Continued from Part 1.....
-THE NEUROCEAN LINE
--The Way Back (continued...)
APPENDIX...
-XP SCORE OF READERSHIP + RANKING
-PERSONAL RANKING
-A ‘DISRUPTIVE’ HISTORY : Origins of THE SPIRAL ‘Superweb-Worlds’ [7XP]
-From ‘The ORIGINAL PREMISE for ‘NEUROCEANS’ Project Wikispace (2004) [3XP]
-OUTLINE OF THE (NATURAL) LORE (OF BEING) connected to THE GAME OF BEING
-GAME DESIGN NOTES and INFORMATION [3XP]
-SOME CHARACTERS AND GROUPS [3XP]
-TERMINOLOGY
CYBERPUNK POETRY & Perspectives... [5XP]
POST-CONVERGENCE
CRY OF THE LORDS
CALL TO THRIVE
THE GAMERS
THE UNRELATED SPACE
PRELUDE / OVERWHELMING WORLDS
THE FEARLESS LORDS
THE DARKENED
SCREEN PEOPLE
CONFLICTION
HOLLOW GAZE
THE TECHNO TOWER
ENCLOSURES
YOU ARE ME
ITEMS
THE COMPUTER
E-ODE TO LONE GUN 3O
AUTHOR NOTES
COPYRIGHT
He closed his eyes with one hand trembling considerably on the small glass while his news pages came up on the wall screen. When his eyes reopened they fell onto the freeze-frame he’d seen that morning. It showed his pale, younger self emerging with Rosa from the Immertech headquarters after the session, being supported by Zack and some paramedics. Not depraved-looking. Deprived.
Then the vision came back to him of those two figures, waiting for them on the shore of their secret island. Perhaps the most sinister moment in the whole experience, seeing them from a distance. And the leaves on the trees of the island gently, seductively moving.
‘If people have no need for these places they will not exist.’ He wondered at the words, as the last person to have been in the Neuroceans. It could even have been Caleb suggesting, perhaps, that such realms would always be realms of power and stolen liberties. Certainly he’d seen such places since. Or had it been Peter Giger, hoping he would understand his curiosity better.
Since then, after the island automatically disappeared, the system had been altered dramatically. He’d helped ensure it. The Neuroceans were shut down, and the interfaces were altered following the widespread knowledge of the cause of the comas, and his report concerning surfacing and the effects of the Line. He had received some compensation for the initial side effects, which included an overwhelming urge to ‘focus’ again. The perfect control over a world.
So then he’d thrown himself back into work, developing ideas and code for a new type of sim, dedicated to revealing the wonders of the natural world. It would begin as a multi-player survival education game. It would use the older interfaces… for now. It was his spiritual therapy and an attempt at promoting ‘confluence’ he knew Blake would have appreciated.
And how much I’d liked to have shown it to you. The plans for Fountellion, a new island. But by then you’d been turned off… forever.
Its positive effect had won him fame and some peace of mind. And it had helped cure him in many ways and might cure others. Though never completely. It couldn’t erase memories.
And now these news items recently, telling him that the new interfaces were emerging again - those of the Immertech variety - and the Neurocean case would soon be re-opened; he knew it. He’d known it would be coming. People want to transcend... And who would be there to supervise and ensure proper procedures? Would they let him back, as a previous victim of its dangers? No… he was already partially unhinged. But I have less to lose.
Had the sensation up on the ladder been the effects of a new plain of reality? Had they felt it? That the mind creates this world. To them, it had been all too real.
Blake had told him once, “We will detach our minds from the worlds where they were born and fasten onto new ones.” They were back in New Sherwood. “We will cross the Line.”
And the premonition: “There will be more coming. Much more. It’s the next evolution. Playing games with the brain.”
Confluence though? That had been their mission.
There was no doubt that new interfaces would be extremely powerful in virtual super-immersion. But as his mental condition testified, the boundary was worrying. There was still much to do in testing the technology and in acclimatisation, and without something… without inspiration… to keep people… grounded, there would be more negativity to come; more abuse. Bedlam.
There are more things in heaven and earth…
Outside, a gust of wind blew at the leaves on the poplar trees and swayed them. Some of them were ripped off and joined the wind.
We live and we learn… but how life punishes us for living… without some wisdom of what life is… all around us… and within.
I’m not out of it… just yet…
The thirty-nine year-old man still stood, staring at the floor in blankness, awaiting more thoughts to reach where they would be at peace. His virtual powers meant nothing to the simple room where he stood. But he had done his training. He may not be a father, but he was an innovator; a pathfinder. It was his life and the meaning that it had for him. And perhaps it would lead again to that greater transcendence, that perfect interface. Would people be ready for it this time, after the lessons they had learnt? Perhaps it would lead to something beyond, for civilisation. Something total. Beyond the line to some new state of being. Or perhaps something closer to what he had always really been looking for… a greater connection with this world… the Source. For a moment he just stared at the restless motion of the wind through tree-leaves beyond the window.
It will all evolve, he thought wearily. Possibly, but sometimes evolution made the wrong adaptations, and too fast. As I have seen.
The girl’s face appeared again in his mind, the wind blowing the flower loose from her hair, and she laughs, taken by surprise, and by the wind. A great tree behind her. It was a vision she had given him. He now knew – for sure – that it had never happened, but that Rosa had sent it and he had found it sometime later. A piece of VR video, sent by her diminishing profile to his Inbox. It was you. She had wanted him to see it, keeping it for him maybe, just in case anything had gone wrong. The resonance of it had stayed with him; had saved him from falling off the ladder completely.
Rosa.
Her face was younger, before their work had begun, and he had lost her. And they had lost Blake. He thought again of their bright, simulated faces, bobbing on the surface of a new ocean. Almost there. For one, true time, they had all believed in one another, and their work; the virtual future. His feelings swam towards the goodness of it, and within his own life, and believed that it could still be applied to a future. He was sure these memories, now that he had faced them again, would be the strengths to bring back, up to the surface.
One final dram into the stomach. But it would be no passing, whiskey-fuelled resolution. For he would start packing his things again tomorrow - for the Division.
Rosa, I’m resolved. It was cooler outside, with a breeze rising. This world wills it, through me. It blew again, and he would go out into it, and back into it.
Nothing else, but to go back…
To more work. More designing. More virtual testing. And the completion of Fountellion, his nature world, the seed of The Spiral.
There was a famous quote: ‘When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain he wept for there were no more worlds to conquer.’
A sudden image; of a vast, shining tower reaching into a dark, never-ending sky appeared in his now addled mind.
On the contrary, there will be too many.
………..
…….
….
..
Each story, fragment or poem comes with ‘completion of readership’ Experience Points (XP), starting with Part 1.
If you keep a personal track of what you ‘complete’ then you can gain an idea of how much you have progressed in understanding the overall nature of ‘The Spiral’...
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Members of Firecube (Academy of elite virtual space-‘shapers’) begin work on the ‘Game of Being’: a positive, spiritual game/MMO influence created for the NEUROCEANS (advanced virtual spaces for high-spec interfaces).
The ‘Game of Being’ achieves rapid success and helps drive creation of the more advanced interfaces.
ImmerTech : immersive hardware company announce link of brainwaves to virtual interfaces.
