The Möbius Server

The Möbius Server is a nonspatial, nontemporal computer server. It can be accessed anywhere, anytime, using computer technology or other forms of consciousness expanding activity (like dreaming, meditation, spirit messengers, etc). It has a variety of functionalities and securities that draw on a mastery of Time, Correspondence, Spirit, Mind, Entropy, and Prime. It is designed as a fee-per-service system, charging users quintessence, willpower, or a magical energy source of another kind (like gnosis, glamour, or pathos).

Types of Connection 
Digital: Use the Computer skill to connect a digital device to the server
Mental: Use the Meditation skill to mentally connect to the server
Spiritual: Use the Cosmology or Rituals skill to spiritually connect to the server
Dreaming: Use Lucid Dreaming skill to go there in sleep
Interdimensional: Characters with Time, Correspondence, and Spirit 5 can travel to their domain within the server.

Power Sources 
Any form of mental or spiritual energy can be used to pay the costs of the server. Quintessence, Gnosis, Glamour, Willpower, Pathos, etc.

Functions

Create an Account
The user connects to the server for the first time. They choose their type of access (digital, meditative, etc). They establish a personal domain within the server. They also choose which other accounts or services they would like their domain connected to (another users, the Virtual Alexandria Project, the MUSE Network, an interlibrary loan partner, etc). Their personal domain in the server only has the information that they supply (either through mental sharing or upload) or by connecting to other domains or networks. Interested in creating an account? Click here!

Basic Uplink
Connect to the server for a moment, allowing a computational/mental task to be done instantaneously. Can upload information (making it always available upon future uplinks, even if the information is forgotten by the user) or download information they have access to (things they have previously uploaded or information from networks their domain is connected to). (Rules: costs 1 quint, will, pathos, etc, per round. Being linked into the server gives the user an additional non-magical mental action that round and +5 to mental challenges that round.)

Deep Uplink
Connect to the server for a moment in embodied time around the user, but it allows the user to delve deeply into the server, temporarily suspending the users mental world and allowing them to work out complex problems in a moment. (Rules: cost: 3/connection. +5 to mental challenges, gain an additional downtime action based focused on learning, analysis, planning, or building mental models. At ST discretion, deep uplinks may spark the awakening of an unenlightened user or a seeking for an enlightened one.)

Reconfigure
By exposing themselves to vast knowledge, users can inspire themselves to transform, learn, and grow. (Rules: cost: variable. This can be used to alter one’s nature, trade one derangement for another, buy off mental flaws, buy mental merits, rename or rebalance resonance, or acquire merits related to the pursuit or protection of knowledge (like Higher Purpose, Conditional Magic, etc). The cost of this function is equal to the point value of the merit, flaw, resonance renamed, etc. STs can set cost for natures, derangements, etc. Also, STs can require the character to visit one of the Epiphamies in order to change a significant aspect of their character.)

Pantemporal Computing
Connect to data structures across time. When reading data, this effectively grants the user a use of pre/postcognition. Can be used to auguemnt the pursuit of various forms of knowledge. (Rules: cost: 2. Allows the user to gain +1 to the use of a background that spreads or acquires knowledge. Also, knowledge seeking/spreading backgrounds can be triggered in a single turn, as the server can backdate the request so that it finishes at the time of the request.)

Visit Epiphamy
The Server is connected to the Epiphamies, a set of abstract spirit worlds that teach important lessons and concepts. The Server enables users to create an astral representation of themselves and visit the Epiphamies or other astral realms. (Rules: cost: 5. Astrally projects the user to the Epiphamy realms)

Overclock
Creative users can potentially use the server to accomplish other effects given its unique design. (Rules: cost: variable. The cost and likelihood of success are subject to ST discretion. As a base cost, add the total of all relevant spheres needed for the effect.)

Proliferation

Open Source API: The code needed to connect a computer to the server is out in the world, hosted in various places across the web. It is all but impossible to get rid of the code, and it is a relatively simple matter to get one’s hands on it.

Temple of the Mind Meme: Spiritual and mental users often share with others the success they have had accessing the server. The methods of using it spread through religious, spiritual, and intellectual communities.

Networks within the Server

The Virtual Alexandria Project

Characters can access the project from their server.

