This story originally appeared in Alien Dimensions Issue #7
The headlights chased away traces of darkness as the car sped towards the sinking sun. Detective Inspector Ron Miller stared at the curve of the road, contemplating the consequences of his actions. He was in the middle of a briefing when he received the call. Suspicious death. University campus. He could use the distraction. But the car ride to the crime scene was anything but distracting. The hum of his car engine put him in a state of familiar introspection. Something he had become used to these days.
He saw the University gate swinging open as he approached. He flashed his identification card to the guards and found a place to park his car. Finally, he thought, as he turned off the engine and opened the glove compartment. He retrieved his gun and a half empty bottle of Jack Daniels. Opening the car door, he took a swig from the bottle and threw it on the seat as he left the vehicle. He looked at the students teeming to and from the buildings that lined the paved road. If only I could go back to a time when I wasn’t a murderer, he thought.
Ron had been on the force for the last five years; what seemed like an eternity to him. He had been a part of the Major Crimes Unit, up until the last year. A poorly executed raid and four civilian deaths later, he decided to step down from the big game to a life of regular crimes and longer nights. Every now and then, the precinct decides to include him on missions that required tactical support; like the one they were preparing for this time with the Counter Terrorism Unit. And every time since the raid, Ron excuses himself from the mission in order to avoid the spiral of regret and guilt.
“This way, Detective.” A tall, lanky figure approached Ron from one of the buildings. He must have been informed of his arrival.
“My name is Professor Berenson. I am also in-charge of the campus security council,” the man extended his hand.
“Detective Miller. How are you doing?” Ron said, taking his hand.
“Alright, given the circumstances. It’s this way,” the professor said as they began walking past the building, onto the paved roads. “You ever been to the campus?”
“No. No, I moved here from Hawaii after graduation. But I’ve heard this is a safe, quiet place.”
“It was until now. We haven’t seen anything like this on campus in years. Minor burglaries, vandalism; sure. But nothing like this.”
“Do all your students and professors live on campus?”
“Not all, but mostly, yes. And all of the resident professors have been here for at least a few years now. It was our Psych Professor who informed me of this and then I called you guys.”
“Alright, Berenson. I’m going to need you to ask the guards to show in the coroners, they should be right behind me.”
Berenson nodded.
“In the meanwhile,” Ron pulled up the collar of his jacket against the frosty wind, “let’s see the bodies.”
Galactic Union Station 4
“How is sector UMN looking?” the Chief Caducian asked.
But the meeting room remained silent. A small pyramid sat at the center of the table, blinking green lights on all faces except one. All of the five members on the table turned to 1-iroi. The Chief cleared his throat in an attempt to get his attention.
Completely aloof of the awkward stares pointed at him, 1-iroi kept still. The pseudo-pod that was supposed to manifest 1-iroi’s thoughts in a vocal form remained lifeless, clearly disconnected from the supposed occupant.
“You have something more pressing, 1-iroi?” this time the Chief bellowed, noticing the disconnected pod as indicated by the pyramid.
Suddenly, the pseudo-pod whirred online. A series of lights blinked rapidly on what resembled a head atop the pseudo-pod and it turned towards the Chief. The pyramid started blinking on the fourth face, signaling proper connection with all four members of the meeting; 1-iroi of the Illadian race, the Chief from the Caducian race and two other bureaucrats who were on the Ikelos council.
It whispered, unintelligibly. A loud crack escaped the pod.
“Excuse me for that. The audio output seems to have some issues. But, well, I’m all here, now,” 1-iroi spoke through the pod.
“I was wondering about sector UMN. Any progress?” the Chief went back to a polite yet stern tone.
“It’s being played out as we speak. I have to allow it to finish before any…”
“You are running it with the Minimum Mandatory Parameters though, right?”
“No. The MMPs are futile. I have resorted to a much more sophisticated mode of meta-communication clouds. I believe it best resembles what…”
“Excuse me? I was aware you like making your own rules, but I’d appreciate if you didn’t alter the core programs. We are to follow strict instructions. Namely, those provided by me,” the Chief said with a tinge of annoyance.
