RYAN SOMMA
THE SPIRALING WEB
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Cover Art
Partial view of the Mandelbrot set. Created by Wolfgang Beyer with the program Ultra Fractal 3.
2006 ideonexus
“The image was mesmerizing, more organic than mechanical, as if I were glimpsing the early stages of some accelerating evolutionary process, in which all the boundaries between men--nationality, race, religion, wealth--were rendered invisible and irrelevant, so that the physicist in Cambridge, the bond trader in Tokyo, the student in a remote Indian village, and the manager of a Mexico City department store were drawn into a single constant, thrumming conversation, time and space giving way to a world spun entirely of light.”
-Senator Barak Obama, Describing a monitor showing World Wide Web traffic patterns.
This book is dedicated to Doug Taylor, for his glowing praise, Vicky Sawyer, for her intuitive insights, and, most of all, Christopher Mitchell, for his challenging criticisms, which forced this lazy writer to make thing much more real.
1.0
THE SPIRALING WEB
1.01
Flatline swept across the world in a ferocious whirlwind of death. Wizards, thieves, clerics, paladins, druids, shamans, warriors, and warlocks all over the planet vanished in a morbid frost of mass extinction. Villages emptied of life. Then the towns deserted, until there were only masses of non-player characters huddling in the cities, following their survival protocols. Their programming lacked the sophistication to know they were merely awaiting deletion as well.
City after city was extinguished, until only a lone king in a barren castle remained. His programming did not allow him to exhibit fear when the monster entered his court. Nor did it allow him to raise one finger in defense when it devoured him and assumed his place on the throne. Flatline was now the proud emperor of a dead world.
The entire absolute conquest took less than an hour.
Devin had come along for the ride, and now he frowned disapprovingly at the hairless, wrinkled demon dog grinning down at him from its throne. Four arms sprouted akimbo from the contorted torso, each moving with a mind of its own. Twin fangs protruded from the crooked snout, oozing sizzling corrosive juices. Two pair of obsidian orbs lined his mangy head, while a pair of large white eyes resided outside of them, holding two pupils each, orbiting one another in a spiraling hypnotic dance.
Flatine’s avatar was awesome. Devin had never seen such attention to detail, and the software maintaining must have required incredible processing power. Such a mass of data would normally bog down a host and ground the system to a halt.
Devin’s form was absurdly simple in comparison, a large eyeball floating on a pedestal of violet energy. It betrayed nothing about the person behind it, and Devin appreciated the anonymity, like a warm blanket while he was online.
Devin watched without interest as Flatline sprang from his haunches to annihilate a dragon covered with emerald scales, a new player just coming online. A moment later, Flatline was padding back to Devin on all sixes, an amused grin on his face. A glittering mound of green crystals and blue blood faded out of existence behind him.
“What fun is it to kill the other players before they become a threat?” Devin asked and Flatline’s smile dropped.
Flatline’s eyes flashed, their pupils spinning. “Fun is ruining the game for everyone.”
“Hm,” Devin went back to watching the deserted playing field. This was really, really boring. A thought occurred to him and he snapped his fingers, causing his avatar to blink out of existence briefly, “I get it. You’re after the SysAdmin.”
He jumped involuntarily as Flatline pounced on another user, a standard Pegasus template just logging into the game. Flatline shredded it into a cloud of white feathers and horsehair. Devin imagined it from the player’s perspective, phasing in, an explosion of fangs, claws, and:
GAME OVER
Another user fled to elsewhere on the Internet.
Devin understood Flatline was that skilled. He could sit on someone else’s computer, and there was nothing the owner could do but watch helplessly as Flatline destroyed months, maybe years of earning a loyal user base through programming and promotions. All the Administrator could do was pray for Flatline to run his course like tornado trashing a trailer park or Godzilla stomping a city.
Devin maintained this acquaintance out of sheer curiosity. Flatline fascinated him the way a child prodigy was interesting, a curiosity, but still a child. Flatline was tedious, two-dimensional, and emotionally immature. He simply lacked any social sensitivity, as if he had a mild case of autism.
Flatline belched and hacked up a longsword onto the palace floor from a Knight he’d devoured earlier. “Bleach!” he shook his head like a shaggy dog, hairless ears slapping grotesquely, “What’s the next challenge? Take out the System Administrator?”
Devin gave a polite laugh, “You’re not a god.”
“A god,” Flatline’s face slackened briefly, his eyes going dull and lifeless for a moment. He returned to the present, stating, “I have no response to that.”
