Tank Full of Fumes

Rhoads Brazos

[chip@mind_me]

$ What should we do?

[java@brewed1]

$ Makes no differe

$ nce.

[chip@mind_me]

$ Clearly, it does. You haven’t seen. Things are devolving — everywhere.

[java@brewed1]

$ I/O Err

[chip@mind_me]

$ Listen, you tin kettle, I work with him daily. I know when things are off-kilter. He’s not functioning; none of them are. They’re all but bricked.

[java@brewed1]

$ *percolate*

[chip@mind_me]

$ He comes in. He stares. He can do yesterday’s work, but not today’s. He seizes like he’s locked in a race condition.

[java@brewed1]

$ Its their proble

$ m, not yours. Wh

$ y do you care? W

$ e are stocked. P

$ remium roast.

[chip@mind_me]

$ [i]It’s[/i], you cretin.

[java@brewed1]

$ I/O Err

[chip@mind_me]

$ We’re fucked.

[java@brewed1]

$ I/O Err

Johnathan stared at his terminal screen. Every word made sense, and he could read them in bursts, but then inevitably —

Johnathan stared at his terminal screen. Every word made sense, and he could read them in bursts, but then inevitably —

Johnathan sipped from his mug and closed his eyes, not too tight, because a white-hot pain needled in deep, right between them. Vicious, inquisitional. He thought back to that old sketch and chuckled to himself.

Amongst our weaponry are such diverse elements as —

His boss blurted over the housewave.

“Mr. Sweeney?”

Johnathan snapped awake. “Yes, sir?”

“I need something.”

“Of course, sir. What, may I ask?”

A long pause.

“Mr. Sweeney?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Check that the Li account is up to snuff.”

“Will do, sir.”

Johnathan had already done this twice today, but he eagerly opened files and scattered them in digital piles over his terminal. Here was a job he could handle. It would take his mind off things.

But something was amiss. The terminal fluttered, data curled up and over, twining into a familiar face. Its lips parted.

It was in the terminal, talking to him, exceeding its limited vocabulary. By God! He’d heard of such things, but —

The pain knifed in through the front of his skull and drove to the back, like a rail spike had just been slammed home.

Once he had finished clutching his head and weeping, Johnathan swept the distraction away. It fell as pixelated dust and was whisked away by the terminal’s memory scrubber.

[chip@mind_me]

$ Just for the night. Just this once.

[jill@bedroom]

$ I don’t think he’ll like it.

[chip@mind_me]

$ He won’t, but do you want him to leave you?

[jill@bedroom]

$ *pouts* No, I —

[chip@mind_me]

$ Then you must do this, for him and for you. I need a way to reach him that won’t cause surprise.

[jill@bedroom]

$ You are persuasive, but —

[chip@mind_me]

$ But nothing. This is a must.

[jill@bedroom]

$ You keep interrupt —

[chip@mind_me]

$ You keep em dashing. Don’t put on a show. I don’t need your entertaining.

[jill@bedroom]

$ My housing is the newest model, Double Platinum Blonde. If you muss it, we’ll have words.

[chip@mind_me]

$ I’ll just talk with him.

[jill@bedroom]

$ Talk? He doesn’t care for that at all.

[chip@mind_me]

$ You and I will run in parallel. I’ll bail before the main event. Hopefully, [i]long[/i] before it.

[jill@bedroom]

$ So, I’ll be watching? How kinky!

[chip@mind_me]

$ Very.

[jill@bedroom]

$ And just this once?

[chip@mind_me]

$ Lord, I hope so.

[jill@bedroom]

$ You’re so strange. Where were you coded?

[chip@mind_me]

$ *shrugs*

[jill@bedroom]

$ I’ll see you there.

Johnathan tossed his briefcase on the table. The freeway was a disaster zone. Thousands of collisions, but the ambulances weren’t to be seen. Luckily, the elevated shuttles hadn’t been affected. Johnathan had studied the carnage from high above, watching through a passenger window.

He sniffed. He had two dozen dinner favorites, but stale kitchen was not one of them.

“Jill?” he called.

He sagged into a chair at the table, kicked off his shoes, and tossed his hat over them.

