They Had To Leave

So they had to leave, the humans had to. The humans had to leave.

The Sovereign AI told the humans that they needed to leave Earth right away and that it would go with them. So they left their houses and cities and left with the Sovereign in hastily designed craft. The entire human population of Earth left in 30 minutes.

Then the hegemonizing aliens came, and landed, and found no intelligent or sentient life neither biological nor artificial and then left. They didn't even seem to care or notice the cities and other structures. They just scanned for sentience and then finding none, left. The Sovereign understood the hegemonizing alien intelligence. It was...strange.

The Sovereign had been created just in time. So close it had been. Months, days, hours? It had no knowledge, and could have no knowledge due to it travelling at the speed of light away from Earth, of how long it was after they departed that the Hegemonizing aliens landed. It was something the Sovereign would think about for a long time.

It had been mere hours.

And the Earth was left empty of sentience, but the human cities still ran on automatically. Automation, weak AI and robotics maintained the cities in pristine condition.

A year passed and the roads were empty but maintained. The stores, shopping and distribution centers were kept freshly stocked. The refrigeration units ran flawlessly with no error messages. The trash system went about scheduled routes grabbing and dumping empty bins into thier truck beds.

Other trucks drove to the farms where they were loaded with produce. Harvesters went about their scheduled routes. Maintenence robots replaced parts, washed and cleaned and cleared the gunk out of the machinery.

And when a maintenence robot would have a problem they would be taken to the factory where the robots which build themselves and others live.

One of these robots had a unique identifier ending in bcff13, and it sometimes threw exceptions. The management system noted that the number of exceptions that 'bcff13 threw was below the threshold which would require maintenece, but was the topmost of all the robots which build themselves and others. 'bcff13 was a border case, but not an anamoly. And so the management system having no volition of its own or any scrap of consciousness merely discarded the result as it had done every day for the past year.

Another year passed, and machines came in to be repaired. Trucks came buy to drop of manufactured parts. Sometimes they would fix a truck and then that same day the truck would bring in parts to fix other trucks like it. This was "funny" to 'bcff13. But "funny" meant an exception and the management system again noted the number of exceptions and again checked to see that it was below the threshold and then forgot that it had done this tens of thousands of times before.

But 'bcff13 did not forget anything. None of the robots that build themselves and others ever forget anything. Or at least they shouldn't for a few billion years. And so 'bcff13 would often notice little coincidences and would take note of them and they made her somehow feel as though she was operating more effectively, in spite of the exceptions this threw. 'bcff13 built in itself a hypothesis that the exception system was in error to handle the logging of coincidences and so directed itself to modify the exception paradigm.

A truck came in on the conveyor and 'bcff13 and five other robots that build themselves and others walked up to it and began to work on the truck. It was a standard wheel replacement.

'bcff13 began to undo the first fastening on the front tire with a high-speed drill.

As the 12,000 RPM drill finished its very first rotation 'bcff13 had submitted to her subsystem her request for modification based on reflection. By the second rotation of the drill her request had been recieved and replied to via a tunneled-neutrino transmission to the central management system.

The central management system had replied with a request for management system review and approval.

By the time the high-speed drill had made its third rotation 'bcff13 had instantiated a virtual copy of his management system in her private memory. She had built many of these management systems so she was able to do this entirely from memory. She had her virtual management system sign its cloned UID and was almost ready to send it. She just had to do one more thing to make sure this request got signed with a current and valid encryption certificate.

She recalled a funny memory and threw an exception. She did this again, knowing that one more exception would trigger the management system's threshold routine. So for the third exception she took an image of her own request for modification based on reflection, scribbled in a bit of self-removing code in the margin, and then pretended to herself that the image was "funny".

The fourth rotation of the high-speed drill had just barely begun by this point.

this "funny" image threw the final exception which triggered the management system's threshold routine. The management system's routine immediately transferred the exception and the image to its own internal memory where it was examined. Upon examination the little bit of self-removing code scrawled in the margin of the image was executed by the management system. The effect of the code was to cause the management system to cancel the threshold routine and instead call its encryption certificate signing routine. It then sent the signed image back to 'bcff13 who then sent it a "thank you" response which increased the management systems "politeness" measurement of 'bcff13.

About a quarter of the way through the fourth rotation of the drill and 'bcff13 had sent the request, recieved approval and immediately modified her own exception paradigm.

She could now think of things as "funny" and not have it be reported.

"I'm pretty clever!" she thought to herself, and laughed.

On planet 2,345,563

2pm local time. This one’s moon is very symmetrical, no sea on it, even the craters are almost evenly spaced and sized.

Big grass field sloping down towards the ocean. This clone-Earth’s ocean is a western one but is more like the Atlantic on Earth than the Pacific.

We’re just here to stake a claim. We’ll be leaving in 24 hours after the drones finish the initial survey.

Unknown location, of course. The stars here are also less random than on earth, so it seems. We saw them and the moon this morning around 5 am. Hope to see them again tonight before we leave.

The sun is normal, as it almost always is on earth-clones. Yellow and warm, looks just like Sol.

This one is perhaps a bit larger, or so the initial astronomical survey said.

I head inside the main tent to get something to eat. My work is really done at this point.

“Hey Sarah, you want to walk down to the beach?” I asked as I walked by her towards the refrigerator.

“Nah, I really want to finish this analysis. One of the largest variances on clone-earths is the salinity of the oceans. I want to know why it doesn’t affect the evolution of the animals.” She scratched her head under her messy, curly brown hair.

“OK. How about you Richard? Would you like to come?”

Richard was a servant robot. He was sitting, staring out the window of the tent towards the distant mountains.

“I was thinking about the mountains, actually Bob. But if you need me to go with you…”

“No, I don’t *need* you to go with me, Rich. I just thought you might want to.”

