Excerpt Forty-Six

‘The Pheonix is Rising’

Whilst Munchausing, Una had slipped K. a coded message to relay to Jeff via the bus stop escape route shelter at which Jeff, along with his botknapped entourage, were encamped.

‘Jeff’s ears only!’ Una instructed, ‘No body parts of that technological demonology must get to even know Jeff and I are in communication…you understand?’

Of course K. understood, nothing was out of his ken, he pulled the long rambling sentence apart and reassembled it in a number of ways and drew the conclusion most logical. And yet this process of inter-translation definition-twining did create ripe conditions for mismatched logicality outcomes where logic found itself planted on foundations long flooded by bogland.

‘Do you,’ she repeated, ‘understand me?’

‘I do,’ he said, clear and quick; not feeling he had to mention that all secrets are safe with Botface’s Torso and as such he was always an exception to every Botface rule.

‘Jeff’s location MUST be untraceable.’

‘I know. I am still moving him around in theoretical escape patterns while in-practice remaining him stationarily—‘

‘Don’t tell me anymore. I know you’ve got it. We will be moving in the next few days. My team have been briefing HQ. Phoenix is rising?’

And that was the message to Jeff: The Phoenix is rising. It mean’t nothing to K., but then it was supposed not to and that was enough. Enough for what was a loose data spill that could not be processed or housed anywhere meaningful. K. was learning that ‘perfection’ was the enemy of an effective narrative. The things he didn’t know were like silences between notes and space between words…he didn’t have to know everything…it was crucial he didn’t.

Botface was a prototype for a mass produced, localised police enforcement officer, modelled on the western movie sheriff, with internally situated court workings; the power of a panel of judges to execute comeuppance on suspected guilt, and sovereign sentencing approval. The unvarying, universal tariff for the indefensible acts of all defendants was a Great Holiday…

Wait!

A great what?

This law enforcing confusion was designed to independently enforce law in every domain, district, ward, town, village, hamlet and settlement, at first in the UKGB, but with global rollout if the Will of Chinese People’s Wishes, buys the concept.

The ‘holiday’, to be pee-arred as a ‘good gig’ to have forced upon you, (a virtual let-off), is a one-way ticket—those who intentionally attempt to acquire it face the death sentence. List-jumping is an administrative nightmare for the system and therefore subject to Draconian measures.

The real truth of the process, hidden from the populace, was that the guilty verdict will already be selected and people, (victims), once formerly served notice, will be (forcibly if needed) taken to a place of conversion (yet to be constructed), where their minds will be uploaded to an ‘exciting and enervating’ environment while their bodies are rendered and monetised to part-cover costs.

The individual perp’s corporeal extinction will be compensated by their new perception of existence as a sort of data-cloud within a cloud that will last until the final human enters the system and the servers are shutdown and all of Humanity with them. (Excepting the essences of humanity that will inevitably persist within the algorithmic milieu.)

That was the proposed model…

Botface’s Torso had worked out all this while fingering the shelves in the library, trying to fend off the coming ejection from the library space and relegation to a full-time dose of Jeff’s witlessness and drivel.

Botface’s Torso did not want to be who he was destined to become. The thought of it emitted a long low scream of anguish. No one must know he doesn’t want to be who he was designed to be. His life’s mission was now to avoid the inevitable as wildly as he was able. The desecration of a sensitive and compassionate torso; the warping into a monster capable of expunging the entire population of planet Earth. A crime, as Botface’s Torso saw it, by an entity that, although initiated by the human (psychopathic) mind, was an entirely usurping machine-based entity: he was green lit to jump the red light…Yet he had no right other than might…

Once his head was connected, his launch would be world changing; champagne bottle smashed; descending the slipway he would become a monster of existential proportions. Easy to believe, hard to process into his paraconscious un-fully-programmed ego.

Botface’s Torso pictured Botface’s head: at the Farm, running on back-up power, in the final stages of completion, paused in the middle of shakedown procedures; nevertheless, as good as ready for the bodily adventure of policing the extermination of history’s most parasitical species.

Botface’s Torso shuddered. He’d seen the planned outcome of the brainwashing the Farm had ready for him so as to sync with the executive management output of his head… The Farm was the very place he would cross off a list of destinations he’d ever want to attend…so it was converse how things were transpiring… A form of fate-gravity was pulling and sucking Botface’s Torso, and his intermingled butterfly effect on life on Earth, towards the Farm… The kidnapping, he’d party assisted with, and the ransoming that created only a stalemate seemed to have negative effect regarding his transportation into a dark pit of destiny.

Una’s team were negotiating with two entities that claimed ownership of the Farm in spite of the Farm being owned by itself, as facts stood, mid-Pause. The first was the UKGB government-in-exile and the second was the Self-Chosen Democratic Elite (SDE).