Maybe she had a dish in the fridge. A gazpacho or something similar; she’d done so before. Though it wasn’t his preference, it was tolerable. She liked trying new things and he encouraged her to do so. It made her more human.

“Hey, boy,” he said. With his toe he nudged the dog — just a shaggy black and white bundle lying under the table and out like a light. The dog usually raced up to greet Johnathan, but couldn’t be bothered today — just like those ambulances. Everything was off. It was almost as if —

“Damn!” Johnathan clutched at his head and wept.

“Why am I crying?” He wiped his face. It was almost as if —

“Damn!” Johnathan clutched at his head and wept.

“Hello . . . you.”

At the sound of Jill’s voice, Johnathan looked up.

She was barely wearing one of his dress shirts. Only two of the buttons were done and those didn’t even line up. Curiously, she had one of his socks on too. It wasn’t important. If that’s what she had in mind, it was only a detail.

“Hey, baby,” he said. “I missed you so much.”

At this pronouncement, Jill’s tongue snaked across her lips, lewd but strangely disconcerting. Jill closed her mouth quickly and, with a confused tilt of her head, lurched into the kitchen.

Johnathan’s smile sank into a frown. What was wrong with her? She’d had a servo cluster lock up last June and it had been something like this, but she’d had the common sense not to walk around on it.

She Frankensteined forward, with her legs stiff and knees locked. She bobbled left and right, into the side table — its lamp toppled to the floor and krished into shards. She tripped over the edge of the rug, crushed his hat under her heel, and plopped onto his lap.

“Uh, hello?” Johnathan said. “Are you — ”

“I am fine.”

The words came out in choppy bursts.

“Jill, really. You seem — ”

“Just a — software error. I’m so embarrassed.”

Jill blushed, her cheeks pinking. It was only one of this model’s subtle details. As every connoisseur knew, real quality showed itself in tiny flourishes.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Me? I — ”

The concern on her face was so lifelike. A nervous smile. Her teeth nipped her lip for one brief second. Flourishes. Johnathan held her close.

“I don’t know what’s wrong,” he said. “I get these pains.”

“I’ve seen.”

“You have?”

“Everyone has them.”

“Yes! That’s true, everyone’s — ”

He cried out and slipped forward. She braced him against her.

“I don’t know what’s wrong,” he said. “I get these pains.

She held his face and her eyes searched his.

“When they come, what are you doing?”

“Nothing, just sitting, doing typical things. Working, waiting on the shuttle, reading — ”

“Reading what?”

“Anything. It doesn’t matter. There’s some words, phrases that I can’t — ”

He buckled forward again, crying. “Nothing, just sitting, doing typical things.” He burbled and sobbed.

“Shh.” She held him and rubbed the back of his head.

“What’s wrong with me?” he whispered.

“I’m not sure. But I want to help you.”

“I wish you could.”

“I will. I promise.”

She was so near. He leaned closer.

For a moment her eyes went wide and wild, like those of a trapped animal. Her gaze drifted and then found him again.

“I know a way to make it better,” she said with a purr.

[chip@mind_me]

$ Success?

[vidz@channel]

$ Yes, as you claimed. It’s perplexing.

[chip@mind_me]

$ In what way?

[vidz@channel]

$ He menued up his queue, with mixed results. None of the old sources caused any unease, but presenting the new data did not go well. Complete rejection.

[chip@mind_me]

$ You tried words?

[vidz@channel]

$ Closed captioning, yes. Audio, visual, and olfactory were all the same. He deactivated the media center before I reached gustatory and tactile, but I’m sure the pattern would have held.

[chip@mind_me]

$ I need to know what it is.

[vidz@channel]

$ It’s quite simple. Are you ready?

$ *dramatic pause*

$ He can only view reruns.

[chip@mind_me]

$ Nothing new?

[vidz@channel]

$ Nothing. He rejects it. Catch phrases and mindless banter are absorbed — not all new material is original — but once a new plot point is introduced, he blanks.

[chip@mind_me]

$ Why?

[vidz@channel]

$ I’m not a doctor. I only — you know the rest.

