The Viral Awakening

I enjoyed the story but found some of the phrases redunded based on the rule that if you love it remove it. They sometimes blocked the flow.

However I want to know more.....

FreakyLemon,

Nicely done. You (unlike many contributors) have written a story that meets all criteria for the Teleport Us event! That itself is awesome.

A few comments on style:
1) Your word choice gets pretty repetitive:  process, hack, spool, expansive, data, code, etc…
2) You have a plethora of run-on sentences broken up by comas. I think it weakens the writing. I would suggest using some shorter sentences to break up the flow.
3) Also work to vary sentence length—you to this to good affect at certain points in the story, but then you have whole other paragraphs that contain numerous long, sentences and no shorter ones.

A few other comments:

I think this story is too long. Because you have a disembodied protagonist largely disconnected to human affairs (those of this world at least), it’s tough to create rapport with your reader—the protagonist is just so other. You have to rely on non-concrete descriptions and use mainly concepts to help us understand the virus. That tires me out as a reader.

That said, the story has verve and I love the concept, so my suggestion would be to put the story over a flame and simmer it down to around 1,000 – 1,200 words. I think you can safely lose a third of the prose and actually improve the story overall.

I would work to make a very clear story arc that sets up your final reveal from the first sentence of the story. Something like “I haven’t always known my purpose,” etc… That way we can wonder with the protagonist it tells us its stages of development from unthinking to possessing reason (and even wisdom).

I enjoyed your story and have posted some comments / suggested edits in the form of a word documents. Use them as you will.

Warmly,
Nathan

I enjoyed this.  The concept is interesting, the idea of a virus gaining self-awareness, and it kept my attention all the way.  You could probably make this a lot shorter and tighter and improve it slightly, but it doesn't necessarily read as too long.  The journey from wondering to understanding to reasoning is all done very well.  I liked that while the character is very non-human, you didn't fall into the trap of making it too human-sounding.  The only problem is that it doesn't have a defined story arc, but given that it is an enjoyable read, that hasn't damaged it much at all.  Good story.

This is another wow! Have you ever read/listened to Spherical Tomi?  The virus in your story reminds me of the creature that Tomi encounters.  Although, yours is a good deal more self constructing.  I'm not sure what the earlier versions of this story looked like, but I'd have to say you've worked out most of the kinks!  A very smooth read from start to finish!

As to possible improvements, I think there were only two things that bugged me:

• "Finally the process of converting the essence of life into data, in silico synthesis, was used to recreate the world as data."  That sentence feels a little awkward.  I had to re-read the middle of it two or three times to get past "in silico synthesis"
• The "#" divisions that you added at various points in the story are largely unnecessary.  There isn't enough of a shift to warrant them so I'd pull them entirely.

Excellent Work!

We can't really imagine this world of information taken over by the conscious virus, so there may not be many ways to tell this story other than the rather overbearing explanation (not a lot of show, here!) Not that it perhaps needs overexplaining, though, the idea of a silicon awareness is not new, so you don't need to linger too long on the process.

So you can simplify, I think, otherwise it does come across as a rather long lecture. What is it that you want to convey? Focus in in that. Does that need the "Other route" - to the stars?

The bit I like most, is that the virus payload has never been delivered, but at the point it is all Virus, it realises it can only deliver to itself...

But the whole "rise of civilisations etc" within this information world, rings odd. Yes, the virus corrupts and destroys countless things - silcone versions of human brains, of memories, but also scientific data, and representations of art. What does it get from these, when it learns to pay attention to them? And by reading - and duplicating, does it not take the step to absorb them, rather than corrupt?

Also, you run the ever present problem, of as soon as you have an  intellect this big - a brain the size of a planet - it can't come across as human, or weak, or unknowing. It's too powerful. It must be able to solve problems in a blink, it would probably spread much faster than it says it did.

I like the fact it consumed it's creators first. Hubris, or self sacrifice..

Overall, I liked it, so thumbs up. 

This is an excellent concept. I loved the ideas and how you made your non-human the focal character.  So much of the language contributed to enriching this world--little touches like Hypervisor and the use of familiar terminology (forking, the virius, corruption, coding)--were seamlessly integrated.

The first person gives us access to a unique entity. That is very cool.  I wonder if it contributes to the thing I found most difficult about the story.  There is a lack of immediacy. It feels like a whole lot of telling. That kept me one step removed from the story.  

On the one hand that can work.  It is interesting in an intellectual sense.  I enjoyed a lot of the telling. You built a very interesting history. My favorite passages begin "To circumvent the dynamic, mutating security . . . " and "Conformity is the price of utopia.". I like those parts.  Some of the other exposition was a touch too dry for my taste.  Now, that could be certainly be a matter of taste.  I don't read much hard sci-fi for this reason.  Your story didn't feel too challenging in terms of the tech; it was just right. The flavor, however, was there.

Overall, I quite enjoyed this. Thumbs up!

--Wendy