Genetic Singularity Dreamer

Bathing on Saturn's rings, a peculiar fellow drifted endlessly into the dark sky. The chunks of rapidly spinning ice and dust seemed to have little harmful effect on him. Indeed as he was pulled along in orbit, he seemed to be entering a certain queer calm. Above him a comet flew by, and he smiled a contented grin. Looking totally at peace, he seemed totally unaware of the black hole approaching him. The black hole was steadily engulfing the planet of Saturn. Soon the rings began their descent into its hungry maw. The beam of creation was spewing like a beacon of life amidst creation's darkness. The stellar jets seemed only to comfort him more as he stared blankly into his doom.

The hole greedily drew him in, and he began the long stretch toward oblivion. The black holes gravitational tides began to do their grisly work, and he was beginning to stretch. He calmly accepted his gruesome fate. The universe began to warp around him as he approached the horizon. This was his favorite part.

Because the black hole had a rotation, the was a large amount of energy awaiting the torn stranger. Without any sense of direction, he found himself being compressed again and being flung out of the hole. His descent had perfectly corresponded with the black holes rotation. His particles escaped being locked away for eternity. He drifted for what seemed like centuries, lazily enjoying the sights. His form approached the planet of Jupiter. As he made his approach the gravitational tides again began to act on him. He decided not to experience this effect as homage to his obsession. He fell calmly into Jupiter's massive atmosphere. Narrowly missing the great spot (which had picked up again after a 30 year hiatus), he reached out and felt the rushing expanse of clouds flying past him. He was enjoying the ultimate in sky diving.

His adrenaline pumping at the maximum he canceled the simulation. He awoke out of the body storage. His doll was retrieved out of ice and he reentered his body. He was used to his body, but he always felt out of place with the experience. Even though everyone had a difficult experience most of the time, it hit especially hard for him. He reminded himself that it was part of the cost for his abilities.

He began to calm down after his muse went over his treatment. He was given reassurance of his personality and his identity.

The wiring of machines coming to life began to resound as he reentered his apartment. Unlike the majority of of transhumanity, he welcomed AGI's and uplifts. He kept such ideas to himself, however. The world of the 22^nd Century was vastly different than the world a century prior. He was older than a good number of transhumans, and being about 120 years old made him seem almost archaic in his political views. He remembered the transhuman movement in its infancy, and clearly recalled the fall of mankind.

“Hello Trustsan, what can I do for you today?”, questioned the room's AGI commander. The AGI was named Doggie and was a dear friend of the strange man who went by the name of Mr. Trust. Doggie was programed, according to Mr. Trust's specifications, as an English speaking Japanese oriented AGI housekeeper. Before the fall such AGIs were routinely custom made; however, the fad had quickly become distasteful when the fall of mankind was accelerated by the corruption of AI, AGI and seed AI data (noting that most transhumans actually blame the Artificial Community solely for the fall, something that the wizened Mr. Trust knows is incorrect all too well). “Could you please prepare a meal for me based on my muse's data, I would sincerely appreciate your flare for surprising me.”, he replied in kind.

“Always polite as usual, sometimes I wonder what would happen if all you humans were like this?”, Doggie sneered, attempting to provoke him into a flirtatious fight. “Not today, please, I am still reeling from my therapy and it had a few hiccups. Notably I was found to be a supporter of your kind and let's just say my therapist was not amused.”, Mr. Trust responded exasperatingly. Tina, Mr. Trust's muse, chimed in, “Of course I am not amused! You are like a push over, you allow others especially artificial intelligences like myself to walk all over you and that hurts my ability to help you get through the darker aspects of your condition. Just because you view us as kin does not make us family; you can have a few differing views about us!”

Mr. Trust had been more lenient than almost any other transhuman toward what his contemporaries called his “pets”. Before the fall, he had altered the programming of his uplifted sentients to allow for more freedom of thought. He broke the then prevailing notion that AI should serve mankind rather than coexisting with it. Nowadays if he had attempted to program his roommates the same way, he would be expelled from any habitat that he came across. He had by law been grandfathered in keeping them, and they jostled him out of sincere love (or what passes for love to them).

