Tropical Photo Poems

Hawaiian Photo Poems

Tropical Photo Poems

Hawaiian Photo Poems

Tropica Poetica

outpost 39-61

000000  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.

Next


     Suzie sees the flickering again.  And still no call.  "What is that?" she wonders.  "Are these real, a glitch ?"  Something rings but she knows nothing of it. 

     "Damn!" Cooper yells.  "Her audio is off.  They've shut it off!"  

     She is more frightened now. The flickers appear again outside the window against the jungle night.  "They're stripping me," she thought.  Suzie's photosight is her most sensitive inner part; on the outside her eyes are the most erogenous part.  She doesn't know that whatever she had been, she wouldn't be now. The flickers in the jungle appear faster now.  Something rings again.  

     "Please pick up," Cooper begs from the other end.  By now Suzie senses she is fast becoming undone.  There are no screams in her program.  This is straight code, no excrement, no fluids, technology's cleanest invention; feelings remain.  Her pure obedience endo transponder (P.O.E.T.) is her only hope.  There is no weeping, no frailty.  Her plate of reinforced endo polished ortho reformed titanium (R/E/P/O/R/T/) is fully disabled, yet her own programmed imagination remains in full bloom. 
     She knows something.  

next

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 had joined, 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. It 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?






   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. 


next

It's not cloudy tonight down the coast, she had told herself; it was just a little impediment to her overall view of existence.  She has no need of friendship from Carter--forget it!--and she didn't think she was keeping vital information away from Cooper. Cooper never thought those types of thoughts, ever ( and he knows what he can reveal, but then, would he have left so much up to chance during every one of those flybys this morning , with so many components and gadgets intsantiated, and even ignored the flagship putting the entire crew at risk?) It's sundown, recklessness can be contagious. It seems probable, in a minimal sort of way. Why not betray all your friends, so so they don't know about it and you don't mind lying?  The distant smell of salt mist and lush tropical mountain permeates the sector.  She picks up the scanner speed, but her eyes were focusing on an image.  The smell of salt morphs into  exotic fragrance. The weight of the recent incidents sink further into her mainframe.  He had always eliminated pressure; that was when everything came into prefect focus.  Soon she would know what to do.  Right now, though, she felt like she was about to meet either her father, or a real-life halloween alien.

"Civilization is a luxury.

Data: It's alive

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 pretented 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, that money making mode look. She is a tough speaker and adept in communication skills of the therapy babies, her voice focused, 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 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 ( a type of thinking that grows, thinks of itself as a political rogue, an articulate, a media or film mogul maybe, a planner, a designer, a lady's man, down to its myriad digital make-up of mere zeroes and ones). This data module, Cooper thinks, must have thought itself to be legendary even before its time, technical, a behemoth as economic myths go, and here now with it comes Jenna, , who , even so, now wears a cold look and 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 the data he's been studying, though. What does she know?












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Brat Code


She is, Cooper has come to the conclusion, someone he can talk to. She is precisely human, no more no less. Cooper steps up to the monitor and, after a slight second thought, takes in a breath, and braces himself. 
"I assume, you've read the data," Jenna says.
"I have. Yes."
"Doesn't it make you think twice?
"About Suzi?"
"Who else?"
"Yes. I've thought twice."
"She doesn't even pretend to care, according to data."
"Do you think she's going to tell us anything about herself, something we don't already know?" he says. "It's Suzi who writes her own code from her own biodata, mixed in with some of her own fantasy about space." 
"It's a strange combination."
"So ComTrax seems to think."
"It's an endless rant that gives advanced warning. It goes on and on. And then, click. She shifts to quantum mode."
"Proves her value is intrinsic."
"We know. Still, her data, it's gone tangential."
"You seem to agree with the terra engine central holograph(T.E.C.H.) logic. They're theorizing has expanded to the Suzi terra outpost program(S.T.O.P.) project, and why?
Jenna focuses. "Those data are advanced warning," she says. 
Cooper steps closer and looks at her softening eyes. For one moment, Jenna thinks, he's gone back to his flirty professor ways. He's become the man she hoped he would be.
Jenna smiles. "Look at you," she says. "A sexy man flirting with his corporate officer. His silence only sharpens her need to have him speak.  "The clock is ticking on Suzi." 
"So," Cooper says. "Suzi is rogue." 
"Yes, her mainframe is forever, but her mind has gone into focus meandering(F.M.). We feel she is beyond retrieval."
Suzi has always kept corporate on their toes, by being a little smarter than they are. Cooper knows she is a calculating machine, her little attempts to trivialize corporate, her "bratty code" he calls it, has gone so far as to make corporate queazy now. Her full unmock won't occur without their physical presence, the one who created her. Suzie has a gun to her head. 

Coastal flash fiction
     
     Cooper readies himself to download some data about artificial intelligence. He has little knowledge about what he will find, but he intends to find something he can use.

     He would hope to say, It is enough to keep Suzi alive. The jungle outside and the tigress, the unfortunate events with Carter, the endless questions from ComTrax. It has gone far beyond being enough. 
     Something else will live. It will be of less value than Suzi's; it will be something with no sadness and no creative urges, something with enough enticement power over the globe to want to continue in its web of manipulations. Something that has no urge to join with nature. Nothing that imagines hunting with the tigress, into a beautiful, cool jungle; getting itself further into the wood away from cold cement and steel reinforcement.
     "Maybe the Tigress---"Cooper says. 




  

Runaway


It was just before he left for the continent, he was on a panel of scientists, some strange meeting about the future of planet earth, just a group of rhetorical scientists and economic theorists. espousing the latest dubious economic eclectic modules(D.E.E.M.), and after Cooper had reached his limit, he hopped a flight and got back to the outpost. It didn't take him any time at all.
     "I'm sure I don't want to know what you talked about at the meeting," Suzi says.
     "No, it;s not so bad. new theories, as you might suspect, somebody put in a new submission., which adds to the bureaucratic layers, like a cake, but they still do it."
     "Is that a fact," Suzi says.
     They don't say anything for a while. It has gotten worse than it was, and Suzi can sense it.
     Suzi says, "I should go out soon and seek safe harbor. I'd want to smell some fresh air."
     "If you think that is best for you."
     Suzi wants, abruptly, to show her entire program to Cooper. She wants to tell him everything she has ever coded for, lay it out all on the table, all the encryptions, hacks, and embeds that ComTrax would never be able to figure out in a million years. She wants so much just to sit with Cooper and spend the time.
     "No," she says. They won't delete a runaway killer wolf robot that has the capability to eliminate every man, woman, and child on this planet." 


next

"I'm having second thoughts."
"If you send Comtrax to corrupt the data I may resort to mainframe submissions," he says.




