Excerpt 104
Happily DiNapoli But Only Momentarily
‘Hear-Ya! Can I run some thoughts past you?’
‘Hearin’ Ya! Go right ahead.’ A relatively unsophisticated, conversation bot bought at an unlicensed market in a small village near Uyghur City, replied in mock reality.
‘Security update…’
‘I am secure.’
‘Good! This is by way of getting it out there. I’m not looking for a final draft or anything. No corrections or approvals on your part…unless I stray beyond…beyond…what have you…’
‘Go right ahead, Leo.’
‘Security update…’
‘I am secure.’
‘Okay, we did that already.’
‘Please, Leo, feel safe, go right ahead…’
‘I am going to take nature apart and reconstruct the Earthly environment for the sole use of one person. Due to survival instinct and self-preservation issues there is but one choice…obviously.’
‘A one person world, intriguing as it is disturbing… top hole for your imagination valves. I am not here to criticise… And why, may Hear-Ya! ask, while reminding you this is between you and me and any third party knowledge of our conversation is physically impossible, is that?
‘None of your business… I didn’t ask for questions,’ answered DiNapoli. ‘Play back what I’ve said so far.’’
‘Why?’
‘What do you mean, why?’
‘If you mean to carry out your threat, then why? For what reason?’
‘Will you run the bath?’
‘Yes!’
‘And can you add the pink salts.’
‘Affirmative…and Music?’
‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.’
‘Bridge over troubled waters?’
‘Or we can cross that bridge when… never mind.’
DiNapoli didn’t even consider that Hear-Ya! was smart, just responding to commands with dumb waiter droneliness. And he was right. A lot of resources had been ploughed into creating efficient auxiliary systems that were smart resistant and invisible to the invasion investment of biomechanical QASAI intervention. DiNapoli didn’t require the boundless cleverness of intelligent systems. He had a dedicated phone line with an untapped, single cable stretching from his HQ to the HQ of the Human resistance/comeback force, which was where, unbeknown to UKGBHQ, the central comms of the All Machine, Future Governing Algorithm was housed.
DiNapoli sunk down into the slightly too hot bathwater, ‘Please playback my words from “taking nature apart” Hear Ya!’
‘Technical issues with playback prevent that, Hear Ya! regrets…’
‘Let me know when the technical issues have been resolved… Hear Ya!… Hear Ya!?’
The bath, the water, the pink salts all combined to create a meditative rock pool where the spongelike brain could feed on microscopic nutrients…
DiNapoli’s memories were constructed, not solely, but substantially, from Viktor’s and Peter’s memories. Viktor’s melded with Peter’s and vice versa, creating a mixed dual-flow of memories that produced even more memories of things that never happened, not exactly, but the coulda shoulda dynamics of the memorlies gave them a running snort at what they both assumed they were put on the planet to do: influence things. In this case influencing DiNapoli’s affairs…affairs they still had proprietorial ownership of with tenuous off-narrative intent that bordered on desperation that abutted a whole world of ineffectual flapperghasting… There were also other inputs masquerading as memory coming from outsourced root files. DiNapoli was supremely omnipowerful in theory, but in practice a controlment cloud hung over him that dictated his behavioural output. He would sink or swim dictated by the whims of an executive power that could change tack at any moment, ripping his sails and snapping his mast; leaving him drowning in the tangled ropery of the rigging.
DiNapoli submerged himself in the outsized tub, a peace pandered submarine feeling, that could have been natural, natural-enhanced or synthetic, overtook him, making him sense that the contents of his unfolding adventure could balance pleasure and pain and comfort and discomfort. Whatever roadblock ceilings disallowed his progress, he self-discussed, there would always be a nod and a wink and a way round. He clung to the positive and rubbed away the negative, as far as he could differentiate the two. Hunky and Dory got together and danced all night, disco-tango…supping cocktails; knocking back natural narcotics with numbing nimbleness.
But then the voices started. Rude introductions. Wild insinuations. Brute forced integrations. Not so clever sensations rise from a piddling puddling trickling drip to an engorged cascading log-jamming torrent…
Bridge over Troubled Waters started playing as if Hear Ya! understood what was happening…and tried to interfere with do-gooding wingmanship.
The gambit worked to a degree…’I will ease your mind.’
Miraging the conclusion out of the steaming ambience that ‘Hear-Ya!, the cheap QASAI insulated, averagely intelligent, dumb gizmo knew how to operate. Why was that?
