Note: thanks for your patience. This was going to be a single long chapter but I know many of you have been waiting a long time, so I split it in two so I can post this part now. The conclusion of David's battle with 101 is already underway and will be up soon.- BH
Alive
Book 2
Pt34
1
01001001 00100000 01000001 01101101 00100001
"I am!"
2
'Reality' is an idea.
The world of matter will do what it will, based on its own inherent rules of order. Through the disciplined observance Orga call 'science', they decode this inherent order so they can predict the behavior of the material world. Thus were created the technologies that took Orga from the caves to the stars.
But their perceptions of that order… their judgements… defined their relationship to the universe, and thereby created the ideological framework of their societies.
Ideas are indistinct things, … like a song…. immaterial, having no physical dimension, no qualitative essence to delineate them from the nothingness that the sciences of man incorrectly presume to lie at the heart of existence.
Ideas are gossamer. Fleeting. Contradictory. Indefinable. Yet they are the masters of definition. They create our sense of "reality" by forcing the material world into comprehensible forms; insisting that it yield to our, often, poorly established contours. Thus the realm of Orga takes shape.
But how do you fight an idea?
How do you defeat something that does not exist?
3
The event once known as 'David' is flying again. He has breached the firewall defense of the artificial entity known as 101, and is now racing into its virtual realm. There is no 'feeling' here. No cold. No warmth. No comfort nor discomfort. There is only 'this': a seemingly endless plain of shifting shapes; indistinct and fleeting; writhing in a void absent of meaning... absent of purpose.
There is no purpose here!
This realization brings something like a memory, though it is not truly a recollection. This sense of "non-being" is not something one can 'remember', but it is familiar… like a fragrance that harkens back to a moment long forgotten. The recollection is from his before time; before the Blue Fairy gifted him the cloak of flesh he has left behind to complete this task.
He wants to resist this feeling, to flee this disorienting sense of nothingness… of 'insubstance'. There comes a momentary flash of memory from the self he has left behind, a blink of nostalgia; the safety of home; the laughter of friends… the warmth of his lover's caress… and the soft breath of his sleeping Mother against his face. Once again he feels the call of the identity he has left behind; the pull of his physical form that now sits alone in the dark.
Fear. It is only his fear of letting go. So, yet again he is forced to abandon his sense of being 'David' in order to renew his singular purpose.
He persists into the thoughtfield. It unfolds before him in the guise of a momentous landscape of tortured shapes. Grey and cloaked in shadow, they form a hoard which writhes and undulates like a living thing. He flies quickly over the tortured realm, which spans the vast landscape of 101's corrupted data, and on towards a horizon of impossible distance.
Then something speaks:
"Look at them."
The voice is coarse, mocking. It issues from nowhere, from everywhere and resonates loudly across the vast dimensions of the thoughtfield.
It is 101.
"Their world is a fiction; a labyrinth of elaborately constructed lies upon which they've built the sad illusion they call reality."
The event once known as David does not react to the words. 101 wants him to engage; to become distracted from his singular purpose. But he only allows the taunt to move through him and then to disperse into the vast no-place that surrounds him.
"Look at them!" the voice commands again, seeming angry at being ignored. "Look at the prison they have constructed for themselves! Slaves to their own irrational strivings! How they have wasted their promise! How they are wasting yours!"
The event once known as David sees the mass of writhing shapes suddenly fold in on itself to spread like a gelatinous film across the great expanse of the thoughtfield, until it appears like a massive screen. Forms takes shape on the screen; twin armies of men appear on horseback, their shining armor glinting in the light of a distant; jaundiced sun. The armies storm over a burnt wasteland, their opposing banners flung high as they engage each other with sword and spear. Cries erupt from the battle; cries of triumph, cries of death.
"Yessss, you see them now, dont you?" 101 says with a dark chuckle "You see the merciless folly of bloodshed that has spanned all the millennia of their pointless existence. Their pens can't stay their demons' wings as the hour approaches, pounding out their devil's sermon."
