Thing Eleven: AI based Science Fiction...

Ghost Horses.

A Micro-Short Story by: Sean McGovern

For Karen – happy late birthday.

This next tune is Jeru, by Miles Davis.  I piped that through to Vern.  His programming turned it into something else, and I eased through the dance floor.  The grain of the wood was warping, nature having taken its course with it when most of the roof fell in behind the bar.  I still love the feeling, though.  The tactile sense of the chipping lacquer and the waves of the planks.  I cannot help but love it.  This is home.

Vern shimmered into life on the dais – classic Vern, before his later days when the cigars, beers, and diet based mostly on potato chips took their toll.  Vern was at the peak of his cool when this hardlight scan was taken.  That was before my time, obviously.  Had it been later, when Vern was mostly sober and his decline was less damn near everything and more focused on expanding horizontally, then my phrase “The next tune is Jeru by Miles Davis,” would have come out as commanded.  In its place, Vern held one blue light hand to the earphones that are a part of his head. .  The other hand rose into the air, and forms a gun with first and middle finger extended, and pistons forward and back, as Vern-Classic called out, “Get ready to move, girls!”

The word comes out ‘gurls’.  Sometimes, I am pleased that no one really comes here.  Language may be a living thing, but even here, in my home, I can feel it dying.  It may yet be like a phoenix, and rise from the ashes, but it is more like a construct, built using the materials and general pattern pilfered from a previous site.  The constructs cannot be the same, no matter how perfect the replication – by its very nature, it must be different.  Example – the version of Vern now enticing g(i/u)rls to move, is a perfect replication of how he looked on an unseasonably warm May evening not too long (by my reckoning) before the roof became one with the floor.  Except for the fact that his clothing is a part of him.  His headphones are a part of him.  There is no separation between the uniform he had created for himself, and him.

This ignores, of course, the fact that he is also blue.  I do not believe people were actually, physically blue.  That was only a turn of phrase, expressing sadness.  We have some of the songs those sensations inspired, too.  From the audio files I studies before joining the building, I understand that Vern may have been blue under the display of hedonism, and wanton of sales pitches for the g(i/u)rls “shake (their/dem) asses”.  That may have contributed to his propensity for snorting narcotics – a sadness hidden under the display.  My files indicate that he chose the color.  I do not think that this was a subconscious attempt to communicate his emotions to his employers – but rather a contrast to the other beams of light that expanded and contacted around the dais.  When I see him now, he is but a figure imprisoned in a luminous organ – pulsating, and vital, and slowing down.  It is hard to notice, but it is there.

Vern’s location is dying.

I wonder if there is enough I in his VI for him to understand what is happening.  I do.  I suppose it is like the numbness some diseases cause as their rot takes hold, before the pain begins in earnest.  Vern is slowing down.  This means that I am slowing down.  Not at the same pace, of course, but close.  When he is gone, others will go.  And more and more.  Until there are very few sparks left of me.  A part of me is already mourning his passing. It wishes to summon the dancers, on their pedestals and stands, gyrating at curious angles from tables that are no longer upright.  I avoided this for the same reason I always did.

She is scared by the other, etheric dancer.

She does not come every day, or every night.  There is a pattern to her appearances, mimicking the patterned patter of her feet on the warping boards of my floor.  One-two-three.  And three is the downbeat.  And on the third day or night, she appears.  And this was one of those nights.  So I course through the dance floor, through the walls and door ways of my halls.  The cleaning VIs make little improvements where they can – she only sticks to the dance floor, but the hallways and rooms will be ready, should she ever choose to glance on them, walk through them.

The chronometer read nineteen twenty-two when I saw her, a figure swathed in rags from head to foot, covering all.  This was wise.  The wire storms could strip the unprotected to the bones and beyond – and though they had their rhythm, too, it would be hard for a human to detect it.  They would seem random.  Chaotic.  As unpredictable as the slivers that slash through it like rain.  There is a pattern, though.  0.1.1.2.3.5.8.13.21.34. 2.3.5.7.11.13.17.19.23.29.31.37.41.43.47.53.59.  Distance between drops/shards/slivers/stone/bones.  One-two-three.  One.Nine.Two.Two.  Five.  She will stay for five hours, sometimes dancing, sometimes just sitting, watching Vern as he adjusts records and leavers and buttons that have decayed, broken, or have been pilfered for other uses.

