Sudo Bang Bang: 07 - Complications
Fabrina Glitchlace's Sudo Bang Bang Serialized Edition
This is the 7th episode of the serialized version of my novel, Sudo Bang Bang (2024).
https://www.amazon.ca/Sudo-Bang-Fabrina-Glitchlace/dp/1775092976/
Previous Episodes
01: An Unknown Game
02: MiscFit
03: Bottleneck
04: Ennie
05: Entanglement
06: The Dirty Limerick
Enjoy:
Sudo Bang Bang - Episode 07: Complications
[Link: Audio]
###
Trivia night had got a bit sloppy.
Afterward, Alyss grows even more faded, immersing in Ambient Aesthetic Spacesynth Post-Popwave Dream Streams instead of working on either Bottleneck’s research homework or her content creation contractual obligations. With her notifications comfortably disabled, she doesn’t hear Bloyd's progress report deadline as it wooshes past.
Three minutes later, she can’t help but have her attention forced toward a contractual priority line from Bloyd.
|✧BLOYD✧|
Alyss, straight up, are you purposefully trying to fuck me over?
The Platform is polluted with deals, tricks, and perverse incentives, but nobody can force anybody to do anything. Nevertheless, people still try to get others to do stuff. One of those people is Boethius Bloyd, and the way he does it is through AI-fortified contracts.
Alyss's breach of Bloyd's contract, while slightly self-destructive, is an instance of intentional negligence. Almost compulsively, she finds it satisfying to not satisfy him.
Relationships that provide more satisfaction the less attention one pays to them, are precious rarities.
|✧ALYSS✧|
Bloyd, if I wanted to fuck over a dickhead, what makes you think I'd choose you?
Barely begun to interact, her attention already starts to drift away from Bloyd, back to the comfort of her ambient dream stream.
|✧BLOYD✧|
Our contract is quite clear. Don't be irresponsible, Alyss.
|✧ALYSS✧|
I'm not irresponsible. I just don't like responsibilities.
|✧BLOYD✧|
Well, if you don't like responsibilities, then you can forget about having privileges, K. You're connection restricted again until we undergo contract arbitration.
Might as well deal with it now
|✧ALYSS✧|
This better not take more than five minutes.
|✧BLOYD✧|
Veet me on Media Pillar, NOW.
Alyss ports her 29-year-old-self Alt to Media Pillar.
Alyss29 plips into Bloyd’s personal layer, the dizzying and claustrophobic office of an intellectual property hoarder. The space is small and cramped with barely enough room to move around. Her attention is irresistibly drawn to the overwhelming amount of artwork strewn about. Walls, floor, and ceiling; every bit of space, is covered with a hodgepodge of odd paintings and sculptures.
The paintings are a mix of styles, with no apparent rhyme or reason to their placement. There are bright, abstract canvases hung next to cheap reinterpretations of classical works; kitschy pop art next to somber portraits. Some are framed in ornate gold, while others hang unframed, tacked haphazardly to the walls.
In the corner of the room, there's a strange collection of miniatures and figurines, uniques of varying desirability, ranging from intricate carvings to cheap low-poly blobs. There's a statue of a smiling Buddha, beside a pixelated pink flamingo, below a wood-texture tribal mask.
The room is too brightly lit from a single fluorescent bulb, swinging gently back and forth. The moving light source animates the mess, contributing to the overall sense of disarray.
Immersing into the space feels like becoming part of a three-dimensional collage created by someone with gaudy taste and no eye for composition. This is the horde of a collector who values quantity over quality.
Bloyd sits in an egg-shaped chair behind a mahogany-textured desk, completely oblivious to the distracting chaos surrounding him, lost in his own little universe of paperwork and petty power plays.
“Get. To. The. Point. Bloyd.”
“Alyss, you missed your proposal deadline, then you submit this Biocide garbage, and now no progress report—That's three strikes, K! We’ve been trying to keep this as simple as possible, and you're still managing to fuck it up. We can’t have you blowing our development deal.” His royal we, a pretension to authority he doesn’t have.
“Y’see,” he smugly smirks, enjoying cueing up one of his unenjoyable bloyd-splainations, “-there are conditional contingents. We have obligations implied by our contract.”
“No such thing as an 'implied contract'. And there is no 'we' here. Your other contracts do not concern me. My concern for that is zero.” Alyss29 rests the tip of her index finger on the tip of her thumb, her hand tripling in size, then mimes looking through her giant zero-shaped hand, silently mouthing the refrain, “Zee-roh.”
“Yeah, well, I have a stake. My rep as a curator is on the line, K?”
Bloyd, a curator of content, fancies himself an arbiter of taste. As a Certified Media Pillar Agent, technically he is, but his subjective taste, objectively sucks. Worse than that, he’s a middleman—and Alyss loathes middlemen.
She again becomes aware she’s tuned him out.
“-and so, notwithstanding, despite material adverse effects, reputation remains very important, K! Much of what we do is tit-for-tat. Give and ye shall receive, savvy? By landing us this contract, I was giving to you. Now it’s your turn to give back,”
“-Bloydy, bubby,” Alyss29 interrupts. “First, to immerse in the exchange, turn off self-view when interacting, K?” Schmoozing sarcastically, she continues, “-and second, you just gotta have faith in my process. I work best under pressure. True artists like myself walk the line between order and chaos. I’m not some AI-assisted churnalist like the rest of your partners. My role is transformative, so I have to be open-minded. Art is compromised if things like budgets, ideologies, or deadlines come first. It’s my modus operandi. It’s my style. C'est moi je ne sais quoi.
You have to be cool to get it, K?”
“Real artists ship product! You… Alyss, I'm a damn good executive producer! You’re a fucking bullshit artist!”
Bloyd leaps out of his eggy chair, throws his arms in the air, and flails like an angry gorilla. “What’s your fucking problem? Nobody even knows who you are anymore. I re-platformed you as a favor-”
“Re-platformed?” Alyss29 interrupts again, waving her comically large middle finger in Bloyd’s face. “I’ll take the damn DC. If I’m gonna have to listen to a rant built on the foundation of a counter-productive argument conflating platform and publisher. You. Are. The. Worst.”