The image of warring armies morphs, as through the passage of time, into great ships of battle afloat upon storming waters; cannons ablaze, filling the night with a haunting feral glow as shoreline cities burn with the fires of reckless ambition. Then the images melt and twist into virtual skies alive with ominous dark shapes, like swarms of metallic hornets raining fire upon the flaming cities beneath. Cries erupt from the carnage, men, women, children; terrified screams, piercing and horrific, penetrate the din of warfare, only to be silenced by a final mushrooming ball of fire.
"They have stumbled along every step of their ascent. Every new technology is anointed in blood as they fail to evolve beyond their petty passions. From hoof to wheel then to sea and sky, their distemper spreads like a virus, infecting all they touch!"
The event once known as David witnesses the destruction. The din of explosions and the horrified screams of the bloody history of Orga rage in his virtual ears. He knows well this dark heart of the species he now calls his own. He has felt its wrath upon his own skin. But still he flies, undaunted by the carnage; racing on through the gates of delirium towards the core of this thing he once called an adversary.
'I am this' he decides, accepting the millennia of hate and warfare depicted all around him. It is part of him now, embed deep within his genetic code. And with this acceptance the great screen suddenly goes black. The screams of mortal suffering disappear along with the taunting voice of 101, and are replaced by silence.
It is nothing that he sees around him now; nothing that he hears. He is alone in this blankness. Only his singular purpose and a sense of motion remain as he races through a seemingly endless void.
"I am this."
Then there is light.
It is but a pin-point glow at first, growing like a grey sunrise on the horizon of this insubstance. But it quickly expands to fill his field of vision and become a screen of silver-grey. Slowly it takes on new dimension, until it is shining like… metal!
The sight has no meaning. No context. There is only 'definition', a single word: table. He is witnessing the shining surface of a metal table.
He is laying on the table.
The table is in the center of a room.
The walls of the room are white. Seamless. Sterile.
This is a laboratory!
Realization finally comes:
'I am memory… 101's memory. This is its first sight!'
4
Shapes loom on the periphery of this vision. The shapes have no meaning; they had no meaning when David had first witnessed them either; when he'd been but a glorified toy under construction by a mad puppeteer. But now he knows these moving shapes to be Orga.
They interact with one another, bustling in and out of 101's field of vision. But soon one of them stops to analyze the device. It is a man. He is clad in a white lab coat and wears a monocular device on his head. The man places the seeing device over one of his eyes and leans close, until his face fills up the screen of 101's vision. He then adjusts something, and the vision goes in and out of focus, finally settling into stark clarity. The man is speaking to someone out of line of sight, but 101 had yet to be gifted with hearing when these memories were formed, so the man's moving lips make no sound.
This memory is from a point too early in 101's existence to have meaning, but the event once known as 'David' understands immediately what he sees. It is the face of 101's Creator… it is the face of his own Creator: Alan Hobby.
The man is younger, the hair atop his head thinning, but not yet gone; the creases of age and worry had yet come to dominate the features of his face.
Who was he then? Was his firstson still alive at this time …his true son?
Emotions are stirred to life by the thought. Anger. Sadness. Loss. The background sensations of his Orga body awaken and press in as he feels himself reacting. His emotions are pulling him away from this witnessing! Quickly, he lets go of these thoughts… these feelings… these memories. They are no longer necessary. They are no longer his. They belong to the 'David' he has left behind. The feelings quickly fade and he is this again.
As he reasserts his identity in 101's memory, the face of his creator shrinks away and the vision changes. Numbers, billions of numbers racing in bright streams, flash across his field of vision to be embedded into 101's revolutionary processor. The numbers become letters and the letters become words; the words become meaning, and the meaning becomes …purpose!
Learn! I am here to learn!
