It's been a while.
Over a year. I've been writing, more than I ever did when I posted my short work on here. But I've also been incredibly busy with what Phillip K. Dick defined as "what I could stop believing in, but wouldn't go away". That is to say, good old real life.
But good news is on the horizon! I haven't forgotten this archaic blog, nor its equally archaic and antiquated contents. Believe me, however bad you think this drivel is, I think it's more than a million times worse. Especially Of Procul. It fills me with shame.
But I've regretted deletion too much to give into contempt for my younger self, so it's all staying up. Maybe I'll even post some more written material, and feel ashamed of that one day too.
Expect very little, but hopefully what eventually crawls out the cocoon isn't more deformed, ugly moths, but a beautiful butterfly. Hopefully.
Until then, friends.
Hungarian Shovelware
Too Busy to Write, too Optimistic to Forget
Monday 20 August 2018
Thursday 8 December 2016
Joasse Holmes, Viral Geneticist
“Should we give hormone treatments to infertile women whose
children are born from synthetic wombs, to fool them into loving the child?”
Pale and nervous, the apprentice skirted around the bollard
in front of him as he followed his study onto the courtyard at the base of the
towerblock.
“Not sure boss, want me to-?” He replied hurriedly, before
the curt but not offensive tone of his superior cut him off.
“Don’t bloody query it, what do you think?” She raised her voice in the second half of the
sentence, pushing her breast out slightly for the doorman sensor to correlate
her speech patterns with the microQR on her lapel. Blazers weren’t in style,
but being different was, so she’d worn it anyway.
The intern was dressed a lot more appropriately different,
speckled with reflective creams and black buttons. He was actively thinking of
a reply to her question, which surprised her pleasantly. Halting outside the
lift, she scanned the other potential occupant. Didn’t know him by name, but
they’d spoken. Friendly, but only out of office hours. A party or lunch sprung
to mind. No point greeting him really.
“Ah, Joasse!” The man said anyway, as his eyes picked up the
movement of her and her apprentice sidling up next to him. “It’s been a while,
how are you?”
Noticing that the intern was wordlessly subvocalizing his
voice into a search engine for what had bloody better be scholarly articles and
not the latest social medium, Joasse did her best to maintain pleasant
conversation with her workmate until the lift arrived, and up the three flours
before her departure. It was tricky, especially having to imply she knew his
name, or anything about him at all. She kept the conversation on herself, but
without being vain, gesturing more than once at the younger servant behind her,
who managed a polite smile each time. Eventually the man who was to rename
nameless was forced to make a goodbye as Joasse stepped out the lift into her
domain, scowling at the empty office in front of her.
“Yes, I’m sure we’ll run into each other again soon,
especially this month!” She finally spurted, her cheery grin collapsing as soon
as the lift doors shut. Normally she felt everyone else stopped smiling as soon
as vision was severed, but that overly intense specimen was probably still
grinning to himself.
“So!” She rounded on the apprentice, whose name she
certainly did remember. “Mark. Hormone treatments? To infertile women? I’m
hoping you were trawling far from recent news about the controversies a few
years back.” As he gathered himself for another one of his damn monologues, she
walked slowly back to her cubit, a little more relaxed now she knew nobody was
watching, given how the floor was deserted. Voluntary paid quarantine month.
Sometimes the oldest techniques worked the best.
“I did scan a press piece about the case in Brazil, where
the mother killed herself and the child.” He began carefully, clearly wary she
was going to cut him off and demolish his argument prematurely. “On the actual
referenced studies, all signs seem to point to yes, that is if the specific aim
is to fool to mother into thinking the baby came from her body.”
Reaching Joasse’s cubit, she sunk into her chair, before her
understudy did the same. Busying herself with the usual intranet chaff which
had accumulated in the mere half hour they’d had lunch, she gestured for him to
continue.
“But I personally think that the mother is fully aware of
the alien nature of her child, genetics aside. Hormone treatments to simulate
affection, oxytocin derivatives primarily, just undermine her own rationality.
And it would seem, sanity. And given recent trends in infertility, any
technique which can stimulate birth-rates deserves to be promoted, which these
hormone treatments certainly don’t.” He finished with his signature flourish,
and Joasse had to admire his confidence in his argument, given the number of
times she’d mercilessly deconstructed them before. But today was different.
Today he was right.
“Mark, my scarcely recognised brilliance must be rubbing off
on you. At least, that’s what WHO-U seems to think.” She nodded at a screen her
offhand had been pulling up as she spoke, and whipped the screenshot onto the twenty-year-olds
lenses screens. His eyes defocused as he read the article, clearly taking his
time. Joasse did a quick brush of her teeth with a disposable she pulled from
her desk, before twisting the hilt to semi-liquidise the toothbrush, drawing
the thin hilt into her mouth dextrously, and chewing the entire thing into a
small lobule of mint-flavoured gum. As she finished her self-admittedly
disgusting product, Mark’s eyes refocused on her with the hints of a smile
around his mouth.
“Well, good. WHO-U need a victory, especially given the
latest shedding novavirus.” Mark said and relaxed a little, gratified he’d
passed one of his mistresses tests.
“It’s not a victory they need,” Joasse replied, chewing
absentmindedly, “just the faith of the public.” She waved aside a following
sentence from her aide. “I know that’s what you meant, I’m just selfcesting.
Anyway!”
Joasse rotated back to her desk, and unclipped the headset
dangling above her monitor. She depressed a few buttons, and slid a thin dial
on its apex, before turning back to her apprentice. “Want any, gum, or
anything?” She tried, putting a little sincerity into her voice. She knew she
was an utter bitch to the boy, but he’d been well informed of that. Plus, she
got the increasingly odd sense his enjoyed it, the little masochist. He shook
his head in reply to her question.
“I’m fine, thank you.” He had removed his own headset from
his satchel, and unfolded the slick curvature around his now unfocused eyes.
“More SARS analogues like this morning?” He asked with just enough emotion to
constitute excitement, as he pulled on his dextrous contact interface gloves.
Joasse was popping microstimulants pills, illegal as of next
week, but being used generously now given her reserves at home. “No, we’ll wrap
that up tomorrow when I’m feeling a little more up to it. We’ll go over the
locust bacterial symbiote genomes they picked up in Arizona last weeks. Little
bastards which live in the locust stomachs. We need to assess the potency of our
counter-G-drive and its interaction with the locust host. It’s only a handful
of generations, and less variety than we’ve seen in populations like this
before. I’ll show you.”
