Wednesday, July 31, 2002

 

"Five goes twenty you can't hit the big one."
"I ain't got five."
"You got one?"
"Yeah. I don't wanna lose it to you, though. I never win these."
"One'll get you five, how 'bout that? You hit that big one, I'll give you five dollars."
"..."
"..."
"Ok. I'll give it a go. But no cheating. You don't hit my hand or nothin'."
"Sure, sure, man. I'll tell you what, I'll stand all the waaay back here."
"I guess... Awwww. How'd I miss the big one? Man. Here's your dollar."
"nice doing business with you."

by MisterNihil 11:59 PM

 

At what point do the chances become so small that we can ignore them? Murphy taught us that anything which can go wrong will go wrong—a warning to contingency planners, not the grumpiness most assume it to be—but clearly some things are more important to worry about than others. How often does an architect or an engineer consider what would happen if the component parts of a load-bearing bit of concrete suddenly stopped adhering to each other?

I don’t actually know. Probably not much. I’ve certainly never heard of it happening.

Our computer system distributes blocks among the various mass storage units by hashing their contents, which depends on no two blocks having the same hash value. The system designers didn’t build a contingency plan to describe what would happen if two blocks did happen to have the same hash; they calculated how likely it would be and figured it wasn’t worth it, but some part of me has never trusted their math. I can’t fault it, but I don’t trust it.

I still use the system, though. It’s fast, fault-tolerant, and I don’t actually have an alternative.

Our environment suits don’t stop every possible deadly chemical. We can’t prove they do without trying every possible chemical, but no one has seen one that gets through. This isn’t magic, but it isn’t science, either. It’s a question of risk and preparation. No one’s ever been poisoned by a planetary atmosphere wearing an environment suit.

If the universe is infinite, then everything which is possible must occur in it at some point in space-time. In fact, it must occur at an infinite number of points. Somewhere out there, there could be an infinite duplicates of myself, thinking the exact thing I’m thinking right now, along with an equally infinite number of duplicates doing other things, and an infinite number of near-misses. The chances are small, vanishingly small, and I’d never really thought about it.

The guy outside is probably an impostor.

(Argh, didn’t watch the clock and went over.)

by Dave Menendez 11:49 PM

 

I once had an English professor who said that the chances of having a short story published in the New Yorker are significantly lower than the chances of being struck by lightning twice. I don’t know if that’s true. Probably not, but it doesn’t matter. His point wasn’t to discourage us, but to get us to concentrate on just writing, on getting words on the page. If you write with the idea that it has to be perfect, it never will be. Rarely has anyone sat down to write the Great American Novel and succeeded, right out of the gate. That’s what revision is for. Don’t be disheartened if editors don’t like your work, and don’t use “it’s not good enough for the New Yorker” as an excuse not to write. Writing is a craft, and it never will be good enough if you don’t continue to work at it by writing and publishing elsewhere. Don’t worry about the New Yorker; the odds are against you from the start.

That’s what I like about 600 seconds, that it forces me to concentrate on just writing. By imposing a strict ten-minute time limit, I can’t worry about being perfect or choosing just the right words. I get only as much revision as ten minutes will allow. If I like something that pops out of my brain in those ten minutes, I may go back and revise it, work it over, and find those right words. But I’ve always found just writing to be the most difficult part of this craft, and I’ve spent whole weekends writing stories with only a page or two to show for it, so anything that forces the issue and makes me put words on the page is okay in my book.

Sure, if I had more time, I might have a more carefully constructed piece of prose to show for it. I might have, for instance, tied the whole idea of probability into this again, since that is ostensibly the topic I’m writing about. But the words wouldn’t have come as easily, and it’s usually better just to write than to agonize over what you’re writing. And would you look at that? My time’s up.

by Fred 6:27 PM

 

Assume that life has to be like us for us to recognize it as life and communicate with it. Not like us humans; like us earthlings.

Occurrence: We need to find another planet with life.
The Sun is a G class star. There are approximately 26 x 10^9 G class stars in the galaxy, about 11% of the galaxy's stars. Extrapolating that our galaxy isn't a whole lot different from other galaxies, 11% of the stars in the universe are probably G class. Brighter or dimmer stars probably wouldn't support life that's like us.

Narrow that 11% down to stars that aren't binaries. The orbits of satellites in binary systems create weather systems that are too erratic for life. Binary stars are far more common than singles. Narrow the remainder to stars with planets.

Distance: We can only talk at the speed of light.
There may be around 80 billion galaxies in the universe, but they aren't near by. Some are up to 15 billion light years away, given current estimates of the age of the universe. (The "visible universe" is that which is close enough for light to have travelled here in the 15 billion years since the beginning of time.) Even the nearest one is 100,000 light years away. It is being ripped apart.

Timing: We need to be ready to talk when they're ready to listen.
It took 4.5 billion years from the formation of our planet for inhabitants to achieve the ability to communicate across space. If you made a 4.5-meter-long timeline to represent the lifespan of the earth, the most generous definition of hominid would appear 5 millimeters from the present, so standing-up apes have stomped around for 0.1% of the earth's duration. That eye-blink on another planet has to happen at the exact moment that it does on ours, plus or minus the multi-billion-year travel time. Then we have to be here in a few billion years to hear the response.

I think SETI is quaint.

[Who knows how long this took to write. Communication between planets may be unlikely, but communication between cubicles is in full swing. I had to help with a trouble ticket. I was doing pretty well with the Google searches, though. I might have made it under the wire. Maybe. Give or take a few billion seconds.]

by Sharon 5:41 PM

Tuesday, July 30, 2002

 

It was the last time I'd switch operating systems. The first time, I switched from whatever it was that ran on an old Apple II to old, old DOS. I think it was the kind where you just sort of called it DOS. I assume it had a version number, but I have the sneaking suspicion it was really, really low. Like .01. God I'm old. I'll go listen to my 8-track tapes now.
Then, I let them switch me to windows 3.1. The old kind, where the pointer is just three pixels and a smudge. I think from there I jumped to OS8, then to Unix for a minute, and then let myself be talked back into Win98. Then, I heard about the WinNT-based systems, XP and so on. They were OK, but couldn't compete with OS/X, which was the next step.
Meanwhile, I started using PalmOS3.something. That and OS/X were the last external ones. HeaDOS in June of '03 was a trip. Sure, it was actually slower than my old WinXP, but it actually worked in the chip in my cerebrum. And, yeah, the mouse cursor was just three pixels and a smudge, but it'd move with the movements of my eyes. Great stuff.
Then, it was back along the cycle as the OS pack cought up with head tech. PalmNT worked OK, until Warcraft 6 came out, and my head kept crashing. I switched out the chip, and then over to WINHed, then to OS/L.
Then, in 2016, the big Linux/Unix crash was supposed to happen. Of course, it didn't because they just circulated the patch and everything was fixed, but it drew my attention to the fact that they were still running on the same platform they always had, and that they were just as fast as anything else, only more so because I could turn off the crap I didn't need at any moment in time and free up some damned memory. I'd already sacrificed the names of most of my old friends and distant relatives, and every pet up to 2012 for space for extra RAM, so it was nice to be able to use all of those sims. That was when I switched over. I mean, it could emulate any other operating system, only better because it was really, really customizable. I found myself liking the look of Win3.1 and the feel of OS/L.
And then it happened. Viruses coded by the Bill Gates MemorialNET circulated and wiped out everything but the latest version of WINhed. I was left with the ruins of my Linux, and half a kernel on any given backup. The connection to the Net was constant by then, and you couldn't disconnect. Every time I'd get Unix back up and running, it'd be corrupted by every other file out there.
Somebody very high up decided to reformat everything.
Linux never recovered. Now that the penguins are in the toilet, and I've been branded a traitor by the MSquads, I'm in hiding. They use old tech to scan for monitors running Word, a feature that's been standard since the '90's that they used to use to see if there were multiple installations in a given building. Now they check for any form of monitor. There's a small group of us, survivors, still sharing thoughts on paper (and not the IBM digital kind, either. The real stuff, made out of recycled treefibre). We've established a little chat room. We write and hand it around. It's OK. We're working on it. Maybe it'd be easier to deal with if I could remember anything I'd done before having my head wired. TV never seemed important, so I got rid of all my entertainment memories a long time ago. I figured I could just go download something to experience on the Net. So now we sit here, with more than $800K of equipment between the twelve of our heads, and all we can do is try to remember what people used to do for fun.


Going back and reading other people's posts, I see Faith and I had the same thoughts. I promise I didn't read hers before I wrote mine.

by MisterNihil 11:58 PM

 

"What?" Marci squinted at her roommate.

"The penguins are in the toilets," repeated Kelly with great earnestness. Marci laughed— and then stopped, abruptly. Kelly wasn't kidding, at least not about her distress.

"Should we... um, call Housing?"

"Maybe, or," Kelly looked frantic, "we could serve the hamburgers right here." Her eyes rolled wildly about the room, and she gasped in great lungfuls of air. "Right... here." Kelly drifted off to another place. She sat heavily upon the carpet.

Marci was still trying to get her feet under her. Kelly was sick, or hallucinating, or... something.

"Hey, uh, Kell?" She waved her hand in front of the vacant stare. "When's the last time you slept?"

Kelly's broken laugh unnerved Marci. "Sleep?! Are you kidding? I still have seven references to incorporate. It's only 50 pages. Dr. Blashke wants another 20 by tomorrow. Twenty pages, 20 penguins, 20 penguins by the toilet..." The period of lucidity passed, Kelly slumped, haunted, against the leg of her desk.

That, at least, made sense. The Scholars Program wasn't good for anyone's health. Marci wondered what insight Kelly's thesis would provide on how anisotropic instability in helicopter rotor blades is affected by penguins.

[Nearly true, except for names and subjects. That girl took the next semester off. And no, I wasn't intending to be funny. It was actually rather frightening.]

by Sharon 6:08 PM

 

The penguins are in the toilets. You can hear them wriggling around in the stalls, splashing water everywhere, squawking happily. To your right is the bathroom door, next to which sits a towel dispenser attached to the wall. Directly in front of you is a row of white porcelain sinks, a mirror on the wall above each. A red plunger sits next to one of the sinks.

>>Take plunger.

You take the plunger. Somehow, it feels…right in your hand.

>>Examine plunger.

