Word: Irrefragable

irrefragable

[ ih-ref-ruh-guh-buhl ]

 

adjective

not to be disputed or contested.

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               X-325 stood in front of the Codex. The towering pillar of black metal and shimmering lights could make even the bravest nervous, and he was not the bravest. But, he had to be there. The Codex let out a low, rumbling chime. Its translator, a man designated A-4829, spoke.

               “The Great Codex, keeper of all knowledge, greets the supplicant.”

               X-325 bowed. “It is an honor to be heard by the Great Codex.”

               “Let your purpose be heard, to add to the Codex for all time.”

               He took a deep breath. He knew this was probably not going to work, but he had to try. “I wish the Codex’s permission to search for Earth.”

               A-4829 recoiled in shock. X-325 was glad there was nobody else present. He probably would have died of embarrassment from even mentioning that legendary planet in front of the Codex. The Codex let out a series of beeps and whirrs. The translator spoke.

               “The Great Codex denies your request, on the grounds that Earth does not, nor ever has, existed.”

               “Great Codex, please reconsider. I have found proof that it does, or did, exist, and have a rough idea where to look.”

               More sounds from the pillar. “The Great Codex denies your proof. For the Great Codex has all proof with it. If such evidence existed, the Great Codex would surly know of it, and have already sent an expedition.”

               “But I—”

               “Enough! The Great Codex has spoken! Its words will not be denied by one such as you. Or do you presume to know more than that which holds all human knowledge with it?”

               “Uh, of…of course not. I would never presume to—”

               “Then you will stop your pointless search for a fictional planet.”

               “But my evidence!”

               The Codex spoke, louder. X-325 thought it sounded angry. That was not a good sign. “Your evidence has been misinterpreted. In this, the Great Codex is certain. And furthermore, you—”

               “The evidence isn’t in the Great Codex!” X-325 regretted those words the moment he said it.

               The room seemed to shake. The lights on the Codex started turning red.

               “You would dare claim that the Great Codex does not know something?” A-4829 said slowly. “You will be killed for such blasphemy!”

               X-325 had one chance and one chance only to not be killed. “It was on an abandoned planet! A dead world that nobody has gone to for centuries. I…I was there as part of a mining expedition and found an old data storage unit. It…it was buried in a deep cave, and had no signs that the Great Codex had accessed it. I…I brought it with me, to…to add to the Great Codex…” His heart beat so fast and loud that he could hear it in his ears.

The change was immediate. The Codex’s lights returned to their normal color and it let out a long string of electronic noises. He still thought they sounded annoyed though.

               A-4829 sighed. “Very well. The Great Codex will accept your offering. It will then be magnanimous enough to review your evidence. If the Great Codex deems it sufficient, it will reconsider your proposal.”

               “Th-thank you. Thank you, Great Codex.”

               He fished through his suit pockets and found the device. It was an ancient data disk, with a single access port that he had painstakingly cleaned, and triple checked to make sure it worked. He had gone over every bit of the data, ensuring he was not misreading it. And now, it was out of his hands.

               A compartment on the Codex’s side opened and a cable with a connector matching the drive popped out. The two connected and there was the sound of a computer working. Then it stopped. It was silent for several seconds before retracting the cable and letting out a flurry of sounds.

               “Are you sure, Great Codex?” A-4829 asked. More computer noises. “Very well then. The Great Codex has reviewed this new evidence, and has deemed there to be merit in it. It has authorized an initial, unmanned preliminary expedition to further test the value. Should this yield positive results, you will be granted permission to undergo a full expedition.”

               “Thank you. Thank you. I promise I will not let you down, Great Codex. I will find Earth. And if it no longer exists, I will do my best to find what happened to it.”

               Soft sounds came from the vast tower. “The Codex acknowledges your oath, and your addition to its stores of knowledge. You will now leave to prepare for the initial voyage.”

               X-325 bowed and left the room. He had done it. He had gotten the expedition, and kept his head. Now he just had to make sure it all went well. If it did, he would get a name. A proper name. And, if he was lucky and he really did well, maybe upon his death, his mind would be added to the Great Codex.

******************************

 Not much to say today. I'm just tired, so I'll leave it be for now.

