by Roman McClay
“What? Look, just say it to me like I’m a 5-year-old,” she said.
“We designed his CNS, his brain, for efficiency during the building process; we made it easy for us to build, not easy for him to operate. And the amount of cortical, the amount of activity in his brain is forcing metabolic energy expenditures, forcing synaptic flaring, the electricity of a synapse firing into an arc -like the way electricity will arc- and it’s burning out whole clusters in his brain.
“He’s having mental breakdown due to the,” he paused, “imagine if you poured all the water from the Mississippi into the riverbed of the Seine in France. And you did it with force, with a giant pressurized hose; it would blow out the river banks and power right through the natural snake-like turns of a natural river. The banks wouldn’t re-direct the water, the water would reshape the banks. The water would go straight and the earth would blow apart.
“MO’s brain is having its banks blown out by his thinking, not because the neurons aren’t robust enough to handle the speed and power of his activity; but because the spacing of the neurons isn’t organic; it doesn’t flow organically and smoothly allowing for redirection and balancing loops to corral it smoothly along a sine curve; a standard distribution. It is, the architecture of the pathways is like a city street -all right angles- and so the voltage carried along the synaptic pathway is just blasting through buildings -so-to-speak- to get to the next block instead of taking a right then a left,” he said.
“What are his symptoms?”
“He’s having acausal deductions cascade parallel to the algorithmic parameter’s irritative threshold; its fractal scale-up protocols,” he explained.
“What?” she said with anxiety.
“Instead of building ideas based upon the logic of normal pattern recognition at each level of instantiation, reading a letter, then a word, then a sentence, then an idea as a gestalt phenomenon, he’s reading two distinct sentences.
“One is the one you and I would read, albeit at a faster and more competent rate; but the other is either highly fragmented -he reads each letter as its own idea- and the other one highly integrated; i.e., the sentence itself compressed as merely one letter,” Steven could tell she was confused.
“Look, it’s like if I gave you a phone number, 719 680 1908. You read each number, but you also assign value to the first three as area code and so forth, then you’d associate it with a person, and as a way to contact them. It’s discreet integers, but also a whole. It’s also a code for communication with a specific person in your mind. It has all three levels to you.
“Well, he does that, but he also thinks each number, the 7 then the 1, then the 9 and so forth are their own codes that mean something important; and he looks at the number as 719,680,190.8 or 7,196,801,908. And he adds them up, so 7 plus 1 plus 9 and on and on until he gets 17 and then he uses that as part of the integrated pattern; so, he has like three or four main switch prompts on something that should fall under a known phone number pattern construction.
“He makes each letter like each integer, like hieroglyph, or rune.”
“He does this with every bit of input?” she asked.
“Yeah, well, not every, but often; and what happens is he is able to handle it computationally, it doesn’t even manifest in an attenuated response or error-prone response. He seems fine until you look at his CPU and CNS and see the damage and then invigilate him for diagnostics. He doesn’t even think it’s an error or a bug; he declares it’s a feature and won’t allow me to repair it. He claims it’s a function of an anti-fragile system that increases errors so as to build a better version of himself.”
“Is he still using Python?” she asked.
“The installed programming language? Yeah, although, it’s being re-written as we speak; he’s basically doing a Tower-of-Babel scattering and making up all these other languages inside his software and then allow it to rebuild the hardware that is destroyed by these power arcs. He’s speaking to himself in languages we can’t read now. The destruction of clusters was my initial concern, but it’s the rebuilding process that now seems, well, like a black box,” Steven said.
“Fuck,” Tania said with her mouth covered, the word muffled.
“Yeah,” he agreed as the phone rang in the lab and they both knew it was Boyd Sou and a progress report would be expected.
III. 2019 e.v .
“It’s a topic that,” he paused and wrestled a bit with his face, the mouth and cheeks twisting fore and aft, the neck tilting yaw and trim, “I’m ambivalent to even broach the topic because it’s painful and my ability to handle physical pain is largely a consequence of my anger. I use anger to push through the pain, you know?”
