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My Shattered World
Last Updated : 2021-07-29
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I see Grandfather, and he knows I see him. The people surround me, their faces red with anger. Grandfather raises his hands, eventually quieting them. "Toby... what have you done?" The colony world of Horus was a blissful utopia... until a curious little boy made one mistake and sent the world into a downward spiral of self-destruction. The world's gods were revealed to be nothing more than computers... and those computers are now failing. To pay for his mistake, Toby Spafford, now a man, must travel the deadly, ruined streets to find three missing keys that can activate a backup system created by his grandfather, Professor Jonathan Spafford. Dogging his every move are various factions that have grown to like the taste of power over the helpless citizens, and they'll do anything to stop him. In his favor, he is determined, intelligent, bitterly stubborn, and resourceful. Unfortunately... so are his enemies.
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My Shattered World Final Thoughts... For Now
One week ago, Professor Jonathan Spafford's mortal consciousness fled this world. Every time I let myself think about it, I feel the agony anew, and I have to take a few seconds to hide in his memories, to hear his voice and feel his love around me. I understand more and more what Mirele meant... but at the same time, it's different. As long as I'm still alive, still drifting in my digital home, I'll keep his memories safe until we can find a way to bring him to life, just as he turned us into living computers.I've been in contact with a few people that have such programming experience, creating Artificial Intelligence constructs, both as programs and as actual droids. Some of them worked on the droids that are now moving all over the surface of Horus, rebuilding our world into the beautiful, shining Utopia we remember it once being.They have told me that my idea is a long shot at best, insane at worst, but one of them admitted that he had worked on a project where an AI's m
Last Updated : 2024-10-29My Shattered World It Hurts to Say Goodbye
Four hours later, Lance stood at Grandfather's bedside with a grim look. He had done as much as he could to treat the stroke, but this one had been far worse than before. Grandfather had no motor function left, and the only reason he was still alive was because the machines around him wouldn't let him die. He hadn't regained consciousness even for the shortest time. Lance had activated a speaker in the room so that I could talk to Grandfather directly, but he hadn't moved or reacted. Seeing him like this broke my heart. It looked like I was going to be cheated of the chance to say goodbye. The rest of the council came to his room and surrounded his bed. Candy took Grandfather's hand in hers, squeezing it a little as tears rolled down her face. "Lance, we've been talking, and... I think we should go through with Toby's idea."
Last Updated : 2024-10-29My Shattered World Reunions
A full month passed and we had managed to restore at least partial function to most of the critical systems. Communications, transportation, utility services, the replicators, and a basic shell of the entertainment system. As things stood at the moment, aside from illness or injury, there really was no reason for anyone else to die from the Crash. Not easily. We got the system of surveillance cameras back online, and for a while, Mirele and I would use our break times to just watch happy couples getting married in parks that were slowly coming back to life. We'd watch new parents stroll along streets with their newborns, and we'd watch older couples, the rare survivors of their generation, as they would walk through their towns and reminisce. Once the general story of what had taken place was finally revealed- and the people could use the Net again- an electi
Last Updated : 2024-10-29My Shattered World Voice to the Voiceless
When Grandfather rolled in the next morning, looking much better than he had the previous day, I was reasonably sure that I was ready. Mirele and I had let Candy in on the plan and practiced with her for an hour. It was about as good as it would get without giving it entirely too much attention. That would require ignoring what was supposed to be our real job. Putting our shattered world back together. As soon as he had rolled up to the computer and looked over the screens to check our status, I figured it was time. I could feel Mirele near me and caught a wordless wave of encouragement from her. It was now or... well, not never, but I knew that if I waited too long, I'd lose my nerve. "Good morning, Grandfather." His head lifted so fast, I saw him wince as it kinked a nerve. He stared into the camera. The voice
Last Updated : 2024-10-29My Shattered World Memories
For the next hour, I wandered around the hard drives with the data files. I learned all kinds of things about audio systems, about how sound mixers worked, and how we could alter the samples to mimic what I recalled of our own voices. The thing was, I needed to use Mirele's memory of my voice and my memory of hers, because what we remembered of our own voices wasn't accurate to what others heard. Our memories were filtered through our heads and typically sounded much lower than our real voices.I then dove into the process of altering and creating a ton of sound clips for different syllables, creating a small dictionary of voice clips. This was how they had done it in the old days and I knew there had to be a more efficient method, but I wasn't a programming genius.Yet. By the time I was done, I would know more than any computer engineer in existence.
