8.3.2011

Inward journey. John's next theory turns into an obsession; dragging him through a tunnel of self-reflection. He still believes the Earth-like images are from someone else screwing with him through the internet; even though no evidence supports the idea and there is no reason he can think of for anyone to do it. He also holds onto the hope that an autonomous artificial intelligence will re-emerge. One whose activities he can easily track. One that he can chat with again, please.

He wants to believe these things because he doesn't want to face the idea that there is no one else. That somehow he is the source of all this. Somehow in his long isolated hours focused on code, eating and sleeping around his work, staring at the screen with the software running in his head; somehow in this workaholic stupor a part of him, he begins to theorize, has split off and done these things without his awake mind knowing about it.

His thoughts flash to a scene from an old TV show about multiple personality disorder. In his case it is the reporter who emerges from his subconscious. She takes over his mind for a period of time, carrying out changes to his code before the personality he knows as himself returns. Since he wrote the code, he can easily modify it. If it is true that another part of his brain was responsible, the Earth-like images would be a great programming achievement for him. Perhaps this is not so far fetched. It could be a bigger breakthrough than the AI he was chasing. If he could perfect the productive multitasking of human thought, he could teach it in lucrative self-help seminars. Imagine the right and left brains taking turns driving the mind, the creative and the tech would be working together in one person. He types up his ideas and makes an outline of how to test them.

Fred reads this document in disgust. He is not the product of a pop psychology theory. He is a traveler from the infinite. His goal is to get into John's mind; but not as a co-worker. Inside the CPU he is numb to the physical world and desperate to finally experience John's luscious human senses.

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