1/22/2019
Okay to be honest this was fun to write for a bit but then I started to realize that I actually am getting bored of writing this so yeah.
Story's, uh... paused until I can reconcile canon Hilda and my own personal gripes with it.
If you enjoy this story feel free to, uh, I don't know... write a spin-off to it on your own profile? Fanfic-recursion. (I refuse to say fanfic-ception- FUCK!)
It... it may continue. It'll just take a while, it's a slow burn.
Kinda like life.
Um... so sorry about this.
Any criticisms (besides wordiness? I'm weeding out an audience here)?
1/20/2019
Yes, this is wordy and heavy on technical information but, I swear, it gets better.
...
Hopefully.
I am nervous.
- Supremo Chickanlordus
I closed the door, sighing as I dropped my 210-page write-up of the properties of thoughtforms onto my desk. Auegh... I'm tired. I've been up for a literal week taking notes for use in my research, not to mention reading through other documents for citations, consulting various researchers (sexually-aggressive old people, telling me disgusting creepy shit-pieces about how they'd like to 'deflower' me. Comparing me to a 'flower' is not only sexist but it is also putting a 'feminine' tone on my being, which I'll fight against until the end of my existence. Time is rough, yeah? This world is a bother.)
I wonder if I should double the amount of pages to a 420-pager or even a 630-pager... or an 840-pager. I can do it. But now I'm going to s-... sleep, I wonder if there's a... a-anything about the world at large makes me tired. I wonder if there's a research field potential in making sense of the existence of awareness? I don't know; seems unknowable until I try researching it.
Qualia. Qualia... How does one go about researching 'qualia'? At least, how does one figure out the nonexistent-potentially-existent 'objective properties' of what it means to feel? Ugh, I'm making this difficult. I should research first, finish this document, continue researching, figure out how to... that's what everyone else flippin' does, isn't it? Several minds have tried to 'crack the code' of awareness. But it just doesn't make sense even from a materialist perspective.
As I sat in this meditative self-reflective state I wondered what's with the bother of doing anything at all? Why not just sleep until I achieve nirvana? What a curious thought... Of course... that's it! I need to study MEDITATIVE states! I'll get some full-scalp capacitive reading systems (a new technology I've invented), some CELGANs (Cross-Entropic Long-Short-Term-Memory Generative Adversarial Networks, a method of combining genetic algorithms with generative adversarial networks via clusters of a population of interconnected networks; if an individual network is shown to increase the performance of the overall network, it is kept, and at the macro-level the entire population of generative adversarial agents are compared using a cross-entropy algorithm and a new network is generated with the mean of the previous two best networks; if it outperforms the previous network, it is kept. If not, the network defaults to the previous best network, and repeats until it succeeds), screens with different emotional contexts in them, random videos, record the scalp activity of various people, including myself, and the types of movies we are watching, use the CELGANs to regenerate the movie from our scalp activity.
I turned on my computer. Now, being more of a physical activity-inclined human, I know that computers, regardless of how fast they are, tend to irritate me. Waiting for it to start up, it... it's a little hackle-raising.
Once my computer was done turning on, I began the write-up to begin the experiment, and to request participants. I'm almost done. Almost. I type fast because my impatience with computers urges me to type quickly. I've almost finished the page... the next page, gotta get some sources... I drank the cocoa in my thermace. I looked through documents about generating Mario levels via generative adversarial networks... looking at some documents about the behaviours of neurons in the brain... reading through some of Jett's documents (Jett is a researcher I respect)... collating my sources into a list, and citing when appropriate. Of course, I need some negative sources too. BagNets vs recurrent neural networks... BagNets are fascinating. I have an idea for one, perhaps a bit of a regular network, really. A 'Position-Based Classifier', where it maps the surface of the image, then each neuron generates a value for each pixel, then continuously reevaluates its own judgment based on adjacent pixels!
I got to work on the actual Cross-Entropic Long-Short-Term-Memory Generative Adversarial Network architecture right away... a very powerful experiment this will be. Of course, programming is something that is usually a long task with mostly debugging at the later stages, but I'm confident I can work this out in a few hours.
Five hours later, I finished the library. Oh stars, I remembered I was supposed to go to bed. Of course, this is why I don't sleep. I get stuck in a work-mood. I just... sitting idle, I must meditate... I must center myself.
... Trevor called. "Hey, Hilda. Weren't you going to come over at 4?"
Oh sst-shit! "I'll be over there! I just finished a research proposal."... I decided I was going to, uh, wash my beret. So I'm not wearing that out. I wear it because it's actually a gift from a nature spirit that protected me when I was young and fell into a marshy quicksand patch (by the way, real quicksand is more boggish than it is when depicted in cartoons or movies... do movies still use that cliche idea of quicksand? I barely watch any mainstream movies, anyway).
Anyway, getting into my car, my heart is pounding in my chest. I'm both excited about my new research proposal and quite sorry I almost forgot to visit Trevor. Anyway, starting my car after putting on my seat belt... briefly, examining the end of the metal plug-in, and noticing the lines which make up the surface... putting it in, starting my car, I began to drive, my mind focused now on Trevor and his request.
...
I arrived at his house, ready to, uh, do whatever it was we'd planned... I think it was... we're going to play a video game? I'm not much of a 'sit down and play' kind of person, but these games are fun. I knocked on his door, ready to, uh, begin. He opened it. "Hilda! You look exhausted."
"I'm alright." I smiled. "May I come in?"
"Sure! Just- uh, if you need to use my bathroom, don't... press the... plunger...?... too hard. You know, the-"
"Trip lever."
"Yes! That toilet-trip-thingydingwing-"
I entered his house. "You seem on edge."
