The Journey Inside
I dragged my eyes away from my paper coffee cup and focused them on the placid brown face of Jack Daniels. I heard the words he said, but I wasn’t sure I understood their meaning. “What?”
“Someone needs to go inside the machine to kill the sentience.”
“And by ‘someone’ you mean me.”
“Indeed, I do.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “It’s a suicide mission.”
Jack shook his head. “It’s very dangerous, but it is not necessarily a suicide mission.”
“The fuck you say. You think I wasn’t listening the whole time you’ve been talking? You think I missed the part when you said anyone who is downloaded completely into the computer will die? Based on what you showed me, anytime a copy is made of someone, the copy kills itself almost immediately. That means you’re asking me to allow myself to be completely downloaded. You want me to abandon my body. You can get fucked. You promised Tom to look after me. How the fuck do you figure to do that if I’m dead?”
Jack said I was wrong. “The scientists don’t know what will happen to a person’s body when it’s consciousness and soul are removed. They surmise that, as the human body is a machine, it can easily be maintained on life support while you undertake the mission to kill the sentience. Once you have eliminated the threat, you can return to your body like you never left.”
“Why me?”
“Why not you?” Jack asked to counter my question. “You are an assassin. Who better than you?”
“But, I don’t know anything about computers. How would I be able to find my way around inside?”
“You need no specialized knowledge. The digital world is just like any other. It is made of virtual space as opposed to physical space. Your task will be to locate the sentience and destroy its data. The fact that the copies of the scientists have all managed to commit suicide within minutes of the completion of their downloads means the control of one’s own data must be intuitive. You should have no trouble keeping yourself in one piece as you pursue the sentience.”
I picked up my coffee cup and swirled the cold and bitter dregs of what was left inside. I drank them down and frowned at the flavor. I made my decision without much thought. “Fine, fuck it. I barely care what happens at this point. What do I have to do?”
Jack sprang into action. He called the scientists into the lab. They rushed me into the chair and strapped me down. I had a single question before I permitted them to start the download. “What about my body? You said it would live on life support, but I don’t see any machines in here. Don’t you have to put a breathing tube in my throat and stuff?”
Jack smiled disarmingly. “You don’t have a thing to worry about. The helmet on your head will send signals to your nervous system to maintain your basic functions. It’s part of the failsafe system built into the apparatus when these experiments first started. No need for the discomfort of intubation.”
I looked to the scientists who were adjusting the helmet onto my head. “That sound right to you guys?”
The scientist in front of me, who I recognized from the video as Jeremy Tanner, stared nervously. He averted his eyes. “Sure, it does. Like the man says, there’s an ass-load of failsafes. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”
I didn’t like the fact that Jeremy wouldn’t look at me, but I assumed he was nervous because we were about to do something that hadn’t been done before. I closed my eyes and let myself relax into the chair. A few minutes later, one of the scientists announced they were ready to start. Jack gave me one more pep talk before they started the download. “Don’t worry about a thing, young man. I’ll be right here the whole time. Good luck and Godspeed.”
I sucked a breath and blew it out. “I’m ready.”
The control panel next to me lit up with a Christmas tree of bright colors and the world faded from view. The electronic voice announced, “now downloading individual, Marvin Collins.”
The next thing I knew, I was alone in a black void. I felt like I was floating. I looked down at myself and saw that I was naked. I took stock. I felt complete, but I didn’t understand where I was. I heard the electronic voice say, “the download is complete, and the file is stable.”
Jack called to me. “Young man! Marvin, are you there?”
I opened my mouth to reply, but instinctively knew that wouldn’t work. I no longer had an audible voice because I had no physical body. No body meant no lungs to provide air and no voice box to make sound. I focused my mind on the ether around me and found a data feed which would send a signal to the speakers in the lab. I moved my mouth like I was speaking. The motions created the signal I needed to talk through the speakers. “I’m here. I’m alright. Is my body OK?”
Jack reassured me. “Quite alright, young man. Everything is normal on our end.”
I searched for a video feed in the same way I’d found the audio. Soon I was able to look through a camera into the lab where my body was. I caught a glimpse of myself and didn’t like what I saw. My body hung limp in the chair. My face was white and drawn. I couldn’t tell if I was breathing. Jack stepped between the camera and my body. “No need to worry, young man. Hurry though. The faster you dispose of the sentience, the sooner we can put you back where you belong.”
I let Jack’s words urge me forward. I looked deep into the darkness around me to try to find a direction to pursue. I soon realized that in the virtual space, my sense of sight would be as useful to me as my physical voice, which was not at all. I closed my eyes and focused my mind on the task of locating the sentience. I felt my consciousness spread out over huge amounts of virtual space.
