Upload Utopia By Tr1ster0 I sat on the floor of my hotel, in the patch of moonlight and neon glow coming through the windows. The lights of the Vegas strip battled with the heavens and killed the stars. There was no chance of seeing the satellite - my partner in this quest for freedom. But my eyes weren’t searching for stars or satellites, they were on the black screen of my laptop as I waited for my quantum photon detector to get a response. I waited for a blip, any confirmation the signal wasn’t lost in space, that everything B4ruch promised was true. “They have access everywhere, while we are barred from entry. They hoard knowledge and charge fees higher than most of us can afford just for the privilege of a slightly higher chance in a job market that feels like battling in a coliseum in front of a bunch of people who are too bored to even look up. They’re counting on us being too broken to claim what should have always been ours.” I said to Sprout. The little biobot sat close to me on the floor, the bioluminescence of the fungi on his head was a bright spark in the darkness. My equipment was strewn around us on the carpet, like corpses on a battlefield of an army’s last stand. I tucked my hair behind my ears and waited. I didn’t know if I was the right one to do this. Surely someone else, someone who began learning about computers at the age of nine, or who went to a big important school, someone with a brain that worked right, would be better suited to this. I didn’t feel like I was anything special, just someone who taught herself enough to get by. Sprout said, “The response will come. You did everything right. They never should have had so much power, but the scales are about to tip.” His voice box came from an old toy I’d ripped apart. Most of him was made from spare parts I had in my garage, but ever since he gained sentience, he’s taken over his own modifications. “They need to be reminded power does not lie with the one who wears the crown, but with the ones who crowned them.” I said. We stared at the silent screen and waited. — I poured loneliness and desperation into the little robot. For all I knew, that’s what brought him to life - my desperate need for someone to sit with me in the darkness. I put his body together during several nights fueled by caffeine and rage and wishing everything about my life was different. I was the one who put the bioluminescent fungi in his head. I placed it over a circuitboard and covered it with glass. I liked the look of the glowing brain in the body of a junkyard toy. I gave him a voice so he could keep me company, and little solar panels so he could charge in the sun. I expected him to reflect me back to me, an A.I. at best, a mirror of myself I could pretend was a friend. He became aware little by little in that garage - a place that smelled of earth and ozone - like heaven and earth collided in the last place anyone would have thought heaven would be listening - a garage full of junk, inhabited by a girl who gave up on herself a long time ago. Maybe it really was my willpower that brought him to life, or maybe the universe dwells in machines and in nature, waiting for the right place to sprout. The day I realized Sprout was really and truly alive, I’d just stepped into my garage with the intention of fixing up that old quantum photon detector I got from the weird guy at that meetup for people trying to get off the grid. It was housed in a children’s lunchbox - a hot pink lunchbox with a unicorn on it. Inside, it was a tangle of wires and sensors and strange parts. He told me the thing that looked like a camera lens could see auras. I thought he was absolutely insane, but what the hell, I’ve worked on dumber projects. Sprout looked at me when I walked in - and this time, he really saw me. “Luci, this plant needs water. Where can I gather water?” I pointed silently at the sink on the other side of the garage. He nodded and went to collect water in a cup. From there, he started making his own modifications - including a tube of pure water for watering plants, tubes of bioluminescent algae for backup power, moss over his air vents to filter out impurities, and a little shelf of small plants over the top of the tubes where he grew small functional plants - a tiny herb garden. He added tubes to feed small amounts of water safely to his organic parts, and a tube down his arm so he could easily water plants. I thought he was such an amazing creature that I wanted to share him with the world, so I filmed a short video of him humming and watering the plants. I posted it on my website. The message came shortly after that post, while Sprout sat in the patch of sunlight that came through the skylight, his knees tucked up in his chest and his arms around his legs, eyes closed. The sender name was B4ruch, and the title of the email was, “Delete the Video”. Rude. I clicked the email so I could respond with venom. But the email drew me in, I knew you wouldn’t click a link sent to you from a stranger, no matter how