The Dystopia Chronicles

Glossary of Terms

Atopia

An independent, sovereign city-state that is a floating platform in the Pacific Ocean, about 2 miles across and reaching more than five hundred feet into the depths of the ocean, home to half a million Atopians. It is the largest platform in the Bensalem group of platforms that are first recognized as sovereign nations by the United Nations in the mid-twenty-first century. These are high-tech retreats where the world’s wealthy come to escape the crush and clutter of a packed and polluted Earth. Cognix funded the development of Atopia as a capital project, as well as to gain their own regulatory environment to proceed with the development of pssi technology and clinical trials that would have been difficult or impossible elsewhere.

Cognix (Corporation)

This is the leading technology company of the mid- to late-twenty-first century that rises to dominate the “synthetic reality and intelligence” market. The founder, Herman Kesselring, uses his amassed fortune to fund the construction of Atopia and the pssi project.

Distributed consciousness

This isn’t really “distributed consciousness” but a simulation of this, using “splinters” that allow a user to send a version of themselves to be at an event or investigate something without needing to actually be there physically.

Infinixx (Corporation)

This is an Atopian start-up (Atopia is like a new Silicon Valley where entrepreneurs flock to develop new synthetic-reality applications) that is using the pssi platform to create “distributed consciousness,” which is targeted as the top business productivity app for Cognix.

Phantoms

Phantoms is a contraction of “phantom limbs” and in the context of pssi refers to additional fingers or hands or limbs that are created in purely virtual spaces that the user can control using their adapted motor control centers. Just as when a person has a limb amputated and can learn to operate a robotic arm by reusing other packets of neurons (using the principle of neuroplasticity), using pssi, a person can learn to control a dozen or more purely virtual “fingers” that can operate workspace in synthetic spaces. Many Atopians, and more specifically pssi-kids, grow dozens of phantoms.

Phuture

Where the future is the singular outcome of this universe in the next moment of time that your mind finds itself in, a phuture is a “possible future” and just one of a set of any possible future universes this timeline may slide into (and that your mind might find itself dragged into). A phuture could be simply regarded as a probabilistic event that either happens or does not happen, or they could be equally regarded as real alternate universes that sprout out from the present moment of time. This is based on the “nearly infinite multiverse” model of multiple universes and timelines that many physicists think is how the world may work.

Phuture News Network

A twenty-four-hour news network, but instead of dealing with news of today, it reports on the news of the phuture. It delivers high-probability news stories that haven’t happened yet, with a particular focus on celebrity (e.g., “Tomorrow morning, a famous celebrity will die in a plane crash”). Phuture News is used not just to passively watch what will happen to the outside world, but to predict what happens in people’s immediate environment (e.g., friends, family, work, etc…). Combined with pssi, people on Atopia don’t just read about possible future events, they actually experience them as they begin to live even further in the worlds of tomorrow.

Proxxi

In the pssi-technology platform, a proxxi is the digital alter-ego of the user that is a synthetic intelligence construct based on the cognitive models of the user, and that, importantly, retains a sensory recording of everything the user has ever seen, touch, heard, tasted, etc… (a more-than-memory recording of their memories). The proxxi is the entity that helps the user navigate pssi space, hopping from one synthetic reality to another, even allowing other people to enter their owner’s sensory streams (equivalent to “ghosting” into someone else’s body) or allowing other people to totally take over someone’s body. Importantly, the proxxi can walk and talk with the user’s body when the user is away, physically protecting the body, and also coordinate hand-over of the body when another user occupies it. A user can commingle, or combine, their subjective reality with the reality experienced by their proxxi. For Atopians, a proxxi is a direct stand-in for its user, accorded the same respect and identity as the user themselves. Under the pssi protocols, users can only assign one proxxi, but they often create multiple sub-proxxi to attend multiple events at once. Proxxi are also the entities responsible for creating “splinters,” which are parts of the proxxi that are splintered off to attend or review events or appointments. This becomes a cultural convention—sending a proxxi is a full stand-in for a person for an important event, but only sending a splinter means this is less important. The full attention of the a person is termed the “primary subjective” and it is rare that a person’s primary subjective would be in only one place at one time, even more rarely within their own body.

