This was the beginnings of a short-story I was writing as retort to kalbear at Westeros in some breakdown we were having about Neuroscience & Bakker... Might continue it one day...

Quote from: Madness

Unconscious Tendencies

It changed a man to stare down his prey. Once, before the Unmooring, there might even have been a mutual sensation, a moment of shared tension as opposing conceptions wrestled through two individual, yet, similar human fonts. Recognition. The mark would look across a crowded room at Duiker and Duiker at the mark and they would just know. The hunt was on. Across any boundless environments, Duiker would give chase. Back in the day, the mark would look at him, and share Duiker’s knowledge in this, that Duiker was their end.

Duiker seemed to recall reading something about mirror neurons on one his many trips to the Archives, the ways in which recognition, empathy, or sympathy depended on different neuronal structures performing complex imitations from one person’s mind to another. He grinned, a little out of place for the moment, but then might all the moves of his mind seem out of place. He was one of the few people who actually read anymore, the antiquated way.

Recognition, that subtle understanding across the different chasms of circumstance.

Not like looking into the eyes of that rich kid Godtweaker or the pedo from Jersey who used neuroinductors on little blond girls.

It changed a man to stare down his prey. You looked across a divide of mind, a line cast in the conceptual sand, across whole gulfs of perception, and knew despite your differences in understanding, you were irrevocably tied to one another – and in Duiker’s line of work it was usually until one of you was dead. It came down to recognition. Mutual understandings.
Before the Unmooring.

The music in the club thrummed around him, vibrating the seat cushion beneath him, and Duiker drew his attention from the mob of dancing patrons to the kid lazing before him, bronze girl draped across his blue tracksuit. Duiker looked for the kid’s eyes, sheathed in blinks by heavy lids. Looked. And Duiker saw nothing of what he thought he remembered, nothing of that mutual reflection.

Not even a suspicion.

That Duiker was a predator.

“I can get you designer nootropics, synestheste nanostimulators, neurotainment,” the kid said to Duiker, toying with his sunglasses as he spoke. “Did you grab a pill on the way in? My DJ has a sick crescendo planned,” the kid grinned at Duiker and he wondered that he could be this boy’s father, that, maybe, someone somewhere was actually worried about him. Silly kid.

Tweaks can really divide the fam jam.

It reminded Duiker of the young girl he’d tracked down south in the first years after the Unmooring. Standing in the doorway returning the biohusk of a girl to her parents. He felt obliged to explain in the early days, as if he would somehow offer an explanation that could wipe them of their pain. Sometimes with a change in neurophysiological structure, the chemical demands on the body by the brain could never be satisfied, a brain might just eventually fry. With the drastic advances in neurosurgery, humans could architect entire brain maps to their desires, and, usually, completely destroyed or sufficiently changed the nature of existing any cortical structures, which might have prompted a rebalanced equilibrium of organization and even the structures that had prompted those desires in the first place.

One never seemed to understand the ways in which the next tweak might affect the very person you were when you imagined the differences. Sometimes the changed magnified underlying personality issues. Sometimes it created whole knew ones in the wake of the old.

Few people appreciated the semantic vista anymore. Duiker, anyone else like him, and the remaining Normies. And there was no one quite like Duiker.

Though many individuals had become islands like himself.

After the Unmooring.

“I’m not here for your drugs-“ Duiker started.

“Drugs,” the kid’s grin grew so fully half his face was dominated by teeth and he whistled. “You are an oldy. I got some of them too – my clientele includes some risk-takers like yourself.” The kid, pushed the girl off his chest, began rooting through the purse at her feet.

“Hey!” She said, sitting up indignantly.

“Bitch, shut-“ the kid started.

“Look,” Duiker held up a hand, “I’m not here for your drugs, no matter what era they’re from.” He reached into his inner breast pocket, grabbed at a gloss to flash to the kid. “You know this guy?” Duiker asked, holding it up.

He really needed to tech-up his toolkit.

Kids these days probably can’t even see a 2D flat gloss.

“Oh shit! That’s… J.C. Merz,” the kid said.

“Yeah,” Duiker said, deterred. The kid acted like any other fan boy ogling a superstar. Everyone knew who J.C. Merz was. “Do you know him personally?”

The kid sat back, motioning for the girl to lean back on him as if he’d never thrown her off in the first place. Duiker wondered at their relationship then stopped himself. You had to look out for you and your own in the world, now more than ever. And Duiker’s tribal allegiances depended solely on who was paying his credits.

