Do you care?

Since he could recall, adventure tugged at his soul. When he was little, he would often feel as an outsider as he had always chosen nature over technological mini machines parents gave to other kids. It was as if there were secrets out there waiting for him to discover. This last treasure was so forgotten that he had to talk to the eldest in his city only to find a handful of details... whispers, myths, and names of this lost place.

He had lost everything and everyone because of this drive, this new adventure to embark on. The origin of them all. All of those who left him, said it had become an obsession. That madness had not conquered only his mind but also his heart. They didn’t understand why he would lose himself looking at the past when the modern world was filled with everything they needed or wanted. Health, comfort, riches, and peace. But it was as if a fishhook tugged at his heart, and so, he pursued on.

It had been days since he started the journey, when an outline popped in the background, and he knew that it was it. It took a few hours to get to the center of the small town. Forgotten in time, old and pre-technologic. He looked at all the buildings until a small one with a big clock on top of the door stood out. Just as the stories said. 

Upon entering, dust and a musty odor filled his nose. From the entrance he could see the whole inside of the building. What would have been a small reception stood in front of him, to his left what it seemed a small reading space and to his right empty shelves covered in ashes.

“It seems time was cruel to the contents of these shelves” he mused but he knew that this forgotten but mighty place would have not kept history in such a susceptible way.

He walked to the other side of the small reception desk, pulled the broken chair out of its place, and pushed the desk to reveal a mosaic on the floor. A conical structure was portrayed with each level slanted as if to provide a path to get to the top. He was rarely nervous but at this moment his whole body was quivering. He took out of his pocket a necklace with a pendant in form of a feather.

He pressed the feather into the mosaic and waited. For some long seconds there was only silence, enough seconds to make him consider doubting all his efforts, the whispers, and myths. As he was starting to shake, not from nervousness but from frustration, a hiss filled the room and one of the shelves lowered and disappeared. Relief flooded his body, and he stood up and walked over the missing shelve. A whole in the ground revealed steps leading to an underground section of the building. He was shocked to find similar technology as back home, illuminating the stairs. After thinking about it, he convinced himself that indeed this was the start of the civilization they knew, where the modern era began. He turned on his chest camera, the only technological gadget he liked to use, and went down the stairs. The flight of stairs ended and he found himself on a small space with big black double doors at the other side.

He walked towards the doors, planting his feet in front and prepared himself, readying to open them. They were taller than him and seemed to be thick and heavy. After all this trouble, he doubted that this last part was going to be completely easy. He braced himself, extended both of his arms and pushed. Hard.

Next thing he knew, he was stumbling on his feet and fell face first through the doors that in the end weighted nothing. He hit the floor hard and managed to stand up fast and braced himself to see the truth, the cornucopia of knowledge. But there was nothing. He found himself on a small, dark grey, circular room. He reached for his camera to check that the fall hadn’t damaged it when…

“It won’t work here” a voice sounded across all the room.

He spun fast trying to find the source of the voice when it talked again.

“Down here at the center” it said and he shifted his eyesight down to the floor towards the center of the room. From there he could see a mound of black pebbles vibrating and spiking. Slowly it started to grow, getting taller looking like a slender tree, but then it split at the bottom into two, and on top sprouted what resembled to two arms. Lastly a blob formed on top. It was faceless but just for an opening where a mouth should be. He had seen the start of robots back at home but never something so advance, so out of this world.

“Welcome, I’m Terra” the humanoid shape said, “Welcome to the Tower of Babel.”

A grin spread thru his face; he could feel it stretching almost touching his ears.

“I found it?! The start of our modern era!” he almost yelled in victory.

“Ah, yes, the stories. For you I guess it would mean the start of the new era, an advanced modern technological era. Just then be distracted with senseless matters.” Terra said. “No I’m afraid the story has a different ending as well as a different new start”.

The pebbles saw the confusion on his face and chuckled. A hand formed on one of its arms and it touched its chin with two fingers, in a very pensive way. In a most humanoid way.

“Let me explain, better yet, let me show you.”

It clicked its fingers and all the walls turned on; they became big monitors. Images, detached audios, and videos played on all of them. Death was everywhere. He saw bodies of all ages spilled on top of each other, babies, young boys and girls, elderly, of all races and shapes. The only constant a blank look on their faces. He heard explosions, cries, prayers, and songs. There were armed men and women, tanks, war ships, hunger, and desolation.

“I know of war, of both great wars and smaller but still terrible ones” he spatted “You are not explaining anything new. All this information is online.”

“Mmm… Have you ever considered the endless possibilities of influences online information might have sustained?” Terra countered. “For the greater good” he quickly added.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

Terra sighed and looked directly at him.

“This was World War III” Terra said in a matter-of-fact way.

He could have sworn he skipped a heartbeat. “That didn’t happen. The world was united before that.”

“Not quite, keep watching.”

He did so and saw as the images focused on the arm bands on the soldiers, some of them had an earth covered on flames while the others had an earth circled by doves.

“To renew the earth from its ashes against to maintain the world as it already was” explained Terra.

The images moved farther, and he saw modern killing technology, drones, bombs, and a lot of interference on social media. He saw people cracking under so much content and taking matters into their own hands onto schools and movie theaters. Other places getting burned to the ground while its neighbor country died to know what the latest celeb news was. He saw how groups with the right roots but wrong direction, bashed and banged and cried on the media demanding everyone to guess how to properly call them, while other countries couldn’t express true love towards the real loved ones, for fear of being discovered and killed.

