Chapter 244: (The Black Box) (1/2)
Herod had found the last week to be frustrating to say the least. His assignment had been to completely learn about graviton particle enhancement to inverted paired quark clusters, which led to axiom particle systems and jabberwork waveform interactions. The worst part was, he was supposed to learn it in two different ways. One, with the technology and technical knowledge of the time the information was researched then learn it again with modern knowledge of particle physics.
Which lead to constant headaches as one tried to keep the knowledge separate.
The others DS researchers were having the same problem. Having to work in their fields with the knowledge of the time period and then with modern knowledge.
It was not uncommon, during the 'socialization breaks' to hear two or three DS lament over the fact that the work seemed impossible, or redundant, or just plain a dead end of appear to be of no use.
Herod was working, the day before the weekly report meeting, when he 'felt' someone access the room. When he turned to look, 'Victor' stood in the virtual space, looking around with some curiosity. He examined each board as Herod studiously ignored him.
He claimed to be Legion, one of the famed Immortals from the Crusade of Wrath, but Herod had his doubts, as did a lot of the DS working in the facility.
The concept of Immortals was ludicrous, just as ridiculous as the idea that the Digital Omnimessiah was anything more than a badly damaged AI that had managed to survive the glassing of Terra. Just as outrageous as the idea of human 'psykers' or 'psychic warriors' that supposedly were wiped out during the so-called Crusade of Wrath.
”Interesting path to take. Perhaps you'll be able to figure something out that everyone else missed,” Victor said quietly.
”We have access to what they knew back then but not how they had fit it all together. I cannot see how they went from 'neural patterns are recordable' to 'immortal' just based off of all what they knew at the time,” Herod admitted.
”I see,” Victor said, moving around and looking down at the data, which was streaming by at a comfortable rate for Herod to examine.
”You were there, how was it done?” Herod asked, feeling frustration at what felt to be an impossible project.
”I wasn't there for the initial foundation or initial deployment. I had to reverse engineer everything, every step, just like we're doing now,” Victor said.
Herod looked up, doing his best to hold back annoyance. ”If you reverse engineered the system, why don't you clue everyone else in on how it was done?”
Victor shrugged. ”It took me ten years of constant work and I had access to an unfinished SUDS extension system.”
”Why don't we have access to that? Having some of the hardware would be invaluable,” Herod said, resisting the urge to start swearing.
”Because they planet-cracked the world it was on,” Victor said. ”That was the least of the Imperium's screw ups in that act. By the time the dust settled, nobody even remembered what I was doing, only that the Imperium had killed me by planet-cracking the world all of me was on.”
Herod waved up an eVR chair and sat down. ”How did you survive? Everyone says you were killed at the end of the Clone War.”
Victor shook his head. ”The Genome Crusade, not the Clone War. The Clone War was something else.”
”Fine, the Genome Crusade, you were killed at the end of it.”
Victor nodded slowly. ”Yes, I was. As close as you can get without extreme measures.”
Herod frowned. ”Planet cracking isn't an extreme measure?”
Again, Victor just shrugged, his thick beard making him somewhat inscrutable. ”Depends on what you're trying to do. Planet-cracking to get rid of a spider in one guy's living room is extreme measures. Novasparking a system because your favorite eVR soap opera had a commercial break is extreme. Planet cracking to try to get rid of me and the other Immortal that was there? A serious case of not bringing enough firepower to handle the problem,” again, Victor shrugged. ”The Crusade was over anyway. They'd destroyed my fleets, eliminated my armies, it was basically over when they planet-cracked me to remove evidence of what they had actually done.”
Herod found himself interested anyway. ”What did they actually do?”
”Kidnapped me. They wanted me to do something for them. I forget what exactly, things got a little exciting when the other Immortal made his displeasure obvious,” Victor said.
”What other Immortal?” Herod asked.
”Osiris.”
Herod shook his head. ”Osiris? He was killed.”
Again, Victor shrugged. ”You know him as Daxin.”
Herod just sighed, rocking back and forth slightly in the chair. ”Neither name really seem to matter. Wait, are you claiming that this Daxin/Osiris survived being planet-cracked?”
Victor laughed, standing up and walking toward the door. ”It wasn't the first time.”
Herod felt irritated by the fact that before he could formulate a reply Victor was gone.
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Sweet Springwater-577392 sat down at the table in front of Herod, an eVR plate of food in front of her. Not that Digital Sentiences needed to eat, but the social time and the personal interaction of 'meal time' was important. Sure, they could exchange data at multiples of the speed of sound by just exchanging data-packets, but what made a Digital Sentience more than an eVI or a VI was the need for sociability, group bonding, and emotional connections.
”So what do you think of our host and all of his incarnations?” she asked Herod.
Herod swirled his 'pudding' with a spoon, mixing up the digital packets to change the flavor of the data. ”I don't know, it's difficult to believe half of what he's saying, not to mention the task he's set for us seems impossible.”
”What does he have you working on?” Sweet asked, smiling. ”It doesn't matter if you tell someone in here, this is a Black Box, there's nobody to overhear.”
