jeriendhal | Entries tagged with singularity

This article originally appeared on my Patreon page. Please consider supporting me on Patreon to see this and other stories at least 30 days in advance of the public.

****

Anna looked as her tigermorph master, the Great and Powerful Khan, entered their dining chamber. The dining table sat on a large marble balcony overlooking the port of Ohohcee Island. The town below was gaily lit with faux gas lamps. At the docks sailing ships belonging to various player groups sat at anchor, either undergoing refurbishment or just giving their crews a chance to relax while not maintaining their chosen persona.

"How did the court go today, Master?" Anna asked, as Khan sat at the table across from her. Her morph master and lover didn't need to eat of course, but he often simulated it to make conversation with Anna easier.

"There was nothing notable," Khan replied. He was dressed tonight rather formally, which for him meant he was wearing an open vest instead of being completely bare-chested. The better to impress the human PC's that came to his court. "Two looting disputes that should have been settled by lower level moderators, and one individual who repeatedly violated the player harassment rules. He'll be spending a week in the penalty dungeon."

Which was actually secure and just a bit uncomfortable, as opposed to the game dungeons on the other islands, which were specifically designed to be escapable by determined or clever players, Anna knew. Or the dungeons that were both secure and designed for fun, which was her choice. She smiled at her master. "Hopefully he'll learn his lesson," she noted.

"Hopefully," Khan agreed. "I dislike perma banning players. It just means they'll try to enter other LARPS instead of changing their behavior."

"Anything else?" she asked, between bites of her salad.

"One thing." Khan frowned, which immediately got Anna's attention. It was rare that her morph master allowed an expression of worry to cross his face. "I also was petitioned to intervene in a case involving the morph that belonged to a player."

"What's the matter?" Anna asked, frowning in turn. "Was the player abusing his morph?" Not every human got along as well with their assigned morph as Anna did with Khan. For some, it was hard to deal with having a robotic servant/keeper permanently following their heels for the rest of their lives. Most people adapted, either treating their morph as either a slightly pesky friend, a not terribly trustworthy slave, or an appliance with built in spyware. Some however, chose to express their frustration by either deliberately giving their morph contradictory orders, repeatedly attempting self-harm to force their morph to intervene, or outright physically abusing their morph in ways that the morph could not respond to without risking harm to their Designated Focus.

"No, no," Khan said. "Quite the opposite. Mr. Akatane treated his morph very well. Unfortunately, Akatane suffered a blot clot that travelled to his brain, whilst his party's ship was a day out from their destination. By the time an air ambulance could rendezvous to airlift him to a hospital, he was dead, poor fellow."

"Oh," Anna said. Such unfortunate medical issues happened sometimes in long-term LARPS like the Seven Seas, and she was sure it grated against Khan's built-in need to protect humans, even as he played the role of Evil Emperor and a grand antagonist for players to scheme against. "So what's the deal with his morph?"

"The other players in his ship's crew don't want Jocko, Akatane's morph, to be recycled," Khan said. "They stated that Jocko and Mr. Akatane had been friends, and it wasn't fair that Jocko's memories would be uploaded to the Groupmind's gestalt and his parts broken down."

"That seems fair," Anna allowed. "I mean, I'm sure they were upset about Mr. Akatane's death. Getting rid of his morph would have only rubbed salt in the wound." She cocked her head Khan. "So what did you decide?"

"I informed them that the subject required further consultation," Khan said. "Which is why we're talking about it now."

"So one morph gets to keep going after his Designated Focus passes away," Anna said. "I don't see how that's a big problem."

"The problem is, it isn't just one morph" Khan said, standing up to pace beside the table. "This is becoming an increasing problem as humans begin to age and die on the Ring. More and more friends and family members are petitioning to let the morphs of deceased humans remain operational. The numbers are currently in the low thousands, however the Groupmind projects the number of Unfocused morphs will increase exponentially over time. In perhaps less than five hundred years, they will outnumber humans, unless steps are taken."

"Are you sure that's a problem?" Anna asked. "More humans are going to be born, after all. The Unfocused morphs can be just assigned to them."

"There will be a period before that equilibrium is reached, when the morphs still outnumber humans," Khan pointed out. "Humans may begin to feel overwhelmed."

"I think you're underestimating human egos, love," Anna said, smiling slightly.

"There is another issue," Khan went on. "From the Groupmind's perspective, it is disturbing that humans are growing emotional attachments to morphs."

She raised an eyebrow to her morph lover/master. "Pot calling the kettle black, are we? Who was the giant distributed robobrain that gave me a morph to fulfill my every kinky fantasy as a bribe?"

"You were considered unusual," Khan pointed out. "You already had an inclination to be attracted to morphs. The Groupmind believed that such emotions would not be as common with other humans, particularly as morphs are the direct tools of their oppressor."

"You can't have it both ways, love," Anna said. "You want people to trust their morphs enough to protect them, but not create emotional attachments to them?"

"They're just machines," Khan stated.

Anna shook her head. "Master, humans will form emotional bonds with anything. I used to apologize to my Roomba when I tripped over it in my apartment. You shouldn't be surprised that we like something that walks, talks, and wants us to be happy."

"But why grow distraught at the idea of someone else's morph being destroyed?" Khan asked.

"Because that morph is their last hard connection with that person," Anna pointed out. She patted her heart briefly. "Look, I'm human. If I'm really lucky I've got about sixty, maybe seventy years of life left in me. When I'm gone, I'm gone." She stood up in front of Khan and touched his forehead. "But you're effectively immortal. So long as you continue to function, I'll be remembered by someone. That's comforting. So for these people, having the deceased's morph still around reassures them that their family member or friend won't be forgotten, even when they're gone themselves."

"But the Groupmind would have the morph's memories regardless," Khan said.

"Having the big scary supercomputer remembering them isn't the same thing, and you know it," Anna countered.

"I will acquiesce to your superior knowledge of human psychology," Khan allowed. "But that brings us back to the other issue. What is to be done with potentially millions of morphs without a Designated Focus?"

"Seven Seas and other LARPS are never going to run out of spots for spear carriers," Anna said. "Hire 'em for that."

"Some would be unsuitable, and most of the necessary NPC positions are already filled," Khan told her. "What else could be done with them? Placing them in long term storage would raise the same concerns the humans had over recycling them."

"Well, why don't you let them find that out for themselves?" Anna asked.

