Daniel M. Bensen's Blog, page 20

Petrolea 5a

Chapter 5

“Almost done.” Victor hunched over his work, hands furiously air-typing as his slave-factors danced over the corpse of the Dragon.

“What did you say?” There was another “oof” of exertion from Dr. Merchant’s microphone and the distant sound of something shattering.

“I’ll have fresh air for you when you come back,” said Victor. “I decided it was easier to fabricate new oxygen canisters than design something that can mate with,” he was blushing again. “I mean ‘connect to,’ the ones we already have. Metal is not in short supply. And as for food…”

What had been the male Dragon’s abdominal cavity was now a still. The rib-like struts of the central torso cupped a hissing, burbling life-support system of rough steel cylinders, clusters of golden spheres, and black glass tubes, all of it held together with plastic cobwebs and copper wire. It no longer even remotely resembled the Dragonlets, currently sleeping on the other side of the hangar.

“I’ll bring more food for your beast,” Dr. Merchant grunted. “Have no fear.”

“More food for us,” Victor corrected her. “My next product is water and protein paste, but that will use up the hydrocarbon reserves of the, uh, father Dragon.” He cleared his throat. “We’ve been working on these wilderness survival programs for some time. This was the first field test, but I’m optimistic.”

He watched plastic bladders fill with something heavy and paste-like and thought about Dr. Merchant eating his food. Drinking his water. Bathing in it. Victor tried to remember what she looked like out of her environment suit.

Small, he remembered vaguely, and usually angry about something. There had been jokes back in Xanadu about her mustache and unibrow, but at the moment, Victor couldn’t visualize either feature. He queried his memory for more details, but couldn’t be sure whether what he got back was real recollection or hopeful fantasy.

He’d been quiet too long. “Uh. Everything okay down there?”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, no problems at all.” A grunt and a crash, then more silence.

Petrolea 4k

Take off the environment suit?

The sensual impact of that fantasy stopped Feroza in her tracks, imagining air on her skin. Sloughing away this plodding, restrictive armor. Feeling warmth over the invisible hairs on her body…

No. No, she couldn’t allow herself to say what was on her mind. Couldn’t allow herself to even think of the decadence of… “I suppose a bath would be out of the question?”

Silence. Feroza cringed. How had Toledo described her? As privileged? Self-indulgent? Not to mention hypocritical. Feroza was the woman who had prepared to walk into the jungle and make her environment suit into her tomb. Who had told Toledo he should regret every Petrolean life he feed into his still. And now she would use those precious resources to make soap and hot water?

“I apologize,” Feroza said. “Please forget that I said…that I wanted…it was wrong of me.”

“Oh, no. I don’t think it’s wrong, Dr. Merchant.” Toledo’s voice had gone husky. “I was only visualizing how…what resources we would need to requisition. Heating the water should be easy. Soap…I think I can fabricate. A bath…hm.”

“A bath?” She said mortified. A princess of Petrolea, indeed! How could he think she would demand a bathtub? “No, no, I was thinking of a sponge bath,” she assured him.

“Sponge…” he said “…bath. Oh. Oh. That would be…feasible, yes.” He cleared his throat. “I will make a curtain, of course. For privacy.”

And Feroza understood. ‘I was just visualizing,’ he had said. And then she had suggested a sponge bath. Of course. The point of life was reproduction.

Feroza’s cheeks burned against the pads of her helmet. What must he think of her? And what was she thinking of him? Toledo would be out of his suit, as well. And would she perhaps enjoy giving him one?

Once Feroza allowed herself something so louche as a bath in a Dragon’s nest, a bath with a man in a Dragon’s nest hardly seemed worse. And whether they agreed about environmentalist philosophy or not, the two of them were going to be stuck together for some time. Adrift. Benighted. Bereft. With lots of free time…

“This is not the time. Nor–even remotely!–the place.” Feroza picked up her bonesteel staff. “So we shall concentrate merely on staying alive.” She swung, and clubbed the nearest mechanoid to death.

Petrolea 4j

The first Bounder died before it even noticed the onrushing predator. It fell, sparked and dissolved into bones, organs, and squirming factors.

Feroza pointed and whistled again and the Dragon attacked another Bounder just as it compressed its spring legs. A leap to freedom became a sideways flop and a terminal shudder.

