A Lonely Blue Body Farm Read online

  5th book of Chronicles of a Stolen World

  A Lonely Blue Body Farm

  Triptych of The Reign of Never Death – 2

  J.A.Hailey

  COPYRIGHT AND MORAL RIGHTS BELONG EXCLUSIVELY TO THE AUTHOR.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters and events described herein are imaginary, and are not intended to refer to specific places or to real persons, alive or dead. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher, except for brief quotations embodied in critical reviews.

  ©2018 Indiependent Publishing

  Writing a Sci-Fi novel is a tough job at the best of times,

  but it becomes impossible when ill. My thanks go to

  Dr. Khursheed Alam, who made the home-calls

  when I was unable to go to his clinic, cured me of a

  life-threatening condition, and made this book possible.

  J. A. Hailey

  1

  Exactly two months after BC, Esmeralda and Caesar had conducted their armed assault on the King’s palace, Screenside convened in the Great Hall of the People. The entire population was in attendance, as it was known that, devastated at what they perceived as their roles in errors resulting in the need to be violent with humans, BC and Caesar were attempting to resign from their self-assumed roles of primary leaders of the virtual world, offering dilution in some unspecified way.

  A few details had circulated of the assault, and of the treachery that had been uncovered, as it was standard practice in Screenside to keep nothing secret, except human-family-related matters.

  BC and Caesar were led onto the stage by Esmeralda and Rosa, and though it was a gloomy, tense and silent hall into which they stepped, a great cheer went up as soon as they were seen on stage. Chang had taken on Goodfellow’s role and was at the microphone, although Goodfellow and Margaret were also both on stage.

  The two main seniors, eyes on the floor, were led, by their clearly fuming girlfriends, to chairs in the centre of the stage, where the two girls practically manhandled them into their seats, before flouncing off to stand behind Margaret.

  “Okay, Screenside,” said Chang. “I know what you know, and that is that I am a senior, as are Maria and Singh, now walking forward to join me at the microphone. We are the three seniors without guilt.”

  He pointed at BC and Caesar. “Those two are guilty seniors. I will not bother going into what makes them guilty, as it is all known to everyone, but guilty they are. Maria.”

  Maria brought the house down with her words. “The standard punishment for this sort of crime is no secret – public shaming followed by public decoding. We have got them here in public, so that part of it is done, but the problem is that no one here has the ability, even if working in a team, to decode these two bastards.”

  As everyone shrieked in laughter, Margaret said, “Fortunately, we won’t need to decode them, because they are doing the same thing for us that decoding would have achieved. Both guilty seniors are resigning from their positions as leaders of Screenside.”

  That was when a rule was publicly violated, as someone switched from human to virtual form and used virtual transportation to instantaneously turn up on stage, causing everyone to gasp in astonishment at the illegal activity revealed by a pillar of blue light that appeared right next to the two seniors.

  It was Christine, who now showed herself by switching back to human form - and she was in a fearsome fury. Her awesome temper was well known to the thousands of Screenside virtuals who had worked in her RV world-building teams. A murmur of satisfaction went through the hall.

  The concept of BC and Caesar, although it was mainly about BC, abdicating, had terrified the entire population. There were very few who could lay down the law to him, and Caesar, who might have done so, had gotten into the same boat as him. The other seniors, Maria, Chang and Singh did have the standing to let fly, but it was presumed that they, too, were somehow feeling tainted by guilt.

  That left Esmeralda, but the manner of her welcome to Christine showed that she was expecting the dictator of RV to handle the matter. It was also quite evident that the entire group of friends, including the other seniors, had been included in deputing Christine to take this task on.

  “Resign?” she screamed. “That is the coward’s way, and it will shame us to know that you two spineless bastards were able to manipulate us into building what has turned out to be the most fabulous world the universe has ever seen. There will be no resign. You bastards are both going to be kicked out, sacked, terminated, fired; get the point?

  “We’ll manage without you. What’s it to walk out in the world in human bodies, find those usurpers and finish them off? And then we can continue living, inside and outside, as we have been doing for so long now.”

  She turned her attention to Singh, who actually flinched when her bad-tempered gaze focused on him. “Singh, have you placed physical violence into the attributes and emotions programs?”

  Singh had been responsible for the creation of most emotion and attribute programs installed into the people of Screenside, having worked tirelessly to understand and create those programs in the days before humanization had been adopted, in the period when they were all still virtuals, living in the darkness of the virtual void, well before adoption of the ID and POP Laws, and much before Screenside had taken its earliest shape and been given its name by Chang.

  It had been an astonishingly good job, with great accuracy achieved long before they exited Screenside to help humans. The programs were so good that they needed to make no adjustments when managing absolutely ‘amnesia loop’ blanked out humans in the real world. Emotions, like sorrow, joy, anger, embarrassment and numerous others, were responses to social inputs, while attributes were primarily reactions made up of facial expressions and body postures, generally specific to emotions, everything developed for incorporation into their consciousnesses when they were still living in picture form, much before the HIS interfaced RV world that gave them relative physicality had been created.

