Chapter 415: The Upgrades

Sunday, May 25 to Wednesday, June 18, 2008

On my next déjà vu, I gave my link partner an overview of my situation and discoveries, waited for him to calm down, told him I thought I could painlessly upgrade him to 352 minds, waited for him to calm down again, then I explained my "Second-Tier Helpers" idea in detail, including that he'd be letting himself in for some possibly risky work on my Voyage. I couched my description as being an invitation to him that he could refuse, but I knew he wouldn't. That'd only put the onus on another Mark, which was silly. The Voyager's previous merge partners had never had a choice, and nor did this Mark really.

One Of Us: <Do you want to do it?>

One Of Them: <Hell yeah! 32 to 352 minds in one painless step. It doesn't get much better than that.> He knew it would get better than that: for the upgrades we'd do to everyone (more accurately, "everyme") after we'd proved it risk free, but he was putting a good spin on his acceptance of his role.

Before we made the attempt, I withdrew a die that I'd been keeping in my pocket and rolled it several times, telling my link partner that it was his number for future identification purposes.

Then I started what I hoped would be my 11th upgrade - actually my first upgrade but I was continuing to count incrementally after my tenth merge as it was still my eleventh increase in number of minds, just with an improved technique. This one should be the best one ever because no one should die. Not dying is a significant improvement to any plan!

I couldn't get the Universe to make me invisible because I couldn't control something I had no access to any meta-information about, but the Universe was sending me meta-information about the déjà vu linking process so the Universe should - I hoped - respond to my instructions about it, especially as it seemed a simple process and what I wanted happened at the end of the link anyway. I took a deep breath, crossed my fingers, waited until just after a refreshing copy had finished, and then I ordered the Universe to terminate the link.

The déjà vu's meta-information disappeared in exactly the same way I'd seen happening at the end of my recent déjà vu's.

#1: <Can any of the non-Voyager minds hear this?>

#14: <Yep. Which I guess means I'm #334 now. Congratulations, the grapevine is going to LOVE what you've discovered.>

We counted off our new minds, and all thirty two of them were present. We even counted off #1 to #320 just to make sure nothing weird had happened. We repeated those counts as we waited to find out whether the thirty two new minds would unravel in some way. As the time that the déjà vu would normally have ended came and went, we gained even more confidence.

All my abilities testing out to be exactly on the button for what mathematics predicted for them; the upgrade was exactly as effective as all of my previous merges. As more minutes passed and all my minds stayed where they were, I felt VERY good. Now I just had to wait to déjà vu with the same Mark again, to find out whether he had retained all his new minds. Given that he and I had far more minds than anyone else - unless he'd lost his - we should déjà vu pretty quickly.

After 9.5 minutes another déjà vu started. I'd started getting a little worried because that was a minute late, but it was close enough to being on schedule. Judging by his knowing to quote a die-rolled number and its being the same as I'd rolled, it was the same guy. He had 352 minds, abilities consistent with that many, had no problems since our last déjà vu, and our special abilities now tested out to be 704 minds' worth. The upgrade had worked perfectly. I patted myself on the back 704 times, as did he. He's allowed to congratulate himself as he is just as much me as I am, the two of us having the same set of minds, although they have different numbers.

[[In several respects I can't truthfully call myself "me" now, as it's difficult to identify the "I" that this autobiography started with. Does the seat of identity rest in the body or mind? The body this autobiography started with died during chapter 1, so has long gone, as have several later bodies. The birth-mind of the Mark that was the initial focus of this autobiography has been copied several times, the originals destroyed, and the tenth generation copies have been duplicated and now exist in several different dimensions. I bet if I asked you to list where all the existing copies of the original Mark's mind are now, it'd take you a few minutes to be able to answer that with confidence. Tracking my identity is a mess, but despite the logical imprecision of identity, we knew which Mark was captaining the Voyage of Discovery, and he will be the 'individual' that my autobiography will continue to follow. I'm not even sure that "autobiography" is the right word any more, but I'll continue to use that too. ("Auto" is Greek for "self", so perhaps "autosbiography", except Greek doesn't pluralize by tacking on an "s".) If you think the identity issue is a muddle at this point, wait till you see the moving and often-disappearing target it is at the time I'm writing this.]]