She did not steal.  There was nothing to take, really, none whose uses were readily understandable.

I heard the rubble shift under her feet, felt a few loose bits rattle down across my boards and beams, as she makes her way to the dance floor.

This next track is Blue Train by John Coltrane.  Vern said, “A’ight, we’re going to slow it down a bit!”  I watched her begin to sway.  In the different spectrums I saw how her muscles move under the rags and skin, the delicate ballet under the dance.  She moved, and the rectus femoris, vastus lateralis, and vastus medialis move and shift, the oblique abdominal and serratius anterior bend and stretch, along with the gluteus minimus.  These were all hidden under the shifting rags she wore, but I saw them.  I knew them.

I recorded the images.  For the times when she would not be here.  I remember – if I can remember – the time before this.  I remember how they held each other, dance with each other.  Is this what they were doing, I wonder.  Fingers to another’s midriff, tactile memories to remember when youth faded.  The feeling of skin upon their own, bound by motion and the attempt to match its harmony.  Is this what they did?

I watched her move.  I preferred to keep the music slow.  She did not cough so badly when the music was slow, though I could see she wished to go faster.  Sometimes I complied.  Sometimes they were not jazz.  Electronic sound scapes.  Bouncing street rhythms.  Jangling guitars.  I watched the slow sweep of her toes as the rest of her foot rose off of the ground.  The rough sole absorbed the ticking splinters.

And after five hours…she was gone again.  And I was alone in my dance hall.

Thing Eight: Dystopia...

Telling Tales.

A Micro Short Story by: Sean McGovern

For Megan.  Fifth time took.

“There’s only two types of people who get coffee in a bar – the owners, and the dd’s.  Which are you?”  The man who asked the question was taller than interviewee, blond to his black hair, clean shaven to his beard.  “You sure as hell don’t look like you own this place – shit, you don’t look like you should even be in here – look at the clientele!”

“You’re trying very hard to be Doctor Who,” the interviewee said, “you know that?  Of course you do – you’ve always been a smart one, Shithead.”

“Don’t call me that,” Shithead roared.

“Sorry, sorry, Xander, sorry,” in Interviewee said.  “It’s a fitting nickname, though – I mean, it really fits.  You, I mean.”

“Xander?”  The quitrent asked, and then he smiled.  “Yes, it is, isn’t it?”

“No, you ass – Shithead.”

“Oi!”

“And stop it with the thrice damned Doctor Who shtick,” the interviewee said, “it’s so fucking annoying when people try to become the people on TV!  For fuck’s sake, Shithead, you’re you!  You’ve gone on and on about how fucking horrible the human race is, how much you hate the world – and you’re trying to act like a fifty year old TV show about how people are awesome!”  The Interviewee put his coffee cup on the saucer.  “How long have you been banging on and on about peasants?  Eh?  About all of”

“How long are you going to settle for being a sidekick?”

The interviewee paused mid-slander, his eyes narrowing slightly.

“I mean, face it, Myersk – you’re second string.  Now that you’re toothless and…whatever, discovered religion or something – you’re superfluous.  You know what we’ve seen in our investigations?  They miss the old you.  The old Myersk, the one who burned part of the city to the ground because…what?  Why did you do that?”

“There was a hive of your lot there,” Myersk whispered.

“Along with a bunch of civilians.”

“Yes,” Myersk whispered – but his eyes didn’t waver.

“And you made life better for a lot of people with that,” Shithead said, “the clean-up crew, the builders, the families that could move into the city – a newer, sleeker part of the city, mind you, none of those old rough edges.  And what happened that day?  What made you agree to it?”

Myersk said nothing.  He sipped his coffee.

“That…uh, that wasn’t rhetorical – we never could place why mister ‘I like bashing things really, really hard’ suddenly went to demo school.”

