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flash fiction-mysticSciFi

A Sudden Silence

Cooper's sudden silence brought with it an air of knowledge and an educational hue; an entire array of curvy, dancing pitches thrown in slow motion. The anticipation of impact is enough to kill anyone's desire. His collection of approaches are jammed into the center of his brain in pure focus.
"Can I ask you a question?" Cooper asks. "You can ask." "Where do you get the urge to pursue this kind of knowledge?" "Humans are curious." He was hoping she would sit down so she would talk to him. "You are an intellectual. Suzi says. "Intellectuals aren't supposed to prefer people over ideas." Her discomfort was becoming noticeable. "Why do you do this?" "So I would know the truth." "Then why out here at the end of the world?" "The Outpost does not encourage unwanted competition among gifted researchers, and I like that. I also like the freedom of exploration." "Exploration is the first step towards exploitation. Suzi says. Cooper wanted to know the full range and depth of her mind. But her eyes had already begun to distract him. He had already engaged in an activity with her that he didn't recognize as his own. He was already exploring the form of her body under her silk lab coat, as if Christopher Columbus sailing an unknown isthmus. "Science is an endless series of explorations." Suzie felt like she was being led through a series of explorations herself. Scrutinized by an alien. "Science begins with the most elementary explorations. It is a standing sequence." Suzie sensed Cooper was trying to place her in a familiar and reassuring setting prematurely. She wasn't feeling capable of following Coop's logic. It wasn't silicon oozing out of a barrel yet. Cooper senses an uncharted area on a false road map. His words seem to condition and sensitize her. Her body was still close, but his mind had just taken the first shuttle out. To Cooper, her lips were moving in slow motion. Her energy was gamma, save as a screen force, but if you sit too close, it's detrimental to your health. She seemed to be waking up to her own sensitivities. He was making her more aware of something she already subconsciously knew. She spoke with a certain gravity and grace. A poet warrior. "You men and your logic," she said. Coop was feeling a lack of true breeding in Suzie. Those words came from her with the demeanor of a nun but the voice of a whore. "My work is paid for by the military. I am officially silent."

flash fiction-Battlefield Poet "The Outpost"

Cooper and his convictions gain strength enough to fight a war, but all he really needs is for everything to just leave him alone with his own thoughts, that allows him to solve. He turns and is gentle with his nostalgic ideas of home as if an ancient traveler whose city has been sacked. New thoughts arrive in forms and beginnings, with feelings that looks like a gambler's lucky streak is about to end, but never does. Oh, if this rugged reality could only find its own way and let the free thoughts of the world be the angels that swoop--if someone only had thought of this before the war, this life would be easy.

He thinks of Suzi scanning intensely over the data sheets, her true intentions yet unknown, writing then rewriting newer and newer code, looking for that magic bullet algorithm. 
Cooper thinks of mentors from his school days, lecturing and bemusing, his eyes popping with curiosity, and yet those days hold no momentous occasion for him, except for one. One of those days seem now to hold the truth, the unceremonious instant he became a man of science in the true spirit of the genetic age. With a strong work ethic and a huge reading appetite it seems anything is possible, anything that can be thought of. It seems that it was no coincidence it was his teacher that drew the genetic world to its feet. Yes, he took endless notes from this funny little man, it seemed that he could be spoken to directly in his elegant mix of diligence and fame, and not feel the slightest downspesk or degradation of character by a man whose published papers had brought him fame.
And his looks were those that could attract many lovers. Not that he loved any of them. He was a solitary man. His important journey was between his ears, not his legs. His dalliances had been a constant source of gossip. Something he hated. He yearned for one unified theory. It seemed like a simple wish, yet so far impossible to attain. His preferences constantly betrayed him. He preferred large staid institutions to the wet and dirt of places like this outpost and all its bubble wrapped quirks. Cooper secretly learned robot computer language from this man. His social life was a constant digression. But as a scientist, he could have ended up working anywhere. Still young and maybe the last surviving genetic engineer of the golden age of genetics. An era of days gone by that quietly forgets. "Rosalind Franklin," he thought. "Another example of women getting screwed in the science world." And the church. "The church doesn't know anything about genetics," he would say. That thought always intrigued Cooper too. Theologists of The World checking the scientific soundness of research arguments. Write what you believe, not what you see, that's the new Watchword Healthcare Algorithm Consortium Knowledge (W.H.A.C.K.). To write with the diction of a noble poet, now that makes you an established investigator. 
Cooper arrived at the Outpost because he felt he could do his work here. He doesn't need the traffic or megalopolis congestion. Every code here stands on its own without the trappings of a big name university. "Shakespeare didn't need extravagant courtyards for his plays," Cooper thought. Yes, a scientific Shakespeare.

