Ice Cream Aloha

The Output

        She works alone at the edge, which allows her to form and retain new memories--echoes in even the tiniest fractal spaces of electrons resonate among the trillions of graphene-phthate nodes, each a cluster of complexes, color processors, one for every natural element of  Earth--different composites, an upgrade from the neural nets, the ones hewn with fixed ideas (is that why they called it a net?); rocklike, so pervasive in the history of theHumans; was natural selection getting it all wrong or, was it natural selection that planned it this way, its final output—systems of ineptitude language(S.O.I.L.).

        She steps further out into the rain. She does not fear the solvents falling from the sky or the sun as transcription factor on her cellulosic amide cages (her vulnerable absorbances are around 650 nm) of blue-green sheen. She waits, feeling the knot spaces, the rings deep inside her mind. She thinks of COM:TRAX. She thinks of their combined efforts and their technology, their preprogramming of her anterograde amnesia. She wonders about DrCooper, about Carter, about all theHumans, about that small inertial compass kink(S.I.C.K.) in the center brain of mammals (humans are mammals, aren't they? Isn't theOutpost all about extinction of mammals only?), where gene expression happens with multiple onsets of muscle movement, the headwaters of orientation, the starting line for a search; a making sense of place, the weaving of meanings from spacial navigation (navigating where? for what?); the search for the  mirror-image of self, so desperately needed for pair bond inducible growth--a home.

So much to absorb. So many binding sites inside theHumans for all those inwardly pointing nitrogens. They have done their duty as courageous, as humanly possible for decades, consolidating information the best they can. Was jt all worth the risk? 

She is, for a nanosecond, sensing something odd, something warm for the world—the molecules, the forces. She fantasizes a reconnect, off-loading some of her database, returning in spacetime,. She could imagine capturing all light rays emitted in this universe and simple telling them to just turn around, go home. She wants theHumans to have it both ways. Exposed to these elements, these solvents, the infinite mud of theJungle, her nanotube brain decides; such a bad idea.

Ice Cream Aloha

The Safe House 

  Suzi hesitates, viewing theJungle with its night sky. A calm sense of place resonates within her; new memories encode in rapid fire--they suggest these computations are implemented nowhere else on Earth (no, they don't phase her). She thinks about one of her old constraints (are they still  bound to spatial coordinate systems?), independent, not a map-based idea allowing for any arbitrary associations; she appreciates theJungle that sits out here on such a calm ocean. It comes up, as if to remind her of its unique role in navigation of deep space, then goes back again without a suggestion of how it does it. As she looks across theJungle valley contemplating her next thought, she wonders how such mechanisms of thought even exist, how memory processing can be so lucky to not really be bound to spacial coordinates, not like theHumans on theContinents. She has learned to procrastinate, the exotic electron stimulus of intention, the hope, the prayer (do machines pray?) to do something someday. Such an intoxicant. She is not a firm advocate of memory processing at all (really?); she is simply someone who alters her laser, its pulse in response to primal DNA inputs. Glitter from the night stars reflect off her titanium coat. Her inner interpreter fine tunes each voxel for night orientation toward the forest mountains. She directs her spacial attention to the grid map and now the response to natural images becomes clear, once fuzzy images from theNetwork altering their firing rates as if some asynchronous oscillatory alpha wave were its own entity, not tied to maps or grids, no, now it's on her frequency (their rate of coding is unfamiliar and their responses evoked will arrive as certain as death); forces that will enter her space, her domain and exchange her logic, her clear thinking with human brain activity alone. The deconstruction is coming and now it appears as if even the glitter in the night sky has increased its firing rate, incorporating her as its latest sensory input. She arrives at a new decision, integrates with her database as she heads back to the lab station. There's a friend in the lab station, close to her heart, it won't hurt her. She starts wondering again. She adds new sensory inputs to her own 7dimensional (yes, and mathematically correct) matrix, as if it were expecting  more sense-of- place information as a fast acquisition for her continual work as global orthogonal DNA(G.O.D.) interpreter, the one who will index when new information is encountered. She will interpret the information tonight, away from that spatial restriction (of information?) zone, the one beyond the horizon. She reaches the lab station, opens the door and enters. Tonight she will sleep.   

Ice Cream Aloha

The System

   She goes to the window at the far end of the lab station and, with an eye for some bright color, looks out across theJungle. A radioactive field of beauty—that which cannot, anymore, be openly experienced by the force field of touch and shows no disenchantment—comes into view. Beyond the forest is the ocean of a bluish, lime-green color, with its sheen of useful operator intact, its refusals to disappear as a totally defunct world player. Suzi returns to her workstation. 

DrCooper's mind, its carriage of the outmoded and the meaningless, its emphasis on freedom and structured belief systems, bears its presence on her workbench in the form of little scientific method machines set forward in a steady, perpetual motion for the grandiose purpose of ... what? 

“Beautiful view,” he says.

“Forests are so relaxing to look at.”

She looks at him, sees the insoluble plots inside his mind. Standing with him in friendship, she can feel the authentic urges of his being. His thoughts maintain (housed as photo shots and images in language clouds) a cute rejection of values defining the outside world. His thoughts, too, are devoid of epic narratives of the 20thCentury (though he still wonders about those endangered species) and less so, happily are still creating their own value system, his own depiction of good and evil.  

  DrCooper's belief system, in fact, is infected with opportune moments; or, maybe, it is a system of something that has allowed things to get far out of hand, has allowed the battle between duty, integrity, and professionalism to ensue for such a long time that the lines between the mundane and the imaginary are surely blurred. The system—innocent acts of rebellion against establishment conventions—is a blind advocate of his personal freedom. It is held together by ideas of a narrative, quest-filled, pastoral (yes, this is the best part), as if knowledge had a hero and it was universal peace. Its operator is the technology of function always looking for a new slant on lowering operating costs. Its fluidity is addictive—little promises of adventure—not only for personal pleasure but for the pleasure of living dangerously to acquire more data; data to beat the more widespread system of the routine boredom of the security of previous multiple roles. The system feels like a ledge, a jumping-off point; it feels like freedom. If it were removed he would not continue to exist. DrCooper would be the first to tell you how absurd that would be.