mgcf.ch2

>>> A whirlwind of pixels spun around Alan's mind like confetti caught in a tornado till they converged on a singular point in the middle of Alan's forehead, and then his loft loaded into view. The effect spun his head like a centrifuge and dizzied him. He stumbled from the loading pad at the front door onto the couch in his living room. He slumped into it and covered his eyes with his arm.

Piper waddled towards him from the kitchen on his hind legs, carefully balancing a glass of cold water in his furry forepaws. "Here you go Al," Piper said as he handed him the cup.

Alan took a long gulp from it. He inhaled deeply and let out his breath.

"Thanks Piper," he said. He scratched his dog/digipal behind the ears.

"Sure." Piper hopped onto the couch next to him.

Alan closed his eyes and rubbed Piper's fur as the loading sickness subsided. It didn't always affect him, but when it did it could be intolerable. Bugging out right before probably didn't help. He sat up after his head cleared and looked out his living room's giant window to the New Dallas Skyline. Tall windowless sky scrapers stabbed at the bright blue sky, as industrial drones flew between them in straight lines as if gliding on invisible tracks.

"You couldn’t wait any longer to hear more about Ed’s contract, eh?" Piper teased.

Alan shrugged. "Ed's contracts are always more interesting than what MTP puts on the job boards. So, what did he say about the gig? Did he say what the reward was?"

"He mentioned it was important for MTP. He suggested it would pay higher than what you earned for the Streams feature."

Bigger than Streams?. Alan had earned a lot for that project. If he got paid at least that much he could buy a multiplayer slot for his world. "That’s a lot of moolah," he replied.

"Indeed," Piper continued. "He said he can share more details once you’ve finished your current contract. He suggested you hurry before they filled all the beta tester positions."

"Current contract?" Alan muttered, remembering he had left one in progress. "Back us out of it. Let someone else pick it up so I can work on this one."

"We could have done that Al, except you already backed out of two other contracts this quarter. You’ve hit your limit," Piper chided.

"Fine," Alan huffed. "Give me the details. I need a refresher."

"Through a KT (Knowledge Transfer), or the old fashioned way?" Piper asked.

"I can't do a KT right now. My head feels like a ton of bricks," Alan mumbled.

"Very well." Piper leaped off the couch onto the rug in front of Alan and raised his right paw. A holographic loading bar emanated from his pawtips as he activated his airUI. Large text from a document and 3D images appeared before him, its projection reversed so Alan could read it. At the top was the ticket number "APGS-2077," below which two red labels read "defect" and "breaking."

"A-P-G-S. That’s the Artificial Population Generation Service," Alan thought aloud. "This bug is for the sims."

"Correct," Piper replied. "MTP released a new feature that upgrades the A.I. for simulated users."

"How smart does it make them? Digipal smart?"

"Not quite. That would require too much processing power for the number of simulated people populating a user's world. Besides, MTP would simply not allow your favorite digital companion to become replaceable," Piper said smugly and let out a Woof!

Alan rolled his eyes. "Alright, so what’s the bug?"

"When too many A.I.-upgraded simulated users congregate, they can overload the CPU resources allocated to the world."

Alan shook his head. "Seems like an obvious thing to protect against."

"MTP developed the feature such that as the density of simulated users increases their individual intelligences decrease. The extra CPU load this feature incurs should remain constant."

"Hmm," Alan mumbled. "Any other details?"

"CPU load has been observed to increase gradually, even if simulated user density does not increase."

"How high can it get?" Alan asked.

"High enough it to cause a world to reboot. A dozen users had their worlds crash before MTP became aware and pulled the feature," Piper said.

"So, pretty high," Alan said coolly.

"Yes Al, ‘pretty high,’" Piper sighed.

"What’s MTP want?"

"A bug report to pinpoint the root cause," Piper said. "Reproduce the issue, record the steps you took, and gather as much data you can."

"Is that all?" Alan grinned. "Easy money. When can I start?"

"Right now, if you’d like," Piper replied. The hologram disappeared from his paw. "I’ve added the upgrade to your world. There is a new setting in on your watch to enable it. You can turn it on and start any time."

Alan tapped through his watch's menus till he found the setting: Smarter Simulated People, and enabled it. His living room shuddered. Could he feel the physical changes taking place outside his digital world that powered this new feature? Core processes restarting with new configurations, new CPU servers attaching to his world to handle the new load… the things he used to deal with when he worked for MTP in the physical.

"Thanks Piper," Alan said. He reached over and rubbed his dog’s head.

"No problem Al. Best of luck." Piper trotted out of the living room and down the hall to his bedroom. He gently bit the knob of his door and pulled it closed.

Alan looked out his high rise at the sharp contours of the buildings housing server farms that sliced into the cloudless sky. He'd set his Home in his world to this newer part of Dallas, purpose-built to serve the world's exploding demand for A.I., to remind him of his past. It represented the pinnacle of computer engineering; his chosen field in the physical world before he plugged in to New Horizons.

Alan turned his thoughts to the job. He had to gather a bunch of sims in one place and record them before his world crashed. He had to visit a populated area during an event, like a festival. It wouldn’t hurt going somewhere he hadn’t been to in awhile, for his own amusement. He tapped his watch to set his world's date to November 1st—the Day of the Dead—and loaded into Mexico City.