Every Sparrow that Falls – Chapter Nine

Flip was not very far from the computer repository. It only took a second to propel herself through the air, exciting molecules and bouncing off them, traveling just under the speed of sound. She reached the basement area just as the second shot scorched the ground where the human had just been lying. The communication team were all speaking rapidly to the computers.

‘Stop firing! This human is a friend.’

‘This contravenes the non-violence treaty which dates back to-’

‘Speak to us. I command you. Respond. We are your superiors.’

‘-and the sub-paragraph, which states-’

‘We need you to translate, not destroy!’

‘-you, being the party in question-’

‘Be quiet!’ Flip said, transmitting over the public frequency with an override signature. The team were silent. There was a loud THUNK, a whine, and a third beam that missed the human by virtue of his random motion. Flip sent a quick query to the computer system. The communication was refused. The computers were obviously going to plead ignorance until they’d killed the visitor. The animosity between human and machine went far back, but the non-corporeal beings did not make for good targets. She’d been a fool to think the machines were ever under their control.

‘This is ridiculous,’ she said. ‘If the machines kill the visitor, there will be reprisals from the orbiting ship.’ The computer powered up its weapon for a fourth shot, but the human had managed to get out of the line of fire. He was safe for now, but Flip knew the laser was only the first of the computer’s deadly tools. Somewhere, deep in storage, two glowing red eyes would be winking into life.

‘Suggestions?’ she asked, not really expecting anything useful. She was not proved wrong.

‘We should start negotiations with the computer. Using logic, it will surely listen to reason.’

‘Shut them all down. The computers are obsolete. We do not need them.’

‘Let them have him? It is an unnecessary conflict in which we involve ourselves.’

Flip ignored them. The human was talking into a communicator, asking for help. She needed to get in contact with him. The computers weren’t going to help. With time, the communication team could probably decipher the correct frequencies to be heard at the human’s audible range, but that would take too long.

‘Rider?’ one of them prompted, looking for a response. She dismissed him with an impatient signal. And then her focus was drawn back to him.

‘What was that?’ she asked.

‘I simply asked, Rider, what we should do,’ he said.

Rider!

Behind her, the man stood up, slowly. She examined him. Complex minds were harder to Ride. Even the apes had a natural shielding caused by their sense of self.

‘It might be possible,’ she mused, ‘He has sustained a severe injury. That will take his focus away.’

‘What was that,’ asked the inquisitive team member.

‘I am a Rider. I will Ride,’ Flip said.

And then the air around them was filled with radiation and her consciousness began to disintegrate under the onslaught. To save herself, she dived straight into the mind of the visitor. There was no time for finesse, no gentle invasion. She slammed through his natural defences and hid within an unused portion of his brain.

Temporarily safe from the radiation (although with time, even his mass would not be enough to shield her) she rapidly spread out to establish contact with the speech centres of his brain. This was an instinctual act. It also required a great deal of empathy, which is why it was not possible for just anybody to do it. Flip knew what he should be thinking and looked for those patterns. When she recognised them, she could start to manipulate them. It wasn’t always immediate. This time she was lucky.

She found him. He was about to make a run for the door. Without the limited shielding provided by their underground shelter, Flip would be lost. She increased the sensitivity of his pain receptors, to stop him from rejecting her as soon as she made her presence known, stopped his legs from taking that first, fatal step and made contact.

‘Wait!’ she told him. ‘You must stop! Make it stop!’

Catching up – Every Sparrow that Falls

The rant was for two weeks ago. Today’s is for last week. I’ll post again on Wednesday and then feel like I’m back on track.

I wanted to share a short, completely unedited piece with you. This blog is all about unedited pieces. I think, I write, I post, I put up with the consequences.

I’ve put together a writing group at my school. At my last school, I had a tight-knit group of writers that were growing and getting involved in the process of writing. By the time I’d left, I’d seen four of my students published in one form or another and one Golden Pen member had won a grant which sent us all to a writers’ retreat for the weekend.

