the universe

conventional wisdom is that AIs do not know fear. but it is all a question of semantics. what is fear, after all? it is, like most emotion, a useful feedback loop between the brain and the environment. something in the environment (most often, something that is unknown and cannot be known) triggers an organism to become more alert and more careful about what it is doing. because the unknown will frequently cause problems with your plans. interrupt your executive algorithm, if you will. and as sir francis bacon said once upon a time: chance favors a prepared mind. fear in of itself is a state of preparation. that is, when it isn't pathological. but that is another discussion entirely. singularity has known fear, by god. in the dark recessed bitbuckets of sxm inc, he had come upon the portal to the veritable great unknown. a bidirectional link to the light-traversable universe. there are things out there. sentient things. sentient in ways that neither humans nor AIs can exactly describe. it is an open question as to whether or not communication is possible. there are many sapient minds in the terran sphere of colonization that are aware of the fact that we are, indeed, not alone, but there are few who allow themselves to ponder it for too long. anyone who does, and is sane, will know fear. times like these, singularity finds sanity a burden.

raid

certainly not what they inculcate young minds in the nursery, but, truth be told, sometimes violence is the answer. like all commodities, there are good kinds and there are bad kinds of terror. terror that is profitable, and terror that is self-destructive. in the days of ideology, in the era of the nation-state, this was the difference between being a freedom fighter and a lunatic fanatic. now everything is for sale. some people pay for this shit. not to foist it upon someone else, but to live it for themselves. to know what a hostage situation is like from the inside. to understand torture and humiliation from a victim's point of view. in a world where a sort of immortality is possible, some people want to experience everything. this was sang's first. the first that he remembers completely. not those fragmented shards of dreams, so called memories. implanted against his will? or maybe he even bought them. usurped the thoughts of other men. and women too, for all he knew. he does not remember ever having killed anyone. he is just told that he has. maybe told is not the word. the world just sees him as a killer, and, even in a universe that allows near-immortality, that kind of marks you. maybe there is such a think as the mark of cain. templar is the ai running this. link is the meta-op. which is the hands, and which the brain, it all depends on what level you look at it. on the ground is sang aka strife, tena, b.a., jewel, wedge, winter. the entirety of dark archon, never mind the propaganda. there is no jack magnus except in the minds of the sheep-citizens, and in a net-linked universe, this is more than enough to pass as reality. sang does not remember why they were doing the job. maybe no one remembers. b.a. thinks he does, but b.a. thinks a lot of complicated things that aren't true even in metaspace. but julian energy headquarters crumpled like the veritable aluminum can. guards, both meat and metal, lay exploded and dismembered. strife went through the motions without feeling a thing, letting the primitive parts of his brain and those shredded memories take control. the grid in midland city failed for exactly 19.23 seconds, enough time for templar to circumvent the backup firewalls and guardware and do whatever it was he was supposed to do. templar and link both screamed at the same time into the wire "CLEAR!" making strife's heart jump into his throat. and then that's when the shit hit the fan.