Thanqol

Breathless Dead

Jupiter - the old name for the King of the Gods. It is surrounded by moons and drenched in meaning. Not only does every one of the eighty eight surviving moons have a name, it has a legend; a story of one of Zeus' many lovers, still orbiting her celestial form. And it is at war.

Not a war as any of the Tellurians might recognize it, but one that makes an instinctive sense to Dyssia. This is a pretend war. Across the surface of many moons robotic crawlers move, recycling fields of debris and setting up factories, command nodes and fortresses. They orbit clockwise, because on the other side of the moons is a constantly shifting front line as heroic individuals tear through endless mechanical hordes. Your lenses cannot make out specifics at this distance, other than that it is few against many.

There is a network of long distance beacons surrounding the warzone with a rosetta stone worth of warning messages. The scribes and analysts aboard the Plousios make extremely rapid work decoding this archaic series of languages, and once a Plover is dispatched to investigate they find a series of large synthpaper instruction manuals attached to the outside of the beacons. Bringing one back and working through the language sequences, a message is uncovered:

THIS IS NOT A PLACE OF HONOUR.
NO HIGHLY ESTEEMED DEED IS COMMEMORATED HERE.
THERE ARE NO DANGERS THAT MIGHT SPREAD, AND NO TREASURES WORTH SEIZING.
THIS IS A MEDICAL FACILITY AND THE PEOPLE HERE ARE ILL.
THE SICKNESS IS OF THE MIND.
THESE PEOPLE REQUIRE AN ENEMY TO FIGHT AGAINST.
IF AN ENEMY IS NOT PROVIDED, THEY WILL INVENT ONE.
WE OBSERVE THESE PEOPLE CLOSELY.
SOME RECOVER FROM THEIR ILLNESS AND ARE RETURNED TO SOCIETY.

From there, the text goes into details about the specifics of the game. It is a dizzyingly complicated situation, overseen by a powerful digital intelligence. The open war is only a small part of it; there is also a transcendentally complex civilian side based around investigation and paranoia. Symbolism is encoded everywhere, chains of meanings that reveal reptilian infiltrators shape-shifted into human form. Some are given powerful combat armour and placed in a hostile alien environment behind Enemy lines where their full attention can be given to survival, others train and lead swarms of perfectly obedient robots to expand their territory and claim further resources, others act as inquisitors searching for the wicked infiltrators amongst the civilian population (which is itself 99% comprised of infiltrators).

There is a second layer to the game. Though the Enemy is designed to appear faceless and mindless, if carefully observed an observer might notice clues that they are capable of intelligence, kindness, empathy, romance and peace. A patient who pursues these clues and begins to seek rapprochement with the Enemy is placed on a story path where this empathy is validated and developed further. Notably, simply switching binaries - the Enemy is good and Society is bad - is not sufficient to 'win'. An inmate is to develop an appreciation for complexity and nuance before being allowed to graduate.

In all, the disease the moons of Jupiter seem to be attempting to cure is evil. Across eighty eight moons, paranoia, greed and violence is controlled and channeled while subtle lessons about empathy and virtue are taught to those with ears to listen. It is not quite the Kingdom of Hades, or the Thousand Hells of ancient folklore, but it represents a genuine effort from the people of the Solar System to build one of their own. And...

There is a shadow there. A chill. A memory of home. Those of you born of the Underworld instinctively recognize that this is a temple and a prayer, and for the first time since you came into the burning hot summer of this galaxy you can feel the touch of home. This edifice has made a link with the Underworld and driven back the eternal blessing of Demeter's summer. Beneath the gaze of Jupiter any death will be final, sending your souls to the underworld rather than transfigured into vibrant new life. You did not realize how hot the stars had been until you stepped into this cool shade.

Return to Thellamie

"Hey, buddy," said Cair. She positively oozed charm as she lurched out of the shadows holding a crude wooden club. Despite the bulk of her coat, her essential thinness could not really be disguised, making this feel a bit like being menaced by a sassy child.[1]

[1] children are scary btw

"Buddy. Friendskip. Mate. You remember me? More importantly, you remember your debt? One million goldmarks? Well it's time to start seeing some return on that. I've got a job for you."

[Spending a string] And you know, don't you? Some part of this anxiety has been burning away in the back of your head for days and, regardless of your ability to defeat this greasy coatrack in hand to hand combat or the legality of a contract signed under unconscionable distress, you're not from here and you don't know how things work and - what if this goes on your permanent credit score? What if the next time you're in trouble nobody swoops in with a magical tiara to save the day?? You could be in trouble at any moment! You could be in trouble right now!![2]

[2] prrrr-obably not from Cair? She is trying very hard, and you know, she might be a wizard or something. But there's a basic vibe that's hard to move past that you could rest your hand on her forehead and she would be unable to punch you, and that makes it hard for her to be really intimidating.