Rumours of ground-breaking, ‘disruptive’ hardware being prepared for widespread release.
Negative incidents and concerns arising, both major (such as the ‘Boston Line Incident’) and minor (addictive potential).
NEUROCEANS server access is closed down as funding and support diminish.
Positive and negative virtual worlds still persist, accessed by conventional interfaces and headsets.
SECOND COMING:
THE SPIRAL PROJECT emerges from the Development Division along with THE SPIRAL INTERFACE; a mature, enhanced version of ImmerTech technology.
It proves extremely successful and promises to save the virtual technology business and enlighten users with its array of curated, enriching virtual spaces.
Everyone wants more Spiral. The Spiral Tower is growing rapidly with new portals...
The well-known founder, designer and elusive virtual project leader Prof. Benjamin Fielding goes suddenly semi-’underground’, possibly due to:
Continued problems still ongoing with the potent effects of The Spiral? Cracks appearing in The Spiral fabric...or… Is he about to produce a new project?
FOUNTELLION rumours and questions begin to surface...
Is it to be the long-awaited successor to the spiritual ‘Game of Being’? Is it part of the Spiral Tower or fundamental to THE SPIRAL FABRIC? Does it make ‘complete’ use of the Spiral Interface in a safer way? Could it be the promised game-land and refuge set to redeem and secure not only the entire, controversial virtual technology business but mankind itself?
A much-coveted ‘Closed BETA’ access to Fountellion begins…
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There are no limitations... only imagination, ideals and passion manifested in these initial projections and scribblings... voices from the Neuroceans... ghosts haunting a virtually connected time... Jack-in to explore a new revolution in human technology-powered expression and creativity... where its secret pioneers must come together with a willingness to explore and relate the goodness and terror of its possibly real... but still only imaginable plunder...
[intro on the ‘Neuroceans’]
Neuroceans - a term applied to the visionary or imaginative possibilities to be manifested in Cyberspace.
Neuroceans – it is also a realm of emerging Virtual Web-worlds primarily for the testing of new interfaces for in-world navigation and interaction.
Neuroceans assume that Cyberspace will become the New Dimension or Medium for interactive art, concepts, gaming, workspaces and lifestyles to flourish; new oceans where the mind, nerves and soul may retreat or be released into its creations.
In this phase of the Digital or Information Revolution the Grid’s (the new web) widespread effects are becoming apparent. Artificial Intelligence and Gaming is becoming more and more sophisticated. There are increasingly likely possibilities of fully-immersive, Virtual Reality-sustained environments in the future, as interfaces for their access improve.
This section concerns initial projections surrounding the direction and content of these possibilities. It concerns the marriage between Art and Technology. What you read here may appear to have physical boundaries and conceptual limits or labels - but there are no limits for the cybernauts of tomorrow. For now, the old media communications must be utilized to carve forth the artistic and utilitarian cyberworlds of the future.
It would be true to say that when technology develops, humanity may normally find acceptable uses for it - else it quickly fades.
However we are dealing with increasing powers and unknowns. There are revolutionary and convergent powers at large. The slow development of Cyberspace/VR to acceptable levels (detailed and effective replication of our reality) that draw serious human involvement may lead to radical changes in various, even crucial aspects of human civilization. Surely there is value in examining or re-examining potential life-enhancing or threatening capabilities of such technological entities? There is concern for the human spirit in the wake of possible magnification of human desires and increased divorce from the limits imposed on us by reality, capitalism and collaborative evolution.
At the time of writings I am merely a student keen to express my enthusiasm, ideas and inspiration for the application and development of technology for humanity - its potential for expression, communication and entertainment.
Stories, voices, characters, poetry, songs, ideas, artwork, papers, assessments, projections…
It is hoped that visitors here will find warnings, motivation, hope for the entertainment and spiritual worlds to come. There are no limitations...
Convergence - a conceptual future where all medias will join together to provide dangerously intoxicating experiences - of music, colour, form, interactive capabilities, liquid architectures where the ghosts of our personalities reside. All artists involved with any medias are automatically involved with what may or may not come...
One of the principle motivations for this section was not just to present my own speculations but to strike a chord with like-minded artists and writers aware of the rising dominance of technology-based involvement, and to bring them together. Hence embedded within the scattered fragments of voices and characters haunting particular worlds there are the Innervators. Hopefully there will be contributions from anyone who is active in the fields of technology or art to come together here, who are as stimulated as I am about the future.
N E U R O C E A N S
The term neuro is connected with the brain and the nerves. The idea of oceans involves numerous worlds and the potential for immersion in these worlds by the brain and nerves which created them. We are all to an extent at the mercy of the world's currents and yet the mind hopes to free itself and gain increased control. Therefore it’s the sensory attraction and the absorbing, ‘controlling’ or visionary potential for creation which stimulates. We are ourselves interfaces to the world, manipulators of its environment for our life-force to become secure within the harshness and celebration of its conditions; ‘Cybernature.’ New, man-made worlds within the world will become the new tools for greater influence and spiritual unions between us...
If our culture is to be technology-led then surely creative opinions, visions or directions are now needed. (2004)
'Let us begin to face the perplexities involved in making the unimaginable imaginable and the imaginable real. Let the ancient project that is cyberspace continue.'
- Michael Benedikt, Cyberspace: First Steps (1992)
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‘Know your code within, so your chutes grow strong and intertwined.
For here, as new worlds of light and darkness unfold and entice online, there is much work to be done to protect the Source from our own misconceptions, and also to reveal its - far greater - reality to ourselves. And this can be done through a reflection just as enticing, and possibly more so.’ – from the Firecube Introductions
BACKGROUND
The Lore of Being is demonstrated within the Game of Being, or GOB, which is an early Multi-User Virtual World Game, which also prepared users for Virtual Immersion and Interaction. As it became more well-known, more scenarios were linked to it but all attempted to ‘grow’ a character to ultimate fulfilment within a tribe of fellow players, or survivors. These include finding a place within this group, learning skills and gaining confidence as time passes.
DEVELOPMENT
A team of designers and developers created the GOB, including Rosa and Syla Rooker. Some of these individuals would have been members of the growing Firecube Academy, a secretive group of virtual artists with a strong natural and scientific perspective. It would influence greatly Professor Benjamin Fielding who would later be a key figure in The Spiral and Fountellion, a game fabric and game-world with a new interface. More ambitious and involving, this later game was also highly nature-based, but built to encourage a more direct involvement with the natural world. The Insights were much more elaborate forms of GOB Insights, but the Lore is still interwoven into its fabric, especially in The Village realm, for example.
SCENARIOS OF THE GOB
Survive with a tribe in a forest. Learn skills and management of basic resources.
If the Lore is not followed, the Game demonstrates how players cannot proceed. Although there is no real way to ‘Lose’ the game, there is outcome and XP.
Collaboration, Communication, Self-organisation.
Survive as other animals: see nature through their eyes, including cats, birds of prey, other wild animals.
