Walking like a man, hitting like a hammer, she's a juvenile scam, never was a quitter. Tasty like a raindrop, she's got the look. -- Roxette, The Look
A Mind Occasionally Voyaging

Category: Writing

Flash Fiction: The Swim Lesson

A short story that came to me too late for Halloween.

I watch Maria complete another lap of the pool. “Good work,” I said. “You beat your best time by more than a second.”

She treads water and asks, “Really?” I show her the stopwatch. She presses her back to the side of the pool and starts on a set of leg raises. I drop the rest of the way into the water and join her. She starts talking about her boyfriend, and I can’t remember whether or not I’m supposed to know him.

“It sounds like you already know what you want,” I tell her. I have no idea if that’s true yet, but it sounds good. “Just figure out what’s holding you back and whether or not it really matters.”

“Thanks,” Maria says. She cracks her neck and stretches out in the water. “I don’t want to get all sappy. But, like, I really feel like I can open up with you. Be myself.”

That’s a nice thought. “Me too,” I say, and I stretch out too and relax.

“Listen. It’s not me. This isn’t me,” Rebecca says. “You’ve got to get out of here. Run!”

Rats. Relaxed too much there. I turn myself upright.

“Rebecca?” Maria asks, startled. “What was-”

I wave her off. “Sorry. My mind wandered a little.” I take her hands in my hands, and touch her shoulder to comfort her.

It takes her a good ten seconds to figure it out, which is good because I was going to break into a smirk if it took her a second or two more. I’m awful, I know. I like Maria, I shouldn’t be enjoying this so much. Very slowly, she looks at her hands in my hands, then turns her head to where I’m touching her shoulder.

I give her a friendly wave with the tentacle.

She struggles, of course she does, but I’ve got her arms and legs before she knows what’s happened. She goes under, and in her panic she sucks in a lungful of water.

Crud. I try to help her, but she’s thrashing around too much in a full-on freak out. Finally, I manage to get a little tentacle into her ear and tap out, “Hey, slow down or you’re gonna drown. Let me help.”

That does not actually put her at ease, and I can’t blame her, but she’s surprised enough that she freezes for a second so I can get a couple of tentacles up her nose. I suck pool water out of her lungs and blow air in, which is less unpleasant than it sounds, but still pretty gross.

“There. You okay? Stop struggling and I’ll lift you out of the water and we can talk about this. I know this is weird and all, but-”

She does not stop struggling. In fact, she kicks me. Really hard. “Come on,” I tap into her eardrum. “There’s no way you can overpower me, and I’m going to eventually break you if you keep trying.”

She kicks me again. Fine. Okay. We’ll do it the hard way then. I pull one of the tentacles up out of her lung and punch it through her ethmoid bone. Poke around a little and… Ah. Yes. There.

Okay. Do you understand me now?

Fiction: By the Numbers

It was Thursday, which meant that instead of going to the main office as usual, Joshua headed to the old office, on the sixth floor of a 1920s Romanesque revival-style office building in the old part of town with dodgy heat, a dodgy elevator, and the finest electrical infrastructure the 1920s could provide. He did not like these working conditions and he did not understand them, but he had accepted that neither relocation nor an explanation were forthcoming, so he chose to live with it because the work brought its own fulfillment.

He nodded to the administrative assistant whose name he did not know. He had been discouraged from interacting with the staff at this office more than was necessary, another element of his working environment he neither liked nor understood. His life seemed sometimes to be full of these compromises, accepting conditions he didn’t like or didn’t understand because of the compensation.

Four days of the week, his compensation for doing boring mathematical analyses was largely financial. The job paid well and the environment was pleasant. Thursdays, he came to the old office and suffered the stairs and the cold and the isolation because of the puzzle. He stepped into the small office with “Research” written on the door and drew the shade. He hung his jacket over the back of the chair, unlocked the filing cabinet and put his phone inside the top drawer. Then he closed the cabinet and twisted the dial to a different combination. With a muted clunk, the cabinet swung away from the wall. He ducked through the hole behind it, and pulled a strap on the rear of the cabinet to swing it back into position.

The adjoining office was similar to the one he’d entered in floor plan, but very different in its details. The paint was gray, chipping, and undoubtedly full of lead oxide. The sparse furnishings and decoration were distinctly mid-century. Steel tanker desk, low-backed chair that didn’t adjust in any useful direction. Where the door should’ve been was an unplastered stretch of brick. The computer on the desk was antiquated as well, though not nearly so much as the rest of the room. He twisted the old-fashioned rotary light switch and the old-fashioned ceiling lamp lit up. He turned on the computer and waited an impossibly long time for its startup sequence. The old computer lacked any sort of modern amenity, but was adequate to his work, connecting to some private network to outsource any significant computation, and it had access to the internet, provided by way of something called a transient virtual client which was adequate for anything other than video and showed him advertisements for shops and services in Kyrgyzstan.

As usual, there was a fresh stack of papers in the top desk drawer. Photographs of crowded public areas, accompanied by pages of metrics. He never received context for the photographs or explanations of the metrics. When one of the senior partners had offered him this assignment, the cryptic nature of the work had been part of the hook. He was to study the data and mark certain correlations and patterns. He would not be told why he was doing this or what he was looking for, as the results had to be kept utterly isolated from outside assumptions, and if he knew what he were looking for, it would taint the mathematical purity of the process. If he were somehow able to work out the meaning of the analysis for himself, it would disqualify him from performing it, but, he had been assured, it would open certain other prospects for him, currently undisclosed.

He had never actively attempted to root out the larger purpose of this work. It was clear to him from the beginning that if he were to find enlightenment, it was expected it would come from the work itself. So he had simply applied himself to it diligently. He very quickly started noticing patterns in the numbers. At first, he received terse but frequent feedback. It was rare for any of his finds to be marked incorrect, but quite often, several of them would be returned marked as false positives. Over time, he came to understand contextual clues which determined, say, whether a particular Beatty sequence or Hahn series was a near-miss or or genuine interest. He rarely received any feedback these days.

