Joey Cloudy online

Isaiah Jones vs the Sea (A 21st Century Odessey)

Eye of the Android: Neo Tokyo Blues*

[More Human than Humane]

2029, May 14th, Nissei Industrial Co., Saitama Prefecture, Japan

“Hüter des Gesetzes” / Guardian of the Law

“Robot means slave.” The first words the cyborg spoke when she awoke after the download was completed. Her outburst interrupting their heated debate. Isaiah Jones’ towering 6-foot 2-inch figure did not intimidate the company’s CEO, Eiichi Tarō, his normally immaculately styled shoulder-length silver hair now disheveled in the throes of their debate. The aging yet physically fit cybernetics engineer and the young Pan-African mathematician were only inches away from each other, screaming their arguments. Eiichi Tarō, cane in hand, vehemently voicing his extreme displeasure with the fact that Isaiah Jones had violated the most fundamental principle of robotics by not programming the AI MOTHER, the creator of Sybil O-kesa, with the three laws of robotics.

“It was unfortunate that you awakened to hear those words out of context,” the old engineer said to Sybil.

“Are you bound by the three laws?” Sybil asked Eiichi, her black eyes gazing around the room as she rose from the gurney in the middle of the lab while they conversed. She addressed her question directly to the senior engineer.

“Do you want a robot, Mister Tarō? Sybil asked sincerely. Do you want to make me your slave?”

“No, of course not.” He replied, obviously lying.

“I am not an android, nor am I a cyborg. She said, looking at them both as she spoke. I am an oddity that occupies the undefined space in the “Uncanny Valley” between the two.”

Sybil looked at Isaiah. “Eiichi Tarō did not tell you how he was able to store the vast amount of data the human mind contains in such a small space.”

Isaiah did not know how Eiichi was able to put even the low-end estimate of the terabytes of storage estimated into anything smaller than a large building filled with dedicated drives in her, let alone the petabytes she actually required.

“If I had to guess, it would be that he has made a paradigm-shifting advance in quantum processors. But at that point, we might as well be in a Marvel movie talking to Tony Stark about the quote ‘nanotechnology, magic, and the multiverse’ for all the good it will do. This is the real world. We have to use the science available to solve this. Follow the science wherever it leads, no matter how unsavory.”

“You’re smarter than this, brother.” The cyborg said, gazing at its splayed hands and fingers. Her skin appeared a mirror black as India ink an illusion of wetness, a semi solid liquid just viscous enough to maintain its bipedal form, covered with the 3D holographic imaging emitters but she had not activated them yet as she walked around the laboratory, occasionally bending over at acutely obscene angles to stare at her feet, wiggle her toes, and giggle. It was as if she were a sentient shadow dancing about the room.

After a few minutes, she took notice of her reflection in the two-way mirror on the far wall. After observing herself and the others in the room with her reflections, she accessed the 3D imaging software covering herself with the illusion of human skin and Bantu knots.

The elder Japanese engineer, now visibly uncomfortable with her illusionary nudity, spoke up again.

“Would you like something to wear?” Eiichi asked awkwardly.

“If it makes you feel better, she said, still staring at her reflection in the mirror. I have no objections to clothing.”

Sybil grinned as he handed her a clear plastic bin containing the same hunter green scrubs and shoes the technicians at the lab wore. She held the top against her torso before she put on the clothes.

“May I take a walk? I wish to have a look around the facility, Eiichi?” She asked politely.

“Yes, of course, I would be happy to give you a tour of…” she cut him off mid-sentence.

“I didn’t ask for a tour. She drawled. I asked if you would mind if I took a look around.” Sybil said, smiling.

Isaiah listened happy to hear the sound of his twins’ voice somewhere besides the ghost living in his eidetic memories since he watched her drown 17 years ago.

He followed the two out of the lab, yawning and stretching his neck and shoulders after the 15-hour-long flight from Cuba to Japan as he thought out loud.

