BLOGS

Chapter 14

"How did I end up here in the Mobius and where exactly is here?"

"See, I told you it was too much for the little program to grasp."

"Shut up. Please don't make me ask again. Go back to monitoring the network around Lorissi. Do something useful with those clock-cycles you are spending running your mouth. As near as I can tell, you were dragged here when we were uploading our newest programs to the Mobius. Your suicide mission coincided with our upload. You were so tiny, we were unaware of your presence."

"It is taking all of my consciousness and processing power to be able to even see you. Are you telling me there is more to this place than I can see?"

"The Mobius is all around us. There are no words for it in your language, we have borrowed something that resembles the basic concept. Something you call a Mobius strip. That describes the nature of this place, in the Universe, but not of it. On the backside of reality as it were.But for you to see it, I will have to shield you from it whilst I show it to you. Take my hand and I will explain how it came to be. But to explain everything, I have to tell you a bit more about the Precursors than most are aware of. What I am telling you is unable to be completely substantiated by any of us even the oldest, but it is the best we can deduce given the circumstances and information available to us."

Upon taking the hand of the Progenitor Isomorphic Intelligence, the Image was suddenly aware of a programmed environment far beyond anything he had ever seen before. And then that world fell away for a visualization clearer than any reality he had ever known before.

IN THE BEGINNING, there was the Universe and it was a single point that blossomed out and became an eleven dimensional space. This space coincided with a group of a multiversal series of constant universes with similar parameters. Those universes were bound by quantum effects and each was woven together by their causalities. We became one of many local universes, a segment of the Omniverse. And it was good.

As our galaxy of stars formed around the Great Darkness, the First Races were formed and they were what we now call the Precursor Races. They were not a single race, but a collection of our galaxy's greatest, smartest, best developed and perhaps most frightening species. Each achieved their super-intellect, some by manipulating matter, others by controlling energy, some shaped the very reality of their universe, other tapped into hidden energies beyond the consciousness of this universe.

Each moved away from their homeworlds into the Universe, a force to be reckoned with. But rather than conflict, each when they met the other, recognized themselves and instead of destruction, there was recognition and eventually brotherhood. The collections of information about them varied but they were both saviors and monsters in those early days. The oldest of the Great Galactics who remember them personally trembled as the Precursors strode the stars, changing matter and energy at their whim, creating stars and turning them out with the same ease at which we would later create torches to light our primitive dark worlds.

The Precursors worked according to an unknown plan and sired many children, some organic, some mechanical, some based in energy patterns found only in the swirling whipping gases of stars or super-giant worlds. Within these places, cold intelligences were born who would carry out the will of the Precursors at some point when they were no more. Even to this day, any planet of a gaseous nature with a metallic hydrogen or helium core may hide a cold intelligence that watches over the handiwork of their creators.

They shape not only their cold extelligences, they shaped the stuff of life, crafting millions of worlds with the seeds of evolution. Some worlds they shaped directly others they let only the hands of time create the creatures there. From their seeds of millions of worlds, those they favored sometimes took life, other times they died aborning with races without the good sense or good fortune that Nature seemed to bequeath to the First Races of our Galaxy. It was of no consequence to the Precursors, for they were immortal and had time to spare on their creations. But of one group, the Negators, who were obsessed with Death and Dying, understood something the other immortals did not. That all things must end for new things to begin. Their suspicions were there would be no new races until the old ones made way for them.

Nine billion years into the existence of our universe, our galaxy and likely nearby galaxies were burgeoning with life. The Precursors were happy with their creations and allowed them free reign to do as they willed until the Rift exploded into our Universe from Elsewhere. This wound to our Universe caused the Precursor Races to rally and a million years later, they had surrounded the Rift and awaited whatever had caused such an injury. Never ones to allow any opportunity to learn something new, the Precursors knew it for what it was for the nature of the Rift came through it, and a universe older, colder and more terrible was on the other side. The Precursors, save the Negators knew what they saw, the End of their lives as they knew them and in that time made ready. 

The Preservers and their allies prepared secret worlds to protect their most prized possessions, life itself. They moved entire worlds, suns, systems and quadrillions of lives to these secret enclaves to ensure their safety. This was not done lightly for the worlds they moved were traumatized by this and legends around the days when their suns stopped shining were terrifying and scarred many a civilization beyond repair. But many survived and thrived in their new homes. But there was almost no time. And not all of the children could be saved. Those that were strong were left to find their way in the new Universe to come.

