The Bathrobe Knight: Volume 2 (17 page)

              Robert appraised the plate in front of him: grilled salmon garnished with little sprigs of rosemary and a lemon slice on a bed of sautéed spinach and a handful of small, herbed fingerling potatoes. "And, believe me, this is a wonderful treat." His stomach was practically growling in anticipation. 

              "Good," Charles answered as he began eating. "I was worried you might have a food allergy. You're always taking a chance as a host when serving fish without having asked first."

              "Oh, no. No, no," Robert answered as he cut into the salmon and took his first bite. It was so light and flaky he wasn't entirely certain the fish hadn't literally melted in his mouth. 

              "So your daughter is enjoying the game then?" Charles questioned as he ate. "It must be wonderful knowing you helped create something she loves taking part in."

              "I'm not entirely certain she sees it that way, but she seems to having enough fun playing it. She's quite proud of the fact that she's managed to out-level most of the other mages in the game so far, and I think she's pushing herself to keep it that way."

              "Well, it's always good to set a goal for ourselves in anything we do," Charles responded.

              Robert nodded in response as he continued eating. He didn't even really care for cooked spinach all that much, but this was amazing.

              "Has she said much about her experience? I'm sure that having a player living in the same house must have its advantages."

              "Not really," Robert shook his head. "She does come up with some rather interesting questions from time to time though."

              "Well, hopefully you aren't giving away too many of our secrets," Charles said with a wry smile.

              "Oh, no, nothing like that," Robert assured him. "She was rather unhappy earlier about the travel system. It turns out that, even in a game, she isn't very happy about having to take a boat ride to get to the mainland."

                "Hmm, well, hopefully she at least has some interesting company to help pass the time. I know on long trips it always helps having someone to talk to."

              Both of the men took the opportunity to dig into their meals and finish the last small portions in relative silence. Robert didn't want to be rude, but the food really was so good that he was almost entirely focused on enjoying every last bite he could. When he finished, he laid his fork and napkin in his plate, signaling that he was done. A maid appeared, as if she had been watching in secret and waiting for just this moment, to remove it from the table along with Charles’. 

              "You were right," Robert said. "That really was exceptional. If Martha is your cook, you really must pay her my compliments. I can't even remember when I've been able to enjoy a meal that exceptional. I can only imagine how your dinners must look. I'm actually a little envious just imagining it."

              "Thank you, and I'll be happy to pass along your compliments. I think she takes a certain bit of pride in her cooking. She rarely ever lets anyone else help her in the kitchen. Well, when she has it her way."

              Another maid had silently reappeared as Charles was speaking. She left the tray she was carrying on the table before disappearing again. 

              "Coffee?" Charles asked as he reached for a silver pot and a cup to pour it in. 

              "Of course. A man of similar thinking to my own," Robert answered as he took the cup of coffee from Charles, having allowed it to be poured for him. "Thank you."

              "To be honest, I actually prefer tea to coffee," Charles said, pouring himself a cup from the second pitcher that was present on the tray. You should try one of the cookies as well," Charles advised.  "Martha bakes them herself, fresh every day."

              "Well, I wouldn't want to be rude," Robert said as he reached out and took a few for himself.

              "Chocolate chip are my favorite, but none of the others ever let me down either."

              After the excellent meal he had just consumed, Robert wasn't nearly as surprised as he would have been otherwise to find that the cookies were soft and buttery in the way only a wonderfully crafted, home-baked cookie could be. Nothing you could ever find in the store was ever nearly this good.

              "So let me ask you," Charles said as he slid his chair away from the table and leaned back, crossing his legs and holding the cup of tea in his lap. "You've seen the world of Tiqpa from both the inside and out. What are your impressions of it?"

              Robert had been vaguely wondering if Charles was ever going to ask him that question. As the lead programmer, he had a more intimate knowledge of how the world worked, what made it tick, than anyone else. Quite literally, he had helped build the backbone of the world. 

              "I think," Robert began, as he took a sip of his coffee, "that it's actually something I'm proud of having helped create. The learning curve was fairly steep at first, but I think I brought myself up to speed rather quickly. Pairing up the different structures was certainly a challenge. The architecture is completely different between the game and the AI, and I have to admit that I had my doubts originally that we were ever going to get it up and working correctly. Not having access to how the AI works or knowing much about how it was created certainly made it interesting at times. 

              It's like . . ." Robert paused briefly as he searched for an example. "It's like trying to do a heart transplant without knowing anything about the donor. Or I suppose a brain transplant may be more apt," Robert chuckled at the idea.

              Charles nodded appreciatively. "Yes, I can see the challenges that would present. It would be like taking someone's personality, their hopes, dreams, ticks and habits--a person whom you know nothing about--and trying to make that personality control someone else's body."

              "Yes, exactly. It was definitely interesting at times to say the least."

              "Tell me, Robert, and forgive me for prying, but what do you dream of?"

              Robert wasn't exactly sure how to either take or answer the question. Was this his boss asking him what his aspirations in life were? What were his goals for the future with the company? Or was this simply a much more mundane question? 

              Robert chose to err with the former, given the nature of the conversation, and decided to play it safe, answering accordingly. "Oh, well, I'm not sure I really dream of very much anymore. I'm pretty lucky to have just about everything I could have ever imagined when I was first just starting out in life."

              "So when you wake up in the middle of the night, there are no dreams left lingering at the edges of your memory?"

