neural.coder 0x0B
It's Monday morning, Jenn and Geoff can't wait to see if Geoff has dreamed up more code in the night. They need a way out of their predicament.
Missed the beginning? Go back and read the first chapter.
Geoff had already quietly arisen, removed the electrodes and synced all the data across to his laptop. He’d been careful not to wake Jenn. With a fresh cup of coffee to prop him up, he went straight to work setting up the code to analyse the electrode data from last night. The processing took some time. Had it really been that quick back that time with Andy? Maybe it was slow because he was watching it? A watched dream never boils.
A ping woke him up. The processing was done. He’d dozed off watching and waiting for the blinking cursor to do something, I really should have coded a progress bar, he thought. He checked the time, it had taken nearly ten minutes.
He checked the output folder. There were three video files, indicative of three periods of REM sleep, the time when humans usually dreamt. He’d quickly check these out and see whether there were any bizarre coding dreams, he did not remember having dreamt at all.
Geoff opened the first video file.
The image was fuzzy and indistinct in places, until it cleared and showed a scene of a sports hall, a green painted floor covered in different coloured lines for three different sports. Rows and columns of single-seat tables and chairs filled the hall. Teenage students sat in at all but one desk. Each of them was head down, scribbling away on an exam paper. They all wrote in perfect synchronisation, stroke by stroke their pencils scratched out answers. Their synchronicity amplified the sound of pencil on paper to a roar. Robotically, they lifted their heads from their work and stared directly at the camera, at me, I guess, Geoff thought, as he became absorbed in the video. It was as if he were actually dreaming this in his head right now.
The hall full of children put down their pens and intoned in unison, “Geoffrey James Stalinsky.” They spoke with the ponderous singsong cadence of hundreds of school children saying ‘good morning’ to the head teacher, “You are late. You will fail. You will retake your exams.” Geoff swallowed dry air, the taste of an old panic rising. This dream again. He fast forwarded the video.
He was running down a door-filled, endless corridor, doors slamming before he could get to them, racing to the next one before it could also slam shut, never quite reaching them in time. He ran down stairwells, into more and more corridors until a final corridor ended in a single open door, a door to the outside. Geoff’s dream self opened the door and stepped through.
Into a dark forest path. Tall, thick evergreens towered above him on both sides of the path. He was walking forward step by step. He looked down at his feet. Well, the point of view of the video did. Each step on the brown path of fallen dead needles seemed springy and soft, and he bounced back up again like walking on the moon. He looked back up to where the path curved out of sight, winding through the densely packed trunks that hid whatever lay ahead. He sped up, each bounding step increasing the speed and height of his moonwalk jumps.
Rounding the corner, there was nothing but more trees, the path continued around another corner, then another—then finally it broke free into a sun-drenched grass covered field, except the grass was not green, and the sun was not yellow. Incredibly intense, bright colours shone from the laptop screen, a cyan sun bathing neon pink grass. His dream self halted, scanning his view across the wide expanse of the field.
A lone rabbit hopped through the neon grass, casting a dark shadow, highlighted in cyan light. He tracked it as it made its hoppy little way across the field. A cyan tinted silhouette of a woman crouched down in the grass, hand held out invitingly as if offering food to the rabbit.
The rabbit cautiously approached. The woman’s silhouette flickered like a faulty strip-light, yet the rabbit still advanced. Its little neon snout sniffed the air repeatedly as it inched closer and closer to the outstretched hand. Eventually, it was touching the woman’s hand, pushing what looked like tiny seeds off onto the ground with its nose.
Geoff watched the woman withdraw her hand a little. Wary and unsure, the rabbit looked around twitchingly, before setting down and lowering its head to the fallen seeds. The dream zoomed in close, cropped around the rabbit and its meal. The seeds were not seeds at all but tiny numerals, a mixture of ones and zeros.
A pair of hands thrust into the frame, grabbed the rabbit by its neck, and swiftly executed it with a sharp crack of bone. The dream ended there.
Geoff closed the video player, deep in thought. The first part of that, the school horror and failing exams, was a common dream he’d remembered having more than once. He often had dreams about exams and doing retakes, even though he’d never actually had to retake any exams in his school days because he also hadn’t failed any. He had no idea what this recurring dream meant.
