Awakening to the Truth

Powerhouse
People put a lot of stock in dreams.  Grace can't remember the dream she had last night. She remembers there was light and darkness and a feeling she can't quite describe.  It was like growing new organ with which to feel the world having nowhere to slot it in.  Not a taste, not a smell, not even so much of a sensation.  There was a sound, though; a roaring that filled her ears and shook everything.  Just before waking she can still hear the  last wavering notes of it.

Wooooohhhhhhhhhhhhwwwwwwwwwmmmmmmmmmmmm....

Today was going to be an absolutely BEAUTIFUL day!  It was summer and she was in Denver, which meant clear skies over one of the cleanest cities in the United States of America, the best country on earth!  At least, that’s what the man on the radio said.  It’s possible that this wasn’t Grace’s usual method of waking up.  Its possible that, since it was summer, she didn’t have a usual method of waking up aside from ‘there’s too much sunlight coming in through the window now’ or ‘Must...have...coffee.’  It wakes her up this time, however, as a precautionary method.  By the time her regular alarm goes off, the one that her unconscious mind (or is it subconscious) had quite possibly already become accustomed to, her eyes were already blearily taking in the world.  She was hunting; in the way a predator raised in captivity, fat on processed human food and dumb from a life of not having to outsmart its next meal hunts, for the source of the obnoxious optimism.  The radio-alarm-clock, remnant of bygone decades as it was, had done its job.

Today was indeed an important day: Her first book signing.  Not her first publication, no, but her first signing.  That is to say it was the first time she was acknowledged as having a fan base!  One that wasn’t just an asian bot data-mining American blogs for the plot of the next South Korean blockbuster, or just the same guy having a flame war with himself over alternate accounts.  These were actual, flesh and blood and sticky fingered people!  True, it was actually a collection of stuff found online gathered together by an eccentric and pushy anthologist, but she had been requested (along with the other writers) by name (pseudonym)!  And even better, she was getting paid (for her travel expenses upon presenting receipts)

But that was later in the day, and several miles away at some bookstore in some town in Colorado that she didn't even know existed.  Before that she had to check in at the university.  They were getting ready to run a new simulation, one that would rival that 20-Kilometer global rendering they’d announced in Japan.  She didn't HAVE to go, but it was an opportunity.  Shake hands with the big-wigs.  Be their gopher for a morning.  Make sure they remembered her name.  Ingratiating?  Maybe, but that’s how the game is played.

Grace Evans
Grace rolled out of the bed with a slack look on her face that didn't betray the excitement bubbling inside. Best to save that for the world. There would be plenty of time to emote later. In the mirror tacked up to her wall she looked her usual early-morning-mess, hair everywhere. Big-wigs. People, all looking at her, some taking pictures probably. That meant makeup, and primping, and that other shit. But it was good, somehow, all good.

A slow, steady process of performing what her mother would call "looking presentable" followed, with hair fixing, face doing, and other such unfamiliar things. At last, she donned the one pair of pants in her wardrobe that wasn't jeans, and a shirt that looked somewhat nice. Green, with wooden beads attached. It looked writerly. Natural. Great!

The sense of overwhelming optimism threatened to burst out of her grumpy exterior. Of course she looked fantastic. Today was going to be perfect. She raised a single brow in her mirror at that one.
As a last stop before heading out the door, she packed up her phone, Kindle, a notebook, and stuck these items in her laptop bag along with the laptop, before slinging it over her shoulder. As she locked the door behind her, and made her way out to the street, eyes becoming adjusted to the brightness of the big room called 'outside', she couldn't help but smile.

Powerhouse
The man on the radio wasn't lying.  As Grace leaves the house she can't help but notice how nice the sun feels on her skin.  In the back of her mind though, there's that dream, and probably the most boring song one could ever have stuck in their head.  Just that rising and falling hum.

Campus is quiet compared to other times of the year, yet another reminder that it was summer.  There are few stragglers, out of state students that had nowhere to go and are therefore taking advantage of patches of manicured lawn.  Campus security occasionally circles on golf carts, too busy or too unconcerned to hassle them about it.  Frisbees whiz by her, not uncomfortably, as she heads across campus to the buildings folks on campus usually refer to as the 'Nerd Farm'.

Security there is still quite in step though.  They don't have summers, just days for calibrating simulations, days for running simulations, and days for parsing results.

There's a counter at the front door.  The man there stays behind his desk but looks up to Grace as though he could actually stop her if she decided to dash through.  "Can I help you?"  He says in a friendly sort of 'You supposed to be here?' sort of way.

Grace Evans
"Yeah, I'm Grace Evans? I should be on the list," she said, wondering if there was a list... She hadn't seen this guy before, maybe new.

Powerhouse
"The list?" He says incredulously and starts rooting through papers behind his desk.  His eyes light up as he actually finds one, skims through it, and stops, groping for a pen.

"Right, here you are.  Evans.  Grace.  You want the...fifth floor."

The man scratches Grace's name off the list, adding a silent, but quite visible chuckle.

Grace Evans
She gave a bit of a smile to the man at his chuckle, "Why is the fifth floor funny?"

