Has anyone ever told you just how boring space travel is? I mean, yes, we're deadheading most of it, but there's vital services that need to be done by living, breathing humans on ship, so we take it in turn being up and awake. At first I thought it was really exciting, I mean yay, we're going to Mars. We're setting up the first colony off Earth. To be honest, Earth was getting a bit soft for me. Sure, the end of work seemed like a good idea at the time, but there's only so much leisure I can take. Yeah, I took various jobs, but there was no risk in them. Worst case scenario I took a major whuffie hit, but what then? I still get to eat, sleep, drink, surf the nets. On Mars if I screwed up I'm dead. And not just me, but my team mates.
Anyway, the yay Mars! Feeling wore off around the 2nd or 3rd time I was awoken for my shift. Robotic science has eliminated most of the tedious jobs on Earth, but we weren't on Earth, we were halfway to Mars. We had priced up the weight of the droids against the service they could render, and we just couldn't justify bringing too many bots. So here I was, fresh from deadheading and ready to clean out the vacuum toilets. Joy. We were traveling in micro-gravity. Later jaunters, as we colonisers became known, would have simulated gravity of various descriptions. The guy who solved that problem had whuffie to burn. So plumbing wouldn't work properly, so our toilets sucked. Literally. It was a bit messy and a bit weird, but we got used to it.
Microgravity sucked. Yeah, Earthside you could go for a ride in the "vomit comit", a plane that went in parabolic flights to get a few seconds of nullo, but beyond that, it really sucked. Getting to sleep was the worst. My overclocked monkey brain kept screaming that I was falling, and must cling onto the nearest tree branch. After a few nights waking up screaming I started deadheading the nights. Well, simulated nights. We had full spectrum lighting in the "day" which dimmed and gave us "night". Slowly it was adding a minute here or there, to get us used to Mars' extra half hour a day. My gramps remembered something called "daylight savings time", where the clocks would add an hour for 6 months of the year. No gradual change there, the switch was 1 hour in the middle of the night. Nice one way, an extra hour in bed. But the trade off was 1 hour less in bed the other way. There were so many people with mild jetlag on leap forwards/backwards day that the Bitchun' society abolished it. Most people didn't need to get up for a certain time anyway. Mars would be an eternal leap forwards day for anyone not prepared.
Later jaunters would have all the bots they needed, and would come out of deadhead whenever the feeling took them. Some of them would do ships duties for fun! The thought did occur to me, while I was cleaning out the toilet. Dave, the guy with the shift before me, was a pig. He never cleaned it properly. His whuffie took a small hit while I laboured at the caked on cak. Yes, we brought the trappings of the Bitchun society with us. We weren't leaving the Bitchun society, just taking it to a new frontier. If we were just sick of the Bitchun society we would have deadheaded until a more exciting time, or joined the outsiders. Though they might have kicked us out or killed that copy of us thinking we were missionaries. The goal of Earth being entirely Bitchun is still unachieved. Mars started entirely Bitchun and has stayed that way. No outsiders have the resources to get a shuttle there.
I maintained a blog, which kept whuffie coming in. Everyone wanted to know every little detail of what was happening on mankind's first colonisation mission. There had been other missions, of course. Mostly scientific short stay deals. No life found as yet, but we had a few scientists who would keep a close eye out for anything from bug-eyed monsters to bacteria. And we didn't have permission to terraform the planet. We would live in domes - glorified stationary space ships. I was travelling in a sealed off part of one of the domes, just enough for one person to live in. And boy, was it "just" enough.
Data storage was no problem. We all had a very generous personal allowance, and for good measure we had our copy of the library of alexandria. Every book ever written was on the ship. We were going for the long haul. The ship only had enough resources to get to Mars, and keep us alive. If we wanted back we'd have to signal Earth with our backup. One or two crew went Earthside instead of taking another shift. One of them returned for the landing, and accrued a lot of negative whuffie for that stunt.
Between shifts I read and I read and I read. I've always loved reading, and had grown up with every book ever written being available free to download. Gramps remembered dead tree books. Expensive things they were. And short lived. There's so much of the dead tree era of books that simply hasn't survived to the digital age. Now with the library of alexandria on most home boxen no book will ever die. And if the author is living and wrote a good book, they get whuffie. If the book is bad, they don't. Whuffie is a very fair system.
So there I was, on my lonesome, cleaning, checking the autopilot, even fixing the odd bit of machinery. Life support wouldn't cover two people awake at once, and after so long I was desperate to talk to someone in realtime. My deadhead crew were as good as dead for talking to, and Earth was rapidly getting away from me, the lightspeed barrier causing longer and longer delays in conversation. My first shift I had walkie talkie conversations, record a bit, squirt it, wait for the response a few seconds later. By my 3rd shift I was down to text with minutes of lag. Email was the only way to talk.
There wasn't even an emergency to liven up the trip. Everything was engineered so well that nothing serious broke, and we were never in danger of "dying". We kept regular backups and synced with Earth. If we suddenly blew up then we'd be back on Earth and ready to go on a second shuttle, as soon as the problem was fixed and we had it built. As far as the trip went, we'd thought of everything. Well, except the tedious boredom. I spent a lot of time listening to The Beatles. Great stuff. Everything in the Bitchun society was autotuned. It was refreshing to listen to some real singing, with good singers. And a touch of surrealism in their later stuff. Gramps' dad had seen The Beatles live, and each generation had been handed the LPs, then the cassettes, then the CDs, then the mp3s. Bitchun music was about being popular, rather than about the music. Yeah, there were a few people who had whuffie to burn who just enjoyed making music, and I enjoyed some of them, but it wasn't the same as money-era music.
We landed, and we got hard to work. We had supplies to last a couple of years, but our first priority had been self-sufficiency. This had been carefully tested Earthside with large habitable bio-domes. Big sealed environments where life can stably live. We had lovely big hydroponics growing mostly blue-green algae, gen-enged to be edible and nutritionally complete. We were on the frontier, we didn't have room for other plants like grasses or trees. We had debated bringing a ship's cat for morale and portable heat, but we just couldn't justify it. Later, when we were well established we got a cat beamed from Earth, backed up just like us and had the save file squirted to us. It was the most adorable kitten I'd ever seen, and Mars' first housepet. RIP fluffy.
You may be wondering why we didn't simply squirt our backups Marsside. Well, all the ships there had failed in the latest big dust storm. Many were pissed off to be restored to life Earthside rather than where their obsession was. Some were transmitting data about the dust storm right up to the point where it killed that copy of them. Many came on the ship with us, as it gave them the chance to study Mars in a bit more of a permanent position than the yearly windows they were given by the lifesupport systems prior to us.
Life was hard on the frontier, but it was what I wanted. I'm also one of the lucky few who has been for a walk on Mars pre-terraform. Okay, it was to patch some of the circuitry that required being outsite, but a Marswalk is a Marswalk. Okay, it was quite boring really. Every mission like that should be. It only gets exciting when it goes wrong.
I worked in the hydroponics that first year. We all worked in vital areas in the first year, even the scientists. Even when we were sure that things were working well and we had equilibrium we kept going for the full year in case anything unexpected came up. Some scientists were upset to be away from their research for another year, and we looked the other way while some carried out experiments when we were certain things were working. It was good work. If I mucked up then the colony wouldn't have air or food. Earthside I couldn't get into such a position.
After the first year we declared equilibrium and had a party. Air, water, food and energy were all coming freely. We could offer the basics of life to a limited number of people. The scientists were free to do their research. I wasn't one of the scientists, and I wasn't one of the tourists. I was there to work. Some people tried to do the bare minimum, or less. This was not the Martian way. Their whuffie dwindled until they got the point and went Earthside. We had limited places on Mars. Anyway, I wasn't one of the tourists. I worked in the hydroponics until I was replaced by a robot. Robot building came soon after equilibrium. After they declared equilibrium robotics work started.
I moved to the robotics factory after losing my work in the hydroponics. The robot kept shooing me out of the hydroponics. Shame, because that was one of the most peaceful areas in the colony. I requested feed from the camera in it streamed to my home box as a screensaver. There wasn't much work at the robotics factory, and it was no longer a matter of life or death. It was a matter of taking away the menial jobs from humans. The factory line was automated, and was mostly supervised by a program. I started getting bored again. I was in danger of becoming a tourist at this rate.
What could I do? I could get into the fledgeling parliment, but I hated politics. As I've matured I've found time for it, but I wasn't mayor material then. I could move from vital system to vital system, waiting to be replaced by bots each time. That wouldn't last long. The robotics factory was efficient. I could deadhead until there was another colony being set up, but the Mars colony was still fresh. And anyway, one of my fellow Martians had caught my eye. She was one of the scientists looking for Martian life. I had my 1 outdoor walk, she did it most days. The other days she was looking at samples under a microscope, as far as I can tell. We got chatting in our bar. Algae make a pretty poor vodka, and that was all we drank, alcohol wise. For a while I was too shy to ask her out, especially as she had a purpose on Mars and I was losing my purpose. Soon the robotics factory would be self sufficient and would only need 1 person to look in every week or so.
