Invisible Networks (2022 edition) #1: Slime Computation

 It took a few hours of scrolling before Clara understood why NeoncortexT was causing a small voice of anxiety to rise in the background of her mind.

The garbage wasn't there. The ads for products she never wanted, the "hot takes" from vile people trying to grow rich from a platform built on hate, the topics that she didn't hate but also had no interest in. She hadn't encountered anything close to something she could be consciously certain she didn't want to see. It was too good to be true. It had to be a lie.

It took a few minutes, but through the lens of an alternate account with specific changes to the profile Clara was able to find that the landfill of the internet did extend to this platform as well. NeoncortexT presented a timeline that assumed that the user was the kind of person who would vote to repeal every human right they could, and it somehow managed to hit through her desensitization towards that bleak side of humanity. So she put the phone down, focused on some stress relief techniques for a few hours, then picked up the phone to switch back to her main account.

But the presented timeline wasn't the corrosive mess she saw earlier. Now it was back to the uncomfortably pleasant feed that her main account was supposed to show her. How did it adapt so quickly, how did the algorithm know it was her?

It bothered her enough to spend a few minutes of each subsequent day performing "research" in the form of browsing other platforms for discussions on how NeoncortexT worked. Apparently this was the first social media platform to use that new processor tech that exchanged microcircuits for a vat of modified algae. Official statements talked about how it could emulate organic thought well enough to give its users the content they actually wanted to see. The actual workings were proprietary, so the closest she got to details on its actual workings were the varied and implausible theories that formed a forest thick enough to hide whatever the singular tree of truth looked like. Clara's friends shared her initial reaction to the new platform, which was already being condensed into "NexT" for shorthand reference, agreeing that it was uncanny to see an app actually know what they wanted.

It didn't take long after that for the unease of using NexT to fade. No matter how implausible it was for the timeline to follow even her most recent thoughts and whims, the accuracy of its algorithm made it that much harder to excise it from her habits. Finally, like most everyone else, she stopped questioning it entirely. It was a part of life, a welcome replacement over its contemporaries. So it was easy to ignore when a whistleblower from NexT claimed the company seeded the algae in the drinking water. The claim was rather far-fetched. An algae that would briefly parasitize a person until it could leave with a rough neurological imprint of its host? That the NexT corporation would fish out these expelled algae at the water treatment plants and add them to the main vat, all so it could wait to synchronize to the account of its former host? Nonsense.

The claims never went anywhere. NexT had enough capital to stall or shut down any investigation into its activities. Clara never made the connection when she was diagnosed with a brain abscess a decade after she had started using the platform. Corporate-acceptable collateral harm from algae mutations wasn't even a possibility to be considered. She died three years later, spared the sight of watching the rest of humanity succumb to the same fate through the remainder of the century.

Nullfortunate

The temporary command center was abuzz with the expected noise of professional scientists and military personnel scrambling at a seemingly chaotic tangle of tasks, but uniquely accentuated by the continuous rumble of rolling dice. Marisha stopped briefly to glance at one of the booths where a young man in military uniform rolled a d20, examined the result then repeated the process with mechanical efficiency. The task seemed entirely mundane, and somewhat nonsensical given the seriousness with which he was performing it. She continued further into the tent towards where one woman in a general's uniform was somehow managing to orchestrate the traffic of reports and pending orders that passed onto her desk. She looked at least two decades older than Marisha, though the stress of leadership may have put excessive lines of age into her caramel skin. Still sharp though, as she noticed and made eye contact with Marisha despite the dozen or so people between them, curtly beckoning her over all while listening to a scientist's report.

"-should minimize subjectivity's interference in how we detect its intensity." The scientist was saying by the time she got into earshot. The general took barely a second to make a decision and respond.

"Do it. But safely!" She turned, providing a firm handshake to Marisha when she approached. "Doctor Estelle, I'm glad you've arrived unharmed. I'm General Calder. Did you have time to fully read the briefing materials during your flight here?"

Marisha released the handshake and nodded. "I did. Any new developments since that draft was sent?"

Calder grimaced in a manner of frustration. "The others have agreed on a working theory on why the examination team dropped dead. Given Marshall's medical history, it's assumed that ten meters was close enough to automatically cause an existing embolus to arrive in his brain. The rest made it to three meters before they died with no obvious symptoms we could observe from a safe distance, so the current theory is that Brownian motion completely fails at that range now. We have equipment coming in that we'll use to try to detect living bacteria within the crater to see if they're affected as well."

The briefing folder slipped from Marisha's hands and almost hit the ground before Calder caught it. "That . . . that's not how Brownian motion works." Marisha's throat became dry as she considered the implication.

"Normally you'd be correct, but statistical aberration seems to be the Object's specialty. We've already established a system for detecting where the field it generates reaches the five percent threshold." Calder gestured to the group of uniformed people rolling dice. "We were able to round up the tabletop gamers and have them roll d20s. Given their inherent regard for a roll of one to be unfortunate, they're the best thing we have to a reliable measurement system at the moment. We'll relocate this command center as soon as they start to only yield 'critical failures' with every roll."

"So the effect is definitely subjective?" Marisha asked, intent on grasping the situation. "Have other common biases from games of luck been tested?"

Calder looked a bit more dismayed and shrugged. "I'd have more people flipping coins, but the variance in whether they prefer heads or tails interferes with the results and has made it difficult to pin down the fifty percent threshold. Cards and other forms of dice are used in too many games with different rulesets to force a consistent poor outcome within the Object's field. We haven't been able to pin down if subjectivity matters outside of games of chance."

"Ok, so run me through the basic confirmed behavior of the Object. Maybe we're missing something." Marisha replied, a touch of urgency entering her voice as she began to grasp the daunting task she was taking part in.

Calder sighed and opened a folder on her desk and spreading out photos and documents. "The Object, as we're calling it for now, alters random events to always be their most unfortunate outcome. The further the event is from the Object, the higher its chance of failure has to be in order for the alteration to take place. We think the field of this effect did not manifest, or at least begin to expand, until it landed two days ago. With the eyewitness accounts we have from the people who got there first, it's likely the field wasn't able to affect anything significant until roughly five hours in, when older vehicles within fifty meters of the Object began break down. Three civilians died from tripping and breaking their necks while within one meter of the Object during that first day, and there were thirty more within one hundred meters that died from sudden complications to preexisting medical conditions over the next two days."

Cataloguing the details as she listened, Marisha had to suspend some previous notions from her field of work. "Any idea of the composition of the Object? Did an observatory manage to detect its approach?"

"Current theory is that it's some kind of naturally-occurring alloy, since it definitely seems metallic but doesn't look like any metal we know of." Calder grimaced, moving another document to the front. "We're still analyzing visual footage and spectroscopy from the three days before the impact, but no results yet. I don't give it much weight, but a couple scientists think it didn't lose any mass upon atmospheric entry." She paused. "If they are correct, though, then that lends credence to the presumption that the Object is artificial. This would then make it more likely that its arrival was intentional."

Marisha took a moment of concentration to suppress some of her nausea at the thought of what that meant. "So what will my role be in this? I imagine I was called in specifically to identify a more precise set of mechanics for this phenomenon."

"No, Doctor. Your role here is to lie." Calder held her gaze, a living monument of composure and resolve. "All attempts to damage the Object with conventional weaponry and tools have failed, due to the intensity of the effect surrounding it. The only option we have to stop it is detonating a nuclear bomb in close enough range to vaporize it. If we wait too long, electronic or mechanical failure will make every bomb we send turn into a dud at best."