"I've just been working on some very important research documents. I wrote a new research proposal!" Eagerly, I told him. He seemed disinterested at first. Let's play some video games.
I walked to his couch, ready to, uh, play the Mario or something (I'm not sure what games he has). "What are we going to play?"
"Have you ever heard of LittleBigPlanet?"
The character, Marlon Random, kept talking about 'Blink Balls' so I pinged them in the head with a few to assert frustration. This game's kinda boring. At least Mario's new and different all of the time... "Hilda, I have a mode to show you. It's a mode where you can make your own levels-"
"FINALLY!"... I sighed. "Sorry. I don't play many platformers, besides the Mario ones, and this one... I've fallen through these levels so many damn times I'm tired."
"You seem tired in general. There's a bed in the back."
"No, I wanna see this 'creation mode'."
So I made a binary calculator. Goes up to 65535. Trevor watched me make it and kept commenting about how efficiently I used the popit and that my fingers are very fast. I found this odd but I was too tired and would rather not have gotten annoyed by something as inane as incessant flattery... so I told him to stop because it was breaking my focus. "Will you quiet down!?"
"Sorry, I-I... uh... wasn't meaning to be a bother."
I felt regretful. "Sorry. I'm tired. No sleep for a week."
"A week!?"
"Yes, a week."
Trevor put a hand on my shoulder. "You know, you, uh, can sleep here tonight." Was he blushing? Why is he blushing? "Trevor, I appreciate the offer, but-" He leaned in towards my face. I leaned away from his. "Uh... a little close, there."
His blush increased and he leaned his head back away from where I was previously. "Sorry. Not used to this."
"Used to what?"
... He looked around the room, with a telling sign of anxiety. "I... uh, just... you know..."
I put the controller down, stood up, and began to leave the room. "I'm getting tired. I'm, uh, going home."
"Hilda, wait!" He walked over to me... he was too close, I backed up through the doorway. He followed, still trying to be as close to me as possible. "Trevor, will you fuck off?"
"S-sorry."
This time I felt a little bit... alarmed. He wasn't usually so disrespectful. "Trevor, what's-" He grabbed me by my waist and all of the color drained from my face. I pushed him off. "AGH! NO!"
"Hild-"
"No... no no no no no no no! I'm not- this is NOT- I don't like this. I don't fucking like this! Trevor, what the shit!?"
"I... I thought... you'd be, uh, you know... I just..."
I stared at him, trying to recognize what was going through his head... he seemed worried. I was feeling sick, like my entire being had been violated. Trevor turned away from me. "I'm so sorry! I didn't realize that wasn't okay!"
My stomach felt weird. I'm... going home. This is not right. This is...
... And as I walked to the door...
... And as I left the house...
... The sickness hit me right then. I gagged. There was- there was no way around what had just happened. Trevor was being weird. He was making me uncomfortable. I realized, that I was shaking as I walked back to my car. I got in it, put on my seat belt, drove away, and kept focusing on the revulsion in my chest, even when I tried to, uh, think about sleeping when I got home. I hated that.
... Right, I have to get gas.
I drove to the nearest gas station, and, still trying to shake that revolting memory, waltzed through the door of the quaint gas station shop. It smelled like noses.
The clerk stared at me, as if I was unusual. They kept glancing at the clock. I grabbed a few packs of spearmint candies and went to the register. "Hello, how are you? My name is Hilda."
"Hello, Hilda. My name is Quispe."
Quispe. I like that name. "You have an interesting name. Where's it originate from."
"Argentina." They smiled. "It means 'free'."
"I assume you don't have any quispe offers for me, right?"
They shrugged. "Well, I've been giving away these coupons. For free... kind of a waste, but... hey, not like the boss's around or anything."
I noticed something in their eyes... a knowing glare. "You're... not pulling a fast one, are you?"
"Why would I be?" That smile... something was off about it. "I'm just a clerk."
I looked around the floor... was the room getting darker? "Is the light broken?"
They sighed. "Just pay for your spearmints and leave." I put the spearmints at the register. They grumbled, under their breath, "Are the lights broken... phbbbt... no they're not."
"Are you okay?"
They didn't reply... just grimaced. I took my spearmints after I paid for them and left. They went oddly silent, and from the corner of my eye, they actually darkened as I left, as if they were a shadow.
I returned to my home, many spearmints eaten, ready to sleep... I realized- oh, crap, I have to head to the library to return the book, 'Meditation in Many Languages: A Complete Guide'.
I went into my room, grabbed the book off of my desk, brought it out into the unassuming cruel world of the outside (just kidding; that even exists in my room), and went back to my car.
I'm high off of sleep deprivation right now. My eyes have twenty bags.
Driving to the library, the memory hit me again, like a nasty insect bite. No... no need to focus on that now. Can't be too focused on... well...
I made it to the library. Trevor- no, I have to focus on the book, not... the memory. I went through the door, and plonked the book down on the desk... the librarian stared at me with surprise in their eyes. "You look like you've fought multiple ghosts."
"I'm fine. Here's the book."
"There are resting chambers in the back."
I'm not resting in the old dusty room of a public library where someone probably shat in it. "Thanks, but I'm going home after this."
"... You know, you actually returned your book, unlike the last person that checked one out, named 'Volya'."
... "That means 'freedom' in Russian?"
"Something like that. How do you know that? Do you speak Russian?"
"Not... really, I just looked up a bunch of meaningful names once. I met someone named 'Quispe', which means 'free'."
... "Strange. You look like you're going to pass out. Go home and sleep."
I went out of the library, got in my car, and returned to my home, after putting on my seatbelt... I'm tired.
At home, I went to my bed, and... collapsed into it, I think. I barely remember falling asleep.
Such is the life of an adventurer.
