Excerpt Seventy-One
TEA ON THE PATIO
To the Commander, the Judith Plan seemed to radiate particulates of perfection, or, at least, an approximation of perfection in action. She was not naive enough to believe in Perfection, per se, as such, but harboured middling hopes that a lesser variant of perfection, nipping and tickling the extremities of that great itchberg of human imperfection, could manifest under the benevolence of the Lord God of Omniperfection.
The Commander who was, let’s recall, an ex-commander returning to Commandership; singing through the popular commander’s song book; the top one hundred tunes from the terminal swan repertoire, considered changing her name to Hubmaster, or, ‘the Hubmaster’, ‘Hubmizz’, ‘Hubmistress’, ‘Hubster’ etc., etc., ad infinitum, during a cup of coffee she’d let get cold, and really thought, for one damned moment, that the warmth had deserted her cup because she deserved it; because beneath everything she was not worthy of warmth, and temperature was being used against her as a weird and unique form of punishment.
She often slipped into such moments when the airwaves were busy with silences; bothered by minimal outside interference allowed her to indulge in freethought-skydiving: a sport of her own making. She would never have made it to Command status though, without the realisation that it was not ‘warmth’ expressing whims or fancies against her wellbeing. It was as though her father governed the window of perfect temperature threatening to burn her if she was not carefully dutiful and offering a damp squib of consolation (non-consolation), in the form of warmthlessness, for below par performance.
The Commander was on her own at UKGBH[Q], with Frank, who she’d be pushing around, making him do stuff for her own alleviation of whatever it was that bullies needed to alleviate, but Frank’s bots followed every minutiae of her behaviour and preempted every power move with block and tackle to the ground tactics.
Frank and bots, she could live with, but Frank and bots and Mabel and bots put her on the spectrum. It was as though Mabel were there. She wanted to tell Mabel to report back to her anything that Judith did that contravened mission throughway, and Frank butted in, explaining why she wouldn’t and Mabel just said, ‘What Frank said.’ And any agreement unalignment the Commander had with Mabel’s bots over the local comms, the Frank bot’s took up; getting personal with the Commander within devious intimate meanness parameters. If it weren’t for her father’s stringent attempts to force the demons of sulkiness out of her, at several delicate stages in her development, that would be her go-to emotion, but she fought her own slipperisloping into sulk mode, and won, and fought and won, and fought and won. Pride and shame partied at the care home for singing swans; things were not going to get better, as she had always believed. But things had to get better or every ascent she had climbed would have led downstairs into the basement.
Judith was growing into a real prospect. The thought of mentoring her wrestled with the desire to destroy her slowly; take her apart bit by bit.
But in any case Judith was the new bitch on the block and she was coming in to heat. The Commander was an adaptive force if nothing else. She willed herself to feel love for Judith so that faith and trust could gather in her for the Piteous Human Fightback (PHF).
Local comms came back and took over. Judith was whispering, which was both intriguing and annoying enough for the Commander’s newly dug well of kindness towards Judith to receive a spike of hatred.
‘We are in the vicinity of the Botnap gathering. Mabel’s team are scoping the latent botware for boobies, it looks safe.’
‘Jeff, our agents are making a stealth approach they are as good as on site…they’ll be with you forthwith,’ the Commander relayed.
‘Botface…legs….arms?’ Jeff asked his surrounding hostaged bottage. He got up and peered behind the bus shelter, scanning everywhere. The bot parts were unalert, indicating a false-data scenario. He went back and sat down. Or, it could be that the bot presence is allowing an ambush because they are colluding in a potential rescue. If this ever happens again, Jeff thought, he’d bring a guitar; he’d always fancied learning.
‘Is this a joke, HQ?’ Jeff emitted.
‘No. Just call us “H” from now on…’
‘HQ, I feel like I’m on an Island surrounded by rabbit holes. I need supportive…’
‘H, Jeff, drop the other…non-H letter. There’s good reason for this new rule but taking time to explain it will mean breaking the rule into desiccated rule crumbs.’
‘Where are you, Mabes?’ Frank asked, ‘Jeff does not have visual.’
‘We are South-East of, on top of, Jeff’s position.’
‘How far out?’
‘So unfar out we’re in.’
The Commander gets out maps, pulls up diagrams…’Right, I’ve got you…Jeff, they are behind the bus shelter. Don’t be freak out.’
‘On top of…Making ourselves…what the…Jeff is not here… Repeat, there’s a no show in the Jeff department.’
Botface’s Torso had left Botface’s Torso and integrated with KB so KB could see what was going on. Botface, in his mindstartling next-gen precociousness, had caused a Place-Shift Time Coinciding Reverse Badger Set Inversion (PSTCRBSI) which meant that both the Judith group and the Jeff group could not be in the same space even though they were in the same space. KB didn’t understand the process or actuation but ran with it in a theoretical vein.
‘Commander…’ KB asked.
‘Hub….please refer to me as Hub, OS…’
‘Okay, Hub…tell Judith and the entire team, bots and all to enter the shelter.’
‘Judith? Get everyone in the shelter. My OS is going through possible solutions.’
‘Will do.’
The bots and some of the bot parts, encamped in the bots’ backpacks, began dis-resonating in a way that everyone could feel, but not interpret in the same way; some eluding any interpretational inquiry because of stress induced disconnection issues.
Mabel’s bots were envious and pissed at the advances in botmanship. Jeff’s captives were at least fifteen iterations North and three generations West of where they were at…
Frank’s bot detail caused a stir that agitated the Commander. Frank had to explain, and The Commander found herself being guilty of a minor dereliction infraction by repeating the word ‘mansplaining’ over and over to herself while Frank was talking.
Even though what Frank had said amounted to:
Mabel having to return to base because her bots were being tracked by automated bot tracker-hacker-jacker systems…could be spurious but why take the risk?
‘Our bots are partisan to us, humans, and realise that the captive bots are very much machine oriented in their loyalties. Programmed with Hard Integrative Fictional Narrative (HIFN); to be unable to harm the machine cause: Machinekind’s Authentic Destiny (MAD).
The one part that wasn’t (Botface’s Torso) that was due for program reconstruction has fled the scene and is hiding within the defunct escape system which, we don’t know if you know this, has leakage in and out with…’
‘With what?’
‘With the operating system at H.’
‘Our operating system? The UKGBH[Q] operating system?’
‘Yes.’
‘Shit, really?’
‘Yup.’
‘Nevermind, for now!’ The Commander said, not really meaning it, leakage in and out mean’t they were compromised, the mission, H[Q] itself, the last and only chance, the whole of Humanity. It was all broken and this news kept breaking it, like a patient with a broken leg being treated with broken legs.
‘Ya, never mind for now. We’ll deal with it later.’
Silence, that told everyone there was something amiss, rang out and became background noise pretty quickly.
Procrastination as defence…
Hopelessness piled on top of hopelessness creating a sort of monument to hope, or the lack of it.
‘I am interested in this “cause”. What is the machine cause? Could you clarify?’ the Commander said, hoping that this was an unanswerable question or differed from the answer she had; written in her soul.
‘To eradicate Humanity.’
‘Oh.’
‘Leaving no trace of the species. Not even historical reference…nothing.’
‘Okay!’ The Commander sort of knew this anyway but it was buried in the garden of occupational therapy and rose up suddenly, demanding a patio be laid above it to secure the equilibrium and create an area conducive to placing a table and chairs set.
The Commander sat down, ‘Hub, taking five. Listen out!’
