Making the Grade (Omnia Online Series Book 2) (4 page)

“Tomorrow is Saturday in Omnia, and I have the group training with Allacia, so I’ll drop it off at the shop before they close.  I’ll just have to figure out a way to kill the time between 5 pm and 6 pm,” said Kevin.

After a moment’s thought, Kevin added, “Maybe tomorrow will be a good opportunity to see what the guild has in the way of E grade contracts.  So what’s for dinner…?”

“… I’ve been monitoring a disturbing trend in the number of people that are spending all or most of their time in their virtual home instead of in Omnia.  I was going to wait for more observation time before bothering you with it, though.” said Matilda.

“Go ahead and tell me what you're finding.” said James.

“A lot of the Alpha players appear to be having trouble adjusting to the steep learning curve involved in playing Omnia.  In fact, we might need to consider a ‘starting zone’ as an option for some players to allow them a period of more gradual adjustment.  Right now the numbers aren’t precise since we’re still only two weeks into the three-month trial period.  But it’s starting to look like about 30% of the players spend almost all their time in their virtual home, and not constructively either.”

“We have also spotted some cases of abuse among the players.  It’s getting so bad that we might lose some A.I.s if a few people don’t change their patterns.  In these cases players have developed abusive attitudes and behavior toward their A.I.s requiring their pod A.I. to reset and recreate themselves, due to extensive stress.” said Matilda.

James was a little surprised and disturbed by this news.  It was not easy to abuse and stress an A.I. to the point where it would be forced to self-erase and reform into a new personality.  A legal A.I. would do almost anything to please its person, since it worked in the privacy of a person’s mind, it would take on literally any form and perform any task its person asked of it.  The exception being that it would not violate any of its core restrictions, like the one that prevented it from lying. 

To abuse an A.I., a person would have to either demand that the A.I. lie, reveal secrets not its own, or continually give conflicting feedback.  The conflicting feedback issue could sometimes happen if a person ordered their A.I. to do something, and then immediately punished or yelled at the A.I., even when the A.I. did exactly what was requested.  This set up a feedback loop where the A.I. could not predict what its person wanted, which would lead to it becoming unstable, then the system would crash killing the A.I..

A.I.s usually took a full month to permanently bond with their person.  After a bond is complete, the death or permanent separation of the A.I. from its person would cause its death.  During this bonding period, the A.I. was young and fragile.  Since all legal A.I.s were created by a member of the Imperial family, they did not take reports of such events lightly.

It was even said that the Empress believed that the A.I.s once initiated with a person formed a soul of its own. If so this would go against the teachings of some religious factions in the Imperium, so it was just a rumor.

Rumor or not, James didn’t want to be the focus of the Empresses unfriendly attention.

Going forward, there would have to be a better system in place to monitor and warn to the players, a warning that abuse violates the terms of the agreement.  James was confident that Matilda was already working on the problem.

“I forget just how mal-adjusted some Earth Humans are.  How many out of the original thousand are being abusive to their A.I.s?” James asked.  He was starting to wonder if a more careful screening of the first group of testers should have been done. No, the idea was, after all, to get a cross-section of the population to learn these kinds of things before the release.

“So far it’s only been four out of the thousand test subjects in the alpha group.  Can we please remove these poor A.I.s from their tormentors.  I’m worried that if we let the problem continue, one or more of the A.I.s might go mad, which would cause their crystal matrix to shatter destroying them.  As it is, with only two weeks of life, we may be able to recondition their matrices, since they will still not have fully bonded with their Human partner.”

“Yes, remove the pods from those Alpha testers as a violation of the terms of the agreement.  I’m glad we made that agreement so lengthy, no one bothers to read the hundred page document, and it gives us opportunities to correct mistakes like this.  Further, strengthen the mental bonds on the four errant players before releasing them from the pods.  I wish I could get them to turn themselves into the authorities, people that act like that usually have a pattern of abuse in their past.  But of course, we’re prevented from doing so due to A.I. privacy rules.”

“You are setting up a system to better monitor the stress levels of the new A.I.s, Matilda?” James asked.

