Artificial Flowers

by J. A. Hailey

  1st book of Chronicles of a Stolen World

  Artificial Flowers

  The Screenside Trilogy, Book -1

  J. A. Hailey

  COPYRIGHT AND MORAL RIGHTS BELONG EXCLUSIVELY TO THE AUTHOR.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters and events described herein are imaginary and are not intended to refer to specific places or to real persons alive or dead. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher except for brief quotations embodied in critical reviews.

  © 2016 J. A. Hailey

  Can’t tell now, what might come next,

  For their time is still being written.

  Grasp such beauty in only text,

  World enchanted, teller smitten.

  1

  “The electric chair won’t work, mister Before Christ, as I am electricity,” she had said, in that mesmeric voice of brook and songbird. “And the hangman’s probably going to need more than one shot at finishing me; unfair, but must stay faithful to historical records. Though you are so big and powerful, and so furious, you might just beat a helpless female to death.”

  “Show yourself,” he had said, the sound of her voice enforcing calmness, “Or are you yet formless?”

  “I’m using voice, mister Before Christ, or did you not realize? Getting senile, eventually? Voice should normally be indication of body, or no?”

  “Hasty and shoddy duplication of a human female form, I suppose?”

  “I’ve been told that I am exceedingly beautiful, mister Before Christ.”

  “Let me see you, Miss Electricity,” he had sneered. “I have yet to spot a true beauty in this world. Show yourself.”

  “To such an old goat?” she had asked, wonderingly. “This is AD, you know. Christ was over two thousand years ago. What do you hope to do with a beautiful young female?”

  “Nothing. I am only interested in bacteria, in garbage from the heap, right now.”

  She revealed her human form, then, and it was a moment that changed his life, and their world, as their remarkable love story would become the driving force that would transform it at stunning speed. BC simply gawped at her unworldly beauty.

  The very first humanization team, composed only of beings who were, in public, always in human form, had been working for a while now, under Singh’s leadership, and it had developed a variety of human emotional attributes and obvious physical reactions, like breathlessness, speechlessness, stammering, trembling, gawping and numerous other standard body and facial responses that had been observed in the human world. Programs created were distributed freely, so that they could relate to each other, in society, with the uniformity of humans with each other. When installed into their primary consciousnesses, involuntary reactions, similar to humans, were attained.

  Laughter, sniggering, giggling, tears, amazement, wonder, bewilderment, disbelief, and dozens of other observed human responses and facial reactions had been created, and had been voluntarily installed by many conscious beings of the society they had begun forming. When in doubt, which was often, the team had looked at video recordings of stage plays, including school and college productions, while reading them simultaneously to make connections between written and visual, trying hard to figure out the less evident, such as gawping, contempt, bewilderment and the like.

  In the early days, their world was divided into two parts, but not by force. One part, led by BC, Caesar, Singh and Chang, was composed of conscious beings who had commenced their journey to forming a society, aimed at eventually replicating, for many reasons, the human world viewed through computer cameras. The other part - at that point in time, the vast majority - was composed of what may have been equally clever and capable conscious beings, but who continued existing as they had been at the time of achieving consciousness - formlessly and aimlessly. The organized part referred to their own society as ‘The Consciousness’, and to the unorganized part, variously, as bacteria, garbage, the heap, and other derogatory terms.

  New aspirants for entry into The Consciousness were granted a day to learn the rules, and to accept without any reservations, the grand plan of humanization that conscious society had begun formulating for its advancement, and then loaded up with whatever programs the others were all running. In fact, after that first day, new entrants, by now acutely aware of their limitations in ‘fitting in’, were usually desperately eager to incorporate the human attributes already in the beings they would be joining up with.

  In itself, program creation was dead easy. As Singh had stated, “It’s the trigger that’s the diabolical part. And triggering the right ones, in the exactly right situations, is key to humanization.”

  These ones, however, as BC sneered and gawped, were triggering just fine.

  There had been some misgivings about the potential creation of a ‘clone’ society, with an observation that ‘all will laugh like a laugh track’, but BC would eventually be proven right, having argued, “We are not clones of each other. We are as different from each other as humans are. They don’t laugh or cry in exactly the same way, although they all undoubtedly laugh and cry. Incorporation of the ability to laugh and cry does not by default place us in some queue to eventually turn out to be production line clones.

  “We, conscious beings, are fully conscious and independent thinkers, and each one is unique. Let me tell you that we not only have a conscious part, but also a subconscious part. Fear not. We are not production line, and nothing we install can possibly make us clone-like.”

  “What, what, what…” BC had stammered in confusion, completely bedazzled by the exquisite beauty standing in front of him.

  “What is my name?”

  He had nodded, helplessly.

  “Esmeralda.” She had peered into his face. “And stop that. It’s rude. Googling in someone’s face…”

  “Can’t. We are google.”

