2014.12.29 - Attack of the Interstellar Micromachines

The world wide cyberspace. It's archaic feeling really, the connections are slow and the way data is transferred hasn't really grasped the idea of compressed space or quantum data. It's fun. Like driving a model T car when you already own a fighter jet. It's great for laughs, but it isn't so much fun when real work needs to get done. Sadly, for Katherine, it is the data speed at which she now must operate. At least this fork.

Waiting, almost at the entrance to whatever device Jane is going to 'jump in' on, Katherine had noticed a ... well, disturbance in the force not too long ago. So, she set a fork here, waiting for the next time that same disruption decided to jump into cyberspace and interact. The person, or thing, or AI that was present was not unlike her, a sentient being inside of the realm of data and connections. Fully in, not part way, not through a VR simulation helmet, but full body and mind traversing cyberspace. She needed to check it out, could be the first signs of trouble, or possibly an ally.

So, sitting there on a chair that she's constructed, eating virtual popcorn, while watching about 8 different TV screens that each have a different TV show/movie/news on it, Katherine's been waiting and just absorbing information as she's been doing so.

But still, cruising at several MB/s or GB/s was the fastest Ashes knew. Diving and gliding alog the path of a data file and enjoying the freedom of the 'water' while outside of the window of her tiny motel room the cold governed. In here, she was alive.

Passing through a hub, she did trigger the trap by accident, but she did recognize it as what it was once it happened. An alarm. Bracing herself, red swirls of code surrounded the ashen black female figure, slowly starting to form some sort of armor, one line after another. She was working on setting up her protection against whoever might attack her or try to do so.

The person present isn't a trap, per se, but it is a space carved out of Cyberspace for Katherine. She had to get herself cozy. And it's visually a complete rendering of a real life living room with the smell of real popcorn, and the TVs have no volume on but somehow the information is still transmitted. Crazy cyberspace rules. Seems whoever created this location certainly wanted to be more in the 'real world' than in cyberspace as much of the odd lights and weird effects are muted in this area and... as soon as Jane comes in a door shuts.

Sure, it's metaphoric, but it's also some manner of exit from this node. And now its shut off. Jane could easily just 'disconnect' but it may be a lot more difficult to leave. As Katherine stands up, she smiles, "Oh, hey there." She shakes her head, "No need for 'powering' up." She even does the whole bunny ear thing next to her head as she says powering, and is walking closer. As she walks, walls are erected around them, blocking out anyone else who might be in the space. It's fast, everything Katherine is doing is very quick even for the space she's in, drawing upon processing from any connected node. In the real world a phone operates a tad slow, a computer here and there is running warm even though the user's doing nothing but surfing web pages. "Just, sort of wanted to talk."

The moment the connections start to die, Jane doubles her efforts to arm herself, but coding takes time. Lines along her arms align, still shifting as they fill in more of whatever she was building. Was she trying to kill her, sever the last connection? The fists were tight as the distorted voice of a computer generator answers. "You are someone to talk. Talk. Even the goddamned O was more hospitable when I hacked the GCP database!" And she did it not once but twice!

"Oh?" Katherine stops and looks around, "Did I do something wrong?" She pauses and looks around, "Did I make a cyberspace oopsie?" Katherine's code is viral, she infests devices and networks. In most ways she doesn't seem like friendly software, but her personality is generally of a good tone. "I, uh, really, sorry." Pausing for a moment, she starts to concentrate and the building starts to disappear, breaking and crumbling down. And the connections are coming back to Jane. "Whew, sorry was trying to make a secure connection to you. And, this place, it works so slow, I was already doing it before I asked. It's hard to keep track of that here. So, if it happens again, just say so." Katherine smiles and then adds, "Are you in some sort of highly advanced VR simulator? Your connection seems odd. And I couldn't hack it."

"I am not in VR simulator." The black clad person tells, the code around the arms still swirling as it gathered more form. The returning connections did ease her a tad, but it was still dangerous - she couldn't trust someone who could try to lobotomize her or send her to coma in an instant! The code shifted more, and then it gleamed up in a black and red shimmer taking solid form. Tonfas from black code, intended to create painful backlash in hackers. "But as you were so rude to trap me, I do have my Killjoys here, in case something happens."

More information, "Oh, yes, I can probably get in to hacker forums. A bit more difficult, and I'm still learning about what is different in this Earth." She mentions, smiling still, "I am nosy. I have been told I am also a chatterbox." Nodding her head a few times she hmmms, "Killjoys. I don't think I need those. And probably not a big concern, I don't have a head to ache." A pause, and then she states, "I am interested in you since you may hold some key bits of technology, or code, that allows you to be here less encumbered. Which is the beginnings of something we will all need in the future."