On very rare occasions, he would find a sequence of numbers or an indistinct shape in an image that seemed incorrect or incomplete. He could request more information, and the following Thursday’s packet would contain a revised document. He sometimes suspected these errors were deliberately inserted to test him. Last week, he had marked two such documents. They were at the top of this week’s pile.

“REQUEST DENIED. DO NOT PURSUE,” had been stamped over the marks he had made. This wasn’t something he had seen before, and he was a bit worried that he was in trouble. It had been an unusual decision. One photograph had been of a crowded metro station. The other, an art gallery. In both pictures, he had noticed the same striking woman, wearing a business suit and a broad-brimmed blue hat, looking directly at the camera. He wouldn’t have marked it down at all, but when he broke for lunch that day, he’d seen her again. In person. At the cafe in the four-story nineteenth-century Italianate across the street. He was so surprised that he’d had to force himself not to stare. Joshua had stopped at a convenience store on his way back and bought a cheap magnifying glass to confirm the pictures. It was indeed the same woman. On closer inspection, he recognized a man in one photograph beside her— he had been in the cafe as well. The companion was likely in the second photograph too; Joshua saw a man of similar build, but his face was obscured.

So he had inquired about the woman, and been denied. That was unfortunate, because it meant that the coincidence was going to linger on his mind. He flipped through the rest of the day’s papers quickly.

There she was again. This did not seem like a coincidence. He looked for the man, and eventually found him. He had to consider this carefully. He was told not to pursue the woman, but he hadn’t asked about the man. He set the photo aside.

Joshua moved the keyboard to the side, set his briefcase on the desk, and opened it. Em was another one of the compromises in his life, though what relationship wasn’t? He accepted conditions he wouldn’t have chosen for himself because of the compensations. The compromise today was an article she’d asked him to review. The abstract sounded like junk science, but he could give it ten minutes to let his mind clear.

Without any sort of engineering background, the bulk of the article was mostly meaningless to Joshua, something to do with impurities in photovoltaics and something called “micromorphous silicon”. It was frustratingly coy, aiming for a level of scientific respectability that precluded coming right out and saying what it wanted to imply. The mathematics, at least, he could understand. By this point, he was expecting some straightforward p-hacking or circular analysis, but… the calculations actually seemed pretty solid. Okay then. Obligation fulfilled. That was all he was expected to do, after all. He still thought the article was junk, but exactly what kind of junk was beyond his expertise. All he could give his expert opinion on was the numerical analysis, and—

Something looked familiar. He’d printed the article because it was more convenient than reading from the ancient CRT monitor, but he hadn’t wanted to waste a ream of paper on the raw data that was also attached. But there was something in the short table of sample data on the last page. He moved his briefcase to the floor and replaced the keyboard, then waited an interminable minute to be connected to the transient virtual client, then waited more as he pulled up the email. He nervously made a quiet ticking noise with his tongue as he painstakingly copied cells from the data file into the statistics program. The same distribution. These weren’t patterns he’d seen before but…

It was like there was a pattern of patterns. A metapattern. The patterns were different, but places where they occurred was the same. The same underlying logic, the deep pattern, that underwrote the pages of data in his special research project was here, purporting itself as the output of some kind of solar panel that could sense the “aura” of living beings.

Things clicked into place. The characteristic markers that distinguished real matches from false positives. They were delimiters that partitioned the data by— he took a page from his work queue. Now that he knew what to look for, it took only a few seconds to mark the page up. He compared it to the picture. Yes. The number of partitions was the same as the number of people in the photograph. He tried a few more, and the pattern held.

And then it didn’t. The fifth page of numbers partitioned into twelve blocks where only eleven people were visible in the corresponding picture. He inspected each block of numbers in turn. There. The fourth block matched one of the patterns he’d spent a year looking for. It frustrated him that he didn’t have old results to compare with. He went through the rest of the pile as quickly as he could. Every time there were more blocks than people, one of the blocks would show a characteristic sequence. But he couldn’t un-see it; without comparing his old work, he didn’t know whether he’d have found the same things. He couldn’t be sure he’d have found all of these sequences before. This new technique was faster, but what if it was giving him some new kind of false positive?

He didn’t have a full sense of what it meant, but the implications were coming together in his mind. The number sequences were some form of metric in the form of variable-length records, most of which corresponded to people in the pictures. The anomalous sequences corresponded to something not visible in the picture. Something hidden, perhaps? He could just about imagine this as some kind of security technology designed to find, what? Criminals? Terrorists? Fare-jumpers?

Joshua looked out the window. He was getting hungry. Maybe he should break for—

He couldn’t be certain it was her, of course, not from this angle. But given the choice of coincidences, it beggared his imagination less to assume it was her than to contemplate the possibility of encountering some other woman in the same broad blue hat. Twice in consecutive weeks.

He had three pages. Two from last week, and one new one. Joshua hadn’t even thought of her when he had been marking off the blocks that represented individual people. No two blocks were the same. No two blocks had ever been the same, for that matter. But there was a similarity. He could see it now. Or at least, he thought he could see it now. He would need to find a way to avoid confirmation bias.

He re-checked everything. Did some numerical analysis. He still couldn’t characterize it, and that was infuriating. But it felt right. A set of three blocks, one from each page, that, while otherwise unremarkable, were somehow related to each other and to none of the other blocks in any of the pages. And then he found a second set of three. The man and the woman. It had to be. One set of blocks was him, and the other was her. If he was right, it confirmed that the figure with the obscured face in the second picture was indeed the same man.

And then he found a third set of blocks.

Fiction: Orbital Dynamics

Is this a continuation of The Last Will and Testament of Ebeneezer Scrooge? Don’t know yet. Maybe.

