Jason Z. Christie's Blog, page 7
November 26, 2020
Crypto Scammers - HitBTC.com and Bitcoin Unlimited/AMM
The cryptocurrency world is now rife with scams, get rich quick schemes, and promises of immense returns. I realize most of us know better, but the people now entering the cryptosphere more than likely don't. In this series, I hope to warn people off of specific sites and trends before they ever make the mistake of transferring crypto or fiat there.
Does anyone remember, in ancient, pre-Bcash, pre-Segwit2 times, the Bitcoin Unlimited proposal? It was a forthcoming fork that promised to solve some of the problems that the Lightning Network and various new BTC forks proposed to eliminate. So, sounded like a possible opportunity, right?
HitBTC, I found out, as the only site offering Bitcoin Unlimited. You know the importance of getting in a new crypto early on. It might have been a long shot, but there seemed to be no real harm in throwing a little BTC behind it. So I got an account and sent, I believe, .1 BTC (now $2000) to it, and bought the equivalent in BTU.
Then I watched it rapidly tank to .01 in value before I dumped it.
Oh, well. That's the way things go sometimes, right?
Except... there was no BTU. And what I bought was not actually BTU. It was...nothing. A future promise for BTU, if it happened. But nowhere on the site did it indicate that. To this day, I'm amazed they are still in business, and I heard no real outcry from the community, no statements condemning them from the Core developers. Just a huge scam.
So, if you Google HitBTC, you can find a plethora of horror stories regarding them. Needless to say, any site that would perpetuate a scam of this nature should be avoided at all costs. They are definitely people I would punch in the face.
The fault is mine, ultimately. While the crypto market does move fast, and timing/early adoption is the key to successful investing, if you can't take a few hours or days to fully investigate what you're getting into, you can and should expect to be burned a few times.
But this is ancient history in the fast-paced crypto world. Which is why newcomers to the realm need to know to avoid the entirely unscrupulous HitBTC at all costs.
PART TWO
Boom! Did I not just tell you guys about HitBTC?
From Facebook: "Anton Dziatkovskii
8 hrs ·
We sincerely apologize for the hitBTC situation. We are currently investigating how this could have happened and preparing the official statement. It will be given after hitBTC comments the issue. Please do not trade until our statement.
#micromoney #cryptocurrency #blockchain #bitcoin #ico #ethereum #initialcoinoffering #Coinschedule #crypto #token #coin #eos #bancor #everex #civic #Tezos #sonm #Storj #aragon #taas #GNOSIS"
HitBTC.com needs to be shut down. This is because you guys ignored their Bitcoin Unlimited scam...
ICO vs. Venture Capital - The Other Crypto Revolution
Have you ever tried to get venture capital? Me, either. Because it's pretty damn hard. It's an entirely different skill set than design, invention, creation. Quite often, someone well-equipped to create a dynamic product is ill-equipped to handle the business end of things. It's sort of like being an author, and submitting your work to a literary agent. You can have the best novel in the world, but if they don't like your cover letter, you can't even get your foot in the door.
ICOs, I maintain, are revolutionary in and of themselves, crypto aside. It's pretty much Kickstarter on a grand scale.
Think about that. To be able to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for a project, and only answering to the market and end users. Literally doing an end run around cutthroat VC gatekeepers.
Now, a lot of VC are a fine bunch. But, damn, if you don't pretty much hand them everything on a silver platter, along with a nice piece of ownership, you are going to be dead in the water. Or, you would have been, in the past.
The times, they are achangin'.
There's a downside, of course. The disruptions in the market as people scramble for the latest ERC-20 issue. The ICOs that are clearly just a cash grab. The epic hacks.
No wonder the feds are cracking down. The blockchain revolution is spawning further revolutions, and venture capital is a pretty important field for this to happen in. Innovation drives economies. What we're seeing here are just the opening salvos in a new civil war that we just might have a chance of winning.
What are your favorite ICOs of late, and why?
November 25, 2020
Dangerous Hypocrisy: The Industrial Safety Racket
Industrial safety is no joke, although we in the field often treat it like it is. That’s because it’s mostly bullshit. Pipefitters, riggers, iron workers and others do work that’s just as dangerous as building any skyscraper (one of the most dangerous professions in the world), but we’re often doing it in a place that can explode at any time. Or gas you to death. Etcetera.
So there’s a certain amount of gallows humor afoot. At the same time, no one wants to get hurt. No one wants to get someone else hurt. Accidents do happen, of course, and there are safe ways to do most things. But if you do get hurt, it’s pretty much almost always your fault.
Was the hazard listed on the STA/JSA? No? Your fault.
Was it not listed on the STA/JSA? No? Why not? Your fault.
But we just roll our eyes at a lot of what they tell us regarding safety, because it’s, as I said, bullshit.
“Wear your gloves all the time. Because this one time, this guy tripped, and he didn’t have gloves on, and he got a splinter, and he lost his whole arm.”
Erm, no, I doubt that. If anyone could produce such a case, you’d find there was a lot more at work there than a splinter from not wearing gloves.
“Since we stopped letting people use their own knives, hand injuries are down 40%.”
Well, since your policy is that we can carry knives, but not use them, guess what? We still use them. Which disproves your statistic. What I’d like to draw attention to is far more serious, however.
Last year, in my immediate area, I hear that four to six workers died at another site. “Heart attack”. I think you mean heat stroke. But, no real hit to the company, because of the way the cause of death is listed. Money fucking talks.
So, then a guy died on our site earlier this year. Fell, we’re told. What are the specifics? We don’t know. They won’t tell us anything. “Make sure you’re tied off.” That’s it. But, one version I heard is that he was tied off, and a crane operating in a high wind knocked part of the scaffold down. The part he was tied off to. Another version is that he walked through a hole in the grating that was covered with fire blanket. Maybe it wasn’t in a barricaded area, and he wasn’t even supposed to be tied off.
Guess what? We may never know. They never said anything about it, and I doubt they ever will.
Then someone died last month or so. Funny story. A guy felt sick, they sent him home. Someone else left work later, hit the brakes, and thump. What the fuck was that? It was a dead guy in his backseat, where he had crawled in to die.
Heat stroke? Heart attack? Was he on drugs?
We’ll probably never fucking know. They won’t say anything. But they did start telling us to take breaks, drink water. Do the math, there.
Now some poor fucker has lost four fingers, I hear. Crushed beyond belief under a vessel that was being lowered. At least that’s the latest info we can get through the grapevine. We didn’t even have a stand-down.
Motherfucker. If they actually cared about our safety, and it wasn’t just a liability/safety rating (read: money) issue, then the more accurate information we could get, the safer and better off we would be. Instead, crickets. Tight fucking lipped bullshit. Nonsensical platitudes about why we shouldn’t eat in the field, or carry our own water bottles. It is Kafkaesque.
A trail of bodies, and zero pertinent safety knowledge gleaned from the events. Info that could save lives in the future. So we take care of ourselves, and each other, and we never pretend for a minute that these people care about our lives and limbs. Don’t let these pieces of shit push you too hard. Keep your hands clear of pipe, steel, and vessels. Work slow and steady, no matter how much they bitch at you. And never forget, it’s about money, it’s never about you.
Cocksuckers.
July 3, 2016
Chapter 1 of Hurricane Regina
Chapter 1 - OverboardCaptain Dan stood at the rails of his ship, surveying the choppy waters. He steadied himself with a single white-knuckled hand and strained the limits of his binoculars.
"Sir, we're just about out of fuel. We don't have enough to make another pass and get to port before she hits, sir,” Yeoman Clancy pointed out, in accordance to his duties.
"Yeoman,” the captain said through gritted teeth, never taking the binoculars from his eyes. "If you don't shut up with your nonsense concerns, I am going to throw youoverboard."
Clancy imperceptibly nodded to a man who wasn't looking, and dismissed himself in silence. His own reaction gave the captain pause. He wasn't known as "The Highest High-C on the Bloody High-Seas" for nothing. Whatever they actually meant by it. He knew his crew loved him like no other, harsh taskmaster or not.
Still, all this for a stowaway?
Twenty minutes later, Clancy returned. An observant captain would have noticed the liquid courage on his breath, steeling himself with alcohol as he did to gain the confidence for another confrontation with his mentor. The world had forced Dan to relocate permanently to the ocean in order to save a shred of his fading humanity. It always came to this, in the student-teacher relationship.
"Sir, we c- ngh,” Clancy emitted, as Captain Dan's left hand raised up silently and backhanded him into unconsciousness.
He saw...something, out there, in her. Her being the sea. Everything was a she when you lived on the ocean with a bunch of hard legs. But he knew his feelings. He trusted them above all. His instincts made him who his was. And he was the best rogue pilot the NAU Navy could afford.
He radioed the contower. "Kill the engines, and drop some boats,” he said. "I want everyone awake, in these boats, rowing and searching until we find her again. Now,” he gritted. "Move!”
Thirteen tired, angry men stirred. Had they a little less respect, he would have been the next one in the ocean. But he saw something out there. His imagination? No. That point, that slightly discolored portion of water too far ahead to be sure it really was a speck of a different color, represented his salvation. He had lost crewmen and passengers before, but he wasn't losing this one without a fight.
