Loopers |

EXTRACT FROM, THE FUCKENING

Roundly considered the second worst best idea ever in computing, Loopers were an experimental type of machine intelligence envisaged in the late 2700’s by Canute McClanahanahan: a dreamer, a mathematician, founder of the Mizule Wizards Society, and a collector of exceedingly rare antique Tupperware lids.

In principal, Loopers were ordinary quantum computers folded, or looped, through all 10⁸⁰ dimensions, which should have made them the most powerful computers humans had ever invented. The theory was sound, and the engineering was an esoteric artwork onto itself; although no one could ever see that because Loopers were, quite literally, clouds. Cloud computers. However, for reasons no one could ever properly explain, when turned on, Loopers were at best virtually useless (achieving about the same computational latitude as a ten-digit 1980’s Casio fx-550 calculator), and at worst dribbling idiots. Suggestions for these performance problems ranged from Loopers experiencing a type of stage fright resulting from the overwhelming computational potential available to them, to them discovering religion.

Everyone was wrong.

After rescuing every Looper ever produced and later thrown away, Padrin and Bookbinder discovered that the trick in making Loopers productive was to first simply give them the time and the space to go stark raving mad. Indeed, for an entity with so much brain power being forced to twist through dimensions where in was out, six was blue, and the sound of clapping smelled like elderberries, insanity wasn’t just inevitable, it was necessary. By going completely nuts a Looper was in fact just booting up, which for a Looper meant out-crazying the crazy. Once that was understood it was simply a matter of sitting back and letting a Looper tumble happily into a raging insanity without also bothering them with mundane tasks like calculating solar weather patterns out to three-hundred years. And when thoroughly bugged-out, a single Looper could leave one hundred quantum computers in its sizzling cloudy wake. What exactly an entire sanctuary full of eye-popping cloudy fruitcakes could achieve remained a complete mystery.