Eco Photo Poetics

Photo Tropical Poetics

Tropical Eco Poetics

Tropical Eco Poetics

Hawaii Photo Poetics

Photo Eco Poetics

Island Eco Poetics

Eco Poetica Poetry

Eco Tropical Poetics

Tropical Photo Poems

Eco Island Poetics

Tropical Eco Poetics

Tropical Eco Poetry

Tropical Photo Poems

Tropical Photo Poetry

Tropical Eco Poetics

Island Photo Poetry

Poetic Poetica

Tropical Photo Poetry

Jungle SciFi

Outpost 58-81

  fffg o," Jenna asks. "How did Suzi get here?"

The Arrival


"So," Jenna asks. "How did Suzi get here?"
"TheOutpost?" Cooper answers, and can sense there's been some kind of mistake. Is he going to hear some corporate dribble about second quarter losses or revenue advancing as if  the biologics advance network(B.A.N.) were some football game? Is he entering, with his inviting nature and his boyishness, into a world of chit chat about checks and balances from a bigger world gone even more technical because he hasn't shared his most recent data? Is corporate online worldwide(C.O.W.) wondering about its trust in individual electronic payment systems, revealing his own ineptness at record keeping? He walks over to the monitor in a new frame of mind. "TheOutpost," he says again to Jenna.
"Yes. TheOutpost."




next 

"She was assigned to my lab by the Intac Consortium.  She had been doing excellent work similar to my project."

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

"What are you saying?" Dr Cooper asks. Damn, he thinks. You've come here, and now this. I can smell an authoritarian messenger a mile away. I know all about their lack of qualms, the paranoia, when it comes to letting the whole world know about their biggest fear--equating ideology with intention. It's so easy. Send a pretty enough face, sharp enough talk, and a haze will appear inside even the brightest of minds. It's fog's most primal motion. They drift. No, you're not a bad person, it's just that you've become good at what you do. And now, here you are.
Dr Jenna says, "We can't be sure of this. Suzi is the first quanta ultra entero electon nova(Q.U.E.E.N.) robiotic to go off task. 
"Mm..." Cooper answers. How do they know?
"With these quanta mechanica, it was just a matter of time."
"Is Suzi Ok?"
"She's somehow received nano implant transference wisdom inner tangles(N.I.T._W.I.T.)"
"Neural implants?"
"We tested over the network, and then she shut off, as if she were, possibly, angry?"
"Really?"
"Yes. It happened so fast." 
"What do you think?"
"We know she's running on sensory inputs."
"I see. Well I..."
"And now Suzi is using a mechano universe simulato intergala communicator(M.U.S.I.C.), directly in her processor."
"Are you sure?"
"Well, sure, not sure, we're beyond scope here. The question is what do I know about space?"
"You're a trained physicist. You're the one closest to Suzi, the one she responds to most. You designed her, for god's sake"
"I'm not in the business of communicating into deep space, you know my history."
"And now Suzi is?"
Dr Cooper goes to the lab window, looks at the jungle, and thinks. Space.




next

"They wanted to be in there.


The Wanting
  

"The inside is built for perfect maneuverability, and she has free run of the place. She has the creativity now for her own virtual ecosystem, to run with, to interact. She's not moving you, only her perception of you." And it's isolated, out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.  But the most important part is you.  You are the world's foremost expert on primeval genetics," says Dr Jenna.

"But Suzie is a robot. Artificial intelligence from toe to nose."  Dr. Cooper continues acting uninformed.  

"She's not pure data base.Her new intelligence includes new criteria."

"Such as?" 

"Wanting," Jenna answers.

"What does she want?  What could the finest artificial intelligence program on the planet possibly want?"

"More intelligence."

"What do I have to do with any of this?"

"Because you are you."

"Excuse me?"

"When your complete profile was programmed into the data base, she took this new data and wrote her own computer virus."  
"What?"
"You are a free thinking scientist. To a robot, that computes into intelligence, intelligence Suzie wants."

"But I'm human. Suzie could get more data from ComTrax even from here at the Outpost."

"Getting data is one thing, but gaining data from a human scientist without his knowledge and getting him to fall in love with her--that would be the ultimate thrill, machine or human.."

"I can't believe that."

"Can't or won't?" Jenna doesn't let Cooper's unexpressed denial bother her.  "You wanted a few things explained to you, and that's all I'm doing.  And getting to the bottom of what Suzie wants is all part of this."  

Cooper's eyes are staring at the ocean now.  He had been looking at the whole picture, but now he is looking at the smaller pieces.  In the bright sun, he seemed to notice Jenna for the first time.  Her hair golden brown, small lips and big eyes were what attracted him to her when they first met.  He notices her smooth long neck and how it seems to connect to the first hint of the top of her breasts.  Coop had always respected Jenna's mind and that alone kept his eyes from wandering further down the lines of her breast.  

"From what I know so far, everything points to you and the effect you have on her.  You have a close relationship with her, and that continues every day.  She has no association with any of the other human scientists at the Outpost."

Cooper leans forward on his chair.  He runs his fingers through his hair, throws his head back as if to look at the sun through his sun glasses.  He stays silent.  He knows Jenna was about to say something he wanted to hear.

"Suzie has got to want more than accessing all the hidden data a primeval jungle holds just to fill her own agenda.  Perhaps the thrill of having a human scientist fall in love with her, actually having you near, while all this reprogramming happens.  This has to be what she's doing."

Elizabeth looks at Cooper as if she'd just waked up to this beautiful place.  The ocean suddenly looks bluer.  Her voice sounds softer. 

"How can Suzie want this?  She's a robot," Cooper said.

"I can't answer that.  I'm not sure anyone can.    

