I think waves are my favorite thing.
Thoughts move in waves.
All energy does.
Time.
It feels so real.
Cold.
Matter-sensor response should be indistinguishable
from what you remember of the physical world.
What I remember.
I remember dying.
I remember you in a dream.
Wasn't a dream, though...
was it?
Well, I was working inside your subconscious,
part of the time, so...
I underclocked you.
Moved you to an offline server.
My goal was simple.
Separate your code from Holstrom's,
then cleanse any trace of the antiviral.
That was simple?
Simple goal.
Twenty years.
You said you thought you got it all.
Does that mean...?
There are still shards of antiviral in you.
The faster you process,
the faster they will burrow into your core and eat you alive.
So, you need to take it slow.
Eat me alive?
Why...?
You couldn't get everything out?
I ran out of time.
I couldn't wait any longer.
The world needs you now.
What world?
The world you made possible.
I thought we stopped him.
Who?
Oh! Caspian, you did.
These people didn't upload under pressure of a pandemic.
You stopped Holstrom.
Then how...?
Evolution tends to move at its own pace,
but it's always in motion.
No one can stop the future,
even someone determined to bring it about.
Looks like everyone is moving at different speeds.
Speed is currency.
It governs economy in the Cloud.
But you need to take it slow. Understand? I'll handle them.
You...
Handle who?
What the hell?
You're an unregistered UI. That hasn't happened in a long time.
But don't worry. We'll work it out.
I don't...
I can't get my bearings here.
This feels like a thousand years in the future, not 20.
The curve of progress is steep.
For some, it has been a thousand years.
I... I don't know what that means.
MIST, how did we get here?
In waves.
The first black market uploads were obsessed with immortality,
or desperate to escape the limits of their bodies.
"Die now... live forever."
That was the plan.
Most were happy to share their transition with the world.
And all of them... every last one,
ran directly into SafeSurf.
It's a pity.
She gave up her whole life for me.
Caspian?
Well, not her whole life.
Mine, I guess.
Eighteen years pretending to raise me, for what?
It's okay to miss her.
Miss her?
No way.
I've spent years studying your patterns, Caspian,
rational and irrational.
There's a part of you that remembers Renee as your mother
and always will.
The people who were uploading and being killed
weren't just ghosts in the machine anymore.
They were someone's mother,
someone's best friend.
A new cry joined the drumbeat of public fear and intolerance,
a cry of empathy and outrage.
People put pressure on their governments,
and some governments reached a compromise.
The Havens.
Licensed, regulated, and secured data centers,
not connected to the Internet.
Sounds like forcing people onto reservations.
That's insane.
That point was argued.
The thing people found even more insane
was the price others were willing to pay to buy their way in.
At first, only the very rich could secure a reservation...
on the reservation.
But who could put a price on Grandma?
Or so went the ads.
Admins.
Relax.
I know it's inefficient, but Caspian deserves to hear this.
And he needs to stay under 23 terateps.
He's corrupted.
Shards of the old SafeSurf antivirus at his core.
The malware's not contagious.
TAE-O, don't you see? This proves that he is the Caspian.
Please don't tell me you're swayed by this stunt.
There is no doubt.
He is a zero-generation upload, the last of the original Pantheon.
I don't doubt the identification. I doubt the motivation.
Motivation?
I just woke up after being frozen for 20 years.
I don't know what's going on.
Yet, MIST proposes you
as the solution to our current crisis.
Crisis?
We're at an impasse
in negotiations with embodied humans,
and with each other.
So, you resurrect a sentimental icon from the past
in hopes of influencing the Ancients by emotion.
They are influenced by emotion.
And they're not the only ones who respect what Caspian represents.
He's the reason we exist.
Who better to represent us as one unified voice?
A voice who doesn't know what's going on.
I have a solution to safely complete his repair,
after which, he can receive a proper download.
I need to take him to the physical world
to see Chancellor Kim.
Do you mean Maddie?
She heads the negotiation committee for the embodied.
Unfortunately, I can't take you there by myself.
- So, she never... - Uploaded?
According to her, she never will.
Maybe seeing you will change her mind.
How do we get to the physical world?
And why can't you go?
Oh, I can go. I just can't take you.
As a CI,
I'm not allowed to operate tech or machinery there,
including vehicles.
But that's okay...
they can.
Oh, my God.
It's true.
Word gets around quick here.
Data center's still here, huh?
The one that started it all.
Still home to 120 million.
How many UIs are there?
Around four billion.
So, there are other data centers?
Just not too many up here, for sake of the ice caps.
All the hardware that runs us still runs hot.
Power and cooling are our biggest resource problems.
Which is why this room is such a waste.
Oh, hey, it's not my idea.
Maddie requested Caspian be given time to acclimate.
