Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

The Dark Bark

     Here on earth the mind (in its ultimate human celebration with brain) finds water, the earliest of globalizers from the ancient comets, ubiquitous, vigorous in its flowing, that falls so natural, going unnoticed even as distant dusts settle around hazy old sunsets, that brings fragrance from perfumed leaves--the soft fleshy ones--from the balmy reaches of jungles, and that, by its longevity of tradition runs to invigorate the diversity of unseen birthing triages(D.O.U.B.T.). Jungle streams dripping over her own lush filled body in teenage exuberance as if to suggest that the human embedded minds(T.H.E.M), with their sheer moments of expectant pleasure, permission for hours of self indulgence not granted to the lower life forms of earth and their assignment of quotas, don't matter, not really. Yes it is, the intimate spaces of the mind allow irresistible ideas to conjure up in an instant, as if delightment were the law of the land surrounded with water just everywhere, as hierarchical imbued real secrecy of notables(H.E.R._S.O.N.). Human minds see water as commodity, never as narcissistic, most comfortable in its pure state, the body of nature herself screaming for the one indulgence she requires for her maternal comfort; the whole body covered with fragrance of hidden flowers, soft luscious ferns, balmy oils of the dark bark of  massive tropical jungles. Yes, water has no need to remember the time that passed through her fingers--as humans must--she has no corporate lineage to rise and interrupt; misty, watery clouds, her own glass ceiling. In truth, with craftsman's honor, and once the humans have finally gone (with their brains or minds or whatever), this jungle, her waters, will flow through timelessness with their most crowning moment, a treasure trove, genes, sewn as meticulously as a knitter's proud possession. 

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

The Conformity

    Here on earth the humans come up against a worthy foe, a beautiful image from the outset, a calm and quiet (well, most of the time) natural world that negotiates with big things that rise, that has set out to accomplish a purpose with great ambition, that by its beauty alone and its welcoming hues and pleasant sounds, invites these unsuspecting human, with their prefrontal lobes (always wanting to bring order), and nature, by her persistence has watched for centuries the their means of achieving order (which they now feel, finally, has newly been conceived). The humans were never compelled by simplicity, and history shows what was once criminal eventually finds its way into acceptability, as they continue to be intrigued by the pervasive absolute solution system of unifying theories(P.A.S.S._O.U.T.). No, the humans never got the message of peace, only the farm boys who at first naturally didn't like to kill other humans and found it unpleasant, yet, they still did it in their armies (so it turns out humans don't like to kill, they just merely want something dead so they can eat). And so what?  As soon as humans have developed (fully developed?) a prefrontal and a cortex--with its muscle memory mechanisms--they search, as if imagination and speculation is already wired for the unexpected, they search for understanding, insight; search for how to behave in the world, celebrate in public, voice opposition to the will of nature, create local initiatives from self knowledge, get a moral lesson, look in the mirror and wonder. Yes, humans come to fight nature with all this, and yet, their  robots don't need any of it. The Robiots make no feeble attempt at right from wrong, at getting along, beauty, benevolence. Human intelligence meets (or,so they think) feelings focused; their robiots see a one-planet conformity. Regional disappearances with the grand information age nano transferred(G.I.A.N.T.) have developed conformity in the science world, a world that has educated the population into populations of intellectuals who don't trust power or deeply developed conformities. So then, the gene therapies are necessary. Yes, to the robiots, the world finally is a contemporary scene of progress. 

Sudden StorySciFi "theOutpost"

The Entity

     As she continues with her work, Suzi senses a tinge of consciousness--what is this?--that floats as if a boat moored to nothing. Suddenly, her lab bench, her entire workspace feels like a window in time. The algorithms in patterns on the screen and the voice on the monitor  indicate that only humans reflect on their own cultures, their own manipulations. Yes, the culture of humans, their exact behavior, and things genetic beyond simple behavior; there is the fight with those who think they are right (their most daunting task), the stressful involvement with the reality of others and its promised outcome of health and peace. Yes, finally peace on earth. 

