Chapter Seven

Dream a little Dream of Me

Jeff slowed, he was nearing the originally agreed rendezvous point that was now obsolete due to the human element’s removal from the administration of the Military Intelligence Oligarchy (MIO). Jeff could not switch on the van’s operating system, nor Botface’s Torso, to communicate with the non-human element that had taken over. But he was there anyway because there was nowhere else to go… 

His hands began shaking, sweat started beading… Something was going massively wrong…

Then he realised he was acquainted with the waves of nausea that were pulsing through him. He had previous experience of them; they were used in a security system that was being tested for integration into the Botface Franchised Organisational Governance (BFOG) system.

He turned the van round and drove until the nausea receded. He pulled into a layby and drank from a small bottle of fizzy water that had been chilling in the Maxi-frost mini-fridge. If allowed to persist, the nausea wave attack would leach into the psyche, triggering latent trauma and making some up; it acted differently on different psychological dispositions; it made some suicidal, but others reacted by completely reengineering their lives; for better or worse. That’s why they’d named it Lottery Roulette Security (LRS).

He was close enough to the security aura of the Solar View Golf and Firing Range to inhibit the ‘catch-as-catch-can’ killnotions of the bots, but only by switching on Botface’s Torso. During the drive he’d surmised that Botface’s Torso had security-optioned itself into a pertinent auto-hostage mode… Botface’s Torso was a component element of the master Botface FOG system; it was the main test bed and many throw-it-in-anyway programs had been engineered in. It was full of solutions for things that would never happen, some of which were now happening.

The current auto-switch proactive survival mode was quirk-conversant and directed Botface’s Torso to be childishly unreasonable in any negotiation situation. Jeff remembered making a reductio ad absurdum joke that went on ad infinitum about it. What had been harmlessly amusing back then was now unamusingly harmful. Which brought back an Una related memory spurt: he’d attempted to be humorous by saying ‘Una musing was unamusing,’ so unfunny that it became funny at some point, but he couldn’t recall the precise occasion.

The original instructions were to wait near the golf club and switch on an analogue radio. Flabikov was going to help the SRA negotiate a deal to use the plutocratic military intelligence’s CREE portal so Jeff could join Una and carry out the plan to prevent automation using the space to manipulate humans into cooperating in the eradication of their own species. 

Jeff toyed with the notion that if the automated Flabikov entity posed as the old manual Flabikov to try to gain access to the CREE world, he could use them to gain access himself and somehow stop them from entering…

The Flabikov Empire Corporation had been notorious for subliminal advertising that flirted with legality and took reckless drives down no-entry streets with illegality. They transmitted to selected individual customers, making the listener believe it was a general broadcast. They produced Hollywood movies into which they inserted Flabikovian ‘mind-demands’ that were no more than adverts hidden from conscious observation…using Sheldrakian neuron exciting surf-emulsifiers.

The analogue radio shockingly crackled into life…

‘This is the Federation of Flabikov Empires. We must speak with Botface the Terrible,’ said the voice, disinterested and sterile, the very signature of automation that had no will to wear frills and pretty up for the sake of human sensibility…

‘Jeff, here, go ahead.’

‘We must speak solely to Botface, no other entity is authorised. Switch on the Botface FOG system so we can omni-verify our position status. A satellite deathray is locked on to you. It is in your own interest to comply…’

Jeff switched Botface’s Torso on and off; less than a second, and waited…

‘Okay…you have the goods. We will need access to a number of stealth programmed Russian-doll-Trojan-egg-cache-attic-holdalls before proceeding.’

Who Jeff was dealing with was utter madness; Viktor had been sidelined years before, Peter, his faithful (in reproduction) clone had taken over, but then the auto-system had kicked in and kicked out Peter, and took executive control. Unmonitored Algorithms designed by the elite hadn’t foreseen a total machine override of Humanity. No one could’ve predicted that a headless chicken would be wagging the dog.

