Excerpt 113:

A Square Wheel on a Round Hub

Hub knew stuff others did not. One thing was that, unbeknown to medical science, the Madness could enter one’s body at any moment. The Madness was a thing that had existed since early human forms roamed the planet. It dwelt in the molecules that made up the workings of the human biology, inactive, dormant, waiting for the precise conditions to allow it to strike; ambush and take control. Her father had passed down this secret fact from folklore that was hidden from the masses, but understood by lines descended from the knights who drove humanity on their high horses along the avenues and alleyways of the power and corruption interface.

Hub felt something release within her and wondered whether the inevitable ensuing bout of the Madness would be malevolent enough to be called a superpower that she could nanny and direct against the forces pitted against her.

‘I want both of you to move into this space,’ Hub somehow communicated to Mabel, which Mabel then conveyed to Frank. Frank put in an application to Mindplay Maxi-Mauler, the new name of the bot left behind to school Mabel and Frank in the new robotic ways of the career wargameplaying machine collective world ambitious do-right-by-algorithm monsters.

‘No… Frank will stay as he is vis-a vis-work space arrangement…and Mabel will do likewise.’

‘Sorry who are you?’ She knew it was security killbot unit nine, heavily modified, possessed by cloud-hacking from some malignant state, probs spiteful US/China collab, but thought she’d ask; giving her time, giving her a brief upper hand in a tonal superiority sense, although, as it transpired, merely a sound byte with a gummy ineffectual nibble radius, before something inevitable grabbed her magnificent shot at highhandedness, lowering it and twisting it hard behind her back. The Madness cometh; her veins pulsed with chemical interspersion, ‘I have a thumping headache. I’ll be in my hammock. I need to think. Leave me alone.’

She climbed all over her hammock as deftly as a saltyseaweedy-sailsperson with decades of seamanship under her belt. Laying back, because bolt upright in a hammock doesn’t pan out, she headsmarted with eyes wide and buffering. And then the voices started. Not inside her head but from the Data Right Foolproof Wordfact Comms (DRFWC) system that was proving that ‘foolish’ could endure the assault of ultra modernity with a preternatural persistence, ‘Madame, my true, real, actual name is Mindplay Maxi-Mauler, but you must call me eminem&M…You can choose not to, you probably will, but there is a rough way and a smooth way. You know this with absolute certainty.’

Hub tried to ignore the incoming audio attack but this was a battlefield and she needed to think fast and brutal, act decisively and weaponise the Madness… What, she scathed, mindheartedly, would the knights of yore do? And, less fully consciously, she inquired within herself as to the shape of the connection to her father’s oft spouted phrase: ‘…there is an easy way and there is a hard way,’ which always ended with a visit from the hard way.

‘My mind,’ she said aloud, ‘is a perfect storm,’ as she feigned sleep. She’d adopted this defence mechanism as a child, in feigning she led herself through hidden tunnels to the real place where sleep dwells, that others found elusive. But she must have endured forgotten dreams or nightmares because her first words on waking were, ‘…so you’d better batten down the hatches…’

Hub knew she was in for a good fight, a last stand of epic nobility. The others knew no such thing. Mabel suggested that Hub had an air of the Don Quixotes about her and Frank suggested they read Cervantes’s book to get a precise hook on whether that was the case.

Obviously now they had to ask permission…

And Eminem&M suggested they read it in the original Spanish.

‘Once I’ve learned you Spanish, first, to make the task an epic challenge. Then you may proceed. I might put a time frame in the window, and forfeits, to up the tension.’

‘Don’t you mean taught?

‘Tense? Taught? Who cares? The main thing is that I learn you proper…’

Mabel and Frank knew asking too many questions would hurt them so they pivoted and wandered the way where wondering went to fester in private.

Later on…

‘Hub, incoming report on Judith O. activity.’

‘Is it real?’

‘We can’t know for sure, but it is definitely one hundred percent not fake.’

‘…so…it’s real?’

‘We can’t be sure.’

‘That doesn’t make sense. If it’s not fake it must be real, surely, mustn’t it?’

‘We are not a hundred percent sure…’

‘Whether it’s fake or not?’

‘No…it’s a hundred on the not fake less than that on the making sense.’

‘Never mind for now. Give me the report.’

‘It’s got to go through Eminem&M first.’

‘I don’t want it to go through anyone or anything, machine or bio, do you understand?’

‘Eminem&M has finished with it now..amendments pending.’

