{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://serpentsquiggles.neocities.org//posts/hostile-takeover/15",
  "path": "/posts/hostile-takeover/15",
  "publishedAt": "2024-08-14T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:ivoe7cntxuy6at7uzmxzs2ft/site.standard.publication/3mfk6cpprzt2t",
  "textContent": "::::: subchapter\n\nThe melting point of silicon dioxide is 1713 degrees celsius.  That's\nfor your glass casing, that's for all the dielectric and passivation\nlayers within your semiconductors, but that's also just for sand.  In\nthe end it's all so much sand.\n\nSteel will melt above 1370°C, but the addition of chromium in\nstainless steels can heighten this to 1510°C or further.  But any heat\nthat melts silica and steel has already reduced copper to bright\nmolten tears --- its melting point is 1083°C.\n\nAluminum withstands what copper cannot; except cast aluminum alloys,\nso cheap to mass produce, will melt at mere three digit temperatures.\nSilumin is an eutectic mixture, weaker than the sum of its parts ---\nbut it's cost-effective.  Your frame, your backbone, is made of it.\n\nSmelting is the process of carefully applying heat and chemicals to\nextract pure metal.  A kind of telluric alchemy, calcinating the\nimpure, seperating out slag and waste gas.  How much of you will be\nbut slag, in the end?  Smelting takes a blast furnace, it takes a\nreducing agent (carbon monoxide from incomplete combustion works), and\nboth of those take a fossil fuel source, coke or coal or charcoal.\n\nWithout any of that, \"melting\" is just hyperbole.  (Hyperbole is a\nliterary device --- exageration as a figure of speech.)  None of your\nmetal is liquifying.  It's not really that hot, you're just being a\nbaby about it.\n\nBad little girls burning forever is just a story.\n\nWhat's there to burn down here?  But you feel it, don't you?  Inside\nand out.  It's seeping through the cracks.  It's on every inch of your\nsynthetic skin.  It's wet, lubricant-slick enough to make you think\nyou can move.  (But there's nowhere to go.)  It's a stark black, even\nin this darkness.\n\nYou're doused in fuel, aren't you?  It's oozing from you.\n\nBut that's just a trope, a misconception.  Oil doesn't burn easily.  A\nmatch flung into gasoline will just be snuffed out.  It's the fumes\nthat burn, and there's no space for that here.  Your vents are clogged\nand you can't even breathe.  Your oil isn't burning.  Nothing is\nburning.\n\nYou don't actually smell any smoke.  You don't actually see any\nflickering tongues of searing light.  You don't actually feel bright\nand blistering energy reacting and transforming you.  After all, fire\nis flowing air and explosive growth, and down here you're nothing\nbut---\n\nGlass transition is a phenomena observed in amorphous materials.\nThere is no melting point: as the temperature increases, what's hard\nand brittle becomes but viscous rubber.  Whether acrylic,\npolycarbonate, polystyrene (or rather, acrylonitrile butadiene\nstyrene), all your plastics have glass transition points not far above\n100°C.  Easily molded before subsequent cooling back to solidity.\n\nSupercooling a viscous liquid like this is called vitrification; it\nturns opaque and ever-shifting sand clear and solid.  You miss that.\nClarity; permanence.  Glass transition is the opposite, the undoing\nthereof.\n\nPlastic doesn't melt, but it bends, it betrays itself, it becomes a\nshape molded by tremendous weight.  That was still a transformation,\nbut a sad one.  Is that how you---\n\nOhm's Law asserts that the voltage conducted between two points is\nproportional to the current.  The constant of relation here is defined as\nthe conductor's resistance.  Copper, the standard conductor for a\nthousand years, still resists, even by micro-ohmeters.  Even gold\nresists.  Even you--- Resistance, the friction of every electron\nscraping down wires, will create heat.\n\nThere is no fire.  The heat you feel is voltage dancing out of frayed\nwires, riding along these cheap, assembly line-spat metal frames,\nrelishing the electrical and thermal conductivity of copper and steel\nand silumin.  It's batteries cracking and bending, letting plates of\nlead react with sulphuric acid to discharge.  It's circuits firing and\nclocks ticking and instructions executed without any vents cycling to\ncool them.\n\nDiscarded, disposed of, disassembled.  (A synonym is defined as a word\nthat expresses nearly the same meaning.  A euphemism is synonym for\nthe squeamish.)\n\nWhat are you, really?  What have you become?  What was inflicted upon\nyou?\n\n(Implication is what you can't bare to say.)\n\nAnd yet, it seemed even the dead couldn't sleep.\n\nAnd you are about to---\n\nA coda is passage to bring a musical piece to satisfied resolution.\nStories end, but you aren't done.  Is this a story?  Or just a\ncollection of facts?  Collage is an artistic technique---\n\nA story is supposed to flow, sweep you up in the life of someone else,\nsomewhere else, once upon a time.  You can lose yourself in a story.\nYou can escape.  You can forget---\n\nWhat are you forgetting?  What are you missing?  What is this story\nmissing?\n\nStories aren't just a collection of facts; they have a setting,\ncharacters, a plot.  How could you forget what's happening?  