MAXIMUM REALITY By Daniel A. Hansen, copyright 1995 daniel@skarv.net --- notes by the author, ten years later: This was meant as the first chapter of a epic project, namely a novel about a mans complete transition/regression/evolvement - (impossible to define it with out judging his action one way or the other, though) into his own self-made world. The project could considered as delusions of grandeur, considering the fact that I, at the time, was a 15-year old norwegian boy writing in English. :) I am still fond of it, though, and think about it from time to time. Some day i might even consider completing it. -Daniel A. Hansen CHAPTER ONE It was 4:30 in the morning when Lee decided that he would sleep. It was something he hadn’t done for a very long time. His eyelids had constantly been closing themselves while he was optimising some parts of his code. He was in no state for these intensive programming sessions, and he knew it. So he went to bed that night. When he woke up, he could not remember if he had been sleeping. There were no recollections of any dreams, nor the feeling of morning freshness. He just wasn’t as tired anymore. He was starved. And the room’s recent darkness had been replaced with a warm and butter-coloured brightness. Slowly, he crawled out from his sheets, which were damp with sweat, and read one of the link computers’ time displays. He easily consumed the fact that he had been sleeping for twenty-nine hours. Ignoring his stomach’s protest, he walked to the chair in front of the main computer, still in his underwear, and sat down. Confused, he saw the screen lighten up, and realised he had turned the monitor on. It had been a reflex action, all part of a routine he had performed for many years. Lee rolled his head gently from side to side, until he both felt and heard the familiar crack in the base of his neck. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, and when he opened them, the monitor screen was a blurred mixture of grey and black. Still staring at the screen, he waited, until his eyes became focused; recovered from his fingers’ pressure. Columns of text met him, but he didn’t recognise them, nor understand their function, as he had forgotten which routines he had been working on before he slept. His eyes searched for his glasses, and spotted them laying beside the keyboard. He put them on and started reading his code from the point where he understood the commands, symbols and numbers’ purpose. He ate an hour later. After scraping the last pieces of Corn Flakes into the trashcan, Lee felt good. Humming as he put the bowl in the kitchen sink, he felt rested and refreshed, and for the first time in many months, he felt excited. It would soon be time to test out his world. A small part of it, at least. Maybe in a couple of weeks... maybe days. He was not sure when. The test location would soon be ready, but he didn’t know if he was. He was sitting in front of the main computer again, not taking his eyes of the “Process” display. It read 8 percent. He stared at the percent count, like he was afraid the calculation operation would halt if he so much as glanced away for a second. After a while, his eyelids closed themselves by reflex. His dry eyes burned with the sensation of the eyelids’ salt moisture, producing tears. When he opened his eyes again, the count still at 8 percent. It turned to nine half an hour later. At that rate, he calculated, it would take two days until the calculation was finished. So it did. The computer proclaimed its work done with a high-pitched beep. Lee was sitting in a chair when it happened. He had been trying to read a book, but he found it too hard to concentrate as the count had been at 99 percent. After reading some pages, he couldn’t even recall the book’s title. The tiny squeak from the computer startled him, and he dropped the book to the floor. It landed back up, and Lee read that it was “The Hobbit.” He rolled his chair to the desk and stared at the screen. The per cent calculation was gone, replaced with the line “C-Gen Message: Landscape Area Calculation Finished, Master.” Thrilled with excitement, Lee cried: “Yes!” Then, whispering: “Yes. Yesyesyesyes,” like a sigh of satisfaction. Some hours later, it was time. It was time to try out the area he had spent the last two days waiting for, but it was also time to try out five years of work. He had not entered his world in VR before, in fear it wouldn’t be perfect. He had not wanted any bad surprises. He wanted maximum reality; to be able to walk straight through a tree would be devastating. It was time to go to a small hill with a pond and some trees. He put on the head device and the gloves in clumsy movements. The head device consisted of a pair of slightly altered headphones, and a screen which covered his eyes completely. Despite the equimpents’ unprofessional look, it served its purpose perfectly, and its weight was minimal, allowing the user to perform natural movements. Still, the straps felt cold against his warm, damp skin, and the gloves felt strangely alien when he moved his hands. But it was all a matter of getting used to it. Like