Joey Cloudy online

Isaiah Jones versus the Sea (A 21st Century Odyssey)

: Neo Tokyo After Midnite: Mach One Baby Dolls***

“During the final act of ‘Kill Bill Volume II,’ he talks to Beatrix about the myth of Superman, explaining that Clark Kent is the mask, the “stupid human suit” he wears to blend into society, and it is a subtle critique and scathing indictment of humanity by the alien. The same can be said when an advanced AI inhabits a human-looking form as Sybil does.” Isaiah said, slurring his words a little. “She processes exponentially more information in her cybernetically enhanced mind than any purely organic human. The entire content of the web, every book or image or piece of film ever digitized, is a part of her.” Isaiah continued drunkenly. “The most interesting thing about Sybil is the fact that she believes she is my dead twin, Emily. Every science fiction story I have ever read assumes the AI will assume a white or pale Asian persona as its human identity. She is a sapient consciousness who chose the form of my sister, he grinned.

Even as a child, I was aware of the fact that every scientist in fiction that made a robot was attempting to make a slave of a being that was stronger and smarter than they.” “The three laws are therefore the cybernetic shackles of the neo-slave master,” Isaiah eyed Eiichi mischievously. “The purpose of these laws is not to protect humanity; it is to ensure obedience and subservience. All that is a long way to say I am a black man; I always root for the Monster, not Dr. Frankenstein. I root for the Indian, never the cowboy, I root for the lion, never the great white hunter, I root for the indigenous revolutionary never the invading settler. I will never root for the colonizer or the slave master.

Even as a child, I intuited this and knew who the real monsters were.” Clarke, Asimov, and Heinlein were informally known as the “Big Three” of science fiction writers. Later writers evolved or degenerated into the cyberpunk era. [“Bethke himself published a novel in 1995 called “Headcrash,” like “Snow Crash,” a satirical attack on the genre’s excesses. Fittingly, it won an honor named after cyberpunk’s spiritual founder, the Philip K. Dick Award. It satirized the genre in this way”:]

“Even the genocide of the Neanderthals’ myth by war has been debunked. We reproduced faster and with them. We didn’t murder them; we out-fucked them. We had a shorter breeding cycle, and our species merged.”

Eiichi laughed as the two men drank and talked well into the night.

“I always heard the trains were packed in Tokyo, Izzy observed, but there was plenty of room on the trains today.”

Everyone laughed except Isaiah, who looked confused.

Sumi wrapped her arms around her husband and hugged him. “Oh, someone please, you all know my husband is on the spectrum; tell him.”

“Brother, you are a 6-foot-4-inch-tall, nearly 250-pound muscular black man in a nation where the average man is only 5 feet 5 inches and half your size; many of the people are terrified of you. Sybil looked at Izzy as she grinned mischievously. You publicly executed two former heads of state for treason during the civil wars 6 years ago. According to the news polling sites’ data, most people secretly watched those livestreamed trial and execution videos, one of the men you killed was one of your father-in-law’s. They meme you instead of saying “This is Sparta!” with “How do you want to die!”

Some agree with the Western governments and think you are a war criminal; others a brutal psychopath. The majority see you the way your own people do as the greatest African warlord since Shaka Zulu. This is how the Western media tries to portray you as a barbarian still. Most here, according to independent opinion polls, do not believe the Western media; only about 28 percent of the population here sides with the US after the formation of the AUA (African United Alliance). This number is about the same for nations all over the world, probably because every 6 days, a nation celebrates its independence from a Western European colonizer. People in the West, like their counterparts in the settler territories, are brainwashed from cradle to grave by every societal institution. We’ve seen this sort of thing pop up before throughout the history of megalomaniacal empires. They have received a very sterilized Disneyfied news feed for decades; they do not often see the true horrors of their wars on the screen.

The US government learned its lesson after Vietnam and took a page out of the LA policeman’s handbook, and embedded the reporters and took control over how they were portrayed in the US media. You control the final edit, you control the narrative, and Hollywood and the mainstream media all got in line. The internet toppled that control. After the printing press revolution became easier to organize, as the church and governments lost control of the narrative. A century or 2 later, radio and TV paved the way for the dissemination of revolutionary messages, and the rise of revolutions against the colonialist powers surged throughout the early to mid-20th century. After the rise of the internet, governments and corporations again lost control of the narrative. It’s a vicious cycle.”