The Epiphamies (from the Infinite Tapestry)

Epiphamies are powerful, highly conceptual domains found in the High Umbra. The Server is manifested in the same astral strata. In essence, it is an epiphamy in its own right. However, it is connected to the other epiphamies. Users venturing to the Epiphamies should do so at their own risk; they are complex spiritual realms

· The World Stage
· The Continuum Orrey
· Newtonian Mechanics/Einsteinian Relativity
· Motherhood
· The Apex of History
· The Nihil
· The Well of Remembrance
· The Well of Souls
· The Fortress of Government

In essence, the Server is itself an Epiphamy, inviting its visitors to reflect on the nature of space, time, and knowledge.

The Null Server

This project, which may well be our magnum opus, began as a joke.

Early in its inception, one of the taglines for the Virtual Alexandria Project was “Building the greatest library ever.” When chatting with a new member, I joked that the goal was to create a library so great, that it was better than even itself in every other moment in time.

That, of course, is silly.

Or is it?

We have to confess that despite the jocular nature of the comment, the notion has stuck with us since. We return to the idea from time to time as something like a paradoxical puzzle, usually with joking solutions. What if we created a temporal shift protocal that whenever anyone showed up in the library, one book was stolen from the immediate past and future and placed in the present, guaranteeing that the library the person encountered was marginally better. Of course, that only works after the library has stopped growing. And it’s also useless and absurd.  We’ve also joked about erasing the library from the past and future, so that it only exists as itself as a person encounters it. But erasing things from timelines is a painful and danger laden path. And it really actually accomplishes nothing, other than living up to the joke.

In this spirit of absurdity, we were hotly debating the subject of the library that was better than any other version of itself, when the Codex Librarian chuckles and says, “The way to make the greatest library ever is just to actually build it in ever.”

Funny thing. No one else laughed. Because that, as it would turn out, was the answer to the question we never had the courage to ask.

What is “ever?” In a temporal sense, “ever” is a nontime. “Ever” simultaneously means “at all times” (an ever present pain) while also meaning “at any time” (don’t ever do that). “Ever after” is an ambiguous un-pinnable moment, whilst “forever” means until time itself ends. This ambiguity of the meaning of “ever” is not because the word means many things. It’s because the word describes an actual component of temporal reality, namely, that there is an aspect of time that eludes all linearity and circularity. It simply is. Masters know this. That’s how they slip in and out of the timeline.

So, what if we built a repository of the library that exists in ever. This repository would exist out of time, but also, in any and every time. But if we are gonna go big, we might as well do it right. What else would need to be true of this repository?  

It would also need to exist out of space, so that regardless of where the library is in history it can be accessed. It should be accessible by digital, mental, and spiritual mediums, to be at least possibly accessible to anyone, regardless of the techno-spiritual moment of their era. Like all great libraries, is should also inspire learning and knowledge.

And suddenly, we had imagined a wonderwork. Our magnum opus.

And so we began to design.

How DO you build a library that exists out of time? Probably not hard for a chorister, just log your thoughts with your favorite god. But as a programmer… that’s a little trickier.

See, programming without space is not so hard. That’s really an easy thing for a VA. Computing isn’t about space, it’s about data. You just process the data to render the special arrays.

But how do you process data without time? That’s trickier. Yes, an equation exists outside of time. Consider how in the expression “Y=X+b,” “Y” is contemporaneous to “X+b.” Math is atemporal right out of the box. Even numbers have a sort of Platonic atemporality to them. But actual computing requires the execution of logic gates through time. Computers work through time. So how build a computer that can functions apart from time?

We tried quantum computing. We thought that the logic of quantum states could be leveraged to do the work. But it posed a spatial problem. The amplituhedrons we used to manage the quantum states only made sense in spatial configurations. And since we wanted a nonspatial foundation, that doesn’t work.

We tried ternary computing, cuz you know, VA. But the power of trinary computing comes from the third logic of “maybe,” Which didn’t make sense over time. Most, if not all “maybes,” become “yes” or “no” eventually, so the logic was wrong in one time and right in others, causing truth values to fluctuate depending on when you accessed it. Which did not lead to viable system.

Inspired though by the near miss of ternarity, we decided to ask, “What is the next step beyond ternary logic?”

In binary logic, there are two notions, “yes” and “no.”

