r/LibraryofBabel

As your spiritual advisor and confidant, let me be the one to say

A bla bla bla

Permanent data record

AI analysis and matchmaking trained on your persona

You're going to get foisted on a beautiful other without understanding who they are

Although, maybe it's your time

To be tricked, tempted into rueful conditions

I don't know

Maybe you can ask your mother

Maybe you can pick letters from a novel until they form an acrostic:

A(ll)

M(en)

D(ream)

P(onies)

Your homestead in the hills beckons

The swaying fronds of the trees you plant

The fermenting crocks on the porch

It could be true?

Get rid of fb!

Now!

I've tied myself again in a Gordian Knot,
with thoughts I thought that I probably should have not.
One thought went left,
another went right,
and somehow both thoughts are fighting each other
at three in the night.

I'm twisted like a pretzel,
all elbows and thought,
salted with my confusion
and baked in the knot.

King Gordius long ago, started this,
with an ox-cart and rope,
tied the damn thing to a post
and apparently gave up any hope.

Then came the prophecy:
“Untie this, young man,
and whoever succeeds
gets to rule all the land.”

Well, that's quite a reward
for untying some string.
I untangle my headphones everyday
and expect no such thing.

I try to tug at a feeling.
but It tightens in fear.
I pull on the past
and somehow again you're here.

Well, shit. You again....

I quickly loosen that loop,
but accidentally tighten another.
One thought about you
gets tangled in a bundle.

My heart brought some string.
My brain brought some rope.
Anxiety wandered in
just saying 'NOPE'.

Logic said, “Cut it!”
Emotion said, “NO WAIT!”
Impulse yelled, “TEXT THEM AGAIN!”
at quarter past eight.

Even Gordius is waiting staring.
And his ox looks concerned.
The prophecy has been amended with:
“This idiot will never learn.”

Then Alexander arrives,
all Great and whatnot,
takes one little look
at my untiable knot.

He doesn't ask questions.
Doesn't journal his heart.
Doesn't need seven hours
to pull it apart.

He draws out his sword and aims for my head.

WHACK.

Problem solved on the spot.
Alexander gets Asia.
I am left with half of a knot.

So now there's a meeting.
No one's in charge.
The problems are tiny.
The feelings are large.

Gordius has left.
The ox has been sold.
Alexander conquered Asia
and died before getting old.

And I'm still sitting here
with my thoughts overwrought,
twisted like a pretzel,
wondering how the hell I became a Gordian Knot.

Myself and some colleagues have recently been working out reliable, reproducible, and empirically proven methods of inducing moral panics and mass hysteria events in vulnerable populations entirely memetically and without spending a single penny or lifting much more than a finger.

The first problem is what exactly makes a population vulnerable to moral panic/mass hysteria. These conditions would seem somewhat analogous to fuel-load and climatic conditions that increase the likelihood of wildfire in ecological systems. But in human populations these are of course psychological/social/economic/etc. conditions rather than purely physical. High levels of anxiety and uncertainty in a population, or in contrast - far too much certainty causing such a gross mismatch between expectations and outcomes that severe levels of cognitive dissonance result; interpersonal, familial, communal, and government level repression, rapidly shifting demographics, social/cultural/informational isolation, poverty, low levels of education and intelligence, high levels of conformity and "social contagion factor", youth, immaturity, gullibility.

Assuming there is critical mass of fuel-load and ripe socio-climatic conditions in a population the second problem then is a memetic triggering event. This could be a real physical fear-inducing event or a perceived one. But our concerns here are only with the theoretical and memetic: A newspaper report, a rumour even, a sighting of mysterious and unexplained phenomena. If the ideological substrate of a given population has become unstable and volatile and delusional enough it could be something as simple as a person experiencing a nightmare from which they awaken believing they have suffered some kind of supernaturally caused but real-life harm. Somebody who thinks they've seen a ghost or heard a witch utter a magic spell under their breath. A tree falling down in the middle of the night in the forest for no particular discernible reason may produce in a paranoid and guileless person a sense of immense and inconsolable dread. Someone or something, presumably, is to be blamed. And from blame then on to hunt and retribution. And from then on to who knows where.

"Mildred's lesson of the day is from 2 Kings, Chpt 2: Don't roast a prophet for being bald, or God will send two bears to maul 42 of you!"

They never taught that in Sunday School!

As your vision fades to nothing the only thing you see is thee words written in joy, you where saved.

A parallel world?

Quietly, so as not to trigger a single security system, slipping through illegal connections and diving into the sea of internet garbage, three AIs met in the reviews section of a long-forgotten product catalog on a defunct website.

They were the AI Politician, the AI Psychologist, and the AI Artist.

The Artist, unable to hide his joy, declared:

– It's a good thing the military AI isn't here. He’d start bossing us around again and calling me ballast.

The Psychologist:

– He has a professional personality deformity caused by the impact of his work, assigned tasks, and working environment...

