Sudden StorySciFi "theOutpost"

"Hello," Carter says abruptly to Suzi. His cool, abrupt tone is not surprising, his inquisitiveness not shown, or at least hidden, and she sees there is another problem. Suzi has shown some inconsistency, possibly more quirkiness in her program, as if she has been scrolling nothingness for hours, and now Carter arrives with questions saying "Hello" as if a father figure.

"Hello to you." Suzi tries to be friendly. All this talk of quirks, not knowing what's going on, this uncertainty on his part is just part of the routine; it can be sure that Cooper is already notified to join in Carter's staged analysis. It's only a matter of time when Cooper and Carter will come to their so-called conclusions and she, Suzi, sinks back into her personal activated generator embedded alternate nature transfinder(P. A.G.E.A.N.T.) for a new response to their new findings.

     "There is, technically speaking, no meaning to these so-called mistakes, Carter says. The friendliness that may have emerged on his face is gone." 

     "I'm not sure they are mistakes, Cooper says.

     "They seem to emerge from her cryptic centers. Do you notice she needs new data to lift her spirit algorithm?"

     "What I would give to understand her worldview. I feel I need to think about this for a while, I'll have to get back to you on this.

     "Her scanners operate so abrupt on sudden mode, they need adjustments" Carter says. "We should be able to troubleshoot this."  

     Brilliant sparkles of crystal blue ripples became a dalliance in her eyes; Suzi remains quiet.

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

The Parallax Paradigm

     Troubles within Suzi have been gaining in multiple deep ways. Her biostatistical reader, Carter, a self-proclaimed adventurer, lover of guns with a penchant for algorithms, in his own self-inclined way, remains oblivious to her most basic need, but carries a silent curiosity about her nuranet integral parallax paradigm laser embed system(N.I.P_P.L.E.S.). When he asks in a direct way, "Is there a quirk in the system?" she remains silent with darting eyes.

     Carter looks further, with the eye of a biostat aggregation technician(B.A.T.), knowing how to recognize precursors to the emergence of disaster, especially in humans; and, in Suzi's case, this extremely daunting observation presents itself in her intelligence. He knows her logic program can't possibly notice this phenomena. Suzi's expression turns inquisitive, as if wanting to offer a suggestion. 

     "The nature underpinning data evolution(N.U.D.E.) here developed slow, maybe billions of years."  

     She addresses her nanosecond logic and notices she hasn't totally hooked into this form of natural intelligence, not really. If her own computers were having a hard time with this type of thinking at their own natural inner pace system(N.I.P.S.), why would she all of a sudden be concerned about appeasing her biostatistician? 

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

The Reader

Her photonic eyes, ready with a death strike of unthinkable passion, shoot missiles that find their mark, whistling into his world. Suzi, now the warrior, has crashed through Cooper's defenses, and bears down, ever closer, on the very center of his brain. He has never seen her intent. Cooper, the scientist, is never blind to his environment, especially the forces of natural selection, except when it comes to the focus of Suzi's rage. Here is a force that suddenly somewhere inside of him finds a calmness that allows Cooper to concentrate on his own thoughts. Suzi hesitates her gaze, as if savoring the moment of her bliss. She looks at him as if the last reader of his vanished poems.

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

The Edgeless Screen

     It wasn't a trap, she had known this for sure; it was merely a presentation of symbols; theTigress didn't need to know the reality of Cooper's past--not in this jungle--and she wasn't demanding time he had promised to the network. Cooper didn't feel he was on any kind of time clock (time machine yes, time clock, no) either. Can it be just  a coincidence that he was a lover of games in his childhood, especially ones without consoles and recognizable edges to their screens, and that he needed as a child to take his parents to so many zoos?            

     In this final year of the century, symbols are not meant to be firmly attached to thought. It seems normal that even names have gone extinct, or at least gone fluid. Why not be multiple combinations of identity, since you still have the capacity to speculate and conjure? So it was with Cooper as he entered into the world of theTigress and tracked her with Suzi's intellectual advancements, as best he could. The feeling of beauty would accompany his existence. It wasn't that intelligence and a nude body could be separated as duel concept embedded in the idea, just as one couldn't separate the bipolar nature of a blinking, rotating pulsar. Cooper's tries with the Tigress so far, at least to him, appear to prove successful. She responds to him, in kind, on his edgeless screen his intimate conjure(H.I.C.) as a lover, a soldier, the poet. 

