Excerpt Seventy-Two
A Fleck in Time
There was a period when Kirk was not yet Kirk and Dave had not yet stopped being Dave and Kirk was instinctively adapting to the new surroundings he was chuting into so that when he fully landed he was with the flow and not against it; swimming in the puddle of Life and not puddled by it.
Certain things were clicking and formulating…
He was being downloaded with the necessaries of the mission and the mission leader, Judith. For instance: Judith made an animal rights speech that Kirk felt had profound relevance, but Dave dismissed as political landscaping that integrated an over-excessive amount of crazy-paving.
‘What if, and I say “what if” as a device, because I have certain beliefs, which lead me to conclude that the “what if” is actually an “is”. But anyway, what if the planet and the animals on it are meant (whatever “meant” means) to live in harmony? What if the strongest most suicidally adapted species wipes out, captures, tortures, kills to the point of holocaust; thinking that it’s garbaging mere alienotherness; an alienotherness lesserness, but, in the Reality built by moral and ethical foundations set in stone, maybe Humankind isn’t creating a place to live, but a place to die: self-destruction by the destruction of those around us; those around us are who are brothers and sisters, not alienothernesses? … Are we stuck, driving in circles, married to the abomination of a self-inflicted roundabout of suicide that we shove off into the forest that comes back round through the forest we just denuded and bites us in the back of the head with our own gnashers?’
Here Judith was personifying, anthro-whatevering, equalising animals as worthy of elevating to ‘not-for- extinguishing status’, and doing it with vigour and verve one might see in a movie featuring Joan of Arc.
Dave imagined that plants had intelligence too and baulked at the claim of animal Armageddon. Not for any other reason than that was what he imagined everyone else was thinking. Then he tailed off in his objections imagining quiz show that played Leeks against Carrots…
Kirk was an outlier and Dave didn’t want to spend even one night outside the city walls without a blanket, or invisibility jacket. Dave wanted comfort and something he could define as joy and started beating a retreat towards it.
While simultupulously:
Kirk agreed with what Judith was putting forward. He had never thought of it like that before; he had thought about it, just not like that; coming from Judith it had a slant that lodged in his groove and cyclically repeated, playing tunes that made his foot tap like a dog with a rhythmically scratch-loopy leg.
Before, Kirk’d objectified Judith to a degree (about 355°), he could see that now, while he was getting old boxes of dusty manners out to set up a stall on his driveway, what he couldn’t see was that he was now deifying her in a way (he’d gone down that route) that would lead to a bar on shared intimacy; a deeper (in a shallow sense) connection. Which would make evolutionary sense if Refurbishment was still going to make Kirk a killing machine for the great humanoid comeback. Kirk saw duty above rumpy-pumpy now refurbishment was in control.
Being back was still drenched in a sticky exhilaration that obscured the finer points of settling in to his next, and most likely final, chapter.
Judith approached, kirk could feel it without naming any of the profuse gamut of sensations; an awe took over, ‘You with me?’ she said, crystal, irresistible.
‘Try and stop me… The future is—‘
‘Be under no illusion, Kirk, please, this is the future.’
‘Oh!… Yes, Ma’am!’ Kirk bleated. and in a later review of the bleat had to assess who he had become, just to be sure.
He not only risen above his past objectification of women…he was now incapable of it.
…and…
…do you know what?
He thought… This Hope lined avenue, taken by Humankind, is full of Promise. The Refurbished road to a Destiny of Life…
Hearing vaguely a passing Dave comment along the lines of: ‘Promises, promises…’ which he easily ignored, Kirk was imbued with a heady knowing. He didn’t necessarily know enough to explain it to himself, let alone Dave, but had a belief and faith in Judith. He felt like whooping with wolflike abandon but respected the fact Dave was receding as he ‘took one for the team’; knocked unconscious by his own ambition to be someone else. Refurbishment had its ups and downs and a down Dave mean’t an up Kirk.
The decision was made, Mabel must return to H. KB could have wangled ways round the dilemma and tightened some bolts and glued the odd seams etc., etc., ad infinitum… But the draw and pull of the Mabel/Frank Interlaced Entangled Duplo-Auto-Intercession (M/F-IEDAI) was prioritising in the majority of auxiliary advice Apps.
‘Mabel,’ the Commander ordered once furnished with outcome-data, ‘Return to H…repeat, return to H.’