We didn't do anything fancy during this link, letting it end naturally. Similarly for all our very frequent subsequent déjà vu's. It was now just a matter of our repeatedly déjà vu'ing together while we waited for one or both of us to déjà vu with a five-merge Mark(s).

Our déjà vu's ceased for a few hours on the second day. I waited for a 32-minded Mark to link, but when my delayed next link did arrive, it was with my usual partner. The hiatus had been caused by my mental twin's brain reorganizing.

My awaited five-merged Mark déjà vu arrived on May 29. He also agreed to be upgraded massively (an inappropriate word), so I did the 12th upgrade, giving each of us 384 minds. It was so quick and easy that it doesn't come close to deserving its own chapter.

I VERY soon learned that while I'd been doing my 12th upgrade, my 11th upgrade partner - either 11A or 11B; that nomenclature wasn't so good anymore - had also déjà vu'd with a five-merged Mark and had upgraded with him, so there were now four of us with 384 minds. The reason I learned that so quickly was because our déjà vu's were now a theoretical average of seven minutes apart and lasting for ten minutes. I have never explicitly stated how the time between déjà vu's was measured: whether from the start of one to the start of the next, or the gap between them. Back when déjà vu's were months or weeks apart and only lasted a few seconds, the difference was indiscernible. Not now though. As it happens, I have always talked about the frequency of déjà vu's, thus the mathematical progression of them predicts that they should last ten minutes but somehow start every seven minutes.

We déjà vu'd over and over again. We didn't play any games with them, so they naturally lasted for ten minutes, ended without an upgrade, then the next one started about ten seconds later. There was a tendency for the next déjà vu to be with a different partner than the previous one, but it was only a slight preference. Because the déjà vu's should theoretically overlap we'd expected a lot of three- or four-way déjà vu's, but we didn't have any of them. For some reason, reality couldn't achieve what the mathematical progression predicted (as is often the case in mathematical progressions, see below). The information I was getting from the Universe didn't explain why, but my guess was that a three-way would've left one guy with no link, and a four-way couldn't start unless the three-way did first.

[Another mathematical progression that will hopefully be constrained by reality: In 1970 there were 20 people who made their livings by being professional Elvis Presley impersonators. By 1980 there were 200 such people, and by 1990, there were over 2,000. Statisticians predict that by 2055 the entire population of the planet will earn their livings by being professional Elvis Presley impersonators. It could be worse: they could be Tiny Tim impersonators. Mom had nostalgically played one of his songs once and I'd run screaming from the room, to get away from the screaming in the room.]

We had our 13th upgrade to 416 minds on June 2nd. We started having plenty of three-way déjà vu's, but no four-ways, which didn't make probabilistic sense. [[The inter-dimensional synchronization process is considerably more sophisticated than simple random chance, with the physical laws that govern it having some constraints and 'preferences' (in the sense that water 'prefers' to run downhill). The preferences constrained the possibilities for multi-way links in this weird situation.]]

June 4 was the date by which the three religions were meant to give me a list of questions for God, should I happen to run into Him again. They weren't finding producing the list easy although they were still working apparently amicably on it. A few days ago they'd asked me for an extension. Given what else I had going on in my life, I was happy to say, "Sure. Take your time. A lot of the benefit is in the dialogue you're having." They had each formed a committee, and those committees were doing a lot of talking inter- and intra- their Churches, but I couldn't tell whether any real benefit was or would come out of it. They were essentially debating about fiction which sounds pointless, but their conclusions could change the way the Churches deal with people, so the process might be useful even though the final list of questions would be totally worthless. It did get quite a lot of press, and many people thought it was a big deal, so I was happy to continue to encourage them. It wasn't relevant to my life though, so I'll say no more about it, just as I've said almost nothing else about what was happening in my life during this time. As its title implies, this document is primarily intended to describe my ascendancy, and now that I'm so far into it, diverting to talk about this or that real life issue is of no relevance at all.

