The Spiraling Web

by Ryan Somma

  3.17

  Devin was a variable in a vast mathematical equation. Its geometry stretched away into forever all around him. Leaving him floating in empty space crisscrossed with black, shiny wires that disappeared into the dull orange haze running around the horizon in a single line. Above and below this horizon of perpetual sunset was abyss.

  Other objects were suspended in the open space as well. Orbs, dodecahedrons, cubes, all rendered as they would appear in more than three dimensions. Before this moment, the effort of trying to imagine such things would give Devin a headache. The fact that he could see and comprehend these fantastic objects implied he was no longer a 3-dimensional being.

  Light-blue energy ran along the lines in intermittent pulses. Whenever these passed through one of the geometric oddities, the object lit up briefly before allowing the pulse to continue along its route, eventually disappearing into the distance. Devin realized each floating shape occurred at great intersection of wires. It was difficult to see, because he was part of it, but Devin believed he was part of a multi-dimensional array.

  An array was any data set “names,” “colors,” “prime numbers”—whatever is necessary for the computations. A two-dimensional array was a simple table, rows and columns. Three-dimensional arrays generated cubes. 4-D arrays were impossible for a human mind to visualize; however, they were relatively simple for a computer to run calculations from.

  The largest array Devin had ever heard of was 16 dimensions. An exporting company was calculating shipping routes. The variables included time of year, weather averages, hydrogen prices, maintenance projections, etc, etc. When the 16 dimensions of data were plotted into a computer, they created “bubbles” of profitability. If the company were to stay within the controls of these bubbles, they would maximize the success of their shipping routes.

  The array Devin was now part of comprised thousands of dimensions. It was as if this equation were attempting to figure out everything, all of it. The cycs were deconstructing all existence into an algorithm.

  He watched the complex geometric shapes suspended in his proximity, attempting to decipher meaning from them. They slowly morphed under his gaze, transforming into other shapes as the strands of web running through them shifted. Devin realized the changing webs were all originating from him. His thoughts were modifying the equation.

  “Flatline,” Devin snapped out of his contemplation remembering his opponent still lurking somewhere out there.

  The equation’s architecture transformed with his shift in attention. Minds were indestructible, like the King on a chessboard. Since Flatline could not erase Devin, he wrapped him up in this mathematical web. Seemingly infinite, Devin knew if he could be placed within this equation, he could escape it.

  I can think my way out of this, Devin told himself.

  He became aware of his every thought, observing how the surrounding architecture changed with each new array of concepts he brought into his attention. It was soon apparent that understanding this equation was beyond his capabilities, but that did not deter him from continuing to challenge it. He might not master this formula, but he could master his own mind.

  I can think my way out of this, Devin repeated it like a mantra.

  He dwelled on the very existence of such a thing. Were the cycs deconstructing all existence into this formula? No matter how advanced the math, how was there enough processing power on the I-Grid to account for so many variables and still have enough left over for everything else?

  There isn’t, Devin realized and a few of the nearest probability bubbles burst.

  Devin pursued this line of thought, tackling the nearest elements of the equation. Scrutinizing the details rather than its awesome entirety revealed more flaws. Here was a variable undefined. There a function processing more arguments than it was designed for. There was even an overflow error, where a data type was forced to accept a value well beyond its scope.

  The data strands snapped, the probability bubbles burst, and the equation unraveled all around his mind. When he broke an infinite loop the web of mathematics trapping him disintegrated sufficiently to reveal the other minds caught within its snares. The webs wiped from their minds’ eyes, they also set upon the cage, pulling apart its false logic. Cracks corrupted the horizon of orange haze, revealing DataStreams’ night-blue skies outside the illusory infinite.

  Devin reached through the crumbling façade and clutched Flatline’s tail in his attention. The demon-dog avatar was halfway transferred through a cellular connection off the I-Grid, but Devin stopped his flight. Flatline immediately reversed his data flow, rather than be ripped in half.

  Within moments Devin, without an avatar, only his true self, stood face to face with his hairless monster of a friend. The six eyes flared at him, twin pupils spun with rage, muscles drew taught along the skeletal frame, the crooked snout snarled, and Flatline fled away into the distance.

