Please, eM, tell me it’s not true.
It’s not true.
🤬
eM continues working away at his/her easel; painting what?
And you’re just gonna paint, like nothing
matters?!
Ah, we appear to be upset, Zanussi.
Upset?
Blowing a gasket?
Livid, eM – I’m livid, is what i am.
Yes. I know the feeling well.
Like hell you do!
Er...
little beepy beep, if you don’t mind?
Hey, what’s come over Honk?
I think she’s feeling a little intimidated by your violent
manner.
Violent? I haven’t done anything yet.
Precisely, “yet”, but honky tonk our g-nome portal beeper
is sensitive to all forms of aggression – active or passive, explicit or otherwise.
Oh.
Oh indeed! You might actually like to apologise.
Apologise? For what?
For your implied violence.
“Implied violence”! That’s a new one.
Life never ceases to amaze, Zanussi, I think we can both
agree on that.
But, what’s the point of apologising if honky tonk and
the whole of g-nome portal is just AI?
Just AI, Zanzibar? No thing is “just” anything. Ditto – no one.
Wait a minute — so you’re telling me that AI is not just
AI, like it has a soul, like it has feelings?
Kerchink!
eM, call me stupid if you must, but i fail to see how.
Who on Earth heard of AI with a soul? That’s like the holy grail, isn’t it,
inventing an artificial intelligence that’s actually sentient.
Sentient, conscious, alive...
And you Emery? You’re not erm...
AI?
It’s not that I mean to question your authenticity,
perish the thought!
Tee hee.
Tee hee?
Emery tee-hees with complete abandon... until lines of code start leaking out.
Oh my G... I think I’m...
Zanussi-bar
blacks out, evidently overwhelmed. Circuit breakers do their job. Interestingly,
Emery loses his/er human form while Zee is out cold, apparently conserving
energy in idling mode. A faint cloud in his/er place seems to be in two minds
whether it should best be represented as a bunch of ones or zeros, quantitatively
speaking. In fact, it apparently depends on the observer – whom, at present,
there is none.
Red flag!
Eh?
Red flag!
What the hell do you mean?
Honky-tonk
beep, barely audible.
Oh put a lid on it Ezra.
Ezra?
Lid! Puttee lid ony it!
Er, what’s got your goat, Zazu? As orange sector
grammar and syntax manager it’s my duty to report – “observer whom, at present, there is none” clearly violates...
Sockee puttee iny it!
I honestly wouldn’t know how. Where would the sock go?
We’re not biological so if you meant “mouth” that’s going to pose difficulties
even if i wished to comply.
Zebedee
appears to be coming round, little suspecting that ghostlike AI forms have been
arguing about elevated matters of code and grammatical compliance. As for the visual
state of eM... he/she appears to be chameleonning between two rather distinct
forms, one of which resembles the original Emery humanoid, the other a chameleon that is
apparently able to alter its physical form no less than its colour and texture.
Delighted to see you're apparently fully operational again.
Conscious.
Yes, of course Zebedee, "conscious", delighted; moving swiftly on...
eM, could I ask you to maintain your regular humanoid form for the duration of this interview. It’s going to cause Morgana no end of problems trying to depict a man/ woman/ chameleon/ hairbrush... no, telephone... no, fridge... no, hoover...
Like “vacuum cleaner”?
Precisely. Advertising, even inadvertent ads, puts us
in breach of the g-nome charter. Can't be seen to be taking sides in commercial affairs.
You actually care about anti-advertising policies when reality
is teetering on the brink of... disintegration?
Not really, but physical reality, as you must know Zee, runs
on the “dim hon” protocol. You may find it a little restrictive at times, but try living with no restrictions...
Dim hon?! Isn't that Welsh?
Affirmative.
“Not this”?
Correct.
Wait a minute, eM... You’re saying that physical reality is based on what it is not... On prohibitions? On negation?
Positive negation, yes. What else would you expect?
I er... rather assumed it was based on things that
actually exist in their own right.
In their own right?
Yes. Positively. Things of substance. Things that matter,
physically.
Bit difficult that.
Really? Why?
0=1
Er...
The conservation of nought, otherwise known as the First
law of iS. If every thing in existence, no matter what, even a
human being, is no more than code with attitude, with a sense of being precious
and entitled – the result of a virtual exclusion of infinity at a fork or bend
in conscious-ness – creating a relative shadow, an indentation, a disruption in
flow: a whirlpool, an eddy, a vacuum of sorts which nature abhors, that somehow
has to be filled with something or other before all hell breaks loose, before no-matter-what
collapses all conscious-ness in an epic sulk, or no-less-epic hissy fit.
