The Ayin

By Gregor Former

I wrote The Ayin in the second half of 1995 and the beginning of 1996 while I was living in London, England. A number of mishaps over the ensuing years prevented me from further working on the book until the fall of 1999, and since then everything has moved at a rapid pace culminating with the publication of the book in May 2000 by Xlibris.

The story could be considered a cyberpunk tale of sorts, but unlike many such books, it has a firm basis in science and includes a number of items that could be (and surely will be) manufactured in the not-too-distant future.

My main focus is on the potential effect that the future of artificial intelligence will have upon our understanding of ourselves and existence in general. Some may argue that I have broken the rules of science as it is currently understood with where I take the story, but I believe time will bear out the conclusions I have drawn about the real potential inherent within quantum physics.

Above all else, I hope everyone who reads the book finds it enjoyable and if it can also make you think in the process, all the better! Thanks.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 11, 2000
• ISBN: 9781462826667

Gregor Former

Born in England, Gregor Former currently resides with his wife, Maria, in Boston where he also works in the computer industry.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

That shit is going to rot your brain one of these days.

Here we go again, he thought.

What do you mean? It helps me conquer cyberspace. Did you ever see a picture of that dude who invented the dataglove? Fried out of his brain. I’m sure there were plenty of bong hits that accompanied that flash of inspiration.

Oh, and I suppose he’s your hero?

No, but it has inspired me.

Yeah, but it also lost you your job with VirtuDat, didn’t it? God, is she ever going to drop this?

Look. Those monkeys didn’t have enough imagination to understand where I was going. How many times am I going to cover this ground? They still don’t. They’re still hyping invasive procedures to ‘reach the next level of cyberspace.’ I mean, jacking in with neuro-cybernetic plugs is old news. It should have been dropped almost as soon as it began. If they had listened to me, by now there would be nobody going for implants. That is just dangerous shit. You’ve seen these slot-heads, they’re all fucked up. Always bumming my trips.

The slot-heads or puragu-jin (plug people) were originally identified by psychiatrists in Japan a year or so after the first generation of plugs had hit the market. The disorder was characterized by the constant over-stimulation of the optic and auditory nerves of the victims, who were left in a semi-catatonic state. The experts had concluded that it was caused by an adverse reaction to the plugs, but their inability to reverse its course belied their lack of understanding. Although only a minutely small percentage of users was ever struck, the end result was scores of zombies shuffling through round-the-clock hallucinations. Surgical removal of the implants proved ineffective. The puragu-jin were easy to spot as they shambled around the streets in their somnambulistic haze. Their eyes had that glazed look that people get when they are jacked in: the look of pupils not focused on the world around them. There was something else in their eyes that always bothered him, but he could never put his finger on exactly what it was.

The corporations were quick to try to allay the public’s fears by assuring them that it was strictly an anomalous occurrence akin to an allergic reaction and, therefore, those who had had no difficulties should not worry. In other words: it either happened or it did not, and if it had not happened to you already, then it would not happen in the future. As for those who were contemplating an implant, the official line was that the source of the reaction, a certain biochemical personality type, had been discovered and potential customers could be screened for this chemical make-up.

This, as Anton and anyone else in the field knew, was a load of bunk. Consequently, the ranks of the puragu-jin swelled, but never by a noticeably large amount due to the counterbalancing effect of their deaths caused by malnutrition, accidents, and the like. Anton Karpov knew only too well that something quite dissimilar to biochemical make-up was behind these incidents. There was something on the Net. What it was, he could only guess, but he knew that it was there: he had seen it in action when it turned his friend into a puragu-jin.

