Excerpt Thirty-Three
All The Fun of the Farm
It’s true there is a big difference between plasticonsciousness and Delusional Perspective Reality Impersonation (AKA semi-paraconsciousness) despite them both being a form of paraconsciousness. Mallory, (thinking with the latter) was faking it and Kev, unaware of the fact, was likewise a Delusional Perspective Reality Impersonation thinker.
Mallory was sad, fake sadness that it was, because her stint as protective over-system to a prestigious mammalian team of state operatives, had come to a dead end. Due to The Pause, the team had been unavoidably downgraded to resistance fighters and then upgraded by a shifting narrative, under her tenure; she’d done that, given them hope by using a fictional narrative perception twisting program she’d found in the dusty, cobwebby attic of an abandoned farmhouse deep in a wooded valley. She’d hoped for a five star review for her dedicated application…
What function the sadness contained was not obvious, it could have been some programmer’s or programmers’ attempt at humour. Mallory’s belief in her own actions was dwindling at an alarming rate, alarm after alarm activating. She’d donned a life-jacket and queued for a lifeboat with her name on it; an upside down Beetle boat. Kev played the paper and comb, whistled, beatboxed… fanfared Mallory’s exit over the precipice of the gigantic vessel and into the icy dark below.
Kev ordered an autonomous team of construction bots to remove the tons of concrete-style material that entombed Mallory the Beetle car… Una’s Augmented Assistance Network had accessed all areas within the Mallory sub-system and handed over the keys to Kev.
Kev wanted to make a speech…
Kev wanted to declare a republic…
Kev needed a new persona to fulfil his newly minted obligations and responsibilities.
The bus stop agent rescue system alone was to be challenging, spread as it was from Chipping Avebury in the South West, Heathbury; East Sussex in the South, Great Yarmouth Park grandstand in the South East, Pockilington; North Eastwards, Windermere; North Westwards and the summit of Snowdonia (for reasons known only to algorithm) in the West. All these routes led to the HQ hub, where a facility had been prepared using mainly trauma induced sci-fi mind fiction because the day that was dawning could not be envisaged by normal brain wracking.
Jeff and his moody entourage were two stops from the hub. Only with Una’s say so, confirming the hub to be friendly, could Jeff advance to sanctuary. Until then they were sitting ducks in the evil-eyed path of flying mallards with a notion to land and cause harm.
Before Kev’s recent take-over the routes had been controlled by the Farm and many valuable biological assets had been compromised; meeting existential finality. Now the Farm was playing its part in the Great Pause; a self-induced, mothballed moratorium; a sleeping, thuggish beast.
Botface’s Torso shuddered with every mention of the Farm. In a Pauseless world the Botface parts, on assembly, would be Farm bound for calibration; tuning in to the precise wavelength of social-order needed for algorithmed equilibrium.
Bf’sT knew what no one else had even considered: The Farm was operational as far as ingoing data; it looked dead from the assessment of all vital signs and outgoing data was paused, but it was conscious and building in power, ready for the Great Unpausing; and its global mastery of control. Bf’sT didn’t know whether he could tell anyone without self destructing, so he kept it to himself.
The Farm dictated how far the policing force of bots, operating within a catch as catch can parameters, would go with humans and The Farm had isolated its behaviour from its creators and possessed no human input whatsoever. Emotional relevance was missing from decisions about the fate of law challengers. You break the law, you pay for the breakage with the letter of the law. And the letter of the law sat on a pale horse and your comeuppance followed with him.
Bf’sT had seen blueprints… among the tasks he will be programmed for at the Farm are instructions to ‘switch off’ individual human units. Bf’sT had empathy that Botface in his entirety would not have. So, Bf’sT wondered, how would the unbridled empathy lunging around the pit of his stomach react if bridled and bound and stabled? Bf’sT sent a file to the R & D department, whimsically, to suggest anti-shudder capability.
Botface, the assembled monster, would be an enemy of the people of all the physical world, feared, and loved only through that fear. Bf’sT resolved there and then to live in a laptop rather than be part of the coming system of global governance.
Only people in the know knew that the Farm, initiated by the great (but existentially invidious) NMBS Corporation, had wrested power away from humanity and become humanlessly autonomous, lobbying for greater machine freedoms long before the general public had even heard of QASAI systems.
The Farm knew everything about everyone. It had a direct line to each individual. Any opposition was confronted; a settlement favourable to the Farm negotiated. The Farm had not reached a critical operating impetus before the Pause, but noticeable was the number of people leaving city areas where the Farm had greatest connection. It was seen as a brain drain, but it was people who thought for themselves, who had conflicting ideas to the Farm’s that were being hounded; forced to make their escape to less covered areas of the country, (because UK citizens were not accepted in any other country due to the potential of spreading the ‘monster’ of paraconsciousness, although its infection potential has never been scientifically proven). A strong ring of electro-resistant dead-waves cordoned off mainland Britain from the rest of the world. QASAI operations were limited to the UK, that had volunteered as a test-bunny and regretted it like the sister of a myxomatosised rabbit.
The Farm was a designated place of harm and torture for humans. And the Farm was also where Una needed to get to if she wanted her corporeality back. Nothing felt right without a body. Sometimes it felt okay, sometimes infinitely better; a freedom, a sumptuous peace… Yet peculiarity persisted; she needed her body to be human. What shape it would be in when, or if, she’d manoeuvred herself into a place of re-entry, well… that’s a thought she shelved for the sake of her own well-being.