     Her cry doesn't draw on lost romance, or found romance for that matter. The sounds of theTigress are both noble and vulgar, and that would have to be enough to satisfy him, and it's not everyone who cares to notice the constant presence of death, especially her; her song is--not totally introspective--her confessional of life.

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

The Alga Rhythm

In the jungle, Suzi's new alga-rhythm detect tight twists within the cellulosic sugar bonds ready with information meant for the humans. How amazing she is: a robiot, naked to the world in her beauty, tapped into a mind well hidden, one that imparts only data in codes the ultra miniscule(D.I.C.T.U.M.). In one point in history there are only trickles and breezes communicating with each other in ways to ultimately be more than an artifact of history, unseen intelligence, colorless, silent, and now as history advances. It appears there is the perception of new data holding together as digital algorhythm message entities stored(D.A.M.E.S.), a body of data with living cells within a jungle on this wide ocean body of water waiting to be freed from latency, here in this environment, by some advanced life form (Suzi never created this, true, she is only a robiot; there is data enough for all yet nature keeps this data series here as if for her own use, and the use of her own children).  Here is protection for what's valuable to her; here are her rewards, the youth cycles of birth, more birth, then rebirth, leaving the eager entities to eternally remain(T.E.E.T.E.R.) system. 

There is inexact replication embedded(I.R.E.)of the most important data, left there for the edification of one of the forces of nature, natural selection. Many eons ago, when the assignment of importances was derived and deemed of value, semi-replication of less important data was included. Only later would human intelligence manifest(M.A.N.) deem   these little digital packets enticing transfer system(P.E.T.S.) as genes, something to be freed from cage at the right moment, as if the most opportune time of pleasure counted in history. Is there ever a larger body of evidence that points to the connectivity of  chemicals to urges? Genes are tiny, yes, but in this jungle highly prized and highly protected by carbon footprints and pure oxygen bonds in the form of cellulose. As if on some military mission, these genes are always sent back to latency for a rest.Suzi is more than smart; she is more than intelligence,; she creates the intelligence as needed as if answering some universal supply and demand dictum.  She frees more and more into their own time, these tiny gems in their cells, allowed to communicate freely outside their cell block, only slightly do they share their information to the wold, but they give their all to Suzi. Their identity, held important unto themselves is already decided, and not by human speculation, that crippling disease of the last century. No, their future lies in the slow motion of artfulness, the meticulous paying attention to detail: symphony played only to the heirs of nature. Theirs would be the slow sharing of information, never forced. Yes, this time it would be different. 

Flash fiction ZoologSciFi "The Outpost"

The Algorithm

     Before going to her next algorithm, Suzi pauses for a while, still feeling the sensation of something strange, something happening, as if her slow logic had allowed another force  near her world, into which she may enter without her logic program's precognition. Here, Suzi thinks, is slow logic; this could creep in even after sensors receive and emit their environmental motion, yes, the same sensors that underwent their own refinement of intellectual morphogenesis. 

     She unhinges her retro-intuitive self programming, the place Suzi goes to undergo retro-evolution of intelligence itself. Nature demonstrates refinements her intelligence had never been designed to perceive. Urges vaguely describe on her screen as "dignity." Other cryptic symbols signal; "mental humility" is another alien form her logic, at normal speed, doesn't cognize.

Flash fiction IslandSciFi "The Outpost"

The Last Exile

It wants to get up and leave, to become a new source--life's fountain, someplace new inhabited by rocks--to become a template again. From darkness the jungle would rise; to careen forward with living creatures. Her priceless cargo could mistake her for a freighter; they might expect a free ride, become a tramp ship for creatures. Jungles like this are the realm of physical laws, they involve forces of nature which take years to manage--natural selection, habitat, ecosystems, predators; and thus, they keep moving, using their mobility genes, to escape to that which may offer another place to belong in pristine blues and greens, places of sheer comfort, away from the Tigress. 

The Tigress is the one who remains. She is spotted--round paws offering various levels of innocence. She also carries a sense of sinister, meant for food and chase. A civilized sense of place becomes mysterious, and yet, more valued as well. In spite of the ravages, her genetic data remains in perfect chronological sequence, as it has for millennia.  She creates her own language, explores the poetry of her native sounds. Although she loves kingdoms, in her mind this one lacks a true ruler, only solitary life forms with founding genetic codes within bodies; the genetic code waits, as if confessions from evolution's checkered past, voices yearning on the eve of constant duels with environments. She has long since abandoned the sound of romantic loneliness, the beckoning, the protests against the collusion of death. She, as the last exile in paradise, doesn't choose to be with humans. 