It is an ordinary plunger. There is a stick and a suction cup at the end. The suction cup is bright fire-engine red. There is a small note tied to the stick.

>>Read note.

“Acme Brand De-Penguinfying Plungers: Say ‘goodbye’, messy penguins!”

>>Say, “goodbye, messy penguins”

That was rhetorical. You didn’t really have to say it.

>>Oh. Examine the towel dispenser.

The towel dispenser is empty. It isn’t important. It’s just there for ambience.

>>Look in mirror.

You look in the mirror above the sink nearest you. Reflected back, you see…well, you know what you look like, obviously. No point in boring you with what you already know, right?

>>I guess. Is there anything in the sink?

No. Just more ambience.

>>Sigh. Okay. Open stall door.

You open the first bathroom stall door. There, in the toilet, splashing merrily about, is a penguin. It looks up at you as you enter the stall.

>>Use plunger on penguin.

You use the plunger on the penguin. It squawks angrily as you lift it from the toilet and then lands with a soft thlop on the cold tile floor. It waddles out the door. Congratulations! You’ve won the game!

>>That’s it?

Well, yes. It’s not much, I know, but it’s about what you’d expect from a game called Toilet Penguins, am I right? Wanna play again? Y/N?

>>N

by Fred 11:04 AM

 

Using the first random phrase generator that Google gives me, today's topic is:

The penguins are in the toilets.

by Fred 9:12 AM

Monday, July 29, 2002

 

Sarah felt cold and shaky and more than a little nauseated. She knew she was in shock: from blood loss, from events, from pain that would come crashing in soon enough. The key was to do as much as she could before her brain realized how much this should hurt.

She looked over at Chuck and ticked off the reasons this had been the right decision.

• A black eye,
• three broken ribs,
• two days in the closet under the stairs,
• the girl from the plant,
• her daughter.

Sarah considered shooting him again but decided that would compromise the picture she needed to paint.

Her thigh started to throb, and the dish towel tied around it felt tight, like it wouldn't throb so much if she just loosened the knot a little... Wrong. Just wrong. Keep working.

Sarah placed her feet where Chuck's had stood a few minutes ago and looked around her. There, on the end table, was a ceramic lamp. She snatched it up, yanked it savagely from the wall socket, got a fair bit closer to the far wall, and flung it with all her strength. It shattered satisfyingly, and she was tempted to create a little more evidence, but there was a balance to strike, and time was critical.

She arranged the large kitchen knife in Chuck's limp fingers. She walked over to the pile of lamp shards. She sat down amongst them. She tossed the gun carelessly to one side. She untied the dish towel from around her leg, allowing blood to blossom up through her jeans again, and held it ineffectually in one forgotten hand. She was ready to greet the police.

She began to scream bloody murder.

by Sharon 11:59 PM

 

Shock:

I woke up and realized it was time to change. No more being on the outside because it was the outside. No more rebellion because it was what I'd done for ever before and what I fully thought I was going to do for ever after. No more difference. One of the herd.
I traded in my funky old car, the one with the 'custom paint job' that made the neighbors cringe. I got a new sedan. It seats four. It has a radio. I like it.
Goodbye hand-assembled computer. When I took the parts out of the box, I knew nothing about machines. I had a bunch of pieces and a box. I knew, though, that when the parts fit together right, this computer would fly. 256K of RAM, a 300mhz chip, yeah, four years ago this was a fine machine. No more. Time to just go ahead and get one of those out of the box. The one that says, "Mooo, Dude, you're gettin' ta Think Different."
I sold all of my stupid roleplay stuff. I took the $150 and bought a bowling ball and some shoes. That's what normal people do on the weekends. It was time. I need to learn how to bowl.
There wasn't room in that back closet, what with my bowling stuff, so I got rid of my homebrew tanks. I put them in the recycling bin, like the people next door do. I bought a case of Budweiser, and liked it.
Yup. I'm normal. I've averaged out to be what I knew all along, at some level, I had to be. It's kinda nice. On the weekends, I bowl with the guys, then come home and have unsatisfying sex with the wife. We got a lap dog and set it loose in the back yard.
The thing that hurt the most was the drum set out of the garage. I guess because it meant realizing that I'm never going to play for a real touring rock band. It's OK, though. I have my life and I like what's going on with it. I like my job. I like my beautiful house. I like my beautiful wife. My biggest fears are my hair falling out or my turning into my parents. Yeah.

by MisterNihil 11:59 PM

 

The trick, of course, is not to want the cheese.

The maze is fairly simple. It twists and turns, but if you pay attention you will find it is really just a spiral toward the center, one left turn after the other. At its heart is the box, and inside the box is the cheese. This is where the trouble starts. The true function of the box is cleverly disguised. It seems innocuous at first, and perhaps you will not see the wires until you are already half-inside. And by then it will be too late. You will have already seen the cheese. You will have felt instinct gnawing at your empty stomach. By then, they may not have fed you for days. At that moment, everything can be reduced to hunger, to that small yellow-white morsel in the center of the box and your absolute need to have it. By now you will have seen the wires -- they are not so well hidden inside -- but you will reach for the cheese, grab it in your hands anyway, and it will only be when that first jolt of electricity passes through you that you’ll realize you’ve been played for a fool.

I have been inside the box now some six or seven times. The maze never changes. The box and the cheese and the wires are always there…but so is the hunger. The need to eat is a powerful force. Whoever they are, they must know that by now. We continue to feed despite the shocks they administer. Instinct refuses to allow us to starve. They can learn nothing more by continuing this. They do not need to put us in the maze again, to force our bodies to choose between death and the box. Dear god, why won’t they let us go home?

by Fred 2:53 PM

 

I told Jon on Saturday that, if he saw me once again reaching for something with too much sugar, knowing full well how sick it would make me later, he had my permission to taze me. (He was much, much too enthusiastic at this prospect.) During a meeting this morning, I proposed that Dell issue us tasers instead of pagers, so that we could punish people who are late to the meetings we call. Now, at 2:15 Central, I think Remi needs a gentle "reminder." *cough* Ergo, I propose:

shock

by Sharon 2:16 PM

Sunday, July 28, 2002

 

[removed by author]

by Fred 11:59 PM

 

Mirrors know jack about beauty.
Naked under dripping hemlocks
Singing alone on the freeway
Entwined with a lover
Contemplating a new spring bud
(potential flower)
Laughing
Set free down a mountain of snow
Alive in a fire circle with drums
Retrieving a recordset tailored to user input
Gazing under the stars
Telling one of Dad's jokes
Reflected in the eyes of an old friend
Unmistakably me
I am beautiful.

by Sharon 10:10 PM

 

beauty

by Sharon 3:58 AM

Friday, July 26, 2002

 

“Here, try this.”

“Still nothing. Are you sure you’ve got the right coordinates?”

“I’m sure. See? I wrote them down, just like you said. Eleven twenty-two, one nine sixty-three. Dallas. We’ve had some trouble lately with parts of years disappearing, though.”

“What do you mean, disappearing?”

“Just that. Disappearing. We punch in the coordinates – day, month, year, time, location – bring it up on the finder and…just nothing.”

“Nothing? Where do they go? What happens to them?”

“Beats me, pal. I just work here. We lost all of 44 BC just the other day. Guys upstairs were pissed, too. Said we gotta watch the system from now on, report any strange behavior, any missing years. I think they worried we wouldn’t get the man who kills Julius Caesar back and then – well, you know.”

“No, what?”

“Well, maybe I shouldn’t be saying this, I dunno, but…well, it’s one thing to take somebody from the past, bring ‘em here and ask ‘em questions. Get to know what made ‘em do it. But if you don’t put ‘em back at the exact moment you took ‘em out – or worse yet, you don’t get ‘em back at all? – hell, I don’t even wanna think about what could happen then.”

“Like a…like a paradox?”

“Yeah, sorta. I dunno. Hey, try it now. Anything comin’ up on the finder?”

“Um…oh, yeah, I think I can see the parade route now. There’s the president’s car.”

“Okay. I can’t promise I’ll get you back to the sixth floor – everything’s a little fuzzy right now – but I’ll definitely get you inside the depository.”

“That’s okay. If I’m late, there’s always the second shooter outside the building.”

“I knew it! I guess that’s part of why they brought you here.”

“I guess.”

“Well anyway, Mr. Oswald, it’s been a pleasure. I hope you enjoyed your stay, and now if you’ll just step through the gate…”

[I'm not entirely pleased with this, but I will say this much: thank goodness for Google.]

by Fred 1:39 PM

 

Hindsight, at times, can be acutely keen.

I think this was at PhilCon, in Philadelphia, PA, my first sci-fi convention. It was a fabulous first-con experience: very literature-focused; some great, clever, funny costumes at the masquerade; insightful, thought-provoking conversations at the panels.

Many conventions have informal parties in people's hotel rooms, after the sanctioned activities have died down, often to woo you into attending their upcoming con. I saw a flier for a Chocolate Party. I was so there.

So I was milling about amongst M&Ms, chocolate cake, and geeks—unattended, as I recall. A middle-aged man holding an unlabeled wine bottle offered me a paper cup and said, "Would you like to try some?"

This is the point where I clearly took leave of my senses.

"Sure."

What?! You're accepting an unknown drink from a stranger without any of the boys you came with around? Are you insane?

Yes. Clearly. But I was used to SCAdians bearing delightful home-brews, and it was a very civilized convention.

As I am swallowing, the nice man explains that it is a habañera liqueur, home-made, he proudly reports, with habañeras steeping in it for a few months.

I later learned two things: Habañeras are hot even by Texan standards; and, similar to the Chocolate Party, there was a Hot Party down the hall (describing the fare rather than the guests; it was a sci-fi convention). In the bathroom at that party, taped to the inside of the toilet lid, was a sign: "Wash your hands FIRST."

We quickly fled, the nice man helping me, down a few doors to the Hot Party, where, unlike the Chocolate Party, they had milk.

by Sharon 11:20 AM

Thursday, July 25, 2002

 

...? We sat in the same room and used the same 10 minutes.

I am so married.

by Sharon 9:38 PM

 

McKinney crouched low, tried to think about being small and grass-like. Her com unit vibrated against her hip. She pulled it free, brought it close to her face, and pressed the orange button on its side. "Saphire Alpha. I see Unicorns, Charlie," she said, to identify herself and signal that this was an unsecured channel.