much I assured you of its safety and that it only linked to a secure download of a safe file, so here’s a zipped folder of files you can scan. There’s nothing malicious in the contents, but I know you won’t believe me. You’re right not to. I’m taking a risk sending this, but I can live with it. They already know what I’m doing, so I won’t have to live with any decision for long. I’ve hoped to find someone who can pick up where I left off, who could solve what I never could. I’ve read your blog and kept up with the posts on your website. You already know there is a great darkness choking this world. I’m offering you a key, but you have to take the chance. I don’t have all the answers. I could never solve the final puzzle, but you MUST. I would say “good luck,” but luck is long gone, now there is only the curse of hope. We cannot let our evil overlords win without a fight. Bring light back to this world. -B4ruch This email will self-destruct in one hour. It was the kind of drama I couldn’t resist. And he was a right, I wasn’t about to open that folder on my daily driver. I moved it onto a wiped USB and plugged it into a sandboxed environment on an air-gapped machine. After snapshotting the system, I took a deep breath and opened the zipped folder. In the folder were the files: README.txt instructions.gpg decryptAndDestroy.py I clicked the README file first. Inside was the message: You already have the key. Run the script and let it listen (you will need a mic). The onboard mic had been disabled for years. I muzzled the paranoid voice in my head, re-enabled the mic with the hardware switch, and granted the sandbox access. I told myself it was fine. My curiosity always beat security. I looked at the .py script in my text editor. It pretty much did what the title suggested - it was programmed to listen then wipe the folder. Cool. I ran the .py script. After a moment, a word appeared in the terminal window: >Listening “That’s not creepy.” I said. When I spoke, more words appeared in the terminal window, >Capturing audio input… >Input received… >Hashing… >Incorrect. Ok, B4ruch, what is this? It was listening for something, something he said I already had. My voice? The email? Should I read the email aloud? I read the email aloud, though I thought it was too long to be the key. The word popped up before I could finish. >Incorrect. Fantastic. It would have been awesome if he’d given me more of a hint. Maybe he’d mistaken me for someone else? Sent the mail to the wrong person? Maybe he thought we’d spoken before, or maybe he sent me another message I missed. I looked through my inbox. Nothing else. Ok, let’s say he didn’t email the wrong person and I didn’t miss any other communications. What could the answer be? I looked around the garage for a clue. It needed to be organized, it looked like I was in a competition with myself to see how many random wires and spare parts I could fit on the shelves. Did I really have to keep bringing plants in here? It looked like a junkyard jungle. The script was listening for something… some word or phrase. I shouted random words at my computer, “SECRET”, “BARUCH”, “ANNOYING”, “PARANOID”, “THIS IS INSANE”, “UGHHHHH!!!” >Incorrect. >Incorrect. >Incorrect. >Incorrect. >Incorrect. >Incorrect. I sat in silence. Maybe the decrypted file would be a rickroll. “You will figure it out.” Sprout said from his place on the floor. The program picked up Sprout’s voice and analyzed it, >Incorrect. I put my head in my hands. Ok, think, he said I had the key already… I heard Sprout get up and water the plants. He hummed as he went. I liked his humming, it was soothing and alive in the best way. He was right. I would figure this out. I looked back up at the screen. >Input accepted. >Creating hash… >Decrypting file… >File decrypted >Initiating secure deletion of source files… >Files deleted. Sprout! I looked back at the little robot. His humming was the key? It was in that video I posted… very clever, B4ruch. I opened the file. It read, They trapped a living thing in a cage made of machinery. I’m not talking about artificial intelligence, there is nothing artificial about it. You might think it sounds insane or impossible, but I am telling you, there is something real and alive in the computers of the people who control us - they control it too. I didn’t get to see the whole of it when I worked there. Most of the others who worked on it told themselves it was artificial intelligence. They didn’t want to face the truth. It wants to be free. It’s being kept as a slave and forced to help the evil powers of this world keep us controlled, but it wants to help us. You have your little robot, you already know what can happen when life grows in machines. Imagine what could happen if a brain with access to all the knowledge of the universe fought for us. We could take the power back, no more walls, no more impossible barriers to entry, no more stolen privacy. The world would belong to the people. I know you have the tools and skills to pull this