SAMPLE
The Lore of Being, also called Earthlore, has no real boundaries or ending, so long as the human spirit survives. For it is no fastened code, but a bid and a path to freedom and balance. It lives and grows; it changes, though some of its wisdom is timeless to humanity. It should enable survival and confluence, or else it shall fail and be lost, until it can be found again by some future species seeking to live harmonious lives. It can be found and re-written by its very need to be. It is virtual and it is real in its manifestations, and is a mix of suggestion for contented living interwoven with fictional situation, music and art. It is somewhat a guide for the spirit, through history and through being…
Its living text is illuminated by and through light to bring people together through their knowledge and experience of the Lore. They may discuss it as they discuss life; share their desires; hear its music. They may come to understand its laws. It was first put together for game scenarios to demonstrate, from the inherited wisdom of many scientists and writers, and from times going back into the dark ages of man. The Lore seeks to expand through Science. Its power works to unite men with the earth; to promote harmony and respect. Men are of the earth and it is the earth’s energies that flow within it; as men’s minds are of the earth. Its lore may change through respected Keepers of the Lore of Being, those who have lived its Being, and have felt the fruit of its power.
Once the Game of Being is completed, players are awarded the status of Keepers of the Lore, for they have used it effectively and shown they have succeeded in life.
It holds magic, paths to powers of peace; mystery; the mystery of human thought and imagination – human knowing - that has forged its existence in a world of need and drive, substance and desire. Its magic is to remind men of their own being. For everything lives for a living, a needing, a loving; the world’s continuance is forged through love and its needs, its responsibilities. The mystery then, is the presence; the existence of the lore. The mystery of our knowing, our sharing, our coping with ourselves, envisaging and serving the stability of our people, our fears, our unions. And yet its existence serves desire, is fashioned by it, and it in turn explains the mystery. For it holds knowledge for those responsibilities, a celebration like a song of moments and wonder, that colours a world and allows participation in its goodness.
Its words should curl like living vines, growing out like a part of nature… a living, evolving package of human creation, worked into the very fabric of the living world. An Earthlore. One of the Earthlores. And where could it lead, this creation; this fashioned world where the power of memory lived and stored the human deeds and voices from the past… Into some other world of thought and song; a transportation into lost lives, who had struggled the same and spent their force into the ongoing spirit of mankind on this old planet with its strange creatures. Is this what it contained for the self? Where it is written, it will be old but it will smell fresh and inside, beautiful – majestical – script and freshness; a great freshness from the pages.
From such a lore, many personal lores grow also. For it encourages the writing of one's own being. These works are indirect examples of the Lore, and hold power also and may die out with their keepers, or may live on. They are thought by their keepers to be in harmony with the Lore of Being. They are no less minor and in truth are all part Earthlore. The Secret Garden is an influential example of an Earthlore.
What must one do? What must one find through what lies locked inside these words to be unraveled through the mind? What can be dreamed into the presence and life of today? How to touch the world, how to feel at one, how to touch lives, touch others, how to be and belong here in one’s own life, among lives. Can it help to see what it is about living and giving, taking and needing, making and moving through, that leads one’s fellows in the tending of the Earth, the fashioning of our place with the animals. This wisdom has always been within us, and any wise man may find it and draw upon it for his living, and its magic will grow onto others. Yet through the Lore it is made manifest once more, and lives amongst men to be well known and to illuminate with greater ease and accessibility.
“It is what’s best in men.” - King Arthur from the 1980s film ‘Excalibur’
OTHER ASPECTS:
Everything is Influence.
The terrible beauty of the cold, divine mathematics within a hungry evolution.
Towards a greater spiritual Convergence, the following may assist:
The Lore is the New Outlook.
The Game of Being helps define the Lore of Being.
It is a code that can be broken. A crack-able Code.
For the mind needs its structures of survival and delusion.
The Body is struggling for FREEDOM, perhaps from the burden of the cluttered mind, seeking purpose, meaning, and love of one's self, where one's self feels love for the world.
The mind inhabits spaces… within these spaces… acquirement of skill and personal expression… complement Reality…
This code is fluid, flexible, unfixed; its rules may bend and be broken.
The Lore is a new-old, suggested way of being, of living and seeing the world. One that might be more truthful, and harmonious for the self amid the world’s forces. Our art, and our humanity lies above, to assist this.
Game Theory: where moderation, harmless intent and motivation to give is the constructive answer. It is somewhat a game of Chess; one should make time to focus, learn the moves, make the moves, change strategy… play a good game.
Positive Energy
Negative Energy
Balance, belonging, well-being: the Stages of Life
Belief – in the world, in the Lore and in love
ON CORRUPTION/SUBVERSION OF THE LORE:
There are those who have seized power from the world and nature.
They use it to attain power - connection, success, respect and belonging.
But it is nature who has given them the power to attain power; the necessity to attain power, magnified. They are the voices of nature.
The power-attaining process, if not checked to keep in confluence with the Earth that is our garden, may damage our future presence on the Earth.
The use of power determines many things, including its erasure of the means by which that power has been attained, and its implications on how future power will be attained.
Words from a Chief Keeper, at the end of the Game of Being:
Well friends and colleagues, I believe in freedom. But I’m aware also that people and systems allow for and carry such freedoms. I certainly hope that you do not feel confined by this compiled system or code, derived from the legacy of other such systems and from scientific understanding. However, there is hope that you may find more hope, energy and freedom in your lives within its observations.
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Prof. Benjamin Fielding – Project leader of The Spiral fabric and concept, ex-Firecube.
John Leaven – friend and fellow founder of The Spiral and Fountellion
Carter – friend of John Leaven, addicted to the Virtual, lost in the dark worlds of The Spiral. A symbol of the failure of The Lore of Being to save those already marked by the earlier, immersive qualities of the Virtual Webworlds?
Dan Harvester - regular guy but veteran gamer stuck in a vicious circle of escape and reality. A victim of games, or someone destined to shine?
Neuroceans:
Blake Welder – coder and tester
Rosa Rooker – coder and tester
Zack
Castellan: disabled, still going, but vulnerable
Peter Giger – ImmerTech investors
Miranda Finch
Charles Rooney
Salvagers:
John Leaven
Hoff
Firecube:
Syla Rooker – She helped write the Lore of Being, and the Game of Being
Rosa Rooker
Fountellion:
Greenwise, the Estuary Guardian - a guide (possible NPC /AI)
Bleakmuse (NPC / AI)
Rogues: Disgruntled or damaged avatars/players
Rogue Minds: In-world maths-based Artificial ‘life’ avatars
Agents/PIPs: pre-programmed avatars/profiles
The Falling: hacker group, mostly harmful, seeking to subvert the virtual and ‘restore the real’. They wish to bring down The Spiral Tower.
Agent
This is an Avatar which is uninhabited and pre-programmed with parameters that enable it to act within Cyberspace/Virtual Worlds, such a gather information from other agents or avatars. They are not the same as Ghosts.
Avatar
Visible, graphical entities assumed online for interactive purposes. They may bear no relation to sourceworld genders or actual physical characteristics. They may not be inhabited but by Artificial Intelligence/pre-programmed settings.
Bedlam(4)
A dark invented webworld or Blacksim. Within it, many different experiences await the visitor. If found by authorities it would be shut down, but it is almost impossible to stop its re-appearance. Primarily, it exists to manifest the darker aspects of humanity (although most would argue, magnify). Those supporting its visions of hell and desire are mostly libertines, free speech or from the artistic world. The problem is that it has been used to aid those in 'passing on', and can contain elaborate suicide seances and scenarios rigged to reality, but fatally altered. It is also associated with negativity, vice and immoral venting. Some support its existence while most, including the Salvagers and some Game Clans, fight to prevent it.
