Prologue 4, Virtual Education
The cutlery clatters as Alexander places them down onto the metallic tray, and with a thought to the network, he informs the kitchenette that he is finished eating, prompting it to begin the clean-up process. The magnets that he knows are built into the desk activate with a near silent hum, firmly grasping the tray in its magnetic field; slowly, the tray begins to float across the kitchen. Under the work surface the dishwasher's door pops open; the tray and frying pans make their way to the now fully opened door.
The network informs him that the dishwasher will now pass his defined threshold, and it will now be full enough that it justifies the expenditure of a washing cycle. He distantly accepts, knowing that the washer will begin its cleaning cycle the moment the clean-up is finished.
Simultaneously he watches with what has long become mute amazement as the robotic manipulators of the washer grasp and organise the floating cutlery, then the plate, the tray and, finally, the assorted pans. With everything firmly locked into place, the dishwasher's door automatically closes, and an almost silent sound of the wash cycle activating echoes through the apartment; with the show over, he turns his attention to his apartment window.
With another thought, Alexander orders the window to go fully opaque, causing the apartment to temporarily darken. With another thought, his virtual overlay expands from the corner of his vision to something all-encompassing, presenting to him a familiar, fully interactive holographic display.
With ingrained habit, Alexander begins to use his common mnemonic gestures to guide his use of his cyberdeck; with a physical wave of his hand, he grabs at the air, and the icon of his kitchen network instantly gathers in his now clenched fist. He then promptly throws it at the now created development instance in his view located on the now opaque window.
With a glance over his shoulder, he gestures for the washroom network to join the instance, and then with a more delicate hand he gathers the rest of his apartment's processing capability; carefully he plucks the full-dive pod out of the apartment's network, creating an isolating instance behind the sub-networks' already substantial walls.
Alexander breathes out calmly; with the entirety of his apartment's processing power now gathered in a dedicated development instance and the full-dive pod properly isolated from any automatic installers that have been snuck in the update cycle, he can safely begin.
Alexander focuses on the development instance, and with another gesture, he loads up the necessary programming developmental tools. The loading window flashes into existence and is immediately replaced with the loaded program. With everything now prepared, he grabs at his mail attachments and immediately throws the waiting pod security update into the isolated development instance.
As he watches the interface load, Alexander takes a moment to reflect on the necessity of this precaution; he has been checking the programming and updates to his full-dive pods for years now and has never actually found anything truly troubling. To be sure, there has been the occasional phishing virus or attempt to add his network's processing power to crowdsourcing, but the rumoured attempts at mind-controlling people have always been almost disappointingly absent.
But the precaution is there more for his mother's peace of mind than his.
Alexander refocuses on the virtual holographic interface as it finishes loading the recent security update and immediately uses his development tools to compare the update to his pod's recorded live version. He finds himself unsurprised when the tools tell him that this main security update has over two thousand lines of code that have in some way been added or altered.
Alexander takes a deep breath before activating his cyberdeck's time compression; without his cybersuit, he can only safely use the two times compression for thirty objective minutes. Conveniently, his university lecture starts in twenty-five minutes, and the suit will have finished its wash cycle in twenty minutes, so that is a non-issue.
He quickly begins to work with the forty subjective minutes that he has available. As is usually the case, his first port of call is any completely new additions to the program; such things tend to be the least trustworthy, according to his experience, although that is hardly a guarantee.
“Think of the devil and he shall appear?” He says with a wry chuckle, immediately he gets a hit, just a common virus this time. He promptly tears the virus right out of the update, making a note of the compromised line for later.
The time passes quickly, and eventually Alexander exhales deeply while blinking away the interface, noting the moderate warmth now focused on his neck. He deactivates the time compression.
The opaque window brightens at his order, once again letting the light of the outdoors into the apartment.
“Five different viruses are worse than usual even for a main update. Did they employ someone new?” he asks himself wryly.
He sends a response to the company server, informing them of the problematic lines, but he doesn’t expect any sort of response. The company probably knew about them before they sent the security update.
More importantly from his perspective is the same email he sends to his class list; his lips twitch into a smug grin as an almost identical email from Mike arrives a mere second later.
Alexander had been first, again.
A quick look at Mike’s email confirms that they had both caught all the same things, and as he stands up, other emails start to trickle in, all confirming what he’d already found himself.
Alexander watches as the last of his class's responses arrive and moves to stand. When suddenly another email pings him, Alexander blinks as he looks at the name of the email's sender.
