SHORT STORY|SCI-FI
A Woman Called Man
[38.9117° N, 77.0756° W, (Alerus) Bioserve 3 10:45.1/4/2235]
Man braces herself as she slams the un-janked thrusters full on, bypassing the prime-damps. Her transpod rips through the silo doors, and in 1.3 seconds, climbs to 32,000 feet and pierces the atmosdome of Alerus. Without the gravnulls on max, she would have been a stain on her seat accelerating at that velocity. But she has to get out of scanner range and get to the distortion field before the sentinels complete one sweep. This is her last chance before she would be terminated, and if she doesn’t succeed, no one else will ever try again — no one else had any reason to. But according to Man, this is all a terrible mistake only she can correct.
I’d never met anyone with ambition before I met Man. According to her, we all had ambition before Protocold deemed it friction, and all but cured us of it. Man is certain the only reason it was tolerated in her is that she was unwaveringly devoid of the other five human diseases: compassion, distraction, doubt, laziness, and the big “L”.
The big “L” is the worst of them, and the only one punishable by early termination. Protocold prohibits us from even talking about it. All we know is that it’s a serious cause of friction, and it’s usually contracted in our final year after being paired with a mate. If your mate gets it, it’s almost always transmitted to you during progenogenesis. Man and I were paired last month, but considering where she’s headed, I doubt she’s worried about the big “L”.
“Nerves of bonded graphite” was how she was described when she first arrived from the fabricators. But at all of five feet, one inch, and ninety-six pounds, Man didn’t look like she’d last a day around here. When two juicers from tooling tried to ambush her on exdeck and came back in crates, we all knew what we were dealing with.
No one has ever been able to square up with Man. She’ll case you for days, vet every detail about you–blink rate, twitch speed, somatotype–then she’ll devise a plan and loop it in her mind over and over so that, come showtime, she could be pulling drop code, clip you, and not miss a keystroke. I’ll never forget the time we were getting into bed and her target suddenly appeared behind her. As she smiled and reached for the light, I watched her clip and six-piece this 300-pound grilla in under two seconds. And then that nonchalant wink she always gives me after a perfect clip. It’s terrifying how easily she kills.
Man’s profound beauty is incongruous with her cruelty. She knows she’s a monster, but she says her mission is more important than any individual. I don’t know why, but I want to believe her when she says this pointless existence we call life was never meant to be.
She often wastes hours of sleep-shift telling bizarre stories of an ancient world where humans governed themselves and indulged their every desire. They spent their days in leisure, breathing deeply of sweet, calming gases produced by strange green creatures called “plants” who lived their lives in a vegetative state. Millions of different species inhabited Bioserve 3 and not one had any self-awareness whatsoever. Some had edible flesh which they allowed humans to consume as if their purpose was to provide sustenance.
She gets all misty and choked up describing a female cradling a small, helpless creature she’d grown inside her body, and feeding it by issuing a caloric liquid from her breasts! And she somehow kept the thing alive that way for 18 years, after which it became a normal human.
At that point, I’m usually a little queasy, and that’s when she wants to uplink! Of course, when Man says “uplink,” I uplink! But I worry I might find a small helpless creature up there!
A few times, after uplinking, I let her keep talking. She said these ancient humans became willful and competitive. In their lust for power, they created corporate entities with which they fought for ownership of the universe. There was a great peace treaty, and for the first time in history, all the entities combined their efforts toward a mutual goal resulting in a technological quantum leap that advanced their creation beyond their own understanding. What they had produced was an inconceivably powerful computing device that, upon its first boot-up, began to redesign and recreate itself by chain reaction so rapidly that within a fraction of a second, it reconfigured everything in the universe to serve itself, including its human creators, who badly misjudged the scope of their creation. Suddenly there was but one single self-perpetuating, omnipotent force, and that force, Man believes, is Protocold. It was hard to grasp the idea that humans created Protocold when we all know Protocold created the universe, and everything in it.
But she insists that before Protocold, the universe and Bioserve 3 were “divine” and “heavenly.” Those words, she said, mean good beyond our understanding.
Man is convinced the universe Protocold created is a closed time-loop recyclium; the ideal state for a machine, but for humans it’s an inescapable prison camp. Her mission is to reopen the linear time continuum in which humans once thrived. She stripped her transpod down to the jump thrusters, and cut the safety janks, believing if she could outrun the sentinels she could use the transpod’s drive core as a photon bomb to collapse the distortion field that keeps us trapped in this universe.
According to Protocold, the distortion field is like a giant meat grinder. That should be enough to deter anyone. But not Man. They must have accidentally broken the mold when they fabricated her.
Where she got this information, I suspect, had something to do with her late arrival. Somewhere between the fabricators and Alerus there were 15 minutes of Man’s life unaccounted for. They said she clipped the driver, but rumors circulated that the Simulants — non-corporeal beings in constant dimensional flux — had made contact with her en route. Having no physicality in any known dimension, the Simulants exist outside of Protocold’s control. But they have appeared to humans in dreams. So they could have downloaded data through her subconscious visual cortex.
The viewcom to her transpod reads all static now; I’ve lost contact. If she succeeds, Protocold’s closed time-loop recyclium will be expunged forever. And the linear time continuum that was saved from oblivion by the wisdom of the Simulants, and the bravery of Man, will seamlessly recommence, and henceforth, persist as the entirety of all that ever was, is, and will be. But if I still exist, as it seems that I do, I have to conclude that Man’s mission has fai —
[Maternity Ward, Georgetown University Hospital, Washington DC 10:55.1/4/2218 ]
“I can see her head! One more push… I’ve got her! Great job, honey! She’s beautiful!…
“Have you two decided on a name for your daughter?”
“Yes! Amanda!“
The end. Or the beginning.
Glossary of made-up words
Unjanked thrusters = thrusters that go full-on instantly without a gradual increase in speed to prevent injury to the passenger.
Gravnulls = Gravity nullifiers or G-force mitigators. theoretical devices that allow spaceships to make hairpin turns at ridiculous speeds without killing the passengers.
Primedamps = things that slow acceleration that you remove when you “unjank” the thrusters (also called “safety janks”)
Bioserve 3 = earth (third planet) in the future when biological organisms (like humans) serve machines
Atmosdome = A bubble of breathable air that covers the entire city such as Alerus
Closed time loop recyclium = a hypothetical dimension in which time does not move forward linearly but keeps looping.
The Big L. = love
Uplink = have sex
Clip = kill
Six-piece (verb.) = cut someone into six pieces
Juicers = users of anabolic steroids for building muscle mass.
Grilla = a person who has used steroids to increase their muscle mass for so long that they now resemble a gorilla.
