The Metaverse: Virtual Life-Real Death Page 7

  Argosi then clicked eject on his controller screen which instantly turned the screen that fully encompassed his head to the blue background with the keyboard, monitor and control box still superimposed in front of him. He felt the exoskeleton move away from his body as the air bladders deflated.

  The upper portion of the H-Pod detached from the bottom and began to rise, the arms gently raising as he pulled his arms from the sleeves. Argosi grabbed the external ladder and pulled himself out of the legs and onto the edge of the lower torso before swinging his legs onto the ladder and descending the H-Pod.

  Argosi exited the room and walked down a hall to a door on the opposite side. Pulling it open he could see Keyton walking down the middle of the yellow lines with H-Pods on each side. This was the “Troop Room,” which held the pods for everyone from the pilots to the negotiators to the shooters and the command staff. It was a much larger room holding one hundred H-Pods in rows of twenty-five.

  ***

  Argosi and Keyton stepped into the late afternoon New Mexico Sun. No matter how many times Argosi had seen the sunsets in the “Land of Enchantment,” he never tired of them. They were always unique, but almost always “Red.” As in the old sailor’s saying: “Red sky at night, sailors delight; red sky at morning, sailors take warning.”

  No doubt, Argosi thought. Tomorrow will be another beautiful day with brilliant blue skies and bright sunlight.

  Walking through the parking lot, Argosi led Keyton to his vehicle, a vintage Ford Super Duty Crew Cab powered by a diesel engine.

  Keyton chuckled. “Still driving this beast, I see?”

  “Yup,” Argosi replied. “It’s the only thing I drive when I am at home.

  “What year is this thing again?” Keyton asked.

  “It’s a 2027, one of the last years that Ford still made a standalone diesel in a passenger truck. It’ll run on real diesel or the synthetic bio-blend, unlike the more modern diesel-hydrogen hybrids that can only handle the synthetic-bio stuff. Funny thing is the bio stuff is like three bucks a gallon, straight up diesel is like a buck and a quarter now.” Argosi chuckled.

  In fact, the cost of energy had steadily been decreasing, not just for passenger vehicles but for society as a whole. The advent of the Pebble Bed Modular Reactors, which were now commonplace in most communities, removed the need for large traditional power plants run on fossil fuels. These reactors were unmanned systems buried in the ground and encased in concrete. They were cooled by inert gases and air circulation systems and could handle very high temperatures that traditional reactors could not. They’d never melt down and could last decades.

  One medium sized reactor could power the equivalent of 18,000 homes. Bundled together they could power large cities and large metropolitan areas. With the Metaverse now playing such a prominent role in human lives, the necessity to leave home for work, school, shopping, entertainment, and vacations was less and less. The result was that fossil fuels, while still widely used, were now in abundant supply.

  “You are a man ahead of your time, LT.” Keyton grinned.

  “Either that or you were born a hundred years too late.”

  That made Argosi laugh. At thirty-five, Argosi was still young, especially with life expectancy now around one hundred years and beyond. Despite all the marvels of the modern age, he found that he often related to an earlier era. One that was not so technology driven.

  He had a fondness for mechanical firearms, guns that did not link to a headset or require an electrical charge or signal to fire. He also had a fondness for a good cigar with a glass of Scotch sipped on the back porch with good conversation. Something that seemed to be lost among human beings unless there was a computer between them.

  While many people spent their off time in-world, Argosi spent his on horseback, tending to the cows, hunting coyotes, or playing with his kids. At least when they visited the ranch he was caretaking. His wife and children were at their home in the Dallas area. They were still married, but the demands of his job strained it almost to the breaking point.

  “Come on, hop in.” Argosi brought the diesel engine to life.

  “I’ve got some good prime beef aging. We can throw them on the grill, and since I’m planning on drinking a fair bit of Scotch afterward, you are staying the night, I’m sure your hotel will not mind.”

