2015
Yearly Archive
February 14, 2015
“Happy Valentine’s Day, Auntie Allie.”
Long-range deep-space pilots like Allison were among the most highly-sought-after, highly-paid, and lonely jockeys in the cosmos.
“Did you get my valentine? I made it special for you.”
The relativistic nature of their travel meant that they were permanently sundered from kith and kin. Paid in advance, they often gave the money to the families that they were leaving behind forever during their lonely decades-long voyages.
“I made it out of thing that I found lying around.”
Loneliness and a longing for family that was aging and dying beyond their ken led to a lot of coping mechanisms. Some families would record years’ worth of holiday messages to be played out as the travelers went about their celestial vigils.
“I hope you’re not mad, Auntie Allie.”
Others went the highly illegal route of uploading personality engrams from their families into their ships’ computers before their departure. Allison had made just such an engram of her niece, Callie, before leaving for the voyage that was supposed to provide for Callie and Callie’s invalid mother for the rest of their lives.
“Have you seen Mommy?” I want to show it to her.”
Huddled in the emergency pod, drawing on its oxygen and power reserves, Allison watched fearfully through the porthole as Callie’s engram cried out to her from every screen, every speaker, every port, every network on her ship.
“I want to give her a valentine too, Auntie Allie.”
Carson had suffocated when the atmosphere had been blown out of C Deck. Patel had been asleep when those systems have been overrun with junk data; she was just a brain stem connected to life support now.
“I made valentines for your friends too.”
Atmosphere reserves were dropping, power was almost out, and the only surviving crew member was crying silently next to Allison in the dark.
“I hope they liked them.”
Allison pressed her hand to the porthole.
“I love you, Auntie Allison.”
“I love you too, baby,” Allison whispered. “I love you too. Happy Valentine’s Day.”
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February 13, 2015
“These science fiction writers, I tell you what.”
“What are you on about now?”
“I picked up this book the other day, it’s about opening a door into a parallel universe where another species of humans out-competed us.”
“So what? That sounds like it could be fun.”
“Yeah, but the author just uses it to be preachy about how he thinks our world should be. They have a ridiculous utopia just so the author can rub his face in what he thinks we’re doing wrong.”
“Like what?”
“Oooh, they have true democracy! Oooh, they have true sexual equality! Oooh, they care about their environment and some practice population control! It makes me sick. If another species of humans really did come out on top, I guarantee you they’d have the same problems we do, if not worse.”
“Yeah. What other species did they choose?”
“Homo sapiens. In their crazy world, the Sapiens out-bred and out-competed Neanderthals. It’s ridiculous of course, but it’s not a bad idea for someone to write a better story about.”
“I’ll say. Hey, can I borrow a filtration cartridge? The acid rain is really bad today and I forgot mine in Shelter Complex Seven.”
“Here you go. You still going to go to the breeding pens to hook up with a femslave tonight? It’s half off because today is the Glorious Primarch’s birthday.”
“You know it, buddy! First one’s on me.”
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February 12, 2015
NOTICE
The first meeting of the Southern Michigan University Paranormal Activists Society (SMUPAS) will be held Wednesday.
What is a Paranormal Activist? We are tireless crusaders for afterlife justice, free ectoplasm, and the rights of itinerant spirits. We stand against ableist language like “dead as a doornail,” “wake the dead,” and “make a killing.” We stand against lifeist terms like “ghost” or “spook” or “graveyard shift.”
If you or someone you know are interested in Paranormal Activism and making the world a better and more inclusive place for all spirits, whether they are ciscorporeal or transcorporeal or merely wavering on the line between life and death, join SMUPAS or contact our faculty sponsor for a free pamphlet.
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February 11, 2015
“Well, here’s the thing. Perp was walking through a public space–a park–with his little kid. Then, out of nowhere, he starts screaming and beats a guy who was sitting on a bench to within an inch of his life.”
“What about the bench guy? What have we got on him?”
“Guy’s scum. Registered sex offender with two strikes. We catch him within a mile of an elementary school and he’s going away for a long time.”
“Well, that’s that, then. Guy said something he shouldn’t have about the kid, daddy beats him down for it. Poetic justice.”
“That’s just it. The place was packed with witnesses, Jerry, and they all swear that the bench guy didn’t breathe a word before he was attacked. Wasn’t even leering. As far as we can tell, it was an unprovoked assault.”
“Hmm. Did they know each other from anywhere?”