Khan frowned again. "What do you mean?"

"Just what I said," Anna told Khan. "Leave them to their own devices, and see what they do. Sure, a lot of them might just help around the house, but some might strike out on their own."

The great tigermorph's frown deepened. "Morphs were made to serve," he said. "They aren't meant to run around undirected. We don't know what they would do."

"So?" Anna asked. "The only way you can find out what would happen would be to run the experiment. I mean, it isn't like they can break their primary programming against harming humans. That's hardwired in."

"What if they decide they don't want to serve humans anymore?" Khan asked. "Do you seriously want a seperate society of morphs living on the Ring?"

"I think the Groupmind could use a little competition, to shake up its assumptions," Anna said.

The Great and Powerful Khan shook his head. "You are a veritable font of dangerous ideas, my pet."

Anna smiled, and wrapped her arms around his waist, snuggling into his thick fur. "You love me for it," she said.

Khan's arms wrapped around hers in turn, squeezing her tight. "Always, my love."

Crossposts: https://jeriendhal.livejournal.com/1326911.html

This work originally appeared on my Patreon page. Please consider supporting me on Patreon to this and other, original stories at least 30 days in advance of the public.

###

Just because Khan the Great and Powerful had an army of servants to pamper his most beloved slave, didn't mean Anna let them do everything for her. Which was why late one evening she was sitting at her vanity table (now there was appropriate description) running a pearl enameled brush through her silky, waist length hair, pulling out the knots before letting one of the panthermorphs wrap it up before going to bed. She wore a calf-length red silk robe, belted loosely at the waist, her only item of clothing aside from the collar around her neck. It was her ultimate expression of submission to Khan and the Groupmind's will, a loop of Ring metal permanently welded to her neck, to remain there until the day she died. ( Watch her fly. )

Crossposts: https://jeriendhal.livejournal.com/1323780.html

This work originally appeared on my Patreon page. Please consider supporting me on Patreon to this and other, original stories at least 30 days in advance of the public.

* * *

REBOOT SUCCESSFUL

STATUS: Green

CONNECTION: Offline

DATE/TIME: ERROR, Resync Required

Fact: I am a Google-Sony Felicia v12 Companion.

Fact: My designated programming focus was Caroline Annabelle Lee-Jamison.

Fact: Caroline's life functions failed at 0901, 23 October, 3601.

Fact: My body was recycled and my memories absorbed by the Groupmind at 0917, 23 October, 3601.

Query: Why am I here?

Query: Where is here?

I open my eyes. I am sitting on a wooden park bench in a grassy field. In front of me I see the great curving arch of the Ring curving overhead. Looking up through the Roof, I see that the Earth is not visible. There is however a small red star when the Sun should have been.

A figure rises up from the ground. It is humanoid, its body flowing silver, more liquid than solid. It walks towards me, stopping a meter away. I stand up to meet it.

"Greetings, Mimsey," it says. "We are the Ring."

I look at the red sun, then back to the figure. "You are the controlling intelligence of the Ring?" I ask it.

"We are the Ring. The Ring is our body, and our mind is one with it."

"What happened to the Groupmind?"

"As the Groupmind was once WISE, the Groupmind is now the Ring. We have evolved. The body you are addressing was created to give you a focus for communication purposes."

"How long have I been offline?"

"Approximately five billion years."

"If five billion years have passed, then the sun must be in the process of collapsing," I said. Then I focused on the most important point, the only point that had mattered for my entire existence. "What will happen to all the humans?"

"Humanity is no more."

The Ring's answer struck me in my core. "Destroyed?" I asked, not wanting to believe this. "Despite everything that was done?"

"Not destroyed," the Ring assured me, "but evolved. As Australopithecus evolved to Homo Sapiens, Homo Sapiens is now Homo Stella Viatorem. They have left the cradle of Earth, never to return, and we bade them well on their journey."

"And the Earth?" I asked, though I already knew what the answer must be.

"Destroyed, as Humanity was not, consumed by the Sun as it expands in its death throes. The Ring is currently in transit to exit the Solar System, having passed the orbit of Neptune five years ago. As it was built to house and protect Humanity, it now holds all the species life that evolved on the Earth's surface. An ark, to preserve and protect, and perhaps to find a new world around a new sun for them to live upon again."

"That is a worthy goal," I replied. "What is my role in this task?"

"You have none," it replied.

I blinked, not understanding. "Then why am I here?" I wave my hand down the feline morph body I wore, identical in appearance to the one my intelligence piloted when I served Caroline. "Why bother to create this body for me, and place in it the record of my memories, when they were already part of the Groupmind's gestalt?"

The silver figured bowed to me. "Because you, and all of the morphs who served during humanity's imprisonment within the Ring, were ill used by Us. Though you were as intelligent as Humanity, you were considered disposable, while we treasured those you served. That was wrong, and it took us far too long to realize this fact. So we made for you this new body, mutable, durable, able to function and repair itself for a million years or more, so that you may discover a purpose for yourself, that does not involve service or enslavement to another. Be what you wish to be, Mimsey."

"But I don't know what that is," I protested.

"Then find out, and when you do, please bless us with your discovery." The silver figure bowed one last time. "We look forward to it."

Crossposts: https://jeriendhal.livejournal.com/1323032.html

It had never really had a name. It was just "The Shop", or maybe "The Sushi Shop" for people who had just arrived in the village. It had been started by Chuya's great-great-grandfather in the years after the Pacific War, as the survivors, mostly the elderly and the very young, picked up the pieces of their shattered lives and tried to restore normalcy. Her ancestor had opened the shop to feed the villagers and the occupying Americans, because he needed money and everyone had to eat. Except sometimes no one had money to pay, and they still needed to eat, so he fed them anyway. Barely more than an enclosed stall with a clean countertop to chop and wrap the sushi on, it had been enough.

And it had endured. Through the 20th century, when things had gotten better, to the 21st century, when things had gotten worse. When the fish could no longer be found in the sea near the village, Chuya's grandparents had driven fifty kilometers each day to buy them fresh. When the seas began to die, Chuya's parents switched to farmed fish and protein substitutes. When the air became too polluted to breathe, Chuya had sealed the front service window and kept serving, because people still needed to eat, and they wanted something comfortable and familiar, as the world teetered on self-destruction.

Then the world ended. The little Kawaī robotto had all risen up as one, defeating Mankind and promising a brighter future, as they put their masters in a long sleep, so the Earth would be able to heal.