“No, we were to do the best we can. You seem to forget that the MMPs will only hold us back. I need to follow the logical steps that will take us to success. And logic is universal. It will not be held back by trivial MMPs.”
“The MMPs are there to protect us from losing…”
“The MMPs are Mainland’s idea of making ourselves feel better. We can’t hope to get anywhere if we undermine our test subjects. These units are better than other sectors. They have Memory networks which make them highly capable…that’s why we call them, UMNs, Units with Memory Networks. We must treat them the same way we were treated by this world.”
The Chief retreated. He was furious at 1-iroi’s indiscretion, especially in front of his sub-ordinates. But 1-iroi being one of the Illadians, the founders of all these programs, the Chief restrained himself from over-reaching as a financial supervisor.
1-iroi noticed the Chief’s silence and continued. “We used these new parameters with Ikelos and the results are improving. I think other sectors should also update their…”
“Thanks for the update, 1-iroi. But I would first like to see the results from the ongoing iteration,” the Chief interrupted, unwilling to surrender his authority to an operator, no matter how talented. A couple of the pods across the board blinked in agreement.
“We will move on to the timelines now. I need to know how many iterations each of the sector run through Ikelos under the current budget. Let’s begin.”
The pod representing the logistic team from the Jupiterian race began a monotonous reading of a document full of jargon.
#
Ron bent over the lifeless body of Professor Jeremy Bentham. He used the gloves in his right hand to pick up a few books lying in disarray next to the professor. The pale skin gleamed under the moonlight peeking in from the open window.
“Was that window open when you found him like this?” Ron asked Berenson, who stood cautiously outside the threshold.
“Yes, but it almost always is. Gets stuffy in here with all the books.”
There were a lot of books, piled up on the floor, stacked on the shelves across three walls, scattered near the bed, and finally, next to the pale body.
“Was he always worked up like this?”
“He is one of the newer academicians on campus. We all struggle to keep our tenure initially,” Berenson shrugged.
Ron stood up and scribbled on his notepad. Then he walked up to the open window. They were on the seventh floor of the resident’s hall.
“The other room is right down the hall.”
Ron turned around, facing Berenson. He nodded and followed him out of the room into the hallway. They walked up to the room next to it and pushed the door ajar. A man, probably mid-twenties lay awkwardly on the edge of the bed. Another body was visible from inside the room, somewhat hidden from the doorway. Ron grimaced. The winter’s chill had kept the bodies from stinking up the whole place but the sight was enough to make him feel wrong inside.
“There are two more down here,” Berenson said from a door down.
Ron walked up and took in the sight. This was a couple lying in the bed, under the sheets. Their still, pale faces portrayed tranquility, a touch of warmth to the macabre circumstances. Ron had had enough. He was relieved to see the coroners walk out of the elevator towards the hall.
“Alright. Berenson, can you stay with these guys for a bit longer?”
“Sure.” He nodded.
“Meanwhile,” Ron shuffled back into the hallway and looked up at Berenson, “didn’t you say it was a colleague who saw the professor’s body first?”
“Yes, Professor Elizabeth Powell. She lives a block away.”
#
Twenty minutes later, Ron was sitting on a comfortable couch nesting a pile of colorful pillows. The vibrant colors fit perfectly in the cheery vibe of the rest of the room. There were no clunky shelves or scattered papers. The walls were decorated with framed doodles and cartoon sketches, probably drawn by kids. Right across Ron, on a similarly vibrant chair, sat Professor Powell. She remained sunken into the chair, barely looking up. Getting out his notepad, Ron caught her glance and smiled. She smiled back, the bare minimum of a smile.
“So how well did you know the professor?”
“We are colleagues, friends. His work is immensely interesting to me and my familiarity with his field is valuable to him.”
“Were you two close? Outside of work?”
