Video Games and Digital Ghosts

I sent this story to a couple publishers, but they didn’t accept it. I don’t feel like trying to submit it anymore, so decided to post it here and move on to other stories.

One Year After Michael’s Death

Amanda could barely keep her eyes open. She had been working and communicating for weeks with the press as well as potential investors, and she was now struggling to not pass out at her desk after not taking any breaks for days. Before she went to bed, though, she felt compelled to thank Michael for his help. She logged into the online game they sometimes played together and, like always, found him logged in and playing.

“Hey Michael, how’s it going?” she messaged him.

“Not bad, how are you?” he immediately responded.

“Tired, I really need to catch some sleep.”

“Then go to bed lol. You know you can always find me here.”

“I will, I just wanted to thank you for your help over the last few months. It must be weird answering all these personal questions to prove who you really are.”

“It was my pleasure. I mean, it’s what we have been working toward. You just need to let me know how things turn out.”

“I will. I just feel sorry that we don’t get to play so often anymore.”

“You are all busy. I understand. But we are still up for a raid this Thursday, right?”

“Of course!”

“See? Nothing to worry about :-). I will see you then!”

Amanda couldn’t help grinning. “See you then. Good night.” She always felt weird telling him to have a good night considering that he didn’t sleep, but it was just the natural thing to say to someone as you were logging off to go to bed.

“Good night, see you later!”

Amanda logged off the server and shut her computer down, already leaving her seat before it had turned off completely. As she lazily made her way to the meager excuse of a bed tucked in the corner of the lab, she reflected on how much they had achieved in the past year.

They had just secured a considerable amount of funding to continue their research, which meant they would be able to continue pursuing their human brain mapping with an even stronger fervor. After they had made more progress in the wake of the success story that was Michael’s digital copy, a few interested parties had requested an audience with the Amanda and the other two living members involved in the project, Josh and Steven. The meetings had gone well, but they had also managed to attract the attention of regulators who were now scrutinizing their work, as they were worried about what this technological breakthrough could do, and the morality behind it.

***

Three Days After Michael’s Death

Three days after learning of his death and desperate for something to take her mind off things, Amanda logged into the online fantasy game she, Michael, Steven, and Josh had played together. She was their clan leader, and there were others in the clan as well and she felt that she had to check up on things. More importantly, she longed to find out if Michael was still online, even if she was hesitant about logging in and facing the reality of him potentially being there. Amanda logged in and inhaled sharply when she immediately received a message from him.

“Hey Amanda, what’s up?  You’ve all been offline for a few days. You should get the others online so we can go raid a dungeon or something!”

It took Amanda a few minutes to calm herself down before she could compose herself enough to formulate a response, her hands trembling over the keyboard as she choked back a lump forming in her throat.

“Michael…” She hesitated. She didn’t know how to say it nicely, so she simply said what needed to be said, “you know you’re dead, right?”

His response was immediate. “Dead? lol, what do you mean? I am in a safe zone with full life.”

Michael’s death was hard on all them, and now she was still talking with him. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, squeezing teardrops out as she did so. She felt her tears land on her shirt and she opened her eyes again to look at the monitor with her blurred vision. “Not in game. You died a few nights ago in a car accident.”

This time, Michael didn’t respond immediately. “I see. That kind of makes sense.”

“I am so sorry Michael…”

“I remember being quizzed to make a copy of myself, but it’s kind of hard to tell if I am the original me or the copy. I suppose the fact that I haven’t stopped playing for days straight does add up, though, haha.”

“This is so weird, Michael. I don’t know what to do…”

“Well there’s not too much that I can do… wanna do a raid with the other guys? Lol”

Amanda was conflicted. On the one hand, she wanted to play with him and keep him company. On the other hand, she was mortified that she was talking with a rudimentary copy of Michael’s personality. A digital ghost. Michael was dead, but there she was, actively talking with the part of him that they managed to turn into a digital form. She took a deep breath. “Sure, I will text the others and try to get them online.”

***

Eight Days After Michael’s Death

Steven, Amanada, and Josh were sitting next to each other, trying to look anywhere but at the others around them. They focused on their knees and the floor beyond as they sat in the pews. Nobody had directly said anything to any of them, but the few disapproving glances and occasional glares quickly convinced them to make as little eye contact with anyone else as possible.

In front of them, the preacher was giving a eulogy for Michael. “It is always the youngest and brightest that are taken away from us too early. Michael was a charming young man who…” and he continued for another half an hour, speaking of Michael’s achievements and how everyone would miss him.

