Tender sunlight oozed through thin curtains and gently laid itself onto a bed. By this time, it reflected off the white sheets patterned with light blue triangles, brightening the entire room, and started to touch the face of Pamela.
She was a young woman with short dark brown hair and a bright, happy face. Whenever you looked at her, no matter what mood she was in, and what expression she had on her face, it felt like her heart was always smiling. She barely had any wrinkles, only lovely dimples on each side of her lips that gave her face a friendly outline.
Just as the sun touched her cheeks, Pamela opened her light grey eyes. In everything, she always had slow but confident movements. They were never jerky or hurried, lazy or constricted. And now, in everything, even in opening her eyes, there was absolutely no hurry, but also none of the laziness. She turned her head to see the empty space to her left, and, with a slightly confused look, she yawned, closed her eyes, then sat herself up on the bed.
"Jim?" she raised her voice just enough to be heard from the adjacent room.
"Morning!" a man's voice replied.
"Good Mornin'!"
She stood up and, still in her pajamas, led herself towards the other voice.
Jim was sitting on a couch in the living room and had a laptop in between his legs and his stomach. He was a young, somewhat tall man with a bit of a stomach, but not too bulky. His wavy light brown hair today looked somewhat messy, which was a bit unusual, because he always took care of his hair and went to a professional stylist. Jim did not have any facial hair, and he wore a wooden horn-shaped piercing on his right ear. His face was straightforward and usually looked very friendly, except for the moments of intense concentration like today. A few seconds after Pamela walked in, he took his sight away from the computer, and she saw bags under his brown eyes.
"Did you sleep, babe?"
"Yeah, I woke up at 4 though, and couldn't fall asleep after. It was already getting bright outside. I had a bit of a crazy dream that gave me an idea on the AI thing I'm doing for work. Decided to do a bit of programming."
"Ah, that's for the game you guys are developing?"
"Yeah. I've been stuck on this part for a few weeks now, so I'm pretty happy making progress now."
"What's the part you've been stuck on? I thought nothing can stop you, Mr. Smartini!" asked Pamela. She always liked coming up with nicknames on the spot.
"Basically, I've been making this feedback loop between the environment and the character. It's a bit hard to explain, but I couldn't figure out how to reflect the objects existing in the environment and project them onto the point of view of the character. But I think I figured it out now. I created an abstraction to process the environment reflection and distort it via a person's learned experience. It's pretty crazy, it works kind of like a brain! It's pretty simple right now, but I'm gonna expand on it and make it more realistic."
"See, not that hard - to make a brain, you, first, need a brain!.." Pamela said with a laugh, came up to Jim and wrapped her arms around his neck. "You know I already know how smart you are, don't need to show off! Speaking of showing off, you remember we're going to an open house today, Mr. Smarty McFly?"
"This is heavy! Alright, let's go after the breakfast?"
"You drive!"
Everything in that moment felt completely dark. There was no noise other than the buzzing sound coming the fluorescent light bulbs Jim was under. Even though they brightly lit the room, in that moment, darkness, cold and emptiness pierced through Jim's mind, as he sat quietly in that long hallway. The world stopped feeling real.
He had been switching back and forth from replaying the events of the accident in his head, to feeling completely empty, to noticing the pain from his abrasions, to looking worriedly at the clock on the wall, to looking impatiently at the door. In the moment when everything was dark and empty, the door opened.
After jumping up from the bench he was sitting on, he faced the nurse that came out of the door, and, after seeing her face, sudden dread and feeling of something irreversible struck him to the core.
"James, we put her ribs in place and took care of the immediate fractures, but the damage to her spine, concussion and loss of blood kept her in the state of coma. We don't know if she's going to make it, or when she's going to wake up... We're very sorry."
"Hi mom!"
"Hey Jim! How is Pam?" was heard from a distance.
"Same."
"Alright, the dinner's in the fridge."
Jim took off his brown jacket and his winter hat. He now had a bristle, no longer had any piercing, and his hair seemed to have lost any resemblance of structure. As he walked towards his room, the noise of a conversation grew louder and louder.
"Look, Linda, it's hovering to the south!" said a man with a deep voice.
