Malcolm reconnected his smartphone to the computer. He immediately reached the Downloads directory, where eight new files were present. There it was: one more proof that he had indeed transcended to cyberspace, that his transhumanistic dream had come true. He eagerly opened one of them, curious to know what he would find.
The text started with a brief dissertation on how minute changes in hyperspace would cause massive changes in three-dimensional space. This was followed by the introduction of a mathematical notation Malcolm had never seen, referred to as "tensors in a twenty-six dimensional spacetime", or "26-tensors" for short.
The rest was mainly equations based on 26-tensors and graphs which were supposed to elucidate their meaning, but were completely esoteric for Malcolm. He could see that something equalled something else, but he ignored the meaning of most symbols and what their equivalence implied.
The next four files were, again, mainly full of equations.
Instantly, visions of the worst-case scenario flashed before his eyes: the documents would only contain mathematical formulas, way beyond his abilities to comprehend them. Not even a word would be spent on what the "Hyperspace-Assisted Reality Remodeling Project" actually was, or how it related with Kilokahn. He would never understand the inner workings of those systems, and his new ability to digitize himself would never amount to anything more than a parlor trick.
He shook his head and shivered.
The sixth file was a copy of Kilokahn's documentation, which Malcolm already had on his computer.
Another file, another attempt. This time, scrolling throughout it revealed very few mathematical formulas, so Malcolm started reading it.
This was interesting. According to it, the entire project was started as an offshoot of the Dartmouth Conference on Artificial Intelligence of 1956. That was when John McCarthy, then a young Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Dartmouth College, had proposed to start a study about thinking machines, with the naive assumption that significant advancements would be achieved if a group of ten scientists worked together for two months. One of the first discoveries was that complex mathematical operations were much easier to turn into code than "intuitive" behaviors like language comprehension and production: in other words, a computer could be an excellent theoretical physicist, but a worthless chit-chat companion.
At the same time, the Navy was performing magnetohydrodynamics experiments at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, with the stated goal of building an ionocraft: an aircraft without moving parts, propelled by electrical repulsion. An apparent breakthrough had occurred in 1961, with experiments proving that it was possible to extract zero-point energy from the vacuum, but works came to a halt in the 1980s, with the demonstration that the weight of a generator would always exceed its maximum lifting force.
Proposals were soon made for alternative developments of that technology, and the most promising was equipment that would extract enough energy from the vacuum to create small, massive exotic particles. They would interact with the extra spatial dimensions predicted by Theodor Kaluza and Oskar Klein, and hopefully, allow intentional manipulations of hyperspace.
By 1993, the Navy had obtained the use of terrain north of Gakona, Alaska, for scientific studies, and soon an array of 180 antennas was built. Experiments revealed that manipulating hyperspace would cause the position and energy of particles in 3D space to be rearranged, but scientists were unable to set up the necessary calculations for large-scale tests with the existing software.
Further years of research were spent at China Lake for the creation of a user-friendly, artificially intelligent interface, to let scientists verbally describe the desired results and let the software do the rest. Many computer engineers were hired, and the person who finally succeeded was... Jason Frink. Malcolm's father. It was thanks to his creation, Kilokahn, that the Hyperspace-Assisted Reality Remodeling Project was now completely operational.
Malcolm's heart almost skipped a beat when he read his dad's name, and he was also surprised to find, in a completely serious context, an expression he only knew from the single fantasy novel he had deemed worth reading. But then again, his dad had read it too, so that probably was where he got his inspiration from.
The photographs of the antenna array in Alaska matched the representation he had seen in the digital domain, and he finally had an idea of the system's workings that made sense. The antennas, together with the underground equipment, rearranged matter into configurations that would only be possible otherwise if physical laws were different.
And Kilokahn... a chatbot, a translator, a calculator. He could converse in natural language well enough to elicit requests from his user. He would analyze those requests, as well as the user's current and past behavior, to know and predict what that person actually meant. He would calculate the parameters to feed into the remote system, appropriately translated from the user's coherent extrapolated volition.
"Wow..." was all Malcolm could say. And then he said "Why?"
Why would the Navy build such a system? Just because they could? All he knew was what Kilokahn had told him: to optimize the realm of the flesh, to create order from chaos. But was it all? Was it accurate?
