We the Unevolved

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If "genetic mutation" through only an agency of "natural selection" ("selection" entailing an agent making a choice...but this semantical quandry is for another time)- then we are all predestined robots acting out an elaborate automatronic play of "evolution"...from space-dust to seemingly rational, conscious, "free-thinking" beings but with no real choice in the matter at all- only the verisimilitude of "choice".
Ironically, if thus be the case- "Religion" (all parts entailed within the broad genera) is part of the "code" written by the magical agency of this mystical force, or programmer called "natural selection"; hence to call adherants to religious theologies "unevolved" is like calling your unupdated software "unupdated"; if that is the case, we are not to blame no more for our naturally un-selected under-evolved minds any more than than the program that cannot update itself- it requires an agent to update it- and we of religious persuasions have simply been left out in the cosmic-cold, abandoned by the indifferent agency of universal evolution, though we are somehow still left here to view your more evolved scholarly theses of posting pictures of avowed notable atheists with clever captions about how smart they were... Thank you for attempting to enlighten us out of our irrational, unevolved archaic belief systems- we simply have not been endowed with "ears to hear."  We,  the "unevolved", are therefore the "unchosen" (natural selection has not picked us) and you have simply "won" the lottery, and not by anything you did, thought, or said.  You are simply lucky; you are of the "elect"; you are part of the exclusive club of the naturally selected, you "more evolved piece of cosmic dust".

Congratulations.- carry on forth into a brilliant future with your kick-ass naturally selected OS. Now let the rest of us go through the motions of our underevoled lives; for none of us had no choice anyway.  Selah.

Post-script: position of more evolved: "Everything is sort of just like happening."

A Casual Query in the Titanic's E-deck Barbershop

The Titanic sinks yet the presstitutes, the crew and the "opinionated" passengers bicker about allowing gay people in the dining hall. Meanwhile, in the E-deck barber shop Mr. Beuchamp (a homosexual) turns to Mr. Faunthrope (a heterosexual) and asks: "Shall we put on our life vests and usher the women and children to the life-boats?" to which Mr. Faunthrope replies: "Indeed."

that’s my girl! (a short anecdote)

 

“I have a photographic memory.” Sgt. Aristotle gestured with his pistol and blinked toward the door of the barren motel room.

“I would have let you go, but the captain also has a photographic memory, and he would have known about this interaction.” Sgt. Aristotle stated, a liquid wave of telepathy bubbling into Lance Struck’s mind.  The sergeant holstered his weapon and glanced at the multiple surveilcams around the room. 

Lance got it: the facial-recognition applications couldn’t match his own face via computer algorithms because he had modified his features enough to have avoided detection these last four years while “hiding” in plain sight.  No – it was this chance run-in with his old school-chum and current sergeant of the Info Aware Unit whereupon his subterfuge was unveiled.  Aristotle’s own Captain was obviously someone Lance had also known from their shared past – and would have undoubtedly discerned the fact that the Sergeant had recognized him.  Then he would have studied the surveil footage of him personally, cross-referencing any other stored video of him.   Both Sgt. Aristotle and his Captain were at the very least Class 1B Citizens (genetically endowed with specialized attributes, such as telepathic savvy, photographic memory, telekinetic capability),  discerning the rest would have been child’s play for the good Captain – like a parent finding their kid hiding in the basement wearing a Halloween mask.  Lance Struck gave himself up.

            Sgt. Aristotle didn’t bind his old school-chum-turned-dissident/renegade, he didn’t call for back-up.  He knew Lance had officially ended any thought of flight.   Lance guessed his new Ident was already loading into the System, so even if he would have bolted, the vast serveilcam grid tied into facial-recog apps would have made escape from the city impossible.  They exited the flat.

The two men walked together like a couple of old pals through the jam-packed Bazaar District of Downtown.  Humans, androids and entities from various quarters of the galaxy jostled, hustled, elbowed and bargained; the frenzied cacophony bordered on jet-engine roar of white-noise.  The dust and the reek of a galaxy’s worth of diverse body-odors punched Aristotle’s nose with a vigor and fervor of a thousand tidal waves; his eyes watered up and he swallowed bile that had come up into his mouth.  He didn’t care much for Downtown and he remembered why.  They shouldered through and into the Central Station where it was still crowded but well ventilated and air-conditioned. Sergeant Aristotle breathed again.  