flashFiction-ecoSciFi

Gadget Implant Devices

The steady rains were gone for now, and he could imagine the feeling migratory birds once had.  It should, he thinks, be rewarding; it could feel so weightless, like a seabird, to simply have the truth. To announce to the Scientific International Consortium Kinetics (S.I.C.K.), I did it, you had other plans; I beat all you bastards. There could be, he thinks, a beautiful silence in its aftermath, like a the sounds being detected in the Black Gulf area, nothing. He now could take science, as it were, into a parallel world; he could ignore the noise of ignorance and finally listen to the ghosts--dolphin, the whales, the seabirds-- all--the smart ones that first got the world's attention so long ago (it will never care again, it will never try to save anything), announcing to other consortiums, and to anyone who subscribes to--gadget implant device distributed yearly(G.I.D.D.Y.)--We thought he was gone forever, we thought his experiments were failures. We thought Suzi would help us.

flashFiction-jungleSciFi

Grace Liquifies

No one would hear her noises, not tonight as the two shadows moved in on each other with impossible serenity. Grace liquefied into a ghostly dance. Her miniscule effort  focuses and faces her little nemesis, who stares back with his own set of nerves. She is, beyond all else, driven; she wishes only to be left alone, to return to her banyan grove. The universe, her universe, suddenly feels slow and cold, distant from everything. There is the shift, a shift at the blink of an eye; there are the tall trees and their fresh smell; there is the deep lush jungle valley; there is the rising river and its one directional rush. She leads her prey back into her corner, redirects him with a rising of her back feet so fluid even the cold light of the moon couldn't expose her.  Once she is satisfied, she returns to a more focused battle, without a pause, picks up her prey and dumps it on the jungle floor before her. The body lands with a surprising quiet, a bright tropical red streaks below her. She increasingly feels nothing, as if a weight had been driven from her heart. She can return now. According to the distant horizon, it was still early.

She has enough time to make it back to the banyan grove before sunrise. This day she will not invite the intruder into her world. This day she will forget the tides of battle and rest on the mountain. Simply a decision to vanish, and she was gone. 

flash fiction-mysticSciFi "The Outpost"

Suzi, he thinks, will will alter her code for some reason that seems, to humans, like a small point, her experimental hypothesis will go not as planned, her mainframe jurisdiction will refuse to answer a simple request about her Compu-helio improv compressor (C.H.I.C.) module. The aim will be to disable a context of herself in the machine; to get her to believe that, for her, the work at this outpost is just as important as the work out there at the Event Horizon.

     Cooper walks  through the laboratory door.  He has the sensation of full command mode over Suzi. The station is under some form of surveillance--yet to be identified.                                                                                                It was beyond being a passive problem now. Cooper needed to talk to the number one machine. He had a few questions for her, face to face.

flash fiction--outpostSciFi

MannedExoticStationSuzi 

He sips the breeze. He barely hears himself as he utters to the olive haze on the horizon: "Suzi can never die." Cooper thinks, slower this time, of how he--how any scientist--could make a machine like that. He reflects on the sparkles coming off the ocean.  "A work of art, billions of years in the making." It is a beautiful, imaginative thought, a little disconnected from him now--it pronounces new plans inside his mind, quietly but forcefully, as if a message just returned. He could decide to kill her. It is a simple, monotone thought, not entirely out of his realm. Exotic stations--even this Manned Exotic Station Suzi (M.E.S.S.)--are where scientists go to save the world, aren't they?  It's possible--maybe even certain--that someone or something targets a Xradio beam right here, to this island, to Suzi. Something calculated, Landing, last site; something looked at these cliffs and that ocean on their own screen. By reaching this force field, you surmount the extreme conditions of your own immediate surroundings and enter your zone of hope, the dead zone you seek, a dead zone where even bacteria have been eliminated.