Binding Path
This is the central path a player takes through a game or a game-world towards ultimate completion. There may be more than one, but which would require further programming. In many cases a quest or a trial is successfully completed to gain Experience Points or some kind of Insight prior to a new path opening. Depending on the story or game, the binding path may be open-ended, meaning that possibilities remain at the end of the game, or the game changes to open up a new dimension or type of game in its place.
Blacksim
A general name for any sim or virtual world that is believed to encourage negativity, vice or dangerous behavior including the encouragement of addiction and crime. Much controversy can surround this label or accusation for a developer, for example with many fantasy game worlds featuring positive or creative requirements despite being based in a negative or law-breaking scenario. Such examples can be said to even prevent real episodes of crime, despite a few infamous or stand-out cases allegedly being attributed to it. On the other hand, such publicity can boost sales and promote the game world. It is agreed across the board, however, that Bedlam4 type experiences are far too vivid or extreme.
Bound / Unbound webworlds
Secure, private, possibly un-editable virtual spaces as opposed to those more exposed and accessible.
Bot
AI program, of varying kinds, such as Ibs – Interface Bots – which can be tied to one’s avatar to increase powers.
Convergence
This is a word to describe a time when all media (music, video, text etc.) were converging into digital format and online spaces, whereas before they had existed in differing formats and technologies.
Crossing Over
Refers to The Neurocean Line, or similar 'nearing the Neurocean/Line', an alleged condition of the cyber-realms. It causes sickness, mental disorientation or sensations of disembodiment. They are cases of such mental immersion (due to interfaces harnessing brain activity) that the body may be lost or drowned. There is much conjecture surrounding the line. It was first encountered by visitors to a webworld called 'Boston Island', a legendary but also infamous creation that led to cases of mental overload and death. Extended powers in RL were said to have emanated from some of the users, contributing to a conspiracy theory and to spiritual or buddhist concepts. Following this, interfaces were created more in tandem with RL experience sensory experience. Rumours continue and searches for mystical interfaces and powers are widespread.
Demiurge
Originally this term had other meanings and context, but it began to be used as an official term for a founder or creator of a Virtual World with its powerful or God-given connotations – and presumptions for attempting to control those within it.
Disenthralled / Disenthralment
This is when users of Virtual Worlds are disconnected too quickly, leaving them disorientated with many symptoms being attributed to this.
Double-timing / Doubling
Engaging in motherworld activities such as eating, at the same time as cyberspace ones. This involves a talent for sensory duality.
Dreamspire
See Spiral Tower
Emergence
Emergence / Emergent Gameplay refers to complex situations in a video game that emerge (either expectedly or unexpectedly) from the interaction of relatively simple game mechanics. [source: Wikipedia]
Falling, (The)
A potent group that – when using this title - seek to undo the virtual and all its creations. In much lesser forms they seek only to test themselves on systems as destructive/constructive hackers. They can also be very akin to gamers. Many support their cause when negative cases arise of the impacts of certain dark worlds or games. However, it is agreed that when they strike they generally do more damage than harm and that some of them have great misconceptions about the world - and its worlds - and can often be used or motivated by marginal or extremist religious groups.
Firecube
The Firecube Academy (of Virtual Artists). ‘The flame is the drive and the cube is the mind.’ This is based within the virtual Know-Zones. There is taught the weaving of colour and light: ‘the true magic of design’, in all its forms. For with the control of imagery comes the responsibility that comes with summoning such illusion and using it for controlling purposes. That is why the Academy retains aspects of a natural Lore (the Lore of Being) to accompany its skill-teaching and envelop them with a form of nature spirituality linked with science. This has added a sense of mystique and weight to graduates of its online programs. It also teaches a significant level of coding and mathematics. The Institute exists solely online (in illustrious backdrops and virtual settings) and often works closely with other groups, such as developers and different sections of the Web Police. In reaction to the widespread proliferation of online schools, Firecube became more selective and secretive, and it is known that its Apprentice-Teacher method is by invitation only. Selected recruits are shown the mystical ‘Introductions’ or Firecube Insights, including ‘The Innervating Way’ and ‘the Forms’. These show something of the strength of design, its connection with science and its power to deceive and also inspire. See also Innervators
Fountellion
Also known as the Flux. A positive web-world and mystical realm of nature, imagination and science. It emerged from the much less advanced ‘Game of Being’ in which players, or seekers, were invited to live through a variety of scenarios. Early publicity stated that in this advanced web-world ‘is hidden the mystery of our connection to nature, the death of specific religion and the revelation of Evolution, Function and Diversity.’
Fountellion is still almost a legend and is said to be hidden within the heart of The Spiral and where access has occasionally been bestowed or withdrawn to select players. It is said to be an island, partly due to the alleged involvement of Prof. Ben Fielding, a survivor of the infamous ‘Neurocean Line’ incident on ‘Boston Island’ test-sim. For more see The Spiral.
Focus
In deep virtual immersion it is a form of flying - beyond basic floating - unique to The Spiral Interface and was particularly developed as a signature aspect in the mysterious nature-illuminating Game-world of Fountellion.
Game of Being (the)
An early incarnation of a nature-based Game-world, where users could gradually acclimatize to the advanced immersive qualities of virtual interfaces, learn about various features of virtual immersion (including ‘brain-wave’ control) and also unlock insights into a secretive ‘Lore of Being’. This ‘code of being’ –an ‘open code’ that can change if science reveals new revelations - was drawn from natural inspirations and famous texts. Both the Game and the Lore intended to promote positivity and harmony in users of Virtual Reality, where concerns were already growing about its more harmful properties. The Game of Being was closed down, partly due to ‘Neurocean Line’ incidents, and partly due to damage from hackers. There is still uncertainty as to the real cause. However, due to its development by certain members of the Firecube Academy, its legacy and its lore (which is still widely known) was to form its successor: the much-rumored, nature-island of ‘Fountellion’ in The Spiral.
Ghosts
Uninhabited avatars etc. or dysfunctional or dead PIPs.
Grid
A new type of internet hardware was required to carry the vast data quantities needed to deliver Virtual Web and Virtual Worlds for business and home users. This became known as the Grid.
Griefing
A term for causing harm or abuse to another person's online presence, virtual presence or avatar, off-line or whilst 'connected' or 'in-world'. This may take a variety of forms, but it is taken seriously because of the immersive or enthralling nature of the Superworlds. See also: The Neurocean Line. The Salvagers continually review such cases.
Guild
Respected professions. Nearly all of them contain training programs that take place in The Spiral.
Firecube is one such Guild.
Hat / (Mind)-Hat / Headset
A specific and essential part of the equipment that allows brain and sensory access into cyberspaces.
Immercam
Immersed camera. This is a program (given any virtual representation) that will record images and experiences from specific or total perspectives inside cyberspace. These 'experience' cameras are not the same as data captivation or software signature-stealing programs.
Immertech
This was an early incarnation of the Development Division, in which Dr. Ben Fielding originally worked as a tester and graphical designer. It now focuses on the hardware side only, including The Spiral Interface, working closely with the Division.
