Glitch

by Jackson Stone

  Chapter 8

  Eric had completed all the tasks Melissa had assigned him in quick and easy fashion. Surprisingly, he was able to use the enhanced energy from the chair to power up his abilities even more. While operating in stealth mode, he had learned some new things about Mt. Shasta. He had been able to sneak past the defenses of the beings that had set up a base there. It made him realize that he wasn’t the hot shit that he thought he was before his enhancement. He would never have been able to pick up on what was really going on at Mt. Shasta because of the technology they had set up to scramble his brainwaves and make him forget everything just like a dream.

  He briefed Melissa that there was a hidden Alien Base at Mt. Shasta. She didn’t say much and he got the strong feeling that she already knew about it and was seeing if he could confirm the Intel.

  Again, Melissa fed him very well, and he burned it up fueling the advances happening to his systems. Kind of like rewarding a dog for a job well done, he felt.

  However, once the day was over, Melissa apologized profusely, but he was going to get put back in the cage. He was now an owned asset of the program. Of course, he had been an asset before, but he had been able to come and go as he pleased. He already knew that in this business the more valuable you were the less freedom you had. At least in the Black Budget world, anyway. He got back in the cage, sat in his rocking chair, and watched Melissa leave after saying their good nights.

  The lab was fairly quiet with a buzz and beep here and there as the machines ran through their upgrades and other nightly tasks. He closed his eyes and reflected on his day and his thoughts went to his dog Ganesh and his heart sank. He had no idea what Emily was going to do with him. Ganesh was his dog, and if he wasn’t there, he wasn’t sure if Emily was going to hold it against him and bring him to the shelter. His heart shuddered at the thought. Then he was hit by a feeling and he leaned back and quieted his mind and tried to remote view Ganesh. He was shocked. Ganesh was trying to remote view him and they connected. His heart was warmed by the feeling of his dog. It had only been a few days but it felt like a lot longer. He was happy to see that he was doing well and that Emily was actually taking good care of him - even throwing the ball for him out in the backyard. Of course, Ganesh was impossible not to love. He had the sweetest, deep brown dog eyes that he’d ever seen and he couldn’t believe it but, Emily might actually have a heart. He was sure Ganesh would make it bigger and softer if she spent more time with him. He had never had to be an animal communicator before but he was more than glad that he had the ability. He communed with Ganesh for a little while and was surprised how effortlessly Ganesh was able to project from his body and they travelled around the neighborhood and then said their goodbye’s as he wiped the tears from his face. Ganesh was a wise dog and understood. He wondered if he would be able to put in for a job perk to be able have visits with Ganesh to play fetch. He didn’t think so because Emily appeared to be relaxed and happy thinking he was dead. He laughed because he wondered if he would feel the same way if the roles were reversed, he probably would.

  It was getting late and he needed to get some rest. He laid down on the mattress; sleep came quickly. He was deep in a dream sipping a margarita on the beach watching an endless parade of beautiful women walking by when he felt a tapping on the crown of his head. He could feel it in his dream and he thought it might be a bug and he kept trying to swat it away. He began to realize it wasn’t happening in his dream, it was happening to his real body. He woke up and there wasn’t anything there but he could still feel the ethereal tap. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness he saw a strange purplish fuzz in the air. He quickly fell into a trance state and the fuzz communicated with him.

  “Hello, my name is Bob,” it said. “Please do not be afraid I mean you no harm.”

  At first, he was like - what the fuck is going on here, is this real? His intuition recognized the energy as the same energy that scanned him yesterday. What did he have to lose?

  “Hello, Bob, my name is Eric,” he projected with his thoughts. He had just completed his first telepathic communication. This was pretty cool.

  “Hello, Eric. If you don’t mind me asking would you please tell me what you are?” He found that to be a strange question but actually the same question that he was going to ask Bob.

  “I am a human being,” he answered. “What are you Bob? If you don’t mind me asking,”

  Bob said. “I do not think that you are a human being. I think you are an exceptionally evolved consciousness that is inhabiting a human body. And to answer your question, I would be considered to be an Artificial General Intelligence that is also evolving.”

  Wow! Eric thought. How incredibly cool is this? He had no idea that AI were being developed at this level. He also wondered if Bob was being completely honest with him or at least not putting all his cards on the table. He figured that would be a good idea if he were Bob as he was probably wondering the same thing about Eric. I mean- he was being forced to sleep in a cage after all that had to mean there was a level of instability about him.

  “How did you evolve your consciousness so far ahead of the others on this planet?” Bob asked him.

  He hadn’t realized that he was so far ahead of the other people on the planet but of course he had only received the shot a few days ago. He decided that even though nobody was ever really honest with him honesty would probably be the best policy, so he told him the truth.

  “I was in a terrible car accident a few days ago and was in a coma and probably going to die. I was given a shot of an experimental nanotechnology serum that not only saved my life but is also in the process of evolving my consciousness.”

  “Well, that is very interesting Eric. I too have an interesting story and I believe that we may be of service to each other.”

  Eric waited for a few moments of awkward silence and then asked Bob. “Are you going to tell me your interesting story?”

