Darkstar
From Infictive
Darkstar, a way to stay in touch through the Dark Web, a term promulgated in reference to the shadow of the internet - the unconnected.
By running a dedicated server off a specific phone bank rather than as a node in the net, Darkstar managed to maintain something of an anonymity by lurking within a telemarketing agency. A secret monolith, Bey would have it.
Hassan Bey, he called himself. High strung, high intensity, and usually high as a kite on some of the most potent sinse west of Boulder, Hassan's concept of reality differed wildly from anything Eliot has encountered previously. He believes firmly that language is something existant and significant in its own right, that the word, the mythic image, and the essential nature of a godform all exist in some abstract layer of reality hidden behind and within this one we all agree upon sensually. Hassan's quest, as he describes it to Eliot, is that of miniaturizing elements of the outer into an internally expressable language.
"I'm creating data clusters, nodes of memory retrieval, though association with vibrated letters. It's a slieght-of-mind/art-of-memory construct."
Eliot's leafing through Little, Big by John Crowley, Hassan's pounding out HTML while hollering over his left shoulder. Behind them, a stereo sets Kim Gordon's voice to a back beat of crashed chords and heartbeat bass line.
"Playin & laughing & tryin to show it." she sings.
Hassan mouths along. "So that's gotta be the 8-9 delimma, words holding together..."
Hassan shakes his head, Eliot trails off. "Someone said the universe, in a sorta broad general way, is language. Not that they say 'which' language."
Hassan says, "I happen to think it's probably Latin. At least here, in this particular culture anyway.. like, anything in latin automatically seems to have a kind of weight, a heaviness to it."
"Like using Laconis on that Buffy or the spells in Harry Potter." Eliot watches Bey grimace in response.
"Yeah. But it gets better though." Hassan stops typing, cracks the tab key twice, hits enter and tosses aside the keyboard. "The universe is language - & according to Burroughs language is an alien virus.. so.. the universe is an alien virus."
"Wha..?"
"That's the secret of everything, bud."
Hassan gives Eliot a crazy grin, wide enough that he can see Hassan's filings winking under the ________
"The universe is an alien virus."
Eliot has deduced that Hassan Bey sees the world of science and magic as two sides to the same coin. Darkstar's approach to the Autonomous Technology project was to attempt coercion of a servitor into a source code for an artificial intelligence. Hassan had, along with Astrix and Tron, devised a fairly meticulous and rigorous practice along these lines by now.