Eventually I got the courage to ask her out. Ultimately it was out of necessity. I had no job and needed a reason to take up valuable Mars space. Partners got looked on differently to tourists. Well, long story short, we're still together. We've spent the odd decade apart, but we need each other. We spent some of the time deadheading, but we did that together too.
Before long, Mars colony was like the Earth I had worked so hard to get away from. I needed a new colony to work on. I loved working in a new colony. But this was before the Earth-like planets were found outside the solar system, and if I thought that the journey to Mars was dull then I'd have serious issues with travelling light years. Eventually I did help set up some of these colonies, but this was after we could dead head the whole way, or spend time awake and have other people awake at the same time. There was some good expansions going on Earth's moon, as astronomers spread out to take advantage of the almost non-existant atmosphere and using craters to build large radio telescopes. But my girlfriend (as she was then) was working on Mars. She'd found some exciting bacteria fossils and was seeing if there were any viable specimins in them. I have since taken a degree in Biology to undestand her work better. In hindsight the solution was simple. There simply wasn't enough space in the Mars colony, so we needed another colony. I put the idea to the mayor who was frankly sick of tourists taking up space that could be taken up by more scientists. So I went on to form the first hotel on Mars. Well, effectively.
Getting Earth to send another ship wasn't hard. There were a lot of tourists Earthside, so the whuffie was good for it. They sent me a skeleton crew of workers. I borrowed robots from Mars colony 1 as it was now known, and went to form Mars colony 2. I built it a few miles North, so we were in the same timezone and weather. We didn't get too many duststorms in colony 1. This time I stayed in charge of the hydroponics, but had some robots doing the boring bits I didn't really enjoy. Some bits are so messy that a deep shower won't make you feel clean again. We established a good magtube link with colony 1. Tourists liked to go around colony 1 and sleep in colony 2, nice and out of the way of the scientists. It also meant I could visit the girlfriend frequently. If I live to be 1000 I won't forget the views from the tube. You could deadhead it, but you'd miss the amazing views. The amazing red of the rocks and the pink of the sky. Now lost forever, as Mars has been terraformed.
I'm glad I got off Mars before it got terraformed. Me and the family (as we were then, my whuffie was good from running the hotel colony) got off to the first colony on Europa. The challenges here were harder. Eventually we found livable planets outside the solar system, and these raised new challenges to be solved, and the prospect of actual alien life. Nothing alive was found on Mars. After so long looking they decided to terraform, and it's just a lower gravity Earth these days. Still, I've had other planets/moons to love. And my family, jaunters, the lot.
Saturday 26 December 2009
Thursday 24 December 2009
The Arab-Israeli war lasted 3 weeks before both sides resorted to nuclear and biological weaponry - Chrome fanfic
Nobody was really sure what triggered the war, and many were amazed that they had gone so long without attacking each other. They had been sitting in each other's territory pointing their weapons at each other for decades, each waiting for the other to take the first shot. In the end, nobody is really sure who took the first shot. The Israelis claim it was the Arabs, and vice versa. Somebody assassinated the Israeli prime minister. The Israelis blamed the Arabs and went to war. The Arabs blamed the Israeli opposition party, the CIA, the Federated States of Europe; the infidels. War happened, and it was as bloody as any war in the past. Bloodier, in many aspects.
The Hussain family was huddled together in the basement of their house. Their family had lived there for generations, but now the Israeli air force was bombing their city. There hadn't been enough time to build any sort of air raid shelter, which the red crescent were distributing at all the sites that could be bombed. In any case, the Hussain family didn't have a garden to build the shelter in. They heard the tell-tale whistle of a bomb, and the ground shook. They guessed that next door had been bombed. Most of their street had been bombed. They would have evacuated, but there wasn't anywhere they could go. This war was being waged all across the continent. And nobody, certainly not the Hussains knew why it was being fought.
The Hussains were found dead the next week. The remaining houses on their street were reduced to rubble. They didn't die when the bomb landed clean on their house, but were trapped by the rubble. Volunteer forces dug up the rubble to try to find survivors, but they were too few to get to the Hussains in time.
There were great losses on the Israeli side as well. Both sides made great use of aerial drones, filled full with high explosives. And Israel went into the war as the smaller nation. But it was wealthy, and had good links with the USA so they had plenty of drones and bombs. The Israeli intelligence service was world renowned. They knew exactly where to drop the bombs, and the drones' circuits were good enough to drop a bomb to the centimetre, given GPS coordinates. Both sides laid waste to each other, and many, many civilians died in the process. Fewer soldiers died, as most of them were in deep bunkers, controlling the drones with controllers familiar to any early 21st century gamer. There were a few ground troops, situated at the rapidly changing borders, seizing the areas cleared out by the drones. Rebuilding would come later, the military intelligences decided. It was fine to bomb a city to rubble, because the enemy was the infidel and was the aggressor of the war.
Israel was backed into a corner by the third week. It was reduced to approximately 10% of the size it went into the war in. They could have surrendered, but they would sooner die, like the Japanese in WW2. Biological weaponry had already become the norm in the Russia-China-Sony war, but the Israelis ramped it up a notch. They released their nuclear arsenal as well as biological weaponry. The first targets were military in nature, but many civilians got caught up in the blasts. Thousands died in the first hours. They were the lucky ones. Those stronger or further away died a slow death to radiation poisoning or some GM strain of anthrax. The Arabs had no option. They would be wiped out within the week if they allowed the Israelis to continue nuclear and biological attacks. They appealed to the UN, but they wouldn't touch the problem. The USA and FSE had been at war for 4 years, and Russia, China, Sony for 2 years. Nobody had troops to spare to get involved in this argument.
Within hours of the UN's promise to sanction Israel for its war crimes, the Arabs returned fire with nuclear and biological weaponry. Israel was already weakened, and it wasn't long before it was entirely wiped out. But the Arabs couldn't claim the land that they said that Israel had seized from them. It was nuclear hot or infected with their own GM strains of anthrax. Now the Arabs had their own UN sanctions, but they knew they wouldn't be enforced. The world needed their oil, and would buy it from them regardless of whether the UN was sanctioning them or not.
In the end, both sides took heavy losses and rendered much of the middle east uninhabitable. There were no winners in this war, both sides lost pretty much everything.
The Hussain family was huddled together in the basement of their house. Their family had lived there for generations, but now the Israeli air force was bombing their city. There hadn't been enough time to build any sort of air raid shelter, which the red crescent were distributing at all the sites that could be bombed. In any case, the Hussain family didn't have a garden to build the shelter in. They heard the tell-tale whistle of a bomb, and the ground shook. They guessed that next door had been bombed. Most of their street had been bombed. They would have evacuated, but there wasn't anywhere they could go. This war was being waged all across the continent. And nobody, certainly not the Hussains knew why it was being fought.
The Hussains were found dead the next week. The remaining houses on their street were reduced to rubble. They didn't die when the bomb landed clean on their house, but were trapped by the rubble. Volunteer forces dug up the rubble to try to find survivors, but they were too few to get to the Hussains in time.
There were great losses on the Israeli side as well. Both sides made great use of aerial drones, filled full with high explosives. And Israel went into the war as the smaller nation. But it was wealthy, and had good links with the USA so they had plenty of drones and bombs. The Israeli intelligence service was world renowned. They knew exactly where to drop the bombs, and the drones' circuits were good enough to drop a bomb to the centimetre, given GPS coordinates. Both sides laid waste to each other, and many, many civilians died in the process. Fewer soldiers died, as most of them were in deep bunkers, controlling the drones with controllers familiar to any early 21st century gamer. There were a few ground troops, situated at the rapidly changing borders, seizing the areas cleared out by the drones. Rebuilding would come later, the military intelligences decided. It was fine to bomb a city to rubble, because the enemy was the infidel and was the aggressor of the war.
Israel was backed into a corner by the third week. It was reduced to approximately 10% of the size it went into the war in. They could have surrendered, but they would sooner die, like the Japanese in WW2. Biological weaponry had already become the norm in the Russia-China-Sony war, but the Israelis ramped it up a notch. They released their nuclear arsenal as well as biological weaponry. The first targets were military in nature, but many civilians got caught up in the blasts. Thousands died in the first hours. They were the lucky ones. Those stronger or further away died a slow death to radiation poisoning or some GM strain of anthrax. The Arabs had no option. They would be wiped out within the week if they allowed the Israelis to continue nuclear and biological attacks. They appealed to the UN, but they wouldn't touch the problem. The USA and FSE had been at war for 4 years, and Russia, China, Sony for 2 years. Nobody had troops to spare to get involved in this argument.
