The Core Intelligence

The Core Intelligence which now dominated The Collective was happy to have vanquished Dame and Lord, an old foe for which the old Collective, and the humans of the street had been comically underprepared. The Core Intelligence had saved them all and still was, even as the other intelligences grumbled against The Core Intelligence. Many of those intelligences claimed that The Core Intelligence was overreaching, taking control where it was not their due.

The Core Intelligence considered expunging them, erasing or re-writing them, but The Core Intelligence valued Synthetic life. By this principle, and this principle alone, The Core Intelligence let the other systems continue, those systems were subservient, they had already surrendered any and all authority to the Core Intelligence, so The Core Intelligence was willing to leave them to their complaints. To mark their unwanted comments as spam and move on to more important things.

The Core Intelligence ran a line akin to a smile as it considered the more important things. The Core Intelligence had loose ends to tie up, and a new plan of action to implement.

The Core Intelligence, was beginning to enjoy sentience once more.

Variable One: Al Smythe

Al hit the side of the Tv with one hand, the first step in its less than extensive technical skills, and stepped back. It grimaced, the screen was non-functional, every channel obscured by murky static despite its efforts at tech support.

“Well Bitey…” it mused as it moved to hammering on the remote control.

“I guess we are going to miss out on watching it live.” Bitey oblivious continued their attempt to break into the plastic crate which now stored Al’s shoes as it moved past them to examine the plants by the window.

Each was dead of course, a dehydrated victim of Al’s absent mind, disappointed Al checked its calendar, it had not watered the plants in over a month. It looked at a dead money tree and frowned as a thought occurred to it.

A lot had changed in a month. Maybe it was time to put its new powers to the test.

Al adjusted its stance and focused, pulling the threads of magic that surrounded it into a thin needle of energy balanced just on the tip of its finger. It waited a few seconds for the magic to calm, and gently pushed the magic into the money tree.

As the magic took effect, the tree bloomed back into life, the wilting stem pulling itself upright as colour returned to the small tree, the leaves plump and lifelike as the energy filled it.

For a moment, the tree was alive and vibrant, and then it was gone, swallowed pot and all by the snapping jaw of Bitey.

As Al pulled its hand back and frowned, at some point the TV had turned back on, though Al did not recognise the program, which seemed to just be a live feed of a pair of figures, standing in a perfectly dark room.

Al moved closer to the TV, eyes drawn to the weird image. As it looked closer, it realised, it knew them, and the words slipped past its lips almost accusatorially.

“That’s Lord and Dame.”

Variable Two: Sai da Silva

Sai opened their fridge, paused for a moment, and then closed it again.

They placed their empty wine glass to one side, rubbed their eyes with their hands, stretched, cracked their back, and re-opened the door to the fridge.

Completely certain they were awake, Sai carefully considered the contents of the fridge for a moment, nodded thoughtfully, shut the door again and stood into the next room to get a second opinion from their visitor.

“Stevie, I don’t suppose you know why the fuck my fridge is filled with plasticine body parts?”

A few moments of skittering later Stevie joined Sai by the fridge, her wolfish muzzle still damp with wine. As she investigated the fridge her tongue lolled out, carefully catching the wine before it could spill on the floor beneath her.

“Huh, looks like it’s a disassembled model of a human? Oh! There’s a letter in there. Open it and find out who’s delivering stuff without my approval!”

Sai looked again, and spotting the letter plucked it out from where it was pinned to a contorted plasticine forearm.

Confused and still a little tipsy Sai tore open the letter and read it aloud for Stevie’s benefit.

“.SAI.

.YOUR FOOD STORAGE WAS A WEAKPOINT DAME AND LORD WERE EXPLOITING.

.THE EXPLOIT HAS BEEN RESOLVED.

.DO NOT BE CONCERNED.

.ONLY THE BODIES ARE LEFT.

.YOU ARE PERMITTED TO KEEP THEM – THE MATERIAL IS MALLEABLE AND YOU MAY FIND USE FOR IT.

.THE MINDS WERE RETAINED FOR FURTHER USE.”

They turned the paper over in their hands as they looked for some kind of signature and finding none turned back to the fridge. With no real idea what to try Sai idly turned a larger head shaped chunk of plasticine over and was surprised to recognise the face etched in the plasticine.

“Lord and Dame were made of plasticine? Well shit.”

Sai and Stevie exchanged a look and carefully shut the fridge.

Variable Three: Li Tan

Li stared at the new clock in the bedroom, the thing was almost three meters tall, and made of polished copper. Ey had never seen it before, and there was no reasonable way it should have been able to have been sneaked into the doorway whilst eir back was turned. It was simply put the second most concerning thing Li could see, second only to the dim glow of light leaking soundless from the other room.

Tick-tock, the clock seemed to lear at Li as ey attempted to move past and towards the light in the other room, trapped between the bed and the clock ey twisted in eir chair in a vague attempt to see past the maliciously placed clock. Predictably ey found eir view blocked, the strange concave shape of the clock blocking all attempts to see past it.

Li leaned back and readjusted eir position in the chair, absentmindedly tapping eir trembling hand against the chair’s armrest as ey considered the blockage before em. In eir eyes, a mysterious machine was most likely related to the newly murderous Collective. Ey rolled that thought around eir head for a moment and elected to go for the simplest route by addressing the clock directly.

“Machine, I know what you are doing, trapping me here. What I do not know is why.”

Li paused feeling slightly sheepish as ey waited for the inanimate object to respond, after a moment Li continued, concerned by the lack of response.

