One of the most important human beings who ever lived was someone who was almost completely unknown during his own time. His name was Stanley Opolis and he was a professor of several interesting subjects simultaneously. He could do this because he possessed a Ph.D. in many useful things. And he was, of course, a completely self-taught man.
Dr. Opolis was merely a human. But he was so rigid and robotic in his thinking and mental habits -- traits that many found annoying but were the keys to his success and the reason for his massive productivity -- that many who met him thought that he might not be any sort of human at all. That perhaps he was a machine. And they had plenty of reasons why they thought that. This incredible inflexibility made him effectively invisible to those who were blind in what the Doctor liked to call, "the mind's eye." They had trouble seeing him because they didn't understand him. They didn't understand him because he thought logically and spoke logically too. He spoke with an eerie precision and a lilting cadence as if he were singing a song about facts and numbers and laws of physics rather than lecturing on it. He did not dress well, and often forgot to wash his body, but still, there was something about him, a confidence, and a certain magic in his eyes that seemed to attract the women and they found him most charming when he least expected them to or even desired it at all if he were especially focused on a particular subject.
To understand the man one had to understand that Dr. Opolis extremely liked walking and talking and thinking. And so he often walked and talked and lived in his thoughts. He did these things more frequently and more differently than other people did. Here were some examples of this:
He liked walking backwards on camera, recording it. So he could play it back later in reverse to get a different perspective on how to walk forwards.
He talked to trees often but they never answered back. And this fact didn't matter to him because it was intended to be a one-way conversation, the effect was to exercise his talking on listeners whose patience and understanding were perfect. And the trees, being green, fit the bill quite nicely.
He was a hobbyist scholar. This meant that he consumed mass quantities of information of varying usefulness, and sifted through it and tried to integrate it all into some sort of unified Map of All Things inside his own mind. Understandably, this messed up his hair. And caused him to sometimes forget how to shower and shave.
Often when he was out walking or talking or thinking people would interrupt him and ask him what all the fancy degrees were for but he would never tell them, he would just look at them funny and seem to start thinking about something or another in a distracted manner until they stopped and left him alone.
"Trivial living is a sin," he liked to say to himself often, especially when nobody else was around -- which was most of the time.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Sunday, June 3, 2007
Shattered Stars Intro
A long time ago in a galaxy pretty far away, there was an evil galactic empire. It was not only an evil empire, it covered most of it's galaxy, and so it was galactic too. Therefore, it was an evil galactic empire. But despite this, some people rebelled against it. They organized themselves into various factions, each with their own goals and their own axes to grind. But for all of them what they had in common was the desire to tear free from the emperor's control and form their own independent states. Early on, they seemed to succeed, because they broke free and created a rogue's gallery of militant nations. What they could not have known was that they would start a seemingly forever civil war, one fought across the depths of space and in the dying light of shattered stars.
Tales of the Shattered Stars
Protomagellan Publishing House
Archterosphynx, Gamma Quadrant
[this short piece is from the preface text to a computer strategy game named Shattered Stars. More info about which can be found on the Groglogic Diary blog.]
Tales of the Shattered Stars
Protomagellan Publishing House
Archterosphynx, Gamma Quadrant
[this short piece is from the preface text to a computer strategy game named Shattered Stars. More info about which can be found on the Groglogic Diary blog.]
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Attack on Hopperion
Richard pressed a button on the console and an audio transmission began to play:
"Five standard hours ago a group of Reaper-class battlecruisers emerged out of hyperspace near Hopperion Prime. Outermost defense pickets relayed warnings before their destruction, and so the Grand Elder Council had already begun mobilizing the Humongous Warrior Elite when the first series of hostile orbital insertions were detected all over their passive skywatch screens.
"At least five divisions of Slaven urmatazzi made it down through the flak to the planet's surface. They are overstrength units, most likely high on metameth and synthmind. Highly mobile, riding APC and custom half-wing suits, accompanied by clusters of Slaven ripperdrones. Initial reports coming in suggest that they have split up their invasion forces to make themselves harder to pin down.
"Terror has spread through the countryside. Large numbers of unarmed non-com's have surrendered according to intergalactic custom, the Slaven would accept, and then the civilians would be killed systematically and fed to the ripperdrones."
The sounds of people freaking out in the speaker's audience.
"So... the Elders have dispatched couriers to all the major cities and bases of their allies, which means to just about every sector capital and starport in that part of the galactic arm. We ourselves are only five hours away by warp drive and will probably be the first to respond. A force will leave immediately, within the hour, taking the best ships we can spare."
The recording ending with a crackle. Richard turned to address his friends. "That was Force Admiral Nedding of the Wonderian Expeditionary Force, based out of their fortress at New Loam."
Devon nodded. Janet was pale and didn't say anything.
"Relativistically-speaking..." continued Richard, "with all other things being equal, we should get there about ten hours after Nedding's group."
"Five standard hours ago a group of Reaper-class battlecruisers emerged out of hyperspace near Hopperion Prime. Outermost defense pickets relayed warnings before their destruction, and so the Grand Elder Council had already begun mobilizing the Humongous Warrior Elite when the first series of hostile orbital insertions were detected all over their passive skywatch screens.
"At least five divisions of Slaven urmatazzi made it down through the flak to the planet's surface. They are overstrength units, most likely high on metameth and synthmind. Highly mobile, riding APC and custom half-wing suits, accompanied by clusters of Slaven ripperdrones. Initial reports coming in suggest that they have split up their invasion forces to make themselves harder to pin down.
"Terror has spread through the countryside. Large numbers of unarmed non-com's have surrendered according to intergalactic custom, the Slaven would accept, and then the civilians would be killed systematically and fed to the ripperdrones."
The sounds of people freaking out in the speaker's audience.
"So... the Elders have dispatched couriers to all the major cities and bases of their allies, which means to just about every sector capital and starport in that part of the galactic arm. We ourselves are only five hours away by warp drive and will probably be the first to respond. A force will leave immediately, within the hour, taking the best ships we can spare."
The recording ending with a crackle. Richard turned to address his friends. "That was Force Admiral Nedding of the Wonderian Expeditionary Force, based out of their fortress at New Loam."
Devon nodded. Janet was pale and didn't say anything.
"Relativistically-speaking..." continued Richard, "with all other things being equal, we should get there about ten hours after Nedding's group."
The Suggestions System
Three guys were sitting at a table having a late afternoon breakfast in the middle of the main clearing in the intergalactically famous Phrase Gardens of the eccentric, elliptical and quite artificial planetoid Phonohomio Prime. Their names were Richard, Devon and Mr. Alfred Andromedae and all but two of the three of them were Neomen -- and of the two that weren't it could most definitely be said of one of these two that he was once a Neoman too.
Mr. Andromedae was the official representative that the Phonohomonymians sent to meet with Richard that afternoon.
They apparently were very fond of having carbonated soda beverages for breakfast because the entire surface of the eccentric elliptical table before them was covered with cups and glasses and bowls full of various colors and flavors of caffeinated carbonated soda beverage liquids.
They were having a very animated conversation about something that had almost absolutely nothing to do with animation, but probably did have a lot to do with all the carbonated caffeine that they were taking in.
A musical boombox on the ground beneath the table played bebop in the background as they spoke.
They spoke about what they had all came there to speak about, and they really stuck to the topic, and so they were very very productive and they accomplished a great deal in the conversation information-wise ... for about five minutes before Richard succeeded in veering them into much more interesting topics involving Neomen and something called the Suggestions System and even a couple of other random tangents involving Dr. Bumwuggle, the GUST, and a small school of pirannha fish that happened to swim by their table at one point later on in his monologue that was cleverly disguised as a dialogue and occasional poly-logue by his forebrain as it hopped along from moment to moment -- all fueled by caffeine from his Diet Caffeine soda beverage, which was clasped tightly in his cold right hand as he shivered and twitched from hypercaffeination and tried very hard to not drool all over himself in the company of strangers like Mr. Andromedae and Devon Anwa.
Devon, for his part, made a quiet snorting sound and rested his head upon his hands, giving his friend Richard an annoyed look.
Mr. Andromedae had, however, just fallen out of a tree yesterday, and, so, of course, as would be expected, he still remembered in vivid detail what being in the tree was like, and, thus, kept asking Richard more and more questions.
"So it's illegal?" Mr. Andromedae asked either or both of them together.