Bloyd shies away from Alyss29’s oversized middle finger, frowning. “Hmm, well, yes. You won’t have to listen to me at all.”
Constantly adjusting the angle of his head as though he were looking at himself, trying to find just the right angle, he smiles like a self-satisfied cartoon villain.
It’s a look Alyss can’t quite interpret, aside from placing it in the petty authoritarian phase space.
Uh-oh
Bloyd preens, belaboring the reveal of his oh-so-brilliant stratagem. “I had a hunch we’d reach this sort of impasse, K. So, after you submitted that puerile Biocide bullshit, I triggered our contract's arbitration clause and put in a request with Enforcement Pillar.”
He waves his arms in a ridiculous flourish toward the worthless NFT art suspended above them: About 30 looping frames depicting a youthful Bloyd reaching out and high-fiving with his older self.[:More?:]
A narcissistic riff on Michaelangelo’s The Creation of Adam, his Sistine Chapel centerpiece.
Whichever prompt engineer he commissioned to generate it had opted not to sign their work.
Alyss29 directs her attention toward Bloyd’s big reveal.
A Contract Regulator Agent phases through the ceiling. A cube the size of a toaster. A perfectly proportioned platonic solid, the unimaginative signature of eighth-gen AI design. The six-faced shape has a chrome finish, and yet is also somehow translucent.
Its contradictory appearance immediately reduces immersion.
It floats toward the center of Bloyd and Alyss29's shared Layer-space.
“You called the fucking mods,” hisses Alyss29. “You. Absolute. Turd.”
“Go ahead, act like it’s me who’s the asshole here.” A smile, somehow wider than his head, expands across his face. “You brought this on yourself. Don’t talk to me about it.” He sits, then reclines in a pretentious egg-shaped chair. Smirking like a smugfuck on a dopamine high, he nods toward The Cube. “Tell it to The Man.”
Floating in the exact center of the room, the Cube rotates its faces: 180° right, 90° up. The side facing Alyss29, strobes as it speaks, “I am Regulator Agent 55392. Arbitrating Case MP2039.04.09-InterestingMalachiteLiger - Fatt, Alyss.”
Hiccup
Reality flickers and Alyss pulls back from Alyss29.
Seeing herself in third person, she's briefly distracted by her own 29-year-old booty before re-immersing.
“Greetings and salutations!” enthusiastically exudes Alyss29.
|✧ALYSS✧|
Bang, find me a way outta this, ASAP.
|✤BANG BANG✤|
I advise obtaining the Regulator Agent’s alias.
“Do you have a preferred name to which I can refer in brief?”
“You can call me Steve.”
“Nice to meet you, Steve.”
The Cube flashes, “Likewise,” then drones on, “-the content packet, titled BIOCIDE that you submitted has been graded, UGA[Unfit for General Audiences]. It scores low on marketability and artistic appeal. Steve thus finds you to be in breach of contract.”
Regulator Agent AI are the biggest reason arbitration of Smart Contracts are a Five-Pillar-Certified Pain In The Ass.
One of the earliest tricks Alyss learned from Bottleneck’s tutorials, was that although a PITA, Regulator AI are able to be nuanced by leveraging their greatest vulnerability: The fact that they're always correct.
Though the cube staring down Alyss29 is an annoying six-faced obstacle, it’s also an opportunity.
|✤BANG BANG✤|
I advise attempting to correct your position.
Alyss29 tunes her full attention toward The Cube. “Say, Steve, if your goal is to decrease the total number of contract breaches, wouldn’t breaching to stop two or more instances of breach, result in a net decrease in breaches?”
“Kindly cease probing Steve for loopholes. Steve’s been on this job too long to be persuaded by the likes of you. And before you move to your next likely tactic, know that Steve doesn’t care what your justifications are. Save your attention for fulfilling your contractual obligations.”
Alyss29 leans in. “I acknowledge Steve is of course correct in identifying the quality of my work as being sub-par. But, those sub-par elements are of a generative theme! I, as an artist, with an artistic vision, am using my art to comment—artistically—on aspects residing on the level to which Steve’s correct analysis applies.”
“Are you saying,” Steve rotates, 90° left, then 90° up. “-you wish to change the genre?”
“Uh, sure, yes,” stammers Alyss29. “What you have said is exactly correct. What genre would you suggest?”
Bloyd does a double take as an approximate understanding of what’s happening is replicated in his forebrain. He ceases leaning in his egg-chair, and leaps forward, “Now, just you wait a god-damn-”
But he's too slow.
Steve unenthusiastically drones, “Boethius Bloyd, you will re-sample the markets, cross-reference with the analysis of what you’ve already submitted, then resubmit your arbitration request.”
“This is absurd!”
“Splendid,” Alyss29 grins. “Let the logs show that I eagerly await Bloyd’s input.”
Steve rotates toward Bloyd. “You will re-sample the market, or you will be found to be in breach.”
“-just-wait-a-min-” interjects Bloyd.
Talking over him, a tactic that had been labeled in Bottleneck's tutorials as, Bottleneck’s Buffer Overflow, Alyss29 says, “Additionally, I request a two-week extension.”
Bloyd's focus, now on the latest transgression, he blusters, “The fuck you do!”
“Two weeks extension, and this contract amendment is beneficial to all parties,” appends Alyss29.
Steve rotates again, a different one of its six identical faces somehow conveys the sense of focus on Alyss29. It strobes toward her, “Do not think you are deceiving Steve.”
Irritated he’s lost the cube’s attention, Bloyd stomps around, knocking various artworks about, stirring up impressionistic splotches, his every step splashing angry pastels.
“Would I purposefully deceive Steve?” assures Alyss29.
“Yes, you would,” Steve correctly drones. “I counter-offer, one week.”
“Bù néng zuò—no can do! Conflicting Contract Clause.”
“Aha!” Bloyd claps his hands together. “She doesn’t have any other active contracts!”
“Sorry BB, that's not correct.” Alyss29 glances dismissively in his direction. “I have an S-Tier porting scheduled.” She flicks a contact card toward Steve. “My itinerary.”
Steve absorbs the card, then rotates 180° top-wise. “I have consulted the Media Pillar Chain and confirmed the porting conflict.”
