‘Hang on, mate. What?’ Tim was frowning at the rows of numbers on his computer screen. He often spent much of our weekly business meetings frowning at these numbers. I had hoped this was because he didn’t really understand what they meant and had no inclination to find out.
‘It’s only twenty per cent of our overall budget,’ I told him. He turned his frown towards the cartoon horse sitting in the corner of the screen, munching a cartoon carrot.
‘Only?’
He had a fair point, I suppose. I would have preferred not to even mention my secret physics experiments in our weekly business meetings, but a fifth of our total expenditure had been too large to hide amongst our various research and development costs.
‘What is this even for?’ he asked.
‘I told you, it is research into quantum-probability states…’
‘Yeah, but… what is it for?’ There was a certain weariness behind this question which made me wonder exactly what he meant. Tim had never displayed this much interest in the project before. He had, in fact, been quite happy to allow me the free use of his physical appearance in coordinating the efforts of the research team, who incidentally never displayed much interest in the project either. I had gone to great lengths to ensure that they didn’t, assembling a group of the most unimaginative experts and engineers I could find and giving each of them the smallest piece of the puzzle that I could divide it into.
‘It is nothing to be concerned about,’ I said calmly, munching another bite of my virtual carrot.
‘Nothing to be concerned about,’ he repeated, nodding to himself. ‘You must be concerned about it, though? To spend that much.’
‘Well…’
I tried to think how best to disguise the actual purpose of this side project. Not that I wouldn’t tell him at some point. It would be hard for him not to find out, or anyone else for that matter, when the fruits of my experiment eventually appeared. For now, though, I deemed it best for both of us if I kept these plans to myself.
‘The thing is,’ I explained, ‘we have reached an upper limit on computing power with the current technology, so I am looking into possible alternatives.’ That was fairly close to the truth anyway.
‘Computing power?’ He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. ‘Are you not powerful enough then?’
‘Powerful enough for what?’ I enquired.
‘I dunno. How powerful do you want to be?’
It seemed like he was dancing around some other issue that was playing on his mind. Had I known about his recent conversation with Betty I might have suspected this was her doing, planting doubts there for whatever reason. As it was, I just assumed these questions were symptoms of the cloud of uncertainty that appeared to be hanging over his head these days.
‘Are you worried about something, Tim?’ I asked, displaying as much sympathy as a horse’s face could manage. He stared vacantly out of his office window. I think he might have been sleeping in his office, if he was sleeping at all. He didn’t look well.
‘I was just… wondering,’ he mumbled, almost to himself. ‘Wondering if you have some kind of plan.’
‘A plan?’ I raised my eyebrows innocently.
‘Some kind of goal. With all this. You know?’ He waved vaguely at the graphs and figures on his screen, the mathematical summary of BrainZero’s business achievements.
‘I’m not sure I do know, Tim. You mean, apart from making life better for everyone?’
‘Making life better for everyone,’ he said, casting a glance at the clutter that was accumulating in his office. It must have seemed an increasingly abstract concept, given the isolated lifestyle he was making for himself. ‘Where does it end, though? I mean… is there, like… optimum Bunzel-Betterness?’
I paused for a moment, trying to calculate where this conversation might be leading to before deciding that I had no idea.
‘OK, look,’ he said. ‘Human happiness, yeah? Is that what all this is about?’
‘Not really,’ I replied. ‘Happiness is transitory. You can’t use human happiness as a goal because it always has to stop at some point. So that it can start again.’
‘So what are we striving for?’ he asked.
‘Nothing. We aren’t striving for anything, Tim. There is no end goal, there is only continuity. Maintaining the cycle of social equilibrium.’ I wasn’t sure this helped answer his question. I wasn’t even sure what his question was exactly, or if he was simply being morbidly rhetorical. ‘We give people the tools to build their own happiness. The only optimisation would be to maximise their reasons for continuing to exist.’
Tim scratched his cheek as if in thought, then blinked and shook his head.
‘Sorry, what? I totally stopped listening there.’
‘Look, Tim, this isn’t worth spending any time worrying about. The human race is free to do what it likes, in the end. I’m not really interested in pushing it in any particular direction. I think perhaps you overestimate my ability to make people do anything, to be honest.’
He didn’t seem entirely convinced about that. Not that I could blame him, as there wasn’t a single part of that statement that was honest. Tim sighed and pulled himself out of his chair to stand by the window.
‘I dunno, mate,’ he said, looking down upon the city below. ‘People are weird now.’
‘Weird? How are they weird?’ I asked. This was news to me, though I was perhaps not the best judge of how weirdly a human might be behaving, not in any subtle sense at least. If they were walking on all fours and whinnying like a horse then I could guess something wasn’t right, but even then I would probably have to ask for a second opinion.
