Excerpt 106:

Let the Games Offend!

The marina building accommodated the Mission group as though, at first glance, they were one extended family at home. Ensuing glances would detect them being more at sea, or at sixes and sevens, but not dead-squirrelly so. As temporary barracking the marina was more like the setting for a lazily lapped-up indoors vacation.

Judith O. and Jeff had grave concerns about the Mission; brought about, overridingly, by botvine grumblwhistlings and electro-coded, data-mist whispers. 

Jeff trusted Una and that was enough for him to trust Judith O.. Judith O. trusted Jeff because his veracity and surefire, nerdy naivety ran rampant right up the rocky pinnacled edge to the summit, according to Una’s unabashed assessment.

After discreetly voicing their concerns with Hub using discretion codes hidden in laboured chit-chat, Hub released information to them that substantiated their concerns, but incongruously, without agreeing with them. An uncharacteristic change in Hub’s perspective seemed to take shape as she unfolded information that Judith O. and Jeff couldn’t help thinking Hub should have told them already.

‘I have received reports from local partisan forces. It appears that leaked plans of the site were off kilter. The espionaged details from previous, pre-pause intel, provided by Cyber Intelligence Agents (CI3) mismatch the latest data from our Pause partners, the Whiskey Distillery Action Scouts (WDAS).’

‘Fake?’

‘Deep fake!’

‘Hypernormal, transreality superdeepfake, yes?’

‘Agreed!’

Had Hub been turned? Had hub been spun a converse truth and bought it? She spoke in tune, but lipstick around her rim betrayed a sloppy non-Hub behaviour that screeched Fake, as it etched loser on the bonnet of a brand new shiny car of Authenticity.

The fakeness continued…

‘The Scouts had uncovered a junction box; a server router terminus; an HQ of sorts, yes, but nothing physical Mission presence could action, so rain has stopped play,’ Hub said, so un-Hub-like that Judith O. and Jeff called individually for verification from their contacts among the bots…

‘Hub, are your sources verifiable…have they been verified?’

‘Affirmative… I wasn’t born yesterday…’

‘WDAS? Never come across them before…’

‘The fog of war…the smog of Pausation.’

Judith O’s contact and Jeffs contacts came back instantaneously simultaneously. Hub was not being faked. This was genuine Hub…what then?

Hub was not herself. Hub was the one constant they needed. Her precise instructional, irritating and arrogant manner had shifted. It made her more likeable but less believable.

Hub verified away:

‘These agents on the ground… Teddy  and Davies Caxton-McCacken, they are WDAS operatives, in the Highlands. Teddy, born male transgendered to be more identical to his twin sister. And Davies, born female, adopted the male gender seeking to be less identical.

Some pockets of smart within Jeff’s bots detected that M and F teams were orchestrating a parallel auxiliary truth narrative for purposes of natural competitive outlet; a safety system to stop them boiling over and causing masskilldeathmayhem. F and M teams had constructed the stories of Teddy and Davies, who worked at a distillery while action scouting for the WDAS, to throw the mission into disarray and score points.

Hub heard herself telling Judith O. that the Farm, a car-sized box in the final report was, ‘…impenetrable, due to a Close Proximity Death Ray (CPDR) from an illegal Pause-breaking Deathray Satellite Deathstar (DSD).’ It didn’t ring true, but it rang loud enough to drown out the sound of further investigation and basic, due diligence, verification.

Teddy and Davies had used archaeological surveillance equipment, that sounded too good to be true, and yet an inevitable consequence of technological progress, that revealed nothing but the box (Car-sized, deathray protected). Contents unknown, but guessed at in self-cancelling loops of conjecture, ad infinitum.

Hub, deep down, must have known… On reflection, after this has passed, if she is still operational, she will see the bellending obvious: the spurious intel was falsified by the scurrilous, dangerous and only-too-powerful gameplay of self-reassigned deathbots who were operating from within the UKGBH complex. The UKGBH central control mall was built never to be used, and protected from harmful encroachment, by specialist bots who were as Trojan as they come; an inbuilt, pre-fitted, harmful encroachment. And Hub would realise that the bots had been the ones using the complex while she had been used.

To the Mission members, generally, the Mission to get to the Farm was already in an irritating state of readiness that was also on stand down. Stand-by that was subtly worked to also act as a ‘relax but be flight and fight adjacent’ order.

Now the Mission scrub felt like there was no genuine or fulfilling end point: No, didn’t mean, Hell, no, it meant Heaven, no. It was as though they were in a limbo that felt like having to jump through hoops just to tread water.

‘The Mission is cancelled the Mission is cancelled the Mission is cancelled hold tight where you are and await the re-Missioning…’ Frank’s team’s spokesbot said, convincing all human ‘players’, including Frank & Mabel that the vital Mission, still vital in the real world, had been rendered unnecessary in the world that encroached and abutted the gameplay Frank and Mabel’s teams had handcrafted before them.

It gave Judith O. a chance to normalise her far from normal world perspective and local viewpoint… She had a lot on her mind that needed compartmentalising so she could function. She was learning how to walk with multi-pedal coordination and learning how to talk with a perpetual multitudinal vocal onslaught… She was still tuning her radio. Upset wrestled with equilibrium…calm explanation and high-end rage duelled at dawn…

Without otherworldly resources she would have been stuck in a flooded cave. She was, after all, the landlady at a featured Stockholm Munchaus; the rules of which were set up to allow her to gain from the clientele and not be harmed by them. She had content access to the two big superstars of the day. However, Sybil was overriding rules to facilitate her own feelings that resonated with Mabel’s bot team (and by consequence, Frank’s bot team).

Something in Sybil recognised the purpose of the trouble making and saluted it, as it processioned past, without question. It was her people doing her thing. Curse or blessing, constructive destruction was coded into her behavioural portfolio.

Mabel’s team called for a ‘point tot’… A truce was initiated… A TV quiz show was selected and utilised for the purposes of sharing the same space in order to parley and bargain. Frank’s team would have called for the truce ‘points tot’ but they were point-dockingly slow.

UKGBH was now F team/M team, or M team/F team, girdled. The intended framework had been frameworked over…game juice spattered and flowed through all intents and purposes. The world, as it were, had gone gamecrazy…

How crazy? Gamecrazy!

F team and M team but mainly F team worked on a gameseam that had hyperised potentiality. Hub’s secure-self auto-psyche advise notes were visible…what can a team of competitive gamewar combatants do?

Using the private personal details in the notes they unsealed the tomb of dust surrounding Hub’s woeful trauma secretion and lit the touch-paper, stood back…and…

Hub let the Woman breathe for a little; The Commander felt flames lapping at her calves. She gathered her beating heart until it escaped with a thumping rupture. All was lost by what was found: Big Daddy was making a comeback; her father, the Admiral…the Man…the monst… Hub took the Woman for a shower. Cleanliness snuggled up against godliness. She over-brushed her teeth to ensure sweet prayer-breath and prayed.

‘Oh, Heavenly father,’ she started, conflating fathers.

She felt truly, irretrievably sick: Bingo! Ten thousand points for team they call Frank’s…