The kid considered Duiker for a second. At least, that’s all that passed for Duiker. It was one of the few tweaks Duiker had deigned to experience, knowing that it was to his monetary advantage to observe the passage of time at the smallest of intervals. Most of the time, he’d let time pass as it had throughout much of his life. But other times, this one for instance, he could, on reflex, consider microseconds like whole tableaus of reality moving through molasses. He’d been told by the Neurosurgeon that cortical map might enable him quicker reaction time, definitely allow extensive planning in even the smallest timeframes, but that he wouldn’t be able to move much faster than a Derelict and that quicker reflexes themselves and wholesale increased synaptic firing were much more expensive.

“Yeah, I know him. He did some work for me…” the kid choked for a second, adjusted his clothes and seemed reconsidered.
“Who are you, man?"

Rather than respond, Duiker just pulled out another gloss, this one with his name, offices, and digits.

“Keep it,” he said passing it to the kid. He watched the kid look it over.

“Who’re working for?” the kid asked. Duiker considered the kid, decided he probably was watching his own ass. At least here, in the heart of the American wasteland, there was a bastion of humanity, a society following the Unmooring, which actually allowed for humans to interact in some semblance of order. Something resembling the way things were, before the Unmooring. And no one wanted to break the Neurolaws here.

“His wife, what’s it to you?  If I cared about your tweaks or your drugs, there’d be Needles in here already. Merz has disappeared and she fears for her husband’s life. Who doesn’t bear some kind of grudge, some kind of envy for the man? Who wouldn’t kidnap or kill J.C. Merz, right, kid?” Duiker said. No one cooperated wholeheartedly anymore. Not like before.
“Sure, sure,” the kid said. He looked back across the dance floor, probably seeing, and feeling, the play of emotion and sound as the DJ vamped up the volume, changed the beat, in time to the swell of experience within the audience. Duiker hadn’t taken the pills at the door.

It looked pretty much like a bunch of people on the same drugs despite the propagated cleanliness and cultural acceptability at the door.

He smiled and the kid grinned too.

No one, but no one, pushes drugs like the Establishment.

“When was the last time you saw him? Merz? Kid? Kid?!” Duiker said, impatiently snapping his fingers. He found his foot tapping excitedly, was reminded of the subtle side effects of some tweaks. The kid waited for a certain gyrating pace to kick out, violently sounding the speakers before the drop into heavy bass beats, and looked back to Duiker.

“So intense. Eh? Did you feel like shit?!” The kid grinned ear to ear and Duiker saw beads of sweat on his forehead and that of the girl’s.

“Kid, I didn’t take the pills at the door. When was the last time you saw Merz? Where?” Duiker must have said this with a dull look on his face because the kid returned his look like Duiker had killed his last buzz. “Just give me a lead and I’ll be out your way too, just like the guy who sent me your way.” Duiker tried to give his best grin, making to stand.

“Yeah, who was that, by the way,” the kid asked, perhaps looking to revisit some of his displeasure on their mutual acquaintance.

“They didn’t say. You know, neuroinductors, kid. A fucking talking duck might have given me that info and all I saw was an amorphous blob of all the people I’ve known in my life. Though I saw her, I guarantee you my grandma didn’t pass me along, kid, I’ll tell you that much.” Duiker said. “You got anything for me?”

“Whatever, Private Dick. All I know is I met Merz down in the Old Southtown. He erased my memories after then to protect him. You know?” The kid shot Duiker his winning little grin. The conversation was no doubt over. A small entourage had been milling around the kid’s table and from it emerged two nondescript looking partygoers.

The doormen, no doubt.

Thinking to push his luck, Duiker began to turn, then stopped and looked at the kid again.

“A name, kid? Save me some time.”

In a world where one could no longer depend on the dividends of outright physicality, a man had to make his way off wit, or whatever inhuman remain of it Duiker still could access. It was one of the few portions of his human self he’d sought, been able really, to preserve and cultivate following his own tweaks. The doormen closed around him, separating Duiker from the kid.

“Some diner called Neuros. Old Southtown,” the kid yelled, seeming to no one as he looked around and above him at experiential art, as the DJ spun chemicals in the bodies around him to the music he dragged and pushed under the digital needles.

I'm digging through my writing folders as I mine my old documents for some novel attempts at synthesis and I discovered some essays that grew out a living symposium I experienced living with some of the smartest people alive  - and I sincerely mean that.

