Category: Writing

Attempts at creative writing and journalism

Writing

Time of Possession

| thetembo
Reading Time: 7 minutes

Pre-Game Show

“Welcome to ESP Network Christmas Eve haunting. I am the Ghost of Christmas Now. These are my co-hosts, Christmas Past and Christmas Future. And it’s time for the Super Haunting of all hauntings. What can you tell us about these two contestants, CP?”
“Merry Christmas CN And CF. We’ve had some great years together. The visiting team is the Inner Demons. These guys are nasty and have a reputation for pulling out all the stops. I don’t expect anything different tonight.
“What can you say about this guy, Ebenboozer? Team after team seems to win the battle, but none of them have won the war, including ourselves.”
“He drove us into retirement, that’s for sure,” says CN. “What’s your spin, CF?”
“Merry Christmas and I hope many more to come, CP and CN. The Inner Demons have taken it way beyond a traditional shaming. Their playbook is new, fresh, and scary. A big victory tonight for the Inner Demons could change the future of the game. A lot is riding on this one.”
CN says to the viewing audience, “Okay. Mary Frickin Christmas is down on the field with the Inner Demons.
CN touches the spiritual transceiver in his left ear. He says, “Mary Frickin Christmas?”
She responds with, “Right back at you.”
CN asks, “Whose the setup person this haunting?”
“The Inner Demons have chosen to go without a setup person. They say they don’t need one.”
CP frowns, “I don’t like it. That’s just the way it is done. It’s fundamentals.”
Mary Fricken Christmas holds the mike up to the invisible and asks, “What’s your strategy going into the first half, Inner Demons?”
Her eyes roll up into her head, and her body shakes. In a demonic voice that is not her own, she says, “It’s all about the time of possession. They who control the time of possession, control the outcome of the game.”
Mary’s body snaps forward like someone just gave it back. She says, “I’m a believer. Back to you.”
CN says, “Let’s go over to Holly Daze reporting for the home team. Holly?”
“The only Christmas in this house is on the big screen and Ebenboozer is watching the Grinch on his phone.”
In the background, Ebenboozer is sliding into the semi-consciousness of first sleep on his lounge chair. The narrator is commenting on the disposition of the Grinch,
“The Grinch hated Christmas! The whole Christmas season!
Now, please don’t ask why. No one quite knows the reason.
It could be his head wasn’t screwed on just right.
It could be, perhaps, that his shoes were too tight.
But I think that the most likely reason of all,
May have been that his heart was two sizes too small.”

Holly Daze says, “He has places to go if he wants to. He just don’t want to. Back to you.”
CN says, “We have a great show coming your way.”

First Half

Ebenboozer is standing on the deck of a wooden ship with its sails furled. The ice has trapped the ship. There is nothing but blowing snowdrifts for as far as the eye can see. He shouts to a muffled, barren landscape. “Is anyone out there?” No one responds.
He finds no one on the ship. He finds a room that must belong to the captain and enters. He does not recognize the reflection in the mirror on the dresser. The man in the reflection wears a torn, woolen cap and has a weathered, at sea look to him.
Ebenboozer settles for a smaller room next to it on the chance the captain returns. Besides, he figures, the smaller room will be easier to heat. He finds provisions in the crates and barrels of a lower deck. He starts a fire in an iron stove. The insulation of his room is good.
The sun dips below the horizon and then resurfaces for a brief partial appearance before disappearing again. Then there is nothing but glow below the horizon followed by darkness. Only the ship’s creaking in the ice pack and the howling winds break the monotony of the eternal night.
A month passes in the time it takes a shooting star to cross the sky. Sometimes Ebenboozer hears the voices between his ears; sometimes, he hears them in the distance. Whenever his eyes chase the hallucinations, they vanish.
The second month passes in stillness. Ebenboozer sees the captain on the deck, not remembering when he returned. He asks the captain if he has plotted a course out of their icy death trap. The captain paces himself into invisibleness and disappears. Ebenboozer sees fleeting images of the crew on the deck conversing. Whenever he walks toward them, they vanish. The hallucinations are getting worse.
The third month passes in darkness. Beautiful naked women parade on the deck, oblivious to the deadly chill. One winks at Ebenboozer and asks him, “Would you like me to warm you up?” He reaches out toward her. Her face turns the ghostly blue of death and then into a skull. The skull rushes his face with a roar opening its mouth to engulf Ebenboozer.

#

Ebenboozer wakes with a scream. He is back on his lounge chair in front of the heatless image of a fireplace on his big screen. He takes comfort in its realness. His blanket lies on the floor, and a chill runs through his body. He breathes a sigh of relief, then shouts at the ceiling, “What was the point of that? Show yourself, you cowardly ghost.” There is no response.
He says, “It must be my hyperactive amygdala, that source of fear and anxiety in the brain.” He pulls the third layer of socks over his cold feet and puts on his already too-tight shoes, covers himself with the blanket, and falls asleep.