Jazz Coleman was the only puragu-jin that Anton knew personally. They had worked at VirtuDat in the R&D department: Karpov on his holographic skullcap and Coleman on the neuro-cybernetic plugs. They had both received their Masters from MIT three years earlier and were snatched up by VirtuDat within days of one another. Although they had been in school for two years together and had taken a number of the same classes, they had never really gotten to know each other at school. Their professional contact quickly bloomed into a friendship outside the office. They would get together over various intoxicants and argue the merits of their respective views of consciousness and how and if that could be translated into interaction with machines. Jazz was a strict materialist, while Anton maintained an idealist philosophy in the Kantian sense. VirtuDat was in the business of designing and manufacturing Virtual Reality hardware and software. Since the release of VirtuDesign software ten years earlier, the company had sat at the top of the VR market. At that time, VR headsets, datagloves, and datasuits were becoming standard computer equipment and the industry realized that some form of standardized map for cyberspace was going to become increasingly necessary to avoid mass chaos on the Net. The Earth seemed to be a handy reference point. The major software companies agreed upon the EarthNet standard, which consisted of a virtual Earth complete with all the planet’s topographical features and spanned by a network of rectilinear grid lines spaced at 100 km distances at the equator. Superimposed over this was a second rectilinear grid rotated 45 degrees with respect to the first and with its intersections coinciding with alternate intersections of the smaller grid. These grids served as the highways of the EarthNet. Along with this software standard was a hardware standard that positioned your arrival on the EarthNet via the Global Positioning Satellite Network. VirtuDesign beat out the competition for two reasons. It had a software override of the satellite positioning, which enabled users to jack into the Net at whatever pre-assigned position they chose. (This caused a lot of grumbling in the industry, but after the complaints had been aired, every other software company followed VirtuDat’s lead.) The coup de grace, however, was VirtuDesign’s programming environment, which was an open-ended design language packaged with basic tools for the construction of virtual structures that could be built onto EarthNet. The rest of the software community was still using the latest version of VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language), which had been the industry standard since the early days of the World Wide Web. VirtuDesign supported all VRML coding, but also had its own language that far surpassed the capabilities of VRML. VirtuDesign caused a land rush as people and corporations raced to stake their claims on the EarthNet. As long as you kept your system plugged into the Net, you could build permanent structures which would project their images, etc. to any passing Net user. It did not take long for EarthNet to be staked out and, naturally, battles over land rights on the Net ensued. The answer to these difficulties came in a variety of forms. People had tended to occupy the same places on the EarthNet as they had on Earth, which created turf wars in places like New York City and other metropolises. A compromise was reached which placed the land of these major cities in the hands of consortiums, which then set about designing the virtual cities. Often what emerged from this process was a virtual city that kept many features of its real-life counterpart.

Concurrently with these developments, VirtuDat launched VirtuSpace, which consisted of an add-on module to the EarthNet standard called Altitude that allowed locations off the surface of the EarthNet to be defined (namely outer space and underground), and an add-on module for VirtuDesign called PlasticSpace that allowed the interior dimensions of a structure to exceed its exterior dimensions. With one software release, VirtuDat had solved the land battles. With PlasticSpace, the space taken up by a doorway on the Net could contain an entire universe. The first dramatic use of Altitude was unvelied to the public when invitations to visit the Moon were extended by The Emperors of the Moon. These invitations plastered billboards all over the EarthNet. All that was needed for a user to visit the Moon was a small public domain software module that would compute the Moon’s position at that time and then move the user to that location on the Net. The Emperors had devised a unique virtual environment that actually revolved around the EarthNet in a manner that mimicked the movement of the real moon. The software module was the only thing that was free about the Moon. The Emperors, having built it, owned it, and were intent on making as much profit as possible off their creation. MoonNet spawned a whole virtual solar system that included bodies that had no counterpart in reality.

VirtuDat was intent on maintaining its edge on the competition by leading the way with the next generation of VR hardware. Every VR company was working on neuro-cybernetic plugs, and VirtuDat was no exception. The consensus was that this technology would replace the headsets of the first generation of VR. When Anton and Jazz started with VirtuDat, there already were plugs on the market, but the public had not rushed to embrace the new technology because most people were put off by the idea of connecting serial cables and power cords to their heads. The outbreak of puragu-jin, which surfaced around the same time as their employment began with VirtuDat, further acted to dampen the growth of the neuro-cybernetic plugs.

The general consensus was that wireless connections were the answer, but this still left the problem of powering the hardware that had been implanted in the user’s skull. VirtuDat had been working on a prototype that used an external battery clip, but this still involved a wire sticking out of the user’s head. The company’s marketing department had determined that the vast majority of the consuming public would not even consider a plug until its presence was wholly unobtrusive.