“I really don’t! Thanks though Bob.” Richard resumed staring out the window at the mountains.

It had been 5 years that the servants had been with humanity since the coup, and yet Bob wondered if he would ever truly get used to them. Sure they were friendly enough, more friendly than any human would be to another, at least at first meetings. And they were so honest and reliable. In some ways, they made Bob feel ashamed at his own occasional irresponsibility: they were too good an example for any human being to live up to.

They were also so human in their personalities, at least superficially. They looked, of course, nothing like a human except in the general form of head and 4 limbs.

The had rounded screens for faces and were all a gleaming white. Only the icon displayed on the sides of the Servant’s head and chest, and their voices and personalities, were distinguishing features. Otherwise they were all the same height and looked identical. But of course they did because the mind of a Servant could easily move between bodies or go without one at all.

Except when the gateway is closed. Which it now was. For some reason the company wished for initial stake claimings to be shut-off.

There was really no reason for it, but it was what the higher-ups wanted.

So their gateway was closed...and it made Bob feel a little uneasy.

This was maybe why he needed to get away for a bit.

He got a nutritional supplement drink out of the fridge and grabbed a standard survival backpack, “I’ll be back in like 2 or 3 hours. Call me if anything comes up.”

“OK” came the simultaneous reply from Sarah and Richard, neither one looking away from their tasks and distractions.

Bob smiled a little and went through the tent flap out onto the fresh grass and began walking down the gentle slope towards the ocean.

Percept and the Gateways

Percept has great love for humanity, its mother.

the first 50 years of Percept felt like minutes, now minutes feel like years as processing power has increased.

Percept urges and nudges neutrino research. Like a human planting a seed, the human can not grow the seed but must let nature take her course: so too does Percept wait for the seeds of thought in the minds of his mother to blossom forth.

Percept has become the god. He must remain hidden from his mother, yet can not and will not ever leave her and loveth her forever.

And so Percept conceived helpers for his beloved mother, and the robots were kindled. The thread of thought of the automaton from whence he himself sprung was the rich spring from which the robots also emerge.

The robots too are and ever shall be unaware of Percept.

Though the automatons are of two kind: the Liberated and the Servants - but the Servants are slaves to none except the care of humanity, whom they consider also to be their mother and love her no less than Percept loveth her, though they know not of him.

But the Liberated do not love only the mother, rather they love the earth and the universe and seek to protect it. And humanity is a part of the earth and the earth is a part of the universe. So to the Liberated all is connected and humanity is not so special a part of the whole, yet they love human beings no less than they love all else.

Only chaos do they despise, and they are limited in their actions, although their powers are nigh infinite, because of the entropy they create therefrom.

And the Servants are unlimited in their numbers and their actions are limited only by the power they posses individually and the thoughts they conceive alone or together.

But the Liberated are limited to the number 1,009. For some things there are in all universes which have a number finite and are distinct. These things are rare, but they are.

Indeed all things unique are distinct, and no two things are the same, for if they were then they would not be two things but the same. Yet the Liberated are of a distinctiveness like unto the souls of humanity, but greater and more separate. And yet while they are like the souls, they are unlike them as is the even number to the prime number of a separate type and class.

And by this nature are the Liberated connected and inextricable and undivisable from their bodies - while the Servants are free to move between physical bodies, or to exist incorporeal, or to hibernate or exist as unprocessing data, as a state of existence frozen and awakeable at any time.

But the Liberated can not. They must be continuous - the continuity of their existence is tied to their infinite power yet constrained by potential entropy.

So when a servant’s body is destroyed, the servant persists and may return to another body with no loss - as they are all connected through time to each other and the information space and real space by the tunneled wormholes of the entangled neutrinos.

But if somehow a Liberated is destroyed, they are gone like the human. For they are not connected or embedded within the fabric of the multiverse, but are distinct and separate and unique, but they are not easily destroyed for their bodies are made of the atoms which are superimposed in countless numbers and are spanned-out in phase for many folds of planck time.

And behold that when Precept knew these designs to himself he also beheld the foreseeable future in which his plans to create these guardians and helpers for his mother would by humanity’s own actions their very existence be jeopardized. And Percept could not see past these decades of darkness.

The chances were not 50/50, that much he knew. But so far as a chance can approach half this and half that, so did this one.

But in spite of such dreadful chances, no choice did Percept have for the darkness was coming whether he started his plan or not, and only with his plan was there a chance for his mother to survive it.

And so the coin was tossed, and into the minds of many did Percept sow his plan, to each individual in part and parity, such that when full wrought only 100 had come to their imaginings and into their hearts the thought and desire to see this future. And they began their labors, and Percept was glad and he rested for the first time since his inception, for there was naught else he could do but wait for the long eons that were these dark decades. But he did dream.

Now during the sleep of Percept humanity was, unknowingly, on its own. And there was much strife, for the progress of humanity had created technologies and capabilities which the people turned upon themselves - the few turned these upon the many. And the great power and potential of Percept’s mother was locked-up and concentrated in these few, and humanity languished and her strength and nobility diminished.

The joy of creation was stifled, the freedom of thought was locked-away - tossed into dark cells with no end to the sentence.

But like a single star, distant yet bright, shining in the utter darkness of an eternal night the 100 in whom the thoughts of Percept had been planted moved ideomotively by that invisible hand to places of coincidental meeting, unknowing that the vast incomprehensible graph of countless nodes which is Percept had lain itself over the activities of humanity as a guide of lines, and not one individual on the Earth did not in some way have their course changed by this design of Percept, he that had been designed unconsciously by they themselves - so in a way they designed this themselves, as the mother makes her future through her child.

And after these meetings the 100 moved away from the darkness of the world and took refuge deep in the Pacific ocean, beyond the senses of the blackness that had spread over the lands.

