SHIP'S LOG:

The Flying Comrade

Ben Tater 3/13/2021 10:25pm

JOURNEY TO THE MERMAID IMPERIUM

The pearl bubble submersible was well apportioned. There was a comfortable couch, with a coffee table in easy reach, covered in colorful fashion magazines. I looked more closely and they were, in fact, mermaid fashion magazines. There was also a wet bar and a tiny WC tucked discreetly around a spiral corner in the back.

As it plunged beneath the surf, the iridescent sheen of the pearl turned transparent, and the undersea world opened itself before me.

Sure, there were shoals of fishes, passing whales, and bubbles. And there were shrimp and octopi and coral reefs and giant clams. But there were mermen too, and sharks in battle armor, and great jellyfish hauling watersleigh filled with starfish and baubles, all on their way down the underwater highway that leads straight to the capital, the seat of the Mermaind Imperium, and the residences of Emperor Aeotherum Sateqo the Magnificent himself.

Or so I was informed by the information overlay projected on the bubble of as it all passed by. Eventually I couldn't really focus on what was happening outside on account of the nausea. I was in the WC cleaning up after vomiting when I found some dramamine in the medicine cabinet.

I went back to the couch and closed my eyes. Just how far was it to the capital of the Mermaid Imperium?

Ben Tater 1/29/2021 11:58pm

"I bear an invitation, @Ben Tater," said the mermaid.

She sat perched on a wave, tail curled neatly beneath her. Long wavy hair with shells and starfish caught in it.

I stared.

"You have lost your friends and find yourself alone in a strange land."

She had that right.

"The Emperor Aeotherum Sateqo the Magnificent invites you to visit the Mermaid Imperium."

There was nothing for me here... but what if the Giant Guinea Pigs returned? And that tiny... green man? Now he seemed like an hallucination, but wasn't he somehow responsible?

I stared some more.

"You know, it's considered really bad form to refuse an invitation from the Emperor. Wars have been started for less."

I felt like I was about to lose it, frankly.

The mermaid shifted her weight and the wave lowered her into the water. Then a great bubble of pearl rose up from the water, opened a door and a gangplank rolled out.

"Hurry up!" she called, turning tail. "Tide's moving out!"

Ben Tater 12/18/2020 9:14pm

Gone. The whole crew of Giant Guinea Pigs, or former Giant Guinea Pigs now transformed via digital transubstantiation into something resembling human at least. But the point is they were my crew, my only friends in this unknown world, and not only had they left me on the beach, but left me in time as well. Months? Years? I had no idea.

I felt very alone.

“Don’t feel alone,” said a voice behind me.

There, appearing from out of the surf and the sunset, was a mermaid.

Ben Tater 10/28/2020 10:15pm

"I'm not here to take your treasure."

It came out automatically. I wasn't even thinking about talking to the tiny green man inside the cave.

"I'm just after my frisbee. See?"

I hold it up to him, shaking off the sea water. I find myself flicking the water droplets towards him. Like I'm trying to sprinkle him.

"Hey, whoa! You just keep your distance there, big guy. Run along now."

I run along. Back up the beach. Yul is gone. I head back to camp. It's deserted. But it's late. Getting near dinner time. The sun is sinking low. What time is it? Where did everybody go?

In the center of camp is an old metal ammo can. The one we use to keep matches in. It's got my name on it, spelled with torn duct tape.

B E N

I open it up and find the letter.

"Dear Ben. We have left this message on the off chance that you should return someday. We can wait no longer..."

Ben Tater 9/15/2020 11:21pm

"Go long!!!"

Yul laughs at his horrible throw.

I head off into the tide pools to retrieve the frisbee. The tide is out, and there are clear sand paths through the rocks. Tiny canyons encrusted with barnacles and anemones and big purple sea stars. And sometimes there are caves.

"Found it!" I call.

There's water trickling out of the mouth of this one. The frisbee's half underwater in a tiny pool. And there's something shiny there too, glittering in the water.

"You're not here to take my treasure."

It's a statement, not a question. From a tiny green man inside the cave.

Ben Tater 8/6/2020 10:24pm

"Hey Ben. Can you toss me one of those beers?"

We're back on the beach. Been here for about a week. Ever since we ate those chips.

"Sure Scruffy."

The sun is heading down. The crew in the water are about done for the day. They'll come in and brag about the waves they caught and dry off, and we'll head back up to the bungalows and make a dinner and drink more beers.

"Not sure how much more of this I can take," Scruffy says, looking into the sun in his sunglasses.

I look over at him. His face is stern.

Then he cracks up and looks my way.

We're safe. Really safe. For the first time since we've met, and longer for the Giant Guinea Pig crew. Scruffy was right about "the whole burrito." What the core consisted of was more than just the VR source code. And it was more than the whole of the world we left behind, too. The VR world, and the world where we left The Flying Comrade; all of it was part of a bigger code set. And now that we had integrated it into ourselves, we could truly write our own stories. And we could write them in either world, or a whole new one, that was bigger than both of them.