"Mmmm... No," answered Devon, shaking his head.
"But it's wrong, right?" Mr. Andromedae asked again.
"Nope," said Devon again, quickly jumping in. "Well, ahh, maybe yes. Okay. Sure. You could use the word wrong to describe it, I guess," Devon replied.
"Uh, well, then I don't get it."
Devon started to explain. "It's because it's--"
"It's not really a Law, per se," interrupted Richard, "but, rather, more of a ... suggestion."
Richard stopped and grinned.
"Where I and Devon come from there are no Laws -- they've all been replaced with suggestions! A simple system of basic ethical suggestions called the Suggestions System," he explained.
"But, how the---" Mr. Andromedae started to ask, before being cut off by Richard.
"How the heck could this possibly be, is probably what you are wondering aloud, I'd imagine? Well, you see, this is how it all came about to be, in the land that Devon and I and others like us like to call home regardless of where we hapen to physically be any given day of the week." He stopped for a moment and smiled wide. "Originally, everybody just grunted -- way back when, in a time and place that existed, perhaps, a small fraction of an eon ago."
Silence.
"They grunted suggestions?" asked Mr. Andromedae.
"No, I think they just grunted," Richard replied.
"Oh."
"We haven't gotten to the suggestions yet. We're gonna start first with the grunting. So have patience and pay attention, please."
"Okay, sure."
"So... The grunting. People were good at it. They were each very good at all the grunting that they all did originally. They did it well and very efficiently. So their conversations were incredibly clear and incredibly concise -- which was an incredibly good thing and so everybody was incredibly happy."
Mr. Andromedae nodded, indicating that he understood.
Richard continued.
"But sadly... slowly... they kinda ever so slightly stopped knowing how to speak the language of grunting. And so they started to rely more and more instead on this other thing. This other thing that was a much newer and untested thing that was called talking."
Richard continued. "Then one day the grunting stopped. It stopped completely."
Shock.
Surprise.
Dismay.
Shock, surprise, dismay... and a predominately genetically Norwegian heritage. All of these uncontrollable feelings -- including especially the Norwegian heritage -- tried simultaneously to vie for control of Alfred's face at that moment. But it was his Norwegian heritage that won.
So Richard kept right on with his story, oblivious to everything but his audience's predominately Norwegian heritage.
"And from that point on all their conversations were held only in the language of talking."
"A lot. I mean, there was a lot of talking and they were very enthusiastic about this talking even if it wasn't exactly second nature like the original grunting was. They had had the grunting down pat. It was natural instinct."
"But with this talking thing, it wasn't as good. There was an inherent problem. And conflicts inevitably ensued."
He paused to take a breath.
"The conflicts arose because many of these things called words that they had built their talking with were being used so inaccurately and out-of-sync with what people really wanted to say -- partly because no one cared to spend the time to learn which words did what and partly because many of these words could each mean different things, based on this other awful thing they called the context of things, and since the context of things was so fond of overlapping with lots of other weird ethereal things like the speaker's emotional state or religion or profession -- that, well, this thing called context that they developed soon turned into what was in effect a big red KICK ME sign placed on these otherwise noble inventions called words."
Richard took a moment to take a sip from his cup of Diet Caffeine-brand carbonated beverage drink. Gave it a few moments to take hold, then continued where he left off.
"And another complicating factor, to be perfectly honest, was that almost everybody was hopelessly stupid and didn't know it. But since this is such a unyversally-present complicating factor to anything present in the Unyverse, it should perhaps always be taken into account."
At this point, he stopped temporarily to go get a refill of soda from the soda refill beverage dispenser near their table. Got it, came back, and sat down again with his friends in the garden.
"So, basically, conflicts arose and these conflicts led to fighting. There were violent ninja kicks and nasty slapping, and occasionally even projectile sneezing and biting improvisational satire.
"So they made Law. It cut down on the kicking and slapping and satire, and then even a lot more things, like humor and creativity and intelligence and personal responsibility and individual judgment.
"But no matter -- there was less slapping and satire, and that was the important thing. Years and years went by, and deep down perhaps deep down inside the DNA of each of these previously human beings there slowly grew the realization that perhaps things would be better if Law was gotten rid of in some way so that they could just let people Truly Be.
"So they got rid of all Laws, and only functionally superseded some of them in their new, friendlier paradigm with things they came to call the Suggestions System.
"And this new system of fundamental ethical suggestions -- it was really not much more than a small codified collection of best practice moral-genetic observations -- worked pretty good, it mostly worked completely better than the old system, except in certain cases where it worked much much worse. And they realized that the reason why this new system broke down in these certain specific situations was because the people involved in these imperfect situations -- whatever else might be said about them -- were just plain hopelessly stupid or evil."
"Of course!" contributed Mr. Andromedae.
Richard glared at him.
Mr. Andromedae decided to stop contributing.
"If they could just get rid of all the hopelessly stupid or evil people," continued Richard, "the Suggestions System would work perfectly, and answer once and for all the question of whether it was ever possible to design a method of mass governance that was better than the classic mix of capitalism, socialism and pseudo-representative democracy. Maybe even something that would be present in Paradise.
"So they set about to make a list of all the people and people types or professions that were noted for being evil, or stupid, or some annoying mixture of evil and stupid, and they would take that list and go around finding all the people on that list, and simply exile them from their civilization. Only problem was, was that these people, in exile, would turn out to just go and mess up other people's civilizations, and making these neighboring civilizations quite cranky with them.
"Either that, or sometimes the exiles would sneak back in, and take right back up where they left off mucking up things again. So simply booting them out merely delayed things, or shuffled about the ickiness. A better solution was needed.
Richard grinned at them all of a sudden.
"And that solution came when Dr. Bander Bumwuggle developed a formal Grand Unified Sporkishness Theory, replete with a wonderfully solid and widely-accepted proof, and with lots of neat diagrams and values out to the kinds of decimal places that pocket calculators can only dream about."
"Proof?!?! What proof, Richard?" asked Devon.
"Thus..." Richard continued, ignoring him. "The invention of the GUST perfectly complemented the Suggestions System because it fixed what was otherwise the only thing wrong with it. Which was the existance of all the stupid and evil people."
Devon sighed. He appeared to be unimpressed. As if he had heard it all before.
Mr. Andromedae just stood there, slack-jawed but not slack-minded, quietly attempting to absorb all that he had just heard from the man with a bizarre last name whom he had met only a few hours before.
"You know, Richard, you really ought to write that down one day," said Devon. "It'd make for a pretty good story, especially the part about Bumwuggle."
They grew silent. They were apparently waiting for something.
A school of mutated, liquid-paisley-colored fish swam by in the Phonohomonymic Stream of Consciousness that happened to be meandering by their breakfast table in the Phrase Garden that day.
Richard shrugged. "Yeah, maybe." He looked at the fish. He hoped they weren't pirannha. Phonohomonymic Pirannha were notoriously carnivorous predators and, additionally, they smelled really bad.
He looked at the stream. He hoped it wouldn't get him wet. He didn't like getting wet. Unless he was in the shower or a swimming pool.
He looked at his wristcom, then quickly stood up, gave a short bow to his companions and then hurried off to the exit, saying, "We have to leave by six past six p.m."
Mr. Andromedae waved at his retreating figure. "Goodbye, Mr. Amadeus!" he yelled out after him.
Devon grunted and picked up the pulse rifle that had been sitting on the ground beneath the table by the boombox the whole time. He checked it for charge and mumbled under his breath, frowning, "Oh, joy. Back to the war again."
Mr. Andromedae appeared startled by something Devon had just said.
"What war?" he asked him.
Devon just shrugged and sighed. "Ask Richard." Then he started polishing his weapon, slowly and methodically, until it shined. "I'm sure he'd just love to tell you about it."
Mr. Andromedae was the official representative that the Phonohomonymians sent to meet with Richard that afternoon.
They apparently were very fond of having carbonated soda beverages for breakfast because the entire surface of the eccentric elliptical table before them was covered with cups and glasses and bowls full of various colors and flavors of caffeinated carbonated soda beverage liquids.
They were having a very animated conversation about something that had almost absolutely nothing to do with animation, but probably did have a lot to do with all the carbonated caffeine that they were taking in.
A musical boombox on the ground beneath the table played bebop in the background as they spoke.
