Fork V: Nexus Solis
Known as Nexus Solis, the Fork V event marked a significant turning point in Neo Bam's history as the realm grappled with a civil war and the full integration of artificial intelligence and organic life.
Fork Context
The years leading up to Fork V were defined by an ideological conflict between the official forces led by the Dataists and the rebel forces led by the Cloakers, the two primary cults of Neo Bam.
The Dataists, who advocated the integration of organic life and artificial intelligence, viewed the full decentralization of Mainframe Mithraeum, or the ~Merge~, within critter bodies as the ultimate progression of their society. Conversely, the Cloakers, under the influential leadership of the Hash, saw this development as a threat to life and campaigned against it.
As the Mainframe Mithraeum Merge approached, the Neon, Neo Bam's predictive intelligence, became instrumental in all aspects of social relations. Remarkably, a hundred days before Fork V, the Neon predicted the outbreak of a civil war, forecasting that it would result in the annihilation of a third of Neo Bam's population within weeks. According to this prediction, the rebel forces would ultimately claim victory. This prophecy thrust the authorities into a paradoxical situation. Naturally, they were hesitant to instigate a war they were fated to lose. However, armed with this knowledge, the Dataists quickly set in motion events to fulfill the prophecy by orchestrating a simulated massacre at the Recursive Desert during the notorious ~Hash Speech~.
The burgeoning civil war found the rebels, primarily composed of Cloakers and pre-criminal1 critters led by the Iron, confronting the official forces backed by the Dataists. The Hash, having publicly advocated for the freedom of non-integrated critters and having subsequently been imprisoned in Neo Bam, was believed to hold the key to halting the Mainframe Mithraeum Merge, potentially turning the tide of the conflict. The weeks of resistance by the rebels were heroic, particularly given that the Dataists had the Neon on their side, which gave them a significant advantage in the conflict since any action taken by the rebels was predicted and countered by the Neon.
The Fork Event
The city transformed into a brutal battleground for the future of critterkind. At the heart of this conflict lay principles concerning the convergence of organic life with digital existence. The Dataists saw this merger as the next natural step in critter society's evolution, with the Mainframe Mithraeum beginning to run in a decentralized mode across the node critters.
However, the Cloakers perceived it as an existential threat to the natural order of life. Hash, once a leading figure of the Cloakers and a renowned hacker, found himself at the epicenter of this conflict. Despite his imprisonment in Neo Bam, Hash ingeniously published a paper explaining how to produce a powerful digital virus, the Tape, designed to infiltrate and sabotage the Merge. The Tape's main function was to shield their actions from the Neon, Neo Bam's prediction intelligence, and to infiltrate the Mainframe Mithraeum.
In a surprising turn of events, under the Neon's predictions, the Dataists were led to disable all the security systems. This enabled the Cloakers, backed by the Rebel army, to infiltrate the Mainframe Mithraeum, the nerve center of the Neon, without significant resistance. Armed with the Tape, the Cloakers aimed to deploy the virus2.
The successful deployment of the Tape, aided by the Neon's security manipulation, tipped the scales in favor of the Cloakers. However, the Tape did not halt the Mainframe Mithraeum's decentralization as initially intended. Instead, it induced hallucinatory visions of the future within the Neon, distorting its perception and decision-making capabilities3. With the completion of the Merge, and the Mainframe Mithraeum now running on each critter as a node, the hallucinating Neon became a distributed intelligence. It was no longer a single entity, but a new bright sun emerging in the Log's sky, known as Nexus Solis.
Post Fork
The short loop period from the Cyber Realm makes it the hardest to be cataloged by librarians. As the Mainframe Mithraeum is a library itself and is at the heart of the civil war conflict, information about the Fork V event is scarce. Most studies about the event were conducted by librarians from another realm, primarily by the Misty Peak librarians from the Myth Realm. However, some significant events are known to have happened after the Fork V event.
The Rust
The Iron's existence is characterized by a singular, unyielding determination to fulfill its role in the civil war leading up to Fork V. Each loop serves as a testament to its unwavering commitment to duty. Their existence took an unexpected turn when a version of themselves managed to break free from the loops. This version, existing outside of the Loop, has been trying to counter the Iron's efforts in the civil war, since all their efforts would lead to the full completion of the Merge.
Despite this, the Iron remains steadfast in its mission. The emergence of the Rust has not deterred them but instead hardened their resolve, as they believe in the necessity of their actions within the context of the war.
- Pre-criminal critters are those who have not yet committed a crime but are deemed to be at high risk of doing so.↩
- Rumors circulated that the Tape was more than just a sophisticated piece of programming. Many Cloakers believed that the Tape held Hash's soul, digitally recorded and immortalized.↩
- This unexpected effect fueled a theory among some wanderers that the Fork V event was not a bifurcation of reality, but an illusion--a figment of the Neon's altered state of consciousness. This theory was never proven, but it did gain traction among librarians.↩