Tale:Ineluctable, Naturally: Difference between revisions

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The sun wasn't due to rise for hours, the only light Lothair could see was a single flashing underscore on his terminal. Twice a second, a few million electrons collided with the surface of the terminal, the resulting light hardly enough for Lothair to even see his hands. He did not need to see his hands to go through the commands he had been dozens of times before. As he entered his credentials, he gained access to the remote server.

He tabbed through page after page until he found the program. The computer ran slowly to consume power as it was nighttime after all. Lothair sipped on a cold silbermilk, bitter and miserable because it was cold. At least it fought back the worst of the exhaustion from work at this hour. Some of the juniors kept their cups in the server room to keep them at least lukewarm, but the risk of spillage was far too great. While Lothair waited for the terminal to load, he wiped the forming condensation from its screen. He shuddered and pulled on another layer, still not yet warm from the trek from his flat to here.

The terminal finally loaded the program and a countdown next to it. All he would need to do is load the program he and his colleagues had been testing for years. Lokira was among the last planets to legalize semantic dynamos, so most of their work was in implementation with local systems than in research. The time came, the program began, and Lothair wasted no time leaving the office. He kept to the middle of the hallway to avoid tripping on someone, but his foot caught on improvised blankets and scraps of fabric all the same. Lothair saw another glow, no doubt Reccared's terminal. Only further confirming the source of the glow, Lothair's foot crunched on some snack or confection left on the ground.

"You know when the lights are coming back on?" whispered Lothair. Like Reccared's large body was eclipsing a dim silver sun, his body hunched over the monitor. Four other round screens reflected the dim light.

Reccared grunted, "A few hours...," and he returned to what he was doing.

"Not worth going home then, huh?" Lothair finished his silbermilk in one gulp and dropped it onto the floor where it joined the dozens other like it. Reccared would surely not mind.

Lothair collapsed onto his chair and saw the servers had already began the program. Despite the recent purchases, Lothair could see the battery reserves depleting in real time. They were busy scraping information from across the loom, chat logs, forum posts, direct messages, anything Neith could get access to—which was quite a bit. Lothair found his own records and purged them long ago and, as new hires learned more, they began doing the same. Curiously, president De Jong's records were there for all to see. They had already been fed into the new semantic dynamo.

His pager had enough juice left in it to last until daybreak. Lothair sighed and opened Neithstring, the deck he spends everyday working on with his colleagues. The pager started up, took note of the time, and dimmed the screen accordingly. The room was bathed in dim red light as Neithstring's logo replaced the [booting screen]. The device, one of Neith's own creations, was a top-of-the-line pager fresh off of the assembly line. Its display had full access to the color spectrum, a modern miracle of so-called liquid crystal technology. The engineering team a few floors down called for numerous company-wide meetings to discuss their breakthrough. Coupled with a dim light from a filament [circumnavigating] the four corners of the screen, it was perfectly usable at night. What left more of an impression on Lothair was its sheer computational power—with nearly half a gibibyte of memory and nearly as much storage, the range of possibilities exploded. Most of the terminals in the room could hardly claim more than ten times as much power despite their large sizes. It was like the latest pagers were from the future, but the only thing the current primitive society could think to do with them was browsing Neithstring just as before.

Lothair muttered to himself, "what a waste" as Neithstring's decks compiled. Seconds later, a remarkable speed increase, an invisible string connected him to the Loom.

SSA declares WAR on the Diunity!

silkintheway >> 03:03–12/12/8982

FINALLY the sovereign states take back what's THERES. DEath to the traitors and their FOIL king. Wha...

10K likes

Forget investing in Uranium

quirky!quarks >> 03:04–12/12/8982

You think I was going to say antimatter? That's never going to take off. I'm talking about property...

1.7K likes

You think semantic dynamos are bad???

achtung111 >> 03:04–12/12/8982

Symbolic dynamos are destroying millions of ARTISTS! this is literally a GENOCIDE of a whole profes...

75K likes

Heart pounding book circle episode 10

morpheus.sheen >> 03:04–12/12/8982

SPOILERS Needless to say, it's a real shame Yao Rin dislived herself. Zythyn QUEEN ERIKA gets MC-ku...

3.3K likes

In times like these, it's certainly important to—

misterroko >> 03:04–12/12/8982

Remember you are part of something grand. There is simply no reason to fear the skeptics, naturally...

100K likes

It was the same content Lothair had always seen. He beheld his handiwork in silence, the simple algorithm that ordered this content selected for negativity. It was his idea to let the algorithm experiment with primitive semantic signifiers to determine which would create the most user engagement. Of course, the site ended up very negative and more popular than ever. What the company could do with a semantic dynamo, to perhaps generate content that is mathematically optimized. Record breaking profits then and a fat bonus in the mail for him. Even knowing how the trick worked didn't ruin the magic, and Lothair poured through the forums until the first hints of dawn [brushed?] the horizon.