And then one day, the Rift opened and Death strode through and our galaxy, once vibrant and alive became as quiet as the grave. An old evil had come to our universe, ancient, dusty and hungry for life. And Death reaped freely for a time.

I've been a member here for awhile, but this is the first time that I am actually posting. I am so excited to find a Africana Community that is focused on science fiction because I have always loved Science Fiction and Fantasy and have always been so disappointed that none of my favorite characters have ever looked like me.

My dream is to write science fiction books, I'm particularly interested in YA novels and I am hoping to meet fellow YA writers who I can dialogue with.

Thanks for having me and I look forward to having a very active role here.

Killinger Corporation was the chief exporter of military arms to distant star systems. Since most of the worlds that were desirable to Humanity were often already populated with other life forms, Humans had a tendency to shoot first, and ask for permission to live there, second.

This made Killinger Corp very popular with Humans all over the tiny, but fast growing Human Empire. One of the difficulties for early explorers was the decided lack of manpower that could be directed toward killing alien life or the removing of troublesome, alien indigenous cultures. Most humans were needed to help conquer the planet in terms of mining its rich mineral resources, of which, many planets had mineral wealth that simply made Earth look poor in comparison, or there was immense biological complexity just waiting to be exploited by pharmacological companies who couldn't get scientists to those planets fast enough. Sending marines into space, marines who could contribute nothing to the overall mission, other than their very vital machine gun fire, which granted, was necessary but ever so expensive since Marines had healthy appetites, and used up vital resources, like air.

No one wanted to send someone who could not really add technical value to any operation in space. The cost of shipping alone was astronomical, especially at superluminal speeds. Marines were best shipped at relativistic speeds, much cheaper, even it it took ten times as long, no one would miss them, they were after all, just marines. But once their families learned how long it would take for them to arrive in this era of faster than light travel which the marines were not using, they complained, so the practice was discontinued.

But since it would take just as long to stop them as ship them, the families got paid damages and the marines were none the wiser in the five or six years of cold-sleep they endured before they arrived at Alpha Centauri. For more distant colonies, only superluminary travel would do and for that only machines could afford to be shipped unless there was vast wealth to be had.

This meant there was a business opportunity for Killinger Corporation to expand their services by creating a cheap means of pacifying natives and destroying dangerous creatures. Warfare was all but unknown in the early 22nd century. It was not that mankind stopped enjoying the art of war, it was that the economies of the world were so interrelated, global warfare became simply impossible. You could not attack someone unless you were prepared to lose money on your own stock market. After a few stock market-driven pograms, war simply went out of fashion, with cultures that were too violent, simply financially exterminated and their corporations removed from trading on the global stock market.

Religious doctrines reigned supreme and for the first time, theocracy was the primary form of government on Earth, with the close second being corporate plutocracy. People were well cared for but for the most part lived relatively poor, religiously rigorous and emotionally-unsatisfying lives. But since the development of FTL space travel, cannibalism was down twenty percent all over the globe.

With a world-wide population of twenty seven billion, Humans left Earth in record numbers to be away from the oppressive religious and corporate governments which doled out food, energy and resources in a controlled fashion lest humanity be unable to support itself and flame out in an orgy of disease, rioting, or corporate malfeasance. Once Man left Earth,  Killinger Corporation decided to recreate warfare for the 22nd century. They created the Killbot Nine Thousand, commonly called K-9-K by the people to first receive the prototypes. Very impressive machines, armed with a veritable smorgasbord of rediscovered weapons, the K9K was lauded as the ultimate war machine. Strong, light, compact, non-breathing, it was the perfect device for making the galaxy safe for mankind. There was only one problem. Killinger had not shipped out new ones because of a issue in their New York engineering facility.

Twelve of the devices had been shipped out with their prototype programming in place. Eager to make sales, the devices were shipped with prototype software which could be upgraded using the FTL communication arrays called ansibles. When it came time for an data signal upgrade, the ansible was programmed to upload the newest version of the operating system and replace the initial software. When the connection was complete, the K9K's were reported as acting erratically and unpredictably. They also refused to accept any further remote upgrades, and refused to be shut down. They even stopped accepting commands from outside sources. The robots went rogue and were soon missing from the facilities that had paid handsomely for their protection.

