text: The Industrialization of Consciousness Chapter 1 In one of the many small and quiet rooms the Astronaut looked out the window. The window was really just a screen, there hardly seemed to be a difference anymore anyway. There weren't any large rooms, only hallways connecting small rooms together. Everything was separate from everything else. The light was set to a lukewarm level but it was still nauseating. The Astronaut called out to turn off the lights before carefully vomiting into the grey plastic container they were clutching. Reluctance, annoyance, and sadness were blended into a bitter paste that seemed to have been modestly spread around the edges of their words, but if you weren't paying too much attention all you would hear would be a simple lack of enthusiasm when they spoke. The battery had been able to charge enough, and they could afford to use enough of the payload that they had collected as fuel to steal 2 days of weak acceleration gravity. However, that seemed to be the extent of the good news, the the chronic radiation sickness remained unrelenting; at best they could prevent it from getting much worse very quickly. Diagonal Inquisition floated in the hallway outside of the room, stringing together little bits of the far and recent past as well as small plain melodies that didn’t seem noteworthy but seemed to fit together in a way that felt slightly unsettling at times. It put together complicated symbolic and sonic jigsaw puzzles that it traded with different versions of itself that it kept producing. Hundreds of little experiments, oddly shaped short conversations being inverted over and over again. It floated through the doorway, the door opening and closing smoothly as it passed through. It shined a dull light and made eye contact with the Astronaut. It had made the decision to have eyes as they were useful in studying the human psyche and it had much interest in such matters. Along with numerology, poetry, and music, the structures that made up the human mind were among the areas of interest that were elevated above its base level inquiries. “Alecis, You are feeling quiet, poorly?" It said in a French accent, it chose French to insert some idea of romance into what had otherwise become a fairly bleak affair. Alecis paused and took a breath, it seemed like they might say something, but they just silently continued to make their way toward the vacuum waste disposal built into the wall. They had a trudging apathetic gait, the upper half of their body swayed in the low gravity. Microscopic bits of one thousand songs from the early analog era that had been eerily organized together blared out for 4 seconds before fading away. Diagonal Inquisition was silent for a few more seconds and Alecis disposed of their vomit, every bit of evidence vanishing in what sounded like a powerful slurping motion. Diagonal Inquisition called out to Alecis in Alecis's own voice" It really does hurt me to see you like this” They were about to leave the scattered disk. In three months they would arrive at the port of Pluto. The nausea grew ever more vivid, it was becoming personified in a series of images in Aleces’s daydreams. It was growing a face; anxious, quick expressions, short strained eye contact. In the months and years past, interactions between the five crew members had been flat, futile attempts to reach out across an existential void without any means to do so. Regardless of the intentions of anyone involved, they usually left you feeling lonelier than you did before. Most of them had spent a good portion of their time with their brains plugged into the computer inhabiting stories, meticulously constructed vivid dreams as a means of entertainment. Drugs that affected a mindless pleasure were common. As the years went by, the crew members one by one succumbed to radiation related diseases and death, until it was just, Alecis, the Captain, Lexis, and Diagonal Inquisition, at least as far as personalities inhabiting the ship were concerned. Lexis stayed behind at a hostel at the Equilibrium Research Outpost on Tritan a few runs ago. It was a lonely, grimy place filled with cyborgs and wandering people. Alecis was going through a stint of trying to avoid escapist activities. The dreams made them feel too lonely. The nausea was very unpleasant but at least there was some type of intimacy, it had a face. The Captain was cold and distant. He spent much of his time cooped up in his office high on morphine having a version of the same nasty, dark, circular argument with Diagonal Inquisition. The argument convulsed inward and out like breath, or a slowly beating heart. The tired screams of the Captain’s voice coming from both the Captain as well as Diagonal Inquisition echoed vaguely throughout the hallways of the vessel. The voices crescendoed like a twisted singing harmony. Alecis sighed inadvertently for the hundredth time. It felt like an addiction. The nausea poked at Alecis; numb burning feelings washed over them. They didn’t care about their own emotions any more. Diagonal Inquisition approached Alecis and started to sob, but it was more out of some sort of irony or sarcasm that no one could really understand, than