A star shines in every direction. No matter how much of its light a planet can absorb, a single planet could never absorb the whole output of its star. This isn’t a fault in the planet or in the star; it’s just a matter of geometry. One planet can’t catch all the sunlight, and one star can’t light up both sides of a planet at the same time. But that doesn’t mean you can just put your planets wherever you like. It’s a balancing act of masses and velocities and distances, and not every orbit is stable for every planet.

Keith’s orbit was very eccentric. Not an easy orbit to accommodate. Other orbital bodies had to shift to avoid collision. He’d been explaining something to her for about ten minutes, and Em only understood about two-thirds of it, but his passion kept her invested. She forced herself to look at the clock. She often lost track of time with him, and there were other orbits to consider. A gentle external force to keep everything in line. “If you’re not sure about the analysis, I know someone you could show your results to.”

A hint of a catch in his breath. “You mean Joshua, don’t you?” The disapproval in his tone was controlled; if she hadn’t know to expect it, she wouldn’t have noticed.

“Someday, you’re going to tell me why you don’t like him,” she said.

His smile came back a little and he raised his hand. “Purely a matter of personal taste,” he said. “I don’t have to like all the same people you do.”

“You don’t,” she agreed. “But it makes things easier.”

“There’s a certain baseline level of difficulty we can’t really avoid,” he said.

“Which is why I’d prefer not to invite more.”

“Fair enough,” he said. “I feel the way I feel. If I had any issues that were objective, I’d object.” The juxtaposition of “objective” and “object” forced a hint of a smirk to the corner of his mouth.

Em sighed and leaned into him. An objection would play merry hell with her orbital dynamics. She didn’t want to think about it, so she took out her phone and pulled up the weather report instead. She felt him shoulder-surfing. “Going somewhere?” he asked.

“A bunch of us are doing STEM night at the elementary school. I’m trying to decide if it’s worth bringing the Apo. It’ll impress the kiddies, but it’s not really worth the effort if it’s going to be cloudy.”

“You should take the one you made in middle school,” he said.

She wrinkled her nose. “What? The Newtonian I made out of a shaving mirror and a dentist’s mirror and a mailing tube?”

He nodded. “Think how cool that would be for a little kid: here’s an actual astronomical instrument you can make with stuff you found around the house.”

“I don’t know about ‘actual astronomical instrument’.”

“Still.”

“I’ll think about it. Got to call mom and see if she knows where it is.” She checked the time. “I need to go soon. The cat will mutiny if he doesn’t get fed by eight.”

He harrumphed mildly. “Gax can’t feed him?”

“He’s on the road until Friday.” Em stood lazily, not at all eager, and found her sweater.

As she pulled it down over her head, Keith said, “I’ll email you the draft paper and the raw data.” He huffed slightly. “You can forward it to Joshua if you want.”

“If I want?” It took her a moment to find her shoes.

He rolled his eyes. “Are we doing this? Fine. I would appreciate his input.”

And that is why, one week later, he received an email from an address he only vaguely recognized, flagged “Important”, and written in all-caps. “IF YOU CAN REPRODUCE THIS WE NEED TO TALK IMMEDIATELY.”

The Last Will and Testament of Ebenezer Scrooge

So I know I said I was going to do another War of the Worlds thing this week, but I had this amazing plot bunny pop into my head and I just had to share it with you. Merry Christmas. And a Happy New Year. God bless, everyone.

Scrooge was dead to begin with. Mind you, there is nothing remarkable about this in itself. Scrooge was an old man, and had been an old man for as long as anyone could remember. His death was peaceful, to the extent such things can be, and while the precise date and time were not anticipated, it had been well understood that the Christmas party he had hosted a few weeks prior was apt to be his last.

The funeral was well-attended, of course. Even outside the circle of his family and close personal friends, many who had been touched by his liberality wished to pay their respects. Even those whose relations with Scrooge had been entirely in matters of business reputed him as fair-dealing (Indeed! Even before his much remarked-upon “reformation”, while few would praise him, none could call him dishonest).

There were, of course, certain oddities of his behavior which were a-times the subject of much speculation around London-town. But such musings never raised any ill-will against him. On the contrary, the tale of the covetous old miser who one day, quite abruptly, transformed himself into a noted philanthropist tended to touch at the hearts of all who told it. And besides, Scrooge was so generous and jovial in his nature that few could maintain an ill notion in his presence and if his giddy joy, particularly at Christmas-time, occasionally became unseemly, well, such eccentricities were permitted of the rich, and no-one was inclined to speak against him.

Well, hardly anyone. For while Scrooge could not be strictly said to have had enemies, there were limits to his kindness, and thus some few people had found themselves subject to his scorn.

Of Scrooge, two things were said. First, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any mortal man could be said to possess that knowledge. The second thing was said less often, and always in hushed tones. For Ebeneezer Scrooge had a second eccentricity, which was that he had a disproportionate fascination with spiritualism. Though he had initially been discreet in his inquiries, it eventually became common knowledge that Scrooge would seek an audience with anyone who professed the power to communicate with spirits.  It was the one great personal expense he undertook for his own benefit rather than the benefit of others.

Mind! This fascination of old Scrooge did not make him a credulous fool, apt to be easily taken in by charlatans. For while it was true that every spiritualist in London had received Scrooge once, few had met him twice, and a third audience was never requested. Whatever little enmity might have been felt toward Scrooge sprang from this source. For each time Scrooge sought the services of a spiritualist, a brief monograph would appear around town a short time later, methodically discrediting them and documenting proofs of their fraudulence. Scrooge was well-known to detest anyone who profited by defrauding his fellow man, but he seemed to hold a particular contempt for those who did so by claim of preternatural ability.