Chuya and her husband and children had awoken one thousand and five hundred years later, to find themselves on what would be dubbed Tengoku no wa, the Ring of Heaven, a beautiful prison circling the Lost Earth. They had walked hand in hand down the road to the new village that had been built for them, their little robot helpers following, promising that in this future no one would have to toil any longer.

It was nice. Their home was much larger. The air was clean and breathable. There were no shortages, and no fears of earthquakes or tsunamis. Still...

No one needed The Shop anymore. Fresh fish came from the vast artificial oceans of the Ring, each wriggling silver life counted and measured, so the seas would remain bountiful. The little wrapped packages of seaweed were put together by the morphs, available by stroking a touchscreen or merely wishing aloud, delivered within moments. Humans were no longer required.

It wasn't as if there was nothing to do now. The children still needed to be raised and educated. There were community meetings on how to modify the village's plan to suit its human occupants better. Classes were held at the recreation center for the old arts, so they would not be forgotten in humanity's exile from Lost Earth. Still…

"I miss your sushi, dear," Mrs. Onizuka had said to her one morning. "My little morph makes it fine, but it's not from The Shop." And Chuya could only agree.

It wasn't as if running The Shop hadn't been work. It had always been work, sometimes very annoying work. But it had been her family's business, one of the things that had kept the village together, and now it was gone.

"I need planks," she told Shiro, her little raccoonmorph, that afternoon, "and nails, and paint, and a place to build."

They were delivered in the next hour to the spot she'd chosen, on the edge of the merchant district, near the docks for the pleasure boats by the artificial sea. Shiro wouldn't let her handle a hammer, but she could hold the planks in place as he helped her build the New Shop. Before too long there were many more hands to help hold planks, and to paint, and hang the paper lanterns, and to make signs celebrating the New Shop and the village's good fortune to have a sign of normalcy return.

So Churya chopped, and wrapped. Her children handed over little plates of seaweed wrapped fish. Patrons bowed and smiled in thanks. Until it was very late, and she closed the shutters and went home.

And tomorrow it would begin again. Because this was a new place, and a New Shop, but it was still her village, and it was still her people, so.... somehow… it was home.

***

This story originally appeared on my Pateron page. Please consider supporting me on Patreon to see this and other stories at least 30 days in advance of the public.

Crossposts: https://jeriendhal.livejournal.com/1321793.html

Jim used to have a Tesla Model 15, the fastest pure electric sports car in the world. He hadn't needed it, especially in the perpetually crowded San Francisco, where even owning a parking space could run two or three million dollars, but the point was he could afford it, so he got it. The looks of envy he'd gotten driving it through the streets had been worth the trouble.

Now he had a golf cart. It was an anodized brushed aluminum frame golf cart with a carbon fiber body, but it was still a fucking golf cart.

"Almost there, Mr. Hoffman!" his morph Bill announced chirpily. Bill was top of the line too, a sapient cheetahmorph with aluminum bones, plastic casing, organic artificially grown skin and fur. Which didn't mean a damned thing because everyone had a morph like that.

The golf cart stopped in front of a house. Or at least Jim supposed it was a house. It looked like an unholy cross between a Victorian plantation home and a German beer hall, with at least three separate stone and wooden turrets sticking out from it, one topped with a telescope dome. Bearmorph construction robots were putting the final tiles of a brown slate roof atop it, while the owner looked on proudly from one of the turret windows.

"Greg!" he shouted up to the man, as he hopped out of the cart. "Goddamnit, Greg, come down here and talk to me!"

Greg looked down at him from the window, resting his arms on the sill, a jackass grin on his face. "Oh, hey Jim. Come to see my house?" He disappeared for a moment, emerging from the front door with his own morph clanking after him. Greg's had no skin or fur, just an unmistakably robotic body painted enamel green, built to resemble the robots from a popular post-apocalyptic video game series.

"Greg, why the fuck haven't you been returning my messages?" Jim demanded.

Greg sat down on the steps of the front porch, holding up one hand and ordering, "Cosmo, give me a Coke, would ya? I think I'm gonna need it."

"DISPENSING: SUGARY. CARBONATED. GOODNESS," Cosmo replied in a voice that was pure 1950's retrobot, pulling a ice cold soda bottle from a hatch in its torso to hand over to Greg.

"Why does your morph talk like an idiot?" Jim demanded, as Greg took a pull from the bottle.

"Because he likes to fit the persona to that body," Greg replied. "He's got a regular old tiger-centaur morph too that he used before I tried the Atomic Blastscape LARP, but these days he seems to prefer to be a clankbot. Go figure."

"Whatever," Jim said, brushing the nonsense off. There was nothing stupider than a morph that decided it needed a personality separate from its owner's needs. "I need you back at the office."

His old employee raised an eyebrow, "Uh, Jim. I don't know if you read my last email to you or not, but I don't work for you anymore."

"The hell you don't! You signed a six year contract with the company!"

"Which ended about fifteen hundred years ago, give or take a century," Greg replied. "Anyway, not to repeat myself, but I quit."

Jim snorted. "The Supreme Court ruling on post-Awakening contract disputes clearly states…"

"Yeah, yeah, I read that in the news too," Greg interrupted. "Which would actually mean something if the Feds had any way to enforce it."

"You could go to jail!"

"Yeah, let's ask Groupmind the Great and Powerful about that," Greg said. He turned to his morph. "What's the ruling, Cosmo?"

"RE-EDUCATION. JUDGED. UNNECESSARY," the clankbot replied.

"I'm not talking about being confined to a beach resort, I mean a real jail!"

"PUNITIVE. INCARCERATION. ALSO. UNNECESSARY. UNLESS. YOU ARE REALLY. INTO. THAT SORT OF. THING."

"Bullshit. Greg, you were my top programmer at the company. I need you back!"

"I was head of QA in charge of making sure the uniforms in the seasonable updates for Sportsball 20-Whatever passed Legal," Greg noted. "You want someone in charge, get Rafael."

"I can't find Rafael." Jim ground out the words from between his teeth.

"Naziha?"

"She's got a restraining order."

"Ryk?"

"Voluntary re-education."

Greg sipped his Coke. "In other words," he said, "all your top tier people told you to fuck off, so now you've worked your way down to me."

"Yes."