In ternary, there are three notions, “yes,” “no,” and “maybe.”

But there is an old computing system that was designed in the 1960s when the computer world was still a wilderness called infinite valued logic. Originally, infinite valued was designed to assess degrees of truth (like “how green is it?” “60% green, actually”). But there has been a small but passionate group of cypherpunks who have kept the candle burning for infinite valued logic and have done some impressive though not always clearly applicable work on programming languages based in indeterminate logic.

Indeterminate logic is sorta like the maybe, but instead of treating maybe like a third position, it treats the area between 0 and 1 as an infinite array uncertain possibility. Indeterminate logic allows for programming based on uninitiated, undefined, empty, and even meaningless values. We call it “Null Computing.”

How does this help us code out of time and space? Well, it turns out people have been using the idea of null to solve troubling problems for a lot longer than computers.

What is null? It’s hard to think about, since our minds tend to focus on things. Null doesn’t exist, really. But null is different than nothing, too. Take for instance, the notion of Śūnyatā. It gets translated into English as “emptiness” or “voidness.” But at its heart, Śūnyatā is recognizing the way things are empty of intrinsic existence and underlying nature. It’s different than nothingness, as in the lack of things. Rather, it’s recognizing that even if there are things, there are probably empty of thingness. Sure, you might have an apple, but do “you” really “have” it? Is there something actually essentially you about the thing that is holding the apple? Probably not. And does holding it actually confer any status of “being had” to the apple? Nope. Or does the apple-in-hand change you into something that is “apple having?” Also no. To embrace the infinite indeterminacy of an empty universe requires letting go of ideas like “underlying,” “foundational,” “essential,” and “nature.”

Now, some people think this is depressing and nihilistic. And sure. If you rely on the belief in an underlying essence to all things to give you meaning and purpose, waking up to the fact is depressing. But there are plenty of people who derive strength, calm, hope, and faith from the emptiness of things. Frankly, that’s the foundation of meditation. Suñña, or “being empty,” is the goal of quite a few meditative paths.

The way meditation works is that the meditator opens themselves to emptiness. And in that moment, there is no self. When you open your mind to emptiness, you discover there is no mind. Or rather, that the mind and self aren’t as stuffed full as they seem. There is an infinite array of possible selves and possible minds that can be expressed. The place of emptiness isn’t the same as nothingness. The null isn’t the abyss. The null isn’t calling out trying to consume the world. The null isn’t the black hole all things fall into when they are lost. The null isn’t a place at all, for starters. It’s the empty, timeless, spaceless condition of all things. And in that way, it’s generative. Like an inexhaustible bellows. A bottomless well. That’s why people have been meditating with the null as a guide for millennia.

And that’s where we’ll build the server.

Ok, sure, but how the F do you program using an indeterminate logic? Don’t your programs actually need to execute? Turns out, you need a mastery of indeterminacy. Or to use mage speak, you need entropy to make it work. You can create a computer logic that is driven neither by 0s or 1s, but the indeterminate space between. But what you need is a way to diffuse questions articulated in 1s and 0s into the indeterminate array, and then a way to collapse the indeterminate array back into 1s and 0s. In essence, you use entropy to translate probabilistically between certainty and uncertainty.

“Ok, fancy man,” most people say at this point, “that sounds like passingly interesting philosophy, but how do you actually design a computer to actually program that way?” Turns out, every digital device on the planet has the capacity to program in null logic.

Wait, what?

Don’t you need a fancy computer? Like a cutting edge ternary device? Aren’t computer bits either in the 1 position or the 0 position? There is no third position, right? But, actually, there is. Think on it a moment.

The null position is when the computer is off. The value of a bit is determined by wheather or not a the electricity of a capacitor is higher or lower than a designated level. But what about when you power off the device? What’s its value then? Welp, it’s undetermined.

This reality of computing devices brings the capacity of null computing to its fullest potential. A user can ask a question of an operating system that will be diffused into an indeterminate array when the computer powers down. The moment the computer is off, the indeterminate array is automatically (because it’s atemporal) computed using the null server. When the device is powered back on, start up protocol run a program that collapses the indeterminate array back into a determined one that can be stored in the 1s and 0s. The null server is built in null space, so every computer anywhere is always and already synched with it when the computer is off. So, you write a command, it is translated on the powerdown, executes the moment it’s off, and the output is displayed on the startup. It’s sorta like teaching computers to meditate.

