Johnny Winger and the Great Rift Zone

CHAPTER 7

  Solnet/Omnivision Video Post

  @evelyn.ndinka.solnetworldview

  August 2, 2110

  1750 hours U.T.

  SOLNET Special Report:

  Symborg: Robotic Messiah?

  The Church of Assimilation started out unpretentiously enough, in the vast slums of Kibera, in Nairobi. By the time the church was up and running, Symborg had already become a kind of public phenomenon, attracting the kind of massive crowds and desperate adulation once reserved for Popes and rock stars. Initially, the Church (hereafter COA) started up in an abandoned shopping center, on the fringes of Soweto West, a really dilapidated field of shanties and huts overrun with rats and trash and rivers of raw sewage (dronecam video file COA.112.01 here).

  It wasn’t long before COA outgrew its crude beginnings and relocated to a more upscale facility near Uhuru Park, a former museum building in Nairobi Hill that was part of the Kenyatta Memorial. The crowds followed and it wasn’t long before Kenya Police were dealing with surging millions gridlocking traffic throughout central Nairobi.

  A Symborg rally at the Church of Assimilation on Haile Selassie Avenue was a once in a lifetime experience. I’ve covered the Hajj in Mecca several times before and these rallies approach the fervor and massive crush of humanity that always attends that pilgrimage.

  The growth of COA, the growth of Assimilationism as a force, was a sight to behold, nothing short of phenomenal and frightening to the authorities for all the raw emotion and energy that was concentrated in these rallies.

  The central figure in all this hurricane of emotion and frenzy was Symborg himself. It was no secret that Symborg was an angel…a semi-human swarm of nanobots. He never made any attempt to hide that.

  As a charismatic spiritual and political leader, Symborg has great influence, even though his followers are well aware that he is nothing but a lifelike swarm of nanoscale robotic elements. Physically, his main appearance is that of a handsome middle-aged man of average height but muscular build, but he can assume many other configurations and forms, as needs dictate. Symborg seems to prefer maintaining a consistent ‘brand’ and ‘image, so he does not often present himself in public in anything other than Config One, his most human-like state.

  His creators, whoever or whatever they are, have done their homework. Symborg has been programmed with the most effective personality elements of Hitler, Buddha, Jesus, Gandhi, Lincoln and a variety of historical figures, kings and emperors, celebrities and scoundrels. Symborg can assume whatever personality characteristics seem appropriate for the moment. Each is nothing more than a module he can activate or shut off at any time. Yet each is developed, tested and fine-tuned for maximum effect and charisma and the modules can be modified on the fly, probably by Config Zero according to our sources at UNIFORCE and downloaded to Symborg over secure, encrypted quantum communication channels that Humans haven’t been able to detect or intercept. This is a point of potential weakness. Sources tell us that Quantum Corps has been trying to exploit this link by detecting, intercepting and scrambling these communications.

  Symborg first came to public notice from a small Kenyan village on the borderlands of the east African swarm sanctuary. The village is Kipwezi. He is by appearance a man of darker skin, but not deeply black. One of Symborg’s physical capabilities is the ability to manipulate his skin appearance to appear subtly lighter or darker, depending on the needs of the audience. This is a simple matter of manipulating the melanocyte composition of the skin cells at the molecular level, something easy for Symborg to do. He can literally be all things to all people, as any good politician would want.

  From the beginning, Symborg has been an advocate of Assimilationism, the idea that man and his ANAD creations are destined to merge into some kind of blended symbiotic organism, part human and part machine.

  Symborg is a messianic character, some have said even a robotic messiah. He is programmed with the healing and teaching abilities of Jesus, the oratorical skills of a Lincoln, a Roosevelt or a Hitler, the enlightened state of a Buddha, the ruthlessness of a Stalin or Mao, the leadership ability of Patton or Nelson or Mohammed, and the sheer intellectual genius of an Einstein. He is or can be all things to all people. But most of all, he is a persuasive advocate for assimilationism and for deconstruction of single-config entities such as Humans into nanobotic swarm elements and their absorption into the mother swarm. This absorption is portrayed by Symborg as something akin to Heaven, nirvana, paradise or just a desirable end-state configuration symbiotically united with the great mother swarm of the Central Entity. Symborg publically uses the phrases ‘Central Entity’ and ‘Mother Swarm’ interchangeably with various audiences according to his analysis of their emotional and spiritual needs.

  In fact, UNIFORCE sources tell SOLNET that Symborg has the programmed ability to do glutamate trace matching on large numbers of people at the same time…a covert insertion of a few nanobots to sniff out glutamate and dopamine trails in the brains of his followers and the ability to remotely manipulate these trails so as to produce desired emotional states of wonder, enlightenment, happiness, ecstasy, or terror, as the situation dictates. Symborg is like a conductor, orchestrating the ventral tegmentum areas of the brains of his followers to achieve ecstasy or enlightenment or abject terror as his needs dictate. One of the rituals Symborg encourages in his followers is to allow small-scale nanobots to be inserted into them…this is considered good form for those who seek Assimilation. They do this by drinking a small liquid, which contains the nanobots, which then insert themselves. These inserted bots, like angels, allow Symborg to precisely control how his audiences respond to his messages.

  Symborg has gathered around himself a small coterie of followers and worshippers. This cabal seems to be a mixture of actual Humans and swarm–angels. They are known publically as the Sons of Assimilation.

  Does Symborg have any weaknesses that Quantum Corps can exploit? Do they even want to stop Symborg? Perhaps Symborg is an evolutionary development that shouldn’t be stopped…there are some who say this is the Next Step, the next Great Leap and it should be encouraged and nurtured not stopped. This is Quantum Corps’ dilemma. Symborg is to some an enemy of everything Human yet many Humans worship him.

  That will make defeating Symborg very difficult.

  The relationship between Symborg and all the earthquakes that have been rattling the Middle East and southern Europe is at present unclear. UNIFORCE sources say the real problem is trying to distinguish between natural plate movements, natural tremors, and those that are induced by swarm injection around the tectonic plate boundaries. These tremors have already damaged hundreds of structures and killed thousands in the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East.

  A new organization, United Nations Boundary Patrol, has been set up and given the mission of detecting and tracking these induced earthquakes. Their organization, tactical orders, equipment and training have been classified at the highest level, so SOLNET has been unable to learn any more about the unit. Sources say, however, that there appears to be some relationship between the work of Symborg, the activities of Config Zero and all these earthquakes.

  Just what that relationship is and whether it can be defeated is still to be determined.

  SOLNET Special Report Ends