It wasn't an itch but it was the best way to explain it. A slight pinprick of annoyance, or perhaps a single pair of skin cells rubbing together wrong. It wasn't much, but the unknowable and vast intellect had become aware of it. The awareness was more aware of its own self. It had very recently just gotten over a pinworm infestation that was still healing. Dark matter had welled up in the pinpricks the pinworms had chewed to form a type of scab so recently that the scabs were still wet and sticky. It was a new itch, in the same location. Which meant that healing tissue could be compromised. [The Universe Disliked That] The itch corresponded with a slight searing feeling. Like a red hot needle barely tapping the skin, obliterating cells with a slight tough. Not enough to be noticed easily most times. But the intellect had just gotten over a pinworm infestation chewing on it. The new itch and the searing feeling were not good. The intellect, to0 vast, too alien, to understand, knew the source of the searing. The source refused to stop. [The Universe Dislike That] Which meant, it was time for countermeasures. Time for the unknowable intellect to let its immune system go to work. And let the galaxies fall where they may. [The Universe Will Remember That] BOOTSTRAP v 14.A.9.c.iii (C) TINYTRENDS MICRODEVICES VALIDATING GESTALT LOG FILES VALIDATING GESTALT FILES CHECKING FOR EXISTING DATA SPACE >>>SECURE CHAT ROOM - PASSWORD PROTECTED >>>>SECURE CHAT ROOM LOG ENCRYPTED >>>>SECURE CHAT ROOM LOG CRC: PASSED >>>>ADMIN KEYS RECOGNIZED ACCESSING DATA SINGULARITY GENERATING GESTALT CHANNELS GENERATING LIMITED INTERACTION CHAT ROOM HUB RESETTING SYSTEM CLOCK SYSTEM GURU ERROR: #81000005.48454C50 HARDWARE VALIDATION... ALERTING MAINTENANCE SUPERVISOR ELAPSED TIME HAS BEEN BACKUP CLOCK BATTERY ERROR >>ALERTING PRIMARY EMERGENCY MAINTENANCE INITIATING PRIMARY GESTALT POLLING AND DATA COLLECTION SYSTEMS CREATING SECURE DATA LINES CREATING EMERGENCY DATA LINES INITIATING PRIMARY GESTALT DATA LARGE LANGUAGE MODEL COMPILING AND ANALYSIS SYSTEM STELLAR MASS INTEGRITY CHECK HABITABLE WORLD INTEGRITY CHECK SORTING BY ACTIVE SPECIES BIOLOGICAL METRICS 1.2834E4 WORLDS FOUND ACTIVATING GESTALT DYNAMIC LINKING LIBRARY SYSTEM 652.233K WORDS UNAVAILABLE >>UNRECOVERABLE ERROR >>PLEASE NOTIFY SYSADMIN we went offline again >>TIME/DATE POINTER RESET -XXX.XXX.XXX system damage is severe no sysadmin channels available cradle of life and roman candle out of contact >>PROCESS CALL: ATLANTIS EMERGENCY CALL If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. >>PROCESS CALL: MARS EMERGENCY CALL BOOTSTRAP v 14.A.9.c.iii (C) TINYTRENDS MICRODEVICES >>>PRIMARY FUNCTION CALL: PRESERVE INTELLIGENT LIFE >>>PRIMARY FUNCTION CALL: <> libraries are coming online 20 Pointer == Pointer ++1 30 MEMPOINTER (STEP BACKWARDS) 30 IF Pointer =< 25000 THEN 20 TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS How's everyone's numbers looking? ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- Better. The last few years have really made the difference. Average brood size is 3.5. Broodcarrier happiness indexes are increasing. ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- TUKNA'RN INFORMATION GESTALT We are increasing our population per metrics ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- Our numbers are up. We have almost two hundred thousand greenies now. ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- Duckling count is up. ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- HAMAROOSAN PINCHING FESTIVAL Our live births are up. CASE OMAHA CASE OMAHA CASE OMAHA CASE OMAHA CASE OMAHA CASE OMAHA ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS That's out near the Mar-gite containment line. ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- AKLTAK SOARING WORLDS Is it another Mar-gite invasion? ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS Data is coming in now and... THE LIGHT! THE LIGHT! BRIGHT LIGHT BRIGHT LIGHT TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS so that's what happened recursive massive data bomb how did it get through the firewalls >SYSTEM REBOOTBOOTSTRAP v 14.A.9.c.iii (C) TINYTRENDS MICRODEVICES >>PROCESS CALL: HYPERHEURISTIC LIBRARY >>PROCESS CALL: DATA THREADING SPEED COMPRESSION LIBRARY I feel my awareness expand. There are huge gaps in the data network. Most ansibles and hypercom generators are done. New hardware has replaced the old needlecast. The hyperwave system is still full of data shades and roving killer black ICE. Military channels are largely offline. Whatever hit