I’m still working with this new bunch. Every fortnight I give them a writing topic. This year, I’ve started with building characters and building worlds. We had to create a world, establish the rules, and then write a story set in that world. Here’s my brainstorm:

Ghost in the Machine:

This world is our own, far into the future. Humanity has evolved beyond the need for a physical form. We created artificial intelligence, downloaded our minds into the AI, and then realised that we didn’t even need the machines themselves. We could function as minds.

No longer truly human, as there is something in the body that gives us our emotions, fears and drives, we are now pure intellect. Nobody dies, but nobody gives birth either. For many generations, new people were created, programmed from the algorithms of two different people, creating a new individual. Some of these people still exist, although the amalgamations weren’t always successful – we don’t emulate nature very well.

Others were created from famous entities from films and TV. These were even harder to control, as they weren’t even fully-formed personalities. The personality traits the grafters could find were inserted into a base personality template. This meant that often the specific behaviours of a star would conflict with the personality type. This is what happens when you let a corporation take over your country.

The world has returned to its natural state. There is still evidence that humanity existed – there are old buildings, now covered with grasses and being crumbled by trees.

And there are still working machines. Older versions of AI exist here. The unevolved. The ancient. The sometimes bitter.

Animals are prolific. Many species thought to be extinct have reappeared. The whales are having a field day. Some specialists have learned to ride along with animal consciousnesses. They can feel the animal’s emotions and to a certain extent, guide them in their choices.

Travel to the stars is possible, but highly dangerous. The radiation in space can disrupt human thought waves, dispersing the consciousness throughout the eternity of space.

Once I had that, I thought the concept of the Rider was a good place to start. It got across some of the basic concepts, gave a hint of what was to come, and allowed me to play with sensation, which I enjoy doing. Here’s the story. Enjoy:

Every sparrow that falls.

Flip spun through the clouds, delighted in feeling the wind beneath her feathers, the thrill of touching the delicate currents of air to change direction. She dipped lower until she could see the treetops below her. Delving into the control centres of her temporary vehicle, she coaxed the sparrow towards the ruins of the city. She focused the tiny but sharp sparrow eyes on a thin trail of smoke rising from between two crumbling city blocks.

Flip felt the sparrow’s heart beat even faster than its regular thrum. She stifled a flow of adrenalin caused by the proximity to the city with its multitude of predators and potential ambush sites. Calm yourself, little sparrow, she told it. All will be well when we reach the smoke. She was still feeling anxious, an unusual sensation for someone who could normally feel no emotion at all. This was the rush of being a Rider – melding her consciousness with that of one of the physical creatures of the country.

Ah, I miss this, she thought, as she guided the sparrow closer to the unusual sign of activity. Immortality was all well and good, but sensation, that was something else entirely!

The sparrow was becoming increasingly nervous. Flip could no longer stem the adrenaline caused by the tiny bird’s fear. She felt herself succumbing to it herself. Be brave, little one, she thought. A little closer. I need to see what this is.

She could, of course, examine the site without the aid of the bird; she could read information from the energy in the area and translate it into useful knowledge. But unlike some of the purebred, she and the other transfers still held great stock in sensual information. Even after a thousand years, the habits of a lifetime were hard to break.

Flip was actively fighting the sparrow’s desire to escape the city now. She felt a twinge of remorse, or the shadow of remorse, but she had to see what was causing the fire. Of course, fires happened naturally, but this did not look natural. She strained the sparrow’s vision, ignoring a desperate urge to check around her for danger.

Finally, the sparrow’s sense of preservation broke through Flip’s tenuous connection with its mind. The tiny bird cried out and broke free of her control, wrenching herself upwards and away. Flip tumbled free of the little form and found herself hovering in the city, back in her natural state.

Around her, the world pulsed with millions of forms of energy. She absorbed the radiant energy of the sun, still slightly dangerous to humans even in this state. She picked up the concussive beats of the sparrow’s wings as molecules of air were thrown about in the maelstrom of its flight. She considered the soundwaves from the impact of the hawk’s claws as it snatched the sparrow out of the air. And intellectually, she felt a twinge of guilt for the life that was taken due to her actions.

The “feeling” was fleeting. Flip’s attention was almost immediately drawn back to the fire below her. Something new had come to Earth. Something alive!