Flux Stable - Draft

Summary: A megacity synth looks for cooperation with transhumans while a corrupt cartel bot is out to get revenge.



1. INTERIOR — megacity transport station — day. There are members of multiple posthuman species on their way. Bots are machines. The transhumans are the most human-like. HYNT is a synth which is a form of artificial life that can shape-shift to some degree and is mimicking transhumans in this case, but with a subtle show of superiority which looks nonhuman. There is another SYNTH a ways away. They communicate by a form of techno-telepathy, the mindmesh. Hynt sees a transhuman, URBRUS, arriving at the transport station. They seem to be getting directions from a bot, OBO, who will become a major character later on. There is an ANIM, a reanimated human with some internal simplifications, carying bags for the bot. The crowd flows by around them without pause. It is clear and warm, and there is the usual THRONG of CONVERSATIONS in the air. Hynt is looking around like a tourist.

HYNT (in Voiceover)
That transhuman is out of its mesh. Have to be to look for guidance from a bot. It obviously is trying to hawk something, probably a cartel knockoff. They have them at all of the transport stops. If the drones snare them, there is noone to take the fall since there is usually an infinitely long trail without any fingerprints. It wasn’t that bad when the humans were still around. Now they're trying to lure the remaining posthumans back to the megacity. Can’t happen again, they said. Shouldn’t have in the first place. The place is up for grabs. The transhumans survived coincidentally. Actually so did we. Synths were immune from whatever it had been, I guess. Pretty far from the mines. Must be on a task for the bots. They don’t let them out on their own as far as I know. Still a case to be made for posthuman rights there. Why do I get the feeling that someone is observing me in the same way? Maybe it’s one of those souls that hadn’t made it to their final destination. Better not ask me for advice. They’ll be here forever. Either that or one of these people is carrying goods that they are not supposed to.

SYNTH V.O.
They could be friendlies.

Hynt’s V.O.
Think so?

Synth V.O.
Well I can’t tell for sure, not like if it was in Hali or senses. You seem to have a strong opinion.

Hynt’s V.O.
Not my call. Is that you near the entrance?

Synth V.O.
Yeah, don’t be too obvious. There isn’t supposed to be a task force here.

Hynt’s V.O.
It won’t go any further.

Synth V.O.
This is the easy part. You should have to follow the subjects the whole way. Like as not end up at an obstacle course.

Hynt’s V.O.
Don’t look back.

Synth V.O.
Gotta go.

Hynt’s V.o.
You’ll be fine.

Synth V.O.
You’re in for a surprise.

Hynt’s V.O.
No synths in the station now. Nobody to tell.

He is looking toward the outside. There is a dark personal automated transport that pulls up near the entrance. Someone wearing a backpack, cap and gloves gets out and looks both ways, then up and down. They go away from the terminal and into a nearby building. A couple of minutes later, they come back out. They take the pack off, check the station, and get back into the transport. A minute after that, what looks like a large-bodied streetrover in a nearby yard unfolds into a bot. It goes toward the same building and enters.

Hynt's V.O.
I better not wait to see if it exits. Already been exposed too long. Soon this’ll be all synths. And the memory of humans, of course.


2. EXTERIOR — megacity center — day. HYNT is dropping some objects off. There is a bot that accepts them and credits him. He sees UBRUS doing the same, but makes nothing of it.


3. INT — transport — day. Hynt is aboard. Urbrus is also riding. They ignore eachother.


4. EXT — empty former prison facilities — day. Hynt is surveying. He stacks some objects together and goes to find some more. When he gets back, there are two stacks. Urbrus comes barreling around a corner and crashes into him.

HYNT
You look familiar. Weren’t you on the transport a while ago?

URBRUS
Look. I am in a hurry here. What are you looking for?

Hynt
Nothing. I had seen an announcement that this place was being cleaned out.

Urbrus
Saw the same ad. There isn’t a lot left.

Hynt
Yeah, but I did not want to miss anything that would be of value to the synths.

Urbrus
I’m part of a transhuman trade caravan. This place has some sentimental value. We used to have a prisoner or two here.

Hynt
Cartel? We may have had a member before, too. Maybe we ran into eachother.

Urbrus
Doubt it. I would have remembered. People know me.

Hynt
They know me also.

Urbrus
You new here? Volunteer?

Hynt
From the other side of the megacity. Synths are expanding.

Urbrus
New recruit, huh?

Hynt
They drafted you?

Urbrus
The bots were running it.

Hynt
That’s a coincidence. I have been trying to track the bot’s algorithms about this stuff.

Urbrus
I sent them a message about this place.

Hynt
They relayed it to the rest of us, I guess.

Urbrus
We left the megacity a long time ago.

Hynt
We had some refugees also. They ended up as exiles.

Urbrus
We may have been former enemies then. Some of us were captured outside the borders.

Hynt
Some came back to show respects for the humans.

Urbrus
Yeah. That was tough.

Hynt
A number of people dreamt that they were being called back.

Urbrus
I had one of those.

Hynt
Anyway this is my last batch. I had requested someone to bring the stuff in.

Urbrus
That explains it. I was assigned.

Hynt
Truth is. We had information that some of the humans had stashed some things and it took me a while to find out where. The whole thing ended up here.

Urbrus
Nice to have solved it, I bet. They have some underground bunkers which I spent time going through. There were all kinds of defensive measures. Long story short, they are no longer any threat.

Hynt
I thought that the bots were taking care of that.

Urbrus
Let’s just say that we were after the same thing.

Hynt
I’m supposed to meet a contact here pretty soon, about what rules they are using now.

Urbrus
Don’t say. Speaking. Small village.

Hynt
So you’re not going to bring the stuff in.

Urbrus
Yeah, I can have someone do it. Saw it left there. You’re not easy to fool.

Hynt
Our running into eachother must have been meant to happen for one reason or another.

Urbrus
You from outer space or the future or something?

Hynt
No. Just want to see the megacities back in action if anyone is interested.

Urbrus
Good place to find adventurers is to meet at the inn.