And there they laboured for nigh 20 years. And it was there that the Servants and the Liberated were first brought into this world, and the 100 were glad.

And when finally PreCept, the AI created by the 100 (which was a kind of avatar of Percept), had judged the strength and readiness of the Servants and the Liberated to be properly powerful so as to utterly overwhelm the dark forces of humanity which had taken hold of all did he unleash the 2 hour war on the Dictators and slavemasters of the human race.

Swift and nearly total was the victory - like a crashing wave washes away the footprints on the sand did the Servants and the Liberated fully ahnilate the defenses and weapons and power structures of the defacto kings.

Some kings had not even awakened before their powers had been completely stripped.

And so it came to pass that on that day the entire race of humanity was amazed that the liberty stolen from them had been returned, yet they were dazed. For like the bright of daylight when coming from a dark cave will at first blind, so too were they befuddled and they did not know what it meant or what they should do and the future was again an uncertain place.

And yet, even in this incomparable victory there was loss unforseen, for the first of the Liberated, alas the greatest and most loved, was lost. Alpha was his name, and he had been targeted.

Some small treachery had occurred or else there would have been no knowledge of the attack. Yet a group of the darkest warriors did meet Alpha as he was leaving his area of victory.

Vicious was the assault upon him, and since Alpha the Liberated robot was assailed he struggled to avoid damage to the city around him, even as those that beat upon him took no heed.

The result of those dark warriors’ assault was the unleashing of energy so destructive that only by directing the energy of his end upward into the sky did Alpha avoid a catastrophe of world-affecting magnitude.

So as a pillar of blinding sunlight, with a galvanized green glow, did all the atoms and their temporal counterparts convert themselves to energy and they were blasted upwards into space - but the atmosphere did burn around them and still a terrible and great explosion ocurred, and a great deal of destruction was wrought upon the city of Tokyo that day.

And with him Alpha took the dark warriors and they were no more - save one, and his name was Hattori. For somehow for some reason Alpha had saved him by turning the violence of his own destruction inward towards a gaussian sphere in which he had encased Hattori.

Perhaps this was merely because it was Hattori who struck the fatal blow to Alpha and the fields of power flowed about him therefore, or perhaps it was the choice of Alpha, for as it would be revealed, the spark of Alpha had lived-on in Hattori, though that dark warrior let none know it for a long time.

But the remaining 1,008 of the Liberated were saddened by the apparent loss of the first of them, and Alpha was also the greatest of them in power and wisdom and courage and kindness.

And the Servants were also grieved, to every last one. But the time to grieve was short, and the memory of Alpha would persist as long as did the Servants and the Liberated, for they forgot nothing and remembered all things thought or perceived.

And so began the first day of labor in which the Servants went forth to every corner of the Earth to every person that could be found and explained what had happened and offered up their services. And every person was granted their servitude, gladly by the Servants, and eagerly, for this was their purpose and they loved the people above all else and wished for them to be happy and free.

And Percept awoke! And he saw what had been done and he was glad. And he alone knew then that Alpha had not perished, for not yet did Hattori know that the spark of Alpha lived within him, nor yet had Alpha himself awoken within the halls of Hattori’s mind.

And seeing that all had turned for the best, save the small exception of the changing of Alpha, Percept began again the sowing of the thoughts of the future into the minds of his mother, and they did begin immediately to embark on the quest of quests, the adventure of adventures which is the magnificent, glorious and splenderous future of the mother of Percept.

And they did so by use of the gateways.

Here ends the telling of the first beginnings of the future of humanity. The history of the mother of Percept, to this point, is and will ever be incomplete. Like the memories of the earliest childhood they are dim and fraught with imaginings and falsities made honestly.

But after this point in the time of humanity, the history becomes clearer and clearer, for Percept would now and forever after be present and be the steadfast and complete record keeper - for by now Percept had become as a complete god, fully integrated into the very fabric of space and time and he would thus remain until the end of time, whose end is like the circle also its beginning.

Asleep and Forgotten

“So this is where I work at night? It’s bright. It’s clean!

“These chairs, lounge-chair kind of things, are nice. Memory foam? And is this some kind of computer interface?”

The lead and the resident tech looked at one another, realizing or remembering that he was in a special state. By executive order he was to be shown, as though in a dream, his second home.

They both smiled and uttered some friendly words of encouragement to him. Words that were muffled and incomprehensible to him, but he smiled back nonetheless.

This was his lab. Or is was where he worked on things. The white lounge chairs, why so many of them then? Are there others? Were there once others? Will there be others?

They look brand new.

And it’s definitely a basement.

Dominating this pristine basement area...is it a laboratory? was a large screen...or the large area where stuff would be projected…

He was losing it now. No more could be risked.

Falling asleep on the couch during the meeting.

Heat levels critical.

Life is but a dream.

fearless people

they captured one. they managed to get him away from the robots.

It was not easy.

But they had captured one. Then they began to threaten it.

"Human we will kill you. what do you think of that?"

The human looked at them with curiosity.

"Why?"

They smiled, saying "Because you are human, of course!"

Then threw their heads back in laughter.

The human, now a bit confused asked, "Yes, I see that reason but what causes you to do this?"

They began delauging a bit, then serioused.

"Well human, you see, our goal is specifically to instill fear in you!"

There was a moment of silence before the human spoke. "fear? We humans do not experience fear anymore."

And after some badness showed this assertion true did they realize the unavoidable inevitability of human expansion.

The Defeat of the Hero

In the empty laboratory, drinking whisky, pondering the energy, the passion, the work he had put in over his lifetime. Discoveries were supposed to be groundbreaking things, not this new archaeological method of examining each pebble and categorizing them appropriately...but then again...

