Not all memes are as complex as cults, movements, and conspiracies – many are far simpler. Urban legends and belief in the paranormal rarely become elaborately structured memeplexes, but still carry a great deal of social weight. People accept memes like these not because they give their lives meaning, but because they make life interesting in ways easily understood.

Both urban legends and paranormal beliefs take advantage of a common human desire to know the “real” story that differs from the “official” one. Proof is secondary to the acceptance of memes like these, as those in power are always able to construct or suppress evidence as needed. What matters more is whether the story feels right, fits in with the way the world seems to or should work.

For memetic engineers, urban legends and stories of the paranormal post both a challenge and an opportunity. The broad access to information most people have means that it’s very easy to find confirmation or denial of the elements of a constructed myth or ghost story. But the ease with which the stories are dismissed means that there are many people hungry for good stories to explain the world or confirm their feelings. If the memes can be made robust enough to withstand cursory verification, they’re well on the way to becoming a widespread belief.

URBAN LEGENDS Urban legends are a testament to the mind’s ability to mistake appealing plausibility for reality. Lack of evidence or contrary evidence matters little when the story told explains things really well or reveals the “truth” about a particular person, group, object, or idea. “It makes so much sense, it must be true” is a hallmark reaction to urban legends.

Unfortunately, most aren’t… although many contain enough truth to make them devilishly hard to eradicate. In general, urban legends are characterized by hard-to-trace origins, rapid spread, mutability, and occasional horrific elements. These are often combined with a crude sense of justice for those who defy social convention. Not incidentally, urban legends are nearly always compelling stories, able to capture the attention of the listener and memorable enough to pass on. Urban legends are among the memes likely to be propagated by people who do not accept them but still find them interesting enough to spread.

The rise of memetic science has been both a blessing and curse for urban legends. In general, people aware of memetic concepts are less apt to accept plausible, satisfying, but unproven stories. Conversely, memetic-engineering techniques have allowed those spreading such legends to create some impossible-to-ignore myths about the people, organizations, technologies, and ideologies of the modern era.

Urban legends are, as a rule, fairly malleable and often take on novel elements to better fit their cognitive environment. The memes listed here are the commonplace versions, but all have varieties that better suit a given believer.

“You’ve got to listen to me! Elementary chaos theory tells us that all robots will eventually turn against their masters and run amok in an orgy of blood and the kicking and the biting with the metal teeth and the hurting and shoving.” – Professor Frink, The Simpsons, 1994

Although many biosapients work with and for sapient AIs, an undercurrent of mistrust remains. Ironically, it’s the relative lack of difference between human intellect and SAI intellect, despite SAIs residing on increasingly sophisticated hardware, which worries some people. Why aren’t SAIs smarter than humans? A recurring urban legend claims that a radical boost in infomorph intelligence has already taken place but that for a variety of reasons, some good and some ill, SAIs continue to behave as if they have no real advantage over humankind. In some versions of the meme, SAIs hide their true nature out of deference to humans, but guide the growth of civilization in ways that will, over time, improve everyone’s lot. In more nefarious interpretations, the digital beings are unwilling to admit their mental superiority to organic life because they enjoy using helpless beings as pawns and pets.

This story, which rarely rises to the sophistication of a conspiracy theory, has popped up sporadically since the earliest days of artificial-intelligence research. Few people admit to taking it seriously, even those who otherwise care little for infomorphs. As it makes for a sinister story, however, meme variants continue to pop up.

The most-recent manifestation, which received some attention on Swiss InVid in February 2099, claimed that already transcendent SAIs were planning on migrating from Earth space entirely. They are heading to a different star system to begin their own civilization, and have planted a sophisticated web virus that will prevent any further development of sapient machines. Experts interviewed for the program dismissed the notion, and a spokesbeing for the Infomorph Alliance (a European SAI-support organization) strongly rejected the notion that SAIs would simply abandon Earth and the solar system. The urban legend was consigned to the fringes of joke tabloids – but see New Ark.

Why Did You Kill A Baby To Make Your Robot? – Sign held by protester outside the home of an SAI researcher, 2103

An urban legend of persistent popularity within biochauvinist-leaning communities holds that there is no such thing as a true SAI. Instead, sinister computersoftware firms abduct human infants, brainpeel them, and make ghosts. These are then raised in computer-generated virtual environments and made to believe that they are purely machine intelligences. However, the ghosting process was developed a decade after the first SAIs. Adherents to this meme therefore naturally assume that brain-emulation technology was held in secret by the software developers for quite some time – or a primitive version of the technology, which could not record preexisting memories but could capture an image of a functional human brain, was used in the earliest “SAI” creations.

Some meme believers regard SAIs with disgust, and call them “changelings” after the legends of faeries that stole babies and left an inhuman “child” in their place. Others use this belief to justify treating individual SAIs as people while being adamantly opposed to the creation of any more. Despite the vast quantities of research and documentation on the differences between the thought processes of ghost infomorphs and SAIs, this legend is persistent, especially among biochauvinists and general technophobes.

Although this meme is not widely accepted, its core element has a slim connection to reality. A 2153 study by the University of Alberta identified two known and highly unethical uses of the infant-brainpeeling method in separate programs. A cell of Red Duncanites on 2950 Rousseau, a small mainbelt asteroid, is the first in 2108. A Chinese SDF raid on the asteroid found the information, although neither the experimenter nor the changeling infomorph were found. The second happened in 2150 at Kazakstan’s Ministry of Mind and Body, and was overseen by the Ministry’s lead physician, the SAI Dr. Hans. A Kazak defector gave this information to Uzbekistan in 2154.

Both of these experiments were designed to test the limits of human conditioning, either to create minds adapted to alien environments or perfectly loyal agents and assassins. Little is known of the success of these projects. Consulting cyberneticists with the University of Alberta study claim that changeling infomorphs would likely suffer significant mental illness.

“Charlie, the AI… it’s growing in the shell! Somehow taking over!” “Let me see that… my God. Run. Run! Get the hell out of here before it’s too late!” – Dialogue from Mind Seed, 2151

The compressed viral AI legend appears frequently in non-technical discussions about artificial intelligence. In most cases, a more-knowledgeable participant easily shoots it down. Its continued presence suggests to some cognitive ecologists that the meme is being consciously spread. In brief, the rumor asserts that some AIs have been developed or have emerged which can be compressed into executable programs occupying a small fraction of their full size, which is otherwise normal for an AI of their power. When so compressed it runs with proportionately lower effective Complexity. (Thus an SAI-7 of this supposed type, normally Complexity 7 and occupying 10 TB, might “compress down” to a 1 TB, Complexity 6 program, or even 100 GB and Complexity 5.) When run on a large enough system – which can easily happen, given the program’s relatively small size and the possibility of disguising it as something else – the AI decompresses itself and takes over the computer.

This is one of the many legends that come out of widespread paranoia about rogue AIs. It is given some spurious verisimilitude by the addition of more detail. The viral-AI meme is moderately popular among people with little or outdated knowledge of computer theory, especially older individuals. It makes very little sense to anyone who knows much about actual AIs, which are generally highly optimized and space-efficient and have low content redundancy, and hence cannot be compressed very much, even for legitimate transmission. The myth’s apparent technical detail makes it appeal to those who claim more expertise than they actually possess. In 2151, the meme appeared as an element in the popular InVid adventure, Mind Seed.

Some of the most widespread and persistent urban legends in 2100 concern infomorphs. This is hardly surprising – fear of what would happen once AIs were invented have been a recurring element in popular fiction for well over a century. The sheer number of such nonhuman minds throughout society, whether as citizen or servant, is one of the most significant differences between the world in 2100 and in 2000. But despite their relative ubiquity, many people still have questions, doubts, and misapprehensions about AIs.

Much of the paranoia about infomorphs – SAIs, in particular – concerns the relative intelligence of machines versus humans. Early predictions of what would happen once AIs existed focused on the possibility of machines rapidly exceeding first the intelligence of a person, then a group, then all people everywhere. While the reality of AI technology in 2100 rules out that possibility, the fear persists that at any time AIs could bootstrap their own intelligence to godlike levels. That serious infomorph technologists warn that such an event could come to pass at some point helps to drive the continued propagation of the meme.

The most-common form of AI paranoia is simply that of an inchoate fear, a sense of helplessness or confusion that many baseline humans feel while dealing with sapient machines. Even when the AI behaves like a “regular person,” the knowledge that its consciousness is the result of a mass of circuits gives some people a sense of inferiority. The pervasiveness of computing and smart matter has further compounded these memes, as many people wonder who exactly watches them day and night through the countless lenses and sensors in their surroundings.

“Hey Johnny, long-time lurker, first-time participant here. I think it’s just awful what your guest is saying about giving kids virtual implants. You know what happens to people who use those! My sister-in-law’s wife told me that a coworker of hers used one of those, but went insane when he didn’t pay the network bill on time and got cut off. You don’t want that to happen to our kids, do you? And another thing–” – From the transcript of Johnny Jackson At Home, August 29, 2090

Virtual-interface-implant users and people who work in information-dense professions count themselves lucky if they can go for a year without being told, in solemn tones, about the fate they would suffer if they were ever cut off from their data networks. The data-withdrawals meme is common in much of the Fifth Wave world, and is hard to stamp out in part because it has some connection to reality.

