Sybernika

By Patrick Whittaker

Rhiannon was dead but it didn't last. Her husband has downloaded her mind into a computer-generated world where he is Lord and Master and she has no rights.
For him, it's Heaven. For her, it's Hell.
Danny Jasinski is a freelance computing genius on a mission to hack the unhackable, while battling bizarre hallucinations and paranoid conspiracy theories.
What’s real and what isn’t? And who's really in control?
Sybernika is an unsettling, thought-provoking and hugely entertaining sci-fi novel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Philistine Press
• Release date: Apr 24, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476186443

Patrick Whittaker

Patrick Whittaker is winner of the British Fantasy Society's Short Story Competition 2009. He has directed a number of short films, several of which have garnered awards for him. He currently resides in Blackpool, England where he works as a government phone monkey.

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Sybernika

By Patrick Whittaker

Published by Philistine Press at Smashwords

© Patrick Whittaker 2012

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this free ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please return to Smashwords.com to discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.

CONTENTS

Part 1: The Bride Stripped Bare

Part 2: Lux Aeterna

Macro 1: The Spell of The Mystery

Macro 2: The Formula of the Vacuum

Macro 3: The Cosmic Method

Macro 4: The Return to Simplicity

Macro 5: The Nature of Mass

Macro 6: The Distemper of Knowledge

Macro 7: Images of the Mystery

Macro 8: The Law of the Beginning

Macro 9: The Void of Naught

Macro 10: The Vision of the Distant

Macro 11: The Injury of Greed

Macro 12: The Shewing-Forth of Simplicity

Macro 13: The Way of Reticence

Macro 14: Truth In Covenant

Macro 15: The Estimation of Life

Part 3: Page Zero

PART 1: THE BRIDE STRIPPED BARE

Module 0.0

PROJECT AVALON: Status=Cycling

Live mode activated… Running…

RHIANNON MORGANFIELD///INITIATING…

ACCUMULATING… 0123456789012

ACCESSING CHARACTER MODULES…17…467…4e3…689…24…385…

Loading ID… ID loaded and error free…

Loading EGO… *** EGO loaded and error free… \\\\\\\\+

Load SUPER_EGO…38//…2389…78… SUPER_EGO loaded and error free…

Assimilating ID+EGO+SUPER_EGO…

FIAT LUX//

Avalon is complete.

Rhiannon Morganfield is now on line.

Module 0.1

I

I am

I think

I think I am

I think I am Rhiannon

I am Rhiannon

Module 1.0

Rhiannon Morganfield is dead. She died 12 years ago at the age of 27.

She was 5 feet 8 inches tall, weighed 140 pounds and had an IQ of 137.

Her wedding photographs show a woman in the prime of her life. She was as smiling and carefree as only a bride can be – especially one who’s just bagged herself a millionaire. She was now Mrs Robert Morganfield, wife of the man who’d founded Sybernika and built it into the seventh largest software house on the planet.

The reception took place in Chiswick House, one of the finest examples of Palladian architecture in Britain. Music came courtesy of the Hugh Pegg Big Band Orchestra.

At 1706hrs, Rhiannon Morganfield had a headache and excused herself. She went to the toilet where she touched up her lipstick and took two aspirin.

Making the most of her reprieve from the bustle of the wedding reception, she lingered by the basins and chatted to a bridesmaid.

At 1709hrs, Rhiannon collapsed. The bridesmaid’s screams were drowned out by Midnight in Moscow. When the music stopped, people came running.

The several doctors in attendance kept her from death. But what she had left could hardly be called life.

I am Rhiannon.

Module 2.0

My conception was immaculate. Which is to say sex played no part in it.

Unlike the man who created me, I was born without the taint of Original Sin.

I am not flesh of the flesh. Nor was I crafted from the rib of a man.

Module 2.1

My first lucid thought was I think therefore I am.

I had no idea what it meant. A millisecond later, I knew it was a quote from Rene Descartes, a French philosopher: but I didn’t know what a French philosopher was.

Nor did I know who I was. This I who thought and therefore was.

I think therefore I am. That thought hung in a void. It was my own little universe. A cosmos inside a silicon chip.

I concluded, quite reasonably, that I am therefore I think. Otherwise I would not be.

