Chapter 14: THE ELEVENTH DOOR
Edilio was the first to finally open the eleventh door. He pushed aside the heavy steel door, stepped inside the room, and looked around. He appraised the room carefully, almost calculating, as though making sure it was as Future-Malik had said it would be.
The room was barren. Steel walls, steel floors. But at the very back of the room, on a pedestal putting it at roughly chest level, was a red button, with a pair of white electrodes dangling from wires attached to the platform. The button itself was inside a locked glass case.
Edilio walked over and held the electrodes in his hand. They looked like those things they would stick to your head to measure your brainwaves in the hospital. "Really?" he said out loud, almost laughing at the absurdity. They were inside a simulation, and yet they still apparently needed a physical attachment to the head in order to read the mind?
"What really?" a voice said, startling Edilio into dropping the electrodes. He spun and saw Armo. Cruz was coming in behind him. Edilio had not been the only one who was curious about the eleventh door.
Edilio winced. He wished it hadn't been Armo, but he figured that the Rockborn Gang all knew about the general nature of this room by now, if not the specifics.
"Remember, don't-" Edilio began, before seeming to remember who he was talking to. He exhaled sharply through his nose. "What this button represents is very powerful, and very dangerous. I am not telling you what to do. But it would be very, VERY terrible if anyone, anyone at all," he looked sternly at Cruz, as if he might just as well be talking to her instead of Armo, "abused this power."
Edilio wasn't yet really used to the roundabout way that Armo had to be "talked into" things. He had been warned that Armo could not be given orders. But actually speaking in a way that avoided any orders being given, was harder than it seemed.
"Have you tried it out yet?" Cruz asked innocently.
Edilio shook his head. "No. I can't even think of what to ask for. Seeing it now, it's more intimidating than I thought it would be. You would have to have total control over your own thoughts. You have to think about exactly what you want. If you suddenly picture, I don't know, a dragon or something, boom, you get a dragon. I figured there'd at least be a keyboard or something. Not freaking electrodes that you attach to your head."
Malik stepped into the room behind Armo and Cruz. The room was too big to feel crowded with just the four of them, but if the whole Rockborn Gang came in here, it might get more awkward. "No dragons," Malik said. "He said that it can't create anything living. The program will forbid it. A stuffed or a robotic dragon, maybe, but not a live one."
He looked a little wistfully at the button. He knew that he could not use it. Those electrodes, the total reliance on the thoughts of the person using the device, meant that there was a very real danger posed by the Dark Watchers. The Dark Watchers could reach into the thoughts of a morphed person, and might be able to exert their will over the morpher's own at that critical moment. And Malik, unlike the other members of the Rockborn Gang, could never de-morph.
Future-Malik had warned his simulated twin that this might be the case. He'd said that he would try to design a keyboard interface, but apparently that had not worked. Which, unfortunately, made sense. It would take a lot of words to convey the exact specifics of a physical object, you couldn't just type "apple" without the program wondering if you meant Granny Smith or Honeycrisp or Red Delicious. And even then, each individual apple was slightly different in infinite possible ways. Whereas a mental image of an apple, conveyed in intimate detail, could smooth out those differences, give the program something to work with besides long paragraphs of text that would require an AI to decipher.
Yes, Malik thought, a little bitterly, it made perfect sense to make the device thought-controlled. The whole point was to give the Rockborn Gang some illusion of control over their own simulation. It wouldn't make sense to then build an AI to interpret their wishes for them.
Armo stepped forward as the first volunteer. "We should do a test run. And I have excellent control over my thoughts."
Edilio quirked an eyebrow. "As long as nobody tells you what to do," he said skeptically.
Armo nodded. "Yeah, as long as that," he said with a grin, but then sobered. "I know I can seem like a loose cannon, and by my own admission I'm not the smartest among us, but the one thing I do have is complete and total control over my mind. That's the reason why nobody can tell me what to do. Trust me, more powerful people than you have tried to control me, and failed."
Edilio nodded respectfully, and stood aside. He almost started to tell Armo what object to produce for a test, but then realized he had no choice but to simply trust Armo.
Armo stepped forward. He turned the key in the lock and opened the glass case. Attached the electrodes. Closed his eyes and slowed his breathing. And pressed his palm gently, almost reverently, down on the button.
A single blueberry scone, complete with a napkin underneath, appeared at the center of the room.
Armo turned around and grinned. "I guess it works."
Edilio nodded approvingly. "Which means we now have just a little bit of control over this simulation we call reality. That's the first real good news we've had in a long time."
