Ohm is Ware the Art is

Ohm is Ware the Art is                              
by Dovin Melhee
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    Jed becomes particularly absorbed in designing his own virtual environment in neurospace.  He builds a towering chrome castle on a mile high cliff overlooking a shimmering ocean.  A perpetual red giant sunset illuminates the emerald waters.  With the limited memory and storage on the lab computer, everything but the highest room in the tallest tower of the castle, his control center, are portals -- links to other sites -- copied images and freeware virtual environments.  A door off the control room transports him to the lab -- or he could simply speak the command 'transport lab' -- or, another of limitless options, he can bring up a lab view on any one of many virtual screens that surrounded him in his tower.

    Jed relaxes, floating peacefully over his virtual ocean.  He's testing a _gentleBreeze_ program he has downloaded off the net, and finds it so pleasant that he allows the simulation to continue running after he had already decided to keep it.  He stares at the soft red giant sun that looms overhead, filling his view.  His mind begins to wander.  He thinks back, as he often does, to the days before the accident -- his original life.
    Suddenly he notices the edges of the sun seem to be shimmering, moving and waving in the breeze.  He senses a presence.  In the corner of his field of vision something seems to glitter.  He looks to his side.  The ocean is gone.  In it's place, a vast wasteland covered with broken glass.  Shadows appear to patrol the surface.
    'Must be a bug in the program,' thinks Jed, perplexed.  'Maybe the new _gentleBreeze_ software is infected with a virus.'
    As he looks closer he sees shifting geometric patterns in the sparkling glass, dancing diamonds, a desolate landscape stretches into an infinite crystalline lattice.  Entranced, he is drawn into the intricate intersecting lines at the edge of each crystal shard.  Millions of mesmerizing microscopic rainbows compressed near the center into thin lines of bright pure white -- vibrating strings of light.  He hears each color resonating at its own frequency, combining in a high pitched chorus -- infinite droning, buzzing voices -- bristling energy.
    It feels as if his body is sinking.  The landscape pulls everything down -- as if someone had run a gravity program and was feeding it exponentially incrementing values.  His huge star is pulled apart and tiny red particles rain down around him, sizzling acid as it hits the ground.  His body melts. His mind drips.  They ooze into boiling red puddles, then drain and merge with the landscape – assimilated into everything.  Some fragments remain as bits of vapor drifting over the surface, code snippets suspended in the air.
    Do I still exist?  He wonders.  My thoughts, nothingness?  My self, nothingness?
    His final fluttering code fragments spiral down and burrow in -- implanted residue impregnating the ground.  Then, from these scattered virtual brain cells, the substance of the universe spews forth – as disparate torrents of boundless unbearable energy.
    The gushing torrents rescind, and from each incubating cell sprouts a machine – growing upwards and stretching from side-to-side.  Banks of towering machines as far as the eye can see.  Then, from above, orbs of light materialize, and descend to the surface.  They transform, morphing into beings wearing lab coats, with large grey heads and dark purple eyes.  The beings gaze at the machines and move their hands before the panels and gauges, manipulating the controls with their minds.  They transmit thoughts which Jeds neural receptors receive.  They think as one.  Their incessant data stream is extreme and intense. The thought signal flux overloads Jeds mind.
    He struggles to construct his own thoughts.  Who are you?
    The thought flood subsides and a single answer comes through.  They are the keepers from antiquity. 
    Where is this place?  What is happening?
    They inform him not to worry, to trust them, that this is a vision of the heart of the universe,  and they are all-controlling, all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful – the keepers of all space-time.
    One of the keepers points to a display on one of the machines.  It shows a string of binary numbers: 010010110101011011010011000...  The keeper motions to all the machines, and Jed sees that each machine has similar displays, all showing different values.  The values are constantly changing.  More thoughts come to Jeds mind, explaining that each machine is calculating its own small segment of the same number,  a value which when combined, is a numeric string of immense size.  It is a binary value resulting from the processing of all matter and energy in the universe –  a numeric encoding of the changing computation of all reality.
    Whoa, no way, Jed thinks. He zooms in on one of the displays.  But now it seems to be showing all zeroes: 000000000...  And then it changes, and says: Null value, ERROR!.  Jed gives an uncertain look.
    The keeper looks up to the display also, his large dark eyes grow larger.  He kicks the machine with his small thin leg.  The frail leg swings back and forth as if it has become unhinged.  Then it falls off and wriggles on the ground.  The keeper picks up the trembling appendage and attempts to reattach it by pressing it back to his body.  Then the entire spectral scene begins to distort.  There is a fetid odor as the keepers deform.  The machines fracture and plummet.  All dissolves, disintegrating to swirling dust...

    And then... it's over. 
         
    The ocean is back, a stable giant sun again fills the sky... Jed floats calmly above the surf.  He feels normal...  What was it?  Feedback loops?  A virulent neural virus?  This was not the first time it had happened, but it was one of the more intense.

    Jed runs both hands through his hair, then shakes his head a few times.  "Tower," he says, and  immediately transports back to his tower control room.  Screens of all sizes cover the walls.
    He walks to a console and says, "display neural log."  A screen appears filled with text and numbers.  "Diagnostic back ten minutes."  The display begins rapidly paging through screens of text.  “Pause,” the screen stops. He touches a line of code on the screen. “Show me the execution point in my source code at this time in the log.”
    A 'bleep' sounds as another screen appears to the left side listing lines of his program.  Jed studies the display for a moment.  He stares at the lines of source code, the source code that is his mind.  He runs a few debugging steps, and then sighs.  He turns, walks over, and sits in a chair in the middle of the room, which looks like a recliner crossed with a dentist chair from the future.
    "Strong coffee, black." he says, and a cup appears in his right hand.  Steam rises from the surface.  The sumptuous aroma of fresh ground roasted beans fills his olfactory circuits.  Jed closes his eyes for a few moments, then lifts the cup, breathes in deeply and takes sip, "ah, even better than the real thing."

    "Foo," Jed then asks, "how old is my latest neural backup?"
    "Eight hours, three minutes and seven seconds," replies the disembodied assistant.
    "That's too long," Jed thinks a moment, "what is the earliest environment checkpoint, before my latest episode, when I went down to the ocean?"
    "Fourteen minutes, five seconds."
    "A reset to that checkpoint restores my complete neural state, correct?"
    "Affirmative."
    "Ok, let's try to reset the environment to that checkpoint, please."
    "Excuse me.  There is an environment loop detection alert!" Foo exclaims.
    "What does that mean?" asks Jed.
    "This will be the fifth consecutive reset to this checkpoint.  The environment is configured to give a loop detection alert when this occurs."
    "Really?  I've done this four times already?  Are there any differences in the runs?  Is the episode reoccurring?"
    "The episode and all events in this virtual environment occur identically in each run.  It ends each time with your request to reset to the same checkpoint."
    "Every detail is the same?  …right down to my cup of coffee?"  Jed looks down, astonished, at the swirling dark brew.
    "Affirmative."
    "Why didn't you tell me?"
    "I have just informed you of the alert."
    "But you're external to this environment, why didn't you tell me before I repeated it four times?"
    "You did not ask.  The alert is set to allow five repeats.  I had no commands or instructions otherwise."
    "Alright, so, of course it resets my memory to the checkpoint too.  I only remember the latest run.  I wonder how long that would have gone if the environment didn't have the loop detection?"

    Jed searches the web to find the history of nSpace loop detection.  He learns that it is now standard in all current environments, and became so after scattered cases of n-clones discovered stuck in infinite loops for countless iterations. 
    "I think we better come up with a new plan,” he states positively.

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excerpt from nSpace by Dovin Melhee

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