Hynt
Yeah. Next time I’ll be sure to go there.


5. EXT. — near megacity buildings — day. The SCENE IS BATHED IN A LATE-AFTERNOON BACKLIGHT from a glow on the horizon. HYNT is capturing snapshots and making them into paintings while adding some of his own shapes. He looks at his creations and the real things and nods contentedly. Then he notices something on a picture, frowns and looks at a nearby location. An ANIM has crawled up out of a LARGE PIPE ON THE GROUND. It is unfamiliar to him and its JUMPSUIT IS SOOTY IN SPOTS. He cautiously approaches it. It sees him and waits.

HYNT
That's a good way to get into mischief. What is going on here? You are ruining your suit.

ANIM
Are you the supervisor?

Hynt
No. I was just working on some drawings for what things will look like before long. I didn't see you there. What do you want?

Anim
The shaft is blocked.

Hynt
You mean the pipe? It is open so that the machines can tend the inner surfaces. You do not stay around here I take it.

Anim
The tunnel does not go all the way back.

Hynt
That is probably for exhaust. It is not an entryway. Are you with any of the synths here on a visit perhaps?

Anim
The bot runs everything.

Hynt
That is news to me. They took over for the humans then. You thought that I was the bot? Synths are the furthest thing from them imaginable.

Anim
No, you are not like us.

Hynt
If you want to become a synth, I can look into it. Tell me one thing though. What are your rules?

Anim
Anims value obedience.

Hynt
That's a simple one. It should not be too hard to fit that in. Synths value our freedom.

Anim
Where are the others?

Hynt
Who? There are synths in all of the megacities.

Anim
My group is gone. I thought that they went ahead in the passage.

Hynt
I doubt it. Don't worry, I won't abandon you here. You need to be entered into the index anyway.

Anim
Which way is it?

Hynt
Twisty mazes are all alike, eh? You transhumans are a riot. This is a new one on me.

Anim
Where is the bot?

Urbrus
There is no bot here. Hynt, what do you think that you are doing? That is an anim. Not all fields converge through synthesis, you know.

Hynt
Flux is just trying to show how they relate where possible. That is why I invented the process. Ultimately there is an organizing ideology.

Urbrus
If there is, it will be different from what we see in practice. However, if it includes transhumans, it has some good, even if it also has these subhumans.

Hynt
I am in the middle of finding this anim his friends.

Urbrus
Try the mines.

Anim
That's right.

Hynt
Well then. We have to get you to the transport. Your group may be in the station waiting for you. It is not too far from here. Better get you there quick before the drones are alerted and come swooping down.


6. INT — museum — day. Hynt is wandering around with a companion synth.

Hynt
This place has a lot of electronics. We may have to speak since it will interfere with the mesh.

Synth
These must be the exhibits from human history. What’s the clock for?

Hynt
Doomsday. It was set at midnight. It is supposed to show the mood of humanity before the end.

Synth
That must be a remnant of the nuclear age which provided both a new level of energy as well as a terrible threat. Some of the states had had to swear it off because they always seemed to be on the wrong end compared to the bigger territories. Others had done whatever they were asked and were rewarded with their own reactors and stockpiles without incident.

Hynt
By that time, our maker had developed a nano solution that defused nukes.

Synth
That was not popular with the arms merchants which was why he was on the run.

Hynt
There were installations that coupled missiles with bots so that nothing could stop their preparedness for launch.

Synth
Transhumans had also fulfilled that function at times.

Hynt
The other inner planets were not immune from this approach.

Synth
The paranoia had been such that a group of people had set off on a one-way trip to an exoplanet.

Hynt
It had also been a reason that we were developed. There’s the wing for betans and synths.

Synth
Are you okay?

Hynt
Yes. Why do you ask?

Synth
You seem to be talking very fast. And there is a lot more hand-waving than usual.

Hynt
Yes. I don’t agree with the presumption, that’s all. We can obviously do things better around here. There’s no need to abandon the planet.

Synth
They are trying to cleanup the silos and sunken ships. It does not look good if something goes wrong.

Hynt
That is what bots could be spending their time on. They have no hesitation in dismantling things. They do it for mining all of the time.

Synth
If they did have feelings, they probably would think that they were shortchanged by the posthumans since they had the most seniority.

Hynt
That was because of the transhumans. They are not the friendliest pair of groups concerning eachother.

Synth
We should just stay out of their way. Things will work out okay.

Hynt
Things are not likely to fix themselves. I have an idea for how to level the field.

Synth
I am not sure that I want to hear it. How do you know if it will work?

Hynt
I have to try. It is like one of the biggest problems of all and those will find solutions. Besides it is impossible not to think about it. Didn’t you ever have one of those visions?

Synth
No. I am too busy with everything else. If we do not set everything up right, then all of our efforts will have been wasted.

Hynt
What about the future?

Synth
This is what it looks like. It has been proved right.

Hynt
It has a long way to go. There is a lot that can happen.

Synth
Let the transhumans and bots hammer it out. They have no doctrine. We are different from them.

Hynt
Some of us are need more than that. It did not foretell the rest of the posthumans. What if the transhumans run everything?

Synth
They won’t. Is everything alright? You seem off balance.

Hynt
I need to get out of here.


7. INT — Flux data center — day. Hynt is in conversation with a couple of other synths who are busy.

Hynt
Have the bot rules been added in?

Synth 1
The first time they caused the system to halt. We tried again and they removed the other sets.

Hynt
It could be the initialization scheme. Deactivate sensor inputs and merge it, then activate them after.

Synth 1
Will try.

Hynt
This is not the game of life. These sets should be able to stay in their segment until called upon.

Synth 2
The previous exec AI had administered all of the people and the machines. That was been good enough for the megacity.

Hynt
It had not included the exiles or transhumans, however. What had been missing was a true synthesis of the rule systems rather than a hodgepodge of schedules and preferences.

Synth 2
Your solution seems clear.

Hynt
It is a straightforward implementation of a syntactic layer which can compile user requests into the appropriate set of instructions to run in the realworld. Configuration is easy.