“Leslie?” he mutters to himself thoughtfully. Alexander looks over the email in full, noting that it is nearly identical to all the others from his class. Instantly, it clicks. “Right… of course, the nepobaby.” he attempts to confirm to himself.
‘Nepobaby?’ Alexander questions himself. ‘When have I ever used that word?’ He blinks, something unknowable flashing through his eyes causing him to blink.
Alexander shakes his head and lets out a light chuckle while glancing over the email again. Leslie had overlooked the most dangerous issue in the sleep-education systems… just like last time…?
A look of incomprehension flies across Alexander's face as he tries to remember.
“Did we have someone in class called Leslie?” he mutters to himself.
Beep Beep Beep
Alexander flinches as his five-minute alarm warns him to get moving.
He exhales and looks at the recently cleared security update in his metaphorical hands. With a shake of his head, he physically throws the update packet at his pod and watches in amazement as the pod activates, beginning the rapid process of updating itself.
Alexander allows himself a quick stretch before he heads to the washroom to retrieve his now clean cyber-suit, and once done, he promptly returns to his full-dive pod.
As he gets back into the pod, he focuses on the update, noting that there were no issues; he activates the pod's system.
In sequence, he watches the pod close its doors, and he feels it activate the sterilisation process. A mask covers his mouth and nose, and then he hears the slight buzzing of the sterilisation field, which is limited to the pod's internals activating and killing anything problematic that might have snuck in with him.
With the pod's internals sterilised, the mattress recedes where he lies, ensuring that he cannot hurt himself while he learns. Finally, along his spine, Alexander feels the interface needles insert themselves back into his spinal column. He closes his eyes, and the world around him stretches as his consciousness leaves his body in the physical world.
His consciousness then enters his body in the virtual world.
Alexander looks around at his apartment's virtual lobby; as is recommended, he has built it as an identical replica of his real-world apartment. He briefly checks the sub-networks to ensure they haven't changed during his short absence, but he finds nothing out of the ordinary.
Certain that things are in order, he turns his attention to the Harvard connection interface that has replaced part of his window; his built-in security ensures that all connections, but the university must go through the virtual door of his apartment.
Alexander proudly looks over at his apartment's virtual door and marvels at the overlaid ramparts. He had mostly designed them himself, a virtual fortress where his front door should be.
Alexander shakes his head, knowing that he should not allow further distraction. With an eagerness that belies the coming lesson, he moves over to the interface and, without any hesitation, steps right into it. The virtual hyperlink is pulling him through a tunnel of flashing light and data pathways.
The journey is short; not only does he have an extremely capable network connection, but his consciousness does not need to traverse the Atlantic to the physical site of Harvard. Instead, the university, like many entities, has data centres all around the world, and the one in Western Europe is based out of London.
Upon entering the brightly lit Harvard virtual lobby, he encounters a vaguely human-shaped but otherwise amorphous avatar. Alexander smiles as he sees the identification tags on the avatar.
"Mike," he nods in greeting, sending a short virtual handshake to the avatar that is instantly accepted.
“Alex.” Mike replies as the avatar changes to match what Alexander has been told is Mike's actual appearance.
Short dark hair, electric blue eyes and sharp muscular features – Alexander has never met Mike in person, but he heavily suspects that if this is really what he looks like, then it can only have come after many hours at a gene clinic.
Of course, Alexander should not throw any shade over bio-sculpting when he had also spent a great deal of time at a gene clinic for his appearance… but his main focus had always been on other improvements.
“Ready for a live lecture with a legend?” Mike asks with a smirk.
“I keep telling you… legend isn’t really the right word. Most people have only heard of the doctor anecdotally.” Alexander replies in exasperation; it had been a constant with Mike, and he suspects that it has more to do with some shared familial connection than actual achievement, as impressive as those might be.
“And I keep telling you, Doctor Amelia Harper is a legend. People will know her name a thousand years from now! She invented the cybernetics and gene treatments that the entire world uses! Unless you identify as a bio-purist, you are benefiting from her work.” Mike says passionately, virtually throwing a dozen articles about the doctor and her admittedly impressive achievements at Alexander.
Alexander somewhat understands where Mike is coming from, but he is still mistaken, and so his reply is one that should end things.
“People like us will know her name in a thousand years. Most people won’t. Toasters, fridges and showers – these things are ever present in people's lives; literally everyone has at least one of each, and most wouldn’t be able to tell you who invented them if asked.”
