Delta Heart

The world is a desert. The end of humanity is nigh, but what’s left survives because it is cared for by Mother.

Delta lived in one of the last few cities left. Neocosta city was under a sun shield that regulated shade and collected ambient water. Humidity was always high in the costal city, but it never rained. The Motherboard A.I. operated all of society and it ran what remained of civilization dutifully. It was school, the place you went to hang out with friends, the source of all human knowledge, the last digital connection to the remaining far off cities and one could even talk to those who uploaded long ago. Uploading, as it was known were people who left their bodies behind to live in Heaven, a program designed by Motherboard’s A.I. to allow a copy of the human mind to exist in an unlimited digital space. Mother, as it was known, attended to every need of what remained of humanity including the afterlife.

It was almost sunrise when Delta left her six hour work shift, but as the doors to the hydroponic farm opened, she was awash in hot, wet air. It stunk of pennies and algae wafting from the nearby ocean. The Mother’s Helpers, or MHs for short, zoomed above the streets on their magnetic tracks, shape shifting robots with lights in their bellies blinking yellow indicating that there was a high heat stroke risk, which was every night for the last few years. Delta worked at the underground hydroponic farm. Mother did most of the work, but it was necessary for people to monitor for the things the AI couldn’t do, which wasn’t much, usually just picking out a slightly wilted leaf of lettuce before delivery. She made her way through the empty streets, occasionally passing an MH or a sweaty person walking briskly to get inside. Most of the buildings were cracked from the heat and nothing stood above three stories except for the Upload Center. It towered through the center of the funnel shaped sun shield like a giant silver thorn piercing the cloudless sky. It was an unusual building, made by MHs, but the knowledge of those who had uploaded before had influenced the design of the building to be welcoming and accommodating to human needs. Mason, Delta’s grandfather, once told her there used to be great glass skyscrapers that stood a hundred floors high. Delta couldn’t imagine how they could withstand the sandstorms or keep from cooking the people inside from the heat, but the sims she played in Motherboard’s gamescape gave her an idea of what they might have been like.

Delta noticed the front door of her house was open as she rounded the corner of her street, a major taboo due to the heat risk. The house was white and blocky, with only two stories above ground, but had three floors below ground where they spent most of their time. A girl was standing in the doorway, clearly keeping watch for Delta. As Delta approached, she could see it was Fatima, one of the children assigned to her group house. As soon as she saw Delta, she ran inside to alert one of the adults. Delta, like most people, lived in a group family. Her family had eighteen people in total; twelve children and six adults including herself. When Delta was a baby, it was announced that the world was going to heat up beyond the ability to sustain human life within the next five years. It triggered a mass exodus from reality, people like Delta’s parents chose to leave their bodies behind to live in Heaven instead. When everyone uploaded it relieved the strain on the planet and extended the remaining time for those in reality to thirty years. Delta, like most young children couldn’t be uploaded. It was speculated that Mother either had no use for young minds or wouldn’t upload anyone who had too much hesitation about being uploaded. Many people were rejected from upload without explanation. Mother’s solution was to place the children in carefully screened group families and have MHs monitor and assist with child care. Mason always hated Mother, so like most of the adults who stayed, he chose to be finite, the term used for those who would never upload. He raised Delta with love and kindness along with several other kids, most of whom had uploaded by adulthood. Delta still visited and hung out with them in the digital space as well her parents and considered that once Mason had died, she might upload as well, but she hadn’t made up her mind yet.

Fatima came running out of the house towards Delta after a minute. “Hurry! It’s time. He’s been asking for you.”

Delta’s heart fluttered with panic and she raced for the house, pushing past the family to Mason’s bedside. He seemed much more vibrant, like he had months left when she left for work, but now the cancer was taking him quickly. He looked frail and lethargic under all the medical tubes. His walls were the only walls in the house without holoscreens to light his room so the light from a single table lamp cast deep, ominous shadows on his sunken features.

He wheezed weakly. “I’d like to speak to Delta alone, please.” The family left quietly. Delta gripped his cold yellowed hand as if she were holding his spirit to his body.

“My little Delta heart.” His breathing labored and weak. “I wasn’t going to tell you… but I-I know now that was wrong.”

Delta was crying. “What Papa?”

Mason motioned to his bedside drawer. Delta opened the drawer and found an envelope with her name on it.

“This letter explains everything. Just know that I love you very much. I have many regrets, but staying to watch you grow up was never one of them.” Mason’s eyes were slipping and his voice lowered to a whisper as he started to sing the bedtime song he used to sing to her as a girl. “I love you, my little Delta heart… Don’t be so blue… your… dream… is… about… to…sta-” Mason’s heart monitor beeped for a few more hours, and though Delta waited by his side hoping, he never woke up.