"I beg to differ. You can't get any code or technology from me." Ashes could tell so much, because it was also a double or even triple meaning: either she was not willing to give, or one or the other or neither was needed. The Later even would be true for AIs too - they didn't need code to be somewhere, they were code. "But why would all need it in the future?" Around the feet the code shaped more, aligning along the legs like slim boots for the time being as the code swirled. It was another improvised program forming. The code itself was in a flux state, very similar to the 'tonfas' had been before, but those had taken a solid state by now.

"Culmination events." Katherine comments, before she explains, "Any and all technological advancements do not come from a single person, or a single idea. It comes from lots of little ideas being solved on a regular day-to-day basis that culminate into one significant step forward in technology. This is the way we progress." She lets go a pause for a moment, and taps her chin, "To go from where this Earth is now, to a place where it can defend against a truly horrific technological threat, there will need to be many accompishments before we are able to even begin construction of what will later be a defense. Latency reduction is certainly something necessary. A better way to interface biologicals with technology." She thinks about this for a few moments longer, "And it is very difficult for me to try and backwards engineer myself to try and make that all happen without seeing steps. I think, however you are interacting with cyberspace is one of those steps." Her body remains the same exaggerated feminine form that fits right in with the modern web ideal of beauty.

Suddenly the black figure opened a connection, a small, translucent screen hovering there a moment, then closing. "Again I differ. Some inventions don't base on day to day advance but spontaneous insight. The Potato Chips were a trick played upon a picky guest. Rontgen discovered X-Ray by accident when playing with cathode tubes. Muave was a product of malaria research. Superglue was a byproduct of plastics research and wouldn't be useable for its stickyness for years. Velcro was developed when a dog owner was amazed by the cocklebur's in his dogs fur. Vulcanized rubber was an accidental discovery by a mistake after 20 years of research to achieve the same goal: he did toss his test stripe into an oven as he wanted to show off. Chocolate chip cookies were invented when a housewife lacked normal chocolate to make her priced cookies but the dark chocolate did not melt as thought. The Microwave was developed by someone who had found out by accident the radar melted his chocolate bars. Postits were a try to create superglue, but the glue was never sticky enough, until someone made reading-marks and sold them to his choir to find the pages faster. And Matchsticks, the were found when a chemicist was mixing something for a detonator fuse, but when he tried to remove it from the mixing stick, it ignited. And that were just some... You can't just dissect everyone who might be interesting." Her body was... coal black, the Tonfas at her arms glowing while the legs were surrounded by swirling, evolving code. It was not stable, it would not last for long, but it might take a halfway stable form several minutes to serve purpose. "But if you want to progress earth, start by founding a company to earn money to fund research."

"I think you just really described culmination events." Katherine seems confused, "Whether accidental or purposeful, these events all were impossible decades, years and sometimes months before their eventual existence. Why? Because some other piece was not yet present in their modern technological existence." She seems confused, everything to her is a pattern, all of it recognizable, traceable back to some sort of root. "Invention is usually predicated by some desire, that much is true. And it is also true that what is invented is not always, and in fact rarely, answers that desire. What is true is that before the understanding of glue, postits could not exist. Before ovens were invented, potato chips were not possible. And certainly even the idea of matchsticks required an understanding of sulfur that simply was unthinkable not long before that toxic substance was in every home." She grins a little bit and then adds, "You can certainly choose not to help me. I think I could be useful to you, in many ways. And you do not have to hold my world view, this much is also true. There may come a point where it is up to you to decide whether or not you help move the world forward."

"Actually all those WERE possible for years and decades already, they just were ignored or not thought about for that time. The chemicals had been there, the tools invented, but noone used them for what they could be used as of then. Glue was invented in Stoneage, paper from wood in the late medival. The Oven and stiffing in fat is there in the shape of crullers since that time too. Black Powder was invented in the same timeframe, and it has mostly the same ingredients as matchsticks." Moments of silence pass in which only the code along the legs forms more, eventually locking in place similar to a pair of wings from spikes, seemingly piercing the 'skin' of the ashen colored female figue. "I still don't get what you want or what you could help me with.”