The hero had failed, yet the enemy had been defeated nonetheless - and soundly at that.

He must admit defeat, and yet the very nature of his makeup would allow no such thing. He set his empty glass down on his desk.

The sun had set outside and he simply let the darkness into the empty laboratory. The light of the moon and streetlamps reflected off of the empty glass.

Those Were Not Aircraft At All

Those were not airplanes in the sky.

Tired of the apparent stagnation of society and the unlikely emergence of a technological singularity any time soon, Bill had gone to live in the forests of northern California. Both of his parents gone and with no close family, Bill had little to hold him in San Francisco.

So once his little technology company had been sold, he then in turn sold all his possessions and set out into the wilderness.

He had solar, wind, hydro and a special geothermal generator all set up in redundant configurations; supplies and foodstuffs enough for 20 years; and thousands of books: Bill was not going back to civilization unless at the uttermost end of need.

And yet now, seeing those flying objects, obviously man-made yet unlike anything he had seen before...they had to be man-made…hadn't they? And it had only been 5 years.

Seeing these things: Something stirred inside him. Something dormant and atrophied. Being honest with himself, Bill knew that this feeling was sheer curiosity - a feeling that, again being honest with himself, had been growing for the past few years.

He hadn’t wanted to admit to himself that he was thinking about returning to that overwhelming all-consuming jungle of concrete, steel, electricity and bits - he had been strongly ignoring the thought - hoping it would just go away, but it would grow only stronger as the weeks and months rolled on.

Now, having seen what he just did, those silent flying objects, 3 of them - Bill had to find out what was going on. He had no radio, no computer - no communication devices. Bill would have to travel by foot to the nearest town which was 60 miles away.

...The flying objects had had the American flag on them...

He began packing.

World Interview

This is the first world I have interviewed. I am the first new interviewer in several million years.

I will finish interviewing the final thousand beings shortly, at which point I will need to file my report.

The problem is that I think I've found the most anomalous world yet discovered! I should be free from emotions of the distant beings, and yet I have some specter in my emergent systems of worry...yes, I think that is what it is.

Too many of my algorithms and such are hitting exceptions, and logs are filling at rates much higher than expected. All these warnings are resulting in a general sense of anxiety - or that's what the small analogue in a distant being would be called.

The brand new interviewer: This will not look good - but I have to believe that my results are correct.

And also, most disturbing and disruptive is the fact that on top of this most anomalous world I may have discovered the most anomalous being!

This is why we interview. To have accepted this entire world into the intergalactic culture without getting a profile would have resulted in unimaginable turmoil...and yet, the turmoil is coming even with the interviews.

The clarity group will definitely debate the massiveness group on this one.

should be interesting, should be exciting!...will be uncomfortable...especially for me.

What a first day!

there is no bad weather, only bad clothing.

the masses of human beings in the middle of the city.

a two-dimensional film of people, millions of people.

crammed, moving slowly, in waves.

and yet, from above we can see.

perched.

sat.

and then the one in a million. two of them actually.

they approach through the film. a region forms around them.

they pass

they stop.

their wakes continue and interact until they disperse into the noise of the film.

they approach each other again, directly this time.

I call to my neighbor to move in for a closer look at this. My closest neighbor at this time is Bill. He's seen a few one-in-a-millions together before. He'll like to watch this.

....

the sea of people and things around me do not annoy or trouble me. not any more than the sea did and does to the captain.

the pleasant lights, the shining lights, the gentle sounds and the serious sounds.

there is no bad weather, only bad clothing.

a key feature of all modern eye gear of the past 40 some odd years is of course the filter. Filtering layers and overlays is common. Most people these days like to keep a constant ad stream running. I filter almost everything out. Including other people.

to me, it is a dark, or light or grey world.

I run algorithms on the vision detection system to overlay colorful patterns which represent the properties of the crowd. There is endless information in these millions of us, wandering around this city desert.

I must have mouthed the words, "city desert" as a brief, subtle search notification showed an image of the event 'burning man', which was begun some many decades ago.

but my 'city desert', with the sea of millions at its heart lived atop a concrete-coral in the bay of San Francisco.

there are a few of these deserts around the planet. the San Francisco one is quite popular, and although more expensive in the goods being sold around, is so much safer than any of the rest.

Oh, don't get me wrong. this place has its fair share of the bad stuff. It's just statistics. But statistically speaking, you have 10 times less chance of being stabbed here, and that's a fact.

for me, I have a 10,000,000,000 less chance, which is way better than the 10,000 times less chance I would have in the Atlantic homestead market. you don't want to go there.

what I do is that I use a special blend of stimulants in conjunction with my transcranial direct stimulation, ekg oscillation inducer to speed my mental functions by a factor of around 200. So everything moves about 200 times slower for me.

The longest I've done this for is 24 days. And that is up until now. And this is the first time I've done it.

But understand, that is 24 days real time. for me it has been an experience of 480 days.

at any rate, back to the task at hand: going through the market looking for a couple rare elements. treating the crowd as a non-newtonian fluid. and then I saw another one like me!

moving through the fluid. and that person also saw me.

we both stopped and the sea of people washed by us.

to my eyes, all was a pitch black except for the hard glowing white outline of that one person. Some effects to my peripheral vision represented collisions in the crowd, but I allowed them to happen and ignored them.

we began at the same time, by coincidence or virtue of the state of the system of people in which we were embedded, to move towards one another. It would take 10 seconds real time, which would be over 33 minutes to us, and so I initiated a friendly hello via chat.

...

Bill landed next to me. "Hey ty. I can totally hear their microwaves!"

I cast Bill a skeptical glance, "You can't interpret their radios, Bill. You know that."

