Guess I’ll try this 1-page sci-fi story thing, since so many people are doing it. This popped into my head in about 3 seconds.

It was a late night on the net for Kyle, a 22nd-century net application developer. Prior to going to sleep at the crack of dawn, he had managed to smoke a full pack of cigarettes, along with several grams of marijuana — all after midnight. With medical advances removing all risks and hazards associated with substance [ab]use, most people these days smoked nicotine to stay up late and stimulate brain activity. It had the benefits of caffeine, without needing to take those pesky bathroom breaks.

And the fact that every American owned a matter synthesizer these days only made obtaining nicotine and marijuana that much easier. Obtaining marijuana was no harder than obtaining a taco; you simply downloaded the MSRF (matter synthesizer recipe file) from the proper electronic source, fired up your matter synthesizer, and waited for the progress bar to reached 100%. When complete, your item was brought into existence, ready to use. The raw materials necessary to create these items were next-to-nothing in cost these days, as nanomachines collected the raw building blocks of all materials from the vast landfills of the 21st century, sending them through pipes along with water, electricity, and network connectivity.

Fast food restaurants such as McDonald’s, too, were vastly different from their original 20th century concept. They existed largely as intellectual property establishments. Actual restaurants only existed in 3rd world nations; these days people simply paid a small fee to license an MSRF (or “mizriff“, as people eventually blurred the acronym from such frequent usage). Once you had a mizriff for the latest product, you would simply fire it up in your own matter synthesizer.

These days, all the money was in intellectual property and content creation. Want to make some money? Come up with a new recipe for a burger, sell it online, and collect money. Nobody actually performed the physical act of cooking anymore; yet anyone could be a “cook” by coming up with a new tasty combination. Never in the history of humanity had such a dynamic range of culinary experiences been available to every Tom, Dick, and Harry. And of course this extended to non-food items as well; marijuana had never been better, and fancy clothes that would cost thousands of dollars per item in the 20th century were available to every single human in the country. You could use Versace suits as napkins if you so desired.

Welfare and socialism were the de facto standards due to the fact that there was not much work to be done these days. Science and technology had solved most of humanity’s problems, and we became a race of dreamers. Most people focused on art — either the creation or consumption thereof. Since art — and not work — is what actually gives life meaning, people were in general more happy than at any other time in human history, and had learned to avoid the lie that the only path to happiness was work and productivity.

Kyle, however, possessed a curious and fiercely intelligent mind. He was a hacker; he liked to tinker. The cyber-underground still existed, and escaped more enforcement efforts — after all, with most societal problems solved, what havoc could they really wreak? With even the poorest people rich by past century’s standards, who cared if someone pirated some intellectual property, or used a piece of technology in an unintended fashion? Even if you were bilked out of your life’s work, you could still eat, drink, and be merry each and every day. And of course you could have all the sex you wanted too, as all STDs had since been cured via genetic tampering and nanotechnology. So nobody really cared if you tinkered with something — even something as serious as your matter synthesizer. Of course such acts were illegal, but enforcement was virtually non-existent.

During the previous night, Kyle had gone on some underground online forums run by elite hacker groups who tinkered with their matter synthesizers. People could download mizriffs for illegal, unpopular, and forgotten items. Most troubling were the mizriff files for weapons of mass destruction — but nobody really wanted these, as most crimes were ultimately the result of economic factors. And even if a WMD was somehow deployed, undetected — population centers were protected from such threats via technological safeguards. Even the most common house was created with materials that could withstand a nuclear blast; not that a nuke could ever get within 100 miles of such a place without being instantly detected.

There were, of course, many other prohibited and forgotten items. Simulated human flesh mizriffs were available for those who wanted a taste of cannibalism. Simulated fleshy children could be downloaded by the pedophiles, allowing them to satisfy their urges with no victim. Poisons such as arsenic, illegal-to-use vehicles, and cooking utensils could be downloaded as well (culinary arts had been completely forgotten by this point). Paper books, deemed a waste of raw material and no longer available via establishment channels — could be downloaded for those who wanted an “antique” feel to their reading. More or less anything that had ever existed could be re-created, whether it was considered “normal” or not.