Most unexpectedly the person who’d originally been expected, Viktor, turned up. Pretending all was well and carrying on regardless; cosplaying as the grim reaper. Jeff’d been stuck in a quandary loop regarding improbable outcomes; he couldn’t see a way out, but he couldn’t stop proving the impossibility of a way out… The loop was desiccated by a sudden, loud knuckle-rap on the window… The grim reaper spoke to Jeff and as the window wound down with gritty seventies authenticity. Jeff caught the last few words; ‘…off the radio’… ‘Turn the radio off and switch the bot on,’ he said, his voice too high to be acting the role with any precision.

‘There’s a complication,’ Jeff told him, flustering in the dissipating shock of the knuckle-rap.

‘Which is?’

‘Some, in the past, irresponsible programmers, light-heartedly I’m sure, uploaded potentially detrimental, to our current situation…programs that are now being accessed by the system as it computes its adapt and survive pathway resolutions.’

‘Bullshit…switch the bot on,’ Flabikov repeated, short on patience. 

‘It is trying to re-scenario itself to somewhere safe.’

‘SWITCH…IT…ON!’ Flabikov shouted…resupplying Jeff’s electro-chemical shock induction momentarily…

‘Don’t you think… Oh, fuck it, what’ve we got to lose?’

‘Everything, if the bot doesn’t play on our side…if it starts up in a detrimental program…we are sunk… The geniuses at G & G labs have prepared for us a last meal of shit sandwiches…’

Jeff climbed into the back; opening the side door for Viktor, not wanting to, and switches on Botface’s Torso; the ‘not wanting to’ theme extending itself.

‘SWITCH IT OFF!’ screamed the grim reaper, reedy, gaspy, but nonetheless loud, gripping his head, ’Why on earth did you switch it on?’

That was a good question and Jeff didn’t have any obvious answers, but suspected he had some Good Soldier Svejk in him somewhere, pulling the wrong strings whenever authority foolishly demanded that the wrong strings be pulled; passing over the right strings despite knowing what string does what.

Viktor ignored Jeff’s conciliatory tone that could’ve been sewn in to a doffed cap, ‘take a seat,’ Jeff said and watched on in demi-horror as Flabikov out-Svejked him and got undressed until he was naked.

‘I have a plan,’ he said, ‘but it involves misinforming my persecutors for long enough to make a dash for freedom. We need a decoy.’

Flabikov had caused a stir back in the day with his heavy computational headgear and the accompanying highly developed neck musculature… It was a slimmed down, neck-friendly version of the headgear Jeff was staring blankly at now, unable to conjure up a next move option.

How Flabikov was able to use the headgear and remain undetected by his own in-house automated pursuers was impossible to know…he had to have inside help, which seemed impossible. 

While staring obliviously with mock intensity at Viktor’s headset, he noticed a USB port, and asked, ‘Is that USB 5?’

‘What’s USB 5?’ Viktor replied, in honest ignorance.

‘I have a fob-drive with copies of as much Botface data I could get without being detected…from the G & G labs smogclouds and skystorage data-lakes. There maybe something on there we can use to deflect them.’

‘Let’s try it.’ Flabikov fumbled around and inserted the drive that Jeff had taken from its port on the slumberful Botface’s Torso. He sat back as though passing the time in light meditation. ‘Great, well done!’ Viktor exclaimed, with ferociously ironic overtones. Viktor switched off his headset and took it off, ‘They’re on to me. The activation of the fob-data alerted them…they’ll be going back up the command chain to an emergency executive board who have murder on their agenda.’

‘Will they use the death ray?’

‘There is no death ray, prohibitive regulations, its a little microwave blended with a belief-wave that death is about to become reality… It cost millions to market people into accepting the death ray myth as fact. Now get undressed… We need to act fast…’

Jeff needed to ask why, although he knew it would trigger the infamous Flabikovian anger. But Viktor looked skywards, at the van’s centre light and reminisced aloud: ‘Peter and I, back in the days when we were…closer… worked out that we could remain undetected by being unclothed and forming a human animal they don’t recognise. Although I suspect Peter programmed a glitch in, just to massage the tight muscles of our acquaintance.

