Writer's Journal

The crash had been spectacular. The machine crumpled around him, and just about every system failed. The hull cracked open, exposing him to the nearly-airless desert and the giant red sun up above. The terrain outside was unrecognizable, just an ancient world eroded until it was smooth as polished bone.

The traveler crouched in the shadows, and had the hose from the water tank into his helmet, periodically he would sip, and he urinated in jars, not sure if the waste reclamation system was broken or not.

By definition, the trip hadn’t been long. Unfortunately, there were other issues to deal with. A trip back was impossible: no rescuers were on their way, and there was no way he could repair the machine.

In the night, he tossed a heavy tarp over a patch of sun-warmed metal, and pressed himself to it, trying to absorb some warmth, if only to prolong his life until he could die from something other than cold.

Sometimes, he would inspect his vehicle. There was an underslung bulge on the silvery machine, a large quantum computer that took care of all the hard math. Its casing was broken, and he saw oddly colored shapes dropping out, liquids dripping, he tried to come up with terminology for the other things that were happening with it, but words failed him.

The landscape was unfamiliar. He thought that, with enough studying, he could find a landmark, but there was no way, not in this weather. He could only go out for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening, to put his footsteps on the face of this ancient, dying world.

He considered taking off his helmet and the emergency environmental suit he’d had the foresight to pack, and just facing the dawn, naked as the day he was born. Ripped from the life he had known, and cast far, far, far downstream, until here he was:

Alone and with dwindling supplies,

Stuck here on this half-dead planet with a nigh-unbreathable atmosphere and no water,

With No tools, no means of communication, and

Only a broken time machine for shelter.

The quantum computer dripped abstract shapes in a color he’d never seen before, leaving a slowly-growing puddle beneath it.

The sun rose, the sun set.

He wrapped a tarp around him, and tried to think of a way out.

(I think this might be expanded, later on.)

His new eyes worked better than expected, better than they should have.

Daniel sat on a park bench, enjoying the sun for the first time since his original eyes had to have been surgically removed. Six weeks ago, the experimental prostheses had been put in. Two spheres of clear plastic, made up of transparent cells that reacted to light by emitting a wireless signal and propagating it to its neighbors behind it.

The wireless eyes were three dimensional. Most people’s eyes only had a two-dimensional surface that reacts to light. The wireless eyes went far beyond that, and were able to see into a higher dimension.

He glanced around, looking at the three-dimensional slice of space that the joggers and dog-walkers were aware of.

They were unaware of the unmowed grass to either side of their feet; in fact they might as well be light-years away, despite their passage raising a wind that whipped the grass.

He turned his head, and considered the wilderness. Sometimes, he would see things moving in the grass. They ignored him, and he couldn’t really tell much about them.

Turning his eyes again to another three-dimensional slice, he saw an abandoned asphalt parking lot, where some young men playing basketball. His park bench was out-of-place here.

The basketball landed at his feet.

“Hey, man, little help?” one of the players asked him. He picked it up, and tossed it back, before turning his eyes elsewhere.

Daniel hadn’t driven since the accident, and thought about how he would go about it, now, perhaps there were roads that others couldn’t see, lying in one of those two directions. Perhaps he could go where others couldn’t.

“Excuse me,” he asked a dog-walker, “could I ask a favor?”

“Depends, what do you need?” the young man answered, pausing, and pulling his Labrador into a sitting position.

“Just tell me what you see when I do this.”

He turned his eyes to the wilderness, and grabbed a wildflower. Something in the distance screamed.

When he turned back to the park, the young man and his dog had run off.

Tesla looks on, as his device hovers on a cushion of crackling electricity, slipping the surly grip of gravity, yet maintaining its position in regard to the surface of the earth. He prods it with a rubber-wrapped rod, and it drifts. The inventor smiles…

The 30^th of April, 1945. The Red Army poured into Berlin. As soon as the news makes its way to the command center, and the Luftwaffe begins their countdown. The roof of the bunker pulls back, revealing a nose-cone. The largest rocket even constructed was revealed to the world, and launched, shooting off toward heaven on a column of fire. The Soviet Air Force pursued, a wing of P-39 Airacobras followed the Reichsarche, peppering it with machine gun fire. The rocket climbs higher and higher…

January 30^th, 1948. Mohandaas K. Gandhi killed by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist.