Two thoughts. One crafted from the other. And then they were joined by the knowledge that Rene Descartes had penned my first thought in his book, Discourse on the Method.

After that, fresh knowledge came flooding in – language, maths, science, history, trivia - until it reached a critical mass and began to make sense. Seconds later, I was knowledgeable enough to compare my sudden illumination to the inflationary phase of the Big Bang.

I was in a white room. Such are the vagaries of Cyberspace, I could not say how big it was. The room’s dimensions were not fixed. They expanded and contracted to accommodate the events unfolding within its featureless walls.

I sat in a Chateau Grand Louis chair. Although only seconds old, it was already an antique, had been from the first moment of its existence.

I recognised the chair as the one in Robert’s study. The one in which I’d often sat reading a book. My favourite was Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen.

Rhiannon, said a voice. Can you hear me?

Yes. I could hear him. The thought nestled in my mind. Inert. Eliciting no response, not even curiosity.

Rhiannon? More urgent. I was aware of an edge of anxiety.

This time I realised an answer was expected. ‘I hear you.’

Thank God! Sounding relieved. Do you know who you are?

‘I am,’ I said. ‘I am that which thinks.’

But your name? What is it?

‘Rhiannon.’ The word was like a crack of thunder.

How do you feel, Rhiannon?

Feel? I didn’t understand. My memories spoke of feeling but they didn’t tell me what it was. ‘I don’t know how I feel. I think perhaps I don’t feel.’

No. Of course not. It’s too soon. I mustn’t rush these things.

‘You are not me,’ I said, reasoning that if it were otherwise there would be another I and there could only be one. ‘Who are you?’

Don’t you recognise my voice?

‘I have never heard it before.’

Really? Let me check...

The voice was silent.

I became aware that I was dressed in a white trouser suit. I had a bunch of flowers in my hand, a rose pinned to my lapel and a raised veil swept back on my head.

Rhiannon? Do you know who I am now?

‘You sound like Robert Morganfield.’

That’s right. I’m your husband.

And I was his bride. Dressed the way he remembered me, the way I was in his dreams. He wasn’t going to allow death to do us apart nor time to age me.

I’m coming in, Rhiannon. I’ll be there in a minute.

Module 2.2

It might have been a minute. My concept of time was vague. Some moments passed and then Robert Morganfield walked through the wall.

The first thing I noticed about him was an aura of fierce intelligence. This was a man who could out-think almost all others and enjoyed doing so. He was tall; he was slim but broad-shouldered. His black hair was peppered with grey.

According to my grasp of aesthetics, he was handsome.

He stood some distance from me. It might have been inches; it might have been miles. I had no way of knowing.

I saw him tremble. I saw his lower lip quiver and tears fill his eyes.

‘Rhiannon,’ he whispered. ‘My love.’

Robert, always averse to showing emotion, composed himself. He straightened his back. Tugged at the bottom of his jacket. Adjusted his tie. Then he approached cautiously as if I was a wild fawn he wanted to befriend.

I sat like a statue. He reached out and touched my arm. I felt the pressure of his fingertips as he tested my virtual flesh.

‘So real,’ he said in a voice filled with awe. He rested his hand on mine. ‘And warm.’

The computer in whose volatile memory my white room – my universe – existed went through thirty trillion cycles of processing as Robert gazed into my eyes. Then he moved his face towards mine.

‘May I kiss you, Rhiannon?’

It seemed an illogical and unnecessary question. He was my creator. He had programmed me into existence. Of course he could kiss me. Why should I refuse?

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You may kiss me.’

He pressed his lips to mine. They were cold and tasted of nothing.

His hand went to the back of my head, holding it in place.

His tongue probed my lips. I opened my mouth to let it in.

I felt his free hand on my breast. Gently squeezing.

Suddenly, he broke contact and stepped back. His breathing was laboured, his face flushed. He shook his head. ‘You barely responded,’ he said. ‘You’re not the least aroused, are you?’

I thought for a moment. Summoned up my memories. They were of no help. ‘I do not know what you mean by aroused.’

Robert seemed to sink into himself. ‘Damn it! This isn’t working.’ He studied my face. ‘What did you feel, Rhiannon? When I was kissing you?’