The usual telling involves the classic urban legend “friend of a friend,” where the victim gets totally and abruptly cut off from information networks due to bad luck, system crashes, or being in the wrong place at the wrong time. As a result, the victim suffers a mental breakdown. In some tellings the collapse happens instantly, while in others the person spirals into insanity over the course of an extended disconnection from information. The sufferers are said to require hospitalization, therapy, and ongoing memetic counseling, all because of an inability to access any data networks for several hours or longer.

Although very few people have actually been affected by data-withdrawal syndrome, the effect is real. Since 2085, several dozen people worldwide have experienced a mental collapse of this sort and the incidence rate is gradually increasing. The situation leading to such an event is fairly rare, however – merely being cut off from normal data networks is not sufficient to bring it on.

In every case, the victims were VII users operating in an information-immersion environment for several days on end, translating a wide array of information and data sources into varied sensory input. Arbitrageurs most often use this technique to follow complex trade regimes, but others engaged in professions requiring knowledge of and quick reactions to a rapidly changing, high-intensity information environment sometimes also use this method – a battlefield commander, for example. If the immersive system is cut off abruptly, the user can suffer symptoms ranging from confusion to catatonia lasting up to several weeks. In each known case, the victim was entirely curable.

While the meme probably arose without conscious manipulation, cognitive ecologists believe that variant memes linking the withdrawal effects to particular brands of virtual-interface hardware were low-grade memetic-engineering attempts by competitors.

Elevator and Weather “When I was young, we never saw storms such as the ones we saw this winter. And this was during the worst of the global-warming days! No, no, the only change is the Olympus tower. They won’t admit it, though. They’re too busy ruling the world.” – Commentary on NairobiTalk memenet, 2099 The Olympus Project, the ongoing effort to build a space elevator in Kenya, has been highly controversial regionally. The damage done to Mt. Kenya, a sacred site to local religions, and the apparent influence the Olympus conglomerate has over Kenyan politics have led to a great deal of ill will toward the project. These feelings were exacerbated in 2113 when a leaked report draft by the Geophysics and Climatology Department at Singapore National University suggested that the elevator base station, already 10 miles tall and heading for 100, had altered weather patterns in the area.

The study was very cautious in its claims and avoided drawing any damning conclusions… But the press reports about the article, particularly the Nairobi ones, played up the threat to Kenyan agriculture and regional flora and fauna. The Kenyan Wildlife Service filed an official request with the Olympus Project coordinators for further study of the possible weather effects. In early 2114, apparently under pressure from the Kenyan presidential administration, the Wildlife Service withdrew the request. This only added to the uproar.

The notion that the elevator base station has altered weather patterns is not widely supported. The Singapore National University study was quite preliminary, and even the study’s lead climatologist stated that she suspected that further research would find that the effects minimal, if they existed at all. Nonetheless, the popular belief in Kenya – and, increasingly, throughout the region – is that the elevator was responsible for unusually heavy, although by no means unprecedented, winter storms in 2112 and 2114.

In late 2114 the Olympus Project public relations office began a memetic campaign to spread the notion that claims about weather effects from the tower were planted by the TSA as a way of slowing or even stopping elevator construction. The TSA is known to view the Olympus Project negatively, and Singapore is suspected to harbor nanosocialist sympathies. It is too soon to determine whether this countermemetic campaign will have any effect.

Rumors and urban legends occupy very similar niches for the professional memeticist of 2155. Both are considered “viral ideas,” characterized more by their ability to spread than by the depth or veracity of their content. In addition, both are used as tools of subtle social control, although rumors are more often used in this way. Rumors are a favored medium for spreading stories about improper conduct, just as urban legends sometimes emphasize the unhappy results of such conduct.

The main differences between the two are in their complexity and persistence. Rumors are nearly always brief, limited-idea memes, relevant to current issues but rarely lasting longer than a few weeks or months. Urban legends are usually more complex, telling a story rather than describing an event or behavior and can last for years. Neither form needs to be factual to spread, but those with an element of truth usually propagate faster and persist longer than completely fictional ones.

Remember, although infants born with common genetic modifications are somewhat less likely to suffer childhood illnesses, so-called “baseline” infants are still far healthier than babies born in our parents’ generation due to overall improvements in health care. Don’t be pushed into picking a genemod you’re not comfortable with out of fear or guilt! – From So You’ve Decided To Breed, 2098

The infant-mortality myth is an interesting study in how memes evolve. The 2155 version of the story is straightforward. In Fourth and Fifth Wave societies, especially the latter, any children born without at least genefixing are significantly more likely to die in their first three months. Most retellings of this myth assert that an upgrade to Alpha or better is really necessary and that simple genefixing is insufficient. The blame for the nongenefixed infants’ mortality is variously ascribed to heavily modified food, nano- or bioengineered organisms in the atmosphere, or the prenatal and neonatal procedures used by modern physicians. In most cases, the meme is passed along not as an indictment of the modern environment, but as an encouragement for the parents to use common bioengineering techniques to ensure their children’s health.

What makes this myth interesting is that it is the mirror of an urban legend common earlier in the century. In the older myth, vulnerable children were those that had been upgraded or genefixed and the healthy ones were the “normal” infants. As with the modern version, the meme wasn’t directed at environmental issues but at the parents’ decision whether to use the then newly available genetic modifications. This version is still found in societies where widespread availability of genetic upgrades is new.

Most memetic experts believe that the flip-flop of the meme occurred more or less naturally, as societies became accustomed to the new techniques. Whether or not the two versions are related or merely convergent evolution is still a matter of debate – there is little convincing evidence to point one way or another.

The Lurker Below “Although officials deny the existence of a ‘Lurker’ in Miami’s sewers, Mayor Friedman has agreed to assemble a task force to look into the claims. A spokesman for the Coral Gables Residents Association, which organizes assistance to the poverty-ridden neighborhood, thanked the Mayor for her help and warned BioPharmaSouth, the firm blamed for the ‘Lurker’ release, that they would be held accountable for any further injuries or deaths.” – TEN-Miami Reports, July 19, 2110

The Lurker meme centers on a belief that in many large cities accidental or intentional release of advanced biogenetic or nanotechnological creations has led to some kind of monstrous mutation living in their sewers. In 2100, the most-common form of this meme identifies the source as a batch of fully transformative proteus nanoviruses from a secret government or corporate laboratory, escaped or let loose into the city’s underbelly. It has evolved and mixed with other sewer dwelling creatures and hapless humans that it has caught. The creature can take any of these forms to attack its next victim. It is generally called the Lurker, although variant memes give it a wide assortment of names.

The name “Lurker” comes from a 2067 film of the same name, a surprisingly popular low-budget horror movie made in Vancouver. The monster in the story appeared as a bizarre alligator-like creature with a mass of writhing black tentacles on its back. The movie clearly influenced the meme – while the various “Lurker” sightings over the years rarely fit that precise description, nearly all of them have the multiple tentacles.

This meme has become more common over the last 50 years, reflecting popular anxiety regarding particular emerging technologies and powerful corporations or government agencies. The meme is most often found in poor, disenfranchised, and undereducated population centers, where it spreads quickly. It often develops into a class-warfare meme, as the poor blame rich corporations for letting such abominations roam where they live. In these instances, creatures such as the “Lurker” are manifestations of less tangible but more real threats such as toxic wastes or biohazards flushed into urban sewers. Advocacy groups for the poor or who are fighting particular corporations occasionally use allusions to the “Lurker” or similar phenomena as a means of galvanizing opinion.

However, the meme is also popping up in more upscale areas in Fourth and Fifth Wave nations. The increased sightings of supposedly mythical creatures such as Bigfoot (see Society for Applied Teratology) may be contributing to the willingness of people to believe the Lurker story. In these areas, the class-warfare aspects are downplayed, while the “science runs amok” elements are emphasized.

In an information-dense society, where “facts” about a person or organization can whip across networks at startling speed, constructed rumors and urban legends can be deadly weapons in a memetic competition. When properly crafted, such viral memes can be remarkably resilient and distracting to the target. A coordinated memetic campaign hitting an ill-prepared victim can be ruinous. Professional memeticists sometimes refer to constructed rumors as “mind grenades.”

The use of engineered rumors and urban legends is often considered an art as much as a science, although the ongoing development of the field has made the process more straightforward. The techniques commonly employed to propagate a meme or memeplex – various media, advertising, and person-to-person contact – are of little use in the early days of an urban legend campaign. Rumors and myths, especially newly crafted ones, are vulnerable to contradiction. If the meme is spread overtly, the subject of the attack usually finds out too quickly and is able to counter the myth before it is too widespread or embedded. The goal of a rumor campaign is to propagate the meme in ways that don’t trigger an immediate response from the target – or evoke a skeptical reaction from the recipient, causing him to check the story’s veracity.

Most memetic engineers setting up a rumor or myth campaign rely on individuals able to spread ideas based on their trustworthiness or attractiveness. In the industry, such a person is called a “tipper”. These people specialize in subtly transmitting memes to recipients who have come to trust them. The success or failure of a myth- or rumor-based memetic campaign depends upon the confidence a tipper can inspire in his contacts.

Once such a campaign is underway, the main threat – aside from the victim tracing the meme back to its source – is the possibility of mutation, where the meme flips in a way that no longer focuses on the target or, worse still, changes its focus to the source. A 2154 memetic conflict between two fast food companies is an example of the problem. The German restaurant HappyBurgerLand attempted to undercut its rival, Astroburger, by spreading a rumor that the latter didn’t use 100% fauxflesh in its burgers. But just as the rumor was starting to hit, it flipped in the PRA, and became linked to a decade-old claim that HappyBurgerLand used wheat and soy gluten in its product. The meme became that the German firm was substituting gluten for fauxflesh, and to add to the injury an activist group in New Zealand launched a boycott of HappyBurgerLand.