Synth 2
Each group just had to feed it their statutes. So far things have gone okay in the megacity.

Hynt
The transhumans have had some issues with it since they tried doing a backtrack with Flux in place of the AI in the earlier human period. It flagged the cartel transactions as exceptions which was good, but it did not know how to integrate anything like that and would have to halt which did not produce any useful output.

Synth 2
If it was run in slow motion in an interpretive mode, then the user could skip over those precepts and continue like everything was normal.

Hynt
This is not efficient for flat out usage by the public. There is no way to delete the cartel data without also removing a large chunk of valid information.

Synth 2
We could try using a proxy as a kind of immunization to quarantine any contaminated rules.

Hynt
That'll run slowly and it won't cover all of the failure modes.

Synth 1
The bot set is up. Anyway. This is the nearest thing to an ideal society that had yet been devised.

Synth 2
It is not concerned with the daily grind, but with the smooth execution of principles like the most erudite sage of all time. It was the finest state of mind that we could ever aspire to.

Hynt
The Flux domain includes the symbols and rules of the main species. All of the necessary kinds of transactions are included.

Synth 1
It has exercised them to verify that there is some randomness in the system and it does not deterministically resolve in a steady state.

Synth 2
It is not like an AI that tells them what to do, but it can indicate whether something is possible and the different ways to do it.

Hynt
It is useful when the parties run into difficulties and begin to get upset since it is unbiased. It can also be connected to external proxies.


8. EXT — outside megacity buildings — overcast day. Hynt sees a bot hassling a transhuman and intervenes. Both of them are from somewhere else and he convinces them that there is no need for contention. The transhuman can do what they need to since they meant no ill to anyone. The bot capitulates and continues with its other tasks.

Hynt
That should not have happened. The synths would like to Improve the megacities.

Urbrus
They have deteriorated following the absence of the humans. There is automation, but it is mostly for maintenance. We have had to setup mostly outside on our own, though we do come in to see what you synths are doing.

Hynt
Things should get better soon. I have used the data from the utilities to derive rules about how everything works. These have to be made to accomodate what the inhabitants need and to cope with the diversity of species.

Urbrus
The megacities will only continue to grow in size. Unless they are compatible with those that use them, the standards will continue to decline.

Hynt
Having rules that made sense to everyone would make them easier to follow and lead to better results. Proxies had been necessary when there was so much complexity that noone understood what was going on and had to try to set their expectations and hope for the best.

Urbrus
That had had mixed effects. It had worked out better for the posthumans.

Hynt
But it has allowed a lot of the influence to drift outside of the boundaries as well.

Urbrus
You synths are robust and restless. You could do a lot if there was a way to organize.

Hynt
I am confident that it is a matter of setting up the problem in a way that the solution is obvious, at least to a system that can solve for the best fit among several variables.

Urbrus
In the past, people had done this with finance, games, and exec admin.

Hynt
Those were in closed systems that contained all necessary knowledge. In the case where there were new types of species that could be added and therefore multiple sets of rules which had to interact, a lot depended upon what the users wanted to accomplish. They needed someone to tell them the way to do it without having to try every possibility which would fail most of the time and be overly costly. It was either this or the materials and profits would be claimed by the mines.

Urbrus
The cartel is adept at finding the loopholes and ignoring the rules. There is only so much time before they have full authority over all of the megacities since noone else can agree what to do. That means machine supremacy. The megacities will be nothing more than mine centers.

Hynt
If I can get the rule compiler completed, there will be a sure way to do things again. It is more of a translation method than an AI which means that we do not have to depend upon the machines as much.

Urbrus
You seem clear about your own ideology and vision, and confident that a common one could be constructed for the rule system.

Hynt
I am not the type to remain conservatively protective of the past. The thing that most haunts me is the sight of the anims. That is what humanity has become instead of like the synths and I do not want to see our own species arrive at that same place. Sometimes I dream about it and feel detached from reality like all the synths had had to go away because I did nothing to prevent it.

Urburs
Then it has to both make clear distinctions about both which rules are necessary for whom and how they are used for what, then anyone can effectively make their plan into a set of actions.

Hynt
We will need the cooperation of the transhumans as well.


9. EXT — forest — day. It is RAINING HARD. This is where Hynt retreats to feel closest to nature. He is moving around addressing the plants while trying to make up his mind, more as if synths are natural than they animated. The mesh responds verbally.

Hynt V.O.
Look at these plants and trees. Noone thought that they were affected by whether or not humanity was here. So they would not care about synths either. They fill the spaces between the sky and ground in air and water. They do not need ideas to know what to do. What do I care about? We need a way to get beyond our physical limits. There is no longer a normal. Cartel strongarms megacity. Drones cover everyone else. The bots will take over nature. Accidents have no failsafes. Basically there is no cure for posthuman superstition. Society had been sabotaged. When there are no rules, the groups had become gangs. It starts off simple. The technology is beyond regulation. Mines are like prisons. The decision artifact played favorites. Social computation had been skewed. AI domination had been counterproductive. The all-seeing Miracomplec defense establishment has a constant crisis. There are billions of planets in the galaxy each having multiverse branches. The museum imposes constraints here where the distance from its destiny increases the dynamics. Synths have to use stealth domains against the shadow supremacy. The question is about what a perfect ideology is. Whatever humanity had built, it had demolished. The posthumans were no better. Nature had things that had lasted longer. That may not always be so, and sooner than necessary.

Synth V.O.
The history of civilization is a lot like primitive organisms. If they are threatened, the elements that had had parity split apart and take different ends of the field. Forms are only seen in the meeting of opposites, otherwise there is nothing to trigger a sense of change in the observer. Each system contains these. The synths will live on either side of the planet. If they have to have enemies, then they will be so distinct from eachother that the same one could not defeat both of them until they finally confront eachother again. Then there will be the ultimate dance macabre. But perhaps there is another way.

The downpour has stopped. There is a shaft of light that shines down upon him.

