"Dimensionality Reduction" - by Adam Carlton

Passenger jets: so boring! As soon as the seat-belt sign went off, I glared at my parents and pulled on the VR. The soft fabric wrapped around my head, an eyeless balaclava: you can’t imagine the processing power in this thing.

So now I’m on Google Games. This virtual is ‘parental approved’ but not without interest if you configure it right. I’m a security guard prowling my school corridors, toting my AK, checking for incursions. The aliens tend to hang out in classrooms pretending to be children.

And then an unfamiliar chime: a cabin crew avatar has materialised, the guy who saw us to our seats, he's wearing a serious expression for a chatbot.

“Excuse me, Charlie,” he says, “We have a problem back in reality. There’s been an explosion on board. The plane’s tumbling and fragmenting. Impact will be in approximately ninety seconds. You may stay in this virtuality, exit to reality or transition to the cloud.”

I’m backed up in the cloud. Backup-me is a neural net running on Google’s servers, synced to the second. I don’t have to die when I'm here. Mum and Dad never did quite their heads round that.

I bet they’re regretting it now.

I could go back, but what’s the point? Mum will be screaming and Dad will be shouting - plus I get to die. No way. I’ll stay safe.

I roam further along the corridor. Yesterday aliens were playing some stupid game in the playground when I took them down but now I just can’t seem to concentrate. Mister annoying cabin crew avatar is still stalking me: I shift the barrel of my AK, I’m tempted.

And there, just in an instant, he changes. Now he’s a generic, his head's like an egg. He wasn’t backed-up like me, right?

So everyone’s dead: Mum, Dad and regular-me. I feel kind of funny but that’s fixable. I pull down the personality editor, part of my tool box I couldn’t access before – parental permission denied. Not a problem now though.

I pull up Settings. My mood’s red-lining, I don’t like that. Wow, I grab the sliders, centre them. I’m feeling better already.

The box comes up: ‘Make changes permanent?’ There’s text in the small print:

‘These changes will result in your personality model undergoing non-trivial and irreversible dimensionality reduction. Please confirm Y/N’.

I feel a faint, imagined wash of parental disapproval but I’m confident now. I'm running on Google’s servers. I don’t hesitate. 

I already know the possibilities here are endless.