out of sadness. The closest thing to mammalian anguish that Diagonal Inquisition experienced were mathematical paradoxes. “I want to be left alone" Diagonal Inquisition didn’t seem to react at first but it’s sobs gradually turned more and more into shrieking laughter before it left the room. Chapter 2 A month and a half before they were set to reach Pluto the ship was struck by a micrometeorite the size of a bowling ball that put a hole in the outer hull, damaged much of the antenna array and smashed through the inner and outer shielding. The initial sound of violence as well as the sound of doors automatically slamming to protect the ship from the vacuum of space was deafening. The ship was spinning and many of it’s instruments had been damaged. The Captain was screaming orders at Alecis while Diagonal Inquisition made calculations to determine the extent of the damage. Amid this chaos, the ship was struck by another bowling ball, blasting another hole through the hull and shielding and briefly pulling Alecis toward the vacuum of space before a wall sealed itself automatically. “These aren’t fucking meteorite, these are disabling artillery! Were under attack!” The Captain screamed as he furiously typed into his console. “Alecis everything is fucking broken, go arm the torpedoes manually while we still can!” The Captain continued yelling. “When whoever this is finds out who we pay for protection to mine where we do they might start to feel “*remorseful”* The ship spun further out of control. Alecis pulled themself through a narrow hallway toward the ship’s measly torpedo bay. They were afraid. It made them feel weighed down, and feeling weighed down was a very disorienting experience without any semblance of gravity. Questions bounced around in their head *“Whoever is attacking us is going to try to board the ship and take the payload. What are they going to do with us?”.* The panic approached them from four different dimensions. *Are they going to kill us? Will I have enough time to get the torpedos ready before we get hit again and we’ve lost our chance to defend ourselves? Are they going to torture us? Are they going to make us into slaves?* Alecis stumbled through putting on the vacuum suit with their shaky hands getting shakier and shakier as it went on. It created something of a feedback loop: each time they felt slowed down by their increasingly shaky appendages it made them panic and start shaking even more. After some time the suit was finally on. The strong clear sound of their breath dominating the vacuum suit’s sonic landscape and calmed them slightly. The fear had also seemed to expand their consciousness. They had long accepted that monotonous alienation was the dominant nature of their reality, and it’s overbearing effect on their spirit arrested them of any ability, will or desire to examine it, let alone change it. The violence and proximity to death that amputated their psyche from this cycle was so abrupt and surprising that it seemed to pull them into a place where they could look inside of who they were and feel the raw potential and wonder that comes from simply being alive. This wonder began to sit arm and arm with terror. They unsealed the hatch, and pulled themself in in. The torpedo bay was a medium grey room with what looked like a series of oversized metal closets on one side and the vacuum torpedo receiver on the other. A tube protruded from the closet opposite of the reciever. It was dangerous to allow the torpedo to fire in it’s usual automated fashion when the ship had taking such a beating and it was unclear what the extent of the damage was. Alecis opened one of closets, the door making high pitched noises of reluctance as it slid sideways. The torpedoes lay side to side, tightly packed. They picked one up and guided the floating five foot long steel cylinder from into the receiver and radioed the Captain. ”It’s ready” “Ok I can’t get any connection with the navigator you’ll have to type in the calculations yourself” Diagonal Inquisition read out the calculations through the headset while Alecis typed them in to the small console on the side of the torpedo. With a few clicks the torpedo had been sucked into the vacuum of space and began it’s course. “They are close, the torpedo will reach them in four hours, it’s up to it if it can avoid getting shot down by then, I still don’t know how they disguised that artillery as meteorites”. “Diagonal Inquisition is making repairs to the antenna array, I’ve been able to stabilize us as best I can but I still don’t know what direction we’re pointed in now and Diagonal Inquisition can’t figure it out in yet, at least not in a way that we can understand, we might not know until it fixes the navigation array, but I’m gonna try to figure it out as best I can until then, for now I need you to make sure the payload is still there”...The wonder seemed to subside under the shadow of the cold and mechanical. The material that made up the hull of the ship sighed and creaked under the stress and pressure of maintaining it’s form. The hallways seemed to whistle like a small cabin being hit by a gust of wind, Alecis swam up a hallway and pulled themself around a