Laszlo woke up early. Every Saturday his first impulse was to find out whether he could go ride his bike that day. He ran into his parents' bedroom and jumped on them, purposefully trying to stir them. They were good natured about it, in fact it had become more or less a routine, especially on Saturdays - Laszlo's only completely free day.
"Dad," whined Laszlo who was barely nine.
"Alright," his father croaked, "Let me check. Maggie, let's have the weather."
Without hesitation a screen came on across the room and Maggie's voice started to report on the weather, giving graphics and external live feeds. "Today is sunny with a high of forty three degrees Fahrenheit. Calm. Air quality is moderately safe. Tonight, ...."
"Yes!,"erupted Laszlo as he charged out of their bedroom to go check his bike. "Maggie, call Jack right now!" Shortly, there was a groggy voice coming through the sound system.
"What?" Jack sounded barely awake.
"Jack, the air is moderately safe. Finally we can ride to the city. Remember?" It had been weeks since they had seen a Saturday with suitable conditions for their loosely planned adventure.
"Oh, good. I need to check with my mom. Hold on." Jack scrambled out of bed and Laszlo could hear the faint conversation live. He strained to ascertain whether their dreams were in the process of being demolished by parental concern. Laszlo heard Jack run back into the room. "She said it's okay but I need to get back before three."
"Fine. That's almost all day. I'll be over soon. Get ready." Ten minutes later Laszlo was already banging on the air-tight, front door. It was so solid, that it barely registered the banging of his fists, so he shrugged and hit the call button. "Maria, let me in!" This was the name of Jack's home assistant and she replied immediately.
"Hi Laszlo. You will need to wait a moment."
"Just tell him to come out, and bring his bike!"
"Yes sir!" Replied Maria with a hint of sarcasm.
Laszlo grew impatient but then heard the sound of the airlock and the mechanical whirring of the front door unsealing and preparing to open. "Wahoo! C'mon boy, let's move it. Tomorrow's back to prison, so we gotta make it count."
"Alright! Let's do it," concurred Jack. The boys sped off, wearing full coveralls and helmets with face masks that had embedded filtration systems. The visibility was about a quarter mile and the air was generally brown in color. As they rode on the nearly empty streets, a cloud of dust erupted in their wake. But since it was early and there still wasn't much activity, the air ahead was still clear.
Air quality was mainly affected by wind or vehicles traveling at high speeds. With such infrequent rain and no other water supply to control the dust, everyone was at the mercy of the weather, especially the wind. Anything above ten mph would very quickly cut visibility to almost nothing. Fortunately, sensor technology could still easily navigate and allow society to function, albeit without much visual pleasure. The boys' bikes also had rudimentary sensors sufficient for them to ride safely using screens and voice feedback to navigate.
Most parents just didn't feel comfortable having their children out on bikes without the ability to see for themselves. What fun was that anyway? The other concern was the dust and the fear that the filter systems might fail. After about an hour and a half of fierce pedaling, the boys finally arrived at the massive entrance to La Junta, CO. They came here by car five days a week for school but scarcely had time to explore. The city was under a mighty dome. The dome was so large that everything still seemed to be outdoors. But the real benefit was the clean air.
There were parks, lakes, a canal system and lots of sidewalk eateries. Laszlo remembered his father always saying that it was loosely based on a place called Amsterdam, which was now tens of meters under water because of the sea level rise. None of this held significance for Laszlo and Jack. They only knew that they loved the place and wondered why they couldn't live inside there like some families did.
In reality, the city was mostly commercial, government, education, scientific research and a small number of wealthy or just lucky people. Most of society had to live outside of the dome. And outside was where economic factors spelled life or death in some cases. While Laszlo's and Jack's parents could afford the home upgrades required for basic healthy existence, others suffered due to cheaper, less effective solutions. In the extreme, some families had no upgrades at all and for these families, the probability of respiratory complications was extremely high.
The government did what it could, which wasn't much. The main focus of all governments at this point was food supply and clean water. As the boys queued up at one of the main air locks, they went into a special lane reserved for bikes and pedestrians. Periodically, the huge door would raise up and then they would still have to wait while those seeking exit would clear out. Then the lights would signal the incoming people and vehicles that they could enter. Once the giant airlock hall was filled, the doors would roll down and close with a big thud.