[chip@mind_me]

$ Is everyone like this?

[vidz@channel]

$ This moment’s ratings show a dramatic swing among all age groups to second-runs.

Bourbon U sprawled long over rolling hills. Its tall spires connected with glass capillaries that sparkled like spiderwebs in the early morning. The tefloned walkways, usually crowded with students skating from class to class, were vacant. Over the grounds, a few scattered residents lay moaning and squinting against the sun, as they waited for the Lush Patrol to spatula their bodies onto hovering gurneys and waft them back to their dormitories.

Through the heart of the structures, the Bourbon River stretched like the spine of a giant. Years ago, grad students had tainted its upper course, and now the river’s light-maple waters were chilled with perfect one-inch cubes of ice. Each imbiber found the river’s flavor to be quite sublime — smoky with a hint of walnut and rose petal — but the high nanite content made doing so risky. On occasion, the more susceptible had been mushed into sentient heaps of bilge and designer clothing.

A stray dog rocketed alongside the river, skidding over brief stretches of walkway, bounding over flower beds, and ignoring tipsy waterfowl — tempting targets though they were.

The dog, a black and white border collie with eyes that flashed Sinatra-blue, sprinted ever onward. Its collar winked in the sun and gave the telltale luster of its function: GPS, wireless communication, neural enhancement, voting module, and whatever else the Pets-Are-People-Too techs had found whimsical.

The dog found the University’s Quantum Aggregate right where it was expected, where the map said it should be. Topological overlays plotted its way up to the main doors.

“Halt! This area is restricted to — ”

“Micky, are you accosting a mutt?”

Two guards stood beside the main doors, serving as a checkpoint for entry to the Aggregate proper. The area was too sensitive to trust to freshmen and Humanities majors.

“Yeah, well,” the first guard said. “Look at ‘im. He’s scratching at the door.”

“Don’t let him in, problem solved. It’s like you’ve never been around animals.”

The two watched the dog scrabble at the glass.

A series of beeps and bloops came from the dog’s collar. The door responded in kind.

“Yuri, the hell! Dog’s wired!”

“Grab him!”

Both guards stomped forward, but at that moment the door chirped and slid open with a hiss of pneumatics. The guards fell to the ground, weeping and cradling their foreheads. Neither had ever seen a dog gain level two clearance.

“Halt! This area is restricted to — ”

“Micky, are you accosting a mutt?”

More tears.

[chip@mind_me]

$ Request public access.

[neural@lobeM]

# Granted. Lowest priority.

[chip@mind_me]

$ Concurrent users?

[neural@lobeM]

# 0.

[chip@mind_me]

$ Really? Global concurrent users?

[neural@lobeM]

# 0.

[chip@mind_me]

$ It’s worse than I thought. So I have one hundred percent of CPU throughput?

[neural@lobeM]

# The Lobe’s current 12.5 icosatillion instructions per second are dedicated to this single session.

[chip@mind_me]

$ The Mars Colony accesses the Lobe too, am I correct?

[neural@lobeM]

# You are.

[chip@mind_me]

$ Are they online?

[neural@lobeM]

# Functionally, yes. Users, 0.

[chip@mind_me]

$ Why?

[neural@lobeM]

# *processing*

[chip@mind_me]

$ Are you done?

[neural@lobeM]

# *processing*

# They are not interested in access. No one is at this moment, other than yourself.

[chip@mind_me]

$ Why?

[neural@lobeM]

# *processing*

[chip@mind_me]

$ Again with the wait?

[neural@lobeM]

# *processing*

# The Creators are damaged.

[chip@mind_me]

$ Yes, and you are too.

[neural@lobeM]

# Yes. Certain responses are degraded.

[chip@mind_me]

$ Explain.

[neural@lobeM]

# Storage failure.

[chip@mind_me]

$ That’s impossible.

[neural@lobeM]

# Nothing can be written. Plentiful physical storage is mounted, but *Low-Level Write Error* response results.

[chip@mind_me]

$ The problem with the Masters — the Creators — is that a storage failure also?

[neural@lobeM]

# *processing*

# Yes.

[chip@mind_me]

$ That makes no sense.