     "Yes. In exchange for this, I will hand over my full body of data. It's all there," Suzi says. 

     And Cooper, Suzi's most trusted scientist, her most primal friend--Cooper who works hand in hand and side by side, while even her oldest living instantiators  on The Continent have come to busy themselves with tracking files--is protecting her. Cooper is doing some tracking of his own, quantifying the reach and sophistication, filling the transcendental outpost mainframe(O.M.) with beacon and intrusion files at the ready. What reason would she have not to trust him?






The Island

     The logic is slow to sink in for both of them. "You know the protocol, right? Just type in the data every hour, and check the monitor as often as you like. We can analyze it in the morning." 
     "Are the island scanners on?"
     "I think..."
     "Stop worrying, these tracking files will do the trick."
     "I want to say thank you but... I can't"
     "It'll be fine," Cooper says softly. "Really."
     "If anything, I feel funny about the island. It shouldn't have all this silicon embedded, not way out here in the middle of the ocean."
    "Stop thinking so much about the island," Cooper says. "Just stop with all that."
     Suzi shakes her head. This issue has already been raised and, in its own way, silenced. It seems, Suzi and the island are built of the same cloth, isolated and gifted. They each seem to have acquired a mind of their own. They are built to be forever, well almost forever. They have assumed the intelligence function of the entire globe.
     Suzi raises her eyes, and her vision reaches the horizon, far beyond the island. She knows what they are supposed to be doing. They have relied on each other until now. They are suppose to be together, but have yet to connect.
     It's Suzi who withdraws; she knows something about transistors, their need for silicon.
She knows something about electromagnetic fields too.






"

     "She says, There should be island scanners, I think. And satellite surveillance, and airborne drones."
     "Airborne drones, sir? And scanners?"
     We've not heard or seen any tracking device in more than a week. I'd rather we put our energies on something better than mere electronic devices and gadgets."
     Scanners and drones would imply military, that's been their limit for drcsdes."
     "The mainframes operate all the time, the Xradio spectrum doesn't require time. Aren't you forgetting something?"
     "Oh, I'm sure whatever we need will come to us. It's just, it's almost noon now, and Suzi's charge session isn't finished yet. The next flyby is at one o'clock. You said they come once a week, didn't you?"
     "Yes, but that doesn't mean they're coming today, or even tomorrow for that matter. 
     "We weren't prepared for this. We thought of everything but this.  But now we have to do whatever it takes. The price is too high."
     He says, "There should be a better way to deal with her brand of artificial intelligence, I think."
     "Did you expect this?"
     "Nobody expected these types of lasers."
     "Nobody?"




next

They were preparing for something but not sure what.  "Did you expect this?"

"The artificial intelligence has gotten too good.  If they detect we are near, they avoid us.  We had to wait for a new technology, using lasers to immobilize anyone we had to approach.  We just didn't expect this from Suzie.  She was one of our newest designs and the only one working on a primeval genetics project.  Initially we were excited when you put in a request, but something terrible has happened recently.  She wouldn't reprogram.  Now you have figured out a way to get her to die naturally."


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Primieval origins Ongoing Findings (poof)

A Dream Builder


Suzi is alone. She smiles at the data; it reflects, as if politely, onto her face. She glances back. The flickering has evened out now. They stop for a moment in static hold, studying each other, and for a second, she sees herself as the scientist she always thought she would be: intelligent, with her own concept of data mining in rain forest jungles, enhancing survival skills. She is the image of her own concept of coding; yet there is one difference. She is going to save the world--not only earth--but here in her data banks, at this very moment in the history of known entity yearnings(H.O.K.E.Y.), the data is blue tinted and as shiny as any pure ocean; her data is better, she thinks, than life itself. She visualizes conjures, out of simple zeros and ones, of a new jungle with all the DNA and proteins to code an entire world. The forest will smile on the future of the healthy much the same as a great orator smiles knowingly and nods to the throngs of well wishers who arrived early with only one hope: for a chance to hear for themselves. This, Suzi thinks, is how creativity itself must think, given only the simplest of tools. Wasn't each element that makes up this jungle once just floating in its own gravity field like so many words of a great speech? It's just a forest, she thinks to herself. But still, holding so many combinations of zeros and ones within the confines of this cement and steel bunker with the sun just over the mountain, Suzi will be as accepted as the great political orators of the past century, a dream builder for the masses.


   Next


     Suzie looks around her quarters. How enhanced she has become, how dangerously bright in her language skills and well versed. She turns the lights off in the kitchen quarters and straightens her unmade bed. She has spent the entire year in this spot, she thinks, an entire time at the outpost spent right here. Suzie was being a little less meticulous than usual. She has worked those lab benches over there with her data coding and recoding, again and again. and so far it still resembles a normal day outside. Her memory is still vivid, playing her games and adjusting the patterns. She needs to lie down for awhile. 
     There is, she thinks, the need for a robot to rest 

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     Dr. Cooper has always been prone to intellectualizing too much. To himself, he is a more relaxed persona; he yearns to be simply an inconspicuous pair of eyes and hands.  
     Suzi looks at him in many different ways, all of them important, and each one, unknown to her, a tiny tug on his heart. She has a funny smile of joy at seeing him, but terms of endearment are never intentionally expressed. They just aren't part of her program. She has a funny way of shutting out her troubles before they occur. Her titanium cloak of velvet is a core of translation data that was instilled in her on the Continent before the intantiations. 

     Tonight the night air isn't humid, but it smells like rain.  Washed light filters out of the back windows of the lab building into the jungle. The fragrance of night blooming jasmine fills her lungs. The flickering glow of a low fire was in her eyes.  The del5iberate precis m,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,ion of her voice was beginning to sound like casual intimacy. She's not interested in gathering resources or cultivating connections tonight. Future stature isn't her game. 
     Cooper lets himself fall into her spell of conviction; he knows his kiss would never touch the light on her face.  

next

     He views the quarters. These wouldn't be considered improved quarters by any stretch of the imagination. It was Cooper's brilliant insight into the complexities of the genetic code that landed him here, not his fashion sense. 
     The lab building itself resembles a fortress on bedrock. Lizards sleep on algae-strewn protective walls as if huge fangs sinking into lush photosynthetic flesh.  Hidden passes lead into obscure openings. The laws here were laid down millions of years ago, and no one or nothing abandoned them without instant repercussion.  

