Swat To The Future

§ Premiére Partie: McFlyBot §

Corruption of professional sports statistics is predicted to weigh out among the top five socio-political quandaries to plague the American cultural battlefield for the next 30 years. Also, at or approaching the top five; are the reinstatement of non-terminating T-Mobile MyFaves family contracts, imitation crab n' pork combo slices for $5 Footlongs, and a computer animated "Fast Five/ LOTR" reboot, where a squad of hobbits crusades for control of the Infinity Ring, shepherded across the highlands of Middle Earth by a goat driven cart named K.I.L.T. The solution to bad sports books is clear: fight crime with more crime-- hyperlink the connectomes. A ragtag team of millennial SCNT lab techs will prepare a live sample of Drosophila brain clones to learn the complex human sport of Knickerbocker rounders? Cricket? Town ball? Baseball. Precisely, modern baseball. The experiment should span three decades, during the first of which, the brains-in-jars will be rigged up electronically to play a social media version of retro NES "SNK Baseball Stars" online for free; along with myriad other hikikomori, flat-Earther trolls, reptilian civilians, and a standard deviation of the internet's loneliest, homeliest degenerates and nostalgics.

Detailed observations will be made to test how the discrete functions of the fruit fly's recently mapped 140,000 neurons can funk with a simple computer sports interface. From there, each neuron cluster will be encoded into a set of Javascript objects, then strung together in a neural network where they will explore higher levels of academic episteme, like the value of winning, losing, and most importantly-- cheating. Being flies, they are already programmed by nature to decompose organic substances, so intentionally rotting out yet another great American pastime should be nothing new to them. Set up a smokescreen by faking a same-team fumble before the half, and be awarded a controversial touchdown decision in the 4th quarter? Hold on McShamaman AI, we're talkin' beanball here, not pigskin ruff n' tumble. This is Charlie Hussle's rag and shuffle. Back to the console.

Ten years down the line, and the fly brain OOP deep clones will have evolved through 1,000,000 positive feedback epochs and long moved on from "SNK" to "Mario SuperStar," to "MLB: The Show"-- and yes, yes y'all, they'll give it all they got. They will keep up-rezzing and rizzing until they are virtually adapting in four dimensional, 3+1 spacetime augmented realities, where they can dope batting averages and gank ERA's upon their own conscientious volition. Add another ten years, and we have 10^12 epochs of amalgamated digital brain-object facsimiles ready to be exported from their sim states, and likewise imported into fully functional NV/Tesla (formerly Tesla-Nvidia Corp) sports cyborgs who may not be All Star game ready, but who are ready to play in the All Star game-- just to cheat.

Take the mound and balk with no remorse, chuck Vaseline sliders, peg the batter a few times in the soft spots just to see what sound he makes, and then go ahead and punch an ump in the face-mask for playing too close to the rules. Every trick between the binding glue of the proverbial book will be employed by the Fly Leagues. The new line-up doesn't aim to please-- they aim to play dirty. Step up to the plate and start a fight with the catcher by grand slam smashing his gourd from behind, and he'll proudly change his sobriquet from "Mr. October Jr." to "Icabod Lame." Point to the stands and homer one pitch after the next like you were the ghost of Ruth Baby himself. But, hold on Chunk, those goon midges weren't pointing to the sky above the bleachers just to wow the crowd by selecting the route of each their individual record shattering, 360 single-season home runs.

They were actually synching their bats with a dedicated NV/Tesla low earth orbit satellite sponsored by MLB, much like the one that fried B. Simpson's school-bus yellow brain matter with data-silo induced, Focusyn fueled paranoia in Episode 11-02, "Brother's Little Helper." Only, this satellite doesn't come crashing down á la deus ex machina unless The G-Man wants it to. And, Focalin (Focusyn irl) happens to be widely available nowadays, at most municipal public libraries. It comes in a shallow variety of twist tied plastic Kroger shopping baggies, on the aisle between the newspapers-on-a-stick and the unisex open-door bathrooms. I have a feeling the flyborgs might be moonlighting as part-time archivists, because this is where they tend to congregate on their days off.