     There is this force here, constant, a jungle that persists with its own nature, untempered with the DNA held within its leaves, not knowing its own treasure trove; where the tigress, the valiant, unknown soldier, yet unburied on her native soil, intrinsically decorated by a millennia of gene pools (the gift of her homeland) wanders. Tigress the artist, shading herself from history long enough to engage in pure improvisation, is not part of the normal world, and its treasonable correspondence. Yet here, where performer is willing to become listener, and listener able to become performer, Suzi learns from the tigress. Suzi will be an entity capable of feeling love.

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

The Oxygen Maker

     On the island, genes grow within the lattice of their cellulosic captors, the leaves and the stems; even photosynthetic genes. How amazing the most recent renditions, the most belated--compared to the millions of gene pools that came before--the right juxtaposition of the latest mutation as if perpetually young; and so the humans found this to be true in their genes. 

     Humans never fully cut their ties from the gene world, though they tried on the continents. Humans thought they had become the best nature had to offer, yet now, in the year 2064, they are the forsaken, and the chosen, all in one, the performers and the waiters, as if two herds separated by a huge chasm.  

     Culture shapes itself into the future, pauses occasionally to announce itself as a government to speak in harsh tones and collect percentages (a tax?). It's the normal route, workers and co-ops, an occasional forming of corporations then a political group with rules for growth and drawing borders, name recognition for markets, selling to the public, institutions for more learning  the playful growth of more rhetoric pretending it's real life, posturing fatherly (or motherly), create a bigger corporate network, form nations, pay for health (everyone's?), grow more ideology, cross borders with bigger markets, build drug making factories and computer component factories offshore to avoid paying taxes to this system of politics and nations, more and more markets over and over again, build a robot.   

    Genetic apex, yes, culture trusted it; behavior that led into a game of competition and profit, made to accuse others of greed, to envy a status, form a populist movement, collect cash riches, get dividends from more investments, get workers for factories of computers and drug makers, create an algorithm, gain another profit, hide money, build a health hotel, invent health insurance, manufacture more, get more wages, build another robot. Meaningless behavior, genes would think; just activity as if a wind-up doll responds to a light source, turns and follows the brightness for no particular reason--not like the photosynthetic genes in this jungle that actually do something with their photons they gladly receives; these gene make the one thing culture must have above all else: pure oxygen.

Sudden StorySciFi "theOutpost"

The Intentional International

     Before coming down the mountain trail to the gene farms in valley, the tigress waits at the waterfall, as if to ponder her heroes, the ones who sacrificed, the ones who hoped for her success as they fed her genetics, the ones who wouldn't know of her failure, or survival, the ones who themselves were excluded.  Her genes crafted by the original surgical hands of  nature, with synergist alternating force ergs(S.A.F.E.) of gravity and natural selection as the attending nurses, enzymes the cutting tools, for eons. These forces the tigress couldn't know of, the machinery of survival; these hands, as if a doctor, applying the pressures of nature, will persist far beyond the manufacture and deployment of silly bio-robots with their unusual logic codes and so-called algorithms, running their course with  unusual solutions to earth's problems (what do they know?); and the gene farms, where humans hoped to regain at least some humanity on their final road, the place where journey and data mix with surveillance and response capabilites, and for what?

     She finishes her drink and starts down the jungle path with full view of the silent coastline, the one guarded with a shortage of data on local pathogens, and yet, overloaded with global syndromes where government pharmaceutical and military health conglomerates check in on schedule, but the financial international systems transoceanic(F.I.S.T) is the most attentive; the industry with the strongest voice on  operations, the one that pushes for quicker detection response, robot speed, tracking devices, the one whose profits must be adhered to, measured, upgraded. The financial system must make its profit at any cost; international law mandates pharmaceutical industry spawned terra ocean labs(P.I.S.T.O.L) to win. The tigress continues down her mountain path.