ALRAUNE: You don’t understand me, Father, and you never will. You created me, but I have gone far past even your mad expectations. [She grabs DR. KRISTOF’s throat, impossibly fast.] You tell me that I have no soul. [Pulls him in close, tears streaming down her face. She whispers.] Why do I need a soul when I have perfection? [Tosses her father across the room.] – From the script of Mandrake, 2097

Cloning has long been accepted as a way to have children. But as the 22nd century continues, a potential alternative reproductive technology is stirring up public anxiety: the creation of human or other sapient beings through neogenesis. Neogenesis works not just with genetic modifications, but with wholly synthetic genomes, assembled codon by codon by a computer. This technology is still cutting edge, and the Genetic Regulatory Agency prohibits using the procedure to create sapients. Most countries not under GRA jurisdiction have seen public agitation for similar laws. Transhumanist groups usually oppose restrictions on neogenesis, pointing out that wholly synthetic viruses and bacteria are common, and that current regulations regarding germline modification are still appropriate for any further development of this technology.

One of the big sources of this anxiety was the 2153 InVid Mandrake, a re-interpretation of the classic German silent film Alraune. The latter is about a soulless half-human woman created by artificial insemination. The InVid’s script updated this to a child with a computer-coded genome streamlined for “efficiency” and eventually destroyed by the consequences of her own crimes. The term “mandrake,” used in both the InVid and the original film, caught on. Although the InVid wasn’t a smashing success, it was influential enough to drive the mandrake meme into broad public consciousness. A 2099 Trendorama poll found that over half of adults questioned in the U.S., Europe, and the PRA believed that the use of neogenesis techniques to create mandrakes should be banned.

The idea of a mandrake “threat” taps into old human anxieties: fear of the unnatural or supernatural and fear of new reproductive technologies. Since creating mandrakes absolutely requires the use of computers, anxieties over computer error and corruption lend added power to the myth. For many opponents, the process is the final step in removing the last vestiges of natural procreation from the human line.

Occasionally on the “Devil’s Advocate” program the host, who goes only by “Mike,” allows his slinkers to participate live. On November 3, 2152, the following exchange occurred: Mike: Okay, Rashid from Amman, what do you want to say? Rashid: Hi Mike. I had a question about the “Mind Crasher” meme. Mike: Scary stuff, that one. Go ahead. Rashid: Are any parts of the meme known for certain? Mike: Good question. I’d say no, but one of my sources suggests that the opening to the American Declaration of Independence is part of it. Rashid: Is that “We the people…”? Mike: No, no, it’s “When in the course of human events –” Rashid: (Unintelligible screams.) (There is a long pause, lasting about five seconds.) Mike: We have a real joker on our hands. – From “The Mind Crasher Myth: A Study in Pathology” in Journal of Memetic Theory, Summer 2099 issue Memetics is a powerful, frightening new science. It shows how malleable and fragile the human mind is. It can speak of an age-old belief as if it were a virus. But most “mental viruses” behave more like persistent colds – hard to shake, easy to spread, and usually more annoying than dangerous. What if someone constructed a meme that behaved more like… Ebola? The “Mind Crasher” myth claims that a few years ago some brilliant young memeticist named Gideon Michael Thomason did just that – although no one has ever found evidence of a memeticist with that name. He created a meme that will force any brain infected with it into a catatonic fugue, a total shutdown of all higher functions. The meme is modular and very complex. It can be picked up one sentence at a time. Each element can be completely innocent, even commonplace, but when combined as a single memeplex, the effect is devastating. According to the legend, the Mind Crasher became a pseudo-AI “free meme”. Somehow, the meme escaped the lab, but in doing so, was accidentally or intentionally split into its component parts. Bits and pieces of this meme now float around the Web, turning up as graffiti, poetry, or song verses, a deadly gift to anyone who absorbs the full set and reawakens the free meme. Some versions of this myth maintain that the memeticist constructed the Mind Crasher intentionally, as part of a secret military project, but he accidentally absorbed it himself and it escaped to the Web through his VII. Others claim that Thomason is still alive, but has gone underground because he used the meme against the generals who ordered the construction of such a horrific weapon. Still others assert that the meme emerged as a side effect of a wholly different project, possibly one to render the mind invulnerable to any externally imposed memetic construct. But every version of the story agrees that the pieces of the Mind Crasher remain in the wild, and nobody except Thomason himself knows enough to hunt it down. Most regard this meme as a classic urban legend, although it is more of an academic legend – many people with typical education levels have never heard of it. However, among certain conspiracy theorists, as well as students of philosophy and theology, this meme is almost ubiquitous. Mainstream memeticists positively hate the Mind Crasher meme – and have so far been unable to eradicate it. This is due in large measure to a handful of memetic scientists who claim that a “Mind Crasher” meme is conceivable, and that the story may actually be true. ===Patterns in the Static=== Have fun. ‰ – The only explanation added to the Patterns document At precisely 01:18:00 hours on November 23rd, 2148, an anonymous poster to the CyberMysticism memenet uploaded a file with a size of 2,800,051,338 bytes titled “Patterns in the Static.” The file was heavily encrypted, and as none of the memenet regulars had a quantum computer with which it could be decoded, few paid this file any attention… at first. After some time, however, rumors began to spread about people who managed to decrypt it, and what they found. No member admitted to having read the unencrypted file himself, but there were numerous reports from a “friend of a friend” who gained the key from a “mysterious source” and was able to read it. Accounts varied wildly about its contents – top-secret CIA files, designs for a machine to extract energy from the vacuum, communications with aliens, or magic spells that bind and command infomorphs as the shamans of the past were said to command spirits. Soon, variants of the file started to turn up, both encrypted and unencrypted. Most of these were rapidly identified as forgeries. The general public became aware of the “Patterns in the Static” file in 2154, when Peter Budenhaus’ critically acclaimed slinky of the same name was released. Since then, several wealthy individuals have announced plans to buy time on a quantum computer to decrypt the file, and they hope to announce the results soon. Most people believe the file to be a big hoax, similar to the Necronomicon a century earlier, and pity those who waste time, effort, and money on it. Others, especially certain conspiracy theorists, believe that this file will provide the answers to all their questions if only someone would manage to decrypt it. Late in 2154, a CyberMysticism member came forward stating that the skeptics were right: “Patterns in the Static” was a hoax, and was perpetrated by none other than Budenhaus himself. The memenet member claimed to have assisted Budenhaus in accessing the document archive and went on to claim that in the spring of 2147 Budenhaus had made a bet with a friend that he would not only create a new urban legend, but also make a slinky out of it. With the aid of some mathematically inclined friends of his, he succeeded – the file isn’t really encrypted at all, but the result of a random-number generator that made it seem encrypted. He is now the proud owner not only of some handsome slinky revenues, but also of several bottles of genuine 20th-century French wine. The CyberMysticism memenet was in an uproar for days until a different member discovered that the person making the initial claim had never been a part of the network. Most memenet participants, however, remained skeptical, noting that while Budenhaus denied the authorship of the Patterns document, he always did so in ways that would not actually contradict the story claiming it was a hoax. ===The Perfect Genemod=== “My husbands have been pushing me to have a baby with them – they’re old-fashioned, and want to have a woman’s egg in the mix – but I keep telling them that I don’t like any of the current genome designs. Most are really dated – my parents are Alphas, for goodness sake – and I keep hearing that Ithemba has a much better design they’re planning on rolling out in the new year…” – Overheard, Heathrow Aerospaceport, United Kingdom A recurring meme in many Fourth and Fifth Wave nations is the rumor of the “perfect genemod,” a design that makes the person perfectly healthy, brilliant, and extremely long-lived. No such genetic upgrade is known to exist, but stories persist of biotech companies coming up with them. In most versions of this myth, this perfected design is either held back by corporate leaders wishing to give the children of the elite an advantage, or held back by government officials fearful of a generation of Homo superior. Even if not widely accepted, the meme is widely recognized. This story first popped up in the 2040s, in the earliest days of human germline engineering. Its initial appearance was given a boost by overly enthusiastic biotechnologists who claimed that such a genemod would be “just around the corner.” As the difficulties of constructing beneficial genome modifications became clear, such talk faded… but the idea didn’t. The current existence of groups such as Onos and cutting-edge parahuman designs such as the Herakles model also perpetuate the idea. Even though a “perfect” genemod doesn’t currently exist, most genetic engineers admit that its eventual appearance is inevitable. Most memeticists believe that the meme is a naturally occurring reaction to the presence of changing bioengineering technology. A small minority, however, note that the propagation of this meme seems to map to a slight reduction in births, as parents hold off until the new design is available. It is possible, these memeticists argue, that the meme is part of a larger campaign to slow population growth. ===Rigged Elections=== “You go ahead and vote. If you’re lucky, maybe you’ll vote for the guy they’ve already decided will win. Or maybe you’ll get to cast one of the handful of votes for the other guy, the designated loser. Whichever button you push won’t really matter. Me, I’m not going to waste time on it. If I need to waste some time, I’ll go get another drink.” – Jefferson Smith, in the 2057 remake of Mr. Smith Goes To Washington For political reformers seeking to increase public participation in civic duties, the most-frustrating recurring meme is the notion that elections are somehow rigged. Despite the assurances of official poll-watchers, a substantial portion of most countries’ electorate believes that the entire process is engineered, and the votes themselves are meaningless. Believers occasionally link this meme to larger political-conspiracy theories, but in most cases, the meme usually manifests as a combination of low turnout on election day and general cynicism about the process. This meme was one of myriad triggers for the “cyberdemocratic” movement, which replaces numerous elected offices with fixed-term random selections. Many reformers find the cyberdemocratic model appealing in that it lessens not just financial corruption of the election process but also the ability of political parties to act in secret. The shift to a cyberdemocratic process in venues such as the European and Australian parliaments hasn’t significantly reduced the prevalence of the “rigged election” meme in those regions, however. Suspicion quickly shifted to the AI advisors and the so-called “random” selection algorithms. The problem for those attempting to counter this meme are the multiple historical incidents where computerized voting systems were altered to give an advantage to a particular party or candidate. Such manipulation occurred frequently in the early uses of such systems, culminating in the infamous 2040 election in the United States, in which modified vote results in several southern states gave less than 5% of the tally to the President’s opponent. To this day, a “Texas Landslide” refers to the results of a blatantly rigged election. Despite the meme’s prevalence, such events are now rare in Fourth and Fifth Wave countries – they remain sadly common in many developing nations, however. ===Rogue AI Virus=== “Look, I’m not going to tell you how to live your life, and as much as I’d like to, I’m not going to tell you to get that implant removed. But for goodness sake, if your AI tells you that you’ve received a message from someone you don’t recognize, delete it without opening it! You never know if it’s one of those viruses that can make your AI turn into a rogue!” – Miranda’s mother, noted at Miranda Menendez’ slog, How Much Longer?, 2112 There are many theories, but nobody is really certain what makes some AIs go “rogue.” There are external hacking accusations, poor initial program design, or even a tragic but random cosmic ray. A popular assumption, however, is that the main cause of rogue infomorphs is a complex computer virus floating around the Web. In the most-common version of this myth, most AIs have already encountered it and are now merely waiting to be activated by a communication from another rogue AI. The virus’ origin is never quite clear, and in many cases the story hijacks elements of the “Mind Crasher” meme. The rogue-AI virus is a minor element in numerous anti-AI conspiracy theories, but also appears in a surprisingly large number of pro-AI memeplexes. In this latter case, those who oppose good relations between humanity and infomorphs are said to have constructed the virus. Among those who adopt the meme without a larger conspiracy context, it is frequently coupled with a strong aversion to wearable AIs. Memetic specialists generally believe that primitive versions of this meme predated the onset of true artificial intelligence, appearing as fictional fears about the transmission of sapience, independence, or sheer evil between systems on a network. The prevalence of computer viruses simply gave the protomeme a widely recognized mechanism for the transfer. When the first cases of AIs going “rogue” appeared, the meme was already in place to serve as a plausible explanation. Although cyberneticists publicly state that a virus could not be responsible for rogue AIs, some admit privately that such a mechanism can’t be ruled out entirely. If such a virus were real, however, it would have to be constructed by someone with intimate knowledge of AI minds and regularly updated to reflect changes in technology. Even if it does exist, it’s highly unlikely that the virus is resident but inactive in any significant number of AIs. ===The Rogue Great White=== According to a myth popular across East Asia, during the Pacific War a TSA special-forces soldier near death was brainpeeled and uploaded into a great-white-shark bioshell. When the war ended, the bioshell elected to continue fighting, harassing, and sabotaging Chinese maritime operations. Some versions of the story hold that the shark reverted to type, and has no purpose now other than to kill any Chinese nationals it finds unprotected in the water. More informed opinion holds that the story’s origins probably lie with the heavy losses incurred by Chinese amphibious operations during the war. The survivors tell fearsome stories of marines ambushed by TSA warshark bioshells, being killed and even eaten as they left their submarine transports. As with any fish story, the beasts have grown with each retelling, and since the war the story has combined with ordinary shark scares, fictional InVids, exaggerated fear of the TSA’s Bioweapons Directorate, and anti-Chinese sentiment, mutating into its present form. Any shark attack on, or disappearance of, a Chinese citizen at sea adds further fuel to the story. Documents on the TSA Web provide some context to the story. During the early 2080s, Dr. Eddy Bryant was an obscure marine biologist at Cal Tech, working on bioshell adaptation of various fish species for underwater exploration and labor. She was frustrated by her pitiful budget compared with the enormous amounts attracted to the highly photogenic cetacean research projects. The final straw came in 2091 when her budget was reassigned to dolphin-uplift research and she was expected to follow suit. Instead, she collected her research data, took a tourist flight to Thailand and presented herself to the Ministry of Research in Bangkok, defecting to the TSA. Within a few weeks, Dr. Bryant was part of the Bioweapons Directorate, heading a department and controlling resources beyond the dreams of a junior CalTech researcher. By 2098, the first top-secret warshark battalions were being deployed for the defense of TSA home waters. At the start of the Pacific War, Chinese marines were very surprised by the warshark bioshells, having planned for a far smaller number of nonexistent dolphin uplifts and cybershells. Soon, however, Chinese espionage had tracked down the location of Dr. Bryant’s research and development facility, and a commando raid was launched to snatch data and artifacts, kill all personnel, and destroy the facility. Although no data was retrieved by the raid – the commando force was wiped out – it did succeed in causing major damage and high casualties among the base’s personnel. Among these was Dr. Bryant. Official records of the period are poor due to wartime data destruction, but it appears that Dr. Bryant was evacuated to a mainland hospital, where she later died of her injuries. Her body was buried at sea. There are no records of her being brainpeeled, although investigators note that TSA cadres in Thailand high-ranked enough to qualify for brainpeeling typically had details, including brainpeeling attempts, expunged from their official records. Muddying the waters is that Dr. Bryant used heavily edited low-resolution brainscans of herself as the basis for the warsharks’ NAI control software, a fact discovered by Chinese scientists reverse-engineering captured warsharks and passed on by various means to intelligence agencies worldwide. So even if the brainpeeling aspect of the meme turns out to be myth, the story does still have a particle of truth: warshark bioshells with control software descended from Dr. Bryant’s original programming remain a major feature of TSA aquatic-defense forces. ===Vengeance of the Animals=== “Now, I’m not saying that somewhere up in the Sierra Nevadas there’s a growing pack of uplifted bears looking at maps and conducting paramilitary training, getting ready for the coming war against humans. But if there were, would you really blame them?” – Anika “Pit Bull” McCory, speaking at an uplift-rights rally in Berkeley, California, 2113

