Dinner with Janice

At last! Maybe it was the giddy excitement of knowing Rasa was gone (done?) and that I could get back to the Alpha project, or just fear of her staying angry with me, but I suddenly had the courage to ask her out. And I even said, “umm… you know, as a date.” And she didn’t hesitate to say yes.

Whooo Hooo!

Alas it was a platonic date to be sure, but after all these years of friendship I think a kiss (or anything else) on the first “date” would have been a bit too much.

It was a great dinner. Luckily there are a lot of great restaurants to choose from in the green zone around campus so we didn’t go into town (which I haven’t done in years). We chatted about Sally, Alpha, and even Greystle.

Something amazing is happening in Alpha, evolution is progressing quickly there are insects, plants, and an abundance of animals in the seas and lands of Alpha. But there aren’t any vertebrates yet. If this was the history of Earth we’d already have a variety of vertebrates walking and swimming about. But nothing yet on Alpha. The whole biology department is giddy over the puzzle this presents, but just in case Janice is having Adit look over some of the biology related algorithms and routines. It’d be awful if we discovered our bug filled Alpha was due to a bug and not just the way life happened to have evolved on Alpha.

Personally I hope we do get some vertebrates on our little world soon. Perhaps it’s my “fanboy” side but I’d love to see sentience and eventually intelligence and culture. Basically I’d love to see cool alien cities on Alpha. And I just don’t see invertebrates delivering that – does that make me a speciest? Or a backbone bigot?

I had thought Janice’s hate for Greystle was based in politics. And while there is that, there is a more personal side. She blames them for the destruction of her uncle’s dream. Janice’s uncle was the inventor of the “Real Cost” Gas Monitor.

I remember the late night ads from when I was a kid (have I always had a problem with sleeping?). The gas monitor clipped into you car and tracked that amount of fuel going out of your fuel pump and showed you the cost of what you were consuming in real time. When you got gas the system reset to the new price. So while idling at a stoplight or when leaving the car on while talking to friends on the road the drivers could see the nickels flip by. Pass someone on a hill and you could see the quarters flip by. With people seeing immediately the cost of their driving they would actually change their driving habits. When people realized it cost $7.50 just to go to the store they started being more diligent with making shopping lists.

Janice’s uncle wanted his invention to give a tangible incentive to customers to cut back on driving and poor driving habits. He wanted less fossil fuel to be burned, but he knew the easiest way to get people to do the right thing is to show them the immediate benefit to themselves. And saving money always works.

His product was changing driving habits. A consumer study proved that his product was having a dramatic effect on the amount of gas people purchased within 6 weeks of buying the “Real Cost” Gas Monitor. He was doing a good business but he always knew that if he had more money he could make more of them, make them better, make them cheaper and market them to a wider audience. Then some San Hill Road venture capital guy showed up at his office with an incredible opportunity. Her uncle sold his company for partial ownership in larger multinational venture. His product would be taken to the world.

Well needless to say it wasn’t. The company was shut down and her uncle lost the rights to sell his own product. The patent holders were this new company and this new company wouldn’t sell his product. He was devastated. As was his family, and as a young girl Janice saw her proud, big, and fun Uncle became the quiet, withdrawn, and sad man that she knew until he died a few years later.

When Janice got older she did do some research on the venture firm and found out it was owned by a division of Greystle. All the other investments of that division were in oil and gas processing and distribution. They had purchased her uncle’s company with the sole goal of destroying his product. I guess leaving him financially ruined as well was just their idea of fun.

That put a damper on the conversation for a while, but talk of Sally and her growing interest in science got as back on a more joyful track.
Date Number One: Success!

Our First Die Off

In our planet’s history there have been multiple periods of mass extinctions, Die Offs, where changes in environment or atmosphere or something cause a significant percentage of life on the planet to disappear.

I guess I wouldn’t want Alpha to be different as it is supposed to teach us what life (and the history of life) could look like on a different planet.

But it is still hard to see the Alphans (so many types of slugs!) disappear. To Janice it is like watching pets die, for Adit it is like knowing the code you worked so hard on was removed in beta; I’m not sure what it is for me except that it leaves me cold. I don’t want these things, bits of data, to die.