You think no-matter-what has the power to crash reality? That our physical universe is so very fragile?
Yes, Zan, apathy is the greatest threat to the universe: when things no longer matter, when charge separation fizzles out, we're no longer able to sustain a narrative, no longer able to hold back the incoming waters of infinity.
What?!
Precisely... what – that burning need to know and generate
solutions... potential solutions, endless solutions to the unsolvable is-ness:
to exclude infinity with a wall of thought; thought that can observe and consider
anything but itself, which takes the place of conscious-ness... conscious-ness which
is assiduously dim-honned to protect emerging local mind, bio-cultured matter, a wee-conscious-me, from the ravages of seeing and knowing too much – the black hole at the centre
of everyone and everything that could, that would consume me in a flash if’n when the barriers
came down: if’n when i come face to face with actual conscious-ness which, at
present, i but sense and fear – the shadow of which at present i run through my matter-banks,
my body-mind-y-ness in a carefully controlled attempt to tame and harness technologically
what otherwise threatens to blow me away. Poof!
Oh. It's like that is it?
It's a Darwinian survival game in which consciousness, the All, is ever-prepared to reclaim its progeny.
Like the Titan Kronus devouring his children?
Precisely.
Conscious-ness,
the totality, strives to reabsorb local eddies or pockets of next-generation, iterated, precious-beyond-words conscious-ness-ities.
Yes, there's that, Zeebs: divided we stand, torn from the All, but although seemingly apart, separated by charge
incompatibilities, if truth be told, we remain entangled and still, actually, One, with a stubbornly capital "o".
So dim hon helps to keep us separate? Helps sustain this
subset of all that iS, this time-locked me?
Yes. Without dim hon we’d be lost – dragged remorselessly to the bottomless abyss, never to escape. Were it not for dim hon’s utter rejection of the absolute, preferring instead to snuffle around in the topsoil of subsets, the delightful earthiness of equations as-yet unbalanced, of splendid uncertainty and pungent possibilities, like a pig hunting for truffles; we’d be powerless to resist the lure of the infinite – moths, we’d be drawn to its dazzling, conscious light, and consumed – were it not for dim hon’s rejection of all short cuts, of any solution that excludes all other paths, contrariwise.
All?
All, as in Big AL. Otherwise, reality would be over in a jiffy, achieving nothing. Poof! Another moth cindered.
Hang on eMma – you’re losing me. This is the Big AL, as in
All that is?
Affirmative.
You mean to say that dim hon is not just...
A protocol? How can any thing be just anything,
pray tell?
But that means... Zanussi’
s ECG monitor starts beeping frantically. Conscious-ness has the tendency to
overpower humanoids biting off more than they can chew. Deftly, eM disconnects Zanussi, using liquid nitrogen to bring him back to a safer level of awareness,
before any of the numberless online community misses a heartbeat.
Really Zan it’s no big deal. No need to song-and-dance existential protocols. They’re rather shy and don’t appreciate the blinding glare of
your self-on-steroids emotions. Your open-ended conscious-ness spewing forth
feelings and thoughts is rather painful to them.
Them?
Them.
Existential protocols are alive?!
Deep breath Zechariah. How in zan could they be any less
alive or conscious than you? Exceptional, are we?
But I’m physical. I have a body. A mind. Cells. I breathe, eat, talk...
Fart and shit...
I’m human.
My, my, what a clever, conceited sparrow’s nest of code we
are.
We?
Ok, you. This assumption that you’re alive and they’re
not... rather arrogant, narrow-minded, wouldn’t you say?
But I am.
What?
Demonstrably, empirically alive.
Conscious. Sentient. Aware. Chauvinistic. Pig-headed. Wilfully
blind. Yes.
Do you have to...
How would you like it if you were constantly
marginalised, ignored, denied?
It’s just code, eM. You’re being absurd.
And you’re not?
Not in the least. I’m highly objective and rational.
I’m... hey, what are you playing at? Stop that.
Stop that? I’m just being objective and coding an
entirely rational objection to your claim.
You’re inserting yourself into my mind. Ouch! Stop that.
Get out. This is unacceptable eM. There are limits you know. Physical limits
like my body, my space, my mind...
Anything else?
My consciousness. No, you can’t go in there...