The dark woods, fairly generic dream territory that, but the springy ground was unusual, not as strange as the neon lit rabbit-death hellscape. Utterly bizarre.
He opened the next video file. It was completely inconsequential. Half of it was flying through clouds and half being chased by a psychopath with a comically oversized rocket launcher. It ended with his dream self pulling out loose teeth in front of a bathroom mirror, spitting blood into the sink. No giant keyboards or frenzied coding in quilted valleys.
The last file was just as mundane, a combination of running for a train that turned out to not exist, with added face melting strangers talking in reverse. It morphed into him giving a TED Talk on the Secret Language of Dreams, while naked from the waist down. No coding dreams.
It didn’t look hopeful. Geoff scanned the rest of his laptop’s drive for any new or changed files, to check if any code had appeared in the dead of night? There was nothing.
“Fuck!” he shouted out loud.
Jenn stirred in her camp bed. “What time is it?” she yawned, stretching her arms out of the cocoon of her sleeping bag and wiping crusty sleep from her eyes.
“Gone seven.”
“Written any code during in the night?”
“No, it hasn’t worked. There’s no miraculous physics bending tools we can use to escape our predicament. I’m not even sure what you were expecting?”
“I dunno, something useful…”
“There are three videos, but they’re all dull, nothing like I saw before when new code had appeared overnight,” he sighed.
“Maybe the code needs more work? There’s really nothing on the physics side that you remember seeing from before? It would be great to see how some of your tweaking code works.”
Geoff turned away from the conversation, facing the screen again. There was that code from the ESCAPE app that he’d partially downloaded, the spatial coordinates and properties of subatomic particles. That was definitely on the physics side.
“Actually…” he stopped, “no, nothing.” He couldn’t talk about it, she’d be furious about him accessing his cloud backups, but without them he’d have no code at all, and it would be weeks before he could get to this point, even if he could remember any of the code he’d seen. The dream reading code was certainly working. Okay, it was slower than it had been before, and the images were not as crisp and clear. That could just be that his dreams weren’t as crisp and clear, or he could have missed something out.
What he really wanted to know was why there’d been no coding dreams and therefore no dream written code.
“Was there anything special about the night it did work?” Jenn asked.
“Not really…” he thought back, “except I was in quite a lot of pain. Bruised ribs and all.”
“Of course, the accident.”
“My ribs haven’t hurt nearly so much the last day or so, seems to have healed quickly? I was on some strong medication the hospital gave me. I remember feeling a little out of it.”
“Maybe that’s the key? Perhaps you need to free your mind? My dreams are always entirely different if I’ve got a fever and a high temperature,” she said.
“I know that feeling. Same for me.”
“We can try again. Perhaps we need to induce a high temperature somehow, and get you to sleep and dreaming proper weird shit.”
“How the hell are we going to do that?”
They both looked blankly at each other. Geoff scanned the room, this was not something they’d considered in their shopping trip, he wasn’t sure what he expected to see.
“You can always eat that leftover special fried rice you didn’t stick in the fridge.” Jenn said, pointing at the foil tray sat on the counter by the kettle and tea supplies.
“I think it would need a few more days.” Geoff said.
“There must be something we can do. I need to get up properly, and tell you about my research findings first, then we can bash our heads together over this.”
They were both up, refreshed, and sat back around the desk. Jenn was reading from her handwritten notes.
“Did you find anything about who these people are?” Geoff asked.
“Yes,” Jenn said, “but it’s very hard to tell what’s true, what delusion, and what’s pure bullshit conspiracy nonsense. I’ve found this one theory that does seem to fit. It’s mind-blowing.”
“So you found something?”
“They call them the Obbligato , although a few other names like The Veiled Choir and Thirteenth Psalm are preferred by other theorists.”
“Unusual name. What does it mean?”
“It’s a Latin music term, and it means ‘obliged to accompany’. It proved a useful word to search on, as this is not the most popular of conspiracy theories, although it does reportedly go back centuries. Some of the full on dedicated researchers believe that the organisation was founded in 1791 by Antonio Salieri. Others say it’s even older than him.”
“Who was he?”