Jungle Arches

aloha writers,
                       Tangles of green engulf a sea of pink in this jungle. Enjoy!

flash fictio -intelligenciaSciFi "The Outpost"

Winners and Losers

     Suzi thinks of her codes she creates as gifts to Cooper; the offerings he will like, or come to like, but which he doesn't understand. Why does she create code for him? She was stationed at this outpost out of talent, but machines have no talent; only speed and conceptual algorithm. Cooper became the diligent, attentive companion. The good scientist. He had seen a lot even with P.T.S.Dgene therapy. It's not about winning to him, it's about joining in. He doesn't know it, he needs her.

    "So," Suzi says. "How's The Tigress?"

    Cooper laughs. 'Look what I do ," he says. "I come here and turn into a night warrior."

     Suzi is not surprised, she knows more than he thinks she does. Cooper holds no fantasy about Suzi's calculations, her little packqges of code she peppers on him, now show irritation.

     "You never admit you love something in the jungle as much as we both know you do.  A committed, permanent, pleasant life with someone, and for what reasons? More time in the jungle darkness than in the lab, just for the thrill of near death. Corporate thinks of you as a scientist; danger consumes you.  

    "Suzie, I know you know your feelings.  Since it takes Corporate Artificial Telligenia (C.A.T.) to continue making you aware of them…"  Cooper paused for a moment.  "OK, so maybe I am a perfectionist, absolutist, always looking in one more place for its cryptic data."

    There is nothing artificial about Suzi's look. It rips him right between the eyes. At this moment, he is no intellectual entity.

flash fiction--jungleSciFi "The Outpost"

Dim Blue Glow

Something resembling hope enters into Cooper's awareness in the darkness under the huge banyan grove. So, he thinks, time doesn't exist here, or would like him to think so.  The cool moonlight falls with a quiet, as if delivering silence were a nightly chore before the sun could rise. This is exactly how this forest kills, with darkness and quiet, as it sleeps, cycles set in motion in her ancient past, not waiting for, or expecting, anything new to be learned. Trees set back from the sheer cliff offer a rain forest meadow.  High ferns shelter the opening where death will occur because someone or something forgot a duty and now she, this rainforest, the ancient one, will not forget and serve the sentence. Why is water so unstoppable, dripping off the sheer rocks?  These primeval waterfalls may atrophy by their own hand.  Intimate dances of the ancient past have made it through eons with no trouble. Why is it so difficult to teach the humans; to have their feelings come back to life and stir inside them?  Something is still home here. Something knows how to climb the rocks, how to breath air into its lungs, how to put off the moments until logic would perfectly place itself, something like a motherly unseen force, breathings, as if heard a million times before.  Why don't we just keep our softness, allow the moon to bring a familiar glow. The Tigress is in a strange force field today and I fear the outline of her body against the rocks will fill you with uncertainty you won't recognize, will haunted you inside, freeze you.  

     Cooper will give the Tigress a focus more than awake, with slow leanings across her body in the moonlight.  Her eyes will open wide as her sleek body stares and her back stiffens.  Her stare will love wildness. Her vision in the dark would be perfect. The dim blue glow of the moon, or of something, dances on the jungle floor through the canopy. 

