"I dunno, I've just always had something against 'artificial' things, and that
certainly goes for intelligence as well as all the more mundane. I've always preferred the
real thing, but people don't seem to mind things being false as long as they're
convenient; genetically altered produce, virtual reality; whatever. Even reality isn't real
anymore! To me it seems consumer culture only demands things that the consumers
can't get their hands on in reality. Stick on a VR helmet and be an instant hero! Play the
part. It's an escape; perhaps a little like acting, though that requires a bit more talent
and the stories you act out normally carry some message." Iron kicked a chunky cog
across the debris strewn concrete forecourt of an abandoned factory and watched it
skim across a rubble ridden car park like a pebble across a silent loch; pinging and
bouncing off pieces of cast off machinery and rusty fragments of burned out vehicles as
if it was in a pinball machine.
The US government had converted what was once High Bridge park on the
Harlem river into a spacious industrial powerhouse which was intended to be the envy
of the world. US goods had been renowned for quality the world over, especially as
political instability in Eastern Europe threatened to bring the manufacturing abilities of
nearby nations down. The fact that both weaponary and consumer based products were
under constant construction here indicated the military imperative which lay behind an
ostensibly civilized society. But months after the grand opening of the urban factory
complex came the advent of a new commercial age; of the gene blending contraption
which was to quickly bring the entire industry down. North bridge industrial district
was closed down with immaculate haste; the Americans cutting their losses and leaving
in more ways than one.
What remained was a stagnant husk; an empty wilderness; a shed skin. Stories
abounded of furnaces burning away with only the ghost of capitalism to stoke them; of
haunting military vehicles scouting a brash and deserted complex where tumbleweed
would have been much more apt. "Why can't people just sit up and accept that there are
some things they just aren’t good at ? Why can't they manage to take the hassle that
comes along with trying to get hold of the thing they want? Life isn't hassle free; not if
you're constantly searching to satisfy unsatisfiable desires. "Lincoln let him play the
aporetic card; raising questions he had no real intention of answering. "Why can't
people just accept what they have and appreciate it? People moan like spoilt children
for what they want and think they need. You haven’t got it now, so just shut up and
enjoy what you have got! They want an instant fix; an easy option; that's what the Gene
Blender was all about."
"And artificial intelligence comes under that category. Why not stop, work and
cultivate the real thing?"
"They want robots that think like us and act like us; that have feelings; consciousness.
They want to build a human being and yet they ignore those that are around them.
They think that we disprove God, or at least his omnipotence by becoming Gods;
creators of life. So we can stand up and proclaim that we are the superior beings;
superior to God!"
"And while we quibble fish swim about, birds soar here and there and cows chew their
cud and think 'so what'? We've believed we're superior for eons, but that doesn't make
it so."
"We've always been creators."
"We'll never be gods." Without really thinking about it; perhaps driven by fate; the pair
of strangely intellectual vigilantes had walked right into a gigantic munitions plant
through a service entrance which given its size they quite understandably mistook for a
road in its own right. An impish scuttle of sparks washed across the glowing floor like
a slow morning tide lapping at the perimeter wall of a beach side villa as they passed a
train like juggernaught left behind before its driver could pack it full of contumelious
crates of arrant armaments intended for a distant conflict in which the so called peace
keepers had no real business to interfere. "How intelligent an object is depends on both
designer and observer. A computer analyst who knows all about the most prestigious
advancements in his area of expertise would walk past an electronic chess machine as if
it wasn't there, whereas someone from a technologically unblooded community may
think the thing is cleverer than those self same observers simply because it plays better
chess!"
"In creating we think we can relieve ourselves of our responsibilities; put ourselves in a
position of authority so that whatever decision we make must be the right one because
we made it, and we are the superior beings on this earth. We want to escape morality so
we can do what we like. We think we can escape the gut wrenching reality of our
responsibility by bringing about a state of affairs where we can make ourselves
reparations for our mistakes; create a life to replace those we destroy; build on top of
our responsibilities to obscure them." Lincoln ducked a roving anvil which swept past
at head height on a mechanical chain.
This old factory appeared surprisingly active considering it had been left to rot
over a decade ago. She had always harbored a loosely existential interpretation of
reality; one which as time went on she was less convinced by. But responsibility was
certainly a relevant issue. She was not as persuaded as Iron by the existence of god, but
either way, man was not god, and could not allow his ethical stance to slacken; "We
can drone on about our superiority all we want- saying we save the world through
medicine and ignore the fact that we also destroy it through war. We can claim we
create art and culture and forget we also bring annihilation and extinction. We can
assume that because we use reason and communicate it through human languages we
are the only beings who communicate, and derive from this the idea that therefore we
are the only ones who think and feel when we really haven’t the faintest idea how other
species think at all. The fact is that there is no truth in any of our desperate egotistic
arguments. You can argue all you want this way and that; you won't get anywhere if
the first premise is incorrect. You won't find any concrete realities if you're arguing
about a fictional world. Human beings aren’t as great as we think we are. We wouldn't
have proved our superiority; our manhood; our intelligence or anything else just by
creating things. We won't suddenly grow little halos and ascend up to the heavens to be
the envy of the gods."