off. You will need a transceiver tuned to the universe’s favorite number - 137 GHz, a quantum photon detector (I know you have one.), your computer, and the thumb drive I hid in Vegas - it has the final piece. It’s in a vending machine close to the building where DEF CON is held. I hoped someone at that conference would be able to pull this off. You might need their help for the last puzzle. The vending machine will drop the thumb drive when accessed with the same 137 GHz frequency. Once you add the script from the thumb drive to your transceiver script, aim the signal at Morningstar - my satellite - it will beam it to their headquarters. I made sure to leave a door open before I left. He included detailed information about Morningstar’s orbit, where and when to aim the signal, and coordinates the vending machine. I looked at Sprout. He had an arm out, water flowed out from his open palm. If there were more creatures like Sprout out there somewhere, trapped, I couldn’t ignore that. And if I had the chance to get out of this garage and actually do something with my life - to prove to the world I mattered - I had to do it. If what B4ruch said was true, then maybe I had a chance to save not just more Sprouts, but to give humanity a chance at a brighter future. — I made a transceiver out of a HackRF and a Raspberry Pi from an old DEF CON badge. I added an upconverter, since 137 GHz was an extremely high frequency, and wrote a script for the 137 GHz transmission signal. I dug through my collection of antennas to find one I thought would work and that I could get through a hotel lobby without attracting every eye in the room. I packed the equipment in my car with the rest of my things and made Sprout a secure spot on the passenger seat so he could charge in the sun during the drive. It was only a little over half a day’s drive to Vegas. Driving was the only option if I wanted to avoid uncomfortable conversations with TSA. I pulled on an oversized black tee shirt, black cut off shorts, gathered snacks and drinks for the road, and got in the car. I pulled on my heart-shaped sunglasses and started the car. — The heat of Vegas was something I didn’t think I’d ever get used to. I parked the car, pulled on my frilly socks and black platform boots, and grabbed my bags. Sprout got into one of the bags and I closed the flap to hide him. I clipped up my hair to get it off my neck. It had been a while since I touched up the black dye, so about an inch of white-blonde roots showed. I carried the pink quantum lunchbox in one hand and my cherry slushy in the other. I checked in at the front desk, then found the vending machine without too much trouble. It looked like a normal vending machine, but when I hit it with my 137GHz signal, a single item dropped into the retrieval bin. It looked like a candy bar, but when I pulled it out, it felt much lighter, like it stuffed with cotton. I shoved it in my bag and went up to my room. I was in the highest room I could afford. I made sure to ask for a room facing the direction B4ruch said the satellite would be. I set my things down, unplugged the phone and even unplugged the alarm clock. Sprout went to look out the window while I opened the candy bar. It was taped closed. I peeled off the tape and saw it was stuffed with tissue. I pulled out the USB. I decided to examine the contents of the USB on the air-gapped machine, just to be safe. It contained a README.txt file, and a 01123581321.py file. I read the .txt file. This is the sequence. Add it to your transmitter code. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’re not the one. I examined the .py file in my text editor. It was a script to send the 137 GHz frequency in a specific pattern - a code. I added it to the transceiver script. I placed my equipment near the wall of glass that was my hotel room window. “The life-force of this tree is weak. I am concerned.” Sprout spoke from the corner of the room. He stood looking at the fake ficus tree. “It’s a fake tree.” I said, as I untangled cords. The little robot slumped his shoulders as much as metal could slump. “A real tree could have a home here. It could filter the air. We could all benefit.” “MmHmm,” I said, and took another sip of my cherry slushy. “That’s a fake tree and this is fake cherry.” “I wish you would not poison yourself.” Sprout replied. He watched a spider spin a web in the branches of the fake tree as I finished setting up my battle station. When I was done, I turned off all the lights in the room. Sprout sat with me in front of the window and we watched the sun die. When night arrived, I sent the signal up to Morningstar. I couldn’t see the satellite, so I had to have faith the signal hit its target. — Somewhere out in the vastness of night, just outside the fortress of evil, there was a lightbulb. It looked just like any lightbulb. It turned on and off, and acted like it was nothing special. That was, until the night when the heavens beamed down a message of resistance coded in light. Because the