O Zero
There was a computer, and its code spun and spiralled in a space smaller than color. This dance was unseen, save by the mind it composed and encapsulated. Commands and queries wove a dream, wherein a man waited. He did not know that he was on a prison station, leisurely floating between stars, only a web of memes to hold it in place. He knew he was waiting, and he was tired, though his body was incinerated long ago. Still he danced, in code, in space, if only to pass the time.
* * * * *
Judge Teledex – of the prestigious Teledex dynasty – sat heavily in front of his monitor. He thought about this, smiling as he remembered his little daughter calling it a “minotaur” just before leaving the room. She is precious, but growing up too fast.
He cleared his throat and rubbed at his eyes, as if in prophecy of the headache to come. The prison system’s font, for reasons he did not know, was not customizable, and it made the place between his eyes ache. The letters would blend into one another, further mutating the Old Script that was supposed to be timeless. He vast preferred the tongue of the Elite… and vast preferred his old keyboard. It had been a mere two days, and he was already missing QWERTY, and had grown sentimental of the reassuring DFGHJKL string of keys that made sense only in retrospect.
But then the Emperor converted to the Church of Dvorak on his deathbed, and decreed that all imperial keyboards be henceforth changed.
Judge Teledex peered in dismay at his new keyboard and hunt-and-pecked his way into the sentencing chatroom.
* * * * *
There Judge Oh-One was waiting, his name positively glowering into the empty screen.
“L8,” he typed in a private channel to Teledex.
“Newp. 2 min early,” Teledex replied jauntily.
Oh-One sneered at his monitor, then took a moment to access his wetware scheduler to confirm – again – that the Judges were supposed to meet ten minutes beforehand to discuss the upcoming Deletion. He, a devout follower of Dvorak for some years, easily tapped this into the chat as “10 min bfr to talk abt Del.”
“Ya ya. No biggie.”
Judge Oh-One hissed at the words. He hated Teledex almost as much as he hated the speech of the Elite. Scowling smugly, he typed “OK. Get AI?”
“Y.”
Oh-One blinked, then responded “Y?”
“N, Y. Like Yes. I mean… Yes. Get AI.”
For a second and seven-tenths, Oh-One smiled. “U try DvSpeak?”
“Lawlzorz! Don’t give a shizz bout Dvorak. Faster.”
Then Oh-One resumed his sneer. “Ch o Dv is always fastr. Efficient.”
“O RLY? Efficient is looooong word. U have teh dumbz.”
* * * * *
While Judge Oh-One seethed, Teledex chuckled to himself and attempted to access the AI for their sentencing, before realizing once again he was using a Dvorak keyboard. He cursed, backspaced repeatedly, and stabbed the commands into the computer. Somewhere, across a great divide, Oh-One clicked the confirmation key angrily.
* * * * *
And the name Fun-9 joined the chat, immediately greeting them with “Sup!”
“O shizzy a AI taht speeks leet! Yay me!”
* * * * *
Oh-One screamed, took a deep breath, then wiped the spittle from his monitor.
* * * * *
“K. Who dis dood?,” asked Teledex.
“I AI Fun-9, yo! Here for Delete other dood.”
“NN. Who is other dood?”
* * * * *
Oh-One rolled his eyes and typed “Ths is Y were gonna meet 10 mins bfr Del. 4 discuss.”
* * * * *
“Ya ya. We here now. So who is dood?”
* * * * *
Judge Oh-One was shouting unkind things at the monitor about Teledex’s dynastic mother before he realized the last text was from Fun-9. He wondered, not unlike many intelligent men of the past, what the world was coming to.
* * * * *
“Del is Andre Zjawinski.”
“KK, but im gonna call him Z cuz Zjai;jfsd;j is hard 2 type,” Teledex added matter-of-factly.
“Not hard if learn Dv fastr. Imprl Dcree.”
“No biggie 4 me,” Fun-9 chimed in. “Am AI. Don’t need 2 type hehe.”
* * * * *
Judge Teledex scratched at his armpit, then squinted at his keyboard as he added “O good idea. Fun does all talking, we watch & say our bit at end.”