"Humans can make all the gizmos; all the toys, so we think we're probably pretty
clever. But clever or not we place ourselves on too high a plateau. We still have
responsibilities to others; duty. If any creature is going to create a real life from scratch,
it's probably us. Actually, that heightens our responsibility. To have power and
knowledge is certainly a handy thing if you use it right." A cruel red light bathed the
somnolent scene as if the intention of the projectionist was to create the illusion of a
bugbear bloodbath which would soon be more forthcoming than the apparent
desertedness of the building would indicate. The heat of countless blast furnaces and
molten pits bubbling and clanking away in the background was beginning to make the
whole sprawling construction feel like the inside of a tropical hothouse in the middle of
Arizona with the visitors dressed as if they were going skiing. Either when the plant
shut down they had forgotten to pull out the plug or somebody was playing devious
tricks on them. "I really don't think getting some kind of robot to 'be human' is possible
anyway. It's insulting to the human race to think that all we are is a bag of wires,
microchips and computer code. You can dress up a computer in human skin; get it to
act like a person and fool people that it is a human being."
"You can dress mutton as lamb."
"You can paint a grapefruit orange and spray it with some orangey aroma, but you'll
soon find out the truth when you open it up. The problem is understanding. Computers
can know things, but they can't understand. They’re functional machines; they do what
they're told. Not like a soldier does what he's told, because that's a conscious decision.
There's some measure of discretion; however obedient the private; but a computer
knows only command and response. Computers are pretty good at sciences, and
experts at math; better than us I should imagine. But math hasn’t ever been seen as a
measure of humanity or creativity."
"They only work in zeros and ones."
"Pure binary. Computers can process, but they can't understand. Imagine a man sitting
in a huge red box. On either side of this box is a white box. The boxes are connected by
two small tubes; one from the white into the red and the other from the red into the
second white. There are also men in the white boxes. The men in the white boxes are
Chinese. The man in the red is not. Furthermore, the man in the red has never been to
China, doesn't speak a word of the language and knows very little about the country.
He's an insular Westerner. So Chinese man number one decides to write a letter to
Chinese man number two. He can't give it to his friend directly because the boxes only
connect through the red one. He also has another problem. He only has a very strange
type of ink which only shows up in red light, which means only the Westerner can see
it. So he writes the letter as neatly as he can baring in mind that he can't see what he's
written himself, and pushes it through the adjoining tube, where the Westerner picks it
up. Now, the task of the man in red is to relay notes, but he recognizes the white ink,
and knows he will have to copy the note using normal ink if the second Chinese man is
to read it. He looks at the note; a few columns of Chinese lettering which means very
little to him. So he copies the symbols with great accuracy onto another piece of paper;
afterall, he's been trained to copy symbols, so his reproduction is immaculately detailed.
In fact, though he's duplicated all the wonky lines and incomplete curves produced
when the Chinese man was writing blind in the white light, he has reproduced the note
in the center of the page where it will be more readable, which the Chinese man failed
to do properly in the white light. He shrugs and passes the new note through the
second tube, where the second Chinese man picks it up, reads and laughs loudly. Now,
what the man in the red room did was to process information. He had a preconceived
task; he was employed to rewrite letters. He had the tools; paper and a normal pen. He
was then presented with a piece of data, and was able to relay it accurately and swiftly.
This is exactly what a computer does. It has a preconceived task and the tools to
complete it. But what did the Chinese men have that the Westerner didn't? What do the
programmers on each side of the world have that the computer relaying their e-mails
doesn't?"
"Understanding. It doesn't 'get the joke'. Both the man in red and the computer are
good at relaying information, but they don't have the slightest idea what the information
means. For all the Westerner knows it could say; 'let's fire that man in the damn red
box, knock through the walls and just talk face to face like normal people." Lincoln
swore she saw a shape bolt unwisely somewhere between beaten boxes and vomiting
sparks, but she dismissed it as the recurrence of a groundless spook story for the time
being at least. "But the man in red can't do anything about it because he simply doesn't
understand it. He gets the form of the message; the shape of the symbols, but he
doesn't contemplate the meaning. Just like a computer he can't do what he's not taught;
programmed to do; it's not his job. "
"You can get a machine to mimic a human, but you can't get it to think like one. You
could spend countless billions and give it prosthetic limbs, rubber skin; a complex
program. You could let it out into the real world; let it get a job and make friends. You
could fool the entire world, but fooling them would be exactly what you were doing;
making them think your creation was something it wasn't. Fooling and creating are two
different things."
Yama Ganelon gazed down from the rafters like an arch villain in a spy movie
beholding with a twisted glee the three dimensional map with which he would lecture
his accomplices on his cunning plan for an all too ambitious world takeover. His targets
had walked straight into his trap; his ambush. Big bucks loomed on the horizon; he
would go back home to China a wealthy man. He played with a shrunken ear on a neck
chain as if it were a biro; running the squidgy momento of a past assassination through
his fingers like an Oriental stress ball.
Yama was a man of high stature in the bounty hunting world. An inherently evil
character whose childhood remained a mystery even to him. It was said he was fathered
by a tyrannous Manchu warlord; all of whom had been imprisoned after the right wing
takeover of that half of China then wiped out for good during the communist purges.
Yama cared little whether his father was a warlord or a farm hand. Hitmen had little
need for families; they simply provided fodder for potential kidnappers disgruntled at
his barbaric treatment of their own loved ones.
He tossed aside the shieth of a slinky ninjato sword and nodded an unintelligible
command to a second hunched killer who lurked with very similar intent on a lower
gangway. Few men escaped his clutches once he had them in his sights like a rabbit in
the headlights of a gun totting hunter's jeep. That was why he had been nicknamed
such; Yama the lord of death. Death is indiscriminate, as was his namesake. Ganelon
was famed for the murders of countless religious leaders in both China and Tibet for
which he was paid substantial fees which 'lesser' men were forced to turn down due to
restraining superstitions. As these next two hits; just names on the list; scrawls on an
ongoing tally; stumbled into the very heart of this chugging, churning arena, the self
appointed leader of this furtive flock of murderous predators braced himself like a thief
in a glum art gallery awaiting the ungainly exit of the only guard; for the kill.