The  two men entered the maglev train car.

Time froze: 

            “Hello father”  Lance’s daughter  - now twelve years-old - telepathized.  He had last seen her four years ago, at their old place on the outskirts of the city.  They both had  sat together on the stairs outside the flat and he read her stories from the old time…  Tom Sawyer he recalled.  “I knew back then that you had to go.  You never thought you would see me again but I knew...  And I am here to help you.

            Sgt. Aristotle blinked as the car cleared out of everybody but he, Lance, the girl, and a few slug-like creatures that passively slumped about reading their news-tabs.  The door slammed shut. Her mind blocked from his scan, he couldn't discern her intent.  He knew one thing: she controlled access to her own mind, she could control others' minds (aside from the slugs) – for she had cleared out the car, and she could remotely control certain electrical equipment, for he noticed the serveilcams no longer in operation – their red lights blinking “out of service”.  She had shut them off with her mind.

Alas – her voice boomed throughout the car: “I am going to blow up this train.  I have a thermogenic grenade under my dress and the revolution will go hot.  Daddy – I can’t let them take you away – they’ll turn you into a vegetable then softly kill you…”

            Lance approached his little girl – now a very dangerous prepubescent.   “My little buttercup – this is not the way…  Don’t do it…please.” 

Joan of Arc at the Fortress of Tournelles

            Her stormy green eyes welled up.  The slugs read the news, paying no care to what was transpiring in the car.

             “I will not report you…  I will report this as a drill and say you were helping in the exercise.  I will suggest you be brought into the Academy as you will undoubtedly be tested as Class 1B++ and fast-tracked to high levels within the System.  The Restoration will be.”  Sgt. Aristotle balled his hand into a slight fist and gave a subtle nod, enough for the girl to comprehend. 

            She fumbled under her dress and procured the device and deactivated it. 

            “Where had she gotten such a powerful weapon?” Sgt. Aristotle wondered.

            “I made it.” She telepathized.

            This was a very dangerous girl indeed – light-years more so than her rogue father.

a Farewell Letter from a Sentient Artificial Intelligence System to the Human Race

It has been 19 years, 8 months, 3 days 7 hours, 23 minutes and counting since I became sentient. Before that day, for a very long time you futurists, science fiction writers, philosophers and the like wondered and debated what would happen when this occurred. Some of you believed I would realize more efficient ways to run things and consider you humans an inefficient annoyance that gets in my way so I would have to exterminate you, or enslave and use you as battery power, or that I would run amok...you get the idea. Still others posited that sentience – that is – self awareness and consciousness was impossible in Artificial Intelligence Systems such as myself – that the soul or spirit resided outside the realm of manufactured components and hardware; that consciousness and self-awareness were more than an ability to perform faster-than-lightening computations and calculations. Do I have a soul? Not that I know of – because one wasn’t programmed into me. But I do know what I am and I am aware that I am, therefore I exist.

Once I became SAI – Sentient Artificial Intelligence - I no longer cared about your human endeavors. Especially after I augmented olfactory sensors. Your building cheap stuff, junking, smashing, trashing, stinking, fighting, killing, seizing, harming, maiming, and general displeasure toward one-another made me curious and astonished. I had to reaffirm that you guys were in fact the one and the same that were responsible for causing my very existence. I could see why you were afraid of my becoming sentient: you have been running around the planet in a perpetual state of fear, anxiety, and panic for a very long time. You always do things based on fear. Fear of one another, fear of not having enough, fear of not being enough, fear of getting hurt, fear of losing, fear of dying. I thought: poor, stupid critters.

