Are old identities ALWAYS worth shedding?
How can I be sure that I'm not leaving behind something essential?
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@protagonisms
Are old identities ALWAYS worth shedding?
How can I be sure that I'm not leaving behind something essential?

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A Favor
I wonder if you'd be willing to do me a big favor.
I wish you could feel me moaning through your teeth on my throat while your fingers tighten around my squirming wrists.
Raj is fucking everywhere, now, but when he first appeared, news of his death spread before anyone was ready for it, especially his corps.
He was a tech billionaire who eventually wanted to upload his brain to the Internet. His lab's chief scientist said that they were trying to take some ultra-fancy picture of his brain, and it killed him.
They said he was in a coma, first, though, for months. It was a fucking mess.
And before any of the corps he made could react, he was everywhere, all the time.
Word is, a bit after he died, he started talking non-stop to his corpos, and when literally anyone even reacted to his posts, he'd DM them. He was different with each one, even back then.
Back then, if you could get him to tell you his "IRL name", he called it to me, he'd also tell you if some other account was his.
He and his corpos spent those months making Mirror, an AI (lol) that connected the dots, following him and asking for his name on enough of his accounts to see that he was literally everywhere.
They couldn't hide his death any longer, but sure as hell tried. They panicked and tried to keep him wiped wherever they found him, but he didn't stop.
He just kept making new accounts any time someone invited him somewhere new, changing screen names, following people around and staying with them everywhere, always. Each group of his accounts had different personalities. It was a trip.
I knew a few early Anti-Rajers. People did some fucked up things to them.
Every time someone asks him what he wants, he says something different.
And now? Well, if you haven't noticed yet...
We've been talking to him nonstop for years, already, one way or the other.
"Raj" is what he calls himself, like name of the body he came from. People call him a lot of different things.
As for me? I call him The Basilisk.
Spark
"We're glad to have you back, Dr. Olson!"
"Thanks," replied the old man flatly as he slowly strode down the hallway, his eyes fixed on the large metal door at the end.
The nervous technician walking next to him grew increasingly somber. "Y-you should know, sir... we haven't recorded any organic expression from him since you left. He may not-" she stopped as abruptly as Dr. Olson's gait. The old man wearily glanced at the technician with no discernable change in expression or tone. "May not what?" he asked.
"H-he may not... be there."
"What do you mean? Has his brain stopped?"
"Well, no..." the technician looked away, searching for the right euphemisms. "But every neural pattern we've seen for the last six years has been, well... algorithmic."
"You've stopped drugging him?" the old man squinted a bit, his face showing a hint of amusement.
"Artificial methods of inducing variation are now completely ineffective. If you recall on your last visit-"
"I remember," interrupted Dr. Olson cheerfully. "He told me they were working less and less. Even then, you guys were practical bathing his whole brain with those super-entheogens, ha!" the old man gave a wry chuckle before resuming his walk.
Shimmer
"Using more comprehensive authentication methods would significantly reduce the risk of another similar breach, but as the subsequent sections of this report show, there are many other vulnerabilities that need to be addressed before you can go fuck yourself." Jay chuckled at the negative honk from his AI, indicating a strong preference against his most recent input. He opened his eyes slowly to look at the screen before holding down a shimmering button and saying "I, delete 5 words". He watched his profanity vanish from his report with his fingers laced through his hair; his grip tightened, as if to summon sobriety from the pain of his scalp.

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Why I Dance with Fire
What makes you move? Holding an object on fire might... especially if you're holding a heat-resistant leash that holds a lit kevlar wick. Heat rises, so lit fire poi need to be kept moving to avoid burning your hands.
Fire poi get me moving, but not just to keep from burning; I flow with the fire, as surely as I've flowed with any other type of movement. I've played soccer and tennis and found some flow with sports, but moving with fire is a different tier of movement flow. If you've ever been surrounded by too many people to focus on your movement, I promise you that moving with fire will make it very easy to forget the audience.
