“Don’t you find it strange that they didn’t have computer viruses?”
They were standing in Time Square opposite a large digital billboard, Amorphia stood staring up at the rapidly change images and blinked. K-Rox didn’t like to have these types of conversation with her in such densely populated areas of Empires.
There were strict rules about not freaking out the MAIs, a fairly high probability, given the content of their average soul-searching conversation. The Empires Mapped AIs seem to truly believe they were their original selves, thus making one of them believe you were a time traveller, or alien, or time travelling alien even, was definitely frowned upon, and could get you kicked out, and even banned from the game.
“Come on let’s go in here.”
He grabbed her by the arm and started walking rapidly in the direction of somewhere he knew would be fairly quiet at this time of day. It was Tuesday morning, and the rush hour was stubbornly clinging on, though as K-Rox remembered, it always seemed to be rush hour in Manhattan.
K-Rox hesitated, as they came to an intersection, he scanned up and down, the street until he spotted where he was looking for and pulled her gently towards the doorway.
They stood outside a large restaurant looking at their reflections in the large glass fronted doors, Amorphia smiled as she read the sign – Champ’s Burgers.
“Of course, we can’t be in America without tasting a burger, no!?”
She put on her fake, cutesy-doll French accent as she said it, even though she could reproduce any particular dialect or accent no matter how obscure, she preferred instead to sound like an American doing what she thought a French accent should be. It was idiosyncrasies like this that were endearing him to her more and more, and he couldn’t wait for her to get out of Empires.
They sat opposite each other, by an upstairs window overlooking the thrumming street below; as K-Rox had guessed the place was empty save for the two of them. A bored looking MAi waitress came over and gave them their menu, Amorphia smiled and thanked her in her Amero-French accent; the waitress barely seemed to notice as she turned to disappear off into whatever hidden doorway from which she had emerged.
Amorphia leaned in towards him and bent her head conspiratorially, beckoning him to do the same. She lowered her voice before she spoke.
“So are all the people in New York MAis?”
“Not all, but a very large number, I believe it’s around two or three million, though I’m not sure if they’re all in play every single time.”
Amorphia’s gaze wandered and no longer met his own, she spoke as though her mind was a million miles away.
“All those people; they all believe that they are real?”
“Yeah, I guess . . Some people say its not fair, it’s cruel - ”
“What do you think K-bot?”
“I’m not sure, in some ways I think the argument is silly, because they are Ai with a small ‘i’, any observed sentience is an illusion. But on the other hand, they do seem to actually believe, but again, they technically don’t have the capacity to ‘believe’ anything.”
K-Rox got ready to defend his stance, but Amorphia seemed to be happy with his answer and instead turned her attention to the menu.
“Wow! $15 for a burger! Woah look $30!! That must be an amazing burger, I’m not sure we can afford it though.”
K-Rox smiled at her, even though he had hundreds of thousands of Empires credits, and was fairly wealthy by 21st century earth standards, Amorphia preferred that they both play the roll of poor, but happy lovers. He had tried showing her how much fun the rich boyfriend roll could be, but she had gotten bored of that after just a few days.
*“Don’t worry my love.”
He said, dropping into character.
“We can afford a thirty-dollar burger, if we share it, I’m sure it will be enough.”*
Later, as they ate their huge burger, which was actually a meal consisting of several large plates, one of which was a gargantuan burger that could have fed five hefty men after a heavy day of manual labour. K-Rox wondered not for the first time if Empires had gotten this bit right, surely 21st century humans didn’t eat this much did they?
“So, going back to my question earlier K-bot; don’t you think it’s a bit odd that they didn’t have computer viruses?”
K-Rox gave the ‘hang-on-a-second’ gesture, as he rapidly chewed and swallowed the large mouthful of burger and onion rings he had placed in his mouth seconds before her question. He still managed to allow a few flecks of food to escape from his mouth as he answered, Amorphia had the good grace to pretend not to notice.
“Yes and no, in some ways it’s a bit strange I guess, because their digital architecture seemed so, so, um - ”
“Archaic?”
“Yes, I guess you could say that, but I guess all that stuff they went through in the 1970s gave them a unique outlook into building computers into the future.”
Amorphia tilted her head to one side and shot him a quizzical look.
“Does that not seem in the least bit strange to you? That after just a couple of decades of computing, they managed to sort a problem out that hadn't even been clearly defined yet.”
K-Rox shrugged, he had stopped being surprised by 21st century humans a long time ago, for every advancement they had, there was some backward law or tradition that cancelled it out. He finished chewing his food, and set his fork down and looked out the window at the steady flow of human traffic oozing along the street.
He turned to speak to Amorphia again, but she too seemed lost in contemplation. He turned back to watch the assortment of MAi Empire characters, players and FMS humans thronging the streets of Manhattan. The sky darkened, slate grey-black clouds boiled in from the east, thin specks of rain arrowed started to bombard the sidewalk below, isolated pockets of steam rose from the emptying sidewalks, and the people moved on.
The changing light outside caused a small sprite of a reflection to appear on her right cheek, K-Rox watched her face move as she spoke without tearing her gaze from the window.
"It just makes you wonder, maybe the Great Confusion itself is confused. Maybe it went on for a lot longer than we know.
Maybe it's still going on."
Previous Chapters
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 16 - Neither Here Nor There
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 15 - At The Edge Of Madness
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 14 - A Sense Of The Real
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 13 - The Search For Truth
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 12 - Empires
Original artwork by 
Original words by Cryptogee
