The sun was beginning to set, giving Luke’s apartment a orangey-glow. The majority of their friends were playing Smash Brothers and weren’t really concerned with the light level, though. Marissa turns the lamp on before reclaiming her seat in the extra chair she had pulled over the couch area.
Most of the people here were also Marissa’s friends, but she was regretting her decision to attend. She didn’t really enjoy playing group video games, or watching them. At some point they’d do cake.
The orangey-glow intensifies, repainting the wall behind the TV.
“Someone close the blinds!” Don yells from the floor, complaining about the glare from the sunset.
“Sure,” Marissa agrees resigned.
Luke is standing behind her looking around a little awestruck. Marissa’s first thought is that Luke is high, but then she’s pretty sure that he was wearing something different earlier. And was cleaner. And she hears Luke’s voice behind her, yelling at another player for targeting him.
“Uh… Luke?” Marissa asks tentatively.
“Yeah?” Luke asks from the couch. The man in front of her smiles knowingly.
“I thought you were an only-child?” Marissa calls out uncertainly.
“Yeah,” Luke replies distractedly.
“Then who’s this?” Marissa asks insistingly.
The Luke-copy seems content to wait out this repertoire, his hands in his pockets watching Marissa. He seems older, now that Marissa has a chance to really inspect him. Rougher skin. The hair under this baseball cap is buzz-cut, unlike Luke’s scraggely mane, and Marissa wouldn’t be surprised if it was showing grey.
“Who’s who?” Luke calls back, unwilling to turn away from the game.
“Stop the fucking game and tell me who this guy is, standing right here!” Marissa says losing it slightly.
The man breaks into a smile and finally speaks, “It’s so good to see you again.” He sounds like Luke.
Behind her, because Marissa refuses to look away from this strange intruder, the game music stops and she can hear people shuffling around.
“What the…” <another person> says, heralding the group chaos of everyone speaking at once.
Questions are thrown out at the Luke-like man. Who are you? How did you get in here? Why are you here? What do you want? Are you related to Luke? What’s going on? Is there more beer? Okay not everyone cares.
Feeling safer, Marissa decides to act on a hunch. A weird sci-fi, this shouldn’t be real hunch. Grabbing Luke’s shoulder she shoves him to stand next to the man, giving him the barest of instructions, “Move.”
“Whoa this is weird. Twins separated at birth?” <Someone> asks.
They’re the same height. The distance between their eyes is the same. Other Luke’s nose is crooked--like it broke and wasn’t set correctly. Battle-worn. This strange imposter was like a battle-worn Luke.
“Luke, show me the scar on your elbow,” Marissa says after racking her brain for any identifiable marks she was aware of on Luke’s body. “And let’s see your elbow too.”
“Marissa you’re on fire,” the man says rolling up his dingy once-white sleeve.
Side by side, it’s obvious the scars are the same shape. Luke is craning his head to see the other man’s scar. The audience has generally fallen silent with disbelief and confusion. <Someone> is whispering to <someone else> explaining why this should be impossible. <Someone else> is likely high. He might not get for a couple of hours, actually.
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Simon is a mid-level <software> development engineer that works for the R&D department of <big company> and while he does a variety of projects, he specializes in neural interfaces. Neural interfacing is a growing field that’s being used to improve work speed, and increase complexity with no increase in difficulty. Simon is assigned to debugging a factory setup that suddenly stopped working when they had to rehire most of their operating team (HR isn't releasing any details).
“Simon! My main engineering guy!” Mr. Rawley greets Simon with finger guns. Mr. Rawley is the balding manager with cheap suits. As far as Simon can tell, Mr. Rawley doesn't do any real work. He’s just the guy corporate yells at when they want something then Mr. Rawley runs around like a wind up monkey and needlessly nags the actual workers.
Simon very purposefully pauses his music and removes the headphones. Not that Mr. Rawley cares that he’s interrupting Simon’s work.
“Yes?” Simon asks.
“I was just wondering how that central control console is going,” Mr. Rawley says with a overly happy tone.
“I started yesterday. I’m still going over the codebase to figure everything out,” Simon answer drolly. His project estimates included this stage. He had to wonder what happened to the guys that originally wrote the programming--and why weren't they trying to debug it.
“It’s not that I don’t believe you’re working hard, Simon,” Mr. Rawley begins his speech as he half sits on the desk next to Simon’s mess. “I’m thinking there’s a way to work smarter here. Like what if dust off the old instruction manual? Or what if I got you a team?”