They spoke about what they had all came there to speak about, and they really stuck to the topic, and so they were very very productive and they accomplished a great deal in the conversation information-wise ... for about five minutes before Richard succeeded in veering them into much more interesting topics involving Neomen and something called the Suggestions System and even a couple of other random tangents involving Dr. Bumwuggle, the GUST, and a small school of pirannha fish that happened to swim by their table at one point later on in his monologue that was cleverly disguised as a dialogue and occasional poly-logue by his forebrain as it hopped along from moment to moment -- all fueled by caffeine from his Diet Caffeine soda beverage, which was clasped tightly in his cold right hand as he shivered and twitched from hypercaffeination and tried very hard to not drool all over himself in the company of strangers like Mr. Andromedae and Devon Anwa.
Devon, for his part, made a quiet snorting sound and rested his head upon his hands, giving his friend Richard an annoyed look.
Mr. Andromedae had, however, just fallen out of a tree yesterday, and, so, of course, as would be expected, he still remembered in vivid detail what being in the tree was like, and, thus, kept asking Richard more and more questions.
"So it's illegal?" Mr. Andromedae asked either or both of them together.
"Mmmm... No," answered Devon, shaking his head.
"But it's wrong, right?" Mr. Andromedae asked again.
"Nope," said Devon again, quickly jumping in. "Well, ahh, maybe yes. Okay. Sure. You could use the word wrong to describe it, I guess," Devon replied.
"Uh, well, then I don't get it."
Devon started to explain. "It's because it's--"
"It's not really a Law, per se," interrupted Richard, "but, rather, more of a ... suggestion."
Richard stopped and grinned.
"Where I and Devon come from there are no Laws -- they've all been replaced with suggestions! A simple system of basic ethical suggestions called the Suggestions System," he explained.
"But, how the---" Mr. Andromedae started to ask, before being cut off by Richard.
"How the heck could this possibly be, is probably what you are wondering aloud, I'd imagine? Well, you see, this is how it all came about to be, in the land that Devon and I and others like us like to call home regardless of where we hapen to physically be any given day of the week." He stopped for a moment and smiled wide. "Originally, everybody just grunted -- way back when, in a time and place that existed, perhaps, a small fraction of an eon ago."
Silence.
"They grunted suggestions?" asked Mr. Andromedae.
"No, I think they just grunted," Richard replied.
"Oh."
"We haven't gotten to the suggestions yet. We're gonna start first with the grunting. So have patience and pay attention, please."
"Okay, sure."
"So... The grunting. People were good at it. They were each very good at all the grunting that they all did originally. They did it well and very efficiently. So their conversations were incredibly clear and incredibly concise -- which was an incredibly good thing and so everybody was incredibly happy."
Mr. Andromedae nodded, indicating that he understood.
Richard continued.
"But sadly... slowly... they kinda ever so slightly stopped knowing how to speak the language of grunting. And so they started to rely more and more instead on this other thing. This other thing that was a much newer and untested thing that was called talking."
Richard continued. "Then one day the grunting stopped. It stopped completely."
Shock.
Surprise.
Dismay.
Shock, surprise, dismay... and a predominately genetically Norwegian heritage. All of these uncontrollable feelings -- including especially the Norwegian heritage -- tried simultaneously to vie for control of Alfred's face at that moment. But it was his Norwegian heritage that won.
So Richard kept right on with his story, oblivious to everything but his audience's predominately Norwegian heritage.
"And from that point on all their conversations were held only in the language of talking."
"A lot. I mean, there was a lot of talking and they were very enthusiastic about this talking even if it wasn't exactly second nature like the original grunting was. They had had the grunting down pat. It was natural instinct."
"But with this talking thing, it wasn't as good. There was an inherent problem. And conflicts inevitably ensued."
He paused to take a breath.
"The conflicts arose because many of these things called words that they had built their talking with were being used so inaccurately and out-of-sync with what people really wanted to say -- partly because no one cared to spend the time to learn which words did what and partly because many of these words could each mean different things, based on this other awful thing they called the context of things, and since the context of things was so fond of overlapping with lots of other weird ethereal things like the speaker's emotional state or religion or profession -- that, well, this thing called context that they developed soon turned into what was in effect a big red KICK ME sign placed on these otherwise noble inventions called words."
Richard took a moment to take a sip from his cup of Diet Caffeine-brand carbonated beverage drink. Gave it a few moments to take hold, then continued where he left off.
"And another complicating factor, to be perfectly honest, was that almost everybody was hopelessly stupid and didn't know it. But since this is such a unyversally-present complicating factor to anything present in the Unyverse, it should perhaps always be taken into account."
At this point, he stopped temporarily to go get a refill of soda from the soda refill beverage dispenser near their table. Got it, came back, and sat down again with his friends in the garden.
"So, basically, conflicts arose and these conflicts led to fighting. There were violent ninja kicks and nasty slapping, and occasionally even projectile sneezing and biting improvisational satire.
"So they made Law. It cut down on the kicking and slapping and satire, and then even a lot more things, like humor and creativity and intelligence and personal responsibility and individual judgment.
"But no matter -- there was less slapping and satire, and that was the important thing. Years and years went by, and deep down perhaps deep down inside the DNA of each of these previously human beings there slowly grew the realization that perhaps things would be better if Law was gotten rid of in some way so that they could just let people Truly Be.
"So they got rid of all Laws, and only functionally superseded some of them in their new, friendlier paradigm with things they came to call the Suggestions System.
"And this new system of fundamental ethical suggestions -- it was really not much more than a small codified collection of best practice moral-genetic observations -- worked pretty good, it mostly worked completely better than the old system, except in certain cases where it worked much much worse. And they realized that the reason why this new system broke down in these certain specific situations was because the people involved in these imperfect situations -- whatever else might be said about them -- were just plain hopelessly stupid or evil."
"Of course!" contributed Mr. Andromedae.
Richard glared at him.
Mr. Andromedae decided to stop contributing.
"If they could just get rid of all the hopelessly stupid or evil people," continued Richard, "the Suggestions System would work perfectly, and answer once and for all the question of whether it was ever possible to design a method of mass governance that was better than the classic mix of capitalism, socialism and pseudo-representative democracy. Maybe even something that would be present in Paradise.
"So they set about to make a list of all the people and people types or professions that were noted for being evil, or stupid, or some annoying mixture of evil and stupid, and they would take that list and go around finding all the people on that list, and simply exile them from their civilization. Only problem was, was that these people, in exile, would turn out to just go and mess up other people's civilizations, and making these neighboring civilizations quite cranky with them.
"Either that, or sometimes the exiles would sneak back in, and take right back up where they left off mucking up things again. So simply booting them out merely delayed things, or shuffled about the ickiness. A better solution was needed.
Richard grinned at them all of a sudden.
"And that solution came when Dr. Bander Bumwuggle developed a formal Grand Unified Sporkishness Theory, replete with a wonderfully solid and widely-accepted proof, and with lots of neat diagrams and values out to the kinds of decimal places that pocket calculators can only dream about."
"Proof?!?! What proof, Richard?" asked Devon.
"Thus..." Richard continued, ignoring him. "The invention of the GUST perfectly complemented the Suggestions System because it fixed what was otherwise the only thing wrong with it. Which was the existance of all the stupid and evil people."
Devon sighed. He appeared to be unimpressed. As if he had heard it all before.
Mr. Andromedae just stood there, slack-jawed but not slack-minded, quietly attempting to absorb all that he had just heard from the man with a bizarre last name whom he had met only a few hours before.
"You know, Richard, you really ought to write that down one day," said Devon. "It'd make for a pretty good story, especially the part about Bumwuggle."
They grew silent. They were apparently waiting for something.
A school of mutated, liquid-paisley-colored fish swam by in the Phonohomonymic Stream of Consciousness that happened to be meandering by their breakfast table in the Phrase Garden that day.
Richard shrugged. "Yeah, maybe." He looked at the fish. He hoped they weren't pirannha. Phonohomonymic Pirannha were notoriously carnivorous predators and, additionally, they smelled really bad.
He looked at the stream. He hoped it wouldn't get him wet. He didn't like getting wet. Unless he was in the shower or a swimming pool.
He looked at his wristcom, then quickly stood up, gave a short bow to his companions and then hurried off to the exit, saying, "We have to leave by six past six p.m."
