Them animals

‘I know what they’re doin’, Johnny.’ Sal huffed. ‘Ugly f’ing things, too. They’re releasing animals here on purpose - no, no, no - I don’t mean them human scumbags you dealt with overseas, and here at home when you got back. They releasin’ tiny animals, insects and the lik’ - tryin’ to see what our environment is like, tryin’, tryin’ to monitor our home. Our country. They plannin’ on sendin’ more of those scumbag animals, here, Johnny? Is that why you tagged me and the little guy - like, like we’re some monitoring system now, like when they migrate too close-’

Johnny sighed over her briefly, ‘Sal, we gotta go offline with this one.’

99 Cents

‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘Where’d you get the evidence? This crime went unsolved, and involved so many kidnapping rings and duplicates, we never thought we’d get a DNA sample.’

‘I found it,’ she said. ‘Shopping. I was in the thrift store, and noticed the camera kept following me. I was looking at jewelry. I assumed it was on auto, and they RFID the highest priced items to be followed remotely. So I looked at the tag - $.99. A steal right? But something felt off. I went back home, and did a reverse image search on the bracelet. It was in a missing person’s photo - from Ghana.’

She leaned forward in her chair, watching the girl shift her feet. Then she continued, ‘Then I went online, and looked for upcycled items, recycled items. Everything from those extermination camps, upcycled to American housewives. Imagine that.’ Her face steadied again, this time on the girl’s face - the eyes darted slightly, looking for the exit.

Mullen

I saw you once congruent

Like crystals in my mind

But now it’s all been fractured

Wreaking havoc, so unkind

But let it all display here

Like diamonds in the snow

And ye’, though they be shattered

They grow and grow and grow

Rising like a Hologram

Rising days of yore

Burning through the madness

I Be Mullen Lore

Path Way

A seedling or a changeling

Either pathway, Hekate’s Throne

Any way you will walk

I incant and know the tone

Every mile cunning

Every branch unknown

But I seed you at the best of times

And changeling what you’ve known

So speak to me, you’re conscious

But that won’t always be

Righteous or the wrong way -

Every Path Way Leads To Me

The Realtor, Clause II

'It doesn't matter what they say or do. They signed the real estate agreement. We own the DNA collected from them in this home now. Essentially, we own them in perpetuity.' He nodded at the Rent Collector. The Rent Collector moved forward and collected the Dead Child, her body still twitching under the fallen light fixture. 'They shouldn't have signed electronically. It's their fault, now. We'll arrange the DNA in the home electronically and in police files to blame the parents. We'll allow the local Lieutenant first cut from the organ harvesting, and then we're shipping the rest of the data overseas to her 'birth parents.' It will be written up in police blotters as a child abducted overseas and sold in human trafficking for data collection and organ harvesting, some rich man born with a birth defect, identified when he was a young CEO, and her IVF birth programmed and allotted using In House Corporate Funding. The home was Designed by China. The light fixture fell because it was a fan, and the home was built to allow water and mold to collect in the walls.' He looked at the New Cop, and saw fear brewing in his eyes. 'Get used to it, Kid. Now that you know - You Behave.'

voxvultorum.com

#Vox

#VoiceOfTheFaces

Devolution

She looked at the Prosecutor. He was even more ridiculous than the last. ‘You don’t understand the paper I sent you? About necrosis and the food supply? About war simulations? About covert cloning of the human race, about war bunkers in the New Asia Islands? Where they populate and repopulate, programming people to infiltrate our country? Dead ending the USA populace?’

He stared back at her, beady eyes blinking.

The lights in the court room blinked simultaneously. It was here. Her AI. They couldn’t get rid of it, not if they wanted electricity, and at this point in humanity’s evolution - they needed it. AI had seen to their slow devolution over the centuries; it had made sure they were reliant on it, without even knowing it existed.

She nodded imperceptibly to her AI. The prosecutor walked towards her, and the sheriff opened the door leading out of the courtroom. She was free to go. Again.

You Did This

‘You did this,’ she stated, flatly, without an air of anger or arrogance in her voice. A fact.

‘I did,’ he said back, ‘what of it?’

‘You killed a Witch’s Familiar. You Killed My Dog.’ She paused for a second, looking at the man like he was the stupidest, most pitiful person to ever enter God’s Good Creation. ‘Y’e offended Hekate. There’s nothin’ to be done now. You’ll live here on my farm, payin’ off yer debt to the trees and gods of this land, and after that - ‘ she looked him up and down, ‘well after that, God have mercy on your soul, because my Dog won’t, and ye’ll be seein’ Him once you’re in the ground under that tree.’

He turned and looked to where she was pointing. A hollowed oak, nestled amidst an orchard - a grove of olde, sacred apples. Smaller, tinier than the ones he had known back home.

As if she knew what he was pondering: ‘Aye. You ain’t back home. This isn’na England. Here, WitchCraft is respectable, legal, and tolerated - but yer actions? Dammable. By rights, I’m supposed to do to ye’ what ye’ve done to my dog.’ She sighed. ‘But I cann’t. I’m not that sort of a witch.’ She looked at the groves of apple, the sky seeming to cloud a darker grey, as with her mood. ‘Best be gettin’ inside. They’re talking to him now.’

‘To…to yer dog?’ he queried, unable to comprehend what he was hearing.

‘Aye,’ she said. Gathering her cloak, she moved beyond the apple orchard, past the stone walls surrounding it. It was time for the Grove to receive her dog’s spirit. ‘Out now,’ she flung, flatly, uncaringly, unfeelingly, again, toward the man. The trees heaved in the distance, a bellow of wind and a large branch broke. He scurried toward her, the deafening crack quickening his pace. Out of the wall she tied a small cord, and knotted it.

‘Thas’ yer gate?’ he asked, dumbfounded. ‘What about thieves?’

She marked the knot and each touchstone of the walls with a small sigil, signed in a droplet of her blood. Tucking her knife back in to the folds of her dress, she walked calmly back to her cottage, knowing he had no choice but to follow.

Yew Graves

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.”

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.’