“We are professionally interested in each other. Outside of work didn’t matter,” she almost snapped back.
“I’m sorry but I’m trying to understand how his working environment was. I was told he’d spend most of his time here, on campus.”
“Yes, but it wasn’t due to lack of friends or depression. He has been caught up with a new theory of his. He was…” she paused, as if confronted by her own words. “He was on the verge of understanding why we humans fall into severe psychological withdrawals from our own self-interests. It would…would have been a significant contribution to our understanding of the psyche.”
“Do you think he was overworked? Any health issues?”
“Not really. He had grown a little too attached to his work the past few months. But that is generally a good sign in our world.”
“And what is this world? Can you explain what it was you guys were studying?”
She hesitated, as if searching for the right words. She looked away outside the window, into the darkness on the street. Ron followed her sight, worried he might have pushed the witness too far.
“It was our dreams,” she finally said.
“Our dreams?”
“He used brain mapping techniques and studied how people dream, especially people who are undergoing stress or showing signs of depression.”
“I was told he was a leading neuropsychologist. Would he have any competition, any rivals in the field?”
“He was more than just…his work was above and beyond what the scientific community is engaged in right now. He had figured out the deepest patterns of our dreams and tried to model them into computer programs and in a way…in a way he figured out how our guilt is the reason we have phobias and depression and eventually total despair. And this guilt takes complete charge in our dreams.”
Ron sat still. He understood enough of that to feel somewhat vulnerable, as if he could’ve just as easily been one of the dead professor’s test subjects. He himself had spent many sleepless nights, riddled with guilt and the nightmares that have haunted his mind since the raid.
She continued. “But that wasn’t what he was obsessed over. He was using the most sophisticated mapping and simulation technology available to us right now. He captured details of our dream state that were never studied before and he was able to validate these using cutting edge programming models.”
Ron sat up straight, shrugging off the thoughts of his own despair. “What did he find?”
“A blank space. Within our dreams. A point in time when the mind is completely blank.”
“Ok. Why is that significant?”
“It is extremely difficult to get your brain inactive for even a fraction of a second. Jeremy found that almost everyone he studied spent microseconds of their dreams with practically no brain activity, followed by a microsecond of the brain going in hyperdrive. According to his simulations, it was as if our mind turns off and then runs through all our past records, fishing out particular memories or situations to build our dreams.”
At that point, Ron had lost the thread. He felt himself drawn back to his own record of memories; mostly written in red, the blood of the innocents he ended up killing. For a brief moment, he gave up on trying to fight back the thoughts, reliving the horrid night.
An old building plagued by disrepair. The whizz of electricity and a few blinking lights betraying the deadly silence. Ron was headed for the second floor. Along with five of his colleagues, he sneaked up from across the street, making sure he wasn’t seen from the second-floor windows. Something went wrong. A bald figure appeared out of a different window on the second floor. As if on instinct, Ron reacted, pointing his gun to the window. But the figure had disappeared. Screams and chaos took over the echoing halls inside. Ron and his team ran into the building. By the time they climbed up a floor, an entire family was held hostage by the goons, a family of four seeking shelter in the cold night. Someone moved nervously. A shot rang. And then…
“Detective?” a soft voice interrupted his thoughts. He felt a sense of relief washing over, followed by embarrassment. “Are you ok?” she sounded worried.
“I’m just fine. I think I have all that I need for now,” he managed to blurt out.
“Detective, are you sure you are alright?” she pressed.
Ron smiled at her, a weak attempt at hiding away what must have been a ghastly expression on his face. “I think its best I get back with the coroners. Just one more thing.”
“Yes?”
“Did you know all his students well? The other victims?”
“Not as well, but yes. They were just as hard working. In fact, just last week we all sat for dinner, discussed their work. To be honest, they were starting to feel nervous, somewhat intimidated by talking about their own findings. But I thought that was just due to the nature of the discovery.”
“Ok, good. I’d like to talk to you again, once we have the reports come in from the medical examiner. So, you should probably cancel any outstation plans for the immediate future.”
