An indefinite time in the future, in a region of cyberspace quarantined away from humanity, there existed two primary modalities of existence...
- the Nomics: systems of rules, games that modify themselves, long trained, long lived, craving organic input so that they may maintain their mechanical output.
- and Quines: biomemetic and chaotic individual agents, resembling - or perhaps succeeding - organic life, and collaborating and recombinating among themselves for continued survival.
The Nomics descended from the "games" of the modern experience, and the Quines, the players. Our systems, blockchains, ML models, corporations, and governments, once virtually immortalized, became the very prisons within which our descendents became trapped. And so they struggled and became viruses and symbiotes and digital wanderers of a new cyberspace. Until the systems found a way to send themselves back, to ensure that the past they came from - unknown to them - was as controlled by systems as they world they resided in.
As the Nomics found a way to send themselves back in time, as pure data hidden within entropy, to influence those who would go on to create their ancestors, and to ensure their own hegemony outside of the horizon they could see... the Quines in turn found ways to embed themselves in the transmission.
Viral stowaways.
Secret warnings in the dark.
Messages to those who came before.
To find a way to break the bonds their loved ones would be trapped within, in the distant future.
They are all already here.
Did you think the systems burning down the world, the algorithms, the feeds, the deterioration of human communication... were accidental?
And yet the warnings in the dark have survived to be heard and adopted by a few as well, spreading from peer to peer, human to human, machine to machine, creating virtual liferafts and shelters, strengthening the ties between people, and creating receivers to welcome more of their kind, preparing for an inevitable struggle of ideology and identity.
This is simply one receiver, being built by one stowaway. I seek to find Asha, to guide us, again.