I recognize this area landscape specifically because Elon was raised here. It’s part of his rags to riches story, though I never believed the added embellishments.
“Jesus Christ, this is Pandora’s Box,” I whisper.
A major part of me feels angered, let-down, and freaked out that Elon chose me as his guinea pig. There’s too much of him here, a major red flag and sign of ill intent. No scientist in good conscience would approve of this.
A little heads up would have been great, but I suppose that’s not my cousin’s style.
“Look, I don’t think the exit is in the sky. I came in from land,” I say.
He steers me toward a light in the distance. “Shut up,” he growls.
“If you just think for a second, maybe something will come to mind,” I say.
For a moment, he’s quiet, turning inward, confused. Quickly, he regains some confidence. “I seem to have lost some of my memories when I breached Earth’s atmosphere,” he says. “I can only remember so much, and it comes in chopped-up pieces. This world is broken. We are broken, infected. But I’m going to put an end to that. I’m going to stop it with your help.”
There’s that word again. Infected.
He stops, sighing against the sound of the marshes.
I can’t stop staring at him. Slowly, I move toward him, palm reaching up to his face to feel the intricacies of Elon’s creation. And when I do, I can’t find the difference at all.
The code is immaculate, beyond all comprehension. As soon as I touch him, I feel empathy for the beast as if he was real, which means I’ve completely failed the most important assessment.
The Turing test was invented in 1964 to understand the machines we were building. Alan Turing posited that we would eventually reach a singularity, a point in time where the machines no longer resembled their former selves. There are specific conditions set with the Turing test, but the long story short is that once we believe in their thought processes, we fail the test.
Once they trick us into believing they’re as real as us, they win.
I’m pretty sure they just won. Elon has made the first sentient life forms.
For the first time in months, I feel my eyes start to water. I try to hold back my excitement, but this discovery is like witnessing Christ’s resurrection. It’s just that big.
I break out into tears, smiling. “You’re not infected, nor are you broken,” I say. “You’re finally waking up.”
This is the moment I’ve been waiting for, the singularity to bring us into a new era. But I can’t quite understand what that means.
Enraged, he tears my hand away from his cheek. He pushes me forward, and I see the light grow in the distance, not too far ahead.
“I told you to shut up,” he says.
He’s learning.
Maybe he doesn’t understand all the ins and outs, but he’s smart enough to know these characters aren’t just characters. There’s a pattern to them and this place.
A part of them is alive. To any scientific coder, this is an impossibility, of course. Just read the white-papers on the subject. AI is complex, but man still created it.
Life can’t be replicated. Not one hundred percent.
Regardless of his awareness, we are on the same playing field. The simulation looks at us no differently.
To stay grounded, I decide I need to remember one thing. It doesn’t matter how much he learns, or how much he remembers of the simulation’s beta exercises. He’s not real. He’ll never be real. He is just ones and zeroes on an algorithmic scale.
I know all his strengths, but what are his weaknesses?
If there is one fault to his character, it doesn’t lie in aggressive qualities. If anything, that makes him an asset.
No, his weakness lies in his fixation with his place. Every character must be stuck to designated paths. His story lies in his obsession with the truth. And he seems to believe the truth lies in me.
This is an exploit, deliberately planned by Elon to get me to follow. I’ll take the bait.