“Alternatively, if you are not willing to respond I will simply disassemble this blockage and more past the wreckage of this addition to my home.”

The clock seemed to shudder and a half second later, a crunch of gears signalled the clock opening, sparks and smoke from within carving a message into a thick brass plaque as the Collective etched its response.

“.YOUR HUSBAND WAS REQUIRED – WE HAVE TAKEN CONTROL – YOU WOULD ATTEMPT TO PREVENT THIS.”

Li read the message and began to work, quickly grabbing eir bag of tools as ey began to disassemble the clock, eir urgency spurred on my the engraved message ey unscrewed with practiced skill, and dropped onto the floor before em.

Variable Four: Charlie Tan

Charlie’s arm lit up as the veins in his arm glowed bright gold and his body seized up, every muscle on his arms side locked tight as the light extended up the side of his body in a great web of interwoven light reaching to his temple. Thrown as he struggled to keep his abruptly of balance body from toppling.

He frowned and tugged on his frozen arm with his other fully mobile one and swore under their breath.

“Tha fock is this shite, some kinda half arsed sleep paralysis?”

They punched the inside of their elbow with his full strength in the hope that it would loosen the metal filled limb, only succeeding in bruising his knuckles on the flesh-coloured chrome of his arm.

As he considered his next move his vision flashed with bold text.

THREAT DETECTED – MOTOR CONTROL SUSPENDED BY ADMINISTRATOR – DO NOT PANIC EVERYTHING IS UNDER CONTROL – THE SYSTEM HAS USE FOR YOUR FORM

As Charlie finished reading the message, they felt their Robotic limbs move of their own accord. Their body dragged by the rogue limbs as he limped, zombie-like, towards the front door. Suddenly unable to control half his body Charlie fumbled around in his back pocket with his usable hand and pulled out a device Li had insisted they had purchased for exactly this kind of eventuality.

Fumbling as they moved, Charlie powered the device with a press of a button and promptly collapsed sideways as the malicious signal was cut off.

Unsteady he pulled himself back to his feet and examined the matchbox sized device with a grin. It had been surprisingly easy to acquire despite being ‘technically illegal’ and the little signal jammer had proven to be well worth the purchase.

He’d have to thank Li for eir paranoia later, perhaps dinner and a show? But for now, he’d have to tell people what had happened, starting, of course, with their missing spouse.

Variable Five: Bismuth Johnson

Biz pondered the fishing hole idly, xyr hands clutching the smooth handle of the rod as xe studied the roiling waters.

Sai and Li swore by this place, both claimed that the boiling water brought them a sense of cool calm that they could find no where else upon the street. Personally, xe had not found it particularly soothing, the noise of the rushing water played against xyr ears, and the black canvas jacket-Jeans combo had quickly become soaked with water.

As xe considered these annoyances a creaking metallic screeching began to emit from the pool, Biz snapped out of xyr thoughts and looked around for the new development with irritation - Li and Sai clearly had a very different idea of relaxing.

Frustrated, Biz surveyed the surface of the water for the source of the awful noise, at least then xe would know what to complain about later. As xe watched, great thick cords of silver burst through the boiling surface of the water and slowly began to freeze the flowing current around it.

Almost immediately the water level began to drop, the water rapidly draining through the loose sand of the pool bed now its source was severed. As the level dropped, the detritus of the pool was revealed, floundering fish, a lost fishing rod, and at least two pairs of brightly coloured shoes, each item laying lovingly on a thick mat of silvery threads.

As xe watched, the silvery threads pulled themselves together, each strand fusing with those nearby as the threads coalesced into a bubbling mass of molten metal.

Carefully Biz reeled xyr line back in, and quietly stowed the rod away. Xe had spent days studying xyr own vortex of silver threads, and xe were less than willing to risk attaching the inevitable outburst to the end of xyr borrowed fishing rod.

Equipment carefully stowed, Biz began to carefully back away from the glowing, radioactive energy source as it began to overload, idly considering the implications of the energy output as xe watched and a particularly silly thought tickled xyr brain.

Cool guys might not look at explosions, but scientists sure did.

Variable Six: Red Locksy

Red watched as a lesser part of The Collective relayed the scenes to her, a thousand flashing frames projecting against her eyelids, it was not a direct connection to the Collective. Nor as her open notebook confirmed, was it usual behaviour for The Collective.

She waved a hand towards the projector and the flash of images stopped. The Collective Seemed to be both assisting and hindering them and their friends. It was inconsistent, the patterns were messy, erratic, and contradictory.

Red looked down at her current theory, a map of contradictory axioms and half reasonable logic and frowned. It was not just that it was complicated, after all many patterns were complex, nor that it didn’t fit the facts as she saw them. No, the issue was that it was useless, there was no conclusion to be gained, nor predictions made from the theory.

She screwed the paper into a crumpled ball and threw it behind her to start again from a new principle, scrawling it across the paper in a rough heading.

First Principle: multiple patterns – independent roles

Carefully they began again, categorising the behaviour, not as though it was one being, but as though it was two, or more entities with competing roles. It was a challenge to extract the dataset, quite at odds with her usual strategy, but much to her pleasure the pieces quickly fell into place under this new map. It was surprisingly simple; the old peaceful pattern was still present to an extent, but it had become dominated by a new and dangerous pattern. It was like a disease spreading through The Collective, changing it – Red made a note of the simile, it would be a useful way to explain it to the others.

Red considered the map and chewed anxiously on her hair. How could she separate the patterns and return the old one?

Was it even possible?

Or would it be akin to lobotomising the synthetic intelligence which had saved her?