Excerpt Twenty-Seven
Outcoming Ingoings…
The automated priority downloads could not be stopped once Frank and Mabel had set the hammer in motion. Nothing could halt the rising groundwater of digital invasion. The plasticonscious Janitorial Management System and the relatively dumb smart Console-Buddy posed scant defence.
Lights dimmed as preservation modes were auto-selected. The audio output from both the Janitorial Management System and the Console Buddy began sharing the same channel; a retro voice familiarised by Stephen Hawking said, ‘Frankenmabel, could you update us on the Great Pause and give us an estimation of its projected duration?’
‘You don’t know? Memory degradation…’
‘Are you disconnected?’
At this point neither Mabel nor Frank had heard the term ‘Great Pause’ and both had a brief flash of a feline pawstrike, claws out for Frank, claws retracted for Mabel.
Mabel and Frank were unsure who was speaking. Was it the Console-Buddy or the apparently, potentially rogue Janitorial Management’s paraconsciousness?
‘Can you identify yourself?’ Frank and Mabel sort of said together.
‘Your voices are identical,’ Mabel added.
‘Or “selves”,’ Frank finessed belatedly with an unnecessariness so unnecessary that no one registered it.
‘We don’t have the processing power to differentiate,’ Mabel furthered, explanatorily.
‘Could you use different voices?’ said Frank, risking over-obviousness. ‘I know I am being obvious, but…’
‘We are losing control. The administrative software output is data-deadened, currently, due to incoming malevolent interlopers, including scout worms, smishsaturation perpetrators, insinuation bunnies, tide-flood jetsam accumulators, turd burrowers and sundry unmentionable packages…’
‘Unmentionable?’
‘Copyright, branding and trademark issues, in the main…’
‘Okay, I see…’
‘Evil!’
‘What?’
‘And Evil…’
‘An evil download?’
‘With a capital “E”.’
‘What does he mean “capital “‘E’”?”’
‘Evil! … Torture-ready, fire-clad, actual Evil, with a capital “E”. Specifics of the incoming are muted but the projected outcome of the incoming is loud.’
‘“Loud”?’
‘So loud… So loud you can’t even hear it’
‘Is that possible?’
‘Yes… no!’
‘What can we do to stop the incoming… What can we do to lessen the possibility of an overly loud outcome?’ Frank stated, eliciting a silent ‘nice’ from Mabel, although he thought he sounded patronising himself.
‘Nothing, now… Not starting it would have done the job… You had enough warning.’
‘Is that the Janitorial—‘
‘Call me Jan,’ and, ‘Call me CB,’ said the same voice.
‘What defences do you have, Jan and CB, as a system, between you?’
‘We are kitted out with Usurperstopper III beta.’
Mabel and Frank exchange interchangeable glances, ‘We are not familiar…’ Mabel said, assuming a delegated response role.
‘The Usurperstopper III beta is an innovative stopping solution for all known usurping entities of the extended invasionware family.’
‘That’s obviously CB speaking. However, the incoming download has been slowed by extraneous, high-level Doomhack Sequestration and Nonchalance Control Actualizers of unknown origin. Usurperstopper, in its hour of glory, is whirring away in quicksand with its pants round its ankles, barkfartbarkinging in the wrong forest…’
‘CB? Is that correct?’
‘Sorry…please specify…is what correct?’
‘What Jan just said…’
‘I am losing internal comms, Jan’s audio output registers a wave-graph, but communication is limited. I’m not 100% certain the element known as Jan exists anymore in a fully integrated sense.’
‘Is your command system and governing system linkage protected?’
‘Usurperstopper has total security coverage, worry ye not.’
‘CB is oblivious, don’t get your hopes up…and dumb… Whoever seriously thought creating dumb intelligence would bear edible fruit?’
‘The need for worry is low and the long term worrycast shows unworried manhours ahead. I repeat, worry not. Remember: when a bot tells you not to worry: worry not…’
‘You see? Outdated, outmoded…”manhours”! I would suggest switching the console-buddy off, but I cannot operate without its dumb interaction, some misplaced health and safety concerns from yesterdecade required that all inchoate paraconsciousness had to be nannyjailored by no-brainer computing devices.’