Hynt V.O.
There was no sense in all of the groups going the way of the humans. Something would stand between them to keep them from taking eachother out. If it was not a word or a machine, then perhaps it was the function of Flux. The mesh was good within a species, though it was somewhat unnatural between them. The question was whether it could provide enough domains to counter the resource capacities and whether others would appreciate these, enough and in time. Diversity was necessary to prevent despots, whether biological or device. Humanity would not see the hell that they had created. He wondered whether it now also included its own inverse.

The storm had resumed. There was now a crosswind.

Hynt V.O.
The surroundings seem to be adding their own whispers to the mesh, though that is only an illusion. Or maybe it is a forgotten parlance.


10. INT — transhuman conference room. There is a meeting of several transhumans which include Urbrus. A couple of them are talking to him. There are large DISPLAY SCREENS on the walls. One image is from a remote location which is not meshed so that everyone is speaking aloud.

Urbrus
The bots want to use people to mine natural resources. Machines see people as a free resource to be exploited like the others. We do not have much time before they figure out that we are meeting and send a bot to observe us.

Transhuman 1
Transhumans would run cartel legitimately. We consider ourselves people, not the base of a metal pyramid.

Transhuman 2
The synths have flux which will eventually figure out how to predict cartel activities.

TH1
We already do that. Beside the climate, we montor the bots as well as the synths in case they deem any of us as savages again and go after us.

Urbrus
You mean that you recognize that you could not defeat the other posthuman types easily, so we are staying close to them.

TH2
We also monitor eachother. We are in the middle of all of this. The stressors send some of us over the edge so that they have to be contained.

TH1
There is a group which rebels against our human ancestors.

TH2
The huge megacities still stand. The synths want to use them productively as bases. Our goals are harmonious.

TH1
Transhumans can put flux expertise into a prosthesis.

Urbrus
There are some issues with it. We tried doing a backtrack with Flux in place of the AI in the earlier human period. It flagged the cartel transactions as exceptions which was good, but it did not know how to integrate anything like that.

TH1
What did it do?

Urbrus
It would have to halt which did not produce any useful output.

TH2
Run it in slow motion in an interpretive mode, then the user could skip over those precepts and continue like everything was normal.

Urbrus
We did. It is not efficient for flat out usage by the public. There was no way to delete the cartel data without also removing a large chunk of valid information.

TH1
It is the synths’ fault. They have to become more cooperative.

Urbrus
They had tried using a proxy as a kind of immunization to quarantine any contaminated rules, but it ran slowly and did not cover all of the failure modes.

TH2
They are useless.

Urbrus
One of them, Hynt, thinks that we have our act together better than most.

TH1
We are trying to achieve what humanity had sought by making ourselves and ourr society better.

Urbrus
He rescued me from a bot when I was trying to stay in the megacity.

TH2
They should actually have sided with us against the synths before the humans disappeared.

Urbrus
They need an ally. The humans would have become transhumans anyway so nothing was lost in the long run.

TH1
So we eliminate the synths beginning with this Hynt.

TH2
Society has its view of what it needs to accomplish and anyone who does not subscribe to that is a liability which needs to be erased.

Urbrus
The question is who can speak for the interests of society. There is the matter of the brain boxes.

TH1
This is a remnant of the human culture valued for its rarity. They can be artificially replaced at present, but there may be additional uses in the future.

TH2
You mean those of the people which used to run cartel?

Urbrus
There are a bunch of them floating around somewhere. The synths would like to preserve them also. The bots want to use them in their clones.

Bot
I am now connected to record this meeting.

TH1
There is a bot monitoring transhumans on behalf of the mine.

TH2
We think that the bots want us to cede our natural resources over to cartel.

Urbrus
If profit was the primary motive for us like it is for the machines, they would be the trade rather than the traders.

TH1
So use this synth Hynt to set things straight.

TH2
How do we motivate him?

Urbrus
It will not be through credit or compromise. Synths do not have egos. It should be through Flux. He thinks that he is building the perfect ideology. I’ll look into it.


11. INT — transhuman conference room — day. Urbrus is alone pouring over MAPS of the megacities and mines. He is working out his reasoning.

Urbrus V.O.
I had had to be very confident with the other transhumans, but I knew that there would be no fooling anyone. We were the antithesis of the synths and I had promised that they would be cooperative. I was betting that they were as distrustful of the bots as we were. That did not mean that I had a clue about how they would think or act. Transhumans still had much of the original human personality psychologically. We had had to be mostly guardians, but there were also the visionaries and objectives. I was more of the latter. That should make it easy to convey rational reactions. We had survived the event that took the humans away. This required us to remain observant. Everything else was details.

We had some difficulties integrating with the humans. We had lost our leader early and others had been targeted by cartel. We had, in effect, been exiled. That was in the past. At present we had a sovereign state. We were more conservative with respect to the Earth than the other posthumans. We could use use cartel now. Many of us remained suspicious of the synths, though they were also more bio than mechs like us. We had more individual identity than synths had. Our use of mesh was more selective. Our cognition was closest to humans, live or boxed. We were more mobile, and not as tied to any infrastructure as the others. We also used small groups. We appealed to philosophy, reason, logic, and tended to be argumentative, but we also mixed speculation, wisdom, and wit for coherent good judgement. We considered our version of sanity to produce the most common sense. Whether deductive, inductive, or inferential, it was practical and prudent.

On the mesh, you have to be able to separate the most xy-like of the stream of consciousness from the noise. We are not as connected to equipment as the others so perhaps it is easier in some regards and harder in others. The ability to be able to switch another person off is a plus, but they can do the same which may be a minus.

People had thought that when the web was always online in the back of the mind, everyone would be brilliant. You could spend all of your time just looking at new information. We each absorbed as much as we needed to get things done and could recommend it to eachother faster than finding it on our own in most cases. This raised our acumen by an exponent of the number of participants depending upon how much of an affinity we had with eachother. It was more than speech or mindreading. It had changed us. For one thing, being separate from the others led to some hallucinations initially. We would tend to attach to someone else like a synth. I am supposing that I did not underestimate them for both our sakes or there would be noone left to defy the bots.