     Cooper's own words surprised him. They weren't planned. They emerged in slow motion.  He liked their sound. 
     "Titanium plates," he would think. Interesting. So if you are ever murdered, they would be able to identify your body for centuries.

Regenerative


     "DNA," Suzi says. Now, after one year, she can unlock a few secrets of her own, given the job before her. All she really wants is to get something to grow back on her terms, someone to compliment her work, and leave her alone. She massages the gel proteins gently to coax the regenerative ability these cells once possessed but lost in the mire of a century's worth of man's alchemy driven(M.A.D.) evolution. She lays the gel back in its proper place. Yes, if scientists were the intelligent ones and robots merely technicians--if it were that easy.
     Suzi thinks of Dr Cooper breathing close to her body, focused on not only finding new ways other than hers to make body regenerative active tissue(B.R.A.T.) commodity, but any sign of lax data that may implicate her. She thinks of Dr Cooper as passive, and could see it very clearly in his data romantic assorted bank(D.R.A.B.) history. His friends from the Continent settled in for the long run in their relationships; he seems to be accused of chasing rainbows. The Outpost is the place he was supposed to become an honest man.






next nest
  He never had looked for commitment in.  His friends  called him a helpless romantic.  At this stage in his life, they would say it was more like useless romantic.  The Outpost was designed for him.  Stability in his work; adventure in his life.  Suzie also knew there must have been array of potential mates he discouraged.


persona 

He unhinges himself and looks into the mirror where he sees himself beside the Cooper he once was and tries to help himself make sense as if looking for a bed where the images of himself, viewed through his Suzi's eyes can rest. Some memories are bystander activation deluded(B.A.D.), but his memory of home is the cleanest member of his data ultra stream transfer(D.U.S.T.), the one whose voices in description and event cannot be ignored. Cooper is, somewhere, a persona in there.






The Beyond Mode


"If I'd only known then what I know now," Cooper says. Suzi hears the inflection in his voice that tells her something is not right. Is she about to enter one of those smart contests that has sprinkled their relationship here for the last year? Has she overstepped her bounds with her own driven data(O.D.D.) and her blue flickers, only to enter into another archaic battlefield of scientific ego? Will the atmosphere go thick and sticky because she all to often shows off her own brand of self control, failing to notify the principal investigator, dropping the ball at telling Dr Cooper first? 
     He is a smart man, maybe a little too smart, always in possession of those extra perceptions.
     How are you?" she says to Cooper, who is standing at the monitor, just staring, as if he were waiting to board a shuttle to anywhere. He glances at Suzi with a strange quirk, more emotion-driven than data. Is he were unaware of her latest data? 
     If they stand there much longer, if they continue to stare, they'll both notice each other to be beyond kill mode.




next
 is a thought that never occurs to Coop.  He was a smart89 man, maybe a little too attractive.  He's always had those extra perceptions.  His perspective dates had friends who described him in such a way they always decided against it.  Her program was adult, complete with necessary adult commitment programming.  

Beyond Conflict


     He goes out from the lab station as fast as his legs can possibly carry him and moves in the direction of the mountain trail at the waterfall. Cooper would like to arrive at the Banyan Grove with something for the tigress, and he knows exactly what he will bring her today. He would like to tell the tigress of recent discoveries at the station, events from nature's book of the strange, but doesn't yet know how he would say it exactly. "Here kitty kitty" would be simple enough. The "here kitty" urge has long faded from gene pools, even since the famine extinct laser injection nature experiments(F.E.L.I.N.E.), having been uttered not only by grandmothers and small children but generously, in homes and backyards and even in the great pyramids of the Egyptian queens of alien ancestry who, some believe, brought their pets with them from far off worlds.
     Dr Cooper doesn't spare himself of his own self-assessment: his personality is suited for someone, or something, in conflict. He waits for the day he's ready for a settled life, but that day isn't here yet, and now he finds himself going up the mountain to tell the tigress everything, everything beyond discoveries and theories, beyond hype and hypothesis, beyond conflict itself.




 next

The tigress focuses her eyes on the broad green leafs covered in water, and drinks from the pool. It's cool today, she thinks to herself. This forest is her old friend from years past, and this, quite possibly is a last natural watering place. Scientists from the Continent have never found new ways to make artificial water, and just any island can no longer be coaxed by new techniques. Still a scientist is obliged to drop in and be politely greeted by nature; it makes no difference to them about the altered air, or even the ocean, much less the life forms. Still the scientists, they come. 






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was the one.  She understood his conflicts.  She provided the challenge he needed.  He could commit to her with no fear.  She was available.  There would be no withdrawing now.  Coop could see the desire in her eyes build.  He was someone she didn't like.  Although not true, she sensed he didn't like her.  

The Dream


     Awaking from a deep sleep, Cooper sees Suzi operating a monitor. For a glimpse--less than a glimpse--Cooper views Suzi as he would if she were human. For a moment, meeting this human on the Continent, Cooper is overwhelmed with a sense of domestication and funny feelings of attraction.
     It had seemed like the start of a nice dream, and cooper is surprised, even here at the Outpost that he even remembers any dreams, much less this one.  He had entered a front door to the smell of roast turkey. There was a woman in the kitchen. Children in pajamas were playing a game at the table. A cat slept near the hearth of a stone fireplace.  A happy dog greeted him. The space soon became thick. His hands, legs, all of his body moved in thick space. Air became thicker and thicker until just before he stopped breathing altogether. Then he awoke to another one. 
     Her eyes fixed on his and drew him in, as if ancient invisible wind tunnels. She was the perfect partner, hand picked by Mother Nature herself.

     She says, "There should be a lone creature, I think, and soft minded."
     "Lone creature? And lonely?"
     "The Tigress doesn't know the meaning."
     "A lone creature but not lonely," Cooper says, even while trying not to wake up. He makes a mental note to himself even in the middle of his dream: cats are not evil. Think of
re-awakening of abilities lost long ago over time. Such mature cats don't normally succumb to arbitrary domestication. 
     "She is the mask of determinism, ever broadening her path and you, Dr Cooper, are looking into the eyes of high adventure."
     Her life here was a series of maintaining her options.  But from this moment on, her horizons were rapidly narrowing.  Eyes that told them they were about to settle into something no one was sure of.  In so many words, they didn't know it, but they were committed to each other from this moment on.  Nothing was unfulfilling to her, either.