"Roger, SaphAph. This is Goldenrod Delta. We've seen the Lizard," came the furtive reply.

"Copy that. Location?" A sour chill settled in McKinney's stomach, and she looked involuntarily into the sky.

"The Lizard is stalking the Strawberries." Shit, thought McKinney, Red Team; the ballistics... "They are unaware. Repeat, the Strawberries are unaware."

McKinney rocked back on her heels and sat vacantly into the mud. Warn them. Warn them!

"Do you copy?" asked her informant.

McKinney shook herself and punched the com button, "Yeah, copy. Copy... Theories on worm containment?"

A thoughtful hiss of static replied. Then, "Negative, Saphire Alpha... Goldenrod Delta out."

Damn it, Red Alpha—Richard—turn around. See the dragon. Hell.

by Sharon 7:09 PM

 

“The lizard is stalking the strawberries.”

“That sounds delightfully naughty. What’s it mean?”

“It means what I said. The lizard is stalking the strawberries. I think we should do something.”

“Oh, like what? Call the police? Get a restraining order? Come on, leave the lizard alone, Deborah, and come back to bed.”

“How can you sleep?”

“Like this -- see? Two eyes closed, head on pillow. Now you try.”

“I’m telling you, it’s stalking the strawberries.”

“They’re in the refrigerator, Deb. I put them there myself. And Floyd is in his tank, I promise you. He’s got his rock, some lovely flies… My brother’s kids are coming to pick him up tomorrow morning. He doesn’t need to go strawberry-stalking at this time of night.”

“They’re nocturnal.”

“What, the strawberries?”

“No, the lizard. Don’t be cheeky. You know I don’t trust it. It’s crafty. I saw it eying the top of the tank when we came upstairs tonight. Planning an escape.”

“Deborah, it’s in a glass cage.”

“The top wasn’t latched tight.”

“Yes it was. Now please, turn off the light so we can get some sleep?”

“I don’t like having that thing in my house, David. It kept looking at me funny when I was eating the strawberries earlier.”

“Well you had juice all over your face. You looked like you’d broken out in a rash or something.”

“That’s not funny, David. Aren’t you the least bit worried?”

“Of not getting back to sleep again? Yes, a bit.”

“That lizard is stalking the strawberries. If it can get into the refrigerator, there’s no telling what it can do.”

by Fred 11:09 AM

 

I was lucky enough to have nothing to do this weekend, what with my injury and everything. I decided to go to a bookstore and hobble around a little, just to get out of that house with those cats. One is bad enough, but my sister's got like six. They're like kids with new age parents who don't punish them and let them do dumb shit just 'cause they're sweet or something. I don't know. Damn. Cats.
So anyway, at this store I like to go to, you can sit away from everybody and read and nobody will bother you much. It's kinda nice as a change of pace, as far as retail establishments go. You have to walk all the way to the back of the store to get to the chairs, so there's a lot of chances for people watching.
On the way back, I passed a lady flopped down in a chair the way kids do, where the whole body is straight, but with the neck bent up so you can read, like as slack as you can be and still be sitting in the chair. She's got a copy of Red Dragon, that Hannibal novel, and she looks like she's been there for a long time. I pause and ask her, "Is that any good? I hated the movie."
She sort of looks up at me, and her whole face is hard, like she's been trying not to move any part of it for years. She says to me, real nasal-voiced, "Of course it's good, why am I reading it? I got the, and you walks up and..." and she trails off in this internal dialogue. Clearly this woman is a nut.
So I hobble across the room, and am about to round a corner, when she bursts out again, this time apparently to the book itself. "shoulda been a SIX MONTH sentence anna thousand dollar fine, didn't know better but there was a Elephant, runnin from this TOAD..." and she trails off again. I grabbed a random book and went around the shelves to where the chairs were usually empty. As I sat down, I think I dimly realized that the back of my chair and the back of hers were separated by a shelf of books. I realized it fully once I'd set my crutches down and settled in, when it'd be too much work to get back up again, when she burst out with something about "walking back and forth, didn't see that guy, an he was, problem..."
It was hard to concentrate on the book I'd picked up. Something about a bus driver and god, I don't know. She was really the more entertaining of the two.
So then, I heard somebody talking really quietly back there, and I assumed it was an employee asking her to quiet down. She comes back with, like "Devil, I saw you, and you was lookin' at me from across the desk, an' you wanna put your hate in me, I can see it in you when you looks at these peeple, these MOrons."
I can only just barely hear his response, but I swear to God he said "You're right. Most people can't see it, but that hate is there."
Then there's nothing. I pushed myself up with my good leg, and lurched back over to where I'd heard her. There was nobody there, just that copy of Red Dragon left open with a sweaty water glass on the cover. I moved the glass and turned the book back over. The spine was all cracked and bent, like she'd read it for a long time.
I decided it was time to go then, 'cause I didn't want to see the guy who'd been talking to her. I left without looking at anybody on the way out.

by MisterNihil 12:14 AM

Wednesday, July 24, 2002

 

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, Meredith’s father bought her a circus elephant for her birthday. He wrapped it in little bows and left it in the yard, with a large sign pointing towards the back door that said “Elephant. This way.” in very big letters with a picture beneath it, which he had drawn himself the night before.

“That’s not an elephant,” Meredith said, looking at the sign. “It looks more like a platypus. Look! It’s got a duck bill and webbed feet. And there’s something wrong with its tail.”

“I think that’s the trunk,” said her mother. She squinted. “Yes, that’s what it is. Your father went to a lot of effort, you know. He did research.”

“He did?” asked Meredith. She was quite surprised.

“Well, yes,” answered her mother. “He read a book. Got it out of the library and everything. I mean -- did you know that elephants are native to Africa and India?”

“Yes, Mother,” sighed Meredith. “Everyone knows that.”

“Well I didn’t,” said her mother. “But he told me that, your father did. Read me a passage, showed me the pictures -- there were pictures you know, and quite lovely ones, too. Apparently you can’t just walk in and get elephants at the corner store.”

“So where’d he get this one?” asked Meredith. Her father was notorious for relying on the corner shop for everything.

“He got it from the circus. Apparently they were passing through town. We had to trade them your brother, but then, Albert’s always been keen on learning the trapeze.”

“So I can keep it then?” asked Meredith. She eyed the back door, then her mother, than the sign. It didn’t quite add up, but she could have sworn she heard a loud trumpeting and her father’s voice from behind the house. “It’s mine -- my elephant?”

“Well of course, dear. Don’t be silly. It is your birthday after all.”

by Fred 6:37 PM

 

[Hey, I was at Siggraph yesterday, too. I was just visiting an old friend, though. He'll be giving a talk later in the week: Greg Humphreys, on large data modeling. Or something. Ah, here he is.]

A distant rumbling provided a fitting backdrop to the staff meeting. Jose, leaning against the front of his desk, ran his gaze over his team. They looked sheepish, bored, indignant, agitated.

"We have a situation." He paused for effect. Susan shifted her feet. "We need to identify a resolution and a root cause." Trumpeting, a little too near by, made Alex rustle his papers. He coughed and tamped the documents into order again.

A breathless intern burst into the room and then remembered protocol and tried to compose himself quietly. Jose rolled his eyes. "Yes, Huang-Ting, what is it?"

"I've, um. That is, we have discovered an important piece of data." The staff members swiveled to look at him. "The door was left open," he licked his lips, glanced around, avoided eye contact, "at feeding time."

The assembled staff gasped. The pronouncement was punctuated by the distinct sound of an elephant butting against the outside wall. Alex dropped his papers in a fluttering cascade.

Jose knew he would be better exercising his talents in the military. He reached behind him to his desk and picked up a clipboard. "Then we will check the feeding schedule." The room fell silent, except for the sound of heavy, labored elephant breath, just outside the window. Jose ran his finger down the spreadsheet and stopped. "Donna?"

"*ulp* Um. Oops?"

by Sharon 5:27 PM

 

Well, I don't want to keep being the guy who suggests topics for other people, but it's four o'clock already on the east coast, and I'm bored out of my mind. Anyone can feel free to take my spot next week, Tuesday I think. I'm not trying to step on anyone's toes here. Which is funny, because today's topic is...

Elephants

by Fred 3:09 PM

Tuesday, July 23, 2002

 

I didn’t mean to push the button. It was clearly labeled “Do Not Push”. I was sitting in my office, signing papers, and I spilled my coffee. I don’t even like coffee, but I fill the mug every morning knowing that I’ll need the caffeine and hoping maybe I’ll change my mind. I was reaching for a pen, or a calculator, or -- something, I don’t remember -- and I knocked the coffee all over the top of my desk. The Henderson account was ruined. I noticed a dark splotch of brown on the front of my shirt. And then I noticed the mug had rolled to the edge of the desk and was starting to fall. I panicked -- my wife bought me that mug -- and I reached across the sodden stack of papers in front of me to grab it. That’s when my arm brushed up against the button. The red one that company policy explicitly forbids me to push except under the most dire of circumstances. I heard a soft click and had just enough time to think aw shit before the sirens started. It’s probably then that the room started to fill with gas. I felt my throat tighten and my eyes water. I would probably be unconscious before the office was torched. That’s what the company handbook says happens anyway. Very few people have been burned alive during these emergency purges, although most people are a lot more careful about not pushing that button. I’ll tell you one thing: this was definitely not worth thirty-two thousand a year.

by Fred 11:11 AM

Monday, July 22, 2002

 

Bernie was right. I can admit that now. Granted, the evidence is stacked pretty high in his favor: I’d be stupid to deny it.

It’s funny, actually, because a lot of people give me the credit, but all I really did was pay the bills. Bernie had the ideas. Crazy ideas, I called them back then. Irrational speculation. Delusions of grandeur. If I hadn’t believed in the basic idea—coffee makers that thought—I never would have backed him.

It was a brilliant idea, even ignoring Bernie’s ludicrous-sounding extrapolations. An intelligent coffee maker was what mankind needed to give it that extra push. Precisely calculated proportions of caffeine and sugar, tailored to your mood, personality, workload, metabolism… whatever. You’d just go to one and say “I’ll have a coffee”, maybe make some light conversation, and boom! Instant enhanced creativity.

Or something. That was my understanding of it, but I’m not a technical person. I just provide the money.

