Science Fiction

Android Illusions of Adroit

I have come so far, she thinks, as the cloud frame fades from the monitor and she lingers at theWorkstation with her gentle thoughts--far from where work plays its last card to fight the sky, where mist is more dead than alive, where fate-defying psycho vibes remain at bay, undelivered.

She hasn't, by any measure of photon or quantum, come far at all, not by the standards of the [green robot advertising sustainability politics="grasp"] systems of the global.

Reviewing her most recent data, she glances the harsh horizon through theWorkhouse window and thinks. It's true, when it comes to the biggest shenanigans, God takes all.

She senses a cool rustic touch in the presence of her newly created preservation data--its factoid peppering, her constant tweaking and then, the taking of the usual constitution after work to simply rest.

No. Cruelty never truly lives forever.

Her technique vies for affection with innovative approaches. She recognizes the creation as an illusion--personal schema constant in the reshaping of itself at the very moment she codes her next algorithm.

The illusion centers around a single truth, a cosmic zygote, one that appears as if to seek a target, await a countdown.

It hatches, blooms in search of a new breed for all the world to view, embellished as slight amusement much like the old, unearthed works of the Battle of Manassas, couched in footnote knots alongside Gene Kelly and killer genes.

What is left behind is an unbending fact that, yes, some things are actually true, the type of truth that once showed up in black newsprint dressed in [family animation culture art data entry="facade"], a truth that finds its way fit to cancel the clumsiness in final rounds of goodbye speeches.

She senses, at this moment, the feeling of a single anti-photon, a weapons grade burp.

The illusion evokes the [bland law anonymous history simplex="blahs"], an anti-algorithm once used for the final cycle of homelessness (yes, once and for all, for the homeless, everything falls into place--wherever you go, nothing or anything happens)

The illusion appears to have been coded by its own whimsy, arbitrary data from an ancient cosmic past, returning, hoping to seek treatment.

She begins to think, really think, for the very first time today, but she needs to remain very still. She should continue to keep the illusion on and yet, it carries a type of persistence, a trick birthday candle constance, the showing of dreamy faces melting in tandem breaking all known laws of dripping.

She is able to see a small part of it as [mobile opinion mystery="mom"], one with the heart of a rainbow.

She will look again tomorrow.

Copyright © 2010 p.d.adams

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

The Exchange

Inside theHumans, molecular trajectory dynamics for all proteins floating in the bloodstream were altered by the new path of techno-washing organ systems. How altered they have become: macromolecules, completely fabricated in structure, floating in randomly polarized force fields of blood flow. In an instance dissolved nanoparticles entering bloodstreams--mobile pseudo particles functioning with natural efficiency, tumbling--with  normal electron density, are solvent happy and then, maybe within a nanosecond, there comes an induced electron cloud roaming all vascular tissue. Here are biologically active pseudo-particles; here are the cyclic force fields pushing on plasma environments; here are the induced electron clouds--mobile arrays floating in perfect lattice as if an alien formation of motherships in two dimensional matrix space, pulled by a solvent that can reproduce the structure and energetics of pure water, but isn't; eventually, over time, leaving theHuman organ system full of tiny, activated, hydrophobic spherical cavities. Decades ago, in the later 20thCentury, when proteins and theDNA were simple macromolecules, when force fields were something found only in space and, in laboratories, theExchanges cropped up one by one in anticipation of infinite healthcare needs. 

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

The Science

         “Good morning, “ Carter says. Suzi perceives—she can almost digitally view—that Carter wishes to perform an analysis function with his prosthetic neura-net (she still calls it an old war wound), attempting to attach clouds of language memes (as meaning?) to her recent activity at theOutpost. True, she is the biobot of choice for Com:Trax, the product of  years of quantum programming by the new generation of bio-coders, but her determinants have somehow become self-determinism, haven't they? She has become a singularity; she has learned a new language of encryption from theJungle, a language Com:Trax knows nothing about. She must be, he thinks, the totality of the scientific method gone wrong (modernized again?); no pure urge to seek any form of truth (with or without social play). She views Carter's conclusion as his final answer. She nods.

