»> “Have you gone through the job description yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Would you like the details uploaded, or shall I brief you?
“Just upload it,” Alan replied.
“Very well. Incoming.”
Alan’s head buzzed as white drowned his mind. “Ungh,” he moaned. He’d forgotten how painful these knowledge transfers are.
“Any unanswered details?”
“I think I’ve got it,” Alan muttered. “Interesting interface.”
“How so?”
“To use the feature I have to fall asleep, and I have to dream about animals. How many I dream about is how many copies I make. Up to three.”
“Curious,” Piper mused.
“Are the different versions of you allowed to meet?”
“No, they—I, I guess—can load into any world I want so long as its not occupied by one of my copies.”
“And what of me, your favorite and irreplaceable digipal?”
“You’re copied too. Though, your performance degrades since the processing is being shared between three worlds.”
“Oh, bother,” Piper grumbled.
“Don’t worry Piper, I’ll love you even if you’re just a little slower.”
“Jolly,” Piper wagged his tail.
Alan brought up the feature toggle on his watch: Multipath. With a little hesitation, Alan flipped the switch. A circular icon spun lazily on his display. After what felt like an eternity it stopped, and the toggle moved to the “on” position.
Multipath enabled, said the soft voice in his head.
“Alright, I’m gonna head to bed and try this out. Can you keep an eye on me?”
“Of course, Al.”
Alan made his way to his bed, and, laying in it with his eyes closed, he dreamt of three giraffes, running on the golden sand coasts of Africa.
alan_c4r33r0
Boring, Alan thought, as he laid on his couch scrolling through contracts on the MTP’s job board. Been there, done that. Unsatisfied, he scrolled angrily further and further down the list till he reached the end of the backlog—the jobs no one wanted. They were either too challenging, didn’t pay enough, or just too mundane or unappealing. One, however, caught his attention. TS-1337… from the Trust and Safety team (T&S). He hadn’t worked for them before, and the pay was good. He skimmed the description. It was a sting. Some perv found a way to hack into a user’s Stream live, as they were recording it. They could see through their victim’s eyes in real-time. The debugger would act as a honeypot to attract the hacker, and someone from MTP’s cyber security incidence response team (CSIRT) would trace and identify them. Alan would have to don an avatar matching the hacker’s usual target: a red-headed woman. The thought of that made him uncomfortable. Must be why no one had taken the ticket, he thought. He scrolled back up and glanced at the other jobs. He’d done them all before. The pay wasn’t even that good. He scrolled back down to the honeypot job. The pay was fantastic. After a pause, he assigned himself to it, and closed out his airUI.
Fog obscured the view of New Dallas’ tall data centers. A few closest to Alan’s building managed to pierce the veil, their drab windowless spires ascennding towards heaven like mountaintops poking through rolling clouds. The dreary view made Alan sleepy. He snuggled up on his couch and dozed off.
He awoke to Piper nestling next to him on the small sliver of space still free on the couch.
“Hello, Al.”
“Hey, Piper.”
“MTP acknowledged your request to take TS-1337,” Piper said, speaking more slowly than usual. “The job’s reporter is coordinating with T&S and CSIRT for when and where to conduct the operation. They switched the job’s status to ‘in progress’. They will let you know when the operation is ready to begin.”
“Sounds good. Hey Piper, what’s the log of four billion, two hundred ninety-four million, nine hundred sixty-seven thousand, two hundred ninety-six, squared?
Piper stared blankly at Alan for what seemed like a whole minute.
“Nineteen point two six six.”
Alan grinned, “Ah perfect, thanks.”
“Of course.”
Alan got up, and got himself a drink.
alan_10v300a
Alan looked Ada up and down; even simply dressed she looked stunning. Retro denim jeans hugged her waist and drew attention her hips… a crisp white shirt with long-sleeves rolled to her elbows gave her an air of elegance. Her jet black hair cascaded down her shoulders in loose waves. Ruby red lipstick betwixt fair skin gave the perfect pop of color.
“Hey,” she smiled, “It’s nice to see you again. In person.”
“Likewise. You look great.”
“Thanks,” she smiled. “You don’t look too bad yourself.”
“I try,” Alan smiled, thinking of the hours he spent browsing influencer streams for the right outfit. He ended up on a classic money look: khaki pants, slippers, and a navy blue shirt. “So, where’s this cafe we’re heading to?”
