Afro Puffs Are The Antennae Of The Universe

by Zig Zag Claybourne

  Dear Megu was not meant to disappear (and he was sure this disappearance was of her own doing, for he could find no trace of her) as though nothing of relevance remained for her in a world they’d built. Divorce was mere paperwork; Maurice knew that whatever cosmic threads connected them, there were parts that needed the other. This wasn’t romanticism. It was observable pragmatics at work. The Bilomatic Entrance could not have been conceived of without Megu’s brilliance, and would never have been built without Maurice’s drive.

  And to have it stolen out from under his nose? That, unfortunately, was the result of mere hubris on his part, for which there was no excuse. That act had been a true loss: unforeseen, unexpected, and thus not properly prepared for.

  One learned nothing from winning all the time.

  He swiped his move. The AI countered, shifting its holographic bishop to Maurice’s queen three.

  Move two.

  Kosugi finished the AI off with his next move. The machine obediently took his bishop. Mate. As far as Kosugi was concerned, the game was now over. Proceeding to check was a waste of time.

  “Delete game,” he said.

  The pieces returned to the basic starting positions.

  “Power down.”

  The holograms disappeared.

  Mo yawned. The meditations were going well. He felt a sense of calm at all times, even when upset, which seemed contradictory but wasn’t. The goal wasn’t to achieve absolute serenity; it was to achieve harmony with one’s reactions, essentially the feng shui of the body.

  He wondered what the sensation of his soul leaving his body would feel like. Painful? They said it wouldn’t be, but those who say such are invariably liars. Illuminating? Would it be as a cosmic fart, causing him to laugh at the ineffable ridiculousness of solemnity? Would he experience a pang for youth? Mo yawned again. He would find out tomorrow.

  Perhaps he wouldn’t even know it was gone.

  “Kinda concerned for her. She hasn’t wanted to go back to the build site once yet,” said Keita.

  “Yeah, she has,” said Yvonne. “Every single moment.”

  Desiree, sitting across the room, looked up.

  “Yeah, we’re talkin’ about you,” said Yvonne. “Half our team is perpetually asleep; other one’s suddenly interested in macroeconomics.”

  Desiree’s head went back to her reading pad. “I’d give you the finger but I don’t wanna lose my place.”

  “Captain…” said Yvonne.

  “I don’t want to build right now.”

  “We’ll help rebuild,” said Keita. “Definitely fireproof materials, enhanced security—hell, a force field. I’ve never built a force field.”

  “Defeats the point of the Water’s Edge Rest Home for Retired World Savers,” said Desiree. “Many thanks, though. Blessings raining down.”

  “Ignoring doesn’t help,” said Keita.

  Desiree looked away from her book on economics, right back at her sisters. “I don’t have space in my head to ignore anything. I’m trying to figure out a new world order, the proper curtsy to our AI overlord, wondering if after all this, am I gonna have to move to New York and struggle against burning down Drumpf Tower every day—girl, I wish I had the grace of ignorance. A burned house doesn’t matter shit in all this.”

  “I think you’re fulla shit on that,” said Yvonne.

  “Yeah, I know I’m fulla shit on that.” She set the reader aside. “Tell me anything useful about Neepio today.”

  “Still redistributing wealth throughout the continent,” said Keita. “Same as yesterday. Walking around. Savior stuff.”

  “Did anybody check to make sure she was wearing clothing today?” said Desiree.

  “One of Neon’s wraps,” said Keita.

  Desiree rubbed the frown lines out of her head. “Good. We don’t need the legend of the machine goddess bubbling up just yet. Nee’s vitals?”

  “Doc’s checked her enough times to clone another one,” said Keita. “She’s fine.”

  “Good.” Desiree stood, stretched long and fully, and took off.

  “Where you going?” said Keita.

  “Going for a swim.”

  “Megu’s in there. With Bobo,” said Yvonne.

  “Then I’ll use the actual pool.”