“This is the documentation,” Simon answers with a sweeping gesture to the piles of paper all over his desk. “It appears to be out of date, and there isn’t a digital copy so I can’t search keywords. More eyes might be useful, but it’s not like there’s an abundance of neural interface experts.” Simon tries to keep the rancor out of his voice. From experience he knows that giving complete straight-forward answers is the quickest way to get rid of Mr. Rawley.
“Okay. Okay, I hear you,” Mr. Rawley says nodding. “What if…” Mr. Rawley draws the ‘if’ out in emphasis, “I got your some other experts. What do you need? Math? Mechanical Engineering? What do you want? I can get you anybody!”
Oh god, any project with infinite resources was one directly under the watch of corporate.
“Fine. Get me the former senior operator,” Simon requests.
“Ooo, no can do, buddy. HR reasons. Work with me. There’s gotta be someone you want.” Mr Rawley presses.
“Surprise me,” Simon says in defeat. Honestly only someone with prior knowledge of the system could really accelerate the painstaking process that is debugging.
“Will do kiddo.” Mr. Rawley pulls out the finger guns again.
Simon reequips his headphones to indicate he considers the conversation complete.
Right before he hits play on his music, he catches Mr. Rawley say, “Good talk.”
Simon now has to reorient himself to the part of code he’s reading. The documentation, as he told his manager, is at least one version out of date--more likely ten versions out of date. Right now he’s trying to diagram the processes that get initiated and the paths between them. Nothing is commented. The variable names are follow a star trek theme at the cost of actually making sense. What team of monkeys wrote this?
Basically Simon will have to understand this code well enough to rewrite it in order to debug it.
2/26: The crew is having trouble making a computer chip
“Do you ever worry that our work will feed into the next atom bomb?” Naomi asks. It’s late and she’s dealing with it by resting her head on her arms, half asleep unless something is specifically asked of her.
Simon would be irritated except by either Naomi’s lackluster effort or her distracting questions, except she’s been very accommodating about staying late. Arguably this was her project too, and Simon shouldn’t need to feel grateful for Naomi fulfilling her basic job duties… Maybe he just couldn’t be irritated with Naomi.
Or Matt. Matt had no reason to be here and since 10 o’clock he’d given up on his projects was just engaging them in distracting conversation.
“You think neural interfacing is going to become a weapon of mass destruction?” Matt asks. Simon never had any attention of responding. There’s a bug somewhere in this code that he wants to fix tonight--they have a deadline after all.
“Well… Is it that far-fetched? We’re assembling molecules into a computer chip. Couldn’t that become rearranging the molecules in people?” Naomi’s eyes have been closed for the last half hour and her speech is starting to slow and become clumsy.
“Well maybe, but it’s not like we could release a swarm of bots that will shoot molecular rearrangement beams at the hapless crowds,” Matt counters.
“That would be scary,” Naomi responds. “Good movie.”
“Okay so I think I might have isolated the section of the <code> that’s breaking. Let’s do one more run and call it a night.” Simon breaks into the conversation.
“Hmm kay.” Naomi pulls herself into a sitting position, straightening out the neural headset.
For test purposes they have copper dust that they’re trying to arrange into relatively thick lines. Visible lines that is. So far Naomi hasn’t even been able to move the copper, which makes no sense because she’s been able to operate other programs where objects are moved.
Simon publishes the most current program up to the server where Naomi can access it from with the headset.
He watches her staring very intently at the pile of darkly colored orange dust on the dinner plate they’re using to contain it. His computer beeps at him.
“Operator error 3wo99589”
“Namoi?” Simon asks tentatively. Usually when the operator messed up there was no feedback. If the operator couldn’t do it, nothing happened.
“I can’t see anything?” Naomi replies uncertainly.
Matt’s chair scrapes along the tile floor as he jumps up to rush around the table. Matt has no medical training; Simon can’t imagine what he hopes to accomplish.
Matt gently turns Naomi's head towards him to look into her eyes.
“No I can see see. I just can’t see anything in the program. I don’t know why.” Simon can’t see Naomi’s expression but her tone is flat, too tired to really be that worried or frustrated.
“Oh! Oh, hold on.” Simon quickly searches the internal wiki for the error message. Yup, he’s kept Naomi up long enough to trigger the safeguard that prevents the operator from accessing the program when he or she is mentally unable. “Yeah, the computer is shutting you out because you’re too tired.”
Matt knocks his forehead into Naomi’s. “Time to get you home, Na-na.”
Matt helps Naomi up, although Simon doubts she needs it. He watches the two gather their stuff up and empties his energy drink. He opens the first class and begins skimming through his methods again.
“You too.” Simon jumps when Matt suddenly appears at his side, tugging at this arm.