"Radio for a tanker to rendezvous at 0600," he snapped into the radio. "We're going to be here the rest of the night, until we find her."
Thousands of feet away, held aloft by pure human will, a frail, scared, nearly unconscious young lady with a rebellious streak as wide as the Mississippi called out with the last of her strength, "Help…"
No one heard her. But he wasn't going to lose another one.
###
Regina Long bobbed along in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic, clinging to both a life preserver and her life. They were, at this point, indistinguishable. To let go was to sink into the icy black waters. And oh, how she wanted to let go.
She could no longer feel her arms, and her legs lacked the strength to kick. Her eyes were unfocused for longer and longer intervals. Now so dehydrated she could no longer cry, Regina was losing the will to live.
Tagging along on some quasi-military research mission seemed like a good idea at the time. And she did have the foresight to come equipped. Her thermal wetsuit kept her warm enough, for the first few hours. But one foot was ripped off. The pain and numbness slowly crept up her arch to her calf before she really noticed.
Now her body temperature was lowered and she was entering the hypothermia zone. So blind, frozen, crippled and mentally exhausted, the remaining span of her time on Earth could be measured in minutes. The last of her strength was used to meekly call out for help one last time.
She tried to focus her eyes, even though she now lacked the ability to rotate her field of vision, and thought she saw a flash. It ignited a spark in her mind, rejuvenating her interest in survival, if only for a little while longer.
Regina knew that in due time, she would cease to care at all. Her death would be horrible, but she planned to sleep through it. All she had to do was close her eyes. She attempted to move her legs for the first time in hours, and felt the blood flow return in full force. She was amazed to discover that she had feeling in her legs again. She knew this because something brushed against her foot. Something sandpapery.
###
Captain Dan’s inflatable boat was the last to hit the water, and the first to reach the area, just in time to see Regina let go, relinquishing her life to forces beyond her control. He dove in after her, fully prepared to swim thirty or forty feet to retrieve her. Had he known about the mako, he would have been better prepared for what lie in store. But she hadn’t fallen far, and she didn’t appear to be struggling. He grasped the back of her collar and began to kick them upward.
As they were nearing the surface, the sea around them began roiling. A gigantic shape rose from beneath them. Dan’s feet struck something solid below him and he feared the worst. What happened was worse than the worst. They found themselves on the deck of a rising submarine, partially encaged by the railings. Water rolled off the thirty-eight foot wide metallic gunship.
Before this stunning turn of events could fully register in the minds of those involved, a coffin-sized hatch opened up a few feet away. A non-descript fellow was pointing a gun at them. A second non-descript fellow, a twin of the first, climbed up onto the deck. Captain Dan made a mental note to always bring weapons on rescue missions. The clone took the girl, who was now beginning to cough up seawater, without incident.
The hatched closed again, and the ship began to dive. Dan leapt off of the side closest to an inflatable before the sub took him down with it. Two of his crewmen pulled him into the raft, and there he sat, panting and stunned.
The President’s daughter had been kidnapped.
###
Regina awakened from a wet dream. More of a watery nightmare, actually. Her eyes first focused on the stranger who stood partially astride her prone body. She then did what any red-blooded American woman would do in that situation, she kicked him in the crotch. His face remained impassive. In fact, he never moved an inch, or gave any indication he had been struck.
“I got nothin’,” she said resignedly.
“You have to admit that was impressive, Ms. Long.” A voice said from behind her.
However, Regina did not turn around immediately. She was transfixed at the tableau before her.
She lay in front of a roaring fireplace on a polar bear skin rug, in what seemed to be a stately English hunting lodge. Pleasant waves of heat radiated out from the fire and washed over her still-shivering body. The walls were adorned with various mounted trophies: elk, lion, moose. Looking positively steampunk was the centerpiece, a cartoony elephant gun.
The cognitive dissonance washed over her in waves. She knew she had been drowning a short time earlier. Or, she thought she had, at least. Now she wasn’t so sure. At once, the room became bare. The walls, ceiling and floor were stark and white. The figure looming over her receded, although she could detect no door. Her mind was already looking for an escape route.
“You may think his non-reaction indicative of training akin to that the Shaolin monks receive, or perhaps the Sumo practice of ‘tucking’. I assure you the answer is a good deal more esoteric. They are bred without sex organs,” a voice said.
Regina had at this point propped up on her elbows and turned to face her captor. She winced due to the soreness in her joints.
“Do you mean...” she began to ask.
“He’s as smooth as a Ken doll, as they say. Of course, the bits necessary for hormonal development remain intact, but internalized.”
“And why are you telling me this?”
“My dear, what sort of evil genius would I be if I didn’t detail my master plan for you?”
“So you’re some sort of super villain?”
“Not really, the truth is much more mundane, I’m afraid. I’ll explain all in good time. I only let you know so you can be assured of your virtue remaining intact. None of my crew will express the slightest interest in you.”
“That’s really the least of my problems,” she said.
“Indeed. The room you’re in, I must say, is far more impressive than humdrum workaday genetic manipulation. The walls and floor are marvels of modern haptics. They can reproduce solid textures ranging from steel and concrete to the bearskin rug you slept on. The visuals are opaque holograms, although we do have an object printer that can reproduce any solid material up to three meters square.”
“So you built a Holodeck? You really are an evil genius.”
“Thank you. I think. I’m not convinced I’m evil, although you certainly may feel that way. With good reason. I’d like you to make a phone call for me, Regina.”
“Oh, really? To whom?”
“Why, your father, of course.”
Out of habit, she touched her left wrist.
“Yes, that. A rather crudely concealed homing device housed in a stylish diving watch. Not that it will do much good on this ship, at any rate. We’re in a Faraday cage designed to quell any aberrant signals.”
“What are you after, Mr…”
“You may call me Moriarty. Captain Nemo, if you wish. Slartibartfast, even. My name is not important.”
“You look like a Tom.”
“Tom it is, then.”
“What are you after, Tom?”
“My dear Regina, I should think that would be obvious. I want your father to resign. Step down. Abdicate the throne, if you will. If he doesn’t, he’ll never see you again.
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"Sir, we're just about out of fuel. We don't have enough to make another pass and get to port before she hits, sir,” Yeoman Clancy pointed out, in accordance to his duties.
"Yeoman,” the captain said through gritted teeth, never taking the binoculars from his eyes. "If you don't shut up with your nonsense concerns, I am going to throw youoverboard."
Clancy imperceptibly nodded to a man who wasn't looking, and dismissed himself in silence. His own reaction gave the captain pause. He wasn't known as "The Highest High-C on the Bloody High-Seas" for nothing. Whatever they actually meant by it. He knew his crew loved him like no other, harsh taskmaster or not.
Still, all this for a stowaway?
Twenty minutes later, Clancy returned. An observant captain would have noticed the liquid courage on his breath, steeling himself with alcohol as he did to gain the confidence for another confrontation with his mentor. The world had forced Dan to relocate permanently to the ocean in order to save a shred of his fading humanity. It always came to this, in the student-teacher relationship.
"Sir, we c- ngh,” Clancy emitted, as Captain Dan's left hand raised up silently and backhanded him into unconsciousness.
He saw...something, out there, in her. Her being the sea. Everything was a she when you lived on the ocean with a bunch of hard legs. But he knew his feelings. He trusted them above all. His instincts made him who his was. And he was the best rogue pilot the NAU Navy could afford.
He radioed the contower. "Kill the engines, and drop some boats,” he said. "I want everyone awake, in these boats, rowing and searching until we find her again. Now,” he gritted. "Move!”
Thirteen tired, angry men stirred. Had they a little less respect, he would have been the next one in the ocean. But he saw something out there. His imagination? No. That point, that slightly discolored portion of water too far ahead to be sure it really was a speck of a different color, represented his salvation. He had lost crewmen and passengers before, but he wasn't losing this one without a fight.
"Radio for a tanker to rendezvous at 0600," he snapped into the radio. "We're going to be here the rest of the night, until we find her."
Thousands of feet away, held aloft by pure human will, a frail, scared, nearly unconscious young lady with a rebellious streak as wide as the Mississippi called out with the last of her strength, "Help…"
No one heard her. But he wasn't going to lose another one.
###
Regina Long bobbed along in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic, clinging to both a life preserver and her life. They were, at this point, indistinguishable. To let go was to sink into the icy black waters. And oh, how she wanted to let go.
She could no longer feel her arms, and her legs lacked the strength to kick. Her eyes were unfocused for longer and longer intervals. Now so dehydrated she could no longer cry, Regina was losing the will to live.
Tagging along on some quasi-military research mission seemed like a good idea at the time. And she did have the foresight to come equipped. Her thermal wetsuit kept her warm enough, for the first few hours. But one foot was ripped off. The pain and numbness slowly crept up her arch to her calf before she really noticed.
Now her body temperature was lowered and she was entering the hypothermia zone. So blind, frozen, crippled and mentally exhausted, the remaining span of her time on Earth could be measured in minutes. The last of her strength was used to meekly call out for help one last time.
She tried to focus her eyes, even though she now lacked the ability to rotate her field of vision, and thought she saw a flash. It ignited a spark in her mind, rejuvenating her interest in survival, if only for a little while longer.
