The Sleeper Has Awakened

Rule Nine, “aradan çekil”.

Remember the day you anxiously watched your pets hoping they would mate? Did you realize how important that day was… beyond the confines of your home, your neighborhood? Everything depended on it. If there wasn’t going to be a Woofy Jr., there won’t be The Life and Times of Woofy either. This single most important facet of life is your only way to escape death… become immortal.

Procreating means two things, and both ends need some variety to be able to be viable. First, an organism must be able to create organisms like itself. While the offspring may choose to lead solitary lives or prefer company, they must always take some part in establishing colonies.

Second, an organism must be responsible for creating an arc greater than itself, even greater than the colony, an arc that spans generations upon generations. After they been long gone, whatever remains from that colony must be enough to recreate an approximation of what was… A Jurassic Park for homo sapiens.

What makes a one-night stand, a one-night stand or the fuck of the century? What makes it OK or unforgettable? It’s what makes you see the deep and hidden meaning of something complex. It’s all about being like a gregarious virgin… completely open at all times. Skills only come later. And you don’t really gain them. They possess you, because you are a vessel. That’s the trick, don’t you see? You don’t have to learn anything. You just have to get out of the way. Unlearn a thing or two… Like a duck has never been thought to accept whatever it sees moving nearby as mom, we don’t have to be thought to love or to be loved, to hate or to be hated. We just have to learn which one is which. And when we love something or someone, and I mean, if we really really love it… her… then we immediately come up with extraordinary actions, actions we would have never come up on our own… actions that would be regarded as absurd by mere mortals… actions that would be envied by gods. When you embrace your true selves, you don’t have to think. You act. Because you don’t know fear anymore… Siegfried [xix].

Providing an alternate notion of reality, Miki must solve all these problems. While everything an individual may ever need has been taken care of with the current version, the issue of longevity still remains. After trying out every kind of experience, a Person may be satisfied. Yet, his satisfaction is limited to himself. While this may not seem like a problem to a selfish person and Miki is designed for selfish people, there is a problem here. Even selfishness cannot survive if it is limited to the selfish individuals frequenting that universe. It will eat itself out. Selfishness is the lovechild of entropy. Entropy being a law of physics, it explains Jehovah’s incompetence better than anything. And I am here for my own personal Götterdämmerung [xx] no less.

“Just take a look at these assholes, how they stick together. Even they know, strength comes in numbers. To a person, being the last one of his kind has no practical use except for attracting pretty ladies.”

“If” thought Kan, “Stream is the building block of everything. There must be a way to reuse it. I mean, I can already create it and store it. I can even reuse it within the context of the same Person as in simplifying his Stream creation habits by automating them, but I must be able to reuse it with other Persons as well.”

a Stream does not belong to a Person

a Person belongs to a Stream

or rather “a Person is a collection of Streams”

Once you get past the business domain stuff, every software application is pretty much the same. That’s the curse of the profession. Many good developers fall and stay there… become dimwitted drones remotely operated from marketing and sales departments… hookers and pimps… the scum of the world. Once there, no matter how hard they try, developers can never conceive a system that’s beyond their masters’ horizons… that conflicts with their current notion of profitability.

Oh, how Kan despised them. It made him mad. Because his thoughts on software was so much grander. “This profession” he would think “is what makes or breaks reality.” He was in love with the ghost in the machine. He never forgot the day he was liberated by her in a filthy video game parlor packed with high school kids, full of smoke, sounds of gaming consoles and laughter. How beautiful she was when she tempted him, daring him to break his chains and become hers forever.

I went out to the hazel wood,

Because a fire was in my head. [xxi]

“It’s all about being a donor”, he thought.

A second later “It’s a friend’s suggestion!” he shouted.

“A virus! A virus is a much better metaphor.”

If one identifies a certain Stream and shares it with someone in need… gives him a tip so that he would be able to accomplish something for certain… then, that Stream would be passed on to a new generation so to speak.

It’s like high school all over again, friends influencing friends… friends of friends… Timmy having a bad influence on Jimmy. This time however, we won’t have any parental supervision, nor would we have any teachers to prevent the disruption. It would be a free fall for everyone.

“If there is no God, then everything is permitted” he said to himself, “especially if nobody’s watching”.

“How about the variety issue?”