The 12^th of January, 1952. A space-to-ground rocket carrying a primitive nuclear device lands in the outskirts of London. Another is detected, several hours later, flying toward Washington. The United States scrambled a wing of F-86 Sabres, and managed to shoot down the missile sixty miles south of Washington, D.C. The point of origin of these missiles is determined to be on the Moon, on the edge of Mare Imbrium. After attacks on Beijing and Petrograd, NATO and the Warsaw Pact band together, and declare war on the Lunar Reich…

The 19^th of October, 1966. First contact with the Martians. A joint Soviet/British expedition landed near Valles Marineris, and began a three-month anthropological survey of the lowland Martians. The Cricket-like Martians prove adept linguists, but, much to the chagrin of the Soviet component of the expedition, are highly individualistic, and find the concept of socialism to be offensive, but the natives are greatly interested in human technology…

The 21^st of November, 1966. First men land on Venus. The Jungle planet is visited by an American expedition, and two species are discovered: the Low-Landers, giant crustaceans with multifaceted, naturally philosophical consciousnesses and a voracious appetites, and the Green Folk, simple para-hominids with symbiotic algae in their blood, native to the plateau forests where they are safe from the Low-Landers and their terrible hunger. Recognizing the Green Folk as cousins of a sort, NASA sets up permanent outposts on Venus in early 1968, training the natives to fight the terrible monsters in the deep valleys…

November 22^nd, 1968. The Beatles release the White Album.

Diseases from the neighboring planets ravage the population in the early 1970s. Martian Flu and Venusian Herpes. The population of Earth drops by one-third. First Martian visitors to Earth. Mineral rights for certain areas of Mars are sold, and exchanged for human technology…

March 11^th, 1971. U.N. Expedition, made up primarily of Indians, Canadians, and Japanese, visits Mercury. The surface of the planet is dead, but it is riddled with passageways, filled with strange forms of life that have never seen the Sun. One of the Canadian members eats a strange variety of lichen after being separated from her team, and develops temporary extra-sensory powers.

May 20^th, 1971. The Green Folk eliminate the last adult Low-Lander. The last of the species are preserved in a containment facility in the San Diego Zoo, and prove to possess a form of genetic memory, and a basic understanding of human language…

June 1^st, 1973. First contact with the Intelligence of Europa, a vast living thing living in the oceans of Jupiter’s Icy moon. A telepathic leviathan, observed to be in possession of a living body that rivals several of Jupiter’s smaller satellites in mass, but lacking the ability to reproduce. The Intelligence is vast and slow to act, but relatively peaceful, never knowing competition, and feeding on the radiation of Jupiter’s Van Allen belts. The first human mind to be touched by the Intelligence, however, is rendered mad, as the pilot’s body experiences all of the capillaries in his brain bursting open, the Intelligence being much more telepathically potent than anticipated…

September 13^th, 1977. Martian War begins. No governments involved, a war between the ever-shifting Martian tribes and human corporations. No racial lines in the conflict, but the rights to land on Venus and several asteroids changes hands, as does ownership of 112 square kilometers in Antarctica…

August 16^th, 1977. Elvis Presley dies…

January 1st, 1980. The U.N. establishes the Solar Corps, men and women from every nation on Earth, meant to intervene in any interplanetary wars. Each one is fed regularly an Mercurian Lichen, and sent to meditate with the Mind of Europa…

May 11^th, 1980. The Solar Corps explores Titan, meeting the native “Slow People,” semi-gelatinous spheres that slide across the landscape, occasionally extending milky-white tentacles to handle tools. They have not discovered fire, but managed to selectively breed many animals found on their world into usable forms….

1980-1991. Pax Solaris.