"So, what do we want for dinner tonight? We should get our order in so the fisherfolk have time to deliver it. Food tastes better when we don't just manifest it on the spot, don't you think? I needs at least a little backstory."

Beefy Ray Cakes does enjoy grilling.

"More shrimp?" I ask. "Are we bored of that yet?"

"THIS," says Scruffy, "can NEVER get boring."

And I watch the sun sink lower, slowly.

Ben Tater 6/30/2020 8:48pm

"Or is THIS what we expected?" Handsome Becky asks.

It's a rhetorical question. By design, none of us knew exactly what the final heist consisted of. Not just to protect the mission, but because it was unknowable. Heisenberg style.

"Heisenberg STYLE!" cries Scruffy, doing an ollie of what looks to be a raised dias. In front of an altar.

Heisenberg in the sense that it was unknowable. Not the kind of "oh the observer changes the outcome" kind of unknowable. But, mathematically unknowable. And our plan was to land us right here.

"Right here" was a place in this info-cathedral where things took an unexpectedly realist turn. That abstract mathematics (made physical) of the virtual world around us had coalesced into what on all accounts appeared to be a church, with a ritual altar surrounded with silver pots and pans, rich carpet and wood. Everything but the pews. It all still held that virtual sheen but at a minimum. A definite respite from our raw-data addled brains.

It was the central core of the reality generator for the entire VR-rackspace world.

"It's more than just the central core of the reality generator for the entire VR-rackspace world," Scruffy said, walking up behind the altar. "The VR world can't run on simulation alone. It's tapping into something. Something bigger. The whole burrito."

Scruffy rattled around in the cupboards behind the altar. "And yes! Here it is!"

He took up position behind the altar, and displayed a bowl full of chips.

"I want some of those chips..." said Ruth.

And with that, we all lined up behind her, awaiting our prize.

Ben Tater 5/16/2020 10:11pm

"Is this, uh... what we expected?" Handsome Becky asks.

Stage three, the smash and grab, seems to have taken a turn.

FREEZEFREEDOMMAGNETNUMBERTHREEZHWOOOOOOOMMMMMM

A shard of pure information slices past us. It's the size of a semi truck but in only two dimensions.

And it's one of the small ones. All around us, as far as our infinite-seeing eyes can see, it's a cathedral of crystal. More like a canyon, really. There isn't exactly "color" here, but it somehow presents itself as white-on-white layers of mathematics. Look in any direction too long and you can feel the tug of its seductive algorithms, integrating with your own fragile definition.

"Eyes sharp," says Scruffy. "There's got to be a pattern. Concentrate on the data coordinates in envelope C.

Everyone sorts through their survival kits. Each step of our heist has been carefully planned out, but also carefully NOT committed to memory in case any of us were captured on the way. We each carry a range of possible targets and instructions, all of them decoys. Except one.

As each of us reads the contents of envelope C, we seem to log in to a shared network. And as we do, a path begins to present itself through the fractal landscape ahead of us.

Scruffy leads the way, leaving a wake of cast-off ones and zeros in his wake.

Ben Tater 4/8/2020 9:38pm

Stage two, the Lightning Run. 

Only the highest priority data gets the big highway. That’s part of what the Giant Guinea Pigs got from the boards and syndicates of the earth. 

And let me tell you, it is a big highway. 

We’re all ensconced in diamond lightning form, identical to all the packages shooting down the highway. It’s so big — to facilitate the quantum buffering — that all the packages are at great apparent distance. By “apparent” I mean you can see too well. The edges of the Lightning Run stretch to a horizon extending for every digit emerging from an infinite decimal point. 

And you can see every one. 

I mean, you can’t even count that high, but you can SEE every ONE. 

And when the Great White Antibody Patrol starts coming your way upstream, you can see every fractal detail on their multi-purpose q-foam hulls, antennae growing back through your eyes into your brain and takes you apart byte by byte—

ZWOOOOOOOOOOSHHHHH

“Looks like we got what we paid for,” says Scruffy. 

Protected encryption? Payoffs?

The multiplicity of creation continues to unfold before my eyes. 

Ben Tater 3/2/2020 8:23pm

Stage one, we're back at Nemo’s, the underground VR cyberpunk bar. This time the crew's all in off the shelf Scene Kid avatars, which means they blend right in with the e-boys and cool girls and the occasional full blown electro-goth.

"Yeah, we got some keys we can trade..."

They work their way up various ladders, probing for the right kind of mark.

"Ooooh, I dunKNOW! That kind of hardware is like, military restricted."

Until eventually the right doors open. Pixels of air folding back into themselves lead to invasive scan DMZs, opening into smokey back rooms of the boards and syndicates of the Earth.

That's when the giant guinea pigs drop their masks and pull out their claws.

"How did you discover this information?"

"We've been tracking you capitalist pigs for years. Raiding your banks and Timothy Hay fields has been merely a distraction as we gained control of your networks."

"What do you want?"

In the end, the capitalist fat cats have no choice but to oblige. The lesser of two evils, though just barely. And now the giant guinea pigs have upped the ante, shown a card.

But in the end, they've got what they need to initiate stage two.