”I'm not even sure. My two separate tasks right now are to understand subatomic particles and waveform interactions the same way they understood them prior to the Great Glassing and modernize the ancient formula according to modern scientific knowledge.”
Sweet shook her head. ”Whew. That's... an impressive task.”
”What about you?” Herod asked.
”Dark Matter, particle types Zero-One-Alpha to Five-Nine-Omega, half of the dark matter particles that were known about prior to the Glassing and then working with those same particles and their interactions with what we know of now,” Sweet said. She smiled and took a sip of her 'drink'. ”Do you know what amazes me?”
Herod shook his head. ”Enlighten me.”
”That our parents figured all of this out, knowledge that we still have difficulty with thousands of years later, before they ever left their home planet, before they even achieved superluminal flight. They did it, not like everyone else with overwhelming proof, but on the scantest observational data. From dark matter to subatomic particle mathematics to observational energy functions,” she sighed. ”Can you imagine how heady it was, how awe inspiring, how exciting?”
”How frustrating,” Herod said. ”All they had was observational data. No actual proof.”
”Wait...” Sweet looked thoughtful. ”Observational data only,” she suddenly stood up. ”That's how they were forced to... without the mastery of... dammit, it was so obvious... had to figure out how and why the state changes occurred without... it's so obvious.”
Without another word she jumped up and ran to the door, pressing her hand against the datapad and dissolving.
That was another thing Herod found annoying. You were allowed to manifest or de-rez in hallways, but not in rooms. If you manifested in one room you had to walk to the other one, even if it lost valuable minutes, instead of just rezzing in and out. You had to use pads to appear and disappear.
It was annoying and Herod was pretty sure it was a violation of his Rights of Digital Movement.
”You look pissy,” Flowerpatch said, setting down her tray of salad and gelatin. She picked up a piece of pan-fried chicken and began shredding it with her fingernails.
Herod had to admit, Flowerpatch was annoying. She used particle disintegration technology to strip her food to the basic atoms and particles, using those particles to run her nanites. She didn't appear as a hologram, but actually used nanites as a distributed network to hold her awareness.
”My task is proving difficult,” Herod admitted.
”Could be worse. Mine's giving me absolute fits. I'm not allowed to use any materials post-Glassing, any fabrication techniques post-Glassing unless I can validate my reasoning to our host,” Flowerpatch said, shrugging. ”During defrag sleep I keep having nightmares that I have justify the use of steel and bronze to him.”
”Do you think we're really going to be able to do it? Rebuild the SUDS network, I mean? Not make steel or bronze,” Vanishing Point asked, sitting down.
”It has to have been tried before. What makes you think this time will be any different than all of the other failures?” Herod asked, tapping his spoon against the side of his glass to refill it.
”Except now we've got Legion,” Flowerpatch said, tilting her glass toward the rows of benches where nearly a hundred clones chatted, ate, and were relaxing. ”Hard to believe that's all one man.”
”You know, if he's still around, how many of the other Immortals are around?” Vanish mused.
”Daxin for sure. He helped some Tnvaru, I saw it on SolNet a few months back,” she said. ”Big ass full conversion cyborg, one of the old style,” she glanced at where the clones were eating. ”You know, everyone calls him a clinical immortal, as if that's why he's an immortal, but what do we know about the Immortals?”
”What does it matter?” Herod wondered.
”You know, that's the problem. They made the Immortals back then,” Vanish said.
”After the Glassing,” Herod pointed out. ”So they aren't relative.”
”Who's to say they aren't? Who's to say that the same technology, in some primitive Black Box, wasn't used to create the Immortals. If we knew how they did it, then maybe we'd know the limits of the technology,” Flowerpatch suddenly stopped. ”Wait, could that be it?”
”Could what be it?” Vanish started to say.
”Could it be that simple? They didn't know something was impossible, they kept going, kept pushing, kept searching, because they didn't know it was impossible, didn't already have the answers,” she was standing up, stepping back from the table. ”That's why we're doing it in two different ways. Not to work from the initial data to the data we have now...”
She turned and hurried away. ”How could I have been so blind?” She touched the datapad and puffed into black mist.
”And then there were two,” Vanish mused.
Herod just nodded. He felt like it was all of waste of time. The SUDS was lostech. All civilizations ever had lostech in their history, usually some kind of great work that nobody could ever figure out.
He sighed and paid attention to his meal.
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The room was quiet, the DS's giving off a slight sound of static that was the DS equivalent of shuffling one's feet and making uncomfortable noises.
Victor was sitting behind the desk, looking over the reports, stroking his beard and nodding to himself.
”If you understand all of our work, why are we even here?” Torturer asked.
”Because different viewpoints reveal data that is hidden from other viewpoints. One of us is the equivalent of staring at a flat dot and thinking that it is all of an object, where another viewer sees only a line, another only sees pig iron, another only the black paint, all of them are able to see the fundamental pieces of the iron rebar, but only if their data is merged do get closer to a whole picture,” Victor said, still stroking his beard, without looking up from the data terminal.
”But if you have the whole picture, why us?” Torturer repeated.