"There's something human beings have that robots don't;" Iron was either
unaware of the presence of scores of unanimated assassins lining the dark factory walls
and hanging from the crow black metal service walkways around and above them, or
else he possessed an ability to remain inhumanely cool in the face of impending danger.
As the pair of reprobate rebels continued their drollery dialogue, Yama decreed to
himself that it was the former option which held more water. "Humans have souls;
consciousness."
"A life which isn't determined; automated. Which sometimes doesn't really make sense."
Lincoln raised her voice to account for the droning plod of a moaning steel furnace
which seemed to expand beyond the walls of the warehouse like room in which it was
housed. Eon Xanthos; a bounty hunter trained by the Manhattan government and thus
pushed down onto the front line by the more experienced clutch of killers who had
been brought in especially for the job; stamped out a cigarette but which may well have
conspired to give the whole sadistic game away and bided his time. "Yeah; weird things
happen, and we adapt to them; we change. We make sense of things our way. Robots
can only make sense of things they've been told how to make sense of. There's no
creativity; no imagination. There can be nothing new and nothing which baffles them."
"Things either have a straight answer or they don't compute."
"Right; take dreaming for example. I have some pretty strange dreams sometimes."
"Ditto."
"But artificial intelligences couldn't have such dreams, could they?"
"You mean do androids dream of electric sheep?"
"Well they don't; unless they've been programmed to, and if they've been programmed
to its not really a dream."
"Because it's not unconscious...." Her words were cut short as Rai Pandarus; another ill
trained and inexperienced government spiv; went one better than his nicotine crazed
counterpart and allowed a trowel like dagger to drop out of his stuttering hands and
imbed itself like a javelin into the carpet of ginger dust which covered the industrial
play park floor with a dull but painfully audible thud.
Yama covered his face with a scarred and rugged hand and viciously motioned
to the intended cannon fodder on ground floor level; concealed deviously behind
towering chunks of clunking machinery; to dash hopelessly towards their dooms.
Lincoln instinctively took hold of Pandarus' wrist and elbow as he conducted a
vague stabbing motion while in full flight and performed a simple aikido twist which
ensured the arm remained as straight and tight as a sparingly short washing line while
the injured party could blame only his own momentum as he plunged headlong into the
starchy red grime with a taught crack of sinew and a choking plume of age old sawdust
and other less inviting substances which appeared around his fallen person as if a
mage's spell. Observing that this initial attacker was merely the very tip of an iceberg
big enough and cumbersome enough to down the most unsinkable of passenger
cruisers, she opted not to persevere with this strap like submission hold. Regardless of
Yama's incoming underlings, such techniques operate on the premise that failure to
surrender to them incites the insinuated breakage. With that wound already inflicted,
there was really little purpose in maintaining the restraintful tactic.
Meanwhile, Iron flew straight into his stride stooping down like a wicket keeper
and depriving Xanthos of his legs with a pristine sweep; the thundering hitman hurled
into an ill fated dive which saw him connect head first with the edge of a chrome
conveyor belt inexplicably laden with a mishmash collection of boxes, crates and tools
despite the lively plant's thirteen year closure; the impact of the blow inciting the
mechanical goods relay into wakefulness while invariably sending the unfortunate junta
operative to a corresponding sleep.
Hiruko Kami and Bhava Tanha were next in the queue. Failing to learn from
their compadre's defeasible performances, they charged together at their short term
sparing partners and swiftly adjourned to the sooty floor; which was beginning to
resemble a bust time dustbowl by now, as Iron and Lincoln span around airborne in
telekinetic harmony and found gaping bulls eyes of targets with identical backicks as if
the stumped duo of now suddenly retired bounty hunters had presented themselves as
diplomatic gifts to a visiting cannibal dignitary.
Above, Yama bit his tongue in frustration until it bled. The other senior
assassin; Jez Solomon; a burley specimen in an off red camouflage and a pancake like
beret; watched the action with him as if the two had bet their houses on one of the non
starters.
Solomon had worked in Africa for the US until that particular floundering
nation's coffers ran as dry as the Kalahari desert where he had played out his final
murderous vigil for them; an act of failed regicide for the costs of which he had never
been fully compensated. Since then he had jumped ship and gone freelance, which
served his animalistic greed more efficiently than any of his former employees had
done. Volscenzi had just made him an offer he couldn't refuse; two simple kills which
given the appropriate time and location could be made at once. Two birds with one
stone; two bounties with one stone. Africa was the only continent; Australasia
discluded; which actually did well out of the war, unless you happened to be from the
Arabic states in the north. Originally hailing from Nairobi, Solomon left for America to
make his fortune, but soon found that that particular ghost had since scuttled back the
other way. Africa had originally been crippled by the withdrawal of financial support
from the big boys when the troubles in Eastern Europe and then the Middle East came
to a head. But a flimsy collection of trade deals and mutual assistance treaties ensured
the survival of what were at the time some of the world's poorest nations. More than
that, it created some sort of stability; a community trust by which the peoples of Africa;
despite their cultural and ethnic diversities; grew to trust one another; in terms of
business at least. Socialism had become popular throughout the world when the
capitalist work ethic fell on its head at the advent of technological 'cheating', and a
cooperative 'safe' trading environment came about over time in Africa, which prompted
scholars and economists to term it the 'New World'; a throwback to the days when
America held that mantle. After Europe and the Middle East, right wing politics had
been pretty much been dead and buried; a significant contrast with how things were
towards the end of the Twentieth Century. The question to the politician was not left or
right, but how far left. Of course some; the Chinese especially and the new Soviet
block; went a little too far, but African politicians carefully stayed clear of such
extremities. With barely usable crops and factories in Europe; most all but destroyed or
otherwise chemically contaminated; African goods became the order of the day.