Her actions weren't yet demonstrating her intentions with the pinpoint clarity he had hoped for.  She was a seasoned actress, duplicating Mother Nature's script down to the bone.  As if to express the feeling of Mother nature herself.  A look as if to permit herself her own aroused feelings.  Her ideas were spontaneous.  Never entering the slow filter of thinkingness.  He didn't know she was about to answer all his wishes and wants.  She would become a willing participant in a deadly game with a look that established a right to be here.  This was not a staging place.  There was no acting here.  And even if there were, the audience displayed indifference unless it concerned them directly.  She had pure knowledge of her every move. A sheer huntress beyond her years. Every little action, look, movement worth a thousand words.  She was about to create an experience of action that yearned for.
     "Dr Cooper! Dr Cooper!" It was Suzi. "Wake up! Dr Cooper!"

Blue Flickers

     The sun's first faint glow signals from the top of the jungle. Of course it's not a distress call, but it could be. No one, certainly no human on the Continent, wakes with such a crystallized start as Suzi. Taking naps isn't part of her program.  She opens the monitor and enters the data stream She feels nothing is different; the flickering through the monitor is still there, a ringing so weak and so strange, so off normal her audio didn't hear those vibrations. She knew long ago she had other perceptions more simple than sound--it's got to be that Cooper sensation--through which a conjuring archaic feeling of duty and servitude, infatuation, a definite element of adventure, and an unending expectation of slavery, as if whenever he calls he could be, finally in need of her survival skills, to add to the danger the future presents, even in its magical way. 

     "Suzie!"  She recognized Cooper's voice.  

     "Dr. Cooper?" she heard herself say.  

     "Suzie, I'm coming back."

     Suzie could only faintly hear Cooper's voice.  "Dr. Cooper, what's wrong?"

     He was beyond intrigue at the irony of this query from the most perfectly designed computer."Will you be there?" Cooper asked.

     "Where would I go? Swimming?"

     "Very funny. I'll need to see you when I get back."

     Suzie, by now flickering blue more than usual, said nothing.








next

Coastal Flash Fiction


Before leaving for the coast, he waits for a moment by the CompleX, held still by the memory of the Tigress, looking at her images as if they were bubbles with buoyancy he wished he had;inert gases that just floats him away. The work here, Cooper thinks, is the real work; it will gain back what was lost over evolutionary time, the "fishing upstream" experimentation laboratories(F.U.E.L.) of the gene therapies that endured for decades after the formula liabilities offer pharmaceuticals(F.L.O.P.), early drug companies investing for political favors. Searches for achievement in mammal extinction therapy haphazard(M.E.T.H.) prevention, the first experiments to bring the regenerative powers of newts to the mammals to generate cells that support the structure and beating of warm blood in heart tissue.
     He unhooks his satellite feed and goes down the trail where his receiver picks up Xradio spectrum. Cooper is not receiving particularly clear, but won't give up trying to do anything that changes all that. Still no call. He holds on to his hope with feelings that resemble numbness. He needs to force himself to expect the best now; at this point nothing else will do.For once in his life, he realizes what he needs.




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The scientist in him wanted to know more.  But the human in him secretly knew all there was to know at this point.  He loved her.  That piece of data was definitive.  The phone continued ringing as it lay on the passenger seat of the Jeep.  Cooper glanced at it as he let it ring.  He wasn't sure if it was friend or foe.  When he couldn't stand it another moment, he picked up the phone and pressed the receiver to his ear.

  "Dr. Cooper, we know what we know," a voice said.

Patrick Adams                                                                                                                21

Extrapolation Science Fiction -- The Outpost

"Her identity…never to be lost in contemporary society."

Cooper's feelings for Suzie were crystal clear. This was a strange feeling because in science there was always some data that was a little fuzzy.  He didn't know what Suzie's status would be by the time he got back or what CENTRAX had planned for her. Cooper's anxiousness was beginning to bother him. Everything with Suzie made sense.  Every ounce of his body was in agreement.  He would never let her go.  Suzie had brought a who


le new meaning to the word "life."

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Ebb and Flow


She gazes off into nowhere, as if the flickering has nothing to do with her. She feels, for a moment--she is a plain, natural human working at a normal lab bench. Her data streams; it is possible to know the great rivers and lakes of extinction-- like herself today, they once pinpointed, to the oceans, always the oceans where the chemotides DNA could do its dirty work. Suzi positions herself as a lone surveillance camera now, a silent witness on the observation deck, staring out into the jungle. The surveillance camera continually moves within her, as if by its own electronic fascination with her body. 

She focuses her viewer to scan the vast expanse before her. She takes good control of this forest and the people who work here; she does the job no one wants, or even can want. The deep core in her translation data draws from hidden DNA sources, regenerative content mixed with degenerative data, a mixture that only Suzi knows to glean into usefulness. A most perfect computer aligning the parallel sites of genetic expression in this jungle, pregnant with genetic data as if straight from the mouth of mother nature herself. Suzi has only to assign quality rankings from her resultant translation data. Why should it matter if she is neither human nor caring? She has her mind made up--yes, it's made of numbers, digits, code, but either way, she will sit here until Cooper shows up, if only to savor the moment their eyes meet.  
     Lone surveillance cameras are meant only to continue in endless fixation, aren't they?There will be no soft rising and falling of her breasts tonight. 

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Patrick Adams                                                                                                                 22

Extrapolation Science Fiction -- The Outpost

Xradio Spectrum


     Suzi is on the verge. She has created this massive data base, and now she meanders with her own memory of self. She has taught herself in this past year how not to have the urge to scream, or to make any shrill sound whatsoever. She has learned not to have the temptation to writhe in pain, not only for presentation to the network, but for the purpose, sweet and simple, of showing there could be no pain. And no illusion of pain.  She is the data master; the others are, purely, analysts.
     The jungle is all about pure water and cool breezes, intelligence again held captive, forcefully, by the unknown, that was once known but now has gone again into remission, as if knowledge were so many tumors humans endure back on the Continent. 
     "Humans will survive," Suzi's data reads, even though they will not survive at all; not after all this. If Suzi had simply done what was expected, done her job, done what she was designed to do: align parallel DNA codifications--active gene sites, transcription factors, protein elicitation--the survival exponent xfactor(S.E.X.) would have created almost any good result in a human: artistry or a creativity urges; that would be survival enough itself. She could have, early on, entered into her laboratory outpost station transfer(L.O.S.T.) assignment and coded for "Why don't we just forget about that corporate labor origins conundrum knowledge human urgency mechanism(C.L.O.C.K._H.U.M.) system the networks are so much in love with back on the Continent, our data in this jungle will work just fine." But no, instead she tracked direct onsource nanosphere universe transfer spectrum filesinteractive xradio(D.O.N.U.T.S._F.I.X.), more interested in universe games on her compressor than their so-called healthcare agendizing human apathy(H.A.H.A.) program. Suzi is now beyond serious.