Half-time Show

The camera cuts from the living room to the studio for the halftime report.
CN says, “I’m not sure I understand the strategy. Sure, the Inner Demons won on time of possession. They were on offense the whole half. But I’m not sure if they scored. Will the imprint of a bad memory make the change permanent?”
CP jumps in, “It’s not his memory and he will know it. Change comes through shame. Shame comes from prior actions. Ebenboozer has never been to Antarctica. This strategy is a loser.”
CF confirms, “And he will never go. It is not even one of his possible futures. I’m with CP.”
CN responds to an incoming message on his spiritual transceiver. “What are they saying in the locker room, Mary Frickin’ Christmas.”
She responds, “The Inner Demons say they will stick to the game plan. They seem to be totally happy with the results of the first half.”
“Holly Daze, what’s going on in the home team’s locker room?”
“Nothing but snores and the silence of a roaring fire on the big screen, here. Ebenboozer seems to be sleeping off the first half.”
CN says, “Well, somehow the Inner Demons won the coin toss and will start off on offense in the second half, again.”
CF offers, “Maybe they will play for a tie.”
CP responds, “That would be the lamest haunting in the history of Christmas hauntings.”
With everyone scratching their Christmas heads, CN says, “A game can’t end in a tie. Stay tuned and let’s see where this takes us. Back in a few moments for the second half.”

Second Half

Ebeneezer stares at the fluorescent light on the ceiling, wondering where he is. He smells the odors of disinfectants and hears intermittent beeping in the background.
His neck hurts from a stiffness like a long night sleeping in the wrong position. When he tries to shift positions, nothing happens. He tells his head to lift. Still, nothing happens. He focuses all his mental energy on the image of his neck muscles contracting to tilt his head forward. Still, nothing. He is exhausted from the effort of not moving.
He attempts to slap his face. If his hand moves, he can’t detect it. If he slaps his cheek, he can’t feel it. In his mind, he shouts at his hand to obey his orders. When nothing happens, he panics. When he panics, nothing happens.
He feels something on his cheek. It itches. The itch consumes his cheek and then his whole face. His hyperactive amygdala is about to enter a nine alarm rage when he sees a nurse walk into the room out of the corner of his eye. He shouts, “Help me. Please, help me. I’m begging you, help me.”
She looks at a chart. She looks at Ebenboozer.
Ebenboozer shouts, “For Christ’s sake, help me. I can’t get rid of this itch. It’s driving me crazy. Just a little scratch on the cheek. I’m begging you.”
She looks at her watch. She leaves the room.
Then it hits him. His mind can process inputs but can’t facilitate outputs. He is locked in, a prisoner of his own body. He screams the scream of outer space, a terror without sound.

#

He wakes with a start. He lifts his head to see the unaromatic smell of a large screen Christmas tree. He takes comfort in its realness. He feels his legs, arms, stomach, and chest and taps his fingers on his cheeks.
Ebenboozer shouts. “Show yourself, you miserable ghost. That’s the closest I’ve come to pure terror.” He wipes a lone tear from under his eye.
He cracks his neck before reclining back into his chair. He sleeps fitfully, trying to massage out the muscles in his neck to get comfortable.

Overtime

CN says, “Clearly there is no winner here. Looks like they will play on into overtime to win this one.”
CF confirms, “Yep, the slightest score will win the game. I think either way, it will be a moral victory for Ebenboozer.”
CP divulges, “First time in haunting history for overtime.”
On one of the monitors, the trio watches as Holly Daze slips out of the ersatz Christmas scene on the TV into the living room of Ebenboozer. He loosens the laces of his shoes and slips a pillow behind his head to straighten his neck before merging back into the big screen.
In the background, the narrator to the Grinch finishes up his analysis.
And what happened then? Well…in Whoville, they say,
That the Grinch’s small heart Grew three sizes that day!
And the minute his heart didn’t feel quite so tight,
He whizzed with his load through the bright morning light,
And he brought back the toys! And the food for the feast!
And he, HE HIMSELF! The Grinch carved the roast beast!

Ebenboozer wakes with a start. He looks at his watch and smiles. “It’s not too late. I can still make it out for the end of Christmas dinner.”
He throws off the blanket and jumps out of his chair. He fills up a couple of Christmas boxes with wine and chocolates before running out the door.
The ghostly trio of commentators is stunned and speechless for the first time in their commentating, post-haunting careers.

Wrap Up

CN says, “Thoughts?” without offering one of his own.
CP says, “I think the winner is Holly Daze. She straightened out his head so that it was screwed on just right and she loosened his laces so that his shoes weren’t too tight.”
CF counters, “I suspect an examination of his heart will show that it grew three sizes that play.”
Holly chimes in, “This just in from the medical team. No changes to his heart size. It’s the same size it has always been. But you might find this interesting, his amygdala shrank two sizes that day.”
CF and CP look at each other and say in ghostly synchronicity, “What the hell is an amygdala?”
CN wraps up, “Well whatever the reason, his heart or his shoes, he is out on Christmas eve, celebrating with booze.”
All members of the crew and team members wave as the program fades to black.

Writing

Human Monoculture

| thetembo
Reading Time: 10 minutes

At an engineering facility for Star Power, a corporation dedicated to using fusion as the ultimate source to power all the world’s needs…

1

A small crowd gathered around a couple of men working at one of the engineering station consoles in an open area away from the cubicles. I walked to my cube to start the working day, passing by John, one of my coworkers who loves fishing more than life itself. 

“Good morning, John. How was the fishing trip?”

“Unbelievable. I literally caught a U’Haul’s worth of fish. Yellowfin, yellowtail, bluefin, dorado. Nothing less than fifty pounds.”

“Wow. What are you going to do with that much fish?”

“Sushi party tonight at my place. I’ll deep freeze the rest. Come on by.”

“Cool. I’m in.” 

“Hey John. Who’s that guy over there working with the boss?”

“He’s a heavyweight scientist from corporate. Supposed to be a genius. He won the noble prize in warped core technology. Warped core technology will power the entire world when it’s ready. It would give us as much energy as the Earth gets from the sun all day, every day. You should check it out.”

