*Author's notes:
In reality, there are no digital fairies, and... this chapter kind of makes me wish there were. I wrote this to visualise certain feelings I have as various wikis become closed to the individual and how technology can make the mind idle, as well as express how creative expressions and freedom should be guarded. I hope you will be entertained.*
The Amiga digital fairy, Amy smiled a little as she viewed her latest charge: the Wii Fairy that Dennis and Effie had rescued. The two were at the moment 'going' through cyberspace (at least as far as can be assumed), 'walking' along the well known paths. Amy felt it was important that the little girl understood this new world, although she was still terribly worried about her. The internet could be such a dangerous place, especially for a young child- though no more then the real world, and no less. Her parents allowed the excursion feeling they had little choice. Some of the younger digital fairies were rounded up to be housed as soon as possible, but it was a lengthy process.
"So your name is Nadine?" Asked Amy curiously, as they jumped past another interconnecting node. Her editor signalled that this was the way towards Mikey. It shouldn't be long before they got to the new connecting system.
The Wii fairy looked a bit embarrassed then smiled shyly. "Well, I rather people called me Nadia. It sounds nicer." The fairy paused a little as she looked at the strange stars in the world. The servers that glittered, making up the individual computers people had. There was something about them that felt... odd. It wasn't quite as comforting as she imagined it to be. All those people up there, browsing.. watching... staring... hungry for information. It never stopped. Occasionally a beam of light would cascade itself down.
"You sense it too dear?" Asked Amy, placing an arm on the girl's shoulder, as she observed the strange sky.
"S-Sense? I don't know what you mean," The Wii fairy said confused.
The elder amiga fairy sighed a bit, and straightened the girl's hair. "All will be revealed soon. I plan to show a few secrets of the Internet to you, and your friends. It will be a little Saturday field trip for us," she smiled again gently, though her eyes had that cautious seriousness. There were so few digital fairies with her particular expertise, and she wanted to pass on all the knowledge she could. Who knew how long digital fairies lived? They were un-backup-able data, essentially... and that worried her.
"Can you find a host for me?" Asked Nadia hopefully. So far, she had just been resigned to staying with her family inside the Nintendo Wii that 'created' her. It wasn't a 'bad' existence exactly, and she was in the really strange position that her family were able to touch and interact with her on the screen. Because a digital fairy existed in such a literal existence and the console was made with literal interaction in mind, she was always getting poked by the pointer, or felt the familiar embrace of her mother's touch through the controls. Even voice communication was easy, with the Bluetooth system. Still, she missed true interaction with them. But even with a host... would it be possible?
Amy paused a moment waiting for a beam of light. It came in strange pulses. "Ah, hop onto this stream- gently now," Said Amy. "It can get a little rough across here." There was a charge of static along their clothes and hair, as the braced themselves, and were suddenly catapulted across a large distance. Little points like these were like fare-ways on the internet. It made travelling very easy- if one knew the routes.
Nadia kept hold of Amy, as the two felt themselves pulled into another packet of data. A router of some sort. However, Nadia started to flicker. "A-Amy?" she gasped though tried not to panic.
"Keep still dear... it's just lag. I'll get more resources allocated to you." She pushed a few buttons on her editor, and suddenly Nadia was back to normal. Nadia, like Amy, was connected to the peer to peer system that tried to host as many fairies as it could. It was sometimes a little glitchy, and was nowhere near as good as a real host... but it worked well enough, as long as one kept an eye on lost time.
The Wii fairy recovered quickly from the shock, but she was clearly panicked. "T-Thanks. I hope I find a dedicated host soon," She said with a sigh. She also had no idea how anything on the internet worked. All she did was play games, and now she had to learn programming? She didn't have any interest in programming! She.. just wanted to be a dancer. Her teacher said she was good at drama, but... in the real world, she was just a sprite. She felt a little sad about it all, but there was nothing anyone could do. She didn't even have a body any more. Amy assured her that they can find a host.. but what if they don't?
"I'm putting in the request for Dennis and Effie to join us from here... this should be close enough." She didn't really want to risk too much movement when the internet was this busy. They might lose half the day to lag.
It wasn't long before a pink and blue light shimmered in front of them, as two more digital fairies emerged.
"Effie!" Nadia said happily and ran to embrace the teenage girl.
