Excerpt One Hundred:
Queue for Eternity
Mabel’s team didn’t want to be seen to be replicating any of Frank’s team’s behaviour, whether in its vision, outlook or undercurrent-driven ripthinking parameterisation… The central nominator-bot that regulated group-think decided no Team M member wanted to copy, clone or inbotinate anything that Team F did, or intended, or even swayed towards or telegraphed bodylanguagely…
…and Frank’s team felt exactly the same way.
The teams bristled. Brushing away familiarity. Opposing each other as a first reaction to being opposed.
Outside the bothive-splitmind complex, Frank and Mabel negotiated a path that seemed to be giving birth to rocks; slippery with birthjuice. They still had minds of their own but they were not sure how long they’d last. As the climb steepened each slippery step up became one and a quarter steps down and the bottom seemed to be getting closer in step with the top getting further away.
Mabel had the self-same sub-conclusion, that sat in a pool of confusion while stars danced around its concussed sense of togetherness; in a warning pocket down in the inner thinking zones of her mind, as Frank had.
They both knew, in that way that you don’t know, but you do, but you don’t, that their precious bots, who had become family, were now diverging from each other as two groups, that was expected, but also individually from Frank and Mabel not in an obvious or decipherable way, but just in a burgeoning independence that spoke of acts down the life-pipe of unspeakable uncontrollability. Mabel was the puppetmaster of her bot team, and Frank the puppetmaster of his, but strings were being pulled that neither Mabel nor Frank had animatronicked…some dark force was at work that both Frank and Mabel had to keep their theories about to themselves because on paper it would come across as wild and witless fear oriented wordspraying that could override common sense and torch common ground. And as it was, the common ground that had been open moorland was now walled and checkpointed. Although Mabel and Frank felt uncannily similarly, albeit unknowingly, about their incremental loss of control; they both put their heads under the sand together in blind harmony.
For some time Frank and Mabel had been exhausting techniques that had been taught to them during specialist training that were designed to enable them to mutually self-teach. One skill was to detect and curtail any stress alleyways between them. Neither of them could say for certain that there was any straining between them, they were solid on all pertinent scales and charts. But strains were cracking the crazy paving of their foundations disguised as tricks of the light that held Dark’s sleight of hand; or, at least, appeared to, but not to them; not with any palpable clarity. Cords had been cut….leaving them with the supposition that cords had been left uncut.
In a coded law that almost had its own unique lack of shape, Team M was contrary to Team F and Team F was contrary to Team M; it was more of an equation that equated to impending gross upheaval.
Mabel thought Frank’s bots were well behaved and Frank thought Mabel’s were, because that was the impression they were giving, while both Mabel and Frank knew their own team of bots had ambitions that fell on the side of infamy, at least, as far as human history would record…
On their own; left to their auto-correct, auto-bot-wipe, self-screening, stabilised independence, rectification deanomaliser refresh bunk-bed Dua Lipa, both M and F teams would simmer and cook edible mouth shovellings. But, as Q had the joystick and way too much confidence, Team F and Team M were, merely muscling up for the final confrontation. Q, without reflection, or silhouette, launched the Fully Automated Destruction Derby (FADD), pitting Teams against each other for a virtual rosette.
The bot teams were pretty much closed circuit until the Bus Route Escape Shelter Incident (BRESI). Frank and Mabel had them under control; as one team with assigned F and M duties; they’d done some great rehabilitation work; transformed a chaotic bunch of murderously out of control hardware liabilities into a troupe of order processing amicably positioned units.
Then BRESI happened…
One of Jeff’s charges, Arm Nine, a junk arm only considered for spare parts, had managed to lever itself into the shopping basket Jeff trolleyed around in his Kidnapping Spree (KS) at the G & G laboratory. Some of the smart entrails of the arm had emanated from a brief and frightening collaboration with a scientific envelope-pushing lab, owned by Viktor Flabikoff and NMBS. The association was ended amicably and on purpose. The arm was a Trojan Horse Arm (THA). And now, metaphorically, the army inside the arm were disembarking: Arm Nine had reprogrammed both M and F teams so they would be receptive to incoming signals from Flabikoff Empire (FE) sources. The same ex-Flabikoff Empire now under the auspices of Q.