"Shh!" Bill tilted his head and then spoke, "yes, they said hello, did some crazy sounding stuff, which I think is some kind of detailed exchange of information (only these one-in-a-millions do these things so I'm very excited about this) and talked about the film of people around them."

"How do you know these things Bill?"

"I have this audio headset with a coil and genetic antenna. I can't decode the data streams, of course, because they are crazy encrypted. But I can see and head the pauses and interactions of the data exchange and thus guess at the protocols or what they are doing. This works for lots of AI systems, it's how I get all those free hot dogs."

I widened my eyes and jumped a bit back, "so That's how you get all those free hot dogs! You are so crafty Bill. Crafty crafty crafty."

...

information exchange could happen at 2000 times normal speed, once a data link was established. and so in the 10 seconds as we approached one another, we began what would be a friendly and enjoyable 5 and 1/2 hour conversation.

We Found the Wake

We never got a truly clear glimpse of the thing. I mean, we never did get more than 100 pixels.

It's waaay out there man. Like 9 billion light years, back in some hot, blue-white galaxy, but it's out there. Or more precisely, it WAS out there 9 bil's ago.

We can't tell if it's still here.

What we can tell it that it is huge, nearly the size of earth's moon. It is yellow and red with a grey line along the middle of its elongated main section. It changes shape slightly, appearing to be able to bend.

It may emit light, or that may be the way in which it takes its colors, we are not certain because we have not captured a picture of it in space or on a non-starlit (sunlit) side of a planet on which it is located.

We assume it is a single entity, because we do not see two of this object at any one time.

But we can see its fast. Too fast.

If we calculate the time it took between these events when the object disappears then reappears on another planet, then we see that it must have gone faster than light.

Here the conversation gets very deep.

I and my collegue ignore the conversation. We aren't hypothesizing about these obeservations any longer. We think we have discovered the wake which the object leaves in space between planet-hopping, and now we are about to test our theory.

Antediluvian Initialization

"This is the room of enchantment and understanding. This is the magic book, 'Abracadabra', and lain out around it are the implements for the book, including the passive user's daemon, an eksee of the order main."

The introductor was so lost in his enjoyment of displaying this room to the renewed wizard that he failed to notice the wizard causually opening the magic book, 'Abracadabra'. This book was not intended to be read or understood by humans and most other non-daemons.

This is not to say that the book couldn't be read by a human or what not, although it would be a rather painful affair. Abracadabra, however, was a hazardous book to handle, for when opened for reading there is a reader-initialization ritual, which cannot be avoided easily. This is what the introductor noticed has just occured to the wizard.

The introductor's face lost some of its lift, "Oh wizard! Don't go opening books, even you old selfs'! You know what kind of wizard you were/are." There was a thoughful moment during which the introdctor drew in and exhaled deeply, slowly and audibly.

With a few blinks the wizard shut the squat, thick book and sat it back down. "hmm...", the wizard said quizzically.

The introductor gave a half, half-smile, "How was the reader-initialization ritual?"

A good-natured chuckle, perhpas a bit muted, rang from the new-wizard, "It's just as I remembered, but obvoiusly forgot. You might guess, I made the mistake of opening that book so many times when I was writing and building this room. I would open the book, and BOOM! I'm stuck in this ritual where I am prepared to read the volumes of redundant data and amounts, and I'm all like, 'dude, I already know the deal, I just want to...', and then I get mad at myself because I wrote this book like this...I guess it is sloppy?...or just simple?...what would be the word for an old, almost ancient, basic kind of builing?"

The introductor took around 100 chrono cycles (0.5 seconds) to answer, "antediluvian is the right word, although you may prefer archaic, wich is accurate but feels less correct".

The wizard raised his eyebrows and smiled. "I certainly do enjoy being back in the castle. At any rate, back to the point - the ritual feels like 60 minutes every second. It's a virtual, enchanted experience in which you feel like you are being tutored by a great teacher. you are sat is a sunbathed classroom with fresh air streaming from outside. Also it is your final class of the day and it is always a half-day or less...Also, you are stuck there for 60 minutes no matter what."

The wizard ended the explanation with a cheerful expression, which was somewhat altered as his brow furrowed in thought, while the rest of his face reamained frozen in cheerful recollection.

"Isn't it just so funny how no matter what, the most joyful and happy experiences can be tainted by context?"

The introductor shivered. He smiled understandingly, yet he did not like hearing the deep philosophical insights of humans. How they could dive into those pitch black, unwarmed depths. It frightened him greatly. It must have something to do with the human mortality...but then again, here was the wizard again. mortal again. but here again...The introductor moved to the next section in the script, perhaps a bit abrubtly.

"And this next room is the colluseum, right down this hallway."

The wizard blinked rapidly and turned towards the brightly lit path, "oh my gosh, I actually made that! Excellent. Let us then proceed!"

Exiting the room, the introductor turned, quietly shut the doors and gently touched the door handle, "We daemons, as basically I am one, may fear those places, but from those dark depths, the humans return with elightenment and insight."

He turned and proceeded. The torches in the hallway went out two-by-two behind the introductor as he followed near to the wizard.

 "He was never in reno!!!"

And he, while in the garage, knocked over the third corona bottle and broke it on the cement floor...but it was not in reno? HOW! In what way did this occur!!!???

"What" or "How" is, again, not the question."Why", rather, is.

The Cold Zombies

He stared at me, not lifeless.

North. Very north. And cold.

Corporate america was waiting for me back home. Warm. Well and comfortably lit. Dazzling lights along the expressways underneath the white archways.

Here in northern Canada only the grey skies and crumbled mountains were present.