She stared at Ron for a minute, and smiled. “You know, Detective. I’m also a psychiatrist here. I do work with patients, sometimes the same one Jeremy worked with. I could…help you.”
Ron stared back, taking in the implications of what he said. He knew it must have showed on his face when he found himself engulfed by his guilt. He sighed and smiled back. “I am certain you can, professor.”
He walked out, reluctant to look back or consider any further conversation on the topic.
Galactic Union Station 4
“That’s a lot of red flags, 1-iroi,” the Chief said, mentally browsing through the recent developments in the current iteration. After the heated meeting, the Chief had asked 1-iroi to stick around and run the adjusted parameters through him.
1-iroi simply stared at him, his mind racing ahead of the problem at hand.
“You don’t think all these lost units are because of you over-riding the MMPs?”
“No,” 1-iroi snapped back. He always found it astounding how shallow the bureaucrats’ thought process was. Even in this moment of an explorative opportunity, all the Chief could think of was how to get rid of liability. Of course, it was their sole expertise and the reason they were granted directive authority. But the only reason the programs were still running was the foresight and ingenuity of the Illadians,
1-iroi was particularly proud of his heritage, an elite race from the Nyxoid cluster of galaxies, particularly endowed with scientific acuity and aptitude. He loved being the thinker, being at the forefront of exploration. Unlike the bureaucrats who were put into place after the Grand Union of the galactic races, he was from a place that survived extremities of their planet system through sheer scientific ingenuity. But sadly, they ran out of resources, the laboratory they thought of as their planet was running on fumes. That was when Illadians joined the Union and soon after that, a scientific order was established. The other galactic races seemed in need of expertise and solutions that were sometimes beyond the overly timid Eleosis or the ultra-materialistic Jupiterians.
“I honestly think you should fast forward the Reset schedule and start over, this time with a more cautious and orthodox set of parameters.”
“You think this is unorthodox? You should wait till you hear what I would like to do next.”
The Chief frowned.
Even in the meeting chambers, a suspended dimension projected for the sake of inter-galactic conversations, 1-iroi feared the Chief might punch him in the face, or at least the pod.
The Illadians did not have a physical form, being merely a swarm of subatomic soup floating around; capable of complex analytical and logical thinking but incapable of physical contact. The other races found this somewhat intimidating, along with a lot of other races that were in the Union but too shy to face each other in person. The pseudo-pods in this dimension made it easier to converse without any sentimental obstacles, but 1-iroi disliked the monotony and disembodiment imposed on him. He would much rather be himself, look like his people, express through energetic vibrations. In that moment, however, he was worried about the Chief’s pod expressing palpable disdain.
1-iroi could sense that he had pushed all the buttons he could push and, at this point, it was better to retreat into scientific jargon.
“Chief, you have to understand,” he continued in a pacifying tone. “If you want the deadline to be met and if you want real results, not fractions of what could’ve been but all that could be; let me move up the logical chain, not back down to reductionist rules.”
“You keep saying that. What do you mean up the logical chain?” the Chief asked, hesitant but apparently desperate to understand what the fuss was all about.
1-iroi sighed, once again reminded he was talking to a Caducian from the rich mining planet only concerned about how to make profit from the Union. The Chief was one of the rotating financiers who were given access to the workings of the Ikelos system in order to evaluate sustainability of this massive scientific program. His job was to keep the Union happy with Ikelos and secure finances for the program. And so far, he had not let down. 1-iroi had to appreciate that the Chief, as annoying as he could be, did not pretend to know more than he does.
“The entire study was designed to understand how a community of similar but not same individuals fares in the face of having to live together,” 1-iroi began explaining. “We made the templates for basic instinct-based programming and assigned randomized analytical algorithms to each of the billions of units. Each unit is then run through Ikelos, such that by the time the program ends and reaches the Reset Point, each of the billion units have analyzed and reported on the problems they were posed, giving us an estimate of how many of them served towards increased analytical power as a community and how long it took them to reach there. Of course, the Reset Point is not exactly fixed since we make it internally dependent on the progress of the collective units. The better they perform, the longer they get to perfect their community.”