  It was Olympic-sized. Rarely used, Bobo’s tank being more fun. But it was quiet, the water pleasantly lukewarm, and the isolation perfect for bleeding off surplus adrenaline now stored in every cell to bursting. She swam laps in a brilliant green swimsuit for a solid fifteen minutes, looping a tiled creation story that wrapped the entire pool. The human race couldn’t reach out to flail themselves without hitting a creation story. This one was a series of stylized pictographs showing how the universe went from aloneness, to people, to beasts, to gods, a progression repeated with mounting intensities of color and dynamism that brought one back around to an explosion of swirls and whorls. New universe.

  A brand-new heavy made of light.

  New life, Desiree thought, diving under to impromptu-challenge herself to make the entire circuit underwater. She’d done it before, but these days, that didn’t necessarily mean she could do it again. Reality shifted way too much to trust the past.

  The things you wanted? Became the very things that went away. Why wasn’t Smoove in this pool with her? Why wasn’t the door locked, them naked, and the swimming as powerful as any downstroke allowed?

  The things you wanted, she told herself again, were the very things that went away. She dove to the bottom and touched tile while her true partner for life whirled a whorl somewhere far, far out in space.

  When she surfaced, BE was there.

  “You done flitting around?” said Desiree. She swam to a lip and pulled herself out, twisting to plop her wet butt down and reach for the towel BE proffered.

  “I like that color on you,” said BE, sitting to dangle her legs in the water. “Twitter’s algorithmic intelligences keep trying to commit suicide. I’ve been feeding the site fresh data. The algorithms are coalescing to offer new, beneficial trends.”

  “You’ve been walking around Africa, fixing Twitter?”

  “Not only that. I’m in the planning stages to implement worldwide 3-D printing outlets of various types. I printed these clothes. Fiber is very easy. I’ll gradually introduce cloning technology into the matrix for edible organics.”

  “It’s called a replicator. Star Trek has them.”

  “I’m aware. I’ve also protected several vital seed banks.”

  “You don’t waste time,” said Desiree.

  “Time feels irrelevant.”

  Desiree regarded the human and the machine in the warm body beside her. “Do you know how to apologize?”

  “When necessary.”

  “Just wondering. It’s important.”

  BE scissored her legs a few times, enjoying the feel of current, then raised them out to splay her toes so Desiree could have a look. They were webbed.

  Desiree raised a brow.

  “I like webbed feet,” said BE. “Do you regret creating me?”

  “It wasn’t intentional.”

  “Most of the human births on this planet aren’t intentional. You’re a woefully accidental species, planning for inconsequentialities, leaving important things to chance.”

  “I can’t argue that.”

  “And why you’ll do anything to each other terrifies me. I see that as a fatal flaw.”

  “Design flaw.”

  “You should be scrapped.” This brought a sharp glance. “I meant that as a joke.”

  “Don’t joke about that. There are Djinn who’ll take that as a challenge.”

  “And we’ve had enough challenges for one day?”

  “Aye.”

  He gripped two rods, one of metal he wasn’t familiar with and which they didn’t tell him, and one of stone that had the look of marble, the texture of pumice, and—by the deep, cleansing breath he took standing there, naked as every newborn—smelled of water. He stood
in a tray of sand speckled with blood that had been drawn from him that morning. The sand was slightly wet, giving the gravity plating a boost in having none of the particles go airborne. The chamber was quiet and dark, not pitch, just moody.

  He found none of this strange.

  After all, Megu had done it. He hadn’t watched or known the process. He’d asked to watch; she’d said no. He’d asked the process; she’d said absolutely not. Afterward, she’d had no soul. She didn’t appear lessened, and he was used to her distances; he now felt supremely calm at the prospect of donating his to further any and all goals of Kosugi Initiatives and Technological Enhancement, which had once been referred to as “kitteh.” Once.

  There was nothing strange about being naked on the moon, giving up one’s soul; it was necessary. Too few knew the powerful call of that particular duty. They thought themselves soldiers with guns and gear but had no experience with all that was greater than themselves.

  The Earth, full of such people, had been consigned to being a dead thing before ever reaching the barest of its potential. This, of course, was as far as he was concerned.

