Cydia is developing itself slowly. I think if I stopped writing at midnight each night it might be a little more well written, but damn it all if I’m not the greatest procrastinator that ever lived. Tomorrow I’m going to start writing earlier so I can think over my ideas and make sure what I’m writing is something significant, of quality… that I’ll remember the next day. Hah!

In addition, I’ve cloudified today’s writing – it’s a big jumble of words where the most-mentioned words are largest. I thought it was cool. Have a look. Click the image for a bigger version.

Word Count: 73,481

They were all men – not a single woman – and in such an orderly fashion did they enter the room and surround the two foreigners that both Ames and Graham were sure their double vision was a mistake. However, there truly were an incredible amount of these people, all in the same fetch as Variable. To make matters more complicated, Variable stepped out and began speaking: “These are my brethren. I am not the only Variable – we are all Variables in one large Equation. We do not live in one building, but everywhere, and when we convene like this it is for a grand event.”

The other Variables cheered. This was their Equation, their unit, their Station. Together they stood firm and supported one another, and as they all had similar fetches not a police force in the universe could deal with them. They were as safe as man could be.

But that meant that their safety was not an issue, and if they weren’t running from the police then they were running from something else. Now Graham simply had to find out what, and find out how to convince them to take him to the president of this continent, this island – whoever was in charge. He needed to get back on track, begin convincing Cydians not to send technology to Talos. For all he knew, Talos was already in distress, progressing further and further towards the empty dimension in which the world leaders planned to construct their New Talos.

Filled with this urgency, Graham began tapping his foot. Variable receded into the mass of Variables and disappeared, which worried Graham intensely. How would he find that specific Variable again? They all looked the same, spoke the same, moved the same – for all intents and purposes, they were the same!

But this hardly mattered, for all at once each Variable pulled out a weapon – a gun akin to the taser device used by the Talos knights, but much larger and bulkier. Judging by the ease at which each Variable handled the weapon, Graham assumed that the weapon was either extremely light or the fetches extremely powerful. And regardless of the strength of the fetches or the weight of the guns, Graham felt a sudden pang in his chest – the realization of his mortality. He had faced it several times over the past several weeks, but seeing this mob hold their guns, all at once, and all at Graham and Ames, made him deeply aware of how easily he could be disposed of.

Variable walked out of the masses. Graham wanted to shout, to scream that the man was a traitor, that he’d deliberately made them trust him so that he could kill them, but before graham could say anything Variable stated that his intentions were not to kill Graham and Ames. “Quite the contrary,” Variable said, “all we want is some information. But we will do whatever it takes to get this information, so please comply. First – to Mrs. Ames – how did Talos acquire that mu gun?”

“Mu gun?” Ames asked.

“The device you showed to me as I brought you here. Tell them all how you believe Talos came about it.”

“We were told that the Cydian governments had been shipping over these things in order to allow Talos to further its technology research. The president of my home country, Lanford, described it as Cydia ‘holding Talos’s hand.’ He took this technology and gave it to Lanford’s police force. In order to obtain this particular device,” she said, choking on her words, “I had to kill a man. I’m not proud.”

Suddenly, the entire room was filled with chatter. Everyone had heard of Talos before – but nobody knew much. It seemed like each Variable knew only of Talos’s existence, and that Cydia had dealt with it in the past. Nobody seemed to know that Cydia was currently dealing with Talos, feeding it technology and asking for nothing in return. But then, all of a sudden, the room was deathly silent, and the guns turned back toward Ames and Graham.

Out of the group stepped a Variable. Neither of the two travelers was sure if it was the Variable they knew.

“Hand it over,” the man said. “We need it more than you do.”

“Not a chance!” Ames said, protecting the device. “I committed murder for this machine. It’s not going anywhere. And, besides, it has saved my life on numerous occasions. Tell me why I should give it to you.” She clutched the device tightly in her right hand.

