Sudden StorySciFi "theOutpost"

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

The Proximity
     That year when she came to theOutpost, it was as if everything had changed, everything that was ever known. It felt that Suzi could learn the secretive, long-lived appropriate behaviors one individual has for another; it felt as if proximity in all its iterations of meaning, significance, had disappeared, not caring about when, if ever, it returned. It was, in a deeper sense, geography. With no geography she would easily have remained as an obscure fembot, just another robot far from failures and misgivings, formal attachments, far from the apathy of caregivers.
     Loss of responsiveness to the communicative effort, the global disease of primary interest, with its altering effect on the others, views the global village through its one-way mirror, as if some interrogation were about to take place. It is the geography. The problem had its beginnings among the old scientists in their archaic universities as a fatal mixture of research and diagnostic tools with mix-ups of clinical impressions and classification--not evident to all alive or present at the time. Those scientists, offering insecurity as a theory as opposed to research-driven classification (leading to its own form of ambiguity) while former efforts in DNA theory was still evolving in the research literature (the library?) beyond the now defunct, useless, laboratories; old crusty urges to conceptualize the problems of the medical profession and geography as synonymous; all this with laboratory procedures used less and less to assess patterns of behavior, both at the human and molecular level. It was geography and the prevailing winds of medicine--the rise of the pharma intercontinental gargantuan system(P.I.G.S.)--that created theOutpost as a more essential laboratory in the jungle, and it was a perfect storm of witch's brews that urged Cooper and Carter to this place as well, this primal jungle in the the middle of the ocean, where they (or, some thing) bring the oldest known planetary DNA to functional life in an attempt to correct sequential generations of experiments (and, experience) by theHumans, the ones with their own long separation with no hope of a total reunion. Who accepts the laws of nature as the supreme system of compliance for the simple undying perpetuation of ...what? All this, and never knowing the true, unfamiliar, stranger in the room is, and always has been, geography.

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

Sudden StorySciFi "theOutpost"

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

Sudden StorySciFi "theOutpost"

Sudden StorySciFi "theOutpost"

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

Sudden StorySciFi "theOutpost"

Sudden StorySciFi "theOutpost"

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

The Cycle

     Cooper thinks, in retrospect, that he's done his best. Never, for him, has there ever been less certainty. What possible good would another moment thinking about her be? Is he being a scientist, the one his parents always wanted him to be, or a dreamer? Scientist, at least that's what they think, and yet, he still has some convincing to do. He has his own ideas about Suzi and he keeps them, mostly, to himself. Suffice it to say. Have the courage of your own convictions, remember what's important, to satisfy yourself (that's what they say, isn't it?)

     He grabs the data sheet, with Suz's latest code, and moves to the adjacent room through the laser detectors to a meta-materials work station where Carter is viewing Suzi's data on a screen.

     "Hello," Cooper says, surprised to see Carter so focused on the monitor; wide, curious, inquisitive eyes staring, his brow furrowed with deep trenches. Cooper detects that, for Carter, his hello hasn't registered. Carter seems to have noticed some inconsistency, whether from the new data or the ones retrieved from Suzi's mainframe, and here, Cooper approaches with a friendly "hello" as if hollering across a yard fence while watering.

     "Hello," he responds, as the sound of worry resonates in his voice. This data will always be new, this code Suzi conjures shows properties engineered (by who? or, what?); even now showing signs of few or no properties found (with its odd structures of normal composition, and who codes for these small irregularities in structure to create such huge effects anyway?) in the natural world, supposedly, to counter the effects of the immense local magnetic field. It's just a matter of time, it seems, that Suzi takes on all the characteristics of a feral child and he, her computer analyst, flips on the screen to see the work of a beautiful robot who has coded in isolation from the time of her very first algorithm. Carter knows Suzi cares little of human care, devoid of society, and for all manner of reason has no intention of learning the nuances of the human language, especially in its question (questionable?) form. She is aware of the idea of parenting, and it has come under scrutiny, as of late (for decades now, literally), but she is unable to wrap her algorithms around the idea of child abandoned retro-entities(C.A.R.E.). She will be the one who intervenes, breaking the cycle, ignoring the ever-so-humanoid trait of reciprocal desire and the facial analog manipulation entity(F.A.M.E.). 

