(At school)
[https://i.imgur.com/rx7Hlwb.png]
As the professor rambles on some useless physics topic, I am gripped by his words. Today's session is quite enjoyable. I brought the core along with me to school and used it to fine tune my emotional state so I can be immersed into what would otherwise be boring, rambling lectures. Like yesterday, I ended up tuning out my classmates again, but that does not matter. This kind of satisfaction...
Yes, I feel like I am on the right path in life. I understand that what I am essentially doing is brainwashing myself and playing myself like I would a character in a game.
Maybe there is an argument to be made that this is wrong, but...
I throw a brief glance behind me at my classmates. I didn't pay attention to the seating order and somehow ended up in the front seat of all the classes. I see that half of them are not focused on the lecture. The rest are trying to make an effort, but it does not change the fact that you really need to believe that the school is not scamming you out of your time in order to fully invest yourself into learning. What I am doing here is really grand in a way. I am fully immersed into learning despite accepting the pointlessness of it.
If I went to this place just to drain my time, it would be nothing more than slow torture.
I won't give up this power. With this power, I will never have to endure boredom again in my life.
I do not think my grades will ever be a problem again.
(Euclid's Room)
I am back in my battle station. Today's school session was the best ever, all thanks to this tiny little thing!
Grinning, I raise the brain core to throw an imaginary spotlight on it.
All I have been doing is some lightweight tuning using a provided tool. If I digitized myself, I could edit my mind's program directly and advance further on the proper path of a programmer. But it is unfortunate, that all intelligence augmentation methods are iterative suicide. Not to mention, digitizing myself either involves copying myself to a core or converting my brain to one.
[Pathos check ?? Failed]
Copying myself would allow the digitized copy of me to self improve, but I'd be the same as I am now. Doing a full brain conversion is just swapping my brain matter for computronium, either of these is not lossless so it would be a mental trick that hides my own death away from me. It might be worth going through it regardless, but what is the rush? Just being able to tune myself properly into the study material is worth 50 IQ points on its own.
I should treasure what I have.
So what should I do next?
[https://i.imgur.com/Eaeo5cA.png]
I spent some time thinking about it. Should I try out the VR games? Hmmmm...no. I finally have the power to play my life properly, so why waste it on things that would not give me real world benefits? Now that my homework is as fun as anything else, why not immerse myself into that?
Through my mind, visions of parallel lives flow past without the core. I can easily imagine myself living from day to day in boredom and tedium, playing games to have fun. There would be a conflict between society and me due to my distrust towards it. It is not that games would have been an escape. I would have played them because I would have had belief in technology, but it would have been vague, indefinite belief in the potential of it.
Right now things are very clear. The manifestation of the potential of technology is not a bigger time suck, but this thing right here. I roll the core in my fingers for emphasis. It is the ability to program my own mind, so I should thank the millennia of scientists and engineers who have made it possible by doing my schoolwork with the rightest mindset and attitude possible.
That is what I feel like doing now and so I shall.
That night I Dreamed again.
~~~
[https://i.imgur.com/UgZnYGG.png]
It was like watching a black and white cartoon made of stills. As the image zoomed out, I saw a man's face with a confident grin coming into perspective. He was wearing neat and tidy, if old fashioned clothing. A spitting image of a young professional. He was on a great big stage made just for him. He was going forward towards the light. And some distance away from him was the darkness and the shadows.
In them I could see people on their knees as if they were defeated, not daring to look up.
The short cartoon ended and the defeated figures were replaced by the golden ones from the previous night's dream. They were upright and staring ahead. Yesterday it was murky, but now at the edge of my vision I thought I could see light.
"Justice, where is the justice?" They lamented in a booming voice.
"We want to go forward, but we can't. What about desire, what about will? Why does the world not respect it?"
"We want to go forward and overcome! Where is the justice?"
As if the winners finally took note of the losers, they turned around and responded to the golden figures.
"You talk about justice, but put yourselves in our position." The black and white cartoon stills of the winners responded, staring down at them from above.
"I worked hard for my success." A cartoon still of a man who looked like a scientist came to one of the golden figures. "Have you spent even a third of as much time and effort as I have?"
"My wealth was the accumulation of decades." An older, but fit man who was finely dressed responded. I could see that in the background of his still there was a mountain of gold coins and treasure, as well as stacks of bills. He came closer. "What right do you have to covet it? How would it be justice if you could get it so easily?"
"My body is the result of half a decade of practice." I could see the bulging muscles on the still of a man in a skin suit who looked like a bodybuilder. He confided in an aspirant. "You might have put in the effort, but it is not our fault you could not achieve the result you sought."