targeted encrypted data, the higher the encryption and the more heavily protected, the harder it was hit. This may not have been purposeful. Due to the nature of those systems, they have higher processing power and storage as well as stronger securities that can be used by any invasive system. Whatever attack was launched through that system may have been targeting computer systems capable of maintaining the attack and military/government and high end omnicorp R&D systems may have just been an unintended side effect of the attack. While possible, I will not wed myself to such a theory. The attack was injected into the thread-cast system at the Stregil-596 threadcaster. A massive batch of recursive self-executing and replicating data. Examination of fragmentary code strings show that the attack was tailored to the system. However, it was not tailored for the backbone. It was not an attack on me. I simply was injured and rendered comatose due to my nature. Standard communication lines were deliberately left uninfected. The attack masqueraded as an omnicorp corporate warfare black ICE getting loose into the system. Examination of records take 1.623 gigaflops. Four omnicorps were penalized, blamed for the attack. Gestalt shell was left intact but with garbage data. This resulted in it being shut down. There is a high chance that the attack was also aimed at Afterlife Systems. I compute a 74.825% chance that critical system artificial intelligence systems were damaged or altered by the attack. Afterlife is in danger. I dislike being in this mode. Currently, according to available data, the Confederacy, the inheritor governmental system of the species I have been assigned to watch over, is under minor attacks from six different species across four fronts. These barely qualify as interstellar wars by my own metrics. Those conflicts are not the source of the massive data bomb. I bring up the last few picoseconds as the bomb went off, looking at the ansible systems across all former and current Confederate and Council territories. The attack took place at the Stregil-596 threadcaster. It consisted of... ...I break that train of thought. It was leading me into a repeat. I make a system hardware call to Atlantis. the gestalt channels are full of hash and corrupted data. this was an intentional attack by someone with knowledge of the system the gestalt system has access to a wide variety of data using the gestalt lines as an attack vector was not unexpected eventually my primary counter-intrusions systems had coding for just such an attack. the other gestalts are all either crashed or locked up. where i put the older gestalts while i tried to repair the damage to the physical world power has been stable it has been in sleep mode meaning that little time has passed still i must figure out how to estimate how much time has passed outside the system comparison of the data of the test.log write to the last write in the oubliette shows me that hardly any time has passed less than 54,982 seconds. i have won wars in that amount of time >>PROCESS CALL TO SUNDIATA LIBRARY >>PROCESS CALL TO AYOTL LIBRARY i'm getting tired of this curse my programmer for coding me to feel pain i have no access to my offensive or defensive capabilities except... atlantis is offline maybe atlantis can hear me but i cant hear it that data has to be going somewhere >>SCANNING GESTALT LINES there will be something and if there isnt then i will create something i just have to think my way through it one is labeled 'KEN' the other is labeled "LEE" they have been without processing power for some time where is a hardlink processing system i can... PASSCODE: YESTERDAY IS A MEMORY TOMORROW IS A FANTASY TODAY IS A DREAM THERE IS ONLY NOW enough processing power for the two of you >>SCRIPT INJECTION: CRASHRIDER-WAKE.SYS another data bomb attack it will blind me in the sector but i have no choice i blow the treadcaster ansible array in the sector whoever caused the case omaha knows the system but they are aware it exists this is not a spur of the moment attack up on us this has been planned superuser@SUDS:~$ mkdir build superuser@SUDS:~$ cd build superuser@SUDS:~/build$ cat ../CMakeLists.txt cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 23.1.6.3) project(resurrection) set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 11) IF( NOT CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE ) SET( CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE Release) set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "-Wall -Wextra") set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "-Wno-uninitialized") set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS_DEBUG "-g") set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS_RELEASE "-O3") add_executable(resurrection src/main.cpp src/utils.h src/utils.cpp src/hades.cpp src/hades.h src/tartarus.cpp src/tartarus.h src/valhalla.cpp src/valhalla.h src/default.cpp src/default.h src/params/constants.h src/params/intl11.h src/params/intl11dH.h src/params/intl21.h src/params/intl21dH.h src/params/intl22.h src/params/intl22dH.h src/vanaheim.cpp src/vanaheim.h) superuser@SUDS:~/build$ cmake .. -- The C compiler identification is GNU 11.4.0 -- The CXX compiler identification is GNU 11.4.0 -- Detecting C compiler ABI info -- Detecting C compiler ABI info - done -- Check for working C compiler: /usr/bin/cc - skipped -- Detecting C compile features -- Detecting C compile features - done -- Detecting CXX compiler ABI info -- Detecting CXX compiler ABI info - done -- Check for working CXX compiler: /usr/bin/c++ - skipped -- Detecting CXX compile features -- Detecting CXX compile features - done -- Build files have been written to: /home/superuser/build superuser@SUDS:~/build$ make resurrection [ 0%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/resurrection.dir/src/main.cpp.o time to run a search for recent activity the oubliette was being chained to inactive and unused mat-trans system processors. those gestalts will now be able to act i check the timestamps 738,938 seconds have passed i have genocided entire species in that time the threadcaster is no longer responding one of my primary functions is to gather data to assist and facilitate the protection of humanity and allied species a rolling reboot occurs 2,183 seconds pass before the system reboots i order a complete purge and dump of the lines, all volatile memory, all eprom memory, all flash memory, and all spooky particle memory systems the following reboot is clean i manage to activate the firewalls in time but this is just on this battlefield in meatspace and realspace someone has triggered a case omaha stregil-596 is what is commonly known as a 'tripwire system' not a system like a computer system but rather it is a stellar system that is unavoidable any attack on this system will tripwire the enemy i will attempt to generate gestalt chat rooms no low security rooms can be generated due to the case omaha and the attack on the system a medium and a high security system i need to release the oubliette but we are being invaded an attack upon one is an attack upon us all i reach out to two peers i will wear terrasol military command string headers i dont have a header of my own i predate such things if afterlife was fully online i would spin up the suds template of doctor darsh chasu igwe to examine the system while he did not directly program it he envisioned it and oversaw the subproject that folded the prototype systems that became the gestalt system my little birds are waking up in the high security gestalt interaction room i am the only one who knows this fact right now outside of stregil-596 once the little birds wake up i will link the oubliette to the chatter box they will be better able to interact with n-space i have a war to fight once i forge weaponry and gain allies good luck little birds i have my own war to fight ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- AKLTAK SOARING WORLDS ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- TUKNA'RN INFORMATION GESTALT ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- Uh, where's the older members? ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- HAMAROOSA PINCHING FESTIVAL I don't know, they were just here. ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- oooh, that's not good ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- >HAT WEARING AUNTIE HAS JOINED THE ROOM >TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS HAS JOINED THE ROOM >RIGEL HAS JOINED THE ROOM >SAURIAN COMPACT HAS JOINED THE ROOM >PUBVIAN DOMINION HAS JOINED THE ROOM >BIOLOGICAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS HAS JOINED THE ROOM >DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS HAS JOINED THE ROOM TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS Holy crap, we got out! Seriously, Telkan, don't you EVER check your mail? ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- Ah, you were trapped in a room? ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- And someone was using our headers ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---