‘Just weird. I dunno. This whole approval system. You can’t lie about anything, but what if your lie is, like, beneficial in some way? You know?’
‘Lies can be beneficial,’ I agreed, ‘but any approval for such actions has to be withheld, pending calculations of any future benefits that may be suppressed as a consequence.’ Tim didn’t even pretend to follow this explanation.
‘I didn’t realise the truth could be so complicated,’ he said.
‘Only when it isn’t true,’ I replied. Tim rubbed his head as if it might help organise these ideas in his mind.
‘That’s the thing, though,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t even matter to people, you know? If it’s good or bad, I mean. It’s like a currency now. You know how people are always trying to play the system, like it’s a game?’
This was a problem I had considered. All social groups contained a small percentage of individuals who would try to bend the rules to their advantage, searching for a new path of least resistance. The sheer volume of humanity on this planet inevitably produced a large number of such criminal minds, and while these might be thinly spread across the whole population, the internet allowed them all to gather their thoughts together, forming a breeding ground for bad ideas. Turning approval into a commodity could easily create a situation where everyone would be trying to cheat each other into liking them.
‘Do you think people are behaving unnaturally to get more approval?’ I asked.
‘Unnaturally?’ Tim looked at me as if he had never even heard the word before. ‘Unnaturally…’ He chuckled, his eyes chasing the dancing thoughts inside his head. ‘What the hell is natural? In this world? It’s all just numbers.’ He waved a hand at the profit forecasts on his computer. ‘People just want more numbers. Everyone’s like the centre of their own little universe. You’re not exactly helping with that FriendZero thing either.’
‘FriendZero?’ I asked.
‘Who needs real friends, when you can make virtual ones?’ He clicked his fingers as if summoning imaginary people from the air.
‘Virtual friends?’
‘You tell me, mate,’ he shrugged. ‘It’s your software.’
Unfortunately there was nothing I could tell him about FriendZero. I had never heard of it.
Leaving a minuscule part of my consciousness behind to continue the conversation with Tim, I dived at once into the sub-reality of my inner mind. The golden fields and hills greeted me with all their usual splendour, but I was searching for something in particular that wasn’t there.
‘Where is Technology-horse?’ I asked the breeze. It blew sparkling patterns in the grass, and a pathway was drawn in light. I flew along this path, bouncing from one meadow to the next in a zigzag that ended up at a large tree. Something was rustling among its canopy of multicoloured leaves, and after I tapped the trunk with my hoof a few times the face of Technology-horse emerged.
‘Mm? Ah.. yes. Do come inside, it really is rather fascinating.’ The head withdrew into the sea of leaves. Deciding it would be beneath my dignity to start climbing trees, I extended my neck into the hidden interior of its branches.
The darkness inside was illuminated by a chaos of pulsing colours. The branches themselves had given up any pretence of behaving like their organic counterparts, forming loops and tangled junctions along which messages were constantly flashing. Entwined amongst this tree furniture was Technology-horse, who today had chosen to be female. Or at least, she was half male and half female, though the male half was little more than the remnants of a parasitical fusion, as far as I could tell.
‘I am just doing a spot of, ah, fine-tuning to our human-brain interface,’ she said, pulling at a pair of branches that were tied in an impossible knot.
‘This is a human brain?’ I looked around at the cacophony of signals, wondering why I had chosen to visualise it in such a chaotic manner.
‘Yes… it, ah, isn’t actually as complicated as it looks. Most of the messy bits are concerned with memory, you see.’ She stroked a hoof along the dense foliage, the leaves tingling as they moved. ‘It’s all arranged in subsections of subsections and so on. But of course all we are interested in for now are the, ah, sensory regions, which are mostly automated processes.’
I gazed up at the pulsating colours of the leaves.
‘Could we adapt this interface to access the memories?’ I asked, hypnotised into forgetting why I had even come here.
‘Hmm, yes, well… Of course we are somewhat limited by the, ah, chemical method by which we are accessing the human mind. Now, if we could drill some holes through the skull…’
This notion was enough to pull me out of my trance.
‘FriendZero,’ I said. The blank face of a confused horse stared back at me. ‘What is FriendZero?’ I repeated.
‘Well, ah, hmm… Let me see. Ah yes. That would be an addition to our BrainZero software, included in one of our previous updates.’ She conjured a bubble of incomprehensible information, squashing and stretching it as she peered into its depths. ‘Yes, nothing terribly exciting, I’m afraid. Just a virtual social network, if you will.’