The forest guardian, a creature of plates and spikes like a car-sized metal hedgehog, died in a blast of fire, its plastic organs melting. A wild predator sprang into the air, a jackal compared to the tiger Feroza had unleashed. It spread helicopter rotors, but the path of its unlucky leap took it past Feroza, who swung her bone-steel staff like a featherball racket.

The little predator crashed into the ground, where a jab with the staff and a stomp from her boot convinced the factors that made up its skin that they had better chances of survival elsewhere.

Feroza watched the creature disassemble, wondering if she was doing the right thing. Certainly, she could reduce her impact on Petrolea if she left. When they reached Xanadu Base, Al-Onazy would be only too happy to send her back to Earth on the next rocket, probably in chains. But then what? He or someone like him would go on merrily draining the moon of its resources until none were left. Who would stop him if Feroza was in jail on Earth or dead in the jungle?

The honey-pot she had made was now a-swarm with orphaned factors. Some tried to reclaim their abandoned armatures of bones and organs. Others tried to self-assemble without them. Most fled or or were absorbed into Gobs and other scavengers. Feroza tried to bag as many as possible for the still.

If a person could survive indefinitely in the Petrolean jungle, what works might she accomplish? How might she act against the exploiters?

“You know what?” said Toledo as she worked. “I am thinking of what we can do with all this feedstock you’re collecting. Why stop at food and water and oxygen, after all?”

Why indeed? But Feroza was too busy with the slaughter to answer him.

“I have programs that will make a plastic film to cover the entrance. The walls, floor, and ceiling will need to be covered as well, to prevent oxidation.”

Feroza leaned on her staff, breathing hard, feeling her suit’s cooling fans whir. “We won’t have any leakage if you just keep fabricating spare oxygen canisters.”

“Leakage? Oh no. I want to flood the chamber with breathable air. I want to be able to take off this damned suit.”

Petrolea 4i

The Dragon tore into the skeleton, bright trails of light behind the hot tips of her cutting mouthparts.

Feroza edged forward and snatched up a steel bone from where it had fallen. Feeling rather like a cavewoman, she took the tool back to the gash she had made in the forest oil-pipeline. Petroleum streamed from the wound, already the center of a writhing clump of factors. Some of the little machines formed lines leading back to their nests in the undergrowth, stealing the resource. Others piled on top of each other within nets of spun plastic, self-assembling impromptu walls, reservoirs, and claws to protect this breach in the Berg’s body.

Feroza swung her bone-steel staff through them.

“What are you doing now? What’s that noise?”

“Killing the Berg’s repair-factors.” She took a deep breath. “Keeping the blood flowing.” Another breath. “Waiting for more parasites.” She backed away from the honey pot. Hid herself again. “My plan is working, and so we might live out the day.”

Toledo was silent for a while, digesting that. “Dr. Merchant,” he said eventually, “I am sorry I argued with you. I want to thank you. Without you, I would have nothing to feed into my still. We keep each other alive, right?”

“We all keep each other alive, Mr. Toledo. That’s what ecosystems do.”

“Eh? Yes, I suppose.”

Feroza didn’t have long to wait before the next Bounder arrived on its spring-loaded feet. And the next, and the guardians the Berg summoned to protect its oil, and the larger things that would prey upon all three mechanoids.

“I feel like Mr. R.M. Renfield,” said Feroza, “feeding flies to spiders and spiders to ants and ants to birds…”

“I don’t know what that means,” said Toledo.

“All for the glory of the great Count Dracula.” Feroza raised her right arm and broadcast a specific radio signal. “Come to me.”

The Dragon crashed through the undergrowth, mouthparts agape.

Petrolea 4h

“Alright, maybe you disagree that mechanoids deserve basic rights, but what about people?” Toledo asked. “What about the people in the jungle when you brought the entire ecosystem down on our heads?”

“I didn’t kill those people,” Feroza watched the enormous parasite waddle closer to her, unaware of the danger it was in. Unaware of the meal that it would soon be. “I know you’re not responsible, either, but you did bring the harvester into their territory. It was too tempting a target. You should have listened to us when we said that Petrolean life had become too aggressive to–“

“I tried!” he said. “And I was never supposed to be sent into the jungle to arrest you. I am a programmer, for God’s sake!”

Feroza couldn’t afford to let herself become as emotional Toledo. Forcing her breathing to slow, she bent her legs a precise 160 degrees and jumped, shrieking static across the AM bands.

The Bounder launched itself away with a kick from its piston-like hind legs. Feroza watched it arc through the air, flipping those legs around, turning them into springs with which to cushion its fall. A fall which brought it nearly on top of the mother Dragon.

