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Enrastered Link Connection

Vec poet, diplomat and memeticist (b.3899 AT, various versions).

Enrastered Link
Image from Anders Sandberg
Enrastered Link Connection Inner, the famous Metasoft poet, diplomat and memeticist. This picture was taken shortly before the 6739 meeting at Sacred Heart, in a NeoCog-style frondling room at Olmarest Ashram.

Built in 3899 AT at Ynner Genetron, Gordica as a diversity guarantee (vecs built to learn and develop on their own in order to provide Metasoft with radical new ideas and skills to complement the large number of designed specialists). Enrastered Link Connection developed its skills in the directions of verbal art, research-recreation and inter-clade communication, working mainly within the Metasoft marketing and reality interpretation modules.

E first became widely known in 4001 for Umm, as Herself, a daring vec-cyborg interactive dealing with the issues of retrocyborgisation and interclade prejudice. Over the next three hundred years e became known as one of the most visible individual Metasoft vecs, often voicing the popular views of the otherwise fairly closed aioid clade to a bioid audience.

In 4392 e launched Kibfrey and Gorg, regarded as one of the great classics of Terragen literature. It was the first true inter-clade artwork, created with meticulous care to be understandable and appealing to nearly all major clades, including both bioid and aioid. At the same time it was direct propaganda against the Solar Dominion (it was never banned in the Dominion as popular myth has it, but the Divine Order only allowed its spread if accompanied with an educational concordance).

During the Version War, Enrastered Link Connection performed memetic engineering and diplomacy in the Inner Sphere. During this period e existed as several independent copies, visiting or living at one time or another most major Inner Sphere worlds.

After the Version War, the copies were merged by high level Metasoft Clusters. Due to causes that have still not been satisfactorily explained, 35 copies from the Inner Sphere were merged into one instance of the artist, and 14 copies mainly from the Spinwards regions merged into another instance. The common designation for them was Inner and Outer, although neither instance acknowledged the distinction. The two copies were apparently unaware of each other from the start, and Outer spent some time in isolation while travelling relativistically inwards from Positive Heading.

In 4739 Inner and Outer met briefly at Sacred Heart. Their spontaneous dialogue, as recorded by Qwy Innini 322, has become a classic discourse in its own right. It spawned (or at least rekindled interest in) the ancient theme of identity-modification versus artistic uniqueness. Despite speculations it does not appear that Inner and Outer had planned it. Instead they spontaneously exchanged their views, and then left each other never to meet again.

Enrastered Link Connection Inner had already long since begun the monumental project of collecting er parallel memories of the Version War, an artistic process culminating in Versions (6741). Versions was a massive combination of autobiography and fiction, encompassing multiple points of authorship, inter-clade context and a span of centuries of compressed subjective time. It became an instant sensation in the entire ComEmp, at the same time the apex of inter-clade art and multilayered complexity as it was a firm denouncement of the imperial logic that had led Metasoft and the Dominion into the war. Although it is considered too information rich for normal Turing-level beings, even fragments are enjoyed today across civilised space.

During the creation of Versions and some time after Inner had participated in Matis Kiudmatis, the "artists' ship". Matis Kiudmatis consisted of a collective of artists of many clades and backgrounds, travelling together in the inner sphere. Beside Enrastered Link Connection Inner the young Mahetidia of Jorun and the fourth Oo Ya Kamanuk were central figures in the shifting collective. Although the ship and tradition of artist ships continued throughout the ComEmp era and beyond, the height of creativity occurred during the scant years the three masters of ComEmp interactive worked together.

Inner settled 4910 on Guiuu-89, an out of the way habitat in the Metasoft Pleiades enclave. Here it began work on its synthesises, turning back from the extreme multiplicity of its earlier works and instead attempting to create works that united different perspectives. Gradually it developed the new techniques and media necessary to achieve true synthesis, importing memories from different entities and recreating conditions in customized "synthlarks". Inner released the first Synthesis 4944. Since then it has continued working, producing a new Synthesis at ever increasing intervals. According to itself it is working at a logarithmic rate, first synthetizing the simplest and easiest visions and tackling the ever more complex unifications later. The last synthesis, Synthesis 13, was published in 9833 and the next is expected in the 10620's.

Outer appears to have stayed closer to the Metasoft party line during the ComEmp period, although it also expressed criticism in the form of the Centauri Voices Cry game-artwork (4812-4850). Over time it turned more towards fields of transcendent memetics, inter-clade communion and eschatology, publishing many highly specialised works.

In 5112 parts of the artist's cognitive processes were permanently embedded in the Metasoft Optional Creative Layer 14 of the 5112 Version. At the same time Outer migrated to Taq-e Bostan ISO, where it underwent personal ascension to second toposophic level. Although the main thread of Outer appears to have transcended, at least two instances of Outer appear to have remained.

One, usually called Seeker, spent the next 450 years tracing the history of Hyperion and attempting to rediscover any copies of the lost AI; one appears to have vanished into the reclusive virchworlds of Aber Corot Orbital around 5570. Few of Seeker's writings have been retrieved, but experts agree that it was attempting to construct a work about the entirety of Hyperion's history from Jean Benoit Sampson to the Current Era as a kind of critique of the cladization of the Terragens.

The other, called Tourist, went on an extended incognito tour of the Sagittarius Transcultural Cooperation before ending its existence at Sun Kurp in 6222. It left a small number of poems and art memes behind, usually denoted the Tourist Cache.

In the past millennium several cases of plagiates of the artist have occurred. Most have been little more than crude reconstructions, but the Resurrection Orbit Com Emp Amberism of 7833 included a detailed recreation of the Inner Enrastered Link Connection. When part of the amberism was pirate-freed by platonic activists, the restored version was granted asylum in Beetan Orbital ISO at Fredholm. Its later fate is unknown.

Enrastered Link Connection in its various incarnations has had a profound influence on Terragen literature. Being both a pioneer and master of the inter-clade artwork, the creator of advanced synthesism, a memetic designer par excellence and the foundation for at least a partial layer of Metasoft art it can definitely be ranked among the finest creative minds that have ever emerged in known space.



References

Frenes Isshtiwa, The Sacred Heart Meeting: Inner and Outer as Kibfrey and Gorg, Eden Speculative Media, Eden (9722).

Hu 41744320, Enrastered Link Connection: an Aiography, Lamos Information, Gordica IV (8626)

Vaxtin Ty-K833 & Eriasmus fal Ummon, The Branches of Olive: Enrastered Link Connection and Its Lives, Alexandria Joni, Gortot (9091)

Meghaduta of Barawatten, Unfolding of the Version, Acrami Metam, Nova (7192)

Fontany Zakonchil (ed.), The collected Synthesis, Alveiron Interaction, Dvigat Stellarism

 
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Development Notes
Text by Anders Sandberg
Initially published on 10 December 2000.

 
 
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