Within hours of the UN's promise to sanction Israel for its war crimes, the Arabs returned fire with nuclear and biological weaponry. Israel was already weakened, and it wasn't long before it was entirely wiped out. But the Arabs couldn't claim the land that they said that Israel had seized from them. It was nuclear hot or infected with their own GM strains of anthrax. Now the Arabs had their own UN sanctions, but they knew they wouldn't be enforced. The world needed their oil, and would buy it from them regardless of whether the UN was sanctioning them or not.
In the end, both sides took heavy losses and rendered much of the middle east uninhabitable. There were no winners in this war, both sides lost pretty much everything.
Sunday 20 December 2009
It can't be long until they catch up with me [- Chrome fanfic
It can't be long until they catch up with me. Bloody psychers. Don't believe the "truth". Psycore is alive and well. And they're hunting me. I don't know why, I've never been a psycher. I bought into the public truth that psychers are no longer a threat to society, and that Psycore was disbanded. I laughed at the man who wanted a neural web. It seemed as crazy as wanting a tinfoil hat. I'm certainly not a psycher. Well, I think I'm not. And I'm pretty sure I've never met a psycher. I've definitely not hidden one.
They think they're subtle, but I've seen the signs. It started with whispers in my room. Bloody telepaths are too loud. They can speak directly into your mind. Evidently they sometimes forget to turn the volume down. This was the first sign they were on my case.
They watch you through the plugs you know. Tiny, tiny microphones and pinhole cameras running on a net based on psyonics, not the shadownet. I got a special scanner down the market. They all lit up. They're watching me, and I don't know why.
I started looking for a neural web. Nice and discretely. They were watching after all. If psycore are after you then you need to improve your willpower. Not that it'll make a difference in the end. They'll get me and mind-rape my corpse and then feed it to the recyc. It's not fair. I bought into the public truth that psycore are gone and psychers aren't a threat to society. I've never harboured a psycher. I'm not a psycher. Why are they picking on me?
My work started suffering. I moved downhive to try to sink into the crowd. Disappear into the mess of bodies that is the underhive. Buy myself more time. They can follow you anywhe, of course. Maybe I should go outside and join the outsiders. I know officially there's nobody out there, but I was in a marketplace and an outsider came in, peddling old tech. Maybe I can get him to sneak me out. Will psycore go outside, to the bleak and miserable radioactive landscape? Dare I go into it?
I daren't use my chip in case they find me. Thankfully, I know things, and cash is still in supply down here. The work I'm doing isn't what I'm used to, but I have to make sacrifices to stay alive a little longer. I also had to get rid of my MedEvac insurance band. I'm sure that they can track me through that. It's only supposed to talk to MedEvac, but I'm sure that with their gross psyonics they can fix that problem.
They started putting thoughts in my mind. Scary thoughts. Thoughts that I should kill myself. I guess this is one of the ways they work. Implant thoughts. No forensics then. "Death by suicide" the reports would read. And no inquiry into why this person committed suicide. Wouldn't even make the news. I bet it's happened hundreds of times and they get away with it.
They won't get away with it with me. I'm sending this report of what's happening to me to the newsies. If I mysteriously die then they got me. No, not "if", "when". When I mysteriously die, they got to me.
Maybe you think I'm crazy. Maybe I am. Maybe they've driven me to the brink of insanity. Maybe everything I've done has been planned out by them and I'm just fulfilling the sick fantasy of some psycher. I don't know any more. I can't cope with their voices in my head much longer. I need a better neural web. I know they officially don't exist, but I know a man who knows a man.
Maybe I'm crazy, but you won't think that when they come for you.
They think they're subtle, but I've seen the signs. It started with whispers in my room. Bloody telepaths are too loud. They can speak directly into your mind. Evidently they sometimes forget to turn the volume down. This was the first sign they were on my case.
They watch you through the plugs you know. Tiny, tiny microphones and pinhole cameras running on a net based on psyonics, not the shadownet. I got a special scanner down the market. They all lit up. They're watching me, and I don't know why.
I started looking for a neural web. Nice and discretely. They were watching after all. If psycore are after you then you need to improve your willpower. Not that it'll make a difference in the end. They'll get me and mind-rape my corpse and then feed it to the recyc. It's not fair. I bought into the public truth that psycore are gone and psychers aren't a threat to society. I've never harboured a psycher. I'm not a psycher. Why are they picking on me?
My work started suffering. I moved downhive to try to sink into the crowd. Disappear into the mess of bodies that is the underhive. Buy myself more time. They can follow you anywhe, of course. Maybe I should go outside and join the outsiders. I know officially there's nobody out there, but I was in a marketplace and an outsider came in, peddling old tech. Maybe I can get him to sneak me out. Will psycore go outside, to the bleak and miserable radioactive landscape? Dare I go into it?
I daren't use my chip in case they find me. Thankfully, I know things, and cash is still in supply down here. The work I'm doing isn't what I'm used to, but I have to make sacrifices to stay alive a little longer. I also had to get rid of my MedEvac insurance band. I'm sure that they can track me through that. It's only supposed to talk to MedEvac, but I'm sure that with their gross psyonics they can fix that problem.
They started putting thoughts in my mind. Scary thoughts. Thoughts that I should kill myself. I guess this is one of the ways they work. Implant thoughts. No forensics then. "Death by suicide" the reports would read. And no inquiry into why this person committed suicide. Wouldn't even make the news. I bet it's happened hundreds of times and they get away with it.
They won't get away with it with me. I'm sending this report of what's happening to me to the newsies. If I mysteriously die then they got me. No, not "if", "when". When I mysteriously die, they got to me.
Maybe you think I'm crazy. Maybe I am. Maybe they've driven me to the brink of insanity. Maybe everything I've done has been planned out by them and I'm just fulfilling the sick fantasy of some psycher. I don't know any more. I can't cope with their voices in my head much longer. I need a better neural web. I know they officially don't exist, but I know a man who knows a man.
Maybe I'm crazy, but you won't think that when they come for you.
Saturday 19 December 2009
Missionary for whuffie. Based on down and out in the magic kingdom by Cory Doctorow.
Bill walked into the backup booth. It would be his last chance to backup before he left the Bitchun society for a while, evangelising about its merits to outsiders. Despite the obvious benefits of the Bitchun society - no death; everyone ate, drank and had internet access; free energy; the list went on. Normally the Bitchun society just outlived its detractors. That's what it did in the early days, when some people claimed it was wrong to backup and restore. That the new body wasn't in fact the old person, even though they had all the memories and acted just like them. Bill wondered if he'd need this backup. Sometimes missionaries didn't come back. Often they were flat out killed. Rarely they joined the society they were trying to convert. One didn't become a missionary if you were entirely happy with the Bitchun society.
Bill's life flashed before his eyes. This was a perfectly normal part of the backup process. Run the entire life through the active part of the mind and copy. Bill had grown up in the Bitchun society, and had never known the things it had replaced; money, work, death, taxes. These were all alien concepts to him. There were old timers who remembered the change in society, starting with the end of scarcity, and ending in the end of death, but most of these were deadheading. Or founding new Bitchun societies off world. They still needed work, even though some of them had strived to rid the world of work. In the Bitchun society you only strived to be popular. The all-mighty wuffie governed what privileges you got beyond the bare necessities of food, drink, shelter (in the form of a coffin hotel), internet access and medical care in the form of backups. Missionaries had all the wuffie the towns they converted had to give, assuming they came back.
Bill got to the stage where he started being a missionary. His past missions flashed before him. The painful mistakes he made in his first mission, ending with him being run out of town. The blank where his second mission was, presumably they killed that copy of him. Finally, his successful third mission, which he had just got back from. He could lounge around the society for a while, draining the massive whuffie he had gained, but he loved the buzz of being a missionary. The fear of being caught out. The thrill of them accepting a part of the Bitchun society, and then another part. The final pay-off of tons of whuffie. Or being run out of town. That was pretty fun too. There just wasn't any danger in the Bitchun society. Most dangerous things were highly antisocial, so came with a great whuffie cost. This way he could gain whuffie and get the adrenaline rushing.
The town Bill was going to was well established, and had thrown off many missionaries before. All the towns had. The Bitchun society had been going over a hundred years, and many opportunists wanted the massive whuffie that being a missionary gained. Some made the mistake of going in as a missionary. The files on the net made it very clear that this was a good way to get restored from backup and lose 10 years. Unless instructed otherwise the bots rebooted missionaries from backup after 10 years. No, the best way to go in was to pretend to be someone wanting to join their society, to break free from the Bitchun society. He washed the dyes out of his hair, removed the more obvious tech, removed the body mods. These were fundamentalists he was going to. There were parts of Leviticus that prohibited body mods.
Bill made his way to the town, in an old fashioned car. He had the whuffie to burn real petroleum. He made it to their crude checkpoint and asked his business. He told them that he was sick of the Bitchun society and wanted to know more about Christ. And possibly join their society. He flashed the silver crucifix he'd recently acquired. They let him in and led him to the chaplain. Bill sat through tedious hours of the chaplain's evangelising, smiling and nodding in the right places. Bill impressed the chaplain with his knowledge of the Gospels, which he was referring to in his invisible HUD, searching the quotes he'd recently bookmarked. Now was the time to build friendships, not to push the Bitchun society.
