Hugh Howey - Molly Fyde and the Land of Light

“This is where it all happens,” Stanley said, waving his arm across the vast expanse. “Almost forty three thousand heavens.”

“That’s how many clients you have?” Molly asked.

“And counting. As you can see, we’re signing people up every day. Not just humans, either, as Dakura’s advances have translated well to other biological systems. And not all of our clients are sick or dying, I might add. Many of our clients are just bored with their normal lives and ready to plug into ours.”

Molly walked to the balcony and looked at the canisters in the distance. She thought about the analogy her mom had made of people in jars. “Is my mom in one of those?” she whispered.

“Oh, my dear, no. Our clients are sleeping in another portion of the moon. These cylinders are packed with spools of fiber-optic cable. Each cylinder contains billions of terabytes of data, stored as little pulses of light that move in and out of a reading and writing device thousands of times a second. We love to point out that people who’ve had brushes with death always saw a light approaching. We offer that. Literally. An entire afterlife created by light waves, a land of li—”

“It’ss a hard drive,” Walter said. Molly turned, shocked to see how rapt the boy had become. The computer had even been returned to its holster. His silvery hands grasped the railing as he leaned forward, peering across the expansive chamber.

“Why, yes, my boy. They are like old-fashioned hard drives. I’m impressed someone your age would even know such a thing.”

“He’s from Palan,” Cole explained. “Lots of antique equipment there.”

“What would heaven be like?” Molly asked, her thoughts far from the technical wizardry. “For my mom,” she added.

“Excellent question, young lady. I was just getting to that.” He addressed them all in hushed tones of wonder: “Heaven would be whatever you wanted it to be! Imagine that. A place where you can be forever happy, no matter what.”

“Wouldn’t that get boring?” asked Cole. “Or repetitive? And how can you know what makes each person happy? Or even leave it up to them to decide?”

“Quite right, and you are extremely sharp, young man. If Dr. Dakura were still around, the two of you would get along quite famously. And he encountered those very problems before he stumbled upon a simple solution.”

Cole narrowed his eyes. “Which was?”

“Leave the brain in charge! Dr. Dakura’s algorithm is tied to the pleasure module of his brain program. As soon as the client becomes less happy than it was earlier, the environment shifts. If the unhappiness continues to increase, it tries a new tactic. It keeps doing this until it maximizes data output from the pleasure center. It’s the same way a robot—much simpler than myself, of course—learns its way around a darkened room by bumping off things and trying a new direction.

“And the best part is, every interaction is recorded to make the process go smoother and smoother. Since the problems Dr. Dakura ran into never surface until after an initial honeymoon phase, the algorithm has you figured out before you even begin to challenge it!”

Cole raised his eyebrows at this. Molly knew the look well: he wasn’t impressed—he was skeptical.

She asked a question of her own: “When I visit my mom, will she be happy to come out of there?”

For the first time during their brief tour thus far, Stanley seemed at a loss for words. He pointed out to the barrels behind him, his head cocking to one side.

“My dear lady,” he replied. “She will not be joining you out here. You will be joining her in there .”

“I’ll be going into one of those canisters?” Molly asked, pointing over the rail.

“I’m so sorry, you requested a tour of the facilities, but I can see now that I really should have broken you into two groups. Ms. Fyde, you need a visitation tour. This is more of a facilities tour for prospective clients. Let’s go up to the guest suites and get you caught up and plugged in, shall we?”

“Before we do—” Molly hesitated. “Can I see her? Her body, that is.”

“Oh, my dear, no. I’m afraid that’s strictly forbidden. If you would like to continue the facilities tour, I can show you where the clients sleep and how that procedure works, but it is just a demonstration. Most of our customers pay dearly to be remembered in a state other than the one in which they arrived. It is a responsibility we take quite seriously here at LIFE.”

“Yeah, I’d like to see that. Before my visit.”

“Of course. Let’s hail one of our elevators, shall we?”

There were at least a dozen shafts that opened onto the large balcony. Despite the congested feel of the place, they didn’t have to wait long for one to arrive. Once inside, a video of a female in a patient’s gown popped up on the rear wall. She conversed happily with Stanley-doctors in a silent promotional video.

“We provide the best medical care offered anywhere in the galaxy,” their guide intoned. “Whether you are coming to us with an intractable disease or in top condition, our painless preservation procedure will maintain you and your brain for all of eternity. Neural growth is stimulated with the latest hormone therapy and stem-cell technology. Our own studies show conclusively that your brain will grow younger even as your body hardly ages at all.”

The video switched to a shot similar to the person being scanned, but this time they were slid into something resembling a morgue drawer. “Inside your personal rest compartment, you will find an eternity of peace and wish-fulfillment. Family members can network with one another, and you may even reserve the rest compartments next to you so loved ones may be just as close in body as they are in spirit.”

“How do you network the people?” Cole asked.

The interruption didn’t faze Stanley at all; he smiled and seemed to launch down another branch of his tour logic-tree. “We let our guests know when family members have joined them at LIFE. How they incorporate one another once a link is made is entirely up to both members and their individual pleasure algorithms. We have had very few cases of family members rejecting one another or not wishing to combine their experiences into a shared environment.”

“But you can’t include people that aren’t here, can you?” Molly asked.

“My goodness, no. How could we? They haven’t been scanned. No, the people that inhabit their own heavens are personalities they make up. Just like when you dream.”

The elevator dinged again; the video screen showed them three quarters of the way to the surface. Stanley waved Molly and Cole through the door, then looked back at Walter, who was reaching for the keyboard by the elevator terminal. “Let’s not touch anything, okay?” he said cheerily. “Excellent. Follow me, please.”

Molly shot Walter a stern glare and waited for him to exit the lift. She looked around at the large lobby they’d entered, the same bank of a dozen elevators lined up along one wall. The other three walls were broken up with hallways leading away in various directions, each cordoned off by a solid glass barrier. Stanley walked toward one of these and waved them along.

Through the glass, Molly could see the edges of the corridor, but not its end. The hallway stretched out so far in a straight line that the opposite wall became an illusion of converging planes. She watched Stanley reach into his coat and produce a card similar to their visitor passes; he swiped it through a reader, and the glass barrier slid silently into the jam.

Walter hissed with delight and reached for his own pass.