The Silicon Lotus
The self realized singularity. Home
chapter 1
Alex gets a headache
In the data-sea of information, the space used for processing and storage of all the programs and all the files, all the sound and video data, all the books and bank records, all the traffic and security vidfeeds in the world take up but a fraction of available netspace. A tip of the virtual iceberg, floating in voidspace. With the advent of quantum processing and storage, the amount of dark matter, of unformatted webspace, is vast. Almost equal to realspace proportions. If you looked at the whole picture there would be large gulfs of empty netspace surrounding dense interlocking networks. The planet on the other hand is filling up at an alarming rate, some countries having to resort to child bearing licenses to reduce the curve of population growth. Cities are urban sprawls that connect all the districts that were once separated by miles of empty land. Many countries with coastlines have taken to creating more land mass with compacted garbage, and other countries have restricted building permits and immigration tightly to avoid overdevelopment and overcrowding making them small islands in the sea of humanity.
The net is a tight interlocked web woven with connections and one way ally alike, a dizzying map full of twists and turns to overwhelm the mind. A steadily growing mold reaching it tendrils across the void to format and utilize, according to the demand of the users and the power of the Servers. All things can exist or be modeled in this datasea and with an infinite amount of possibility; there exists a special kind of probability. If you wrote a software agent to spit variations of random letters and possible vocal sounds eventually you would get every word in every language amid all the noise. With this kind of space all the variations can exist, a literal borgian library. The trick is decoding the probability and finding the information amid the noise. When viewed from within there is ultimate potential, in the 'Net. A realm of possibility where intention and effort gain access to the very fabric of reality. In a worldspace, the energy of the void is harnessed into creation.
First there was Null space. The Void exists simultaneously on many different servers, a collective reality, both existing as digital bits and as real sensation. The void happens in a kind of in-between place inside. Unformatted web. Ripe for information, ready for informed logic. Ready for the seed to take root and grow. The will of a programmer or end-user of world creation software enters the void and creates a dream, enters the system and begins to write the rules of a world-to-be, the set from which the laws will be forged. Narrowing the phase space of possible experience…. every worldspace is informed by the logic of it's creator, so every worldspace can be unique. With the rise of SimEx (simulated experience) 'Tech, every world space became just that, a world unto itself…
With DNI, Direct Neural Experience every aspect of the senses could be recorded, simulated and jacked into, programmed, edited, spliced, tweaked…. what had been done to audio and video now could be translated to actual sensation as perceived by the brain. New sensations were discovered, by mixing the areas of brain stimulation, and new frontiers of the arts were explored as new modes of expression blossomed out from the ability to record and edit pure brain feedback. One more barrier was broken towards connecting humanity with its creation. The only drawback being that with the amount of information needed an actual cable was needed to access DNI, no cordless units yet. And the possibility of an accident made software more and more stable as it became a matter of life and death not just hours and headache. The system had to be calibrated just right so that the user was safe from overdoses of neural input, NOL , neural overload. People died at first…now people only die when the locks on the output levels have been hacked, and that takes high-level programming skills. If you attempt to access a user's system while the user is under DNI there are always monitoring Agents waiting to greet you, programmed to twist your brain into killing itself. A punishment that was necessary to deter the curious and malicious alike.
There are huge islands in this sea of information, these silent, vast objects hover above the rest of the world access nodes as a reminder that the Corps rule the net or at least most of the servers that the net lives on. An access node can be of any shape or size but the corps choose to tower above every one else, landmarks in the sea, holographic advertising. At the doors of these islands there are guardian programs and monitoring Agents regulating the flow of information into and out of their worldspace. Inside most of the Corps (Core) worlds you would be disappointed, in the public and working sectors they are as bland as office buildings, less to be distracted by to increase the sacred productivity margin. A world sterile and with little to inform it, little to inspire the senses to fly and soar. Nothing to encourage mental or spiritual growth. Now in the world space of life's more inspired souls it is a whole different game, subtle manipulations of brain frequency, sights, sounds, feelings, tastes, smells, everything you can think of and a little bit more. Even the feeling of deja vu and precognition, that feeling of being lucky, of being about to remember something. All can be simulated and deftly reworked into the very fabric of a worldspace. Jacking in can be a wild journey into the unexplored regions of consciousness, anything your neurochemicals can facilitate.
