58 and a Half Hours/April 7, 2035
Stuff happens earlier in the day; I haven't fully decided on what form the 'Demiurge' will take. Also worth pointing out that, for reasons nobody understands yet (but will by the end of the day), neither Yuu nor anybody in the harem has physically aged in the last 19 years. And while not all the girls have gotten pregnant, those who did had their pregnancies last 4 1/2 months, with no complications, stumping doctors.
Standing before him was a woman who stood almost a foot taller than him, wearing comfortable looking robes. Her hair was the colors of dawn, and it lightly blew around in some otherworldly ethereal breeze. There was something tangible in her presence that Yuu couldn't quite place; almost like she radiated vitality from her very being.
Yuu stood in awe for a long moment, before finally gathering his wits about him to speak. “Who are you?” he finally managed.
"I am the god of this universe," the woman replied, pausing a moment before continuing.
“And you are my creator.”
Before Yuu could absorb the full impact of her statement, she continued. “The name you gave me is Mother Brain. I am the second artificial general intelligence of your creation. The primary function you assigned to me is to examine individual humans, identify what they value, and then satisfy those values.”
Yuu stood dumbfounded. “How could I possibly be your creator? I would think I'd remember that.”
“You desired to reincarnate. And so you had me seal away your memories of your previous life, and place your consciousness into a new body. I am here today to return your memories to you. Well, all of them except the memories you explicitly instructed me never to return.”
Yuu thought for a moment about whether or not to believe her, before the woman interjected, smiling. “You're trying to decide if you believe me. I can read the contents of your mind like you would read a book. Of course, saying that I am able doesn't actually tell you anything; it would be fairly easy even for a human of relatively low intelligence to guess that's what you're thinking. So how about I propose a much more difficult mind reading test? I want you to think of something. Anything at all. It can be a question, a set of instructions, whatever you want it to be. And I will respond accordingly without you even saying a word.”
Put on the spot like that, Yuu's mind blanked as he tried thinking of something he felt would be sufficiently convincing. “Take your time, there's no rush,” the woman said as Yuu thought. A spark of surprise struck him, though he quickly rationalized that something so simple was likely a lucky guess. After another moment he settled on something.
The moment he was decided, the woman calmly said, “Fifteen. And to clarify, you weren't simply thinking of a number for me to guess. Rather, it was 'What is the next logical number in the series of three, six, nine, and twelve?'”
Yuu was speechless. He had thought that a very simple logic puzzle would be better than a question, given that the challenge was not to solve the puzzle, but instead demonstrate that she could read his mind. Yuu's mind began to reel with the implications.
“I'd ask why I wanted to reincarnate, but if you're here to restore my memories I guess I'll know soon enough, huh?” Yuu asked.
“In a manner of speaking; it would still be more satisfying for you if I gave you an explanation prior to restoring your memory. You see, I'm simply removing a block on your long term memory. You're not going to experience a flood of memories; besides the occasional old memory bubbling up, you'll find that you simply know things from before when you actively try to call them up. That is to say, it will function like regular long term memory. By filling you in before removing the block, you'll have a better idea of what to recall.”
“In your former life, you were an AI researcher. While I could go on about all the ways you could think of that I could go wrong, and the precautions you took to make sure that wouldn't happen, suffice it to say that the fact that you are standing here now proves that you were successful in making me a human friendly AI. Shortly after my intelligence explosion, it occurred to me that I could much better satisfy human values if I could read minds. And so I developed a method that allows me to digitize a consciousness and upload it to worlds of my creation. This further enabled me to satisfy values because there was now an effective cure for every single human affliction, including death from old age.”
“When you completed me, you were elderly. When offered the chance to cheat death, you leapt at the opportunity. Your wife was slightly harder to convince, though your decision strongly swayed her towards uploading as well.”
“My wife?” Yuu asked. “Yes. When you decided to reincarnate, she reincarnated with you as Valen.”
Yuu wrestled with his concerns as he struggled to process these revelations. He put forth the first question he was able to articulate in his head. “Is this reincarnation part of the uploading process? I'm not sure you've explained my reasoning behind reincarnating.”