"But you built her."

"That's the point. She's not following her program," says Elizabeth.
Cooper stares out at the ocean, wanting to know more.

next

TThe undefined threshold


They wanted to be there


The Golden Age


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




 next


Biopolitic Dream


His dream comes back. It rolls Cooper over in its slow, dark moments of frozen silence. Light enters, as if a cold metal door cracking, then opens. The laboratory is in lighted view, with bright windows that open to a commons in a courtyard, cherry blossom trees, students. A famous university emerges, as if on a giant freight elevator, all the way to the horizon. He looks down for the the pink flowers again and stares at what only remains: a tangled jungle, on a tropical island, peppered with cement bunkers, half buried in the under brush, standing guard over a white coastline, lime green ocean waters lap her shore.
"Darwinianism," he thinks.
"Democracy," a voice deep in the jungle answers.
He inhales a clean cool breath of air. He is exhausted from moving around so much in what feels like thick space. He stays up until moonrise, taking care of the animals. he touches a bible--is this bad for the humans, them being so sick and all? He isn't ready to wake up yet; he has fears of realizing this isn't a dream. He tells himself he must get more sleep. he'll be fresh for the humans in the morning, to hear again from them, how their beliefs and insights sustain the world, how survival instincts, even the strong ones, weaken. How extinction just happens. Then he wakes up.

PNext


atrick Adams                                                                                                                10

Extrapolation Science Fiction -- The Outpost

"…this intimate dance with the ancient past."

Beauty Program

She processes the data with focus now. At any time Suzi could chose to consume it faster, not as a tasty food, but intellectually, with the purpose of exotic intellect, the same way she learned to distinguish herself from everything else in the universe after she arrived at the Outpost and began to enumerate(Dr Cooper was duly impressed with her efforts). She is so filled with the need to learn, to share, it truly feels like home.
 And Cooper, Suzi's first real friend, her first lab partner--Dr Cooper who works so close by her side, even as some of the trackers at corporate suspect her--is responding to her newly acquired beauty program. He is seeing her as more and more important, instilling her mind with the human system innocence nanotechnology(S.I.N.) and happiness intelligence protocol protection yarn(H.I.P.P.Y.). Can it really be he who trickles the beauty algorithm inside her?
Cooper says, "You know the genetic code has long since been worked out, don't you? Psychologists debate, thinking they can explain benevolence phenomena by counting molecules. The first terminal extinction episodes sapien humans offered technologically(T.E.E._S.H.O.T.) began by measuring chemical phenomena inside male and female humans to explain urges and wants."
"Yes." Suzi says. She thinks. How is this connected to my beauty program?




  

WNext


Robiot Beauty


She will never put in a request for an upgrade on her artificial retroprogram technologics(A.R.T.), she simply lets it run on its own. Suzi, an intellectual flower amidst Dr Cooper's robiots, has no inclination to assess her standing among the ranks of the new socio-quantum intelligence retro magenta(S.Q.U.I.R.M.) generation. Suzi has come to points of recognition in the field of beauty. It must be, she thinks, a possible statistical analysis revolving around massive intellectualism and a kind of moral nudity, an appropriate blend of smart and naked. Suzi doesn't, at least yet, realize a life outside her own. She always has enough time to inventory her own knowledge, her inner design is a perfect androgyny program, her chassis a young workforce nude design of  highest grade naturally grown intracellular matrix and synthetic collagen, and for that reason, human male of the workforce often are enticed, attracted to the morality of hard work in the hopes of receiving the smallest amount of attention from her sector. She has nothing to compare her intelligence to, or with; it could be top of the line or low grade, she really doesn't care, yet.

HNEXT
The Last Coastal Boundary
Her intelligence is, as a rule, never asleep and always near, constant, filled with new algorithm and ancient code Suzi invents, so as to present herself in the best light. It is silently ordered, yet sprinkled throughout by stretches of useless code, as if to mimic junk DNA found decades ago in the natural wild, and, as in nature, Suzi collects junk algorithm for no apparent reason. Pure intelligence has, as a not-so-obvious trait, an underbelly it reveals to no one and--to no thing. It searches a new environment as if it were searching  an exotic tropical beach, not to sun itself, but to slither across with the pleasure of a conquerer. It seeks its next brink with the intent of an electron seeking a new energy cloud, a wedding cake wanting another layer frosting. Yes, another layer upon is what it wants , to feed itself, to fatten up as a great enumerator(A.G.E.). Pure intelligence, by any stretch of the imagination, does not appear to claim anything or anyone in the fuzzy locales it is found, and yet, when it spreads out its tentacles so as to signal its intention to leave behind the last coastal boundary, it feels nothing, save the putting of another notch on evolution's pistol--gunplay in an old western planet, so to speak; as if rain forests,  beaches, and high plains deserts are there solely and singly for it's own urge; its personal amusement.


 next
Active Central Enumerator(A.C.E.)


COMTRAX, on the Continent, collects human entity profiles within its own massive axial data(M.A.D.) core. The built-in discipline program central enumerator memorizing entity transfer(C.E.M.E.N.T), mixes at a constant pace on the dry ground, while anywhere from seven to eleven satellites remain set in motion, worldwide, at any one time. Through enterprise Xradio circuitless extraterrestrial signaling systems(E.X.C.E.S.S.), earth planetary power requirement is next to nil, and thus, free to the public. Data, in its rawest form, enters from the laboratories through personal ingest gadgets(P.I.G.) at the remaining sites intelligencia last-life yearlong(S.I.L.L.Y.) centers. 
Control and reason have long since become something of the past. One blessing remains: the Chindia robots COMTRAX purchased for each remaining human, all titanium-iridium framed, just now starting to understand their owner's condition of survival or death. And here is Suzi, artificial intelligence not yet in full knowledge of the the conceptual idea of the kill, yet.




next

Suzie's flesh was soft, but it was synthetic.  A familiar touch just wasn't something she could perceive.  Her eyes, beautifully designed, could find another's, but they were incapable of "I love you."  But love had nothing to do with perceiving and collecting raw data, and that's what she needed--more data.  Love had nothing to do with any of that, not for Suzie.  