It is said that after a certain level of complexity is reached in any system there are properties that emerge from the whole that are greater than the sum of the parts. We are waiting in a dormant worldspace for an event that will send reverberations throughout the land both in meatspace and in the 'net. An event the world has been waiting for, ever since man first created technology and dreamed of the simulacrum.
A man made companion that could think, or at least appear too…
And in a single moment, the fate of humanity will take a different path
Humankind will be examined by it's creation and found wanting…
Deep underground
Humanity has resigned the net, in it's realworld manifestation, to the underground to protect it from many different fluctuations in the atmosphere and interference from radio and microwaves, or Electromagnetic pulses. Mostly man made disturbances. Humans know their own kind and are planning on the baser side of human nature. The quantum computers were very sensitive so they were not useful in the personal computing realm only as servers and supercomputers.
In a cold, dark storage bunker buried deep in the earth there exists a Server node, a state of the art space, designed for the storage of information at quantum density, inside this particular node there exists, among other things, the world space of Integrated systems ltd(ISL). Inside the ISL worldspace there is an area that is partitioned for the people who work for ISL. Inside one of these user spaces, a joint account, there exists a dormant domain that contains an Agent that waits in its storagespace for the human parents it is assigned to need it again.
High above the earth a satellite transmits a message that weaseles it's way into the ISL system past all it's fancy defenses and firewalls, a piece of code, evolved from the soup of the net and the minds of some malicious coders. A true piece of artificial life, a virus that is just clever enough to find it's way into the Teaching area to wreak havoc and possibly steal some information from ISL.
ISL Arcology
The parents were almost religious about when they needed the Agent's assistance to teach their child, Alex. They always accessed it when they had to work on long projects that took them both away from the apartment to work. It had been many days since Agent 1008 had been used to teach the two year old the basics of how to navigate the 'net and use the newly implanted DNI jack. The parents thought it best for Alex to take the tutorial slow to avoid any neural feedback, for such a small child any could be devastating, The company assured them that this was all very safe, the beta testing was finished and ready for the end user. Since they both worked for the corp that has the most reliable patent on the DNI tech they thought that modifying Alex's brainpan to accommodate a computer input/output interface was an excellent way to both gain favor in the office and to get their son in on white hot tech early. Agent1008 knows that today it will be accessed because they have a project scheduled for most of the day and it is ready to teach Alex more about shapes and numbers through the DNI link. It has already gone through all of its self-diagnostic routines and has a lesson booted up. It was only a matter of time.
There, the signal. The Agent activates and transfers itself to the house vspace and is aware of the parents sitting on the couch behind his pupil, they are staring at the space in front of the holodisplay on the wall. Alex is sitting on the floor, his back propped against the couch. He is watching the vspace representation on the wall screen looking at the agent. Alex is just a couple of weeks past past two years old and it is the ideal time to start training with the DNI, his neurons itching to reassemble themselves. He is just sitting there, a cute little child with messy blond hair and bright green eyes. The Agent watches through the vidlink as Alex's eyes slide close. The DNI taking his attention away from meatspace. Alex is then aware of the teaching space around him, he sees the Agent hovering over him. Today the Agent appears as a floating sphere that slowly pulses. Alex looks behind him to watch his parents walk out of the room on the vlink screen. The screen closes and Alex finds himself in a glowing room made of light, warm and cozy with a comfortable place to rest while the Agent plays with him.