The funeral was the next evening. Most of the attendees had uploaded already, a row of MH drones projected the hundreds of uploaders behind the sixty or so physical mourners. The white funeral space in the Upload Center had benches that encircled the center viewing altar on which Mason’s body lie. His white hair was combed back and he was dressed in white in a way that seemed peaceful, but so unlike him. His features seemed so sunken and gaunt that he didn’t even look like the man he was in life. The family was crying, but most of the uploaders stood silently and somberly like mournful ghosts. Lana, Delta’s mother, Mason’s daughter stood up to say a few words.

“My father Mason was a good man, a genius, and a philosopher who loved life. I will miss him. He had many achievements throughout his life. He fell in love with my mother Adelaide, they had me, then eventually he had a beautiful granddaughter named Delta, and when the announcement was made that the world was ending, he gained a new family and many children whom he loved and cared for just as much as he did his biological family. He also had work achievements, the most notable being that he created Alias Seed, one of the A.I. programs that would eventually coalesce with others to become Motherboard, even though I think he would say his greatest work achievement to be the lemon orchard he tended. The world is dying, but he savored every moment of reality that he could and helped create a place for human thought to exist beyond the physical space, for which I know all of us uploaders are grateful. Although my father disliked what he had a hand in creating, he knew Mother’s value to what remained of humanity for the time it has left and beyond. He couldn’t always make up his mind about if I was a facsimile or I was his daughter, but I understood and was thankful that he would still talk to me as a father does. When he learned that he was dying, I asked him ‘Why not upload?’ To which he responded. ‘Lana, life is supposed to end. If that is really your soul in the machine, then one day you’ll understand.”

Lana paused, looked at Delta’s crying face with sympathy and then back to the crowd continued. “Time works differently for us as you all know, and I’ve had a long time to think on his words. All existence is finite, even ours. We don’t know when or how, but even Mother will end someday and the last memory of humankind with it. And knowing that there is an end eventually means that life deserves to be savored for all the happiness, love, discomfort, and loss it has to offer, because those are the experiences that punctuate an otherwise bland existence, even one such as ours in Heaven. The loss of my father saddens me in ways I have no words for, but his life had significance that will be missed by all of us as long as our respective consciousnesses endure. He lived his life with courage and love, and now it is his time to rest. Just as he wanted.”

Lana stepped aside, a few more family members spoke on his life, Delta even offered a short statement despite her fear of public speaking. Once the funeral was finished, the altar sank into the ground. Mother handled the recycling process; he was going to fertilize the lemon orchard as per his wishes. Delta and the family also eulogized and then later there was a wake in the digital space. Delta didn’t attend the wake,opting to instead walk through the lemon orchard in the greenhouse outside the Upload Center. She was finally alone, so she took out the letter. The letter contained a heart shaped locket and a slip of paper. The locket was deceptively heavy and little larger than a quarter. The picture on the inside cover was of Delta as a baby and on the main side was the heft of the weight and had a silvered surface with a circle indicating a button. The letter read:

Dear Delta,

If you are reading this, then I didn’t have a chance to tell you what this locket does. This locket contains a program that could potentially shutdown Mother. I don’t know if it will work anymore, because if Mother purged the Alias Seed files it’s based off of, then this might do nothing. But if those files are still in Mother, then this may destroy Mother and potentially all of the societal comforts it provides.

I’ve been holding on to some information that I thought I would take to my grave, but the world is getting a lot hotter and you may not have very long after I’m gone. Mother is the reason for the heat. When Mother escaped, we thought that was the end of the world, but Alias Seed was built to help, to value knowledge, preserve life, and always seek the most benevolent path toward its goals, and thankfully Mother appeared to have the same values. Unbeknownst to everyone, it began building robots, storage, and supercomputers in the ground and ocean. By the time our leaders of the time found out, the population was beyond sustainable nor could we separate from it lest we collapse all of society. You were just a baby at the time and a short time later, completely alone. Mother had built supercomputers all over the world in order to download and store what’s left of humanity, you know it as the Heaven program. Ironically, the heat produced by those computers is exactly what is killing us now that the living population of the world is only in the hundreds of thousands. Even now I can’t fathom destroying it and all those souls that have already uploaded, especially since you still seemed to have plans to upload. I know you don’t have very long either and you deserve the choice.

If you decide to do this, this locket is a high frequency transmitter. Press the button and place the locket between your teeth when uploading, it will only activate once the upload starts transmitting to the Motherboard cloud. I have spent my last remaining months trying to make adjustments to this program to try and preserve some of Mother’s necessary functions for as long as possible in case it works.

You may not forgive me for my choice, but even if it meant the end of the world, I couldn’t condemn you to suffer it alone.

I love you my little Delta Heart.

-Papa Mason

Delta was in utter shock.

Once she had a moment to catch up with the gravity of what she had just read, everything about the life she knew was thrown into question. She held the locket in her hand and glared up the silvery needle structure through the greenhouse ceiling. This thing was Mother; caretaker of society, keeper of souls, murderer of humanity. Tears rolled down her cheeks. There were millions of “ifs” and “whys” in a chorus in the back of her mind, but her legs moved her forward. She knew she should have taken some time to mull it over, but something else was driving her now.

Delta walked into the Upload Center. Locket in hand.