Stories of Your Life and Others

fun. Park more fun. Show you."
"We can't go to that park. It's very far away; we would have to travel a
long time to get there."
"Just open portal."
"Sorry Marco, I can't open portals here in the outside world."
"Now watch his face," says Ana.
"You try. Try hard please please." Marco forms his panda-bear face
into a pleading expression; Derek hasn't seen it before, and it makes him
burst out in laughter.
Ana laughs too, and says, "Keep watching."
On the screen she says, "It doesn't matter how hard I try, Marco; the
outside world doesn't have portals. Only Data Earth has portals."
"Then we go Data Earth, open portal there."
"That would work for you if there's a body there for you to wear, but I
can't wear a different body, I'd have to move this one, and that would take a
long time."
Marco thinks about that, and Derek's delighted to see that the digient's
face actually suggests his incredulity. "Outside world dumb," the digient
announces.
Derek and Ana burst out into laughter. She closes the windows and
says, "You did some terrific work there."

---

"Thanks. And thanks for showing that to me; it made my day."
"Glad to do it."
It's nice to be reminded that his earlier work is bearing fruit, because
most of Derek's recent assignments aren't nearly as interesting. The Origami
and Faberge digients have begun to pop up in a wider variety of avatars,
such as baby dragons, gryphons, and other mythological creatures, so Blue
Gamma wants to offer similar avatars for the Neuroblast digients. The new
avatars are straightforward modifications of the existing ones, requiring
nothing new in terms of their facial expressions.
In fact, his newest assignment requires him to create an avatar with no
facial expressions at all. A group of artifical-life hobbyists was impressed
by the potential of the Neuroblast genome and, rather than wait for real
intelligence to evolve on its own in the biomes, commissioned Blue Gamma
to design an intelligent alien species for them. The developers engineered a
personality taxon that was miles away from the breeds that Blue Gamma
sells, and Derek's designing an avatar with three legs, a pair of tentacles
instead of arms, and a prehensile tail. Some of the hobbyists want an even
stranger body plan, as well as an environment with different physics, but he
reminded them that they'll have to wear the avatars themselves when raising
the digients, and controlling tentacles will be difficult enough.
The hobbyists have named their new species Xenotherians, and set up
a private continent called Data Mars on which they intend to create an alien
culture from scratch. Derek's curious about it but hasn't been able to visit,
because the only language allowed in the presence of the digients is a
custom dialect of the artificial language Lojban. He wonders how long the
hobbyists will be able to stick with their project. Aside from the enormous
barrier to entry, raising the Xenotherians won't offer pleasures like the one
that he and Ana just got from watching Marco. The rewards will be purely
intellectual, and over the long term, will that be enough?