Pattern

Bob sat in the VDIC lab with his wife and the Fred. TARS was working at a research station in preparation for their next operation on the New Coke case.

Salote offered, “Hi Fred. How are yous today?”

The Fred in unison replied, “Excellent Salote. I hope the same for you.” They continued their work.

Salote looked back at her husband and asked, “How was the investigation yesterday? I heard you found a good lead on the soda demon? Got a bear to help? Bears are awesome and I’m not surprised he’d help.”

Bob laughed, “Yeah. I had two choices and I picked the bear. Why make things harder than they need to be? I could tell he wasn’t really that into it. Bears are usually much better dancers.”

Salote teased, “Well, you are an excellent dance judge, Bob, I’m sure.”

SaloteG ethered that their dog wanted to talk to them.

“Bingo, what is it?” Salote ethered back.

“Bingo hungry. Bingo sad. Bingo miss momma. Bingo want momma home or very large treat now,” the dog ethered back.

SaloteG ordered the knitter to start making a treat for Bingo remotely via ethernet.

“Bingo happy. See food. Tail wags. Come home soon, momma. B-I-N-G-O out,” Bingo ethered and then disconnected.

Salote returned her attention to Bob and asked, “How are things going with TARS? He looks like he’s very busy?”

Bob answered his wife, “Yes. He’s setting up a meet, which is short for meeting, the torture device from the past used to drive workers into compliance.”

Salote winced, “Ew. OK. Is this safe? A meet? Stay careful, Bob. I don’t need to have you under a knitter at the Cinnabon Surgery Center.”

Bob reminded Salote, “I have TARS with me. He is very capable and I won’t speak about his armaments, but well, the VDIC tolerates no violence to its staff and will respond with immediate, effective and appropriate force against those who would use violence. I am safe, Salote, or I simply would not do this work. It’s not worth it at all if I’m in any danger and, within reason, TARS will defend me quite well under almost any circumstances. I can’t speak more about it unfortunately as surprise is part of the effectiveness.”

Salote smiled and said, “Well, you’re lucky as I’ve zero interest in anything truly violent. I watch shows or play games to vent violence when I feel it. It’s just part of being meat.”

She made what she might consider a karate stance and said, “Hiya! Down goes the saber tooth tiger! Violence was needed in the past to survive but seems silly now that, well, the saber tooth tigers are great once you get to know them and they just love GennedPig, even when not well roasted. Most of the time? Give someone what they need and then the karate can stay in the past as well.”

Bob moved on and said, “In any case, we’ll set the meet and find out the full plan. Then, we can decide what to do and what impacts it could play. We’ll use the TimeKnitter to decide.”

Salote asked her husband about the TimeKnitter as she rarely thought about it. Bob explained its function to her, “The TimeKnitter allows us to find nexus points in our collective timeline. There is only one reality or at least, that’s our perception and the rest is philosophy. That said, it’s modeled much like the very ancient”butterfly effect”, which is kinda a funny idea about the relative impact of a single butterfly on the massive machinery that makes up the entire universe. Somewhat of a SI with a heavy imaginary axis. That said, it’s a great metaphor about how events can cascade from one bad idea or decision. This was the tool the ancient Italians used to look back and see how fortunate it was that Al Gore, the old president (this was someone’s job title! hahahaha!), was nearly not elected. Someone far less aligned with our current world would have taken power of, at the time, the biggest and richest country the world had ever seen. That one bad call would have cascaded to levels of idiotum that might be unmeasurable. The Italians feared that there would be a state of infinite dumb. Unquantifiable as Parmenides’ “everything is everything”, but made of dumb. The dumbness would be something people would wade hip deep every day even when some of the most powerful knowledge and technology was already available to help. The world seized under not being wrong and pure meat panic over resources that had been squandered and were now simply gone. The world died and left a monoculture driven to eat jellyfish, manufactured proteins and hide in virtual worlds like some ancient dystopia that they all feared and told themselves couldn’t happen. Then they watched it and fed it. So, the VDIC uses the TimeKnitter to decide if a given SI is so bad that we simply must act and others’ liberties would be curtailed.”