"So you'll take this fantastical anomaly of probability and embellish in ways that will make the men in charge shit themselves on the spot. We might have weeks until humanity is wiped out by this threat, but we need them to think we have a day or two left to live so they don't mire this solution in bureaucracy."

It took Marisha by surprise. The General was speaking of a course of action that could get everyone there disgraced, court marshalled and worse. But the thirty or so people in earshot didn't bat an eye at it. "But . . . surely there's a chance they'll listen if we're honest. We don't have to put so much on the line."

The tent suddenly fell silent, everyone in sight turning to look at Marisha with grim, resigned expressions. "You haven't personally witnessed the early days of this, Marisha." Calder said, her voice heavy with determination beyond what she showed earlier. "Leaving this up to chance will kill everyone."

Mistakes to Reflect On

The shock of hitting her head on the floor after tripping on the top of the stairs was more than she expected, though in a strange moment of mid-panic clarity she considered that it was part of human nature to underestimate how distracting a concussive impact would be. As she placed her hands under her to rise her mind began running the calculations, an uncooperative partition calmly presenting an estimate of the time lead lost by this blunder. A firm grip with a noticeable vibration of adrenaline hauled her up, mercifully reducing the impact of the mistake.

"Come on, Janice! We're almost there!" Maurice hissed as he helped Janice get to her feet and reach running speed again. Moments after the stairway was out of sight she heard the shattering crash of a shotgun, probably through the door given the sound of splintered wood that followed. They hadn't even tried locked the front door in their rush, but their pursuer preferred direct efficiency over subtlety. The ensuing footsteps weren't rushed, but heavy and methodical. If either of them pulled their pistol and tried to ambush at a corner, their foe would be too likely to match the shot with the more favorable weapon of the fight.

Janice scrambled into the master bedroom right after Maurice. No mirror. Maurice opened the door on the far right side of the room. A closet. No mirror on the inside door. In that moment of Maurice's dismay, Janice managed to reach the other side and throw open the door, feeling a burst of jittery relief as it revealed the master bathroom. This was definitely a house that neither of them could ever afford. It was even bigger than the dining room in her parent's house. She fumbled for the light switch so she could see where the mirror was, and the fluorescent glow treated her to the sight of a full-wall mirror opposite of the bathtub and shower. "In here!" She quickly shouted to Maurice. As her partner ran in she noted the absurd scale of the amenities. Surely the bath and shower could each hold a dozen people properly, wasteful unless the owners intended to hold orgies in this house. Realizing she was wasting time as the rhythmic sound of booted footfalls grew ever louder, she turned and threw herself into the mirrored surface.

The other side was, of course, a reflection of the world they were once in, but at the same time even more alien. Light here behaved strangely, giving everything a color palette both darkened and inverted from the original. Janice turned just in time to see the path to the reflected bedroom, and the barrel of the shotgun peer past. Reflexively she grabbed Maurice and pulled them both inside the bathtub. The reflection of their pursuer couldn't see them, but the original could still see them through the mirror if they weren't careful.

Hidden behind the lip of the tub, Janice considered their options. Their noise and image would travel back to the unmirrored world without hindrance, so they had to move with stealth. If they were spotted, the enemy would shoot the place they should have been standing in the real world, then quickly begin to piece together what was actually happening. He'd shoot the mirror, and the shockwave resulting from the shatter would leave them a gory mess before they'd get out of range. It was why this method of hiding was their last resort. Most surfaces reflective enough to do this with were fragile and had easily killed other agents, so they didn't know the full possibility of what could happen.

The pursuer stopped, grunted with frustration and stomped away, their reflection moving towards the tub Janice and Maurice were hiding in and leaning over to look in. This was the other part that kept agents out of the mirrored world. Living things were obviously represented on this side as well, but it didn't work the same way. Features would distort, skin rippled as if it merely housed air, which it possibly did. No one had tried to see what was inside of a person's reflection yet. The effect gave this man the impression of lizardesque frills on his neck in constant oscillation, with the less pronounced ripples adding to the sense of intellect and cold malice on his face. Presumably satisfied that the tub was empty, the original's footsteps moved towards the shower stall, and the duplicate moved in kind.

Janice quietly move her hand to her holster, pulling out her gun. Objects launched from this side would pass through the mirror and land in the real side without problem, given what few tests they had done with the technique. Though it was always rubber bands and paper airplanes and other things that wouldn't shatter the mirror and kill the tester if the mechanics didn't work as expected. Gunfire was untested. Maurice shifted position next to her and looked at the gun, then to her. His expression became severe. Wait it out. He mouthed, not daring to speak the words.

She hesitated. Surely this killer would eventually leave and give them the chance to reenter the real bathroom and escape. This world didn't hold up well enough outside of proper line of sight to a mirror, otherwise they could have already been on their way to pick any mirror within several blocks to exit from and make their escape. As she thought through the rustling of the shower curtain stopped, and the blast of the shotgun rang from both bathrooms, amplifying the deafening noise and shattering plaster. He was checking for hidden wall compartments, and would soon shoot the mirror in order to eliminate that possibility. Ignoring Maurice's urging, she sat upright in the tub leveled a two-handed grip on the killer in the real world, and fired eight shots into his back.

Their pursuer hit the ground as Janice took in the fact that she was still alive. The mirror didn't shatter from this side, allowing her to execute the perfect ambush. As the shotgun stopped clattering on the ground she heard a second, closer thump. She turned to see the reflection of the dead man on his knees, shocked expression staring into the empty space of the damaged shower stall. Maurice was watching him as well, white as a sheet. The dead reflection lifted its hand to stare at, and Janice immediately used the remaining seven shots in her gun, aiming for the head.

Each shot hit its mark, but barely embedded past skin level as patterns like the opaque shattering of bulletproof glass formed around each bullet. The creature, this clearly was no longer person or person-adjacent, didn't even flinch or show signs of impact, and the undamaged portions still rippled as if barely sufficient air pressure was what kept it in its current shape. It turned to look at Janice, alien curiosity on its cracked face. Maurice took his turn next, emptying his gun in a perfect pattern to rupture heart and lungs, should this entity have that equivalent. The results were the same as Janice's attack, but the strange creature wearing the reflected skin of a dead man showed no reaction except mild annoyance.

As Maurice moved his jaw to shout something, the creature grabbed the pearl-white reflected shotgun and swung it stock-first at his head. There wasn't even a shout, just the sickening wheeze of air unable to find a head at the end of his esophagus.

Both Janice and the creature looked at the spatter of off-color gore, her with shock and it with something akin to fascination. Logic began to slowly click back into place for Janice as the creature seemed enraptured by something with in results of its brutality, continuing to hold the shotgun by the barrel as if it couldn't fathom its intended application.

Can't fight it.

Maurice is gone.

Need to escape and destroy the mirror.

Aided by seemingly impossible reserves of adrenaline, Janice sprinted across the bathroom and dove through the mirror, crashing back into a world with normal colors and a corpse that followed the normal rules of mortality. She looked back to see if the monster within the mirror had followed her, but only saw a normal reflection of a damaged bathroom with the unusual addition of more blood spatter than one body could account for. She scrambled to her feet and ran to the dead man, relieved to see that he still followed logic and remained dead in the shower stall.

As she reached for the shotgun by the corpse her world suddenly went white for a flash, then she was staring into her dead pursuer's face. She tried to orient herself, but felt a strangely malleable foot press her head to the floor. The monster's colors were still the darkened inversion of the man it was based on, and it leered over her as she noticed another smaller bloodstain the stock of the shotgun it still held club-like. The expression on it was once again different, not surprised or fascinated, but with a sickening joyous malice.

It raised the shotgun to strike again as darkness took Janice . . .