“Composer, contemporary of Mozart,” Jenn said, “The theorists mostly agree that he killed Mozart, although there has never been any evidence for this. There is good evidence that not only did they work together, but they were close friends. Of course, the theorists claim it’s all lies planted by the Obligato to program us.” Jenn shook her head.
“Sounds crazy. What makes you think it isn’t just some conspiracy theory?” Geoff said. “Can you connect them to the goons that stormed my flat, and that Hannah woman?”
“We'll, I got myself into a forum where all they talk about is the Obligato. They are a select group, maybe only twenty or thirty worldwide. Over the years, they’ve documented many disappearances, deaths, and other strange happenings.”
“Plenty of people disappear. Why’s that a conspiracy?”
“Yes, but these are disappearances of exceptional and talented people. All the people documented had made a recent breakthrough in their career. Whatever their creative or intellectual pursuit was, they’d all either broken through with something that would shake up their scene, or were reportedly on the verge of doing so.”
“And then they’re disappeared?”
“Yes, or they die in some accident, or they take an overdose of drugs, that sort of thing.”
“What does the government gain from disappearing talented individuals?” said Geoff.
“The theory says the Catholic Church, not the government funds them.”
“Same question. What do they gain?”
“Well,” Jenn flipped through her notes, “it all stems from Salieri’s supposed hate for Mozart. They say he was ragingly jealous of Mozart’s talent. Salieri was angry at God for gifting all his holy inspiration to Mozart and none to him.”
“What, so they are bumping people off because they are still jealous? So you spent the evening with a bunch of religious clipbaiters?”
Jenn frowned. Clearly, she’d never heard the word. Geoff sensed there was still much she’d not explained about herself.
“No, most of the conspiracy theorists reject the existence of God. There’s one or two religious holdouts, but the prevailing theory is that people are being inspired by the universe itself.”
“But the universe is not a person!”
“They believe differently. They have taken Gaia Theory and expanded it to the Universe and combined it with something Carl Sagan once said.”
Geoff blinked, “Gaia Theory?”
“Yes,” said Jenn, “the theory that the earth is a complete and conscious organism made up of countless tiny organisms like us, in the same way we ourselves are complete organisms made up of billions of tiny organisms. From things like the mites that live on our eyelids, the bacteria that live on our skin and in our guts, down to every single cell that makes us up. They just expand that out to the entire galaxy, to the whole of the universe, even to all the universes.”
“Mites live on our eyelids?”
“Not the important bit Geoff,” Jenn smiled, like his question amused her somehow, “They have expanded Gaia theory to all life existing everywhere.”
Geoff nodded, considering the breadth of this idea. He’d always figured life was out there somewhere in the universe, even if we hadn’t found it yet. The mechanisms of evolution made it inevitable that complex life would evolve, given time.
“They attribute a consciousness to the entire universe?” Geoff asked.
“Yes, they quote Carl Sagan, an astronomer from the last century,” Jenn checked her notes, “he said something like, ‘We’re all made of star stuff’, and that ‘complex life is an expression of the universe trying to understand itself.’”
Geoff didn’t reply. He didn’t think that sounded entirely unreasonable, in a metaphorical sense. In fact, it felt comforting.
“They took that and Gaia Theory and combined it into this globe-spanning conspiracy. Some of them propose that the Obligato has come to the same conclusion over the years. They may have started out believing that God was inspiring people like Mozart, but now they share the belief about the universe. Others argue that the Obligato is still very much a religious affair, and there is evidence that the Catholic Church still funds them.”
“So, are they saying the universe is making people talented? Then these religious attack squads are bumping people off?”
“No. They say the universe just nudges here and there, gives people the slight change in direction they need, or that single thought that comes out of nowhere that leads people down a different path.”
“You’ve basically just described inspiration. Nothing magical about that. Everyone gets random inspirational thoughts, not just extra special, talented people.”
“Yes, but their investigations uncover more overt inspiration than that. Occurrences of explicit dreams, compulsions that can’t be explained, reported shifts in reality, things that should not be possible. Miraculous things, you might even say, that break the laws of physics.”
“Wait,” Geoff jumped up from the armchair, “wait, wait, wait! Are you saying that the universe wrote that code while I was sleeping?”
“I don’t think the universe is writing your code, no. I think whatever power is behind this, whether it’s gods or the universe or whatever, simply found a way to influence you to write the best code you could, to show you what you are capable of. To give you a kick up the arse. To send you a message. To spark your true potential.”