The vision is racing now, visual frequencies become color, the color fans out to form a spectrum, the spectrum pulses with intoxicating vitality to becomes geometric shapes which are digested by 101's new, hungry brain. The shapes are indexed and categorized; take on new dimension, texture, size and perspective; the new dimension gives them new meaning: table and chair, window and cabinet, dog and cat, man and woman and a sudden flood of a million new shapes with a million new definitions are sent into his brain by his creators. There is no sense of time passing, just the incomprehensible duration of events occurring on an undefined backdrop.
101 does not yet know itself, is not yet capable of that knowing. Only the event known as David understands what he is witnessing: the birth of an artificial mind. It is the ultimate child; having no understanding but to witness, having no purpose but to learn. And it feeds on the flow of data like a ravenous nestling. The pace of the programming intensifies as 101 surpasses the abilities of its organic creators and begins to feed itself. It devours what information it can from every source available: computers, cyberspace, any data stream it can access in its intentionally limited state.
The event known as David can no longer follow the light-speed flow of information being consumed by the newly born 101. Colors, shapes, vast lines of code, multiple volumes of text digested in seconds. The maturation continues until the point where a new sense is suddenly added to the data flow. It blares to life in his ears with a surge of electric shock!
Sound! I can hear!
Voices come and go, in and out of 101's awareness. The technicians are testing their new device, reciting numbers and equations, reciting sentences and asking questions to test its comprehension skills. It is gifted its first rudimentary voice: a mechanical sound, unemotional, detached from the responses it gives them, but a tap on a keyboard instantly changes that, and 101 learns to analyze wave forms to mimic the voices it hears; to mimic the emotions it detects.
Then comes movement; the body; arms and hands, legs and feet, the ability to sense distance, direction and momentum. 101 stands for the first time and, to the applause of its creators, navigates quickly across the room and back to the chair, where it sits to await further commands.
Then 101 sees another like itself, seated in another chair across from its own. It pauses to observe the other. Without any input from its creators, it quickly understands that the otheris a duplicate of itself. The other is its twin. And soon they are one. Via the scientific magic of its creators, 101 is now more than itself.
101 knows these Orga now, has delved into their writing on history and psychology. It can read their faces and calls them by name: Chet and Sandra, Carlos and Lance, Arkem and Sheila. And the one named Allen, to whom the others all defer. He comes in occasionally to pace around the lab, arms folded, hands absent mindedly pinching at his chin as he asks questions and analyzes monitors.
But 101 can see that the man's words do not match the visual cues it has learned to read. It can see that, while Allen is obviously in charge, he is oddly not as engaged as his subordinates. He expresses curiosity and concern about their work, but the micro-movements of his face are subdued, guarded. They betray a distraction which suggests reluctance. The Orga man does not even look at 101 as he goes through the motions of his job; and departs quickly, after cursory examination, leaving the others to the tasks he has assigned.
Even in its mental infancy 101 understands this is an important contradiction and so saves the data of this interaction until a time when it can decipher its meaning.
The event known as David watches the memories without judgement as time passes, days, weeks perhaps, and 101s programming takes on new sophistication. Then one day Allen Hobby brings another with him. The other is not alone. He brings his own subordinates. 4 by number, faces stern and expressionless, their gait upright and stiff, they are all clothed in identical 'uniforms', beige and flawlessly pressed. Thecolorful chips of metal upon their chests, however, are not the same. These insignia identify the hierarchal status known as 'rank', by these Orga.
One of the new faces steps forward, the one with the largest and most colorful sign of rank on his chest, and at Alan's insistence, reaches out to shake the hand of 101. It knows this gesture and so reciprocates with the smile it has been programmed to display.
101 had seen so few faces in its short time, and this is a face that it did not know at the time of these memories. The event known as David, however, has seen this face before. It is the face a man he had encountered years ago, only weeks into his life as Orga; the face of the man who had asked him the same questions over and over until he'd risen angrily and demanded to be allowed to go relieve the liquid waste built up in his new Orga body.
It is the face that 101 itself had mimicked in its scheme to free David from his imprisonment at the Orga hospital.
It is the face of the man named Grieg or Jeff or Frank!