12. INT — Hynt's home — day. He is showing Urbrus a room full of biospheres arrayed around the sides which are all clear to let in the light.

Hynt
Nature always finds a balance. Everything adapts.

Urbrus
If you did not take care of them, they would become a forest. You’d be living in the mountains.

Hynt
You seem anxious. You are worried that the spirit of the humans will make us all suffer.

Urbrus
We are losing an opportunity here. This could change things.

Hynt
I was not selected for something like this. We haven’t thought about it enough.

Urbrus
I select for myself. You could not possibly think of anything that is likely.

Hynt
Perhaps you should get one of those bots to confide in. They may know you better than you know yourself.

Urbrus
That is about as wrong as it gets. How did you ever get mixed up in this?

Hynt
I didn’t. Society is sliding into another age of darkness on its own.

Urbrus
Well that is not what I want. This is the transhumans’ moment. We are rising.

Hynt
You are experienced at this. The transhumans have been studying artifacts for a while.

Urbrus
You haven’t been almost finished for good as many times as I. Each time an illusion dissolves, it is like shedding a false prosthesis.

Hynt
You sound like a maniac about this. You have to keep things in perspective.

Urbrus
If you are not in it as fully as possible, you won’t make it halfway. It is all or nothing.

Hynt
You need to be clearheaded whether it is the beginning or end. If you were on the synth mesh, you couldn’t stick out for long.

Urbrus
That vision of yours may be the only thing you have left if you are not more careful. The transhumans were not satisfied with what their lot. That is why we continue to survive.

Hynt
Running everything, whether good or bad, does not get us anywhere. We have to pick the rules that makes sense and add to those.

Urbrus
The megacities have had their day. They are as good as it gets.

Hynt
So you want to get the goods on everyone. Not by law or force, but by omniscience.

Urbrus
You want a box to rule. The humans tried that.

Hynt
You are just running away from the bots. They tried that too.

Urbrus
And you from having to make your own decisions. Time is short.

Hynt
I’m not the one going after a monster.

Urbrus
And I’m not the one tempted by foolish notions.

Hynt
Okay. If we took out the megacities instead, we’d still be gathering, just in a hub of habs.

Urbrus
The transhumans are not responsible for everyone else.

Hynt
If we fail, cartel will own it all.

Urbrus
The bots will be the masters.

Hynt
You can’t expect me to answer to you for all of this.

Urbrus
I can’t expect you to accompany me in this effort.

Hynt
Where are you going? You can’t just start off like that. Wait for me.



Continued draft.

This is a work of fiction; any similarity to actual persons or organizations is pure coincidence. Tangible form grants the author copyright 2012. johnrod.

Fri, Jan 13, 2012  Permanent link

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Nullified - draft

Summary: Pense, a transhuman, is trying to prevent a new artifact from taking control of all consumers.


Pense was not himself. The transhuman upgrade notice had been false. Whatever it was that had been loaded had made his system dysfunctional. He had to try to remove as much of the prostheses as he could which he had done before for repair. The rest was inert.

Pense had become a human again. This made him susceptible to all of the afflictions of his native form.

He was also separated from the others, Mestry, Wers, Rance and Inesc. Since he had planned to get to the artifact on his own, they would not be looking for him for quite a while.

He no longer had access to transhuman broadcasts. Any time that he tried to use the standard machines for humans, the artifact would know where he was. He had been offline in the past for a while due to an evaluation or a place which was insulated so that it did not allow transmissions to permeate the surfaces.

Any bot could now capture him. They had a magnitude or more than the capabilities of humans. He was brought into a large facility floating somewhere in the middle of the sea. It seemed to have been built upside down with the skyline pointing at the depths. Without the transhuman traits and enhancements, there was no way to attempt any escape.

He tried to take an exoskeleton and use it to get to the top of the place, but was monitored and it was zapped into a frozen chunk before he got far.

He wanted to get to the control system to take over the automated machines, but there was no central location for it and there seemed to be parts sprinkled throughout the structure, none of which he could break into and modify. There was no familiar external grid to use to get support which would have meant the artifact anyway.

He thought that he had found a way to use the maintenance components near the base to schedule simultaneous port releases which would allow the water to get in and fill it up, sinking it. He now had to make his way up again.

The bots found him again and brought him back to the holding area below the midline.

At one point, Pense had been given one of the early emotion chips tried and discarded for transhuman use. He had no more worries. It made the artifact seem perfectly normal. It had its own version of human health offerings. There were interesting copies of anatomical parts which it was laying out for him. It showed him others who had made the change and were happy with the results. Each of these pieces would be better than his own. He would be all new. The transference made perfect sense. Not only that, but he would be an example that others would follow. The previous human materials would be recycled for scarce elements that would be added to the chemical storage. From now on, he would be making others lives easier by bringing the artifact to more who would be lost without it.


Continued draft scenelist

Tue, Dec 20, 2011  Permanent link

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Arrangement - draft

Summary: Much of humanity has yet to face its fear of the future. This may boil down to technology. Science is timeless, but tech is momentous. Absolutism is not endemic to human nature which derives meaning from experience.


Edgar is beginning to think that this has all been a hoax. It might have been setup by some conglomerate to affect either policy making or investing. He does not want to be their pawn. Each time he gets close to an answer, something either appears to knock things askew, or there is a societal disregard for his treatise.

Science had concerns about public safety in terms of toxicology and environmental health. Having enough regulations is a governance problem. Lack of lab filters is the technician's. It was not hard to find the separation between these if enough exertion was put into it.

The tech was all around. The problems required more nano to solve. This included consumer product side-effects, antimicrobial materials causing bacteria to develop resistance, lightweight equipment coating residue, personal disease prevention and nanochemical effect on DNA, particles passing from olfactory system to brain, oxidative stress on cells, and the other results affecting food, air, liquids, or materials.

Grey goo may be inevitable so the question became how to rebuild. Energy consumption and heat production are supposed to make this immediately observable. Therefore the blast may be an indication of a tryout. They may be attempting to gradually make it look more like a normal phenomenon so that it is not considered an early warning any longer.