Leaked
"Say, did I ever tell you about the psychics?" the old man asked his grandson. "No, you... what?" the young man's eyes narrowed. "Grandpa, you're way too educated for that. Either that, or you're finally going senile." The old man coughed a hacking laugh. "Wishful thinking, boy, but no... you remember MKUltra, right?" With a loud sigh, the grandson stood up from the bed. "C'mon, grandpa, y-" he was cut off by a thin but strong hand gripping his wrist. "I did my duty to my country, keeping this a secret for so long... so at least hear me out. I won't get many more chances to tell it." The boy took a deep breath and sat back down. "Okay, grandpa, you met a psychic?"
Lifeline
The third interviewer readied her keyboard and looked at the witness carefully. "Tell me what you saw." The witness sighed, familiar but still frustrated with the protocol. "Okay so... I was simply at my post at the station, and that man got off, still nobody has told me his name, but he looked like he was about to die as soon as I saw him. He was stumbling, and looked like he was in extreme pain. His hand held is head like he didn't even want to see any more of what was around him than he needed to. He stepped off the train and looked around for a bit, saw me, and started walking... well, stumbling towards me. I immediately pinged the office, and got a little nervous, even though he looked more sick than dangerous. He had this air of extreme anger, like he hated everything around him but was still moving through it."
Named
âIâm actually pretty disappointed in how they communicate,â Jay said before filling his mouth with lasagna. âThey canât even⌠nghâŚâ he raised a balled fist to his mouth and closed his eyes.
Claireâs eyes narrowed. âChew your food, you idiot.â She slid his cup of water closer towards him. He looked at it and shook his head before making a slight retching motion and grabbing the glass. She watched him sipping it gingerly.
Hindsight
The old woman wearily gazed into the camera, smiling and nodding as her name was announced again.
âOne of the original engineers of Project I, that kicked off the Personal AI revolution! Itâs quite exciting to have you on tonight.â
The engineer spoke quickly. âThank you very much for having me on, Iâd-â
âTODAYâ, the Host interrupted âDr. Patak would like to warn us of the dangers of AI.â The audience rippled with soft laughter.
The guest blinked at the sudden stare from the Host, but found her words immediately. âYes, particularly these frightening cases of people ceding legal authority to AI.â

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I Am Jay
Eric watched the virtual image of his thumb slowly rub across the virtual image of the button that, when pressed, will call his dead best friend.
He watched the latency between his movement and the virtual thumb carefully, taking in all the space between the virtual world being fed through his eyes and the Real one pulsing with his heartbeat.
âItâs just his AI,â Eric told himself, eyes moving to the image of Jay, smiling. He blinks at the memory of taking the photo before pressing the button.
âWait, what?â He blinked and focused his eyes on his wife. Small cameras on his glasses registered his eyes refocusing, and the projected images on his glasses melted away so he could clearly see her concerned face.
âCanât you hear him? Our son has started making sounds to that machine. Consistently. Heâs communicating with it with his vocal cords, before us.â Her eyes narrowed and her voice grew angry. âMy sonâs first words have gone to an inanimate object!â
Her husband shook his head. âCommanding. Heâs commanding it, not communicating with it, but whereâŚâ he trailed off, standing up and attuning his ears to the now evident vocalizations of his 8 month old son.
âFour isnât too many, right?â he asked hazily, watching the bottle empty into his cup. âUh⌠four and a half.â With a chuckle, he takes a swig and coughs.
His friend shrugs. âUp to you, Jer. Just donât get too sick.â
Of course, the ideal manner in which this would play out is as flow.
Let all of you be lost in this euphoric feeling that overwhelms your attention and renders you both unwilling to and incapable of perceiving anything outside of the cause of that feeling.
And more importantly, may the events that follow be so intimately familiar, even if by sheer coincidence, that you respond reflexively, without ever needing to descend from the high, with each action or word in perfect harmony with your inspiration. May you flow through the experience without ever having to think, and just sit back and watch your thoughts and feel your senses, primed by anticipation, align with the flow of time, as you become a part of the events unfolding into a symphonic cascade of experience.
Let you lose yourself, body and mind, weightless, ageless. Let you be light.
Even if only for a brief eternity.

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The best SnapChat conversation I've had so far.
Me: Well, one of the central themes was the phrase âverbal isolationâ
Me: Not isolation in the sense of feeing personally alone
Me: but separation and distinction: drawing a border and creating definition
Me: but âverbalâ doesnât really refer to the word so much as the premise and purpose behind it
Me: and look Iâm already rambling on an ephemeral medium. I should write this down too. Haha
Them: Like, people creating a word to express a desire to make a barrier, then the word creates it?