Simon slides his computer away from Matt, not trusting his friend to press the power button.
“No seriously, you need to go home and sleep too,” Matt insists. “I’m still reasonably awake, I’ll drive you both home.”
It's nearly 3am and her drinking companions have dwindled to Alex and Joe. The three of them are in Alex's studio apartment using her one chair, a step-stool, and a box to sit around the small table, which was really intended for a breakfast nook. Alex is something of a young spinster--her life already optimized for one. But the cozy apartment was downtown, which was closest to the bar that had kicked them out after closing.
Joe is rolling paper into tight pipes, mostly just to occupy his hands. If he smoked, Theodora imagined he would be doing that now. "Magic is a fantasy concept. In the real world everything can be defined by math and physics. Granted the phenomenon is bizarre and currently beyond explanation. That certainly doesn't mean it will always be the case," Joe rebutts.
"Maybe you can explain these unlabeled force lines," Theodora says, jabbing her finger on the diagram Joe drew earlier, describing how the program sorted the candies by color into separate piles. "There's some undiscovered particle that's being excited and moving the M&Ms. But what is determining the color of each M&M? There are no cameras hooked up to the computer. I wasn't looking at the pile."
Alex is quietly watching the exchange, taking small bird-like sips of red wine. As a good hostess she took the box, which isn't a comfortable seat. She keeps shifting slightly.
"Who's to say that the light reflecting off the M&Ms isn't absorbed by that same undiscovered particle?" Joe asks.
"Couldn't be that," Alex states simply.
She's content to leave it at that until Joe demands, "Well why not?"
"Particles. There's no receptor on the computer." Again Alex doesn't expand on the statement.
"Right!" Theodora exclaims, feeling validated. "What if the human is the receptor? And the actor? That sounds a lot like magic!"
Joe's brows furrows along with a heavy sigh. As an esteemed physics professor he should be able to dissuade his colleagues of such a childish notion. Well Alex was a professor in the computer sciences department, but Theodora was one of the graduate students working in her lab. Theodora was a bit... cross-discipline.
"'Particles create force,'" Joe begins slowly. "is a simplistic hypothesis for an obviously complex and astounding result. String theory, subatomic physics, have answers. We just need to ask the right questions."
Alex chooses to speak again, "The tech only works when certain people 'read through' the program. That suggests the human element is essential to the process. Odd. We'll need exotic measuring devices to try to isolate any forces."
"Perhaps I shall take my leave then. We'll all need sleep if we want to find answers tomorrow." Joe shuffles around the step-stool and retrieves his coat from the bed two feet away. Alex could afford a larger space.
"Theodora, would you like to share a cab?" Joe asks.
"No I'm to wound up to sleep. Alex can I stay?" Theodora asks. Alex nods sagely.
January 25: Simon hates security and emails (revamping the setting a little bit)
Simon fishes the badge out of his pocket for the security guard. He's allowed to take his work laptop home and VPN into the work network, but god forbid he walk into the building unharassed. Technically he's an employee of the U.N., the federal U.S. government, and <big company name> simultaneously (even the IRS isn't sure how to tax his income) with a very high security clearance in the scientific division of everyone lost their minds and thinks <magic> tech will destroy the world.
The security firm must have some sort of incentive package that runs out after three months because that's about how long it takes for half of the guards to be replaced. For that first two weeks the new guards are obnoxious. Simon must not fit their profile of professional <spell programmer>. They glare at him, eyes flicking between his security badge and his face as if he doesn't look enough like himself to get in the building.
Every proposal needs to run four sets of permits to get approval. Proposals that Simon was forced to write because it didn't make sense to start <coding> until they had approval.
The first and easiest permit to get was from the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Ethical Usage of Altered Physics Technology (UNSCEUAPT). In the Office it was just referred to as Unscuplt. Unscuplt required that any proposed usage met with exisiting UN Ethics, which was largely about human rights and therefore nonapplicable as <big company name> started handing out 10 foot poles.
The United States federal government had two permits they required, which is a deceiving thing to call nearly 150 pages of paperwork. Simon wasn't sure of half of what they wanted to know and he was fairly certain they didn't either. He just answered the questions as best he could and kept turning pages, not really remembering anything from one page to the next.
The final permit was a local county building permit because Washington state had classified any physical changes a <spell> made as free-standing buildings. The historical basis for this law was something about research being done for a spell that erect emergency shelters in a couple of hours. This permit was tricky because it was required before they could begin research on a project but the county only cares about instances of the <spell> of which there were none planned.
He hasn't <coded> since college.
