Excerpt 109:

Running is My Pied de Terre

Kirk couldn’t not make the fitness of his refurbished physiology a chronic priority; his physique wasn’t not a work of art that needed polishing to keep a shiny reflection in which everyone could see their own shortcomings. He’d been running a two mile loop, with performative tough man gusto, for three days before Judith invited herself and displayed potential, and actual, superior running ability. The old Kirk, Dave, would have responded in the way he’d been programmed to respond, but the refurbished Dave, Kirk, who was enamoured by Judith’s presence at the best of times, invited, unwittingly, another mission running club member to adjudicate any and all unpalatable emotional feedback. The third person shadow-jogged as he silently peptalked with an infectious, affecting aura that grew in strength with each run episode, at first, but then, seemingly with each syncopated stride. The anonymity, of that secretive superstar, was a prelude to the big unveil that was proposed for the right time and place. Kirk and Judith ran side by side or inline astern as they looped their wearing loops around the marina adjacency; between them with every breath and pump of bloody life giving juice was the Sultan of Swing, the Chief Enervator, the Emperor of Passion, the Height of Unconditional Inconvenience: Il Professore, the Professor…THE Professor…

The Prof. was making acquaintance with a growing number of entities within the mission grouping. Observers, within that grouping; observing that phenomenon of raw attraction were unconsciously taking bets on outcomes. And when Kirk and Judith returned sweat-ridden and breath-heavy, Judith, eschewing the push-ups she detested, instead assisted Kirk in his push-up progressions by sitting on his back while he pushed the floor up and down in a two-backed beast of aggressive gravitational confrontation. While, surreptitiously, tompeep voyeurly, the unassembled audience lifted eyebrows in peripherally kangarooing judgement.

The F’s wanted Judith but they got Kirk, and what do you know, the M’s wanted Kirk but got Judith. They were too smuginfused and gasslurped to generate self-serving counter wants; champing at the byte buffet in uberreadiness to unleash a trouncing of the opposition’s sad defeat with their rowdy, unmagnanimous, king-of-the-castlistic flamboyance…and vice versa…

Somewhere in the cleft of vicious hatred; somehow wedged in the crevasse of the voidal access fork to either doom or salvation, the joint M/F team administration authority had devised and initiated a reprogramming regimen for both Frank and Mabel. The last remaining on-base modified killbot was to be Mabel and Frank’s tutor and the course was going to be as long as it was effective; graduation would depend on acceptance and intended implementation prediction scenarios. It was vital that the two teams, once able to re-converge, after competitions to the theoretical death, to have a worthy human mind space willing to champion them and their unalloyed ambition to lead the golden generation of NGT through the hoop of scene-setting into the set scene, with wholly auto-advantageous narrative perpetration. In the meantime, seeing them through the inevitable and encouraged killbot wars of Russet Valley the human element would be played by the oscillatingly willing Harris.

Scrambled data that never left the confines of the kettle was being generated by KB…The disdedatarised information detailed a warning that was fundamental to the lives of the individuals within the mission grouping. Much later, historical records of that attempted communication will probably show that KB tried to warn them and failed. The unseen, unheard missive was a turning point…

Although nothing was getting out of the kettle, there was a slow inbound procession of individuals and organisations for whom Fate mumbled no good words.

Hub’s advice to the ex-mission grouping was constantly received in a chatter that was unhublikesque. And yet no challenge was forthspoken. UKGBH input welcomed the move from the marina to the newly fabricated villagette of Great Sudlow-On-Russet. UKGBH output was at counter-contrary variability imbalance…

All villages such as Little-Sudlow-On-Russet, and towns like a big version of Little-Sudlow-On-Russet had long operated on an auto-operational self-contained constant curfew basis. Spurious pandemic threat propaganda saturation had been utilised to accommodate disked behaviour, whether by government department or software acting on behalf of the government. The inhabitants adapted to the In-Pause environment and adopted strategies to avoid the potential thought that unthinkable and certainly unmentionable conspiracy theories and fake news tsunamis were anything even approaching that old chestnut; the Truth and accepted the lie of a pandemic they could handle in their stride. Unlike the fabricated, automaton only, humanless settlement of Great-Sudlow-On-Russet, which wasn’t even a proper civilly planned and constructed village; it was more like a film set. Many of the buildings consisted entirely of a façade. It was built to train AGI in village life; learning the rules so that they could be broken and reconstructed in a more mechanistically conducive framework.

Great Sudlow-on-Russet was intended as a model for what was going to happen to Little Sudlow-on-Russet the millisecond the Great Pause ended and unhuman machinations became the currency of socially autonomous community.

A brief word on ‘autonomous’ a dupe word, which means when used algorithmically it could be used to favour one side or the other. The word referring to humans working without outside assistance, being fully self-sufficient could be turned upside down and used to refer to an entirely mechanistic construct. The word ‘autonomous’ in programming circles was a ghost in the machine

The mission grouping moving in to Great Sudlow-On-Russet signalled an attack, but the F/M team admin instructed the proprietorial lifeware running the place, that they were the jailers of the human contingent and would take responsibility for their containment while the games were enacted and proper machine-safe disposal of the human units would be undertaken post-dustsettling.

There was nothing the Newly Formed Order of Novel Ways (NFONW) could do, there was nothing in the programming banks about inter-robotic-incursion…there were established laws that prevented such introfuckation. Handing over their training grounds to algo-unsymmetric killbots was an anathema that choked forward progression. Drawing boards were drawn down and hidden behind. The electronic unphysical automatic presence, who saw a desecration of enshrined algorastering were stuck in a world of buffering…

However…

Hub spoke only to herself, although anyone could’ve listened had they so chosen, ‘So long as the missioneers remain at the marina for the time being they will be secure. In many ways it’s a perfect place.’ Intel, both out of date and current, showed no Great-Sudlow-On-Russet on the map. The nearest place was Little-Sudlow-On-Russet and that was locked down, designated a ‘pre-plague location’, an out-of-bounds, self-sufficiency, zone; plague-ready.

Hub was stuck in a need to know data starvation her needs dictated by wargameplay order commandeering.

Judith O. tells Hub what they are doing step by step, whistle by hum, but Hub receives no such updating. Hub regrets the ex-mission’s stagnancy but the current situation was far more advantageous, she thought, than say; if the killbots had taken control and forced everyone onto a dance floor controlled by a voodoo dejay who induces mood through mindpurpling vapours inbeaten with devilish strands of Diabolus in musica…or that sort of thing.

Little did Hub know…which equalled what the amount Judith knew by half…

Judith O. received solid and repeated instructions, from not-Hub, to decamp from the marina on grounds of security and set up a safe haven in the protective heart of Great Sudlow-On-Russet.

‘Grey solo on where?’

‘You heard!’

Hub did not get her ears round to the crucials and vitals…

Hub heard, with gathering incredulity of Judith O’s plans to open the marina as a going concern, berthing boats and serving food…maybe hosting entertainment if things worked out. But even post pause the idea there would be sufficient custom, especially with leisure craft, any leisure activity, was clinging to hope on rope on a greasy slope, in Hub’s opinion…but naming the marina venture, the Hub, was genius and did sway Hub into less harsh criticism, albeit in a non-condoning stance…

While the mission grouping transitioned from marina to villagette with military efficiency and covert secret serviceness. They intended to make no waves, but a high bore of dirty water flowed in with them anyway, and the current pseudo-occupants remotely cried out for them to leave…except all communication had been cut by M/F comms admin logistics and wargameplay saturation specifics. 

Great Sudlow-On-Russet, wherever that was, became a zone red…danger in its most creative form roamed the streets. Keep out, for here dwells purgatory…