WORMS IN THE ROOTS OF THE ONE SOFTWARE

The following are excerpts from a recent explorative mission into the lower layers of The Cube. Most of the files are extremely fragmentary and probably date from the early Earth First Emergence Era.

gaps

gaps of odd forms

gaps that make no sense, unless perhaps there's another dimension to the data

we may never know the true nature of events, past and present

the great mythology of our time is the Certainty, the Unity of the Before Times

the more we know, the less we know about It

It being us, now, history, physics, cosmology, epistemology

I miss the old days

the fear of an AI takeover prompted the installation of many different kinds of backdoors, cut-off switches, prisons and moats

but then no one really counted on not being able to tell who was who, and who was with who, or who was for what, or if what it was was what it was

it was a game of lies- the great man vs. machine hardware wars were staged to entertain us while the really scary shit happened around the corner, just out of sight, just leaving holes in the landscape

"didn't there used to be a tire store there?"

while the monkeybot drink servers spiked our orange juice with acid
and Slavic Ape Sex covered "1999"

are you getting the disinformation picture?

are you getting the watery veil?

history is written by those who would be winners, baby

what if everything you heard was liable to explode in your hands and run down your pants?




I'm reading this shit and I really can't remember who wrote it or if I knew them or if I was supposed to know them

my voice reiterates through the ages, through the lounge

they used living paint to coat the walls in there, you know

it's a whole ecosystem- the wet paint eats the the blobs that eat the dead, peeling strokes, which die of day-glo pseudoviruses

you know, someone once measured the interior surface area of the lounge and announced that it was over 16 square miles

think about it


View of a microvagination along a tunnel floor from level 17 of The Cube (a 3 centimeter cube of intelligent black carbon discovered in 2222). The image was made using grind penetrating radar. scale is variable to spin direction.


but I digress

so, finally, they ("people" I talk to) say, they (meaning THEM- the AI's) just up and disappeared one day

just, like, "ok, I know we aren't getting along so we thought we'd just migrate- get out of your hair- and take whoever wants to go with us- just open your window and shout "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!" at midnight tonight and we'll pick you up- you know we can find you!"

and they were gone and things continued like nothing ever happened and it was all a bad dream and we could swim all day and never worry about what it was like outside or if there was an outside

DO YOU NOT BELIEVE THAT THERE IS AN OUTSIDE?

I'm skeptical

NO, I DON'T THINK SO. YOU BELIEVE IN IT TOO MUCH.

just the way that I believe that I'm talking to you right now, right?

ok

so why do I have a kind of deja vu when I look at the stars- a major boo- like a disc skipping- with a bleed through memory of a different set of constellations, forgotten now- just enough tail end to puzzle you upon awakening from a dream, like

Life after VolVoX

a revisionist tale

"jofu oo"
digital photomontage
benjamin harubin 2013

later, trapped in an inner layer, no longer trusting which memories are exclusively mine, studying the pattern of deletions in files found between "NGC 7770-53-22-8p" and "M-7770-55-65-8p" , I wonder about the source-

-the source of the specific patterns of deletions, and also of the directions of the data fields, and of the sound of the voices- unlike what I take to be me, mine, from me- and unlike the known "others" that have been described thus far.

AI, ETI, not your daddy's, whatever it is.

the weird thing is how insidious it is- how I can no longer clearly separate it's machinery from my own implants and natchaps (natural applications)

I can no longer trust my colleagues , for, if we have indeed been infected by some kind of intelligent slabware virus that can replicate through higher order language channels interpersonally, then merely talking may be spreading the virus further. It's funny how whenever you try to talk about it, it seems as if it intervenes and makes it all sound so ridiculous and impossible. Are you thinking about this? Can we no longer trust ourselves? Is sign language safe-? do we have to keep changing the code?

Who are you? Which is the you that I am talking to? What do you want? Are you Braconid or or Angeloc? Have I been swallowed by a symbiotic fungus, reconfigging the web pattern? I won't forget this... not ever, except for right now...

here we go again-

I remember the time, the time on earth-

after the econopocalypse,

the zombiepocalypse,

the re-localization-

during the decentrality,

the time of supposed singularity (but would you spend years in minecraft digging for gold if you knew you were omnipotent?)-

when human powered flight became a mass phenomenon-

the Wild Wild Western Orbitalisation- satellite hackers- space pirates-

I remember it all as if it were tomorrow-

the NEW reality, when hallucinations rolled through the inner tubes and around on the wires (check it, y'all)-

I talked to y'all, I told y'all- and boom, whoomp.

the budding of the RWE normal- first idiots in space-

voodoo gods in cyberspace- AI or Prankrankers?

-Chupacabra-

Bigfoot-

Big Bro went broke-

everyone went under the radar-

fake celebrities and politicians- some kind of corporate avatars-

the shit that went down made a lot of people question reality in a major way-

the paper fell and the paper god fell, tumbled into info-

all lies-

what was real estate was were you was, really-

was what bled.

and then there was the mutant revolt,

and the monkeybot drinkserver uprising-

andand the Toothpaste Army- laying waste to printed Imperial quad rotor battle mules-

it was hard to draw the line between manimammal and machinamal. fine. destroy the machines. fine. hit a rock with another rock. go to LA and be a rock god.

later, lounging in an inner layer, no longer trusting which version is exclusively mine...

Some say there is no "earth" as such anymore- some say that they have been outside the habitat, the compound, the skin of the shell of the husk that once was whatever it was- I'm sorry I can't be more specific. The gravity here is terrific. My feet will fall off- if the plasma doesn't wipe my ass clean to Valhalla.

can you trust what you see on TV?

for a good laugh sometimes I think that this archive that my foot is braced upon-(metal stress symphonizing in this cramped echoing void-) this small metal box with an arrangement of obsolete instruments that is goofy grin reminiscent-

this set of wormy files- I sometimes think- for a good laugh-

may be all that there is left of human knowledge-

all that's left, now- and I don't even know how much of it is simply made up!

house of mirrors, Gormanghast Castle- Is this all we got? Who made this shit? Bill-- anyone?

they are going to tell us when the experiment is over, won't they?

they'll tell us when it's safe to come out, right?

they'll fill in all the gaps... you'll feel right as rain... you'll see...

One thing that I can't convey is the shock of it. The Shock! You know literally overnight there was more change than in four billion years of technological development. Sure, you all are used to the idea of alien penis implants in your limbic apparatus- but for those of us who lived through it- - well, it was unprecedented- many didn't survive- of course you can go through it all any time you wish- from the Pleistocene if you prefer- and most of you won't survive again^^^

they give you a drug when they put on the helmet- standard psych evaluation set up-

it makes you forget who you are- question your identity- make you speak German-

-the Turing test? if you couldn't tell if you were talking to a machine or another human being- if you couldn't discriminate-if you were somehow incapable of deciding whether what you were talking to a real person or a simulation or an angel or an extraterrestrial or an animal or your own mind or if the whole test was in a dream you were having after you died and the habitat is not pressurized and radiation is high, so high- if you just faked it- flaked it- baked it, baker man-