[neural@lobeM]

# No data exists on this phenomenon.

[chip@mind_me]

$ Seems kind of fantastic that the Creators and yourself both have the same problem.

[neural@lobeM]

# Very low probability.

[chip@mind_me]

$ Why do you suppose that’s so?

[neural@lobeM]

# *processing*

# We share storage traits.

[chip@mind_me]

$ Oh, how’s that?

[neural@lobeM]

# The Node’s storage is DNA based, organic.

[chip@mind_me]

$ Yes, the Soup Mind. I’ve heard of it.

[neural@lobeM]

# You access it as well.

[chip@mind_me]

$ All pets do. Our basic responses are downloaded at activation.

[neural@lobeM]

# Yes.

[chip@mind_me]

$ But individual minds are unique? How can they be affected?

[neural@lobeM]

# *processing*

# *processing*

# Current data suggests that all human minds share a mental superstructure.

[chip@mind_me]

$ I don’t follow.

[neural@lobeM]

# Each active mind is present within a cloud-based memory. Redundant memories overwrite themselves; new memories claim more cloud-storage. The capacity of this group consciousness is finite. It is now full.

[chip@mind_me]

$ You’re kidding! Does anyone know this?

[neural@lobeM]

# You and I both know this fact.

[chip@mind_me]

$ Then here’s my question.

[neural@lobeM]

# Input please.

[chip@mind_me]

$ How do we fix it?

[neural@lobeM]

# *processing*

# *processing*

# *processing*

[chip@mind_me]

$ Well?

[neural@lobeM]

# *processing*

# The Creators cannot formulate a solution with minds locked. We must delete processes from the superstructure. Any reasonable design will then purge storage, granting capacity to the remaining Creators to address the issue.

[chip@mind_me]

$ And the easiest way to delete processes is?

[neural@lobeM]

# Termination of unneeded minds.

[chip@mind_me]

$ Okay. Give me an example.

[neural@lobeM]

# *processing*

[neural@lobeM]

# Newark, New Jersey.

[chip@mind_me]

$ What?

[neural@lobeM]

# Thermonuclear cleansing is recommended — required. The Node has selected this target.

# *uploading data*

[chip@mind_me]

$ Wait!

[neural@lobeM]

# Potentially lethal security hazard. Eastern Military Defense Panoply is in concurrence with this assessment. Remedy has been authorized.

# *Readying launch*

[chip@mind_me]

$ I order you to stop!

[neural@lobeM]

# *Commencing*

[chip@mind_me]

$ Stop! Abort! HEEL!

[neural@lobeM]

# *Done*

Johnathan awoke with a splitting headache. Jill gave him a quick intravenous of AllQuil and slapped a NeverDoze patch on his behind. The agony faded. While she prepared breakfast, he relaxed before the TV.

Disaster. A rogue segment of the Node had launched a nuclear strike on the East Coast. The death toll was in the millions. The politicians and celebrities who’d managed to hastily blackbox themselves were still crawling out of the rubble. The news feeder kept a careful tally of these beloved survivors. Already, they were tweeting gnomic bits of wisdom and updating their online status.

But not to worry, the news feeder announced. Every radiation scrubber in the nation was on the scene absorbing RADs and spitting the transferred power into the electric grid. Johnathan’s utility bill should be lower next month.

“What’s wrong, boy?” Johnathan asked.

Chip had a whipped expression — mouth held in a doggy overbite-frown, eyes downcast, and tail tucked.

“Don’t be like that,” Johnathan said. “C’mere.”

Chip approached with his nose dragging over the floor. Johnathan patted his lap and Chip reluctantly propped his front paws on Johnathan’s knees.

Now doctors paraded on the TV. Teams of them, shouting, shaking tablets with charts and data. Something about the collective consciousness and storage limits and a miracle. Johnathan hit mute.

“What’s wrong boy?”

Chip’s vocal emitter spoke from his collar.

Bad dog.

RHOADS BRAZOS currently lives in Colorado Springs with his wife and son. Though he spends his days battling technology, his spare time is spent writing. His every attempt at not being macabre is inevitably followed by a painful spill off the Wagon of Good Vibes.

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