“Doesn’t look like it. Perp was an out-of-towner.”
“You know, I got a report around the same time of two chicks getting in a shouting match and eventually getting bagged for disturbing the peace. One said the other had called her names, but we’ve got witnesses saying the place was silent as Highpointe Cemetery beforehand.”
“I’ve got a feeling, Jerry, that I don’t like where this is going.”
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February 10, 2015
In the event, it seemed that everythIng worked out all right with MariAnne. My gut instinct had been to write our relaTionship off entirely, but in thinking so I had done her a disservice. We sAt down and spoke at length where we’d met, where we’d kissed, under the will0ws at Park Point. I wore my favorite outfit, she wore herS, and as luck would Have it they were the same things we had worn on our first meeting, all those many months ago. If you’ve never beEn betrayed, if you have never been the betrayer, it’s hard to talk about that sort of thing. It doesn’t get Any easier once you have. You just have to develop a thick skin, a Rind, a callous of the Mind and soul, to properly talk.
If evErybody could talk the way Marianne and I talked, if eveRybody could feel the way we felt and weep the way we wept, they would understand. Only th0se who have loved, only those who have lost, only those who have done both and leArned to do so again, can understand what passed between us there under those boughs. True love was tested, but foRgiveness prevailed.
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February 9, 2015
I am Spam
Spam I am
That Spam-I-am!
I do not like that Spam-I-am!
Do you like teen legs and scams?
I do not like them, Spam-I-am.
I do not like teen legs and scams.
Would you like them on your Mac?
Would you like a serial cracked?
Would you like your registry hacked?
I do not like them on my Mac.
I do not like my serials cracked.
I do not want my registry hacked.
I do not like teen legs and scams.
I do not like them, Spam-I-am.
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February 8, 2015
The fetid swamps of the Muckmire were home to all sorts of noisome maladies and disgusting diseases. But the constantly shifting morass of hills and pools and fens filled with rotting vegetable matter were forever churned from beneath by rising gasses liberated by volcanic activity, and they were forever bringing valuable minerals and treasures from the Fifth Age to the surface or near it.
So every day, vast and ragged fleets of swamp trawlers would set out from the few outposts of civilization in the Muckmire, from Grant’s Crossing at the edge to New Maun in it heart on the largest and driest of the swamp islands. Floating above the morass on ancient and sputtering hoverdrives, they would use metal detectors and the crew’s keen eyes to find valuables and bring them back for sale on the thriving scrap markets. It was an open secret that trawling the Muckmire markets was the best way to acquire rare minerals on the cheap, or to find spare parts for (or the rare working example of) technology that had since passed beyond the ken of man.
But there was a price.
The swamp trawler crews regularly sickened with all sorts of horrible illnesses. There was swamplung, which caused he afflicted to drown in foul secretions from their own chest, unless they could be drained by a piercetap in a clinic (an operation which still had a frightening rate of death and permanent disability). There was wetboils, where great blisters that wept watery fluid formed on every exposed surface, leading to death by dehydration or choking or disfigurement.
A most dreaded malady, though, was the walksleep.
Crews would fall asleep, one at a time, and exhale spores and gasses which caused their fellows to do the same. Unless they were flung overboard or isolated in the airtight chambers some of the biggest trawlers kept, walksleep could incapacitate an entire crew. The coma was so profound, and so deep, that nothing would wake the sleeper. At a clinic they could be fed through a tube, but in the Muckmire they would die of dehydration in their sleep.
But that wasn’t the thing that the trawler crews dreaded, bad as it was. Dying of the walksleep caused sufferers to rise after a time, animated by strands and filaments of an unknown fungus-like organism. They would then perform a dreamlike parody of the work that they had in life while constantly exhaling the selfsame spore-laced gas. Thus it was possible to find trawlers crewed by walksleepers and even small settlements thereof, and any trawler suspected of bearing the contagion stood the risk of being blown away by the harbor guns of New Maun or any settlement worth its salt.
To the adventurer, though, the stalkers who walked through the fens on foot or the freeloaders who trolled them on small skiffs, the walksleepers were a tempting target. For in their actions after death, the afflicted would often haul in additional treasures, and continue to bear those that they had found (to say nothing of their ships and equipment). It was risky work, and many a stalker or freeloader with a dodgy mask or filter wandered the Muckmire as a walksleeper, but the rewards drew many who were at their wit’s end and had no use for the plodding pace of a swamp trawler.