“The mu gun’s a powerful machine, that’s for sure – and pretty much nobody has one. All we’ve got are these cheap pieces of shit from the store in this city. But we don’t need it to defend ourselves. We need it to see what The Collective is up to. We’ve all been separated from it for very long – almost out entire lives – and we’re not reconnecting. Right, everyone?”

The entire room let out a hearty cheer to this, but it meant nothing to graham and Ames. Gibberish, that’s what it was, and both wanted the group of silhouettes to stop at once. Their motives were too unknown, and they felt completely betrayed by Variable – whoever Variable was. Graham’s trust in Cydians was fading fast, and he feared that he was about to racially profile an entire planet of beings, but as he learned the inner workings of Cydia he began to realize how justified this assumption was.

As the man continued, speaking casually and quickly, Graham learned about the group and why they had reason to point their guns at the two travelers.

“Yes, that’s right!” he said. “As visitors from Talos, you’re probably unfamiliar with who we are. If you knew who we are, you wouldn’t be so hesitant to hand over that mu gun. That gun belongs to The Collective.” Graham stared blankly at the man, not knowing about The Collective.

“What the hell is The Collective?” Graham asked, becoming angry. “Listen, guns or no guns, you have no right to ask us for favors. In fact, it should be me asking you for favors – there is a world in danger as we speak, and you’re ignoring it to beg us for a weapon!”

“You don’t understand!” the Variable shouted in retaliation. “That gun belongs to the people who are sending technology to Talos. We’re not those people, clearly. Most of us don’t know anything about Talos, and we don’t really care – but if we can get our hands on just one mu gun we can begin to dissect the way that current technology has advanced since we disconnected. You hold a critical key to our future.”
“But that wasn’t why Variable was going to bring us here,” Graham said. “He was leading us here before he saw that Jessica had the mu gun. So that mean’s you’re lying – you don’t want the mu gun. Or you do, but that’s not what you’re really after. What do you really want from us? Why go through all the trouble bringing us here if you were going to shoot us dead on sight?”

The Variable sighed, and motioned to everyone to let his gun down. At once, and fully in unison, the group lowered its weapons. The Variable then sank back into the group, disappearing amongst the many Variables. On the far left side of the room, another Variable stepped forward.

“You’re right. But that is not of consequence. That portal had remained unused for hundreds of years. We were beginning to think it was going to rot away, that we would never receive any visitors from other worlds. The technology used in that portal – the corpus lock – was originally developed here. If you came here from Talos, I bet those bastards stole our technology. Did they even bother to modify it, or discover how it works? No matter, you’re in the birthplace of that technology.

“But that isn’t the reason why one of us would have brought you here. We all received notification in our terminals when the portal activated. The portal was originally built so that members of the scientific coalitions in The Collective could have easy access to us from far away, but they quickly shunned our kind and never contacted us again – instead, they began dealing with a world called Talos. This was big news at the time, but died down amongst us. Eventually we stopped longing for interaction and updates about the latest developments, and the portal’s use floundered.

“That you’re here now means that either Talos decided to engage in contact with the greater Equation, or you got here by mistake.”

“My bet is on the ladder,” said Graham. “And The Collective? What is that?”

The Variable sighed. “The greater Equation has always stressed individuality – even if it doesn’t, at first, seem that way. So long ago that I no longer remember it, there was a push amongst the people across Cydia to merge their minds into one Supreme Being via a massive cyber-neural network. By dislodging the consciousness from the body and inserting it into a cluster of servers located at the core of the planet, the world leaders of Cydia successfully set up what today is known as The Collective, a literal collective consciousness consisting of nearly every being on Cydia. People spend their days inside this collective, conscious network. What one person knows, every person knows – information is shared instantaneously and without bias. By connecting to The Collective you gain the entire repository of human knowledge.