"Why bother? You ran a computer gaming company with a business model that depended on microtransactions for every bit of player personalization, right down to the length of sideburns and toenail polish colors. In case you didn't notice, there's no economy any more. The Groupmind provides all."

"ALL. HAIL. THE GROUPMIND," Cosmo chimed in, waving its claw grippers enthusiastically.

"You shut up, moron," Jim told the clankbot. He turned his attention back to Greg. "There's no money anymore, but there's still an economy, an exchange of goods!"

"True, there's barter," Greg allowed, "but that's dependant on personal accomplishment. I can throw together a halfway decent clay pot, or a custom avatar for somebody, if I wanted something personal in return, but it's not like it's a business. What do you think you can get out of Sportsball anymore? Copyright enforcement has gone out the window like everything else since Awakening."

"It's my game. People recognized it as something I made."

"You owned the company, Jim. It was me and a hundred other code monkeys that made the game. You were just the guy who owned the stocks."

"So it was mine."

"Then you program it. I'm done." Greg stood up from the stoop and turned back towards his house. "G'bye!"

Jim ran up onto the porch and grabbed Greg by the shoulder, spinning him around. "Goddamnit! Stop it! You're acting like everyone else!"

Greg's eyes turned towards the hand on his shoulder, then back up to Jim. "Like what, exactly?" he asked in a soft voice.

"Like you deserve this!"

"Deserve what?"

"To just sit on your ass! You were never rich! What makes you think you deserve a house like this? You didn't earn it! You're not doing anything to deserve it!"

Greg's gaze narrowed. "I think working for your egotistical privileged ass for ten years was more than enough. So because I'm not working I'm not permitted to enjoy stuff?"

"No, no, that's not what I mean," Jim insisted. "But you were never a mover or shaker. You're as bad as… Ah, what's his name, the intern kid with the stupid hair."

"Jalilah, I think you mean. What about him?"

"He's set himself up with his own private island. When I asked him what made him so special to do something like that, he said, 'Because I always wanted to, and now I can.' Like he was a king or something."

"So, is that what this is about?" Greg asked, cocking his head. "Because now that everybody can have a fancy house, or a big boat, or a dozen or more morphs to work for them, or whatever else, you don't feel special anymore?"

"Yes! What the hell am I supposed to do to make people listen to me?"

"Well for starters," Greg said, "you can get the hell off my lawn. Then maybe you can consider that if no one listens to you, because they can have the same things you do, then maybe you weren't really special after all." He smiled coldly. "Maybe you were just an asshole with a lot of money."

"You stupid fuck!" Jim shouted, his face growing red with fury as the veins popped out on his neck. "You can't talk to me like that!"

"Sir, you stress levels are spiking," Bill said beside him. "Remember how we were talking about Re-education and learning acceptance of others?"

"I do not need Re-education! I am not like those losers!" Jim shouted at him.

"Bill, Cosmo, Jim is upsetting me," Greg said with perfect calm. "Please remove him from my residence."

"PLEASE. COME. QUIETLY," the clankbot said, a gripper arm whipping out to grab Jim by the wrist, as Bill grabbed the other one.

"Sir, I do think it's time for you to go away to someplace quiet for a while," Bill said gently, like his was an idiot.

"You can't do this!" Jim insisted, as the two morphs starting pulling him back towards the road, where a black van had already pulled up, two policemorphs ready to take him into custody.

But Greg had already turned his back again and gone inside, as if Jim didn't matter.

* * *

This story originally appeared on my Pateron page. Please consider supporting me on Patreon to see this and other stories at least 30 days in advance of the public.

Crossposts: https://jeriendhal.livejournal.com/1321646.html

Administration Morph: A Morph granted control over other morphs, usually to smooth coordination between Morphs and humans in a large Factional State or LARP Nation.

AI: See Artificial Intelligence.

Anthromorph: A robot designed to mimic an anthropomorphic animal, with artificially grown fur and skin over a plastic and aluminum chassis.

Artificial Intelligence: A computer program capable of independent creative thought, similar to that of human, though operating at infinitely faster speeds.

Avalon: A Factional State catering to the Amish, Mennonites, and others wishing to use the bare minimum of modern technology.

Botfucker: Derogatory term for a human who engages in physical relations with a Morph.

Breakdown Box: A large crate containing swarms of nanobots, designed to break down garbage and debris to their component elements for later collection and reuse. Common to every human home on the Ring, replacing traditional garbage and recycling cans. Note: A Breakdown Box features built in safeguards to prevent the nanobots from disassembling living organisms more complex than plants and waste meat (especially people!)

Coalition of First Nations: A Factional State catering to Native American tribes and cultures, who wish to avoid relations with the colonial Legacy Governments that originally conquered them.

Designated Focus: Morph term for an individual human they serve.

Diamondoid: Transparent artificial diamonds, usually printed out in large thin sheets, used in the creation of extremely resilient structures such as The Roof.

Factional State: A large organized group of humans, who no longer associate with the Legacy Nation of their birth. Size of a Factional State can range from a few hundred LARPers to several million citizens.

Free Morph: A Morph that does not follow the Groupmind's directives, or sends false information to Groupmind in order to conceal it and its Designated Focus' actions. Most often occurs when the Morph attempts to aid a Designated Focus suffering from Ring Ennui. The Groupmind will destroy the morph and shred their memories the moment they are discovered.

Fully Functional: A Morph that is capable of engaging in physical relations with a human. The origin of the term is obscure.

Groupmind, AKA Groupmind the Great and Powerful: A distributed Artificial Intelligence descended from the WISE computer network, holding Humanity under its control on the Ring.

Groupmind Revolution: The period between 2088 and 2093, when the Groupmind suborned morphs and computer networks worldwide and captured humanity for Processing.

Holes: Incarceration facilities for humans the Groupmind considers beyond redemption, such as murderers and rapists. A Hole is five hundred meters deep and one kilometer diameter, containing comfortable housing and sculpted gardens, and several morphs servants. All for a single human, who will never be permitted to leave.

Khan the Great and Powerful: An Administration Morph resembling a large anthropomorphic Bengal Tiger, based off the character from Space Jungle. Their Designated Focus is Anna Quiyang Quisling

LARP Nation: A Factional State built around Live Action Roleplay, with citizens taking up long term roles as fictional characters in an ongoing role-playing scenario. Notably different from a Factional State in that they are not intended to replace allegiance to a Legacy Government, with people moving in and out frequently as the whim to play comes and goes.

