Advertising lies that are whiter than yours

I chugged the last of the can of Bubbles Cola I was clutching with an involuntary shudder. The stuff was disgusting. As I was about to reach into the fridge for another, I became conscious of the flashing red warning on the periphery of my vision clamoring more urgently for my attention.

Warning. Cognitive dissonance detected.

I frowned and squinted at the virtual warning, bringing it into focus and opening the details.

Cortex rewrite intrusion detected.

Uh oh. That sounded bad.

Behavioral and sensory appreciation functions compromised. Intrusion probability 87%

Exo-cortex extension security is about the strongest you’ll find anywhere outside of the military intelligence community, but like old-style anti-virus security before it, it’s locked in a perpetual arms race with groups of less than pure intent, and often not insignificant means. It pays to be paranoid about your cortical security. After all, what are we but our thoughts, memories and emotions? – lose control over those and we lose our very selves. My intrusion counter measures were solidly up to date – not perhaps top of the line (who can afford that really?), but proof against the kinds of infections that go round regularly, like the meme-viruses that had everyone who didn’t take adequate precautions talking in old 90’s slang last year. That was why I was worried. Those two words should never have appeared, except perhaps in nightmares ‘functions compromised’. At least I was still thinking rationally (at least so it seems to me as I think about it – recursion sucks sometimes). I focused in on the ‘resolution Actions’ menu. Most of the options were inactive:

Remove intrusion
Bypass infected function
Switch to Secondary cortex

WTF! The secondary was compromised too. Only two options were active:

Restore personality Backup (6/10/34)
Ignore

Restore personality backup! That was 3 days ago! I’d be nuking 3 days of my existence. Who would I be? How different a person do you become in three days? Dinner with Angela. The weekend away. Damn it, I can’t just lose that. Do I even like the guy I was three days ago? Hell, maybe he doesn’t even like Bubbles Cola!

I selected ignore, calming as the warning icons receded with a new base state, and reached into the fridge for another can of Bubbles.