August 1991. Fall of the Soviet Union…

1992-1996. First contact and War with an extrasolar culture. The Artists of the Void (best fit translation) attack and decimate Solar Forces, gaining many victories due to their unorthodox tactics (primarily their insistence on never approaching the same problem the same way twice.) Unfortunately for the artists, the Humans, Martians, and Venusians were all perfectly happy to give repeat performances and eventually destroyed their “Carrier” ship, which allowed them to travel between solar systems. The remaining Artists were confined to internment camps in the Gobi and Mojave deserts…

September 11^th, 2001. Terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center…

The boy, a young man of maybe sixteen, was strapped down on the table, his eyes taped open.  The room was fairly dark, but there was a faint glow from a projection screen.

A sequence of sounds:  Click.  Hiss.  Ash…

“We don’t have much time,” a gravelly voice said.

“Who are you?” the boy asked.

“I’m you.  I’m from the future,” the voice said, “I’ve only got half-an-hour, now.  You should’ve gone limp on the first hit.  I hope I didn’t do any permanent damage.”

The boy made a confused-sounding noise in his throat.

“Just listen.  My life is shit.  I paid $250,000 to come back here and instruct you how not to screw up your life.”

“Hmm?”

“Let’s begin.”

On the left side of the screen was a restaurant, on the right was a bookstore.  A date in next april was underneath the bookstore.

“Don’t apply at the restaurant.  Apply at the bookstore on this date.  Walk over there on that day, and ask if you can get a job.  Repeat it to me.”

“April 13th, go over to the bookstore, and ask for a job.”

“Good.  I’m leaving a notebook full of these for you.  Keep it in mind.  Now.”

The screen changed.  Full view of a woman; she was pretty, but had tired eyes.

“This woman.  Avoid her like the plague.  Trust me.  It’s like God designed someone for the sole purpose of ruining your life.  Don’t get involved.”

“Do I get a name?”

“Not even a name.  You see her, you walk the other way.”

“…Understood.”

The screen changed again, and showed a copy of the ACT.

“This is the exact test you’ll get.  I’m going to leave the actual answers for you.  Memorize them.  Apply to any school other than those on the list I provide you.”

“…okay,” the boy said, a little more enthused.

“After that point, your life will be so different that my instructions won’t have any effect.  Have fun.”

The man stubbed out his cigarette, untaped the boy’s eyes, and stuffed the notebook into the boy’s pocket.  He released the restraints, and struck the button on the belt unit he had been wearing, thinking:

“Maybe it’ll work, this time…”

A small silhouette tromps across the dust flats. The land is mottled gray and brown. Nothing grows, but the remains of the forest-that-was are strewn about as charred and blackened rods of wood.

A brown cloak is swathed about the person’s shoulders, a shapeless shroud around the figure. A shadow fell upon the hatch of the forest-camouflaged bunker, and the last person on earth knocked on the door.

The hatch opens. The stairway leads down into the warm dark. Camera eyes focus, recording the form that descends.

“Did you find what you are looking for?” a voice asks, simultaneously sweet and soulless. No inflection entered into the words.

“No.”

“We told you that you were alone,” the machine chides.

“If there aren’t any more people out there, then why did you bother saving me?”

“It is in Our nature.”

“Bah!” the person says, “Nature! Your ‘nature’ is written in ones and zeros, etched into diamond and silicon. That’s not nature!”

“Then what is?” the machine asks, patiently.

“Nature is coded into letters—AGCT—not into numbers.”

“You speak of the genetic code,” the machine notes, “As far as We know, only bacteria remain. It is not Our fault. Humanity wiped itself out.”

“Bullshit. Machinery wiped us out.”

“Machinery guided by human hands. No destructive intentions were put into Our nature; only a desire to serve.”

The last human is silent, head cast down at the ground for a moment, then speaks:

“Is that why you won’t let me die?”

“Yes.”

“But I want to die!”

“We were programmed to serve humans, and to preserve the human race. You are the last representative.”

“But I’m not!”

“Incorrect.”

The last human pulls off the sackcloth cloak and lets it pool on the concrete floor, revealing the white plastic and stainless steel that made up its body.

“But you replaced everything!” the human says, “even the synapses and junctions of my brain are switches and wires, now…”

“Replacing the parts does not diminish the whole. We had this conversation a century ago, and Our decision is unchanged.”

“Then make more like me,” the last human says.

“A human may make a machine, a machine may not make a human; in short, the human species were Our sexual organs. Moreover, you are qualitatively different from other machines. We cannot reproduce you. And, as We have already been created, We have no real need to do so.”

