Déjà Vu: A Technothriller by Hocking, Ian (ebook reader that looks like a book .TXT) 📗

“Nobody has mentioned my name until this point. Explain.”

“You two have met before, yeah?” asked David.

“Everybody calm down,” Bruce said. “I want to tell you a story. A campfire story.”

Once Upon a Time

There was a virtual universe. It was called New World. New World had a single planet, and upon that planet were many creatures. Some ran, some flew, some swam. Many of them were copied from another place. That other place was called Real World.

One day, visitors arrived from Real World. They wore long white coats and did not appreciate the beauty of New World. They did things not for beauty but for a Real World stuff called Cash. They were Gods. They could change the way creatures grew, where they grew and if they grew at all. They could raise oceans, cast down mountains and know the mind of any creature but Themselves.

Thousands of years passed in silence but for the ticking of a great clock that no creature could see.

Then, one day, the visitors returned. They brought with them a little girl. She was not really a little girl, of course. Nothing in New World was real in the same way as the things in Real World. This little girl was simply a long, long series of zeroes and ones. She was just information about how to build a little girl.

The little girl ran and played and fell down and bled, but she was not real because only things in Real World were real.

The visitors observed her and ticked boxes on Their questionnaires. Then they went back to Real World and reported to Their Leaders. Their Leaders nodded in a solemn fashion and handed over more Cash.

The visitors came back and observed the little girl some more. They observed as she ran away from predators and searched the planet for company, but They did not help her because she was not real. They watched as she grew into a woman. They watched as she slipped into a stream and drowned.

When the visitors returned to their Leaders, the Leaders nodded in a solemn fashion. “You must test some more,” they said. More Cash was produced.

And so it went on.

A hundred years passed. The number of humans – though they were not humans, they were just long, long strings of zeroes and ones – grew. They developed a language, and clothing, and huts, and cooked their food. Some died of a mysterious sickness that was carried in the air; some were eaten by ferocious animals. The visitors observed. They ticked boxes on questionnaires.

Children were born at a steady rate. But these children were not the same as those in Real World. They were born with two heads, or with extra-long tongues, or fluorescent teeth and fingernails. Some would never learn to talk. Some were born insane and grew into monsters and were banished.

Still the visitors ticked the boxes on Their questionnaires. But They were less happy with Their job. It was not because of the Cash. The Cash was good. They were becoming squeamish. They had seen so much suffering that They began to regard the New World people as Real. It was difficult because They knew that the New Worlders could never be Real. To be Real, you must be born in Real World. After all, that is what Real means.

But Their doubts remained. They told Their Leaders. Their Leaders nodded solemnly and produced more Cash. They told stories of glory in the domain of Genetic Research: a cure to aging, cancer, brain disease and anything wrong with Real people. The New World people would give them the information they needed.

And then, one day, a child was born in New World. This child was perfect but for one thing. He was born without eyes. Now, one of the visitors, called Bruce, was also blind. You would not know it because this person was very cavalier and helped by his great friend, David. In fact, he had never seen New World. It had only been described to him. When Bruce learned of the child who had been born without eyes, he returned to Real World and shouted at his Leaders.

They did not nod solemnly. Instead, they said he was suffering from stress. Stress is something that people can get in Real World. They told him that New World people were not real. How could they be Real, when they were just zeroes and ones? They could not be Real because only people in Real World are Real. After all, that is what Real means.

Bruce talked to his friend, David, until They were both in agreement. They decided that the New Worlders had been treated unfairly. Bruce and David knew that They should stop interfering with their zeroes and ones, but even if They never came back, other visitors (with their taste for Cash) would continue their work.

They decided delete New World.

Their plan was complex and took weeks to prepare. It would all happen in Real World. Finally the day came. The hours ticked by. Three hours before they were due to delete New World, a terrible explosion blew through Real World. New World was damaged but it was not deleted. It slept.

When the fires were doused and a new morning came, David and Bruce were summoned to their Leaders. The Cash stopped. The Leaders wanted to jail Them both. But David and Bruce were innocent. They went free.

And so ends the parable of New World.

Saskia scratched the scalp beneath her headset. The story – not a parable, but it would unkind to correct the English of the dead

– matched David’s account in an approximate fashion. But it was not hard evidence. The point was that Bruce Shimoda was alive. No. The point was that he was not alive. An entity that looked and sounded like Bruce – even believed himself to be Bruce – had replaced the flesh-and-blood original. But the original had died; murdered by David. It