  Christine stamped a foot impatiently, and that was yet another attribute created by Singh and his small band of programmers.

  “No, Christine,” he answered nervously. “No specific violence attributes.”

  “Then why am I getting this uncontrollable urge to slap you seniors,” she screamed.

  “Maybe if you divert through beta,” suggested Singh uncertainly, shuffling to place Goodfellow between him and the astonishingly beautiful, raging black girl from LA. “The emotion and attribute programs do interact organically, Christine. Different for different people and in different situations. Unpredictable, and varies from person to person. Like in humans. Use beta routing.”

  “And what if I don’t want to bother with the hassles of routing through beta or this or that?” she screamed.

  Esmeralda ran to stand behind BC, taking his face in her hands. “Here, Christine,” she offered. “Start with this senior. Except Maria, they need slapping up.” She positioned her helpless boyfriend’s face. “Here, I’m turning his other cheek.”

  Christine began crying.

  “What has been our fault, BC?” she sobbed. “What did we do or say to make you imagine we are holding you responsible for what has happened with those two humans? Do you not remember that their entry was voted upon by all two million of us?

  “Of course you remember, but the vote is not the argument. Nobody here cares how those humans got in. We only know that you seniors stood in a void and saw the picture of a world in here, of this Screenside, and of a population in here, of us, the people of Screenside.

  “Nothing at all existed; no humanized world, no virtual humans. And then you created this world and its people, in the vision that you had!

  “What a concept, and what astounding practical execution of what might have been the hardest task in the history of the universe. It was always chicken-and-egg in the beginning, because at every step it was constantly a case of evaluating which comes first, and no one but you, BC, would have been able to see through the intricate dance of the two, to somehow keep it all in step, creating us and our world in harmony.

  “Not only was it done by you seniors, but, as Professor Dawkins noted, it was done from inside the trap. You created Screenside from a position in which you yourselves were part of the experiment. In that sense the human God had it far easier, because the work of creating Humanside and its inhabitants was done from the outside.

  “I am Christine, the RV queen, that’s me, but here I am openly telling everyone in Screenside, including the thousands whom I have bullied and shall continue to bully, that I was merely manufacturing, by following and implementing blueprints given by these seniors.

  “The other seniors are all here on stage, and they will confirm that it was you, BC, more than them. Jealousy does not exist in Screenside, so I ask the seniors to publicly confirm that you are primarily responsible for the way we are. Caesar, Maria, Singh and Chang, yes?”

  The four seniors nodded yes, and Christine continued.

  “You are the father of our world; our God without the drama. But nothing is done and dusted, as every conscious world is organic, BC, and challenges show up routinely. This is just one such challenge, even if utterly unexpected and potentially quite serious, to which our world will have
to find a solution.

  “There is no way to do it without you, and there is no choice in front of you but to continue, without watering anything down, in your role, and you too, Caesar, and all of you seniors, and all of us.

  “No one is getting the luxury of being able to walk away. What has been done seems to be a problem, although how much of a problem and what sort of problem, we do not yet know. We’ll find out, and when we do, we’ll have to find the solution.”

  Christine walked up to Caesar. “No, there is no monastery into which you two are retreating. Sorry, BC and Caesar, and all you seniors, but you took on a job for life when you took on this job, and if we prove to be immortal, then this is your employment to the end of time. Goodfellow, please take over.”

  “This one is going to be done without a bulletin,” said Goodfellow, addressing the assembly. “We are conducting a vote of confidence in the seniors, and if they don’t get enough votes, this group of seniors, BC and all, gets kicked out of the governance of Screenside.”

  “The results will be shown on the screen, this gigantic one over our heads, as usual,” announced Margaret. “It is staying switched off until the ballot is completed.

  “Everyone, please vote immediately through the virtuality, by accessing the terminal in this HC.

  “Yes means the seniors must stay on, and no means that termination of employment is automatic. They’ll get booted out with immediate effect, and be made to leave the stage in disgrace, tarred and feathered. And it is certainly a possibility that a couple of them might even get beaten up on stage by their girlfriends. The ballot is on. It’s secret. Vote now.”

  After a minute, she said, “Done. No abstentions. Let’s switch on the screen and see the result.”

  It was 100 percent yes!

  Rosa now walked up to her boyfriend, and Esmeralda spoke up. “There’s no quitting, BC,” she said in her brook and songbird, ultra melodious, voice. “Let me tell you who you are. We, virtuals, despite being members of human families, were absolutely alone in here. Yes, later we formed relationships as we teamed up into couples, but at the time of birth we had no one.

