The next morning we awoke to find them cuddled together between us. It was time to wake them up permanently. We used the same procedure, the bathroom sink as a seat and zapped them each for several minutes. Mary squealed. Tina took it silently. They spent a long time in the bathroom together while I experimented with making coffee, boiling the grounds in water and then then adding cold water on top to make the grounds sink to the bottom. We had no coffee pot. We were able to offer them a delicious cup when they did come out in their towels, with sugar and powdered creamer to boot.
Tina told us they visited many palaces in their dreams, over twenty, skipping together from one to the next. There seemed to be fewer than before and most notably, some of the characters in them were the same they’d seen in the previous places. One figure, who dressed as an Arabian prince and whom she’d taken as a lover before, appeared in three locals and when she asked him if he’d visited ‘Tempura’ lately in the second and the third pleasure palace, he gave her the same response: “No. Hardly anyone goes there anymore.”
“Good work you two”, I said. “I think this proves that some are computer generated. Humans don’t repeat themselves like that. They may give a similar answer to the same question, but rarely in the exact same words. Let’s plan our next move. We’re not just staying here, eating cans of Spam”.
“So what’s next?” Mary asked.
Rich answered, “I think we should find a vehicle and drive up North, to the address in the notebook. Klamath is on the coast. Highway One will take us right to it. We might meet your friend there, who seems to know things”.
“I agree. But what about the elderly couple at the end of the hall? They’re alive. They’re human beings”.
“We’ve got to consider what type of world we’re bringing them into, if we do revive them”, Mary said. “We don’t know where we’re going or what dangers it involves. They might be better off just dreaming their lives out. Who are we to deny them that?”
Tina responded, “I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we give them a little tingle of electricity, wake them for just a few hours and find out all they know. There has to be a reason why they’re still with us when so many are dead. If we do find others and safety we can come back for them. We can tell them that”.
“That’s a brilliant plan” I said. “I should kiss you for it”. But then the thought of Rich beside me occurred.
Mary spoke up. “Go ahead, kiss her and I’ll kiss Rich. See, our plan is working out. We’re all one single team now”.
We decided to wait until evening when the bedside lamps came on. The girls were now ready to step outdoors with us. They were a bit intrigued by all the items we’d found the day before and asked us to show them the deserted stores. They had their own lists of wants percolating in their beautiful heads and we didn’t want to deny them that. There were always rewards after a shopping spree.
It was an overcast day and not as exhilarating as the last but still the air was invigorating. We showed them the hardware store and the small supermarket but their interests were not there. Another block down we came across a jewelry store. Their eyes widened, we kicked in the door for them and they went to town. We watched bemused, as they raided the display cases, filling two purses they snatched off a rack to the brim. Though jewelry was perhaps the most useless stuff we could imagine for our needs, happiness was not, and therein lay the secret to connubial bliss. And connubial we were, times two.
Since we hadn’t seen a soul yet we figured it was safe to part ways. We told the girls to head towards home. There was a woman’s apparel shop on the way and the grocery store. They could visit both. We’d be back later. We wanted to find a vehicle we could start and this might take hours. We finally came across a Jeep Liberty with the key under the sun visor. It started up and we filled its tank from other vehicles and parked it beside our building. It was as if everyone on the face of the earth had vanished leaving behind all material wealth for us to take.
There was one mystery I wished to explore. Most of the town was without power yet our building continued to function perfectly. It was a single story structure with fifteen units ranged along a windowless hallway, all the lights fully automatic. At the one entrance there was a utility room which we entered for the first time. It was full of battery banks and an inverter. I followed the cables out a port leading up to the roof, and climbing a rung ladder saw the flat roof held a solar array. This answered the question. The building was self sufficient, like a robot that could go on for centuries.
As we proceeded down the hall we found the girls in Tina’s unit arranging stacks of clothes. They were wearing jeans now and hiking boots, a far cry from their other outfits. There were two large, metal frame back packs leaning against the wall by the rifles.
“What are you planning, hiking through the wilderness?”
Tina ran to him and gave him a kiss. “Look at all this gear we found, and yes, who knows, Klamath is in a forest.”
“We’ll be driving there, not walking. We found us a Jeep”, he added. “We leave tomorrow”.
When the lights came on the four of us headed towards the end unit. But on the way the girls insisted we enter every unit and examine the dead, to see if they passed away at the same time or in stages. Some were definitely more recent than others. One couple looked like they just died a week or two ago.
“This could have been us”, Tina said, as she pulled the sheet reverentially over their heads. “Thank you again, Jack”.
In the old folks unit we set the couple up in a sitting position in bed. I placed the cap and just tapped the wire to voltage, like a telegraph operator. With a few tries we had them both coming out of their spells. They were disoriented and groggy. The girls sent us back to prepare a large meal. They would attend to their needs and bring them to dinner, where we could talk.
They were still confused and almost speechless as they sat down to our expanded table. But I poured them each a glass of wine and Tina lit two candles and as the dishes were set they responded, with polite talk, as if at some soiree, thanking us for the meal and complimenting the flavors.
The man had had a most interesting career. He’d been a software engineer and had worked on one of the very first AI projects thirty years ago and up until he and his wife took the chip. I asked if he knew my friend John. He didn’t personally but said he’d heard of him.
Not to totally destroy the pleasant mood of the meal, we slowly came around to revealing how we woke up and that many people were missing, some dead, and that we’d be setting off to discover what was happening and that they’d be falling asleep again soon. Our mission was fraught with danger but if we found others in a comfortable environment we would come back and wake them permanently to join us, as this dreamscape world seemed about to expire.
Even as we were finishing dessert of some canned fruit we could see they were nodding in drowsiness. After a feeble handshake from the man and a ‘good luck’, the girls walked them back to their unit and helped them to bed. I wondered if this evening was much different from their other dreams and if they could even distinguish between the two. One thing for sure, those who worked closely with AI seemed to be privileged.
It was as if AI knew everything and everybody.
