Here's another example of the output from my "300 words a day" practice.
Nia's Dream
by Sandra Kishi Glenn
It was the only machine of its kind. They named it QALI, and pronounced it KAH-lee like the Hindu goddess. The Quantum Amplified Liminal Interpreter was a matte black one-meter sphere ringed about its equator with a pulsing line of state-annunciator LEDs. And with 1,024 entangled q-processors, it was by far the most powerful computing device ever made. It could simulate anything imaginable, including the life cycle of any possible universe, from Big Bang to Heat Death. Not just an approximation, mind you, but a cosmos fully as complex as the one we called real.
QALI would pave the way for a new kind of boundless virtual reality, an entire alternate existence indistinguishable from this one. Yet for all this potential it was still just a blank slate, awaiting an artist's promethean spark.
The biggest challenge was the interface. While it did have an attached keyboard-mouse-display setup, they were only used to initialize the system. The real power under the hood was the Main Process Cloud, its harmonized network of entangled q-procs, requiring a far subtler means of control: a next-generation brain-machine interface, stupendously difficult to use. It had been described as ‘a twelve-dimensional theremin of the mind‘, and this was no exaggeration. Many people had tried to use it, and all had failed.
But it was a widely-known fact that the machine had been designed with a single person in mind.
Her name was Estefania Burgos Alvarado and although she had been stricken by cerebral palsy at an early age, she was the world's most famous person. The prison of her withered body had driven her to the only freedom left, that of unbounded imagination. Using primitive brainwave interfaces she had begun her career as a successful screenwriter. Then she became an animator, and later, director. But Estefania soon outgrew the limitations of the existing technology, and with a team of crack engineers and programmers developed her own custom firmware, of far greater potential. At age 35 she gained greatest fame as Nia, the world's only Oneironist, weaver of downloadable dreams, and best friend to eight billion hungry souls. In a world filled with increasingly dire economic, political, and environmental news, she was the lone gatekeeper to a realm of total escape.
Only Nia could tame the wild potential of QALI. And so, one fine autumn day, it was with great fanfare her special van arrived at the engineering lab at MIT for the system's first run.
The concrete path which ran to the lab's main entry had been covered by thousands of lovingly placed flowers. The sight of this, and the adoration of the thronged fans who lined the way brought tears to Estefania's eyes. They were untroubled by the bent, elfin body strapped to her custom wheelchair. They knew her better as she appeared in their dreams: sometimes as a glowing angel, sometimes the perfect mate and lover, sometimes the virile hero, or occasionally the smiling moon, watching protectively in the night sky. A million forms she had taken, like bright birds freed from a cruel cage, and her fans knew them all.
Yet had anyone been able to read that inscrutable, writhing face, they might have caught a hint of sadness, a secret regret. But of course no one could.
In the lab, they carefully placed the sensors on her slumped head and performed the necessary calibrations. At last the device was ready to go, the way clear for her to dream as never before, and—it was hoped—spawn a new reality.
Her body showed no outward sign when QALI was activated. But inwardly, her senses reeled at the blaze of light, the dimensions of possibility unfolding in her head. It was exactly how the Goddess must have felt at the birth of Everything. Her mind stretched, nearly broke, stretched again painfully, and she feared the power of it would unmake her.
She was turned inside out and consumed by this hungry, prodigious matrix. No longer was she Nia, but a wisp of soul flung violently by the tumult of increasing complexity. Real terror claimed her.
Primordial gasses coalesced into streamers, then formed glittering clumps of blazing, jetting, exploding stars. Their high-speed churn of birth and death was a firecracker assault upon her senses.
But gradually things slowed down. Galaxies formed, and finally she gained traction within the thought-driven interface. The course of their formation had a palpable texture, and she experimented. Here, she stroked too hard and a galaxy flung itself asunder. Another collapsed into a sullen black hole when she squeezed. She could trace her mind's finger along the frilled shape of yet another, and give it the most beautiful lacework eddies. What she did in one place was subtly reflected throughout the whole firmament, very much like the fractal generators she'd used for her animations, so many years ago.
She found an especially lovely galaxy, modest but well-formed, and focused on that. It swelled in her mind. She could see its hundred billion stars in perfect detail, each beckoning eagerly. A butter-colored star and its pretty azure water world caught her eye. When she zoomed in for a closer view, the gemlike planet greeted her with swirling clouds and a pirouetting single moon. The world begged to be shaped.
She breathed upon it, and life appeared. The oceans churned with its frenzy of evolution. When life finally slithered onto land, she rejoiced. Meteors, ice ages, drifting continents—these were the tools with which she pruned and tended uncounted species, heedless of the passing aeons her labor demanded.
