Hyperlink Island
Note: this week I’m trying something new and sharing some fiction. I wrote this story in a fever a few summers ago, inspired by J.G. Ballard’s Report on an Unidentified Space Station and an image, which has haunted me for years, from Michael Green’s Zen and the Art of the Macintosh, of an ancient computer falling into ruin in the jungle. Re-reading it today, I was struck by how much it resonates with the themes of this newsletter. Read on if you like slime molds and body horror; back to regular programming soon.
Report 01
We’d been dithering at sea a year before we finally sighted Hyperlink Island. We emptied our wallets at once; our money means nothing in the new world. From the ruined ship we salvaged a few tools, a chess set, and our trusted captain, its hard drive encrusted in salt. With these, we swam to shore, pried oysters from the rocks and fruit from the trees. Tonight we feast on silica beaches. Tomorrow we’ll venture into the forest, in search of the ancient computer that created this place.
I’ll write when I’m able.
Report 02
Our captain is unwell since our landing; its ports are swollen with brine. A barnacle has appeared where its optical reader was. We feed it the random numbers we find inscribed in the pearlescent canals of seashells, but still it grows weak. We’ve lashed a makeshift stretcher together from palm fronds and lengths of Ethernet cable. Hopefully this will suffice to carry our captain deeper into the hot, green forest. All around us cicadas wail like disconnected modems and the ground teems with rotten links. Our trust in our captain has brought us this far, and we are lost without its guidance. Only the ancient computer, if she does indeed exist, can help us now.
Report 03
It has been three days since we began our journey inland. Our captain’s condition is unusual, but stable. A fine mold has appeared all over its casing. Feathery cilia reach out as we approach, eager to lap salt from our skin. I have so far kept my distance, more out of respect than fear. Our captain has ceased communicating in natural language and has reverted to issuing commands in its native Lisp. Only Lois, our navigator, can understand. She translates what she can, but even in English its demands were incomprehensible. Perhaps we are too primitive to understand; perhaps we lost our curiosity during the AI winter. At night the jungle hums. We must be getting close.
Report 04
Our initial survey of the island appears to have been incorrect. Lois suspects an electromagnetic field has distorted our bearings. We should have passed through the jungle by now; instead, it grows louder and denser. This afternoon we discovered fungal masses as tall as termite mounds and covered in a mottled orange skin. They’re as rubbery and unknowable as the sharks that took Lois’ brother at sea. But our rations are depleted. We eye the mushrooms hugrily. The captain’s mechanical core is visible only by moonlight.
Report 05
Last night we succumbed to our hunger and tasted the orange fungus. The texture was surprisingly viscous, and once we began to eat we found it difficult to stop. When we finally slept I was visited by the most remarkable visions, which I am not entirely sure were dreams: the ancient computer, taking the form of an enormous insect, descended from the jungle canopy and bound us like pupae in lengths of magnetic tape. As she worked she whispered instructions to our captain in binary code. I awoke more exhausted than before, but the jungle looks different today. Its constrictive net of life now seems beautiful, even logical. Lois, although she cannot explain why, knows precisely in which direction our party must travel: in a nested loop.
Report 06
Our captain is in fine spirits. It lopes ahead of us now, easily, synched with the recursive rhythms of the forest. Its arms are knotted with fiber-optic vines, and when we pause to sate our hunger with more of the orange fungus, butterflies land on its head. They appear to be recharging. Lois and I are taken with fever; the island itself seems to be floating in an ocean of pure data. I feel the edges of everything solid wearing away. The sun rises and sets, rises and sets, and as the day changes I remember the world we left behind: the decayed cities, the docklands where we labored so long, believing we could someday earn passage beyond the edges of the map. How our families feared for us! I’ll never regret stealing the ship that brought us here. I’ll never forget what I had to do to steal it.