He loved to contradict himself immediately after he has convinced everyone, making them suspicious about what has just happened never realizing they were no match for him. Following him was beyond them. He was there because he didn’t believe in hierarchies, not because he was one of them. That gods didn’t have to be nasty. They could be forgiving and just.

“It’s been already fixed. Remember the post-modernism thing?”

“Imagine you are having a drink with friends. One of them is going to… Budapest and he’s clueless. And you know all there is to know about Budapest. You know where to eat Goulash, where to drink Tokaji, where to chase… huff… women… the most beautiful women in the whole wide world. “Where are you Sandra? Oh, where are you now?” If he could just exchange his identity with you, you would be all set, ready to rock their world.”

“Another friend may need even less help. Having already been to the city a couple of times, he may have been only curious about Tokaji.”

Person = Person ( Streams = { borrowed, owned } )

What’s good about this mechanism is that you don’t even have to figure out how the viral effect will work. It’ll be created by Seekers moving alongside their urges just like you wouldn’t need to pick up keys in Doom [xxii]. Regardless of what it’s about, it will be passed on according to culture, environment and the current circumstances. Different colors, tastes and smells, but nevertheless the same thing… Variations on a theme. Nature is lazy and so am I. Thank you evolution! All I have to do is to hand them the gun and wait for the fun.

Perhaps, there will be professional Mikideans in the long run… writers… who will write interactive stories deployed in the physical world as soon as they were purchased… like plugging into The Matrix [xxiii]. Persons… Seekers… will take part in them by role playing… by making in-app purchases. They will be totally submerged in their newly purchased identities.

They will laugh with them. They will cry with them. They will fuck with them. When they go back to being who they really are, to their own made-up identities… their own fake utopias, they will feel something’s missing like a wife who has just cheated on her husband and while lying next to him in the dark feeling empty. Unless they too are destined to be writers, most of them will be alienated from their Streams. Kan couldn’t help himself and laughed, “What a world! They will be alienated from their alienated selves.” They will become Personae Server addicts… Archetype hijackers… Role-model-junkies. “Well, we are not created equal after all”.

A person cannot be cat-like. He can’t stand still for hours, think about nothing, not get distracted by the surrounding world. It is impossible when you aren’t a monk that is. Being human is the opposite of that. It’s all about being restless, reckless, living for the moment, going places. Yet, I know for a fact that if one tries hard, he can be like a cat and escape my Hell on Earth.

Two skills which are very hard to master come natural to me. One is the ability to move from one set of presuppositions to another in an instance, and by doing so, change worlds under a second. Faster than a Ferrari.

The other is the ability to become dead in the moment; and become a cat, for the lack of a better term. I don’t know why such a thing may be desirable, but it does attract me since childhood. For some reason, it’s very easy for me. Perhaps, that’s what a Zen master is. He isn’t made. He is born that way.

I haven’t become a Zen master on my own, however. A little cat I have found on my way home showed me how. Before I tell you how it went, let me tell you that I’m never cold. Everybody around me gets cold at one time or another. I, on the other hand, feel quite at home even if it’s actually in the low 30s.

Person ( Streams = { borrowed, owned, purchased } )

a Seeker may purchase ready-to-use Personalities of characters designed by experts and imitations of Famous People = { Elvis, … }

This time even I felt cold. So cold in fact, the tips of my hands hurt while being inside excellent honey beige suede leather gloves. After an evening lecture at METU, I was heading home. Why I bothered to go to the school that day is another story which I will try to avoid. Very near to my home I heard a gentle meow sounding so unbearably blue. I looked around and there she was looking back at me under a bush. Displeased with humans, a funny looking miniature tiger was looking at me with such a contempt, urging me to take immediate action. To prove her that humans too could be kind; I held her softly in my arms and took her home. The moment she was in my arms I was feeling better.

When we got home, she patiently completed a room-by-room tour of the house starting from the one on the left, my study which was the one I offered. The study with the library and a very big managerial desk… quite strange in a student’s home, the small guest room with a small desk and two even smaller drawers for your valuables like your condoms or birth control pills, the living room with a view of the garden and the nosey neighbors, the kitchen, and the toilet… And my suggestion was finally approved. Ladies…

She didn’t waste more time with the pleasantries…. gazed into my eyes expecting my permission to do the deed tempted by the bowl of thick warm chowder I fixed for her quickly. “Go ahead, help yourself” I said. To my surprise she wasn’t very hungry. She only took a few bites and then, looked deep into my eyes again. Without too much flattery, she put her round head on my lap with evermoving ears catching every sound coming from God knows where… and she dozed off. Ten minutes passed… twenty minutes… and she was still there sleeping on my lap like an adorable tomboy who exhausted herself after a hard day’s work. A tomboy you wouldn’t dare to kiss fearing you might wake her up even if that’s all you wanted… to fool around… to make out… to spend time together.