Why is this useful? Well, it allows any computer to synch with the null server. This means allows non-internet connected devices to still access a repository of knowledge. It also means that literally any computing question could be answered in the time it takes to reboot. If you had a data set with an obnoxious amount of computing, you could power it down and do the calculations in the null server, because every calculation happens simultaneously. It also means that programmers could potentially draw on datasets from past and future events, because the atemporal nature of the null server means that uploads and downloads are all happening to it at the same time. Oh, and it would have storage space that is infinite.

How do you actually build something in null spacetime? That’s worth a whole other article, but there’s plenty of precedent. Spirits can warp entities out of reality (they do it to crazy ass mages). Some magics can send people to interdimensional oubliettes. Heck, there’s this whole level of reality beyond the Dreamshell that is basically experimental time and space. Suffice it to say, we conceptualize the actual platform of the null server as drawing on our past work with reality mapping, the Dreamtime, and the Correspondence Point. The time part is the hardest bit. It requires building a server that is both apart from time and across time. We’ve read about mages who can achieve true pantemporality. We had to hack that one a bit. We rely on sidestepping time and then building a multitemporal API. The server exists aside time, but pushes queries and notifications across time.

So, what are the actual steps?

1. Design the programming language of indeterminate logic.
2. Design and build the actual server in null timespace.
3. Create a user interface that is permissive of various information technologies (cuz there’s good evidence that it could be accessed by people meditating in addition to computers)
4. Create a network security plan.
5. Run the thing and work through bugs.

It’s a nutty idea. No doubt. But it to say that it’s the future of computing is to miss out the fact that it might already exist and we just haven’t figured out how to access it. 

Entropy: Chance and Chaos, Destiny and Decay, A Dissertation on the Nature of Ars Fati

Written by Deacon Cameron Nonesuch Aro
Adept Magus, Ordo Hermes, Bani Ex Miscellanea, ap Merinita
Keeper of a Thousand Tales, Speaker of Legends, Weaver of Dreams

"I can buy myself a reason,
I can sell myself a job.
I can hang myself for treason,
Yeah, I am my own damn god."

-- Modest Mouse

1. Preface
2. Entropy and the Machinations of Fate
3. Entropy and the Decline of systems
4. Entropy and the Domination of the Spheres
5. Entropy and the Illusion of Will

1. ) PREFACE
Within this writing, you will find the musings of a Man. Fallible, opinionated Man. No better or different from any other. A Man that will one day die. Will be forgotten. Will turn to dust in the ground to nourish plants and then animals, and eventually fuel the fire of the inevitable explosion of a star. A Man that will one day exist, in a sense, as nothing more than heat, absorbed and radiated, bouncing amongst the debris of countless universes, collapsing upon each other, burning as they return to the origin of their collective creation.

Nothing more.

This manuscript will not contain answers.

This manuscript will not comfort you.

This manuscript will not answer even its own questions. This Man is not able to see through the veil of reality to the required degree. Its unlikely that the Man ever will. Should that impossibility occur, it will undoubtedly be too busy to revise this document at that time.

This Man will not apologize for this.

2. ) ENTROPY AND THE MACHINATIONS OF FATE
Ars Fati. Entropy. The Art of Change. Of Systems. Of Fate.

What is Fate? Random chance masquerading as a series of otherwise unconnected events? Perceived through the Human and Awakened mind as connected because of their cumulative effects on our lives? Like waves crashing against the shore slowly shaping it to some new configuration. Is it just the tide? We can explain the tide. The gravitational pull from the moon kneads the surface of the water like dough. It comes in, and out. It moves the land and the creatures around. The beach is reshaped, but why? For what purpose? Is there a purpose? Perhaps more importantly, does there need to be a purpose?