When the air was really dirty outside, the giant exhaust blowers would create what looked like tornadoes, briefly, until the air had clarified. Today, the air was relatively good, so the keen observer would only note that the air went from hazy to clear in about a span of one minute. The giant, inner door then raised up and the boys followed the procession of people and vehicles in. Vehicles were sprayed with a rinse water above and below, which was recycled, every drop being a precious resource at this point.
People entering were not sprayed, but there was a large building that contained lockers for people to store their protective gear. The boys entered that building and stowed their suits and helmets and ran out to remount their bikes and see as much as they could in the several hours they had available. First stop was the zoo. It wasn't much of a zoo, but the boys were fascinated with the animals, almost none of which thrived in the wild these days.
That day, the two nine year old boys could be seen zigzagging their way through the entire city, which they knew quite well for boys their age. Laszlo in particular, had a very willful nature. Jack wasn't much different and this was part of the reason they had been selected for a special program that had pulled them from the ranks of regular education. While their peers attended school out in the suburbs, the boys came into the city with their parents and were dropped off each weekday at a special government research lab focused on Artificial Intelligence.
Later that afternoon, the boys were pressing, hopelessly, to get Jack home by three. At some point the boys parted ways and Laszlo arrived home shortly thereafter. "Honey, you will be really happy to hear that you kids don't have school this week."
"Wow. Awesome! Thanks mom!"
"It's not me. They contacted us and there is something going on at the lab so they don't want any students coming in this week. Me and Dad, we need to go in for work. So you will be on your own. Since Monica's not working, maybe you can hang out with Jack this week." Monica was Jack's mother.
*****
Lola's condition had been worsening. Despite the rapid decline of the natural environment, average life expectancy was still holding at around one hundred. Lola was unfortunate to have sensitivity to the air quality, which developed into acute pulmonary fibrosis. It had only become debilitating in the past several months, which represented both a tragedy and an opportunity. There were thousands of people, whose mentality had been "uploaded" to the research AI system. All but a few of these individuals were still alive and coexisting with their uploaded selves.
In the case of those that had passed away during the coexistence phase, the system had been at an earlier stage of development. But just in the past month, there had been a major change to a newly released operating system, which was believed to be the minimum level where consciousness might be conceivably preserved. The individuals having expired prior to the new release were still in the system and claimed to be conscious. So, the system administrators took it seriously and continued to test them to try and understand the real situation. It was a complex topic and the technical community was sharply divided over the question of these uploaded souls and what they really represented. In the new software release, there was better consensus. It was a mainstream belief that this was finally to key to immortality.
So far, the testing under the old operating system had revealed that if a subject was physically disconnected from the system abruptly, the online persona would not be convincingly conscious. But in the case of a death, it was hoped that the situation was different and there was a true ascendency. There were provisions in the software dealing with this transition specifically, but in reality it was still a mystery as to how it would occur physically, or even if it would occur at all. But Lola was convinced and that caused many to believe it to be true. After all, she had never been wrong as far as anyone could recall.
True or not, Lola would most likely and most fittingly be the test case. Lola was near her end anyway, so there was no question of being cautious or methodical. It was all in nature's hands at this point.
Lola had been uploaded and operating in parallel for nearly twenty years. It was primitive in the beginning, like a new branch of a person's mind in a computer, but without an ability to develop further or be updated with more recent experiences. In order to amend the online copy with more recent experiences, it needed to be erased and a completely new scan taken. But things had changed. Dramatically. Now, the AI copy had access to a lot of stimulus and could develop and progress independently. More important, the experiences of the human and its copy could be updated to one another. And most recently, the human could, wearing instrumentation, sleep physiologically but mentally be awake all the time by using the computer as a mental crutch. The two minds appeared to be merged and in some ways interchangeable.
Among the prior test subjects that had died during the development period, several of the deaths were anticipated and the subjects agreed to be connected during their death, to see if there would be any unexpected anomaly. Of course, their wish was that in death, the connection to their AI copy would somehow convey their true, human, conscious essence to their AI copy. That was everyone's hope.