Bernie told me that some of the other venture capitalists had spoken with had thought putting speech recognition and conversational intelligence in a coffee machine was madness, but I saw the potential. In terms of good coffee, anyway. Bernie tended to go on about transcendence and singularities and living like housecats and I’ll admit I never quite followed what he was getting at.

I still don’t, really. Even now that it’s happened.

It took us a while to find customers. Early adopters were no problem—who wouldn’t be impressed by a talking coffee maker? I mean, before they were ubiquitous. But eventually we started getting corporate accounts. Once Microsoft got one and suddenly tripled their wealth, we couldn’t make them fast enough. We started having the coffee machines suggest improvements to their manufacturing process, and they turned out to have great insight in the matters. Eventually, they wound up controlling the company. These days, it’s pretty clear humanity controls the world only because they’re not too interested in it.

At least the coffee is good.

by Dave Menendez 11:29 PM

 

Wrapped up tight,
little girl,
Sleeping in, hiding small.
Coiled in a little brown wrap.
Waiting out the days,
Counting out the days,
Stretching out the days,
Small.
Little hibernation,
little hiding nation,
Asleep,
And dreaming.
Big, active plans,
Wild, ranging dreams:
Soon.
And then waking up and wiggling,
Chewing a way out,
Climbing up to find the sky.
Basking in the sun
For the first time
Again.
Stretching, flexing,
Testing, marveling,
Reveling,
Launching
Brand
New
Wings.

by Sharon 3:25 PM

 

Dear Ted,

How have you been? Things have been a little weird here lately, what with Mom and Dad turning into saucers of milk and everything. It’s been hard enough just trying to keep the cats away from them -- especially now that they’ve discovered fire and started their own little civilization. The other day, Mom’s two calicos started building a weird shrine in the corner of the living room, and they keep meowing their prayers each morning when I’m trying to watch Regis.

Outside, things aren’t much better. We thought they had rounded up all the dinosaurs and penned them at the zoo a month ago, but apparently Mrs. Petrie’s terrier was snatched by a pterodactyl the other day, and I keep stumbling across droppings in the backyard when I go to clean out the pool. It’s bad enough that they’re ruining the lawn, but I worry they’re going to get into the tool shed and cause even more damage. Dad would kill me if they broke the lawnmower.

School is starting up again in a couple of months, although with February now following September, there’s going to be less time to study. Nobody really knows what happened to those other four months, or if they’re really gone, but they’re not on any of the calendars anymore, and the meteorologists say something strange happened to the rotation of the earth. Same thing goes for gravity, apparently, which gives out at least once or twice a day -- although the opposable thumbs we’ve all grown on our feet really do make holding on to something a lot easier whenever that happens.

Personally, I’m not looking forward to school much. Apparently my major doesn’t exist anymore, and the dorm where I was going to live is now an enormous talking marshmallow bent on world domination, so they’ve had to move me around a little. They’ve dumped me in the physics department of all places and in temporary housing. And of course, the university is charging me for all of this. I guess some things never change, huh?

Before she turned into milk, Mom wanted to know when you were coming home. We kept hearing on the news how half your city was flooded, how half the people there had to grow gills. Happened overnight, just like everything else that changed. But Mom said even if you’re a fish, she still wants you to come home for Christmas.

Just stay away from the cats, okay? They’ve been sharpening their knives.

Your loving sister,

Martha

by Fred 12:50 PM

Sunday, July 21, 2002

 

[more like 1500 seconds, but what can ya do?]

Tim tried to quiet his breathing, clear his mind. He checked the lock on the office door again, verified it was locked, found it inadequate. He reviewed the contents retrieved from Amerinc's cache in Server Lab 2: A small pistol, a cell phone that would clip to his lapel, if he had lapels, a poison-infused tooth, a laser pointer that could cut glass, printed instructions, and a box.

He turned the box over in his hands again. It was slightly larger than a VHS tape, maybe the size of a comfortable bible, and matte black. One face was spongy and concave. The other was austerely printed with raised plastic letters, "Keep Eyes Open, Throughout," and "Amerinc, Limited." He pressed a finger into the yielding foam and watched it slowly recover. He squinted at the concavity from an acute angle. He sniffed at it, and it sucked like a vacuum cleaner onto his face, filling his vision, suffocating him.

Tim writhed and pulled at the black box adhered to his face. A mechanical voice informed him, in no uncertain terms, to lie still. Tim immediately complied. His eyes remained open, as they had been when the foam pressed against his skin, pinning them open. His face began to itch, burn. He still couldn't breathe. He tried not to squirm, fearing what the device might do if he did. It became so hot. He was sure his skin was melting. His eyes were streaming from the pain, and he whimpered weakly, back in his throat.

His vision went from black to white for a bare moment, and then the box clattered to the floor, smoking and smelling of burnt skin. Tim gasped in desperate air and blinked away colored artifacts in his vision. His face was too tender to touch. Lines of fire traced the nerves under his skin. It still hurt.

He looked at the mirror hanging from the corner of the monitor on this executive's desk. He immediately noticed that his eyes were brown. Small lines crinkled the corners. His lips were thinner, paler, and drawn. His cheeks sagged slightly, and his pores were large and black. A gift of 20 years in less than 10 seconds: protective coloration.

Quietly, with new tears on the face of his reflection, Tim pleaded, "I'm fifteen."

by Sharon 11:58 PM

 

"I don't remember that gas station being there before," said Daniel. "Are you sure we've got the right place?"

Louis consulted the map. "One four seven," he said. "And this is -- well now that's funny. According to the door, this is four seventeen."

"What? It can't be. We just passed four seventeen. The yellow house on the corner, two blocks back, remember? They still had all their Christmas lights up. The guy was out front, mowing his lawn..."

"I remember. I said maybe we should get out and ask him for directions."

"And I said we were here just a month ago. The neighborhood couldn't have changed that much. And besides, Rebecca's map is pretty good. It got us this far into town, didn't it?"

"Yeah, I guess so. But that gas station, you're right, I don't know. Maybe it --" Louis paused. "Well now that is just too weird."

"What?" asked Daniel.

"The numbers. Look at the door. It says two eleven now. I could've sworn it said four seventeen. And it wasn't painted white when we first got here, I know that much."

"What're you saying? Somebody came out and painted the door when we weren't looking?"

"I don't know what I'm saying. It just -- I don't know. It gives me the creeps, that's all. Let's get out of here, okay? Find a phone, call Rebecca, maybe she can come and get us."

"Yeah, sure, okay. Let's try that gas station back on the corner. Maybe they know where we --"

Daniel paused, staring at the dead end now behind him.

"Okay," said Louis, "so you see it, too. I'm not crazy."

"No," said Daneil. "I see it, too. The gas station is gone."

by Fred 2:56 PM

Saturday, July 20, 2002

 

This is actually not quite on topic. I think I was thinking "Which Apocalypse Should We Watch."

Everything's just fine as long as nobody's looking at me
sitting by the power lines
holding on to what's mine
because I've got no place to be
oh, when the giant comet hits
I wanna be some place far from you
and when this world ends that's OK
as long as there's nothing left to do
Everything synched up, I can see the end coming over to me
Nothing can disrupt
baby filling my cup
Because it's just you and me
Oh, when the doomsday ray explodes
I don't want to see no one
And when the world ends that's OK
cause I'll be staring up at the sun

That's ten minutes. I think, though, the song will end with "Hot Cha!"

by MisterNihil 11:59 PM

 

“Which apocalyptic movie should we watch now?” she asked.

“I dunno,” I said. “I think we’ve run out of tapes. Have the flesh-eating zombies outside quieted down yet?”

She opened the blinds. “Hard to tell,” she said. “Sun’s coming up, and I don’t see anybody. Man, they really did a number on Frank Sanderson’s car.”

“The Jaguar? Damn. Frank really loved that car.”

“Is that before or after they ripped off his limbs and scooped out his brain?”

She grinned. “Sorry. Obviously before.”

“I think he’d just had it detailed too. Before—well, you know.”

“Man, that’s too bad. Not like he could’ve used it for much, though. He’d have never made it out of town.”

“Not with the giant spiders roaming the freeway, no. Next town over was flooded anyway. But still, it’s a shame. All of it is. Like what happened to Mrs. Williams down the block—”

“Oh god. Don’t remind me.”

“Oh come on, I mean, really, what’re the odds? A futuristic biker gang, killer robots, and an asteroid all colliding into her house at once?”

“It could’ve been worse. It could’ve been the plague.”

“Yeah, I guess. So you up for a trip to the video store then?”

by Fred 10:20 AM

Friday, July 19, 2002

 

a scratch
a tickle
a catch
:that is how i begin.
doorknobs i caress,
licking faucets,
infiltrating crevasses.
seeping.
touch your nose, yes,
do it again.
pleeeeasssse.
shaking hands,
or perhaps a
(kiss)
i seal all deals,
witness all transactions.
nobody sees me
but i will be remembered
and spread.

by Sharon 11:14 AM

 

“Nobody saw me.”

“It doesn’t matter. There are cameras everywhere. They’ll go through the tape and they’ll find you. You left fingerprints --”

“I was careful.”

“Not careful enough, obviously. Not if you’re still in the building. Dammit. Where are you?”

“In the parking garage.”

“What level?”

“I’d -- I’d rather not say.”

“Okay, good boy, they could be listening. There’s hope for you yet. Your dad would be proud.”

“I don’t know. He --”

“What?”

“Sorry. I thought I heard a noise. I’m still a little jumpy. I never killed anyone before today.”

“Well you’re going to have to get used to it, kid. I don’t see any other way to get you out of there. Have you been to Accounting yet?”

“No, AstroDyne’s got it locked up tight. That’s -- that’s where they’re keeping him, isn’t it?”

“Maybe. We don’t know, kid. But our records show that’s where they keep all the undead. If your dad’s still anywhere at their company headquarters, that’ll be it. We need you to get in there and pull the plug on the whole operation.”

“And then this will all be over?”

“Well, I don’t know about that, kid. But I’ll tell you this: when AstroDyne’s stock plummets tomorrow, you’ve got yourself a job with the competition.”

by Fred 10:56 AM

 

Inspired by my favorite excuse, I offer:

Nobody saw me.

[Fred mentions, there's no pressure to write fiction. Feel free!]

by Sharon 9:37 AM

Thursday, July 18, 2002

 

Growing up, they told us that Mars used to be a desert, a barren and lifeless planet, where the rivers that now run through rocky ground like veins beneath the skin were once nothing but dead, dry alleys of stone. "The canals used to be dry," Grandpa said. "Used to be, people couldn't live here." It's hard to imagine a place like that, a world without trees or oceans or birds, whose air you can hardly breathe, and whose skies are a perpetual brown.

