Writer's Journal

(As for the title:  The following is founded on an observation I had while driving through Tucumcari on Monday.)

A dead tumbleweed bounced across the highway, like a beach ball made out of spiderweb. The hitchhiker watched it go, looked up the highway, and down.

As far as he knew, he was thirty miles outside of Des Moines, with the great, baking field of a mall parking lot behind him. He’d planted a temporary camp in the men’s section of a department store, and raided the food court for supplies.

Everything was so full of preservatives that it was still mostly good. Even the salads had been irradiated so that nothing but a suburban office-lady would eat it. He’d filled three waterskins from the fountain, the water filled with heavy metals, but the hitchhiker preferred that to dying of thirst.

A figure passed on a traveling motorcycle. It could’ve been a man or woman, he couldn’t tell, swaddled as it was in helmet, goggles, bandanna, and leathers. For a split second the biker glanced at him, thumb outstretched, and just sped onward.

The first person he’d seen in a week. If he’d had the courage, he would have walked on to Des Moines or one of the satellite communities. But doubt held him back: he’d start hoofing it when the water gave out. When he was sucking on pennies and nickels for the doubtful, illusory moisture.

The last person he’d seen had been dying of cancer, limping along in an electric car. The man was bloated, and the tumors lurked just under the skin, stretching the splotchy, waxy surface as tight as a drumhead in some places, while letting it hang in others.

The man and the car had died within an hour of each other. The hitchhiker had put him in a car on the corner of the parking lot and given him a motorist’s funeral.

He broke out the windows, and siphoned a little gas from the defunct vehicles around the parking lot into a bucket. Only the ones that would never run—rusted to hell, missing wheels, and the like. He placed a cigarette in the man’s lips, and put the pack in the man’s breast pocket.

He doused the car in gasoline, and sparked it with the man’s zippo, which he then slipped into his own pocket. No laws against grave robbing, anymore.

In the fading evening light, on the baking hot blacktop, he watched the funeral.

The hitchhiker knew in the back of his head that he needed to learn the same lesson. As soon as you stopped, you died.

If he could just find a battery, some source of electrical power that hadn’t yet given out.

Looking up and down the road, the hitchhiker sighed, and put his bundle on his shoulder. He took the tinfoil package of food off the blacktop, and opened it up. A chicken patty hissed in the middle of it, and he bit into it, walking off toward the mall, and his camp in the men’s section.

Tomorrow morning, he would give up hitchhiking and start looking for a battery.

(There was a modernist building that was going to be put in Manhattan called the “Church of Solitude”  designed by Gaetano Pesce, an Italian architect.  This scene here was essentially me thinking about how things might be if the design had been built, and other cities had constructed buildings of a similar purpose.  So…essentially, this is an architectural alternate history.)

The Temple of Solitude was understandably quiet. After being closed all winter, after the gardeners had finished in the open-air cells, the janitor set to work cleaning up their mess and that of the long winter.

In the back room, the three interns opened up the refrigerator marked “not food” and each pulled a pair of tortoises out, after moving out of the cold refrigerator and into the warm grip of the interns, the hibernating reptiles began to slowly come awake.

Each was placed in a different cell, to combat the growth of the snail population and add atmosphere.

Each cell was carpeted in grass. Most had a stream coming through them, and one larger plant, either a berry bush or a large shade tree. All were open to the sky, but the walls were tall and thick, preventing sound from penetrating. In the middle was a bench.

After the janitor had finished and stepped outside for his smoke break, the front desk attendant unlocked the front door, and began to work on a crossword puzzle.

The first customer was a child skipping school. She had a book under her arm, and walked right by the desk. Going to the fourth door on the outer ring of the hallway. The girl reached into her pocket, pulled out a roll of quarters, and put six in the slot by the door. The door unlocked, and the sign cycled over from “Vacant” to “occupied.”

The next people to come in were a trio of college students, who dropped in a handful of quarters, stepped inside. They took off their shoes and dangled their toes in the stream, as they discussed a presentation.