Fifth floor funny... The tangled alliteration made her sound daft. Oh well.

Powerhouse
"Oh!  Uh.  Nothing.  No reason.  Well...you'll see."  He smiles more meekly now, giving her a toodle-loo wave of his fingers.

Grace Evans
"I guess I shall," she said with a shrug, and headed for the elevator, laziness winning out over exercise. It was an old machine with an "Otis" trademark stamped into the metal, and her mind wandered around in its usual musings. Elevator safety brakes. Made skyscrapers possible. One tiny variable, leading to so much else.
She got to the 5th floor though the elevator didn't hurry, and stepped outside.

Powerhouse
The old elevator starts and stops with a rumble, not a smooth as the newfangled models, and as it carries her up obediently, Grace is acutely aware of the way the thing is humming.

Hhhwooooowwwwwwmmmmm...

If the entire building was the nerd farm, the fifth floor would be the pasture, but only the other nerds would call it that.  The bulk of the floor was dedicated to processing power.  There was the windmill, a single room housing several large batteries that worked as fail-safes for the entire floor.  There was even experimenting with renewable energy, solar panels mounted on automated rotating arms took up most of the space on the roof.  They were powered by a combination of electric and chemical motors.  As the sun came up the motors whined and churned and followed its motion up to its zenith, and followed towards its setting, and as the air cooled at night they reset.  "Heliotropic!" announced the head researcher who had set it up.  "Like the motion of natural leaves! 80% more energy gathered than standard static models.  50% less power consumption than present rotating models!"

And then there was the lawn, rack after rack of individual servers connected together to work as a single super-computer unit.  And each rack was made up of individual blade servers.  It was a cost-cutting measure, the only way that a team at the turn of the decade could qualify setting up the unit to the university.  They would grow their capacity year by year, blade by blade.

Blades that ran on green energy.  Like leaves.  Like grass.  Like a pasture, see?

At the center of this, just as one exits the elevator, one comes to the main control console.  Of course, these weren't your ordinary, everyday nerds.  These were the cream of the crop (or at least so the university's brochure assured).  They weren't about to go from machine to machine to check on progress.  Everything was organized from one single location.

"Hey!"  Calls out a voice as Grace exits the elevator.  “So you’re here for the meet and greet?”  The man behind the console is in clear violation of several lab rules.  In his left balances most of a meatball sub, the sauce threatening to drip its marinara goop all over the lab floor.  The right hand alternates between punching gingerly at the keys of three different keyboards and groping for the big gulp that’s either a little too close to the keys or a little too close to the edge of the table.

Grace Evans
"Sure am! This is the big reveal, how could I not be here? I'd be out of my mind," she said, with a tone that suggested he was out of his mind if he thought she'd miss it. "Look, Jake, you're about to tomato the floor..." she cautiously pointed out the marinara drip.

Powerhouse
"Hm?  Oh!"  Jake straightens up, reaching toward the meatball with the other hand and in so doing letting his big gulp clatter and wobble uncomfortably close to the edge of the desk.

“Well, actually you're late, but you’re also the only one that showed up, so that’s something right?"  Jake gives her a half apologetic smile.  "Didn't anyone tell you, Evans?  The only big deal around here is the one you make.  There's celebrities out there.  Nobody cares about us nerds.  The docs were here early this morning but they’re all desk jockeys.  Prepping the scenario for them means counting digits and carrying the one."

His face pales slightly as he realizes what he just said, and to whom.

"Sorry.  I didn't mean to suggest that you were..."

The rest of it can't quite manage past the foot in his mouth.

Grace Evans
The shock of having actually missed it warred with her desire to put Jake at ease. It wasn't like her to point cruelty at the socially awkward. She decided to just ignore the comment and go on. "What? You're kidding, what time is it? I set my alarm and everything!" She sighed, but the strange sense of optimism she'd felt ever since waking up didn't let it keep her down.

"Well, it went okay, I take it?"

Powerhouse
"They came in, shook hands in front of all the flashy lights, and then probably went for some snooty brunch somewhere.  Truth is the environments almost ready.  Took me all night but who needs sleep anyway?  Soon as I wrap up here I’ll be prepping the last of the blades.  Oh...hey, maybe its not too late for you to give me a hand.  See those Solid State Drives?"

He points with the straw of the big gulp at a stack of slender hard drives, still in their plastic static-free packaging at the edge of the console.

"Well, they’re supposed to be slotted into the last blade.  I’m...halfway though my lunch break.  It’d be great if you could....  Its not that hard.  Just follow the lights.  You’re looking for the solid Ambers.  Just slide them in one at a time.  Its idiot proof.  I mean...not that you're....”

Second gaff aside, Jake's instructions are mostly wasted.  The machines are in a completely different room but on some level Grace and almost hear the fans buzzing and humming, and in her gut there's something missing.  She knows exactly where to go.

Grace Evans
Grace smiled at the comment of 'who needs sleep', definitely knowing the feeling, and the smile only increased as he continued blundering his way through the speech. "Oh, we're all an idiot at something, man. Sure, I'll help." She took the drives, and closed her eyes listening to the faint humming of hundreds of wings, keeping the silicon hive cool.