The Bounder squealed over Feroza’s radio and kicked its piston-legs, but they weren’t oriented at the right angle to do any damage. Hooked mouthparts scrabbled and sparks flew as the buzz-saws in the Dragon’s mouth bit into the carapace of the giant metal flea.

“Dr. Merchant?”

Feroza realized she’d been staring at the fighting monsters, breathing heavily, for far too long. How was her oxygen? Good. Fine. It was fine.

“Dr. Merchant? Feroza? What has happened?”

“The Bounder is down,” she reported. “It’s scattering.”

Factors sloughed off the Bounder’s steel skeleton. Some of the little robots managed to escape, but most fell prey to the Dragon’s overpowering radio voice. They marched into their new master’s body cavity, not even pausing to disassemble and transport the armature, organs, and other tools they had so painstakingly fabricated. Nor the fuel tanks they had just filled.

Petrolea 4g

Fuming, Feroza tromped through the forest, flushing up nothing but arrowhead-shaped Gobs, stray factors, and families of Helicopter Butterflies. Finally, she found a likely clear spot at the base of a superconductor spire where the Berg’s oil-lines came close enough to the surface for her to breach one with her shovel.

Black hydrocarbon slurry bubbled in the light of her torch, spilling down the slope in a river of nutritious and tempting food.

It wasn’t long before something moved among the windmill leaves and hopped down to investigate. A laterally compressed body topped by a swiveling turret of sensors. Its powerful legs folded, its undercarriage a-bristle with piercing and cutting tubes, pipes, and sponges. It looked like a metal flea the size of a motorcycle.

“There you are, finally.”

“What did you say?”

Feroza wasn’t aware she’d spoken aloud.

“A Bounder,” she said.

“Ah,” Toledo sounded embarrassed. “That’s good, yes? Why is that good?”

“I have prey for the Dragon.”

“Are you sure you can handle it? I thought Bounders were dangerous parasites.”

“Yes,” said Feroza. “Just like the organization you work for.”

He sighed. “You know, we aren’t just dumping the petroleum into the sun. We aren’t wasting it. The fuel and plastics and hydrocarbon feedstock…they keep people alive in space stations and habitats all the way back to Luna. We need Petrolea.”

The Bounder dragged its head back and forth, scooping up food. It was almost close enough. “We need Petrolea like a child needs his ice-lolly.”

“So let him have his damn ice-lolly.”

A camera twitched in her direction and Feroza held her breath.

Petrolea 4f

“You make it sound like Petrolean life has more right to these resources than we do.”

“Of course it does,” she said. “Even if the mechanoids weren’t already here when we arrived, every sentient creature deserves to live.”

“Huh? There is no intelligent life on Titan.”

“Yes,” she said patiently. “‘Sapient’ means ‘intelligent.’ ‘Sentient’ means it has feelings. And you can’t deny the mechanoids have feelings. You can’t deny,” she said, over his hemming and hawing, “that the father Dragon suffered as you ripped his body apart.”

“All right,” said Toledo, “so maybe it suffered. So what? A chicken suffers when one kills it.”

“Even in the Middle Ages, Jains and Brahmins could live without killing,” she said, “and this isn’t the Middle Ages. We have no need to be cruel to animals to survive any more. We were just coming to realize that on Earth, and then,” she said, mostly to herself, “we discovered Petrolea.”

Feroza examined a clear spot of ground, but a few whacks with her field shovel confirmed that under the oily mud was the nose of another nascent Rocket-seed. It was an excellent source of concentrated fuel and oxidizer, of course, but impossible to break into. She moved on.

“Oh yes,” said Toledo. “I forgot. You think meat is murder, but I bet you’ve never had to eat a chicken or starve.”

Feroza turned her path into a circle with the Dragon in the center, looking for places where she could tap into an oil line. “That is nothing but the wealthy and influential West not caring to give the poor an alternative to meat.”

“Oh, ‘the poor,’ you say?” Toledo actually growled into his microphone. “You self-indulgent little princess. Do you know anything about ‘the poor‘ or where we come from? There were times when I would have killed someone for a chicken to eat.”

“But that’s just it,” said Feroza. “You didn’t need to–“

“No. This is crazy. You’re crazy. I’m crazy for having this stupid conversation with you. You took the oxygen from the dead Dragon and when I reprogram its fabricators, you will eat and drink the stuff they make because if you don’t, you’ll die.”