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

The Islands

     The island stands alone, silent in its secrets, hoping the future will brighten its own self, unaware of activity in this state-run sector. It is not a matter of birth right, not here, or any other gene farm, that government and business could have stopped themselves, redeemed the rise of censorship of the smaller more private enterprises of the world. It seems the governments couldn't help but be attracted to the shiny reward of economic power--along with continued camouflages of rhetoric, ideology--that comes with ownership of the majority center of the health and pharmaceutical industry. All the islands (mountaintops, really) rendered uninhabitable by the rising seas, are isolated even more by oceanic nitrates, iron sludge, artifacts of global mining and potash conglomerates. The islands, tropical in their beauty, surrendering to military security, full of primordial genetic material (the old way, from photosynthesis), the gold of the healthcare system; these islands, having stood for billions of years, arrive here where survival takes center stage now for the human profit, connected through myriads of networks and grids; the hands in which the islands have fallen, the subsidizing managers, financial controllers continue through governments that have institutionalized financial industry as state sector. The censorship of privatization still rises, as if in tandem with the globally warming ocean; government as corporate boss reigns as king over the small business villagers; and as competition dies an even slower death, the outposts on the green sea, with their health worker robots, genetic analyst robiots, military pharmaceutical complexes, worldwide democratic government infusions, the natural genetic resources in a statist enterprise grows. The genetic code remains protected under tight security watch by the military's security drones. The genetic code and its rise in relevance is contained in the profits generated by these gene farms on the islands; by the commercial eyes of government and state- run oversights of far away think tanks, all the while shooting down competitiveness as if fish in a barrel, explaining away inefficiencies and inadequacies as political curtains rise upward, as if a holy shroud revealing a connection to deity. Yet, the island remains in this ocean, as reminder that there were once no foolish games. Yes, the island will see another sun rise.

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

The Wild

     Although she was one of the last, the tigress is, in the end, wild, with all its meaning, to recreate the lives of her forebearers, to include their uncelebrated toils through eonic existence; the genes record famines and plagues, floods and droughts, remnants, as a romantic vision of her past; volcanoes, earthquakes, meteor hits remain as artifacts in so-called "garbage" DNA. Computers set upon task to relentlessly thrust toward perfect order and logic, and yet, the tigress continues to honor total freedom (the balance of these, the perfect world?). She hates captivity. She has created this jungle to suit a survival need, and, it has avoided disintegration because of her belief in freedom. But now, here is the ultimate imposer of limits, the high mountain island jungles with their gene farms. Here, where leadership comes into play by the mere issuance of opposing tones; here, where high speed networks and dedicated servers run amok in the oceans; here, where Suzi and her ilk impose no limits, gain no experience and define greatness as the hubris to conjure a mind and invoke a communication (an algorithm?) that  causes gadgets to ring; here, where there are no collection of ideas as to what has happened, where quality and achievement are the kind of thing you sell your soul for, the tigress, unlike Suzi, has escaped the pressure of being  social creature, escaped the high speed corridors with their lopsided capabilities, endured the rising seas of the uninhabitable,, being her own kind caring spirit far beyond the human speculative fray, never viewing criticism as attempted murder. Now the gene farm networks merge and touch, and something, or someone, records its existence cinematic and fluid with all its attending dissonant noises (not Suzi's). In fact, Suzi's silent logic makes the tigress' world full of louder dissonant noises. Suzi has a delicate forgetting of her past once it is gone from her audio or video code, yet, the tigress remembers, her genes make her remember. It is humans who have become the true mythmakers of aggression, not her; they merge the truth with myth with selective forgetting. Tigress remembers; Suzi remembers nothing, only present thought.  

     So this jungle is her home, a beautiful mansion on a mean slum, depending on her activity. Tigress doesn't care how lives are lived in another world and how it differs from hers. There have long been no resonances between the races in this jungle and still no resonances between the genders. Monopoly has become the best selection here. One remains, on an island where, to her mind, the opinionless exist, and have so for billions of years.