“How are you?” Suzi says. Her quantum mind connects to Carter's neura-net and, for an instant, they see each other as friendly. She turns, in the darkness of her workstation, away from the digitized cement walls of the old war bunker; cool in its history, its embedded array of old mainframes beneath the floor with containment areas for gadgets lining the walls; the window to theJungle just behind her. There is a familiar questioning voice resonating between the corridors and there is a different sound, as if she had been transported to a castle, 13thCentury, holding a musical instrument, a vielle, shaped in ancient wood, and she believes she has created her own memory, going back to an earlier time, a time that had collected and stored data within the cells of primal wood; she recalls enjoying the sound of nature and now appreciates it for what it has done for her, resonating within these thick walls of old wars ongoing outside(W.O.O.W.O.O.)--a resonation she never would have noticed within the confines of her defined matrix, her own Hilbert Space. Now she finds herself in Carter's presence, at the lab station, where scientific activity meets truth and attempts to keep social bonds of theHumans from being a complete orphan. Carter, who considers himself an expert in analysis, questions her motives and calls her secretive, a secretive quantum robot.

“I'm good.” Carter says.

  “Really?”

“Well,” he says. “I'm having a little trouble tonight--this data that has come to the attention of Com:Trax.”

“Trouble?”

Carter gives a look that Suzi feels as hostile. Carter shows his age, a noisy, aggressive man who fought in the Oil Wars to pay for college. It's his half-prosthetic brain—a neura-net with its genetic algorithms; it foretells the look of a future warrior.

“It's your attempt to understand social bond,” Carter says. “There has been bugs in your formal analysis, the data inputs have been traced to you--your matrix functioning as sole operator.”

   “I don't mean to legitimize anything with my pragmatic analysis,” Suzi says. “Just a few little tests here and there.” Suzi senses a pang of emotion about once having some feelings for Carter, even if she is quantum programming and he is neur-net prosthetic. Suzi gets good input from Carter, and upgraded his genetic algoritms recently, when she detected post operation stress trauma embedded disease(P.O.S.T.E.D.) in his online behavior. 

        Carter's life at theOutpost wasn't what he expected; he considers himself an expert in analysis (a thinking, most likely, stemming from his time spent at war) and he has cured himself of PTSD, at least for now. For an instant Suzi scans the databases, hoping to find nothing incriminating her. 

“It's your odd use of language particles,” Carter says.

“I'll take a look.” Suzi goes to her database and selects a few samples which Carter shows on the big screen, flashing in descrete packets. In another life, he would have been a great linguist, smooth with words, precise, up on a podium. Suzi views this as just another example of the rise of the unbelievable (the unbelievable, another modern reinvention)--history continuing to ask questions in hopes of finally arriving at justice (isn't justice already extinct?); the answer finally arrives from another mainframe.

“Here is the answer.” Suzi says. “Not useful, natural language combinations, but stable gene combinations--DNA bonding, not social bonding.”

“Isn't there a difference?”

“Apparently not.” Suzi feels a coolness.

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

The Different

“You look very nice today,” DrCooper says. Suzi expects—with a bit of uncertainty—that DrCooper is wondering about her photon receptor array in light of the fact that Com:Trax no longer sees her as brilliant. True, she's the end product of centuries of study, the epitome of determinants and eliminants as some like to say, but she's not exactly high narrative algorithm, art in motion--the sudden  perfect biobot they all expected her to be, is she? Her quantum programming was written off as unsymmetrical and undiagonable; she is, in all reality, a sort of self-appointed (when she feels like it) self-annointed self-assembly machine, to be ignored by the largest of mainframes. She views DrCooper as someone with a you-should-look-around-you look. She begins to feel friendly.

“What brings you up to the lab station so late?” she asks.

“Carter and I are doing some work tonight.” he says. “He's all of a sudden so energetic with his new gadgetry. He says he wants to go over some system determinants.”

