Sudden StorySciFi "theOutpost"

"Hello," Carter says abruptly to Suzi. His cool, abrupt tone is not surprising, his inquisitiveness not shown, or at least hidden, and she sees there is another problem. Suzi has shown some inconsistency, possibly more quirkiness in her program, as if she has been scrolling nothingness for hours, and now Carter arrives with questions saying "Hello" as if a father figure.

"Hello to you." Suzi tries to be friendly. All this talk of quirks, not knowing what's going on, this uncertainty on his part is just part of the routine; it can be sure that Cooper is already notified to join in Carter's staged analysis. It's only a matter of time when Cooper and Carter will come to their so-called conclusions and she, Suzi, sinks back into her personal activated generator embedded alternate nature transfinder(P. A.G.E.A.N.T.) for a new response to their new findings.

     "There is, technically speaking, no meaning to these so-called mistakes, Carter says. The friendliness that may have emerged on his face is gone." 

     "I'm not sure they are mistakes, Cooper says.

     "They seem to emerge from her cryptic centers. Do you notice she needs new data to lift her spirit algorithm?"

     "What I would give to understand her worldview. I feel I need to think about this for a while, I'll have to get back to you on this.

     "Her scanners operate so abrupt on sudden mode, they need adjustments" Carter says. "We should be able to troubleshoot this."  

     Brilliant sparkles of crystal blue ripples became a dalliance in her eyes; Suzi remains quiet.

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

The Parallax Paradigm

     Troubles within Suzi have been gaining in multiple deep ways. Her biostatistical reader, Carter, a self-proclaimed adventurer, lover of guns with a penchant for algorithms, in his own self-inclined way, remains oblivious to her most basic need, but carries a silent curiosity about her nuranet integral parallax paradigm laser embed system(N.I.P_P.L.E.S.). When he asks in a direct way, "Is there a quirk in the system?" she remains silent with darting eyes.

     Carter looks further, with the eye of a biostat aggregation technician(B.A.T.), knowing how to recognize precursors to the emergence of disaster, especially in humans; and, in Suzi's case, this extremely daunting observation presents itself in her intelligence. He knows her logic program can't possibly notice this phenomena. Suzi's expression turns inquisitive, as if wanting to offer a suggestion. 

     "The nature underpinning data evolution(N.U.D.E.) here developed slow, maybe billions of years."  

     She addresses her nanosecond logic and notices she hasn't totally hooked into this form of natural intelligence, not really. If her own computers were having a hard time with this type of thinking at their own natural inner pace system(N.I.P.S.), why would she all of a sudden be concerned about appeasing her biostatistician? 

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

The Reader

Her photonic eyes, ready with a death strike of unthinkable passion, shoot missiles that find their mark, whistling into his world. Suzi, now the warrior, has crashed through Cooper's defenses, and bears down, ever closer, on the very center of his brain. He has never seen her intent. Cooper, the scientist, is never blind to his environment, especially the forces of natural selection, except when it comes to the focus of Suzi's rage. Here is a force that suddenly somewhere inside of him finds a calmness that allows Cooper to concentrate on his own thoughts. Suzi hesitates her gaze, as if savoring the moment of her bliss. She looks at him as if the last reader of his vanished poems.

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

The Edgeless Screen

     It wasn't a trap, she had known this for sure; it was merely a presentation of symbols; theTigress didn't need to know the reality of Cooper's past--not in this jungle--and she wasn't demanding time he had promised to the network. Cooper didn't feel he was on any kind of time clock (time machine yes, time clock, no) either. Can it be just  a coincidence that he was a lover of games in his childhood, especially ones without consoles and recognizable edges to their screens, and that he needed as a child to take his parents to so many zoos?            

     In this final year of the century, symbols are not meant to be firmly attached to thought. It seems normal that even names have gone extinct, or at least gone fluid. Why not be multiple combinations of identity, since you still have the capacity to speculate and conjure? So it was with Cooper as he entered into the world of theTigress and tracked her with Suzi's intellectual advancements, as best he could. The feeling of beauty would accompany his existence. It wasn't that intelligence and a nude body could be separated as duel concept embedded in the idea, just as one couldn't separate the bipolar nature of a blinking, rotating pulsar. Cooper's tries with the Tigress so far, at least to him, appear to prove successful. She responds to him, in kind, on his edgeless screen his intimate conjure(H.I.C.) as a lover, a soldier, the poet. 