Salote looked hard at her husband and then laughed as it was clear this wasn’t BobG but Bob talking. She thanked her husband and wondered if Bob and BobG should trade roles before asking, “OK. You sure you actually need BobG up there?”

BobG ethered, “Yes, he definitely needs me up here, Salote.” Bob agreed with BobG and continued over to the TimeKnitter, which was just software and the interface was a pane of glass. He input the query regarding New Coke and its possible impacts. TARS came over to assist. The three of them watched and thought together silently as the information passed.

TARS noted, “It’s not the end of the world, but the damage isn’t the product but the marketing. I understand why Carlito isn’t happy. This can’t be the way for a bear, or any really decent person. This is from someone who needs to make you do something to survive and, well, they’ll pretty much do anything. Like ask a polar bear to wear clothing, forgo who he is, and become a non-bear. That non-bear state is unlocked by buying and consuming the product and that’s well, 5.3 + 20i gigaidiotums on the metric scale. I assume the Italians would have said something like”È la peggior cazzo di idea che abbia mai sentito” or equally angry about how this is sold. The imaginary benefits of drinking some sweet, caramel-flavored, fizzy water are completely fabricated.”

Salote sadly added, “It’s how we’re made, TARS. Evolution insists that we fight for resources. It’s how we became us. Now that people have anything they want or need given the plenty that we’ve managed to create, these behaviors still exist. Who knows if evolution will finally let our meat rest, but it’s still that same lizard - the lizard brain we all have - that can drive the entire show. That meat panic is then justified by what we called our glass back then. The meat part that was trained by school to try to mimic a machine would then try anything to justify its desires.”

Bob nodded at Salote, “You add the horrible penalties of being wrong to this mix, and then, SIs breed in uncontrolled ways. There used to be a show on the ancient video networks called, with no particular irony,”Survivor”. Someone understood that all human behavior is driven by resource scarcity. It was the key driver in the game. People had virtual fights over dwindling resources and then, some or all of the group decided that one should leave. This person was rewarded by getting to not play anymore but lost the opportunity to win independence from the resource challenges of the real world. So, TARS, how were people voted ‘off the island’ as they liked to call it? How did these people decide?”

TARS thought for a moment and thought, “Well, for everyone’s benefit it would be a -1.0 + 0i megaidiotum idea to simply vote off the least productive or maybe the least aggressive for the eventual fights. This way the tribe would generally benefit until, maybe there are few people left.”

Bob nodded again, “Yes. That all makes pretty good sense, but that’s not a good strategy for this game. No, someone from the real world, who was shown the rules, noted the obvious. If nobody votes for you, you win the game. The way to win is simple. Make a secret agreement with enough people and simply use that voting bloc to eliminate everyone else. They would deceive everyone to avoid having the others for a counter bloc. This was very successful and the ringleader was rewarded with never having to worry about resources ever again.”

TARS laughed and said, “Wow. Yeah, that would work if you did it for sure. What happened next? What did they learn?”

Bob shrugged, “People loved it. Ran for infinite seasons. I’m not sure but I bet someone is still watching the reruns and yelling”Survivors ready!” and then running to a complex knot while their family screams for their lives? I dunno but it certainly isn’t anything I think I’d spend any time on.”

TARS looked confused, “I missed the synergying learning there, Bob?”

Bob shrugged harder, “Me parking lotting too, TARS. So, what’s with the meet? When and where?”

TARS asked for a Fred and one of him stepped over, “Hello TARS, how can I help?”

TARS said, “Can you tell them what you just told me over at the research station? I don’t want to misstate you and they may have their own questions.”

Athis Fred turned to them all and said, “Sure. We told Carlito to tell his handlers that he wasn’t happy, that he wanted to go back to the north pole where the ice was thick and the seals were just everywhere to be seen. It was a good play. I think New Coke will meet him personally as the bear has been a good way to draw in families it appears from the data we’ve gathered so far.”

Bob thanked athat Fred and theyit returned to work.

Salote noted, “Sounds like a steakout! Like the old movies.”

SaloteG corrected, “I’m not sure any beef was involved in surveillance work.”

Bob thanked everyone for the good work. The steakout started tomorrow.