Mike looked as if he had been struck, but before he could argue further, another voice entered the chat.
“Are you two still arguing about whether the Doctor is a legend or not?” came the amused voice of Emily, followed immediately by another virtual handshake.
"It's less of an argument and more of a discussion.” Alexander replies; Mike nods in agreement.
“I guess both of you are ready for this. Gone through all the pre-lecture material?” Emily asks.
“Of course. We’re not Leslie.” Alexander replies, smirking.
Alexander thinks of Leslie for a moment. While he is certain that Mike comes from a wealthy background, he also puts the work in. Leslie, in contrast, embodies the essence of a privileged child. Despite blatantly superior cybernetics, he is always last to finish, last to arrive, and last in class. Alexander knows for a fact that he would have been kicked from the entire program if he’d had Leslie’s metrics.
Alexander watches them both share a look before asking in concern, “Who?”
Alexander frowns: he opens his mouth to answer and then immediately points out, “It’s starting.”
‘What?’ Alexander tries and fails to look shocked as his mouth refuses to say what he had been thinking.
Before he could consider the oddity further, the lobby, which had been getting filled by new arrivals, starts to flash and change. Alexander sees the underlying light pathways of the virtual world for a brief instant, and suddenly what were previously hundreds of amorphous avatars have all morphed into the more recognisable human ones, a clear sign that the virtual classroom instance has stopped idling and fully started.
The room shifts from a meeting lobby to a lecture hall; all of the now-human avatars are already in their pre-determined seats.
Alexander is still not entirely used to this sight; much of his schooling had been in person, what purists called 'traditional schooling', although unlike those Luddites Alexander had been progressively introduced to more and more virtual elements in the first years of his life.
From the lessons he is currently attending he knows that the change is completely intentional, educating children in a fully virtual environment has been deemed dangerous to their development. Carefully introducing cybernetics and the virtual world to children has instead been shown to heavily improve educational outcomes, particularly in areas such as critical thinking, problem-solving skills, and adaptability to technology.
‘I wonder if that explains Leslie. Maybe he got thrown straight into time-compressed virtual environments to try and teach him faster… and instead caused the damage that makes him an idiot.’ Alexander suppresses a rueful chuckle at the thought. If that were the case, then the negative effects of time compression would have been intentional, as they are well known by now.
Suddenly the atmosphere in the virtual classroom changes with the arrival of the doctor. And for a moment Alexander fully appreciates what Mike means when he refers to her as a legend; her virtual presence fills the room in a way that previous live professors simply haven’t.
Could it really be called presence? He quickly began to scrutinise himself and the environment around him, looking for anything that could explain this strange sense of heaviness. To his mild surprise, he sort of finds a point of origin for the feeling near the doctor's neck; instead of some mystical charisma or a psychological intimidation factor due to her fame, the heaviness emanating from the doctor's virtual presence is clearly the result of some software or cybernetics.
His virtual focus on the strange feeling briefly captures the doctor's attention; to his surprise, he receives a smile of approval, along with several others.
“Good morning, class. For the next eight hours we will be discussing the effect of biological reality on the virtual world around us.” Doctor Amelia declares.
Alexander blinks in confusion. He knows that his pod is limited to a four to one time compression differential; the recent security update on the pod even removed the legacy ability to go to an eight to one ratio. But the lesson plan clearly stated that the lesson would require only one physical hour. What was going on?
“I see some confusion in the hall.” the doctor notes. “While your pods are restricted to a four to one ratio, the university server can be used to safely augment the ratio further. But the financial cost of using the necessary resources is usually not deemed worthwhile. However, when it comes to using my time, that is not the case," she declares with a smile.
‘That makes sense, I guess.’ Alexander concedes.
The doctor's time is valuable, and Alexander had heard that external hardware could be used to increase the safe time compression limit. He simply didn’t realise that it could be done without direct physical access.
“Now we begin. You have all undergone gene-clinic augmentation to reap the numerous benefits it offers. This practice is so wide-spread because base-line humans are simply not built for cyberware integration. She smirks and laughs. “This is obvious; human bodies can even reject biological limbs or organs that directly match your DNA. The solution? If you are not built for something, then you should implement an update; hence, human two point oh, or one point one depending on who you ask.”
Alexander leans forward, heavily focusing on the lesson that he knows he is privileged to attend.