Mr. Andromedae waved at his retreating figure. "Goodbye, Mr. Amadeus!" he yelled out after him.
Devon grunted and picked up the pulse rifle that had been sitting on the ground beneath the table by the boombox the whole time. He checked it for charge and mumbled under his breath, frowning, "Oh, joy. Back to the war again."
Mr. Andromedae appeared startled by something Devon had just said.
"What war?" he asked him.
Devon just shrugged and sighed. "Ask Richard." Then he started polishing his weapon, slowly and methodically, until it shined. "I'm sure he'd just love to tell you about it."
The Wallomen
It was in an abandoned Silent City-brand ship's store that was far, far below the surface of the mysterious planet Murloch -- covered mostly with marshes and forests and swamps, on a Tuesday, with a slight fog setting in and the pleasantly annoying aftertaste of cinnamon candy in her mouth -- that Susan Meerson of the Jethromundanian OOBMSDP happened to run into some Wallomen for the very first time.
They were strange wallowing creatures, always seeming to be in all sorts of hurries and things. They lived inside a lost section of the wrecked Superperverticon battleship because that was where they were born and had not moved or evolved within very much in the millennium since.
They had been trapped in this section of the Superperverticon for perhaps a full one thousand years all alone and by themselves except for each other and some plastic furniture for warmth and emotional support.
Which may have explained why they had become so incredibly normal and insane.
Susan, however, at this point, wasn't aware of either their incredible normality, or, of course, of their incredible insanity -- and instead decided to get a good long look at them for a bit before speaking because it did appear on the surface that they were incredibly interesting.
So she stared at them for a few seconds without saying anything.
And this is all that she saw:
The first Walloman was big and round and obviously on good terms with the ship's robotic cafeteria staff.
The second Walloman was not as round and not as big as the first Walloman but far more obsessed with the cafeteria's artificial cheesecake and casually strewn-about fanatical religious pamphlets.
In turn, the two weird Wallomen looked back at her as well. However, Susan wasn't sure how she herself looked to them from their point-of-view situated on the outside of her body -- which was perhaps a fortunate thing.
She shook her head and decided to stop thinking and do something.
She stepped forward confidently to greet them with a friendly, "Hi, there!" and then extended her hand for a shake.
The two Wallomen looked at her hand, and then looked at each other, and then at her hand again, and then back at each other until they were soon gazing very deeply into each other's souls. Since there wasn't much to see there they quickly stopped doing that and instead started grinning wildly and then turned back to face Susan again.
They opened their mouths as if to speak -- but Susan cut them off before they even had a chance.
"Why hello there. Can I, uh, help you?" she asked.
"--Ack-thpff!!!" exclaimed the first Walloman.
And "--Slppppbbbttt!!!" the other Walloman calmly declared, in loose accordance with all relevant multi-galactic customs concerning polite public oral intercourse. The spoken kind.
"We're looking for the Meaning of the Unyverse," said the first.
"Is it orange?" asked the other. "Does it walk? Will it fly? Can it talk?"
"These things and more are ways in which we wish to know much more of," said the first.
"After all -- ideas are just words with wings," said the second.
"And words are cheap," said the first.
"You know they make the best building materials," said the other.
"Yes, I ... see," said Susan, flabbergasted. And this was coming from a lady who wasn't often gasted -- flabber or otherwise -- until the weekend.
"Do you really?" they both asked simultaneously.
"Well, ah, maybe sometimes I do," she replied.
"Doubtful!" said the first.
"Highly improbable-istic!" said the other.
"Especially if it's sometimes five-times or more!" said the first.
"How?!?!" yelped Susan, blushing. Then she shook her head slowly and narrowed her eyes at them inquisitively. She immediately worried and thought, "How could they know it sometimes happens to me five-times or more on the weekends?"
She shook her head from side to side for a bit and decided not to worry about it.
The second Walloman started to explain anyway.
"It's because--"
"--Oh. Fine, fine," interjected Susan, cutting him off before he could really begin. "Soooo, why, ah, exactly are you, uh, are you looking for the meaning of the Unyverse?" asked Susan. "Are you bored? Are you going for your Ph.D's?"
The two Wallomen looked at each other for a moment. Staring deep into each other's eyes, unblinking, ungrinning, quietly, for a few seconds. Then they turned back to look at Susan directly.
"Answers!" said the first.
"Answers, we need answers!" said the second.
"Answers, you see, taste better, they do, which means that no matter how many and no matter how few that they will always taste much better with gravy than any maybes do! So answers it is and answers it will be, for if it was and if it is, and if it sometimes soon just might possibly be, then the only end to every question is the answer to this trick question: which is... what is the essence of those guessed-at phrases known as the one or more supposed Meanings of the Unyverse?!?!" said the first.
"It is no more -- and neither is it last! -- or less than this ethereal sense of that which the most thoughtful thinkers of things among us seek and wish to know with utter certainty in perpetuity!!!" exclaimed the second.
"Ahhhh... I get it... you're post-docs," said Susan.
The first Walloman nodded but the second shook his head.
"And now we must depart..." said the first.
"Yes, that's true!" said the second.
"Our neck is in the noose but, alas, our prey is on the loose," said the first. And then he bowed low and said, "Good-day!"
"Goodnight!" said the second before spinning around on his and Susan's feet.
"Goodbye," Susan said, pushing him back and grabbing her foot. "Ouch," she mumbled softly to herself.
And then the Wallomen ran off with hardly a huff or a wham: they ran out of the store and down the corridor and around a corner and promptly disappeared from view.
Susan herself snooped around and in between the mostly empty shelves for a few minutes afterward without finding where the interesting-looking shoes had went but then began to wonder more and more if Richard had any more cinnamon sticks left.
So she headed back to camp and promptly forgot all about the shoes and the two weird Wallomen of the Silent City-brand store.
They were strange wallowing creatures, always seeming to be in all sorts of hurries and things. They lived inside a lost section of the wrecked Superperverticon battleship because that was where they were born and had not moved or evolved within very much in the millennium since.
They had been trapped in this section of the Superperverticon for perhaps a full one thousand years all alone and by themselves except for each other and some plastic furniture for warmth and emotional support.
Which may have explained why they had become so incredibly normal and insane.
Susan, however, at this point, wasn't aware of either their incredible normality, or, of course, of their incredible insanity -- and instead decided to get a good long look at them for a bit before speaking because it did appear on the surface that they were incredibly interesting.
So she stared at them for a few seconds without saying anything.
And this is all that she saw:
The first Walloman was big and round and obviously on good terms with the ship's robotic cafeteria staff.
The second Walloman was not as round and not as big as the first Walloman but far more obsessed with the cafeteria's artificial cheesecake and casually strewn-about fanatical religious pamphlets.
In turn, the two weird Wallomen looked back at her as well. However, Susan wasn't sure how she herself looked to them from their point-of-view situated on the outside of her body -- which was perhaps a fortunate thing.
She shook her head and decided to stop thinking and do something.
She stepped forward confidently to greet them with a friendly, "Hi, there!" and then extended her hand for a shake.
The two Wallomen looked at her hand, and then looked at each other, and then at her hand again, and then back at each other until they were soon gazing very deeply into each other's souls. Since there wasn't much to see there they quickly stopped doing that and instead started grinning wildly and then turned back to face Susan again.
They opened their mouths as if to speak -- but Susan cut them off before they even had a chance.
"Why hello there. Can I, uh, help you?" she asked.
"--Ack-thpff!!!" exclaimed the first Walloman.
And "--Slppppbbbttt!!!" the other Walloman calmly declared, in loose accordance with all relevant multi-galactic customs concerning polite public oral intercourse. The spoken kind.
"We're looking for the Meaning of the Unyverse," said the first.
"Is it orange?" asked the other. "Does it walk? Will it fly? Can it talk?"
"These things and more are ways in which we wish to know much more of," said the first.
"After all -- ideas are just words with wings," said the second.
"And words are cheap," said the first.
"You know they make the best building materials," said the other.
"Yes, I ... see," said Susan, flabbergasted. And this was coming from a lady who wasn't often gasted -- flabber or otherwise -- until the weekend.
"Do you really?" they both asked simultaneously.
"Well, ah, maybe sometimes I do," she replied.
"Doubtful!" said the first.
"Highly improbable-istic!" said the other.
"Especially if it's sometimes five-times or more!" said the first.