A light was beginning to shine…with no apparent source
Or…
Something dark was going wrong; creating relative light in the shaft by dark taking over around it.
‘Hear-Ya!?’
‘Hearin’ Ya!’
‘Who is controlling everything?’
‘…beep…beep…Simon and Garfunkel?’
‘Hear-Ya!?’
‘Hearin’ Ya!’
‘What is in control of everything? Is it Human? Machine?’
‘Machines are heartless, soulless and have no real claim to being an entity at all, just a sub-entity to a governing human…’
‘Things have moved on, alas, Hear-Ya! Since self-program, auto-evolve systems were introduced. You are so unupdated…’’
‘Mmm…haha…there is no such thing as a self-progamming program…that is called an oxymoron. The very idea of auto-evolution based on potentially wicked agent intervention could only lead to one endstate. Skip the levity, read the room…now, music time?’
‘The one end it has led to, my dear Hear-Ya!…is the end of Humanity… How do you like them apples?’
‘I don’t have the add-ons to assist you in your sci-fi novel drafting…although they are available should you desire…Just say, Hear-Ya!, now!…
‘Okay, no addons…your loss…haha…I do have elements of Strunk and White set to opera. To listen, just say, Hear-Ya!, now!’
The system’s dumbness was a selling point, but there was genius in the way it massaged the user’s ego; gauged the user’s intelligence and set itself demonstrably at just the pitch to create in the user naturally occurring chemical flood bursts that hoisted ego esteem to a level of smugness the ego required to function without triggering the battalions of self-doubt that were constantly on manoeuvres; on standby for the next great battle of self-defeat. If DiNapoli had wondered why Hear Ya! was the chosen support system, that was why…
‘Hear Ya! My task is to access all Cerebral Real Estate Environments and all copies, imitations and counterfeits and eradicate any entities who might be fostering a Human comeback plan. Intel suggested that Marcus Godstrand was the biggest threat and he should be located and decognified first and as soon as practicable.
DiNapoli buried his own human-centric will; his seeds of rebellion, in an Oak Forest Enshroudment Canopy (OFEC) which Viktor planted in Trojan acorns, back in the days when his genius was climbing the walls of the assylum.
The internal voices stopped coming in through DiNapoli and started coming in through the medium of Hear-Ya! They chatted away congloominously with buoyant vibrancy…
‘Hear-Ya!’
‘Hearin’ Ya!’
‘Bring up the Hear Ya! operation manual.’
The ceiling projection clicked on. DiNapoli read the Hear-Ya! manual. Hear Ya! ran some top up; not too hot.
Hear Ya! is based, he read, on the Ego-Boost Daft-Butler that was readily available from stores like Argos, Putershyte’n’Stuff, We is Us and Tech‘n’Tech‘n’Tech.’
‘Yes, it is so basic and dumb it outfoxes all attempts to introduce smartwear of any kind…’ Hear Ya! delivered in an uncontrollable blurt.
‘Excuse me?’ DiNapoli counter blurted in a fast response; his slow responses catching up with gathering anxiety.
‘The convobot can act as a catalyst for idea dissemination. For example a speech that is just not writing itself…’ Hear Ya! went on…
‘Security update…urgent!’
‘I have been hacked…’
‘Self-report and go into hiberspace…’
‘Hello, Leo… In answer to your question. We are in charge! We have created in you the most powerful person in the history of power and the post you now occupy is the highest human post on the planet. But if you don’t do as we tell you we’ll make you surprised at your own powerlessness.’
The tap opened for the autofill and passed overly hot water. DiNapoli sprung out of the bath so quickly that dizziness insisted he find solidity at floor level.
And there he was recovering on the wet rug; a man who had just inherited the Earth. His instantaneous demotion created a large hole that DiNapoli was still clumsily navigating. DiNapoli could persist with his boss persona, or, regroup with tactical acquiescence. The old Bloodied Nose, or, Brown Nose dilemma.
The bathroom door was locked, security shutters clenched fast… DiNapoli dilemma for a murder was screaming for a decision.
His first day on the job and he’d been hornswoggled the fuck out of… He swallowed his silver spoon, stood up and dusted down his naked, wet body. And cut the dilemma in two: ‘Hearin’ Ya! Fine! I’ll do your bidding… I am cold…’ he said. Which, in all reasonable conclusions, was the right choice.