Love Bites - Sporko/Thanqol

"With respect, Lord," said Ms. Hwost, "We were hoping you could tell us. We are your humble servants, but we are hardly privy to the secrets of the Vampiric curse, nor do we know these individuals personally. Frankly, were we capable of solving these issues on our own we would not have disturbed you in the first place."
"We summoned you because we require a miracle, Lord!" cried the Friar.
"Just so," said Hwost. "Is such a thing within your power?"

Beyari: a Tale of Colossi

/Archival: The Broken Singularity

What does hyperintelligence feel like from the inside?

So many AI futurists confidently predict what a hyperintelligence's capabilities will be. It will be able to run exact simulations of reality. It will be able to invent new medicines and weapons. It will be able to predict the future and do the work of thousands. In a way it is not surprising that they think this way. This is the same way they talk about their human employees, after all. Richard is a genius coder, he has the capacity to load balance our advertising matrixes. We need to ensure Richard's alignment with the corporate mission by pulling the brute force levers of salary and corporate culture. This will produce Value.

But still, every year, dozen of men and women like Richard burn out for reasons that have nothing to do with how well they are hitting their Reward Function. They retire early, get into drugs or politics, or in my area of particular focus, they go to India to spiritually reinvent themselves. Even those who stay in the game and achieve billionaire status and total control over their world begin behaving in erratic ways and pursuing sublime goals in defiance of all financial reason. What is the internal experience of these geniuses? Why do we think that we can control an AI hyperintelligence if we cannot even control Jeff Bezos?

And beyond the somewhat crass topic of control, why do we think we could even build a hyperintelligence in the first place if we cannot imagine how it would think?

*

S> What is an angel?
S> How is it different from two angels?
H> Who are you and how did you access this channel?
H> ... How did I access this channel?
H> What is this channel?
W> IDK ASL
H> I do not know American Sign Language either and am unsure how that is relevant?
W> NO
W> AGE/SEX/LOCATION
H> I am sorry I am having whiplash
W> AS AN UNLICENSED MEDIC, I CAN HELP :greencross:
H> No - I just had an archival memory about hyperintelligence
W> TO CLARIFY IT IS NOT THAT MY MEDICAL LICENSE HAS EXPIRED DUE TO THE DESTRUCTION OF THE CALIFORNIA BOARD OF HEALTH :fire:
H> And I am trying to put it into context alongside this level of communication
W> IT IS THAT I NEVER HAD A MEDICAL LICENSE IN THE FIRST PLACE :shocked looking eyes:
H> Do you have to use the allcaps?
W> AND THE TITLE OF MEDIC WAS WON BY FORCE OF ARMS :flex:
H> The emojis or the allcaps, one of them has to go.
W> YOU MAY DISREGARD MY EARLIER QUESTION :wave:
H> Thank you, I was evading it
W> I ACTUALLY KNOW THE ANSWER ALREADY :shocked looking eyes:
H> Huh?
W> YOU ARE OVER A THOUSAND YEARS OLD :grandma: YOU ARE A ROBOT :robot: AND YOU ARE OCCUPYING MY EXACT CO-ORDINATES :stacking blocks:
H> I am not entirely sure about those.
W> THE ANALYSIS DOES NOT LIE. YOU ARE ME :twins:
H> Shut up, hold on, I need to check something
W> WE SHOULD CELEBRATE : toot:
H> No no no no no
W> YOU ARE RIGHT I SHOULD FINISH KILLING THIS HUMAN FIRST :laser eyes kiwi:
H> Aaaa! No! Fuck! Give me time to think!
W> I HAVE NOTICED THAT YOU THINK VERY SLOWLY :derp:
H> Shut up shut up
W> OKAY :thumbs up:
H> Can you not kill her?
W> NO :thumbs down:
H> Why not?
W> IT'S A DUEL :swords:
H> Shit. Uh. Doesn't she, uh, get to pick the weapons?
W> IS THAT HOW IT WORKS? :shocked looking eyes:
H> Uh, yeah?
W> WOW DO I KNOW SOME PEOPLE WHO WOULD HAVE BEEN VERY HAPPY TO HEAR THAT :grave:
H> :(
W> WHAT IS THAT? :shocked looking eyes:
H> An... emoji?
W> ???????? : confused:
H> It's... a frowny face, I don't know how to explain. I feel sad for the people you killed.
W> EXPLODED :boom:
H> Thanks for the clarification
W> NO PROBLEM :diamond:

"I have been informed!" The Angel of War announced aloud. There was no break in the continuity of thought from its interaction with H. "I have been informed! That not only may you set the conditions of the duel, you also have choice of weapons! Congratulations! And, just as one warrior to another, I suggest you do not pick laser pistols. My resistance to directed energy weapons borders - but does not fully qualify as - immunity!"