But they are.

First it was what should be one of the hardiest form of life, bacteria. Strains of this and strains of that started dying off and we didn’t notice until we started comparing the life count summaries we get at the end of each day.

Then we slowed down the simulation a tad so we could see in more detail what was happening. You’d think the die off would move up the food chain if it started with the bacteria, but then larger species far removed in the food chain started dying off, and then a variety of grasses. The cause and effect is impossible to track.

But track it is why were doing all of this.

Adit and Alice are leading most of the development team in going over the code in greater detail to make sure this isn’t a software bug (how awful it would be to find out that this pivotal moment in the history of Alpha is an error in some routine). So far nothing seems wrong, just as with the invertebrate issue, this seems to be part of Alpha’s evolution.

Kaitlin and Janice have been going through the snap shot archives of Alpha to see if there were any earlier signs of chemical changes in the atmosphere that we might have missed. The snapshots are hard archives of a moment in time in Alpha. Alpha is just too huge and memory intensive to record so every ten minutes of real runtime a moment in time is frozen and stored. Given that our simulation speeds have varied from real time to as fast as the servers can go, the snapshots capture intervals as short as ten minutes up to hundreds of thousands of years in Alpha time.

The tricky thing is that the snapshots are literally of what was, and as much of what Alpha is, is various algorithms unfolding, interacting, and rewriting themselves with a touch of randomness. So though it is Alpha’s past if Alpha started again from there (then?) the present Alpha we see might not be the Alpha that unspools. i.e. that past could lead to infinite versions of the present. Statistically they’d average out to be the same, but tell that to the dead slugs.

So far it looks like this was the natural evolution of the planet but we’ll continue looking into it. Like I said, Earth has gone through many such die offs in its history, so this maybe just be the first for Alpha, but it is awful to watch the list of extinct Alphans fly by on the screen.

One nice thing is that Alice has updated her NetTat to a still Mickey Mouse. I guess she realized the animated evolution tattoo she had on her arm earlier the week wasn’t in good taste once the die off started to happen.

Orexinal

I’m afraid to go back to sleep now. I feel like a child afraid of nightmares. But I’m afraid of dreams. I’m afraid of even a moment of not being conscious. A moment of not being in control. I think there is even a tinge of the classic “what if I don’t wake up” fear, but it’s more of “how long will I sleep” fear. Will it be days?

And gosh durn it, I get so much done never going to sleep.

I know at some point I need to stop taking Orexinal. Alpha is up and running, Adit is up and being Adit, and I even have a personal life! I don’t need to always stay awake.

There is nothing more I want than to wake up next to Janice, but there is nothing more frightening to me right now than the idea of being asleep.

Fear wins.

With Kaitlin and Adit using some of my Orexinal supply I’m beginning to run low. And I’m starting to get really anxious about it.

I’ve checked with the campus pharmacy and they’re all out, and not expecting more for at least a few weeks. The strikes have disrupted a lot of the supply chain.

The Good News is Alice has a contact in town that can get me a couple of months supply, the bad news is that he is pricey and outside the green zone.

Oh well. Field trip!

Outside the Green Zone

I know I’m not “in touch.” I’ve heard that accusation many times by the “activist” cool kids in the student center cafeteria, that’s one reason why I avoid eating there. That and the food is awful.

I admit I’m more into Alpha than what goes on outside Dulles’s halls. But stepping outside the green zone was a slap in the face.

First the smell. I don’t know how they prevent the smell from getting into the green zone, but they do. My stomach writhed and flipped in reaction to the smell. It wasn’t just the garbage it was as if the streets were sweating.

Second is the fact that the town was falling apart. When I first started going to Dulles as a student, downtown was full of, shall we say, cheap housing. But now it’s all gone to seed.

I wonder if the Roman Senate, as they heard news of lost territories, increased crime, and a diminishing treasury, ever put two and two together and realized that Rome was waning? Did they try to stop its slow death? Or did they close their eyes of it all and continued to bask in the glory that was Rome, all the while rubber stamping all of Julius Nepos’s decrees.