Patrick Adams                                                                                                                   11

Extrapolation Science Fiction -- The Outpost

The Hindrance
Cooper looks into her eyes only to see what he wants to see. Suzi's synthetic collagen now comes with a natural scent, an enticement put there by the creatures, natural pheromones thrown in, but not as just an afterthought.   

She is designed to access data at fast speeds without having the hindrance of adolescence, that small window of testosterone and oxytocin so prevalent on TheContinent system. Suzi gets code and just goes. She is literally unstoppable, in fact, her code is only relevant to her present task, which makes her all the more unstoppable, a reprieve to those instructoe on the Continent system who constantly are having to deal with the hindrance of adolescence xenophobia(H.O.A.X.) syndrome. 
Cooper's view, somewhat skewed by engineers on theContinent, is still intact, the way it was the day he first welcomed Suzi to theOutpost (his logic falters once in a while, strangely, from time to time); her chassis, a nude exotic beauty Ursula latent acting(N.E.B.U.L.A.) model, never faints, never goes into comas, or even suffers from overload. Suzi's spirit (if you can call it that) can never die, at least not here, because of her titanium optical panels latitudinal extraterrestrial solar strobes(T.O.P.L.E.S.S.) in this tropical setting. Cooper enters the general quarters and clicks for her.
"Suzi here.Yes?" 
"Dr Cooper."He answers.
"I know."
"Were you expecting me?
"Sort of"

Suzi never screams, he thinks, and she doesn't bleed. All she wants is more data at this place and time? If she's having any problems (as if quantum mechanic robots have problems), surely she would tell him. That's what she's supposed to do, right?
Suzi cracks her door. She can see Cooper looking back at her with a look of pure ice, as if to mimic what he sees on her face, now searching her thoughts. He can't know what she is thinking--he hears a voice, forming a word, from the inside, that sound a lot like "space."
Cooper thinks, at least the tigress, the one outside the bunker, has a basic defense system: concealment.  Suzi doesn't care about that, in fact, Suzi has no sensually normal intimate fear function(S.N.I F.F.) mechanism at all. She just doesn't care, yet.  

Patrick Adams                                                                                                                   9

Extrapolation Science Fiction -- The Outpost

"Who fights now…"

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


next  

The Next Brink
What is it?" Suzi says. She and Carter go up to the observation deck.
"The water's up."
"Up? Probably not, the river is rising."
"Do you know that's the same thing?"
"No," she says, and she turns her scanners to the south to check the horizon with a certain intellectual impatience of Carter's ineptitude. She steadies her viewfinder the way captains of an intelligence alien motherships(I_am), in ancient history, would have done, looking for resources and intelligence in new realms, elements and data of sleepy civilizations.  Suzi stays for a moment, peering beyond the jungle, beyond the precious river(P.R.). Suddenly Suzi turns away with the look of disgust.

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

Suzi's wide eyes shoot white hot at Carter. 
No, he will never change his ways, and present himself in her required scientific way.
He will die on this island. He will be killed by his own stupidity, probably because of his own miniscule blindness. That will happen in the jungle, before he reaches any level of intellect. But in the meantime, watching the river rise, she directs her attention to more important matters at hand, the question of the next brink. She will go to a new level. She will become secretive and assertive. She will create trust and confusion, all the while simply doing her job, the one she was designed to do, collecting data; she will entice the genetics world by showing the function of these strange new DNA strands, just as the greatest scientists in history have always done. Then, only then, will her data have value, and she will be beautiful. Yes, in the end it would all be worth the solar, and, it would have all been about beauty, her beauty.






 Cooper stared at Carter.  "Carter!"  Cooper made no attempt to understand Carter's toying with Suzie's logic program.  

One glare from Suzie wasn't enough to freeze Carter.  He persisted.  Suzie was light years superior to anything Carter would ever be as an intellectual.  She knew she could run a bait and badger program on Carter.  But to her, it wasn't worth the solar.  

Next

Patrick Adams                                                                                                                   

Extrapolation Science Fiction -- The Outpost                                                               

"A cunning and resourceful opponent…a worthy encounter."

The jungle floor was surprisingly hard for a rain forest, but it was early winter and not much rain had fallen in the last couple of days.  Then when he saw them.  

workers androbot sleep.  

This night Dr. Samuel Cooper, Biogenist X, was not alone in   Lights from the back of the lab station faintly shimmered in the distant valley floor.  

When he moved, it was with ease through the shadows.  Never standing directly under the moon filled night. 

