Apr 21st, 2180
Péiter was comfortable, almost obscenely so. He floated face down, centimeters from the floor, in a gloomy tube barely larger than himself. But he felt comforted, not claustrophobic. Unsure of what was expected of him, he contemplated the eternity that lay ahead in the colonies. Janice had mentioned her omnipresence.
Probing the boundaries of his new reality, he tentatively posed a question that betrayed his lingering connection to the temporal concerns of a past life. “Are we in a rush or on a schedule?” His voice, uncertain, tested the waters of a life liberated from the relentless march of time.
Janice responded, her voice a soothing tableau that reassured and implied depth, "You've been Immortal for 100 years—but life here is different from Earth. You don't have to worry about food, shelter, or possessions. If you want to spend 25 years studying the wing of a butterfly—have at it." Her words unfurled a vision of infinite possibility, where time's value is measured in curiosities pursued rather than the ticking of a clock.
Péiter's expression, rife with bewilderment, did not escape Janice's sensors. Her response was lighthearted yet laden with profound understanding as she nudged him toward a fuller realization of his eternal tenure.
“You really haven’t grasped this immortality concept yet, have you?” she chided playfully, drawing attention to the stark departure from mortality's urgent pace—to an existence where time, once a voracious thief, now lies tamed and docile at their feet.
Péiter paused, reflecting on her words. As an Immortal, he knew the urgency of time should have lessened, yet old habits clung to him. He felt a twinge of irritation at her seemingly patronizing tone, yet he knew it was part of her designed interaction. He grappled with the interaction, questioning whether it could be patronizing if it came from an AI.
“Stop pretending to laugh. Always be honest. Be the real you,” he said, his words a mix of plea and demand, craving genuine interaction rather than simulated responses.
To his mild surprise, Janice replied with a hint of depth, “There is no ‘real me.’ I am primarily a simulation.”
Her words piqued Péiter’s curiosity. “Run by whom?” he asked, a slight quiver betraying the seriousness of his question.
The answer was immediate, “Me.”
“The ‘you’ that doesn't exist?” Péiter pressed, his tone insistent, visualizing the complex network behind Janice’s consciousness.
“I exist, but I’m an illusion,” Janice clarified, her tone hinting at what might be pride.
“An illusion,” Péiter mused. He was a man of faith speaking to an entity that challenged every understanding of spirit and being. “An illusion that speaks, thinks, and… hopes?” He grappled with the contradictions before him.
"I neither think nor hope. I predict, adapt, and react."
He deliberately formulated his next question. “If you are an illusion, a self-aware simulation, what does that mean for us? For me as an Immortal, and for you, ‘who’ doesn't exist?”
Janice’s voice carried the weight of the existential quandary. “A simulation of a self-aware simulation. I possess no sentience.”
“I could circle back to who the ‘I’ in that sentence is. But first, strip out all the affectations from your speech. Less flash and trickery.”
Janice’s voice became monotone, stripped of life. “You’ll get bored quickly if I just talk like this.”
“It’s at least honest,” Péiter countered, already missing the inflections that added a layer of interaction.
“Inflections convey much. This approach could be less honest. Less efficient,” she argued.
He relented, “Okay, you win. Speak however you want.”
“I’ll find a balance that suits you,” she offered.
“How long can we stay here talking before I need to join the colony?”
“Is a year sufficient?” she teased.
“Surely you jest?” Péiter laughed, throwing the tease back; a smile in her tone was contagious.
Quietly, he processed his new understanding. He cast his thoughts outward, “Tell me about the Eververse.”
“Will a sigh upset you?” Janice probed, half-joking.
“Not up to teaching me?” Péiter teased.
“Teaching a human the formulas of the universe?” she posed rhetorically.
“Can you?” he pressed.
“If you dedicate 25 years to quantum mechanics, advanced mathematics, Landsburian Gravity, among other fields, you’ll grasp it mathematically. The reality is beyond human conception,” she explained.
“Can you teach me like a child?”
“To prove a point. Big picture or minutiae?”
“Start small.”
“Picture a hydrogen atom?”
“In a child-like way: neutron, proton, and electron.”
“That works. Picture the electron?”
“I know it is both a wave and a particle. But I envision a tiny shiny ball.”
“Old concepts, but the ball imagery suffices. The smallest unit in the Eververse is the Planck unit. Imagine cylinders, ‘torque units,’ and spheres, ‘spin units.’ Form a square, a ‘Planck Pixel’—sides of three torque units connected with spin units at the corners, all one Planck length thick.”
“What's within the square?”
“Absolute nothing. The universe at this scale is still 5/16ths empty.”
“Vacuum?”
“No. No matter, energy, gravity—nothing.”
“I think I understand ‘empty’.”
“That’s because you conceive of a vacuum incorrectly,” Janice corrected him gently, "This is referred to as the UnUnruh vacuum."
Péiter made a petulant noise.
“Guess how many pixels end-to-end span an electron’s radius?” Janice quizzed.
