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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.
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
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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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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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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."
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
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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.
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