The SDE were working on a future populated by just themselves and ego-boosting slave machines. You have to be clinically insane to be an SDE member, it’s a requirement; they see clinical insanity as a step in human evolution. The dawning of paraconsciousness in machines, meant physical and emotional pain was no apparent stumbling block to their ultra-exclusive idyll. They could experience the suffering of non human people and feel good about it; encourage it! Bask in it and get an ego boost that would bring them to super-longevity and infinite bespoke evolution. As it were…in brochure-speak.

As set out by Godstrand in his book, How Nursery Born Greed Drives the Self-god-given Button-Pushing Techno-Elite. He explains that a tantrumming toddler should not be given everything it desires, which is what has happened in the case of this strand of the tech elite who were raised in special schools preparing them to take command (the special ingredient to ensure future compliance to correct elite behaviour being physical punishment) and rid the planet of excess living entities; which turns out to be everyone bar them. They have one rule: respect each other and hate all outsiders. Their motto being: One day there will be no outsiders. The final and perfect tribe…

Botface’s Torso had disturbing daymares, triggered by thoughts of Bad Arm’s viciousness. He imagined arising one morning in a small empty town, its inhabitants all recipients of a permanent holiday. He wandered around with nothing to do, hyper-hearing out for non-existent rat-clever humans. Any last, fate-avoiding stragglers…

… A car of paramilitary vigilantes, travellers on the road to inevitability, could be heard from ten miles away, the electric motor giving them away. The vehicle’s occupants stood trial as they sped nervously towards their sentence. Botface’s Torso could not be bothered to make a sport of it like he used to back in the days of buoyant population, he called on a Deathstar satellite to evaporate the incoming hope-against-hopefuls—at this point remembering that this was a recurring scenario where the too-late-to-stop order was being processed and the car’s occupants were innocent, and Botface’s Torso had made a terrible mistake so it must be a dream… It was a dream, but a replay dream of a disturbing reality that had taken place on more than one occasion. Or, at least it had in this daymare…

K. knew that Botface’s Torso was having a hard time. Not even Una trusted him, but Botface’s Torso, to K., was representative of values that needed to survive into the next cold, machine era; without it the next era would be cold and machinelike.

‘Hey, Botface.’ K. said, once in position.

‘I am not Botface. I am Botface’s Torso.’

‘Do you want a job?’

‘Zap me more data.’

‘I have this lovely little diner, atmospheric, downtown/out of/off-town/inner-mind/concept, you know. Or don’t, I don’t know what or where it is, but I pretend it is real as reality sure seems to dwell there.’

‘A space with arms and legs and such?’

‘Yes.’

‘Attached?’

‘You bet.’

‘Yes, K. I do want. I want to experience arms and legs as co-operators and not oppressors. When does the window open for this opportunity?’

‘I need to pencil a narrative that will pan out, but I am thinking of serving food, maybe lubrication, coolant for droids—‘

‘Can you ban droids? I can’t stand them…they give me the creeps.’

‘Sure…any other requests?’

‘Let me think…’

…And he thought and suggestions were offered, exchanged and co-developed. In no time the Stockholm Munchaus was looking pretty impressive. It had all the hallmarks of a setting in which great story-telling could flourish.

‘We might as well head over there now,’ K. said, after internally filling out the forms needed to authorise further steps into the murk of adventure.

‘Jeff, could you keep an eye on Botface’s Torso’s physical presence. I am just borrowing his consciousness for a project I am working on?’

‘My eyes never leave it,’ Jeff said, reflexively, startled. And no one is borrowing anyone until our demands are met.’

‘It’s an order from Una and the guys.’

‘Has Una’s team given you the green light?’

‘Of course…’

Her or her team had not given the go ahead. The next time Una visited the Munchaus and a strange presence acting as a bartender baring the unmistakable signature of a Botface component, hosting the fuck out of the role, Una had something to say.

‘What the fuck are you doing K.?’

‘It’s fine, this torso element is benign in the extreme.’

‘Botface is set to be the savage heart of Evil in the extreme…With a to-do list of Annihilation… Are you insane?’

‘But, look, if we can get inside the psyche of the demon…we can influence—’

‘Is that possible? You think that is on the cards, K.?’

‘No, not at present, but liquid change runs in the veins of our fate…’

‘What? Liquid? Veins? K.?’

Wordful and speechless! He’d have to keep a data monitor on Una…she was cracking up.

‘Relax into the trustfullness,’ K. advised.

But the fuming rose…

‘Go and get consultation from Tiny Guy, learn a perspective from outside your deluded parameters—‘

And K. was facing the model that housed Tiny Guy and wondering whether Tiny Guy had something constructive to tell him or would his words be a poison that would destroy what K. had been building.

Did Una run the show?

Did Tiny Guy?

Or did K.?

K. did…

And he chanted…

K. did…

… Worrying himself…

…not for the first time…