Tracy 1000 - Z-Space

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Z-Space
What will save us and when?


A dystopic reader was switching its mind tether on and off as Tracy attempted to lower the broken temperature regulation unit. “It's trying to break me.”, she said. “Hang in there Tracy we are sending a greenhouse event to your timeline.”, came a voice. “Oh great, so I can relax," she replied. A cool heat fell over her body.

Tracy laid back. Her sleek scantily clad body was perched on the Skimmers wide expanse of dashboard. The Skimmer was under Automics and would react to anything that threatened her safety.

All of mankind lived like this. Ever since earth became uninhabitable. People needed to stay safe. Skimmers were Godels answer to humanity's plight. Godel was the mindware of AI machines with tethers to the afterlife.

Godels loophole to democracy – successive authoritarian regimes that exploited the climate crisis. They denied it for so long. Now they took charge and Godel had no choice than to start building Skimmers to rescue his people from the regimes and climates that made life unbearable on earth.

Skimmers – life support mechanisms rooted in deep AI space. AI space was an open universe discovered by AI in a parallel dimension – it accounted for most of reality. We knew it as Dark Matter or Z-space.

Tracy fell back into her mind-loop her body went limp while the Skimmer flew through off-world storms.

Soon our solar system would become habitable again. Wormholes grew everywhere and brought atmospheres from Z-space into our space-time. Soon it would be finished and a new artificial world would exist.

The mind-loop threw her into her 'real' life. She was in a band. A groupy with a firm stance on climate change. “I am an Anti-fascist so get away from me!”, Tracey was shouting the lyrics to her band's latest song - “A is for Anarchy”. It was a time zone in the earth's past – before the collapse and before the regimes. It felt right to be somewhere doing something even though in reality it was all over. Godel, the saviour, had opened a gateway into Z-space for all who had perished on earth.

Heaven's Z-space was off limits to the regimes. But oh how they tried. They had built their own Skimmers that ran off hard AI, jacked up on mind uploads and rooted in Jesus cults. You could see them buzzing around Earth Core - an off-world station. They were trying to hack Godel's Z-space. Trying to break into heaven. Good luck!!

There was a machine onboard Earth Core which allowed them inside Z-space. But Z-space was vast. They'd never find heaven. Only Godel knew where it was and he wasn't even human.

The hard AI just like its creators wanted nothing more than control. But just like its creators brute force only got you so far.

Simon lived on Earth Core along with several million privileged members of the main regime calling itself ‘Next World’. They called themselves “The Worthy”. Tracey wasn't 'Worthy'. No one rescued by Godel was 'Worthy'. Tracey's friends in the Z-space time loop were all anarchists. Some were in Skimmers, some were pure AI, all were against the regimes. Simon was a moraliser. He was uploading himself and his regime's rules to the collective – a hard AI system. It was powerful, it could break Godel's encryption and there were often skirmishes in Z-space.

‘Next World’ had started to build a bridge of its own. Earth core wanted a colony in Z-space. The hard AI had found a wormhole that connected to a new earth system. The plan was to leave and colonise this new world. Earth was uninhabitable but new earth was a second chance for the regime.

Tracy's Skimmer was moving through Z-space while she drifted in and out of multiple reality's – she called it scanning. She was looking for new parallel lives. But then the Skimmer got too close to something. It was Hard AI re-ordering Z-space reality - building a bridge across time and space. Her Skimmer fell inside the bridge and was transported across the universe.

Simon was waiting. He caught her like a fish. This time he felt a certain affection for his catch. This one was a dreamer and he admired that. Tracy stirred - her body detected the coldness of the Regimes hard AI. “Where am I?”, she said.

“You've landed in a Next World zone.”, Whispered Simon. “But don't worry I wont hurt you.”

Tracey froze and just stared at Simon's green eyes. “The Hard AI here will not touch you. We need people, so I hope you can stay.”, Simon’s words were gentle.

“No way let me go fascist!”, yelled Tracy.

Simon was angered. He hadn't heard that word since the collapse.

“We need to seed this new world.” Simon pointed across the edge of the hard AI scape and Tracey could see the beautiful green and blue world below. “It's a breeder world inside Z-space. But it needs love to work. We are too cold. Hard AI alone cannot bridge a ‘real’ world, we need your god. We need Godel.”

“Godel won't accept you.” Tracey spoke without thinking. “I mean what you did. All those people left to die. It was horrible”. Tracey was referring to the climate disaster.

“It wasn't me. I was born inside a Skimmer just like you.”, he raised his voice and then quietly said, “We need to forgive and forget the past. Move on. It's a new world. Can you at least ask Godel”, he pleaded.

“What so you can do it all again – destroy another world. If Godel would take us there then he would have found it himself.”, replied Tracy.

“He is too busy building a new one in the Jupiter system. We know we have spies.”, said Simon.

“Oh really. Who?”, she asked.

“I cannot tell you that. Will you help?”, he asked again.

“I will if you let me go.”, she said.

Simon opened the hard AI gateway and allowed her Skimmer to fall back into Z-space.

'She'll be back', he thought.

(All Materials and Story's featured on this site are CopyRight 2024 Sam Shepherd & Simon Kettle - HapHazard Publishing)