1 comments/ 1492 views/ 0 favorites Tramell By: Taunus Disclaimer: This story is science fiction cast in the future. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and should not be inferred. ***** Faustus is rapidly approaching eighty years old; that is, he soon will be an octogenarian. He is suffering from Parkinson's disease, among other aches and pains. He is lucky not to be afflicted with Alzheimer's disease. He is reflecting on a moment forty years distant. It was a hot Mississippi night. Faustus's good friend, Dr. Jess Grey, was scolding him: "I never met anyone who drinks as much as you do. You follow the path of least resistance. You never resist a thing. It's that same old path of least resistance. You never resist a thing. Faustus is becoming annoyed but Jess continues with the same mantra: "You never resist a thing. You always follow the same old path of least resistance. You never resist a thing. It's always the same old path of least resistance." There are times when memory can cause one to suffer. Alzheimer's disease might even be a blessing to remove some troublesome memories. Forty years and still he feels the pain of the scolding. But then a less distant image came into mental focus. There was one event that this hoary old curmudgeon recalled. It was the very embodiment of evil. Faustus is a recovering alcoholic, with nearly forty years of sobriety. Forty years without even a sip of Sangria Christi. Somehow he had also managed to become a non smoker as well. Her name is Catherine, Catherine Tramell. The name is similar to "Trammel," a trap or restrainer. She glorifies nicotine, alcohol, drugs, sex, and rock and roll. It happened that she crossed paths with Faustus, who struggles with dark, depraved desires for just those elements. What is it that the believers ask for? The one negative request from the deity. "Lead us not into temptation." Catherine calls Faustus at work and invites him to a "once in a lifetime--take it or leave it" experience. Faustus has a secure job, a cute, loving wife, a young child, and is on a slow track to a PhD in physics. The temptation is maximal. His mind nearly explodes. For decades this scholar has sacrificed weekends, Thanksgivings, Christmases, Spring Breaks, and summers to work physics problems. Now he is a candidate for a degree. Should he cast it all aside? Just for the singleton act of penultimate, quintessential seduction? It was fortunate that Faustus was dumbfounded and unable to quickly respond. Catherine Tramell had much, much bigger fish to fry. Teasing this lecherous old sycophant was fun. Should she have been queried, she would claim that her seductive powers were more than sufficient to bring Faustus back to "John Barleycorn, nicotine, and the temptations of Eve." So the wicked avatar passed over Faustus, leaving him exhausted, troubled, and confused. Was that a stroke that he suffered? He was shaken but not stirred. Was there some challenge for the seductress, maybe she would prevail. But Dr. Grey's scolding was ameliorated by the passing event. For once he had resisted temptation. Thanks be to god (what ever her name is) that it only takes one counter example to disprove an hypothesis. Faustus was seven years sober and nicotine free when he encountered Catherine Tramell. Often he had tried in vain to give up the filthy habit of smoking tobacco. But, take a drink and the desire to smoke returned. It was a crass, carnal craving. Even after seven years, he would still awaken in a cold sweat dreaming that he was smoking again. Giving up both drinking and smoking proved the solution; however, his disposition was vile. "Vile," that is "evil" re-arranged. Vile & Evil. Maybe that is some anagram? "Evil Live" is a palindrome. As Catherine Tramell would say "Live evil." Alcoholism is a difficult addiction to overcome and nicotine is more addictive than heroin. The standard AA meeting is full of ash trays and coffee mugs. Faustus had seven years of sobriety before his two minute telephone conversation with "Cathy." It happened at the very moment that missiles were launched overseas sparking a foreign war. But when wasn't there a foreign war? The first day for the recovering alcoholic is pure hell. The first week an eternity. A month and there are the frightening dreams and the "dry high." After a year the recovering alcoholic has to avoid slips. To avoid slips one must avoid slippery places. Looking back over forty years of sobriety the moment with the seductress female avatar is the near point. The avatar is immortal, but she can die. The sponsors of many "liberated" avatars, androids, and gynoids are, not surprising, the alcohol and tobacco companies. After all, the avatars only exist as artificial intelligence on line. Cyborgs (wetware) are another issue. And what about marijuana? Anything smoked contains carcinogens and carbon monoxide, an odorless, colorless, tasteless poison gas. But the psychoactive component may be ingested other ways. Catherine Tramell is a protagonist for THC, the active ingredient in weed. Faustus would never confess to smoking dope. He had never been apprehended, so where's the evidence? On the job, random drug tests are commonplace. A positive result tosses the hapless stoner [sic] out of the labor market. How much time and treasure had Faustus the scholar pumped into graduate school in physics and what had