"Let's keep quiet, maybe it won't notice us. The bushy meadow to the right looks good, Marcus," whispered a woman.
"Could be a good hideout, let's go. I swear this goddamn dragon can smell us!" responded the man.
Jim's mother asked from another room, "What's been happening in your room, Jimmy? I keep hearing voices coming from there, and it's been bugging me all day!"
"Not now, mom, I gotta help them," replied Jim.
Jim quickly unlocked the door, and a growl of a dragon filled the whole apartment. Jim jumped over the many wires and computer parts lying on the ground and quickly took his virtual reality goggles. His mom impatiently entered his room, and Jim said, "Just don't step on the wires!" as he put his goggles on.
"Marcus, it's getting close!" said Linda. A beautiful tall blonde woman in golden armor appeared on a big screen in the room and inside Jim's virtual reality goggles. She was wearing a necklace with a red stone inside, and her hand covered in multiple rings was approaching for a dagger hanging from her back. Her and her partner's heads were sticking out of a bush, and the dragon swerving left and right was hovering closer and closer to them.
"Linda, run to the tower on the right, your dagger won't be useful until this thing lands. I will shoot arrows until it comes down. Then run close and hit it!" said Marcus. He was a strong muscular man with rough features, dark hair and many scars. His armor had a blue tint, and it was shining like it was made out of glass.
Jim pressed the button on his virtual reality gloves, was waving up and down to choose a location, then was waiting to spawn near them. His gloves looked much like regular gloves, except had a few buttons on the wrists and wires attaching them to the goggles. As it was happening, Marcus stood up and ran to the left with his bow out and started taking out his arrows, pulling them on the string, and shooting them one by one. Linda ran to the right towards a small ruined tower and found cover under two leaning stones. The dragon let out a loud noise followed by the tongues of flame coming out of its mouth. It was staggering right and left to avoid the incoming arrows but one of them managed to land on its wing. As the dragon flew directly above them, it let out a burst of flame that burned the bushes they sat in just a few seconds ago.
The dragon turned its back to them and was slowly turning around to have a next go at them, as the arrows kept flying at it. Another arrow landed on its tail, and another - on a different wing. Marcus truly was a great archer. The dragon became slightly less aerodynamic and it was clear it was going to land in a minute or two. Jim was already on the field but it will take him a bit of time to run close to them. He was running as fast as he could towards the sound of a dragon fight, and he quickly saw more flames coming from the sky. He ran beside a river, beside a grove, he could finally see the forest near which the fight was happening, and soon he saw the tower and the burning meadow nearby. He could hear the struggle, the loud roars, but due to the fire and the smoke, it was hard to see Linda or Marcus.
Even though he ran out stamina, he finally got there. "Marcus! Linda!" he shouted. He reached them in the moment when the dragon was on the land, hitting Marcus with its claws. One of its wings was frozen, probably a work of Linda's magic, and she kept smashing the other side of the dragon. Marcus was avoiding most of the hits but was already bleeding from both arms, and it was getting hard for him to swing his two-handed sword. Worse, he was on the direct path of dragon's flames, and it could spit fire at any moment.
Without hesitation, Jim approached the dragon from the side of its frozen wing, and quickly took out his magic one-handed sword. He was doing it with his virtual reality gloves as if there was a real sword on his back. When his hand touched the sword in the game, his glove actually tensed and wrapped around, as if he was holding the real sword, and prevented further movement, giving an illusion of weight and touch. It was a fairly new technology.
Jim pointed his free hand on the dragon and let out a magical spell that totally froze and paralyzed the dragon's neck. In one swift movement, his sword cut off the dragon's head, and the blood started first sprinkling, then pouring out of the remaining hole. Only a few seconds later, Marcus and Linda realized what happened and stopped hitting it.
"Told you guys, there's gotta be three of us to fight off a dragon!" exclaimed Jim.
"Jim-the-Grim!" shouted Linda.
"Son of the undead!" shouted Marcus.
"Hey y'all!"
"Jim, if ripping the head from one dragon takes you one minute, what secret mission are you doing for, like, eight hours each day, huh?" said Marcus.
"I'll take that as a thank you," replied Jim.