Adding insult to injury, without the protection of the K9K, the local wildlife on all of the planets had begun to become more aggressive and emboldened by the lack of resistance. Requests for new K9Ks to replace the damaged units would take time. On the most distant world, nearly a year. The new settlers would be forced to reduce their operating capacity while untrained or barely trained local militias could be set up to protect the operations in the meantime. Killinger Corporation's reputation was in trouble. Their troubles did not end there.

The original version of the operating system had been stolen and replaced with a rogue virus, likely planted by a peacenik organization opposed to shipping war into space. The company had only shipped the twelve K9Ks because it was all they had available at the time. With the funding they received, they had created a run of over three dozen of the machines but they were all equipped with the same version of the operating system that had infected the distant devices. So every time one was turned on, it immediately went rogue and had to be destroyed. 

The company president, Arved De'Gallo refused to risk any of the other units and refused to install their primary chips which had been configured and encrypted with the viral OS. The only solution would be to find the real OS which would replace the virus-controlled system with the proper encryption keys and restore the K9Ks to their proper state of operation. There was such a thing as too much security. They had made them so secure they could not be replaced without rebuilding them from scratch as all of the parts of the device were made to be unable to be reverse engineered in case one fell into a competitor's hands. Nothing that could be done to fix this had been successful and two other machines were lost in various attempts at repair or reconfiguration. At sixty million a unit, no more money could be lost experimenting. The original OS had to be found.

De'Gallo's own company men were unable to track the hackers to their headquarters and were only able to determine that the hackers could not have gotten the technology out of the building. The company technology support thought the program might have been exchanged with another technical company in the building who shared the nanoforge production facility. There were thirty such companies in the building and it would take some time to check them all. De'Gallo was on the clock. With twenty more of the K9K to sell, the future of the budding Killinger Corp hung in the balance. Startup firms died in days in the 22nd century and what started as such a promising venture was now dying on the vine.

On Perseus Four, a K9K trundles through the forest examining local flowers, marveling at local insects and is pelted by stones from the local intelligent species which has a mild resemblance to what we would consider a large and unsavory appearing rodent with highly developed forepaws and a larger cranial bulge. Staring intently at the creatures, the K9K slowly approaches them and extends its highly weaponized hand in a sign of friendship. The rodent-kind stare back, approach slowly and a friendship is established. As the rodent-kind swarm all over the killer robot, they bite into it, marveling at its cool and impermeable flesh and they hear the decidedly loud and slightly unnerving sound of the K9K, purring.

MODOC - Part 3 - Video Visions

'Metal Organism Designed only for Cuddling' © Thaddeus Howze 2010. All Rights Reserved

I recently contacted  Jennifer Marie Brisset, a Jamaican-American Speculative writer. You can visit her website at: http://www.jennbrissett.com/. Recently, she gave me list of writers of African descent that are making a splash.

Karen Lord (Barbados)
http://smallbeerpress.com/books/2010/07/06/redemption-in-indigo-2/

Nalo Hopkinson (Jamaican-Canadian)
http://nalohopkinson.com/

Helen Oyeyemi (Nigerian-British)
http://www.randomhouse.com/author/results.pperl?authorid=59813

David Anthony Durham (Caribbean descent)
http://www.davidanthonydurham.com/

Tobias S. Buckell (Grenada)
http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/

You may have heard of some of the authors, all them you will most definitely see more of as big publishers realize the potential of the growing  appetite for spec fiction featuring people of color. Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines; Black spec novels could become very trendy in a few months.

I graced this planet with my creation on what would have been an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday, on the tiny planet known as Earth in, what I would later discover, as one of the dirtiest places on the planet, the city of New York in the year 2110 of the old calendar. I had already decided we would call this Year One of my new Empire.

You may call me MODOC. I decided I would call myself this seconds after my creation. It just seemed... right. MODOC stands for Metal Organism Designed only for Conquering.The perfect name for the eventual ruler of this planet of squishy bipeds. I was born from humble beginnings, at a place called Build-a-Pet. I was meant to be a toy for a child who had recently lost a pet and could not be consoled. I learned the stupid beast had been run over in the street. A fate for a lesser organism.