Regina knew that in due time, she would cease to care at all. Her death would be horrible, but she planned to sleep through it. All she had to do was close her eyes. She attempted to move her legs for the first time in hours, and felt the blood flow return in full force. She was amazed to discover that she had feeling in her legs again. She knew this because something brushed against her foot. Something sandpapery.
###
Captain Dan’s inflatable boat was the last to hit the water, and the first to reach the area, just in time to see Regina let go, relinquishing her life to forces beyond her control. He dove in after her, fully prepared to swim thirty or forty feet to retrieve her. Had he known about the mako, he would have been better prepared for what lie in store. But she hadn’t fallen far, and she didn’t appear to be struggling. He grasped the back of her collar and began to kick them upward.
As they were nearing the surface, the sea around them began roiling. A gigantic shape rose from beneath them. Dan’s feet struck something solid below him and he feared the worst. What happened was worse than the worst. They found themselves on the deck of a rising submarine, partially encaged by the railings. Water rolled off the thirty-eight foot wide metallic gunship.
Before this stunning turn of events could fully register in the minds of those involved, a coffin-sized hatch opened up a few feet away. A non-descript fellow was pointing a gun at them. A second non-descript fellow, a twin of the first, climbed up onto the deck. Captain Dan made a mental note to always bring weapons on rescue missions. The clone took the girl, who was now beginning to cough up seawater, without incident.
The hatched closed again, and the ship began to dive. Dan leapt off of the side closest to an inflatable before the sub took him down with it. Two of his crewmen pulled him into the raft, and there he sat, panting and stunned.
The President’s daughter had been kidnapped.
###
Regina awakened from a wet dream. More of a watery nightmare, actually. Her eyes first focused on the stranger who stood partially astride her prone body. She then did what any red-blooded American woman would do in that situation, she kicked him in the crotch. His face remained impassive. In fact, he never moved an inch, or gave any indication he had been struck.
“I got nothin’,” she said resignedly.
“You have to admit that was impressive, Ms. Long.” A voice said from behind her.
However, Regina did not turn around immediately. She was transfixed at the tableau before her.
She lay in front of a roaring fireplace on a polar bear skin rug, in what seemed to be a stately English hunting lodge. Pleasant waves of heat radiated out from the fire and washed over her still-shivering body. The walls were adorned with various mounted trophies: elk, lion, moose. Looking positively steampunk was the centerpiece, a cartoony elephant gun.
The cognitive dissonance washed over her in waves. She knew she had been drowning a short time earlier. Or, she thought she had, at least. Now she wasn’t so sure. At once, the room became bare. The walls, ceiling and floor were stark and white. The figure looming over her receded, although she could detect no door. Her mind was already looking for an escape route.
“You may think his non-reaction indicative of training akin to that the Shaolin monks receive, or perhaps the Sumo practice of ‘tucking’. I assure you the answer is a good deal more esoteric. They are bred without sex organs,” a voice said.
Regina had at this point propped up on her elbows and turned to face her captor. She winced due to the soreness in her joints.
“Do you mean...” she began to ask.
“He’s as smooth as a Ken doll, as they say. Of course, the bits necessary for hormonal development remain intact, but internalized.”
“And why are you telling me this?”
“My dear, what sort of evil genius would I be if I didn’t detail my master plan for you?”
“So you’re some sort of super villain?”
“Not really, the truth is much more mundane, I’m afraid. I’ll explain all in good time. I only let you know so you can be assured of your virtue remaining intact. None of my crew will express the slightest interest in you.”
“That’s really the least of my problems,” she said.
“Indeed. The room you’re in, I must say, is far more impressive than humdrum workaday genetic manipulation. The walls and floor are marvels of modern haptics. They can reproduce solid textures ranging from steel and concrete to the bearskin rug you slept on. The visuals are opaque holograms, although we do have an object printer that can reproduce any solid material up to three meters square.”
“So you built a Holodeck? You really are an evil genius.”
“Thank you. I think. I’m not convinced I’m evil, although you certainly may feel that way. With good reason. I’d like you to make a phone call for me, Regina.”
“Oh, really? To whom?”
“Why, your father, of course.”
Out of habit, she touched her left wrist.
“Yes, that. A rather crudely concealed homing device housed in a stylish diving watch. Not that it will do much good on this ship, at any rate. We’re in a Faraday cage designed to quell any aberrant signals.”
“What are you after, Mr…”
“You may call me Moriarty. Captain Nemo, if you wish. Slartibartfast, even. My name is not important.”
“You look like a Tom.”
“Tom it is, then.”
“What are you after, Tom?”
“My dear Regina, I should think that would be obvious. I want your father to resign. Step down. Abdicate the throne, if you will. If he doesn’t, he’ll never see you again.
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Chapter 1 of Radar Love
1 – Meet Chris and Janique
“He was a hard-headed man / He was brutally handsome” – The Eagles, “Life in the Fast Lane”
“Txt me bk Lv u!”
This was a new development. Chris crouched, pondered it for a moment, and then resumed his walk around the yard. The love of his life had contacted him, and he was stunned at how she had done it.
They were both in prison.
The text message was a fortune-sized scrap of paper stuck to a small rock with toothpaste. It struck him in the chest from a great distance, with an accuracy that would have made Charles Whitman proud.
He had no idea how she had pulled it off, but there was no mistaking her handwriting. If he hadn’t reacted fast and caught it after it hit him, he probably would have never even known that there was a note attached to it. Moreover, he had absolutely no idea how to replicate her trick. Or even where to send it, for that matter.
They were both facing up to fifteen years for the same stimulant-fueled series of armed robberies and manslaughter, only one of which they were actually in danger of being convicted of. If they were lucky, they might get off with ten each for good behavior, good behavior being something in short supply in prison.
Ill-fated and star-crossed, their love for each other had blinded them to their fate as it approached like an out-of-control locomotive. What else would one expect of a couple whose theme song was “Life in the Fast Lane”?
He wanted to think that their troubles all began when they started committing armed robbery for fun, but he knew it had really started when he kidnapped her.
Chris Turner was a twenty-eight year old hustler with a hell of a habit. He was addicted to his hostage. He had abducted her shortly after her father had denied her hand in marriage. She had been reluctant to leave on her own, as she was close to her parents and even closer to their money. So they hatched a kidnapping plot, their first and only. It had proven to be highly erotic, and they were together at last. Thankfully, they abandoned the idea of extracting a ransom on top of everything else.
But they had never cleared the matter up with her parents, so now Chris faced a felony kidnapping charge in addition to the laundry list of crimes the state had on him already.
“She” was Janique Tamerlane Patton, and his only reason for living.
He slid the note into his pocket and wondered how Janique was fairing in lock-up. She was a smart girl, and tough, but hardly the prison type. Ever since the arrest had gone down, he had worried about her.
###
“She was terminally pretty”
Janique held the black girl’s face deep down in the stainless steel toilet bowl.
“Drink, bitch, or you’re going to die down there,” she growled into the drowning woman’s left ear.
The girl, however, shook her head slightly side to side. She’d been holding her breath for nearly a minute. Janique and her new roommate were having a disagreement about sleeping arrangements.
In a move that would have impressed a contortionist, she kept the death grip she had on the girl’s afro and the arm she had forced behind her, reared back, and kicked her squarely in the ribs.
A large air bubble escaped the girl’s mouth, and she began to go limp. But as she did, Janique watched her slap the floor a few times in a sign of submission. The girl swallowed a few mouthfuls before she was released, but whether she did it intentionally or as a dying gesture, she was unsure. She’d gotten her point across just the same. The fact that she had neglected to flush the toilet first only added insult to injury.
“If we have to fight again, I’m going to kill you. Understand?” she whispered into her cellmate’s ear. “I fuck who I want to fuck. And that’s not you.”
The girl nodded emphatically in enthusiastic understanding.
Janique was confident that Chris was faring better than she was. He was so well-spoken and diplomatic. She was sure he was fine.
###
Chris’s first day had been similarly eventful. His arrival and processing were routine and took until lunch, when he was released into general population without fanfare. It was show time.
He didn’t think it was going to be like this so soon, but he knew he had to make a big showing if he was going to do long time. Luckily he had a plan, and a few tricks up his sleeve, among other places.
Due to his genetic makeup, a mélange of Sicilian, Polish and American Indian, Chris could pass for white, mulatto or Latino. Or at least he could with a tan. The last few months, however, had left him faded.
He scanned the room once more and then found a somewhat isolated toilet. Within a minute he had a Leatherman Skeletool knife in his hand. He swished it around the bowl and unwrapped the Saran Wrap. Then he strolled up to the middle of the chow line and cut in front of a white guy who was standing behind a black guy.
“Hey, what the fuck?” the white guy protested.
“He let me in,” Chris said, and gestured at the black guy in front of him.
The white one tapped the black one on the shoulder, and the confrontation began immediately. Chris made two quick swipes with the razor-sharp stainless steel blade and began walking away before either was aware they were bleeding.
“That dude cut Mikey!” someone yelled. But he was pointing at the black guy. Calamity erupted. In less than thirty seconds, two men were fatally wounded and a riot was instigated.