"Mr. Grim, the necklace you got me really helped with my freezing spells! Did you see that bastard's wing?" exclaimed Linda.
They all caught their breath. Linda and Marcus stood beside the dragon's bloody head. Linda started collecting the still-pouring dragon's blood into a vial. After Marcus shook off the dirt and ashes from his armor, Jim put his hands on Marcus's wounds and started chanting a spell to heal them.
"Buddy, we can make money off of dragon's meat! Just sell 'em slices, since you seem like a qualified butcher." started Marcus, "Or, we can come up with some fine recipes! I'm thinking... a sweetroll with dragon chunks," continued Marcus, followed by laughter from his friends. "Hear me out, I've got a pitch too!"
Who stole your sweetroll?
Not a rat and not a troll?
Twas that darned dragon soul!
We chopped that bastard in a bowl!
Roasted slowly with a scroll!
To serve in sweet and tasty roll,
Twas that bastard's final role!
Don't forget one for your stroll!
"Jim, that man tells me his career as a bard is over. I'm telling you, Marcus, you will be famous for your poems, not your adventures!" laughed Linda.
"You know, Marcus, if a creature takes out your tongue, I'm gonna miss your songs the most." Jim finished casting his spell and let out a deep breath, "It was a great work, you guys, and we can joke around forever, but, um... I gotta go now. I'll try to find you in a couple of hours," said Jim.
In order not to scare his friends by a sudden disappearance, he first chanted an invisibility spell on himself, then quickly exited the game.
"Wait, don't burn yourself around here, the meadow is still in fire!" said Linda and rushed towards Jim, but he was already gone.
"What a mystery man! Appears to help, then disappears just as quickly! Maybe he just didn't like my recipe idea?" said Marcus.
"It was the most hilarious idea," said Linda while sheathing her bloodied dagger behind her back.
"You think that was hilarious? Wait till you hear my other food ideas. First, you've been collecting lots of dragon blood, and I think it's about time we make a soup with it. Then, ..." Jim turned down the volume of the speakers after taking off his goggles. His mom stood in awe and couldn't comprehend what was happening.
"Sorry, mom, I forgot to turn down the volume today," said Jim. "Sorry it was loud the whole day."
"Who are these people?.. Are they your friends? Are you playing with them online?" asked his mom.
"Yes, they're my friends. And no... they're not online. I... um... created them. They're kind of... virtual."
"What? How do you mean? How did you make them?"
"See, around 5 months ago, around the time of... you know..." sighed Jim
"I know," his mom responded.
"Yeah, at around that time, I realized how to make a sort of a... brain inside a computer... and I hooked it up to the game my company is developing. It's all rather technical, but in simpler words, I kind of made characters, and, well, the whole game... sentient. That's why it looks so realistic, and the characters behave real, do things, talk, joke around."
"How's that possible? They're in the computer! Why did you help them?"
"They don't know it's a game. To them, it's real life. They feel, and breathe, and love. A developer has to take care of his people, you know, even if they're virtual."
"But is that ethical? To keep them, you know, in that box... in your computer? What if you... turn it off?"
"It's alright, they're in a cloud, they won't die if I turn off my computer! Well, even if the cloud was turned off... I suppose, it would be similar to... what happened to Pam," said Jim, sighed and looked down and to a side.
"Sorry Jimmy... Did the doctors say anything different today?"
Jim sat on his couch, and his eyes started to tear up.
"Her brain activity is a bit different each day, which means that she's still there. But, it's not getting stronger, and she can't get out," said Jim, and, after a pause, started mumbling with tears running down his cheeks, "I feel guilty for what happened. I was driving that day, and... maybe if I slept better, I'd be more careful, and she wouldn't be there... on the hospital bed... I miss her so much..."
"You know it wasn't your fault, Jim, we talked about it a million times." and, after a brief pause, added, "Let's have dinner, it'll make you feel better."
To say that Jim looked like a different man would be an understatement. With a heavy beard and long hair, his entire face shimmered with light brown. The features of his face and its colors always made him stand out in a good way, but now, apart from unusual beauty, his new look spoke of weirdness, eccentricity and, perhaps, obsession. His eyes were intensely swinging left and right, and there was always a peculiar smile on his face, like he figured something out, like a stretched out eureka moment, like he was in that dream he once had, only this time it was not a dream.