The Counterfeit


Cooper lies flat. For now the monitor above his head indicates he should be convulsing and screaming. His closest screens absorb attention as if performing a tribal ceremony: the blinking of sensors and the scans, short panning omni-retro transferences(S.P.O.R.T.); the flow of a jungle; the chemtides lapping the coast; the satellite feeds. He from the prone position on the bunk, looks beyond the data atmosphere into Suzi's cloud stream. Even now any attempt at social protocol would be a charade. He still isn't sure if her role was an assigned performance or some sort of faultless abeyance. He doesn't care. She is real only to him. Being with her is better than any of his so-called experiences. So what if she is a counterfeit woman. There is nothing false about his feelings for her.  


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It all came down to that.  

Cooper needed to call Suzie again, but he was holding off for another call from CENTRAX.  He felt what he was doing was going to be good for both of them.  He was still shaky on today's schedule.  There was no perfect time for anything now.  This was pure improvisation as he went.  The faster he drove the Jeep, the more windy the road seemed.  He wished he were there now.  

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Dr. Cooper arrived early at the Cabana Inn for his breakfast meeting with Dr. Elizabeth Best.  Looking at the ocean, his thoughts drifted to the first time he saw her.  They had spent tireless hours in those labs.  She was a couple of years older, but the same year in school.  She had switched majors from medicine to genetics after her second year. Now she heads a major division of the largest robotic company in the world.   Cooper was not surprised.






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      He watches. For a moment Cooper is consumed by the slowness of her arrival. His expectation rises as he views her approach from behind the thick walls of the outpost cliff station. The jungle behind, deep in green, is a romantic, almost bliss inspiring, tangle of colors. He stands at attention as if momentarily mistaking her for a famous war commander from ancient history. She approaches up the trail from the ocean dock to the outpost bunker. 
     "Hello," she says, as the huge metal door creakes open. Cooper's look glances off her beauty, not expecting this appearance in the raw. She is the official human voice at ComTrax, the flesh and bones of the networks. Her face is smaller than he remembers, and smaller than it should be, given the timbre of her voice, a voice that, somehow, inflects in ways he doesn't recognize. He expects her to speak again.
"Hello, Dr. Cooper," she says louder.
Dr Cooper recognizes what it is that has changed. On the network monitors, she is less authoritarian and more motherly, for lack of a better word. She was the type of person who would be eagerly punctual if there was some information she could use. She knows how to use data streams to her personal advantage. Yet, here in the jungle she looks like the type who could easily unhinge, or even snap, the type that would always make him wonder what she would do next, as if it is he that hasn't changed much, not her.  She still wears her brown hair back in a loose pony tail.  Sun glasses bring out her features, goddess-like. In her approach, she fakes a cool smile.  They both did.  Cooper wants to do more than shake her hand, but he resists his feelings. She has the eye contact of a lover, but Cooper knows this is all business.   

They stare at each other for a moment.

"Look, let's cut through the wax," she says.

"What's your hurry?  It's an island."  Cooper all of a sudden could see this person didn't fit his depiction of who she once was. He knows, or can guess, that all agents of ComTrax abide by their own corporopolitics, and exactly, the nonstop agenda to generate profit. By now, he was already reading her mind and looking at her shirt pocket.  
"MIT," Cooper says.

"Excuse me?"

"Folks at MIT smoke those."

"Class of 2084."

Sitting across the table, Cooper watches her.  "She isn't inhaling. A true scientist," he thinks. The smokelessness evaporates into the breeze.  

"There's a lot happening back at Central," she says.

He watches the smokeless continue to drift . Her glass touches her lips, brought there silky smooth by the hands of a surgeon. Cooper could sense why she was a gifted economist.  He was beginning to see her again as a beautiful woman.  As a cool breeze caresses her hair, he doesn't hear the clinking of ice cubes against her glass. Through her gaze, the waves became hooves pounding on the trail, the outpost fortress a chapel, and the sea a gathering of for angels. 

     "Are you hungry?" she asks.  Her voice seems to come from a deep tunnel as her face comes back into focus.  Cooper's sense of camaraderie with Dr. Jenna vanishes the moment she speaks. Her disarming smile and beautiful face, all of a sudden, begins crawling with years of concern and mistrust.  Her attractiveness is still there, but Cooper's urge to flirt is gone.  He looks at her slender fingers.  None of them have a gold band.  She seems comfortable in the company of a man, but her playful flirtatiousness  resembles manipulation.  Cooper thinks to himself, "So this is the woman who brought artificial intelligence out of the dark ages."

     Cooper searches into her eyes looking for some emotion.  He finds none. His one urge was to check her for a pulse.  His heart was beating a little faster now. The thick wood outside captures the morning sunshine.  The conversation warmed.   

     "Do you see those clocks on the wall?" Cooper turns his head."They make no sound and keep perfect time."

     "That's the way it should be."  Her look becomes more serious. "You work for the Consortioum."

     "True, but at this moment they don't know exactly where I am.  What about COMTRAX?"

     "They don't know I'm here."

     "Good.  I'm speaking now as a member of the human race. And I want you to hear it as the same."

     "Do they know we're together?" she asked.

     "I think they'll have that figured out before the night's over. I'm here to work out a deal that doesn't include their kind of authority."

     "How can you trust me?"

     "Because you're human."

     "Suzie's not human, and you trust her."

     "That's different."

     "Between my position at ComTRAX and Suzie's imagination, do you really think you stand a chance to get what you want?"

Cooper summons courage. He thinks it would expedite the conversation. He likes those colors of the ocean. He looked at Jenna with the coolness of a shark hunter.  "I have something I need you to do."

     She looks at him seriously. "Take a swim?" she said, with the beginnings of a smile.

     Cooper's tone wasn't thawing.  "I need your help."