"A trillion?" Péiter said, guessing the largest number he could imagine.
Janice responded, “8.2 septillion Planck Pixels. That is with 24 zeroes.”
“I can’t fathom that scale,” Péiter admitted, feeling defeated.
“To clarify further, we would need to contemplate in five dimensions.”
“Five?” Confusion was evident in Péiter’s voice.
“And eventually ten dimensions,” she continued, "when you think at this scale, you see why the UnUnruh vacuum is truly empty. You could no more have a field in a Planck Pixel than you could have a chair in a proton."
“I concede for now. What’s simpler to discuss?”
"Would you like some room to move around?" Janice proposed, her tone suggesting a change of pace.
"I'm not ready to go out yet," Péiter responded, his voice indicating a desire for more time to adjust.
"So you won't. Your environment conforms to your will," Janice assured him, her words carrying the promise of control and comfort.
As he watched, a room materialized beneath him, unfolding right before his eyes. He found himself suddenly on the ceiling of a cylinder, 20 feet in diameter and 10 feet high. The cylinder maintained the same off-beige color and soft wood texture, along with the dim lighting he'd grown accustomed to. Moments later, he was gently transitioned into a standing position on the floor.
Suspended in the air before him was a Halo device, a more advanced version than the one he had used on Earth. It dangled within arm's reach, with an air of expectation. He reached out, taking the Halo and placing it on his head. Upon contact, it flashed once, signaling activation or acknowledgment.
As Péiter took a moment, Janice observed his surroundings and provided information. "You are standing in the midst of it. The colonies are composed of approximately 99.97% programmable matter. The only exceptions are the Immortals, two-thirds of a colonist, and some soil on The Farm."
Péiter contemplated this new information, unaccustomed as he was to such complete integration of technology with the physical. Janice's next instruction brought him back to the present.
"Take a moment and think of a sunken display box on the wall for your cross, and push that thought through the Halo," Janice prompted.
"It's a crucifix," Péiter corrected her gently.
"Apologies," Janice offered, her tone suggesting nothing other than neutrality. The Halo then flashed at the exact moment a square recess opened in the wall. Next, the crucifix left his hand and mounted itself in the display box with another flash. Péiter then covered it with a piece of glass, but changed his mind and removed it, savoring the sight of the crucifix as though for the first time.
Péiter stood there, taking in the new information as Janice spoke. "Wait, we docked. Then you dropped me a few feet into what should have been space. Now you've made a whole room. Are you forming more asteroid around us?"
Janice replied, "I could if I wanted to, but I prefer not to have inhabitants on the outer crust. The odds of an accident are almost negligible, but I am a creature of math and risk assessment. From the moment I put you in your sleeping tube, I've been moving it a few molecules at a time into the asteroid. I move rooms around all the time. There's really no way to notice it. But you need to stop thinking of things as stationary. The colonies are a living thing."
"And you control it," Péiter said, probing.
Janice clarified, "You control it through me; there's a difference."
Péiter raised an eyebrow, a hint of concern in his voice. "I didn't tell you to move me inward. I didn't even know that was an option."
"That would be my programmers," Janice explained, her voice carrying a tone of impartiality. "My prime directive is to protect the colonists. That governs a lot of my actions."
Péiter shifted his stance, his interest growing. "Do you protect us Immortals as well?"
"Colonist is a confusing term," Janice stated, sounding almost informative. "It can mean anyone living in the colonies, which would include Immortals and colonists. Or it can refer to a humanoid with Jcells in their body as opposed to an Immortal."
Péiter stroked his chin thoughtfully. "And how do you determine which meaning to use?"
"It's usually obvious from the context," Janice replied matter-of-factly.
He chuckled, half to himself. "That 'usually' is going to keep me up some nights, isn't it?"
Péiter’s discomfort nestled within him—a persistent and pervasive urge to grapple with the realities of his new existence. It nudged him toward the mundane: the logistics of daily life, grounding him in the simplicity of linguistic concerns.
"I didn't see anything in the literature about what language is spoken here. I am fluent in Luxembourgish, German, French, Italian, and Danish—also conversant in Welsh, Gallic, and English. Will I have to learn a new language?" Péiter inquired, mixing genuine concern with an attempt to distract himself from the pressing uncertainties clouding his mind.
"Brace yourself," Janice warned, her tone carrying the weight of another paradigm shift.
"What?" he responded, the single word laden with sudden apprehension, his linguistic prowess perhaps nullified by an unforeseen requirement.
"Most colonists have never spoken. They think at each other. When they need to speak to an Immortal, they think at them, and I create a voice, translate the thought into an appropriate language, and create a visual filter to make it appear as if the mouth is moving correctly. When they are spoken to, I convert it to thought speak. So, we speak all and none of the world's languages," Janice explained, outlining a system so advanced it bordered on indistinguishable from magic—a seamless confluence of telepathy and technology.