On June 7 we did the 14th and our last of this block of upgrades, which gave him and me 448 minds, which would make sixteen of us with that number of minds after the seven other 416-minded Mark's had each upgraded one more 32-minded Mark. I had previously been frustrated and upset by being able to increase my mind count by only thirty two at a time, but with no longer having to say goodbye to my families, I couldn't care less how many upgrades I did because none of them involved any grief at all, let alone the horrendous amounts every previous Voyaging merge had caused. Upgrades were WONDERFUL!

After a few more hours, all the Second-Tier Helper Marks had been created. I just had three more big upgrades to go and then I'll wait three months to make sure that nothing falls apart, after which I'll declare my Voyage of Discovery to be finished. I'm reasonably confident that's what's going to happen and that there shouldn't be any problems with it. I'm not counting my chickens yet, but I'm definitely counting the eggs. There's never been a single sign of any psychological problem, and the few scares I've had have always been false alarms over what turned out to be welcome developments.

In three months I'll give a green light to the W-Dimension-wide rollout to all the five-merged Marks, and I'll put my feet up and relax while the twelve guys still on 448 minds start the process of upgrading the billion or so five-merge Marks out there. I'll be able to take my life out of its holding pattern and put my attention into getting the most out of it with the enormous power I'll have then; FAR more than I will EVER need or be able to use, although having a wider proximity and ki-effects ranges would be good. I won't even have to worry about what to do about the four- and fewer-merged Marks. They'll need to be upgraded too, but I'd decided that doing that is outside the job description of the Voyager. In the several ordinary déjà vu's I'd had before I started the upgrade cycle, I'd told those Marks that my job finished with my giving the green light because Voyaging was only about "discovery", not implementation of my findings. That would be all the other Marks' responsibility, including elevating the small Marks. My déjà vu partners had immediately agreed with me. I could totally read their emotions with my/our proximity sense, and they didn't begrudge me in the slightest. They could VERY easily empathize with my situation and desire to retire from the Voyaging business.

For the record: The last time I gave exact values for my abilities was when I had 320 minds. Now I have 448, an increase of 1.4 times, so my abilities had risen by factors of 1.4, 1.96 or 2.744, depending on the ability:

• Proximity is now 336 feet (102 meters) and even more detailed.

• My maximum ki-effects range is 830 feet (253 meters).

• There are 448 fingertips per mind, so just over 200,000 in total now. Maximum width is 224 inches (nearly 19 feet; 5.7 meters). Minimum width is 1/224th of an inch.

• The Blinks Allowed Effect is 104 minutes.

• My maximum force is nearly 27 million kilograms (30,000 tons).

• The amount of heat and light I can radiate is 721 megawatts. The nuclear reactor I mentioned earlier was 1,167 megawatts so it looks like I haven't beaten it yet, although I've actually left it far behind because I'm nearly always in a déjà vu.

• I won't bother confusing you with descriptions of my abilities with magnetism, electricity, energy sink and others, although I will say, "Look out, Thor!"

The sixteen of us - me and my Second-Tier Helpers - are déjà vu'ing almost continuously now, in two- and three-way combinations, so the above list significantly understate what I am capable of. With two or three times more minds in my head, my NP force and energy generation maximums are usually eight or twenty seven times greater than the figures listed above. Apart from the brief intervals between déjà vu's, I can output far more power than the latest nuclear power station, often by a factor of nearly seventeen.

The near-constant déjà vu's are another reason I'm counting my end-of-Voyage chickens so optimistically, as I'm already living with 896 or 1,344 minds in my head far more often than not, and that's working perfectly well. It's not even a nuisance, as there's no echo effect. We can sense each other fully, both in our own heads as well as the copies at the other ends of the links, and it's not in the least intrusive. [[It occurs to me that I failed to explain why there's no echo any longer. You can probably see the reason yourself, but in case you can't: My subconsciouses had achieved better access to and control over some of the Universe's Consciousness functions, including the déjà vu process. They didn't have full access, understanding or control, but they did have some. Improving our inter-dimensional communication process had got rid of the problem of the refreshing echoes (unless we directed a message to a mind-copy but not its mind-original), but had created the "glitch" problem, which I now understand and celebrate the cause of.]]