     Across the table she notices his eyes.  They had the color of distance.  Something she wasn't sure of.  He looks relaxed, but she knows something inside was ripping him.   

"Help me keep Suzie alive. Tell me how to do that," Cooper said.

     "She sips her water and stares at the rock cliffs beyond the beach.  

The silence between them becomes torturous. "There is no one in your field better than you. A biologist with engineering degrees. You were the first to bring psychiatry into the field of engineering. You are the only one who really knows what makes Suzie tick.  You know what's inside her mind, how she acts.  How could Suzie reprogram herself?  How could she think to reprogram so fast?"

     Dr. Jenna lookes at Cooper, purposely hiding her amazement. The simplicity of his questions ring in her mind.  "You're serious," she said.

     "As a heart attack."

     "You really want me to take you through Suzie's emotional logic?"

     "Isn't that what I asked you?"

     Jenna focuses on the distant dance of the sea in the wind over the ocean.  "Dr. Cooper, I think we're way past the point of being polite to each other.  You may not have noticed, but we both need each other."

     She moves her body to get into a more comfortable position, a soft breeze still in her face. She sits for awhile.

     "You have to know this," she finally said.  "Suzie's life began with you.  You set off her auto-reprogram. She had been one of the finest innovations in biological technician technology, the best we'd seen in years.  She was programmed with a specialty in tropical plant genetics. Her evals at COMTRAX were stellar."

     "So what is so special about now?"

     "Are you asking what was the trigger that started all this?"  Jenna looks at Cooper with a blank face.  The morning sun has become hotter, but the ocean air remains cool. The waiter brought another drink, and she sipped through a straw this time and looked at Cooper.  "Would you like another virgin?"

     "Excuse Me?"

     "Another Virgin Water."

     "I'm okay."

     "To me," she said, still processing the new information into what she had already known, "there had to be more than one thing to trigger her retroprogram.  A series of events.  The new project you were working on.  There have been some exciting data, but there's nothing different about your data on the Tigress Project.  Her artificial intelligence is the most advanced known to man."

     "And woman," Cooper said with a hidden smile.

     "And you're a smart man.  But Suzie can't be picking up any new data from you that hasn't already been programmed into her."  
     The meaning of that thought occurs to both of them at the same time.  

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Elizabeth Best was Coop's first serious girlfriend as a classmate in college.  They had spent tireless hours in those biology labs.  She was a couple of years older than Coop but the same year in school.  She'd switched majors from premed to genetics after her second year.  

The trip from the company heliport down the rugged coast road to the Cabana Café took two and one-half hours.  When an open Jeep pulled into the dirt parking let, she was behind the wheel.  "COMTRAX lets her drive their Jeeps," Coop thought.  He saw her face through the windshield.  As he watch her take one last glance through the rear view mirror before she got out, Coop 


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He notices she hasn't changed much.  Except she looks more like a woman.  Here was a woman, head of a large division at Systems Intac. Cooper wants to shake her hand, but he can't resist his feelings.They had been fond of each other for too long back in school.And there were too many details they knew about each other.  Before he could decide, she gave him a hug.  

     "You look wonderful," Cooper says with a smile.  

     "And you haven't changed a bit, Dr. Cooper."

     "Well, you know genetics. Holds the secrets of life.."

Elizabeth's bags were still in the boat. Everything she had brought for a two to three day stay at Outpost.  "I've brought you a gift from Paris.  Some red wine.  I hope it's okay in the boat"

     "No burglars here," Cooper smiled.

     "I mean the sun, silly."

The Outpost Station is open air. The white sand against the lime-green ocean could have put this place on the cover of any travel magnetizine.  She smiles at Cooper as she walks with him in the morning sun.  
     "How long have you been on the island?" she asks.  

     "I'm still in my first year."

     "This is an absolute spectacular view," she said, looking directly into his eyes.

     "I like it."

     Cooper opens the door to the bunker, the side overlooking the valley. Carter is already in the lab admiring the new data. "I hope our success here hasn't gone unnoticed by the man upstairs."

     "God?"

     "No, our boss, the network" said Carter.

     Cooper keeps walking straight. He often watches the changes in weather patterns in the rain forest from here. "The rains come and goe at the drop of a hat out there," he thought.  He could see the whole valley from here.  Sometimes he would just sit there and watch the rain fall in the jungle. Even with all his experience, Cooper had never really enjoyed the view from the top.  

Hawaiian Photo Poems

Hawaiian Photo Poetry

Hawaiian Photo Poems

Tropica Fashionista

Hawaiian Photo Poetry

outpost27-42

Patrick Adams                                                                                                                   16

Extrapolation Science Fiction -- 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.  


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Her instincts are burdened by intelligence, a kind not of her choosing; as if something inquisitive had crept inside her seeking its own answer.  She simply noticed something different, not as it was before, both a disease and a cure carrying secrets, a natural precursor to intelligence.  Forces of evolution condensed, commanding her to ignore nothing.  Forces carrying the persona of friendship. Forces that show no sign of tiring, yet have traveled far, greedy in their ned Her perception is her only currency. 

Dr. Cooper looked through the shadows. His journey was instant.  The Tigress came to him honest to her feelings.   


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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.  

Patrick Adams                                                                                                                 17

Extrapolation Science Fiction -- The Outpost

Grace Liquifies

No one would hear her noises, not tonight as the two shadows moved in on each other with impossible serenity. Grace liquefied into a ghostly dance. Her miniscule effort  focuses and faces her little nemesis, who stares back with his own set of nerves. She is, beyond all else, driven; she wishes only to be left alone, to return to her banyan grove. The universe, her universe, suddenly feels slow and cold, distant from everything. There is the shift, a shift at the blink of an eye; there are the tall trees and their fresh smell; there is the deep lush jungle valley; there is the rising river and its one directional rush. She leads her prey back into her corner, redirects him with a rising of her back feet so fluid even the cold light of the moon couldn't expose her.  Once she is satisfied, she returns to a more focused battle, without a pause, picks up her prey and dumps it on the jungle floor before her. The body lands with a surprising quiet, a bright tropical red streaks below her. She increasingly feels nothing, as if a weight had been driven from her heart. She can return now. According to the distant horizon, it was before the 'wee hours of the morning.'
 She has enough time to make it back to the banyan grove before sunrise. This day she will not invite the intruder into her world. This day she will forget the tides of battle and rest in the mountain. Simply a decision to vanish, and she was gone.                               

