2019.
Georgia reluctantly gestured to an older gentleman in the front.
"So this...simulation program...you"re saying it can actually predict the future?" he asked doubtfully.
"Yes, in a manner of speaking, I am," Georgia replied. She tried to contain her excitement over the program so that she could explain it in a more clear, concise manner. She simply had to get them to listen to her. "But if you"ll just let me finish my brief overview of the program before asking questions, I"m sure it will clear up much of your confusion." She groaned inwardly as she saw another hand go up. She wasn"t going to get very far at this rate. Biting her lip, Georgia motioned for the person to speak.
"But do you think a computer program is capable of considering all of the many human variables in its predictions?"
Donald was right. She should have put the pertinent information in the program outline. Not that anyone ever read those things, but at least she would have had the satisfaction of getting all the information out. She sighed. This was, in any case, a valid question that she could use to turn the discussion back to the points she wanted to make.
"If the program is given the proper information, yes. Our program has been fed every kind of statistical data on humans and human behavior that you can imagine, going back four hundred years. We"ve included statistics that cover all aspects of human life, from cultural, to economical, to psychological tendencies and behaviors. In addition, we"ve trained the program to configure the logical progression of human existence based on this data. Literally, we have given the program an education in human behavior that would be the equivalent of about two hundred scientists with doctorates in everything from psychology to sociology. And I"m only scratching the surface here. The details this program has..."
But several more hands were popping up so, with a sigh, Georgia selected one from among them.
"How does the program compute the behaviors into predictions for the future?"
"This program is interactive and ongoing. What we did was actually create an exact replica of our world-a kind of cyber world-that"s running parallel to ours, but at an accelerated speed. We started with the statistical data from our world, past and present, as I stated before. But to simply tell you this doesn"t really even begin to get you acquainted with what this program knows. We have collected and input literally billions of data files containing every single detail of human existence according to culture, gender, religion, status and so forth."
"How can a computer program process all of this?" Georgia searched the audience to see where this question originated. She didn"t want people just yelling questions out at her, and wondered fleetingly if she should say something to nip it in the bud. But she didn"t want to say or do anything to discourage them from the program, either.
"The program examines our present-day life-population, cultural issues and so on-and compares it to the historical data to a.n.a.lyze the logical, cause-and-effect tendencies in our life"s progression. It uses its psychological skills to study these behaviors individually and culturally, and then calculates probable future behaviors based on its findings. Again, I"m oversimplifying here, but basically the program recreates an exact replica of the world that exists in conjunction with ours, but moving at an accelerated pace, so that we can get a glimpse of what most likely lies ahead for us in our future." In the stunned silence that followed, Georgia was able to pause for a moment before continuing. "In order to optimize accuracy, the program computes all activity on an individual basis. For every doc.u.mented life in our current existence, the program was given a corresponding life. It has computed the effects of every human being on the planet!"
There was another moment of shocked silence, and then nearly half the audience"s hands went up. Georgia motioned to a woman in the front.
"Are you saying that we...each one of us...is in that program?"
Georgia"s mind raced as she thought about how to answer that question. She was well aware that her ideals as a scientist might not coincide with the ideals of those less enthusiastic about the program, but on the other hand, she was optimistic. How could anyone fail to be impressed by the program"s capabilities, in spite of any seeming moral or purely emotional objections? Still, Georgia chose her words carefully. "Theoretically, yes, each of our individual statistics has been entered into the program. We represent, after all, the starting point for peopling the world in our program. We used data from census reports around the world. However, the program has a.s.signed new ident.i.ties to each individual."
"But it"s still us, right?" someone asked. "I mean, couldn"t people in your program be identified by their addresses? a.s.suming you don"t change the names of streets, cities and states, too."
"We have changed other identifying factors as well, but it"s important to remember that the program is not designed for the short-term." Georgia realized she needed to steer the audience away from this obviously touchy subject. "The purpose of the program is to help us see the impact we"re having on the planet, and give us an idea of what life might be like for future generations."
Again there was thoughtful silence, followed by a flurry of hands. She selected one arbitrarily.
"How far into the future does this thing go?"
"We"ve just crossed into the twenty-fourth century."
More hands went up.
Georgia finally raised her hands in protest. "Perhaps it would be easier to simply show you the program," she suggested. "There is a screen already set up behind me. If you will be so patient as to hold your questions, I will run the program for you right here."
Georgia opened her laptop computer and began a flurry of activity on the keyboard. Within minutes, a picture popped up on the screen. It showed a street teeming with average-looking men and women. After a few seconds, the picture came to life and the people on the street resumed their activity, single-mindedly heading toward destinations unknown and unaware of any surveillance.
