Flash fiction ecoSciFi "The Outpost"

The Flexibling

     The problem is found in theFarma, for so many reasons. Suzi has figured it out, or pretends to have figured out--the DNA flexibling of theHumans. She knows theHumans and thePeople, their goals and desires, once hammered out by their own will; they are now affected by genetic coalitions continuing to seek to resolve their differences; theHumans won't, in the final analysis, stand up to the preliminary open DNA standards(P.O.D.S.) of independent, moral worth.

     "Allocation," Suzi commands, as if she were a field general in a war and theHumans were her warriors. She codes theHumans' brains in her algorithms and, when she is finished, seeks full reconciliation through dialog on the future, upcoming commissions. She knows the status when it comes to lack of political philosophy, self-reliance, within theHumans. She accepts her will over them.

     They often stop, as if to allow strong feelings and prayers to divide them even more, long suppressing the demanded ownership of their genes lost in court battles, old disputes of the Golden Age, before they became theHumans. They still yearn for government sponsored bills (languishing in chambers) over property rights and DNA proselytizing. Right now, in this place, government sponsored prescription drug programs continue--always a priority to older voters--an inevitability that led the government bureaucrats to decide which drugs and medical procedures are available to what faction of the population; yes, their own little economic mechanism for resource allocation. Here is the availability to the population (including the unborn population, the prenatal). Here is the imposed gene therapy. This is where theFarma had fought to keep decisions in the hands of doctors and (unsuspecting?) patients; where the political plan of focus groups--those who made the drugs--outweighs the plan for those who take them; here is the launch pad of reckless campaigns, special interest groups winning (winning?)over the actions and will of theHumans, the genesis of the loss of a free market mechanism; the loss of the very place of individual aspiration and want--the kind of want that supplies a feeling of accomplishment, the permission for the starting from scratch, from innovation, the very entranceway to the thrill of competition. Here is where the censors gather, hastening to chasten in horrendous back firings of theHumans, and now, DNA flexible. With no purposeful intention, no foresight or forethought, the loss of knowledge indicates the loss of a particular gene, the beginning of the end of civilization as they know it. Really?

Flash fiction ecoSciFi "The Outpost"

The Hunters

Viruses enter the programming extremely sharp, slicing, as if ninja knife arrays. They appear, in a way, as an excessively preoccupied entity delivered by the (externally motivated?) process of internalization. Their prestige self-sustains them; it becomes probable the future will hold the answer to any of their disordering functions--yes, they'll become more self-centered, nonlocal, bypassing the evolution of entire immune systems--as entities that go down in history marked as the true crossers of boundaries, traversing virtual land bridges. 

The Global DNA Initiatives were, in their own way, part of an archaic internet system monitored by later 20thCentury technology--old companies with infected, overloaded computer systems of (once thought) extinct data, information, once again monitored.  

Suzi codes her next algorithm, thinks of her next one, codes it too. She views the 21stCentury growth explosions, simply, as speed damage; she covers the viruses and hackers; she comes from a place of no sensitive temperaments (where the most data-intensive are the most loss-prone), a place of no praise, no external feedback loops, no entanglements of alleged poor behavior, no parental value, no emotion, nothing unpredictable, nothing unreliable--yes, a pure birth from nothingness. She is busy simply writing code against internet-instilled powers of disease with their own viruses to track. How can it make any difference that she doesn't care about either the finance systems of insurance industries or medical service providers? 

Sudden StorySciFi "theOutpost"