After hours of preaching, Bill recited some lines and took a blessing from the chaplain. They welcomed their new brother into their society, giving him the lodgings of a recently deceased widow. The pace of life was harder in the town. Food had to be grown the hard way, with no genetic engineering, even without robots to help them. Life was hard, and the men were real men, the women were real women, and many other clichés. Bill thought it would almost be a shame to bring them around to the Bitchun society, but he would do it any way. If they loved all their fronter stuff, they'd love colonising a new planet. A lot of ex-outsiders went out in the colonies. There was space in their towns. Space that the Bitchun society didn't have on Earth. With the birthrate slightly above zero, and the deathrate zero there was a bit of a population problem. Naturally, whuffie solved this problem slightly. It was grossly unpopular to have children, so most people didn't. Only those willing to spend years living in coffin complexes, living off the bare minimums the society gave freely to those with no whuffie, had children. In the town every couple had a few children. They didn't have a zero mortality rate after all.
Very slowly and very carefully Bill introduced bits of the Bitchun society to the town. First it was a robot to help with the farming. First he had it on remote control, directly controlling its harvest. They were impressed that he got 3 day's work done in 1 day. The next day Bill gave the controls to another citizen of the town, and showed him how to control it. It took him a bit of getting used to, but he still managed to get 2 days work out of the droid. Later Bill would show them the AI in the droid, that let it tend the field unattended. Bill pointed out that this gave them plenty more time for Bible study. These nuts loved their Bible study. Everything shut down on the Sunday, apart from the small, but well tended, Church. With its awesome stained glass windows and hard pews. Even Bill felt a pang of awe when he went in, every Sunday. In the Spring, Bill swapped their seed for his GM seed in the robot's hopper. If they didn't know about it then they couldn't object. And they could hardly complain about a bumper harvest, which was almost guaranteed from the supplier.
Time went by and Bill integrated well into society. He even flirted with one of the locals, but with their "no sex before marriage" customs nothing came of it. He certainly wasn't going to marry someone who would almost certainly become a colonist. Deadheading through the boring parts of space travel, setting up new colonies, moving on to the next colony. That life wasn't for him. He was a missionary, and he enjoyed what he did. Everyone enjoyed what they did in the Bitchun society. Robots did all the boring jobs. Time went by and Bill introduced more bits of the Bitchun society. Curing death would be a hard one. These people believed in the soul, in the afterlife. What happens to the soul if you were dead and then brought back to life? Bill talked this over with the chaplain, who thought that the copy must have no soul, so was not a real person. The real person died the first time their body died and went on to the afterlife. The copied body with the copied memories was not a real person. If they had the numbers they would wage holy war on the Bitchun society, but they didn't and would get squashed. Bill knew that he would have his work cut out here.
Everywhere in the town Bill talked to people about curing death, and everywhere he met the same opinion. Only the original person, born to a man and woman, was a real person with an immortal soul. Copies were demon spawn, grown in vats, engineered to be exactly the age you wanted to be when you came out of the simulation from your latest backup. Bill faked knowing a bit of medicine to get to the deathly sick. He used his portable backup generator on them. He never got the opportunity to use the backups.
The town had regular trading contacts with the other nearby outsider towns. Thanks to Bill's robot and GM crops they had a bumper harvest, and had plenty left over for trade. This was fortunate since the other towns had a poor harvest this year. True, it made things a bit easier for the Bitchun society if the outsider towns died off, but they'd rather that they joined the society. This is one reason why they didn't declare war on the outsider towns. Another reason was that there wasn't much of an army to speak of. After all, wars are very unpopular. Not much whuffie in forming an army. One day, a trader came from the neighbouring Muslim town. Religion wasn't banned in the Bitchun society, but it wasn't popular. Mankind had acieved many of the things religion had promised. For all intents and purposes, the Bitchun society was paradise. An angry gate keeper walked the visitor into town, looking for Bill.
"Bill! I never knew you had a brother." The gate keeper said, approaching Bill.
"I'm not..." the other Bill started.
"Bill! Run!" Bill shouted.
Bill and what looked remarkably like Bill ran out of town. The townspeople realised that Bill, their Bill, who they had welcomed into their society was a soulless clone. They grabbed all tools that could possibly be used as weapons and gave chase. This took a little time,and the Bills took the head start. They made it back to civilisation in one piece, leaving the problem of there being two Bills, each with a valid claim to being the real Bill.
Bill's life flashed before his eyes. This was a perfectly normal part of the backup process. Run the entire life through the active part of the mind and copy. Bill had grown up in the Bitchun society, and had never known the things it had replaced; money, work, death, taxes. These were all alien concepts to him. There were old timers who remembered the change in society, starting with the end of scarcity, and ending in the end of death, but most of these were deadheading. Or founding new Bitchun societies off world. They still needed work, even though some of them had strived to rid the world of work. In the Bitchun society you only strived to be popular. The all-mighty wuffie governed what privileges you got beyond the bare necessities of food, drink, shelter (in the form of a coffin hotel), internet access and medical care in the form of backups. Missionaries had all the wuffie the towns they converted had to give, assuming they came back.
Bill got to the stage where he started being a missionary. His past missions flashed before him. The painful mistakes he made in his first mission, ending with him being run out of town. The blank where his second mission was, presumably they killed that copy of him. Finally, his successful third mission, which he had just got back from. He could lounge around the society for a while, draining the massive whuffie he had gained, but he loved the buzz of being a missionary. The fear of being caught out. The thrill of them accepting a part of the Bitchun society, and then another part. The final pay-off of tons of whuffie. Or being run out of town. That was pretty fun too. There just wasn't any danger in the Bitchun society. Most dangerous things were highly antisocial, so came with a great whuffie cost. This way he could gain whuffie and get the adrenaline rushing.
The town Bill was going to was well established, and had thrown off many missionaries before. All the towns had. The Bitchun society had been going over a hundred years, and many opportunists wanted the massive whuffie that being a missionary gained. Some made the mistake of going in as a missionary. The files on the net made it very clear that this was a good way to get restored from backup and lose 10 years. Unless instructed otherwise the bots rebooted missionaries from backup after 10 years. No, the best way to go in was to pretend to be someone wanting to join their society, to break free from the Bitchun society. He washed the dyes out of his hair, removed the more obvious tech, removed the body mods. These were fundamentalists he was going to. There were parts of Leviticus that prohibited body mods.
Bill made his way to the town, in an old fashioned car. He had the whuffie to burn real petroleum. He made it to their crude checkpoint and asked his business. He told them that he was sick of the Bitchun society and wanted to know more about Christ. And possibly join their society. He flashed the silver crucifix he'd recently acquired. They let him in and led him to the chaplain. Bill sat through tedious hours of the chaplain's evangelising, smiling and nodding in the right places. Bill impressed the chaplain with his knowledge of the Gospels, which he was referring to in his invisible HUD, searching the quotes he'd recently bookmarked. Now was the time to build friendships, not to push the Bitchun society.
After hours of preaching, Bill recited some lines and took a blessing from the chaplain. They welcomed their new brother into their society, giving him the lodgings of a recently deceased widow. The pace of life was harder in the town. Food had to be grown the hard way, with no genetic engineering, even without robots to help them. Life was hard, and the men were real men, the women were real women, and many other clichés. Bill thought it would almost be a shame to bring them around to the Bitchun society, but he would do it any way. If they loved all their fronter stuff, they'd love colonising a new planet. A lot of ex-outsiders went out in the colonies. There was space in their towns. Space that the Bitchun society didn't have on Earth. With the birthrate slightly above zero, and the deathrate zero there was a bit of a population problem. Naturally, whuffie solved this problem slightly. It was grossly unpopular to have children, so most people didn't. Only those willing to spend years living in coffin complexes, living off the bare minimums the society gave freely to those with no whuffie, had children. In the town every couple had a few children. They didn't have a zero mortality rate after all.
Very slowly and very carefully Bill introduced bits of the Bitchun society to the town. First it was a robot to help with the farming. First he had it on remote control, directly controlling its harvest. They were impressed that he got 3 day's work done in 1 day. The next day Bill gave the controls to another citizen of the town, and showed him how to control it. It took him a bit of getting used to, but he still managed to get 2 days work out of the droid. Later Bill would show them the AI in the droid, that let it tend the field unattended. Bill pointed out that this gave them plenty more time for Bible study. These nuts loved their Bible study. Everything shut down on the Sunday, apart from the small, but well tended, Church. With its awesome stained glass windows and hard pews. Even Bill felt a pang of awe when he went in, every Sunday. In the Spring, Bill swapped their seed for his GM seed in the robot's hopper. If they didn't know about it then they couldn't object. And they could hardly complain about a bumper harvest, which was almost guaranteed from the supplier.