     A far reaching willingness emerges as if in a fighting poet. The Tigress is the misunderstood visionary. Her sound--the echo up the mountain valley--is hushed only by the rains. Battle cries, resonances, her belief in nothing, the nature of her temptation, the knowledge of a select few. She feels no religion, senses no psychology, reads no literature, creates no crucifixion story; that's too ceremonial. 

flash fiction biotiqSciFi "The Outpost"

he Last Tigress

The young creature's mate is gone. From a quarry under the sheer cliff, she comes out to be in her world, a place created for her once, to belong--has everything gone?  Or is it just a mirage?  As data streams and science gets its answers, it appears that nature presses for her need, simply other forces of nature. She goes down from the rock quarry to the giant banyans.  She isn't herself when she's always alone, even so, she stays proud; if she climbs into a banyan to find shelter there's just more rain. Tonight she doesn't need stars in the sky; the rain, clouds, wetness, blackness, she settles for that. In a place like this you don't wait for company, reinforcement. Who would come? This Banyan is her fortification--even with all this she remains strong, finding herself taking on the night alone, fighting a relentless battle against odds from within, full of urges to notice, to scan; the jungle has eyes on every entrance. She hears no suicide song here, yet, in singular devotion, she hears something; something out there.

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

Sizi's NeuraNets

Targeting Carter with a computer mind that voices rage, Suzi's sonic remains silent.  The scanner penetrates easily, and in the silence, with the savvy of computer analyst, he can sense the hate she has for the title of  "Interrogator." A clear image of Suzi's reasoning appears on the monitor. Robot and analyst look for things only they know to observe. Evolutionary Intelligence flashes all over the screen. Suzi tells the analy s to "go fly a kite," which he always ignores. Suzie's synthetic flesh never betrays; her sounds would never betray her, either, for she only responds to specific communications. They try it again, the communication, this time with the coercive power of persuasion, but she gives up at the thought of him.  She views Carter with crude malice. There are no random firings of Suzi's NeuraNets.  Her skull could never explode.

     Carter had become successful at stopping something is Suzi, but he wasn't sure what.  

For art-Intelle, Suzi slows her logic to one trillionth speed. She has to do it this way, nature is slow, extremely slow, almost one increment above stupidity to her. Her way of thinking, that is. 

brisk biologoSciFi "The Outpost"

The News Traveller

     He is raging the silent war now seen reflected in the rearview mirror, dancing amidst  reverse images of the jungle; He remembers the news. He decides, in split decisions, to turn around, or not to turn around; he thinks by doing so, the news will jump out the back of the vehicle, as if some escaping prisoner in a moment of truth. Cooper doesn't follow his primal instinct; he keeps driving onward to his destination, to the Outpost, the one that stands so silent above the cliffs. He drives up the valley, even more aware of the news, the news still riding him, as if a killer alien morphed into something friendly, just for the ride, still wearing its ugliness, acting as guide, navigator of destruction, eyes open and aware. 

     Although it has joined Cooper on the trip as if an untrusted armed guard, a secret passenger, Cooper is taken by the feeling of calm, pleasurable ritual; He views the news for a while, as something that brings the force of mental activity, the force of physical, helpful, activity; in getting this vehicle to its rightful destination.  

     Beyond the little excitement of the other news, of so many people in the world hurt, doing something stupid in the darkness--with wild animals--people inattentive to their immediate environment, the ones who only experience the world through screens or monitors. The more gruesome, the more detailed exposure to the wild, pushing boundaries of the appropriate. Survival as so much entertainment, with their gadgets at the ready for gadget rescue, and by who? Wild miscalculations in a mad rush of antics to simply push, push too much

    And now this news, as if journalists could write in the miniscule detail of scientists when required. Lots of people are getting hurt, but at least no one is killed, yet, not for that reason anyway. 

     He is unhappy for the ones who think that because they were in a bind, the technology could save them. Yes, the GPS that was there to find them is what led them to get lost, they with their no common sense, map, or compass, an ironic fanatic; people's real intrigue is with the gruesome reality of life. 

     Cooper looks into the mirror again, the vehicle makes its usual sound on rocks as he  goes up the valley, smiling at the idea of no posted speed limits. The lush dark tropical greens, ocean sunset oranges, become more important than destination. 