Is there a...consciousness, guiding the universe towards unforeseen goals? If so, why? What does it care if a man sleeps through his alarm and is late for work? Does Fate know, that despite the consequences of being late, again, this reality is preferable to the death that would have occurred had the man gotten less sleep, and was pulverized by a semi-truck in his fugue? And if this is the case, does Fate feel offense when the man curses it, because he knows not the alternative? Is it compassion, that guides this being I have posited to do what it does? What morals does this infinitely powerful and seemingly capricious force hold true? And if this reality is preferable, preferable for whom? Does it want to grant this hypothetical man another day on this Earth, a thankless task at best? Or does it wish more time to toy with the man? Unwilling to lose a plaything?

Snow falls upon a mountaintop as a storm rages down upon it. It collects, stacking, upon a single molecule of Water, frozen to a crystalline shape. It, along with countless others summon the strength to hold up trillions of others, all standing together like a pyramid, growing ever upward and out. And then...a change. A failure of the strength of water. Was it the weight? Was it heat, sapping the strength of a snowflake, causing it to give way? A loud report shaking the ground, allowing the structure to become unbalanced, and topple? Or was it Fate, pushing the drift over? It's simple as a being of Will to assume that Fate played a hand in the avalanche that follows. Especially if there is tragedy in its wake. But it is also inevitable. The mountain will not remained unchanged, stagnant, until the stars die in the night sky. A person, an animal, even plant life, is insignificant in the event. It simply will be. Does this being have plans for the shape of the mountain? Is it an immediate effect that is achieved, or something much later, something made possible only because Fate has spent a millennia building and destroying castles of water, feeding rivers to shape the land, carving valleys that will someday shelter animals, and people from the storms that ravage the land nearby? Will there one day be an avalanche that moves so much water to be free from its crystalline prison that the valley floods, and decimates the creatures that call it home?

What chance do these creatures have against such a being? What right does this being have to change the world as it sees fit?

3. ) ENTROPY AND THE DECLINE OF SYSTEMS
Presume, for a moment, that such a creature does not exist. What then, are we left with? The natural laws of the world, as we understand them can be easily slotted into this spot. Metal rusts, because oxygen bonds with the molecules and steals electrons, breaking the metal down, with the expression of heat as it dissolves.

A body rots on the ground. Microbes set about tearing it to pieces. Insects lay eggs in the carcass, bringing about a renewal of the life that had just ended to fuel the creation of another. Animals consume the meat to survive. As the microbes dissolve the body to base fluids, it soaks into the dirt, allowing seeds to take root and flourish. In the end, while its impossible to completely destroy every part of the body, and the universal energies that compose it, it is nonetheless destroyed. Unrecognizable from its previous form. Its...elegant in its horrific totality. Has it always been? Was there a time when bodies were left, untouched upon the ground? Has life evolved to accomplish this task? Chosen to live as a scavenger of the dead, using the resource available to it, and not to simply choose to take nourishment from the sun? All of this is logical. Accepting this is simple. It requires no stretch of the mind to imagine. Is it therefore the best answer? Is that the end of knowledge? Once you have grasped this truth, and accepted it, are you finished?

All of this, forgiving for a moment the conceit that all of these creatures, simple to complex, have not only developed a way to process the remains of the creatures that exist alongside them, but that they have been fortunate enough to have survived the required changes to pass adaptations to their progeny, to say nothing of the inherit dangers of their existence. What is it that drives this behavior? What creature dares to look directly into the face of death, of decay, and chooses to try to consume it? To survive upon it? Whether by conscious thought, or by instinct, all living beings strive for survival. What is it about death that makes them accept it into themselves to survive? And why are they seemingly rewarded for this? How many wondrous and impossible creatures have been lost to this process? Those that adapted to survive one threat, but not another? How would the world have looked had one lineage survived over another?

All these chance occurrences, and this is the result? Beings that inhabit this world, and worlds beyond, have simply been the elite winners of a lottery that all must play? As time progresses, the chances of each individualized instance, each unique creature, becomes infinitesimally smaller. Ever approaching but never quite touching impossibility. Can the being that is known as Fate be therefore ruled out? If a victor is required for every contest, then we sit among the best and greatest beings that have ever existed. The singularly amazing and unlikely creatures that have survived, against all odds, to this point.

