Oh my fellow geeks, please read this taster, then click the image above for the full thing. Magically, geeklistically nerdtastic!
“They’re made out of data.”
“Data?”
“Data. They’re made out of data.”
“Data?”
“No doubt about it. We picked them up as holonomic extrusions, sent in an amnesiant isomorphic scout party, and checked them out up close. They are completely data.”
“That’s impossible. What about that page?”
“The page didn’t come from them. The page came from a machine.”
“So who made the machine? That’s who we want to contact.”
“I’ll get to that in a minute. But they’re definitely data. Bits and bytes. Running on a machine.”
“You’re asking me to believe in sentient data.”
“I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. These creatures are emergent characteristics of a software framework and they’re made out of data.”
“That’s ridiculous. Maybe they’re like the leiorfo. You know, an intelligent multiversal abstraction that goes through a data stage.”
“Nope. They’re born data and they die data. We studied them for several of their life cycles, which didn’t take long. Do you have any idea what’s the life span of data?”
“I had a Commodore Amiga: spare me. Okay, maybe they’re only part data. You know, like the leiweddi. Hardware head running data on virtual machines to augment…”
“They’re interpreted by a virtual machine! Inside the real one, simulating three dimensional space as a construct within the dimensional manifolds the hardware can access. They don’t exist in spacetime at all, except as predictable quantum properties of electromagnetic states.”
“No brain?”
“Oh, there’s a brain all right. It’s just that the brain is made out of data! That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
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