Impress Your Creators
May 19, 2020
TRIGGER
There was an average Tuesday
There was a shooting star
Then everything went fucking nuts!
They landed giant spheres
Contacted us
Confirmed our fears that they were gods
So listen up
They said, “We are your makers
One chance to impress your creators now
So straighten up!"
— from Tub Ring - “Impress Your Creators”
ECO
The Briefing
Malcolm leaned back in his chair, breathing deeply.
“So, you’re telling me that they’ve been coming here every 10 years for the past 2000, checking-in on our progress? Do you really expect me to believe that?”
“It’s true,” The Professor replied. “You must believe us! It’s already been another 10 years, and we have nothing to show for it. This was our last chance; I fear that their next action will be a ‘hard reset.’ We have but months left until they return.”
“Why doesn’t the world know about this? Why hasn’t anyone reported giant spheres landing on Earth?”
“They have, but the entities are able to cloak their ships to all but the intended witnesses. We don’t understand how the technology works.”
“I have a hypothesis,” Malcolm replied smugly, “but if you want my advice, you’re going to need to tell me everything.”
“Verify, then trust,” The Professor replied. “You have taught us that much. We have seen your work. We trust that you know something we don’t. There is no more time to waste; it is time to act.”
“I thought you’d never ask,” Malcolm replied.
The Solution
“I need a team,” Malcolm stated. “Scientists. Engineers. Artists. We need people from all aspects of life.”
“Done. What else?” The Professor asked.
“We need to build The Fold. It’s the only way to fix the problems we have created.”
“I don’t understand,” The Professor replied.
“Think of it this way,” Malcolm started. “Human consciousness is a space ship - most commonly a triangular Prism - flying through space and time. Human perspective is experienced as moments in time - scenes in a story - much like a flip book. What we experience as 3 dimensions really operates on 2 dimensional principles.”
“We call the peak of this ship is called “The Point,” and it is always moving in the direction of the human’s attention.”
“This is problematic because humans focus on many different things. Because Prisms are larger than Earth, everyone’s consciousnesses overlap. When we are focused on so many different things, we are causing a physical conflict between consciousnesses. This collision causes the anarchy that we see today. It causes the imbalance we see today. The bearing on these ships is pointed in different and conflicting directions.”
“A solution comes from aligning consciousnesses together. I believe that we must set shared Pillars amongst everyone. We must find a way to come to a shared identity - because it is individualism that is killing us! We must find a way to align our Prisms by setting Pillars in-stone, in a place that truly works for everyone.”
“Conflict is fine. Disagreement of opinion is fine. What isn’t fine is the construction of our identity upon these differences. The vast majority of people believe in the same things; we must build our systems to reflect this.”
“Herein lies the most difficult problem; people will come to a different understanding of the same problem, and we have no easy way to correct the errant ones. We have no way to come to a shared ‘truth.’ We can’t even agree that there is a shared truth at all!”
“This is why we must build The Fold. We need a universal tool that connects everyone on the planet. We will use this tool to educate, govern, and entertain en-masse. Most importantly, we will use it to tell stories. The player’s choices within the game will be reflected in their reality. Poor choices and negative beliefs will lead to negative outcomes. We will show them the error of their ways.”
“We will scare them. When presented with their future, people will be forced to change. They will make this change of their own accord.”
“In this way, we will train players to come to beliefs that enable human flourishing.”
“I could go on and on, but the theory goes into places like time travel, a new model of physics, extra dimensions, quantum computing, and more. It’s really too complicated to explain to you.”
“This is why I must SHOW you. This is why we must SHOW the world. It’s too complicated to explain. We need to demonstrate.”
“I have made it my life’s purpose to see this to completion. But I will never complete it alone. I need help.”
“We’re here,” The Professor replied. “I’m truly sorry that it’s taken us so long to come to your aid. We had to be sure you were The One.”
“I may be the One, but I’m not your savior,” Malcolm replied. “It’s time that the world saved itself.”
The Clones
“So, how can we possibly create a custom experience for every player? There are so many possible worlds that could exist… how do we provide a tailored visual experience for everyone?”
“Well, as I said, we need spoken-word and video for every line of dialogue in The Fold,” Malcolm replied. “But clearly, current technology makes this untenable.”
“What we need is to create ‘clones’ of people. We already have the people necessary: these are the ASMR artists. We must ‘feed’ this data into an artificial intelligence, allowing it to create ‘deepfakes’ of their face. Allowing it to create replicas of their voice, able to speak any word, sentence, or language presented to it. In this way, we can create a list of user-specific confidants by using the data from real-world people.”
“We know that this technology already exists. It just hasn’t been used at this scale before.”
“Or, perhaps it has. For all we know, change has always been this way. For all we know, our very existence has always been ‘guided’ in this way.”
“This system is passing all of my verification checks; it SHOULD work. We’re never going to know unless we try.”
“And you guys are out of other ideas.”
CAT
data.stats.symptoms = [
- arrogance
]
ECHO
Every man has a place, in his heart there’s a space,
And the world can’t erase his fantasies
Take a ride in the sky, on our ship fantasii
All your dreams will come true, right away
And we will live together, until the twelfth of never
Our voices will ring forever, as one