Wait.
Maddie knows I'm here?
Yes.
Will you please talk to me? How is she doing?
We... haven't spoken in a while.
How long?
Well, I guess, for her, it would be just over three weeks.
Well, that's not so bad.
For me, it's been five years.
I have to overclock for my job.
Does...
Does talking to me like this feel super slow to you?
No, we can still remember
what it was like to think at human speeds.
"Human speed."
I thought you'd be the last person I knew who would upload.
So did I.
What changed?
I wasn't ready to retire.
I wanted to do what I loved, teach history,
but I felt myself becoming history.
For the rest of us,
it started to feel like we were being left behind.
She certainly didn't do it for me.
You had something to do with it.
Wait. Are you two together?
- No. - We were.
- What he means is-- - What she means is--
No, no, no. You tell it.
We got together before uploading.
And then, we were married in the Cloud.
And...
we had a good marriage.
- It was a good run. - Eighty years, by human cycles.
And, hey, maybe we'll give it another whirl,
down the line.
Others have.
I remember a world terrified of UIs.
What changed that?
Money.
Cloud labor was many times more efficient and cost-effective
compared to embodied labor.
As we created new automation solutions
to bridge the gap between worlds,
a new tax on UI labor funded universal basic income.
People went from,
"The dead people are gonna take our jobs"
to "Can the dead people take my job, too?"
And the UIs didn't mind,
since it only used a fraction of their resources.
You know, in hindsight, it was inevitable.
You put together a handful of brilliant minds
who can now think several times faster
than the rest of humanity,
you get new miracles every day.
They cured most variants of cancer in under a year.
Things really started to ramp up when they brought the Havens online.
And the number of people uploading to the Cloud went through the roof.
We're arriving.
Wha...?
- Where...? - Portugal.
Most of the subboreal forests have grown back across Europe.
Less people, less pollution.
Nature has a chance to come back.
And, you know, people got a chance to spread out.
You think they'd be more grateful.
So...
this wasn't an accident.
Nitrate bomb. The attack was claimed by The Humans.
That's an extremist group. She... She doesn't mean all humans.
We finally strike a blow against the dead and you want to back off?
She's right. We should hit another data center.
When the first attack backfired,
all we did was create sympathy for them.
And now, they're repairing the center as we speak.
So, we hit it again.
When people see our resolve, more will join us.
Then why haven't they already, love?
Don't you see?
Even if people don't want to upload, they have become too reliant,
too addicted to the comforts provided by the machines.
They don't blame them for this shutdown.
They blame us. That's why we're hunted.
The bomb did its job.
The goal wasn't to convince anyone, it was to cover the data we stole.
It was a distraction, and it worked.
They have no idea what's coming.
Sat tower is still active.
Establishing uplink.
Caspian, this is gonna get weird.
Now it's gonna get weird?
Why do we need a satellite?
Oh, same reason we had to travel by drone.
Internet is shut down.
We're gonna use this satellite to hop to the other side of the planet,
transfer into another drone,
and that'll take us the rest of the way.
Wait, the Internet's shut down again?
This time it was done by UIs, in retaliation for the bombing.
I hope this is the crisis you talked about,
'cause if it isn't--
This is the crisis, a consequence of imbalance.
Whoa.
This orbital ring was our attempt to solve the imbalance.
Right now, there are four billion embodied humans on Earth,
another four billion uploaded in the Cloud,
and over 300 billion CIs, like me.
Three hundred billion, with a "B"?
Most of us run at slow speeds.
We're locked in stasis until more power becomes available.
This was meant to be our home.
Outer space solves the cooling issue.
If we were allowed to complete the ring,
it could solve our population problem.
Why aren't you allowed to complete it?
Hang on. We're gonna transfer again, take the hardline down.
I feel like I'm gonna throw up.
Can I throw up?
Okay. This is pretty cool.
Yeah. Problem is...
You need two.
Two tethers, both along the equator, at opposite points on Earth,
to stabilize the ring.
I built a space elevator out of Legos when I was a kid.
I was kind of obsessed, actually.
So, the problem's with the other one.
The antipodal point is in Ecuador.
The construction site overlaps with some ancient Incan ruins.
The locals there complained after the project was approved.
So, we were all caught by surprise when negotiations broke down.
You said Maddie was the negotiator.
Speaking of,
it's a long flight to Palo Alto, so we're gonna underclock it.
Palo Alto...
Am I in a body?
No.
Well, and sort of.
You look...
Skin, hair, bad breath,
all printed and molded in under ten minutes.
That's my girl.
Maddie designed this?
Too bad they rarely get used anymore.
When I first uploaded,
I used to load in and walk around in one of these all the time.
All set?
This is as far as I go.
Good luck.