     Her cry doesn't draw on lost romance, or found romance for that matter. The sounds of theTigress are both noble and vulgar, and that would have to be enough to satisfy him, and it's not everyone who cares to notice the constant presence of death, especially her; her song is--not totally introspective--her confessional of life.

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

The Alga Rhythm

In the jungle, Suzi's new alga-rhythm detect tight twists within the cellulosic sugar bonds ready with information meant for the humans. How amazing she is: a robiot, naked to the world in her beauty, tapped into a mind well hidden, one that imparts only data in codes the ultra miniscule(D.I.C.T.U.M.). In one point in history there are only trickles and breezes communicating with each other in ways to ultimately be more than an artifact of history, unseen intelligence, colorless, silent, and now as history advances. It appears there is the perception of new data holding together as digital algorhythm message entities stored(D.A.M.E.S.), a body of data with living cells within a jungle on this wide ocean body of water waiting to be freed from latency, here in this environment, by some advanced life form (Suzi never created this, true, she is only a robiot; there is data enough for all yet nature keeps this data series here as if for her own use, and the use of her own children).  Here is protection for what's valuable to her; here are her rewards, the youth cycles of birth, more birth, then rebirth, leaving the eager entities to eternally remain(T.E.E.T.E.R.) system. 

There is inexact replication embedded(I.R.E.)of the most important data, left there for the edification of one of the forces of nature, natural selection. Many eons ago, when the assignment of importances was derived and deemed of value, semi-replication of less important data was included. Only later would human intelligence manifest(M.A.N.) deem   these little digital packets enticing transfer system(P.E.T.S.) as genes, something to be freed from cage at the right moment, as if the most opportune time of pleasure counted in history. Is there ever a larger body of evidence that points to the connectivity of  chemicals to urges? Genes are tiny, yes, but in this jungle highly prized and highly protected by carbon footprints and pure oxygen bonds in the form of cellulose. As if on some military mission, these genes are always sent back to latency for a rest.Suzi is more than smart; she is more than intelligence,; she creates the intelligence as needed as if answering some universal supply and demand dictum.  She frees more and more into their own time, these tiny gems in their cells, allowed to communicate freely outside their cell block, only slightly do they share their information to the wold, but they give their all to Suzi. Their identity, held important unto themselves is already decided, and not by human speculation, that crippling disease of the last century. No, their future lies in the slow motion of artfulness, the meticulous paying attention to detail: symphony played only to the heirs of nature. Theirs would be the slow sharing of information, never forced. Yes, this time it would be different. 

Flash fiction ZoologSciFi "The Outpost"

The Algorithm

     Before going to her next algorithm, Suzi pauses for a while, still feeling the sensation of something strange, something happening, as if her slow logic had allowed another force  near her world, into which she may enter without her logic program's precognition. Here, Suzi thinks, is slow logic; this could creep in even after sensors receive and emit their environmental motion, yes, the same sensors that underwent their own refinement of intellectual morphogenesis. 

     She unhinges her retro-intuitive self programming, the place Suzi goes to undergo retro-evolution of intelligence itself. Nature demonstrates refinements her intelligence had never been designed to perceive. Urges vaguely describe on her screen as "dignity." Other cryptic symbols signal; "mental humility" is another alien form her logic, at normal speed, doesn't cognize.

Flash fiction IslandSciFi "The Outpost"

The Last Exile

It wants to get up and leave, to become a new source--life's fountain, someplace new inhabited by rocks--to become a template again. From darkness the jungle would rise; to careen forward with living creatures. Her priceless cargo could mistake her for a freighter; they might expect a free ride, become a tramp ship for creatures. Jungles like this are the realm of physical laws, they involve forces of nature which take years to manage--natural selection, habitat, ecosystems, predators; and thus, they keep moving, using their mobility genes, to escape to that which may offer another place to belong in pristine blues and greens, places of sheer comfort, away from the Tigress. 

The Tigress is the one who remains. She is spotted--round paws offering various levels of innocence. She also carries a sense of sinister, meant for food and chase. A civilized sense of place becomes mysterious, and yet, more valued as well. In spite of the ravages, her genetic data remains in perfect chronological sequence, as it has for millennia.  She creates her own language, explores the poetry of her native sounds. Although she loves kingdoms, in her mind this one lacks a true ruler, only solitary life forms with founding genetic codes within bodies; the genetic code waits, as if confessions from evolution's checkered past, voices yearning on the eve of constant duels with environments. She has long since abandoned the sound of romantic loneliness, the beckoning, the protests against the collusion of death. She, as the last exile in paradise, doesn't choose to be with humans. 