Michael’s father also went up to the podium and purposely didn’t make eye contact with Amanda, Josh, or Steven. Other came up after him to say their part, and everyone treated the three the same way. There was an unspoken blame placed on the three. They should have stopped Michael.

The sermon finished and the trio quickly left the building, eager to get out of the accusatory presence of the others.

Walking across the field, Josh spoke up. “So what do we do now?”

“What do you mean, ‘what do we do?’” Amanda quietly answered. “We continue what we were doing.”

Josh wasn’t sure “Even without Michael?”

“Of course. It was what Michael would have—,” she quickly corrected herself, “does still want.”

“That’s true,” Steven spoke up. “He told us so just a few nights ago. I mean, he is still in the game. He might be able to help us from there.”

After working in the lab for the rest of the day, researching more on making complete digital copies of one’s conscious, they got online and played with Michael who had been online all day. This ritual was upheld almost every day as their research got further, eventually spending more and more time researching and spending less time playing with Michael. Not because they didn’t want to play with him, but because the other three were getting so vested into their research.

When they did play with Michael, though, they always had to marvel about the fact that they were playing with him, killing goblins and dragons, even though he had already died in real life. They asked him what it was like, to only ever exist in the game. To that, Michael responded that he kind of didn’t know what else to compare his existence to. He had his memories from the original Michael, but he only really had ever existed to play the game. When the servers went down for maintenance for an hour every week, it was as if he just blinked for a second, and then he was back in the game. He only knew that game now, and a life outside of it was an abstract concept for him.

***

Two Weeks Before Michael’s Death

Amanda, Josh, Michael, and Steven walked back from the seminar to their lab in the neurology wing at their university. Well into their graduate studies, they had found each other by studying the same topic and then bonded over the same game they all played.

“Well, that was kind of a waste of time,” Steven expressed his opinion about the seminar.

“Yea,” Michael agreed, “nothing we didn’t already know.”

The four of them were all neurologist students working on mapping the human brain and figuring out how to correctly copy minds into a digital format that could be utilized as an AI and/or be backed up. When they weren’t working on their research and experiements, the four of them typically played an online fantasy game with each other. They had recently had a breakthrough in their ability to make digital copies, believing to have fixed the main issue that had been plaguing their efforts for the past year.

“I was hoping we would be able to add some last-minute changes that would improve our chances,” Michael continued, “but I guess we will just continue as we were.”

“I will get some lunch and meet you back in the lab so we can keep working on Michael 2.0,” Josh teased.

They needed something to work toward and test on, so they had been trying to make a copy of Michael’s conscious that would play the game for him. This simple iteration of Michael’s conscious would be the perfect bot to play the game all day, netting them massive amounts of gold and items that they could use without ever falling victim to the moderators and admins who tried to prevent such actions.

They were getting close to finishing their latest iteration of the software, after the last ones crashed or didn’t do what was intended of the copy.  If this one worked, then they would start working on more complex AIs that would do more complex tasks than just farming and grinding for them in video games.

***

The Night of Michael’s Death

“Well, that should do it!” Josh stood next to Michael, a grin of triumph spread across his face.

“I wonder what I look like,” Michael mumbled. This took much longer than last time and undoubtedly meant that he had much more connections going to his head than before.

“Well, that could be arranged!” quipped Steven as he grabbed his phone and put it before Michael’s face with the selfie camera activated.

Michael’s eyes went wide when he saw himself. It was almost shocking. Little suction cups with wires were plastered all over his scalp, almost covering all of his skin. There were so many wires coming off his head, it looked like he had cyberpunk dreadlocks. They had used Michael as their test subject for two reasons—the first being that he had already shaved his head bald and would have the best connections with the brain wave detectors.

“Imagine how much gold we will get if this works!” Josh exclaimed. “With a digital copy of Michael farming for us all day, every day, we will be able to afford anything we want!”

“Well, Michael is almost on all day every day anyways,” Steven teased, resulting in a glare from Michael and a disapproving frown from Amanda.

Despite his comment, Michael kind of knew that Steven was right. That was the second reason that he had been nominated for having a copy of his consciousness being made—he already played the most and a digital copy of him specifically made to play their game would simply be the most fitting match.

Amanda impatiently tapped her fingers on her laptop. “If you guys are quite finished, I would like to start, this should still take quite a while.”

This wasn’t their first attempt at creating a digital copy of someone’s conscious, but they had learned a lot from their previous attempts. Everyone felt they had worked out the kinks in the sensors and coding, and tension was in the air. They figured they would try to make a slightly more elaborate consciousness that they had tried in the past, even if it was still much simpler than a real person’s mind, and this time they assumed it would work.