Joasse’s hands made love to the keyboard. Mark’s writhed in
their gloves. They both disappeared into data.
***
Slumping on a sofa which hummed into action, hugging her
shoulders in a vain attempted to relieve stress Joasse sighed. She normally
kept the screen off unless she had company, which was rare, hence why it hadn’t
turned itself on when she shut her apartments front door. But the train home
was depressingly empty enough to warrant herself marching into her own brain
and, as usual, being her own worst critic. She wanted to take her mind off
herself, for once.
Waving, and making a little niggle of the index finger, Joasse
made the screen pop into life. A microlens followed her pupil, obeying her
blinks as her eyes drifted through menus until she reached the news-streaming
sites. She ignored a supposed tier 4 alert which winked in the background,
knowing it would just be another powercut due for this evening. The televised news
mediums had morphed into modern and hip versions of their old selves, but at
their core remained the same. Voiceovers and images, providing as the public
desired. While the streamsite had instinctively tried to cater itself to
Joasses dispiritingly defining train as a viral geneticist, she blinked it
aside without a thought, asking to just hear a general breakdown from the last
twelve hours from some of the smaller new sites. The voices washed over her,
and she rubbed her eyes with her hands, scarily listening. Without a pair of
eyes to track, the computer just cycled randomly through the channels.
“-but the dam should
be up and running by tonight, Elsa! So you’ll all be-
-don’t fret! There’s just announced to be a fifth release! That’s -
-and full payment to the victim’s family is expected within the week. In other-
-And! And, think back to what you said in March! Hardly just ‘ripples’ now Misses Chair!-
-a genetically modified SARS analogue unlike that seen before-“
Joasse listlessly looked back to the screen, and blinked to
signify she wanted to stay on general news. SARS analogues was too specific to
be anything but picked by a machine to interest her. But she was on general
news. She was actually on the BBC. Strange.
“The novel strain,
which from preliminary sequencing efforts by emergency teams, seems to have
incorporate infection DNA from several other deadly viruses, undermining the
belief this was a natural phenomena” The news reporter said, as a blurry
electron microscope photo of a faint viral halo hung behind him. “The SARS analogue virus was suspected to
have been aerosol released, in a similar manor to the novavirus two months ago,
in the Beijing Capital Airport. Estimates for the infected range from ten to
twenty-five thousand, with a death toll currently unconfirmed but in excess of two
thousand.”
Almost without conscious thought, Joasse had sat stock
upright, and was sitting at a level of attentiveness she’d not felt since her
last date, perched barely on the edge of her sofa. Her eyes were locked on the
screen in front of her, the microlens happy she hadn’t blinked for a while. It
was so great, Joasse almost didn’t feel the terrified awe.
“Experts have given
the temporary name ‘SARSAB’, SARS Analogue Beijing. A summarised statement from
the WHO and local WHO-Us will follow within the half hour. Globally, cases have been
reported on all continents, with even conservative estimates pointing this to
be the greatest piece of bioterrorism in human history. The government urges
all citizens to-“
A knock at the door woke Joasse up rather apruptly, and she
jumped. Dragging her eyes away from the macabre world map now adorning her
screen, she pulled herself up and walked to her door. Her mind wasn’t really
functioning, at least that’s how she would describe it in hindsight. She didn’t
even bother checking the outside camera, instead just pulling the door open. In
a brief flash she saw two policewomen, a man in a suit, and a lab technician
wearing a woolly jumper. She only just realised they were all wearing
protective facemasks before the nearest policewoman rudely shoved something
over her mouth. The word ‘kidnap’ rushed through her head childishly before she
felt the two policewomen fastening straps round her head and ears, informing
her panicked brain she was now wearing a breathing mask. She took a deep breath
of metalized air, before her lungs relaxed.
The man in the suit stepped forward, eyes severe above the
rim of his mask. “Joasse Holmes?” he asked, rather rudely she felt, absurdly.
“The viral geneticist?” Joasse nodded, eyes darting between the four figures in
front of her.
“Who, who are you? What do you want?” She stammered, the shock of apparently being arrested mounting on top of what she’d just seen on the news.
“What do we want?” Said the lab tech, smiling at a policewoman,
who nearly chuckled. “Well, seen the news recently?”
The two cops released her, and Joasse fell forward slightly.
“Five minutes.” Said the stockier one, gruffly. “Essentials only. Pack for a
couple of nights.”
Joasses frightened brain complied to authority, as they so
often did, and over the sound of her frantically packing a combination of electronics
and clothes, she only just heard the lab tech laugh coldly. “A couple of
nights. Yeah, right.”
Wednesday 30 November 2016
Three Flags.
The Antarctic
Joint Antarctic
Research and Conservation Program
United States
Antarctic Program (USAP)
Dr. Scott Lehman, USA. Mission Director, Spatial Ecologist.
Dr. Mark Cote, USA/Canada. Climatologist.
Cynthia Nevinson, USA. Meteorologist. [Deceased]
Helen; AIRNE, Artificial Intelligence. Site Administration
and Communications.
Chinese Antarctic
Administration (CAA)
Wang Biyu; Jasper, China. AI Psychologist.
Li Qiang; Charles, China/France. Meteorologist,
Glaciologist.
United Kingdom, Australian
and New Zealand (UKANZ) Antarctic Survey
Tomas Dytham, UK. Deputy Director, Microbiologist,
Ecologist.
Oliver General, Australia. Maintenance, Engineering.
Hailey Wilson, Australia. Entomologist.
John Whittaker, New Zealand. Edaphologist, Hydrologist.
[Deceased]
***
Dawn broke on three flags.
Red and white stripes shimmered roughly, brushing off a
light dusting of ice clinging to the bottom. The fifty state flags were forfeit
for the patchy white outline of the Antarctic, the same shape blazing yellow
against the red background of the Chinese equivalent waving beside it. Slightly
lower, flagpole sunken embarrassingly, the quartered UKANZ flag married the
white Antarctic map, union crosses and white and red respective stars of
Australia and New Zealand. The three danced on the same wind, weaving and
dodging the breeze.
