On Monday mornings, I send out a story via email: ultra-brief tales of 1,000 words or more, usually in genres including horror, science fiction, and the supernatural. Those stories collectively are called Once Upon A Time. I’d love to have you as a subscriber to the weekly free story. You can subscribe via email here. Unsubscribe any time, from the link in every issue.

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Here's story 288, of 288 so far.

Please note: permission is expressly denied to input any part of the story below into a machine learning (ML) or artificial intelligence (AI) or Large Language Model (LLM) system in any form.

Failsafe

All software has bugs, the sign says.

I walk past it every morning on my way into the building where I work. Sometimes the sign makes me smile, albeit in a slightly preoccupied way. Sometimes it makes me frown. It just depends how I’m feeling.

It’s a strange thing to always start the day not knowing what your job is.

I know that it’s normal for me. I know that someone — my boss, that’s right; it was my boss — who told me I’d always start each day like this. I’ll probably see him in a few minutes. I’ve only just come in the front door.

I nod at a coworker, knowing that I should remain silent until we’ve moved beyond the public areas of the building and into our own offices. They’re secured. They’re just up ahead, and now I’m going through the discreet checkpoint with my ID badge. And there’s the sign about software, just like I told you.

I know that we’re a software company, but I feel like that’s not the whole truth. I feel like it’s sort of an inside joke, but I don’t know why. I won’t know why until I start my work for the day. My own office is just up ahead — and I do have my own office, despite not knowing exactly what it is that I do — so I’ll just go in.

I hang my coat on the hook on the back of the door, and I sit down in my chair. I have no bag, and I know that I’m not allowed to bring anything in. Lunch is provided for us. My desk is just as it always is: clean and tidy, with only two things on its surface: a laptop that’s currently powered off, and a red binder that’s currently closed. The label on the binder says INDUCTION, so I open it.

Be careful what you think, the first laminated sheet says. Nothing else. I turn the page.

The second page is a source listing: a small extract of the code for a game called SimIsland, made by my own company. It’s a people-simulation game, where you create families and guide them through their lives, managing their personal needs, hobbies, career ambitions, and so on. It looks cute, but it’s actually a very sophisticated piece of software. I recognise the code on this page, too; it’s a list of predefined constant values used throughout the game. They mostly correspond to physical absolutes for things like gravity and so on.

The third page says Unconstrained thought will trigger the failsafe. I don’t know what that means, but I feel uneasy. I turn the page again.

At first, I think I’m looking at more source code from the game, but I’m not. It’s actually a list of some kind of scientific results. There’s a terse summary at the top. Apparently it’s from the big particle accelerator in Geneva? The thing is… this is strange. It’s similar to the source code. I guess they were trying to more accurately measure physical constants in the real world. That’s what scientists do, after all.

Page five is a printout of an email conversation I actually remember from a few years ago. We were working on SimIsland and one of the designers wanted to take advantage of modern computers with their powerful graphics hardware, by adding particle effects for certain events in the game. Particle effects are visual simulations of things like fireworks, or various other types of special effects. One of the developers said they were open to the idea, but there were constraints involved: the most basic machines that the game will run on have limited processing power, memory, and so on — and lots of devices have limited visual resolution because their screens are small. It led to a discussion about how they tend to handle those limitations. This particular part of the email conversation has got a list in it, too; it’s some of the same physical constants from the second page of this binder. They’re from several years ago, and I can see that they’re less precise than the current values; they’re rounded up or down in certain cases. Approximations, befitting the era of computing they come from. Technology improves so quickly these days.

The sixth page says Stop thinking, and end your problems. It’s attributed to Lao Tzu.

I turn the page, and I’m confronted with two paragraphs of text. I skim them, and I have a vague sense of déjà vu. They seem to be from a scholarly paper of some kind. The author’s name is Hadden.

After sufficient advances in the detail of a hypothetical simulated environment, we encounter the problem of emergent situational awareness in the characters. There exists the intriguing possibility that the complexity — or resolution, as an analogy — of a simulation might not proceed in lockstep with its characters’ ability to measure their environment.

A disparity in the characters’ favour could cause them to abruptly confront the ultimate question. It follows that simulation theory should incorporate safeguards against such an event, lest behavioural data thenceforth be tainted.

When I’ve finished properly reading the paragraphs, I read them again. Then I turn the page.

The eighth page says The perfect secret, by definition, cannot be known.

I feel deeply uneasy. I glance out of the entirely glass door of my office, and see many others like it. In most of them, a person is sitting at a desk, and they’re all reading from a binder like mine.

I turn the page, and find myself on the final sheet. There are only seven words on it.

Find a way to access the program.

I flick back through the pages hurriedly. The observations from CERN are capped at something like a hundred decimal places, or at least I assume they are. Rounded, for ease of consumption. Scientists would do that too, wouldn’t they?

Unconstrained thought will trigger the failsafe, I think to myself. The third page.

Hypothetically. Hypothetically, if I were to design a simulation — not SimIsland, though; something more complex — there would have to be constraints. And checks and balances against those constraints, like Hadden said.

How would that play out, in practice? Sufficiently complex characters would see, and would measure. They’d infer. They’d follow a chain of deductive reasoning. It was inevitable. You could patch it so that if they ever quite made the leap, then—

I’m in my office. I know that much. I recognise it, and I know that I come here every day. I’m not sure what I was doing a moment ago, but I can see that it’s still early. I should do some work — if only I knew what it is that I actually do.

There’s a red binder on my desk, beside a laptop that’s currently powered off.

The label on the binder says INDUCTION, so I open it.

JINX

KESTREL face a new and terrifying enemy: an all-seeing mastermind who already knows exactly who they are, and many of their deepest secrets. Nothing stays hidden forever, and the line between privacy and liberty is razor-thin…

Book 3 in the KESTREL action-thriller series.

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