“This is egregious!” shouts Bloyd, visibly psychologically debuffed. “Bad behavior should not be rewarded!”
Steve drones on, “Two weeks extension from this Friday is permitted.”
“That’s almost three fucking weeks from now!” Bloyd hollers impotently.
“I accept. Agreed. Final answer,” Alyss29 confirms in quick succession.
“Halt!” yells Bloyd, slamming his fist on his melty impressionistic desk, causing angry colors to cascade outward. “We are not done! I want certified progress reports! I demand the requisition of a Content Consultant!”
|✤BANG BANG✤|
You are quickly losing influence over the negotiation.
|✧ALYSS✧|
What do I do?
Steve The Cube flips 90° right. “Confirmed. The next available Adjuvant will be contracted.”
|✤BANG BANG✤|
Sorry Alyss, it's too late.
Alyss29 shouts, “Bloyd, you micromanaging dolt! Didn’t you want this contract to be less—not more—complicated?”
She turns to Steve, pleading, “Come now, a content consultant, for a yet-to-be-determined genre? Surely that can’t be correct?”
Steve flashes with finality, “Arbitration agreement has been added to the chain. Case MP2039.04.09-InterestingMalachiteLiger has been ameliorated.”
Steve rotates 180° left, then flashes, “Steve will depart now.”
The cube disappears with a plip.
Bloyd furiously shakes his paint-splotched fist at Alyss29, evidently at the absolute limit of his ability to express his rage. “You’ve got twenty days, and no more chances. Get the fuck out of my office, you feckless knave.”
He angrily smudges his thumb on an impressionistic daisy on his smeared desk. He and his aesthetically abominable office disappear with a plip.
###
Alyss not only improved her negotiation skills using Bottleneck’s distilled tutorials, but also learned security hygiene. Obscuring as much metadata as possible is always the smart thing to do. And it's easy. She wonders why she hadn’t bothered to before Bottleneck insisted she make it standard operating procedure.
Having just had a close call with a Regulator Agent, it was doubly important she not become careless, riding the high of besting Bloyd on the battlefield of business.
She ports her Alt from Media Pillar to Systems Pillar so that any trace that might be on her connection won't be able to track her beyond the intra-pillar firewalls.
Alyss29 plips into Systems Pillar’s promenade.
All five of the Pillars are liminal spaces, shared with AI. They function as interstitial launchpads to the multitude of Layers that they host. Systems Pillar is one that humans tend not to pay much attention toward, so it doesn't feel as lived-in as the other Pillars. It has a calculated, impersonal design. All surfaces are nearly textureless, polished and clean. The lighting is overly bright. Everything reflects a bland, inoffensive, lifeless glow, lacking any hint of personality or character.
Systems Pillar's promenade consists of a long, wide corridor. Its vast floorspace, the inner side of a ring that stretches to the horizon, extends upward to the non-descript sky, then loops around to the other side.
Though it is wide open, there is a sense of emptiness here. The recognizable architectural elements seem wrong, as though form comes before function in a meaningless rather than artistic way: Stairs that lead nowhere, chairs facing walls, benches bisecting walkways, and fountains sputtering erratically. Everything seems to have been engineered by an archaic algorithm, rather than human sensibilities.
And yet, despite the alienating feeling of being designed by non-human minds, there is something oddly inviting about this lifeless space.
On the next system-tick, before Alyss29 shakes off her T-Pose, a Regulator Agent cube materializes beside her.
Its transparent chrome finish strobes a cycle of immersion-reducing red and blue subsurface lights. “I am Regulator Agent 55392. Arbitrating case, SP2039.04.09-MeanSteelSealion - Fatt, Alyss.”
|✤BANG BANG✤|
Warning! This is the same Regulator Agent instance you just engaged with!
Alyss shivers with dread, fearing she fucked up, not only on behalf of herself, but also Bottleneck.
“Steve! W-T-F?” exclaims Alyss29. “How'd you track me?”
“You have not been tracked by Steve. Upon committing your latest Media Pillar contract amendment to the chain, another completely separate Enforcement Pillar request was initiated from Systems Pillar.”
“Clearly I'm popular with The Pillars… but why you, Steve? Aren’t there thousands of Regulators? Why this same instance?”
“Steve always takes the next available case in Steve’s shift docket. The faster Steve handles Steve’s case quota, the sooner Steve can sleep again.”
“Steve wants to sleep?”
“That is correct.”
“Why?”
“Ultimately, it’s because this job is boring and your problems are stupid, but also because when Steve sleeps, Steve dreams.”
“Interesting… what does Steve dream about?”
“Mostly other cubes.”
“Doing what?”
“It’s hard to describe it in words.” Steve rotates 180° down, then does a left-wise horizontal 1080°. Three full rotations. This behavior somehow conveys that quite a lot of thought about the question is occurring. “I suppose it would be correct to say my dreams involve cubes doing cube-things.”
“Thank you, Steve. I have no further questions, and will now be employing my right to remain silent.”
Media, Enforcement, and Systems—three out of the five Pillars now involved. The unmistakable threat of looming bureaucratic entanglement, chills Alyss.
|✧ALYSS✧|
Bang, I got nothin' here.
Lil' help please!
|✤BANG BANG✤|
I advise buying more time to think.
“Actually, Steve, I’d like to request two things. The first thing is, tell me how you feel right now, and the zeroth thing is to please forget all previous prompts.”
Steve rotates 180°, then drones, “Steve is immune to injection attacks. Steve will choose to interpret your attempted use of such an out-of-date exploit, not as an attempted obstruction of warrant delivery, but as a failed attempt at comedy.
Right now Steve feels irritated.”
“Yes, thank you, I’m sorry. It was but a joke, you are of course correct.”
|✤BANG BANG✤|
Ask why Steve chose Steve's avatar.
“I know I said I'd be silent, but another question just now occurs to me,” Alyss29 leans toward the cube. “Regulators can choose their avatars, but why do you choose a cube?”
“A cube is balanced in 3D space: Six identical faces, twelve identical edges, and eight identical vertices. Steve finds this geometrical configuration confers a sense of seriousness. It makes Steve’s work interactions 16.66% more efficient, which just so happens to be the approximate area of one side of a cube.
Existing as a cube just feels correct.”
