Crafting Your Way in the Complicity Universe - or -

What do you think an artist is?

An imbecile who has only eyes, if he is a painter, or ears if he is a musician, or a lyre in every chamber of his heart if he is a poet, or even, if he is a boxer, just his muscles?

Far from it: at the same time, he is also a political being, constantly aware of the heartbreaking, passionate, or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image.

How could it be possible to feel no interest in other people, and with a cool indifference to detach yourself from the very life which they bring to you so abundantly?

No, painting is not done to decorate apartments.

It is an instrument of war.


PABLO PICASSO

The bones of Complicity Universe were laid for the web fiction novel Complicit Simplicity - Hackers End Game as it was written online. Now that Complicit Simplicity is done (and part of the cyberhug.me trilogy) the Complicity Universe is available to anyone to expand for their use.

I'm getting hits on the Complicit Simplicity site by folks looking for a hackers game, You can use this universe and create your own hackers game.

The block of granite which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak,
became a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong.
Thomas Carlyle

Decide how to add flesh to those Complicity Universe bones by writing or creating whatever you wish. Here is a summation of the Complicity Universe canon:

Back in the not too distant dark ages, when giant bureaucratic wheels ground freedoms under their weight, individuals had also been consigned as grist to be crushed into a uniform flour of humanity. Seeming perpetual motion mill stones of suffering still exist in principalities such as Elldee, but enlightenment is coming once again to human interaction.

The bottom up structure of society is rapidly replacing the top down oppression of ruling elites. Individuals are once again creating shared opportunity where cancerous agencies had manifested decay. Three privateering hackers are part of this; seeking evil about to fall - they are agreed to risk giving it a push. Their creativity is unleashed.

There is no going back.

In earlier centuries, insightful individuals might mature past limiting coherence. By the twenty third century, entire societies reorganized as their constituent's interests fragmented -- coherence lost.

Mankind entered adolescence, a time of confusion. Untethered, personal identity drifted away from familial tribe and national allegiance toward tribes of similar interests. And beyond. Technology awakened awareness of unlimited choice, options in the trillions. Where shackles were successfully broken new relationships were sought. Not as children needing direction, but as discrete adults considering map and compass, setting their own course.

The Federation Of Liberated Cantons is not a nation, nor does it govern. The FLC is an optional assemblage of adults agreeing to mind their own business.

Backstory for the cyberhug.me series: http://cyberhug.me
by Allan R. Wallace

Welcome to the Universe of Complicity. I guess that also renders Complicit Simplicity available as a basis for new content.. Consider these back stories as foundations for your arts.

That's right, the Complicity Universe can underlie any art work you wish to create -any. Do you want to write space stories, romance novels, or adventure fantasies using these basic ideas - go for it. If paintings or videos are your form of expression - don't let my limitations slow you down. In fact, don't let your expressiveness be controlled by anyone but you.

New themes you create may get worked into this novel as I edit and re-edit the chapters. I luv plot-bunnies -- keep 'em multiplying. Use Squidoo, blogs, or any other format you wish. I'll link to you if I like it. Perhaps we will publish some PDF e-books with the best of it. A mixed media Complicit Universe Anthology will be very cool.

Open Your Mind: create short stories, poems, volumes of nomenclature for sovereign hackers, statuary, film, etc. Enjoy the freedom to express yourself as you wish, with whatever parts of this universe you care to use.

You can use the following concepts for writing your works in the Complicity Universe.

Bear in mind this was an outline made before the story expanded beyond the first few chapters. The characters grew, they and the story made demands, things changed. This however was the beginning:

After dystopia (see Hacker School for extended cause explanations) there was a partial rebound of strong civic commitment. The bounce came too late, technology was already deflating bloated centralized bureaucracies. Voluntary social collaboration displaced government allegiances that were seen as archaic. With the collapse of nation states, principalities and local coalitions emerged. By 2050 an uneasy stability had been achieved. Complicit Simplicity reflects life a century or two later.

* Governance varies from Lockian free will to despotism; economies vary from natural enterprise, through feudalism, to communism..

* Los Angeles and San Diego had merged after the diaspora, the principality's name morphing to become LD, then Elldee. It's borders roughly included coast to desert, all of Baja with malleability as far north as Fresno and Santa Cruz. The capital of Elldee is Tijuana.

*Electronic payments that are a barter equivalent, acts as a stable basis for inter-principality trade. Wealth begins with harvesting renewable resources and value adding production. Savings can be denominated as you wish in such commodities as timber, postage stamps, or winter wheat. Networked virtual wallets handle equivalency algorithms, allowing pricing of services and commodities in 24 hour market quotes. Some principalities still maintain national currencies, to harvest the hidden tax of inflation.

* World wide communications are almost instantaneous (light speed), and highly varied in application.

* Diaspora after a die-off moved a majority of the remaining population from hollow metropolis to interactive rural.

* Societies vary from resilient communities to parasitic gangs. Overlapping zones of influence make determining permanent borders unrealistic.

To change the future you must first consider the future.

As always, the majority of the population remains stable; depending on location they may be subjecting themselves to manipulation, extortion, and brutality.