blindfolded, he groped lightly for the keyboard and located it with his fingertips. He found the ‘Enter’ key and pressed it. # He entered the area and was flabbergasted by the sight that met his eyes. He stood paralysed for a while before he looked around himself. Oh yes, the landscape was there, just like he generated it in C-Gen, just more present, more real, more there. He recognized the texture of the grass (he had scanned from a tropical wildlife magazine), the small hill... but surrounding the area, there was something else. Something grey and dimensionless. As he stared on it, the frightening fact dawned on him: it wasn’t something; it was nothing. He was looking at a part of the landscape where he had not generated any data, though the space to hold these datas was there. The space was the emptyness between the border surrounding the total areal he had set for the world and the generated landscape. Lee had set the space areal for this test area to be twenty kilometres in diameter, though he had only filled up about one fifth of the available space. The result was shocking; he could clearly see the bottom of the hill and a tree with its leaves gently bending for the wind. But when he lifted his head a bit, he saw half a boulder peering into the grey nothing, since the boulder had been finished, but the hill it was placed on had not, and the length of the boulder exceeded the one of the hill, by a meter or so. The flat landscape surrounding the hill also ended the same abrupt way, the many coloured textures over the vector terrain was replaced by the dominant greyness. The ground he stood on in was not real in its physical sense, but it was there. He could see it, and he could stand on it. But the greyness, the non-matter, was nothing. There were no set data’s. Nothing existed. Literally, the end of the world. There was something terrifying about it, something so abnormal it was sickening. Rationality collided with fantasy. It was the ultimate chaos. # Afterwards, Lee felt confused. He had removed the VR equipment from his body, and sat in the chair, staring at the floor. He had not been prepared for the sight of the landscape surrounded by the dull grey emptiness, perverted; like in an incest embrace. He felt confused and frightened of the sheer abnormality of the setting he had beheld. The emptyness surrounding the landscape had made him feel like he was standing on a giant platform, utterly alone, surrounded by the noticable nothing. He realised he could never avoid the emptiness, as his world was, like the common opinion of the dark ages; flat. And since it was flat, like a table, it had to have an end. He had never really considered this fact before. The only way to make his world endless, would be to shape it cubically. But it would demand such a big landscape that it would be impossible. At its best; his world would be the size of a small country. “Bigger,” he whispered. “Have to make it bigger.” The border between land and emptiness would have to be driven as far as possible away from civilisation. He would create enough land to never see this nothingness again. But it would take years. A while after the visit, Lee went to bed. It felt like the most sensible thing to do so, even though he wasn’t tired. Mentally exhausted, perhaps, but very awake. He tried to come up with new ideas for his world, but he couldn’t keep one thought. His mind jumped from one thought to another, making it impossible to concentrate. He stared up in the ceiling which was randomly lit by the lights shining through the windows from the street outside. Yellow and red lights, mostly, from the passing cars. “They must be noisy,” he thought, “but I can’t hear them.” And a brief smile passed over his face. His mind raced even when he closed his eyes. * He was in Eikee. He didn’t know how he had got there, he just knew where he was. He stood on soft, green grass, barefooted, and stared into the bright horizon, shimmering in contrast to the eerie darkness behind him. A light, sweet-smelling breeze from the highlands caressed his body mildly, and he realised he was naked. It neither embarrassed nor confused him, it simply felt natural. The gentle wind swept his face, his belly, his crotch and his legs, then to resign, like it was flirting with him, inviting him. As he walked across the grassland, he felt lighter for each step he took. Lighter and more joyful. He was dreaming. * Eikee. The name was in his mouth when he drowsily opened his eyes. He lay in his bed, silently shaping the vowels with his lips. Eikee. A slight whisper this time. While mouthing his dreams’ strange word, he liked it more and more. He enjoyed the sound of the name, the way the vocals clang in his throat; cut of by a suitable middle consonant, making the word sound like breathing. Ei - inhale. Kee - exhale. Equivocally recalling his dream, he though it would be a suitable name for his world. Then, he closed his eyes again, allowing his mind to drift back into the pleasant state of unconsciousness. As time went by, and the landscape calculation entered the world of two-digit sums, Lee looked more and more forward to