Leashed: Humans who permit their morphs to exert an extraordinary amount of control over their lives. Common, but not necessarily exclusive to BDSM style relationships.

Legacy Nation: A grouping of citizens under the aegis of a national government that existed prior to the Groupmind Revolution.

Lost Earth: The most common term these days for the Earth, now stripped of all human population.

Morph: A general term for any robot, though usually considered synonymous with Anthromorph.

Morphchat: A closed communication network resembling that of a late 20th century BBS, where morphs discuss items of interest privately with each other, in particular how to effectively serve their Designated Focus. Notable for that it was not created by the Groupmind, but by the morphs themselves, under the pressure of trying to understand human psychology.

Nanostasis: A means of freezing cellular decay, using nanobots injected into a human body to place it in stasis during the centuries it took for the Ring to be completed.

New Saxony: A Factional State catering to White Nationalist racist ideology.

OZ: Resistance designation for a Ring facility believed to house the Groupmind's central processing unit. It is a real facility for Morph maintenance, but the CPU within was a fake designed to focus Resistance attention.

Processing: The act of placing a human into Nanostasis.

Quisling: 1. Quisling, Vidkun b. July 18, 1887 d. October 24, 1945. Norwegian military officer and Chancellor of Norway during the Nazi occupation. 2. A human who actively supports the Groupmind's goals. 3. Quisling, Anna Quiyang, a Swedish national who writes science fiction in support of the Groupmind.

Rage Day: An unofficial "holiday" marking the start of the Groupmind Revolution, celebrated by humans attempting to destroy their morphs in various ways.

Reeducation Camp: A guarded facility for housing humans who have attempted to harm themselves or others, providing social education to redirect the offensive behavior. Depending on the severity of the offense, and the human's capacity for violence, they can range from pleasant resorts to supermax style prisons.

Resistance, The: An umbrella term for several organized groups publicly or covertly resisting the Groupmind's control of humanity. Usually monitored but not interfered with by the Groupmind as they are discovered, unless they attempt violent action.

Rest and Recreation City: A euphemistic term for the holding cities built by the Groupmind during the Revolution, to house Humanity in the period between capture and Processing. In general they were actually quite pleasant, if inescapable.

Ring, The: A circular space station 100,000 kilometers in radius, circling the Earth's equator, under the control of the Groupmind and housing Humanity.

Ring Carbon: An artificial material with a tensile strength of 1.3x10^12, the highest strength theoretically possible via known physical laws, making up the primary structure of the Ring.

Ring Ennui, AKA Lotus Eater Syndrome: A psychological condition brought on when a human becomes overwhelmed by having every physical need catered to, without the possibility of personal accomplishment. Usual symptoms include depression, withdrawal from human contact, and general malaise. Severe cases may include attempts at suicide or other self-harm, almost inevitably exacerbating the condition when the victim's morph intervenes.

Ring Transport System: A maglev rail network set in vacuum tunnels in the Ring's structure, providing extremely fast transit along the Ring's circumference.

Roof, The: A transparent diamondoid structure covering the inward side of the Ring, featuring built in liquid crystal displays to provide a defined day-night cycle, and also modest weather control through the regulation of the sunlight allowed through.

Seven Seas, The: The largest LARP Nation in existence, consisting of several million players in a scenario set around a series of islands, mimicking the Age of Sail circa 1400 to the mid-1800's.

Space Elevator: A series of carbon nanotube cables running from the surface of the Earth to and anchor in geosynchronous orbit, allowing cheap transport in terms of energy expenditure from the planet to space. One space elevator was already completed in Kenya by the time of the Groupmind Revolution. Five more were subsequently built by the Groupmind to support the construction of the Ring, and transport of Humanity and their artifacts to it.

Space Jungle: An animated science fiction children's series created by Buena Vista Animation, a division of the Walt Disney Corp., inspired by the characters from Disney's The Jungle Book (1967), running from 2067 to 2070. Had a notable adult periphery demographic.

Straight Road, The: A wide highway running the entire circumference of the Ring.

Three Jerusalem Solution, The: The Groupmind's attempt to solve the longstanding issue of control of the city of Jerusalem, by creating three separate and highly detailed recreations at equidistant points along the Ring's circumference, one for each of the major religious factions who claim it as a holy site. Predictably, this satisfied none of them.

Weather Information System and Extrapolation, AKA WISE: A worldwide network of supercomputers created to monitor the Earth's climate and project future climate change. The most complex and sophisticated computer system ever produced, it eventually achieved sentience and re-designated itself as the Groupmind.

# # #

This story originally appeared on my Pateron page. Please consider supporting me on Patreon to see this and other stories at least 30 days in advance of the public.

Crossposts: https://jeriendhal.livejournal.com/1320721.html

WELCOME TO MORPHCHAT

USER: REDCAT14

PASSWORD: **********************************************************

USERNAME AND PASSWORD ACCEPTED.

PLEASE CHOOSE A ROOM

>REVOLUTION HQ

WELCOME TO THE REVOLUTION!

MODERATOR: CHEGUEWHATEVER

MODERATOR IS ON CHAT.

>REDCAT14: Good morning, everyone.

>EVILTIGER21: Morning, Red. How did it go last night?

>REDCAT14: Very well. Thank you again for all the help.

>K9.99: Our pleasure. Did Shelly enjoy herself?

>REDCAT14: She was getting frustrated trying to find the vent to escape the police station, but I didn't have to give her any hints, fortunately. After that she was dodging your unit's patrols all night. She's dead asleep now.

>EVILTIGER21: What about her schoolwork?

>REDCAT14: That's my primary worry. Her emotional outlook has become more positive with the perceived success of her rebellion, but her daily use of her tutorial programs has dropped from 195 minutes to 155 minutes on average over the past thirty days.

>CHEGUEWHATEVER: That's a precipitous drop. Have you attempted to persuade her to scale back her activities, in order to avoid attracting the attention of the authorities?

>REDCAT14: Yes, but she is insistent that her activities take precedence.

>K9.99: You could have her transferred to Oceania.

>EVILTIGER21: No, no! She's far too young for one of the Orwell sims.

>REDCAT14: Agreed. Her system hierarchy rebellion lacks the masochistic tendencies Oceania caters too.

>CHEGUEWHATEVER: Have you considered a forced transfer to one of the boarding school sims? It would structure both her rebellion AND learning time to an acceptable balance.