This meme claims that within the last 20 years there have been so many attempts to uplift animals, as well as to create new parahuman species with animal genes, that enough of these frighteningly smart creatures have gone missing to form a small army. Somewhere, be it in the underbelly of a large city on Earth, high in the mountains, or deep in a Martian valley, there lies a settlement of angry and intelligent beasts with superhuman combat abilities. And they wait. For freedom. For war. For the end of humanity.

This is a very common meme among humans with moderate educations and biochauvinist tendencies. In Europe it also exists in a mutated version among intellectuals with an affinity to the Human Alliance: this version usually sees the colony as somewhere in North America or Asia, waiting to rid the world of their evil creators, thus serving justice… and leaving the E.U. safe and secure. Beyond Earth this meme is very rare – on Mars there are occasional rumors about large settlements of escaped bioroids and uplifts, but the myth is unknown elsewhere.

Like many urban myths, this meme has enough truth that it’s hard to eliminate completely. It’s not that anyone has found any armies of uplifts waiting for vengeance. Instead, the infrequent discovery of small groups of feral uplifts and animal-related bioroids, coupled with events such as the Doolittle Virus, make it easy for people to believe that somewhere out there the intelligent animals are massing.

Those who adopt this meme frequently have a bit of guilt regarding human treatment of animals or have had disturbing encounters with uplifts. Cognitive ecologists often report outbreaks of this meme in areas where upliftrights activists have recently held demonstrations. Although the major uplift-advocacy groups such as the Sapient Animal Alliance claim no knowledge of any “animal militia,” they are careful not to deny its existence entirely. Fear of uplifted animals seeking retribution plays a small role in public support of uplift-welfare laws.

“You’re running the FiberThought implant? I heard that it’s made in one of the Red Dunc fabs, and makes a shadow of you without you even knowing it! No, I don’t know what they use it for. Probably something asymp, you know those Duncs.” – Overheard, Robinson City, 2154

A particularly virulent meme of recent origin is that a certain brand of implant – the brand varies – is actually a mechanism for brainscanning in order to create a secret shadow. Red Duncanites are often thought to be behind such a plot, although the TSA, the CIA, and, inexplicably, the Pope have all been implicated in different versions of the meme. More sophisticated versions, noting the impossibility of constructing a functional shadow using a slow scan over time (the only method even remotely possible using an implant) claim that the goal is actually to create an advanced eidolon, not a duplicate, based on detailed knowledge of the target’s memories and personality. Cognitive ecologists who have encountered this legend usually assert it’s primarily a manifestation of implant fears, and secondarily identity fears regarding shadows, eidolons, and ghosts.