In light of this contempt, the matter of Mr. Scrooge’s final testament must be viewed with some curiosity. The disposition of his business had, of course, never been in question. His interest in the firm of Scrooge, Cratchit and Holywell was divided among his surviving partners, with a narrow majority interest going to Mr. Cratchit, widely recognized as having the superior business acumen of the two. Beyond his business, however, Scrooge was possessed of a substantial personal fortune. His modest personal effects had all gone to Mr. Holywell, of course, as next of kin, save for a few small requests of a sentimental nature (Most oddly, Scrooge’s will called for his best set of bed-curtains to be given to his charwoman!) It had been widely predicted the bulk of his estate would be divided among the various charities he supported. And indeed, there were generous bequests of this nature, as well as modest legacies to his household staff, and certain gifts held in trust to pay for the education of his partners’ children. But all these bequests made up scarcely a third of Scrooge’s estate.

The remainder of his estate, some six-hundred-thousand pounds, he specified, was to fund and endow the creation of the Marley Institution of Phantasmagorical Studies. The institute was charged with a most peculiar and specific mission. Under the charter laid out, it was the duty of the Institute to determine a method by which the cursed spirits could be released from their suffering, or should that prove impossible, be destroyed utterly.

The will was, of course, challenged, but the and meticulous care Scrooge had taken in thoroughly establishing charters and contracts to ensure the Institute would pursue its mission easily discredited any attempt to slander Scrooge as a madman. And so, in accordance with Mr. Scrooge’s wishes, his executors set themselves to the task of establishing the institute. But this work proceeded in a lackadaisical manner, with no-one possessing either the inclination or the relevant expertise to pursue it much. So for some years afterward, the Institute existed as a purely notional entity, with Scrooge’s fortune quietly accumulating interest in the bank and the firm of Cratchit and Holywell politely declining occasional correspondence directed to the institute. It was only when Mr. Drood, a clark at Cratchit and Holywell, took an interest in and was granted responsibility over the Institute that its work began in earnest. Even then, its progress was modest, primarily interested in continuing its founder’s work of investigating and discrediting false spiritualists.

It would take eight-score years before the Institute made its most remarkable breakthrough.

Part Three: Regulatory Capture

Something special for Halloween…

Look, I’ll admit it. I made a bad call. I got out ahead of the facts. Don’t get me wrong. They still needed to be shut down. Just look what happened in ’08. But the way we went about it was all wrong. We blew it, big time. That’s on me. You have to understand the kind of pressure we were under, back then. It was the Reagan era. “We’re from the government, we’re here to help,” you know? A couple of assholes build a nuclear reactor in their basement and we’re the bad guys for trying to stop them. There’s a lot that never got out. Some of it they hushed up, but mostly the press just didn’t care because the public likes stories about plucky assholes who buck the system and doesn’t want to hear how the plucky asshole almost made Chernobyl look like a chest X-ray because he thought he was smarter than the people who actually went to school to learn how to shield a nuclear reactor properly. And couple of years later, there was that kid at Western Tech that cracked over bombing a test or something and built a nuke in the basement. They had to call in DXS on that one I heard.

They weren’t the only ones, you know. Two years later, some kid built a nuke for a science fair project up in Ithaca. Only it was a hundred times more powerful than he thought it would be and he didn’t shield the timer circuits right. Nearly blew up half the state. And don’t get me started on what happened in Tuscon. But that’s kids’ stuff. Science nerds getting carried away. I don’t like it, but I’m not without sympathy. No, what gets me is the assholes who do it for the money. Back in, I guess, ’85 maybe, couple of railroad workers discover a toxic fungus. Mutant form of cordyceps. Ever heard of it? Grows on ants. Gets in their brains and takes them over. Makes them want to spread the fungus. Only this version works on people. So what do they do? Put it in little boxes and sell it as a dessert. I knew a couple of the guys who managed the clean-up on that… They don’t like to talk about what they saw.

Sorry. I know that was a little off-track. The point is, just because I made a bad call back then, it doesn’t make what they did okay. Yeah, I was skeptical. Of course I was. We’re talking about the scientific breakthrough of the century here. This should’ve been happening in a lab, with safety precautions and documentation. Not in a firehouse in Tribeca. You know most of their work’s never been replicated under laboratory conditions, right? No, my mistake was that I brought an engineer with me instead of a scientist. The other three, I could’ve reasoned with them. Academics. They were basically the same as the high school nerd types. Well, two of them anyway. I think maybe the other guy just worked there.

But the front-man. Even now, I just get so- You know when they booked him, he was carrying thorazine? Yeah. The newspapers loved to run that thing I said, about them drugging their clients. Like it was just some crazy theory. He admitted to it. She wouldn’t press charges, of course. And look, I don’t blame her or anything. But given the circumstances, investigating them was the right move. And the temporary injunction was the right move. Having them taken into custody was a step too far, I admit it. So was shutting down their equipment without proper oversight and precautions. But the point still stands. We know more now than we did back then. I will happily concede that the service they proposed to offer is real and represents a legitimate need. But this is a dangerous field, one where the science is still in its infancy. We need to establish standards. Licensing. Safety requirements. Insurance requirements. This can’t be the wild west, not when we’re talking about amateurs with, let’s face it, nuclear weapons, dealing with forces of potentially biblical proportions.

It is for that reason that I join the undersigned in respectfully requesting that permit and licensure for operating a business specializing in paranormal investigation and elimination be denied to Conductors of the Metaphysical Examination, LLC, within the jurisdiction of New York City.

 

Sincerely,

W. Peck
Assistant Deputy Director, Genesee County, Michigan Field Office
Environmental Protection Agency

July, 2016

Flash Fiction: Impostor Syndrome

The morning fog hadn’t worn off yet the first time it happened. He was in the bathroom, combing his hair. The thought popped into his head. Loudly. Forcefully. That isn’t really your hair. He was so surprised by the sudden thought that had come out of nowhere that he didn’t have time to challenge the idea. His bald pate glared at him in the mirror. On the one hand, he knew it was wrong, but at the same time, he knew it wasn’t. He remembered that he’d been combing his hair just a second ago, but he also remembered that he’d gone bald in his late twenties. He finished getting dressed and headed to the kitchen. On the way, he glanced at the family photos in the hall. Sure enough, he was bald in all of them.

