Flux [2/3]

    The chamber was welcoming, despite the sober occasion it heralded, as though... ah, there was a word for it. Something anthropomorphic clung to the beige walls and the soft lamps set therein, to the round, surprisingly egalitarian table where she was to join the C.F.A.S. Enforcers. Even the carpets had been programmed to buoy her feet-- soft, and bright.
    ...Humanitarian. The room was humanitarian, Era thought.
    The C.F.A.S.'s representatives were not-- or, not obviously so. They had no tablets or holofiles. All the information they needed danced, spun in dizzying convolutions about their irises, transmitted directly to their field of vision by whatever port or chair or collar they were hooked up to.
    She remembered something her companion (Cheshire, she'd taken to calling him) had whispered to her a year or two ago. Back then, a sympathetic programmer had warned them the Enforcers were coming to break up one of her protests because its elaborate digital (or was it cerebral?) stage, a darling of her imagination, was clogging the C.F.A.S.'s traffic. Cheshire had leaned in close to her ear, his chains brushing her shoulder, and whispered:
    "You're new to this, aren't you? Have you ever been there when the C.F.A.S Enforcers rain down?  No? More’s the pity. If it weren’t for the obsoletion of old texts-- ah, Mills!, ah, Dante!-- I could describe it as the descent of a cold and pitiless heavenly host. But even that wouldn't do it justice-- Enforcers seem more divine than our paltry imaginings at the sacred could ever grasp...Just, be ready."
    Then, and now, she understood.
    The Enforcers weren't crowned by aureoles, and no crude glow suffused their presence. Yet they were otherworldly. Each was a Vitruvian of perfect proportions, androgynous and of no discernible race or colour— whenever she tried to gaze into their eyes or trace their features her mind conjured every face she'd ever seen and tried to run them together until she was forced to avert her gaze.
    Despite that, no matter where she focused her attention, she could see them watching her in a very real sense. Her consciousness was pregnant with them, with their neural representations, rewriting them over and over and over in a desperate attempt to make concrete that which was truest. That which was emptiest, analytic...
    She tried to ignore her aching head and took a seat in a black leather chair, instead. She remembered well the stage for the protest they’d broken up—it had been framed by pixels enlarged to the size of her avatar's head. The backdrop was an unholy fusion of the old (the real) world's landmarks and those of the C.F.A.S.'s synthetic world, and each had been lit by a separate grid of lights.
    The C.F.A.S. grid had started with the letters 'C... F... A.... S' illuminated. From there, the lights moved and danced according to the rules of Conway's Game of Life. The game employed two value logic, lighted or not. If a given cell had two or three lighted neighbors, it 'survived' the next round, it lit or stayed lighted-- otherwise it went out, died. Simple. The lights danced erratically until finally a pattern stabilized.
    The grid that covered the real world's artifacts, though, was different. It operated by the same rules, except that it used three value logic. A cell could birth itself, live, or die-- except there was also an element of chance thrown in. If a cell didn't have any lighted neighboring cells there was a one in five hundred chance it would light up anyway, and the same applied to a cell that should have lived-- it could die.
    The resulting pattern was dazzling. The beauty of indeterminacy, of reality.
    And the Enforcers had vaporized it all with a wave of their hands. The only reason Era hadn't been forced to endure their questioning then was that Cheshire had whisked her away to his own, private server.
    In a way, this hearing felt like fate.
    She opened her mouth-- the avatar's mouth-- to speak.
    Miss Erasto... Balogun, the Enforcers interrupted. She hated that, the way they communicated without the medium of a voice. You--.
    "It's Era," she interrupted, with an uneasy smile. "Let us be on equal terms, though I know you have opted to keep your names confidential." Her tone was friendly, an attempt at establishing respect. There was a pause.
    Yes. Thank you. We can tell you're weighing something heavily in your mind. Before you begin we want to make clear the extent of our expectations of you for this hearing. You have two choices-- first, a vow not to disrupt traffic again in the C.F.A.S. upon penalty of expulsion-- or second, voluntary leave from the system.
    She blinked. "But I... was of the impression that you were curious about my research."