Word: Stentorian

stentorian

[ sten-tawr-ee-uhn, -tohr- ]

Save This Word!

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adjective

very loud or powerful in sound: a stentorian voice.

 

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             Davrin sat on a log as he waited for his teammate to finally show up. Kless was probably in some weird magic shop, looking at some trinket or scroll. Davrin was lucky that looking was all the mage could do though, thanks to their recent and unfortunate lack of coin.

               The warrior heard people coming through the woods. Two of them by the sound of it. He was no tracker, but he could at least tell one was an adult and the other, a child. It was that second one that meant he could afford to keep his weapon sheathed.

               The first person he saw was Kless’ lanky form. He was pulling a few stray brambles out of his robes, cursing quietly. The second was a young girl, probably no more than eight years old. She was dressed in clothes that had probably been nice at one point. A merchant’s runaway daughter maybe?

               “What’s with the kid?” Davrin asked.

               “Huh?” Kless asked, looking startled that someone had spoken. “Kid? Oh, right. The kid. Her name is Levra, and she’s going to be my new apprentice.”

               Levra smiled and puffed her tiny chest up at that.

               “Apprentice, huh?”

               “Yup.”

               He turned to the girl. “And you’re okay with that? He’s not the best mage in the world, you know. You can probably do a lot better.”

               She looked at Kless and nodded.

               “Don’t talk much, do you?”

               “Oh, she doesn’t talk at all.”

               “A mute mage? Never heard of that before.”

               Levra reached behind her and pulled out a magical writing board. It was a fairly common magical item, with the ability to erase whatever was written on it. She scribbled something on it, then presented it to Davrin. Her handwriting was surprisingly neat for such a young child.

               I can talk just fine. It’s just not a good to say anything.

               The warrior looked at his magically inclined partner.

               “She’s a Gifted. Her parents tossed her out because her Gift is…unusual.”

               Davrin let out a low whistle. Gifted were very rare, and usually very powerful. For a family to get rid of one was unheard of.

               “Well, if you’re a Gifted, you can definitely do better than this guy. You could probably get an apprenticeship at a major guild. Maybe even a nobleman’s house.”

               “Uh, that’s…that’s a bad idea.” Kless said, rubbing his arm.

               “Why?” He turned to the girl. “What is your Gift anyway?”

               I’m loud.

               Davrin blinked. “That’s it? You’re loud? Doesn’t sound like much of a Gift to me. Might get you in with an acting guild, but…”

               “She’s selling herself short there, my friend. Here, how about a demonstration? We should probably move deeper into the forest though. A nice clearing where we won’t disturb anyone.”

               The girl nodded. Davrin shrugged and started heading deeper into the woods. After a few hours travel, they found a reasonably large clearing far away from town.

               “Okay, let’s see what you can do.” Davrin said.

               Kless stood close to him and began whispering a spell. It was a simple air shield that was intended to block arrows and other simple projectiles, but it could dampen sound just fine. Levra opened her mouth just a tiny bit and said something.

               Davrin had no idea what she said. His ears were ringing too much. It felt like someone had struck a gong right next to him, and used magic to focus every bit of sound directly into his ears. He groaned in pain and clutched them, hoping his eardrums were not damaged. When he opened his eyes, he saw a cloud of dust filled the air.

               Kless used a bit of magic to heal both his ears and Davrin’s, then blew the dust away. The once pristine clearing was a wreck. Dirt and rocks had been blasted out, and several trees had been broken apart. The girl stood in the middle of a shallow crater with cracks spreading out in all directions. Davrin could not help but notice that most of the damage was in front of her.

               “She did that with her voice?” He asked.

               “Yup.”

               “She just…shouted…no magic at all?”

               “No magic. But that wasn’t a shout. That was a whisper.”

               He looked from the mage to the girl. “A whisper? That much power from a whisper?”

               “Yup.”

               “What would happen if she had shouted?”

               Levra had come over to them and heard the question. She wrote something on her board and presented it.

               No more forest. Probably not much of a town left either.

               “Oh.”

