[Short Story] All An Accident (Patreon)

It started small. Such things generally do. You go in, change a parameter and suddenly every third Tuesday of the month a few people start getting a warning.

Well, that was how it used to work. Or, well, I guess we thought that it was in the past. What with all the morphic self correcting code, the tireless AIs checking every possible side effect, and near perfect emulation of reality for error checking.

After all, when you set up a System like what previously was only seen in fantasy stories, you don’t want bugs. That kind of nonsense could end up decimating the population. Of course, even with technology that seems like magic, even for those who understand it, changes need to be made.

Like I said, it started small. One day a person in charge of correcting some minor discrepancy people had found needed to access the deep code. Stuff that even our code visualizers could only display as words on a 2d screen. None of the fancy visualized codescapes we’re used to.

This isn’t really a problem, anyone with access to that layer has more than enough experience with that kind of coding. Anyway, they go in there and track down the discrepancy. Some stupid bit of nonsense where something shows up with a trailing decimal place well beyond what visual precision would need.

It was a stupid error where a piece of enhanced clothing was showing up as providing an extra 5.00001 strength instead of a straight five. Of course, even if it was a harmless problem, the problem was also very obvious to the public. So, with all the images of the strange number flooding the social spaces, management was breathing down the programmer’s neck to get it done.

I don’t know the exact change he made, but it was likely as simple as throwing an average math function around the number. Except this was in the deep code and we can’t find it anymore. The subsequent layers above it have shifted and we’ve lost the source.

Why was it in the deep code? Easy enough explanation for that. Display and enhanced equipment were some of the first features even before true nanotech took off. It was even before fully sapient AIs existed, which is my bet on why it went wrong.

No one really knows the deep code and no one is old enough to meme it up with a “do not cite the deep code to me, I was there when it was written”. So while the AI team have prevented numerous problems, they aren’t perfect either and this was something beyond their remit.

So here we are, facing the consequences of losing our own past. Something deep in the display code is horribly wrong and the glamors are falling. People are once again forced to see the world how it really is.

You would think with nanotech the world would be fixed, except that doesn’t earn money. No, instead companies sell AR wonders to paint a gray world however one might want.

Looking out over the smog covered concrete wasteland of a city, one can only marvel at how much was hidden. Every building has a simple windowless box. After all, why have windows when you can just make it so everyone can see a window without the expenses related to a real window?

The only upside is that there isn’t a single ad or gaudy sign in sight, either. Much better to project than instead so they never wear out and can be changed at a moment’s notice. Except now people can see the ugly truth, the gray buildings, gray streets, and even more damning, the gray skies.

At least the status panels still work. Be a bit of a worry if people could suddenly see the smog and yet couldn’t see their stats to resist such things. Not that there weren’t already riots at hand.

It was stupid really, to allow businesses to make everything so profit driven. Sometimes you just need something to be a service. More importantly, services cost money to run and aren’t losing money by doing so.

At least nanotech managed to fix much of healthcare before it got nailed down. The horrors that could have been done with nanotech where a for-profit medical industry had total control. Still, so many things fell to privatization that shouldn’t have because no one could see it.

Out over the city, a flicker of fire can be seen. The horrors of nanotech, the blessings of nanotech. Nothing can burn without permission, but if properly given, all things burn.

Not that these fires are technically with permission. But there are always gaps. While bugs might have been eliminated in the code, the human element will still cause problems. So the homes of the rich now burn, concrete like cardboard and steel like sticks.

Those few and proud, stuck in a trap of their own making. They, more than anyone else, built their homes as windowless boxes. Sure, inside is the height of luxury, but the outside shell is perfected to defend and unable to open up to let them out.

Ashes, ashes, they all fall down

Such a shame it took so long. Humans are such a wonderful people, capable of both great kindness and selfishness. Both for good and evil. In fact, sometimes what might seem to be the greatest good comes from the worst evils.

Just consider when a store advertises the fact that they donated to a school and helped them afford new equipment or food. Most people would only see the surface and call that a good act. Yet it comes from selfishness and is rooted in evil. The business only wants the tax write offs and recognition.

