ecoSciFi "The Outpost"

       

Dr. Cooper looks into his computer screen with solid, composed expectation. He feels, for the moment, like a wild-eyed college student in the computer lounge. His reverie vanishes; it is improbable to feel curiously comfortable with Suzie--she's beautiful, soft and naive about her intelligence, a selection of new generation of computers scientists and physicists would say, She has what it takes to save the human race, she does. 
The science world already, secretly, has an odd feeling being closely involved with her brand of artificial intelligence.
Cooper looks out the window, thinks again of his college days. He does good science, by accident; he plays god with his genetics; he runs his gels, the genetic code, far from the misery, hunger, far from the everyday stresses of life. He does his work. Who cares if he is neither fast nor intelligent. "Hey," he says to Suzi. He is a little shocked at his urge to get Suzi to speak. "Yes," Suzi says. "Did you get the data? Did it come in on time?" Suzi sits perfectly still, for a moment, as if looking nowhere. She thinks to herself. She sits at her station the way one would sit in a pew during church service. She says, "I have to search the augmented reality maps (A.R.M.) for a few more days." "What happened?" "I'm not sure exactly. I have some kind of interference program." "Damn." "It's crept in, I think. My maternal codes." "What?" "My brain. I have to give myself a look." "How?" "I'm not sure---some fantasy impoverished childhood teacher interference off network (F.I.C.T.I.O.N.)code. ComTrax ordered it. I need you to stay silent on this." "OK. What did they want?" "It's only that I needed to scan it, and they need for me to tell them what I find, truthfully. It may be--what the problem has been all along. About getting the data" "Then," Cooper says. "Then they will help you get back on task." "They say they will make that decision. They say they want to hear my findings first." Cooper looks at Suzi, who does not speak again. "You're a robot. You didn't have a childhood," he says.

flash fiction-ecoSciFi "The Outpost"

A Lonely Nest


The loneliness is always present, sometimes cryptic, and Cooper's sense of home, however distant, always feels temporary. At times the lonely feeling arrives for a short visit, with soft noises shifting through the jungle darkness, then retreats for the secrets to remain guarded. Sometimes a cold smoldering of mist rises above the canopy in the moonlight causing an ebb inside Cooper. In a blink, the amount of time eternity took to build this forest, the loneliness pans out across the valley as if the forest isn't there, or had never been. Even in its flickers and shadows, the jungle holds no pretense of fantasy. As complete blackness of the night holds desperate struggles, the loneliness plays along, but Cooper doesn't wish it away the way the memory of a loss would be wished away. Competition in sport is as full of loneliness as the strugglers in this jungle, where winners rest. There is no silence here in this canopied place, no silence within his heart either. There are only gradients of loneliness and noise. The constant hum of the jungle can be interrupted by only intense sound, even amidst the unrecognizable, the loneliness stalls and something different comes to life, no smells, just pure essence that appears from behind the banyans, or just under the green canopy. Anything living here knows the meaning of these timeless apparitions of loneliness, yet no data has emerged from the chilled darkness, the inner sanctum of this rain forest. This timeless place keeps its secrets.
.

flashFiction-ecoSciFi

Gadget Implant Devices

The steady rains were gone for now, and he could imagine the feeling migratory birds once had.  It should, he thinks, be rewarding; it could feel so weightless, like a seabird, to simply have the truth. To announce to the Scientific International Consortium Kinetics (S.I.C.K.), I did it, you had other plans; I beat all you bastards. There could be, he thinks, a beautiful silence in its aftermath, like a the sounds being detected in the Black Gulf area, nothing. He now could take science, as it were, into a parallel world; he could ignore the noise of ignorance and finally listen to the ghosts--dolphin, the whales, the seabirds-- all--the smart ones that first got the world's attention so long ago (it will never care again, it will never try to save anything), announcing to other consortiums, and to anyone who subscribes to--gadget implant device distributed yearly(G.I.D.D.Y.)--We thought he was gone forever, we thought his experiments were failures. We thought Suzi would help us.

flash fiction--ecoSciFi"The Outpost"

Brat Code

She is, Cooper has come to the conclusion, someone he can talk to. She is precisely human, no more no less. Cooper steps up to the monitor and, after a slight second thought, takes in a breath, and braces himself. 

"I assume, you've read the data," Jenna says.

"I have. Yes."

"Doesn't it make you think twice?

"About Suzi?"

"Who else?"

"Yes. I've thought twice."

"She doesn't even pretend to care, according to data."

"Do you think she's going to tell us anything about herself, something we don't already know?" he says. "It's Suzi who writes her own code from her own biodata, mixed in with some of her own fantasy about space." 

"It's a strange combination."

"So ComTrax seems to think."

"It's an endless rant that gives advanced warning. It goes on and on. And then, click. She shifts to quantum mode."

"Proves her value is intrinsic."

"We know. Still, her data, it's gone tangential."

"You seem to agree with the terra engine central holograph(T.E.C.H.) logic. They're theorizing has expanded to the Suzi terra outpost program(S.T.O.P.) project, and why?

Jenna focuses. "Those data are advanced warning," she says. 

Cooper steps closer and looks at her softening eyes. For one moment, Jenna thinks, he's gone back to his flirty professor ways. He's become the man she hoped he would be.

Jenna smiles. "Look at you," she says. "A sexy man flirting with his corporate officer. His silence only sharpens her need to have him speak.  "The clock is ticking on Suzi." 

"So," Cooper says. "Suzi is rogue." 

"Yes, her mainframe is forever, but her mind has gone into focus meandering(F.M.). We feel she is beyond retrieval."

Suzi has always kept corporate on their toes, by being a little smarter than they are. Cooper knows she is a calculating machine, her little attempts to trivialize corporate, her "bratty code" he calls it, has gone so far as to make corporate queazy now. Her full unmock won't occur without their physical presence, the one who created her. Suzie has a gun to her head.