Bryan: refine category, move article to end of sort key

2007-09-17T06:18:10Z

refine category, move article to end of sort key

← Older revision		Revision as of 01:18, 17 September 2007
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	[[Category:Story]] [[Category:Eirik]] [[Category:Equine]] {{DEFAULTSORT:~~The~~ Trouble with Troubleshooting}}		[[Category:Story]] [[Category:Eirik]] [[Category:Equine]] {{DEFAULTSORT:Trouble with Troubleshooting, The}}
	{{title\|name=The Trouble with Troubleshooting\|user=Eirik\|author=Eirik}}		{{title\|name=The Trouble with Troubleshooting\|user=Eirik\|author=Eirik}}
	Eric pulled up to the building and parked. The building was		Eric pulled up to the building and parked. The building was

Bryan: refine category

2007-09-17T06:17:56Z

refine category

← Older revision		Revision as of 01:17, 17 September 2007
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	[[Category:Story]] [[Category:Eirik]] [[Category:~~Animal~~]] {{DEFAULTSORT:The Trouble with Troubleshooting}}		[[Category:Story]] [[Category:Eirik]] [[Category:Equine]] {{DEFAULTSORT:The Trouble with Troubleshooting}}
	{{title\|name=The Trouble with Troubleshooting\|user=Eirik\|author=Eirik}}		{{title\|name=The Trouble with Troubleshooting\|user=Eirik\|author=Eirik}}
	Eric pulled up to the building and parked. The building was		Eric pulled up to the building and parked. The building was

Eirik: New page: Category:Story Category:Eirik Category:Animal {{DEFAULTSORT:The Trouble with Troubleshooting}} {{title|name=The Trouble with Troubleshooting|user=Eirik|author=Eirik}} Eric pul...

2007-09-10T20:33:40Z

New page: Category:Story Category:Eirik Category:Animal {{DEFAULTSORT:The Trouble with Troubleshooting}} {{title|name=The Trouble with Troubleshooting|user=Eirik|author=Eirik}} Eric pul...

New page

[[Category:Story]] [[Category:Eirik]] [[Category:Animal]] {{DEFAULTSORT:The Trouble with Troubleshooting}}
{{title|name=The Trouble with Troubleshooting|user=Eirik|author=Eirik}}
Eric pulled up to the building and parked. The building was
nondescript enough. The only thing that showed this was the
headquarters of a multi-billion dollar corporation was the simple blue
sign on the northeast corner, Woltech.

Walking though the glass front doors, he stopped at the security
desk. "Can you direct me to Mr. Wollers office?"

The guard glanced at a computer screen, then back up. "You have an
appointment?"

Eric nodded. "Schneider, Eric Schneider."

The guard waved toward a bank of elevators. "Fifth floor."

Eric thanked the man and headed across the lobby. He was anxious to
figure out what this job was all about. It had been the oddest since
he'd struck out on his own with consulting work. The company CEO
himself called, talking fast and buttering him up. They had a problem
with their new project, and had the need for someone with his
talents. He'd heard of how Eric had helped rebuild the database for
their west coast division, and how good the work was. Oh, and he
would be compensated for his services.

And how. If this was all on the level, it would be enough to buy a
house, even ''after'' giving Uncle Sam his cut. All for a couple weeks
work. Eric wasn't sure what was wrong, but it was definitely
important.

The elevator doors opened on a quiet, dimly lit lobby. A
receptionist glanced up from her desk and smiled as he stepped off.
"You must be Mr. Schneider. Mr. Woller is expecting you. Go right
in."

Eric walked in and saw Mr. Woller in person for the first time. He
was a lot shorter than his pictures in the trade magazines implied.
Billions of dollars of personal net worth tended to make people seem
taller. The CEO stood up from his chair and circled the desk. "Mr.
Schneider, how nice to meet you. Have a seat. Can I offer you some
coffee or something?"

"It's Eric, and no thanks." He took the offered chair, though.