She could have shaped life into a trillion forms, but she knew her goal. As she worked, that little water world began to resemble the one she had left far behind in her wheelchair. It was much easier, now that she had learned the interface. She was guided by a sense of this, not that, the same intuitive process which shaped her famous dream-stories. Closer, now, and still closer she drew to her ultimate goal.
Just before the final tweak, she hesitated. They would not like what she had wrought. But from the first moment she had learned of the QALI device, this was what she had yearned to do. And so at last, she flung aside her doubts and gave a last twist to this little world of her making. It was done.
She felt herself slipping away. She went with quiet joy.
---
Nia's funeral was watched by half the world's population, and all wept at her passing. No one could have imagined the device would claim her life. The engineers and scientists were horrified by this outcome, and protested there had been nothing dangerous about the process. An investigation would have to be made.
But Nia was gone, and there was no one to take her place. Hers would remain the first and only virtual universe until someone else could match her talent.
Of course everyone wanted to know what fabulous creation had claimed the life of their beloved Nia. Was it heaven? A fantastic fairytale realm? They knew her dreams well, and surely this new work would surpass them all.
It is easy, then, to imagine the researchers' immense disappointment when they finally entered the Niaverse. With infinite possibilities at her disposal, Nia had chosen the single outcome no one expected: a perfect copy of the real world, complete in every detail, problems and all. It was the cruelest possible twist of an already tragic story. The machine contained the one thing no one wanted, and gone was the only person who could create another.
The researchers said they would let Nia's universe continue to run, and made the obligatory speeches about her living legacy and the rich academic possibilities it held. But their words rang hollow. The real truth was, they would have to wait for a new oneironist to be born before another attempt could be made.
Nia's fans bitterly abandoned their hope for a better reality, and returned to their cherished dream-recordings.
---
But deep within the black orb, on that little water world, on a perfect copy of the island of Kauai...was the one thing in Nia's universe which differed from the outside reality. For there, in the emerald surf beneath a painfully blue sky ran a naked, laughing, and whole Estefania Burgos Alvarado.
She had devoted her previous life to the selfless fulfillment of a world's dreams. This dream, finally, would be for her alone.
© 2008 Sandra Kishi Glenn, all rights reserved.
by Sandra Kishi Glenn
It was the only machine of its kind. They named it QALI, and pronounced it KAH-lee like the Hindu goddess. The Quantum Amplified Liminal Interpreter was a matte black one-meter sphere ringed about its equator with a pulsing line of state-annunciator LEDs. And with 1,024 entangled q-processors, it was by far the most powerful computing device ever made. It could simulate anything imaginable, including the life cycle of any possible universe, from Big Bang to Heat Death. Not just an approximation, mind you, but a cosmos fully as complex as the one we called real.
QALI would pave the way for a new kind of boundless virtual reality, an entire alternate existence indistinguishable from this one. Yet for all this potential it was still just a blank slate, awaiting an artist's promethean spark.
The biggest challenge was the interface. While it did have an attached keyboard-mouse-display setup, they were only used to initialize the system. The real power under the hood was the Main Process Cloud, its harmonized network of entangled q-procs, requiring a far subtler means of control: a next-generation brain-machine interface, stupendously difficult to use. It had been described as ‘a twelve-dimensional theremin of the mind‘, and this was no exaggeration. Many people had tried to use it, and all had failed.
But it was a widely-known fact that the machine had been designed with a single person in mind.
Her name was Estefania Burgos Alvarado and although she had been stricken by cerebral palsy at an early age, she was the world's most famous person. The prison of her withered body had driven her to the only freedom left, that of unbounded imagination. Using primitive brainwave interfaces she had begun her career as a successful screenwriter. Then she became an animator, and later, director. But Estefania soon outgrew the limitations of the existing technology, and with a team of crack engineers and programmers developed her own custom firmware, of far greater potential. At age 35 she gained greatest fame as Nia, the world's only Oneironist, weaver of downloadable dreams, and best friend to eight billion hungry souls. In a world filled with increasingly dire economic, political, and environmental news, she was the lone gatekeeper to a realm of total escape.
Only Nia could tame the wild potential of QALI. And so, one fine autumn day, it was with great fanfare her special van arrived at the engineering lab at MIT for the system's first run.