"The year is 2304," Georgia began. "At a glance, the changes are relatively subtle. You can see that the vehicles on the road are few, and considerably different from ours." She typed something on her keyboard and their view turned toward the road. "The program has generated all of this," she reminded them. "Although it simulates human life at an accelerated pace, we can view it at our own. The program is meant to be used as a tool that allows us to look ahead at some of the challenges we are creating with the decisions we make today." Georgia looked over the faces of the audience. "Just think of the potential benefits!" she exclaimed.
"How do we know that what happens in your program will really happen in the future?" someone called out from the back of the room.
"We don"t know that for certain," Georgia admitted. "But we do know that this program is drawing the most logical conclusions based on real data. This program has been running for more than seven years and so far it has had an accuracy rate of ninety-seven percent!"
There was a gasp of surprise.
Georgia typed something else on her keyboard and the scene on the screen changed to a place in the desert. A city could be seen far off in the distance. "At any given time," Georgia told them, "we can look up a day in the future and get a good idea of what may well be happening in our world on that day."
As if to prove her point, she caused the picture to change again, this time to an ocean view with tall buildings forming the skyline. "We can look at how people live. The individuals in the program-literally billions of them-are living simulated lives to ours and our offspring"s and, in the process, showing us the impact we could be having on the world."
"What about chance, or unexplained phenomenon?" someone else asked. "Without advance knowledge of these things, it seems as if your program is little more than science fiction."
"This is real," Georgia countered. "These people are living simulated lives, it"s true, but as far as we can see from the last seven years of its running, the statistics created by the program have mirrored own our real-life statistics during the same period socially, economically, ecologically..."
"How do you know that?" another person asked.
"From the data." Georgia typed something on her keyboard and the screen changed again. A statistical data sheet appeared.
"You can pull up the statistics for any given day," she told them. "I"m going to enter the date for a month ago yesterday. On the left it will compute the program"s stats for that day and on the right it will list our real-life stats. These are just an overview of major world statistics. We can formulate lists that are much more detailed and precise. But this list configures automatically, making it simple to compare the two worlds at a glance. It tells us things like the number of births, percentage of birth defects, injuries, health trends, deaths, the job market, crime and so forth."
"And this is all based on...what, exactly again?" someone asked.
Georgia sighed, trying to hide her impatience. "It"s based on the program simulating our world and our lives. The individuals living in this cyber world are psychologically programmed to behave exactly how we are most likely to behave, according to genetics, our environment, etcetera. It then estimates what effect our behavior will have on the world." As Georgia spoke, the computer appeared to be calculating, and now a series of numbers popped up on the screen. "These figures list the statistical data for both worlds as of last month," she explained. "Note how close the statistics are running side by side, right down to the number of babies born. As I mentioned before, after running the program for over seven years, we can see that it is maintaining an average of ninety-seven percent accuracy."
"So what about the future...how far did you say this thing got in the last seven years?"
"We are now into the twenty-fourth century," she said.
"Can we see the statistics for then?" asked another. There were murmurs of agreement throughout the audience at seeing this.
Georgia entered the dates, wondering if it was wise to show them this. The last thing she wanted to do was to turn them off the program. But this was exactly what the program was designed for, she reminded herself. "If we had more time-which I"m hoping we will have after this meeting-we could examine each and every cause and effect that brought our cyber world to this point," she said as the screen flashed a series of new numbers. "But for the moment, let us just suppose that this is something like what we are looking at in the future." She highlighted the various areas on the screen with her selector tool as she spoke. "These are the stats for the last five years of our online world, bringing us to September eighth of the year 2304. Believe it or not, wood burning is still the preferable method of heating. Solar is not an option because there is no longer enough sun. There was initially a very slow response to global warming." She took a deep breath before continuing. "You may have noticed that the number of deaths is extraordinarily high for this time period." She tapped the word deaths on the screen and it caused another page to appear. This page detailed all of the deaths by gender, age, location and cause. At a glance, it was clear that the highest number of deaths, by an alarming margin, were among women.
"Based on all of the current data we have on our existence-global warming, disease, genetics and so forth-the program has predicted that women will be hit the hardest by the various effects of global warming."
There was a moment"s silence, and then a woman from the audience asked, "What did you say the accuracy on this program was so far...ninety-something percent?"
"Ninety-seven," Georgia told her.
"Can you break that down by year?" someone else asked.
Georgia had dreaded this question but felt that, with a little luck, she could turn this, too, around to her advantage. She typed something on the keyboard and another screen popped up.
"Yes," she answered. "The program is able to compute the statistics from its world daily, whereas our real-life statistics can, at best, be computed weekly, depending on what they are, while others can take months or even years to collect. And this is another great thing about the program-it allows us to enter new data at any time. Each time our real-life data is entered, the program computes the accuracy rate." As she spoke, the percentages were appearing on the screen, showing the breakdown by year.