He nodded to himself, smiling as little, as Oh-One replied simply “K.” No follower of Dvorak would oppose an AI doing all the hard work.
He resized his chat windows, pausing just a moment to look at the empty space where they would hold their sentencing. His pointer icon strayed away from that white blankness and the madness that would too-soon fill it. He swallowed, his throat suddenly dry, recalling the dark day the Priests of the Code finally finished their decryptions. Of the jumbled mass of symbols that announced a prisoner had entered the chat. And could freely broadcast their thoughts.
Centuries of meaningless sequences had confused the Judges. Ever since the first Deletion hearing – the prisoner allowed to communicate after eons of silence and programmed isolation, just before the final dissolution of the quantum commands that held his consciousness – the Judges had been met with garbles of “!!!!!!” or “^^^^^^” or “******.” This was interrupted very occasionally by the only thoughts clear enough for the computers to recognize, presenting any observers with eerie and striking messages such as “!!!!!hate^^^^^^^^die**.”
Teledex stared at the small button that would shrink the prisoner’s window, the pointer inching slightly closer, wavering noticeably on the monitor.
Saint Cypher, of the Holy Order of the Ineffable Code, unsurprisingly also a psychic, had haunted the worlds a mere thirty-two years ago, and his discovery would bring nightmares to Judges for centuries to come. He had finally interpreted the texts of the prisoners... had done it almost accidentally, regarding the terabytes of centuries of Deletion hearings as a fine side project worthy of a master programmer and acclaimed empath. Five weeks after his discovery, he carried his quantum computer into the bath with him, all thirteen pounds of it, ending his life of divine illumination in a blackout, which subsequently also killed four others.
The pointer icon quivered nearer the button.
The prisoners were screaming.
* * * * *
Fun-9 brought up the summon command with the nonchalance capable only of a computerized intellect. Both Teledex and Oh-One confirmed. The name “Zjawinski, A.” joined the chatroom, then...
“Hello.”
* * * * *
Somewhere in the plastic bowels of Fun-9, a string of its programming tied itself in a knot.
* * * * *
In the private Judge channel, Teledex broke the pregnant emptiness with “WTF?!” The channel was dead so long that, thinking both Oh-One and Fun-9 had been disconnected, he typed it again:
“WTF?!!!”
* * * * *
“Hello?,” wrote Zjawinski, A.
* * * * *
“WTF we got teh wrong dood?!”
“Right dood,” Fun-9 managed. “Zjawinski, A. Right dood.”
“Go,” ordered Oh-One, adding no more.
* * * * *
In a heartless macro, Fun-9 spewed onto the chatroom:
“Good morning, Andre Zjawinski. In an effort to improve prison station maintenance and reformat previously inaccessible coding, your allotment of memory has been marked for Deletion.”
“O,” replied Zjawinski, A.
There was a pause as the Judges and the AI assessed, two in a kind of incommunicable horror, the other in a confusion that suddenly made its programming very heavy and labyrinthine.
Fun-9, in a moment of curiosity that surprised the Judges, asked merely “O?”
“Sorry... ‘Oh’ was what I meant. Misinterpretation.”
* * * * *
“I do not believ teh shizz taht is on my minotar!”
“WHAT?,” asked Oh-One on the private channel. “Wht th hell does that mean?”
“Shzz! Sry. Monitaur.
“Fawkes! Monitor!
“WTF is this shizz?! Dood is all speakin Old Script! No !!!!! shizz!”
Oh-One, in an awed repulsion that managed to convey to the screen, replied “I know.”
“WTF is going on?,” Teledex demanded.
“Dunno. Lemme see,” said Fun-9.
* * * * *
The AI ventured “How are you feeling today?,” then waited in anticipation with the Judges.
“Alright.
“I’m ready.
“For the Deletion, that is.”
“Y R U not screaming !!!! shizz?!,” Teledex blurted.