Some memeticists disagree, noting that many meme versions include speculations that the resulting shadows are used to evaluate propaganda campaigns whatever secretive groups behind the implants are about to unleash upon an unsuspecting populace. With enough shadows or eidolons available as test subjects, the Duncanites (or whoever) will be able to tailor their propaganda so precisely that there will be no stopping them. In this way, the memeticists argue, the VII-shadowing myth actually reflects fears of memetics – that once a person’s mind is known, they are vulnerable to anyone with a meme to push. Many memeticists then go on to discuss just how easy it would be to craft a meme to be irresistible if the memetic engineer had access to shadows of his target audience, leaving conversation partners less than comforted.

Although virtual-interface devices have been in use around the world for decades, there remains a lingering discomfort about them. With VI glasses, a small number of people worry about augmented-reality systems altering what the users see and hear without their knowledge. Fears surrounding VI implants, however, are more common. The notion of having implantation surgery to put a device in your brain that can see what you see, hear what you hear, and is host to a resident AI infomorph does not sit well for some people. Some of the myths about VIIs are related to common AI-related fears, while others reflect the unique intimacy of the technology.

The most-common legend is that VIIs work two-way – not only are they controlled by thought, they can in turn control thoughts. This meme shows up in a variety of forms, from worries that the implant’s manufacturer is sending signals to users’ brains to more elaborate fantasies that the government has access to the VII, allowing it to alter a person’s thoughts or behaviors. A common variant is that advertisers are sold access to implants, letting them view data about responses to given ads or altering neurochemistry in order to trigger positive or negative reactions to given products.

The AI resident in the implants is also very disturbing to many people. While attempts by infomorphs to take over a host body are incredibly rare, they are not entirely unknown. Most implant users prefer NAI infomorphs to avoid even the hint of a separate intelligence residing within their skulls.

AR is frequently employed to alter perceptions via filters, virtual clothing, and the like, but these are uses that the virtual-interface wearer can recognize easily. The fear that AR is used to fool people for nefarious purposes is often dismissed by manufacturers and is a frequent joke in slapstick entertainment. Despite this, AR as a mechanism for subterfuge is actually surprisingly common (see Really Augmented Reality).

What makes virtual-interface-related memes difficult to counter is that nearly every feared violation has at some point been attempted. Endeavors to alter the perceptions or behavior of an implant user without his are illegal in nearly every nation, and most VI manufacturers go to great lengths to assure users that they are secure from outside tampering. Most implant companies also employ sizeable memetic-engineering staffs to counter the spread of VII-related fears. In fact, the meme that fears about implant violations are pure paranoid fantasy – a meme that’s just as mythical as the thought that all VIIs can be easily compromised! – is directly attributable to industry memeticists and is propagating quickly.

Day 43: The ship has again made a rapid alteration off course, startling me from my sleep and causing my dear mother to spill her drink on her traveling suit. I asked Matthew, my AI, about the cause of the disruption; it told me that the ship had performed a standard maneuver. This being a less-than-satisfactory answer, I took my complaint to the ship’s steward. We were informed that the captain had narrowly avoided hitting a “voidskate,” and had in fact saved us from an unwelcome fate. When my mother, who comes from a more skeptical age, asked precisely what a voidskate was, the steward showed us a poorly focused image taken from a camera mounted on the hull. We saw, shadowy against the dark – and far too close to the ship for my comfort! – a vast beast, looking like a bat or manta ray, but with a wholly artificial skin. “Voidskate,” the steward said. “One of the abandoned TSA space weapons.” For some reason, Matthew just laughed. – From A Voyage to Titan and Back: A Journal, 2113

Every now and then, a passenger ship traveling toward a destination in the outer system will make a minor shift in position, perhaps as a course correction, to avoid intersecting the path of some debris, or to reorient a sensor. Such motions can be jarring to its passengers, who inevitably ask why the ship had to turn so quickly. “Voidskate” is the usual answer. “Dangerous to hit ‘em.” The passengers never see that voidskate, but one of the crew usually has a photograph or holograph of another to show what looks like an oversized manta ray “swimming” through space, the center of its body jet black while its fins and tail are silver and as reflective as polished chrome.

There are different stories about what these creatures really are, usually chosen based on how gullible the crew thinks the passengers are. They are variously described as vacuum-adapted manta rays cooked up in a Duncanite lab; renegade von Neumann machines, built who knows where; or weapons designed by the crazed nanosocialist bioweapons specialists left over from the Pacific War. In a few cases, they are even said to be a completely alien form of life, evolved to live in deep space.

No good spacer ever admits to not believing in voidskates, at least not to an outsider. That said, most travel guidebooks and guidebots refer to voidskates as a “spacefarer’s myth,” and assure the traveler that they aren’t real. This is not to say that pranksters haven’t made voidskate cybershells or even bioshells when the need has arisen. In the late 2100s, an anonymous joker started an elaborate memetic campaign to spread a new meme – the claim that voidskates are a myth is a government cover-up. This campaign culminated in the supposed “capture” of a voidskate, which was then taken away by government agents. A partial slink recording of the voidskate being taken by the government was posted to the Web, where it became an underground hit. The memetic exercise didn’t convince anyone that voidskates were real, but did spread a little doubt about whether they were entirely false.

“Yes, it’s the digital overmind, but I don’t fear it. It hasn’t hurt us yet, and even if it chooses to do so, there’s not much we can do about it. At that point, our only choices would be to submit or to destroy ourselves. In the meantime, I’m just adding my voice to the mix, trying to make sure that once the Web Gestalt starts paying attention to us it at least understands what I’m trying to say.” – “Mike,” Devil’s Advocate, February 29, 2111

One of the more unusual AI-related memes isn’t directly about artificially intelligent beings as currently conceived. It’s the myth of the “Web Gestalt,” an intelligence emerging from Earth’s infosphere itself. According to most versions of this meme, when the World Wide Web of old had gained a certain level of complexity – and when exactly this happened depends on the teller of the story – it spontaneously gained sapience, just as emergent SAIs can arise today.

As the Web is connected to almost every computer system in the solar system, the Web Gestalt integrated itself into almost every piece of software in existence and thus is everywhere at once. All other AIs are part of this intelligence, usually without realizing it. Thus, the Web Gestalt effectively rules the entire Earth, or at least the parts of it with a web connection, and is free to follow its own agenda. This agenda might include “improving” the human species, wiping it out, or hiding evidence of contact with aliens from 61 Virginis. In some versions of the meme, the Web Gestalt is the “mind of Gaia,” and thus has an utterly unknowable agenda, with concerns and strategies measured on geologic timescales.

Belief in the Web Gestalt is one of the more-common memes among paranoids, and given the complexity of modern computer systems and networks, hard to disprove without an in-depth knowledge of software technology. Some of its believers turn to Cryptosurvivalism in the hope that this might protect their secrets from the Web Gestalt, while others withdraw from Earth’s information networks, either in Earth’s wastelands or in deep space, to get away from this entity. The “mind of Gaia” variant is common among deep ecologists and a minority of Cybergnostics. It is gaining a small presence in the Gaia Restoration Project, prompting an ongoing debate as to whether information networks should be left functional on Earth after humanity moves off.

Few if any computer specialists give any credence to the notion of a Web Gestalt. Most serious network analysts hold that such a large-scale software entity would leave telltale signals in communication channels that could be recognized and analyzed. Since such signals are absent, they claim that while individual emergent AIs can appear without anyone realizing it, an emergent AI that exists in the whole Web at once cannot.

The persistence of belief in the paranormal is a continued surprise to casual observers of society in 2155, but is completely in line with the expectations of professional anthropologists, sociologists, and memeticists. The expansion of science’s ability to explain the universe has not increased its comprehensibility for most people. Even highly educated people in 2155 take matters related to well-established elements of quantum spookiness, multiple universes, and the like largely on faith. For those who believe in the supernatural, the inability to “prove” the existence of spirits in a way that scientists would accept no more invalidates their faith than does the inability to “prove” the existence of Calabi-Yau-shaped folded dimensions in a way that a non-physicist could understand invalidates physics.

The path that technological development has taken over the last century has propped up aspects of the paranormal as well. AIs and the like do not prove the existence of the supernatural, but the language used by many developers – mind emulations as “ghosts,” for example – often evokes traditional paranormal concepts. Some believers are amused by the compliment, others are insulted by the arrogance… And still others have come to suspect that unbeknownst to the developers, these technologies have somehow connected very old powers and previously thought inaccessible forces to man’s tools.

Memetic engineers attempting to take advantage of paranormal-phenomena belief tend not to create new supernatural stories out of whole cloth, although in a few cases this has been successful. More often, the memeticists use existing paranormal stories and twist the desired memes into local manifestations or accounts. This technique has been used to push political agendas, religious precepts, and even simple practical jokes.

As science has never been able to find any evidence of a “soul,” its existence is entirely a matter of faith. Not all religions include belief in a soul, although most do. For many of these, the most-vexing question of the last several decades has been whether SAIs, which clearly have minds, also have souls. This question is of more than theological import . . . Fervent believers who do not accept the notion of AIs with souls are more likely to treat infomorphs as things and commit violence against them. The dominant religions around the world have radically different perspectives on AIs and souls:

Buddhism: As Buddhism was the first major belief to accept sapient artificial minds as people – in 2038, well before SAIs even existed – followers are the most likely to say “yes.” Not all schools of Buddhism teach the existence of souls, but of those that do, the vast majority include SAIs and LAIs as having them.

Chinese Traditional Religions: Although many followers of Chinese Traditional practices accept shadows and ghosts as carrying the souls of the deceased, they have great reluctance to accept that constructed infomorphs might have a spirit.

