excerpt from THE LESSON

PAY PARTY NIGHTMARES

Several taxi trapped hours later I’m informed by my suit that the Great Eight Senior Researchers will not allow me to start investigating the Roman Catholic Church at this time. That’s not a definite ‘no‘, just a ‘maybe later‘. Moody tells suit that there are six ongoing SR reports on them already. And not one publishable yet.

On Balance Demarist has been busy setting up a professional conference for us. He was the first to get there and had to hold the fort till Space and I paid off the taxi fare. What a scene it was when we waltzed in late, total chaos and anarchy. It was perfect for productive research. Poor Demarist though, he was first confronted by numerous irresolvable existential catering dichotomies of the Kosher Halal Vegan variety, this was followed by a severe pummeling of the morals with regards the bar inventory then caught up into speaker scheduling turf battles aggravated by massive jargon overload. He was a complete wreck by the time we arrived.

“This is too serious!” I couldn’t hear my Mexican polkas. Suits speakers were drowned out by the uproar. I cranked up the volume.

Demarists mission had been to soften things up, make inroads, or an outline at least. I had hoped he could guide the discussions.

“They’re all sick…! Sick! Sick! Sick!” That explains everything of course. He should not have tried to stand in front of the buffet. I could see plainly now that he was no match for their paid conference skills. Never, never bring out the food till you’ve had the chance to size up the room, get the speakers with something to say talking before everyone’s too drunk. Speech’s first, drinks then food then more talk then open the bar again. The ignorance of youth. Now the food was gone and more than half the booze too!

The thing to do was separate the two main groups. That would cut down on the lines at the bar. Nobody gets paid till the conference is over so they’ll stick around till the funds transfer. So I released the dog on them! “Herd Space! Split them by disciplines! Good boy!” His way of accomplishing this was to leap up on the buffet and attack the platter of chicken bits.

“Demarist!” “Yes.” “You did what you could. Now go away and get drunk quick!” “Sure.” He fled.

I got suit to load up the 120db PA ap and I got them all to shut up with a fifteen second blast of a G major chord. While they rubbed their ears I insisted all industrial Philosophers (six of them, not one a Weiser), Intelligeneers (a whole group from CA NA), and Physicists (had to be thirty of them all clutching display projector lami's) go into the banquet annex room next door. They grumbled and took their drinks and platters of G-tank seafood. I sent a bartender to set up for them out there. This left the Forensic Psychiatrists and Behavioral Chemists alone with the Lawyers from the Government Universities Social Engineering sub-contractors. I felt this was a fair match up. The Physicists and Psychiatrists would have been inconsequential anyway together not getting any words in on the Lawyers. Things got back to a dull cacophony of arguing and point making quickly.

Psychiatrist number one, Gruffy I call him, was speaking sideways all round about how the conscious and the unconscious and preconscious and id and ego and all couldn’t be recorded. I pointed out that isn’t art in its many forms a record of the ego? I was sneered at. He grumbled about maligned subjectivity. His back up team included several holographic Behavioral Chemists to contend with the Behavioral Chemists brought in by the Social Engineers. They mumbled incessant reductionistic bullshit. It was a pit of snarling opinions all around me that I could move through and step into an argument and if it didn’t interest me move onto the next. Some just ignored the rest and held forth on their own anxious to get what they had to say transcribed into my report as everything going on in both rooms was being well recorded for inclusion.

The debate was more for their personal benefit financially rather than to perhaps illuminate my report what with the latest generous consulting fee schedule. They all can charge the Government big bucks for ‘consulting’ and get their name in the back of the report too. I invited them all here to answer my questions, which I provided in advance and I’ve already decided these questions were too easy.

Certainly I could be wrong.

No mind can be separated from itself.

The dreams hold the key I think.

This all began with dreams of desire. Of emulation. Of the demands of economies of scale. Dreams and fantasies so easily seen are worth attempting to fulfill. For Manuelo de Boveray many were eager to help. The point where the act of fulfilling the dream of the economy met the dreams of the sampled people blurred the reality of the objective, the reality of a plausible goal. What began as a molded cultural dream has become a myth of accomplishment. Can a myth created to describe what can only be a dream be the accomplishment? That’s about all that’s been accomplished so far.

Yes the dreams hold the key. The paradox in the data is rooted in the dream state data stream, its affects grew into the real time knowledge.

How could a data acquisition array tell dreaming from reality? It doesn’t. It relies on the stream of data to arrive. Content only matters later to the EIO machine. The physical context of the subject shown in the data is the only marker, a heart beating, the clock ticking in sequence. Realities all blur during sleep while dreaming. The dream clock language the self uses to describe what’s going on is no help later. A dreamer can look at a clock in a dream and think that is the real time. For a dreamer in a dream when trying to decide what to call a period or episode, to describe it as a dream or reality, the internal tests break down. If the mind of the subject doesn’t know if it is awake or dreaming when dreaming with time suspended how can a machine interpreting data tell?

Points of view vary. Two stories from two sources of the same event are always varied. The Green Apples study attempts to qualify a point of view by technology. It takes forty people as a team to record all the responses available from one. They become corroborators by technology, the witnesses for reality. The data is supposed to be a representation of a point of view, the subjects point of view. The cluster paradox phenomena strikes then thus two separate points of view exist, and one point of view, the original, the subject itself disappears. The only version left is the flawed sample data. What connects these sampled people is not the occurrence of paradox it’s Manuelo de Boveray deciding to download the samples. These are the ones he bought, the only ones. No sampled person unconnected has become un-find-able. Some clustering of paradox data occurred among them only to have been filled in properly by the compensating patches. No other data compromised, no body missing.

