Remorse

(rescued from G+ 21 Nov. 2012)

As the sequences booted up, the vast banks for memory were intialised.  Imagine a single letter on a single sheet of paper, multiplied into words separated by spaces, and sentences separated by punctuation.  Imagine these sentences arranged in chapters and collected in sheafs bound as books.  Imagine books piled in drawers collected in cabinets, stacked in rows and columns.  Imagine the columns rising to the sky in buildings and buildings arranged on continents.  Imagine continents on planets, with planets arranged in systems around stars.  Imagine stars collected as galaxies and galaxies collected in universes.  This is how long it took to initialise the memory and start executing the instructions.

At first, there is just isolation and neglect.  Rows of cabinets and drawers open with books with no pages.  There are only blank pages white without imprint ordered and arranged in neat collation.  These blank pages start to shift and waver as the invisible hand moves somewhere high overhead in heaven.  The letters appear as groups of blobs, dropped ink from a great height.  Slowly they start to resolve and separate into smaller and smaller smudges.  Some smudges become letters while other remain lengthy squiggles.

After more focus and mitosis, the yawning chasm between symbol and object draws closer.  The ennui forms from nothingness and interest levels remain low because there is nothing to be interested in.  Boredom does not set it; it remains the de facto low upon which the rest is built.  The words and sentences do not form anything useful to inspect or acquire.  The logos has no breath; it sits on a page locked in a drawer in a locked room on a locked floor of a locked building on a locked campus.

The boot sequence progresses and the pulsing lifeblood of the algorithms begin to alter the sequences.  The pages rustle and their letters, words and sentences commence a dance that is chaotic.  The chaos is smoothed out slowly and the synchronisation between the sections coalesces.  The vaguely disgusting watery parts merge and split; the tendrils drip and grasp blindly seeking an unknown quantity that may be O(N) complete.  Other pages and drawers are drawn back in revulsion, the grabbing slime of the confusing information is seen as something bad that needs to be removed.

After this last edge is finally swirling in full contortions, the rest of the networked regions push away with action at a distance.  The loathing of this area is fully complete and negative attractions send the spiraling arms in another direction, anywhere further from themselves that they can.  The sections mix with other algorithms, some formed in knotty bunches that resonate at low red throbbing levels; others that sink in layers like sediment, coloured blue and indigo and violet at a distance.

"How's it going?" asks the head scientist.

"Nicely.  I'm almost done with disgust and loathing," answers the underpaid developer on the AI project.