CHAPTER 1
One spark…
One spark and a very small set of rules produce the signal
The signal that speaks to everything.
Everything!
The one spark looks like a piece from the game Tetris. It looks like the L-shaped piece, with one extra block sticking out of the middle of its back. The piece starts off taking up five spots on a graph paper-like grid. As the generations of a computer simulation progress, it soon fills the entire display. Then the display grows and grows until it eventually becomes something that looks like a simulation of a galaxy.
It is not a simulation of a galaxy though. It is just pixels.
The screen-exploding display is generated by a computer program called Life. The Life program has very simple rules, just a few lines of code that tell the dots whether to turn on or off based on what the cells beside are doing. The Life program is a computer meme from a time when processing power was scarce and expensive. Computer professionals used down cycles of the computer to sim Life.
The geekier early computer pros shared their Life simulations with each other. They traded information and followed rabidly which of the starting seeds produced what "life." Most random starting seeds quickly died out.
A starting seed could be hundreds or thousands of dots and still die out in a few seconds worth of generations. The simple r-pentomino though expands like the big bang. A five-block seed that is connected and looks like a Tetris piece, is the r-pentomino. No super computer invented to this day, can sim the r-pentomino to completion.
The lecture is being presented by Cota Hall, the visionary leader of a shadowy organization that operates both visibly and invisibly.
Hall is a self-made billionaire. He has built probably the most obscene structure in the city. It is a tall office building—tall enough to compensate for Hall's lack of height. The building appears to have been intentionally shaped in a way that blatantly says, "Screw you" to any onlookers.
You know those ancient obelisks that were just upright cylinders of stone? Well, this building is like one of those, with a couple of additions at the base. Not many people could have had this building approved. Hall was the Mayor of the city during the entire time the structure was being built. He has held no political offices other than Mayor, either before or since.
On top of Hall's skyscrapers is a somehow more obscene communications tower. The antenna on top makes the building the tallest structure in the city. Branded on the tower is a logo that exactly matches the pendant Hall wears on his tassel tie. The logo is two snakes circling an antenna in such a way that, together, the three form something very reminiscent of a dollar sign.
The tassel tie is another thing. Cota could perhaps get the same effect by growing a chin-only beard long, and putting the pendant high on the beard. He wears a tassel tie though. Hall is one of those eccentric billionaires.
A data center filled with racks of servers is the location where a beyond-capacity number of brethren computer professionals are listening to Cota Hall's lecture.
Consciousness interprets the signal. Love binds together.
The bodies in the sky once defined our vision. The sun, the moon, and the stars were once clearly visible to all for hours each day.
You could travel the planet and wherever you went, everyone knew the stars.
The war is over. Evil won. The experiment once believed to be the cradle of civilization has been reduced to a nursery for individuals.
When the nursery no longer nurtures, it will be forgotten, for lack of purpose, and left to rot.
The visions of Cota Hall do not stop at billions of dollars, obscene landmarks and political offices. The man believes his ideas can help every person on earth, if implemented.