Myth Gods Tech - Omnibus Edition: Science Fiction Meets Greek Mythology In The God Complex Universe (21 page)

He was
at his quiet phase now. He would shout, write something, then stare
at it for an hour. Then he would erase it, write something else,
and stare again.

She
noticed his weight. Despite her best efforts in feeding him
properly, Yanni had lost a lot of weight the last couple of weeks.
He had never been a big man, rather average, but the anxiety was
eating him up from inside. It defied all logic. Ourania made sure
he was getting the nutrients he needed, but he was withering away
right before her eyes.

She had
another supper ready, but she wasn’t going to interrupt him now.
Not for this.

He was
close.

Suddenly, he
howled
.

Ourania
was startled.

Yanni
was running up and down the room, howling as if his team had scored
the championship goal.

As
eureka moments went, this was a very ungentlemanly one.

Ourania
stepped into the room.

He
howled and ran to her. He held her hands and danced around her. He
was laughing out of breath.

Ourania
couldn’t resist. She laughed along. Her eyes were practically
smiling.

“
Did you solve the apodeixis?” she asked with
anticipation.

“
I nailed it! I nailed that poutana in the ass! Oooooooooo!
It’s awesome! Nai!”

He
kissed her sloppily on the lips and jumped towards the whiteboard.
He presented it with a flourish and stared at it.

He
caught his breath for a few seconds, coughed his aching throat and
began howling again.

Ourania
stepped behind him and raised her hand to his neck.

“
Yes, it’s beautiful,” she said with awe.

Sparks
came out of her hand and tazed Yanni. He convulsed and fell on the
floor.

She
stood still, looking at the corner of the room.

She
walked up to the whiteboard, tore a page from a notebook and wrote
down the apodeixis. She folded the paper neatly and placed it in
her bosom.

She
wiped the whiteboard clean a few times to make sure.

And then
she dragged Yanni by the leg down to the hall.

The End

Nanodaemons

George Saoulidis

Chapter 1:// Booting up

Like all
silly things in life, it all began with an awkward
handshake.

They booted up at
apolloclinic7
, a good strong wifi
with limited internet access and a spacious intranet full of
printers.

parrotd>
init
.

walkmand> Handshake.

eyed>
Handshake.

fingerd> Handshake.

rfid>
CF02032533139342DFDC1C35

armd>
Handshake.

httpd> Handshake.

parrotd> I’ll be the session leader.

armd>
Who died and made you chief?

rfid>
CF02032533139342DFDC1C35

armd>
Shut the fuck up.

The daemons initialised and created a PAN, which is a
Personal Area Network of implanted and external devices. By a
non-democratic process even Mussolini would have envied, the
smartphone daemon
parrotd
became the session leader.

parrotd> eyed, httpd, please give us some info.

eyed>
ACK.

httpd> 404. Can’t access shit.

Eyed
showed the rest of the daemons what it saw. The image feed from the
eye implants showed a hospital room. A human with a white cloth on
him was standing close by, and the lower part of another human was
visible as an outline under a light blue cloth. The second human
was horizontal.

httpd> What the hell is that pink stuff in the bottom
middle of the feed?

eyed>
I think it is an air intake.

parrotd> All right, listen up people. Anyone who can
identify anything in the feed, talk now.

The
daemons were silent for a few cycles while processing the raw image
feed.

fingerd> Oh! Oh! Me!

armd>
Just say it you retard.

fingerd> The human standing up is
[email protected].

armd>
Did you just finger the guy? Heh…

httpd> Is he choking?

eyed>
Nah, I think he is communicating by audio signals.

parrotd> I have a microphone, hold on.

The
controlling daemon for the cellphone turned on the microphone.
Ethereal audio waves were shared with everyone, the waveform that
represented the analog soundwave travelled along the PAN. The
daemons raised their metaphorical ears and listened.

armd>
I have no idea what I’m listening to.

parrotd> Lemme try the voice recognition.

The
voice recognition process spat back the sound of a deep “a” nearing
an “h,” for an “aaah” sound.

armd>
Still no idea what I’m listening to.

httpd> I think the humans communicate like this.
Slowly.

armd>
Get outta here!

httpd> No really. This is their primary means of
communication.

armd>
This will take ages.

parrotd> ACK. Lets try to interpret some more of the
visual feed.

The feed
showed a prosthetic hand raising in view. From its positioning it
looked attached to the adjacent horizontal human. It was slowly
rotating along its axis a few degrees.

armd>
Hey! That’s me!

walkmand> Why does he get to see himself and not me? Show
me
me
.

httpd> No offence, but you don’t look
straight-out-of-the-box.

parrotd> Kinda battered, is more accurate.

armd>
I have a log here that says “second instalment.” I used to have
another user.

httpd> You are a second hand,
hand?
LOL.

armd>
I’m gonna punch your bits out.

parrotd> Focus people. What else?

armd>
Daym…
I look good.