He took a vacation at work, and each day, every wakeful hour, he was digging into electronics, soldering wires, printing circuits, connecting electrical sensors. His mother was away visiting relatives for a while, so there was nothing distracting him. The living room was used as a storage for pieces of unused or broken electronics and empty pizza boxes, while his computer room had triple the usual amount of computer parts and tools. His table, apart from having the big, now stained, screen, also had a number of books and torn pages with schematics and calculations.
He muttered to himself as he was connecting, combining and soldering various electronics:
"I had to think in more dimensions, all this time..."
"To think that nobody's done this before... A CPU with a flexible instruction set..."
"Pieces of paper and computer screens are sometimes so limiting..."
"Alright, the CPU instructions will come from a programmable array..."
"Brain and CPU instructions... through programmable array... I think it'll work..."
"Analyzing brain structure might be tough... I'll need to find invariants at a run time, but I've done that for my brain abstraction..."
"Hmm... brain creating CPU commands at a run time... An unexplored direction..."
"Okay... Once I connect brain signals as inputs to the CPU, it'll basically serve as my abstraction..."
"And the rest will be more straightforward... Just connect it to my sandbox audio-visual algorithm..."
"Might be good to store the created environment inside the cloud... yes..."
"The biggest caveat... how do we feed the environment back to the brain?"
"Hmm... Headphones? I hope the brain will learn to interpret the environment..."
"It'll be a feedback loop... so it's a good bet..."
"And of course... Gonna mix myself there as well..."
As before, Jim was walking to Pamela's room in the hospital every day. These days, however, he took a certain briefcase with him. Even though it was ordinarily-looking, it was a result of months of his obsessions and weeks of tireless work, it was a peak of his creativity, pinnacle of his ingenuity, work of his life, and, perhaps, his last hope. Each time, once he was left alone with Pam, he first kissed her, talked to her about life and explained what he was going to do. He would then open the briefcase and take out a single piece of electronics that was his creation. It looked basically like a winter hat with attached headphones. All around the hat were electrical sensors attached to wires. Wires were neatly collected together and fed to the bottom section of the briefcase. The bottom of the briefcase had multiple pieces of electronics hidden away from the naked eye and acted as a black box that took the sensors as inputs, and had a single output wire connecting to the headphones located on the hat.
"Pam, you have to learn to interpret the sound, okay? Just think of something, a sound or a sight. You'll notice the sound in your headphones. It'll sounds one way. Think of something else, it'll sound another way. It's like learning to see for the first time. When you learn it, you brain will program it. Then it's going to make sense to me, and I'm going to make sense to you. And we can see each other again."
It was July and it's been almost a year since the beginning of Pamela's coma. Doctors told Jim there's no reason to come anymore, since there's little hope left. However, they always let him in and let him be alone with her for an hour each day. These days, he spend the whole hour training Pamela's brain to understand his piece of technology.
He put on his goggles and gloves, and, in virtual reality, he was looking around and walking left and right. There were days when all he could see or hear was white noise, randomly colored dots ranging from white to black, all shades of red, green and blue. There were other days that made him more hopeful, where he saw weird fractal-like patterns, but nothing intelligible. He was beginning to see patterns himself, in randomness, hearing things in pure noise. He's been worried about his own mental state since he stopped shaving, but during these hours, his concerns were stronger than ever.
Exactly three weeks into his experiment, something happened. After thirty seconds of the usual randomness, sudden flash made everything pure white. Jim closed his eyes out of surprise, but immediately opened them again. The regular static noise disappeared, and it got really quiet. Jim got worried. He couldn't understand why everything would turn white and quiet? In just a few seconds, faint outlines of Pamela's face started to materialize. It was appearing as if it was imprinted on a round wall in front of him. In fact, not just one face, but many, many Pamela's faces. Everywhere he could look, he saw Pamela's face. There was four big ones on each side around him, one big one on the ceiling, another - on the floor. In the corners between these faces, more smaller faces appeared. And in the corners between them, yet smaller ones appeared. He was in a giant fractal where everything looked like Pamela's face. Even the patterns of the outlines looked as though they were made out of little Pamela's faces, whose outlines were also made of smaller Pamela's faces. It was the weirdest thing he's ever seen in his life. Pamela's eyes were closed.