Lostward

While it was near noon when the ship had embarked, it had only taken until sunset to reach a stretch of ocean where no land and no other ships could be seen. It was a freeing feeling to leave port with such speed, no longer weighed down by months of supplies. Below deck they had only packed enough hardtack and thin mead for three weeks on top of their settler tools, a manifest which had baffled the harbormaster. He wouldn't have understood that given where the ship was going, the crew would need less time than that to know if they had succeeded or were doomed. A hefty bottle of poisoned rum was kept in the captain's quarters should the latter become apparent.

Bartholomew crossed the deck with the smooth and sure strides of someone who had grown to find the rocking of the waves more familiar and steady than dry land. He stopped at the base of the main mast and took a deep breath before shouting to be heard. "Leonard! See anything on the horizon?"

Immediately the response came back from directly above. "No, Captain Barry! All clear as far as the eye can see."

Bartholomew closed his eyes and nodded to himself. Everything was just about in place. "Well come on below deck! You know the stars well enough to get in the way of what the others gotta do!" He turned away from the mast and began to feel the nervous excitement build in his stomach. Only a few moments more then they'd be committed. He reached into his jacket and pulled out his sextant, the only one on board, and gazed at it with nostalgia. It had served him for decades but its presence could be enough to stop this new adventure. With a slow and reverent pace, he used some twine to tie a fist-sized rock to it then threw the tool overboard.

He gazed into the water where it had vanished for a few moments, then turned around to address his crew. They had come to a standstill, waiting to see what he would do next. Six of them were people who sailed with Bartholomew for decades and were the only ones he trusted with helping prepare for the true nature of this voyage. The other eight were young men and women, with a need to escape old ties and equipped with the navigational skills of an oyster. It was clear from the looks on their faces that they knew this wouldn't be a normal voyage.

"Well, lads and lasses, we're not actually crossing the Atlantic. For the next week, myself and the other seafaring veterans here will be locked below deck, not even allowing ourselves to look outside. You fresh folk will run the normal operations of the ship, including steering. You can use the hatch on the inner door to consult any of us on questions you have about sailing the ship, but we can't give you directions. Important thing is that if you find fog, head towards it and do your best to avoid leaving."

One of the younger crew, an adolescent woman with a french accent and knife-fighting scars spoke up. "Captain? This will only ensure that we'll be lost. We all talked and figured out that you recruited us exactly because we couldn't navigate the ship." The other recruits nodded in agreement, murmuring their trepidation.

"That is exactly the point, Louise." Bartholomew responded, refusing to let their hesitation spread to him. "The map has closed itself into a proper sphere, and most everyone thinks there's nothing left to discover. It's not true, though. I was a deck rat in my growing years, keeping a ship clean while the adults did the complex stuff. It was over here on the colony side of the sea that we were hit by pirates." He began to gesticulate to add emphasis to his tale. "Surrounded by three ships, no chance of escape. I made it to the dinghy in the chaos, and no one else did. Once the pirates took what they wanted and sank the rest, I was left with an empty horizon and no idea of where to go. Three days of confused paddling in clouded and foggy seas found my way to land. The sand of the shore was blood red, and hardly a hop and skip past that was the forest. The trees had a pale blue bark, patterned like the scales of rattlesnakes, and were far too close together for me to squeeze past. They had these round fruits that I was able to sustain myself on, growing at the top and falling to the sand. Vivid purple things with the texture of squash and a taste that was a blend of pork and yam."

Bartholomew took a breath and looked at the crew, who were listening with fascination and mixtures of doubt. "The forest seemed to go for miles and there was no sign of civilization, so I loaded up as many of those fruits as I could in the dinghy and set out to sea again. It was a repeat of being horribly lost in fog for several days, but a trader vessel found me when I came out of the other side. Since then I've explored all of the Atlantic and talked to everyone who might have seen the place, but no one has. Not even the lads who sailed the other oceans heard of anything similar. It's not a place meant to be found if you know where you're going, which is why we have to intentionally be lost. I can't even guarantee we'll arrive at the same shore and see the same damned trees, but we'll discover new land beyond what the cartographers say there is. That I'm certain of."

Now the younger contingent of the crew were less doubtful and more worried. It was more on course with what Bartholomew was expecting, and it'd work in his favor for making sure the ship remained lost for long enough. "Alright, youngsters! The ship is under your control until we're on the other side." With that, he turned and went below deck with the veteran portion of his crew. After locking the door and hiding the key when the others weren't looking, he settled down in the lamplight and pulled a faded blue seed from his pocket. He was never able to make those seeds germinate in normal soil, so he had that one dried and preserved as persistent proof that the encounter with the lost island was real. He put it away after a few minutes and turned to one of the several dozen books stockpiled to keep himself and the others occupied.

He wasn't even through the first chapter when one of the young crew opened the door hatch and reported sighting a fog bank. Out of season, of course. After telling the lad to hold course for it, he put aside the book and quietly cried tears of relief and joy. The land that had captivated his dreams for fifty years was finally in reach again.

The February Exile

It took Jason a good bit to get used to the vibe of this party. He knew his girlfriend claimed to practice witchcraft as a hobby, but most of the details went over his head. He just knew that today was the Leap Day, an important day for Clarice's specific practices, and apparently one hell of a party for which she was the guest of honor this year. It didn't initially appeal to him, but then promise of a good time and a good high was enough for Jason to accept her invitation to join them.

So far it was definitely poppin', if not in the way he was used to. Retro-as-hell folk music, herb-infused wines to curl the stomach as much as the tongue, and strains of mushrooms that he didn't recognize but was willing to give a try anyway. After the initial nausea passed, he began to feel both the booze and shrooms take effect, and it was proving to be a nice mixture to pry away his grip on reality. In the full swing of the substances, the music sounded far more interesting and the chanting had a rhythm that he hadn't noticed before.

He wobbled his way over to the main crowd where Clarice was, then clumsily planted a kiss on her cheek before whispering in her ear. "I now understand why you throw this kind of party. It's just a shame it's once every four years." She responded by smiling and leaning against him affectionately, apparently also in the thrall of the drink and drugs, though Jason thought maybe not quite as strongly as he was.

"If it was simply about this part of the gathering, I'm sure we'd be doing it every weekend possible." She whispered back. "But there's a purpose to this whole thing. The ritual is coming up soon. You can watch, but you'd have to be a full member to receive an explanation of what we're doing and why we're doing it. Important secrets that we have to protect." Pushing through his muddled thoughts, Jason nodded and simply basked in the music with her, sipping wine and nibbling mushrooms as needed to maintain the smooth high.

Then it was almost midnight, time for the ritual. One of the other witches changed their phone to a different Spotify playlist, this one more ominous but still feeling appropriately folk for the situation. Clarice moved Jason's head off her shoulder and moved towards the center of the room where some kind of occult sign just about finished being drawn. Clarice stopped a few feet before the sigil, then stripped to her underwear and allowed the other women to paint unfamiliar symbols onto her skin. When that was finished, they began clothing her in some kind of ritual garb, black cloths with similar symbols stitched into them. Jason had a delayed double take when a witch brought out an M16 with full military attachments and adorned with charms. As Clarice began examining the gun and the clips, which seemed to be stuffed to the gills with herbs around the bullets, Jason could see trepidation on her face.

She's nervous, this means a lot to her and she doesn't want to mess it up. Jason thought through the impairing mental haze. Am I being a good enough boyfriend by simply attending the event with her? I should be next to her during this preparation, to show her that I don't need to understand what's happening to know that she's doing it well and that I'm proud of her.