“It’s this way,” she pointed behind her, down a narrow, cobblestone street flanked by stone facades and iron balconies. She led them to a pair of bicycles leaning on an old stone wall, one a dark slate blue, and the other khaki.
“By the way, I got us some bikes to get us there. You can ride, right?” she asked with an awkward smile.
Alan scoffed. “‘Course. I grew up riding bikes.”
“Just asking. Ya know, I just now realized… it would have been pretty awkward if you didn’t know how.”
“And embarassing,” Alan laughed. He looked them. The blue was the bigger of the two, so his; both were vintage, with straight pipes for the main frame and clean, simple curves on the handlebars and forks. He guessed they were from the twentieth century.
“How’d you know I like blue?”
“Lucky guess.”
Alan mounted his bike with ease and watched, a little impressed, as Ada did as well. They pedaled down the bumpy road, side by side, gliding through the salty air at a leisurely pace.
“I love this city,” Ada said, her voice soft but confident, as she took in the familiar streets around them. “I used to watch sailing races here with my father.”
Alan glanced at her, and caught a hint of nostalgia in her eyes—a glimmer of remembrance—and let her keep talking, as the quiet bond between them grew stronger.
“I haven’t been back here since… gosh, I can’t even remember,” Ada murmured, her voice trailing off for a moment. “It’s funny how some places feel like they’re frozen in time, as if the place knew that when you’d come back, you’d want it to be just the way you remembered it.”
“Hmmm,” Alan hummed in agreement, though he couldn’t relate from experience. His life moved fast before he got put in the digital. He struggled to remember when that was.
“How did you and your dad get into sailboat racing?”
“It was a tradition in his family, and he passed it on to me. I raced in high school and college, you know?” she said with pride, a small smile tugging at the corners of her lips.
“Say, you wouldn’t want to race, would you?” she raised an eyebrow, her smile widening.
Alan smirked. He wasn’t very competitive, but he could definitely ride. “Sure, why not?”
“You think you can keep up?” she teased, a playful glint in her eyes. “I might leave you in the dust.”
“We’ll see,” he grinned.
alan_v1c35
Linus crouched down by the edge of the alley, picking at paint peeling off a rusty pipe behind a brick building. A sly grin spread across his face. He tilted his head toward a bot walking towards them. “Check this out,” he said.
Alan followed his gaze to the bot walking steadily down the narrow passage. Dressed in a white chef’s uniform replete with a tall hat and a comically thick moustache, he carried a stack of plates that wobbled dangerously with each step. The moment he tried to walk past a chain link fence he collided with an invisible wall. The impact sent the entire stack of plates crashing to the ground in a spectacular mess of shattered porcelain.
The bot paused, confused by the sudden disaster, then bent down and scooped the shards of floral white porcelain into his apron. With his belly bulging from the jagged mass of ceramic, he turned around and walked the same path—only to collide with the barrier again, sending the shards flying once more.
Alan laughed and shook his head in disbelief. “You’ve gotta be kidding me. How’d you even find this?”
“Just stumbled on it while exploring,” Linus replied, enjoying the spectacle. “It’s like watching a never-ending slapstick routine. These bots are dumber than a box of rocks!”
“Yeah, they can be,” Alan agreed, still grinning as he watched the bot stuck in an infinite loop.
“Hey, you work on this kind of stuff, right? Why’s that barrier even there? I can’t get past it either!”
Alan went to examine hidden wall. The bot, on noticing him, broke out of his routine and shuffled away, broken plates clinking together softly as he left the way he came. Alan patted the surface, feeling for its height. It was the same as the nearby fence. He inspected where one end of the fence met the side of a building. The chain links fused right into the wall, where there should have been a post for them to link into.
“This fence is supposed to be five feet this way,” Alan motioned away from the building towards the hidden wall. “Sometimes the system misplaces objects and buildings when it’s generating a world, and it causes stuff like this to happen.”
Linus examined where the fence fused with the wall. “Far out,” he replied. “Let’s get outta here. Melbourne’s got way more than glitchy alleys.”
___ back to Paris ___
Alan stomped on the pedals and sucked up the shock and vibration from the brick and stone street as he gathered speed. He turned sharply at the intersection, narrowly avoiding a passing car, and hopped onto the sidewalk at a low point in the curb.
“Hey!” Alan shouted to the streams of bots mindlessly walking in his way. “Beep beep!” Startled, they jumped in masses to either the cobblestone street or up against the walls of the block’s shops and apartments.