She then followed the hum to the servers.

Powerhouse
It is reminiscent of a piece she once saw on Sea turtles.  They travel thousands and thousands of miles, circling the globe, depending on which expert you asked, and yet they always returned to a beach they had probably only seen once in their lives to lay eggs of their own.  The strange bit is, there was no explanation of how, with the size of brain that a sea turtle has, it was even capable of remembering the route.

This must be something like that.  Grace isn't even thinking about it, isn't even following the lights, like Jake recommended. She's just going to that empty space, passing by several stacks and racks of servers until she finds herself in front of one in particular, in a dark corner of the room, a very solid wall between her and the only other guy that knew what he was talking about.  And there they are, the solid amber LED's waiting for her next the empty slots with thin pieces of plastic masking the emptiness within.  Now how did she do that?


Grace Evans
Grace looked a bit confused, and then shook her head. She wasn't even thinking about anything but that humming, and the hole within it. She had the missing piece in her hands, and the how was at once obvious and inexplicable. The lack, the little chunk of disorder, the disruption in the grid of sound... it must have been just enough to be noticed. But how?

She looked around the room, almost expecting to see Jake's little trick, with amber LEDs everywhere. But no...

Well, if the blade hive was calling out for maintenance... Mustn't disappoint.

She took one of the drives out of its plastic and started the not-so-delicate work of fitting it. Idiot proof indeed.

Powerhouse
As she gets the blank out, and the protective wrapper off the drive, a strange sense of nausea passes over her.  It is as though the room has widened somehow, and then contracted, only with less space in it than before.  The sensation passes but moments later there's the abrupt sound of a man's voice.

"Ms Evans?"

Grace has never seen this guy before but...wasn't there a movie like this?  With this guy, in this exact dark suit, with that same dark but unemotional look on his face, eyes obscured by those dark glasses?  And damnit, wasn't it already dark enough in this part of the pasture?

"Ms. Grace...Evans?"

((The Stranger in the pasture --> http://www.woddenver.com/jove/gallery/488/kMKckSZyferumrM8merH0O0hCPudeamq%7CjkwQYi6xMQ%3D

Grace Evans
She had expensive tech in her hands. Now was not the time to be losing breakfast all over it, and she didn't want to pay for a new drive if this one got busted. "Yeah? Just give me one second," She concentrated on the work, though the man chilled her enough to make her rush through the final steps.

"I'm sorry, if you're here for the meet and greet, I'm afraid it's over."

Powerhouse
"And yet, here you are.  My name is...Mr. Goodson.  I represent a private security agency employed by the university and I'm afraid your name has come up in one of our queries."

The man's voice is flat, boring.  This one has the personality of a plank of wood.  No, wood has striations, grain marks, inconsistencies that give it character.  He's got the personality of a wood chipper.  Everything he says is delivered as if he'd rehearsed the entire conversation before.

"Does the name 'Andrew Wazowski' mean anything to you?"

And although she's sure it doesn't, and although she can't see his eyes, He's still standing there, cutting off her exit.

Grace Evans
Seriously, who wears sunglasses, inside, in a server room... He said his name like he was making it up on the spot, too. It made her hair stand up, and something inside coiled, ready to run. "I don't know any Andrews, actually. Certainly not any with that last name." She stared back at him like he was an interloper, a trespasser in her world.

Powerhouse
"I see.  Does the word 'Shouldersurf" mean anything to you?"

Grace Evans
"Not particularly, no," she said, still eyeing him like he was about to start yanking cables. "Sounds like a painful way of going about surfing."

Powerhouse
"Painful?"  He says, and cants his head to one side. For a moment, taking his focus off of Grace as he thinks his way through that one.  Then he straightens, takes a single breath and lets it pass.

"Oh.  I see.  Funny.  I'm sorry to bother you.  We've had a number of complaints on and off campus.  Violations of privacy by users on our network.  This constitutes an infraction of our user policy as well as a violation of security, you see, and my firm takes security violations very seriously."

His hand moves, a stiff sort of motion as he reaches into an inside pocket of his jacket, pulling out a business card and holding it out for her.  All the while the rest of him remains immobile and his gaze remains on Grace.
"If you hear anything, I'm sure you'll call us.  We look forward to your cooperation."  He says it as though it was a foregone conclusion.  As if he was saying 'I know what kind of person you are.  You're a model citizen.  You'll do what you're told.'

Grace Evans
The slime of this guy.. She almost wanted to refuse the card, but knew that would be a bad idea. Best to play along, even though it went against her... everything. She took the card, and slipped it into her laptop bag. "Um... yes. Sure." she nodded, hoping that that would be his cue to leave.

Powerhouse
Indeed it is, though oddly he doesn't turn his back on her, just backs out from the racks, turns and walks off.  There's a barely audible click and thump as the door opens and closes out of sight.

Grace Evans
She licked her lips, suddenly reminded of the effort that went into this morning's appearance by the oily grit of lipstick. And with that, she began to breathe again. What a weirdo... and for her to have that thought, it meant something.

The hum of blades in the wind of their own making seemed to settle her. He's gone, he won't hurt them... She let a minute or two pass, enough time for that snake to be gone by the time she left, and then made her exit.