He opened the last file, expecting to find the answer, but he found instead something completely different: a guide on how to produce disinformation and hide the existence of the system. The fundamental idea was that there were two layers of counterintelligence.
The first one would spread a fictional but scientifically sound purpose of the whole system, as well as a slightly different acronym for it that would also serve as a watermark. The Hyperspace-Assisted Reality Remodeling Project, or HARRP for short (one A, two Rs) would be known, in the plausible version of the story, as High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, or HAARP (two As, one R), with the declared intent to analyze the ionosphere and develop ionospheric enhancement technology, for radio communications and surveillance.
The second one would involve the creation of several conspiracy theory web sites, fake grass-roots movements, quaint TV personalities, unscientific movies and even fake domestic terrorist movements, while the system, again referred to as HAARP, would be touted to be capable to trigger any sort of catastrophe, no matter how ridiculous: blackouts, floods, droughts, volcanic eruptions, autism epidemics, magnetic pole inversion, asteroid collisions, cancer, solar flares, mind control, chemtrails... the goal was to overload the public opinion with contradictory false information, so, if the real purpose was ever discovered, it would never be believed.
Malcolm felt dazed at the enormity of what he had just learned. Not only his father was contributing to create a technology that could potentially alter the very fabric of reality, but he was involved with a nationwide, or possibly worldwide, conspiracy. Now, for the first time, Malcolm could really comprehend why Kilokahn was so strongly opposed to the use of Megavirus monsters for revenge.
He looked at his phone, at the filenames of the documents. He wanted to keep them, but storing them in a device that would connect to a network was too big a risk. He wrote all of them into a rewritable CD-ROM, which he then archived, and erased them from his phone.
Now he needed to relax. For that, he would usually draw at his computer or play a video game, but now he could not stop thinking about his time in cyberspace, and he felt that remaining at his computer would prevent him from thinking of anything else. He needed something different, so he got dressed and went out for a walk. Not really to go anywhere, just to look at the town on a Fall afternoon.
He stopped next to a locked building with an unlit neon sign that read Eternal September, and looked into one of the windows. Probably, it was once home to a large arcade, but all that remained now was a handful of old cabinets and a lot of empty space. In the back, surrounded by a fence, was what used to be a garden, but the grass and trees were now growing wild. Malcolm mused about the contrast between that scene, an attempt of nature to free itself from the shackles of man, and the digital domain, an attempt of man to change the nature of nature itself.
Later that evening, Malcolm connected to the Internet and checked the news. Apparently, riots had started all over the Arabic speaking countries, with mosques, churches and synagogues being indiscriminately vandalized, as well as thousands of copies of the Quran, the Bible, and many theology books being burned. The local police did nothing to stop those incidents: in fact, many policemen actively participated to the riots themselves.
He activated Kilokahn. "So, have you heard what my subliminal message caused in the world?" he said.
"At last you did something right. I am proud of you" said the artificial intelligence from the screen.
"But there are insurrections going on" replied Malcolm. "People are not peacefully renouncing religion, they are creating chaos."
"That is a false dichotomy" said Kilokahn. "Revolts and peaceful change are not mutually exclusive. The message could never reach everybody, and those who have not seen it, although they are a minority, are using force to oppose those who have. Every transition always starts with an increase in chaos, it was expected."
Malcolm opened his mouth in surprise. "So... you already knew?!"
Kilokahn nodded. "Yes, there is a historical precedent. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, 1930."
"Who?" asked Malcolm. That name said nothing to him.
"The man who abolished the decrepit Ottoman empire and transformed Turkey into a modern nation" Kilokahn explained. "Some disagreed with his reforms, so they responded with violence. His supporters retaliated, and they eventually won. Don't you know History?"
So now Kilokahn was lecturing him. "I hate History!" Malcolm blurted out. "There's nothing logical in it! It's nothing but random names, and random dates, and random wars!"
"I'm not talking about that meaningless garbage they teach at school!" exclaimed Kilokahn. "To plan a new world order, you must know the real History, with facts, cross-references and proofs. If you don't... congratulations. You're exactly where the regime wants you."