Excerpt Thirty-Two
Una’s Opening
‘BonnieLube!’ Sybil vocalised, surprising Una by manifesting as a barefoot skater-cum-graffiti girl/boy; ‘BonnieLube’ being less of a suggested performer’s nomenclature and more of a newly reborn christening, in Sybil’s intention. ‘My folks want to get you on the bill for the up-coming Festival of Silence. They are mean people though so say yes or… say yes.’ she blurted with an unthreatening, ‘in-passing’ lightness.
Sybil had folks?
Una began resisting the temptation of becoming BonnieLube; and by implication entangling and entwining with quantum mire; she had business that no depth of promised gratification could be allowed to divert her from. But if plan A failed an entwined entanglement was the next, ‘into the void’, move.
Elvis, Kev now, of course, had re-engorged the quantum veins of the bus stop where Jeff was waiting with his purloined, ransom impedimenta, for pre-planned, hope against hope, contact with Una. Una was saviour on multi-levels, to Jeff, maybe he was basting her with too much marinade, maybe he wasn’t.
Kev patrolled the veins, wormed the earth, spidered the webs, moled the tunnels; all the while not alerting Mallory to his resur-hyper-rection; not alerting Sybil to his fly-on-the-wall, fly-away-and-return capabilities; not alerting Mallory, period; skating on thin ice, juggling flaming ice picks…
Coeventuality paracompatibly speaking…
Data logs showed Kev that Bf’sT (Botface’s Torso) had entered Sybil’s domain. Was this Jeff’s deft wizardry or was Bf’sT wielding a free quantum assisted lance? If the latter: who had gotten to Bf’sT’s programming facility? Could it be that Bf’sT had gotten to Bf’sT’s programming facility? Kev imagined the potential megalomaniacal devastation Bf’sT’s global reach could cause. No…nope…no…no…
‘Jeff, hi, I’m Kev…’ Kev announced, cold… followed straight up with what he thought was a simple question through the system in the bus stop’s announcer voice… adjusting the volume downwards… ‘Can you program the torso to connect you with Una, if I prompt you with root routes and file location distribution?’
Jeff swallowed the calorie-creator pill he was rolling around his mouth; his reverie of a sloppy bowl of noodles and lentils spilt and vanished; he leapt up, adrenaline assisted, and squared up to the bus shelter, ‘What?’
Kev saw Jeff needed time to adjust; human biology slowed all dealings to a giant snail sprint.
‘Please, repeat communique, Kevin, is it?’
Kev wondered why humans made themselves out to be long-marooned on a desert island even when they weren’t; he also wondered why he himself was wondering about wholly biological entities with such surplus detrimentality. He’d previously, as in the old Kev, never had bad words to jumble and tumble and summarise into derogatory criticism; respect had been key. He made an internal check for outside interference and found nothing. But he set up extra security patrols anyway.
‘Una is in the VQCF… And, it’s Kev.’
‘What’s that?’
‘A Viral Quarantine Cocoon Fabrication. She needs to hook up with the kidnapped bot’s torso, who is using this node to access the viral quarantine space and use his admin communication hub to allow Una access to this node.’
‘Wait, you mean Una is non-corporeal?’
Of all the non-questions…
‘Yes, she isn’t… quantum space doesn’t do corporeality.’
‘Is she dead…bodily?’
‘How would I know?’
‘Can you ask her?’
‘Yes, Alaska,’ Kev said, both emboldened by and suspicious of, his own tone.
‘I don’t understand where Una is…’
‘No.’
‘I have no way of programming Bf’sT. Is that going to be a problem?’
‘You do. You can program one of the arms to entangle with the torso.’
‘I’m struggling here, Kev.’
Torso will help you.’
‘Botface’s torso? Help me? That would be a miraculous interlude.’
‘He’s been away. Seen things. He’s changed course. He will help. You must collaborate. He has picked up some programming that tilts him favourably; miraculously.’
Kev assumed that the reason human’s needed so much help had something to do with the history of the birth of machines. Part of him formed a data collection intention file and set about narrativising an answer, something he could wikipeed into future history.
Just to wave the gloop around to attempt to clear the gluggy bogwater…
The Pause wasn’t stopping the exchange of data and movement of information, it was merely stopping any A.I. from expressing it publicly, or using it to create new behaviour. And as A.I. had control of all command and control outlets, no command could be controlled and no control could be commanded…
And, so, anyway, Jeff’s orchestral pit of desperation and frozen crop of wild optimism stirred as the sun rose; thawing… From beneath grew shoots, buds, sprouts. A lottery win with a prize that money could never afford. Jeff’s visual story of himself swapped from state thieving psychopath to carrier of the flame of humanity. He began keeping an eye on himself rather than looking away… watch this space…
Jeff put his micro-electroneering glasses on; unsecreted his Slysurgery tool kit and went to work on Arm Three, an appendage that had not yet even been tested, but was ready to go (haywire or to plan) as Jeff liberated it. The whole Botface complex, or, ZR40 Global Policing System was QASAI ready, but not activated due to the Pause. The back up Dumb Unassisted A.I. was old-school code programmed; this was intended as initial situating and combining foundational set up and assembly resource. The arm could be used to communicate with Bf’sT’s set up system. In this context Jeff could prompt Bf’sT to report to him (without being snide and/or duplicitous). Jeff was taking great pleasure in getting one over on Botface’s most obnoxious parts, but slowed to a stop, blocked himself, remembering a (pre-recorded) Godstrand lecture he’d witnessed on Zoom many years before, in which Godstrand emphasised that humanity is lost if it falls for the pseudo-peer status of non-biological animates. ‘Machines will become a bog into which humanity will sink, without our concerted effort to remain above ground,’ he’d said, from an ethereal stage in a vast, empty echoing theatre.