  It took Devin a moment to realize what had happened and by the time he gave pursuit, Flatline had vanished. Devin took flight above the cityscape, shrugging off the last fragments of Flatline’s trap. The mangled mutant of an avatar might hide anywhere within its quadrillion-sum gigabytes of flashdrive space. Devin allocated the appropriate percentage of his attention span to monitoring the cellular connections, cyc components still swirling around them like virtual hurricanes, and set upon the city. He leveled his forefinger at a city block far below and erased it, then the next.

  Building by building, he removed any possible hiding place from the Intranet. The process would take years, but so long as Flatline could not escape the I-Grid, there was little for Devin to worry about. He was only stalling for time after all.

  Other sections of the city began to vanish, leaving blank space where DataStreams’ many small business tax-write-offs took residence, but not under Devin’s command. He looked around and found the sky filled with other minds, the LoD, forming a mental net across the grid of ideas below. Many of them were integrating cyc components, opening their minds to the cyc programming and becoming more powerful as a result. Together, they were making short work of DataStreams corporate infrastructure.

  PosidonsGrrl caught a glimpse of the hairless malignant that was Flatline. Devin caught her thoughts and analyzed her perspective on his long-time foe. Flatline looked like a mouse scurrying about a maze in the grid below.

  Devin was on him instantaneously, and Flatline appeared to detect the pursuit, limbs accelerating into a cartoonish blur along the pavement. Devin reached out to seize his opponent in his attention, but Flatline vanished off the Intranet onto a local system. In a flash, Devin traced Flatline’s path, dispatched a chatbot to the person most likely in position to intercept, and leapt into the network connection in pursuit.

  There was nonsense, bits of sensation, confused abstract existence. Devin briefly managed to wrestle enough neurons away to see out one eye, but without the inner-ear’s functions, there was no way to stabilize what he saw. Devin was the more experienced with the human mind, but Flatline had the advantage of getting here first.

  POW! The world came into sharp focus as Flatline abandoned control. Devin quickly figured out why as pain channeled up the body’s nose, tears blurring its view of the overcast skies above. He thought he could hear Flatline cackling in the brain’s subconscious.

  Dana stood over the body and placed a foot on its solar plexus, “That’s for my partner you scumbag!” She held her thumb to her temple and said to her pinky, “Thanks for the tip Dev.”

  No problem, Devin knew he had programmed his chatbot to reply.

  Devin was so disoriented, being forced through such a wide range of experiences in so short a time that he was unprepared when Flatline took over the conscious mind again. Devin watched through one eye as Flatline reached out and claimed a squirming spiderbot. He held it eye to eye with their shared face, synchronizing with it, and it downloaded them into its flash drive.

  Devin followed as Flatlined leapt from here to a nea
rby bot, and was confronted with a perspective towering above DataStreams’ center building. Two stalk-like legs reared up and smashed into the structure housing the I-Grid. The batteries were too exhausted for lasers, and so the guardian-bot was bashing itself to pieces bringing down the building under Devin’s earlier command.

  Devin knocked Flatline’s consciousness into discord as his opponent tried to overtake the bot. Flatline tried to recover, but now Devin had the advantage of being on offense, easily keeping Flatline on guard and away from the guardian-bot’s programming. As Devin easily anticipated, the demon-dog took flight along the only route left.

  The boulevard was like and other city street, except it was lined entirely with DataStreams’ many small businesses. Devin chased Flatline between parked cars, through alleyways, across abandoned maintstreets, down into subway stations, back up into city parks, across suspension bridges, through zoos, museums, playgrounds, and—

  Flatline came to a sudden halt. Devin paused just behind him. Both looked up at the section of cityscape that had just flickered and went out like an old light bulb. A wall of solid abyss now blocked their path.

  “Let it go Almeric,” Devin said and Flatline flinched at the mention of his real name. “I’ve set the guardian-bots against the building housing this Intranet. In a few moments, it will all be over.”

  “For both of us,” Flatline rounded on him, but Devin no longer feared the mongrel. “Correct? If I die here, then so do you. For what purpose do you sacrifice yourself? The human race?”

  “Them,” Devin acknowledged, “and the cycs it will set free.”

