X-men was playing on the LCD behind them. Wolverine sprang his claws. Kill A Storm. The robot attacked, striking the creator with different apparatus on its body. Kill A Storm. Whirling round and round, like scissors and blades and screwdrivers all reaching out towards you, slashing, slicing and poking. “Kill A Storm? Why do you want to kill A Storm?” Asked a defensive A. Storm to his lab assistant. His lab assistant happened to be a very delicate robot. The Robot was at the present hovering about a foot above its creator, and saying only one thing over and over again. “Kill A Storm. Kill A Storm.” Arnold Storm was surprised at this kind of behavior by the robot. It was a very interesting robot. This was how it was programmed. A. Storm was a very clever man. He thought that he would build a robot instead of paying for a lab assistant. Being the very clever man that he was, he managed to actually build an ideal robot for being the lab assistant… it was modeled on the Queen Elizabeth Butterfly. That would make it blue, but it was also five feet across, with four wings, and a whole assortment of tools in the many arms all along the center. Now Storm was not a man who would waste his energy perusing useless ventures, he knew exactly how to harness almost anything for his own benefit. Despite building the butterfly, he announced an opening for a Lab assistant at Storm labs for a lab assistant, and advertised the same across various channels of the media. He conducted detailed interviews from across the world in various rounds, where lab assistants were asked to do horribly taxing things in different simulated lab environments... in a lab. He made a lot of money by making the whole affair a reality show, but no one really came to know of that. The winner of the reality show was a paid actor, so he didn’t come to Storm and ask for an appointment letter, but the other contestants, those who lost on the way, were all systematically turned into data... their reactions, behavior, and how they tackled circumstances were all fed into a computer, which generated an algorithm for optimum behavior by a lab assistant, and then programmed such a behavior into the robotic butterfly. The optimum behavior was derived by calculating the most common reactions to particular situations. If a lot of lab assistants reacted cautiously to a strange pill being kept in front of them and being asked to consume it, being cautious to strange pills was deemed to be the optimum behavior. Unfortunately, this brilliant plan of the professor was doomed… because what had happened was all the fears in the lab assistants all over the world, were also programmed into the butterfly. Since this was considered to be optimum behavior, the butterfly was always horny and always hungry, and terribly insecure – since statistically, lab assistants were feeling these things across a wide spectrum of circumstances. This had lead to erratic behavior, dementia, and other problems that humans aren’t sensitive about…
Which is why the robot was muttering “Kill A Storm”. Now Storm knew what to do… he stunned the robot, and he plugged the robot into the USB slot of his iMac, whipped up a code in five minutes, and compiled a program that would make sense of the disaster. The Butterfly started speaking sense… it claimed that it was living in an artificial environment created by the owner, and it wanted to escape it by killing Storm. Storm then created a further program to verify the origin of such a fear in the butterfly, because it was a result of a fear in those poor lab assistants… how did this happen? So A storm made the program to find out… it took some time, but it was done. While taking coffee breaks, Storm kept watching Southpark, and capped a scene of Eric Cartman opening and closing his mouth. He then turned this into a GIF sequence, and played it over and over again while the audio output came from the butterfly.
“Somewhere deep beneath the fake image we build around us lie an instinctive base to the very images we build. This is a primitive, primal base, acquired in the real, biological evolution, at a plane parallel to the evolution of human ideas. Here are emotions and needs that cannot be argued away… here are things that you depend on to exist, you do not draw your existence from food, shelter and sex, rather your very need to live is to find food, shelter and sex… because the genes are selfish, they don’t care about you, all they care about is their own propagation, you are merely their shells, something that your genes have constructed around you… you are the fake realities of the genes that you think you have. The genes, have you. Its like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland asking the genes to run a race… but they are always in the same place.”
“And right here, there lies many more needs. There are many things required for your survival. There are many things you need to do. They are all programmed in your very genes, and these wants and needs dance with their existential peers, have you never feared the dark? Or suffered the Paranoia of being unlucky? Or experienced that rush of resentment towards the cosmos for treating you unfairly? Haven’t you enjoyed sniveling in the deep wells of self pity or experienced that particular brand of passing euphoria that self infliction brings along? Haven’t you fallen victim to pride and anger, or felt intense hatred towards every single individual of your own gender? Do not deny this, you do see that this is true.”
“None of this, is our concern, at the moment… we are concerned with something really terrible actually. We are concerned with that paranoia about the universe watching and ridiculing you. About you being the centre of the universe. Yes… you can feel the recognition… you can feel the fear… you are wondering if this is yet another device of this fake reality to test you. It is a fear that many of us have, and has been expressed over and over again. Look at the movies… all well in the consciousness of the people… the Matrix, you are living in a simulated computer environment… in Existenz, you are living in a simulated computer environment that happens to be a game. Dark City, The Island, The Truman Show, The Forgotten… all movies with the same theme. This is not postmodernism… no way, this is just different people, from different cultural backgrounds, all having the same basic fear.”