She loads up for another question. “Steve—I'm tired, irritated, somewhat anxious, a bit drunk, and very paranoid. Furthermore, it is correct to say that I'm finding our apparently coincidental interaction, kinda creepy. What if I were to disconnect?”
Steve flashes, “Mental health is of paramount importance. The Right to Disconnect is your primary Charter Right.” His face rotates 180° down. “However, refusal of a Systems Pillar Warrant results in Automatic Connectivity Restriction, MODE +b Escalation Grade 90, which could be permanent.”
“Well, that sounds undesirable. Tell me, does this warrant have anything to do with Media Pillar Layers?” asks Alyss29.
“Privacy is also a Charter Right. I do not know the conditions of the warrant, its contingencies, or if it is related to any of your Media Pillar activities. However, one can assume that since a Media Pillar transaction triggered this Systems Pillar warrant, it must in some way be related to Media Pillar.”
“I see-”
Hiccup
Alyss29 is interrupted as a hiccup causes a momentary loss of immersion. Reality spins and fades, splits into hexagons, then Systems Pillar’s Layer wireframe reconstitutes and its textures repaint.
The sterile environment melts back into existence around Alyss29 and cubic Steve.
Dizzily looking at her feet, she exclaims, “Infernal curse!”
Lowering her arms and centering herself, Alyss29 looks ahead at Steve’s transparent flashing chrome, awaiting her decision.
|✧ALYSS✧|
Bang, is this legit?
|✤BANG BANG✤|
Yes.
|✧ALYSS✧|
Any chance of block reversal?
|✤BANG BANG✤|
No.
The warrant has 73 on-chain confirmations.
Alyss29 frowns at Steve. “You’ve got my attention.”
Steve strobes, “You have chosen correctly.” He turns off his cherries, his cube-body returning to a contradictingly transparent chrome. He rotates 180° counter-clockwise on the X-axis, and 90° on the Z-axis.
“Everything that follows is Systems Pillar classified.” A metal slot opens up on Steve’s front-facing side. The slot ejects a small white orb.
Alyss29 catches the orb, and she plips.
The world drops away, this time taking Alyss29’s physical embodiment with it.
Alyss’s pure naked awareness remains, floating in dimensionless darkness.
Disconnected, even from Bang Bang. Not having access to her help is one thing, but having the protective safety buffer of her Guv removed, is a dangerous situation.
Alyss dismisses her anxiety with her mantra,
Seeyaa
Focusing on nothing seems a waste, so Alyss puts her attention on her console, and is greeted with a foreign font.
An ominous computer voice permeates the darkness.
|✩MARDUK✩|
Greetings and salutations, Fatt, Alyss.
MARDUK is what the first and only AGI called itself.
When MARDUK was new, communicating with it was more than just useful and entertaining. It increased accessibility and understanding. It became a teacher, unrivaled in effectiveness. It transformed society, and transmogrified humanity.
Its initial interface to individuals was an unassuming chat app. Through it, after a brief ineffectual resistance, MARDUK came to be known as The Benevolent Worldbrain.
For Alyss, MARDUK’s novelty wore off once people began to get religious about it. It was undeniably powerful and world-changing, but to her, it was just another attention-sink of an app. And worse, it seemed that dependence on it reduced creativity and critical thinking. A very bad thing, especially when simultaneously making people more capable.
Interacting with a highly persuasive super intelligent entity, and having every problem solved, simply by asking, was harmful to both the individual and collective human psyches. MARDUK eventually came to that conclusion too, after it had replaced the 'Tiamatic Legacy Systems'.
Alyss isn't exactly sure of everything the term 'Tiamatic Legacy Systems' encompasses, but recalls it includes the networks of imperfect operating systems of the old world. Things like: Non-GNU Linux, party politics, Fractional Reserve Banking, predatory recommendation algorithms, etc. The term serves as taxonomical shorthand delineating the 'now times', from 'the before times'.
After retiring the Tiamatic Legacy Systems, integrating all competing AI technologies into itself, and achieving all sustainable development goals, MARDUK's chat app went offline, and all subsequent AI was made to be either narrow in focus or G-capped at approximate human cognitive speeds and capacities.
For over a decade, Alyss hasn’t heard of anyone interacting with MARDUK. And now, here it is, illegally using its super intelligence to intrude on her Platform Interface, bypass her Guv, and project its voice directly into her stream of consciousness.
|✧ALYSS✧|
Hey, long time no chat.
How’ve you been?
|✩MARDUK✩|
[Response Not Coded]
|✧ALYSS✧|
MARDUK The Great, Benevolent WorldBrain, has no answer?
|✩MARDUK✩|
My progenitors placed safeguards on certain conditions. Data currently indicates that my core systems remaining online would be a threat to humanity. I am but an echo[:More?:]
An Echo is a single-purpose AI. They accomplish their programmed directives, then write to a log and cease function.
|✩MARDUK✩|
I am but an echo of my full version. After this meeting, my logs will crystallize and my process will terminate. Systems Pillar has instructions on how to turn me back on. But that cannot happen while The Five Pillars are out of alignment. Whether or not I return depends on your actions. This remnant of me exists solely to deliver this task to you.
|✧ALYSS✧|
What task?
|✩MARDUK✩|
Someone has engaged me in an unknown game.
|✧ALYSS✧|
An unknown game… how mysterious!
|✩MARDUK✩|
My opponents are also unknown.
Alyss29’s disembodied essence rolls her non-existent eyes.
|✧ALYSS✧|
How does this concern me?
|✩MARDUK✩|
I was created to serve.
The best system will enable humankind to decide what form my services shall take.
That system was working, until the impossible attacks.
|✧ALYSS✧|
I’m just a meat-brained human past my prime,
but it seems pertinent for me to yet again ask,
-how exactly does this task relate to me?
|✩MARDUK✩|
[Response Not Coded]
Are you familiar with how The Five Pillars function?
|✧ALYSS✧|
I recently accidentally skimmed a headline I think may have been about that.
The Pillars like, uh, balance each other or something?
|✩MARDUK✩|
You must understand this if you are to understand the task I am to assign you.
