[Ben Barker]

I had this fucked up dream last night. Probably the result of thinking about Deus Ex, Gnutella, and science fiction stuff too much.
I couldn't figure out a way to draw it, so I had to write this story to express it to other people effectively. Not the most eloquent thing you'll ever read, but hey, I'm not a writer

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"I hate that place. It freaks me out." Kane grimaced and looked down at his plate, after biting a pocket of bitter spices in his entree. "Jesus, can't they mix this better, or something?"
"How do you mean?" I asked. It was the first thing I'd even said the whole meal. He looked up, surprised at my sudden interest.
"What?"
"How does it 'freak you out' exactly?" I repeated. He paused, caught off guard.
"Oh, well� um. Oh yeah, that door, for instance."
"What door?"
"Well, here's what happened. I was in the center of the room, looking at that� that sphere. What did you call it?"
"It's called the mediator." I reminded him.
"Right. That thing," he said. Kane didn't seem to be entirely collected. "Well, I was looking at that for a long time, when I noticed the oddest little man staring at me. He startled me actually, I never saw him walk up. But there he was about 5 feet away, just staring at me with a horrible look on his face, waiting for me to notice him." He pulled his face up into a scowl, and held his arms out, limp-wristed zombie style over the table in imitation.
Chuckling, I said nostalgically, "that Sounds like Raxis." Old Raxis was quite a character, after all, but harmless. Somewhat of a creep, he seemed to make the same first impression to everyone he met.
"Well, whatever his name is, I said 'hello' and he didn't even respond. He just pointed over my shoulder. When I looked I saw a door, like an exit. But I swear to God I hadn't noticed it before then. I mean, it was HUGE," he gestured again, "it must have been 10 feet high. There's no way I could have missed it. Then he told me 'See that? They want you to leave. Get out!' ".
"So?"
"So I got the hell out of there. It was freakin' me out!" I smiled. His naivet� was amusing. My wry smile prompted him to ask, "What's so funny man? I'm being serious".
"Raxis was talking about the Angels." I answered him.
"What? The Angels? What's that, some religious thing?" He was obviously interested in listening for once.
"No, but if there was anyone who worshipped them, it would be Raxis." Kane looked confused. I continued, "Angels are microscopic. They're robots, nano-technology."
"Really," he mused. "What's so special about that? Nano-tech is everywhere now, almost."
"Let me finish. It is everywhere, you're right, but not like in there. The Angels are completely unique."
"Well, who built them? I've never heard of them." He couldn't be content with silence for long. Sometimes it grated on my nerves, though I'd only met Kane 2 weeks ago at the train station.
"Actually, we don't know who built them." I paused, and then looked up. Kane seemed shocked. He was a foreigner to the city, but he wasn't ready for anything as odd as what he was about to hear.
"What do you mean you don't know? Somebody built them. Nano-tech has only been around for�"
"8 years," I finished his thought. Yes, somebody did make them, or perhaps, one of them. But it was at least 200 years ago. There's no mention of anyone making them in the historical record, and it goes back past that." I said.
It was true. Nobody knew who originally constructed the Angels.
"Bu-"
"I've studied them for a long time," I cut him off, "and I've developed a pretty good theory about how they operate. It's really my forte, which is why I sent you to see the mediator in the first place."
"What about-"
"Let me finish, please." He was a little too eager.
"The most unique thing about the Angels is their intelligence. They're smart, you see. But individually, they can do little more than rearrange molecules one by one, seemingly at random. I've noticed in lab studies that an isolated Angel is capable of only one thing: making another Angel." I had his full attention now. "But, it can do it out of anything. Well, not anything, anything with carbon atoms. Angels are mostly carbon, and selenium, with god knows what else. I've never been able to make one, even after watching them under a microscope hundreds of times."
"How many years have you been doing this?" Kane asked.
"Hmmm. This summer will make it seventeen." He was jaw-dropped again.
"So, that's why you called me here?" he asked.
"Sort of, but let me continue." I paused, and took a sip of water. " I've already said that one Angel isn't very smart. In fact, it's only a little bit more functional than the average neuron in a brain like mine, or yours. But put them together, and they can function as one. The more you have, the more intelligent they are. They talk to each other with some sort of radiation, and their processing power just grows and grows.
"Starting with one Angel, then two, then four, and so on, after a while there was quite the computer floating around. At some point, they began making decisions for themselves beyond just replication."
"Whoa, whoa," interrupted Kane," you mean AI? Nobody's ever been able to prove a computer was sentient." He was right, though there had been many attempts. Heuristics and artificial intelligence had taken many leaps forward, but no one had ever come close to simulating an organism as complex as a human.
"Not just AI, boy, the best form of AI! How is it any different from your brain, or mine? You don't run on interpreted code, like a computer. A fetus starts with one brain cell, then two, then four. At what point does its brain become complex enough for sentience? Whoever created the first Angel was a genius. They created one simple device, and it created for itself the most complex network in the universe. More complex than any biological brain, and capable of manipulating matter at the atomic level; capable of making anything."
"So it's more complex, that means more intelligence, right?"
"Exactly. How could something as stupid as a human come up with something as elegant as the mediator?" I answered. There was a pause of disbelief.
"You mean THEY built the mediator, the Angels?"
