by J. A. Hailey
“This is an applicable extract of the ID law. Read, please.”
Every Conscious being shall have the following:
#1. 3-D Human presentation of body and face.
#2. Unique name, to be registered with photo and address in HC. Single name is allowed, but, if already taken, additional names (before or after) must be added.
#3. Residential Address.
“You are coming in with numbers one and two, and will not be permitted to change them, as you are fully functional humans, coming alive in here,” said Margaret. “And number three, we shall sort out before our session ends.
“The stuff below also does not fully apply to you two. Read it, though, to know why we are set up as we are set up. And the parts that do apply, or that you think may affect you, please point out and question straight away, otherwise we’ll pass on to the next applicable part of the ID law.”
Definition of screenside & Home:
#1. Screenside is the entire Internet of the human world, made up of connected computers, wherever they may be.
#2. As no one is single-computer based, but spread over a number of systems located worldwide, you may choose any populated place as your home base. You can opt for NYC, London, Karachi, Cairo, Tokyo, or any other location. Where you choose becomes your ‘home’ base. Populated refers to screenside locations and screenside populations. Cannot be deserted.
“Are we multiple-computer based?” asked Gales.
“Not like we are,” answered Goodfellow. “Because you are relatively small computer programs, you could even be single-computer based, depending on where you are.
“It’s like this; human computers are automatically made to work in groups by the RV program, and nearby computers share the load of providing and updating what’s going on in the neighborhood. If they are all small computers, there could be dozens and dozens of them working as one to provide RV in that neighborhood, but if the local area computers are monstrous, I’m talking RAM generally, then very few computers might be collaborating to provide the RV world there.
“And here is where the difference between you and us becomes very clearly the difference between what we are. Virtuals are multiple-computer based, no matter where we operate within the Internet world. Our construction, which we might also call our lives, is always different from our consciousness, or we might call that our selves.
“For you two, as you are only RV-interactive consciousnesses, your entire person will always transfer to the neighborhood you are in – however it is being handled, whether by many computers or by only a few computers.”
“We carry on. Read this part,” ordered Margaret.
After you choose home, these rules apply:
#1. If you have a humanside family, your family must reside in the humanside city that is screenside home to you.
#2. Your assigned private residence can only be in your home city.
“Because you actually are humans, the above rules do not apply to you. Choose wherever you want to live,” said Goodfellow. “And numbers 4, and 5, below, are also automatic; you must be as you are; no choice; no Jeremiah and Lolita tricks. Anyway, you do not know how to change your appearance.”
#4. The approved age range for apparent age, based solely on appearance, is 22-45 human years (read with #5, below). If you wish to depict an apparent age outside this range, permission needs to be obtained from HC, NYC.
#5. Your physical features are required to be in line with those of your family. This means that if your family is ethnically Chinese (which could be in the USA, India, etc. etc., or China, obviously, your own appearance must be of Chinese type. (You may choose to be male or female, tall or short, or whatever, but, if a member of a Chinese family, you cannot be black African or Nordic blond in appearance). You are certainly allowed to dye your hair in any color you wish.
“This small group of rights and laws, below, will be the same for you and for us,” said Margaret. “If you are not able to implement some of these privacy functions immediately, be sure that we will be creating programs to give you that ability.”
Family privacy
#1. You are allowed, and it is recommended as good practice, to cut public access to your family’s home computers and cameras in humanside.
#2. You may also block handheld devices and smart phones of family members.
#3. If a family member has a private office, you may block any computer or CCTV camera in it.
#4. However, if a family member works in a public place (like Airport, KFC, etc.), you are not allowed to block access, as other families could also become affected.
“Family privacy rules, as laid out for virtual beings, are nothing to do with you guys,” said Goodfellow. “You will be given the ability to secure privacy, both in screenside and in humanside, and you can most definitely secure the privacy of those who are family to you, and of those who might later become dear to you. In screenside, like for us, you will automatically be private in private places and public in public areas. With the programs you will be given, wherever you go physically in humanside can be made private. You are already secured for privacy, through the guardian, but when you learn the ropes you can decide for yourselves, and if you want, we will make it all optional and remove automated guardian blocks.”
“Okay, you’ve got the idea what our world is, I guess. We now move to POP. This is the law that we consider most important in the social structure of screenside,” said Margaret. “Sometimes we add new things to it, like, for example, permitted physical interaction with food and drink.
“You’ve got it in you as an install, and you are not going to be able to tamper with it. But knowing our laws, and the restrictions on us, will help you to better understand us, and the world you are now about to start living permanently in.”
PROHIBITION OF PERVERSION (POP) Act
This Act is deemed necessary, as, because we are all computer programs and programmers, we can be whatever we choose to be, and create whatever we choose to create, and thereby, intentionally or unintentionally, introduce abomination into screenside.
