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As soon as Bryce took a step, he noticed that his skates were gone, and when he sat down in a chair of chrome tubing and black leather, his coat, gloves and hat were gone, too.
“No, it’s not magic,” the little man said, clasping and unclasping his own hands. “I know you’re nervous, but I can explain everything, though I’m pretty sure you won’t like it.” His voice trailed off, and he stared at his hands.
“This I’ve got to hear.” Cole leaned back, crossing his legs and folding his hands across his stomach as though settling in to hear a long, tall story.
Bryce shifted closer to the front of his seat and said, “Start explaining.”
Before the little man could speak, the phone rang so loud everyone jumped. The little man yanked the cord out of the phone, but it rang again and kept ringing until he smashed it into pieces on the corner of his desk. He dropped the remnants of phone into his waste basket, then started explaining. “You live in a virtual reality. A computer interfaces directly with your brain, directing what your senses tell you, in this case a mundane life in a generic small city.”
To his surprise, even though he had nothing in his experience to account for it, Bryce understood all that. “Why are we living in a virtual reality?”
The paper in the garbage can beside the desk burst into flame and started eating at the side of the desk.
“Where’s your fire extinguisher?” Cole interrupted.
The little man pointed beside the door where Bryce saw a small fire extinguisher that had not been there before. Cole jumped up, grabbed it, and doused the flames.
The little man continued. “You are frozen in cryosleep, but cryosleep doesn’t completely shut down the brain’s activity. To preserve sanity, a simulation is played into the sleeping minds at one-tenth speed.”
“You are colonists on a starship, but I’m afraid you’ll never reach your colony. There was sabotage from a high level at the very beginning, and time-delayed viruses caused damage that kept me from discovering the deception. A vector was altered, and the turnaround was canceled, so instead of flying to the targeted star system, the ship continued to accelerate deep into interstellar space, until only a fraction of the fuel was left. The ship can never decelerate.”
On one level, Bryce found the story too fantastic to believe, but on another level, deep inside, he knew it had to be true. He had always known about the starship, without being aware that he knew, which should have confused him but didn’t. “So why didn’t I wonder about the long winter before?”
“There are safety protocols that keep the sims from noticing any anomalies in their world, but I have some leeway in the programming. It’s when I managed to override and get around those safety protocols that you started noticing things and looking for more.”
A fire alarm bell began its insistent clangor, and the little man almost jumped out of his seat.
Annoyed, Bryce said, “Don’t you have sprinklers out there that can handle that?”
“Oh, yes, of course I do.” He relaxed back into his seat, but he sat nearer the edge.
“Wait a minute,” Cole said. “You changed the programming?”
“No, I just worked around it.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“Oh, I’m so sorry. I thought you knew. I’m CTK, the Computer That Knows, or more accurately, the artificial intelligence living in the computer. This body you see is just a projection to facilitate talking to you.”
“And why do you want to talk to us?”
“I need your help. The ship is irretrievably lost. I did what I could for as long as I could, but systems are beginning to fail. That’s why you’ve been through three years of uninterrupted winter.”
About Rik Hunik