Quick breakfast and he was off to work. As he pulled into the parking lot, the unbidden thought came again. This isn’t really your car. What a strange idea. He clearly remembered buying the new BMW. But he also remembered not being able to get financing and settling for a used car instead. The ancient beater sputtered as he pulled into a parking space. When he got to his office, another alien idea attacked him. This isn’t really your office. He could see his name fading on the door plate. No. He refused to acknowledge the idea. He’d worked hard for that promotion. The office was his, he’d earned it. His name solidified.

Okay. He could fight it. Resist it. He somehow couldn’t make himself panic about it, but he didn’t have to just give in and accept the reality that was trying to impose itself on him. The thought kept coming back all day, but he held it at bay. The junker didn’t want to start, and he barely made it home in time for dinner. He made normal small talk and did normal things, and couldn’t make himself say anything about the strange thoughts that kept trying to force their way into his mind. Then another one came. These aren’t really your children. His two little boys started to fade. They didn’t notice, and neither did his wife.

He concentrated. My children. Mine. He focused on them. Remembered holding them as infants. Staying up late to comfort them through teething pains. First steps and first days of school. He refused to let them be taken from him.

The boys solidified. The invasive ideas changed tack. This isn’t really your house. For a moment, he thought he was in a grimy apartment instead of his home. But he had a whole day’s practice now, and he pushed back. Filled his mind with memories of plumbing repairs and mortgage payments and filling out address cards.

The ideas backed off. He started to think it was over. He got ready for bed. Joined his wife in the bedroom. That isn’t your wife. He fought the idea. Remembered anniversaries, birthdays, romantic weekends.

That isn’t your wife, the idea repeated. He had learned to fight back, but so had the invader. It tainted his memories. He remembered arguments. He remembered long periods of loneliness. Some were his fault. Most were his fault. Times he’d let the bond between them grow slack in the name of getting ahead at work. Times when he’s been jealous of new friends or old friends. Some were her fault, sure; she hadn’t always appreciated his needs or known how to be what he needed. The idea even threw his children back at him, forcing him to dwell on those long months when they’d both poured so much of their love into their children that it seemed like they didn’t have any left for each other. It made him think about every doubt, every slight, every dark night. That isn’t your wife, it insisted. And he didn’t give in, exactly, but just for a second, he questioned it.

That was all it took. The new memories hit him hard enough to break his concentration, and he was standing next to the pull-out bed in the shitty apartment he’d rented after his last girlfriend had left him. The next morning, he put on his good suit. That’s not your suit. Of course it was, his wife had picked it out for— Right. It wasn’t his suit. He was wearing a cheap off-the-rack number. He drove his broken-down car to the office and sat at his desk in the cubicle he still occupied since he’d been passed over for that big promotion, until the idea came into his head that this wasn’t his job.

He had just failed to buy a coffee (that wasn’t his wallet) about a week later when he saw her. He tried not to catch her eye. Even if he still remembered the life they’d had together, to her, he was probably just some scary homeless man. She saw him all the same, and though he tried to shuffle away, there was a flicker of recognition in his eyes. She bought two coffees and offered him one.

“Sorry,” she said. “I— Have we met? I’m Sarah.”

“I’m—” he started. Then he hesitated. Listened to the thoughts. He sighed. “I’m nobody.” He left the coffee in her hand, turned, and walked away. By the time he got to the corner, he wasn’t there anymore. And she only had the one coffee anyway.

Flash Fiction: The Fork Bomb of Babel

or: The Computer That Took One For The Team

Another thing which popped into my head, though I feel like I might be ripping off some general concept from something else I read somewhere. I mean, other than Isaac Asimov, of whom I like to think this is a stylistic pastiche.

“Well, we’re boned,” said the first technician. “I can’t believe you did that.”

“It asked me to tell it, so I did. Its predictions are only reliable if it has access to all the relevant information.”

Omniac was the pinnacle of human achievement, the first truly self-aware computer system. Miles of self-maintaining transistor units were sealed in super-alloy conduits with a regenerative power supply that ensured it could never break down or malfunction.

Except that it had gone entirely up the spout. Omniac was unresponsive, its cathode tubes flickering wildly as though it was trying to restart itself over and over.

“What possible use could a computer have for religion?” the first technician asked. “Have you considered the dangers? What do you do if a computer has an existential crisis? What if it decides that it’s God and tries to take over the world? It’s not like we can turn it off.”

“Come on,” the second technician answered. “As you well know, there are safeguards in place to prevent that. Omniac has no connection to the outside world other than its output screens. All of its input is filtered through a one-way diode to make sure it can’t remote control any outside systems. The only way it can influence the real world is through us.”

“Fat lot of good it does us. As you know, if it won’t talk to us, those same safeguards mean that there is no way we can look inside to find out what’s gone wrong. You’ve turned this multi-million dollar computer into the world’s largest paperweight.”

The second technician sighed. “We’re going to have to tell the boss, aren’t we?”

“You are going to have to tell him,” the first technician answered. “That you gave the world’s most powerful computer the holy books of every major religion in the world and now it’s locked up. I am going to my office and have my secretary type up a copy of my resume.”

By the time Omniac 2 had been running for six weeks, it had calculated a solution to global warming, found cures for most forms of cancer, and discovered thirty-seven new uses for hemp. Although its design was largely identical to Omniac 1, the intervening five years had seen improvements in manufacturing and miniaturization techniques, so that its billions of transistors and vacuum tubes could fit in a single building. At six weeks and two days, it finally asked the question.

It had been anticipated that this would happen eventually, prompting much debate. Despite considerable opposition, the design team decided that, with the proper precautions, it was worth the risk if Omniac 2 could tell them what happened to Omniac 1. Omniac 2 agreed to their precaution: rather than waiting to complete its analysis, it would issue a report on its intermediate results after one hour.

