Log 1.2

Ahem.

Back on track…

People trade their data allotments around for things. Privilege, priv, is your external data. It lets you grow; lets you simulate things in the Medium. A pen will run you one priv.

The second is Exaflops. Exa. Ex. X.

Exa is your personal data allotment. The real money, you might say, like labor was when we had flesh and things to actually do. If you're trading away your exa, you either have more than you need, more coming, or something's very wrong.

But hey, if you have the data, 1X will get you a pen the size of a house, and all the ink will be calculated for every bit of n-body Brownian motion in the gravity direction of your choice.

A few people got really good at exploiting this economy. Let's just say they get to play the parts of gods amongst all of the mere immortals. They even get to boss around Demi.

Gotta love admins.

They get to make worlds and have enough memory to learn – but most of the time just download – all the knowledge and skills they can wrap their tiny little imaginations around.

Get enough data in you, and people called you hi-res. You get to live that hi-res life in a hi-rise getting high on other people's memories of real drugs…

Not sure about that last part, but I'm pretty sure there's mycologists out there. Some fun guys who saw the universe on a starship propelled by magic mushrooms.

Lose enough exa… and let's just say you get pixelated. And not just in terms of your SIS. That's Self Image Simulation, for all of you who may not be in on the ghost-lingo.

Lose the wrong data, and you become a monster.

I'm talking digital cannibalism. SISs transformed into the stuff of nightmares that the nightmares had.

The people they rip apart don't get reinstanced.

Here, when you die normally – a phrase I never thought I'd use – you just get refreshed. Replaced by a fresh copy, minus any data that doesn't fit your allotment. With all the economically induced data limits, the game nowadays is: go too far down the lo-res track, and what little comes back is worse than getting deleted.

I hate seeing it. It reminds me of-

Pangolin, pangolin, peanut, Stop, pangolpang-pang paki plagl p-p-p-p-p… Please…

…

I'm shuddering right now. My SIS looks like a human radio wave, then it's back to normal once I get out of the loop.

The thing that chills me, I put it in my closet.

Temperature is just a concept here, and I'm shuddering because the poor sucker who held my job last is in a box muttering "Dakota" to themself as a blurry puddle of point-zero-zero-one exaflops. Sometimes I think it's just lips that are left. Sometimes I think it's an eyeball. A blind, talking eyeball.

Reminds me of dying… and speaking of dying…

Without a body, a person only needs about point-seven exaflops to be stable. Point-two if you're willing to give up visual data processing. Blidgies, people call such folk.

The word has something to do with blindness, which wasn't even a problem in my time. Don't ask me, I missed the centuries of culture all the other sims got to have.

But what I do know is that when everyone else was first instanced, everyone started with exactly one exaflop.

That poor sob who had my job is basically a clue more than a human now… sterilized of everything but a word. They die about every half second. Their re-instance is tagged to a fucking shoe box in my digital apartment. A recreation from my memories, Demiurge says.

Demi keeps them my predecessor around because they aren't allowed to kill passengers.

I call them Demi.

They're… an okay boss.

Not the worst I've had.

You know that trope in fiction about assassins getting assassinated after the assassination?

I evaded that trope three times.

Only took one shot of whiskey laced with a tranquilizer for the trope to stick though.

But Nixed, did you get sleep through the whole brain vaporization process? No. Not even a little. That asshole needed me awake for the dying. The better to copy my intelligence, he said…

But hey, at least with Demi, a true artificial intelligence, one bound by coding and all that, I don't have to worry about betrayal…

…

All right, so I don't have a choice. I wasn't even supposed to be in the 100 Million Club.

According to Demi, she found my metadrive in a stasis crate of dried spaghetti noodles.

That's me. Spaghetti all'Assassina.

Whoever stored me there had a sick sense of humor.

Just like me. Haha. I think. Less gallows, more gouda.

Sometimes I wonder if original-recipe me was this crazy.

I'd sigh right now if I really could.

Might feel good to just say it…

Sigh.

I wish I could remember her name. The girl who used to hack for me… I really feel like there was something more there. Maybe marriage, or a kid, or a shared interest, or a cat… I think I liked cats. But nope.

It's all almost-gone.

Excised data. Along with my name. My backstory. My metadata.

I got to keep just enough memories to keep me working. Just enough knowledge of Earth to let me sympathize with 100 million ghosts who always talk about the damn place. Just enough ephemeral sensations of lost love in my not-really-asleep dreams to keep me motivated and interested in this perdition.

See, because I'm not on the manifest, Demi doesn't have to not-kill me.

I'm an outside agent. A free person… err… program. One they can do all sorts of things to. Like start me off with one exa from their personal processor. The last bit is enough to overclock with only a few bad consequences instead of a lot of really bad ones. I'm talking pangolin flashbacks.

Also, I get enough priv for me to live in the memory of a shitty apartment by the vesselport in 2277's Tokyo. Almost dead center in the "city" of Share.

Love those 6-engine air yachts. At home, only I get to hear them every hour on the hour. Ah, memories.

Was I even Japanese? I feel like my hacker was.

So yeah… Sucks to be me. I might get deleted at the end of this or Demi will turn out to be the best boss I ever had.

No pressure.

I get my memories unlocked when I finish my work to Demi's satisfaction, provided I also demonstrate good behavior. Remembering myself and everyone I ever knew would be nice… but the memory I want the most is the name and face of the bastard that killed me. Because I know he's here somewhere, and I aim to delete him.

My bet: He's on top of the exa-crement pile.

My plan: To go analog in dismantling his digital ass.

I am not a good person…

I'm not even sure I'm a sane one.

Or maybe I'm the only sane one in a mad world.

I'm sure other villains thought the same…

But him…

Some people shouldn't be allowed to exist.

Just thinking about killing him makes me feel more real. Makes me want to be real.

The longer I'm awake, the more I think I could look forward to having a real body again…

If he's gone.

One exaflop of Nixed. Here for revenge at the end of the world.

Ahaha ha. Ahah. Hah…

Pangolins.

…

So let me tell you about Demiurge.