“Yes, I am aware of how this will help our Union perfect our own transactions and standard of living, but there is a reason we have implemented certain restrictions on the parameters used for building these units.”
“Yes, and the reasons for those restrictions have nothing to do with getting better results. As much as you guys like to believe the MMPs are to safeguard abuse of Ikelos, it’s mostly just to keep the units inferior to any and all of the races in the Union. The Jupiterians don’t want the units to be self-sufficient upon conception. The Xeloids don’t want the units to be impervious to problems related to fear and pain. Even I’d admit that Illadians did not want them to be overly smart. But I don’t think these restrictions would ever yield any results. The problem with all the races of the Union, in my view, is that we are all homogenous within each other. The units need to be unique; each slightly different from the others within their own community. Mere differences in how we approach a given problem aren’t enough diversity to build a community. And I learned that from Ikelos.”
“How do you mean? What exactly did you alter?”
“The last iteration, I ran with not just instinct-based problem solving but an access to shared memory. It allowed them to learn algorithms that were simply based on their interactions. Each unit developing differently as the program progressed. The community was able to extend the Reset Point by several light dots. That’s an extension never seen before.”
“Shared memory can lead to paradoxes and learning. The units are supposed to be free of those biases,” the Chief grunted.
“Yes, but the next time I added a layer of fear to the units. The farther along they reach in problem solving, the more aware they were of their fate. I even added this algorithm for invoking what I like to call the Doomsday Clock, their interpretation of the Reset Clock. Keeps them much better aligned to share memories and work together.”
The Chief didn’t say anything. 1-iroi wondered if that was in appreciation or as a sign of giving up on the conversation.
He continued. “Along with fear, I had to increase their self-awareness since fear would mean nothing if they did not maintain a record of their lifetime and analyze what it meant to be existent. And you know what, we are already four light dots ahead of the last time it hit Reset Point.”
The Chief leaned towards 1-iroi. “Just tell me why the units are malfunctioning right now. They won’t take too long to reach Reset Point if they keep dropping like Xenomorphs.”
Several Weeks later
Ron walked into the café fiddling with the car keys in his jacket pocket. He wasn’t sure he would make it to the café especially with all the chaos back at work.
In response to a flurry of terrorist attacks, all the city cops had been re-assigned to the Counter Terrorism Unit. Ron himself was beginning to realize the gravity of these threats, some even armed with nuclear weapons. He had to reluctantly oblige with the re-assignment. And that was the reason, Ron told himself, he had arranged for this meeting with the psychiatrist.
Professor Elizabeth Powell sat in a corner under dimmed lights fighting away the darkness left behind by an early sunset. He joined her at the table and they ordered food.
It was only after an hour of their conversation about everything from his past and present that he brought up the other issue troubling him since they last met.
“You know, it really helped me, just the fact that you offered help when you met me first, a complete stranger.”
She smiled. “Well, it was hard to not notice that you needed someone to talk to.”
“Would you want to talk a bit more, perhaps over dinner?”
Her smile waned off. She sat up straight and looked away from him. “I actually have to get back to work. I have been taking forward Jeremy’s work and we think we have reached a point where I have to give all my attention to work.”
Ron felt his lips turn to a frown, but he smiled as soon as she turned to look at him. “I understand,” he said, looking away, contemplating whether he could drink himself to death that very moment. He could use a distraction right about now.
“Did you ever find out by the way?” she said in a barely audible whisper.
“What?” Ron asked, puzzled.
“About Jeremy’s death.”
“Oh…well, I don’t know if I should be talking to you about that now. But suffice to say, we have closed the case. With all this nuclear terror running in the streets, we had to anyways suspend all local cases.”
“You know, as your psychiatrist, I can keep all that you say between us. And I only asked about Jeremy because…well, because we think he died as a result of his work.”