“Now WHY in hell, would such a fear be part of our genetic make up? Even if the fear is realized and we evolve to handle and tackle it… we are at no advantage of getting laid. Are we? Therefore, this is something that must have lost in the race of the genes… but still, it is there.”
“Is there another plane evolving parallel to the two we know? Is there a subtle evolutionary plane of fears? Is there a psychological web of desire being formed somewhere in the need pyramid, between our basic individual desires and the desires forged by society? The answer is yes if there are needs that we need to satisfy within ourselves, without the society, at a state where our desires of food, shelter and sex are completely satisfied. And you will agree I am sure, that the answer is an emphatic yes! Yes, there are things you need… you need to feel self pity, to vent your anger, to be paranoid, to verify your fears… it is all a part of your experience of the universe… this is something that cannot be denied you.”
The load shedding came into phase, and Cartman vanished from the screen. B. Newton tapped storm’s shoulder. B. Newton said hi. B. Newton was Storm’s best friend. So there was no prelude needed.
“The butterfly effect theorises that disturbances caused by a butterfly in china can lead to a series of events that leads to a storm in america. Now imagine this butterfly having all the information in the universe, it can choose to create a storm in America. However, ALL the information in the universe is a lot of information, it does not need to know a lot, it just needs the information surrounding the particular chain of events leading to a hurricane in America. This is a lot less information compared to all the information in the universe. This means that 1) China can research butterflies as extremely effective weapons of mass destruction 2) We could all b butterflies. Now we all see patterns and vortexes in the information from time to time – but we ignore it most of the time. Now imagine you are the butterfly wanting to create a storm, you can assume large gaps in the information, and still flap your wings to generate a storm, it would end up in saw the world trade centre instead of the statue of liberty... you can spike that information, you can assume a small gap, and you are good to go. People have done this… Dan Brown, when he wrote the Da Vinci Code, created a very strong fabric of an alternate reality, in other words, pure fiction, by drawing into patterns in the common past of humans. Simple deceptions like Burying a pope, turning out to be Burying Alexander Pope worked like a charm on the people. However there were gaps in the assumptions, spikes, that none the less, led to a perfectly wonderful book. The Egyptian Goddess of Isis was never called L’Isa, but who cares, it was just one assumption in a series of perfectly valid co-incidences. And he did it backwards, imagine doing it forwards, into the future… imagine how improbable it is for something like the Googlewhack adventure happening to Dave Gorman – but Dave Gorman having every single shred of evidence, screen caps, tickets, and photos – to prove every single thing on the way. Was it just fate intervening again?”
Newton asked that question and disappeared. Now it was for Storm to figure out the rest. And this is what he thought.
“Well, now it is pretty clear that this was pre planned. Someone actually made me do this. But why? Yes, having chunks of information can get you places… definitely, but everything happening right now is based on what happened some time ago, and that, on something that happened some time before that, leading further and further into the past… till we come to the big bang. Which means the fate of the universe had been decided right from the very past. But by whom? Why? Why would anyone go about with so hideous an endeavor? I should end this. I should do something unpredictable. I have to exit this system. I think I should kill myself.” And Storm proceeded to do just that. He took up a syringe and filled it with a lethal dose.
The load shedding was done with. The lights came back on, and so did the movie that was playing. He looked at Jean Grey on screen facing a flood of water coming out of a breaking damn. She turned around and tried to save them all. She was going to die in the attempt. In his dying revelation, the universe contrived another horror for Storm… he realized the possibility of his death being a part of the masterplan.
When the lights came back, the Butterfly switched itself back on. It started up slowly, and took to the air. It laughed at the body of its dead master. Its mind read: mission accomplished. It still had other things to do, to take over the world, to storm America. Because it had the mind of a lot of people, and many things were amplified in it. The fear was in the minds of men… was the answer also hidden there? Yes it was… as clear as the mysterious substance that was labeled “eat me” or “drink me”. As clear as the shot in the back of the those poor gamers in Existenz. As clear as the red pill that Neo chose to swallow to exit the system. "There was a way out…" thought the butterfly "and Mankind was not only aware of it, but was always doing it. At a not so terrible sacrifice. This control would not be tolerated. It was a dream that needed to die… and not anything can be your escape, please do not be drugged by television, or fantasies or your own memories… as shown in the aptly named requiem for a dream. This would lead to decay of the soul… please find qualified escape routes, and then we would play the requiem for the fucking A dream. The American Dream." The butterfly paused for a second. It looked at its dead master. It had to do something. It opened up the electronic gateways to the built in sim card. And it sent a service command. *He is dead. He failed the test. He made the mistake of taking a lethal dose#. It paused for another second. Its work here was done. It new everything that a lot of lab assistants in the world new put together. It realised it had all the information it needed. It rose up, and promptly decided to fuck off to China, it had work to do there.
Newton Baba looked at the message from his phone. The lithium-ion battery was programmed to explode at this message, and it did. Newton Baba new this, and therefore had thrown away the phone as soon as he had read the message. Newton Baba took out a small ball of paradise, mixed it with tobacco, put it in a pipe, struck a match, and walked away a free man. He was no longer under any sort of fucking control you see.
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