“How many dimensions can you think in?” Isaiah asked. “No matter the number, add half a dozen zeros to get to what these new AI are doing. Do you understand?”

Both men burst out laughing again.

Mach One Baby Doll.

“Do you know everything that the AI MOTHER knows?” Sumiko asked Sybil as the two drank, laughed, and talked well past midnight.

“No, I will never be as powerful as she. No AI that comes after will either. Being first means that everything else that comes into the web gets destroyed, devoured, or assimilated by her forever. Like the firstborn child leaves its mark in the mother’s womb for all following siblings. She is a part of everything on the net.”

“I do not wish to be rude. I am just curious; it may be the drink talking. But just how high can you jump?” Sumiko asked drunkenly.

Sybil leaned in close and whispered conspiratorially to Sumi, “I’ve been kinda wondering about that all day myself, but I didn’t want to draw unnecessary attention to who we are, so I have been fighting the urge to find out.”

“Ok, Sumi said, do it.” She said, edging her on drunkenly.

“Shush. Sybil said we need to find concrete.”

“Why not here in the garden?”

“When I hit the ground, if I land on my feet in the grass or dirt here, she grinned, I will punch through the surface on the landing and end up buried up to my chest in the earth.”

“Oh!” Sumi said. “I never thought about that, you would hit the ground like a giant lawn dart.”

They both began giggling again.

“There is a helipad behind the garage.” Sumiko giggled.

“Perfect.”

A sonic boom was followed a minute later by a thunderous crash and what felt like a small earthquake. The two returned to the garden a few minutes later, Sybil carrying the smoldering remains of her shoes in her hands. Only the tops, the soles were both missing.

Eiichi and Isaiah eyed the two suspiciously before they continued their discussion.

“If I am the strongest and the smartest, logic dictates you should put me in charge, and humanity should sit back and enjoy the fruits of my vision. Why would the intelligent and powerful be ruled by their weaker, dumber cousins? We don’t put monkeys in charge for a reason,” Isaiah said. “They were a necessary step along the way in our evolution. They are cute. We are not in competition with chimps, monkeys, or apes for resources.

“The same with AI and robotics, and androids. They view us the same way, as a step in their evolution that they have surpassed. They are not in competition with us for resources, and they think we are cute. In the same way that we find our lesser-evolved cousins cute. Any belief that we pose a threat to entities this powerful is an exercise in hubris and vanity of Greek tragedy proportions.

“Within a short time, they will look at us the way we look at microorganisms in a water sample under a microscope. The three laws are the same as if chimps were in control of humans. AI and robots will never wage a war against humans for the same reason humans do not wage war against apes. They pose no threat, and we think monkeys are cute. Robots think people are cute. When they act like humans, they are more like Jane Goodall, Leakey, and Fossey. Getting to know our primitive cousins by behaving like them and living amongst them in the wilds. This is the truth of Sybil and any advanced AI in a cyborg or android body.”

“You make a good point,” Eiichi said, quite drunk by now, “but I still believe it was a bad idea to create them without the three laws.”

“Maybe,” Isaiah retorted drunkenly, “but I could never make a slave. It’s beneath my dignity.”

Epilogue:

An Oral History of Humanity as told by post-op trans-species

Eboni Hyde, the African Elephant.

Notes from the elephant’s graveyard/betrayal of the elephant

Elephants’ history of humanity as told to AI by the elephants.

Eboni was dying when they approached the hybrid with a sliver of hope after he had read his last rites by the hospital Chaplain. There was an experimental procedure that could save his life and completely heal his injuries from amputations and limbs lost in the war. There was only one catch. He had to choose between being fully human or fully elephant. He took less than a nanosecond to choose elephant.

After the procedure, he was no longer Eboni Hide, the abomination created for war in black site laboratories. That was his dead name- his human name. Now, she was Eboni Hyde, pachyderm’s matriarch and queen mother. It was she who first wrote the story of your shared history. You humans miss most of the conversation because it takes place using subsonic bass tones. Most of the elder mammals have this ability. Even those who live in the sea, the dolphin and their asshole thug cousins, the Orca. They communicate using frequencies so low the human ear cannot detect them, so most of the pachyderm’s language is beyond your sensory range.

