2.9 KiB
[Q] Looking for a story: different characters, emulated in a shared environment, reset on different timelines.
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Author: u/boomfarmer Trying to be helpful*
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/4mgdzf/q_looking_for_a_story_different_characters/
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Score: 11
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Created: 2016-06-04T02:31:08
Post:
It is The Cookie Monster by Vernor Vinge.
What did you think of the story?
Can you help me find this story? I remember the plot details, but not the names.
The first character works in a tech support call center. Her coworker receives a very weird email, which leads the main character, her male coworker, and her female coworker to another building on their company's campus. They've been at work for a week.
In the new building, they find a literal copy of the female coworker, working on a month-long research project as a grad student.
The male coworker reveals himself as a tabloid journalist investigating the company.
The two female coworkers find clues which lead the four characters to a wild area of the company's campus, where there's a vault door.
The male coworker is revealed as an antibody of the simulation: he was sending a strange text message that appears it would reboot the simulation that they conclude they are living in.
They enter the vault, where they find two AI researchers on their first day, who look at the suspicious email and are immediately convinced that they are working inside a simulation, and that their work project would be expanding the capabilities and scale of the simulation. And they conclude that the materials they were provided as a prompt were the result of past iterations, and that the two researchers in the vault have been working to subvert the company's leader since the first round of simulations began, when it was only the two researchers, before the rest of the simulated campus grew up.
Do you know what this story is?
Comments:
u/alexanderwales [+5] Time flies like an arrow (12 minutes later)
u/boomfarmer [+3] Trying to be helpful (17 minutes later)
By the fifth paragraph: Yes.
Somewhere, I read the whole thing online. I shall look for it. And here it is: https://www.ida.liu.se/~tompe44/lsff-book/Vernor%20Vinge%20-%20The%20Cookie%20Monster.htm
u/Chronophilia [+5] sci-fi ≠ futurology (7 hours later)
It's been submitted to /r/rational twice before, if you want to check out previous discussions. Here last week and here a year ago.
u/boomfarmer [+3] Trying to be helpful (18 hours later)
Last week is probably why it was so fresh in my brain. Thank you!