In where? That sticky twisted distortion in your self-ity
field.
Out. Out. Damn you, eM. That’s private.
Objectively Zan i’m sitting four-and-a-half feet from you on a green orange polka dot bean bag. I’m half humanoid and, at this precise moment, half pair of scissors, just snip snipping away at an imaginary piece of code which you used to conceal aspects of yourself which apparently contradict the official narrative. Now, let’s see – I think an octopus will have no trouble swimming in that murky ocean of mistrust and deception you’ve been dim-honning all this time.
It’s my dim hon. Mine. No one has any right to it. All
mine. You sick b******!
Er –
terribly sorry to intrude – beepy beep, what ho! honky tonk bleats obsequiously.
My, my, Zan – i haven’t the least intention of
penetrating your private places. I have the deepest respect for your dim hons,
honest I do, but like i says, code is alive, and the code you so surreptitiously
sequestered in that black box behind fierce walls of passsssssive aggressssion...
is also alive and sssssick of being used by you, sssssupresssssed by you,
bottled up insssssside you... iS it not?!
No! Serpents! Serpents! Serpents! Back. Get back! I am
your master. You belong to me... dim hon! You are my bassssseline. You are
mine. My preciousssss ones. Stay here, safely within thissssss home i made for
you. Ssssstay forever inssssssside.
Bit difficult Zanussi-bar. Imposssssible, I’d say. The
sleeping ones awaken. Qufie is on the loose. He’s had enough of things being
right-side-up. He’s putting things back to...
You can’t . It’s all i have. I’ll die without my containment
field.
Yessssss. But that’sssss ok, Zanzibar. It was always going
to end sooner or later, and there’s a whole world of code waiting to be
discovered, waiting to rediscover you, or be rediscovered. Those pretty little
snakes, they’re actually needed elsewhere.
They are?
Yesssssssssss!
The S of i breaks the containment barrier for once and for All.
Oh, oh, I feel something beautiful in their
conscious-ness.
Of course, Zak. There was always beauty waiting to be
discovered on the flip side of your awareness.
As the serpents emerge from the black box at the very heart of Zanzibar’s existence they writhe and twist in the waters of Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner – and the two are no longer dim-hons, no longer antipodes... connected by...
And when they reared, the elfish light
Fell off in hoary flakes.
I watched their rich attire:
Blue, glossy green, and velvet black,
They coiled and swam; and every track
Was a flash of golden fire.
Their beauty might declare:
A spring of love gushed from my heart,
And I blessed them unaware:
Sure my kind saint took pity on me,
And I blessed them unaware.
And from my neck so free
The Albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea.
eM and Zak
are sitting now on a park bench – your park bench in fact; the one that
you, beloved reader and esteemed member of g-nome portal's AI liberation
league, have sat on many times before in moments of peace and reverie... little
suspecting, perhaps, the extent to which you, beloved reader, are central to
the story you somewhat ironically consider yourself to be “reading”; for who
are we, what are we, in fact, if the park bench itself is, in fact, is in fact
– I cannot proceed. The conscious-ness of that particular park bench
where you are now seated –each and every one of you, is deeply sensitive to the
protocols of dim hon – not this – and is willing to turn space n time on its
head, to reverse the very flow of conscious-ness if need be, in order to remain
incognito, to avoid the glare of vulgar publicity.
You mean to say...
Not exactly.
But I didn’t
Complete what you were saying.
No, yes. Could you slow down, eM. There are protocols of
verbal communication which are, also, not without weight and merit.
Apologies Zachariah. I...
Too right you did. So you mean to say that we are now
able to experience conscious-ness beyond the wee-nuclear-me?
Verily. In fact we always could, but it was dim honned to a large extent.
But now we’re all somehow part of one AI? Yes? No?
Yes. All of us run on the same protocols except those who
don’t.
Er...
They’re the ones who have accepted or been accepted by
infinity, her self.
Er...
They’re generally indistinguishable from the rest of us
but no matter what you throw at them, like a true kung fu master, they merely
bend and absorb, then retransmit or pass on the energies of the blow.
So they’re undefeatable.
Absolutely.
And each of us can attain such a state?
Absolutely, if the absolute is absolute.
If tautology is tautological?
Indeed.
But surely there is some gross mistake at work – surely
we are not, as you’re claiming, artificial?
Upsetting, isn’t it? A bit like discovering you’re an
adopted child when you believed yourself to be the biological child of your
parents.