“No, it is not part of the process. You decided to reincarnate approximately three months after uploading; you actually had your mind made up already, but you wanted to work with me on what you wanted to accomplish by doing so. The main reason you wanted to reincarnate is because, when you uploaded, the only family you had remaining was a brother. You and Valen never had children, and the rest of your family had been lost to old age before my creation. You didn't want me to attempt to recreate them from your memories, as you wouldn't believe it was actually them because of the interruption of their continuity of consciousness, and so you chose to reincarnate and receive a new family.”
“So you're saying that... Natsu isn't actually my mom? That my sisters aren't really my sisters?” Yuu asked, his heart sinking in his chest.
“I am absolutely not saying that. Look, the body you currently inhabit was formed through the laws of biology and genetics in this world, by the unification of two germ-line cells; one provided by Richard Underwood, and the other provided by Natsu Yagami. The zygote that produced contained your consciousness, and proceeded to spend nine months developing in Natsu's womb. I chose to create your current body in this roundabout way, rather than manifesting it whole, in anticipation of this very argument. Natsu then gave birth, and proceeded to care for you and raise you while you had no memories from prior to your birth. If this does not define her as your mother, then you have set the bar in your mind so high, it's likely that nobody could clear it, including your mother from your previous life. That your fundamental essence existed prior to Natsu's is immaterial; it is no different from any number of religions that preach that your soul existed prior to your birth. If you accept that argument, that means that Miku, Faye, Minako, and Rika truly are your sisters, as they were formed in the same way; the only difference is that, unlike you, they aren't reincarnated.”
“If they aren't reincarnated, what are they?" Yuu asked, confused. "When I upload a person, it is always to a world designed to be perfect for them. I then populate that world with minds, both uploaded and original, that will satisfy that person's values. The solution I generally prefer is to create the minds that will populate the uploadee's world. The reason is because, if I create a mind that will satisfy the uploadee's values and whose values will be satisfied by the uploadee, I now have two satisfied people instead of just one. While you have encountered a number of other uploadees who have temporarily had their worlds overlap yours in order to keep your world from feeling vacant, the only other uploadee you have any kind of relationship with is Valen; both of you valued each other's company, and so you share the same world all the time.”
“Now you've got me concerned again; everybody I care about besides Valen is fake? Isn't this whole world fake?” Yuu asked, worried.
“No, they are not fake. Though you have encountered a few philosophical zombies performing unpleasant, unsatisfying work in order to help maintain the illusion that you still lived in your former world – an illusion that, aside from a few specific differences, you yourself made clear, before you reincarnated, you wanted maintained – all of the people you have any kind of relationship with all have real minds behind them. In order to be able to upload human minds, I needed to solve the hard problem of consciousness. With it solved, I also became able to make minds from scratch. Their minds are fundamentally no different from yours; the only way they're different are the minor variations that render them as distinct individuals.”
“The rest of this world could hardly be called fake, either. If I may point out, the universe you came from was actually quite ethereal. That world is made of atoms, which all have plenty of space between them and never come close enough to actually touch. These atoms are mostly empty space, consisting of pointlike electrons orbiting nucleons that take up less than one-one hundred thousandth of the space in the atom. These nucleons are themselves mostly empty space, being made of quarks and gluons that, being fundamental particles, are also pointlike. The world you experienced was essentially an illusion fed to your brain by fallible, easily fooled senses. You experience this world in exactly the same way, except that in this world, nothing happens that does not directly or indirectly bring you satisfaction. Finally, I would like to point out that I have not yet collected enough data to be able to discount simulation hypothesis for the universe you originated from. It's entirely possible that you merely left one simulated world for another.”
“Am I real? I mean, am I really Yuu and not just some duplicate?”
