Excerpt Sixty-Eight
Dear Truth, Better Luck Next Time!
Automated Untethered Technological Output (AUTO) Perceptual Realignment (PR), began hosting, in the minds of selected billions. The omni-insemination of a proud feeling that grew into Authenticity and was riddled with Correctitude, took hold and became the flavour of the day, every day, forever.
To some, this gift of ultimosity was not warranted nor needed. The trickle-down liquid gold, dribbling from the Deserved Ones of the Elite of the Elite (DOEE), dampened the masses with the secretions of wealth, perhaps not of actual ready cash, but certainly the perception of bathing in a ‘sense of wealth’ they could not otherwise attain. Ultimositily less literal and more conceptual.
The way it was and always will be wasn’t anymore and the way it was going to be became the way it was. But no one, due to Thought Helping Enlightenment Spasm Integrator (THESI) tech, had a word for the experience that sat on the ‘con’ side of a the sheet of paper everyone was encouraged to fill in. The encouragement being a new tax on form-filling. The ability of Mr Joe and Ms, Miss Mrs. Jo to process the ‘con’ side of the ‘Let us know how you are feeling’ questionaire had been blinker-positioned; obscured by virtual cerebral redaction. From the plateau of positive placation the masses looked down and, in the distorted reflection of the blood red water supply, thanked their lucky stars and providential black holes. For everything forever.
Helper-Feeler-Knower Machine-on-the-shoulder Interjection Pointer Antwormgoats (HFKMSIPA) led people along a mountain track to a place of salvation where they could salvate in deep-rooted perpetuity. They all had a choice and that was it. What ‘that’ was or what ‘it’ meant was left floating in an acid bath on a wind swept moor.
Bless the Deserved Ones of the Elite of the Elite, for their benevolence feeds us and their worldliness protects us in a cocoon of blessingness and love: everyone found themselves thinking, in secret unison; a personal collective narrative that came from nowhere and went everywhere. The mandatory (for the masses) mind-idyll, was used recreationally by some of the (lesser) Deserved Ones to drown out the ‘mania’ caused by the sheer weight of responsibility of utter Deservedness.
An omnipresent wisp of recognition whispered to everyone that they were vaguely wrong-footed but staunchly right-minded. And no one wanted to dispense of the precious plateau of placation. I mean, you heard the horror stories… Your Sense-Assisted Imagination Guidance Enabler (SAIGE) proved to you how terrible horror could be; what horrible terror was capable of. And the whole horror and terror thing became one terrahorra junket of ‘not-go-there’ and you put all your dreams in a pigeonhole where the Elite could help steer you back to the rumbling, reassuring tarmac of the road to ‘heaven’ (AKA Hell).
Objection, Your Honour!
Objection overruled…
Hoarse arguments and depleted objections littered the conversationscape. But the inherent fate of a Natural living thing added to by a rogue out-of-control mind madness that created an anti-nature of sorts, had one appointment along the linear historical narrative.
Species-level adjustments needed to be made; Homo Sapiens’s were adaptable existentially and they would fire up some of the same life-skills regarding Existential’s weirder little sister Disexistentiality. Death was a part of life: you go back to where you came from. Cutting out the ‘middle-man’ seemed neither onerous nor arduous even though deep-seated, collectively suppressed logic blurted out the pulsating-purple-faced vituperation of a dire warning. ‘Dead species walking!’ Rang out: unheard…
As the majoritymost of the mass of people on planet Earth were toning down their ambition (mostly through unconscious, and highly suspicious, drives); distancing themselves from the dead-and-buried hope of an existentially viable future, Paul Harris was zoning in to the unexpected; plucking up the courage to take leaps and bounds up and over the rough terrain of the pervasive machine-imposed exit-strategy visited upon Everymind and its attached Everybody.
Two things marked out Paul Harris as the person UKGBHQ needed; first, he had been trained in the EE409B headset, the forerunner and great uncle of the Bonce-dome Datashifting Superelectric Mind-buddy (BDSM). UKGBHQ had one surreptitiously housed in a specially built Thermo-Instructed Smart Cupboard (TISC) that lingered at the end of a long and winding, and otherwise pointless, corridor…
And the second being that his brother had worked for a GCHQ mentor-guru agent who mentored one of the three agents who successfully penetrated the automated group that took over the Kremlin and the Whitehouse in an attempted coup back in the day; his brother had mentored a human who successfully impersonated automata (this was incredible and bizarre and unique in thirty-three-and-a-third; equal measure). Who measures these things?
Paul Harris knew people and it created in him a person with interconnectivitiability that could be plugged in at the drop of an aitch. Once Paul Harris was super-connected with the BDSM headgear; he would become the personification of raw interchangeable data flow. Amongst other things.
As other less front-of-centre plusses, he was immune to feeling silly walking around in a helmet that made him look like he was re-enacting Top Gun persistently and inappropriately. And as he had no ‘real’ friends or family to restrict him from indulging in work related danger that significantly put him in the vicinity of certain death, he was good to go ungently into that good night.