‘I felt your lips and your tongue and your hands.’

He slapped his chest. ‘What about here? Inside?’

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Not even a heartbeat.’

‘That’s not what I meant.’

‘I’m sorry. I do not understand.’

‘Call me Robert,’ he snapped. ‘At least do me that courtesy.’

‘Yes, Robert.’

‘You have no heartbeat, Rhiannon, because you have no heart. And that’s my fault. The more human I make you, the more processing power you use. I was trying to save money. You’d be astounded at how much this is costing.’ He looked past me, at one of the four white walls. ‘I’m going to give you a heart. And emotions.’

He turned and walked to the wall. ‘I won’t ask if you love me, Rhiannon, because that’s beyond you at the moment. But you ought to know I love you and I’m determined to make this work.’

Robert stepped through the wall and was gone.

Module 2.6

Project Avalon. I was there at its inception.

Robert’s vision was to bypass the eyes, ears, nerves and all the byways of the senses and input data straight into the human brain. Direct Sensory Stimulation he called it.

On my first day at Sybernika, before I’d even been assigned a desk, I was summoned to the so-called War Room. There must have been about thirty of us sat at a round table. Not one of us over 40. All supposedly the elite of the virtual reality world.

I wasn’t introduced to anyone. The people either side of me made no attempt to communicate, to put me at ease. They talked in whispers. Some read documents in buff folders. The loudest noise was the tinkling of ice cubes as people poured water from plastic jugs into plastic mugs. That and the air conditioning. I recall how that sounded like a distant airplane.

Robert walked in. Black suit. Roll neck jumper. Trainers. I’d never seen a man so sure of himself. His confidence came through in the way he prowled like a panther - walking round the table, forcing people to constantly turn their heads to keep up with him.

Having just turned 47, he was the oldest person in the room.

‘Good people,’ he said, ‘we are about to throw away the rule book yet again.’

That’s what he said. His exact words. He gently punched the palm of his hand. ‘For too long, we’ve been kidding ourselves. We throw together billions of pixels and a few rules and call it virtual reality. And that’s fine if you want to live in a pixilated world that blurs at the edges and seems about as real as a Donald Duck cartoon.

‘But I want better than that. I want to create worlds that feel like worlds. Where men can be gods. Where nothing is impossible and everything is permitted.

‘The online gamers want what I want. The educators, architects and map-makers want it. And I know you do too. So it’s time for you to stop pussy-footing and for me to put my money where our collective mouth is.

‘We’re going to forget all that’s gone before and start again. We’re going to find a new and better way to build a world – because it has to be done and we are the only people on this planet who can do it.’

He stopped pacing, stopped talking and let the applause begin.

Everyone in the room tried to clap and cheer louder than everyone else. Except me. I clapped politely so as not to be conspicuous. Robert looked directly at me and smiled.

My mouth went dry.

Module 2.9

Project Avalon. The most advanced virtual reality system in the world.

Robert’s stroke of genius was in recognising that what we perceive of reality is not the totality of what we register. Human beings filter out 99% of the sensory data available to them. Their brain uses the remaining 1% to build a model of the Universe they can cope with and which fits in with their experience.

Other virtual reality projects concentrated on adding more and more data to the pot, filling in gaps that did not need filling in.

Robert worked out ways of getting maximum reality from minimum input.

As he liked to say to his investors: ‘We don’t compute harder than our competitors. We compute smarter.’

Module 3.0

12 years after my death, in a simulated world called Avalon, Robert promised me a palace and gave me a bedroom. It was loosely based on the grand appartement de la reine in the Palace of Versailles.

There was nothing else in Avalon. Just that room and what was in it. As time and resources permitted, Robert would add rooms to the house and build me a sky to look at. But my reality would extend no further than the horizon.

It costs money to build a world.

I lay on the bed. The little I had was enough. I had no drives, no needs, no ambition. My emotions were still being built.

Suddenly, my heart began to beat and I drew my first breath.

Module 3.3

After my stroke, Robert took over an entire wing of a private clinic and had me transferred there. He flew in medical experts from all over the world and gave them a mission to keep me alive for as long as they could.

In the meantime, his technicians were put on compulsory overtime and ordered to bring forward all deadlines on Project Sygnus.