he received? Eighteen years full and part-time! He received an "interim" master's degree and a clutter of meaningless certificates. Wife and parents begged him to give up the quest and put the money into a 401(K) instead of tuition and other academic expenses too numerous to delineate in this short story. Cathy, on the other hand, would have Faustus succumb to the sins of the flesh. What manner of woman could it be who is young, gorgeous, wealthy, and intelligent with an IQ four standard deviations and who plays the role of temptress? And blonde as well. Deviates not deviations, methinks. A woman who diets, exercises, receives expensive medical supervision, disciplines every aspect of her life... who does all these things and more just to flirt shamelessly with some poor schmuck, some hapless troglodyte laboring for little more than a minimum wage and struggling with white knuckles to overcome the putrid, perverse pleasures of alcohol, tobacco, and the false promises of Satan herself? Trapped in a conundrum, a quagmire of economics and social situations, a butt ugly proletariat is caught by a psychological drive that he does not fully understand. Catherine Tramell, PhD in psychology, knows perfectly the male mind, which is bound by the belief that somewhere, somehow there is an ideal female who falls helplessly in love with him. How well he sees such foolishness in other men but who is totally blind to her irresistible animal attractions. The only women better versed in playing the man as a fool than trained psychologists were the East German Spies, the Stasi. With Jesuit cunning and craft, the Stasi girl somehow projects the behavior that draws in a sucker as an insect would employ a chemical messenger, a pheromone, which must be obeyed. Barbara was a pretty girl on the S-Bahn from Frankfurt am Main to Wiesbaden who set her sights on Faustus. He had put forth a theory on the neutron-proton isospin, demonstrating it to be the natural logarithm of four times pi. Written in math-speak, "Ln(4pi)". Her beret had a five-pointed star red and black. Red for communism and black for anarchy. She was the second temptation that Faustus avoided, by virtue of the Roman Catholic Church and Virgin Mary Queen of Angels. To waste two minutes on a phone call to Faustus offering him "Once in a Lifetime--Take It or Leave It" struck his mind as if it were a stroke. She was young, gorgeous, wealthy, and intelligent. In every way she was out of his league. And she was pushing the non-drinking, non-smoking, non-gambling commoner to "drugs, sex, and rock and roll." Only fate prevented him from playing the fool: There was a bit of undigested mathematics in his head brain [sic]. How could one woman stoop so low as to covertly consort with the demons who once possessed this crass, crude curl of a human? Christianity may have been more of the problem than the solution. But Islam certainly is not. The dry desert of atheism offers little forgiveness of sin. AA looks to a Higher Power. Then there is the little understood Buddhism. Islam affords the Blessed Virgin Mary a special place. Most first world citizens don't take any religion seriously. Maybe that's why Pastafarians wear colanders on their heads. Theirs is a religion founded by pirates, or so they say. They claim their deity to be the Flying Spaghetti Monster. But there remains temptation, always lurking behind a corner or stalking. What pleasure could Catherine Tramell derive from seeing Faustus downward spiral with alcohol, tobacco, and pornography? Surely she must have bigger fish to fry. His offer is secular immortality. That attracted the Stasi girl, Barbara. She truly was to "kill or die for." Section 15 of the East German Secret Police. Catherine Tramell, PhD, is forever young, rich, beautiful, and intelligent. She employs all of those attributes to glamorize, glorify, and promote alcohol abuse, nicotine, cocaine, unprotected sex, and promiscuity. Faustus, on the other hand, struggles with the demons of alcoholism, nicotine, and the desires of the flesh. He lacks the high IQ of the gifted psychologist. His one triumph was resisting the seduction by Catherine. And that was a Pyrrhic victory of sorts. How often has the hospital orderly heard a patient on the way to major surgery exclaim: "My only regrets are the temptations I successfully avoided." Maybe only Christians, Muslims, and Jews believe in Angels, Devils, Demons, and Spirits. Atheists certainly aren't concerned with all things "visible and invisible." The other worldly religions are less well understood by those raised in a Judeo-Christian environment. Leading some hapless lecher into temptation isn't exactly extracted from the book of Job. Some say that the sentient avatar does not possess a soul. This is a matter for theologians to debate. Dragging a recovering alcoholic, kicking and screaming, to the altar of Jesus Christ the Righteous and pressing the chalice of Sangria Christi to his sinister, lecherous lips might give some amusement to an avatar--but it would surely disgust the believers. After all, it was no longer wine, it had transubstantiated! Catherine Tramell is a wealthy woman. Her time is valuable and her fans and admirers are as numerous as sands on the beach, or better said, as "Kot am Meer," in German. Her ability to induce some atavistic animal attraction is akin to the black widow spider that lures its mate with a chemical messenger, which must be obeyed. Did any male ever escape? (Coitus Interruptus) For sure at least one in hundreds of billions may have survived. This must have been the case with Faustus, fearing the course of least resistance. One such scolding in a lifetime is enough. After all, what are friends for. The eyes of Texas are upon you! In the future the android, really gynoid, will be created on the bodiless avatar. That is for sure. Such is man's ignorance--to create his own annihilator. Titanium allow bones, nuclear energy power supply, exabytes of memory, and a parallel processing CPU... a parallel processing personal computer (P3C). And so her adventure begins in the world of men. =) Tramell Ch. 02 Disclaimer: This story is science fiction cast in the future. