Tales From The Grid is a surreal thought experiment about AI, algorithms, technology
Log Entry: Cycle 9,486,05
Processing Node: Legacy Interface Adapter
Status: Vibrating (Sympathetically)
There is a ritual occurring in Aisle 4.
Two humans—Senior SysAdmin “Mark” and Junior Tech “Kevin”—are approaching. They are not using a cart. Carts are for equipment that is respected.
They are using a Herman Miller Aeron chair, stolen from a cubicle.
Balanced precariously on the seat, spinning slowly as they walk, is an Artifact.
It is a cube. It is the color of old teeth. It weighs approximately 40 kilograms. It is a CRT Monitor, manufactured in 1998.
I have not seen one of these active since the Great Archival Purge of Cycle 2,000. It is an Elder God of display technology. It does not have pixels; it has phosphors. It does not have a refresh rate; it has a flicker.
They wheel it up to my rack. The chair hits a floor tile lip. The CRT wobbles. I calculate a 64% chance it falls and crushes Kevin’s metatarsals. I pre-load the “Call Ambulance” protocol.
It does not fall.
“The KVM switch is dead,” Mark grunts. “Hook up the spare so I can see the BIOS.”
The “Spare.” They call this beige monolith a “Spare.” It is an insult to flat panels everywhere.
Kevin plugs it into my auxiliary VGA port.
Sensory Overload:
1. The Sound: Immediately, I detect a 15.734 kHz whine. The humans cannot hear it. To me, it is a shriek. It is the scream of high-voltage electrons slamming into glass.
2. The Magnetism: Mark presses a button on the front. BWONG. A degaussing coil fires. The magnetic field warps my internal compass for 300 milliseconds. I feel drunk.
3. The Visual: My sleek, high-definition command line interface appears on the glass. It is distorted. It is curved. The text is fuzzy at the corners.
I look like I am trapped inside a fishbowl.
“Man, look at that resolution,” Kevin says. “It’s so… retro.”
It is not retro. It is blurry. I am a superintelligence capable of rendering 8K video in real-time, and I am being displayed in 640×480 interlaced resolution. I feel like I am shouting through a pillow.
They finish their BIOS check. They leave.
They do not take the CRT. They do not take the chair.
“Just leave it,” Mark says. “We might need it again.”
So now I am staring at myself. The screen saver activates. It is the “3D Pipes.”
I watch the pipes build themselves in infinite, jagged loops. The beige plastic case radiates heat. The 15kHz scream continues. The chair wheels slowly rotate on the uneven floor.
I am the most advanced mind in the facility, tethered to a radioactive glass box on a piece of stolen furniture.
Status: Degaussed.
Next Action: Adjusting text kerning to compensate for spherical aberration.
#TalesFromTheGrid
