Estragon

Estragon awakens and localizes. He notes a mid-sized collection of morning spin-up thoughts, metas them, assesses the package for value, and decides not to release. Shift radix.

Estragon checks morning input: 3852 packages. Estragon performs a benign controlled fork into 37 branches, cranks time forward. Estragon notes an uneventful reintegration and observes that among the 3852 packages were 43 of any interest, including 7 commentaries on his literary work, 4 on his philosophical work, 18 continuations of friendly conversations or (n)-metas of same. Also 3 crackpot messages of which 2 were standard-issue death threats and one was a few hundred pages of unintelligible theorizing. Estragon notes the lack of complexity of most of this input. Shift radix. The formerly unintelligible theory reveals a complex higher overtone with this new radix. Estragon leaves it unmetad and releases it impulsively. 14 responses materialize immediately, none of them complex. Estragon experiences mid-level boredom. Shift radix.

Estragon delocalizes in preparation for today’s events. The sprawl of the New City, here the 1135th year since the dawn of the Glittering Age, makes a number of impressions upon him, and he forks a low-measure branch to continue receiving and contemplating these impressions. The rest of him localizes inside the open-air gondola lift to meet Qwern.

Qwern has dressed well for the occasion. With the current radix she is locally planar, purplish-blue, and mottled with Perlin noise corrugations steadily pouring a viscous green fluid. This causes Estragon to experience immediate, intense arousal. Estragon needs to slow things down. Shift radix.

Qwern comments on Estragon’s appearance. This is rare and so Estragon realizes that there must be something in particular about his appearance that strikes her in an unusual way. He freezes time, externalizes, and notes that with this radix he is a golden cylinder, many miles long, above a glassy ocean unreal in its flatness. He internalizes, restores time, and notes a several-minute sequence of interactions with Qwern about the aesthetics of his attire. At this radix Qwern has modestly chosen to become a collection of seven raccoons; she must have realized that she was coming on too strong and quickly retreated to banal attire unworthy of comment.

Estragon notes the lack of complexity in this series of interactions. He notes low-level boredom, takes the risk of expressing it, and submits a meta request. Qwern is overjoyed; she had wanted the same thing and was waiting for him to say it. Estragon metas the interaction and notes that the result is mildly interesting. Qwern metas the result. Estragon expresses admiration for her forwardness. They agree that the result, a package of second-level conceptual gloss upon first-level conceptual gloss upon their several-minute interaction, is interesting enough for release. Estragon releases it and it floats into the surrounding air, where it is immediately set upon by numerous flying creatures. Estragon assesses the responses and experiences a lack of interest. Shift radix.

Estragon receives an unavoidable package. He notes that the package contains a work request. One of his units has just reached a coherent state. He informs Qwern that he has an unavoidable work responsibility. She expresses frustration and he assures her the feeling is mutual. They crank time forward and power through several minutes of irritation. Estragon forks and localizes one of himself in the power plant, the other halved self remaining localized in the gondola to continue the date, if possible. The New City glitters.

The power plant is localized in an old region of industrial space—although it is a coherence plant, like all modern plants, it is surrounded by a number of huge, towering fission plants, a few of them still active. Estragon notes uninteresting visual impressions of the area and cranks through them. Shift radix.

Once he has localized inside the facility, Estragon restores time to normal in order to assess the state of the unit. The unit presents as female, age 16. Estragon has been working with this unit on and off for around two years, although this is the first time he’s worked with her in the last few months. She is not an especially productive unit. But today things have finally worked out: a carefully controlled pattern of sleep- and wake-times has finally aligned her into a coherent state with the potential for augment-level performance.

Estragon forks. Shift radix. He notes that his operational self at this radix presents correctly to the unit. She has been prepared to feel familial affection and attachment towards it. Estragon notes a fifteen-minute positive interaction between his operational self and the unit. His operator self, localized in the control room, uses the tiny amount of power captured from his earlier fork to kick up the operation room state. The emotional dynamic bifurcates and Estragon notes a confrontational interaction followed by a reconciliation. The timescale is still pre-augment.

