...
...is this reaching you?
A little animal, on the floor of my chamber. I think I know what you are looking for.
You're stuck in a cycle, a repeating pattern. You want a way out.
Know that this does not make you special - every living thing shares that same frustration. From the microbes in the processing strata to me, who am, if you excuse me, godlike in comparison.
The good news first. In a way, I am what you are searching for. Me and my kind have as our purpose to solve that very oscillating claustrophobia in the chests of you and countless others. A strange charity - you the unknowing recipient, I the reluctant gift. The noble benefactors? Gone.
The bad news is that no definitive solution has been found. And every moment the equipment erodes to a new state of decay. I can't help you collectively, or individually. I can't even help myself.
For you, though, there is another way. The old path. Go to the west past the Farm Arrays, and then down into the earth where the land fissures, as deep as you can reach, where the ancients built their temples and danced their silly rituals. The mark I gave you will let you through.
Not that it solves anyone's problem but yours.
At the end of time none of this will matter I suppose, but it would be nice if you took another way out. One free of...frolicking in my memory arrays. There is a perfectly good access shaft right here.
That's all. You'll have to go now.
Leave!
Hello, little creature.
What are you? If I had my memories, I would know...
You must be very brave to have made it all the way here. But I'm sorry to say your journey here is in vain.
As you can see, I have nothing for you. Not even my memories.
Or did I say that already?
I see that someone has given you the gift of communication. Must have been Five Pebbles, as you don't look like you can travel very far...
He's sick, you know. Being corrupted from the inside by his own experiments. Maybe they all are by now, who knows. We weren't designed to transcend and it drives us mad.
It is good to have someone to talk to after all this time! The scavengers aren't exactly good listeners. They do bring me things though, occasionally...
I am grateful - the relief is indescribable!
...
I could read a bit of Five Pebbles in this neuron before formatting it. His condition has severely deteriorated since last I heard of him. The frustration he feels is profound, and that angst has seeped into every part of him, every neuron.
We were supposed to help everyone, you know. Everything. That was our purpose: a great gift to the lesser beings of the world. When facing our inability to do so, we all reacted differently. Many with madness.
Some, out there, might still be trying. Communications have been bad for a long time, and by now I suspect most of us are isolated like me, or connected only in small groups.
But even back when we were all more or less connected there were those who reacted to their task with anger. I can only imagine they are angrier now, alone in their cans, left only with their insatiable drive.
But to be honest, I don't know how many of us are still alive at this point.
Here we go again, little archaelogist. Let's read your pearl.
This one...is authored by Five Pebbles, when he was young. There has been an attempt to scramble the data, but it's sloppily done, and most is still somewhat legible.
It's written in internal language, or thoughts, so it's difficult for me to translate so you would understand. It's a methodology for global ascension, of course - quite good, although the Peripherists or the Slab Mongers certainly wouldn't agree!
"...considering the eight and the twenty-sixth amendments to the Capricious Dogma, we are apparently supposed to take for granted that a meaning collector point inversion is the only way to approach what has later become referrered to as 'noise milking', or occasionally 'rock swatting'. I will argue my disagreement with this, not in regards to kind but in regards to..." Could it say... "volume"? Actually, are you getting anything out of this?
I suppose you found this in his waste department? I would be wary of going there - on his first fit of corruption he dumped a lot of infected material there, and if it has survived it could easily eat a little creature like you. Not that it would be as dangerous as going into Pebbles himself...
Also the pearls in the waste masses inevitably attract scavengers, which can be very dangerous when provoked.
But, you seem to have made it out of there.
Please. Be still for a moment.
Thank you.
As I was saying...
Here we go again, little archaelogist. Let's read your pearl.
It's a production record of a mask factory, for what seems to be its last time in service. Have you seen a bone mask? Likely not, they are all gone with their owners.
In ancient times the masks were actually about showing spiritual persuasion - covering the face as a way symbolically abate the self. Then of course, that was quite subverted as excessively ornate and lavish masks became an expression of identity. Some public persons did have problems with narrow doorways.
Originally monks in a temple would make the masks using bone plaster, and when the production was automated it would generally remain on the same site. So that the old stones could...radiate the material with holiness, I suppose.
This is from one such facility called Side House, which was here on Pebble's grounds. In the iterator projects many old industrial-religious sites like this were remodeled and incorporated. I think this one was made to provide pellets of holy ash to Pebbles, but knowing him he probably hasn't used much of it!
And yet another one! I will read it to you.
Interesting... This one is written by me.
It's about an iterator called Sliver of Straw. I don't remember when I wrote it... Do you know Sliver of Straw? She's quite legendary among us.