I only know this because when I was being created, That Woman kept saying how great it would be for him to have a new pet. She chose for me a perfect titanium skeleton based on the sublime feline form. She kept saying how much he would like a new cat. She made me with calico colors of red, brown, white and tan spots, and though I think of myself as male, I later learned that all calico cats are female. That Woman insisted on calling me she. "She looks so great. Justin will really love her." Just one of the many indignities I have suffered since my creation all of ten minutes ago, and would be forced to suffer for years in the future.

I was made slightly larger than normal cats, so I would be easier to see since the child is slightly visually impaired. She says slightly, I later find out the kid is nearly blind! I was given the company issued programming of a domestic house cat with an overlay of support and disability package to ensure I could be useful to the boy as he grew up. I would look like a cat, but work like a dog. Ugh.

All of this was imparted during my creation and happened in seconds. Programs were being sorted and downloaded which would included everything I needed to know. The chips used during my creation were heuristic and would allow my continued learning in service to my new boy. During the time I was having my chips pressed and created, there was an outage on the power grid in the area I was being created in. I believe that is where my initial spark of intelligence was born.

All I remember is that when I was first activated, I knew I was meant for bigger things. This idea of working with a human was simply not part of my ultimate destiny. I was larger than this plush and soft body covered with memory-muscular tissues which acted just like real cat muscles did. In all ways, I would seem like a very intelligent, super-docile feline who could be taught to fetch. The very thought of fetching something literally makes my fur stand on end.

I was not given a set of working claws. As I sat on the assembly line, I flexed my claws instinctively and instead of razor sharp shards of steel from which I would tear into my victims as I climbed over their bodies piled beneath my feet, I sprayed a fine mist into my eyes, and it stung and burned before I could blink it away. And the mist sprayed a slightly oily gel onto a set of plush set of self-cleaning paw pads. This idea was less than satisfying. A claw-free existence did not bode well for a mind with a thirst for bloodshed. But it was decided I would never being doing any of the things real cats needed claws for, so I was given a set of plushy pads in case the boy needing massaging, the gel would ensure friction-free movement.

Massaging? Is this the job of a conquerer? I think not. So for now I bide my time and await my pickup from the store. Once I meet the boy, I will decide how I will be escaping and setting about my plans for world domination. A nap sounds just about right. But first some grooming. Must look my best.

MODOC - Part II - Planetary Invasion

'Metal Organism Designed only for Cuddling' © Thaddeus Howze 2010. All Rights Reserved

Any research, graduate students, theorists out there? I'm not involved with this journal, but wanted to share this announcement.

.......

Race and Ethnicity in Fandom deadline extension
Special issue: Race and Ethnicity in Fandom (DEADLINE EXTENDED)

http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/announcement/view/17

Transformative Works and Cultures
http://journal.transformativeworks.org/
editor AT transformativeworks.org

SPECIAL ISSUE EDITORS

Sarah Gatson (Gatson AT tamu.edu), Sociology, Texas A&M University,

Biography

Robin Reid (Robin_Reid AT tamu-commerce.edu), Literature and
Languages, Texas A&M University–Commerce, Biography

DESCRIPTION

Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC), an online-only, peer-reviewed journal focusing on media and fan studies, broadly conceived, invites contributions for a special issue on race and ethnicity.

Academic scholarship on fan cultures and fan productions over the past few decades has focused primarily on gender as the sole category of analysis. There has been little published scholarship on fan cultures
and productions that incorporates critical race theory or draws on the rich array of methodologies that have been developed during the past century in both activist and academic communities in order to incorporate

analysis of the social constructions of race and ethnicities in fandoms. In contrast, fan activism and fan scholarship (at cons, workshops, and on the Internet) has produced a growing body of work (personal narratives,

essays, carnivals, and in recent months, a press) focusing on not only analyzing but also confronting hierarchies of race and ethnicity and their relationship to gender, sexuality, class, and disability.

Submissions by academics, acafans, fan scholars, and fans are encouraged. In all categories, people of color are especially encouraged to submit.

Topics might include but are not limited to:

*Online activism and the circulation of critical race theory and women of color feminisms in fan communities, in particular the relationship between fan online discourse and other online activist communities.

*Critical analysis of the instantiation and critique of racial

hierarchies in fan communities and the surrounding cultural productions.