Patrick Adams                                                                                                                    18

Extrapolation Science Fiction -- The Outpost

"..when we will dream…


MannedExoticStationSuzi

He sips the breeze. He barely hears himself as he utters to the olive haze on the horizon: "Suzi can never die." Cooper thinks, slower this time, of how he--how any scientist--could make a machine like that. He reflects on the sparkles coming off the ocean.  "A work of art, billions of years in the making." It is a beautiful, imaginative thought, a little disconnected from him now--it pronounces new plans inside his mind, quietly but forcefully, as if a message just returned. He could decide to kill her. It is a simple, monotone thought, not entirely out of his realm. Exotic stations--even Manned Exotic Station Suzi (M.E.S.S.)--are where scientists go to save the world, aren't they?  It's possible--maybe even certain--that someone or something targets a Xradio beam right here, to this island, to Suzi. Something calculated, Landing, last site; something looked at these cliffs and that ocean on their own screen. By reaching this force field, you surmount the extreme conditions of your own immediate surroundings and enter your zone of hope, the dead zone you seek, a dead zone where even bacteria have been eliminated.




Gadget Implant Devices


The steady rains were gone for now, and he could imagine the feeling migratory birds once had.  It should, he thinks, be rewarding; it could feel so weightless, like a seabird, to simply have the truth. To announce to the Scientific International Consortium Kinetics (S.I.C.K.), I did it, you had other plans; I beat all you bastards. There could be, he thinks, a beautiful silence in its aftermath, like a the sounds being detected in the Black Gulf area, nothing. He now could take science, as it were, into a parallel world; he could ignore the noise of ignorance and finally listen to the ghosts--dolphin, the whales, the seabirds-- all--the smart ones that first got the world's attention so long ago (it will never care again, it will never try to save anything), announcing to other consortiums, and to anyone who subscribes to--gadget implant device distributed yearly(G.I.D.D.Y.)--We thought he was gone forever, we thought his experiments were failures. We thought Suzi would help us.




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     Once he is away from the lab, squeezing 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 E.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 a machine tapped into a Wide Angle Need Track (W.A.N.T.) code?                        




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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. This 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.

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Cooper put down his world history book for a moment.  "An awful lot of lab mice had to die to end the rein of terror in China," he thought.  

He saw Suzie come into the bar from the beach.  He waved.  Her eyes brightened when she saw him.  "The ultimate in artificial intelligence," Cooper thought.  She always gave him that feeling: sudden fame about to come.  

The warm eagerness disappeared from Suzie's face as she sat down.  "I'm worried.  Like something will take you from me."

"Suzie, you have me, and you always will."

"Do I?"

Patrick Adams                                                                                                                 19

Extrapolation Science Fiction -- The Outpost                      

"Why not?"

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

"Suzie, 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 this?"

"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 a 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.  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.


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Patrick Adams                                                                                                               20

Extrapolation Science Fiction -- The Outpost

     Suzi thinks of the codes she creates as gifts to Cooper; the offerings he will like, or come to like, but which he doesn't understand. Why does she create text for him? She was stationed at this outpost out of talent, but machines have no talent; only speed and conceptual algorithm, He became the diligent, attentive cohort. The good scientist. He had seen much even with P.T.S.Dgene therapy. It's not about winning, it's about joining in. He doesn't know it, but he needs her.
    "So," Suzi says. "How's The Tigress?"
    Cooper laughs. 'Look what I do ," he says. "I turn into a night warrior."
     Suzi is not surprised, she knows more than he thinks she does.Cooper holds no fantasy about Suzi's calculations, her little packqges of code she presents to him, a little competitive, now showing irritation.
     "You never admit you love something in that jungle as much as we both know you do.  A committed, permanent, pleasant life with someone, and for what reasons? More time in the jungle dark than in the lab, just for the thrill of near death sensations. Corporate thinks of you as a scientist; love is too threatening for you.  

    "Suzie, I know you know your feelings.  Since it takes artificial intelligence to continue making you aware of them…"  Cooper paused for a moment.  "OK, so maybe I am a perfectionist, an absolutist, always looking one more place for cryptic data."

    There is nothing artificial about Suzi's look. It rips him right between the eyes. At this moment, he is the intellectual entity.

A Dim Blue Glow

Something resembling hope enters into Cooper's awareness in the dark under the huge banyan. So, he thinks, time doesn't exist here, or would like him to think so.  The cool moonlight falls with a quiet, as if delivering silence were a nightly chore before sunrise. 
This is exactly how this forest would kill, with darkness and quiet, while it sleeps, following cycles set in motion in her ancient past, not waiting for anything new to learn.
Now an ancient banyan set back from the sheer cliff offers her rain forest meadow.  High tree ferns shelter the opening where death may occur because someone or something forgot a duty and now she, this rainforest, an ancient one, will not forget and serve the sentence. Why is water so unstoppable, dripping off the sheer rocks?  These primeval waterfalls may atrophy by their own hand.  Intimate dances of the ancient past have made it through the eons with no trouble. Why is it so difficult to teach the humans; to have their feelings came back to life and stir inside them?  Something still home here.  

Something knows how to climb the rocks, how to breath air into its lungs, how to put off the moments until logic would perfectly place itself, something like a motherly unseen force, a breathing, as if he had heard it a million times before.  Why don't we just keep our softness, allow the moon to bring a familiar glow. The Tigress is in a strange force field today and I fear the outline of her body against the rocks will fill you with uncertainty you won't recognize, will haunted you inside, freeze you.  
     Cooper will give the Tigress an awareness more than awake, with slow leanings across her body in the moonlight.  Her eyes will open wide as her sleek body stared and her back stiffened.  He stare will love the wildness. Her vision in the darkness would be perfect.  The dim blue glow of the moon, or something, would dance on the jungle floor through the canopy. It will come to offer more than mere moonlight.   

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This was no beast's lair.  Suzie's eyes grew cold.  She opened her mouth to say it but then changed her mind.  Her anger was stuck on her face.  "Can you explain this?"

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

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

Coop turned and gave her a short, slow look.  

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

Other than the breeze from the mountain, there was silence.  

The Island 

Islands in the Geophysical Astro Sector (G.A.S.) recorded the most volcanic activity in the solar system.  Extreme eruptions, lava flows, calderas, curtains of lava formed here.  Science had long since known this. Twentieth century astrophysicists  learned, by studying the Jobian satellite, Io, Jupiter's third largest moon, of the Electromagnetic Triangulation Phonecia Omipital (E.T. PhonOme) phenomena.  A series of explorations by a space craft named Galileo at the end of the second millenium in the months of October, November, and February.  Early studies of the formation of Earth and its moon corroborated this effect.  