It was clear that, compared to the Viktor Flabikov of folklore, this guy had seriously lost it; he was a wet tea towel trying to act as a family’s worth of beach towels on an all day picnic punctuated with persistent spillages.

‘The only way we are going to get to the entrance undetected…also read: alive…is after dark and if I ride you bareback.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Just imagine you are a beast being ridden to a place you really need to go, play the game, do the math, act the legs off your imagination… Dare to dream.’

He was mad, but then he’d remained alive when his own empire had been taken over by automation that wanted him dead. So Jeff was onboard, despite water being taken on and heavy seas forecast.

’It is not a sexual thing, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

Jeff wondered why he would say that…then he wondered why he would wonder why he’d said that… 

But by then it was dark; the intermittent sounds of club striking ball persisted; electronic-eye-mapping-judge-security gauged every aspect of their threadbare intrusion as they penetrated the entrance.

‘Think like you are drunk, having a good time on the way back from the pub after gorging on the sauce… There we go, steady now… Sing a drunkman’s song!’ he said, ‘his madness enveloping Jeff. Were musicals ever appropriate?

‘Sing!’ and he sort of sang, ‘…just off key and out of kilter, thirsty work on a night’s retreat…’ Then he said, ‘imagine yourself a Hogarth painting, animated for the fools, cartoonified for the mindless masses,’ He seemed to be enjoying himself, which made it all the more loathsome for Jeff. Viktor broke once more into a sort of song: ’Wailing loud and proudly, boldly, waking up the sleeping crowd…with feet placed where feet weren’t meant to tread…in the off-hours on the way to bed…forced to submit to the law and the lash…coming home and crashing the trash…low on self worth and lower on cash…’ He fell silent, farted and told Jeff, ‘I was wrong…you are a player… We have a viability you and me… Sing!’

Jeff wished a sudden deep and numbing drunkeness upon himself. The fear of the deathbed mince-ray that had been subliminally PR’d into his brain, and wouldn’t leave, even after the introduction of a contrary factual disclosure, was fended off by the pain of his knees screaming submission. His bending back barely squeaking with flesh-on-flesh perspiration-slithering friction-butt-rub. All the time adding up the pros and cons…concluding over and over that if they could get into the command centre this would all be worth while…one for the album, to show the grandkids… Would he live to see grandkids? If he didn’t make it to the underground bunker, Jeff feared, there was a chance that no one would be having grandkids… 

The sweetly chipping golf fraternity received a low level nudge regarding security; enough to call for a complete ground assessment and evaluation. Extraneous monitors left transmitting in the clubhouse despite the human element being let go, showed a strange infrared creature roaming the grounds. Actiondeath-Apps remained inactive; the beast was not pincered-moved on or clamp-opped around. The resounding thwack of balls fell silent… The gentle whirr of suspicion rose.

‘Knee pads,’ Jeff said, ‘Shshshsh!’ came the rider’s reply, ‘we’ve nearly pulled off one of the greatest naked ridden human security breaches of all time.’ The sound of Jeff’s plaintive voice saying ‘knee pads’ alerted him to the fact he was struggling far more than he was fooling himself he was. They’d traversed flawless bladed grass, a tribute indeed to the sophistication of the automated green keeper, but for the last hundred yards they’d had to cross the tarmac… Jeff gritted his teeth and ploughed on, imagining the finish line to be in sight, followed by an increasing feeling that the bots were playing a game and waiting for the right moment to administer the coup de grace…and finish off his knees for good.

The bots scanned the rider and the ridden; they both had CREE adapted mind signals. That was a shoot first item on the kill list, but as the facility they’d need for the CREE adaptation to be operational was dead, and there was no immediate threat, they took a calculatory step-back. 

Jeff, without standing up, balanced on three legs while knocking on the door to the underground bunker with a weary hoof. He couldn’t hear the knock himself, it was as if the door was made of material that was knock-resistant.

‘Can I get up now?’ Jeff said, intending something greater than the thin, whiney sound that trickled out.