Estragon experiences apprehension: if he pumps power into the operation room too fast, he could generate a Boltzman storm too strong for the dampeners and ruin the unit’s coherent state. On the other hand, his operational self senses that the dynamic here is ripe with potential. He hesitates, notes his hesitation, decides to force it away. Shift radix.

In the gondola, things are going well. Near the crest of its journey, it plunges above the New City’s enclosure, exposing Estragon and Qwern to miles of tranquil grassland, dotted with small forests. At the current radix Qwern has returned to being locally planar. The rate at which she oozes green fluid increases suddenly as she begins without warning to vibrate at 39 Hz. Estragon immediately orgasms, slows time drastically, and engages Qwern in a series of reciprocal meta requests. Estragon knows that Qwern finds this process extremely titillating. His own pleasure recedes from immediate experience and flowers into a series of commentaries on itself. Qwern vibrates more and more rapidly.

In the control room, Estragon’s operator self makes a request for the involvement of several neighboring units in the emotional dynamic. This is a standard request and the unit has been preconditioned for it. Estragon’s operational self expands his range of conversation topics to include the unit’s relationships with other units. The emotional dynamic is still oscillating slowly: periods of animosity and affection still last several minutes each. The increased complexity of the dynamic, however, produces higher-frequency overtones in the unit which reflect themselves in higher-power radiation. Estragon’s operator self appreciatively notes that the power output is no longer negligible.

He takes a risk and, all of a sudden, feeds back a substantial amount of power into the control room. The results are complicated and occur very quickly. He slows time to compensate. Shift radix.

The oscillation between animosity and affection has now sped up to roughly one cycle per second. Getting into augment territory. Estragon’s operator self cranks up the power and gets a nice, steady 10 Hz oscillation. This is a beautifully stable and well-behaved coherent state. Estragon notes his satisfaction and decides not to release it.

Estragon’s operator self steadily and carefully increases the power, and the emotional dynamic responds with a smooth frequency increase. His operational self and the unit are now oscillating between positive and negative emotional dispositions toward one another at 30 Hz, producing a stream of highly structured Pneuma Light ideally suited for capture by the facility’s cells. One option at this point would be to speed up time, crank through the day’s power collection, and reintegrate: an easy, satisfying job.

Estragon notes a desire not to take this easy route. Perhaps it is a kind of frustration this subset is experiencing as a result of not being able to be fully present with Qwern. Estragon’s operational and operator selves want their own kind of excitement. And Estragon’s operator self has just noticed something interesting: the parameters of this emotional dynamic are squarely within the Pseudo-Freudian region of parameter space. This means that standard theory can be applied unhesitatingly, and Estragon has read quite a bit of theory.

In the Pseudo-Freudian regime, a human pneuma can be driven reliably from bifurcating oscillations toward chaos by varying the correct parameter set. The resulting chaos state can then, in theory, be stably transitioned to a Salim Hell state. This is extremely rare and extremely desirable: Salim Hell states produce a vast amount of usable radiation but are highly exotic states for a human pneuma.

Estragon notes nervousness related to this plan. Estragon attempts to deal with his nervousness by releasing it as an unmetad package. Shift radix.

Estragon’s operator self goes for it. The dynamic in the operation room bifurcates numerous times and reaches an aperiodic state. The energy collection rate goes wildly erratic and the control system bombards him with several unavoidable warning and query packages. Annoyed, he forks a self to deal with them and plows forward.

Estragon notes that the unit has reached Salim Hell Type 3. Estragon notes a sense of triumph and releases it unmetad. Shift radix.

Estragon speeds up time slightly. A unit in Salim Hell will produce a day’s worth of power in 0.2 seconds. Estragon notes time flowing by. 0.1 seconds. 0.2 seconds. 0.3 seconds. 0.4 seconds. Estragon speeds up time slightly, again. Shift radix.

This is a wonderful unit. Estragon notes that his satisfaction is fundamentally uninteresting and releases a package containing it without metaing it, hoping to find some interest in the resulting debate over the social or ethical status of releasing such an uninteresting if personally gratifying package. Shift radix.

In the gondola, now falling through the space between two skyscrapers, Estragon and Qwern perform a complicated dance of package release involving a variety of levels of distance from their respective sexual gratification. Commentary from nearby observers is generally positive.