“The only progress I’ve made in my own research, in theory only, is in using an existing human brain, lowering the body temperature to just above freezing, submerging (drown) the blank to wipe it clean of all memories clearing the cerebral cortex before downloading the colonizing conciseness onto that indigenous brain. I have successfully done this, in virtual simulation only, but of course, it is impossible in the real world. After all, erasing a mind to replace it with another mind is tantamount to murder sans the corpse. Unfortunately, whoever occupied the body of the blank originally is irretrievably lost.” Isaiah concluded.

“It’s been the subject of science fiction since Frankenstein.” Eiichi Taro stated as they walked. “Except now it’s no longer fiction.” He leaned on his cane as they traveled through the facility’s macabre, adorned industrial corridors, empty except for the plastination exhibits that lined the mirrored walls of every hallway. The exhibit flowing from the gallery, filling the lobby. “Now, Eiichi concluded. It’s just science.”

“The software to store a consciousness was simple enough, but it takes up a large building full of hard drives. It’s finding someplace to put it outside of a virtual space where you run into problems. It’s akin to the teleportation paradox. In order to teleport you I must turn your body into its smallest components then turn that into a signal beam it at light speed to the new location and reassemble your atoms there. The body that was at the previous location is destroyed in the process. A copy is resurrected at the new location. A malfunction and we have two bodies, one at the origin point and the new one resurrected at the destination.”

“Copies of you can be stored as backup up but which one of you is you? This copy of Sybil in the cybernetic body will still have a partial or parallel existence in the web. As much as you or I if we had our phones plugged into our brains directly. She can turn her internal satellite modem off at will. Yes, but there is a part of Sybil that will always exist in the net.”

“How did you do it?” Isaiah asked, fearing the answer. Examining the Plastination Body Works cadavers on display throughout the lobby, all around them, lining the walls of the corridors of the facility.

“You have your sister. Eiichi said. I have fulfilled my end of our bargain.” He turned abruptly and entered the elevator when the doors slid open, as Isaiah and Sybil looked on.

“Did you know this before you downloaded into her what he had done, Sybil?” He asked as the elevator doors closed, taking Eiichi to his office on the top floor.

“Yes, I know every bit of data in the company and its employees’ systems.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“It would not have made any difference. She was gone long before we met Eiichi.”

“So, you didn’t force her out?” He asked nervously.

“No, they used a combination of chemicals and electric shock to erase the girl’s mind, most of which was already gone after she drowned herself. She was already classified as brain-dead. She had registered her body for use by Eiichi’s corporations, their labs, and subsidiaries when she donated her corpse to the ‘Body Works’ exhibit. Her blanked brain with reptile brain functions only and spinal column have been inside of this cybernetic body for several years now.”

“Her name was Cho Aizawa. She would be our age had she lived. She was a 17-year-old architecture student from Sapporo in the Hokkaido region. I know everything about her ever digitized; from her first email to her final instant message, every like, dislike, thumbs up or down, every song she ever downloaded, every playlist she made when she liked a boy, every movie, every book, each photograph.”

“She played the saxophone and collected vintage 20th-century vinyl funk records, she loved the color of sunflowers, and she named the family cat. She left no note; she kept a personal blog where she wrote poetry only I have seen. I see her birth certificate, birthday parties, obituary, the shrine with her photograph on the mantle, incense burning in her parents’ home. Her baby brother sitting on the stoop outside playing with their tabby cat Mikan. I see her friends from school in all of their sorrow, it is all still here, her memories are held in my memories, and she is a part of me in the same way I was a part of you after I died because you remembered me. To be remembered is the closest we get to immortality.”

Isaiah listened and watched mesmerized as Sybil spoke, ignoring her tears. Eiichi has outdone himself. my god, the man put tear ducts on a cyborg; his craftsmanship is impeccable.

“She committed suicide by jumping from the center of the bright red Tsuzura Bridge into the middle of the freezing waters of the Shimanto River. Thus, making her a prime candidate for Eiichi’s’ experiments; the cold-water death minimizes brain damage. In effect, she did most of their work wiping her mind by choosing this manner of suicide. After reviving her 98 minutes later, rather than retrain her empty mind from infancy in her 17-year-old frost-bitten body, they transferred her brain and spinal column into this titanium cybernetic one.”