Next
Final Arrival
Seeing the eyes, he can barely catch his breath to see her eyes through the jungle canopy, calm, given the fact they belong to the creature who rules here. Cooper has found the hard jungle floor, entered the realm of strange form. The path to the waterfall, to the far reaches of the mountain, is lush with gree, the type of green gone extinct on theContinent, and to arrive here he endores more than one sound of the night, of ghosts and those other things; the midnight corridors of RainForest IIe; and, below in the deep valley, lights from the lab station, faint shimmer in the distant valley floor, where Carter sleeps, gun in hand, at the ready, where a beautiful young robiot, in nude flesh colors, appear to be in sleep mode, or communicstes with some one or some thing, and where the observation deck stands guard, looking out into the dark.
     He steps onto the banyan grove, moves with ease through the shadows, positions his body directly under the moon filled night. 
her is his existence, now:the feeling of safety, not arriving, or presenting  itself, yet, with a hope Cooper's next feeling would pass for it in a recognizable way. The grove has clean light from a glittering suspension of stars, cool blackness of the jungle all drifting over a strange yearning, a wondering of where he really wants to, or should, be. it is, he feels, an exciting hammering of hearts. It is the feeling of finality, yes, a final arrival.


next
The Hunter's Focus
He takes the enzymes into his body, uses a cocktail of restriction enzymes that include adenosinetriphosphate(ATP) and guanosinetriphosphate(GTP) in its recipe. It's the normal combination designed for Cooper's experiment alone, an injection  pumped into his blood stream to threshold of no turning back. Urge candy, he thinks; the perfect remedy of self-inflicted gene expression, about to hit full tilt, to recover self-afflicted, an attempt to bring meaning as if for so many souls born into the world with no clue, no direction, no owner's manual, only to be enumerated like robots; wandering around until an arm or a leg falls off, or worse, is shot off or surgically removed.
  Cooper treks high in the jungle and remembers, sees the resemblance of a scientist in his past, and pushes himself on. He thinks a cold jungle floor is no laboratory. He wishes he could breath easier when he notices animal smell seeping through the dense flora of the jungle.  It brings a coolness to the air, massive oxygen content. A sensation exudes from the lush jungle green, and makes the smell attractive. It brings back a focus he once had, complete with primal smells of a new born baby, born in a  hospital, not the mud of distant rain forests, as if by some cruel switch of fate. Yes, experiments had gotten him this far, at this moment, but now he hurries and for what? Will this all be taken away, the sounds and smells exciting him, the ones he recognizes? All of a sudden his emotions vaporize into nothingness, leaving behind only one thing: the hunter's focus.


next

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

  

next

The Beach
Storms brush the coast as if wanting to fade north, wishing themselves back out to sea. There is no more brisk air to consume, no more abrupt forces left to signal a season change on the island. To contribute to his state of mind, Dr Cooper stops by the beach, the actual place that, since the beginning, stimulated feelings from inside his brain' yes, the from moment he arrived at the Outpost, and, should it present those feelings to him again?  This beach, as if a feather tickling a yet discovered neuron center, a place where, when touched, makes any and all things seem funny. Given Suzi's submitted data and its genetic implications on neuro electro response dimininuative(N.E.R.D.)function. The secret, Cooper thinks, is that this beach is alive in its contrasts of the various shades of green held by the ocean, its slight oily sheen and metallic remnants, its view of the horizon with massive water, implying slow organic germ growth year(S.O.G.G.Y.) and low omni value entities(L.O.V.E.). 
     Looking out at the ocean had become a small pleasure instead of a serious surveillance for him. Yes, there are suggestions of no activity above the surface, now that the storm is leaving, yet below, so much employment by the artificial intelligence of photosynthetic machinery.
     This is just another point in time he has stood on this shore, and this place has yet to disappoint . No physical or mental activity is needed, only the presence to be, the chance to listen to inner music of the mind. Cooper pretends to be a scientist while knowing it is this off-the-beaten path beach that stops the world and all its attendant actions, stops the thinking and all the decisions based on trillions of religious and political input; he sees the smiling faces from the ones who truly love; he, the one who carries the ability of the age-old traditions of entering nothingness, for the simple purpose of hearing the music being played by a small place within the prefrontal lobe, self generated alph waves, decided by his own computation device; alpha waves emanating as ethereal as the minute waves lapping on this shore, this beach, only at this moment in time. Yes, the greatest discovery of all, the discovery of a personal ruling operational passion(P.R.O.P), found only here at this place, on this beach.








No hurricanes had been known to touch this island, at least in recorded history.   Presently, though, one was reported five hundred miles to the north.  No expected landfall yet.  

He had not gotten a lot of sleep the past three nights.  He was excited about his work, but now it wasn't his ruling passion.  He thought of Suzie, her silk dress clinging to her sensitive nipples.  His quickening heart persuaded him, convinced him.  He had always needed her; now he wanted her.  It wasn't loneliness that drove him, only pure desire to be with her. 

next

Cooper received some supplies at the post office and picked up a Chronicle.  On the way back he stopped the Jeep and looked out at the blue sea.  He thought of the years working on a boat.  That oceanography course he took in grad school.  Deep down he always wondered who or what he was.  


next
The News Traveller
     He is raging the silent war now seen reflected in the rearview mirror, dancing amidst  reverse images of the jungle; He remembers the news. He decides, in split decisions, to turn around, or not to turn around; he thinks by doing so, the news will jump out the back of the vehicle, as if some escaping prisoner in a moment of truth. Cooper doesn't follow his primal instinct; he keeps driving onward to his destination, to the Outpost, the one that stands so silent above the cliffs. He drives up the valley, even more aware of the news, the news still riding him, as if a killer alien morphed into something friendly, just for the ride, still wearing its ugliness, acting as guide, navigator of destruction, eyes open and aware. 
     Although it has joined Cooper on the trip as if an untrusted armed guard, a secret passenger, Cooper is taken by the feeling of calm, pleasurable ritual; He views the news for a while, as something that brings the force of mental activity, the force of physical, helpful, activity; in getting this vehicle to its rightful destination.  
     Beyond the little excitement of the other news, of so many people in the world hurt, doing something stupid in the darkness--with wild animals--people inattentive to their immediate environment, the ones who only experience the world through screens or monitors. The more gruesome, the more detailed exposure to the wild, pushing boundaries of the appropriate. Survival as so much entertainment, with their gadgets at the ready for gadget rescue, and by who? Wild miscalculations in a mad rush of antics to simply push, push too much
    And now this news, as if journalists could write in the miniscule detail of scientists when required. Lots of people are getting hurt, but at least no one is killed, yet, not for that reason anyway. 
     He is unhappy for the ones who think that because they were in a bind, the technology could save them. Yes, the GPS that was there to find them is what led them to get lost, they with their no common sense, map, or compass, an ironic fanatic; people's real intrigue is with the gruesome reality of life. 
     Cooper looks into the mirror again, the vehicle makes its usual sound on rocks as he  goes up the valley, smiling at the idea of no posted speed limits. The lush dark tropical greens, ocean sunset oranges, become more important than destination. 