This, and another I'll post, were partially finished attempts at turning the notes I took in those conversations in an artifact.

I posted them here rather than philosophy & science because of the informal and unfinished nature of each piece. But feel free to engage as a piece of writing to be or an argument to be tuned and tweaked:

Quote from: Madness

Academic Philosophy

The education of our children, or the next generations, is something of minefield. To be a human child in a twenty-first century education system is to receive some historical-class psychological and physical indoctrination. It begins with our culture-wide disinformation of key terms; teacher, provider, and care-giver.

Rather than a natural separation of these archetypal caricatures in the twenty-first society, Teacher essential embodies all three cultural structures. Teachers should provide the best, most useful knowledge, instilling attention and awareness, and inspiration. Instead, teachers serve as the conduit for social indoctrination through the medium of education, being largely responsible for how we humans behave and interact psychologically and physically.

A child enters the North American education system at a young social age. Regardless of individual intelligence, for which exists flawed mandatory testing, the predominant social training a young human receives is the exposure to a pressured, constrained environment of the classroom. The current cultural conception of the family structure provides the other predominant social training and even it’s success is impinged by social doctrine itself, mostly breeding a low statistic of open-minded, rationally intelligent, emotionally developed parents which the social mechanism ejects at random.

As for the propagated ideal of  imparting actual useful knowledge for the use of revision and expansion of our current knowledge base, our education system scrapes by with a passing mark just like the majority of our students, achieving the bare minimums in social requirements. The social requirements themselves are representative of the cultural and social conceptual structures, which the majority of Elementary and Secondary students fill like little moulds.

There is rare respite in our current system of education; that of the exposure to truisms and mystery, through much viable raw data to which students have access, the exposure to other young minds and humans, and tools of conscious expansion and introspection. In this young North American circumstance there is a random circumstance allowing for true potential for growth.

Aside from the current scattered gems of knowledge held by teachers and institutions worldwide, there is nowhere which exhibits potential for growth like the post-secondary education systems of the Western Empire. Likewise, nowhere which showcases the skeletal structure for social indoctrination. Education not for the revision and expansion of knowledge at the benefit of humanity but for the economic and social gratification of our cultural heritage, capitalistic materialism, at the benefit of the few.

At the very least, the spark for growth should remain a beacon for truth in the academic discipline of philosophy. All I know is that I know nothing, of the first building blocks of western intellectualism. In this age, philosophers must be re-imagined, reemployed. In the past philosophers have occupied a space between, riding the edge of subjectivity towards objectivity, seers into our great mysteries, death, the afterlife, the unknown; persons whom imagined makers and reasons. In our relevant context, philosophers by their own opinion have changed little, only the field of study. Humans who submit to philosophy must be looked to, to grasp possibilities and frames of reference beyond the scope of our imagination and learn to accept humanity’s possible place within them.

The journey of a post-modern philosophy in our twenty-first century is mired by it’s contradiction. The disillusionment of the individual philosopher takes place in their personal indoctrination into the neutered social and cultural structure of the Philosophic Academia.

The exposure to certain historical minds can be a riveting opening into an awareness of human potential. Aside from innate psychological mechanisms and description, humans owe their rights and privileges to some philosophic facet. The ability to understand and embody a developed moral subjectivity owes it’s entire conceptions to philosophy. However, these truly awesome conceptions are glossed over by heavy research and juxtaposition. In post-modern society there are new ideas only described in those that randomly arise from the contrast of old, unrevised, opinion. Art for the sake of Art.

This nouveau strange, the limping philosophical mechanism, cannot produce an original thought. It’s students leave philosophy  in it’s cupboard, on it’s pedestal until it’s inane schizophrenic argument resumes endlessly. There is no relation to the individual, a self, whose philosophy has effect on daily life. The creativity of journey is squelched and in it’s place academics itself, the mindless regurgitation of writing papers; research, adhere, deadline.

The elders, those responsible in this indoctrination process, all seem aware of the contradiction of their immediate circumstance. However, philosophy’s contradiction is taboo; to speak of it risks exposure, exclusion, and, perhaps the livelihood of it’s teachers. Comments otherwise made by the indoctrinated youth are quickly and quietly derailed and buried. Questioning, the root of their academia, appears quite unwarranted in the post-modern circumstance.