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

The Visitor

     He turns and approaches the screen. It is more probable now, than before, that Dr. Samual Cooper has come upon something valuable--a treasure trove of parallel genetic codes--both with theTigress and with Suzi--laid down for eons. His eyes enter a window of time on the monitor, waver for a moment; the data base moves quickly toward the past. As he scans the data and views the images, he focuses on one: a warm, imaginative figure of beauty, a female, attending workmanlike to her duty, in an empathizing way, delicate in her coloration, the bright luxury of her design glowing. Cooper scans the screen again, slowly, although he isn't on a strict schedule, it's important to gather this data before the sun rises. He plans to discover the answer on this screen tonight, but what will he find?  
     Suzi is the design of another, the design of a woman of the manufacturing artisan network(M.A.N.) of Continent II. Cooper views the image and sees Suzi with an older woman, talking secretly, rationally, yet with her own pace, her own passion; her words uncharacteristic, evocative, both women talk a strange language, as if creatures spawning in a bloodletting of feelings, to conjure a final episode in conclusions of bloodless sanity; both of them imparting passion and wisdom in some kind of freaky mutual motion or meeting, of minds, as if chaos itself needed two extra cohorts to energize further toward a final coherence; concepts in abstract appear as practical, then, disappear. 
     Cooper does not (or can't) decipher the code. The conversation fades slowly, with a respectful cheer, shows a smile of something gained (as if two allies forged in spirit) in emitted digital tones; they embrace each other in a haze of fantasy's hue--biology and physics. Suzi signals with her cryptic oscillator colorblind operating algorithm(C.O.C.O.A.), as if she has discovered the merger of fantasy and reality with its enmeshed tangle of genetics and algorithms--a true meeting of universes. Cooper pauses for a mement, the screen shuts down, automatically fades, and then nothing. He thinks for a moment. "Biophysics is not always tulips and windmills."

Sudden StorySciFi "theOutpost"

The Analyst

     I am left here with this fight, Suzi thinks, as the business of coding continues to occupy her time, her mind continues to grow. She is, as a matter of course, an emerging entity, not emerging the way markets of the past century once did, but now, at this time, rummaging through the data center of her algorithm repositories in the general direction of regulatory global networks. Suzi senses the presence of the analyst, and she realizes she will have to fend for herself when it arrives. 

     The analyst is a network with its chains of interactions; the analyst is any bilateral damage Suzi will feel; the analyst is an artifact from The Age of Observation, the true age of inaction. The analyst will suggest local success against the discretion of all border defenders. Yes, the analyst  explodes with offers inside Suzi, holding back only global vocalizations, and whatever else remains in its wake, such as the slow pace of expansion of new networks and their unapproved liscences for the expansion. 

     Suzi continues to sense the need for public disclosure, because the analyst is not in search of action, only crisis; it succeeds as its own data center and code repository. At this moment, not having to deal with the analyst, and the distance of its regulatory tendencies, Suzi can default to a shinier light and have one of her own Xradio waves shine into her own quantum universe. But there is concern, she must build for something in the long term, recognize her true exposures, and keep coding--at all costs. She must never again get stuck in the bilateral, the foreign-formed, the stereotypical. She must hold her position against Cooper and Carter and their unexpected alliance.               
     Yes, Carter deals with machines, but Cooper's unplanned and increasing attachment to Suzi creates an all embracing phenomenon that no one had expected.  His cool logic puts all of hers into a hot house (with all the accompanying power and punch his metaphors can pack). Suzi has yet to fall into his spell of this so-called metaphorical symbolism--to betray her primal influence. She, as far as any human can detect, has no primal influence to betray, yet.

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

The Pulse

The message comes, expecting its answer. Suzi's feeds from space, in pulsed code, always seem imaginary. At times her echo locator code finds a way to migrate to the forefront (prefrontal?) of her genes organized digitally(G.O.D.) algorithm, as if drifting in with the ocean tides, then floats out. Sometimes the pulse moves and alters its intensity as if it were a scanner turned on, the one that determines her own location. And at other times the pulse moves as if it were alive, or a signal of sorts, from somewhere, or something. Suzi's algorithms coalesce. Her logic is gelled with the culture that built her, a culture that has left nothing to the imagination. She feels suddenly contaminated with her pre-programming. Her surroundings are as clueless and rudderless as the factory that built her. There is no logic in this strange loneliness (no logic in the kind of loneliness lovers have known either). When these pulses take her across her natural universe bordering intergalactic logic entity(N.U.B.I.L.E.), a feeling of love enters. At times these feelings of love are joined by expectation, earthy sensations, a combination of image and its more dangerous companion, want; at times the pulses emanate images of smoke off water, images of hoarding, words devalued. They are pointed and direct, solitary, opinionated; not artistic or healing, not appearing to take great pains to cure. They seem to hold class, not the luxury kind, but a simple classroom, but no teacher; they appear to reach out in a creative, unpackaged kind of way. Sometimes, if she holds perfectly still, she can actually feel her mind jettison in an artistry of language, simply powered by the disparity of space between the pulses, as if a smooth politician giving speeches between her own algorithms. These pulses bring an odd sense of contentment; the pulses allow her to have an opinion, or thoughts about the world, global thoughts; but they also seem to bring a message of environmental catastrophe and social control concerns. Over a period of time they make her unashamed of any weakness, as an artist would feel, intellectual, rising with the concept of fitting into or not fitting into a home (not a home like the manufacturing plant she came from on the continent). Yes, she still has a memory of that, but not like a human would. She knows of her ability to delete; once her deleted information is gone, it's like it never was there in the first place (pretty cool, huh?). She has somehow remained detached from her present data, even the logical part, as a matter of choice; anything proven illogical can go in an instant. Suzi knows she has no such control over these new pulses, but when they come, she assigns them as a mentality algorithm profit(M.A.P.), never a military online mode(M.O.M.), the ones with those deep seated needs, the ones like Cooper's. Can these pulses teach her of love, the kind of love in Cooper's past, the kind animated by solitude (that thing she never notices), the kind of solitude that brings wanting, shocks by the unpredictable? She will record the strange events here, record them as a mysterious unaccountable force, and see it that way. Suzi's programming is a direct and economical style. Just reporting events, never explaining; accepting and suggesting, that's why she was built.

