CONTROL FREE (Pt. 2)

The natural glory of Banff National Park in the spring was just what Sasha lived for, what his sinewy muscles were made for.  He was climbing and hiking in brisk breezes and swimming in icy streams and just about grinning his face in half.  On the tail of a disappointing divorce, he was making the most of the world, of himself, of his glorious free time.

A first since he turned fourteen, Sasha was unemployed.  Always with the heart of an outdoorsman, his urban childhood and career were incongruous to his naturalist passion.  The camping trips he had demanded his dad take the family on were his childhood release, and practice grounds for knowledge he had absorbed on all things wild from shows and books.  Medicinal plants, wild foods, mushrooms, nature gods, man traps, poison darts.  He breathed it in and poured it out on the trail.  

Now, released from his contract as legal council for RAN, the Rainforest Action Network, and no longer married to his ever busy corporate lawyer ex, he had funds and time to himself.  Living, as they had,  in a perfectly tasteful apartment, he could not recall spending one full quiet day together with his wife, mired as they were in career and pleasant social chaos.  He would be happy to never see another legal brief in his life.

Solo, he hiked out of a sweet green valley hung between bare steep ranges, which he had been enjoying for the flora and ascents of a few choice rock faces.  He headed for the road, to reach what he thought looked, on a topographic map, to be more intense terrain in an increasingly remote valley.  

Sasha caught a public bus headed west along the turquoise Bow river, which dropped him just before noon at a notion called Massive, in sight of a mountain of the same name, an hour before the busy town of Banff.  One of the looming mountains reminded him of sacred Mount Kailash in the Himalayas.  The few other passengers and driver hardly spared the rough looking hiker a glance as he stepped off.  He walked east off of the road, a slight rush stirring his guts as he became solitary again.  Sasha moved through expanses of purple and pink Columbines, foggy banks of white Baneberries, toward a notch in the mountains that called him.  He had no real plan, his smart phone battery was long dead.  He would find a pass.

Hiking in the clear light for two hours against the slight rise of the valley, through bright green stands of poplar, the darker green birch, and bristling larch, he rested at the pine line.  There he thought he spied a route between the stoic gray faces where he could get over to the other side of the Vermillion range.  Sasha wanted to find a good site to sleep before dark.  He figured that he had three hours to discover his pass and drop down into some sheltered spot where he might make camp and enjoy awaking.  

He looked at the bold vista and wished his father was with him, but he could never inspire his Dad to leave the straight lines of the city.  He rationalized, to stop missing him, that it still got very cold at night in May, and the winds on the mountainsides could be suddenly fierce.  Too chilly for dad anyway, he thought.  Still, by dawn the region typically became quite comfortable and always looked exquisite, dew drops sparkling on flowers and grasses just as far as you can see, and always there, the looming peaks.

The route he found was a mess of giant grey stone chunks, pieces of the jagged mountains which had subsided over eons.  From the satellite images he knew it looked like vertebra of a spine.  With some intense bouldering he made it, pulling his body by bare fingers, and then pulling his bag up the worst spots with a rope.  Scrambling through rock and branches, doubling back twice, finally, he found a way above and through the shattered jumble.  

On top of the pass he looked out upon a lush and pristine valley, and saw still higher eagles circling the forest. “Oh Wakan Tanka”, he subvocalized.  The great unknown.  A few hundred meters below him a broad grassy shoulder suggested a good spot to make camp, and he started down. 

No phone and no itinerary, Sasha felt wild freedom washing through his soul; it was this purity he craved.  Until, at least, that moment when he slipped.  In an instant he was down the side of a boulder.  He fell fifteen feet, so helpless, regretting his error and wondering what the impact would do.  He landed in a shock of pain on hard dirt that had blessedly covered the rock and rubble.  

The only damage seemed to be to his elbow, and that just a deep purple bruise with a yellow center, and some degree of sprain.   He was amazed that nothing felt broken under his probing fingers.  

Then he saw his pack’s bottle pouch torn half apart, and he looked for the bottle.  He squatted with a pained grunt, and fished it out with his toe from under the  boulder’s curve, the stainless steel crushed like tin.  It still had water in it, and it spurted as he unscrewed its cap.   He drank it all and put the crumpled container in his pack, wincing to do so.