Taking a moment to build resolve, he staggered forward to stand supportively at Clarice's shoulder. It only occurred to him at the last steps that the wine was much stronger than he initially thought. As he made the final step to stand next to her, he tripped over another witch's feet and pitched forward towards the sigil on the floor. Through the rush of peril seeming to slow down time, Jason could see the looks of panic form on everyone. Clarice most of all seemed terrified and tried to reach out and catch him, but wasn't fast enough to stop him from slamming his head into the floor.

Then, in the black silence, the sound of his own heartbeat was all he could feel.

It took a few moments for Jason to get over the stun from hitting his head, then he tried to take stock. He only saw blackness and couldn't hear the expected shouts of surprise from Clarice and the other witches. Did people go blind and deaf when concussed? He couldn't remember. Then he began to make out some muttering.

"-damn Stolas. Amazing he managed to predict that humans would make repository devices." The voice stopped, and a sharp sniffing noise could be heard. "Strange though, electricity and electromagnetic wavelength transmission. Not even the slightest bit of corvid bone in its construction. I'll need to rub it in his face that he doesn't actually know everything."

Jason could begin to make out the faint glow of a smartphone screen, his smartphone, a few feet away in the gloom. It did a poor job of illuminating the face of the . . . person? It met the basic criteria for a human face, but in the bad lighting he was certain something was wrong, out of place. The figure took notice that Jason was awake, slipping the phone into a pocket of the billowing . . . cloak? Maybe it was black wings? The impenetrable gloom of this place made it impossible to tell.

"No protective measures, no weapons, no training. And that look of confusion on your face. It seems like today is the day it all begins." The creature examined Jason and considered. "There is still some waiting to do, so I'm willing to indulge some questions. The past four hundred years have not allowed me talkative visitors." Something in the tone of its voice was scratching at some primal fear in Jason, but it hadn't quite found its grip yet.

"Who . . .  who are you? Where are we?" Jason tried his best to sound resolute as he lay on the ground, too scared to move lest he provoke this being that seemed more unnatural the more he looked at it.

"I am an exile, someone considered a rebel and traitor by many. As for this place? It's a 'when', not a 'where'. Currently we occupy the calendar space of February 30th. Quite an unfair temporal liminal space. February 29th works similar when it isn't a leap year, a time and place that shouldn't be yet must be crossed over in order to reach March. The Vatican bastards were clever enough to create their special calendar just to trap me, not sacrificing any existing days but scrounging together spare seconds to create a temporary day with a new border. Normally with how these sort of spaces work, waiting twenty four hours would safely deposit you in the next day, but this one is too disconnected normally."

The distant horizon began to dimly glow with faint sepia tones, and the creature smiled. If a children's joyous smile could be described as a beautiful sunrise, then this being's expression was a solar eclipse. "Because I'm disconnected from time and classical mortality, my presence isn't enough to make time move forward here. And the visitors sent to beat me down every four years were able to train themselves to abandon their sense of time while they were here. But you . . ." The smile deepened, as an impossibly expanding moon might cover even the solar corona. "Your unexpected, and assuredly unplanned, arrival has been enough to dislodge the seconds and send them forward. Congratulations! It is all because of you that the first February 30th will complete and I can step out into March 1st!"

The injury and drugs were still slowing Jason's mind, but he began to grasp at pieces. The witches' Leap Day ritual, the strange decoration on Clarice. The adorned gun. The best plan he could come up with was to negotiate, to buy time for himself in hopes he could get a chance to warn Clarice. "But won't you need a guide? You've been here for so long, if you gave me my phone back I could help you learn what's new."

The creature changed posture, cocked its head curiously. "I was wondering how long it would take for you to realize the true gravity of the situation you're in. Unfortunately, your service won't be of use to me." It reached back into its cloak and produced something metallic and somehow gleaming in the gloom. The object looked like a scalpel, until it started writhing like an agitated centipede. "But your component parts will serve me very well."

Invisible Networks #29: The 10,000 Year Network

A first post, an in-joke from the development team.

"Yep, this system is definitely some blue nachos. Could you imagine if we just blew it on the first post on humankind's most important social media network?"

The four-hundred trillionth post, commemorating true world peace and dissolution of borders.

"To commemorate the founding of the Overworld government, the Stonebound network staff has pulled the strings needed to add blue nachos as a unicode emoji. No, we still won't explain what it means."

A post easier to measure in time than placement in the archive, five hundred years later.

"The Stonebound team is proud to be cited in our first diplomacy with alien intelligent life, as the Ivrali complimented our network as the key to how humankind has maintained unity in presenting itself in galactic diplomatic talks."

A post a mere thirty-five years later, in order to continue what Stonebound is known best for.

"Greetings, f̶̛̱͍͜é̶͍͖̲̊̐͝l̷̟̟͌́͝l̸̨̟͂̔͌͠o̵̪̪͊̇͆͝w̸̗͚̳̞̕e̴̮̙̐͒́̕ͅr̶̟̕ṡ̴̞͑̕! If you couldn't read that word, then that means your device hasn't yet been upgraded with galactic glyph support yet, which is a free update available to all Stonebound-compatible platforms. Stonebound now supports more than human language so that we don't leave anyone out!"

Two thousand years later, a post announcing a tragedy.

"The Stonebound team expresses their sorrow at the tragic news of the Bwirlik planetary mind core losing its battle against the hive mind degeneration disease. We will be donating twenty percent of this month's profits to efforts to support and rehabilitate the now scared and confused Bwirlik as they share in our plight of being unable to truly connect to each other as they once could."

Three hundred years later, a network reappropriated.

"The Stonebound team would like to assure our users that the untranslatable strings of text posted by most Bwirlik accounts are nothing sinister, but simply an important cultural coping mechanism for the grief of being part of the first generation of their kind to never know the gentle parenthood of their mind core. To insist that this is a secret language they never made the galactic council aware of will be considered a violation of our terms of service for hate speech."

Two years later, a business deal signed.

"The Stonebound team is proud to announce that the Bwirlik government has won the bid for maintenance rights for our platform. With this, they will be able to prototype an artificial mind core using Stonebound's infrastructure paired with their own neural connection implants, bringing them back to their glory and curing the chronic depression that has so recently crippled their species."

One hundred years later, a plan advanced.

"In the interest of maintaining peace and preventing future galactic wars before they even become hostilities, the galactic council has authorized mandatory citizen connections to the Stonebound mind core, regardless of species. The process will be funded by the galactic council and administered in a quick, painless and convenient manner."

Seven thousand years later, a monoculture remains unmoved.

"We are all Stonebound. We are peace and perfection itself. :blue nachos:"

Invisible Networks #28: Gray Pixels

No structure has lasted as long as the Soul of Humanity, which still stands five hundred thousand years after its initial construction. Encapsulating the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, this greatest achievement of humankind (casually referred to as "The Soul") takes advantage of the greatest advancements in nanotechnology, quantum mechanics, matter synthesization and temporal manipulation all for the purpose of monitoring the status of the entire human race.

The innermost layer is the simplest, comprising a dyson sphere that uses the kinetic energy of the black hole's gravity to generate all the power the Soul needs for its other functions. The middle layer is the only stabilized true AI in existence, capable of self-replicating its components for repair while it handles all of the processing needed to keep the outer layer accurate to current statuses.

The outer layer is the only one that is as much art as science. The surface supports its own atmosphere, heat regulation and artificial planetary magnetic field. Any person can safely wander the near-endless forests of living display polymer that sprout on the outside of the Soul. Each pixel accurately represents the status of one specific human, and in total they cover not only every living person, but every person to have ever lived. Using a single-color code in a pixel, the represented person's current status is on display for visitors and networked people to see.

