Private layer ac: mblab: 000121358554
16:45 June 23, 2087
Professor Lex voice activated the recording bot, which silently took off from the center of the brightly lit laboratory. With trembling hands, the scientist folded all the papers with notes in a perfectly flat pile lying in the center of the table and turned to the frightened young man sitting opposite.
- It happened on the 3048 layer 20 years ago. A world with a complete overlap of objective reality, a dull stylization for some classic first-person shooter - banal and dull. The alley turned into a set of blurry textures with low resolution and without any texture, it seemed that you could cut yourself on the corners of the houses. This is a custom made by a rich geek who is fond of antiquity, who pays tribute to the works of the past that have been useless for a long time.
The victim's name was Elron Oaks and he became a part of this alley in the most literal sense - his body was half immersed in the plane of the house - the thigh of his right leg, pelvis, stomach, elbow of his left hand were drowned in the real wall, which was hidden behind the stylized rendering of the layer.
Elron did not say anything, did not react to the speech of others, but actively tried to get out of the topological trap. The most striking thing is that in the zero layer the physical Elron Oaks was already 12 hours dead, like his avatars in the other twenty and a half million public virtual realities. But not in layer 3048.
The professor moved closer to the listener, his hands digging into the armrests of the chair.
- The avatar is a simple shell, nothing more. Yes, it is always synchronized with the user himself, but this is just a visualization adapted for a specific layer, and in the vast majority of layers it is generally the default shell. As soon as the exocortical module, which is responsible for the work of network avatars, stops receiving information from the brain - when a person dies - the avatar simply stops being projected and instead of the layer's avatar, we see a real person. It is part of the foundation of today's multi-layered augmented reality network.
The discovered phenomenon was later called "stratification", and such avatars were immediately called ghosts by the media. For all the time, 8 such incidents were registered. Ghosts were found in completely different layers, disembodied projections did not react in any way to any requests, usually they just stood motionless or moved aimlessly through the streets, and after 20 hours they simply disappeared.
Each layer in which the incident occurred was thoroughly analyzed, but no errors were found, in other words, no one knows why netizens see projections and why the projections themselves have some kind of animations and operate according to an incomprehensible script. In any case, they did not know until today.
- Professor, please, can I just leave? The young man looked towards the closed door and then at the gun on the table next to Lex.
- It is logical to assume, - the scientist began to actively gesticulate, - that these ghosts are a kind of echo of the owner's consciousness. A residual phenomenon that after a while dissolves into the network.
Yes, yes, I remember that all attempts to digitize consciousness failed, but what if in this case the cast is made by chance by the network itself, holding consciousness for 72 thousand seconds. It's not about the network avatar protocol, no. The professor shook his index finger in front of the recording bot. - Every 20 hours, there is a scheduled update of the layer's event logging block, ancient as the network itself, which was needed for debugging in the first versions of the network. This module is almost never used anywhere, but in some layers the developers simply did not disable it.
Lex got up from his chair and began pacing the lab, muttering and staring at his feet.
- But why only 8 incidents in 20 years? If the matter is only in the logging block, then there would be much more cases. And again we were looking in the wrong place! - The recording bot, noticing Lex's voice raising, bounced off the scientist. - We tried to find interconnections between users, the similarity of the layers, where the stratification occurred, but we had to look at the whole picture, at all these micro-events that occur in various modules at the same time - during the user's death. Do you understand? Lex picked up the gun from the table. - This whole complex of events creates a cascading effect. It's just an accident. But! If you put the whole picture together, understand the chronology, then the situation can be reproduced, as well as other problems, such as interruption, due to which they have no response to external stimuli, can be solved. Do you even realize where this can lead us ?!
- Professor, please don't do this! The young man sank into a chair.
The professor stopped and looked at him and then at the pistol.
“Oh, don't worry, there is no longer any need for it. Lex looked at the body behind the ghost and turned to the recording bot. - Run the procedure for updating the layer logging block.
The young man's eyes widened in horror, it was clear that he wanted to say something else, but after a moment he simply disappeared without uttering a sound.
The professor looked at the gun again.
- It will change everything.
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