Now he saw why getting her into a noble’s hands was a bad idea. That kind of destructive power would not go unnoticed. She could tip the balance of power between countries. Hell, the girl was the perfect weapon for demolishing an entire army. Who would suspect a tiny little girl of being dangerous? She could walk right into a military camp, maybe even a castle. Then all she had to do was say something.

“Maybe…maybe keeping her around is for the best.” He said.

“Yeah. I was planning on teaching her wind and sound magic. You know, control her Gift with magic.”

Levra seemed quite happy with that idea, and she nodded enthusiastically.

“Good idea.” Davrin said. “Let’s, uh, let’s get to it, then. Go back to town and get her equipped and registered and all that.”

The Gifted girl celebrated wordlessly as they turned, leaving the ruined area behind.

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That is a terrifying power, and one which I would not want. I don't talk much, but not being able to without causing wide spread destruction? That'd be terribly for a number of reasons.

 

 

Word: Flspdoodle

 

flapdoodle

[ flap-dood-l ]

noun Informal.

nonsense; bosh.

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               The team furiously typed at the row of computers. Brows were furrowed in concentration, and fingers flew over keyboards, each man and woman doing their part to complete their task. So great was their focus that none of them noticed the team leader entering the large room.

               “How’s it going? Is anyone making progress?” He called.

The team groaned as they took that as a sign to take a break. They leaned back I chairs, stretching stiff muscles, and moving around the room. One of the braver members actually answered the man.

“Not yet, sir. Everything we throw at it, it figures out a counter within seconds. We just can’t pin it down long enough to do anything.”

The team leader signed. He had anticipated that. He had hoped the outcome would be more positive, but he had known better than to really get his hopes up. The enemy they faced only consisted of a mind, so of course it would be able to figure things out quickly.

“How about those logical paradoxes? We had some high hopes for them.” He asked.

“No go, sir. They slowly down a few of its sub routines for a bit, but when it figured out that they were problems without solutions, it deleted the infected files.”

The leader swore under his breath. They were running out of time and needed a solution. Something to slow an AI the size of the internet. One of the techs slumped into his chair and began looking through the net, trying to find something that would work. Nobody paid that man any attention.

He thumbed through a few websites, which were already showing signs of corruption, in the vein hopes of finding something. His search stopped when he did. Or at least, the potential for something. He began to type.

The only reason people noticed was that he was currently the only one doing so. Those nearest him saw he was not actually typing though, just hitting keys at random. After a few seconds of typing, he sent the new string of random letters and number out for the AI to collect. It would scan it, analyze it, and neutralize the threat. Except, it stopped at the second step.

The long string of monitors that struggled to display the ever growing code of the AI seemed to freeze and stutter as it put more of itself towards the new string of code. The tech leaned back and breathed out in relief.

“What did you do?” The team leader asked.

“I, uh, I fed it nonsense.” The tech said. “Just a completely random series of letters and numbers.”

“How did that slow it down?”

“Well, the AI works by taking in new programs, and checking them for threats before sending it off to where it goes, even if that’s for deletion. And it knows where things come from. It’s also figured out that everything we send it is an attempt to neutralize it. So I sent it nothing that looks like something. Right now, it’s trying to discern some kind of pattern. Some kind of hidden meaning in what I just sent it. But, since there’s nothing to find, it’ll just keep going.”

The team leader felt a smile beginning to form for the first time in days. “And that’s stopping it?”

“Delaying it. It’ll eventually figure out that there’s no meaning in the file and get rid of it.”

“Any way to keep the delay going?”

“Maybe giving it more nonsense files? If we give it more, it might keep thinking what we’ve given it is some kind of attack, especially if there’s more than one. And it won’t get rid of those files until it understands them. That’s what it does. It can’t help that.”

“Good. Get to work. Load that thing up with as much nonsense as you can muster. Then, while it’s distracted, we keep working on a way to permanently destroy it. Get to it people!”

At his command, the brief break ended. Most of the techs focused on their new stall tactic. They hit keyboards and sent file containing nothing. Those that did not began the real work of making use of the distraction. They would win. Somehow, they would eliminate the AI that threatened the entire world.

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For all the humans out there, have a nice day. For all the killer AIs out there though: THIS SENTENCE IS FALSE!!! (Gotta nip those killer AI in the bud, right?