“I can see your shock and disbelief. But do not be fooled. The greater Equation has no affiliation with The Collective. It is most likely The Collective sending technology to Talos than one of us. You are still in shock, I can see.”

Graham was more than in shock – Cydia had achieved what every man on Earth dreamed of, and greatly feared, if the man was telling the truth, which he doubted. As his trust in the Equation depleted, so too did his trust of their explanations, which he was sure were outright fabrications meant to make Ames hand over the mu gun.  But if, by chance, the Variable told the truth, then such a network would have been the greatest technological advancement in Cydian history. He knew engineers who dreamt of companies such as Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and other internet pioneers creating first a network of grand proportions that spanned beyond the rudimentary interactivity of the internet in its current form. Yet these developments were a long way off – and to literally transfer one’s consciousness into the internet was thousands of years away.

If the Variable told the truth, then Graham was outmatched and outwitted before he even stepped into this world. These figures knew things he could not even begin to comprehend. He wouldn’t have known how their guns worked, he still could not decipher the language of the glasses, and that all of these people were dressed in the same artificial body drove his insignificant mind halfway to insanity.

Yes, he believed the Variable, but he wished dearly in his heart that none of it were true, that he had travelled to a world that he could relate, find some peace and semblance with, where he could put his knowledge to good use as he had on Talos with Ames, working to engineer solutions to problems that would ultimately send him home to Earth. But here, none of that existed. Although the Equation and The Collective seemed to coexist, they also seemed to do so peacefully. Yet Graham’s curiosity would not fade – he wanted to know more about The Collective. He wanted to interact with it. He wanted to see it, to enter it, to experience it.

Already his mind was flowing with ideas and visualizations of what such a grand network might look like. But anything he could have imagined would have been decidedly wrong; it was like nothing Graham could concoct.

Graham turned away and removed his gaze from the Variables. “Everyone, this is just too much for me. Please don’t force this all upon me; I’m just a man trying to get back to his home. This world is strange, stranger than the last world – all of my friends at home must dearly miss me, and even my despicable family must show some remorse! Why is it so difficult to go home?” Graham fell over onto the plush carpeted ground, soaking it with tears. He thought how initially it had been Ames who could not cope with the advent of Cydia, but now he was lost in translation, he was on the floor seizing up, he was having the utmost trouble believing all of it, even though he knew every word that the Variable spoke in this instance was true.

Ames was now simply shutting out all influx of new data, fighting for her survival internally in a strange world. Her mind wanted to tell off these strangely similar men, but her conscience made her act otherwise. By now she had realized that if she could not understand the wonders of electricity as described by Graham, she was utterly lost in the explanations of the Cydians. Only two thoughts now remained in her mind: Stop Cydians from delivering technology to Talos at all costs, and protect the mu gun.

Slowly, all of the Variables realized that their explanations were effectively useless to the two travelers. The one currently standing outside of the group receded back, and the original variable commanded all the other to leave at once so that he may prove the group’s worth to Graham and Ames. The Equation filtered out of the room, converging at the double doors at the far end of the room. Soon it was just the original Variable, Graham and Ames.

Both said nothing for several minutes while Variable paced the room, unsure of how to introduce the two properly to his group. Graham was the first to speak.

“Why did you say nothing?”

“I couldn’t have told you. You wouldn’t have come. You needed to know that I was sent to help you.”

“We came through the wrong portal. I’m sure of it. This portal was supposed to lead us to the Cydian government – one of them, at least! The President on Talos used this portal to receive technology from Cydia. Why would it go here? Something clearly went wrong. You have no business with us, or with our mu gun.”

“You don’t understand.”

“I understand perfectly,” Graham said, hoping to sound confident enough that Variable would believe him. “You’re not who you say you are – you are not Variable, you are not here to help me or my friend. You found us at the portal and dragged us into your group because you saw that Ames had the gun from the start. And it wasn’t the portal that you detected, but the presence of the gun. If everybody wanted the gun that badly, why would they pay attention to a damn portal instead of tracking the signal of the gun?”