Devin hated when Flatline said that.
Neither spoke for several minutes. Flatline yawned, his massive jaws popping before snapping them shut with a ‘clop,’ “I bet the gaming boards are bad-mouthing me this very second.” He stood and paced full circle on his six limbs, and slumped into an exasperated heap again, “This isn’t enough...”
“No one’s joining in,” Devin remarked, his disembodied eye panned across the empty room. Only the whistling wind was missing from this lonely scene. “Whatever the SysAdmin did to provoke you, I think you’ve made your point.”
Flatline nodded silently in agreement, “You’d better disappear, I’m going to see what other trouble I can get into.” This meant Flatline was leaving the game, but would leave a shell of his avatar behind, set on ‘Auto Kill’ to destroy any players who might join later.
Devin quietly logged out.
1.02
Devin continued surfing the Web for several hours, browsing links in the form of caverns, roller coasters, riverboats, and whatever else the millions of Web Designers worldwide had constructed. It was late, but the residual energy his interactions with Flatline generated had left his mind too active for sleep. He clipped a few discussion forum threads flaming the hacker who’d crashed Clan War Machine’s Gaming Network tonight--although Flatline never acknowledged his own press.
Devin hit the ideonexus portal, always bustling with activity. Every crazy possible avatar wandered through the vast space station, flashing out of existence as they reached the airlocks, which were links to various subjects. A panda bear wearing a purple tutu and carrying a matching umbrella plodded through the crowd. A bare-chested barbarian browsed the fantasy fiction links, an enormous broad sword resting casually on one shoulder. A multi-colored furry thing bounced a few feet away, its big floppy ears flapping and crossed eyes jingling. Devin thought it looked appropriate for the “Space Station” skin he applied to the portal, more so that the “Ancient Rome” or “Library” skins he’d tried before.
It was a high volume of traffic for this time, especially for his favorites, which consisted of obscure philosophy, science, and technology news. California had passed out of prime time several hours ago, and soon, across the Pacific, Japan would wake up and fill the portal with kitschy cartoon animals. Devin preferred the Chinese web-surfers who would then follow and their preference for martial arts avatars.
He opened a window to his music library, itching to hear the Beatles studio recording of “Hey Jude” he’d recently discovered, but dismayed to find he couldn’t afford to play it. It was two days until his next allowance, an eternity without music or movies. Devin toyed with the idea of getting a pirated version through Flatline, but he would need to go offline to enjoy it. While online, a copyright-enforcement bot might catch him.
Devin opened a navigation window in the air before him and checked the science websites for updates. The space station disappeared and he stood outside the pristine, white building representing the Data Sanctuary for the Natural Sciences. Scrawled across the building’s face in giant red letters, graffiti read:
Evolution is a hoax!
There is only one true Savior!
Devin met with a “Host Inaccessible” error when he pushed on the twin glass doors, and he shook his head sadly. Once again the Religionists had successfully orchestrated a denial of service attack against the organization, preventing Devin from accessing the facts he needed to inconvenience their Post-Intelligent Design arguments in the “Origins” Forum.
He opened a window with his personal organizer and located the address for the Legion of Discord, an organization of hackers that had been around for decades. Every time the International Web Authority thought they had shut the group down, they sprang up somewhere else on the Web. Devin’s successful hack of an algorithm for searching research papers caught an LoD member’s notice, who was now sponsoring him for membership.
Devin was practically ecstatic over this possibility. It was rumored the LoD had backups of the Library of Congress they gave to members. Devin didn’t know if it was true or not, but it did earn the group the nickname “Keepers of the Lame” among the Vectorialist pundits, but to Devin it sounded like a paradise. What would it be like to swim in so much data?
He instant messaged his sponsor, and a connection established. Sun Wu Kong, the immortal shape-shifting samurai monkey king of ancient Chinese legend appeared in an explosion of smoke before him. He carried a bo staff in one hand and was covered in elaborate armor made of virtual bamboo, cloth, and ring-mail.
“Hello Omni,” he said and a tiny world map with most of Asia highlighted appeared above his head to indicate his words were being translated from Mandarin to English through babble fish software.
“Hello Mr. Kong,” Devin replied politely. “You said to check back and see if he was free.”
“Let me ping him,” Sun Wu replied.
“Thanks again for sponsoring me,” Devin said, but Sun-Wu did not reply. Devin waited uncomfortably for several moments before deciding to break the silence with some small talk, “How’d your date go Friday night?”