This was where Coleman came into the picture. He had grown up in Compton and had been enlisted with the Crips at the age of ten. Luckily for Jazz, someone noticed that he had a brain and put him to work alongside the technos. Saved from gun slinging in the streets, he quickly learned all they could teach him about computers, which they were using for accounting and some piracy on the Net. The gangs had grown into rather sophisticated businesses, and business requires technology to stay ahead of the competition. The gang was grooming Jazz for a top position in their hierarchy, but he had different ideas. When a scholarship offer came through from MIT, Jazz split the West Coast and the Crips before anyone had noticed his absence.

What made VirtuDat and every other major corporation very interested in Coleman was his thesis work, which he had done on the conversion of biochemical energy into electricity. He had devised a silicon-based ATP converter. This enabled electronic devices to run on the same fuel that powered humans. Jazz held the pending patent and every corporation in the business wanted it.

It was about a year after his arrival at VirtuDat that a working prototype using the new converter had been developed. During the development period the first reports of puragu-jin surfaced in Japan. The cases were more widespread there simply because the Japanese had been the only people to buy into the first generation of plugs to any large degree.

The new prototype was ready, but VirtuDat could find none of its employees willing to try out the new jack because the puragu-jin stories had left everyone a bit skittish. Seeing that his work was going to go nowhere until someone took the plunge, Coleman volunteered to be the guinea pig.

The plug, after a few minor adjustments, worked perfectly, and VirtuDat geared up production in anticipation of a huge demand for the plug. They had a market coup on their hands and wanted to be ready to flood the stores with the VirtuJak 2. After training legions of doctors around the globe on the implant process, VirtuDat launched a massive advertising campaign. Among the claims made was that the VirtuJak 2 eliminated the possibility of the puragu-jin syndrome.

When VirtuJak 2 hit the stores, the response was phenomenal. Doctors had months long waiting lists of appointments. It was about a year after this that Jazz became a puragu-jin. Karpov had been jacked-in alongside Coleman to put his latest skullcap through its paces. Coleman was there to monitor his progress, and if there were any glitches, there would be two perspectives on what had gone wrong. His role was to follow behind Anton as he rode the Net.

The major difference between the holographic skullcaps and the plugs was that the caps were input/output devices, whereas the plugs relied on output made by either commands entered into the user’s console or information from datagloves and/or datasuits. The plug merely served as a translation bridge between the electronic information coming in over the Net and the user’s sensory channels. The skullcap eliminated the need for the console, or at least the continued need. A fresh skullcap was like a babe-in-arms: it knew nothing; it had no concept of its function. Using a built-in neural network, the cap learned how to negotiate the Net based upon Fourier transformations of the three-dimensional image of the electromagnetic field created by the user’s brain. At the outset, the user had to use a console in the standard manner to execute commands on the Net, but as these commands were entered the skullcap read the Fourier translations of the corresponding brain state, and the neural network ‘learned’ the relevance of the information based on a feedback loop from the console. The beauty of this method was two-fold: first, once the cap had learned your brain patterns (which left the neural network imprinted with your unique brain signature), you could think your way around the Net; and second, it meant that the level of sophistication of the skullcap was open-ended and fully user-determined; a user could design subroutines on his console and then teach the neural-network the pattern of brain intention that coincided with the execution of the subroutine.

These aspects of the skullcaps were, however, the reason VirtuDat was keeping Karpov’s work on the slow track. They felt the buying public demanded ease of use in electronic devices. They wanted something that required no thought on their part, not some new technology that required time to master. VirtuDat’s directors felt that the skullcap’s market was a limited one, or, at least this was the case in its current state of development. It was branded a ‘Techy Toy’ by Hamilton Polk III (whom Anton regarded as an obsequious, blue-blooded twit) and the label had stuck.

So on this late September day a half year previous to his exchange with Jasmine about his drug habits, the two men jacked into the Net. This was the first free-jack that Anton was making with his latest prototype, which meant it would be running purely off thought. They had decided to ride out to VirtuLand II in Santa Cruz and test drive the skullcap on the VR games at the complex. They had split a hit of Godhead an hour before, and it was beginning to kick in.