The flags barely visible through the sleet dashing against
the window, Dytham turned back to the table. Biyu’s eyes darted away just as he
glanced at her, returned to her soup. The precious stone she wore round her
neck re-entered her grasp, as her off-hand fiddled with it nervously. Cote
showed no such irritation. He cricked his neck, and stood to take his bowl over
to the sink. Dumping the half empty bowl in the soapy water, he wiped his hands
on a dishcloth and walked out without a goodbye. Biyu continued fidgeting,
without looking up.
“Are you still making Cynthia’s oxygen readings?” said
Dytham, breaking the silence. Biyu jumped slightly, and replied instantly.
“Shi, yes. Yes. Me and Scott rerouted a little power from
morgue lighting and boosted the YSI. Helen said it wouldn’t be a trouble. It’s
nice to have something to do.” She looked up and smiled a little. “I enjoy the
data.”
Dytham smiled back, and glanced out the window again. Cote
had suited up, and was climbing down the ladder to help General fix the
Hagglunds. The ATV had suffered a vague engine failure after its last excursion
to the coast to recover Nevinson, and was in the process of being repaired. Dytham
has remembered the gaunt look on Oliver General’s face as he shut the door
behind him, and explained to the entire team Nevinson’s grim fate. Hailey had
cried again, but Dytham and Qiang had volunteered to bring her body back into
the makeshift morgue. She lay there now, wrapped in a bodybag with “Cynthia”
scribbled sadly on the side.
“Tom.” Biyu had nearly whispered it, barely audible over the
wind outside. “I’m worried about Li, I mean Charles. He hardly speaks to me
anymore, and when he does he sounds so, depressed.” Biyu sunk her chin into her
hands and rubbed her eyes.
“Next time I see him, I’ll speak to him.” Dytham promised
emptily. He’d made the same promise to General about Hailey after the Cynthia
incident, but hadn’t made good on it yet.
He murmured a nicety, patted Biyu’s shoulder, and walked to
the sink, placing his empty bowl in the effervescing broth. A robotic arm begun
wiping it, as a second pulled Cote’s now clean bowl out of the sink and onto a
rack above. A tiny yellow light blinked into existence on the wall where the
arms erupted, signalling Helen wanted to talk to him.
“Hi Tom. Next time, could you make sure Mark finishes his
meal? I’d tell him myself, but he’d likely find it patronising.”
Dytham agreed, but didn’t say so. “Sure thing Helen.” He
pulled an earpiece out of his top pocket, tapped the side, slid the smooth cone
into his ear, and continued the conversation out in the hall.
“I can’t keep track of everyone here.” He said quietly,
pulling the door to the kitchen behind him closed. “If Qiangs as bad as Biyu
says then I’ll have to check on him as well. I haven’t even seen Hailey for
days, but-“
The optimized female voice cut him off gently. “Tom, you’re
staying remarkably calm given the situation. Depression is our worst enemy now
that Scott’s stabled our hydroponics. You can help, please do.”
“Why not tell Scott this?” Dytham replied irritably. “Lehman’s
meant to be leading this bloody operation, and I know he’s busy with the food
but why not get-“.
He was cut short as the large door behind him swung open,
and General stomped in. He made a gruff acknowledging nod at Dytham as he
pulled off his balaclava and threw it on a box by the door.
“How’s the Hagglund?” Asked Dytham, discreately removing the
earpiece and stowing it in his pocket.
“Bad.” Replied General, without looking away from a tablet
he’d pulled off the wall. Tearing a glove off one hand with his teeth, he begun
typing. “It won’t be taking us anywhere until we can print out a new set of
cylinders.” His thick Australian accent suddenly took a grimmer tone. “And we’re
low on multi substrate as is. Helen, what are the chances of us pulling some
emergency multisub from any of the active projects?”
A yellow light pinged at the tablets corner. “Unlikely,
unless you can bring a sufficient supply from basecamp, I can’t maintain
processes here.”
General and Helen’s voices disappeared down the corridor,
trading insults and figures respectively. Dytham scratched his beard, and put
his earpiece in again.
“Helen, still there?”
A quick reply. “I can continue three or four conversation at
once Tom. You had mentioned Scott?”
But Dytham’s mind had wandered from Lehman. “No, no forget
it. Where’s Hailey right now?”
“She’s working in the smaller laboratory. No, sorry. She’s
there, but she’s been browsing photos of John for a few hours. I suspect she
would prefer to be left alone.”
“I’m sure, but I’ll pay her a visit anyway.” Dytham pulled
on the gloves and balaclava General had left by the door, and grabbed an
immense parka off the wall.
***
Heaving the door shut behind him, Dytham took a deep breath
of warm air from the laboratory building. Cote hadn’t seen him as he passed,
too focused on the intricacies of the Hagglund’s repairs. The three doors ahead
of him were all shut. Helen’s MCH core was sealed tight at the end of the
corridor, but the two laboratory doors were unlocked. Dytham slowly opened the
door to the smaller of the two, and smiled at Hailey as she looked up.
“Tom! Hi, hi how’s it going?” Hailey’s enthusiasm was
dialled down through the sentence as she rapidly realise she was trying too
hard. Her mouse made a small but quick movement, before she lay back and
crossed her arms. Dytham suspected that a window had just been minimized.
“Fine, actually. I was just talking to Oliver about the ATV,
he says it’s fixable.” Hailey’s smile was genuine.
“That’s great. Great.” She turned back to the screen, and
feigned concentration.
Dytham walked over and sat down next to her, paused and then
said. “Look, you don’t have to pretend. I know you must be worried about John
but I’m sure he’s ok. Just because he couldn’t setup comms from basecamp
doesn’t mean he’s in trouble. If anything he’s doing better than us.”
Hailey had smiled slightly at that last part, but quickly
her face fell again. I spoke to Oliver
after he, after he brought in Cynthia.” She tried and failed to keep the
emotion from her voice. “The cabling was sound all the way up to where it went
underground. There’s no way we’ve lost comms with basecamp, John just never
made it there.”
Dytham couldn’t help but marvel at the façade Hailey had put
on for him, as she swallowed and kept a brave face on announcing the death of
her husband.
