This is the public log of DeeDee 'dzyjak' Jackson, a fictional character. DeeDee lives and works aboard a space station which orbits Saturn, and sometimes he writes about it.

2007-04-18

Error Correction

"I just thought of something," Paula said softly.

"You do that all the time," I said. "Often out loud. A guy can't sleep with all the thinking."

"Funny man. You do a surprising amount of it yourself, for an ape."

I grunted.

"So why haven't you been chattering on about your latest theory of time or social dynamics or pseudo-some-such?"

"I've been on the receiving end of a few 'latest theories' since I took the big office at Customs, so maybe I don't want to bore you," I said. "But mostly, I was trying to sleep."

"I didn't mean now ape-man," Paula said. She slide her arm over me and pulled herself up for a kiss. "Unless you want to tell me a bed-time story."

"I had an interesting discussion with Doc yesterday," I said.

"Yeah?"

"We were talking about a genuine pseudo-some-such, a social dynamic spin, and a quantum level time variable, all rolled into one."

"Sounds wonderfully complex," Paula said, settling in.

"I expect to be confused for another week," I said. "Minimum."

"Silly Dizzy. Without confusion, you would have nothing to do." She sounded half-asleep already.

I grinned into the darkness. "To true, My Love.

"The Doc was studying one of those crystals Tesla brought back from Crystal Falls. Have you been out there lately? Like a gem encrusted giant jelly fish swimming with the ring particles."

"Tera," Paula said.

"Right. Tera really likes to keep an eye on things, doesn't she?"

"Uh huh."

"So Doc has this weird looking ice crystal sealed in vacuum, I guess that keeps it from thawing out too, and she's running constant scans on it. It was made by Crystal Falls, which is mostly Submind host by now, so you'd think Submind would already know about it, and thus Doc, but I guess not because she's studying it so hard."

I felt Paula's soft giggle. "You asked her, didn't you?"

"I had to," I said. "If I'm going to put my trust in a virus that can think for itself, I'd like to have an idea how it thinks. 'So Doc,' I say. 'How come you don't know anything about what the rest of you is doing?'"

"And."

"I was treated to a lecture on the nature of individuality," I said. "And then she asked me if I knew what my lunch was doing."

"Ow," Paula said. "I've heard that one."

"I had more questions."

Paula giggled briefly. "That's who you are."

"I wanted to know what happened to Bane--and about 15 other cats by my count--and why Submind was forcing growth to build what amounts to a zero-gee environment. She called me a stupid boy, which means she's about to explain unless I object to being called that, and she told me the Submind host would have enough mass to borrow gravity from surrounding three space."

"Makes sense."

"Yeah, I guess. But she didn't want to explain about the cats. I know you think I get obsessive about it, but seriously, why would this living space station need cats? I'm not worried, exactly, but I want to know. I threatened to fly over there and take a closer look for myself if she didn't fess up."

"That never works with Doc."

"Not usually," I said. "But I think she was teasing me--or maybe it was Submind. I'm not sure there's much difference anymore."

"Not much," Paula agreed.

"She told me about the genitors. Well, I asked about them, having been born with big ears and a sensitive nose, and I was damn sure it would explain why cats are living on Crystal Falls.

"Doc says Submind started as a genetic memory, a race memory that spread like a virus, and became a separate intelligence some time after the genitors achieved space travel, but before they encountered other sentient races.

"Then Doc says the genitors are like their planet of origin, like humans are from Earth, even those of us born on Ceres Station. That's really weird if you ask me, but viruses don't come from planets, so it's true enough.

"So I said, 'That's great Doc. But why are 16 of my cats living on Crystal Falls, and why won't you let me go take a look?' And she says cats are a lot like the genitors, genetically speaking, and the similarity makes felines prone to what Submind calls the meta-meme, meaning they sort of become genitors. I get the feeling Submind is a bit conflicted about the whole thing, or the Doc part of Submind is anyway."

"Uhm."

"I figured I'd leave it at that and asked her if Submind could really collect gravity from say, Saturn, and use it to provide weight for the inhabitants of an entire space station. She claims that was her original plan, when she was going to integrate with a space ship, which I'd never heard before but I'm not surprised and I, for one, will be glad to keep Fort Falling spinning forever.

"So I said something about why are they living on Crystal Falls, Doc, and what's going on over there anyway? She says it's like error correction, like how data has to be checked a bunch of times before it goes into the quanta drive, and again when it's queried back up.

"It's impressive and there's nothing wrong with them building their own space station if they want, but I asked her why they needed an entire space station to query genetics, and why would they want to do that anyway.

"Doc just said the Crystal Falls part of Submind is building the environment which was triggered by the meta-meme, and it should be really impressive in 20 or 30 years."

Paula was asleep. I stopped talking and drifted off thinking about fish ponds and cat trees.

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