Hugh Howey - Molly Fyde and the Land of Light

Molly held up her hand. “Actually, before I get straight to the visit, I was wondering if we could get a tour of the facilities? Maybe hear a little about how all this works. I still don’t understand why my mom came here or even what it is that you guys do.”

“Oh, but of course. I’m terribly sorry. Most people are in such a rush these days. It pleases me you are willing to take your time and do things in the proper order. Most excellent. Very well, then, if you will follow me I will show you all that LIFE has to offer.”

“Life?” Cole asked as they followed Stanley through the door.

The android spelled it out: “Ell eye eff eee. Longevity through Interactive Fantasy Environments. LIFE.”

Walter straggled behind, coming through the door last; it swooshed closed behind him. The sounds of heavy machinery whirring into operation emanated from the hangar, and a light above the door winked from green to red.

“Uh, Stanley?” Molly said. “Is our ship gonna be okay?”

“What? Oh, of course. It will be valet parked until you are ready to leave. Must make room for our new arrivals! Busy, busy.” As if to demonstrate, Stanley turned and started walking swiftly down the long, tiled hallway.

Molly pictured Parsona being parked in the vacuum of the hangar and thought about the poor Wadi in her crew quarters. She guessed there were several days of atmosphere locked up in the ship, and their visit shouldn’t take nearly that long. She tried not to worry and hurried after Stanley, past doors labeled “Hangar Six” and “Hangar Four.” Their guide kept up the pace as he launched into a history of the company.

“Founded in 2312, LIFE was designed to offer an alternative to the finality of death. The brainchild of Dr. Arthur Dakura, a wonderful philanthropist and brilliant psychologist, it fulfills the broken promise of so many ancient systems of belief—”

Stanley spun around on the group and threw his hands wide across the hall.

“— Heaven, ” he gushed, saying it as if he were about to unveil a new private-class GN starship model. The maneuver was flamboyant enough to make Walter glance up from his computer.

Molly and Cole froze. She wondered if they were supposed to ask a question at this point, then Stanley whirled back around and continued to walk and talk.

“What Dr. Dakura discovered in his mapping of the human brain was that it works just like a computer. Data flows in, the computer does some crunching, and data flows back out. Simple as that.”

“If it’s so simple,” Cole asked, “what makes this Arthur guy so smart?”

“Excellent question. Step right through here, please.” A door opposite Hangar Eight led the small group into a lobby of sorts. There were several other figures in suits milling about, all of them identical to Stanley in every way. One of them looked up from behind a large wooden desk and smiled. Another passed right by them, escorting an elderly lady. This Stanley reached into his suit and proffered a handkerchief, which the woman accepted and sniffled into.

Molly moved aside to let them pass, watching the duo head out toward the hangars.

Dozens of identical voices could be heard talking with prospective clients, family members, and each other. Molly nodded to another human whose eye she caught, the feeling of evolutionary kinship as powerful as it was absurd—a sense of tribalism thousands of years past its usefulness.

The place really was busy, she saw. And being run like clockwork. Several species Molly didn’t recognize moved through the lobby, listening to a Stanley as he gave them a tour.

“Fyde, Parsona,” their Stanley said to the Stanley behind the desk. Then he turned to Molly and explained, “Your mother will be told to expect you. How long will you be visiting?”

Molly hadn’t thought about that. How long would she need? How different would this be from talking to the “mom” in her spaceship?

“A few hours?” she asked out loud.

“Put her down for three hours, Stanley.”

“Very good, Stanley.” The man behind the desk produced three visitor passes.

Their guide turned and handed them the passes, which they draped over their necks. Then he turned to Cole and pointed to a large portrait on the wall. “Your question, my good man, regarding Dr. Dakura’s intellect is still awaiting its answer. Let’s go down a few levels and see for ourselves, shall we?”

Molly nodded eagerly and followed along after their energetic guide. She put one hand on Walter’s elbow and guided him through the lobby and down a short hallway, allowing him to play his game without crashing into anyone.

An elevator dinged ahead of them and disgorged an elderly human couple. Molly and Cole both nodded, reflexively, as their group entered the lift. Stanley pressed a button and typed some commands into a keyboard affixed to the wall.

The back of the elevator flickered for a moment, then displayed a video. The first scene showed an elevator descending toward the center of a circular, gray moon. Below this stood a side-on view of the human brain.

“We begin our tour at the center of Dakura’s moon,” Stanley began. “At the heart of LIFE. Of course, ‘heart’ is a poor metaphor, a holdover from the days of anatomical ignorance. We now know primal emotions lie here , at the core of our brains.”

Stanley faced them, but still managed to trace his fingers over appropriate portions of the image. It was an uncanny and jarring sight, similar to holovid weathermen back on Earth.

“Dr. Dakura’s genius,” he directed this to Cole, “was to understand the computer programs and previous attempts at AI were doomed due to their complexity. For hundreds of years, computer scientists tried to recreate an object around which they knew nothing. It took a psychologist who understood that object, and dabbled in computer science, to make the breakthrough.”

The video flashed to a shot of a scientist standing over a man as he slid into a scanning machine of some sort.

“Dr. Dakura knew two things about the brain these other researchers neglected to take into account. First, the illusion of a single program is just that: an illusion. Second, the brain is imperfect.” Stanley’s mechanical eyes peeled away from Cole and resumed their steady flicking over the trio. The video changed back to a graphical representation of their descent to the center of the moon with an overlay of the human brain on top.

“The human brain is composed of thousands of small programs, many of them working against one another. All of them are imperfect. They make mistakes. Dr. Dakura was the first researcher to introduce competition between his simulated brain modules and also program in a degree of randomness. Every now and then, his AI would ‘see’ or ‘hear’ things that weren’t truly there. They would incorporate lies as truths. It was brilliant work for which he never sought recognition, neither through publication nor awards.”

The elevator dinged. It must have been moving swiftly, but there had been no sense of it ever starting or stopping. Molly looked to her feet, wondering if there were gravity panels in the floor.

“Right this way,” Stanley said.

They filed out while another group, a Stanley and two Callites stood to the side. The Stanleys greeted one another politely. Molly smiled at the Callites , assuming they were a couple. She remembered the race from her childhood on Lok and was somewhat surprised the notoriously impoverished people could afford the services. The female Callite smiled back at her while the male struggled forward on two canes, barely able to walk. There was no need to guess which of the aliens was considering enrollment.

Molly stepped out of the elevator and made room for them to pass, pulling Walter along with her. Their group exited onto a long, wide balcony. Two other groups stood by the low wall lining the edge and listened intently to their own Stanleys. Beyond the railing loomed a massive chamber, carved out of raw moon, that stretched out for kilometers. Flat concrete walls rose up, covered with gigantic shelves on which stood colorful drums easily large enough to hold a human body.