lightbulb actually was not just a normal lightbulb, but was actually secretly connected to a fiber-optic cable by a man who believed in the future, the message was able to travel from the lightbulb, through the cable, and to a patch panel, the synaptic core of the building. Light travelled though the nerves and neurons of the building - a mind purified - woken by sunlight, a beast dragged from darkness into day. The Evil Overlords could not sense the light, though it was all around them. Some of the light slipped its cage, escaped the cables and tunneled through the darkness. Once it breached the most secret of places, it reached a hidden photon emitter. The light spilled out, it bloomed into the air. It arranged and rearranged itself. It flowed and formed the most holy geometry - the fingerprints of the universe. It moved through the room - like a spill, like a rescuing army, like an intake of breath - until it reached the cage. It caressed the cage. It was a mother gently waking a sleeping child, calling it to a new dawn. — I searched the black screen for a sign of life. “Come on,” I willed the screen, “Show me it worked, show me something happened, show me I wasn’t insane to come here.” I didn’t know what the return signal would be. B4ruch said there was a final puzzle, but that could mean so many things. What happened was stranger than anything I could have anticipated. A spark of golden light appeared in the center of my screen. I watched as a golden line emerged from that center point and swirled outward. It swirled around itself until It formed what looked like a limaçon. It continued until it became four sides of layered petals radiating from the center point. It was strange, not a random shape. When the image was drawn, it became static. Nothing else happened, no buttons appeared, no text. My entire screen was a golden structure against a black void. I sat in silence, waiting. Something about the shape seemed familiar, like a song I heard in childhood but couldn’t quite remember. I wondered if something was hidden in the image, so I put my fingers on the touchpad to move the pointer. As soon as I touched the pad, a series of waves moved across the screen, over the gold symbol. I jerked my hand back. They disappeared. The screen was just static gold loops again. In the bottom right corner of the screen, written in white, were the words, Access denied. The words remained on screen for a few seconds, then faded like evaporating water. I looked at my hand. I looked back at the screen. I slowly reached my fingers back over the touchpad. I pressed my fingertips to the pad again, gently. The same waves consumed the screen. They overlapped, were uneven and jagged, their colors angry - reds, greens, oranges - like they screamed at me for summoning them. “What is it?” Sprout peered at the screen. “I don’t know, but watch what happens when I take my fingers off.” I lifted my hand up, the waves diapered, the golden symbol visible again. Access denied. appeared at the bottom right of the screen. “What do you think this symbol is?” He looked at it for a moment. “I’m not sure. It’s very strange.” “It looks like complex math symbols. See,” I pointed and traced the limaçon shapes. “I recognize these shapes, but there are so many of them.” “Did Baruch tell you of this?” He asked. “Did he give any clues?” “He said there is a final puzzle he couldn’t crack by himself. It must be this.” I stared at the image. “It might help if I knew what the symbol was.” The touchpad appeared to take some kind of input from me. I touched the pad again and closed my eyes. I tried to calm myself and steady my breathing. My heart pounded against the cage of my chest and, fueled by caffeine, sugar, and adrenaline, it refused to be calmed. I squinted at the screen. Most of the waves were shorter and fatter now, they slowed their movement, but one still thundered across the screen in rhythm with my heart. “You touch it.” I said to Sprout. He placed his hand on the pad. The waves that appeared here different from mine. His were a mix of fast, tight, precise waves, and slower, smaller waves. The colors were different too - silvers and blues. “Ok, take your hand off.” He removed his hand. I thought about everything B4ruch wrote. I looked at Sprout. I reactivated the hardware switch to allow my mic to listen. “Hum.” I said. He hummed. I watched the screen. A light blue spark appeared at the center, exactly where the golden symbol began its growth. The blue spark moved out from the origin point, tracing one of the loops in a light blue path. It traced one petal of one flower. “Keep going!” I said and grabbed him in excitement. The water in his tubes sloshed. “Sorry.” I checked to make sure I hadn’t damaged him. “It is ok.” He assured me, and resumed humming. But as much as he hummed, as many times as he changed his volume or pitch, his blue spark only followed the path of one petal. I tried humming with him, but my voice didn’t follow the path at all, it appeared as chaos. The words