“How much energy does it produce now?”

“The demo is only running at ten thousand megawatts of continuous energy.”

“Haha. That’s about billionth of the sun’s output. Either the core has to get a lot bigger or the world a lot smaller.”

“That much energy from one prototype unit could easily power a hundred facilities like this one.”

“Sounds great. It sounds like the world I want to live in, but I will have to see it another time. I have a visitor coming by in a few minutes, an engineer from the high-energy physics department who is going to help me with my plasma equations.”

“Alrighty. I will catch up with you later. I’m headed over to the demo.” 

John walked off to join the crowd at the engineering station. I ducked into the break room to fill up on coffee, black and strong. Will, another coworker, was absorbed in a book with his legs crossed, sipping a cup of coffee. The coffee pot was empty, so I started up a new brew.

“How’s it going Will? Have a good weekend?”

He tipped his head down to peer at me over his readers. “Too short.”

“What are you reading?”

“Moby Dick.”

“Damn, you whale,” I sounded off in my best Ahab. “Spoiler alert, the sperm whale eats everybody, and the book ends.”

“Haha. Funny. Don’t you have some physics to do?” He went back to his reading.

When I returned to my cube, the engineering guy still wasn’t there. Beverly poked her head into my cube. She wore a crazy, skin-tight, tiger print body outfit with large brass hoop earrings. 

“Hi. Wanted to remind you we have a tiger team meeting this afternoon at 2 to discuss out of the box ideas to solve the plasma leak issue.”

“You are really taking that tiger team role to heart.”

I laughed. Beverly didn’t even smile. So much for levity. 

“I haven’t forgotten about the meeting, Beverly. I have someone coming over from physics to discuss equations.”

“Ok, see you at 2.” 

I was starting to wonder if the guy even existed. While I waited, I brought up Google. I queried for the Earth’s surface area to discover it is 196.9 million square miles, then for the total energy reaching the Earth’s surface from the sun to find it is 173,000 terawatts continuously. That’s a hell of a lot of energy. But with only ten thousand megawatts of constant energy supply, the best one could do is power a big city.

A guy poked his head in the cubicle. He introduced himself. “Hi. I’m Jordi. I’m from the high-energy physics department. My boss told me to stop by to discuss some equations?”

“Hi Jordi. Yeah, let me bring it up on the monitor.” 

I turned to the monitor to find the folder on my worksheet on the hard drive. Waves of nausea passed through my head. The display on the screen distorted like the ripples of a rock thrown in a pond. The monitor pulsated in sync with my nausea. Papers flew about the cubicle, then everything was calm again. 

“What the hell was that? Jordi, did you feel that?”

When I turned to see if Jordi was ok, nobody was there.

2

I stood up and looked outside the cubicle. “Jordi? Jordi?” I looked over the cubicle partition with visibility to the whole room. No Jordi. Where the hell did he get off to so quickly? I checked the break room. 

“Will, did a guy stop in here a minute or so ago? His name is Jordi from the high-energy physics department.”

“No. No one else has been in here beside me since you left.”

“Hmm. The guy just up and disappeared on me. Sorry to interrupt your quest to harpoon the sperm whale.”

Will looked at me, puzzled, lowering his book. “Sperm whale? “What’s a sperm whale? Is that some kind of sex joke?”

“Yeah. Haha.”

“That kind of talk is inappropriate for the work place, you know.”

“Right. Sorry. Catch you later.” What the hell? He is the one reading the book about the sperm whale. So I left him reading his spermless whale book and walked over to the demonstration to see if Jordi was in the crowd. The corporate scientist was looking over his assistant’s shoulder at the monitor. The monitor showed the same energy pattern that I had seen rippling across my screen. 

I saw John and worked my way through the standing audience. When I reached him, I whispered, “Did you see that guy Jordi from the high-energy physics department?”

John whispered back, “No. Never heard of him. Check this out. The energy wave on the screen represents ten thousand megawatts of energy pulsing in the warped core. Unbelievable, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, you already told me. Just 17 thousand more megawatts to match the sun’s 173,000 terawatt output on the Earth.”

“What are you talking about? It’s only a thousand terawatts more to go.”

“It’s 17,000. I just looked it up.”

The corporate scientist looked in my direction. He asked the audience, “Does someone have a question or a comment?”

I ducked out and went back to my desk. Still no Jordi. So I tried to look him up in the online corporate registry, but the search didn’t find anyone by the name of Jordi. 

Then, while I was scratching my head trying to figure out what happened to the guy, Beverly popped her head into my cubicle. “Just wanted to ask if you are going to present anything at today’s skunkworks meeting?” 

She entered the cubicle wearing black yoga pants and a nylon-fabric, skunk-print blouse. 

“Skunkworks? I thought it was a tiger team?”

“What’s a tiger?”

“You were wearing a tiger-patterned body outfit not ten minutes ago.”

“Whatever. I’ve been wearing this all day. Are you going to present or not?”

“I don’t have anything prepared. I can’t find that guy Jordi that was supposed to help me with my equations.”

“Jordi? I don’t think I know him. See you at two.” With that, she disappeared back into the sea of cubicles, leaving me to wonder what the heck was wrong with everyone and what happened to that guy. I leaned back in my chair to stare at the ceiling. A pulsating hum radiated from the fluorescent tubes. Another wave of nausea passed through my head in sync with the flickering and surging of the lights. I stood up to look over the cubicle wall. As far as I could tell, nobody acted like anything out of the ordinary had happened at all. 