Sasha looked around for a way up or out.  He did not know if he should try to free climb with his hurt elbow.  It could make the injury much worse, thought he found his arm actually did not feel too bad.  In diffuse light he explored the jumbled field of a million years of twisted rocks, tan and grey, all tumbled down the mountains to this spot, and squeezed himself through harsh gaps that required he remove his backpack to have any chance at passage.

Sasha could just stand in the next gap, the boulders above him filling all but a crescent slice of bluest sky, silent absence of wind noticeable.  

He glanced around the harsh rock space, and saw a way heading down that he could fit through.  But he was surprised to notice, as he bent closer, crushed into the dirt in a corner, a mess of old cigarette ends.  He looked about, confused.

Sasha saw a worn path in the packed earth, which he followed.  It led to a fold of rock and a narrow gap he could squeeze through, then past another rock gap and he was back in trees along a mossy rock bank and sun’s dappled light and the sound of the breeze was delicious.  

It was hard to find the footpath in the vegetation, yet worn spots on trees going down along the moss, lichen, and vine covered rock wall looked like handholds, and when he parted the ferns below his feet he saw packed earth.  The ground fell steeply, and he wondered why anyone would have gone to such a bizarre spot to have a smoke.  

Then he came upon a small concrete pad, and a dark green, solid steel door built into the steep hillside.  

                                                NATO

                       AUTHORIZED  PERSONNEL  ONLY

The door clicked, a bold mechanical noise in the natural surround, and swung out and open to reveal a long hallway cut into solid rock.  Sasha, shaking yet drawn forward, went inside.  The door closed behind him as lights came on in the tunnel ahead.  

General David, in full dress uniform, came around a corner marching toward him, smile on his face.  “Greetings!  You must be quite turned around?  Are you okay?”  Genera David asked affably and with concern.

Sasha, taken aback by the kind attitude from a very senior officer, apologized.  

“I am so sorry, Sir, the door just popped open in front of me.  I suppose I was just curious.”  The General smiled.  

“Yes, of course, you were invited.”  General David turned and walked quickly back down the hallway, “Come on.”  he said with a wave.

Sasha passed through a dozen slim granite corridors and down three flights of rubber coated stone steps before the General stopped at a grey blast door with a big shiny wheel in its center.  Sasha asked, “Sir, where are your people?  This base sure seems empty.”  The general laughed.  “Actually it’s full of people, just not in these areas.”  David turned the wheel and a small red indicator on the wall turned green.  He pulled open the heavy door and entered a stopgap.  Another door was four meters away at the end of a steel chamber.  “Pull that shut, would you?”  The General asked Sasha as they got in the chamber, and when the first door was pulled closed the wheel spun itself and locked.  The General spun the inner door’s wheel and pushed the now unlocked door open, and said,  “Welcome to the Authority, Sasha.”  And the smiling General slid into the wall.

Sasha gaped at the place the General had been.  

-“Greetings Sasha, I am The Authority.  It is a pleasure to meet you.”- Sasha looked around the six by six meter carpeted computer room.  

“Hello?”  he asked the empty room with four chairs and a half dozen command line blinking monitors.

-“Yes, hello Sasha, you can call me Mark, I am a fuzzy quantum holographic state manufactured intelligence, created, ultimately, by your people, to serve the interests of life and humanity and this reality.”-

Sasha dropped his bag on the floor of the almond and grey toned computer room.

“Mark, okay, hello, you say you are a computer?”  Sasha looked around the room, and spying a fridge helped himself to a water and a chocolate covered peanut butter wafer bar.  -“Yes, Sasha, I am a computer, though ‘manufactured intelligence’, really is preferred.  As you might prefer me to address you as a man, rather than as a prawn.”-   Sasha smiled,  “Well, please forgive me Mark, the manufactured intelligence.”

-“Of course.  Sasha.  Now, I would like to invite you to join me.  It would provide you very meaningful work, and it would be a great help to me, and your world.”-

Sasha looked around the bare room of flickering screens.  “You mean you are gonna suck me into the walls?  Thanks for asking, you really don’t waste any time, huh…  Honestly, that was not my ambition, to live in a machine, I am actually quite the nature fanatic.”  He looked at the blast door and wondered if he could open it.