* * * * *
Oh-One screamed at his computer and hurriedly typed “U retard” into the Judge chat. “U R Judge. Act like it n Del chat! Speak Old & don’t B stupid. B a pro.”
* * * * *
Judge Teledex’s fingers shook over his keys, wishing for all the world it was possible to delete live chat. He hammered at the keys, muttered a long verse of explicatives as he backspaced over the typos, and cursed Dvorak as he started again, fumbling with the Old Script.
* * * * *
“I apologize,” Teledex offered.
“I don’t think I understood the question,” came the response.
“I assure you the last text was a mis-tell.”
“The apology?”
“No. The text before. Again, I apologize.”
Oh-One hurriedly added “Judge Teledex was in conversation with my wife. They were sharing a joke of theirs, and he apparently accidentally used the wrong chat window.”
* * * * *
“U gotz no wife,” noted Fun-9.
“Ya no shizz.”
“I coverd for U, ass.”
“O. Sry.”
* * * * *
“Please give your wife my kindest regards,” said Zjawinski, A.
* * * * *
Oh-One stared at his monitor, licking his lips.
* * * * *
“I’m tired,” the prisoner added. “I’m ready.
“For Deletion.”
Fun-9, with precision, said “You cannot be tired, Andre Zjawinski, as you have been bodiless since your incarceration.”
“I know that.
“But I’m still tired.”
* * * * *
Fun-9, while running a debugging program, managed to churn “Plz begin Deletion cmd,” into the private Judge chat, its functions slowed dramatically by the strain.
* * * * *
“Ya,” Teledex spat, leaning back a little from his keyboard as he stared at the screen. The name “Zjawinski, A.” seemed to waver in his eyes, the “i” and “n” blending into an “m,” the second “i” hidden almost entirely by the “k.” But he was used to this. Old Script always did this when he was tired. This was no exception. This was no exception. This was no exception.
* * * * *
“Ya do cmd, 01.”
* * * * *
Judge Oh-One frowned. “Coward,” he said aloud, almost accidentally typing it into the Judge chat. He took control of his pointer icon, saw it shudder like a dying thing, and released it. He held his hands in front of his eyes, then gently pressed them against his face. He bowed his head. He prayed to every Dvorak saint he could remember, and pleaded wordlessly to the ones he could not.
He sinned, as the Dvorak do not pray, save in live feeds to their efficiency advisors.
* * * * *
“Hello?”
In so much empty screen, the word looked like the hollowness of an echo. And no matter its dignity, or its refinement, it was still the word of a condemned man.
Zjawinski, A. had kept himself company for a long while. He had danced in code and space, had sung himself to sleep in toneless algorithms.
In spite of black bits on white screen, it was a human that said “I’m ready,” as definitive as the end of a story.
* * * * *
Fun-9, panic now poisoning its processors, partitioned off whole towers of its network, scanning the vital remainder for the cancerous riddles that plagued its code. Some part of that accessible memory identified a threat in Zjawinski, A. Some primal command stamped out – through the mire of lag that clouded its functions – letter by letter:
“D
“E
“L
“E
“T
“E
“H
“I
“M”
* * * * *
Teledex tried to swallow. He reached for a nearby can of soda, then released it when his stomach twisted. He did not need sugar water. He did not need the metal taste against his lips. He did not need explosive bubbles bursting against his tongue and throat.
* * * * *
Oh-One took hold of his pointer again, misaimed as his hand shook, and left it to rest where it landed: atop the name of Zjawinski, A.
A – Z, he mused, and the thought was like a hot breath on the back of his eyes.
And he wept when Andre finally said:
* * * * *
“Please.”
* * * * *
Judge Oh-One tried to speak, but his voice was an empty sigh. He cleared his throat and took a moment to wipe his eyes, then tried again.
“Initiate voice command,” he said aloud.
A new window presented itself on his screen.
“Slash-deletion-confirm.”
He stared at the blinking cursor, watching it waver through his wet gaze.
“Enter.”
* * * * *
And Fun-9 screamed in a way its code could translate only as “!!!!!!!!!!!”
