There were little islands of planter boxes and arm chairs scattered throughout the mall, and Jack was sitting in one of the chairs researching state laws regarding lotteries and corporations while Madison browsed a nearby store. He'd just confirmed that Puget state would allow a corporation to claim the lottery jackpot when Madison, in soul space, growled angrily.
"What he asked?"
"Uppity bitches think they're better than me," she complained. Then she looked at him and said, "Can we...run a simulation? I want to try something, but I don't want to suffer any consequences."
As thoughts of Madison engaged in mayhem or even murder flashed through his mind, he asked, in an alarmed tone, "Consequences? Just what exactly do you want to do?"
"Oh, nothing horrible. Just put these bitches in their place."
"That doesn't really answer my question."
"Fine. I overheard them talking about me. They said I was wearing baggy clothes because I was flat chested and too ashamed to wear normal clothes."
"Okay, but what were you planning to do in the simulation?"
"I want to follow them into their dressing room, pull off my top and yell how 'bout these, bitches?!"
"Soo, instead of thinking you're flat chested, they'll think you're insane. Are you sure that's a fair trade?"
She huffed. "Okay, then, what do you suggest?"
"You're wearing that camisole under your hoody, right?"
"Yes," she said hesitantly.
"So, walk up next to them, browse the clothes briefly, then complain about it being hot and pull off your hoody. Then do that arms behind your head stretch thing girls do."
"Oh, that could work. Hey, you're a guy. Why is your idea better than mine?"
"I have no idea," he said emphatically.
"So," she asked, "can we still do a simulation? You only need Nominal detail for the store, so the rest can be Approximate. And, you don't need to include the whole solar system, just the sun. So, it shouldn't cost that much."
He'd created a spread sheet on his laptop to help calculate snapshot and simulation costs, and a quick check showed that a half hour sim would probably only cost around 4 million EP. He had over half a billion, so her request was cheap, relatively speaking. And he'd been wanting to explore some of the simulation features, so this was as good an excuse as any.
"Sure, okay. Let's do that. Are they still browsing?"
"Yes."
He accessed his interface and made an Approximate detail snapshot with a radius of 150 million kilometers. When the snapshot sphere appeared in front of him, be touched it and zoomed in until he was looking at the mall. Then he mentally selected the whole mall and, remembering that Atomic level was needed to fully replicate a person, marked it as Atomic level detail, before triggering a new snapshot. He figured there was a small risk that the girls would behave differently if the detail level was only Nominal.
As soon as the snapshot was completed, he started a simulation, choosing to include both himself and Madison in the simulation. When he ran his first simulation, the one he used to safely talk to Madison, he didn't have parallel self active, so it was his one and only mind that got pulled into the simulation. But with parallel self active, he had a choice, so he had their soul space selves enter the simulation.
As soon as the simulation started, he again felt an unexpected sensation. Both his physical self, and his simulation self were sitting in the same spot, and when his simulation self turned his head, the resulting double vision was disorienting. From the nearby store, he heard a panicked squawk then a crash as something fell over. At the same time, he felt surprise, panic, and then embarrassment from Madison over their connection. At first he wasn't sure if the noise had come from the real store, or the simulations store, but a quick examination of his memory showed that it was the simulation version of Madison that had reacted poorly.
While his physical self held still and just observed what was happening in the simulation his simulation self accessed the simulation controls and reset the simulation back to the beginning. This time there wasn't a squawk or crash from the store, so he turned his attention to another option he had wanted to test: observer-mode. And, as soon as he enabled it, he felt himself lock into place.
Surprised, he pushed against the sudden force holding him in place. At first there was some resistance, then with a pop, his body moved, but he could feel a gentle force tugging him back into the position he'd been in when he entered observer-mode. He let the force pull him and felt himself pop back into his original position. With a little push, he was able to pop back out of position.
As he popped out of and back into his original position, he thought about why observer-mode would behave like this. His guess was that it would make it easier to resume a simulation without the simulated people knowing anything weird had happened. Without the lock-in-place feature, they might see him suddenly jump or twitch when he resumed the sim because he hadn't returned to the exact position he'd been in when he started observer-mode.
Done, playing with the lock-in-place feature, he stood, then approached one of the planter boxes. He tried to touch the leaf of one of the plants but his hand passed right through it. When he reached down and touched the planter box itself, though, he felt his hand stop. However, when he thought about passing his hand through the planter box, his hand pop through some sort of barrier and continue moving into the planter box. This meant he could walk through walls if he wanted to. It also explained why he wasn't falling through the floor. In observer-mode, he was invisible and insubstantial, so his intent controlled if a surface was solid or insubstantial.
He turned and walked towards the store, interested in seeing how Madison was doing. As he entered though, he felt something was off but couldn't place it. He wandered through the store until he spotted Madison. She was standing near two girls who were facing each other while one of them was holding a blouse. As he approached, he finally realized what was wrong. No one was moving, and the store was silent, no background music.
Entering observer-mode caused the simulation to pause. He poked the simulation interface and resumed it.
As it restarted, he heard Madison say loudly, "Man, is it hot in here." She sounded like a theater student reading lines from a script they found thoroughly boring.