Flash fiction ecoSciFi "The Outpost"

The Realizers

     Suzi is one year old today, technically, a year-old history book. She has come far beyond the ancient Greek civilizations, becoming so interested in the promotion of self-interest, that Dr Cooper finds her subjective view at odds with the sacred scientific method of the later 19thCentury. When she arrived at theOutpost she appeared to have only one outside interest, images of utility(I.O.U.), as if an ancient artesian iconographer(A.I.), were built into her platform as image writer--according to tradition, the first iconographers of the ancient world painted images of a deity whose death marked the first day of ...what? She remain a firm believer in the use of patterns to gain wisdom. She'll always gain wisdom, but lately she's gained something more, a human trait beyond coding mosaics and murals, beyond the most recognizable (at least to them) of portable panels, the portraits, something to add more pizzaz to her informational processing devices, making her some uncontested behaviorally urged retroactive biobot(S.U.B.U.R.B.).  She is not prone to devotional objects and tends to broaden in a different, rational direction, as if she were an icon gradually becoming more realistic, evolving into a secular artist; her concern (in the area of decision-making) for risk, all gone; her uncertainty principles dissipated.

     "Suzi," Dr.Cooper says. "Happy birthday!"

     She accepts his greeting wholeheartedly (for a robot). She reviews her historical data algorithms and prepares their operations. She sees strength in icons, stylized figures, always a symbol for something, symbolism in its sharpest form, even able to represent the opposite of Darwinism, whatever that is (communism?). She should know--yes, icons always disregard the illusion of space and, are not always pretty, just devotional--they are never painted to be outwardly beautiful and, visually alone, they represent nothing. I am, she thinks, built just as well, instructional, contemplative,painted to inspire, to imitate; built to remember the virtues of spaceless bodies, to increase  love for the unknown and awaken intelligence from within. "I must, unlike that," Suzi thinks, "have been meant to be real."