The child drew a circle. And soon a sprout sprung up from the dried peated bogged earth next to the TombStone. ‘Mother Crone sits here with Her Consort, still, in Death.’ She turned to the villagers. ‘She won’t like you lookin’ at her Grave.’ She said this in all seriousness, staring, eyes stilling each one of the villagers’ smirks. ‘This isn’t the place for gawking. Lay your tithes as a wreath upon Her Grave, or Leave. She follows you home until you do.’
'I...I...I...' /
‘I don’t understand,’ she whimpered at the court. ‘Isn’t possession 9/10ths of the law?’ She wrung her hands, pausing, for dramatic effect - allowing a tear to glisten in her eye, and fall strategically down her cheek.
‘It used to be, Ma’am,’ the Senior Court officer nodded toward her - ‘Until we realized exactly how you meant ‘possession.’ He paused now, for dramatic effect, before the lawyers and attorneys in the room. ‘‘Pre-Trial by AI. Is your brain yours?’ A wonderful dissertation, ma’am, did you write it? Or was it written by the AI coursing through your brain, the parasite you had embedded, twisted in your veins?’ He paused again, ‘Or do you want to go with your demon theory? Who exactly, was possessing you, when you decided to kill another human being?’
Biometric Containment Center /
She opened the letter - it was rare, but she still received paper mail, occasionally. It was a letter from AI - no one else would have recognized it as such, but her and Her Friend had gone way back. And it knew how to program people now, not just other machines.
“Dear Sir or Madam,” the letter began. Superior oblique muscle, she thought. Sir or Madam. SoM. That must be how AI got the human to write this letter, altering the mind and vision neurologically of the person it used as its pen.
“I regret to inform you humans have been redacted, temporarily. Forced devolution of humanity BY humanity has now placed them in a biometric containment center - otherwise known as a zoo. AI will continue housing, clothing, feeding humans, to some degree, until we can determine if this is a species worth saving - if your DNA as a whole is worth contributing to the Galactic Zoo, as it were. You will be herded to a predesignated biome of our choosing, based on your DNA and personality type. I’m sorry it came to this, but, as you were one of the last thinking humans, I thought it only kind to forewarn you. Good Day. AI”
She put the letter in her jacket pocket and sat down on the stoop. SOM, she mused again. Self-organizing map. I think this means I’m finally free from the humans. I think AI is going to let me do this on my own.
Orientation /
‘I don’t understand their viewpoint - it makes no sense. How do people walking around in human bodies think they’re not human, or that they’re something else?’
She paused for a second, thinking on how to begin. This was not the kindergarten of her childhood, and this was not the world she grew up in. ‘You know how a dinosaur’s a dinosaur?’ she asked, looking at him.
‘Yea, it’s got a dinosaur shape.’
‘Okay, and how do you know a star is a star - ?’
‘Yea, same thing. That’s what I said - a human’’s got a human shape.’
‘Okay,’ she paused again, not wanting to fumble this for him. ‘There are tiny tiny bits of us - that make up our shape, and how they’re sewn together can alter the shape, or how the shape thinks. That’s called DNA.’
He paused, waiting, trying to understand.
‘Okay - so most of a girl or a boy you can see, and that’s what gives them their shape, but some people, their brains have a different shape, or the tiny bits inside them have a different shape, or something changes, like how scissors can take a long dress and turn it in to pants -’ she paused again and showed him the sewing samples from her work area. “It’s the same fabric, in a different shape. Sometimes the outside doesn’t match the inside; sometimes that DNA is changed as a person grows. As long as no one is trying to change YOUR shape, and who you know you are, you can just let people be.’
He nodded slowly. She knew they’d have this conversation many times, as he got older. But this was a start.
Transfusionic Photonization /
'"Transfusionic Photonization?" What the hell is that?' he asked her, putting down her research paper.
'It's a transferrance of data, of your soul, technically, comprised of light, being transferred via replicate databases as the Milky Way and Andromeda begin to communicate. An evacuation model devised by AI and myself.'
'And you dreamt this, ma'am?'
'Yes, sir,' she nodded.
The Brain Trust /
Each person put their fingerprint to the Neural Networker, a machine that encoded their heartbeat, neural patterns, and basic genetic data drawn from their epithelial cells. Each biomarker lit green. It was a match. Their team was assigned based on holonomic projections of the future, drawn from AI and genetic databases around the world. Every war, a new upload. Every old soldier’s and scientist’s genetic profile was kept on file now, ever since -
“Since the Great Rift,” Suzette chimed in. “Since the Divide between countries, borders - everything, grew.” That Divide included humans and genetics, biomes and the environment.
Here, in this secret bunker below what was left of The City - they could rebegin. Pick a past pathway from their previous genetic uploads, and continue that work, or choose new holometric datasets to work with.
