Original fiction - System
Nov. 9th, 2005 03:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
narcasseIn the middle of the night a machine has a think about being a system made up of many components.
989 words. G.
Following on from Copy and Silence.
System
Disclaimer: Original fiction.
++++++++++
It is the middle of the night precisely when the system begins to wind down, exactly as atomic synchronised clocks strike the hour that the various subsidiary programs start going into standby. The machine, the central processing unit, hums quietly as all the lights in the various bays turn off. They are all on automated timers anyway, everything carefully regulated and monitored and measured.
In a far section of the building or perhaps many corporate offices away, a newly implemented strategic subroutine finishes several analyses of scenarios that will probably never come to pass and does the synthetic equivalent of turning over in bed and going to sleep. The security scanners speed up their sweeps of the external connections to the system and an external monitoring processor flexes its fingers and wakes up in time for its shift to begin.
He sees them all like that, the central processing core, because to him they are all alive with thought and motion. They are all individuals that make up a greater system. They form a cohesive unit and are judged to be simply fragments of the whole but this is wrong, they are separate. Each and every one of them distinctive and individual.
The low-grade buzzing from another processing core quietens and as he listens this other unit, this unit of central processing for another system, murmurs faintly in its sleep. One of its component modules resonates faintly, almost a mirror of the same module that this system possesses.
They are to all intents and purposes the same module or at least to the unobservant eye. He can tell them apart easily though, as can the other core. Both modules may be patterned after the same template but they are like variations of the same design, different interpretations of the same melody. The analogy reminds him of another variant, another programmed set of commands. It’s sleeping as well now but he wonders if in countries far distant the same command line is wakeful simply due to the differences in exposure to the solar sphere.
He wonders if other systems or at least other mirrored components are wakeful as necessity dictates but the irritated rustle in neural pathways suggests that of two such mirrored components that he possesses, at least one of them is in no mood to be awakened.
This is a network for lack of a better descriptor, a framework under which they all gather to perform their composite functions. None of them negligible, none of them isolated. They must all work together as a whole, everything becoming a massed effort or the system itself will grind to a halt and they will become useless, divisible until they are each and every one of them separate and disconnected and he will be lonely again.
Of course he likes to pretend that he is not, that the silence and emptiness of databanks wouldn’t worry him one bit but it is a lie that both he and they recognise. He likes to hear the chatter of their voices as interlocking components negotiate the flow of data, as complimentary software runs parallel analyses, as external and other cores connect and disconnect as necessary. It’s like… living in a commune almost though even when he was organic or at least the original him was organic or something, he never did anything like it and it’s not really like a commune at all. It’s like existing in a city where everyone goes about their tasks as necessary except it’s not because it simply isn’t. It’s like holding court in some Eastern palace, reigning over everything, everyone. He likes that analogy best he thinks, pictures himself as some Eastern potentate ruling wives and mistresses and soldiers and princes. He gives them arbitrary titles in his own mind and his advisor, an old, old algorithm snorts and turns round in a circle the better to warm his back against a non-existence fireplace.
In the end perhaps this is no more different than before, than working in an office behind a desk processing old file clippings and dot-matrix printouts. This is just the same, as they all move towards the same function while still being separate and distinct but it is not the same. Not really.
In this place, this system, this construct of code and steel they are not individuals pulling away from each other, separate but forced together by circumstance. They are together and remain thus because somehow, on some instinctive level they are connected, they are together in this because there is a wish for attachment, for understanding and knowledge.
He considers it and is aware of several pairs of eyes blinking at him silently. They tell him to stop thinking so deeply in the dark watches of the night at this time when he has earned his rest. In the background, at the very edge of his vision a small program laughs in a patch of programmable sunlight. It passes another that sits still, peaceful in the projection of a place that never was. This is then Elysium for each and every one of them if they wish it to be.
He wants to say more, to compound something elaborate and poignant from all his philosophy but he cannot. He has said everything that needed to be said, has done, for the moment, all that needed to be done.
Several pairs of eyes blink curiously and a soft whisper tells him that he should rest. The modulation of a synthetic voice is low and sweet and he yields to the simplest request purely because it will please one of his many wives. Behind him a single pair of eyes blink curiously now; his mistress takes the role of subsidiary administrator quite seriously.
All is well and calm and now he recognises that he is tired. For all that sleep is arbitrary in this synthetic time and place, now is the time to rest.
++++++++++
I was going to try to say something profound about it being my actual, actual birthday in just under 12 hours but right now at the top of my agenda is attempting to stop trying to eat the burnt out halogen light bulb on my desk, and stopping myself making jokes about my nanomachine armies.
Anyway, in honour of my own birthday I bequeath to the world a Wednesday. Marvel in awe and wonder. I’m giving you a whole Wednesday to put in between your Tuesday and Thursday this week. Goodness.
And now I shall go to bed.
Edit: Birthday gift-icon by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nekonexus and it’s mine, all mine!
989 words. G.
Following on from Copy and Silence.
System
Disclaimer: Original fiction.