Exportation was huge from the outset; of both foodstuffs and consumer products.
The most fore thinking multinationals relocated to Lagos and Cape Town as
soon as the first bouts of anthrax were released in anger by the Arabic Confederation; a
retaliatory measure after the United States of Europe; prodded in no uncertain terms by
the Americans who were keen to go back to their Nagasaki days; landed a potful of
death and devastation on Baghdad. With this turn around in the third world- first world
merrygoround, the old call to end third world debt was suddenly approved; a course of
action which would never have taken place if the monetary boot was still on the other
foot. Solomon, though was an American by now; batting for the losing side. He was
employed as an invisible trouble maker. His hit list included ambassadors and political
strongmen alike; and all to facilitate a breakdown in law and order between the African
Trade Partnerships with the intention of bringing them into a wider war from which the
Americans would profit. The rouse failed, the partnerships lived on despite tense
divisions between racial groups, and Solomon's pay check never came through.
Volscenzi offered cash up front.
By now Iron and Lincoln were surrounded by three intransigent individuals who
grouped around them like baiters around a sprung bear trap. Geb Amon; a bull like
grappler who looked more like the bear than the baiter was the first to break the
formerly irrefrangible impasse. A succinct leaping boot to the jaw sent him tumbling
into a pile of rocket filled boxes as Iron plucked him off the ground like a fractured
daisy. Shu Amon could hardly have been any more different physically; a lanky bando
practitioner who shared with his twin only a grasping and self serving persona. Both
had moved on when Egypt had become entangled in the troubles between the Arabic
Confederation and the wrecked former democracies of Eastern Europe, and; just as like
the rest of the perverted planet's blood lusting, money loving killers; ended up in New
York City State. But inevitably the result of their current warring escapade would bare
a similar parallel to their DNA....
Wincing to duck as a diplidocan blast furnace sprayed a confetti like rainbow of
chittering sparks across an uncompromising floor as if it were the family of the bride at
an extravagant wedding, Lincoln swiftly regained her composure despite the unstable
surroundings which shuddered and churned in and out of action at worryingly irregular
intervals; a volcanic furnace here or a dull leaden crate on a pulley swinging apparently
purposelessly there making the entire environment one of frenzily forbidding danger.
Ever resourceful, she swang a circular furnace door into the advancing Tefnut
Harthor's face at an opportune moment as if idly shutting a resistant fridge door. Iron,
on the other hand, was notably more enthusiastic. He ducked eccentrically while a
previously cocksure swipe wailed spasmodically over his head.
Shu was the elder of the brothers by precious moments, and it showed;
although neither could be mistaken for potential child geniuses at birth to be weeded
out and institutionalized by society. His twin may well have been bigger, but Shu had
tactical skill on his side. Unfortunately for him, leaving oneself open to a far more
accomplished adversary while reveling in one's own flawed expertise amounted to no
less than an open invitation, and sure enough he was soon to pay for his brash behavior
as Iron pummeled his midsection with a swooping bodyshot and sent him face first into
the sawdust strewn factory floor with a swinging ax kick to the back of his swanning
head.
By now, a stumbling cohort of eager combatants had gathered sporadically on a
lofty metal concourse some two floors high amid stammering ancient light bulbs on
stringy stalks and chattering wooden skylights from a bygone age which rattled eerily
as if possessed by an angered poltergeist. Lincoln; although conceding only a faint
glance, had registered their presence like an IRS super computer processing a tax
return, but responded like she was more interested in utilizing the expensive set to her
advantage as if some acting contract she had signed depended on it as she arched her
arm back over another gawmless mercenary's neck and nonchalantly slammed his chin
into a heavy duty conveyer belt with a slick neck drop that wouldn't have looked out of
place in a wrestling ring. Slipping away as if nothing had happened, she looped down
and to the right to avoid another inaccurate left issued by a previously unblooded
opponent and promptly bowled a rangey right hook at her unsuspecting adversary just
to demonstrate how it should be done.
Ched Linighan had seen every conceivable breed of strange and subversive
street thugs and antiestablishment dissenter in his time as both a bureaucratic dogsbody
and a blagging bounty hunter whose resemie had been carefully amended to ensure he
copped the top jobs. He had worked for the US over the Atlantic nullifying any threats
to American hegemony abroad which his superiors deemed insignificant enough to risk
employing a one star assassin over, but when it became clear that his employers were
quite categorically on their knees in political and economic terms he had played Judas
and packed his bags to go and provide the opposition with his much sort after insider's
perspective on the former superpower's war room secrets. With the war a mite too
close for comfort, he jumped ship again to live the easy life under Volscenzi's
command. In his time Linighan had encountered characters from the sublime to the
ridiculous, but these two he couldn't quite sum up. Iron was the madcap teenager who
had never grown up. He was quick and eager; complacently brash if he hadn't been so
accomplished. Lincoln, on the other hand, was attentive but at the same time
disinterested; possesively concealing her true colors under a veil of business like
efficiency. Slight but swift of mind. As it happened, he should have kept the
psychological analysis to a minimum as the subject neatly hooked his front foot
marginally off the ground; thus fooling him into thinking a full sweep of the back leg
was imminent, then proved him wrong with a carbon copy pair of hooks to either side
of the jaw which soared outward then in like twin propeller blades.
