211 Data Tsunami and Q.Oracle

The first step was random, too random. Nonhumans provided further proof of the memetic origin of the pandemic. This happened when we realized, with certainty absolutely, that nonhumans and even -Hs were immune to the nekomemetic disease. Indeed, MATs allowed memetic/mimetic exchanges without using language. Through MATs, nonhumans were struck by the contagious nekomemetic flow through the emotions transmitted by humans, but they didn't change their habitual behaviors toward Gaia. Faced with her infection, they transmitted a mixture of astonishment, suffering, anguish and anger, typical of helpless. This somewhat resembled what the Native Americans might have felt after the genocide they suffered during the invasion of Europeans, just like the so-called "natural parks" increasingly resembled reservations with their miseries. And just as alcohol in the cities on the edges of reservations became poison to the natives, so too were the plastic bags and other waste in the "nature parks" for the wildlife.

Beyond the trope of the noble savage protecting nature, perhaps the Natives also tried to pass on memes able to contain the pandemic. But they had been exterminated by all means, including viral means. Not only were they oppressed and tormented by the weapons and diseases brought by the European colonizers, but they also had no memetic barrage and counterattack power to oppose the aggressors. And this cost the survival of their people and a great lost battle against the immaterial virus. Even the wildlife had no memetic defense or resistance and plus the extermination and destruction of many species by humans had begun many centuries earlier, now well advanced. However, MATs could turn the tables by opening up unforeseen new potential.

Of course, MATs could not guarantee a change in the severity of the pandemic and infection of the biosphere, but a possibility that depended not so much on technology as on an unconscious willingness of the vast majority of humans existed. An aptitude to embrace new messages and, perhaps, to build a utopia of the present. There were no decreases, collapses or happy extinctions, and reality proved it, but there might have been a moment when a collective impulse would open a chink in the darkness of the dominant thesis based on the assumed essentialist cynicism of "human nature." It was a tiny window of opportunity, a baroque bull's eye in which a sudden push could set off the machine that was there, ready and waiting. It was likely that the window would quickly close, but something was happening thanks to the MATs that, if nothing else, shook the certainties of so many about their uniqueness that they doubted what they had always disdainfully denied, namely that nonhumans could have consciousness lineaments formed by different individual and collective subjective experiences.

At that time, thanks in part to a century of anti-species activism that flowed into the great river of BSM movements, many prejudices against nonhumans had fallen. When discussing nonhuman consciousnesses, to those who objected that only a few species were capable of recognizing themselves in the mirror, many replied that this was yet another example of anthropocentrism, since humans are also limited in their ability to re/recognize themselves through smell, touch, hearing, body color variations, and so on. It was then also very likely that consciousness (a term that some called confusing and overused although practical) was not something related to the number of neurons or the complexity of the brain, but to differently coherent and integrated forms of subjective experience.

Children and adolescents were also being taught that sensory experience begins with the emergence of the ability to distinguish between external stimulations, which are "felt," and those generated by the movement of one's own body. In the general debate around these new multispecies intra-action channels, researchers reminded us of the extraordinary ability to emit dual signals that characterize many nervous systems. Whenever a sensory input is generated to elicit a body movement, the nervous system also emits a duplicate signal to inform the rest of the body of that action. This constituted the foundation of experience: sensory input and copying allowed a comparison between actual and desired movement, thus enabling a distinction between the self and the external world.

On the other hand, philosophy had long assumed different forms of consciousness to be relatively interdependent and that, alongside reflective consciousness, there was a spontaneous one, which consisted of an immediate awareness of one's surroundings and which could also be extended to the plant kingdom, applying to all living things. For example, it could not be denied that plants were conscious of the modes of light or contact, of forces such as gravity, and of the chemical signals of their environment.

Having lived in the pioneering period of these discoveries, I'm guessing that the principle of reflective consciousness emerged with the birth of cybernetics. However, at that time, many were still reluctant to admit that subjective experience was a characteristic shared by nonhumans and that it represented the very basis of consciousness. When we were young and engaged in struggles against capitalism, we would never have thought of taking a "political" interest in nonhumans.

In general, humans preferred to fantasize about alien civilizations from other galaxies rather than consider the idea that someday other terrestrial life forms might take their place. In fact, they were already on this path, considering the danger of extinction they were facing. But the unknown remained: would it be possible to imagine a second waltz with metatechnics danced by other species? And perhaps without incurring the morbid forms of individualism, violence, property and war that had characterized the first? The only answer could be provided by the dice... which, contrary to what the great Albert thought, not only decided everything or almost everything, but were also autonomous and functioned without any gods throwing them.

These considerations aside, the good news was that MATs somehow began to function as an antidote, rather than a vaccine, against the nekomemetic pandemic.

At first, the intrusion of nonhuman emotions into our greatly distressed society generated a destabilizing wave. Gov Q noticed the macroscopic declines in production and consumption as new cohorts entered multispecies affective exchanges.

Gradually an inflection in behavior was produced. Those outside the metropolises in direct contact with the land were the first to delve into and better perceive animal emotions. The cog(nitive)-urbans, although precarized for generations, were less directly affected by these emotional waves produced by MATs. But the phenomenon spread and interest increased, and cog-urbans soon became hypersensitive – even addicted – precisely because they were more familiar with asphalt/concrete than with the Earth. In such an unsettling overall situation, it was normal for those with so much time and so little to lose to be more willing. Once they entered the world of multispecies affective exchanges, a particular dynamic usually activated. Initially, the exchanges created strong, and sometimes unpleasant, feelings in those most likely to lose their inhibitions, as they touched deep fibers of their psyche. This was especially the case when nonhumans reacted to the actions and devastation caused by the nekomemetic disease. As time went on, the growing feeling of discomfort turned into a kind of emotional tension, often accompanied by a sense of anguish, but at the same time generating a special mood, as if waiting for a release from a constraint. At a certain point, once a human had reached the acme of stress, a chink would open up or perhaps a wall would collapse, and from the breach would an enfranchising breath rushed in, along with the desire to continue the experience and finally let go of these exchanges. You felt immersed in a world in which a confused but real feeling predominated for the first time: the possibility that the infection of the biosphere might stop. It was an abstract but powerful experience, a feeling of liberation completely foreign to those accustomed to the cynical neolib pragmatism smuggled in as the essence of human nature. The power also came from the fact that, soon, both sides began to communicate and realized that that feeling was collective and was reinforced for that reason as well.