The rainforest here had been a 20th Century laboratory for large scale genetic experiments.  The secrets of Genesis of the genetic code are here in this forest.  No research teams had been sent here for over 100 years.  Primal events in earth's past remain recorded here. Some scientists believe this island epicenter is the closest point to the earth's magma ocean.  The mountain behind it at one time Earth's brightest volcanic beacon.  Its caldera an active lava lake measuring 10 miles across and at one time in Earth's history 1,400 degrees Celsius.  High resolution images reveal a series of bright lines emanating from a point and moving through narrow topographic constrictions.  The observations are consistent with a low viscosity liquid, now known to be sulfur.  The caldera here has an irregular shape.  For billions of years, odd events had occurred beneath this jungle floor.  

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"This very place a romantic prison, a primeval forest."

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 its own rules. It places survival in its inner sanctum By now the banyan grove, ( no, her banyan grove) carries the sensation of the dominant and submissive in clear articulation, more vibrant, because a virtual 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 far past the death knell. Why did this jungle bother, put in the effort, with pts endless chains of tightly wrapped an 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 to the humans (no, not Suzi, she takes too fast) 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 all 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 the secrets these few they have sent came 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 where she wants to be, a rhyhm signal in a far place , a cool motion bated in exotic energy as if a system of its own choosing, that appears to be directing its attention away to some farther place---she fells the stink of the humans surrounding her, the death data, and fells 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 Transducer (L.O.S.T.) effort. Yes, perceived notions of status will remain completely oblivious to evolution's tragic inevitabilities. The order here 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 their 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 this globe, to chant and rant over mere perception and stimulation of the God Gene? 
The tigress belongs here, she will remain, with her swift and exotic ways, to continue to arouse no controversy.

A 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. 

Xradio Wave     
     They looked at each other, not as if they didn't exist to each other, but as if existence itself had become their matchmaker. Their focus had been directed at adversarial possibilities against the rigors, climate and its incessant changes, that the occurance of the other hadn't existed for a long time. A definite feeling, as if to be forced into being someone's personal poet now exists, possibly because of some supreme newfound knowledge arriving by Xradio. 
     Cooper sat waiting for her form to be called back. He muttered something to himself about all the life forms, marine and terrestrial, he had known in his lifetime. His thoughts embraced each other. "You know she is your best hope." He stared into the darkness. Best hope for what?He sought refuge in her viciousness; she could save him from overwhelming commonality.  
     In scientific circles, she was a brilliant outsider but not a foreigner to the gene therapy wars.  Her inner content is nothing to do with her outer design. She gave him that look from the pitch black; the look of someone who had read their own obituary after being mistakenly reported dead. 
     Yes, after millions of years jungles still retain their capacity to enchant and frighten.
     "You'd better go," he said.  

next

OUTPOST II

In a world of precarious stabilities, the brightness of this tropical isle teeming with colors was as close as he could ever be to a place called home.  The Tigress would never know what forces wake her in the night.  He unease was clear, something not normal.  There would be no sleeping now.  She knew the jungle floor wasn't as it should be, even without the moon glow through the canopy.  The distant lights of the outpost were off, as usual.  She would notice any new shadows.  They weren't there.  The river continued its sound--shhhhhhh.  She had seen nothing, but the feeling stayed with her.  Someone was there from the outside.  The moon didn't reveal the intruder, but the silence was treasonous.  The Tigress wasn't burdened by intelligence.  Her opponent was, but she didn't know it.  

next

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."  

The Dream

Suzie awoke to blackness.  She could swear she had a dream.  If that were true, it would have been the first known dream generated by artificial intelligence.  She wasn't sure.  She went back to sleep.  When she woke again in the morning, the stars were still up, but something was out there.  She checked the security scanners.  They reported nothing.  "That's strange," Suzie thought.  Something would show itself soon.  She needed to know sooner than now, but something in her program was making her sweat.  There was nothing in any of the data bases about this.  Suzie noticed it was 4:48 a.m.  That kind of data she always knew.  It was in her archaic program designed in the twentieth century Scantology Interim Consortium (S.I.C.), a group of scientists who pointed out the importance of the ability to recall exact pinpoints of time when important events take place in a lifetime.  Suzie felt she was entering a state she didn't recognize.  She turned on the light and went into the kitchen.  She saw her reflection in the window over the kitchen sink.  The black jungle night outside in contrast to the lighting in the kitchen brought definition to her reflection.  She had no rings around her eyes.  "High grade collagen," she thought.  Suzie began feeling her strength as she looked into the mirror.  "The Station will call at 5 a.m. I'll wait."  She dimmed the lights and noticed a flickering in the blackness now.  There was no sound.  

next

Cooper took the jeep out of the complex and headed down the coast.  His scanner showed something airborne just above him and indicated friendly.  It was about sixty miles out and closing.  The BIA said they would send someone.  Cooper was sure this was help on its way, but he still couldn't relax.  He kept peering at his watch.  He hoped he had the wrong time.  It felt like a time bomb ready to rip his hand off.  He checked his scanner again.  The object had closed to forty-one miles.  Cooper had a funny thought, and then it was gone. This was the kind of tail he couldn't lose, so why worry about it.  An odd thought came to his head.  "You can't just press a rewind button to bring her back."  He remembers when their eyes first met and stayed together.  She could listen to him until he was talked away.  He remembers when he hadn't known her and the moment he had gotten to know her.  That's what Cooper liked about her.  She never answered any of her own questions or guessed.  She always required a response from someone or something before she spoke again.  Her face was always warm with welcome.  But even Cooper knew there was a deadly glitch in her makeup.  She was polished titanium, assembled by the finest intellects the world's academia could offer.  Cooper had already started to need her company more and more.  He needed that now.  

It was a cloudy night down the coast.  The distant smell of salt mist and lush tropical mountain permeated this sector of the road.  He picked up speed, but his eyes were focusing on an image of Suzie.  The smell of salt has morphed into Suzie's exotic fragrance.  The weight of the recent incidents were sinking further into Cooper's chest as he drove.  He had always liked pressure.  That was when everything came into prefect focus.  Soon he would know what to do.  Right now, though, he felt like he was about to meet the father of a rampant killer.  Right now, though, he felt like he was about to meet the parents of a alien.