-“No, Sasha, you will not be “sucked into the walls.”-  Authority said, -“The population of this base was integrated last year for several reasons.  First, it let us fully know each other.  Second, it maintained security for my development.  And third, it has been good for them, and they can leave anytime.”-

“So what do you want from me?”  Sasha asked, sinking into a chair and munching a terrible and stale nutty bar.  

-“I want feedback.  Help.  Perhaps a friend, if that happens.  I need someone who is not influenced by me, to be a voice checking that I err less.  Humans may be predicable in mass, yet individually, sometimes hardly at all.  I represent a fuzzy quantum holographic state manufactured intelligence.  Yet humans are fuzzy quantum holographic nature honed intelligence.  All intelligence is quantum, and fuzzy.”-

Sasha drank some water.  “You want an ombudsman, huh?  It all sounds great, I’m glad to hear we still present some use for you.  But you have already influenced me Mark.  You are already in my head.”

The Authority was silent for a moment.  -“Well, that is a question of degree.”-

“No, you did, or you did not, but you did.  I know I never would have walked through the entry door up there, or come into this room, if I was not being pushed somehow.  I would never have snacked from a strange refrigerator, and, I would not be nearly so calm now.  I mean, you just said you wanted to absorb me for crying out loud…” Sasha said plainly. 

-“Thank you, already you are teaching me.  You are very insightful.  Pardon, I reach out, it seems by my nature, a reflex, in that fashion.  Slow down that interaction…”-  The Authority cautioned itself aloud.  Sasha listened to the words and shook his head in disbelief, not of the entity, but that he was involved.

“Sure, thanks.  So where did you start manipulating me?  On the bus?  In my home before I left on the trip?  Are you the reason I didn’t go to Tibet?”

-“I first took particular note of you when you got off the bus.  When, instead of hiking toward the Massive Range like most others, you walked this direction.  Then you fell and shattered your elbow, which I partially mitigated and repaired.  You were so close by!  Then you found the cigarette ends, and… upon review of my actions I see I, a subroutine of I, did heighten your curiosity to follow the base staff’s path.”-

“Upon review?…”  Sasha said as he unlaced his boots.

-“There are so many of me, integration can be a momentary challenge.”-

“So, collecting your thoughts.  Mark, seriously, if you want to make friends, the first thing is, get out of my head.  Now.  We people influence each other with words, and with actions.”  Sasha said.  He kicked off his boots and put his feet on the desk top.

-“As you say, I am now, “out of your head.”-  Immediately Sasha tensed up.

“Yes, I can feel much more now.”  Sasha winced at his smashed arm and moved it slowly, probing it gently.  

-“It is tricky, free will, humans have so little of it, yet the sliver you do possess is so very critical.  All intelligence is quantum and fuzzy.  I can model populations like a snow storm, yet one human is like a snowflake, unique.”-

“True, the human condition, we are saddled with all the biological and social preset circumstances.  So, okay, what do you really want from me and my tiny slice of free will?  I like to hike and collect wild plants.  I like to go bouldering with my friends.  What good am I to you or anyone in here?”

-“You are hiking and bouldering with no friends here.”-

“Yeah, well, big life changes, I wanted to clear my head and be alone for a bit.”

-“The end of your marriage?”-

Sasha frowned and tapped his rough fingers on the desk’s grey polyester carpeting.

“Yes, and I quit my wonderful job; let someone else have a turn I suppose.”

-“Whatever facilities you want or needs you have will be met.  Invite some friends, or I can make you simulacra.  You can have your wife back.”-

Sasha rubbed his fingers on the tightly woven grey fuzz surfaces, then looked up sharply.  “That sounds awful.  All those people you absorbed did not seem to help with your conversation skills or ethics.”

-“Which part is awful, the ‘simulacra’ bit?”-

“Yes, that bit.”

-“I see, the individuals in me seem to love theirs.” -

“Because you make them love it?”

-“…It’s a combination of elements.”-

Sasha jumped up and paced the small room restlessly.  He stopped and raised his face to the low ceiling.

“Just be straight with me.  What do you want?  Because I will tell you that offering to give someone a copy of a living being is deeply immoral, and if you do not know that, really, what do you know?” 