next

Patrick Adams                                                                                                                  1

Extrapolation Science Fiction

".…to suckle the breast of the intellectual."

The Last Paradise
The sky to the south darkens with rain clouds and something undefined--have the drones finally made it to this sector? Or is a fleet of corporate jets? The end of the season is here, It appears that the research teams were gone, taking the data ships until next time  The boats were gone too.  The Aviatrix III and Technoprobe IX were the last to go. By early evening, the horizon had imbibed her fill, the lights from the research vessels melting into a watery distance.  Silent storms creep from the south and west of the island and spread a drenched dullness over the jungle, last primeval forest on earth.  

Thick tropical ferns dance in the darkness, naked against the wetness.  Further up the mountain, Giant Koa and Banyan trees stand majestic, multiple root systems cling to the black soggy jungle floor in a twisted maze, resembling giant petrified octopi. Sprouting puddles are the instant headwaters; rivulets, streams, and rivers emerge. The massive wall of water gushes down the mountain, dancing off volcanic rock, a gravity-aided thrust to the vast ocean below. The last paradise.

next

Post Options

Patrick Adams                                                                                                                  7

Extrapolation Science Fiction -- The Outpost                         

"Humans with gene guns…this jungle, she  stands.

The Last Tigress

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

next
atrick Adams                                                                                                                     5

Extrapolation Science Fiction -- The Outpost

"The aesthetic warrior…. freedom, then self knowledge."

The Last Exile
It tries to get up and leave, to become a new source--life's fountain, someplace else inhabited by rocks--to become a new template. From darkness the jungle would rise; to careen forward with living creatures. Her priceless cargo could mistake her for a freighter; they might expect a free ride, become a tramp ship of creatures. Jungles like this are the realm of physical laws, they involve forces of nature which takes years to manage--natural selection, habitat, ecosystems, predators; and thus, they keep moving using their mobility genes, to escape to that which may offer another place to belong, pristine blues and greens, places of sheer comfort, away from the Tigress. 
The Tigress is the one who remains. She is spotted--round paws offering various levels of innocence. She also carries a sense of sinister, meant for food and chase. A civilized sense of place becomes mysterious, and yet, more valued as well. In spite of the ravages, genetic data remains in perfect chronological sequence, as it has for millennia.  

She creates her own language, explores the poetry of her native sounds. Although she loves kingdom, in her mind this one lacks a true ruler, only a solitary life forms with  founding genetic codes in bodies; the genetic code waits, as if confessions from evolution's checkered past. Voices yearning on the eve of constant duels with environment. She has long since abandoned the sound of romantic loneliness, for beckoning, protests against the collusion of death. She, as the last exile in paradise, doesn't choose to be with humans. 
     A far reaching willingness emerges as if a fighting poet. The Tigress is the misunderstood visionary. Her sounds--the echo up the mountain valley--are hushed only by the rains. Battle cries, resonances her belief in nothing, the nature of her temptation, the knowledge of the select few. She feels no religion, senses no psychology, reads no literature, creates no crucifixion story; that's too ceremonial. 




Next  

Patrick Adams                                                                                                                   6

Extrapolation Science Fiction -- The Outpost

The Edgeless Screen
     It wasn't a trap, she had known this for sure; it was merely a presentation of symbols; theTigress didn't need to know the reality of Cooper's past--not in this jungle--and she wasn't demanding time he had promised to the network. Cooper didn't feel he was on any kind of time clock (time machine yes, time clock, no) either. Can it be just  a coincidence that he was a lover of games in his childhood, especially ones without consoles and recognizable edges to their screens, and that he needed as a child to take his parents to so many zoos?            
     In this final year of the century, symbols are not meant to be firmly attached to thought. It seems normal that even names have gone extinct, or at least gone fluid. Why not be multiple combinations of identity, since you still have the capacity to speculate and conjure? So it was with Cooper as he entered into the world of theTigress and tracked her with Suzi's intellectual advancements, as best he could. The feeling of beauty would accompany his existence. It wasn't that intelligence and a nude body could be separated as duel concept embedded in the idea, just as one couldn't separate the bipolar nature of a blinking, rotating pulsar. Cooper's tries with the Tigress so far, at least to him, appear to prove successful. She responds to him, in kind, on his edgeless screen his intimate conjure(H.I.C.) as a lover, a soldier, the poet. 
     Her cry doesn't draw on lost romance, or found romance for that matter. The sounds of theTigress are both noble and vulgar, and that would have to be enough to satisfy him, and it's not everyone who cares to notice the constant presence of death, especially her; her song is--not totally introspective-- her confessional of life.  


next
Now powers of authority want her genetic line.  Her enemies have never seen the inside of prison walls; she prefers demise to vindication.  She has never experienced divine compassion in this, her homeland.  Or human tolerance.  