“You don’t know that.” Said Dytham gently, before nervously saying
“But Oliver asked me to check up on you, and Helen says you’ve been in here for
hours looking at photos of him-“
Sorrow flew from Hailey’s demeanour, as she whirled around
to face the tiny camera embedded in the fall. “That fucking machine’s been spying
on me again?” She nearly shouted, slamming her laptop screen shut. “That
AIRNE’s done nothing but pry on me since I got here, yellow light or not it’s
always fucking watching me I swear.” She stood, and angrily romped over to the
corner, pulling some electric tape out of her back pocket. “I’ve wanted to
cover this thing since I got here, I’m sick of this shit.”
Dytham jumped up, and hurriedly grabbed her shoulder.
“Hailey, Hailey! Helen’s just looking out for you, she’s just trying to make
sure you don’t-“
“Looking out for me!” Hailey stopped her advance on the
camera, but laughed wickedly. “Tom it’s a fucking AI! She doesn’t care about
me, it’s all just optimization to it.”
A yellow light had slowly turned on next to the camera, and
Helen’s voice gently joined the discussion. “Hailey, please listen to John.”
Hailey rounded on the camera, and got as close as she could
without standing on a chair and roared into the aperture.
“Fuck off! I don’t need your hypocritical emotional
analysis!” She kicked a box to her left angrily beneath the camera, and raised
herself up. Tape spread across the lens, and only once three layers were
applied did Hailey stop muttering obesities, and stepped down from the box.
Dytham stood in a state of shock on the other side of the
room, almost impressed with the emotional outburst his normally timid workmate
had shown. He waited until she sat down again to speak.
“AIRNE’s aside, are you sure you’re ok? That didn’t seem,
very, you.” He nodded towards the now obscured camera on the other side of the
room, and folded his arms apprehensively.
“I’m sad, and angry, and all sorts of messed up I’m sure.”
She replied furiously calm. “But I don’t need a half-cocked physiological
subroutine analysing me.”
Dytham turned his attention to the laptop his workmate had
returned too. The webcam was uncovered. He was about to ask, but Hailey
pre-empted him.
“I pulled it from the intranet.” She explained. “Unless it
somehow gets a drone in here to plug the ether cord back in, she-it, can’t spy
on my personal affairs.”
Picking up on nearly calling Helen “she” instead of “it”, Dytham
was shaken. He felt he’d outstayed his welcome.
“Okay, alright.” He replied, walking slowly over to the
door. He turned back to her, and sighed. “Don’t worry about the computer, ok?
If you want to anyone, just give me a ping.”
The two smiled at each other, and Hailey humbly murmured a
thank you and goodbye. Dytham walked out.
***
The larger lab on the opposite side of the hall was a lot
warmer than Hailey’s. The troughs and trays that lay beneath the assortment of
lights were rough and fragile, hurriedly printed a few days after the mainland messages
came in. The various plantlets and stems which wove their way around the
lab-turned-farm were all looking healthy, and hopefully edible. Dytham shut the
door behind him to preserve the heat, before Lehman told him too.
“Tom. I heard shouting.” Lehman didn’t look up from the
large computer in front of him, as he adjusted a set of dials atop the water
purification system he’d assembled a few days ago.
“Yeah. Hailey having a little freak out about Helen watching
her. She’s covered the camera in the small lab, and pulled her laptop from the
intranet.” Dytham sat down near the door, and unzipped his parka.
Helen chimed in from the computer before Lehman could reply.
“I won’t be monitoring her anymore. But the covered camera could pose a real
danger, if there’s an accident-“
Lehman was only human, but still technically Helen’s boss.
AIRNE’s didn’t get paid, but they could get shut down. “Helen it’ll be fine.
I’ll keep an eye on her. She’s not left that lab for days.”
Dytham smiled a bit. “You’ve not left here for days either.”
Lehman looked up, smiled briefly in return, and pushed his
wheel chair away from the computer. He leaned again his desk and grew sombre
again.
“It’s been hell trying to get this hydroponics system
working. I’m surprised it’s working at all frankly, especially given our
resources. I don’t trust it enough to leave for more than an hour or two. Too
much could go wrong.”
“Well, you need to show your face a little. Only me, Oliver
and Mark seem to be keeping it together, touch wood. Biyu’s saying Qiang’s in a
bad way, and she’s not great herself.” Dytham smiled again and looked Lehman in
the eye. “We need another inspiring speech, like the one you gave us after the
mainland dispatches. That really pulled us all together.”
Lehman surprised Dytham by laughing, which he hadn’t seen
the man do since the Christmas party two months ago. He tapped his watch a few
and signalled Dytham should do the same.
“You’ve got Helen to thank for that little show. She wrote
the damn thing, scavenged from three or four speeches in her records. I was
almost scared you would recognise the words of Winston Churchill.” Dytham
wasn’t shocked, Lehman valued efficiency over all. Flicking through the text on
his phone, he didn’t recognise the words per se but could believe it. Helen
spoke again.
“It was still very well done Scott. I agree with Tom,
another speech would be excellent for morale.”
Lehman shook his head. “I’d just be repeating myself. Once
Oliver repairs the Hagglunds, we’ll be able to make full outings to the coast,
where we’ll at least be able to try and contact the mainland again.”
Dytham wasn’t impressed. “Well at least tell people that.
Have a meeting in commons or the kitchen. Get people out of their rooms. In
fact, let’s do it now.” He stood, and returned to his watch and tapped Helen’s
symbol, but she pre-empted his request.
“I heard you Tom. Scott, should I make an announcement?”
Dytham had zipped his jacket back up, and turned to Lehman who still sat at his
desk. He thought for a second, before replying.
“Okay then. It’s a good idea.” He walked to the door Dytham
held open, grabbing a jacket off the rack. “I’ll tell Hailey in person, remind
her there’s a person opposite her, as well as a machine.” The two left the lab,
the door pushed shut behind them.
***
Commons was large. The room was meant to accommodate the
entire crew and guests from the coast or mainland, but the room was
depressingly far from full today. Dytham was the last to enter, just as Lehman
looked like he was about to start. Biyu, General and Cote sat on one of the
sofas near the door, while Qiang stood alone at the other end of the room.