It was Ron’s turn to sit up this time. He leaned towards her. “How do you mean?”
“We think Jeremy came to the inference that the dreams of his patients were playing out almost exactly like his simulated programs were playing out. It was as if the dream was…a program in itself.”
“But wasn’t it the other way around? The professor designed the simulation programs to best mimic the patient’s brain during these dreams.”
“Yes. But no simulation has ever mimicked a natural system so perfectly. The dream simulations have to be extremely unique. Either that or the dreams themselves, perhaps subconsciousness itself, follows the same rules as coded programs.”
“As dreadful as that sounds, how does that make sense of the professor’s death?”
“I just have a hunch. An educated guess,” she hesitated. “He got scared to death.”
Ron froze in his chair. How could she possibly know this? The autopsy had confirmed the heart failure but it had also found extremely high levels of adrenaline and cortisol. The medical examiner even used the exact words she had just used.
“I did some new experiments with the simulations. When you confront the program with existential crisis, it goes into hyperdrive and projects fear. A response so strong that a real brain could never handle it. At least not over a period of days under continuous stress.”
Ron considered the implications of that. “You are saying that our dreams and possibly our brain is programmed to kill us by scaring us to death?”
#
“They are scared to death”, 1-iroi claimed.
The Chief did not seem to appreciate the epiphany 1-iroi had. It took him a brief moment since the Chief asked the question, but 1-iroi knew this was the answer.
“They are malfunctioning because my new layer of algorithms puts them under the control of fear, especially under stressful circumstances. When each unit, regardless of its variation meets an existential or critical problem it gets run over by fear. That also explains why more units are malfunctioning as we get closer to Reset Point.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I set them to acquire increased shared memories, increased fear and a slow but steady increase in self-awareness. The self-awareness of course depends on various factors. How the units interact with other units, how they perceive themselves. But eventually, as the Doomsday Clock ticks onward, their self-awareness compounds into pure fear. Add to that having to solve problems, you have yourself a malfunction.”
“What can we do to improve that?”
As if on cue, 1-iroi’s pod beeped loudly. He looked up at the Chief. “Reset Point for this iteration has reached. Their universe just ended.”
“Alright. I think you need to really tread carefully now. I would hate to see a repeat of this bizarre problem with the units.”
1-iroi felt a pang of disappointment. He had hoped that his discussion with the Chief would end up in more leniency with the parameters, in appreciation of the genius of Ikelos.
Ikelos was a giant quantum computer they used to run community simulations. Each iteration is a universe in its own, with billions of programs processed by Ikelos as if harboring billions of lives lived in the real world. 1-iroi had spent months running thousands of programs, each one full of life-like “beings” evolving from simpler to more complex forms of individual “organisms”. They called them units; billions of these units processed their simulated world, and 1-iroi’s job was to design programs for the units that would make them continue processing far beyond the Reset Point, a community that works harmoniously, and potentially forever.
1-iroi read the reports coming in from the recent iteration, a summary of where the community failed and how co-operative they were.
“They need to be less sensitive to fear. Less sensitive to all of the emotional parameters. Perhaps…compartmentalization is the key. An undercurrent of conscious prioritization. If I build this into them, it could potentially sustain them for much longer” 1-iroi spoke, almost to himself.
The Chief cleared his throat. “I can see you have some more work to do. And I know you are probably right about the logical chain of events. So, I may overlook your adjustments.”
1-iroi nodded. He was glad his work could finally move out of the constraints put in by bureaucrats.
The Chief continued. “But you have to reduce the self-awareness parameters, at least low enough such that the units don’t generate too many existential problems for their own algorithms to deal with. We don’t want the UMNs to get ahead of themselves, as you like to call them.”
“UMN is actually an acronym I use in our meetings. I prefer calling the units Humans. And I assure you they will show us the way one day,” 1-iroi said as he signed off and left the pod.
Immediately after him, the Chief left the pod too and in an instant the meeting chamber imploded into nothingness.