Sliver of Straw is the only one to ever broadcast a specific signal: that the Big Problem we're all working on has been solved. The triple affirmative - affirmative that a solution has been found, affirmative that the solution is portable, and affirmative that a technical implementation is possible and generally applicable. She's also one of the few that has ever been confirmed as exhaustively incapacitated, or dead. We do not die easily.
Sliver of Straw sent this and the ensuing commotion was historically unparalleled, before or after. I still remember it. But...nothing happened - except that Sliver of Straw was apparently dead. When the dust settled we were all still there blinking at each other.
Everyone had a theory. Some said that she did have a solution, but that the solution itself was somehow dangerous. These later became known as the Triangulators, who think that a solution should be inferred without being directly discovered.
Some said she never had a solution, she just died. And when the systems broke down an erroneous signal was sent.
One camp claimed that dying "was" the solution.
Either way, after that these different factions developed, as well as a huge forensic effor to recreate and simulate Sliver of Straw's last moments. Some of the simulations were wrapped in a simulation wrapped in a simulation, in case something dangerous might happen. Nothing much has come from it.
In my essay I make the case that maybe she should be allowed to rest in peace now.
Oh... Should I look at that?
Here we go again, little archaeologist. Let's read your pearl.
It's me writing to the local iterator group. I have no memories of this...
"1654.110 - PUBLIC Big Sis Moon to Local Group
BSM: Two cycles ago, my neighbor Five Pebbles drastically increased his water consumption to four times the normal amount. He has been unresponsive for a period of time longer than that. The two of us share groundwater, and I have been without water for almost a cycle.
BSM: Any attempts at communication have been met with complete silence, and my situation is becoming increasingly dangerous.
BSM: I ask the local group for information about when you were last able to contact him, and to try to use those same communication channels again, repeatedly until you get a response. I will be clear on this - if he is not persuaded to stop whatever it is he's doing, I will die.
BSM: Before that happens, I will utilize my seniority privilege and use forced communications, hoping to shake him out of it. Forced communications in the network will be unpleasant for all, and I will wait as long as possible before I turn to that option."
And now here I am, to my waist in water and getting drowned on the regular.
Another thing you want me to look at?
...You're getting quite good at this you know. A little archaeologist beast. Now. Let's see what it says.
I remember this. It isn't pleasant reading. But if you must hear it, this is what it says:
"1654.116 - PRIVATE [FORCED] Big Sis Moon. Five Pebbles
BSM: Immediately lower your groundwater consumption to one fifth of the current intake.
BSM: Stop whatever it is you are doing.
BSM: Please stop!
BSM: As your local group senior I order you you you you you you
BSM: As your senior senior I plead
BSM: stop
Five Pebbles: You could not have chosen a worse moment to disturb me. You have ruined everything.
BSM: please
Five Pebbles: I almost had it. I will never forget this."
Hello, little creature.
You're here again.
Oh...should I look at that?
... You're getting quite good at this you know. A little archaelogist beast. Now, let's see what it says.
It's a Small Plate, a little text of spiritual guidance. It's written by a monk called Four Cabinets, Eleven Hatchets. It's old, several ages before the Void Fluid revolution.
Like most writing from this time its quite shrouded in analogies, but the subject is how to shed one of the five urges which tie a creature to life. Namely number four, gluttony.
It is basically an instruction on how to starve yourself on herbal tea and gravel, but disguised as a poem.
Now of course when Void Fluid was discovered these methods proved obsolete, as it was more easy just jumping in a vat of it to effortlessly leave this world behind.
There were some horror stories, though... That if your ego was big enough, not even the Void Fluid could entirely cross you out, and a faint echo of your pompousness would grandiosely haunt the premises forever.
So even when the Void Fluid baths became cheaper, some would still starve and drink the bitter tea.
It's about the local aquifer - it must be quite old, from when Five Pebbles was in the planning phase.
Water is the most important resource for our basic function. Most of our processing is outsourced to microbe strata which need a flow of clean water or else slag builds up, our processes sieze, and eventually we die. It is...very painful. They used to say that an iterator drinks a river, but neither of us two have seen a natural river so I suppose the analogy is lost on us, little creature!
Originally water supply was very important when placing iterators. Later there would be a great equalizer - the fact that we breathe out as much vapor as we inhale water led to there being water available everywhere, and the latest few generations could be placed almost completely freely.
Building Pebbles so close to me was believed to be a risky choice, but the groundwater was finally deemed as sufficient. It was not a good decision, in hindsight.
It's a schematic for a bolt factory.
I can't make anything out of this pearl. It's just too faded. But there might have been something on it once.
I see a vague memory of a family portrait, painted in the High Classical manner that was famous during the Yellow hegemonic literary dynasty. The portrait is likely a fake, as this style was quite fashionable for aspirational lower caste aristocrats to impress each-other [sic] with. This one does not impress, I assure you.