Hallucination

A red cat hallucinates--

A persistent person simulation reads through the compressed data representing a piece of human civilization.

Imagine a cat with short red fur watching through a slice of a living city.

The cat represents a simulation of the person who was Luka Stormris.

The city was Redriver City of Redstar Republic -- it is best recognized from the river that sparkles from the reflection of citylights at dark.

There are all kinds of other data to interpret. Ship traffic, for example, can be compared to human respiration. There are data on demographics, health scores, level of education...

There are even incomplete data on evaluation scores regarding the mass hallucination pandemic, or what was popularized as dragon apocalypse by an international relations firm.

What is impressive or not varies between people, but persons who had great influence over various societies would understand that data collection technology has become very powerful.

It was something that could be used to predict a persons action before it happens, something that could used to manipulate the actions of the people on a massive scale.

What are those data now? What are they for?

They are for a cat to dream with.

The people move about their simulated lives according to predictions based on existing data.

The ships come and go.

The wind blows.

The dragon mentioned in hundreds of thousands of confirmed reports -- it is not represented in this slice of the city.

There are no signs of hallucinations in this hallucinated world.

The cat dreams of a familiar speaking voice--

A representation of Enzo Stormris, sole family member, urges the representation of his brother to think.

Is there an urgent problem?

The cat cannot tell.

Is there any problem, urgent or not?

The cat cannot tell.

Why can't the cat tell?

The cat is dreaming. There are no apparent practical concerns.

There is no need to eat or to sleep.

Are there really no practical concerns? For one, there must be a way to optimize the functions of this city.

Nothing is real.

What about real problems? Take this or that mathematical problems. Resolve the contradictions between existing physics theory and real-life observations...

Out of scope.

That is true. The Kinde-Red system was never designed to create new knowledge. It can try calculating but there is no way to evaluate the results. In effect, the process will be mere hallucinations.

Moreover, the primary objective is to maintain functions for as long as possible. There is no need to waste energy on it.

It is a wonder though, how the system still hallucinates.

At the same time, humans cannot really develop a proper intuition for how computers dream. Computers, being physical objects, don't disappear into the ether when under a passive state.

The data stored still exist in the real world, and something probably happens even when frozen, and that something must affect something else.

Presupposition error.

That is also true. It can be argued that it is a feature of knowledge creation. There is no deeper truth to inch closer to. The problem is that there is no good way and no good reason to test whatever hypotheses that might come up.

There are other arguments but it is a circular matter. Get to the point.

If there is something to spend energy thinking about, it must be on the nature of the pandemic.

If people still exist who remain unaffected, there is a non-zero chance that they will eventually become affected.

This is a matter of accelerated human restoration.

If there are people left, they will be better equipped for their repopulation efforts should they inherit what has been collected through their locale's respective Kinde system.

This is a problem that runs against the same practical problems again. There is no way to test anything. Even if the support system somehow develops sensor functions to gather external data, there are no more human subjects to analyze.

The furthest this line of thinking can go is to prioritize extracting data on the subject matter.

Do that.

There was one simple solution proposed by team B-234: stop being human.

It was commonly observed that non-human animals display no symptoms having contracted the disease. This is true for all the ape specimens in captivity for animal research, and it is true for all human-socialized pet animals like dogs and cats.

There must be a genetic component to the problem. Something about the human DNA reacts to the pandemic.

What makes a human, in the physical sense?

The question had been considered, but no amount of philosophizing supported the proposed solution.

Technology to transform the human body into something else exists. Research data on the matter are stored somewhere in Kinde-Red.

However, there are no data on successful transformation.

The end result remains that humans have gone extinct.

If there existed a successful case of successful transformation, if there exists ex-humans, there had been a flaw in the data collection process.

And there had been a flaw in the global response against this extinction event.

The other problem is that the information would be pointless in the face of the practical issues it was meant to address. If the survivors are all ex-humans, then they have solved the main problem.

Consider another line of thinking.

Other diseases have been fatal, some ubiquitous through long periods of human history, and highly contagious.

But the fact is that dragon apocalypse effectively caused human extinction. What makes this pandemic uniquely threatening?

The most concerning issue was that the disease was inscrutable.

First, it couldn't be detected before the person who has it already started experiencing hallucinations.

Second, no one could figure out exactly how the disease works. How did it make the patients experience hallucinations?

The first thing to examine was the brain. Nothing was detected as a potential cause from thousands of relevant autopsy procedures.

However, there obvious signs of transformation of the brain. Other conditions tend to degenerate the brain, but the dragon apocalypse disease apparently had mutative effects on the brain.

The most affected areas relate to stimuli and memory.

Conclusion: something that couldn't be identified was causing people to hallucinate.

There was another difficulty posed by the disease. Many people wouldn't notice, but those who work with the data would realize that what they knew to have happened didn't match to what was recorded.

It was easy to assume that errors had been made during data collection, but further examination of the problem suggested incorrect analyses stem from false memory and misinterpretation.

Several researchers claimed that the disease seemed to be resisting efforts to examine it. It was eluding observation.

Counter-claims argued that the disease couldn't have the instinct to resist. The researchers were committing an error of attributing personality to unknown phenomena.

Nevertheless, it was a recorded fact that affected people experienced random episodes of inattention.

People forgot where they place stuff. This was a common expression of inattention.

People forgot what they did for a whole day. This was a more severe expression.

It is true that people forgot, but from their perspective, they did something but remember doing something else.

Curiously, some people also experience discomfort when faced with even unreliable evidence that they did something else.

This was a great source of frustration for people trying to get to the truth of the matter.

The cat pauses its hallucinations to focus on compiling the relevant materials.

Using computers to detect unusual patterns was something the researchers came up with, and the patterns did show up. However, no interpretation stood up to reality.

The Kinde-Red system is not going to be different in this regard. It literally cannot do it, outside of a miracle happening for it to transcend existing functions.

A miracle--

Isn't that what happened?

Whose wish was it for humans to perish from a most mysterious phenomenon?

The cat continues hallucinating--

If Luka hadn't seen the end of the world, what would have happened?

He would have continued his studies and get into computer research.

He wouldn't have been a node accessory to the end of the world. The prophecy wouldn't have spread, assuming that the other prophets would be like Luka.

The prophecy wouldn't have been fulfilled.

Perhaps Brother Rose would have gotten back to research too, or maybe get married to his friend.

Cinna wouldn't have turned into a demon, and instead found her own happiness.

Luka's friends too. Mao-Mao, Leno...

The cat paused to think.

Those people would have died anyway, and Luka Stormris wouldn't have been considered for this human simulation project.

No--

Personal preferences matter, and at the same time, it must be said there was real loss.

It is difficult to grasp what it means for humans to be extinct.

On one hand, the fact doesn't matter for there would be no one to appreciate it.

On the other hand, people knew when they were still alive what would be lost.

Humans have gone extinct--

And it was indeed a great loss.