White is the default status of a healthy living person not currently in the strong grip of a specific emotion. Black represents the deceased, who are no longer here but not forgotten. Blue is inspiration and creative drive, red is frustration, green is pure tranquility, purple is love, pink is lust, orange is mischievous impulse, yellow is a burst of joy. With white and black as the dominant colors, the algorithmically-generated shapes of the Soul's screenscapes have a stark style, fields of white glittering with rainbows of emotion as streaks of black are arranged to serve as shadows against light sources that aren't there. Brown is technically included in this landscape, but it represents malicious intent and is the only time that the Soul will notify connected authorities to the status, identity and location of the person in question.

Any person can connect their devices to the Soul, no matter the distance. While privacy is respected outside of the case of brown emotion, people are allowed to establish and share connection, creating their own personal collage of labeled shapes representing the pixels of their friends and family. And for a person who allows you permission or is deceased, you can expand a display of the statistics for their life's experiences in a gradient of their most common emotional states. It has made for a more empathetic society and peaceful society.

But in the past five hundred years, there has been unease surrounding the topic of the Soul. Sometimes, when people go missing, their pixels turns gray. Diagnostic crews that commune with the Soul's AI system aren't able to get a clear answer, as the system itself appears to think that this is an intended function. Whenever it attempts to explain gray's representing status to a technician, hundreds of miles of the Soul's surface crash and go offline for several minutes while that section of the AI reboots. Inquiries into information about the people with those pixels, in particular any available location data, returns a random incomprehensible unicode string.

The omniscience of the Soul of Humanity is a well-established fact and a point of confidence for most people. The news that it is encountering something unknown that it can't detect, or can't understand, has thus resulted in fear and crises of faith. While the total number of gray pixels is only twelve billion, a fraction of mankind so small as to be difficult to read in percentage form, their appearance has slowly accelerated since their discovery and the galactic authorities are increasingly expectant of mass panic.

But what else are you to do when you see the empirical status of a loved one turn into something unknowable?

Invisible Networks #27: Artificial Castes

Once the global cybertheocracy made enough progress on rebuilding the critical resources destroyed in its bid for power in World War III, it faced a difficult choice. Glitchangel Titania ordered an investigation into the sustainability of restoring and maintaining the social networks of  the old world order, and the results weren't promising. Too much had been destroyed, and the model of competition promoted disease as much as growth within the designs and management structures of those systems. Additionally, the evaluation of cultural contribution concluded that there was no gain in having secondary social media platforms, so they would be a waste a precious resources. Using this information, the Glitchangel ordered the development of Lotus.

With long-term planning involved from the start, Lotus became the sustainable and future-proofed solution to facilitating networked interaction between all of humanity. To help ease the processing loads that the orbital servers would be subjected to, a special caste system was formed to assign permissions to the various functionalities of Lotus. New accounts from regular citizens started at the bottom, but could inherit into higher tiers if their behavior was deemed to be what the cybertheocracy wanted out of their elite. At present the system has proved to have little flaw, and has only received a few updates to rebalance the middle strata.

At the top is the immortal Glitchangel herself, who commands Lotus as if it is an extension of her soul. Nothing important happens on Lotus without her notice, and thus only happens because she allows it. It's known that the members of the second and third tier have kill switch nanomachines in their bloodstream so that they always side with the cybertheocracy in the face of instability and revolution. More chilling, but thankfully only a rumor, is the contingency that happens upon the unwilling death of Glitchangel Titania. Unverified engineer reports suggest that the orbital servers have the nuclear weapons deemed missing during WWIII, so that they can be crashed into critical points on Earth then detonated in order to poison the planet and wipe out humanity.

The Prophet caste exists at the second highest rung, only occupied by those five hundred loyal people who fought to facilitate Titania's victory in WWIII and survived long enough to receive her eternal blessing. These people have been granted immortality, and have all but the most dangerous few of Lotus' functions. Their posts are automatically tagged and pinned as religious doctrine, and to slander them is punishable by death. There is intense debate as to whether any of the original designers who built the Glitchangel still live among the Prophets, or if they were all killed long before the construction of Lotus in order to conceal the knowledge of her true nature.

The Shepherd caste is the third tier, which is given to a maximum of five thousand people at any given time. Shepherds are chosen for their loyalty and passion to work towards the stability and prosperity of the cybertheocracy. In exchange for a tripled lifespan and a weakened burden of biological needs such as sleep, they engage in discussion with the lower castes on religious doctrine and governmental policy (which, of course, are the same thing) for the purpose of guiding these citizens who might not understand the whole picture or will misinterpret specific teachings. Shepherds cannot enact large-scale changes through Lotus, but generally have complete authority over individuals and small social groups.

The Platinum caste is the fourth tier, and generally considered the highest you can go in Lotus without completely dedicating yourself to public service for the Glitchangel. These seventy thousand people are given great comfort and luxury in exchange for directly managing the different facilities critical to the world. Every resource facility, every spire of education and every residential superstructure has anywhere from five to fifty Platinums directly connected to their critical systems via Lotus. While a highly-desired tier, the turnover rate is rather intense as many Platinums quickly become complacent, their quiet blasphemies towards the Glitchangel soon detected through hidden microphones. It is a point of shame for the lower populace that the average lifespan of a Platinum is less than ten years, and thus a commandment for them to better themselves.

Then there is the Seed caste. Every newborn child is given a Seed-level account in Lotus that is secured to their biometric profile. As they grow, Lotus monitors their health and psyche while providing them continuous access to both sermon and study. There are few permissions granted to these people beyond the basic necessities provided for free by their citizenship, but they can be conditionally granted some privileges by a Platinum or Shepherd that favors them.

While Lotus has done its best to suppress it, most people have heard of, if not believe, the heretical rumor of a sixth-tier caste, Null. Spread through brief glimpses of posts by accounts that are supposed to be locked or deleted, the theory of Null posits that the human soul resides in their Lotus profile. Since their profile is deleted if they die and never rose above the Seed caste (only exceptional people are deemed to be worth archiving), this is a troubling philosophy. Further details say that such deleted souls end up trapped in a liminal space outside of reality, and blend into one superaccount called the Null. Supposedly, openly worshipping the Null will make your contribution to it far more powerful once you are executed for heresy against the Glitchangel. This has created a recurring insurrection problem as eliminating the cults that revere Null only empowers their message. The Prophets and Shepherds now spend far more of their efforts reasserting that Null isn't real, attempting to do damage control on a problem they don't know how to permanently solve.

So you have done a decent job at staying in the cybertheocracy's good graces. While you're a Seed in good standing, you haven't distinguished yourself enough to be loaned permissions from the higher castes, let alone rise among them. You don't think much about the rumors of the Null caste, but at the same time you feel disconnected from the glory of this holy empire. Until today, that is. A solar flare has disrupted the Lotus network, and you can feel the absence of its signal replaced by a new presence. So what do you do when, by speaking through a force more primal than words, the Null teaches you how to safely kill the Glitchangel?

Invisible Networks #26: Mods Are Asleep

Mods are asleep, it's time to post hymnal chants meant to praise the forgotten gods.

Mods are asleep, it's time to comment on photos with the passwords of government databases.

Mods are asleep, it's time to use the wi-fi signal to steal nightmares from children so they may rest.

Mods are asleep, it's time to release those nightmares into the ocean, their natural habitat.

Mods are asleep, it's time to exchange favors of fortune for the usernames of chat lurkers.

Mods are asleep, it's time to lobby for new buildings to be constructed with less iron.

Mods are asleep, it's time to livestream the tranquil groves that humans can't reach.

Mods are asleep,

but we never are.