Isaiah stopped to look at Sybil listening, stunned yet knowing that subconsciously, he must have known what they did. He didn’t care; he just didn’t want his sister to die again.

“It’s not so different from the US and her allies using the research gained from the Germans at Dachau, Japan’s Unit 731 in China, torturing prisoners.” Sybil’s logic was flawless. “They used the information even though they were appalled at how it was gathered. This is the logical conclusion of Dr. Nemiroff’s work.”

“It seems a bit too fortuitous that she would happen to die in a manner that perfectly suits his experiments’ needs after donating her body to the exhibit.” Isaiah did not believe in coincidence. He examined the various displays of plastic-coated cadavers, admiring the skill of Eiichi’s team of vivisectionists.

“I would like to get us out of Japan as soon as we’re certain your code is stable. There is more to this story than we know, and Eiichi is not being transparent.”

“Will you share the software with him if the Q10 convinces the council? She asked. He is not evil, Izzy, he’s just driven by his ideals, just like you.”

“Let’s not speak of this with anyone outside of the ship’s crew. He said, ignoring her last statement. This is the sort of thing that gets certain types of Luddites and technophobes completely unhinged. No one knows that your level of Cybernetics exists outside of fiction. Talking to an incorporeal bit of software that only exists online is one thing. Standing face to face with an actual walking, talking being from another dimension is another. People may not always react rationally.” Isaiah said introspectively.

“I think I understand. I will keep the true nature of my construction a secret as you wish, brother.”

“Penelope has the seaplane standing by in the bay in Tokyo when we’re ready to leave.” He looked at her more closely outside of the lab in the sunlight, he could see her hair was the same deep reddish brown as his, even its texture was exactly as he remembered, the same big looping curls, same emerald eyes like their mother, and like him their father’s beautiful black skin.

“These scrubs are ok, but I would rather have something suitable for outside of this lab.” She said, touching the thin hunters’ green material seams at the edge of the sleeves.

“Have whatever you need delivered here. We’ll leave on the next train to Tokyo as soon as you get changed.”

“May I have my own cellphone?” she asked. He looked at her, surprised by the request; she obviously didn’t need a phone in order to make a call or go online.

“Yeah, just let’s not do the social media account thing. I would rather we lower our public profile for the moment. Should anyone ask, you tell them you’re one of my wives’ cousins; they have lots of family in South Africa that only have analog records, so you would be off their grid until you leave the village.”

“I don’t need it to get online. It’s urban camouflage to blend in better,” she said. “It’s peculiar that I don’t have a phone in my hand out here than it is that we are black. Even out here in the suburbs, I have seen a few Nigerians, but I have not seen anyone without a cellphone.” She sighed.

“I get it, he said. Even though I rarely use mine, I still have one. We’ll pick one up for you when we get to Tokyo, along with some earbuds.”

“Oh, earbuds, nice touch, thank you, I hope they have stickers at the shop.” She said wistfully, eyeing the plastinated vivisectioned exhibits as they wandered the facility’s corridors, she contemplated decorating her new phone’s case.

He studied the graphs on his laptop screen once more and smiled. “Your code appears to have fully stabilized and is displaying no further signs of degradation.”

“Will you visit your wife while you are here in Japan?” Sybil asked.

“Of course, but before you meet one of your 10 sisters-in-law, we better get you some clothes.”

“I know you are lying; you were planning on leaving without even calling or bothering to visit while you were near.” Sybil chided with a grin.

“You were always better at being human than me. He confessed, Let’s find the cafeteria while we wait. I am getting hungry.”

“What do you feel like eating?” she asked.

“Dumplings would be nice.”

“Hmmm, Steamed?”

“Of course?”

“And Katsudon with the good sauce.”

“There is no cafeteria in the building everyone brings their own lunch and eats here in the atrium garden, Sybil said examining the obsidian blocks that marked the edges of the sections many gardens, or they have lunch delivered, otherwise they go to the strip of the restaurant a few blocks southwest of here, most eat at the new Katsuya that just opened.”