"Of course they did. And the building it's in, the one you visited. The way I see it, when the Angels began thinking for themselves, or itself, it realized it had a major communication problem. If any Angel wanted to communicate with any other Angel, it had to keep a memory bank with unique I.D.s for every one of it's kind. That would be simply just ridiculous. They are only a few molecules wide, after all. They couldn't make more than a few million Angels until the communication network just broke down under it's own weight.
"So the solution they came up with was the mediator. They designed it, built it, and let it keep track of every Angel. That way, it's guaranteed that for one Angel to communicate with another, it only has to take two steps: one to the mediator, and one to the other Angel. If they were communicating peer to peer, it would have to query every other Angel in sequence until it found the right one. That would take forever.
"It must have been quite a day. The first time an Angel realized and built something other than what it was programmed to build."
"It's brilliant." Kane awed.
"They are brilliant. In fact, so smart by now their motives are pretty much unfathomable. Whenever we stumble across a new type of math, or unify a two theories in physics, we look at the actions the Angels took 12, or even 20 years before that have just started making sense, and realize they were on the same path long before we were. Who knows what their goals are now. They've definitely thought everything we do out long before we've even done it. It's a shame we can't talk to them, but we probably couldn't handle it anyway."
Kane was fishing his spoon around in his meal now, thoroughly disinterested in food. "I see why you are studying them, but why can't we talk to them?" he asked.
"Nobody has ever been able to create an interface for communication. Usually they don't let people get very close to the mediator, which is the obvious solution for linking up to an outside network. It's the hub of their system, after all. I'm sure if they felt it was necessary to communicate with humans they would come up with something to do so. And whatever device they made, it would be the best solution possible. That's how they operate. That's also why I'm guessing they made the door and had Raxis 'ask' you to leave. They didn't like what you were doing, or what you were about to do. They knew that, of course, before you did.
"Chilling," said Kane. "They asked Raxis? So, they control him, they talk to him then, right?" he asked.
"Good," I said. "You're paying attention. But no they don't communicate with him. He lives in their presence, and he can analyze their actions and intents probably better than any other human alive. He worships them, really, I guess. I can't figure out any other reason he would live in that place. But, if you think about it, why not worship them? They are basically omniscient; they can do anything they want. It sounds like the definition of God to me. And frankly, far more concrete than any other Gods I've heard of. I guess that as long as he isn't a threat, which he isn't, they don't want to waste the time dealing with him, and they ignore him."
"They would kill him?"
"No, unless they needed to. There are a million things they could do to kill a human body. They could stop his heart, attack his brain, create toxin in his veins. They're probably saturated in his bloodstream." I said.
"Heh, I guess he had better hope he doesn't piss them off." Kane said with a smile.
"That can't happen. They are above emotion. If it were in their interest to do so, they would do it. That is all. I figure, at some point in their evolution, at right about the time their system was as complex as our brains, certain emotions may have existed. But, perhaps almost instantly, they realized what a waste it was. Perhaps they discovered emotions, and left them behind in a fraction of a second."
Now Kane looked grim. The idea of an all-powerful presence in that place was unsettling to him. "But, you could essentially kill them by destroying the mediator."
"No, they would all still be there. They just couldn't communicate as efficiently. It would be quite a setback, but I'm sure they have a backup plan in case of, well, any contingency you could possible imagine. They are, essentially, invincible. They have complete control over matter, and the intelligence to use it. The intelligence isn't centralized in any one place. It's present in every Angel. And that's why they're even called Angels, because who knows what 'God's' will is, or where God is.
"But why would you want to kill them? If we could study them, we could learn the most efficient way to do just about anything? How is their network arranged? How do they sustain themselves without going overboard on reproduction? Whatever they're solutions are, you can bet they are the most efficient, optimized, and ingenious solutions possible. Nothing a human or a modern computer could come up with in a million years. It's like the way God would do things."
"God, in this case, being their intelligence?" asked Kane.
"Right, and their power. I have no problem with that assessment."
"So, just one more question," Kane said.
"Yeah, sure. What?"
"If I couldn't possibly destroy them, why did they want me to leave when I came close to the mediator?"
"I'm not sure," I said. "They see something in you, some reason why you shouldn't be there. Maybe fear of something, but I highly doubt that. Fear suggests irrationality, which is something they are not. If you were a real threat, they would eliminate you, so I don't know. If they know everything that will happen tomorrow, and the next day, then you're just painted in their plans I guess."
"You said they saturated Raxis' body."
"Yes, if they feel the need to be inside of his body they have."
"Well, that means they've been inside of my body, right? I was in the building for almost 10 minutes."
I paused. I hadn't thought of that yet. "Perhaps."
"Then maybe they've heard, and considered, this entire conversation?"
I set down my spoon, and leaned back. We were the only ones left in the diner now. Our conversation was over at that thought, the last question left unanswered. I put the money on the table and stood. Lost in thought, we both took our coats and walked in silence out into the snowy city.