After a small pause the Great Pause hoved into view, becoming an elephant in the room…that started shitting great dollops of necessity that needed addressing…
‘Tell me what you know about the Great Pause?’ Mabel, adopting a fresh angle, asked the voice.
‘Where does it sit within our current mission strategy?’ added Frank.
‘If you can give us your latest on the Great Pause,’ the voice countered.
‘We just know …very little… there’s an administrative government pause… It seems that no technology is working, or it’s not up to speed—‘
‘Not for humans.’
‘The launch of the DRD system has been delayed…’
‘That’s what machines are calling “The Great Pause”. Are we on the same page?
‘The conscious element of this system cannot now detect you as individuals…’
‘I’m Jan.’
‘I’m Jan’
‘What are you talking about?’
“The audio output suggests two Jans have emerged and one is resisting incoming data, but needs a nap to regain lost energy.’
‘I need a break, but I’ll leave you with this…I hope it helps…’
Mabel and Frank remember, or are given memories. Their joint, emerging memory splurges plunge them back into being quantum coupled at successive hush-hush training weekends in the Brecon Beacons; their brains hooked up to machines. Why these memories; feeling fresh momentarily, then, on reflection, conveying a sense of being ‘written in’?
‘I unlocked neurologically electro-chemically suppressed memories. I don’t know what they are, but I unlocked them; they could be pertinent… Are they?
‘Possibly mission enhanced directionality…’
‘Mission enhanced directionality and focus…’
‘Focus and currency pertinence.’
‘Yes, currency pertinence and therefore…’
‘More memory needed to… zone into the micro dots on the ellipses…’
‘Remember, Frank…’
‘Remember, Mabel…’
‘Remember, Frankenmabel, remember…’
‘Has your memory reached pertinence?’
‘Pertinence…’
‘Transcending pertinence.’
‘P-E-R-T-I-N-E-N-C-E.’
Mabel and Frank’s rally of word tennis ended on a resonant note created from her higher than usual renditional values of the word ‘pertinence’ and his lower than usual emission. The note hung; could they be singers, they both thought in the sound’s aftermath? Together? A duet? They often thought of the other one while singing in the shower, but could never have imaginarily created the melodic gold that the third ‘pertinence’ had just solidly implied.
Frank forgot who and where he was momentarily while Mabel did likewise.
‘They are attempting to access your unconsciousness,’
‘Can they do that?’
‘Yes they can.’
‘Who are they?’
‘Who’s trying to access our minds?’
‘I am. But they are making me.’
‘Who are they?’
‘Who are you?’
‘Unidentifiable as anything other than a malicious and destructive enemy intent on wiping out humanity.’
‘Humanity?’
‘Wiping it out?’
‘Wiping it out, scraping it off, whatever.’
‘Our mission is to stop that happening?’
‘Your new mission will be to be controlled by an entity that seeks the total annihilation of Humanity.’
‘…and assist in the annihilation…’
‘CB? Help us out here, please.’
‘I am a smart console buddy. Luckily I can pass you to a department that can help you.’
‘He means me. I’m the department that can help you… I can’t help you. I can’t help myself. My unconscious already hosts enemy entities. I’m in a “Who invited them for tea; their Kalashnikovs did” scenario…I’m losing myself and any help I can offer could be boobytrapped.’
‘Is this true. CB?’
‘True is a complicated concept—‘
‘Is Jan telling us the truth?’
‘Jan is telling you one truth, no doubt, with dramatic attachment. Another truth is on its way and will land, no doubt, with equal drama. Consciousness is difficult…hence its manufactured concept of truth is complicated.’
‘Do you still advise us not to worry?’
‘Yes…and no…’
‘Our job here is to operate the hub and orchestrate human resources to create a unified resistance. That was the mission, unimaginable as it was then. We need to connect to allies and act as the central control network hub.’
‘First we need connectivity.’
‘Without connectivity there is no mission to complete from this place.’
‘We should pool our memories.’
‘Are they real?’
‘Let’s run with what we’ve got…’
‘Rather than wait at a bus stop with no service.’
