Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

The Privacy

Cooper ponders Carter's s question and goes deeper into his desire to be cooperative, where he believes he will find a rational component of thought, a thought to muster a defense for Suzi. Cooper and Carter face off, bur Suzi is obviously the flashpoint of the present debate, the one that at this very moment takes inspiration from theNature for the advancement of her own quantum programming, the one that employs physical phenomena as code. “There are assignments,” Cooper says as he and Carter approach what seems to be a new realm of self-interest. The confrontation emerges. "She is doing her assigned task, I believe.” 

        “Is it to synthesize something natural?” Carter asks, not noticing a sudden heat of conversation has triggered a human node sensor--implanted micro processor informal systems hierarchy(I.M.P.I.S.H.).  

        "No, She only employs natural DNA to compute.”
        “Not a machine of pleasure?”

  A half smile comes to Cooper's face as he remembers Carter is his friend or, at least he thought he was. He looks out the window into a daylight of jungle, still wondering about Carter and his rationale, pondering Suzi and the last time he saw her, the last time he looked into her eyes, wondering if whatever he said could be kept within the confines of his own world, not the private, personal world theHumans relinquished so long ago—privacy vanished off the planet as if once virtual, a dream, just another member of the ghosts of animal life, once-upon-a-time wild on earth. This, Cooper thinks, is the true motivation; this jungle will improve its own environment after the history books--the ones that told him, as a child, about what was once considered human--have gone extinct with the narrow rationalities of self-interest operators, judgements on which theHumans held as gospel in a strict spirit of subjectivity.”I can't say,” he says. “Can anyone?

“When she's finished, I will prove her value.”

  “Yes,” says Cooper, and with not even a glance, the sound of value seems so vague. Even now, at this stage in history, the worth of things human (the worth of any human, for that matter), the worth of a history still records life on earth as such a technical place and allows early computers to be pitted against each other for the sole purpose of claiming something of value to theHumans, only to be turned off when not needed--a simple flip of a switch, then back on to obtain more things of value.”Ok, then, I'll be waiting.”

        “Sure,” Carter answers. He was thinking that his friend would counter his ideology to possess wealth, the amount of energy to obtain it, the acquisition of convenience, necessity, luxury with the smallest quantity of caring. The study of ideas, is surely not the way. You shouldn't, he thinks, believe what the group believes because of shared experience. You shouldnt, unless you want to end up like theHumans. You just shouldn't.