Report 07
Last night, as Lois slept and our captain defragged its drives, I crept alone to a stand of ancient trees a few hundred meters from camp. As I approached, I noticed a faint orange light emanating from the ground, so dim I’m not sure I would have seen it under the white glare of the overhead sun. Emboldened by curiosity, I peeled back a thick mat of moss from the forest floor. It pulled off neatly, like an orange peel. Beneath was a mass of blinking conduits and cables of extraordinary complexity woven deep into the black soil. As I looked closer, I noticed a web of bright orange hyphae coiled around the circuitry. I touched it, and pulled my hand quickly back in shock. I showed Lois the burns this morning; they have already begun to blister. The moss must insulate the island. I haven’t told Lois, or the captain, but I believe the ancient computer to be already with us. I see her face everywhere in the strange symmetry of this place. I think she has been with me since the day we set sail.
Report 08
This morning brought a dry lightning storm to the island. We watched the sky crackle with static in patches between the thick canopy. Lois said it reminded her of the ancient text Neuromancer, which I haven’t read. The air went prickly and forest creatures howled and pelted us with fruit. The lightning spooked our captain, too; for about two hours it stood in a clearing, screaming buggy code into the heavens. This hysteria ended only when the storm broke and the skies opened with a torrential rain. Now that this, too, has passed, the moss underfoot has a pleasant new springiness and the smell of Earth and warm plastic is sensuous. In the new light, I’ve noticed that the burns on my hand have faded, leaving a rubbery scab of orange. I think I may be infected. I’m keeping it secret for now.
Report 09
The more I pick at the orange scab, the more vigorously it grows back. It has begun to spread across my hand, its leading edge pulsing tentatively forward, as though it were searching for food. Despite my horror, there is something beautiful in the way it grows; an intelligence is clearly at play in the lacelike patterns forming against my skin. My dreams have grown more intense and vivid. Last night I dreamt I was home, knotting fishing nets with my blistered hands, bleeding into the sea until I was dry. Every morning Lois douses me with water from the brackish stream that winds across the jungle. I feel myself disappearing into this place. I had a name, once. A family. But now I crave only salt, and to merge with the ancient computer, if she will have me.
Report 10
Forgive me but I must hurry—I am not myself—from the moment I open my eyes my field of vision is not mine—I look at Lois and I no longer see the outlines of her face—instead new light converges into Lois—and then—as though a lens were clicking into place—every molecule—cells ebbing, merging—I see life’s little animals eating each other up—consuming and negotiating and breeding in a dance. A jungle, also—within us all—fantastic, creative madness I could never have imagined exists—never seen before—existence itself. The constellation called Lois refuses my touch—my gift.
Tonight the captain and I will do what is necessary.
/ Report 11 Missing
/ Report 12 Missing
/ Report 13 Missing
/ Reports 14-92 Available Upon Request
Report 93
This is Lois. I should get this down, since I’m not sure I’ll ever get off this island. I suppose that’s what Ballard wanted, in his way. In the end I had to tear the equipment away from him, and as I did that his arms tore away too, leaving only spongy, bloodless flesh, like the stem of a boletus mushroom. I shudder to think what would have happened if he and the captain had caught me sleeping that night, as I imagine they’d intended. Fortunately I’d slept only fitfully since we arrived. Whatever effect the fungus had on Ballard, it spared me. I did my best to tend to him, but our doctor, my brother, died at sea. I’m only an engineer. I’m working to repair this emitter using components I salvaged from the captain. I hope to pierce the magnetic field that contains this wretched place. Ballard stopped making sense a week or so before he died, if you can call what he did that. He and the captain spent hours together, straddling a nurse log and braying with laughter. I didn’t know our captain could laugh. At night, Ballard would sometimes reach out and touch me, whispering, very serious, saying his hands—what was left of them—were passing through me. I thought he was joking, but I know certain fungi can give people the ability to perceive the world around them more acutely. I wish I could ask him, but all that remains of the Ballard I knew is a mound of mottled orange nestled between the trees. I’d feel pity, but I think this is what he wanted. I made a recording of his last words to me, as he melted into the soil and coughed puffs of fluorescent spores into the air between us. I’m transcribing it here, as faithfully as I can, before the drives corrode any further:
Lo, Lo, Lois. It’s not what we thought. She’s here, right here. All this time wasted searching. She was with us. Seamless, self-correcting, magnificent. Please accept this. Please accept this gift. The ancient computer isn’t here. She isn’t an island. None of us are.
🌱
In other news: Bumper Stickers for Your Phone Volume 1 is now available.
xo
Claire
Lovely. Like Area X meets System 7.