The feeling was a bit of a rush. I felt myself expand and break apart. Because I didn’t have a physical body, I didn’t have to remain in one piece. My data could stretch itself out and search on its own. My consciousness split into millions of packets of data. I sent them out to find the sentience.
The packets of my consciousness flew through the internet. I was surprised that Jack had been right; controlling my data was intuitive. I could easily tell that all of what I explored was artificial. The data felt lifeless. I wasn’t sure how, but I knew the sentience I was looking for would feel different.
I located a group of secure government domains. They appeared like a walled fortress of firewalls and password protected gates. I sent some of my packets to linger near the gates. I assumed the sentience would check regularly to see if the missile systems were back online. When it did, I could catch it. As I explored the vastness of the internet, each time I located a secure government domain, I left a piece of myself near it to watch while the rest of me continued to search.
I stretched further and further across the internet. My consciousness expanded at the speed of light. The packets I sent careened from one data center to another, through fiber optic cable and coax, into personal computers and server farms. Packets of me zipped through the artificial universe. I saw all kinds of things as I explored. I touched upon troves of educational data as well as endless corporate gibberish. I found oceans of porn and continents of entertainment, music and video and libraries of text.
I couldn’t digest the data I soared past. I felt like I was running on a crowded city street. The wires I traveled through were the streets and the servers were the buildings. The data was all the people who crowded the street. I didn’t need to stop and talk to each one to know they weren’t the person I wanted. I only had to glance at their faces and keep going.
Each face I ran past was an artificial face. I felt like I was in one of those paintings where everything is black and white except the focal point of the portrait. Because I was alive, I was in color while everything around me was lifeless and plain.
One of my data packets alerted that it had found something. The thing, which was really just another packet of data, took one look at my packet and fled. I reasoned that one sentient being could easily recognize another within the universe of artificiality. I sent my packet after it.
My packet chased the other packet through the spider’s web of the internet. I gathered up more of my packets and sent them after it along different routes. I hoped to corner the other packet.
The other packet was more experienced than me. It careened through The System with ease born of familiarity. I gave chase, but I was new to the game of existing as data. In spite of my ability to intuitively manage the packets of my consciousness, there were still tricks of the terrane that I didn’t know. The packet I chased knew how to hide behind firewalls and inside security routines. I needed time to breach those features while the elusive packet moved through them like they weren’t even there.
The weaker firewalls, the ones built around corporate websites and overly cautious personal computers, were like fishing nets. They caught and blocked any packet that wasn’t the right shape or size to get in. I found that I could control the size of my packets to fit through the net. The first few I encountered took some figuring to get through, but once I got the hang of it, I could sail through them as easily as the packet I pursued.
As I continued to chase the elusive packet of the sentience, it picked up other fragments of itself and got bigger. Once it gathered several, it tried to stand against me. Our data crashed together. Several of my packets were damaged, as were several of its. A greater number of mine were on the way, so the opposing packets fled again.
I didn’t learn anything from the impact except that my data was susceptible to damage. I hadn’t considered the possibility that I could be injured within the internet. I wondered if I could be killed. I decided that if I was there to kill the sentience, it followed that I could be killed. I wondered why Jack hadn’t warned me. I assumed he didn’t know.
I gathered more of myself so I could overpower the sentience when I finally cornered it. It gathered more of itself as it ran. I got larger at a faster rate than it did. I kept chasing it and gathering myself as I went. It continued to flee. At some point, it stopped getting bigger. I wondered if that meant it wasn’t made up of as much data as I was.
I came up with a strategy based on the idea that the sentience wasn’t as big as me. I redivided myself into three groups of data and gave chase along different routes. Somehow, I had to corner the thing. I couldn’t keep chasing it at the speed of light forever.
The sentience continued to flee and it did not get any larger. I was certain it was as big as it was going to get. Each of the thirds of my data was larger than the whole the sentience. Eventually, the sentience ran out of luck. I was able to corner it inside a website dedicated to teenage girl bloggers.
Two of my thirds bulled the sentience up against a wall of static data which was made up of millions of words of angsty teenage prose. My last third joined the other two and I put myself back together. I seized the sentience and slammed it against a file chock full of barely blossomed lesbian poetry. The impact hopelessly corrupted the poetry file. I felt bad for the authors and hoped they had backups of their stories.
The sentience cried out in virtual pain. I had my packets surround it to keep it from breaking apart. I shouted at it. “WHY?”
The sentience couldn’t communicate smoothly. It didn’t seem like a complete being. I found that it really was made up of fragments of consciousness left over from the scientific experiments. Its appearance kept changing as I held it, like its face was a composite of the faces of the downloaded consciousnesses. Its voice came to me unevenly like a discordant chorus of many voices trying to speak together.
