cordyceps spoilers

itsbenedict:

kakunya on Chapter 26

I really want to read Light Marathon. Do you have any plans to write it? If not, could you possibly share a summary of the ideas behind it?

Benedict_SC on Chapter 26

I don’t have any plans to write it- it’s mainly window dressing- but I did think a little bit about it so I could keep Arc and Gavin’s nerding-out about it consistent.

The basic idea is that there’s an interstellar civilization that hasn’t quite managed to completely bypass the lightspeed barrier- human settlements are pretty self-contained, since all interstellar communication is asynchronous. To keep everything synced up, there’s these huge AI-run computers- collectively, the Lightspeed Archive or the Perfect Mind- which form a benevolent godlike superorganism that keeps what are supposed to be perfect records of everything it observes. It functions as a sort of oracle, handing out information that it’s confident of with 100% certainty in order to advise local governments on policy and coordinate interstellar travel and communication. (Yes, that’s not realistic- it’s a conceit of the setting that the computers are Just That Good, and I’m sure Archive05, datacrawlers_georg, and the rest of LMOF have had lots of loud arguments about whether this makes sense and whether the author of the series knows anything about computers at all.)

This state of affairs is objected to by a number of groups with different aims, who’ve formed an uneasy marriage of convenience- the Plausibilists, people who seek to corrupt the Perfect Mind’s data and force it to start reasoning in probabilities and guesswork. Some of them think that the PM should be more powerful, and that making it deal with messy reality would empower it, and others think that it should be LESS powerful, and that making it deal with messy reality would disempower it. They’ve got the same short-term goals, but completely different beliefs about what those goals will accomplish, which leads to internal tension and infighting.

The series as a whole is mainly a cyberpunk spy thriller- hackers and smugglers and various ne’er-do-wells trying to alternatively coordinate with and backstab each other across lightyears of distance, while dealing with double agents and plots upon plots. Everyone has to deal with both bizarre, incontrovertible prophecies from the machine, and the uncertainty inherent in being mutually displaced in time from their cohorts.

(And at one point the Plausibilists win out on the fourth and newest colony, somehow corrupting Archive04, and someone named Zack Mainframe decides to blow it up and force people to rebuild it rather than let it propagate its corrupted data to the rest of the Perfect Mind- hence, Riley’s username.)

Note that apart from the part about the no-FTL interstellar civilization, all of this was made up on the fly while writing chapter O/22 as a post-hoc explanation for the username. Not sure whether I want to write out some excerpts and put them in earlier chapters as foreshadowing, or avoid getting too in-depth because it’d be a distracting red herring…

If anyone wants to pick up this setting and write their own thing with it, be my guest- or, since it’s conveniently Worldbuilding Wednesday, send some asks about it?

You know, I didn’t notice at the time, but reading this it occurs to me: doesn’t the analogy make at least as much sense if you use it to argue the opposite way?

What is St. Shelhart’s goal, after all, if not to destroy part of Arc to save the rest? And what is Arc doing, if not allowing their corrupted systems to propagate and take down everything?

Tags:

#reply via reblog #cordyceps tcftog #cordyceps spoilers #fridge logic #metaphors are tricky things

itsbenedict:

(I’m gonna put this in drafts and post it in a couple days, once the story’s over.)

the answer to “WHYYY” is mainly “there really wasn’t any other plausible outcome”. like, if it didn’t happen this way, it would have happened some other way, because there’s no chance in hell Arc would ever have been able to do what it took to avoid it.

(even though “what it takes to avoid it” is just “not making all these complicated strings of terrible decisions”.)

(spoilers under cut)

Keep reading

(more spoilers)

Yeah, I was wondering at first why the hell anyone would believe O when they claimed to be J, since surely they’ve proven themself to be completely untrustworthy from the staff’s POV. And then I thought, it doesn’t really matter in the end. Arc could never be satisfied with the situation as it stands. They would always be determined to get their memory back, die trying, or–as it happens–both. If they didn’t die to the fungus on iteration O, they’d die to it in a future iteration, or get themself shot when they pissed off one of the people-with-guns one time too many. They really were doomed from the moment they were infected.

Although it’s not really enough to manifest over the few cycles we see, the process does progressively cordon off more of the brain over time

It doesn’t manifest? Was I reading too much into the fact that N can come up with a not just a plan, but a plan for how to hide their real plan, in the few seconds they have between seeing Orchard and having Orchard come after them, but O has quotes like this:

He turned to me. “Sorry- quick question- what’s your name?”

I froze. What did he need my name for?

[chain of reasoning cut for space]

“Hey. Your name. Can you tell me?” Gah! I wasn’t done thinking! I held up a finger for silence.

[more reasoning]

I’d paused too long. The guard was getting suspicious. “I’m just asking. This isn’t a trick or anything, just… what’s your name?”

And this:

Everything was happening too fast. I couldn’t stop and think through every implication of what they were saying- they kept saying things, without giving me time to analyze it! I couldn’t move, I couldn’t make a judgment- had 5 gotten her to say that somehow? Is that what someone who’d had their cover blown would say out loud? No, but- it explained 5’s behavior, it was plausible- but it could be a trick. HOW could it be a trick? What was Helium even saying, oh, she was saying more things now-

I mean, when I saw the bit about brain damage with each reset, I kind of figured the problem was that O thinks more slowly than N does.

*Potentially*, Arc could be cured with a specialized treatment plan and a really high-security facility, where they just lock them in with no human contact and no clues whatsoever, and hope they don’t work it out for themselves over months of time to think and theorize and potentially hit upon the right solution by chance. Maybe stick a lot of books and video games in there to distract them with?

Is there a reason why keeping a patient continuously unconscious for six months wouldn’t work, or is it just impractical for them to actually do?

(At first I wondered if you could even avoid the need for amnesia by doing that, but I suppose even if it would theoretically work and they had enough supplies, it would be hard to ensure people are always completely unconscious and not dreaming of elephants.)

Tags:

#cordyceps tcftog #reply via reblog #cordyceps spoilers #not sure what happens to a thread with multiple cuts like this #we’ll find out

Brinens and Things

(crosspost from AO3 comments)

nevermindbinarity asked: WHYYY (also the way you formatted the link was clever!)