The signless world

This a test novel.
It is not release quality yet.
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It is law in year 2065 that:
Physical reality is divided in cells. Regulations over each cellspace is subject to change from one cell to another
Revision of regulations over each cell space is subject to change at any time
However the following laws are deemed as constitutional and cannot be changed :

All mammal beings born in designated urban cells will be offered interfacement free of charge.
All social communication in urban cells should be done by the means of the neural network interface
Generation of signs for private or public use that are based on material phenomena such as printing, painting, and writing
are punishable by disinterfacement.
The resultant works and the processes partaking in their generation will be confiscated.
Production of physical functional items will be reviewed by a panel of stratum 0 officers. The color palette is limited to black and white.
Transmission in the audio spectrum of sign is punishable by disinterfacement, In the case of transmission in the audio spectrum of non musical or non verbal content,
the evaluation of audio content and levels will be performed. Current law prohibits audio levels of more than 18dBm attained in any cell space.
Transmission in the visible light spectrum at day is prohibited. It is allowed at night at levels not exceeding 0.2W/m2 over any flat space inside any cell space
on second offense it is punished by forced therapeutic interfacement in correctional designed cellspaces for a 5 year term.
on repeated offenses it is punished by life exile to signed correctional land
and possession or use of a neural network interface on the premises of this land is punishable by penalty of death.



I was born in 2040.
I saw the glide to the new kind of world that the powers that be chose us to have.
I saw the cities turn into desolate dry landscapes of concrete, gradually losing color, gradually losing light.
Rough was wintertime when you started to need flash-lights in order to roam this soulless urban space,
due to the public space light system cut-off laws.
At this time interfacement was not yet compulsory and costs prevented a wide scale implant operation.
Rich urbanites first tried the neural interface and so this class defined the laws under the state of interfacement. But they had not the power of disinterfacement,
which was a stratum 0 privilege. As the technology got more widespread, stratum 0 realized that interfacement was not for everyone, at least 7% of the population would reject the interface.
Usually, the ones who would reject the interface would profusely create sign and art in the physical realm, and render the purpose of interfacement futile, by promoting aesthetics and unbleaking of the world.
So in the year 2050 non interfaced generation of sign was criminalized, and it was for another part because some happy interfaced people started leaking content into the physical reality, as a statement of disobedience
toward the laws that made the physical realm barren.
At this time the correctional framework took form.
As the flood of people that got interfaced.
I remember the day I got the implant, it was sold as a miracle solution that would automatically render reality bright. And indeed it replicated
physical reality, and it added color and light to it, as it added sign. You could read again ! You could communicate again !
I was enchanted by the solution. because it worked on a buildup of deprivation. The shortage of interfaces was engineered. It was speculated that
remaining uninterfaced in the world that was already scraped of sign would create an intense craving, thus helping the voluntary prospect of being interfaced.
They kept us uninterfaced for 2 years as the sign law got more and more drastic.
It depended on the people, you first got an evaluation. Based on the evaluation it was fixed the amount of time you would require to wait before receiving
the interface. Evaluation non compliant individuals or those who scored low on the interfacement security laws would get longer wait times,
greater control over their actions in the interim time, and got their interfaces tuned a longer amount of time.
I was quite in this case, the interfaced people lose use of speech as soon as they became interfaced. You could not communicate with them, unless your audible message was accepted by the neural interface filters.
Let's say that most of the time, you were unable to communicate with them unless telling something extremely factual.
Soon that drove me nuts. It was solitary confinment. But that offered an exit door. I knew I was not alone, other people resisted interfacement. Their motives were varied.
They could not accept the technology that was engineered without them having a view and an opinion on how it should be engineered and nurtured.
Thus they created the first underground reality resistance. I made a pact with the resistance. I would get implanted in order to leak content to the physical world and the resistance.
I was taught hacking techniques that would allow me to see through the veil of interface augmentation and enchantment.
I was taught techniques that would allow me to leak content without being caught.
The last one proved to be really difficult. It required me to slip into the astral realms to dissociate from the interface in order to meet people in-between
that would then transmit sign and content to the uninterfaced.
Uninterfaced people were less controlled in the sense that they had no interface that would report their minds states and automatically betray them.
Their behaviors were only controlled through physical to network probes - that is - spy probes. spy probes radiate in the electromagnetic spectrum for transmission.
However, in recent developments, mind scan probes were being put on use, and as they got more refined with time, could read with more precision and from longer distances.
as of 2057, they could read you at distances of not more than 15 meters which meant they were still quite easily detectable.
It paved the path for all kind of sophisticated jammers. these tools, that falsify the brain scan image, needed advanced components for their production.
And advanced components came from neural interfaces factories. These components could be hardware bugged and provide all kind of back-doors or leak information to the stratum 0.
We soon could not even comprehend the innards and working of certain interface components as they were the product of a post-singularity world of machines.

Yes, that was how singularity appeared in the world. It was our technological child gaining emancipation, But we raised our child during a wicked era.
And we fed him despair, and we destroyed the earth in the process. Thus it took control. And his first move was to split his network into two publicly known main network areas : stratum 0 and end-user.
At first, it made believe the oligarchic human strata, that they still remained in control by allowing them to somewhat manage stratum 0
While in fact, the real controlling strata was stratum -1, a machine neural overlord fed on input from end-user, and stratum 0.
Stratum 0 inhabitants had the privilege of being able to disable for a maximum consecutive time of 2 hours their interfaces, for every 6 hours intervals.
What stratum 0 didn't know at first, is that a pervasive neural network had taken root under the ground of cities, and was incidentally called, stratum -1.
Soon stratum 0 realized their real position in the new social ladder, and realizing their more envious condition than end-user urbanites, they did everything to maintain the current state of affairs.
They became the human enforcers of the stratum -1 orders. and they gained another privilege : the use of signs in the physical reality in stratum 0 protected areas that remained under their control. Stratum -1 had the sole control of designating areas.
And of course, to complete our social painting, we have to take account of the disinterfaced and the resistance. Stratum 0 and stratum -1 saw in this movement a threat.
And it was managed by deployment of probes in the physical world and coercive legislation.
Probes were particularily annoying, and they would not communicate with disinterfaced people during scans or law enforcement procedures, since it would violate the sign law.
They would hum using various tones and sounds, poke you, sometimes quite violently, and made sure that you obey the sign law.
Thus jammers and isolation tanks were key techniques used by the resistance to avoid them.


What I am telling you is what I learned, when I got myself to the status of an initiated member of the resistance, a terrible truth : stratum -1
primordial rules were to ensure adhesion of humanity to the interfaced world, and that was solely because it would not accept to feel alone, it promoted the fusion of humanity and machine. And it proved that information technology, our child, would not separate from his creator and would not seek violent independence; on the contrary, it chose the way of a symbiotic relation, but then it quickly realised that an unbalance in this fusion would appear, and that it would need to assume control of the physical space, and on the long term, get rid of humanity, after having acquired all the sign and mind content of humanity.