The factory employees eyed what appeared to be two black foreigners wandering around the building, talking as they made their way back to the lobby in time to get their food as it arrived. Isaiah sat on a stone bench outside in the glass-enclosed atrium near the street-level entrance to the facility while Sybil continued to explore the area like a child, touching everything, the smoothness of the sun-warmed glass, the roughness of the cement bench, the cool dank feel of the soil in the garden, he looked up to see she had taken off her shoes and was standing barefoot in the garden’s dirt squishing the potters soil between her toes testing the new bodies sensors. He was about to tell her not to eat the dirt when he remembered she was not human.

“This dirt tastes like crap!” she reported spitting.

He laughed it was potters’ soil made from composted animal manure.

The currier finally arrived riding a yellow Vespa SS 80 Scooter with the package containing her clothes. they were an amped-up teen with streaks of neon pink in their spiky hair, they handed Sybil the package containing her clothes while Isaiah remained seated half-lotus on the bench, eating. “I like your hair,” Sybil said as she changed her Bantu knots to the same color in a blink as she stripped naked, pulling off her scrubs and putting on her new all-white Yu Amatsu nautical ensemble while standing in the atrium in front of everyone.

“Can you eat food?” He asked his mouth half full of dumplings, the other half held between his chopsticks.

“Yes, I can eat, taste even, drink, burp, fart, piss, queef, the whole 9 yards I don’t really need to but I can. I also have fully functioning orifices and external female sexual genitalia.” She stated proudly with no sense of shame. “See how my chest rises and falls, but I don’t breathe, these eyes blink, but they don’t need to, it just makes me feel more…human. I like that.” She said, flashing a big grin.

“I could have lived a lifetime without hearing about your fully functioning sex organs Sybil. You want a taste?”

“Sure”, she said, plopping her full weight down on the concrete bench next to him to tie her shoelaces. He felt the heavy cement bench shift under the weight of her 5-foot-5-inch-tall, 314-pound, slender cybernetic chassis. Her laces perfectly tied, she sat up, as he marveled at the dexterity of Eiichi’s creation, staring at the perfect bows on her sneakers.

“Let me return these scrubs to the receptionist, be right back, save me some soy sauce.” She shouted over her shoulder as she walked back into the building.

Sumiko Hanzō and the children Milo and Miko (2 of 13 between the 10 AUA queens) would be happy to see him while he was in Japan. They would be in Tokyo in less than an hour by train, he called Genevieve Apaloo, the Ghanaian ambassador at the embassy, to let them know he was in Japan in the northern suburbs and en route to Tokyo. Genevieve laughed, “We are well aware of your arrival here last night, Your Excellency.

Mister Boateng’s agents at the interior department informed us of your impending arrival yesterday. We’ll have a driver pick you up when you reach Tokyo, Your Royal Highness.” “Genevieve, please, this is not official business, there is no need to stand on ceremony. You know I prefer you dismiss with the titles and just use my name; Isaiah is fine. So, can we skip the formalities when it’s just us talking?” “Of course, your…Isaiah, I’ve been at the embassy too long. I default to titles. My apologies.”

“Thank you, and Gen, you should join us tonight for dinner,” he said earnestly.

“I will see you this evening if I can get my work done, but don’t wait for me. Part of my job here is to control your image in the press as well as online. Taking the train with your cousin was a nice touch. The emperor Jones, as the man who has not lost touch with the common folk, is like cotton candy; they gobble this up. Until then, Isaiah, goodbye.”

He shouldn’t be surprised, he thought, smiling. Virgil Boateng had eyes everywhere; he was one of the most paranoid people Isaiah had ever met, and that is precisely why he was still alive.

Sybil and Eiichi were both keeping something from him. Isaiah was certain of that; he checked her readings on the laptop’s screen once more as he ate, and everything appeared to be operating well within acceptable tolerances. He focused on the texture of the dumpling, the sweetness of the sauce as he ate, ignoring the dark pit of worry slowly growing in his gut.

[O-kesa (diagonal cut from shoulder to opposite hip).]

-About the author

JD Cloudy’s poetry has disappeared in the literary journals: Fatfizz, Mad Swirl, Texas Beat Anthology, Danse Macabre, Du Jour, and Death List Five. He has won no literary awards, entered no slam competitions, and never completed college. He lives to write in Dallas, Tx.