"How?!?!" yelped Susan, blushing. Then she shook her head slowly and narrowed her eyes at them inquisitively. She immediately worried and thought, "How could they know it sometimes happens to me five-times or more on the weekends?"
She shook her head from side to side for a bit and decided not to worry about it.
The second Walloman started to explain anyway.
"It's because--"
"--Oh. Fine, fine," interjected Susan, cutting him off before he could really begin. "Soooo, why, ah, exactly are you, uh, are you looking for the meaning of the Unyverse?" asked Susan. "Are you bored? Are you going for your Ph.D's?"
The two Wallomen looked at each other for a moment. Staring deep into each other's eyes, unblinking, ungrinning, quietly, for a few seconds. Then they turned back to look at Susan directly.
"Answers!" said the first.
"Answers, we need answers!" said the second.
"Answers, you see, taste better, they do, which means that no matter how many and no matter how few that they will always taste much better with gravy than any maybes do! So answers it is and answers it will be, for if it was and if it is, and if it sometimes soon just might possibly be, then the only end to every question is the answer to this trick question: which is... what is the essence of those guessed-at phrases known as the one or more supposed Meanings of the Unyverse?!?!" said the first.
"It is no more -- and neither is it last! -- or less than this ethereal sense of that which the most thoughtful thinkers of things among us seek and wish to know with utter certainty in perpetuity!!!" exclaimed the second.
"Ahhhh... I get it... you're post-docs," said Susan.
The first Walloman nodded but the second shook his head.
"And now we must depart..." said the first.
"Yes, that's true!" said the second.
"Our neck is in the noose but, alas, our prey is on the loose," said the first. And then he bowed low and said, "Good-day!"
"Goodnight!" said the second before spinning around on his and Susan's feet.
"Goodbye," Susan said, pushing him back and grabbing her foot. "Ouch," she mumbled softly to herself.
And then the Wallomen ran off with hardly a huff or a wham: they ran out of the store and down the corridor and around a corner and promptly disappeared from view.
Susan herself snooped around and in between the mostly empty shelves for a few minutes afterward without finding where the interesting-looking shoes had went but then began to wonder more and more if Richard had any more cinnamon sticks left.
So she headed back to camp and promptly forgot all about the shoes and the two weird Wallomen of the Silent City-brand store.
Strange Encounters
"This place is boring," said Richard.
"Too drab," said Susan.
"Their interior designer should be fired," said Janet.
"It sucks," said Devon.
As they stood there they were suddenly startled by the appearance of an unexpected inhabitant of the place. They had been alone for a long time, all by themselves. They had not seen any actual inhabitants of Murloch at any time so far in their trip.
A huge, spherical, grossly overweight humanoid cyborg waddled up to them and spoke:
"Your pants. May I have them? Would you remove them for me please?"
The fat cyborg looked at each of their faces. Sensed that they would not be soon complying. Or that perhaps they didn't understand him. He frowned. Tried again to communicate with them.
"Either that or your skirts or slacks. Would you find yourself taken aback a bit if I or someone else we authorize were to take the opportunity to add them to our large and growing collection?"
Then the incredibly fat, highly-spherical humanoid cyborg thing quickly turned around and ran off down the corridor and around a corner.
As they got used to his sudden disappearance, somebody (or something) else appeared.
An incredibly tall and thin android, painted all white with thin red pinstripes running vertically along his shell. He ran up to them and addressed them as a group.
"Slack. I'm looking for slack because I need it, see. So do you know of where I could get it, please? Could you point me in the proper direction at this particular moment in time? Are there places where one could rent it temporarily or even extemporaneously?"
Richard shrugged. "Uh, maybe?"
The incredibly tall, thin android-man frowned, paused for a second, and then quickly turned around and ran off down the corridor and around a corner.
"Too drab," said Susan.
"Their interior designer should be fired," said Janet.
"It sucks," said Devon.
As they stood there they were suddenly startled by the appearance of an unexpected inhabitant of the place. They had been alone for a long time, all by themselves. They had not seen any actual inhabitants of Murloch at any time so far in their trip.
A huge, spherical, grossly overweight humanoid cyborg waddled up to them and spoke:
"Your pants. May I have them? Would you remove them for me please?"
The fat cyborg looked at each of their faces. Sensed that they would not be soon complying. Or that perhaps they didn't understand him. He frowned. Tried again to communicate with them.
"Either that or your skirts or slacks. Would you find yourself taken aback a bit if I or someone else we authorize were to take the opportunity to add them to our large and growing collection?"
Then the incredibly fat, highly-spherical humanoid cyborg thing quickly turned around and ran off down the corridor and around a corner.
As they got used to his sudden disappearance, somebody (or something) else appeared.
An incredibly tall and thin android, painted all white with thin red pinstripes running vertically along his shell. He ran up to them and addressed them as a group.
"Slack. I'm looking for slack because I need it, see. So do you know of where I could get it, please? Could you point me in the proper direction at this particular moment in time? Are there places where one could rent it temporarily or even extemporaneously?"
Richard shrugged. "Uh, maybe?"
The incredibly tall, thin android-man frowned, paused for a second, and then quickly turned around and ran off down the corridor and around a corner.
Clowns Don't Belong in the Forest
Clowns don't belong in the forest
And they don't belong in my pants
They don't belong in my pockets
They don't belong in any boxes or even space rockets
Clowns don't belong in McTronic's restaurants
and they don't belong in France,
now long non-existent
Except for my pants
And possibly your pants as well
They don't belong on this planet
and I suspect that they'd be
out-of-place outside of space and time
additionally too
Clowns don't belong most places
Because clowns don't belong, at all, any way.
And they don't belong in my pants
They don't belong in my pockets
They don't belong in any boxes or even space rockets
Clowns don't belong in McTronic's restaurants
and they don't belong in France,
now long non-existent
Except for my pants
And possibly your pants as well
They don't belong on this planet
and I suspect that they'd be
out-of-place outside of space and time
additionally too
Clowns don't belong most places
Because clowns don't belong, at all, any way.
Civilization Summarized
Civilization began when some guy banged two rocks together, saw a spark, and figured out how he could use this fact to start a fire. It got better and better after that. Then, things took a turn for the worse, and started heading downhill. Civilization ended with a bang when a runaway nano-biomechanical plague was let loose in Kansas one morning, and it spread so fast and quickly, and was so unstoppable, that it wiped out all lifeforms on the planet in under a week, leaving nothing living except itself. After it wiped out it's only fuel source it died too. All that was left, aside from the occasional skyscraper or shopping mall or interstate highway system, was a sort of metaphorical monument to mankind's hubris. It had no specific shape or location -- it wasn't a specific artifact, in other words -- but it existed nonetheless. Upon this monument was inscribed the words of a poet who had been dead for many centuries past, that read, in effect:
"Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair."
"Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair."
Monday, May 7, 2007
Micropolis - Arrival
A janitorial closet.
It is small and cramped and full of numerous boxes and shelves and weirdly-shaped gadgets and tools. And a broom jammed down into a bucket that's far too small for it.
A strange whirring, grinding sound is coming from somewhere unknown.
Suddenly, a faint image of a British police call box appears in a clear spot on the floor of the closet.
The TARDIS.
An acronym which stands for Time and the Relative Dimensions in Space.
Because this out-of-place telephone booth is actually a time machine. A Gallifreyan model type-40 time machine, to be precise.
And there's barely enough room for it inside this packed closet that's literally packed to the walls with old boxes and buckets and brooms.
But the ghostly image grows slowly stronger and stronger and the peculiar humming sound continues until the machine has completed it's out-of-space-and-time manifestation process.
A moment when nothing happens.
Then--
A door on the front of the TARDIS opens and a tall, frazzled-looking middle-aged man steps out. He's wearing a long brown overcoat, a striped scarf colored every color of the rainbow, and a wide-brimmed hat. His hair is brown and curly. His eyes are wide and bulging. And he has a mischievous grin that makes anyone that sees him wonder what it is that he is thinking about.
A moment later a younger woman emerges after him. She's wearing a white dress as if she's planning on going to a fancy ballroom dance. Her hair is straight and long and dark blonde, though her face is very plain her eyes are bright and she moves with a regal air and intelligent purpose.
"Oh not again, Doctor," she said to him, in a weary tone. "We've been in transit for barely an hour of subjective time and already you want to stop and have a look around. You say you're not looking for anything but I suspect you're looking for trouble outright!"