Around noon, there was a rush of office people coming in, either singly or in small groups, and for almost half an hour, every cell was full, as the white collar workers sat in the cells—boxes much like their cubicles, but filled with green instead of beige—and ate lunch in privacy.

At the end of the day, the shutters at the top of each cell were closed, and the desk attendant walked the circle, opening each cell with a master key.

“We’re closing.”

“You have to go home.”

“See you tomorrow.”

“Hurry up now, it’s time.”

“See you next week.”

And after all the customers were gone, the evening shift gardeners came out, and lit each cell with bright lights, the four of them going in each cell and checking for any major damage to the plants, and harmlessly excising injured sections.

When they finished, they left food in the tortoises’ dishes and shut down the lights, locking up the Temple of Solitude behind them.

The Second Part of Ave Machina, this one gets us halfway.  After the next two parts, season 2 of Cicatriz will begin.  As long as I can get the outline written, as well as all of my academic obligations.

Ave Machina 2

“Everybody on the ground!” the man in the ski-mask with the BJMN logo on the face shouted.  The security guard, who had been informed of the situation, simply sat on the ground and continued to read his paper.

Brett Jones (watching security footage, laughing):  So, this was around the time everyone started to incorporate themselves.  You know, slightly more complex taxes, but you make more money and you’ve got more rights, under the American system.

The man in the ski-mask vaulted over the counter and held out the BJMN-screenprinted bags to the cashieres, before rattling of the nigh-incomprehensible series of words that his lawyer had taught him, a sort of magical charm against legal retribution.

Brett Jones:  I was something weird, though, the first one-man multinational.  It was really ingenious, and I’ve got to thank my accountant for the idea.  Afterward, my lawyer and I began jetting all around South America and East Asia to make things work.

“This is a hostile and unannounced capital redistribution situation in which the party of the second part (that is, the bank) will give to the party of the first part (that is, the wearer of the BJMN face mask) no amount lesser or greater than one tenth of assets currently available on the premises.  Due to the nature of Brett Jones Multinational, this agent, the cause of this extra-financial transfer of funds is not vulnerable to prosecution so long as A) no more than one-tenth of available assets are taken, B) the wearer of the BJMN face mask does not fire on an unarmed civilian, and does not provoke any armed personnel of the bank, and C) it occurs within a minute and a half of the time printed on the notice.  It is now…2:11 PM and fifteen seconds.  Your recordings should show that this robbery started at roughly 2:10, which is the time on the notice currently in possession of your security guard.  Now.  Please fill these bags with bills, no ink packets, or anything of the sort, though it doesn’t matter if they’re consecutive.”

Brett Jones:  I bought a small parcel of land in Ecuador, a bit in Mexico, one in Colombia, another in Japan, a square foot in China, and I’m renting an appartment in a small Indonesian city for pennies a month.  Due to the interface of the laws in these five countries, we were able to set it up so that it would be impossible to prosecute me for crimes.  We set it up so that the prosecution would just spin their wheels and get nowhere, acruing legal fees in six different countries.

The man in the BJMN facemask was writing out the receipt and giving the bank manager a copy and an informational packet.

“Now, this gives you all the information you need on the subject, and yes, your insurance will cover this.”

“Could I claim insurance money for psychological trauma?”

“I don’t see why not, Mister Manager.  Also, another important bit, this robbery will not be repeated unless it falls under different management, and due to the intricacies of International Law, anyone else robbing this bank will be considered a criminal in several South American nations, including Mexico, China, Japan, and Indonesia.  Simply contact my lawyer and inform him of the situation.”