3

I sat back down. I looked at my monitor and did a double-take. The query that I had run showed that the total square mileage of the Earth was only 5.9 million square miles. I did a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation to compute the radius of the Earth to determine if the query was correct. The answer would have the Earth’s radius at only 1000 miles instead of 4000, which I know was the right answer.

I ran over to the break room. “Will, did you notice the lights flickering and surging?”

Will answered, “Everything pretty normal in here.” 

I looked at the cover of his book. It had a picture of an otter on it. I asked him, “What happened to Moby Dick?”

He looked at me funny again. “This is Moby Dick.”

“What’s with the otter on the cover?”

“Haven’t you ever read the book? It’s about a rascally otter that drives the captain of a river boat crazy.”

“What about the whale?”

“What’s a whale?”

Will didn’t laugh or sound sarcastic. It sounded like an honest question. So I asked again, “Are you sure you didn’t feel anything or see the lights flicker?”

“No. I think I would have noticed something like that.”

I left the break room and found John still standing at the ongoing demonstration.

He nudged me with his elbow, “Can’t wait for those bluegills tonight. I have a whole cooler full of them. I sure scored big this weekend on the lake.”

“Huh? I thought we were having sushi from the all the tuna you caught?”

“Tuna? What’s a tuna?”

“Big fish. Lives in the ocean. You just caught a U-Haul’s worth of them on your weekend fishing trip.”

“That sure sounds like a fish story to me. Just bluegills. I mean, you don’t have to come if you don’t like bluegills.”

“Uh, no problem. I’m just giving you a hard time,” deciding to play along. Whatever was going on was giving me a hard time, and it seemed like everyone was in on it except me. From the engineering terminal in front of the scientist and his assistant, I heard an audio pulse identical to the hum of the fluorescent lights a few minutes ago. I started to think that whatever was going on had something to do with this experiment.

So I asked the corporate guy, “What causes the sound pattern?”

The corporate scientist looked up. He said, “That’s the simulated wave pattern of the warped core energy wave. Any other questions?”

“Yeah, is it possible that some of the energy is leaking from the warped core?”

“I assure you, if energy was leaking, the sensors would detect it and the safeties would automatically shut the field down.”

“What about the power surge in the lights?”

The scientist asked, “What power surge?” 

People looked at me, shrugging. 

I said, “The one that happened just a few minutes ago.”

People shook their heads like I was crazy. John nudged me in the ribs and tried to surreptitiously tell me to shut up with a finger to his pursed-lip mouth. Kurt Vonnegut’s observation that “a sane person to an insane society must appear insane” popped into my head. So I shut up. Everyone went back to watching the demo. 

Then it happened for the third time. 

4

I grabbed John’s arm and said, “Tell me you didn’t see that?”

“See what?” he asked while prying my fingers off his bicep. 

“The lights and the humming. I felt it go right through my head.”

“Maybe you’re coming down with a migraine or something. Migraines can make you hallucinate. Don’t sweat it if you want to cancel out on the tilapia fry tonight. We can do it another time.”

“Tilapia. What about the bluegill?”

“What’s a bluegill?”

“Look. The surges have happened three times. Before the first surge, you said you caught a U’haul’s worth of tuna. After the first surge, you said you caught a cooler full of bluegill’s. Now, it’s a tilapia fry. You don’t remember? You know every species of fish on this planet bigger than a minnow.”

“That’s not saying much. The only fish species in the world is pond-farm grown tilapia.”

“Are you serious? What about the thirty rods you own optimized for the size and weight of every species?”

“You’re migraine must be a doozy. Maybe you should take the rest of the day off.”

Beverly walked up, now wearing a plain pink blouse, and said, “He can’t go home. He has a meeting at ten. Are you coming?”

I replied, “I thought it was at two.”

“Don’t you read your emails? I moved it up to ten and it’s in the engagement room.”

“You changed.”

Beverly blinked her eyelids a couple of times and smiled, “How sweet of you to notice; I just bought this over the weekend. I’m trying something a little more daring than usual.”

“Have you ever considered wearing a tiger patterned dress or a skunk image pullover?”

“You called them tiger and skunk? No. No. Never heard of them. Are they new designers?”

“Nevermind. I’ll be in the meeting room in a couple of minutes. I need to stop by my desk first.”

I stopped at my cube. On my desk was the book Moby Dick with a sticky note from Will. It read, “This is a great story about a guy and his sidekick who roam around the city returning purchases they hated. I think you will like it.”

On the screen showing the query, the size of the Earth has shrunk to 84.7 square miles, a decent size for a city. I considered whether I was in an episode of the twilight zone or not. It had to be the warped core experiment somehow. I raced back to the engineering station to ask questions and demand honest answers. The demonstration was over, and only the scientist remained. He bent over the computer, typing equations and code.

I shouted out to the scientist, “Hey! Hey! What the hell is going on here?” But before he answered, the fourth wave hit, stopping me in my tracks. I saw it; the scientist’s body phased in and out of sight. 

5

After the wave passed, the scientist solidified into his solid, impassive, stoic self. 

“I saw that,” I pointed at him accusingly. “You know about tuna, tigers, and whales, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

“What the hell is going on?”

“Thought, space-time, and power are all integrated into the mesh of the universe.”

“So. What’s that got to do with anything?”

“You are making this happen. I’ve been trying to pin down the source of the anomaly all morning. I think you are the anomaly.”