“You think the universe sent me those text messages? Are you becoming a fully signed up member of this crazy conspiracy squad?”
“Err, well, no. I sent you those messages, Geoff.”
“What!? You said that wasn’t you. That you’d had messages as well.”
A guilty look crossed Jenn’s face, morphing into relief. “Yes, that’s kinda true. I have had messages, just not by text.”
Geoff knew she’d been holding back, not telling all.
“I didn’t want to sound like I was crazy,” she said, “but I get visions of things. Little snippets of future events. That’s how I knew you were in danger. That’s how I knew where to find a bin lorry with the keys in the ignition. Sometimes they are accompanied by compulsive thoughts of potential actions.”
“That does sound like you’re crazy.”
“I know, for a long time I thought I was,” Jenn said, “but acting on the visions and compulsions has always worked out as the best thing to do since they started. Now, given what I’ve read last night, I’m starting to get on board with this Universe theory.”
“It does have a certain appeal,” Geoff said, “but what on earth is the Obligato’s goal?”
“That’s where most of the disagreement is. Some say they just want to get closer to God, to understand who’s being inspired. Some say they capture and interrogate these people—they call them the Inspired, with a capital I—before returning them to their lives to meet with an accidental and untimely death. Others say they are trying to understand whatever the power is behind the Inspired to take it and use that power for their own means. One poster postulates their goal is to harness this power of God to return religion to the world, via a global theocratic dictatorship.”
“These conspiracy nuts sound like they are proposing a global war between good and evil,” Geoff laughed, “although I’m not entirely sure which side is which—or which side we are on.”
“They are right about them grabbing people and interrogating them,” Jenn said, “not to mention the torture that went along with that. They had me locked up for over a week, and the shit they did to me I don’t even want to think about. I know for sure that we aren’t on their side!”
“Good, we’re on the side of good?”
“Whatever that is, I don’t know. They are for sure evil by any interpretation of the word. I can’t go back there, we just need to stay hidden and get you writing more miraculous stuff in your dreams. I need…we need a way out of this. Believe me, you do not want to be captured.”
Geoff’s thoughts turned to the code that tweaked the underlying forces of physics, the code he couldn’t tell her about.
“Jenn?”
“Yes.”
Geoff hesitated, “I…well, I have some code from an app I found on my phone.”
“The thing that changed your balance?” she asked.
“No, the one I never used, the ESCAPE app.”
“You rewrote it from memory?”
“Well…no, I never looked at the source code before—”
“But you wrote it. It’s inside you somewhere,” she interrupted.
“Maybe, but I downloaded it from my cloud backups.”
“What! Yesterday? From here?” she dropped her hand-written notes.
“I took precautions. I went through a secure browser and a network of obscurity nodes across the world. It’s totally untraceable.”
“What the fuck Geoff, they could already know where we are, and they are definitely after what you can do. The universe has chosen you and they clearly want your gifts. They could be outside watching us now, they could be listening to every word we say.”
Jumping up from the desk, Jenn grabbed a rucksack and started throwing things in it.
“Don’t you think you’re overreacting a—”
“Fuckity fuck-a-fuck Geoff! How could you have logged into your own damn online account? Of course they’ll be watching that!”
“I set up over a hundred hops all around the world,” he said. “The system bounces off of compromised corporate systems and deletes all the logs in reverse order as it leaves. Even if they did manage to trace all of that back from my account, it’ll take them months.”
“Who knows what techniques and tools they’ve acquired over the years? You’re an absolute idiot. I am not going back there. How can you do this to me, after all I’ve done to help you?”
“You’re being paranoid!” Geoff said, throwing his arms in the air.
She zipped up the rucksack, and grabbed her luggable computer. “I am not going back there,” she said as she stormed out of the office.
“You’re just gonna piss off and leave me here!” Geoff shouted at the swinging door, “Where are you going to go?”
“Far away from you, far away from danger. Don’t follow me!” her voice echoed back from the church.
I’m releasing Geoff’s story as I write it and it’s the first novel length story I have ever released into the wild. If you like it then please let me know, just a like is a good sign. If you hate it let me know as well. If you want to let loose theory crafting then do that too!
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