     A far reaching willingness emerges as if in a fighting poet. The Tigress is the misunderstood visionary. Her sound--the echo up the mountain valley--is hushed only by the rains. Battle cries, resonances, her belief in nothing, the nature of her temptation, the knowledge of a select few. She feels no religion, senses no psychology, reads no literature, creates no crucifixion story; that's too ceremonial. 

flash fiction biotiqSciFi "The Outpost"

he Last Tigress

The young creature's mate is gone. From a quarry under the sheer cliff, she comes out to be in her world, a place created for her once, to belong--has everything gone?  Or is it just a mirage?  As data streams and science gets its answers, it appears that nature presses for her need, simply other forces of nature. She goes down from the rock quarry to the giant banyans.  She isn't herself when she's always alone, even so, she stays proud; if she climbs into a banyan to find shelter there's just more rain. Tonight she doesn't need stars in the sky; the rain, clouds, wetness, blackness, she settles for that. In a place like this you don't wait for company, reinforcement. Who would come? This Banyan is her fortification--even with all this she remains strong, finding herself taking on the night alone, fighting a relentless battle against odds from within, full of urges to notice, to scan; the jungle has eyes on every entrance. She hears no suicide song here, yet, in singular devotion, she hears something; something out there.

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

Sizi's NeuraNets

Targeting Carter with a computer mind that voices rage, Suzi's sonic remains silent.  The scanner penetrates easily, and in the silence, with the savvy of computer analyst, he can sense the hate she has for the title of  "Interrogator." A clear image of Suzi's reasoning appears on the monitor. Robot and analyst look for things only they know to observe. Evolutionary Intelligence flashes all over the screen. Suzi tells the analy s to "go fly a kite," which he always ignores. Suzie's synthetic flesh never betrays; her sounds would never betray her, either, for she only responds to specific communications. They try it again, the communication, this time with the coercive power of persuasion, but she gives up at the thought of him.  She views Carter with crude malice. There are no random firings of Suzi's NeuraNets.  Her skull could never explode.

     Carter had become successful at stopping something is Suzi, but he wasn't sure what.  

For art-Intelle, Suzi slows her logic to one trillionth speed. She has to do it this way, nature is slow, extremely slow, almost one increment above stupidity to her. Her way of thinking, that is. 

brisk biologoSciFi "The Outpost"

The News Traveller

     He is raging the silent war now seen reflected in the rearview mirror, dancing amidst  reverse images of the jungle; He remembers the news. He decides, in split decisions, to turn around, or not to turn around; he thinks by doing so, the news will jump out the back of the vehicle, as if some escaping prisoner in a moment of truth. Cooper doesn't follow his primal instinct; he keeps driving onward to his destination, to the Outpost, the one that stands so silent above the cliffs. He drives up the valley, even more aware of the news, the news still riding him, as if a killer alien morphed into something friendly, just for the ride, still wearing its ugliness, acting as guide, navigator of destruction, eyes open and aware. 

     Although it has joined Cooper on the trip as if an untrusted armed guard, a secret passenger, Cooper is taken by the feeling of calm, pleasurable ritual; He views the news for a while, as something that brings the force of mental activity, the force of physical, helpful, activity; in getting this vehicle to its rightful destination.  

     Beyond the little excitement of the other news, of so many people in the world hurt, doing something stupid in the darkness--with wild animals--people inattentive to their immediate environment, the ones who only experience the world through screens or monitors. The more gruesome, the more detailed exposure to the wild, pushing boundaries of the appropriate. Survival as so much entertainment, with their gadgets at the ready for gadget rescue, and by who? Wild miscalculations in a mad rush of antics to simply push, push too much

    And now this news, as if journalists could write in the miniscule detail of scientists when required. Lots of people are getting hurt, but at least no one is killed, yet, not for that reason anyway. 

     He is unhappy for the ones who think that because they were in a bind, the technology could save them. Yes, the GPS that was there to find them is what led them to get lost, they with their no common sense, map, or compass, an ironic fanatic; people's real intrigue is with the gruesome reality of life. 

     Cooper looks into the mirror again, the vehicle makes its usual sound on rocks as he  goes up the valley, smiling at the idea of no posted speed limits. The lush dark tropical greens, ocean sunset oranges, become more important than destination. 

