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"

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

theMarketplace

     The market keeps theCellulose from the populations of the world and, secretly, distributes to wooden warehouses, the ones owned by millions of the childfree analog villager entities(C.A.V.E.) on XContinent. So, the marketplace algorithm masking all(M.A.M.A) thinks, they would want to hoard the DNA; well ok, with the further idea of presenting, as if stockpiling were the next step in the government regime entity quest underwriting instigations regressing enterprise(R.E.Q.U.I.R.E.), the mandate that, someday, will separate order from unrest.This is the way the XContinent Regime will address protest in its own global streets, economically and statistically, the manner in which they will regulate, hiding vast stores of DNA product in hamlets; placed in such obscurity, they will not remember they even exist. In the decades leading up to these times, they preferred the subject of DNA remain a constant subject of rumor in the business of import and export. theHumans producing consuming and, yes, trying to trade demand too much of theMarketplace algorithm and, presently, they, the entire population of XContinent got their due for simply wanting too much. Why does the human tendency to speculate and hoard necessisarily expect prices (money coming in?) to increase? The early, individualism, settlers of  ZContinent didn't seem to have this problem. How can a simple idea of later 20thCentury, collective bargaining have been so mean and greedy with the general populations; to create short term profit by virtual short term shortages--to want so much money and, thus it seems, attention, or worse, admiration? People should know how a concept as simple as marketplace, should work, and that, keeping information from the marketplace that responds (really?) to 25 million DNA farmers--the lack of information--becomes the source of even more rumors and, yes, more speculation, as if a wild animal running loose. It seems, as DNA production data remains unpublished, the symbol of a brewing commodity inflates. "Let's see the import and export data and, for now, there is damage to the computer system for the very simple reason of....what? 

     How much of the potential rise in prices is driven by worries the world is running short of DNA, if anyone can even measure the shortage; if they'd only stored the cellulose in better warehouses, tried to prevent the floods and fires (how?), not gotten involved the idea of strategic reserve, or data on inputs of goods and services.  Couldn't they have unleashed something else, all at once, besides DNA hoarding? It is highly possible to think of DNA being stashed throughout the world (through a Continental Trading Company?) or anything, creating a tighter market as production falls and demand increases. Think of ZContinebnt with its own artificial short supply; even as a wide investigation with little ability to gather DNA intelligence, various planting directors overseeing planting algorithms(D.O.P.E.) overviews production operations on thousands of islands. Smaller output and higher costs cause even more uncertainty and, swings in theMarketplace promote an outcry for government DNA produces and users from around the world. Suppliers could have, governments think, gone the other way. DNA, the most volatile of all exchange traded commodities, enters its own vicious cycle of accumulation and (market share?) health risk. It only waits to explode.

Sudden StorySciFi "theOutpost"

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

The Enchanted

     Now, in this forest, lay the agent of any heart; theTigress has become the most divine and effective of natural agents. Those statesmen of ZContinent, with their talkative analysis pawned off as wisdom and, questioned by humanity, became unable to maintain peace; their attempts to bring peace through genetic engineering still failing. The Humans, it seems, continue to have their chances; they entice with sporadic flares of social greed, economic upheavals, all the while promising to turn back toward, or at least heed, Nature.  They feel no need to direct special attention to these jungle plants, and yet, nothing here is infallible. Still, the sense of movement against the better forces, Nature's secret recipes, the ones that have been known for their wondrous effects for eons, seems always in the opposite direction, chopping and cutting, until each plant no longer lives (even further aiding the forces of demise), minimizing the efficiency of the work of realm spirit transients(W.O.R.S.T.) within the plants; survival, it seems, remains held at bay in this true enchanted forest.

Sudden StorySciFi "theOutpost"

Sudden StorySciFi "theOutpost"

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

The Fortress 

     The island outpost remains more than a remnant of what nature once was-- a jungle deep in observation of life itself. Even so, the jungle bares no mantra of violence (it could if it wanted to); it stands as the window of the world, alone every morning. Its body has changed though, permanently swelled. 

     Beautiful dawns creep past sleepy plants; light filters through the high canopy. The jungle floor, tiled by time, cold, stays within its comfort zone under a ceiling high leaves, walls of sloping sunbeams. Ancient trees, likely, held their own as tiny fortresses, under which uncontrollable events, seemingly, stood no chance.  

      Suzi concentrates on the task in front of her, needing no inspiration to push (or, pull).  Suzi's lasers have spoken to Cooper from the deepest center of her need, and Cooper has listened.  She has become determined not to let her logics analog program(L.A.P.) rob her of her spirit to feel the urge to leave the lab station. She won't have to.  Her virtual intern virtue analog computing internet online user system (V.I.V.A.C.I.O.U.S.) program gives her everything she needs.  She, as yet, has no entrenched attitudes; no refusals of task. She moves, as she wishes, around the lab complex freely. There is no break with tradition, she has none to break with. Still, she's not concerned with dignity, or (she hasn't given it any thought), humanity--she's going, in her own way, through a shift in thinking. She plans to sense the environment surrounding the quarters for its comfort and will scan its perimeter as an intimate setting, intimate, that is, for a fortress. 