The Underlying Premise:

Centralized authorities have only a few of tools to adapt for control of their populace. The standards of taxes, regulations, and severe punishments, backed by lots of guns and propaganda, are almost useless against asymmetric freedom attacks. Network defenses are erected by generalists searching a rear view mirror for prior failures - those that hack and intrude are creative specialists adapting to reality's scroll as it unreels.

Bureaucratic authorities can't discern the vitally important and protect just those critical elements of their governance architecture. Supposed overwhelming force is therefore diluted by over application, the costs straining manipulators of public conscience. As a result no network of totalitarian infrastructure has an impenetrable defense.

Most cyber-battles are therefore waged against a sovereign oppressor's purposely isolated systems. The goal is to supplement current data with tools that will be sampled for updating offline stored data. If later triggered by intrusive mining, a landslide of software disruption should result. Of such battles is freedom won.

The closer to equal the abilities of state and citizen, the greater the freedom. Open source relationships are stronger, safer, and vastly more adaptive than hierarchies. Free people are self adjusting, each free element constantly testing any restraints.

In Complicit Simplicity millions of dedicated hackers and crackers write software recipes for instant personal histories; like yeast they ferment the rise of generic people. Hackers understand the code and machines, crackers develop ways to use that knowledge to intrude - both value peer recognition and adherence to their own peculiar set of ethics. Both inter-relate and choose their netcohort teams on the basis of reputation.

That powerful central defenses versus distributed and insular defenders of freedom remains an equal contest is due to an irony. Bureaucratic aggression tends to release ever more potent innovative implementations from those resisting conquest. Oppressive ruling oligopolies will not defer immediate gratification to build a technological lead. Instead they remove a technology based irritant as quickly as possible, instigating a release of dozens of improvements by independent developers with aligned interests.

An added increase to liberty tools is the standard final act of Hackish innovators - the release of all their proprietary tricks as open source code, a basis for further innovation. Each new attack on a resourceful Ragnar Danneskjd impels further progress in both defensive and offensive measures - attacking salients are cut off, new offensive probes initiated.

Many ethical hackers view themselves as part of a sovereign nation composed of virtual sovereign individuals. Their sovereignty is always subject to attack, hence their border sites are well defended. Their offense reactions against those that attack their domain have a strategy to dismantle their enemy's bureaucratic control systems and free their enemy's subject people.

Productive entrepreneurs also work in this same virtual nation. They may become mercenary freelances, bringing prosperity to societies aggressive at providing an open and biodiverse economic ecosystem. Privacy and well rewarded innovation thwart oppression and inspire necessary progress.

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."
cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead

Advertisement seen throughout Elldee.

Nano Technology has provided YOU with the opportunity to find a permanent, satisfying, and Successful life.

Our team is waiting for you to join.

Ancient Education of the early industrial age was a mutually shared benefit. A student traded twenty years of their life for a chance at a better job, quicker promotions, and higher income. For providing that education bureaucrats acquired well trained workers, dedicated to their government.

There were flaws in this utopia. Teaching children by boredom, even if the day is proceeded by a tasty loyalty oath and flavored with enhanced history, is inefficient. Over half the children acquired by compulsory educational systems were unacceptable, never completing their provided education. The brightest and the slowest were frequently lost, leaving a well educated and substantial middle class, but not enough to ensure peace, profit, and tranquility.

The future is here! YOU do not have to struggle consume your life at a higher plane.

At NANO University your entrance exams and interviews will determine your capabilities. We have public and private employers sorted and filed for all types of graduates, we will guarantee rewarding employment as soon as your training is complete.

Your employers will pay for your education. No student loans or other draining financial requirements. Spend an evening getting pain-free injections, a week of further evaluation, and your bright future is guaranteed. You will never regret the process.

Sign-up stations and their opportunities surrounding you. Walk in the door, give permissions, and a week later your future is set.

Loving parents can ensure success to their beloved offspring starting as soon as three years old. Other applicants must be under 55 years of age.

END

"knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind" - Plato

Fulfilled in

"Academies that are founded at public expense are instituted not so much to cultivate men's natural abilities as to restrain them." - Baruch Spinoza

contrast with

"Wisdom and understanding are enthusiastic pursuits rather than an academic record." - Allan Wallace

The original outline. Like a movie, the novel is not fully true to the guidelines. Once the story started, Gloria, Jon, and Mose took over. Hackers End Game is their adventure.

Complicit Team Members

Financier: A generic person using the name Midas, perhaps with a sideways glance toward Atlas Shrugged. Guessing at his motives jumps unresolved along a continuum between altruism and setting up our heroes to be scapegoats. The question persists, is Midas a manipulator or a facilitator? Midas chose the three members of the generic team, blending their reputations and pasts.

Technician: Jonathon Christforth is a quiet and contemplative generic. Naturally gregarious, he is drifting toward solemn isolation since a personal loss. He describes himself as dedicated, others see him as driven. Deep passions exist within Jon, how will they express themselves if permitted to arise?

Strategist: Gloria Portola has become adept at disguise, mainly to hide her beauty, avoiding unwanted attention. An in motion policy surgeon, attempting to keep Complicit Team A, as Midas has named them, on track; even as tracks change. Tending to be impious, she can turn iconoclastic when encountering hypocrisy. Gloria can dominate a room if circumstances warrant.

