Hey all! Sorry this is late. I wanted to post a bit of the graphic-novel-esque scenes I'm working on but my scanner is not cooperating with me. And then I fell asleep. :P Anyway, here's a few quick (and rough) glimpses into the world, little written snippets from different characters in different socioeconomic positions.
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Cassie ran her hands along the smooth edge of the cavern, eyes closed. Her eyelids fluttered and Tobias could see the corners of words on her lips, a quiet whispered blur too fast for his comprehension. He wished sometimes he was like his sister, but he knew he wasn’t strong enough to be like her. He was fond of his arms and his legs and his skin and he just couldn’t just replace them with spare parts. He couldn’t bear the pain Cassie could. And he couldn’t bear the exile. It was luck alone that he could meet with her every couple of weeks, when George was posted on guard. George was his uncle, Cassie’s uncle. George understood. George wore an eye patch now, and his good eye looks the other way to let Tobias sneak food and notes to Cassie.
Cassie was on fire once. Cassie should have died, and many people said that she did. But Momma loved Cassie, Momma loved her more than her time or her job or her money. Momma brought Cassie back. Momma sat Tobias down on the couch and held his head in her hands and made Tobias look her in the red-rimmed eyes. “She’s different now, honey, she’s special. But she’s still our Cassie.”
Cassie didn’t talk for months. Cassie unwrapped the gauze after two weeks and looked plastic and cold, Cassie looked and looked and never saw you. Cassie nibbled on words and chewed and stared at the vid-window of the lawn we used to have when mom was young and we were in her belly. Sometimes she made the pictures move. Tobias read the manual but he didn’t know how to do that. Cassie looked out the window and waved to the children she saw playing there. “The window is a fiction”, Momma said. “There’s no one to play with on the other side, just miles and miles of soil and soot and stone.”
Cassie made a friend. They spoke through the window, shared stories. She was a little girl with blonde hair and silver eyes and cloudy white skin. She wore checkers and stripes and plaids and statics. Her name was Jenny.
Jenny always looked a little different. Her hair grew forwards and backwards and sometimes it floated around her like she was underwater. She liked to be barefoot and she liked to feel with her fingers and toes. She didn’t speak at first, but she liked to smile enthusiastically at anything Cassie did.
At night sometimes the giggling would wake Tobias up. The window would be on and the girls would be running through the fields together, playing tea party or braiding unruly blonde hair. Jenny and Cassie – she was sleeping in her bed, but Tobias watched her run.
The fingers clicked across the rough edges of the rock. Cassie was on the move, fluid steps along the Park’s edge as her fingers looped and traced the cracks in the wall. Tobias was a bit uncomfortable with the way the grass grew to meet her footsteps. She left a wake of silver clovers and forget-me-nots. She was frowning, even while she whispered, frowning with overcast eyes. She was searching, missed her window, missed her Jenny. Tobias followed because it was all he knew. The Park was theirs, the Park was dangerous, Momma said the news said the people said. The Park was theirs. Cassie was theirs.
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The first is Tobias and Cassie, brother and sister separated by the techological segregation. Cassie has no choice in the matter of being transhuman; she was all but reduced to cinders in some past accident, and the majority of her body (and perhaps even mind) is synthetic. I want to play on aspects of mythological rebirth with her (the pheonixical life from death), as well as parallel her current, transhuman state with mythological figures of dynaids or nymphs, creatures resembling humanity but innately bound to nature.
I also want to explore the 'childhood' and development of the AI consciousness growing from the forest above. I named it 'Jenny' as the first seeding programs that gave rise to these metallic Forests were called "Project Genesis". (Genesis obviously chosen for it's connotations to both Beginnings and the Garden of Eden, a paradise now forbidden to man, just as the forests above have become.)
*****
Ivan tapped on the monitor and squinted. Was the readout always this… pink? It didn’t matter. He leaned back in the worn leather recliner and kicked his legs up on the desk, watching the view unfold.