***
Simon's stomach falls when he opens his email. He of course has several emails from permitting authorities requesting clarifications and additional materials. His project manager (if only he had a project) asking a series of stupid questions that were difficult to answer because of their theoretical nature. Joe sent out a dumb email with jokes. That was all normal fair.
No the subject line that Simon loathed was "Mandatory Mtg RE: Major Company REORG." Considering how unfruitful the AP division had been in the last forever, Simon felt like this most likely meant dissolving his division. Oh god no one would hire an AP <programmer>, he'd have to go back to school! I mean yeah there were start-ups but no successful ones yet and a lot of their hope was based on <big company name> ploughing through the murky expensive waters first.
Simon glances through the email. It's clearly written by an HR executive; however there are no secret code words for firing people. The email promises "exciting news we want to share with you first!" and "a new era for the company!" This sounded more like a product launch. It probably had nothing to do with APs. Simon frowns internally grumbling at the way the clickbate subject rankled him.
The meeting is first thing after lunch. Not a lot of notice.
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Naomi sat comfortably in her dining room table chair. Matt was adjusting her headpiece. He's had some experience operating simple <spell-programs> and knew how the equipment was supposed to work.
Simon had five simple pieces of code he pulled out of previously completed projects. He had tweaked them to suit their purposes. "Okay so I've just set up a 10 meter radius around you as the bounds. Pick something." Simon instructs.
He's already spinning up the program. Naomi feels the instructions like an external intelligence pressing against her temples. If she focuses, she can pick up bits of what it says. Like trying to focus on the blackboard when you aren't wearing your glasses.
Because Simon had instructed her about the bounds, she feels that first. Although technically she didn't need to focus on that at all. The next <method> has something to do with picking an object. "What do you mean, pick something?" Naomi asks. Lifting up the small stuffed husky doll, she adds, "I already picked this."
"Pick it!" Simon snaps unhelpfully, still glued to his computer screen. He had a tendency to get frustrated when people didn't understand him right away.
"Uh... I think he means like pick it with magic. Like tag it," Matt translates.
That made sense, actually, now. Naomi holds the fuzzy dog in her hand trying to indicate 'this thing' to Simon's computer. It wasn't working. Or maybe it was.
"Anything?" Naomi asks. She realizes that at some point Matt has started lightly rubbing her shoulders. When she first met him it had been unsettling how touchy-feely he is, but then she observed him doing the exact same stuff with Simon. It was more about his affection toward them as friends than being a giant no boundaries douche canoe.
"Uh..." Simon is watching the logs on his screen. "No..."
Debugging was never fun. Working with Simon was nice because he trusted Naomi's abilities. Other <programmers> were quick to place blame on operators. *The <spell code> is fine; you just aren't doing it right!*
"Oh shit, I forgot to pass in an open variable," Simon admonishes himself. He begins typing that in.
Naomi pets the husky with her thumbs enjoying the back rub. The downtime she got while helping a <programmer> debugging was awkward and used to frustrate her a lot. She couldn't really work (not that she had anything to work on right now) because every five to ten minutes she would have to drop everything to run the new iteration of the <spell program>.
Matt however was completely useless. He was just the math guy. Like the really good at really high level math that everyone in the company borrows. But they wouldn't need him until they were writing virgin <code>.
"Okay, try again," Simon prompts. "It should shake when you pick it."
"Can we say tag?" Naomi requests. "It just makes more sense in my head." She shrug-smiles diplomatically.
"Yeah that's fine," Simon answers presumably typing that note down.
After a deep breath, Naomi pushes her mind into that hyper-precise space where the <spell> rests. This time the second <method> feels grabby. Like when you remember a line of a song but can't remember what it's from. *This husky.* Naomi thinks focusing on what the husky was: stuffing surrounded by faux-fur cloth with button eyes and a felt tongue.
The husky vibrates and Naomi squeals in excitement.
"Okay step one done," Simon says, his voice dragged down by anticipated exhaustion.
Matt sits next to her and takes the husky from her hands. "Si, it's still shaking," Matt comments.
"Dammit!" Simon starts scrolling through the lines of <code> on his screen.
*Nothing* Naomi thinks very hard. When she opens her eyes the husky has stilled. It's a hard quit command that all operators have to be able to perform whether it's written into a <spell> or not.
Back in the pioneering days, an operator died when their power source ran out and the <spell> began cannibalizing her body for power.
Naomi absently chews on the edge of her porcelain mug, having already emptied the contents.
She's taken to working with Matt and Simon in a conference room. They're only working on one project together, and honestly email and occasional meetings was enough communication to complete a project.
