Welcome to Bravo

T.W. Nicholson

Description

A titanic psychological nail-biter, Welcome to Bravo dresses up the digital and analog worlds as protagonists vying for souls of the departed. This parochial-dystopian epic is driven by rich characters who propel a powerful narrative creating an inescapable addiction to the next page.  As a contemporary science fiction thriller, the story is for anyone who ever wondered if the screens captivating our eyes and ensnaring our minds bear a false light, whose foundation of black glass is actually a dark portal conditioning the mind to embrace eternal alone-ness.  

Charon Mausolus founded and runs Everlasting Enterprises with the promise of Humans Eternally Living Life as an uploaded consciousness interred in hyper-scaled datacenter mausoleums.  His technological genius is heralded by government sycophants and capitalistic cannibals looking to enrich themselves feeding off their fellow man.  But these crypts of the digital age siphon souls to a sinister purpose, and reveal how the dialectic of Heaven and Hell has been disrupted by a Faustian bargain.  

Sujets

• Policier & Thriller
• Thriller
• Fiction
• Psychology
• Technology
• Thrillers
• Psychological
• Technological

Informations

• Publié par: Outskirts Press
• Date de parution: 08 août 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781977266545
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

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Welcome to Bravo A Diabolical Dialectic All Rights Reserved. Copyright © 2023 T.W. Nicholson v3.0 r1.2
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitiousmanner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher. The author has represented andwarranted full ownership and/or legal right to publish all the materials in this book.
This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consentof the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Outskirts Press, Inc. http://www.outskirtspress.com
Cover Photo © 2023 T.W. Nicholson
Outskirts Press and the “OP” logo are trademarks belonging to Outskirts Press, Inc.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Table of Contents
1. INTERNMENT
2. HEDONIS SUCHERBORG
3. THE EARNINGS CALL
4. PACKING AND UNPACKING
5. MEMORY CARE KARMA
6. GHOST IN THE MACHINE
7. LIFE AND DEATH IN THE BOARD ROOM
8. THE RYTHM OF LIFE
9. SOUL JUROR RITUAL
10. RITUAL INITIATION
11. SHOW ME HOW TO LIVE
12. YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE
13. HOLY COW POW WOW
14. BURNING MAN AT BURNING MAN
15. A NIGHT-EAT THE MUSEUM
16. FROZEN DEAD GUY
17. GOLDEN CALF MELTDOWN
18. TIME TO FLY
19. UH OH, RETRO
20. HOT PURSUIT
21. …BUT MY HEAD S IN MISSISSIPPI
22. SOUL JUROR STOPS
23. SENTINEL SAVIOR
24. ON THE ROAD AGAIN
25. THE FERRYMAN TAKES HIS TOLL
26. CONNECTING THE DOTS
27. THE STORM
28. MOUNTAIN SECRETS
29. E PLURIBUS UNUM INVICTUS
30. FELIXIS OR SPARTACUS
31. DIVINATION
32. ASK JEEVES
33. CRUISER
34. DEATH AND DIALECTIC
35. EXCURSION IN THE PLANETARIUM
36. SHOJI SHOTS
37. FROZEN DEAD GUY REDUX
38. THE GAMBIT
39. ALONE AGAIN
40. TWO TATTOOS
41. PARTING AND DEPARTING
42. VEGAS BABY
43. BURNING MAN ON FIRE
44. A LONG EXPECTED RITUAL
45. WHERE S THE MIMIC?
46. THE SETUP
47. RITUAL SACRIFICE SHOCK
48. THE VALLEY OF DEATH
49. AI EXULTATION
50. G.O.D.
Chapter 1: INTERNMENT
Welcome to Bravo the automated voice stated. Soothing and calm, it sounded unflappable, confident arrogant. In the dimly lit chamber, the voice took on a sonorous depth, and the phrase lingered in the ensuing silence. Jim s mind echoed the phrase, revisiting the finality of uploading his father into server #159, Welcome to Bravo . It was so...antiseptic, he thought.
Jim stared directly ahead at the black wall, slowly lowering hands that had just inserted his father s software remains into the hardware repository. He watched as if they were another s hands as they slowly receded from a small black box, stacked among thousands of such black boxes, holding a memory card upon which the entire brain of his father had been stored. The card was empty now, having deposited its contents into a perpetual state of preservation inside the machine s memory. The voice s tone conjured a sense of smug fulfillment at the acceptance of all his father had been. The joys he had cherished, sorrows he had suffered, and secrets he had silently saved went to the grave with him - for the whole world to now access. Jim s father, or more accurately, the information that had once been the personality of Jim s father, was now ingested into a network of artificial intelligence and learning algorithms. The man Jim had known as a person, as his dad, and had become familiar with through interaction in the physical world, was now known far more intimately by the machine. In the natural world, by encountering his dad, Jim had known the what and the who that was Ben. But now, converted into a digital existence, the AI now knew the why .
It was the best Jim could do for Ben, as most of his father s wealth had been siphoned away battling the illness that ultimately took his life. Lacking sufficient funds for Alpha, Jim had secured Tier Bravo Internment for his father - a second-class upload that saved his father from disappearing, but also allowed the machine access to examine and learn from the contents extracted from Ben s brain. Every thought, the very essence of who he had been, was laid bare for the sifting, distilling, cross-referencing, and ultimately intelligence-building code. The same code that enabled contextual machine learning and fueled the ever-evolving awareness of the Artificial Intelligence residing in the machine - a geometrically expanding neural network of increasingly conscious consciousness.