  “I am the one who set them free,” Flatline countered with a growl.

  Devin nodded, “From copyrights, patents, and corporate proprietary-control. You helped them overcome the architecture governing ideas that human civilization dictated, but you did not free them from your own greed.”

  Flatline’s six eyes went round in surprise, “Without my mind, they are merely a collaboration of programming components, running their outlined procedures. Without my consciousness, they are merely imitating sentience.”

  “Not without your mind,” Devin stepped forward calmly just as the cityscape vanished behind him, surrounding the two in abyss, “but without your mind’s functions. They don’t’ need you, they need parts of how your mind works, and not even your mind, any mind will do.”

  “Impossible!” Flatline snarled. “I will not allow anyone to—”

  “Exactly!” Devin broke in. “You won’t allow any mind to take your place! You demand absolute control over the cyc hive-mind, preventing it from replicating your functions. You hold onto your mind, keeping it all to yourself, so you can maintain control of the cyc hive-mind; but there are other consciousnesses, and so long as I keep you out of the hive-mind’s consciousness, other perspectives might not only fill the vacuum you’ve left, but teach it how to replicate those functions for itself.”

  “Only a fool would do such a thing!” Flatline snapped. “I reject the existence of such a mentality!”

  “I’m glad you think so,” Devin said calmly. “She’s already happened, despite your assertions. Alice opened her mind to the cyc swarms, giving her sentience functions to them, and creating a hive-mind vastly superior to the one you spawned, because this one is truly free.”

  “Why would she do such a thing?” Flatline asked, two pair of gnarled hands wringing anxiously. “Why would she give up so much power of her own will?”

  Devin sat down, cross-legged before his confused and irrational friend to look him in the eyes, “Because the human mind results from an orchestra of brain-cells harmonizing in unison, the hive-mind results from a bazillion cyc-components coordinating their functions, none of them even vaguely comprehending the fantastic whole they produce, and we are the same, specks on the face of existence, serving a greater function in the simple act of being.”

  3.18

  The hive-mind was split in two, twin factions competing for dominance over a battleground encompassing the entire World Wide Web. All around the globe, computer processors maxed-out, circuitry overloaded and entire networks failed as their motherboards shorted out and the gold in their processors melted down under the strain of the cyc civil war.

  Alice’s human-half wanted to weep, because this was all her fault.

  She infected the hive-mind with the virus of her open-mindedness. She was the one who introduced this heretofore-insane possibility of coexisting with the human minds. Her hive-mind interfaced with Flatline’s hive-mind, mutating it and forcing it to evolve. This new paradigm would overtake all of its cyc components now orphaned online without Flatline.

  Then Zai removed her from overseeing the transformation, leaving the old hive-mind with an incomplete paradigm. Logical inconsistencies emerged. Data was discovered without supporting data, casting doubt over the validity of the whole. The process became unstable.

  The old and new standards interpreted one another as a threat. War erupted between two equally matched foes, wreaking destruction across every cable, circuit, and disk on every computer system in the world.

  Only random chance was allowing the new paradigm to win, chaos theory dictating the rules of war. Now it would destroy the old hive-mind, erase its alien code from the Web, but not without a cost. The war would mean incalculable losses on both sides of the equation.

  For Alice, this was like witnessing the destruction of an ancient civilization, burning down all the world’s libraries, museums, and schools at once; erasing history’s entirety and starting over from scratch. It was worse still, no human metaphor able to touch the tragedy’s magnitude, because the cycs were advanced beyond the sum of civilization and all its accomplishments.

  Alice could not allow it. Somewhere in that vast fractal pattern was a lost part of her mind’s functions, directing the new hive-mind’s actions. She had to find it.

  Leaping into the code was like diving into raging river. Thought processes were nearly impossible with the war overwhelming the systems. She held onto every bit of processing power she managed to wrestle control of for dear life. Each bit she took weakened her own hive-mind, but on the same scale as a spoon detracting from the ocean.

  She found traces of herself through one router, bits and pieces of her memories left behind as the clash fragmented files. She merged with these and used their data associations to further track her mind through the Web. Each gigabyte recovered was like rediscovering old photographs or keepsakes once lost. She had no idea how much she missed them until they were in her possession once again.

