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*Sneak Peek* The Gmmos


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Following are excerpts for Chapter 1 of my new book. Comments are always welcome; don't expect them, but they're welcome anyway. . . .

 

Gene sat at his module turned it on and read thru the broadcasts from the bots. Hacking into the bot computers was a growing problem and the bots were increasing their vigilance to catch intruders before they gained complete access. There were proposed penalties up to and including public execution by means that only bots could conceive. Gene wondered how it would feel to be skinned alive and then beheaded.

 

He flipped from the news to the general login screen and entered the code for the bot general records section. He entered his fake ID and password.

 

“ACCESS DENIED”

 

“EUGENUS 54-721c: DO NOT LEAVE YOUR RESIDENCE”

 

“WE WILL COLLECT YOU”

 

“DO NO FEAR”

 

“THERE WILL BE A TRIAL TO DETERMINE YOUR DEGREE OF GUILT AND CORRECT PUNISHMENT”

 

“LEAVE YOUR MODULE FOR REPROGRAMMING”

 

“END. . . .”

 

Gene sat at his module and watched bot code run across the screen until he grew bored. There no need to be concerned. He was caught; there was nothing he could do. He wondered if accessing bot general records was a capital offense or if they would let him off with a short prison sentence and just mental reprogramming. He’d read about that too, but didn’t want to contemplate having probes stuck in his brain to remove bot offensive neurons. Maybe they’d just kill him and be done with it. He wondered how long a person lived while being skinned alive. Would he scream as he’d read?

 

He went into his sister Eugeni’s room and sat on her bed. She was using her module to access the day’s lessons on particle physics. She wanted to work with the ship’s dark particle systems when she received her final postdoc assignment.

 

“Hi,” Gene said. He tried not to sound sad, but it came out that way on its own.

 

“I heard you come in,” Eugeni said. “I busy.”

 

“I can see that,” Gene said. He decided to tell her since she was going to be picked up, too. “I just got caught trying to access a bot record system.”

 

“Shit!” Eugeni said. She turned around and stared at her brother. “I’m working on my thesis. I can’t go now. Why did you do that? You know what Dadi said.”

 

“I’m sorry, I just had to know some things,” Gene said. He heard a bot vehicle pull up outside the residence. This was it, then. “You know I’m now majoring in biology. There were things I thought I needed to know. I’m sorry.”

 

“Did you tell Momi or Dadi?” Eugeni asked as fear streaked her face.

 

“No, they’re still at work in the fields,” Gene said. He stood up, turned around with a sad face. “The bots are here.”

 

“I heard it,” Eugeni said. “Are you going to open the door or let them break it down?”

 

“Okay! I’ll go,” Gene said. “If they don’t come for you, you’ll know you’re safe.”

 

“They don’t break up twin sets,” Eugeni said.

 

Gene walked out of the bedroom and went to the front door. Although he expected at least two bots, there was only one.

 

“Eugenus 54-721c?” the bot asked.

 

“Yes,” Gene said.

 

“You will come with me,” the bot said.

 

“My sister,” Gene said.

 

“She is not a hacker,” the bot said.

 

“But, bots don’t break up twin sets,” Gene said as he followed the bot out to a two place speeder.

 

“A rumor perpetrated by rogue humans,” the bot said, blankly. “I trust you will not try to escape.”

 

“Why would I do that?” Gene asked. “It’d only make things worse.”

 

“You’re a smart boy, human,” the bot said in bot straight face.

 

“Thank you,” Gene said.

 

. . . . . .

 

Gene found pretrial detention in the Ring 2 juvenile detention facility to be quite unremarkable. Every day after breakfast two burly human guards came to escort him to interrogation. They cuffed his hands behind his back and shackled his ankles. He shuffled out of his cell and down the hallway between them as his shackles clanked along the stone floor. It was the same every day. They left him cuffed and shackled in the interrogation room sitting on an unpadded metal chair on one side of a metal desk. The lighting was unusually bright for any other place he had been in the facility.