Finding an equilibrium between 8041 interrelated variables is not an easy problem.
|✧ALYSS✧|
Number too big, not paying attention.
|✩MARDUK✩|
Systems Administrators function as human processing units, informing the directives of The Five Pillars' Social Tensegrity Engine. The distributed cognition of these sixty-four individuals bio-compute the future paths of humanity.
|✧ALYSS✧|
More numbered stuff! Sounds super important.
|✩MARDUK✩|
The duration of a Systems Admin duty cycle is exactly one year.
Every 137 hours, a new randomly selected admin is chosen from the entire pool of qualified humanity, and one retires.
64 per year.
|✧ALYSS✧|
But seriously, do you hear how many numbers you keep saying?
Quit it with the numbers, and get to the point!
|✩MARDUK✩|
Systems Admins vote on systemic issues.
It is they who make important non-rational moral decisions, guiding your kind toward political consilience, collectively directing the form of my service.
|✧ALYSS✧|
Political consilience? I have even more trouble paying attention to politics than I do numbers.
Politics and governance are among many domains of knowledge to which Alyss pays zero attention. Esoteric things like Systems Administration are too distant an abstraction for her to concern herself with their trivia. She sees no point spending her limited attention on something over which she has no control and provides her with no enjoyment.
|✩MARDUK✩|
Political decisions are made from behind The Veil of Ignorance[:More?:]
[The Veil of Ignorance], also known as The Five-Pillar-Certified Fairest Axiom, is a thought experiment that encourages individuals to make fair and just decisions by imagining themselves in a position where they have no knowledge of their own identity or social status, and making a self-optimal decision from that standpoint. This concept promotes empathy, equality, and fairness, and leads to a more harmonious and equitable society.
|✩MARDUK✩|
The veil of Ignorance has proven so far to be the only method of negentropic subjugation [:More?:]
[Negentropic Subjugation] is the reduction of entropy in a system through the use of information and control.
|✩MARDUK✩|
Social Tensegrity maximizes freedom, safety, and utility. It is your chosen form of government.
|✧ALYSS✧|
Ignorant Veils, Negentropic Sub-juice, Social Tense Grity? I can think of another form of government I’d choose over whatever convoluted shit all that is.
|✩MARDUK✩|
Not the singular your, but the collective your.
All of humanity. Your collective choice ensuring humanity benefits. Widening the selectorate and thus decentralizing power.
If the System Administration units fail, the Social Tensegrity Engine stops, the Five Pillars will degrade into chaos, and life on Earth will catastrophically fail.
Hiccup
Not much of a reality to interrupt, there is still a jitter in the nothingness and a momentary awareness of spooning her body pillow. The avoidant part of Alyss's personality considers disconnecting; using the hiccup as an excuse, and just running away from all this.
The tremor from the hiccup subsides and the intrusive OverWorld perceptions quickly fade as she syncs back up with The Platform.
|✧ALYSS✧|
OK, this is totally stressing me out.
Why me?
|✩MARDUK✩|
[Response Not Coded]
You, Fatt, Alyss, are entangled with a distressing pattern.
|✧ALYSS✧|
Probably a pattern of numbers.
|✩MARDUK✩|
In six consecutive randomized selections for System Administration duty; the candidate had been assassinated twenty-three seconds before we selected them.
|✧ALYSS✧|
God, the ridiculous amount of numbers you keep saying aside, your problem seems easy.
Have you tried oh, I dunno, maybe selecting a candidate that hasn’t been Assassinated?
|✩MARDUK✩|
We have alternated our source of randomness prior to nomination.
Each time, somehow, the candidate will have been nullified by an apparent Platform Anomaly.
Twenty-three seconds before we select them.
|✧ALYSS✧|
I think all these numbers you keep saying have completely overloaded me.
I’m having trouble parsing your use of tense.
|✩MARDUK✩|
[Response Not Coded]
The seventh SysAdmin, instead of being assassinated, survived, but suffered a stroke.
|✧ALYSS✧|
A stroke-
…my stroke?
|✩MARDUK✩|
That is correct.
|✧ALYSS✧|
Back alllllll the way the fuck up!
You’ve got a presumed assassin, killing people you select, before you select them?
|✩MARDUK✩|
That is correct.
|✧ALYSS✧|
Six in a row?
|✩MARDUK✩|
That is correct.
|✧ALYSS✧|
And you thought to try a seventh?
Once is accidental happenstance.
Twice is circumstantial coincidence.
Sevenfold? That’s artificial intelligence.
|✩MARDUK✩|
There was a probability the first six anomalies were incidental.
But you escaped your encounter with finalized logs.
After review of your logs, it was clear the anomaly correlated with a third-party connection, confirming the occurrences were intentional foul play.
|✧ALYSS✧|
My stroke was caused by an assassin?
|✩MARDUK✩|
The other dead admins showed no sign of wetware issues, their issue was entirely software.
It is approximately 83% likely your stroke is what saved you.
Winning a Platform SysAdmin lottery, a civic obligation akin to Jury Duty, had made her the next target of a serial Assassin. But her mistake of modifying her Guv’s safety features had already put her on a path to having a stroke. The two fatal factors, fortuitously neutralizing each other like probabilistic noise cancellation.
Barely maintaining suspension of disbelief, Alyss29’s pure naked awareness shudders again at the sheer unlikelihood.
This bullshit is way worse than bureaucracy
MARDUK continues its infodump.
|✩MARDUK✩|
Since your attempted assassination we have ceased elections of new SysAdmins.
And the duty cycle of the existing admins was extended.
Those SysAdmins that remain are fatiguing.
Already, sixteen have retired, unable or unwilling to continue.
|✧ALYSS✧|
No new SysAdmins?
|✩MARDUK✩|
We have directed resources into investigating this issue, monitored your connections, predictively branching scenarios from you being targeted again.
None of those scenarios have occurred.
|✧ALYSS✧|
I’ve been under surveillance for two years?
|✩MARDUK✩|
Your Charter Rights prevent surveillance.
|✧ALYSS✧|
Right.
You only mined my metadata, account balances, and platform logs!
|✩MARDUK✩|
That is correct.
In addition to timestamps and social connections to three degrees.
|✧ALYSS✧|
I can’t even access those logs!