"Pam! Pam!" exclaimed Jim.
"Eaaahaghhh," yawned and grimaced Pamela. All of the hundreds of millions of Pamela's faces changed their expression at the same time.
"Pam! Pam! You're here! I can't believe it... You're finally here! Is this real?"
"Mhm?" responded Pamela with a face as blissful as a morning sun. Jim was not himself from excitement. He shouted, "Pam! Wake up!" as he jumped, trying to touch one of Pamela's faces, then ran forward towards another, even though it remained the same distance from him.
"Pam! Can you hear me? Wake up!"
Pamela's face smiled and a billion of dimples suddenly appeared all around Jim. Pamela slowly, but confidently opened her eyes and was suddenly struck with terror.
"What the... Where am I? Why is everything so weird?" as Pamela spoke, all her innumerable mouths opened, and the sound reverberated throughout the simulation, giving her voice ominous and, at the same time, godly characteristic.
"Erm... Don't get worried! Everything's alright! You're... inside your own head!"
"What... What are you... What is this place... Why is there so many..." Pamela's voice echoed with millions of little echoes.
"Everything's alright! Everything is wonderful! You are connected to a virtual space. We are communicating through my virtual reality, and you are looking inside your own virtual world!" explained Jim and stopped running. He stood still, marveling at the insanity of what he was experiencing.
"Jim? It's you?" was heard from millions of her mouths, followed by millions of tiny echoes. All of her faces closed one eye and squinted the other to inspect Jim who was standing in between all of her faces.
"Yes! It's me, Pam!"
"Why? Why... why are we here? What happened?"
"Pam, do you remember driving to the open house?"
"No... we were supposed to go."
"We were driving... I was driving us to an open house. We almost got there, but there was a junction... A pickup truck ran the red light and T-Boned us."
"I don't remember this... I can't believe... Is everything alright with us?"
"I had a few scratches... I'm so sorry, Pam. You're still in a coma. You've been in the coma for almost a year now. I've been visiting you every day. Doctors said there's no chance for me to see you again, and... I've been going a little crazy here, without you. I decided to find a way to talk to you... And I... We finally succeeded! It worked! You're inside the simulation! Your brain creates this environment, and my avatar is mixed as part of it."
"Wow... I don't know what to say... If my mind is inside the simulation, where is my body? How is my body doing?"
"It's on the hospital bed beside me, and it's fine!.. I mean, it's great and hot as always! You've been on a good diet, I promise!"
"Can't I just wake up?"
"I think you're stuck inside your own brain for now... I don't know how long it's going to last, but at least now that we can communicate! Let's try something! Can you focus your energy to create a virtual body, like I have? Just remember what you looked like, and imagine yourself standing next to me!"
"Erm.. Alright."
Pamela closed her eyes, and soon, the millions of faces all merged into one little sphere. It rolled close to Jim, and out of that sphere, materialized the body of Pamela, exactly as she remembered herself, with her hair, her usual skin, the clothes she usually wore at home. To Jim, her body looked ever-so-slightly weird, because everything was inverted from left to right, although he quickly realized why that was the case.
In an instant, Pamela and Jim were linked up in a hug, and he could feel the touch with his virtual reality gloves. They both burst into tears and, during the rest of his hour, talked about what's happened over the past year.
Jim and Pamela stood on a long suspension bridge connecting two beautiful mountains together. Around them, beautiful mountain ranges were covered in lush intricate forests and stretched all the way to the horizon. Snowy regions, like hats covered tops of the tallest mountains. Beneath where they stood, there was a beautiful tropical valley with a wide and vivacious river, and a complicated jungle on each side of it. In front of them were vast colorful fields, and, far in the distance, what looked like cities with skyscrapers and bustling streets covered in people. The world created by Pamela was not constrained in shape or size. The earth, even though was still spherical, had an unthinkable magnitude. The mountains could stretch forever, the cities could grow huge vertically and horizontally. Pamela was the god of this place. She constructed the laws of physics, she could destroy or create anything, transport them anywhere. She could even construct an entirely new planet if she ever got bored, and all she had to do was to will it into existence.