The Feeling

     Before the decline of the Golden Age of Genetics and the rise of theExchanges, the feeling of being a relic remained. TheHumans conceptually used that part of the brain that allowed for sensations through the body, perceptions through mind (and yet, no obvious body of data--or, body of information--in the physical realm, and they always gained, in the decades leading up to theDecline, traction with the idea that the feeling (using its power of control) carries meaning, possibly not for the potential of living the unperturbed life (happiness?) surrounded by well-thought-out independent personal choices, but minimally, something presenting itself in a form that cannot be effectively communicated (much less understood) other than through the means of actually having been physically there. It appears to have taken on a life of its own, believing that theHumans represent a clear and present danger to ...what? The feeling has appeared over the eons to be only for theHumans, seemingly, to bask in individually, not in a bath of relativistic knowledge, but as a unique, unchanging, experience of perceptional sensation much like one would expect a close personal companion to act, and if the feeling could still be perceived, unscathethed by the burden of maintaining levels of presentation to the world--the weight of the balancing act between pleasure and architecture, function and form--it could continue to be perceived in its native form, personal, not subject to criticism or forms of social justice; the feeling could still resonate with the original feelings of the cyberGen curators, much as it did (long before theExchanges) soon after the full mapping of the human genome of the later 20thCentury, enabling the diagnosis of prenatal and pediatric diseases and children with birth defects, allowing for treatments to ensure theHumans' unborn child was healthy and if not, treat the disease in the child or treat a birth defect, whether it is life threatening--or cosmetic. The old feeling would let the conversation continue for decades about theArrays, focuses of gene therapies for adult disorders--stroke, heart disease, neurological, cancer; the feeling was once hope, hope that this was where genetics would have an impact on the future, permitting the concern for why people get those as they grow older; it would have said that it wouldn't happen tomorrow, but sometime soon, DNA's voluntary poverty box, living in a barrel (chromosome?) upended as impoverished data. The feeling would have allowed for continuances--advanced practice genetics nurses and reproductive coordinators, certified genetic counselors, and adult genetic services coordinators, pediatric genetic coordinators, cytogenetics laboratories looking at chromosomes--of the singular knowledge that the way something feels creates its own mental state. It would have created the urge to talk about the pure subjective, the only invention of theHumans exempt from extinction and excused from error, Yes, the feeling once allowed for all of this.

Flash fiction ecoSciFi "The Outpost"

The Wanting

     "Hurry," he says.

     She hurries without fully knowing the meaning of time constraint.  Her code stutters for a moment, then kicks in. The algorithm goes directly, in its own wireless way that arrives at the terminals of the ArtIntelles. An array of algorithms go out from there, spans the globe, then returns. She looks into her remote eyelid monitor(R.E.M.) to see what has returned: the need of assurance that she is here for the well being of ...what?

     "Fine," her computer analyst says.  

     She entrances her gaze to meet Carter's eyes. Suzi stops for a moment. Why does she let her machine vision operate on such archaic fuzzy logic while Carter's's traces are so crystal clear? At this instant Carter is no man-of-the-life-sciences. Her man-made eyes code for system intrigue gendering him(S.I.G.H.). His eyes became eager prisoners. Her true virtual(T.V.) appears, for a moment, to descend from a data cloud. Just in this instance she wants--the sensation of wanting, such an odd feeling--but without blame, or regret.

     "It's Ok," Suzi says.

     He glances clinically, knowing she's intentionally presenting a challenge to his scientific mind. It's her call now, something photonic, only increments above electronic logic in programmability but light years faster in memory from the old models of network enticed yearners(M.O.N.E.Y.), the ones he suspected of getting theHumans in this mess in the first place, the ones that never made an attempt to befriend, much less understand, human intelligence;  somewhere the connectivity had been lost in the nuclear electro-evolution of their intelligence---even they didn't know how they did it. He wonders. Yes, that had to be the fallacy of using genetic algorithm logic systems(G.A.L.S.) with neuro-network meta analog logic embedded systems(M.A.L.E.S.). His perception of her photonic vision changes even as she approaches.  

Flash fiction ecoSciFi "The Outpost"

The Love

     Cooper appears to be so sure of himself, so removed, that Suzi senses his default (mode?) belief in a total absence of rational morality. She checks her retina monitor to assure herself Cooper was still here in the lab station, his adjustment level of getting used to working with the logic of so-called artificial intelligence, and the hope she might make a difference, or so she thought. She notices by scanner this was to be his last assignment with the Art-Intelle for awhile, the hope he wouldn't ever have to work with the neuro-net workers ever again, views it as wishful thinking, reads that deep down he knew it too, and even after all, in the short time they will have together, coding in this jungle, that he will come to appreciate her as a robot (her photonic logic is smoother?), or maybe that he could just trust her logic over the neuro-net workers.  

     She hopes somehow he senses a force of destiny with her. Her hope is emitted as an algorithm of how things are and how he should act, knowing full well that their dispute stems from the compulsive setting up of rival camps, rival thought tradition, each with their own data cloud, ways of approaching even shared data from a deep past. He senses that she needs him, even though he doesn't trust artificial intelligence, but after all, she is the new artificial intelligence, the latest model, yet still, there is something in his human makeup that she needs, it seems more that ever now; and he couldn't fight that awareness in her presence, and the experience of photonic logic had given her abilities theHumans weren't aware of yet. As of now Cooper loves her mind and the way she makes him feel, but he isn't sure if he will have to kill her or love her.  

