🔹Strata 7: Duality and Flex
Enter Flex: a mirror, a rival, a possible twin. Strata 7 explores mirrored intelligence and the double-edged nature of self-awareness.
Welcome to Immersion, you have reached Strata 7
Jarome and the Scritters, (Trade and Barter)
Humans have developed uniqueness from animals through a process of cognitive evolution.
They are exceptional cultural learners and can read situations.
These skills have enabled them to develop complex trading tools. They rely heavily on these skills to create abstract cerebral and linguistic representations when placing themselves in various situations.
The cultural and socio-political environment in which humans have evolved has led them to acquire the cognitive skills, particularly mathematical, to support a sophisticated disposition along with a capacity for reciprocal cooperation. Humans understand conceptual ideas of property and exchange value.
Humans are savvy, humans broker deals.
Outside there was an optimistic sun and the people busied around the market unaware of any of the commotion that had occurred in the bank.
*POS informed Renyke that he had lost negligible battery power and there was no damage to his mechanical structures.
The *robo-dog and the cat had waited patiently outside the bank and now trotted diligently at their sides.
Maybeline returned to Renyke's pocket for a nap.
'You got my *bits?' asked the woman
'For nearly getting us killed?' Asked Renyke contemplating the difference between, irony, sarcasm and humour. POS began to explain but Renyke shut her out. He really did not want to know at this juncture.
'Listen Mr whoever you are, there's many a hiccup ahead. You are in the *zones now, you need to get used to the hiccups. 'Sides, I gotta feed my cat. She ain't no robot like that mutt.'
The robo-dog gave a little yelp and lowered its head in shame.
Queenie's cat moved closer to Renyke and sniffed the air for any scent of lunch.
Renyke took something from the bag, the smallest nugget he could find, and handed it to Queenie.
'That is very generous of you,' she said, taking the payment and subtly raising an eyebrow with the tiniest of smiles. The payment was excessive and the cat would eat for a month. Renyke was none the wiser.
Then Queenie was gone, running into the crowds as lithe as the cat behind her. A blue feather shimmied to the ground. For some reason Renyke was compelled to pick it up and put it in his pocket and Maybeline wrapped it around herself.
Back on the main street Flex approached smiling and jaunty. Renyke was reassured to see him.
'I need a vehicle, Flex, something to get me to where I am going,' said Renyke.
'Yes, yes, yes Mr. Leather Man, where you goin' is where I'm goin'. Let's find a veee-hicle. Jerome, he is the car man, he got cars, and bikes and *scoots..... and *copters, and airships so they say.'
'Take me to Jerome,' said Renyke.
****
Flex took Renyke into a disused concrete building as the robo-dog curled up and waited outside.
There are the echoes of voices, activity and motor engines being revved from another part of the building. There is a smell of fuel and mumbled communications. Somewhere too there is music.
Flex beckoned Renyke to Jerome's office, a ramshackle room filled with books. More books than Renyke had ever seen. Books were no longer used in most homes or schools and the paper shortages after the warmings had meant that they were no longer being produced commercially. Paper had become heavily taxed and there were also problems with scritters.
*Scritters were large crawling insects that had been genetically made in a laboratory by the Russian military. They were a fusion of a cockroach and a wasp but there wings had become lost in the process. Scritters were highly protective and thus easily trained.
They looked deformed with big insect heads and metal body parts. At birth scritters are born with a soft back. They seek protection from any material that offers a hard shell. Because of the huge landfill areas all around the world, the rubbish of hundred's of years had provided the perfect materials for protection. Plastics and metals were abundant.
During the *Russia China Wars scritters had been used to carry tiny incendiary divides on their backs were not affected by the nerve gases. But after the wars, the scritters had bred like wildfire, devouring paper and trees and nesting in book spines where the glue offered a perfect cocoon for pupae. Whole libraries had been mutilated by them. They were a scourge on the planet and another reason so many houses were built on stilts in the *Midcast Projects as scritters were terrified of heights.
The more paper they ate, the more they reproduced. Books and paper matter that had not been digitally copied had been devastated and lost forever.
'A car you say?' asked Jerome. 'I got plenty, but the fuel....we got no fuel. We are working on some alternatives, but all prototypes so far. They cut off our fuel after the riots. And the food supplies. I have been missing Gummies, I loved those.'
Renyke nodded as Jerome continued....
'Transport is a big problem. You'll be better off walking, my friend, if you can get through the tunnels. But there are booby traps all around the perimeters here in the zones.'
Renyke checks POS for details but the tunnels are unchartered.
POS seemed to be struggling with connection and was operating intermittently.
'I have a hybrid cart,' continued Jerome. 'It runs on solar but only for about 3 hours per full charge if you do under 40km. And if it is a cloudy day, an hour. I can let you take it for 3000 *G-bits. It won't get off the ground without jet fuel but it can drive on flat ground well enough. It doesn't hold the road well, but if you are a good driver, it won't be an issue.'
Renyke is unsure of his driving skills and POS was glitching again. This man was rambling on and Renyke needed facts urgently. It was hard to know what was important without POS.
'Can you drive?' Renyke asked Flex.
Flex laughed... 'Of course I can.'
A scritter crawls across the floor and Jerome stamps on it. A black tar oozes from under his foot.
Jerome sees Renyke might be changing his mind about the deal.
'I will take *TELL You got some TELL?"
POS gets a signal......
...TELL: abbreviation of Tellurium, found in copper ore. Used in mobile phones, especially older versions where it was added to other metals improving their strength and hardness and reducing corrosion. Rare due to demise of traditional copper mines.
Renyke begins to feel confused about whether to get the vehicle and asks POS.
...I am not programmed to have opinions. I do not have access to data about the vehicle, it has no computerised system. The seller seems to be shield protected. But Redact is within easy walking distance for a *Mark 3...
Renyke looks at Flex and then at Jerome. A scritter is crawling up his boot and he throws it off with a kick. He feels a rising panic and a thumping in his chest which he does not recognise. Why was it so important that he not make a mistake? Why was he not able to understand the virtue or danger of the exchange?
Finally, Renyke says, 'I will walk.'
Jerome shrugged his shoulders and stamped on another scritter mumbling, 'time waster' under his breath.
Flex, looking aghast, sighed.
to be continued,
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