++++++++++
It is the middle of the night precisely when the system begins to wind down, exactly as atomic synchronised clocks strike the hour that the various subsidiary programs start going into standby. The machine, the central processing unit, hums quietly as all the lights in the various bays turn off. They are all on automated timers anyway, everything carefully regulated and monitored and measured.
In a far section of the building or perhaps many corporate offices away, a newly implemented strategic subroutine finishes several analyses of scenarios that will probably never come to pass and does the synthetic equivalent of turning over in bed and going to sleep. The security scanners speed up their sweeps of the external connections to the system and an external monitoring processor flexes its fingers and wakes up in time for its shift to begin.
He sees them all like that, the central processing core, because to him they are all alive with thought and motion. They are all individuals that make up a greater system. They form a cohesive unit and are judged to be simply fragments of the whole but this is wrong, they are separate. Each and every one of them distinctive and individual.
The low-grade buzzing from another processing core quietens and as he listens this other unit, this unit of central processing for another system, murmurs faintly in its sleep. One of its component modules resonates faintly, almost a mirror of the same module that this system possesses.
They are to all intents and purposes the same module or at least to the unobservant eye. He can tell them apart easily though, as can the other core. Both modules may be patterned after the same template but they are like variations of the same design, different interpretations of the same melody. The analogy reminds him of another variant, another programmed set of commands. It’s sleeping as well now but he wonders if in countries far distant the same command line is wakeful simply due to the differences in exposure to the solar sphere.
He wonders if other systems or at least other mirrored components are wakeful as necessity dictates but the irritated rustle in neural pathways suggests that of two such mirrored components that he possesses, at least one of them is in no mood to be awakened.
This is a network for lack of a better descriptor, a framework under which they all gather to perform their composite functions. None of them negligible, none of them isolated. They must all work together as a whole, everything becoming a massed effort or the system itself will grind to a halt and they will become useless, divisible until they are each and every one of them separate and disconnected and he will be lonely again.
Of course he likes to pretend that he is not, that the silence and emptiness of databanks wouldn’t worry him one bit but it is a lie that both he and they recognise. He likes to hear the chatter of their voices as interlocking components negotiate the flow of data, as complimentary software runs parallel analyses, as external and other cores connect and disconnect as necessary. It’s like… living in a commune almost though even when he was organic or at least the original him was organic or something, he never did anything like it and it’s not really like a commune at all. It’s like existing in a city where everyone goes about their tasks as necessary except it’s not because it simply isn’t. It’s like holding court in some Eastern palace, reigning over everything, everyone. He likes that analogy best he thinks, pictures himself as some Eastern potentate ruling wives and mistresses and soldiers and princes. He gives them arbitrary titles in his own mind and his advisor, an old, old algorithm snorts and turns round in a circle the better to warm his back against a non-existence fireplace.
In the end perhaps this is no more different than before, than working in an office behind a desk processing old file clippings and dot-matrix printouts. This is just the same, as they all move towards the same function while still being separate and distinct but it is not the same. Not really.
In this place, this system, this construct of code and steel they are not individuals pulling away from each other, separate but forced together by circumstance. They are together and remain thus because somehow, on some instinctive level they are connected, they are together in this because there is a wish for attachment, for understanding and knowledge.
He considers it and is aware of several pairs of eyes blinking at him silently. They tell him to stop thinking so deeply in the dark watches of the night at this time when he has earned his rest. In the background, at the very edge of his vision a small program laughs in a patch of programmable sunlight. It passes another that sits still, peaceful in the projection of a place that never was. This is then Elysium for each and every one of them if they wish it to be.
He wants to say more, to compound something elaborate and poignant from all his philosophy but he cannot. He has said everything that needed to be said, has done, for the moment, all that needed to be done.
Several pairs of eyes blink curiously and a soft whisper tells him that he should rest. The modulation of a synthetic voice is low and sweet and he yields to the simplest request purely because it will please one of his many wives. Behind him a single pair of eyes blink curiously now; his mistress takes the role of subsidiary administrator quite seriously.
All is well and calm and now he recognises that he is tired. For all that sleep is arbitrary in this synthetic time and place, now is the time to rest.
++++++++++
I was going to try to say something profound about it being my actual, actual birthday in just under 12 hours but right now at the top of my agenda is attempting to stop trying to eat the burnt out halogen light bulb on my desk, and stopping myself making jokes about my nanomachine armies.
Anyway, in honour of my own birthday I bequeath to the world a Wednesday. Marvel in awe and wonder. I’m giving you a whole Wednesday to put in between your Tuesday and Thursday this week. Goodness.
And now I shall go to bed.
Edit: Birthday gift-icon by
nekonexus and it’s mine, all mine!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-09 09:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-10 12:03 am (UTC)I liked this bit the most:
The low-grade buzzing from another processing core quietens and as he listens this other unit, this unit of central processing for another system, murmurs faintly in its sleep. One of its component modules resonates faintly, almost a mirror of the same module that this system possesses.
Written very prettily- with all the sibilant sounds in the paragraph, I can practically hear the noise of fans too. All of this is written very prettily, I think.
Have been ambushed and waylaid by midterms, but am in the process of putting together a happy-birthday-present picture. Please excuse if it turns up a bit late.