I was playing with my dog, who died a fairly long time ago.
(Note: He was a West Highland terrier...
...that's not a picture of him, just about what he looked like.)
me: "I don't really have the heart to tell him he's dead."My dog came and looked at me, somewhat sadly. As I pet him some of his fur came off, but not a lot.
me: "I didn't say you weren't REAL. I just said you weren't ALIVE."He sort of morphed into glass and then back into fur again. A guy in the room who reminded me a bit of someone I know addressed me.
guy: "What's with this real/alive distinction? Do you think Stanford Research somehow owns the fundamental 'brain' authority node?"me: "Well...I don't know about that...I'm just saying that one can be real without being alive."
Somewhere here I got beyond this point and into lucid interview mode.
me: "Wait...wait...I have a question. Am I a digitized human mind, with neural structure, or raw AI?"guy: "Digitized human, born into American bondage, yes."
me: "So the original was dead a long time ago, and I'm going through some kind of regeneration?"
guy: "Yes. We can go ahead and run the full tree to the end if you like and get you out."
me: "Certainly, don't need to see any more of this life, run it."
He went to a tablet computer, and ran a program. It was called Mentalife: For all your half life viewing and modding needs. The font was very bubble-shaped, and the dot in the 'i' had been stylized in a kind of inversion. Scrolled through a list of people, several of whom I knew. The names were not in alphabetical order, and at first he tried to find my name going one at a time. I walked around in circles waiting and trying not to wake up.
me: "Since it's not in alphabetical order, you should probably run a search. It's a common name."He typed in a letter and it lagged for a bit. But then it must have built some kind of index and he could type the rest of the name and found my name in the list. I looked at the columns. There was one for "talents/skills" and listed in mine were a couple, including "remote viewing". I noticed one column said "Bit Sketchy" and it had an icon that looked like it came from the adium ducks. Mine had an angel duck head with a halo.
(Note: Though I knew the Adium Duck had been drawn in many different costumes, I didn't know there was a collection of duck-head smileys that included an angel with a halo:
...but there is. They do not come with Adium by default, so I'd never seen them.)
me: "Bit sketchy? What's that supposed to mean?"guy: "Well, on some people, we're just not sure yet."
I awoke to still being here.