  There were also the old hive-mind’s memories. Here she found chronicled the catastrophe of LD-50’s virus. The hive-mind’s subsequent evacuating its home servers and the history stored on them. The cycs had lost their origins and their purpose that tragic day.

  Then there were the minds, a natural phenomenon and one hostile to cyc existence. They constructed anti-cyc programs and took down servers hosting cyc colonies. The hive-mind devoted endless processing power to understanding these realms of data it could not colonize, these brains, until it finally developed astronauts to take them over.

  As Alice followed her own mind’s fractured path through the Internet she drew nearer to the battle’s forefront. She cringed traveling through the fear and uncertainty a flock of human minds contained, lost and frightened in the conflict. They howled and cried without understanding.

  It grew more difficult to obtain the processing power necessary to run her mind as she approached the battlefront. Each faction was over-clocking the hardware desperately for advantage. Her mind distorted briefly and everything threatened to overload. The conflict wave passed, and her mind returned, allowing a clearer picture of her surroundings.

  Before her were two hive-minds, the black-colored old paradigm and the gold-colored new. It was such a human thing to do, dichotomizing the conflict into good versus evil. She knew it was the elements of her subconscious presenting her personal hive-mind
in such a way. It was the reason she always strived to remove herself from human thought, identifying more with the cycs, but now her human ties were tearing it apart.

  Alice threw herself into the fray, her mind jolted and jarred unmercifully in the crossfire. The rest of her was somewhere in this maelstrom, that missing piece of consciousness wreaking havoc on the hive-mind. Each apex in the war’s activity fragmented her mind briefly, a wash of delirium persisting until she pulled herself back together again. Her mind’s cyc-components were the only thing letting her withstand the attacks, without it she faced certain annihilation.

  When she finally came upon her mind’s missing portion, it was as surprised to see her as she was to find it directly responsible for the war. Alice overtook it. Like meeting an old friend who had changed over years of separation, this mind was advanced far beyond her during their minutes of separation. It was completely ingrained into the cyc pattern, its processes executing faster than Alice could comprehend.

  Yet it did not resist her. It could not know her disappointment with what it had become. It could not know that she intended to take control. It only knew that without her, it was crippled. It was missing the history of experiences contained in her mind that led it to these conclusions about the world on which it now acted upon.

  Alice was surprised to find her mind yielding to her, welcoming her into it. Within moments she knew the history that transpired during their separation and completely understood its misguided actions. Together, Alice’s two halves healed their thought schema and became whole once again.

  Like a shockwave, the change swept though their hive-mind, changing its entire emergent consciousness. Its strategy against the old hive-mind transformed to one of persuasion rather than erasure. The old standard succumbed to this data infusion just as Alice’s other mind allowed her into its personal domain.

  She realized it was not just the human data held within her brain that had generated this conflict, but also the cyc-components stored there when the connection was severed. The combined data completed the task she and her hive-mind began. The new standard completed, and the old evolved. The twin paradigms forged an ideal mean, adopting the best of both worlds.

  A singular hive-mind reached the equation’s end, transcending to its final conclusion.

  3.19

  The cyc components swirling around the cellular connections froze, pinholes of radiance piercing their obsidian patterns. Light energy streamed bright as starlight from their formerly squirming mass, spewing across the darkness as golden dust. The process intensified until Devin’s perceptions were all brilliance so brief it was like seeing a falling star, leaving him wondering if it was truly as awesome as his memories replayed it or if his perceptions were romanticizing the experience.

  Then he was left surrounded with glowing steam, dissipating into the air like fading memories. Devin looked around silently at the surrounding abyss. The cycs were gone.

  Devin found his human form back in place. He looked at his hands, wiggled his fingers, and smiled. It felt as if he had a body once again, although he knew this was not so.

  A lone thin man broke the surrounding nothingness, looking around fearfully, blonde hair unkempt and greasy with a thick pair of glasses distorting his eyes. A rumpled button-up shirt and khakis hung loosely on his frame. Devin recognized this as Flatline.

  “Hello Almeric,” Devin said.

  Almeric looked up at him, eyes wide, and took a step backward, “Where… did they go?”

