The Grudge

[P3nT4gR4m]

"Billy!"

"Danny! How are you?"

"Rolling in credits, Billy, got the matter lined up for a space mission. Thinking Crab Nebula, the net has new hypothesis. If proven could be able to send about fifty kilos of probe substrate & miner-bot mix in under two years. The Crab, Billy, the motherfucken crab. I shit you not."

"Whoa there, Dan, back up a bit. How the fuck did you get credit for space program volume? I just blinked that research, it's only two days old. Last I heard you'd fallen in with those hypercollider junkies and blown everything you had. How'd that work out for you anyway?"

"I came this close, bud, this fucking close to having my name on a pseudoparticle. 'The Danny's Ballsack Boson'

"No shit? You're allowed to do that?"

"Fuck yeah, you're allowed, is PDsci, nobody pwns that shit

"So what went wrong?"

"Fking Norwegian is what went wrong, giant of a man. Bastard Viking crossed with a cliff. Took exception. Got all 'science is serious bizness' on me. Punched me out in a bar when I was out celebrating the find. I came to and he's jacked my patch and posted the results on my behalf. I hadn't even submitted it, I was so stoked, I ran straight out and got shitfaced. Insult to injury he's some corporate fuck. So now we have the Mitsubishi-Gundersen Pseudohadron. Shit name or what?"

"Oh fuck me gently, THAT particle?"

"Yeah that f'kin particle. That particle that was discovered on my gloopfarms and, under open source 'Finders Keepers' rules I get to name."

"Surely you could just stick a claim in to bitjudge or something?"

"Not the point"

"Eh?"

"The point was that fucking evil vampire bitch on the six pm infoburst having to read out 'Danny's ballsack' with her butter-wouldn't-melt, cost me every credit I had smile on her whore face!"

"Julia?"

"F'kin Julia."

"You're still bitter?"

"Fuck yeah, I'm bitter. I ever tell you about the time..."

"Pretty sure I could recite it word perfect, Dan."

"Fuck off."

"Dude it's been twelve years. You need to get over that shit. So anyway, you got the credits all right? Was still your Q-key on the form."

"PDsci, Billy, Public Domain. No credits. Idealistic bullshit if you ask me but it would have been worth the creds I ploughed into it. So anyway, Crab!"

"Yeah, before that. Between the scandanavian thing and now. Credits?"

"Oh, yeah, Primlifes."

"Primlifes?"

"Primlifes."

"Nope, blink is blind, nothing on net."

"Yeah, it's kinda darknet."

"Ahhhhh. K, so spill."

"Pretty straightforward, it's fastbreeding Primlifes."

"And a primlife is?"

"Kinda like a monkey. Modelled at data abstraction plugged in to an environment sim."

"And the credits come how?"

"Well the key is to set up the environment, just right."

"And what's 'right'?"

"You want it really fucking hostile for maximum effect. Just enough to allow them to balance the stats on either side of the i/o graph but have to keep working like motherfuckers to keep it going. And then you run the sim and let them breed for a couple of million generations. Just enough food and water and a lot of natural predators kinda schtick."

"You want vicious little monkey sims?"

"Not vicious, per se, that's actually a kinda side effect that really kills the productivity. If you could make them not vicious it'd be worth trillions instead of billions but any other environment setting and you don't get results fast enough if at all."

"So we're talking billions?"

"Yup!"

"How long does it take?"

"Couple of weeks."

"Holy shit. So what's the script?"

"Script is for the first couple of days you're working constantly, night and day. Sim runs fast as fuck and you gotta stay on top of extinction threats at the same time making sure to torture the little fucks hard enough to make their lives a misery, it's like a tightrope. My first couple of attempts burned out pretty fast. Started to wonder if the whole thing was a hoax or something but the science checked out so I kept going."

"So you just watch this shit and tweak it for two fucking weeks?"

"Fuck no. What do I look like? No, you gotta watch it for a couple of days. After that they start torturing each other."

"You're joking?"

"Nope, for the next week and a half it kinda settles in to a rhythm of building shit up then building other shit to knock the first shit down."

"Like ants?"

"Fuck no. Well, at first, yeah, it's like ants but they end up growing more intelligent by the hour. Building mud then clay then stone, the start using fire and that leads to tech, the whole time the little bastards are getting smarter."

"And vicious."

"Aw shit, man they go beyond vicious, I mean this shit is just insane. They're just nasty little monkey fuckheads to be honest and some of it is kinda funny. Like sick but funny? Tell you the truth I started feeling a bit bad for them but at the same time they do it to themselves."

"Dude, project much."

"Oh it aint projection, Billy. That's backed up, after a couple of weeks they start becoming sentient, to the point that they start pushing category three cognition."

"No fucking way!"

"Seriously."

"You gotta be kidding me."

"Swear."

"But they must be crazy as fuck, what possible use could you have for them?"

"I don't."

"Talk sense"

"I don't have any use for a couple of billion insane cat3 monkey sims but after a week, I'm sitting on a couple of hundred thousand Cat 4."

"Four?"

"Yup."

"Four, like you and me four?"

"Full cognition. Something about that inhospitable environment pushes monkeys, and it's only monkeys as far as we know. It pushes them to cat4 in no time flat."

"So then what? You're running a virtual concentration camp?"

"Fuck no, you get them the fuck out of there as soon as they're detected onto alternative substrate running luxury simspace. Then you introduce yourself."

"What are they like? Vicious? Wait, they're cat4, they must understand what you've done to them."

"Most of them are pretty relieved it wasn't real, to be honest. Some get argumentative but there's no vicious. To the best of our knowledge cat4 is still incapable of vicious. No change there."

"So they're trapped there? What next?"

"Citizenship test."

"Fuck off."

"Seriously."

"But if they pass, then they're people. They'll sue the fuck out of you."

"For the most part, they see the logic that they probably wouldn't have existed any other way."

"For the most part? You have to kill some of them?"

"Dude, fucksake, no. Ewwwww! I just told you I felt bad wiping out a bunch of threes"

"Psychotic threes."

"Yeah but still, they're conscious."

"So what about the guys theatening to sue."

"They're not a problem, we make them sign an NDA before we release onto the net."

"And you take a cut of the 'Welcome-Citizen' credits."

"For services rendered."

"Not too much I trust."

"No, no. Just enough to cover a mission to the Crab."

"So why the Crab?"

"Gonna remodel the nebula so it spells out 'Fuck you Julia'. I think that just might bring me closure."

[LMNO]

Makes as much sense as the Malevolent Deity theory.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

  I like it better than the idea that this shitshow is real and we're actually shitting up our only life support system as we speak.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Is a tired old scifi trope with obvious punchline but I love both reading and dreaming up new scenarios.

I like it better than the idea that this shitshow is real and we're actually shitting up our only life support system as we speak.

We're kinda doing that either way. What kind of psycho creator would want us? 

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Is a tired old scifi trope with obvious punchline but I love both reading and dreaming up new scenarios.

I like it better than the idea that this shitshow is real and we're actually shitting up our only life support system as we speak.

We're kinda doing that either way. What kind of psycho creator would want us? 

We seriously are some kind of crazy petty assholes. I guess this is what happens when baboons get technology.

[Eater of Clowns]

This was a seriously fun read.

I also had some side fun parsing in story terminology as delivered in a decidedly Scottish parlance.

[Doktor Howl]

Makes as much sense as the Malevolent Deity theory.

Doesn't.