I don't even have to write that we're polite to each other, or didn't try to control each other's bodies, or any other 'rules', because we didn't care about any of those issues. We do sometimes control each other's bodies. It was probably a little bit impolite but we didn't care so it often happens, especially if one of us thinks of something funny to do. We ARE each other, especially because all fifteen of my second-tier helpers have almost the same set of minds as I do. We treat each other across the link the same as we treat each other inside our heads. It's almost correct to say, "There's no difference because there's no difference." That we're sharing two bodies and that one of those bodies swaps around semi-randomly every few minutes isn't any real change from sharing one body. The only reason we had for being cautious about remote-controlling someone else's body is that his dimension might have a dimensional difference relevant to the action that made it a poor one. Such differences were so rare that we ignored the risk of them, especially because none of them were relevant to what we were doing over these hours. Should an important difference be discovered, it wouldn't take long to spread the warning about it through the other fourteen of us.

[[One of the many Mark-minds that is 'looking over my shoulder' while I am writing this just pointed out that the text's concentration on the Voyage to the exclusion of all else might give readers the erroneous impression that I had indeed gone away on a voyage. All these recently described events occurred inside my head. Outside of my head, life went on as normal: my body was still in bed with my girls when they woke up in the morning, I still brushed my teeth and went through all my other daily functions. With the number of minds I had now, I had NO trouble managing my life while participating in the Voyage. You know enough about my life to be able to imagine its daily routine. Anything particularly interesting I'll make sure to mention later.]]

We hadn't spread the word to the five-merge grapevine since before the eleventh upgrade, so having achieved the creation of the Second-Tier Helpers, we paused for the few days it took to have some déjà vu's with 32-minded Marks. They were so excited from the shock of déjà vu temporarily taking them from 32 to 480 minds, and by the news that we told them, that they raved about it so loudly that Marks in dimensions neighboring theirs could probably hear them even without a link.

My Voyage of Discovery had failed in a way that made all the other Marks VERY happy, or would when they got the news through the grapevine. The Voyage had been launched for me to help everyone else by finding out things about our abilities that I could tell them how to use. I hadn't found very many. The Energy Sink was a great discovery and possibly a lifesaver, giving NP-points mirrors and greater crush resistance were perhaps useful gains, but otherwise I hadn't found much of any real significance - that I now had 27 million kilograms of NP force, although ridiculously awe inspiring for me, was useless to everyone else. Instead of my finding useful things that the 32- or fewer-minded Marks could add to their abilities, I'd found a way to get all of them painlessly upgraded to having approximately 1,500 minds. That BLEW AWAY any little tricks I could teach them. With luck, once they've all got over a thousand minds they might make useful discoveries of their own, adding to our combined knowledge and making me even more redundant.

^

Now I just had to do my last three large upgrades, then wait three months.

My little group of sixteen Marks had spent so much time living with 896 and 1,344 minds in our heads that the idea of upgrading two of our heads from 448 to 896 didn't cause any excitement or concern. All of my second-tier helpers were perfectly happy to be my partner for that upgrade. We would be exposed to the risk that our subsequent déjà vu's would take us to even more minds, and maybe there would be problems then, but we didn't think so. It seemed that our brains could hold an astonishing number of minds, and there wasn't even a hint of there being a limit. There had to be, of course, but it was very unlikely to be something we were just about to bang into.

