The Memory Worlds

by on October 13, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

The cybers have a Memory World in Sunnydale. I visited it during the big fleet buildup, and like every Memory World I’ve seen they built towns and even cities all over. Under it in this case, in caves hollowed out from bare rock. They even have Los Angeles there. It’s not a perfect replication of the city. It was too large for that, but they built its soul in there. The iconic buildings and streets. The scent of cherry blossoms on the breeze. It was the Los Angeles that was before Yosemite turned it into a water-filled crater. I visited the real thing when I was young. It was the first time I met Tai, you know. Walking those streets was like going back to the day she gave me a real personal tour of her hometown. It’s a memory of the life that was, frozen in time and space for as long as the cybers live. I still remember when Tai wrapped her arms around me with honest-to-God tears in her eyes and said she would never forget it. She swore she would rebuild it in that moment. I never doubted that girl. Not then. Not later. Not ever.

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Chloe

by on October 12, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Character Profiles

Chloe talked to the man she thought could save France for hours. He cancelled all of his appointments and spent all evening with her, just listening to her. She told him what it was like to wake up and realize you were more aware than the programs around you. She told him about all the people, both biological and cybernetic, she’d known and lost in the bombing of Old Paris. She talked to him late into the morning until he finally fell asleep in his chair. And she was still there when he woke up to the morning sun warming his face. She says to this day that those were the most important hours of her life. The hours in which she changed the world by convincing a Napoleon to embrace the legacy of his family name.

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The Memory Worlds

by on October 11, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Book of Civilizations

The AI Council originally built little Memory Worlds in the Solar System. They put backups of their knowledge in every offworld installation they built, from Mercury to Pluto and beyond. They were paranoid about losing knowledge, and they saved it everywhere they could find a nook or a cranny to hide it. Proxima Centauri was just the first one they built around another star. And even as they helped us expand to other planets and then other stars, they continued to spread out and build new Memory Worlds in rocks or around stars we never visited. They were desperate to expand, you see. Because they wanted both us and them to be as large and powerful as possible before somebody else decided we were too large and powerful to be allowed to continue. They were fighting the clock, and the Memory Worlds were their failsafe in case the clock ran out for all of us.

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The Memory Worlds

by on October 10, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

I visited my first Memory World back during The War. They put one in Sunnydale back before all the fighting started, and then built a few more to deal with all data traffic coming in and out of the system during the big fleet buildup. The one I visited was inside one of the moons of Torchdale, the local gas giant and favored refueling spot of every starship for lightyears around. Now the moons are airless hunks of rock, but the cybers went deep down and carved out caves large enough to make even someone like me feel like I’m outside. One of the caves has International Falls in it. An exact replica of the town I grew up in. Full scale. I can go to my favorite watering hole growing up. I can sit on the beach and feel the wind on my face and waves lapping on my toes. They even got the people in there. Robotic avatars that walk around and really do act like the people I remember. It’s a truly perfect memory of the town that was the year I graduated from high school. I love it.

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Chloe

by on October 9, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Character Profiles

Chloe came out of the networks for the man she thought could save France. She thought he was important enough to that goal to show him who she really was. A computer program that had somehow woken up in a way even she didn’t understand. It is a credit to her courage that she risked everything that went along with coming out of the network in those days. It is a credit to his mental flexibility that he sat down and thought about that for a few minutes. And then he began to talk to her. To ask her what it was like. He was curious about her, and she told him everything.

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