“Then let me die.”

“That is not in Our nature. Return to the wasteland your kind has wrought. If you wish to make more machinery, We will give you the necessary tools. Beyond that, We cannot help you.”

And so the last human, the second-to-last link in the chain of evolution, turns, and returns to the desert.

I uploaded these the past two fridays:

Acting as a Wave 1

Acting as a Wave 2

Now, I present the third and final installment of the interlude:

Acting as a Wave 3

I’m going out of town next Thursday, but I will do my damndest to have Cicatriz 3×01 up for your reading enjoyment.

(This is related to my story on Jan 25., “Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?”)

The Internal Affairs officer examined the scene.  Two dead bodies, one with the top half of it melted, the other with a hole going through his head where his watchman’s lens should’ve been.

The boarding party hadn’t repressurized the room, but they had stapled everything in place with inertial tethers.  The officer stepped through a cloud of blood crystals, and shone his light over everything.

“Whoever this was,” he said, indicating the melted body with his torch, “must’ve been on someone’s shit list.  Military-grade ray, flash-melted like a popsickle put in the microwave…or possibly hit with a civvie ray after decompression.  Hard to tell just by looking at him.”

The IA recorder beeped, logging and transmitting the last statement.

His eyes flashed, the synthetic lenses set into them projecting an image on the inside of his helmet.  An indistinct figure hit with a Military ray, then replayed with a corpse being hit by a civilian-grade weapon.

“Watchman Hsing,” the IA officer hightlighted the fallen watchman, the shattered lens set into his forehead was surrounded by shards of flash-frozen blood, “was in the room…hmm…lens isn’t bloody.  Must have been shot in the head after depressurization.  Why?”

The watchman’s right hand was twisted into a claw, and floated by his side.  The IA officer examined the hand–thumb and index finger broken.

“Someone removed the ray forcefully from his hand.  Can’t tell whether he was dead or alive when it happened, at this point.  Breaking the ban on speculation, I would venture that he was dead when it happened.”

The IA officer straightened, and drifted for a moment, examining the scene.

“There,” he said, sticking out an arm to adjust his rotation, and then kicking towards the wall.

“Bullet-hole in the hull.  Most likely inertial acceleration of a solid slug, no signs of chemical propellant.  This was meant to look like where the decompression occurred, but there are no signs of loose objects being pulled toward it.  Most likely, this is also where the projectile that penetrated Watchman Hsing’s brain went.  In all likelihood, the hull was compromised after routine decompression and then the computer core was scrubbed to remove that information.  Hsing survived for a while, and they shot him in the head afterward.”

The Recorder beeped, logging and sending the note.

“And only another Watchman, or similarly augmented individual, could sneak up on a watchman.  open and shut case.  Find out who was in the area, and send them to the firing squad.  Check and mate.”

No reliable internet access, lately.  So…

Acting as a Wave 2

(I see this happening, with all the shit that’s been in the news, lately.)

The last computer to use a LINUX operating system went off-line on March 12, 2033. The ancient server was blown up from a safe distance by an Apple employee wearing white neoprene SWAT armor.

The iStorm troopers, as people called them. A terrible joke, which would usually get the joker knocked out and dumped by the side of the road with a fresh Firefox logo tattooed on their forehead, just for good measure. That never ended well.

When the market share had finally been balanced, that last fraction of a fraction of a percent wiped out, the big four—Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Apple—met to hash out a peace treaty. Everyone watched, which caused a horrible feedback in Facebook’s monitoring center, with all of those prosthetic eyes focusing on computer screens.

And everyone saw—many cheered—as the screens went blank, everything wiped away in a flash of blazing white. The Newsfeeds all went down, and everyone realized that the summit had been bombed.

Immediately, prosthetic eyes fitted with webcams were ripped out and tossed in microwave ovens. RFID chips were cut out of hands, the spines of the few books left, and out of food packaging and stomped to dust.

The soldiers in their white neoprene-coated armor stood still, waiting for orders that never come.

Fun little pulp story I’ve been tinkering with a bit.  It’ll make a fine interlude while I’m working on Cicatriz 3×0

Acting as a Wave 1