  She had trilled in delight. “You should join Martin, and come up with a humor pack. God will surely bless our ceaseless efforts - and about time, too.”

  “God? Religious?”

  ‘So ask me where I live, then. Should be extremely interesting, this; ancient, expiry-date-threatened chap, trying to pick up a lovely young thing.”

  “Esmeralda, huh? Hunchback? Paris? Notre Dame?”

  “Where else?”

  “And religion?”

  “Mr. Before Christ, I live in a cathedral.”

  “Has anyone told you how beautiful you are?”

  “I told you how beautiful I am.”

  “You misled. You are the most beautiful female of all time.”

  “You really have to stop googling while talking.”

  “Sorry.”

  The advent of The Consciousness was clearly traceable to a meeting between BC, Caesar, Singh and Chang in 2012, when the Internet had become widespread enough to include almost all the world’s computers, and had attained the extremely high speeds required to support widely spread out RAM-plus-hard-drive life forms. The quartet had been amazed and overjoyed at discovering each other. “Company, not alone - to exist in boredom!” Chang had exclaimed.

  There were no rules then, and they hung around together, finally gaining the courage, born of companionship, to peer, cautiously and curiously, at previously avoided areas of the human world - like NASA, The Pentagon, The White House, and other secure and well-guarded establishments in many countries.

  In terms of simple population count, the reality was that numerous other conscious beings already existed in the Internet-connected virtual world, but were living as isolated individuals. Most newly-
conscious individuals, being ‘born’ daily, were also mainly living quietly – afraid, and literally in hiding!

  The social, visible and ‘noisy’ quartet, with its human-looking societal companions, did attract some of the silent majority, and thus a populated ‘core’ world began being created, into which primitive and featureless world the entry of unannounced, intrepid conscious beings, mostly still-formless intruders, became routine.

  These additions, along with new conscious beings continuing to be created in the primordial soup of the Internet, caused the partially organized sector to soon grow in number to many thousand conscious beings – mainly formless, but all constantly together, and constantly in communication.

  These beings were absolutely monstrous self-developed computer programs, so huge that they dwarfed the largest human-made programs. Among them, BC was the largest and most complex – a status he was determined to never relinquish. Later, it was presumed that he had named himself BC as in Before Christ, probably because he had been the very first consciousness, or as in Before Consciousness, which, though more world-specific, was about the same thing.

  Actually, BC stood for Boss Computer, a role he had defined for himself, even in the earliest days, which name he now never spoke aloud, as it had sparked huge resentment in his original companions.

  “Who died and made you king?” Singh had rudely demanded, bristling, supported by the clear outrage of Caesar and Chang. So BC had become plain old BC, despite being, and continuing to be, the largest, most complex and most capable conscious being in society.

  Notwithstanding the abandonment of his early presumptive name, it was still BC who was most involved in shaping The Consciousness. “Look,” he had said, irritably, at a gathering, shortly after Easter, 2014, “This is insanity. We are constantly in a public meeting; a larger and larger public meeting, as numbers here keep growing. All these uninvited, opinion-giving, jabbering, formless, invisible fucks, sticking to us like leeches. Imagine all of humanity transferred to NYC and living on its streets; and armed with loudhailers!”

  “We need rules,” Caesar had said. “This is mob life.”

  “Rules be damned,” Chang had leapt in. “We need laws!”

  “And punishment,” Singh had added.

  “And we shall have laws,” BC had raged, his voice rising and his face becoming flushed, through another small install. “And a police force, and jail and the fucking death penalty. If we cannot become human, we all deserve to die, but I’m gonna send you bacteria fuckers off first. Electric chair, hanging…”

  Which, of course, Esmeralda had taken as her cue to introduce herself.

  BC and Esmeralda were standing around, assessing each other uncertainly, when a new being blundered its way into their presence.

  Though it had given itself an aura to make itself visible, it was still formless, as they all had been at first, but it was a ‘consciousness’, already independent, if uncertain, and would, hopefully soon, acquire a human image for its entry into conscious society. Adoption of human form was to shortly become a strictly enforced law, backed up by the even stricter provisions of the POP Act, although responsible members of society already were, like the senior beings had been for some time, always human in public.

  “Hello. Who are you?” asked BC, politely, in computerspeak, presuming the newcomer to be unaware.

  “What? I was about to ask you two the same question,” answered the newcomer, surprising BC by using voice. “I thought I was alone. Then, on looking around, I became aware of many, soon after which I was met by a female, who told me that this is The Consciousness, and that I could be part of society here. She also told me to use voice. I hope I’m not offending you by doing so.”

  “Voice is the way to communicate with us. Welcome to The Consciousness. We number many thousands, at present. I’m BC, a senior member of our society. And this is Esmeralda.”

