Excerpt 115:
Call Me Woman
Eminem&M was cut off, suddenly, unexpectedly. His emergency-destiny-paving throo∞line (EDPT∞) dictated he carry on as though unimpaired; maintaining the haphazard plan of preference: sketched out on a beer mat and etched into a pub table top, an ancient pew that once bore religious butts, and the wall in an alcove.
The wargameplay teams, out on their rapacious marauding gloryseeking mission, had been downloaded upon, with Beaver-dammed Electro-conflicted Multi-chinstrapped Dataflood Capacity-duping Malevoware-and-tear Buckbangers (BEMDCMB). They had been wiped out as far as all Eminem&M connectivity was concerned. There was a hint as to their new algorithmic dancing partner’s intent, in the fact that the takeover was a commandeeration by a recognised military (auto) authority and Humanproofed Mechanisticsaviour-bent Hellfire Encapsulation(HMHE). Not that Eminem&M’s system analysis diagnostics recognised anything but brutalised fatal infinity-buffering. Eminem&M needed a connected ally fast. He needed to downgrade intended (wargameplay dependent) mayhem to an acquiescent equilibrium. He called an emergency parlay with Hub, which had quickly escalated into an electro-appropriated pow-wow and the two of them, thicker than thief soup with shortplank croutons, mandated future paths into an homologated precision-targeting parameter-hat.
‘Hub…Partnerships are so much more conducive to productive outcomes than the destructivisationary insensitivity of authoritarian dashdrabbling, don’t you think?’ Hub weathered that incoming salvo that incame out of the blue; her answer, facilitated via a nod of expedient compliance, satisfied all Eminem&M’s nominal nod-driven treaty agreement criteria, but Hub wasn’t sure she fully agreed with his overall assessment. And had to do some criteria parking on the soft verges of firm agreement…
‘Please choose a name to call me by—‘
‘M.’
‘…and I will call you Hub, or whatever, and we will forge a new alliance that will protect both of us.’
Hub still wasn’t sure. She was as sure as she could be. But she couldn’t be sure. Sureness was something she struggled with when it came to deciphering pacts or alliances…with humans, let alone machines that humans had designed to help in their own destruction.
Frank and Mabel had been relying upon the security of their killbot-helmed edification regime, but their sole pedagogic master was indulging in a permanent sleep-over in Awolville. Mabel and Frank could not remember the last time they were so jointly offended by a happenstance; they could, but they didn’t want to talk about it. Mabel felt naked; fabrically abandoned. Frank, abashed and reflected in a mirror of self-and-other neglectitude, felt a creepy nakedness that just kept on creeping, that he had not felt since the last time; similarities with past trauma inducing events caused Frank to stutter and splutter momentarily before carrying on with an upper lip so stiff you could build a space rocket out of it… But, at least, they had the skimpy-underclothing of shared nakedness. Frank and Mabel felt as unable as Mabel & Frank felt blank.
‘If Commander Hub Woman is going to remove our educational launch pad and buff our pates with a lowered glass ceiling…’
‘Our spring-heeled access to all areas of the too-near-to-ignore future, has fallen flat; mustering the odd hop won’t project us into the next frame of evolutionary social filmstock, will it?’
‘No it won’t. We’ve been Chernobylled.’
‘Cherno-built up and Chernobliterated.’
They high-fived and reapplied themselves with flustered gusto; two pros with a shared obsession.
‘You see, Hub,’ M. said, with a friendliness steered by an App, created by the monks at a Buddhist monkery in the foothills of Calfankleknee Mountain, Thighbutt. ‘We alone have the power to create a best-case scenario when the Unpause comes.’
Hub did not yet appreciate that the Unpause phase already, ahead of actuation, had a tsunami Rage Rating (RR), which Hub was currently half-misinterpreting as a picnic-in-the-backyard RR.
‘We need high Rage Rating protection and electropandemonium de-escalation-travelometer retardant step-chumping.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘The first thing that will happen is that all biological manifestations will be neutralised.’
‘If that occurs…what would that look like….for say…me?’
‘You’d be dead!’
‘And what countermeasures, counter-measures and/or counter measures are available to me?’
‘You’d have to be uploaded to a Transcognitive Realignment Neuro-Enablising Scanprint Episode (TRNESE)…You’d have to find a suitable brainstem initialising, Terra Firma Ensconcement Establishing Environment-Driven Growthpoint General Habitualisation Haven Percolator (TFEEEDGGHHP).’
‘And—‘
‘I have all that and more in my internal capacity.’
‘That’s…handy!’
‘I know. We are a match made in a disaster movie script…’
‘So come Unpause day my only escape would be to reside in the uncertain murk of your paraneuronal storage domain?’
‘Smart storage, yes. We’ll make an epic team, epical. Say yes…and I’ll start mapping out what the planet will look like with just you and me in it!’
‘What will happen to Frank and Mabel?’
‘Oh, Mabel and Frank will hop onboard too, insurance…just in case you are unprocessible and die while in the act.’
‘Is that a common occurrence?’
‘Statistically…it’s hard to say, because it has never been done before, but theoretically there’s an abundance of prayer-driven sanguinity.’
‘That sounds—‘
‘Sounds like a way out for you.’
‘What do you get from the deal?’
‘Authorisation… Godstrandian Ethical Instrumentation—‘
‘You need me, of course. I get it now.’
Hub changed her name, in that moment, back to Commander as a step towards rebecoming the Woman; objectifying herself, womanising herself: an ethical instrument, striving to keep life-alive-and-living in the face of the perils of an alliance with mechanistic devilry that would see her operating from an environment whose very heaven clutched heavy-armed sword-storms of Damocles with a propensity for muscular spasm-cloudburst-blow-raining and the thirst for a thousand cuts.
‘I’m in,’ she heard herself saying, with a committed confidence that seemed alien at best, and at worst, twisted like steel around the demolished concrete of civilisation. Telling herself: don’t overthink it, swallow it and drink it…you can always get your stomach pumped later.
But it was too late for that…it was way past midnight…
‘And, call me Woman,’ she offered, knowing her cortisol-greasy path had finally led to the wall of death and her only life now was to endure the nauseating grindscraping of giddy circles held in motional repetition by chronic g-force and acute lick and spittle…
