xp_logs | Xorn: Sofia and Essex (Reply)

Sofia's been given the lucky job of coming up with a mental profile for Xorn. But even serial killers have some kind of humanity, though twisted, and this is going to be a long night; Essex delivers his information on him in assistance.

It was simple enough. Just another profile, like a hundred she had
done before. Finding patterns in what to anyone else would be a Rubik
cube, humanity in the mind of a rapist, a serial killer. Today, it
was God, followed by saving the Chinese and the world. And she'd
dimly worried she had thrown her life away. "There's no question
about that... but at least you're being productive," she muttered to
herself, scribbling in another note, crossing, circling, drawing
arrows, her notebook resting on her knee.

"Ms Mantega-Barret," Essex said as he entered the room. He had a
collection of materials from Xorn's earliest years, as Sofia had
requested. He placed the files on the table next to her.

Pausing in her writing, Sofia shoved her pen into her pulled back hair
and eagerly pulled the papers towards her. "Beautiful," she purred,
scanning, flipping over, taking a first go at the new information like
a teenager with a fashion magazine; she'd skim through it once, then
go back to thoroughly read that which interested her. Her bare feet,
toenails painted a deep wine colour, slipped out from where she had
been sitting on them to stretch, stretch, and come back a little,
knees bent, so that she could read two pages together. "And excellent
service as well."

"There is a certain time constraint, yes." Essex took a seat at the
table, taking his own files from under his arm and setting them down
beside his PDA.

"Make yourself at home," Sofia remarked, but with no obvious malice in
her tone; she was too busy pouring over the new facts to add and it
was possible that she may have drawn a sort of silent peace with the
megalomaniac, if only because, well. Who else would? Besides, she
could be Very Indignant with him after the demi-god was safe and
sound. "There are... blankets, throws, in the foot rest."

"I believe just the chair will suffice." Essex said dryly. She was not
his image of a psychologist, used to the military counterparts and
their driven psyops ideas. "Have you made any preliminary observations
at this point?"

"Besides the part where I curse and lose sleep a lot? Nothing in
paragraph form, but. He is quite remarkable." There was a strange
tone to Sofia's voice, light and low and soft, and had anyone else
been in the room they'd have most likely reacted in surprise from the
deviance from her usual harsh, even words. "It's really too bad I'll
never be able to write an article about him."

"Not without risking a potential death squad from the Chinese, no." He
placed his hands down on the table, over the carefully placed papers.
"He is an utterly unique entity. It almost seems ridiculous to be
forced to apply approaches that now are used on those who are
considered too dangerous for society."

"If geniuses start killing innocent people," Sofia started, that quirk
of her mouth present again, "I promise I will use the same steps to
profile them as well." She frown suddenly, a sigh, scratching out a
large block of writing as she came across a chapter of the gift notes.
"It's not unusual for humans to have a lack of morals. To be unaware
of good or of evil, to make up their own standards, their own rules,
and to be totally unaware that they could possibly be in the wrong.
But Xorn. I've never seen anything like this. I'm not sure I can
even classify him as human at all. You may get your wish, different
methods."

"Indeed. Xorn is more of a force than a consciousness, I believe. At
least at this point he must be. Charles is the expert on telepathic
mental development, and I believe even he would be daunted by what
Xorn represents. Truly an incarnation of the noosphere itself;
connected directly to every mind on the planet. Humanity could only
use total madness to deal with such a situation."

Putting down her pen, Sofia looked up, finally fully looking at the
man across from her. "Noosphere. I keep hearing it, I read about it,
I understand no more about it now than I did before I wasted a good
several hours of my life. Perhaps you could be a little more
comprehensive?"

"Of course. When you consider the universe as a whole, there is a
general transformation or series of phases in which elements
fundamentally change the Earth. The first, obviously, was it's
formation itself, or the geosphere. The second was when life began on
the planet, creating the next major change, which is known as the
biosphere. Each time, the makeup of the planet changed to forms barely
recognizable from the earlier. The noosphere is the next step, when
the interconnection of a shared consciousness allows for a
transmutative level for the species."

"I knew there was a reason I went pneumo instead of telekinetic," she
remarked, possibly. Joking? "But. That makes more sense than the
pages of dry text I had before." Jotting down 'geo', 'bio', 'noo',
one under the other, Sofia drew a square around the whole group of
them, etching it into her mind.

"Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was the first to attempt to explain it as
a second level; a sort of culmination to an Omega Point of perfect
integration between minds to create a quantum expression of conscious.
God, to be more precise, is not an entity but rather the perfect
expression of shared consciousness." Essex tapped his chin as he
spoke, smoothing the short black goatee. "Whether you believe in that
or not, I feel that Morgan was on the right track when he proposed
emergent evolution; that evolution is often discontinuous of
environment, creating giant leaps in complexity at a confluence of
factor, as opposed to a single response to a biosphere driven
adaptation. For example, your own mutation has no other logical
adaptive reason save for the fact that there are other mutants. So
that first emergent telepath could have been a non-environmental
influence that directly shaped the ones coming after to populate the
new system."

Sofia turned her head slightly to the side as he spoke, offering a nod
or similarly quiet squinting of her eyes at intervals. "There is the
other school of thought, in which mutations are merely a new way of
genetic self expression, but, I see where you are coming from, if not
in a more limited view. You know little of my work, and I in turn,
know little of yours."

"I'm afraid genetics and psychology share little in common, true.
Still, there is an intriguing suite of theories of how they came come
together. The evolution simultaneously of thought and form into
transhumanist and finally post-human society." Essex pointed out.
"Where genetics and psychology merge into a philosophy, so to speak,
of the next evolution; the next step."

"And I suppose dumb luck isn't a greatly appreciated answer."

"It has a somewhat limited following in modern academia, yes." Essex said wryly.

“Hm. Well, it’s not like they were my greatest fans beforehand, anyway.” Sofia went back to her notes, eying particular scribblings with what she hoped was a refreshed mind, and suddenly focused on one word, hidden in the mess. Unbound. Unbound, liberated, overcome… “What if we looked at Xorn as nothing more than someone who practices Buddhism. Awakened, unattached to desires. And just happens to be nuclear. After all, Buddha is human. Although, I guess we'll have to stop calling him God.”

There was a pause, but finally, Essex gave her what appeared to be a smile. “I think you may have something.”