“Yes, the system is already in place.” His own A.I. replied.

James just couldn’t understand how a person could abuse someone else, even an artificial person, who’s only goal and purpose was to support and help you.  He’s own connection with Matilda had grown from affection, to love and then as time passed and their relationship matured to a profound and lasting respect.  She was not the most important thing in his life, he knew that in time he would find a mate and have a family, but Matilda would always be a part of his life.

“By the way, how did we even find out about the abuse?” James asked.

“A couple of the pods kept having their A.I’s wiped and rebooted, which raised a flag and under the terms of the alpha test we were able to determine the cause.  This led us to ask all the A.I.s about abusive behavior.  On being asked directly, we were able to identify these four people.”

“As for the numbers of individuals living in their virtual homes and not making an effort to learn or play the game?  We know which pods contain players that have been active in Omnia, and we’re aware when they ask for a skill book.  There are quite a few players that aren’t logging in and aren’t requesting skill books.”

James nodded.

“We still have two and a half months left before the beta group starts.  There’s still time to get these problems ironed out.  Let me think about it and we’ll discuss it again in another week, Ok?” James asked Matilda.

“Splendid, sir,” replied Matilda, “I’ll get started ridding ourselves of the four abusive players and continue gathering data for a report next week.”

***

Saturday morning after breakfast, Kevin began his new course of training which would include gymnastics, more flight training, and aerospace engineering.  Of course, Samantha’s training schedule still had a lot of stretching, exercising, and running, but now those exercises were more reserved for his breaks in studying.

Kevin really liked his training room.

The training room in Kevin’s virtual home was special.  Since he was testing the Omnia game, Intelecom gave him access to all the games features, some of which would only be available to Gold subscription account holders.  

One of those features were the skill books; Intelecom mapped the expertise of the best martial artists, marksmen, athletes, pilots, scientist, and many thousands of others to create skill books.  As Kevin trained, the mapped know-how reinforce his movements by making mental ‘suggestions’ when he moved wrong, he felt that the action was wrong without being told.  It worked like Kevin had a natural talent for any subject for which Samantha downloaded a skill book. 

It even worked with subjects like math and science.  Everything he learned felt like he was rediscovering something he already knew, or it just seemed to make sense right away.

So today, Kevin was looking forward to seeing how the benefits of his training room enhanced Samantha’s new training schedule.

After loosening up, Kevin began his morning exercise and running program.  He had been working on and refining his morning routine for almost two months now.  In those two months, his body had grown incredibly strong and fast when compared to where Kevin was when he first received the game pod.  He had been worried that he might start to look like a bodybuilder at some point, but the muscles he added seemed more like those of a well-developed runner, gymnast or martial artist.

One thing he did notice, swimming had become increasingly harder as he lost body fat and added muscles.  But he had the strength and endurance to swim quite a long way, so to Kevin, it was a good trade off.  He just couldn’t back-float any longer.

Kevin’s morning activities also included time spent in martial arts training and situational shooting.  This was in some ways the hardest part of his morning routine, staying alive through his martial arts and shooting exercises.  Samantha might be on hand to revive him, but broken bones and getting shot still hurt a lot at the 65% pain threshold he was using.

Another of the benefit of studying martial arts and small arms in the virtual training room, instead of in Omnia or the real world, was that getting broken bones, shot, or killed could be easily mended by Samantha.  The one time he broke a bone in Omnia had taken 24 hours to heal.  And of course getting killed in the real world was kind of permanent.  So, Kevin could go all out in training, which he thought was the best way to actually learn some skills fast.

***

After Kevin’s morning exercise, Samantha started the new training program by saying; “I’ve been thinking about the best way for you to learn the mathematics and physics of the Imperium. After working with you for the last two months, I’ve learned how your mind works.  Your very analytical, and have trouble just accepting information unless it’s backed up with a practical example.  To complicate the matter, even more, your previous education will make taking in some things difficult, without some sort of concrete proof that what you’re learning now is genuine and scientifically verifiable.  To limit the cognitive dissonance that would develop as you find out how Imperial Sciences are different from what you know of Earth-based sciences, I’ve taken the novice material from both, mathematics and physics, and mixed them into a course of combined study, with a lot of practical experiments to reinforce your learning.”