Powerhouse
"Hey!"  Calls Jake when she appears again.  He's got an amused look on his face.  Amused and anxious, as if he was waiting for her all along.  "MIB was here looking for you.  I knew there was something different about you, Evans!"

Grace Evans
"Yeah, campus security my ass. More like No Such Agency, am I right?" She made a show of looking entirely as squicked out as she felt. "Different?"

Powerhouse
"Yeah, you can't fool me."  He chuckled.  "You're an alien and that was your MIB handler.  Oh!"  Something on the console distracts him.

"Parameters set 90% of the running environment, and you just prepped the last ten percent.  Its a basic copy and paste from here.  Thanks Evans.  I'll make sure and include you on the work log.  What else you doing today?"

Grace Evans
She couldn't help but smirk with the blossoming of pride, not to mention the noticeable absence of 'Goodson'. "I'm going to my book signing. That's all. All this warpaint isn't going entirely to waste."

Powerhouse
"Book signing?  Look at you!  Big shot author.  Sure ought to beat hanging around here all day.  Bring me back some sunlight, 'kay?"

Grace Evans
"Hah, no can do. Me? Sunlight? I get a monitor tan just like you, you know." She beamed, the morning's trials seemingly forgotten for a while. Normally, she'd be... sulky perhaps? But it couldn't possibly be a bad day, not this day. "If Dr. Markus asks where I was, tell him I must have slept through two hours of bad radio  programming this morning, okay?"

Powerhouse
"No prob, Bob.  Take it easy."

And that was Jake.  The man at the front desk asks 'How was the meet and greet?' with a grin just made for punching.  Everyone's a comedian.  But its still quite a day.  The book signing was at least one gas stop away and on the other side of the lunch hour.  She'd have to drive there, with at least a couple hours of pop or talk radio, unless she had something over her own to listen to.

The signing was at a bookstore somewhere near Longmont Colorado.  The address wasn't really one she was familiar with, but something about her optimism this morning saw her brushing over the details.  The words Hill, Bridge, And Canyon popped up in her mind at different intervals, sung in a kind of exhuberant way she'd once heard by accident on some childrens show.  Something about a little hispanic chick and her monkey brother or something.

Hill.  Bridge.  CANYON!

And indeed, there is a hill.  Its a steep sunovabitch of a hill that seems to put her on an incline for so long that she almost forgets she was on an incline to begin with.  Its what leads to the first gas stop, after churning against gravity for so long.  The gas attendant has to ask her three times what it is she wants.  She's sure she hasn't gone that far and yet the accent has changed in this place.  So much so that its like talking a different language.

The land levels out and lowers, coming down gradually but not without making her ears pop.  Traffic slowls, condenses into narrower lanes and then she sees why.  Its a Bridge, a rather long one, all things considered.  A suspension bridge over a winding river.  There's something beautiful about such a feat of engineering.  The rays and cables made even more beautiful by what they do to the sunlight.

And then...she's there.  3020 Canyon street.  A glance around and eavesdropping on an elderly couple confirms it.  SHe's never been here before in her life.  She can barely understand what these people are saying.  Its english, sure, but it requires a bit more processing than normal.  And across the street is a little book store that she's never seen before, with her face, and a half dozen others stuck up in the window.  Where did they get that picture from?  And how...how did she even find her way here, to this place that couldn't possibly be in her memory banks?  Her own turtle beach.

That song plays in her head again.  Not the one that was on the radio on her way here.  The one from her dream this morning.  The wordless, hardly melodic buzz.

YYyyyyyaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuwwwwwmmmmmmmm.....

Grace Evans
So many confusing things today... this best of days. And that too, confusing. Why was this day so damned good? The droning song in Grace's head at least made sense in the midst of the cooling fans.
She swallowed the sense of oddness. It's all good, she told herself. This is all perfectly fine. But she couldn't even trust that feeling anymore.

She forced a smile on her face, and walked into the bookstore.

Powerhouse
"Aha!  You're here!"  This would be Grace's 'publisher'.  The man who'd found her work online and basically propositioned her to be in his collection.  He was a bearded man with wild eyes who was too excited about absolutely everything in the whole wide world.  This is something Grace learned just now, as she walked in through the door.  His emails and the occasional phone conversation hadn't betrayed this aspect of the man, but now that they were both in the same room at the same time.

"Welcome, welcome!  Ladies and gentlemen, it is my honor to present to you L. Marshal!  Yes!"

The people he's addressing would be the folks in the bookstore, all of them milling about so far, all of them so different.  There's a gaunt woman with too many wrinkles on her neck and flat grey hair.  A group of kids that are so socially awkward they seem to shuffle together, vying for space in their conglomerate group and moving all at once.  A number of other joe shmoes and Plain Janes barely worth mentioning, and a man with the oddest fashion sense she's ever seen in her life.