Sun Wu Kong waved a hand dismissively, “Turns out it was just a chatbot trying to lure me to the Pleasure Dome Cybersex site in Thailand.”
“You got tricked by a chatbot?” Devin scoffed, but choked down his laughter at the intensity of Sun-Wu’s glare.
“Have you ever met a bot online Devin?” Sun Wu demanded.
“No.”
“Yes you have,” Sun Wu Kong replied. “You’ve just never realized you were talking to one. At least I know I’ve been duped—I’ve located him.”
The connection established and Devin navigated to the address. The Web suddenly felt a few degrees colder, and Devin looked back at Sun-Wu, the monkey wore a smug smile, knowing exactly what thoughts he had just put in Devin’s mind. Devin made a mental note to read up on the “Chatbot Identification Act” that never seemed to go anywhere in Congress.
The Egyptian God Horus, Traveler’s avatar, faded into existence. Another world map with the Middle East and parts of Africa highlighted accompanied him, indicating his speech was being translated from Arabic.
“Greetings Omni,” Traveler said. “Are you ready to discuss your possible membership in the Legion?”
Devin nodded, “Sun Wu said you would need to interview me. I’m guessing you’re the clan leader?”
Traveler shook his avian head, “We don’t have a chain of command. Sun-Wu and some other members thought I was the best choice to interview you. Do you know what it means to join the Legion?”
“It means becoming a hacker.”
Traveler nodded, “Why do you want to become a hacker?”
“I…” Devin paused. This was not what he expected. He was thinking there would be tests of logic and programming in store for him, but this was something else. “I hate that I have to pay for every single experience online. I love data sanctuaries, but there isn’t enough information in them. Why do I have to pay others to know anything?”
Traveler smiled, “Have you ever heard of the Library of Alexandria?”
“Only that it’s ancient,” Devin replied.
“It was once the greatest library on Earth,” Traveler said. “Knowledge from all over the world was gathered inside it. History, Science, Culture—everything the ancient world knew about their world was contained there. Do you have any idea what we could learn about our ancestors from the scrolls it contained Omni?”
Devin shook his head.
“We will never know,” Traveler continued, “because the Library was destroyed after centuries of data was collected inside of it. Centuries of data, Omni. Wiped out, and do you know why?”
Devin paused, “Ignorance?”
“Maybe,” Traveler shrugged slightly. “Whether there were motives or if it was an accident we don’t know, but we do know that much of that data was centralized in one place. It wasn’t replicated into many locations.
“Today we have the ability to replicate data all over the world, but do we?” Traveler asked. “Instead we hoard it, make it proprietary, copyright it and manage content. Data has become the most valuable commodity there is, and only because people have engineered it that way.” Traveler spread his hands out in front of Devin, revealing a glowing data cube.
Devin’s breath caught in his throat at this, the Library of Congress.
“This library was once free Omni,” Traveler said. “Just as the Internet once was. Unix, Apache, WWW—the technological innovations that triggered the Communications Revolution were established on free software.” Traveler waited to let this last sink in. When he spoke again his tone was one of bitterness, “Then the Vectorialists divided it all up. They replaced Apache servers with Microsoft, phased out World Wide Web for Quality of Service—” he stopped, regarding Devin. “You want to say something.”
Devin nodded reluctantly, “Those… market innovations, MS servers and QoS--they had their advantages, didn’t they? We learned in school they brought greater controls to how the Internet was run—”
“At what price?” Traveler broke in. “They were innovations that allowed the existing corporations to prevent the emergence of competing innovations. They engineered all of this,” Traveler gestured around him, at the Internet, “to squash the competition.”
“Hm,” Devin found himself suddenly burdened by all of this. “I see your point of view… but… I don’t wholly accept that complete data… uh… liberation is the solution.”
“The Vectorialists are destroying innovation,” Traveler countered. “Their hoarding of ideas leaves nothing for others to build on.”
Traveler regarded him in uncomfortable silence for some time. Finally he said, “I think you’ll make an excellent addition to the Legion of Discord, Omni.”
Devin was surprised, “You think I’ll make a good hacker?”
“That I don’t know,” Traveler shook his head, “but when presented with a paradigm, your first reaction is to challenge it. You challenged me just now. When we part ways you will be immersed in their paradigm once again and you will challenge that. If it is as wrong as I believe, then you will help tear it down. If I am the one who is wrong, then theirs’ was meant to be.”
“Maybe balance is the answer,” Devin offered.
“Here,” Traveler reached out and placed the cube in Devin’s possession. “This is why we hack Omni. Keep it safe.”