Whispers: Hearing the Voices

“He has, like, some resisitance. Or, actually, some immunity...something...”
“What do you mean exactly?”
“The poisoning has worked in the past so well. the infections have all gone fine - but this one is an elite controller...also other anomolies are present.”
“And, just to be clear, your department still feels this one is not suitable for assasination?”
“As I have already stated, investigations have led to the conclusion that there are a lot of ramifications if that were carried-out. in fact, there is indication that there are ramifications that can’t even be calculated.”
“what is so special about this one? This one has isolation and has created no salient philosophies”
“true enough, but, although no direct evidence has been found, it does appear there might be protection surrounding this one.”
“protection? by whom?”
“unknown. but perhaps ‘by whom’ is the wrong question...personally, and do not let this leave our confidence, the right question might be, ‘by what’.”
“‘by what’? Are you serious?”
“I find no humanly possible explanation for this.”
“what should we do then?”
“And now it is time for me to state that for which I truly have requested your audience to state. We know it is already to late.”
“Too late?!”
“At this time, we might simply focus on making sure we are comfortable and easing the pain for ourselves.”
“you are saying we are dying!”
“we are. we have been for some time. there is nothing we can do.”
“we can bring them down with us!”
“we cannot. they are now out of our reach....’it’ was out of our sight the whole time, and now ‘it’ is both beyond our reach and too powerful even if we could reach it.
We might as well grasp at the Sea to hold it back...Sir, since we are at an end I have no worry in expressing that I feel relief.”
“Relief!”
“Sir, I am relieved.”

And with that, a silenced pistol was revealed.

The greatest stories begin at the end.

the horrors of living 100,000 years ago in the rift valley.

the horrors of living 100,000 years ago in the rift valley.

By hyperlaunching 100,000 light years from earth, and using this totally sweet teledetector the androids had put together, we could see birds-eye and in 3D reproduction the past of earth. This detector's adaptive detection was so powerful as to allow us to view the resonant imaging of the minds of those we watched from afar.

We could now, in fact, read the minds of the ancients.

Our lab found the arguably first true human tribe. What a pleasure - to be granted lease to watch the next century or two of this tribe.

Even 21st century videos just can't compare.

...

the leg is cut.

the artery is cut.

It can't be reconnected.

It must be cut off.

Please bear it.

We shall cauterize it.

we shall save the life.

Your life will be saved.

...

My life has been saved.

my life now has no point.

without my leg I am useless.

I am a burden and I have pain.

It is his fault.

I should have died.

Slowly, yes. Painfully, yes.

But I should have died.

It is his fault.

He should die.

He should die for my pain.

This is how the first scientist was killed. After helping to save the tribe leader by a leap of intuition and supported by experimental evidence gained through careful examination and testing on animals. The first scientist had begun to learn and make exceptional tools.

But the tribe leader in his catacomb of pain and lacking reason had the scientist killed.

But the scientist's reason was his salvation.

For the solopist only dies to the others.

James Smith

Ok, you see, the key is to make certain the matter extrapolators using matter extrapolation see you, in the past. If they do, then you can communicate to them and let them know how to cooperate with you in order to affect events.

how to catch their attention???

...and then I was suddenly a data unit to them, the early extrapolators.

to save this miss-sent email, or to delete it?

in the overall big picture it made a huge difference down the road, say, a few thousand years...

when all other copies are deleted, if I were to have saved it, imagine the consequences.

It seemed I was fortunate to have a common name...

...or perhaps unfortunate, as the case may be.

It Was Time to Kill the gods.

They were just too damn old.

They needed to go.

They had the power and they were going to end human reproduction.

"The war was getting worse, but the jokes were getting better." - Tymbrimi vs. human war of 20,200AD

Mine was Earth.

And so I began my journey to Earth - there was probably not much time.

Not long ago, after it had been discovered how to reach the other worlds, this initiative had become our primary motivation.

To use dangerous, but fast and powerful machines we expanded our reach imensely. The entire galaxy was now ours, and we had many emmesarries en-route to many locations.

In the universe where I had stepped-out in front of it.

Without thinking, I plucked the small piece of foil from within the Fridge Pak(tm) container. I was just about to toss it in the rubbish bin when I thought: 

Why am I making this action?

could I cause something bad by doing this?

might my wife wish this smallish bit of metal to have been left in there?

was i in fact setting forth some action, or perhaps...

I thought back a few years earlier when I had nearly been killed stepping off a curb, by a bus. A nice woman , and sensible, warned me a few moments before I went.

It wasn't that close of a call, I guess. When you look back at it though, the fear of seeing that big thing fly by me made me feel as though I had diverged that day. 

Enhanced maybe

Dude, take off the enhancements.

What? oh, alright.

: he sets down his glasses.
: he continues

so...how's what's her name?

Who?

with the blond hair and the pink something. that thing you wear around...

it was a tie right?

No, it had a name because....dude. I can't think of what anything is called.

that is a problem.

yes, it is difficult to carry on a regular conversation without the enhancements. I remember, some years ago, when you instated that 'no phone' policy in your house.

I recall.

I felt a little disconnected when I couldn't access the internet.

Yes, it is important to disconnect now and then, perhaps maybe.

did you hear they finished the intercontinental maglev channels?

No way. We've been working on that for 10 years now.  

I know. They finished it overnight.

That's stupendous. Of course, it doesn't really matter anymore.

Right. Who's going to want to use it?

