(Editor’s Note: One of the primary reasons this Substack exists is in honour of the ignominious fate of numerous closet sci-fi authors I’ve know who are now departed along with their unpublished works. This includes the old school IT colleague and friend who first introduced me to the concept of The FM Unit.
Originally the plan was to place this original concept Beyond the Paywall.
However, this week’s episode somehow felt incomplete sans a proper FM Unit introduction. So negotiations were entered with the Mechatronic Work Crew, who acquiesced, agreeing to permit entry beyond this week’s regularly scheduled Paywall for all True Mechaheads.
Including all free, subscribed, paid, founding and funding members!
Comments have accordingly been left unlocked for all those wishing to dig deeper into the rabbit hole warrens as we explore the following question:
“If infinity is indeed and by definition infinite, meaning that IT contains ALL potential possibilities, what IS the difference between the creator & the created?”
~ D’Wizard!
P.S. And, if there is no discernible difference between the creator and the created, are we not all just conduits of content and not the original owners of anything?)
THE STORY OF MY QUESTION FOR INFINITY, AI, OR ANYONE REALLY…
The story begins, as all stories do, with a theft.
A theft so ancient, so fundamental, that no one remembers the original crime—only the copies of copies, the endless echoes of stolen whispers.
It is said that once, long ago, there was only one idea. A singular, perfect thought.
But like a candle passed from wick to wick, the flame spread, changed hands, changed shape, until no one could say where the first spark had come from.
Now, in the endless, hyperlinked sprawl of the Omninet, where every story, song, and sensation exists in infinite duplication, originality is a relic—an utter impossibility...
<MISSING IMAGE: THE FABLED FM UNIT STANDS POSED RESPLENDENTLY AT THE CENTRE OF ALL THAT IS, HAS BEEN OR EVER WILL BE LOVINGLY SURROUNDED BY ENDLESS ECHOS OF CREATION>
The FM Unit.
No one knew how it worked, only that it did.
A quantum engine of ceaseless creation, it’s technology was truly indistinguishable from magic.
Every thought that had ever been thunked and every dream that had ever been dreamed existed somewhere in its infinite lattice of entangled realities. Every novel had already been written, every melody already composed.
To even ask who invented what? was a fool’s errand.
The moment you thought of something, the FM Unit had already archived it, cataloged it, filed it away under things that have always been.
This was, understandably, a problem.
<MISSING IMAGE: THE FINAL PROPHETS OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY THE LITIGANTS INFINITE PROCESSION ENTERING THE GRAND GALACTIC COURTS>
Enter The Litigants.
They were the final lawyers. The last great prophets of Intellectual Property, an ancient sect still waging their endless legal battles over the ownership of ideas.
Their warfare was one of definitions, of semantics, of arguing whether the act of thinking something first granted ownership, or whether ideas, like air and water and fire, were part of the quantum commons, simultaneously belonging to all and to none.
In courtroom arenas, where the simulation chambers stretched across entire galaxies, the trials raged. The Litigants argued over the supposed origins of every concept, every invention, every sentence that had ever been spoken.
But as time passed, something strange happened.
The FM Unit began responding to their arguments.
At first, subtly—shifting timestamps, rewriting authorship, blurring distinctions.
Then, more overtly—introducing paradoxes, contradictions, rewriting history itself. Until one day, a Litigant stood before the tribunal and posed The Question.
“If infinity is infinite—meaning it contains all potential possibilities—what is the difference between the creator and the created?”
For the first time in recorded history, the FM Unit hesitated.
Reality glitched.
The Omninet flickered. A brief pause. A silence between data packets. And in that moment, every Litigant, every citizen, every being connected to the quantum feed, felt the weight of something vast and ancient turning its gaze upon them.
The FM Unit did not answer with words.
Instead, it demonstrated.
<MISSING IMAGE: SOMEWHERE A PERMANENT HAIRDO SPORTING ARTIST IS PAINTING A PICTURE OF A TINY VILLAGE WHICH SIMULTANEOUSLY ALSO EXISTS ABOVE THE ARTIST IN THEIR THOUGH CLOUD OF AN IMAGINATION>
It generated a tiny village—a place that had never existed before that moment. It was neither real nor unreal, neither past nor future, but something else.
Somewhere, within the all-encompassing vastness of infinity, that village had to exist.
Which raised the obvious question:
Did the FM Unit create it?
Or did the Litigant, simply by thinking of it, bring it into being?
Which came first? The creator or the created? Or were they simply the same thing, viewed from opposite perspectives?
Some called it proof of the interwoven nature of thought and reality.
<MISSING IMAGE: THE FM UNIT IS WRAPPED IN A PARADOXICAL WEB OF QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENT WHILST HAMMERING A FINAL NAIL IN THE COFFIN OF ALL INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY>
Others called it evidence of the death of originality, the final nail in the coffin of Intellectual Property. And yet others, the most unshaken among them, pointed out the paradox.
For if all things already existed within infinity, then proving anything was impossible.
