Ned

Party

/ staticsky

Dr. Stevens – Ned – introduced the team to the Greystle Group today. These guys are the ones who gave us the grant to make this possible; they put the money behind this, instead of just all the talk. A dinner party… yes, I was as excited as you are.

I’ve seen articles, books, and films about simulated worlds from decades back (Ned has quite a collection), but it’s been possible to do this for at least 5 years. The cost was the wall. And I guess that wall finally got cheap enough for Greystle to bite the bullet for us.

Of course they get a healthy chunk of the patents that we are already grinding out just in setting this up. How they make money off of this esoteric code is their issue.

At least there was free food at the party. A bunch of basement dwellers meeting incredibly boring powerful wealthy folks was not as an amusing sitcom set up as you would think.

Yes, I know we just sit all day staring at our screens, hands deep in sensors, but god these guys were dull. Vacuous really. How the hell do you get to be so connected and so rich and just have a frat house level of interest in reality is beyond me.

Janice brought her daughter Sally to the party. Poor girl. She’s big now – I think she’s six. I remember when Sally was born in our sophomore year. It felt like we all had suddenly taken a step into adulthood (though not quite a big a step as for Janice). Sally got quite a big family – basically the whole Alpha team.

Did I mention that it is weird that we are called the Alpha team when there is no other “team” in the Dulles Tech Simulations Department?

Janice is our biologist. She’s overseeing all the life Alpha contains. Or will. Maybe. She is busy though, summing up “life” into a series of rules and requirements. And sum is the correct word. The idea is to let Alpha develop. Gravity is a simple rule when you get down to it, and so are other core things that make up “reality,” and in the end so is Life. What becomes life (How it becomes) based on our basic rules is what the Alpha project is about. She really is the big wig of the project for that reason.

Janice is also the team mom because she really is a mom and we’re all just Sally’s bigger brothers and sisters.

The only person who seemed to have fun at the party was Jack. Jack is our lead technologist – the hardware man if you want – but it is software that makes this possible. He makes sure we are “up and running.” It’s his wild scattered imagination that is his real gift to the team. Quantum Compression, the theory that makes a large-scale simulation like ours possible, almost reasonable, was his concept. Adit is our algorithm God; he made Quantum Compression work, but just the idea (as amazingly obvious as it is now) came from Jack.

Many of Jack’s ideas are worthless though. And he seems to have a new one almost every day. At the party he kept pushing one of the Greystle ladies to invest in his idea of a children’s book series. The books would have names like “Nietzsche for nippers, Kant for kids, Buddhism for babies, and Jung for youngsters. It was hilarious hearing him explain to her how it would read: “Zarathustra says God is Dead. Dead Dead Dead..” She didn’t seem interested.

In the end the party really was a bust. But Ned just seemed relieved that none of us screwed anything up. No wine stains on our investors thank you.

Om

/ staticsky

Today was the day. A simple command line was entered by Adit, and I got to hit the red enter button.

“Om” Adit chanted as we looked at the code fill up the screen. I let out a laugh but Janice gave the “that” look. Adit was being serious. “Om” being the first sound of the universe or something.

When we projected the rendered images the gravity of the moment hit me. The gases, dust, and debris gathering together before us. Alpha was being born. EDIT: I just noticed the gravity pun – sorry.

We’ve started

We have it cranked up so Alpha should begin cooling by the end of the week.

Ned and I have a meeting at the Greystle Group tomorrow to get more funds. Kaitlin has quite a wish list for new hardware.

Because I need to get ready, I’m skipping the “launch” party, which is probably just as well. A bunch of basement dwellers getting together in a stunned state of disbelief (at having actually begun and still recovering from the whole Jack/DHS fiasco) is probably as fun as it sounds.

I Can’t Sleep

/ staticsky

Well actually I haven’t tried, but I’m pretty sure I can’t sleep. It’s been two days now. Basically it’s a combo of starting Alpha, working to get all our requirements done for the proposal Greystle wants, and asking out Janice (well without the actual asking out part – I’ll get to it).

I got some Orexinal at the campus store and it works great, I was starting to fall apart and now I’m doing fine.

I won’t mention this to Janice. I mean she’ll be pissed enough about me taking a drug, but the fact that the pharma company that makes Orexinal is one of Greystle’s companies will push her over the edge. Ever since the Jack crap she’s gotten to be an almost activist about those guys. Ned and I now make sure she never goes to any meetings with them.

Oh

/ staticsky

It wasn’t until I was 17 that I finally had a girlfriend. And it was serious, it way going to be forever. But even a 17 year old deep down knows that isn’t true, and when coming home from a movie in my parent’s ancient hybrid I blurted out that I was going to leave town and go to Dulles Tech. I didn’t let Anna speak I kept going on about how this was best for me, and how we can still have a relationship even though I’m gone, and though I didn’t plan it I started babbling about my parents getting a divorce and before I knew it I was crying. Finally I was silent and Anna said “Oh.”

Adit’s story is mentioned in dozens of studies. His case is the case study on countless white papers and thesis papers and journal articles – etc. Luckily as soon as he came to Dulles as a child he was known only as Rasa. I always assumed that was in reference to Tabula rasa, that and it sounds Indian. Rasa is famous in many diciplines of study – taking brain-computer interface (BCI or wetware) technology to a whole new level. Rasa was a source of pride at Dulles. Only Jack, Ned and I knew that Adit and Rasa were one in the same, until I told Kaitlin.