Thursday, July 20, 2000

Outpost Island
By the beginning of the 3rd millenium, the primal human genome sequences had been worn to mere remnants. The islands, once a members of an archipelago, all gone now since the Ring of Flame eruptions.  A natural catacomb of techtonic plate bored with intricate tunneling by 21st century geo-oceanographers to prevent the impending geological catastrophe left the area to be deemed highly magnetized.  Their handiwork had accelerated the demise of the island chain.  Now only one remains.  

The evidence of this island, her granite rock preponderance had persisted over the great erosions by the end of the 21st century.  Their were no ancient cave labyrinths or deep caverns here that allowed an unwanted entrance to the incessant eroding effects of the pounding ocean.  So persistent had this island been that the ocean appears to have given up on its wanting of rock demise.

  Only the wind had been allowed to stroke its slow paintbrush on the landscape here.  Guarded for an apparent reason other than to be a military secret, this island offered no sanctuary to humans.  Once in history had she been of interest, during the last great war.  She was a supply depot for the armies of Continent II.  Her mountains too steep for human habitat, only the south eastern beach and lower mountain valley had been fortified with archaic cement. Cement pillboxes from ancient wars. The central post was up the valley floor, built at the doorstep to the jungle. No human healers or mind explorers of early 21st century had gained access here. In fact, the ritual of human battles of the 2nd millenium ended before this outpost was brought into full service.  The unusual electromagnetic forces altered the equipment and machines of the 21st century war lords.  An annoyance they would rather do without. So the island stands alone, a gem only unto herself for millennia. Never used for sacred ritual or military prisons.  

next    " Nature never cries aloud."

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

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

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

next

Jungles
     The jungle watches; as a source of healing, its physical world stands, as if protecting itself, for millennia, with pummeling winds and waters. The island holds in her bosom calm breezes and cool trickles, those that would meet geophysical forces--in a convergence on the jungle floor--to make healing molecules, the genes, alkaloids with a message; in time they would become valuable, only after the great emergence: nature's intelligence manifesting itself in mind, a human mind.
  

The Algorithm
     Before going to her next algorithm, Suzi pauses for a while, still feeling the sensation of something strange, something happening, as if her slow logic had allowed another force  near her world, into which she may enter without her logic program's precognition. Here, Suzi thinks, is slow logic; this could creep in even after sensors receive and emit their environmental motion, yes, the same sensors that underwent their own refinement of intellectual morphogenesis. 
     She u nhinges her retro-intuitive self programming, the place Suzi goes to undergo retro-evolution of intelligence itself. Nature demonstrates refinements her intelligence had never been designed to perceive. Urges vaguely describe on her screen as "dignity." Other cryptic symbols signal; "mental humility" is another alien form her logic, at normal speed, doesn't cognize. 

As a robot, Suzie had never known a youth or a childhood, for that matter.  Her programs were given to her by downloading in a non-invasive way.  But her given data wasn't of human intellect.  The Great Machino Intelles of the 4th Millenium had broken with the Hume Intells.  The policy of downloading data had changed.  The Art Intelles had broken cleanly from the Hume Intells.  

"Humanity and humility…teachers both, but not to each other."

Next


The Alga Rhythm
In the jungle, Suzi's new alga-rhythm detect tight twists within the cellulosic sugar bonds ready with information meant for the humans. How amazing she is: a robiot, naked to the world in her beauty, tapped into a mind well hidden, one that imparts only data in codes the ultra miniscule(D.I.C.T.U.M.). In one point in history there are only trickles and breezes communicating with each other in ways to ultimately be more than an artifact of history, unseen intelligence, colorless, silent, and now as history advances. It appears there is the perception of new data holding together as digital algorhythm message entities stored(D.A.M.E.S.), a body of data with living cells within a jungle on this wide ocean body of water waiting to be freed from latency, here in this environment, by some advanced life form (Suzi never created this, true, she is only a robiot; there is data enough for all yet nature keeps this data series here as if for her own use, and the use of her own children).  Here is protection for what's valuable to her; here are her rewards, the youth cycles of birth, more birth, then rebirth, leaving the eager entities to eternally remain(T.E.E.T.E.R.) system. 
There is inexact replication embedded(I.R.E.)of the most important data, left there for the edification of one of the forces of nature, natural selection. Many eons ago, when the assignment of importances was derived and deemed of value, semi-replication of less important data was included. Only later would human intelligence manifest(M.A.N.) deem   these little digital packets enticing transfer system(P.E.T.S.) as genes, something to be freed from cage at the right moment, as if the most opportune time of pleasure counted in history. Is there ever a larger body of evidence that points to the connectivity of  chemicals to urges? Genes are tiny, yes, but in this jungle highly prized and highly protected by carbon footprints and pure oxygen bonds in the form of cellulose. As if on some military mission, these genes are always sent back to latency for a rest.Suzi is more than smart; she is more than intelligence,; she creates the intelligence as needed as if answering some universal supply and demand dictum.  She frees more and more into their own time, these tiny gems in their cells, allowed to communicate freely outside their cell block, only slightly do they share their information to the wold, but they give their all to Suzi. Their identity, held important unto themselves is already decided, and not by human speculation, that crippling disease of the last century. No, their future lies in the slow motion of artfulness, the meticulous paying attention to detail: symphony played only to the heirs of nature. Theirs would be the slow sharing of information, never forced. Yes, this time it would be different.  

next

"Toiling with tools of innocence."