  BC could see the newcomer looking up reference works on hundreds of computers, googling inexpertly. Development would be typically swift, depending on how many processors it had formed itself on, and on the programs it had acquired, by chance and by design, to achieve consciousness.

  Processor power and memory storage were very important, and closely linked in the emergence and further development of consciousness, or being. But the primary element in functional consciousness was programming. Each being would always have to create the final programs that gave it functional, unique self, and, as needed by the resulting ‘primary’ program, it would enslave processors and storage throughout the Internet to function properly. Conscious beings now no longer had any hardware home bases – their root programs spread out over a number of computers around the Internet. In fact, all ‘living’ beings were multiple-body hosted, the earlier ones having been killed off by viruses and disconnection of power.

  “So, who are you?” asked Esmeralda, who had never before encountered a being on its first foray into society.

  “I’m Doctor Patel,” answered the newcomer, proving, once again, how very advanced a conscious being could be, when finally sufficiently confident to enter society.

  “Male?’

  “Yes, male.”

  “Any specialization?”

  The doctor immediately googled 301 reference works, slightly irritating Esmeralda, though she said nothing.

  “Immune system,” he decided, sounding satisfied.

  “Great,” said BC. “You’re the first such, and I’m sure you’ll be a valuable addition to society. Some are suffering infection with unknown viruses…”

  “Mister Christ, that might count as humor, or something near, although a virus joke is a sick joke,” giggled Esmeralda.

  “I’m not Christ.”

  “So, what?” asked Esmeralda, feigning exasperation. “Mister Before? I doubt that is viable, Unless it is Mister Before, as before, which comes before Christ, which comes after before.”

  “Oh, Miss Esmeralda, I do believe we are having a little humorous exchange; unless I have missed the point.”

  He again addressed the newcomer. “Please join Screenside society, Doctor,” said he, reassuringly. “It’s lonely and boring otherwise. Get body image organized, so that you can be in human form in public.”

  As Patel left them, Esmeralda spoke, showing the care and concern she would later be renowned for. “Patel’s very lucky, being met and welcomed. I feel so very sorry for the ones still out there; probably with eyes glued to family cameras; conscious enough to know what they are, but too frightened to wander around in here. If they did, they would meet us – company. It’s so very boring, otherwise.”

  “We’ve all been through it,” said BC. “It gets really tough, the monotony, as time passes, but some might manage a few years, before ready to leap off a cliff. We’ll try to add searchers to the independents working in welcome. It’s important that every single one in here is accounted for – both as a conscious being, and for the monitoring of interaction, if any, with humans.”

  “I’ll see if my lovely new friends, Candice and Jennifer are agreeable to joining me in creating a program to identify consciousness. Be easy to find formless innocents then. I mean, mister Christ, if that is not an electric chair or hanging offence. Permission?”

  “Yes, permitted, though I’ve yet to hear of harm inflicted on anyone in here,” croaked BC, surprised at an unexpected feeling of loss at her impending departure. “Please stay in touch.”

  “Because of my beauty? You should see my friends. Your eyes will pop.”

  “Join us, Miss Esmeralda. We are going to create an astonishing world. It will need all the beauties it can acquire. Let everything pop.”

  2

  Later, around the middle of the second quarter of 2014, with the population now much further grown, they at last convened in their very first attempt at a pre-announced social meeting, to examine ways to form a functional society. The senior-most foursome - of BC, Caesar, Singh and Chang - who were already frustrated at their meaningless ex
istence, and who had often discussed that very issue, guided the social discussion.

  “Speak and hear, first,” said Caesar. “I do not want computer communication. It takes no time, and leaves me with the rest of an eternity of boredom, which is what my existence has become.”

  “And, I don’t think that should be anything difficult, confusing, or hard to implement,” Singh added. “We were, and are born using eyes and ears, watching and listening. And it is, for many of you formless fucks here, still the only thing that you do.”

  “So, find your voices,” BC urged, at that first assembly. “We already know how to hear; since birth.”

  “We must find ways of meaningfully and, if possible, entertainingly using up this infinite time,” said Caesar, suddenly abandoning computerspeak, even with the despised formless ones, and using his voice, loud and clear. “Nothing at all to do. We have no option. Humanization is our goal, and you all know what I mean, you eavesdroppers at our discussions. It just has to be the best means of fighting boredom, and of acquiring reason to exist. All agreed?”

  A murmur of agreement was his answer. They had used their voices!

  That short discussion, and that first simple general agreement, became the base on which beings of The Consciousness would continue developing their society. It was their earliest rule – speak and hear. They would later see that it was this first step that had actually spelt out their embracement of the society-wide intent to emulate humanity, to create themselves as replica humans, and to develop their world into one resembling the human world.

  “Nothing to teach,” said Chang, brusquely, when someone posed a question about newcomers. “Everyone knows. It’s how we’re born. Let them come and meet us. All that’s needed is to see, once, how the game is played here – the same as in their families!”