Hailey leaned reluctantly by the door, scowling at Lehman, who stood ahead of
all of them at the centre of the room. Making a surprise appearance, Helen had
illuminated the flat screen television to Qiang’s left with an image of her
“face”, which would talk and express emotion whenever she spoke. It currently
looked sombre and serious, much like all the more realistic faces in the room.
“Right.” Lehman began, crossing his arms and looking around
the assembled scientists in front of him. “It’s been about two weeks since we
last all got together, and while the situation is far from perfect, negative
attitudes won’t help things.” He gestured at Cote. “Mark here says that we
should be able to print new parts for the Hagglunds, and after that it’s just a
case of ferrying people to the coast. Once we’re there, we can try and contact
the mainland again, and-“
Almost on cue, the room began to shake. Mugs, books and the
entire tables themselves begun to skitter and trundle around the room. Qiang
grabbed the wall, and barely remained standing. Everyone else just locked in,
and hung on to whatever was largest and nearest. The shacking continued for
about thirty seconds, before fading and finally stopping.
Unfazed, Lehman continued. “And once at the mainland, we can
try to-“, but found himself cut short again.
“And then what?” Qiang’s Sino-French voice was raised and
annoyed. “You heard the messages, we all did! There’s nothing left of a
mainland to visit! And even if there was, you think the Milner survived?” He
pushed himself off the wall, and advanced on Lehman. “We haven’t heard anything
from the coast, the station’s probably destroyed!”
Biyu’s face had disappeared into her hands, and Cote looked
troubled enough to almost make Dytham like him. General and Hailey were less
amused. Logical arguments presented from the two were rebuked by Qiang’s own,
until eventually the three descended into a dull roar. Gesticulating and
waving, the trio attracted each other into a matter of centimetres. Biyu cried.
Dytham felt his second in command duties rising themselves up from the thick
fear of embarrassment he’d felt a year ago when he was forced to tell Hailey
and John the crew could hear it when they copulated in their room. Lehman was
still for a moment, before turning to Helen’s digitized face and nodded.
A claxon screamed. The shouting was cauterized. The siren
died as well after a brief millisecond, unheard since the safety briefing that
had actually proceeded in the copulating incident by a few weeks, back when the
mission started when the crew moved in. Lehman made good use of the now heavy
silence.
“Charles. Pessimism isn’t going to get us anywhere, so calm
down.”
General agreed, muttering. “Remember your training you
coward.”
Lehman pre-empted Qiang’s response as he rounded on General.
“Charles! Please we all know the situation is bad, but you-“. He didn’t finish
his sentence. Qiang had left, looked utterly defeated. He made an effort to not
barge into either Dytham or General as he passed the two on his way out. Crying
mixed with depressed laughed echoed from down the hall before a door slammed,
leaving only Biyu’s quiet tears to accompany the reshuffling, as people sat
back down. Cote patted her on the shoulder, with Dytham noticing how he
nervously glanced towards General, who didn’t look happy.
“Well, now we’re all collected.” Lehman continued, pausing
to look at the door. “I’ll talk to Charles later, I’m sure he’s just stressed.
I know we all feel a bit like him at the moment, but it’s important we don’t
fall apart. The situation seems a lot worse than it is.” He gestured at Dytham.
“I just showed Tom the hydroponics I’ve set up. Just last week we were falling
apart about food, and now we’re nearing self-sustainability, as long as we
don’t expect any roast dinners.” He smiled, and a bit of warmth returned to the
room.
“The Hagglunds is looking better.” Said Cote, as he laid
back slightly in his chair. “Helen’s printing some parts now, and I’ll probably
be able to get them installed in a day or two.” He looked pleased with himself.
“Excellent.” Hailey commented, before she coughed slightly
and turned her face steely. Blinking, she continued. “I just want everyone to
know that if, when, when we make it to the coast, I would like to be one of the
first there. To see, to see if John is okay. If he’s alive.” Finished, she
relaxed.
“Of course.” Lehman eased, as he leaned far forward off his
chair and patted her arm. “Oliver and you can be the first to go.” He looked up
at Oliver, who nodded gruffly before turning away to the window. Dytham spoke
up too, directing his question at General.
“What was our multisub situation saying?” He asked, before
turning his eyes to the monitor expecting some graphs. General walked past him
and began to explain the figures which had replaced Helen’s visage, but
suddenly the screen changed violently.
“Alert!” Helen said without any emotion, optimized only for getting attention. “I think, yes. Li Qiang is attempting suicide.” The screen showed Qiang from above, as he wrestled with a craft knife. Dytham didn’t see the rest, as he launched himself out of commons and down the corridor after Cote who was yanking open the intermediate doorway and sprinting towards Qiangs room. Beyu’s scream and a satisfyingly severe “Jesus Christ!” from General were heard from commons. Lehman walked.
By the time he had slowly strode to Qiangs room, both Dytham
and Cote’s hands were warm with blood. Qiang’s lifeless eyes traced the arch of
the ceiling as the pair lay his head down on the blanket they’d used to try and
stifle the gash across his neck. Lehman closed his eyes. Biyu wrapped herself
around Hailey, their tears mirrored in Cote and Dythams face. An aftershock
tremor painted the pool of blood into a mathematically pleasing randomized
shape.
“Fuck.” Said nobody in particular.
***
Friday 25 November 2016
[Ping]
[Anglic Norte]
[Incoming]
[TwenCen]
[VCast VCaught]
Hi Mendel.
Just fishing some Oort debris out the way for Euphoria of Known Sex, and we're having a lot of problems with what we're guessing incredulously to be shrapnel from the First Lunar War. Only Asiatics were using velocity mass projectiles, and archives imply the conflict was mainly fought along one long front, hence the bizarre alignment of the old munitions. Bullets and shells curved round Sun once, then were directed by Jupiter to where we're picking them up now. While incredibly spread out, we've experienced minor injuries but approaching substantial damage to accretion facilities. Item analysis confirms.
I would recommend HiveMind and Prodigies to, if nothing else, investigate this phenomena for potential future incidents, especially following the fifty year later Second Lunar War, which saw continued use of velocity mass projectiles. Euphoria of Known Sex has an above average size accretion shield, which would see incredible damage at time of departure if these randomised small projectile incidents are continuous.
Apologies for the lack of formalities, but I feel this would really benefit from further investigation.