Brett Jones (seriously):  Now I’d like to point out that this wasn’t simple greed.  BJMN was my second self-incorporation, and was essentially set up to buy back the rights of my first incorporation, Brett Jones United.  It was pretty nasty, really.  I was an idiot, and sold shares to pay for some medical and housing bills, as well as to cover student loans.  I was intending to hold on to 501 of the 10000 shares, but there were unseen issues, and I had to sell too much, and was forced into several business deals I didn’t want.  The Mob actually began using me to launder money.  Thus BJMN was born, which effectively used money I took from banks to enact a hostile takeover of BJU.  As long as I could buy back some of the shares and get my Lawyer to work some more of his black magic, I could get everything right as rain, again.

“Now remember,” the man in the BJMN mask shouted, “you all saw me, everything was perfectly above-the-table, and no one got hurt.  In fact…” he checks his watch, “…this has been the fastest one thus far.  Good job, everyone.  Why don’t we give them a round of applause, folks?”

The kerberos ambled down the street, its head wagging from side to side, casting its reproachful gaze wherever it went.  Deep in the armored hump on its back, an augmented dog brain floated in a vat of oxygenated nutrients, connected to the visual module that allowed it to see like a man, and the sniffers which allowed it to smell like never before.

It passed a man, coming up to the bottom of his sternum; the man shrank back, placing a hand over his heart, drawing breath in.  But he immediately sighed in relief:  He would not have known the kerberos was looking for him; seeing it was probably the best sign he had.  The metal dog walked on; a radio built into its back signaled its pack; nothing.

Once the kerberos has been a flesh-and-blood dog, a family pet named “Lefty.”  Then the car accident happened, and things went dark.  When he woke up, his body had been peeled away, and his brain had been left, and he started to know things.

(”It’s impossible to create consciousness in a mechanical, electrical, or quantum medium,” the scientists said, long ago, “we can do everything but create that kernel of awareness that sits enshrined in the middle.  Augmentation, however, is easy.  Easy as pie.”)

The metal dog turned down an alleyway, sniffing the air, identifying every molecule, translating it into familiar scents:  Tomcat.  Garbage.  Decay.  Fear-Sweat.

Fear-Sweat?

The Kerberos crouched lower, and analyzed the scent.  Was it his quarry?

It shot forward, tackling the man, and pinning him down.  Stainless steel jaws parted and played a sound that had been tailored to produce a debilitating fear-reaction.

It sniffed again, as its other senses took over, identifying the man, reading his fingerprints, testing the DNA in the fine cloud of hair and dead skin cells around him.  Reading him.

Something in the Kerberos’s brain insistently pressed against its trained core of consciousness, and presented it with a memory of a boy who had snuck it bacon under the table, and taken it for walks, who had grown older, but still scratched him behind the ears, who’d been there when the car accident happened.

(And cried when the brain had been sold to the arms manufacturer.)

The Kerberos printed a strip of Kevlar with an embedded RFID, and secured it around its quarry’s wrists, and another around his ankles.  It stood there standing guard over the criminal, waiting for the police.

The man–the criminal–the quarry–looked up at the kerberos, and moaned, before saying something about “Lefty” and drifting off.

(Paired with Monday’s for a reason.  Enjoy.)

For three billion years, he tended a garden around a small red star, rearranging the dust of the ground into new living things, and setting them free. Many of them imitated the living things he had been fond of when was been flesh. Birds, especially.

Sometimes his compatriots visited. Some brought him news from elsewhere, others came to look at his garden, (and comment on his aesthetics, his genetic codes, how like Yeates or Eliot? His organic chemistry, how like Rembrandt or Chagal?) still others came to vandalize the garden, not seeing the utility of putting life into meat.

After a time, he grew bored with the garden, and abandoned it to blind evolution, letting it live free in its last few eons.

He swam between the stars, remembering how in the old days they used crude rockets, and protected their fragile bodies with metal and ceramic. Not any longer.

For a time, he listened to the conversations of his fellow men and women—the distinction was more psychological than anything, now—and tried to understand their politics.

Then, he turned his mind to the great Resonant Intelligences that had been since before mankind had shed their bodies in favor of machines.

The great minds could not be perceived, but they could be heard. They could not be understood, but they could be listened to. He meditated on this.