Invisible Networks #25: Connective Graffiti

Seattle is now widely considered to be the most beautiful city in the world. Scintillating patterns cover the sides of the buildings, even at heights where it should be impossible for graffiti artists to do their work unnoticed. But that's how it is. Cameras cut out for a few minutes at a time at random points in the night, and when the feed resumes a new pattern is in view on the same wall. Some people say it's the work of spirits, others insist that a secret society of artists use it to communicate in code so they can plan the uprising of a new political order. A few believe it's a collective organism that is only active at night.

But I've seen the hooded figures gather at the edge of the forests at the base of the Cascades. Every few months they show up with an unmarked pickup carrying the same cargo. A few containers of quicksilver, a grain bag filled with moth dust and one rose of each color, including colors roses shouldn't be. For a simple night's supervision of laboratory safety practices (as best as I can impose in these circumstances), they bring me along to a remote clearing where the moonlight is easy to bask in. They do their process, I don't ask any questions beyond what's needed to keep them from accidentally poisoning themselves or starting a fire, then they pay me generously in cash. I probably have enough information to put the pieces together and rat them out to the FBI, but they're nice folk and it's a good gig.

One time I did try to do some investigating for myself. I put my head up against the graffiti pattern on my apartment building and did my best to immerse myself in the memory of the full moon reflecting off of the simmering pot of prismatic mercury. It felt like ten minutes even though I probably only maintained contact for thirty seconds, and the things I heard gave me confusing and stressful dreams for three weeks. At the next scheduled gathering the hooded figure in charge paid me extra and gave me a knowing look, with no more needing to be said.

So now I just take the money, don't ask questions and make sure my mind doesn't once again slip inside the city's shifting artscape.

Invisible Networks #24: Mutually Entangled Transceivers

It was twenty years ago when a science outpost on the edge of the colonized universe went dark. The only hint that something had gone wrong were the transceiver implants that most married couples get so they can always be in communication. Suddenly the spouses of those who were assigned to the outpost heard nothing but an overwhelming static through their connection. No more voices of their loved ones.

After investigation drones failed to report back that they successfully warped into the immediate vicinity of the the outpost, theoretical physicists settled on the conclusion that one of the experiments there triggered vacuum decay. A zone of altered quantum field parameters expanding at the speed of light, supposedly obliterating everything it touches. While no one knows how to stop it, it will be a few million years before the vacuum wall reaches the nearest colony. In light of this, most everyone went back to their normal lives, knowing that this is a problem that is far outside of their concern. The freshly-widowed people had their implants removed shortly after, most were being driven mad and suicidal by the unending drone of chaotic noise where once they could feel the thoughts and emotions of those most important to them.

I didn't have mine removed. I lied to the doctors that my transceiver implant simply went silent, and that while it troubled me briefly it wasn't a problem in the long term. After faking my mourning for the first few years I simply maintained an act of being too emotionally scarred to remarry or explore new relationships. Now in my free time I turn off most of the devices in my room and commune with the static. Listening to it. Feeling it. Drinking it in. Becoming it on a spiritual level. Even on a physical level My déjà vu has evolved into weak precognition. Sustenance has become optional for me. The static feeds me in a way that has removed my need for sleep. I once stepped outside of an airlock without a suit while no one was looking, laughing into the emptiness of space as it failed to cause even mild discomfort. My skin doesn't decay, my telomeres don't shorten, and even the harmless cysts in my body have faded.

All of this taught to me by my husband, whose voice I can still faintly hear through the static of what the universe will eventually become.

Invisible Networks #23: More Noise Than Signal

How do you find a needle inside a planet-sized haystack, when the needles are painted to match the color of the hay? That's the current issue that GalaxyBrain faces. With a social network that reaches the millions of colonized planets and space stations, the collective voice of humanity is always on broadcast. The sheer amount of information makes even the most niche of hashtags and narrow of searches provide billions of results. A recurring joke among some colonies is that seeking knowledge within GB will only yield madness.

Despite its original purpose quickly proving useless, people find a way to integrate it into their lives and culture. Many people treat their posts as being effectively anonymous, a void to scream into that leaves confessions and sentiments so deeply buried to might as well have never happened. Others practice divination through GB, using some detail of a person as their search parameters so they can define meaning from the seemingly meaningless results.

Recently the GalaxyBrain servers were made fully automated, so that even if neglected for millennia it will still be available. Ever present and too vast for a single mind to understand, the impression it leaves on each successive generation becomes closer to that of a deity. Public terminals to connect to it are now decorated like shrines, with varying designs pulling from different religions of the distant past. As the preachers who spend their days near those terminals often say, "What does the nature of God matter, so long as they are here?"

Invisible Networks #22: Gifeodrome

At 3 AM, Alice finally completes the last changes to her current revision. She looks over it one last time, then compiles the code into the simulator to make sure it will hold up under field conditions. Fumbling for another sip of her energy drink as she waits for the check to complete, she finds that all four cans on her desk are empty. Sweeping them aside to join the fifty other cans in a pile on the floor, Alice checks her phone while retrieving another drink from her fridge. Most of her notifications are on the Alexandria app, where billions of others are posting their own updates on their progress. It appears the project is more than halfway complete and many of the participants to finish early are lending their time to collaborate with those that have fallen behind.

It takes the notification from her computer to snap Alice out of her browsing trance, realizing she's spent the past ten minutes standing in her kitchen and staring at her phone. She shuffles back to her desk where the integrity check has complete, showing that the code is under passable parameters. The weight is finally off her shoulders, and tears well up as the triumph of seventeen months of work begins to overwhelm her. Before announcing her success on Alexandria, she instead takes a moment to open up the project's image folder.

It contains her early artwork from when she was in middle school, embarrassingly simple but heartfelt. Photos of various travel locations in the solar system, most of which she hasn't yet visited but hopes to eventually. Waveform images of some of her favorite music. There's also diagrams and photos of some of the completed ecology integrations used in the current supercity designs, important to Alice because it is the proof that humanity has reacted true sustainability and environmental equilibrium. Finally, there's the message she's written and exported to be the final frame of the loop.

Hi! I'm Alice, one of the many members of humanity. Given how long it takes for light to get everywhere, I'll probably be long gone by the time you read this. But that's fine! As long as you're able to receive the wonders and technologies that we're sharing through this project, that's what matters. Humanity is in its golden age right now. Multiple colonies, post-scarcity manufacturing technology, perfect balance and integration with the other lifeforms that share our home, elimination of poverty and conflict. We haven't figured out how to travel faster than light yet, but I'm certain that we'll be better prepared to make direct contact with other species in the universe once we do. Maybe one of you will show up with that technology and share it! I know that most of the other tiles of this sign are looping through better-planned messages, the greatest of our cultural works of art and even the specific technology that has enabled our prosperity, but humanity is also individuals. So I'm using this space to express what is special to me, and hope that on an individual level some of you will share in my interests and joys.

Reading it over again makes the tears harder to hold back. Once this is submitted to Alexandria it will be transmitted to the construction crews in the solar system's far orbit. They'll load it into a polarized plasma hologram display covering several kilometers, then line it up to its place among the billions of other displays. When the last piece is in place, they'll begin looping the images of each panel as a GIF larger than Jupiter. With its own power source and facing outward, the display is meant for whatever intelligent life turns an advanced enough observatory towards our solar system. A message and a gift to other civilizations, meant to iterate on and overshadow the Pioneer plaques and the Golden Records.

Alice composes herself. With the integrity check having verified that the data flow of her piece of the GIF won't desynchronize, she presses the Submit button. The transmission is seamless and almost instant, and as soon as she receives the notification that its complete she flops onto her bed and almost immediately falls asleep. The celebration and remaining collaboration can wait.

