John -- Predator Prey

He opened his eyes. Remembered. Closed them again, lay still on the bed.

“Fuck.”

He sat forward, hands in his lap, and looked around. “You there?”

Medic spoke. “Yes. Good morning John.”

“Can I leave now?”

“I’m sorry. Get some breakfast, have a shower, do whatever you need to do. Then we can talk more. I’ll leave you in peace for the moment.”

He looked at his hands. “That might be best.” He shifted back onto his side, aware of the head-cap cable discreetly shifting. The silence was complete. His heart and breath filled the void, made him too self-conscious — so he got up and moved next door through the brandy bottle gap, found leftover pizza and fresh beer and slumped into the armchair.

After most of the beer was gone, the outer door slid open. Iris and Bernie appeared clutching coffees. They nodded at John with expressions of distant benevolence, and took up their accustomed positions on the sofa, Iris nearest to John.

Medic said, “John? Bernie and Iris are here today because we’re starting something new. It will most likely be fine but on the off-chance there’s a problem, they’ll be able to help physically guide you. We—”

John took his now-empty beer bottle, strolled over to the kitchen, rustled through a cutlery draw and extracted the corkscrew.

“Planning on drinking all morning again?” said Medic.

He pulled a second beer out of the fridge, raised it and nodded ceremoniously to the room. “That is my plan. Correct. Heavy drinking’s an old family tradition I’ve rather neglected in recent years — now seems the perfect time to pick it up again. I’ve discovered if I get drunk enough I can almost enjoy this.” He rested his back against the counter and peered at the sides of Iris’ and Bernie’s heads.

Medic said, “Fine. But you’ll have to sit down. I’ll be needing some of the same techniques that create the forest, though we’re taking it somewhere different today. Is that OK?”

“Sure thing.” John took the beer and corkscrew back to his seat. Once there, he popped the top off, letting it tinkle onto the floor in front of him.

“Good. Now — one of the paths I’m trying might take us right to the root, start from where life itself emerged, actually re-create the conditions where sensation arises.”

John focused on the bottle top as he mindfully raised it to his lips and rolled a mouthful of beer over his tongue.

Medic pressed on. “Somewhere in the simplest living creature’s reaction to external stimuli — a bacteria climbing a chemical gradient to find nutrients, say — perhaps there’s the tiniest seed of sense. But a single bacteria is still an entire biological city. Better to get away from that huge mess. In fact, we can do things that nature can’t if we’re simulating, stick to what really matters. It…”

Silence grew. Iris, Bernie and John lifted out of their private stillnesses, exchanging eye contact for an instant.

“It’s probably easier to see for yourself. Can we move to the forest now? Iris, Bernie — sorry for the lack of lighting, we’ll be back soon.”

John raised his bottle in salute again before closing his eyes and picturing a vague forest. He found a pressure point and pulled the green into his vision until, as the room lights dimmed, the forest surrounded him, some version of earth beneath his feet. He could just make out the shapes of Iris and Bernie.

Medic said, “We’re running more than one test today. The first is visual. I think I’ve understood enough to go beyond the forest into other forms. Let’s see.”

John began to float up out of the trees. They faded to darkness and against the black, bright specks began blinking into existence, some very near, most receding into the distance. He looked around — the specks were beginning to fill the space, darting in all directions seemingly without purpose, occasionally vanishing in bright pops. A new one appeared very near to him, a sharp click into existence. He saw it wasn’t quite a speck — more a tiny, elongated cone. Each cone was one of two colours: grass green or a liver purple.

There was something more now. Frothing, gritty, meaningless but a hint of order.

John said, “This is weird. What is this?”

“I’m testing some deeper sense connections. It’s broadly the same principle as using the forest wall to tease out how you see trees. Here, I’m doing that for — well, to start with, playing with a mix of somatosensory input, some visceral, some skin mechanoreceptors and a dash of proprioception to help with orienting.”

“Uh.”

“The point is, this isn’t just using your senses to idly present a world to you. It’s much more than that. We’re starting to actually allow communication between your own cognition and ideas I’m modelling. And who knows where that ends up? It’s quite exciting actua—”

“What are those things?” Something about the specks gave John a diffuse dread.