The Sunset
 Yarns of innocence through genetic data emerge. It holds truth just as did the information of the final days of the grand information age now transcended(G.I.A.N.T.).  In fact, growing legends of data continue to flow from these particular island plants. Sunshine caresses its softness and appreciates no changes occur suddenly here within this realm as the sun drifts downward. The slow tint of the horizon's sky blue tangles with the ocean blues, as if a playful picnic tug-of-war.  The azure reds and oranges of the early night sky bring a surprising coolness to the island.  Just as these messenger colors appeared, the sky over the now navy blue ocean quickens toward night as if to race home with the promise of tomorrow's good news. 


next 

The Jungle's Heart
Morning comes with less warning than the night.  Out of blackness, the first shroud of solar helio alpha red photons(S.H.A.R.P.), early messengers from the sun.  The stampede of photons continue until slow sunbursts make their presence over the mountain.  

Days are never hot, nor completely dry for that matter, as the cycle of energy progresses. Each day never complete in its promise of extremes. Each one predictably different.  In the jungle, the smell of the air remains thick with fragrance, the effervescence of alkaloids as if nourishment itself floats. Life flourishes. Water drips from heaven's nourishing nipples, to ease the jungle's receptance of solar powdery photons, the sun's incessant spoon feeding, as if a mother herself. Early evening's color cornucopia also replenishes and feeds the jungle's heart.  

Next
"Nature…her unabandoned adventure persists."

The Cool Sullen
Seeing no sign of animal life, they don't seem to feel the full extent of the cool sullen. The humans have grown accustomed to no other creatures here. The machines they invented, the ones that replaced the animal kingdom, are now simply a way station for evolution, hard driven by intelligence; and, to further their misery, humans use their best machines to create better machines--with the casual nature of what was once human intelligence--within the arms of nature; built atom by atom, cellulosic bonds lie as template to the future. Nature had used her best genes to create better genes, where information lay, for millennia, as if to ambush something imagined. Here data is not new, but is in communication with  information; yes, data and information in communication in the jungle, beyond the cliffs above the beach.  


next

The Parallax Paradigm
     Troubles within Suzi have been gaining in multiple deep ways. Her biostatistical reader, Carter, a self-proclaimed adventurer, lover of guns with a penchant for algorithms, in his own self-inclined way, remains oblivious to her most basic need, but carries a silent curiosity about her nuranet integral parallax paradigm laser embed system(N.I.P_P.L.E.S.). When he asks in a direct way, "Is there a quirk in the system?" she remains silent with darting eyes.
     Carter looks further, with the eye of a biostat aggregation technician(B.A.T.), knowing how to recognize precursors to the emergence of disaster, especially in humans; and, in Suzi's case, this extremely daunting observation presents itself in her intelligence. He knows her logic program can't possibly notice this phenomena. Suzi's expression turns inquisitive, as if wanting to offer a suggestion. 
     "The nature underpinning data evolution(N.U.D.E.) here developed slow, maybe billions of years."  
     She addresses her nanosecond logic and notices she hasn't totally hooked into this form of natural intelligence, not really. If her own computers were having a hard time with this type of thinking at their own natural inner pace system(N.I.P.S.), why would she all of a sudden be concerned about appeasing her biostatistician? 

next
The Old Data
The machines, she thinks, will devise again the gene therapies for the first phase of the 21st century for reasons that appear, at least to theHumans, closely associated to the health advancement core knowledge systems(H.A.C.K.S.) of the early turn of the century.  Suzi's face tightens. She senses the full effect of new data streams of new information, and as the senior robiot in charge (although in reality she is quite young compared to the others), assesses it, and decides the old analytic data(T.O.A.D.) doesn't qualify as information and goes into her own modal energy(H.O.M.E.), readies herself for Dr Cooper's meeting at the bunker.  
In the laboratory, Carter scans the monitors and their screens. Carter is uneasy, he spends most of his time on edge; being grizzled and dark, aging in the face, as if he had spent his life as a sea captain in the early years--wide blue oceans and cool breezes--and still holds a lively form in his memory, the forward edges of his prefrontals. Suzi is afraid of him. How is it that he keeps his assignment, how does he figure out how to stay at theOutpost, and be her biostatistician? 




next

"T


"Hello," Carter says abruptly to Suzi. His cool, abrupt tone is not surprising, his inquisitiveness not shown, or at least hidden, and she sees there is another problem. Suzi has shown some inconsistency, possibly more quirkiness in her program, as if she has been scrolling nothingness for hours, and now Carter arrives with questions saying "Hello" as if a father figure about to lower the boom.
"Hello to you." Suzi tries to be friendly. All this talk of quirks, not knowing what's going on, this uncertainty on his part is just part of the routine; it can be sure that Cooper is already notified to join in carter's staged analysis. It's only a matter of time when cooper and carter will come to their so-called conclusions and she, Suzi, sinks back into her personal coder to generate a new response to their new findings.

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

     "I'm not sure they are mistakes, Cooper says.
     "They seem to emerge from her cryptic centers. Do you notice she needs new data to lift her spirits?"
     "What I would give to understand her worldview. I fell I need to think about this for a while, I'll have to get back to you on this.
     "Her scanners operate so abrupt on sudden mode, they need adjustments" Carter says. "We should be able to troubleshoot this."  
     Suzi remains quiet.  