The man grinned a grin that was even more mischievous than the one he had on a moment before. Then he turned to look into her eyes directly before speaking.
"Romana, my dear, I'm afraid you have it all backwards and inside out. Or maybe it's frontwards and rightside in, or upside down and facing away in embarrassment at the feel of clammy hands where they shouldn't be at all. Whichever it is I can't say for sure." He paused for a moment. "Either way," he continued, "it's not trouble I'm looking for I'm looking for a man. A being. A masculine entity whose name is Dalen Rax. He's a prince and a rascal and once he was the ruler of this city."
"What city?" she asked.
"Why the city that surrounds this very closet that we're in, of course."
"I see."
"There's an urgent matter I must discuss with him before it's too late. Before time runs out."
"That's two cliche phrases in one sentence, Doctor! Shame on you."
"Yes, shame-shame on me I agree but sometimes cliches are true and it is true that I must speak with him before it's too late."
"Too late for what?"
"No time for that now, Romana." He glanced around the closet that was around them in turn. "And if we wait any longer it looks like there will be no space for it either!"
He pushed his way through the boxes towards the door and grabbed the handle -- managing to clear enough space to open it partway. Then he stepped through it and turned his head to look back over his shoulder. "Well are you coming or going, Romana? You know it would please me greatly to have the pleasure of your company. As usual."
She thought for a bit.
Sighed.
Shrugged her shoulders.
"No more adventures, Doctor. I'm so tired of having adventures. No one wants so many unexpected surprises all in one day."
"Well, having the other kind of surprises wouldn't make much sense, now would it?" he replied.
She pushed her way towards the door and they both left, Romana pulling the door closed behind them.
It is small and cramped and full of numerous boxes and shelves and weirdly-shaped gadgets and tools. And a broom jammed down into a bucket that's far too small for it.
A strange whirring, grinding sound is coming from somewhere unknown.
Suddenly, a faint image of a British police call box appears in a clear spot on the floor of the closet.
The TARDIS.
An acronym which stands for Time and the Relative Dimensions in Space.
Because this out-of-place telephone booth is actually a time machine. A Gallifreyan model type-40 time machine, to be precise.
And there's barely enough room for it inside this packed closet that's literally packed to the walls with old boxes and buckets and brooms.
But the ghostly image grows slowly stronger and stronger and the peculiar humming sound continues until the machine has completed it's out-of-space-and-time manifestation process.
A moment when nothing happens.
Then--
A door on the front of the TARDIS opens and a tall, frazzled-looking middle-aged man steps out. He's wearing a long brown overcoat, a striped scarf colored every color of the rainbow, and a wide-brimmed hat. His hair is brown and curly. His eyes are wide and bulging. And he has a mischievous grin that makes anyone that sees him wonder what it is that he is thinking about.
A moment later a younger woman emerges after him. She's wearing a white dress as if she's planning on going to a fancy ballroom dance. Her hair is straight and long and dark blonde, though her face is very plain her eyes are bright and she moves with a regal air and intelligent purpose.
"Oh not again, Doctor," she said to him, in a weary tone. "We've been in transit for barely an hour of subjective time and already you want to stop and have a look around. You say you're not looking for anything but I suspect you're looking for trouble outright!"
The man grinned a grin that was even more mischievous than the one he had on a moment before. Then he turned to look into her eyes directly before speaking.
"Romana, my dear, I'm afraid you have it all backwards and inside out. Or maybe it's frontwards and rightside in, or upside down and facing away in embarrassment at the feel of clammy hands where they shouldn't be at all. Whichever it is I can't say for sure." He paused for a moment. "Either way," he continued, "it's not trouble I'm looking for I'm looking for a man. A being. A masculine entity whose name is Dalen Rax. He's a prince and a rascal and once he was the ruler of this city."
"What city?" she asked.
"Why the city that surrounds this very closet that we're in, of course."
"I see."
"There's an urgent matter I must discuss with him before it's too late. Before time runs out."
"That's two cliche phrases in one sentence, Doctor! Shame on you."
"Yes, shame-shame on me I agree but sometimes cliches are true and it is true that I must speak with him before it's too late."
"Too late for what?"
"No time for that now, Romana." He glanced around the closet that was around them in turn. "And if we wait any longer it looks like there will be no space for it either!"
He pushed his way through the boxes towards the door and grabbed the handle -- managing to clear enough space to open it partway. Then he stepped through it and turned his head to look back over his shoulder. "Well are you coming or going, Romana? You know it would please me greatly to have the pleasure of your company. As usual."
She thought for a bit.
Sighed.
Shrugged her shoulders.
"No more adventures, Doctor. I'm so tired of having adventures. No one wants so many unexpected surprises all in one day."
"Well, having the other kind of surprises wouldn't make much sense, now would it?" he replied.
She pushed her way towards the door and they both left, Romana pulling the door closed behind them.
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Ghost Machine and Man
The machine materialized with a faint whir or buzz that suggested spinning blades. A flashing, twirling light filled the room with an eerie glow. When the machine had materialized completely the sound also stopped. A moment later the front of it opened inward like a door into the interior. A man stepped out and pulled the door closed behind him. He looked around with a puzzled expression. "Oh, this isn't right. Not at all," he said. He suddenly crouched down, then leaned over and planted his ear on the ground, as if to listen to it. "Mmmhmmmm. Yes. As I expected." He leaped back to his feet, brushing his hands off as he did so. "But this will have to do. At least until I can make repairs." He turned toward the machine. "I've got a task for you, K-9. Please come outside." A moment later, a disembodied, mechanical voice replied, seemingly from a speaker on the outside hull of the machine. "Coming, master."
Purple, Fast and Far Away
She had a little purple starship. Sleek and built for speed. Just last week she made a run with it to the Dachyon system, carrying a load of contraband. The pay was good, more than enough to offset the risk of entanglements with friendly neighborhood law enforcement types.
She had a secret hideaway on the far side of the moon of Tyrel V. Buried underground, it had a private hanger with a camouflaged entrance that was invisible to all but the closest inspection. Packed full of comforts and homey things, it was where she Kept Her Stuff and kicked back in between jobs and vacations.
She had a secret hideaway on the far side of the moon of Tyrel V. Buried underground, it had a private hanger with a camouflaged entrance that was invisible to all but the closest inspection. Packed full of comforts and homey things, it was where she Kept Her Stuff and kicked back in between jobs and vacations.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Gigan
Once upon a time in the land of Gigan there lived a group of human people who spent most of their lives working on a great mechanical thing that was called Gigan. This mechanical thing called Gigan was merely a machine and thus completely different and separate from the land that the human people had been living on for thousands of years. And it was even more different and separate from the human people who worked on it every day of their lives, although most of these people had trouble seeing this distinction. And of those who could see the distinction they were sadly outnumbered. The proportion of people who had this ability to see grew worse and worse with each new generation of supposedly human people who went along with the ancient tradition and toiled away on Gigan.
But one day, an interesting thought occurred to one of the workers. It was a young man, one who felt he was somehow more than a little different than the other workers, and, well, he was just plain curious about something. He wondered more and more about the purpose of Gigan. And why they were all working on it, every single day of the week -- except on the traditional Wednesdays when they rest -- and for what seemed like all the remainder of their waking lives.
He wondered why because it seemed to him that there was something funny about Gigan. Something not quite right about it. Something wrong with how it was shaped, perhaps, or how it's insides were on the outside instead of the other way around. Something about the way it looked at you whenever you weren't looking back. Something about the way it just stood there, day after day, never moving or making any sound when in fact it was a mechanical thing and so it seemed only natural that it should be moving or making some kind of sound.
He looked at Gigan again directly and this was what he saw:
A huge silent mechanical structure shaped like a man. Like a giant male human with a stern sculpted face. It had a large and diverse assortment of complicated and highly specialized internal components. All kinds of unexplained miscellaneous machinery, hydraulics, pneumatics, support structure, struts, joints, braces, motors and fluid-carrying cables. Instead of hands it had claw-like metal grinders. And it stood in the center of a clearing in a large beautiful forest. Though it had no nameplate or sign to indicate its true name the workers had always referred to it as Gigan. The same name as their land.
Eventually he stopped looking and started thinking again instead.
He thought and thought and thought some more for several hours as was his favorite pastime but eventually he decided to stop thinking -- partly because this "stop thinking" activity was also a favorite pastime too.