  “No sir, I’m sure that will be fine, I would have probably had dinner alone anyway. Most of the guys it seems are on the Nutrient, so your kind offer is most welcome. Besides I know you have much better Scotch than the bar at the hotel.”

  Boulder, Colorado

  Pat Sullivan raced home to the modest suburban home. The house, from the outside, resembled many in the nicely kept neighborhoods to the northwest of Denver at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. What was different about the Sullivan residence, but not entirely uncommon these days, was the windowless addition on the back of the home. The addition was two stories. The basement and the portion above ground housed an H-Pod like the ones at FLETC but of a more modern design.

  After arriving home, Sullivan showered and dried off before going down to the basement where he went through a doorway cut through the original basement wall and down a series of steps. The portion of the basement that housed the H-Pod was an additional eight feet below the main basement floor allowing Sullivan’s H-Pod to be able to move about 25 feet in the vertical. Having just been installed, Sullivan’s H-Pod was the latest model sold with all the bells and whistles.

  As at FLETC, there was a yellow line that indicated the range of travel the H-Pod might move within. Mounted to a wall was a large white box with the Digital-Life logo on the front: a large L with a smaller capital D inside it, resting just above the bottom horizontal of the “L” and followed by the remainder of the letters “IFE.”

  Sullivan touched the front of the box and a small touch screen window opened. Sullivan selected “Start.” In just a second and a half, the diagnostics of the unit had checked trillions of nanocircuits. Each circuit comprised thousands of molecular logic gates, the heart of quantum calculations that allowed this system to perform at close to twenty-five thousand petaflops. One petaflop being a thousand trillion floating-point operations-per-second. This computing power allowed this particular H-Pod to interact with the SecondSkin technology. That technology meant that the human element was more than just in the sim. He or she was in that world as completely as they would be in the real world. The line between simulation and real life was no longer tangible.

  On the network or in the Metaverse, one could create a simulation, but you paid for space where you could control who came into it. The simulation was considered free domain, anyone could use it like a public golf course or park. A private network sim was also limited regarding space and capabilities but was a good starting point for those that wanted to experiment building their own worlds.

  Systems like the one in the Sullivan household could create private simulations that allowed others to join you. The number was limited to the type of system you bought and the scale of simulation that you created. The same could be done through Digital-Life, but you had to pay for the size of space you wanted. Although your sim would be private and only allow others access that you authorize, the location remained a public domain area, like a private club in the middle of a big city. Others would know about it, could see the outside of it and might message you about coming in. If you created a really cool environment or club, then you could even charge a fee.

  Upon completing the self-check and powering up the H-Pod, a monitoring screen came to life in a hologram in front of the unit. A well-dressed young male appeared three dimensionally with various other systems windows opening on either side of him.

  “Hello Patricia, I hope you are having a pleasant day.”

  Pat preferred this name when in-world and liked when others used it.

  “Thank you, Adam, I’m going to suit up and then jump in, location home, master bath. Please run a hot bath with lavender bubble bath.
”

  Without missing a beat, Adam answered. “Yes, ma’am. May I suggest some candles?”

  “Yes, that would be wonderful. You’re the best!”

  Adam smiled. “I will check the H-Pod and ensure that it is ready for you.”

  “Thank you again, Adam,” Patricia opened a cabinet with a glass door.

  Inside was the custom-made SecondSkin suit hanging on a hanger in the humidified warm environment that kept it at precisely thirty-seven degrees Celsius or ninety-eight-point-six-degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature of the human body. It looked like the skin of a person but translucent as there was no body underneath it. It was, in fact, a precise replication of Sullivan’s skin down to the square picometer, or trillionth of a meter.

  Sullivan stepped out of the robe he wore and hung it on a hook on the side of the cabinet. Adam had his back turned as he looked at the various system windows and occasionally tapped a command on one of them. He did not notice that Pat was now completely undressed, not that his digital brain would have cared.