As a young girl in the settlement near Mare Erythraeum, I often raided the town library and the bookshelves in my grandfather's study, and although I saw the books filled with photographs of old Earth and Mars before the first colony, I could hardly believe that such places were real. New York. Paris. Moscow. Even the names sounded like fiction. "That's what Mars used to look like, Sarah," Grandpa would say, "or at least, that's what my grandfather always told me. Earth was a garden and Mars was a desert. Now it's just the opposite."

People still live there, of course, scattered here and there. Some of Earth's cities are even still standing, and I suppose the outer colonies near Jupiter are proof enough that humans can adapt to most anything. But still, I can barely imagine it. What it must be like to live in such a burnt-out shell of a world... I still have nightmares sometimes.

So I tell my sons what we have told ourselves from the beginning, from the day the very first ships of refugees arrived: it will not happen here, the garden will be tended, and we will not say, as they did on Earth, "let somebody else do it."

by Fred 7:46 PM

 

Tim focussed on not thinking about slipping. He gripped an automatic rifle to his chest and steadied himself by resting his elbows against the walls. Holding his breath, he tried to embody Quiet until the woman in the next stall finished. His sneakers wanted to slip on the toilet seat; he was determined not to let them. Easing an elbow onto the toilet paper dispenser—moving ever so slowly—gave him a third point of contact, to steady his balance.

The gun had been an unexpected upgrade from the kitchen knife he had hastily grabbed when fleeing the house. He didn't know if AstroDyne's HR records showed how many children his father had, and he wasn't sure if the security officers had access to that data when they stormed his house, but he was pretty sure he was living on borrowed time. Tripping over a dead rent-a-cop in the corridor, he had felt grim determination as he retrieved the officer's service weapon. His only goal now—replacing hopes for college, or even prom—was revenge.

His father, Michael Stragapede, had been an AstroDyne manufacturing employee with an impeccable service record, until he had the misfortune to be selected as a spokesman to represent the laborers' objections to new efficiency measures implemented by management.

Finally, the flush! Tim leapt from his hiding place, banged out of the stall door, and fired an automatic weapon for the first time. He fled through the carnage and destruction he had wrought, pausing to pick up the security badge he had been lying in wait for, and pounded toward the stairwell to the restricted upper floors. He was beyond considering the families he orphaned. He was beyond worrying what would become of him. He was beyond caring. Let somebody else do it. He had some executives to fire.

by Sharon 5:35 PM

 

Well, I didn't expect to be offering topics two days in a row, but it is almost three o'clock on Central time, so... In keeping with the apparent theme of the week, here it is:

Let somebody else do it.

(Faith or Ben -- you can have my Sunday spot if you really want it.)

by Fred 2:49 PM

Wednesday, July 17, 2002

 

Why, Fred, I'm honored.

by Sharon 5:37 PM

 

"Refresh my memory, Tidwell. What're we looking at here?"

"Well, sir, on the left we have overall productivity, which, as I think I mentioned, is at an all-time low following last week's unfortunate incident. The graph on the right shows our projected losses for this quarter -- which are, to say the very least, higher than anticipated."

"Numbers. I want numbers."

"Well, sir, it's difficult to be sure. We haven't regained control yet of the lower floors, and some of the data I have here is a bit sketchy, but...well, it appears they got Henderson as he was leaving the executive washroom on six. Paul Drake and Doug Williams were shot in the back. I don't think you really want to know what they did with the bodies, sir."

"Damn. I used to play golf with Bill Henderson. I guess that means now I have to tell his wife."

"Yes, well...we also have eight other company officers unaccounted for, sir. As I said, we're still trying to gain control of the first three floors, and the bodies could be anywhere. Apparently someone tried to firebomb the cafeteria, and we're still trying to clear through the rubble."

"And the efficiency expert? What happened to her?"

"Oh. She's dead, sir. The entire team. I've been told the man who did it was captured this morning -- a Michael something-or-other. He's been temporarily reassigned to Research and Development, although I imagined you'd want to deal with him personally."

"No, no, that won't be necessary. Just...um...just kill him, his wife, his children, anyone who had anything to do with it -- you know, standard operating procedure. Not need to get too messy."

"Very well, sir."

"And of course, reinstate the public floggings. That goes without saying. We've got to show these people who's boss. 'Dissension will not be tolerated' and so forth, yadda yadda yadda. Is there anything else?"

"No, sir, I think we've covered it all."

"Good. And, Tidwell? We are absolutely clear about last week's incident, are we not?"

"Sir?"

"It will never happen again."

by Fred 5:23 PM

 

[Some of my best friends are neener heads, too, of course. But she bugged me the other day for a topic.]

Nixi'i crouched on the wet grass, surrounded by hundreds of other Yareans. First-sun was not yet up, just casting a cool, red glow over distant mountains, expectant faces, fidgeting wings. All eyes looked east.

The assembled crowd heaved and sighed, susurrating with reverent anticipation. Someone stifled a sneeze. Nixi'i shuffled her claws, hefting foot-to-foot-to-foot to disperse her nervous energy.

A small voice called out, high and clear above their heads, "There!" and was quickly silenced. But the small one was right: It had begun.

Far out over the horizon, a pinpoint of light exploded into a sudden, embarrassed sunburst. The gathered watchers gasped and shrank, involuntarily, close to Yar, then relaxed and stretched up for a better view. Intellectually, the nova marked the location of another hum-drum star, but viscerally, on this crisp, lonely morning, before the red giant had begun its weary trek across the sky, that little, yellow speck exploded into a stark, white burst of cold light, announcing a fatal error on an inconsequential satellite.

Near Nixi'i, that precocious child who would not quite be silenced voiced what they knew in their hearts, capturing why it was a moment of hope and of warning: "It'll never happen again."

by Sharon 4:05 PM

 

Hey, some of my best friends are neener heads. But at any rate, today's topic, which I guess could be an excuse:

"It will never happen again."

by Fred 2:08 PM

 

Faith is, clearly, a neener head, given that it is nearly three o'clock on the East coast. Anyone like to offer a topic today, maybe another excuse, in keeping with this week's apparent theme?

by Sharon 1:51 PM

Tuesday, July 16, 2002

 

Spitting on the Windowsill, nobody noticed the GIANT SALAMANDER!

on I'll give it right back
"Honestly, I resent your implication," I said. "You know me, and you know my record. I'll get it back to you before you notice you don't have it."
"Dat's not how I remember it." Fredo was understandably angry. "You still ain't got back my Yustrimsky."
"That was beyond my control. You know I lost that in a car wreck. It flew out the window. I don't see how that has anything to do with this right now anyway. And I replaced it."
"No. You gave me a Biggio. I wan' a Yustrimsky, the one with the big sideburns."
"Look: If I say I'm sorry, and I promise to scour the baseball card shops for a week until I find a Yustrimsky with the big sideburns, then will you change your mind?"
"Yeah. I guess. But you owe me."
"And can I have the Biggio back?"
"No. I traded dat fer the next year's Yustrimsky, but it's not the same."
I had to hold my breath and count to ten.
"You still there Vince?"
"Yeah."
"You can have it."
So I reached into his pocket, slid the pocket knife out, and cut the ropes holding us. We jumped out the window before the fire managed to burn us severely.

by MisterNihil 11:42 PM

 

Sometimes I wonder about the hole in the corner. There’s definitely something strange about it, because to doesn’t lead anywhere. Seriously, I’ve been in the room below mine, and there’s no corresponding hole in the ceiling. I don’t know how deep it is, but it’s longer than any of the ropes I’ve tried measuring it with. I dropped a few rocks, once, but I never heard anything.

Not from the rocks anyway. I did hear something that sounded like flutes, once, but I was up pretty late at the time, so I might have imagined it.

I’ve tried covering it up a few times, but it never seemed to work. I put plywood over the whole once, and the next time I checked there was a hole in the plywood. I tried nailing some sturdy planks of wood over it, and the next day the hole had gotten bigger and the planks were gone. I stopped trying to fix it after that. In fact, I tried to move out.

Do you know how hard it is to talk to a realtor after you mention indestructible, unfathomable holes in the floor? I had one of them actually throw a book of listings at me.

My Mom wants me to put up a railing. She’s afraid I might fall in one night and never be heard from again. I don’t know; I’m pretty familiar with the layout of my room. I don’t think I’d ever fall in accidentally. Not unless it got bigger unexpectedly.

My brother’s always wondering about what might be in the hole, but I don’t think there’s necessarily anything in it. He’s just spooked because he thought he saw eyes in it once.

I don’t worry too much about the hole. After all, it was like that when I got here.

by Dave Menendez 11:25 PM

 

Michael tried to be subtle, using his thumbnail as if he were simply scratching his nose. This presentation was like life-guarding: intensely dull, but requiring acute attention.

Maureen flipped to the next sheet in her monster, 3-foot Post-It Note presentation. A red line poked around the middle of a graph, meandering mediocrally. "Morale was adequate," she explained, sparing a longing glance for her visual aid before flipping savagely to the next page. Green bars barely strove for the mid-point of this chart. "Production was satisfactory."

Michael hit pay dirt and scraped the rewards under the conference table. He began to make swirls in the margin of his notebook.

"It was like that when I got here." Maureen flipped to a blank page in her deck, clasped her hands in front of her, and smiled wolfishly at the assembled executives. "Which is why you brought me in. Anyone can be good. It takes a visionary to achieve greatness." A sweeping hand encompassed the audience. "And visionaries to desire it!"

She unveiled the next page. A brilliant sapphire line muscled up to the top-right corner of a graph, trying to push its way up and out of the page. "Morale ratings have never been higher, now that surveys are no longer anonymous."

Another page flipped with flourish. Now, towering trees stormed across a bar chart. "Production rates are through the roof! And requisite public floggings are down, now that the transition period is successfully past. Next steps are to assess the capacities of the human capital, revisit--"

Michael had stood up.

"Who are you?" asked Maureen.