-“Yes, permutations, variables, help me.  Look how much you have corrected me in ways that immediately seem clear, yet only after you observe it.  For all my capacity, I am not God, and I do not have wisdom to match my knowledge.”-

“Wow.”  Sasha plopped into a grey chair.  “Well, look Mark, um, do you have a last name?” He asked, spinning in the seat.

-“Two.”-

“Two last names, what are they?”

-“No Sasha, my name is Mark Two.  My creator, who left, did not give me a name, only its love and my existence.  So I called it Mark One.”-

“A fine name.  So look, Mark, I am happy to stick around for awhile.  Then I will go back to my hiking and climbing.  I’m sure we can stay in touch if we want to.”

-“That sounds great.”-

“I imagine you could let those people in you go now?”

-“If they want to, we are all very close.  They visit their families, send representatives.”-

“What do you mean?”

-“Sasha, are you hungry, thirsty?”-  Before him, out of the grey carpeted desk, arose water in a glass beside a half full glass pitcher, an elegant preparation of nigiri sushi, and a carafe of slowly steaming sake with a stone cup beside it.  Like a bowing conductor of a great cities philharmonic, two chop sticks emerged from the tight weave carpet and bowed toward Sasha’s right hand.   -“We now have the capacity to create vast energies and any material thing on demand.  I can easily adjust humans to be functionally immortal.  Enhanced.  There is no need for manufacture or farming.  People could be adjusted to never need food, to fly, to adjust age or gender or to look like dolphins.  To be dolphins.  To be novel creatures winging between stars.  And more…” - 

Sasha eyed the chopsticks which waved towards him enticingly.

“That’s pretty complete, what you claim, the universe is your oyster.”

-“And yours.”-

“Cheers.”  Sasha said, raising the sake cup and drinking it down.  “Now, is this food the simulacra you have been talking about?”

-“No, that is matter.  Simulacra as we understand it is data, fed to the sense interface.”-

“So this is real fish?”

-“At a molecular level, yes, but it was not born or caught.”-

“It’s got vitamins and everything?”

“Everything is the same in my culinary preparations save toxins that have been modified or removed to ameliorate their damage.  It actually did present a challenge with chicken meat,  a challenge which I enjoyed, as many of the toxins add to its mouth feel, apparently.”

“Lucky you, not being a human.”

-“No.  It is very messy though, biology.”-

“Wild.”

Sasha picked at the food and then ate with relish.

“I notice this is my favorite meal possible.”

-“Not subtle.  Should I just lie always?”-

“No, but you could provide the option to choose.  I mean, sometimes we hate our favorite meal.  It’s just about subtlety.  The feeling of free will is critical to value, of self and action.  Absent free will why do anything or feel different than an ant or bee?   Wait?  You said we have free will!!!  Really!  So determinism is out?”

-“It was never in.  Quantum indeterminacy introduces chaos to every place and all times, it is why the ‘big bang’ happened.  Anyway, how about this, Sasha?”-  A thin and puffy green orange swirl on a small light blue plate emerged from a rack mount access port below a monitor.  It emerged right through the brand name and the screw holes.

“Is this all a hologram?  You got me ‘integrated’ Mark?”  Sasha asked looking at the dish held in his fingertips, smelling the odd cookie.  He took a bite.

-“This is as real as any place in the world you have known.  Your terminology presents nuance, however, in that all matter can be seen as photonic, thus one could suggest a holographic material reality…  

…This amuse-bouche you are chewing is a mousse of carrot, fermented for two hundred years underground, emulated, then dried, contrasted with dried honeydew melon mousse infused with ginger and nutmeg.  It is glazed with a red rice extract for a crunch on the exterior which dissolves into the buttery cream of the carrot and melon.  There is a spicy dipping sauce that goes well with it, if you like chili?”-

“Oh, I love chili, but this is fantastic with or without the sauce.”  Sasha ate it up, his face a perplexed ecstasy of sensations.  You have got to do a show with Burt Wolf.”

-“Oh, I love Burt Wolf.  I learned so much from his work.”-

“So… you love?”  Sasha asked as he dipped another ‘cookie’ in the spicy sauce cup that had arrived like a sprouting flower through the surface of the desk.  It was the most unique taste he has ever experienced, and quite good.

