Greystone Part 3

Pod 101 was once again in a ready-stage for me to enter. Sure I had been confident the night before, but I had the jitters now, as I entered.

As I closed the pod and turned the Divine Secured Ring one full turn, I tried to grasp the whole stream and control it, and I was battered for the effort. Instead I was helplessly watching as endless missiles of data were barraging me.

I had planned to track time inside, but that was lost immediately. Instead, I redirected information, receiving some, reflecting others, and dodging still others. Only some of the information seemed hostile. The originally insanely fast rushing river became a river which was dangerous in part, but acceptable in part.

The increasingly calm recognition of data allowed a basal recognition that there was me, and then the pod itself. But my model was disturbed when I realized the data about me implied there was another human inside the pod. Various bodily auto-systems reacted beyond my ability to provide contrary output. 

I recognized the distinction between regular internal systems and the modified internal reports that were being provided to me now. My body was transmitting information to me that said it was in a special operating mode. It pursued such states automatically as a function of it's operator eigenstate.

I couldn't factorize such vast matrices yet, so I didn't know any compressed representations, beyond the self / other factorization.

I couldn't get a grip on all of the data, there was still so much that was unknown. Time passed and I recognized a return to the normal self-state. 

It was easier this time, to recognize that I should turn the Divine Secured Ring counter-clockwise one turn. It's nature produced informational patterns of a remarkably different nature than anything else.

My senses were not yet fully transformed back as I saw but did not understand in a connected way. I went to the shower, following memory-data.

I had experienced something, which awareness could not connect to my automatic human system. It was just dawning on me that the experience was an informationalized response to sex and that kind of bodily desire.

My body had responded without any restraints, just as it had before, but this time my bowels were kept together, it was that other part of my bodily function which had been unleashed.

My automatic systems of both desire and guilt, and control of desire, they had not perceived or been in control during the incident, so I didn't have any shame, merely confusion. The bodily sensations had gone away before I left the pod, I didn't feel any of them now. Perhaps only a latent satisfaction.

I had put on a clean uniform several times before. It's use as a protection from desire and display was minimized. I must be receiving training to control that type of desire response.

The team member on call when I returned from the shower told me to go clean the pod. He was the same one who had told me to clean it up before.

I momentarily reacted when I entered the pod with cleaning supplies, and saw Blue Beaver completely naked. The sensations faded within ten seconds. She stood there perfectly still as I envisioned the original automatic sensation response, and then recognized the informational content, associating the one with the other. The automatic replaced by the informational.

 "Remember, practice returning to your automatic response. Cut the linkage with the informationalization." Blue Beaver said.

Minutes later, when I had succeeded in recovering the automatic response, it was almost too much to handle. I managed to be both recognize it's presence, process it, and then return to transforming the automatic into information.

The cleanup was quicker this time, but Blue Beaver agreed to stay for an hour before she had to go get in uniform. That let him trigger and de-trigger his automatic system response.

After the training session and Blue Beaver's shower, she invited him to go for a walk. It was good that his automatic system had been not just suppressed, but mastered. He was embarrassed that he had such a reaction.

"Usually we find someone on the team who the candidate will have a Lascivious Desire response to. Unfortunately, that was me," she said. "So I had to delay my mission by a day. Men don't do as well in this test as women. Your automatic system is more controlling on this issue.. But you will do better in a later run."

"I assume I need a new superior?" I said.

"No. I made the call on you, Green Eagle. You're my probee. You aren't exhibiting, suppressing or hiding Lascivious Desire, you truly have informationalized it, both temporarily and making good progress on a permanent basis."

I was glad that there would be no wedge between us. Since she must be a fully informationalized being, it wasn't a worry from her side. "I'm glad I don't have to worry about those automatic responses."

Blue Beaver spoke, "Don't become a 2nd stage suppressor, Green Eagle. You've only dealt with two automatic systems, so your other systems are trying to overcompensate. Romantic relations are still a possibility. Other members of Greystone become this time of wakened beings, just at a much later stage in their training. We're talking post-expert. When you have reached the end of the primary development program for the Black Team, you'll be able to pursue such things from a reasonable position."

"You think I'll  make it?" I asked. There were surely harder tests ahead, although I couldn't conceive of what they would be.

"Read the chapters of all your books, on Lascivious desire," she said. "It will help more."

 

If you want to speak of automatic systems, Lascivious desire was at the root of human history, along with disgust, being the two oldest.

The books talked about how modern society didn't control such things, but merely mutated them and caused both horrors and deprivations. The automatic system controlled something which was not as of itself, always bad, but it's responses were particularly inefficient and overpowering, especially for men.