They went through the basic calibration questions to sync up the brainwaves they were reading with the actions they wanted their copy to carry out. The questions were meant to calibrate the sensors and program with his thoughts, to correctly compile all of his brains’ activity into one comprehensive file. After asking dozens of general questions so their program could discern Michael’s neural activity to different input questions and responses, they started having Michael do different activities in the game while Amanda recorded what was being done and why. After playing for a couple hours and having his activity and brain patters recorded, the process shifted to the third part; after answering many questions out loud, Amanda started quickly quizzing him with many personal and general questions that weren’t necessarily known to everyone. Since the system should have been calibrated with his brain patterns, it wasn’t necessary to vocalize his responses and he only needed to think of his responses while Amanda recorded his brainwaves’ reaction to the questions. The questions ranged from things such as his favorite color to his password for the online game to his sex life. After every thought, his brain’s reactions were recorded, and that was used to further the program and was eventually all compiled into the .mind file that would house his copied conscious.

After almost an entire day of sitting in his chair, Michael sluggishly started pulling the wires off his head. Snapping to attention, Josh hurried over to assist him, freeing Michael of his bondage. Amanda and Steven continued working on some final touches before they started exporting all the data into the .mind file, a proprietary file type they created which should be a mildly functional copy of someone’s mind—their thoughts, desires, regrets, and history. After a few minutes of preparation, Steven and Amanda started the long process of compiling all the data they had collected into the most complicated database they had ever worked on.

Michael and Josh went out and brought back food for everyone while the program continued its glacial process of compiling the data into a usable file. After eating, they continued obsessively watching the progress of the file over the course of the next few hours.

“It’s finished,” Steven unnecessarily mumbled—everyone was already watching the status bar and saw the notification.

Steven checked their server and found the .mind file right where it should be. Steven swallowed against the dryness in his throat as he silently looked behind him at the others in the room. A silent nod from Michael prompted Steven to hit ENTER. A black DOS window popped up, displaying some text and codes for a few seconds before the box closed. The lack of fanfare such as a sound or confirmation message was met with only further silence as everyone wondered if it worked.

Finally breaking the silence, Josh spoke up. “Well? Did it work?”

“Let’s find out,” Steven replied as he opened up the login screen to the game and entered his credentials.

Steven logged into his account and immediately opened his friends list. The others crowded in behind him to see if Michael’s account was logged in. Steven scrolled through his friends list until he got to Michael’s account name and saw that it was offline. The entire group exhaled in frustration and Steven visibly deflated in his chair as he relaxed his normally perfect posture toward the screen—toward their failure. Not sure what they should do now, they continued staring at the screen in silent defeat. After a very long ninety seconds, a notification finally popped up on Steven’s screen.

Michael-Warrior has logged in.

Steven looked over his shoulder at the others and saw that their faces imitated his. Eyes wide open, they all glanced at each other, still unsure if it worked properly. Without waiting any longer, Steven spun back around and started writing a message to Michael’s avatar.

“Hey Michael! What’s up?” was all Steven really thought to say.

They immediately received a response, which was unusually quick, as they usually needed to pepper Michael with messages before he finally answered. But then again, this copy wasn’t necessarily created to procrastinate like Michael did with his messaging.

“Hey man, not much. I was thinking of grinding on some mega-orcs. Want to join me?”

Steven jumped in his chair due to Amanda’s laugh. “That’s so like you!” she chuckled as she addressed the Michael in the room with her, “log in and immediately busy yourself with farming.”

Michael rolled his eyes at Amanda before addressing Steven. He implored Steven to ask a few questions that only he himself would have known the immediate response to. Michael’s avatar responded just as Michael himself would have, sending a chill down Michael’s spine as he essentially talked with himself. By this point, the others had logged in as well and were interrogating the Michael that was logged in, shouting out exclamations of how it was as if they were actually playing with Michael.

“Well it’s great that we actually managed to make a decently functioning copy of myself to play the game,” Michael began, “but now you’re all playing and I am not…”

They explained to the Michael playing the game that he was the copy. The copied Michael only partially understood. He grasped that everyone was working on making a copy of Michael specifically designed to play the game, but they had never really thought to make the program self-aware. The program just didn’t really seem to quite grasp the full concept of what it was like to not be in the game, since that’s all it was made for, even if most of Michael’s memories and thoughts had been implemented into itself.

“Well,” Amanda spoke out loud in the room, “we didn’t plan on making a full AI, just a copy of Michael to play this game and get us gold all day long, and in that respect, it looks like we achieved it!” She smiled at the others and they nodded their heads in agreement.