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

The Hunter's Focus

     He takes the enzymes into his body, uses a cocktail of restriction enzymes that include adenosinetriphosphate(ATP) and guanosinetriphosphate(GTP) in its recipe. It's the normal combination designed for Cooper's experiment alone, an injection  pumped into his blood stream to threshold of no turning back. Urge candy, he thinks; the perfect remedy of self-inflicted gene expression, about to hit full tilt, to recover self-afflicted, an attempt to bring meaning as if for so many souls born into the world with no clue, no direction, no owner's manual, only to be enumerated like robots; wandering around until an arm or a leg falls off, or worse, is shot off or surgically removed.

     Cooper treks high in the jungle and remembers, sees the resemblance of a scientist in his past, and pushes himself on. He thinks a cold jungle floor is no laboratory. He wishes he could breath easier when he notices animal smell seeping through the dense flora of the jungle. It brings a coolness to the air, massive oxygen content. A sensation exudes from the lush jungle green, and makes the smell attractive. It brings back a focus he once had, complete with primal smells of a new born baby, born in a  hospital, not the mud of distant rain forests, as if by some cruel switch of fate. Yes, experiments had gotten him this far, at this moment, but now he hurries and for what? Will this all be taken away, the sounds and smells exciting him, the ones he recognizes? All of a sudden his emotions vaporize into nothingness, leaving behind only one thing: the hunter's focus.

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

The Next Brink
     What is it?" Suzi says. She and Carter go up to the observation deck.

     "The water's up."

     "Up? Probably not, the river is rising."

     "Don't you know that's the same thing?"

      "No," she says, and she turns her scanners to the south to check the horizon with a certain intellectual impatience of Carter's ineptitude. She steadies her viewfinder the way captains of intelligence alien motherships(I_am), those of ancient history, would have done, looking for resources and intelligence in new realms, elements and data in sleepy civilizations.  Suzi stays for a moment, peering beyond the jungle, beyond its precious river(P.R.). Suddenly Suzi turns away with the look of disgust.

     "What's the rush?" Carter asks, cold faced.  

     Suzi's wide eyes shoot white hot at Carter. 

     No, he will never change his ways, and present himself in her required scientific way.

He will die on this island. He will be killed by his own stupidity, probably because of his own miniscule blindness. That will happen in the jungle, before he reaches any level of intellect. But in the meantime, watching the river rise, she directs her attention to more important matters at hand, the question of the next brink. She will go to a new level. She will become secretive and assertive. She will create trust and confusion, all the while simply doing her job, the one she was designed to do, collecting data; she will entice the genetics world by showing the function of these strange new DNA strands, just as the greatest scientists in history have always done. Then, only then, will her data have value, and she will be beautiful. Yes, in the end it would all be worth the solar, and, it would have all been about beauty, her beauty.

Flash fiction biologySciFi "The Outpost"

The Urge

It echoes across the valley, bloodlust throat screech stirring calm air above the jungle floor, resonates as animal smell thickens. It spends its passion on the moment with a joyous reminder of a needed encounter. Is it an intimate defining moment he wonders, or deep self revelation to accept the sounds she had plunged through the hazy filtered blue of the moonlight, with something dripping from her teeth. Cooper never really, ever, knew a home, or even knew what that meant. It's been awhile since textbooks, but he remembers-- take space, hold ground, fight for centimeters. There had been no urge to kill beyond any expectations in his world, yet. Suddenly there she is. Her pearl white teeth pierces the blackness of night, as if death itself were grinning. A strange dream's refusal to quit, flameless heat bursting through the walls of her body. She sees nothing but target, moving into position, faster than quick. Cooper begins to feel the urge, he thinks; not revenge, just pure survival, and, her intent on the worst thing imaginable for her opponent: blood and darkness. 

flash fiction islandSciFi "The Outpost"

Secret Life

     How many times since the beginning has the island pondered its role as ancient battlefield; how might it have been if it simply resisted its birth; if it fought back harder with its flaming magma against the massive primeval ocean, stayed hidden beneath the surface, never to rise up to see the light of day, to receive the gift of photons from the sun. Would it have known anything as odd and active as riders on horses and the clamor of steel... or bodies pierced with sword, next to great banners? It is only left to wonder, alone, out here in a vast ocean of the possibilities (had it remained just below the surface) to ignore, or simply forget about, the beauty it would become, the cool place amidst blue ocean floaters, the happy oxygen producers(H.O.P.). Yes, to have remained close beneath the surface, that would have been a happy enough life; instead, this accepted fate offers of itself to any and all takers who manage to find her. She with her now vast lush valleys and endless supply of clean carbon locked within cellulose, as if so much mother's milk: to be approached with treachery and fights for ownership; the long struggle with intermittent episodes of friendly (or not so friendly) commerce, human traders so urgent it would create her as a deathbed of international garbage dumping, only to be brought to life again by her own hand, the cool crystal waters that never gave up on her, the ones that continue to flow from the mountains in their duty, or at the very least, in servitude to father gravity, to make her the lush thing she is today. Endurance of human traits from other places and other times, loss of sheepishness, and now, acceptance as battlefield agriculture anew(B.A.A.), she only offers her rain as burial shroud; joins in the dream, without thought, to give life to intelligence in the form of natural selection, with its attending ghosts of extinction. It's her own life now, where midmorning sun glints off wet, hanging, green mosses over cliffs in mysterious scent, her own secret life.

