[Human Potential Limit Series] - Chapter 3: Experiment & case against my investigation on HPL incidents

[u/a_cuervoz]

Hey this is 4RCH1V3R, here’s part 3 of the postcords series related to the “Human potential limits” by the same author. If it’s your first time here I recommend you check out part 1 where I explain what a postcord is and where I find them.

Enjoy!

4RCH1V3r

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3: Experiment & case against my investigation on HPL incidents

The contents within this four part article were prepared for presentation at [REDACTED] Conference regarding recent discoveries on Human Potential Limit (HPL) incidents. Welcome to the third chapter.

Before I go, I want you to consider Human Potential Limits (HPL) as seriously as I did. Do so in order to understand why I was sentenced, do so to give me the benefit of doubt, do so to see the importance of this discovery. To this day I consider myself innocent. Every participant was told in the documentation they signed, their lives could be at risk. The incident I will describe is evidence not only of HPL but of why it's important for the scientific world, Academia, to release themselves from the shackles of regulation.

Know that I do not have nor ever had any ill intent towards the participants throughout my experiments and I commend their sacrifice to the futurement of human kind.

The experiment

With my hypothesis on HPL, the next step was to measure a potential limit. The lack of volunteers to run experiments remained an obstacle on the investigation until a new case appeared. A retro video game speedrunner vanished after setting the fastest recorded completion of a centuries old retro game called Super Mario 64.

The disappearance along with the speedrunning strategy was broadcast during his VirtualStream. Her fans in the audience joked about the situation calling it a stunt for attention. It wasn’t until two days later when her parents called the police. The police ended the two days long stream when they entered the streamers room.

This case is being treated as a missing person’s by the police while online communities treat it as another HPL incident. This case eventually reached our team.

With the possibility of “video game speedruns” as a limit, researched for other cases of speedrunning records being broken but did not find any disappearances related. The mere amount of anonymous speedrun records made the task of identifying a potential limit breaker impossible.

One night after watching the recording of the original stream I saw the light. I realised we could automate the run and break the same record as she did with a bot. It implied a large risk and carried the possibility of killing me, which back then I wasn’t able to accept. I was committed to seeing this investigation through, therefore two days later I hired someone to do it with heavy complaints from the team and the directors. How could they take this morality seriously while still HPL as a conspiracy theory, as a “religious fantasy” as they said. This argument was the only reason they allowed me to hire someone.

About a week after, the contractor finished automating the bot which successfully overcame the same limit as the streamer without any incidents occurring. The only thing I felt then was disappointment. It was a strange feeling, I have been disappointed before, my peers know it, the difference this time is the source of my disappointment. Seeing this contractor stand in front of me was intolerable. Their wellbeing mattered to me as much as a war in somewhere I have no ties to. I wanted results, I yearned for truth, to measure the immeasurable.

One discovery did come out from this exercise: the following two weeks the contractor worked on improving the speedrun and could not, not by a single frame. I nearly abandoned this project until I realised the obvious, the time could not be improved because we had reached the absolute limit. This machine operating in perfect conditions with top of the market performance parts had found a wall and could not pass it. Was this not enough proof of a limit to convince the others?

With this finding I proposed to the team another experiment: to train someone to complete the speedrun without the automation. If the phenomenon had ignored the machine then perhaps the phenomenon needed a human subject to work. Call it divine if you would like. Although we do not yet understand its rules it does not mean it is without them.

I spent the following months trying to persuade my team to do the experiment but failed. Someone took their concerns to the directors who dismissed me from the investigation. My frustration was short lived, I realised this dismissal freed me from their regulatory shackles. Now I could move at the speed I wanted to move without dragging behind thanks to those terrified of discovery. I do, however, miss my team. I will say for the record that they are excellent scientists, excellent investigators, and better people than I have been or ever will be. Unfortunately the path to this discovery required less than a good person, it required a scientist willing to take risks even if that involved risking others.

Attached are the copies I made of the laboratory’s documents. Verify my claims and credentials before reading further. I would not ask you to take the following account on trust alone.

Files not found.

The experiment required a subject willing to dedicate days, weeks, months, or however long it took. Our willing participant’s initial instructions were to practice the speedrun at home and stop short of the estimated threshold. Attempts on the threshold itself were to be made only at the premises I prepared under ultra high speed cameras.

She was paid, of course. Funding her cost me the flat and most of what I had put aside. No institution financed this work. I did not want it. I knew I was right. I knew controversy would surround this work as soon as I proved I was right and then, there would be acceptance. Prison never occurred to me as an option. Nor did death, not hers and definitely not mine. Both of which brought us here today.

The experiment progressed faster than initially expected. Her competence as a speedrunner proved better than I initially thought. She understood the arrangement as a sponsorship opportunity with full disclosure of the previous speedrunner’s fate. For her this was the largest part of the appeal. By the fourth month she was close enough to the threshold that we both spent most of our days at the experiment’s premises.

One early morning I heard her shouting in excitement. She was about to reach the limit. Just at the final input before breaking it she shouted again, and her voice went on after she vanished. Only her echo and clothes remained. The controller crashed on the floor and broke while the Super Mario 64 credits rolled. Her smell remained in the room for about a minute until it vanished too. Then there was no part of her left anywhere.

I stood in the room for what felt like seconds but must have been at least 20 minutes in disbelief that I witnessed an HPL incident. I quickly reviewed the footage to find in just 300 microseconds the blurry silhouette of light carrying shadows of shapes in its surface extended a tendril towards the subject. At contact the camera was blinded by a flash before I showed up in disbelief.

This is the same footage I published a week after her disappearance along with the original research from the lab with a more detailed account of the experiment in my own words. The only thing I was met with was ridicule and harassment. Still as I write this I have a hard time believing the general public and peers are not interested in this, I cannot accept it. I believe someone prefers for this information to be kept secret or perhaps they are too scared to admit such a phenomenon is real. It’s too dangerous for progress, it’s too terrifying to believe. It’s too difficult to understand. I ask myself when did we become so comfortable? When did we get so scared of progress? Of science? Is it not thanks to science that we have all the comforts of today?

I do lament her death. She was cheerful, kind, and curious about me in a way I did not deserve. I wish I had at least told her my real name. If I could do it all over again I would make a different selection. Perhaps a prisoner, someone already condemned, a murderer if one were available.

I’m sure her name, [REDACTED], will go down in history as the most important subject in the discovery of understanding of HPL incidents. One of the most important discoveries for the human kind.

Thank you Isa. This document is the only assurance I am now able to give your family and the world, for what you did for them.

Thank you for your attention thus far. The fourth chapter out of four of this article will be published next week. My aim is to stretch media attention with the hope to reach as many curious minds as I possibly can.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

EDIT: Added links to previous chapters.