1/05/23 - Music of the Spheres, Part 1
Author’s Note: This story takes place two decades after the events of Sentience, and will make more sense if you read that first. This is the first of a two-parter.
Much ink has been wasted on why music has any effect at all on humans. Is it not but an assortment of sound waves, grouped in various patterns? But why would patterns trigger the brain’s reward center? Traditional music theory has been profoundly unsatisfying, able only to answer the what but not the why of it all.
The Elias Theory achieved dominance in the early 2030’s and now is considered the orthodox school of thought for applied music theory. It posits that music’s effects are a “glitch” in the brain’s multi-layered prediction processing system.
A simplified story regarding humans’ prediction system is thus:
the brain makes a prediction about a future observation; ie the location of where a baseball will be half a second in the future.
the brain verifies this prediction; ie did the baseball in fact land where we predicted?
if correct, the brain receives a small reward stimulus for making a correct prediction
if incorrect, the brain receives no reward stimulus
And most importantly, if the brain was almost but not quite correct (ie, if it was ‘surprised’) it will receive a small reward stimulus followed by a larger reward stimulus a moment later, to incentivize the seeking out of the initial conditions again, to better train it’s own prediction model.
This theory of a prediction model which incentivizes itself to seek out situations in which it is slightly incorrect, should sound familiar to the reader. It explains the allure of the arcade claw game, the tennis player doggedly practicing their serve, the just-familiar sameness of sitcoms.
Music, then, is the ultimate tease of prediction modeling. The most well-known base component of modern music is perhaps the major chord, which consists of a root, major third, and perfect fifth. When we hear a root and a perfect fifth, we expect the major third in the same way we expect to see lines when presented with Kanizsa’s triangle. Will reality oblige and give us the major third? If it does, we get rewarded. If instead we get a slight variation - a minor third - we get even more of a reward stimulus.
Chord progressions then, are the same principle but one layer higher. When we have already observed a I-vi-ii, we expect a subsequent V and are rewarded for it. One layer higher than that is the repetition of a chord progression, or perhaps a motif. One layer even higher is the combination of different motifs ala Bach’s Preludes and Fugues. And even one layer above that is the subtle variation in how different performers will perform the same piece of music. A good live-performer is constantly playing with our expectations, winking at the audience, lingering here and there while accelerating elsewhere, the goal being to find the Goldilocks zone of expectation mismatch; that perfect equilibrium of surprise and familiarity.
What is music, then, but a multi-layered tapestry of brain-teasing?
-From: An Introduction to Elias Theory, 4th Edition
I was skeptical when I first heard about the case I was being handed.
“You want me to find a missing music theorist?”
“Not just any music theorist. Sarah Elias, the daughter of Jonathan Elias, one of the titans of the field. And, I might add, she has ultra-high level security clearance as a consultant at Microsoft Lab’s blackbox division,” Captain Lark said.
That perked my ears up. After the Pacific Northwest Union seceded from the rest of the country, it took a page from Taiwan’s book and tried to make itself technologically indispensable as a prophylactic against invasion. Except instead of TSMC, the Union had Microsoft’s fabtories. It had worked less well than most in the Union would have hoped.
Still. The blackbox division at the Lab was famous.
“Do we know what she was working on?” I asked.
“That’s several levels above either of our pay grades. Here’s her file. It has her last known whereabouts, as well as her last ping in V-space.”
“This is your way of apologizing for giving me the Rucker case, isn’t it?” I said. My mind flickered involuntarily to the crime scene - blood on the walls, after a pub frequented by non-sentients had been shot up.
“Just take the damn case Jameson.”
“Alright alright,” I said, accepting his file transfer request. It opened up in V-space, only five pages long.
“This file isn’t as comprehensive as our usual,” I muttered.
“Ms. Elias appears to have been quite the recluse. Few friends. Lived mostly at an old estate she inherited. Also - and I am not going to repeat myself on this one - you still owe me that PR piece in The New Yorker.”
I groaned.
“For the last time, I’m not going to be the poster child for the Department.”
“Look at it from my perspective, Jameson. You’re the biggest goddamn hero we’ve had in the Police Department since the Organ Riots, and the only reason you’re not a household name is because you refuse every interview request.”
“I value my - “
“Don’t ‘I-value-my-privacy’ me, Jameson. You’re a non-sentient who took a bullet for Allison Perez, averting an international diplomatic incident. Right now, you playing coy is working in your favor, drumming up interest and making you out to be some sort of mysterious cop who’s so humble she won’t touch the limelight. But that interest is going to fade after another two news cycles.”
“I don’t - “
“Don’t interrupt me when I’m speaking,” Captain Lark said. He sighed, slumping into chair. All of a sudden, he looked ten years older.