Godhead was a synthetic amphetamine-alkaloid polymer that had been developed in some clandestine lab about a decade earlier. It contained methoxyharmalan, a stronger derivative of harmine (7-methoxyharman), the principal alkaloid in Ayahuasca (Banisteriopsis caapi), a South American vine from whose lower stems have been brewed a hallucinogenic tea known as Yaje by natives of the Amazon and Orinoco basins for centuries or more. It has been described as the most powerful hallucinogen known. The second alkaloid in Godhead, scopolamine, was derived from Belladonna. These alkaloids had been alternately bonded to the benzene rings of amphetamines that had been combined to form a long-chain polymer. The result was a hallucino-stimulant plastic with no need for packaging as it was already in a marketable form. The chemistry was of little concern to Anton; all he knew was that there was no buzz like Godhead, if you could call it a buzz. There were many trips that Anton had experienced which later left him at a loss to explain in any logical manner. In the midst of full-blown hallucinations, he would occasionally have moments of pure clarity—a clarity of totality: all things moving in harmony within and without him; his consciousness stretched to the limits of the cosmos, which breathed in synch with the rhythm of his soul. It was during one of these moments while he was an undergrad at Stanford that the idea for the holographic transformation of brain states first occurred to him. As far as he was concerned, Godhead had landed him this well-paid, cushy position, thank you very much. And cushy it definitely was. Where else could he be paid so highly to take drugs and play VR games on the Net?

After jacking in, Anton suggested a game of cross-country virtual tag to check out the skullcap’s response times to movement commands. There was no competition: Anton was able to run circles around Jazz. The cap’s response to his thoughts was seamless—so much so that a few of his maneuvers gave him vertigo. He had also programmed in a few subroutines that proved to be quite impressive. One routine made him ‘vanish’ from the Net and then reappear at a nearby, random location. This vanishing was not just a virtual visual effect, but involved his momentary jacking out of the Net. For a split second, he was back in the office, and, then, as soon as that environment registered, he was back on the Net.

Jazz was in pursuit of him on a long straight-away down a grid line when Anton first tried his vanishing routine.

When Anton reappeared, he was about six meters to the right of the location from where he had vanished. Magic.

It had worked just as advertised—at least the ad that ran in Anton’s head. He was so busy basking in his own glory, that a full twenty seconds had transpired before he remembered Jazz. When he turned his head to the spot he had left, he saw a badly flickering image of Jazz lying where Anton had vanished from the Net. He immediately jacked out.

Sprawled over the console to his left was Jazz. Anton jerked the skullcap off his head, pushed out his chair, and stretched his left fore and middle fingers out to press against Jazz’s carotid artery. A pulse. He turned off Jazz’s console.

Anton buzzed reception for an ambulance. He lifted Jazz’s right eyelid. No one home. He got up, crossed the room to his desk, and retrieved a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. On the third attempt, he managed to shake a cigarette from the pack and find his lips with a shaky hand. He fumbled with the lighter, lit the cigarette, and returned to his chair to wait for the ambulance.

The two ambulance women arrived shortly thereafter. Both were in their mid-20’s, one brunette, the other with chestnut-colored hair (possibly Hispanic) and both apparently natural. No surgery. Anton was amazed by his ability to ogle these women at such a time. The women set about their work. The brunette began asking Anton questions.

How long has he been like this?

About twenty minutes.

How did it happen?

I’m not really sure. We were jacked into the Net and then the next thing I know, he’s fried.

Did you see anything unusual that might have caused this?

No, not that I can recall. Anton searched his memory. Well, now that you mention it, I have a vague recollection of seeing some intense light coming toward us from the left that I caught out of the corner of my eye. It’s only now that I’ve remembered it. I couldn’t tell you what it was. Maybe it hit him.

Maybe . . . Anyway it looks like we’ve got another case of puragu-jin here. That’s the VirtuJak 2 implant he’s got, isn’t it?

Yep. He designed the power system. In fact, he was the first person to have one implanted.

Where’s yours? When she asked, she looked Karpov over from head to toe, as if she had only just acknowledged his presence in the room. Anton felt an involuntary response in his loins.

I’ve got a problem with implanting shit in my skull. Besides, I’m working on a different design. He vaguely motioned toward the skullcap on his console.

