Tropical Prison

flash fiction-mysticSciFi "The Outpost"

Fur Clad, Club Wielding 


The creature, he thinks, should have been dead a long time ago for reasons that seem, not so obviously, of her own choosing. Her banyan cove will go the way of all the other coves. A kind of trick played by nature that for all her glory, all her prowess her defeat lies within the very soil she walks. For her, the chemicals are more destructive than any predator's fight. Cooper looks out the window. He senses a strong control in himself as to who or what is the creature. Whether she held good or evil intelligence, he couldn't tell. It didn't matter anyway. His mind doesn't work in two's like that. "What time is it?" Cooper asked. "It's the dawn of time." Carter focuses on his weapon, as if its shine carries a special message, revealed only to him. "Is that gun loaded?" "What do you think." This type of communication wasn't on Cooper's agenda at two o'clock in the morning, especially this morning. "I know what it is." Cooper says, even though he has to try to look unconcerned. He tells himself: this beast is not a killer. Don't think of the ocean; don't think of the sulfur in the air. "What do you think it is?" Carter became serious. "I can tell you what it wasn't." "OK…" Carter waited. "Fur clad and club wielding." "Very funny. You are feeling safe because we're four stories up and these walls are three feet thick." Yes, this lab fortress must stand up to this force, and protect.

Cloud Creature

mysticSciFi

mysticSciFi

flash fiction-mysticSciFi "The Outpost"

Suzi, he thinks, will will alter her code for some reason that seems, to humans, like a small point, her experimental hypothesis will go not as planned, her mainframe jurisdiction will refuse to answer a simple request about her Compu-helio improv compressor (C.H.I.C.) module. The aim will be to disable a context of herself in the machine; to get her to believe that, for her, the work at this outpost is just as important as the work out there at the Event Horizon.

     Cooper walks  through the laboratory door.  He has the sensation of full command mode over Suzi. The station is under some form of surveillance--yet to be identified.                                                                                                It was beyond being a passive problem now. Cooper needed to talk to the number one machine. He had a few questions for her, face to face.

flash fiction-mysticSciFi "The Outpost"

Headwaters Code

The more time Suzi spent in the jungle, the more she became a perfect animalist; she thought like the jungle, coded like it. She turned her head at the slightest unexpected noise. She expressed photosynthesis gene protectors when the sun was the brightest. She also actively pursued the mind of the jungle to gain knowledge. Suzi never tricked herself into thinking it would be easy. The mere spending of time here didn't dictate a sure friendship, just a similar type of thinking, but it had seemed like something that might feel like the beginnings of a strange idea humans knew as happiness, but Suzi is never surprised, even in all of her years as a robot, by anything; in that the existence of experience is in the being placed in an environment, in the inception of the creation of the headwaters code dictating want, want in the smell of a flower, an odor of freshness; that itself creates enticement.

Suzi's coded love of nature embedded (C.L.O.N.E.) was not to be forgotten now. These forests have too long been dominated by other forms of intelligence; even her default program, intended for environmental constraints was gone. Reinventing herself wasn't part of a plan, but now takes center stage. What remains as a dominant force is the lack of battle between the sensual and spiritual.  Yes, there is that growing need for a response, and the response she needs is no aimless wanderer.  Her every motion is the product of  perfect calculating machines, one now with a growing visceral pride, but never strong enough to mutilate her own freedom codes. 

Now she has come to understand this as the moment of her freedom; the perfect existence doesn't embody rootlessness. She belongs in this jungle. 

flash fiction--artificialSciFi "The Outpost"

Quanta Deemed

The time comes and goes, still no call.  Suzie's concern grows, but never all the way to terror.  She remembers the first scientist who cared for her, her vulnerability.  "The latest advances in a.i.," she thought.  She had never known the feeling of unconsciousness.  

A sudden sound broke the silence.  

Suzie gets up.  She wouldn't  know futility, either.  She had heard of courage, but wasn't aware of what it really was.  Whatever was needed, she would do.  She was aware of that.  She thought again of the only one who sensed sentiment in her logic; she knew it wasn't what she thought.  The sentiment program had been too long in the coming, even by quanta mechanica standards. It had been deemed useless.

flash fiction--designSciFi "The Outpost"

There must have been, she thinks, more sensuality in the global world

     Suzi is feeling fine today, and there is even more she can do, but there was still that one thing about last night, by eleven o'clock she should have received her instantia ambia (I.AM.}code. For now, she follows Cooper's image on her favorite screen. Her thoughts wander to the memories (yes, the ones he scanned for her), of when their eyes first met, for those moments, to listen to more of his voice. But she can't  still remember when she hadn't known him and the moment she had gotten to know him. Straining her memory now, she enters a void. Cooper will fill her memory, that's what she likes about him; he never answers any of his own questions or guesses. He always requires a response from someone, or something, before she (or it) spoke again.  His face is always warm with welcome.  But even Suzi knew there was a deadly glitch.  She was polished titanium, Cooper was not; he was her forest, soft whispers of the leaves at night when moonbeams dance and glisten in harmony. He is, she thought, truly hers. 

flashFiction

Beyond Jungles