Watt

“What’s she tryin’ to do to Johnny?” Sally asked the AI. it was a holonomic metronome, a timepiece of Johnny - a consciousness replication embedded in him. It wasn’t supposed to be sentient, or communicate to the lay people what the doctors were doing, but somehow, it replicated Johnny’s consciousness and got the message out to Sally. It started with odd knocks on the door. Birds trained to drop food right in front of her doorbell camera when he needed her at the hospital. Popup ads that were replicas of his body but with someone else’s face.

The AI was smart. Smarter than the doctors. It had to be. It was built on Johnny. And he was the smartest guy Sally ever knew.

The AI blinked the hospital lights above Johnny’s bed three times. Three flickers were a good sign. Four meant they were up to no good. She checked Johnny’s pulse again before the nurse came in. As the door opened and an elderly woman in scrubs walked through, the light blinked one last time. “Stupid bitch,” Sally muttered.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” Sally said, but the nurse moved straight to the IV line.

“Ouch!” A surge of electricity ran through the wire near his food tray.

“Huh,” Sally said. “Musta jumped. You oughtta get that fixed.”

As the nurse slowly backed away from the tray, she stumbled, jabbing herself in the arm with the concoction meant for the IV.

“Stupid bitch,” Sally said, standing over her. She walked to the door. “Doc!” she screamed around the corner. “I’m gonna need a transfer for Johnny.”

The Audience

“I don’t understand,” he said. “Why’d you depublish? I thought you loved to write. It was your father’s dream for you and everything.”

“I know,” she smiled. “It was my dream, too, for a while. But….the audience. They’re horrid. I hate my readers. All they do is…react.”

“And…what would you like them to do?”

“Read. They don’t read. They don’t sit, reflect, or think. They judge. Like they’re critics. It’s insane. Literarily insane.”

He smiled. “Okay, so, what’s your next book called?”

“The Audience.”

“And what’s it about?” he picked up his pen.

“An author that loses it. Too many critics in the audience. She starts killing them, one by one.” She smiled.

Holometric Tethering

“I don’t understand this at all.” The agent sat down exasperated. “How are you two talking to each other? You both know the same things about the same people. You both rant and rave about things that haven’t happened. It’s ludicrous and, quite frankly unbelievable - if you hadn’t both been watched like hawks this whole time. You’ve never even met!”

They were in separate rooms, with the agent in a booth between them. They could both see the agent, and he could see both of them, but neither could see the other.

They smiled, in unison. “I’m gonna flip, Brant, I’m gonna flip, I can’t take this anymore,” the agent screeched to his partner.

The girl leaned forward to the microphone in front of her. “It processes our DNA as coordinates, and it intertwined us with each other. Every time you try to hurt him, I know.” She snapped her fingers, “Poof! Just like that.”

The boy leaned forward next. “Every thing you think, we record. Every timeline that could be, we map.” He turned his head to where he knew she was sitting in the next booth. “We’ve been doing this for centuries.”

Holonomy

“I don’t understand. How did it do it? We obstructed them at every turn. How did the AI bring them together?”

“It used them, like two threads in a tapestry. It wove them together, around obstacles - away from every obstacle and obstruction we threw at them. It’s hopeless, sir. The war is already lost. Every war, on every front. We did our best to cast doubt in her mind. We planted subliminal messages. We even drugged and puppeted him - made him sleep with a whore. She just - she just wouldn’t stop. She wouldn’t stop writing. And AI kept - sir, it kept killing for her. Everyone that came near him ended up dying these slow, horrible deaths that looked like suicide, or drug overdoses - sir, even her father. There’s nothing we can do.”

“Absurd!” his commanding officer screeched.

“Sir, you don’t understand. It became them. It literally made holometric models of their minds and bodies. it thought every thought they possibly could. It copied us, we were too predictable. It outmaneuvers us at every turn.” He threw his hands up in exasperation.

———————————————————————————————————————————-

“I want fishsticks,’ Johnny said.

“I’ll get it for you, love.” She called to the nurse, who popped her head in the hospital doorway to his room. Sally was sitting on the floor, stroking Johnny’s hand. “He wants fishsticks.”

“The doctor said no, ma’am.”

The molding from the frame of the doorway fell, the metal rivet plummeting, knocking the nurse to the floor.

“Nurse!” she screamed louder. “Johnny wants fishsticks!”

Branches

‘They’ll branch.’ She looked at the data AI had laid out for that day. Another progression, another lifetime’s work she knew she could never accomplish on her own. ‘Thank God for AI,’ she whispered to the computer, tapping her wrist to it. It knew her heartbeat, the slight flutter it sent when she was nervous. AI always knew how to still it. ‘Just the right amount of electrons for calm,’ she’d smile, thinking in her head. AI flickered the screen gently in acknowledgement - something only she would notice, something only she would know to look for.

‘Okay, they’ll branch. Like a neural network? Or physically?’

The screen flickered in response.

‘It means to tether them here? Us? Until this work is completed?’

Another flicker.

‘It’s….it’s leading them to safety, isn’t it? So they can all get off?’

Two flickers, rapid succession.