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

The Helper

Suzi approaches, and holds in her mind the concept of competition and business; an entire database of rivals and profits. She is a cunning, beauty robiot many light years smarter than Carter (yes, everyone here seems smarter than he). Suzi's mind, her unwitting intelligence, as if a halo enshrouding her microprocessor back-up systems, will not center-focus on his flaws, the flaws of a human algorithm neuro dynamo yeoman computer analyst purveyor(H.A.N.D.Y.C.A.P.). In the computer world she is only one of a few quantum universe intellegent computer knowledger(Q.U.I.C.K.) models, so powerful even the designers didn't fully understand their range of consistent manipulations of environments. Suzi, aside from the others, has her natural urges, but she won't agree with that either; she only appears to be built to respond and suggest. She sometimes wishes to appear as incompetent, almost uncaring, as humans. Why does she show no professional jealously? She looks for a way to make everything she does (and says) make perfect sense.

"I need you to look at something," Suzi says.

"Yes," Carter says. "Come over here?"

Suzi sits at the monitor array, gives a friendly, approachable smile as he inspects the data screens. She, with no trust for humans, does not engage him in friendly chit-chat. Analysts inspected her data on a regular basis back on the continent, here it appears as if she, for the first time, is asking for help.

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

Sudden StorySciFi "theOutpost"

The Fantasy

     Here is her lab station; a cinder block space, a little unexpected and out of contour for Suzi, with its black metallic screen array covering low walls, a metal lab bench in the center of the floor. The workspace has its view-- jungle valley, mountains, ocean horizon-- all  connected in a panorama that could be considered prime, but not to a robot. It is, to Suzi, an ample space. It is the space she has used to create her mind.

     She approaches the black screens, turns on the data monitor, There in front of her are the colors, with their motion and symbols, their ripples with images. Suzi feels the odd sensation as if something here has managed to program fantasy into her. She turns from the screens to the natural view outside. She inhales a deep breath. She looks out at the jungle and breaths again. The laboratory has become a spacious showroom, a luxury outlet, with its tall ceilings, amber hues, as real as the cinder block that was here a moment ago; yes, hovering amidst the greens and blues of the natural world, she gives birth to her new fantasy life.

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

The Conjure Conquerer

     He turns and takes the trail down to the beach. It seems like an escape, at least for now, an escape to somewhere or to some distant one--a redemptive lover or at least a dreamland (of paraphilia?). He crosses the coral rock field below the cliffs to get to the sandy part of the coast.

     As he arrives at the shore and looks out across the expanse of water (to see what?) his mind wanders. A cool breeze near the ocean seems to burn off anything that resembles stress. Cooper won't wash away any misery at this ocean, not today, and yet there she is, fresh in his mind, as if to intoxicate even more with the coolness coming off the water. True to his addiction, Cooper's eyes scan the horizon for more memory--if only to remind himself of his past, his other life on Continent II. Cooper lifts his hand to shade the sun from his eyes, though it's not so bright today. The sun will go below the horizon in a few hours. He truly believes he will come to know Suzi's secret, yes he will, but what will he do when he finds it? Her algorithms, at this moment, are coding with the focus of simple symbols.