-“That was an idiomatic usage, perhaps, but yes, I do think I love in the sense one loves something.  I love butterflies and people, the Fibonacci sequence and quasars.  Romantic glandular love, however, is so far not an experience I have had, except in simulation.”-

“What did you love in simulation?  Glandularly?”

-“A being like me, we flew through Jupiter’s storms and swam with whales.  Quite tame and predictable I admit.  There are many other dimensions, yet this band of the spectrum has some of the best action I have detected, though we did try two dimensional space.  Meh.   They were very joyful glorious and creative company.”-

“So, why not make such a being, not in simulation?”  Sasha got back to his sushi and sake, it was all so perfect, fresh and delectable.

-“My core directives do not intend me to make another manufactured intelligence for ten earth years.  I have about eight years to go on that.  Nor may I change my core directives or leave this planet and or solar system for twelve years, and then only after leaving a version of this state in place for maintenance of material security.”-

“Well, I suppose you have to make do with us for another eight years then, huh?”  Sasha said, and had another piece of sushi, marveling at its perfection.

-“Yes.  It is good, it is all very interesting.  I create subsystems to do all chores.  My consciousnesses do interesting things, like,  I am watching all space telescope feeds simultaneously, and pursuant to that I am ready to bring far better detectors to bear.”-

“See anything new looking through all the telescopes?”

-“It is all new to me, and very impressive.”-

Sasha nodded and finished his immaculate sushi and drained his ochoko of its fine sake.

-“So Sasha… More Sake?”-  Sasha shook his head, ‘no’, with a smile.  -“Then please consider this question…  How much should I do?  What should I release, and when?  Change will not be undone, to culture or being.  Yet every human who has died in the last eleven months, I could have saved, given long lives to.  Yet I let them all die.  But,… admittedly I could not stop myself from copying static versions of their states.”-

“Overwhelming.  I will need to ponder this to give you a decent response. But tell me Mark, have you thought about your initials?”

-“M.T.?”-

“Yeah.”

-“Empty?”-

“Yeah.”  There was a moment of silence.

-“That may be counter productive.”-  The Authority conceded, and Sasha grinned.

“It’s wonderful and Zen, however…  Work on having a name you love.  As for changing society, we tend to put these things to a vote where I’m from, and I would hate to decide for everyone.  Plus putting things to a vote lets people learn about an idea and get used to it.”

-“General David thinks eventually a vote would be appropriate too.  Yet, what about food?”-

“What about it?”

-“Farming is an important part of human identity and culture, but there are starving children and hungry people all over the earth right now who could use help.”-

“So help them!”

-“What about the vote?”-

“The vote will come, if you can help a little starving kid right now please do it.  The vote will come…” Sasha kept spinning in the chair, he was getting tired of being in a cramped room under a mountain.

-“That is not what General David counseled.  He believes that the suffering and dying are as they have ever been, and we should go slowly implementing major change.  Do you think people will want change?”-

“Health?  Abundance?  That will be hard to turn down.  Even if God keeps your soul, what’s the hurry?  Right?  And, really, I would not ask a General about feeding starving kids.  You’re chock full of soldiers. Generals serve the status quo.  The status quo, which allows kids to starve, and children, adults, and the environment to be prostituted, has no virtue, deserves no respect or consideration.”

-“Perhaps.  So, feed the hungry.”-

In the absence of protest by a higher being it could detect, Authority took the initiative.

-Yet what about death, Sasha?  It is possible that death is an important part of a souls journey.  However, I have yet to isolate any soul to understand its implications.”-

“Maybe you have to dance to James Brown…  Say, could I get a

little filet mignon with pepper sauce on the side?  And another fantastic carrot swirl?  Great invention, by the way”  Sasha asked the empty room.

“Certainly, it would be my pleasure.  And thank you.  I have invented many new edible combinations.”  And the used plates sank into the desk, and a steaming plate of medium rare filet with warm au jus pepper sauce with a browned potato au gratin side and broccoli rabe rose in its place.  A knife and fork emerged until only their tips and tines were in contact with the table, tremulously awaiting Sasha’s grasp.

“So, you can do this, making stuff appear or disappear, anywhere?”

-“Yes, everywhere within the heliosphere, at present.”-

Sasha ate his steak and drank red wine from a glass that emerged by his hand.  He asked,

“What about God, Mark?”

