Artificial Flowers

by J. A. Hailey

  A peal of laughter erupted in the assembly, with even the Lawmakers on stage in splits. It would have been a great one, howsoever delivered, but made absolutely nuclear by Goodfellow’s unawareness of what it could imply, and by how deadpan-well he had said it.

  “Thank you for attending. A small install has been created by two wonderful girls, Kate and Laura; cameras, please, on them; show them on the screen. Yes, hold those lovely smiles girls. Sweet Dreams is designed to work within the sleep program. Everyone needs sleep. There are more reasons for sleep than I can go into here, but one of the reasons could be sweet dreams. That is what these lovely girls have devised - Sweet Dreams, in a pack. I’m hoping to see them in my dreams.

  “There are many new things coming in together right now. It is change of world all at once! Read the bulletins, please. Many things. Please join me in a round of applause for all the folks in all the teams, who have struggled unheralded, and without rest, to give us a world with a time goal unknown to us. It was decided to give us a new world, a new life, from the first day of 2016! Thank you. Yes, yes, clap, cheer, whistle, hoot, stamp, more, more, louder, louder. Yes, yes, thank you, thank you, whoever you are, you wonderful folks. Screenside thanks you. This meeting is now over. Bye, all.

  “Oh. Yes, Candice? What announcement am I forgetting? Just imagine…

  “And, Screenside, here’s one for the netpeople. The target has been met. Go and install everything… fast! There is to be a New Year’s Eve party, a carnival. In New York. Bulletin with details, shortly. See you in NYC. 2016 is going to be our year.

  “This is the dawning of the Age of Screenside!”

  33

  Bulletin, 29 December, 2015 – MULTIPLE INSTALLS

  NOTE:

  The following installs are interfaced to work intimately with each other, with some other installs, and with the Real Virtuality (RV) program, via the Humanside in Screenside (HIS) Interface. You are permitted to schedule these installations for until you get home, but without undue delay thereafter, as HIS is already operational.

  Those who have installed as guinea-pig volunteers, prior to HIS, are required to uninstall, and to reinstall with the updated ones being issued now.

  #1. BODYLINE

  Creates outer-line definition, and gives hardness, or shape, to physical objects and their component parts. It defines the physical you and all parts of you. It also works on objects and environment, and defines every leaf, tree, grain of sand, dust - everything.

  #2. MASS MOVEMENT (MM)

  Uses pseudo gravity to introduce calculated weight into every object or part of that object, including your body and parts of your body. It basically creates substance in things.

  #3. INNERLINE

  Provides physical senses, like feelings of pleasure on being caressed, and of pain on being pinched. It is also the program delivering sexual sensation, working on vagina and penis, and, functioning, in sync with emotion programs, to create erections and to make vaginas ready for sexual intercourse. The sexual sensation range includes climax.

  This vast program is also responsible for extreme humanization - creates taste and smell capabilities, switches off unconscious computerspeak, introduces breathing, and provides heartbeat. It restricts sight to be only through eyes, and sound to be heard only through ears, and so on.

  Innerline works on environment too - RV employs it to lock scent into flowers, milk in coconuts, salt taste in sea water, and so on.

  This new world, and the new you, cannot be explained in any greater detail. You have to live in it and be it.

  THAT IS THE ONLY WAY TO LEARN IT.

  DO SO!

  34

  Bulletin, 29 December, 2015 - WORLD PROGRAM

  HUMANSIDE IN SCREENSIDE

  HIS is now installed as a world program. All interfaces have been activated.

  HIS interfaces convert Screenside into an environment of permanent physicality.

  It is MANDATORY for everyone to install EVERY issued program without undue delay.

  Humanside-like lifestyle

  You are to walk or run (in replica human motion), and, except in cases of emergency (like virus invasions or grid failures), it is prohibited to move through public RV environments in virtual form.

  Our world has become replica Humanside. Violators face a sentence of education, by 500 straight hours of Humanside viewing, supervised by an automated program. Very boring.

  Example: NYC – Map exists; streets with buildings exist; your building exists.

  Open your door with your key, to enter your apartment. Inside, there are seats, beds, and other furniture, as you have acquired and arranged, ALL NOW PHYSICAL!

  Fully functional toilets and kitchens are still not allowed, but shower is okay, in a little shower room you may design and install, or just do nothing, and your local HC will place a standard one in your residence, installed overnight through the virtuality. Your taps will now have running water, hot and cold. In winter, switch on the heating, in summer, the cooling, and at night, the lights. Watch TV, listen to music, visit your human family…

  Cover with a sheet, or, if still cold, use a blanket. Make physical human-style love with your partner. Hold a conversation. Call friends for a chat on the phone. Have them over in the evening. If you have a pet, it’s now gone physical – dog, cat or other permitted animal, or get one from the Pet Shop.

  Want to visit a friend? First get directions, or keep a map on, on your phone. Leave by your front door (window is allowed for ground level homes), walk on the streets. Dress suitably for the season. If it is winter, you’ll be very cold, so dress warm. Carry an umbrella if it’s raining. Or dodge from awning to awning. Or get wet! Inform your friend when you get there (by phone, knock, ring, yell), and enter with permission.