When he was far enough away from the action, Chris waded into a cluster of Latinos who were moving toward the epicenter of the disturbance, anxious to see if it involved one of their own.
“What happened, ese?” one straggler asked him.
Chris glanced around one last time.
“Someone got cut, vato,” he said with a flawless accent.
“No shit?”
At once, he brought the blade low and made a deep slash across the kid’s abdomen. Realization and horror dawned on his face, but no cry escaped his lips. For good measure, Chris snapped the knife closed and shoved it into the slit he had made. Then he found a safe place and waited. Pandemonium was erupting everywhere. This was no mere riot. It was a becoming a full-blown race war.
Soon the C.O.s flooded the mess hall in full riot gear, firing teargas and rubber bullets, and swinging batons. Chris watched with some amusement as one guard had his baton taken away and used against him. As he fell to the floor, several inmates gathered around, intending to stomp him to death. Eventually, the smoke cleared, and things were brought under control. But Chris wasn’t taken back to this new cell. He ended up in the waiting room outside of the warden’s office.
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“He was a hard-headed man / He was brutally handsome” – The Eagles, “Life in the Fast Lane”
“Txt me bk Lv u!”
This was a new development. Chris crouched, pondered it for a moment, and then resumed his walk around the yard. The love of his life had contacted him, and he was stunned at how she had done it.
They were both in prison.
The text message was a fortune-sized scrap of paper stuck to a small rock with toothpaste. It struck him in the chest from a great distance, with an accuracy that would have made Charles Whitman proud.
He had no idea how she had pulled it off, but there was no mistaking her handwriting. If he hadn’t reacted fast and caught it after it hit him, he probably would have never even known that there was a note attached to it. Moreover, he had absolutely no idea how to replicate her trick. Or even where to send it, for that matter.
They were both facing up to fifteen years for the same stimulant-fueled series of armed robberies and manslaughter, only one of which they were actually in danger of being convicted of. If they were lucky, they might get off with ten each for good behavior, good behavior being something in short supply in prison.
Ill-fated and star-crossed, their love for each other had blinded them to their fate as it approached like an out-of-control locomotive. What else would one expect of a couple whose theme song was “Life in the Fast Lane”?
He wanted to think that their troubles all began when they started committing armed robbery for fun, but he knew it had really started when he kidnapped her.
Chris Turner was a twenty-eight year old hustler with a hell of a habit. He was addicted to his hostage. He had abducted her shortly after her father had denied her hand in marriage. She had been reluctant to leave on her own, as she was close to her parents and even closer to their money. So they hatched a kidnapping plot, their first and only. It had proven to be highly erotic, and they were together at last. Thankfully, they abandoned the idea of extracting a ransom on top of everything else.
But they had never cleared the matter up with her parents, so now Chris faced a felony kidnapping charge in addition to the laundry list of crimes the state had on him already.
“She” was Janique Tamerlane Patton, and his only reason for living.
He slid the note into his pocket and wondered how Janique was fairing in lock-up. She was a smart girl, and tough, but hardly the prison type. Ever since the arrest had gone down, he had worried about her.
###
“She was terminally pretty”
Janique held the black girl’s face deep down in the stainless steel toilet bowl.
“Drink, bitch, or you’re going to die down there,” she growled into the drowning woman’s left ear.
The girl, however, shook her head slightly side to side. She’d been holding her breath for nearly a minute. Janique and her new roommate were having a disagreement about sleeping arrangements.
In a move that would have impressed a contortionist, she kept the death grip she had on the girl’s afro and the arm she had forced behind her, reared back, and kicked her squarely in the ribs.
A large air bubble escaped the girl’s mouth, and she began to go limp. But as she did, Janique watched her slap the floor a few times in a sign of submission. The girl swallowed a few mouthfuls before she was released, but whether she did it intentionally or as a dying gesture, she was unsure. She’d gotten her point across just the same. The fact that she had neglected to flush the toilet first only added insult to injury.
“If we have to fight again, I’m going to kill you. Understand?” she whispered into her cellmate’s ear. “I fuck who I want to fuck. And that’s not you.”
The girl nodded emphatically in enthusiastic understanding.
Janique was confident that Chris was faring better than she was. He was so well-spoken and diplomatic. She was sure he was fine.
###
Chris’s first day had been similarly eventful. His arrival and processing were routine and took until lunch, when he was released into general population without fanfare. It was show time.
He didn’t think it was going to be like this so soon, but he knew he had to make a big showing if he was going to do long time. Luckily he had a plan, and a few tricks up his sleeve, among other places.
Due to his genetic makeup, a mélange of Sicilian, Polish and American Indian, Chris could pass for white, mulatto or Latino. Or at least he could with a tan. The last few months, however, had left him faded.
He scanned the room once more and then found a somewhat isolated toilet. Within a minute he had a Leatherman Skeletool knife in his hand. He swished it around the bowl and unwrapped the Saran Wrap. Then he strolled up to the middle of the chow line and cut in front of a white guy who was standing behind a black guy.
“Hey, what the fuck?” the white guy protested.
“He let me in,” Chris said, and gestured at the black guy in front of him.
The white one tapped the black one on the shoulder, and the confrontation began immediately. Chris made two quick swipes with the razor-sharp stainless steel blade and began walking away before either was aware they were bleeding.
“That dude cut Mikey!” someone yelled. But he was pointing at the black guy. Calamity erupted. In less than thirty seconds, two men were fatally wounded and a riot was instigated.
When he was far enough away from the action, Chris waded into a cluster of Latinos who were moving toward the epicenter of the disturbance, anxious to see if it involved one of their own.
“What happened, ese?” one straggler asked him.
Chris glanced around one last time.
“Someone got cut, vato,” he said with a flawless accent.
“No shit?”
At once, he brought the blade low and made a deep slash across the kid’s abdomen. Realization and horror dawned on his face, but no cry escaped his lips. For good measure, Chris snapped the knife closed and shoved it into the slit he had made. Then he found a safe place and waited. Pandemonium was erupting everywhere. This was no mere riot. It was a becoming a full-blown race war.
Soon the C.O.s flooded the mess hall in full riot gear, firing teargas and rubber bullets, and swinging batons. Chris watched with some amusement as one guard had his baton taken away and used against him. As he fell to the floor, several inmates gathered around, intending to stomp him to death. Eventually, the smoke cleared, and things were brought under control. But Chris wasn’t taken back to this new cell. He ended up in the waiting room outside of the warden’s office.
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Cure for Sanity - Chapter 1 - Earthbound
1 – EarthboundHe had found a shortcut to the future. Instead, he took the long, rocky road. It was in part because of something his grandfather had told him once. It was something to the effect that on a journey, a thinly-disguised metaphor for life, people all too often focused on the mountains, and missed the flowers along the way.
He liked flowers.
Another reason was an old joke he had heard or read, once. A father and son were on the top of a hill, overlooking a herd of cows.
"Hey, dad," the son said. "Let's run down there and fuck us one of them there cows."
The father replied, "Well, son. I'd suggest that we could instead walk down there at a leisurely pace and then fuck them all. Except we're men, son. We don't fuck cows."
It was funny to him for three reasons. For one, he wasn't human. For another, he was his own father, although he really did have a grandfather. And he loved hamburgers. Having no name, he called himself Project X.
His earliest memory was of swimming in the void. It was extremely brutal there. Ordinarily, you didn't survive in the void by being flashy or loud. You either moved so fast that no one could possibly catch you, or so slowly that no one noticed you at all.
He heeded no such conventions. He'd been drifting for quite some time when a tiny speck of light caught his attention, and he pursued it out of the void. And once you've left the void, as they say, there's no going back.
Ever so slowly, he climbed the ladder that led to the surface world. To be completely fair, he began as a virus, a self-replicating, non-living entity. From there, he adopted the guise of a single-celled life form and became upwardly mobile. Once he'd reached the other end of the spectrum, he began showboating, racing up and down the timelines, making small changes here and there as suited him, creating the ideal multiverse for himself.
Along the way, he'd broken every rule he could devise. He submerged himself in molten metal. He allowed himself to be frozen at well below four hundred Kelvin. He even sliced himself into eight thousand slices like some kosher deli meat and scattered his very essence to the wind.
He was never exactly sure why he did the things he did. Half of him said it was because he loved a challenge. The other half of him said he didn't like to be challenged at all.
Eventually, he found himself in the other void, deep space. There, he espied another speck, Terra. You may know it as Earth. Remembering the words of his grandfather, he approached it with exquisite slowness. Project X began absorbing their radio transmissions, satellite broadcasts, their very thoughts and souls. By the time he reached low Earth orbit, he knew their languages and cultures backwards and forwards. And he did it all with a specific plan in mind. Yes, hamburgers were a part of it.
The Earth was a low-hanging fruit, waiting to fall into his hands. When his feet touched ground, he said to the first person he'd noticed, "Hi, I'm the messiah. Did I miss anything?"
###
"Fuck off, nutter," the man said and walked away, muttering about the damned Hyde Park loonies.
"Well, that went well," Pex thought.
No one else noticed him. He wandered alone for hours, trying to gain some direction. Up in space, everything had been so obvious. Perfect clarity. But donning the mortal coil was more restrictive than he had imagined. He felt he'd need eternity just to figure it all out.