It was uncomfortable reading, which I suspected was because of the other automatic systems I was still unquestioning about.

 

Blue Beaver was out on a week long mission when I went into the Pod for a third run.

While I entered the pod and controlled the missiles of information quickly, I had to contend with sudden hyper-speed attacks. These data-points were fast reacting. I had to recognize the need for such reaction. Damage was occuring to part of my internal system. I was able to divide my informational world into skin-surface, internal, and external

The attacks were happening at the skin-surface layer. I devised scripts to handle skin-threats quickly. The skin was essentially a protective layer for whatever wanted to pass into the body. If it was hostile it must be stopped and reacted to there.

I only spent 3 hours in the Pod this time. And I was able to clean and store away the needles and hot pads and other items I identified as causing touch sensations.

The automatic reaction system I was working with was our skin or touch sense reaction to a hot surface, needle, electricity, etc.

I was rather confident when I reported into to the team member on call.

"I cleaned up everything and put it all away," I told him.

"Put your hand on this globe," he told me.

It was metal, so I expected an electric shock, but instead, it was a pins and needles and agonizing heat all in one.

I pulled my hand away, and the experience was much worse, but the informationalization started.

I recognized that my hand needed to be on the globe to prevent any real damage. the signal being sent was designed to cause no harm but cause the auto-touch response to activate wildly.

"Work with this until you can turn on and off your touch automatic perception."

I could see that this one was a bad one to leave off, unless I could write a script to respond more effectively. Which I guess I could, with some training.

I worked with the touch perception device until I could readily turn on and off the automatic perception. i would have to work with Blue Beaver on the script.

I felt like I was scripting in the pod, but out here int he world I couldn't perceive how to do it.

After I had completed my practice and my reading on touch perception, I got more advice from one of the team members.

"You've completed the junior league, probee. Start with the really strong automatic systems. But next, you'll have to expose yourself to the stronger Room 102, in order to work on the mid-tier automatic systems. Go mingle with your fellow Candidates, walk around and realize that you are already completely unlike them."

 

So I did. My touch sense was proven in that I didn't react, upset when someone bumped into me in a crowd.

Everyone else I saw did, except one elderly man who must have been an Elite or Elder member.

Loud sounds still startled me. That would be fixed someday, I was sure of it.

 Most people didn't look at my badge and simply said, "Senior Brother," even a Full member called me senior.

 I acknowledged them little. I was senior to the plain Candidates, but many of those around me were Senior Candidates like I was.

Appearance didn't matter. I recognized, and I could partially toggle Lascivious Desire, but it didn't move me anymore, since I had seen and become familiar with the informational content.

I recognized that there was a group of new members that I once would have called stinky, but I didn't really care now.

I ate dinner in the cafeteria with hundreds of other younger members. While it didn't bother me much, I craved a return to the Systematics building and Black Team.

There was another new member of the Black Team talking with Purple Bear. I had been told some of their names now that I was out of 101, and no longer in the first start of the induction program.

I waited two days for Blue Beaver to get back from a mission. I didn't have anything to do except re-read the first three chapters of my books.

Had the Black Team reorganized the books according to our training scheme, or was this a common order to tackle. I thought of the Black Team as a special operation, doing things at the state of the art, and only our people could handle this.

The new girl was still in 101 when I went into the lab to talk to Blue Beaver.

"After 96 hours, we'll give medical care, and hope for the best, but she won't be part of the team at that point, even if she lives."

They had put me through that? When they knew it could cause death?

"Previously, you went through exposure training in 101, and then the subsequent tests in the lab. Each automatic response was it's own exposure and lab. Now, in Intermediate Beginner. You will be exposured to multiple sensoriums and automatic responses, and then you will use the Trial system to face the automatic response and learn to master it, both muted and unmuted.

Turning the Secured ring clockwise, exposes you to vastly more information, thus overriding the automatic responses and forcing you to perceive the actual information which is available, when your automatic responses are not in control. 101 is the most effective sensory deprivation chamber in this part of the world, so that the volume of information is tolerable. It is almost totally information about your own body and the pod chamber.

Now, in 102, you will receive a small fraction of the information which is available in the outside world. Vibrational information, through the bottom of the pod contacting the floor. Electromagnetic information through a 99.9999% effective filter, which leaves just that remaining portion getting through to you. And there are other kinds of information which are much reduced but you will now start to see them. Your informational model will smash apart, and you will have to reforge it.

For the first 8 hours, you will just be dealing with that, and afterwords the sensations affiliated with 3 automatic responses will be presented to you.