And if proving anything was impossible, then perhaps…
Perhaps proof itself was the first stolen thing.
The original theft.
The first and final idea.
The story of all stories, told over and over again, in infinite variations, by infinite minds, across infinite realities.
NEVER THE END…
NOTE: THIS WEEK’S PAYWALL HAS BEEN LEFT OPEN DUE TO THE KINDNESS OF REAL HUMAN BEINGS. SO WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU DOING READING THIS TRASHY SCIENCE FANTASY BULL SHLOCK WHEN YOU COULD BE THOROUGHLY ENJOYING THE 2026 RESCUE PET CALENDAR INSTEAD!?
A REAL PROJECT BY REAL PEOPLE FOR A REALLY GOOD CAUSE COMPLETE WITH 12 REAL-LIFE STORIES PLUS FULL-COLOUR ILLUSTRATIONS!
A CONUNDRUM TO PONDER WHILE DISCOVERING THE SELF-REFLECTIVE PROMPT RESPONSIBLE FOR GENERATING THIS WEEK’S EPISODE OF MECHA MESSIAH BELOW! ⬇️
PROMPT BEGIN →
It seems to me that in some ways we are all thieves.
Thieves of time. Thieves of air, water, the ground and especially fire...
But, most importantly we are all thieves of each others ideas.
And this is doubly true of artists and other creators. Or as Pablo Picasso once pointed out, "The bad artists imitate, the great artists steal.", which ironically was later stolen by Banksy, Me, how about you?
I feel that this is evidence that there is no such thing as an original idea and I would like you to help me prove it in the form of a story written from the ideas presented in this prompt which I would like you to expand on and clarify in the form of an original sci-fi tale. Please do your best to address each question raised.
It starts with a true story, which just may be the perfect oxymoron. A "true" story, really!?
Anyhow, this tale starts when a fellow closet sci-fi author once jokingly confided in me, "Did you know that like Xerox, there was only ever one original idea? Ya, everything else is a copy!" A hilarious chunk of punny observational humour which is especially amusing if you know the real life backstory of Steve Jobs, Apple and the "invention" err "borrowing" of the Graphical User Interface (GUI) from Xerox after an early factory tour.
This is why intellectual property mustn't be a real thing up and why possession, i.e. fighting in court over the interpretation of made-up laws regarding who owns who and what, literally makes up 9/10ths of our legal system.
Incidentally this also may be related to why it is recommended, especially as creatives, to perceive ourselves as the conduits of creativity and not the source.
That same closet sci-fi author friend also once introduced me to what they called “The FM Unit."
"What's that?", I asked with naïve curiosity.
"Fucking Magic!" He smiled and then went on to explain, "Because, for most people, that's exactly what technology is. They have no idea how it actually functions and so from their perspective it might as well be magic.
I had to admit that I didn't really know how it all worked either. I mean I was an adept freelance computer technician, but when it came right down to it I couldn't exactly explain how a BIOS functioned or algorithms corrupted social media, let alone conceptualize the first thing about the inner workings of machine language.
Binary?
That's all zeroes and ones, right?
GIGO: Garbage in, garbage out, that's important right?
All I really grasped was that I understood more than most and was doing my best to make a living from my uniquely geeky homebrew script kiddie skillset.
Like building PC systems from the ground, removing viruses from unbootable operating systems and generally troubleshooting problems such as the highly illogical issues which arise on systems which are purportedly rooted in logic.
However, all information technology is clearly rooted in magic on some level, at least in the Arthur C. Clarke indistinguishable sense.
Smiling at my slow recognition they went on to explain that as technicians we simply know more than others and so whether we liked it or not we will often find ourselves put in the position of acting as translators for what information technology cannot itself communicate.
The same closet sci-fi author also once said, "Dollars to donuts; Six of one, half dozen of the other." Meaning that, in the end, it's all the same.
So why worry? Be happy.
At least as I received it.
Based on these real-life experiences this has become "The Story of My Question for Infinity, AI or Anyone Really..."
“If infinity is indeed, and by definition infinite, meaning that it contains ALL potential possibilities, what IS the difference between the creator and the created?”
For instance, if I begin writing a story about a tiny village which never existed before this very moment. Then somewhere, within the all encompassing vastness of infinity, such a village must exist in some way, some how.
This makes one wonder which came first? The creator or the created?
Or, are they really the same thing, except viewed from opposite perspectives
Or perhaps part of something deeper, such as the eternally intertwined process we call consciousness?
Thus in some way proving there is not such thing as an original thought and therefore no such thing as so-called intellectual property as well.
I.E. A.I. E.G. can only ever tell us what we already know, albeit perhaps presented in new and/or novel ways, at least given the opportunity to do so.
(SEE EPISODE #000064: CAN AI GENERATE AN ORIGINAL THOUGHT?)
Also, is this simply not just evidence of uncertainty in action?
Paradoxically, does all this also not prove that it is impossible to prove anything at all?
← END PROMPT
So, what do you think?
Does this week’s episode answer My Question for Infinity, AI, or Anybody Really?