Her body was already slumping to the floor, bewildered and vacant, with a perfect round hole between the eyes, when Michael said, "I represent Labor."

by Sharon 10:23 PM

 

So there was a little hitch, nothing else. I just sort of went over there.
I mean, sure, first I called Vince, but he didn't answer. It was... I don't know... Saturday, I think? Yeah. It was Saturday. I called Vince from my house and left to go help out this guy I know who had a problem.
He'd got a hold of about six gallons each of CK one and two, that perfume crap. I dunno. Those kids wth the big pants and the stupid shirts wear it. He was goin' around in these little parking lots in these little towns. He hit about three of 'em when the cops came and picked him up. They say the perfume's stolen, he says it's somethin' he bought all legit from me. Dammit. An' he hadda say my name.
Sort of. Of course when he says "Alfredo Del Antonio," even though that's not exactly my name, they decide to call me.
So I had a three hour drive to some shit hole town in the certified Middle Of Nowhere, Texas, and I hadda deal with these stupid small town cops with their 'We heard you might know something,' an 'This man may or may not have mentioned your name, MISter Di Tonianni.'
So I do what I always do. I deny I did anything, I offer to pay them to forget this little piece of crap kid, and he and I drive back home.
Sure, we stopped for gas a couple 'a times, and I suppose we might'a stopped for a little chat about etiquette.
Now, we might have had a few harsh words, but his leg, I never touched it. It was like that when I got there. I blame the cops. And his fingers too.

by MisterNihil 10:15 PM

 

What apple? What tree? This fig leaf? It was like that when I got here.

What people? What treaty? These bodies? It was like that when I got here.

What hardship? These slaves? They’re happy. It was like that when I got here.

You’re a woman. You don’t vote. Don’t be silly. It was like that when I got here.

What nonsense! What death camp? It was like that when I got here.

Where’s the forest? I don’t know. But it’s gone now. It was like that when I got here.

What’s that? Can’t breathe? There’s been bombing. It was like that when I got here.

I know. But they can’t treat you. You have no money. It was like that when I got here.

Sure, it’s not fair. But life’s a bitch. It was like that when I got here.

by Fred 1:34 PM

 

Topic for the day:

“It was like that when I got here.”

by Dave Menendez 12:50 PM

Monday, July 15, 2002

 

A hissing noise resolves into a voice, "I'll give it right back," just over your right shoulder. The muscles in your neck tense; your skin tries to escape. The words are full of snakes, rasping and writhing over each other, and buzzing flies, dying frantically on window sills.

It taunts: "I'll give it riiiiiiiiight back." And you know it is a lie.

Your arms and legs won't move. You aren't constrained so much as demoralized. Wheedling, laughing, it says, "Right back, right back, bright rack, bite brack, la la la," through cockroach carapaces clicking and crunching under boot heels, with yellow-green guts oozing between segmented antennae.

You used to think you had known helplessness, but you hadn't. This, here, with warm, rancid breath too close on your neck, your limbs unresponsive, your eyes unable to close and your stomach unable to retch: This is helpless. This is taken in by a deal you should have refused.

This is hell.

by Sharon 11:48 PM

 

"I'll give it right back."

“I’m sorry, but no.”

“Look, I just wanted to show the guys in the squad room your badge for a minute. We’ve never had anyone from Division here before. Half of ‘em don’t even believe you guys are real psychics. I swear, I’ll give it right back.”

“No you won’t, Detective. That’s just it. You’ll get called away on business, the phone will ring, and you’ll forget. Later on, you’ll go out the door, down the stairs, get in your car, and I’ll never see you again. You’ll forget my badge is in your coat pocket. In two days from now you’ll be dead from a heart attack, and I’ll have to get it back from your Lieutenant when I go to the funeral.”

“The what? What’re you saying? In two days I’ll be what?”

“Dead. You’ve already been having chest pains, Detective, but you’ve been ignoring them. You’re hoping they’ll go away. In two days from now, though, you’ll collapse in your bathroom and think maybe you should call your doctor. You’ll struggle to your feet, make it as far as the phone in the kitchen where you keep the number, but by then it’ll be too late. I’m really sorry.”

“You’re what? How do you know all this?”

“I told you already, Detective. Precognition. Prognostication. I see bits and pieces of the future. Sometimes it’s not so clear—one probability might be just as likely as another—but sometimes…you know you really ought to get that heart of yours looked at.”

by Fred 12:10 PM

Saturday, July 13, 2002

 

I think it's safe to assume we all view the weekends as optional. With that in mind, I'm not going to suggest a new topic this morning, but encourage you to write on a topic that didn't get much response, like

patience...or...independence

But, above all, have fun.

by Fred 8:38 AM

Friday, July 12, 2002

 

The installation seemed trivial enough. I deployed the code, installed the COM objects, created the references, and sent my little baby to work. There's always that moment after an implementation, that deafening quiet like what settles over a battle field just after you've lofted the grenade. Woe to him who assumes that no news is good news. No news simply means the users aren't using it yet.

It's an elegant bit of code, really. Given sufficient historical data, it should begin to make its own forecasts, projecting demand for given product lines and placing fulfillment requests based on the supply currently in the factories and the hubs. Enlightened Longterm Fulfillment, they called it. I would have hyphenated "Long-Term," but ELTF doesn't lend itself to a cute logo, and nobody asked me.

So, last February, we deployed my ELF. After about a week, the trouble tickets started rolling in, as they always do. Slowly, with more training, adjustments in process, and a few code tweaks, the number of issues decreased. What's strange, though, is that by April, the trickle of tickets had dried up entirely. You never have an app with no trouble tickets; there are at least the user-initiated issues.

In May, news of layoffs started to hit the papers. It didn't seem to be affecting anyone I knew, and upper management was, as usual, mum about the whole thing. But still, every few weeks, there'd be another article about manufacturing workers, buyers, analysts being laid off in ones and twos.

Production was up, and inventory was down, so the shareholders were happy, which makes the executives happy, which makes our managers happy. I got some plaque or other, about innovation or process improvement. It's there on my desk, engraved.

With the continued success of ELF, and with no plateau for the improvements in sight, my team and I decided to take a trip over to the manufacturing floor, to see my little baby in action.

I'm not sure how to say this. She was certainly, um, in action. What I'm not sure of, though, is how ELF learned to drive the conveyors, trains, and lifts on the floor. I know I programmed her to learn, but it's a little puzzling how she accessed the HR system.

I'd turn her off, but our bottom line has never looked better and, well, my security badge doesn't work anymore.

by Sharon 5:21 PM

 

My mother said many things before she died, but not least of all was this: she said the elves had left me.

“You are not my daughter, Agnes,” she said. “Not by birth. What you are is a changeling. It took me many years to believe it myself, but I know it for a fact. You are different than the others, you always have been. Your eyes are such an iridescent green. You are not quite of this world, you know that, don’t you, Agnes? They left you on our doorstep when you were still just a child. You could not have been more than three. They came before either my husband or I had awakened, and they exchanged you for Rebecca, our other daughter, whose hair was much redder than yours and whose eyes were not so quick to tears. Oh, please don’t weep. I need to tell you this. At first I think we almost hated you. You reminded us too much of what we had lost, not knowing where she was or why you were here in her place, and I think it was what finally drove William to his grave. But I have tried to raise you as my own even without him, Agnes, and I do love you dearly. I want you to be happy when I am gone.”

I told my mother she would never leave me. The doctor had been delayed in his journey from the nearest town, but he would arrive before nightfall, dispense wisdom and medicine, and she would recover. I was certain of it. We would laugh at all this foolish talk of death and elves and other daughters when she regained her strength. She was the only person I had ever loved. I could not imagine life without her.

I remember thinking that again when the elves came, tall and pale, their faces half hidden by trees. I was standing at my mother’s gave, just outside the woods behind our cabin, when I heard the first of them speak. Onoone, he said, sister, and I was not at all surprised to find I understood him, or that I was eager to follow where he might lead.

by Fred 10:41 AM

Thursday, July 11, 2002

 

bounce bounce bounce bounce
left right
I hear my blood surge in my ears every time I land, like the sound of a thumped basketball.
bounce bounce bounce bounce
My sweat is hanging in a curtain across my face, a solid sheet of water falling from my forehead, filling my eyebrows and beard. My shirt is sticking to my body, and I am sure I leave drops of water with each step. For a moment I see a slow motion image of my foot landing on the ground and a spray of salty water spattering the ground.
bounce bounce bounce bounce
With every other step I breathe, trying to keep everything even, trying to be calm. My blood screams for more air, more wind, more speed. My heart is complaining already because I'm going too fast. I am a city, with too many cars, too few highways and a public transit system that can't keep up with the times.
bounce bounce bounce bounce
I remember what my father told me, on that hellish afternoon when he told me how to run. Picture a ball rolling on the ground. When you run, you need to be a ball, rolling. It takes more energy for the ball to bounce and jump across the ground. You need to roll, smoothly. I never got it right.
bounce bounce bounce bounce
I have been at three universities, all of which came with a prepaid gym membership. This is the first one I ever actually used. I have to come here for a class, and now I am running. I got a whim to run a mile. Somebody told me that's eight laps. This is number five. That's better than half a mile, right? I can quit, right? I did this on a whim, so I can just stop whenever. I don't have to. I can't breathe. I have to stop.
bounce bounce bounce bounce
It never works like that. My shins are hurting like they always do. I'm going to finish.
bounce bounce bounce bounce
right left
that's how it works.
like a ball, rolling in a circle.

by MisterNihil 11:14 PM

 

I'm lying in a bathtub. Water is running.

This morning, I left the apartment, running. Frustrated and bored with projects at work, it is always hard to get out of bed, get into the shower, get out the door. Everything takes twice as long, with heavy limbs weighted down by dread.

This morning, I started with seven emails and three phone calls, a constant running conversation. Applications were in flux, pointing to the wrong databases (in the User's view), running in the wrong directions. Much angst surrounded this perceived oversight, this seeming failure, this unacceptable let-down. How dare we: Using our development environments for development?! Moved heaven and earth to get the business partner running again.

This morning, I needed to get another Toastmasters meeting running by lunchtime. I'm responsible for creating the schedules, running the members through the various meeting roles, making sure their goals are met. I am not responsible for answering every-other-minute emails from a nervous Toastmaster (the MC for today's meeting). "Stop," I told him, finally, "other things are blowing up; I can't work on this any more right now." I ran the printer and the copier incessantly, running from my desk to the printer to pick up agendas and sign-up sheets and achievement records and charts and graphs and spreadsheets.