  Opening the cabinet Sullivan carefully removed the suit and activated a switch near the neck. Instantly the neck opening and shoulders expanded outward as an electrical current changed the size and shape of the opening so that Sullivan could step into it one leg at a time. As each foot made its way into the appropriate leg opening, the suit swelled, expanding the opening allowing for ease of entry. As Sullivan’s feet reached all the way to the toe portion, the individual toes found their way into SecondSkin and became encased.

  When the rest of Sullivan’s body entered the suit, it shrunk down about the shoulders and neck. Similarly, the fingers were now completely encased. The suit shrink-wrapped itself and melded with Sullivan’s skin. The insoluble fibrous nano carbons reached below his skin’s surface through the pores. Below the neck, every square centimeter of Sullivan’s skin surface melded with the suit which still rolled about various parts, adjusting and calibrating itself. Sullivan briefly felt a tinge of pleasure as the genital area was encased and calibrated, causing Sullivan to cringe as Adam went through the suit calibration procedure. Again Adam did not seem to notice, eliciting a chuckle from Sullivan.

  “Ready here, ma’am.”

  Sullivan then inserted the contact lenses that would meld with the hood that would encase his head. These lenses, when paired to the SecondSkin, provided all the visuals that Sullivan would receive from the simulation.

  Moving to the H-Pod Sullivan stepped onto the ladder and climbed above the waist portion. After stepping into it, Sullivan put on the contact lenses that mated with the system then pulled on the separate hood, stretching it over his head. Unlike the H-Pods at FLETC where your head moved about inside of the headpiece, the SecondSkin system enveloped your head so that the skin, scalp, and the ears became completely encased. Even the lips were wrapped, but the mouth still could open and close. Sullivan felt the sensation of the suit moving into the ear canal and sealing about the nostrils as it adjusted itself. The eye sockets of the hood slowly sealed around Sullivan’s eyes. Initially, only a blurry distant blue haze was visible. The haze moved closer against a blue backdrop slowly coming into focus. Sullivan stared at Adam for a moment, blinking as his eyes adjusted. Adam held up a pen with a dim light.

  “Please follow the light, ma’am.” Sullivan moved his eyes as Adam swung the light.

  Adam removed the light and asked if he was ready to close the pod. Sullivan answered yes, and he reminded him to lift the arms up to meet the sleeves. The top of the pod came down and linked with the bottom at the waist and sealed itself. “Just another moment or two.” Adam said with a smile.

  Sullivan felt the bladder on the other side of the exoskeleton adjusting itself. Unlike older pods the exoskeleton felt more distant, in another moment he did not feel it at all. Once a human was inside a properly fitted and calibrated SecondSkin the body only “felt” what the body would feel in a given environment in its natural state.

  The point at which the SecondSkin the Human Element and the exoskeleton all interconnected was referred to as Synthetic Symbiosis. A term that many found offensive. Symbiosis by definition has to occur between living organisms that mutually support each other. The Human Element was no doubt living. But there were raging arguments among ethicists about SecondSkin which is composed of carbon nanotubes blended polymers and tiny biologic organisms. A system of synthetic nerve endings that lived within the carbon nanotubes.

  Originally developed to replace skin damaged by burning, and later used to wrap around a robotic prosthesis, SecondSkin at a cellular level was alive in the same way that a jellyfish is. Without a central nervous system, brain or heart. The second skin and the human skin became one and the same. The difference was that the outer layer of second skin was for all intents and purposes inside the simulation. Anything that touched or affected it there would be felt through the SecondSkin as any human being normally would.

  As virtual reality advanced, the central problem was getting the HE into full dimension using all the senses of sight, smell, sound, touch, and taste. No small amount of money was spent trying to find a link into the human brain that bypassed the body, so that the sense occurred in the human mind. The technology as advanced as it had become still could not interface with the human brain at that level.

