Comedy Open Mic Round 37 : OVER THE SILVER SKY TO THE WORLD OF NEVER : Part 63 - Another Pointless Conversation.

Yes people it's all over the news THE SPICE GIRLS have just confirmed they will be doing a reunion tour, minus Victoria Beckham (The sulky skinny one known as Posh). On hearing this monumental news my first thought was "Fuck No", the second was "Over my dead body". I barely survived their first incarnation. Due to my impressionable daughter these women have cost me a small fortune. I'm pretty sure the only merchandise of theirs I didn't buy was the pink motor scooter. This only because my daughter was too young to ride one. I thought I was off the hook when Geri Halliwell (The Ginger Mutant) left to pursue a solo career, no. Even though the solo career outpaced her, possibly due to the heels she was wearing. Then the rest split up in pursuit of solo careers. Having not learned from Geri, that those solo careers are pretty pacey, they never did manage to catch one. Those solo careers are now off somewhere enjoying themselves, I expect. I'm not posting this for any benefit to me or the rest of mankind. I am doing this out of childish revenge and petty spite. I don't want these millionaires picking my pockets and turning my children against me yet again.

(The copyright for this image is the property of Spice Girls.)

No matter which way Jake looked at this, he was mildly disappointed. While he'd not really had any specific thoughts on what this futuristic place would be like, he'd thought it would be better than it actually was. There were many aspects which were pretty cool of course. The machines and devices for example. The people weren't that good though. Sure they'd banished hunger, poverty and war long ago, but that was beside the point. Additionally the so called Outers could be said to be relatively poor. In the sense of living on millionaire's row with a mansion that was slightly worse than everyone else's. The Outers were far more vibrant as well. They had their own culture, sort of. He'd even reconciled himself to the cold blooded murder of Itchyelbow. Having reached the conclusion that the son of a bitch deserved it if anyone did. Besides the perverted bastard would be revived soon enough. Once a new body had been grown and his old personality installed in it.

Most of the planet's surface was in near pristine condition, give or take the odd meteorite impact crater. Extinct species had been brought back to life. Even a few that had preceded man by millions of years. By this world's standards Bristol was tiny, it wasn't really a megapolis, only having around five million citizens. That was almost ten times as many as the Bristol he'd left, what seemed months ago now. So why was there more life back there? The place had buzzed. A quality he'd found annoying while living there, but now missed. Once again he didn't know what he'd had until he lost it. In this case he'd thrown it away to follow Sharon and escape a timeline that would eventually completely unravel.

Right now he was walking along the street of a world he would once have dreamed about. In his imagination he would have roamed it taking in all the sights. Yet here he was pretty much ignoring everything while he internalized the events that had overtaken him. Going back over all that had happened a question arose. Pip had stated she hadn't been arrested with the rest of the crew due to her young age. Other information he'd subsequently learned made him doubt her honesty or his sanity. It was a toss up.

"Grundel?" Jake cautiously inquired. "This is purely theoretical, you understand." Here he winked.
Grundel's eyes went through a few blinking contortions as he pawed his face.
"Are you indicating I have something in my eye, or is it in your eye."
Oh bother. This might be another communication barrier. How did he explain this to an artificial intelligence other than as a one eyed blink.
"It's remotely like a bit of conscious body language from my earth. In this instance it meant that when I said theoretically I meant the opposite. That it was real."
"What possible use could such a facial contortion have, when it's only purpose is to mislead without misleading?"
Oh Christ. Start again.
"Right. Ignore the wink. The wink never happened." God bless him, Grundel was looking up the word. No way of knowing how much help that would be. "I was trying to raise a delicate matter I did not want anyone else to overhear. I'm thinking specifically the...." Balls he couldn't say Consensus as that would be picked up. "Look lets cut to the chase, is it safe for me to talk with you on any subject at all? Such as for example something, those who watch over us would find, illegal? For example." Jake pointed at his eye and winked.
Grundel interjected before he could continue.
"Now is that the Wink meaning this is the opposite to what I mean or is it the one indicating affection?"
He'd reintroduced the wink too early in this. Should have avoided it all together.
"Oh bum. It was neither and I really don't have the time or the energy to work out an explanation. I'm starting again."
"Do I ignore that Wink as well?"
"Yes it's probably safest. The concept of the wink is far more complex than I'd ever imagined. I should have paid more attention to "I, Robot", and not spoken about it. Oh God. Let's start from the beginning before the wink existed to you. Now you've told me, and my observations have confirmed, there are no children within the Consensus. The birth or discovery of a child would create a stir with these authorities. Say we found a child, as miraculous as that would be, would mentioning this here be overheard and lead to said child being taken into custody?"
"Yes."
"Well that was a lot of buggering about to get precisely nowhere. It's also very confusing since the rules are very contradictory."
The penny had finally dropped with Grundel. His face a picture of sudden understanding.
"Oh I see what you mean Jake. Talking in public would be monitored. We could use a sex booth. They are extremely private. Not monitored at all."
So basically what happened in the sex booths stayed in the sex booths. Along with all that DNA.
"Like I've repeatedly said, I'm not a fan. Besides I was thinking of an exchange of information rather than bodily fluids. Are there any other places we can speak in private?"
The tour guide gave that careful consideration.
"Not with the same levels of comfort."
"I'd like to call that an opening or a crack, but I'm not going to. The chances for more misunderstandings and poor phrasing are too great. What is the problem, comfort wise, with these alternatives?"
"They're very small. Intended for one person. Rarely used these days. The privacy cubical's were once used when people needed to make or receive personal calls they didn't want overheard by others. Nobody cares about privacy anymore so they've fallen out of use."
"You and I could fit in one though couldn't we?"
"Yes we could. As long as we used no communication equipment nothing we said would be monitored."
"How about this for an idea? Why don't we use one of these privacy booths?"
Grundel balked at this, much to Jake's annoyance.
"Because as I said they are small and uncomfortable. Why don't we discuss it in the store instead?"
"Say what?" Jake exclaimed.
"There's no surveillance in there nor in any store for that matter."
This was somewhat perplexing.
"That does seem like a gaping hole in the security of this place. We can go in there and buy all the weapons we need. Then we can plan whatever we like without anyone knowing what we're up to. We could burst out of that store and wipe out everything in a two hundred meter radius."
The avatar was unperturbed.
"It's a hole I'll admit. One that nobody has utilized. Firstly only one person would be allowed to purchase anything. Whatever they purchased would be genetically coded for their use only. Anyone touching the weapons purchased by someone else would find themselves with 50,000 volts fizzing through their body. It can be made safe for others to touch but only when deactivated. It would then only serve as a very expensive club."
"Ah yes but what about a sword? That's not as high tech is it."
"The system is the same for all weapons Jake. Shall we go in?"
Looking up he saw the icon twirling above his head. Jake cursed under his breath. Having come this far on the trail to nowhere he was over committed now. Far too late to turn back.

