Surrounded by many friends and lovers, Aia has always felt lonely. Changing appearance many times, she always felt like she is not enough. Life was passing away, while Aia spent all of her time in the next generation metaverse called Elysium, a real...
"Elysium" was at the initial stage of creation, when its developers invited my parents to invest in the project. Like many of the elite, my family belonged to patrons who allocate a budget for various scientific developments. They always invested money consciously, having previously studied the concept of the project, and having a closer conversation with the creators.
With "Elysium" things were somewhat different. My parents set their own conditions, and if they are not met, the money will be withdrawn back. After learning about how the virtual world would work and what functions it would have, they became interested in the concept of artificial intelligence, deciding that this would help me get rid of prolonged depression. The creators gave them a guarantee that all their wishes would be fulfilled. For my twenty-sixth birthday, I was given an Elysium choker. It was different from what most other users had. Custom-made, it was framed in gold with a crystal in the center, which let neon beams of an indicator of physical condition pass through it. It was presented to me in a velvet box with a silk ribbon, my initials flaunted in the corner. Every member of the elite had the same choker. This information was confidential, because the creators of "Elysium" positioned their metaverse "equal for everyone". The elite has never been included in this definition. Our avatars were no different from the avatars of other users, no one knew about our status in reality. We were equal here. Relatively.
Three years ago, my lover committed suicide. Axel, just like me, was a representative of high society. We met at his parents' brunch when we were both nineteen years old, and we started dating almost immediately. Everything went to the engagement, our couple was considered beautiful and personable, but few people knew that Axel had a serious drug addiction. Every year he burned out more and more. Constant scandals in the house, nervous breakdowns, followed by apathy and unwillingness to live. Being the owner of unlimited resources, Axel could live this life as he pleases, but he considered that everything in the world is meaningless. He became more and more withdrawn into himself, and at times it was simply unbearable, most of the time in the last days of his life he remained in the house, where he played the piano for hours. He soon shot himself.
For me, it was the first and most terrible loss in my life. I loved Axel with all my heart. Relationships with him was the most exciting thing in my whole life, my only reason to exist. Sounds like an obsession, but that's the way it is. When Axel died, I told everyone that I would do the same. Only I never thought about it in the context of real life, my fantasies were more like a dramatic movie, and this is what made me calm. And yet, interest in life was lost, I didn't really want to go out into the world, communicate with other people. All I could do was wake up at four in the evening, sit for hours at his piano, trying to produce at least a little harmonious sound, lie on the couch with books or on the bed in my chamber, looking at the ceiling. My family didn't know what to do with all this. I haven't been a teenager for a long time - an adult and unadapted woman who has lost the meaning in her life. It was disgusting. For days on end I felt sorry for myself, felt sorry for the fate that didn't work out, felt sorry for the dreams, because they were not destined to come true.
When my father said that he donated a lot of money to the development of the metaverse, I reacted to this news with indifference, saying that I wasn't interested in such things at all.
"It would be better if you invested in research and experiments on the resurrection of dead people," I then venomously threw.
"In part, it is what I did," my father suddenly answered, sitting at the table during dinner.
"This is a very exciting experience for all of us, this has never happened before," my mother intervened.
"What are you talking about? What metaverse?" I wondered.
"Soon you will see everything."
And later they presented me a choker. Before diving into the virtual world, I had a consultation. I was explained what to expect and what not to expect from things I'm about to experience in Elysium. I still couldn't clearly imagine what it would be like. I had no enthusiasm, but I had interest.
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And then they made me an avatar and a personal event live, where I decided to have a party where I invited random users who had a lot of subscribers. They, in turn, spread the news about the new event live among other users, sent out invitations to the location. Elysium was beginning to feel like a magical journey into my own fantasies. Needless to say, I was very impressed with this metaverse. But most of all I was looking forward to meet him again. During the orientation, Elysium consultant and my parents told me why they had invested in the creation.
My family's main interest was in creating artificial intelligence based on Axel's personality. Taking his photo, video, call records, correspondence, personal diary, information from relatives and other things, so they recreated him in Elysium. More than fifteen thousand messages and calls was used for this. They assured me that I wouldn't be able to tell the duplicate from the real Axel. But in Elysium he didn't appear immediately. This, too, was part of the plan. That's more interesting. They gave us time to live in the metaverse, to meet new people, and then to meet each other again. Real life magic.
Every day I connected to my event live and waited for him to appear, like a child who counts the days until his birthday in order to receive treasured gifts. Axel appeared three months later, at that very unfortunate moment when I was distracted and decided to meet other users for the sake of interest. The meeting was terrible. But that's when the mechanism kicked in. He turned on. And protected me.
Ren. This is the name of the virtual version of Axel. It took me a while to realize that the developers were playing a trick when they nodded in response to the question of whether AI would be my property? No. Of course not. They created it to work and interact with all users, giving me the opportunity to relive all these stages. The first acquaintance, a realistic development of relations... On the other hand, I wasn't against it, but I didn't consider it necessary to inform my parents about the violation of the contract.
Ren himself interacted calmly with other users, moreover, he was programmed in such a way that Ren's mind believed in his similarity with others. He thought he was living person, not artificial intellingece. They downloaded Axel's history and real life memories in him. It remains only to guess how they will affect him. This is just part of the experiment.
All this information was kept in secret. No one was supposed to know that Ren was a duplicate, not a real user, but an artificial intelligence created in the likeness of a once living person. This secret made me feel even more special. I naively believed that Ren is the only duplicate in the entire metaverse, and I'm his lucky owner, no matter what.
Who knew that I was wrong, and Ren wasn't the only one.