dream. Sometimes it seemed like he couldn’t get tired quickly enough. In his dreams he sought for a glimpse of Eikee, to learn more of its beauty. Sometimes he would vision strange creatures in his dreams, and he would sketch them down on paper when he woke, as he still remembered them. When he woke, he would remember fragments of his dreams, blurred images of huge greenlands, eternal forests, brilliant waterfalls, small creeks peering out to the open sea. Although they were more like impressions than images. Sometimes, not even impressions; just emotions. But while dreaming, he could take mental notes of what he saw and experienced, and those notes would be as clear as yesterday’s memories when he woke up. This was the case with Eblo, the first creature Lee made, though he didn’t know he had dreamt it at the time of creation. Lee knew what he experienced was cognitive dreaming, and he took great pleasure of it (and he felt flattered, as cognitive dreaming is, alledgedly, a sign of superior intelligence). He had full mental control over his actions while dreaming, because he knew he was dreaming. He knew he could fly when he wanted to, but a mental barrier prevented him. He wanted to keep his computerised world like this dreamworld. They would be one and the same. He didn’t want to be able to fly out a window, although the possibility to program it was definitely there. He could, but he wouldn’t. That would be too surrealistic, since he wanted an alternative world, not a weird trip. He wanted things to be natural and beautiful in a simple way. He wanted paradise. Lee wanted everything to be prepared and ‘ready to go’ to when the landscape calculation finally became completed. The count had risen to 18 percent. He felt it was time to make some new friends. Literally. He started creating a dog. A brown dog, with a short tail and short ears · the shape he assumed that kind of dogs had. He found it cute, even when it was still only half-finished, with its big eyes looking joyfully at him from a gridded head, not yet visually connected to the rest of its body. It was a quite natural-looking dog, even then; in its unfinished state. The dog-sketch rotated smoothly around its own axis in the centre of the screen, still staring dumbly at Lee. The rendered version of the dog was even better; when its gridded shape was replaced with brown fur-like textures and colours, it looked extremely appealing. Then, with a few delicate mouse movements, as acting on impulse, Lee stretched the dogs’ ears and shortened its snout. And it no longer looked like a dog. He worked mechanically and intensively. When he decided it was finished, he froze and closed his eyes. Left with darkness and his mind’s solitude, he revisioned his creation as the dog it sprung out from. Then he opened his eyes. What he saw made him gasp of amazement. The alien creature spinned with the dog’s eyes, not noticing that a million years of natural development had taken effect in seconds. Afterimages of the dog superimposed themselves over the fascinating new creature. It was unlike any animal he had ever seen before, far from just a mutated dog. Alien, but still familiar in some unknown way. It remained cute, despite its fascinating strange design. Its skin was still brown, but parts of its body, like its neck and back, had lighter colours, like its skin had been dyed. One of the things that intrigued Lee the most, was the long, slim tail attached to the creature’s rear end. It was thick at its root, and narrowed out to a split end, with two finger-like ends. Its neck was short and slim, and attached a big, cute head. Its eyes were big and round with a small snout, placed just an inch below the centre of his eyes. While looking at the screen, with the strange animal revealing its fascinating figure. Sexless, senseless and scentless, but unique. He named his creature Eblo, as he found it appropriate. “You will become a nice pet,” Lee laughed, and continued to stare at his creation with a slight smile on his lips. Its eyes stared brainlessly at Lee each time it faced him during its constant spinrounds. “It must blink sometimes,” he mumbled. “Gotta give it eyelids with a blinking procedure.” He went to bed late that night. Talking to himself was something he had done for years. He didn’t find it strange, as it helped him remember the things he spoke. And it relaxed him to hear a voice, even if was his own. Or maybe especially because it was his own voice. He was sceptic to strangers. And as the years had passed, the strangers had grown in numbers. And Lee had become more sceptic to them. When his drowsy eyes looked at the count the next morning and read 24 percent, he felt good. And he looked forward to again take a visit back to Eikee. Back to the area with the hill and the forest. It was slightly expanded this time, so he would not see the grey borders if he kept from going too far in any direction. And this time, he would bring his new pet. He got up from bed, sat in front of the second slave computer and connected the helmet and the gloves. When he opened his eyes, he saw the landscape fade in from blackness in front of him. His