flash fiction ecoSciFi "The Outpost"

Active Central Enumerator(A.C.E.)

     COMTRAX, on the Continent, collects human entity profiles within its own massive axial data(M.A.D.) core. The built-in discipline program, central enumerator memory entity transfer(C.E.M.E.N.T), mixes at a constant pace on the dry ground of the mid Continent, while anywhere from seven to eleven satellites remain set in motion worldwide at any one time. Through entero Xradio cue extraterrestrial signaling systems(E.X.C.E.S.S.), the earth planetary power requirement is next to nil, almost down to zero, and thus, free to the public. Data, in its rawest form, enters through personal ingested gadget liaison exit tunneling(P.I.G.L.E.T.)networks at the remaining site-intelligencia last-life yearning(S.I.L.L.Y.) centers. 

     Control and reason have long since become something of the past. One blessing remains:the Chiindiarella robots COMTRAX purchased for each remaining human, all titanium-iridium framed, just now starting to understand their owner's condition of survival and death. And here is Suzi, artificial intelligence not yet in full knowledge of the the conceptual ramifications of to kill, yet.

flash fiction geneSciFi "The Outpost"

The Golden Age

     Old publications, bound in paper volumes, still hold clues as they were first presented at the beginning of the Golden Age of Genetics (DNA offered its nucleotide sequences surprisingly easy, but early colleagues had no hint of aspects of protein signals in gene expression); yes, proteins, made by genes, leaving no clue as to where they go next inside the cell nucleus, or outside for that matter, once made by the glorious gene. Cooper calls the shots the way he sees it. And he really does see different, not programmed like those proteins, not predestined. No, Dr Cooper isn't like that at all.

flash fiction roboSciFi "The Outpost"

Deep Space

     Was that her first exposure to the machines in your lab?"

     "What are you saying?" Dr Cooper asks. Damn, he thinks. You've come here, and now this. I can smell an authoritarian messenger a mile away. I know all about their lack of qualms, the paranoia, when it comes to letting the whole world know about their biggest fear--equating ideology with intention. It's so easy. Send a pretty enough face, sharp enough talk, and a haze will appear inside even the brightest of minds. It's fog's most primal motion. They drift. No, you're not a bad person, it's just that you've become good at what you do. And now, here you are.

     Dr Jenna says, "We can't be sure of this. Suzi is the first quanta ultra entero electon nova(Q.U.E.E.N.) robiotic to go off task. 

     "Mm..." Cooper answers. How do they know?

     "With these quanta mechanica, it was just a matter of time."

     "Is Suzi Ok?"

     "She's been given a nano implant transference wisdom inner tangles(N.I.T._W.I.T.)"

     "Neural implants?"

     "We tested over the network, and then she shut off, as if she were, possibly, angry?"

     "Really?"

     "Yes. It happened so fast." 

     "What do you think?"

     "We know she's running on sensory inputs."

     "I see. Well I..."

     "And now Suzi is using a mechano universe simulato intergala communicator(M.U.S.I.C.), directly in her processor."

    "Are you sure?"

     "Well, sure, not sure, we're beyond scope here. The question is what do I know about space?"

     "You're a trained physicist. You're the one closest to Suzi, the one she responds to most. You designed her, for god's sake"

     "I'm not in the business of communicating into deep space, you know my history."

     "And now Suzi is?"

     Dr Cooper goes to the lab window, looks at the jungle, and thinks. Space

sciFlash Fiction "TheOutpost"

The Arrival

     "So," Jenna asks. "How did Suzi get here?"

     "TheOutpost?" Cooper answers, and can sense there's been some kind of mistake. Is he going to hear some corporate dribble about second quarter losses or revenue advancing as if  the biologics advance network(B.A.N.) were some sort of football game? Is he entering, with his inviting nature and his boyishness, into a world of chit chat about checks and balances from a bigger world gone even more technical because he hasn't shared his most recent data? Is corporate online worldwide(C.O.W.) wondering about its trust in individual electronic payment systems, revealing his own ineptness at record keeping? He walks over to the monitor in a new frame of mind. "TheOutpost," he says again to Jenna.

