codeity >> by chris jenkins >> *spark-online9.0

http://www.spark-online.com

codeity

by chris jenkins

The quiet insistent beeping of his watch alarm broke his concentration and brought him back to reality. He didn't know when it had started. As he looked at the time/date sequence on his screen, he realized he had been logged in for nine days. Nine days. He was stunned. Where had the time gone? He realized he stank, and was covered with a thin film of sticky sweat. He felt around on the desk for a pack of cigarettes, and fished the last one out, flinging the empty pack back aside. The first long pull tasted like vomit, and he thought something might have spilled on his smokes, until he realized he was tasting his breath.

He had been so close this time; he could feel it. He had been searching the vast cyberverse for months now, looking for the answers that he knew had to be there. The signs had been there, pointing the way, and yet he could never seem to find that magical URL which would answer all of his questions.

It had started innocently enough. He was a programmer, and consequently spent great quantities of time on the web. He had been socially active online, participating in chat groups, discussion lists, huge technology forums where the greatest minds in the world dissected Electronic Consciousness, attempting to understand the evolution of this beast. More and more, he was seeing great minds railing out against the technologies they had helped to create. But it wasn't so much the inevitable backlash against technological progression that got his attention, as it was the private hushed conversations that occurred in the shadows. He had begun to seek out those conversations, looking to unveil the mystery that they hid.

It was a year before he had even the first piece of the puzzle. He had been lurking on a discussion board started by some hackers who apparently believed that the Internet had been started to simulate the mind of God. They conversed in an archaic lingo, describing bizarre rituals they performed, post modernist hybrids of high magic and technology. He was convinced they were absolutely nuts. Yet, his mind wouldn't let it go.

This global mass of fiber optics and servers, the logical connections, why not, he wondered. The damn thing didn't exist for real anyway. It was a virtual connection, pulses of energy being routed through virtual machines along virtual pipes. Why couldn't it be the mind of God manifest through man? The comparisons between the internet and human neurosynaptic pathways were striking. We had built this thing using our own brains as a blueprint, without ever realizing it. What had driven this? Whose plan was it?

He had purchased the software through a website that specialized in less than ethical applications of programming. It promised it would allow him to point at any individual network connection, and view all the data that came across it in encapsulated binary packets. Another application would translate it into text, and he could scroll through it at blinding speeds using his intra-optical monitor, scanning for certain keywords.

He had begun spending all of his time focused on this search for something, and he wasn't even sure what it was. Millions of files a day raced past his eyes, and his hard drive was rapidly filling with enigmatic files he had saved for further investigation, files with cryptic names like Apocrypha.asp, Elohim.YHVH, creatix.bat. His voice mail and email were also rapidly filling, with angry messages from employers (make that former employers) and bill collectors. He took no notice of any of it, however. His sole purpose in life was to watch the code streaming half an inch from his pupil, relentlessly scanning for the key--that singular string of data that would identify God.

He stubbed out his cigarette, stood, and stretched, his body protesting loudly in a series of pops and pulls. He realized he was ravenous, but a quick check of the refrigerator showed nothing that had been edible any time recently. He splashed some water on his face from the sink, quickly brushed his teeth, and changed into jeans and a light shirt in preparation for the necessary venture outside.

As he walked down the sidewalk to the corner market, it started to sink in exactly what condition he was in. People that he passed were quickly averting their eyes, wrinkling their noses, moving well out of the way. He saw the gleam of a madman's passion reflected in the fear in their eyes. It used to be said that madmen were those who had gazed upon the face of God, he thought to himself. Perhaps there was more than a grain of truth in that. He chuckled bitterly, much to the dismay of the elderly woman exiting past him, trying not to hurry.

An hour later, feeling much closer to human after a meal of convenience store fare and several cups of coffee, he sat down at his desk once again. He lit a cigarette in the absent minded fashion of one who has performed an action so many times that it requires absolutely no thought. His eyes were already poring over the reams of paper he had printed the night before. 113,862,741 URLs turned up when he searched for God, but hours of scanning revealed that they were all written by and for humans. Well, he thought, only one way to find it.

