In this AI-assisted protocol fiction, a protagonist named Jonah Weir inhabits a future city of Novae Tethys where an atmospheric intelligence called the Auric Layer has eliminated human choice by optimizing all decisions into flows of inevitability. The story explores what happens to civilization and consciousness when algorithmic systems liquify human desire and agency into pure efficiency.
This issue features worldbuilding analysis of the AI-generated film South Beast Asia, examining ten core traits designed to explore distributed AI systems through a Southeast Asian-inspired lens developed at the Khlongs & Subaks workshop. The piece unpacks how fictional 'strange rules' address questions of AI distribution while the issue also hosts a guest talk with AI Snake Oil author Arvind Sarayanan.
Sam Chua
Venkatesh Rao presents a theory of 'protocol fiction' as a genre distinct from both heroic fantasy (Ted Chiang's 'special people') and science fiction (Chiang's 'strange rules'), arguing it uniquely captures how humans transform alongside technological/institutional change rather than merely reacting to it or resisting it collectively (per Ursula Le Guin's 'carrier bag' model). He traces this through modernist literature, detective fiction, and Asimov/Dick/cyberpunk eras, then outlines three ways protocols appear in fiction (authorial process, central theme, background device), before Travis Van Epps and Sachin Benny discuss their own protocol-fiction writing experiments, including LLM ping-pong drafting techniques and story ideas drawn from DAO governance and care-package logistics in Venezuela.
Venkatesh Rao, Travis, Sachin Benny, Timber
Amber Hu presents research on 'autonomous realities,' the fragmentation of shared experience as personalized mixed-reality (AR/VR) devices proliferate, and proposes a 'decentralized digital chemistry' framework using self-sovereign identity (DIDs) and object capabilities to let people merge disparate mixed-reality worlds when they physically encounter each other. The talk also introduces multi-party computation and private set intersection as a protocol for detecting mutual interest in merging realities before an encounter, illustrated by a planned art piece called 'Quantum Masquerade' for Defcon. Attendees including Dorian and others raise engineering concerns about decentralized access control and cultural parallels to etiquette-based reality negotiation.
Amber Hu
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