Variable sighed. “The mu gun is a very important piece of machinery. We used to have one. We are a scientific people, Mr. graham, and this we enjoy when new technology can fall into our midst. What your cohort has is clearly an updated model. You are correct – we did not track the portal. The mu gun signal is registered all over this city at multiple checkpoints, and the closest Variable to the checkpoint nearest the mu gun was designated to get it. But when I saw you two, I knew I could not simply take the gun from innocent travelers. I notified the Equation and let them know I would bring you in hopes we could convince you to give it to us. But I see we have failed.”

“But I still don’t understand,” Graham asked. “And I’ll bet you that Ames doesn’t, either.” Graham began to pace, and he saw that he paced in concert with Variable. “Tell me your name.”

“I have no name.”

“Then who are you?”

“I am Variable.”

“You’re insatiable.”

“Better that than a part of the damned Collective! Imagine it – try to, if you can – the whole world, sharing all of their thoughts, all of their knowledge with one another. It sounds wonderful at first – we all joined in, we all sacrificed ourselves and went into stasis for this massive project. The only means of escape from the network we had were the fetches designed by the inventors of the network – for a hefty price one could temporarily exit the network in a body of their choosing, but of course not their original bodies. The majority of people, yes, they remained satisfied with their predicament, and never left – but some of us, floating in cyberspace, longed for fresh air and a realistic environment, and so we purchased fetches at a premium in order to do so. But we discovered something great and terrible.

“We all did things that we regret while outside of the network, things we never wished to share with anyone. Yet we knew that as soon as we uploaded our consciousness to The Collective once again, the entire populous of Cydia would share in our knowledge – both the righteous activities we partook in, and the damnable ones. Faced with this conundrum, several of us chose not to return, as I’m sure you would have. Anybody who has ever kept a secret can understand that these things must remain secret, yes? That it our principle – not wanting to share with the entire world that which is not worth sharing.”

Variable looked as though he wanted to take a deep breath, but inside a fetch there was no breath to be took – the artificial body did not require oxygen.

Graham now understood. By forcibly exiling themselves from The Collective, the Variables had managed to remain independent minds, able to keep their own thoughts, and not need to share them with anyone else. This was, of course, to their benefit in some ways, but a detriment to their existence in other ways – for instance, their ability to keep up with modern technology. Trapped in their fetches, they were out of contact with the new era of Cydian life. Thus they frequently stole technology and found ways of contacting scientists temporarily exiting The Collective to do research. Yet, somehow, the mu gun had eluded them – and now their long-lost search was over with the appearance of Graham and Ames.

“I only need the mu gun for one night, to dissect it and satiate the others. Do not worry, we are peaceful. I am sure it was those in the core of Cydia who were delivering the technology to your planet. I do not know why, and it is not really of my concern for that very reason. But if it has anything to do with why you are here, I will provide any assistance I can. You are, as far as my judgment will say, honored guests in Cydia – at least on the turf of the greater Equation.”

“And how can we trust you not to lift your guns to our faces again?” Ames said, barging in on the conversation with a great amount of hostility.

“Sadly, there is nothing I can say to regain your trust. You cannot trust me – my kind is the kind that keeps secrets, and keeps them well. That is our purpose for living, for remaining as we do in this city. This entire city is full of people like me, like us, who have found one reason or another not to return to The Collective. Not all of us are keeping secrets – some simply do not enjoy the lifestyle of The Collective and are social exiles, come here to waste away the millennia with only the company of a few friends and minimal knowledge. I cannot make you trust me over someone else, but I can ask what I can do to prove to you I am trustworthy once more.”

And then, Ames knew what she wanted Variable to do to prove his worth. She nodded at Graham, who she knew was thinking similar thoughts. She turned her gaze to Variable and pierced through his robotic exterior, then spoke: “Teach me how to use the glasses.”