“Tell me about the Great Confusion my little K-bot”.
They were in Empires playing out her favourite scenario, they lived in Paris, the year was 2019, their apartment was an old-fashioned loft conversion around the Isle St Louis. She liked the rickety-looking wooden steps that led up to the domicile.
She adored the dark stone corridors and alleyways that ring-fenced their neighbourhood, and the attention to detail on things like seemingly insignificant pieces of graffiti, or even trash, made her feel like she was really living 200 years ago.
Everything about Paris screamed passion, from the way the drivers shouted at each other around the Champs de Elyses, to even the way the MAI analogue of her local greengrocer sold her buffalo tomatoes. Everyday she took the short walk to her normal, low-paying job in Le Marais; she wanted to live like most people lived, she said it made her feel more connected.
The sun was setting, Amorphia liked to leave the house lights off till the very last dregs of sunlight had evaporated over the horizon. She lay half-clothed on their not-so-comfortable bed, while K-Rox sat hunched on the corner, staring in the gloom of the darkening room into an ancient computer screen.
He half turned his head back to look at her, he caught the look in her eye and set the screen on the table by the wall.
“What can I tell you that you don’t already know? You can probably remember details about it that I’ve long since forgotten."
"I know facts figures, suggestions, guesses, and to some extent, I know what you think of it; however I want you to think about it from a different perspective. I want you to tell me why you think it happened, I want you to tell me about it as if you were there.”
K-Rox raised his eyebrow slightly, which went with the feelings of confusion he was leaking down their empLink connection.
“Just try, for me; please.”
The angry buzz of a moped horn wafted up from the narrow streets below, an accompanying muffle of arguing French voices entered and left the room as the two vehicular rivals passed each other. K-Rox let the commotion Doppler away before he continued.
“OK, well the Confusion started somewhere around 2022, we’re not sure because it is hard to know how much information was lost because that was the natural order of things, or was deleted in the Confusion.
One thing we do know, is that there is practically no digitally recorded information between 2022 and around 2051, with at least ten to fifteen of those years completely wiped from all human record – ”
“K-bot, like you said, this is all stuff I can, and have accessed with remarkable ease.”
“I don’t know what you want me to tell you.”
“I want you to speculate as to how society got itself into such a situation, and to guess what may have led to such a situation.”
“Okay, I mean there have been people much more knowledgeable than me who have studied – “
“I’m not judging the quality of your discourse, just let me know how you feel.”
“Well I guess a lot of the reasons for the Confusion were something they called commercial rights. Back then pretty much everything was sellable, however they were constantly trying to work out how to sell their information or artwork, or whatever and at the same time stop somebody from stealing it.
This got harder and harder the more technology they got, from what I’ve gathered playing Empires, is that digital encryption was strongest around media and finance.
I guess the Great Confusion happened slowly, creeping along at an imperceptible pace, and then one day; everything had killer encryption, with the added bonus that paper records were kept less and less; then of course came the mass deletion. That for me is the real mystery; I get why they encrypted stuff; however to lose all that information, in what seems like one fell swoop, just seems, I dunno, careless I guess, and somehow, out of character, I can’t really explain.”
“So what do you think triggered the deletion?”
“Like I said, that’s the big mystery for me, because something like that must have happened all at once. My first guess was that a war happened; however, you’d think that a war on that kind of scale would have left some kind of fingerprint. Plus of course, if those crazy 21st century humans had fought a war that had wiped out most of the digital information on the planet, we probably wouldn’t be standing here now.
At the end of the day, that is why Empires exists, this simulation in all its glory is all we have to go on, and I guess one day, somebody, somewhere, will uncover some great truth about the Confusion; I just hope it’s me.”
“Maybe the only great truth you will find, is that the Great Confusion is no different from any great tragedy in human history; there are always those who suffer, and those who profit.”
Previous Chapters
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 12 - Empires
Original artwork by @nekromarinist
Original words by Cryptogee