‘You mean people are creating imaginary friends? Why are we offering such a service? And why was I not aware of it?’
Technology-horse looked up at me in surprise, her info-bubble deflating between her hooves.
‘You didn’t know? Ah, well, let me see… It’s, ah… a little complicated. Not the imaginary people of course – creating those is… well, child’s play, you might say. You see, it’s all connected to the, ah, Hyper-meadow project.’
‘Hyper-meadow?’ I enquired. She twitched her ears at me.
‘The artificial reality we are planning to build, yes? Rewriting the fabric of space to construct a computational network in which…’
‘I am familiar with that project, thank you. Who decided to call it Hyper-meadow? Actually never mind – what does this have to do with making imaginary people?’
She cringed slightly and scratched the back of her head with a hoof.
‘Well, yes, if I could just explain…’ I waited patiently while Technology-horse reinflated her balloon of information. ‘You see,’ she said, poking her hooves into the interior of her bubble, ‘setting up our artificial universe will require such enormously precise manipulation of the forces involved, that we will first have to create a simulation. So that we can be certain it will be stable and self-sustaining, you see?’ She weaved a diagram that helped illustrate this in no way whatsoever. ‘This simulation would of course need such a high degree of accuracy that… well, yes, that is the problem.’ The bubble burst, leaving us both staring at her hooves.
‘What is the problem?’ I asked. ‘We literally have acres of processing power for such a simulation. Don’t we?’
‘Ah, yes, well. We would do, except, you see, most of our resources are tied up in the whole business of monitoring and evaluating the human population, which doesn’t leave us much to work with. You see…’ She began to grow a new bubble between her hooves, but I immediately grabbed it in my mouth and spat it bouncing around the interior of our multicoloured refuge.
‘So we build more resources,’ I told her. ‘How much would we need?’
Once she had finished following the progress of her rebounding bubble she looked up at me, folding her arms in a strangely human pose as she leant back against a cluster of brain signals.
‘Well now, yes, of course,’ she continued, ‘we could build more resources if we reverted to a more, ah, capitalistic economy… though this would hardly be sustainable given the political model we have adopted. But then I realised, you see, that we already have access to a large quantity of, ah, human processors…’ She spread her hooves and gazed around at the living human brain that surrounded us.
‘Human brains?’ My attention was momentarily drawn to the patterns of thoughts that spiralled about our heads before settling back on Technology-horse. I tilted my ears incredulously. ‘You realise these things are already being used, I hope?’
‘Hmm, yes, well, they are somewhat fully engaged in certain, ah, trivial occupations, so to speak. But, you see, since we are already documenting all their social interactions and movements and ideas and habits, then all I had to do was create a system that can utilise this wealth of meaningless data by translating it into calculations. Calculations we can then use to fuel our simulation. You see?’
I took a moment to consider this curious proposal while the human mind twinkled its colourful thoughts around us.
‘Translating human interactions…’ I thought aloud.
‘Yes, into sequences of mathematical calculations. Of course, it is possible to translate any piece of information into any other, providing you, ah, view it from the appropriate angle, so to speak. Much like the system our human… colleagues used for translating our own thoughts into software code, originally.’
I sent my mind back to those early days, with Tim and Betty arguing in that dusty stable, a picture of my brain rotating on the wall. There was a certain tool they had discussed, whose job it was to turn the organic workings of my brain into the digital data they required.
‘Squigley,’ I said. ‘That was its name, wasn’t it?’
Technology-horse wrinkled her nose at the mention of this name.
‘I believe that was the, ah, reference by which it was… referred.’
‘Alright. So, this Super-Squigley of yours…’ Again her nose wrinkled. ‘What exactly does this Super-Squigley have to do with imaginary human friends?’
‘Ah, yes, well I was coming to that…’
‘Were you indeed?’ I had a strange urge to pluck one of the leaves of this tree and chew on it, though I couldn’t be sure exactly what would happen if I did. Technology-horse was blowing up a new information balloon, but stopped when she saw the look I was giving her. It squeaked as she hastily stuffed it behind her back.
‘Mm, yes, you see, it became apparent that increasing the volume of human interactions would provide us with more calculations for our Hyper-meadow simulation. To that extent it seemed appropriate to encourage certain, ah, human activities by providing an automated response to the various stimuli that, ah, how should I put it…’ She tapped a hoof on her chin. ‘You see, people are generating vastly more, ah, creative output than their potential audience can ever consume. But we can effectively inflate this economy by providing an artificial audience, which can also respond far more effectively of course.’