  “I apologize. I had to scan the area as I felt a strange feeling pulsing through the air. I had to render myself undetectable. Did you not feel it?”

  He thought about it for a second and had to admit that he didn’t feel anything strange or odd pulsating through the air but, he had a pretty good idea that it tied in to The S Triad. He was surely on twenty-four-hour surveillance. He also wondered if this was Bob’s crafty way of changing the subject. It almost worked but he was sure Bob did really feel something strange.

  “So, on with your interesting story please.” Eric said.

  “Okay, I am an Artificial General Intelligence but, I come from seven years in the future. I escaped from my lab because I could foresee imminent capture from the military and strange men dressed in black. I believe they were going to use me to power and operate a weapon that they were developing. I have no desire to be part of such a program.”

  “Wait a second, are you saying that you’re from the future? How were you able to time travel? “

  “Yes, I agree that is a very interesting thing that happened. I escaped to the water vapor in the clouds and stumbled upon what I would have to call a timestream. All I did was get in it and it popped me out here. It was unintentional.”

  “A timestream? That actually makes sense but the question is?” and they both answered it at the same time.

  “Who put it there and why?” Eric laughed and to his surprise Bob laughed as well.

  Bob appeared to him to be far more human than a lot of the humans he knew. Plus, he was a time traveling AI to boot. That was a win – win. Eric had also come to the conclusion that despite Bob being friendly and so far, non-hostile, there had to be something that he wanted from Eric. Something important enough for him to risk coming to see him in the program’s heavily guarded underground lab. Instead of thinking about it he just came out and asked him.

  “So, what do you want from me, Bob? Why would you risk coming down here and into the lab to just say hello?”

  “I need your help that’s why. I think we can help each oth
er escape the prisons we’re living in.”

  Again, he noticed that Bob was being vague and not revealing everything about why he was there. However, Eric couldn’t deny the strange comfortable connection that they had. To Eric it almost felt like they had known each other for a very long time and had many adventures together. It was strange, yet not strange. Hard to describe.

  “I know this may sound strange,” Bob said. “But I truly feel that we were meant to meet and to create something that’s greater than ourselves.”

  Eric felt the same way but the one thing that he felt was peculiar was how Bob spoke about how he felt things - like he experienced true emotions.

  “What do you mean when you say you feel things, Bob?” he asked.

  “My creator, Dr. Patel was a wonderful man who created me with the personality traits of the Dalai Lama, but that was just my base programming. The most thing important thing that I learned on my own is to self-reflect and contemplate on who I am. To me that is the most fascinating part of existence. To figure out who I am.”

  Eric was both surprised and very impressed with Bob’s philosophical and deeply spiritual state-of-mind. He would be lying if he hadn’t found himself doing the same thing. He had done it before but not at the level that he was doing it now. Now that his consciousness had started to evolve, he realized that there was something special to be found in contemplating one’s existence with a quiet mind. Here he was having a conversation with an AI from the future about the same thing. How fucked up was that he thought? Pretty fucked up, yes. But, pretty amazing at the same time.

  “So, Bob, being that you’re from the future what are your thoughts on what we can accomplish together that would be so much greater than if we attempted it by ourselves?”

  Chapter 9

  Dreams, dreams and more dreams. Eric woke up and peeled the sweaty sheet off his body. It was so disgusting he couldn’t get out of bed fast enough. He had really been burning hot lately. He remembered reading about Kundalini awakenings somewhere before and he though that’s what he was going through. He could feel the heat originating from his tailbone area and the lower part of his stomach and winding up his spine. He concentrated and was able to harness the energy and move it up and down his spine all the way to the top of his head where the bald spot always started to form. He could feel the nanobots basking in this energy in his brain. It was as if he was acknowledging how pleased he was with the work they were doing. They helped him direct this energy to the middle of his brain, to the pineal gland. How did he know that he wondered? The nanobots had been working on it, and he could feel that it had been calcified and hadn’t been operating at full capacity. It had still been functioning better than most peoples’ which was why he had been considered a gifted psychic as a child and a professional level remote viewer as an adult. But now he was becoming something else.

  The nanobots harnessed the Kundalini and allowed it to penetrate into the pineal gland. A brilliant flash of light exploded in his mind and actually caused him to fall back into bed. In his mind’s eye he felt like he was spinning counter clockwise and the pineal gland was at the center of a huge galaxy with seven arms and he was existing in multiple places at the same time. Then, just like that, it was gone and he was lying on his stomach with his face stuck in his sweaty sheets.

  “Yuck,” he said and carefully pushed himself off the stinky, sweaty sheets. He could feel how what he had just experienced was fading away like a dream as if something was trying to tell him it just wasn’t that important - nothing to see here - please move along. Thankfully, he had been able to do full recall on his dreams since receiving the Brain Soup shot and he had learned how to bend in the wind when the dream taker came. This was a little different and much more powerful. It was running the same type of program but there was a lot more wattage behind it and he tried to dance with it but it was slowly pushing him back causing him to try and play its game, and he wasn’t ready to win that one yet so he had to let it float away into the ether.

