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.