The bones of indoctrination appear again in the sphere of tradition. Here, pride preserves our elders of knowledge. In this cramped world there is no room for new original attempts at Philosophy. Individually, today, we seem fallible. There is a stigma which our teachers hide behind and it is best to leave the conceptual footwork to historical precedence.

The world is progressing. The warped conception that there can be no growth eliminates the conceptual possibility of growing negatively. However, without our organized conscious effort, negative growth seems to be the predominant outcome of random progression.

Teachers, persons themselves, no longer stand out. There is a competition for voice, to be unique. In our current circumstance, lives are arranged as jobs. Pride and delusion seduce our knowledge export and in order to contribute, knowledge must conform to academic consensus. Philosophy is carved and sacrificed so it’s students may occupy the system in a comfortable fashion.

Those whom remain true to their philosophic ideals seem to care about the current state of academic affairs. However, by their circumstances these individuals are themselves challenged by their own ego within the system. The statistic of those excommunicated from the academic agenda grows steadily. There is little success with much challenge for those whom might better our lives.

The individuals whom occupy the spectrum of Teacher, all across their span, are burdened in some fashion by their knowledge. While we extravagantly label our youth “Our Future”, as a society and culture we do little to affect a better future. We have in place an educational mechanism, constructed from cultural and societal conceptual construction materials, which produces more cogs for the current description of Clockwork Earth. Education is not meant to challenge those in it’s grasp but those past it’s thresholds. It’s current embodiment, however, does little to challenge the existent status quo, to revise and expand the foundational variables of our awareness. Those who have the power to enlighten, choose to induce slavery instead.

A pretty basic little arrangement, I wont oversell it! However I'm trying a new sort of conversational approach to writing and creatively it's proving more fluid to produce, which I'm glad for. Pitching some words out...listening...

Here's the main spiel:
Starting a sprite based series in a wilderness setting. Wrote some code in a programming language to help layout the many elements of the page.

If you're swooning for some bittersweet 'I struggle and I barely get anywhere in a horrible landscape, but Imma gunna tough it out and slowly but surely power up' stuff, here's one of them tales!

Boot strap fantasy ahoy!

Read the comic, watch the protagonist slowly claw his way up in the world and latter you can say you saw him through the struggle. Assuming he survives. 5 days a week!

http://wizardshotthefood.smackjeeves.com/comics/1697594/driftwurld-trader-1/

Eventually to be tied in with a text based game.

A friend of mine helped set this site up recently.
I thought perhaps you guys with a writerly bent might like to check it out.
They are looking for submissions (but do not pay).
http://bumf.com.au/
Feel free to move this to literature or interesting things if you think it should be there instead, Madness.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-numenera

Quote

Torment: Tides of Numenera is a game set in the world of Monte Cook’s new tabletop RPG setting, Numenera. Torment continues the thematic legacy of Planescape: Torment, a critically acclaimed role-playing game from 1999 that's considered by many to be a hallmark for storytelling in computer RPGs. With Torment, we're striving to create a rich role-playing experience that explores similar deep, personal themes...

We're crafting Torment with the goal of creating a gameplay experience like that evoked by Planescape: Torment (or PS:T). We want Torment to challenge, reward, surprise, and entertain you in ways that PS:T did. To do that, we examined PS:T carefully, and took these four pillars as our foundation:

    A Deep, Thematically Satisfying Story. The philosophical underpinnings of Torment drive the game, both mechanically and narratively. Your words, choices, and actions will be your primary weapons.

    A World Unlike Any Other. The game has a fantastic, original setting, with awe-inspiring painterly visuals, imaginative locations, truly offbeat items, and massive feats of magic. In Numenera, however, "magic" is actually something surprisingly different.

    A Rich, Personal Narrative. The story is thoughtful and character-driven—epic in feel but a deeply personal narrative, with nontraditional characters and companions who have their own motivations and desires that drive them throughout the game.

    Reactivity, Choice, and Real Consequences. The game emphasizes replayability and reactivity, and your choices will make a real difference. You can play the game with a different approach and discover entirely new pathways. Most important, we won't tell you how to play. The best ending is the one you choose, flowing naturally from your actions throughout the game.

As soon as I heard about the exploding meteorite in Russia, the very first thought that crossed my mind was: The Ark of the Sky!

Anyone playing this?  I've been playing off and on since beta release and I quite enjoy it.  There was probably a period of 8 months or so where it was the only video game I was playing.

Come on, I can't be the only one in this neckbeard fest playing the damn thing.

Achamian#1897 for those who care.