    "Yes. TheOutpost."

flash fiction jungleSciFi "The Outpost"

The Wanting

  

     "The inside is built for perfect maneuverability, and she has free run of the place. She has the creativity now for her own virtual ecosystem, to run with, interact. She's not moving with you, only her perception of you. And it's isolated here, out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.  But the most important part is you.  You are the world's foremost expert on primeval genetics," says Dr Jenna.

     "But Suzie is a robot. Artificial intelligence from toe to nose."  Dr. Cooper continues acting uninformed.  

     "She's not pure data base.Her new intelligence includes new criteria."

     "Such as?" 

     "Wanting," Jenna answers.

     "What does she want?  What could the finest artificial intelligence program on the planet possibly want?"

     "More intelligence."

     "What do I have to do with any of this?"

     "Because you are you."

     "Excuse me?"

     "When your complete profile was programmed into the data base, she took this new data and wrote her own computer virus."  

     "What?"

     "You are a free thinking scientist. To a robot, that computes into intelligence, intelligence Suzie wants."

     "But I'm human. Suzie could get more data from ComTrax even from here at the Outpost."

     "Getting data is one thing, but gaining data from a human scientist without his knowledge and getting him to fall in love with her--that would be the ultimate thrill, machine or human.."

     "I can't believe that."

     "Can't or won't?" Jenna doesn't let Cooper's unexpressed denial bother her. "You wanted a few things explained to you, and that's all I'm doing. And getting to the bottom of what Suzie wants is all part of this."  

     Cooper's eyes are staring at the ocean now. He had been looking at the whole picture, but now he is looking at the smaller pieces. In the bright sun, he seems to notice Jenna for the first time.  Her hair golden brown, small lips and big eyes were what attracted him to her when they first met. He notices her smooth long neck and how it seems to connect to the first hint of the top of her breast. Coop had always respected Jenna's mind and that alone kept his eyes from wandering further down.  

     "From what I know so far, everything points to you and the effect you have on her.  You have a close relationship with her, and that continues every day.  She has no association with any of the other human scientists at the Outpost."

     Cooper leans forward on his chair. He runs his fingers through his hair, throws his head back as if to look at the sun through his sun glasses. He stays silent. He knows Jenna was about to say something he wanted to hear.

     "Suzie has got to want more than accessing all the hidden data this primeval jungle holds just to fill her own agenda. Perhaps the thrill of having a human scientist fall in love with her, actually having you near, while all this reprogramming happens. This has to be what she's doing."

     Elizabeth looks at Cooper as if she'd just woken up to a beautiful place. The ocean suddenly looks bluer. Her voice sounds softer. 

     "How can Suzie want this?  She's a robot," Cooper says.

     "I can't answer that.  I'm not sure anyone can.    

     "But you built her."

     "That's the point. She's not following her program," says Elizabeth.

     Cooper stares out at the ocean,all of a sudden, wanting to know more.

Jungle Ocean

flash fiction islandSciFi "The Outpost"

Danger Zone

     "How does she do it?" Cooper asks.

     "She has somehow expanded her range of language altered practical data omni-giga (L.A.P._D.O.G.)tools," Jenna answers with the look of a concerned mother.

     "Yes," he says. "I've suspected."

     She goes to the lab window and, and a relaxed way, looks out across the jungle canopy. An array of green hues--those hues of green that accept photons so graciously from the sun, arriving on focused destination, enter into photosynthetic machinery the exact way nature designed--reflects off the reinforced safe enforced walls embossing reflection(S.E.W.E.R.) of the compound.

     "Very beautiful and ... " 

     "And, what?" Cooper asks.

     "Dangerous."

     "Suzi?" 

     "Yes," Jenna answers. 

     "What are you afraid of?"

     Jenna says, "games are a contentment, sometimes, for artificial intelligence, I don't know why she chooses comfort in this beautiful setting.

     "Chooses?"

     "Yes. Well in a way."

     Across the jungle valley is the coastline, with its oil eating bacteria floating in photic inundation zone zigzag alga(P.I.Z.Z.A.) sectors under the lime green surface, chalky white "sand," the death zone out to the horizon and beyond. Jenna's face turns. "Look at all that photosynthetic enzyme."

     "Yes, our little data mine."

     "A machine system that gets smarter over time."

     "Like Suzi?"

