Capulet Hyperdrive

Capulet Hyperdrive

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Every love story just remixes an older version of the same. The players change - and the scene - but every basic existential possibility has been outlined; every possible move has been prescribed and codified by the mechanism of our basest instincts. The parameters have been disclosed time and again. Eventually someone would have had to take up the final task of mapping it computationally. So what if I didn’t have the idea to do it first. Sort of the point right there if you ask me. Cap-Sheen Industries tasked me with the job… Don’t know why or what for; seems to me like you could have the proverbial monkeys bashing keyboards for forever and with the program I wrote narrowing the scope, those monkeys might just produce ‘Shakespeare’ exponentially faster given that the monkey can write half a kajillion words per second. Not to sell myself short; no code heretofore has ever captured the kind of nuance I have captured. Jus’ don’t know what they need it for.

Sorry Arelice, I know you’ve been hung up on what they want your code for, I got distracted by these holo-reports running through the net today… Besides, you know that all of this speculation gets you nowhere. You know I have an acute awareness of the kind of non-disclosure agreement you signed - those 10-94’s mean business. I know for a fact that I shouldn’t even know this much. Just because we fuck occasionally doesn’t make me any less your lawyer.

Pfft. Those suits couldn’t do shit without me Sammy.

I go by Sam and you know it… Fair though… All I’m sayin’ is what happens when you’ve finished the code and they don’t need you any longer?

Well that’s just the brilliance of how I wrote it Sammy. See, anything that holds implicit value can never be finished. Every end is a new beginning so to speak. But - and here’s where it gets tricky - I have encoded this very perpetuity within the evolving cyber-matrix of my program stored right here on this very quantum hard drive.

Ever the artist Arelice. How fitting that you should have put the program in a heart shaped locket like that… However… As much as it pains me to say this and as unfortunate that it is that I have to do so with this revolver here: your use has come to an end.

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So, I assume you’re still stringing along that plaything, eh, Sam? No closer to the critical component that we need to finish this job than before? Wasting my time. Our time. What’s got you all fucked up now?

…It’s over, Happiness. I have the component. I’m uploading the program to your network now.

And the programmer? Did you…

Yes.

So, we get the five-trillion creds and can quit this racket for good at last!

Yes.

Oh, come on. You knew from the start that the programmer was just a mark. What? Did you fall in love or something incredibly stupid like that?

Happiness, its just…

Shut up. I don’t care. You knew what we’re getting into now ya gotta deal. Just… don’t come directly back here. I picked it up on the police scanner. That revolver of yours… Told ya to go with something that wouldn’t wake the dead. The fuzz is the least of your concerns though. Cap-Sheen Industries will know. They’ve probably got their new-tech bloodhounds on your scent already.

I’ll just pop a persona destabilizer now like we planned all along. They’ll never be looking for not me and this kinda new-tech pharmaceutical is practically undetectable. I’m on my way. We’ve been separated too long. I can’t bear it.

You’ve tossed back more than just the destabilizer sounds to me…

Well - you would too if you just shot your lover who, incidentally, stored their masterpiece we designed to steal on a heart shaped locket hard drive with the both of our pictures in it!

I’m your lover first and don’t forget it! How close are you? I’m analyzing the data now.

Close.

Something strange here… The locket you mentioned… the structure is in the code itself and it… shifts… Never mind though; the creds just came through. I’m forwarding the component to Axious and Lo so they can complete whatever it was they needed this shitty program for. Over and out.

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Shit. Happiness isn’t answering and here I go talking to myself again. Sam. You gotta pull it together. Of course you love Happiness. Of course you never intend to get so in bed with Arelice both literally and figuratively. It just happened. Now I just got to get my head clear… maybe I shouldn’t have taken those new-tech pharmaceuticals with the normal cocktail…. Fuck. Happiness will know how to fix all of this. Just through this door…

I thought I told you not to come directly back here Sam! And now you have to see all this and I can’t just cut you loose anymore like I originally planned. I guess I have a certain effect on people. Like this poor dupe you just witnessed me trial run the new software on; clinging desperately to me as my network erased mind, memory, and soul in the process of copying and storing the data that constituted the very being of the individual into my backup hard drives. As it turns out, the key to encrypting the mind has everything to do with our most basic principles as organic beings; to be brief, love.

But… you…

Of course you thought I loved you. All of my tools do. The thing about a feat of programming this large… you can’t just have one of the pieces, you gotta have em’ all. Just think of it. A ‘Sam’ for every programer on the Cap-Sheen Industries team. Happiness isn’t even my name; just a call sign. Why do you think you never met Lo and Axious? I am Lo and the only person I can truly call my equal is Axious. But you don’t need to know anymore do you.

I’ll… shoot… you… I swear to God. I just…

Shhh. It will all be over soon.

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I never get tired of staring into your eyes Lo, but I suppose I will eventually. Thats the problem with love; it’s such a temporary ephemeral thing. The only thing that seems to seal it away for all time, as Shakespeare taught us, has to do with the untimely end of the lovers. Now, with the heart locket program complete we can terminate the steady march of time that would see all love fade and capture it frozen forever in the form of encrypted data. Who cares if it leaves the host an empty husk. They will relive the moment they sacrificed everything for love a billion times a second eternally.

Ah, but Axious, I interpreted our plan a little differently I must admit. You see, I always held the tragic element of love in highest regard. You cannot simply freeze the moment of greatest passion without the accompanying negativity that heightened the sensibility. The tragedy of the circumstance comes part and parcel. When Shakespeare killed off Romeo and Juliet he merely killed the embodiment of love in order to raise its truth to a new level. The only way to supersede a Romeo and Juliet would involve the task of killing love itself in this world and I think we have the means to do it.

Ah, my dear, it would appear that our ends do not agree. No mater. The solution seems obvious to me in order that we may both have our way.

Together then?

Together.