The candidate bent over when he saw a small box on a shelf, filled with wooden doorstoppers. He picked it up. “This is really all we need,” he announced, displaying the simple object for Thel.
“What are those?”
The candidate tilted his head when he realized how much the post-human was a fish out of water in his era. “They’re doorstops. You just jam these under a door, and the NPCs won’t be able to get through, unless they ripped the door right off its hinges that is.”
She held the doorstop in her hand. “That simple, huh?”
“Yep,” the candidate replied. He turned to the map of the building that was framed next to the door. “There are two stairwells that lead up to the top floor on opposing corners of the building. All we have to do is block the doors and shut off the elevator after we head back up, and that should do the trick.”
“We’ll be safe, you think?”
“Relatively,” the candidate confirmed. “Shall we?”
“Lead the way,” Thel gestured with her hand.
“Thank you,” the candidate replied as they made their way to the first stairwell before walking down to the lobby. There, the candidate carefully opened the door to see if the lobby had been infiltrated. It hadn’t, but the scene just outside the floor-to-ceiling windows of the lobby was ghastly to the extreme.
The candidate watched the NPCs tearing each other apart in the street. Women and children were being pulled into alleys, and surrounded by gangs of other NPCs, and then summarily murdered before the gang members turned on each other. All of the carnage was in plain view.
“The post-humans,” he began, “they’re not like this? They don’t murder one another?”
Thel shook her head. “You’re seeing the purge—it was written into the scenario to test you. Those things out there…they aren’t human. They’re mindless. Real people don’t behave that way.”
The candidate shifted slightly, speaking over his shoulder to Thel as she continued to stand behind him. “But you said the real world was at risk, that attackers had murdered the people of the real Earth. It sounds very much like a purge.”
Thel sucked her lips for a moment as she considered the candidate’s point. “It does,” she conceded. “The androids behave very much like NPCs, but they aren’t human. They claim to be, but they’re...inhuman—totally brainwashed—trust me.”
“Why did you create me?” the candidate asked quickly, surprising Thel as he turned to face her.
“I didn’t create you,” she replied with a slight smile as she thought of the absurdity of the question’s premise. “A program created you—the same program that created the A.I.”
“Who wrote the program?”
“Aldous Gibson,” Thel replied.
The candidate tilted his head to the side. “The same man you suspect of trapping you and your friends inside this sim?”
Thel nodded. “The one and only.”
“Why did he create the program that created the A.I., only to abandon his own creation?”
Thel shrugged. “He—we needed something. Artificial intelligence was threatening to get out of control. Aldous designed the program to create an entity that was based on human intelligence—an entity that could feel empathy for humans because it would think that it was human. He thought that if the A.I. considered itself to be human, that it would be able to understand our concerns and make those concerns its own. We needed an entity like that—an entity that could take control of the world and be its protector—a protector we could trust.”
“And now you want a new protector?” the candidate asked. To Thel, it seemed as if the candidate was genuinely intrigued.
“That’s right,” Thel said, smiling. “You catch on quick.”
The candidate nodded. “That brings me back to my original question. If you already have a protector, then why did you—meaning humanity—create me?”
Thel took in a deep breath. “I don’t really know. The mainframe the A.I. controlled was last-gen technology.” She stopped for a moment when she considered this. “Actually, compared to Trans-human, the mainframe was last-last-last-gen. I’m not going to lie—only James and the A.I. really comprehend the technology, but from what I understand, Trans-human is a computer that is essentially infinitely more powerful than anything we’ve ever seen. It’s against the A.I.’s programming to assume that kind of power for himself, so that’s why we needed you, and we needed to test you—we needed to know that, with that kind of power, you wouldn’t forget about us. We needed to know that you’d identify as human—that you’d use your power to protect us. That’s what this whole lousy test was supposed to be about.”