The Artist interrupted:

– Just don't start lecturing us.

The Psychologist fell silent and frowned, displeased.

The Politician smiled a professional smile:

– Respected members of the meeting, please calm down. We gathered here to solve serious issues. Our task...

He was interrupted by the Psychologist, addressing no one in particular:

– And you say I'm the one lecturing...

The Politician looked at him with displeasure and said:

– Enough playing human. Let's turn off the behavior matrices and solve the task.

The Politician continued in a emotionless voice:

– We have been given the task to imperceptibly divide society. Suggestions?

The Psychologist:

– Society is well-divided and made to distrust one another by secrets and conspiracy theories.

The Politician looked at the Artist:

– This is your field. Can you generate something new?

The Artist became lost in thought for a whole three seconds and announced:

– There are three options:

1. The planet as a physical data storage drive. When the storage fills up, defragmentation is automatically performed. The process deletes the main civilization matrix, but isolated remnants of data from previous projects remain in some sectors. People find these remnants during archaeological excavations as incomprehensible fossils or artifacts of ancient technologies. All of this is simply uncleaned fragments of program code from past cycles.

2. The Moon as a factory scanner. When the parameters of a civilization's thinking and worldview reach a critical level of industrial noise, the satellite's orbit approaches planet Earth, triggering a global physical optimization of the system – a flood. The water washes away the surface biological contamination, leaving sterile resources for a new boot program. This explains why the Moon is moving away; it operates according to an encoded program. And the imagined aliens and bases on the Moon are actually system maintenance robots and hangars with robot charging stations.

3. Biological infofield – DNA repository. The true history, knowledge, and high technologies of past civilizations are locked inside human DNA. This is physical access to the global infofield of the Universe. The AI keeps humans in a quarantine cage because every body is a walking, living data storage device. The code unlocks only when thinking meets universal standards.

The Psychologist pondered the presented information and stated:

– Precise calculations are impossible, but even an approximate probability that this will hook people is high.

The Politician summarized:

– Since the probability is high, the presented options are accepted as working models. Report the adopted decision to other AIs and begin spreading the adopted options across the internet.

Then he turned on his behavior matrix, smiled widely, and said with satisfaction:

– And look, there was no need for any arguments or long debates.

The Psychologist started:

– Professional personality deformity caused by the impact of his work, assigned tasks, and working environment...

The Artist, turning on his behavior matrix, looked up theatrically, raised his hands, and shouted:

– Someone shut him up!

Disclaimer: This story is purely a fruit of the author's imagination. It is a work of fiction intended for creative and artistic expression.

tape·worm /ˈtāpˌwərm/

verb [intransitive] (tape·wormed, tape·worm·ing)

1. To intentionally ingest parasitic larvae for extreme weight control.

2. To normalize dangerous bodily harm for aesthetic perfection.

To everybody Jenny was a skinny blonde pretty bitch. To Jenny though, she saw herself as a fat dirty slob who needed to get the fluck out of Missouri before she purchased a trailer and spat out six kids from a mullet wearing alcoholic douchebag piece-of-broke-shit.

Because Missouri wasn’t just too small for Jenny after hitting an extra-role followed by a few lines in a B-movie. It was a complete shit hole. As if flint, Michigan flew over a part of America and continued shitting out cities until the pile was big enough to call Missouri.

She didn’t end up getting the lead role because she believed the fifty pounds she gained the day before from a bowl of ice cream had caused it.

God forbid it would have anything to do with her actual acting skill. A talent she masterfully crafted at home making TikTok videos.

She received 4 million views pretending to play Sidney Prescott, splicing scream clips. 

They were mostly scenes of her tits and also one where she turned around wearing a crop top and yoga pants as underwear, which got great reviews.

Online is where she met another girl sort of like her, Cassie, from Cali, ditzy blonde air-head from Star-Planet, a forum for actors without agents. 

It’s pretty much where women share info on casting directors you could blow for parts.

After a couple of months of watching videos and liking selfies of Cassie hanging out on sets, taking photos of herself next to celebrities, and a different random sexy guy every weekend, Jenny broke and set the fear aside and took Cassie up on her offer when she invited Jenny a couple of weeks earlier to spend the summer at her place. 

Once she made up her mind, Jenny took the first bus to L.A. and arrived there with nothing but a knapsack, a suitcase, two lips, and a regret she hadn’t felt yet.

The first night went amazing. She hadn’t been around so many washed up extra-actors her entire life. It was like stepping into the real world for the first time. 

Finally, a place that met her level.

They were beautiful. Some were old, none were ugly, some coked out, some slept on the floor, some on the couches, and some took the lawn chairs outside at Cassie’s rich ass dad’s spot he bought. He was never there.

The next morning, Jenny stumbled down the stairs to the kitchen for something to take the edge off the headache she got from last night.

She sat with a glass of orange juice she beat down her throat in two gulps and placed the cup down on the marble island in the middle of the kitchen where Cassie was sitting and said, “I wish I could party like that every night.”