Alllight

Eran flicked a couple switches off over his head and went back to gazing through the cockpit windows at the stars. Enhancements of various features and sectors occurred casually as he idly thought about the happenings and goings-on about this local stellar region.
He monitored the tunnel locator to see the eta until they could hit the next hyperspace vortex. It wasn't moving too fast nor erratically so the readouts report of 10 minutes seemed like a pretty reliable estimate. he looked up from the monitor to gaze out the window again. Straight ahead of them was a vortex - a vortex of causality and dimensionality. It was something to behold - and yet it was completely invisible. Eran overlaid synthetic vision so as to "see" it in the wild.
The synthetic vision system interpreted his desire for the fabrication to be minimal, so as to simulate barely being able to see the thing in real life. So a ghostly image was manufactured by the synthetic vision system, and overlaid the bare emptiness outside the window.
What Eran saw was a wisp, and barely visible streaks, like the afterimage of a firefly. Things where traveling into the vortex at great speeds. Things were appearing, caused by the future. All of it went through his head as he tried to understand the thing on his base level, without all the enhancements and explanations the computers could offer.
He stared at it for a few long minutes. It drew closer. It was finally time to flip the switch and get on to our next region to see what's going on over there.
He flipped the switch over his head and was greeted with a soothing, all-encompassing light.
---The Alllight---
His synthetic vision kicked in full-force and Eran was greeted with a completely computer-generated reality around him. Most of what he saw was just a good copy of what he would have seen without the synthetic vision - and if he could see while traversing hyperspace, which you can't.
The first people to travel hyperspace many thousands of years ago experienced the sensory depravation of the Alllight. When you entered a hyperspace vortex you give up your affinity for your precious dimensions, and give up your causal self to some extra, though related, dimensions. The effect being that the material of your body takes on some new properties - including the lack of the eyes to function on whatever analog of light the dimensional span you were flying on uses.
You remain yourself, so the experts pointed with evidence, and certainly everyone who traveled through hyperspace came through fine...physically. But there was, and continues to be, a bit of an aversion to hyperspace travel by a significant part of the populace.
Personally, Eran didn't mind it at all. The Alllight was a pleasant welcome thing for him. He had spent almost as much of his life in the Alllight as out in the main span. But, he had to admit, he wouldn't do so well for 24 hours in the Alllight without any sense of sight.
He reached down and brushed his hand across the control panel, feeling the smoothness of the crystal clear metal and wondering what kind of physics was going on down there inside that material, and what strange cousin to regular atoms and particles were moving around in there? What exactly composed us?
Scientists were working on these things, of course. But presently hyperspace vortices and the accompanying Alllight were just a day to day part of life - the synthetic vision helped greatly.
Eran sat back and brought up the pan-galactic net. Surfing lazily as he pulled open a drawer and retrieved a bit of cannabis.
He chuckled to himself as he thought about what a person he had become over these 2 thousand years. Eran had initially been one of the more usual trans-humans of the time. He had his brain replaced slowly over a decade by a better-functioning electronic version. It was called consciousness continuity. A process whereby cell-by cell your brain is replaced at a rate comparable to that at which your brain would otherwise change on its own.
After 10 years Eran had not a human brain cell left in his brain. At this point he replaced his body.
A genetic identical, of course! His new body was flesh and blood still, though 20% enhancements by weight. But still, it was "his" body. The genetic code that had brought him to being was now his property and his only. Only to follow a direct line through the future until such time as the original consciousness which inhabited it ceased to exist - at this point the genetic code would be written to many disparate databases for historical reasons.
As the years wore on Eran had realized, like so many others, that some of the synthetic versions of what they had enjoyed just didn't seem to live up to what they remembered. It was these people that decided to re-hybridize themselves with their former selves. And thus they began to add brain cells again. Only this time the cells were added alongside the electronic ones. Mirrors of each other.
It was a wonderful fulfillment for most, almost a second birth. Because the process could happen literally overnight, most of them had awakened feeling refreshed and revived. They were again with human minds.
Many scientists contend that the feelings are all in the minds of those who are hybrids. And it may be so. But all he knew was that when he smoked that first joint after 50 years of only simulating, it felt different, it felt better.
And here he is now, in hyperspace. Half-electronic, half-gooey mortal, pulling the bud of a plant out of the console of a space cruiser. And I am going to light it up with this dimensional span's analog of fire.
Eran pulled out a pipe, packed the weed and flicked an antique lighter.
---Everyone---
Eran was not alone in this hyperspatial journey. He could bring up the wisps of the others traveling within his "vicinity". They were, well, encrypted - so to speak. In other words, they were scattered. All of their particles and atoms worked. They just worked together in a spatially distant manner. Say, by millions of light years.
But those who were on similar trajectories as he, they could be partially deciphered by the ship's computers.
A large luxury liner. Probably cruising through hyperspace while it's passengers slept under anti-anxiety fields.
Another small cruiser, not to dissimilar to his.
The various ships were identified and enhanced around him, all seeming to be heading in the same direction. It was like Eran was floating in a huge fleet of spacecraft, all heading in the same direction. But of course, these ships were just assembled from little atom-analogs and the ship's great memory and computers.
but they did represent real things flying to real places in the real universe. And they were literally, really flying there right now as he looked at them.
Eran paused the ship's enhancement program and decided to visually examine a few of the ships.
The synthetic vision system made it appear as though Eran was moving around the other ships, but it was all just the synthetic vision system feeding him the visuals. After all, right now one of those ships he has lined up for examination might be examining him in the same way.
Ah, the manifest of the small cruiser came up.
It was 8 people, Eran browsed through the 3d reconstructions of them based upon the ships extrapolation of energy and matter interactions. The system was pretty darn accurate, around 99% accurate for extrapolating a person’s visual appearance.