Even if a déjà vu does cause problems, we could cause it to end quickly by getting the minds at the ends to think very differently. Once the link had canceled, and if the problem had been bad enough, we could cancel future déjà vu's just as they were starting and before any minds were copied. With a little practice - and we'd get plenty of it - that would soon become a subconscious habit. That would keep us safe even if out of contact with the rest of the W-Dimension's Marks. That'd be a real shame, but it's not as if I'd feel lonely given how many minds I'd have in my own head. It wasn't even as bad as that, because I could probably find a way of making sure I just had two-way déjà vu's with relatively small-minded Marks, giving me a conduit through to all the rest of us. That was mostly just idle speculation though, as we didn't envisage bad problems - it had just been so easy so far.

I finished my yawn, double-checked the current link was still only a two-way déjà vu. We can sense the links forming well before the minds are copied so there was no chance of my making a mistake, and it wouldn't have mattered much if I had. I wanted to upgrade while in a two-way link so fewer of us would be affected if there was a health problem, but that risk was so low I was really only being cautious because there was no reason not to be. I cut the existing link to cause my 15th upgrade, leaving my partner and me with 896 minds each.

Everything was good at my end, and it only took a few minutes to get confirmation that it'd worked at his end too.

<One down, two to go.>

To be cautious - almost certainly unnecessarily - I waited a day. During that time I had plenty of three-ways with the other 896-minded Mark and one of the 448's, making 2,240 minds in our heads, and those déjà vu's didn't cause any problems. The imminent sixteenth upgrade was only slightly more of a worry than the fifteenth. Having the non-upgrading déjà vu's confirm I had the capacity first took a lot of the worry out.

During the wait, one of the 448-minded second-tier helpers déjà vu'd with a five-merge Mark, getting the latest little progress report out. I wouldn't have held up the next upgrade if no five-merged Mark had turned up because if anything went wrong the fourteen non-participating Helper Marks would get the word out about it easily.

Anyhow, 24 hours after my previous upgrade, when I was linked to only a 448-minded Mark, I canceled the link, and the 16th upgrade went through without a hiccup, giving the two of us 1,344 minds. Just one more upgrade to go and my active involvement in the Voyaging profession will be over.

Toward the end of the next 24-hour waiting period, a new part of my brain came online. I thanked it for not taking all my abilities away for a few hours first, then thought about the information it was telling me. I felt rather than knew the following:

• It was about my and the Mark I was currently déjà vu'ing with's w-dimensions.

• There was a w-dimension address for each of us. Not in the sense of an absolute address like, "Number 12, 5th Street", but a relative one like, "Just over there {pointing at a spot}." The address seemed precise, but it was relative and more analog than digital. My w-dimension had an address that didn't feel like "here" or "zero". It was close to "here", but not quite, which implied the addresses were relative to something other than me. [[Something analogous to the center of this dimension.]]

• There was some information that felt like an "age". It looked like a 2D picture with the full spectrum of color included although the vast majority of it was blue, with only a very few spots or areas of yellow or red. The colors were VERY slowly shifting toward red; so slowly that I felt rather than saw it. What it meant was anybody's guess. A lot of my bodiless anybodies did guess, but we weren't able to tell which if any were right. [[The Universe's Consciousness keeping track of how in need of synchronizing each part of this dimension was.]]

• There were half a dozen scalar values for each of the two dimensions. Again qualitative rather than quantitative, with values like "high", "very low", etc. What they were measuring was anybody's next guess, which were just as successful as their previous guesses. We could test a few of our guesses, but for most of them we couldn't determine their accuracy. [[There's a lot of meta-information stored about each dimension, for example, to define the "themes" that operate within it.]]

The Mark that I was linked to was the other 1,344-minded Mark but he didn't have the new sense himself. I thought he probably would within a day or two because my mental adaptability was just a little ahead of his. I'd started my Voyage months before he'd joined it, but what mattered the most is the timing difference between when we got enough minds for something to happen, and a couple of the Second-Tier Helper Marks were close behind me on that. With the current Mark, we tied on getting to 1,344 minds, but I'd beaten him to 896, giving me a slight edge.

When we became a three-way déjà vu, the new guy's data also appeared in my new sense.