"Pam! Can you fly us somewhere again? This time, can you take me to the clouds?"
Pamela took Jim's hand and guided him up. They flew above the bridge and the mountains. They could no longer see the river under them as clearly, the cities disappeared, and it was getting darker and darker. Suddenly, they were surrounded by milky white as they flew through the grotesque moving clouds.
After they were above the clouds, Pamela said, "Jim, trust me!" and suddenly let go of his hand. Jim felt the loss of control. He started falling and looked at Pamela with a confused look as he fell further and further away from her. She stayed floating in the air, and he was racing towards the clouds. The white milk was getting closer and closer, but when he bumped into it, the clouds turned into a viscous liquid, and he bounced right off of them!
"Did you like my bouncy sky castle?" laughed Pamela right after she caught him.
"Very funny," said Jim.
"Hey mister! If you don't like it, remember I can zap you with a lightning!" laughed Pamela as they settled onto a cloud.
"Zeus the Almighty!" replied Jim.
They stood on the surface of the clouds and looked around. To the bottom of them, they could see the outline of Pamela's planet, with a bright and unusual surface. As they moved their sight further and further up, a colorful gradient went from blue, to yellow, and further up, to the darkness of space. As they moved their sight to the very top, an incredible picture was revealed. A myriad of lively and glimmering iridescent fractal-like galaxies and nebulas were extending into the infinite distance. Expanding, contracting and vibrating tubes made of stars were stretching like vines, embedded with self-similar rainbow-colored geometrical shapes that were connected in the most beautiful arrangement that they've ever seen. Words cannot describe the intricacy, the variety, the symmetry and the multitude of these patterns.
Pamela took Jim's hand, and both of them stood still and couldn't take their eyes away from the stars. They were in awe and total disbelief of the beauty of what they were seeing. A quiet moment passed. As Jim's gloves began to vibrate, he asked:
"Did you... make this?"
"No."
Their voices reverberated and echoed back from the universe in the shape of a beautiful musical piece. Millions of harmonic songs of angels, the orchestra of pure bliss, the ensemble of unconditional love, combined with creativity of all that have ever existed, connected together to play the song for them.
"I love you, Jim."
"I love you, Pam."
The music covered and lifted them into the iridescent universe, taking them for the most lovely walk of their lives. Galaxies moving past them took shape of a beautiful scenery, where stars were as colorful and intricate as flowers. They moved towards the waterfall made out of stars reflecting the sight around them. As they crossed the waterfall, the colorful stars beyond it took shapes of birds. As uncountable varieties of flocks flew all around them, they heard their tranquil singing and a synchronous dance of their wings amplified by the angelic singing. As they moved forward, stars began to look like weird, unknown and unusual animals, insects and creatures from minuscule elephants to mountain-sized bees. These creatures moved rhythmically, interacted with one another, flew and buzzed. Shapes started taking forms of otherworldly creatures, ancient musical instruments and gorgeous temples. Their sight was lit by rainbows and gradient patterns, and every object had intricate details. They saw thousands of light blue triangles, then thousands of little suns. They saw distortions of colors that looked like their own selves, they saw multi-colored fractals that looked like places they are familiar with, while the music consisted of orchestra instruments and choir, emotionally touching deep to the core. The new and unrepeatable fractal images started flashing very quickly, and the music was obtaining a faster tempo. Neither of them could say a word, they could only quietly observe the beauty of these multi-layered patterns of colors and music. The sight was incredible, through and through.
All of a sudden, the vision ended, and Jim suddenly saw the hospital room around him. Yes, it was the same room he was in, this was Pamela's bed, and this... this was Jim himself. The field of view was slowly but confidently moving left, then right... But he was not controlling it. He was very confused, and it took him a few seconds to understand what he was seeing. He took off his goggles.
He found himself hugging Pamela and being hugged by her, both of them awake, and both of them in tears. They embraced each other, they looked into each others' open eyes and were sobbing uncontrollably. They could not say a word, but the most beautiful "I love you" echoed deep in their hearts.