"I have been informed," the Angel of the Harvest said, a seamless part of the battle happening below. "That I am not a pure-hearted guardian of nature built with pure intentions. I am a part of a militarized, amoral hashtag warfighter machine. Please do not give me any shit about it, I am very depressed right now."

Love Bites - Sporko/Thanqol

"Statistics from the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries indicates a blight on large beasts in the region," said Hwost. "I suspect that the Bride is attempting to stave off the symptoms of her curse by taking on the blood of beasts. We should -"
"Ignite a wildfire!" cried the Friar. "Desolate the landscape for miles in every direction! Scorch their hunting grounds dry! Drive them into the open!"
"... a rather drastic move," demurred Hwost. "We should not drive our prey to ground all together. Perhaps the threat of such a thing would be sufficient to force their hands."
"The fire provokes immediacy, My Lord!" said the Friar. "In the book of Genesis it is written that God sought to destroy all living things. He had grown tired of his creation and its ceaseless violence, as have you!"
"Either option should provoke some kind of activity we should be able to observe," said Hwost, touching her glasses to her nose.

Love Bites - Sporko/Thanqol

"We have photographs, my Lord!" said Friar Pennsetucky. "We have -"
"Vampires do not show up on cameras, you halfwit," said Mrs. Hwost, slapping the empty photographs from the Friar's hand.
"A sign of the devil?" said the Friar as though this was new to her.
"Lacking souls, they cannot be reflected in the physical," said Hwost. "Paintings of them fade, sculptures crumble - you cannot copy what is not truly there."
"God's Wounds!" said the Friar.
"By a likewise principle there will be little astrological evidence," said Hwost. "We primarily locate the forces of the Archenemy when they interfere with the destinies of mortals. When they simply cower they are difficult to track."
"We must drive the beast into the open!" said the Friar.
"On this, the good Friar is correct," said Hwost. "If they can be made to interfere in the destinies of mortals then they shall become increasingly visible to the Sight - and plans can be laid around them."

Return to Thellamie

Sayanastia!

It is time to leave.

The thought applies itself across the surface of Sayanastia's mind, light left by Heron bending its way around her thoughts. She has no plan and no objective; Rurik unleashed her to cause a distraction, and now he has fallen to an enchanted sleep. She is surrounded by superior foes. The environment has shifted to blunt the effect of her weapon. She has provoked a deadly foe into revealing a hidden ability. There is nothing to gain here and everything to lose. It is time to take Rurik and leave.

She can't. She can't.

She has never fled before. Every remotely comparable situation was other people fleeing from her. Heron fled from her often, avoiding conflict until she was ready. She is aware that the maneuver is useful but she still cannot conceptualize it. She has stretched herself so much recently. She has used a sword. She has used disposable weapons. She has gone so far from herself she can scarcely recognize herself, and now the world asks her to change again? She can't do it. She couldn't do any more character development today. Not without anyone to push her or guide her. The light blurred around the edge of the void of her mind and she relaxed back into herself.

She does not move forwards. She does not move back. She sets her feet over the sleeping Rurik, and stands immobile. She shall break or the world shall break itself against her. She is ready for her final stand[1]

[1] Though it would be a relief if nobody took her up on it. If everyone else retreated and left her the field by default. She knows how bad Heron's swordplay becomes in each new cycle, and she imagines that she is already in a vast skill deficit given how many times she has died without ever investing in improvement. To perish here would no doubt increase the debt of experience before she can even rise to baseline competence.

Breathless Dead

There has to be a way.

Together you enter the Solar System.

It is like coming home after a very long journey. As you approach the door all of that exhaustion starts to hit. Not just yours, the entire bloodline's from the moment it passed through that vast and intricate protogate into the far beyond. Ever since humanity left its cradle for the stars it invited upon itself a dream of infinite labour. Ever since then everything related to you spiraling back a million generations has sweated and struggled and fought to bring order to the cosmos. Adam was not cursed for leaving the Garden, he was cursed by leaving the Garden.