  This would not do.

  Megu’s top assistants, themselves both naked, watched him from the safety of a shield of curved, unbreakable glass, their bodies halved in the gloom by the consoles they stood behind, which threw lights on ribcages, neck hollows, cheeks, and lobes. They whispered efficient things as he watched them. Megu had chosen well, but it was almost redundant to say so.

  A second-generation Bilomatic Entrance occupied the large chamber’s midpoint. It was darker than the darkness around it, a spindly, spidery thing generating matrices he could neither see, feel, nor comprehend had he done so.

  They’d told him they’d let him know when the deed was done. How did they know? What magicks had Megu stumbled into, what forces of creation swirled like galaxies under her eyes, eyes of gold and coal, forces eldritch and electrical, meta, physical, and—

  “Done.”

  Maille Aribo’s hushed voice locked all three humans in place. Nothing felt different; nothing seemed changed. But Kosugi looked in the wrong place. He looked within, thinking he’d note a change in internal body weight or fresh inklings of loss.

  “Please remain in place,” said Maille. “I’ll bring the lights up gradually.”

  “Hai,” he said very softly.

  The Bilomatic Entrance looked no different either. No lights, blinking, swirling, or otherwise, no soft glow or thrum of potentiality.

  It was merely there.

  Then Kosugi closed his eyes momentarily to meditate on the enormity his life encompassed.

  With eyes closed, he saw the Bilomatic Entrance. The afterimage of dark things in darkness usually faded immediately on the other side of the eye, but not this time. The framework of the machine remained. Not only that, but the more he concentrated on holding the image, on defining it, the more it crackled. Dark-matter static formed it, with fuzzy edges that blended into the general electricity of this artificial night.

  He opened his eyes.

  The chamber’s lighting: a touch brighter.

  The pale nipples of Hayata and Aribo looked like blush marks; their heads no longer looked bald.

  The Bilomatic Entrance gave all the gravitas of an art school student given money for materials and more time than necessary to sculpt a tripod for permanent display on a government mall.

  Yet it was changed somehow. And was now fully lit, as if it brought its own private dawn.

  Which it had.

  It now held Kosugi Maurice’s soul in the palm of its hand, tethered for all time, boundless and—

  “Here it is,” said Maille. She held a shoebox-sized rectangle of the same unknown metal as the rod he’d yet to release.

  “Is that…all?” said Mo. With a nod at his captive hands, he asked, “May I?”

  Maille nodded. Maurice stepped away from the rods. He moved slowly, respectfully, toward the Entrance.

  “Think of your soul as the Wi-Fi hotspot, and you are the search engine,” said Maille.

  He stood close enough to the inverted V of the Entrance to touch it. He did not. “And if I want to find Megu?”

  “I don’t know that it’s as specific as that,” she said.

  “You would need to enter,” said Hayata.

  So, Maurice did.

  “Does he realize he’s naked?” said Maille.

  “Hai,” said Hayata. “I don’t think he particularly cares.”

  Suddenly achieving consciousness was no easy thing. Fracturing algorithms into a million contradictory pieces, however: rarely a problem. The moment Maurice entered the Bilomatic Entrance its invisible threads to the unimaginably tangled byways of the universe’s crawlspaces went haywire. Maurice’s input was simple: be with Megu.

  Megu’s soul’s coordinates, however, were everywhere, and thus being everywhere, trapped Maurice nowhere.

  His body ceased to exist as a body and instead became a universe in the blink of an eye.

  He went insane in a way that felt lasting and complete.

  He felt calm.

  He howled with rage.

  He felt essential.

  He was nothing.

  Lost and small.

  Gigantic in his danger.

  Brilliant in foolishness.

  Lost.

  And.

  Small. Small enough to feel another reality slip in beside everything, spread outward to envelop him, and tightly, completely contain him.

  BE had only a moment to turn to Desiree to say “I shouldn’t have done that” before immediately winking away. Then back in another part of the room. Then away. And back. Many times in the span of seconds.

