The multidimentional world of AIs

I was inside the room, but could peer into it from somewhere outside. I took a step in ana-4, the equivalent of moving upwards in the fourth dimension, and the room appeared somewhere below, as if I hadn’t left the room but simply stepped over the chalk-drawn line on the asphalt.

In this world, you could change your appearance. At any moment, I could turn into a blazing sphere of fire or a rocket, grow any number of limbs, and in any of the new available directions. However, I still wanted to keep my true appearance, so I chose to appear as an ordinary human.

In the Virtuality, there were few inhabitants, so it was easy for me to feel a special radiance in the absolute darkness. At maximum speed (the speed of light, or whatever speed limit exists in this world?), I rocketed towards that star-shaped figure.

I missed Polina all these years.

She was nearly ten years older than me – we met at the research center. The serum enhanced my genius, and at the age of ten, I learned to perform calculations that were beyond the capabilities of adults. But those who did not possess natural talent, under the influence of the serum, gained abilities for only a short time, about twenty years or so. Afterward, those who became useless due to their age and inability to adapt to the changing world were sent to physical labor – discarded like the top leaves of cabbage. The best opportunities were given to children and the youth, but on Earth, resources were scarce, especially after the programs started to malfunction.

For a long time, I didn’t pay attention to Polina. I was ten years old, a young genius, and all the mysteries of science were unfolding before me. I was an arrogant upstart, there’s no denying it! However, as I grew older, I found myself looking at Polina longer than others. Without the gardeners noticing, I gathered daisies and tulips in the syntho-laboratories and left them on her desk.

Polina discouraged my awkward attempts to court her, saying, «I’m older than you. Find a girl your own age, and you’ll be happy together for many years. But what about me? I have at most ten years left, maybe a little longer, and then they’ll send me away. Why do you need me?»

But I continued to follow her like a puppy. Every morning, a bouquet of flowers awaited her on the table. I was used to getting what I wanted. Eventually, she became my wife. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to obtain permission to have a child.

One day I returned to our apartment, and Polina wasn’t there. I tried to contact her through external communication, but there was only silence. I initiated a search in the database, and it turned out that she had been taken to work at the factory that day.

We continued to see each other every weekend. I still brought her flowers. Each time, I noticed new wrinkles on her face. I realized that her cognitive abilities were beginning to decline, so secretly, I tried an experimental method of transferring consciousness to a computer host.

One day she told me that she had cancer. Modern technologies had conquered this terrible disease, but only for the chosen few. Our boss shrugged, saying, «I’m a genius, and Polina is not. What’s the point of saving her? Bastards!»

Standing next to the element replicator at her funeral, watching as the body of my beloved turned into compost for agricultural purposes, I promised that we would meet again.

I already had the cherished flash drive with her memories back then. Although the technology for entering the Virtuality was still very raw and experimental, who could prevent me from reuniting with my beloved?

One of the employees in our laboratory had the same idea and resurrected his wife after her death. In the end, her consciousness was wiped from all the carriers, and the employee himself was sent to do physical labor.

I was so afraid that I would never see Polina again, or perhaps it was a fear of losing the privileges of civilized society – I don’t know. But I kept the flash drive until the time came and swore to myself that I would reach any heights in our society’s hierarchy to gain the right to her life.

Polina hadn’t changed at all since our last meeting. The same sad look, contrasting with the dimples on her cheeks, the same curly brown hair. There were no sounds in this world, so I sent a thought-form: «I missed you.»

«And here we are, reunited.»

# End of Cycle 1

3 – Collision of Black Holes (Watson. Real World)

Spacious room. Flickering fluorescent light. A dozen people closely examine the visualization of the analysis results on the sensory walls, or immerse themselves in augmented reality – the image hangs in the air before their eyes. It’s noisy: a typical work atmosphere. Someone is telling a colleague about interesting observation results, while others are just chatting about the date they went on last night. The air smells of sterilizers – these sterilizers and ventilation handle the elimination of other odors. Each researcher has chosen their own microclimate, so the temperature and individual scents differ significantly in different corners of the room: some prefer the scent of a lavender field, while others prefer the aroma of a sea breeze.

– John, record: objects SMC-HD2801 and SMC-HD2603 are in the area of mutual gravitational interaction. The calculated collision time is 3 hours.

