The Curated Guide to Hellsborough and The Dark Peak
Your Guide to navigating Hellsborough and The Dark Peak by Pip Rippon.
The finished version of Dark Peak: Hellsborough Chronicles Book One, is now available in Kindle and paperback formats from Amazon -- or you can download the first 7 chapters for free in ePub or Kindle mobi format from Hellsborough Library
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Introduction » Chapter 1 » Chapter 2 » Chapter 3 » Chapter 4 » Chapter 5 » Chapter 6 »
Hellsborough is very different from the off-world
Part 2 - The Inconceivable
In the previous chapters I’ve talked about how the world developed, about how you can get to this place of dark matter, of the differences and similarities between here and where you are, in the off-world. Then I talked about evolution in The Dark Peak since the illimitable cleavage and the birth of the denizens. In this chapter, the final one in this curated guide, I’m going to introduce you to the supernatural elements of The Murk, and then end with most fantastical of concepts: Technology so advanced, that it is literally inconceivable.
The Murk is the persistent fog and cold dampness that constantly covers Hellsborough and the Dark Peak; blocking out most sun and moonlight. Organic in a large part, due to the general drismality of the weather in the area, it is supplemented by The Nascenti constructed humidity plants dotted across the Dark Peak, and exists for their benefit, but also all of the denizens of The Dark Peak, because of the additional moisture in the air.
The Murk protects various cryptids from greater exposure
Barghest
Ghostly apparitions of large shaggy black barkers with large glowing
blue eyes of flame, found in liminal places, like rivers and graveyards,
sight of one is often associated with an impending tragedy.
Gabbleratchet
Phantom human-headed barkers that fly through The Murk with much
whining, whelping, barking and howling – the barkers of the underworld
hunting for the souls of the newly dead and the spirits of the
living.
Don
Bog Beast
A massive predator that lives and hunts around a large area, centered
around the source of The Don high in The Dark Peak’s inhospitable and
rugged heights.
The
Bracken Man of Wadsley common
An ancient poem describing the hideous vestige of a man with a body of
thistles and thorns.
Loxley
Kraken
A mythical many tentacled beast believed to haunt an equally mythical
place known as Hellsborough Hole.
Hobs
and Boggarts
Boggarts and Hobs, when seen, resemble knuckle dragging apes – squat and
hairy, they haunt locations in The Murk.
Murk
Wraith
Ghostly spirits of the dirty and the dead of Hellsborough that inhabit
The Murk and torment whoever they encounter.
Other species and creatures as yet undocumented
The Murk is ancient and vast, concealing innumerable and untold other
yet to be discovered. It stands to reason that over millions of years
countless adaptation, diversification, interbreeding and experimentation
will have occurred, and should you be unwise enough to venture out into
the furthest reaches of The Murk (or even the nearer reaches) you will
never be prepared enough for what you are about to encounter.
I’m a folklorist and anthropologist, so the above, that’s my stock in trade. And I’ve said that before, but now I need to enter unexplored territory, because tech ain’t my thing in the off-world – never mind this mind-bending stuff, but I’ll try my best to explain it as best I can. Chapter 6 of this guide has links to resources that have helped me understand some of the things that I talk about below.
The advanced technology of The Dark Peak
The Murk. It all starts with The Murk. Think of The Murk as like memory in a conventional computer – RAM. Except The Murk is nothing like RAM at all. If you reboot your computer, it wipes the RAM. You can’t reboot The Murk. But The Murk is like working memory, maybe more like your consciousness. You can’t reboot your consciousness either.
If The Murk is working memory, then something needs to happen in that space, otherwise it is nought but a sterile void. In your conventional computer, you run code in RAM. The Murk has scerm. Scerm is ideas, combinations of ideas, thoughts, combinations of thoughts and ideas. Fear of those entering The Hinge, the souls of the dead, the undead and the wanting to be dead travelling down the long and precipitous Dun. Scerm is the prayers and worship of Dunlockslyn. Scerm is the missing ingredient of dark matter, the embodiment of The Murk; the holy ghost – the ethereal embodiment of Dunlockslyn, that that’s experienced when the slime is slurped. Scerm is a greater power. Scerm is quantum code.
If The Murk is working memory, and scerm the code that runs within it, then The Dark Peak itself, to continue with this conventional computing-biological metaphor, is long-term memory or storage. Every thought you have, every experience your mind captures, is recorded in your brain. Before you doubt this, believe me. It’s true: It’s not storage that’s the problem with your head, it’s recall. It’s the same with The Murk, everything is written to the hardware of The Dark Peak; if recall isn’t instantaneous, it’s not because it wasn’t written, it’s because retrieval mechanisms are faulty.
Every computer needs input, without a way of getting data into a computer there is nothing more the code in RAM to work upon. The organic network serves this purpose in The Dark Peak. Every plant – tree, flower, grass, moss – in Hellsborough and The Dark Peak reports a heat signature back to its nearest sub-station. This data monitors all movement in Hellsborough and The Dark Peak. All humans in Hellsborough – the jellyheads – wear psycmasks, which provide them with their infotainment, but also provide valuable data on the location and activities of the human population.
All of this inflowing data is processed by the fungal network. The fungal network – a vast interconnected system below ground and covering the entire expanse of The Dark Peak. The fungal network, hence known as the fungal AI – or more succinctly, the fungai – connects all of the plants and people together below ground and is the communications medium of the organic network. The fungai is the decision making organ, the quantum brain of The Dark Peak. The fungai is the processor, the CPU of a conventional computer.
From what I understand (which isn’t much), I am now stretching the conventional computer analogy a bit far, since consciousness – human or otherwise – is non-algorithmic, and thus is not capable of being modelled by a conventional computer.
What does that mean?
What it means is that advanced consciousness – that superior to human consciousness – as enacted by the fungai, requires massive networks of organic neurons, the mycelium of the fungus, and because organic matter operates in accordance with quantum gravity, the fungai is the most brilliant intelligence ever conceived.
There are two original denizens not yet mentioned. Both are found (if you find them) exclusively in The Murk. They are Morivarid and Syncarid. Big eyed and friendly looking, the morivarid are found in shoals, just like fish. They are cleaners of The Murk. Encounter them in the wild and they will suck out you eyeballs and eat your tongue, before picking the flesh from your bones, but for the fungai they are the administrators, the code cleaners. Syncarid are variably sized stingray type creatures capable of enveloping and stinging anyone to death, but they also fulfil the role of programmers and synchronisers of the code that runs, handling event queueing and ensuring communication across the entire system.
The fungai has no integrated circuits, has no silicon at all. Entirely carbon based. All computations are performed using organic chemical and quantum reactions. Conventional computers only operate in binary, but the fungai, being composed of cells, mycelium and neurons is in millions of different states at any moment in time. This means far more information is stored and processed than a silicon transistor could ever do, thus negating the space limitations of conventional computers, and at the same time being geographically enormous.
This is the hardest to get your head around, since it is the most advanced, and why I saved it until last; this is far more advanced technology than you have ever experienced. Combined, The Dark Peak, The Murk, the organic network, scerm and fungai comprise a massive quantum-organic computer.
And if you want to hack, rockcrust is your gateway.
quantum-organic computing – there is a word for it: Quantanic (some call it quorgantum) computing – the name is still under debate. Whatever, remember you heard both here first.