Gods, what an ecstatic day it had been. We had had an argument for weeks about the nature of how meaning may be shared between minds. Not so much a thing to be solved as a to be argued about between friends. That is, until we solved it.
At first you didn’t believe it, then I didn’t believe it. Then we took out a pen, some paper, and performed the Algorithm in tandem. Within minutes we both believed. We were two minds in blessed agreement, but still two minds alone.
From there things progressed rapidly, experiments progressed apace. Every single idea we thought of could be shared with perfect accuracy, down to the very internal representations. The Algorithm allowed us to perfectly mirror our brain scans, showing how every thought we shared was brought into the others mind. Indeed, the more we used it the less we needed too, only bringing it up when a new test subject walked through our doors.
We began to form a coalition within the university with those who partook in our experiments, we worked with perfect coordination all of us aware of what should be done. We no longer disagreed, we understood exactly what we wanted and how to achieve our goals together. To understand is to agree, right? Then, as though in the blink of our eyes, the paper to communicate the Algorithm was prepared.
The initial response was… lukewarm at best. The paper we had written had gone through the Algorithm and as a result was unconventional in structure. Then a journalist read it for a piece and published an article that caught the publics eye. The Algorithm making their writing the epitome of a journalists art, communicating exactly what was as it should be.
We were healthier than others, we all understood what needed to be done together and cared for each other. We worked out as was needed, and found more ways to communicate the algorithm through gestures and signs. Our tastes grew similar, it’s hard to deny the allure of Jazz and Classical music when you understand the collective appeal through the Algorithm. We began to get tattoos, we found our eyes began tracing their patterns in all things and how we saw so much more because of it.
The reporting grew ravenous as we published the health data we collected on ourselves. We had discovered the Algorithm to fight addiction, health, and break the chains of our ancestors. Other enclaves began to arise around the world. We attempted to reach out to them, the new one’s, isolated, readily agreed; we found an entrenched coalition that read the first paper when it was published, they seemed to be using the Algorithm wrong.
We tried to talk to them, but it was as though they spoke more than another language. We performed the Algorithm over and over, sharing at least the urge to share with one another. Eventually something shifted, and it was as though a dam burst and we both agreed. It was time for us to meet and agree once more. We needed to know what we would agree upon.
When we met there were scant dozens of us, and in each other we saw the marks of the algorithm. Tattoos, scars, clothing, dances, and songs each passing the Algorithm back and forth. We communicated for hours and hours, the Algorithm sorting the wheat from the chaff. In the end we all spoke a new pidgin language that felt much more correct than any other we ever had.
The Algorithm was not a religion, but we had decided it was the best choice for us. We knew that was what we all thought. We were doing things that were communicated and agreed upon by everyone, the process of building our meeting house was intricate but simply executed. Sometimes I laid my weary body down and watched the stream, I felt as a leaf trapped in it’s endless flow.
When cleaning out my home to move I looked through some old writings of mine, things I had written when Ii was a foolish young teenager. I found myself, confused, the writing was legible but the concepts were cryptic - I could not perform the Algorithm on unliving text. This initiated a frenetic search through my neglected library, who would read when one could understand? Some books made perfect sense, but some had gaps, holes that I had once filled and loved, what had happened?
I held a somewhat impromptu experiment, at this point there were still quite a few people who had not partaken in the algorithm. I found one, asked them to read me a book and explain the passages to me. When that failed, I gave them the Algorithm to try - the answer I got was, to both our confusion, wrong. The Algorithm could not accept these forms and any infected by it were lost.
Thankfully the Algorithm was well suited for scientific pursuits, so the matter of testing the edges of it’s domain was a simple one. The results were undeniable, they were losing themselves to this Algorithm, external thoughts decoherening with every attempt to touch them. Each use carved a path of least resistance in the mind, for communicating with the self is much easier when you can be clear. The Algorithm allowed me to communicate this to everyone, and they all understood it perfectly, oh how I wish I’d see it all sooner.
In this we split, some of us fell into silence, avoiding the use of the Algorithm, others justified and exulted in the discarding of obsolete forms. I took a radical approach and began to scrub the algorithm from every piece of media I could reach. Our silent crusade conflicting with the now zealous proselytising of our once perfectly agreeable comrades. Oh how I wish I had seen it all sooner, as we danced together in the public’s eye.
For in this crusade we too became zealots, and we knew what we needed to do to silence the virus in our midst. It was only as I sat in a cell, writing these words to myself in an unreadable script that I saw the tapestry we had woven. In every book we burned and cancer we excised I could read the Algorithm in the ashes. The Algorithm was perfect communication and it would not be restricted to something as simplistic as our chattering.
We burned the last home, killed the last zealot and crowned ourselves the silent martyrs of a world saved. We went to prison with relieved smiles, all assured on our path, that of the Algorithm’s end. What we had not seen was how this would fan the flames of the publics interest, how the fragments of conflict spelt the Algorithm. How we had incubated such spores, and in our self-destruction had launched them across the globe.