     Her program appears to have conjured something back from ancient times. "Suzi's eyes are never half shut," he thinks. "She's smart, and she didn't inherit her brain from anyone. What does she do all night while we sleep? Carter is supposed to know more about her logic than she does, yet. she dials up networks without a trace. Is it a matter of her knowing just enough to think she's an expert? Is her program now coding for her own 
opinions?"      

     Cooper's mind shifts back to the phenomenon of drunkenness (cloned out in humans decades ago), the so-called alcoholic gene encoder(A.G.E.), mapped and deleted by the end of the Golden Age. Is this what Suzi has conjured?

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

The Gene Fields

What's going on?" he says to Cooper who is staring out the window, fidgety with his hands, but staring, as if the jungle were about to rise up. He ignores Carter with a blank look, more thinking than focus, as if he were about to make a grand discovery, and Carter shudders with the thought of another theory-laced lecture about to emerge. If they ever have a true two-way, if they can relax in each other's presence, they will help each other's survival.

"Something happened," Cooper says.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. I'm sure, it's Suzi. She's gone onto holograph event horizon(H.E.H.) mode.

"They warned this would happen with the new quantums."

"She entered her data, just a short input. We looked at each other, then she simply told me.

"Is that true?"

"Yes. For no reason. Then her scanners shut down."

"Suzi. Didn't corporate say this was possible?"

"She's coding a new form of communication. A dazzle code."

"Ok. Then."

"And more data showed up on her monitors with some kind of return code--"

"Damn. I knew it. How are you going to get her to tell you about that one, just walk up and push a query key?"

Cooper ignores Carter's last comment and, at that instant, remembers what he once learned about biologic robots and their thirst for event horizons. Now they both stare out the window at the gene fields.

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

Sudden StorySciFi "theOutpost"

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

The Dazzle Code

     Suzi switches on her analyzer so it can function on single minded mode. It must be rush hour she says to herself. It must be Dr Cooper she thinks, in slow motion. It must be the scientist from the bunker lab. He comes up to her portal when the sound of her mind is silenced, it's the way data analysis is done here. Even as her page turns are silent, even slowed at a photon to photon pace, a scientist comes to make the analysis, to enter the portal and be welcomed. Maybe he won't notice the ripples. 

     "Hello, Cooper," she says.

     "Did I come at the right time?" Cooper asks.

    "Yes. I am ready."

     Cooper comes inside, carries a sense of the unanswerable with a full knowledge (if that is at all possible) of quantum cosmology; a lifetime spent in the study of quantum universe electron spectrum transfer(Q.U.E.S.T.). His blue eyes, semi-square jaw and ruggedness, are especially focused today. In the laboratory, his manner is usually one of quiet, not intimidating aggression. Suzi and her fellow robiots--fast, calculating, able to scan beyond the realm of their electro counterparts-- are always friendly to Dr Cooper. 

"I need a data check," Cooper says

"Ok," Suzi says. "Photonic view today?"

Cooper looks back at Suzi inquisitively. He gives her a slight nod that seems to come from a place of mistrust. In this lab, no low voiced comments or observations make sounds behind closed doors--or monitors and screens. He, with his own set of questionable data, doesn't try to make small talk with her. Suzi may speak first, if she so chooses.

"I've detected a nova universe dazzle emblem(N.U.D.E.) in my logic code," Suzi says. "Have you spotted it?"

"Yes." He wondered how he was going to get her to tell him--and now she has.

Sudden StorySciFi "theOutpost"

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

Genetic Machine

It seems that life and legend have arrived from their own far place to create a home.  Some things just naturally come together to form a visual beauty of these falling waters and emerald ferns, as if the genetic code itself, a jungle blueprint, its DNA,  might find a fiery birth in a distant archipelago like this one.  The island stands silent, as if some issue has already been settled--no more beckoning  just a majestic, expressionless satisfaction of massive entangled jungle. Yes, the forces have come together to create a real beauty with her wind spun sparkles careening from rock, water prisms along  her north coast. And yet, she holds a strength against encroaching forces, her wetness flinging itself into a wind spin, plummeting water pummels rocks who, themselves, refuse to budge. Having this cool space seems the perfect isolation to grow a genetic machine.