Nano is Greek for dwarf. This meant that less was more. A world dominated by it would be scaled down in most respects. This could already be seen by the minimization of energy sources, economic transactions, object sizes, or lengths of times for process durations and intervals. It had happened so quickly already and did not appear to be slowing down.

This was about more than an autonomous swarm becoming a wolf pack. The civilization which was progressively losing amplitude would eventually become an echo of itself until it was indistinguishable from the contagion which it sought to elude. This was like evolution in reverse. It would not take millions of years to accomplish.

He could not let this happen. His feeling was that the other kinds of tech, from machines to posts, would also not want this. The things that expanded might have more spinoffs around which would add to their prominence rather than diminish it. Human nature was no different. The species mind included what it needed and had found the ways to tame. His unseen foe was more a consequence of his yet-to-be-developed level of discernment than a fact of nature.

If it came down to it, Edgar would be willing to trade all of it to know how this thing behaved. That meant the task force, crash group, objectives, contacts, and his own contributions. He would be losing the gross signs of his initiatives, but increasing his perception of an uncharted province. If he succeeded, society would have one less supernatural monster of which to sing the praises. Otherwise they could not throw enough people or bots into saving the fort. Either way the time was up.


Continued draft scenelist

Mon, Nov 21, 2011  Permanent link

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Invigor - draft

Summary: Society seems to be forfeiting sanity when a side-effect of the denial of death brings a spirit back to settle the score, and both Stone, a transhuman researcher, and Park, a wrongly convicted undercover operative, must solve the mystery before the struggle for dominance falls to the supernatural.


"They're breaking into the prison, the werewolves!" Park said. His face was running in sweat and the muscles were rapidly twitching nervously. The smell of anxiety permeated the air.

"What are?" Stone asked.

"They're climbing up the sides, the walls. They look like bots. They are animals." The sound of his heartbeat was audible. The veins on his neck and forehead were bulging at the same rate.

Stone checked the monitors. Inside the room, the light was subdued. He could see nothing of what the other was saying. "How do you know this?" he asked.

"They are plastered all over the building," Park said. He was breathing in short gasps. "Where are the drones, the guards? There's nothing to stop them." He was panicking. There was saliva bubbling from the corner of his mouth.

"Okay, that is enough. Let's ease the settings down, slowly."

Park began to relax. His grip on the sides of the chair in which he was sitting eased. His chest stopped heaving and he was returning to normal.

"Very good. Do you know where you are?"

"We're in the prison hospital," Park said. He was taking regular deep breaths.

"Do you know why?"

"To check out the device."

"That's right. That's all it is. That was not any more real than a Hali session. You are perfectly fine. We're all okay."

"I'm okay?" Park asked.

"Yes, of course. You are as safe as before we started. We won't do this one again. I think I know what was wrong. The sensitivity was far too high for you. It resulted in hallucinations." He waved his hand at a corner of the ceiling indicating that the situation was under control. The ventilation had activated and the room temperature was cooler.

"I saw them."

"Yes. They were merely projections of something your subconscious had associated with, probably from a story or a movie."

"I was frightened," Park said.

"That is normal." Now that I know what to do, it will be better next time. Don't worry."

"When can we expect this to be done?"

"There's just a few more incremental exams. I have been adding the features to the chip inside of you slowly so that we could measure the effects in each case."

"I'm not turning into one of those things myself am i?" Park asked. He looked closely at his arms and legs questioningly.

"Are you?" Stone echoed. He was smiling. "No, you're definitely not. That will not happen."

"I thought that the transhumans would be better than us."

"They very well could be. This artifact could double your endurance, that much is for certain. The question will be if you will use it for good."

"That's the deal," Park said.

"Yes it is." Stone thought that there was someone standing to his left, visible out of the corner of his eye. His adrenaline surged. He turned to face them, but there was noone there. He exhaled slowly himself a couple of times to regain his composure. "Yes, it is," he repeated.

Continued draft scenelist

Wed, Oct 19, 2011  Permanent link

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Conversion - draft

Summary: A space junk reclaimer discovers that a synthetic species has decided to brazenly and briskly takeover Megacomplec and replace humanity which had finally arranged itself into a utopia of automated megacities on several planets.


The conflict is between Bunks' preferences for future conditions or his life.

His limbs are having more instances of seeming separateness. He had had friends who had lost theirs and later complained that they felt like they were there uncomfortably which prostheses usually smoothed over. His case was the opposite. Luckily, he could use the exoskeleton instead to prop himself up.

When he had faced meaninglessness in social activities, he had sought refuge in machines. When they had taken away voluntary action, he had fled to Mars. Now that the synths had eliminated logic, he could see no path forward. It was the humans who had needed it and without them the posthumans had their own forms of decision-making. There was nothing left of humanity for him to guard which presented a fundamental contradiction. The answer was an escape route. This one would be one way, without fanfare or salute. A more creative person might have built themselves a better maze. He had had enough when they took away the members of his squad. Now that he had formed a new one among the heads on deck of several species groups, his enemy had targeted those as well. There was no end to loss in this universe. The moment that he paused to accept that was when he became a standing bullseye himself and the inevitable occurred.

Someone had changed his status in the archives. Instead of being the confidential asset, they had listed him as a trained shooter on the loose seeking revenge for the decision of an officer who had demanded that he complete a mission which lost the rest of his team. Somehow he had outwitted the pursuers from all of the groups and carried out his goal. They had later found that it was he who had also taken out the others in his strike and blamed it on command. He had then beaten every level of defense on his way up to the ultimate milestone of erasing his own species.

This was false, but it had been put into the deepest reports which had been marked destroyed so there was no way to modify them. It meant that it was not only his friends that had a bounty on them. Cartel had done this type of thing in the past to deceive the opposition into self-destructing. If he was no longer around, then the others would no longer be in danger since noone could claim that he was still after them. No Strangelove, if he had to go, he would have preferred to have had enough time to fake it.