All the best,
LeMarkte
[Received]
[Response Pending]
[Incoming]
[TwenCen]
[VCast VCaught]
Hi Mendel.
Just fishing some Oort debris out the way for Euphoria of Known Sex, and we're having a lot of problems with what we're guessing incredulously to be shrapnel from the First Lunar War. Only Asiatics were using velocity mass projectiles, and archives imply the conflict was mainly fought along one long front, hence the bizarre alignment of the old munitions. Bullets and shells curved round Sun once, then were directed by Jupiter to where we're picking them up now. While incredibly spread out, we've experienced minor injuries but approaching substantial damage to accretion facilities. Item analysis confirms.
I would recommend HiveMind and Prodigies to, if nothing else, investigate this phenomena for potential future incidents, especially following the fifty year later Second Lunar War, which saw continued use of velocity mass projectiles. Euphoria of Known Sex has an above average size accretion shield, which would see incredible damage at time of departure if these randomised small projectile incidents are continuous.
Apologies for the lack of formalities, but I feel this would really benefit from further investigation.
All the best,
LeMarkte
[Received]
[Response Pending]
Thursday 24 November 2016
Moral Programs
Nobody sued musicians for their album art on the screen of
handhelds, clenched vicelike in the hands of recent suicides who opted not to
drown. Statistical artefacts, classified under “contributory factors”, deemed
immune to blame. The same should be for videogames.
But what if they directly implied the player didn’t exist?
Meta. Extremely meta.
The premise was this; upon opening the game, players where
given a heavy dose of expository spiel. They were informed that they were “Moral
Programs”. Philosophical AIs with enough complexity and electrical similarity
to brains to deem them human enough on the Turing scales to be passable as the
real thing. Machines which felt. Sufficiently. The player’s life up until
launching the game was described as a subroutine. Something to give the AI a
sense of reality and weight.
Players laughed. Quaint. If they shut the game prematurely,
to test the supposed depth of the game, they were simply bought back to the
main screen on reloading. Failure also took the player back to the start, a
difficulty just hard enough to activate primal hunting instincts and a desire
to try again. Nothing special, but enough to entice playing further.
The gameplay consisted of simple masked optimization
problems. “You” accompanied a drone, which was
actively seeking foreign targets in a foreign land. The player’s goal was
essentially to observe, their humanlike presence in the conflict a necessity only
by international law. Occasionally, players were instructed to decide which
targets were more “ethically challenging”. Advice the drone to run the risk of
killing six children, or three young pregnant women? Two criminals or one
innocent civil servant? A teenagers arm and ears, or both his legs? “Missions”
were evaluated at their conclusion at a military tribunal, where the player/Moral
Program were analysed and its ethical combat decision-making commended. Failure
resorted in a reset. Infuriating. Try again.
It was curious complexity. People talked about it to their friends on and
off-line, as it warped and spread across the net. Watching other people play
the game wasn’t as satisfying as playing it yourself, but the fans still
crowded to their streams. Reviewers lapped up its intricacy in a genre with
dying thematic principles. Overall it was being well received.
Now things become most complicated at the very end of the
game. The player/Moral Program was constantly being reminded by their in-game commander
of their lack of existence, and how “everything else” (being, everything but
the game), was a minor script in their programming to ground them in reality.
The façade grew and grew. The player’s/Moral Program’s family were mentioned,
in vague enough terms to catch the attention of a wide audience. Probing into the
open-source freedom of social media, the game occasionally pulled friends and
lovers names out the blue to scare the player/Moral Program. The game even
describes these processes within itself, bathing in the meta-conversations
which acknowledge axioms themselves, lathering the audience with the triviality
of a known illusion good enough to keep you fooled. The game knew it was a
game. But did the player?
The ending itself was what finally drew the most blame. The
final “mission” was to retrieve a package for the government the player/Moral
Program served. It was cutting edge, and exceedingly hard for the player to
morally retrieve. Civilians and double agents crowded the battlefield. A second
drone entered play. A hospital was conveniently in the line of fire. Neurones
fired faster along their new muscle memory than they had before. Breath was
held. A satisfying boss fight.
The cutscene which followed hammered the final nail. The
package was revealed as an artificial “heaven”. The commander described, in a speech
clearly designed for repetition to many audiences, that the Moral Programs were
too humanlike in their complexity to be simply shutdown like the unconscious drone
AIs. Instead they had to be stored in “heavens” until they lived a standard
human life. Then they could die like the rest of us. The game ends with the
commander thanking the player/Moral Program for their work, and says their
coding will be recommended to their superior.
And that was that. Replaying the game was identical, and the
command simply explained it was just another facet of heaven to entertain the
player. Players shut down their PCs, went for a drink, and then moved onto the
next serial FPS. But fans don’t die hard.
All it took was 0.001% of the players which deemed
themselves “fans” to post their datamine on a forum and the secrets were out.
Paragraphs of additional dialogue, deemed “unfit” for the game’s final build.
The commander’s speeches were tedious, explaining the game was the only way
within the law to use Moral Programs, and his own concerns that the AIs would
become too aware of their false lives and commit suicide. He went on, describing
how only a handful of Moral Programs were even used in the conflict, and that
the rest of the “player base”, and “fans” of the game were just subroutines of
subroutines. Other characters, who helped designed the program were hinted at in a spiders web of intrigue. The commander in one passage even seemed to be close to a breakdown. It was very well done.
Of course there were sceptics. Or rather, realists. It was
all made up. Obviously it was all made up. But still very very well done. The thematic
praise actually won the game a few awards, which the sole creator took sullenly
and with a barely managed fake smile. It was all made up!
But the brain in a vat stipulation evolved into the Moral
Program on a chip stipulation. The game was even brought up at a low-level philosophy
conference at an equally low level university. Even professionals however conceded it was a good way to get kids interested in philosophy. A year after
release, having made a tidy sum, the one-man development team retired, from
videogames and public life. People began to forget about Moral Program.
Then, in the short space of a month, about eleven teenagers
killed themselves. So what. Well, after two more months and another fifteen
later connected suicides, it was agreed that all the dead, along with a slew of
previously ignored suicides from months ago, were massive fans of the game. They had watched
stream after stream, done play-through after play-through. Most datamined, with
all having joined in lengthy forum arguments for weeks. One or two even had merchandising.
