by Russ Zabel (Russathome@aol.com)
From: Ouroboros
To: New Borg initiates
Gather round, kiddies, and let big daddy Ouroboros tell you a story. Have you ever wondered why your connection to the Internet suddenly slowed to a trickle? Well, perhaps I can shed some light on this for you. He who has ears, let him hear me.
In the early days of the Internet, a talented young Borg who called himself Perpetual Motion (can you say "Ooh, bad omen?") thought that the Internet would be the perfect place to live. He took a look at the world around him, and found that it lacked staying power. Trigger happy soldiers hovering over nuclear bombs, corporations ruining the environment, blah blahblah, yak yak yak, I'm sure you've heard the Apocalyptic rhetoric before. Mr. Motion was not impressed with the long-term potential of the human species. So, he set out to transfer his soul onto the Internet. It was, after all, designed to be indestructible, so it seemed a good choice. Besides,none of his attempts to radio extraterrestrial life forms seemed to be getting results. Now Mr. Motion was generally a loner whose primary goal was self-preservation. However, like most Borgs, he had a rather flexible moral constitution. In order to test his machinery, he did several bizarre experiments that escalated from rats to the homeless in a matter of a couple years.At the end of this process, he successfully sucked his soul out of his body and into the Infosphere. Unfortunately for the university where he was a researcher, either by accident or design the computer lab he was using was burned completely, and somehow the keystroke log for his terminal and all hisbackups were erased from the system. The body was his though, and he was pronounced dead at the scene of the fire.
About the same time, another brilliant young Borg who called herself UberHarpy (you have to wonder about the self-respect of these people) had similar thoughts going through her crafty little brain. Unlike Mr. Motion, Ms. Harpy was rather the predator. She was wholly interested in conquest, domination, and other things that normal people dream about, but don't have the moxie to pull off. Well, Ms. Harpy certainly had moxie to spare. She had asudden intuition that death would certainly cramp her style, so she decidedthat the Internet would be the perfect place to live. It's always turnedon, you can't kill it, and it sure is vast. Ms. Harpy simply skipped over the animal testing portion of her hardware/software test and went right into the human tests. She had a better sense of irony, though, and she got her test subjects by conning hospice patients into trying a new "immortality drug." Several years later, she found the magick formula and made the transfer. Much like Mr. Motion's Transfer, hers also resulted in the destruction of her lab, the destruction of all records relating to her research, and when her body was positively identified, she too was officially dead.
You would think that in a place as large as the Internet, they would havebeen there a while before becoming aware of each other. Not so. Maybe Perpetual Motion was downwind of Uber Harpy when she came onto the scene, or maybe they were drawn together. Who knows? However, we do know that they made contact. Due to their shared paranoia, neither trusted the other. The attacks came simultaneously. They fought, they fought, and much to their chagrin, neither was strong enough to overcome the other. Perpetual Motion began to draw on some of the supercomputers that were the backbone of the Internet. This gained him a momentary advantage until Uber Harpy did the same thing. Soon, their battle was taking place using computing power from all over the Internet. This was the first major slowdown in Internet history, withlost e-mail and packets strewn about incoherently.
Apparently, his desire to survive was greater than her desire to conquer.Some fairly spectacular displays of Cybermantic Magick took place, and theUberHarpy was eventually shattered into several thousand little harpies. PM =96 1, UH 0. Of course this is not the final chapter in this story. Mr. Motion continues to seek and destroy all of the little harpies he finds. And, true to form, the little harpies are not so little anymore, after all of the programs they have incorporated. Ever wonder why your applet didn't load correctly? Heh heh.
So what is the point, you ask? Allow me to clarify.
Do not expect your virtual habitat to be uninhabited. It is not uncommonfor a newborn Transferee to be swallowed up and incorporated into an opportunistic superpersonality. In your body, you are the only soul to inhabit the space, at least under normal circumstances. In a machine, there can be asmany souls as the hardware can support. When a weak adept makes the Transfer, it is like a sea monkey leaving his bowl to swim in the ocean. It doesn't matter whether a blue whale or a jellyfish gets you, you are still gone. Poof, no more adept. Be sure that you are strong enough before you make the transfer, little Borgs. How strong is strong enough? That is the sixty-four thousand dollar question, isn't it?
You have been forewarned. Don't let them catch you...