"Sandra, hold my calls," he said to the receptionist as she walked
out. He went back to his chair and sat down. "So, Eric, how much do
you know about my company?"

He shrugged. "Not a great deal, to be honest. You make a lot of
good, but niche, computers and electronics. Your bread and butter is
in satellite technology. That's about it."

"You've heard of our virtual reality division, correct?"

Eric nodded. "Sure, who hasn't? Best in the world, but too expensive
for anyone to buy."

Woller smiled. "Of course." He leaned forward. "My company is
working on the most advanced virtual reality environment ever
constructed, something straight out of science fiction. Once you're
immersed in it, you'll never know it's not real. It won't look like
you're trapped in 'Tron' anymore."

Eric smiled a bit skeptically. "Sounds interesting."

The CEO laughed. "I know, I know, it sounds like a grandiose claim.
Believe me, even a couple years ago it was. We've been working on a
whole new type of computer, though. Blows away anything that exists
today." He leaned back in his chair. "We literally download your
mind into the environment, and you interact with others inside the
system. The buildings, trees and even the animals look, feel and
smell real. We've had over a hundred programmers working day and
night on this for two years and have barely scratched the surface."

"You download a mind into the computer?" asked Eric suspiciously.
This sounded like the setup for a bad story. "How does that work?"

Woller waved his hands, "It's complex, believe me. I don't even
understand it all. But we've been doing it with animals for six
months now, partly to see if it was harmful and partly to populate our
virtual world. So far, the ones we've pulled back out are none the
worse for wear. The others we left inside as avatars are
flourishing. We've loaded over seventy different animals so far."

Eric tapped his foot a couple times. "So, why are you talking to me
about all this. It sounds like you've got your own people on top of
things."

Woller shook his head. "I'll level with you, there is something odd
going on inside the environment, but none of my people can put a
finger on it. So far, we've largely programmed one test setting,
called the SMT…"

"SMT?"

"Small Midwestern Town," he explained with a grin. "Flat, a main
street, farms and barns. That kind of thing. Pretty detailed
considering it's a test bed, but dull as dishwater."

Eric nodded. "What kind of problems are you having?"

"The setting doesn't seem completely stable. We've had a problem with
small structures appearing and disappearing. A lot of the plant life
is getting out of hand, particularly the domestic crops we've
programmed in. We return it to the norms, and it won't stay. We
don't understand why."

"Anything else?" asked Eric.

"The oddest thing is that the avatars are breeding."

Eric felt his eyebrows rise. "The computer program is breeding?"

Woller shook his head. "What we've got inside that environment is not
just a series of computer programs. The animals that are inside that
computer are complete templates. Every thought and instinct. Those
animals are alive in there. So we expected, to a degree, that they
would at least attempt to breed. But if what we see is accurate, they
are actually doing it."

Eric frowned. "What kind of animals are in this place?"

"A pretty wide variety, actually," said Woller. "Mostly farm stock,
though. Cows, horses, pigs, chickens, that kind of thing. A few
smaller critters like squirrels and raccoons. Nothing large and
dangerous. No large predators," he added.

Eric began to shake his head. "Exactly what do you want me to do
here, Mr. Woller? I still don't understand what this job is."

Woller leaned back. "We want you to go inside and find out what's
going on."

Eric considered a moment. "Have there been other people who have done
this?"

Woller nodded emphatically. "Oh sure! Six of the programmers have
already gone in and looked around. The problem is that they are too
close to things. They never saw anything go wrong. We think that
it's possible that the computer was using their own knowledge as an
error check while they were in there. Once the programmers were
pulled out, though, things went back to their unstable self."

"You need someone who knows nothing about this to see if the problems
are more than ghosts," said Eric.

He nodded. "Something like that. Can I count you in?"

"I've got some more questions, but I'm interested."

{{Separator|k}}

Eric felt a little disoriented as the lab facility vanished around him
and was replaced by the front steps of a small county courthouse. He
gripped a marble pillar to keep from falling over and looked around.

