Happy Mother's Day!

The Dark 

     Suzi turns her attention toward her new ability as a useful resource for communication (and yes, computation as well) as if she were coming to terms with something she wasn't quite sure of (a brand new uncertainty principle?).  Something appears to her continually; the presence of a natural masterpiece is something she has never known in her synthetic virtual world.  She and her coordinate system and quantum language are in a jungle learning a rain forest's ways of patterning (a reading she had thought to meet on her own terms). Within this jungle darkness is hidden global elements of a more abstract system where self image (don't worry, identity elements for addition remains at 0 and, identity elements for multiplication at 1--old binary computers still use 0,1) and natural selection is always additive, at least when it comes to DNA (really now, has junk DNA ever existed?), where nature's best kept secrets won't allow themselves to be struck from the record, secrets that allow Suzi to use her own quantum algorithms on the structure of its machine as if to serve a function for her logic. True, it had attained valuable knowledge, not for immediate use (by whom or, for what?), knowledge even she wasn't aware of, yet. It is a subtle, intrinsic knowledge. It is beyond information and definitely not just data; visions of Nature dawning each morning for eons (primal intelligence Suzi didn't know she recognized), here in this dark jungle as if the final resting place of knowledge itself--the most ancient of primal knowledges or, maybe not.  

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 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 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 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.