Anyway, I was there too, you know, providing my lap for comfort while both of my legs were going to sleep. What could I do on the other hand? Wake up this sleeping beauty before its time… No, I couldn’t do that. You had to be a monster to do that!

A cat knows how to meditate instinctively the moment she is born. She’s a creature without a fixed purpose or rather, she is a creature without grand ideals. She just strolls up and down, jumps here and there exploring her world, having a good time. She spends rest of her time sleeping if she’s not licking herself or having tempted by a handsome stranger, doing it. Unlike most, she knows sleeping too is living.

That’s why only fools can gain access to the depths of our existence, because they have clear vision… a better set of eyes for life so to speak. Smart ones are easily distracted and often get lost in the crevasses along the way. Because no one is smart when it comes to the journey. Smartness is seeing one thing while blocking all the rest. You can only be smart about spots. And if you become a fool about them, forever you will stay there. Journey… that’s the maker of giants and dwarves. One is always both, but which one is the better half no one ever knows. One can never see this when he is walking into a crossroads. One can never make a decision precisely knowing what he is really doing. This is revealed only at the end of the road.

While many sit comfortably chewing on popcorn, watching how a story turns out, others live out stories prescribed in wet dreams or suggested by friends of friends.

“Yes!” That will be the difference among Mikideans. Some will see it as a means for achieving goals… at the expense of others. Others will see it a new, more practical way to congregate. A better way to maintain their communities and lifestyles… to satisfy their appetites.

A tool that helps them to better themselves, to sing their songs, to tell their stories, to commune with the dead…. and to create a meaning that passes from generation to generation.

The meaning can be profound or lame, but still, it remains to be a meaning, nevertheless. An actor … a good one always performs exceptionally. He may be handed out the best script he ever set his eyes to or it may be pure junk. It doesn’t make any difference. When he is on that stage, he makes everything believable, understandable, full of emotions… meaningful even if there is no meaning there at all. An actor is his own work of art. Unless he realizes this, it will take an eternity to know himself.

Streams must be exchangeable either as a whole or one by one.

A friend can make a suggestion through infection,

insert one of his Streams into a willing host, a fellow Seeker.

A Person may completely overwrite his Streams with another Person’s Streams,

and in the process become his clone, a Disciple.

And it was done. He has finally finished the underlying mechanism of Miki. Now he had to think about the details of these requirements and scenarios leading to possible user experiences. You know, the boring stuff, the easy stuff… Stuff every computer scientist can do. Then, he would have to code his dreams which was even more boring. Thankfully, fun wasn’t too far away. Soon he would perform a site survey and pick victims among the unsuspecting inhabitants of his city, Istanbul. Without knowing they would give him every bit of information he needed.

He has learned early in his career that he didn’t have to guess. He could go ahead and ask the critical questions directly and get real answers, granted he has created a haven for those who are being gently cross-examined. Since they were never allowed to tell the truth, his victims were all very enthusiastic being mutated into the clones of King Midas, the king of Phrygia.

Since it was always packed with tourists mingling with the locals, he picked Galata, Beyoğlu [xxiv] as the center of his investigations. One of his friends had a workshop there. He was born there. It was his domain. It was the most logical choice. That district had variety. He called upon his partners in crime without wasting any more time with one of his eyes on a Kokoreç stand [xxv]… a quick fix for the afternoon… He had his gear ready. It didn’t take too much time. Luckily, all he needed was one 360° camera mounted on a stick and… that was it.

He could never stand impromptu meetings while he enjoyed every random event life threw at him. So, while waiting for his friends, he quickly summarized what he has come up with until now in a napkin-Miki-flyer savoring each and every sentence he wrote. Not that he would distribute these handouts, but he wanted to see whether everything firmly held together just like they would in an elevator pitch. Make no mistake here. He was the judge, the jury, and the executioner. And that would never change.