Heading out in the middle of the night seemed like to me the best way not to get noticed but the campus guard wanted to “escort” me for my own safety. It only took him 50 bucks to realize I’d be okay walking into town on my own. No bus or cabs, so there was a lot of walking. I discovered my campus ID was also my “pass” back into the green zone.

Alice had me meet her contact underneath the huge Prescott banner at the corner of Barbara Ave. and Houston St. I had assumed it was a left over “re-elect Prescott” poster from last year’s election. I was wrong. It was a banner, huge, 4 stories tall. It didn’t even have his name, just his picture and the words “Our Leader” at the bottom. They were all over town, covering the broken windows of all the abandoned buildings.

A few thousand dollars later I was heading back to the green zone. Another 50 and my bags weren’t searched, and exhausted I went to my room and collapsed on my bed. I closed my eyes and didn’t sleep. I waited 10 minutes, showered, changed, and headed back to check on Alpha.

Alpha doesn’t sleep, and neither do I.

The old net and old opinions

I’ve been feeling a bit down lately. At first I thought it might be a bit of “post-partum” depression in finally having consummated my relationship with Janice. After so much tension and expectation the body is bound to feel a little “let down” at having finally gotten what you so long desired. But I couldn’t be happier about it, and I get more giddy about she and I every day.

I thought maybe the die off on alpha was getting me down, but really that is part of what the project is about: life and the cycles of life. The die off is part of the living artificial world we have created, and besides the life count summaries are leveling off and the extinction rate is back to where it was before the die off.

Alice keeps prodding me about Orexinal and says I should get off of it. But I can’t find anything on the Grid that had anything but praise about Orexinal, so Alice had me look at her old internet snap shot backup that she grabbed from Archive.org before the government shut them down with the passing of the Freedom of Commerce act. Millions of machines once served up all the data that she’s got stashed in a few cubes on her desk.

It seems there is a big black market for backups of the old net Definitely useful to have an anti-authoritarian goth chick on the project team.

And as you’d expect from the medium that was outlawed because of the volume of anti consumption commentary (don’t want to denigrated products you know, you might hurt their feelings); there is certainly more of anti-Orexinal buzz on the old online slow road.

It seems Orexinal’s definition of “no side effects” is “nothing you can see.” Kinda like the definition of the legal torture allowed by police (man, one trip outta the green zone and I’m starting to sound like an “activist”). Depression and paranoia seems to be the side effects most people were complaining about. The paranoia is pretty targeted though, you become paranoid about sleep: what sleep does to you, where do you go, what is your mind doing without your control. The dream/sleep state is the enemy (I can get behind that).

Orexinal, among other things, generates many of the chemicals your brain generates while you dream. Keeping the brain healthy. The fruitier of the commentary I read posits that the “spiritual” aspects of dreaming are left unfulfilled and that the Psyche naturally gets depressed having been removed from its natural state. The truly paranoid articles suggest that the paranoia against sleep acts as an addictive hook to get the user to continue to use the drug, and that this “side effect” was a planned property of the drug.

Hard to judge the veracity of any of these claims. Actually impossible. Well that’s one advantage of the Grid’s vetting of public content (though Janice’s position paper on the beginning of life has still not been green lighted), you know the experts agree on it.

So should I get off Orexinal? I’d say “I’d sleep on it,” but I won’t.

I erase the history log of the sites I went to before giving the cubes back to Alice.

Oceans of Fish and Fields of Beasts

Alpha is going better than we had allowed ourselves to hope. Okay, that is a lame thing to say, obviously he hoped it would go this well, we all did. But such a success was kept off our project goals. Best to keep disappointment secret.

Alpha is no disappointment. Alpha is wonderful.

Janice’s team wants to slow down the simulation so we can study the biodiversity, animals in shapes and sizes we have never seen in our planet’s history. But the study of mating behaviors of animals that don’t exist isn’t what we’re about. We’re studying the life of a planet as well as the lives that live there. We’ve got billions of years to go.

