NationStates Jolt Archive

Seqca relaxed in his cushy reclining kyberchair. Wires ran down his arms from the tactile feedback gloves on each hand, joined another bundle of wires emerging from the helmet covering his cranium and optic organs, and flopped over the side of the chair to hook into a multitude of ports on a small copper box- a 2.4 petaflop solidstate diamond superconductor junction computer with optronic co-processor. Technically legal to have, though the only way for a civillian- or at least a civillian who wasn't hyperwealthy- to get one wasn't. Not to mention the modified netdiving apparatus.

Ever since the revolt in Lunae started, huge sections of data had suddenly become unavailable. Disappointing, yes, but not entirely unworkaroundable. The data patterns he was tracking were beginning to show up everywhere. By skipping over any sort of unnecessary visual representation of the network, Seqca's brain played with raw data at a far higher rate than any casual netdiver in some corner cybercafe. Thus it was that he saw in the bitstreams things that noone else had, things that were hidden not in datapackets but in headers and switching instructions. It was the sort of things that an AI would've noticed- but no AI ever looked. The servers had no software to direct the patterns as they were. It might've been emergence from p2p interactions, but none of the local nodes he had access to contained any identifiable common software for such functions. Data wasn't moving in straight lines and minimal-time paths like it was supposed to according to intermachine messaging servers- it was moving through paths of highest stability like it should according to something that wanted to preserve data integrity. The revolt had disrupted things for several days, but the rest of the netowork promptly re-organized itself.

Today, Seqca- or, more correctly, Seqca's data analysis scripts- had made a breakthrough. The massive holographic and spintronic memories of the copper box archived wave after wave of apparently extraneous datapackets, going through every permutation of how to string them together and which protocol to use to decode them. At a trigger signal from one of the archiving and analysis scripts, the powerful electromagnets in Seqca's helmet flipped on and off in such a pattern as to trigger neurons to fire in the appropriate sections of his neocortex to implant the following concept and memory: "Match found. Core dump?"

Seqca twitched his fingers, and the latest program reconstruction poured into his hippocampus.

"Holy Crap! I've found it! Hah, I was right along. Bits of networking code floating about disjointed on the net, executing only when and where they're needed before moving on. Looks like something cooked up via genetic algorithm. There's a shear point, self-recognition algorithms, search algorithms...." SQUIDs in the helmet read Seqca's brain's instructions, and relayed to the computer to continue looking for more versions and permutations. If it was derived from a genetic algorithm, there were bound to be multiple incarnations of every algorithm it contained floating about.

Each peice of the program- assuming that it really was a single segmented program, anyway- worked with the others, but travelled independantly. Thus, they all held quines and network transfer routines, which it was somewhat pointless to store multiple times. Consequently, Seqca had the archivers separate those bits out and catalog them separately. Not onyl would it save memory, it would ensure that no fragments could escape during testing.

Within hours after identifying the Program, data was flowing into Seqca's computers at fantastic rates. He'd need more cycles. Relaxing in his chair, he partitioned a few cycles for a new side process, and reached out his mind over the network, locating a few other 'trusted contacts', and transferring his thoughts to them. The dialog of minds lasted only a few seconds before he had another two not-quite-legal clusters at his disposal for data storage and simulation.

With the archivers now distributed over all three systems, virtual machine 'sandboxes' began running simulations of every permutation in order, sticking together all the program fragments yet collected in every concievable way and seeing what they would do. A few fragments turned out to be eerily similar to a virus that had been big news a couple months back. Was the virus a mutation of the networking program, or vice versa? Or was the virus the means of implanting the program?

Of course, modification had to be made to make of for the mix-matching that had already been done- simply throwing the fragments together without knowing which ones were of the same 'species' so-to-speak, and especially after having removed their quines, would've been pointless, so extra clock cycles were dedicated to inserting new data pipe routines.

And not a few of these began to exhibit, shall we say, interesting behavior.

Taking a rare journey Outside, Seqca stopped at a little cafe by the nearest plaza for a natspace meeting with one of the generous donators of computing power.