  Advancements of artificial skin and nerves caused two young post-doctoral biochemists who happened to be twin brothers with an interest in virtual reality to pose the question that maybe science was looking in the wrong direction in trying to mate the software with the human brain. After all the best avenue into the mind already existed. It existed in our five senses of sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch. The first four had been solved. We could see in simulations, hear in them as well. Synthetic aromas solved the problem of smell and taste. A bone conduction transducer built into the hood which mimics chewing meant that the jello like nutrient could take on the texture of a steak or a juicy tomato, but touch had been elusive.

  Every touching sensation that humans experience, from water to air to heat to cold, is interpreted by the surface of the skin and the underlying nerve tissues. Those were the real pathways into the brain. Dr. Joseph and Dr. Joseph postulated that a human being, wrapped in a cocoon of artificial skin and nerves melded to human skin might “reflect” onto the human skin what it would feel when in a simulation. Nearly a decade of research and testing went into the concept and SecondSkin was the result.

  What the two young scientists had figured out was simple, at least to them, in concept but exceedingly difficult to make work. Like any problem taken to its extreme, it involved math. Quantum computing allowed them to reduce how a human feels by touch down to a math equation for any given sensation.

  The base or starting point of these equations being Phi which is represented by the number 1.6180339887... Often referred to as the “Golden Number” or the “Golden Ratio,” Phi like Pi, goes on to infinity. But unlike Pi’s transcendental and non-algebraic number, Phi is the solution to a quadratic equation and universal law.

  Phi is found throughout nature, physics, and art. Where it was most telling though was the human body. A person’s height, divided by the distance from the belly button to the floor, equals Phi. All people possess dimensional properties that adhere to a ratio of Phi to 1. But it goes beyond simple asymmetry. Phi underlies the clock cycle of brain waves and exists in the magnetic resonance of spinning atoms and is found in Human Genome DNA.

  For the two Dr. Joseph’s, the answer was clear. The presence of Phi was what made you know the grain of sand under your toe was not what you felt with your thumb. The brain has no idea where your toes are with relation to your fingers or your knees. The signals sent to the brain are not a direct path of nerve endings ending up like a light on a switchboard telling it that the right big toe has detected a grain of sand.

  Rather, it’s an interpretation of a signal sent by a nerve ending and based on a ratio that the brain intuitively knows, something that is still not f
ully understood. That ratio is Phi. So when there is a grain of sand under your big toe in the simulation, the computer program calculates how to reflect in the appropriate place to the SecondSkin, which transmits it through the actual skin layer and then through the nerves that end up registering in your brain.

  Whether it’s a grain of sand, water or moisture, heat or cold, something soft or hard, organic or nonorganic. The interaction of those elements on human skin was quantifiable. They could be reproduced through a synthetic layer of skin that melded with the real skin, which then sent the signal to the brain about what it was experiencing.

  Dr. Stephen Marquardt famous for his use of mathematics in trying to measure the ratio of beauty made this early observation:

  “All life is biology. All biology is physiology. All physiology is chemistry. All chemistry is physics. All physics is math.”

  That was a quote the two Dr. Joseph’s took to heart when searching for a way to bring human beings thoroughly and comprehensively into a virtual world. The result of their work, besides vast sums of money, also solved the final issue of touch in a virtual environment.

  As the H-Pod sealed itself up, the blue haze behind Adam suddenly became an elegant bathroom. Looking to the marble flooring, she felt a warmth as she sensed the comfortable Turkish robe that she wore and the soft sandals. “He” was now fully a “she.” Patricia could see Adam near the doorway.

  “I took the liberty of choosing the robe and sandals so madam would not catch a chill.”

  “Thank you, Adam. You are the best, have I told you that yet today?”

  She laughed.

  Adam blushed. “I am here to make everything enjoyable for you, so my job is to be the best, but thank you again, ma’am.”

  Patricia could hear the water running behind her as the bath filled. She could smell the lavender of the bubble bath and the scent of her favorite sweet amber-orange candles. Adam, having removed his jacket, had one sleeve rolled up with that arm in the water.