The Commander didn’t want to say why and was queueing up such a response as she struggled with her post retirement, re-introduction to the work force, waning professionalism to stop herself from adding: Do not pass go…Do not collect to hundred pounds…
Mabel had already succumbed to an attack of outwardly inspired decision-making. She was planning a return to H, anyway, mutiny-be-damned…and her bots were with her all the way, so her path back was pretty clear. She’d looked forward to meeting Jeff, but somethings are cucumber shaped and others banana shaped…life sure was quirky!
‘Coming back in, Hub.’
‘Affirmative, Mabel. Good on you,’ added Frank, unnecessarily.
‘Hub,’ Judith asked, over the local comms, ‘Does this affect my trajectory?’
‘No, you stay on track. This is a Mabel only order.’
‘Mabel, only?’
‘Mabel and her…(what would one call them?)…team.’
Judith was less stressed when Mabel and her bots moved out, there was less protection without the bots, from any possible outside incursion, but that was weight-matched by the lessened threat posed by Mabel’s team going auto-auto from-within-the-ramparts in a wrecking-ball-frenzy. Stability not protogeeing-out as their forte.
Judith sat down with Jeff; looking for a way to integrate ongoing objectives so they could maximise partnership potential. She wished she’d brought a guitar with her.
‘A bit stuck are we champ?’
‘Una?’
‘Sorry, she didn’t make it out let alone in.’
‘But is she still…operational?’
‘Yes, I believe so, she’s in a stalemate that will resolve with the unpause if not sooner.’
‘Did she get any messages through? I mean for me?’
‘Hang on let me… Hub, Judith to Hub…’
‘Hub here.’
‘Are there any personal comms from Una for Jeff?’
‘Wait a mo… OS, any Una, Jeff comms crossed your path?’
KB could have spent three hours in humankenable explication. A whole Jeff/Una sub-narrative tragedy had unfolded. The chance of Una escaping the bloodyminded will of Sybil was in the nought point minuses and shrinking. Simplification and chaff-editing Apps came to the rescue in an otherwise longwinded rain-lashed camping expedition of explanatory adventure…
‘Negative, no comms.’
Jeff wanted to save Humanity and so did Judith, they were on the same page, but how they turned the pages was at variance. Jeff wanted to restore what was and Judith wanted to remake; refashion, to the point of metamorphosis.
Judith was by now single-minded about navigating the high-seas before her; she’d been launched, fitted out and was now being crewed-up for embarkation.
Jeff was entrenched; his no-mans-land crowded with robotic antagonism; his support hiding up in the coconut trees. Judith offered a new opening, and he had the most advanced tech in human hands to fill the opening and then some.
Jeff mentally searched his baggage and baggage carriers for an Almost Invisible, Multifunctioning, Cosmically Intelligent Communications Fleck (AIMCICF) that was so advanced no slot had been developed other than its mother slot for it to fulfil its destiny.
Jeff had purloined the mother slot. He eventually located the fleck behind his left ear, making sense of a mild but persistent irritation. Jeff asked Botface’s Torso for the mother slot and the Cloned Imposter Version (CIV) of Botface’s Torso released a hydraulic door revealing a cavity in his abdomen which contained the MS.
The fleck had a few messages regarding air quality and weather patterns but little else. Then, as Jeff was about to abandon that quest the fleck inputted its considered output. Although the chip said little and not often, on personal matters, it spoke up: ‘Judith,’ it said, ‘is the only route. The route is tenuous but could work. It involves reprogramming eavesdropping Self-Programming Algodictator MasterApps (S-PAMA) by adopting a certain Humans-are-worth-saving-after-all approach for which Judith unwittingly has the blueprint.’
It was what Jeff wanted to hear before he’d even formulated the questions… This tech was truly awesome and trust in it flowed like a breeze of pure meliflouosness.
‘Where is Una?’ Jeff suddenly said, not meaning to.
KB got a simultaneous application from the fleck which was both worrying and impressive, asking and taking without redaction all data and every communication regarding Una including stuff barred by Sybil’s Information Barrister Team (IBT) App.
KB had been feeling immense for weeks but this only barely visible fleck of tech made him feel small…which led him to consider Tiny Guy and Tiny Guy jingles ear-wormed around in KB’s head mechanisms.
The Commander, Hub, whatever, sighed and sighed and then progressed to a hiss and curse session as the OS went down for maintenance.
The inconvenience of losing out on Jeff/Judith interaction, vis-a-vis the mission’s progression, meant she was slipping backwards while precariously tipping sideways.
KB had a plan that involved taking over the mission and reporting back to Hub (AKA The Commander) a differing version of events so that objectives unpalatable to Human minds could be rendered.
KB threw Apps out there. Creating open source input streams regarding potential outcomes… If Humanity was going to disappear under his helmsmanship; it was going to go democratically.