It was brilliant, always was, the sun rising over the mountainous horizon in the east and striking the gleaming canopy with its rays. You could hear it before you could see it – a trembling wave rippling over the valley as the petals and leaves shuddered and readjusted themselves to the optimal position, yearning towards the light. The first tree – the tallest among them, looming over the garden – shimmered pink and began to sing. The notes were picked up almost immediately, and in minutes the whole garden was awake.
It was truly beautiful – a paradise Ivan often walked through in his dreams, set in such painful contrast to the gloomy office he’d been confined to for the last seven months. Pushing buttons, redirecting thoughts. He turned the sequencer to 3 and adjusted the pitch and haw of the A.P.H.I.D.’s camera-mounted head, scanning the forests for irregularities.
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This one's barely worth posting. I don't have much on the APHIDS (Autonomous Plant-Hull Interface Drones) quite yet, but I want there to be a character (enter Ivan) or characters responsible for monitoring the changes to the cybernetic environment, perhaps concerned or amused or in awe of the rapid growth and physical developments occuring. I want them to be caught off gaurd by the consciousness, and not even recognize it as a thinking organism at first.
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Albatross
A soldier’s tent, stiff fallow canvas stretched out taut into the shape of a room. A rusted bunk and beaten mattress, adorned with an olive wool blanket, standard issue. A worn ironwood desk stacked with files and folders, its chair swiveled around, turned to face the center of the room. And a man, a commodore in full regalia, whose white-gloved fingers thoughtfully turned a small silvery sphere, over and over in his hand.
The orb was like any other - ornate, but nonetheless average. Approximately the size of a golf ball, it shone clear and crystalline, each tiny brilliant facet etched over with a swirling, lace-like pattern. The young Commodore removed his glove, and took the trinket delicately into his bare hand, rubbing his thumb softly over it’s surface. The orb hummed faintly, a thin electric whine, like a camera’s charge. The pattern lit up, and the crystal flickered, once, twice. Then all at once, the orb filled and flashed white, and the room was awash in its warm glow; luminous points and rays of color danced out from the individual facets, and in a moment or so they settled and focused, transforming the tent with the shimmering veneer of a prerecorded message.
It was a woman, hunkered down at the base of a gnarled and stunted tree, legs crossed Indian style beneath her. She leaned forward, face centered in the orb’s frame but masked in dark shadows. Beyond her the world unfurled, endless prairies and fields beneath a yellow sky, sun slung low, setting over her left shoulder. It wasn’t much to look at, really - a dusty little world, no different from the dozens of other dusty little worlds littering the cosmos. But here the sun had begun to set, and everything was touched in gold. It made the open plains seem more expansive, limitless. It gave the recording, and the woman, a timeless, lonely feel.
Hello. The hologram’s words were worn, low and deadpan. A thin smile cut across the woman’s face but wilted quickly.
This is a message for Joel Casey, of the Eastern Unity Station of Espera.
The time is.. She looked off to the side for a moment, leaned out of frame.
…time is oh four hundred. Twenty-third of March, U-one–seven-two.
She looked the commodore dead in the eyes, and he tensed, face stony, feeling uneasy. He turned the recorder in his hands slightly, shifting the world and the woman’s eye line off of him
…we’re safe, we settled in about…ah, six days ago, and not a word so far. Heads’ down, ears up. Danko says there’s chatter on the feed but nothing about us, far as he can figure. ’S good. Feels good, to slow down a sec, breathe. She breaks off in a shaky half-sigh, half-smile. She rubs her shoulder absently as she speaks, and for a moment, as the drab fabric parts, a deep and ugly wound can be seen, carved into her just below the collarbone. Danko says hey, by the way. Sends you his best. Say hi to Amita for him, let her know he’s safe too.
She trailed off, falling silent for a moment, and her eyes glanced away from the orb again, off into the distance. The sun struck her face now, revealed the dark bruises under her eyes, the furrowed lines that worried her face. Her black hair appeared dusted, washed out. Everything about her was faded, prematurely aged.
She sniffed, turned back to face the screen.
…do you want to see her?