I'll let that sink in. Ride a subway, if they still exist. Take a stroll at night through a city center, overburdened with population, drowning in its own filth. Watch as the greatest beings to have ever existed turn a blind eye to the decay of the support systems that their ancestors have built for them. Watch as they ignore the suffering of what should otherwise be their brother. Watch as the beings that you spend all your time with, every moment of every day of your life, go about doing menial tasks. Carving an existence out of the decaying wreckage of the glory that they have inherited. Watch as the cycle repeats on an ever expanding scale. As the creatures you call friends consume the flesh of the dead, break it down and express it as fluids that feed the soil to grow the crops that will accompany their next meal with a light balsamic vinaigrette.

What does this make you? Are you a microbe to interstellar beings, unworthy of notice, or a being that Fate has deemed worthy of its attentions? A man that Fate has deemed will awaken late for work today? Can you convince yourself of that level of importance? Trillions have. It's comforting. Safe.

4. ) ENTROPY AND THE DOMINATION OF THE SPHERES

If any set of creatures can convince themselves of their own importance, who shelter amid the Hubris that they themselves are not only worthy of the universe's attention, but its obedience, it is the Awakened. A microbe, that sets about toiling and consuming, that has the nerve to stand up and demand that the universe reshape itself to it's Will. More on this later.

But when the Magus, the Willworker, tugs at the fabric of reality and marvels as the ripples cause peaks and valleys in the Tellurian that bend and twist in new and exciting ways, what role then, does Entropy play? How does the Magus, or Fate, or the combination, reshape reality around it?

Consider the effect. A Magus, studied in Ars Fati, wishes to affect the outcome of a roll of a single die. The effect is simple. Basic. Elementary. But is it? What is the Willworker controlling? Is it Matter, that displaces the die's mass? Is it Forces, that the air pressure beneath a side of the die is thicker, and slows its momentum? The force of the throw, the original starting position of the die, the distance thrown, the occurrence or lack thereof of objects in the path of the die, all are affecting the outcome. Is the Will of the Magus affecting these other Spheres in subtle ways, as they relate to the die's path? Or is the chance of the die falling upon a certain number inherently encoded into the reality of the die?

At greater levels of understanding, the Magus can speed the effects of the natural systems, causing metal to rust in front of one's very eyes, a body to rot at an accelerated rate. Is this Matter, wrenching the molecules from the metal? Speeding the microbe's Life cycles so that they may feast and breed faster? Or is it simply Time being infused into the object, causing it to pass more quickly.

A Magus can infuse him or herself with a streak of luck, rewarding their efforts when searching for an object of importance? Is this Mind, telling the Magus where to look? Correspondence, moving the object to the place being searched? Or is something grander at work? Does the Will of the worker move through time, affecting the last person who touched the item to drop the object, to place it in a specific place to be found later, or simply to forget to take it with them when they left?

What then does this say of the being that is Fate? If there is a conscious Will at work, what then does the workings of Ars Fati represent? Does the worker command Fate to do their bidding? Is Fate pre-disposed to cooperate with the Magus? Or has Fate been working all this time? Has the machinations of Fate been prodding the Magus towards this moment? Shaping their Mind to assume they have the power over Fate and Chance itself and it will do as the Magus pleases...Happily and ignorantly marching ever forward, along the path Fate has destined them to follow, until they are subsumed into the void, to be returned to the Quintessence that which Prime has constructed them.

5. ) ENTROPY AND THE ILLUSION OF WILL
So, is there such a thing as Fate? Is it an illusion created to explain why tragedy befalls a soul? Is it an unrepentant force that marches ever onward, in spite of the best laid plans? Billions of lives have been spent throughout history, toiling against an outcome that seemed insurmountable. Were the victories always to be, and all struggles were simply for show? A play for the actors to meet out upon the stage of the world? Or were they truly victories? Can there be a victory against the wishes of Fate?

What Machinations, eons in their construction, will a willful and purposed being allow to be dashed against the rocks of failure, because of a single, willful individual, daring to play god? Is freewill simply an illusion, meant to sedate and placate these creatures as they toil and set about doing Fate's work? Or is it a nuisance to be accommodated for, and dealt with? Will there be contingency plans for the designs that Fate has worked to achieve?

Is this even possible to know? If you can know it...to truly know definitively one way or the other...Can one work against that truth, to change it? Is the Will of a Magus, of a Human, of an animal...of a microbe...of any real consequence?

In the end, is all of your work and suffering actually paying off? Or are you a pawn in a larger scheme and simply...

Nothing more.