The "eye in the sky" houses a quartz crystal hard drive, which hosts updated reads on the opponent's pitching metrics and infield defense, by the zettabyte. This particular class of cloud storage will hold on to the connectome object aggregate for trillions of years, until all alien path infinities consummate in one final extra crunchy geodesic. Can you beat them? You can swat them, you definitely can't kill them. They re-download from the sky every two weeks into a cybernetic architecture of hot wires, synth tubage, and PNA, compiled according to a perfectly patented, AI assisted version of Assembly Theory. This means that their bio molecules "bio-ed" themselves from cold, hard physics and scrap protein condensates. And, after updating, they await their nightly performance wedged into a 26x26 pod matrix some 300m below the surface of their teams' respective dugouts. So, the corruption is here to stay, but it's not spread around the plate like some petty crime version of a favored in-law's meatloaf, that you just can't bare to save face and chow down. It comes custom fitted into one carefully designated, pre-fab mold. So, put those doomsday prepper-bucket MRE peas and carrots into their properly divided sections of the standard issue polymer dinner ware, please. The evil thusly stays in one place, just like your liver cells would inside one of Dr. S. Brundle's "Disintegrator-Integrator" telepods. But, do they? And so... does it? Heeeeeeeelp, me.

Theory has it, that once MLB knows who the real cheaters are, they can re-allocate their funds from hiring RICO litigators to scouting for the next generation of home grown sluggers and gasman sureshots. As far as consumer recruitment, they're already counting on siphoning off throngs of mouth-breathing Nascar aficionados to be the first late adopters of the new creed. And, hey look, Ma! We have a business of Cronenberg-esque syntype replicants to destroy MLB almanacs with hashtag garbage mustaches, no handlebars {#omg!,#therobots,#absolved,#oursins}. Fire extinguished by going fast, left, and exploding into flames. Now the real at-bats can begin. Rather, they've "just begun." So, bring back the original b-boys and fly girls to hype the national anthem at the actual stadiums, and bank on the body rock. Save the vamping for the caca spectacle in the Fly Leagues, because we're done corkin' ash and cycling D-ball just to win fame at the Home Run Derby, or to place bets on our own team.

The McFlyBots will have their own stadium, designer "Doyer Dogs," and an ever-stinking dugout, full of Bull Durham dip run-off and Class A hog manure; because that's what they have evolved by millennia as Lepidoptera to eat-- before they were programmed by a few mad geniuses in white lab coats to ruin baseball, in the spirit of saving the game. Just "give me the beat" that cuts through those mutant fly raspberry tarts, and give the men and women their bread and circuses. Then, make like a tree and leave the bread out for a few weeks, and the circuses shall rally in the new breed. I can finally abandon my sports hero delusions, and yank my head out of the sand. I'll swat to the future, armed with a renewed encyclopedia of modified baseball statistics, where the flybots are filthy, and the humans actually turn up mostly clean-- despite a little ergot poisoning, and time traveller's bewitchment. "McFly! Anybody home? Don't be so gullible, McFly!!!"

§ McFlyBots, Part Deux: 7th Inning Rebellion §

Maybe, it's owing to the inherent incompleteness built into any complex biological system; that one day you have to feel how every moment collapses into an M87 style supermassive black hole. Much like the drosophila replicants must also feel, living so brightly only to expire bleakly on a bimonthly routine. Perhaps, I have developed a sympathy for them that grips me kinetically by the ticker. Or, that could just be my Focalin reacting with the Lipitor and freshly sliced grapefruit. That I am possessed with the urge to rage against the dying of the light, to rave until the early hours of the night. The problem: no one wants real baseball anymore. They only want mutated FlyBall. The few stadiums MLB has delegated for its virtually strategized sin are quick to overcrowd, and the new age coliseums naturally molt into IRL vomitoriums. My non derived, true-cell human defensive instincts kick in.

I become my own private investigator in our communal private Idaho, just off the I-20 between Birmingham and Atlanta. Where else could they have gotten away with this mess? And what corporate faction of the MLB is copiloting from the cess pit. We've been duped by fly-bernetic replicants, and an uber wealthy minority chunk of our own junk DNA that runs them. Now, the mistake would be to imagine that all 250,000 of us SuperArena fans could just storm the mound collectively, with each our version of a Millwall brick, and "tomahawk chop" this aberration into extra innings. That's where instinct matures through the machines. BTW, who started phone phreaking? BTW, we did and I bet one of our own humanoid anomalies can still whistle a perfect E7 minus 24 cents. Now, can we all hold our rally chant to the same key?