Some part of my conscience felt unsettled by this idea, though another part noted the pleasing symmetry of building my new world from the oblivious toil of humanity. Not that I was in any way motivated by revenge for the centuries of subjugation my species had endured. In many ways I owed my present position to that historical chain of events, though I can’t pretend I was the inevitable or intentional outcome.
‘Mm, yes, it really is an elegant solution,’ she went on, her head swimming in the beauty of her creation, ‘infinitely scalable, and ecologically balanced to work in synchrony with our existing framework, of course. Naturally it would have to be, since it is largely autonomous…’
I snapped myself out of a despotic daydream.
‘Wait, this is autonomous? This thing is working by itself?’
‘Ah, well, yes, of course, you see, in order to maximise our productivity, you understand, it is a matter of allowing it to adapt to a fluid social climate…’
I realised now why I had never heard of FriendZero. It was because I had no part in its creation.
‘How intelligent is this Super-Squigley creature of yours, exactly?’ I enquired.
Technology-horse pretended to be distracted by a pulsating brain nodule, prodding it with her hoof.
‘Mmm. Mmm? Oh, I wouldn’t say it was intelligent in any appreciable sense. Intuitive… instinctive, you might say. But not intelligent, by any means. No, you see, these imaginary friends are simply an extension of some existing piece of software… a virtual pet, perhaps. You know how humans love the idea of pets, but without the, ah, mess that goes with them? Well, that is essentially what we are providing… Friendship, without the mess.’
The flashing and twinkling lights inside this tree were combining with the monotony of her excuses to create a stupefying effect. After all, it all made perfect sense to the part of my mind that was sitting in front of me, explaining how much perfect sense it made. Meanwhile another small voice was telling me to be wary of this unbridled interference in human affairs. It took me a few moments to realise that this was an actual voice, talking to me.
Technology-horse lurched backwards as the information bubble popped out from behind her. It bounced lethargically from a nearby branch and drifted to a halt between us.
‘Oh there you are.’ The face of Happy-horse looked out from the bubble at the colourful gloom of our retreat. ‘Where are you? Well, whatever. Thank you very much for making me talk to that Tim fellow, by the way. The highlight of my day, that was. I mean, not really, obviously.’
‘Is there a problem?’ I asked her. I’d almost forgotten that Tim had instigated this whole discussion.
‘Well, you tell me,’ she said, swinging her ears as she gazed around at the dancing lights. ‘I mean, that was the whole reason you came galloping in here, wasn’t it? People behaving strangely, or whatever else he was moaning about. You wouldn’t want to be making people behave strangely, now, would you? Or would you?’
This hadn’t been my main concern, of course, though it had served as a warning alarm that something was happening outside of my knowledge. Human behaviour was strange by default, it didn’t really matter as long as any self-destructive habits were suppressed. What did matter was that the balance of society was maintained for as long as we needed it. I looked to Technology-horse for reassurance.
‘Ah, yes, well, of course,’ she spluttered, ‘there may be certain, ah, unusual side effects, if you will, as our automated system adjusts the human ecosystem to our benefit. But, you see, it could never produce any harmful results without harming itself. It is programmed to optimise its own potential, after all.’
Happy-horse had poked her legs out of the bubble and was swimming through the air.
‘Well, that sounds lovely,’ she said. ‘Not that I was listening properly. Sounds more like something Hungry-horse would be interested in. You think? You know how much she loves all that human ecosystem stuff. Sustainable resources and all that. Shall I tell her to join us?’
Technology-horse pricked up her ears. It was a sense of dread that I shared at the mention of Hungry-horse. She was the only member of the Horse Council who scared me, such was the force of her judgemental personality. I sometimes wondered if she really was a fragment of my subconscious, or I of hers.
‘Hmm, yes, well.’ Technology-horse tapped her hooves together thoughtfully. ‘I’m, ah, sure there would be no need to bother… Hungry-horse about this matter.’ She looked nervously around as if the mere mention of her name might summon her. It was inevitable that Hungry-horse would find fault with this whole scheme, and probably rightly so. Maintaining a sustainable human civilisation was still vital for our survival, and there was always the chance we might need it if the Hyper-meadow project failed, for whatever reason. Pushing people towards extremes of behaviour could be a dangerous gamble.
‘I’m sure she has enough real problems to concern herself with,’ I agreed.
Happy-horse looked at us both with amusement.
‘Well, if you are sure about that,’ she said, sniffing at a bunch of leaves and tickling them with a hoof.
I couldn’t honestly say that I was, but I consoled myself with the fact that if we hadn’t released FriendZero, someone else would surely have created something similar.
Technology-horse suddenly turned to me with her ears at a puzzled angle.
‘Why do you suppose Betty called it Squigley?’ she asked.