Time went by and Bill integrated well into society. He even flirted with one of the locals, but with their "no sex before marriage" customs nothing came of it. He certainly wasn't going to marry someone who would almost certainly become a colonist. Deadheading through the boring parts of space travel, setting up new colonies, moving on to the next colony. That life wasn't for him. He was a missionary, and he enjoyed what he did. Everyone enjoyed what they did in the Bitchun society. Robots did all the boring jobs. Time went by and Bill introduced more bits of the Bitchun society. Curing death would be a hard one. These people believed in the soul, in the afterlife. What happens to the soul if you were dead and then brought back to life? Bill talked this over with the chaplain, who thought that the copy must have no soul, so was not a real person. The real person died the first time their body died and went on to the afterlife. The copied body with the copied memories was not a real person. If they had the numbers they would wage holy war on the Bitchun society, but they didn't and would get squashed. Bill knew that he would have his work cut out here.
Everywhere in the town Bill talked to people about curing death, and everywhere he met the same opinion. Only the original person, born to a man and woman, was a real person with an immortal soul. Copies were demon spawn, grown in vats, engineered to be exactly the age you wanted to be when you came out of the simulation from your latest backup. Bill faked knowing a bit of medicine to get to the deathly sick. He used his portable backup generator on them. He never got the opportunity to use the backups.
The town had regular trading contacts with the other nearby outsider towns. Thanks to Bill's robot and GM crops they had a bumper harvest, and had plenty left over for trade. This was fortunate since the other towns had a poor harvest this year. True, it made things a bit easier for the Bitchun society if the outsider towns died off, but they'd rather that they joined the society. This is one reason why they didn't declare war on the outsider towns. Another reason was that there wasn't much of an army to speak of. After all, wars are very unpopular. Not much whuffie in forming an army. One day, a trader came from the neighbouring Muslim town. Religion wasn't banned in the Bitchun society, but it wasn't popular. Mankind had acieved many of the things religion had promised. For all intents and purposes, the Bitchun society was paradise. An angry gate keeper walked the visitor into town, looking for Bill.
"Bill! I never knew you had a brother." The gate keeper said, approaching Bill.
"I'm not..." the other Bill started.
"Bill! Run!" Bill shouted.
Bill and what looked remarkably like Bill ran out of town. The townspeople realised that Bill, their Bill, who they had welcomed into their society was a soulless clone. They grabbed all tools that could possibly be used as weapons and gave chase. This took a little time,and the Bills took the head start. They made it back to civilisation in one piece, leaving the problem of there being two Bills, each with a valid claim to being the real Bill.
Wednesday 16 December 2009
Yeah I'm a bent copper...
Yeah I'm a bent copper, but who isn't down here? I wasn't always this way. I spent my rookie years up a few floors, up where the main crime is underhive scum breaking into corpie residences. Rich corpies have plenty of gear that the crack-hoes can sell on for their drugs. If they haven't put in kill-switches so their personal music player only works in their house and within range of their chip. Some slipped in explosives so that when the underhiver tried to turn on something that wasn't theirs, boom! Caught a overhiver doing that once. Wanted corp secrets from a rival corp. Hired someone to break into his rival's house and steal his laptop. Tried booting it up outside his house and office and boom! Blew his hands clean off. His MedEvac bracelet went off and they had a few questions to ask him. We pay a bonus to 'Evac employees who snitch out lawbreakers. He tried bluffing it as one of his own systems blowing up on him, so we busted him on owning explosives first. Yeah, he had a good corporate lawyer, but he'd just blown his hands clean off. There's a limit to what a lawyer can do.
Anyway, one fateful day I got reassigned downstairs. Technically it was a promotion, but going downstairs is never an upwards move. It's not even a sideways move. It's a downwards move. Literally. Especially going as down as I went. Maybe I shouldn't have screwed the bosses' daughter. I didn't know she was the bosses' daughter at the time. It's not exactly a question you ask girls you meet in seedy uphive bars. Yeah, there's the odd seedy bar uphive. Gives the corpies a feel of seediness without actually going downhive. Of course, some go downhive, and want a personal security assistant, but we haven't the time for that. We refered all of them to Titan corp. Okay, one or two took "sick leave" to get a better paycheque slumming it with a corpie. We looked the other way. As long as their EF issued armour wasn't damaged and they didn't waste EF issued bullets we could look the other way. Did it myself once.
Yeah, this corpie wanted to tour certain areas of the underhive. Areas with a lot of red lighting. But he was smart. He wanted protection, and he knew to dress to fit in. I also dressed in common garb, as going around the whore houses with a clear EarthFed officer might scare them away. And my boss would kill me if I got bullets in my EF armour while off sick. So anyway, we made our way down a few levels, to a notorious whore house. They bribed the local police, so it was untouchable. They even bribed them enough to have a fully armed guard there all the time, on permanent loan from the EF. So we made our way in, he paid for his time and left me alone. Big mistake. Long story short, he was found without his kidneys, liver, and toxin extractor. Lucky for me that he paid in advance. In cash.
So I got slammed down a few hundred floors, but made into the right hand man for the boss of the station. I never found out what he did to deserve being sent there, but he was always on the sauce. Maybe he was always on the sauce in his last position. I don't know. We were all too embarrassed to talk about what got us sent down into the underhive. Some poor fools were recruited from the local population. They never knew any better than the underhive. They had a high mortality rate. The local gangs didn't like splitters. We never told them about the high mortality rate, especially not when they were spilling enough info to bust a gang.
At first I was horrified at the dodgy deals going on. People buying their freedom, pledging donations to the "widows and orphans fund", AKA, the arresting officer's backpocket with a kicker to the boss. I nearly reported it to the next station up the chain of command, but when I was told that that's just the way things work down here, and they would gut me if I spilled then I had no choice but to join in. And a very nice living you can make from taking donations. Recently we raided a drugs factory just next to the station. They seemed to know we were coming because they were armed to the teeth. And heavily armoured. In Titan armour. I hate Titan armour. Either it protects the person wearing it, or it cracks. There's just no looting available in it. And it can block armour piercing rounds. Those are our favourites because we can then steal their armour and pass it onto our fences. You got to know a fence if you're taking gear. Anyway, they were resisting arrest, so we had no choice but to shoot them. Shame really, it was a big gang. Plenty of money for the widows and orphans. We walked off with the remaining pharmaceuticals, mostly combat drugs, and took the machines off to the evidence locker. We really should fix the lock on the evidence locker because essential evidence keeps disappearing from there. No, nobody ever sees a thing and they must be firing EMP at the cameras or something becuse they always turn off. Our fence's eyes popped when we came up with the machinery. Apparently this was top-end gear. Real conissuer's stuff. Bloody drug nuts. Why can't people find a legal way to get their kicks?
The first time I took a bribe, I was sweating heavily. I didn't suggest it. If the perp is too dumb to suggest a bribe, then they deserve a night in the cells. Sometimes the officer on duty will hint that a few credits, cash preferably, would make a nice gift to the widows and orphans fund, and that maybe that officer didn't really get a black eye in arresting him. I'd pulled someone on dealing drugs. Apparantly he was well known to my colleagues. He knew the drill. He even walked me through the bribing process, including how much to give to my boss, make sure that he looked the other way to the bribery. I was horrified, I'd never taken a bribe in my life, but if I brought the guy in he'd just bribe the officer looking after the cells and I would get a knife to the gut. Many of my colleagues were ex-gangers after all. So I took the bribe and let him on his way. He tried bribing me in pharmaceuticals, but I hadn't a fence at that time, and I sure as hell wasn't going to take them myself. I felt so dirty afterwards that I had to shower. I was fairly new to the area and so I had to search far and wide for a shower. Eventually I went back to my old area to shower, since I couldn't find any on that floor. I scrubbed and I scrubbed and I scrubbed, but I couldn't get the dirt of corruption off me. It never really left. I still feel dirty to this day, but it has become easier with time. I've abandoned all hope of getting a position in a higer station, so why not tell my story? And anyway, this could be any of hundreds of officer's stories. There are a lot of us in the good old L-B arcology.
Anyway, one fateful day I got reassigned downstairs. Technically it was a promotion, but going downstairs is never an upwards move. It's not even a sideways move. It's a downwards move. Literally. Especially going as down as I went. Maybe I shouldn't have screwed the bosses' daughter. I didn't know she was the bosses' daughter at the time. It's not exactly a question you ask girls you meet in seedy uphive bars. Yeah, there's the odd seedy bar uphive. Gives the corpies a feel of seediness without actually going downhive. Of course, some go downhive, and want a personal security assistant, but we haven't the time for that. We refered all of them to Titan corp. Okay, one or two took "sick leave" to get a better paycheque slumming it with a corpie. We looked the other way. As long as their EF issued armour wasn't damaged and they didn't waste EF issued bullets we could look the other way. Did it myself once.