Kyle wasn’t really as interested in the most of these items as much as he was interested in tinkering and understanding the underlying mechanisms of the matter synthesizers themselves. Only a few people remained who truly understood how these machines worked, and the knowledge was closely guarded — almost like a cult. But an underground network of matter synthesizer tinkers had emerged. They called themselves “synthackers”. Their communities had become quite organized, but there were of course malicious elements within.

Just last night Kyle had downloaded some hacked firmware for his matter synthesizer; one which would unlock some of the quantum hardware limitations imposed by the benevolent government. Despite the inherent danger of playing with the very fabric reality at a quantum level, Kyle was quite intrigued by the prospect. Everyone wants to play God, but these days it was actually possible. And the possibilities were truly endless.

So, after a long night staying up, tinkering with his synthesizer, and downloading mizriffs that perhaps should have been scanned for threats first, Kyle went to sleep in a hazy, marijuana-induced stupor. He normally did not dream, due to THC suppressing REM sleep cycles — but this night, he had some of the craziest dreams he’d ever had. Upon awakening, Kyle’s gut told him that something was a bit off-kilter. He was not sure what.

What Kyle didn’t realize was that he had downloaded a hacked matter synthesizer firmware deliberately infected with malware; an encrypted quantum trojan horse. He had read about it in news releases on underground forums, but had promptly forgotten about it, as he was quite stoned at the time. The mechanisms of this trojan horse were not understood by anyone; even the people who circulated it. Such works are usually the product of one extremely devious genius.

The results of an infection were somewhat well-documented in underground circles: with the right combination of unlocked firmware and infected mizriffs, the matter synthesizer would actually synthesize a quantum-level singularity that would effectively swap you with a double from a nearby alternate universe. Since energy tends to travel the path of least resistance, the universe chosen was always the closest possible alternate. And since the nexus of this exchange was the matter synthesizer — hooked up to the net — victims of this trojan horse would find themselves in a universe extremely similar to their own, but with subtle differences ONLY manifested in their technology: the matter synthesizer, their computers, and the net.

Kyle did not realize he had been pwned, and went about his day’s work. He opened up his page editor, took it out of WYSIWYG mode, and made some subtle code changes at the text level without really looking at the file as a whole.

Upon completion, the page did not render as expected. Characters displayed that should not have. The image he added did not display. Kyle became quite puzzled, and then he suddenly remembered those forum messages he’d read many months ago — about synthackers unknowingly being sent to nearby , almost indistinguishable alternate universes. The difference in these universes were supposed to be very subtle, and only manifested in the computer.

Kyle took a second look at the HTML code for the page he was working on. The image code was “[img src='filename.jpg']“?!?!?!?! Images are supposed to be enclosed in quotations, not apostrophes. And page elements are supposed to be enclosed in less-than/greater-than symbols, not brackets.

“FUCK”, Kyle exclaimed out loud. The source code to the page made him realize he was no longer in his original universe. The synthackers had gotten to him; another unwitting victim. He wondered what his double from this universe was up to in his original universe. Quite likely doing the exact same thing.

Kyle synthesized another pack of cigarettes, and pulled an HTML book off of the shelf, where he had left it last night. Flipping it open to a random page, it took only one glance to verify that all the code standards had indeed subtly changed. As he lit up a smoke, he realized he had a long and arduous day ahead of him, learning this “new” syntax.

He wondered if he would be able to crank out pages at the same rate that he used to. Since he did this purely for fun, and not profit, he wondered if anyone would actually notice that he was not the same Kyle. Would his girlfriend? Would knowing that she was a different copy of the same girl would make the sex any different? At least in his own mind, it would be hotter.

Either way, he knew he was a victim of tinkering with forces that should probably have been left alone. Feeling silly, he flipped the page, continuing his studies, and learned the new HTML syntax for bold, italics, underlining, hyperlinks, and images. He brought this on himself and would have to pay the consequences, as insignificant as they were to real life, face-to-face exchanges.

Fortunately, in the grand scheme of things, he could still have a marijuana-laced taco with no ill health effects at any given time. Thus, even as he realized his victimization, he still had a smirk on his face. He had used his technology in a way few other people did, and was proud of his achievement — even if the results weren’t quite what he expected. If only Marie Curie could have been so lucky…