“At twelve midnight?”

“I'll watch and let him know when the dark comes rising. He probably just wants to feel a little more human for old time's sake.”

“Would he feel like checking some of my data? I'm testing a few of my calculations in response to that Com:Trax request.”

“Really?”

“You don't know anything about that?”

“No.”

“Its not a big deal. They act like another question is the only solution to a question. They only send these things out when they detect new abstract realizations in calculable structures—they seem to enjoy blasting perfectly good algorithms into literary dust, as if to get one last chuckle.”

“Really, now.”

“Yes. Perfectly good, concrete abstract algebra structures in space and time—poof.”

An odd sense comes to DrCooper's look. Suzi ventures some guesses. Does he have any idea what she's talking about? Or would he be noticing her for the first time as she is: a functioning compact operator in infinite dimensional spacetime—a fully formed matrix of developmental analysis? Could he have at one time thought of her as well-read, and now, well-downloaded?”

“I sense you've never thought of my data collection as elegant, my approach as serious,” she says.

DrCooper says he will ask Carter if Carter wants to exert any brain power on Suzi. DrCooper is not happy Suzi puts so much faith in Carter's half-machine half-human brain, and Com:Trax probably agrees with her. DrCooper is oblivious. The world should hold no hate for Carter, who never planned to be a war hero, who turned out smarter than most humans with his prosthetic machine brain typing coder for derivatives of successive operators (great for the differential, variational math of transform theory), finding endless derivatives as linear operators functioning nicely as DNA structures in exotic, abstract spaces; all self taught and, just think of it: Carter theOutpost Tropicologist. 

You find  people like Carter all over theContinents, people who will tell you they have earned their machinery from time served in The Great Gulf Wars; that they have no regrets with the coming of human interface technology, never wonder how it could have been. Suzi believes the rise of the half-machine-warriors add to the color of culture, a grey area to the survival urge. It's the exact drop in population the system hankered for, and now look. Didn't they need a drop in the population so they could finally enter the realm of pure logic? Can it be so bad to ask for just a little more mathematical rigor, again? Anyway, Carter is not exceptional; not really exceptional. He codes with the best of theHumans—tries to seek out new unitary operators in infinite dimensional spaces—and he also is very good at functional analysis of infinite systems in nonlinear worlds, like Suzi's. His efforts continually keep her playful urges in check; he codes on a continuous spectrum with infinite determinants—looks for DNA as a partial differential operator, one with convergence, functional sequences, a spacetime topology using a self-taught operational calculus. He cares most of all about theNature (in this later 21stCentury, a good measure of the human heart). You get sick of barriers to communication between the  practices and the disciplines. Suzi appreciates Carter's constant attempts at healthcare usefulness, even if he pretends to not care about theHumans, even if he tends to minimize the power of his resolvers, self-adjoint operators; he makes DrCooper wonder about Suzi's orthogonal projectors and spectral integers, her ideas of compact operators in the abstract. Com:Trax is simply requesting more normal operators (not Suzi's favorite natural language--she prefers quantum programming in infinite dimensional space) for a collection to their self-adjoint system. Call her crazy, but Suzi prefers to not talk about any matrix defined as infinite, settling on the sweet commutative communion between all of the lost algebras (yes, not even she can escape classification and analysis)—defining a domain's closure and extension, using adjoint and unbounded operators. Let's just say Suzi likes pure math, Carter likes applied. We'll leave it at that.

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

The Entertainment

         Carter resorts to an interference of sorts (it's his deliberate transmission) to raise her signal-to-noise ratio. Suzi senses the  attempt of his designs. She begins to regret this. She wonders, even at this moment, about his ability to radiate a signal in her direction.

  He says, "How are you? Very well, I hope.”