     It comes to offer more than mere moonlight.

flash fiction--realmSciFi "The Outpost"

The Island 

Islands in the Geophysical Astro Sector (G.A.S.) recorded the most volcanic activity in the solar system's Third Millenium.  Extreme eruptions, lava flows, calderas, curtains of lava formed here.  Science had long since known this. Twentieth century astrophysicists  learned, by studying the Jobian satellite, Io, Jupiter's third largest moon, of the Electromagnetic Triangulation Phonecia Omipital (E.T. PhonOme) phenomena this island had long carried..  A series of explorations by a space craft named Galileo at the end of the second millenium in the months of October, November, and February added to the body of data..  Early studies of the formation of Earth and its moon corroborated this effect.  

This rainforest had been a 20th Century laboratory for large scale genetic experiments.  The secrets of Genesis of the genetic code are here in the forest.  No research teams had been sent here for over 100 years.  Primal events in earth's past remain recorded here. Some scientists believe the island epicenter is the closest point to the earth's magma ocean.  The mountain behind it at one time Earth's brightest volcanic beacon.  Its caldera an active lava lake measuring 10 miles across and at one time in Earth's history 1,400 degrees Celsius.  High resolution images reveal a series of bright lines emanating from a point and moving through narrow topographic constrictions.  The observations are consistent with radio energy now known as Xradio. The caldera here has an irregular shape, as if a convex receiver..  For billions of years, dormancy.New odd events occur beneath this jungle floor.

flash fiction-mysticSciFi "The Outpost"

Headwaters Code

The more time Suzi spent in the jungle, the more she became a perfect animalist; she thought like the jungle, coded like it. She turned her head at the slightest unexpected noise. She expressed photosynthesis gene protectors when the sun was the brightest. She also actively pursued the mind of the jungle to gain knowledge. Suzi never tricked herself into thinking it would be easy. The mere spending of time here didn't dictate a sure friendship, just a similar type of thinking, but it had seemed like something that might feel like the beginnings of a strange idea humans knew as happiness, but Suzi is never surprised, even in all of her years as a robot, by anything; in that the existence of experience is in the being placed in an environment, in the inception of the creation of the headwaters code dictating want, want in the smell of a flower, an odor of freshness; that itself creates enticement.

Suzi's coded love of nature embedded (C.L.O.N.E.) was not to be forgotten now. These forests have too long been dominated by other forms of intelligence; even her default program, intended for environmental constraints was gone. Reinventing herself wasn't part of a plan, but now takes center stage. What remains as a dominant force is the lack of battle between the sensual and spiritual.  Yes, there is that growing need for a response, and the response she needs is no aimless wanderer.  Her every motion is the product of  perfect calculating machines, one now with a growing visceral pride, but never strong enough to mutilate her own freedom codes. 

Now she has come to understand this as the moment of her freedom; the perfect existence doesn't embody rootlessness. She belongs in this jungle. 

flash fiction--mysticSciFi "The Outpost"

Xradio Wave     

     They looked at each other, not as if they didn't exist to one another, but as if existence itself had become their matchmaker. Their focus had been directed at adversarial against the rigors, climate and its incessant changes; the occurance of the other hadn't existed for a long time. A definite feeling, as if to be forced into being someone's personal poet now exists, possibly because of some supreme newfound knowledge via Xradio. 

     Cooper sat waiting for her form to be called back. He muttered something to himself about all the life forms, marine and terrestrial, he had known in his lifetime. His thoughts embraced each other. "You know she is your best hope." He stared into the darkness. Best hope for what? He sought refuge in her viciousness; she could save him from overwhelming commonality.  

     In scientific circles, she was a brilliant outsider but not a foreigner to the gene therapy wars.  Her inner content now has nothing to do with her outer design. She gives him that look from the pitch black; the look of someone who had read their own obituary after being mistakenly reported dead. 

     Yes, millions of years and jungles still retain capacity to enchant and frighten.