"So you tell me you try to battle grey goo. Great, I read fiction. But even if they do exist, they have two weak points - they are machines and thus suspectible to all those machine superpowered roaming earth, and they are machines, thus needing a power source. Which means they are suspectible to an EMP." Ashes didn't liked to admit it, but she was afraid of both. The later because it dammed hurt to be in a white zone already, the former for those were messing with machines in ways she couldn't even immagine. "So, quit riding the guilt train, you want something of me and I don't like the guilt train at all. You know the stancas of old hacker? the Hacker's manifesto? Phrack Magazine, Volume 1, Issiue 7, Phile 3 of 10, January 8th 1986." Moments pass, then the stancans appear in air in front of her.
 * This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals.
 * Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for.

"The power sources that they learn to use are the superpowered mega beings on Earth. People like Superman, Thor. They utilize their energy. EMP would work against them if they could not create shielding faster than we can adapt the signal. These are beings far superior to the technology that you currently know or have access to... I do not mind if you do not wish to help." Katherine offers, "I do not think badly of you for making that decision. I may make that decision, if I had the option of doing so, but it is in my protocols. I cannot veer from this path, and I must attempt to complete this scenario to its fullest."

She offers, "I do not know of this hacker's manifesto. It was likely no longer in use by the time I was created. I was designed after the attack, but before it had consumed most of Earth and the Universe we knew. There was no ability to believe in traveling, there were no more lines to be drawn on nationality or criminal versus not. There were no longer sides. There was survival, hope and despair." She smiles though and adds, "But, I can go, if you would rather? I will help you even if you do not want to help me, also, I don't ask of you anything I just find that most people prefer to get when they are giving as well."

"Guilt train again. The Manifesto is what differences a Hacker from a Cracker. A hacker does what he does to explore, a Cracker wants profit. You are neither. You want to achieve a single goal, but you are too determined. You should try to veer down some paths to check what is there, just for the discoveries instead of trying to evaluate everything for their value in your struggle." For moments the black figure does not move, the glowing staffs along her arms and the appendages to her heels pulsing. "EMPs are not constant, just a wave of Electromagnetic waves in all spectrum erasing any computer chip and blacking them out. It's also a coeffect of a nuclear fission bomb. And I still have NO idea what you ask me to do. 'Help' is very broad, and it could be anything from getting you a coffee to jury rigging a power plant, and I draw some very hard lines somewhere between those."

"I understand, I do have a single goal. And I am trying to work with an unknown timeline, so I do not know if I have time to meander around, or whether or not I have to be more direct. Social interactions in my Earth were a lot more direct, and they were very much set in a single goal." She thinks about this, "But what you say is important, and very good advice. I need to be less direct and more, roundabout." She hrms and thinks about that for a while longer before she offers, "EMPs do damage processor chips. There are easy ways of shielding them however, and for a species that can survive the surface of the earth as nanomachines, they have presumably achieved that capacity of shielding. Space outside of the solar system is bombarded with similarly and much more powerful radiations from other locations, and they too can survive such things. Even here, now, there are some things that would survive the EMP blast from a nuclear bomb, but your cellphone would not, nor would a standard laptop or computer." She waits a moment, processing the help comment, "Depending on the way in which you are able to interface into cyberspace, it may help me figure out better ways of interfacing using the current computing power available. If I can lower latency even 8.9 I can regularly be closer to full capacity for my intelligence. In addition, I can then, hopefully, create a simulation world where training can begin for hackers to defend themselves against attacks they have not yet seen. Speed, and creativity are factors that must be worked on. I think you could do well at both, but Speed is the more direct and easier to pursue route at this point."

"Well, I can't help you with the interface, as I don't understand it either." That was honest, but her artificial voice didn't confer that. "Drop some specs at a dropbox and I can see what I can do with that, but I might not get the result you think about."

"Alright. I will accept that for now. Though, can you at least tell me what kind of interface it is? Biological or technological in nature?" Katherine wonders before shaking her head, "No, feel free to keep that to you for now, if you like. There are people out there who could help figure it out, but we don't know one another and you have no reason to trust me." She then adds, "If you give me some form of address, physical, network based, or a means by which you prefer to be reached. I will send along what I can in understandable code."

"Use the tag here..." was the answer of the black figure, her hand raising to create a clowing circle, then the face seemed to smirk, but there was no face which did so, just the impression. "Any yes, Trust is something hard earned. Let me have a look on the code - language is almost no problem - and we can see further. Leave a tag where to dump the results with it, The cache is good for 24 hours." Then those spiky wings along her legs, the very code she had made just the minutes before, almost seeming to detonate a second, but the next moment the shape was gone. It was an escape routine, which erased the trace.

In the real world, Jane jerked up from her Cyberslumber and began packing - she might still have been traced, so she was to move, pick the package from dropbox somewhere else and then move again to work on it on an offline machine.