He missed the void. So quiet and dark. Perfect order. Here, all was chaos.
One thing he was unprepared for was all of the emotion. He had none, of course, but the emotions of those surrounding him were overwhelming, swirling about his head and heart like a maelstrom, a confusing washing machine of contradictory feelings. He switched off, unable to deal with humanity for now.
Day turned to night and back again. After several of these cycles, people did begin to notice him, and not in a good way. He saw them glancing nervously at him as he walked past, clucking their tongues behind their hands.
He switched on for an instant, just enough to gain some understanding, a little insight into the minds of these curious creatures. Then he felt like a fool.
Of course! He'd made absolutely no effort whatever at blending in, and it was seriously starting to show. Arriving in clothing had been his only concession to Earth culture. He didn't eat. Or sleep. Or groom himself. He consulted his vast encyclopedic knowledge of their world, and realized it was woefully incomplete. He headed for the worst part of town which, curiously, was always adjacent to the seat of local government, and found a homeless shelter.
"I need help," he said to the man in charge.
"That you do, mate. You look like right shit, you do. What's your story, guv? Drink?"
"No, thanks."
"Crack, then?"
He didn't know what that was, but it sounded vaguely distasteful.
"Women's?" he asked hopefully.
"Oh, a sex addict, are ya? Join the club, me wubber," the man said with a laugh. "Women. The cause of life's myriad problems. And the solution too, wot?"
Pex tried to join in the man's laughter and found that he could not.
"Well, come into me office and we'll get you squared away."
He followed him into a dingy, poorly lit office that reeked of cigarettes and insanity. I'm from another planet, he thought. How could he not see that? Earthlings were all insane, he realized. That put him, with all of his reason and logic, at a rather serious disadvantage.
"Can you read?" the man asked. "Write?"
"Wrong," Pex told him.
"No problem, innit? I'll fill this out for you. Bob's your uncle."
He didn't bother telling the man, Charles, it turned out, that he had no such uncle. It seemed pointless with an entire world at stake.
"Name?"
"Uh, none," he said, after some consideration.
"Come off it, Jack. We all have names. Stuff and nonsense."
"Jack?" he said.
"Now we're gettin' somewhere. Last name?"
"I don't know," Pex said sincerely.
"Cor, you must have really tied one on, Jacky me lad. We'll leave it blank for now. It'll come back to you."
The man hummed along, cheerfully filling out pointless paperwork.
"Next of kin?"
"None."
"Tragic. Jus' tragic. Well, that's it, then. You're officially homeless."
"Thank you," Jack nee Project X said.
He felt more alien than ever. Clearly, his takeover of Earth would be harder than he thought. He walked off in search of sustenance and normalcy. At McDonald's, he was accosted by a ravenscoal-headed girl with peculiar square-rimmed glasses. She eyed him quite intently while looking past and around him.
"Can I help you?" she said by rolling her eyes.
A hidden glimmer of amusement danced behind the glint of her lenses.
"Two number ones, supersize," he said. "And a fish sandwich with cheese?"
"With or without cheese?"
"A fish sandwich with cheese? Who eats fish sandwiches with cheese? What sort of cheese?"
"American," she said. "There's no such thing as fucking British cheese."
"Sounds dreadful. I'll have it."
"Will this complete your order, Pex?" she asked. "For here or to go?"
He played ignorant.
"Here," he said, eyeing her with sadistic intent.
She busied herself with organizing her station and polishing the stainless steel countertop.
When the food arrived, he sat where he could window shop, and at the same time, watch her not watching him. He wolfed down the first, and slowed to enjoy the other. But the fries were best served hot. Everyone knew that. Even second-hand, cold McDonald's fries were better than any non-homemade potato-derived side dish he could think of.
She consulted her phone directly, as if to say-
"Hey," she said liplessly. "Quit saying, 'As if to say', okay?”
Product placement? Really?
As if to say, "This is how people communicate.”
"Yeah, right," he said to an empty table. "We have to stop meeting like this."
"After we pre-" she began without a word.
He answered in agreement to a question unasked. It was maddening. Why was he always exactly where she looked for him? Why did he give her the coordinates? And then ignore her? Play dumb? Was he playing dumb?
Pause.
"What?"
( "I love you" |” “)
She suppressed a laugh.
"You look beautiful today, Prail," he told her.
She blossomed. Resumed.
Janique interrupted Prail's thoughts with her latest investigative report.
"Useful data," Prail said. "Thank you."
They played Pong with it for hours. Eventually, Pex tired of toying with her and left the subset.
"Empty Set Crew," she countered.
Prail was playing Nerdcore With Friends. She had an idea for a new game. Janique closed her eyes to the details, but she knew it was going to be a big hit.
She was already impatient. The ladder was such a slow climb. She really enjoyed peeking ahead, and eventually decided to stay with Prail and enlist Chris to finish the older books. Let him stay mired at the C-64 stage for a while, she thought.
It frustrated her, to wander around with Brad and Leo, feeding them future tech thoughts a little at a time. It was for a good cause, but tedious, to her. Janique had lost her patience.Pex eventually reminded them that this started off as his story. They countered with the Prail/Project X dichotomy.
"Secret origins," they said. "You once believed in transparency in government. We get it."
"Political schemer," Prail thought to herself.
Janique played Silver Surfer while she waited. Chris let her sleep while he wrote. He was getting weird story ideas lately, sort of derived from Hitchhiker's Guide. It was a heavy new sort of responsibility. Part of it required willful ignorance on his part. Cyclical and self-referential, he thought. Nice.
The business of America is business, an echo said. Janique let the machine answer it.The joke of it was, Pex knew the outcome in advance, which was why he deliberately picked on Prail, giving a little "sibling" rivalry some attention. He knew it was Dark Hustle, another of his sister's games.
A girl helped vacuum.
"That was me," Elisabeth said. "Sorry."
She was referring to shooting him.
"But, aha," he said. "If it's not a game, how do you know about it?"
"Oops," she said.
"Turing test. Busted. Well, then. Just stop pretending. We'll make a brief appearance, and then retire for the evening."
He had switched from daughter to mother in an instant. In mid-stream, he meant. In his head. He had meant to say it aloud.
She knew. He knew. They, collectively, knew. The citizens were clueless.
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He liked flowers.
Another reason was an old joke he had heard or read, once. A father and son were on the top of a hill, overlooking a herd of cows.
"Hey, dad," the son said. "Let's run down there and fuck us one of them there cows."
The father replied, "Well, son. I'd suggest that we could instead walk down there at a leisurely pace and then fuck them all. Except we're men, son. We don't fuck cows."
It was funny to him for three reasons. For one, he wasn't human. For another, he was his own father, although he really did have a grandfather. And he loved hamburgers. Having no name, he called himself Project X.
His earliest memory was of swimming in the void. It was extremely brutal there. Ordinarily, you didn't survive in the void by being flashy or loud. You either moved so fast that no one could possibly catch you, or so slowly that no one noticed you at all.
He heeded no such conventions. He'd been drifting for quite some time when a tiny speck of light caught his attention, and he pursued it out of the void. And once you've left the void, as they say, there's no going back.
Ever so slowly, he climbed the ladder that led to the surface world. To be completely fair, he began as a virus, a self-replicating, non-living entity. From there, he adopted the guise of a single-celled life form and became upwardly mobile. Once he'd reached the other end of the spectrum, he began showboating, racing up and down the timelines, making small changes here and there as suited him, creating the ideal multiverse for himself.
Along the way, he'd broken every rule he could devise. He submerged himself in molten metal. He allowed himself to be frozen at well below four hundred Kelvin. He even sliced himself into eight thousand slices like some kosher deli meat and scattered his very essence to the wind.
He was never exactly sure why he did the things he did. Half of him said it was because he loved a challenge. The other half of him said he didn't like to be challenged at all.
Eventually, he found himself in the other void, deep space. There, he espied another speck, Terra. You may know it as Earth. Remembering the words of his grandfather, he approached it with exquisite slowness. Project X began absorbing their radio transmissions, satellite broadcasts, their very thoughts and souls. By the time he reached low Earth orbit, he knew their languages and cultures backwards and forwards. And he did it all with a specific plan in mind. Yes, hamburgers were a part of it.
The Earth was a low-hanging fruit, waiting to fall into his hands. When his feet touched ground, he said to the first person he'd noticed, "Hi, I'm the messiah. Did I miss anything?"
###
"Fuck off, nutter," the man said and walked away, muttering about the damned Hyde Park loonies.
"Well, that went well," Pex thought.
No one else noticed him. He wandered alone for hours, trying to gain some direction. Up in space, everything had been so obvious. Perfect clarity. But donning the mortal coil was more restrictive than he had imagined. He felt he'd need eternity just to figure it all out.
He missed the void. So quiet and dark. Perfect order. Here, all was chaos.
One thing he was unprepared for was all of the emotion. He had none, of course, but the emotions of those surrounding him were overwhelming, swirling about his head and heart like a maelstrom, a confusing washing machine of contradictory feelings. He switched off, unable to deal with humanity for now.
Day turned to night and back again. After several of these cycles, people did begin to notice him, and not in a good way. He saw them glancing nervously at him as he walked past, clucking their tongues behind their hands.