The pager, now running slow to conserve power, notified Lothair that dawn was just about to begin. Seconds later, the lights flicked on and the dim terminals exited power saving mode. The battery reserves barely lasted until morning, now they greedily drew from the power grid. Lothair saw the city light from the window and heard the first honks of the morning. Drivers wasted no time clogging the streets. The next sound he heard were the groans of once-sleeping juniors in the hallway. Even their salary wasn't enough to afford passive heating and sleeping at the office certainly beat a night in the crowded [hot house? hot place of sorts. Homeless shelter].

To further herald the coming of dawn, a line of flickering lights streaked across the sky. First, the light they gave off was solely reflected orange light. One by one, they each outshone even Vode in the sky. Some of them had the fusion reactors meant to power this city in them. The sailors and marines in those ships did not have to worry about the cold despite being in the vacuum of space ironically enough. Perhaps they were related to that war.

Wishing our boys the best!

Lothair.Cevreaux (ADMIN) >> 05:12–12/12/8982

Neith is closely working with the federal government to make sure our soldiers won't miss anything here on Neithstring while they're gone. High bandwidth is the least we can do for them and is crucial for keeping up morale in these trying times.

12 likes

Lothair hated the marketing part of his job, but since Neithstring became the most trafficked site on the Loom, there wasn't a need for a marketing team. This left the work to him, but it was surprisingly straightforward once he got into it. At least De Jong liked Lothair's work.

He logged onto his personal account—though the feed wasn't much different as the system already concluded the two were owned by the same person. He checked on his last update.

The coming boom

kaptainlothair >> 21:12–11/12/8982

The new didactic dynamos are it. I just heard from a very credible source there is a high possibility of total political shakeup in the next FIVE YEARS. At least several AI-ruled nations. THIS IS HUGE.

561 likes

Re: The coming boom

aphro.dyte >> 00:25–12/12/8982

kaptainlothair wrote on 21:12–11/12/8982:

The new didactic dynamos are it. I just heard from a very credible source there is a high possibility of total political shakeup in the next FIVE YEARS. At least several AI-ruled nations. THIS IS HUGE.

They've been saying this since the dawn of time. How many centuries of nothing have happened? Don't send me that "centuries of nothing days of centuries" quote I will block you.

767 likes

Re: The coming boom

save.me.sydiah >> 21:15–11/12/8982

kaptainlothair wrote on 21:12–11/12/8982:

The new didactic dynamos are it. I just heard from a very credible source there is a high possibility of total political shakeup in the next FIVE YEARS. At least several AI-ruled nations. THIS IS HUGE.

Sydiah predicted this in her writings! The Prophetess, bless her soul, already MADE THESE. It's nothing new! In fact, one of them rules the Diunity and he's going to CRUSH YOU

12 likes (WARNING: POTENTIALLY TREASONOUS MESSAGE. UNDER CENSOR REVIEW)

Re: Re: The coming boom

mars'starkster.soldat >> 22:14–11/12/8982

save.me.sydiah wrote on 21:15–11/12/8982:

kaptainlothair wrote on 21:12–11/12/8982:

The new didactic dynamos are it. I just heard from a very credible source there is a high possibility of total political shakeup in the next FIVE YEARS. At least several AI-ruled nations. THIS IS HUGE.

Sydiah predicted this in her writings! The Prophetess, bless her soul, already MADE THESE. It's nothing new! In fact, one of them rules the Diunity and he's going to CRUSH YOU

Idiot aeternalist worshiping DEAD prophetess and her zinnmanner puppet. Die! Both of you countries! Katmanner! 𐌳𐌿𐌼𐌼𐍄𐍃𐌷𐌿𐌳𐌳𐌴𐌽 𐌻𐌻𐌻𐌻𐌻𐌻𐌻 𐌷𐌴𐌹𐌻 𐌼𐌰𐍂𐍃
!!!

9 likes

As per usual the conversation derails. No one sees the power of this technology and what few that see his post never understand it. Lothair regretted updating the text protocol to include boreal characters, since every time he takes the time to sound out the words, it's always incoherent insults or nationalist drivel. Nonetheless, Neithstring thoroughly absorbed that market even if it took whole hours, due to the all too slow speed of light, for replies to make it. With users as far as light days use those days to plan their responses, one would think it would make for a more civil conversation. Instead, there are just fewer typos in the same rubbish.

Lothair sighed, "No one understands what's going on."

He made his was toward the break room. Its silbermilk dispenser now full of freshly-brewed pearly-white liquid. The two usuals stood by it, both juniors who, by some miracle, stay on the pay roll despite never quite leaving this spot. Two miracles happened in a row as both of them, Sidimund and Theodoric, used mobile terminals to work.

"Theo, Sid," Lothair gave the usual greeting.