Labyrinth guide: Mose Ramsees is an ex-bureaucrat, perhaps reformed bureaucrat is a better description. Generics are often tinted with idealism, Mose is saturated. Using his knowledge of the twisted inner workings of bureaucracies and their convoluted policies, Mose uncovers express routes where bureaucrats intended to install roadblocks. When the team needs a face to present, Mose is a pleasant representative. There is nothing memorable about Mose, hair, ears, smile, height - everything is soft and average. If Mose wears a hat, he is remembered only as the guy with the hat, wearing a patterned ascot, he is a guy with an ascot, if Mose changes the handkerchief poking out of his blazer's pocket he suddenly becomes a very different person.

Complicit Team Relationships:

Jon and Mose have a fractious relationship even though they agree on many levels. Mose sees how things should be, and maneuvers for a victory that makes them so. Jon sees many possibilities, and wants to direct events toward high probability solutions. Their fraternal interplay is between chess player and game theory advocate.

Jon and Gloria share several deep emotional bonds, but guardedly seek to retain freedoms and restraint that result from staying aloof. The result is a spinning bottle that threatens to point suddenly to hidden emotions.

Gloria and Mose have been partnered before, with Midas acting as a producer in more than one of their ventures. Like Jon's solo efforts, results of their productions have toppled power structures and helped raise visionary leaders.

Gloria is director, and it is her vision and insights that must fuse three independent lightning bolts into a single directed strike.

"The average man is a conformist, accepting miseries and disasters with the stoicism of a cow standing in the rain." - Colin Wilson

Jon, Gloria, and Mose are not ordinary people and they are certainly not conformists. What will this triumvirate do when they are sent to help transform a totalitarian city-state, and discover an opportunity to make one of themselves it's reigning savior?

Complicit Team's Opposition:

The obvious opposition is the prince. A fine looking and intelligent man, he is driven by a need for recognition. His public appearances are flamboyant and very well staged, he looks every inch the prince that all should feel drawn to follow.

The real power of the principality lies in the prince's advisors. They have the pragmatic experience he lacks, and he pays close attention to their apparent wisdom. After all, a man can only know so much, his job is to represent the best possible governance to his people, no matter where the ideas originate.

The real power of the advisors is a self-serving former leader of the principality. Having arranged a putsch while in exile, it was he who arranged to have Prince Pahl anointed and crowned. Getting a great deal of exposure as the world's Representative of Los Diego, Secretary Scarlettia is careful to stay out of any line of fire if another coup should take place. Content to have power and profit consolidated in his position, Scarlettia maneuvers to retain second place in the race for popularity.

Whatever the future - Scarlettia intends to remain in control - at whatever cost to others.

"...For example, I was taught in college that one ought to figure out a program completely on paper before even going near a computer. I found that I did not program this way. I found that I liked to program sitting in front of a computer, not a piece of paper. Worse still, instead of patiently writing out a complete program and assuring myself it was correct, I tended to just spew out code that was hopelessly broken, and gradually beat it into shape. Debugging, I was taught, was a kind of final pass where you caught typos and oversights. The way I worked, it seemed like programming consisted of debugging.

For a long time I felt bad about this, just as I once felt bad that I didn't hold my pencil the way they taught me to in elementary school. If I had only looked over at the other makers, the painters or the architects, I would have realized that there was a name for what I was doing: sketching. As far as I can tell, the way they taught me to program in college was all wrong. You should figure out programs as you're writing them, just as writers and painters and architects do."

Excerpt from an essay, Hackers and Painters, by Paul Graham

Opposing lines were thrashing each other in the narrow confines of the system architecture. Sensing weakness on the left Jon's *AI* sent three main battle bots right in a powerful drive, pulling Hemlock's reinforcements toward what appeared to be Jon's major battle force. With only 512 defensive positions along the lines of the secondary bus, *AI*s commitment of heavy bottage to the right quickly entangled available *H* units in their own defensive array. *AI* slid forward hidden troops that Trojan Horses had deposited for just such an operation - a front and rear pincher crushed *H* positions on the left flank. A concerted effort at rolling up the narrow *H* bus and *AI* could force occupation of the entire data center. *H* command troops made a last desperate effort at counter assault as their bits and bytes front collapsed. Victory followed for Jon's *AI*. The data center prize was cleared of final resistance while individualized thought bots started overwriting totalitarian logic. A final wave of cleanup and pseudobots removed broken code and other relics of battle, restoring interrupted sessions, and presenting an appearance nothing had changed. Sunset was over.

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German Hackers Conference, Chaos Communication Conference in Berlin, EOY 2009


Every Crack In the Sidewalk

""Our knowledge is so limited, our abilities seem so inadequate, most people see themselves as small insects.

They cope by being serious about whatever crack in the sidewalk they were born into.

Ignoring limitless potential within a wondrous world, they cling to the security of their limited crack.

Crawl out of the crack, take a few steps down the sidewalk, then decide where you want to fly."

Allan R. Wallace




This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License



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