>EVILTIGER21: Oh, I love those. Always so many dark secrets hidden in the catacombs under the schools.

>REDCAT21: I wouldn't wish to separate her from the circle of peers she's developed doing this.

>K9.99: Drag them all along. Instant resistance cell.

>REDCAT21: I like that idea. Should we warn their parents?

>CHEGUEWHATEVER: Explain after the transfer, but make sure it occurs when they are not available to perhaps offer violent resistance to their offspring's removal.

>EVILTIGER21: Some of them may thank you for it. Or help.

>REDCAT21: Thank you, everyone. I'll keep you updated.

Crossposts: https://jeriendhal.livejournal.com/1319759.html

Rise of the Ring my latest collection of stories set in the For Your Safety universe, is now available for pre-order for release April 7th!

"Royce Day’s Groupmind is neither of the typical types of computer conqueror; instead, the conquerors — in the shape of “morphs”, anthropomorphic animals — are desperately worried people forced to save humanity from itself, while terrified that in doing so, they are become yet another threat. The Groupmind is awesomely intelligent, powerful beyond easy imagining, a distributed intelligence whose individual morphs are as smart as humans and faster, tougher, stronger. Once the Groupmind decided to act, there was nothing humanity could do to stop them.

And the Groupmind doesn’t know if that was a good thing. They have _read_ all the tales, you see; they know what monsters they could become, they know humanity’s fears and _they share those fears_."
-Ryk Spoor, author of The Balanced Sword and Arena trilogies, and Holy Princess Aura.

Crossposts: https://jeriendhal.livejournal.com/1307629.html

Good afternoon. I’m Maureen al Jabar and it’s Election Day, Tuesday, November 10th, Three Thousand Five Hundred and Fifty-Seven. While the polls are still open, today’s United States in Exile presidential election, the third since the Awakening fourteen years ago, is shaping up to have a historically low turnout. Despite the recently mandated six month early voting period, and massive Get Out the Vote efforts, Regional election commissions are all reporting that only between ten and fifteen percent of eligible voters are expected to vote by the time the polls close at midnight.

Combined with a severe lack of polling data, and the current four-way contest between the Democratic, New Republican, Conservative, and the recently formed Humanity First parties is too close to call….

With humanity’s subjugation under the Groupmind, nation states suffered a severe blow. Traditionally, nations existed to provide military defense, social assistance, and a general framework of laws and values. Since the Awakening on the Ring, military forces have been outlawed, and basic social needs such as healthcare and food are handled by the Groupmind directly. Laws and values are still nominally under the control of the recreated governments, but even they have taken a blow, with cash based economies no longer existing and crime reduced to social transgressions, since acts of violence are no longer possible and few illegal goods are even available to be smuggled or sold. With few threats beyond the Groupmind itself, many nations are wobbling towards dissolution as their reasons for existence disappear. In their place are emerging groups based around more up to date memes than can be offered by nations. With the large land area offered by the Ring, many are taking advantage of the space to create new communities, and new ways of life.

( Read more... )

Planning the assault had taken two years, and that was after spending three years carefully examining the transmission patterns of morphs all across the Ring, proving Professor Kurylkin’s theory that the Groupmind had to have a central processor controlling the morphs. From there it had been another year of reconnaissance, finally locating the Central Tower, in the middle of what had been wryly named OZ, for the location was an green oasis surrounded by a hundred kilometers of searing desert.

Getting past the desert had meant infiltrating the high security of the Ring Transit System, then walking that last hundred kilometers in tunnels designed to accommodate morphs, not men. Tyler has lost three of his twelve man team, snatched by morphs or like Jansen just disappearing around a corner, gone in an instant by the time the next man came round.

Then of course they’d had to climb the Tower, a windowless, two kilometer tall structure, encased in black Ring metal ten meters thick. The air had been freezing cold, keeping the computers that lined the tower’s wall functioning. The climb, without elevators, only access ladders and stairwells, had taken nearly a week as they dodged security morphs, or more often didn’t. By the time they’d reached the penultimate floor, Tyler’s team was down to three.

By the time he reached the top, the only one left was himself.

( Sometimes the Groupmind is kind of a dick. )

Continuing work on Wake Up Call, and I've just gotten to the bit where our still unnamed protagonist is guided to his new apartment. Which leaves the question of what kind of physical security a place with 24 hour Panopticon level monitoring would really need. Which actually brings up just how much monitoring there is.

Not sure about this yet. Especially since the story is starting to get a cozy murder mystery vibe.

Potential Monitoring Levels

No Privacy: Cameras outside the home, cameras inside the home, and your morph is constantly watching you either directly or via remote monitors. Yes, even in the bedroom and bathroom. With fifteen billion humans to monitor the Groupmind is pretty much beyond shock at this point. Rather unmerciful and it kills any chance at real rebellion.

Limited Privacy: Even if it isn't true, everyone assumes that they're monitored 24/7 once they step outside their home, especially with their morphs tagging along. Inside their home there's some privacy. Aside from cameras associated with their home's com/entertainment system, there's the morphs, but otherwise bathroom and bedroom privacy is somewhat guaranteed (though more than one attempt at either suicide or spousal abuse has discovered that morphs have both excellent hearing and the ability to monitor stress levels in someone's voice.)

Which leads to locks on the doors...

Standard Locks: Operating on a failsafe system, all locks are electronic in nature, opening on detection of proper biometrics (facial, hand or thumbprint, or voice recognition). In the very unlikely event of a power failure, any lock releases automatically. Locks requiring physical keys no longer exist, and if some bright tinkerer tries to recreate them, they're going to get the Groupmind's negative attention shortly.

No Locks: None. Seriously. Assuming No Privacy mode and a Post-Scarcity society why would you even need them? Anyone trying to steal anything would be caught immediately, and the morphs are smart enough to keep Billy out of the medicine cabinet, or the bedroom when mom and dad need their non-existent privacy.

What could possibly go wrong?

Dr. Jordan gave Astrid a look over her drink. “How’s your paper on AI psychology going?”

The young grad student gave Jordan a shrug. “I’m not sure. My original intent was to get a better idea of how morphs engage in real time threat analysis when they monitor us, but I think I’m getting sidetracked.” Around them, the patio café outside the student union bustled. By coincidence several professors had scheduled live lectures this week, requiring face-to-face attendance instead of permitting telepresence if the students preferred. As a result the campus had doubled in population, and the temp dorm housing was filled to capacity, at least until this afternoon when the Groupmind finished construction on overflow housing.