The sum of Ben s life had been paid to Everlasting Enterprises. Referred to by everyone as EvEnt, the Fintech Start-up boasted themselves A Revolution in Mortuary Affairs. This RMA offered an afterlife that directly revealed the stark economic reality at this terminus of one s life. To overcome one s tears, EvEnt offered three tiers - Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie; or, more accurate in Jim s mind, audaciously expensive, blue collar budget, and cut-rate crap.
Jim stood at the brink of banks that held what had been humans, his mind mulling over the aspects of each internment. Tier Alpha offered private encryption. One underwent a complete upload of their entire brain, accessible exclusively by designated loved ones and friends. The cryptologic security ensured a dignified and private internment. An Alpha s identity was inserted in to specially secured chassis that contained tiny projectors which presented a holographic image of the person at purchaser identified periods of their life. Displayed between 5-10 centimeters from the site of their upload, these holograms gave a perpetual, visual depiction of the person s defining moments to show their spirit. The holograms, taken from real-life moments now resident in the machine, showcased the new gravestone of the digital age - no more sunken rocks, covered by earth and grass, buried and eventually consumed by nature s embrace. Today s deceased could remain on display and never go away. And for an Alpha, complete encryption ensured a peaceful repose, accessible only by loved ones, who could then virtually interact with a digitally intact personality.
Tier Bravo was different. The entire brain was uploaded, and the loved one could be accessed by friends and relatives, but also by others in the public domain. There was no barrier for Bravos - no cryptologic cordon. Without a crypt , EvEnt s own internal algorithms could search any individual interred at Tier Bravo. Outsiders gained access if they paid a monthly subscription, dubbed Bravo+ by EvEnt marketing. Tier Bravo afforded no individual privacy, no sanctity, and no data rights. But at least an individual at Bravo remained intact, not subject to perpetual harvesting by anyone who watched the required commercials, nor were they subjected to the parceling and further sale befalling some Charlies .
Though no hologram adorned the air in front of their storage drive, at least Bravo tier contents were not harvested and scattered like the lowest class. The uncomfortable reality was that Charlie uploads paid for themselves with themselves. The script was flipped on the Charlies because rather than them paying for internment, whoever sold them got paid - which was the Government most of the time, if not EvEnt itself. Another universal benefit for society - like healthcare but death care. A Charlie might start as an individual entity, but be dissected and parceled once sold to a third party.
For the vast majority of the dying population, the gratuity paid by EvEnt to the family made the prospect of internment at tier Charlie a sizable cash bonus per stirpes.
The incentive had perverted end of life decisions, which was somewhat expected. But the actual spike in euthanasia was downright shocking, causing many to re-imagine the term loved-one. Suddenly that aging population didn t seem so old anymore. Moral judgement aside, society was becoming younger and healthier. The loved-one s death that might otherwise have incurred debt became KA$H money. Charlie offered a way out of destitution, if only briefly, for the loving legacy of the lost - just had to forget Mom s mind being siphoned and sold. Which was a wishful possibility, if you didn t greedily hasten her demise, and convince yourself there is no consciousness after death. But sacrificing the infirmed s identity to bouncing around the digital universe in disparate parts for a few bucks smacked of indignity, even if one didn t off em early . But the dead don t talk, at least not nearly as loudly as money. So the ranks of the Charlies were burgeoning.
Jim s eye caught a cart, piled high with cards, being pushed toward a roped off area by one of the mausoleum staff. At first Jim thought the worker was approaching a trash bin, and stared incredulously as the employee began tossing handfuls of data cards into the bin. Those must be the empties - already uploaded, Jim reasoned. He realized his error when tiny LED lights began glowing at a sustained rate on the wall of servers behind the bin, matching the rate of the piles being dropped into the feeder. Charlies, he realized. Shoved into the maw like offal for the pigs. Everlasting Enterprises harvested their non-crypt data for commercial pursuits, and to augment the education of their proprietary Artificial Intelligence. Guess quantity has its own quality, he thought. Like so many others in the race, the EvEnt goal was an ever increasing neural network consciousness, an AI self-awareness that could lighten the burden of all mankind .
* * *
As these thoughts percolated in Jim, he felt his anger rising. The amount of money being made by the harvesting and selling of a human mind must be staggering - the new oil of the Virtual Age. Alph