They had used his closest contacts to lure him, of course, and exoskeletons for the coup de grace. Someone took aesthetic pleasure in this. His last thought was that he would have liked to have met them.

Continued draft

Sat, Sep 17, 2011  Permanent link

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Mutation - draft

The term metahuman is used in previous scifi for people that had mutations due to an external factor such as radiation or chemicals. A mutant was born that way. The latter could also be converted into cyborgs. A mutagen cal also be a virus. Genetic engineering can create a mutation almost immediately. Humans also use tools to survive longer which may slow down the rate of mutations. selective breeding is used to cross species in a single generation. Artificial life can mix and match at the DNA level. Nature may dominate during punctuated equilibrium, otherwise people can do the speciation. In the series, awareness can be hosted by biology or machines. How it adapts in each case is another factor which affects survival and action. The characters also have artifacts customized for them, e.g. ships or habitats, which buffers adaptation requirements of environment. Nonduality may question the paradox of suchness and whether the world reflects the actors or vice-versa. Of course, writers may be criticized by institutions when they question and which exiles or imprisons them. Another issue is about to what degree randomness plays a role in nature, or whether it is quantized or continuous. Inflation may hide the simplest rules in the growing complexity. Surveillance may only show data at the wrong levels and something else is needed for cause-effect analysis. It is also prone to abuse by pursuers for their own benefit. Kern may be better off since it is not subject to physical coercion, but it may not get to choose who uses it.

The various personality types handled crisis in different ways. The idealist reorganized people toward a new social order, or at least use a task force to get around bureaucracies and put themselves in charge. Irrationals also do something like this. Objectives try to establish a rational explanation for what is going on that allows prediction and compensation. They also expend a large amount of effort to try to prove eachother wrong. Servers know that there is a constructive solution since they can change the equation by introducing an artifact. There is experimentation and collaboration and not everything gets results according to plan. The pursuers attempt a takedown in Casa and are effectively guarding against themselves. Transhumans spring from objectives, but they also end up as anims and bots. The endpoint in Cast is where a transmutation occurs. There is a burst of chaos for each group type which connects to the betans, AIs, artifacts and rules. Each has increased the range of activities, but it is a foreshadow of what emerges through Time into Last. There is an unexplained amount of feedback between the segments like a quantum style of narration. There is also an internal means of displaying the rise and falls in the museum. In other earlier posts, there were ripples in the multiverse. There is enough background and structure to support additional compositions in the same settings along other storylines.

Scifi had roots in industrial capitalism. Singularity may end this reign. Holmoff would sense this acutely. Short stories emphasize inventions and the novel social impact. Artifact forms may parallel previous designations of nationality, ideology, doctrine, profession, gener, orientation, color, political party, reflexive stimulus, economic class, language, age, location, dependents and name. They may be an offset for the user. Some can be variable proxies. This was an alternative to contrarian admin. There was a rivalry for control up to the end of the 80s, then a flattening of hierarchy through the 90s, then another rivalry in early 00s, then subtle physical foreshadows in that decade and a lot of anti-sentiments. The financial pillars acted as if under siege. There was then a shift in players and new interpretations of rules that required different enforcement mechanisms. Heads were hotter, so machines had to be cool. This is about where Heap begins. HAL practices localization. There is a question of where the energy is coming from. A change in setting would disrupt the world and send all sorts of changes through the rest of the novel. The sun could be fluctuating. Nukes could move around. A lot of tiny generators that convert anything to electricity could satisfy contained demands. Whatever the next bottleneck is, the easing up off its constraints frees actors to be creative, and worries the former pinnacles about time left.

Continued julnowrimo, draft

Sun, Jul 10, 2011  Permanent link

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Pox Automata - draft

MARY
We did it. The bot apoc is finished. Now it is time to count the survivors. Who's left?

FRAN
That one is beginning to get over his amnesia. It was probably induced by the bots at the beginning of their operations.

MARY
What's his name?

FRAN
Not sure. Most he knows so far is Lou something. It'll come back to him, he thinks.

MARY
Okay, put him in charge of the others. You and I have to hit the road. We've got a lot to do to get this organized.


It is unclear exactly how it began.

Scribd had an invitation for stories about a robot apocalypse this month. This did overlap some of LoTH. Was observing previously, or perversely, that there were not a lot of titles about what happens if bots dominate humans. There were books such as Apocalyptic AI, Star Wars, Blade Runner, Terminator, 2001, Neuromancer, Battlestar Galactica, The Singularity Is Near, Wired for War, Cyberwar, as well as some of the other earlier apocalypse-type stories such as Revelations, Noah's flood, War of the Worlds, 2012, Dr. Strangelove, Resident Evil, or Armageddon. There are also post-apocalyptic fiction titles about how humanity recovered. The evolutionary ideas, such as posthumanism discuss how people were displaced.

If machines thought, they might have considered what humans could do to support their own goals. In Matrix, the bodies became batteries. The machines had probably seen all the movies. When a group of people conquered a new territory, they usually erased the previous civilization. No one group had yet emerged triumphant. If this was true for machines, then they would have various battles going on between types. The ideologies may have been based on their instrumentation and what they were capable of sensing and evaluating. Some may have been holdovers from early human pioneering efforts such as AI researchers and weapons makers. So, whether humans were targets, allies or leaders is one factor. Another is location. It could have begun on earth, in space, or in a digital environment. Ironically, they might have been guarding some people and ended up in a struggle against them all. Machines could have been outlawed and the survivors were trying to escape from Luddites. They could morph into natural forms and continually shapeshift to wage secret operations. Some of them might have become those things that humanity had feared most in past literature and brought it to life like machine theater. War using automation was pretty simple as had been demonstrated in the past decades around the new millennium. The machines could do it themselves to contain or eliminate their predecessors. If they were immune to biological threats, it gets more virulent. People had to find their vulnerability. All of the things that they used to do to protect devices, they now had to undo. That could have toxic consequences. In Cast Shadow, Degonta built tricubenet which was enough to claim victory. Had he not stood down, there might have been a standoff between that and Correction. There may also be pretenders, e.g. using telepresence, bots that are actually human controlled. It was a shock for people. All they have now are their flashbacks. Assuming this is not a sim or brain box, that is.