He switched on for an instant, just enough to gain some understanding, a little insight into the minds of these curious creatures. Then he felt like a fool.
Of course! He'd made absolutely no effort whatever at blending in, and it was seriously starting to show. Arriving in clothing had been his only concession to Earth culture. He didn't eat. Or sleep. Or groom himself. He consulted his vast encyclopedic knowledge of their world, and realized it was woefully incomplete. He headed for the worst part of town which, curiously, was always adjacent to the seat of local government, and found a homeless shelter.
"I need help," he said to the man in charge.
"That you do, mate. You look like right shit, you do. What's your story, guv? Drink?"
"No, thanks."
"Crack, then?"
He didn't know what that was, but it sounded vaguely distasteful.
"Women's?" he asked hopefully.
"Oh, a sex addict, are ya? Join the club, me wubber," the man said with a laugh. "Women. The cause of life's myriad problems. And the solution too, wot?"
Pex tried to join in the man's laughter and found that he could not.
"Well, come into me office and we'll get you squared away."
He followed him into a dingy, poorly lit office that reeked of cigarettes and insanity. I'm from another planet, he thought. How could he not see that? Earthlings were all insane, he realized. That put him, with all of his reason and logic, at a rather serious disadvantage.
"Can you read?" the man asked. "Write?"
"Wrong," Pex told him.
"No problem, innit? I'll fill this out for you. Bob's your uncle."
He didn't bother telling the man, Charles, it turned out, that he had no such uncle. It seemed pointless with an entire world at stake.
"Name?"
"Uh, none," he said, after some consideration.
"Come off it, Jack. We all have names. Stuff and nonsense."
"Jack?" he said.
"Now we're gettin' somewhere. Last name?"
"I don't know," Pex said sincerely.
"Cor, you must have really tied one on, Jacky me lad. We'll leave it blank for now. It'll come back to you."
The man hummed along, cheerfully filling out pointless paperwork.
"Next of kin?"
"None."
"Tragic. Jus' tragic. Well, that's it, then. You're officially homeless."
"Thank you," Jack nee Project X said.
He felt more alien than ever. Clearly, his takeover of Earth would be harder than he thought. He walked off in search of sustenance and normalcy. At McDonald's, he was accosted by a ravenscoal-headed girl with peculiar square-rimmed glasses. She eyed him quite intently while looking past and around him.
"Can I help you?" she said by rolling her eyes.
A hidden glimmer of amusement danced behind the glint of her lenses.
"Two number ones, supersize," he said. "And a fish sandwich with cheese?"
"With or without cheese?"
"A fish sandwich with cheese? Who eats fish sandwiches with cheese? What sort of cheese?"
"American," she said. "There's no such thing as fucking British cheese."
"Sounds dreadful. I'll have it."
"Will this complete your order, Pex?" she asked. "For here or to go?"
He played ignorant.
"Here," he said, eyeing her with sadistic intent.
She busied herself with organizing her station and polishing the stainless steel countertop.
When the food arrived, he sat where he could window shop, and at the same time, watch her not watching him. He wolfed down the first, and slowed to enjoy the other. But the fries were best served hot. Everyone knew that. Even second-hand, cold McDonald's fries were better than any non-homemade potato-derived side dish he could think of.
She consulted her phone directly, as if to say-
"Hey," she said liplessly. "Quit saying, 'As if to say', okay?”
Product placement? Really?
As if to say, "This is how people communicate.”
"Yeah, right," he said to an empty table. "We have to stop meeting like this."
"After we pre-" she began without a word.
He answered in agreement to a question unasked. It was maddening. Why was he always exactly where she looked for him? Why did he give her the coordinates? And then ignore her? Play dumb? Was he playing dumb?
Pause.
"What?"
( "I love you" |” “)
She suppressed a laugh.
"You look beautiful today, Prail," he told her.
She blossomed. Resumed.
Janique interrupted Prail's thoughts with her latest investigative report.
"Useful data," Prail said. "Thank you."
They played Pong with it for hours. Eventually, Pex tired of toying with her and left the subset.
"Empty Set Crew," she countered.
Prail was playing Nerdcore With Friends. She had an idea for a new game. Janique closed her eyes to the details, but she knew it was going to be a big hit.
She was already impatient. The ladder was such a slow climb. She really enjoyed peeking ahead, and eventually decided to stay with Prail and enlist Chris to finish the older books. Let him stay mired at the C-64 stage for a while, she thought.
It frustrated her, to wander around with Brad and Leo, feeding them future tech thoughts a little at a time. It was for a good cause, but tedious, to her. Janique had lost her patience.Pex eventually reminded them that this started off as his story. They countered with the Prail/Project X dichotomy.
"Secret origins," they said. "You once believed in transparency in government. We get it."
"Political schemer," Prail thought to herself.
Janique played Silver Surfer while she waited. Chris let her sleep while he wrote. He was getting weird story ideas lately, sort of derived from Hitchhiker's Guide. It was a heavy new sort of responsibility. Part of it required willful ignorance on his part. Cyclical and self-referential, he thought. Nice.
The business of America is business, an echo said. Janique let the machine answer it.The joke of it was, Pex knew the outcome in advance, which was why he deliberately picked on Prail, giving a little "sibling" rivalry some attention. He knew it was Dark Hustle, another of his sister's games.
A girl helped vacuum.
"That was me," Elisabeth said. "Sorry."
She was referring to shooting him.
"But, aha," he said. "If it's not a game, how do you know about it?"
"Oops," she said.
"Turing test. Busted. Well, then. Just stop pretending. We'll make a brief appearance, and then retire for the evening."
He had switched from daughter to mother in an instant. In mid-stream, he meant. In his head. He had meant to say it aloud.
She knew. He knew. They, collectively, knew. The citizens were clueless.
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Perfect Me - Chapter One - Prail
PrailPrail Abraxis sat in her lab, going over the numbers from the previous day. From all indications, Project X was a go. One of her private interests, it represented the culmination of her life’s work thus far. Prail was planning on making a twin brother for herself, which was probably against the rules. She managed to evade a lot of them, though. Her latest interest was permitted with silent consent.
Praxis, her home world, was at the center of a great falsehood. Praxalians ran the machines that projected recordings of the former inhabitants of a planet that had been destroyed in a great cataclysm. She lacked specific details as to what exactly had occurred, but she was assured by her elder that it was horrific, and that she really shouldn’t look into it any further. When she’d made repeated, insistent inquiries, Prail hit a wall of silence. Consequently, uncovering the truth was also one of her pet projects.
Her job was an easy one, at least by Praxalian standards. It was an intern position, usually held for one hundred and eighty standard cycles, the equivalent of about nine months. Prail herself was sixteen hundred and twenty cycles old, and had already served ninety-six.
The remnants of Earth, which was the penal colony of Praxis, pre-cataclysm, was contained in the Grand Banks. This was the planet’s central processing core, and where she and her family dwelled. The Earthtwoians were projected in nine dimensions onto the surface of the planet: the X, Y, and X planes, time, and their five limited senses.
Three suns orbited Praxis. Prail’s primary task was writing the functions and subroutines that insured they was manipulated so no one on the surface was exposed to more than one sun at a time. It was boring work. Much of the computational routines were long-since written. In fact, there hadn’t been an unforeseen convergence the entire time she had been on the assignment.
So she had ample opportunity to amuse herself. Not only that, but she had access to incredibly powerful hardware and software. A common activity for Praxalians in Prail’s position, taboo though it was, was to temporarily take over the body of an Earth2 citizen for a joyride. They would usually provoke the hapless avatar for a while, manipulate them into doing something terrible, and then abandon them to their fate, heedless of the damage caused.
Prail was different. She found a particularly hopeless individual, and infused them with secret knowledge, and inner peace and calm. When she left them, they never knew she was there in the first place, but they were fully transformed. Some did go insane. Some suicided. But for the most part, it was a net gain. She slept with a Clean Conscience.
A Clean Conscience was a Sirius Cybernetics Corporation pillow that filtered out bad dreams.
Her friends, if you could call them that. You couldn’t. Her peers, if you-. No, she was peerless. Other Praxalians manipulated Earthtwoians into committing horrible violence and sexual atrocities. It was sort of given a pass on Praxis because they knew that the poor earthlings weren’t real anyway, so no one cared, generally speaking.
Prail cared.
In the course of her investigative work, she’d come across the Bible. It fascinated her, and she felt it held the key to understanding what went wrong on Earth one point oh. As near as she could tell, there were sixteen hundred and twelve different conflicting versions floating around. Yet, in each one, she found snatches of truth and beauty.
She often wondered how a planet could have destroyed itself when it had such a glorious gift in its possession. The Bible only spurred on her love of reading, and she devoured great chunks of ancient Earth literature and culture. Eventually she uncovered what she considered a fatal flaw in the algorithms that made up Earth2: there was almost no culture to speak of, and most of it was decidedly low-brow.
She yearned for a promotion, so she could begin to correct what she considered programming errors. Patience was a vital part of Praxalian culture, and Prail knew that time was approaching, but it didn’t mean she had to wait idly by until then.