"It appears that the highest percentage was in the first year," one man observed. "The percentage seems to get lower with each pa.s.sing year."
"That is correct," Georgia admitted. "However, this program is interactive, so by feeding it the correct statistics as they become available the program, is able to go back and correct itself, redirecting its steps so that it is once again back on track and in sync with our world." There was a murmur of voices and she perceived that this last bit of information had cast a negative shadow on the program, so she spoke up quickly and loudly in an effort to get her point across. "We fully expect that the accuracy level will go back up once these program adjustments take effect. You can see in the last year the accuracy rate has already risen point three percent."
"But what if it doesn"t go up?" someone asked. "What if the accuracy rate just keeps going down? Even at the rate of a half a point a year, it would be below zero long before that date you showed us on the screen."
"He"s right," someone else agreed. "Anyone could make predictions a year or two in advance."
"The purpose of the program is not-" Georgia tried to interject, but she was interrupted once again.
"I think we all understand the purpose of the program and what it"s capable of now, Ms. Warner," said a voice from the front, and Georgia saw that it was the chairman speaking. "You did an excellent job of explaining it. Thank you. With the time remaining, let"s run through the costs of continuing the program." Georgia met his eyes. He seemed a kindly man, and she had the impression that he wanted to cut the presentation short to make it easier for her. But she felt that if she could just have a little more time to explain, she might be able to convince them.
However, it would not do to argue with the chairman. She pulled up another chart on the screen and went over the staggering amounts of money it would take to keep the project going. She explained the numbers dejectedly. The audience was polite and listened attentively, but she knew that she had lost them. She had not aroused the kind of enthusiasm she needed to get the additional funding.
Georgia had imagined the meeting going so differently. She had fully expected the investors to be impressed and excited by the program. She should have known better. These people were not scientists. She tried to hide her dismay as she concluded her presentation.
"I"m taking you to dinner," Donald announced afterward. "For a job well done."
"I"m pretty sure we"re not going to get the funding," she told him.
"Probably not," he agreed, having watched from the back of the room. "But you know there"ll be something else. There"s always something else, around every corner."
Georgia looked at him. "How can you say that? How can you so easily abandon this project when we"ve worked so hard?" She turned away, not really angry with Donald but at the world in general. She sighed miserably. "I just don"t get it. It cost them millions to get to this point. We didn"t even know the project"s potential back then. Why were they willing to invest in the program to begin with if they were just going to abandon it halfway through?"
"That"s the way it works," he told her, shrugging. "Investors get bored. They get excited about new theories and ideas, but they"ll pick apart an experiment that"s actually unfolding." He was much more philosophical about it than Georgia. "These guys aren"t scientists. They"re not really looking for any kind of achievement. We"re just expensive entertainment for them."
"Well, I"m tired of entertaining them!" she exclaimed, suddenly sick to death of the subject. "Where are you taking me? It better have a full bar this time!"
But no matter how much Georgia drank, she couldn"t shake off her disappointment. She felt as if she were losing a part of herself. Or worse, she was being forced to kill it.
For the first night in nearly seven years, Georgia went to bed without logging on to the program and checking in on her cyber world.
"So how long do we have?" Georgia asked when Donald told her the inevitable news the next morning.
"We"ve got the rest of our contract, through the end of the year," he said. "Just enough time for me to finish that addition to my house, maybe take a vacation with the wife and kids. Look into some options for our next project."
Georgia stared at him. "You"re going to abandon the project early?" she asked him, incredulous.
He shrugged. "What"s the point of going through the motions? It"s over, Georgia."
"Uh, we"re being paid to go through the motions," she reminded him.
Donald laughed. "Once you get used to how all this works, you"ll catch on," he said. He formed a tube with his hands and placed it in front of his mouth. "Earth to Georgia," he said in his best robot voice. "The funding has stopped. Beep. n.o.body cares anymore. Beep."
Normally his nerdy behavior would make her laugh, but not this time. "I care," she said stubbornly.
"Well, I care about getting us another gig," he told her. "Life goes on."
"Some lives won"t," she muttered.
"They"re not real lives, Georgia," he said, catching her drift. "I wish they were. Maybe then you could find out what our next gig is going to be."
"I"ve got five more months on this project and that"s where I"m going to be," she said stubbornly.
He laughed at her. "Suit yourself."
When Donald left, Georgia approached her workstation gloomily. She logged on to the program without enthusiasm. For the first time in years, she wasn"t on pins and needles to see what was happening. Since she last logged on-apart from the brief encounter at the investors" meeting-more than twenty-four hours had elapsed, which meant that nearly forty days had pa.s.sed in cyber world.
What will happen to them? Georgia wondered miserably. She paused, perplexed by the question. More to the point, what would happen to her? She had no life outside of the program. She had given up everything for this project. It was all she thought about anymore.