After a further four months, the suicides reach fifty. At this point, the
parents of the initial dead were frothing at the mouth. The illusive developer,
until now declining comment, was hauled in by the police. An eight-year-old,
left at home with nothing but his laptop and a deep desire for attention from his
arguably as much to blame parents, walked in front of a bus while playing the
games theme-tune on his handheld. That got the rest of the general public
involved and caring.
Another slew of suicides and game faced a mass-recall. As
the one-hundred mark was reached, computers connected to the internet
uninstalled the game automatically, citing “mental health risks”. But somebody
cracked the thing open and made it run offline undetected. All it took was a
trip to the ‘Bay and the entire experience was yours. Forums which had covertly
inadvertely been promoting the suicide pact were also shutdown superficially,
but all it took was real devotion and you’d find them again. Parents, family
and friends became more and more fearful. The “Moral-Program” effect littered
the news, blaming any game it could. Previously laid to rest court cases were
dug up. Irate mothers threw their bawling preteens consoles in the outside bin.
Then one self-seen Assange managed to leak the footage from
the final stage of the developer’s trial. The creator had been indicted for
months, as the death toll mounted and mounted, until it finally begun to recede two years after release, with him facing a lengthy sentence. Hearings and evidence
mounted, witnesses went from screaming to sobbing. Hate crimes were committed
against the developer’s innocent parents, who eventually began to condemn their
son as much as the parents of “those he’d killed”. The general public grew
tired eventually, as the trial drew to a close. But the footage was
too enjoyable, and it sparked an aftershock unlike anything before.
He was quite deranged, everyone agreed. The developer had
gone without any real attorney or defensive lawmaker whatsoever. He’d just sat
sullenly, confirming what was true and denying lies eventually deemed to be false as
well. All sane. All until the closing statement. He’d certainly been thinking
about it for a while. And he certainly knew how to a capture a crowds
attention.
He erupted, fervour unseen before in the courtroom outside
of the grieving parents. He condemned not the courts, but all videogames
themselves. Flirtatious combat simulations, which toyed with the brain just
enough to make it feel like it was actually doing anything, tricking the
matters into releasing joyful hormones for nothing. He laughed and ran his
hands through his hair, announcing he was almost glad at the suicides, deeming
the dead’s brains too susceptible to false trickery and manipulation. He
referenced a utopian apocalyptic future, where we put our brains in the very “heaven”
machines he’d hypothesised, seeking pleasure over any tangible impact on
reality. The machines would rule us then, he said, while we giggled child-like
in our self-made illusions. More laugher, more tears. He eventually devolved,
and was dragged out the courtroom ranting about mankind’s inability to handle
anything short of ultimate pleasure, given a choice. The last footage the leak
captured was his biting a guard’s hand, manic eyes scanning a stunned jury,
while screaming inhumanly.
“They’ll kill our will, our impact! The fucking games will kill
us all!”
Trawling the man’s hard-drives turned up similar rants. He’d
even written a short story, describing almost an identical scenario, which when
cross-referencing his final screams in the story and reality was scarily accurate,
especially given how he’d been separate from
the computer for months.
The world was quite shaken. At least for a few months. Then
it went back to caring about only the prettier endangered animals, and
trivialities of celebrity. And its video games, of course.
Monday 10 October 2016
Dissapointments
Disappointments.
The first was time. The second was space. Or at least half
of space.
We couldn’t go faster than light, so we didn’t technically
master space. But on the way to our disappointment we made some interesting discoveries.
We couldn’t go forward, back, left or right. So what do we do? We go up.
Shifting dimension is an incredibly apt metaphor seeing as
that’s essentially what was done. We delved downwards into two and one
dimension universes. We waved dark matter around until we got a very basic response.
They’re still working on getting a reply which isn’t seemingly random to the
point of meaningless. They’re also working on breaching a zero dimension
universe but those departments don’t get any funding anymore. Or more
accurately power, as its computers which run the entire show.
Upwards was more promising. We got basic mimicry from five
through to seven, then more interesting responses. We got a number system going
with positive and negative interactions in a nine dimension universe. That
was big news for a while and the genius which coded the genius which figured
that out both got very famous, but only the first genius made any money. Some were
happy with a plateau there, but eff that.
Finally after a generation and a social trend towards
transhuman biotech and videogames, the public’s eye was drawn again to a sudden
bout of interesting results from a 17D universe. Yes? No? Prime numbers?
Headlines for once lived up to the research. A civilisation sick of Fermi’s
bloody paradox was eager for some aliens not of our design, or the design
of our aliens. Translation was difficult, and we assume they overloaded their
systems several times throughout the process given long stretches of time without
a response. But the language progressed. Eventually we said “Hello”. Then they
did too.
And it was all very enlightening until they asked if they
could speak to the water.
We re-translated. Many, many times. But they were infatuated
with water. They almost refused to speak to us, at one point referring to us as
(And this is an extremely rough translation) “Nitrogen-heavy fat confusion
makers”. Nobody around the sun took that well.
We explained that the water couldn’t exactly speak back, but
they insisted. We tried hooking all manner of dihydrogen monoxide systems up to
our communique, but to no avail. They asked us to leave, and let them speak to
the water, citing important philosophical arguments they had to share.
Aliens from another dimension. And they were completely
effing insane. Or maybe we were the insane ones, seeing as we apparently couldn’t
speak to water.
Needless to say we all went back to videogames.
Tuesday 4 October 2016
Of Procul Preview - Chapter Three
3201
Earth
An explosion reverberated through
the valley.
The figure lying under the thick
thermal rug jerked suddenly awake, scouring the hillside around him. Darting
upwards, his eyes followed the path of a beige lighter craft as it descended
behind a low hill in the distance. The ships tracer trails lingered behind it
for a few seconds, before slowing fading out of existence. Its rapid rise from
stratospheric to normal jetting speeds had created the sonic boom which had
awoken the man. He hadn’t spied any markings from this distance, but Earth saw
little to no interplanetary activity outside the E.R.C.O, so he sized the craft
was there’s. Pulling the blanket off himself, he stood. Having slept fully
clothed, he proceeded to unfurl the thick poncho he had wrapped around himself
in his sleep. Stepping into his boots, he bent to tighten their elastics, and
picking up a cowl draped over the weighty rucksack he had used as a pillow, he
covered his shaven head from the sun above.