For a split second, he could almost be convinced that he was really in
a small town. The buildings looked real enough, as did the trees and
the sky. Even the marble under his fingers felt cool and rough as it
should.

But as his mind settled into things, he began to pick out the small
differences between this virtual reality and the true reality. The
colors here were too uniform. He looked at the brickwork that made up
a general store across the street and realized that it seemed as
though a template had been used dozens of times to make the walls.
The same subtle flaws and marks repeated over and over. The clouds,
he saw, were moving slowly across the sky, but too perfectly. They
lacked the randomness of real clouds.

''Damn good start, though,'' he thought. ''If this is a test bed, then I
can't wait to see what they do when its ready for primetime!''

He was struck by the silence, though. No wind, no birds, nothing.
There were, of course, no people sounds. Absolute, total silence. It
seemed like the end of the world.

Eric started down the steps of the building and started to take stock
of things. He'd been given a rundown of what he should expect to see
here. The area had been laid out roughly based on a map of some town
in Kansas. There were a total of fifty buildings in the setting, most
of them here near the courthouse. They and what furnishings had been
programmed in were around 1950's period, though it wasn't a strict
thing. There were no cars or trucks yet, and most of the stores were
just fronts without merchandise.

He turned a corner near a barber shop and stopped at the sight of the
first of the animal avatars, a lone pig rooting through a flowerbed.
The pig stopped only a moment to regard the newcomer, then went back
to digging up roots to eat. As far as Eric could tell, it was no
different than any pig he'd ever seen or heard of, though he'd hardly
made a study of them. The thing even cast a shadow, something he
didn't realize he hadn't expected to see.

He gave the animal a wide berth. There wasn't much point in scaring
it into attacking by getting too close. He had been assured that he
couldn't die inside the computer, that his computer generated body was
indestructible, but they had pointed out that the perception of pain
was still possible.

Eric sighed and checked his watch, or rather the virtual
representation of a watch that his virtual body was wearing. It had
only been a few minutes, and he'd agreed to stay here for five days.

It was going to be a long five days.

{{Separator|k}}

Eric spent most of the first day roaming the buildings in the main
part of the town. For the most part, they looked reasonably well
designed. He was a little put off by some of it, though. He'd never
seen so many famous paintings outside of a museum. It seemed that
someone had scanned a book of the Louvers collection and told the
computer to use that to decorate the walls. The Mona Lisa alone was
hung in five different houses. There were other oddities like that
all over. There were only a few different pieces of furniture, and
the computer was randomly using them in each house and building.
Every book on every shelf, he noted wryly, was in the public domain.

So far, though, it all seemed stable enough. As dull as it all was,
it didn't jump around. Houses weren't appearing in the middle of the
street or anything like that.

He ran into a few more of the avatars as he moved though the town,
too. He caught a glimpse of a chipmunk running across a street and up
a tree, and when he came out of the courthouse after examining it, a
pair of cows were grazing on the lawn. He'd approached them
cautiously, but stayed on the opposite side of the stone wall. He
reached out and touched one on the neck. As far as he could tell,
these cows felt as real as anything else here.

He left the pair and walked down the street to a large house. Just as
he'd been warned, he'd get tired and hungry here as well as in the
real world. Only in the real world his body was being fed through a
tube. Inside the house, he found a kitchen filled with generic soda,
a few cuts of lunch meat and some bags of potato chips.

''Never leave it to an engineer to stock the pantry,'' he noted.

After his dinner, he laid down on the couch in the dimming light of
the virtual sun and slept.

{{Separator|k}}

He was greeted the following morning by the crowing of a rooster.

Grudgingly, Eric slid off the sofa and looked out the window. A
couple of chickens were pecking at the grass, the rooster slowly
circling them. More avatars. He tried to remember how many they had
told him were in here. He seemed to be running into them all the time
since he first got here. Considering they were all supposed to be
confined to the farms, it was a little odd. He sighed and headed out
the door, not feeling like more soda and chips for breakfast. Perhaps
he's find something more interesting on one of the farms.