    Mis-- Era, we have already reviewed your most recent publication, and we found it irrelevant. We do not exist to cast judgment from without the system. We ensure that the system is running as it is meant to. Your publication failed to convince us that your concerns are of a threat to our users. The only issue 'at bar' here, if you will forgive the expression, is whether or not you will continue to be an obstacle to the C.F.A.S.'s operations, our duty.
    Era swallowed. She was to be tested sooner than she had thought; so be it. For a moment she sat up straighter in her seat, and she cast her stare over the entire board of Enforcers, though it sent agonizing pangs through her head.
    "I have to object. Consider the nature of your services. The C.F.A.S. system is not advertised as an escape, a house of pleasure, though some do indeed use it for that purpose. Many an academic plugs in at night because from within the system one is supposed to be able to access all the information in the world, to learn and study in their sleep if they so desire. Yet, I'm concerned that the effects I have seen the system affect upon its users’ brains will impede their growth intellectually."
    You alluded to that. But intuition has ever been proven erroneous, and the faculties which you ever so tentatively assert might suffer from extended use of the C.F.A.S. are of negligible benefit to all but social reasoning, which is being transformed by the very developments you are concerned about.
    "I'm not arguing merely that it will cause harm to intuitive or social reasoning," Era objected again. "I'm arguing that all reasoning will suffer if users dissociate themselves from their bodies."
    And she should know. What a grey childhood she had to look back over, an intellect frustrated again and again by her flight from depression, her forceful suppression of all that was emotion in order to end the pain. How appalling, how blind she'd been prior to accepting the weight of it, prior to discovering the best of friends and mentors to coax her from the vat she was trying to seal her mind in...
    "There are many ways in which our brains are... ineffective," she pressed. "But information processing isn't one. There is very little of it that is done consciously. Even unconsciously, it would be arduous to keep in mind every little fact, memory, or representation and their contingencies. So our mind... weights them, so to speak. We have something like an emotional response associated with even the most abstract of datum. It may be reinforced, its impression may become stronger due to any number of causes, be they emotional or intellectual or social. I think much of our ability to theorize or handle large problems draws on the simplification of knowledge via physiological processes, however invaluable it is to us to use calculus to verify those conjectures. In short, I think they're indispensable to conducting science-- those systems that I think the C.F.A.S.'s current structure may be afflicting, that is."
    The view of the nervous system you delivered is not necessarily the canon in your field, Era-- albeit that it has credibility, the voice was conciliatory. But as we said, and we considered our decision carefully: You are to decide whether you will leave the C.F.A.S. or abide by the restrictions we shall deliver to you at the conclusion of this meeting.
    "You mean--?" she asked disbelievingly. Could it really be over so swiftly, the culmination of all her years of study?
    We have meant all that we said, Era.
    She sat back in her chair, and cast her eyes in her lap, gave her aching head some relief. Her fists were clenched under the table, the veins straining to leap from them and-- and do something. But she had ever been too quick to despair, a habit of her depression that no amount of will could bring her to surmount.
    "...I'll take the restrictions," she spoke softly. She had enough pride to refuse a dismissal.
    Swiftly, she rose to her feet and returned to the great gates at her back. Already her mind scrabbled, pawed its contents desperately for some semblance of consolation, a new plan, a phoenix buried in the ashes... She could go to-- to whom? Who was there left? She'd plead with every institution in the country-- was she to move, now?
    "Remember this."
    The words boomed in the circular chamber, and Era felt its very foundations jump with her as she twisted back toward the round table. Cheshire floated above it, and his rictus grin was so lathered in antipathy that his avatar seemed to crackle with a necrotic vigor. He glowered down at the Enforcers like something from Hell, an antiquated ghost plaguing their new nightmare.
    "Remember this day, the third of us to try and save you from yourselves. Remember it if ever there's a glitch and you wake from your fugue. Remember it, in that terror-stricken instant of clarity that precedes your death, when you face the closest thing to God. She would have saved you, but I will not."
    "What the Hell are you doin--?!" Era began.
    But then she realized that all was black, and that she was falling, falling up.
    Falling into consciousness.