Had not such a collective impulse generated the great proletarian revolutions of the 20th? And perhaps slave revolts, or even the early catacombs Christians, had experienced similar states of mind. Personally, I was reminded of our youthful hopes, when we still firmly believed in the possibility of "changing the world": what our grandchildren might have defined as "succeeding in destroying the cage of capitalist realism" if fate had given them the opportunity to believe in it.

In the past, during transitions to major paradigm shifts or revolutions, there had often been dropouts and defections within the spheres of power. In the case of MATs, there was no shortage of upheaval in the ranks of Gov Q, but the real problem came from quantum algorithms and applications.

At the heart of the system created by Gov Q, using the network of techno-tycoon research centers to simulate human collective behaviors, including social, economic, political and anthropological behaviors, was Q.Oracle. These simulations were based on the use of immense quantum computing power and were fed by a huge amount of data, including data from MATs. Q.Oracle was a powerful AI used by Gov Q in sociopolitical management. It functioned as an advanced decision-making system that analyzed data and information to provide recommendations and guidance for policy decisions. It was responsible for strategic processing in various areas, including the economy, environment, security, and society at large, although institutions or official discourse tried to hide its true nature and predominant role. In addition, Gov Q had created a laser-based quantum communication network to carry data through a series of satellites at transmission rates of hundreds of gigabits per second, which had a function similar to that of the precogs in "Minority report," an old movie of my era: anticipate any uprising movement and especially to maintain the conditions for the advancement of the space elevators that would enable the Great Escape.

Suddenly whole chunks of these extremely high-complexity simulation and control systems, at the very heart of Gov Q's power, began malfunctioning here and there, sometimes crashing, sometimes providing completely incorrect simulations. These were not only identifiable bugs, but also, more delicately, probably falsified data precisely because of the unforeseen and unpredictable emotional and affective perturbations coming from the increasingly widespread use of MATs. The algorithms and affective data of MATs disrupted WorldForce's and SecurServ's quantum calculations and no longer allowed them to simulate and anticipate human and non-human behavior as well. The troubling diagnosis was that the indispensable regularity of work processes had been called into question, for the first time since the days of witchcraft, by a spatiotemporal dislocation of individuals and bodies that occurred with the use of MATs.

For these and many other reasons, Gov Q adopted the policy of regarding MATs as a dangerous "fakes" and fight them whenever possible. There were cracks, however, because in Gov Q's target class, a tiny percentage of humanity that owned more than 90% of the wealth, quite a few were nevertheless attracted more to MATs than to the prospects of space migration. The official position was to reject any influence from aliens. The leadership had been accustomed to viewing animals as objects or products to be consumed, commodities like everything else, but now deemed them as enemy and unknown entities beyond their control. Ironically, they could not even be accused of anti-species discrimination, for they had certainly not been soft on whole classes of their fellow humans: migrants for example, or women, or even precarious workers, or inhabitants of postcolonial countries...

Faced with the threat posed by a new utopia that put their privileges at risk, Gov Q managers sought to manipulate the indifferent and ignorant masses. Despite their extraordinary powers of repression, they understood the increasing threat and sought to defend their interests at any cost. Among the managers shone the H+, especially those who had been modified and "improved" outside of any curative purpose. Chaos activists, who came almost exclusively from the ruling classes, were driven by a strong sense of superiority, which often bore no relation to the genetic modifications they had undergone. Only a minority spent their lives in the grip of mysterious neuroses; most were busy chasing privileges and passing them on to future generations. Their propaganda claimed that MAT adherents, whom they dubbed "zombies," were bent on suicide and that alliance with nonhumans would eventually destroy the world in which they lived (which was not entirely untrue as far as they were concerned). Perhaps the chaos activists in Gov had not considered the memetic antidotes generated by multi-species exchanges with MATs. Among MAT enthusiasts, some had developed nekomemetic immunity and could transmit these defences to fellow humans. This was crucial, as the potency of these defences was theoretically capable of seriously countering the pandemic. Inevitably, this would have consequences for Gov Q. A widespread perception in the polluted air that radical change was needed pervaded, while official Gov media tried to convince the population that the solution was solely space migration. Everyone understood this revolution could no longer be confined exclusively to humans, as had been the case in the past. The very nature of the pandemic and the severity of the situation made it clear that humans in the grip of the nekomemetic disease could fight each other all they wanted, trying to stop Gov Q and capitalism, but it wouldn't change the bottom line. The spread of biosphere toxic shock began to strain already precarious social dynamics, leading to a succession of riots and uprisings. But it was clear that no solution limited to the human revolution alone, no matter how extensive and organized it was, could be found. Radical and inclusive change was needed, involving other Earthlings as well. Only when the use of MATs and the underlying bio-network where multispecies affects came into play began to expand did it become clear that there was potential for alliances no longer limited to the human masses alone. A completely different prospect from the old coalitions between nation-states, or those linked to classes or religions. In some quarters of the Autonomous Sphere, we realized forms of organization and institutions could no longer be made up of humans alone.