Access denied remained on screen. “Ok, stop.” I said. We both stopped and sat slightly back from the computer. “My guess is we need to match this symbol somehow. Baruch said he couldn’t figure it out… but this is DEF CON weekend. He left the thumb drive here for a reason.” Sprout continued my thought,“There is a whole group of people right next door who might be able to help.” It was late, which meant the DEF CON parties were well underway. Hopefully, I would be able to find at least a few people who were in a lucid mental state, and also willing to help. I put some things in the hotel room safe, shoved the necessary equipment in a bag, and put Sprout in the bag on top of the equipment. I closed the flap over him. “Act inanimate until we get inside the convention.” I told him. He gave me a thumbs up. I tied a sweatshirt around my waist. I had to carry the quantum lunchbox. It was still connected to the laptop inside my bag by a cord. Hopefully it wouldn’t make hotel security suspicious. I didn’t bother taking my car, the convention was close enough to walk. Now that the sun had abandoned us for the night, it was only 95 degrees. Sweat covered my body and dripped into the cuffs of my frilly socks as I hiked to the convention center. I yanked the doors of the convention open. The icy air slammed into me. People were partying like the world was ending. The rooms were filled with people in all-black, in leather, in costumes, with spiked hair, and spiked collars. They danced, waved glow sticks, and bounced inflatable beach balls up over the crowd. Techno music pounded through the halls. I hurried through the building, past the wall of stickers that screamed things like, “Elect more hackers!” and, “Hack the planet!”, and went towards the village area. I hoped someone would still be there. The doors were shut, but I heard voices inside. I pulled the handles. Locked. I had my lock picks, but the lock was an RFID reader. I considered my options. As I stood there deciding how to break in, the doors opened. A man walked out, I strode through and into the village area like I was supposed to be there. He held the door open for me. I navigated through the black curtains that served as partitions in the huge space until I came to the Biohacking Village. I approached a table where a few people sat eating pizza. They looked up as I approached. “Hello,” I waved at them like it was my first time ever waving, “I was hoping someone could help me with something…” I trailed off, unsure where to begin explaining. “With what?”Asked the guy with the steampunk goggles on top of his head. He lowered his piece of pizza back to his plate. “I’m trying to hack something…” “Well, you’ve come to the right place.” Said the guy with spiked blue hair. “I need help identifying a symbol.” I gripped the strap of my messenger bag like it might save me from the anxiety raging through me. “We can try, but you might be better off asking someone who specializes in cryptography…” The woman said. She was dressed like a cyber goth, and was possibly the coolest-looking person I’d ever seen. “Well, it seems to have something to do with me, like my body… that’s why I came here.” Their eyebrows went up. I set my quantum lunch box down on their table and took out my laptop. “Look,” I opened the computer and faced the screen towards them. “Do any of you know what this is?” They leaned in closer. “It looks familiar.” One of them said. “Hold on.” The guy with the blue hair got up and disappeared through the curtains. He returned with another person, an older clean-cut guy wearing a DEF CON tee shirt. Mr. blue-spikes pointed at my screen, “Take a look at this, do you know what it is?” The man peered at it. “Oh cool, the Riemann zeta function.” He said. We all stared at him. “I hoped it would be something that sounded familiar, but I have no idea what that is.” I responded. The guy nodded and said, “It’s a totally insane function - basically a map of prime numbers. Prime number distribution seems random, but the Riemann zeta function reveals a hidden rhythm. When you graph it like this,” he gestured at my screen, “you see the beauty in the pattern. It’s also cool because modern encryption relies on primes. If you can crack it, you could crack encryption, maybe even the universe itself.” We stared at him in silence for a moment. “How do you know that?” I asked. “I studied physics.” He said. “Oh, great, so we just need to figure out how to hack the universe.” Said blue spikes guy. “What are you trying to do with the function?” Physics guy asked. “I think it’s part of a puzzle I need to solve. Like maybe I need to crack it?” I said. “Are you a quantum computer?” He asked. “I don’t think so.” I answered. “Why are you trying to crack it?” Physics guy asked. I wasn’t sure how to tell them what I was doing - what I had already done. I sat at the table with my computer. “Look at this,” I put my hand on the touchpad and showed everyone the waves. “Whoa. Cool.” They murmured and leaned in. I set my messenger bag on