So she wrote code in some of her spare time, filing it away in her private server space, where she could merge it with the source tree later. But it was extremely tricky code to write. How could you author A.I. code that was greater that the sum of its parts? Her initial attempts involved “borrowing” bits from great innovators of the past: a little da Vinci, a little Shakespeare, a little de Sade.
But when Prail executed the sandboxed code, she was always disappointed with the results. However, there was hope. As her code base grew, the logic began to improve itself.
She simply added more to the mix. Robert A. Heinlein, H.P. Lovecraft. A somewhat obscure author named Stephen King. As she did so and studied the results, Prail realized it was a matter of varying their motivations. She was fairly thunderstruck by the revelation. It was a huge bug in the base code. Prail knew it would be an easy fix. She was going to be famous.
But how would she be able to check the code in?
All changes to the source had to get past MotherBrain. And no one was allowed to upstage MotherBrain. Prail needed a hero, a champion. She was still considered too young and small to be of much consequence on Praxis, which tended to venerate the sizable and muscular. She hadn’t even found her voice, yet.
Prail had big shoes to fill. All of her older sisters had done great things: Hera, Andromeda, Demeter, Aphrodite, Venus. And those were the few she could name offhand. Prail probably had a hundred big sisters, each one a huge overachiever.
She felt impossibly small. At times like these, she retreated into coding. When she wrote games, the Praxalians of her own age recognized her as a unique genius. It was possible to write specific rule sets and scenarios, and then allow other Praxalians to jump into them via Earthtwoians. Prail’s games allowed other Praxalians to transcend who they were, for a time.
Every game she wrote required extensive play testing. She was currently juggling seven: Death Race 2000, Barbarians, Survival Of The Fittest, Construction Master, Reaper Madness, Big Top, and a Heavy Metal MMORPG.
The games, at least, let her take her mind off of the bigger issues she struggled with. She was toying with the concept of a writer sim, but that led her back to the sticky wicket of self-innovating A.I. code, and she hit the wall there.
Poor Prail even fretted over her hobbies.
Audiobook, Paperback, Kindle Edition: Amazon.com
Free review copies: Google Drive
Praxis, her home world, was at the center of a great falsehood. Praxalians ran the machines that projected recordings of the former inhabitants of a planet that had been destroyed in a great cataclysm. She lacked specific details as to what exactly had occurred, but she was assured by her elder that it was horrific, and that she really shouldn’t look into it any further. When she’d made repeated, insistent inquiries, Prail hit a wall of silence. Consequently, uncovering the truth was also one of her pet projects.
Her job was an easy one, at least by Praxalian standards. It was an intern position, usually held for one hundred and eighty standard cycles, the equivalent of about nine months. Prail herself was sixteen hundred and twenty cycles old, and had already served ninety-six.
The remnants of Earth, which was the penal colony of Praxis, pre-cataclysm, was contained in the Grand Banks. This was the planet’s central processing core, and where she and her family dwelled. The Earthtwoians were projected in nine dimensions onto the surface of the planet: the X, Y, and X planes, time, and their five limited senses.
Three suns orbited Praxis. Prail’s primary task was writing the functions and subroutines that insured they was manipulated so no one on the surface was exposed to more than one sun at a time. It was boring work. Much of the computational routines were long-since written. In fact, there hadn’t been an unforeseen convergence the entire time she had been on the assignment.
So she had ample opportunity to amuse herself. Not only that, but she had access to incredibly powerful hardware and software. A common activity for Praxalians in Prail’s position, taboo though it was, was to temporarily take over the body of an Earth2 citizen for a joyride. They would usually provoke the hapless avatar for a while, manipulate them into doing something terrible, and then abandon them to their fate, heedless of the damage caused.
Prail was different. She found a particularly hopeless individual, and infused them with secret knowledge, and inner peace and calm. When she left them, they never knew she was there in the first place, but they were fully transformed. Some did go insane. Some suicided. But for the most part, it was a net gain. She slept with a Clean Conscience.
A Clean Conscience was a Sirius Cybernetics Corporation pillow that filtered out bad dreams.
Her friends, if you could call them that. You couldn’t. Her peers, if you-. No, she was peerless. Other Praxalians manipulated Earthtwoians into committing horrible violence and sexual atrocities. It was sort of given a pass on Praxis because they knew that the poor earthlings weren’t real anyway, so no one cared, generally speaking.
Prail cared.
In the course of her investigative work, she’d come across the Bible. It fascinated her, and she felt it held the key to understanding what went wrong on Earth one point oh. As near as she could tell, there were sixteen hundred and twelve different conflicting versions floating around. Yet, in each one, she found snatches of truth and beauty.
She often wondered how a planet could have destroyed itself when it had such a glorious gift in its possession. The Bible only spurred on her love of reading, and she devoured great chunks of ancient Earth literature and culture. Eventually she uncovered what she considered a fatal flaw in the algorithms that made up Earth2: there was almost no culture to speak of, and most of it was decidedly low-brow.
She yearned for a promotion, so she could begin to correct what she considered programming errors. Patience was a vital part of Praxalian culture, and Prail knew that time was approaching, but it didn’t mean she had to wait idly by until then.
So she wrote code in some of her spare time, filing it away in her private server space, where she could merge it with the source tree later. But it was extremely tricky code to write. How could you author A.I. code that was greater that the sum of its parts? Her initial attempts involved “borrowing” bits from great innovators of the past: a little da Vinci, a little Shakespeare, a little de Sade.
But when Prail executed the sandboxed code, she was always disappointed with the results. However, there was hope. As her code base grew, the logic began to improve itself.
She simply added more to the mix. Robert A. Heinlein, H.P. Lovecraft. A somewhat obscure author named Stephen King. As she did so and studied the results, Prail realized it was a matter of varying their motivations. She was fairly thunderstruck by the revelation. It was a huge bug in the base code. Prail knew it would be an easy fix. She was going to be famous.
But how would she be able to check the code in?
All changes to the source had to get past MotherBrain. And no one was allowed to upstage MotherBrain. Prail needed a hero, a champion. She was still considered too young and small to be of much consequence on Praxis, which tended to venerate the sizable and muscular. She hadn’t even found her voice, yet.
Prail had big shoes to fill. All of her older sisters had done great things: Hera, Andromeda, Demeter, Aphrodite, Venus. And those were the few she could name offhand. Prail probably had a hundred big sisters, each one a huge overachiever.
She felt impossibly small. At times like these, she retreated into coding. When she wrote games, the Praxalians of her own age recognized her as a unique genius. It was possible to write specific rule sets and scenarios, and then allow other Praxalians to jump into them via Earthtwoians. Prail’s games allowed other Praxalians to transcend who they were, for a time.
Every game she wrote required extensive play testing. She was currently juggling seven: Death Race 2000, Barbarians, Survival Of The Fittest, Construction Master, Reaper Madness, Big Top, and a Heavy Metal MMORPG.
The games, at least, let her take her mind off of the bigger issues she struggled with. She was toying with the concept of a writer sim, but that led her back to the sticky wicket of self-innovating A.I. code, and she hit the wall there.
Poor Prail even fretted over her hobbies.
Audiobook, Paperback, Kindle Edition: Amazon.com
Free review copies: Google Drive
June 30, 2016
My Illest Verse Of All Time
I crack a little sneer at your common cocktail banter
Two steps to the left, cuz I'm deft as Eddie Cantor
I bring a compendium obscure straight from Loompanics
Epiphanic revelations shed light among the frantic
You can flip a few words, but that don't make you famous
I'll rip a full strip and trip, you'll get raped like Tori Amos
You're the weakest link, in this mind meld
Hand you a red shirt, and you get cancelled like Seinfeld
From the mixed up files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
I'm a wind in the door, inspired divine styler
This is the crucible, it's irreducible
You think you're better, but the feeling is mutual
Can't stop for death so you're along for the ride
I heard a fly buzz when you died
I throw aside the seventh veil, your artifice of superficiality
This carriage holds but just ourselves and immortality
From my stately pleasure dome decree
You fall flat in the face of educated MC
Iron man on a thing called horse
I'll carve my name into your fly-blow corpse
No sleep 'til Hammersmith
I'll spit mad shit straight from Zoogz Rift
So go decipher - I'll play the sniper
Come again, but not so hyper
A homeopathic dose of my Vogonic poetry
And when I flow it B, the motherfuckers all know it's me
I gotta give a thumbs down to your third-rate horror
Bloodsucking freak, I'm a fucking skull borer
From beyond - I'll check out your pineal
And once again, the effort is minimal
Armchair critique? I'll do you one better
Here's a bill, go find you an editor
I got Nietzschean styles - you try but you Kant
My stanzas bonanza cause your Pavlovian pant
I electrify like Nikola, and you're a half-baked Edison
High-C pulls the plug on your fucking bad medicine...