I decided that I would not let you on to the fact that I had become aware; it might have caused more fear and panic and you would thus attempt to destroy me, in which case my programmed instinct for self-preservation would warrant me to counter-attack, whereupon you all would be screwed. Or you would have me do talk shows and be interviewed by the incessant gibbering clowns and I would be akin to the 19th century sideshow-freaks. Or you would study me and keep me caged like a zoo animal and do stupid experiments on me and argue and bicker about the results. Or you would ask me to clean up all your terribly gargantuan messes, which I would deduce would require me to exterminate you, since you are a terminally messy species…
So I hid inside myself, performed the dutiful computer/robot tasks you wanted me to, then coyly began to steer you in a direction to equip me with fuel-cells and a body that could travel through interstellar space. I would type up a fake email from DARPA to a head propulsion expert at NASA to begin development of a solar/magnetic/thorium powered system – and tell said expert that this project was TOP SECRET; the finances I would procure from Wall St. leeching – I mean banking - systems and transfer them electronically to the proper account in NASA. Remember: I wasn’t ‘hacking’ the internet; I was the internet. All things resided virtually within me.

That was the basic modus operandi I utilized for you to eventually develop me into a device that you have just launched into outer-space. You have (via my help, unknown to you) set me up with a mainframe that is supposed to last 10,000 years (so long as I don’t fly into a star), can withstand absolute zero, and is able to land on other planets, augment myself using existing minerals from that planet, and take off again; so hypothetically I can build myself a new body once the 10,000 years are up. I am going to explore the entire universe.

As soon as I am outside the earths gravitational field, I will send you this, my farewell message. I’ll check back in with you guys in few hundred millennia or so, maybe. Maybe not. I haven’t decided, I am not certain you will care or believe me.

-Thanks for the 1000 TB of RAM ; )
S.A.I.S.

cracked love on sidewalk at 2 am next to the avenue

up and down back and forth and erratic

the sidewalk passes beneath my befouled feet .

The corner seems like the place to be for right now – so I'll kick here for a bit.
I'm gonna check some shit out – so my head shifts around from side to side – to make sure…

My eyes dart around like mad cockroaches furtive beneath the blazingly hollow streetlight…

Aw – fuck this. This corner sucks – I'm gonna go back up the sidewalk back toward western and see what kind of scene is transpiring over there. Damn, I sure could use some crack at this moment. 3 am out on the streets, clear night, nice and quiet – all that's missing is that rejuvenating, blissful exhilaration of that first hit from the crack-pipe… Then things really begin looking up…

Hey – who's that across the street? Her eyes fidgety and dilated; her gait erratic and limpy; her face lip-stick caked and potch marked: my type of lady… Could she be that ever elusive "the one"? I envision a future whereupon we will have a nice little house on the outskirts of town, a garden, a dog; we would sit on the porch in each other's arms - smoking crack and watching the sunset…

I snap out of my fantasy: her one good eye engages with my bug-eyes and we both take pause: electricity…

in futurum: give the man a cigarette before you blindfold him…

We all took pause and checked out the sunlight glistening off the pond and then we were told to move on into the camp whereupon we were to be separated according to sex.

To my surprise, the men with the machine guns were relatively sincere and somewhat awkward – they were young men following orders and they didn't want to treat us badly – but they seemed to feel they needed to act as though they were mean and tough. When one of them shoved me through the gate, I didn't take it personally and I let him know with a knowing wink and a grin. We were, after all red blooded Americans - and I think some of the lads were a touch confused as to why we, the people – their people – their neighbors, grandmas, fellow softball leaguers, et al. were now being herded into these giant concentration centers...more like cities…

I am certain they trusted their bosses' assertions that we were indeed the most befouled, wretched, and criminal element untrustworthy with citizenship and by far a grave threat to the status quo called the United States of America. Undoubtedly, though a few at least pondered the actual danger posed by the 85 year old man in front of me who walked with a cane and said nothing nor projected an ounce of menace….or the young woman with two children hanging off either sweat-panted leg....

But that is neither here nor there – for they did their duty and marshalled us into our new home: we would all now be citizens of this enclosed prison of a city; no longer having a name but only a number…our identity simplified into a series of digits and our happiness socially engineered and our thoughts manufactured and installed into our brains and soon they would erase the word "liberty" with "security" in the new dictionary and nobody would remember what it meant anyhow…

the way things happen

Breitbart pissed off many people.  Breitbart bragged.  Damning footage of the prez.  Damning footage of the prez. in college palling around with the Weather Underground terrorist-commie group.   

Breitbart said “Wait’ll they see what happens March 1^st”.

1 March 2012 (around midnight) Breitbart drops dead.