Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

The Logic

         It's his challenge to Com:Trax. Cooper stands erect, checks the futility of silence at this point and its deathly consequence. He stares across theJungle, attempting to clear his mind. He views the   

query from Com:Trax, the one formally submitted, the one requiring a formal reply. He is, at this moment, concerned about authority.

  How can this be, his mind asks. Why does he all of a sudden care about authority? 

Thoughts in his head seem to flow a little slower. The authoritarian system, Com:Trax, with its  calm, timeframe requests and unhurried demeanor, obviously not only expects an answer, but expects one soon. When it asks these types of questions about Suzi, it does not expect a data reply such as, “I'll get back to you on that. Can you wait?”  

         “Request received,” Cooper says. 

         Com:Trax hesitates, waiting for a definitive answer. Cooper's nervousness resonates, but he remains in control. 

         “She will reply, in reality, when her data is up and running. She's put herself into self-exile, and she won't transmit. She appears to be in “fire and water” mode.

         He moves closer to the giant screen to get a better look at the legality of the request. His tactic, obviously, is to set up a waiting game. If he and Suzi are constantly transmitting data, why do they need an answer to this question? Why such a surprise query?

         Com:Trax, in its own way, remains persistent. I am sorry but we will need an answer to the issue of Suzi's want. Is that possible?”

        “Yes, we can do that. There must be a simple explanation.”

         Dr.Cooper puts off the most powerful network on Earth with the power of his own reputation. Turning off the screen, he doesn't believe his own thoughts. He has wanted to keep Suzi all to himself, but to delay Com:Trax? The thoughts in his head, converging closer to his prefrontal lobe (are they refuted distortions?), each coated with, what seems like, an artifact of faulty thinking, each inclusive of a desire for Suzi (even more than he knew), and to stray from the conclusion that she desires him as well, he forces himself to remember she has been hard-driven to want nothing but data at theOutpost; the ease of photonic quantum programming; and, inside his own counter-factual beliefs, he finds more evidence of breaking the silence (does he know the thoughts before they came up?), where he pleads with himself,  "Cooper, please come to your senses. Suzie is a tool of Com:Trax, a piece of architecture. Your feelings for her have been elicited not by Suzi, but by one program Com:Trax instilled in her. It's not you.” Here is the place where Cooper knows he's human and she is tactical, where understanding "the why" doesn't matter, where her formal language is beyond ideology, beyond the logic of and:or:both; this is truly about her innate traits, her self-written artificial meta pragmatic love of graphic intellectual  companionship(S.W.A.M.P._L.O.G.I.C.). This is not about him.