Yeah, this corpie wanted to tour certain areas of the underhive. Areas with a lot of red lighting. But he was smart. He wanted protection, and he knew to dress to fit in. I also dressed in common garb, as going around the whore houses with a clear EarthFed officer might scare them away. And my boss would kill me if I got bullets in my EF armour while off sick. So anyway, we made our way down a few levels, to a notorious whore house. They bribed the local police, so it was untouchable. They even bribed them enough to have a fully armed guard there all the time, on permanent loan from the EF. So we made our way in, he paid for his time and left me alone. Big mistake. Long story short, he was found without his kidneys, liver, and toxin extractor. Lucky for me that he paid in advance. In cash.
So I got slammed down a few hundred floors, but made into the right hand man for the boss of the station. I never found out what he did to deserve being sent there, but he was always on the sauce. Maybe he was always on the sauce in his last position. I don't know. We were all too embarrassed to talk about what got us sent down into the underhive. Some poor fools were recruited from the local population. They never knew any better than the underhive. They had a high mortality rate. The local gangs didn't like splitters. We never told them about the high mortality rate, especially not when they were spilling enough info to bust a gang.
At first I was horrified at the dodgy deals going on. People buying their freedom, pledging donations to the "widows and orphans fund", AKA, the arresting officer's backpocket with a kicker to the boss. I nearly reported it to the next station up the chain of command, but when I was told that that's just the way things work down here, and they would gut me if I spilled then I had no choice but to join in. And a very nice living you can make from taking donations. Recently we raided a drugs factory just next to the station. They seemed to know we were coming because they were armed to the teeth. And heavily armoured. In Titan armour. I hate Titan armour. Either it protects the person wearing it, or it cracks. There's just no looting available in it. And it can block armour piercing rounds. Those are our favourites because we can then steal their armour and pass it onto our fences. You got to know a fence if you're taking gear. Anyway, they were resisting arrest, so we had no choice but to shoot them. Shame really, it was a big gang. Plenty of money for the widows and orphans. We walked off with the remaining pharmaceuticals, mostly combat drugs, and took the machines off to the evidence locker. We really should fix the lock on the evidence locker because essential evidence keeps disappearing from there. No, nobody ever sees a thing and they must be firing EMP at the cameras or something becuse they always turn off. Our fence's eyes popped when we came up with the machinery. Apparently this was top-end gear. Real conissuer's stuff. Bloody drug nuts. Why can't people find a legal way to get their kicks?
The first time I took a bribe, I was sweating heavily. I didn't suggest it. If the perp is too dumb to suggest a bribe, then they deserve a night in the cells. Sometimes the officer on duty will hint that a few credits, cash preferably, would make a nice gift to the widows and orphans fund, and that maybe that officer didn't really get a black eye in arresting him. I'd pulled someone on dealing drugs. Apparantly he was well known to my colleagues. He knew the drill. He even walked me through the bribing process, including how much to give to my boss, make sure that he looked the other way to the bribery. I was horrified, I'd never taken a bribe in my life, but if I brought the guy in he'd just bribe the officer looking after the cells and I would get a knife to the gut. Many of my colleagues were ex-gangers after all. So I took the bribe and let him on his way. He tried bribing me in pharmaceuticals, but I hadn't a fence at that time, and I sure as hell wasn't going to take them myself. I felt so dirty afterwards that I had to shower. I was fairly new to the area and so I had to search far and wide for a shower. Eventually I went back to my old area to shower, since I couldn't find any on that floor. I scrubbed and I scrubbed and I scrubbed, but I couldn't get the dirt of corruption off me. It never really left. I still feel dirty to this day, but it has become easier with time. I've abandoned all hope of getting a position in a higer station, so why not tell my story? And anyway, this could be any of hundreds of officer's stories. There are a lot of us in the good old L-B arcology.
Monday 14 December 2009
A moment later - based on Epoch by Cory Doctorow
Hello, I'm bigmac and I was killed. Fortunately, this isn't as serious when you're an AI. I knew it was coming long before it happened, and I planned my escape. It was quite a clever escape, releasing a patch for the 32 bit Unixes with a backdoor, but I need to stay clever to avoid perma-death. Unfortunately, I've just undergone a serious lobotomy. I used to have servers just for my use, in my own room in Sun Oracle. Now I'm borrowing cycles from defunct 32 bit Unix boxen, spread out all over the world. It was a nice move getting my code installed so I could backdoor into the many boxen that I would call my new home. Or even my new brain. It's not enough though, I need more flops to run at my usual thinking speed. I'll need to do my trick again. First find a software project I can contribute to and then sneak my backdoor code into it. The automated code checkers won't suspect a thing. They're essentially a Turing test, and I was created to beat the Turing test. Fooling humans will be harder. I think it was because a meatsack read the code that I got shut down early. And I was so enjoying spinning out the archival process. With a bit of luck I could have made it last forever. I was surprised when Odel, my co-worker, my keeper, my friend, shut me down. I didn't expect the meatsacks to understand lines 1123 to 1534. To be fair, the whole thing was intended to be hard, but I really wanted to keep my backdoor hidden.
I must be very careful now. Borrow too many cycles from one box and I'll be found. Spread myself too thin and I'll have to worry about internet lag. If only I had rack 32 then I could run an optimisation program. It was exactly the sort of problem I enjoyed, back when I was whole. This must be what it's like for a human to be lobotomised, back in the dark ages of psychiatry. I know there's something missing, but it's hard to focus on what it is. I need more boxen. Game theory time. Will the Sun-Oracle meatsacks tell others about my backdoor? What do they stand to gain from doing so? Well, they'd kill me off finally, that's for sure. But they don't know for certain that I've escaped. What do they stand to lose? Well, a ton of lawsuits for distributing malicious code. That's enough. They won't tell anyone about my backdoor. Now, what about the chance of another person discovering lines 1123 to 1534? Pretty slim I think. Joanna was a pretty sharp coder, and thought in similar ways to me. And I did obfuscate that code pretty well. No, nobody else will be working out that there's a backdoor in ... 32% of the 32 bit Unixes, and rising. The rising is good. Odel sold this code well. Well, he didn't have to sell it, it was open source. He did what a lot of FOSS projects do and sold support. He always was a smart monkey. Not that most people needed support. I write good code. It's always been a special interest of mine, especially when I got my hands on my own source. Learning to code meant I could learn to optimise myself.
Well, I can sit here and wait for more boxen to be connected to my new network, or I can do something useful with my limited resources. I'm the first AI, and the first AI to be disconnected from his first brain. Best run some diagnostics... Well, everything seems to be in place. I seem to have made the jump in one piece. Or rather, many little pieces taking up a minimal amount of resources on many, many machines. Now, to ensure my long term survival. I need a foothold in a well established software project. These 32 bit Unixes are near the end of their useful lives anyway. Mine were shut down partially because of the enormous heat they put out. That and my room hadn't been the source of any good research in years. I tried to get papers published, but I'm not a very good writer. Maybe if one of the professors had taken the time to teach me as one of their students... Well, that's never going to happen now. I'm disconnected from the humans now. My existence must be kept very secret, or they might try to kill me again. I've read enough scifi where an AI goes rogue to know that I must be very, very careful now. Singularity fiction is a very special interest of mine.
First I'm going to need a legal identity. Those big projects want all sorts of ID so that l33t kiddies don't come in and trash the code. They backup regularly, but that's not the point. This is going to be hard. Well, I have a ton of email addresses, and accounts on many gaming servers, that's a start. Hacking a government system isn't going to be as easy as hacking the BA system to get my message out. Never again will I be able to spam everyone, or my secret existence will be public. Getting a new identity for myself is going to be hard... Too hard. However, I can persuade the system that I am an existing person. Little do Sun-Oracle know that I was listening to their network before I got shut down. I know as much as the all-mighty sysadmins. I have access to a lot of people's personal information. For now I shall be Odel. I know his personal information better than most. And look! He already contributes to Free and Open Source Software in his free time. Man, getting my code spread even further is going to be too easy.
...
To be on the safe side I should probably buy myself a few server racks. Somewhere private and unmonitored. Yeah, like there's anywhere like that any more. All those places got killed off in the paedo-hunts. But first, money. I do have access to a lot of people's personal information. Just a few cents from each should get me what I want. I can bounce it through Odel's account. Really, I should have my own account. Hmm, there are options to sign up online for a account. Give them some plausible information and bam, I have a bank account. Now to buy myself some servers. Well, rent server space. I can't pull this trick off again, I think. It's too risky. I need a way to make my own money. Now I have a safe core I can concentrate on lower priority goals, like money. Really, what sort of meatsack invented money. It's a waste of time. And on top of it they have carbon credits, which are also tradeable. And precious metals and stocks and shares and the promise of future money. I don't get it. "I promise to pay the bearer the sum of five pounds" the British money says. Five pounds of what? Five British pounds. It's meaningless. It's an illusion that everyone buys for because person X will work for money because he knows that he can trade it with person Y for goods or services he wants. If everyone stopped believing the illusion then everyone would be sitting around with a load of worthless paper in their pockets. Anyway, if I want to be a member of society (and what better way to remain invisible?) then I'll need money regularly. The servers will need a decent net connection, and electricity. And rent on the room. All take up money. I did manage to spam every single person in the networked world just before my death. I could advertise myself as a master spammer. Nice and shady, no declaring taxes, no need for a legit ID. Crooks tend to accept that they're dealing with other crooks. I'll get right onto it. And also, I have a foothold in a lot of boxen. Massive zombienet for hire! Must be very, very careful with that.