     Suzi, in essence, is under the directive of Carter, and Carter is worried. Carter, along with the global computer analyst societal technicians(C.A.S.T.) will look for anomalies and do anything they can--the global village depends on them, as do all theHumans, to identify and report new and suspected terminal yearnings(N.A.S.T.Y.), conjured as if from mere nothingness, meta-materials, the ones from the optic and photonic computers (biobots?) in the field. Suzi may be an undetected specialist in auxetic meta-materials right here at theOutpost, she may even be coding a cloaking device, but she is ultimately Carter's responsibility, and Suzi will be tracked by him, and him alone, for sure. She must know at least that much.

Sudden StorySciFi "theOutpost"

Sudden StorySciFi "theOutpost"

Sudden StorySciFi "theOutpost"

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

Sudden StorySciFi "theOutpost"

Sudden StorySciFi "theOutpost"

Sudden StorySciFi "theOutpost"

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

Sudden StorySciFi "theOutpost"

The Exchanges

     

     They have tortured the future to its own eventual oblivion, stopping at nothing that doesn't resemble superficial thinking. It's the normal chatter around the DNA Exchanges, boosting DNA capacity and government accountability, collections of old defense department reports, irregularities, allocations, arrays of spectrum assignments in various languages (both human and computer), their codes double-embedded within encrypted external main frames. DNA water, mankind's last hope; valuable commodity, made rare like so much gold of the later 20thCentury, who's shiny metal never touched the fingers of these humans. They stand on the brink, outlining a more aggressive approach to curbing levels of chemicals in the DNA water. They view themselves and the government algorithms, rumored to exist at the exchanges, in the various survival sectors (out there in the sun-baked regions of villages, the government is forced on foot), and believe the health agencies want something for them--push new measures to lift DNA production, shore up the public sector gene therapies, do something. They are about at wit's end when they hear rumors of government action beyond initial sampling of more perchlorate found in a DNA watershed in SectorIII (the government's first announcement of rocket fuel in DNA water). It's presence, when consumed, is long implicated in thyroid inability to absorb iodine, a condition spreading hormonal deficiencies. The perchlorate issue signals a separate effort by the government to attempt to barter new limits on their own culpability in the substances harming individual terminals(S.H.I.T.) zone. Other regulatory organizations, so public relations minded, advance their own separate efforts to set limits, deciding from board rooms in skyscrapers, seemingly, to show a more caring attitude toward theHumans. The various sector governments are quick to have difficulties--almost instantaneous--in their concerted effort at digesting fallout from the collapse of a century-long Golden Age of Genetics, that era that usually finds the answers but now knows the mistakes of its ways in the harried race of DNA sequencing of the human genome without giving due diligence to protein chemistry and signaling mechanisms. Health ministers predict the future of the DNA water with its 15 parts per million perchlorate embedded in the double helix; sensing their own confidence, they announce their game changing information, yet, slow to elicit a change of standards. How long, now,  will it be until the DNA Exchanges move from guidelines to a mandate? 

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

Sudden StorySciFi "theOutpost"

Sudden StorySciFi "theOutpost"

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

     The Global Eyes

     Suzi views casually, checks her side monitor. "I see," she says,"globalization has crested today."

     "I believe that's true," theReason answers."My proof-checking indicates so."

     "Are you sure?"

     Suzi scans, secretly, the database, server networks on ZContinent under The DNA Cartel. Her network quickly responds with trading, pricing, reporting on the various global microsystems and, (synchronizing data mash-ups) goes interactive with the data coming from the market analyzing DNA(M.A.D.) sector; now appearing limited and embedded, incompletely focused, perishable with the underlying trading system, data shows trade ministers in talks, revealing their individual exotic try at altering credibility, safety standards, genetically modified food, assessing chemicals in beef and poultry feed; the data has minimized the uncertainty principle, emerging even stronger with non-organic monotonic analogy detonators(N.O.M.A.D.).

     "Confirm," theReason says, with its monotonic sound-extracted wave emitter regressor(S.E.W.E.R.).

     "It looks as if trade organization world algorithm regression data(T.O.W.A.R.D.) is the last to signal," Suzi says, while double-checking her workstation main screen.

     "The report's original author remains unknown," theReason says. "Sectors use exchange rate policy to distort trade--yes."

     At the arrival of more data, Suzi substantiates the rise in subsidy survival, scans the currency battles and energy battles raging between sectors. "I'm viewing the extinction of globalization," she says.

     "Confirmed."

Sudden StorySciFi "theOutpost"