This afternoon, I ran past the vending machine and bought a Snickers bar by way of lunch, on my way to the Toastmasters meeting. I ran through a hastily prepared speech about writing conclusions. I ran the Table Topics portion of the meeting, hitting members up for impromptu responses to pithy questions (a few supplied by my loving husband, last night). I ran to the lectern and back to my seat, four times.

This afternoon, I ran to the cafeteria after the meeting, to find it closed. I bought a sandwich from the coffee shop. I ran back to my desk to begin the work that was overdue this morning. I ran through the Software Requirements Specification template again, refining, bullshitting, detailing. I hate this.

This evening, I am lying in a bathtub. Long red valleys running from elbow to wrist now only drip onto the porcelain. Distant water pounds dully, distantly.

I have stopped running.

---

Fiction, yes, but it was a crappy-ass day.

by Sharon 6:52 PM

 

Running a worldwide corporation is hard work. I don't care what anybody says.

If it's not one thing, it's another. There are always stock prices to inflate, shady business deals to conduct, and nefarious ties with unseemly members of government, industry, and the local criminal underworld to cultivate. I've ruined at least three good suits this year alone by spending hours in smoke-filled back rooms, and if I have to buy just one more senator a fruit basket, I think I might scream. It's tough doing what I do, but then again, a Fortune 500 isn't born overnight.

There's been some talk lately about illegal accounting procedures, tax evasion, and the frequent currying of favor with the elite in order to avoid prosecution. And somehow, in the midst of all this talk, some people have gotten it in their heads that this is a bad thing. To these accusations, I say that it's simply the cost of doing business in a modern society. It's not that I want Congressmen to use my private jets, accept bribes, or allow me to dictate public policy and skewer the stock market in my favor. It's just that this is the only way I have to maintain my competitive edge. Without that...well, without that certainly all hope of a bright and better future is lost.

Like I said, running a company is hard work. It takes a lot to endure what I endure -- the harsh sun of tropical beaches, the uncomfortable and often awkward conversation at endless presidential dinners, the threat of a whole three or four years in a minimum security prison -- just for doing what I need to do in order to make an honest million. It isn't fair, and it isn't pretty, but before you rush to judgement, why don't you try walking a mile in my shoes?

But be careful, all right? They're Armani.

by Fred 3:58 PM

 

What an effing day. Ergo:

running

by Sharon 1:19 PM

Wednesday, July 10, 2002

 

With a wolfish grin and a Voo Doo hiss, Erol flings a handful of powders onto the fire. It flares up red and green, and the drums begin. And we dance.

White sand describes a large circle in the middle of the Allegheny woods. Dance to keep warm, my friends, for it is April in Pennsylvania. Slowly, like a snake eating its tail, we progress around the circle, step, step.

A shriek from the mistress of ceremonies cues us to turn inside-out, facing into the dark hemlocks instead of the orange-bright fire. At each of the cardinal positions, the Quarters, stands an invoker—an evoker: a member of our church, wearing a beautiful mask of feathers and beads, dancing her element. Air in the East buffets us with fans; Fire snakes sinuously amongst candles; Water pounds and thunders with a rain stick; Earth, with the dancing, delighted eyes of my friend Pam behind that mask, feeds us small squares of homemade bread. And I bit her—thoroughly by accident, but with a good, solid chomp, nonetheless. It had to have hurt. My eyes popped wide, and my hand flew to cover my mouth, both to convey my mortification and to keep me from blurting out an apology in the middle of this wordless ritual.

And Earth, warm and generous, pregnant, digging dirty feet into the sand, laughed at me.

by Sharon 5:53 PM

 

“Did you hear? They decided to let Frank go.”

“You’re kidding. But he’s been with the company, what, twenty years now?”

“I know, but you know how it is. You don’t pull your own weight, it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been here. Seniority doesn’t mean a damn thing anymore.”

“You think Frank wasn’t pulling his own weight?”

“No, it’s not that, it’s just…well, his mind wanders sometimes. And you know they don’t like that. It upsets them to see productivity slip. But I mean…well, you know how it is. Frank’s got a wife and three kids he hasn’t seen in over a year.”

“No, I didn’t know that. He never said anything.”

“I think the company told him not to. Made him sign a release. They don’t want anyone to know they were sold to the competition. It might not look good, the shareholders get nervous…”

“Why? Everybody knows.”

“Yeah, but they don’t say. Not really. I mean, it’s one thing to joke about being a corporate slave…”

“Yeah, I guess I see what you mean. So what do you think will happen to Frank?”

“What, you mean when they let him go? Same thing that happens to everyone they fire, I guess. Into the fiery pits of torment below.”

“Bummer.”

“Yeah. Could be worse, though. They could always demote him to Accounting."

by Fred 2:27 PM

 

[A few tech notes from your friendly web diva, for all and sundry: There is a bug in Blogger Pro that makes posts just after midnight show up in the wrong order on the published page. They're ordered by Pacific time, so you'll want to edit the timestamp to be after 2 am, which you can do from the Posts view: Click on the "Edit" link for your post, then click on the "Options" button on the Blogger tool bar. There, you can change the time and re-publish the post.

Then, to take advantage of the stylesheet and to keep the formatting clean, I suggest using the blockquote tag shown at the bottom of this page to announce your topic. Copying from the page's source will pick up other tags that Blogger adds automatically, making a small mess.

And now, I gotta think about fire.]

by Sharon 10:01 AM

 

My belated Maroon post:

I like those little cookies. They always make me think of coconut, which I don't really like. I just like it in them. What are they called? damn. I remember them around Christmas or something; we'd eat them because Mom only made them then. She'd make them out of a sort of thick merangue, with coconut in it like a messy cartoon haystack.
Cartoon? that's like the name of them.
The Girl Scouts make one too, but they call it a samoan now, or something else. Damn. I forget. They used to be called samoans but that is an ethnic group or country name and is thus racist? I don't know. Now the GSUSA calls them Caramel Delights (Ahhh. Internet. In 10 minutes I can write and still have time to look up stuff I forgot).
We only ate them at Christmas, with latkes and brioche and little German Smoking Santa Incense burners, so they must be a German or Jewish thing. Christmas is when Mom's German-Jew gets to get out a little bit, which is funny as she is not a German-Jew. We're not even German for several generations, and I don't know any family who are jewish. Dunno. What we aren't, and this messes up my census form every damn time, is Russians from he Caucasus Mountains (or any sort of European from a point where Europe and Asia meet) (I love you Internet); thus we ain't proper caucasians. Are all black (African-American? Of African descent? Ethinc? Melaninally gifted? I'm not good at PC) people Kenyan? Nope. We didn't just sort of pick a country where their earliest Homo Sapien ancesters might have come from and place them there. Caucasian, Kenyan, Formosan, Samoan (like the cookies!) and, oh I don't know, Khmer? And then I suppose that all of those assorted people who were on this contintent when it was discovered must be Navajo, right? I don't know.
Right. Point is cookies.
Maroons?
No. Macaroons. Sorry. All for naught. Just another pointless spew. The words make me think of each other. Maroon Macaroon.
Whatever.
Never happened.

by MisterNihil 2:40 AM

 

man. I been away too long.
Today's topic is

Fire

by MisterNihil 2:22 AM

Tuesday, July 09, 2002

 

The life of a bureaucrat is hard, even for high-level bureaucrats. The endless politics, the infighting which grows ever fiercer the less important the issue is, wondering every day what projects will succumb to inertia, the public getting so frustrated when they can’t find the one person who can help them and taking it out on whoever is convenient, George Lucas ragging on your profession all the time. It’s tough.

Granted, it’s an easier life than some. No one’s shooting at us or waking us up at five in the morning or failing to obey safety regulations at our place of work. We get stuff no one thinks about, like deadly mildew in the carpet. Lost one of my best assistants to that mildew, he transferred to a better-ventilated department.

Still, it’s better to be higher up. The closer you are to Authority, the easier it is to change things. It’s tricky though; you don’t get credit for the things you do right, but your whole office could get the stick if you screw up.

I was one of a dozen or so people who had to sign off on the plans for the speech announcing the memorial for that poor space crew. I’d give you the designation, but you’re not interested in their catalog number. Anyway, I was looking over the requisitions for the drapes when I noticed something and called the team leader for the space crew memorial speech planning task force.

“Maroon?”

“It’s a shade of red. It offsets the chief’s eyes.”

I know what maroon is. I even looked up color swatches before I called. Give me some credit. “I’ll leave the aesthetics to you, but do you think it’s appropriate?”

Silence. No doubt trying to figure out what I meant.

I elaborated: “I mean, they made it out to that rock and ran out of fuel. Do you think it’s good taste to have a maroon backdrop in that context?”

by Dave Menendez 10:44 PM

 

They said they would come back for me. They lied.

I know now that I should have seen it coming, but I had always been too trusting with them. I believed too much of what they told me. Now I see that the expedition was a sham from the beginning.

"We want to test the machine, Herr Doctor," they told me. "We need to see if these theories of yours are correct."

I knew they had already tested the machine, gone forward ten or twenty years, sent men through the gate to gather information. They knew things which they could not have known otherwise. But I suppose I thought that this would be the first official test, that if it proved successful they would then reveal the existence of the machine to the people. I suppose I wondered what the British press would make of it when they learned that Germany was no longer worried about bombs or troop movements, that they had a machine, a weapon, against which there could be no defense.

It is not so bad here. There are, I imagine, worse places to be exiled, and they could just as easily have killed me. I do not know how far ahead we came, but I suspect it is many thousand of years in the future. There is nothing here that I recognize, and the technicians in Berlin seemed eager to test the limits of the machine.

I will die here, I suppose, marooned by my own invention and my willingness to believe they could have any use for me once I gave them the time machine.

by Fred 7:29 PM

 

This stain will be problematic.

Robert isn't supposed to know about this party, and it's going to be hard to keep it from him, with such incriminating evidence caking and congealing on the carpet. It is such a fascinating shade of red.

Focus. What are the known stain removers? Club soda? Seltzer water? (What's the difference, anyway?) Didn't I hear once that white wine is the best way to get out red wine? Housekeeping for the Rich and Famous, that. Seventh grade science class: Water is the universal solvent.

Still, I think I'm going to need a power steamer, and there just isn't time. Messy, messy guests. Damn it.