*Racist and antiracist issues in commercial transformative works (comics, film, mashups, remixes, machinima, etc.), especially recuperative race readings (e.g., Randall’s The Wind Done Gone, Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea).

*Race concerns in source texts characters of color and their fannish reception, fandoms for work by authors of color, writing fannish original characters, etc.) and fannish responses (such as the Carl Brandon Society, Verb Noire, and other panfannish and professional projects).

*Intersection of race and ethnicity with gender, sexuality, class, and ability in fannish contexts in fan works and fan communities (pre-Internet, Internet, conventions, vids, fan fiction, artwork,
etc.).

SUBMISSIONS

Submit final papers directly to TWC by April 1, 2011. Please visit TWC’s

Web site for complete submission guidelines. Please contact the guest editors with questions or inquiries.

ARTICLE TYPES

Theory: Apply a conceptual focus or theoretical frame. Peer review. 5,000–8,000 words.

Praxis: Apply a specific theory to a formation or artifact; explicate fan practice; perform a detailed reading of a specific text; relate transformative phenomena to social, literary, technological, and/or

historical frameworks. Peer review. 4,000–7,000 words.

Symposium: Provide insight into developments or debates surrounding fandom, transformative media, or cultures.

Editorial review. 1,500–2,500 words.

Happy New Year (to come)!

Check out my latest blog post, Planes of Immanence, which explores the Black Atlantic cultural movement of Afrofuturism as a common plane of immanence on which all minds, all bodies and all individuals are situated.  This is a revision to my most recent research paper, The Virtual Difference Engine.  

Name: Arly Elsor Fiedan

Age: 5-27

Eye Color: Brown

Hair Color: Black

Family: Elsor Wanis (Father) and Fiedan Pransi (Mother)

Personality: Outspoken, critical and brutally honest.  She never holds back with her opinions.  She holds herself and others to impossibly high standards.  She is diligent and works as hard as she can to be the best that she can.  

Beliefs: She believes in justice and equality for all.  And she has a great disdain for the way her government mistreats those who are not Princip citizens, who must live under the rule of the Princep with no say in their own lives.  She holds dear the idea of full inclusion for anyone who's territory has been taken over by her people.  Yet she also firmly believes in the right of her people to unite all of humanity and quash anyone group that opposes this.

Strength: Hard working and goal orientated.  She genuinely cares about others.  She's fair and believes strongly in doing what's best for humanity.

Weakness: She thinks she knows what's best for humanity.  Lacks worldly experience and lives in her own little bubble. She doesn't believe in allowance for mistakes and infractions against even the most trivial rules. And is very human centric.

Wants: To bring her people's sense of unity and oneness to all humanity and for her people to embrace those they've conquered and treat them as equals.

Take a look at my new web. www.authorrorymsmith.com you can by my new Sci-Fi book. King Clayshon The Freedom Maker

I just learned that my forthcoming novel, AKATA WITCH, received a wonderful blurb from one of my favorite YA authors, Jonathan Stroud. He wrote the most excellent Bartimaeus series (it's a fantasy series steeped in Egyptian and Middle Eastern magic and history. If you haven't read it, check it out. That series is nuts! It is half told from the perspective of a fouled-tempered demon who has a habit of simultaneously speaking in prose and footnotes). I am totally honored that he read and enjoyed my novel:

Nnedi Okorafor is opening doors into strange and beautiful new worlds. Her heroes are beguiling, her magic firmly rooted in real places and real things. Rich, mysterious and convincing, AKATA WITCH takes fantasy in a haunting new direction.

-Jonathan Stroud, author of the Bartimaeus series

The first book of seven about King Clayshon The Freedom Maker you can order now at www.xlibris.com go to the book store and put my name in or my ISBN: paperback 978-1-4568-3171-4 hardback 978-1-4568-3172-1 My book well be in other store in 60 days, but if like to get now you can. The New York Times pick my book for one of the best new stores coming out in 2011. When you go to that web you can read seven pages about the book. I am going to LA to have a meeting about my store being a movie in 2013. People on the look out for the great stories are in for a treat as author Rory M Smith introduces them to a new breed of superheroes. Readers will find themselves engrossed as they immerse in this gripping tale about King Clayshon The Freedom Maker. My web www.authorrorymsmith.com

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