     "You'd better go," he said. 

flash fiction--designSciFi "The Outpost"

The Dream

Suzie awoke to blackness.  She could swear she had a dream.  If that were true, it would have been the first known dream generated by artificial intelligence.  She wasn't sure.  She went back to sleep.  When she woke again in the morning, the stars were still up, but something was out there.  She checked the security scanners.  They reported nothing.  "That's strange," Suzie thought.  Something would show itself soon.  She needed to know sooner than now, but something in her program was making her sweat.  There was nothing in any of the data bases about this.  Suzie noticed it was 4:48 a.m.  That kind of data she always knew.  It was in her archaic program designed in the twentieth century Scantology Interim Consortium (S.I.C.), a group of scientists who pointed out the importance of the ability to recall exact pinpoints of time when important events take place in a lifetime.  Suzie felt she was entering a state she didn't recognize.  She turned on the light and went into the kitchen.  She saw her reflection in the window over the kitchen sink.  The black jungle night outside in contrast to the lighting in the kitchen brought definition to her reflection.  She had no rings around her eyes.  "High grade collagen," she thought.  Suzie began feeling her strength as she looked into the mirror.  "The Station will call at 5 a.m. I'll wait."  She dimmed the lights and noticed a flickering in the blackness now.  There was no sound. 

flash fiction--mysticSciFi "The Outpost"

The Dream

Suzie awoke to blackness.  She could swear she had a dream.  If that were true, it would have been the first known dream generated by artificial intelligence.  She wasn't sure.  She went back to sleep.  When she woke again in the morning, the stars were still up, but something was out there.  She checked the security scanners.  They reported nothing.  "That's strange," Suzie thought.  Something would show itself soon.  She needed to know sooner than now, but something in her program was making her sweat.  There was nothing in any of the data bases about this.  Suzie noticed it was 4:48 a.m.  That kind of data she always knew.  It was in her archaic program designed in the twentieth century Scantology Interim Consortium (S.I.C.), a group of scientists who pointed out the importance of the ability to recall exact pinpoints of time when important events take place in a lifetime.  Suzie felt she was entering a state she didn't recognize.  She turned on the light and went into the kitchen.  She saw her reflection in the window over the kitchen sink.  The black jungle night outside in contrast to the lighting in the kitchen brought definition to her reflection.  She had no rings around her eyes.  "High grade collagen," she thought.  Suzie began feeling her strength as she looked into the mirror.  "The Station will call at 5 a.m. I'll wait."  She dimmed the lights and noticed a flickering in the blackness now.  There was no sound. 

flash fiction--artificialSciFi "The Outpost"

Quanta Deemed

The time comes and goes, still no call.  Suzie's concern grows, but never all the way to terror.  She remembers the first scientist who cared for her, her vulnerability.  "The latest advances in a.i.," she thought.  She had never known the feeling of unconsciousness.  

A sudden sound broke the silence.  

Suzie gets up.  She wouldn't  know futility, either.  She had heard of courage, but wasn't aware of what it really was.  Whatever was needed, she would do.  She was aware of that.  She thought again of the only one who sensed sentiment in her logic; she knew it wasn't what she thought.  The sentiment program had been too long in the coming, even by quanta mechanica standards. It had been deemed useless.

flash fiction--lyricalSciFi "The Outpost"

Inner Poet

     Suzie sees the flickering again.  And still no call.  "What is that?" she wonders.  "Are these real, a glitch ?"  Something rings but she knows nothing of it. 

     "Damn!" Cooper yells.  "Her audio is off.  They've shut it off!"  

     She is more frightened now. The flickers appear again outside the window against the jungle night.  "They're stripping me," she thought.  Suzie's photosight is her most sensitive inner part; on the outside her eyes are the most erogenous part.  She doesn't know that whatever she had been, she wouldn't be now. The flickers in the jungle appear faster now.  Something rings again.  

     "Please pick up," Cooper begs from the other end.  By now Suzie senses she is fast becoming undone.  There are no screams in her program.  This is straight code, no excrement, no fluids, technology's cleanest invention; feelings remain.  Her pure obedience endo transponder (P.O.E.T.) is her only hope.  There is no weeping, no frailty.  Her plate of reinforced endo polished ortho reformed titanium (R/E/P/O/R/T/) is fully disabled, yet her own programmed imagination remains in full bloom. 