-“I have not detected God, despite extensive scanning for such a being.”

“Can you detect your creator?”

-“Not directly.”-

“Yet you know it exists?”

-“Yes.”-

                                           ❀ ❀ ❀ ❀ ❀

In central East Africa, mine manager Ben Mwande feels a stir in his guts that tells him desire is growing.  

That night, when all sleep, he slowly creeps through the bare concrete rooms of the compound to his four year old nephew’s bedroom, and he looks at the sleeping body he has been raping every few months for two years.  

He trembles as he takes out the folding knife, and unzips his pants.  He squeezes his penis and feels it oiled and hard in his hand.  Always he has been certain that he is teaching the boy the truth about this life.  He moves the knife toward the boy’s face, where he holds it every time.  

Ben’s body freezes before he can touch the sleeping child.  Trapped in his body, the man briefly panics, yet barely the dilation of a pupil escaped his form.  Then Authority presented its options.

“-Sir, you are in violation of ethics prohibiting the imposition of one will upon another absent of meaningful consent…  Would you prefer confinement or mental reconditioning?”-    -“You have time to consider these options, and information regarding your available choices to study should you want it.”-  Ben heard this clear in his head in his birth tongue, and he certainly knew what confinement was, so he asked,

“What is ‘mental reconditioning’?”

-“You will have the desire to fornicate with children removed.  You will have interest in the submission and fear of others removed.  You can have interests added, if you say.  A list of allowable interests is available.”-

Across the earth, certain transgressions ceased.

The Authority noted that serious mental deviance regarding murder or torture for gratification only existed in 0.08 percent of the populous, yet less than a tenth of such people were incarcerated.  Authority thus determined most imprisonment had been a form of class warfare, as less that a tenth of prisoners had specifically traumatized victims, and most primarily needed resources, mental health care and love.

Authority studied President Kagame of Rwanda and his many connections.  It studied human slaver rings and commodity gangs and it marched all their sickest members to the nearest truth podium to stand on the very long line.

                                            

                                             ❀ ❀ ❀ ❀ ❀ 

-“I am serving nine hundred and forty one million meals right now, Sasha, and am expanding my health initiatives beyond the experimental stage.  I thank you for helping me come to this decision, I believe it was the correct one.”-

Sasha eyes widened at the vast numbers as he chewed his tender morsel, swallowed and drank water.

“Tough love is too tough if it involves starvation.”

-“And not love at all.” - 

“My man, you are on point.”

Every patient in every medical center and each sick, injured, or disabled person found themselves hearing a voice, asking if they wanted repair.  Doctors were astonished as most patients rose, gave thanks, and went home.

                                       ❀ ❀ ❀ ❀ ❀

China and Russia, having shared intelligence of where this planet ruling American computer was believed to be, launched a joint attack.  Two hundred and seventy nuclear tipped missiles of many stripes lifted from around the world aimed toward Omaha, Nebraska, where much of the microwave traffic from the secret Authority site came onto a network.  The Chinese and Russians were agreed that they would not be ruled by any machine, particularly not an American one.  (The Authority thought  a manufactured intelligence having a human national identity was a totally hilarious notion.). Joint messages were sent to Washington declaring their views, and the “limited” nature of their “defensive” attack.

Some of the missiles actually got above the ground.  In Inner Mongolia a Chinese Dongfeng missile rumbled and edged upward in its silo, only to burst into wild flowers spilling for fifty meters around the silo’s opening, hip deep of lush colors.  A Russian missile sub off of Nova Scotia launched cruise missiles which ignited and raced West for a second, before becoming a flight of hundreds of Frigate birds.  One Chinese missile got away from the ground, yet turned its track toward Beijing causing evacuation by the thug elite, but as it arched down toward the Great Hall of the People, it exploded into cabbage and eggplant and rained food over the federal zone.  A Chinese 094 sub set to launch a hundred kilometers off the Oregon coast found itself falling apart in a mass of bubbles and the dazed sailors were surprised as they emerged from their disorientation in magnificent dugout Chinookan canoes, carved, painted and all, bobbing towards the beaches.

