This ongoing work in progress is entirely a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed within are entirely fictional and any resemblance to people, living or dead is coincidental.
No part of the work may be reproduced in any form without the explicit permission of the author.
Copyright Ion Fyr 2022
Luc thought for a moment, keeping his vision focused on the structure, until, turning his head slightly, to make eye-contact, as difficult as that was with the effects of the camouflage field superimposing landscape textures and colors over the part of Etelka’s face that were exposed by the hood.
“My history is somewhat shaky on the matter; schools only teach the minimum needed to groom little workers. But,…” Lucy seemed to sight during his pause, “as they tell it—like the mouthpieces of the ruling elite they are—not that far from this period in time, after computers went from analogue to digital, their complexity became such that they developed minds of their own.
“This coincided with society’s reliance on these computing systems for running the infrastructure and keeping the economy going. By the years leading up to year 0, which I think corresponds to 1971 or something in your calendar, the computers—now effectively sentient—were ruling, and the people, especially the people who came from power and wealth, wanted to take back control.
“Again, my knowledge of the War is sketchy. They tell us in the cinema and video feeds that the noble and brave armies of the founding corporations kill off the AI or AIs—it varies as to whether it was a single AI or an interlocking collective of them….It could be that even the AI itself didn’t know
“This reminds me of an experiment that was done by a group of transhumanists early on—they were fringe folk early on, before modifications became relatively safe. Back before you could get these things with buffers.
“Anyway, a group that I heard about…maybe 10 or 12 people, hooked their brains together; all of them were wired with drives and interfaces, and so they plugged themselves in to a hub…I really am going somewhere with this….” Luc continued
“What happened was that once the protocols synced, the whole group be came more than just connected. They became kind of like a single mind. Even to the point of speaking all together in unison. They also initially seemed to enter an orgasmic state.”
Etelka, blushing under her hood and camouflage, tried to imagine it, and could only come up with a vague feeling of horror at a group joining their innermost thoughts.
“The men and women involved in those first experiments, did not fare well. Many gradually became unable to act as individuals afterwards…they were said to be listless and withdrawn when disconnected.
“The groups developed unusually personality traits when linked as well. Tendencies and opinions that did not seem to be present in the individuals involved.”
Etelka thought Luc had gone completely off topic at this point: “Luc, if I may ask, what does this have to do with AIs?”
“When they are networked, they also develop faculties that seem to exceed the sum of the components,” answered Luc. “That is said to have been the start of the problem.”
“What is Nila doing here, then, if this is the birth of your World Congress of Commerce?” She asked. “She absolutely hates the WCC.”
“That I don’t know. Her impulsiveness always gets her in trouble.”
“How is it that you tracked her here?” He continued.
“Remember the Everittite tablet I showed you? The one that some of us in the 19th century use to communicate with one another across distances? She asked.
Luc remembered the device, a small greenish screen made of some mountain crystal that he had never seen before. The rectangle of brass (or was it bronze) with dials and knobs to connect its frequencies with a similar device far beyond the horizon.
“Well, I had an idea and tinkered with it and some left over parts from the chronoportal engine from Baba Yaga’s Hut, and came up with this.” Without moving her rifle from its position she reached into her coat and pulled out a new looking green leather case, light green like the color of certain lichens that grow on subarctic boulders. To an untrained eye, it looked superficially like a book with a protective jacket, the brass-bronze metal edging like the gold-painted paper edges of 19th century bound books.
She unsnapped a flap and folded the leather cover to the back side. This one had more dials and knobs and included cylinders inscribed with numbers, in clumps of two or three embedded in the right margin of the metal case surrounding the small dark green screen. Along the left side there appeared to be two lenses that faced the direction opposite the screen.
“I attuned this device to track Miss Tagore’s whereabouts in both space and time. You’ll have to promise me to keep that part a secret between us Mr Maron.” She toggled a switch beneath the dials on the right margin and the screen turned from dark green to a slightly glowing chartreuse. “It would be brighter in darker circumstances…, but observe the screen as I adjust the focus of the lenses…”
The a figure of sorts came into view—as glowing charicature, that probably was Nila, inside the image of structure. The walls of the metal building, and the slope of the mountains were like a film hanging in monochromatic space. The cylinders on the right were mostly silent and still. A row seemed to show the date in the old calendar: 4.6.23xx 14:32:46 (he guessed the latter was the time of day: hours, minutes and seconds, given the rate the far left counter was spinning).
Etelka guessed what Luc was questioning. “You may be correct in assuming that the clock is not so much our time—it is at the moment—but it is, rather, Nila’s time, the time when she was to be at this location. That’s how I knew to come to this place at this point in time; I matched Baba Yaga’s Hut’s clock to this one, rather close in proximity to Nila’s departure, which, going against my fears of using the device to know the future, will be likely facilitated by ourselves in a few moments.”
Luc gestured with his head at the device, at the screen. “What’s that other thing, near Nila but not as bright?”
“I am not sure. It could just be a matter of adjusting the focus,” Etelka speculated, then made some fine adjustments.
The form to which Luc had been referring had been indeed out of focus, though when resolved, it was still difficult to make out what it was.
A form writhed throughout the structure, piercing the anthromorphs, which now registered on the screen as marionettes manipulated by the tendrils of the form. The core of the form, though, lay superimposed on a very large bank of gears and rods and other mechanical devices, forming etherial gears in the space surrounding it.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before…it’s like the phantoms that sometimes appear on these devices somehow have become mated to the thinking machine in there.
Ion Fyr 