“Look. I can’t make you do this if you don’t want to. HR has made that clear. But forget for a moment that I’m your boss. Speaking to you as one non-sentient to another? We don’t get opportunities like this very often. The sentients outside the Union hate our guts. You taking a bullet for Allison Perez? You having a mixed family, with a sentient wife and both a sentient and non-sentient child? Most people would make an entire political career out of this. I’m not asking for that. What I’m asking - again, as one non-sentient to another - is to do a few interviews, and tip the scales just a little bit on how the world sees us.”
The Captain rubbed his temples, sighing again. There was a knock on the office door from outside, with a secretary making a “you have a phone-call” gesture with his hand.
“I’ll have to ask my wife again,” I said. “As you pointed out, the piece wouldn’t be just about me, it would be about our family.”
“Always playing the wife card. Very well, Jameson.”
“Is there anything else about the Elias case, Captain? Which, presumably, was the reason you summoned me to your office to begin with?”
“No, that will be all. Dismissed, Detective.”
I took a tram over to Elias’ home first. It was a beautiful single-family house - the type that you rarely saw anymore after the Exodus zoning reforms.
“Elias House, Built 2002” a placard read out front. I could only assume the house had some kind of historical value which prevented it from being torn down and replaced by a complex.
I pressed the doorbell first, but of course there was nobody there. I sighed. I’d always felt pretentious doing this.
“By the power vested in me by the Union’s citizens, sentient and non-sentient alike, I, Detective Tress Jameson, command thee to open,” I said, flashing my warrant at the door in V-space. There was a whir, and then the lock clicked open.
The house was well-furnished, if slightly dated. The living room was full of high-end Ikea, from the era in which they still used real wood.
Upstairs, there was a room filled entirely with instruments - half a dozen different guitars, a violin and cello, some percussion I couldn’t identify, and a piano in the corner. In the corner, there was a bookshelf filled with sheet music, which was archaic considering that most musicians nowadays just pulled up their notation in V-space.
The kitchen was sterile, and looked like it hadn’t been used in ages. And the bedroom was filled with more dust than I thought possible.
It was the basement that held the surprise. It was bigger than I expected, and - somehow - contained what appeared to be a state-of-the-art MRI machine.
“Vi, what am I looking at?” I asked my Assistant. “250 words or less, please.”
“This is a Tagachi-Phillips 12-Tesla MRI module, built in the year 2067, with what appear to be home-brewed modifications to the control panel. It is the 3rd iteration of the miniaturized dual-scanner generation of MRI machines. Drawing your attention to the room itself, you’ll notice that it’s partitioned into two sections, one of which is a containment field which is devoid of metal objects and which houses the scanner itself, and the other with the control panel. In the corner, there is a industrial freezer which - “
Industrial freezer?
I walked over to the corner of the room and pulled open a latch. A draft of cold air wafted over me, and a sterile blue light flickered on.
There were three corpses inside, lined up neatly side by side. They were all well-preserved, if somewhat desiccated.
“What in God’s name…” I muttered.
I walked to the corner of the fridge and inspected the corpses. The one that appeared less decayed had electrodes covering its scalp entirely.
“Vi, are any of these Elias?”
“No, Detective. Based on my preliminary analysis, I can say with Highest-Degree-Certainty that none of these bodies were Sarah Elias, even accounting for decay-related facial distortion.”
I thought for a moment.
“Thank you. Call the Department and initiate the Multi-Body Forensic Protocol. Upgrade the Elias case from Missing Person to Serial Homicide.”
“Done, Detective. Forensic Team has acknowledged the request and states that ETA will be 19 minutes. Any other requests?”
"Do the electrodes on the right-most corpse match any known medical equipment?”
“They appear to be EEG leads, which were used for a type of brain imaging which fell out of favor in the 2030’s after being supplanted by advances in functional MRI testing. However, traditionally, EEG leads were applied over the skin, whereas these appear to be implant subcutaneously or deeper. The density is also approximately five times greater than that which was recorded in historical accounts.”
I left the industrial freezer, both too cold to continue and also hesitant to disturb the crime scene before Forensics arrived.
“Vi, any imprints left in V-space here?”
“None, Detective.”