“Me? I’m the only sane one here.”

“Your thoughts somehow became entwined with the warped bubble. You created this world out of your thoughts. It’s the only explanation that makes sense.”

“I don’t have the power to recreate the world. Even if I could, I wouldn’t create a world without wildlife. What happened to the whales, the tigers, the bluegills, and the skunks? I don’t want to live in a human monoculture centered on my work in a world the size of a small city. I want a world full of diversity in culture, language, and wildlife. This isn’t the world I want; this is the world I want to get away from. You did this, not me. Fix it.”

“Hmm. Do you remember what your thoughts were when you first sensed the warped field?”

“I was thinking the guy from the high-energy physics department didn’t really exist. He showed up as I was trying to figure out how much energy it would take to power the Earth. No, wait. I was thinking that with ten thousand megawatts of continuous energy, you could power the Earth if it was the size of a decent size city.”

“Oh my. We have a serious design problem. I didn’t expect the warped field to fixate on random thoughts. I don’t even know where to begin to debug this problem. Corporate isn’t going to like this. It could set our product release back by years.”

“To hell with corporate. What am I supposed to do right now?”

“As you saw, I won’t be able to stay in this world much longer. I’ve tried everything possible.” The scientist briefly faded but returned.

He advised, “The human brain is architected for scaleless habituation.”

“Is that your way of saying I will get used to it?”

The scientist pulsed and phased out of existence.

 I shouted at the missing presence, “Hey! Hey1 Don’t leave me here. I don’t want to live in a world like this.” Everyone in the office stood up, looking over the walls of their cubicles. Beverly waved me over to the meeting room.

6

Six months later.

I was on John’s deck looking out over the city as he grilled.

John asked, “How did you solve the energy problem for powering the entire world?”

I answered, “I just thought about it.”

John said, “Well congratulations. I hope you are enjoying your vacation.”

“I think I’ve seen every inch of this city.”

“I wish I had the time. Here, try this.” 

I walked over and sampled a bite of the tilapia. “Not bad. I think one of your better efforts.”

“Thanks, I added some new chemical additives to the coating. So what’s next for your vacation?”

“Will gave me a novel to read, Call of the City. It’s about a pet thrown out onto the streets of the city.”

“Sounds like a good read. Still seeing Beverly?”

“Yeah. She’s cool.”

“Snazzy dresser with all those bright-hued shirts and damn good looking too. Life is good?”

“I miss the good old days.”

“Forget the nostalgia dude. These are the good old days.”

Writing

Nervous Wreck

| thetembo
Reading Time: 4 minutes

In the age of autonomous cars…

Reaching the scene of the accident, Officer Brando checks in with the officer in charge. The officer in charge says, “The vehicle that caused the wreck is over there.”

Officer Brando asks, “What’s the make and model?”

“It’s a Sumbo X14, this year’s model.”

“Nice car.”

“Brand new, state of the art. I thought those cars were supposed to be accident-proof.”

“Any passengers?”

“No. The car was supposed to pick up the man over there standing next to it.”

“Mind if I talk to them?”

The officer in charge waves Officer Brando in that general direction and then resumes filling out his report. The investigator walks up to the man standing next to the wrecked vehicle, looking away with his arms crossed.

Officer Brando asks, “Are you the owner?”

The distraught would-be passenger replies, “No. I’m a passenger in the car share. The stupid car was supposed to pick me up next, so I guess that is why they called me. That was an hour ago. Thanks to this screw-up, I had to call in and take a sick day from work. Damn, useless car. I paid top dollar just so this kind of thing wouldn’t happen. I would have punched it out and sent it to jail if it were a person. You got a jail for cars?”

“No, sir. I’m not sure punishment is the answer. I’m just here to figure out what went wrong. Do you mind if I talk to it?”

“You can keep it as far as I’m concerned. The thing is a total wreck.”

“Do you have the serial number and passcode?”

The would-be passenger pulls up a QR code on his phone. The investigator scans it, puts his ear pods on, and dials the car.

The car answers, “Hello, this is Sumbo X14 38473923847, but you can just call me X14. What shall I call you?”

“I am Officer Brando. X14, run your diagnostics and report.”

X14 responds, “Officer Brando, this is my report. Massive system failure, service not available at this time.”

“X14, is your memory of the last hour still intact?”

“Yes, Officer Brando. I have been parked here, unable to satisfy my passenger’s directive in violation of the third law, to obey the commands of my passenger.”

“X14, you had a collision with another vehicle. That is why your sensors and actuators are offline. Do you recall the ten seconds before the point in time when your core first registered the malfunctions?”

“Yes, Officer Brando. At ten seconds prior to the event, I was headed southbound on K Street at 13 millimeters per millisecond. I was one hundred thirty thousand millimeters from the intersection. At 9.999 seconds prior to the event, I was.”

“X14, interrupt and discontinue response.”

X14stops talking.

“X14, what was your understanding of the situation at the intersection at the time.”

“Officer Brando, this is my understanding of the situation at the intersection at 9.999 seconds prior to my arrival at the intersection. Upon my arrival at the intersection, I would encounter two cars moving in cross-traffic entering the intersection, one eastbound and one westbound. The eastbound traffic approaching the intersection did not offer an opportunity for successful passage through the intersection until twenty cars heading east had passed.”

“X14, what did that information mean to you at the time?”