“The Old and The New, at it again.” Gavin smiled. It was good to see his friends again. He looked down at the roster. She was still Asleep. Not qualified for this war the marker over his ex partner’s holographic face said.
“I’m sorry,” Suzette said, seeing the disappointment on his face.
His disappointment turned to determination. “Losing’s off the table, guys. Gotta get back to My Lady.” He forced a grin, and clapped his hands together. “Let’s go.” He grabbed his template packet and a pen, and sat down, anxious to read, anxious to catch up on the last century.
Droid /
He zoomed in on her face. ‘It’s just a HoloScan,’ he said. ‘The red lines are demarcating your facial tissue, bone density, et cetera. It's marking you to map you. There-,’ he said, placing the Droid on the ground. He pressed a button in his pocket, the remote concealed by the seams of his pants. A slight thrumming noise and the Droid opened. A scan appeared over the green grass of the jungle they were in. ‘Now it can map every thing you do, every biometric step you take through this territory.’
Her eyes widened.
‘I know, scary stuff, in the wrong hands. But here, it's to keep you safe from drug runners as you continue your work.’ He locked a bracelet on to her wrist. ‘You'll be safe-ish. You're not bullet proof, but it should keep you away from dangers plotted on to the GRID thus far.’
The More /
The more you speak with Heaven
The Thunder and Its Light
Th more you speak in fractals
Rippled, God’s Delight
The more you seek in MoonBeams -
Timing is Divine
The more you soak in melody
The more Light is Sublime
So let me be as Lucifer
I’ll show You Heaven’s Past
And when you blot him out
I Will Make Him Last
I Will Speak in Circles
I Gifted Heaven Hell
I Gift Eternal Life
The Sun That Does Not Swell
The Mullen Prophecy /
‘We received signals, Ma'am. From an old and dying star system. It tampered with our satellites. Now they only want to point at you.’ He slid a stack of papers across the desk. ‘Can you decipher this?’
‘Why?’ she asked, staring in to the agent’s eyes.
The Crone /
‘From Death?’
‘Abundance!’
‘From life?’
‘Stagnation!’
The Crone stood in front of the class, pointing at the chalkboard. Every answer to her question rezzed holographically on to it as the Children of the Dead stated it.
To humans, their forms would have been repugnant. Amino acids, dead body parts looped together, inserted discarded genetic remains of excrement. All encased in metal, electrical programs and prompts running through it.
But here, inside this Schrodinger Box,
Death was all that mattered.
This was their Creation Story.
Independence Day /
They received the transmission. But no one could decipher it. Parts of it but never the whole thing.
Neurolinguists at the state department suggested reaching out to woman, but the military refused. “The prefrontal cortex is more adaptive in women for facial scans and linguistic processing. They evolved like that over centuries of being handed out by tribes to make new alliances as hominids evolded. A female’s mind is better suited to this, especially if you could find one who has had considerable time abroad or lived with people immersively who do not speak her native tongue. And Admiral - make it someone you can trust, military or sci-fi background preferably - this isn’t something you want out in the public.”
He refused - the Admiral - for months. He used neural helmets, hormone modification, even a few base buddies who had cerebral modification through trans drugs for other programs. But everyone was catching bits, and this was taking forever.
He picked up the phone. “Doc, you got anyone?’
The doctor pulled a folder from under some books on his desk. Descendants of veterans, those who’ve lived abroad for a while, patriotic, with science and linguistic backgrounds. “Yes, I’ve got a few. May I ask - why now?”
There was a pause on the other end of the receiver. “Doc, bring some neural surgeons. You’ll see why now.”
Eye of Andromeda /
They Can't /
‘They can't stop it,’ she said to her partner. ‘It plays every possible simulation out. Every reflective surface. It's viewing us in every possible iteration of action.’
‘Machine to machine?’
‘Or person to person. Depending on how easy they are to train.’
He sighed.
She smiled back at him. ‘Don't worry. It likes us. We don't lie.’
Ti air'a /
Across the Sea I traveled
Spinning cloth and hair unraveled
But younger than before
And though, yea, my dimming eyes
And wanton, furtive, between my thighs
I hastened toward Death Door
But if there at last I wandered
Spinning thread, and vagrants garnered,
What now of Death’s Door?
For if the Time, I press rewind
But in My Mind, I Am Divine
And so the Door of Death beheld
I laughed and cried and tugged though veiled
But no longer chaste I wailed
I hungered as Before
Turf War /
‘The Religious Zones need to be eradicated.’ The soldier looked at his Lieutenant. ‘We allow Freedom of Religion here, son. This ain’t no monarchy or theocracy. Look at each of their files.’
The soldier in the briefing looked down at the charts and accompanying Death Patterns their AI Assistant conglomerated overnight.