Meanwhile, Iron's observed enthusiasm was beginning to grow beyond its
means. As if a hungry child convinced his stomach could handle two meals instead of
one, he was continually drawing more opponents into the fray; placing the numerical
advantage squarely in their court. Why an apparently deserted munitions plant was so
heavily guarded was beyond him, but ignoring this mystery, he bounced off a stack of
cast iron crates like a frolicking lamb and found time to deliver a well placed heel kick
to the face of the nearest of the Amon twins; whichever one it was; before landing
coolly on his feet.
Upstairs, Yama and Solomon sighed like a pair of detectives watching a blatant
setup of a lineup as the witness continually picked out the plants and not the suspect as
Iron nailed the grizzly Hathor in the face with a twirling roundhouse, allowed the kick
to swing wide of its stricken target and pulled it back again behind the head to prompt
him into a forward stoop. Not content with having disposed of one of the tedious
threesome, he continued the volute maneuver as he moved into a heel sweep which
caught the minimally younger of the Amon brothers as he seeped forward like an
apparitious shroud and sent him careering into a noncombatant nest of rocket crates
like a an experimental jet into a civilian housing project.
Another bumbling assasin was dutifully doubled over with an abrupt solar
plexus bound knee, which presented Iron with the unresistanble temptation to spoil his
artistic urges like a siblingless spouse; rolling over his hunched opponent as if he were a
school gym mat and landing to face the cowering figure whose body he had just used
for leverage. Yet another sacrificial pawn tried his luck from behind and failed; copping
a simple backheel to a body region he wished with hindsight he had kept protected
before having an arm hooked under his chin and up around his head as Iron dropped
into a mommentarily comfortable seated position while both mortified adversaries
enjoyed a far less easeful communion with the floor in light of the fact that the climax
of this daredevil manouver involved the captured head colliding with the afore
mentioned hunched back as it dropped.
Distracted by this illustrious display, Lincoln absent mindedly allowed her own
opponent to catch her leg at the ankle as she threw a half hearted kick. Such a
predicament would worry most artisan exponents to the point of quitting, but she
seldom ventured down those paths. A little improvisation goes a long way. She leant
foward and unexpectedly grabbed the attacker by the collar with both hands as if
haranging a careless motorist who had just pranged her priceless sports car, pulled
down as she began an awakward backward roll and pushed off with the impounded leg
as she went; sending him into a nasty column of industrial instruments and regaining her
footing before he even realized he had lost his own.
Next for Iron came Linighan; still smarting from his previous beating; who had
come across a piece of lead piping which at this moment he saw fit to imbed into the
skull of his by now hated nemesis. However, displaying a violent disregard for any
inkling of caution, Iron nullified this advantage as he leapt over the offending weapon’s
stringent flight path and planted a stark left boot into the poltroon peon's already
mangled features. But Iron wasn't finished. With only two of their previously
insurmountable number remaining before the predictable rush of reinforcements
arrived, the eczematous extras came to the belated conclusion that perhaps they would
have better luck if they attacked in unison. This soon left a bitter taste in the poleaxed
pair's palettes as they were hacked unceremoniously down to size; one with a crisp leg
sweep, the other with a pivoting spinning back kick which weeped majestically towards
its target as if a tospy turvy seesaw bolted to a wall rather than solid ground.
Lincoln mooched a melancholy frown as another bruising battle loomed
inevitable as the shadow of death to a misbegotten Macbeth scrabbling for his blood
etched blade in perpetual darkness; the witch's fateful prophecy lambasting his
eardrums like a retributive pharaoh’s curse. But Nelo Battista; one of Yama's personal
henchmen and a killer in training if such an unerring education could be imagined; was
to receive the self same treatment granted to some of his already prostrate peers,
because like any self respecting radical in a world which habitually resisted even the
most subservient change, Lincoln was far from willing to allow any given symbol of
authority a free ride; to fell the giant it's first appropriate to attack his feet.
Battista, who liked to persuade himself and his higher ranking acquaintances
that his ordeals in the gruesome Argentinean civil war some years back had hardened
him to the extent that any challenge to his assumed manhood would fall embarrassingly
as if a marsupial attempting to out wrestle a tiger; now wished he had been more
truthful about his wartime experiences. Afterall, to see a hero lose the fight is more
discouraging that to witness the same fate befall a coward, and Battista quite clearly
recognized that if god were to judge him on past and present merits, he would certainly
be joining the latter category. Initially, he concentrated his energies on trying; in an
amateurish sense of the word; to floor his opponent swiftly with a lengthy and
somewhat aimless onslaught with a baneful but beloved infantry baton, but soon found
his attention turned to the ease at which Lincoln had caught the weapon in mid-flight;
thus bringing his battle plan to a gritty, laborious halt before it had really materialized.
What he should have been concentrating on; to his befitting despair, was the fact that a
clubbing right hand counter was in the process of looping over his drooping guard and
down into his face like a bouncing bomb; dropping him to his knees then flat onto the
sediment covered floor like a priest murdered at prayer.
Never one to revel in the misfortune of others even if she herself had brought
that misfortune about, Lincoln simply turned to acknowledge the jittery approach of
another muddled minion of the apparently eternal deranged despotism who approached
nervously from another dark and undetermined corner as if a virus stricken worker bee
hovering unassuredly towards an unaccomadating petal of poisoned pollen at the whim
of his unparsimonious queen. Believe it or not she had never delighted in violence; in
fact she despised it; rather like a pacifist in a war zone. Morality says wave the white
feather and perish in peace, but practicality insists that self defense is an exception to
the unwritten rule.