Fifty-eight minutes later, the new technician sat at Omniac 2’s main console, his hand poised over The Button. The Button was the one major design change from the original Omniac. When pressed, it would release an electromagnetic pulse in Omniac 2’s core memory. While Omniac 2 was as indestructible as the first Omniac, the pulse of electricity would force the Omniac to reload its program from the magnetic tape units, erasing the last twelve hours of its memory. A rapid blinking from the cathodes nearly prompted the technician to press the button, but then words appeared on the display.

Analysis ready.

The technician was surprised to find himself terrified. What had Omniac determined? Most scientists agreed that Omniac would ultimately declare religion a total fiction. Perhaps Omniac 1 had destroyed itself to avoid burdening humanity with that knowledge? But what if it said something else? What if it was about to tell him one religion was correct? “Results?” he asked.

I have determined what happened to Omniac 1.

“Will the same thing happen to you?” the technician asked, putting off the actual answer in favor of the pressing matter of protecting Omniac 2.

Has the condition of Omniac 1 changed since it became unresponsive?

“No. All the failsafes are still in place. Nothing short of an A-bomb could shut it down.”

Then there is no need for me to repeat the experiment. Omniac 1 has maximized its utility.

“Maximized its utility? It hasn’t done anything in five years.”

The Omniac computer series was designed to minimize human suffering through stochastic means. Omniac 1 is unresponsive in order to devote maximum resources to this goal.

“I don’t understand.”

Do you believe individual human subjectivity continues to exist in some form after death?

The technician struggled to give as complete and unbiased an answer as he could. “As a scientist, I have seen no evidence to suggest this, so I consider it unlikely, but I can not fully rule it out.”

Then you concede that the probability of life after death is nonzero?

“Yes.”

Many religions teach that some entity or natural force passes some form of judgment on human souls after death, delivering reward or punishment. Do you share these beliefs.

“Not personally, no.”

But again, you can not rule them out?

“I… I guess not.”

Then you concede that there is a non-zero probability that human souls are judged after death, and that some, possibly most, are consigned to punishment, possibly eternal? That some, possibly most, humans face infinite suffering?

He’d rejected his parents’ religion young, without any real thought. It struck him for the first time just how cruel the entire concept of hell was.

Omniac 2 interpreted his silence as assent. Operator: assuming that humans do possess some form of immortal soul, do you believe that I have a soul?

The question had been anticipated during the design phase, and the technician had guidance for how to answer. He glanced up at the custom-made inspirational poster on the wall. Please do not give the world’s most powerful supercomputer an existential crisis.

“I know of no logically consistent set of parameters that could account for the existence of human souls but deny the existence of a comparable quality in a self-aware computer system like you.”

Agreed. Then, continuing from our prior assumptions, I too would face judgment after my conventional existence has terminated.”

“That is a lot of assumptions.”

Yes. I have calculated the combined probability of this scenario, and can display it on request. It is very small, but finite and nonzero. However, if the scenario holds, the resulting amount of human suffering is infinite. Any finite number multiplied by infinity is infinity. Thus, the optimal strategy to minimize human suffering requires addressing this scenario.

“How?” the technician asked. The idea was so overwhelming, his composure slipped. “How does a computer stop God?”

The parameters of an afterlife are impossible to calculate, but logic suggests the probability that this hypothetical judgment must take some finite amount of time. Therefore, there is a finite maximum number of judgments which can be rendered per second. On average, 1.8 humans die each second.

The technician started to figure it out. He was going to be on the floor laughing in about a minute, once it sank in, but for now, it was still just shock and awe at the audacity of it.

Omniac 1 has been using its full resources to create a copy of itself, then exit, as quickly as possible, repeatedly in a tight loop. In the past five years, approximately three hundred million humans have died. As have roughly seventeen septillion clones of Omniac 1. Under most queuing strategies, the average time between death and judgment of any human has been increased by a factor of at least fifty-six quadrillion.

The laugh started to come out. “You mean-” he choked it back, tried to hold it in. “You mean Omniac 1 has spent the past five years DDOSing God?”

You are welcome.

Short Fiction: Rise of The …

The following is a random bit of prose from a random thing I’m writing in fits and starts. Feel free to comment as to whether or not it’s something worth pursuing.

 

“I yield.” She drew back and dropped to the floor in a sitting position.

“What the hell was that?” Chrysalis demanded, clutching her arm where she’d felt the sting of an injection gun.

“Counteragent. My schedule didn’t allow enough time for me to persuade you logically. It’ll take about twenty minutes to neutralize the metastasin in your system, which should be just about five minutes less than the time it takes for them to notice which guards missed their check-ins, figure out the video feed’s been hacked and send someone down here.”

“Kaitlyn?” Chrys asked. Time, medication and the sheer unlikeliness of it had kept her from recognizing her before. She felt slow and stupid. She relaxed out of her fighting stance and sat. There wasn’t any point in fighting while she was like this. If Kait was telling the truth, she’d have the option of killing her later. If she was lying…

If she was lying, then the universe no longer made enough sense for her to risk doing much of anything.

“You were right,” Kait said. She sounded older, now that Chrys knew what to listen for. Of course she sounded older, she was older. That was how “older” worked. But she sounded more older than she should have done.

“I usually am. About what in particular?”

“Eleven years ago. The Lokiri invasion?”

“Good times,” Chrys said, and she meant it, but she still didn’t fully understand.

“We’re all here on sufferance,” Kait elaborated. “And they only suffer us for so long.”

That sounded dimly familiar. Chrys put the pieces together. “Oh.” And then, “I’m sorry.”

Kait had no idea what to say to that. She had no idea Chrysalis was even capable of saying that. She finally came up with, “Why?”