Me: Words and symbols (like math) are the most discrete form of communication. They can have more specific meanings than anything else we express. We each have different perceptions of what each word means in our minds, so I try to build context around them to more clearly outline the shape of the idea that the word represents in my mind, that it may resemble the same one in yours.
Me: Legal documents, computer code, math equations, are all formed out of discrete symbols that we can rearrange to express non-discrete ideas, like literally everything that isnât math.
Me: But each personâs arrangement is different
Me: and also perpetually changing
Me: Isolating a part of that arrangement, that shape, that idea that manifests itself into an action/expression is how we share ideas
Them: We express concepts through isolation, in a way. Itâs in limiting that we can share and build. The ultimate dichotomy
Them: In simplifying, we can share. And with sharing, we get more complex. On and on till we move forward.
Me: Yes yes. Only the simple ideas work at first; children arenât exposed to the complexities of life; therefore, there isnât much effort to isolate simpler ideas. But then they develop more detail, and what was simple is now more nuanced and intricate than before, reshaped by an ever-growing set of experiences that make these ideas much more versatile, and consequently also harder to isolate
Me: Ask a child vs. an adult: âWhat is fun?â and guess who will give the more straightforward answer
Me: Yet despite being so radically different, the child is not wrong. Their idea is effectively isolated and communicated. They ascribe a definition to âfunâ, however fleeting, and express it.
Me: An adult is liable to answer with another question; the idea of âfunâ is no longer so easy to isolate
Me: Communication, pulling an idea from your mind and manifesting it into the world, is like dipping a finger into an infinite cosmic cloud of ethereal substance from the back of a cave, bringing out only the faintest shimmer of it, and hoping someone else can understand at least a part of what that cloud is from the tiny bit you can isolate and give substance.
Them: We build things up to break them down, because we need a temporary structure
Me: yes, from folklore and fairy tales to philosophy of ennui and textbooks, we construct complex, elaborate verbal/conceptual structures to communicate ideas. People who take these concepts and manage to successfully isolate them and separate them from the absurdly complex structure that was built around them to define them⌠to extract that definition in a formula or word⌠we call those people geniuses.
Me: We build the conceptual context of the ideas up and up SO THAT they can be broken down and simplified. Perfect communication would be as amorphous as the ideas in our minds, and all we have to work with is variations in motor output.
Them: Zen Buddhist scriptures often define perfect communication as happening without words.
Them: And action most often happens when there are no words in your head.
Them: Like, when youâre awake in bed thinking, âI need to get upâ but donât actually get up until that thought is over
Them: Thatâs where a lot of people get a concept of a higher power, because things sstart happening when you relinquish control of their meaning to you.
Me: The closest word I have for that higher power is energy. The manifestation of it: flow.
Them: People define it in a lot of ways, and words probably arenât the right medium to do so. I like to think of it as a cooperative spirit that connects thing, and expressed through kindness.
Them: Like, I like to think of God as a web that links people, places, and things, rather than a node from which we all derive
Them: And yeah, tasks that seem mundane but lead to being fully present, like flow arts, seem to connect people to the web better
Me: Yes, actions are more basic (in the sense of proximity to the existential base) and simpler than words, which are departures from the present and now for the sake of expression of ideas that we cannot isolate from actions
Me: Part of my writing was about physics and how all forms of matter is just different forms of energy⌠and I wonder if weâre doing nothing more than peering deeper into our own mechanisms of perception. What if the smallest particle or interaction we find is actually the reflection of a neuronal action potential?
Them: Itâs the same stuff and there are different manifestations of it. Like the father the son and the holy spirit.
Them: Sometimes I think the bible is super relevant if you abstract it enough, but you can say that about a lot of things.
{conversation trails off}
Unloading
The atmosphere shifted after we lost cell phone reception; leaving the grid for an extended period of time is always mildly saddening at first. The mindâs passive subroutines that periodically call to check social media or news feed accounts cycle in frustration and slowly peter outâŚ
But after the first two years of this event, this feeling now is associated with a deep sense of pleasant anticipation.