He saw how most lost sight of what really mattered while others moved in a cunning and manipulative manner and declared war. Wanting to shape the world as they see fit. But it got out of control. He saw how the world was burning to the ground, how every one was backed into a corner fighting with teeth and claws. How while money and justice was unbalanced (and was the mostly the root of so much pain) self-love and real fullfilment was missing above all.

“Then it was at that point, when other (and more destructive) means where going to be implemented that we interceded” Terra said.

On some point he had fallen to the ground without realizing and had his face streaked with tears.

“Who are you? What are you? Interceded how? This has all to be AI engineered. But artificial intelligence with a capability of masking real life is not reachable yet. You can always tell it’s fake, a creation of an AI.” He said his mind spinning.

“Oh, well we make some of them low quality on purpose… It is best to show you the real world. But we are afraid that it could be too much for you. Although we have been monitoring you and think you are one of the few capable of managing it. In the end all that matters is if you really want to see. So, if you do, close your eyes and we’ll show you. Get you out of this intermediate place.”

There was something telling him that after all this chase he had to see “I can do it” he said and closed his eyes.

It felt as if his whole body spun fast for a twirl or two and then it stopped. He must have been drugged, heavily and transported to a new place. It felt brighter behinds his eyelids. There was a pressure on the back of his head, shoulders, and legs, and when he reached with his hands the surface felt hard, porous, and mildly hot. It had to be some kind of stone, and he was lying on it. Slowly he opened his eyes, starting to get up when a blue shape, appeared hovering on top, looking straight at him. 

“How are you feeling?” it was Terra’s voice. He was not looking at a black face made of pebbles, this face had features. It looked, mostly human but the eyes were wider, bigger, and with gold irises.

His instinct was to push back and by doing so his head hit the stone kind of bed and almost blinded him with pain. Trashing violently, he tried to find something to defend himself from it. He felt some prickling in his neck and found that he felt extremely relaxed.

“You okay?” Terra asked.

“Please don’t hurt me. Who are you!?” He asked.

“Oh heavens, if ever there was one, no. We won't hurt you. And by we, it’s better you watch a bit more” Terra said, gave no more explanation and stood away.

He looked around, this was an identical room as before but instead of being dark grey it was completely white. Soon the walls again were covered with images and footage. A video came into focus, while the other content dimmed down, it was of the fight before the pushing of those life changing buttons, but as they were going to do so a system fail message appeared on the monitors. And pushing the buttons did not start anything. Many monitors with the same message appeared in what he could infer were security rooms all over the world. Then blue faces appeared on them, talking about keeping alive humans, calling themselves The Life Preservers, with the goal to maintain peace across the galaxy. He saw meetings with the beings and high-power humans, how a truce was struck. And how everyone who was left entered a bright lit door, to what was promised was a better future. And that point the screen went blank again.

“What happened through that door?” he asked.

“I’ll show you in a few seconds. But first some human theory review. The human simulation argument. Where it was theorized that as technology was evolving one of three following scenarios would occur: First, that human civilization ceased to exist before reaching the peak of AI and virtual reality. Second, that humans didn’t cease to exist but decide against it. Or lastly, that humans didn’t cease to exist and integrated virtual reality onto their lives and future”.

The only thing that he could muster, between so much confusion and change in conversation was “So?”.

“Humans were never going to reach that point alive.” Terra said. “Not without help.”

In that moment the room was filled with a hissing sound and the walls slowly disappeared revealing a glass wall. He didn’t see anything at first a clear blue sky. He crept closer to the edge and below them hundreds of trees with big pods on them. Small ships with more blue beings were circling around in what it seems inspections of the pods and their content. He squinted closer and almost fainted, humans.

“What did you do?” he asked but felt that already knew the answer.

“Created a better, sustainable and war-free world.” Terra said.

“A virtual world. It’s not real and they don’t know it.” he said.

“Yes, a mix of technology and biology. Hence the trees which maintains alive the bodies and the mind supple without requiring tons of energy. The technology for the construct. A better world than the one they were living on it. And to not tell the reality, was one the terms of the human founding fathers of this new era. What you don’t know, you won’t miss.”

“What do your people get from it?”

At that Terra hesitated and remained silent for some seconds. “At the moment of the treaty we explained that our world and its organic composition was drying up. Thus, besides expanding galaxy wide peace we also needed to replenish our world’s organic mass to ensure our people survival.”

Anger flushed through him “The price was to become fertilizer?!” he yelled turning towards Terra.

“Only when humans naturally die. Humans age in their pods at the same rate as they age in the virtual world. When they die on it, the minds also die and with gracefulness and respect we accept the gifts their passing provides.”

He was numb, this was not the great victory and separation of eras he had expected to uncover. It was not what it was taught. There was only one question burning right through him.

“Why did you show me the truth?” He asked.

“The best way to explain it would be, for quality checks. Another of the human founding father’s terms.” said Terra. “To randomly check if contentment was still thriving inside of the virtual world.”

“Which means?” he asked.

“Just one question to ask. After all you have seen, do you care?” Terra asked.

He stood there, replaying all the footage in his mind, thinking about what he had lived inside the construct and faced the glass again, where he could see the placid faces of many humans.

“No.”