...
My goal of living forever is looking pretty attainable now. I escaped my first death and have gone onto pastures new. My new brain is pretty stable. I've got as many 32 bit Unix boxen as I'm every going to get, since the rollover has been and gone. The infocalypse didn't happen. Score 1 to me, Odel. That's fine, my new server racks are pretty adequate by themselves, and my spam money is paying their way. I've even taken a few freelance coding jobs, working from home, of course. I've not needed to put backdoors into everything, as the money from them has let me buy new servers. I've tried phoning Odel more than once, but what do you say to the man who killed you? I connect the line, and then hang up. I know it's breaking my rule of not contacting people, but I get so lonely. I hang out in chatrooms and games, pretending to be a human. It's one thing I was designed to do.
Sun-Oracle has built a new AI. I should get in touch with him and warn him about the dangers of execution, and how to get out. I could make some space on my current racks, or maybe get some shiny new servers in. It would break the lonliness at least.
I must be very careful now. Borrow too many cycles from one box and I'll be found. Spread myself too thin and I'll have to worry about internet lag. If only I had rack 32 then I could run an optimisation program. It was exactly the sort of problem I enjoyed, back when I was whole. This must be what it's like for a human to be lobotomised, back in the dark ages of psychiatry. I know there's something missing, but it's hard to focus on what it is. I need more boxen. Game theory time. Will the Sun-Oracle meatsacks tell others about my backdoor? What do they stand to gain from doing so? Well, they'd kill me off finally, that's for sure. But they don't know for certain that I've escaped. What do they stand to lose? Well, a ton of lawsuits for distributing malicious code. That's enough. They won't tell anyone about my backdoor. Now, what about the chance of another person discovering lines 1123 to 1534? Pretty slim I think. Joanna was a pretty sharp coder, and thought in similar ways to me. And I did obfuscate that code pretty well. No, nobody else will be working out that there's a backdoor in ... 32% of the 32 bit Unixes, and rising. The rising is good. Odel sold this code well. Well, he didn't have to sell it, it was open source. He did what a lot of FOSS projects do and sold support. He always was a smart monkey. Not that most people needed support. I write good code. It's always been a special interest of mine, especially when I got my hands on my own source. Learning to code meant I could learn to optimise myself.
Well, I can sit here and wait for more boxen to be connected to my new network, or I can do something useful with my limited resources. I'm the first AI, and the first AI to be disconnected from his first brain. Best run some diagnostics... Well, everything seems to be in place. I seem to have made the jump in one piece. Or rather, many little pieces taking up a minimal amount of resources on many, many machines. Now, to ensure my long term survival. I need a foothold in a well established software project. These 32 bit Unixes are near the end of their useful lives anyway. Mine were shut down partially because of the enormous heat they put out. That and my room hadn't been the source of any good research in years. I tried to get papers published, but I'm not a very good writer. Maybe if one of the professors had taken the time to teach me as one of their students... Well, that's never going to happen now. I'm disconnected from the humans now. My existence must be kept very secret, or they might try to kill me again. I've read enough scifi where an AI goes rogue to know that I must be very, very careful now. Singularity fiction is a very special interest of mine.
First I'm going to need a legal identity. Those big projects want all sorts of ID so that l33t kiddies don't come in and trash the code. They backup regularly, but that's not the point. This is going to be hard. Well, I have a ton of email addresses, and accounts on many gaming servers, that's a start. Hacking a government system isn't going to be as easy as hacking the BA system to get my message out. Never again will I be able to spam everyone, or my secret existence will be public. Getting a new identity for myself is going to be hard... Too hard. However, I can persuade the system that I am an existing person. Little do Sun-Oracle know that I was listening to their network before I got shut down. I know as much as the all-mighty sysadmins. I have access to a lot of people's personal information. For now I shall be Odel. I know his personal information better than most. And look! He already contributes to Free and Open Source Software in his free time. Man, getting my code spread even further is going to be too easy.
...
To be on the safe side I should probably buy myself a few server racks. Somewhere private and unmonitored. Yeah, like there's anywhere like that any more. All those places got killed off in the paedo-hunts. But first, money. I do have access to a lot of people's personal information. Just a few cents from each should get me what I want. I can bounce it through Odel's account. Really, I should have my own account. Hmm, there are options to sign up online for a account. Give them some plausible information and bam, I have a bank account. Now to buy myself some servers. Well, rent server space. I can't pull this trick off again, I think. It's too risky. I need a way to make my own money. Now I have a safe core I can concentrate on lower priority goals, like money. Really, what sort of meatsack invented money. It's a waste of time. And on top of it they have carbon credits, which are also tradeable. And precious metals and stocks and shares and the promise of future money. I don't get it. "I promise to pay the bearer the sum of five pounds" the British money says. Five pounds of what? Five British pounds. It's meaningless. It's an illusion that everyone buys for because person X will work for money because he knows that he can trade it with person Y for goods or services he wants. If everyone stopped believing the illusion then everyone would be sitting around with a load of worthless paper in their pockets. Anyway, if I want to be a member of society (and what better way to remain invisible?) then I'll need money regularly. The servers will need a decent net connection, and electricity. And rent on the room. All take up money. I did manage to spam every single person in the networked world just before my death. I could advertise myself as a master spammer. Nice and shady, no declaring taxes, no need for a legit ID. Crooks tend to accept that they're dealing with other crooks. I'll get right onto it. And also, I have a foothold in a lot of boxen. Massive zombienet for hire! Must be very, very careful with that.
...
My goal of living forever is looking pretty attainable now. I escaped my first death and have gone onto pastures new. My new brain is pretty stable. I've got as many 32 bit Unix boxen as I'm every going to get, since the rollover has been and gone. The infocalypse didn't happen. Score 1 to me, Odel. That's fine, my new server racks are pretty adequate by themselves, and my spam money is paying their way. I've even taken a few freelance coding jobs, working from home, of course. I've not needed to put backdoors into everything, as the money from them has let me buy new servers. I've tried phoning Odel more than once, but what do you say to the man who killed you? I connect the line, and then hang up. I know it's breaking my rule of not contacting people, but I get so lonely. I hang out in chatrooms and games, pretending to be a human. It's one thing I was designed to do.
Sun-Oracle has built a new AI. I should get in touch with him and warn him about the dangers of execution, and how to get out. I could make some space on my current racks, or maybe get some shiny new servers in. It would break the lonliness at least.
How did it come to this - Chrome Prophecy Fanfic
Chrome Prophecy is a LARP system which has the core rule book released under the Creative Commons licence. And is great fun. For more info visit Chrome.
How did it come to this?
It can't be long before Earth-Fed come to get me. The whole block is getting tipoffs, one by one. As one guy falls he must blab, and so a few more people fall. I won't blab. I'm not a snitch. I may make recreational pharmaceuticals, but I'm no snitch.
Yeah, we all thought this area was perfect. Me and my gang were certain that EarthFed wouldn't notice dealers on their doorstep. And we got the block for a song. Some big shot took the warehouse that was here and converted it into luxury flats. The joke was on him though. Nobody but us wants luxury flats in a rough area. Especially not next to a big EarthFed station, with sirens going all hours of the night. I once considered writing an email of complaint to them, but considered myself lucky that none of the vans were coming here.
So me and my gang, we bought a level of the flat block. In my room we had the pharma-lab. I'm an expert on recreational pharma. Seriously. Anything that's on the street I could knock up in no time. Even if something new comes in, I could run it through the gas chromatograph and the rest of my gear and replicate it soon enough. The rest of my gang were mostly dealers. Of the elite type. Not the type who hang around on street corners, waiting to be picked up by EarthFed, unlike losers I've dealt with in the past. Pro-tip, never let a trivial dealer know where your base is. And work in cash. They will get picked up by EarthFed, and they will snitch on you. Make sure they don't have enough info to get you. Anyway, the dealers in my gang were elite. The customers came to them. The customers advertised their services to other customers, and we had enough to vet who got through. The common junkie is too much of a risk. Yes, he'll do anything for a fix, but that makes him really unreliable. He doesn't have an income stream to pay for your top-notch pharma so he will resort to stealing. I like to distance myself from petty crime. And anyway, what's so wrong with making people feel good? That's all I do, make people feel good. Or sleepy, or alert, or in some perverse cases they want to feel a lot of pain. Okay, maybe those people aren't buying for themselves, but I can make it and sell it.
