Free Tomorrow Happens by David Brin, Deb Geisler, James Burns Page B

suggested techniques, we would force the Friends of the Unreal to back down a bit, and offer a slightly more palatable law of citizenship. The fictitious would at least have to earn their increased levels of reality.

    Indeed, there was a kind of beauty to the new social order I could perceive coming. If simulations can make simulations, and storybook characters can make up new stories, then anything that is possible to conceive, will be conceived. Every possible idea, plot, gimmick, concept or personality will become manifest, in every possible permutation. This myriad of notions, this maelstrom of memes, would churn in a tremendous stew of competition. Darwinistic selection would see to it that the best rise, from one level of simulation to the next, gradually earning greater recognition. More privileges. More significance.

    Potential will climb toward actuality , by merit. An efficient system, if your aim is to find every single good idea in record time.

    But that was not my aim! In fact, I hated it. I did not want all the creativity in the cosmos to reduce to a vast, self-organizing stew, rapidly discovering every possibility within a single day. For one thing, what will we do with ourselves once we use it all up! What can come next, with real-time immortality stretching ahead of us like a curse?

    In effect, it will be a second singularity—even steeper than the first one—after which nothing will ever be the same.

    My footsteps took me through a sweet-warm evening, filled with lush jungle sounds and fecund aromas. Life burgeoned around me. The cityscape was like a vision of paradise. If I willed it, my mind could zoom to any corner of Heaven, even far beyond Pluto. I could play any symphony, ponder any book. And these riches were nothing compared to what would soon spill forth from the horn of plenty, the conceptual cornucopia, in an era when ideas become sovereign and suffrage is granted to each thought.

    At that moment, it was very little comfort to be an augmented semi-deity. Despite all my powers, I found the prospect of a new singularity just as unnerving as my old proto-self perceived the first one.

    Eventually, my human body found its way back to my own front walk. I shuffled slowly toward the door. House opened up, wafting scents of my favorite late night snack. My spirits lifted a bit.

    Then I saw it by the entryway. A soft gleam, almost as faint as a pict, but in a color that seemed to stroke shivers in my spine. In my soul.

    Someone had left it there for me. As I bent to pick it up, I recognized the shape, the texture.

    A stone.

    It shone with a lambence of urgency.

    I expected this , said oracle .

    I nodded. So had seer . . . and even poor old cortex , though none of my selves had dared to voice the thought. We were too good at our craft to miss this logical conclusion.

    Conscience joined in.

    I, too, saw it coming a mile away .

    We all reconverged, united in resignation to the inevitable.

    Though tempted to rage and scream—or at least kick the stone!—I lifted it instead and read our score.

    Seventeen percent. Not bad.

    YOU HAVE DONE PRETTY WELL, SO FAR , a message inside read.
THE INNOVATIONS YOU DISCOVERED HAVE PUT YOU NEAR THE LEAD FOR YOUR REWARD. BUT YOU MUST TRY HARDER TO ATTAIN FIRST PLACE. I WANT TO FORCE FURTHER CONCESSIONS FROM THE PRO-REIFERS IN THE REAL WORLD. COME UP WITH A WAY, AND THE PRIZE WILL BE YOURS !
    The stone was cool to the touch.

    I suppose I should have been glad of the news it brought. But I confess that I could only stare at the awful thing, loathing the implied nature of my world, my life, my self. I pinched my flesh until it hurt, but of course palpable sensations don't proved a thing. As an expert, I knew how pain and pleasure can be mimicked with utter credibility.

    How many times have I been "run"? A simulation. A throw-away copy, serving the needs of a Creator I may never meet in person, but who I know as well as He knows himself. Have I been