Effie gasped in some shock. "H-Hello Nadine."
"call me Nadia. My friends do. "She had not forgotten how the smart ME fairy cleaned her system of the Nova virus.
Dennis looked over Amy. "It's great to see you again. Helping another digital fairy out?"
Amy nodded. "Yes, I am looking for a suitable host for young Nadia here... though of course, it has to be someone we can trust completely. Her parents are against her being hosted by just anyone... she rather it was someone close by- preferably someone willing to move in with them." It put a lot of constraints, and there were so few she considered suitable, and even fewer close to their location.
"I don't know if Mikey can host another. Though she did have a growth spurt." Said Effie. She was then slightly distracted by a floating ball of light. The internet was so strange and surreal to the ME fairy. This was real? It was more like a dream world to her. The real world was real, and she longed to go back to it again. This felt like a cheap substitute.
"Come come children," said Amy with a smile. "I am going to take you on a little field trip of the internet. Consider it a programmer passing on her knowledge of things..."
Together the digital fairies moved on, upon the new world.
The digital fairies found themselves in a very strange place. Great spires of 'trees', made of light that seemed to point towards the distant stars, which were themselves points of light in a sky that worked as a bridge to the real world.
At ground level there was a 'lake', that seemed to be the essence of code, flowing from points in a hazy horizon.. The tributaries looked to be fractal in nature, but with three major streams in it. Glancing up one could make out the appearance of an occasional shooting star, but not the burning ones one associated with a crashing computer. These were very precise as they cut the trees along the edges, until each one was perfectly uniform to the one after it. Occasionally, new trees would suddenly form lining themselves up to the first set, with code being carried from each trunk by he stream.
Effie thought it looked very beautiful, yet there felt something very off about it. "Where are we Amy?"
"The Internet's dirty little secret, my dear," said the fairy. "The Internet was founded as a place one could share ideas, to create... express... much like a country was I suppose. That's where we are."
"There's something under this tree," said Nadia as she brushed underneath the code. Small shoots of tiny plants started to grow where she dusted away, reaching out towards at an angle to the sky.
Amy sighed and gently pulled away at the young seedlings of information, then placed them closer to the stream pool. It grew ever so slightly. The three other fairies watched in amazement, but then were shocked as a beam of light from one of the stars came down, engulfing the seedling.
There was nothing left of it.
Amy however had another copy, saved in her editor. She recalled it and this time placed it hidden under a larger tree. It survived there, but didn't grow as much. She seemed to take great care in its placement, so that it was exposed to the sky at a slight angle. "You see children, the Internet isn't quite what you may think in some ways. This is an E-cosystem, and the Users shape it.."
"Users?" Asked Nadia. She was too young to have seen Tron
"Ah pardon me... those in the 'real' world." She said. "Though this world is as much real as that one... in a way we are very lucky to see this side of our reality."
"I still want to go back to the real world," Sighed Effie. She got a little hug from Dennis at that.
"M-Me too," Sniffled Nadia, though her eyes were still drawn by what this forest represented, as well as the strange eeriness she felt. The strange 'wrongness' was here. "The trees are all the same," She said out loud.
"Very good observation child," said Amy impressed that she noticed. To illustrate her point, she took off a single twig from one of the trees. A bolt of energy came down from a star, and the information was repaired. Her expression was neutral however, indicating this might not be as good a thing as it appeared... or bad? "Humans are part of the information exchange, though here they are hardly acting human. They act more like daemons."
"D-Daemons? You mean non-sentient?" Gasped Effie. She thought back to the fairy who tried to change her code, and became... like that. Was Amy saying humans could become this naturally?
Amy shook her head a little amused by that notion. "Not exactly. It's an imprecise term, though the result is the same. Think of the human mind as... another kind of server. It has its inputs and outputs, just like any node on the internet, and the output comes here. Indeed everything here sprang as a thought in the human mind."
The three fairies looked at awe in that. So this wasn't just a forest, it was like a city too? Information made whole, and substantial. They could touch it... but why was it 'wrong'?
Amy nodded but her voice became a little sad. "The human mind has many wonders... and when a group of them get together, as they do here, there is little beyond limit- except-"
The three tensed a bit at this.
