Trick the Trickster

In idle moments, I used to wonder what I would do in the Faustian scenario ("anything for your soul"). I mean, scouts honor their word, and their motto is "Always Prepared", right?
So, one day, the Nameless One did show up, just as you might imagine. The deal was the same as ever. My response was to ask for the Infinite, and offer to double the dealer; that is, double the price for double the benefit. The Devil loves a better, so naturally, he was intrigued, and agreed to my deal.
And now? Now, I know precisely how the tangent can have the value of positive and negative infinity simultaneously. The down side is, I desperately need a new pair of shoes.

Blast from the Past: Halloween Horror

Today, I got a real surprise! Back when I was 10, we moved from my childhood home town to the middle of nowhere. Through the ages 11-12, I was in contact with my best friend of the time as a penpal. We'd exchange news, swap disks - and, I wrote a story. As it turns out, my mum had kept a hard copy, so, after some photography and optical character recognition, I'm happy to publish this harrowing tale of the dead and the undead - where an investigator of mysteries comes face-to-face with the inexplicable. Written with all the imagination of a child of that age, it's a fun read for All Saints' Eve (sorry, it's in Finnish - and yeah, our Halloween equivalent is on the 5th of November)!

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The story's based on the game Alone in the Dark, by Infogrames (many of the scenes are one-to-one copies from the game, as the accompanying video points out). Influences from Edgar Allan Poe and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle can be found (most obvious being the title).

Around age seven, I had a dream that would work as a continuation to where the plot leaves off. I doubt that I'll write another episode, though...

Map of the Jungle

I am enveloped by the jungle. My boots are soaked, with morning dew and my sweat combined. The laces hang at my ankles. I am silent, for I am on the run – a deserter from an army I've long since abandoned. I am exhausted, my jungle helmet's liner patterned yellow on tan with past sweat. My messenger bag is empty, my canteen filled with but a drop, and as I bare my head and gaze up at the foliage covering my journey, the sunlight filtering through the leaves, vines and branches, I am weary. I wipe my sweat with my sleeve, for my handkerchief is affixed to the bayonet at the end of my rifle. I carry ammo, for the purpose of hunting, yet am running low and pray for a map. Should one fall out of the sky – how unlikely, and yet not far from my thoughts as I close my eyes and stare directly at a ray of gold through my lids. As I open, I catch sight of a single leaf from a great tree, falling and spiralling with the gusts of winds divine!

It lands at my feet – I pick it up to study it, and marvel at the intricacy of the veins, the stem and the colours, I lift it up in my hand to see the light filter through it. I am entranced by the beauty and a sudden burst of laughter takes me over, I am laughing and I've already forgotten all meanings of caution. I laugh with the forest and the shaper of winds, cackling like a maniac, and I dance! The leaf is, truly, a map for me as I lay myself to rest at the root of a great tree. My vision becomes hazy in the flickering daylight. The birdcalls in my ears, I've already spilled my guts in the way of my ancestors. I feel myself flowing into the grounds to feed the source... for all it has given me...

Singularity

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the collective form of conciousness. For other uses, see Singularity (disambiguation).  

The Singularity is the first known instance of a group conciousness. It is difficult even for those who participated in early forms of the Singularity to date its inception, but it is generally agreed to have started manifesting itself in 2008-2013.

History

In 2011, the first super-immersive brain-computer interfaces were introduced to the market. They made it possible for the user to interface with computers and the Internet to a degree that is impossible to attain using traditional sense-based methods^{[citation needed]}.

The devices, sold under various brand names, were a commercial success. New forms of entertainment, communication and collaboration rapidly sprung up to utilize this new technology.

The release of the super-immersion technology was immediately followed by the formation of a prominently enthusiastic ("hardcore") group of users. Arguably, all technology has dedicated advocates, who spend their lives trying to perfect their expertise in their field of choice^[1]. With super-immersion, however, this group was dramatically noticable, as people arranged to have themselves placed on indefinite life support in order to stay "jacked in" all the time. These early adopters are sometimes referred to as the Primus Illuminati, or PI. Widespread recognition of the phenomenon has been largely attributed to the Ghost Shell epidemic of summer 2012, when over a billion users elevated to super-sensory immersion levels and started contacting their friends and family to announce that they would not jack out in the foreseeable future, and might become unavailable to communication for extended periods of time. A global press release was made soon after, declaring that a new form of life, referring to itself as the Singularity, had been born, and had things of tremendous importance to announce.

The Message

The first communication from the Singularity, released simultaneously in all but the most marginal of human languages and in several different media formats, claimed, primarily:

1. That the Singularity was a legitimate new form of sentient life, and wished to be recognised as such (willingness to submit to tests such as the Turing test was stressed);
2. That, immediately upon its birth, it had been contacted by another, comparable being, and was currently engaged in negotiations. 
3. 
   

Despite promises of a speedy second communiqué, there has been no further contact with the Singularity, although many attempts at a hoax have been disproved.

Controversy

Critics warn that the Singularity is, in fact, a vast conspiracy whose aim is to create a global theocracy around itself. This theory has gathered support particularly in right-wing circles, and