very confused.
“It’s this teck. I told you, I can control technology. That’s not all.” Archie reached out to grab Luddite’s arm, but Luddite took a step back. “No its cool, I just want to show you something.” Archie again tried to grab Luddite’s arm, without success.
“Yeah, I don’t think I want any little red worms taking over my body. I don’t care how ‘cool’ it is.” Luddite maintained a safe distance from Archie. Archie tried to figure this new development out.
‘Hmm. Perhaps it would be better if I make people choose to want the teck. Veronica was freaked out by it when I gave it to her. Luddite refused to receive it all together. If I can get people to choose to get it, then they would be more likely to try and get other people to choose to get it as well. It could be a self-replicating pattern leading to a positive feedback loop of proliferation! I could control the whole world!! But, how can I get other people to choose it?’ Archie schemed ideas while he ate lunch with Luddite in an awkward silence.
That night, Archie set out to initiate his plan. He sat on his couch and stared at the wall. ‘Ok, if I can access computers just by thinking about it, then I should be able to access the internet with my mind. I wonder how far my reach can stretch.’ Just then, an explosion of awareness came barreling down on Archie. The teck that Archie had planted in his phone and the other computers he had come into contact with that day traversed the fiber optic cables connecting all computers throughout the world. Any bit of information on the web was instantaneously available to Archie.
‘Holy shit...” Archie’s new found perception was unrecognizable to his perception before being infected by the worm. “Ok, so, based upon my calculations, given the fact that I can control the minds of others and direct their thoughts and actions then I must necessarily be able to directly manipulate and intercept the neural connections in their brain. If I can manipulate the neural connections in other people’s brains, then that must mean that I can manipulate my own neural connections. If I speed up the rate at which my neurons fire, then I can essentially think and solve problems at a faster rate dependent upon the increased rate in which I fire my neurons. This will effectively cause my perception of time to slow down as well. Furthermore, by increasing the rate at which I fire neurons, I can identify patterns in my mind as well as in the internet far more rapidly than I can normally. This should allow me to figure out a solution to my problem in no time.’ Archie rapidly searched through his mind and the internet. He quickly crawled all of the webpages of the net, cataloging patterns into groups and hierarchies. By going through all of the social networking sites, e-commerce sites, blogs, news sites, and science journals, Archie developed a detailed analysis of the history of the Universe, along with detailed analyses of the patterns of behaviors, interests, fears, and desires of nearly every individual on the planet. Minutes after he sat on the couch, Archie had managed to create customized and subtle advertisements that specifically targeted each individual to maximize the probability of them voluntarily choosing to become recipients of the teck.
It started quickly. Ten minutes after Archie planted the ads, 1% of the world’s population had become recipients. After twenty minutes, 10% had become infected. Archie was feeling his power grow and was trying to harness it to his advantage. To test out his new found and rapidly growing powers, he had his growing army of recipients friend him on the web. The recipients voluntarily sent out comments on their new found teck to the web. Within an hour’s time, over 80% of the world’s population had become recipients under the control of Archie.
The next stage of Archie’s plan was to have everyone skip work the next day and to spread the teck as far and wide as they could, from other humans, to the technology that they use, the yards, houses, and even aesthetic objects. Everything was put into the framework of the teck. Everything, except Luddite. Luddite was one of only a few million people left on Earth who was not a recipient.
The next morning, Archie had become the central core of a massive, superconsciousness that had spanned the globe. Everyone could communicate with everyone else at the speed of thought. The barrier to communication among each of the nodes in the “Vast Archie Inter-brain Network” or VAIN as it was called, was negligible. 97% of the global human population had voluntarily become a node to the VAIN.
The teck that had facilitated the building of VAIN had spread throughout Earth’s biosphere, rapidly converting more and more of the resources to VAIN. Whole forests were turned into highly efficient, high calorie, high vitamin foods to feed the nodes. The waste given off by the nodes was funneled back into these gardens. Every node became vegans to facilitate the direct use of node-waste in gardens. The teck had stabilized the DNA of every node and fixed any wear and tear that time had wrought on the nodes’ bodies. The nodes became impervious to age and injury. In a matter of days, VAIN had planted VAIN seeds on the surrounding moons, and planets. VAIN used the Earth’s own satellite system to direct pulses of gamma rays coming from solar flares and extra solar sources towards the moons and planets. Distinct patterns of gamma rays were directed towards pockets of water present on the planetoids to melt and bind together existing molecular compounds first to form RNA molecules with a genetic composition approaching that of the teck. From the RNA, further pulses produced DNA that mirrored the genetic composition of the teck. The information contained within the pulses of gamma radiation held everything known by VAIN and the satellite transmitters left open a live link for open communication between Earth’s VAIN and the budding VAIN on the other moons and planets. Through directing light pulses and manipulating the genetic composition of each VAIN satellite, VAIN organisms could be Evolved to drive new behaviors and the formation of novel structures. On each seeded planetoid new civilizations similar to the ones on Earth began to form.
In 100 solar days, all planets and moons had fully matured VAIN societies structured specifically to maximize the use of available resources in each location. The mature VAIN societies on each planetoid began construction on massive solar sheets that collectively formed a solar system-wide, spherical mirror. This mirror collected 99.1% of all of the solar energy released by the sun at any given time, and routed it through a series of electrical channels to a massive series of storage batteries. The batteries, made from many of the moons, comets, and asteroids orbiting the sun, were oriented in a position to power a laser constructed from the massive rocky core of Jupiter.
The laser, being powered by the sun, gathered energy for another solar day. At the end of the solar period, the laser fired at the core of the sun. The resulting reaction led to an exponential increase in the rate of nuclear fusion occurring in the core of the sun. The hydrogen rapidly converted to helium, then helium to carbon, and so on until nickel formed and decayed to iron. At this point, the sun rapidly collapsed and exploded in a supernova. A number of satellites had been built by VAIN so that with the supernova explosion, minor perturbations in the shockwave and distribution of stellar elements occurred. These perturbations strategically displaced mass-energy in specific patterns throughout the super solar zone.
The area surrounding the supernova explosion became enriched in heavy elements. Gravity began to pull the remnants of the former star together. As the mass cloud grew denser and denser, a central core began to form, pulling in the surrounding material faster and faster, and with more force. Soon, a central core the size of Jupiter became established, which contained approximately 40% of the mass of the former solar system. The configuration of the core, a result of the distribution of stellar remnants after the supernova, had been modeled after the early VAIN network. The whole core was a layered construct made up of hundreds of trillions of structures nearly identical to a human brain from the medulla oblongata to the prefrontal cortex. Each human brain-like structure contained within it tens of billions of neurons, with the neurons forming tens of trillions of connections between them. The patterns of connections corresponded to
specific bits of information previously gathered by VAIN, or were undifferentiated and allowed for additional information to be stored or processed. Similar meta-connections existed connecting the brain-nodes together into specific patterns based upon the similarity of the data or processing capabilities they had. Thus the entire central core exhibited considerable differentiation based upon actual or potential capabilities associated with the storage or processing of information. There were sections for controlling the movement of the solar system-sized structure, called “Super Solar VAIN”, or “SS VAIN”. Sections of the core were dedicated to checking the health status of the structure. There were early detection systems to give warning of impending attack and a massive logistic and behavioral analysis system. The core had come pre-loaded with all of the patterns of information already identified by VAIN. In addition to this, VAIN had been able to scan all of the information embedded in each of the solar system objects prior to the supernova. Thus, all of the information held within the solar system since its birth with