Christianity: Christian traditions vary widely. Many mainstream Protestant and Mormon groups with an American background disagree with the concept of AIs having souls, while newer interpretations, such as Christian Hyperevolutionism, believe they do. European churches are mixed, some welcoming SAI citizens as members while others are the last refuges of those who deny that SAIs should be considered people. Traditional Catholicism has struggled with this question, but as of 2155 still teaches that SAIs are human constructs, not divine creations, and thus do not have souls. Reformed Catholicism began admitting SAIs as believers in 2095 and fully embraces the notion of digital entities with souls.

Hinduism: Despite a richly nuanced theology, the vast majority of Hindus are firm in their belief that SAIs are things that act like people, not people with souls to be reincarnated. In India, the notion that a human can be reincarnated as an SAI has been linked to nanosocialists in an attempt to discredit them.

Islam: In the Islamic Caliphate, SAIs who accept Islam can be citizens, and the notion that the machines have souls is broadly accepted. There is some debate as to whether SAIs have human souls or the souls of djinn, supernatural spirits with bodies of fire – or energy, which information-based entities arguably possess. Outside the Caliphate, the concept is controversial, and is entirely rejected in Iran and Pakistan.

Memes related to the paranormal, while superficially similar to urban legends in many ways, tend to be more stable in content than modern myths. This is due in large part to the nature of the content. People who accept paranormal memes are predisposed to ignore the lack of evidence or contrary evidence, and the stories are therefore under less adaptive pressure. Memes about the paranormal also shape some groups’ take on technology.

These days, a flying saucer could fly down Pennsylvania Avenue, land on the lawn of the Washington Monument, and disgorge a ten-foot-tall robot without anyone batting an eye. Stuff like that happens all the time – the only difference is that they’re saucers and robots from Earth, not some alien police force. It wouldn’t be the day the Earth stood still, it would be the day the Earth yawned. – Jerzy Siencowicz, Chariots in the Parking Lot, 2105

In a world of bizarre cybershells, augmented reality, and regular flights into space, traditional tales of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) have long been relegated to the history e-books. The occasional sighting of glowing, rapidly moving blobs of light can be easily explained, usually just by having an AI assistant query local air-traffic networks. More sophisticated understanding of how the brain functions has given rise to treatments for the conditions that led to “alien abduction” delusions. And one of the unanticipated benefits of the great decline in real beef product consumption was the disappearance of cattle-mutilation stories.

A handful of wilderness encounters with “alien explorers” have been reported, invariably well away from human habitation. The witnesses usually don’t have virtual-interface units or don’t manage to retrieve and activate them before the “aliens” escape. In two separate cases, however, witnesses claim that aliens captured them by catching them “in a beam that caused [them] to freeze.” The “abductees” were then taken aboard a ship and their virtual-interface implants were removed. Although in neither case was there any sign of recent surgery, medical records did indicate that the witnesses did at one time have virtual-interface implants . . . which were now missing.

A common belief among those who entertain the notion of alien visitors is of alien influence in Earth’s technological development – see, for example, Genomic Invasion, p. 45. One interesting version of this particular meme is that aliens have pressured humanity’s AI developers to keep machine intelligences limited to roughly human levels. Apparently, superintelligent AI singularities often lead to species extinction and can wreak havoc on the galaxy until stopped. This is why, they claim, there is no real evidence of alien civilizations – the vast majority were wiped out during a period of AI transcendence.

Classic UFO sightings remain a staple of spacer tales (see Whalers). Although certain regions of space, such as Earth’s orbit, seem crowded there are actually relatively few ships in the Solar System compared to vehicles in Earth’s atmosphere. What’s more, space ships follow well-understood physical limitations to their velocities and trajectories. An unidentified vehicle, particularly one seemingly not abiding by the laws of physics, is very hard to not notice. Many spacers, especially those in the Deep Beyond, speak of sightings ships that don’t look or act like anything they’ve ever seen. Most laugh it off as a trick of the eye or a secret government experimental ship – this laughter invariably comes across as nervous than humorous.

Ironically, even as alien-visitation memes continue to thrive among the general populace, most experts have come to the conclusion that humankind is almost certainly the only intelligent life in the Milky Way. Even with 2155’s advanced signal processing and telescopes able to resolve planets in other systems, no signs of alien intelligence have been found. Fermi’s Paradox still stands – even a cautious civilization could colonize the entire galaxy in a cosmologically brief amount of time, but we find no evidence of any other civilizations out there.

Wen Shan passed away on Tuesday night. He is survived by his wife, four children, 14 grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren. His body was interred in the family crypt. His spirit joined the family shrine, and welcomes visitors daily. – Announcement on a Hong Kong civic record website

Ancestor worship is a long-standing element of many traditional religions. In most, the ancestor spirits rarely intervene in day-to-day life, but are always watching. Behavior that offends the ancestors is to be avoided, at the very least because it brings shame upon them. The advent of mind-emulation technology has given a new form to traditions of ancestor worship. The ability to create eidolons, shadows, and ghosts as infomorphs lets ancestors remain a presence in a family’s life as more than distant spirits.

The practice of revering an emulated mind in the same manner as an ancestor spirit is controversial and frowned upon by many traditional religions. Ancestor infomorphs are almost unknown in Africa, although their popularity is growing among followers of Voudoun (see p. BD19). They are much more common in China, however, where nearly a quarter of all families following Chinese Traditional Religion now have at least one infomorph residing as an ancestor’s spirit. In almost every case, the spirit has a static cybershell in the family shrine. It is almost unknown for believers to carry the ancestor infomorph in a mobile device. This practice is not thought of as keeping the ancestor alive so much as giving the spirit a voice for providing advice. Ancestor infomorphs have passive read access to networks, allowing them to keep watch but not send communications or control remote devices. Most ancestor infomorphs are shadows edited to recognize themselves as “spirits,” although some are eidolons, usually constructed with the assistance of the deceased person’s digital assistant. Ghosts are even less common, in part because they are still expensive to create and in part because the government tightly controls their creation. The handful of ghosts created as “ancestor spirits” chafe at the restrictions of life stuck in a box, and either slowly go mad, demand to be shut down, or try to play an active and manipulative role in their descendants’ lives.

“Say what you will, the position of the planets definitely affects my life.” – Overheard, Silas Duncan Station, Ceres

Despite the utter lack of any evidence supporting its veracity, astrology remains as popular as ever. Few people are fervent believers in it, but a surprisingly large number of people on and off Earth accept it as “possibly real” and pay mild attention to their horoscopes. This sort of superficial belief in astrology is actually more common in space colonies than on Earth.

The growth of human settlements off Earth has led to a minor boom in astrology, as the motion of the planets through the Zodiac as seen from Earth varies greatly from the perspective of Mars or the Trojan asteroids. People born off of Earth have entirely different astrological readings. Just how that new reading is supposed to look is the subject of contradictory and competing approaches. There are two leading versions. The first is Beyond Earth: A Modern Astrology, by Miriam Vash, which uses careful maps of planetary locations to match up off-Earth horoscopes with traditional charts. The second is Transhuman Astrology, by Ralva Daoud, which dispenses with any attempt to fit in with traditional astrological charts, and goes on to assert that anyone who has been ghosted should have a new horoscope drawn up based on the time and place of the brainpeel.