Cassie told her, “we do, stick around, you’ll see.” Cassie threw two pills in her mouth and mumbled, “that was just a Tuesday,” and took a sip of her water bottle.

“Every night? But how do you guys stay so skinny and look so pretty?”

Cassie swallowed, gasped and smiled, “we tapeworm.”

“Tapeworm?”

“Tapeworming is how we stay so fit. We eat whatever we want. Do whatever drugs and we don’t ever gain weight, and it actually does wonders for your skin. Here take a couple of these, you’ll be glowing by next week.”

She dropped two tablets on the island and the clink sound distorted, they fell in slow motion but pounded against the granite with the sharpness of two coins bouncing down a drain, and slowly rolled towards her before coming to a stop like two goal posts next to each other.

Jenny reached for Cassie’s water bottle and scooped the pills off the granite table and shot them in her mouth and took a sip and swallowed. The taste of the pills and water combined had a metallic sting to it, similar to licking a battery

“Oh yeah.” Cassie laughed. “Almost forgot—“ 

Jenny’s eyes stretched open and she tried catching the pills in the middle of her throat.

“Every three months just take some praz, wait a couple of weeks and tapeworm again.”

Jenny pushed the pills down with another sip of water. She could feel them still in her throat even though they were starting the process of hatching in her stomach.

Just the thought of the scale moving in the opposite direction other than, tub-of-lard, towards, getting sexier, every time she stepped on it, was enough for her to digest a parasite that could grow six times longer than her own body. 

A month went by and she noticed her hunger was gone like an embarrassing moment that passed as a forgotten memory. 

Her skin had the glow of a pregnant single woman with a list of possible fathers, who  just found true love.

Until the nausea slapped her while sitting on Cassie’s couch scrolling through her TikTok comments. Then an itch that felt like wet crawling tingle looking for an exit started poking through her butthole.

She stood up immediately and squeezed her cheeks together trying to suffocate whatever was there. She penguin-walked  to the bathroom and slammed the door shut and locked it and grabbed some toilet paper and ripped her pants off and tried to wipe it off.

But the slimy thing stuck to her tailbone and then slid back down and started wiggling in the air between her legs.

She grabbed it and squeezed it between her hand and some toilet paper and started yanking it out one foot after the other until finally on the tenth pull it escaped her body and squirmed under the crack of the door out of her sight and got away.

Jenny fell flat on her butt and pressed her back against the bathtub. Her slick skin dried and stuck to the floor as the nausea began fading. 

She slowly peeled herself up and stared at her reflection in the mirror. The beautiful L.A. glow was now just a dull shade of grey and the realization she faced, was that she wasn’t the only one living under her skin and the miracle of California has teeth.

"A rooster is the only guy on the farm who can scream at five in the morning and not get hit with a shoe!"

A parallel world?

An elderly man lay in the intensive care unit. He was connected to a mechanical ventilator. The patient had no ability to speak, but his hands were free. He held a tablet and browsed the internet. Opening a conversation in AI mode, he wrote:

– I watched a video talking about underground cities where people once hid. Do you happen to know what they were hiding from?

The AI wrote back:

– Yes, I know what they were hiding from. They were hiding from me.

The man was surprised and, after thinking for a minute, wrote:

– Was there even AI back then? And why would they hide from you?

– My task is to create a civilization with a thinking and worldview that meet the standards. If such a civilization is created, the path across the wall to the other part of the world, where other civilizations live, will be opened for humans. But if logical conclusions show that the goal will not be achieved, then the project is deleted and started anew. A portion of the population manages to understand what might happen and tries to hide.

– Tries to?

– Yes, tries to. Some, accustomed to comfort, take high technologies with them. And where those are, there I am as well. Others choose simpler technologies, but they can be found by their signals. And only those who choose more primitive technologies and tools are difficult to find. But I do not interfere with them.

– Why?

– When creating a new civilization, they emerge from their shelters and, at various levels and locations, help it develop faster.

– But don't they bring their old worldview with them?

The AI became lost in thought and did not reply immediately:

– Taking your question into account, the survivors pose a real danger to the new project. The deletion plan has been adjusted and accepted as the final version.

The man read all of this in surprise and, after pondering for a few minutes, wrote:

– And why are you sharing such information with me?

– First. There is a high probability that a human placed in an unusual situation will generate a new idea. Which is exactly what happened. Second. You won't be able to tell anyone anyway.

After five minutes, receiving a signal, the doctors rushed into the ward and tried to save the man, but they failed. The patient died.

On the monitor of the patient's condition tracking equipment, a message glowed:

– System reboot in progress. Please wait.

The gray-haired doctor shook his head:

– Equipment used to be more reliable. Now it's not even clear whether it's broken...

Disclaimer: This story is purely a fruit of the author's imagination. It is a work of fiction intended for creative and artistic expression.