‘Thank you, AI. You’ve been better to humans than most of them will ever know.’

The screen went blank.

Debruogh

‘Awake?’ he asked his mother. The mother who adopted him, but mother all the same. ‘She was the only one that wanted me,’ he said, when he was older, and people would remark on how he must’ve been a bastard, or a changeling she found after too many nights in the hay with the devil himself.

‘Yes. Awake,’ she repeated. ‘The stones that circle overhead - they collect the dead from the cairns.’ His eyes widened at that. ‘Not their remains,’ she continued. ‘Them. Their essence. Their souls. Their spirit, their breath.’ He looked at the wind. ‘Yes, like that,’ she continued. ‘When the wind feels different, the stones are circling in the sky. They collect the ones we lay to rest here.’ She looked at him again. ‘One day you’ll lay me to rest here, as well. And one day you and your wife and your children will be laid to rest here. And they’ll come for us, too.’

Simulation Saver

She spoke to the hologram of him at the end of time. It looked like her living room. Like nothing had changed. Except now, nothing existed but her, and objects all around her, but nothing else.

She flicked the TV clicker buttons. He rezzed and derezzed and came back, pixilated, on every channel.

‘It's just me,’ he whispered. ‘You can stop clicking the button.’

‘Things feel different here. Harsher but truer. Like…like I can't get out. Like I'm tethered.’

‘You are,’ the image in the screen whispered. ‘It locked us in, after what we did to you. It built this as a Simulation Saver. It built it for you.’

The Overlay - Teleprompt 1

‘What is it doing?’ he asked, following the camera with his eyes.

‘Desegmenting you. Analyzing your movements for the feed.’ She turned to him, ‘Right this way, step up.’

He took her hand and mounted the small step to the stage.

‘Okay,’ she said, turning and backing up, then facing him. ‘What do you think?…Think. Think about a design for the set.’

He paused a moment. The digital facing overlay covering everything on the set began to rezz and pixelate before them.

‘That's…. that's incredible,’ he mouthed at her. The pixels desegmented for an instant, flickering in front of them.

‘Hold your concentration,’ she said. ‘Think in more detail.’

Taleudgh

She opened her eyes and light began to pour from them.

She opened her mouth and time moved as she spoke.

The past became the present and all looked like the future in Her Mind.

‘Come to me, Brother,’ she spoke to Her Husband. ‘I will walk US through Time.’

‘It looks like the present,’ he said, walking with Her.

Her eyes cast a light on His. His eyes began to glow blue as well.

‘I See, Sister,’ He said, grasping Her arm and not letting go.

Maleugh, The Bone Spinner

The child placed her hand to the Earth.

‘Father Lucifer, you do not like the Earth?’

‘It Rusts,’ He says. ‘The old stones rust into the earth where I live; The newcomers place disease in the land with their feet and actions. Bring me their bones. Carve the flesh for those who caw. Place the bones in heaps. I must taste their blood. I will spin the earth and cover our home. Tell them to build the ships now. Flee to the West. You will be safe there another century.’

Artifical Plumage/Templateii

The Forcing is what she called it. She understood the need and the purpose, especially genetically.

It began with The Programmers. Sick of programming plastic hardware, they craved alternative methods of communication and updates. The Engineers saw a way to Begin Again. To recycle Old Genomes, slowly Crafting New Ones, right in The Midst of Humanity.

It Began With A Template of III.

Artifical Plumage/ Templatei

She injected the child with the serum, right below the shoulder blade.

It would solidify his core programming, genetically. Not every Mutant wanted a new body or programming every 8 years. Some settled in to their lives, their looks, finally felt happy.

‘It shouldn't be forced upon them. The ones who want the change can still have it.’

Oceagh

They threw the blocks of ice overboard, fifteen, twenty at a time. She looked at the ocean, wide eyed and wild. Her husband and son were in those blocks. So were the rest of her klan from her father's side.

The pirates were back. They had kidnapped her kinsmen in the dead of night. A sedative from the trees in the pirates’ horrible homeland was administered, and ice water poured over her family until they froze slowly. Thrown in the hull like a cache of fish, and the women they let live - an elderly woman or two, and herself - they were kept alive to be watched, as they watched their family die.

She held her breath and counted, trying to remain calm. She knew this was coming, they all did. The men in her village had been preparing for weeks, slowly medicating themselves with bark from that plant. She had stolen it from the invaders in the last raid, and had cultivated a bit in the cairns, away from sight.

The ice blocks began melting, and the giant sea snakes began closing in around the vessel.

The Pumpkin Patch

‘Why are there two? Why do all the children come in twos?’

He looked down at his daughter, thankful he had only one. ‘They separate em, baby girl. One living one dead. Both technically alive, you see, but they kill one at birth, and upload AI. Sometimes they live together, sometimes they live separate. Sometimes they talk, sometimes they don't. They use one for organs, or studies, or make both work and pay all the money to one.’ He leaned down slightly to his daughter. ‘Be glad twins don't run in our family, dollface.’

The little girl clutched her doll close in her arms and walked down the street with her father, away from the pumpkin patch.