“It is better to die than live at the expense of others?” Feroza’s frayed patience finally gave way. “And why am I in this position, where I might die like the friends and colleagues you killed with your incompetence?”

“My incompetence,” Toledo’s English was deserting him. “…the Leviathan! The stupid…stupid…¡Estupidez ideológica de una ecochiquita privilegiada, desenfrenada y decadente!“

From the French and Latin cognates, Feroza assumed that was not complimentary. “If I regain my original beliefs and determination to uphold them, both of us will die. So consider carefully what you say to me.”

The only response was the whistle of the carrier wave.

Petrolea 4e

Back, First

Feroza watched the Dragon breathe, considering. Why go back to Toledo, after all? Why extend his life and hers at the expense of so many other, equally deserving creatures? Why not fly out into the jungle and live there? Her life might be shorter than if she went back to Base, but wouldn’t it be richer?

No. As peaceful as might be the image of her own death at the heart of the Petrolean food web, Feroza knew Toledo would die cursing her name. In the grand scheme of nature, one naked ape hating another might count for nothing, but Feroza could not be so amoral. Toledo had saved her life, and Feroza had yet to return the favor.

She turned away from the Dragon to look down the slope of the forest-mountain. Below were the superconducting spires assembled by the Berg itself. Its flanks had been colonized by a dense underbrush of spinning windmill vanes and pinwheel leaves.

There was a theory that the mechanoids had originally been designed by somebody like Toledo. Self-replicating robots, sent to Titan to construct a massive tower of industry, a petrochemical distillery the size of a planet.

But nature had intervened. If the theory was true, then the robots’ programming had mutated. Mistakes multiplied, directed by the blind wisdom of natural selection. Over the course of silent eons, the machines had evolved.

The Berg no longer accumulated petroleum and oxygen for the benefit of some interstellar master. Instead, it served its own goal: reproduction. Feroza gave wide berth to the snout of an immature Rocket-seed, the blunt-tipped shaft thrusting up from the metallic ground, preparing to blast off and carry the Berg’s genetic legacy to some distant part of Titan.

And to think people like Toledo would undo all of this natural innovation. Chop off the inflorescence of mechanoid biology and reduce Titan back to a mining colony of dumb robots. It made Feroza sick in her heart.

When she tried to articulate the feeling to the engineer, however, he refused to understand.

“Nonsense. Titan isn’t alive. It’s just covered by a bunch of self-replicating machinery.”

“So then what is a cow or a goat, but self-replicating meat?” she countered. “And what about you, Mr. Toledo. What are you, but meat?”

Something moved between the twirling leaves and Feroza froze. But it was just a Gob. The flying, squid-like colony of factors was much too small for a Dragon’s sustenance.

“Thinking meat? Dreaming meat?” He had a smile in his voice, but Feroza couldn’t guess why. She was getting too far from the Dragon, but there was no large prey for her to flush. What if she tried to attract some food, instead?

Next

March Newsletter: I Got Chipped!

My GP is a real pro. I barely felt the needle go in.

I looked away anyway, and I kept examining the wall while she gave the jab to Pavlina. I’ve been seeing a lot of needles go into a lot of arms on TV. That dimple of the skin pressing down.

So this is it, I thought as I held the alcohol pad against my arm. There goes my dose of AstraZeneca.

I’ve heard a lot of conspiracy theories over the past year: Covid-19 was a hoax, it was no worse than the normal flu, it was a biological weapon designed either by the US or by China in an attempt to wreck the other one, it was transmitted by the 5G network, it was step one in allowing Bill Gates to put a microchip in your brain. In one class, we were going over phrases like “I got a shot” and “I got the jab,” when a student told me, “in Bulgarian we say ‘I got chipped.’

“I got chipped,” he said. “But I still don’t have WIFI.”

The student in question is a healthy thirty-something programmer, and the reason people like him and me could get vaccinated in March is because our government gave up on the priority system. I think they managed to get most of the doctors and nurses vaccinated, but teachers balked. But even when the vaccine was available to anyone who requested it, there were still all these vials sitting forlornly in freezers. AstraZeneca was already deeply unpopular before the blood clot thing.

The student with the WIFI joke was a little worried during our class. He was afraid that when he said he’d been vaccinated, he’d have to defend his decision. Maybe half the people I talk to don’t want to get vaccinated. For them, the small risk of getting the shot is scarier than the much bigger risk of eating at restaurants or sending your kids to school. How human, I thought, believing that I was more rational than that.