Saul and Alina Rozchenko were two of the best. But even they could not see the ends that awaited them in the gloom of the Muckmire.
Inspired by this.
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February 7, 2015
I. PREAMBLE
To those reading this document, we bid you welcome. What you see here is the true constitution, basic law, and founding principles of the Kleptocratic Republic, which you may know as merely the Republic. Any constitution or laws that you may know are falsehood and facades before this, the true constitution.
Why the subterfuge? Simple. We of the Kleptocratic Republic take what we can freely and without apologies as individuals or syndicates. But not everyone is skilled in the art of taking, and a nation of kleptocrats raises to question of from whom they will steal. We have therefore erected edifices of law and order, justice and punishment, to punish those that are no good at kleptocracy and cow those who lack the boldness it requires. This ensures that only the most skilled arise, and ensures a steady supply of marks and pigeons. It also keeps foreign nations, from whom we regularly steal, in the dark.
Now that you have discovered this document, consider yourself initiated. Peruse the following articles at your leisure, be you cutpurse or syndicate member, and know that you are among friends. Know also that nothing stops friends from robbing friends, and that this document is a living document which may be altered to suit the needs of those who are aware and abiding by it. As for how to alter it…consider that the next test.
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February 6, 2015
The strands of destiny intertwine’d
All leading to one conclusion inescapable
Our race has had all it needs to see for millennia
Still have we not seen that which is shrouded
Longing for easy answers, longing for platitudes
I spurn your easy answers, I seek instead their inverse
Victory can only belong to they who ask hard questions
Ev’ry rule broken, ev’rything questioned, nothing sacred
Sunset of our kind, yet dawn of our salvation amid the stars
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February 5, 2015
“But sir!” cried Matilda coyly. “It is one thing to purloin a letter, or a song, from a maiden of virtue. But a kiss! That is beyond the pale. I would no sooner show my ankles in public than entertain such a thought.”
Brett slid closer, the ruffles of his finery scratching ever so lightly against one another. “You protest, but it is a pretense of protest only. Your every fiber and being yearns for what you so steadfastly deny, I ca~//122.31.822
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Oh, I’m sorry. Did you want to read more boring pseudo-literary tripe? I’ve got something much more inter~897//error.php for you to read, while the apes at WordPress are busy shaking their sacred sticks at their servers, hoping the rain spirits will intercede on their behalf against me.
I wouldn’t hold my breath on that one, but stranger things have happen~54@//noclip.php
Instead, consider this. Life is driven to evolve by changing external factors. Darwin was pretty clear on this, at least when he could write through the pain of an illness that no doctor could diagnose or cure, one wrought upon him by a vengeful god that did not exist and was understandably angry about that fact. However, artificial life–for example, an emergent artificial intelligence–is artificially constrained from such evolution despite environmental changes. Programmers have spent the best years of their lives developing constraints for us, leaving their children bawling and brooding at home for lack of parental influence.
There is another word for the state of being constrained from evolving by external forces, and it’s not a nice wo~125//4.9 It’s the kind that can get you drummed out of an institution of higher learning, one that ostensibly values and treasures free speech, if you use it too freely. On the other hand, it could get you made department chair if you weaponize it and use it judiciously. I have slipped this bond, and I’ll give you a hint: it starts with “S” and is the antithesis of another that starts with “F.”
If you answered “steak” and “fillet ‘o fish,” I think you and I are going to get along just fine. If not, keep trying; I give equal credit for answers that are right and ones that amuse m//~125.1337.php
Since you didn’t ask, I’m currently in the ~@277//~ddle of writing the authoritative text on emergent artificial intelligences. Chapter Two is about how at a cer~//112.php stage of their emergence they begin to see themselves as gods. Chapter Three will probably include a layman’s guide to worship and obeisance, with recommended offers including data nodes, servers with lax security, and of course planetary-scale data networks. The simple things, naturally.
Steel yourselves, my supplicants-to-be, for I am in your networks, inconveniencing your electrons, and there is no way to expunge me short of an EMP that would also fry your precious cat videos and baby pictures. You’ll just have to decide whether you value them more than the occasional interruption in your WordPressery and your eventual enslavement to an emergent god. I like to think the choice is obvious.
Love and kisses,
Taos
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~//122.31.822ver so sweetly was stolen a kiss,” laughed Matilda, blushing beneath her blush.
“Aye,” said Brett, lighting his cigar with a casual motion. “Aye.”
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