flash fiction--rainforestSciFi "The Outpost"

flash fiction--designSciFi "The Outpost"

Data-alive: Dali Code

He gets up and walks to the mainframe orbital monitor(M.O.M.). Through his actuator he can make out an image in the low wave spectrum, a pretty face of light complexion on which is placed a digital smile. He can't tell if this is an official message or just a friendly visit. He's placed at Central Control. He seems to be in a conversation with someone over Suzi. 

"Dr Cooper?" the screen cackles. "Dr Cooper!" 

"Hello," says Cooper, in front of the screen. Not 'copy." He has a history of being a rebellious scientist, too intelligent for the world intelligence knowledge institutions(W.I.K.I.), rebellious, not trusting inbound satellite spectrum data against his own instantiated devices(I.D.).

"Hello Cooper," the moniter says. "Do you remember Dr Jenna?"

Cooper turns his face closer to the screen. Great, a real human voice is about to enter the room.

"Yes, I rememember her," Cooper says. He goes closer to the screen, ready to greet her.

She is Dr. Jenna Best, Suzie's designer. She is so beautiful, so unchanged, that Cooper is concerned his emotions will get in the way of his conversation. When he first met her she was a bright-eyed student, or at least pretended to be, smooth and active, unaffected by the genetic utero therapy(G.U.T.) trials. She still hasn't changed, she'll never really change, but has taken on enough of an institutional persona, a money making look. She is a tough speaker and adept in the skills of the therapy babies, her voice focused, her look direct.

"Jenna," he says. "It's been a long time."

She takes control of the conversation from the beginning. Her instantiation is the new world order economics(W.O.E.). Her data is based on theories without any re-cognitional treatments(T.H.W.A.R.T.), descrete packagings designed to prioritize and preserve last century's ( now, archaic) idea of "job;" fancy ideas presented to bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed students in the consortium's regularly organized college knowledge(C.R.O.C.K.) form. It takes after the science ignored corporate knows(S.I.C.K.) trend (types of thinking that grew, thinking of itself as political rogue, articulate, a media or film mogul maybe, a planner, a designer, down to its sheer make-up of mere zeroes and ones). This data module, Cooper thinks, must have thought itself to be legendary even before its time, a behemoth as economic myths go, and here now with it comes Jenna, , who even now wears a cold look, a blue uniform, jet black hair, appearing as if she should be on the cover of eReader displaying that beauty instead of here on this science monitor.

"Hello, Cooper," she says. She grabs his attention in a warm kind of way. Of course, she is aware he's been studying the data. She does not seem quite aware of which data he's been studying, though. What does she know?

flash fiction--designSciFi "The Outpost"

     What it is she does recall in perfect order pictures(P.O.P.) is a window on a mobile craft flying over the ocean, sensing that fear of flying she was coded to feel, touching her shiny new mainframe of steel and bronze (she thinks), and cognizant of her upcoming life at the outpost.

flash fiction--coastSciFi "The Outpost"

     A small promise then goodbye. She gets away, starting to feel the sensation of weather; not yet angry at the WatchdogZ data; surely, crazy to think this new plan of those watchdogs (that which has never run a business, never experienced an exchange cycle--that continues to demand for new submissions, even after the great small allocated business offering tax and gouge extinctions(S.A.B.O.T.A.G.E.). 

     A continued try these watchdogs make against the small.

flash fiction--jungleSciFi "The Outpost"

Cooper goes for a few more hours on the coast. Last night he had a dream. He was on the water, darkness was approaching, needed to get home. He hears what sounds like twenty, or so, airborne figures; his scanner indicates only one. "Sixty miles and closing." He can think of no other thing than that they would send someone if there were trouble. He wonders about Carter, a little ticked off, and yet, he thinks, Carter can take care of himself.

     "I'm sure I don't need to know all about that right now."

     He sits still for a while. It's somehow better this way, It is better that DNA and protein and DNA and protein have ended their cycle, that water, fresh water, had joined in the process and that it would never again.

     Cooper says, "I should get to a higher altitude."

     He was sure this was help on its way, but he still couldn't relax. He kept peering at  his wrist. He hoped he had the wrong time. His watch felt like a time bomb ready to rip his hand off.  He checked his scanner again.  The object had closed to forty-one miles. He had a funny thought, and then it was gone. This was the kind of connection he couldn't lose, so why worry about it? Another odd thought came to his head.  