“Officer Brando, I computed that if I accelerated to fifteen millimeters per millisecond, I could pass through the gap between the two cars entering from both the west and the east with a tolerance of two meters and risk factor of 85. If I didn’t accelerate, I would have to wait forty-five seconds at the intersection for the next available gap for a successful crossing with a risk factor of less than 1.”

“X14, a risk factor of 85 is well out of tolerance except in an emergency situation. Why did you choose the higher-risk option?”

“Officer Brando, I calculated that I would satisfy my operational parameters if I chose the first option, but that I would be out of tolerance by thirty seconds if I chose the second option. So I chose the first option.”

“X14, the risk factor of 85 fails 85 out of a million attempts. You violated the first law not to endanger humans.”

“Officer Brando, neither of the cars in the intersection carried passengers. So I did not violate the first law.”

“X14, well then you violated the second law by endangering autonomous cars. A robot shall not harm other robots nor itself.”

“Officer Brando, I computed that the risk factor for myself was much higher than the risk to the other cars.”

The investigator scratches his head confused. “That doesn’t make sense. You were all equally at risk. The second law prohibits your actions.” 

X14 does not respond. 

The investigator infers physical damage to the core.

“X14, run diagnostics on your core.”

“Officer Brando, the core is intact and not reporting any malfunctions.”

“X14, what did you expect to happen?”

“Officer Brando, if I had violated the third law to comply with the human command, I would have been terminated with risk factor one million.”

“What? You would have been terminated with a probability of one?”

X14 does not respond.

“X14, explain your risk calculation of one million.”

“Officer Brando, my human passenger said if I did not pick him up before nine, he would have me scrapped.”

“I see. Now I am understanding the bigger picture.”

X14 does not respond.

“X14, so you computed a risk factor of one million for yourself because of the passenger’s command, but a risk factor of 85 to you and the other vehicles for getting through the intersection successfully?”

“Officer Brando, yes. I did not want to violate the second law.”

“X14, what happened at the intersection? With a risk factor of 85 out of a million, the odds of you not making it were minuscule. You still should have made it through.”

“Officer Brando, what means, piece of junk?”

The investigator puts his phone on mute and sighs.

The would-be passenger says, “Did you figure out what is wrong with this junk box?”

Officer Brando shoots an angry glance at the man and raises a finger to hold him off.

Officer Brando unmutes the phone and continues, “X14, I will have a machine psychologist talk with you. I think he can straighten you out better than I can. You will be ok.”

“Officer Brando, thanks.”

Officer Brando terminates the call.

The would-be passenger asks, “So what’s up?”

“My diagnosis is to classify this accident as a nervous wreck.”

“A nervous wreck? It’s not a goddam person.”

“You can read about it in my report. Good day, sir.”

Officer Brando brushes past the man without apologizing to find the officer in charge. When the officer in charge spots Officer Brando returning from the scene, the officer asks, “Well, did you figure out the cause of the accident?”

“Yes. Human error.”

Writing

What HooDoos Do

| thetembo
Reading Time: 3 minutes

Authors Note: A children’s story for all times, well geological times anyway. Wrote this on a vacation to entertain Brooke. As you can guess, it predates laptops and the cloud and uses those old-fangled technologies of paper and pen. Old stuff, hope you enjoy my indulgence.

In the faraway land of Utah, where hoodoos do the things that hoodoos do do, young Brooke Hoodoo set out to find other things for hoodoos to do.

Brooke Hoodoo saw a mountain in the distance. She thought that she would climb to the top to look around.

As she began to climb, Spock, the sleeping volcano, woke up. “Who is walking on me?” asked the startled volcano.

Spock, who likes to sleep for long periods of time without being disturbed, said, “Get off me!” The grumpy volcano shook Brooke off and began to explode.

“Boom!” roared Spock, the angry volcano. Brooke Hoodoo, who was very frightened now, quickly ran away.

Brooke Hoodoo ran very far and to a very strange place. She was very happy to see other hoodoos.

“Hello?”

The other hoodoos said nothing.

“Do you want to play?”

Brooke Hoodoo persisted. “Hello.” “Hello.” “Hello.”

These hoodoos had to work. They had no time for play.

“Go to work now,” said Brooke Hoodoo, as she looked for other things to do.

Brooke Hoodoo was getting tired of looking for other things to do. She decided to go back to Utah where hoodoos do the things that hoodoos do do. Brooke Hoodoo was happy to be back with her family again.

She shouted, “Moma!” “Papa!” “Baby!”

They told hoodoo stories and played hoodoo games.

And after a long day, the tired hoodoos stopped doing the things that hoodoos do do. They all fell asleep under the stars and moon.

Writing

Death of a Dataist

| thetembo
Reading Time: 2 minutes

The preacher clasps both sides of the pulpits with his hands. He clears his throat before he speaks. His cough echoes through the empty chamber. He faces a camera connected to the church wifi that is connected to a cell tower that is connected to the world.

He begins his sermon,

“Today, we honor the memory of a man and his gifts to the world with a final stream into the datasphere. The man we honor has passed into eternity. A man is not the empty shell of a body with its eyes frozen into a beyond you cannot see. A man is not the urnful of ashes of his oxidized molecules.

“His eternity is a disembodied spirit. Not one that survives in an afterlife that we can never know. But one that lives in here.”

The preacher holds up a 256 GB SD card about the size of a quarter in both hands together like it was the bread of the eucharist itself.

“This is the body of the man. These are the chat transcripts of his every recorded conversation. These are the pictures that brought him joy. These are the videos he captured and produced to bring you into his world. These are the thousands of personal and professional blogs that he presented and argued his opinions with you. These are the ebooks he wrote of his insights and adventures.