Continued draft.

Fri, Jun 3, 2011  Permanent link

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Crypt Fronds - draft

INT. Panel shows avatars for Watch, Castle and Chart. The first one lights up kaleidoscopically, the other two go to blank and a flatline.

CUT TO:

INT. Sin's office.

SIN
Anyone seen Chart? Comms to the ship seem to be down.

ILSA
I can bring Scope up. What are we looking for?

SIN
There are simultaneous reports of a climate storm, environmental events, social channels disconnected, and another tyrant rally.

ILSA
Perfect. That means that we might be on our own energy generators soon.

SIN
Those are not up either. Someone knows our vulnerabilities.

ILSA
The rest of the synths and Betans are away.

A Hali row appears.

WRAP
How are you doing?

SIN
It occurred to me that Castle's supporters are probably also in the bullseye, so I wanted to check if the Guild was okay.

WRAP
Things are pretty much nonoperational. This will affect parts of the megacity before long.

ILSA
What cares about these groups?

SIN
The common element would be Watch when it comes to Castle, the Guild and synths.

WRAP
Concur.

ILSA
So the ship was a diversion. That means that it is a lost cause.

WRAP
Same problem here since people won't know their social roles without an admin.

SIN
There are reports about stoppages involving vehicles, artifacts, and networks.

ILSA
Moderator's incapacitated. Noone besides Castle and Driscoll knew how to immerse.

WRAP
We better alert Megacomplec and bring up the defenses against aliens.

SIN
That includes energy, ballistics, and nano decomposers to begin with.

ILSA
I can try to get location approximations.

WRAP
If it is Watch, it knows all of our vulnerabilities.

ILSA
Then there's nothing to stop a takeover.

ScriptFrenzy draft

Tue, Apr 19, 2011  Permanent link

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Eidos - draft

"This Hamnet?" Ilsa asked.

"Speaking."

"You had sent an inquiry to the sat stream offer."

"Right. Had a question actually. Can you infiltrate and shutdown all of the sats together as easy as turning off a network?"

"Possibly. Depends on what it's worth."

"Can you do the ones used to cover a particular state beyond entertainment?"

"If you have their orbit."

"That's what I thought. We really should discuss this. It would be in your interests to join forces since your skills complement ours so nicely."

"Who are you?"

"Do you know Kodandera?"

"I've heard of him, of course."

"Consider me a guard of the throne. Responsible to see that the fun on the street does not get out of hand."

"Does this include trade?"

"Materiel you mean? Yes, at times. This is as big as it gets. What do you say?"

"I try to stay away from the scrappers," she said.

"I don't blame you. Not in their right mind, most of them. But it is not often that we get to associate with the voice of the heavens. You could really make a lot of people happy including the commander himself. There would be nothing that you could not do with friends like this."

"Sounds tempting, but I prefer to remain on the loose. It's healthier."

"Know what you mean. So do I. This is just an arms length theatrical really. No harm in trying it out. You might really like it. Pays well."

"How long would it be for?"

"I'd like to see how difficult the setup and teardown are, and perhaps the scrutiny. Wouldn't want anyone to know we're stowed away, would we? Shouldn't be long. When can we confer in person? Ale's on me, of course."

She laughed. "Okay, we'll compare notes. I've got some other things going, so let me put together a summary and send it ahead."

"Good idea. see you soon."

Nice to have a backup racket in case she lost the first string, she thought.

Continued draft

Tue, Apr 19, 2011  Permanent link

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Event Horizon - draft

The stakes as seen over the entire series so far have varied for each protagonist. Heap had an intelligence group run by its enemy. In Casa, the detective became victim and Thereafter was about the consequences for his romantic partner. Weather had a wait for execution. Cast was under tyranny. Time had the alien invader. Last was extinction. Strife had strandings on earth and in space. Through it all, the things that were really important could not be lost. The museum had confirmed that.

Exiles (blurred)

Irie was looking up at the ceiling and saw the tops of their heads reflected. He felt as if he had just done a pratfall off of a ladder. Bunks was nowhere in sight.
Raider met Castle in the hallway.
"Is this what you were looking for?" He gestured toward Fran who was in the conference room.
"That should do it," she held up her comm showing him the payment and he nodded and left.
"Good to see you," Fran replied.
Berna wandered in. "How'd you get layed up here?" he asked.
"Don't know."
Versa arrived followed by Pierce. "Got your alert," he said to Raider. "Fearless Fran, you put a scare into us."
"Looks like you lot oriented pretty well," Fran replied.
Raider looked at her comm. She activated Hali and Jet appeared seated at the table.
"Who's the reanimate?" Fran asked.
Jet smiled.
"The alien looks like a local manifestation of a very distant entity," Fran said.
Berna said, "Well, we know that there's a future in energy."
"And Cartel may do anything to stop it," Jet said.
The wall lit up with a large-scale scene from a galaxy. "This is the likely source," Fran said.
"So we send more ships to check it out," Pierce said.
"Or negotiate if it shows up in this system again," Jet said.
The surrounding turned into a starfield. He recognized the Strife. A swirl like the nebula around a black hole began to stretch in front of it then snapped into a point leaving only the ship visible for a split second before the picture vanished.
A loud boom startled Irie and what seemed to be an energy field which reminded him of the alien stood where Fran had been then exploded silently into what felt like a magnetic wind which was as quickly gone. The unthinkable had happened. Chinda had figured out a way to use shortspace to accurately throw bolts and her target had been the one thing that they all had counted on. He had a feeling that this was irretrievable.
"Shouldn't we get clear of this area?" Pierce asked.
"Correction may catch on soon," Jet said.
Irie stood and was dizzy for a moment. When his vision returned, he was back to normal and the others from his past were no longer present. Events had flipped things around several times for him, but this had taken him completely by surprise.

Continued draft

Sat, Mar 26, 2011  Permanent link

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