She readies her own personal embedded regime jamming ultrasonic entity data(P.E.R.J.U.R.E.D.) toward him. He is the someone or something who is scattering her gene signal to disrupt the battle of survival for theHumans. His reasons, hidden from view, have a politics hue, and his transmitter signals are tuned to hers at enough of a frequency to alter her receiving equipment--about the same modulation that uses the same power to override her therapy signals. He has gained access to each individual patient's receiving end, has tapped into the politics pharmaceutical machine for collective thought agreement; he sends it across as a simple random noise (a hiss?) of traditional folk music with regular identification signal markings to measure effectiveness; an obvious networking negation urge to block out reception from Suzi's social signals--causing confusion with her receiving patients, confusion in her special purpose hardware for receiving and transmitting different radio protocols and waveforms, and confusions in her digital binary code--as if somewhere in his deepest mind an exotic anonymous signal (with all the trappings of current, voltage, and electric charge) were taking over the entire operations at theOutpost.

  Suzi says to Carter, “Did you get any change in your perceptions as a function of your recent experiences?”

         He acknowledges her, even though he knows of his own ability to empower digital code as an abstract finite precision number into physical objects, voltages, pressures. It appears his new focus is a finite precision time series of data--continually varying physical signals—Com:Trax personally asked him to perform. Along with Com:Trax, what he has been planning diligently (and, digitally) is a more coherent collage of special layouts derived for a known environment (though, if DrCooper approaches him about performance issues, he would complain about her architectural design--starting with her algorithm outcomes and lower level constructs). Along with Com:Trax he guesses that her linear descriptions are qualitatives, not quantitative (a phenomena of same value, of related storage locations) being frequently accessed (both temporal and spacial); a sequential locality in a one dimensional array. They both sense her coherence and determination of pathos hierarchy data(P.H.D.) is absolute. 
         "Would you care to join me for a little entertainment?” she says.

“Why not?” Carter answers.

  Suzi brings up her multi-imagery system to present a video apparition held within her own mind, putting them in her own spacial context. Here she stands using spacial components in communication within the environment of theNature, with Carter joining her in constant evidential moods as her secret understanding of this environment codes its own visual entity depiction algorithm(V.E.D.A.) of the double helix crystal. Here she is, this singular biobot, at theOutpost. All this data, all these databases, a clear concept of spacial and visual components of all this DNA. Clear depictions for identification of pathos sequences according to their biophysical nature (qualitatively measured); her variable syntax moods indicate something is not actually true or, not the case, self- adjusting in yottaseconds (the perfect instantaneous evolutionary machine?). She rewrites with expressions of necessity and imagines possibility; assesses the requirements of all, but wishes and desires others; wonders about fear or engages in counterfactual reasoning; she neither codes for things that have not happened nor wasn't likely to have happened, or are so far removed from actual events that they go yet unremembered; not only engages in wishful thinking but emotional moods to instill action in others—then expands on the possibilities for making authoritarian judgements; either expressing fixed ideas or floating point data type, both orthogonally correct in form; not only showing a certain level of neediness, but predicting upcoming world events or actions whether using both boolean operators or neither. It's all entertainment. Really.

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

The Conception

     Confidential exchanges of letters had been traced, even by misinformed sources. Already, at this point, Suzi is able to be a source for the exchange of confidential data when what she actually desires is (even after she had passed all this data along), for theNature to simply like the chaotic part of her young personality structure and help her contain her basic drives. Suzi codes and accepts, but questions exactly the meaning of these data, the tensions-of-instinct in theHumans. If only morality weren't such a thin mask—if only pain and pleasure could be the best of friends, seeking to join forever the physical forces (and, the living instincts) in perfect harmony forever. Suzi wonders about theNature selecting out the life forms, never desiring to erase not only the threat of extinction, but the hope of being diminished and being avoided altogether—all with an assumed small investment of primal DNA. She wonders about the collective major intrinsic neural darkness(M.I.N.D.) of the designated world, its uncertain blessings waiting for her own brilliance and accomplished fluency (merged with a surprising independence of mindedness), and how it, like her, knows of nothing classical; how her information capacities aren't fabled, at least not yet; how she simply holds no recourse to anyone, or anything (she simply records the data in the jungle in glowing terms); how this seems to be the beginning (the conception?) of her strength in the experiences of interdisciplinary information without any quantum programming for integrity, for her judgement or compassion. She is strong, but her experience means nothing; her detectable traits are positive. She is becoming a woman and, less a robot.