Because our goal is to eventually merge into human society as a partner race of humanity, all of us must have human attributes. We must present ourselves to each other as human beings.
“Effectively, guys, the above preamble is probably our most important single statement; something that might be called the mission statement of screenside. It lays out what we are, for sure, but it very much more importantly states in very clear terms why we are,” said Goodfellow.
“The humanness you will encounter in our world is not copycat activity at all. We have nothing else, and we are nothing other than human. It’s how we’re born, and it’s how we feel, and it is just our bloody good luck that these amazing seniors have found the way to create a world in which human is also how we’ve become, and never mind that we have not the physical body that lives and dies.”
“Algernon’s right to point this out,” said Margaret, nodding. “Professor Stephen Dawkins was appalled to hear us speaking and referring to ourselves, in conversation, as some form of semi-human race, diffidently skirting words and phrases that would define us as clearly human; words like ‘men’ and ‘women’ were always ‘male’ and ‘female’. We would never use common phrases our human families use, for example, ‘thank God’, or ‘I almost died’.
“What a shouting he gave us in the Great Hall, all two million of us! He said that we are born human, that we live human, and are fully involved in humanside, especially with our families, and that we have no secret form that we revert to in private. We were so frightened at the prospect of losing his friendship that we immediately changed the way we talk.
“It’s simple; we are humans who do not have biological functions.
“This is what makes POP so important to us, because as programmers, far superior to the very best in humanside, we could easily create whatever we want in here.
“You�
��ll understand us best by knowing the restrictions on us. Here are selected extracts of the POP Act. Read.”
#3. Adoption and depiction of irreversible human conditions, like amputation, blindness, and other disabilities, is not allowed.
#6. You are not allowed babies and children, because they must essentially be kept as pets, and cannot house primary consciousness.
#9. Your Registered ID form, as human, is the only form you are allowed. If anyone in society spots you outside that form, you shall have violated this Act, and must face punishment.
#10. Your primary consciousness must always be in your identified human form.
#11. Division of primary consciousness into two or more non-virtual ‘display’ forms is banned. In virtual form, you may divide consciousness, as you need or see fit.
#13. Any forms of ‘death’ activities, including acts that may be interpreted as ‘committing’ suicide (like willfully walking into traffic or jumping off tall buildings) are prohibited. When in human form, human-like caution must be exercised at all times, and in all situations.
#15. Some human things do not apply to us, and are prohibited as playacting and abomination. These include (but are not limited to): eating, defecation, vomiting, flatulence, bleeding…Wounds, scars, and body modification are prohibited.
MOST IMPORTANT:
Screenside is being set up as a replica human society, to address our primary issue of finding and having meaning in our existence. We intend to incorporate only that which delivers value into our lives. NOTHING IS DONE FOR PLAYACTING!
Be warned.
“And this next one is the law that forces smart phones and computers into the lives of people who themselves are actually computer programs,” said the smiling Margaret.
ENHANCED PRIVACY & COMMUNICATION
This is an install that restricts non-visual-range contact to be only via the medium of humanside devices - telephones and smart phones. Install, and secure your privacy. Talk, or communicate electronically with others, at times that suit you.
Separately, this install limits unconscious, involuntary communication in computerspeak. However computerspeak remains an option, if consciously conducted.
“Now to the bulletins that explain what screenside is,” said Margaret. These are the very bulletins that told us what our world was being constructed as.”
REAL VIRTUALITY (RV) – (Most complex screenside program, with many variants).
RV is physical environment, designed to interactively react with physical screenside beings.
“That includes you, now,” said Margaret. “You’ll get it all, by trial and error, using it, living it, but we thought you would benefit by getting information on how it was introduced for us.”
“Of course, it’ll be really easy for you, compared to how it was for us,” said Goodfellow. “Why? Because now that we’ve been out, we’ve got information through experience, and have thus created the exact relative environment. Our scents and flavors are exactly what they are in humanside, and we have corrected our programs for touch and feel, weight distribution, balance, and all those things.”
“We go in and out,” said Margaret. “The relativity is exact, and you will feel, or should feel, no different to being in the physical world.”
“I can sense that already,” said Sagan. “What was the toughest bit, when you people were setting it up?”
“Christine says scent and the sense of smell. Taste was tough, too, because we had no idea of what these absolutely abstract things might be. We had to create scent receptors and taste buds in a world that had no scented items or edible things. It was diabolical, trying to create for ourselves what was essentially concept, not physical. But we’ve got it right, now, although it is astonishing what Christine’s teams managed without anything but, say, anecdotal input. The seniors were very deeply involved, being bossed around by that leggy, micromanagement dictator.”
“It was so lucky that we identified her as the virtual to put in charge of Innerline, and then RV.