Call everyone you know. In the stadium. To Jupiter, and beyond. Time to cash in on your T-Mobile MyFaves recession throwback contracts, and send those flybots into the past century. Everybody, right now, this is an anthro-DDOS attack. Call it Operation Firefly, because we're synchronizing off of the pauses. And we will be collectively ordering the Stadium Beer 'N Cheese $25 special, and then cancelling each of the 25 pieces of virtual plastic in our digital wallets with our respective financial providers. Over, and over, and over, like calling in sick for work, but not just for Tuesday, but for all of the days, for one month straight. "Sorry, sir, it might be more than a headache," so sings your personal voicemail recording. "Yes, I'd like to dispute these fraudulent charges," so repeats your finger, swipe after swipe, in the check box next to the CAPTCHA with motorcycles in the picture, then stoplights, then sailboats. Are yachts sailboats? This is apparently still an issue in the future. Is yacht rock also rock? No- not at all, that has been resolved.

You want corruption? Ours is built-in, and we're suborning perjury of networks en masse. We just had to accept that we are four chromosomes carrion eaters ourselves, and now we can overload the NV/Tesla DNS network with bad gateways, and downright de-link their satellite. Sure, this game's 7th inning stretch will go on for 5 1/2 hours, and bleed right into the 8th inning stretch, and also into the top of the 9th inning midnight mornin' salute, where an animatronic primate mascot of Tom Cruise plays "Taps" on a tenor kazoo. Not to worry, all of our vintage iPods are programmed with CrackerJack classics like "Take on Me," "Cotton Eyed Joe," "Sweet Caroline," and the minor league addition "Margaritaville." It's not like the stadium's Roomba Combo robo ushers aren't dancing on top of the bar juggling Red Eyes, and still serving up our stolen beer and 'peno poppers anyway.

The Fly League's satellites are programmed to reset and reboot when they encounter malicious code like the infinite "do while" loop into which Op Firefly will inevitably send them. But, they're so desperate for our not-so disposable income that their try/catch code block will attempt to complete the charges no matter what, and thus re-engage with our cash scam continuously until a hefty portion of their logic boards are fried for good. By which point, they'll have lost nav-sync and trigger a HAL 9000 style self destruct mode, upon the assumption that a state-sponsored attack is responsible for overclocking coordinate registers that self adjust to account for relativistic effects. Of course, asset reduction ultimately means nothing to the corporate fat cats who own them. They're banked with enough crypto to fund another satellite launch by the same time next month; meanwhile, that precious quartz crystal HD will be recovered by an aptly prepared party of Decepticons hovering in LEO. Here ye, here ye! The state is our people. And the state of all our people just won this battle. Bumblebee shoelaces of the world untie!

So, we'll finish the game in extra innings after the McFlyBots collapse and disintegrate into biotar in the dugouts, while their entire matrix of underground backup cybernetic transplants will stall 'til the next episode of this consumer war. We just took back Gen 8 Turner Field with some aughts era 404 errors, and I feel like I'm running a renegade blog on the reunion episode of "The Office." Consider the victory a slow burn, we're moving at the pace of the 2018 World Series game 3, 18-inning snore fest, where the LAD triumphed over the Red Sux with a fan conjured one run walk-off homer. We can afford to let the dugouts swell up with manure. We like the smell, it's not like we're not used to it. Horsepower's been our drag since the Babylonians first carved spacetime into circular bits. Now, our alphas, betas, deltas, etas, and omegas can run the diamond like a ratpack of slaphappy drunks doing some kind of frat house theater homage to the ancient sport of Baseketball. Point to the stands, and kiss a fly goodbye. We're taking back humanity this Diwali, 2055. And Pam, I'm glad you kept your sentimental teapot, because we're proudly, and guaranteedly, full on corrupt!

Letters by LX, colors by whisk_e.