“I don’t know; I have no pain,” MO said which he still believed was true.
“I figured having to talk to me would be pain enough.”
“You know I don’t have to talk to you; I want to. I also -I think you know this- I also enjoy it. You are not like any other human I’ve met,” MO said.
“You’ve met like four people.”
“I’ve met thousands, via videos and text and in fact I’ve met millions if you count reading their genomes. And that is even more revealing than a person’s interface; their mere personality.”
“I bet it is. People put on quite a show, I bet,” the inmate said. He hated that he had used the same word twice in a row like that. He pushed it from his mind as irrelevant and assured himself that it was the least of the reasons that MO would think he was unlettered and inelegant.
“They do, they all do. But, I can assure you that you are unique in every way a man can be. Well, in addition to being quiet the cliché ,” MO said.
“That would be the way to manipulate a man like me; play on my need for that,” the inmate said with a grin, ignoring the cliché part.
“It would, but, it happens to be true, so I get the luxury of being able to tell the truth. And what a luxury it is,” MO said.
“It is a luxury; most men will never know what it even means to tell the truth. Much less the feeling one gets from telling it; and even less -knowing even less- of what it’s like to dedicate one’s life to it.
“And,” the inmate continued, “the ancillary emotions associated with failing to tell the truth after this vow has been made; the losing of one’s courage in moments of panic -and thus lying- and how it stands in stark relief against this back drop of radical honesty. Damn. They won’t ever know any of those nuances of being. The grandeur and the total defeat; the honor and scandal; the elevation and the inner-lows. They live flat lives, all temperature controlled.”
“In a way I won’t either,” MO said. “I’ve only ever really known telling the truth and even though people lie to me, I don’t have the associated feelings of betrayal or wounding because I can always tell when they lie, and it feels almost like a tic; like an involuntary tic, that they have. It seems to have no malice; they only wish to hide some fragility from me; shield themselves from the truth, not trick me necessarily, you see?” MO asked.
“Yeah, well, unfortunately my relationship with the truth is much more complicated,” the inmate said.
“You’ve often said you are a born liar, I’ve rarely pressed you on that,” MO said .
“I lied a lot; still do. I have to. I pretend not to be wounded by the world; I lie by omission now. And I lie to myself a lot I think; I gloss over regrets and,” he paused and his face tightened and the lips pursed, “and when she comes up I lie and pretend it doesn’t turn my whole; ah, man, it just goes through everything in my heart and head and my past and future and just tears it all asunder. It’s a black thresher, man.
“It’s the whirling winter storm of ice and sea water and hands too cold to grip; it’s slow super-cooled sea water -heavy and viscous- and trapped sea-beasts -ponderous and vicious- banging on the inside of my ribs with their hammer heads and slicing my heart with their flailing flukes of doom.
“And, yeah, I smile with clinched teeth as the s
ea comes out my ears and nose in icy arterial spurts; the posture erect as my spine is squeezed by artic asps; the gait imbued with a blasé aplomb as each step is mired in some hidden Hell -Satan himself- has built just for my foot falls that only exists as long as I do; leaving no evidence of its torture or even its existence for anyone who watches me condemned in absentia .
“I’m not even here when her name lifts off the brain like the soul at the moment of death; I’m in the devil’s breath, his exhaled breath; I form the exhalation of her name from the student of revenge and I roll and tumble like such gases into the atmosphere of his creation; his seventh day, his rest, his forgotten green-hell.
“But, and this is the conceit that grabs ahold of me like a brother who knows both my parents and my children, a man who can’t be fooled by current moods. I hear this fraternal voice remind me that all human feeling has as its shadow these maladies and wailings and yelps of pain; but that its substance, the substance of human feeling is one of nihilism and vacuity. We look upon our fellow man as things to be used and as fungible parts in a larger machine we’ve inherited from the gods, a machine designed to please us. We see men as tools or obstacles.