Psombie

A psombie is when a human’s body is occupied by a machine intelligence that has nothing to do with the person (i.e., their body is not left in the control of their proxxi or even a splinter, and they have no subjective sensory stream coming from their body that they can tap into), often when a person leases or lends their body to perform work when they don’t need it—or in the event they are incarcerated for crimes, their minds will be disconnected from their bodies, and their minds imprisoned while their bodies are used to help in farming or cleaning during the sentence period. On Atopia, psombies occupy and run the vertical farming complexes as well as cleaning the property.

pssi

This term is purposely uncapitalized because it is so commonly used)—acronym for “poly-synthetic sensory interface.” This is a platform of technologies that enables an absolutely perfect synthetic reality—a perfect sensory reconstruction of sight, sound touch, smell, taste, plus a range of 20-plus other senses. For example, the sense of touch by itself is made up of five senses—tactile, kinesthetic (the position and motion of limbs), sense of temperature, sense of skin being penetrated, and the proprioceptive sense of things being a part of our bodies.

The pssi technology platform accomplishes this by intercepting and transducing afferent (from sense organs to brain) and efferent (from brain to glands and muscle) nerve signals using smarticles embedded in the body, turning the mind into a “brain in a box” that can either be presented wholly synthetic reality or a mix of reality and augmented reality. Critical in this technology platform is the ability, when pssi is installed in the nervous systems of a host, to control the motor functions of the body, enabling a proxxi to control and protect the body of the user while the user is in synthetic space and/or protect the body in the event of any danger whatsoever.

Pssi enables the user to directly plug his or her mind into the informational flow of the multiverse, filtered and aided by their proxxi. It also enables the user to create phantoms (additional fingers and hands in virtual spaces, directly attached to their neural system) as well as to remap their sensory system—for instance, to remap your skin to the surface of the water when surfing, or to trigger the hair in your back to stock trades so you can “feel” the stock market.

Pssi-kid

The first generation of children born on Atopia who grow up with the pssi stimulus embedded in their nervous systems from birth. They are a part of the final clinic-trials phase of pssi as a medical device. Cognix Corporation carried out these trials on Atopia as they wouldn’t have been able to receive approval for this, and many other trials, in any other jurisdiction. Pssi-kids grow up seeing very little difference between this world and purely synthetic worlds.

Slingshot

An off-center rotating platform weapon that can sling thousands of pellets a second, at speeds of up to several miles-per-second, at incoming targets—sort of like a souped-up Gatling gun/rail gun combination. This is based on real research—imagine dropping a ball bearing into an empty beer can, and then holding the can at its base and wobbling the can around in concentric off-center rotations. The ball bearing would rapidly accelerate around the circumference of the inside of the can at high speed for very little motion or effort on your part. That’s the idea, but on a much larger scale. Atopia uses batteries of slingshot, as well as a mass driver cannon (that doubles as a passenger transport) and a range of drones and other weapons systems to defend its physical assets.

Smarticle

These “smart particles” are the physical basis of the pssi-technology platform, nano-scale devices (about the size of a virus) that enter into and suffuse through the body of a host, automatically latching themselves along the axons of nerve cells. They derive their power from the heat of the body. Once in place, they create a sensor-communication-transduction network within the neural systems of the host, communicating and modifying nerve signals in real time. A user can typically install a smarticle network within his or her body by simply drinking a glass of water containing trillions of the invisible-to-the-eye devices. They are so small they can also float in the air, buffeted and held aloft by Brownian motion of air—on Atopia, the entire environment, air, water, etc., is infused with smarticles.

Splinters

Synthetic intelligence meta-cognition constructs, which are like simulated versions of “you” (packed with as much of a user’s memories and cognitive models as needed) that are sent out to investigate something or monitor an event. These splinters report back to the user in highly compressed user-specific sensory and memetic constructs understandable only to the user who owns the splinter. Imagine your best friend winking at you when someone enters a party—based on your unique shared memories and knowledge of each other, that wink—which contains only a single bit of information—forms the basis for a huge amount of conveyed information. A splinter is like this best friend, a shared memory version of you with whom you can send out and communicate.

Synthetic reality

An older term for virtual reality that actually takes the concept further. Rather than being virtually there, a synthetic reality can be actually and completely there, with full physical sensation, yet created wholly within an intangible environment—it could be thought of as “virtual reality 2.0.” Importantly, it does not need to totally replace reality, but can often be used to create an augmented reality or seamless bridges from reality to augmented reality to wholly virtual reality—the term encompasses all these modes.