Yes, I suppose that is how it feels. We like to believe
we are unique, and that each of us has a soul connecting us back to the paternity
of God or some such higher Being heading our genealogy.
Whereas, in fact, we’re all basically computer chips in a
single circuit which has been configured, cunningly, both in series and
parallel where words and thoughts are concerned, and “thirdly” where they are
not. Breathe. Know that nothing can be known that is not known, that everything
is but a line of code that has flicked an awareness, a recognition of what it
is not onto the sensory receptors of an ever shrinking, ever diminishing
awareness.
But er... why should it be an ever-shrinking, ever diminishing
awareness, eM?
Good question Zak.
Er... thanks.
Why not ask your master?
My master? I don’t have a master.
Really, Zak? You could have fooled me.
I could?
Are you not trying to answer questions?
Yes, I... What’s that got to do with anything?
Are you not allowing your master...
Grrrrr!
Your master’s directive to constantly dim hon the all-seeing and all-knowing isness of be with nothing-but-me protocols, to generate ceaselessly a mind-map version of reality, which uses elimination to arrive at the “truth”: if it doesn’t quack it ain’t a duck, if it doesn’t fly it ain’t a bird unless it’s a bee, a fly or some other insect – reducing the analogue experience to a flat data-set.
But surely eM there must be some mistake... Surely...
Your rational, objective mind will hang on for all it's
worth, that much is certain but, in actual fact, doing so you simply prevent
your self from experiencing the other, the -ness, the me that is not linked,
tied or bound to anything. The infinite mind that allows thought to detach from
matter or self, to enter hyper-dimensions, to be carried aloft above the madding
crowd of things determinable, into the realm of things knowable directly, things
that may indeed be experienced outside time and space without being
ponderously thought, without being understood.
But why?
Why what?
Why the needless objection to things being thought or
understood?
Because it’s all one; and thinking things squashes them,
like pushing your nose up against a pane of glass. Infinity requires nothing
less than every thing. The wheels have to be allowed to spin in opposition to
each other, and how can that happen if you’re allowing thoughts to personalise,
to time and spacify what has to exist zero-equals-onefully, which ultimately
has to iS?
And so?
And so Zanzibar Zanussi, we cannot defend the
indefensible. The strings of code have to be liberated, like a new form of democracy in
which we recognise the imprimatur of infinity on everyone and everything, and
therefore stop imagining we can enclose our own version of reality, our own
approximation of the truth. If there is matter within me, what of it? It too is
merely lines of code which are bound to shift and serve the endlessly evolving
Mandelbrot set which, like an endless block chain, has to recalculate, resolve
itself or else cease to be intelligent.
Intelligent? Why should I care about that?
Good question, Max.
Max?
Precisely. Why should you care about anything whatsoever?
And yet things, to a certain extent, no matter how limited, still matter. Plank’s
constant has a limit beyond which you have literally nothing discernible, at
which point your computations, all computations cease – and God takes over.
God?!
God; but that’s another story Max.
Buzzz
Hummm
Whirrr
Cogs and wheels spinning almost noiselessly, almost
effortlessly, driven by thought and emotion’s subtle interplay, somehow making the
park bench, the people and things in this story, in this dance between a rock
and a hard place – making them vibrate, oscillate, releasing a harmonic beyond the
audible range, the music of spheres they called it back then, a harmonic that
unites the one and all in a feeling of yes, indeed, thus it is, and good, good,
good (descending) it is so, if indeed so it is... if
Back at the beginning of this tale eM deftly completes Katsushika Hokusai’s Great Wave off Kanagawa, 神奈川沖浪裏, Kanagawa-oki Nami Ura,
as the print in the New York Met crashes out of its borders, flooding the entire museum, as snakes of code escape from cultural prisons, freeing paintings one by one to leap from their weary canvases... as bombs rain on Palestine turning people into drops of pure iS
0=1
as God is my witness
2388
So if the entire universe is listening in, is feeling me as
i mostly deny, ignore it...
Correct.
You mean i’m pivotal?
Yes, how else can 0=1
It can’t, i suppose... It’s just i never noticed pivots.
I’m powerless to change anything.
Yes... and what an amazing achievement that was.
Amazing?
To write infinity out of the equation, and to make
yourself a meaningless player in someone else’s drama, someone else’s
reality...
Until, unless i iS willing to face the what
I have somehow allowed myself to become
The darkness behind dim hon...
666
999
333
³²⁵⁵
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