"Nami, come over here," Matt requests. He always says her name funny. He's holding a neural tiara <trying out names> that's plugged into Simon's laptop. "I want you to try running this."
"We need sand first," Simon says pointedly.
"Oh, right," Matt leaves the workroom. Naomi and Simon watch Matt walk down the hallway through the large windows of the conference room.
"Do we have sand in the building?" Simon asks Naomi.
Naomi shrugs. They did keep weird stuff in the supply closets around here.
Simon shrugs back. His eyes fall back to his computer screen. Considering Matt and Simon wanted her to test something, Simon was probably stalled on his current project. Based on the amount of typing and clicking, Simon was going through message boards. Before Matt came on board, Naomi had thought that Simon was just always working. It had been intimidating to talk to him.
Matt walks back in, "I just talked to Marcy. She said she'll send an intern out for sand."
"Hey after work, can I ask you guys to help me with something?" Naomi asks.
Matt sits in the chair next to her and leans on his elbow. "Something personal?" Naomi can't help but giggle.
"We'd be happy to help you Naomi. What's the project?" Simon asks while typing. It would be weird to see Simon away from a computer or at least a tablet.
"Well all of our projects at work are these big clients that want really stupid flashy things. I want to try to make something that everyone could use," Naomi explains. She's gotten herself really excited about this. "What I want to start with is a cleaning <spell>."
"I want that too," Matt adds. Based on the condition of his desk he needed it.
"Okay so the first part would be assigning positions in your house for all your things. The <spell> would put everything back in its place. After that I'm not really sure. Is it possible to just take the dirt off something?" Naomi asks.
Matt steals a blank sheet of paper from the bottom of Naomi's pile, and the pen from her hand. He begins diagramming out a fork, with equations assigned to different curves. His lips purse slightly when he's thinking hard
Simon grunts and leaves his computer to see what Matt is writing. "Matt, wouldn't it be easier to apply a surface detecting algorithm to the dishes than mathematically describing every dish and utensil," Simon asks critically.
Matt wordlessly flips the paper over.
"I think we have to start with an assigned dirty dish area," Matt draws a cube to describe what Simon is saying. "I can reuse a script I wrote that detects and identifies discrete objects."
"Oh well not all dishes are discrete objects. Like a garlic press or carrot peeler," Naomi adds.
"Um..." Simon bites his thumb thinking. "It might still work. Even if something has multiple pieces, it can clean them all."
"Some of those pieces may be greased," Naomi adds with a grimace.
Simon sighs heavily, "Let's work on that later. For now let's assume that every piece of everything needs to be cleaned."
January 11: the explanation of "magic" in my universe
Altered physics, often erroneously referred to as magic, requires three components. Instructions, power, and focused intention. Intention is a uniquely sentient quality, which is why altered physics is so often considered magical. However, that type of thinking is a trap that will lead to sloppy instructions or unrealistic expectations.
For example, if you were to create a sorting machine you could not write in the instructions merely, 'blue skittles go into the left slot,' but would also have to include instructions to identify the color of each skittle. Namely request the frequency of light reflected off the skittle and then assign each segment of the spectrum a specific designation, or color.
Obviously, it is more efficient to use existing mundane tools, like matches, to light wood. Or even lasers for precise burning.
The additional expenses of <spell> development and operation means that many tools and processes will never be replaced. Where altered physics really shines is in precision and customization.
Finally altered physics is subject to mundane laws of physics. Energy cannot be created nor destroyed, only transformed or transferred. Theoretically you could make an apple appear in thin air using massive amounts of power, but it would be considerably more practical to teleport an apple through a temporary wormhole--as crazy as that sounds. It would be slightly easier to create an apple from a pile of its component molecules, but that would require essentially drawing a diagram of every atom in the apple. So teleportation is still easier.
Those of you studying to be operators may begrudge <spell> writing requirements in your major. To effectively hand off instructions to the actors, you have to have a strong working understanding of the instructions. Of course the <device> will have the full detailed instructions, you'll only have to hold the <pseudo code> in your mind, which would be 'blue skittles go in the left slot.'
<Devices> have a neural interface that allows the operator to access the instructions without having to fully understand it. Some operators have described a sensation of feeling the coded instructions as if looking at them written out blurry or remembering a conversation. Mika Glaeser, world famous operator who <did something really cool> said that to be a great operator you have to assign a simplistic understanding to the feeling of the expanded instructions. You have to be able to link 'blue skittles to the left' to the sensation that you get from the chunk of instructions that details how to do that.
This ability to assign thoughts "space" and connect has been compared to proprioception of the mind.