 

The interrogator came in after about a half an hour, but Gene couldn’t see a clock to tell him how long it really was. The interrogator was always the same young man, maybe fifth iteration twenty-five. It was a guess. He didn’t ask. He never asked any questions. He didn’t want to get into any trouble.

 

The interrogator always seemed to know what Gene was going to answer to his questions because he never wrote anything; just seemed to place a checkmark next to an item on his clipboard. It was a pleasant experience, at least in his room. Gene could hear screams coming from other rooms here on the interrogation floor that told him they also tortured some of the children here. He never saw any of the torture victims; he never saw any other prisoners, just heard yelling and screaming from his cell and from this room.

 

“Your trial is tomorrow,” the interrogator said one day. “You will be escorted to a vid wall in an observation room. Except for guards, you will be alone. The trial will appear on the vid.”

 

“Do I get to see a defense attorney?” Gene asked.

 

“That is an ancient concept that no longer applies on Hercules III,” the interrogator said. “Your prosecutor will present your case and the results of our interrogation sessions to the judge. He or she will recess the trial for a period of time and then return with your verdict. You will be escorted either to your current cell or to a cell in another complex in the facility. It all depends on your sentence. We do not determine that; it is up to the judge.”

 

“I want thank you for you and the guards being human,” Gene said. “It made things tolerable. I don’t know what I’d do if this was a total bot facility.”

 

“We appreciate your candor; I will put that on the record of your interrogation report,” the interrogator said. “It may have a bearing on your trial or may not. You’re basically a nice boy who has been led astray by errant elders. They have been arrested and will receive their proper punishment.”

 

Gene stared at the interrogator. Arne was the one who taught him how to hack into the bot computers and now his sister, Arnae, would suffer his punishment too, probably death.

 

The next morning a long while after lunch his guards came for him and cuffed and shackled him. They led him to an elevator that felt like it was going up; how far, he did not know.

 

The trial vid room had three chairs; one before a vid camera beside the vid wall; and the other two sat in the back of the room. He was placed in his chair and he assumed the guards were in the other two. The screen came on and the bailiff said, ‘All Rise.’ Gene stood up as best he could. He saw the judge come into the courtroom and sit at the dais. The bailiff said, ‘Be Seated.’ Gene sat down.

 

“I commend you son on your attempt at maintaining the decorum of the court,” the judge said. He appeared to be at least five thousand iteration age ninety.

 

It was a hobby of Gene’s to guess a person’s age and iteration. The judge was barely middle aged, just about what he thought ninety should look like. His iteration was only a guess since there were fifteen thousand eight hundred ninety-five iterations between age ninety and ninety-one. The tattoo of a small eagle on the side of the judge’s forehead identified him as homosexual, not that Gene knew exactly what that meant or entailed. He suspected some things, but, after all, he was only second iteration age eleven. Puberty probably wouldn’t hit for another seventy-six years; hopefully when he was fourteen or so. He really hoped he wouldn’t have to wait until he was sixteen or seventeen. He’d heard of boys who remained hairless, sometimes until age eighteen and had to go to a clinic to get hormone shots. He hated shots, especially those administered by bots. They had no heart.

 

But, what was a homosexual? Sure, they had small eagles tattooed on their foreheads, but what did that mean? Homo was the root word for man and sexual was obvious or was it? He tried to think about how it all worked. Momis and dadis had sex, but, of course, they couldn’t produce children because men couldn’t produce sperm until the bots operated on them before going to a birth center to donate it. Did homosexuals donate sperm? Why the tattoo? Why?

 

. . . . . .

 

Gene sat on his bed in his residence after being released from the bot prison that morning. Home was definitely better than prison. He looked at a poster of an ancient Earth vid actor. The print at the bottom identified it as Humphrey Bogart, but that was meaningless to Gene. He just liked the stare. It was almost demonic, evil, bot like. Unable to stop it, his mind wandered to the prison, someplace he never wanted to go again. Hacking bedamned, that place was pure evil.