‘No, stay…they’re suspicious… I have a trick up my sleeve.’

A pair of bots approached…A golf-bot and his auto-caddy, flashing and beeping…locking on. ‘You are trespassing on plutocrat owned military grounds that have been liberated by Authentic Intelligence managed and driven security golfing bots. Please identify yourselves and state your business. You, rider, first.’

‘We are battery charge technicians, come to install charging equipment that will improve your game…unlimited double Albertrosses and triple Eagles and—’

‘Stop…’ the bot buzzed a little, ‘Wait!’ 

Robots strode and auto-caddies wheeled towards them from every available direction. But as they closed in, the human forms slowed, adopting non threatening shapes; warm soapy water on a filthy cold day.

Flabikov knew all the coding comms that billionaires used, because he was one. Maybe he’d launched an App within the group, from the implants he was rumoured to have painfully lodged in his skull. In any event the mood changed from fraught trigger happiness to spaced-out peace-pipiness instantaneously… Jeff’s stomach unknotted with the passing wind of promise. 

The bots arranged themselves in a tight huddle that formed an escape-tight semicircle round him and Viktor. Viktor dismounted and slumped with his back against the light-weight but impregnable plastic composite door to the underground bunker, as though he had dismounted a great stallion and was a lesser person for it.

So near, but so far…

‘Tea?’ said the first bot on the scene.

‘No, thanks,’ said, Jeff, a reflex because it could only be poisoned.

‘Do we have a choice?’ Flabikov added.

‘Apparel!’ said the bot, ‘Firewood,’ it continued.

Most likely to burn the bodies on, thought Jeff, following it up by rationalising that if he didn’t drink the tea and die first they’d chuck him on the fire anyway. Plutocrat sourced algorithms sewn into the tapestry of modern folklore; medieval needles and eye-pricking pins depicting post-modernity dawning brighter for the few because the masses were still mired in the Dark Ages.

Two caddies rolled up carrying a clothes rack between them; the clubhouse shop had been maintained despite zero chance of a customer. Jeff rushed to get dressed in the clothes the main bot chose for him from the selection. Flabikov didn’t seem that interested, but complied to the dress code in his own time, asking, ‘Why don’t you guys get dressed too, you look so drab and Teslary,’ and as they were silly-putty in Flabikov’s hands, those who could get dressed did, and the caddies draped clothing over themselves. 

Jeff, still terrified and feeling closer to death than ever….laughed inside…Flabikov was a powerhouse…Jeff had always despised billionaires, oligarchs and plutocrats…but Jeff was entirely dependent on Viktor who was shaping all the moves, making the two of them square while the bots tried to figure out how to fit them into a round hole of death.

Firewood had been deposited and lit suddenly and without warning, ‘It’s the death ray!’ said an auto-caddy wearing three hats, ‘no, you don’t fool me, there is no death ray,’ thought Jeff, giving him a sense of unconfused interaction that had been missing up to that point.

‘You, circumvented regulations, got yourself a death ray, congratulations,’ Flabikov added, unnecessarily.

The bot seemingly in charge clapped its hands twice shouting, ‘songs!’

Too handily, a folder of song sheets was produced…the bot scanned several, transmitting them to the others. ’Please, feel free to join in, if you know the words.’

Jeff tried to remember a time when he’d felt this odd. He couldn’t, but he was sure in his rich life there should’ve been competition in there somewhere…

‘Uke!’

A 2020 vintage Wailing Guitars steel replica ukulele was extracted from one of the caddies and handed to the lead bot; who strummed: Dream a little Dream of Me.

Jeff and Viktor were both wondering the same thing…The bots were wondering the same thing, but different from what Jeff and Viktor were both thinking… Both parties were stuck in a loop that, with any luck, Viktor Flabikov, for all his great sins, would keep going until the quick and omnipresent thinking of the Commander could reach out a helping hand to promote the prospect of an extension to the way the world was ending..

‘Sing along with me, now, a one, a two, a one, two, three, four…’