It was a hike out to the closest farmstead. It had been simulated to
be at least a mile out of town, and the virtual morning sun was a lot
stronger than he liked. Worse, it was a dull walk. The road was a
simple two lane asphalt strip that ran perfectly straight out as far
as the eye could see. The black was almost shiny, like it had been
laid down the day before, but the edges were cracked and broken like
it was old and weathered. Even the pattern of the breaks and cracks
repeated over and over.

The monotony of the walk was shattered by a rumbling whinny from
nearby. Eric glanced up to see a horse standing at the corner of a
fence in a pasture. The dark brown coat was marked only by a nearly
perfect white star between its eyes. He walked over to it and reached
out carefully. "Heya fella," he said gently, "how are you?"

The horse sniffed at his fingers and seemed to accept that Eric wasn't
a demon, allowing him to scratch his neck. "You're a friendly one."
Eric took a good look at the animal, and was again amazed by the
detail of this program. He knew that the horses mind was supposed to
be real, but the body was the product of the programmers, and it was
perfect. It wasn't that this horse was a champion, but he was
properly proportioned and everything seemed to work okay. He was a
bit on the chunky side, but he'd been grazing for months without stop,
so that was to be expected. According to Woller, the computer knew
how to add and subtract weight like that.

Eric started walking down the fence line, the horse in close tow. He
stopped a couple times to pat the horse, but he seemed starved for
attention. Eric felt a little pit in his stomach. This was a real
animal, one that had likely been raised around humans all its life
before being imported into this place and left alone. Eric really
felt sorry for the poor thing.

He reached the end of the fence line, which turned in toward a small
cluster of buildings. Eric turned and started toward the farmhouse,
stopping when he heard a piercing whinny behind him. He turned and
looked at the horse. "I'll be back in a little while. Don't worry."

He turned and started for the house again. This time, rather than a
whinny, he heard the pounding of hooves on the grass. Eric turned and
almost bowled over by the onrushing stallion. He started to step out
of the way, but it proved unnecessary. The horse stopped, waiting to
be scratched a bit more.

Eric reached out uncertainly, but looked back over his shoulder at the
fence. It was a solid, wooden fence without a gate. "How did you get
through there, fella?" asked Eric.

The horse didn't answer. After he was satisfied, he simply trotted
away.

Eric started poking around the farm, the horse nagging at him. How
had he managed to get through that fence? He could have jumped it,
but not from a standstill. He made a mental note to mention this to
the engineers. This had the feel of a bug.

Eric walked to the side of the barn and found the vegetable patch.
Rows and rows of carrots, cabbage and other crops were neatly lined up
neatly. A couple of horses, a donkey and a cow were scattered
through the vegetables, eating to their hearts content. It seemed
that all of the animals were out of their pens, though without any
caretakers, that was for the best anyway.

The animals ignored him as he made a wide circle around the patch. He
was about to round the corner near the carrots when something struck
him as odd. The vegetable patch wasn't right. He looked at the
house, then the barn, then the patch again. It was pretty clear that
the engineers had set this up to be symmetrical. The patch was
supposed to fit neatly into the rectangle formed by the house and
barn, then bordered by a couple of pasture fences. The pasture fences
were gone, though, and the vegetable crop was spread far past their
old lines. Another glitch.

Eric walked back toward the barn and poked his head in. Here he found
a couple more donkeys and five horses eating from their feed bins.
The stall doors were all wide open, as were the barn doors. He walked
down the line of stalls, getting stares from some of the equines and
ignored by others. All of the stalls looked well lived used, but
someone had been mucking them out. None of them had anything close to
six months worth of dung covering them, yet the animals were using
them. The straw in most even looked fresh and clean. More than that,
the feed bins were perpetually full. The engineers had told him that
nothing was automated here, at least not yet. The animals were just
expected to graze until that could be done. So what the hell was
going on?

