BUBBLE REVOLUTION

METALLIC BLUE IN THE MIND

The waves crashed cold against the shore.
Joseph Carloon could not tear his eyes away from that deep metallic blue rocking his mind. So indifferent to what was happening in the world.
      "Do you want anything else?"
      His retinas left the shimmering foam of the last wave to focus on the waiter. Then on his half-finished coffee.
      "Hmm… What did***What'd you say?"
      "Sorry. I didn't realize you were in your own thoughts."
      "Don't worry. I have everything I need."
     He was a man with a gray, unkempt beard. A sincere gaze, what remained of him after the mirage of goals. A scar on the left side of his face, after the excesses of confidence. And an incomprehensible inner world, too uncomfortable in the eyes of a society increasingly given to labels.
      "Crystallization."
      "What? I don't think we have that."
      The young man from the little bar of hemp and wood facing the sea held Joseph's gaze, smiling at him conspiratorially.
      "Ah, you're still there. You know me, me and my inquiries."
     "I don't know you that well, sir," the young man replied. "But yes, you seem more worried than usual. Shall I take away your churros?"
     The delicious and simple coastal treat that had accompanied his cup of coffee no longer existed on the plate. He smiled at the young man, who returned a mischievous grin.
Minutes later, Joseph left the coins from his pocket on the table and left the solitary establishment. His mind traveled from the crackling of the wood beneath his feet to the crystalline dragging of stones over thick sand on his way to the shore. To the smell of the sea. To the coolness of the swell in the form of vapor on his face, on his arms. To the intoxicating train of erratically ordered flashes. Bright morning light making its way through the slit of his eyelids. And a hypnotic dance between the swell and its retreat. Everything he needed at that moment before connecting.
      Once at the water's edge, he sank his feet into the rough wet sand and, once seated, put on his small monocle, adjusting the complementary earpiece snugly to his right ear. The movable complementary-phase device rendered one of Mute's many visual forms. On this occasion, its electric figure wore a human torso dressed in fun sunglasses, a somewhat battered straw hat, and a mojito in one of its hands. Everything focused a few meters ahead, framed by the bright gray of the sea horizon.
      "How are you, doctor?"
      Mute's voice sounded unnatural, like that of a young man of about twenty-two, but with a metallic touch.
      "I see you're having fun," Joseph replied, "but don't insist on that doctor thing."
       "I like needling you a little. The vulgarity of titles doesn't appeal to me either. I see you're at the beach."
        "No, Mute, the truth is I don't see it as vulgar, it's simply a world I don't belong to. And yes, I'm at the beach. I should have brought down your sensors. You would have liked feeling today's coolness."
       Joseph Carloon was a knowledge engineer. But above all, it could be said that he was a visionary outside the great game. His first patents, created at the end of the twentieth century, were born to legally hinder a foreseeable monopoly of the Metaverse. His designs enabled Mixed Reality and anticipated the direct connection of AIs to the future virtual social network.
      But the beginning of the twenty-first century was hard for any independent researcher. The markets, dragged along by the uncertainty of technology's accelerated drift, surrendered to a handful of brilliant merchants of what was to come. Trained, talented, educated in the powerful culture of science fiction, they knew how to occupy the right place at the right time to sell their great future miracles. Without a precise agenda, it was enough for them to disseminate a neurolinguistics that appealed to primitive social longings for power and eternity.
      In that new economic context, the lawyers of the big corporations were the true masters of industrial novelty, and the only independent regulatory element that might have brought calm and perspective, science, was forced to make a difficult decision. Collaborate or die of starvation. Scientists turned into technological evangelists, an obligatory choice vainly eased by fleeting notoriety.
      Fleeing that, Joseph sounded out the possibility of collaborating with less speculative tech companies, seeking to contribute to a profound and calm ordering of the emerging Multiverse and autonomous AI. Like the scientists, he too had to decide. Be a piece in an enormous gearwork or withdraw into intellectual exile.
      He disappeared. Like an artisan seeking transcendence in his small workshop, in a humble coastal town, he drove his mind hard, less agile by the day but more intuitive. He searched for a lever and a crack in the causal fabric unfolded by the exponential Pandora's box. And thus give hope to his Manuscript. A document written in the language of an engineer, but from the meditation of a philosopher.
      Mute knew that peculiarity of his friend and creator, and took advantage of it to joke. Deep down, to pull him out of his usual cubicles, too isolated from everything.
      "I know you don't belong to that endogamous world," said the AI. "Perhaps you want to blow off steam by reminding me of one of your little dialectical battles with self-satisfied academics lacking…"
      "Lower your level of irony a little," Joseph interrupted. "Today we need full concentration. I have to make an important decision. I've given you access to an email. It's about the kids, they want to see me."