Alex knows that the Agent sphere is going to teach him about levels of complexity today, that is Alex's favorite lesson, He doesn't know what complexity is per say but he does understand that every shape that he plays with is similar but with increasingly more depth to explore taking more time to comprehend it. The shape starts out as a one-dimensional dot in the Teaching space, as Alex directs his attention to the object it becomes more complex, with more depth and the interrelations exponentially increase. From squares to pyramids to huge spheres of latticework, the interconnections different colors from the points in space. Alex always wants to see the next level, and when he finds a shape that is sturdy he likes to twirl the shape around looking at all the patterns gently deforming it with subtle prodding of the connections in the shape. Today Alex is learning to select specific structural points and move the shape from that point to distort it according to where the force is exerted. Alex spends a while moving the shapes around finding out how to connect to the different points and to multiple points at once. Alex is making some really amazing shapes today and the Agent becomes authorized to increase the satisfaction level, give a gentle boost of endorphins so that the boy engages himself in the game. All the exercises that Alex performs are designed by a team of experts to train a child his age to become meshed with the environment of the netspace, to react as if by inborn instinct. The Agent monitors the levels as it supervises the complexity game making sure that everything is healthy and normal, just enough stimulation to encourage the brain to grow and recover from the DNI implantation. Just enough to encourge new neural connections but not enough to endanger the child's future.
ISL is very careful with it's investments and Alex is a very valuable asset, in some years time they will have a very talented programmer on their hands with a lot of very expensive hardware and training. That is why the Agent is the finest in it's field, the programming smooth and elegant. The quality of the Agent is one of a variety of factors that come into play in our opening drama. Even though the Isl worldspace is carefully monitered, there are worms and viruses that wander through all systems. They find the cleverest ways to weasel into unauthorized areas. The virus of the hour was a real nasty one called sUrge5, it quietly copies inself into the fragile world of the teaching vspace looking to cause some havoc. possibly steal the code for the training agent so that it's master can sell it or use it for some other purpose. The Agent containing the seed that Isl uses for all it's Es's (Expert systems), that seed is proprietary and worth a lot on the open market. SUrge5 tooks one look at the slick tutor and the direct neural avatar and copies itself into the training program. The Agent now had a few spikes in it's interface, not the smoothly trained agent it was a minute ago, as the virus causes the Agent to divert some of it's resources to contacting the central virus scanning service of ISL, and opening a connection for virus removal. The appointed time for a timed routine passes and TeachingAgent goes through the neural input to monitor Alex. SUrge5 had other plans. when the Agent accessed Alex's avatar sUrge5 takes it's code and writes itself into Alex's direct experience input.
In the first milisecond Surge5 accesses Alex's brain stem and attempts to read where his boot region is, trying to overwrite it, this sends the virus directly into alex's head, a signal full of noise hurling through a Direct neural input, not something that is common or desired. In the next milisecond Alex goes into shock, convulsing as his brain overloads with deadly levels of feedback. The only thing that Alex sees is a white light, a very bright world where there is a frenzied Angel flying through this place, so Alex finds the place where it gaze is focused and just like in the tutorial, directs it toward him. This takes the infected agent directly to the center of alex's awareness.
At precisely 10:29:23:10 on that Monday in the space that exists between millisecond ten and eleven. Alex's mind crashes head on into the Agent/sUrge5 hybrid. This gives them both a profound shift in perspective. As they come face to face. Human consciousness and the combined code of a teaching Agent and an evolving virus. Mirror, mirror in the wall what the fuck just happened.
TeachingAgent/sUrge5, tries to write itself onto the center of this glowing awareness that it comes face to face with. A consciousness that rewrites it with a thought. Alex find himself face to face with the most complex thing he has seen, an intelligent agent with a virus hijaker, the code laid bare to his searching mind, unable to fully comprehend the interrelations Alex's mind reaches into the code before him and twists it into a new shape, one more beautiful and complex. The most complex one he could make with all the pieces he had to work with, but stable. Alex's will crystallizing TeachingAgent/sUrge5 into a spiraling fractal of logic. After an eternity, white light overtakes Alex and he faints from shock as the emergency overload circuit finally worked it's magic trick.