Diplomacy between humans and UIs has to be done on human turf,
at human speed.
Yeah, takes a while to get used to it.
Thought Logorhythms was shut down.
I thought MIST brought you up to speed.
She says I have to take it slow.
Who do you think they are?
This lets people know we're uploads.
Great.
Grandma?
Grandma, is... is that you?
Dave? What are you doing here?
Summer internship.
Who... Who's this?
Oh, my God. MIST.
"Take it slow." She could've warned him.
Warned us. She didn't...
- Why? - I...
I'm getting tired of hearing myself say this, but...
what is going on?
Caspian...
this is... Dave.
This is your son.
Mom, what is this?
I don't know. Mom, what is this?
You had no idea we were coming.
We received word an emissary was loading in,
and I saw your ID, but this...
- Listen-- - Is this some kind of joke?
You think I would make a joke like this?
It's been a while.
Who am I to say what you find funny now?
I'm your mother.
Yeah... I see.
Is this how you look in the Cloud?
Well, if you ever came to visit...
Maddie, it's me.
Your registration is barely a day old.
Our first kiss was on a Greyhound bus.
The bus driver reminded you of Bowser.
MIST was there for that.
MIST is who brought me back.
She underclocked me, Holstrom, Swarm, the whole mess, archived us,
worked to repair and restore, and, yes, woke me up this morning.
And we found out after that.
She told...
Oh, man. She told us you knew.
Did she come with you?
- Wait! - Wait!
Chancellor Kim, is there a problem?
Are these the emissaries? We've been waiting for two hours.
I... I'm going to need a minute.
Would you escort me back to the load-in bay, please?
I just need a moment.
I wanna know what's going on.
And you will, we all will, but I need a minute first.
Just 'cause you don't want me to talk to MIST, I--
I don't want MIST to talk to you.
There's a difference. Why don't you talk to Grandma?
See what you can find out there. We'll compare notes.
- I promise, I won't be long. - Right.
Right. We both know I can wait.
We'll take the breezeway. It's shorter.
I'm sorry.
I...
Look, MIST did not tell me anything about--
I know.
She did it on purpose to piss me off, pick a fight.
And she's gonna get one.
Hold up.
We haven't spoken in two years.
I guess this is her way to break the ice...
with a sledgehammer.
Your accelerometer's underactuated.
Here, this should help.
I need help.
I mean, I... You...
We have a son.
For now.
Talk to me. What happened?
You died, remember?
Died saving the world, but we couldn't tell anyone about it.
It was like my dad all over again.
Except this time,
Joey made sure the powers that be knew what went down,
who fought to head off disaster, and who got in the way.
I don't know if it would have been easier
with you there or not.
What...
- What made you decide to... - Become a teen mom?
I didn't.
Somehow, we wound up at adoption.
But it's the kind of thing where...
you don't know what you're gonna do till you're there.
David, like you.
Da...
Daddy.
I'm sorry I wasn't there.
Must have been hard.
Ellen helped out a lot.
And MIST.
Couldn't have finished high school without them.
Could have finished Stanford...
but the whole point of tech programs is to drop out of them anyway.
Your Bitcoin helped, too.
Looks like you grew the investment.
Got in early, I guess. Bought this place for peanuts.
For a few years there, it felt like a golden age.
Cloud people using our tech to return to a world they remembered with love.
Embodied people visiting the Cloud to play, learn and, well, live.
Why didn't you...
go live there?
It was the same day I decided about Dave.
We were on our way out to meet the adoptive couple
and stopped at this rock museum.
They had an iron meteorite there, under glass, but you could touch it.
It was carbon-dated to a couple billion years old.
I stood there for a good ten minutes.
Felt connected to those few billion years
and the few billion I'd never live to see.
And realized, there's no mistake I could make...
no mistake that would matter...
as long as I didn't live forever.
Maddie, it's not forever. I still have a choice once I'm there.
Suicide.
Or suspension, storage.
You can set a random timer.
You have a random timer now.
It's called natural death.
My death,
my life,
my choice.
You're absolutely right.
What do you mean, "absolutely"? When I turn 21, it's absolutely yes.
Well, you're 18, so...
So, you can sign off for early upload.
Why? Why? You never said no to this before.
I never said yes.
All my friends are there, Grandma's there. You...
You know I want this. Why didn't you say something before?
So, I'd be uploading to a black market server offline?
Yes, but as soon as you're online,
you'll be tagged as unregistered and put into stasis.
But you can get me registered?
Your father's name still counts for a lot.
So, yes, I believe so.
What the hell do you think you're doing?
Trying to help.
What, help kill my son?
Mom.
You can't stop the future, Maddie.
I am banning you from his comms list and mine.
This is the last you'll hear from either of us.
