Phase Q/What in the World
After the military victory, the Flowrisers break up and recompose themselves into a more effective organization for reconstruction. The transition happens nearly instantaneously. Switching their signals from the security operations to the production of goods and services, a new economy prevails.
The newly victorious Fyuchees purchase many units of data movement. They convert much of it into new cities, clusters, and metaclusters. In every second life, the Fyuchees consume vast quantities of party substances, while also engaging in other forms of art.
The symbols multiply in complexity, as they continue to manipulate the materialspace, and themselves. They increasingly reflect upon themselves, developing whole new symbologies. Soon, the Fyuchees speak new languages that pertain more to their symbolic life than to the underlying mentalstrate or materialspace. It only requires a minute portion of the mentalstrate to manage the materialspace symbolically. Now, mentalstrate gets bought and sold in bulk, by massenergy.
Still, the Fyuchees retain their intimate connection with spacetime. In fact, sometimes as part of a mating ritual, which measures code efficiency, the replicating parts instantiate themselves in materialspace. Therethen, they run a bare spacetime contest.
In materialspace, a large, well-placed system of mentalstrate banks basically fill up most available vol. Additionally, sizable vols pack quasivacuum. And, due to a variety of practical concerns –a few of the vols are not valuable enough to control, and others are inaccessible – scattered handfuls of vol still retain uncontrolled industrial or agricultural or wilderness contents.
The replication cycle in the tubeworks follows a circuitous route. First, a city holds a census. By tabulating the fields in its metablock of digital circuitry, the city quickly learns how many people live there. If there are more producers than consumers, measuring by overall value quantity, then the city selects a suitable proportion of its bits, runs its replication code, and splits into anywhere between two to two quintillion new cities.
Within a digital city, people perform their functional duties, gleefully. Each person has thresholds for information processing, energy production, and joy. The overall amounts fluctuate, and among all the myriad cities the values reflect and inform the performance of different functions, including the continuing replication of new cities.
War continues to pop up naturally among the Fyuchee cities. Due to their circuitry, the Fyuchees enjoy the new forms of warfare immensely. Each death results in pleasure, each kill even more so. Sometimes the Fyuchees engage in play warfare in their off time, for the fun of it.
Identity in Fyucheeland becomes interchangeable. The people are proud of their non-distinction. A digital Fyuchee can switch experiential platforms with another digital Fyuchee. They can also combine or split experiential platforms into various configurations. Overall, as they all rely on identical particles which behave as one, they use identical personality elements, which behave as one.
With all the newfangled gear in their mentalstrates, the Fyuchees engage in many types of life activity which would be difficult or impossible to report without their extensive network of symbols. A very small number of the activities resemble ancient precedents with deep material roots, like enjoying the sensations of archaic forms of digestion or procreation. Most activities, however, have no analogs.
Phase Q: An interactive adventure.