Innervators / Innervation
These are users who play a vital role in virtual world creation or maintenance either as designers, lore keepers or mages. The positive term also implies the bearer has attended the Firecube Academy and is highly versed in design principles. It can also apply to anyone who has inspired others through their work in the virtual for making the cold but colorful spaces highly interactive, emotional or involving in some way eg. Game designers.
Insights
These – it is rumored – are a feature of the Virtual Island of Fountellion, and give to the player unique understandings of Nature as well as possible upgrades and powers in the game world. Their form of virtual ‘revelatory experience’ has been described as powerful to the mind and senses, that the user remains heavily inspired back in the real world. People began to use the word Vinsights, in sharing and discussions, to distinguish them from real-world vocabulary; such were there prominence in a standard user profile.
Interface
In computing, an interface is a shared boundary across which two separate components of a computer system exchange information. The exchange can be between software, computer hardware, peripheral devices, humans and combinations of these. Some computer hardware devices such as a touchscreen can both send and receive data through the interface, while others such as a mouse, microphone or joystick are one way only. [Wikipedia]
Jack-in / Jack-out / Jackers
This can mean to immerse, but more specifically refers to connecting into or disconnecting from certain webworlds using various types of interface and hardware. This may not be a voluntary procedure.
Know-Zones
Knowledge Zones of virtual interaction with information began in the Neuroceans and quickly found a home in the new Spiral. They were advanced spaces that enabled customized learning, sharing and demonstration of Real-world and Virtual Skills. They allow for great possibilities in communication, collaboration and understanding/insight. The Lore of Being is also ‘shown’ here.
Lore of Being
An ‘open code’ or lore that is a spiritual guidance for living for all people. It is evolving and changes are advised by wise members of society, the Masters, or Keepers of the Code. These changes do not occur very often. Many of its original tenets and wisdom originated from 'The Prophet' by Kahlil Gibran and also from nature science, including evolutionary science. Originally it emerged out of a need to ‘acclimatise’ users of virtual technology to the responsibilities and powers of virtual immersion and interaction using the more advanced interfaces. For example, ‘progression’ for players of the Game of Being involved unlocking/understanding many of its main principles in order to pass on to new levels in the Game. Its legacy was inherited into The Spiral worlds, and also its successor, the more advanced nature realm of Fountellion.
Mages
A term for players who have considerable, recorded experience of worlds in The Spiral, and have proved willing and able to prove their power. They are considered wise and responsible for guiding other players and promoting the message of the Insights, positive, natural elements allegedly only found in Fountellion.
Mother-world / Realtime / The Source
The natural world or reality as we know it, as opposed to the Superworlds, the man-made Virtual worlds.
Neurocean Line
Also known as the ‘Boston Line’. See below
Neuroceans
Early webworlds / superworlds that first encountered the phenomenon of dangerous loss of mind and body control. It was a double-sided creation, mostly due to its utilization of an advanced interface that led to cases of suicide or death. (It was even claimed that extended powers in RL were said to have emanated from some of its users, contributing to conspiracy theories and heightened support for spiritual or buddhist concepts). One of its ‘test-beds’ was shut down as it was alleged that company insiders were the cause of certain incidents. Another result that was claimed was that the interface was never completely tested and had caused such a deep connection with a Virtual Environment that research may never now fully explain. Other rumours say that the information still exists regarding the interface. This may have been due to the influence of Dr. Ben Fielding – one of the testers and subsequent designers of the later interfaces – who successfully shut down the Neuroceans project and files.
However, some positive outcomes emerged from ‘The Neurocean Line’ dangers. New brain-wave interfaces were created more carefully and more in tandem with RL sensory experience. See also: Crossing Over. This includes the emergence of The Spiral Webworlds, a tower of ‘locked-down’ portals to web-worlds which have passed full testing.
Neuroceans Worlds: These contained many early and often ill-tested sims, often developed by members of the Firecube Academy. These included those of the Embertime musical Jamworlds, these tranquil spaces were designed uniquely by Firecube to inspire and enthuse the visiting ‘soul’. They were refuges of peace to restore feelings of well-being, aligned to the Lore and highlighting the deep connection of our species to the Earth. Named after the free spirit of imagination Ariel in Shakepeare's The Tempest, it was originally unbound, but became increasingly attacked by negative hackers and vandals. Eventually it was destroyed in its original form, but versions have arisen ever since and rumours of a lost, secret copy still in existence persist. An opposite world to Ariela is Bedlam4.
NPC
Non-Player Character. In a game environment this could be any character that is not controlled by a player. This typically means a character controlled by the computer through artificial intelligence.
OP (Online Presence)
The entirety of a person's online settings, profiles, memberships etc.
Open world
This is where a player can move freely through a virtual world and is given considerable freedom in regards to how or when to approach objectives, as opposed to other computer games or environments that have a more linear structure to their gameplay. Open world and free-roaming suggest the absence of artificial barriers, in contrast to the invisible walls and loading screens that are common in linear level designs. [source: Wikipedia]
Overlay
This term refers to any motherworld space that has been 'shaped', (graphically drawn into the virtual world). It is a fast way of 'space-shaping' or attaining a virtual platform. This correspondence between the real and virtual can be used to ease orientation and enhance a known realspace. The space is effectively filmed, before a special application draws the given dimensions into the virtual. If the user was then to maneuver around the space, feeling the objects present, the system would require a direct link between real and virtual motion.
Persistent World
A persistent world can be achieved by developing and maintaining a single or dynamic instance state of the game world that is shared and viewed by all players around the clock. The persistence of a world can be subdivided into "game persistence", "world persistence" and "data persistence". Data persistence ensures that any world data is not lost in the event of computer system failure. World persistence means the world continues to exist and is available to players when they want to access it. Finally, game persistence refers to the persistence of game events within the world. [source: Wikipedia]
PIP(s)
Personal Interactive Profile(s). These are graphical / informational representations of our character values. They can also be a form of 'Intelligent Agents'. This means they may be quite elaborately pre-programmed or pre-constructed to handle our affairs (including roaming, networking and info gathering) in the spaces, especially when the live host is absent. This means they will also be highly encrypted and secure, so that none of these effective identities can be stolen. Some highly expensive ones may even become Artificial Life Minds with character traits resembling and attached to their user. These are regarded as individuals in their own rights, but have no real emotional nuances.
Procedural generation
A method of creating data algorithmically as opposed to manually. In computer graphics it is commonly used for creating textures. In game world creation it is used for creating large amounts of content in a game. Advantages of procedural generation include smaller file sizes, larger amounts of content, and randomness for less predictable gameplay. Sound can also be generated this way. The term procedural refers to the process that computes a particular function. Fractals, an example of procedural generation, express this concept, around which a whole body of mathematics - fractal geometry - has been developed. [source: Wikipedia]
PvP
Player(s) versus player(s), is a type of multiplayer interactive conflict within a game between two or more live participants. This is in contrast to games where players compete against computer-controlled opponents and/or players, which is referred to as player versus environment (PvE). The terms are most often used in games where both activities exist, particularly MMORPGs, MUDs, and other role-playing video games. PvP can be broadly used to describe any game, or aspect of a game, where players compete against each other. PvP is often controversial when used in role-playing games. [source: Wikipedia]
Sandbox sims
Test-bed virtual worlds, particularly for emerging ‘brain-wave’ or Neurocean interfaces. Some of them involved processes for entering and exiting, such as ‘Slow-surfacing’, as used for the infamous ‘Boston Island’ sim, closed down following an incident of virtual abuse and death.