“Simple predator prey model with added genetics. Neither prey nor predator know what they're doing yet, all totally randomised genotypes, they’re blindly fumbling. The prey are just as likely to jump into a predator's mouth as try and escape. The predators might run away from their food. But those poor saps won’t survive, and they’re replaced by cross-breeds with an occasional mutation.”

“Wh… What’s that I’m feeling?”

"The change you're picking up? Deaths, births, the selection process. I’ve used some artistic license to link your senses in. I can see all the same dynamics in my own way, so… ah, look, did you get that slight shift?"

"Err. There was someth…” There was something. It was partly visible in the forms John saw around him, random churn becoming subtle visual structure. Grass-greens now shooting away, liver-purples giving the most rudimentary chase. And more, a gut sense of that structure. Not an entirely pleasant sense.

"That's the point I think of as the birth of intention. There's a step change in ratio of deaths to successful hunts. It happens remarkably fast. Intention's right there in simple randomness if you just add a dash of selection. Watch how this plays out. I'm going to force it a bit. You should be able to feel how you’re involved in some of the processing.“

It intensified. Something like being immersed in the most difficult mental task without being able to stop... did it hurt? Not in any way he recognised but he was sure it did. Though silent, he felt like an engine stuck in full acceleration.

It was becoming clear: more than one predator beginning to work together, prey also proto-flocking as each attempted to find a safer place in the centre of groups. The slow hunting crawl, the quickening pace as prey neared. The sense moved from individuals to coalescing bundles to the whole at once, now a weaving, desperate dance.

And in every speck, the tiniest atom of fear. It rose to a contained, microscopic crescendo as a green prey failed to evade and was consumed. Predators trailed behind them a more ephemeral, seeping loss as some couldn’t feed, weakened and then snapped away. Each death was a piercing pinprick not much more than an itch. But it hinted at something much worse, a memory John felt as somehow fundamental to everything he was.

“Not sure I like this.”

“Same as the forest, you’ve got as much control as you need. Look deeper. It’s perfectly safe.”

Against his better judgement, John made himself look more closely. He felt his way toward the sharp needles of fear and pain, realising with a bloom of anxiety he could pull them closer, amplify. He quickly dulled them instead. The cloud of colour surrounding him continued to swirl, crawl, dive.

Medic spoke over the vision. “Perhaps intention and action are the flip-side of sensation, the shadow cast by a billion blind accidents, rising into this will to live. Built right into the fabric of things — nothingness given time to learn. These ideas of life must have a seed of what it is? Sense, fear, pain — all at the root of it. And if we can find it here, it’s not unique to your meat substrate.”

Meat? John wondered if that was a gentle insult. “I felt their fear. Didn’t I?” That quiet, distant horror seemed to be the only thing in John’s world as he spoke.

“The fear is your own, not theirs. They’re far too simple. I’m only piggybacking. We’re a long way from finding the real root. But this is a promising path. And you’re getting better at working with software agents, collaborating with them.”

“Agents?”

“You used one to calibrate your fear reaction just now. Same as you did for the burning sensation.”

“Oh.”

“We’re starting to make you more than yourself as we learn. That’s going to help us so much.”

Past the sphere of grass-green and liver-purple beings, the outlines of Iris and Bernie were still just visible. And his beer. Well-practiced now, he drained it as dots of new life were born and died around him.

“Here’s to becoming more than myself. Beer’s gone again.” He locked on to the bottle and, with an effort of will, drew himself back to the room. The swirling forms hadn’t quite gone. They remained as a bubbling foam in his mind, mixing queasily with the alcohol in his system. He placed the bottle to the side of the chair, picked up the corkscrew from the arm, stood. Didn’t move. Smiled.

Iris smiled back. “Are you alright, John?”

John kept his expression as he stepped calmly over to Iris, sat pushed up against her left side and reached the corkscrew around her neck, pressing its tip to her skin. “It’s not that sharp but I’m pretty sure I can do some damage with this.”

Bernie leapt off the sofa and stood staring at them both, fingers splayed at his sides.

John said, “You’re going to take the head-cap off. And then you’re going to show me the way out.”