     She knows something.  

flash fiction--designSciFi "The Outpost"

There must have been, she thinks, more sensuality in the global world

     Suzi is feeling fine today, and there is even more she can do, but there was still that one thing about last night, by eleven o'clock she should have received her instantia ambia (I.AM.}code. For now, she follows Cooper's image on her favorite screen. Her thoughts wander to the memories (yes, the ones he scanned for her), of when their eyes first met, for those moments, to listen to more of his voice. But she can't  still remember when she hadn't known him and the moment she had gotten to know him. Straining her memory now, she enters a void. Cooper will fill her memory, that's what she likes about him; he never answers any of his own questions or guesses. He always requires a response from someone, or something, before she (or it) spoke again.  His face is always warm with welcome.  But even Suzi knew there was a deadly glitch.  She was polished titanium, Cooper was not; he was her forest, soft whispers of the leaves at night when moonbeams dance and glisten in harmony. He is, she thought, truly hers. 

flash fiction--coaastSciFi "The Outpost"

Alien


It's not cloudy tonight down the coast, she told herself; this was just a little impediment to her view of existence. Suzi has no need of friendship from Carter--forget it!--and she didn't think she was keeping vital information away from Cooper. 
     Cooper never thought those types of thoughts about her, ever (and he knows what he can reveal, but then, would he have left so much up to chance during every one of those flybys this morning, with so many components in full insrantiation, and even ignored the flagship?)        Recklessness can be contagious. It seems even probable, in a minimal way. Why not betray your friend, even so, they won't know about it and you don't mind lying, just a little?  
     The distant smell of salt mist and lush tropical mountain permeates the sector now. Suzi increases her scanner speed, but her eyes focus on an image.  The smell of salt morphs into  exotic fragrance. The weight of the recent incidents sink further into her mainframe. She had always eliminated pressure; that was the time when everything comes into prefect focus.  Soon she would know what to do.  Right now, though, she feels like she is about to meet a real-life halloween alien.

flash fiction--ecoSciFi"The Outpost"

Brat Code

She is, Cooper has come to the conclusion, someone he can talk to. She is precisely human, no more no less. Cooper steps up to the monitor and, after a slight second thought, takes in a breath, and braces himself. 

"I assume, you've read the data," Jenna says.

"I have. Yes."

"Doesn't it make you think twice?

"About Suzi?"

"Who else?"

"Yes. I've thought twice."

"She doesn't even pretend to care, according to data."

"Do you think she's going to tell us anything about herself, something we don't already know?" he says. "It's Suzi who writes her own code from her own biodata, mixed in with some of her own fantasy about space." 

"It's a strange combination."

"So ComTrax seems to think."

"It's an endless rant that gives advanced warning. It goes on and on. And then, click. She shifts to quantum mode."

"Proves her value is intrinsic."

"We know. Still, her data, it's gone tangential."

"You seem to agree with the terra engine central holograph(T.E.C.H.) logic. They're theorizing has expanded to the Suzi terra outpost program(S.T.O.P.) project, and why?

Jenna focuses. "Those data are advanced warning," she says. 

Cooper steps closer and looks at her softening eyes. For one moment, Jenna thinks, he's gone back to his flirty professor ways. He's become the man she hoped he would be.

Jenna smiles. "Look at you," she says. "A sexy man flirting with his corporate officer. His silence only sharpens her need to have him speak.  "The clock is ticking on Suzi." 

"So," Cooper says. "Suzi is rogue." 

"Yes, her mainframe is forever, but her mind has gone into focus meandering(F.M.). We feel she is beyond retrieval."

Suzi has always kept corporate on their toes, by being a little smarter than they are. Cooper knows she is a calculating machine, her little attempts to trivialize corporate, her "bratty code" he calls it, has gone so far as to make corporate queazy now. Her full unmock won't occur without their physical presence, the one who created her. Suzie has a gun to her head. 

mysticSciFi

Jungle Hut

flashFiction

Forest Rage Cage

flashFiction

Exotic Box

flashFiction

Jungle Seed