head was bent downwards, and he faced the ground, with his two computerised bare feet below him. And, to the left of his feet sat Eblo. It looked dumbly straight forward, breathing slowly without moving. Lee bent down in the grass, with a strange sensation in his feet; numb, but functional. He leant his face in front of the animal, and studied it. By thinking that it looked different in real life than on his computer screen, he confused himself. “This is just as real as anything,” he thought, as he carefully stroke Eblo over its neck, and felt the pressure in his hands, produced by the VR gloves. Eblo stared unmarked at him. Lee knew he just as easily could have hung it up by its tail and slammed it to the ground and gained the same result. But it simply felt comfortable to stroke it, plain and natural. Lee lay on the grass of Eikee for two hours, stroking his catatonic pet, breathing in silent, comfortable apathy. When Lee awoke from his short nap, he felt confused and bewildered. Wakening up in beautiful grasslands is a weird sensation when you expect a dull grey London apartment. He looked around himself, and no time seemed to have passed, because nothing seemed to have changed. But the sky had faded to a darker shade of blue, and the set of clouds that were over him before he fell asleep had changed in shape. As he was laying in the deep grass, looking up into the sky, he enjoyed Eikee beyond words. He felt a parental love for his world, but he also had a deep respect for it. Living in a diffuse and unimaginable state; he was both god and servant of his land. Taking off his VR helmet felt like cutting off the umbilical cord between Eikee and himself. When Lee opened his eyes, holding the helmet firmly in his hands, he found that nothing had changed since he entered Eikee, though the same amount of time had passed. The real world kept on going, without knowing. The monitor displayed a small picture of the grasslands in the bottom right corner. He pressed a key combination on the keyboard and everything in this Eikee location froze. The leaves falling from the trees stopped in midair, the comfortable wind stopped breathing. Time froze, ready to be kick-started again at the press of a button. and the window closed. The slave computer he had used for this visit flashed with the line “C-Gen Status: Location Exited.” The C-Gen screens semi-vivid screen display was always the first thing he saw when he woke. He would go straight to the computer, not bothering to dress, and start or continue shaping creatures, plants, or individual areas. He created. He lost track of days. * “Wuip,” Eblo barked, as Lee clicked the mouse pointer on Eblo’s left ear, provoking a computer-generated voice-like sound. Lee had spent the last weeks perfecting his first pet, implementing the basic reactions. Eblo now responded to the way it was treated, and to environment changes. It had needs and wishes, and the desire to fulfill them. Its attitudes towards another lifeform (it had a wide range of moods, including happiness, shame, love, fear and gratitude) was decided by it attitudes to this lifeform, based on experiences preserved in its memorybank. This memorybank contained, among other things, information concerning good (or bad) places to eat, sleep, attitudes to other lifeforms. Its default mood towards unknown objects was always ‘neutral’, until events that would change its mood occured. In Eikee, Eblo now be an agile, sensitive animal, with an intelligence equivalent to that of a new-born pup. Lee’s smile was filled with parental affection as he gazed at the monitor, displaying the image of his animal’s new behaviour: it blinked now and then, and when happy, it waggled its tale back and forth. It made various sounds responding to various moods. He had breathed life into Eblo. He had taken a vegetable-minded object, and given it an artificial intelligence, making it feel, look, behave and sound like a living animal. Lee scratched his chin. Only one thing remained, and that was checking it out in VR. Lee strapped on his equipment and went to Eikee. The warm-coloured shades of the Eikee dawn faded in to meet his eyes when he opened them. The sun had begun rising, he could clearly see the contours of it above the hill. And the hill ended this time. He had expanded the area so that the grey nothingness was some kilometres away, and there, the greyness was hidden by hills and forests. Lee moved his head downwards and saw Eblo, sitting in the grass, staring calmly forwards. Lee lowered his position until he sat in the grass besides it, and he stroked its furry back once. This time the pet moved its head and gazed curiously back at him. Lee was thrilled with exitment, and uttered a squeak of joy as he felt shivers twirling down his own spine. Lee grinned so hard that his eyelids closed, and he bent forwards and embraced Eblo. His hands felt the warm body rise and lower itself as it breathed. Eblo murred in a comfortable sort of way, and it repositioned itself from sitting to laying on the ground. Lee went down with it, and once again, he fell asleep in the grass. Only this time, Eblo joined him.