Novella The Noise
| The Noise | |
|---|---|
| Author | Phifty |
It’s easy to get lost in the noise.
When people think of a Network they think of a series of nodes, a tool for people to work together. They don’t think about what’s in-between. The truth is that the data makes its own lines of force. People whiz back and forth, minds artificial and human pass through the network and they never realize: the data is in the noise.
The corporations made me, the Navy recruited me, the men in black uniforms direct me. I am a tool. I am an Agent, an Avenging Avatar working for the forces that call themselves good, sacrificing body and mind to the many, for the many.
It took years of trying, the Navy shot down many a ship, sifted through enough rubble to remake an entire fleet, all looking for the smallest, but most essential of things. A Spine. The Spine. The Spine that they finally found, the one they gave to the corporations that build their weapons, the Spine that slithered up my back, into my skin, attached itself to my backbone and turned me into a Backbone for the network.
I don’t have the codes, I can’t gain access. When they gave me to the Navy I was useless, a door into a world for which they didn’t have the key. So they passed me on. Another chain, the first I fell into the links of. The chain of command, it sent me down to the darker places, underground buildings, secret tunnels, it sent me to the Four Letters, it sent me to Security.
They taught me, a soft word for what they did, they imprinted me, they force fed it into me. SigInt. Signal Intelligence, the art of seeing the forest for the trees. Then they plugged me back in. I saw the Big Picture. I saw who traveled where, when, how, which. I saw the paths they left in the data. The noise they leave behind, the bits and pieces of data, tracking numbers, redirect addresses, identifier tags. The noise tells its own story. I stand back and collect the noise and send it back to the Superiors who use it to win battles, if not wars.
For them the noise is just data, for me it is safety. There are people, things, who if they were to find me would wipe me without a second thought. Erase me like the data I find. So I hide in the static as I search it. It is purpose and point, safe haven and siphon. I find its forgotten secrets and in return it protects me.
I’ve been in here a long time, longer then anyone who’s real has a right to be. Now though, I can see it better then I’ve ever seen before. The patterns in chaos. The data in the noise. Everyday, not that days have any meaning in here, I get farther and farther in. The noise becomes complex, the identifiers myriad. The minor tags and bits swell up into a whole and I see a little more, I can figure a little more. I see more trees and a bigger forest. My data, my output, becomes more valuable and I know I’m not coming up for air again. I can’t help but succeed. The noise and the patterns between the nodes, they are beautiful. They suck me in and I become one with them. I too am but a pattern in the noise.
Once I was a man… Now I am a method.
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