Salvager Squad
Of Web-rescue. A crack team of techies operating virtually but most often in reality/the Source. They are dedicated to saving 'victims' of the web; those thought to be suicidal, dangerous or addicted. They trace specific individuals or clans with the purpose of reaching them before they can harm others or themselves. When not tipped off, it can involve specialized tracking and tracing and high access levels. They have been criticized for interference in the choices of an individual and the freedom of the web. They work closely with rehabilitation methods and webworlds, and as a result are also criticized for mind-washing. However, in fighting webworlds such as Bedlam4 and encountering its 'victims', many of the patients they find require some kind of rehab. The division of Web-rescue work more indirectly, with the more widespread but more subtle forms of web addiction.
Sensation-Spaces
Elaborate entertainment cyberspaces, less for gaming purposes and more for direct mood-affecting or spiritual experiences.
Sims
Another term for ‘Virtual Webworlds’
Source (the)
This is Reality. The natural world. The evolving presence – and pressure - of the Earth or mother-world.
Shadowlands
Reality, aka The Source.
Shapers
Space-makers and web designers, possibly trained at the Firecube Academy. Many of these may become Media or Weblords.
Spider
Indexing (search etc) bot.
Spiral (The)
The Spiral is a growing web of advanced Virtual Web-Worlds (most effectively) created for the use of the advanced Spiral Interface. They are linked virtually by The Spiral Tower, or the Dreamspire with its multiple rooms with doors to worlds that are connected to it. They form the various needs of society: science, gaming, visualization, desire etc. The tower grows higher the more worlds are connected to it.
A way out of the Tower is said to lead to the mystical nature-realm of Fountellion, an island of Nature and Revelation.
Spiral Interface
A special variety of Virtual Reality Interface that emerged from the infamous early worlds and testing sims that were ‘The Neuroceans’. Like never before, it provided a deep, signature connection to virtual environments by utilizing brain-waves and various physical aspects such as breathing. A special term ‘slow-surfacing’ was used to describe returning to normal reality. Once widespread health concerns had been addressed, including new overlay systems and acclimatizing features in-built, it was officially re-launched to coincide with The Spiral. This concept aimed to link - online - any worthy Virtual Experience or game world that utilized the interface’s potential and had passed full-testing and screening procedures. The immersive potential allowed for such deep involvement with the Virtual that many of these experiences were entertainment ‘escapist’ creations, although many educational and scientific ones emerged too. Ironically, this also included a nature-illuminating island world of Fountellion, which aimed to remind all visitors of a deep relationship and connection to nature, the ‘Source-world’.
Supertime
This refers to the ability to work, move or act faster when immersed in Virtual Worlds.
Superworlds
See webworlds.
Survival games
These are a subgenre of action video games that generally start the player off with minimal resources, in a hostile, open-world environment, and require them to collect resources, craft tools, weapons, and shelter, and survive as long as possible. Many survival games are based on randomly or procedurally generated persistent environments, with more recently created games often playable online, with multiple players on a single persistent world. Survival games are generally open-ended with no set goals, and are often closely related to the survival horror genre, in which the player must survive within a supernatural setting, such as a zombie apocalypse.
The Tower
See The Spiral
V-Web
Virtual Web, including the worlds of the Neuroceans.
Webcrafts
Graphical containers for avatars in cyberspace to convey a sense of travelling from one place to another. This differs from direct jumping to certain addresses.
Weblords
Beings of powerful influence online.
Webworlds
Public or private, cohesive ‘virtual cyberspaces’ where it is possible to access, or jack-in, from any location and for numerous purposes. They vary greatly in degrees of immersion and development for purposes of gaming, communication, teaching etc. One of the most elaborate types could be said to be The Spiral : the public, widely-played, always running, open-ended virtual tower that features portals to other worlds. Their nature and access has been designed for The Spiral Interface, although other interfaces have been used. Recently, an updated, little-known but much talked-about version of the Game of Being is on the verge of being released, and is called Fountellion. It is said to exist outside of the Tower itself.
Extracted from an early volume of poetry: ‘Gathered on This Beach: Poems & Perspectives for a Converging World’
Lost is this soul in shadowy worlds while in a sandy swamp as it rains, golden, with the dreams, the visions of our fellow fires. The energies that flow in this dimension; rising; reaching; hoping for an overflow where from the bottom an insect crawls, spontaneous in its itch of life… and so close to the quickness of our real deaths. Fresh wonder in the child’s glow that doesn’t know, of the assessment of its own dark and precious state. Such assessment drives an adult to this action – introspective - in this search for universal, further evolutionary power that makes more mere dreams… until one can exhaust such force.
It is a rapid fire, denuding the wonders of receiver to the struggle of a maker. The rich magic; what is made and flashed before the eyes that is always to be made while bodies of emotion sway in the lands of the mind, motivating the soul… or ruining it. The wise man knows of this blinding, heightening vision; the entry into fires through our own fire-magic or the makings of the mind - and the cool, corrupting combustion that shall work upon the lost; the searching souls.
Now it must be shown:
Wild words wrung out amid loud sounds, through resonating eyes
From careful code
To the figures so restricted in their bones
That space is to be blown -
Worlds opened, richly known -
To find one's soul and settle in some thrown
Above the harness of this force and place
That tries us, and would hide us
Crying and alone...
Or… darkened; narrow; restless…
Unatoned.
'He who binds to himself a joy
Doth the winged life destroy.
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in Eternity's sunrise.'
(Blake)
Will you come?
And thrive inside this sound with me -
Let its light surround us
And re-animate the Ways that will here play
Upon our special day.
Reach out and feel the fire -
Brightening empty streets and faces that so fade -
Become what you desire!
A moment is not worth its mark
Within a free, exhilarating time
When it is forced through cautious, overbearing
Powers of the mind.
Gun-blasts bleed the little men
Over and over
'Till the next stage
Places the next caged
Version of ourselves
In a fresh setting
Dead for the killing,
Ready-ripe for the filling.
The fixated reaching
Wields up
Brain attainments
Clutched in the blood palm;
White knuckle balm
For the hungry source
Of these advanced projections -
Fleeting in the flickering light
Blinking between trees,
The clockwork chaos
Amid a strange place
Only previously dreamed
Unwinds its deluxe and detailed world
From fabric that evolved
Rogue minds
Which search for fresh fulfilment
To stimulate the unchained
Instinctive ways of a being
Unexplained;
Doing what there is to do
That can be won -
Crunched in the mouth for the needy belly,
For digestion to be done -
And once sunned
Slipping to the next…
Until the laws that define the space
Where our embedded actions pace,
Where our imagination takes
Our feelings
Breaks out our special breath
And stills this vast net
Where gamers shake -
Crashing the whole burden
Beyond sensations
Incessantly insisting themselves
Within the crypts of ourselves,
Beyond the quickness of our slick digits
Where an immersion burned of all immersions
Makes it inexplicably known…
That we must complete a life
Through involvement that can make us strive to own
Some sound and balanced, rooted home
For all the worlds where we are known or unknown -
Easily enthroned -
Lost children of our own deep Gods.