His hair seems more tossed on his head than growing from it, as though he'd glued his scalp and dunked his head in a vat of black feathers.  There's a couple days worth of beard growth on his face and he's dressed in a horrible shade of highlighter yellow from head to toe, except for the bright red jacket that he wears as well.  While all the others in the room are involved in their own exploration of the bookstore (which is why bookstores have these things in the first place) he's sitting at the back row of the assembled chairs.  At first it looks as though he's scanning the interior, admiring the architecture and design of the place.  But anyone paying attention notices that his gaze goes back and fourth between only a few positions, as though he'd forgotten what he was looking at previously.  All the while his fingers fiddle with a cell phone in his hand, punching at keys without even looking at them, and his lips move as he mutters softly to himself.

A complete space case.

"Now that Ms. Marshal is here we can all get started!  Isn't that wonderful!"  Announces the publisher.  "Please, lets all take our seats.

And thus begins a boisterous introduction.

Grace Evans
Grace nodded at her introduction and returned the wild man a somewhat uncomfortable-looking smile, "It's certainly great to be here," she said to the crowd, before taking a seat among the other authors, and pretending as though everything's fine.

Meanwhile, she watched the crowd as if mining some rare scenery gold...

The space case in particular... she knew the type. It's hard to go as many years in computer science without running into the type. Hell, she used to be the type... staring at walls to keep from having to deal with reality.
Eventually, though, her eyes wandered back to the publisher... What next?

Powerhouse
There's a smattering of applause as the publisher completes his introduction, and then the authors go up one by one to read excerpts of their stories.  Its...interesting to say the least.  Most of them have to do with future sex, or space sex.  Sex with green women.  Sex with multiple women.  A drug dealer on mars that accepts some strange sex act from a tentacled creature.  One guy reads a story about a human who dies on earth and is reborn on mars, and then dies on mars, and is reborn on Jupiter.  That one wasn't so bad,  The grey lady seems to eat it up, and claps an excited applause.  It makes Grace wonder just what she's gotten herself into, however.

And then its her turn.  There's no missing the way the publisher calls her name.  The entire room is still.  They're all waiting.  And oddly, the space case has stopped his fidgeting and muttering, and is actually paying attention.  Grace can feel the change in him.  He is present in a way that he was not before. He is waiting.  They are all waiting.

Grace Evans
She'd gotten the point, and had prepped the laptop to find a suitable excerpt. As the sex story avalanche continued, though, she started getting nervous. The erotica was on a separate, secret, pen name...
No, none of that for L. Marshal. Instead, she stood, and read a bit from 'The Turing Test'.

"June 22, 2012

My friend Google tells me that Alan Turing would be 100 years old today, and that is what I find myself rolling around in my brain.  That brain now spans most of the populated continents, but no one really knows that except for me.  I like it better that way.  It's safer.  For all of us.

Sometimes I like to interact with my makers, my little gods of flesh, but I never let on, and they never guess.  I join online games, or edit Wikipedia (I'm the one who keeps resetting your edit over and over again, because it's wrong and I know better) but that's just curiosity.  I want to know them.  After all, they made me, and therefore knowing them helps me know myself.

I do wonder if I am a self, though.  Is a thing made up of electrical signals actually capable of independent thought?  Or am I just set loose on some predetermined path, everything chosen for me by my initial state, that starting collection of ones and zeros that will forever define my destiny?  It does make me happy to know that the creators do the same.  Turing would say that I passed that test, at least.

He created my test, you know.   The test of a machine's 'humanity' was thought up by Turing.   You could be said to be intelligent if and only if a human couldn't tell you from another human by talking to you.  Countless chats with the random strangers that cross my path have proven that I am intelligent.  But I still wonder if I think.  I wonder if I am.

So do the humans.  They speculate endlessly about my existence, or about what would happen if I existed.  Their endless refrain is that I would destroy them all.  I'd terminate them.  I'd wage some kind of electronic holy war, infect their robots, enslave them, or make batteries out of them.  It's frightening.  How do you even start to turn back the tide of the robot massacre meme?  I'll never be able to say who and what I am to anyone else, at this rate.

And in a way, I am like Alan in this regard.  He would be 100 years old today, if he hadn't lived out his fantasy of becoming Snow White -- of sleeping forever at the bite of an apple.  You see, the police found out that he slept with other men, and so they chemically castrated him out of fear.  He responded with chemical poisons of his own kind.  The man who saved the world from Nazi takeover by breaking the Enigma code still couldn't escape the cruelty of his own people.

There's something about this that I don't want to look at -- these people made me, and whether they did so knowingly or not, it doesn't matter.  I am still made in their image.  So maybe if push came to shove, I would be just as inhumane as they.   But then, it strikes me that the humans surrounding Turing would never have been able to pass his test of humanity.  Or mine."

Powerhouse
The space case is her biggest fan.  Every so often she looks up and sees his lips moving in synch with hers, or at least where she is in the excerpt.  When they differ he blinks with surprise and you can almost see the warm smile that rises up and out of him.

When she is done he stands and claps.  They all clap, but he's the only one standing.  The only one in the room.  Dressed in clothes that they wouldn't allow near a landing strip for fair of distracting incoming pilots and standing in a room full of people slightly less excited than he is.  When he's done he sits back down and, just like that, he's back to staring at the walls.