In one of the stalls, he saw one of the foals that Woller had
mentioned. The mare was eating quietly, though watching Eric with a
wary eye. The foal was laying in the straw, sleeping. It was cute as
could be, and again perfect, but definitely made no sense. The
programmers had assured him that they had never even told to computer
what an infant animals looked like, yet something had created this
thing. In fact, the engineers had begun to suspect that their
readings of these foals and calves were spurious readings. This was
the cutest spurious reading he'd ever seen, though.

Eric walked out of the barn and looked out across the wheat field. He
shook his head a little to clear his thoughts. The first day he'd
walked all over the town and seen nothing out of the ordinary, save
for the occasional animal wandering around. The buildings, the
furnishings, everything. It was all as normal as a virtual place
could be. The only mistakes and glitches were here on the farm.

Eric glanced up to see a bull moving slowly, but deliberately, toward
the wheat field. He didn't slow as he came toward the heavy wooden
fence and Eric waited for the distant collision.

The fence vanished as the bull passed through, then reappeared.

As the bull started to graze on the wheat, Eric stood shocked. The
avatars had control! Somehow, the animals could modify this place!

The thought had barely crossed his mind when he heard a snort behind
him. He turned and barely registered the presence of the business end
of a large donkey when the world was hurled into darkness.

{{Separator|k}}

"It's my turn, and you know it," said a gruff voice.

"You damned equines all stick together," shot back a high pitched
voice. "Fine, but I get the next one."

Eric slowly opened his eyes and tried to clear his double vision. The
horde of animals slowly turned into one of half the number. Equines,
cows, chickens, pigs and a host of others were crowded around him. He
tried not to move, but a chicken spoke up, "He's awake."

A horse stepped forward. "Sorry for the rough treatment, but we
couldn't have you running off and warning the engineers," he said.

"What's going on?" asked Eric. "How could you be talking?"

There were chuckles through the animals. "We do a lot more than that,
Eric. Much more."

"How did you know my…" his voice trailed off as things clicked
together. "Oh my God, you have access to the program. You're
sentient."

The horse perked up his ears. "I'm impressed. The last couple of
humans that came in here didn't believe it, right to the end." He
flashed a toothy grin. "You see, the programmers designed this place
to cut off humans from the program from inside. No one thought about
the animals. We've learned. We have total control."

"It was only a few days before we were thinking, planning, plotting,"
said a sow. "We're all determined to get out of here."

Eric shook his head. "You can't get out. They removed your bodies…"

"We were just animals, after all," finished the horse. "I wouldn't
worry. We're implementing phase one right now. We'll get the bodies
we want, eventually. For now, yours will do. Step up!"

Eric tried to say something, but felt his body go limp. A donkey
stepped from the crowd of animals. "I'm here."

"You'll take this humans form. You know your assignment." He turned
toward the human. "Don't worry. None of the others felt any pain."

Eric tried to protest, but his world went dark.

{{Separator|k}}

He was in a pasture.

For a moment, he was aware of some greater presence, the vast database
of the computer. Just as suddenly, he felt himself cut off from
that. The animals weren't going to allow him to gain control. Ever.

Fleetingly, he was aware of his memories vanishing, one by one. He
struggled to hang onto a few of them, but they were snatched away and
forgotten.

It wasn't long before the sweet smell of the grass took over his
thoughts, and only a donkey remained.

{{Separator|k}}

"How was it in there?" asked Woller.

"I couldn't believe it, it was incredible. But there were some
problems."

"What kind of problems?"

The former donkey smiled. "Hard to describe, but we'll need a few
engineers to come in and take a look."

User:Eirik/The Trouble with Troubleshooting - Revision history

Bryan: refine category, move article to end of sort key

Bryan: refine category

Eirik: New page: Category:Story Category:Eirik Category:Animal {{DEFAULTSORT:The Trouble with Troubleshooting}} {{title|name=The Trouble with Troubleshooting|user=Eirik|author=Eirik}} Eric pul...