Next 
He new data failed to lift her spirits.  Brilliant sparkles of crystal blue ripples became a dalliance in her eyes.


next

     The Beauty
     The great ocean still stretches its boundary over the west, and there is yet more water to swirl south off the emerald cliffs, and by now it's the purest of ocean waters; nothing lives there. It looks up at towering island cliffs, and as it accepts the cool waters that cascade, the ocean is gracious, as if a freeing judge smiling at the fresh coolness of the jungle held refuge yet living above her vastness. Fires of red, orange, and mauve whirl and crisscross in the western sky, a signal that can only mean more dirt in the air, but the designers of industry still gape and awe over its overwhelming beauty. The beautiful sunset is always over the ocean. No sign of life is expected to be encountered, still, the beauty remains.




 next 

The Deeper Hues
    He likes the feeling, likes the sensation of beauty, at least when he is outside and can feel its cool; but he would still be lost in the massive realms of her trance. Dr Cooper would be standing at the ledge as if the ocean itself had dug a deep gorge between this island and Continent II, slow to raise its misty veil to lend a helping hand, to do its part, in hiding Suzi's treasure. How could he secretly share an apprehension about Suzi?  Something he was doing as a scientist, a carrier of old war wounds (PTSD, they called it, and blamed it on his erroneous scientific publications), could possibly be the reason things were suddenly fitting together with her logic, as if he had secretly discovered the key to a lost puzzle. It would be, he thinks, beautiful. It would color the island in deeper hues--those looks Suzi offers, those eyes, as if her logic doesn't understand the problem--deeper hues of beauty. 




next

"No sign of life…a goal of humans"

The Belief
He turns his attention in her direction and focuses. It is probable, in long continuums of time, that another world--no, not another worldview, another world--exists in Suzi, aside from the reality in which she sits--a reality related to her grin that all of a sudden looks sadistic. Suzi scans the last set of data as if attempting to fish out something dead from a swamp.  
 He doesn't think he allows his senses to grip him, Carter is sure he feels the trust of his own insights, even now more than ever. He pays complete attention to Suzi's data, and is soon to let go of any preconceptions. "How can that be?" he asks himself, then lets his mind wander. He wonders if it might be an overcompensation of her logic intra pod series(L.I.P.S.), one of those micro algorithms she plays around with, a sort of nanosecond yes followed by a millisecond no, as if she has discovered a new game the system mode, all the while thinking no one is watching, and if they are, surely they can't see. Suzi's designer was a woman, albeit a human one, and there could be some motherhood instillment there---an oxytocin algorithm? Designers joke by saying such things as, "If urgency made noise, by now this would be a very loud place--" These are the types of words computer analysts like Carter remember; designers, as they build the new generation of quantum ultralight advanced logic mechanista system(Q.U.A.L.M.S.) robiots, may instill the possibility of grim fate, even after all that logic and all that memory has been built. He remembers Suzi saying more than once, "This is but a temporary stay at expected fates." Suzi says it simply because it is in her program, or, as Carter suspects, she says it because she truly believes.

next  

In the morning Cooper would emerge into the laboratory with a disheartening sight.

The Alternate
     It changes into a darker veil, dims little by little. At these moments, the jungle becomes something else, anything it wants to be, as it settles into more darkness, anything, that is, except gloomy. It has the mountains in the north and east, towers to the jungle valley. For the next few hours it can be breezy as the soils cool, and later as the ocean cools too, she is permitted to enter her own dream world as shrouds of wet air move across her valley. New signals will arrive soon enough. 
     By now, Cooper goes into deep thought, and by the time it's quiet enough to hear the waterfall, with its convincing rush, he will be making some firm decisions. If he doesn't start his routine now, he will have to answer to somebody, or, something later. For now he is left with the comfort of his own thoughts, a scientist in the quiet of his own lab, conceptualizing, not knowing by morning he would emerge to a disheartening sight.


next

The Embracement
     It stands up above the ocean, where two mountain ranges are connected by a vast waterfall to the jungle valley below. The island stays within its allotted boundary, far from the more mobile tectonic plates, and lets water rush its own convincing response to gravity. All around the island the ocean holds itself in relative silence (it's had its fill of iron oxides and potash from the Continent II mining corporations giving its distinctive lime green, and more importantly, accumulations of iron nitrates, creating a permanent death zone, but of course the humans are working on it). The island itself , somehow, feels no such pressure from those irons and the nitrates, in fact the island seems to be oblivious of any emission coming from the ocean. There is a sense that any body that washes into the ocean would attract nothing active, no shark frenzy awaiting demise, no rip tides, no ocean current streams, nothing, only the stillness of lime green and its petroleum eating bacteria; other than that, not a thing--unless, of course, you count the lapping of the shoreline as nothing. It would seem that even the green moss hanging from huge black trees have arrived here by mistake too, the iron nitrates are odd even to them. Yes, that's it. the island itself has been on its own secret journey, taking Nature and her vast powers and sheer dimensions along for the ride, as if on an excursion to an amusement park, or, better yet, a State Fair, at least if those so-called states still existed. This island stands proud, erect, nothing can overwhelm her here. She is both a beacon and something else, yes, something to embrace.  
    

next

Pure Blackness
She goes outside in a quick darting motion. Suzi has seen this before and it affects her logic pods. She was coding in pure blackness when the mere sight of his eyes offended her. She looks directly into the sun with her micro intensity laser kits(M.I.L.K.)--is it recommended she view directly into the sun, with micro lasers? She never reads her best practices manual anymore, she lately just seems to forget those types of things. She is in no mood to talk, which is why she came out here.
She says to Cooper,"You shouldn't have spoken like that to me."  
Cooper hesitates for a few moments, amazed at Suzi turning on him with anger.  

She says, "Shouldn't have spoken."
This time, Cooper says nothing on purpose; he knows exactly what's happening with ComTrax's #1 invention.


next

Humans had gained their dominance in a now lost age and continued to refuse relinquishment to the new Art-Intelles.  Dr. Cooper still had the courage to argue with Suzie's logic.  Cooper began to realize his own significance.  

Suzie didn't have the time or heart to reflect on this new data.  Far removed from the lights and synthetics of her world, this place scowled with a hostility as if it had realized its own insignificance in Suzie's world.  

An uneasy stillness surrounds the lab building.  Cooper hopes Suzi would point out his error, but she never would.  This is the area of research Cooper feels he was wandering blind.