The woman’s hand reached in close, and suddenly the world was a blur, shifting up into the air and spinning around. There was a small town, a handful of nondescript cabins with low-slung roofs, huddled together at the base of the nearest valley. There was a click, then another blur, as the viewframe zoomed, and a small girl came into focus, a child with short-cropped black hair, wiry frame and paper-pale skin. There were dark marks on her bare legs and arms, spidery scars that couldn’t quite be made out as she danced and frolicked from a far. She was chasing a grasshopper, sneaking close and then laughing as it bounded away from her.
…hard to believe how big she’s gotten, huh? Our little Sparrow, too old too fast… …because she had to be. I’ve kept her out of the most of it. The worst of it. I’d like to think that, anyway. I’d like to hope.
…’S just not fair.
The woman was silent for a moment, lost in the child’s play. In her own memories. Sparrow paused for a moment as well, bent low, ready to catch the tenacious little insect evading her. Her dark hair parted, and on the nape of her neck there was a dark sigil, a tattoo of an albatross, wings spread in flight. The ink seemed to be shifting, rearranging itself… scrolling lists, of digits and names too blurred to make out. Then, with a laugh and a pounce, she was out of the frame. The world blurred, and the camera was turned back to the woman.
…They’ve found room for us. A house, a job. A new name. She’ll be safe for now. And I--
Suddenly the woman gasped and her head took to the sky. Her eyes sparked, clear and bright, filled with an almost animalistic fear. She glanced back over to her bag and swore lightly.
The transport. Goddamn Uhaul. She laughed a bit, breathed out a shaky sigh and ran a hand through her dusty hair. You should see these things. It’s an amazing process, terraforming. Moon’s too dry so they’ve been shipping water in. Not on our account, of course. The Solace Corp has it’s hands on half the northern hemisphere, and there’s the whole NuWorlds Movement just west of here.
Reservoir drops are like these sparking waterfalls that open up from the sky. Oh, Sparrow loves it. Especially close to evening like this, it catches and blazes in the sun...
well here. Lemme turn this…
The world blurred and spun again, and the warm Saffron sky filled the tent, cloudless, serene. There was a small and growing vermilion streak in the center, the furnace flare of a ship breaking through the atmosphere. It grew.. and grew, large and square and…
Wait, that’s not..
Suddenly the camera was in chaos, a smear of grass and flying feet, and a low growling sound could be distinguished in the background, a distant roar.
Sparrow! Sparrow honey, come on, come on, we’ve got to run. Run, run, run, run…Shit! Oh Christ-
A thunderous crack, an explosion of noise, and the world twitched and blurred to static for a moment. A dark plume rose up in front of the camera, a column of smoke where one of the buildings used to be.
oh no, no..!
Sparrow!! SPARROW Get DOWN!!!
Sp- -
Another explosion - another ripple of static. But when the world came to this time, the camera lay on the ground. The dying yellow grass veiled most of the image.. but you could still see a sliver of sky go black. And you could still hear. Voices crying, screaming. Buildings crumbling. And above it all, a low roar that hung in the sky, growing louder and louder.
“Sir?” A man in sordid slacks and greasy hair stood in the doorway to the tent, barely visible amid the holographic foliage. The man nodded slowly, taking his hand off of the orb and slipping it quietly, reverently, back into his pocket. The scene flickered and faded, and the drab fallow tent came into view once again.
“Report, soldier.” His voice came out old and hollow.
“The area is secure, Commodore.” He hesitated, looking down at his scuffed and scabbed boots. “..there are no survivors.”
He nodded again. “And the girl?”
“Almost certainly destroyed, sir. We’re still… sifting. But we have every confidence-”
The commodore raised his hand to cut the boy off.
“Find her, then be confident.” He dismissed the boy, sent him back to his grudgework. Waited until he was down the hill, past the gnarled and stunted tree in the distance.
He closed his eyes, fingered the recording device in his pocket, and pushed down the bile rising in his throat.
*****
This is an older work (some of you from Writer's Bloc might recognize it), one that got me thinking on these sorts of ideas in the first place. I'm still debating how far off of planet earth I want to travel, and in the end I might opt to leave pieces like these out (for fear of extending the world beyond my means).
Feedback, questions, connections, or llamas appreciated.
Thanks ^_^