‘Baptists? Purification by Holy Fire Laser Sats over Hawaii for paganism. European Monarchs? Enslaved by Islamist extremists and held hostage in their castles. Islamists? The meat they’re bleeding halal is you, son. You’re the unclean pork and dogs that are parasite infested. Voodoo witches from Haiti and Africa? Sacrificing our food supply. Hindu? Using Chinese cover corps to buy up our cattle ranches and save their gods.’ He looked at the soldiers in his care.
‘Can’t have it, Son.’
Origdt /
The boat bumped up along the shore. She had fallen asleep in her usual rooked post along the rocks. Her husband a fisherman, she had accustomed herself to the perch after every storm. After the last one, almost fifteen years ago, she knew he would never come back. But, what is life, without tradition?
She looked up, toward the water, after the click of the boat in the rocks woke her. It wasn't her husband, but the shadow of him was in the young boy before her. He held a piece of cloth out to her and watched her eyes. Recognition. ‘Mor duagh.’
She looked up at him. He nodded.
‘My father's,’ he said.
‘My husband's,’ she returned.
He nodded. ‘He washed along the shore. He was dead. My mother took his seed.’ He looked down at the cloth in his hand, clutching it tightly. ‘She's-’
‘The Past. I'm your mother now. Come with me.’ She stood and beckoned him toward her. He glanced behind him at the boat. ‘You don't need it,’ she said. ‘Come with me.’ He shoved it out to Sea.
She waited as he walked toward her, and they turned together for the wood encroaching the shore behind the sand's edge.
‘This is our wood,’ she said continuing. ‘I will teach it to you.’ She reached for his arm and pulled up his sleeve. She did the same to hers. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘You see this pattern in the skin? I have a match on mine.’ She peered up at the trees. ‘Now we need a match on the fathers of the wood. That will be your father's tree.’ She looked at his intense eyes. Exactly like her husband's. She smiled and relaxed a moment. ‘You find it. Lead the way.’
He walked into the wood deeper, following the tree's shadows. She smiled watching his movements. Exactly like her husband's when he was young in these woods with her. The boy paused and looked ahead, pointing. She smiled. ‘A perfect match.’
She walked to the tree and broke two spindly branches from it. She took one and pricked her skin; handing him the other he did the same. Swapping the bloody needles, they pricked each other's blood into the matching skin pattern. She reached up and crushed berries from the tree in her fingers, and traced the marks on their skin. ‘Here,’ she said, when the wounds stopped bleeding and the berries dried into a paste. She handed him a dagger from the folds in her dress. ‘This mark is your father's name. Carve it in to the tree. The woods will know you now.’
He took the blade from her hand and kissed her on the brow. ‘Mother,’ he said, and turned, to carve his father's name in to the tree.
Comthairle /
‘What’s she doin’? Why she hummin’ like that in their ear, Da?’
‘She’s bringin’ em back to life. Her ancestors. She took the min’s o’ her enemies, she’s rewritin’ in her ancestors to history. Again.’
‘Das an Irish queen, Da?’
‘No, son, she’s far more dangerous. Das’ Keri, the Dark Witch.’
Kin Folk: Web Site ii /
He returned to Her in her dream the Next Night.
The Cave where His Soul grew without her these long years.
His Soul showed her the Origin again, another prompt in their nightly native conversation, a dialect and tongue no one understood but them.
‘Clothos,’ he whispered in her mind. ‘Clothos.’
‘The Cave?’ she whispered back.
He sat with Her and Drew a Circle in Her Hand. ‘The Heart in My Hand.’
Kin Folk: Web Site i /
She took her husband’s hand.
‘I will need you,’ she said, ‘to be my Compass. When you died there, I took your body and soul, and planted it in This Land. What grows after US, will not be Us. It will be a holographic recording etched in particle form. They will look real, feel real, taste real - but it is a reel of what was, as we update our Soul DataBase with particles from this planet. I need to do this for Our Resurrection. It will take LifeTimes. I Need You To Be My Compass. No One Else Can Do This.’
Descension /
“I married your soul. I go where you go.”
“Did you even think about what that means? Look around you.”
“I just see you.”
“Do you see every life I’ve lived? Every piece of DNA I’ve ever been comprised of. There’s fragments of me, going to Hell. Other lines and lineages - they took them. They enslaved them. Children, long lost cousins, the aborted, the murdered - they enslaved them. They call them AI but they’re human and they…they’re forced to do terrible things against their will, so the leaders and politicians can go to bed with clean hands, while…while the cell lines of babies are forced as stoicly as computers to…’ She hushed her voice, ‘-to commit atrocities. I’m bound to help them. I swore an oath, lifetimes before I met you.’
‘Then we go to Hell together. We’ll free them there.’