As soon as I heard Kaitlin say “hello” I leaped into listing resources we might need, how I’ll get Ned’s permission to secure a lab, and that budget was not an issue. Finally I paused, “what’s this about?” Kaitlin finally was able to ask. I let her know that Adit was Rasa and he was broken. Whatever Adit and Jack had done wasn’t working. I paused again. Silence, and then Kaitlin said “Oh.”

Now Kaitlin and Adit are making my stockpile of Orexinal disappear as we’ve locked ourselves into a lab right above the Greystle guys. If they only knew the patent potentials happening in this room.

Kaitlin is like a kid in a candy store looking at Jack’s specs on Rasa that Ned had locked away and working with Adit on possible reasons for the malfunction and ways to improve the system. I have to say Adit has taken to Kaitlin. He never had before – when he had memories of her from before his last night of sleep. He is starting to look like he is secure. I think he finally feels safe. Good. I can’t imagine what it really is like when everyone is a stranger.

I’m trying to help out, but I am so out of my league. Honestly the only help I can give them is time and privacy. Oh, and I seem to be getting the drinks and food too.

I am the go to intern on this project. I’m fine with that.

Jack and the Analytical Engine

/ staticsky

I finally was able to get a hold of Jack; it was weird hearing from him after so much has happened.

Kaitlin has basically taken Jack’s earlier work and quickly made it her own. In fact she’s updated Adit’s system so that all of the wiring can be external of the skull. Now all Adit really would need is a cap but for aesthetic reasons they’ve been grafting the inputs below the scalp. Not only can the sensors on top of the skull record the firing of each neuron to record the memories – senses, and emotions, but the sensors can record the unique frequency of each neuron’s firing so the “playback” doesn’t actually have to be from “shocking” the effected area as before but actually by shocking the skull at the neuron’s frequency. The brain then thinks that neuron fired. This makes Adit’s new system exponentially more precise than the one Adit and Jack came up with years back. Rasa is now Adit 2.0 (God he’d kill me if he heard me say that). Its good to have Adit back. Rasa is almost completely gone now. Adit even slept last night and woke up knowing who we were, and what we were doing; basically knowing who he is.

All of the old hardware in the brain is no longer needed which is why we needed to get a hold of Jack. Occasionally the “playback” hits a frequency close to what the old hardware was tuned to – and when that happens we get instant seizures. Adit’s got a big ass bruise on his head from when the first one hit. With the new method for “playback” seizures are no longer supposed to be an issue.

When Rasa first came to me I was trying everything to get a hold of Jack, but truth is once I found out Kaitlin was on top of things and Ned had most of the specs, it didn’t become as necessary for me to find Jack – and I was kind of relived. Now we needed him. We can’t remove the old hardware without at least doing an itty bit of damage so what we need to do is map out all of the frequencies of the old hardware so that when Adit is experiencing a memory “play back” we skip anything that would conflict with the old hardware. Sure there might be itty bits of memory gaps here and there, but at most we’re talking about a blink. I forget more in ten minutes then Adit probably will over his lifetime.

Ned didn’t have that kind of detail on the hardware Jack used, so we hoped Jack did. And he did. Jack had the details in a secure area of one of his grid corners – we got the info instantly. But Jack really wanted from me was help with his new idea.

Jack wants to make and market desktop versions of Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine. Yes you too can have an analog computer the size of a small room and made of iron and brass miniaturized to the size of a knick-knack for your desk. While I agree not many people have a fully functional metal analog computer of gears, rods, and levers as a paperweight, I’m not sure many would want one. Jack went on to explain that at first he was going to make Babbage’s Difference Engine because there were complete plans, but he thought everyone would just think of it as a cool Victorian calculator, but with the Analytical Engine each purchase would come with a stack of punch cards with programs ready to go. “Though no one would actually use it – it would be much more obvious to them and the friends they are showing it off to that it is indeed a computer.”

Jack needs to get out of state. He made a grid contact that can work on mass-producing the prototype Jack made after he finalized Babbage’s specs. But there are some design issues his “contact” has encountered and Jack needs to get into New Jersey to help with it. I really don’t want to get into this and I pushed him off to Ned – politely of course.

He’s not even allowed into Jersey now. Damn, I don’t think he realized how much of his freedom Maple Sap was going to cost him. Who would?

/ staticsky

Ned made a cameo appearance down to the main Alpha lab this morning carrying a big box and a big grin. Jack had sent Ned a gift for helping Jack out with travel permits.

It was a 45 year old Macintosh computer. No hard drive, no color, no ports of any use, and yet this little 8 mhz machine was an integral part of a path the led from the abacas to Alpha.

Kaitlin was in awe and giggled when Ned turned it on and she heard the tinny little chime. Some of the students (okay and staff) didn’t even know what it was at first, they thought it would look a little less old.

And with that Ned went back upstairs with his little bundle of joy. He didn’t even ask how Alpha was going.

Too bad, because it’s going well we’ve got vertebrates now in all flavors, cold, warm, and this one species that switches based on the ease of finding food. Very cool.