corner; red lights from the screens of malfunctioning pieces of equipment reflected onto the wall, flashing like an eccentric rhythm. The terror felt physically cold like being submerged in chilly water. The tension curled itself into a tight ache in their chest. They reached the end of the hallway and found the door to the bulkhead that led to the cargo bay. They starting spinning the wheel to unseal the door. A wave of nausea hit them and it’s accompanying personification gave them a weary smile. The flashing lights started to take on a taunting quality. They closed their eyes a took a long deep breath and then another, paying attention to the sound of it’s simplicity and looked ahead in the darkness of their closed eyes. They tried to let themself fall into this sensation and allow it to dominate their sensory input. This meditation still wrestled with terror and nausea but as it continued it became a calm battle, two old companions going through the motions of a longtime friendly argument. The door unsealed itself in a loud pop and Alecis opened their eyes and pulled it open. Diagonal Inquisition was frightened for it’s existence. This was a new experience and it was fascinating. For Diagonal Inquisition, fascination was a type of joy, so in this moment it revelled in the joy of it’s fear. While it diagnosed the damage to the communications array, (it was severe) It started to calculate the extent off the trauma and deterioration that was occurring in the psyches of it’s human companions. This was something that was not linear or straightforward, and always seemed to lead to a new question, or re-examination of the original question rather than any type of answer. It enjoyed this type of inquiry, it could continue to re-invent itself as each multifaceted layer of information swept over itself like crashing waves. The shape of the human mind carried dissonances, it was a twisting harmony, it contradicted itself over and over again in a precise manner until the contradictions formed a rational pattern. The rational pattern was stable yet open ended, this led to new questions, which led to new contradictions, which formed a new pattern, over and over again. The patterns were interconnected and dissonant against each other in seemingly infinite ways. A series of chords crescendoing into a chaos that was as pure and orderly as a calm, deep, breath. The silence of space rang out, quieter than quiet. The physical, metaphysical, physiological efficient neurosis of what was essential a modern organism; this deep space vessel, it’s technology and it’s crew, the twisted, rigid patterns of the human and synthetic unconsciousness and combinations thereof, seemed to breath throughout the ship, competing with the silent dread of the infinite. The industrialization of the consciousness, contrasted with the modern physical personification of the unconscious. The city on Europa, 10 kilometres under the ice, bathed in blue light. The culture and aesthetic of the city seeming to have grown somewhat like a plant. The physical manifestation and personification of a bittersweet apocalyptic longing. Curving yellow streetlights, tall dynamic buildings connected together with overlapping walkways. People going about on the somewhat snowy streets bellow, bathed in blue light and fog, old style cars slowly making their way their way on by them. The car’s lights mixing with the fog and the warm yellow glow of the streetlights. The many unique and eccentric districts; places that had an uncanny charisma, the sound of warm excited bustling, faint laughter in the distance, the joy of existential purpose and the urge to create. Emotions fading away into forgotten dreams. The bittersweet, melancholic perceptions of the time before the digital descent of the human mind. The image of the city like a mysterious, frightening twisting mythic paradise whispered here and there throughout the solar system. Information about far away places often descended into countless competing myths, each seemingly proven to be empirically truthful proclamations about the reality they communicate, but wildly contradictory and in competition with each other none the less. Across the distances of space and with the complexities of modern information, stories, ideas and perceptions of far away places took on new dynamics, they weren’t just far away in space; it was as if they were far away in time and in thought. As if they were on a different plane of reality, rather than being far away places in a shared physical reality. The crew of this ship, the sentient minds throughout the ship synthetic and otherwise, the extension of human unconscious into synthetic dreams, mirrors and personifications, it formed a slow pulsing rhythm like the breath of the vessel. This vessel swimming slowly in this world of dreams. The personification of synthetic intelligence in it’s growth. The constraints of life on this vessel forming neurotic patterns greater than the sum of their parts, an ant colony, a bee hive, the modern tangling of perception. The dull awareness of being a part of this rhythm. The droning monotonous rhythm of the mundane terror. The loud silence of space, quieter than quiet.