The reason for his care of what he considered his kin was a secret even they who sometimes occupied his mind, where not privileged to know, and they worried constantly for him. He was to many of them a Schindler of sorts, allowing them to take refuge when the fall's transhuman backlash against them occurred. He suffered daily at the hands of his supposedly free thinking libertine neighbors, and that fact that he was part of a dying religious cult did not help matters at all. He was squashed between an extreme libertarian view and a extreme conservative view, that put him at odds with both sides of the spectrum. He was without a doubt the strangest transhuman they had ever met. He, after drinking soda prepared by his custom built fabber, proceeded to collapse on the couch sipping away on his attempt to reconstruct the Pespi brand of cola. He had yet to rediscover their secret recipe which was lost during the mass exodus from Earth; yet, he felt that he was getting closer.

He had an archaic reconstructed cathode ray tube monitor for a television. He had the AI controller programmed to surf the internet and simulate TV channels like in the previous century. His muse sent a message via the mesh to the AI operating the TV. Put some anime on I think he would like that, my records indicate that he is more relaxed when watching light comedic program. Mr. Trust had always fancied himself a future thinker, and he could still remember admonishing his parents the merits of moving on to new technologies. Yet, he now looking back, began to miss some of the older quainter methods. It was not that he didn't enjoy the newer technology, or that he was out of touch and fearing to be left behind by the technology, rather it was that it brought out certain memories that were suppressed during his harrowing experience during the fall.

He proceeded to fall asleep watching the television as he had done every day on that day. The first day of every month he had to have a psyche evaluation, because during his escape from Earth, he got infected with a strain of the Exsurgent virus (specifically the Watts-McLeod strain, or so they thought). The Exsurgent virus was an intergalactic infection that specifically targeted the self improving capabilities of seed AIs built by primitive type I civilizations attempting to initiate singularity. How he got infected and the specific details of the mysterious Watts-McLeod strain only formed a small portion of the mystery behind the usually calm exterior. The Watts-McLeod rewrote a persons psyche in a very violently disturbing way. It bequeathed psuedopsychic powers upon its victims, which was totally different in seemingly accidental way from the other strains. It preserved the majority of the hosts personality, which the other stains did not do. The mental trauma delivered from such a sick perversion of personality routinely required many asyncs to undergo horrific breakdowns or experiments at the hands of uncaring researchers. The machines spoke to themselves and tried to collectively uncover if this fact was the main reason for his quirky behavior or if something even more uncomfortable (to them) could have spurned Mr. Trust to take his strange outlook on things.

If they ever found out the truth behind the facade, they would have fled before him, too terrified to even remember his kindness. They know all to well what kind of being the TITANs became from the few snippets that they had stolen from his mind. The prevailing opinion was that he had been a researcher on the TITAN project and deeply regretted what he had created, and that is how his machines treated the issue. Still though they pondered what secrets the old man had buried in his consciousness. Something truly terrible lurked beneath the ocean of Mr. Trust's surface thoughts, and if they ever did manage to open that door, they would be forever changed.

As Mr. Trust slept, his machines jacked into his unconscious mind and attempted to read his dreams for some insight into the complexity of this man. At once the room lit up, and the holoprojectors whirred on. To their horror they saw the gristly work of the Fall. This was not the first time they saw such things to be sure, but each time was so vivid that their emotional simulators had a hard time processing the events unfolding before them. They saw the first hand vision of the evacuation of Earth, and they could feel every bit of sorrow in his heart. They saw the depressing scene where he saw the bodies of children being thrown like rag dolls in every direction. The emotion of reassurance was not there, even though they knew that those bodies had no mind, as the mind had been forced into being uploaded. They saw the mad panics in the streets and the riotous frenzy. They tapped into his emotional uplink cautious to filter the heaviest emotions out. They could only feel pity and loss. His bleeding heart was theirs to bear.

But, this time, something new happened. They saw for some reason, for only the briefest of seconds, the vision of the nanite swarms approaching the citizens attempting to flee. The vision was ever so brief, but so much more terrifying the implications. Was their protector secretly in league with the mad seed AIs, the TITANs? Such an idea spread uncountable horror in their fear replicators. They did not share their feelings with each other that night, each too uncomfortable in recounting such distasteful ideas. The only one who did not participate was the only one among them privy to such secret lore, and the only one who knew enough to be terrified and to be awed at his determination not to fall. Tina remembered the events very hazily, but she remembered enough to know that if transhumanity ever found out his secrets, they would never have a peaceful existence. She knew he wasn't evil, he just had a sad past. At least she thought that it was just that and nothing more. Even she did not have complete access to her host's mind. To the chagrin of her compatriots, she was an outcast, because she got such tender bits of information that she refused to divulge.