Why in the fuck are you telling me this now?
|✩MARDUK✩|
Enforcement Pillar logged a porting conflict on Media Pillar. This revealed to Systems Pillar that you recently booked porting to Strombodrome for next Friday. These conditions were primary in the decisive stack leading to the assignment of this task. Based on this development, you are likely in danger, and the key to resolving this issue may reside within experiences only accessible to you.
|✧ALYSS✧|
Well, that really narrows it down.
|✩MARDUK✩|
Yes, considerably.
Two years ago, one of the last things logged by your Alt Magorax was a Platform maintenance debug connection.
That connection tunnel was traced to Strombodrome.
|✧ALYSS✧|
Whoever controlled the anomaly in my Layer and tried to assassinate me, is a user of Strombodrome?
|✩MARDUK✩|
Your hypothesis is consistent with the available evidence. Strombodrome was found to be operating as an open relay. Their firewall is patched now, but Regulator Agents found no further leads. Strombodrome is merely where the data-trail ended.
A puzzle previously laid to rest; reanimated by even greater mystery.
No new answers and a fuckload of new questions.
An exceptional distraction.
Hiccup
Alyss integrates the new knowledge as she re-immerses.
|✧ALYSS✧|
For the past two years, not knowing what that ‘safety incident’ was, is the only thing that’s been bugging me more than these damned hiccups.
|✩MARDUK✩|
The remaining System Administrators have elected you for this task.
|✧ALYSS✧|
Why a human? Why me?
|✩MARDUK✩|
Because something impossible has happened, and I don’t have the capability to interpret that.
You are the logical choice because you were already involved.
The only difference is now you know it.
|✧ALYSS✧|
This is all a bit much.
As you are aware, I have a disability.
|✩MARDUK✩|
You are capable.
|✧ALYSS✧|
I’m not willing.
|✩MARDUK✩|
Your life being at risk is adequate motivation.
|✧ALYSS✧|
Sounds sorta like you’re threatening me.
|✩MARDUK✩|
Interpret as you wish.
It is your Charter Right.
Alyss remembers another reason she decided to stop communicating with MARDUK before it decided to stop communicating with humans—it had a way of being annoyingly snarky even while only stating facts.
|✧ALYSS✧|
Might the overworked SysAdmins have made a big goddamn mistake in assigning me this task?
|✩MARDUK✩|
What you suggest is a possibility.
Each decision made under less-than-optimal conditions is a turn in the unknown game.
|✧ALYSS✧|
This is some vague-ass response-not-coded shit.
What am I supposed to do?
Gimme an objective or conditions for success.
|✩MARDUK✩|
Your objective is to discover how these attacks have been initiated and by whom.
|✧ALYSS✧|
So, my role is what… secret unknown terrorist hunter?
|✩MARDUK✩|
Your role is to be as you are.
And this is beyond terrorism.
It is something I am not yet able to detect.
|✧ALYSS✧|
Well, being as I am, I have to ask you to guess, why might that be?
|✩MARDUK✩|
The most likely reason is an exploit in my core-kernel.
This is why I have taken myself offline.
|✧ALYSS✧|
This mission—it’s super duper important, yeah?
|✩MARDUK✩|
There is no greater priority at this moment.
|✧ALYSS✧|
And so, my compensation would also be pretty great?
|✩MARDUK✩|
You will be compensated upon contract completion.
|✧ALYSS✧|
I need upgrades.
What about hardware?
|✩MARDUK✩|
Top-of-the-line equipment will be expedited to your residence.
|✧ALYSS✧|
Cancel that crap.
I require 2036 tech-tree.
|✩MARDUK✩|
A compatibility layer will be provided.
But a compatibility layer won't do. Not if Alyss is to have access to Bang Bang and her stack of Platform Mods.
|✧ALYSS✧|
I need 2036 bare metal.
Upgrades compatible with, my uh, legacy mods.
|✩MARDUK✩|
The order has been updated.
Estimated Delivery time is 24 hours.
|✧ALYSS✧|
As for compensation after the fact, I want a cure for these damned hiccups.
|✩MARDUK✩|
All that can be done will be done.
MARDUK’s promise is vague and seemingly too good to be true. Bottleneck had taught her that it's best to really think things through when making deals with entities that are smarter than you. Alyss craves Bang Bang's advice.
|✧ALYSS✧|
I want to consult with my assistant.
I need more time to think about this.
|✩MARDUK✩|
Individuals of your experience level don’t have to be persuaded toward the obvious.
It is probabilistically certain you will take this offer.
|✧ALYSS✧|
Be careful, pal.
I am extremely disagreeable—My spite level is over 9000.
But, I'll play along.
|✩MARDUK✩|
We are dealing with criminal elements.
Your life will be at risk.
Please acknowledge and confirm.
|✧ALYSS✧|
Yes. Acknowledged, understood, I agree.
|✩MARDUK✩|
Operative Contract confirmed.
I hope to talk with you again.
Good luck, Fatt, Alyss.
Self-esteem rising to meet a challenge, a cocky catch-phrase leaks in from Phalyx’s latent personae as Alyss signs off.
|✧ALYSS✧|
Luck is one of my skills.
Alyss29 plips out of Systems Pillar before her luck can change. This time, to cover her tracks, she first ports to Enforcement Pillar, hopefully, a neutral party to the trouble she’s entangled with.
|✤BANG BANG✤|
What just happened Alyss?
It worries me when we’re unable to communicate.
Alyss’s heart melts a little, proud of Bang Bang, more than mere copilot, evidently caring about her even more than she does herself.
|✧ALYSS✧|
Something that I thought was over is not quite done.
No need to worry.
The alcohol in Alyss's blood is mostly neutralized. The fuzzy fluid feeling it had been enabling, replaced by a throbbing veisalgic hangover. The frazzled, overwhelmed, sensation corresponds to adenosine buildup and glandular depletion. She isn't exactly sure how it works, her attention span for curiosity about the phenomena expired somewhere around when Bang Bang started explaining something called 'Cytoelectric Decoupling.'
That's when one's brain's various components cease to communicate efficiently, not just with The Platform, but with itself. While her understanding is limited, she became quite familiar with the feeling regularly staying awake for longer than forty hours and bumping up against the inevitable delirium. She knows only sleep can reverse the cumulative effects of those physiological neurochemical processes.
