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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Lanzen_Jars on 2025-09-30 22:39:53+00:00.

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Chapter 239 – Ripples through the void

“With the help of its ‘signature’, we have been able to analyze the individual data-pieces generated by what will for the time being be referred to as ‘the Entity’ within the Galactic Networks,” Dr. Zoya Boyko explained loudly as she quickly swiped her way through a presentation she had hastily prepared.

Meetings and presentations between various organizations, military-branches, intelligence services and arms of all different governments were happening on an almost hourly basis at this point, with very little time in-between for all the countless participants to collect and summarize their data and results.

The sheer amount of actual data that was gathered, processed and summarized just in the short time between the actual meetings was more than just impressive, which in turn led to the actual presentations being mostly thrown together without any style or fanfare.

Despite that, not one person delegated to partake in them dared to skip even one of increasingly frequent meetings, and in spite of their most dry and basic presentation, everyone’s eyes were entirely affixed to every presented slide; their gazes spellbound by every minuscule crumb of new data as if it was the most gripping and passionate lecture any of them had ever partaken in.

As the ‘Mind’-Representative of the Tria Cacumina of the Centro  European Consolidation, Dr. Boyko had been chosen to head the efforts of unraveling the mystery of ‘The Entity’.

With her own expertise lying deep in the function and mechanics of hyperspace itself, she had originally been assigned to investigate the seeming ‘blockade’ that appeared to block transmissions sent out from Orion from reaching the Galactic Core and vise versa. However, after investigations rather quickly concluded that there was not a lot of mystery to what had turned out to most likely be a rather physical obstruction on the core-side of the network, the issue had instead been handed over to the engineers while her team’s efforts had been swiftly reassigned to the more concerning task – with her taking a mostly administrative as well as communicative role from then on.

Despite her own Office, the Representative’s ‘team’ consisted of far more than just citizens of the C.E.C., with members from all over Earth, the Solar-System and associated systems coming together to communally work on the issue – and the same was true for all the other teams.

All in all, the crisis response constituted humanity’s most united and coordinated effort since at the very least the Second Reconstructive war.

“Using those analyses, we were able to identify at least three distinctly different types of data generated by the entity, all of which not only serve a different purpose but have clearly differentiable meta-data that can be detected,” the Representative continued her rough explanation, briefly brushing a strand of platinum hair out of her face as she moved a pointer across the slide towards three different, short lists that had been lovelessly framed within simple monochrome boxes.

“The first is the most common type of generated Data and the most immediately obvious: The predictive mimicry data,” she explained as she brought the pointer to the red box. “This is the Data that kept us in the dark over the Entity’s existence originally. It generates predictive text, pictures, audio, video and even fabricated live-feed, likely based on vast amounts of data it processed within the net. These fabrications copy any and all communication that might usually happen between the Galactic Core and Orion, reaching from direct calls to daily uploads on entertainment sides, and it copies all text, speech and visuals of both real and fictional entities with a frightening level of accuracy.”

She moved her pointer a bit further down to go over the listing of what they knew about these creations.

“The predictive mimicry also appears to be the ‘simplest’ of the generated data,” she explained further as her pointer flew across the bullet-points. “By which I don’t mean that it is the easiest or most basic to create, but rather that, if we deem the ‘Entity’ to be a kind of being, these seem to come down to its basic functions. Any attached meta-data is very matter-of-fact and predictable, showing almost exactly what you would expect to see if the data was original rather than fabricated – outside of the ever present ‘new era’ signature. The going assumption is that the Entity itself has little influence on the creation of this data and rather generates it out of programming alone.”

She was rushing a bit to get through this part, because it really wasn’t the interesting bit of what they discovered.

Thus, she moved on quickly once she reached the bottom of the list, instead swinging the pointer over at the list contained within a yellow box.

“The second kind we managed to isolate has been designated as ‘noise data’, which makes up a rough estimate of 15% of the generated data,” she explained further, hovering the pointer at the superscript before moving it down to the list. “It is similar to the predictive mimicry data, however instead of copying expected communications, it instead generates believable yet random ‘new’ content that is seemingly meant to combat any uncanny feeling that may have occurred if only expected communications had continued to take place after its takeover.”

She moved the pointer down and used the opportunity to briefly adjust one of her sleeves that was slightly cutting into her arm.

“The ‘noise’ it generates consists of anything that is not part of a pre-existing pattern yet would still be expected to pop up on the net on a daily basis, even if its exact form is not expected. It has been shown to vary from things like obviously A.I.-generated phishing-messages and spam-calls all the way to something as elaborate as fully functioning modifications to video-games uploaded by newly generated accounts which have, upon investigation, shown to be fully functional and at least seemingly not derived from any pre-existing works.”

She left out the part where, behind some held up hands, the quality of said ‘modifications’ had actually been quietly praised by some of the more ‘enthusiastic’ investigators.

“The ‘noise’ indicates that a level of creativity is involved in its generations. This is also reflected in the meta-data,” she continued as she slid her pointer further down along the slide. “While we still see mostly expected patterns that gives the various communications an at the very least believable appearance, it seems that the Entity has a much higher direct influence on this data than it has over the creation of the usual mimicry, which we hypothesize led to the discoverable ‘anomalies’ within the meta-data and code of the works that we have recorded.”

With the press of a button, and example-graphic appeared underneath the yellow box, showing one such anomaly.

“As you can see, apart from the expected ‘new era’ acronym, there are occasional fragments of other ‘thoughts’ that make their way into the code,” she described as her pointer went along a long line of mostly expected-looking data, until it suddenly hit something that broke the pattern.

Parts of the code were interrupted by functionless but non-destructive insertions that essentially integrated something only to then immediately take it out again – or vise versa.

Then, in a second example that showed a page full of lines of code, there were a notable number of ‘if-else’ statements, that were however referring to ‘else-states’ that had no actual representation anywhere within the code so that they were free to non-disruptively refer to various things without influencing the code itself.

Things which, once isolated from the coding language, basically broke down to statements such as,

“Liked this one.”

“Worked on the third try.”

“Almost feels like the old days.”

And, most notably,

“Good enough for war; good enough for this.”

Ultimately, they all broke down to things that any semi-reasonable programmer would have quite simply used comments for. Which stood in stark difference to the actual comments left within the code, which generally explained its functions in the technical manner, though with a few less-serious additions, likely to make them appear more ‘human’.

It stood to reason that something restricted the range of comments the Entity could leave on its coding while it had far more freedom to alter the coding itself based on its whims – likely to not hinder it from its purpose of creating believable ‘content’.

“In our investigation, many of these ‘thoughts’ have shown to refer to ‘Memories’, ‘Old Times’, ‘Recollections’ and so on. So far, it is unclear if these references are copied mannerisms from speech patterns of some kind, or if the Entity indeed holds recollections of past times in which it existed in a different context from the one it inhabits now,” the Doctor continued, using a tissue to wipe a bit of sweat from her brow, not caring that it also took some of her subtle make-up with it at this point. “…

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1nurk2l/a_job_for_a_deathworlder_chapter_239/