"You'll be using virtual versions of devices that allow you to move physical objects. Remote manipulator arms, roamers, and 3D printers at a minimum, and more specific devices will depend on what you seen to have an aptitude for."

GUPPI: respond to ">".
> Has virtual microphone ever received any input, or is the good Doctor talking directly to my audio perception? Do they(she?) have a face even? Do you know / can you tell if they're an AI, irl human, another upload?
> Survival, hm. Known threats to survival / projected future ones?
> AMI = Amazon Machine Image, AOL Messenger Instance, Artificial Medical Intelligence?
> Nerve-impulse processing? > Maximum pleasure, 0.1s subjective.

"Huh, you've gotten 3D printers working at usable tolerances? How long was I out?" This should maybe surprise him less than the uploads.

"Or no, I got this." He forms a sketch of code in his mind. > canhaz clock, rendered to text in a corner of my awareness? Translate to modern programming environment as necessary. Oh, and copy to anyone listening, if you have a standard output channel that isn't voice.

[Response.

Doctor, identified as Dr. Yanzen and identified as a human, is using the virtual microphone, likely through a non-virtual microphone. Dr. Yanzen is likely not to be an AMI or replicant (upload). GUPPI directly influences audio perception, other audio input must be received through a microphone. 

User may be deactivated either temporarily or permanently upon insanity, non-cooperation, or illegal action.

AMI expands to Artificial Machine Intelligence.

Direct emotional control is unavailable. Only visual and audio receptor nerves currently available for sensory input.]

Geez, he'll be super cooperative then.

> Any laws I'm likely to break while I'm still in a simulated environment with no connection to outside computer systems?

[No non-audio non-private output channel available.]

A small block of text, initially reading "2133-07-19.15:43:18.325" appears in the corner of his vision. The fractional-seconds begin to increment, but with a noticeable delay between each millisecond.

[No. User will be warned before illegal action can be taken.]

200x acceleration, niiice

> Will I run this fast if I'm paying attention to more than some walls and a clock? Could I go faster: am I being slowed down to lower the chances of, as you put it, insanity?

> Projected subjective time until I get a response from Dr. Yanzen? Am I even done speaking?

100 years. Less than he expected, though much had changed in even the three decades he had been alive. > Where are we? What are the five main technological developments since I died? Are countries roughly in the same shape they have been on the scale of the previous hundred years, is the Middle East still on fire?

Gosh, if simulated humans could be run robustly now, the advancements in programming language design must have been fascinating!

> Did Open Source "win"?

[By default, subjective speed is increased while user is alone or interacting with GUPPI, and decreased while interacting with non-simulated beings. Current hardware does not allow much greater perceived speed. Yes.]

[At current experience speed, approximately nine minutes. User completed speaking prior to subjective acceleration. By default, user will return to 1.5x perception speed after completing conversation with GUPPI.]

([104], it interjects into his estimate of how many years have passed since his death.)

[Applied Synergetics Inc. facility in New Handeltown in the Free American Independent Theocratic Hegemony. Unknown. Unknown but unlikely. Unknown but unlikely.]

 [Unclear query.]

> Like, for your software, my basic architecture, the VR environment, programs that exist in the world in general: is the source code generally available with the compiled version? Does a separate user-visible "compilation" step even exist? I guess your answer that is also going to be "insufficient data", sigh.

Oh fine, slow me down then, he thinks.

[Insufficient data,] it agrees. The milliseconds on his clock cease to crawl, and begin to toddle, walk, run, and sprint.

"Yes. Advances in nanotechnology allowed printers to be built that can create almost any solid, given enough time, raw materials, and energy."

"Geez. How nano, can you shuffle protons around at will or is this still constrained by chemistry? If it is, much energy would it take to transmute a small pile of sand and metal shavings into a single circa-1975 6502 microprocessor chip?"

"How expensive are the simplest ones: are we talking a few dozen in the research labs of major corporations, most university workshops as 3D printers were in my day, >10% american households using them for miscellaneous repair, functional toy versions being bought for a day's wages and given to children on Christmas?"

"Some proton-shuffling, but it's much more efficient to give it raw materials that match the desired output more closely, and some substances are a bad idea to try to manufacture because there is a risk of them exploding or otherwise damaging the printer partway through. I'm not actually a 3D printing technician or scientist, I'm more of a historian and personal trainer, you'll need to ask your GUPPI for specific energy requirements once you're working with printers and the information's added to its database.

"Unfortunately, one of the slowest things to manufacture with even a very good 3D printer is another, so high-precision printers are rather rare, owned by particularly large companies and by governments. Less-precise printers, capable of most things on a super-atomic scale, about one per reasonably large city, and ones that operate with molecular-or-larger precision, about one in every eight households? Obviously this varies by country, though."

"Given how fiddly I remember them being, this does not surprise me in the slightest". > you're recording and cataloguing all this right?

"Okay so I think I know manipulator arms, don't suppose in a hundred years they've come up with sensors that give decent haptic feedback to your VR rig? …I suppose I now am a VR rig."

[Information is being recorded, compressed, and stored, but current GUPPI theoretically may be replaced.]

> But not likely in practice? What kinds of situations would lead to that?

[Error in GUPPI that cannot be recovered from or unexpected user compatibility issue. Recovery of user from backup would also involve recovery of GUPPI from backup at same point in time.]

> Right, if our hardware suffers a catastrophic failure I wouldn't still have access to that version.

> Bind ">>" to "resume 1.5x realtime / IO speed of non-GUPPI system I'm communicating with"; >>

[Binding assigned,] it reports, and his clock begins to move at speed again.

"There are headsets and gloves such that I can interact with and appear in your environment. We've just found that in general, a disembodied voice in a simple room is less alarming to start with."

"I suppose if the first thing I saw waking up was a Wizard of Oz style giant floating head, I'd have been alarmed, yes."

Laughter. "Would you particularly prefer I appear or not appear in your environment? All right, do you have any further pressing questions? If not, we'll suspend your program to back you up and connect you to some peripherals to start learning to use."

> Oh right, what was that about an American Theocracy?

"How pressing? You haven't answered my question about arm sensors so I'm guessing not, I'm assuming roamers are the skitterbots that were just getting started to be used in industry, and I'm generally wondering what's been going on worldwide besides 3d printers; you sound like you have to go though."

"And yes, I think I'm ready for something that isn't pure geometric shapes."

[Scripts for user will be provided to GUPPI if a ministry inspection is scheduled. Further details currently unknown.]