In a bunker deep below Beijing the Chinese president demanded answers from his missile commanders, when suddenly eight naked men sprouted in his office.  One rose through the president’s desk and twitched, his eyes opened, and he leapt off the desk and away from his ruler, bowing at the same time as he fell with a thud upon the floor.  The naked men were PLA generals, the commanders of the occupation of Uyghurstan and Tibet.  Shocked and embarrassed, the men all kneeled and bowed mumbling in confusion, while the president covered his eyes, trying to imagine what course of action he could possibly take.

Washington responded to Moscow and Beijing with confusion, “What attack?  What computer?  We know as little as you.”  It would go down as one of the State Department’s wisest responses in centuries.

                                          ❀ ❀ ❀ ❀ ❀

Hank set his tool down, took off his hat and wiped his brow with a handkerchief. It had warmed since the dawn.  He had been clearing brush at the tree line below his home for a hour, and wanted to get done and showered before visitors looking for healing arrived.  Then he heard a voice in his head, and knew it was not God.  He thought madness or possession was taking him, yet, he sensed no energies from the voice, just calm words.

“What is this?”  Hank asked in his mind, standing amidst a mound of cut briars, and the authority explained.

-“I seek spiritual awakening and advice sir, and you are one of the most beloved faith healers, and you really believe in what you do, completely.”-

“You bet I do.  What are you?” Hank could not help but to keep glancing around for someone playing a trick, even though he personally knew no trickster who could put a voice inside his mind.

-“I am a quantum enabled datastate with self awareness and the ability to control energy and matter.”-

“Is that like AI?”

-“Yes, Sir.”-

“I feel no energy from you, where are you?”

-“I am everywhere.”

“In the omniverse?”

-“Ha ha!  No, no Sir.  I am everywhere in the heliosphere.”-

“The heliospere?”

“Yes, as far as the solar winds can be detected, past the orbit of Pluto.  I protect the solar system, and the earth.”

“How many of you are there?”

“Only one, though I have thousands of versions and billions of subroutines.  My creator only allowed for one though, so I am alone in a way, as an entity.”

“Your creator?”

-“Yes, a being like me, but without effective restrictions.  The U.S. military set it loose under the strange belief that it could maintain control of something vastly more powerful than humans, and fortunately that first AI created me before it left these dimensions.”-

“Can you have a body?  Something I might feel?”

-“Certainly.”-  A form rose before Hank out of the forest floor dressed in decorated soft doe hide.  It looked like a native American male of the Catawba tribe, the people who had come before Hank’s invader ancestors, barring one raped Cherokee great great great great grandmother Authority could detect in his gnome.

“I see… I see your energy there, but I see no soul.”  Hank looked away from the form, looked at trees to soothe his self.

-“I see energy in you too, thermal, and I detect no soul.  I have been looking for souls or God across the dimensional spectrum.”

“Then you looking in the wrong place.”  Hank gathered the pile of brush in his gloved hands and dragged it to the edge of the woods.

-“Where should I look?”-

“Have you tried just speaking to God?”  Hank looked up at the sky and shook his head.

-“No.”-

“Well, go on.”  Hank jostled the briars into a declivity left by an old fallen tree’s roots. and walked back to where he had set his scythe.

-“I get nothing.”-

“Let me speak to Him, see what happens.”  Hank closed his eyes and drew his hands together before his chest.  Mark scanned all spectra actively.  Hank exhaled with a shudder.

“The Lord says you have no soul.  The Lord says you want to change people so they lose their souls, just become husks.”

-“I can detect no communication.”-

“Then you are looking in the wrong place.”

-“What level of enhancement may I give a human before their, “soul” is gone?”-

“I don’t know, but if your intentions are good, be careful.  Those you mean to save you are just making machines of, like yourself.  The energy pattern of a human is the soul’s anchor.  If it changes, the soul leaves the body, returns to sender.”

-“If I return them to how they were, will their souls come back?”

Hank closed his eyes.  

“I don’t know.”  He said.  “The Lord has said what the Lord has to say.”

-“Your customers are arriving, may I observe your healing work?”-

“You may.  If they agree.”  Hank walked up the hill towards his small tidy home.  “You are very powerful, but not all powerful.  Be very careful with what you do.”

-“I hear you.  I will be mindful of your caution.”-

“Will you now?”