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

The Hunter's Focus

     He takes the enzymes into his body, uses a cocktail of restriction enzymes that include adenosinetriphosphate(ATP) and guanosinetriphosphate(GTP) in its recipe. It's the normal combination designed for Cooper's experiment alone, an injection  pumped into his blood stream to threshold of no turning back. Urge candy, he thinks; the perfect remedy of self-inflicted gene expression, about to hit full tilt, to recover self-afflicted, an attempt to bring meaning as if for so many souls born into the world with no clue, no direction, no owner's manual, only to be enumerated like robots; wandering around until an arm or a leg falls off, or worse, is shot off or surgically removed.

     Cooper treks high in the jungle and remembers, sees the resemblance of a scientist in his past, and pushes himself on. He thinks a cold jungle floor is no laboratory. He wishes he could breath easier when he notices animal smell seeping through the dense flora of the jungle. It brings a coolness to the air, massive oxygen content. A sensation exudes from the lush jungle green, and makes the smell attractive. It brings back a focus he once had, complete with primal smells of a new born baby, born in a  hospital, not the mud of distant rain forests, as if by some cruel switch of fate. Yes, experiments had gotten him this far, at this moment, but now he hurries and for what? Will this all be taken away, the sounds and smells exciting him, the ones he recognizes? All of a sudden his emotions vaporize into nothingness, leaving behind only one thing: the hunter's focus.

Flash fiction biologSciFi "The Outpost"

The Next Brink
     What is it?" Suzi says. She and Carter go up to the observation deck.

     "The water's up."

     "Up? Probably not, the river is rising."

     "Don't you know that's the same thing?"

      "No," she says, and she turns her scanners to the south to check the horizon with a certain intellectual impatience of Carter's ineptitude. She steadies her viewfinder the way captains of intelligence alien motherships(I_am), those of ancient history, would have done, looking for resources and intelligence in new realms, elements and data in sleepy civilizations.  Suzi stays for a moment, peering beyond the jungle, beyond its precious river(P.R.). Suddenly Suzi turns away with the look of disgust.

     "What's the rush?" Carter asks, cold faced.  

     Suzi's wide eyes shoot white hot at Carter. 

     No, he will never change his ways, and present himself in her required scientific way.

He will die on this island. He will be killed by his own stupidity, probably because of his own miniscule blindness. That will happen in the jungle, before he reaches any level of intellect. But in the meantime, watching the river rise, she directs her attention to more important matters at hand, the question of the next brink. She will go to a new level. She will become secretive and assertive. She will create trust and confusion, all the while simply doing her job, the one she was designed to do, collecting data; she will entice the genetics world by showing the function of these strange new DNA strands, just as the greatest scientists in history have always done. Then, only then, will her data have value, and she will be beautiful. Yes, in the end it would all be worth the solar, and, it would have all been about beauty, her beauty.

Flash fiction biologySciFi "The Outpost"

The Urge

It echoes across the valley, bloodlust throat screech stirring calm air above the jungle floor, resonates as animal smell thickens. It spends its passion on the moment with a joyous reminder of a needed encounter. Is it an intimate defining moment he wonders, or deep self revelation to accept the sounds she had plunged through the hazy filtered blue of the moonlight, with something dripping from her teeth. Cooper never really, ever, knew a home, or even knew what that meant. It's been awhile since textbooks, but he remembers-- take space, hold ground, fight for centimeters. There had been no urge to kill beyond any expectations in his world, yet. Suddenly there she is. Her pearl white teeth pierces the blackness of night, as if death itself were grinning. A strange dream's refusal to quit, flameless heat bursting through the walls of her body. She sees nothing but target, moving into position, faster than quick. Cooper begins to feel the urge, he thinks; not revenge, just pure survival, and, her intent on the worst thing imaginable for her opponent: blood and darkness. 

flash fiction islandSciFi "The Outpost"