So he stopped thinking and decided to decide something instead.
He decided that maybe he needed more data, more input from his fellow workers on what they thought about Gigan.
So he set aside his tools and proceeded to go around asking his fellow workers what they thought about Gigan. To the young man, it was not clear that they were thinking at all because his fellow workers came back with all kinds of seemingly reasonable but possibly highly irrational explanations, each of which boiled down to the following:
"Well we work for the sake of the brain. The brain that's in the box at the top of its head. Since it's in a box it has these virtual thoughts -- the kinds of thoughts that Gigan has when it thinks in a box."
"Yeah and this box is called a brainbox."
"And the brainbox needs something to hold it up. Plus you'd have to admit that it's good to have several stable and secure places to mount mechanical motors."
"Yeah, the motors that drive the pumps."
"The pumps which push the fluids through the cables and pipes."
"The cables and pipes carry the fluids to all the parts of its structure that need the fluids."
"Those parts benefit from the fluids because the fluids lubricate the parts and redistribute waste heat."
"All of this helps it to move … if it were to do so."
When our hero heard this last bit he smiled wide and interrupted them in his sudden excitement by saying, "So clearly it has been designed to move! But it never moves!" Though when he said these things he only smiled wide on the outside because deep down he suspected that it was going nowhere.
"It might move," responded the particular fellow worker who he had interrupted the moment before. "Just because it isn't now doesn't mean it won't or ever hasn't. That is irrelevant. That has nothing to do with mechanics or what we do."
"Then what is the purpose of Gigan?" asked our hero.
"Huh?"
He groaned. "What is the overall purpose of Gigan, as a whole?" he restated his question for the purpose of clarification. "If it won't move is its purpose the virtual thoughts?"
The fellow worker he addressed got a blank expression. Someone else nearby proceeded to giggle and laugh.
"You're nuts."
"I'm not sure if you know what you're talking about."
"I think that may be a nonsensical question. Like asking what the color yellow smells like."
"I agree with Gort. To put it another way, for example, in analogy, it is like wondering about what the hypothetical opposite of a hippopotamus would be."
"Tern's right. Tern is dead on it. You're being too metaphysical. I think it is more of a spiritual issue, best left for the wise men and holy documents to decide."
The conversation continued like this for several hours until eventually, our hero -- the curious young man with questions -- became too frustrated and decided to give up. He picked up his tools again and resumed his job working on Gigan, just like everybody else.
Time passed...
Our hero showed up to work one day as usual, grabbed his tools, got into position in his officially assigned working spot. A location near the end of one of Gigan's arms. Almost immediately he made a terrible discovery:
Blood.
Where no blood should ever be at all.
There was blood on the left hand of Gigan!
Stained red spots all over and in between it's enormous grinder claws.
He raised an alarm and a crowd gathered around him to try to see what he had seen. Not all of them could get close enough to see it but of those who did they agreed that it was blood but didn't know whose blood it was. No one, in fact, knew how it got there. But they didn't seem too concerned about it either.
In the background outside the crowd around the hero a woman's voice could be heard. She was calling out a loved one's name in a worried tone, calling, pleading, begging for signs of life, over and over and over again, each time with no response. And no help from anyone in the crowd except our hero. Because our hero jumped the moment he heard her and tried to reach her. He managed to worm his way out of the crowd around and between them, and looked everywhere around to try to find her and figure out who she was and who she was calling for and find out if there was a connection between the blood discovered and the person she had lost. But he could not find her. She was gone and would never be heard from again.
Time passed...
Our hero showed up to work again one day and looked for the missing woman again but, as usual, she was still gone. So he grabbed his tools and took up his assigned working position. But he couldn't get any work done because he saw something terrible almost right away. He found more blood. Between the grinders of Gigan. He started to worry again if there was something terribly wrong about Gigan, about the people's involvement with it. He talked about it a little bit with some of the others. But nobody else was as worried about it as he was. Even though another person had been reported missing that morning. They didn't know where this missing person went. And most of the people didn't even know where the missing person came from in the first place. Some think that he never truly existed so, therefore, it would be patently impossible for him to be missing now.
Time passed...
Our hero arrived to work one morning and headed straight to his usual position. He had a particularly bad feeling that morning, about something being terribly wrong with what he was doing each day. Not necessarily there be something terribly wrong with what everybody else was doing each day because, frankly, he felt increasingly that he couldn't relate to these other people. It was as if perhaps it was not actually wrong for them to be doing what they were doing. Perhaps, for them, it was even right. And so, his little mental argument with himself went, they never thought anything was wrong whenever something terribly wrong happened because it wasn't terribly wrong for them. Just for others. And other people, in their view, it seemed, may not even exist. And since, in their view, others may not exist, it may be ---
-- The young man's thoughts were interrupted when he got a sudden shocking sight. He saw fresh blood on the grinders of Gigan. It was shiny and wet and just beginning to dry.
For a moment he just stood there and thought and thought and tried to calm his mind. He thought and thought but then eventually he reached an important decision.
He dropped his tools. Ran off into the forest.
Nobody saw him leave. Nobody talked about his absence, they just continued with their work on the machine.
At night, after all the workers were comfortably sleeping and dreaming, something stirred in the machine. A grinding and thumping sound began to emanate from Gigan. It didn't wake the workers. The left foot lifted slowly up from the ground and then moved out in front and set back down again. The huge machine moved and shifted its weight forward onto this foot, then lifted up the other one and it became clear that it was starting to walk, although very slowly and with great momentum.
Gigan walked toward the forest.
The trees bent and twisted and shredded and some were shattered and destroyed by Gigan's passing. And as it disappeared from view through the branches and leaves, it could just be made out -- by anyone who might have been out walking in their sleep -- that its giant grinder claws were slowly opening and closing, opening and closing.
To any casual observer -- for example, perhaps to anyone who might have awakened momentarily from a dream -- it would have appeared that Gigan walked with firm purpose and a definite destination in mind. At least, that is, the kind of destination that could be in the virtual mind in the box at the top of its head.
But the young man ran and ran and with firm purpose too and a definite destination in mind and so, at least for a while -- and maybe even forever -- he became free.
But one day, an interesting thought occurred to one of the workers. It was a young man, one who felt he was somehow more than a little different than the other workers, and, well, he was just plain curious about something. He wondered more and more about the purpose of Gigan. And why they were all working on it, every single day of the week -- except on the traditional Wednesdays when they rest -- and for what seemed like all the remainder of their waking lives.
He wondered why because it seemed to him that there was something funny about Gigan. Something not quite right about it. Something wrong with how it was shaped, perhaps, or how it's insides were on the outside instead of the other way around. Something about the way it looked at you whenever you weren't looking back. Something about the way it just stood there, day after day, never moving or making any sound when in fact it was a mechanical thing and so it seemed only natural that it should be moving or making some kind of sound.
He looked at Gigan again directly and this was what he saw:
A huge silent mechanical structure shaped like a man. Like a giant male human with a stern sculpted face. It had a large and diverse assortment of complicated and highly specialized internal components. All kinds of unexplained miscellaneous machinery, hydraulics, pneumatics, support structure, struts, joints, braces, motors and fluid-carrying cables. Instead of hands it had claw-like metal grinders. And it stood in the center of a clearing in a large beautiful forest. Though it had no nameplate or sign to indicate its true name the workers had always referred to it as Gigan. The same name as their land.
Eventually he stopped looking and started thinking again instead.
He thought and thought and thought some more for several hours as was his favorite pastime but eventually he decided to stop thinking -- partly because this "stop thinking" activity was also a favorite pastime too.
So he stopped thinking and decided to decide something instead.
He decided that maybe he needed more data, more input from his fellow workers on what they thought about Gigan.
So he set aside his tools and proceeded to go around asking his fellow workers what they thought about Gigan. To the young man, it was not clear that they were thinking at all because his fellow workers came back with all kinds of seemingly reasonable but possibly highly irrational explanations, each of which boiled down to the following:
"Well we work for the sake of the brain. The brain that's in the box at the top of its head. Since it's in a box it has these virtual thoughts -- the kinds of thoughts that Gigan has when it thinks in a box."
"Yeah and this box is called a brainbox."
"And the brainbox needs something to hold it up. Plus you'd have to admit that it's good to have several stable and secure places to mount mechanical motors."