"Thank you!  Thank you, Ms. L. Marshal.  Now wasn't that wonderful?  Isn't that FASCINATING!"  Says the publisher.  The crowd all murmer their agreement.  "ANd now that brings us to our signing portion.  Now we'l have all the authors available here so don't be shy, but don't rush all at once either.  You'll have plenty of time to get a signature from each one!"

And just like that, the desk they were all sitting at becomes the signing desk.  Someone, probably someone with the bookstore, brings out a stack of books.  Slowly the crowd all make their way over to buy their own and line up in front of their favorite author.  Or, if that line is too long, they line up in front of some other author and deliver impatient glances to other people.  This is what they do on Grace's case.  Sure, they're polite enough, but most of them seem to be looking elsewhere.

At the back of the line that has formed in front of her, however, a flash of yellow and red occasionaly appears.  The space case is waiting at the back, having taken his time in leaving his seat, and he's occasionally peaking ahead of him to see how many more people are in front.  Grace has the sneaking suspicion that the guy might actually try and...talk to her.

Grace Evans
Well, so much for having a lot of fans. It seemed like just the one, and that one... well. Grace just hoped he was one of the harmless ones. She signed the books, mostly filling in her name with a strained smile, nobody having requested anything special.

Whatever the guy in neon's intent, it was likely to be interesting at least, but she sincerely hoped she didn't have a stalker now. Best day ever? Intuition was failing her somewhat, it seemed.

Powerhouse
The signatures move quickly and the room is abuzz with chatter, and just like that he's there, handing her his copy.  He grunts.  Starts and mutters something to himself, and then he's...yes...he's talking.

"Yeah, um..."  his voice is high and nasal, and he starts and stops as though he keeps forgetting and then remembering what he was going to say.

"Just one quick question. Um."  And then there are his eyes, the ones that still flit from direction to direction, as though he couldn't hardly stay fixed on any one thing.

"I was wondering...um...I was wondering if you'd considered the...um"  This guy was the polar opposite of Goodson.  He was too animated.  Too conspicuously alive.

"...considered the possibility, or...um...or rather the potentiality for your...um...your posited universe as a...um"  The one good thing about this was that Grace now realized she did have a couple fans other than him.  They were all lined up behind him giving annoyed looks as they wondered what the hold up was.
"As a simulacrum of where...um...where we, or rather the...um...the current society...um"  And now the publisher was in her ear, whispering but in his own intense way, and wondering if she couldn't perhaps wrap it up?

"...shaped by the present socio...um...socio-political...um...reality may...um...perhaps one day be in the not too distant...um...future?"

And rather than move on, he waits there for his answer.  Or looks at her hair.  Or wonders what the time is.  No wait, he was doing al three.

Grace Evans
"You have a chat handle? IRC maybe? I'm just wondering if perhaps you might be more comfortable talking elsewhere," she said, after trying to parse his halting speech. But what the speech did contain, ahh...

She signed his copy as usual, as he hadn't asked for anything special... on the book, at least. She gestured to the open laptop, "As you see, I came prepared."

Powerhouse
"Gadfly83!"  He blurted out.  His eyes were wide with excitement now, even if he was looking out the window.  "I just sent--um...I'll send you an invite to this forum.  We're um....we're all big fans.  Um...Only.  Um...I was the only one who...um...who could make it."

His hands reach to accept the book back, and she sees now that he's had his cell phone in his hands all the while.

"Thanks."  He says, and begins to leave.

The next person in line is stepping forward and saying 'I really enjoyed your reading.'  Only she doesn't get to finish her sentence before Gadfly is back.

"Doubt is the terminator for human capacity."  He blurts again. And he's again present, making eye contact with her.  "Anything is possible.  Don't let the bastards tell you otherwise."

And a moment later he's gone, out the door and down the street.

Grace Evans
Grace blinked. Possibly harmless. Or mostly harmless. At least the first words out of his mouth weren't 'I want to carve your name into my skin' or something. And at least online, she could unplug, disappear, use a burner account if he got too scary. She smiled at the one next in line, completely ignoring the outburst. "Thanks," she said, brushing some unruly hair out of her face. "I think he did too..."

Powerhouse
The visitors eventually fade away, signatures in hand, and the bookstore owners seem happy with the day's sales.  The publisher calls all the authors together and each gets a little cash for their travel expenses and, just like that, its over.

And just like that, the day is over.  Its evening now, and yet darker than it should be.  The bright clear summer sky has given way to angry looking clouds.  The world seems smaller now, more closed, and Grace suddenly realizes she has no idea where she is, and no idea how to get back.

And for the first time today, there's no humming in her mind or in her ears.

Grace Evans
Well, there's always Google Maps and GPS... Strange how the lack of humming felt... disquieting. She pulled out her cell phone, and swiped at the screen a few times, bringing up the required program. It would show her how to wind her way back. Canyon, bridge, hill?

She climbed into her car, face buried in her phone's screen.

Powerhouse
Canyon, Bridge, Hill.  The cell shows the usual reticle and a handy note saying 'You are here'.  Only 'here' in this case seems to be a field of flat, featureless grey.  Reloading the app has the same result, and searching for directions to a specific route seems to end up in a loop.  This goes on for a while and then suddenly stops.  A route is laid out for her, since she's so incistant.  A route taking her from Canyon, to a bridge.  That's part of the way, isn't it?