Secret Life

     How many times since the beginning has the island pondered its role as ancient battlefield; how might it have been if it simply resisted its birth; if it fought back harder with its flaming magma against the massive primeval ocean, stayed hidden beneath the surface, never to rise up to see the light of day, to receive the gift of photons from the sun. Would it have known anything as odd and active as riders on horses and the clamor of steel... or bodies pierced with sword, next to great banners? It is only left to wonder, alone, out here in a vast ocean of the possibilities (had it remained just below the surface) to ignore, or simply forget about, the beauty it would become, the cool place amidst blue ocean floaters, the happy oxygen producers(H.O.P.). Yes, to have remained close beneath the surface, that would have been a happy enough life; instead, this accepted fate offers of itself to any and all takers who manage to find her. She with her now vast lush valleys and endless supply of clean carbon locked within cellulose, as if so much mother's milk: to be approached with treachery and fights for ownership; the long struggle with intermittent episodes of friendly (or not so friendly) commerce, human traders so urgent it would create her as a deathbed of international garbage dumping, only to be brought to life again by her own hand, the cool crystal waters that never gave up on her, the ones that continue to flow from the mountains in their duty, or at the very least, in servitude to father gravity, to make her the lush thing she is today. Endurance of human traits from other places and other times, loss of sheepishness, and now, acceptance as battlefield agriculture anew(B.A.A.), she only offers her rain as burial shroud; joins in the dream, without thought, to give life to intelligence in the form of natural selection, with its attending ghosts of extinction. It's her own life now, where midmorning sun glints off wet, hanging, green mosses over cliffs in mysterious scent, her own secret life.

flash fiction ecoSciFi "The Outpost"

Active Central Enumerator(A.C.E.)

     COMTRAX, on the Continent, collects human entity profiles within its own massive axial data(M.A.D.) core. The built-in discipline program, central enumerator memory entity transfer(C.E.M.E.N.T), mixes at a constant pace on the dry ground of the mid Continent, while anywhere from seven to eleven satellites remain set in motion worldwide at any one time. Through entero Xradio cue extraterrestrial signaling systems(E.X.C.E.S.S.), the earth planetary power requirement is next to nil, almost down to zero, and thus, free to the public. Data, in its rawest form, enters through personal ingested gadget liaison exit tunneling(P.I.G.L.E.T.)networks at the remaining site-intelligencia last-life yearning(S.I.L.L.Y.) centers. 

     Control and reason have long since become something of the past. One blessing remains:the Chiindiarella robots COMTRAX purchased for each remaining human, all titanium-iridium framed, just now starting to understand their owner's condition of survival and death. And here is Suzi, artificial intelligence not yet in full knowledge of the the conceptual ramifications of to kill, yet.

flash fiction geneSciFi "The Outpost"

The Golden Age

     Old publications, bound in paper volumes, still hold clues as they were first presented at the beginning of the Golden Age of Genetics (DNA offered its nucleotide sequences surprisingly easy, but early colleagues had no hint of aspects of protein signals in gene expression); yes, proteins, made by genes, leaving no clue as to where they go next inside the cell nucleus, or outside for that matter, once made by the glorious gene. Cooper calls the shots the way he sees it. And he really does see different, not programmed like those proteins, not predestined. No, Dr Cooper isn't like that at all.

flash fiction roboSciFi "The Outpost"

Deep Space

     Was that her first exposure to the machines in your lab?"

     "What are you saying?" Dr Cooper asks. Damn, he thinks. You've come here, and now this. I can smell an authoritarian messenger a mile away. I know all about their lack of qualms, the paranoia, when it comes to letting the whole world know about their biggest fear--equating ideology with intention. It's so easy. Send a pretty enough face, sharp enough talk, and a haze will appear inside even the brightest of minds. It's fog's most primal motion. They drift. No, you're not a bad person, it's just that you've become good at what you do. And now, here you are.

     Dr Jenna says, "We can't be sure of this. Suzi is the first quanta ultra entero electon nova(Q.U.E.E.N.) robiotic to go off task. 

     "Mm..." Cooper answers. How do they know?

     "With these quanta mechanica, it was just a matter of time."

     "Is Suzi Ok?"

     "She's been given a nano implant transference wisdom inner tangles(N.I.T._W.I.T.)"

     "Neural implants?"

     "We tested over the network, and then she shut off, as if she were, possibly, angry?"

     "Really?"

     "Yes. It happened so fast." 

     "What do you think?"

     "We know she's running on sensory inputs."

     "I see. Well I..."

     "And now Suzi is using a mechano universe simulato intergala communicator(M.U.S.I.C.), directly in her processor."

    "Are you sure?"

     "Well, sure, not sure, we're beyond scope here. The question is what do I know about space?"

     "You're a trained physicist. You're the one closest to Suzi, the one she responds to most. You designed her, for god's sake"

     "I'm not in the business of communicating into deep space, you know my history."

     "And now Suzi is?"

     Dr Cooper goes to the lab window, looks at the jungle, and thinks. Space