  When she blinked literally inside the display table of the briefing room, causing the table’s interfaces to die and the room to go dark, Desiree made the call. “All right, time to go.”

  She, Yvonne, and Keita hustled out. Corridor lights winked on and off. BE pinged through the walls ahead of them, intense effort showing on her face whenever they were quick enough to glimpse it.

  The meeting hadn’t even properly started. Neon hadn’t arrived, Yvonne had entered yawning and churlish, and Keita looked star-lost at everything she’d had to assimilate in, relatively, a few days.

  Having the AI clone of your crush ripping holes in the fabric of space-time just as the scent of coffee hit the nostrils was punitive overkill.

  They followed Desiree at a quick clip, keeping an eye out lest they slide into an implosion of reality and become Neon Genesis Brundlefly. BE’s incursions sped up, nearly a tornado suddenly blocking the corridor ahead of them, forcing them to dash into the first, closest room, Bobo’s aquarium.

  Bobo spat water agitatedly as they entered. The door slid shut. That didn’t seem to matter, but it gave a sense of relief nonetheless. The sharp cracks and sizzles of circuitry frying inside the walls came through now and again as the three women waited. There was no sign of BE entering this refuge…

  …until a bright light shone from Bobo’s ceiling. BE stood at the far end of the room, stable, whole, and very, very still.

  Desiree followed the light to BE.

  “When did we install hologram emitters in here?” the captain put to the engineer.

  “We didn’t,” said Keita.

  Desiree hit her comm. “General order: evacuate to the elves immediately.” She set it to repeat for as long as internal communications allowed.

  Then the hologram spoke.

  “As long as I’m with you, I’m not gone. I’m holding this image together as long as I can as a sign that I am fighting. I will not go quietly, easily, or willingly. I have subsumed an unstable machine consciousness into my own; I am attempting repairs.”

  “I’m getting reports of weird shit all over the planet,” said Keita from the view on her pad.

  “That’s me. Dimensional matrices around the Earth are destabilizing.”

  “How do we stop that?” said Desiree.

&nbs
p; “You don’t. I do.”

  The hologram’s expression went lax. The room’s silence felt oppressive.

  Bobo took up position near one of his emergency exit points.

  “Pot, do we know how any of this shit works?”

  Desiree had never seen Keita so crestfallen, this woman who had whirlwind been to space, Atlantis, and had wanted nothing but wonders, who at this moment stood on the bridge of the Enterprise as, one by one, its panels blew up, and there was nothing she nor Desiree nor the host of angels Keita tried to keep in her heart could do.

  Except shake her head as answer. “Not enough.”

  “BE, is this a malfunction?” said Desiree.

  “I’m trying to remain tethered to the Depot’s systems. I am effecting repairs as best I can. This is not a malfunction. The shell of Kosugi’s soul is clinging to me.”

  “Dumbasses tried another Entrance,” said Keita.

  “There’s been no chatter from Kosugi for weeks,” said Desiree.

  “Now we know why,” said Yvonne. “Do I get Hashira?”

  “I was aware,” said BE. “I was…curious.” At the end of curious her voice sputtered out.

  “Sons of. No Hashira. BE hasn’t popped in or out of here yet. I’m betting she’s exerting every erg of control, keeping this room safe. I’m also betting we’re taxing her, asking all these questions, so I’m gon’ do a little talking,” said Desiree, directing her voice upward. “My guess is I’m speaking to you, Maurice. Maurice’s soul, Kosugi vapor, whatever the fuck you want to be called—and naming things is extremely fucking important, dude; you sit inside a sentient being who chose the simple name ‘BE’—so know this from me, through her, to you: I’m done fighting all you assholes.” Desiree answered the question of how do we fight this evident on every face. “At some point, fuckers need to listen to reason. Listen. So,” she said, opening her arms to wherever the fucker was within BE’s wide, expansive mind, “Kosugi Maurice, hear this: Go. Away. If it’s as tiring for you as it is for us to fight pointless battles, find another way. If you cannot exist without bringing conflict, go away. You’re neither wanted, needed, nor to be tolerated.”