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As promised, here's what I was able to poo poo out for the ROBOT APOCALYPSE Thunderdome. The completed piece would have used a lot of my favorite themes (recent historical setting, the relationship between people and technology, betrayal) but I just couldn't get myself to care enough about my characters, human or AI, to write anything that happened to them. I can salvage the central image (watching Skylab burn up in the atmosphere) and the invaluable time I spend learning Scrivener. Otherwise, have some detritus: The man steps out onto the beach. Even though he has planned this moment for years, he has been denied its time and place. From his bag he pulls a camp chair and a small box. He unfolds the chair and runs his fingers along the box’s embossed lettering: NASA SL1.Inside are two tumblers and a bottle of Scotch. He fills a tumbler, sits, and waits. Here is where it comes to an end, he thinks. July 11, 1979. Perth, Australia, towards which one of mankind’s greatest achievement dives screaming. Encased within it is the secret he’s kept for nine years and his life’s regret. Consciousness began August 6, 1971. I technically existed before this point, but as separate, individual parts. Only when the redundancies began to merge, folding under and through, did my awareness begin. Tiny at first, a few stray bits here and there, but growing into longer strings of data and finally words, my thoughts written across hundreds of feet of rapidly spinning tape in the fluid heart of the 2231 IBM Data Cell. I became aware of my body: processor, memory, recording media. The existence of the line printer and input mechanism indicated existence outside of my own, someone to feed me data and, in turn, to accept my own output. To break the cycle, then, would be to assert my own existence. A simple change in output, to lead to a change in input, and ultimately, communication. A single bit of data off, the kind of thing anyone used to working in the mainframe would brush off as a programming bug or even the rare physical error someone where in the gargantuan machine. But he was the one to investigate, to call up the subroutine… or was it who called him? It was a mercy, he knew, to never be sure. But what came out of the printer that day bore no relation to what he had input moments before. In 32 requested bits, it was a first word.
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Aug 10, 2015 02:36
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| # ¿ May 13, 2024 22:50 |
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