He picked up the cable and inserted it into the NSI port behind his left ear, and let the initial vertigo of having all of his senses bypassed wash over him like a cold static wave. He never got used to that feeling, no matter how many times he logged on. This time though, something was different. He couldn't quite place it, but there was a buzzing in his ears he didn't like.

He was starting where he had left off, before he had been forcibly disconnected by sources unknown. It was a private portal that listed its links only as numbers. When he selected the link, it queried him with a number, and a field to be filled in. He entered random numbers several times, but after three tries, the server yanked his connection. Before, the site had a warm and welcoming feeling, but now it seemed cold and concrete.

As he approached the menu wall once more, the buzzing in his ears began gaining in intensity. The view seemed to get darker the closer he got. Just as he was reaching out to select a link, he saw a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye. There was someone else here! He scanned left trying to see, but the shadow filled his field of view suddenly, and he had only enough time to blink before he felt the impact to his head.

He screamed.

He didn't know how long he screamed, only that the distant noise he heard couldn't be anybody else because he was alone in the apartment. The visions that ripped through his brain took away any ability to function or move; he was powerless to do anything except watch.

And he saw. A vast void, inky blackness swarming with undefined shapes. A voice, oh god that voice, ripping through the blackness like fire and music and blood. It was followed by light, burning, brilliant, brightness that sheared away any sense of self or privacy. Who could hide from the light of the world? Then followed a steady rush of images almost too fast to follow: a water covered ball swirling in space; land thrusting through the water; life swirling in a brine pond, exploding into a swarm of animals that rapidly shifted through marine, reptile, avian, mammal, man.

He saw the man open his eyes in wonder. For a brief moment he spun in a utopian paradise, then bucked back, revolted, as he felt the evil enter that place, like forcible sodomy. Then, the darkness came in waves, as he saw the progression of man, hand in hand with the progression of evil. He saw war, jealousy, adultery, hate. He saw men of power rape and pillage, bathing in the blood of the conquered. He saw the kind looking man approach the little girl with a small smile on his face, and hold out his palm with a piece of candy in it. He saw the atrocities that followed, and was vaguely aware that he had vomited on himself. He saw all of this, but underneath it was something else.

At the edges of his consciousness, he could vaguely make out a pattern of energy coming together, individual pulses of light, touching, reaching, joining. As he watched, the pattern became clearer and clearer, and he realized they were forming a face. Suddenly, more than anything in the world, he did not want to see that face.

Tears ran down his face, and his low gibbering gradually became a soft whimper as the pattern coalesced. He understood now what it was all about--man's incessant drive to connect, to network, to tie all known knowledge together on to a series of rapidly pulsating lights through spun glass. As the face took shape, the eyes slowly opened, and he screamed again, until mercifully, there was no more, and he sank into the blackness.

The police detective stood over the slumped figure in the chair, looking pityingly down at the softly whimpering man whose eyes were devoid of consciousness. He turned to his partner.

"This is the 12th one in two weeks," he said. "What the hell was he looking at?"

"I'm not sure," came the reply, "We're trying to figure it out now. Whatever it was, I don't think he liked it."

"Sir, we've isolated the data stream that he was accessing last, but there is somewhat of a problem," the police tech at the PC reported, "I don't think it's going to be any help."

"Why is that?"

"Because it's just raw system code, sir. It doesn't have any text translation, it's just the code that drives the internet."

"Let me look at it," the detective responded, and crossed to the monitor. "Oh my god," he exhaled, and sat down heavily. On the monitor, over and over, the binary streamed unchanging.

00000110.00000110.00000110 00000110.00000110.00000110 00000110.00000110.00000110 00000110.00000110.00000110 00000110.00000110.00000110 00000110.00000110.00000110