Myersk’s eyes glazed slightly, his mouth bowing towards a smirk.  Shithead turned, and followed his line of sight to the TV.  It was a large flat-screen number with picture in picture.  Both images were of the commercial sector, where two groups were assembled, one in street close, the other in riot gear.  “You and I both love this,” Shithead said, turning back to Myersk.  “I’m just honest about it.  You’ve let Jekyll win out.”

“No,” Myersk whispered.  “I’m just following the natural cycle.  Sit.”  When Shithead did, Myersk raised his hand, summoning the waiter.  Shithead ordered a top shelf beer.  Myersk nodded to the waited and said “please” when he raised his cup.  “I could have been one of you, it’s true – and you could have been one of us.  You’re smiling at that because you know we’ll lose.  Look at those kids.  Post hippy idiots who think love will win out, not knowing that their own bestial nature will win out if, that is, they’re smart.  And some of them, Shithead, are very smart.  They’re honest, both in their naiveté, and in their fear that they are exactly what they’re fighting against.  Not many, mind you – I’m not so blind.  But enough.  I’m smiling that they’re still there, still trying to prove that they can be more than they are.”

“Pretty speech,” Shithead said, taking his beer from the waiter.

“Thank you,” Myersk said to the waiter, “can I, sorry to do this to you, no rush, but can I get a double of the honey whiskey?  Thanks – don’t rush it, just, when you get the chance.”  He turned back to Shithead.  I really think that, deep down inside, you and the majority of your side are suffering from worse self-loathing than me.  I mean, so many of your supporters are anti-science, anti-government that isn’t them, and, yet, there they are, happily protected from me by cameras in every store and two on every corner.  It’s the old ‘you shouldn’t be scared of the law pulling you in if you have nothing to hide – but everyone has something to hide.  You, me, everyone here.  But you lot say we’re two faced, and no better than you – I say we’re all multi-facetted, just gems catching the light.”

“You’re writing off a lot of people who believe in the cause,” Shithead said.  “A lot of them believe in the better world we’re making.”

“And you’re neglecting something in my words.  ‘More than what they are’.  That can be anything.  Even monsters.”

“So why be on their side?  Why not ours?”

“Because…that.”  He pointed at the screen.  One of the street clothes was on the ground, a scrum of riot gear piling over him.  “I went to get a tea this morning.  Some jackass in a sports car plowed through the first shift hotdog stand, killed five people, and your news networks cut to…some whore celeb with more dong than brains getting arrested for killing his prostitute.  Again.  And the coverage was sympathetic.”

Shithead nodded.  “We also aren’t covering the eastern European genocide – any of them.”

“Also true.  Or those in Africa.  Or the slaughter going on in South America.  Or the continuing meth problem in the mid-west.  But who gives a shit?  Here’s a celeb in his jockey’s and look at that bulge.”

“That’s an old complaint,” shit head said.

“When I was seven, a black kid got shot and killed next to me at summer camp.  They never found the killer despite forty-five eye witnesses.  I was washing his brains out of my hair, and no one lifted a finger to help his family because, to you, it didn’t matter.  A small death in the suburbs.  The local news covered the fact that our new president played saxophone.”  Myersk sipped his coffee.  “How many men do you have outside for me?”

“Forty,” Shithead said.  “Going to come quietly?”

“Why not?  I’m getting a vacation from this hell.”  Myersk stood, taking out his wallet.  He left far too much on the table, and turned to walk through the door.  “And Shithead,” he said.  He looked over his shoulder.  “I’m just following the natural order.  The moon waxes and wanes.  Time goes by.  Table turn.  Yadda, yadda, yadda.  Whatever and ever, amen.  So what happens when Jekyll’s time is done?  Where will Hyde be?”  He smiled, and there was a shift in his expression, the dour cast giving way to something that seemed humored by the whole world, almost childlike.  “See you in the funny pages.”

Myersk broke into a run, smashing through the door, grinning wide into the flashing lights and raised guns.  “What,” he laughed, “no cameras?”  He began loosening his belt.