              "Well, to be honest, if I wake up in the middle of the night the first thought on my mind is how fast I can make it to the bathroom," Robert answered with a laugh. 

              "Touché," Charles responded.

              "No, but, on a more serious note, I rarely ever remember very many of my dreams once I'm awake. I know that medical science says we must have them during the deep stages of REM sleep, but I'm not even entirely sure when was the last time I woke up still thinking about what I had been dreaming of. Usually, it only happens when someone calls during the middle of the night, and I'm forced awake to the sound of the phone buzzing. Even then, if someone is calling in the middle of the night, it has to be important and my thoughts are immediately shifted somewhere else: why are they calling so late at night, where is Kass, what went wrong at work? As soon as I'm awake, I guess the dreams are gone just as quickly. Why do you ask?"

              "Well," Charles responded, taking another sip of his tea, "dreams have always been rather interesting to me. There are many cultures throughout history that took them quite seriously. They could be signs of the future, warnings of dangers that were coming up or trials and tribulations that had to be passed. Many people even believed that dreams were a form of communication with the spirits of the deceased that had passed on from life in this world. They were mechanisms for our deceased forefathers to be able to communicate with us, whatever the reason. 

              Now, however, most of that is largely disregarded by the scientific community as inaccurate. We tend to view dreams as the result of an active imagination as the brain tries to process and store memories. People often relive scenes from their everyday lives as  their brain struggles to make sense of the information. In more extreme cases, we know that people are often haunted in their dreams if they have experienced a traumatic event, being forced to relive it over and over again. Similarly, people often dream of what they think they may want most out of life. If someone is fixated on dating a girl, for example, he may dream of what it is like to be with her in his dreams.

              "But, even now with all our advanced technology, we have no method for recording dreams other than our own memories. We have the ability to instantly communicate with anyone else around the world in the blink of an eye. We can communicate with satellites millions of miles away on different planets across the vast expanses of space. It seems to present quite the conundrum, doesn't it? We have to rely on memory, however temporarily, to record our own thoughts. Sure, we can write down our recollections upon waking, but human memory, as we well know, is often fallible to the point of being completely inaccurate. Memory tests of certain events show the brain is much more likely to fill in missing details that it expects to be there than actually record them as they truthfully were. We can experience an infinite number of events while we're asleep and maybe only ever remember a handful--if we're lucky. It's almost like there is some strange distortion of time while we're asleep." 

              "I think I can see what you're saying," Robert answered after Charles had finished speaking. "But, and forgive me for asking this, why does it matter?"

              Charles shrugged and sipped his tea. "As I said, it's something of a hobby of mine. I've always been fascinated with how the brain works, what makes it tick. The technical aspects of dreaming just appealed to my naturally inquisitive nature, I suppose. 

              “For example, what purpose do dreams serve from an evolutionary standpoint? We know that every person will experience dreaming during their lives, during the natural course of being asleep. But what function does it serve? How much of a role does it really play in aiding the survival of the species? Like philosophy, they could easily be dismissed as a superfluous function of higher learning and leisure. At the most basic level, dreaming isn't going to overtly keep you alive, tell you where to find food or shelter. So from an evolutionary standpoint, dreams only really serve a few niche purposes. Yet, we know that even in the most primitive societies where every day was a fight to stay alive, they still had dreams while they were asleep at night. It has been widely hypothesized that dreams are a problem solving function of the brain as it tries to sort out information it gathered during the day and resolve unanswered questions. I’m sure you’re familiar with the phrase ‘let me sleep on it.’ 

              “So does that mean that the ability to dream is a trait that we have learned from society? Brain scans of newborn infants and even children still in the womb have shown activity in the cortex of the brain associated with dreaming. Those areas of the brain light up and show patterns the same as the average adult. As such, we must rule out dreams as a byproduct of society. Although we can neither confirm nor deny that a newborn child is indeed dreaming, it would seem the logical conclusion based on our understanding of how the brain works that they actually do dream. Dreaming, then, cannot possibly be categorized as a learned ability.

              “If it is only partially linked to evolutionary purposes as a  survival mechanism, and it's not a learned ability such as speech, for example, where does it come from? We do know, however, through our studies on the subject that, despite not being a socially-learned behavior, there are several commonalities throughout every person's individual dreams. When you're dreaming, for example, you often find yourself placed in extraordinary situations that you would never likely face during your waking life.  Yet, no one ever has to ever be told what's happening or what to do. How do you know, just know, that you're going to fall from a tall building and die? You never hit bottom--well, I've never heard of anyone who actually hit bottom, anyway--yet somehow, within the dream, you know that you're going to do it. Reason doesn't apply there. The rules are real and absolute. You know them with certainty and believe them with conviction.

              “Why do you think it is that everyone seems to report experiencing the reoccurrence of the same common themes within dreams? Why do the same monsters haunt the dark corners of everyone's brain? How do you know that there are demons lurking in the shadows? That the boogeyman is coming for you?

              “When we're awake, we can easily dismiss these ideas with simple logic and reason as fairytales.  'There's nothing in the shadows of the night that isn't there during the day.' We rationalize away our fears that haunt us during the darkest hours of the night, but does that mean that when we're dreaming that we suspend these higher brain functions all together? Are we more at one with our primitive, animalistic selves, or do we simply reject all higher learning and theory in favor of simple, more natural principles and actions? Have we allowed higher thinking and philosophy to overcome natural instinct, or have a thousand years of rationalization and logic undone thousands of years of evolution--or do those still exist somewhere within the brain?"