 

On the first day he stripped off all his detention clothes, including his underwear and was given the standard strip search, including body orifices. Then he was given sickly green prison clothes, including the underwear. They gave him bedding which he carried to his cell. Remarkably to him, he was not cuffed or shackled, but where would he go? Where indeed?

 

The door to his cell was solid, which prohibited him a view of the passageway. There was a barred window on the opposite wall that provided light, but it was above his reach so he couldn’t see out. There wasn’t much use in jumping because the window was frosted meaning he couldn’t have seen anything anyway. Under the window was a metal toilet and wash basin. Only warm water came from the tap and the soap came from a dispenser set into the wall. Toothbrush and toothpaste provided by the bots stood in a metal cup welded behind the sink. To the right of the window was his bed, it was metal. He remembered thinking that it was a good thing they gave him a mattress pad. It provided little comfort, but it was better than having to lie on bare metal. Across the cell from his bed was a metal door, behind which was his personal shower. He was allowed to take two showers a week under supervision of a bot. He remembered crying himself to sleep that first night.

 

. . . . . .

 

He walked over to his sister’s bedroom and sat on her bed. She was reading something on her module. He didn’t look at it.

 

“You’re back,” she said.

 

“Yeah,” he said.

 

“Can I ask you something?” she asked. “Why did you vomit every time you returned to your cell after the bots left?”

 

“How do you now that?” he asked.

 

“We received vids on the house module now and then,” she said. “But it was only of you in your cell.”

 

“That was when I was returned from witnessing an execution,” he said.

 

“They made you watch?” she asked.

 

“That was my punishment,” he said.

 

“Oh,” she said. “It was horrible then?”

 

“Worse than you can imagine,” he said. “There were punishments from ancient Earth. The bots know how to kill humans in the most painful and bloody ways.”

 

 

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Following are excerpts for Chapter 1 of my new book. Comments are always welcome; don't expect them, but they're welcome anyway. . . .

 

Gene sat at his module turned it on and read thru the broadcasts from the bots. Hacking into the bot computers was a growing problem and the bots were increasing their vigilance to catch intruders before they gained complete access. There were proposed penalties up to and including public execution by means that only bots could conceive. Gene wondered how it would feel to be skinned alive and then beheaded.

 

He flipped from the news to the general login screen and entered the code for the bot general records section. He entered his fake ID and password.

 

“ACCESS DENIED”

 

“EUGENUS 54-721c: DO NOT LEAVE YOUR RESIDENCE”

 

“WE WILL COLLECT YOU”

 

“DO NO FEAR”

 

“THERE WILL BE A TRIAL TO DETERMINE YOUR DEGREE OF GUILT AND CORRECT PUNISHMENT”

 

“LEAVE YOUR MODULE FOR REPROGRAMMING”

 

“END. . . .”

 

Gene sat at his module and watched bot code run across the screen until he grew bored. There no need to be concerned. He was caught; there was nothing he could do. He wondered if accessing bot general records was a capital offense or if they would let him off with a short prison sentence and just mental reprogramming. He’d read about that too, but didn’t want to contemplate having probes stuck in his brain to remove bot offensive neurons. Maybe they’d just kill him and be done with it. He wondered how long a person lived while being skinned alive. Would he scream as he’d read?

 

He went into his sister Eugeni’s room and sat on her bed. She was using her module to access the day’s lessons on particle physics. She wanted to work with the ship’s dark particle systems when she received her final postdoc assignment.

 

“Hi,” Gene said. He tried not to sound sad, but it came out that way on its own.

 

“I heard you come in,” Eugeni said. “I busy.”

 

“I can see that,” Gene said. He decided to tell her since she was going to be picked up, too. “I just got caught trying to access a bot record system.”