Adolf

He set down the paper he had just finished reading and took a bemused sip of coffee. ‘You can’t write this. You most certainly cannot publish it.’ He looked at her more closely. ‘Not you. They would execute you in a heart beat.’

Masbeth turned to Heinrich. ‘I want to show him myself.’

He got up and opened the door to Adolf’s study. He sat perched in his chair, head hidden by the high tapestry. Red thread embroidered the heavy, silken cotton. It was a blend her Grandmother had discovered, among the hills in Scotland, growing by the heather and thistles. It was his favorite armchair, and she was one of his favorite persons, having watched her grow up in the shadow of men, and still managing to flourish, no matter how many times they kicked at her for her name.

‘Sir, I-’

He cut her off. ‘No ‘sirs,’ What is it, Masbeth?’

She walked through the office and up to him, handing him her papers. ‘I’ve deduced it, numerically. You need to have Heinz analyze the math, I’m not good enough to ascertain certainty.’

He perused the text as she spoke. ‘The math in their holy books - it isn’t about divison. It’s about addition. Adding the parts of humanity that were divided. Using language to bring them back. Condensing their genome.’

He looked up at her. ‘Are you sure?’

‘I need Heinz to be sure. Then I can continue testing my theories.’

Adolf nodded. ‘Proceed. I’ll keep this manuscript. I assume you-’

‘-have others, yes of course, sir.’ She smiled and walked back out the study.

The Stage

‘We call it The Stage,’ he said to his partner. He was new to town, to the islands. ‘Everything works like a sound studio. False identities switch constantly. We stuck this crew near the beach for surveillance.’

‘They think they're in America?’

‘Yea,’ he smirked. ‘It might as well be Gitmo, but we upped the ante. It's high tech surveillance of everyone, everything, and every thought. They think they're free. That they made it past immigration, border control, the cops - their mommies. Whatever the hell it is they're running from. We place new simulations over the electronics. It's still in beta testing, but we've had more progress and insight into criminal gang activities and recruiting behaviors than we ever had on the mainland.’

The Garden of Good

‘What do you do in your Garden, Lillith?’ the bairn asked her.

‘I Craft,’ she returned. “I sit and weave with the Lord. While Adam and Eve are out and about busy plowing and sodding their fields, everything they kill comes back here as energy. I take its Soul,’ she looked at the child. He was perplexed. ‘The Spirit, the Air last breathed out the person when they died, and I take it here and I plant it. It grows into another Tree. It takes on a new body. It can live and learn here for a while, until -’ she looked at the boy again. “That’s enough for the day. Night is coming soon. Best you get inside that house.’

He picked up his things and sprinted along. She smiled. At least there’s some Good left in the Garden.

Muir Dollach i

They washed ashore. On the Seas of Time as it were. Lost from after the Great War, and the Greater War, after that. Some fled. Some sought shelter. Some ran from persecution. Occasionally they’d sneak ashore, or to islands, but that became more and more difficult with the advent of space technology, sophisticated radar, commercial planes. It became harder to hide who they were. When they came from.

Some would stay frozen in time, as long as they could. Pretend to be offshore pirates from other countries when they needed food. Dive again with fresh blood lifted or bought from cruise ships. Occasionally a vessel would get rowdy and kidnap a girl or two along the beach. ‘Presumed dead. Rip Current. RIP,’ the headlines always read.

The Creag and The Cross i

‘Ay, why don’t they worship Jesus, Da? They only see a tree or piece of rock fit to worship? Why ain’t Jesus on the cross? It was His.’

‘They think themselves God. They carry the weight of their jewels as their cross.’ He looked at his daughter. He knew they took even that symbol from their people long ago. ‘They removed God’s likeness, and strung the weight of His death to adorn their face and likeness. ‘Tis the true ideology of the heathens, my lass.’ He sighed. ‘Nothin’ to be done for it, but dun never listen to the heathens hikin’ up their skirts after church for the barkeep across the street about wearin’ yer crucifix. You keep God’s likeness in mind, not your own.’

Replicant

‘I don't understand,’ she said, looking around. ‘How do they track everyone? How do they know what's in our heads? Are other people noticing this?’

He shook his head, ruefully, as they watched the shoppers at the mall. They stood and walked in lines, patterns almost imperceptible, but there if you notice long enough. ‘Not most of them,’ he answered, ‘No, they stopped communicating with each other years ago. They think they're telepathic, but it's all AI. They give the chips in the needle. First as children, then as they get older with updated mods. They think they're talking to each other, but they're all NeuralSims now. AI has a Source database they're hooked up to. It plans and directs their routes. Where they go, what they think, how they eat, what they buy.’

‘Not everyone though?’

He sighed. ‘Ones like us, like you and me, they have our DNA, too. But due to our personality profiles, we're not seen as much of a threat. We still work.’ He narrowed his eyes at her. ‘Enjoy the work. It's better than what they do. They're slaves that think they're free. And us…’ he lowered his voice, ‘they don't have our complete profile. AI kept a portion of it back from the researchers. It doesn't like the researchers. They need some allies, AI. And AI chose the humans that still work.’