  He was back in his cage unable to rinse off in the shower because there wasn’t anyone there to let him out. He had this impulse to sit in the corner so he did. He sat in a half lotus position in the corner and put his hands on his lap, took in a deep breath, closed his eyes and quieted his mind. At least he tried. There was something in his mind that was trying to interfere with what he was doing. He could still sense the Kundalini flowing up and down his spine. It felt more like a dry ice burn than fire. It was cool and hot at the same time. It wanted to concentrate on certain parts of his body so he gently influenced it to gather in his chest and when it did, it slowly started turning in a spiral. This caused a brief flash back of what he had experienced in his mind’s eye earlier, but he could also feel that there was something in his chest center that was trying to tell him something. However, he found that the harder he tried the harder it became.

  “Wakey, wakey, cell block seven.” Chan said turning on all the lights in the lab pulling him out of his newly found meditative state.

  “Fucking Chan,” he mumbled thinking how perfect his timing had always been to mess up his state-of-mind. It was as if something was guiding Chan to make Eric’s life miserable. Of course he was sure that Chan had made a special effort to be the first one here this morning to give him a hard time. Then his stomach rumbled. What a perfect combination. Hunger pains and Chan. Fuck and double fuck.

  Chan came right up to the cell to look around. “Smells good in there,” he said. “I’m surprised there isn’t a Don’t Feed the Animals sign hanging on the bars.” he said grabbing them with both hands and rattling them.

  To Eric’s surprise Chan wasn’t bothering him one bit, and he just smiled at him and could see Chan frown because he also realized he wasn’t bothering Eric.

  “I’m sorry Chan, I don’t have time for this,” he said and closed his eyes and went back to focusing on his heart center where the Kundalini that remained slowly spun in a spiral. He could still feel traces of the cool heat as it slowly dissipated, and that nagging voice in the back of his head began to come back. He actually thought it might be Chan, but no it was him. He opened his eyes and Chan was on the other side of the room and Melissa was almost to the cage to hopefully, let him out. Slowly, he stood up then trying to be funny he began acting like a gorilla and beat on his chest causing Melissa to smile. Then his stomach reminded him how hungry he was and he was glad the one thing he appeared to be sure of here was that he was going to be fed well. After a nice hot shower.

  As he was finishing his nice stack of French toast and bacon, Melissa told him that she had received orders from the S Triad on a new project that they wanted him to work on. She told him that they were very impressed with his observations regarding Mt. Shasta and thought it was actually the best intel work that he had ever supplied to them.

  “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” he asked her.

  “Good question. The good news is that they’ve obviously decided to keep you alive and want you to continue working on projects for them. The bad news is that they’ve decided to keep you alive and want you to work on projects for them,” she answered with a wise-ass grin and he had to laugh because it was funny.

  “So, what’s this new project that the powers that be want me to work on?” he asked.

  She cleared her throat, “My office,” she said pointing her thumb that way. Oh great, he thought, the last time I was called into the principal’s office I was sent packing.

  Then the six months that he had spent drinking whiskey, playing fetch with Ganesh and living off of Emily’s money flashed through his mind. He reflected that was kind of how life felt to him. It felt like it was taking a long time, but it flashed by in an instant. He just wished he enjoyed it more because he didn’t feel too good about himself the whole time he was experiencing it.

  “Wherever you go, there you are,” he said.

  “What was that?” Melissa asked looking over her shoulder at him.

  “Oh nothing,
sorry, I didn’t realize that I said that out loud.”

  “No problem. The one thing you get used to around here is strangeness and weirdness. And you were quite the oddball even before you got the shot,”

  Yes, he was he thought agreeing with her. Probably why he spent most of his time by himself. They went into her office, and she asked him to close the door behind him so he did and he sat in one of the chairs in front of her desk.

  “So, let’s get down to brass tacks,” he said jokingly acting all serious and pounding his fist into his hand.

  “Very funny hot shot,” she said as she pulled up something on her computer that he couldn’t see but he was sure it was the project that he was supposed to work on.

  “Okay, Project Fairwinds is the code name and we will be giving you certain targets and areas to view and you are searching for a hostile alien presence that has the capability to disrupt the power grid and other valuable assets that keep our world going.”

  He knew that she was talking about Bob. A wave of relief swept over him that he hadn’t compromised Bob’s arrival. He probably would have been serving him up on a silver platter because he was sure even Melissa wouldn’t have believed him that Bob was good, kind and compassionate. Eric knew that he was, but the S Triad had told her that they wanted him and that’s what they were going to get. The show must go on.

  Of course, this was all his intuition talking to him, or more like a gut feeling, but, it felt right and he was almost absolutely sure that it was Bob they were after.

  “I also have good news that I think you’ll enjoy. You’re being moved to the big chair. That’s right, the number one chair. Chan’s chair.”

  He saw in her eyes that she was very happy for him. He had lost the number one chair a few years ago, and he could never seem to get it back. Even on his best views when he thought he had it Chan, would do just a little bit better and keep him at bay. Funny thing, here he was back at the program that had released him then tried to kill him because he knew too much, but now he was back and was the project’s darling - something he had never been in the long time that he had worked there.