 

“Shit!” Eugeni said. She turned around and stared at her brother. “I’m working on my thesis. I can’t go now. Why did you do that? You know what Dadi said.”

 

“I’m sorry, I just had to know some things,” Gene said. He heard a bot vehicle pull up outside the residence. This was it, then. “You know I’m now majoring in biology. There were things I thought I needed to know. I’m sorry.”

 

“Did you tell Momi or Dadi?” Eugeni asked as fear streaked her face.

 

“No, they’re still at work in the fields,” Gene said. He stood up, turned around with a sad face. “The bots are here.”

 

“I heard it,” Eugeni said. “Are you going to open the door or let them break it down?”

 

“Okay! I’ll go,” Gene said. “If they don’t come for you, you’ll know you’re safe.”

 

“They don’t break up twin sets,” Eugeni said.

 

Gene walked out of the bedroom and went to the front door. Although he expected at least two bots, there was only one.

 

“Eugenus 54-721c?” the bot asked.

 

“Yes,” Gene said.

 

“You will come with me,” the bot said.

 

“My sister,” Gene said.

 

“She is not a hacker,” the bot said.

 

“But, bots don’t break up twin sets,” Gene said as he followed the bot out to a two place speeder.

 

“A rumor perpetrated by rogue humans,” the bot said, blankly. “I trust you will not try to escape.”

 

“Why would I do that?” Gene asked. “It’d only make things worse.”

 

“You’re a smart boy, human,” the bot said in bot straight face.

 

“Thank you,” Gene said.

 

. . . . . .

 

Gene found pretrial detention in the Ring 2 juvenile detention facility to be quite unremarkable. Every day after breakfast two burly human guards came to escort him to interrogation. They cuffed his hands behind his back and shackled his ankles. He shuffled out of his cell and down the hallway between them as his shackles clanked along the stone floor. It was the same every day. They left him cuffed and shackled in the interrogation room sitting on an unpadded metal chair on one side of a metal desk. The lighting was unusually bright for any other place he had been in the facility.

 

The interrogator came in after about a half an hour, but Gene couldn’t see a clock to tell him how long it really was. The interrogator was always the same young man, maybe fifth iteration twenty-five. It was a guess. He didn’t ask. He never asked any questions. He didn’t want to get into any trouble.

 

The interrogator always seemed to know what Gene was going to answer to his questions because he never wrote anything; just seemed to place a checkmark next to an item on his clipboard. It was a pleasant experience, at least in his room. Gene could hear screams coming from other rooms here on the interrogation floor that told him they also tortured some of the children here. He never saw any of the torture victims; he never saw any other prisoners, just heard yelling and screaming from his cell and from this room.

 

“Your trial is tomorrow,” the interrogator said one day. “You will be escorted to a vid wall in an observation room. Except for guards, you will be alone. The trial will appear on the vid.”

 

“Do I get to see a defense attorney?” Gene asked.

 

“That is an ancient concept that no longer applies on Hercules III,” the interrogator said. “Your prosecutor will present your case and the results of our interrogation sessions to the judge. He or she will recess the trial for a period of time and then return with your verdict. You will be escorted either to your current cell or to a cell in another complex in the facility. It all depends on your sentence. We do not determine that; it is up to the judge.”

 

“I want thank you for you and the guards being human,” Gene said. “It made things tolerable. I don’t know what I’d do if this was a total bot facility.”

 

“We appreciate your candor; I will put that on the record of your interrogation report,” the interrogator said. “It may have a bearing on your trial or may not. You’re basically a nice boy who has been led astray by errant elders. They have been arrested and will receive their proper punishment.”

 

Gene stared at the interrogator. Arne was the one who taught him how to hack into the bot computers and now his sister, Arnae, would suffer his punishment too, probably death.

 

The next morning a long while after lunch his guards came for him and cuffed and shackled him. They led him to an elevator that felt like it was going up; how far, he did not know.