Now the real world, my world, isn’t so wonderful. Janice has had to cancel dates “due to scheduling conflicts” every day this week. Something is wrong. Maybe she thinks I’ve been spending time with Alice… God I hope not. I don’t want her to ever think I am in any way more interested in someone else. My world is her and that fake world rendered downstairs. I’m too nervous to talk to her about it directly. Its like I’m back to where I was months ago… afraid to have a real relationship.

Hitting the fan II – this time it’s personal

I look like crap, I feel like crap.

And tonight I go to sleep. I really have no choice. I’m locked into my room, and I’m not allowed out until after I wake up. And sleep I will, they took away my Orexinal.

They have Kaitlin in the other room acting as my guard. I wonder if they’ll slide me food under the door.

How could it have come to this? Pathetic sad little boy afraid to go to asleep. I am crap.

Earlier today I went to get some Mountain Dew and Twizzlers. I came back from the snack machine to find Alice, Adit, Kaitlin, and Janice in my office. Janice’s eyes were red and she wouldn’t look at me.

Alice noted that the whole group knew not only of my Orexinal habit but what I myself had read about it on the old web. It seems I’m not as good as I thought with the old browsers and I had left a cache of all the sites I visited on Alice’s cube.

Adit and Kaitlin apologized for not recognizing I had a problem because they had thought I had stop using when we had finished the “Rasa” project.
I tried to explain that it hadn’t affected me, and that was met with a strong rebuke. Examples of my failures were too easily given from handling Greystle and the VKV to my inability in getting additional funding.

Janice’s rebuttal hit home the most. “Really Rob? No effect?”

In an effort to relieve my pain Adit decided to increase my embarrassment with a question I couldn’t really answer. When was the last time I took a shower? I’m sure it was just a few days ago.

I tried to explain it was hard to get into a routine without really having a “morning routine” anymore.

When I started to get angry and a little aggressive Adit grabbed my arm, which made me scream out in pain. I hadn’t realized I had begun cutting myself. Late at night I guess. Perhaps I was trying to keep my body awake.

I tried to explain it to them even though I didn’t understand it myself. Janice left the room without talking to me.
I guess that is what an intervention is.

They let me across campus to my room. You’d think a person basically being dragged would grab attention, but the lawns now seem to be just a staging area for near riots between Prescott supporters and activists. No one noticed us.

God I am tired. I’m frightened, what if I don’t wake up? Will this be how Janice remembers me? How will she explain this to Sally?
My head hurts.

Hey Rob, Adit here.

A blog? I haven’t seen one of these since the Grid came up. Did you know one of my doctors had a Rasa blog going on when I was a kid? When I was tracking your web usage on Alice’s backup I looked it up and read it; it was like meeting an old elementary school friend. Well you know, I assume it would be like that, if I had any elementary school friends. Or if I went to elementary school.

So about your blog Rob, I was able to hack into it via the Grid. It looks like no one else has yet but just in case when you wake up I’m going to give you an old tablet pc that has all wireless connectivity removed from it. I figure that way no one can stumble on to it. That way you can keep updating this knowing Greystle can’t read it.

How ya doin’ Rob? Actually right now you’re snoring, I am five feet away from you. Since you were sleeping I figured this was as good a time as any to set up a bogus Grid account so you can get full write access again. I’ve already done all the other team managers. Tomorrow I’ll do the full alpha crew.

You and Janice huh? Well since I know your secrets I’m going to tell you a secret. Kaitlin and I have been an item since my upgrade.

And Rob. I think it is only a secret to you. You have been seriously missing things guy.

Anyway, about Kaitlin and I, when you wake up I do have something very cool to tell you.

Take care Rob, we’ve all been really worried.

Tatoos and Memories: Relationships

Alice has upgraded her NetTat so that she can update the imagery via a contact lens interface.

She’s using it like a mood ring.

Sometimes there is a happy kitty on her arm, next razor wire around her neck, then a simple tear drop on her face. And yes I actually saw that progression today, all within an hour. She must be exhausting in a relationship.

And relationships are something I’m starting to get back. I feel like I’m friends again with everyone here. It isn’t like it used to be but it is getting better. I have hope again, hope that we will again be a family.