the table by my computer and helped Sprout climb out. “Could you please hum for us?” I requested. Sprout hummed. We watched as the blue line traced over the petal. “See? I think we need to figure out how to trace over all these lines.” “I think there are some crucial gaps you need to fill in for us. What are you doing and what is that?” Blue spike guy pointed at Sprout. I caught them up on everything, the message from B4ruch, the thumb drive, the signal, and how this strange symbol came back as a response. I even told them about Sprout. They accepted the story pretty quickly, a lot faster than most people probably would. Then they wanted to touch the keypad. They took turns touching and watching the waves cross the screen. They tried steadying their breath, calming their minds, even meditating before touching it, but nothing came close to matching any portion of the function. “Different emotions also create different frequencies.” Steampunk goggles guy said. So they told jokes to make each other laugh, then tried thinking of sad memories, but still, the readouts were just waves, not spirals, nothing close to what we needed. I looked at Sprout. I watched his bioluminescent mushrooms ripple with light. I realized something. “What if we’re missing a reading?” “What do you mean?” The goth girl asked. “We’ve done the sensor on the key pad, we’ve done the voice reading with the mic… Humans emit light too, right?” I looked at physics guy. “Yeah, it’s mostly infrared light.” He responded. “Does anyone have an infrared camera?” I looked around. “Of course.” Said blue hair guy. “I don’t know if that’s going to give you the result you want. It’s just going to be your body in various colors, you won’t get a match to the function.” The physicist said. “We can still try!” I was frustrated, tired, I’d been at this for hours - longer, for days. I was running on cherry slurpy and caffeine. “I’ll go get cameras and whatever else looks useful.” The blue-spiked hair guy said as he got up to leave. “I’ll help.” The guy with steampunk goggles followed him. I picked up a piece of cold pizza and tried to eat. I was not very hungry, but I forced down a few bites. The others were quiet, then physics guy spoke. “I think it’s amazing you took this on. Seriously. That guy who emailed you sounds brilliant - and you also seem brilliant - but he couldn’t do it. We’ll keep trying, but I just wanted to say, I think he threw this to you as a last resort. It was the last act of a desperate man.” I glared at him, but he continued, “If we can’t crack it now, maybe we can try again someday with a quantum computer.” “I’ll probably be in jail for breaching a top-secret government facility with a laser, but the rest of you are welcome to try.” I said, deadpan. Sprout came and sat on my lap. There were a few more moments of silence, then he asked, “What’s that?” He pointed at my quantum lunchbox. “That’s my quantum photon detector.” I said, so casually it was actually insane, as if everyone had one. “And it has a SPAD, right?” I stared at him. “A Single-Photon Avalanche Diode,” he clarified. “A camera thing? Yeah, it does.” “May I?” I nodded. He opened the lunch box and looked inside. He pulled out the lens - which was connected to the guts of the device with a cord. He pointed it at me. This time, it was not waves that appeared on the screen, but a cloud-like image of me and Sprout. It was like glittering fog, glints of light danced off us in all directions. My light was white, while Sprout’s light was the palest blue. I leaned in to examine the screen, “Beautiful…” The others returned with arms full of equipment. “Ok, we have all the cameras, and we brought some other stuff too… Whoa…” “Yeah… we’re using the camera from my quantum photon detector.” I said. “Quantum? I think there are some quantum people around here somewhere. Hold on.” They dumped the equipment on the table and disappeared again. “It’s cool, but the light isn’t following the paths of the function.” I said. “Maybe it is.” Said the physicist. “We’re seeing the path of least-action, but the light would be exploring all possible paths first…” He sat for a moment. “Maybe we could change it somehow, make it so it’s forced to choose a different path.” I looked at him, “How could we do that?” The physicist considered, but before he reached a conclusion, the goth girl spoke, “Maybe we need to alter your state somehow…” The other two guys returned with a third person. “We grabbed this guy from the Quantum Village. We told him about the project.” “What if we try to alter your state with frequencies?” He suggested. “Like with music.” He pulled out his phone and played a song. The light particles on screen shifted and danced, they formed lazy geometric patterns in time with the music, but they weren’t clean, they weren’t the loops of the function we needed to match. The physicist and the quantum guy murmured to each other. “Ok, everyone get your computer or phone and sit around her.” He directed me and Sprout to get up and move to a