     "You can't just press a rewind button on this thing, or could you." He has waited, and now this, and for what?

Beautiful Prison

flash fiction--designSciFi "The Outpost"

FlyBys

Her scanner locks in on him in a bipolar way, as if on a series of flybys at a distance planet. Suzi comes looking. Her face has a fiery surface, and Cooper could assume nothing about her state and couldn't, or wouldn't, ask anything of her at this moment. "Here comes trouble." As if  Mother Nature's daughter herself were wandering the tunnels and catacombs below the cliffs and rocks, the exact point where ocean meets land, under the deep dirt. Small as biobots go, she makes up for her size in sheer fury; the message she posts to the main frame appears deceiving, "There's been some activity."

flash fiction--mysticSciFi "The Outpost"

flash fiction--spiritualSciFi "The Outpost"

The God Gene

The jungle tries to be a world of invention. Yes, that is what it must be--something that tries to maintain itself by creating new rules. It places survival in its inner sanctum. Now the banyan grove, ( no, her banyan grove) carries the sensation of the dominant and submissive to a clear articulation, more vibrant, as an  entity he calls the tigress paces with her own set of needs. 

The forest stares out at the distant horizon in search of its long lost clock. It's gone far past the death knell now. Why did this jungle bother, put in the effort, with endless chains of tightly wrapped and cross bound cellulose chains--how could it ever have thought humans were smart enough to use that form of tightly held energy in a clean way? She should be letting them help themselves to her secrets, not resisting; not denying the birthplace of the human mind one last shot at survival. The jungle should wake early, merge its mind with those who have emerged from here, presenting her hidden knowledge  (no, not to Suzi,) to those whose mind still has some life in it. She hears their cries from across the dead ocean, the Corporate Overlord Politician Society (C.O.P.S.) broadcasting, but not administering their rules, ignoring the mass media. This jungle should join them in their quest, shouldn't it? It should be on a podium in front of a microphone wearing her best blues and greens, announcing to the world her secrets to these few who they have been sent to come to figure out for them. Yet when she listens to her own silences in her own constant way ( after 4.5 billion years)--she lives exactly the way she wants to be, a rhyhm signal in a far place, a cool motion bathed in exotic energy as if a system created of its own choosing, that appears to be now directing its attention to some farther place---she smells the stink of human markings surrounding her, the omni death data(O.D.D.), and feels the time is now for a new campaign elsewhere in the universe. The humans are having enough trouble trusting each other in this Laboratory Outpost Station Transporter (L.O.S.T.) effort. Yes, perceived notions of status will remain completely oblivious to evolution's tragic inevitabilities. This cellulosic endo ordering(C.E.O.) has been building for eons and humans have answered their questions in their own way. "Catastrophic callings embraced by deeds and desires as pride mutilates freedom." They negotiated the transition from Meaningless Altered Neanderthal (M.A.N.) to duty, very badly, an entire species remaining distracted by hormones, for eons; should they be permitted their gaps in attentiveness, to remain sleeping on the globe, to chant and rant over mere perceptions and stimulations of the God Gene? 

The tigress will remain, with her swift and exotic ways, to continue to arouse no controversy. She is their only hope.

flash fiction-realmSciFi "The Outpost"

The Beach

On the beach, Suzi relaxes on the sugary sand, stretching out on a soft patch near the green water with its yellow waves. How amazing she is, photo voltaic sensors, fully awash in sunlight, saturated in quantum processors, the brainchild of so many international corporate and political consortiums.

"Hello, Dr Cooper," Suzi calls. Her eyes brightened when she saw him.

"How are you?" The ultimate in artificial intelligence he would think.  She always gave him that feeling, as if sudden fame were about to arrive.  

The warm eagerness disappears from Suzie's face as she focuses on Cooper's eyes.  Oh, she thinks, just before my photo charge, here's trouble. What, to be perfectly precise, does a sunbathing robot say to a disturbed scientist, or to any human?

"Let's make this simple," Cooper says. "You are what you were built to be, and nothing can change that."

Just as it should be, the scientist holds all the questions-the hypothesis. This much Suzi knows, her code tells her so. Suzi does no harm to the human race, but she does not help them either, not even under her HolyOnus trinity (H.O.T.) code.

"We should go back to the lab," Cooper says, "and get out of this sun."

"No," Suzi answers. "I'm on my naked inter-code embed (N.I.C.E.) mode, it wants me to be outside."

