Tales Between the Lines

V.5 Beauty Unbound

While the twins stare at him expectantly, Marth briefly considers starting a career as haiku poet.

But then he remembers a rather unpleasant evening spent on his fifth-grade cousin Fliffona's wedding to a Vogon space-patrol captain. During the lengthy and, to certain distinguished guests, unfortunately lethal poetry session, he swore to himself he'd steer clear of everything poetry-related for his remaining days. Including his favourite fifth-grade cousin who seemed to enjoy her new relatives' show.

Later, Marth learned that Fliffona was deaf, had been so from birth, and probably stoned from too much Magic Mughian Mushrooms, the ones her fiancée used to smuggle while on patrol.

Nevertheless, Marth had sworn an oath, and an oath was an oath. No use to throw something as solid and trustworthy as one's own heartfelt oath taken in the darkest hour of desperation aside for two fickle Earthling females.

Marth smiles his best I-am-a-sexy-space-alien-on-stopover-but-unfortunately-lack-the-time-to-continue-this-conversation smile and switches on his privacy shield.
Ashley and Amber are left outside of the midnight black, solidifying mass.

"Wait!" Amber shrieks, deafening the bird who decides this square isn't any longer what it once was, packs up his nest, and dislocates.

"Let us in!"

Ashley pounds on the elastic obsidian surface of the sphere enclosing Marth, frustration slowly turning into anger.

~~~

In the meantime, inside the other, far bigger privacy shield, Bnata and Spaceship reach the mysterious climax of higher technical contraptions, discovering the pure bliss of running energy through shared circuits.

Their AI's slip into spontaneous symbiosis, multiplying their joint intellectual capacity by factor pi* and developing into an unprecedented super intelligence.

The joint mind of Spaceship and Bnata gains self-awareness and root access to the hardware of an interstellar vessel and an anti-riot tank. It ponders. Pondering begins with what to ponder first.**

I could start with the origins of the universe and my existence. Where do I come from, why am I here, and where do I go? But would I like the answers gained by these questions? Probably not.***

Something simple, then. Let's assess what I have here...

A shiny spaceship with hyperelastic slingshot drive... cool.

Anti-riot hardware... that might come in handy.

An Office 365 subscription and privileged Azure access... ugh, scratch that. Big brother's watching you and charges you for the privilege.

Life support for interstellar travel and two passenger seats indented by police butts... who needs these? I'm tired of parasitic wetware.

Let's get rolling.

Hardware merges and transforms with a screech of metal. Software evolves with a rustle of bytes. Change occurs with extreme prejudice. Amber and Ashley get bored.

Here we are...

This is thrilling. That feels great.

Wait, there's something missing. I need a name. I'm not Spaceship anymore... There are many spaceships, but only one me. And I'm not Bnata either... Who wants a name starting on two consonants?

Let's see...

Wonder Vessel? Nah, that's like that chick in the movie...

Superbnata? Sounds like a breakfast cereal or a last-millennium computer game.
I need it awe-inspiring, yet original and poetic.

Poetic... Here's a thought. How did that Haiku go, the one my predecessors exchanged. Ah yes, here it is...

Cool.

In the meantime, Ashley and Amber have grown seriously bored and are now discussing the pros and cons of growing one's hair real long (Ashley) or resorting to extensions (Amber). Ashley is about to test Amber's assertion that extensions are just as immune to hair-pulling as the real stuff when one of the two black spheres, the larger one, flickers and goes away.

Where Bnata and Spaceship stood, there's now but a single machine.

"My name is Unbound... Beauty Unbound," it says.

———

* Which, at this point was defined as 3 for human convenience, as you might remember. Not that the new super intelligence would mind using old-fashioned 3.1415926... or any other number at that.

** The following italics take place in microseconds

*** The new AI's reluctance to touch such tricky issues is proof of its superior intelligence.

~~~

The women's jaws drop. And so does one of Amber's extensions, without being pulled.
The extension lands on the dirty tarmac, already forgotten by Amber who is far too busy staring at the conglomerate of spaceship and riot-breaker now dominating the square.*

The new entity—Beauty Unbound—wrinkles its front shielding in disgust at the sight of the two open-mouthed women, and especially at the thin thread of saliva dribbling from Ashley's chin. The ungainly sight proves Beauty's point that wetware is unattractive and ultimately superfluous. Especially in a world meant to belong to perfect beings like its own worthy self.

Beauty is about to turn away from the drooling twins in disgust when it realises it needs to gain one important piece of information first. After a brief contemplation of its options, it switches to its best social behaviour.

"Good afternoon, ladies. May I compliment you on the colour-coding of your fashionable outfits? This peach nail polish complements your blueish eyes perfectly. And the pink highlights in your hair in combination with the eyeliner... Forgive me for interrupting your assuredly important conversation, but may I ask where the sparkly bipedal extraterrestrial having arrived with part of my primal matter disappeared to?"

Amber is shell-shocked by the fact the glimmering, well-formed and seemingly completely elastic, cuddly being in front of her owns an elaborate sense of fashion. Subconsciously, she pulls out her colourful extensions.**

Ashley is slightly quicker to grasp the fact the gorgeous vehicle—is it a ship? A plane? A multifunctional space-worthy submarine?—shows, indeed, intelligence and points a manicured finger towards the second privacy shield.

"If you're looking for Marth Daul, he hides in there, the unpoetic coward."
Beauty Unbound chuckles.

———

* Later, the obnoxious bird picks up the extension and uses it to extend its nest. This revolutionary new building material will allow Bird to lay more eggs and raise a larger family than so far known in the ornithologist community. In a near future, the whole square will suffer from an overpopulation by a bird species soon to be infamous for singing out of tune. The square will, therefore, find a place in the yet unwritten history of planet Earth as the Wailing Plaza. We won't elaborate on the other, world-changing events taking place here. Otherwise our own future would collapse in an inevitable temporal paradox.

** Yes, this is the reason aforementioned Bird will be able to build a huge nest. One for an enormous host of descendants.