now its topography begins to erode; one by one, its virtual land masses disappear like real islands, vanishing beneath a rising tide of consumer indifference.
Meanwhile, the failure of the hothouse experiments to produce miniature civilizations has caused general interest in digital lifeforms to dwindle. Occasionally curious new fauna are observed in the biomes, a species demonstrating an exotic body plan or a novel reproductive strategy, but it's generally agreed that the biomes aren't run at a high enough resolution for real intelligence to evolve there. The companies that make the Origami and Faberge genomes go into decline. Many technology pundits declare digients to be a dead end, proof that embodied AI is useless for anything beyond entertainment, until the introduction of a new genomic engine called Sophonce.
Sophonce's designers wanted digients that could be taught via software instead of needing interaction with humans; toward that end, they've created an engine that favors asocial behavior and obsessive personalities. The vast majority of the digients generated with the engine are discarded for their psychological malformations, but a tiny fraction prove capable of learning with minimal supervision: give them the right tutoring software and they'll happily study for weeks of subjective time, meaning that they can be run at hothouse speeds without going feral. Some hobbyists demonstrate Sophonce digients that outperform Neuroblast, Origami, and Faberge digients on math tests, despite having been trained with far less real-time interaction. There's speculation that, if their energies can be directed in a practical direction, Sophonce digients could become useful workers within a matter of months. The problem is that they're so charmless that few people want to engage in even the limited amounts of interaction that the digients require.
----
Ana has brought Jax along with her to Siege of Heaven, the first new game continent to appear in Data Earth in a year. She shows him around the Argent Plaza, where players congregate and socialize in between missions; it's a massive courtyard of white marble, lapis lazuli, and gold filigree located on top of a cumulonimbus cloud. Ana has to wear her game avatar, a kestrel-cherub, but Jax keeps his traditional copper robot avatar.
As they're strolling amongst the other gamers, Ana sees the onscreen annotation for a digient. His avatar is a hydrocephalic dwarf, the standard avatar for a Drayta: a Sophonce digient who's skilled at solving the logic puzzles found on the gaming continents. The original Drayta's owner trained him using a puzzle generator pirated from the Five Dynasties continent on the Real Space platform, and then released copies to the public domain. Now so many gameplayers take a Drayta with them on their missions that game companies are considering major redesigns.
Ana directs Jax's attention to the other digient. "See the guy over there? He's a Drayta."
"Really?" Jax has heard about Draytas, but this is the first one he's met. He walks over to the dwarf. "Hi," he says. "I'm Jax."
"Wanna solve puzzles," says Drayta.
"What kind puzzles you like?"
"Wanna solve puzzles." Drayta is getting anxious; he runs around the waiting area.
"Wanna solve puzzles. "
A nearby gamer wearing a osprey-seraph avatar pauses in his conversation to point a finger at Drayta; the digient freezes in midstep, shrinks to a icon, and snaps into one of the gamer's belt compartments as if pulled by an elastic.
"Drayta weird," says Jax.
"Yes he was, wasn't he?"
"All Draytas like that?"
"I think so."
The seraph walks over to Ana. "What kind of digient have you got? Haven't seen his sort before."
"His name's Jax. He runs on the Neuroblast genome."
"Don't know that one. Is it new?"
One of the seraph's teammates, wearing a nephilim avatar, comes by. "Nah, it's old, last generation."
The seraph nods. "Is he good at puzzles?"
"Not really," says Ana.
"So what does he do?"
"I like
Meanwhile, the failure of the hothouse experiments to produce miniature civilizations has caused general interest in digital lifeforms to dwindle. Occasionally curious new fauna are observed in the biomes, a species demonstrating an exotic body plan or a novel reproductive strategy, but it's generally agreed that the biomes aren't run at a high enough resolution for real intelligence to evolve there. The companies that make the Origami and Faberge genomes go into decline. Many technology pundits declare digients to be a dead end, proof that embodied AI is useless for anything beyond entertainment, until the introduction of a new genomic engine called Sophonce.
Sophonce's designers wanted digients that could be taught via software instead of needing interaction with humans; toward that end, they've created an engine that favors asocial behavior and obsessive personalities. The vast majority of the digients generated with the engine are discarded for their psychological malformations, but a tiny fraction prove capable of learning with minimal supervision: give them the right tutoring software and they'll happily study for weeks of subjective time, meaning that they can be run at hothouse speeds without going feral. Some hobbyists demonstrate Sophonce digients that outperform Neuroblast, Origami, and Faberge digients on math tests, despite having been trained with far less real-time interaction. There's speculation that, if their energies can be directed in a practical direction, Sophonce digients could become useful workers within a matter of months. The problem is that they're so charmless that few people want to engage in even the limited amounts of interaction that the digients require.
----
Ana has brought Jax along with her to Siege of Heaven, the first new game continent to appear in Data Earth in a year. She shows him around the Argent Plaza, where players congregate and socialize in between missions; it's a massive courtyard of white marble, lapis lazuli, and gold filigree located on top of a cumulonimbus cloud. Ana has to wear her game avatar, a kestrel-cherub, but Jax keeps his traditional copper robot avatar.
As they're strolling amongst the other gamers, Ana sees the onscreen annotation for a digient. His avatar is a hydrocephalic dwarf, the standard avatar for a Drayta: a Sophonce digient who's skilled at solving the logic puzzles found on the gaming continents. The original Drayta's owner trained him using a puzzle generator pirated from the Five Dynasties continent on the Real Space platform, and then released copies to the public domain. Now so many gameplayers take a Drayta with them on their missions that game companies are considering major redesigns.
Ana directs Jax's attention to the other digient. "See the guy over there? He's a Drayta."
"Really?" Jax has heard about Draytas, but this is the first one he's met. He walks over to the dwarf. "Hi," he says. "I'm Jax."
"Wanna solve puzzles," says Drayta.
"What kind puzzles you like?"
"Wanna solve puzzles." Drayta is getting anxious; he runs around the waiting area.
"Wanna solve puzzles. "
A nearby gamer wearing a osprey-seraph avatar pauses in his conversation to point a finger at Drayta; the digient freezes in midstep, shrinks to a icon, and snaps into one of the gamer's belt compartments as if pulled by an elastic.
"Drayta weird," says Jax.
"Yes he was, wasn't he?"
"All Draytas like that?"
"I think so."
The seraph walks over to Ana. "What kind of digient have you got? Haven't seen his sort before."
"His name's Jax. He runs on the Neuroblast genome."
"Don't know that one. Is it new?"
One of the seraph's teammates, wearing a nephilim avatar, comes by. "Nah, it's old, last generation."
The seraph nods. "Is he good at puzzles?"
"Not really," says Ana.
"So what does he do?"
"I like
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