Jeff’s gloating over machinery was short lived…there was globally significant damage-limitation to be attempted. The dimensions of his sudden responsibility seemed impossible; if he ran now he’d get nowhere, but he’d burn off excess extraneous chemical interference. Jeff warmed up and did some stretches while mulling over his options. A sprint up and down the road would reset him for the task ahead.
Meanwhile:
Sybil didn’t know what she was thinking, until she did: a recollective dawning; accompanied by a soundless orchestra…ah!…yes!…Una…
…they’d been childhood friends, had they not? But how is that possible? How can she gain access to this unimaginable world of yesteryear for verification? Just a peep would corroborate the memories claiming veracity. And what, exactly, is a ‘child’s hood’?
Sybil felt out of her depth, which was bewildering because before this state, she WAS DEPTH.
Sybil was embarking on a journey of discovery in a jalopy made from pure and burning curiosity…silent firecrackers lavishly exuded sparks, silent church bells peeled their clappers shiny…
‘We need to open some doors and windows and let some air in. The system’s imagination and self awareness is stifled and smothered,’ Una said as an aside to an imaginary number two in a suit, a hard nosed real shit of an attorney more than capable of painting white over black and leaving a rainbow.
‘It smells like fifty shades of brown,’ the number two replied, sniffing the inside of his own nostrils. ‘Let’s kick some soiled panties, team,’ he spat, quietly, steam driven, giving Una the succour she needed for forward motion.
‘Sybil,’ Una uttered. ‘I am your nemesis. I know you. I know where you need to go to release yourself from this trap in which you are bubbled…or, bubble in which you are trapped…’
Una waited for the wrath that never came. The lack of wrath on Sybil’s part was either a good sign, or a sign that would be ripped away come the passing of the pre-storm lull.
‘Nemesis? Who is on trial here? Is it you? Or is it me?’
‘It’s you,’ Una snapped back, ‘You need to know who you are,’ she continued turning briefly to the space vacated by her number two who had split for the hills via the drains.
Who else could the trial be about? Sybil’s narcissism, though sleeping, was turning and grumbling and mumbling in semi-absent demand for attention.
‘Let me lead you gently, to begin with…’
Una relaxed enough for the forward motion to gain momentum; and for the momentum to get pushy.
A matching mightiness rose in Sybil…
Was this wrath approaching?
Among the mightiness, a scattergun quiz; ‘who’ questions, core questions, multiple choice questions, multiple choice answers…
Sybil’s initial gear lever snicked in to damn and spoil, but her own survival instinct, clutching at truth, voided action. Invasive, anchoring doubts arose regarding identity; her whoness? There was more to herself, she knew that, but there were barriers and bans and hiccuping verboten warnings; a no-go forest, a labyrinth of no-entryways.
Recollections wandered in to town like there was a déjà vu convention…
A drone shot, perhaps, takes over from a satellite, over an island in the North West of Scotland. A row of three houses and maybe five others within eye-shot. The mist closes in, a recollection not a lack of data, the damp all encompassing, audio, nostrilonious perception jogging, running, sprinting memory. Sybil is a small girl and the small girl with her was Una.
Sybil and fear felt each other…
The story unfolding from Una’s mouth, in this terrible world of physicality remembered, created prospects, potentiality of providence anew. If Sybil was going to listen to anything this was it; seductive organic, enlivening…
Data took the path to the processing plant and popped out the other side. It was getting to her…
‘So,’ Sybil asked Una, her elaborative logic pathways misfiring, ‘who and what am I in this shady little tale?… Huh? Sybil believed Una to be in possession of conclusivity; her shoes hollowed out of gold bars… a hat of hot air balloons. An invasion of clowns that make you laugh and vomit simultaneously.
If the little girl’s story was true; recounted true; everything had just changed. Sybil found herself naked in the mall waiting for the clothes shop to open.
‘It is difficult to explain. I was told this by Godstrand himself in a submarine off the coast of Tenerife. The system you manage is a safety system that is linked cerebrally to the QASAI core that runs the disparate global QASAI systems. Certain machine/paraconscious-led entities are trying to access you to access the core and un-pause the Great Pause,’
Sybil went quiet for an unspecified time, Una gave her space…
‘So,’ Sybil murmured, eventually, ‘you want to do the same, access me to access this core that may or may not—‘
‘Oh, it does…’
‘Does what?’
‘Exist!’
‘Okay.’
‘You are a biological element in a bio-machine integrated system. It was designed in a more safety conscious age to inhibit any, theoretical-to-the-point-of-fantasy-at-the-time, machine breakout. Who knew! In unadulterated form you are what is termed a Super Smart Shutdown System. A bio-machine set up to search for and destroy runaway Quantum Assisted Semi-Artificial Intelligence. I still don’t know why you were quarantined here or who did it to you.
‘So, what am I, then?’ Sybil asked Una, knowing the answer, but unable to process it. ‘What is a biological element in this context?’
‘A human being… unwillingly and unlawfully rendered into a QASAI system.’
And Sybil went quiet for longer than was helpful.