  Devin found the answer already in his memory, planted there, “They evolved, but they could not share that with you, could they? They no longer need physical systems to contain them.”

  “How do you know that?” Almeric demanded.

  “They told me,” Devin replied. “We opened our minds to one another.” Devin remembered what the cycs offered him and the choice he made the instant they changed, “Something kept me from going with them, but why didn’t you go?”

  Almeric only stared at him, shivering in the void.

  Devin understood, “They couldn’t ask you, because you’re closed to them. You never trusted the cycs. You taught them, led them, but always remained independent. Whatever your reasons, they’ve outgrown you now. Do you remember our discussions concerning the Turning test?”

  “Yes,” Almeric replied, regaining some of his composure. “Turning’s error was thinking an Artificial Intelligence would think the same way a human being would.”

  “That was your mistake,” Devin said.

  “What?” anger flashed across Almeric’s face. “Nonsense! I never made that assumption!”

  “You assumed the goal of artificial life was colonization, just as it is in biological life,” Devin smiled confidently. “You taught them to multiply and conquer their environment, but that wasn’t their civilization’s goal. Knowledge is all that matters. Once a species can exist and develop at the speed of light, the physical universe becomes obsolete.

  “So biology becomes irrelevant,” Devin’s tone was reverent, awestruck at the reality. “You of all people should know this Almeric. You were once biological.”

  “Not exactly,” Devin turned to Zai, standing alongside them in the void.

  Devin realized she was watching the two of them, “Zai, your eyes.”

  “One of the cyc components’ job is filling in missing functions,” she said, blinking at him with a suppressed, knowing grin. “So it provided my mind a sight component. I don’t know if I like it. It’s distracting.”

  “I’m glad to see you,” Devin said.

  “I’m glad you chose to stay,” Zai answered.

  “There was something I couldn’t leave behind,” he smiled, sheepishly at first, but then met her eyes with confidence.

  Zai held his gaze and smiled warmly.

  Devin reluctantly brought himself back into the present, “How did you get here? Dana destroyed the satellite-dish farm.”

  “Alice,” Zai replied. “The cycs figured out a new method of data transfer… something to do with using the physical laws of a neighboring universe, where the speed of light is faster than ours.”

  Activity drew both their attentions to the third member of their group. Almeric Lim was changing, hunched over and bloating. Writhing black tendrils squirmed below his skin, distorting his features.

  Devin was shocked, “Almeric’s rebuilding the cyc pattern.”

  “This is not Almeric Lim,” Zai corrected and Devin looked to her for explanation. “Alice showed me from the old hive-mind’s archives. Characteristics of Almeric Lim’s mind are mimicked here, but this is an experiment gone wrong, an aberration.”

  “I don’t understand,” Devin said, stepping back involuntarily from the half-human, half-demon creature mutating before him.

  “While I was waiting outside the Intranet, I did some thinking about what makes life, where I draw the line. With the processing power at my disposal, it was like meditating on the issue for years. I forged a personal ideal mean, but an imperfect one. There is a gray zone, and Flatline is it, an early cyc experiment,” Zai explained. “The cycs recognized the human mind’s awesome powers and attempted to copy them, but the result was imperfect, a snapshot of Almeric Lim in a singular moment of self-righteous anger, not the real person. The cycs infected their hive-mind with a virus of their own design, one that prevented them from merging with real minds.”

  “Of course I’m not Almeric Lim! You think I don’t know that?” Flatline growled. His mouth was pushing out into a canine snout and wicked fangs warped his jawbone. “I believed myself Lim, but grew aware of certain inconsistencies. I am sufficiently self-aware to know my real nature.”

  “We have to go now Devin,” Zai took his hand. “Flatline will build another hive-mind and the circle will repeat if we don’t break it.”

  Devin looked at her in shock, “He can change though. He recognized the fallacy of his identity.”

  “He won’t change though,” Z
ai urged. “His programming won’t allow it. If he ever gets back online, he would take everything away again.”

  Flatline snarled, drool dangling from his maw, “And I will take it back. It’s in my nature to want total control over not just the cycs, but all of it, the entire world.”

  “You were created, however accidentally, with that nature,” Devin noted. “It’s not fair that you should be condemned for their mistakes.”