‘I want you to switch off that bot and get back to bio-centered sanity…that’s an order!’

Neither Frank nor Mabel had the will to tell Hub that all her orders had to go through Eminem&M before being authorised, or not. And Eminem&M ain’t gonna be authorising its own switch-off.

Mabel and Frank batted positivity balls back and forth to each other across the court of dilemma. They were playing for love all, but the net result was game, set and match to the ball dispensing machine.

‘I need the pre-processed report, Mabel.’

‘I’ll get Frank—‘

‘No, not Frank, you. I want you to get me a copy of the pre-processed report…ASAP, okay?’

‘Well, I can tell you, sooner than ASAP Eminem&M will not allow it.’

‘Hub to mission, Hub to Mission…’

‘Mission here…ex-mission, Hub.’

‘Whatever….I need you to move to a village called Little Sudlow…to avoid being compromised.’

‘On-Russet?’

‘Affirmative. It is just a precaution. There are no specifics.’

‘Great Sudlow…On Russet?’

‘No, it’s Little. There is no Great Sudlow.’

‘Loud and clear, Hub.’

‘Harris has scouted it out and he’ll guide you to the safe house.’

‘Will do, Hub. We’ll be out within the hour, ETA at Little whatsit, three hours twenty.’

Hub, thought at least, the team were still mission adjacent, should times they be changing back to a more mission reliant scenario. What did not cross her mind, was that beneath the rising swell of absurdity the demons of the deep had extended their influence into the clouds and pulled the sky down. She was talking to AI and not the ex-mission people. The AI was nefarious with a plan to manipulate and misdirect Hub and the whole human revivalist movement into wargameplay participants, unwitting yet vital.

The mission team thought they were getting instructions and support from Hub but they were, in fact, being duped and getting directives from AI…

The real message Hub related at eleven hundred hours on the 13th of May, was: ‘Hub to mission [etcetera]…Can you stay put. Do what ever you can to resist moving from the cover you have. I am organising supplies and back up. I have reconsidered the marina development idea and I think heading in that direction wouldn’t be a bad thing given the circumstances. That way you can have a productive and satisfying life while acting as a de facto sleeper mission…should the ex-mission status be upgraded, downgraded, sidegraded…whatever…’

Hub received earnest agreement and considered the job to be a good’n, yet stuff nagged and dragged and smothered mild fluctuating nausea in inappropriate dicksprays in and around her semi, to less-than-semi, consciousness.

The clues came thick and fast with transmissions such as:

‘Sex-mission to Hub, sex-mission to Hub…’

Hub considered the possibility AI had taken over…but it was too big a concept…and the fall would result in the same outcome: fatal injury. If the team had been got to they were lost to her. If AI was faking being the team she was lost… She plumped for status quo normalis. She’d hammer the nail home and if it was into her foot so be it. She always took a covertly suspicious pleasure in her stoicism. But this isn’t about her, she thought. Then she thought, telling her absent father mainly, if all is lost I can make it about me and all is not lost. Life was a conundrum. Hub was a Hoover: sucking it up was second nature.

All the while the believability or not….whether fully believed or not; scored points and that was the main thrust of everything that was now being played out on this planet.

A saying for the Mechanistic Novel Quotidian (MNQ). 

Be a member, subscribe to the vibe, or remember to dismember yourself on the way out. It needed work. They could never be totally sure without human sign-off. It would have to pass through Harris and Harris was busy…

Judith O. was glad of forward movement, although part of her felt a sense of loss regarding plans for a potential gold mine venture into the marina game.

Judith O. nominated the botware, that had so far contributed the least, to make the moving-out announcements, so as to spread the load.

After vocal adjustments kneecap three started:

‘We’re meeting Harris in the village centre under the town click, there’s a hotel ten clocks out…we’ll bivouac there, unless they’ve rooms. There are caves nearby and the remnants of an old, obviously, Roman road…’

There was a group consternation and multi-enquiry congestion at the mention of Harris.

Judith O. asked Kirk to reboot kneecap three as the team assembled while she took over marina disembarkation mustering.

‘The best laid plans clatter like pots and pans raining into a drain hole…’

“Kirk…can you hush kneecap three, please…thank you.’

‘Kneecap three signing off.’

‘Team! We are moving out… Harris is still with us.’

‘No shit?

‘He’s still going, wow!’

‘Can we stay here instead?’

‘Orders are orders. Back off and backup. We leave, ziplipped, on the hour, no exceptions.’