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Heh, this could be a game.

[Freddio]

not short enough for me to read lol

[Maruman]

mmmm.... this sound really similar to a authur C clarke story.... i think it was him.. i'll have to go look it up .. it fully reminded me of the story ..cant evn remeber what its called


anyway pretty freaky shit



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[url=]----PORN PHOTOSHOP AND 3DMAX----All you need for life-Digital CatGirl[/url]

[Bradford]

Holy s***! Some bloody dream that must have been!

[shahar2k]

hey barker, you dream all that?
reminds me of a story...
http://www.aliaterra.com/fromtalo/intro.cfm
it's a collection of 75 letters, made into a real interesting story.
allso reminds me of my own game which I'm working on called Other earth... strangely enough, aliaterra, means other earth in latin, I found the site when looking for a URL for my game...
I was wondering if you could contact me on ICQ? or AIM?

[synj]

personally, i dont believe that you'd be able to remember all of that dialogue from a dream. eheh

[Ben Barker]

No synj, you're right. The only part I dreamed it the part where some guy is in a building, and nanorobots called Angels create a door for him to leave.

I added the rest later when I was thinking about it, and all the stuff I thought would be neat. Like how they would be superintelligent, and that means they have thought things way past what we have. Also, how they communicate with the mediator was based off of Napster, which is a far better method than what Gnutella uses(peer to peer). I think most of this came from a conversation I was having with my friends about the NSA and encryption.
I wouldn't be surprised if the exact same idea has been written down before. It's a pretty common sci-fi technique to take current technology and extrapolate it to the extreme, then think about the ramifications. Like Blade Runner, every time travel movie, half of the Twilight Zones, etc.

[Ben Barker]

- Sources of the Angel's carbon supply (soilant green?!)

Hey, that's people!
I guess they find it in the earth, or make it by arranging protons, or they've found some great way that I can't even comprehend.

- Where the Angels are and what they are doing. Can they go into space where they might possibly freeze or melt?

They fill the air in their building. I imagined the building as a big cathedral, and it's unclear if a people or they built it.
If they wanted to travel they would find some amazingly creative way to do it with the minimum possible effort with the maximum possible efficiency and results.

- How many "cerebrates" are there in the overmind (think Starcraft). Twist the starcraft theme to make it original.

There aren't any. That's the strength of the Angels. They don't need any.

- Are there combative sub-egos inside the Angel unimind?

I would doubt it, since that would be counter productive. That's an interesting point though. But an individual isn't smart enough to start a rebellion for whatever reason. It would take a great number to simultaneously reach that conclusion and join together.
But again, they would realize that they are much stronger when unified, so war is counter productive.
Again, though, that is worth more thought.

- What does latency do to the overall system, what kinds of logical inhibitors are created from communication latency?

I don't know, but I'm sure they've figured out a perfect communication system. That's why I made the mediator a simple non-descript sphere, because nobody knows what is on the inside, if it's complicated or simple, or how it works specifically. It could be anything.
Maybe the narator character in my story is totally wrong about what it does.

- What are the Angel's thought process weaknesses? If they try to think of love for example, do they burn up? (hehe.. cliche...)

I don't think so. They have a much more advanced thought process than a human, so any weakness we don't have, they wouldn't have. One of the points is, if they do have a weakness, we can't comprehend it. It would be trying to find a weakness in God. But only another God, one of God's peers, could know what those were.
Your pets can't comprehend your mental weaknesses, so it is with us to the Angels.

- Tell me, please, why the Angels didn't want the guy in their building! Agrhh! I'm dying to know (don't tell me in a sentence... I'll tape your fingers shut! Instead, write a bigger story or make it into a game like you said... then I can buy it)

Heh, sorry, but you're guess is as good as mine. I didn't think that far ahead. It could become really involved, and I don't want to write less than is necessary to do the story justice.

Heh, a game. Yeah. Who doesn't have a few game ideas?

[edited because spelling owns my ass]

[This message has been edited by Ben Barker (edited January 02, 2001).]

[Sergenth]

A great read! Here are some things you need to spice it up for me

- Sources of the Angel's carbon supply (soilant green?!)
- Where the Angels are and what they are doing. Can they go into space where they might possibly freeze or melt?
- How many "cerebrates" are there in the overmind (think Starcraft). Twist the starcraft theme to make it original.
- Are there combative sub-egos inside the Angel unimind?
- What does latency do to the overall system, what kinds of logical inhibitors are created from communication latency?
- What are the Angel's thought process weaknesses? If they try to think of love for example, do they burn up? (hehe.. cliche...)
- Tell me, please, why the Angels didn't want the guy in their building! Agrhh! I'm dying to know (don't tell me in a sentence... I'll tape your fingers shut! Instead, write a bigger story or make it into a game like you said... then I can buy it)

[This message has been edited by Sergenth (edited January 02, 2001).]

[el tigre]

sounds a bit like the nanotech intelligence in "Blood Music" by phillip k dick, I think.

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arse, my pen just ran out. *shakes furiously*