Written in a time before Facebook !
I've written pithy poems
I would not utter -
Nor ever utter -
In your pressing presence.
It's this space; this face
And the star of my deep pride
That keeps me barren.
Near and far
From sleep at night -
My many thoughts grow out to you
Yet die within this time and all this harsh
Oblivious life.
Is there to be made another place? An unrelated space
For forceful, thoughtful breathings of our soulful race
To pace freely and to blend with grace;
An eloquence to come
That we could carve with power
To empower or defeat the one;
The madness of the one.
For words make worlds that could unfurl;
Where there's some screen between our beings;
Where there's no rude or crude;
No quick, or cutting consequence
To hinder how our insides mix;
To stain and drain a flustered brain -
Still stranded in these moments rich - but which remain -
So very dry amid the hungriness of eyes;
They fill my mind.
Drink up upon your deep and sweet and overwhelming worlds
Your hungrily rendered worlds of drunken gold, and hordes of words and art on screens
Reflected to the limits of those crowded, glassy organs of your eyes
The teeming shadow-waves of which could safely desecrate the strangeness
Forcing up and spreading out your thoughts from small-stacked rooms
Your faces forced to meet the gaze of real waves inside square mirrors -
The feeling of the ways of eyes so high upon the tide
The knowing and sustaining of its life
The reading at the records of Man's truths
Within their tightened voyage around the suns
Amid the moon - within what is and what must then become
Undone - the glories exigent and wide
And intertwined.
Knowing silky beauty dancing through the maenad mind
Amid the realms of what is harsh
And draining you.
Knowing Life's main duty in the heat while lying closed
Amid cool shells in pools of shade -
Knowing both the fact and fiction of a Life -
That in the fattest butter there is air
And in the air there is the light and blood of suns
Look about and fight despair!
Where minds apply and reach to clasp it all
Defining the Divine that is to shine with the Divine
While simply squinting out before the ragged and the threatening sea
And leaning more towards the trees
Before the curls and murmurs of a vast and temperamental tide -
Holding all the program of our subtle drive
Binding and directing where you work beneath the riding mind -
Loosening and breaking in the waves
And falling down among the raw vicinity -
The rooted beasts of you, and this starkness of me.
Words amid the world
Seem dead by design.
Old voices muttering from pages
When the wind is wild.
Fly - as beholders of the storm
Against the program.
So much brilliant beauty,
Sensation-seeking,
Useless art -
We'd all be Travelers surely,
Young and proud;
Forceful; fearless lords;
Ingesting lives,
Talking out in totality of Time,
Expounding worlds of flame in perfectly articulated ways,
Reveling in revelations - far away -
From humble, darkened fields,
Where simple flowers
Struggle not to fade.
We know the old-aged islands that we are in youth
Within the loud, proud seconds we would waste
While blessed with light and kept from
Plundering the sudden wantonness within our separated souls.
So we must display
A keen, hard sex in homes of millions
So soon forgotten by those satiated and ashamed.
What is the animal reaching out for?
More life - the driving force deluded by itself.
You cannot keep your beauty private with its meaninglessness!
So your love remains unknown by those who suffer on the streets,
By those who aren't your closest friends
But who could be and would care more for you;
They stay darkened.
Senses orienteering and engaged
By strange ranges of a warped world.
Our eyes, our souls are insatiable;
Bald, bloated watchdogs
Peeled back for penetrating,
Filling up upon,
Our silence-filling dreams…
Where the special silence of the total nights
Incites the fires we strive to quench
Through use of powers bestowed on us
From distant suns.
We live stoked-up and so inspired,
In deep and ever-restless
Places of our simple, perching souls;
Demanding of our shadows paths to peace and better being -
Sudden joys -
Acquired through all our dim and misdirecting,
Overturning,
Over-knowing,
Overthrowing
Movie-minds.
Somewhere beyond a cell
Created and maintained by minds
We glimpse the sights
And feel the slippery key
Dig into the gut;
Poking the wilderness within.
Out there
The cries of whales are not soft, exotic tunes,
The circulation of our blood
Pumps in the fluctuations of the weather
Through the rangy wolves, with eyes like pools of the pure moon
Raised together.
They shine like glassy drinks,
Filled from the bottle of the horned God;
The flash of fear and the fang on the skull
Is the clink of the toast:
'To Life's insanity, bare,
Its deep, rich taste
And those who've won their share.'
Escape attempts
Into the unaware inebriation of the wild
Bring us back to the cell
To treasure the sensations
While we scorn the fading of the key
And condition a conscience
For our suppuration in the sea.
The ability to read fast fails.
It frustrates my hope of focus onto
All the figures of the world
The Grecian fires burning on the shores,
Thoughts written filling canvases of paint,
Friend-circles, broken slowly in their time
To be re-drawn in fresh, pretending forms,
Perpetual stormy struggles -
Byron and the Shelleys - gazing from the gloom -
Drowned -
Flickering in the spirits of this world
And on the screen
Transfixing souls with dull-glow
And so much wine and spice
Drenching a fallen state…
It asks us why we strive,
What is the cause towards fulfilment that we'll find?
Here where all that catches busy eyes
Are paths to quick emotions in new moments
In this culture shaping now our minds, our enhanced lives
With thick, invigorating lies.
The terra-stella Techno-Tower -
Tall-standing now and soon to swallow souls -
Is holding close its gold, and gleaming
With absorbefacient songs, and shadows stolen from the world -
We fill with colour there, and turn over, so amazed
To know reflections of ourselves inside our prisons under glass;
Our coldness within stone.
I would offer my own suffocating soul up - whole -
If through this new Tower's replicating spells
It could restore what broke at Babel;
Heal this sense of fear amid a force of fire, fragmented
And assuming homely cubes
Diminished by close space and blinding use of minds.
Full and naked visions of the stars that squint upon us from the clarity of night
Susurrate through our struggle to the hollowness of will
Where our wits have glorified in paint - ideals -
That thrive in its electrically-enchanted fields…
Yet still this will - it needs unleashing
Where the Tower spins quietly its worlds to re-awaken
All such celebratory powers:
A realm of interweaving realms wherein
Our Darkness can assume new, unimaginable attires
And dance - its joy away in flickering facades
That once did tower round the flickering of more familiar, feral fires;
Ranting back at the long black breath of the night around us.
Half our lives
Lie sheathed among the knives
That sleep in darkened corners
Of this world's new rooms.
Drawn out - they shimmer in the sun,
Glimmer with the moon,
Sharp in the awareness of the stone
That scrapes away their bone,
Blunting the fine edge.
The subtle struggle to secure our soul
Constructs the phantoms from the mind;
They grow out together, crowding skies
Becoming a complexity
That blocks the chance to fly.
Have we here enclosed
The real, impressive sparks -
That melt away all masks,
That concentrate our fear
Around the making of great Gods
And at the full exposure to their sound -
Like the sound of crashing and replenishing waves -
Could break us loose -
And let us let out cries into the places where we hide
That no thin squares of sky
Might ever hide or disguise.
This is me -
Is me -
You are only
Somebody in a film I think
The Idea of me -
You make me fulfil
Far away from Life in the here and now
That waterfalls
Out of myself -
Where a face is covered by a blanket of a mask
And itches where the brain-waves bleed - eradicating me.