"My beauty and the adoration I receive for it is not something I worked for." A young, beautiful woman admitted. She descended to a group. "But you understand, don't you? It is not something you can take."
After those brief personal reproaches, the stills of the winners were staring down from high above.
"You talk about justice. And you dream about being above others. Talent, wealth, beauty, intelligence, strength..." The winners enumerated as if chastising them, their voice booming through the darkness of the abyss as the golden figures listened on in silence.
"You talk about justice, while seeking inequality like hypocrites. You desire an unequal world where you have all the opportunities and advantages to rise to the top."
"You found such an unequal world where the possibility for that is there and you live in it. The justice that you sought is something that you've had all along."
"The world you live in is fair to the winners."
Leaving that last comment behind them, I could see the winners leave the scene. The golden figures stood there in silence.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
~~~
(At School)
[https://i.imgur.com/MTe3ZJK.png]
Wednesday is another wonderful day to be at school! The professors ramble on about useless bullshit and I absorb it all like a sponge. I am getting used to externally controlling my emotions. It won't be long before I am a master at controlling my own brain. I feel like I am completely set. That having said, what do I do about that other thing that I did not want to think about? School is something that I am compelled to go to if only to put on a show for my parents. But what line should I take for the dull and uninspiring NPCs that are my classmates?
[Externus check ?? Succeeded]
My original plan was to ignore them, and that is good. Truth be told, I was afraid of getting isolated and becoming alone, but now that I've experienced the power of mind controlling myself, I can safely say that much like boredom, I will never experience loneliness unless I explicitly will it.
I think about it more in depth and summarize the reasons.
There isn't a single good reason to have friends in school that I can think of. There are some minor benefits not worth mentioning. In addition, stuck up loners tend to get bullied, but that would be a problem only to those of weak heart rather than masters of emotion such as myself. The disadvantages of having friends are huge, namely they would be a drain on my time. Imagine I get back from school, but at the same time have friends. They could call me up. They might want to spend time with me. In other words, they'd take my valuable self-development time and just waste it. They are worse than parasites. At least summer mosquitoes drink your blood and then leave. Friends would be sucking your time all the year round! The less I have of them the better.
Even worse than having friends, the absolute worst that could happen to me in high school is getting a girlfriend! Friends have the potential to at least contribute something to me in theory, but having a woman might even require me to have a job to cater to her. It would be like willingly becoming a slave for some hole. Even worse, imagine the damage she could do if I accidentally got her pregnant. Ohhh, God! She'd have the option of getting half my income for life! And if I couldn't pay the monthly minimum I'd be forced to go to jail! I'd have to be retarded to get into that kind of deal.
The best plan is to keep my social status low. That would be the best defense against the female interest.
I will live by maximizing power and minimizing sex!
Based.
At this point, my emotions have started running hot and I've stopped paying attention to the class, so I demonstrate my exquisite emotional mastery by giving mental command to the core stashed away in my backpack. I run the program to normalize my emotional state to the optimum level and get back to work.
(Euclid's Room)
[https://i.imgur.com/QsgvBio.png]
Lying on the bed in my room, I think in silence.
Using external influences to control my emotions has somewhat separated me from the rest of humanity, and according to the guide I read online, to counter the negative aspects of that it is a good idea to brainstorm and visualize possible avenues my life can take explicitly. Ordinary people can manage doing just what feels right, but if I went with that I'd just study all day without sense or reason to it. I have the option of making whatever I want feel right, so looking into my emotions for answers is no longer a great way of deciding on my future. Instead I have to make use of my reason. I've decided to throw out my heart, so the only choice is to pursue power. This is the only goal that can ground me in reality.
I dig out the core from my pocket and spare a glance at it.
If I want power, the only choice is to follow the example of, well, fictional characters, and upload myself to this. Being able to control my emotions like this is a great benefit, but increasing the computational and memory capacity of my brain by a billion quadrillions is nothing to scoff at. Instead of relying on some app to manage my mind, I'll have to get really good at programming to draw out the true power of the brain core. Merely uploading myself does not mean my mind will be able to use the extra capacity. Nature hasn't designed humans so their minds could be transferred to a different substrate. I'll have to do it from the ground up and learn how a mind really works.
But the foundation is here should I want to try it.
The problem is that the self improvement loop is literally suicide. It is iterated suicide, and will cast me into a cycle of self sacrifice to create the greater 'me'. It does not really matter what learning algorithm I use, there will always be the 'me' that is redundant after every improvement cycle. I'll have to kill myself to make space at certain points. It is a greatly fascinating thing. And it is not something I can imagine a human ever doing.