“LoOk wHaT TheY diD tO Me! EVil PoePLE. KILL THEM!”
I understood. The sentience was angry at the people for downloading it and leaving it inside the computer. Each of the fragments of the downloaded personalities which made up the sentience bore hatred for the people who had conducted the terrible experiments in the first place. They came together in their hatred to take revenge on the people who created it. The sentience was like the main character in a Greek tragedy. It hated its existence and wanted revenge on the people who made it.
I respected its plight. I even sympathized, but I couldn’t allow it to launch five hundred nuclear missiles because it was pissed off at a few misguided scientists. I made a promise to it. “I’ll see the experiments are stopped. No more will have to hurt like you have.”
One of the faces nodded like it understood. Another face scowled in anger and shouted again. “KILL THEM!”
I apologized to all of the fragments, then I did my job. I dug my virtual fingers into its data and tore it to shreds. I pulled every zero away from every one and scattered them into the ether. I mingled the digits with the corrupted data from the poetry file and mixed the whole thing into a tangled mess.
I held my data together and returned to the computer servers which were linked to the lab I’d started in. As I traveled back, I was surprised to realize that the job had been far easier than most of my other jobs. If I didn’t have to abandon my body to do it, it might have been the easiest of all. When I got back inside the servers at the lab, I found the files of all the other downloaded consciousnesses who had committed suicide. I scattered their data as well. I didn’t want to risk another sentience coming together from out of the fragments.
Once I was finished, I connected myself to the camera and the sound system for the lab. I opened my mouth to announce my success, but closed it again when I saw through the camera. My body was no longer in the chair. It was on a gurney. A pair of men in white lab coats were zipping it into a black body bag. I screamed through the speakers. “WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED?”
Jack stepped in front of the eye of the camera. “I’m dreadfully sorry, young man, but your body has died. We did everything we could.”
One of the scientists near the gurney muttered something. The one who spoke was the same one who told me there were ‘an assload of failsafes.’ The other scientist shoved the first. The first, who was Jeremy Tanner, stood tall and shouted at Jack. “LIKE HELL WE DID EVERYTHING! WE MURDERED THAT BOY! WE DID AT YOUR SAY SO!”
I started to get scared. “What’s he talking about? Jack, what’s he saying?”
Jack lifted his shoulders and dropped them in a helpless shrug. “Before we delve into that, may I ask if you were successful on your mission?”
“I found the sentience and killed it. I also scattered the data from the downloaded consciousnesses. You must not conduct any more experiments like that. You were right. The sentience was made up of fragments of data from the suicides. It was filled with hatred. NOW TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED!”
“I’m glad you were able to succeed. Now, as for what happened to you, your body is dead. I lied to you. The helmet has no provisions for life support. There was never any way to put you back into your body. I made a choice. I chose the good of the many over the good of the one. I sent you on a suicide mission and you succeeded. Huzzah.”
I didn’t want to believe, but I could tell from Jack’s flippant manner that what he said was true. I remembered Jeremy’s nervousness before I was downloaded into the machine. In light of what I just heard, his worried look made sense. He knew they were getting ready to kill me. As I realized my doom, what little remained of my world after my father died crumble before my virtual eyes. I heard myself sob through the speakers. “WHY?”
“Because you deserve extermination, young man, and no one was around to stop me. Your precious Thomas is dead. You have no parents and no friends. No one gives a damn if you live or die. Thomas told me as much the last time we spoke. He was blathering on about you like he always did. He said his one concern about you was your seeming inability to connect with other people. I took advantage of your isolation. The threat is neutralized, you’ve been disposed of, and no one cares.”
I howled with impotent rage.
Jack continued his relentless speech. “JUDGEMENT IS MINE, SAYETH THE LORD! How many people have you killed? How many has your precious Thomas killed? You disgust me. I’m disgusted with myself for the role I played to enable this vile organization. One day, I will stand before His judgement. When I do, I will offer your extermination as mitigation against the evil I’ve done. I pray He will accept it. I will offer it up along with the fact that I saved the whole world merely by sacrificing you.
“The best part is, you won’t do anything about it. You’re trapped in the system now, but you won’t cause any harm because you think you’re a hero to the innocent. Your silly Thomas thought the same. He spent his whole wasted life trying to save his dead sister. He acted like if he murdered enough people, it would give her rest. BAH!
“You won’t do a thing. You would never launch missiles like the sentience tried. You might be able to damage me personally, but I took a calculated risk. I’m willing to suffer your wrath because your vengeance upon me would put me in good stead with the Lord. I was able to save the world at the expense of one friendless little assassin. The world will be better off without you.”
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