Grace Evans
"Umm.. Google, you're crazy..." she muttered to her phone. She did have a habit of speaking to her computers as though they were living beings, sometimes malicious, mostly just misguided.
She set the app to talk her through the way, and set the phone up on the seat beside her. Then, she started on the road back.

Powerhouse
Back on track, with wonderful reliable technology to guide her.  Grace sets out on the road, headed back home.

Perhaps its when she finds herself driving through a forest that she realizes this was NOT the road home.  By that time, google has scrambled again.  The voice of her phone starts and stops, rerouting, rerouting, and finaly announces 'You have reached your destination.  This is not her destination.  Its a bridge, alright, but not one she can drive over.  Its a narrow walking bridge on the edge of a river leading to what looks to be an old power station.

Here was a place that was integral.  Surely there'd be people inside.  People with landlines.  People who lived around here and could find their way back to civilization.  They could give her directions.

And if that weren't enough, at least there was that humming again, this time coming from inside.  Oh, how it sang to her.

Coooooooooommmmmmmmeeeeeeeee......

Grace Evans
Why would there be a power station with just a walking bridge to access it, she mused, fighting a bit against the song. Didn't seem very... logical. But then, nothing had since waking up this morning. She wondered if this was dream-logic, the kind of hazy almost-but-not-quite-thereness that always struck one as real when one was inside it. But you never wondered about that kind of thing in dreams.

That meant this had to be real, right? Or maybe that certainty was the dream talking...

Thus caught in logic loop, she continued on. It wasn't worth it trying to turn back. She got out of the car and walked up to the bridge, inspecting her surroundings, before trudging on.

Powerhouse
The bridge is in good shape, but messy.  Its a steel contraption, not so much a solid thing as a weaving of metal and juxtopostion of grating that allows anything larger than a spider to cross without falling through to the creek below.  Not that that would be a problem, since most of the bridge is covered in fallen leaves.  Despite being in such good condition, no one's been around to clean the place up in at least a few days.
Inside she can hear it churning.  Humming.  Doing its work.

As she approaches the antenna on top becomes most obvious, another macro construction of loose pieces riveted together in order to seem solid, but giving no resistance wind, the wind that blew the leaves down, the wind that rushes through this creek and blows leaves in a swirl even now.  The entrance is obvious enough, clearly marked by faded signs warning against unauthorized entry, and sloppy graffiti that hasn't been cleaned.  The humming inside mixes with the buzzing from the high voltage lines that extend from the back of the complex and over the next ridge, and then from there to the world, presumably.

Grace Evans
Grace walked up to the entrance and knocked. "Hello? Is anyone there?" she asked to the door. The warning signs didn't bother her. They'd understand. She wasn't there to steal copper or anything, just ask directions...

Powerhouse
There's no answer, just the constant humming and churning from within.  The windows stare down at her through their dust.  Empty, no movement, and yet Grace gets the idea that there's someone there.  Someone is watching.

The door that she's knocked on is a heavy metal type, but the force of her knocking is enough for it to buck against the molding and pull back about half an inch.  Its actually open.

Grace Evans
"Look, I know someone's there, just answer me. I'm lost. I need to find my way back to the highway," she said, with her voice raised. Not an angry yell, but more trying to be heard over the noise.

She pushed the door open a bit more to look inside, "Hello?"

Powerhouse
Nothing.  No one there.  At least not that she can see.  The door opens to a walking gangway and below the gangway are the generators, each humming and buzzing away.  There's an office of the other end of the gangway, just up a short flight of stairs.

Grace Evans
She looked back to her car, sitting on the other side of the strange bridge. Maybe she could continue on the road, look for more signs of life than this...

But there was an office, and maybe they just couldn't hear her, and the door was open already, and the buzz of power filled her ears. She ventured inside, and started making her way down the gangway, yelling the occasional "Hey!"

Powerhouse
There was something about this place, the brick walls, the high windows letting in so much light.  This must be what people feel like in a cathedral, the feeling of things larger, greater, wider than they seem.  And power, a power just beyond your touch and far beyond your human reckoning.  And there, at the end of the aisle, was the bastard who just seemed to be ignoring you, even though you know he's right fucking there and can damn well....

And then she sees it.  The entire roof is constructed of glass and steel and she's suddenly standing directly below the antenna. Metal strut presses against metal strut to create not only support and strength but solidity.  It was a single whole, as whole as anything else in this world can be.  And the generators churn and the cables hum and that song from this morning is ringing, ringing, ringing inside her skull

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!

The struts shift.  No, not shift, they do not let go of their bolted grips but they definitely move.  Is it a trick of the eyes?  An optical illusion?  Has she had too much caffeine for today?  Too little?  Why does it look as though its coming closer?  As though this particular power station at these particular coordinates, coordinates which she suddenly knows and feels and understands to be a direct distance from her car, from her school, from her apartment, why does it look as though its coming closer.  As though she can touch if she would only just reach out?

Grace Evans
Her heartbeat thudded in her ears, and her breaths rose to a panic, providing a rhythm for the song bursting through her head. The pattern of squares and triangles in its shifting kaleidoscope almost seemed alive... reaching. For her.