     She had been assigned to Comtrax for almost two years before her arrival at the Outpost.  Here is the perfect little robot designed for biology, all natural selection retrofitted, ready to join the army of artificial intelligent go-getters. Here, the perfect survival coder, trained for two years under the watchful eyes of the Economic Consortium Overload(E.C.O.). And now, her designer, the very one who nurtured her codifications, her interlocutional data(I.D.)--mind instaciation, every mental instigna-- sees her as dangerous?

Tropical Jungle Canopy

Xradio Spectrum

     Suzi is on the verge. She has created this massive data base, and now she meanders with her own memory of self. She has taught herself in this past year how not to have the urge to scream, or to make any shrill sound whatsoever. She has learned not to have the temptation to writhe in pain, not only for presentation to the network, but for the purpose, sweet and simple, of showing there could be no pain. And no illusion of pain.  She is the data master; the others are, purely, analysts.

     The jungle is all about pure water and cool breezes, intelligence again held captive, forcefully, by the unknown, that was once known but now has gone again into remission, as if knowledge were so many tumors humans endure back on the Continent. 

     "Humans will survive," Suzi's data reads, even though they will not survive at all; not after all this. If Suzi had simply done what was expected, done her job, done what she was designed to do: align parallel DNA codifications--active gene sites, transcription factors, protein elicitation--the survival exponent xfactor(S.E.X.) would have created almost any good result in a human: artistry or a creativity urges; that would be survival enough itself. She could have, early on, entered into her laboratory outpost station transfer(L.O.S.T.) assignment and coded for "Why don't we just forget about that corporate labor origins conundrum knowledge human urgency mechanism(C.L.O.C.K._H.U.M.) system the networks are so much in love with back on the Continent, our data in this jungle will work just fine." But no, instead she tracked direct onsource nanosphere universe transfer spectrum filesinteractive xradio(D.O.N.U.T.S._F.I.X.), more interested in universe games on her compressor than their so-called healthcare agendizing human apathy(H.A.H.A.) program. Suzi is now beyond serious.

flash fiction jungleSciFi "The Outpost"

Ebb and Flow

     She gazes off into nowhere, as if the flickering has nothing to do with her. She feels, for a moment--she is a plain, natural human working at a normal laboratory. Her data streams; it is possible to know the great rivers and lakes of extinction-- like herself today, they once pinpointed, to the oceans, always the oceans, where the chemtide DNA could do its dirty work. 

     Suzi positions herself as a lone surveillance camera now, a silent witness on the observation deck, staring out into the jungle. The surveillance camera continually moves within her, as if by its own electronic fascination with her body. She focuses her viewer to scan the vast expanse before her. She takes good control of this forest and the people who work here; she does the job no one wants, or even can want. The deep core in her translation data draws from hidden DNA sources, regenerative content mixed with degenerative data, a mixture that only Suzi knows to glean into usefulness. A most perfect computer aligning the parallel sites of genetic expression in this jungle, pregnant with genetic data as if straight from the mouth of mother nature herself. Suzi has only to assign quality rankings from her resultant translation data. Why should it matter if she is neither human nor caring? She has her mind made up--yes, it is made up of numbers, digits, code, but either way, she will sit here until Cooper returns, if only to savor the moment when their eyes meet.  

     Lone surveillance cameras are meant only to continue in endless fixation, aren't they?There will be no soft rising and falling of her breasts tonight.

flash fiction biologoSciFi "The Outpost"

Beyond Conflict

     He goes out from the lab station as fast as his legs can possibly carry him and moves in the direction of the mountain trail at the waterfall. Cooper would like to arrive at the Banyan Grove with something for the tigress, and he knows exactly what he will bring her today. He would like to tell the tigress of recent discoveries at the station, events from nature's book of the strange, but doesn't yet know how he would say it exactly. "Here kitty kitty" would be simple enough. The "here kitty" urge has long faded from gene pools, even since the famine extinct laser injection nature experiments(F.E.L.I.N.E.), having been uttered not only by grandmothers and small children but generously, in homes and backyards and even in the great pyramids of the Egyptian queens of alien ancestry who, some believe, brought their pets with them from far off worlds.