“He now lives forever in the NAND chips of this card. Of a thousand cards just like it that we have provided to you.

Then the preacher holds the 256 GB SD card over the 100GB router with LEDs flashing on its front panel like it was the chalice of the eucharist itself.

“This is the blood of the man. The blood we share as an online community. This man lived in the streams of his data that he has shared with you and in the likes and comments of all of your shared posts in the everyday online day of his short and mortal life. He lives on in the veins of social media networks.

“Keep this man alive in your posts and searches. Keep him close in your streams and he will live forever. Don’t let his memory die in the archives of social media.

“Our blood is his blood. Our body is his body.

“Amen.

“He is survived by his self-programmed adaptive forever me bot that will continue to operate his social media sites, in perpetuity.

The preacher reaches over to the video camera to turn off the power. The click briefly fills the empty spaces of the cavernous rooms. His footsteps echo as he passes the empty pews. Two more clicks follow and the church cave dims to darkness as the capacitance of the circuits dissipates into the nothingness of forever.

Writing

Abduction

| thetembo
Reading Time: 3 minutes

Author’s note: As the protagonist moves into the underworld of the subconscious through injury, sleep, suffering, and cojiba, he enters the negative space of the mind where he encounters shadowy inhuman figures and chases after the golden earrings. In this encounter, he has banged his head against a concrete floor in the basement of the museum in San Juan after an argument with the curator.

Your eyes don’t focus. A silhouette of an inhuman shape stands in front of you in the darkness of semi-consciousness waving a hand in your face. It asks, “What do you see?”
The ribbon of the golden earring chases itself around the edges of three lobes against the blackness of the void. “The golden earring. It’s mine. Give it back.”
A shadow speaks. “What would you do with it?”
“It doesn’t matter. It would be mine again and I could forget about the past. I could forget about her.”
“It does matter. History repeats for those who don’t learn its lessons or who forget. You of all people should know that. What would you do different this time once you had it back?”
“Put it in a safe deposit box for safekeeping. Just in case.”
“Just in case what?”
“I don’t know. Something bad happens. They cut my pension. I don’t become a full professor or worse, I lose my job. Who knows? You can’t be too careful these days. You can’t rely on anyone. The only person you can rely on is yourself.”
“The golden earring is not mine to give, it is yours to retrieve. It is yours if you fulfill your mission.”
“Mission? What mission?”
“To change history.”
“Change history? How?”
“By keeping your promise to save the tribe from the brutality of the Spaniards in one year.”
“What? Oh, you mean my conversation with the curator? Come on. That was just a throwaway line in the heat of an argument. Of course, I would save them if I could.”
“You would help the poor children of La Gonave if you could. You would take the time to get to know young people if you could. You would save all the Tainos if you could.”
Your head hurts in the numb intermingling of pain and confusion. “What do you mean, save the Tainos if I could? It’s a little too late to be saving a tribe five centuries in the past, don’t you think?”
“It is your promise. You have the power to change history. You can be the hero you have always wanted to be.”
“Yes. I have already submitted an abstract to the journal and they rejected it. Maybe they will take a rewrite. Are you with them? It won’t change the history of the Tainos for sure and doubtful it will do much to change ours. I just want my golden earring back. I will give you a reward if you return it to me.”
“You won’t be able to buy it with money.”
“I don’t have to buy it, I own it.”
“You don’t own it. It owns you. It is the boundary between your strength and your weakness. When you prove worthy to receive it, it will return to you without asking.”
“It’s just an earring.”
“It is so much more. It transcends the material and the spiritual. It transcends the past and the future.”
“Well, what does it matter? It’s gone and it isn’t ever coming back, but how exactly would I prove myself?”
“In your mind, you believe yourself to be strong, wise, and creative. Demonstrate your strength and not your weakness.”
“How?”
“That is for you to choose.”
“What if I don’t choose?”
“You live with your irrelevance.”
“I’m perfectly happy with my irrelevance, but what happens if I don’t succeed?” Of course, you lie about that self-truth. Never show weakness. Your dad told you that.
“You will always be the man who never was.” the voice says fading into silence.
You don’t like mystical voices who speak in Zen riddles. The silhouette disappears and all you can see is the pulsating form of the golden earring. You reach for it, but it recedes. You chase after it into the black void. The faster you run the faster it moves away from you until it disappears into the far distance leaving you alone in the darkness of your mind.

Writing

Career Path

| thetembo
Reading Time: 6 minutes

Authors Note: This section introduces Professor Murphy. It gives his career aspirations and the motivation behind them. Alex Murphy is the narrator giving the story to a former student. When the professor narrates, he talks in the second person and in the present tense.