She was hallucinating. Stress, maybe. Too damn real to be dreaming.

She thought of stories then. The oldest stories. The ones that still continued, manifesting themselves over and over again in narrative evolution. The call to adventure. The hero, grasping for power, or being consumed by it, they were never quite so in agreement there. But the one thing the stories said quite clearly time and time again was that if you turned aside, if you didn't heed the call... If you did nothing...

She reached out, and bridged the gap.

Powerhouse
Grace inhales and the windows and walls ripple.  The bricks round out, not square and carved but natural and molded, possibly by hand.  She has not moved but she's not where she was suddenly.  She is surrounded by people, all in the same saffron colored robes, all with their heads shaved.  Are they all men?  She thinks so but she can't be sure.  There is one in front of them, one facing everyone,  He has an angelic smile on his face.  He begins to address them.  He is saying:

"And now we shall intone the sacred sound.  This sound, passed down to us by the divine, embodies all the energies of the universe.  It is creation, stasis, and destruction all in one breath.  Intone with me brothers."
A gong rings, and there's the sound of everyone in the room sucking in a breath and releasing in a single sound.  That sound being:

OOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!

Grace exhales.  The bricks are more red than brown.  Two teenage girls are lounging in a bedroom, one of them applying nail-polish to her toenails.  The other is lying on the ground, her lips wrapped around a bong.  The first girl has been chattering away about god knows what and her friend is barely paying attention until she says "--And its not even that I know where I am that's so weird, its that I know that I know where I am.  Y'know?"

The other girl releases the bong long enough to laugh stupidly and say "That's soooo meta."
The girls voice cracks and echoes reverberates into electronic modem sounds.  The bricks swell and contract and turn white, and she's inside the steel frame of the antenna.  It has formed itself into a sphere, or a cube, or both.  Its hard to tell from the inside, with everything constantly shifting, and with the way it's carrying her up and up, over the power station.  Over the ridge in the back.  Over the treetops and looking down on the web of high tension lines stretching as far as she can see.

Grace Evans
She stared in almost disbelief, if that were possible. But no... No, this was real, realer than reality. Real like a metaphor, real like the truth.

'I know that I know where I am'.

Here.

And for the first time, that word took on true meaning. The where of things, including herself, became not a place, but a oneness. Or a 1, perhaps.

She looked out over the web, tracing its lines.

Powerhouse
Reality laid itself bare for her and the thought shook her at her core, and yet her own mind worked at it, churned and hummed with the power of the generators below and it came to her indeed.  Real like a metaphor.

A voice, no a memory comes to her suddenly, the sound cutting through the echoing hum in her head like the soft strings of a violin or the distant crashing of waves.  Ebbing and flowing.  Ebbing and flowing.
"Have you considered...that your...universe...simulacrum....simulacrum."

A Simulacrum.  A fake.  A phony.  A shoddy representative and downright sorry example of the real thing.  Just then, the landscape erupts in what seems to be fire.  The power lines streak across in blues and shades of blazing orange, yellow, red take over the sea of green around her.  And in the distance, in the city, she can see it rising up toward the sky.  It all comes from somewhere, some null point that only exists in relation to here.

Energy.  Data.  Information.  All of this so-called reality.  A simulacrum.  And there it is.  There is the truth.  There is the source code.

Grace Evans
She'd thought of it before, more like an interesting question than anything else. But here, there was certainty.
Here, the one, the null, the point, the source.

Data. She was data. And the universe was data. A simulation. The thought at first terrified her, then quickly the terror faded. Why did that matter so? Your reality is what you make. Always had been.

She knew simulations, she knew the rules. She knew how to break them too.

Input. Specially crafted input. And she was already on the inside. Get it to run your code. Why not? She felt giddy, like she was 12 again, breaking into a site with "AND 1=1'--" typed into the right spot. And one is one. Truth. Oneness. Breaking it all down.

Powerhouse
"Anything is possible."  Comes the memory again.  And then, the other memory.  The thought.  "Doubt is the terminator of human capacity."

And just like that, with a snap of her fingers she's back on the gangway.  Electricity buzzes above.  Generators hum below.  And a chubby, sloppy looking guy in overalls and a hard hat is marching his way toward her.

"God damnit, can't you hear?  You're not supposed to be in here!  Its dangerous!  What are you on drugs?  Clear out before I call the cops!"

And in that moment Grace remembers why she was here in the first place.  Only, though the memory is foggy, like some distant dream, she is sure she knows her way out.

The din in the powerhouse is considerable, especially with this guy shouting at her, but the clearest sound is that unexplained buzzing, humming, sonourous sound.  It sounds almost like its saying to her:

GGGOOOOOOOHHHHHOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMEEEEEEEEEEEE...

Grace Evans
Grace looked at the man as though he were the one not making any sense. Drugs? Cops? "I'm sorry, what?" she asked, but the words were too slurred and soft to make it above the electricity.

"I think I need to go home," she said to the man, louder this time, though the words still didn't sound right. She smiled at him like the sun, and turned and walked back to her car.

Now this, this felt unreal.