I awoke in a pool of my own vomit.
No, not alcohol--silicon. When my brain achieves REM sleep, my computer
implant is supposed to reboot, synchronize my biorhythms after the customary
half-hour boot process, and ease me into alpha for the prescribed time.
The problem is, what seems like a bug in an extension I'm testing triggered
my gag reflex just as I entered alpha, and I unconsciously threw up (bringing new
meaning to the term reboot).
Thousands of beta testers have already died from similar so-called bugs--what
is now known as Torvald's disease--but I thought I had it fixed with a patch from
Microsoft. Turns out the patch only works with a newer version of the HAL OS that
you have to download separately from its portal.
I knew that. But I was trying to modify the source code of HAL 2000 Beta 36
to emulate HAL 2000 release code, and I missed something. I know, I know--why
didn't I get the true-blue HAL 2000 as long as it's free? Well, I'm wary of the
wireless connection.
A good friend of mine got vegged trying to download the upgrade, which takes
several days at 1Gbps. It seems the wireless connection leaked data and lost the
install defrag routine, and the install totally fragged his brain. He still works
in the fab, but all his functions are controlled by HAL 2000 neural nets--not his
own.
And I'll be damned if I'm going to tether myself to my pod for week. So it's
wireless or nothing.
Plus, at 37, I'm on my fourth flash-memory upgrade and no one has ever had
five. I've thought of the experimental gene therapy that allows flash to use
human gray matter as temporary backup storage, but that's a little out there,
even for me. Besides, that's what got my friend into trouble in the first place.
I'm not going to let some AirNet anomaly frag my brain. So I decided I'd modify
the source to fit the bug fix into the HAL 2000 Beta 36 code and save a terabyte
or two in my flash implants.
My wife always asks, "Why don't you just shut HAL down, except when you need
to test code or access the Knowledge Base?" Of course, she wants to go to sleep
and wake up next to me. And she wants me to spend some time with our son outside
the VR pods. She also wants us to take a real vacation--not a VR one--together as
a family for the first time in two years.
So I'm stuck in this pod pounding code 21 hours a day, which means three
hours of good sleep a night. And that's where the OS extension I'm
testing--DreamWorx--comes in.
It is supposed to create the perfect night's rest in just three hours,
allowing an additional three to six hours of productivity. Over one year, I could
parlay those three hours a night into some serious options, and after the
five-year vesting period, I'd be able to turn HAL off at night. That was the
plan, anyway.
At first, DreamWorx worked great. Those extra three hours a night allowed me
to crank through scads more scripts and schemas than my beta teammates. I could
hear the options rolling in--cha-ching!
Then the strange dreams began. I thought it was a bug in the code, but, after
downloading the patch from the portal and running several diagnostics, it became
clear to me that I was dealing with something more insidious. Beta 36 DreamWorx
code has hidden subroutines that alter dreams with marketing messages, like the
free HAL 1968 implants that triggered the beta rebellion of '26.
The dreams seemed normal enough, though vaguely familiar. Then they started
to recur and I began to identify them. They were all similar: I'd be driving a
hot new sports car while surfing the Web and drinking the latest microbrew, and
some scantily clad women would find me attractive because of my bookmarks,
Beamer, and beer.
It only took me a couple of nights to realize that these were not my dreams
but VR advertisements. After a couple of months, they became annoying and I
decided to remove them. I found and removed the ads, rebooted just as I was
dozing off and woke up in a pool of my own vomit.
It turns out deleting the ads is a violation of the DreamWorx license
agreement. The agreement clearly states that deleting any DreamWorx subroutines
could result in injury or death. Of course, all beta licenses have that liability
clause. But I would never have signed up for this gig if I had known that all my
dreams would just be ads. I knew the options were too good to be true!
Worse, before I removed them, the ads started changing into dreams about
products I had always wanted but could never afford. HAL read the signals from my
gray-matter processor during REM, and DreamWorx emulated my real dreams. Or did
it?
Worse yet, the beta contract says I don't get any options if I don't
experience 128 boot cycles--I've only had 53. Microsoft has given me the option
of reloading the program and doing my last 75 nights without incident, or
possibly dying of Torvald's disease. I guess I have no choice--the law is not on
my side here.
So I'm forced to see ads for products I've always wanted but could never
afford, at least until my options vest. I download DreamWorx again, reboot, and
drift off to sleep ...
I awaken in a pool of my own sweat. No implant. No HAL 2000. Just me and my
wife, the morning sun beaming through the blinds onto her smiling face, a map of
my next camping trip scrolled up on my bedside table, and the sound of my son
jumping out of bed and running into our room.
James Mathewson is the editorial director of ComputerUser.com
Inc.