And yet, when I got the jab, I was scared too. There were these conflicting reports on blood clots. About whether AstraZeneca was effective at all. I imagined all sorts of symptoms before I felt the bruise-pain around the injection sight. What would be next? “Stop being silly about this,” Pavlina and I told each other. “If you calculated the odds of getting killed by thrombosis versus getting killed by the Corona Virus…”

Except we’d been through the odds before. Our older daughter’s congenital bilateral hip dysplasia was at most a 0.4% chance. My colon cancer was about the same, not to mention the complications from the first surgery that nearly killed me. What’s the chance of both? For us, it’s 100%. In our experience, unlikely medical catastrophes do happen.

Because medical catastrophes have happened, though, Pavlina and I have learned some things about decisions and uncertainty. We don’t allow ourselves to be paralyzed by the prospect of death. We’ve worked hard on breaking our habits of second-guessing and worst-case-scenario-spinning. “Stay the course,” we told each other. We had decided to trust our doctor; now we had to trust ourselves.

There were almost no side-effects. Pavlina felt sleepy and feverish on the second day, and I had some joint pain, but we’d stocked up on paracetamol, ibuprofin, and aspirin. Also on our doctor’s advice, we took antihistamines every morning for three mornings starting on the day of the vaccination.

More importantly, we didn’t let our imaginations run away with us. We stuck with our routines when they comforted us, and otherwise we took naps. After the jab, we looked for signs that we were healthy, rather than sick. We managed to sleep, and work, and live normally. What else can you do?

At the time I’m writing this, AstraZeneca (the company) has stated that the 37 cases of deep vein thrombosis or pulmonary embolism among the 17 million people who have received their vaccine in the EU and UK constitute a much lower rate of these conditions than the general population – you are more likely to die that way if you don’t get the vaccine. On the other hand, the Paul-Ehrlich Institute has found that out of 1.6 million vaccinations, there have been seven cases of cerebral vein thrombosis, which is higher than the general population. The European Medical Agency says the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risk, but the German Ministry of Health has restricted its use to only people over 60. We surely haven’t heard the last word yet.

The pandemic has taught us all a lot about uncertainty. How many people have Covid19? Of those, how many of those does it kill? How much does being inoculated protect you? The answers are there, but they are fuzzy, and they change both as new data comes to light, and as the world changes out from under us.

We shouldn’t pretend that we have certainty when we don’t. And yet we don’t have time to wait for certainty to form. All we can do is try to make good guesses, and move forward.

I still don’t have WiFi.

 

The Mountain in March

Behind cold and windy clouds.

Daffodils tremble.

 

Ooh ho! Footnotes! How tedious they are to format.

In other news…

Interchange! The Advance Reader version is ready for reviewers to read, and YOU, my friend, you can be a reviewer! Just head on over to NetGalley or click this finely crafted widget:

I do appreciate reviews, even negative ones. They’re the only way I’ll learn.

The Sultan’s Enchanter is still out with publishers, and The Centuries Unlimited is safe with my agent Jennie. I sent “Levski’s Boots” to the Inklings…it’s about twice the length they want, but hopefully they’ll give me some advice on how to cut it.

And now, after living for two goddamn months in, as it were, the footwear of a late-nineteenth century Balkan man, now I’m gearing up to begin my third draft of Wealthgiver…which is if anything, even more nineteenth-century Balkan. Only two thirds as manly, though. Anyway, this will be the “skin” draft, which means by the time I’m done with it (probably by July), you’ll be able to beta-read it. “Vikru!” as the Vassians say. I’m pretty sure that’s what they say. I’ve almost got the sound changes nailed down.

But you don’t have to wait until July if you want to read something of mine. I’ve started serializing “Petrolea” here on my website. You can start reading it here. Updates daily.

And finally I’m going to be moderating a panel discussion about Speculative Evolution for the Flights of Foundry scifi convention. My guests will be Peter Watts, Julie Czerneda, and Casey Lucas, so it’s sure to be very interesting. Why not join us? Registration is free. 

And here’s what I read

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams – I tried a new technique with this one: read the end of the (nonfiction) book and see whether the author and I share a world to the extent that I can make use of their insights. So I saw immediately that there’s some good stuff here – eat right so that you feel like exercising, aggressively interrogate your failures, and focus on systems, not goals. There’s some good autobiographical material to back that up. too. And I admire the hell out of the reason Adams wrote this book in the first place: help other people overcome dystonia. I hit a wall around the middle, though, where he stops digging deep within himself, forgets to be vulnerable, and starts griping. This still isn’t quite the “Make Time with a focus on health” that I’m looking for, but I’m getting closer.