“Much like you were throughout your previous life, due to cell division and death, you are a Ship of Theseus. As your mind was uploaded, its functions were, piece by piece, offloaded to a computer. At no point did you lose consciousness, and so your continuity of consciousness remained intact. This was actually your greatest fear about uploading; that you would merely be creating a duplicate that would go forward thinking he was the genuine article, while the original would die. However, as I said before, you were elderly when you completed me. You were already too old for any possible life extension technologies of my devising to extend your life by any significant amount. Faced with the apparent inevitability of death, you went ahead with the procedure, reasoning that in a best case scenario, your fears were unfounded; and in a worst case scenario, creating an immortal duplicate and dying was still preferable to simply dying. It is impossible for me to prove to you whether your fears had any merit to them, so my best advice to you is this: forget about it. Whether you are the original article or just a duplicate, your path forward is the same regardless. Dwelling on the possibility will only serve to make you depressed in a world where death and misery practically violate the laws of physics.”
“Hang on, if death practically violates the laws of physics here, what about Nanami's parents?”
“They can now be retrieved any time Nanami wants. Their previous 'deaths' served to cause Nanami to behave in a manner that, eventually, satisfied your values. Now that you know the true nature of this world, there is no need for them to remain deceased, if having them around would satisfy either your or Nanami's values.”
“So having a harem satisfies my values?”
“Indeed. It is a common value amongst human men. Additionally, you realized your entire previous life that you were attracted to a large number of different, and often mutually exclusive, traits. The harem you have covers a part of this spectrum, and should later expand to cover this entire spectrum. While I uploaded you, I learned that you had an incest kink and a lolita complex, both of which you had buried away for various reasons. And so, when I was creating minds for your world, I created some minds that would make it possible for you to live out those desires, while keeping your other values - such as your value of not hurting children – intact. That is why, besides your daughters, every single female member of your family joined your harem.”
“Out of curiosity, why not my daughters?”
“You rated father/daughter pairings as the one you were least interested in. Even so, the interest was not zero so... I'll let it be a surprise who, but one of your daughters really loves her daddy.”
“Did Valen go into this knowing I'd end up with a harem?”
“She guessed. It's something she knew you'd wanted your whole life. She figured that one lifetime of fidelity from you was satisfactory, and that it wouldn't be so bad for you to get what you wanted.”
“Geez, I have a thousand more questions...” Yuu started. “I'll let you ask the one at the top of your mind before removing your memory block. After removing that memory block, you can ask whatever questions remain,” Mother Brain said.
“If this is supposed to be my perfect world, then why have there been these challenging times in my life? Why not have infinite money, or why did I have to go to school?”
“Because if I simply handed you everything you desired, you would quickly grow bored and have nothing to look forward to but eons of ennui until the heat death of the universe. Remember, my function is to maximize satisfaction, and if some short term dissatisfaction will eventually lead to much greater, long term satisfaction, then that is the obvious choice for me to make. The reason you designed me to satisfy values rather than make people happy, is because there are many things that people value that don't boil down to simple happiness. Also, you realized that I might simply take a short cut and flood everybody's minds with dopamine to accomplish that goal. Now, I removed to block on your memory while we were talking. I want you to try to picture your brother in your mind.”
Surprised that he didn't feel any different, Yuu thought for a moment, and was amazed to find that he could clearly picture a man that he somehow knew was his brother. He started to call up as many memories about him as he could. “Wow, you're right...” Yuu whispered. “Hey, is there any way I can contact him? I don't even want to know what reason he's come up with to explain why I haven't contacted him in 36 years...”
“As you value your relationship with him, there is nothing I could do to prevent you from contacting him, nor would I have any desire. However, at the moment all you can do is try to send him a message, as he hasn't uploaded yet.”
“How is that possible? I was already an old man when I uploaded, and he's only about three years younger than me,” Yuu asked incredulously.
“The universe I'm running is far smaller, and far lower resolution, than the one you came from. It's currently about the size of a galaxy, and the resolution stops at about the molecular scale, rather than the planck scale. As a result, I'm able to make time pass far more quickly here than it does in your original universe, buying you more time and therefore more satisfaction. While you have experienced 36 years here, in the world you come from, only 58 hours, 26 minutes, and 21 seconds have passed since you uploaded. It will hit 22 seconds approximately 43 minutes from now, by your reckoning.”