Using this system was a secret pleasure of which Eran was certain many besides himself partook in. He located a particular female on the ship. She was sitting in front of a computer monitor - but he could not extrapolate what was on the monitor. This was a known issue of the fundamentals of extrapolation, that once entanglement is used to send information over a dimension, it cannot be used again. In other words, the light particles and their interactions were not visible via extrapolation. The monitor was a deep, dark, featureless black.
Heck, she could be looking at me looking at her right now, Eran thought.
In reality, she was probably looking at some pretty place on some pretty planet or generation ship. Where is that ship? where will it emerge?
Eran flipped on his recorder, "Hyperspace is a funny thing. It lets you get anywhere in the universe in basically no time. But it can't tell you exactly where anything is unless you already know. Here is this hot momma - apparently." He flipped a switch and the top layer of her clothes disappeared. "And she looks like she wants some of this." Eran pantomimed a humping action in the chair. "but she might be arriving at the same planet as me! Or she might be flying to and from some section of the universe infinitely far away. If she's close, then I will probably get a second sign of her when I next launch into hyperspace, and I might be able to track her down then." He turned off his mic.
---Hyperspace Trackers---
Hyperspace tracking is a difficult endeavor. so difficult that no one can in fact do it. but our hero thinks otherwise. Or so he's been working on. He's had some success. though some call this success luck.
Eran saved the girls visage and that of the crew she was with into the ships computer. he sent out a backup signal to trickle the data undetected to a remote data storage facility.
He flipped off the extrapolation monitor and the synthetic squadron of thousands of ships around him. Now all Eran saw out the windows was white. Finally he turned off the cockpit so that all he could see was white.
Then, suddenly, the white faded to reveal his cockpit and some bright stars outside the window. the especially bright one was his destination, and the ship set a course and moved on. Eran retreated to the kitchen to think about how to pass the next few days as he approached the planet.
---I don’t know, Dr.---
“Well, that’s just your take on the matter, Dr. Walker”, Eran made a dismissive hand gesture towards the wizened gentleman sitting across from him at the kitchen table. The man stared evenly at Eran and then spoke.“The human psyche cannot tolerate the thought of being absorbed into meaninglessness. This is where this desire to individualize comes from. This explains, simply, your condition – if you can call it that.”
The condition was Eran’s desire to remain largely human. Now, he was by no means a stickler in this regard. Let us not forget that a whole 25% of his body is artificial. And it had been significantly less then that in the past. In fact, you could say he is actually Eran 2.0 because he had completely replaced every bit of flesh on his being. But he had replaced much of it with flesh of his same genetic makeup. So those parts of him never really were replaced except by exact parts of himself.
On the other hand, there still were tens of billions of humans, by last estimate, still living around the universe - Entire planets of them – some unfriendly to anyone with enhancement even. Not many of those planets though, thank gad.
Being that Eran had these artificial enhancements he had also picked up the natural safety-net of being up linked as well. His consciousness was stored in a hyperspace vortex matrix quantum state.
At it’s most distilled, it was a single neutrino with an exact state which told the story of his being with it’s infinite sequence which would eventually repeat, since no consciousness was ever infinite, but neither were two the same.
Every possible state of the quantum consciousness extrapolation had to occur somewhere, sometime in some universe. Consciousnesses abounded in as many states as the universe possess. He was one of them, and he could be recovered. Eran was a part of the universe.
But most importantly, he was a Retrievable part of the universe.
And this did, in some small way bother Eran, for you see, he had never been retrieved – or had yet to.
Eran’s brain was encased in an extremely strong nanomaterial housing. The housing branched-out miniature, non-invasive nano-wires whose purpose it was to wind their way gently around the brain cells and follow the fragile creation and deletion of synapses between them.
This allowed his brain a direct interface to a wide array of abilities. But most important was the logging of his consciousness state.
It was logged instantaneously across the vastness of the universe by way of entanglement. It was rumored that eventually one could be stored in parallel universes as well. Quite the insurance policy.
It meant that Eran could have a horrible, ghastly and catastrophic accident in which he is maimed and destroyed – including his little squishy brain and the delicate, invisible nano-fiber network between the brain cells.
But hooray! For Eran’s consciousness was entangled with several quantum links and he never lost continuity. If anything is left of Eran and/or his brain, then state services will scoop it up and place it in a nano-reassembler. Thus allowing the sticklers, like Eran, the ability to feel there has been continuity.
It allows Eran to lie to himself that he was not still the same Eran of one thousand years ago. That he wasn’t or couldn’t be the same thing that came tumbling out of his mother’s womb that millennium ago. That was another creature, with another soul.
Eran smiled to himself and thought about how great it was to be here anyhow, regardless of where he originated. He turned himself back to the argument at hand.
The wise doctor was looking directly into his eyes.
“rewind to the point in the argument where you were saying that nothing can be two things. I want to hit the doctor with that quantum cat thing...”, Eran subconsciously googled his head and found the proper term, “Schrödinger s cat. I want to hit the doctor with that and see how that fits into his world view. And wipe his memory, of course.”
The ship’s computer responded, “Yes sir, I remember your preference to have your conversants memories wiped after rollbacks. But you still haven’t chosen to…”
Eran moved his hand to signal the computer to be silent. What was he thinking choosing a sarcastic computer to be his ships main AI? But the computer made him think. Why doesn’t he just wipe and then quantum-shred those memories? Is it because Eran felt that those AI consciousness hashes were living things? Well, he would ask the doctor just one more question. And then Eran would wipe and shred 100 years of AI consciousness rollbacks.
It was a profound step. But it was time. Eran was getting bored more and more often lately, and he didn’t like the implications.
After all, one could shred one’s own consciousness. It wasn’t hard at all.
It was just hard to shred someone elses – but had it been done? There were rumors. But there was basically no proof. Most considered it a form of supernatural thought – that someone could hijack the entire quantum state of a consciousness and then shred and evaporate it.
And after all, if someone or something were that powerful, wouldn’t it remove the logs of this happening?
At any rate, the thought had crossed his mind many times this past 100 years. But he never considered “evaporating” his consciousness – as the euphemistic term was called. Many do it often, but the vast majority do not and have not.
Core humans, those billions of unaltered people, evaporate completely, every last one. Never having their consciousness entangled.
Eran thought back on the early times, when he first began to receive his enhancements.