“Balancing Accounts” by James L. Cambias – a nice little story about robots, money, and morality.

Murder and Mendelssohn by Kerry Greenwood – There’s a succession of dead choral directors, and a cute gay romance Sherlock/Watson fanfic. I liked this one more than the last couple of Phryne Fisher books, I think because the romance and mystery plots were more tightly woven together.

Black Stone Heart by Michael R. Fletcher – I was very pleased to discover this book, which is “the Ancient Evil has returned!” story from the perspective of the Ancient Evil. He’s been reborn as a teenage boy with most of his skills and memories missing, and now must recover them…by tracking down other shards of himself (also teenage boys), and murdering them. There is quite a lot of murder. Also sex. And satisfying character growth. I enjoyed all three, although I did hit a speed-bump halfway through where the author forced his characters to follow the outline, rather than let them continue doing what they wanted to do. There is a payoff for that, though, so keep reading.

The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett – Ah, what a delight this book is. I’d read a Chekov story just before, and this was the antidote I needed. A bowl of hot fatsup to brace me against the cold winter.

On Horseback Through Asia Minor by Frederick Burnaby -this was research for “Levski’s Boots,” and it gave me a very good perspective on late 19th century Ottoman geopolitics. Not my perspective, but there are clearly real people in there, and they have interesting opinions. The kadi with a utopian-atheist picture of the future, the pro-Ottoman Armenian, the local guide who just hates sea voyages. Burnaby liked the Ottoman Empire, and wanted to think the best of it. He wanted to be right about it, and on the right side of history. There’s a definite theme of “those atrocities didn’t happen, and if they did happen, it was someone else who did them, and if it was the Ottomans who did them, it wasn’t as bad as everyone is saying.” I was reminded of Facebook.

The Children of the Sky by Vernor Vinge – On my second attempt to re-read this book, I finished it. The Children of the Sky has two problems: it’s not at all the same kind of story as the first two books in its series, and it’s not nearly as good. It’s trying to be a cozy murder mystery/romance with some bigger things to say about sweat-shops and maybe fake news, but it never gets there. It never says them. There are glimmerings of something great here, but nothing got the development it needed. Based on “Fast Times at Fairmont High” versus Rainbows End, I theorize that Vinge’s process is to write the story, then completely rewrite it. I wonder whether with Children of the Sky, we’re looking at step one.

And I found out that my library has stocked the e-versions of magazines! I read the March Cook’s Illustrated and the last two editions of the Economist. Nice.

Finally, you really ought to listen to Long Way Down and Northwest Passage.

 

See you next month!

Subscribe to my monthly newsletter.

 

Milcheva, Emiliya (22 February 2021). “Ваксинацията в България: защо се забързаха”. dw.com (in Bulgarian). Retrieved 26 February 2021.

“Developmental dysplasia of the hip”. (23 July 2018) https://www.nhs.uk. Retrieved 31 February 2021.

6% of American males times 7% of those diagnosed before they turn 40. From Dozois et al. “Young-Onset Colorectal Cancer in Patients With No Known Genetic Predisposition” (19 May 2019) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4437192/ Retrieved 31 February 2021.

“Update on the safety of COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca”. (14 March 2019) https://www.astrazeneca.com. Retrieved 3/31/2021.

“Paul-Ehrlich-Institut – News – The Paul-Ehrlich-Institut informs – Temporary Suspension of Vaccination with COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca”. www.pei.de. Retrieved 16 March 2021.

Newsletter: I Got Chipped!

I Got Chipped

My GP is a real pro. I barely felt the needle go in.

I looked away anyway, and I kept examining the wall while she gave the jab to Pavlina. I’ve been seeing a lot of needles go into a lot of arms on TV. That dimple of the skin pressing down.

So this is it, I thought as I held the alcohol pad against my arm. There goes my dose of AstraZeneca.

I’ve heard a lot of conspiracy theories over the past year: Covid-19 was a hoax, it was no worse than the normal flu, it was a biological weapon designed either by the US or by China in an attempt to wreck the other one, it was transmitted by the 5G network, it was step one in allowing Bill Gates to put a microchip in your brain. In one class, we were going over phrases like “I got a shot” and “I got the jab,” when a student told me, “in Bulgarian we say ‘I got chipped.’