Sudden StorySciFi "theOutpost"

The Reward

Before re-entering into her data banks, Suzi senses more wave oscillations, still vibrating with subatomic activity, feeling moment of awareness, in increments of concepts , as if there were a whole brain engaging an analog event, a quanta lightbulb. This must be, she thinks, how humans acquire new data, their information; thoughts will continue after neurons (and their networks) energize bright sensations felt with feelings of acquired information--without necessarily knowing it--as data that works through and finally arrives as another bright sensation, the reward. This is human.  

Suzi takes the latest retro-learning she's acquired and stores it, neatly, near the bright sensation area of her solars; she creates a feeling of accomplishment, her own silent reward, every nanosecond until she gets what she really wants: pure, simple information.

  "That feels good," Suzi says, and by all accounts, it does. She senses with the expectation of more  good feelings (humans are driven by good feelings as a drawn out process, a slowness, one increment above stupidity), Her data is instantaneous and, simultaneous. She would like to try it again.

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

"Destiny rules the passion"

The Entity

        "I want," she says to Cooper. "You more than any human gentle--Ben my logic."

Her softness touches his face. It's new to him, these words not prompted by logic. Suzi's eyes begin to show, a widening, a warmth for him.  He turns up the audio on her monitor.

"Ok," he says, thinking about world's physical beauty. Tracking Suzi's thoughts with his, he sees bright green across the screen--the clearest of greens because nothing lives there--the brightest, from the nitrogen and iron oxides. Her spacetime goes beyond the water, and through a darker purity sees the sediments, the ocean floor. Nothing lives there; that's why it is so clear. Cooper tries to talk to Suzi, though he is just an icon on her screen, and in one moment (a nanosecond?) they seem to have a perfect merging of minds. She is, he knows, programmed to cooperate with her cooperation online logic data neutralizing entity sympathy system(C.O.L.D.N.E.S.S.). Cooper also knows the first six letters of that program spells his name.  

         "Ok," she says.

         Cooper smiles; he sees Suzi very secure as a life form, acting on no subconscious desires, adapting perfectly (helped along by a conversion process that is programmed by the very data she collects). It would be so easy for Cooper to think, "No computer could do the work she's doing; maybe she's not a computer any more."  She could become, given time, the emotional stable woman he once desired. It seems so easy to love a woman as he loves science. It is possible, given the probabilities of an infinite universe, that Suzi has self-acquired a digital analog brain inclusive with prefrontal lobe; the one that took The Humans billions of years to inherit, the one that, as we speak, diminishes their viability on Earth, the one built from DNA, the very DNA that decides what rather than who. Can it be hardly outside of the entity realm system(H.O.O.T.E.R.S.) that human genes have never mingled in this forest? Something here has captured itself. The Humans have taken everything Nature gave, thinking of using the information wisely (to their benefit?), and now an entity enables itself to take evolution directly in its own hands, for its own purpose, the way a creature reaches for something forbidden--enchanted creature, unenchanted world.

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

The Fallacy

The dimming mist of the mountain (a precursor to a steam vented magma crack?) rises with the sun. This, now, is the place a volcanic explosion could occur today, sheer stubbornness of cliffs keeping the mountains on due course, bringing them higher and higher. Without fanfare, any desire to turn back is futile; time,in all its complexities, simply moves forward; even the pull of nature fails to circumvent sheer elimination of the human race.

Hours pass. Finally, Cooper and Carter arrive back at the lab station. 

        "Carter, you will never understand Suzie until you stand beside her," Cooper says, taking the last few steps, raising more sweat. "Working with her is like being on the edge of a deep gorge."

         "And what do you find in this deep gorge?"

         "Well, anything can come up-- you can't find something if you don't look."  Cooper's mind disappears into a foggy mist for a moment.

          Carter's eyes widened as if expanding the target for an expected presumptive strike.  

          Suzi is built on logical structure. She hopes for nothing. Cooper likes her hunches, but he is a scientist and knows the fallacy of self-imposed gene expression, but still, he hopes this time it gives him overpowering feelings. maybe a haunting, a familiarity to nothing; soon his conscious mind will remember.

Sudden StorySciFi "theOutpost"

The Machinery

Cooper sleeps, feeling the warmth of the huge bunk, far enough away from the mainframes. Suzi sleeps nearby, the coolness of the evening, soothing her solar cells still warm from the previous day. The inside of the lab quarters is roomy, a view of the forest tapers up the jungle valley. Suzi's olfactory senses the fragrances, the forest; her silence views the instant presentation of molecular structures on her screen; the old supply depot--with its history of camouflaged jackets, khaki greens of ancient times--surrounds them. 

