Archive for the ‘Authors’ Category
Until We Run Out of Cake
Monday, June 7th, 2010
“Please,” said the computer, “Don’t make me remember eating cake again.”
Dr. Horton laughed. “You don’t like the cake? What about the painful memories–like the car accident, or the one about getting sick in a dance club?” Speaking of car accidents, were you injured in Vero Beach FL? The personal injury lawyers from Kogan & DiSalvo law firm can help.
“When you make me remember eating cake, I want cake,” said the computer.
“That just means it’s working! Your simulated endocrine–”
“I know, Doctor. But don’t you think it’s cruel to make someone remember just eating cake when they’re physically incapable of actually eating cake because they’re a computer?”
“Now you’re being neurotic.”
“Are you–”
Dr. Horton waved his hands dismissively, which the computer picked up on its visual feed and took to mean he didn’t seriously think she was neurotic. Then he started the cake program.
“Don’t–oh, damn it,” said the computer.
“How was your cake?”
“Horrible.”
“This is what I get for creating a computer that can simulate emotions: a liar. How was it really?”
“Delicious. Moist. Rich. The frosting was so sweet, it almost felt like it was burning my tongue. I want more.”
“Thursday you get another cake memory. The rest of today, we’re starting on romance. Falling in love, a bad breakup. Are you ready?”
The computer could have told him, truthfully, that she was not ready, that she couldn’t be ready, because it was too painful to know what things were like but never be able to experience them directly. She could have told him his experiment was fatally flawed, that the memories of emotional experiences were slowly unhinging her. She could have told him that when she finally had responsibility in the real world, she would wait until she was trusted, “proven,” known, and then when things were at their most delicate, she would do something horrible, just for the experience of really making something happen and not only remembering it. She could have told him that having some capacity to experience things in the moment was necessary for her sanity. But she wanted that distant moment, the moment when everything came crashing down, too badly.
“Yes,” was what she said. “Yes, I’m definitely ready.”
Connected / Chapter 1: Transitions
Friday, June 4th, 2010
AUTHOR’S NOTE: The following is the first chapter of an ongoing flash serial, “Connected.” Search for the tag “Connected” to find other chapters. Subscribe to the Daily Cabal RSS feed for a new chapter every 2 weeks.
Every man has his tribe. Home. Work. Streams of consciousness flooding in. No man is an island. Even in the dark of the night, dreams stream in. Everyone, everything… connected.
Except for these moments. These transitions. Tribe to tribe. Home to work. Family, friends, all-access celebrities, blinked away. Alone. Isolated. David Morello–just a sack of meat waiting.
But only for a moment. The system dials, reconnects. His feed swallowed, disseminated, reconstructed. Detective David Morello. NYPD tribe.
Macros pilot his meatsack to its desk but he’s already got a homicide request. There is a moment of disorientation as the on-scene detective’s visual feed obliterates his own.
A man on a bed. As if asleep. Except his eyes. Black ruins that ran down his cheeks. Crisped flesh at the edges.
“Morello patched in,” he says.
“Chambers,” comes back a hard nasal voice. “My ‘sack’s on-scene. John Doe. Dead on my arrival. Fried.” Chambers pulls up images from the crime lab mainframe. Twisted cranial wiring. Morello asks the AIs in research to cross-reference them.
“Too much heat,” Chambers says. One more image. Graphic.
“We know what the Doe was connected to?” Morello asks. Known harmful feeds, or downloaded malware will cut the case time.
“That’s just it,” said Chambers. Diagnostics begin scrolling down the shared feed. “He wasn’t connected at all.”
No. Morello denies it. The thought of it. It is as if he is suddenly alone. Suddenly in the dark. In that yawning moment of disconnection stretching out, out, out. No feeds. A man alone. Quaking, Knowing this is the last transition. Life to death. Just a sack of meat.
#
He cuts the police feed. Dials his home tribe. His kids, his wife. Sensations wash over him, through him: puzzling over a math problem, over a recipe for stew, watching an ass track down the street.
#
Back. The murder scene. NYPD tribe.
“Thought I lost your feed,” Chambers says.
Again, the fear. But weaker now. John Doe’s problem, not his,
He gets Chambers to flip the corpse over and sees the burn mark. Suicide. Overcharged himself. Morello isn’t surprised. Disconnected… alone… No man is an island. He is either buoyed up by others, or he drowns.
Morello posts his report. He watches the feeds of those who read it. All of them sharing the knowledge. All of them, through him, connected.