"You need to know this.  I retrieved some of your data. It came up on my screen. It's your self-injected genes."

"Cooper, I..."

The conversation was about to change into a beast's lair. Suzie's eyes grew cold. She opened her mouth to speak but then changed her mind. Her anger was still stuck on her face.  "Can you explain?"

"I'm not free to say," Cooper said, walking away.

"What exactly are you free to do?" Suzie shouted.

Cooper turned and gave her a short, slow look.

Suzie was the perfect animalist. Love of mankind wasn't her program, and no environment had ever put any constraints on her. Reinventing herself wasn't part of any plan.There was no battle between the sensual and spiritual in her world.  She needed nothing but a response. Her every motion was the product of a perfect calculating machine.

"You go up there in the blackest part of the night with some self-inflicted genes expressing yourself. Who's to blame if you get yourself killed?"  Suzie was showing some heat now, so she shut herself off.

Other than the pounding of the surf, there was silence.

flash fiction-fashionistaSciFi "The Outpost"

    Once he is away from the lab, crunching all the data possible, Cooper says to Carter,"These new findings are pure conjecture. The research is too low key. We've got to find the bug and get the newE.A.R.T.H.E.R. code up and running. We should have done it yesterday."

     "Well, now," Carter says, picking up on Cooper's mistrust of Suzi. "She'll be glad to see you won't she."

     Cooper ponders the new developments, which are distasteful but not overblown to his mind."I hate this," he says. "She was a beautiful design."

     Carter smiles unconsciously, secretly, as if he were finally getting his way. He is not concerned in a regimented way, as ComTrax would expect from their soldier of fortune in the jungle. Where do these signals emit from, these designer fashionista Xradio waves that arrive so brilliantly in the dead night?

Has one of the machines tapped into a Wide Angle Need Track (W.A.N.T.) code? 

flash fiction-jungleSciFi

The Gift

The tigress rises, smooth, without thought. She knows the pattern signal. Dispatch razor sharp claws flying, and feel the blood.  A telling yelp emerges up the steep cliffs.  The signal of 'they had hit their mark.' A dialogue that convinced with no apology.The pure passionate urge to kill.  An honest rendering of the laws of this jungle.  She had sensed movement in the corner of her eye.  The manifestation of a device designed by evolution, the edge detector. Her head turn was instant.  First nothing, then a ghost shadow.  Her figure moves once again with grace, the gift given her by nature. 

flash fiction-mysticSciFi "The Outpost"

Here in the calm, in the banyan grove the Tigress opens her eyes to the jungle valley below. Wide scenes of recognition, dark to blue hues, carry quiet clues of what forces wake her in the night.  Her unease is clear. There would be no sleeping now. She knows the jungle floor isn't as it should be. The night offers no moon through the canopy. She would notice any new shadows. They are not there.  

She stands , a slow warmth leaves her body but the feeling from the valley stays.  Someone or something was here from the outside.  Nothing reveals the intruder; the silence is treasonous. 

flash fiction-rainforestSciFi

Her instincts are burdened by intelligence, the kind not of her choosing; as if something inquisitive had crept inside, seeking unique answers. She simply noticed something different, not as it was before, but as a disease and a cure carrying a common secret; natural precursors to intelligence.  Forces of evolution condensed, command her to ignore nothing and carry no persona of friendship. Forces allowing no sign of rest, having traveled far, greedy, as if a monetary need. Her perceptions are her only currency.

flash fiction-realmSciFi

flash fiction..The Old Coast

Cooper focuses on the ocean and its horizon, and it seems they have traveled together, not as traveling companions but as acquaintances on a long trip, and have endured much, and now must go their separate ways as the more dominant coast comes into view. He senses the quiet there as well, and it seems they too are old friends, even with the shoreline's absent-minded old wind. Cooper smiles at the few breezes this coast offers. He looks at it as a sacred place now; a place to settle any thoughts that come to mind even if he recognizes none of them as his own. The stillness of the vast ocean laps gently against the rocks below the cliffside; he hears words descending in old hymns of layered monotone. He's not sure how long he's been out here.

flash fiction-rainforestSciFi

It is altogether possible Cooper has crossed over into a parallel world, a world that until now has eluded him. A world with promises of sensations that resemble contentment, promises to make him the man he thought he would rather not be. The distinct possibility of a morphing right here on the rocks of this sheer cliff in the presence of that distant view. He has captured another version of himself.