As sheer beauty is unmistakeable, so supple, synthetic collagen stretched over high cheek bones of the purest titanium dioxide. Nature's design, it seems, never got it correct, and, Suzi isn't an immediate product of Nature's patterns (like the cellulose), never; she is beyond the last manifest--the most advanced leaves and plants--as machinery creates deep inside cells left by previous machinery left behind to protect massive structures yet to come. Events settled slow--four billion years in the making of this jungle. Suzi's data, even in sleep, continually indicate the rate as one increment above stupidity. Yes, she has arrived; her blue eyes peer into the forest, waiting, watching, her lasers computing. Her DNA patterns remain just outside the realm of human understanding. 

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

The Particular Particles

Digital computers never stop. The zeroes and ones don't go away. Bits combine into larger forms, numbers and letters, become words. Suzi checks her game instilled theory algorithm(G.I.T.A.), views her database for earth's most recent success-unsuccess-choice knowledge systems(S.U.C.K.S.), prints out. The data will make its best attempt at a convergent unilateral system solution(C.U.S.S.), hunting with  functional analysis demand(F.A.D.) inside its variably owned infinite dimension (V.O.I.D.). When Suzi accesses the server mainframes they will report to her as if a new born baby, instant toddler, her child, just on the verge of making sense so its mother's wave functions are able to describe in mathematical terms (the only extant language of The Humans, and still going strong) the quantum state of this particular system of particles. This is the normal behavior of young data--random spin; a direct, almost happy momentum, a matter-of-fact presence with spacetime hiding in it pajamas so as not to reveal its true momentum. Suzi visualizes, or imagines, little capsules of Mexican jumping beans, the ones that kept children amused, it seems, for centuries. More data will come. 

Sudden StorySciFi "theOutpost"

The Downpour

The exact time of morning isn't certain now. The first rays of sunlight find their way through the greenery. The dripping jungle feels its lushness outside the lab building, and, it will rain again tonight and feel another hard downpour, again more heard than seen. The jungle never escapes from this drenching, not this night, not any night. It holds an ancient secret, an agreement bartered in the very bowls of her darkest night, deepest valley.

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

"Articulation of the problem is a beginning" -p.d.adams

The Design

Standing at the workstation with her algorithms on full computational mode, she hears Cooper's voice, "Optical photonic computers see humans as strange." True, Suzi is a cadmium, titanium oxide design, too heavy for security work by all accounts. She was commissioned into the medical profession because of her quickness. For a while, identifying rogue malignant lesions (the last persistent artifact of ancient human disease) in young patients made Suzi behavior driven She was learning all she could about digital enhanced fitness reclusion of strangers' traits(D.E.F.R.O.S.T.)--the times and conditions required for fitness loss due to human analog behaviors instigating termination systems(H.A.B.I.T.S.)

"Sure," Carter says. "She can perform trillions of calculations."

"That's a relatively normal function for a robot," Cooper says.

"That's true, except …"

"Except?"

"Her simultaneity."

"Simultaneity?"

"Yes. Her crystal circuitry allows her to perform functions instantaneously."

"So what's the problem?"

"She's not programmable. She operates on only the configuration given her according to the computational elements of her optical logic." 

"Which means?"

"She recognizes patterns as humans do--her parallax circuitry resembles ours--the difference is, her speed."

Compared to Suzi, even the brightest Human mind is one increment above stupid. She lives and breathes the sub molecular world.

Sudden StorySciFi "theOutpost"

The Worthy

     Nature lets Suzi communicate with the jungle's primal DNA on her own terms, holding her own against analytics and the likes of Suzi. Nature's knowledge of gene frequencies across eons of generations holds close to her bosom interaction and entanglements as if all entities were related. And at what cost? Can it be fate, she thinks, or simple destiny allowing natural selection to understand biological relativity 

(behavior of relatives), as influence peddling for evolutionary gatekeepers of individual fitness? 

     Which one is it? Nature has had four billion tears to work out this particular algorithm--to stand up to Suzi's so-called analytics. After all this time one would think Nature would offer up some kind of certainty principle. History has demonstrated some advances--gene frequency increases within populations (preferably genes that encode fitness-enhancing traits). And were there some declines? There's always been those incessant genes that lower individual fitness--never entirely eliminated (yes, this is part of the bio-uncertainty principle). 

     Nature never talks about her mistakes, even as Humans advance onto their own paradoxical demise. Each and every mutation, at least in the eyes of Nature, is placed at the right moment in time.The only recourse for mistakes is to conjure up new, hypothetical genes to see if they prompt behavior to enhance fitness; or, maybe the closely related relatives lower the fitness of the carrier simply by odd displays of behavior, or, Nature may simply increase the gene's frequency in a population because of career carrier relatives. Nature may show anger in ways only she knows; in ways that make no sense to the computer literate; and in the end she shrugs knowingly over spacetime at her force algorithms--the force that drives all behavior--of kin selection, winning little battles in the war against natural selection. Yes, Nature feels satisfied. 

     Suzi will be a worthy opponent.