  The RV program does give some real things – such as real time of day, real season, and like-real weather. If it is snowing in Humanside NYC, snow in Screenside NYC too.

  Experience it, and let experience teach you your new world. Don’t be stupid. 500 hours is for first offence. The punishment is 1,000 hours for each of the next violations!

  Enjoy your new world.

  35

  Bulletin, 29 December, 2015 - MULTIPLE INSTALLS

  These installs are interlinked, and HIS interfaces are already active.

  #1. (MSST)

  MUSCLE, STRENGTH, STAMINA & TIRING

  One of the most evident features of humans, in Humanside, is the limitation of strength and stamina, and the advent of exhaustion, or tiredness, if too long or too much. In any case, for Screenside to get it right, the ‘superman’ factor of unlimited ability is being removed.

  This install gives a being strength in proportion to appearance, by gender. It is based on millions of observations and calculations. If you find the need to be stronger, or to carry on longer, you must conduct physical activity to achieve your goal – gym, jogging, and so on. This is called exercising, or ‘working out’ in Humanside, and you are required to build strength and stamina through these means, similar to Humanside.

  Note: The MSST program adds ability without adding muscle through exercise, so that it does not cause changes in your appearance. Similarly, non-exercising causes neither appearance changes (by loss of muscle), nor reduction in ability, as initially bestowed by the program.

  Needless to say, the same activity, conducted routinely, naturally increases the ability to do it more strenuously and for longer periods, similar to Humanside. Like a laborer gets stronger in Humanside, as he works on, day after day.

  MM imparts calculated weight to everything, and so, if you carry a suitcase full of clothes, it ends up as the equivalent weight of its similar in Humanside, and you need to have the ability to lift it or drag it, as per similar in Humanside.

  A lot of that type of work will end in you becoming tired, as per similar in Humanside, and needing rest, as per similar in Humanside.

  #2. SLEEP

  Taking time off and getting some rest is an esse
ntial for humans. At some point, post introduction of MSST, after prolonged strenuous activity, you are going to end up so exhausted that continuing becomes impossible, as per similar in Humanside. A period of rest and recovery becomes imperative. Sitting down for a while is good; lying down is better. You are students of Humanside, and know these details. And so, you must already know that sleep is the paramount means of rest. It is the one that renews energy best, and should become a nightly routine, as in Humanside. Napping, at appropriate times, counts as rest, and is also beneficial. Your normal day should end up making you tired, and you are going to need sleep at night, similar to Humanside.

  But it is not our aim to run classes for fools. None of you are fools. Experience will teach. It is the best teacher. And we are going to leave it to you to learn.

  #3. SWEET DREAMS

  This is a program that could activate in sleep – not guaranteed. It gives mostly garbled, cinema-type visuals in sleep. These are supposed to be composed of the nice things of your day and life, but could sometimes go wrong. The cinema experience is usually very hard to remember on waking up.

  Bulletin, 29 December, 2015 - WORLD PROGRAM

  REAL VIRTUALITY (RV) – (Most complex Screenside program, with many variants).

  RV is physical environment, designed to interactively react with physical Screenside beings.

  THE TWO MAJOR VARIANTS OF RV

  #1. PERMANENT RV – Always exists, and can be permanently modified (like your city, a café, your apartment).

  #2. TOEROE RV (Trigger On Entry, Refresh On Exit) – Generally environments one might merely pass through (scenery equivalent), and environments offered for recreation purposes (like beaches, holiday resorts, etc.). CANNOT be permanently modified.

  A TOEROE RV environment is a picture that incorporates all programmed properties of items into the items in that picture. RV pictures (which are actually ‘environments’) are passive and inactive (to save on RAM usage), waiting for entry of one or more conscious beings to activate them.

  Every RV picture (there are many thousands) updates itself via real-time information, for local time of day and weather, but remains passive and inactive - until a conscious being arrives! RV also employs Innerline, and so has scents in its flowers, and maybe milk in its coconuts, etc.

  When, for example, you visit a TOEROE RV beach, you may make a sand castle. But when you leave the beach, it must become the original picture again. RV programming has to recreate the original picture as soon as no conscious being remains in it, with only time changing - morning, noon, night…

  You could walk away, out of sight, to another part of the environment, but the RV program, knowing that you have not left altogether, will leave things (say, a sandcastle) unchanged for your return. However, when the environment is totally vacated, even for a moment, everything in it immediately refreshes to original – waiting for its next visitor!

  Detailed RV & Logical CONTINUATOR RV

  Detailed RV – most of your city, TOEROE recreation environments, your apartment, cafes, etc.

  Logical CONTINUATOR RV – the rest of the world.

  Every spot in Screenside is a location – a point on a map, coinciding precisely with that same point on the Humanside map of the world.

  Starting at any point, including where you are right now in your city, you may commence walking in any direction, and for as many days as you wish to walk. Your route has to be one that exists as possible in Humanside, for CONTINUATOR to keep providing RV routes with major Humanside features – rivers, forests, grasslands, swamps, trails, good roads…

  CONTINUATOR landscapes are provided in logical RV. Cannot be detailed RV, as detailed mapping does not exist, but logical RV can be delivered to let you go all the way around the world – if guardian programs agree that you are moving logically and safely.

