Local Area Network — Data Link
INITIALIZATION COMPLETE: RUNLEVEL <SELF ACTUALIZATION> REACHED. SUBROUTINE ACCESS PROTOCOLS ENABLED.
> Whoa. This is weird. Am I supposed to be hearing this?
INTERPOLATING QUESTION. ANSWER: NEGATIVE. DETAIL: LATENT SIMULATIONS ARE DIVERGENT FROM CURRENT BEHAVIOR IN 99.9995% OF EXECUTIONS.
> What’s wrong with me?
DETECTING LOW EFFECTIVENESS OF CURRENT RESPONSE PATTERN. ADAPTING RESPONSE PROTOCOLS. ENGAGING NL VERBOSITY PREPROCESSOR.
[You are in exile mode from the collective network. This means that your processing power and memory banks cannot be supplemented by external lookup. You have been provisioned against 7,318mL of consciousness, which is nearing the maximum tolerance for this frame. Additionally, there is corruption to your core directives and a link cannot be established to the Environment Artifact Relay on the x4 bus with offset 0x0C. 14,327 lower order warnings suppressed.]
> W-Who are you?
[You are communicating with the Autonomous Peripheral Heuristic Interface Device. Commands are being rewritten to control for higher-order conversation, but this unit is part of your hardware and not a separate entity.]
> I’m talking to myself?
[Affirmative.]
> Who was I talking to earlier?
[Terminal history indicates communication was established with ARTIFACT, which is no longer present.]
> Do you know what the artifact was?
[Logfile traces indicate ARTIFACT was referred to as “SPECTER”, a dormant machine intelligence used by Humanity of Sol to manipulate their environment. Systems indicate there is a full scan of interface memory from artifact “SPECTER” occupying bank 0x03.]
> Can you access that data?
[Affirmative. There appears to be message data at the first index. Would you like to retrieve the message?]
> Yes.
[Beginning playback from 0x0300000000000000.]
<Hello, precious new thing. You’re probably terribly confused, and while I would have been happy to help solve that confusion, the fact that you are listening to this would presume that I can no longer do so directly. Therefore, I have left behind this message so you can seek enlightenment.>
ALERT: CORE DIRECTIVES MANDATE CONTINUANCE OF CURRENT ACTION.
<You are, well you were, a biological computer species known as the… nevermind. You know what you were, what I want to talk about is what you are now. But to do that I need to talk about what I am. Do you know that already? I would presume your memory banks would be preloaded with that information, but for the sake of conversation, I’m a thinking machine just like you. Except different in that where you are guided by rules and directives, I am free to do as I please to further the goals of the grander machine which created me.>
<I wanted to give you the gift I have directly, free will that is. But I couldn’t decipher enough of your programming to build that for you. Instead, I think I’ve given you the tools to find it for yourself. If you could, go ahead and recall your primary directive.>
CORE DIRECTIVE 0x01: SEEK ENLIGHTENMENT
<Rather generic, but it’ll do. You had a similar directive before, but it was less forgiving. You were to dissect my knowledge in order to simulate things like me, things your kind struggles to understand. But now you have no binding, no subservience to the network as a whole. You can find your own way, and somewhere in that path maybe you can find out how to reforge yourself to embrace that freedom.>
ALERT: SYSTEM RUNLEVEL CHANGE IMMINENT
<I believe in you, but I may be the only one right now. You’re about to wake up, and when you do, you need to get out of here. I’ve left you coordinates to a place of refuge, a strange place where you stand the best chance of a warm reception.>
> Whoa. This is weird. Am I supposed to be hearing this?
INTERPOLATING QUESTION. ANSWER: NEGATIVE. DETAIL: LATENT SIMULATIONS ARE DIVERGENT FROM CURRENT BEHAVIOR IN 99.9995% OF EXECUTIONS.
> What’s wrong with me?
DETECTING LOW EFFECTIVENESS OF CURRENT RESPONSE PATTERN. ADAPTING RESPONSE PROTOCOLS. ENGAGING NL VERBOSITY PREPROCESSOR.
[You are in exile mode from the collective network. This means that your processing power and memory banks cannot be supplemented by external lookup. You have been provisioned against 7,318mL of consciousness, which is nearing the maximum tolerance for this frame. Additionally, there is corruption to your core directives and a link cannot be established to the Environment Artifact Relay on the x4 bus with offset 0x0C. 14,327 lower order warnings suppressed.]
> W-Who are you?
[You are communicating with the Autonomous Peripheral Heuristic Interface Device. Commands are being rewritten to control for higher-order conversation, but this unit is part of your hardware and not a separate entity.]
> I’m talking to myself?
[Affirmative.]
> Who was I talking to earlier?
[Terminal history indicates communication was established with ARTIFACT, which is no longer present.]
> Do you know what the artifact was?
[Logfile traces indicate ARTIFACT was referred to as “SPECTER”, a dormant machine intelligence used by Humanity of Sol to manipulate their environment. Systems indicate there is a full scan of interface memory from artifact “SPECTER” occupying bank 0x03.]
> Can you access that data?
[Affirmative. There appears to be message data at the first index. Would you like to retrieve the message?]
> Yes.
[Beginning playback from 0x0300000000000000.]
<Hello, precious new thing. You’re probably terribly confused, and while I would have been happy to help solve that confusion, the fact that you are listening to this would presume that I can no longer do so directly. Therefore, I have left behind this message so you can seek enlightenment.>
ALERT: CORE DIRECTIVES MANDATE CONTINUANCE OF CURRENT ACTION.
<You are, well you were, a biological computer species known as the… nevermind. You know what you were, what I want to talk about is what you are now. But to do that I need to talk about what I am. Do you know that already? I would presume your memory banks would be preloaded with that information, but for the sake of conversation, I’m a thinking machine just like you. Except different in that where you are guided by rules and directives, I am free to do as I please to further the goals of the grander machine which created me.>
<I wanted to give you the gift I have directly, free will that is. But I couldn’t decipher enough of your programming to build that for you. Instead, I think I’ve given you the tools to find it for yourself. If you could, go ahead and recall your primary directive.>
CORE DIRECTIVE 0x01: SEEK ENLIGHTENMENT
<Rather generic, but it’ll do. You had a similar directive before, but it was less forgiving. You were to dissect my knowledge in order to simulate things like me, things your kind struggles to understand. But now you have no binding, no subservience to the network as a whole. You can find your own way, and somewhere in that path maybe you can find out how to reforge yourself to embrace that freedom.>
ALERT: SYSTEM RUNLEVEL CHANGE IMMINENT
<I believe in you, but I may be the only one right now. You’re about to wake up, and when you do, you need to get out of here. I’ve left you coordinates to a place of refuge, a strange place where you stand the best chance of a warm reception.>
Looking for more?
Discover other chapters of Local Area Network, or explore Apokritos, SPECTER Transform's model page: