Emily Eternal (Simulation of world) | Database of Machine Vision in Art, Games and Narratives

Brief description

When a human wears an interface chip, Emily can see through their eyes and move around the actual world with them. When she is not directly interacting with a human, Emily lives in a simulation of the world that runs on her servers. She has a dorm room that is a replica of a real grad student's dorm room, and she has built a simulation of most of the MIT campus and some of the surrounding city using live data from surveillance cameras and webcams, and still images of places where there are no cameras. The cameras have a 15 second lag so she experiences everything 15 seconds after it actually happens, which can be very frustrating when important things happen.

In this scene, people dressed like soldiers have stormed into the lab where Emily's team works, and Emily rushes in to see what is happening. However, she is not on interface with a human (until later, when Nathan briefly connects with her just before he dies), so is limited to the 15 second delay of her simulation and cannot interact with anybody.

Pull Quotes

Is Nathan in his office? Or down in the server farm? Then I remember his unreachable cell and decide on the latter. As gunfire erupts on the floor above me, I dash to the stairs leading to the sublevels, pass through the door, and hurry down. I try again to cheat, to leap ahead, but again I’m restricted.

All I can think is, fifteen seconds…fifteen seconds… I finally reach the server bank on the third sublevel, the one that contains my processor and primary memory. I try to determine how far ahead I am of the troops upstairs and lie to myself, saying I have at least a minute. I’ll reach Nathan. I’ll save him. There’ll be enough time. Everything will be fine.

Wheaton, M. G.. Emily Eternal (p. 90). Grand Central Publishing. Kindle Edition.

“Gally!” I cry, but he’s not wearing his interface chip. None of them are. I wonder if they destroyed them. I hear someone tinkering with the servers at the end of another row and run over. I’m relieved to see both Nathan and Dr. Choksi holding tablets, systematically shutting down processes one at a time.

“Nathan!” I cry.

I hear machine-gun fire and screams. Nathan’s eyes go from focused to bleary in an instant. Dr. Choksi, standing up a second before, is now dead on the ground, covered in blood, her shattered tablet in her hand.

I’ve leaped ahead my fifteen seconds. I’m in interface with Nathan now, who stares back at me. He must’ve just switched on his chip. I’ve reached him only to watch him die. The soldiers, not knowing I’m there, swarm around me as they finish off my three beloved techs one row over.

Wheaton, M. G.. Emily Eternal (pp. 90-94). Grand Central Publishing. Kindle Edition.