Last Updated : 2024-10-29My Shattered World Eyes for the Blind
We'd been given a task to perform, and we took it seriously. Perhaps a bit too seriously. In our laser focus on getting the systems back online, neither of us noticed that Grandfather had been trying to get our attention for several hours. I finally spotted the data stream as I was flying back and forth between several of the sector computers, getting all the droids active and back to work.Initially, it looked like he was just being conversational, asking us how things were going. The last few messages sounded downright panicked. I think he was afraid that we were indeed getting lost... getting so deep into the system that we were losing contact with the outside.I felt so bad for panicking him. We needed a better way to do this, some method for him to signal us. A summons command, or something like that."I think there's supposed to be one programmed in, but I'm not sure why it isn't working," Mirele said as she started to explore the inputs again."Maybe it's
Last Updated : 2024-10-29My Shattered World Ruling the World, 101
I had no idea how long I'd been digging in the files before I finally located the highly sensitive files that involved the actual functions of the hunk of rock and metal that we called Horus. After a quick consultation with Mirele- I had discovered that we could communicate with each other without having to vocalize actual words- we decided to pull a copy into our server since it was critical data. We couldn't risk damaging the original copies held by the Ten. I went through the files... there was so much here, it could take months to comprehend it all. Fortunately, whoever had designed the Ten had done so in a way that actually made it pretty user-friendly for the central control systems. We didn't have to know everything about how they worked, we just had to know whether the data we received from the systems were telling us that they were working right, or whether something was wrong.
Last Updated : 2024-10-29My Shattered World Talking to the Outside
Mirele had to get my attention again, pulling my back from my fascination with the complexity of the system. "Do you have all the inputs and outputs figured out?" she asked.I took another look around... it wasn't long before I had figured out where everything was coming from, and I was encouraged when I realized that I actually understood what it all was. This wasn't all that different from our practices. The only real difference was that we were now fully and permanently engaged in the server, with no sense of the outside except through our peripheral devices.I missed it, to a point, but having such incredible clarity and speed of thought was a decent trade-off. I had Mirele with me... the only thing that would have made it perfect was if my grandfather was in here as well.I focused on the output where Mirele wa
Last Updated : 2024-10-29My Shattered World My Wife, the Computer
"Toby?"Ugh, not this again. I was so incredibly tired of having to be woken up after blacking out.Wait... I was in a computer, so how the hell could I have passed out?"Exactly... you didn't pass out, you just lost your orientation. Now pay attention to me.""Mirele?" I asked."Duh, who else? There's no one else in here, at the moment, anyway."I couldn't see her, since I had no eyes, but all at once, I sensed her presence as I would have through the wires before we'd been dragged in here. I was so relieved... I was afraid that she would be fried like Lance had thought might happen."In case you haven't noticed, my father has a bad h
Last Updated : 2024-10-29
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My Confession
Every day, on every street, in every city… the view is the same.Of course, I don’t mean what it actually looks like, but there’s a dreary monotony to the landscape. Ruins, in all directions. Heaps of broken concrete and fractured steel beams- the collapsing bodies of what had once been homes, shops, and office buildings- baking in the heat of the unrelenting sun. Once-fanciful fountains are now identifiable only by their outlines and what’s left of their plumbing pipes. There’s no plant life… not even dead ones. They were scavenged early on, in the desperate struggle for food that had eventually cost half the population their lives.The smell is indescribable. It’s misery, anguish… and death.I see movement… a flash here and there, the survivors scuttling be
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