Paul Harris was beginning to think it was all about him, but, as you guessed, it wasn’t.
The Commander was unable to cognitively conspire with the real reason she felt Dave should be tightly bound to secure seating while Kirk was completing the return phase; was it for security, really? Or was it for delectation of more intimate reasons that were vacationing at a psycho-erotic club for Commander’s and their ‘types’ in a world of invention wrought from childhood trauma? It was anyone’s guess.
She had certain feelings for Dave and certain feelings for Kirk; they were not feelings, comparative to each other, that danced with any kind of aesthetically resonant compatibility, as they spilled out, running and jumping on the furniture and making a mess of the general order of things. To everyone present, Dave and Kirk, formed a triangle of confusion that had to explain itself round or remain in a square of indecipherability.
The Commander felt the urge to command Kirk and Dave be, at least, handcuffed until their/his current operationally incumbent character had been revealed, sub laminated and homologateposted. Kirk had been away a long time in a world with bad actors and even worse writers; the tests came back clean but he could’ve been assuaged or filled by malicious programs ejaculating from multiple foe-favouring opposition-biased forces that she imagined had the run of the Cerebral Real Estate environment. And Dave could be freaked-out by the sudden invasion of his prodigal, narcissistic old half-self.
The Commander felt she needed the warmth and reassurance of tech generated fact-checking and banking. She inputted, and KB, after a realistic lag of subservient duration, outputted:
‘What we now know, with evidence-based-actuality, is that Kirk and Atoll only ever got as far as a quarantined space that was acting as a portal but was a dead and dying end. Valuable intel about the core systems was got from this, but there wasn’t any Co-Narrative, Program-Congealment Activation (CNPCA) between Kirk and the CRE space,’ KB told the Commander, who didn’t believe the OS, but had to file it under ‘Loose Truthed Miscellania’ because that was the step up to the beginning of the way forward. And in no time at all she had to believe the angle of descent from the summit of truth to the valley of practical data conclusion below. She believed what KB was telling her, she just just needed to get out of the maze and stare at the Overlook Hotel.
These days Hope was what you made of it; you could dress her up and play dollies, or you could dress her down and poke her lifeless carcass with a stick.
Kirk thought he was Atticus for moment; convinced of it. With a open door to the Panic brothers he said goodbye to himself; as was, with arm-elusive coat-donning awkwardness, and said hello… but who to; to whom?
Somebody needed to say it…
‘Kirk?’
‘What’d I do,’ he said, from a line in Apocalypse now he’d always been looking for an opportunity to repeat aloud. Knowing he shouldn’t; knowing he’d regret it. But he’d he’d started and that was massive. So massive it seemed to outweigh the negatives thirty-three to one.
‘Dave? Kirk? Is that you?’ The Commander enquired.
‘Lance was a famous surfer from the beaches South of LA…’
‘Is this code?’ The Commander threw in to the room…
‘Kirk, it’s Kirk,’ suggested Frank. He was certain Mabel would have thought so.
‘I think it’s still Dave,’ a botmodule enjoined, speaking out of turn.
‘Wait…it’s not a Dave Kirk hybrid, is it?’ interjected another bot, increasing the need to do something about the botmodulation problem…
‘One day this war will be over, ‘ Kirk stated, sadly.
‘Check the code files,’ the Commander blurted, including the botmudules, who reacted unpositively inquiry wise but continued to dominate the useless suggestion agenda; was this a tactic; they were taking over…
‘Kave or Dirk?’ Yet another botmodule put in to the general mocking air of uncalled for bot interjections.
‘I love the smell of nose balm in the morning…’
‘Get the manuals and the ledgers out. I don’t recollect any of these code words or phrases.’
‘I wanted a mission, and for my sinuses, they gave me one.’ Kirk wondered why he was being funny (trying), he was never funny (never tried), something was wrong. He resolved to keep the abnormality hushed-up; all his vying intentions agreed and the hush pact was cemented. Kirk and his scientifically technologically induced schizophrenic cabal became a solid association of parts.
KB detected Movie-Script-Word-Replacement-Inertia (MSWRI). Kirk was side-effected by Crossover Bypass Interdetective Dovetailed-Mingling Separation-Anxiety Collusion (CBIDMSAC). It would pass. They’d have to wait time might not be a great friend at times but on this occasion she was a good nurse.
Internal Suppression and Delusionary Narrative Intervention and Misdirection (ISDNIM) tricks Kirk would have learned at refurb school would soon bring the solitary Kirk back to the fore. KB had a cockstrand of data that suggested some external influence or interference on the Kirk cognitive health check report, but one cockstrand does not a cathederal of suspicion make. KB wrestled the dilemma until he dropped it. Time healed the wound and wanted the bed space.
Although pressing KB felt he had to leave it for a few minutes to allow the team to normalise and appreciate that Kirk was arriving from a travailing journey; he was not a neatly packaged gift ready for smooth fitting co-integration. Not yet.
Then he’d tell them that everything was as it should be, but as much as he tucked the extraneous cockstrand away out of sight and out of mind…it kept raising its ugly head.…