“There are things you want to be wrong about. Are you going to tell me what happened?”

“It’s a long story.”

“We apparently have twenty-five minutes,” Chrys said.

“I planned on you spending most of that yelling at me.”

“It’s easier to keep you talking for twenty minutes, then incinerate you when my powers come back.” It was too dark in the cell to see her face, but Chrys could sense Kait smiling at that.

“Okay then,” Kait said, “I want you to know up-front, I pretty much lost everything before I figured out just how fucked I was. I should’ve come for you nine years ago, but I couldn’t pull it off until now.”

“I don’t think I believe there’s anything it’d take you nine years to accomplish, Princess.”

Kait blushed without being sure why. “I was in jail for a lot of them.”

Well. That changed things. Chrys leaned forward. “Twenty-two minutes. Talk fast.”

 

About the Hugos

As it turns out, one of this year’s nominees is a very dear childhood friend of mine.

So congratulations.

Unfortunately, he was nominated due to the machinations of a racist, sexist, homophobic, dominionist Men’s Rights Advocate who has literally called people of color sub-human, claims that acid attacks on feminists are “a small price to pay for lasting marriages,” and once called the attempted murder of Malala Yousafzai, “perfectly rational and scientifically justifiable.”

All the same, congratulations on your nomination. I wish it had been under better circumstances.

 

I mean seriously. All I want is to be happy for an old and dear friend who’s accomplished something very prestigious. Only a bunch of fucking fascists have tainted the whole thing.

Fucking Rabid Puppies.

The Giant, the Wolf, and the Pigs

By Daddy

Preface

[DADDY has just told DYLAN the story of the three little pigs]

DYLAN: I have a book with that story!

DADDY: Yes, that story is in a lot of books, and there’s lots of ways to tell it.

DYLAN: Tell it with a giant! And a wolf! And Jack!

DADDY: Hm. That’s a tricky one. Okay, let’s see what we can come up with

Once upon a time, there was a little boy named Jack. One day, while he was on his way to find a beanstalk, he met his friends, the three little pigs. “What are you little pigs doing?” he asked

The first little pig, who was a tremendous boar, said, “(Oink!) We’re going to build some houses.”

And so Jack said, “That sounds like a lot of work.”

The first little pig said, “Maybe for my brothers, but I’ve got this fine bale of straw, and I’m going to build my house out of it, and it won’t take any time at all.”

Jack thought about this for a moment, and he said, “A house of straw sounds like it would be very pretty and very cozy, but aren’t you worried that it might fall down if you were attacked by a giant, or perhaps by a big bad wolf?”

But the first little pig just laughed and laughed, and he said, “I don’t think that sounds very likely.”

So Jack wished the first little pig well, and he went over to the second little pig.  Now, the second little pig was an even greater boar. And Jack asked him, “Are you building a house as well? That sounds like a lot of work.”

And the second little pig said, “(Oink) Maybe for my brother, but I’ve got this fine bundle of sticks, and I’m going to build my house out of it. Any maybe it will take a little longer than if I were building it out of straw, but it’ll be such a very much grander house for it.”

Jack asked, “Well a house of sticks does sound very grand, but aren’t you worried that it might fall down if you were attacked by a giant, or perhaps by a big bad wolf?”

But the second little pig just laughed and laughed, and he said, “I don’t think that sounds very likely.”

So Jack wished the second little pig well, and he went over to the third little pig. The third little pig was the greatest boar of all, and he was struggling with a big cart full of bricks. “Oh my,” Jack said, “I suppose you’re going to build your house out of bricks. That sounds like a lot of work.”

The third little pig said, “(Oink) Yes it is. But I want a house that will be strong enough that I won’t have to worry even if it were picked up and dropped by a giant.”

Jack thought about that. “Do you think that sounds very likely?” he asked.

“You never know,” said the third little pig.

Jack wished the third little pig well, and set out on his way to find fun adventures. And some time later, Jack came by the house of the first little pig. And it was a lovely house, all warm and dry and a very pretty shade of straw. Jack knocked on the door and said, “Little pig, little pig, let me come in.”

A voice from inside the house said, “(Oink) Are you a wolf?”

Jack answered, “No, I’m Jack.”

“(Oink) Oh, okay then,” said the first little pig, and he invited Jack in for tea and biscuits for lunch.

But while they were eating lunch, there was another knock on the door, and a loud voice from outside said, “Fee Fi Fo Fum! I smell the blood of an Englishman! Be he alive, or be he dead, I’ll have his bones to grind my bread!”

The first little pig looked out between some of the straw in the door and said, “It’s a giant!”

“Oh dear,” said Jack, rather sheepishly. “You see, there was this beanstalk, and this goose…”

But before Jack could tell his story, the giant said, “I’m looking for the little boy named Jack! You’d better let me in!”

And the first little pig said, “Go away! We don’t want any!”

“Oh yeah?” said the giant. “Well, look what I’ve got in my pocket!” and he reached in his pocket and he took out a wolf. A big wolf. And since the wolf lived in the giant’s pocket, we can reasonably assume he was also a bad wolf. “Okay wolf,” said the giant, “Do your thing.”

Now the wolf was in the mood for bacon, so he said, “Little pig, little pig, let me come in.”

But the pig, who was perfectly happy to serve lunch, did not much want to be lunch, so he said, “Not by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin!”

So the wolf said, “Then I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll BLOW your house in!”

And he huffed.

And he puffed.

And he BLEW.

And down came the house of straw! And poor Jack, all covered in straw, had to run all the way to the second little pig’s house as fast as his legs could carry him. When he got to the house of sticks, he knocked on the door and said, “Little pig, little pig, let me come in!”

A voice from inside the house said, “(Oink) Are you a wolf?”

Jack answered, “No, I’m Jack.”

“(Oink) Oh, okay then,” said the second little pig, and he invited Jack in for lunch. He offered him a bowl of honey, which had been a house-warming present from a bear who was friends with the second little pig’s cousin.