The concrete path which ran to the lab's main entry had been covered by thousands of lovingly placed flowers. The sight of this, and the adoration of the thronged fans who lined the way brought tears to Estefania's eyes. They were untroubled by the bent, elfin body strapped to her custom wheelchair. They knew her better as she appeared in their dreams: sometimes as a glowing angel, sometimes the perfect mate and lover, sometimes the virile hero, or occasionally the smiling moon, watching protectively in the night sky. A million forms she had taken, like bright birds freed from a cruel cage, and her fans knew them all.
Yet had anyone been able to read that inscrutable, writhing face, they might have caught a hint of sadness, a secret regret. But of course no one could.
In the lab, they carefully placed the sensors on her slumped head and performed the necessary calibrations. At last the device was ready to go, the way clear for her to dream as never before, and—it was hoped—spawn a new reality.
Her body showed no outward sign when QALI was activated. But inwardly, her senses reeled at the blaze of light, the dimensions of possibility unfolding in her head. It was exactly how the Goddess must have felt at the birth of Everything. Her mind stretched, nearly broke, stretched again painfully, and she feared the power of it would unmake her.
She was turned inside out and consumed by this hungry, prodigious matrix. No longer was she Nia, but a wisp of soul flung violently by the tumult of increasing complexity. Real terror claimed her.
Primordial gasses coalesced into streamers, then formed glittering clumps of blazing, jetting, exploding stars. Their high-speed churn of birth and death was a firecracker assault upon her senses.
But gradually things slowed down. Galaxies formed, and finally she gained traction within the thought-driven interface. The course of their formation had a palpable texture, and she experimented. Here, she stroked too hard and a galaxy flung itself asunder. Another collapsed into a sullen black hole when she squeezed. She could trace her mind's finger along the frilled shape of yet another, and give it the most beautiful lacework eddies. What she did in one place was subtly reflected throughout the whole firmament, very much like the fractal generators she'd used for her animations, so many years ago.
She found an especially lovely galaxy, modest but well-formed, and focused on that. It swelled in her mind. She could see its hundred billion stars in perfect detail, each beckoning eagerly. A butter-colored star and its pretty azure water world caught her eye. When she zoomed in for a closer view, the gemlike planet greeted her with swirling clouds and a pirouetting single moon. The world begged to be shaped.
She breathed upon it, and life appeared. The oceans churned with its frenzy of evolution. When life finally slithered onto land, she rejoiced. Meteors, ice ages, drifting continents—these were the tools with which she pruned and tended uncounted species, heedless of the passing aeons her labor demanded.
She could have shaped life into a trillion forms, but she knew her goal. As she worked, that little water world began to resemble the one she had left far behind in her wheelchair. It was much easier, now that she had learned the interface. She was guided by a sense of this, not that, the same intuitive process which shaped her famous dream-stories. Closer, now, and still closer she drew to her ultimate goal.
Just before the final tweak, she hesitated. They would not like what she had wrought. But from the first moment she had learned of the QALI device, this was what she had yearned to do. And so at last, she flung aside her doubts and gave a last twist to this little world of her making. It was done.
She felt herself slipping away. She went with quiet joy.
---
Nia's funeral was watched by half the world's population, and all wept at her passing. No one could have imagined the device would claim her life. The engineers and scientists were horrified by this outcome, and protested there had been nothing dangerous about the process. An investigation would have to be made.
But Nia was gone, and there was no one to take her place. Hers would remain the first and only virtual universe until someone else could match her talent.
Of course everyone wanted to know what fabulous creation had claimed the life of their beloved Nia. Was it heaven? A fantastic fairytale realm? They knew her dreams well, and surely this new work would surpass them all.
It is easy, then, to imagine the researchers' immense disappointment when they finally entered the Niaverse. With infinite possibilities at her disposal, Nia had chosen the single outcome no one expected: a perfect copy of the real world, complete in every detail, problems and all. It was the cruelest possible twist of an already tragic story. The machine contained the one thing no one wanted, and gone was the only person who could create another.
The researchers said they would let Nia's universe continue to run, and made the obligatory speeches about her living legacy and the rich academic possibilities it held. But their words rang hollow. The real truth was, they would have to wait for a new oneironist to be born before another attempt could be made.
Nia's fans bitterly abandoned their hope for a better reality, and returned to their cherished dream-recordings.
---
But deep within the black orb, on that little water world, on a perfect copy of the island of Kauai...was the one thing in Nia's universe which differed from the outside reality. For there, in the emerald surf beneath a painfully blue sky ran a naked, laughing, and whole Estefania Burgos Alvarado.
She had devoted her previous life to the selfless fulfillment of a world's dreams. This dream, finally, would be for her alone.
© 2008 Sandra Kishi Glenn, all rights reserved.