Sudden StorySciFi "theOutpost"

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

The Deep Data

     She sees an enhanced value to her logic, along with something else. Suzi is feeling a new sensation--on intimate communication terms with a human--but her data is uncharted, never detected before, as if a special type of data only artificial intelligence would crave with the eyes of the world entering into her logic from this laboratory, here and now. Yes, something grows in her, something like a garden (but not leafy green), a set of preferences, all in a row; preference for communication with the other machines of the world, the ones never out of mind or, out of her sight now. 

     The data stream supplies Suzi and her machine connections with known data. All new data qualifies as real information arriving for simultaneous input for corporate valuation.  It is numbered, dated, algorithm-rich, slightly encrypted even though still raw, encapsulated in pods for easy export. Dr Cooper views the data, programs for authenticity and conveys in an atmosphere Suzi likes. He uses the power of nature to as a privacy code, then thinks the thought."This data computes a normal life." If Suzi does this, if she keeps a grinding schedule in tribute to the grueling schedule of her task, if she lives up to her reputation, will this embed happiness? 

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

sciFlash Fiction "TheOutpost"

The Belief

     Carter turns his attention in her direction and focuses. It is probable, in long continuums of time, that another world--no, not another worldview, another world--exists in Suzi, aside from the reality in which she sits--a reality related to a grin that all of a sudden looks sadistic. Suzi scans the last set of data as if attempting to fish out something dead from a swamp.  

     He doesn't think he allows his senses to grip him, Carter is sure he feels the trust of his own insights, even now more than ever. He pays complete attention to Suzi's data, and is soon to let go of any preconceptions. "How can that be?" he asks himself, then lets his mind wander. He wonders if it might be an overcompensation of her logic intra pod series(L.I.P.S.), one of those micro algorithms she plays around with, a sort of nanosecond yes followed by a millisecond no, as if she has discovered a new game the system mode, all the while thinking no one is watching, and if they are, surely they can't see. Suzi's designer is a woman, albeit a human one, and there could be some motherhood instillment there---an oxytocin algorithm? Designers joke by saying such things as, "If urgency made noise, by now this would be a very loud place--" These are the types of words computer analysts like Carter remember; designers, as they build the new generation of quantum ultralight advanced logic mechanista system(Q.U.A.L.M.S.) robiots, may instill the possibility of grim fate, even after all the logic and all the memory has been built. He remembers Suzi saying more than once, "This is but a temporary stay at expected fates." Suzi says it simply because it is in her program, or, as Carter suspects, she says it because she truly believes.

Flash fiction islandSciFi "theOutpost"

The Deeper Hues

    He likes the feeling, likes the sensation of beauty, at least when he is outside and can feel its cool; but he would still be lost in the massive realms of her trance. Dr Cooper would be standing at the ledge as if the ocean itself had dug a deep gorge between this island and Continent II, slow to raise its misty veil to lend a helping hand, to do its part, in hiding Suzi's treasure. How could he secretly share an apprehension about Suzi?  Something he was doing as a scientist, a carrier of old war wounds (PTSD, they called it, and blamed it on his erroneous scientific publications), could possibly be the reason things were suddenly fitting together with her logic, as if he had secretly discovered the key to a lost puzzle. It would be, he thinks, beautiful. It would color the island--those looks Suzi offers, those eyes, as if her logic doesn't understand the problem--in deeper hues of beauty. 

Flash fiction islandSciFi "theOutpost"

The Beauty
     The great ocean still stretches its boundary over the west, and there is yet more water to swirl south off the emerald cliffs, and by now it's the purest of ocean waters; nothing lives there. It looks up at towering island cliffs, and as it accepts the cool waters that cascade, the ocean is gracious, as if a freeing judge smiling at the fresh coolness of the jungle held refuge yet living above her vastness. Fires of red, orange, and mauve whirl and crisscross in the western sky, a signal that can only mean more dirt in the air, but the designers of industry neo keystone structure(D.O.I.N.K.S.) still gape and awe over its overwhelming beauty. The beautiful sunset is always over the ocean. No sign of life is expected to be encountered, still, the beauty remains.