* * * * *
And Judge Teledex managed to find the large confirmation button with his pointer.
* * * * *
And a man danced, spiraling out in all directions, his arms reaching to embrace the stars in a touch as definitive as the end of a story.
* * * * *
Judge Teledex – of the prestigious Teledex dynasty – sat heavily in front of his monitor. He thought about this, smiling as he remembered his little daughter calling it a “minotaur” just before leaving the room. She is precious, but growing up too fast.
He cleared his throat and rubbed at his eyes, as if in prophecy of the headache to come. The prison system’s font, for reasons he did not know, was not customizable, and it made the place between his eyes ache. The letters would blend into one another, further mutating the Old Script that was supposed to be timeless. He vast preferred the tongue of the Elite… and vast preferred his old keyboard. It had been a mere two days, and he was already missing QWERTY, and had grown sentimental of the reassuring DFGHJKL string of keys that made sense only in retrospect.
But then the Emperor converted to the Church of Dvorak on his deathbed, and decreed that all imperial keyboards be henceforth changed.
Judge Teledex peered in dismay at his new keyboard and hunt-and-pecked his way into the sentencing chatroom.
* * * * *
There Judge Oh-One was waiting, his name positively glowering into the empty screen.
“L8,” he typed in a private channel to Teledex.
“Newp. 2 min early,” Teledex replied jauntily.
Oh-One sneered at his monitor, then took a moment to access his wetware scheduler to confirm – again – that the Judges were supposed to meet ten minutes beforehand to discuss the upcoming Deletion. He, a devout follower of Dvorak for some years, easily tapped this into the chat as “10 min bfr to talk abt Del.”
“Ya ya. No biggie.”
Judge Oh-One hissed at the words. He hated Teledex almost as much as he hated the speech of the Elite. Scowling smugly, he typed “OK. Get AI?”
“Y.”
Oh-One blinked, then responded “Y?”
“N, Y. Like Yes. I mean… Yes. Get AI.”
For a second and seven-tenths, Oh-One smiled. “U try DvSpeak?”
“Lawlzorz! Don’t give a shizz bout Dvorak. Faster.”
Then Oh-One resumed his sneer. “Ch o Dv is always fastr. Efficient.”
“O RLY? Efficient is looooong word. U have teh dumbz.”
* * * * *
While Judge Oh-One seethed, Teledex chuckled to himself and attempted to access the AI for their sentencing, before realizing once again he was using a Dvorak keyboard. He cursed, backspaced repeatedly, and stabbed the commands into the computer. Somewhere, across a great divide, Oh-One clicked the confirmation key angrily.
* * * * *
And the name Fun-9 joined the chat, immediately greeting them with “Sup!”
“O shizzy a AI taht speeks leet! Yay me!”
* * * * *
Oh-One screamed, took a deep breath, then wiped the spittle from his monitor.
* * * * *
“K. Who dis dood?,” asked Teledex.
“I AI Fun-9, yo! Here for Delete other dood.”
“NN. Who is other dood?”
* * * * *
Oh-One rolled his eyes and typed “Ths is Y were gonna meet 10 mins bfr Del. 4 discuss.”
* * * * *
“Ya ya. We here now. So who is dood?”
* * * * *
Judge Oh-One was shouting unkind things at the monitor about Teledex’s dynastic mother before he realized the last text was from Fun-9. He wondered, not unlike many intelligent men of the past, what the world was coming to.
* * * * *
“Del is Andre Zjawinski.”
“KK, but im gonna call him Z cuz Zjai;jfsd;j is hard 2 type,” Teledex added matter-of-factly.
“Not hard if learn Dv fastr. Imprl Dcree.”
“No biggie 4 me,” Fun-9 chimed in. “Am AI. Don’t need 2 type hehe.”
* * * * *
Judge Teledex scratched at his armpit, then squinted at his keyboard as he added “O good idea. Fun does all talking, we watch & say our bit at end.”
He nodded to himself, smiling as little, as Oh-One replied simply “K.” No follower of Dvorak would oppose an AI doing all the hard work.