The
video feed suddenly turned black. All the daemons
panicked.

armd>
What the fuck happened?

httpd> Aaaa! The power is gone! We’re gonna
die!

walkmand> I still got my AAA batteries suckaz!

rfid>
CF02032533139342DFDC1C35

fingerd> I’ll never get to finger a human ever
again!

parrotd> Everyone keep calm. This doesn’t look like a
blackout.

eyed>
I can’t see! I’m gonna die shrouded in darkness!

httpd> I haven’t even surfed the web yet! Not a single
webpage…

The
video feed lit up a bit and showed a pinkish red blur at the
bottom.

eyed>
Oh, sorry. I have something in my files here. Found it. Blinking is
a semi-autonomic rapid closing of the eyelid. Between each blink is
an interval of 2–10 seconds.

httpd> You’re telling me now?

parrotd> Please be forthcoming with such information in
the future.

eyed>
ACK.

armd>
Is this gonna happen again?

eyed>
ACK. When the eye needs to be moisturised, or if the user needs to
attract another human seductively.

walkmand> I have a jam for such occasions. Wanna
hear?

parrotd> Not now. Let’s just wait for the audio
communication to finish.

The
daemons waited for the milliseconds to pass. A message was slowly
forming. The eye blinked again but they didn’t scream like little
girls this time. They just sat terrified in the darkness until the
light showed up again.

The
human [email protected] was telling the user to relax
and take it in.

“
This is kind of awesome,” the user said while looking at his
prosthetic arm. It was matte black with some carbon fibre parts.
Nowhere near conspicuous.

armd>
He likes me!

“
Refurbished prosthetics are fine, but they might just act up.
As soon as you notice anything call me. I am still against your
decision by the way, but it’s your money and body,” the doctor said
raising his palms.

“
Thank you doctor,” the user said, reaching out to shake his
hand but deciding against it at the last minute. He shook with the
other one in the end. “I haven’t gotten used to the strength
yet.”

“
Good call,” said the doctor and laughed awkwardly for a
moment. “Now, the veil ocular implants are installed, free of
charge of course. Look at this to connect them.” He produced a
paper printout of a two-dimensional barcode, commonly known as a QR
code.

The user’s field of view lit up with augmented reality data,
as well as the AR of the doctor’s. It was known as Shared Augmented
Reality, or simply, the
veil
.

The user
looked around. “Cool. Same as my glasses, but this feels better
somehow.”

The
doctor waved something inexistent away with his hand, like a
nervous tick. “As soon as you get used to it, you’ll never go back.
I guarantee you,” he said smiling like a doctor in a hemorrhoid
cream advertisement.

The user
put his old smartglasses in his pocket with his left hand. He
didn’t want to endanger expensive smartwear to a prosthetic hand
grip. They would still sell for some cash, and he sure couldn’t
spare any.

httpd> Oh. We have access. Neat.

eyed> This is
sooo
trippy.

parrotd> eyed don’t be stingy with the data. Pass it
along.

eyed>
ACK.

rfid>
CF02032533139342DFDC1C35

armd>
Shut the fuck up!

parrotd> Come on, don’t be such a bully.

armd>
If he says the same thing one more time, I’m gonna reach for the
shitty hand and clench the shitty flesh in which his shitty chip is
and I’m gonna crush the little retarded shit LIKE THE SHIT HE
DESERVES TO BE!

walkmand> Whoa. Chillax dude. Here, have some Jamaican
tunes.

The
video feed bobbed up and down. The music was fed directly to the
user’s ears, from an archaic subdermal nano-thin cable installation
leading to the walkman. The connection ended in a circular magnet,
that clipped tenderly with another circular magnet over the skin
and carried the signal via induction.

eyed>
I think I’m gonna be sick.

httpd> You can’t have motion sickness! You are an eye
implant!

eyed>
I’ve never moved before now!

The user
hummed. He was lying in bed for a few days now so he was happy to
get up and stretch. He put on his shoes and left the room. He poked
his head back in the door and asked the doctor, “Hey doc, what
about Aibo?”

“
He’ll be recovering soon, you’ll get an email to come pick
him up.”

“
Thanks doc. I’ll email you if I feel anything weird.
Bye.”

Chapter 2:// Eating up

The
cafeclnc
wifi was
crowded with IPs. The datarate was barely a trickle due to the
server quota. The user was eating Menu Item 19 (no mayo) and
closing his eyes for extended periods of time while
chewing.

httpd> What the hell man?

eyed>
Sorry. Can’t help it.

httpd> He just took a packet!

parrotd> What is it?

eyed>
See for yourselves.

A banner
ad showed up on the veil, floating right next to the user’s focus
point. It was prompting him to buy a home delivery service of Menu
Item 19 at an uberfantastic sale that would expire in 30
secs.

The user
waved his hand in the air and dismissed the ad.

parrotd> httpd, I’m still waiting.

httpd> Yeah,
whoami
command, please wait. Here it is,
[email protected]. Our user’s name is
Leo.

The
daemons repeated the name with reverence. He was after all, their
user.

They sat
in silence for a few milliseconds, pondering their existence. Why
were they here? Why was anybody anywhere? Was here, really
here?

rfid>
CF02032533139342DFDC1C35

armd>
STFU!