"Except that it feels a need to check itself against others... but sometimes, then it can decide, why bother checking? Why not simply output the same response to an input if it worked last time? Familiarly breeds contempt...responses become automatic, without creativity. Hence how they act like Daemon rulers."
"Sounds like just laziness to me," Dennis thought.
Effie giggled just a bit at that- but blushed at the stern look of the elder programmer. She felt she had to defend the internet of their generation. Amy was an impressive programmer from what was a bygone era. "Come on. The internet isn't like that. You can say anything you want on it-"
"Have you tried to speak of something that goes against popular opinion? How quickly was your comment removed as if it never existed? What if I told you of a digital fairy that was tortured even though many were against it, but could do absolutely nothing, because of 'popular' opinion, that wasn't even popular to begin with?"
That shut Effie completely up.
The Amiga fairy continued to walk gesturing to the strange tree-codes. "what you are seeing here, is typical of any heavily edited page, where novel ideas are quickly buried away. Conformity reigns here, and is desired... conformity to users, that are acting more as a group-deamon now. There is a point to this lesson. When travelling these servers, you must be very cautious. They could delete your code on the spot, not even caring that you might be living programs."
The three tensed and shivered at that. Would humans really be that crazy? Effie wondered that of herself... she had seen many trolls on the internet... and she was actually vulnerable to their whims if- oh God Amy was right. Not everyone was bad but... the Internet could bring the very worst in people, as well as the best. Amy was also right about another thing. Effie had experienced difficulty in expressing anything on the internet... that was why she...she wrote those viruses. To get attention... when words failed.
"So, the is common on the entire internet?" Asked Dennis. This did feel a bit cynical. However it was important to know of any threat in this strange world.
Amy looked a bit sadly. "Maybe not the entire internet... but a lot of it- more then in my day." The digital fairy sighed. She was old enough to have seen the internet when it was still a telnet application. It was special to her back then... creative, fun... and now that they could do so much, it was like they did so little. It saddened her terribly. If she had been a digital fairy in that time, how great the world have been? But then, computers back then were not strong enough to code a person's thoughts.
"Why are humans acting like this here?" Asked Nadia.
Amy gave it some though. "Well... there's many reasons. I can give you the one I believe. As an information system, Humans are geared towards solving a puzzle... be it a game, an equation, or riddle. To find patterns in chaos. If they believe it to be solvable first... otherwise, they win by not playing. Humans like to win- and that is evident in the internet, when what you see is ego fighting ego. Information here, is an extension of that ego... and once it is on the internet, it validates that ego. I'm afraid lot of it is just psychological, I can't help you too much on that."
Nadia nodded a bit at that. She was a young child, but even she had seen what the Internet did... how many of her friends hi-fived each other at seeing something they all agreed on in the internet, re-tweeted it, and regurgitated it without really thinking? It wasn't done out of any sense of maliciousness... but if everyone was doing it... what would happen?
The elder Amiga fairly bent down, touching the digital 'soil', showing where smaller streams of code flowed, hidden away from the watchful star-sentries. "You can classify a system as being either alive, or dead... Live servers spring forth new ideas as budding shoots, and towering trees all mixed together. Different sizes and shapes. Some work, some don't...but all exist, living and breathing, creating something out of eachother. Both types will look alive, to the sky- to the Users... who can not see the forest for the trees." She grinned a bit at that before contuning.
"You can see the trees clearly, from our perspective. This server may look alive,,. but it is quite dead. The stars make it look alive and from above it certainly looks living. but it is all just an illusion. Users can never tell the difference... but you can." She sighed a bit more glancing up at the stars. "... Unfortunately- and this is my own opinion based on what I have seen so far, this is the natural evolution for most servers. They must either become like this.. or not exist at all."
Effie felt herself get depressed, as did all the other fairies. This was a terrible load to put on what should be an exciting world. It wasn't exactly making her feel any more at home here. If this was their reality, was there really nothing they could do? "if this is an E-cosystem, humans are part of it right? All we need to do is... fix that."
Amy smiled a little at that. "Easier said then done. Humans terrify me in more ways then you can imagine. But you are right... humans are a vital part to this... as are we now" Amy glanced back at them, sympathetically. "Come come children, we are not yet done on our tour... I'll show you a living server, and you will be amazed."