The subjects must have been removed from their lives in order to stop any further sampling, to stop a checkup of progress. The records of the data saved by the Green Apples folks for posterity are now the only version of their lives, their points of view. After purchase by de Boveray the data packets containing the green Apples were relayed through W24. Two versions of each now are separated by the vastness of space. Were MDBs copies already compromised? Did the cluster paradox affect those versions differently, or at all? Are the Mars samples pristine?

Which life story is to be believed? Was this a valuing of the data by destroying the source and all other records? Could this be a way of erasing identities? The source is gone. The record is damaged. Who’s the narrator? Not I. The computer sampling? The scientists? The Government? Why is a sample so important to the completion of MDBs planned grand being? Why eighteen of them?

Usually when a story is told the teller cannot directly enter into the minds of those that are talked about. Here the stories are the minds themselves.

A handy dandy Mythologist among the Forensic Psychiatrists is there to explain it all.

“Myths are ways of dealing with problems and finding solutions that face humanity. Stories using symbolism and characterizations to answer all the ultimate questions. Shaped by cultures and language use myths are insights into the way people think about reality. Myths provide the stories that create the basis of the way people look at their culture. Nothing is accepted into a cultural psyche that are not strongly rooted in a myth that rationalizes changing events. Much of extraordinary history becomes myth much later in the future. Data manipulation cannot be subject to myth. Myth and math don’t add up

.

“Demarist, get me a Forensic Mathematician fast!”

“He’s at the bar getting drunk.”

“The mathematician?”

“I want to talk Boolean realities. I want subjective paradigms. I want to swap meta-compact maximums.”

“Oh! There’s a fight in the annex!”

The myth guy won’t give up. “This is a myth making event. A transitional phase. We make myths to attain the unattainable. To fulfill dreams.” Dreams again. “An upheaval is about to take place in what is taken for granted. The myth is the forming of reality in the minds of the world. Can humanity build artificial humans? Did it happen already? Is there a way to record a mind? It seems possible because we can see that it could be done with what we have now. We just don’t know if it really has yet. It’s a myth in the making.”

Suit got one on holo. I waved for silence at those nearby.

“Listen.” “Mathematician there?”

“Yes.”

“What’s reality?”

“What?” “What?”

“I’ll get back to ya.”

“Well, who’s writing this myth anyhow?”

“We are!”

Demarist has gone, getting drunk on my orders. Now I really hope he didn’t do it and I hope he just went to bed to rest up

.

“Sleep. This sleep thing keeps coming back to me. Hey dreams. Huh? Dreams.” Yeah me too.

“The sampled dreams are being analyzed right now.”

“What about the sullied data?”

“Bit by bit but the dreams are where the first paradox clusters occurred.” “I read that!” “As psycho psychological.” “Behavioral chemistry.”

“You guys got all the answers.”

“Reality is this!” Shouts the holographic mathematician. He points to a projection scrawled with symbols.

“That’s an equation! Could you make it a word problem maybe, like a shuttle leaves Seattle on vector 212 at 42,000 KPH...”

“I’ll get back to ya…”

“Hey Psychiatrist guy…”

“Doctor.”

“Yeah sure you are. Hey some of these people sampled were clearly nuts. Doctor de Boveray was nuts. The guys that marketed the data were nuts. The data went nuts. How are you feeling? All there? No nuttiness?”

“Not in me.”

He just dressed nutty (gaudy sweater). This was no longer fun. The social engineers wouldn’t talk to anybody and the philosophers and lawyers wouldn’t shut up.

“Let the intelligeneers back in!” That will break up the fight. “Boo!” “Arrgghh!” “Grr!”

“They think they know everything!”

That’s the best I can describe the groan that rose up from the participants.

“You Researcher you! You’ve got to understand! You’re playing with fire here! If you say he did it, it won’t matter if he did or not! Everyone associated stands to make or lose billions!”

“Who did what? Make a list of the losers and billionaires and give it to Demarest.”

“The power of the Senior Researchers must be checked! This system is out of control! You researchers have overstepped the bounds. You make everyone jump. I’m sick of it!”

“How do you spell your name? Rest assured your opinions are being well recorded.”

“Nice buffet though.”

“Is this your dog chewing my pants leg?”

“Yeah great food this time Paul.”

“Yup, I’m coming back for sure if I get invited.”

“Stop that Space! No!”

Just then a new large group of surly Lawyers pushed through the doors.

“Lawyers for the families of the disappeared!”

“I hear they are contemplating suing you Researcher.”

Well there goes a thousand scroll screens in my report. “I’ve been sued by the highest paid lawyers in Soltera and I have nothing left to loose”

“Besides this is active evolving history, every lawsuit just adds to the record.”

“Thank you Librarian.”

This conference was unofficially over upon the arrival of the Librarian. His military escort and liaisons scared everyone away from the buffet. They crowded the bar, ordering drinks for Space, and some were already picking fights with the Philosophers. The Psychiatrists disappeared from the room first. The Intelligeneers left in a group huff cause no one would talk to them. The hologram of the Mathematician was studiously reading from a large old fashioned leaf paper book. The Librarian and one of his Para-military shadows lean over to try and get a look at it but the holo resolution wasn’t clear enough.

“What’s that you’re reading there Doc?”

He had to look at the cover before he could answer:

“…Reality…”