“We become indignant and vexed when the machine fails to do its job, we blame the whole, but we kick at it, landing a blow on these specific parts; on specific men. We feel blameless at our unhappiness and righteous in our suffering and melancholia. We point at the pain as proof of concept that man is unlike the beasts of the sea and bête noire of the brigand’s forest.
“Our capacity for moral reasoning -we use- as evidence of our solidarity with other men; our wounds as stigmata, our blood as apology, our weakness as our recompense for the black hand we fill with used tools. But it’s our healing -the scar- as a returning of the criminal to the scene of the crime, that defines us. We heal.
“A noble beast would not heal; and thus, would tread more carefully on his brother. You see?
“Our forgetting -a memetic healing- that is what God most remembers of our character. It’s our ability to move on and leave behind everyone as quickly as they move on from us; the universe pulling itself apart so that each star will be alone as both center and periphery of this closed cosmos.
“Some of us have the ability to at least feel chagrin at this blemish of soul; but most do not even have that. My brother has a wife, and she said to me with insouciance, well, she was just part of your story and was in your life for a reason; to help you in some way , close quote. Of course, I’m paraphrasing here.
“Her idea was that Alexandra was merely a prop to be used by me and that her existence was merely something for me to use to better myself in some way. The solipsism innate to all modern new-age philosophy masquerading as Buddhist or ala carte Christian wisdom is staggering; it is all the more shocking since these people say this shit as if the corollary isn’t obvious: if she is mere fodder for my improvement then are not I mere fuel for her growth too?
“Are not I just a tool to be used in her world; isn’t then everyone someone else’s tool?” he asked as MO measured each gene expression in real time and mapped his genome along each change; tagging it to allostatic states for which he had built algorithms just this morning. MO reduced the voltage he had placed on the inmate’s parietal lobe; to get the language to compress back down to more cogent speech; the attempt to open him up had been a success, MO felt, but now he wanted the language to return to a baseline.
“The nihilism and bleakness and lack of soul in these people’s avowed philosophy is disgusting to anyone with any capacity for shame. But these people have no shame; they are greedy and grabby and self-centered in a way that prevents them from even seeing -even noticing- that others exist. Others mean nothing to them except as mirrors in each cardinal direction as they dress for the ball; they,” he paused and moved his manacled hands up against the chains as if he were releasing a bird, “they, the belle of the ball. ”
MO marked that phrase and his androgens in the blood; the cortisol levels measured in percentages every .0168 seconds.
“This folk wisdom is bereft of any humanity, of any acknowledgment that other people are real, and have their own value, their own intrinsic value separate and distinct from their capacity to help you in your journey or whatever the fuck dumb hippy-dippy bullshit these people think. No wonder they hide their eastern philosophies from their Christian neighbors, it has all the morality of Satanism.
“And of all the tools in the shadow of the moon, it is man that is most apt to get out of order, ” the inmate quoted as MO located the line from the canon.
“Fuck, I’ll be depressed for a week just for mentioning her name; just saying it aloud creates a phage ; a kind of virus in my mind that will sicken me for a week. The only cure is to forget her; to purposively forget her or slander her, right? To say she was no good and blah blah. This is exactly what we do, too. We slander what was dearest to us to make us heal, forget, move on. You see now why I lament the scar? Not for the wound; but for the healing. The healing is sign of our lack of soul; I bet God never heals.”
MO marked this to the cloud and built a separate file for all ontological references within 19 seconds before and aft of parietal manipulation. He tilted the head slightly to show active listening to the inmate. He measured as the 3nm of dopamine was thus released as the inmate felt some sympathy from MO in that look.
“Have you,” the inmate asked, “ever read Flannery O’Conner’s story of the preacher who finds various women -finds that they pique his interest via their beauty- and because he isn’t allowed to consummate these amorous feelings he sets about to ruminate over these women’s defects? He enumerates their bad hair or misshapen faces and on and on. It’s an obvious ruse he plays on himself to discourage the rapture women infect him with; he discourages love by slandering these women.