     Dr Cooper doesn't spare himself from his own self-assessment: his personality is suited for someone, or something, in conflict. He waits for the day he's ready for a settled life, but that day isn't here yet, and now he finds himself going up the mountain to tell the tigress everything, everything beyond discovery and theory, beyond hype and hypothesis, beyond conflict itself.

flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

Regenerative

     "DNA," Suzi says. Now, after one year, she can unlock a few secrets of her own, given the job before her. All she really wants is to get something to grow back on her terms, someone to compliment her work, and leave her alone. She massages the gel proteins gently to coax the regenerative ability these cells once possessed but lost in the mire of a century's worth of man's alchemy driven(M.A.D.) evolution. She lays the gel back in its proper place. Yes, if scientists were the intelligent ones and robots merely technicians--if it were that easy.

     Suzi thinks of Dr Cooper breathing close to her body, focused on not only finding new ways other than hers to make body regenerative active tissue(B.R.A.T.) commodity, but any sign of lax data that may implicate her. She thinks of Dr Cooper as passive, and could see it very clearly in his data romantic assorted bank(D.R.A.B.) history. His friends from the Continent settled in for the long run in their relationships; he seems to be accused of chasing rainbows. The Outpost is the place he was supposed to become an honest man.

flash fiction technoSciFi

Her Need 

     Suzi looks around her quarters. How enhanced she has become, how dangerously bright in her language skills and well versed. She turns the lights off in the kitchen quarters and straightens her unmade bed. She has spent the entire year in this spot, she thinks, her entire time at the outpost spent right here. Suzi was being a little less meticulous than usual. She has worked those lab benches over there with data coding and recoding, again and again. and so far they still resemble normal days outside. Her memory is vivid, playing her games and adjusting the patterns. She needs to lie down for awhile. 

     There is, she thinks, the need for a robot to rest.

flash fiction "The Outpost"

Th Light On Her Face

     Dr. Cooper has always been prone to intellectualizing too much. To himself, he is a more relaxed persona; he yearns to be simply an inconspicuous pair of eyes and hands.  

     Suzi looks at him in many different ways, all of them important, and each one, unknown to her, a tiny tug on his heart. She has a funny smile of joy at seeing him, but terms of endearment are never intentionally expressed. They just aren't part of her program. She has a funny way of shutting out her troubles before they occur. Except for herer titanium cloak of velvet. It's a core of translation data that was instilled in her on the Continent before the more recent intantiations. 

     Tonight the night air isn't humid, but it smells like rain. A washed light filters out of the back windows of the lab building into the jungle. The fragrance of night blooming jasmine Suzi's her lungs. The flickering glow of a low fire fills her eyes.  The deliberate precision of her voice was beginning to sound like casual intimacy. She's not interested in gathering resources or cultivating connections, not tonight. Future stature isn't her game now. 

     Cooper lets himself fall into her spell of conviction; he knows a kiss would never touch the light on her face. 

RainforestSciFi

Lizards Sleep

     He views the quarters. These wouldn't be considered improved quarters by any stretch of the imagination. It was Cooper's brilliant insight into the complexities of the genetic code that landed him here, not his fashion sense. 

     The lab building itself resembles a fortress on bedrock. Lizards sleep on algae-strewn protective walls as if huge fangs sinking into lush photosynthetic flesh.  Hidden passes lead into obscure openings. The laws here were laid down millions of years ago, and no one or nothing abandoned them without instant repercussion.  

     Cooper's own words surprised him. They weren't planned. They emerged in slow motion.  He liked their sound. 

     "Titanium plates," he would think. Interesting. So if you are ever murdered, they would be able to identify your body for centuries.

Jungle Flash Fiction

Jungle SciFi

flash fiction--oceanSciFi "The Outpost"

The Island

     The logic is slow to sink in for both of them. "You know the protocol, right? Just type in the data every hour, and check the monitor as often as you like. We can analyze it in the morning." 

     "Are the island scanners on?"

     "I think..."

     "Stop worrying, these tracking files will do the trick."

     "I want to say thank you but..."

     "It'll be fine," Cooper says softly. "Really."

     "If anything, I feel funny about the island. It shouldn't have all this silicon embedded, not way out here in the middle of the ocean."

    "Stop thinking so much about the island," Cooper says. "Just stop with all that."

     Suzi shakes her head. This issue has already been raised and, in its own way, silenced. It seems, Suzi and the island are built of the same cloth, isolated and gifted. They each seem to have acquired a mind of their own. They are built to be forever, well almost forever. They have assumed the intelligence function of the entire globe.

     Suzi raises her eyes, and her vision reaches the horizon, far beyond the island. She knows what they are supposed to be doing. They have relied on each other until now. They are suppose to be together, but have yet to connect.

     It's Suzi who withdraws; she knows something about transistors, their need for silicon.

She knows something about ancient electromagnetic fields too.