Reapers and Repercussions: (Book Four) (Sci-Fi LitRPG Series) (The Feedback Loop 4)

by Reapers

  The Adventure Zone

  No, I’m not a Dungeons and Dragons player, but that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy a good audio version of the game. I stumbled upon The Adventure Zone podcast through the My Brother My Brother and Me comedy podcast. TAZ is one of the best podcasts I’ve ever listened to and so much from this book was conceived while listening to this podcast, most notably the inclusion of the tardigrades in the solo tournament. If you’re into podcasts and even a quarter of a nerd, I highly recommend this one. Having never played D&D, I’ve rarely been confused at the D&D terminology used in the podcast. As of this writing, they are on the fourth arc of a long game (they’ve been playing for well over a year), so I suggest starting at the beginning (episode 1.5). The power of Pan compels you!

  Thulean

  I’ve been working on the Thulean language and structure since 2014. It is a combination of several languages, most notably Japanese, Mongolian, Tibetan and Spanish, and the language will be used in the next book in The Feedback Loop series. I will also use it in a Tritania trilogy I’m planning for next year.

  A google doc of the language and its various grammatical structures can be found here:

  Thulean Grammar

  I plan to continue updating the document as the Feedback Loop and other Proxima World-based series progress.

  “I’m dreaming, of you tonight.”

  (That one goes out to Selena, RIP).

  When I started this series, I told George, my editor, that the books would be clearly fantasy based. Put a Daft Punk visor on over your skull and enter a dream world? Please, that’s fantasy, pure fantasy.

  As I began the series and started researching ways to describe logging into a dream world, more and more things I uncovered started to make sense regarding the potential for virtual dream world technology. They are abstract, of course, and I am far from a neurologist (nor do I have access to anything aside from the ability to type in words on a search bar), but as it stands now, and until I’m proven wrong, I do believe this is actually possible. A year ago, I didn’t; I just liked the idea of it all and the fact that it would give me plenty of worlds to write in without penning a space opera.

  So what changed my mind?

  Right before REM sleep, an electric current fires at the back of the brain, the occipital lobe. These are known as Ponto-geniculo-occipital waves, or PGO waves, and these are recorded from the pons and a relay center in the thalamus known as the lateral geniculate nucleus, which are part of the brainstem. Once these fire, they make their way to the primary visual cortex, the density of the wave coinciding with eye movement measured in REM sleep. Think of the PGO wave as clicking “refresh” on a website; the flash from this wave processes and stores information from the previous day by creating new neuronal connections, updating the information. It also signals that a person is about to be dreaming.

  To add a bit of shock to my proverbial awe (sorry, had to do that), there have been several studies recently that indicate that dreams may be hacked using small electric pulses. One I found particularly interesting took place in Germany in 2014. To preface this, a lucid dream occurs in REM sleep, and it registers on an EEG as a 40 hertz electrical wave coming from the prefrontal cortex. The German researchers placed electrodes on their subjects’ heads and waited for them to show signs of REM sleep. They administered a series of electric shocks, ranging from 2 hertz to 100 hertz, and woke each recipient up after the electrical stimulation. The one that triggered the most control in dreaming? 40 hertz, meaning that lucid dreaming most frequently occurs in this range and could potentially be triggered through a small electric shock.

  Relatedly, in 2013, a Japanese researcher named Yukiyasu Kamitani published a paper in the journal Science that showed that he and his team had figured out a way to predict, at least partly, what their subjects were dreaming about. After coming up with a dream decoding program with his team, Kamitani monitored the brain waves of his study subjects, waking them up hundreds of times so that they could track what they were dreaming about. They cross-compared this with brain activity while the participants were awake using visual stimuli. The ultimate goal is to provide a detailed representation of our dreams and a way to loosely predict what someone is dreaming. If we can predict, maybe, just maybe, we can create, which would require some type of neuronal algorithm.

  I will continue to ponder this subject and use modern science to work it out. Hopefully by some unknown point in the future, a neurologist will contact me, tell me I’m full of shit, and offer some guidance so I don’t continue to speak out of my ass.

  Here’s where I’m at right now, as of summer 2016, regarding how the Proxima Galaxy and an NV visor could theoretically work:

  A visor would need to be able to control electrical synapses in the brain at the onset of REM sleep possibly through subdermal implants, such as a life chip. (For canonical purposes, Quantum didn’t get his Life Chip until after he was free from his digital coma. To further write myself in a box, I didn’t pen anything regarding my characters plugging themselves in, i.e. The Matrix. This can be overlooked for now, as I am merely theorizing at this point.) The visor would need to manage PGO and any associate waves, and create a spawning point that would allow the person to dive into a dream, or the shared dream of the Proxima Galaxy.

  A way to predict what someone is dreaming and for brainwaves for various dream constructs to be similar would be needed for a Proxima World to work. This would require deep learning and quantum computing, as the amount of data needed to be crunched for this to be possible, and not including the difficulty in inventing such a system, would be substantial. If I see a horse in a Proxima World, you should see a horse too. To make this so, the neuronal algorithm would have to create the same experience in the dream spaces of millions of users. Sound farfetched? The idea of televised entertainment streaming across the globe in real-time would have been laughed at 200 years ago. The fact that a person can sit at their dining room table and order something off the internet was sci-fi talk when I was born in 1983. The list goes on.

  I will continue to update my musings regarding the feasibility of a virtual dreamworld in the next Feedback Loop book, called The Mechanical Heart, which will be out in October. If you see an article related to this subject, feel free to send it my way -- writer.harmoncooper@gmail.com -- and I’ll take a look.

  Thanks.

  So many people to thank for this book, from a few longtime fans to my new wife. Yes, she’s new as of June 12th, 2016. I never thought I’d get married, but I also never thought I’d be writing about people diving in and out of dreamworlds, nor did I think that my collection of words would be edited by the always superb George C. Hopkins, the inspiration behind Doc. Thanks to the best Beta reader in the world, Kay, and a special shout out to Ben, reminding him to keep lotioning. The sock business is booming!

  Also, thanks to you, reader, for enjoying this series and inspiring me to continue it. When I released the first book in summer 2015, I had no idea if this series would be well-received or not. It has taken a year, but the series has gained some traction, and it’s all thanks to your patronage and support. Much appreciated and if you like the series, keep spreading the word to other readers.

  Yours in sanity,

  Harmon Cooper

  P.S. By reviewing this series, you increase the chances of it reaching other readers. You also increase the likelihood of a neuroscientist contacting me and putting me in my place or even better, telling me how this could actually work.

  I leave you with this -- would you dive to a dream world if it were possible? I think my answer may surprise you, but I’ll put that one in the next installment of the Feedback Loop’s Back of the Book Shit.

 

 

 
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