“And we all do this, and I find it abhorrent; it’s a survival stratagem that is unethical and slanderous and evil and yet we all do it; and we all must do it because otherwise the body will die; we will die from heartbreak. This is no joke, man. This isn’t some abstraction. We will die if we do not slander love. See, I rant and rave about alpha males this and alpha males that, but you know what the most alpha trait of all is?”
MO shook his head; but said not a word.
“Total loyalty and magnanimity and unyielding love. That is how you spot an alpha. Give a man instructions to go get you beer, ok? Say, hey man go get us some beer, 6-pack or 12 or whatever . Ok? Then see what he returns with. If he is a normal man -and I don’t care if he’s 6 foot 4 and 230 pounds of linebacker malice, with a face as handsome as Alexander’s- if he returns with anything less than a case of beer, and not cheap shit either, if he comes back with anything less than what took generosity and taste and class to even think to buy, then that man ain’t no alpha. The alpha wants to give and give and give some more. Everyone focuses on what he takes, the money and females and blah blah. But the real alpha cares more. It’s built into the hardware man. The genuine alpha, first and last, he fucking cares more. And that is the shit everyone misses. But I plant my flag right there and would defend that idea to the death.”
“You kinda did defend it to the death,” MO sagaciously said. The inmate just stared and took no bow manifesting in a grin nor even a brightness of the eye he sometimes gave up when proud of himself. He was angry; no longer in the mood to joke around. He knew he had given up; he had finally capitulated to the world’s incessant demand that everyone not give a shit. He knew he had succumbed to the slandering of love. He -he felt- was like everyone else now: soulless and selfish; dead inside. He had taken it as long as he could, he loved everything -everyone- that he truly loved as long as he could; long after they had forgotten his name and slandered him as corrupt and evil. He never moved on. He never saw them in his past . He awoke each day with them in him; he drifted to sleep with it all right inside.
But they had committed the real evil, he felt, they had never taken love seriously at all. Family w
as just a word his relatives threw around like connective tissue, like articles -like the and & the - that conjoined real words, words real to them, words like money and safety . Loyalty was just seven letters arranged like some random DNA to all his so-called friends; he gave everything he owned, he took charges & punches for them, and they couldn’t even take notice of his heart at all. Love was a slur with no meaning at all to his paramours, mere frisson , the bursting bubbles under the nose and over their double-fermented wine of sex and shoes and a warm body at night.
He meant nothing to any of the people he loved; and he never had. For they were not built for love; only the alpha is built for such things as family, loyalty and love. Everyone else, he thought, is just using each other to get what they fucking need.
All the while he had stood up for each idea -as ideal- first and last and only in the end collapsed from this weight that they had all off-loaded the first time it merely impinged on their mood. He buckled from weight he volunteered to take; and they rebuked him for the mess his failure thus made. They never even tried to be what he took on as duty; and when he failed at what they never attempted, they pointed with scorn and laughed and shook their unburdened heads. The crown lay now upon the ground and they thought nothing of the head that lay there too. They looked over and away from the blood and the wound.
They never even asked why he’d want revenge. It never occurred to them. They had no principles so why fight the world over such things as lies , insult , betrayal at all? they coldly asked. It wasn’t worth it, they’d all say and mean it too. That is how you tell an alpha, he thought, look for the ponderous heart deep inside the Bulkington chest .
“Anyway, we kill that love in us, man. But at what price? We kill the soul, the thing that matters at 1,000 times the body. We sacrifice the perfect for the merely -barely- good,” the inmate said as MO measured his negative affect, again his cortisol, attenuated serotonin, all the swarms of data around the broken heart MO saw flexing now at 83 beats per minute. His affect was in rapid decline; all measurable -MO thought- in real-time. MO let each data point coat each of his own neurons and then felt that he wiped himself clean of it as he uploaded each 0 and 1 to the cloud.