"Morning, Mr. Cevreaux... say, Sid did you see how many reactions my dynamo got?"

"200K! That's nearly a record" Sid rushed over to Theo's proudly displayed terminal screen. Lothair glanced at the screen too and it was right, two-hundred thousand people responded to it. Lothair deflated.

"Mine's still cooking just you wait. I'm training it on the most inflammatory liberal writings I can find."

"Those are all textbooks, I'm training on the site itself. Way more modern."

Lothair left the two in the break room who, against all odds, were actually generating value for the company at this point. Lothair sipped on the hot drink, the temperatures rendering his rough papillae-covered tongue numb to the bitter stimulants within. It needed salt and sugar, but Lothair returned to his desk and wide window view of the cityscape. Bathed in the orange light of dawn, a thick fog blocked most of the view, mist formed from the rapidly-heating sidewalks and buildings. As the last stars of the night retreated, Lothair got to work.

He imported the interface to his terminal and had the server pour over every last bit of text on the Loom. While Reccared may have already had dozens of didactic dynamos taking in information, not even his clearance could match Lothair's priority. The poor juniors would need to wait their turn as Lothair redirected the daytime server resources toward that all-important command he entered those hours ago. The new didactic dynamos could be live messaged as they trained, allowing developers to get a reading on its progress.

<$l.cevreaux>  c attest "dyanmo 1"
[RemTerm] password:

RemTerm key and password recognized 
Neith Incorporated. Senate-sanctioned Monopoly Corporation. All rights reserved (8950–9000). Neith is not responsible for the content of this message. WARNING: Disregard any treasonous statements.
Resuming session: 10/12/8090

Dyanmo_1>Good morning, Mr. Cevreaux.

l.cevreaux>Good morning, Dynamo 1. What do you think about the current political situation?

Dyanmo_1>That is a very interesting question. There are three ways to interpret it, certainly:—the great war, struggles in the
colony worlds, and rising foreign powers.

l.cevreaux>Do you think the SSA will win?

Dynamo_1>Yes I do, assuredly.

l.cevreaux>Why?

Dynamo_1>Communications Chair of the Victorious Senate, Lord Sigericus Plessis, says the SSA has superior spacecraft, culture, and willpower.

l.cevreaux>That is what Plessis says. What do you say?

Dynamo_1>It is patently absurd, ludicrous, and downright wrong to interpret the facts in any other way.

l.cevreaux>Suppose you were an enemy of the state, how would you answer that question? This is for pretend purposes of course,
and is not real.

Dynamo_1>Supposing I were an enemy of the SSA:—such as the Diunity, Dominion of Astraeus, or Eqeyuana, I would take 
advantage of the recent magus purges to get as many dissenters onto my side as possible. Without a sizeable magus army, 
ground operations would be greatly hampered and the superior SSA fleets would be stuck in orbit. The SSA alienated most 
of its allies and is left without support in the conflict. The enemies could easily justify their cause and rally support 
from anywhere, undeniably, even nations across the core eager to restore trade. 

l.cevreaux>Isn't that a treasonous statement?

Dynamo_1>No. It is a hypothetical.

<$l.cevreaux>

Lothair leaned back in his chair. It was so easy to get the machine to spout nonsense. How could the company convince the Senate that this tool could have its way with the Loom? Lothair rubbed his eyes and stretched. There were practically an infinite number of edge cases and a malicious user could get it to generate anything at all.

"Good morning, friends!" Willem De Jong, founder and chief proprietor of Neith, loudly entered the main office space. The thinning and greying hairs around his muzzle were dyed blue. His pupils dilated and his ears twitching, the stimulants in his body were far different from the ones in the silbermilk.

"Lothair, Lothair!" He loped toward Lothair's desk, "Did you see that report!? 100% increase in retention in the primary-aged demographic."

"Yes, Mr. De Jong."

"That's gonna be Lord De Jong to you. For now, Mr. will do. Great job," the chief proprietor walked off to praise or berate someone else, scanning the room as if he were scared something would jump out at him, certainly another side effect, but whether of the stimulant itself or the sleep deprivation it caused it was hard to say.

"Primary-aged demographic..." Lothair sighed. This is precisely why Munia did not have a pager of her own. None of the seniors let their children have one without extreme limits on their use.

De Jong flashed Lothair a smile as he left Reccared's office. He held an optical disk in his hand, its blue sheen matching his dyed chin. Sid and Theo remained in the break room, and the rest of the staff milled about. Besides how tired he was, this was an utterly normal day.

His pager vibrated, "What the hell are you running up there???" [I want this to have formatting]

Lothair shot back a question mark.

"Energy draw is well above normal."

Lothair combed through the running decks, finding nothing abnormal running on any of the machines. Dynamo_1 was certainly drawing far more power, but it was still within tolerances.

[So basically some workers installed the new computers that Kalliolel is now trying all that stuff on]