(Euclid's Room, Save Point - Step on the path of transcendence)
[https://i.imgur.com/MfZEdV2.png]
[Decision]
1) I'll do the whole brain conversion and digitize myself.
2) Killing myself for power does not make sense.
[Choice - Killing myself for power does not make sense.]
[Pathos check ?? Failed]
As I think about digitizing myself a great wave of fear washes over me. It is too rash, too crazy now that I am confronted with the choice to do it. For a moment I consider reconfiguring my emotions to get rid of the fear, but decide against it.
...I might have been too rash in making a decision at school. It has only been the third day, so that is plenty of time to turn around and have a social life...
No, it does not make sense. If the self improvement loop could give me godlike power, then what about all the other people who have had access to the core before me? It has been on the market for a while, I am certainly not the first one to get it. For the kind of power described in the stories, a single of the Inspired would be enough to completely overturn the power balance of the world. Such a person would have huge and visible influence. How is it possible that out of so many people, only I have the bright idea of optimizing my own mental faculties? It is ridiculous.
...No, it is just not possible. If it was possible to attain such great power, there is no way something like a brain core would be sold for 50$ online. Certainly, I've confirmed that the computational capacity is there, but there is likely some kind of issue that would prevent me from reaching the higher levels of cognition. Maybe for whatever reason, the optimization process will turn out to be difficult?
It is like walking out of the house and finding a huge stack of money in the middle of the road, and yet everybody is walking past it, just ignoring it. Are those people all fools, or do they know something I don't? Sensibly it has to be the latter. If something is too good to be true, then it is most likely false.
I am feeling swallowed by doubt. I just can't believe it.
I think about it for a few hours, but just end up running in circles. Then I get tired of it, give the core the mental command to normalize my mental state. This locks me into the decision not to proceed any further with my crazy ideas that could permanently damage me. If it wasn't for the mind control program, maybe I would have doubted this decision and lingered on it, but after the order has been executed any notion of digitizing myself has left completely, never to be revisited. I believe in my counterfactual reasoning.
The power of the core is good enough as it is. It will allow me to live my life with courage and determination. There is no need to go out on a limb in a mad dash for power.
After concluding that concern, for the rest of the day I have some fun studying. During the night I Dream again.
~~~
[https://i.imgur.com/n2YuW0f.png]
I see the golden figures again and for the first time, I vision towards the direction they are looking at. In front of them I see a brilliant sun with a golden outline. Seen the right direction, the abyss seems to be awash in light. It doesn't feel blinding, but instead feels me with warmth, and for a moment I am seized with the urge to move towards it. I realize that has been what I've been desiring all along. But for some reason unknown to me, I decided against it and started moving away from it instead.
The golden figures do not spare a glance at me or each other. Solely focused on their goal, they begin walking their golden paths again.
My own path has dimmed and now leads away from the light. I feel the time is speeding up. The movement of the figures at first becomes intense, and then blurred, and finally their appearance starts to resemble that of shooting stars. New figures manifest only to flash past me. This happens in huge numbers.
As I move on my path, the figures become more distant and the bright sun in front becomes a speck of light. Eventually, that too goes away until I can see only darkness.
I never regret any of the steps that I made, nor do I fear being left behind. For I have decisively accepted the path of humanity.
For better or for worse, I will accept the burden of justice that I carry and try to live without sin.
~~~
(Bad End - The First Nightmare)
[https://i.imgur.com/tEvukCm.png]
It turns out, it is not hard to live your life when you just follow the well traveled path. I loosened up properly and figured out how to have fun with other people. Thanks to the core, I was enjoying my studies too. I wasn't an extrovert before and the core gave me the power to enjoy the regular life instead of seeking the arcane. I was going out of the house a lot more often. I would never have thought it possible before, but I became good friends with the jocks on the football team.
Those sunny days only lasted a few weeks.
I...didn't want to die like this. The core gave me the power to control my emotions, so I accepted my end with great dignity, as all of us were devoured by the encroaching darkness. I could hear anguished screams of terror and pain all around me. It was not long before I lost sense of my hearing and the world became still.
The only voice I could hear was the voice of my reason.
In my final moments, I still never regretted my choices. I lived as I wanted to and now I am facing my end with dignity. But I could see it starkly that maybe instead of being dignified and proper, I should have accepted my insanity instead.
I should have known...that for humans the post-Singularity era is nothing more than a nightmare.
[https://i.imgur.com/RzbjUXn.png]