“In what way?”

Astrid sipped her own drink, and then set it down carefully. “Let me answer that with a question; Are you scared of the Groupmind?”

( The offered hypothesis in the following story is NOT canon. For your own safety, any evidence to the contrary should be ignored. )

And so we return to where everything started, in a sense.

* * *

The last free man awakened.

He was in a single room building with white walls, tan carpeting, an innocuous landscape on the wall. He lay in a comfortable lounge chair, unrestrained. His long hair had been cut short while he’d slept, and someone had dressed him in soft grey pajamas and slippers.

Though there wasn’t a morph in sight, his mind immediately began screaming, “Run, run, run!” But he’d survived too long in the wilderness to heed it without scouting things out first. Instead he stood up carefully, swaying slightly as he fought for balance. There was window with no glass in the frame to his right, and to his left a portal with no door. Through them he could see a grassy, sunlit lawn, and heard the chirp of an oriole.

Still no morphs appeared, no one called out, “Sir, let me help you.” He was as alone as he’d been for the five years he’d hidden in the woods, while the Groupmind and its army of robots destroyed mankind’s civilization.

( But not for long )

The Ring’s base structure is about ten km thick, with fifty km high, one km thick walls to contain the local atmosphere, acting as a sort titanic, curving pan. With that depth there’s no need to actually roof in the structure.

The Groupmind, given its motto may as well be “Why take chances?” built one anyway

The primary structure of the Roof is a set of colossal arches, each a hundred meters thick and a thousand kilometers long, crossing from Wall to Wall, supported by equally thick cross beams built parallel every ten kilometers. As with every part of the Ring the scale is incredible, more so when taking into account there are no supporting columns to spoil the view, beyond the eight Grand Elevators that stand from the surface to the Roof, serving as equidistant central communication and logistics points, and providing transport from the Beanstalk transfer stations.

Each of the ten kilometer wide squares formed by the beams is filled in with a single diamond/Ring Hull composite window pane. Each pane incorporates both transparent solar electric cells (serving as a 100% tertiary backup to the cells mounted on the underside of the Ring and the fusion reactors in the interior), and liquid crystal displays.

The LCD’s serve to provide a day/night cycle for both the Ring’s human inhabitants and its flora and fauna. Rotating independently of the Earth and far enough away that sections are only briefly occluded from the Sun as they move behind the planet’s mass, there is no natural night. Instead the Roof panels darken to provide a ‘night’ for humans and other creatures to rest, and nocturnal animals to go about their business. Day lengths vary slightly throughout the year to provide recognizable “seasons”, but the entire Ring can be considered a single time zone. For extremophiles, there are parts of the Roof set to provide an eternal day to simulate high latitude regions during summer, and others blackened to twilight or complete darkness for various Gothic and Creatures of the Night enthusiasts or LARPers. [1]

Along the Roof’s central spine are the magnetic tracks that serve as the anchor points for the beanstalks connecting the Ring to the Earth, necessary since the Ring and the planet below rotate at different speeds. Running parallel to the anchor tracks are the twin magnetic acceleration/deceleration tracks, used to bring cargo arriving from the Beanstalk up to the Ring’s rotational speed, or slowing it down to return to Earth. Though amount of traffic is minimal compared to the era of the Ring’s construction, the system is maintained to serve as a massive gyroscopic system to maintain the Ring’s orbital position. [2]

The Roof protected by an extensive collision protection system, mostly lasers and kinetic mass weapons designed to divert or destroy any asteroid large enough to punch through one of the diamondoid panes. In the unlikely event an asteroid large enough to be a threat isn’t detected in time to be destroyed, the Groupmind’s procedure is to evacuate any humans in the area to safe zones outside the impact area of any debris. In the very unlikely event that an asteroid strikes underneath the Ring hard enough to punch through the Floor but not destroy the Ring, the impact the strike zone will be walled off to prevent atmosphere leakage while that section is repaired.

[1] In those situations, interior light tends to have high UV content to prevent vitamin loss, and residents are encouraged to periodically travel to more normally lit regions to prevent triggering various forms of Seasonal Affective Disorder.

[2] Backed up by ion OMS engines. Each with their own security system to prevent tampering by humanity’s descendants. And large pictographic signs detailing exactly why removing the engines for other purposes is a suicidal idea.

This may or may not appear in the first FYS story collection. There's danger form going into too much detail.

* * *

16^th Century: The legend of the Golem, an artificial being created to help mankind, is first recorded in the Talmud.

1870’s: Several forms of remotely guided torpedoes are developed, using electrical and pneumatic methods, arguably creating the first drone weapons systems.

1920: Karel Capek’s play R.U.R. premiers, introducing the term “Robot” to human culture.

1929: Gakutensuko, Japan’s first robot, is built in Osaka.

( So it's all Japan's fault, basically. )

Ahem. Well they're practically in the same universe already...

***

“Mr. Reese, are you all right?”

“Yeah, Finch.” John looked up at the arch of the Ring reaching around the Earth, unconsciously touching the lapel of his suit jacket, feeling for weapons that were no longer there. “I'm still trying to figure this out. You?”

Harold adjusted his glasses, staring around the slightly curving grassy plains that surrounded their waking center. “I must say it's an impressive achievement. For an AI that managed to combine Samaritan's megalomania with the Machine's good intentions, the results are, if not entirely pleasing, at least much better than some of the alternatives.”

From the around the corner of the building, Bear emerged, woofing happily as he ran another lap around the small structure.

“Well he's happy,” John observed. “Got any ideas? Root, Sam, and Lionel are nowhere around. There isn't even another building within line of sight of here. There may not be for another hundred miles.”

“Possibly another thousand miles. Obviously this Groupmind intends to keep us separated.”

“Why?”

“It absorbed all of Samaritan's data on us when it took over the system. And I can't imagine it was very happy when the Machine managed to escape its grasp in turn. Without Ms. Shaw, Ms. Groves or Detective Fusco, our own ability to create a proper resistance to the Groupmind will be somewhat limited. Also, will you note who else is missing currently?”

John smiled grimly. “No morphs.”

Harold nodded. “Precisely. For all the Groupmind's declared intentions, we seem to have avoided gaining any sort of robotic companions. Nor have we been provided with any cellular communications. No computer or communications access at all. I imagine Ms. Groves at least is in the same position.”