 

The trial vid room had three chairs; one before a vid camera beside the vid wall; and the other two sat in the back of the room. He was placed in his chair and he assumed the guards were in the other two. The screen came on and the bailiff said, ‘All Rise.’ Gene stood up as best he could. He saw the judge come into the courtroom and sit at the dais. The bailiff said, ‘Be Seated.’ Gene sat down.

 

“I commend you son on your attempt at maintaining the decorum of the court,” the judge said. He appeared to be at least five thousand iteration age ninety.

 

It was a hobby of Gene’s to guess a person’s age and iteration. The judge was barely middle aged, just about what he thought ninety should look like. His iteration was only a guess since there were fifteen thousand eight hundred ninety-five iterations between age ninety and ninety-one. The tattoo of a small eagle on the side of the judge’s forehead identified him as homosexual, not that Gene knew exactly what that meant or entailed. He suspected some things, but, after all, he was only second iteration age eleven. Puberty probably wouldn’t hit for another seventy-six years; hopefully when he was fourteen or so. He really hoped he wouldn’t have to wait until he was sixteen or seventeen. He’d heard of boys who remained hairless, sometimes until age eighteen and had to go to a clinic to get hormone shots. He hated shots, especially those administered by bots. They had no heart.

 

But, what was a homosexual? Sure, they had small eagles tattooed on their foreheads, but what did that mean? Homo was the root word for man and sexual was obvious or was it? He tried to think about how it all worked. Momis and dadis had sex, but, of course, they couldn’t produce children because men couldn’t produce sperm until the bots operated on them before going to a birth center to donate it. Did homosexuals donate sperm? Why the tattoo? Why?

 

. . . . . .

 

Gene sat on his bed in his residence after being released from the bot prison that morning. Home was definitely better than prison. He looked at a poster of an ancient Earth vid actor. The print at the bottom identified it as Humphrey Bogart, but that was meaningless to Gene. He just liked the stare. It was almost demonic, evil, bot like. Unable to stop it, his mind wandered to the prison, someplace he never wanted to go again. Hacking bedamned, that place was pure evil.

 

On the first day he stripped off all his detention clothes, including his underwear and was given the standard strip search, including body orifices. Then he was given sickly green prison clothes, including the underwear. They gave him bedding which he carried to his cell. Remarkably to him, he was not cuffed or shackled, but where would he go? Where indeed?

 

The door to his cell was solid, which prohibited him a view of the passageway. There was a barred window on the opposite wall that provided light, but it was above his reach so he couldn’t see out. There wasn’t much use in jumping because the window was frosted meaning he couldn’t have seen anything anyway. Under the window was a metal toilet and wash basin. Only warm water came from the tap and the soap came from a dispenser set into the wall. Toothbrush and toothpaste provided by the bots stood in a metal cup welded behind the sink. To the right of the window was his bed, it was metal. He remembered thinking that it was a good thing they gave him a mattress pad. It provided little comfort, but it was better than having to lie on bare metal. Across the cell from his bed was a metal door, behind which was his personal shower. He was allowed to take two showers a week under supervision of a bot. He remembered crying himself to sleep that first night.

 

. . . . . .

 

He walked over to his sister’s bedroom and sat on her bed. She was reading something on her module. He didn’t look at it.

 

“You’re back,” she said.

 

“Yeah,” he said.

 

“Can I ask you something?” she asked. “Why did you vomit every time you returned to your cell after the bots left?”

 

“How do you now that?” he asked.

 

“We received vids on the house module now and then,” she said. “But it was only of you in your cell.”

 

“That was when I was returned from witnessing an execution,” he said.

 

“They made you watch?” she asked.

 

“That was my punishment,” he said.

 

“Oh,” she said. “It was horrible then?”

 

serato vs virtual dj

 

“Worse than you can imagine,” he said. “There were punishments from ancient Earth. The bots know how to kill humans in the most painful and bloody ways.”

Impressive post here. I do agree with your point here. 

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