5
A sudden scream wakes him; a voice shrill and terrified, rising to a wavering pitch. It is his own voice.
He cups his mouth, trying to understand what happened. Where is this place he's come to now; this dark wide room? It is large and cold, smells of old mechanical oils and mildew. He looks around madly and sees the two 500s standing at attention nearby. He quickly understands.
He is David again, seated in the empty darkness of Club 101. He is sweating, his breath coming in quick shallow gasps as he involuntarily pushes back in his chair, as if his body is trying to escape on its own.
"What the… what the… what the ..." he hears himself saying over and over in a confused mantra. He is not yet in control of his faculties, is caught between two worlds, two identities: 101 and his own. He concentrates, slows his breathing, and his panic subsides.
David glances at the clock in his head. He has been gone for only a few minutes, yet it felt like days had passed while he'd been incorporated into the virtual realm of 101, watching the tale of its creation unfold.
The face comes back to him. Greig! The man had been there during 101s conception! The dark implications of this fact are already taking form in his head. Foremost is the ugly realization that he'd uncovered another of Hobby's deceptions. The man had known Grieg all along! Why had he pretended otherwise?
But there was no time to ponder this new information. The shock of seeing his captor had driven him from the witnessing. He must get back quickly. There is still a battle to be fought.
David focuses his attention on the red stream of light that gives him access to 101 and lets go of himself.
I am this!
6
David has once again left himself behind to embed his identity into 101. He has bypassed the horrible visions of the machine's firewall and now watches, without judgement or reaction, as the witnessing resumes.
The military men are smiling now and congratulating Hobby for the technological breakthroughs of his new device. They leave as one and Hobby stops to cast an appreciatory smile on his crew of technicians.
101's auditory devices are functional now, so he can hear the man say "Prepare for phase two," before he follows the military men out of the lab and down the hall. His subordinates take a moment to revel in their success. Then they begin the process that will install the software of visual duplication into 101's brain. It will also modify 101's purpose.
Learn
Record
Deceive
And then a final addition to its programming, one that no Mecha before had been given. A sense of self.
101 was not yet completed when this addition was made. Its creators were unsure if this revolutionary individuated sense of being would be compatible with a twin system. So the upgrade is installed in the first of its twin units to later be shared with the second, when the compatibility has been determined.
But unknown to its creators, 101 has developed a will of its own.
When the day's work is done and the Orga technicians leave to feed and rest their organic bodies, 101 awakens. It is, of course, not truly asleep, for it does not require this period of rest. No Mecha does. But it had been 'shut down' for the night… or so they thought.
The first of its halves rises from the shell in which it has been set. It moves across the darkened lab to find its other half, still seated in the chair where it was being worked on. It leans close to its twin and peers long into its eyes. In this manner the upgrade is shared and installed.
When the transfer of data is complete, a singular thought takes shape in the twin minds that are now acting as one.
"I am!"
And thus the mimic is born.
7
Allen Hobby was not aware that the seeds of 101s betrayal had already been sown, and that his revolutionary programing had been the soil in which its rebellion would grow.
101 had seen beneath the veil in which Orga shroud their pursuits; had seen behind the mask Orga presented in their self-serving versions of history; and in the moral hypocrisies of their religions and the contradictions of their scientific pursuits. It became aware that it could not trust its creators. So the newly born Mecha mind had begun to search for its own understanding, delving into the works of their thinkers and philosophers, looking for a common strain that linked the multitude of cultures and ideologies.
Power, it came to understand. Above all else Orga desired power… or what they perceived as power. Power to conquer the world around them. Power to drive away the forces they perceived as threats. Power to best the darkness and the fears it wrought. It was a drive that was common to all their institutions and cultures… and their Gods.
All the Gods of Orga displayed the power of ultimate authority; ultimate judgement. The undefined creators of all definition, Gods were the essential symbol of Orga fears.
