this is all neal stephenson's fault, okay

[fahye]

David pulls him another beer, and as the fizz icebergs across his tongue Tee finds himself thinking about what can be hidden in an eyai -- not in their code, not the way he is accustomed to hiding things, but in the eyai themselves. The choc-eggs have a simply defined output for a pattern of input, but what if there was instead a module for adjustable output, a storage space, such that the output would never appear on the code; just the potential for it. The font but not the text itself. You could store anything, under as many layers of meaningless stimuli as you wished, and as long as the input pattern was disguised adequately in the basic psychophysical templates -- easy, and nobody would ever look there for anything as fun as this -- an ignorant third party could grind the carrier into silicon dust before it gave up a single bit of information.

He glances at the girl and thinks oh, the secrets I could store in you. An eyai holding the cipher and -- he smiles at the neatness of it, the abrupt anachronistic chord -- a person holding the key.

~

OOPS. Never let it be said that I am not easily swayed by my current reading material.

Now I'm off to hammer some Bechdel potential into my story, which is surprisingly difficult when it's narrated by a self-absorbed male.

Comments

[kayloulee.livejournal.com]

Which Stephenson book are you reading? I caught a glance of the cover yesterday in the library, but I didn't recognise it. From what you just posted I'm guessing it's not from the Baroque Cycle or Anathem.

[fahye.livejournal.com]

Cryptonomicon, which is about WWII cryptographers and modern-day hackers and hunting for gold in the jungle! It's about as ridiculously crammed full of jokes for scientists and historians as the Baroque Cycle is.

[kayloulee.livejournal.com]

I adore Cryptonomicon! I was tossing up between your book being that or one of the two I haven't read (Snow Crash and Diamond Age - if there's others then I haven't read them either). Cryptonomicon's my twice-annual stuvac read, because there's a battered copy of it in Short Loan and I never have enough switch-off material during stuvac. I want to buy it, but I've never seen it anywhere.

You know that it's set in the same universe as the Baroque Cycle, right?

[fahye.livejournal.com]

Yes! Though all I've read of BC is three-quarters of Quicksilver.

[lilith-lessfair.livejournal.com]

I'm looking forward to this one.

You could store anything, under as many layers of meaningless stimuli as you wished, and as long as the input pattern was disguised adequately in the basic psychophysical templates -- easy, and nobody would ever look there for anything as fun as this

Intriguing. The implications ...

I'm often swayed by my reading materials as well; but it usually works out as there seems to be a close and productive relationship between what I choose to read and what I write.

[lilith-lessfair.livejournal.com]

Or at least I hope it's a productive relationship; I may only be derivative ....

[schiarire.livejournal.com]

Tee is kind of a terrible person, but enjoyably so.

[fahye.livejournal.com]

I find it interesting that both of my stories are about human males who are very closely linked to eyai but who really aren't fussed about the revolution one way or the other. Though for COMPLETELY different reasons.