Delivering an almost slow motion backick with ridiculous effectiveness, the
central player would have been forgiven for entertaining the notion that perhaps all this
was a Hollywood action movie where the would be victims were paid for falling down
like squared circle jobbers; either that or a controversially simplistic boxing match
encapsulating the comeback of some disgraced former champion undisputed both in in
ring ferociousness and festering guilt over some atrocious extra curricula crime his
millionaire promoter insisted he did not commit; and all for the sake of a few more
zeros on some swelling bank account which would sadly be used only to purchase a
needless covey of jaunty jewelry and vivacious vehicles when it could quite easily have
been put towards lessening world poverty.
Iron too tended to get that old, ailing shudder every time he caused due pain to
another conscious being surely not remarkably dissimilar to himself, but through simple
logic he was able to shove those sacrilegious skeletons into the appropriate cupboard
and never look back. But to Lincoln that freezing, electric shudder felt like some kind
of retribution building up; some sort of negative karmic energy building up inside her
with every impure deed. In a way all these unanswered knockdowns made her feel tall;
an unusual feeling for someone of a mere five foot seven, but that failed to halt her
scolding mind from condemning her to an ethical mire which made her head churn like
an intellectually challenged arachnid having constructed its web in an attic lined with
exposed asbestos. Somewhere threateningly nearby a roaring cauldron of melting metal
shrieked demonically as it regurgitated wafts of fraught flame into the atmosphere;
making Lincoln look forward all the more to getting this unfortunate incursion out of
the way.
Iron; having disposed of his fair share of the bumbling bureaucratic brigade, was
nudged aside from the maddening ruckus by yet another nasty nye of malevolent
manhunters, who thought they had cornered him behind an untidy stack of cronious
crates which piled up like a pride of puce ptomaines around a contorted and corroding
carcass as they slid off the faltering conveyor belt expecting to be wheeled off into
waiting transport vehicles which nowadays were unlikely to appear.
Latona Locusta was the first to be placed on an undesirable diet of crass
cardboard and wimpy wood as Iron span around in an infinitesimal space and landed a
boot to the nose and lip which connected like a titanic cruiser ship being guided by a
horribly long sighted captain towards a frail and splintering pier; a metaphor which in
raising the idea of splintering inspired a friction frayed box to do the same under
Locusta's weight.
Styx Paean was next; a European immigrant who had lost his home to the
beastly bomb and relocated to seek the fabled gold paved streets of New York not to
finance a charitable drive to bring prosperity back to his homeland or at least to
rehouse his surviving relatives, but to sit peacefully away from it all on a bed of money.
Paean was so renowned as a social bloodsucker that whenever leeches went paddling in
a rainforest swamp they'd leap out of the water in disgust checking desperately if he
was suckling some part of their slimy bodies. At least; Iron considered; his surname
was appropriate, however it was spelt. He delivered a dizzying jab and a stoop inducing
knee to the midsection, took hold of both sides of his confused opponent's belt, dug a
shoulder into the side of his neck and yanked the startled grunt off his feet as if carrying
a heavy treasure chest; balancing him at a near vertical degree and wandering with no
little discomfort towards a stack of munitions boxes like a removals man having to cart
around three piece sofas by himself due to a spite of union action. With the intended
position acquired, Iron began to drop into a face flat flop; his arms pushed
automatically under Styx's sore shoulders; sending him into a temporary upside down
crucifix position with arms held at right angles to his body before he belatedly realized
the oncoming approach of intense pain and was dumped head first into a half empty but
agonizingly also half full grenade crate foraged at some point by the more vindictive of
anti corporate disruption groups before such things died a disturbing death. Evidently
their illegally gathered arms provided indecisive in the ongoing struggle against the
buck wielding autroproneaurs to whom those exploding packages were likely to have
been delivered. That digression noted, Iron got to his feet with a high jump style
scissors kick and allowed Paean to writhe in his.. pain like a worm with its tail cut off.
Sadly, worms tended to grow their tails back.
Meanwhile, Lincoln introduced Giampiero Caruzo to a crackly bacon shaped
block of kentledge which by an inverted commered coincidence had been lying around
like a spade in a graveyard; useful even if random in its placement. This instilled in the
ungrateful target a vindictive form of wu wei; an unwanted bout of non action from
which he was not to fully recover for a full day and night. Lazurus Belero was next. He
hurled a cudgel like piece of metal over Lincoln's head which she ducked like a cunning
rabbit under a farmer's spade and countered with a curling reverse roundhouse which
made him mommentarily as deaf as the maltreated son of a manic preacher man
determined to practice his noisy sermons in the privacy of his front room.
Yama gave the last of his sorry bunch of assassins a searing look which just
about physically threw the recipient over the overhanging steel balcony which had
previously given him a near bird's eye view of a conflict of which he was now
reluctantly a part. Grimacing at the agony which reverberated in his knees as he landed,
Arroch Anubis whirled a beefy chain around his head as if competing in an urban
gymnastics competition and gaped gecko like through a gaunt and restricting shriveled
cranium which would have looked more fitting on the non existent neck of one of those
gray aliens which were blamed for scores of abusive abductions when people were less
suspicious of their own governments and so had to partition blame on somebody else.
Lincoln convincingly presented herself the phrenological theory that with a skull of that
shape and constricting disposition the crushed brain must have significantly induced a
narrow and conceited character. Verily such presumptions were rarely provable, but in
any case it mattered little. Anubis' attempt to lasso the evasive intruder like a glum
gaucho fell on its face; as did its performer; as Lincoln caught the chain mid swipe,
used it to pull herself round into a sternum squashing back kick and sent him head first
into a punishing cairn of sharp edged boxes with a whole hearted pull of the confiscated
weapon as if she was spinning around to throw an athletic hammer.