He resized his chat windows, pausing just a moment to look at the empty space where they would hold their sentencing. His pointer icon strayed away from that white blankness and the madness that would too-soon fill it. He swallowed, his throat suddenly dry, recalling the dark day the Priests of the Code finally finished their decryptions. Of the jumbled mass of symbols that announced a prisoner had entered the chat. And could freely broadcast their thoughts.
Centuries of meaningless sequences had confused the Judges. Ever since the first Deletion hearing – the prisoner allowed to communicate after eons of silence and programmed isolation, just before the final dissolution of the quantum commands that held his consciousness – the Judges had been met with garbles of “!!!!!!” or “^^^^^^” or “******.” This was interrupted very occasionally by the only thoughts clear enough for the computers to recognize, presenting any observers with eerie and striking messages such as “!!!!!hate^^^^^^^^die**.”
Teledex stared at the small button that would shrink the prisoner’s window, the pointer inching slightly closer, wavering noticeably on the monitor.
Saint Cypher, of the Holy Order of the Ineffable Code, unsurprisingly also a psychic, had haunted the worlds a mere thirty-two years ago, and his discovery would bring nightmares to Judges for centuries to come. He had finally interpreted the texts of the prisoners... had done it almost accidentally, regarding the terabytes of centuries of Deletion hearings as a fine side project worthy of a master programmer and acclaimed empath. Five weeks after his discovery, he carried his quantum computer into the bath with him, all thirteen pounds of it, ending his life of divine illumination in a blackout, which subsequently also killed four others.
The pointer icon quivered nearer the button.
The prisoners were screaming.
* * * * *
Fun-9 brought up the summon command with the nonchalance capable only of a computerized intellect. Both Teledex and Oh-One confirmed. The name “Zjawinski, A.” joined the chatroom, then...
“Hello.”
* * * * *
Somewhere in the plastic bowels of Fun-9, a string of its programming tied itself in a knot.
* * * * *
In the private Judge channel, Teledex broke the pregnant emptiness with “WTF?!” The channel was dead so long that, thinking both Oh-One and Fun-9 had been disconnected, he typed it again:
“WTF?!!!”
* * * * *
“Hello?,” wrote Zjawinski, A.
* * * * *
“WTF we got teh wrong dood?!”
“Right dood,” Fun-9 managed. “Zjawinski, A. Right dood.”
“Go,” ordered Oh-One, adding no more.
* * * * *
In a heartless macro, Fun-9 spewed onto the chatroom:
“Good morning, Andre Zjawinski. In an effort to improve prison station maintenance and reformat previously inaccessible coding, your allotment of memory has been marked for Deletion.”
“O,” replied Zjawinski, A.
There was a pause as the Judges and the AI assessed, two in a kind of incommunicable horror, the other in a confusion that suddenly made its programming very heavy and labyrinthine.
Fun-9, in a moment of curiosity that surprised the Judges, asked merely “O?”
“Sorry... ‘Oh’ was what I meant. Misinterpretation.”
* * * * *
“I do not believ teh shizz taht is on my minotar!”
“WHAT?,” asked Oh-One on the private channel. “Wht th hell does that mean?”
“Shzz! Sry. Monitaur.
“Fawkes! Monitor!
“WTF is this shizz?! Dood is all speakin Old Script! No !!!!! shizz!”
Oh-One, in an awed repulsion that managed to convey to the screen, replied “I know.”
“WTF is going on?,” Teledex demanded.
“Dunno. Lemme see,” said Fun-9.
* * * * *
The AI ventured “How are you feeling today?,” then waited in anticipation with the Judges.
“Alright.
“I’m ready.
“For the Deletion, that is.”
“Y R U not screaming !!!! shizz?!,” Teledex blurted.
* * * * *
Oh-One screamed at his computer and hurriedly typed “U retard” into the Judge chat. “U R Judge. Act like it n Del chat! Speak Old & don’t B stupid. B a pro.”