Do you mind if I give you a quick check-up?

Check all you want, honey.

Why?

Just to see if you have been affected in any way as well. You were next to him on the Net, right?

Well, sort of . . . I was jacked out for about half a second when it happened . . . Karpov’s mind began to take a leisurely stroll into the copse that had materialized in the corner of the office.

Hello? The brunette was bent over before him waving her hand in front of his eyes. Anton snapped back to reality.

Oh. Sorry.

What are you on? she asked with a stern grimace pinching her lips.

Ah . . . Godhead.

Him too? She jerked her thumb in Jazz’s direction.

Ah . . . Yeah. The second wave of the drug was beginning to kick in, and this always left him fairly stupid for about half an hour.

Shit. You people are unbelievable. Aren’t you a little too old for this sort of thing? Anton grinned sheepishly.

Hamilton Polk III walked into the room as she was speaking. I just got out of a meeting and I heard that Coleman had had an accident of some sort, so I rushed right over. He paused to allow everyone the opportunity to appreciate his presence. And then, as an afterthought: Too old for what? I’m sorry, Hamilton Polk III, VP for marketing. He thrust his hand before the brunette. She did not take it.

Jasmine Reynolds. And that’s Carmen Gonzalez. Carmen nodded in response. It seems your boy geniuses here have been partaking of a little Godhead while on the job. Are you going to stand there all day like that? Polk’s hand was still grasping the air waiting for a mate. He frowned then returned it to his side with a flustered smile.

So, is that what has caused this? he asked as his other hand swept an arc to where Jazz lay slumped in his chair.

I don’t think so; though it probably isn’t helping.

I see. Well, Mr. Karpov. I think you can consider yourself on an indefinite leave of absence as of right now. The company will be in touch. Good day, ladies. I won’t keep you from your work. He turned on his heel and departed. As he turned, Anton caught a smile creeping across the corner of Polk’s mouth.

I’m sorry, Jasmine said. Looks like I’ve fucked your life up.

Ah, don’t worry about it. I’m on a five-year non-dischargeable contract. They can’t fire me and I can’t quit. My salary will be reduced, but that’s no big deal. I’ll still be making more than enough.

How nice for you. But seriously, I really am sorry. It’s just that I’ve got a real problem with Godhead. It completely fucked my brother up. During this time, Carmen had set up the stretcher for Jazz.

Um, Jasmine, shouldn’t we get this guy off to the hospital?

Oh yeah, right.

Need a hand?

No, replied Carmen and with one motion the two women lifted Jazz’s body from his chair and onto the stretcher.

Is it all right if I tag along? Anton asked sheepishly.

Yeah, sure. They’ll need someone to give them his details at the hospital. As it would appear, it doesn’t look like he’ll be answering any questions any time soon.

Okay. I just need to grab a few things. Anton picked up the skullcap and a couple of CD’s that had his latest programs on them. As an afterthought he went to the console, made a copy of the Net transcript from his journey with Jazz, and then purged the files. A little insurance, he said to the room.

As they left the building, Anton felt surrounded by walls of accusing eyes. Bad news travels fast, he thought.

The rest of the day in the hospital was a blur of questions, hallucinations, and general unease. The hospital had an air of authority, and authority always bummed him out when he was tripping. It made him feel accused and guilty. Somehow in the midst of all that, he had managed to arrange a rendezvous with Jasmine before she had left the hospital. He figured that she had agreed because she felt guilty about getting him in trouble.

Jazz did not regain consciousness that night—not that he really did afterwards, either. They kept him in the hospital for a month during which time Anton visited every few days. Jazz’s condition improved somewhat, but he spent the majority of his time in puragu-jin land. Even when he was not in a daze, it was like talking with someone in the latter stages of Alzheimer’s. Halfway into a sentence, Jazz would lose his train of thought.

Anton would occasionally see Jazz walking around in his puragu-jin haze after his release. When he would try talking to him in this state, Anton’s presence would not register in Jazz’s eyes.