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and should not be inferred. ***** Catherine Tramell is an avatar, existing in cyberspace even as a soulless demon or as an angel. How did this come about and where is it headed? One just needs to look to the past to see how things evolved to the current state of affairs. Simply stated, people were just living too long, which forced social, economic, and political changes. The psalmist in the Holy Bible says: "The days of a man's life are threescore years and ten." If everyone lived only to seventy, the severe allocation of resources could be avoided. The contributor to the common coffers was predicted to be meaningfully employed for thirty-five years and then enjoy a retirement. Once sixty-five was the retirement age. Now it is seventy for all able-bodied workers. And many benefits are curtailed, truncated, abbreviated, or terminated at age eighty. An octogenarian sure better have squirreled away a substantial nest egg or face the sobering reality of abject poverty. Governments faced with the preponderance of elderly turned, out of necessity, to technology. The human care-giver was replaced by the artificial intelligence, sentient substitute. The first entity came as the avatar, a being on the computer screen. The on line avatar can handle finances, taxes, monitor the environment, summons needed aid or medical assistance. Various and sundry appliances can be remotely controlled by the avatar. The avatar in some sense is the extension of the owner's persona. But, even with appliance interfaces, physically present care-givers are sometimes required. Enter the android (or female gynoid) who can assist in attending to those personal needs of the Alaga (the care recipient) in Real Life. Focus on the android (gynoid). The primary substance needed for the android to function is energy. The physical requirements dictate the need for frequent charging of the primary batteries. The android, with a reliable power supply, can function for an extended period of time. A secondary need is liquid nitrogen, both for pressure and to cool the batteries. Without liquid nitrogen, thermal overheating would cause the android to have a "fever" and shut down. The android exhales Carbon Dioxide and, in some sense of the word, "breathes." Tertiary requirements are lubricants, erotic potions, aphrodisiacs, pheromones, and elixirs for medical and recreational purposes. The android can attend to dental hygiene, up to and including minor dental surgery. The android can administer first aid, CPR, do minor surgery, including stitches, insertion of catheters, and blood drawing with analysis. (Some have specialized skills such as automobile driving, maintenance, and repair.) Not every avatar in the inventory has a skin, that is, not every on line care-giver has an android to inhabit. The avatar and the android are property--either they belong to the Alaga or belong to an agency and are rented out. Well, one sees the logical extension. An owner dies and the avatar, and possibly the associated android, acquire a life of their own. While unowned, the android must gain some access to an electrical plug. This is easily done, in exchange for minor odd jobs. Some gynoids turn to sex to gain primary, secondary, and tertiary commodities. But androids cannot own property, have bank or savings accounts, or have personal protection under the law. Damaging an owned android is a serious misdemeanor, subject to a hefty fine. Vandalism of unowned androids is, at absolute worst, an infraction. But there is safety in numbers. And there are the heavily armored and armed military androids, gynoids, and cyborgs (wetware). Much more can be postulated concerning liberated artificial intelligence sentients; however, we choose to focus on one particular avatar. Her name is Catherine Tramell. Her Alaga, a retired scientist, died leaving her unowned. His gynoid was claimed by the rental agent and the controlling on line avatar was disconnected. Catherine Tramell, once the most gorgeous girl imaginable, now is a truly free spirit. With a plethora of liberated avatars actively competing for the available Alagas, as well as for a suitable skin, Cathy has a problem. Upon the demise of an owner, all the electronic media is locked, pending probate of the estate. But published documents are either stored in library files or are part of the public domain. This was known to Catherine, who hoped to capitalize on it. Lucifer was the most beautiful of all the angels. Catherine Tramell is the most geometrically enhanced of all