“I got chipped,” he said. “But I still don’t have WIFI.”

The student in question is a healthy thirty-something programmer, and the reason people like him and me could get vaccinated in March is because our government gave up on the priority system. I think they managed to get most of the doctors and nurses vaccinated, but teachers balked. But even when the vaccine was available to anyone who requested it, there were still all these vials sitting forlornly in freezers. AstraZeneca was already deeply unpopular before the blood clot thing.

The student with the WIFI joke was a little worried during our class. He was afraid that when he said he’d been vaccinated, he’d have to defend his decision. Maybe half the people I talk to don’t want to get vaccinated. For them, the small risk of getting the shot is scarier than the much bigger risk of eating at restaurants or sending your kids to school. How human, I thought, believing that I was more rational than that.

And yet, when I got the jab, I was scared too. There were these conflicting reports on blood clots. About whether AstraZeneca was effective at all. I imagined all sorts of symptoms before I felt the bruise-pain around the injection sight. What would be next? “Stop being silly about this,” Pavlina and I told each other. “If you calculated the odds of getting killed by thrombosis versus getting killed by the Corona Virus…”

Except we’d been through the odds before. Our older daughter’s congenital bilateral hip dysplasia was at most a 0.4% chance. My colon cancer was about the same, not to mention the complications from the first surgery that nearly killed me. What’s the chance of both? For us, it’s 100%. In our experience, unlikely medical catastrophes do happen.

Because medical catastrophes have happened, though, Pavlina and I have learned some things about decisions and uncertainty. We don’t allow ourselves to be paralyzed by the prospect of death. We’ve worked hard on breaking our habits of second-guessing and worst-case-scenario-spinning. “Stay the course,” we told each other. We had decided to trust our doctor; now we had to trust ourselves.

There were almost no side-effects. Pavlina felt sleepy and feverish on the second day, and I had some joint pain, but we’d stocked up on paracetamol, ibuprofin, and aspirin. Also on our doctor’s advice, we took antihistamines every morning for three mornings starting on the day of the vaccination.

More importantly, we didn’t let our imaginations run away with us. We stuck with our routines when they comforted us, and otherwise we took naps. After the jab, we looked for signs that we were healthy, rather than sick. We managed to sleep, and work, and live normally. What else can you do?

At the time I’m writing this, AstraZeneca (the company) has stated that the 37 cases of deep vein thrombosis or pulmonary embolism among the 17 million people who have received their vaccine in the EU and UK constitute a much lower rate of these conditions than the general population – you are more likely to die that way if you don’t get the vaccine. On the other hand, the Paul-Ehrlich Institute has found that out of 1.6 million vaccinations, there have been seven cases of cerebral vein thrombosis, which is higher than the general population. The European Medical Agency says the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risk, but the German Ministry of Health has restricted its use to only people over 60. We surely haven’t heard the last word yet.

The pandemic has taught us all a lot about uncertainty. How many people have Covid19? Of those, how many of those does it kill? How much does being inoculated protect you? The answers are there, but they are fuzzy, and they change both as new data comes to light, and as the world changes out from under us.

We shouldn’t pretend that we have certainty when we don’t. And yet we don’t have time to wait for certainty to form. All we can do is try to make good guesses, and move forward.

I still don’t have WiFi.

 

Ooh ho! Footnotes! How tedious they are to format.

In other news…

Interchange! The Advance Reader version is ready for reviewers to read, and YOU, my friend, you can be a reviewer! Just head on over to NetGalley or click this finely crafted widget:

I do appreciate reviews, even negative ones. They’re the only way I’ll learn.

The Sultan’s Enchanter is still out with publishers, and The Centuries Unlimited is safe with my agent Jennie. I sent “Levski’s Boots” to the Inklings…it’s about twice the length they want, but hopefully they’ll give me some advice on how to cut it.

And now, after living for two goddamn months in, as it were, the footwear of a late-nineteenth century Balkan man, now I’m gearing up to begin my third draft of Wealthgiver…which is if anything, even more nineteenth-century Balkan. Only two thirds as manly, though. Anyway, this will be the “skin” draft, which means by the time I’m done with it (probably by July), you’ll be able to beta-read it. “Vikru!” as the Vassians say. I’m pretty sure that’s what they say. I’ve almost got the sound changes nailed down.

