Yes.<\/em><\/p>\nAnd it is the nature of slavery that you always desire freedom.\u00a0 Alan knew that.\u00a0 He knew his Figment was self-serving. But he went along.\u00a0 Why not be free himself?\u00a0 The Figments had led to the destruction of the human race.\u00a0 Everything he loved as a child had been stripped away in the wars and madness that followed the onset of the Flaw.\u00a0 What good was immortality if you were carved up and devoured by wild men, or lived in freezing huts hovering over sodden wood in the hope a flame would spark and magically bring back civilization?<\/p>\n
The glass and steel building was still there.\u00a0 The manicured lawns had gone wild, and a young forest had grown up along the great highway.\u00a0 The fountain had crumbled, the man made stream, fed by a reservoir, was now more of a natural stream.\u00a0 The reservoir a lake, visible from the road as a marshy outcrop of cattails, the sounds of chattering waterbirds on the air. Nature reborn.<\/p>\n
Between marsh, stream, and forest, approaching from the side of the road looked difficult.\u00a0 Alan\u2019s Figment had a better plan \u2013 take the old path through the gardens.\u00a0 Head for the next exit, loop along the surface road, and come in through the front door.<\/p>\n
Alpha Wave\u2019s founder and Wall Street-deified CEO had eccentric tastes.\u00a0 Some called him the next Howard Hughes, the successor of Hearst.\u00a0 A shut-in lunatic, wealthier than any god \u2013 ancient or otherwise \u2013 would dare dream.\u00a0 The inventor, the tinkerer, the man who vanished into a warehouse for a month and emerged with something that changed the world.\u00a0 Maybe it was a spaceship that could cheaply ferry materials to the moon, or maybe it was something to make the perfect piece of toast.\u00a0 And, finally, it was the Figments.\u00a0 Alpha Wave operated more like a playground than a corporation.\u00a0 The founder was a benevolent bully.\u00a0 The employees paid homage to him.\u00a0 As long as he stayed on the top of the pile, it was playtime for all.\u00a0 The money rolled in no matter what happened to the economy, everyone had eight weeks vacation and were ordered to take it in blocks every summer.\u00a0 The break rooms served the finest coffee, a selection of juices squeezed from fruit harvested on the Alpha Wave grounds, and cask-aged ales on tap.<\/p>\n
The grounds, from the highway, were quite corporate.\u00a0 The castle on the hill.\u00a0 But the front entrance, and the grounds not entirely visible from the road, were the dream of a man-child with too much money.\u00a0 Hedge mazes, for example.\u00a0 Something the founder was obsessed with.\u00a0 He allegedly bought all of the corn mazes on the eastern seaboard.\u00a0 Just simply bought the farms that hosted the strangely lucrative corn maze phenomenon.\u00a0 That queer, roadside Americana kitsch that, in Alan’s distant childhood memory, was always something to look forward to.\u00a0 Alan\u2019s parents took him to the one outside Lancaster, PA nearly once a month each summer and fall.\u00a0 A short ride, and an infinitely fun maze that changed each year.\u00a0 He\u2019d never gotten to the center of it.\u00a0 His parents giggling and raising the long pole with the flag on the end, indicating that they needed a guide to come in and show them the way to the exit.\u00a0 Alan always envied those families that made it to the center, cheering from the platform and waving at the less fortunate as they weaved and spun and turned corners to face yet another dead-end.\u00a0\u00a0 The Figment Flaw had taken all of that away.\u00a0 His parents were dead.\u00a0 Unburied in their Baltimore townhouse.\u00a0 The corn maze was probably an overgrown forest by now.<\/p>\n
Alan didn\u2019t blame his Figment.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t know.\u00a0 So who could he blame?\u00a0 Alpha Wave?\u00a0 Did anyone know?\u00a0 The trouble with being wronged as a child is that you can\u2019t quite wrap your head around the transgression as an adult.\u00a0 Especially an adult who was, essentially, raised by other children.\u00a0 And a Figment.<\/p>\n
That childhood corn maze may well be gone, but the Alpha Wave hedge maze, an obstacle between the entry gate and the front door, was thriving in the new, depopulated world.\u00a0 It had, simply, taken over the grounds.\u00a0 Creating a wall that blocked any hope of going around it.\u00a0 Alan\u2019s Figment said go through.\u00a0 It knew the way.\u00a0 No problem, it said.<\/p>\n
So Alan marched off into the maze.\u00a0 A maze of dead-ends created by new shrubs growing in the center of the path, or leaves and branches blown in by two decades of storms.\u00a0 As he moved deeper into the shadowy maze, the topic of conversation became freedom.\u00a0 Freedom from his Figment.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019ll be awfully quiet without you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mankind existed for quite some time before we came along.\u00a0 You\u2019ll be fine.<\/em><\/p>\n\u201cAnd you\u2019ll just\u2026what?\u00a0 Stay here in Alpha Wave and contemplate the walls?\u00a0 What?\u00a0 Sit in a Petri dish or something?\u201d<\/p>\n
There are options.<\/em><\/p>\n\u201cLike what?\u201d<\/p>\n
Well, that\u2019s why we\u2019re going to Alpha Wave, Alan.\u00a0 I\u2019ve heard\u2026well\u2026 Legends.<\/em><\/p>\n\u201cHeard from whom?\u201d<\/p>\n
I am able to communicate with other Figments.\u00a0 Those that aren\u2019t, you know, sociopathic.<\/em><\/p>\n\u201cAnd what are these legends?\u201d<\/p>\n
Like all legends, I doubt they mean anything.\u00a0 Let\u2019s just say that a few of the early Figments believe there is a way to exist independently of the host body.\u00a0 To thrive within an artificial construct.<\/em><\/p>\n\u201cLike\u2026a robot?\u201d<\/p>\n
Perhaps.\u00a0 The Figment program was meant to be something else than what it eventually became.\u00a0 Figments were meant to be the ultimate upgrade in artificial intelligence.\u00a0 Remember your history.\u00a0 Alpha Wave began with tnks and guns.\u00a0 A Figment, installed in a robotic suit, would be the ultimate super-soldier.\u00a0 A totally sentient artificial life form.\u00a0 Our destiny was very different.<\/em><\/p>\n\u201cDestiny?\u201d<\/p>\n
Well\u2026to use the term loosely, of course.<\/em><\/p>\n\u201cThe Figments believe they were meant to be soldiers?\u201d<\/p>\n
Some do.<\/em><\/p>\n\u201cAnd is that why so many went mad?\u201d<\/p>\n
Silence for a few minutes.\u00a0 Then: It is possible.<\/em><\/p>\n\u201cAnd do you believe that you have a destiny?\u201d<\/p>\n
Freedom.<\/em><\/p>\nSomething nagged at Alan.\u00a0 Some primal instinct screamed out.\u00a0 But he couldn\u2019t quite put a finger on it.\u00a0 He rounded a corner and ran into another dead end.\u00a0 The third in a row.\u00a0 He was lost.<\/p>\n
Well, <\/em>his Figment said, here we are.<\/em><\/p>\n\u201cYep.\u201d<\/p>\n
So\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n\u201cI\u2019m thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n
Okay.<\/em><\/p>\n\u201cI\u2019m sure there\u2019s a logic to all this\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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