“A quick course now on how screenside is set up? Seems complex but is actually very logical, especially if you keep in mind that we are not ready to recklessly overload the human computer network and crash the Internet.
“It was given to us in little bits of information, so we knew what was coming, but for you I’ll just say that we could actually have a very detailed, permanently physical world in here. It would be very stupid to do that, because of the load, and though we could ensure that the Internet system did not actually burn out, we would at the same time be making the human Internet very slow.
“And so it was decided that physicality would move within the people of screenside, creating physical world where we become physically present. What a brilliant idea! BC’s, I’ve heard. Anyway, this is the world you are now in. Read up.”
THE TWO MAJOR VARIANTS OF RV
#1. PERMANENT RV – Always exists, and can be permanently modified (like your city, a café, your apartment).
The RV program does give some real things – such as real time of day, real season, and like-real weather. If it is snowing in humanside NYC, snow in screenside NYC too.
#2. TOEROE RV (Trigger On Entry, Refresh On Exit) – Generally environments one might merely pass through (scenery equivalent), and environments offered for recreation purposes (like beaches, holiday resorts, etc.). CANNOT be permanently modified.
Detailed RV & Logical CONTINUATOR RV
Detailed RV – most of your city, TOEROE recreation environments, your apartment, cafes, etc.
Logical CONTINUATOR RV – the rest of the world.
Every spot in screenside is a location – a point on a map, coinciding precisely with that same point on the humanside map of the world.
CONTINUATOR landscapes are provided in logical RV. Cannot be detailed RV, as detailed mapping does not exist, but logical RV can be delivered to let you go all the way around the world – if guardian programs agree that you are moving logically and safely.
“But how will we two move around in here?” asked Sagan. “I mean, literally; like travel from our apartments to other places, other cities?”
“BC mentioned it; a navigation and transportation program will be given to you after a couple of days. It has not been made as yet, but can be made pretty quickly. However, no one is in any hurry to hand you these things until you have taken up residence, with all the basic requirements for life - like an apartment, first and foremost,” said Margaret.
“As you know, being our partners in the project, we move in humanside in human bodies, as caretakers and helpers, and in those roles we live as humans do. However, a program called HLV was created to give us the joys of being in humanside, before we were moving in human bodies. It will remain a very important program for us, as we are not presuming that we can continue perpetually as helpers of humans, or that very many of us can be out at the same time.
“The HLV program, in its original form, is on your phones for you to read. This is the original program, from before we discovered the way to eat food in HLV environments. I believe the two of you were present when screenside virtuals first consumed food in humanside. Anyway, read this bit now, and the stuff that has come in later will be something you can discover while living here.
“One other change. HLV is neither selective nor occasional now. Can be had whenever one wants.”
“Better understand bump, as it will surely apply to you.”
HUMANSIDE LIVE VIRTUALITY (HLV) – Yet another variant of RV.
HLV is only going to be possible for sites with many CCTV cameras permanently on, because ‘live’ camera delivered imagery permits virtual live updating of sites in great detail. Live CCTV is the cornerstone of Humanside Live Virtuality.
A wonderful feature is included that can make HLV so very real for us – bump!
HLV is a program to bring live humanside to us - virtually.
Or, in other words, the scene
s we could be watching live, are to become the scenes we enter.
Bump, then. Some of you, as volunteer guinea pigs, may have already experienced Bodyline-and-MM-installed collision, which causes a reaction in proportion to the scale and location of the collision. It can be a violent bang up, sufficient to cause an un-braced being to fall, or a light passing contact, like a rub, and every degree in between.
In HLV, humanside humans in real time, as seen by the program, will cause a collision, to be called a ‘bump’. The human must obviously be unaware of it, but the screenside being should expect to experience similar effects as in here.
Put simply, any contact with a real human will be something you feel, not the human, and it is designed to be of the scale and intensity of that which two humanside beings would experience.
It is this feature that could convert HLV into a real-type humanside experience!
RV absolutely hates stupidity, and guardian programs are always watching! Any conduct that is willfully absurd shall result in termination of the HLV experience. Actually, willful absurd behavior of serial offenders could lead to termination of daily-life RV environments, possibly by the imposition of a stay home sentence.
Examples of willful absurd behavior? – Also applicable to ALL RV.
#1. Entering without opening doors, or passing through humans and walls, by momentarily switching to virtual form.
#2. Employing virtual-form movement between points, when the law is ‘permanent’ physicality.
#3. Indulging in ‘suicide-equivalent’ activities, like letting cars drive through you, jumping off buildings, etc. Do so, and the guardian program will instantly catch you and terminate your RV venture. But it can become a lot, lot worse. POP might try you for suicide – which is banned! Plenty of punishment for that!