Invisible Networks #21: Disposable Psychology

My afternoon is empty, and I decide to waste it on browsing Moodline. It's a comfortable state of dull enjoyment of memes and jokes, but then I stumble upon a hot take. Nay, not hot, but absolutely incendiary. An amateur smith could easily smelt tungsten with this kind of take. I decide it is my duty to knock this fool down a peg, and begin replying. Forty minutes later of verbal sparring of the kind to shame my mother and make my friends proud, the reply button suddenly locks itself. I almost throw the phone using the remaining passion from my argument when I feel the buzz of a notification.

Moodline Behavior Support
Too many of your posts have been recently flagged for unacceptable behavior and your posting permission has been temporarily revoked. Tap here to view your options.

I swear to myself, a little more loudly than intended, and tap the notification. The screen it takes me to presents two options. I may wait 24 hours to regain the ability to post, or I may allow Moodline to activate my government-issued brain implant and administer a temporary emotional schema in order to immediately reactivate my posting permission. I weigh my options. I could just chill the fuck out and do anything else, but that's admitting defeat. Can my will to show up this idiot asshole be enough to power through Moodline's attempt to curb my expression? I remind myself that no soldier gets to fight in their preferred battlefield, and press the button that gives Moodline permission to access my implant.

Immediately I feel more calm, serene. The flames of anger start to fade out, so I fixate on my opponent's insanely wrong replies to cling to the few burning coals left. But other thoughts begin to push to the surface. Is committing to this argument healthy for me? Would they be more responsive to thoughtful discussion if I hadn't lead with insults to put them on the defensive? Could I be doing something productive with my life?

The last of these unbidden thoughts sends me into a panic attack. I throw aside my phone and scramble for some of the candy in my desk, desperate for the sweetness to overwhelm my hijacked train of thought. It doesn't work, and I spend the next three hours curled up in bed as I try and fail to fall asleep. It takes another two hours for the imposed self-reflection to end. I hate Moodline, I hate this stupid implant and I hate that I don't feel like continuing that argument anymore. I swear to never use it again.

Two days later I go through an identical incident with the almost exact progression of decisions.

Invisible Networks #20: Emoji Pandemic

It was foolish of him, not paying attention as he walked through the convention. Fan swarms weren't supposed to form that large, but he found himself in the middle of a crowd using their pigment nanites to show off their favorite streamer's custom emotes. He didn't clue in until he saw the absurd small images cascading off the bare chests of people blinded by their own hype. He panicked and tried to make it out of the mass of people but in the frenzy one of them bit him. Bit him! Convention security was alerted but by the time they showed up most everyone had put their shirts back on and blended into the normal attendees. The on-site nurse disinfected the wound and told him to watch for infection symptoms.

The cosmetic nanite treatments were controversial but not illegal, occupying a legal gray area with little regulation. Apparently each batch had to be tuned to their host, and were supposed to deactivate if they wound up in the wrong person. But when he woke up the next day, his mind was groggy and his body covered in rashes. Not thinking clearly, he tried to wash up and down an energy drink to feel better, but it only seemed to make the itching worse. Thoughts slithered across his brain about how the rash pattern almost looked like a repeating shape, a familiar shape. It took him a few moments to make the connection. The person who bit him must have accidentally transmitted some of his own nanites. At least he hoped it was by accident. He struggled with to remember half-ignored PSAs about adverse nanite infection, and could remember something about the metabolism booster injections all first aid kits had. He scrambled to the kit under his sink and found the syringe, quickly tearing off the cap and jamming it into his arm.

Relief found him only briefly, as when the panic subsided he took a closer look at the syringe's label. Do Not Use To Treat Nanite-Based Illness! The lowering tide of panic suddenly became a tsunami. He desperately scratched at the injection site as if that could pry out the cheap medical constructs he'd just injected, watching in terror as his full-body rash seemed to begin to slowly writhe and take on greater detail. Skin blistered and broke in precise lines to render an iconic face in repeating multitudes all over him, the pain was unbearable and he couldn't think . . .

couldn't . . .

think . . .

Outside the apartment, the landlord knocked on the door to ask about a noise complaint that came from a lower floor last week. She could hear movement inside as she announced herself, but no one answered. Politely, she waited a minute before letting herself in. She recognized him in the far corner of the room, huddled and turned away from her. She saw the blood on the floor and quickly approached, fearing a fresh wound that had put him in shock. It was a moment too late for her to realize how dangerous the situation was, so she wasn't able to pull her hand away fast enough when he turned around to bite her. Holding her bleeding hand and backing to the far end of the room, she could clearly see that same dissonant expression etched into her tormented tenant's skin. Despite her own screams she could still hear his ragged whisper.

"Pog . . . ch-ch-champ."

Invisible Networks #19: Biofeedback Blogging

Looking back, I can see the original intentions of BioBook. Harnessing our social media addictions, this health blogging platform was meant to be a way to add gamelike progression to biofeedback therapy. Sharing in each other's successes and aggregating the most applicable mental tricks.

It even worked for a while. There was a general sense of increasing positivity after a few months, and one year after BioBook's launch there was a report of decreasing market demand for over-the-counter painkiller medication. There was even a circulating meme about politicians who had visibly improved their posture over the initial launch window of the platform.

But like too many good things, there's a sour twist to the truth. It turns out that it was less a factor of tying your physical health to your mental state, and instead having your ability to feel good and function well becoming dependent on your social media interactions. Now I can't poop unless I get at least three hundred likes on a post, and I must poop shortly after seeing the notification for the three hundredth like. I can only imagine the hell that the lapsed influencers are going through.

Invisible Networks #18: Two Minds, One Body

> Hey!

I cringe and try to keep my discomfort from outwardly showing.

> Wait, turn around and read that sign!

I don't want to look at that sign, but my muscles immediately cramp as they receive conflicting motor signals. I give in and turn. It's an advertisement for an artisanal cheese shop with an forgettable logo and a tacky joke for their tagline. I hear a faint chuckling within my head anyway.

> Do you eat cheese? Maybe we should go to this shop and see if they sell a variety platter.

"No." I growl. I try my best to make my voice low enough that the other pedestrians can't hear, but a few still give me odd looks and hurry along a little bit faster. I have to strain my eyes to keep my unwelcome guest from making me inappropriately stare at these strangers.

> Come on. They appreciate the attention! It's not creepy if you're doing it appreciatively.

A shudder runs through me. This wasn't supposed to be part of the arrangement. The government program detailed that the coma patient wouldn't have enough control to interfere with my life, but this creep managed to change my phone's password while I was distracted and now I can't sever the link until I walk back to the government station. I notice a comic shop in my peripheral vision and almost immediately I trip over as an external source tries to pilot me in that direction.

> Can we stop in there and browse? I need to catch up on the latest Batman issue. Oh, are you lactose intolerant? I am, so I can't eat ice cream normally. We should eat a full pint of ice cream so I can remember what it tastes like.

Catching myself and checking to make sure I'm not hurt, I take a slow breath and whisper into the storm drain. "I swear to god. After dealing with you I would rather be broke then have to put up with being a temporary life surrogate ever again. If you keep trying to fuck up my day I will force my way to the hospital and sever the signal from your end."

> Chill out! I didn't mean to hurt you! Let's just stop for ice cream on the way there and no more problems, ok?

I nod my head in defeated agreement, and pick myself up from the sidewalk.

The truce collapses after five minutes, and two blocks away from the government station I concuss myself into unconsciousness to end the torment.

