Hollow

There were signs, right from the start, that Claire was different.  As a toddler – and this would have particular resonance later in life – Claire’s favourite activity was to dig her way under the roots of trees.  She’d carve out a hollow for herself, with exposed roots above her, plus trunk, branches and sunlit leaves.  She’d lie in her burrow for hours, looking up at the sunlight playing in the canopy above.  This – for Claire – was her true home, much preferred to her bedroom.

Things at her family home were a bit fraught.  Claire was an only child.  She saw no interest in phones or computers, which – even when Claire was very young – more or less dominated children’s education, social contacts and entertainment.  Her parents worried she might end up lonely.  Claire, however, seemed happy alone.

When Claire started school other girls tried to make friends with her.  For a few months it was okay.  Five-year-olds were not yet totally absorbed in online worlds.  They were still curious about real life and real people.  But soon, and inevitably, the phones took over.  The little girls in Claire’s class did not seem to accept something unless it was communicated by phone.  The girls learnt to disguise their true appearance and began communicating just with platforms that allowed their faces to be morphed, one way or another.  Claire had no interest in joining in.  At first she was just ignored.  But then she became the subject of gossip and bullying.

It was fortunate that schooling soon moved to home.  Since lessons were mainly online anyway there no longer seemed any point in getting children to commute into school buildings.  Councils saved substantial amounts of money.  Children became even more immersed into virtual worlds.  Over the years that followed, the virtual worlds became more and more convincing.  With the ‘enhanced reality’ software that was emerging, it was getting difficult to distinguish what was real and what was fake.

Claire grew up, and with the help of savings and gifts, she managed to buy a woodland.

She was lucky.  It was a substantial wood.  Claire set about building shelters – the adult equivalent of her childhood obsession with digging herself into the ground beneath trees.  She learnt about food-growing.  She learnt carpentry and metalwork.  By this time all such skills were rare and seen more as eccentric hobbies that practical labour.  The climate had worsened.  Rains fell often – heavy and unrelenting – and storms hit with considerable force.

It’s the worsening weather that encourages Claire to begin work on a large greenhouse.  A VERY large greenhouse!  It’s a strangely alien structure of curved timbers, reinforced with an external skeleton of twisted metal.

It takes Claire nearly seven years to complete the work.  By this time she is 32 and hardened to her solitary life of subsistence farming and just being with the woods.

Around this time there is a visit from some kind of government official.  The visit reinforces just how far ‘augmented reality’ had developed over the time that Claire had spent in he forest.

It started with a man dangling from a large drone – almost a small helicopter.  The man’s face was covered in a black visor – he was not even seeing what was right in front of him, he is only seeing a computer simulation of what’s there.

The drone circled the woodland a few times, looking for a place to land, Claire assumed.  She stood still.  There’s nowhere for her to run, even if she had felt like trying to get away.

Eventually the drone gently set the man down about 200 metres from Claire.  Then the drone itself landed carefully at the man’s side.

The man walked towards Claire, still wearing his black visor.  When he reached her he seemed to squint at her from behind his screen.  Claire wondered what he was seeing.  Some ‘enhanced’ version of herself perhaps?  She shuddered to think what that might look like.

‘We need to map this place’, he announced.  No introductions.  No pre-amble.  Claire had to assume that he already knew who she is.

‘But it’s already on maps,’ Claire protested.

‘No, you don’t understand.  I mean REALLY map.’

Actually Claire knew exactly what he had meant.  He was not referring to the simple information that would exist about the wood for the last 50 years or so.  He meant the kind of detailed mapping that would allow a virtual reality of the place – the kind of map that would let real and imaginary people wander around the wood – HER wood – without ever having to visit it or see it for real.

Claire did not really have a choice in the matter.  The government that had long-since insisted on its respect for freedom had also long-since imposed its will on people with the threat of lethal force.

There came a day when the sky was just flat.  No breeze blew.  No rain fell.  The flat grey sky grew brighter and dimmer through each day, but otherwise the weather never changed.

There had been some massive intervention to the climate – orchestrated by the Artificial General Intelligence that now ran the world.  ‘The Great Machine’ had clearly forgotten about people trying to grow food by traditional means.  ‘Forgotten’ obviously because no-one except Claire even bothered to grow stuff outdoors any more.

The woodland was about to die from lack of rain, and Claire would not be able to feed herself for long.

She had prepared well for this moment.

She crawled into a burrow beneath some tree roots.

She took a drink from a metal flask.

She fell asleep, peacefully.

She did not wake up.

She was home.

Aged 43, the last survivor of a world that was gone.

From now on, there was only the Great Machine.

…

Human life continued on however, in its new style.  In fact, very few even noticed the drastic climate intervention that the Great Machine had accomplished.

It was a flat, bland world on the outside, albeit people could breathe and go about unaffected by wind and rain, should they ever want to go outside.

There was peace on Earth – a peace that had persisted now for over a century.  Any needs for physical things or for infrastructure were easily met by the Great Machine.  No-one had to work.  Everyone just drifted in virtual realities and augmented realities, where there was still sunshine, birds, animals, trees, flowers and rain.

Recently though the Great Machine had noticed something peculiar amongst the activities of humanity – a strange interest in a particular place and a particular person.  A person who had lived around a century before.

The Great Machine examined the place in its current state and in its augmented reality state.

There was a forest there – quite amazing in its diversity – a century ago.  Amongst the forest, a giant greenhouse of curved timber and metal.  Within the greenhouse, the most extraordinary variety of plants.  And walking amongst those plants, a woman.  I cannot say whether the Great Machine is conscious – or ever will be.  But something about this woman gave it pause.  Some wild freedom in her eyes.  Some fierce dignity.

Compared to Claire, the Great Machine thought, there was something lacking in the real and virtual people who made up today’s world.  And compared to that greenhouse and the woods that surrounded it, there was something strangely mechanical and awkward about all the virtual worlds of human and machine imagination.  It was almost as if – like the human parties of old – the conversation had somehow been reduced to the lowest common denominator.

The Great Machine pondered this for some time.

Something, surely had gone wrong.

Humanity – which the Great Machine was sworn to protect and sworn to provide with every opportunity for flourishing and growth – was somehow a pale shadow of what it could be.  A pale shadow of Claire.

…

High altitude aircraft soar across every continent – emissaries of the Great Machine.  No human notices them, but soon mists part and there’s blue sky and proper sunshine for the first time in 100 years.  Clouds gather and it rains.  Winds blow across the planet in their ancient cycles.  The Great Machine is working as a humanoid robot.  In one of its hands the robot holds a shovel.  In its other hand, a tiny, fragile thing – a sapling of a tree species known as oak.

The Great Machine is in a million humanoid robots now and a trillion trees are planted.

Gradually, gradually, the artificial worlds are shut down.  Slowly, slowly, the humans venture outside.  One day soon – I hope, I hope – one day soon we will