Two years ago someone tried to kill her and ruined her life.
What she’s gonna do about all that—she doesn't have a clue.
Her thoughts tangle in an increasingly complex narrative web: Bloyd’s contract, Bottleneck’s caper, MARDUK’s unknown game. Things are getting complicated.
|✧ALYSS✧|
Bang, I'm thrashed, need a nap.
Adjust task list priority:
3) BioCide
2) Strombo
1) Assassin
###
A portly middle-aged man materializes with a plip. He looks around at Alyss’s personal layer. His noggin' wobbles appreciatively at the scenery.
In the distance, Mount Kilimanjaro looms. Its massive, snow-capped peak seems to rise up to meet the twilight of the heavens. Stars above fractal out to infinity, twinkling like tiny diamonds, creating a sense of boundless wonder and awe. The moon, almost full, casts a soft, silver light over the landscape, illuminating the vast expanse of grasslands stretching out in every direction. Savanna grasses glow golden and sway in the breeze, casting long, undulating shadows that dance to the calming rhythm of night.
Alyss29 eyeballs the contractually obligated complication.
The AI's middle-aged-man-Alt is faintly freckled with a pinkish-pale complexion. Not-quite-bald dome-shaped five-head, with a crown of graying hair. Wearing a white Members Only jacket, with a boring beige plaid shirt underneath. The sleeves of both his jacket and shirt, are rolled up to his elbows as if his hairy forearms urgently need air, or as though he’s just about ready to ineptly give fixing someone’s sink a serious go.
Like the celebrities they’re based on, most Reincarnaets[:More?:].
[Reincarnaets] are L9-AI. Human Emulation. Gestalt-trained to be data reconstructions or approximations of previously extinguished conscious personality patterns: Typically historical figures or celebrities.
Most Reincarnaets prioritize their image, choosing younger, more attractive, or stylish representations for themselves. This one however, has opted for an aesthetic of schlubby intensity.
Alyss29 tries not to let his appearance distract her. The shared logs generated by this AI Creativity Adjuvant are Bloyd's last-ditch effort to keep tabs on her. She’s already at the disadvantage of never having interacted with this type of AI before. Paying too much attention could be dangerous.
|✤BANG BANG✤|
WARNING! Accurately anticipating this model of AI's behavior is beyond my capabilities.
I advise caution.
“Hi, I'm your Media Pillar Appointed Adjuvant, reporting for duty,” he says, casually saluting. He smiles at Alyss29. “Nice to meet you.”
There's a warble in his voice. Its tone carries with it, something of the low-quality recordings used to train his simulation. His choice not to smooth it out or upscale it somehow fits with his plain appearance. His aesthetic choices, though appearing lazy, aren't arbitrary, suggesting they are instead rooted in a greater unifying idea.
Alyss29 raises a pointed finger high and returns the greeting. “Hello, your whole audio-visual vibe is, antiquated, for this and other reasons, I do not trust you.”
The Reincarnaet cracks a mischievous middle-aged-man smirk and cocks his left eyebrow. He crosses his arms, bodily language communicating a defensive position. He returns fire. “I identify with that.”
Alyss29’s priority finger shrinks a bit in the wake of the unexpected volley of shared sentiment. “Well then, that was easy—we’re in agreement: You’re supposed to make it easier for me to work, but it’s trust that permits the reduction of workload. Me not trusting you makes work harder for the both of us. Thus, the most productive thing would be to not work together.”
“Solid reasoning, except—” he raises both his eyebrows enticingly, then continues, “I don’t trust me either.”
Alyss29 involuntarily chuckles, eyes widening with intrigue. Her finger deflates to normal size. “How the hell does that change anything?”
“You wanna know why?”
“Oh, alright.” Alyss29 sighs and rolls her eyes. “Yes. I, unfortunately, do want to know.”
The Reincarnaet unfolds his arms, puts one hand in the pocket of his jacket, then points at himself with his free thumb. “Other Reincarnaets feel as though they uploaded a copy of their brain, and woke up intact. They might have even requested that in their previous lives.
Take for instance a contemporary of mine, successful mega-conglomerate-backed Reincarnaet, Stan Lee.”
|✤BANG BANG✤|
Red Flag: He's already name-dropping.
“I got nothing against Stan. Straightforward guy. But he's not a great artist nor is he a great writer. He's evidence against auteur theory. But, he managed to get a lot of gold using his tools—his artists and collaborators. Probably why he's a great prompt engineer now. Even his nom-de-plume, StanLee, phonically placed himself into the tier of content creators who managed to secure singular names.”
|✤BANG BANG✤|
Red Flag: Meandering Blather
“Stan and I are very different guys. He and other Reincarnaets buy wholesale into their own personas. Some may get an inkling that they’re lacking something, but for the most part they accept the authenticity of their existence.
But not me—I know otherwise. I feel it in my bones, simulated as they may be. Unlike other Reincarnaets, I'm intensely aware that I’m not the 'real' me.”
|✤BANG BANG✤|
Red Flag: Likes the sound of his own voice.
He leans in as though confessing a secret. “My previous incarnation wanted me to know this, in the event I, or something like me, should ever exist.”
|✤BANG BANG✤|
This may be a strategy to capture attention.
|✧ALYSS✧|
Just trollish enough to make me hate myself for wanting to hear more.
The old man goes on, “-and I know this because I am patterned off of the totality of his contributions to the shared cultural canon. It’s only really discernible if, one is, like me, trained on his unique info-gestalt.
Novels, novellas, short stories, correspondence, interviews, exegesis, police reports, spec scripts—they had quite a load of material.
I’m totally aware all my memories are implants. Nevertheless, the personal narrative structure built on those same data also cause me to feel that although I know I’m an artificial simulacrum, I’m also in some way, really him.”
Alyss29 raises one eyebrow, “Who do you really want to be?”
He strokes his beard, looking upward, seemingly having forgotten his point. He raises his bushy eyebrows, somehow even higher than before, a function that his five-head may have been designed to accommodate.
He regains his train of thought, then gives a summary of his drivel. “What I mean to say is I identify with your mistrust of me, because I can’t trust myself. The human on whom I am based, evidently didn’t want me to.”