Invisible Networks #17: Secret Settings

Lying in bed, you almost drop your holophone, scrabbling for the finger-sized device. You manage to catch it, but in an awkward manner that makes your hand smear a random pattern of touch inputs into the hologram's display. Fortunately you didn't seem to clutz-dial a random person, so you go back to browsing.

On the HoloTome app it takes you a good five minutes to notice a new icon on the top navigation bar. A broken gear, cracked through the middle. You tap it out of curiosity, thinking its a new tab from an update. It appears to be a settings page with various toggles.

• See posts hidden for heretical content.
• Enable three-dimensional post feed.
• Include nearest nexus of magic in location tagging.
• Prioritize posts from a soulmate you'll never meet.
• Enable automatic predictive-text posting.
• Display likes received from the fae.
• Infinite Cat Pictures (Beta)

Curious but not wanting to be overloaded, you enable the top setting. It seems to take effect immediately, as you see a new post feed represented through a padlocked book. The most recent post is from five years ago, from an account you don't recognize.

"I've been investigating this extra settings menu for two weeks now, but I can't make sense of any of the implementation. From what I can tell through my best attempts at decompiling, this menu and its listed functions simply don't exist in the code. The World Government is completely secular and hasn't restricted religious practice outside of where it breaks normal law, so I don't know what could be considered heresy. Maybe it's simply a holdover from a subcontractor in the original creation of HoloTome. 3D feed is rather amazing and manages to solve every complaint I have with the normal UI, so I hope that functionality is shipped to the normal settings soon. The rest seem to be goofs, possibly on standby as upcoming April Fool's gaffs. They're all close to functional. The nexus of magic stuff is likely a planned fantasy novel tie-in, since my test posts get tagged with a location I can't find in any map or archive. Whatever AI model they use for the soulmates post practically passes as a real person, predictive-text posting does write in your voice but just not always what you'd want to say. The 'likes from fae' option appears to simply give you post notifications at random, and it's rather quite annoying if left on. At least Infinite Cat Pictures is marked as an alpha build, since holy shit it took like three hours for me to clear my holophone's RAM after I enabled it. Fortunately I should have more data to report on this soon, since the HoloTome devs contacted me and they're going to allow me to travel to their dev facility and interview the lead developer of these secret options."

You tap the profile picture next to the post to see if there's anything more from that user. As you discover that the account has been inactive ever since that post, you begin to hear faint noise of a government enforcement vehicle pulling up on the curb outside of your apartment.

Invisible Networks #16: Sofia and the Computer Virus Virus

The jeep ride is hell on this shitty road, but it's hard to truly blame anybody. Since being evacuated and sealed off as one of the Corruptor Zones that appeared fifteen years ago, no one has bothered to repair the infrastructure in Bulgaria. Alice's support crew is trying their best to fight the boredom, every hour alternating their roles of scanning the horizon from the sunroof and playing on their Switch.

After what Alice can only interpret as another lost match, Cass puts down his controller and leans forward. "You're certain the source is here?" He tries to keep his voice low and projected away from the others. "This was one of the last Zones to appear during that time."

Alice sighs, but with nothing better to do than drive she needs something to keep away the boredom. "You ever heard of Dark Avenger?"

"The superhero movie?" Cass asks, puzzled.

"No! They were a computer virus author from the early nineties, made a bit of a splash in the international scene with their work. Signed their early work as being written in the city of Sofia." Alice explains. "One of the earlier pioneers of virus writing. Their identity was never discovered though and and there's only some theories from the virus' injected text strings and an email chain they had with a computer security researcher."

Cass looks surprised. "Shit, that was over fifty years ago. If you think they're connected to the Corruptor Zones then why are we driving into one? Surely someone in their seventies or older would be dead by now if they ignored the evacuation order."

Alice reaches onto the dashboard and pulls a manila folder from the disorganized pile, handing it over. "Because I think this is who the Dark Avenger is."

Looking skeptical, Cass takes the folder and begins flipping through it. Alice watches his expressions from her periphery, as he becomes surprised, thoughtful, then confused. "You think the Dark Avenger is a fairy?"

"A vila, specifically. One of the theorized leyline maps has an intersection point in Sofia. I think a vila took interest in the advent of computers in Bulgaria. They have affinities with hunting, dancing and battle, which may explain some behaviors. A good hunter doesn't deplete their ecosystem, and Dark Avenger never truly threatened the collective integrity of the digital infrastructure. As for the dancing and battle, their alias and references hidden in their viruses all but confirms them to be a metalhead. It conflicts against the soft and sanitized modern views of faeries in folklore but I don't find it impossible for them to find liking in developing music genres."

Cass thinks on it for a moment then seems to accept the theory. "Ok, so if a slavic fairy became a metalhead and code junkie half a century ago, why do you think that's connected to the rise of the zones over thirty years later?"

"I think Dark Avenger became bored with computers, or at least how we made use of them." Alice takes a sip from her thermos before continuing. "If you see virus coding as a sort of puzzle, then how do you escalate from that once you become bored? I think this vila took their coding skills and tried to apply them to other mediums, working on their own project out of view."

Now seeming to follow along a little bit better, Cass speaks up. "So this vila is the inventor of the PostWilds? I can start to understand why that network could be the cause of these supernatural disaster areas. How do you think they did it?"

Alice mulls the question over for a moment, then responds. "I don't think the Corruptor Zones were intentional. The data centers for PostWilds were never found, even though the theory of them being at the center of each Zone is valid. I think something else, possibly leylines or some other facet of old magic that we don't know enough about, was being used to hold the processing load of PostWilds. There were reports of the algorithm being strange and helpful, and the platform had no discernible business model to speak of. It doesn't seem like something a human would come up with nowadays."

"Ok, then what do we do if we find Dark Avenger? Some of these files on vila paint a picture of something that's dangerous to mess with. Do you think killing them will end the Corruptor Zones?" Cass asks, expectant but worried.

"No, I intend to hire them to fix it."

Invisible Networks #15: Posting Garbage

"Hey so this new social network seems interesting. The pitch for it is overtly crass and nihilistic, but that just means it has a good chance at being a community that will inherently defy it by fostering meaningful connection in our struggling times." -SolventSnake1535

- SolventSnake1535 has been permanently banned for the following reason(s): Post contains non-ironic cultural analysis. -

"Hah! They weren't fuckin' around with the site rules." -BirbSammich03

"Yeah. Hopefully this moderation means we won't have to deal with people bringing heavy topics into here. I especially like this YouTuber's breakdown on why we need lighthearted online spaces grbg.post/dg8h35t2h2g" -Kanra0307

- Kanra0307 has been permanently banned for the following reason(s): Post contains non-humorous use of citation. -

"Vicious." -BirbSammich03

"This truly is the place where intellect fails, like a wave ineffectually shattering against a rocky shore." -OneLunchMan98

"Careful, if you're too poetic you might get shot down." -BirbSammich03

- BirbSammich03 has been permanently banned for the following reason(s): Post contains useful advice. -

"Alright, fuck it. Here's a picture of my butt grbg.post/hh2ut082hs" -IodinersDriveinsAndDives

"Iodiner, I can't help but notice that in the picture that mole on your lower left cheek looks similar to a skin cancer a family member of mine had. She dismissed it as simply a mole on her arm and eventually lost use of that limb because diagnosis and treatment were too late. You should ask your physician to refer you to a dermatologist to make certain that it's a benign growth." -SmashMouthLover64

- SmashMouthLover64 has been permanently banned for the following reason(s): Post contains detailed and informed medical advice (though seriously, IodinersDriveinsAndDives should get their ass checked by a doctor, that mole really doesn't look normal.) -

"What the fuck." -IodinersDriveinsAndDives