Two steps to the left, cuz I'm deft as Eddie Cantor
I bring a compendium obscure straight from Loompanics
Epiphanic revelations shed light among the frantic
You can flip a few words, but that don't make you famous
I'll rip a full strip and trip, you'll get raped like Tori Amos
You're the weakest link, in this mind meld
Hand you a red shirt, and you get cancelled like Seinfeld
From the mixed up files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
I'm a wind in the door, inspired divine styler
This is the crucible, it's irreducible
You think you're better, but the feeling is mutual
Can't stop for death so you're along for the ride
I heard a fly buzz when you died
I throw aside the seventh veil, your artifice of superficiality
This carriage holds but just ourselves and immortality
From my stately pleasure dome decree
You fall flat in the face of educated MC
Iron man on a thing called horse
I'll carve my name into your fly-blow corpse
No sleep 'til Hammersmith
I'll spit mad shit straight from Zoogz Rift
So go decipher - I'll play the sniper
Come again, but not so hyper
A homeopathic dose of my Vogonic poetry
And when I flow it B, the motherfuckers all know it's me
I gotta give a thumbs down to your third-rate horror
Bloodsucking freak, I'm a fucking skull borer
From beyond - I'll check out your pineal
And once again, the effort is minimal
Armchair critique? I'll do you one better
Here's a bill, go find you an editor
I got Nietzschean styles - you try but you Kant
My stanzas bonanza cause your Pavlovian pant
I electrify like Nikola, and you're a half-baked Edison
High-C pulls the plug on your fucking bad medicine...
June 29, 2016
The I.D. of Daria Gray
After a point, Daria Gray didn't age.
Now, obviously, this means that she did age, up to a point. That point being her eighteenth birthday. Not coincidentally, that was the age at which she received her driver's license.
Her fateful driver's license.
She knew all about The Picture of Dorian Gray, of course. Her parents named her for it. How would she not know. She'd read it more than once in her youth. That didn't stop every teacher she'd ever had from telling her about it at the start of each school year. By sixth grade, it had lost all charm. By eighth grade, it was an annoyance.
She'd even considered changing her name. But by the time senior year rolled around, she had come to terms with the whole things. There were more important things on the horizon. College. Freedom. Driving.
The woman at the DMV didn't even bring it up. Either she was too polite, or, more likely, ignorant. Either way. Victory!
At age twenty-five, she looked the same. Normal, one supposes. At age thirty, hmmm, okay... She was blessed apparently. But by the time she was approaching forty, she was suspicious. It seemed far too crazy to be possible.
At age forty-two, she felt she was going insane. Now people were starting to notice. Especially the people at the DMV. She had already started going to other towns for her renewals. But that didn't really change things very much.
By age forty-six, she had come to terms with it. Okay, fine. She didn't age. Neither did her photo, for the record. But it was whateversies. Her new concern was the possibility that she was immortal. She didn't make friends, or marry, because she had already lost her parents. Who wants to go through that sort of thing forever?
She made her way to the DMV for yet another renewal. A federal driver's license, this time. Dutifully waited for her number to be called.
But there was no photo. The woman just eventually handed her a card, and said, "That'll be thirty-six dollars, please."
"But...there's no photo?"
"Nope. It's all chips now, you know. Mark of the beast and all that," the woman said with a grin.
Flustered, she had no choice but to accept it. She was pretty sure it had nothing to do with her license, anyway. Pure superstition on her part. The fact that her photo didn't age confirmed it.
On the way home, she looked in the mirror. Hanging down in the middle of her face was a single gray hair...
Now, obviously, this means that she did age, up to a point. That point being her eighteenth birthday. Not coincidentally, that was the age at which she received her driver's license.
Her fateful driver's license.
She knew all about The Picture of Dorian Gray, of course. Her parents named her for it. How would she not know. She'd read it more than once in her youth. That didn't stop every teacher she'd ever had from telling her about it at the start of each school year. By sixth grade, it had lost all charm. By eighth grade, it was an annoyance.
She'd even considered changing her name. But by the time senior year rolled around, she had come to terms with the whole things. There were more important things on the horizon. College. Freedom. Driving.
The woman at the DMV didn't even bring it up. Either she was too polite, or, more likely, ignorant. Either way. Victory!
At age twenty-five, she looked the same. Normal, one supposes. At age thirty, hmmm, okay... She was blessed apparently. But by the time she was approaching forty, she was suspicious. It seemed far too crazy to be possible.
At age forty-two, she felt she was going insane. Now people were starting to notice. Especially the people at the DMV. She had already started going to other towns for her renewals. But that didn't really change things very much.
By age forty-six, she had come to terms with it. Okay, fine. She didn't age. Neither did her photo, for the record. But it was whateversies. Her new concern was the possibility that she was immortal. She didn't make friends, or marry, because she had already lost her parents. Who wants to go through that sort of thing forever?
She made her way to the DMV for yet another renewal. A federal driver's license, this time. Dutifully waited for her number to be called.
But there was no photo. The woman just eventually handed her a card, and said, "That'll be thirty-six dollars, please."
"But...there's no photo?"
"Nope. It's all chips now, you know. Mark of the beast and all that," the woman said with a grin.
Flustered, she had no choice but to accept it. She was pretty sure it had nothing to do with her license, anyway. Pure superstition on her part. The fact that her photo didn't age confirmed it.
On the way home, she looked in the mirror. Hanging down in the middle of her face was a single gray hair...
June 28, 2016
Drugs, Mental Illness, and Simulation Theory
Did you know that mental illness is partially driven by technology? Schizophrenics a hundred years ago were talking about being controlled by 'aether', invisible wires, and things like that. We can only describe things using the language and tools of our time, for the most part.
Plato and many others did well at describing these things using language and concepts understood by their peers, while avoiding things specific to our time: rendering, processing, displays, etc. As we get more technologically advanced, our views more closely coincide with 'reality'. Hence simulation theory.
Now I'm not saying that simulation theory is crazy talk. Hear me out.
If you wanted to hack into a website, say, you would most likely use an exploit. Generally, you would create an error condition using random numbers or events that would bring about a window of opportunity to break through security.
If *I* were a lazy programmer, attempting to simulate drugs or mental illness, I'd probably just use a lot of random values. I tend to think that this is what can create a temporary condition that can allow one to see the 'Sim'. It has a crazy sort of logic to it.
It's really distressing to think that our universe is created by lazy programmers, isn't it? Distressing, but not really surprising. Some poor other-dimensional contract worker is tasked with simulating mental illness, and uses a cheap random number generator to do his work for him, creating little exploits for the bold or unfortunate to use to break through and see the Sim.
Sounds about right. Then they probably over-taxed him, and shorted him four credits of overtime.
It gets worse, because who would believe anyone on drugs, or mentally ill? That's why I'm a writer. I can go on about this sort of dross for days, and I get a free pass.
(Editor's note: This is why I avoid drugs, now. I like normalcy.)
My favorite story (FROM BACK IN THE DAYS WHEN I DID DRUGS AND ENJOYED MENTAL ILLNESS):
My fiancee and I had been up for several days. She couldn't sleep, because I was still awake, and each time she started to doze, she would get up again to check on me.
I told her to put her head in my lap and rest, and that way she wouldn't have to wake up. So she came over to where I was on the couch, and we were face to face.
Her hair started moving a bit, like antennae. My hair did the same thing. I say a point on her face emit dotted line rays, and then she started turning into triangles.
My hand was on her shoulder, under her hair. I felt my hand pass through her, exactly as things behave when you render in 3D.
So, hallucination, mental illness, a glimpse into the Sim...or all three?
Philip K. Dick knows. But he's no longer talking.
Plato and many others did well at describing these things using language and concepts understood by their peers, while avoiding things specific to our time: rendering, processing, displays, etc. As we get more technologically advanced, our views more closely coincide with 'reality'. Hence simulation theory.
Now I'm not saying that simulation theory is crazy talk. Hear me out.
If you wanted to hack into a website, say, you would most likely use an exploit. Generally, you would create an error condition using random numbers or events that would bring about a window of opportunity to break through security.
If *I* were a lazy programmer, attempting to simulate drugs or mental illness, I'd probably just use a lot of random values. I tend to think that this is what can create a temporary condition that can allow one to see the 'Sim'. It has a crazy sort of logic to it.
It's really distressing to think that our universe is created by lazy programmers, isn't it? Distressing, but not really surprising. Some poor other-dimensional contract worker is tasked with simulating mental illness, and uses a cheap random number generator to do his work for him, creating little exploits for the bold or unfortunate to use to break through and see the Sim.
Sounds about right. Then they probably over-taxed him, and shorted him four credits of overtime.
It gets worse, because who would believe anyone on drugs, or mentally ill? That's why I'm a writer. I can go on about this sort of dross for days, and I get a free pass.
(Editor's note: This is why I avoid drugs, now. I like normalcy.)
My favorite story (FROM BACK IN THE DAYS WHEN I DID DRUGS AND ENJOYED MENTAL ILLNESS):
My fiancee and I had been up for several days. She couldn't sleep, because I was still awake, and each time she started to doze, she would get up again to check on me.
I told her to put her head in my lap and rest, and that way she wouldn't have to wake up. So she came over to where I was on the couch, and we were face to face.
Her hair started moving a bit, like antennae. My hair did the same thing. I say a point on her face emit dotted line rays, and then she started turning into triangles.
My hand was on her shoulder, under her hair. I felt my hand pass through her, exactly as things behave when you render in 3D.
So, hallucination, mental illness, a glimpse into the Sim...or all three?
Philip K. Dick knows. But he's no longer talking.