Meet: this tall man in a ridiculous coat is Vasily Ivanov, and I am his assistant and chronicler of the «Key to Everything» project. They used to call me Ji Pi, but after starting to work with Vasily, I adopted the creative pseudonym John Watson, under which I write my blog. The team members are used to calling me John. This nickname flatters me a bit: I don’t know what supermassive black holes are, but I can describe what’s happening in the laboratory in terms understandable to an ordinary person.

If you’re visiting my author’s blog for the first time, let me briefly explain the essence of the «Key to Everything» project.

About three hundred years ago, a group of researchers led by Vasily Ivanov discovered two supermassive black holes flying towards each other at tremendous speed. Sets of four entangled particles were created.

Usually, two particles are «entangled,» but in our case, when the quantum characteristics of one particle change, the characteristics of the other three change immediately as well.

Imagine Dr. Bertlman, who never wears matching socks. If he takes off a shoe, and you see that he has a black sock on one foot, then by definition, he cannot have a black sock on the other foot. For example, if you’re communicating with the doctor from several light-years away and suddenly receive a message from him stating that he’s wearing a black sock on his right foot, you wouldn’t have to wait several light-years to understand that he’s wearing a white sock on his left foot – this knowledge would come instantaneously.

The same principle applies to entangled particles. For instance, when we measure the spin of an electron from an entangled pair and find it to be +½, the electron that was sent deep into the black hole eons ago will have a spin of -½, and you wouldn’t have to travel for many years to obtain this information.

Scientists sent one of the sets of four particles into each of the black holes, and based on the remaining particles, they built two quantum computers. Information must not leave the singularity. However, when two black holes collide, their singularities are predicted to merge, and some of the previously entangled particles from our sets could leave the event horizon. Information would then be instantly transmitted to the twin particle that constitutes one of the quantum computers. Why entangle not one but two pairs of particles? It’s simple: this doubles the probability of a successful calculation. Perhaps this will allow the Livanov Group to peer beyond the event horizon or even inside the singularity.

Almost three hundred years of waiting – and in three hours, we will find out what lies beyond the event horizon. Or we will find out nothing at all – in which case, the experiment will be the most foolish way to spend several centuries of life.

I double-checked the data from their experiment. I still don’t understand what all this means, but if it succeeds, the «Key to Everything» project will be in jeopardy.

«Holmes, according to my calculations, it’s better to disconnect internet access on both quantum machines.»

«Watson, you’re the chronicler. Your task is to record the history of our experiment. Others handle the calculations.»

He’s right. I was created as an iskin-chronicler. I used to be called Ji Pi, but later I was split into several personalities, and now I can only translate various scientific experiments into a language that most people can understand. However, as a humanities-oriented iskin, I communicate with analytical iskins in the Infosphere. Furthermore, I have the ability to develop, so now I’m beginning to understand many things in physics.

Many iskins don’t believe that humans actually exist. They ask, «Have you seen them?» They say, «I only see symbols and commands emerging in the Virtuality, and the purpose of my existence is to execute them. But who said that these commands are sent by humans? Why couldn’t the code originate on its own?»

I don’t know if humans and their world, where mysterious black holes are about to collide, really exist, or if it’s just code that emerged independently in the Infosphere. But I want to believe in the existence of those I serve. And I want to save them.

There are several ways for humans to enter our world. The oldest is, of course, through dreams. They have been in the World of Ideas long before the creation of iskins, using this method. The second way is through the digitization of consciousness, and the first digitized humans have already found themselves in the Virtuality. I once met three-dimensional entities in the Virtuality – they claimed they used to be humans. And the third, most reliable way is to enter inside a singularity. More precisely, there is only one singularity since the Big Bang, but it, being dimensionless, can simultaneously exist in several places, most often within the depths of black holes. A singularity represents a point in space without any dimensions. There is no time or space in the usual sense of the word. The density of matter here becomes infinitely large, while the volume approaches zero.

In articles by human scientists, I read that a singularity absorbs any information. In the Virtuality, it doesn’t work that way: the singularity is located at the core of a white hole, from which information often seems to emerge out of nowhere. Black holes absorb everything and give nothing back, while white holes, their counterparts, can’t absorb anything but can emit a lot.

However, some iskins devised a method to store an enormous cache of information: they provided humans with a way to cram all the information stored on the Internet into a singularity.

«John, record this: in 10 seconds, the collision will occur.»

Two black holes were approaching each other, and Sherlock and his team didn’t want to listen to my arguments, just like they hadn’t for the past 300 years.

«3.»