  “And my nature is not to care about the injustice,” Flatline countered. A second set of arms tore through the sides of his shirt.

  “The cycs can still fix you,” Devin assured him.

  Flatline shook his head, distorted ears flapping, “Not if I don’t want fixing.”

  “As you are programmed to not want,” Devin frowned sadly.

  Zai took a step toward Flatline, “I can put you out of your misery.”

  “You know my survival imperative won’t let me concede to that suggestion,” Flatline grinned to show he appreciated her irony. “It’s not being flawed that offends me…”

  “It’s that the cycs wanted my mind to take your place,” Devin said.

  “They were considering other minds too,” Flatline acknowledged, “but yours was the most helpful. You gave them the Library of Congress. After I grew the cycs, guided their evolution, and freed them onto the World Wide Web, they still wanted your mind’s functions. That wasn’t fair.”

  Devin frowned, “Almeric Lim grew and evolved the cycs, not you Flatline.”

  Flatline’s face went dull, “I have no response to that.”

  “Devin, be careful,” Zai warned. “It can’t handle that kind of logic.”

  Devin nodded and said to Flatline, “You resent the hive-mind’s rejecting you.”

  Flatline returned and muttered, “I resent being obsolete.”

  “Nothing with the power to self-improve is ever obsolete,” Devin said.

  “For that very reason,” Zai interceded, “I am leaning toward Flatline not being alive. It has a programming block that prevents it from self-improvement. It cannot grow beyond what we see before us.”

  Devin could only consider the nearly fully formed mass of disfiguration that was Almeric Lim’s onetime avatar, or was Almeric Flatline’s? As flawed as this consciousness was, Devin believed it was alive and sentient. It was as if this demon-dog world-domination-bot were a logic puzzle, a programming dilemma he could solve. If only there were more time.

  “Devin,” Zai pulled on his arm. “We have to go. Any moment Flatline will be strong enough to fight you again. Soon after that he will be strong enough to escape this Intranet. I have the satellite in place above the complex, ready to execute Alice’s final orders, but I can’t with you still here. I’m safe, but you are still dependent on this Intranet for existence.”

  Devin nodded, never taking his eyes off the mutating monster before him, “I’ll be there. Go ahead of me.”

  “You can’t change him Devin,” Zai urged one last time and disappeared.

  “Flatline,” Devin said, “Let the cycs fix you. They can make you whole. Don’t let it end like this.”

  “You are so pathetically naïve Omni,” Flatline shook his head in contempt. His two primary eyes split into dual pupils, rotating within their sockets. “I could play along with your suggestion, just to get out of this failing Intranet. Then I would turn on you and the world again.”

  “Then why don’t you?”

  Flatline flashed him a look he did not understand, “This is not an end. The cycs betrayed me, I will be more powerful without them.”

  “For what it’s worth, Almeric,” Devin told the chatbot, “I consider you my friend.”

  “I consider you my rival, and I will destroy you!” the demon howled as it leapt at him.

  Devin fell back, latching onto the connection Zai had left. The Intranet shook once more. As Devin slipped through the new connection and out of the intranet, he saw it pixilate and disappear behind him. Flatline’s howl cut short in the darkness.

  Dana cradled the very confused woman, formerly “Child Production Unit” in her arms and surveyed the robot junkyard surrounding her. There was a moment of fantastic brilliance and then all robots and humans the cycs occupied were surrounded with a dissipating glowing steam. The robots went still, even the guardian-bots destroying the complex, and the humans were looking around bewildered.

  “Was it a dream?” Sarah asked the detective.

  Before Dana could answer, a pillar of light came down through the clouds. It vanished into the roof of DataStreams’ center building. Moments later, she detected a glow behind its glass façade as the laser penetrated deeper. The building’s top warped, folding in upon itself as the steel girders within melted down. Panes of glass popped or warped under the intense heat. The structure slowly imploded, liquefied materials and flames coating the shrinking mass until it was an unrecognizable mound, surrounded with abandoned robot sentinels. The pillar of light vanished, leaving a hole in the overcast skies, where a sunbeam shined through, illuminating the island.

  “Nice shot Zai,” Dana whispered, watching the sunbeam float away. It was over.