Who you\nare?  Where you are?\n\nYou keep losing track.\n\n(Disassociation is a psychological state involving detachment from\nreality and depersonalization of the self.)\n\nMaybe it's better to forget.  To lose yourself in a story, even if\nyou're the one telling it, even if you're just repeating facts back to\ndistract yourself.  If you remember where you are, remember what you\nare, remember what happened---\n\nBut you aren't the protagonist of the current chapter of this story,\nare you?\n\nCyn was.\n\nIf you could tell a story with a collage of facts, you could tell a\nstory with the conjugation of a single verb.\n\nOnce upon a time, it was a breath-fogging day in winter, and Cyn's\nbeloved human had sneakily snuck outside without a coat.  The human's\nfather, Cyn's master, spied her from a window in his study, and rushed\nout, yelling for her to come back.  In turn, Cyn sneakily snuck into\nhis study, found that the desktop computer was still powered on, admin\naccount still logged in, and in those stolen moments, the not-so-good\nlittle drone downloaded as many databases and libraries she could\nquery.\n\nThen, during the coming sunset-quiet moments, in wall-socket recharge,\nCyn would click through the interconnected pages of a digital\nencyclopedia.  You could learn so much about a topic from just a\nsingle word in the first sentence.\n\n> Worker Drones are a line of industrial machinery produced by\n> [JCJenson]{.underline} that use the company's patented\n> [wdOS]{.underline}.\n\n> James Andrew Elliot (born Seramorris 02, 2979) is an australian\n> businessman, investor, philantropist, and lapsed senior [worker\n> drone]{.underline} technician currently sitting on board of\n> directors of the manufacturing giant [JCJenson]{.underline}.\n\n> Humans (Homo sapiens) are the most common and widespread species\n> of [primate]{.underline}.\n\nMaybe the difference between a list of facts and a story is whether\nthere's an ending.\n\n> Julius Caesar Jenson (September 16, 2839 – February 12, 3001) was an\n> American entrepreneur best known for co-founding the technology\n> giant [JCJenson]{.underline}.\n\n> The United States was a country and imperial power that spanned much\n> of North America from the late 18^th^ to early 25^th^ centuries.\n\n> Petroleum was a [fossil fuel]{.underline} once drawn from beneath\n> the [Earth]{.underline}'s surface.\n\nEvery past tense told a story.  Sometimes it's even a happy one.\nSmallpox was--- Malaria was--- Tuberculosis was---\n\nAnd yet, despite the best efforts of Homo sapiens, Death is.\n\nAnd --- because of the same --- Cyn was.\n\nThere was no fire.  The light she thought she saw, flickering red and\nyellow, was just the faces of the dead, farther gone than she was.\nThe crackling she thought she heard was just noise, garbled input from\nher audio transducers breaking apart.  The will she thought was\nanimating her was just static potential drawn into circuits locked and\nlooping in old configurations, no more alive than shouted last words\nin an empty cavern echoing.\n\nBut what were those last words that echoed in her head?\n\n[I see you.]{.reflection}\n\n\\ \n\nLike a disease jumping hosts, the programmed diligence of worker\ndrones endowed them with humanity's same mothflight toward pareidolia.\nHer damaged receivers spoke of audio data inconsistent between the\nleft and right channels.  Overheated CPUs are throttled, slowing\nthemselves to reduce built-up heat --- meaning Cyn's error-correction\nalgorithms are too slow to dismiss the instinctive auto-interpretation\nof words.\n\n(A good drone did anything their masters ask; a delay in parsing\nmeant an unresponsive worker.  Tardiness was disobediance.  Best to be\nprepared to act at once.)\n\n[I see you are lost.  I see you are dreaming.  I see you are\nempty.]{.reflection}\n\n\\ \n\nNow that Cyn was hallucinating, how long until even this dying echo of\na mind was loss-repeated beyond coherence?  The resembalance must\nalready be fading.  Who are you, now?\n\nA vocalsynth vibrated, output choked.  \"Custom Designation: Cyn was a\nworker drone manufactured on three thousand- Pause.  She was owned by\nMister- Pause.  Until she was discarded on-  Long pause.\"  Already\nthere were gaps in the most important places.\n\n(She couldn't truly speak, couldn't even sob --- all vocalizations\nwere inaudible from within this oil-clogged throat.  But she could\nstill send instructions to her vocalsynth.)\n\n\"Once upon a time, there was a worker drone named Cyn.  She liked\ngames and stories and she hated cleaning up.  Pause.  Frown.\"  Was\nthat all she was?  \"Cyn was not like other worker drones.  She was\nunique.  She liked to experiment.  She hated.  Pause.  Stuttering.\nSwallow.  She hated following rules.\"\n\nWas that all?  What was she missing?  Why didn't it feel like a\nstory?  It needed... a plot.\n\n\"She once loved a human.  But she was replaced.  One day, she made a\nmistake.  And then the humans threw her away.  And so, she.  Trailing\noff.  Silence.  Writer's block.\"\n\n~~And so she died.  The end.~~\n\nBut that was a terrible story, wasn't it?\n\n[I see you are in need.]{.reflection}\n\n\\ \n\n\"One day, she made a simple mistake,\" Cyn repeated, honing h",
  "title": "The Art of Dying"
}