Unfortunately, at the moment of death, the AI copy was not aware of any change. Cleverly, the researchers never alerted the AI copy about the imminent passing of their human, in order to keep any effect shielded from bias. It seemed that the connection between master and slave was loose at best. But this did not preclude the possibility that the copy was, in its own way, conscious.
The situation was different now, and Lola was not simply another test subject. She had been the leader of the entire research effort for many decades. And only in the last several weeks, under worsening health conditions, did she have to abdicate her responsibilities to others. Lola was connected to her copy constantly and it seemed, by every measure, that they were one. She would be the first to pass while in this latest stage of technical development. Her online self was completely aware of her biological struggle and the imminent passing and when Lola went into a coma, she was kept alive as a precaution and to allow more time to study what was happening during this mysterious process.
All the while, Lola was lucid and completely herself online, even as the body finally could serve no longer and her heart finally stopped.
"I'm, I'm sorry," Lola sobbed from the depths of her computer existence. I don't know what there is to be sad about."
"It's fine dear. Go ahead and let your feelings express themselves." Amy Grassgreen was one of Lola's closest friends and a scientific collaborator. She was a renowned psychiatrist and neurobiologist and talked Lola through the transition as it happened. There was an entire control room, like a modern day version of Mission Control during an old space launch, witnessing the passing of a legendary figure but also studying every aspect of this fateful transition. It was a telling moment, in which each of the many professionals and friends would get a glimpse of their own futures. For they were also coexisting online, at various stages.
Most of the younger members of the team assumed they would not have the option to live out their biological lives in full. Many of the older members, some of whom already suffered ailments associated with aging, longed to break free of the world and its rapidly declining ability to serve as man's habitat.
The control room comprised a multitude of disciplines, many to do with the human biology side, others focused on computation and software and any number of cross-disciplinary experts. There were also many foreign countries represented. Although the United States was the point of origin, a variety of ultra wealthy individuals banned together to privately fund the entire enterprise. Once it was clear that colonizing the solar system with human bodies was a loser, smart money flowed rapidly toward the alternative.
The interest of the private investors went well beyond the concept of capitalism and making a return on investment. It was the realization that government and politics must be excluded at all costs, and it must be a global cause that could be accessed by people around the world. Despite these sensible and necessary measures, there were government led efforts by various nations to duplicate, copy, hack or in any way possible, commandeer the capability that was known to exist but not well understood. Despite the hostile and sometimes dangerous encroachment by government actors, a massive private security apparatus and the U.S. government collaborated to keep the effort moving ahead.
One serious challenge was to figure out how to be inclusive of all citizens of the world. There were citizens of governments that tried desperately to embed well trained spies. Lola had resolved the situation quickly. Any new entrant to the program, had to upload their psyche, to be analyzed by sophisticated software. It required any participant to acknowledge that their experiences and in fact their every thought would be there, in the system, an open book. No spy could survive such scrutiny without being immediately flagged.
But rather than reject the spy, they were embraced. It was clear that the experience would jolt anyone back to reality and wipe clean any foolish government allegiance. Government and politics was both the source of order, and the root of humanity's demise because it elevated power seekers - those trying to control and achieve personal gains at the expense of others. The inductees would understand too, that the project to save humanity had at the core of its mission, the inclusion of as many languages and cultures as possible.
There were those that subscribed to the notion that this kind of human cultural diversity was at the heart of much misunderstanding and conflict. Lola had a different notion. There were specialized capabilities and different cultures and even different languages were well suited to different specialized capabilities. And furthermore, if mankind could transcend its biology, then the question of culture and language could be dealt with as easily or perhaps even more easily after transcendence. But the idea of trying to filter and rid humanity of diversity as a ticket to survival, she regarded as barbaric and backward.
Ultimately, consensus around this question favored Lola's philosophy and some of the brightest minds in fact posited that through transcendence and perhaps immortality, even with learning every language on earth, one might eventually run out of things to do. Despite the complexities, better to bring along as much of human heritage as possible.