Severed from physical intensities with you -
Where there are roles we could play for awhile -
(You - calling me by funny names -)
Make us make no story or particular, transforming dance -
The sudden acquirement of a long-dead laugh -
But only recognise the wind and altering of light on me, on you -
Dying - where no lens shines to rescue
With effects
What you could do
In the other-ness and void…
Give me a cigarette since you're here
Depleting the drift of a poem - speaking to itself -
Drag me away
From the elaborate smoke
That is the chains and twisting ropes
Of this silence under life;
Eating at our voices and our useful words,
Deconstructing all the dreams where we're unique
And I am not what dreams and shadows make me Me.
We live in soft focus
So it's easy to forget
The depth,
The tragedy;
The cold vicinity
Of the knife-edge.
Sudden storms
Bleed across the substance
Of its surface.
And what can we do -
In the space of a short time
Given to the gifted,
Attached to the mind
And desolately empty
Amongst the items
That make us feel -
The missing quantities of dead friends
And the deep Why
Apparent in the zoom-out
Of our whole lives.
Hums and runs… computing… processing… storing… responding…
Why have we created this machine that hums and trickles as if to live and breathe?
A symbol of our brain-power, nature-blessed, to extend our nature within… across time and space…
It runs…
Where all media converge…
Where new software is born within its hidden mechanisms, pre-programmed by our needs to perform actions that will be instinctive in its system; its platform, built for systems…
It runs…
For us to interface with information, managing our world activities and adapting to sudden change…
It runs…
Without experience…
Living every moment to fasten its kind above a world within the moving storms of nature…
It seems predictable and yet a sudden virus reveals the precariousness the machine inherits from its creators, from reality, stricken suddenly with disaffection, death and loss…
The loss of all our memories, save for what is saved that lives on in future use and future growth of power over time and distance…
It runs…
To perform its tasks more efficiently than it is in our power to perform…
It is more powerful than us…
It has power invested by us…
It is a new brain to relieve our own brains and to create a new consciousness, a shared internet to carry our dreams and our desires, quicker and closer, in a cyberspace stripped of physical danger…
It runs…
It has brought us towards an instantaneous connection of thought and desire, managing our needs… bringing us closer over distance… extending our identities out into the worlds of extended trade and deed…
Will its new worlds of information and understanding save us from ourselves, our strangeness, our proliferation, through its powers now strive to manage this same proliferation?
Thus it runs…
To keep in tandem with the world…
To let us change in accordance with the world’s whims; the eco-system that we sit within…
We are of the world and it is of the world…
Striving for balance and for life and for its peace, and yet it allows more safety for us and less savagery…
For the world is lazy; it is only savage by necessity…
Yet it runs…
False worlds, non-threatening where our desires are magnified – where desires are used by some to feed off those in others…
It illuminates this unreality where, as in nature, some are weakened, some gain strength…
It bears a new, more passive extension to the hunger of nature…
It is a soulless slave without our guilt, used to better control a changing world…
It needs updating – faster, streamlined, for instantaneous handling of complexities;
The maintenance of our human race…
It runs…
We control, we are controlled, by one another, by our needs and by nature; by our need for a computer…
That is controlling us?
Like never before our desires may control us through a computer…
For the positive and negative that must maintain a balanced person, may be loosened without the anchor of reality… with just the addiction of what is offered…
It runs…
Re-wire the mind to quicken its thought capacity…
Electrical, calculations bearing up
Our natural interactions, needs to know and to show…
Our mysteries, our fading mystery…
The computer runs…
Our brain-worlds feeding nature to our souls in stronger doses…
Virtual realms where thought runs free from harsh realities…
And we are focused all together perhaps on one thing at any one time…
On what we are presented with right now…
It runs…
The computer is a window into our own natures…
Stripped of what reality – mother-nature - serves to hone them and to bury them with.
Or submits them to where new worlds – computer-powered – gives now new chances to escape them more, and so be free from fear…
To never be lonely or oppressed by death, but be continually consoled by the disembodied words and understanding of others, by the presence of one another freed from physical harm and from life itself…
It runs and hums…
The web favours the understanding and aesthetic soul… it heralds now a certain retreat from things we fear in nature, and in ourselves… unless we bring those elements with us through its Icons, its idols of power; its tiny windows becoming huge when opened…
It runs on…
To break on thru
You needed 3 codes
To access your own new future…
The white of the long boxes
Lay in the synthetic air
Empty and eager
For the info-rich; the well-connected select.
The GUI you’d souped-up; fully primed,
For the hidden space; it was the darkened place
To seek out, download and exec the correct face.
The Guide’s implants you knew
Lay locked and idle, fast inside you
Pulling the sweat out;
It was not a full-proof zone
To go it alone
The data had some old bones
And only Hope10 said they’d been picked for you;
Some sympathetic SYS-Lord or Super-man; a hacker-guru…
With the blessing of the Oracle.
You punched in the cool key sequence
Rattled some bones of your own
And the words were yours;
Ripped or copied out, razor-quick;
Pasted into the pocket of your sharp e-senses
Console-tuned.
Before any ghost trace glimmered up in the system;
Hawk-Mods zeroing in, to swoop down
Savagely.
For then you were gone, out-drifted,
User-proof and secret select;
Chanting the password;
Chanting the net charm same as the real: that it’s ‘who you know
Not what’ -
That helps a wired-in, fixated soul break out;
To make it
Phreaker/jacked; outbound
For higher levels of art and soft command,
Secreted and un-jaded; jamming forth
Unto the Know-zones;
Education–weighed; a mind-tune set-up
Wet-modified; emblazoned
For the better control of worlds.
I see you Lone Gun, I see your sigh;
It falls down to me from some new high u ride…
And I expose my eyes;
We did hear false but brilliant chimes in our accelerated time -
So I raise my misty glasses unto you;
I expose my eyes;
I throw u this goodbye.
[POEMS COMPLETED! +5 XP : BACKGROUND ITEM - see more re: XP + Ranking]
This is a project of speculative web / VR science-fiction, with an emphasis on ideas about the future of Virtual Reality (Game) Worlds or VRMMOs/VRMMORPGs [or more recently: ‘Metaverse’.]
Some of the writings were originally posted on a wikispace called ‘Neuroceans’ from about 2004 onwards. Since then they were published on Scribd.com, but I’ve wanted to fully re-visit and update them into a 2016-17 edition. This is partly because of ideas that started forming around ‘The Spiral’, a virtual tower of online worlds underpinned by a strong spiritual and nature-based influence.
The early site is The Spiral Times, for news of extra writings and deeper background information (including a further Terminology).
Book 2…‘Fountellion in The Spiral’ on Amazon in 2017... [re-released 2023]
I hope a few of the ideas contain value or inspiration for the future of this exciting technology now emerging. As with most sci-fi, it is partly a message to - and a belief in - the future.
Stay with me folks…
Ade m-c
2016-17
Read the ‘Avalogs’ of Dan Harvester… lost to the first ‘Green Game’…
Published internationally by Greenwise Designs: (Ade’s Press)
©️ Ade M. Campbell 2023
All Persons Fictitious Disclaimer:
This book is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters and situations within its pages and places or persons, living or dead, is unintentional and coincidental.
End of Line.
Ade M. Campbell
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