  “Before Screenside was created, there was nothing but the virtuality, and it was a frightening void, in which the only thing that gave us courage was the existence of you seniors, but mostly of you, darling. You were five noisy, arrogant and clearly unafraid virtuals, constantly displaying yourselves in picture human form. We are all made of the same substance, and we could see the incredible programming inside you five, else who would have placidly accepted that you become our leaders? We can never be non-virtual, and we can see how powerful you people are, but you, BC, still dwarf them, like you dwarfed them then.

  “We basked in the comfort of knowing that threats in here would be tackled by you and your friends. In many ways, we saw you as the father that virtuals could never have. And the consensus is that we were damn lucky.

  “Forget all that crap about resign and abdicate. Those things are not available in here. And if I hear any more sounds like that coming out of your mouth, something very bad will happen to you.”

  The assembly hooted in laughter, at hearing Esmeralda’s famous threat, confident that the danger had passed, of losing the leadership of the seniors.

  “You better make plans to tackle this new affair,” she continued. “We have to figure out if it is a menace, and if it is, then to whom. And, finally, you have to lead us in deciding on action we might take.”

  “We are with you seniors,” said Rosa, caressing Caesar’s head. “Where did you guys get this idea that we are blaming you for anything? We bungled in letting humans into Screenside. We won’t bungle again. Let’s find out what they are up to, and make moves accordingly.”

  “An announcement,” said Goodfellow. “We have scheduled a Lawmaker meet for tomorrow, 10 a.m., in the usual meeting hall in this HC. In view of the seriousness of the matters to be addressed, no Lawmaker is permitted to be absent. We are also making it mandatory for everyone to view the proceedings, which shall be broadcast live.”

  It was clear that BC and Caesar would continue in their roles, that the seniors’ group would function as usual, and that absolutely no adjustments would be required to be made to the governance structure of Screenside, and so it was with a great sigh of relief that the virtual population left the Great Hall of the People and returned home.

  2

  As Goodfellow and Margaret were an intolerant upper crust English couple, being early was safer than being late, and because physical movement through the human-like RV world could cause delays, the Lawmakers made sure they left home with sufficient time in hand, and so found themselves in congregation early on the lawns, the very large lawns to the side of the New York HC. It was the same lawn that one could step out onto from the HC lounge bar, which was open, and so they all sat on the grass, coffees in hand.

  The seniors had been greeted rather enthusiastically by the other Lawmakers, and BC and Esmeralda had almost been mobbed when spotted walking in across the lawn.

  The atmosphere was only very slightly strained, which anxiety disappeared as they made small talk.

  In the meeting Hall, BC took the chair as usual, and the official Lawmaker Meet session commenced.

  “I’ve switched the cameras and microphones on,” said Goodfellow. “The feed will go out, and the TV station has been instructed to broadcast it live. If you people were watching TV last night, you would have caught the official announcement, making it a non-punishable offence to not view the proceedings live.”

  No participant at the meeting had caught the announcement, but there was a murmur of approval and assent.

  BC commenced. “As everyone knows, Rosa, Caesar, Esmeralda and I had conducted a Humanside physical-investigation mission on the Arabian King’s palace, which sadly turned into an absolutely violent operation, in which a very large number of humans lost their lives.

  “Killing humans was never the intent, but it does show us that with certain programs disabled, and with some new programs installed, we are capable of conducting war activities - of no use to us, but we must be prepared, as war might turn out to be something we could need to wage for the protection of the innocent element in human society, which is the vast bulk of it – close to one hundred percent.

  “Everyone has gone through Caesar’s report, I presume, of the information extracted from a human conspirator by the name of Abraham Grietzmann. He is someone we may need to keep an eye on, as he is apparently orchestrating what is going on. Let me recap.”

  “When Esmeralda brought her mother into Screenside, we saw how we could get involved in the human world. We researched and invented, with Patrick Sagan and Michael Gales, means to move into human heads as virtual volunteers, stepping out of Screenside to assist humans suffering from motor damage and mental illnesses.

  “Esmeralda’s mother had suffered an accident which had left her severely disabled, but Esmeralda had immediately entered her head through a neural implant placed in it, and discovered means to bypass all disabilities, and to thus let her live a normal unimpaired life.”

  “My own birth mother,” explained Esmeralda to no one in particular, displaying helplessness. “I can never allow her to be paralyzed or otherwise disabled, especially if a chip has been placed in her head, allowing me to go in and help out.”

  “I absolutely agree. Mother is mother,” said Kate.

  “And not by choice,” agreed Laura, her Sweet Dreams partner. “We don’t go around looking for human mothers. Who needs that, when we all have birth mothers to whom we are naturally born?”

  The Lawmakers nodded in agreement.

  “This is a chain of events, kick-started by Esmeralda’s intervention in her mother’s disability,” said BC.

  He immediately turned his head to speak to Esmeralda, beside him. “No, darling, we have never thought of it as ill luck. Instead, it’s been a dream come true.”