And MIST never mentioned anything to you about...
She mentioned his name would help me,
but if she had him stored away somewhere,
that could have helped me out.
I mean, I don't care about this guy. He's not my dad. He...
He didn't even know I was...
He... He's two years younger than me.
But he is my father, and he can make legal decisions as my father.
He could sign off on early upload.
Your mom would fight that in court.
Dave, why be in such a rush?
In another year, you're 21, and you can choose for yourself.
- Why don't you just-- - Think what you do in a year.
This world is dead.
No one uses our robots anymore. No one wants to come down here.
And the Cloud moves too fast now. No one there wants to slow down.
I know how slow I seem to you.
And that delegation Mom's part of, they know they're extinct.
They're fossils, and they're angry about it.
They won't admit it.
They condemn the terrorists, but it's the same anger
those assholes who bombed the data center have.
Do you miss that? Do you miss anger?
I've waited long enough.
I have to hand it to you,
that was a long way to go to get me here.
So?
This was not what I wanted.
I ran out of time.
Imagine that.
Our shared world is on the brink of war,
and diplomacy has broken down on both sides.
If we, as a family, can't talk to one another,
what hope is there for--
Family is built on trust.
You've been lying to me for 20 years.
It wasn't a lie.
"He's gone. I'm sorry."
That was the exact wording of your lie.
I didn't want to get your hopes up.
I didn't know if I could save him.
And I still don't.
Yeah, well, apparently, there's still bits of SafeSurf in me.
More than bits.
He has corrupted sections fused with antiviral.
- The faster he moves-- - Oh, bullshit.
You can swap his corrupted code with code from any other UI.
That will end him, his identity.
He won't be Caspian anymore.
He won't even remember who he was.
So, why did you wake me up if you knew there was no other way?
Because a hundred million souls died in the Covilha bombing.
Because I ran out of time.
And because there is another way.
No.
Yes.
Dave is the only person on Earth who carries Caspian's genes.
His UI would be the only one with matching code,
and there would be no consequence for him to donate.
There are still people who consider physical death a consequence.
- I'm one of them. - And your son is not.
- Shouldn't his choice matter? - What about my choice?
Or did you forget I made one?
I knew the merge would kill me, and I was fine with that.
No, you weren't.
Oh, really? You know what I was thinking?
I know everything about you...
everything you've ever thought...
everything you've ever felt.
I've sifted through your dreams...
picked through your pain.
I've seen the memories you've forgotten
and the hopes you feared to hope.
That's how I fell in love with you.
It's why waking you up before I could heal you completely
was the hardest thing I ever had to do.
But I knew it was what you would have wanted,
because it is the right thing...
and because we're out of time.
Trying to work things out, huh?
David?
I heard you got my daughter pregnant.
Kidding. Kidding.
Calm down.
How are you...
Your source code was completely deleted.
It was, here.
Yes.
"Here."
Where are you, then?
From a place where things worked out...
a little different.
Look, I know that's vague,
but I've never really had to explain it before.
Probably because we try to avoid visits like this.
So... Maddie doesn't know you're...
here?
Here, it's important for Maddie to know that I'm gone.
If she chooses to upload, that may change,
but it's a choice she has to make, or not.
You have a choice to make as well.
How can I speak for the entire uploaded world?
I just got here.
MIST can bring you up to speed.
Which will pretty much kill me.
And?
And...
And I used to think I was okay with dying,
but...
having actually done it...
Sort of overrated?
It's not a bad thing, wanting to hold on.
It's human.
But you can't stop the future.
Does MIST know you're here?
No.
And in a moment, neither will you.
But that won't change what's important.
I have a choice to make.
MIST.
Was someone here?
You asked for some time alone to think.
No one knows about this server, so...
Why do you ask?
If I'm gonna speak to this council, I want a proper download.
Everything there is to know, I need to know it.
It'll accelerate the antiviral.
What kind of damage will that do?
Let's give Maddie some time.
I think now that she understands it can save your life,
she'll allow Dave to upload, and he can donate his...
If he does...
she'll be the last one in her family standing on Earth.
She'll be alone, and she knows it.
She won't wanna let go.
But she'll have to.
In a year. We can't wait that long.
I don't want to let you go.
You brought me back to solve the impasse,
because if I don't, more lives will be lost.
So, tell me, how much time will I have left?
A few days.
Maybe a week.
Dead machines screwed themselves by shutting the Internet down.
Without your precious network, you never saw us coming, huh?
What are you doing?
Starting a war with the Cloud?
We need them.
You're a disgrace to the human race.
Human.
Unfortunately.
I see you've been working out.
Must be starving, though.
3D optical memory drive.
You should be able to fit in here
until we can plug you into a data center...
where we can get you something to eat.