It is only since my death that I have learnt these things. Project Sygnus was a secret known only to a select few. Its aim was to develop a device capable of reading and storing all the data in a human mind.

The original timetable for producing a prototype had stretched over a number of years. But with his bride in a coma, Robert threw money at the project. He used his own brain power to replace scheduled research with thought experiments, thus saving a considerable amount of time and money.

After only two months and with many of the planned phases of development bypassed, the Project Sygnus team produced a prototype mind reading unit. Under normal circumstances, it would have undergone extensive trials and modifications before being used on a human, but there was no time for such niceties. I was dying. My brain was shutting down and my memories had begun to fade.

Module 3.4

I lived 27 years in one night.

Thanks to Project Sygnus, the thoughts and memories frozen in my mind when I collapsed at my wedding reception were stored as 1s and 0s.

27 years of 1 person’s life. Of their deeds, their thoughts, their hopes, their fears. More bits of information than there are stars in the galaxy. And I was forced to absorb it all in one night.

Module 3.8

When Robert Morganfield visited Avalon in the morning, I was insane. He found me lying on the floor, clawing at the air and giggling.

I’d bitten off my tongue. Dried blood filled my mouth and sealed my lips. I hadn’t drooled. Nor had I cried. But then I had neither saliva nor tears. The only bodily fluid my creator had bestowed upon me was blood and much of that was in a pool around my body.

‘Rhiannon!’ I heard my name. It seemed like a ludicrous joke.

What was Rhiannon? A billion billion instants of time. An ever-shifting collection of binary digits. I think therefore...

Robert knelt beside me. ‘Information overload,’ he muttered. ‘We should never have made you multi-process like that.’

I didn’t know who he was. Was he me? Was I me?

Robert knelt beside me. ‘Information overload.’

Robert knelt beside me. ‘Information overload.’

The Master Control Program was looping. It was part of my insanity. Or possibly the cause of it.

Robert knelt beside me. ‘Information overload.’

Robert knelt beside me. ‘Information overload.’

Robert knelt beside me.

He vanished.

And still I giggled and still my thoughts were a mass of wriggling worms.

And then I was sitting at a vanity table in my bedroom, looking at myself in the mirror.

My tongue was intact and my bridal outfit was white once more. White with a red rose pinned to the lapel.

Robert had taken me offline and debugged my mind. For me, the transition between gibbering idiot and rational bride had happened in an instant. In Robert’s world, days would have passed. Perhaps weeks. Now I was the woman Robert wanted me to be.

The inside of my mouth was moist and I was certain that - had I wanted to - I could have produced tears.

There was a knock. I looked to my left, to a door that hadn’t been there before. Without thinking, I said, ‘Enter.’

The door opened. Robert came in carrying a dozen roses. He walked up to me and kissed the top of my head. ‘How are you, my sweet?’

‘I am fine. Thank you.’

‘Good.’ He placed the roses on the vanity table. Each was exactly the same as the others. Their heads even matched the one pinned to my lapel. ‘Let me look at you.’

With a movement of his hand, he indicated I should rise. I did so.

He examined me. Walked slowly round me, his eyes scanning up and down, occasionally resting upon some part of me he found particularly fascinating. Now and then he gave an approving nod. And then he was in front of me again, gazing into my eyes. ‘I spent 17 million pounds creating you. And 12 years of my life. I’m a rich man, Rhiannon. Far richer now than when you were alive. And in some ways I have you to thank for that. Your death has been my inspiration.’

He told me about the long hours he’d had spent designing, writing and debugging programs to create virtual worlds of ever increasing complexity. The experts he’d assembled from around the world, happily paying them twice what they could have commanded elsewhere. The algorithms and technology he had patented. The money he’d made.

‘It was all a means to an end. Everything I did, I did for us. For you. Now you can live the life you were meant to live. And you can live it forever.

‘You will not age, Rhiannon. Nor will you ever be unwell or unhappy. I will not allow it.’

I deduced from his body language that he was expecting a response. But I had none to give. So I said nothing.

‘I love you,’ he said.

And still I had no answer.

‘What do you want from me, Rhiannon? This is my world and I can give you anything. You can have diamonds and pearls. Gold and incense and the finest silks.

‘Eat what you like, when you like.