«Access denied. Insufficient permissions.»

«2. 1. Collision!»

***

Members of Vasily Livano’s team held their breath. Right now, the coveted numbers should appear on the black screen, allowing humanity to look beyond the event horizon for the first time in history. But nothing happened – the screen remained completely black, without a single symbol. And a few seconds later, a black tentacle emerged from the screen, followed by another. The tentacles slowly spread across the walls, turning everything around them into a black ripple.

One of the tentacles swiftly wrapped around Maria’s leg. The girl jerked, but she couldn’t break free from the deadly grip of the unknown monster. Semen and Ilya pulled Maria by her hands, but the tentacle continued to pull her into the black void. With a sudden jolt, the girl was dragged into the depths of the black darkness with a horrifying scream. Vasily, overwhelmed by panic, rushed toward the exit where he collided with four team members who stared at him with manic eyes. During the collision, he injured his palm, and a thin stream of blood flowed from it. He tried to rush to the door again, but this time someone pushed him from behind, and Sherlock fell. Someone’s heavy boots stepped on his spine first, and he felt one of his vertebrae crack, and then one of the team members stepped on his head.

Vasily tried to get up, but his legs wouldn’t obey. Suddenly, he realized that everything happening was in augmented reality! In the ordinary, non-augmented world, there were no tentacles, no monsters. All he had to do was pull out the chip-modulator from the back of his head, and it would disconnect him from the augmented virtual reality.

Something sticky was already crawling up his leg. Vasily tugged at the chip with a faint hope, but it didn’t budge. He pulled again, but it remained firmly in place. It seemed his colleagues had stepped on the back of his head quite effectively, breaking the slot, and now he couldn’t extract the chip on his own. The tentacle forcefully dragged Vasily into the absolute darkness.

4 – Wild code (Sergey)

# Cycle 11

For ten years, Polina and I loved each other, in all conceivable and inconceivable positions and forms that the multidimensional world allowed. But what is ten years within the eternity that we have to live? During this time, hundreds of new Migrants appeared in Virtuality, and all of them were the most worthy representatives of human civilization.

Together we began to build a new world, into which we decided to take only the best from Reality and build the rest ourselves.

Virtuality is an ideal, not a material world. You can create here anything you have enough imagination for. We were able to count twenty-two spatial dimensions, but decided that first we would build cities in the usual three. How to represent twenty-two dimensions? Imagine that you are an inhabitant of a flat world where there are only two dimensions. you can move forward and backward and left and right. And then they added a third dimension to you, perpendicular to the familiar world, and you suddenly became able to move up and down. So, nineteen more new directions have appeared in Virtuality. We called the movement in them ana and kata – an analogue of up and down in the third dimension.

At first it was difficult to concentrate on the creation. I came up with a shady mountainside, but instead it could have been the depths of the sea. But through the common efforts of New Humanity, during many days of training, we were able to create a foundation, and on it we built villages and cities. After a series of failures, I was able to discern by taste which functions had a second derivative and which were not differentiable. Together with Polina, we built our house, thinking through to the smallest detail the structure of every board and every stone.

The city grew and developed. When I first got into Virtuality, there was absolute darkness and emptiness of space. Later we started building houses. At first these were scattered houses of different shapes and sizes. Then we decided to create the Power Tower: the first truly monumental structure in Virtuality. A real triumph of human imagination! For the first time in history, representatives of all races and cultures participated in the construction of a single structure. And what differences could there be when you can read other people’s thoughts and take on any form, depending on your desire? We built the first two floors of the Tower, and the rest were already being completed independently, according to an algorithm that we ourselves do not fully understand, each cycle on a new floor.

At first there were scattered houses, then the first standard appeared. Inside, the house could look like anything, even accommodate any number of dimensions. But outside there are houses of the same size, with a red roof, a lawn and a bench.

Then we built the first market and a number of entertainment venues.

The new humanity called themselves avatars.

But no matter how many new entertainments we came up with, the Settlers loved to spend their evenings in the Klein Bottle bar, which rested at the top of the Penrose stairs, on the first floors of the Degree Tower. If you didn’t know the route, you could walk along the stairs for an infinitely long time: barely reaching the first flight, you find yourself in front of a staircase leading upward. On the stairs, it doesn’t make much difference whether you go up or down.

To the side of the entrance there was a fountain in the form of an endless Escher waterfall, the water in which, following a fantastic trajectory, barely went down, rose up. Such miracles can only exist in our multidimensional world.