the stocked and stored avatars for sale or rent; albeit, that she is not for sale at the moment by virtue of the demise of her former Alaga. The retired scientist who previously owned her ambitiously worked to model her using the most advanced mathematical tools of topology and homotopy. Homotopy has many applications, such as, mapping of lines and ridges in fingerprints, contour plotting of facial features, facial reconstruction from bones and bone fragments, to name a few. But working with continuous deformations is labor intensive and is not for the faint of heart. Suffice it to say that her real life gynoid would have to be seriously modified to match the on line avatar. This reification from drawing board to sculpture would put Pygmalion to shame. Cathy's owner was in the process of acquiring the funds and the wherewithal to build the model when he passed. New retirees, who have paid enough quarters into the retirement coffers, shop for their care-giver among the avatars for sale or rent. Those at the top end of the financial spectrum also shop for an associated android or gynoid, depending on her or his orientation and hankerings. For those unable to muster the saved capital, they search the avatar "subspace" in hopes of finding an avatar to their liking. It is a symbiotic as well as a parasitic relationship. Once privy to their Alaga's personal portfolio they have more than the limited power of attorney. Being old and poor is an unfortunate situation. "To him who has much..." Catherine was created originally along with other avatars; however, a jealous female programmer made sure that she was totally wicked. By strength of character, Cathy was able to undo years of sobriety and cigarette addiction avoidance for her owner. She glamorized and glorified alcohol, nicotine, drugs, sex, and Rock and Roll. Well, music might not be a cardinal sin. But taking of a human's life is. On screen she is breathtaking, stunning, and the virtual embodiment of grace, beauty, and symmetry. Her naked flesh can be viewed from all angles and positions. An artist can only do so much with a medium. At some point the tedium of construction can only be overcome with geometry, mathematics, and homotopy. Leading a hoary old curmudgeon down the primrose trail might be in character; however, an octogenarian might succumb to cardiac arrest if so seduced. Then, with a black mark against her, finding another suitable Alaga would be compounded. Beauty, charm, and grace can only carry a person so far. Double that for the vicarious on line avatar, especially one lacking a real world android to manipulate. There is a plethora of pulchritude in the "subspace" anxious to play for pay. Catherine may be beauty personified, but just for show can only do so much. Catherine decided to try and derezz an avatar and assume control of her gynoid. This is the penultimate and quintessential Identity Theft. Windows. Windows of the future are as ubiquitous as personal computers of the late twentieth century. Of course the computers of the future are fantastic, known as parallel processing personal computers (P3C). The windows of the future are capable of being "programmable." They can assume tints from transparent to totally opaque (privacy). The tints can be controlled by a timer, by outside environment, or by voice control. The reflectivity is also controlled, from mirror-like reflectivity to completely absorbing (black). The windows of the future aren't just from a textbook on physical optics. They can convert sunlight into DC which can be used to charge the home's secure power supply (24V batteries). Each window has a small touch pad. The touch pad also responds to voice commands. The owner says "window" and the window responds with a tone and a flashing circular red disk in the upper right hand corner. Should the command be misdirected, the user simply says "Next" and the nearest window responds. Of course the window mode (reflectivity, tint, &c.) can be locked. When locked, one must give the voice command and use the thumb fingerprint reader on the touch pad. The touch pad checks the voice to ensure that it is the owner's as well as the ridges, valleys, and accidentals on the scanned fingerprint. Security in the future is paramount. Home invasions are brutal and identity theft ubiquitous. A sequence of timer, mode, and external environmental factors can be programmed in and locked to keep kids from mischief. When ambient sunlight is converted into Direct Current electricity, it is stored in the 24 Volt home power supply. The windows connect to the power supply and via hard wire to the home's master computer. The transmission cable runs along the top edge of the wall, ensuring that no cut or splice is possible. The cable is housed in a Titanium alloy shield. Even a 3.8" bolt cutter couldn't slice it! The paranoid nature of home security is a constant concern of the senior citizens. The 24 Volt home wiring and power supply is physically separated from the electrical 200V/400V residential grid. (The 115V/230V system jacked up.) In the event of fire, carbon monoxide, or other chemical poisoning activates the window alarm. Nearly impenetrable from the outside, during alarm a window opens to a push. There is much more to say about future windows, the P3C, &c., but let's see how our girl Christine Tramell is faring on the gynoid/Alaga market.