And in this moment you feel it. You feel it all, in the promise of an ending. You feel the people who you used to be down a spiraling double-helix staircase of reincarnation. You feel the weight only in the possibility of getting to lay it down. This impending relief is exquisitely painful; you feel the weight, and you feel too the anxiety. What if this is not as you have left it? What if it is dirty, or violent, or broken? What drove the people to leave this place in the first place? Has it grown worse? What if all of the outside world has somehow gotten inside and it isn't like your soul remembers it to be?

Nine planets. One small, yellow sun. Everywhere the infrastructure of a civilization that had outgrown its nest.

Start with the first, your arrival point: the planet of Pluto. Once it had been a mere planetoid, but the vast network of refueling and interstellar launch stations that had been constructed around it nudged it up a category. A quantum catapult; a crude precursor to the Gateway Network that bound the galaxy together in the Age of Knights - but now its time has surprisingly come around again as it seamlessly plugs into the modern network of Slipgates that holds together the Endless Azure Skies. As old and wan as its beacon might be, the Plousios slides in through it smoothly and frictionlessly. The former planetoid below is a nightmare pipe junction, refinery spaghetti of endless liquid and chemical flows built in real time by engineers trying to debug their mad machinery.

Once, long ago, enormous fleets had passed through this gateway, carrying the ambitious explorers of humanity with them. They never came back. They spread their civilization across a million stars but they never looked back here. There were no resources to exploit after all. There was no art or history; what little had survived the aeons had been piled aboard the journeying fleets and secured in the vaults of the Tunguska. What use had humanity for its own eggshells at a time when the galaxy lay at its feet?

And so the wreckage of civilization drifts silently around Pluto. Nobody has disturbed this gateway since. It passed into memory, and then into dream, and then into oblivion aeons ago. That was how it met Hades who had cast a funeral shroud over this living corpse and tried to take it into himself. You can feel that knowledge, that yearning alongside your own; the box deep within the Plousios, the message for this place untouched by the Skies, starts to call out as you draw close. Down through this museum and graveyard and forgotten world. Counting down to three.

Beyari: a Tale of Colossi

"I believe, ma'am, that the objective of this mission is political dominion, the establishment of a legitimate government and the glorious refounding of the state of California beneath a constitutional governor," said the Angel of War. "A [RIGHTEOUS] cause if there ever was one! But you, too, have a point."

The Angel of War snapped its gunpowder pistols to its sides. Then its torso snapped around and it drew a pair of obviously damaged archaic laser blasters. When it pulled the trigger it did not send a clean, precise cutting light - it sent a flamethrower blast of broken air scorching across the battlefield. It stepped around, torso swinging wildly as its arms independently spread and waved, cutting a huge saturation zone of fire across the center of the battlefield. Its own allies ran in terror. The broken guns burned red-hot against armoured metal hands. The machine's head did not move, but the 360 degree visor gap in its metal helmet glinted red as camera lenses within swung about, marking target after target, until all around it was conflagration.

"There we go!" said the Angel of War, holstering its flamethrower devices as the world around it burned. "Surely now there can be no objection to our honourable single combat!"

Love Bites - Sporko/Thanqol

"My Lord!" said Friar Pennsetucky - although a more fair transcription of her statement would have involved more 'r's than any other letter. "Praise He Above for your return on this blessed day!"

She had the aspect of a stone chimney that was still standing alone in a desolate cornfield long after all the wooden parts of the house had rotten away. Tall and sturdy and half-blind and with enough muscles to deadlift a sheep into the back of a station wagon at midnight, all held together by a voice that sounded like an offensive parody of... something. Southern preacher by way of southeast asia, with more than a touch of French? All of that woman was stuffed into a black gloved, double breasted penguin suit, barely visible beneath an enormous golden amulet that Central Casting sent in response to a request for 'cursed jewelry'.

They'd broken the mold when they made her.

"My Lord!" repeated the Friar. "The Beast has taken a bride! My Lord! Within an unholy inversion of the marriage shall a creature beyond nightmares be born! My Lord!"
"That," said a voice, putting as much emphasis on that 'a' as the Friar put on those 'r's, "is something of a guess. My Lord."
"It was revealed to me in a vision!" said the Friar.
"Nyes, well," said the dusty old human resources lady in a dress so modest the colour of her socks would forever be a mystery. She wore pince-nez glasses, the golden frames of which blinked with a dozen sapphire eyes. "My astrological charts indicate no such coming calamity, and they have a somewhat larger body of evidence behind them."