At the same time, Iron fortified his position by knocking Locusta down again
with a sweeping reverse knifehand blow delivered blind as the mendacious manhunter
gave up on his myopic plank bearing broadside from behind to instead fall back spared
of further embarrassment within the cushioning remnants of a shattered crate which at
this point in time felt just like the balloon like bean bag he used to seep down into to
lounge in front of the TV back in his childhood.
His pontificating platoon thus extinguished like a Sahara forest fire finding
nothing remained for it to burn, Yama flipped like an ape thrown into an inadequate
cage with a mountain of fruit placed infuriatingly just out of his reach outside as
Solomon muscled in to restrain him as if an inexperienced veterain attempting to inject
a retaliative cat with a dose of antibiotics. Their two proposed targets seized the
opportunity this division in ranks presented with the usual revolutionary gusto; skipping
up the springy walkway like rare red squirrels escaping the ravenous attention of a
tactless taxidermist as they bolted up a deciduous winter beech which in such a season
offered scant protection.
Solomon met them half way down the creaking collocation of stereoscopic steel
stairways like a bouncer employed by god himself to keep trouble makers out of his
lofty domain. A monist when it came to dictating his personal loyalties, he tended to be
swayed only by the profit margin, and being seen to succeed where lesser men had
failed would surely further his reputation; and thus his bank balance, if in today's world
such things realistically indicated wealth and prosperity. 'Oh; the euthyphro dilemma;'
Lincoln had picked perhaps an incongruous moment in which to debate to herself social
and moral issues; 'is the holy loved by the gods because it's holy, or is it holy because
it's loved by the gods? Is the general followed by his troops because he's powerful, or is
he powerful because he's followed by his troops?' Her observation would surely have
been adequate if applied to the unyielding Yama; who having been deprived of his
footmen now drifted off up to the precarious top balcony like a formless vapor in an
attempt to shirk what was undeniably his responsibility; a responsibility Solomon
greedily devoured.
But it wasn't Lincoln that the harsh hitman went for. Despite having just
delivered a display which should have convinced him otherwise, a chauvinistic glitch in
an already dubious persona persuaded him to bypass the mockingly dejected deviant in
favor of her ever enthusiastic partner; which was fine by her since this meant she could
slip by like a mouse under the gap between refrigerator door and ice box and go
straight for the big cheese.
Yama centered himself on a long, thin gangway reminiscent of a pirate's plank
as a chuckling, chaotic configuration of cleaving flames swirled and dived around them
threatening to tear the entire trembling stairway down into the gory depths of the open
topped steel furnace over which they so precariously hang. Yama kept her back initially
with a few uneconomic slashes of his nefarious ninjato sword; each one producing a
pageant of scattered sparks as the bludgeoning blade scraped across the tip of the
resisting railings.
But Lincoln was never going to fall foul to such intimidatory tactics, and
instead awaited her moment to knock the offending weapon out of his grasp with a
timely inside out ax kick which sent the thing twirling across the woefully welded
walkway like a spinning coin before it toppled over the precipice and dissolved; like a
zombie returning to the grave; into the fiery pit despite its owner's frantic backward
scuttle to save it.
Meanwhile Solomon stomped forward with so little pace that if he was a car he
might as well have been in reverse. He may well have been built like a boisterous
bulldozer, but in all honesty was so slow that if he ever got back home at midnight
from a late shift; if it could be imagined that bounty hunters worked such things; the
room was in pitch blackness and he went for the light switch, the necessity of the action
would have negated itself in that by the time he had completed it day would already
have dawned. Iron presented a canny roundhouse to his stubly jaw, followed it through
as he span in a full circle which climaxed in another strike of similar format, then
pushed off his opponent with the striking instep into another full turn which this time
ended in a stabbing backick which Solomon more fell than walked onto as if tricked
into strolling into the welcoming embrace of hades with the shrill charm of the pan
pipes.
Yama rubbed a saber like tooth like a malignant diablo toying with his subject
with the intention of fooling her into committing a cardinal sin which would commit her
soul eternally to the nether realms. Given the fire and brimstone which made up the
surrounding scene, the metaphor carried a great deal of reference to genuine reality in
Lincoln's mind as the patriarchal assassin backed off from the mouth of one dragon
onto the flickering tongue of another; spitting flames lapping like a Pacific wash against
his feet as he steadied an eternally concealed fear of heights with an uncertain grip on a
merciful handrail as he declined to look down off the walkway's abrupt edge into the
hellish vat of molten gunge from which his fiery assailants sped.
The compassionate appearance of a disconsulent poker which a by now
redundant factory hand formerly used to stoke the fickle fires of this horrifying hell
prompted on Yama's face a vicissitudinous smirk. But the ponderous swipe he
produced would have looked more comfortable on a teeing green, which left the shame
faced felon to encounter a foreboding fate as Lincoln sent him reeling into the
aforementioned handrail like a stretching dancer suddenly deprived of her lead leg with
a cute kick to the midsection which he only noticed with bitter hindsight. Murdering
pacifistic religious figures had been far easier.
A little below, the truck like form of Solomon crashed down to an unstable grill
like ground like a capricious comet at the whim of a streamlined spin kick. Iron
crooned at his adversary like a girdling circus clown and dictated the use of speed
rather than a brute force he in no way could be perceived to posses in comparison to
his opponent; almost walking through the air with a sky dancing jig accompanied with a
right thrust kick, a left in similar vein and a hooking right; each time gathering the
required velocity by pushing off the target rather than simply striking it, and bouncing
back onto his feet as if clearing a vaulting horse. The whole display would have
convinced Solomon into believing Iron had been wearing the winged boots of Mercury
had he not been more occupied with other things; such as failing dismally to prevent
himself rolling down two merciless flights of steps like a tobogganing Lapland
schoolkid.
