Flash fiction ecoSciFi "The Outpost"

The Birth

     Suzi is morphing now, possibly into the true retro information bearer entity(T.R.I.B.E.). She is becoming so enthralled with the natural mechanisms, the birther of primeval life, that Dr Cooper expects the ultimate teacher in her will emerge, teaching herself anew. When she had been placed in this environment so long ago, it was, really, a quirk of coincidence, collecting information as if nowhere else exists within the known universe (at least the one with three dimensions, anyway). She has become the new mentality of DNA mechanism, she will always be mental now, the pure passive self, and she will be the torch bearer of information--not their object, anymore, or their subject of knowledge, for all that matters; she has become the object of all knowledge, the receptacle of theNature. She was built with a constitution in the manner that allows the entry of a complete body of information--stored as massive cellulosicDNA memory vaults here in this jungle--to affect the very functioning of her processors. The once conceived, now the perceiver.

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."

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 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. 

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.  

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?