This was the first assignment given in my “Networking Fundamentals” class.  We were asked to write a short fiction story describing how we believe devices communicate on a network.  It was not graded but used as a way for the professor to get a feeling of how much we know about networking before we got into the course material.  I perhaps took the assignment too seriously, or not serious enough.  You decide.

The land of Kinterneon exists apart from yours and mine.  It is a world which follows a strict yet completely foreign set of protocols.  The inhabitants are uniquely talented in the ways of multitasking and optimizing their efficiency.  With these skills they are able to evolve and develop with astonishing speed.  In-fact, their entire existence has come to be and developed to what it is today in just the last 40 years.

Kinterneon is divided regions, which are added and removed at to fast a pace to count.  These regions exist to allow their regional administrators preside over their domains with better focus and grace.  A region is totally autonomous, much like individual countries are in our world.  They have the ability to manage all their own affairs however they may see fit, while still being able to interact with other regions.

Communication in Kinterneon is one of the peoples proudest, and oddest, achievements.  For a region to convey a message to another region, the message has to first be brought to an interface junction on the periphery of their territory.  From there the message is broken up into smaller chunks and each chunk packaged with information such as the source, destination and a count of the number of places the package has traveled through.  All of these packages are then numbered in sequence and then sent through a very large tube to a central switching authority.  Each switching authority manages incoming and outgoing messages for a set few regions.  They are neutral when it comes to region affiliation and they will route messages from their sender to the desired recipient without bias.  In some cases, when a messages intended destination is not within the scope of address served by the authority, the message has to be sent to a planetary master authority.  There are nine of these master authorities in Kinterneon, aptly designated K-1 through K-9.  (See “A Tale of a Doctor and His Phone Box” for a wondrous journey with the K-9 authority.)  Each of these master authorities have direct connections with each other via very fat pipes.  In a world where communication is so very important, this level of redundancy has proved useful in the past.  The master authorities keep records of the ranges of addresses accessible from all of the other switching authorities connected to them.  With this information they are able to route any unknown package to its ultimate destination.  If a package’s included travel count gets increased beyond a particular limit however, the package and all of its data are discarded.  When a package ultimately arrives at its destination, the receiving region places it in an incoming buffer which holds all the communication chunks sent to them.  As contiguous pieces are received, they are reassembled in the labeled sequence to reform the original message.  The daemon is then free to act on the message in whatever manor he or she has been instructed to.

With the ever increasing volume and cleverness of the people of Kinterneon, they have become so adept at this communication method that they can even send images, audio, video and even thoughts and ideas encoded and broken up within their packages.  Many years ago a convention was convened to decided on a standard method of encoding and delivering such unique message contents.  The Regional Fairness Convention is the unifying force behind the diverse forms of communication now possible.

The cities within a region in Kinterneon can also communicate with each other in much the same way.  They follow the same protocols and format as regional communication, but just on a smaller scale, communicating city-to-city.  If a city wishes to communicate with another region, it only has to make a request of the interface junction controller at the edge of their region.

As you can see, the land of Kinterneon must be vast and full of wonder and innovation.  However, despite our differences, we here on Earth have learned a lot from their model.

I, like many people my age and/or being at this point in life, am thinking about what comes next.  I can look back and see the “sweet innocence” of childhood or the self-imposed stress and problems of adolescence.  I can look to people further along in life then I am and see careers, families, responsibilities, and all sorts of “exciting” things.  But what happens in-between?

I know how the game is supposed to end.  The main character (me, if you haven’t been following along) gets the girl in the end and they ride off into the (Martian) sunset together (in their hover car) to start a family together and live happily ever after.  (Some details filled in from personal fantasy.)  I look at myself and my peers, and I get the impression that I have a clearer picture of this then most.  Additionally, I seem to either be more worried, less concerned, or more sure of how I will achieve these life goals.  I have yet to come to a definitive conclusion on which of those three it is.

Popular belief is that I somehow acquire either (a) copious scholarships or (b) lots of debt to attend a college of my choice for several years, get a nice middle-class job afterwards with which I can manage any debt I may have, buy a house, car, wife, kids, and all the toothpaste I want.  But what if I can’t find all that on the store shelves?  What if, assuming for the moment that I manage to get to this fanciful point in life, I end up not finding the right car, or the right person, or the right brand of toothpaste.  Falling back to popular belief, I would “move on.”  Settle for the peppermint when what I really wanted was wintergreen.  (they never have wintergreen these days…)  Personally, I refuse to settle.  I am willing to “make due with what I have” or to “improvise”, but I will never settle.  I know what I want, and one way or another, I will have it.  (even if I have to cut down my own wintergreen tree…)

But remember, we have assumed that I will be given the honor of being presented the choice of toothpaste or woman or car.  I still have to get that job with which to buy her/it.  (Lets pretend I’m referring to the car as “her” and save the slavery/prostitution implications for the next post.)  To get this job, I either have to be the luckiest person I know, or have to jump through all sorts of high-strung hoops to prove my worth.  Even when it seems like you will never get the degree or job you want.  Even when the fiscal and logistical requirements to get the degree or the job seem impossible.

I just have to keep on going.  Never ending, never waivering.  Or else, no toothpaste.

So here is the deal. I have thoughts. You have thoughts. It is these thoughts that make us (the human race) what we are. Some say it is the ability to reason, but I say it is the thought. I, as a sentient being, have the ability to ponder my own existence and the meaning of it. We all do. We all should.

Today I was among some friends at a magic (Magic the Gathering, a trading card game) tournament. I started to talk about this sort of stuff, and the people I was talking to seemed to be completely foreign to these concepts. They stated that the common thoughts of an American are on the “important things” like money, sex, and food. Now, I am not going to dispute the importance of any of those three things. This society requires money to trade for other needs, sex is needed for procreation of the species, and food to sustain our biological bodies. But how can one’s life revolve around just that? How is that enlightened? What long term good does that serve?

About now you are probably thinking to yourself, “This loon sounds like he is trying to start a cult.” Well, that would be fun and all, but I have other obligations in my life at the moment. No time to become a spiritual leader. In any case, that isn’t the point here, but in a way I guess it is. What I am talking about is frame of mind. An awareness of who we are, what our minds can accomplish, our position in the cosmos. This does not require a conversion to a new spirituality, whatever one you have now will work just fine. It just requires some thought.

And that is the point of it all. If you are able to give things like this the thought, you have already started the “enlightenment.” If you are able to comprehend, understand, and even accept what I am talking about, then you have just proven to yourself that you have the mental ability of self-awareness. You have validated your sentience.

You have proven yourself to be a worthy reader of M.etaphysical E.xistance.