A couple of days after the incident, Anton played back the Net transcript on his home console. He was able to rotate the perspective of his view 90 degrees to the left and play the last ten seconds of the transcript before his vanishing act in slo-mo. At T minus 3 seconds, a pinpoint of light appeared on the horizon, which was a distance of 1750 km on the record mode of his work console. This light approached his position at a steady rate so that it always appeared exactly perpendicular to his course. The EarthNet had a built in speed limit of 200 km/s, which had been imposed from the start to avoid ‘accidents.’ This limit was enforced through both hardware and software specifications (the only exception being the NetPolice, who could travel at speeds up to 400 km/s). Not only was it next to impossible to overcome this barrier, but the penalty was also extremely prohibitive: a mandatory three-month jail sentence (in the real world)—and you would be found because whenever you were on the Net, you left your signature behind. It was, of course, a goal of many would-be HackerGods to ‘speed the Net.’ Whoever or whatever this light was did not seem to be beholden to the same restrictions, nor care about consequences, for, after a quick bit a mental arithmetic, Anton figured it was traveling approximately 617 km/s. As it drew closer, Karpov could make out some detail of the object. It looked like a ball of fire, or, more correctly, a miniature sun. The image was somewhat transparent, as he could still see the landscape behind it, although around its periphery the background undulated in a manner similar to the effect of heat rising off a summer road. The center of the ball of light produced error codes in the transcript. Whatever it looked like, the console’s recording equipment had been unable to translate it into visual data. At the moment he had vanished from the Net, the object was no more than a meter away. Watching the playback left him with the distinct impression that whatever it had been on the Net had been after him rather than Jazz, who was just an unfortunate victim—not the intended target.

Anton decided to jack in and visit the local NetPolice station to see if they had caught this speeder. When he arrived at the station, Officer Sherman greeted him. He had the usual persona of a NetPol: handlebar mustache and the body of a steroids abuser. Anton was certain that the real-world Sherman was a weedy little man.

Karpov filed his report and then asked whether anyone had been apprehended. With a quick scan on his console, Sherman assured him that there had been no such speeding incident on the day in question, but tried to compensate by stressing that he would still log Anton’s report.

The next day there was a message for Anton on his console:

Had an unexplained incident on the Net?

CALL THE U.N.O. HOTLINE

WE CAN HELP

1-800-BELIEVE

Lovely, he thought, now I’m on the fruitcake mailing list.

About five months later, he was in the VirtualDive, a semi-trendy, semi-freakshow club and bar near his apartment in the East Village. It was still early in the night, so there were only a handful of people at the bar. Anton had just taken his first swig of beer when he felt a finger tap him on the shoulder. He turned to find Jazz standing behind him. I thought I’d find you here.

My God. Why? I never come here at this time of night. You know that—or at least you did. How the hell are you doing? Are you back with us?

Well, somewhat, at least for a little while. Sometimes I’m allowed these periods of lucidity.

Allowed? What’s that supposed to mean?

Just that.

I don’t understand.

Neither do I, but I know I’m right.

Here. Sit down and I’ll buy you a drink. He motioned to the bartender for another beer. So what the fuck happened?

I’m not really sure, but something got me, something big.

You know, I replayed the transcript from that session and there was something there. It had a bead on me for about three seconds and then I disappeared just as it was about to hit me. I think whatever it was, was intended for me. What was it like?

I’m really not sure . . . You know, I’ve only been awake for about twenty, thirty hours since it happened.

No shit?

Yeah. That fucker’s been in control of me almost the whole time.

What do you think it is?

I’ve got no idea, but it felt like it washed me clean when it happened—I felt violated.

How so?

It felt like it was a vacuum cleaning out my mind. Like it was sucking out all my mental content.

Anton paused to take a mouthful of beer. So, you really think something got hold of you?

Definitely, and definitely an it. Whatever it was, it wasn’t human.

What does it feel like when you’re zoned out? I’ve seen you a couple of times since you got out of the hospital and it was like you didn’t know I was standing in front of you.

No shit? The last time I remember seeing you was in the hospital . . . I don’t know. I’ve spent a lot of time in limbo—like I was in storage. These months have been like a dream that I can’t remember except for small snatches of wakefulness. It’s so strange. The only thing that sticks in my mind is Stanford.

Stanford? Why?

Fuck if I know, but it’s not from me, it’s from whatever it is that’s running my show. Jazz paused to let this sink in and downed half of his