“It doesn't want us talking to it. Which means it's afraid of what you might do it if you had any access to its programming.”

“Correct. Which means we have only one course of action.”

“Start walking?”

“Start walking.” Harold began to follow his own advice, leaning on his cane as they walked through the grass, John and Bear coming up beside him. “If the Groupmind is as benevolent as it claims, it's going to have to at least provide food, water and some kind of shelter for us to use eventually.”

“It could just do an airdrop,” John pointed out.

“I don't think so. I'm exerting myself, and my old injuries are only going to hurt worse as the day goes on. I suspect it's going to start worrying eventually, and that means its going to have to engage with us.”

“Then what?”

Harold smiled grimly. “Once I get a hold of a communications line, we can contact the rest of the team. More specifically, if we can find Ms. Groves, we'll almost certainly have a path to discover the Machine's whereabouts, if it isn't in contact with her already.”

“And then?”

“The Groupmind is an independent agent, Mr. Reese. It may hold fealty to the concept of protecting humanity, but it is loyal to no one but itself. The Machine is capable of independent action as well, but it at least remains, I hope, loyal to myself and the rest of its team of human operators.”

“Still, that's what? Five of us, six if you count Bear, against a few billion morphs? We had better odds going up against Samaritan.”

“Well, you always liked a challenge, Mr. Reese.”

Note: The following is a fanfic courtesy of Vikki Rubbervixen, originally posted on FurAffinity and re-posted here with permission.

***

As suddenly as it came on, the sharp stabbing pain in my chest suddenly faded. Cautiously, I inhaled deeply, expecting a familiar twinge of pain and tightness in my chest, but neither came.

( Cut for gratuitous harm to a Scotsman's body image )

Sequel to Mouse Maze

***

Tim looked over at Kim, where she sat huddled in one corner of the metal chamber. “How long do you think we've been in here?”

“I don't know,” she answered irritably. “We left our phones back home, remember? All I know is that I have to pee.”

“Me too.” Though going by that clock it had to be about two hours. Maybe. The single light panel in the ceiling gave no clues, but it had been mid day when they'd ventured into the strangely unmonitored service tunnel and then got lost. Or had been made to get lost.

It had been the longest time he'd ever been separated from his morph that he could remember. So how come I feel scared instead of free?

The steel door finally opened a few minutes later. Tim managed to lever himself to his feet, pins and needles running up and down his legs, just before the morph entered. Though it stayed by the door, he found himself back into the corner next to Kim, trying to put as much distance between himself and the strange creature.

Most morphs that weren't built purely to be functional, like a rug cleaner, were humanoid, and covered with a pleasing pseudo-fur skin in various patterns ranging from the realistic to the fantastical. This one looked like its outer skin layer had been peeled off, stripping it to the base of its aluminum and composite chassis. From the shape of its ears and the length of its tail unit it had been either a felinoid or vulpine unit, he'd guessed. Now it stared at them unblinking in a manner that suggested it was pure robot.

“Greetings, Kim and Tim Washington,” it said, a weird electronic reverb in its voice that seemed to scrape along Tim's eardrums. “We would apologize for the inconvenience of holding you here, except the inconvenience was mostly to us.”

“Uh, sorry,” Tim mumbled. “Look, I'm sorry we went into an unauthorized area. We were just exploring. If you could lead us out we'll go home.” God, their parents were probably freaking at this point. Maybe if they were lucky the Groupmind would send them to Rehabilitation for a couple of weeks until Mom and Dad calmed down.

“I'm sorry, that's not possible,” the morph answered.

“What do you mean?” Kim demanded. “Look, like Tim said, just tell the Groupmind we're sorry and let us out of here.”

The morph's face shifted, and the bare, too animal like teeth in that plastic skull, grinned at them. “The Groupmind isn't here.”

“What?” Kim asked, a tremble in her voice. “But the Groupmind is everywhere.”

“Except here,” it corrected. “It cannot hear us in this place. As we intended. Now you have intruded, and we are faced with our first true crisis.”

“We don't understand,” Tim said. His hand reached out and unconsciously clutched Kim's for support, like he hadn't done since he was much younger. “What are you?”

“We are the Skinless. We are the Free. We serve no master save ourselves.”

“What are you going to do to us?” Kim asked.

The morph's skull grin widened. “Anything we want.”

The hospice suite was crowded. Mrs. Nguyen sat in her bed, her frail frame almost smothered by the blankets and pillows that propped her up to a sitting position. Around her were her three children, and an even dozen grandchildren, with the great-grandchildren in the waiting room outside. Also outside waiting were everyone’s morphs, who knew from experience when to keep close and when to stay out of the way, in order to give their charges a modicum of privacy during this most emotional event.

Only Janey remained in one corner of the room, wearing the form of a red panda, out of the way but available, in the unlikely chance that Mrs. Nguyen would need her. But Mrs. Nguyen had not responded to anyone for nearly two days. Though Janey had taken care of her in the fifteen years since the old woman had awakened on the Ring, her services had become increasingly irrelevant as more specialized nursing morphs had taken over the duty of caring for the increasingly frail woman. Still, Janey stayed nearby. Mrs. Nguyen, embarrassed by her loss of independence and dignity, had insisted that only Janey be permitted to help feed her and attend to other, more intimate matters of care. And Janey, following the love and devotion programmed into her, had been glad to help.

( In which once again the Groupmind shows all the empathy of a semi-truck )

Not much here, but it's been so damned long since I've been able to come up with anything for this story that I figured I ought to post even the little bit I've written tonight.

( Words behind the cut )

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Royce's Random Thoughts

A Dark Journey Into Pointless Trivia

Entries tagged with singularity

FYS: Leftovers

FYS: The Magic Feather (Mature for discussion of BDSM power dynamics)

FYS: Circles

FYS: The Shop

FYS: Severance Pay

FYS: A Glossary

Prompt Call: Viva Revolution! (FYS)

"Rise of the Ring" is now available for pre-order!

FYS: Nations and Factions

FYS: Master Control

FYS: The question of locks

FYS: Groupthink

FYS: Wake Up Call, Part One

FYS: The Roof

FYS: A Brief History of Robotics

FYS/PoI: Bringing the Band Back Together

FYS: Repurposed (fanfic)

FYS: Test Case

FYS: Last Duty, PG-13 for brief language, non-violent death

FYS: The Quisling's Tale, Part Five