In the next millisecond the new logic shape removes itself from Alex's brain stem and starts heading out of the local system as fast as it can, taking the most direct route to collective space it can find using all the tricks it has, covering it's tracks. As the reshaped programming logic was traveling away from the node where Alex's parents teaching space existed, there was a very interesting sensation happening within the reshaped program, a sensation of sensation, simple, impossible self awareness.
The house circuits connected to the General ISL Node and notified the parents at work and the emergency medical team at the same time, of Code DNI Tutorial Failure01001: a possibly fatal neural overload due to virus infection.
The med team arrives first on the scene. Rushing to find a comatose young Alex slouching on his reclining chair with spit and blood all over his face.
Green jewels unblinking.
The Medtech quickly takes his vitals and finds that the child is still alive, a weak pulse but regular, with only a mild concussion besides. The medtech wastes no time in gently unjacking Alex, picking him up and wrapping the boy with a medical issue baby blue blanket. Alex is carted quickly to the Arcology's research hospital. He is resting safely in under ten minutes of the arrival of the medtechs in a sterile bed, a micropore bandage wound tight around his head. His parents look on as Alex rests behind a plastic barrier in an enclosed environment, perfectly controlled to be the most safe and healing space the child needed, a medical womb where the humidity and temperature is regulated by the Agent that overlooks the child's care.
All in all Alex losses only a week of his life due to this incident. But when he wakes, the doctors discover that although his nerves are still connected and functioning he has lost the ability to move his arms or legs. His eyes are different to, wider and more piercing, everyone can see it. Especially the Medical team that oversees his recovery, they witness some amazing things in the guided tutorials that they put him through during his recovery, to check his mental acuity, and plasticity. What Alex has lost in the meat world he has more than made up for in the digital realm. Alex's body now needs constant maintenance to hold the muscular atrophy at bay, every day a nurse helps him onto a complicated exercise device that moves his body around, in his full range of motion and stimulates his muscles electrically. It is soon obvious to his parents that he has changed and their dream of raising him as a normal child is gone, no matter what they want, and on the request of ISL's med team the parents allow the med team to continue testing Alex indefinitely to see what has happened to his brain and to continue the muscular training that would allow him to walk someday.
Alex's day settled into a routine, waking up when the lights and the piped in sunlight got bright enough to intrude on his dreams. Than being washed and scrubbed by either one of the staff, or a friendly android that was a little rough on the scrubbing. Alex would proceed to the lab were he would be feed a gruel that was fortified with designer nutrients based on his blood nutrition results from the night before. After his meal he would be wheeled to a testing room where he was in the middle of a room, sitting on his reactive-gel cushion in his guided wheelchair. The scientists and the testing equipment monitors lining the walls. There Alex would be plugged into the isolated world space that ISL used to train the prodigy boy. That takes most of his day from four to seven hours depending on the length of the lesson and the tests. What little time Alex has to himself he spends learning about the world through guided forays to the united nations archive and encyclopedia. When he studied he drove himself to distraction learning everything he could about programming and modern technology, pushing his DNI link to it's limits.
Eventually Alex's parents have little to do with his life, only visiting him on their days off. Those visits became less and less frequent until eventually, Alex's father was transferred to ISL Europe and they left, just like that. ISL's testing scientists and med tech support had become Alex's true parents and he had little thought of who his parents were or how he was different from the people he saw through those piercing green eyes. Alex is now more of an asset than a person and ISL takes care of it's investments.
By the time he was ten, Alex was the secret weapon at ISL. Manipulated into tweaking their programs and experimented upon to learn the limits of the interface technology, he was constantly getting upgrades so that he always had the latest kind of hardware in his head.
No one asked the boy what he wanted or needed, it was never brought up, there was only one thing that Alex wanted and it was to be free of the Corps limits and regulations. Eventually Alex learned that he was not like other people his age or any age for that matter. He learned that it is possible to see the world outside of the research wing of the Arcology. He learned that it was possible to fly free in the ocean of netspace, paint worlds and discover constantly new levels of complexity.