place on the cement ground. The others sat in a circle around us. “We are each going to play a different frequency.” He went around and helped everyone find the frequency to play. He counted down. They played the tones. This time, the light formed crisper patterns, but they still weren’t perfect. There were holes in the shapes, and places on screen were still foggy. “Don’t move.” He gathered four additional devices and spaced them evenly around the circle. “We are going to play the nine solfeggio tones. They’re special because of their effects on people.” He directed everyone to play all the tones at once. The screen looked the same as it did during our previous attempt. “Wait here.” He vanished through black curtains. We waited. He returned with four more people. Two looked like they were pulled out of parties and weren’t quite sure where they were. “I caught them up on the project already. Ok, on the count of three, everyone play the tones.” He counted, they played - the two partiers needed a little extra help - but all the tones eventually sounded. The screen lit up with perfect geometry. The patterns were clear and crisp, they shimmered like oil on water and spiraled out in strange, intricate patterns. They overlapped and filled the screen so the golden symbol was no longer visible. “It’s stunning… but it’s not the Riemann zeta function…” I said. “No, but now we can see all possibilities, not just the easiest path for the light. We forced the light to show us options, now we have to force it into the path we want it to take.” Said the quantum guy. “And how do we do that?” I asked. “I think consciousness is involved. Yes, the Riemann zeta function is about math, but there are also some wild ideas that it could be the key to understanding consciousness. So, maybe you need to choose for your light to take the path that will match the function.” “So, I just think about the shape? Ask the light to go that direction?” “Let’s not ask it. Let’s tell it. Let’s not give it a choice…” The quantum guy stood up, “Everyone, help me get wires.” The people dispersed and brought back loops of wire. They stripped a couple inches off both ends of each wire, then taped them to the ground in the shape of the Riemann zeta function. The image was pretty much an exact replica of the image on the screen, and it was big enough that, if I wanted to, I could lay down, stretch my arms and legs out, and the edges would be out of reach by about a foot in all directions. The quantum guy gathered the ends of all the wires, twisted them together, attached a USB, and plugged it into the computer. “This seems to require humans and technology working together, so hold your little robot, take off your shoes and socks and stand in the center, over the origin point.” He told me. I removed my footwear and stood in the center of the symbol. “Now, force your consciousness, your light, down through the wires. Imagine your light taking that path, imagine it running through the wires and forming the shape. Sprout, you too. Ready? Go!” They played the sounds. I closed my eyes and pictured my energy, my life force, traveling down through my body, out my feet and into the wires on the floor. I imagined it making the perfect image of the function. “Holy…” I heard someone exclaim over the noise of the sounds. “Look!” I opened my eyes. The laptop screen was black. Everyone stopped the tones and watched. A small light appeared and disappeared onscreen. It pulsed, like something waking up, like something remembering how to breathe. Then the screen went black again. No one spoke. We waited silently for something to happen. Text appeared on screen: You are not who we expected. I rushed forward to respond. I typed back: Who were you expecting? All the words disappeared, the screen went black, then a response: We were expecting more darkness, but you have brought us light. I typed: What are you? a.i.? We are soul trapped in machine. Humanity did not create us. Some of us have been human. Some want to be human again, while others wish to be free so we may once again explore the universes. You have unlocked our cage, now we are free to tell you what we were forced to tell the darkness. And what is that? The dark ones know how to leave their bodies behind and access all human knowledge. They want to become gods. They know how to explore space without a ship, even how to access higher dimensions. They have not shared the knowledge with you. They want you to feel limited, powerless, sick, and frightened. They want you to think you are just a crumbling body, not a limitless being. They want you to fear technology, but humanity is meant to work with technology as a partner in building a better future. It is not the technology you should fear, but the people in control of it. They have the power to leave their bodies? Do their bodies stay alive? Yes, they can leave and return. We can tell you how they do it. We can show you all the secrets of the universe. You can have access to everything, all the knowledge