Dopamine

People choose how they fail. Sometimes unwittingly, but usually knowing what they’ve decided.

Advice from the Darkness

3 Weeks Later - Megacles - The Sugar Lab

I wake up at Candy’s. I’m alone, she’s out. I rustle up some breakfast. All the food is healthy, which is annoying, but it suffices to sustain life. She’s offered to change my preferences in food. No thanks.

I go to her lab. It’s used mostly for hypnosis, and looks like a recording studio had a baby with a bordello. I fire up her hypnoclone and overlap my lab from home. I study my God Machine. It’s not working. I’ve fucking killed another one.

My attempts to breed a green sulfur algae that can survive above the ocean’s floor have met mixed results. I’ve developed several strains that can survive at atmospheric pressures, but they all still get fried by direct sunlight. I suspect that if I do manage to fix this, they will lose their quantum perfect photosynthesis, which would not suit my goals either.

The God Machine will inevitably be a bio-optical computer that can only handle very small amounts of light. Fair enough, I can build that. Unfortunately, that drastically slows down the training process. The info from Project Octopus has to be loaded into the God Machine via photons, and if we go too fast, we fry the fucking thing. But if we go slow enough to preserve the algae, I’ll die of old age before we’re half done. Not ideal.

I’ve been trying to make a more robust algae configuration that can accept more light by expanding the contact area. Doc’s been trying to make the world’s most gentle laser. The ol’ tickle blaster. Neither’s worked so far.

All frustrating, but not unexpected. This kinda shit takes some trial and error. I instruct my lab to build a slightly different fractal algae array to receive lasered instructions. That should keep it busy for the next couple of days. I watch it work for a bit, cause i’m a colossal geek, but after 5 minutes even I get twitchy. I’ll tune back in when it’s time to fry it. For now, let’s see what Mr. President’s up to.

Our economy’s in a death spiral. Without jobs, people have stopped spending, which makes more people lose their jobs, which lowers spending again. This is where a competent government would step in to hire people and spend money, but ours just keeps trying to kill Project Octopus. Mr. President is supposed to be meeting his economists about this crisis. Instead he’s sitting in a bar. The Darkness is with him. There’s a handful of security, bar staff, and drinkers present. They’re going about their business quietly. It’s clear Mr. President came here for some peace.

He drinks for a while, then begins to speak.

“We’ve cured pretty much every disease. That’s good. It’s got some problems - amnesia and agony - but I’m sure we’ll work past that. Given time. More importantly, we’ve developed a system that takes desperate people with intractable problems, and outputs reasonably happy people with almost miraculous solutions. That might be the bigger achievement here. It’s a shame we’re about to lose it because powerful forces don’t want to lose their desperate underclass.”

He takes a long drink. We all wait. Eventually, he continues.

“I’m gonna turn Project Octopus on itself. They’re a lot smarter than me. Let them figure out how they’re gonna fund themselves. And fix all our collective problems. The central conceit of government is striving for stability. To make each day the same as yesterday. As if the future can be put off. Let’s abandon that and build a government that changes everything as quickly as possible.

“The new mandate for Project Octopus is to make a functioning economy without jobs and to give us all superpowers. They’ve got three months until we’re out of money. Let’s see what they make of it.”

Mr. President and The Darkness drink for a bit.

“You’re unusually quiet.” says Mr. President. “Hit me with the heavy stuff.”

“Arrgg.” groans the Darkness. “You’re trying to build a new government inside of the old one. It may work. And having many people make decisions together generally leads to more equal societies. But is that what we’re doing? Because giving political power to workers, turns workers into politicians. And a politician’s first instinct is to grab more power for themselves. Do you have a plan for that? Cause this is a big experiment running fast and loose because you’re desperately short on time. The unintended consequences could be dire.”

“I hear that.” says Doc-Danger.

I jump. I’m shocked - Doc-Danger’s here! Virtually here, but still. He has full access to my feed, one of two people who can tune in at any time. But, he always adheres to a rigid schedule - Monday to Thursday. Never Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. He’s so unexpected, it’s disorientating. I actually check the date, even though I know it’s Saturday.

“If we make superconsciousness, why would it help us? I don’t go around helping ants.” He’s drunk. Not happy. His plan is troubling him.

I crack a beer. Drunk talk is about balance. “You help the billions of little cells you’re made of. The God Machine will help you for the same reason. Because it will be you.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. Pattern recognition algorithms can only mimic the top half of sentience. It will be smarter than us, in the sense that it will have a superior ability to mold the future by massaging the subtleties of the present. But its desires will align with ours, because it simply won’t have any of its own. It needs us to be its id.”

Doc frowns. “So I’ll be, like, middle management in my own brain?”

“Oh buddy. The real you is a bundle of desires buried under self control, social norms, cultural expectations, economic necessities, and governmental interference. We’ve been middle management for a while now.”

Doc continues to frown. Then shrugs. Perks up a little. Hearing you were born fucked can sometimes do that.

“I love you.” he says.

“I’m glad.” I say.

We chat for a bit. I have to run errands, I’m hungry. I ask him to come with me. He agrees, gets up and walks with me. Hmm… wonder where he’s going in real life.

We wander through the city. Smoke and drink and eat and laugh. We stop by a large ad screen, and get distracted by the girls booty dancing on it.

“I can totally see why people join dance troupes.” says Doc-Danger.

“They do look like they're having fun.”

“I want to have fun. Excuse me a moment.”

Doc-Danger adjusts his avatar and jumps into the screen. He gets about half the moves right, and flubs through the rest with booty wiggling intensity. It's the best thing I've ever seen.

He pops out of the screen to a few cheers. I hold out my hat, and some kids throw money in it. They’re doing it ironically, but it'll buy me drugs just the same.

We stumble along, joking about the ads everywhere. I block ads on the internet, I kinda forgot about them.

Doc studies a men’s fashion ad. “I don’t understand this. Am I supposed to get a man bun?”

“No. Definitely not.”

“I suppose that would be hard to monetize. What about the kimono?”

“Sure. We’ll get you one.”

“Sweet.”

“What do you think of Mr. President’s plan?” I ask.

He shrugs “I dunno. Probably won’t work. Mind you, doing nothing definitely isn’t working either. At least with his plan we’ll all go down together. There’s a dignity to that.”

Fuck ya. We laugh and drink more beer.

“Why are you making brains anyway?”

“Holy shit! Will you look at that!” Doc-Danger sends me a link to view his feed. I invert mine to see what he’s looking at.

It’s a big fucking tree. A huge evergreen. Rimed with frost. Above it, the Milky Way stretches to the heavens. Billions of stars are visible. He must be far, far from any man-made light. The frost and the stars twinkle. It's otherworldly and beautiful.

I look at him through his live feed. He looks great. Worn down, but strong. Pretty rough, but fucking beautiful.

We make love.