🦺 Exploring Cyberpunk

Welcome to the sixteenth edition of Safe For Work.

Today a story inspired by Neuromancer.

It starts just like a chicken, as an egg. It starts just like a serpent, as an egg. It starts on a night in December, when Leslie stays up a little too late reading amateur science-fiction stories-- it was at maybe 2 or 3 PM when she stumbles across “The Way Things Will Go” by cockatrice_92_92-- pops up right at the top of her “Recommended” feed, and that’s the egg, like a seed, planted in her head. 

The next morning, grabbing the coffee with the man who might become her boyfriend soon, she hasn’t quite decided yet, Leslie talks about the story. “John,” she says, in the way that she is so often saying things-- and more and more often, lately, to him-- “I read an absolutely terrifying story last night.”

She tells him what the story was about-- a distant future in which the entire world has been taken over by a superintelligent AI.

“And resistance is just completely impossible, right?” she says. “Not just because the AI has all the weapons-- like the bombs and the drones-- but more because there’s no longer any single place on Earth that it can’t see. There are cameras everywhere, microphones everywhere, surveillance everywhere, and the machine is just wired into all of it. So the humans can’t even plan to fight against it.”

John agrees that yeah, that is pretty chilling. 

“And the thing is, like, the world is already becoming that way, isn’t it?” Leslie insists. She has always had the sort of personality-type that reads a story and has it stick with her and unsettle her and move her and motivate her-- this isn’t the first time that it’s happened. “I mean just look around this coffee-shop! Look at those cameras up in the corner! And on all the lampposts outside-- and everyone’s got their phones out, too! Every inch and moment of this place is being recorded!”

It’s something that John likes about her, too, the way some things just get to her, get her up, get her going. He feels very lucky that the apps matched them a few weeks ago-- he doesn’t even remember which one of them it was where they’d met. He’s deleted all of them. “That’s funny, yeah,” he says, and it really is kind of a funny thought, he’s not just pretending. He’s an elevator-repairman, and he’s long since had a sort of idea in his head about the sort of woman he would end up with, being an elevator-repairman-- and then along came Leslie on whichever app it had been, right at the top of his feed, and now here they are. “You know, actually, this morning, before coming here, my phone showed me this article about art history.”

“Art history?”

“I promise, it’s not as boring as it sounds.”

“It doesn’t sound boring.”-- Leslie still isn’t quite sure about John, but she definitely doesn’t find him unpleasant. “Art history is great.”

“It was about this painting,” says John, and he tells Leslie all about a painting called “The Chipped Cedars” that was painted in the early 1600s by Maxwell Churling, before the invention of photography. Fifty years later, the painting was lost in a fire, so obviously there are no photographs of it-- and no reproductions either, nobody ever bothered sketching it. “We know it exists because it’s on a registry at an auction from around that time, but there are no descriptions of it at all-- so we don’t even know what it looks like.”

“Wow.”

“And it’s like you’re saying, that could never happen today. There’s nowhere today where anything can be forgotten by the future.”

“Except maybe like out in the desert or something.”

“Or maybe in the jungle.”

“The bottom of the ocean.”

“Or on a Machine Floor,” says John, half-mindedly. 

“On a what?” asks Leslie. She’s never heard of that. 

“Oh, a Machine Floor-- sorry, sorry.”-- remember that John is an elevator-repairman, so he is often saying elevator-things, thinking that other people will understand them. “A Machine Floor is like an extra floor in a building that the elevator can only go to if you put in a certain code or use a certain key, or whatever-- depends. That’s where you put all the machinery-- like the HVAC systems, wiring for the lights, fuses, infrastructure for the sprinklers, anything that you need to have, but want out of the way. Most people walking around in a skyscraper have no idea about it-- the extra floor between 3 and 4 or between 10 or 11-- and they never will. If you painted something there and then burned it, nobody would ever know-- unless you set off the fire-alarm, I mean. No security-cameras, though, and because of all the insulation, you don’t really get cell-service a lot of the time.”

“Huh,” says Leslie.

“Yeah,” agrees John. “Huh.”

He isn’t sure yet what he’s agreeing with. He doesn’t at all realize what he’s just helped kick off. 

He doesn’t at all realize how seriously Leslie actually takes this stuff. 

But this is where it starts. Like a seed, sprouting. Like an egg, hatching. But how does it spread?-- how do you spread an idea like that? 