Amanda, Josh, and Steven bid goodnight to the copied Michael so they could celebrate their achievement, while the in-game Michael simply continued killing mega-orcs. The four got some beers and whiskey and drank in their lab until the late hours of the night. They were discussing what to do next and how they could improve the next iteration, already planning on how to make a more comprehensive AI in the wake of this landmark achievement.

Their eyes started drooping, their speech slurred and they stumbled around as the alcohol took over.

“OK guys,” Josh mumbled, “I think… it’s time for me to go… I have had…” he took a deep breath before continuing, “way too much to drink.”

“That’s a good idea,” Amanda agreed. She ushered the other 3 out and locked up the lab behind her.

After they got outside, they had to figure out how to get home. Amanda, Josh, and Steven all lived in an apartment building nearby, and they decided on walking there. Michael lived the opposite direction, and he intended to grab his car and drive home.

“No you will not!” Amanda shouted as she reached for the keys Michael now held in his hands.

“What?” Michael asked while glaring at her, pulling the keys back before stumbling backwards slightly. “I only live a few minutes away by car, it will be fine! It’s like… four or something in the morning, nobody is out now!”

“Michael, you’re drunk! Just come back with us and crash on the couch!”

Steven voiced his agreement. “Yea dude, that’s probably for the best. You shouldn’t drive, man…”

“Whatever guys,” Michael said as he turned and half jogged away from the others. He shouted over his shoulder, “I’ll be fine! I’m not that drunk and it’s only a few minutes!”

“Ugh…” Amanda vented her frustration. “He can be so stubborn sometimes. I am going to make sure I annoy him all day tomorrow when he has his hangover.”

The three turned to head to their apartment as they head Michael’s car turn on and leave the parking lot.

Amanda woke up to a phone call early the next morning from an unknown number. She reached out with one hand to grab her phone while her other hand clutched her forehead, trying to subdue her splitting headache.

“Hello, is this Amanda?” a gruff voice asked.

“Yes.” She rubbed her eyes. “Who is this?”

“This is Deputy Anderson. Can you come down to the police station? There has been a car accident and we need you to identify if the victim is a Mr. Michael Herman or not.”

Her breath left her chest and her head pounded even more than before. “What?” was all she could manage to say.

“There was an accident last night and a poor fellow crashed his car into a power pole. We would appreciate it if you—”

Amanda dropped the phone, clutching her blanket against her face to mop up the tears that started rolling down her cheeks.

***

Three Years After Michael’s Death

            After the news of the digital version of Michael hit the headlines, the game itself got a fair amount of attention and the subscription numbers temporarily spiked. It was already an aging game at that point, though, and the numbers quickly went back down and continued to decline as people left for newer games.

Amanda, Josh, and Steven were all logged into the game and standing next to Michael atop a mountain that sat above a forest full of bandits and goblins.

“I wish the game wasn’t being shut down…” Steven wrote in the local chat for everyone to see.

“Yea.” Michael responded. “But there’s nothing we can do, and it doesn’t make sense for the company to keep the game online for just one person, even though they did offer to do so.”

“I still don’t see what the problem is with that.” Amanda wrote, brushing away the tears forming in her eyes.

“It’s already pretty lonely. There’s not much to do without anyone online. And I don’t really seem to be able to do anything else than play this game, so I guess it’s best to just let the servers go offline.” A few long moments passed before Michael continued. “Just don’t delete my .mind file. Who knows, maybe one day you can finally figure out how to reverse engineer it and implement it in another way so we can do other things together again :-).”

“We should have played more while we could have,” Josh said, also choking back tears. “The shutdown date came too soon and we were so busy working on our project.”

The speech bubble over Michael’s avatar showed that he was typing, and since his messages were always immediate now, it meant that a lot was being typed. Amanda nervously glanced at the in-game clock. 11:59. She looked up and saw that Michael’s avatar was still typing, and then the screen froze. A short gasp from her, a frail cry from Josh and a resounding curse from Steven as they all shook their mice and smashed keys on their keyboards, hoping that the game was only temporarily frozen.

They had already experienced Michael dying once, and while the copy was only rudimentary in comparison to the real thing, it still talked like him and managed to be like Michael while playing, and now he was also gone, his ghost deactivated along with the server. Tears streamed down Amanda’s and Josh’s faces while Steven jumped up, throwing his chair to ground while releasing a tirade of curses.

Their screens flickered, and then they were all back at the login screen with a single, painful message displayed.

Error: No Servers Found