Disoriented by his colic agony, Yama was considerately granted a vicious
physiotherapy as a deft stamp to the knee made him forget the effects of the opening
blow. A second circumstantial hack of the poker yielded no more satisfactory result;
Lincoln getting hold of his striking arm and twisting it into a unbearable and wholly
unhealthy position while she slammed him back first into the buckled banister behind
with another cueing heel to the chest. Yama clunked spine first against the unforgiving
metal and proceeded to falter into an unwise sideways dip which saw him barrel roll off
the balcony's side like a cliff leaping lemming.
But as soon as she had recognized the possibility of this unintended
unconscious act, Lincoln had bolted into a cheetah like sprint with the intention of
stopping an insignificant triumph from becoming a terrifying tragedy. Her luck was in
for once. Gladly, Yama had had the foresight to turn as he plummeted; thus ending up
dropping feet first, which allowed Lincoln to grab a hold of his forearm as she belly
flopped painfully into the course chrome floor; thus beginning an apparently hopeless
struggle to keep both predator and prey from plunging into the billowing basin below
like a pair of homesick phoenixes eager to return to from whence they came.
Her body grated along the ground as if she was being pulled along by a cruising
automobile she had been brutally tied to like a can on the back bumper of a newly wed's
station wagon; Yama's weight conspiring to bring them both increasingly closer to the
vat of what seemed like enflamed, toe nibbling piranhas; to a fiery death Lincoln would
have preferred to be smothered by like a comatosed patient murdered with a pillow
than to cause another death herself. She grit her teeth and hit her head against the
slippery steel a few times in frantic resistence as the weight edged her on. Gravity
appeared to be conspiring against her.
She reached with a foot to hook it under the railings but only managed to prod
them as if testing the freshness of a loaf of bread. She held her grappling arm at the
elbow with the other and began to go over as the flames appeared to open up
underneath Yama's near sobbing form like a massive fire fanged mouth, but somehow
this act declined to double her strength. Eventually Iron flopped down beside her on the
gauze gantry like a sturgeon on a sandflat and wrapped his hands around hers to
provide the required force to ensure that the quietly grateful bounty hunter was saved
from what may well have been a deserving death.
Her fateful forward motion halted, Lincoln looked to the friend that such
situations made her eternally grateful of having and almost clashed heads as he did the
same. The instinct reaction to that unfortunate connection could well have had them
both dropping their now mutual 'friend'; thus teaching him right for his lack of
gratitude. Fortunately, neither were easily shocked. "My own personal savior." Actually
Iron was more the bounty hunter's savior. It was strange how things turned out; how
tables could be turned. It is a hearty measure of compassion to save from death one
who moments ago would have death descend onto you.
They pulled Yama up and left him to the set of previously unconsidered ethical
puzzles which this encounter had brought up like the recovered body of a clumsy surfer
from a furious ocean cove, thus rectifying a previous sin. The lava filled cannibal's
cooking pot below belched in protest as the pair left without supplying it with the
desired meal. Yama would certainly have thanked them if such a notion did not seem so
contradictory baring in mind the opinions he had had of them previously, not to
mention the clear finality that he was not going to be earning his unfair cut of the riches
on this unfortunate day.
The pair stepped over the cowering form of Solomon; who curled up and shook
like a pickup turned over in a freeway pileup; engine still chugging aimlessly as it
wobbled on its back like a tortoise stranded by its own absent minded roll down a
slippery dune.
"So what do you reckon; is artificial intelligence intelligence at all?" The
motions of Iron's brain had obviously been put on hold as if in a stasis chamber in a
colorful sci fi tale based on a light fantastic skipping spacecraft; it was almost as if he
had forgotten the entire ordeal they had just participated in. "In conclusion, the most
accurate indication of intelligence is understanding. Some people say computers can
understand some things. They can understand numbers, for example. But are we
mistaking understanding numbers for just knowing a lot about them? Can a computer
totally comprehend the number three, for example? It can recognize the figure on
paper, it knows that three times three equals nine and that one plus two equals three...."
"But...."
"But the concept 'three' has a calculable reality. It only exists in a calculable sense.
'Three' is a unit of measurement, and as such computers; who are notoriously good at
measuring things; can utilize it well."
"But expertise doesn't necessarily indicate understanding."
"Knowledge and knowing are two different things." They had successfully blazed past
this atrocious ambush like a samurai sword through young bamboo and leaving the
temperate 'paradise' looking like a towering twister had run through it unfettered and
undeterred and ventured back out into the comparable barbecue of the sun doused
streets of the industrial sector. "However, they can't comprehend what something
means; what it's worth and how it feels to know it; to hold it. Even if a computer had
that information, it wouldn't care, because it wouldn't understand the value of things."
"And information is never enough."
"Only when we're talking about a concrete reality. But there are greater realities. We all
know people feel and machines don't, right? That's the first distinction and it's the most
important one we all accept. You can quantify a thing without ever considering
quality."
"How long is a piece of string, right?"
"The difference between us and machines is that machines are a collection of mechanics
and operations that whiz around and cause action, whereas we are a collection of
similar things that cause similar actions but on top of that we're also an immaterial
presence which lords over the whole thing, and is more 'us' than the sum of our parts.
Computers think. We think and understand. Computers react. We react and feel."
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