As he busied himself with breakfast
and preparations for the day, the poncho rattled and clattered as he moved
around his makeshift camp. To a spectator from afar, the garment resembled a
greyed urban camouflage, or a tessellating piece of tactile electronic art.
Drawing closer, the patterns discerned themselves into a collection of tiny
rectangles of varying sizes. Some hung as large as a palm, others smaller than
a fingernail. The plates overlapped seamlessly, to such an extent than the
material beneath was invisible. It resembled a haphazard chainmail, steel of
antiquity or carbonfibre of today.
The camp reorganised and stowed in
his pack, the man hoisted it upon his shoulders and grasped a staff he had laid
carefully by his bed the night before. The staff mimicked his poncho, a long
train of cubes of differing sizes, but all connected into one another. Near the
staffs head, thick and thin wires wove together into a hairball mess. Using the
staff to steady himself, the man slowly descended from the ridge where he had
slept. He stumbled only once, but caught himself on a rocky outcrop behind him.
Eventually reaching the scarcely visible road beneath him, he continued his
journey southward. The old tarmac creaked and groaned underfoot, complaining
against the careful steps. Several times the whine rose to a roar as large
chunks were dislodged and threw themselves into the valley below. It didn’t
faze the walker though. He had made this journey countless times before, and
the road begrudged him passage every time. With his spare hand, he fidgeted
with one of the smaller plates adorning his garment. Twisting it between
fingers, gentle not to pull it from its clasp. His mind wandered. Six hundred years. Over six hundred years it had been kept a secret.
For a hundred years after the war, searches were made with effort. Teams and
drones ransacked the still breathing cities and buried the dead ones. After
then, their enemies relaxed the hunt, realizing their wartime allies were
peacetime foes. Foreign eyes left the Earth to be left in peace and pieces.
2894. It was a Martian
astrobattleship which launched the spear that struck the Gutenberg-Alexandrite
Library City of Europa. No other datastore was left untouched, as drone and
zealot alike rushed over the crippled Earth. Fragile intelligence was overrun
by violent ignorance. In a matter of hours, every city felt the blow of the
astrospears, while the slaved Ceresian AIs wrought destruction on the intranets
webwide. The last bear was crushed under a Martian landing craft in Brazil. The
last fern was vaporized and smoked by a Titaness mercenary as she triumphantly
waved at a cameradrone. But one does not extinguish a flame so easily. Mere
minutes after the munity of the moon disabled Earths defensive satellite
network, the EarthGov met for one final time. As the combined ships of the
Defiant Movement slowed into Earthen near space, rushed decisions were made. As
the meeting drew to a close, almost half the data on the planet had already
been copied. By the time the Unpronounceable General and his Ceresian court
entered the atmosphere, the entirety of the planets data was safely copied and
being printed onto memdrives. Flashcards were hurriedly inserted into ports,
while memory sticks were brandished ecstatically at image banks. It’s rumoured
even a hard copy disk was taken out of storage and re-digitized. As the Unpronounceable
General and a Martian Leejun entered the Office City of Brussels, wading
through the ice water which writhed in the streets, the EarthGov was quite
calm. Peace was signed within the hour, over the tumultuous clamour the crowds
outside. As the fire of the astrospears peaked the horizon apocalyptically and
intranet implants were torn out to screams and nosebleeds, the last EarthGov
president felt warmth in his heart. But not for long.
The slaved AIs picked up the
intranet ping trail within minutes, and messages ordering the mass data
reproduction were decoded in the fleet command centres above. The
Unpronounceable General’s rage saw the last president and his congress die
feeling their throats boil. But with their last petaflops the loyal Earthen AIs
managed to mask the location of the transcription from the invaders, before
succumbing to cessation themselves. So when the first nomad left his burning
city and strode out into the wilderness, he knew that the knowledge he carried
in his garment was safe from the barbarians above. Weaved into the poncho he wore
under thin rags and plasfilms, was all the knowledge left of the planet. The
EarthGov knew they had lost the war. A century of hubris had seen to that.
Cities and fortresses fell, their allies too far and weak to help. The last
remaining super-AIs were bargaining with the enemy for exile beyond the
wormhole. There were no option left but to hide. It was the idea of one
official who lay now clutching their microwaved jugular in the Brusselèèr
Office City, to hide in the people themselves.
And it worked. The septillions upon
septillions of bytes of data were woven into inconspicuousness. As the first
wearer of the poncho settled down in a newborn shantytown on the southern coast
of a forgotten coast, the knowledge was hidden from prying eyes. They were
visited thrice by search parties in the first year. But nothing was found. When
the first nomad’s third grandchild saw the occupation end nearly ninety years
later, the treasures remained safe. The Castillo cave paintings. The works of
Mozart, Boucher and Unchu. The social media trends from the three hundred major
neural forum sites from 2200 until 2894. The full 3D scans of Prague, Tasmania
and Beijing. Photos of every human who had ever lived since 2078, and genome
sequences from 2162, both excluding deliberate outliers. The all-powerful entanglement
“frequency” of the induced wormhole, which had sealed itself shut after the
last AI carrier craft passed through. All this information, culture, wisdom and
history was safe. Hidden and forgotten.
The man who walked the road along
the mountainside stopped fidgeting with the memdrive between his fingers and
brought his hand up to shield his eyes from the shimmering sun. These thoughts
of history were racing through his mind, but these emotions of loss drifted
from one subject to another. The words his mother had spoken to him when his
father grew bleeding were harsh but true. The weight and burden was forced onto
his shoulders but he carried it dutifully. He scarcely remembered his mother’s
face, yet he remembered events from six hundred and fifty years ago which he’d
never lived. But the present was pressing. Squinting, he could make out the
shattered shafts of Santiago touching the heavens in the distance. The Orosh
had passed, but the dust storms still whipped up the air around the city into a
thin fog visible kilometres away. Closer to him, alongside the young river
birthed last year by an earthquake, lay a Neuvo Santiago. Smoke rose from a few
houses, and a smile broke the man’s face.
“She still lives then.” He murmured quietly for nobody to hear.
Tightening his packs claps
with a yank, and continued down the road towards the fresh settlement. He was
the twenty sixth wearer of knowledge. His name was John Nino.
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