They entered the store. To his pleasant surprise it was a lot more interesting than the tailors. As the door opened the walls lit up with images of all the different types of weapons available. Following on from his ordeal by pointlessness, Jake was tempted to not only buy a gun, but a permit to kill himself. He didn't want to break any of their laws did he. Who knew what trouble he'd get in for committing suicide? No point though. They'd only bring him back to life, he assumed. There was Hermes to think about as well. They had a truce at the moment. No point provoking him. While the weapons were not what he'd been used to on his own planet, they were very similar. Nothing here looked like a death ray. It was all projectile weapons and sharp pointy things. Understandable he supposed. There was something he had to take care of first though. Before he picked out anything he needed that chat with Grundel.

"Purely to make absolutely sure here. We can talk about anything in here and it won't be monitored?"
"Yes. From your verbal and body language contortions I am getting the impression your thinking of talking about Pip." Grundel answered.
"How very astute of you." Jake replied, the sarcasm sailing way over Grundel's head. "Now I can remember quite clearly that when I arrived Pip said she hadn't been arrested along with the rest of the crew because she was too young to be criminally responsible. She seemed to believe that the security bots in the internal tunnels and the train stations would ignore her as well. Again due to her age. To me that makes no sense whatsoever. If the bots and the police authorities won't touch her, why doesn't some other unit, for want of a better word, swoop down and snatch her?"
The AI gave an understanding nod.
"It's simple really. There are two reasons for this apparent contradiction. The first being that machine intelligence is extremely stupid. Unless it's been programmed to bring this to attention it will ignore it. A drone would scan Pip and having been programmed hundreds of years ago will accept her as a child. It will know she is not criminally responsible due to her age. Add to this that no one else is that young. She and you are possibly the two youngest people in Bristol right now. To a machine, age is only a number. It has no significance unless the system scanning her has been programmed to take note of this particular number. The second reason is more delicate. You see the Consensus is not a whole thing. Even among machine intelligence's there are different factions. The algorithms controlling their personalities contain randomly generated differentials. This was designed so that these AI's would more nearly resemble people in their thoughts. They will come to different decisions on the same data unless that decision is inescapable. Even then there is still some margin for dissent."
He'd wasted a lot of time and effort there for an explanation that was of very little use to him. It could come in handy in future, but Jake doubted that very much. What was with him anyway. His curious ability to accept some things while questioning others to the point of insanity. As though there were two of him. One a gullible moron and the other a cantankerous dick. There was little prospect they'd merge into something wonderful. Far more likely he'd become a cantankerous moron or a gullible dick. The prospect was actually quite scary.
"Well that's.... No. I can't spin that into anything positive. The only plus here is that now I can choose some pointy shooty things. Do you think they do those Japanese shuriken things? I've always wanted to give them a go."
Grundel assumed the distant rolling eye look he always did when he was looking something up.
"I expect so. Though they'd be more of a distraction than a real weapon. I doubt you could kill anyone with one or even half a dozen. What does Hermes think? He should know the amount of action he's seen."
He opened his mouth to reply. It stayed open as he realized what this indicated.
"You mean you've known about Hermes all along?"
"Oh yes. I thought it best to let you believe I didn't. Think of it as more training. Training you were badly in need of. Given the large number of times you almost let his presence slip. Angelique said you'd be pretty clueless. She wasn't exaggerating. You're a complete idiot."

I would like to nominate @bluetower and @mojo4you for the next round.