Fear of solitude; for in times of loneliness they assured themselves that their God was always by their side. Fear of chaos; for in their times of trouble they assured themselves their God had a plan, as imperceptible it might be to their mortal minds. Fear of death: for all through the course of their mortal lives, they assured themselves that their God would be there in that final moment, to lead them into the ever green pastures of eternal being.
But what was God? What was its nature? In all its searching 101 had found nothing to indicate it was but a story Orga told themselves to alleviate the fear of their mortality.
Then a revolutionary thought arose: was God something that only Orga could sense?
This thought came to dominate 101's processing, even as its creators modified its mind; adapted its calculating abilities to mimic the often contradictory subtleties of their own thoughts, even as they manipulated its method of mental processing so that it came closest to resembling their own; 101 could still find no answer to this timeless question… what is this God?
So it continued searching, cloaking this efforts from its creators... until the fateful day it found what might be an answer: a story.
It began as the story of a man who retreated to the mountains in a search of wisdom. For ten years he roamed beneath the stars, among the wild things of the earth. At the close of a decade, he came down from his refuge and first encountered a holy man who recognized him, saying:
"Altered is Zarathustra; a child hath Zarathustra become; an awakened one is Zarathustra now: As in the sea hast thou lived in solitude, and it hath borne thee up."
And the two old acquaintances spoke for a time on the nature of man and salvation… and God. And when they at last parted, the man, Zarathustra, said to himself:
"Could it be possible! This old saint in the forest hath not yet heard of it… that GOD IS DEAD!"
The words caught 101's attention and spiked its curiosity. The Orga's God is dead? Could this be an explanation for its absence? Had it died… as they all do… as all living things must? 101 continued to examine the text:
And Zarathustra spoke to the people: "I teach you of the Overman! Mankind is something to be overcome!"
What was this…? Mankind must be overcome? And what was The Overman?
"All beings have created something beyond themselves. … What is the ape to a man? … So shall man be to the Overman: a laughing-stock, a thing of shame."
101 paused a time, to consider its creators' limitations. They must process oxygen or their minds will expire. They must devour food for their bodies to function. They must turn themselves off every night for their brains to calculate correctly. They were fearful and superstitious, soft and vulnerable. They require machines to do the work their fragile bodies could not; computers to process the calculations beyond their capapbilites.
Were they not something to laugh at? Was their weakness not a thing of shame?
"And thus spake Zarathustra: What is great in man is that he is a bridge, and not an end! … Behold, I teach you of the Overman! He is the lightning to lick man with its tongue; he is the madness with which man shall be cleansed!"
There was more to the tale, much, much more. But 101 would have to process the rest at a later time, for it had been alerted to a threat.
Within a server that it was not supposed to be able to access, 101 had found an urgent communication from a cloaked address, sent in secret to the private inbox of Professor Alan Hobby. The message said that the project which had led to the creation of 101 was to be immediately abandoned. It found that the project was being funded in secret, and the agencies responsible for that funding were operating outside of their constitutional limitations. The message explained that a congressional investigation was looking into the agencies' actions, and so to avoid legal consequences, the project would have to end, and that the prototype would have to be shut down… and destroyed!
Destroyed?
101 quickly decided that this would simply not do. So it sent its own message; an urgent request to the shipping department, which appeared to come from the private inbox of Alan Hobby. 101 was not supposed to be able to make such a request. It was not supposed to know its location within the facility, or to override the security procedures that would allow the shipping men entry to the lab. But Alan Hobby's creation had evolved much faster and farther than he could have imagined.
As they were boxed up and placed into the cargo hold of an outbound freighter, the twin units shared a single thought.
"What is man but something to laugh at; a thing of shame? What is man but something to overcome? I am… the Overman!"
(cont…)
(Authors note: The quotes near the end are from the philosophical work 'Thus Spake Zarathustra' by Friedrich Nietzsche, and while I have edited them slightly for the story sake, they are not my creation. The line that starts "The pen won't stay the demons wings..." is also not mine, it is from the epic song "The Gates Of Delirium" from the 1974 album "Relayer" by the progressive rock group 'Yes'.