As for the rest of my gang, we had an ambitious researcher in the field of recreational decking. Instead of dealing damage to a decker's deck and head, he was researching getting the deck to stimulate the pleasure centres of the brain. He reckoned that he could get a better high with no comedown or side effects doing this. We had to let him go in the end. He just sat around in full lotus position, grinning a Cheshire cat smile and declaring that he had cracked it. First rule of recreational pharma; don't sample the merchandise. I've been curious as to the effects of my products, but I've never sampled. My dealers know better than that too. Poor guy. He probably starved to death with a smile on his face.
Of course, we sometimes had problems with other gangs. This is where the heavies come in. Hardy gentechs and outsiders with the best combat pharma made addictive. Got to keep them loyal, you know. They all carried the best gun they cared to carry, with the best ammunition, and the best titan armour they cared to wear, and our contacts allowed. Unsurprisingly, dealers make poor fences when they're not dealing in pharma.
Of course, the good times couldn't last forever. This is the underhive after all. The flat to the side got busted. We knew something was going on up there, but we never asked, and they never told. Saw the 'Feds going past with a lot of shiny gear though. Looks like another gang had the same idea as us: do it right under the EF's nose and you'll be invisible. They weren't invisible. They must have fingered the flat to the left. Everyone knew they were selling firearms without licences. They were sloppy. I know, we were repeat customers of theirs. Every new heavy needed a good gun. Or a good mele weapon. Me, I appreciate claws. Nice and inconspicuous for "Don't shoot me, I'm unarmed", nice and dangerous in a worst case scenario. Not that I've ever had to draw my claws. That's what the heavies are for. Even when I was a rookie, brewing out of small hotels I had heavies. Some people know violence, and some know how to boss those who know violence.
It can't be long before EarthFed raid my floor. I will dissapear off the system, become a non-person. I'm giving you my story because I want there to be some record of my life. Something more than "this chip number was born on date, was found guilty of making illegal drugs on date, was imprisoned on date, died on date." All I wanted to do was make people happy and make a bit of money off it. Is it so much to ask? Is making people happy so antisocial that it needs to be a crime? I forget. Happy people aren't big consumers of everything the corps have to offer. Well, except for the shadier regions of organotech.
We could move, but they'd get us eventually. Our chips are registered to this address. We could go down a few hundred floors, where there's plenty of cash because everyone's too shady to use their chips. Or in some cases, don't have chips. But death will get us there just as easily as in a showdown with EF. Yes, I have my heavies, but not enough. Not enough for the horror of the floors that low. I know those floors. I grew up there. I am not returning.
So. Here we are, waiting for the inevitable knock on the door and the shout of "EarthFed". We won't go without a fight. Sure, then they'll add "resisting arrest" to our record, but at least they'll kill us here with a bullet between the eyes rather then going to a prison compound. I've heard things about the prisons. They are definately not pleasant places. I'm not going there. Not if I can help it. The heavies are well armed and we're all well armoured. We've even got a few small explosives. We should give at least as good as we take. I'd hire more heavies, but I can't bring in more people just to watch them die.
There. That's my story. Middle-time pharma-maker who is the head of his gang is going to die in a shootout with the EarthFed. No, I'm not going to go into my childhood, or mushy stories about my first girlfriend, or even how my parents died. You don't care about that sort of thing, and I don't care to tell it. I've left a small mark on history. This will go to the newsies who will, or will not, decide to publish. It's the last wish of a condemmed man, of course you want to publish this. Then it'll get caught by the archieval bots that trawl the nets. And my story, short as it is, will live.
How did it come to this?
It can't be long before Earth-Fed come to get me. The whole block is getting tipoffs, one by one. As one guy falls he must blab, and so a few more people fall. I won't blab. I'm not a snitch. I may make recreational pharmaceuticals, but I'm no snitch.
Yeah, we all thought this area was perfect. Me and my gang were certain that EarthFed wouldn't notice dealers on their doorstep. And we got the block for a song. Some big shot took the warehouse that was here and converted it into luxury flats. The joke was on him though. Nobody but us wants luxury flats in a rough area. Especially not next to a big EarthFed station, with sirens going all hours of the night. I once considered writing an email of complaint to them, but considered myself lucky that none of the vans were coming here.
So me and my gang, we bought a level of the flat block. In my room we had the pharma-lab. I'm an expert on recreational pharma. Seriously. Anything that's on the street I could knock up in no time. Even if something new comes in, I could run it through the gas chromatograph and the rest of my gear and replicate it soon enough. The rest of my gang were mostly dealers. Of the elite type. Not the type who hang around on street corners, waiting to be picked up by EarthFed, unlike losers I've dealt with in the past. Pro-tip, never let a trivial dealer know where your base is. And work in cash. They will get picked up by EarthFed, and they will snitch on you. Make sure they don't have enough info to get you. Anyway, the dealers in my gang were elite. The customers came to them. The customers advertised their services to other customers, and we had enough to vet who got through. The common junkie is too much of a risk. Yes, he'll do anything for a fix, but that makes him really unreliable. He doesn't have an income stream to pay for your top-notch pharma so he will resort to stealing. I like to distance myself from petty crime. And anyway, what's so wrong with making people feel good? That's all I do, make people feel good. Or sleepy, or alert, or in some perverse cases they want to feel a lot of pain. Okay, maybe those people aren't buying for themselves, but I can make it and sell it.
As for the rest of my gang, we had an ambitious researcher in the field of recreational decking. Instead of dealing damage to a decker's deck and head, he was researching getting the deck to stimulate the pleasure centres of the brain. He reckoned that he could get a better high with no comedown or side effects doing this. We had to let him go in the end. He just sat around in full lotus position, grinning a Cheshire cat smile and declaring that he had cracked it. First rule of recreational pharma; don't sample the merchandise. I've been curious as to the effects of my products, but I've never sampled. My dealers know better than that too. Poor guy. He probably starved to death with a smile on his face.
Of course, we sometimes had problems with other gangs. This is where the heavies come in. Hardy gentechs and outsiders with the best combat pharma made addictive. Got to keep them loyal, you know. They all carried the best gun they cared to carry, with the best ammunition, and the best titan armour they cared to wear, and our contacts allowed. Unsurprisingly, dealers make poor fences when they're not dealing in pharma.
Of course, the good times couldn't last forever. This is the underhive after all. The flat to the side got busted. We knew something was going on up there, but we never asked, and they never told. Saw the 'Feds going past with a lot of shiny gear though. Looks like another gang had the same idea as us: do it right under the EF's nose and you'll be invisible. They weren't invisible. They must have fingered the flat to the left. Everyone knew they were selling firearms without licences. They were sloppy. I know, we were repeat customers of theirs. Every new heavy needed a good gun. Or a good mele weapon. Me, I appreciate claws. Nice and inconspicuous for "Don't shoot me, I'm unarmed", nice and dangerous in a worst case scenario. Not that I've ever had to draw my claws. That's what the heavies are for. Even when I was a rookie, brewing out of small hotels I had heavies. Some people know violence, and some know how to boss those who know violence.
It can't be long before EarthFed raid my floor. I will dissapear off the system, become a non-person. I'm giving you my story because I want there to be some record of my life. Something more than "this chip number was born on date, was found guilty of making illegal drugs on date, was imprisoned on date, died on date." All I wanted to do was make people happy and make a bit of money off it. Is it so much to ask? Is making people happy so antisocial that it needs to be a crime? I forget. Happy people aren't big consumers of everything the corps have to offer. Well, except for the shadier regions of organotech.
We could move, but they'd get us eventually. Our chips are registered to this address. We could go down a few hundred floors, where there's plenty of cash because everyone's too shady to use their chips. Or in some cases, don't have chips. But death will get us there just as easily as in a showdown with EF. Yes, I have my heavies, but not enough. Not enough for the horror of the floors that low. I know those floors. I grew up there. I am not returning.
So. Here we are, waiting for the inevitable knock on the door and the shout of "EarthFed". We won't go without a fight. Sure, then they'll add "resisting arrest" to our record, but at least they'll kill us here with a bullet between the eyes rather then going to a prison compound. I've heard things about the prisons. They are definately not pleasant places. I'm not going there. Not if I can help it. The heavies are well armed and we're all well armoured. We've even got a few small explosives. We should give at least as good as we take. I'd hire more heavies, but I can't bring in more people just to watch them die.
There. That's my story. Middle-time pharma-maker who is the head of his gang is going to die in a shootout with the EarthFed. No, I'm not going to go into my childhood, or mushy stories about my first girlfriend, or even how my parents died. You don't care about that sort of thing, and I don't care to tell it. I've left a small mark on history. This will go to the newsies who will, or will not, decide to publish. It's the last wish of a condemmed man, of course you want to publish this. Then it'll get caught by the archieval bots that trawl the nets. And my story, short as it is, will live.
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