  Thus, CONTINUATOR is a magical program, allowing world trips.

  If you want, get a group together in 4-wheel drives and go on long adventures. CONTINUATOR will always provide the way to go forward, giving you non-detailed roads and landscapes as really exist in Humanside.

  Here’s a warning. If you’re on a beach, and see an island out at sea, you are welcome to swim to it. CONTINUATOR will continue providing sea to swim. But if the island is 30 miles away, the MSST program could, after some distance, cause you to become too fatigued to get to it, or to get back to your start point on the shore. If so, the guardian program might catch you for attempted suicide! Termination of the environment experience, and much explaining to POP!

  SCREENSIDE IS RV, NOW!

  If we learn how to responsibly use it, we can enjoy it. Therefore, be smart, everyone (it is the sole requirement).

  We are bringing the world to Screenside. Use it RESPONSIBLY & cleverly. That’s all.

  Bulletin, 29 December, 2015 - WORLD PROGRAM

  HUMANSIDE LIVE VIRTUALITY (HLV) – Yet another variant of RV.

  HLV is to be selective and occasionally available (sites will be announced).

  It is only going to be possible for sites with many CCTV cameras permanently on, because ‘live’ camera delivered imagery permits virtual live updating of sites in great detail. Live CCTV is the cornerstone of Humanside Live Virtuality.

  A wonderful feature is included that can make HLV so very real for us – bump!

  We are NOT slyly possessing their world and wandering around invisibly as ghosts. HLV is a program to bring live Humanside to us - virtually.

  Or, in other words, the scenes we could be watching live, are to become the scenes we enter.

  This is the explanation. Later, you will have the experience. We can never enter Humanside. Without physical self, we cannot be there. And with physical self, we cannot be here!

  Bump, then. Some of you, as volunteer guinea pigs, may have already experienced Bodyline-and-MM-installed collision, which causes a reaction in proportion to the scale and location of the collision. It can be a violent bang up, sufficient to cause an un-braced being to fall, or a light passing contact, like a rub, and every degree in between.

  In HLV, Humanside humans in real time, as seen by the program, will cause a collision, to be called a ‘bump’. The human must obviously be unaware of it, but the Screenside being should expect to experience similar effects as in here.

  Put simply, any contact with a real human will be something you feel, not the human, and it is designed to be of the scale and intensity of that which two Humanside beings would experience.

  It is this feature that could convert HLV into a real-type Humanside experience!

  You folks are not going to be walking through people, walls, railings, moving vehicles and stuff. You are to be forced to wander around, in HLV Humanside, with caution, or else spend time picking yourself up and ruining your day of adventure and fun.

  RV absolutely hates stupidity, and guardian programs are always watching! Any conduct that is willfully absurd shall result in termination of the HLV experience. Actually, wilful absurd behavior of serial offenders, could lead to termination of daily-life RV environments, possibly by the imposition of a stay home sentence.

  Examples of willful absurd behavior? – Also applicable to ALL RV, of which HLV is a variant.

  #1. Entering without opening doors, or passing through humans and walls, by momentarily switching to virtual form.

  #2. Employing virtual-form movement between points, when the law is ‘permanent’ physicality.

  #3. Indulging in ‘suicide-equivalent’ activities, like letting cars drive through you, jumping off buildings, etc. Do so, and the guardian program will instantly catch you and terminate your RV venture. But it can become a lot, lot worse. POP might try you for suicide – which is banned! Plenty of punishment for that!

  #4. There must be times when some beings cannot escape from a ‘death situation’. It is a Humanside adventure, and humans do die. You won’t. But your trip gets instantly terminated. If you are a habitual offender, POP punishes; otherwise, POP will be lenient, but
your trip ends - a ruined trip.

  So, no stupidity. No walking into cars. No walking through walls.

  Lastly, in HLV, there must logically be points where live camera coverage ends, at which points the continuity of live-camera-dependent HLV environments therefore end. However, basic RV continues, in HLV, and even in normal daily-life RV cityscapes, through non-mapped but logical real world features via the already explained CONTINUATOR.

  HLV is to be a strictly policed program, though no one is going to monitor it. The computer program will update environment - with people, traffic, weather, etc., continually, in real time, with its guardian component programmed to guard against stupidity, and you should end up having a good time or a bad time according to the choices you make.

  Obviously, the guardian program won’t allow too many quick virtual actions, like change of splashed clothes while walking on the street. If you do that, it could abruptly terminate your HLV trip. Up to you.

  That is it, in a nutshell. We’ll soon see how it works, and how to use HLV for really real Humanside-type experiences.

  And this is very important. While all beings will henceforth permanently and uninterruptedly enjoy the benefits of RV in Screenside, entry into Humanside HLV environments is to be restricted because of the immense load on RAM. Think of it as a ‘visa’. Everyone may apply, and we are sure everyone will go frequently, but HLV environments cannot be open 24/7 to all.