Flash fiction ecoSciFi "The Outpost"

The Rain 

The sound of rain comes into the workhouse. How relaxing it is--but not for Suzi. The rain comes and goes, it's just another sound to Suzi. It has been part of the ebb and flow of the jungle with all its DNA undergoing some sort of evolution, as if it were part of Suzi's mind, digressing into an archaic prelogical state amidst streams of consciousness. She and her logic have been in high focus, but not because she wants it that way--she was designed to be that way. 

There has been, lately, a gradual loss of some of that focus. 

         Suzi has unintentionally placed herself in an environment natural to humans. Here she finds herself in the presence of a man she appears to be attracted to, seemingly, acting with purpose and thinking rationally (to deal with the environment she has been placed in?). It's all about the environment, though, not Cooper. It's the environment's sounds of the wind, the environment's colors of the forest, and yet, the sound of rushing water, the raindrops on the roof seem to have altered her focus. There is the possibility her attention is following a logic program that tells her that her focus is not needed here; solving problems not necessarily laid down by her final extrinsic agenda regime(F.E.A.R.). Even her readings on the logic of nature--with its inventive bent toward modernity, haphazard quality of productive arguments, moral divergence toward a specified purpose, and creative political pragmatism--seem contrived. This must be, she thinks, what love feels like.

Sudden StorySciFi "theOutpost"

The Remote

     Pacific mountain hamlets hold their own brand of community interests, and these interests vary, seemingly, from island to island, held intact by at least two opposing forces. The genes on this particular island are made up of simple DNA, holding answers in the form of information (no, not data), as if waiting for the arrival of some form of pure science, yet purposeful in their disinterest in politics. It is a pair of forces--much like that of prey and predator where a jungle invites the use of its battlefield platform--that entice, yet warn, of the dangers of demise (to both parties involved), the forces that inform a benefit even to the hunted. Have theHumans bound themselves with the mechanisms of these forces at some place in time in their feeble attempt to define a place as local, discretionary, environment? Or is it that some other entity, some cosmic dark matter, designs its own environment for theHumans from a distant outpost?

Flash fiction ecoSciFi "The Outpost"

The Theorized

     The experimental war rages on. The genes write their truth in words of poetry, not symbols. If Suzi plans to know art until death knows her, it's connected to her life in this forest, a forest that continues to survive even in the teeth of global death.  This forest, this jungle for the experimenters holds no gods and, no faith for friendship. The jungle stays in the moment to be looked at from the front of the lab building, below, the pristine ocean. It stays with its own phase transitional thoughts,  "Clouds have darkened the theorized horizons."

     The ancient times of natural agents allowed physical systems a discrete time evolution, once attributed to spirit of plants. now described in wave functions by genetic engineers interested in chemical constituents, enabling contact with cells of the human body, holding DNA in packages of chromosomes and probabilities of their own phase transitions. The true effects of these plants lay obscure for centuries, partially because of the lack of calculations of the effect of the actual event of taking the measurements. Suzi first measured the forest as unmechanical,  an unemotional nature with no obvious pangs or showy feelings of uncomfortableness (a fluctuation state that would never allow for the caring of someone). Suzi has recently become the entity that never does anything because she is expected to, and yet she is becoming the emotional one, further clouding her perception of the true role the experimenter plays in the experiment. Does anyone care that Suzi simply sits and waits for her next phase transition, her next entanglement empowering her to represent and perform operations on her own data in the form of unarticulated, contemplated attachments (a portrayal of love?)? In a radiance of photons, Suzi lives.

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Grace Liquifies

No one would hear her noises, not tonight as the two shadows moved in on each other with impossible serenity. Grace liquefied into a ghostly dance. Her miniscule effort  focuses and faces her little nemesis, who stares back with his own set of nerves. She is, beyond all else, driven; she wishes only to be left alone, to return to her banyan grove. The universe, her universe, suddenly feels slow and cold, distant from everything. There is the shift, a shift at the blink of an eye; there are the tall trees and their fresh smell; there is the deep lush jungle valley; there is the rising river and its one directional rush. She leads her prey back into her corner, redirects him with a rising of her back feet so fluid even the cold light of the moon couldn't expose her.  Once she is satisfied, she returns to a more focused battle, without a pause, picks up her prey and dumps it on the jungle floor before her. The body lands with a surprising quiet, a bright tropical red streaks below her. She increasingly feels nothing, as if a weight had been driven from her heart. She can return now. According to the distant horizon, it was still early.

She has enough time to make it back to the banyan grove before sunrise. This day she will not invite the intruder into her world. This day she will forget the tides of battle and rest on the mountain. Simply a decision to vanish, and she was gone. 

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