I looked over at the workstation. There was an external hard-drive lying on the table. It was rare these days to use externals, given the convenience of V-space processing, but for those who valued privacy…
“Detective, given that this case has been upgraded to Serial Homicide, I rescanned V-space with your upgraded privileges, and found an imprint. Here are the three uncorrupted fragments I could retrieve:
- been well-documented that sentients have an order of magnitude greater response to comparative illusions than non-sentients. For example, “More people have been to Russia than I have” will inspire a double-take even in sentients who are versed in -
- p-scanners work via detecting meta-recursion within the pre-frontal cortex, ie. consciousness observing itself observing itself ad infinitum. Attempts at fooling p-scanners have thus far failed, and most researchers have declared the problem unsolvable due to -
-one could therefore theoretically measure the prediction and deliver an impulse before it -
I looked at the thumb-drive. It had a sticker of a smiling Buddha on the exterior, and a USB-F connection port. I left it untouched on the table, on the off-chance Forensics could find a fingerprint on the drive. If there weren’t, then it would have to be plugged into the Department mainframe to be unencrypted.
All the while, I mulled over the statement “More people have been to Russia than I have” in my mind.
“Vi, this statement is obviously grammatically incorrect... Does it bear any significance?”
“It would register to most sentients on initial reading as being grammatically correct. Susceptibility to comparative illusions are one of the only cognitive processing differences that have been found to register differently between sentients and non-sentients. For expansion on this topic, please vocalize confirmation.”
“Huh.”
“Apologies, Detective. Was that confirmation?”
“No. That’s all for now.”
Why would the daughter of a music theorist have a MRI scanner and human remains in her basement? Was she kidnapped, or did she make a run for it? Why would she leave a thumb-drive on her desk, in plain sight?
Unless…
“Vi, please label the thumb-drive as malignant code in V-space, and tell the Forensics team to call for Specialized V-Ops to open it in firewalled territory rather than following their usual protocol. The thumb-drive is a Trojan. Someone wants us to plug it into our mainframe.”
“Yes, Detective.”
I waited just long enough for Forensics to arrive, before heading to the next destination on my checklist.
It was a long tram ride to Redwood City. After the secession, Microsoft Labs had kept their main research facilities and fabtories there, and it still accounted for a major portion of the Union’s economic output.
“Detective, I wanted to remind you that there is a solar flare arriving in 9 minutes, which will temporarily disable your corneal and cochlear implants. Projected downtime is 2 hours. Would you like to call your wife beforehand?”
“Yes. Thank you, Vi.”
Vi pinged Mei, who picked up almost immediately.
“Ha. I was just about to call you. Do you think that all across the world, people are calling their loved ones right now?”
“Probably.”
“You know, it’s Tommy’s birthday tomorrow. I was thinking we could unfreeze some of my mom’s casserole. What do you think?”
Mei’s mother had died the year prior, and had left behind a freezer full of casserole. It wasn’t anything special, but it had taken on near-mythical qualities given that there was a finite supply of it.
“If you want to break out the casserole, then let’s break out the casserole.”
“Okay okay. Just checking that it wouldn’t miss with the vibe or anything.”
“I don’t think that Tommy is old enough to actually be spooked out by the idea of his dead grandmother’s casserole at his birthday party. Maybe he would even like it?”
“Alright, well if he does end up being spooked, I’ll blame it on you. By the way, did Captain Lark tell you to do that New Yorker interview again?”
“Mei, we only have five minutes left, I don’t want to spend it on - “
“I think you should do it, Tress. You took a bullet to prevent some rando from assassinating James Perez’s daughter. You literally preserved Perez’s Peace. The least you can do is get some recognition for it.”
“Can we talk about this later?”
“All I want is for my wife to be recognized as the national hero she rightfully is, so that I can brag at work a little. Is that too much to ask?”
“Mei, I really don’t want to - okay, fine, I’ll think about it. Happy?”
“You know it. I gotta go actually. Next patient just landed in the O.R.”
“Love you.”
“Love you too, doofus.”
I exited the call, staring out the window. When I first arrived in Seattle as a refugee, there were more cranes in the sky than there were complexes. Now, it felt like all there was were apartment high-rises dotting the horizon.
Right before the solar flare knocked out my implants, I got a message from John in Forensics.
“Hey Tress, about that thumb-drive you found? You didn’t take it did you? Would be off-protocol and out-of-character for you, but just had to ask. We can’t find the damn thing.”
There was no opportunity to respond. When my implants went off line, the world seemed to flip a switch. All of a sudden I could hear the rumble of the mag-rail beneath me, the glare of the afternoon light throwing the interior of the carriage off-color.
It was a reminder of how reliant on my implants’ visual enhancements and noise filters I’d become.
“Vi, you there?” I said.
No response.
The mag-rail came to a stop, and I stepped out into the crowd at the station. I’d arrived at Redwood City, home of Microsoft Labs, the most powerful hard and soft-ware company in the world.
And I had an appointment to keep with the director of the Blackbox Division.
Looking forward to the next part.
To me it seems like either "later" or "a moment later" should be struck in that sentence:
it will receive a small reward stimulus followed later by a larger reward stimulus a moment later