When the current déjà vu completely finished, I tried imagining myself linking to the guy who'd just left. His dimension's data was no longer actively displayed in my head but I remembered his address. I knew what newly forming links felt like, so it might've been easy if my subconscious acted on my obvious intent. Nothing happened, so I tried the next test we'd agreed on: I tried to link my address to his address. The link formed, and a couple of seconds later we were in a perfectly ordinary déjà vu. We chatted for a little while, then I ended the déjà vu in the non-upgrade way. [A method that works well is for the Mark-mind anchoring one end of the link to think of a really sexy image - we can usually think of something - while the other anchoring mind thinks of something offensive such as licking vomit out of a used and unflushed toilet bowl. The emotional dichotomy kills the déjà vu pretty damned fast. I'll call a non-upgrading severing of a déjà vu a "dichotomy cancel" to differentiate it from an "upgrading cancel".]

Next I tried linking the two other Marks I knew the addresses of together. I couldn't tell whether they were connected from any of the information I had. I waited fifteen seconds, then linked myself to the theoretically easier of the two: the one with the most minds. I wrote "theoretically" because no effort was required from me, but I chose that guy because I thought my experiment's request was more likely to succeed if I made it easier for the Universe. The Universe has been good to me recently so I like to do what I can to be good to it. The two test-Marks had been in déjà vu for fifteen seconds by the time I'd arrived.

I dichotomy-canceled myself out of the déjà vu, waited fifteen seconds then dichotomy-canceled the test Marks' déjà vu. Then I linked myself to one of them, confirming that my severing their link had succeeded. Amusingly, the control I now have over w-dimension links means that I can take two Marks that I know the w-dimension addresses of and repeatedly upgrade them together, whether they want to or not. That was very silly but the process allows it. [[The Universe hadn't been 'designed' to enforce sensible use. It hadn't been designed at all, as far as I know, so there were things that I could do that abused the normal processes. Every time you lift something up, you're "abusing" the "normal process" of gravity, so abusing the Universe's properties isn't a scary thing.]]

We ended that déjà vu, then I tried linking my address to a random location. I just 'pointed' somewhere (it wasn't actually "pointing", but it wasn't quantitative so I wasn't simply specifying an address. I had to indicate it in an analog way, so "pointing" is a good-enough description). The link opened but nothing happened, and after a couple of seconds, it closed itself.

I imagined my address being blocked off so it couldn't be linked to. I waited ten minutes. That was an unprecedented time for me not to déjà vu in my current situation - ten seconds was about normal for a gap - so it was definitive enough. I removed the block and waited all of twenty seconds for the next déjà vu, and thereafter they occurred with the normal intervals.

I didn't want to experiment with blocking someone's address while they were in a déjà vu in case it created an upgrade or even caused damage somehow. I thought an upgrade was the most likely result, but even that was a slight nuisance as it'd slow down the process of upgrading all the other Marks by moving two of the seeders closer to the approximately 1,500-mind ceiling that we were envisaging. So I dichotomy-canceled my current déjà vu and then quickly blocked his address before he could start a new link. I waited ten minutes, dichotomy-canceled the déjà vu I was in, unblocked my test-Mark's address and linked myself to him. He'd been déjà vu-free for the last ten minutes.

That's enough of a description to give you the idea of how it worked. What I found more interesting than any other aspect, was its being a fundamental new type of ability because it crossed dimensions! That was a biggie. [[As I explained not long ago, my subconsciouses had already made some cross-dimensional progress in getting rid of the déjà vu echoes while accidentally confusing me with the glitch.]] When we've all got this w-address tracking and linking ability, we'll have enormous communication flexibility. It won't take thirty days to spread the word across the billion or so of us, but something like thirty minutes if we manage it properly. That has some profound consequences for our lives, such as having a billion or so Marks all doing scientific research in a coordinated manner and sharing their results. It also offers the possibility of allowing us to contact fewer-minded Marks, and potentially even the single-minded ones who have no idea what they're missing out on, and their families missing out on too. Improving that ability and gaining understanding of how the w-addresses work are high on my list of research topics.