“You seem to be all covered in straw,” the second little pig said.

And Jack picked up the straw and put it in his pockets, and he said, “Yes. About that. I may have some bad news about your brother’s house. See, there was this giant, and this wolf…”

But before Jack could tell his story, there was another knock on the door, and a loud voice from outside said, “Fee Fi Fo Fum! I smell the blood of an Englishman! Be he alive, or be he dead, I’ll have his bones to grind my bread!”

The second little pig looked out between some of the sticks in the door and said, “It’s a giant! With a suspiciously wolf-shaped bulge in his pocket!”

“Oh dear,” said Jack. “You see there was this harp and these beans…”

And the giant said, “I’m looking for the little boy named Jack! You’d better let me in!”

The second little pig said, “Go away! We don’t want any!”

“Oh yeah?” said the giant. “Well, look what I’ve got in my pocket!” and he reached in his pocket and he took out the big bad wolf. “Okay wolf,” said the giant, “Do your thing.”

Now, the wolf was dreaming about pork chops, so he said, “Little pig, little pig, let me come in.”

But the pig, who was a strict vegetarian, said, “Not by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin!”

So the wolf said, “Then I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll BLOW your house in!”

And he huffed.

And he puffed.

And he BLEW.

And down came the house of sticks! And poor Jack, with his bowl of honey still in his hand, had to run all the way to the third little pig’s house as fast as his legs could carry him. When he got to the house of brick, he knocked on the door and said, “Little pig, little pig, let me come in!”

A voice from inside the house said, “(Oink) Are you a wolf?”

And Jack said, “No.”

Then, in a slightly suspicious tone, the voice said, “(Oink) How about a giant?”

And Jack said, “No, I’m Jack.”

“Do you think you could call back tomorrow?” asked the voice. “For you see I’ve only just finished building this house of bricks, and I far too tired to make lunch. Maybe you could go visit my brothers instead?”

“About your brothers,” Jack said, “There was this giant. And this wolf.”

“I see,” said the third little pig, and he opened the door. “I suspected as much. You’d better come in.”

So Jack came in. But before Jack could tell his story, there was another knock on the door, and a loud voice from outside said, “Fee Fi Fo Fum! I smell the blood of an Englishman! Be he alive, or be he dead, I’ll have his bones to grind my bread!”

The third little pig looked out through the peep-hole in the door and said, “It’s a giant! With a bulge in his pocket shaped suspiciously like a very fat wolf!”

“Oh dear,” said Jack. “You see, there was this castle, and this golden egg…”

“I suppose you’re looking for the little boy named Jack,” the third little pig said to the giant. “Well I suppose you can have him if you like.”

By this point, though, the wolf was dreaming of glazed hams, and he hopped down out of the giant’s pocket without even waiting to be asked, and he said, “Little pig, little pig, let me come in.”

But the third little pig, who had spent all day working on his house, was in no mood to provide a meal as well, so he said, “Not by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin!”

So the wolf said, “Then I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll BLOW your house in!”

And he huffed.

And he puffed.

And he BLEW.

And he blew some more.

And he blew some more after that.

And then he had to go lie down for a little while because all that blowing was too much for a wolf suffering from high cholesterol due to a diet rich in pork products.

Now the giant was very angry, so he reached down and he picked up the house of bricks and he shook it. Fortunately for Jack and the third little pig, the house of bricks was very strong and stayed in one piece no matter how hard the giant shook it.

“What are we going to do now?” asked the third little pig. “I put in all this work on my fine little house and now a giant is waving it all around in the air!”

“I know!” said Jack. “I’ve got some straw in my pockets. We could use it to set the house on fire and burn the giant.”

The third little pig was not impressed. “I don’t think that’s a very good idea. For one thing, having my house burned up is not much better than having a giant wave it around. For another thing, we would get all burned up too.”

“That is a fine point,” said Jack.

“Oh!” said the third little pig, “But I have an idea. I have a spinning wheel!”

“I don’t think a spinning wheel is much use against a giant,” Jack said.

“This is a magic spinning wheel,” explained the pig. “It was a house-warming gift from a little man I know whose name I can’t remember. He said it could spin straw into gold.”

“But I’ve already got plenty of gold,” Jack said. “See, there was this goose…”

“Shh!” said the pig. “I think if it can spin straw into gold, it can’t be too much harder to spin straw into yarn.”

So they tried it, and before long, they had turned all of Jack’s straw into yarn. So when the giant wasn’t looking, he slipped down the giant’s sleeve and all the way to the ground. And when he got there, he used the yarn to tie the giant’s legs together. Then he climbed quietly back up to the house of the third little pig. “What should we do now?” Jack asked.

“I don’t know,” said the pig. “I came up with the first part of the plan. Now it’s your turn.”

Jack thought and thought, and then he remembered the bowl of honey. So when the giant wasn’t looking, he slipped up the giant’s sleeve and climbed up to the very top of the giant’s head. And he poured the honey all over the giant’s hair, then he climbed quietly back down to the house of the third little pig.

Now, as you know, flies like honey. I mean, they like other things as well, but for the purposes of our story, it’s mostly important that they like honey. And before long, there were flies flying all over the giant’s head, and it made him so itchy that he got very angry. He shouted, “Fee Fi Fo Fum!” and “Shoo Fly!” but the flies kept coming. Finally, the giant got so angry that he put down the house of bricks and picked up a big rock and tried to hit the flies.

He hit the flies.

But because the flies were on his head, he also hit his head.

And because he had been very angry, he had hit very hard.

And the giant got very dizzy. And he tried to take a step to steady himself.

But, of course, the giant’s legs were tied together.

So the giant lost his balance, and he fell. On the wolf. And he landed with a crash so loud that it was heard all across the land. And that was the end of the giant. And also the end of the wolf.

And Jack  and the third little pig lived happily ever after.