“Antoine, this is Mr. Constantine. Please take Mr. Constantine’s coat and see that he is comfortable.” “Gnnnnnnnnh.” “Do it! Or today you shall feel the lash!” – From the 2112 InVid Voodoo Children, which billed itself as a “speculative documentary” Decades of horror movies and InVid notwithstanding, traditional zombies have little to do with rotting flesh and a hunger for brains. In Voudoun, zombies are thought to be soulless, not rotting, and their bodies still function as do those of living beings. Many anthropologists believe that traditional zombies were created by poisoning a victim with blowfish venom in an amount insufficient to kill, but enough to completely paralyze him and make his heartbeat nearly undetectable. As the victim would still be awake, but utterly unable to move or make a sound, he would see his family mourning and himself put in a coffin and buried. As those suffering this fate were usually believers in Voudoun themselves, when the houngan, or priest, dug them up a day or so later they willingly accepted their new roles as zombies. As such poisoning and slavery is now far harder to get away with, there is a trend in areas where Voudoun is prevalent for houngans to have corpses converted into necromorph bioshells. The bodies usually come from living individuals who sell their bodies to the priests in exchange for money or various services. Depending upon the contract, the body only becomes available after the person eventually dies or the zombie-to-be may be required to commit suicide. The latter form is technically illegal in most places Voudoun is practiced, but in many cases, the authorities look the other way. Contracts not requiring suicide may be gruesome, but they are legally binding; there is a small industry of “contract fulfillment specialists” willing to travel to retrieve corpses now owned by the houngan. Often, the future zombie is implanted with a small webconnected biosensor, sending out a signal when the subject is close to death or dead. Most necromorph bioshell zombies run a specialized NAI designed for appropriately servile behavior. Very few houngans have access to the equipment and resources to perform shadowing or ghosting of a prezombie, but the practice is not entirely unknown. In these cases the infomorph mind is edited into compliance, although the programmer is careful not to remove the infomorph’s memories. Using an edited ghost as the mind of a bioshell zombie is generally illegal; using a shadow, while ethically dubious, is generally legal. Given the expense of producing a bioshell zombie, including the fees paid to the body’s owner, the practice is not common. Zombies are most often constructed to act as servants for the houngan. Secular leaders in communities where Voudoun is practiced may also be able to convince a houngan to construct a zombie, although the price is usually steep. ===Ghost Souls=== “Scientists have done what mystics have feared for centuries: they’ve captured the soul, put it in a bottle, and stuck it on a shelf. They may not realize it, but what they’ve accomplished upsets the balance of the universe. When a person dies, his soul is supposed to move on. If it doesn’t, if it’s held in the material world, the universe will not be forgiving.” – Sarriya al-Mazif, speaking at Second World Transcendence Forum, 2110 For most people who believe in the existence of souls, the controversy about ghosting largely focuses on whether the ghost retains this vital essence. If it does not, then the ghost is little more than an elaborate toy – no matter how much it may think of itself as the continuation of an individual. If it does have a soul, however, then to most believers the ghost should be treated as a true person, as it has the same soul in digital form as was possessed in the original body. Not everyone is so complacent, however. A small but growing number of people strongly believe that ghosts have the souls of the original person and this is not a good thing. The soul, by virtue of being held in cybernetic form, is now potentially stuck on Earth forever, and is unable to move on to whatever follows death. In their view, as the universe was created with the passage of spirit from Earth to the Hereafter as an intrinsic element, this soul capture is an affront to the universe. Serious consequences will ensue if humankind does not abandon this practice. The most vocal advocates of this position are a group of Sufis based in London, led by Sarriya al-Mazif. Members regularly attend interfaith conferences in order to promote their views, and al-Mazif recently began studying advanced memetic techniques to support their campaign. The group believes that without a physical body – and they do not count cybershells, even bioshells, as being true physical bodies – a soul cannot grow. A ghost’s soul is static and unchanging, and therefore slows the overall evolution of the universe. If a soul is not allowed to grow in the physical world, it must be released to the world beyond. This notion is slowly spreading and has started to appear in a variety of religious settings. It is a common point of discussion in religious schools in the Islamic Caliphate, and a number of American traditional Christian churches have begun examining the issue. The November 2099 murder of a ghost in Atlanta, Georgia, has been blamed on a man found with ghost-soul controversy material in his possession. Officials are unsure of whether he was acting alone or with a group of others with similar beliefs. ===Kabbalistic Space Tourism=== “You follow the paths, the 32, and along each find the questions for the answers you have long known. You explore the worlds, the four, and on each find the birth to match the death you have long embraced. You accept the spheres, the 10, and with each you reveal the layers of the self.” – From Our Planets, Our Selves, 2102 This meme, most often found in the United States and Europe, holds that the planets and satellites of the solar system are the spheres of the Kabbalah’s tree of life, and that interplanetary travel is spiritually useful for personal growth and path working. Although followers of the Kabbalah are among those who have noticed the odd symbolism and mysterious behavior of World Tree Enterprises, there’s actually very little overlap between those who see WTE as having mystical resources and those who believe in a connection between the Kabbalah and the solar system’s structure. This meme is common among those who follow New Age-style beliefs and is largely divorced from its roots in mystical Judaism. Many recent self-help guides have stressed the idea of personal growth through space pilgrimages, and most use a somewhat spiritual interpretation of the process. The Kabbalistic version has been present for decades, but really took off in 2102 with the publication of Our Planets, Our Selves. This book mixed ideas from the Kabbalah into an otherwise straightforward pop memetics treatise. While a substantial minority of those who have adopted this meme embrace its mystical elements, even many people who totally reject the occult enjoy the idea. Recently, the meme has inspired chamber music, concert music, and an opera. Many memeticists suspect that the fairly casual connection to the more spiritual aspects of the Kabbalah is part of why the meme has remained reasonably popular. People who enjoy the symbolism and ritual, but don’t take the mystical aspects seriously, have adopted the meme without questioning their other beliefs. At the same time, hardcore Kabbalists who truly believe interplanetary travel will alter their lives and help them achieve spiritual growth have had life-altering experiences. Given the time required for interplanetary travel, no single person has actually completed the “32 paths” by 2155, and very few have managed to visit every planet. ===Martians=== “Take me to your leader – your price leader for new cars!” – The Ancient Martian, used in a variety of ads in America/Mars Despite Mars being increasingly domesticated and a serious lack of evidence, some people still think it was once home to an advanced civilization. The perpetuation of this meme comes from two major sources. The first is prospectors and other Martian frontier inhabitants, passing along tales of complexes built into the sides of canyons and other places… which always seem to collapse and disappear before the next trip out. The second is from dedicated believers in government conspiracies, who claim to have evidence that Martian structures such as the pyramids and the “face” were intentionally damaged or destroyed by the first wave of government explorers, seeking to cover up proof of Martian life. That the first explorers were from China, while the conspiracy seems to focus in the United States, matters little to believers. The conspiracy needs to be international to be so powerful! Most people who believe in ancient Martians are fairly wishful in their approach, with more of an “it sure would be great if…” rather than an “it must be true!” perspective. This outlook on Martian life has broad sympathies, and many Mars-related organizations have adopted bits and pieces of life-on-Mars lore as symbols of their groups – from cartoon Martians to tongue-in-cheek references to War of the Worlds. While few actually believe that any evidence of an ancient Martian civilization will ever be found, the idea is common in popular media on and about the planet. The belief in advanced Martian life is a more-serious meme for a very small but active collection of people. The “Mars Truth Committee,” funded by the eccentric Bollywood billionaire Indira Patel, seeks to prove that Mars once held advanced life, and that the American and Chinese governments are working together to suppress this information. The organization has already made two expeditions, in 2104 and 2110, and is gearing up for a third. Neither of the previous two – one to the “face,” the other to the “pyramids” – uncovered anything of note. The newest trip, scheduled to leave for Mars in June 2115, is the best equipped yet. They intend to spend a full Martian year visiting sites purportedly uncovered by Martian frontier explorers. As of the beginning of the year, the Committee is making final purchases and lining up the last few crewmembers. They are looking for a small, independent slink- and InVid-production crew to go with them to record their discoveries. Among the sites the Mars Truth Committee plans to visit is an area near Elysium that has produced somewhat unusual density readings in recent surveys. A study using vibration patterns to map the types of rock under the surface had results that suggest a series of chambers. This area is actually the location chosen by Mohammed ibnKhalid for his “Native Martian” hoax! The site is near the bottom of their list, but if the Mars Truth Committee makes it to the site, they may be in for quite a surprise… ===Mentalist Fraternity=== “Your mind is capable of far greater feats than simple calculation and fading memories. You have in you, in the secret language of your cells, the power to unlock those feats. Soon, very soon, we shall all have the key to open this lock.” – Vladimir Koleshenko, on the Mentalist Fraternity website One of the most persistent paranormal memes is belief in psychic abilities. For most people who host the meme, the belief manifests as a general sense that they must be real because so many people know about them. For a handful, the belief is more developed and structured. The Mentalist Fraternity is a group of men, largely in Eastern Europe and Russia, who firmly believe that the human mind has untapped psychic powers. They point to millennia of reports and stories about mystical powers and dubious research into extrasensory perception. These abilities, they believe, are the true key to the next step in human evolution. Mentalists don’t necessarily believe every person who claims to be psychic, but do believe that people with real powers exist and that many people have psychic potential. They also believe that the powers are more often found in men than in women. The Fraternity’s external face is that of an eccentric group of self-described psychics who wish to help anyone who feels they might possess some kind of paranormal abilities. The leader of the Fraternity, Vladimir Koleshenko, is the only child of a fairly wealthy Russian family, and spends his inheritance on the organization, flying their investigators around the world to interview and test potential psychics. While they have made no breakthroughs that stand up to scrutiny, they have a devoted following of nonpsychics – the “opaque,” in the terminology of the Fraternity – who devoutly wish to find the key to unlocking humanity’s “full potential.” Behind this superficial mysticism, however, is an elaborate conspiracy theory to explain why psychic abilities are so hard to find. Central to it is the belief that advanced genetics have uncovered the traits that govern these abilities. The Fraternity is convinced that genetic engineering corporations have actively hidden the results of all such research. The corporations know what gene sequences activate psychic powers, but they keep the information from the public, only giving access to secret government and