"Yeah, the motors that drive the pumps."
"The pumps which push the fluids through the cables and pipes."
"The cables and pipes carry the fluids to all the parts of its structure that need the fluids."
"Those parts benefit from the fluids because the fluids lubricate the parts and redistribute waste heat."
"All of this helps it to move … if it were to do so."
When our hero heard this last bit he smiled wide and interrupted them in his sudden excitement by saying, "So clearly it has been designed to move! But it never moves!" Though when he said these things he only smiled wide on the outside because deep down he suspected that it was going nowhere.
"It might move," responded the particular fellow worker who he had interrupted the moment before. "Just because it isn't now doesn't mean it won't or ever hasn't. That is irrelevant. That has nothing to do with mechanics or what we do."
"Then what is the purpose of Gigan?" asked our hero.
"Huh?"
He groaned. "What is the overall purpose of Gigan, as a whole?" he restated his question for the purpose of clarification. "If it won't move is its purpose the virtual thoughts?"
The fellow worker he addressed got a blank expression. Someone else nearby proceeded to giggle and laugh.
"You're nuts."
"I'm not sure if you know what you're talking about."
"I think that may be a nonsensical question. Like asking what the color yellow smells like."
"I agree with Gort. To put it another way, for example, in analogy, it is like wondering about what the hypothetical opposite of a hippopotamus would be."
"Tern's right. Tern is dead on it. You're being too metaphysical. I think it is more of a spiritual issue, best left for the wise men and holy documents to decide."
The conversation continued like this for several hours until eventually, our hero -- the curious young man with questions -- became too frustrated and decided to give up. He picked up his tools again and resumed his job working on Gigan, just like everybody else.
Time passed...
Our hero showed up to work one day as usual, grabbed his tools, got into position in his officially assigned working spot. A location near the end of one of Gigan's arms. Almost immediately he made a terrible discovery:
Blood.
Where no blood should ever be at all.
There was blood on the left hand of Gigan!
Stained red spots all over and in between it's enormous grinder claws.
He raised an alarm and a crowd gathered around him to try to see what he had seen. Not all of them could get close enough to see it but of those who did they agreed that it was blood but didn't know whose blood it was. No one, in fact, knew how it got there. But they didn't seem too concerned about it either.
In the background outside the crowd around the hero a woman's voice could be heard. She was calling out a loved one's name in a worried tone, calling, pleading, begging for signs of life, over and over and over again, each time with no response. And no help from anyone in the crowd except our hero. Because our hero jumped the moment he heard her and tried to reach her. He managed to worm his way out of the crowd around and between them, and looked everywhere around to try to find her and figure out who she was and who she was calling for and find out if there was a connection between the blood discovered and the person she had lost. But he could not find her. She was gone and would never be heard from again.
Time passed...
Our hero showed up to work again one day and looked for the missing woman again but, as usual, she was still gone. So he grabbed his tools and took up his assigned working position. But he couldn't get any work done because he saw something terrible almost right away. He found more blood. Between the grinders of Gigan. He started to worry again if there was something terribly wrong about Gigan, about the people's involvement with it. He talked about it a little bit with some of the others. But nobody else was as worried about it as he was. Even though another person had been reported missing that morning. They didn't know where this missing person went. And most of the people didn't even know where the missing person came from in the first place. Some think that he never truly existed so, therefore, it would be patently impossible for him to be missing now.
Time passed...
Our hero arrived to work one morning and headed straight to his usual position. He had a particularly bad feeling that morning, about something being terribly wrong with what he was doing each day. Not necessarily there be something terribly wrong with what everybody else was doing each day because, frankly, he felt increasingly that he couldn't relate to these other people. It was as if perhaps it was not actually wrong for them to be doing what they were doing. Perhaps, for them, it was even right. And so, his little mental argument with himself went, they never thought anything was wrong whenever something terribly wrong happened because it wasn't terribly wrong for them. Just for others. And other people, in their view, it seemed, may not even exist. And since, in their view, others may not exist, it may be ---
-- The young man's thoughts were interrupted when he got a sudden shocking sight. He saw fresh blood on the grinders of Gigan. It was shiny and wet and just beginning to dry.
For a moment he just stood there and thought and thought and tried to calm his mind. He thought and thought but then eventually he reached an important decision.
He dropped his tools. Ran off into the forest.
Nobody saw him leave. Nobody talked about his absence, they just continued with their work on the machine.
At night, after all the workers were comfortably sleeping and dreaming, something stirred in the machine. A grinding and thumping sound began to emanate from Gigan. It didn't wake the workers. The left foot lifted slowly up from the ground and then moved out in front and set back down again. The huge machine moved and shifted its weight forward onto this foot, then lifted up the other one and it became clear that it was starting to walk, although very slowly and with great momentum.
Gigan walked toward the forest.
The trees bent and twisted and shredded and some were shattered and destroyed by Gigan's passing. And as it disappeared from view through the branches and leaves, it could just be made out -- by anyone who might have been out walking in their sleep -- that its giant grinder claws were slowly opening and closing, opening and closing.
To any casual observer -- for example, perhaps to anyone who might have awakened momentarily from a dream -- it would have appeared that Gigan walked with firm purpose and a definite destination in mind. At least, that is, the kind of destination that could be in the virtual mind in the box at the top of its head.
But the young man ran and ran and with firm purpose too and a definite destination in mind and so, at least for a while -- and maybe even forever -- he became free.
Friday, April 27, 2007
City by the Sea
Vileen. City by the sea. Towers and temples and tunnels by the thousands. All inhabited by people counted in the millions. It was the capital of the principle planet of the system. It had a class A starport. It had it's own space navy and it's own army. It had the most notorious bars and brothels in ten parsecs. It was the kind of place you'd be sure to find the best bounty hunters and assassins. Captain Ganymo was looking exactly for these things. He hurried through the entrance gates and proceeded on his mission.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Space Cantina Interlude
A cantina aboard a trade station, somewhere in frontier space.
"...and that is why I will never drink with a Zargollian space pirate ever again. It's just too risky."
The man at the bar was speaking to a female companion.
He wore a silver spaceship pilot's suit, a little worn around the edges, but still bearing the insignia of the Galactic Federation.
She was beautiful with long black hair, had the noticeably pointed ears of a Rigellian, and wore the outfit of a Rigel royal house to boot.
"But you had a gun," she said. "You could have shot him. Ended it right there. Before it got out of hand."
"True," he replied. "That's very true. But what I didn't mention so far is that this Zargollian had about a dozen more of his friends sitting across the room. Though I'm confident I have a decent chance against one at a time, or maybe even a few, I'm not crazy enough to think I could survive those odds. So I decided to cut bait and high-tail it out of there. Back to the ship. We lit up, cleared free of the station and were comfortably ensconced back into hyperspace before the local police vettes could so much as launch."
"That's a great story."
"Yeah. It probably sounds better looking back now than how it felt at the time. But I guess it was kinda fun. And we lived to talk about it."
"...and that is why I will never drink with a Zargollian space pirate ever again. It's just too risky."
The man at the bar was speaking to a female companion.
He wore a silver spaceship pilot's suit, a little worn around the edges, but still bearing the insignia of the Galactic Federation.
She was beautiful with long black hair, had the noticeably pointed ears of a Rigellian, and wore the outfit of a Rigel royal house to boot.
"But you had a gun," she said. "You could have shot him. Ended it right there. Before it got out of hand."
"True," he replied. "That's very true. But what I didn't mention so far is that this Zargollian had about a dozen more of his friends sitting across the room. Though I'm confident I have a decent chance against one at a time, or maybe even a few, I'm not crazy enough to think I could survive those odds. So I decided to cut bait and high-tail it out of there. Back to the ship. We lit up, cleared free of the station and were comfortably ensconced back into hyperspace before the local police vettes could so much as launch."
"That's a great story."
"Yeah. It probably sounds better looking back now than how it felt at the time. But I guess it was kinda fun. And we lived to talk about it."
Post Zero with Purpose
The purpose of this blog is to have a place online to put some of my experiments with writing fiction. There will likely be a mix of short and long pieces. Single standalone stories or scenes, as well as parts of a continuing series that get revisited with new posts whenever I generate new material for them. It's up in the air at this point. As with anything in life what's here today may be gone tomorrow. So we'll see...
Mike
Mike
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