Short story: The G in the V

This is a short story by AI expert Sau Sheong Chang, who imagines a perhaps not-so-distant world where technology lurches into the dystopia.

He felt a bit nervous as they opened the door to let him into the room. It was sparse and functional, as expected. There were just two white sofa chairs facing each other, with a standing lamp not too close but close enough to make out the chairs. A wireless V headset was resting on a small white coffee table, which sat between the chairs. The rest of the room was empty, but that was OK. He wasn’t really going into the room, anyway. He was going into the G.

To see Sunny.

It was the first time since the accident, and he missed her badly.

“Please have a seat,” said his escort politely. “She’ll be here shortly.”

Everything was a blur after the accident, except that she was gone. He went back to work as usual. He continued his projects, closed the deals together with his team, and made his numbers. There were lots to do as always, and work simply numbed his ability to think or feel. For some time afterward, all he could think of was what went on in his life until he met Sunny – his school life, his university days, and landing a job at the investment firm he was with now. And of course, meeting her on the plane when he flew to San Francisco, and the time he spent with her. The smell of her hair, the wrinkled mischievous smile on her face when she pranked him, the wide open mouth and raised eyebrows when he proposed to her.

He blinked in succession and wiped off the tears that started to form. His hands reached out automatically to the V headset on the coffee table. He had never gone into the G before, even though a few years back, he was part of the team that helped the firm to invest in NirvanaAI when it was just a startup.

Everyone went into the V, of course. That’s how most people interacted now for work and study and play. But he didn’t game much in the V – not anymore, anyway. He just couldn’t do racing sims in the V anymore. But the G was different. Technically it’s still part of the V, except there were certain people in the G that you wouldn’t meet elsewhere.

He lifted the headset and settled it comfortably over his head. It felt light and quite premium, almost like he wasn’t really wearing one. He wondered if it was a new model on the market. The room looked exactly like before, of course. The V was often augmented and he expected this situation to be as well. In any case, the environment in the G was supposed to be muted and the focus was speaking to Sunny.

When they told him they were putting Sunny into the G, he was completely stunned. Not that he had much of a say in it, anyway – he was just her boyfriend and her family had made the final decision. But they asked for his memories of his time with her and he didn’t object. He let them take all his memories and more. That was the least he could do for them. And in return, he got to speak to her, one last time.

All those memories trained the Diffusion Persona, a special pre-trained AI model from NirvanaAI. The Diffusion Persona was already trained on the data memories of 2 billion consenting individuals on all the popular social media platforms – all 42 or so zettabytes of data. The model was fine-tuned by another few hundred terabytes of data: the 28 years of Sunny’s short life. That was all that was needed to create the Sunny AI model. The one he was about to speak to.

The G was part of the digital transformation of columbariums. It was shocking and controversial when it was first launched: There were even in-person protests, besides the usual ones in the V. Initially, that is. The experiences and subsequent feedback from the families of the departed made it abundantly clear the G was something that people wanted. And what the people want, the people usually get, especially if they are willing to pay a lot for it. Protests soon faded. Everything was in the V already, anyway, so why not the departed too?

He fidgeted a bit in his seat – it shouldn’t have taken so long. He wondered why. Then the door slowly opened. It didn’t really open of course, he was in the G. Someone stepped into the room.