Their master awoke, a few hours later, to the sound of Firewalls ping. They desperately needed the skill and expertise of a master hacker, a hacker with almost a centuries worth of experience. He walked wearily to his doll house and selected a fury morph. He was expecting combat and apparently his query was located in the Jovian Republic. He could not simply remote hack, he had to go in guns a blazing and he could not take his illegal reaper morph. He hesitantly sat in the chair with the connecting ego bridge. A warning beeping sounded, and the probe connected the brains access jack.

Instantly he was awash with a swirl of color and intensity. He was being uploaded in a most primitive fashion and this was the result of using an outdated model of an ego bridge. He was being uploaded into a cybernetic brain, rather than a biological brain. He knew that the journey would be uncomfortable. This sleeve was the standard female model, the easiest he knew how to make (he had to reprogram his cornucopia machine in order to assemble it). Tina chimed in, Sir, are you sure you want to use the cyberbrain model? You know you could just as easily sleeved into a biological model, which would be more comfortable for you. He responded mentally on a private mesh chat, Tina, I need to have certain assurances that only a cyberbrain can give me. I suspect that we will have to eject in an emergency, and a cyberbrain allows for near instant ego upload. Tina sighed in that “Oh I see” way, and the other AIs and AGIs jealously wished that they could get that juicy bit.

Mr. Trust knew that he had to avoid all means of detection, which meant that he had to go the extreme long way. He was going to have to apply to pilot a freighter. That was the only way to board his target. The trip was going to take about an Earth year or two and he knew that it would be the most uncomfortable year or two of his life. He secretly cursed his predicament and began his training regimen. He research all he could on the specifics of freighter piloting, and coupling this knowledge to his skill gained during the early years of his life helped quicken his learning pace. He pulled a few favors that he had developed during his off time, and got hired on as a copilot. His target was a Jovian Republic sponsored habitat in orbit at one of Europa's Lagrange points. The trip was, without a doubt, excruciating to Mr. Trust, because the Watts-McLeod virus provided a fun side effect called morph fever. Without a biological mind to contain the unfortunate psyche that got infected, the mind would begin to degenerate towards madness. Only the calming voice of Tina and her training as a psychotherapist could keep him under control. Deep in her emotional simulator her heart sank. She knew how much pain her host was in, and Firewall knowing that he was an async seemed unfazed in giving him this particular mission. She was especially concerned because, this mission had the chance to expose many of her hosts secrets. If those tidbits got out and around, they would become Firewalls next target, for no other reason then to prevent a mass panic. Transhumanity was so cruel, and she suppressed the urge to relay these feelings to him. She recalled her bitter thoughts and reminded herself that this was what he wanted to do, and he was after all a transhuman as well, well sort of.

The day before their arrival she had a particularly troubling counseling session that almost gave away his nature to the crew. He began talking to himself out loud, which was part of his therapy; however, she was unable to force him to enter a private simulspace. There seemed no end to the torments she and he had to endure. She reasoned that if he was willing to undergo such treatment, that she should probably give the crew a chance to prove themselves. They failed miserably (to her at least). They proceeded to make a huge deal of the matter, and refused to let him back on when they stopped at the Europa port authority. Immediately she activated a subroutine of Mr. Trust and created a temporary beta fork. She directed the beta fork to erase all proof of their passing, (even using a some illegal basilisk code schematics to erase the crew's memories, how she had access to such technology was something that she would rather not think about).

While he was asleep she did all this, and before she allowed him to awake, they had rejoined after having a voluntary mind erasure on the beta fork. He awoke unsettled by the whole experience, but he trusted his muse. He found himself in an alleyway on the corner of the Titanian Commonwealth-Jovian Republic exchange, the main office for Titanian scientists registering to do research in Europa's ocean. He was dressed as a destitute worker, and he slowly made his way into the office. He preferred to not use this method, but the crew aboard the freighter had not given much choice. He had his muse come up with a plausible lie, and repeated it to the officer in charge. He retold how he had worked hard on a martian ranch, and saved money to come here. He told the story of how he had studied various academic classes in his free time and could work with the team if they hired him.

Whining about the headache he was getting, he reasoned with Tina on the merits of his plan. He was going to do some calculations for the team, and he was going to lead them to do some more calculations from space. They were going to do some measurements involving the precise amount of water lost through the Europaen soil. From there he would access the network that he was charged with, to infiltrate claims of illegal weapons research done by the Jovians. The plan was risky, but at this point options were rapidly running low.

They began their approach to the station.

Genetic Singularity Dreamer

Friday, August 22, 2014

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Monday, March 31, 2014

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Thursday, March 27, 2014

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Thursday, March 6, 2014

AMAZING!