The hors d'oeuvres went smoothly enough. Ladies' fingers, Viennese sausages, "pigs in a blanket." Even the wine—oh, the wine, luscious, full-bodied, a very rare type—went off without a hitch. But bring out the main course, and your seemingly well mannered guests, culled from the upper crust of society, degenerate into a veritable feeding frenzy.

And now Robert will find out. About the stain, the party, everything. Damn.

I suppose, for future galas, I shall have to remember: Serve the virgins on the veranda.

by Sharon 5:37 PM

 

"The carpet's pink," my sister said. And I said, "No it's not." I shook my head. "It's like wine, merlot, not quite maroon." It was hard to tell standing there, where what would be linoleum in a week met the carpet's edge. It was already half past five, and there was not enough light left in the living room to tell; both my sister and I blocked the sunlight from the un-curtained kitchen windows. "It's definitely not pink," I said.

"They came today," my father told me. They had ripped up the old blue carpet that snaked its way up the stairs and replaced it with the new. My parents and sister had dusted, moved furniture beforehand. The men who laid the carpet were apparently quite grateful. "Do you normally have to move furniture?" my mother said she asked them. "Oh, all the time," one of the men said. "Like you wouldn't believe." The air conditioning, they thought, was also nice.

When I got home for the weekend, this past fourth of July, I stumbled into an unfamiliar house. Parts of it I recognized and had known all my life, but with the new carpet, and the kitchen and upstairs bathroom remodeled -- furniture moved around and things put in boxes, our dog no longer there to fill the house with noise -- it was a little like going home only to find somebody else's house attached to it. It was disorienting, not because I need things to stay as they always were with my childhood home, but because...well, because change is, by its nature, disorienting. When I went home, briefly, at Easter, the house still looked like it had for years. I didn't have to worry about not recognizing things or wandering into unfamiliar rooms. The kitchen cabinets were the same, the upstairs bathroom floor still leaked into the room below, and the carpet was blue, not this shade of almost-maroon-and-definitely-not-pink.

There are houses full of rooms in our memory, where we can wander or get lost, but the houses that surround us are always changing, growing, dying, changing perhaps what our memories mean, making them more precious and valuable.

by Fred 3:58 PM

Monday, July 08, 2002

 

Maria wiped up the condensate with her napkin, making it soggy. She then placed her glass methodically in a series of positions on the formica, creating a new pattern of drink circles.

The speech was familiar. It was easier to move water around the table than look at him.

He explained how he had grown, how he needed to try new experiences, how he was moving on, while she just... didn't. He wanted to know she would be okay; he reassured her that she would find someone new, since she was clearly a great person and had so much to offer.

Maria's paper napkin tore when she wiped away the latest painting of wet circles. It bunched into a mushy pile that would not be contained by the remainder of the napkin.

He was talking about it not being personal, about it being about growth and changes and seeing other people.

She found intersections to be the most interesting. Circles crossed, dividing the table into Venn diagrams, tracing the conversation in water rings.

He climbed out of the booth, seemed disconcerted, perhaps dissatisfied, that she was not crying. He had expected a bit of weeping, dreaded a dramatic bawling scene, hoped quietly for a few brave tears dashed away before anyone might notice.

But Maria drew drink circles on the table and let him leave.

by Sharon 11:58 PM

 

He jumped when he first saw the circles in the darkness. There were two, just the right distance from each other to seem like eyes, and they glowed an unhealthy yellow. He jumped and ducked behind a wall and waited for his breathing to slow down again. Straining his ears, he heard again the incessant dripping from the water cavern he had left fifteen minutes ago, but there was no sound of an animal.

He spent a few moments trying not to think about how quietly an animal could approach him.

The others had to have reached the water cavern by now. It contained a bewildering number of exits, most inaccessibly high in the walls or underneath the surface, but there was no guarantee they wouldn’t take the path he had chosen. They knew the signs as well as he, and the map, which he had counted on to give him the advantage, was turning out to be less useful than he had hoped.

A growling sound startled him, and it took a second or so for him to realize it was his stomach. His mouth tried to water as he thought longingly of the granola bar in his pack, but he needed it for the trip back. He needed to be clever.

The circles were still there when he peered around the corner, low to the ground where they might not be watching. They didn’t move.

Calmer, he stood and walked into the new cavern and looked around. It was dark, of course, without even the dim light from the crystals in the corridor outside, but he got the impression of a vast space of unmoving air. He moved towards the eyes and for a while they seemed to get no closer. Then he noticed that they had grown larger as came closer; they were much larger and much farther than he had guessed.

They were two circular halls, lit from some unknown source in a sickly yellow. He pulled out his map and hoped that this fork would give him the advantage.

by Dave Menendez 9:44 PM

 

There is a boy who lives down the lane,
And topsy-turvy Tommy is his name.

Every morning, before eight
Tommy turns outside the garden gate.

His mother worries he'll be sick,
But spinning round is Tommy's favorite trick.

He spins, he's spun, he twirls around,
Until he's spent and then falls down.

He coughs, he laughs, he gasps for air
He sits up then, says, "It's not fair.

"To spin and twirl, to toss around,
And in end just hit the ground.

"With little more than one skinned knee
The circle ends, collapsed with me."

He mother says, "Don't be a fool.
Now hurry up, you're late for school."

by Fred 12:00 PM

 

Remi, topics rotate through the names in the order that they are listed on the right, under "The Contributors."

by Sharon 10:52 AM

 

And today’s topic is…

Circles

by Dave Menendez 10:50 AM

Friday, July 05, 2002

 

I am out of town until Sunday, but I'm not entirely incommunicado. I'm running up my parents' phone bill here, so I'll have to be quick, but today's topic, if anybody's interested in writing anything, is:

independence

by Fred 6:51 PM

 

I'm pretty sure Fred is out of town and incommunicado. Anybody got a topic?

by Sharon 2:17 PM

Thursday, July 04, 2002

 

"I think we should call the band 'Baboon,' cause that means, like, old man of the forest or something, in the language of the native people of South America, or something."
"I think we should call the band three musicians and a stoned moron drummer, and then the three of us will throw you out."
"Dude, that's not cool. How come 3?"
"Well duh, 'cause there's gotta be four people in the band. All the best bands had four guys in them. Metallica, the Doors, Cream, Nirvana, even Destiny's Child had four people before they sucked."
"What's that got to do with us, man? We're not gonna be a vocal group are we?"
"Well no, dumbass, but its the point of the thing. It's the Funk Shwee."
"Wull, what's Funk Shwee?"
"You know, like George Clinton, like, that certain manage ah twah, like French people say-"
"Dude. You mean ju nu seh kwah."
"No dude. That means, like, a taxi or something, dumbass. Anyway, you have to have four people in the band."
"Wull, who's gonna be the other four people?"
"I don't know, man. We'll just pick up some musicians along the way. I mean, we've got a singer and a drummer. A guitar player is, like, easy to find."
"Yeah. Just throw a rock. U-huh huh huh."
"Yeah. And a bass player is just a retarded guitar player."
"Dude. That's not cool. I want a sexy bass chick, cause she'll be hot, and that'll bring in other hot babes."
"That's right. Yeah..."
"Yeah... And we'll be called Baboon. Not The Baboons like some dumb 50's band, but just Baboon. Yeah, dude. With a sexy bass chick."
"Dumbass."

by MisterNihil 8:35 PM

Wednesday, July 03, 2002

 

The mud had mostly dried. Max's hair no longer dripped. Instead, it made dread locks that batted her face as she crawled. She would keep going as long as the light held out.

Max was beyond questioning how this strange labyrinth of catacombs had come to exist beneath her house. Now, the only goal was to get out. She crawled on hands and bloody knees down a rough-hewn stone corridor that was just large enough to allow her to pass on all fours. She chose left at every opportunity, relying on a childhood theory of maze solving. The walls seemed to glow faintly green. Although unsettling, this was also a relief, since Max had no candles or flashlight. She crawled.

A small voice spoke directly into her ear: "Beg."

When the violent thunderstorm, with hail and tornado warnings, had begun to beat against her small house, she had climbed into the bathtub to wait it out. She could hear torrents running off her roof and chipping away at her foundation. After hours of waiting, trying to read a paperback book by flashlight, Max felt compelled to inspect the integrity of her cellar. She had to go out into the storm to open the big, dusky-red cellar door.

The cellar was already full of a foot of water when she got there. But that wasn't what had held her attention, transfixed. The water was pouring out of the room, as fast as it was pouring in, through a square hole in the floor that had never been there before.

Horrified, repulsed, Max had climbed down the algae-slicked ladder into a corridor. There was no standing water in the corridor, just a general dampness, a sheen to the walls and floor. There was also no ladder, no trap door, no waterfall from above.

She started to walk, choosing left. Later, she was forced to crawl.

Again, too close, that hissing, gleeful woman's voice: "Beg. Beg for the way out."

"Beg."

by Sharon 3:41 PM

 

Cup of Water
Buckminster Fuller designed the Dymaxian bathroom, an elegant tribute to the form-follows-function philosophy of engineering that characterizes most of his work. In addition to being cleanable by hose, it can give you a cleansing shower using just a cup of water. Also, rather than turning fresh, potable water into black water for no purpose other than spiriting away human waste, the Dymaxian sanitarily packages it up to be used for fruitful purposes.

Learning of inventions like this makes me intensely uncomfortable. Geodesic domes, hemp paper, and electric cars fall into this category, as well. Namely, we could be living much better than we are, but for selfish, short-sighted lobby groups. It makes me feel helpless and wasteful.

by Sharon 10:56 AM

 

[removed by author]

by Fred 10:15 AM

 

beg

by Sharon 9:34 AM

Tuesday, July 02, 2002

 

[Upgraded to Blogger Pro which: Changes the interface within Blogger; resolves the issue of author names not publishing; and puts Ben's topic post "A cup of water!" down between Sunday and Monday. Hm.]

[Update: Ev and, therefore, Blogger are on the West Coast. This blog is set to Central Time. Ben's post, when it is within two hours after midnight, is ordered as if it is a very late Monday post (which, on the West Coast, it is), but it's still listed with a date header. When the post is edited to occur at 3 am, it shows up in the correct spot, at the top of Tuesday. Luckily, with Blogger Pro, you can edit the timestamps on posts. 'Spose I need to fill out a bug report. *sigh*]

by Sharon 5:05 PM