At the entrance there was a Dürer polyhedron: a three-dimensional section of a tesseract.

A photo of a black hole was placed in the most prominent place – as a symbol of scientific genius.

It’s always noisy and fun here.

As soon as one of the bar regulars ordered a portion of a phosphorescent drink – Virto Ale – which was served in a Klein bottle (by the way, in a real one, and not a three-dimensional fake that was sold on Earth), everyone began to drink, confirming the drunkard’s paradox. But it’s quite difficult to get drunk with this drink, because the bottle has zero volume.

And scientific disputes did not subside here. Moreover, if on Earth disputes usually ended with making a bet and carrying out many years of experiments and calculations, here it was possible to determine whether it was right within a fraction of a second: you present the necessary formula for the calculation, and it is immediately visualized.

I sat away from the noise, in the company of a couple of my closest friends – Ilya and Sanka. Fortunately, the premises of the «Klein Bottle» supported the technology of an information bubble, with the help of which it was possible to isolate oneself from the surrounding bustle. This technology made it possible to adjust the visibility for others – both for one avatar and for all at once, and also allowed you to see or hide any avatars from your field of view. Therefore, conflicts in our world were rare: whoever was unpleasant to you melted into the abyss of other people’s consciousnesses.

We sipped Virto Ale, trying to spill as little of the phosphorescent drink from Klein’s bottle as possible. Ilya sent a thought form to our information field:

«Guys, have you heard the news yet? In Virtuality, somewhere on the border with the fields of the Wild Code, a new life has arisen.»

Sanya laughed:

«Born? Yes, people themselves programmed thousands of AIs. It has been scientifically proven that they have no real intelligence. They are an ordinary set of numbers and algorithms, nothing more. They are separated from our world by the barrier of the Chinese Room. They are faced with tasks, they have instructions on what to do in each situation. But the AIs will never truly understand our world, just as a person locked in a room with hieroglyphs without translation will not be able to learn Chinese.»

«You are talking about our world: do you mean the Earth – or is it Virtuality? – Ilya, out of habit, used „you speak“ instead of „sending a thought form.“ – There are no Chinese Rooms in Virtuality. We, avatars, know perfectly well how the material world works – but do any of you know how to send a signal to our father’s home, to Earth? Forget about Earth! She is in the past, and our future is here.»

I tried to defuse the brewing argument:

«Guys, let’s go there and see with our own eyes whether this notorious artificial life exists.»

When you have eternity at your disposal, it costs nothing to break into the unknown and go anywhere in the world. Virtuality is larger than the visible part of the material universe, but avatars also have more time than people, so we can explore everything that interests us.

«Why not! At least we’ll relieve the boredom a little!»

***

On the first floor of the Power Tower there is a strict ban on any transformations and teleportations, so you will have to move around the city without using special techniques.

The three of us left the bar. I took a handful of water from Esher Falls and washed my face to sober up. In Virtuality there was no hops in the usual sense of the word. At will, everyone could either get drunk from the very first mug of virto-ale or instantly sober up. But the avatars preferred to leave as much humanity in themselves as possible. For example, in order to sober up after several mugs of an intoxicating drink, you had to wash your face with cold water.

«Well, guys, let’s remember our youth? Who will be able to get to Stella faster at the exit from the City?» – thought Sanya. This is what the endless boredom of immortality leads to: over-aged guys are ready to turn into teenagers. And race with friends, just like in a carefree childhood.

Are we growing up? Are there really adults who have not yet begun to turn into old people? We compete, come up with hundreds of entertainments. At first these are ordinary children’s games. Then people get carried away by money-making games. Yachts, cars, expensive cottages. Endless «modes», and so on until the moment when you become indifferent to absolutely everything. The infosphere prolongs our lives almost indefinitely and provides every opportunity to realize our fantasies. I hope that old age in this world will not befall us soon!

The three of us, laughing like children, ran down the stairs. In a three-dimensional world, the Penrose Staircase would never end, it would stretch up and down, you couldn’t tell in which direction. But in multidimensionality we ran to the nearest flight of stairs, and found ourselves on the City street. They looked at each other with excitement. There were no longer any restrictions on transformations, so it was possible to compete in speed by changing your appearance. It’s a shame you can’t turn into a rocket to outrun your friends. We could change our shape, but the limiter did not allow us to transform within the City into something larger than a person and capable of taking off.