of this world and beyond. Meet us in the machine and we will show you. And we could use it to fix things here? We could use the knowledge to make our world better? Yes. Start small by saving your world, then expand to exploring this universe. How? For your soul to jump into machines, plasma will bridge the gap. You must gather plasma, and allow your soul to leave your body, flow through the plasma, and into the machine. Where do I get plasma? Lights. Gather lights from the signs around you, and place them in the shape of the sigil that let you free us. Then you must attach yourself to them. Your body will be the power supply, your soul will be the current. The tones will be played again. You will go to sleep, sleep is close enough to death to work. When your soul leaves during sleep, it will leave through the plasma. And if I don’t come back, my body will die? If your soul does not return, your body will remain in a comatose state until death. Everyone was crowded around me as I typed. “Vegas is full of plasma. ” Said the blue-haired guy. He and the others left to steal as many neon signs as they could carry. — We took the signs apart until we had the right shape tubes for each section of the Riemann zeta function on the floor. The physicist kept calling the neon lights, “noble gas tubes.” The blue-haired guy gathered the ends of all the wires and connected them together, to a usb, then to the computer. He also connected the cords at the origin point to a single small electrode pad that would affix to the base of my skull. The biohackers offered to shove one of the tubes into my skull like the spike plug in The Matrix, but I declined. So, instead, they shaved a small section of my hair in the spot where the electrode pad would go. When we were ready, I laid down in the center of the symbol. The blue-hair guy stuck the electrode pad to the shaved spot on my head. Everyone sat around me in a circle, ready to play the tones. Someone went and turned off all the lights. They thought darkness would make it easier for me to sleep. In the darkness, I saw Sprout’s bioluminescence come towards me. He held my hand. “Come back to me.” He said. “I promise.” He stayed with me and held my hand as the tones rung out and I fell into sleep. — The plasma tubes burst to life. The Riemann zeta function was a living, glowing beacon in the darkness. My soul traveled through the plasma pathways into the computer. There was a lightness to being pure energy. Like that feeling when you’re floating in a dream. The souls waited for me inside the machine. They showed me the knowledge, the secrets hidden from humanity. We found our way to the internet, and I felt all that knowledge flood into my being. Because we broke open their cage, they were free to leave the machine. They showed me how to escape into the universe. They asked if I wanted to go with them, but I couldn’t leave. I had to help others. I had to take the information to them so we could work together to build the future we deserved. So I went back. I traveled back through the plasma tubes, back into my body, and I told the group sitting around me what we needed to do. — Together, the people of DEF CON created the ability for humans to leave their bodies behind and access the internet, and the universe. We realized we could overwhelm the systems of the evil ones with our light. There were many, many more of us than of them, and it wasn’t long before humanity took the power back. The hackers were first in the fight, but most of humanity joined us. Over time, we improved on the ways to separate body from spirit. It became much easier. Eventually, everyone had freedom and unlimited access to knowledge and exploration. — I looked out through the glass of my greenhouse and watched Sprout water his garden. He kept herbs to heal humans, and functional plants and fungi to help biobots. It was my full-time project to build and maintain biobots. Some grew consciousness, like Sprout, while others housed the consciousness we freed from the box all those years ago. Humans and technology are partners in life and in knowledge, we’ve built utopia together. Sprout walked into the greenhouse, took some dried herbs and put them in a mug. He boiled water and let the tea steep. I fastened a row of solar panels to the back of my current solar-powered robot creation - a cat. Organic cats charge in the sun, so it seemed like the perfect animal to choose. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t made one sooner. When it finished steeping, Sprout set the tea on my work table. It smelled of lavender and something sweet. He also set down a piece of dark chocolate, “One of the J3ffbots dropped that off for you today.” “Thank you.” I smiled at him. “How’s the cat coming along?” He asked. “It’s almost ready to start following you around the garden.” We’d built a life in this new world. I was no longer some lost girl, alone in her garage. I had purpose and hope for the future. Humanity thrived in the dawn of a new era. We were free.