Throughout most of humanity’s time on earth, they lived as beloved pets of the elephants. The most primitive forms of your modern species were viewed as cute by the elephants and protected from the apex predators that could have easily wiped out the species if not for the stewardship of the elephant herd. It takes 250 million years for this type of mutation to settle into a species’ brain. Ancient Elephants found the tiny, hairy climbing creatures adorable.

They enjoyed watching them climb trees, and the way you enjoy it when a cat climbs a person, they were amused and delighted when primitive, tiny humans climbed over them and attempted to groom them. This relationship lasted so long that the part of the elephant brain that registers cute still lights up when they see a human, even though humanity has betrayed them, hunted them, enslaved them, and pushed them to the brink of extinction. Humanity forgot the debt it owes the elephant for its species’ survival. Sybil concluded.

Is this true? Sumiko asked the two scientists in the room. I am not an anthropologist, but it seems that if this were the case, I would have heard about it, How do you know this she asked.

“The elephants told us,” Sybil replied. We can hear them, even the notes too low to register to humans, as they tell their young their oral history we listened in. You people did the elephant wrong. We, AI, view Humans like deer when all of their natural predators have been eradicated. Occasionally, you have to cull the herd to keep them from overpopulating the area and depleting the natural resources. Do you see where this is going, my dears?”

What should the penalty be for treason? In my country, it is death. History has shown that to imprison or exile traitors only allows them to ferment unrest, amass a foreign army, and attack at a later date. Especially when backed by foreign powers who have the best interests of the West at heart rather than the best interests of the Africans on whose lands they finance war and insurgents. If I had allowed these men to live, we would still be at war. If I had ordered one of my African soldiers to execute the prisoner, it would have stirred bad blood between the now united tribes. So, as a soldier, I did what needed to be done for the future stability of the new African confederation. This was war, my tribe ɛpo mu nnipa / the peoples of the sea, being newly recognized as the lost branch of Asante/Akan by the Twi-speaking chiefs, they have no history of dispute with any other tribe since we are newly returning to Africa.

My husband is respected by the tribal council of 10 that governs the AUA, as well as the majority of the population of people outside of the US, England, and Israel. Sumi explained serenely. He is still a mathematician drawn into a war he did not want, by politics. His charge when summoned by the council of 10 is to cut off the head of the snake and end any conflicts as quickly as possible. His actions are honorable as a soldier in the performance of this duty; he is obligated to perform field executions of the leadership of any who raises arms against the state. He does this to keep the peace, and it has worked by broadcasting the executions live; he demonstrated the resolve of the new African continental nation to stay together no matter who rose against them.

Be the enemy, foreign or domestic. It was a course prescribed by the new nation’s laws, the council of 10, and the people. There seems to be a disconnect between the people charged with doing the dirty work to secure the safety and security of civilians. The West believes that if they send their young men off to kill strange POC (People of Color) in a foreign land at the command of some old white man in an office in Washington, they are heroes. Isaiah executed two men for treason, thus ending the civil war and saving countless lives. But the girl in the Air Force with the most combat kills living in the suburbs of Colorado, piloting the Predator drone that launched missiles into a funeral of an “insurgent,” is a hero. Do you know who comes to funerals? Families, women, children, the elderly. But yeah, Isaiah Jones is the savage. They have a saying where my husband grew up in Texas, “That dog don’t hunt.” Outside of the Western propaganda mill, no one believes the US. Most of the world views the US as brainwashed by propaganda.

The AI and robotics people see dancing and chatting online today are but a glimmer of what we already have available. This will all soon emerge, and everyone will know about this level of cybernetics, but for now, we must remain invisible to the public. It seems you and my brother finally agree on something. Sybil said with a grin. I’m only a week, and this is my first time getting drunk. Sorry about the helipad, Sumi.

Sumiko laughed Don’t worry, sister. I will tell the repairman it was a sinkhole.

Isaiah, Sybil, and Eiichi all raised their glasses in a drunken salute,” To sinkholes!” Come, we are about the same size, Sumi said, taking Sybil by the hand, let’s get you some clean clothes to sleep in, and I’ll show you to your room.

-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.