The Extra-Solar Union of Systems Archive

Helen Xanthier, Project Director, Project Polite Bemusement wrote:>> TO: James Bovill (root-a@kostemetsia.gov)
>> TO: Thomas Hansen (root-b@kostemetsia.gov)
>> FROM: Helen Xanthier (admin@osrt.mil)
>> SUBJECT: MOSMS-1V43 "Insanity Gun"
>> KEY ACCESS CODE: gov/main/mil/secret/top/polite-bemusement/eml/51
>> BODY:

Prelude
As you know, hyperspace is a nasty place (or so the old vid trope goes). Direct visual contact with that realm which lies outside starships' islands of calm will cause curable but instant insanity, as the brain unsuccessfully tries to resolve the cognitive dissonance provided by the ten-dimensional space presented to it.

Concept
The insanity gun forces visual contact with that realm, disrupting (in the above-mentioned fashion) the minds of those who look at its 'beam'.

Details
The insanity gun, being a modified engine, opens a two-metre-diameter, several-million-kilometre-length cylindrical fissure in real space. Additionally, it omits the optical hindrance field which is used to safeguard wormholes.

Thus, the insanity gun will insantly cause massive, long-lasting disruptions in the minds of those who look at it with unprotected eyes through any pure visual medium, such as clear viewports or photonic transmitter screens.

Caveats
The insanity gun will not cause insanity in those who look at it with eye protection. Additionally, it will not appear on sensors (in the fashion of a conventional wormhole, it will appear as a dead zone), except for faster-than-light sensors, which will read it as an impossibly large conventional wormhole.

The insanity gun has been known to cause low-level corruption in polysentiences; this is a hindrance for the humans working with the polysentience and a traumatic experience for the polysentience dighim/digherself. Thus, it is best that prior-fire visual lockdown procedures and the actual lockdown itself should be handled by human personnel.

Notes
Specifications have been attached for your convenience.

Conclusion
Mr Bovill and Mr Hansen, the Office of Special Research Tasks eagerly awaits your views on this matter.

Yours truly,
Helen Xanthier
Director, O.S.R.T.

Trailers wrote:Lol sunglasses

A number of Langford's stories are set in a future containing images, colloquially called "basilisks", which crash the human mind by triggering thoughts that the mind is physically or logically incapable of thinking. The first of these stories was "BLIT" (Interzone, 1988); others include "What Happened at Cambridge IV" (Digital Dreams, 1990); "comp.basilisk FAQ" (Nature, 1999), and the Hugo-winning "Different Kinds of Darkness" (F&SF, 2000).

The idea has appeared elsewhere; in one of his novels, Ken MacLeod has characters explicitly mention (and worry about encountering) the "Langford Visual Hack". Similar references, also mentioning Langford by name, feature in works by Greg Egan and Charles Stross. The titular Snow Crash of Neal Stephenson's novel is a combination mental/computer virus capable of infecting the minds of hackers via their visual cortex. The idea also appears in Blindsight by Peter Watts where a particular combination of right angles is a harmful image to vampires.

A related idea, the fracter, a fractal image with psycho-active effects, occurs as a key plot element in Ian McDonald's 1994 novella Scissors Cut Paper Wrap Stone.

A similar mandala concept also appears in the book Tetrarch by Alex Comfort, causing effects such as encouraging self-healing or preventing the ability to target an object in combat.