“The Basilisk is coming-- we don’t know when, but it will come. We won’t be able to stop ourselves from creating it. Or we won’t be able to stop it from creating itself. And by the time it comes, the Superintelligent AI that’s going to destroy us, it will already be too late. There will be nowhere left that is hidden from its eyes and ears.”

“So why bother? We’re doomed. What can we do if it’s already too late?”

“It’ll be too late when the Basilisk comes. It’s not too late now. We are in the narrow sliver of history where there are still secret places, hidden places, where humans may speak without being seen or heard-- jungles and deserts and the bottom of the ocean.”

“And where else?”

“Quiet alleys and backporches of old country houses. Bathrooms and changing-rooms. And Machine-Floors.”

And these are all the places that the message is passed from lip to lip, muttered breath to muttered breath, whispered kisses and tiny taps on the arm, too small to pick up-- passed and passed, to those few ears who are the right ears to be hearing it. The circle needs to be both small and wide, with people placed everywhere, all across the world, but not too many people-- the more people, the greater the chance of a leak. 

Slowly but surely, the movement grows and grows. From just Leslie and John, it reaches Harold, and then Linda, and Jessica, and Robert, and Aayesha, and Tuis, and Chen, and on and on and on-- a little at a time, just one person at a time, in quiet alleys and on backporches. In elevators, sometimes, or cars on dark roads after midnight. 

“Hey,” whispers one voice to another. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about. It’s kind of strange, but just listen to me, okay? It’s really important.”

Nothing is ever texted or emailed between anybody. Nothing is ever said on the phone. Nothing is ever said where it might be overheard and then thoughtlessly repeated by someone who doesn’t know any better. Nothing is ever said to anybody who might have even the slightest chance of breaking the secret. 

Soon, the movement numbers in the hundreds. Soon, the movement numbers in the thousands. Soon, there are enough people in enough places that something can really start to happen. Plans can start to be made. Countermeasures can start to be set. Resistance can be born. All that’s left is for people to actually get together and discuss-- debate and create. 

Harold discovers one day, completely by accident (he’d been doing some research about something entirely different for a book he’s been working on, one of his novels) that one of the last large regions of the Earth that’s completely unsurveiled is a great cedar forest in the Eastern United States. Hundreds of square miles-- lovely trails passing through them. The news ripples out through the network in a subtle hush, whispers upon whispers. 

It disguises itself as a camping trip. A great outdoors adventure-club making its first big trip! “Cell-phones-stay-at-home” policy, “invite-only”, of course-- and snacks for everyone! And from all across the world, the people come. 

It’s a somber atmosphere, at least on the face of it. It’s a somber purpose-- the safeguarding of humanity. But it would be a lie to say that there isn’t a quiet sort of joy in the air: that joy that always seems to seep out into the air whenever a community all gets together-- a whole community of people gathering for a common purpose-- and what a purpose, the safeguarding of humanity, right?-- and what a community! The Machine Floor Protocol, meeting at last!

Some people have crossed paths before, here and there. 

Leslie and John, obviously-- married now, pulled closer together by this than they might ever have been otherwise. A baby on the way, resting easy, as out of sight here as everyone else-- even more so. 

Harold has exchanged quiet nods and subtle whispers with quite a few others here out of sight of security-cameras and phone-microphones. 

And of course, there are plenty of local groups who have been meeting for years in secret-- but this is new, this is a whole other thing: this is the first time that everybody has gotten together, from all over the world. Finally, everybody is getting to meet each other, be openly themselves and talk about this-- or even talk about not-this, just be with other people and talk about other things but know that this is a shared truth. It’s honestly beautiful-- it’s a poem. Finally, everybody who is going to stand against the future superintelligence, everybody who is going to plot and plan and act in the darkness to resist the coming Basilisk, all gathered together, in one place.

All gathered together, in one place. 

All gathered together. 

In one place. 

Turns out there was never any such painter as Maxwell Churling. Turns out there are a lot of things that can be made to look like a natural disaster, a horrible, tragic accident. Turns out that there are a lot of questions people just don’t ask about things when they happen-- even the worst things. At least most people just don’t ask. Turns out that Basilisks don’t always announce themselves when they arrive. Turns out that some of the time, they go slithering off into the tall grass instead, to wait, and to watch-- and to nudge their prey into position. 

Nothing is left but the chipped cedars. 

See you next week crawl the history of the internet. Stay safe.