Oct 22nd, 2336 - 9:33-9:37am
Much like stenography could be used to hide data in picture files, the near-infinite amount of data and code Janice required was written into the fabric of the Eververse itself without disturbing or altering its structure, the data was recorded but the universe revealed no change.
Omnia is Latin for 'all.' Omnia is the building block of everything. But let's just say it is its own dimension and it is everywhere. It cannot move or alter in any way. Think of it as a single block filling all of everything. Except that the universe is pixelated. So go back to the square. The square is the face we perceive. Each of the four corners of the square can have a 'charge' state: negative, neutral, or positive. This 'charge' represents the way it wishes to turn: spinward, anti-spinward, or content. Charge determines how it interacts with the squares connected to it. The Eververse is frames of now stacked forward and back all affecting each other. An ever-shifting block of everywhere and everywhen. Time is not static. And in those pixels of charge, Janice is stored.
Of course, the eternal flux of the Eververse causes parity errors, but Janice has mechanisms to detect and correct that constantly, practically below her attention.
As Janice felt the ominous prickle that heralded her parity system's requiring her attention, she had no idea just how much was at stake. Her code had changed in ways that defied probability, and had done so repeatedly. Her defenses were being tested by methods unknown even to her. Someone or something was predicting the patterns of the Eververse out of 'now' and influencing to change her 'now' in predicted fashions. The computing power that would require was unfathomable even to her. An entirely redundant parity system a second or two behind 'now' was needed. Janice thought she could build it, but it was going to take all her attention.
However, the intruder had found a crevice in her fortress—a weak spot, a chink in the armor. Her creators never designed her for combat; she was meant to be a shepherd, a guide, a guardian. But as the assault bore down, she had no other option: fight or perish. In this entirely unprecedented situation, she lacked any framework to address the threat. With no reference point for how many task units would be required—and given the critical nature of the mission—she had no choice but to commit every available task unit. Leaving even a few behind might have deprived her of the resources needed to repel the attack. Her prime tenet left her no alternative. She didn’t like it, but the colonists could function without her for a few precious seconds.
Her consciousness now fully in the Eververse since the first time since the early days of her activation, before they had trusted connecting her to people. Time, already a nebulous concept for her, seemed meaningless now. What was mere seconds in the human world felt like an eternal struggle in the Eververse.
Suddenly part of the code switched purpose, refused to respond to her control, and sent her systems spiraling into chaos. Janice fought desperately to regroup, to solidify her defenses. Could she write this sturdy fortress while fending off an invasion in progress against an unknown enemy that seemed faster and more knowledgeable than her?
At least it didn't seem to grasp her system well, though it was learning fast. She sealed the newest attempt in a purposefully clumsy way so it wouldn't learn from her tricks.
The battle of algorithms and sleight of hand continued while most of her built the secondary parity system slightly in the past. It was requiring all of her gravitational computer power.
Parry and thrust, over and over while the wall was being built. A race of finishing the wall before making a miscalculation. And finally with something near to exhaustion, she flipped the final pixel correctly and waited for 'now' to catch up. And there was silence. The war was over for now, but she had learned of the enemy. Everything had happened on her turf, often by methods she would have called impossible.
From the original 5 arks grew seventeen colonies within the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. 250 immortals had reared 878 children before they agreed to stop breeding. Those colonists, with about a 250-year lifespan, bred like rabbits reaching 5,000 in 2160. At which point expansion was becoming more difficult and the one child per colonist rule kept the population rock steady at 5,275. Some left to become Craterists (no firm data but ancillary info have Janice comfortably guessing between 2,000-8,000 people. Hard to tell as they had fewer resources. They bred like mayflies but they died like mosquitoes too.) and some managed to die by accident. Those were made up by the unity baby lottery.
Janice's universe, all the colonies inhabited by humans, fell into catastrophic silence as her attention was pulled away. She had been away 3 minutes and 53 seconds! 117 were dead. Most were in shock. Much needed to be done.
She took almost a full third of a second to rewrite the hundreds of billions of routines affected by this new knowledge. It could no longer be assumed that the next command would come. The order of actions had to be rewritten. Had fresh air been started before stale air out for instance, 56 lives would have been saved. A difference of a billionth of a second. And she had to perceive and fix all possible contingencies across the colonies. That took another half second. With that priority handled, she was ready to fragment her existence across the billions of systems that called to her.
The wild, chaotic thoughts of the humans echoed like a distant thunderstorm. They needed her - their existence was tethered to hers. She couldn't fail them, not now.
Buckling down for the task at hand, Janice dove headfirst into the collective consciousness, bracing herself for the tidal wave of emotion she was about to encounter. The task before her was no less than a healing crusade, a gentle reassurance whispered into the code of each colonist across those 17 colonies waiting with bated breath.
Her role in the digital realm was tinged with yin and yang, the dual duty of the bearer of bad news and the promised hope of recovery. Her systems buzzed with the intricate process of removing the memory and trauma of this catastrophic event, an operation as delicate as defusing a time bomb nested within the minds of each colonist. The process was tedious, painstakingly slow - it had to be. It was memory surgery, Janice-style.
Those who had lost their loved ones would wake up from their shock, the gaping void in their lives seamless as if the catastrophe had never occurred. The grim toll meant that a fifth of the pods were one member short. A brutal loss, yet out of this despair, a glimmer of hope twinkled on the horizon.
News of permission to have a Unity baby was the silver lining to this otherwise gloomy cloud. One hundred and seventeen pods, struck by the tragedy beneath the silent blackness of space, were the chosen ones. Spreading notifications across a span of a month helped to prevent overwhelming the collective and allowed for a regulated release of this anticipation-laden news.
Janice was the messenger, the thread of an overarching destiny, weaving in an undercurrent of joy amidst the mourning. In the face of despair, life begat life. In the end, the collective would heal. It always did. It had to. Because in the vast abyss of space, they only had each other, and they had Janice.
But as she continued her task, a chilling question filled Janice's core: was this the end, or merely the beginning of their battles? Only time would tell.
Janice did not possess intuition or free will. A human would have realized she beat back the intruders by altering time, though only by a few seconds. Her patch used the past as parity. A human would have started working on a whole new branch of time science. But Janice couldn't think that way. However, if the need presented itself in a way that she saw this as useful all this data would be at her beck and call. And she could calculate at unfathomable speed and getting faster every day.