Some time later, he and his compatriots gathered in a small corner of the universe, to watch the last star come into being.

It was a slow process, but one of great interest: after all, their calculations showed that the particles of matter that made up the universe would decay before any other star formed.

They descended into the nebulous womb in which the star was growing, and fashioned a rosette of planets about it.

The Gardener stayed for a time, but didn’t lay claim to the corner of some world and make it his own.

He dove into the heart of a great spiral, a galaxy that looked like nothing so much as a tornado confined to an ashtray. In the heart of it was a black sphere.

It was an illusion, he knew. It only looked like a black sphere: instead, it was a mere point, a spot in space-time where God or the Resonant Intelligences had decided to play a joke and put a “/0” behind whatever value coded for its existence.

The black hole tugged at him, and he considered it for a moment.

Humans were as gods, able to make life with a thought and travel between the stars. There were no frontiers; they knew that to proceed in one direction was to return to where you began (“The Universe is Round!” a silvery Magellan had declared.)

Correction: Two frontiers.

The end of time, which was coming to them. Doubtless, some would welcome the respite it brought. Others would study it. Still others would try to crack open the black holes and make new matter with what they found out/inside. For all they knew, the Resonant Intelligences would simply sigh and add another metaphorical tally.

The other one, the darkened threshold that none he knew of dared cross, stood before him.

With a mental shrug, he dove in.

When he woke, it was to resonant applause.

(Another would-be short-story idea I’ve been kicking around for a bit under a month. Hope to actually get to this one, even if it’s the setting more than the story that’s fascinating.)

The journeyman led the schoolchildren along the catwalk over the workshop floor, where neanderthaloid craftsmen in protective suits bolted ceramic shells onto the crustacean foundry-workers being assembled there.

Behind the schoolchildren, his valet—also a neanderthaloid Frank—made cooing noises, urging them onward, and picking up stragglers before placing them in the middle of the pack.

“What we see here,” the Craftsman said, “is the ultimate expression of industry. In the times before the Fall, men and women used machines to do their work. Metal Minds and Metal Bodies that broke down, and needed people to repair them, that couldn’t adapt, and needed people to guide them. It’s easy to see the fortune in the fall, now that we don’t rely on machines, isn’t it?”

“Yes, craftsman,” the schoolchildren chorused.

“You can see here as two Franks fit the ceramic shell onto the foundry-crab. Shapeless without the shell, it becomes a near-tireless and adaptive worker with it attached.”

One of the children raised her hand.

“Yes, you,” the craftsman said, irritated that the children would keep him from real work.

“How smart are the crabs?” she asked.

A proud smile broke out on his face when the child brought up his area of expertise.

“They can be made as smart as necessary. Usually, they’re no more intelligent than a cat, but a foreman crab is altered, with extra ganglia sewn and grafted into its brain, until it’s as smart as a Frank.”

The children turned and looked at his valet, who smiled.

“Franks smart,” he confided to them, hiding his own disgust with the pedagogy that was to be their task today.

The children laughed derisively, though the valet didn’t care.

“Can anything be made smarter?” a child asked without raising his hand.

The journeyman forced a smile, and held up wagging fingers.

The child complied, and the journeyman waited a count of eight.

“Yes, you.”

“Can anything be made smarter?”

The journeyman smiled derisively.

“In theory, but they still have to be taught. A leg must be broken, here and there. The guard beasts are taught to do that. You remember them? The great big birds with no wings and tubes for beaks? Each is as smart as you or I–” no, not as smart as I, he corrected silently “–but much stronger.”

The children were silent for a moment, and he led them to the door.

“Now, after all that thinking and questioning,” he asked, “wouldn’t it be fine to look at where Franks are made?”

The children chorused their agreement.

#

“Wretched beasts,” the journeyman said.

“Wretched indeed,” the valet concurred.

The journeyman sat in his small office, where a colony of glow-worms dozed behind a glass pane, awaiting his tapping, and a recording bird sat on its perch, a disk of white bone suspended before it.