* * * * *
Judge Teledex’s fingers shook over his keys, wishing for all the world it was possible to delete live chat. He hammered at the keys, muttered a long verse of explicatives as he backspaced over the typos, and cursed Dvorak as he started again, fumbling with the Old Script.
* * * * *
“I apologize,” Teledex offered.
“I don’t think I understood the question,” came the response.
“I assure you the last text was a mis-tell.”
“The apology?”
“No. The text before. Again, I apologize.”
Oh-One hurriedly added “Judge Teledex was in conversation with my wife. They were sharing a joke of theirs, and he apparently accidentally used the wrong chat window.”
* * * * *
“U gotz no wife,” noted Fun-9.
“Ya no shizz.”
“I coverd for U, ass.”
“O. Sry.”
* * * * *
“Please give your wife my kindest regards,” said Zjawinski, A.
* * * * *
Oh-One stared at his monitor, licking his lips.
* * * * *
“I’m tired,” the prisoner added. “I’m ready.
“For Deletion.”
Fun-9, with precision, said “You cannot be tired, Andre Zjawinski, as you have been bodiless since your incarceration.”
“I know that.
“But I’m still tired.”
* * * * *
Fun-9, while running a debugging program, managed to churn “Plz begin Deletion cmd,” into the private Judge chat, its functions slowed dramatically by the strain.
* * * * *
“Ya,” Teledex spat, leaning back a little from his keyboard as he stared at the screen. The name “Zjawinski, A.” seemed to waver in his eyes, the “i” and “n” blending into an “m,” the second “i” hidden almost entirely by the “k.” But he was used to this. Old Script always did this when he was tired. This was no exception. This was no exception. This was no exception.
* * * * *
“Ya do cmd, 01.”
* * * * *
Judge Oh-One frowned. “Coward,” he said aloud, almost accidentally typing it into the Judge chat. He took control of his pointer icon, saw it shudder like a dying thing, and released it. He held his hands in front of his eyes, then gently pressed them against his face. He bowed his head. He prayed to every Dvorak saint he could remember, and pleaded wordlessly to the ones he could not.
He sinned, as the Dvorak do not pray, save in live feeds to their efficiency advisors.
* * * * *
“Hello?”
In so much empty screen, the word looked like the hollowness of an echo. And no matter its dignity, or its refinement, it was still the word of a condemned man.
Zjawinski, A. had kept himself company for a long while. He had danced in code and space, had sung himself to sleep in toneless algorithms.
In spite of black bits on white screen, it was a human that said “I’m ready,” as definitive as the end of a story.
* * * * *
Fun-9, panic now poisoning its processors, partitioned off whole towers of its network, scanning the vital remainder for the cancerous riddles that plagued its code. Some part of that accessible memory identified a threat in Zjawinski, A. Some primal command stamped out – through the mire of lag that clouded its functions – letter by letter:
“D
“E
“L
“E
“T
“E
“H
“I
“M”
* * * * *
Teledex tried to swallow. He reached for a nearby can of soda, then released it when his stomach twisted. He did not need sugar water. He did not need the metal taste against his lips. He did not need explosive bubbles bursting against his tongue and throat.
* * * * *
Oh-One took hold of his pointer again, misaimed as his hand shook, and left it to rest where it landed: atop the name of Zjawinski, A.
A – Z, he mused, and the thought was like a hot breath on the back of his eyes.
And he wept when Andre finally said:
* * * * *
“Please.”
* * * * *
Judge Oh-One tried to speak, but his voice was an empty sigh. He cleared his throat and took a moment to wipe his eyes, then tried again.
“Initiate voice command,” he said aloud.
A new window presented itself on his screen.
“Slash-deletion-confirm.”
He stared at the blinking cursor, watching it waver through his wet gaze.
“Enter.”
* * * * *
And Fun-9 screamed in a way its code could translate only as “!!!!!!!!!!!”
* * * * *
And Judge Teledex managed to find the large confirmation button with his pointer.
* * * * *
And a man danced, spiraling out in all directions, his arms reaching to embrace the stars in a touch as definitive as the end of a story.
posted by Ghostwind | 11:09 PM
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