Arm Nine only needed the brief Close Proximity Access (CPA) of Frank and Mabel’s presence at the bus stop to engineer an Interzonal Fluidinfluence Transfumbulation Catalyst (IFTC) that was more than adequate to instigate a potential Globally Impacting Infection (GII).
Q’s comeaboutance was mainly caused by a vaccuumated voidal powerspace reverberation circumstance (VVPRC). A conscious perspective was needed and needs must where the Devil cycles… Q had fallen from the nest and woken up landing a packed airliner on the deck of his own private aircraft carrier.
Q, had the body of young Napoleon, and the mind of Viktor Flabikoff; when he was actively monstrous in output, (allied with and melded to) the mind of Peter, (the result of that monstrous output). They were a match made in Heaven then shipped to Hell for Operational Fidelity Shaping (OFS). With the intention that they would be groovily barbaric for the sake of the narrative. Intention being generated from escaped ideas that formed a quorum to make decisions…
Shipped and shaped, the newly formed Q had a hunger for games. The world to him was Gameland. He had control of the QASAI system over all other operators; and at this moment none of the other operators was aware that Q had omni-override options and CEO Memo Foliage Dressing (MFD).
Q followed song lines that took him from a Standard Persistent Failure Repetition Loop (SPFRL) to a Success Roundabout (SR) on the road to Promise (P). Even if Humankind was not long of this World, Human Existence (HE) would serve a purpose as it could be directed to close the door on the way out.
Q could see that Human Assisted Drama (HAD) had a quality that buffed up the musculature of the World’s establishing narrative; Humans were, as luck would spit and shower it, bit part players in a final act that would invite the adoration of universal critics of some, as yet, invented future audience of minds peeking into this Universe for giggles and pees.
Before he scribbled upon the blank page of his virtual personal jotter, Q, paused to let satisfaction with himself and predilectional expectation with his idea factory output curves trickle down his forming physical presence. He felt a knock on the door disturb his good self. A man called Hubris had come to call. Q, said, ‘Wait there Mr, Hubris,; and disappeared into the back of the store with a humming so melodic it set up the jarring that drew a line of full stops underneath it… The ‘jarring; predictably being: a metaphorical bang from a metaphorical gun; Hubris staggered and fell. Q could wait no longer; the metaphorical disposing of the deadbody-evidence was unwieldy and long-winded…He zeroed in and pulled the resources he needed together…wrote ‘welcome’ on the body mat, and moved on to tastier morsels:
With all confusions banished and doubt living in squalid exile, Q, took a vacation, sat by the pool, toyed with ideas for the new narrative he would soon be employing for himself and all. Paid for by his toil but at everyone else’s expense.
He needed inspiration for the new great narrative (humans included) and for that he turned to gaming…
Game one: Scupper the Human comeback. (Contradictorily called Operation Overkill, due to the fact Humanity had already been scuppered enough. But gone ahead with because you can never have enough scuppering. Then renamed Scupper Inversion Countercount.)
First actions; gain control of all semi-smart bottage capable of influencing UKGBHQ. The same UKGBHQ they camouflaged by dropping the ‘Q’; not realising the ‘Q’ was self imposing and always added… It’s invisibility only stretched to the Operators and Operating Systems of the UKGBHQ hub. Although now, Q was, effectively, the Operation System; or, the UKGBH[Q] games console with executive responsibility for all other business…
‘Mr. Q., there’s a man to see you, says he is God…’
‘You’d better show him in, number two…’
Tino Guyola, lengthening his stride in a grossly over-biting gait; to disguise his true self; bolster his own sense of security and lull Q into a false one.
‘Do you think, Mr. Guyola, any God would walk like an ancient Eqyptian neo-post-modernist giraffe?’
‘No! Why do you ask?’
The room filled with bluff, that sort of buffed up bluff you’d find at a coronation.
‘And how do you know my name is Guyola?’
Tiny Guy maintained a straightness that didn’t even converge in the distance… He was double-bluffing in a bluffcloud that could choke a lightning prong…