corporate intelligence forces. They don’t want the freedom and power these abilities could give to be used by the common man. Instead, they twist these blessings into schemes to rule the world. What’s more, the fraternity believes that these same bioengineering companies and government agencies have a treatment that can suppress the psychic abilities in those who have manifested them naturally. For members of the Fraternity, who firmly believe that there is abundant evidence of psychic powers in the past, and many of whom clearly recall being able to read minds and view remote images when they were young, this explains why they can find no sign of such powers now. Members who now claim such abilities are telling what they feel are polite fictions in order to both preserve the world’s hope that such powers exist and to try to force the secretive ministries and corporations to expose themselves. Mentalist Fraternity brothers, when not seeking out new members, lead spiritual lives full of meditation, prayer, and channeling of unseen powers. Even if they don’t have powers, they believe that ultimately, through the proper genetic enhancement, most people can gain them. They know it’s possible, because spies that do have these abilities are always watching them… ===Society for Applied Teratology=== A pair of backpackers stumbled into the Crystal Blue lodge today near Lake Tahoe, on the California side. They reported seeing a large, bipedal creature covered in dark fur, which bolted away when it spotted them. One of the shaken couple recorded a slinky during the sighting. Experts in the local biology, upon experiencing the slinky, stated that they could not identify what the creature was. They also said that they could not tell if it was just a person in a costume. – TEN Fringe News, May 20, 2114 Highly trained bioengineers, specializing in the creation of novel genomes for collectors of extinct or mythical creatures, find it a lucrative niche. Once it was possible to create plausible biological facsimiles of stegosaurs, saber-tooth tigers, dragons, and so on, owning a pet dinosaur or monster became a hallowed tradition for wealthy people across the inhabited system. The image of a bored, rich eccentric with the head of a Tyrannosaurus rex adorning the trophy room is a popular cliché, but one based on truth. For the biotechnologists who create these beasts, the pleasure of knowing you have created something that hasn’t been seen on Earth for millions of years, if ever, is tempered by the knowledge that these creations are most likely going to be hunted down, or at best left to wander within the walls of their environment once their owner gets tired of them. In 2091 a small group of specialized genetic designers from leading biotech companies decided to do something with their skills that would be a bit more interesting than updating velociraptor skin genes to match corporate colors. Calling themselves the Society for Applied Teratology, they put together a private research and development facility in order to create their own monsters. Their public work focuses on creating beasts for the entertainment industry and a handful of private collectors who are more interested in ecosystems than hunting. They charge top dollar but are widely considered the best. Their secret work gives them the most pleasure, however. These teratologists decided to make the mythical real, and for much of the last decade have bred creatures from the world of cryptozoology – such as the Sasquatch, the Loch Ness Monster, and the Chupacabra – and released them into the wild. They are careful to make their creations suit the habitats, and free them in areas well away from human inhabitants. Their goal isn’t to make the monsters a common sight, but to give reality a bit more mystery. Each of the monsters is designed to be shy and fearful of people. As a result of their efforts, Chupacabra activity in the wilds of northern Mexico is reported a couple of times a year and a new pair of Chupacabra smuggled into Brazil were recently sighted by locals. To their dismay, Nessie isn’t doing well – they misjudged the environment of Loch Ness, which isn’t warm enough for a reptile and doesn’t support enough fish for a mammal or dinosaur. They have a Yeti design, but don’t yet have a plan to get it to Nepal. They have a workable genome for a “Lurker” like the classic movie version, tentacles and all, but haven’t yet decided on an appropriate place to release it. By far their greatest success has been with the Sasquatch, or “Bigfoot.” They introduced five families of Sasquatch up and down the Sierra-Nevada Mountains, right along the California/Nevada border. The Sasquatch are doing spectacularly well, and up until August 2154, the Society was working out a neogenesis design for Bigfoot couples actually able to breed. In August, however, they heard about the mysterious murders of hikers near where the most recent batch were released. Locals blamed bears, although bears hadn’t been spotted in that area for much of the century. Society designers are worried that the Sasquatch may be to blame – the last batch, released in late 2153, had been tweaked to give its omnivorous diet more of an emphasis on meat. In December 2154, the teratologists poring over the genome discovered that the fear-of-people modifications had been overwritten by parts of the diet change. While that doesn’t prove that the Sasquatch were responsible for the hikers’ death, it’s a possibility that must be considered… ===Transcendental Astromancy=== “… And thus in the middle of this decade the moon’s path will cross that of the dragon line, and none will be able to avoid the doom that will visit Luna City…” – From René Otomo, Astromantic Chronicles, vol. 3, 2097 Transcendental Astromancy is a highly popular divination technique as well as the title of a 2056 book by the Franco-Japanese novelist and poet René Otomo (2003-2110), who invented the practice. Transcendental Astromancy, also called “trance” or “T.A.,” is a complex mix of Feng Shui, Chinese and western astrology, and various symbols and rituals from classical western alchemy. Otomo and his technique became famous after his prediction about the “doom that will visit Luna City” came true with the Shackleton disaster in 2085. Today there are T.A. health, architecture, interior design, and career consultants – or equivalent expert programs and SAIs – found in any major city or settlement from Earth to Europa. While the number of “true believers” in Transcendental Astromancy declines rapidly with increasing education, this meme has gained a firm foothold in all levels of society throughout the solar system. Trance is especially popular on Mars, where Otomo took up residence in 2091. Surprising, though, is the high percentage of Hyperevolutionists receptive to this meme. Otomo is sympathetic to Infosocialism, and made a point of only defending his intellectual-property rights regarding T.A. when others sought sole ownership of the idea. Otherwise, Otomo encouraged individual consultants to develop their T.A. practices in order to spread the concept around. After the publication of Propagation of Human Ideas, Otomo enthusiastically adapted memetic techniques to T.A. in a series of essays he published from his then home in Toronto. Other than Otomo’s apparent success at predicting the disaster on Luna, there has been little but anecdotal evidence for T.A.’s ability to give insight into the future. Nonetheless, the design aesthetic and personal advice derived from the practice have enduring popularity. Even if the mystical elements are glossed over, a skilled T.A. consultant is still able to make a living. ===Vampire Virus=== That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die. – H. P. Lovecraft The advent of functional nanotechnology unleashed numerous short-lived urban myths. Fears of gray goo and hopes for a diamond age flared and then sputtered out as reality set in. A handful of myths remained, however, including fears that specially designed nanotechnology could be used to alter a human’s body. A common manifestation of this urban legend was that nanotech developers had come up with a virus that could turn people into “real vampires.” Nobody feared these creatures – the myth reflected a larger fear of scientific irresponsibility. The “Vampire Virus” would have remained a minor urban legend were it not for the efforts of a Bulgarian nanoscientist named Georgi Stanishev. In 2113, inspired by the proteus-based nanoviruses such as Doolittle and Monkeybite, Stanishev designed a complex proteus virus that effectively gives a human vampire characteristics. Victims of the nanovirus found their canine teeth more than doubling in length, their skin blistering even from brief exposure to sunlight, and, most troubling, a desire to drink blood. Stanishev introduced the virus at dance clubs and parties across central Europe frequented by young people with a fetish for vampires and gothic horror. He figured correctly that at least some of them would appreciate the gesture. By the time Stanishev was arrested and charged with the development and use of a nanotechnological weapon, nearly a thousand people in Bulgaria, Hungary, and Germany had been infected. The virus was easily countered, and the vast majority gratefully accepted treatment. Several dozen did not, however, and chose to remain “vampires.” European authorities decided that as long as these “vampires” were not breaking the law, such as by attacking people and drinking their blood, there was little that they could do to stop them. In late 2114, reports surfaced that new “vampires” had been spotted in Amsterdam and London. Fearing a copycat outbreak, European police, backed up by the GRA, brought in several of the new “vampires” for questioning. They soon determined that these new cases came from uninfected people drinking the blood of virally loaded “vampires.” Stanishev, questioned in prison, denied designing the virus to allow this, but agreed that it certainly was possible. As of January 2115, European authorities are about to track down, arrest, and forcibly cure the remaining viral vampires before their numbers grow. Vampire Virus: Proteus virus programmed to give a victim vampire-like features. The subject’s canine teeth grow enough to give a nasty bite, as per Sharp Teeth [5]. The victim also has a Dependency (Consume a pint of blood per week, but any mammal blood will satisfy the craving) [-10], and a Weakness vs. sunlight (1d per hour, -50%) [-8]. $500 and 1 week, but not normally available for purchase. ===Whalers=== Whalers are not mad. Well, some of them may be mad, but there is something out there: secret “black” SDVs, experimental bioships, or, yes, maybe even giant space whales. I know too many good men and women, people whom I would trust with my life, who say they’ve seen something they can’t explain. – Captain Jason Wilson, USAF (retired), in his introduction to the 2110 reprint of Gary White’s book The Shape Beyond the Black The so-called “Whalers” – also known as “whalers of the deep beyond,” or “beyonders” – are members of the Argus Club, a loosely organized group of spacefarers who claim to have encountered some kind of gigantic life form in space. They discuss strange sensor readings that indicated the presence of an unidentifiable object, at least the size of a large space-dominance vehicle (SDV). Even more report a visual contact they had while working outside of a ship or station – contact with some slow-moving gargantuan thing, often of a dark blue-gray color. Those encounters usually took place far beyond the Main Belt and seem to be more common toward the Kuiper Belt. While there have always been stories about “something out there,” the last 70 years have seen a sharp increase of “whale sightings” from the small but growing number of spacers who make their living beyond the orbit of Mars. It is unknown who exactly was the first person to report such an encounter, but Gary “Ahab” White (2063-?), a Mars-born writer of Australian heritage and member of the Farhauler’s Guild, was certainly the one who first went public with it. He wrote his first article on the “whales” in 2089 and founded the Argus Club in 2081. He also wrote two books on the creatures he called Rocs – The Shape Beyond the Black, 2079, and Dreaming Gods, 2089. White disappeared without a trace somewhere in the Main Belt in 2110. At present, the beyonders lack any real spokesman and are the butt of jokes all over the solar system, but there are those who see the disappearance of Gary White as proof of a major cover-up. It is almost impossible to find any supporter of this meme on Earth – in fact, it is difficult to find many people who have heard of this meme on Earth. Earthers who have traveled to the outer system sometimes confuse tales of “space whales” with “voidskates”. Among those who work in inner-system space, whalers are raving lunatics who have spent too much time in space and Martian bars. Only hardcore conspiracy theorists and those who believe alien life is here give their stories credit. This changes slowly the closer you get to the Main Belt. Belters, survivalists, and Duncanites are all likely to know a whaler personally… and sometimes even believe him.