In transit, or as we as we call it an extraction, there is a moment of pause. It isn’t a perfect process and we have lost some. But I have been through it so many times I just relax and take a mental break. A break from the chaos … from the consistent fear. My transit vehicle is a 70s movie set flying saucer … funny enough. The place we just escaped reminded me of Carrie, and how we meet. The diner, the old phone booth, my rendered craft of transportation.

“If you were to star in the next Sci Fi dimensional experience what would your characters name be”, I typed into a instant cyber net program.

I often used this device to patrol for potential rebels. I always used the subject of SDE, or what we used to call movies, to get a feel for the entity behind the occurrence. If I was chatting with the system it would steer me away from re-creating  itself.  Humans can role play but machines seem to have a problem with it.

I got no answer and started to believe this was the system.  Before exiting the conversation I decided to play a little with it.  

“Ok … calling you Carrie”

The ICP still showed the presence of some entity on the other end. Then suddenly the status bar showed that it was putting together a response so I waited.

“You are yum!”, the text flew across the screen.

Interesting response no doubt. It appeared to be a machine because it did not make sense and since it was avoiding role play it made sense. But something was wrong.  It seemed to be giving me a name.   

“Sci Fi dimensional experience – hmmm don’t know characters well enough … “, more text followed.

Again did not seem to be a human response.  But there was some humor to it.

“Doesn’t matter … Carrie … if that is your real name”

I decided to play along.  Sometimes the machines were fun to play with. But I couldn’t play to long or give away the location of my connection to the CN. 

“follow the white rabbit ?”

Of course! This was a human, pretending to be a machine. I found another like me. There were others. I tried to keep my excitement at bay. 

” Ah nice. Here is my card …. my name is Libby”, I typed. 

“Can I ride in your spaceship?”

“So you know?”

“hehe going to the postoffice to talk to some aliens right now..”

Interestingly enough this validated to me that this was another human. First off there is no such thing as a “postoffice” in 2112.  Maybe 99 years ago this would of made sense, but not now.  And aliens … no such thing to machines who viewed all other conscious objects as potential threats to the system and were always flagged for removal.

“I need to show you something. Can you get to 47.473011,-115.925414?”

“Yes, give me 3 hours”

I used the usual device to arrive at my destination. My spaceship from a 1970s movie totally flew under the radar of the machines.  If the human imagination wanted these silly craft then so be it. So as far as a program was concerned it would just render it. This only would work for 20 minutes. Every 20 minutes it would run a inventory program that would notice that this render was not imagined at all but just showed up.   My craft would totally not make sense in this world. Carrie would see it and do one of two things. Call in the clean up bots or know for certain I was from the outside. If Carrie was a bot then I would simply abort.  Unlike using phone booths to summon the ship I could pop out of the system immediately. The ship was a render but my existance a consciousness. Once my consciousness saw coast clear then the rest would follow. This was part of the transit.

I arrived at 47.473011,-115.925414 and everything was cool. I went inside a diner. Her eyes were so beautiful. “Is she one of them?”, I thought to myself. “Can she be pulled out of the system?”

“Aliens?”, I smiled and looked into her eyes.

She giggled, “thought you would like that”

I knew instantly this was someone I would be with until the end.

“ I need to show you something”

“Okay .. I’m ready …”