The program made a humming sound when it was updating, and hearing the familiar drone gave Georgia a tiny thrill in spite of her depression. She perked up a little, recovering her interest in what was happening in "her" world.
When the program finished updating, Georgia opened the fields that she secretly kept bookmarked. She held her breath now as she waited for her own special little corner of cyber world to be located. In a moment, life appeared on the screen like a movie in progress.
They were inside an apartment. A dark-haired woman in a bathrobe stepped into view, carefully taking sips from an overfilled coffee cup. Georgia watched as Ca.s.sie logged on to her own computer to check that day"s news, just as she did every morning. Ca.s.sie took another sip from her cup just as the headlines appeared on her screen, but when she saw them she dropped it, spilling coffee all over her floor.
Georgia gasped in surprise when she saw the headline, too. It happened! It really happened! She couldn"t believe it. Everything had been building up to it and the pundits had been saying it was only a matter of time for many months now, but even so, it was hard to imagine. Even the fact that people had already been more or less partic.i.p.ating without the "incentive program" didn"t make it any less shocking. To think, even with all that had happened in the past three centuries-global warming, the horrible epidemic and all the unimaginable consequences that followed-that such an incentive program could actually be ordained by the government, with tax breaks to go along with it!
Georgia wondered how Ca.s.sie would react to the news. It was hard to tell what she was thinking from her stoic expression as she read every word of the news article. Her shattered coffee cup remained on the floor where she"d dropped it.
Georgia tried to predict what Ca.s.sie would do. Would she sign up for the program? Surely she must have thought about it. As shocking as it was, it made a certain kind of sense, too, considering what the world had come to. Things were very different in the twenty-fourth century, although Ca.s.sie was like a throwback from the past. Perhaps that"s why Georgia related to her so well. Ca.s.sie reminded Georgia of herself.
Georgia was suddenly excited. What would Ca.s.sie do? Why, oh, why couldn"t this news have come out a week ago? Now Georgia would actually have to wait to see what would happen next. Yet even in the minutes that pa.s.sed while she watched Ca.s.sie read the news article, Georgia knew that time in her virtual world was steaming ahead at a rate of an hour and a half per minute. Georgia only needed to update the program again to meet it. But she lingered for the moment, waiting for Ca.s.sie"s response.
But aside from dropping her cup of coffee, Ca.s.sie appeared to have no reaction. She turned off the computer and began cleaning the coffee from the floor. Her face remained impa.s.sive. Georgia continued to watch for a bit, preferring to hold off for as long as possible before updating the program. She knew from experience how frustrating it could be to keep updating and updating in antic.i.p.ation of something happening. She"d wasted entire days doing that. Particularly through the epidemic, which kept Georgia on pins and needles until she was certain that Ca.s.sie would be one of the survivors.
"I"ve got a surprise for you!"
Georgia jumped, nearly falling off her chair, at the unexpected voice coming from behind her. "Christ!" she exclaimed.
Donald laughed. "What are you doing?" he asked.
"Working on the program," she snapped irritably. "What do you think I"m doing?" She quickly closed the window she was in.
"Sorry. Didn"t mean to scare you. But I"ve got some exciting news."
"Well? You"ve got my attention."
He laughed again. "I might have something here to cheer you up. Don"t get your hopes up too much," he warned. "It"s still under scrutiny, but there"s a team of scientists who are conducting a number of studies that are similar to the one we"ve been doing here. They contacted me because they were impressed with our work. I"ll be meeting with them next week. And two other organizations left messages but I"ve yet to get back to them." He smiled at her smugly. "It seems we made an impression on the science community, at least. At this rate we"ll have our new jobs lined up before this contract is even up!"
Georgia just stared at him. This was supposed to cheer her up? It was good that people were interested, she supposed, but the thought of terminating the program was still too difficult for her to accept. She was not ready to even contemplate it.
"Well!" Donald said. "I expected a little more excitement than that." He dropped the papers onto her desk. "I went to a lot of trouble to get this information because I thought you would at least be curious."
"I am," she murmured unenthusiastically. "I"ll look at it. Thanks, Donald."
"Still mooning over your little program?"
Georgia glanced at her computer, wishing he would leave. She was dying to know what Ca.s.sie was doing at that moment. "I guess. I feel like I have to keep working on it for now, you know?"
"Yeah, I suppose," he conceded, although she could tell that he was lying. She wondered that he never became more involved in the project. "You don"t mind if I don"t hang around, though, do you?"
"Of course not," she told him truthfully.
"Well, be sure and look over that stuff I left, will you?" he reminded her as he headed for the door. "I know there"s a few things in there that will appeal to you."
"Thank you, Donald," she said more sincerely this time.