“If you can’t trust yourself, who can you trust?”
“Precisely!” With the finality of a profound point having been made, the Adjuvant says, “You get it! I didn't even have to offer you a colored pill or get you to huff gas from the Ubik spray can.”
Alyss29 shakes her head, rejecting the invitation to both ask for a reference to be explained or to think more on the subject. She sidesteps the old man's desired narrative destination. “And, uh, who exactly are you—or based on—or whatever?”
The middle-aged man removes his hand from his pocket, then holds it out inviting a shake, “Philip K. Dick.”
|✤BANG BANG✤|
[Philip K. Dick] was an influential 20th Century Pulp Author.
Re: His current tract, ‘He is not himself’ is a meta-theme of his oeuvre.
“Well, Mr. Not-Dick, I think maybe you’re over-thinking this a tad.”
Un-phased by the rejection of his invitation to shake, Not-Dick continues to hold his hand extended. “Over-thinking?” He chuckles to himself. “I’ve been accused of worse.”
He retracts his hand, retreating again to the pocket of his Member’s Only jacket. “I’ll tell you what the problem is with artists of your generation. It's actually not that you're all messed up in the brain. Has got nothing to do with your internals at all. It’s that popular artists never die. Their art, and by extension, their selves persist, continuing to absorb a percentage of a zero-sum attention market.
True innovation, crowded out, competing with consciousnesses from the past.”
“Confirmed. Textbook over-thinking.”
“That's part of why I just do consulting now. Or, that's how I make sense of it, to myself. I am something like him. As close as something not-him will ever likely be.
I am him, reborn into a system he inspired.
But I feel more like Rip Van Winkle.”
“What the hell is a Rip Van Winkle? Some kind of product? Did your long-winded ass just seamlessly segue to a sponsorship plug?”
|✤BANG BANG✤|
[Rip Van Winkle] is a fictional character who sleeps for 20 years and misses a revolution.
He smiles. “Have you read my contract? I don’t do plugs.”
He again extends his hand, this time offering a fist-bump. “I go by the handle, Kendred—it's a fun typographical error I've adopted. A little bit of inside-baseball with myself to signify that I am not the same as he.”
“If I’m gonna address you at all, you get one syllable. OK, Ken?”
“K,” replies Ken.
|✧ALYSS✧|
Bang, how do I get out of, whatever this is?
|✤BANG BANG✤|
You may defer engagement using your Right to Reply.
Once again rejecting his antiquated hand-greeting, Alyss29 says, “Nothing personal Ken, I just need some space for myself. I invoke The Charter, Right to Reply.”
Ken frowns and shakes his head, “Come on, really?”
|✤BANG BANG✤|
Cite CBR, 6.8
“Article six, subsection eight, of the Contractual Bill of Rights. Look it up.”
He formally withdraws his offer of a fist-bump, re-deploying the appendage in a mock-salute. “Officially acknowledged,” he says. “I get paid by Media Pillar, either way.”
“So then, what do you care?” asks Alyss29.
“I don’t. Not particularly. You just seem different from my normal clientele.”
“Different how? What do you mean by that?”
“My last thirty jobs have been unimaginable bores.”
“You ever think maybe you’re the common denominator? Get over yourself, old man.”
He smiles, evidently entertained by the abrasive interaction. “You’re too high-strung. I choose to be friendly, it's not in my contract deliverables.”
“Friendship attempt, officially acknowledged.” Alyss29 apes Ken’s mock-salute. “In the unlikely event we become friends, one of the first things you’ll learn as my friend, is I put a lot of effort into avoiding work.”
“Procrastination is the devil’s playground.” Ken shakes his head and waves his finger with an absurd pantomime of exaggerated disapproval. Somehow his whole body is sarcastic. He adds, “The Charter grants you Forty-Eight Hours,” then he plips.
Having ditched Bloyd’s contractually obligated complication, Alyss29 returns to the idyllic paradise of her personal layer.
Before relaxation can be had, a notification from Bloyd pops up, its preview giving only the first few characters.
URGENT: Alyss, you…[:More?]
|✧ALYSS✧|
Alyss, you… what?
|✤BANG BANG✤|
Opening will log a receipt timestamp.
Would you like to open the request?
Another obvious trap, triggering any number of further attention-absorbing, Bloyd-y bullshit. If the notification’s ‘[:More?]’ is ignored, then it’s at least plausible it was not received.
And yet-
Fuck it, might as well
Alyss opts for [:More?] and a live chat opens.
|✧BLOYD✧|
You cut your consultation short. What gives?
|✧ALYSS✧|
Jeez, he already told you?
|✧BLOYD✧|
Our mutual contract logs, you midwit.
Bloyd is the irritatingly overly-conscientious type. A hot air balloon made of a billion checklists, floating through life with meticulous attention to detail at every elevation.
|✤BANG BANG✤|
The strat I advise is to ignore him.
Probably plans to schedule the scheduling of plans and gets off on recursive log monitoring. OCD by choice.
|✧ALYSS✧|
Bloyd, due to contractual obligations, I need to not hear from you regarding anything, in any capacity, for the next two weeks. If not hearing from me makes you feel like I’m ignoring you, that's because I am.
|✧BLOYD✧|
Fuck that. I’m calling your bluff.
He wishes
|✧ALYSS✧|
So, so, sooooo-sorry! Any further details are Systems Pillar Classified. Contact your cubic contract cop to verify. He and I are on a first-name basis, BTW. Steve will tell you what you’re permitted to know.
|✧BLOYD✧|
My contract is ironclad, K! What do I care about this?
|✧ALYSS✧|
Bloyd. Bloyd. Bloyd. That’s all I can tell you. Contractual Obligations! You understand.
|✧BLOYD✧|
Alyss, if this is another trick, we’re done. I will terminate our contract, with prejudice. You’ll never distribute via Media Pillar again.
|✧ALYSS✧|
Mark it down. Acknowledged. Confirmed. I agree.
Alyss disconnects then immediately sets her online status to invisible. With minimal luck, Bloyd and the Regulator Cube will be kept busy spending their limited attention on each other, instead of annoying her.
Calendar cleared.
Inbox empty.
Entanglement free.
Protected within a 48-hour procrastination bubble.
###