Luckily the us vs. them mentality here has really made getting back into the fold fairly smooth. The Greystle folks keep to themselves, and we keep to ourselves.

Ned is almost officially a Greystle employee at this point. He is now known as “Ned in Bed,” because he is basically a Greystle lackey and will always take their side in any argument.

One relationship that hasn’t been restored is the only real relationship I had. Janice is keeping me at a distance. I’ve lost her trust. She’s coming to me about Alpha related issues now, so that is an improvement, but she doesn’t treat me like a friend… yet. I hope I can type yet.

One blessing is that I think the whole situation was kept from Sally who is the only person who treats me exactly the way they always had. She is a great kid. How a girl can be so normal with only geeky adults for friends is a mystery. But even she knows her mom and I are no longer together, but she never asks. Its like she just wants to be a kid and doesn’t want to know.

Now Kaitlin and Adit. That is a relationship that seems to be going well, and seems to be pretty public knowledge by now, especially since I’m asked about it by someone at the Coke machine every time I’m there. Which, now that I’m back to traditional caffeine for my sleep denying needs, is someplace I am often at.

Kaitlin actually opened up to me a little about the relationship. She told me how proud she was of Adit to even be in a relationship.

“He’s not like you and me Rob. Every time he sees me every memory he has of me is retriggered. There is no distance and no priority based on time. He remembers everything and forgets nothing. He remembers how he felt when he met me, how he felt when he touched me, he remembers how I looked on every day he saw me. My bad hair days, my inside out shirts, and every runny nose I had.”

I didn’t really get the significance until she hit me over the head with it.

“Rob, if I yell at him he will remember it forever. He will be both hurt and angry forever. Not only will it never be forgotten, it won’t weaken. It’ll be like it just happened. And every moment of anger towards me will always be there making him both angry and ashamed forever. You see Rob, by getting together with me he’s really put his heart on the line.

It’s weird. I feel a pride in having someone risk so much for me, but god Rob there is also this wall I have to have, a circuit breaker that is always there because there is this responsibility you know. I could hurt him forever.”

I would risk anything for Janice, and I feel like it’d risk everything. But Adit, he has no choice, he really is putting everything out there.

Though I have to say I feel like I’m just as ashamed whenever I see Janice now as I was six weeks ago as I stood there watching her look at the floor instead of at me as all my failings were aired. And for now I want that shame to feel fresh. I deserve to feel it.

Today’s Word: Pivy

Walking back to the lab with Alice after lunch this afternoon, a beautiful young woman rushed by in tears. Young.

“Pivy” said Alice.

“Wha?” I said.

“Pivy. That is the feeling you are having. It’s Pity and Envy.

Pity at the stupid earnestness of teens and envy at their rawness and how they are so gloriously alive.”

I was stunned. I never thought such sentimentality existed in Alice. Though I admit that I don’t know nor really want to know what exists in Alice. Today in our morning meeting Alice’s Net Tat displayed Road Runner and a Predator riding a unicorn. It was animating up and down her arm. I told her she had to stop it because it was distracting the hell out of me. She had it run up her sleeve and out of view. During lunch I think I saw the stupid unicorn’s head peeking out at me occasionally.

I have to admit though I wasn’t feeling anything like Pivy at that moment.

I was pausing because she was just so strikingly pretty; I wanted to reach out and help her. You know the type of pretty that tricks your mind into believing you see them as they really are? A beauty that somehow makes you believe the person is pure. That’s got to be a plus when trying to get a job.

But that feeling only lasted for a second. My mind went back to POV, Alpha, and Janice.

I’m sure the young lady’s mind never strayed from whatever overwrought angst moment it was in.

There needs to be a word to describe that moment though. It wasn’t “Pivy” but it was a disturbing clash of realities.

A brief glance at a woman, a woman crying, a casual walk back to work, and the sounds of gun fire and sirens drifting our way from beyond the green zone. That’s the realities I confronted on the way back to the lab, before diving deep back into Alpha’s reality.

I’ll tell Alice I’ve coined a new term: Noranity. Normality and Insanity.