"Hey, Gaban!"
"Hey. So, what's the deal?"
"I, uh, lost a computer."
"You what? Dude, those things are top of the line! Do you have any idea how much that'll cost! Well, duh, of course you do, you bought it in the first place-"
"Gaban! Shut it. It's not that bad. I pinged it, it still responds, I can use it just fine, I just physically lost it. I can't find it in my apartment."
Gaban blinked. "Dude, you are unbelievable. You really need to get the junkheap cleaned up. Tell ya what- I'll come over for a little housecleaning party, and you show me what my Cluster's been up to. And you still owe me 60 grams of caffeine for those clock cycles, don't you forget."
"Deal. I got a case of Red Bull in the fridge."

Gaban and Seqca were busily throwing about bits of paper, old ethernet and USB cables, user manuals, memory discs, and various other bits of computer equipment, sorting it all into two general "keep" and "no keep" piles, save for the stuff which was bolted down or plugged in which was most definitely keep- for now, anyway, until they could figure out exactly what everything did.
"Aha! I found it. ORAC processor #2."
"Alright! High-five, man. Take a hit." Seqca pulled an aluminum can out of a liquid-cooled computer case and tossed it over the piles of junk to Gaban's waiting hands just as the door chimed.
"I got it." Seqca waded through the piles of paper to the apartment's front door and slid it open.
"Hey, man."
"Hey. You are so not going to believe what I found." Hathol pushed passed Seqca and into the room. "Whoa. Dude, this looks even worse than usual. Kudos."
"Yeah, yeah. We're in the middle of cleaning things up, so the junk that's usually hidden uner the furniture is out and visible now."
"Gotcha."
Gaban waded over to the computer case and pulled out another Bull. "Hey, Hathol, soda?"
"Nah, I'm off caffeine for a few days. Gotta get rid of the tolerance I built up. I'm runnin' off piracetam in the meantime."
Seqca's face became a well of false pitty. "Dude, that's not good. You see, geeks just shouldn't go off caffeine for so many reasons. First, it makes you lose concentration-"
"But that's what the piracetam is for-"
"and makes you nervous, let me finish. And then you get cravings. And cravings make geeks irritable. And geeks run the computers that run the worlds banks and militaries! Now, maybe you're not that important, but just think of what kind of example you're setting for the rest of us."
Hathol was speachless for a moment.
"And that's not all- if you stop drinking caffeine, the soda companies lose business, and if they lose enough business, they'll have to close their local outlets, and think of the drain on the economy that that could bring! You'd be toppling a pillar of modern commmerce! Now, you may be just one man- but if everyone thought that way, thousands or millions of just one men could mean the downfall of civilization."
"Wow. I never thought of it like that before."
Seqca gave hima soft punch on the arm. "Eh, I'm just playin' with ya. What's up?"
"No, no, give me a can. I've become an important person, so toss me a can before we plunge into anarchy!"
Gaban tossed the Bull to Hathol, who quickly began chugging it down. "So, what's up? Why are you an important person now?"
Hathol gasped between gulps of caffeine-infused sugar water. "You - won't believe - this. I - have uncovered - a BioGeoNet."

Seqca's eyes bugged for a moment, until he chuckled. "Dude, you're screwin' with us."
"No! No, really, Mars has a BioGeoNet. At least, I think it's a BioGeoNet, maybe a NanoGeoNet... what else could it be?"
"Um, I don't know, you haven't told us anything about it yet."
"Oh. Oh, right. Yeah, so now I'm thinkin', what if Venus or Titan have 'em too?"
"I don't know!" Seqca was getting just a bit impatient. "Maybe you should tell me what if!"
"Ok, ok, here it is: so I was screwin' around on GoldNet last night, right, and I took the usual backdoor into Kono, y'know, checkout what sort of new hardware they're gettin' up there. So I see this project folder named LITHOS, and I think, 'eh? why'd they call a computer `the rock`?' So I thought maybe it was some new security system or somethin', but there was nobody knockin' at the door, so I opened it up, and there before me was a filelist of gene sequences, maps of infusion points, the works! Heck, even a HOW-TO on successfull input-output."
"Dude."
"Cool."