“We could just build more people,” the craftsman declared, “I could do it. They could spring from the womb-chambers fully formed and fully educated.”

“True,” the Frank said, “but what would separate us, then?”

The craftsman sighed, and turned away.

“I made you too smart,” he said.

“You copied your mind into me, but made me servile. My ganglia are yours, save that one thing. I wouldn’t be a very good valet if I let you get set on an idea that would have you disassembled.”

The journeyman nodded, the threat of mutual disassembly made them excellent partners.

“I’m not going to get any more work done, today,” he said.

“No. I suppose not,” the valet concurred, “shall we go home?”

“Yes. I suppose we shall.”

The two stood and left.

#

Outside, the valet held a sunshade over his master’s head, the black frond absorbing the hard light from the sun overhead. Both wore lenses of treated chitin over their eyes.

A guard-beast blocked their way. A giant, featherless bird five times the size of a man. Its wicked, taloned feet dug into the ground, and it blared a warning that all the craftsmen of the firm knew.

He produced his papers while the bird dug in the pouch on its stomach for a bullet-grub. Sucking one up into its beak, it positioned its hammer-like tongue on the worm’s head, holding it in place.

The bird-thing turned its head and put one vast, black eye very close to the leather page, searching for any sign of counterfeit.

It trumpeted again, through its nose, a low, flat noise.

The craftsman was unfamiliar with that noise.

It turned towards him, and he lurched out of the way, his valet following him with the sunshade.

The hammer-tongue pounded on the head of the bullet-grub, and its metal-filled thorax shot through the air, followed by the chitinous confetti of its head and abdomen.

The two ran, fleeing the bird.

It trumpeted again, calling more guard-beasts.

But the two were gone.

“What was that?” the Valet asked, when they had passed through the archway of the gate.

“I don’t know,” the Craftsman responded.

“It’s like it didn’t recognize you!”

“I know!” he growled back.

“What could’ve done that?” the valet asked.

“Only someone using my techniques,” the craftsman said, darkly.

Chapter Eight

Have fun.

(As always, the entirety of White Knight is available by clicking the little link below the post’s title.)

Based loosely on the setting of Ellis’ Doktor Sleepless, this is a cyberpunk murder mystery.  This is a story I wrote  last year, and sent into Futurismic for publication:  They didn’t pick it up, saying that the “point of attack” came too late, they were correct.

However, I still like it.

A Fool’s Prerogative

Hey, folks.  Normally, on thursdays, I post an amusing video.  Not this week; I’ve been doing a lot of essay writing and news-watching (mostly to do with the stuff going on over in Iran.)  It might seem odd to put a news story in a writers’ journal–even an open one like this–but a great many stories are inspired by the news, and the weird things that happen in our strange, strange world.

So, today, instead of moving pictures, I present you with a handful of static ones:

Twitter to Flickr

This is a collection of photographs taken in Iran that have been collected into a flickr account and put out there for use by News Organizations.  I thought you folks might like to see these photos and take a look at them yourselves, without the interpretation that always comes with them being used in the media.

This sort of thing is what Twitter, Flickr, etc. were meant to be for (not really, but it’s the best use for it.)  Citizen journalism at the speed of the wire:  right now, there’s a cyberwar going on in Iran, as the government tries to restrict the free flow of information.

I was going to post a link to the paranoid linux project (based on Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother) but it seems the project’s died on the vine.  Too bad, really.  There’s a wealth of relevant information on this sort of thing out there already:

• Instructables by W1n5t0n
• News story about Pirate Party & Anonymous assisting Iranian Protestors
  

But why do I find this interesting, you wonder?  There are a variety of reasons, and I’m not going into them all.  However, as a writer, I find this interesting because of the interplay of fiction and reality.  Go and look at the Little Brother link up higher on the page, realize that we’re coming into a cyberpunk future:  even if the government isn’t getting involved, people all over the world are.

Fascinating, no?