But you don’t have to wait until July if you want to read something of mine. I’ve started serializing “Petrolea” here on my website. You can start reading it here. Updates daily.

And finally I’m going to be moderating a panel discussion about Speculative Evolution for the Flights of Foundry scifi convention. My guests will be Peter Watts, Julie Czerneda, and Casey Lucas, so it’s sure to be very interesting. Why not join us? Registration is free. 

And here’s what I read

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams – I tried a new technique with this one: read the end of the (nonfiction) book and see whether the author and I share a world to the extent that I can make use of their insights. So I saw immediately that there’s some good stuff here – eat right so that you feel like exercising, aggressively interrogate your failures, and focus on systems, not goals. There’s some good autobiographical material to back that up. too. And I admire the hell out of the reason Adams wrote this book in the first place: help other people overcome dystonia. I hit a wall around the middle, though, where he stops digging deep within himself, forgets to be vulnerable, and starts griping. This still isn’t quite the “Make Time with a focus on health” that I’m looking for, but I’m getting closer.

“Balancing Accounts” by James L. Cambias – a nice little story about robots, money, and morality.

Murder and Mendelssohn by Kerry Greenwood – There’s a succession of dead choral directors, and a cute gay romance Sherlock/Watson fanfic. I liked this one more than the last couple of Phryne Fisher books, I think because the romance and mystery plots were more tightly woven together.

Black Stone Heart by Michael R. Fletcher – I was very pleased to discover this book, which is “the Ancient Evil has returned!” story from the perspective of the Ancient Evil. He’s been reborn as a teenage boy with most of his skills and memories missing, and now must recover them…by tracking down other shards of himself (also teenage boys), and murdering them. There is quite a lot of murder. Also sex. And satisfying character growth. I enjoyed all three, although I did hit a speed-bump halfway through where the author forced his characters to follow the outline, rather than let them continue doing what they wanted to do. There is a payoff for that, though, so keep reading.

The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett – Ah, what a delight this book is. I’d read a Chekov story just before, and this was the antidote I needed. A bowl of hot fatsup to brace me against the cold winter.

On Horseback Through Asia Minor by Frederick Burnaby -this was research for “Levski’s Boots,” and it gave me a very good perspective on late 19th century Ottoman geopolitics. Not my perspective, but there are clearly real people in there, and they have interesting opinions. The kadi with a utopian-atheist picture of the future, the pro-Ottoman Armenian, the local guide who just hates sea voyages. Burnaby liked the Ottoman Empire, and wanted to think the best of it. He wanted to be right about it, and on the right side of history. There’s a definite theme of “those atrocities didn’t happen, and if they did happen, it was someone else who did them, and if it was the Ottomans who did them, it wasn’t as bad as everyone is saying.” I was reminded of Facebook.

The Children of the Sky by Vernor Vinge – On my second attempt to re-read this book, I finished it. The Children of the Sky has two problems: it’s not at all the same kind of story as the first two books in its series, and it’s not nearly as good. It’s trying to be a cozy murder mystery/romance with some bigger things to say about sweat-shops and maybe fake news, but it never gets there. It never says them. There are glimmerings of something great here, but nothing got the development it needed. Based on “Fast Times at Fairmont High” versus Rainbows End, I theorize that Vinge’s process is to write the story, then completely rewrite it. I wonder whether with Children of the Sky, we’re looking at step one.

And I found out that my library has stocked the e-versions of magazines! I read the March Cook’s Illustrated and the last two editions of the Economist. Nice.

Finally, you really ought to listen to Long Way Down and Northwest Passage.

 

See you next month!

 

Milcheva, Emiliya (22 February 2021). “Ваксинацията в България: защо се забързаха”. dw.com (in Bulgarian). Retrieved 26 February 2021.

“Developmental dysplasia of the hip”. (23 July 2018) https://www.nhs.uk. Retrieved 31 February 2021.

6% of American males times 7% of those diagnosed before they turn 40. From Dozois et al. “Young-Onset Colorectal Cancer in Patients With No Known Genetic Predisposition” (19 May 2019) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4437192/ Retrieved 31 February 2021.

“Update on the safety of COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca”. (14 March 2019) https://www.astrazeneca.com. Retrieved 3/31/2021.

“Paul-Ehrlich-Institut – News – The Paul-Ehrlich-Institut informs – Temporary Suspension of Vaccination with COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca”. www.pei.de. Retrieved 16 March 2021.