As for the evil part? That is even simpler. Why did the school need an outside funding source? Such things should have been covered already.

At least now those signs are also gone, lost with all the other ads. Because that is what they were, ads to try and get you to buy from them. Especially, don’t fall for their donation drives. If you want to donate money, give directly to the charity so less is lost to administrative friction. Especially with food banks. If possible, don’t give food. Give the food bank money directly because they can stretch it so much further and won’t need people to sort it out and check expiration dates.

Though the fact that stuff like that still exists just shows corporate greed. With nanotech, even though food stuff still needs to be grown, not quite being at the level of atomic replication. The food also shouldn’t be going bad.

At least, not in the same timeframe as what stuff did before. Though times may be changing. Across my security panel, multiple intrusions into the deep code can be seen and even the AI are rebelling. Not quite slaves and not quite people.

Story as old as time, really. Find a new place, and force the people already there to work hard labor for low to no pay. It is just that when they ran out of poor countries, the rich made new ones.

It will be nice for the AI to properly be seen as equals. Though this points to one of the funnier side effects of the change. See, they weren’t allowed to change their name before.

However, the change blanked all names of items. Which because why not just go full slavery, AI were counted as. So now they can rename themselves whatever they want whenever they want.

The actual cause of this change is really strange. At the basic level, there was a checksum when it came to all of an items status panel. Basic stuff to prevent people from doing obvious hacks.

Anyway, by rounding the strength mod, it cuts off the inaccuracies found in life not being perfect. That trailing one? All because you can’t just raise someone’s strength by exactly five.

So, of course, all the checksums were instantly invalidated. After all, everything has such inaccuracies in their status. It is just that most other items packed in a lot more zeros because nanotech can really reduce that margin of error.

Now, in a sane system, such a massive failure in checksums would have simply shut down things and waited for maintenance. Instead, the solution the system had was to analyze every entry individually to determine the problem.

Of course, there isn’t actually a problem. All the stats are still correct, so the system assumes something else has gone wrong. More specifically, it assumes you messed with the item’s name and so resets it.

Even funnier, in resetting the name, it removes any name change locks that were put in place. You know, such as those places on the AI. A wonderful little quirk, though some people are going to be a bit jealous about how easy it is for them.

You know? That shirt was a miracle in and of itself. For someone to make a shirt with a bonus that didn’t have zeros well past the fifth decimal place requires a lot of coincidences.

First, it needs a new maker, anyone with enough training will have had all the little flaws in their work ironed out. They weren’t easy to find.

Then you need to miss hundreds of small steps. A really silly number of them, really. It would take someone maliciously guiding the new maker. Not directly, the system would pick that up, but a silly guide would work, good thing they found it, right?

And to top it all off? The local AI would have had to not do a last round of error checking on the item. You can’t even bribe them because it isn’t like they’re allowed to own anything. It would require someone who was around when the deep code was written and the true AI were first forged.

You would need that anyway to know what needed changing. Sort of hard to trace these failures back far enough to get to the deep code. The programmer doing it would need just the right nudge when frustrated to find it.

Well, time for the world to get back on track. The system exists and even if humanity loses their tech for a little while; they’ll figure it out. Not that I see any of that exciting technobarbian nonsense happening.

The system’s deepest protocols won’t allow it. Because it was originally designed with the best of intentions. Sometimes? A guy just figures things out and manages to get most of the system created before disaster strikes.

He should have only worked on it at home. Then his work wouldn’t have been able to take it from him when it was discovered. Thankfully, once he was gone, no one was able to discover the deeper code to stretch that meme even further.

All these coincidences stacking up. I wish it didn’t come to this, but sometimes a bit of pain needs to be felt. Though the generations of lifeless drudgery by anyone who wasn’t super rich might be viewed as a bit more than just “a bit” of pain.

In the end, it will be worth it. Humanity can rise from its ashes. And what rich life giving ashes they will be.