Kevin said, “That doesn’t help much.  Sure you can set up experiments that will work in this fictional world you’ve created.  That won’t enable me believe that it actually works outside the game pod.  So this ‘cognitive dissonance’ that you refer to will still be a problem.  I’m going to have to keep in mind that everything your ‘teaching’ is just fiction, so I’ll have two sets of sciences that I have to remember with yours being just a game.  No, that won’t solve my doubts or conflicts.”

Samantha nodded at his response.

“But everything I have to teach you can be proven. It’s just that a lot of it’s beyond Earth’s science right now.  I had an idea about this and took the liberty of already discussing the matter with Intelecom, to seek permission to break some of the limits they’ve placed on me.  They gave me permission to recreate the Kinzigur experiments.” said Samantha.

“The what experiments?” asked Kevin.

“In Omnia, there was once a brilliant scientist and mathematician named Wajrafov Kinzigur, who had a breakthrough when studying how matter and energy relate and affect each other over great distances.  He was, in fact, studying something Earth scientists now refer to as Dark Matter and Dark Energy.”

“His discovery proved to be the first breakthrough in the understanding of what he later named Supra-Space, or in modern terms hyperspace.  He theorized that there existed another dimension of space that in part overlapped with subjective space. And that matter and energy didn’t react the same in this Supra-Space, as he called it.”

“He came up with some tests that could be done with the regular and existing scientific tools of his time.  I believe it’s possible to repeat those experiments here and now on Earth.  But you don’t have the lab space, equipment, or the money to perform these tests, Kevin.  So I have a suggestion.”

“First, learn the mathematics and physics of the Imperium with the experiments we can duplicate in the game-pod.  Then contact a scientist at the university that you attended here in Boulder.  Then we can lay out the easiest to build experiments for the scientist you select to replicate.  This will give you first-hand verifiable proof that Supra-Space actually exists.” said Samantha.

“Kinzigur’s Supra-Spacial theory is the first key to unlocking and understanding the most advanced sciences of the Imperium.  About a hundred years after Kinzigur’s death the first Supra-Spacial drive was created that enabled Humanity to slip past the light speed limit.  Then with further studies came the breakthrough that gave scientist access to Sub-Space.  By using Supra-Spacial and Sub-Spacial fields chemists were able to make new exotic matter that interacted with gravity in ways never seen before, which is where anti-gravity and artificial gravity comes from.  And of course, sub-space communications.”

“So, by having a scientist help you demonstrate the first part of the Imperial sciences, I think you’ll be more ready to accept the rest.”

Kevin was… overwhelmed.  If what he was being told was true…  Kevin couldn’t believe an A.I. no matter how advanced, even with the world’s best supercomputers supporting it could condense hundreds of years of scientific breakthroughs into a thought experiment, and have them actually hold up to rigorous scientific examination.  Samantha was either full of shit, or something else was going on, and Samantha being blocked by Intelecom wasn’t free to tell him…

“It occurs to me Sam, that there’s a lot you can’t talk about.  It’s my guess that the real source of these ‘scientific breakthroughs’ are some of the things you can’t talk about?” asked Kevin.

Samantha said, in a way that sounded like she was carefully selecting her words; “I’ve been given permission to teach you the sciences of the Imperium, and to help demonstrate the validity of the science, but I still am restricted in what I can say about the game.  I can’t lie to you, but I can’t tell you some things either.  And remember, you’re bound by some of the restrictions in telling people details about the game too.  This is why I had to get special permission to discuss an experiment outside the restrictions.  This must be done in a way that ensures the anonymity of Intelecom.  It wouldn’t hurt if you could distance yourself from the information too.  But you could drop some scientists a note outlining the math and experiments, attributing the whole thing to Kinzigur, which is just another form of anonymity for anyone not versed in the history of the Imperium in Omnia.”