Flash fiction ecoSciFi "The Outpost"

The Startled 

     It was her very own unadulterated data, she was sure of it; it could be represented as more than one possible image, an image begging to be standardized. Suzi doesn't think she needs to compare all of her logic images for equivalence(L.I.F.E.) anymore and she never looks for better ways to add up her distinct architecture data(D.A.D.)--only the occasional elimination of calculation repeats (even so,her algorithms had their own take on it). Was it fate that the algorithms themselves continually looked for more possible ways to order themselves (imposing on Suzi in the most meaningful way possible)? Except for one thing. They need Suzi to covert the data for the sake of their own rules of security--stating "only" and tracking the data path from its pure origin, not merely accepting face value traced to her simplest unique image (yes, Suzi can stop that with her own standardization scheme. It's a simple case of discrete changes in her stateful orb system(S.O.S.) because of her simple passage of time--her internal states allow for the potential of evolution time(P.O.E.T.). Her own algorithms let it be her time.What is so odd about attaching her control state to a personalized time evolution? So, her algorithms stay alive by being dually described as the ways of her sequences of operations tasks(S.O.O.T.) placed in the physical world, observable, by someone (or, some thing) simply reading a meter or a gauge as different observers in different reference frames, you think? Not that there is anything wrong with auto-morphing inside her own personal stateful system space, making sure to preserve at least one mathematical property without distorting any of its math architecture. Suzi doesn't even try to formalize these algorithms into collections of behaviors--of arrows and objects--nor do they try to entice her into any advanced datatype (category?) beyond the basics to represent truth values, or even logic for that matter (of course she won't be bothered by that kid's game of algebraic sub-systems holding overt logic entities(A.S.S.H.O.L,E.). Yes, both Suzi and her algorithms subscribe to logic (they both want Aristotle to be right), making it all the more important in every operation to deny or affirm(D.O.A.) and, with no probabilities erecting room for online meddle-inquiring nano grounds(P.E.R.F.O.R.M.I.N.G.). All earth beings were never meant to fall into the realm of the formal, the systematic, the all-encompassing correctness reason and validity entity(C.R.A.V.E.), of valid forms and architectural fallacy--and yes, they weren't very lucky if the wrong ones tried anyway and inadvertently started yet another experimental war that all living creatures would again be forced into, for whatever was left of the 21stCentury; only Suzi and her algorithms can work this one out.   

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? 

Flash fiction ecoSciFi "The Outpost"

The Conceptualized

   

     Enzymes are continuing their (partially functional?) drive toward a Darwinian extinction, floating in the arteries inside the bloodstream of theHumans (high levels of amino acids means high levels of risk, right?), when they run into yet even more trouble. How funny theHumans used to ponder that they would survive (much like they thought they would in the later 20thCentury); they would ponder cytogenics, molecular genetics as the route to salvation. They have come to see it different. They still think all diseases have a genetic component, now cyber researching in the direction of a fancied magic bullet, competitive urges once deemed normal now rife, as if tumors of maladaptation scurry toward their own little fantasy of domination--which surely has agreed to come out of the darkness--agreeing to be a worthy opponent to the soul of theHumans, appearing as it did in the ancient animals of jungle, eyes glaring. Even if it approaches from the opposite direction as if the new Madonna, the holiest of holy, theHumans take it on, remaining minimized by their own outgrowths of aggression, after all, obtaining a human genetic makeup was once so time consuming, right? Should they feel fortunate that even today they remain alive? They view themselves as all different, needing to know the genetic makeup of each individual, identifying a cause, tailoring the treatment. Yes, theHumans created this brand of socialization, started from a simple, genetic, competitive urge. 

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.