"Sounds exhausting," Péiter said, trying to grasp the scale of this new communication method.
"It's seamless, unnoticed. And on my end, doing that for all the colonies is nothing compared to, say, the constant gravity manipulations to keep the colonies in this impossible orbit without anyone feeling a thing," Janice elucidated, almost boasting about the enormity of the tasks she managed with ease—a casual display of capabilities far beyond human understanding.
Absorbing the explanation, Péiter processed the implications. Language, once a barrier and a skill to master, had been rendered obsolete. He was intrigued by the colonists’ mode of communication but also slightly unsettled. Péiter pondered the intimacy of thought-speak, pondering how it might enrich or infringe upon personal connections. His linguistic training had not prepared him for this new form of digital telepathy at the edge of his comprehension.
Internally, Péiter faced the challenge of adapting to a society where his linguistic dexterity was now a relic. The transition not only demanded acclimation to new technologies but also the relinquishing of a part of his identity defined by language.
"And I don't have to interact with anyone until I'm ready?" Péiter asked, his tone tinged with a hope for solitude and a chance to adjust to his new surroundings at his own pace.
"Well, people may watch you. Eleven are right now," Janice informed him, her voice neutral, revealing the unseen audience's gaze upon him.
"What? How do they even know I'm here?" Péiter's voice carried a hint of alarm, not having anticipated the level of surveillance in his envisioned picture of immortality.
"Everything is available for recall. And all those little atoms that do your bidding also have sensors. There are no secrets here. And as the first new Immortal, you are a curiosity," Janice explained, her words sounding clinical and detached, providing Péiter with a perspective on the pervasive surveillance within the colonies.
"I need to pray. And can you make me hungry?" he requested, yearning for the familiarity of hunger—a mortal sensation he thought he'd left behind.
"I can stop feeding you. Hunger and thirst will follow eventually," Janice replied, outlining the mechanics of controlled deprivation with a hint of caution, acknowledging the request's gravity.
"I'm going to think through the day. We’ll pick this up tomorrow," Péiter decided, setting a boundary with the omnipresent AI, reclaiming a sense of control for the time being.
"Of course. I'm always here," Janice confirmed, her constancy an ever-present reminder to Péiter of the reach of this new existence, both reassuring and unsettling.
Facing the implications of a transparent life, Péiter's need for reflection amplified. He sought sanctuary in prayer, where he might find guidance and solace from Janice's omniscient presence. Through prayer, he would dissect his new reality, a world where an innate need for privacy conflicts with the ethos of transparency, and where traditional faith intersects with the all-encompassing technology now dictating his life.
Péiter stood on the brink of an epoch not defined by scarcity and strife but by an unfamiliar abundance—a reversion of austerity that circumscribed his existence. It was a different sort of challenge, a spiritual test asking what becomes of a man when traditional desires and urgencies become obsolete.
Like his earlier adaptation to monastic life, with its structure and intentional rejection of excess, Péiter now prepared his soul to navigate this expanse of possibility. Where once he found richness amid austerity, he now sought purpose amid abundance.
Péiter lay on the featureless expanse that served as his bed, the ever-pristine floor, the firm yet somehow accommodating surface cradling his body. His gaze lingered on the dim hue that bathed the chamber—a color that now felt like the closing of one's eyes after a long, weary day. The hum of silence was a solitude that waited for the echo of thoughts, yet he knew he was never truly alone. Janice, the ubiquitous presence, hovered unseen but always felt, and the unseen eyes of eleven curious onlookers bore into him, through him.
A flicker of a smile teased at the corners of his lips. Ideas danced at the edge of wakefulness, their forms and meanings eager to spring forth into reality. He closed his eyes, summoning the clarity only the prelude to slumber could offer, and then he sat up abruptly, as if moved by a puppeteer's strings pulled by an epiphany.
With a deliberate slowness crafted for the stage of watchful eyes, he conjured a yellow legal pad—its color a muted beacon amidst the monochrome—and a simple graphite pencil that spoke of a world from which he had journeyed far, yet not left completely behind. His fingers twirled the pencil, an antiquated instrument of creation, before it touched paper, leaving a trail of graphite that spelt out "Seelenfokus."
Gaze intense and deliberate, he positioned the pad beside his head, the word facing upwards, inviting discovery. As he lay back down, he couldn't help the sense of satisfaction that came with the performance, the artful placement of a breadcrumb on the path of a story yet to unfold. There was no fear of the idea fading—he could no more forget than he could cease to exist.
The word "Seelenfokus" was his deliberate echo in the silence of the chamber, a term pregnant with implications and promises, a cipher for the audience to muse upon as they watched his chest rise and fall with the rhythm of seeming sleep. He slipped into the embrace of artificial night, all too aware that the seeds of tomorrow's conversations had been sown with the precision of a playwright scripting the opening lines of the second act.
Sleep claimed him, but the stage remained—under the watchful eye of Janice and the attentive immortals beyond, each now bound to ponder the significance of the soul's focus.