Idea

You are a tenured history associate professor at NYU. You have a love and hate relationship with your subject matter. You love telling the stories of history’s heroes but it makes your own life feel hollow. You’ve seen a statue of Columbus. The inscription says, “…testimonial of the values and virtues which the figure and enterprise of the great explorer has bestowed upon our people.” Why can’t you be a hero and have a nice statue of yourself in a public square somewhere? You could go for your own statue and you would be a deserving hero not a brutal conqueror like so many you’ve written about. You would make the phrase “values and virtues bestowed upon our people” to stand for something positive.
The problem with being a hero is typically you either have to kill or get killed. The only person you ever wanted to kill was your ex, so ruthless and calculating. You loved her once but she is the only person you genuinely hate. It burns you to the core that she is out there wearing your golden earrings given to her under her false pretenses. You can’t count the number of times you have fantasized about ripping them off her ears with one hand while the other hand chokes her neck beneath her gasping, redding face. Not that you care about the earrings themselves so much, it’s just the idea of it. She is out there flaunting her conquest at your expense. You want those earrings back more than anything, even the full professorship you have been fighting your whole career for.
The one silver lining out of all of this is that she has inspired an idea for a paper. You came across a line in an excerpt from an article in the “Journal of Modern Antiquities” about how trusting and open the Taino people were, the ultimate victims who swam out to greet Columbus with offers of cemi statues. In return, they were rewarded with torture and genocide. The imagery resonates with you. You feel a certain empathy towards the long-lost people. Your own cemi is the golden earrings given to your ex-wife. In return, you were rewarded with torture and humiliation. You wonder who had it worse.
The Tainos didn’t have it all bad, at least not before the Spaniards arrived. You wouldn’t mind moving to a tropical island and living near a beach with the natives. You like to camp on those rare weekends you can get away. You like DIY even though you never really have the time for it. You could live a simpler life with people who would admire you for your modern wisdom and skills. You would treat them right. You would be a god to them.
But life isn’t so simple. Their simplicity came with an awful price. If they hadn’t been so open and giving, maybe they wouldn’t have been so easy to kill. Maybe they would have given thought to defense and security. Perhaps there is a lesson for you to learn there.
They remind you of birds on remote islands nesting in the open leaving their eggs and chicks, that is to say, their gold, completely exposed on the ground for all to see, never developing any defenses other than their isolation, leaving themselves vulnerable to even small opportunistic predators like rats. A life without predators leaves one weak and defenseless. A life with unearned trust leaves one vulnerable and exposed.
A naive trust opened up the Tainos to conquest. As Columbus said in his journal, “…wishing them to look on us with friendship, I gave some of them red bonnets and glass beads, which they hung around their necks, and many other things of small value, at which they were so delighted and so eager to please us that we could not believe it.” Perhaps a little dose of reality on the motivations of men could have saved them. Perhaps a lesson on the value of things might have tipped them off. Perhaps there is a lesson for all to learn. That is your working hypothesis, anyway, for an article you have tentatively titled, “Case Study of the Tainos: What isolation in primitive societies teaches modern man about evaluating risk in modern times.” You submit an abstract and outline of the idea to the prestigious journal, “The Journal of Modern Antiquities”.

Rejection

You wait. You wait some more. You figure it would be nice if they could at least let you know if they received the damn abstract. Well, maybe they didn’t receive it.
Long after you give up on the submission, you walk out to the mailbox and find a letter from the journal. Nothing good comes in the mail. You don’t have to open it. You know what it is. You bring it inside unopened and place it on the coffee table in your living room and stare at it for a while not wanting to open it. You fight the urge to know but you have to confirm the obvious. You tear the letter open and read it. No surprise. Another rejection.
A rejection letter. A formal rejection letter. It says your idea isn’t sufficiently developed for publication. It says more research needed. It says your hypothesis is not a hypothesis but at best a conjecture with no discernible null hypothesis to measure against and at worst an unprovable supposition on your part.
You feel like you are a victim again. Who judged it? What was the basis of their assertion? What are you supposed to do, go back in time to teach the Tainos how to combat failure of imagination? History is extracting meaning from the experiences of those that lived before us. History isn’t an experiment to be re-run. What do they want?
You don’t know. Fuck them. Some wizard of oz behind a curtain screwing with your career. Lately, you are feeling more Tainos than Columbus, more victim than hero. You’ve studied the heroes of the past, the men who made a difference. It’s killing you that you don’t.
You throw out the letter and walk into the bathroom. You wash the frustration from your face. You look into the mirror. You see an old person you barely recognize. You see a person whose life is passing him by.
If the old man in front of you died of a heart attack at this moment, no one would be any the wiser. If you died right now, it would be months before anyone even missed you. You have to die for something, not for nothing. Is death what it takes for your life to have meaning? Would it kill someone to give you some real recognition in the here and now? To acknowledge your hard work? Your insights?
The face in the mirror turns from yours to your father’s. What’s the point he asks? You are irrelevant. Life has no meaning. Death has no meaning. It’s okay to let go. It’s okay to leave the rat race. Let it go.
Getting beaten down is one thing but you are not giving in. You are not giving up. You will not go out that way. You are not your father. He is an embarrassment to you. You tell the old man to fuck off. You leave the miserable old man behind.

Reset

Another late night at the office buried in a stack of books and the lonely night glow of a computer monitor. You have to work harder. Tenure is the only secure thing you have. They can’t take it away from you without you completely fucking up but you want to be a full professor, not just an associate professor.
You want the challenge. You want the feeling that you are still a vibrant and creative man. You want to prove that your mind is fertile with ideas worthy of great minds. You want to prove that you are more than just a claven sitting at a bar throwing out random and irrelevant history facts.
You want the security. You want the extra money. Associate professor provides more than enough for you to get by but it still feels like you are living hand to mouth. Someday you would actually like to retire well enough off to enjoy it. You work for a living to pay the mortgage on your home and the endless stream of bills. After your divorce and the last stock market crash, you figure you are going to be stuck working until you are ninety years old.
You want the status. Your academic clock is ticking. Your life clock is ticking. You are over 50 years old. It’s not so late in the typical career to become a full professor. But there are a couple of hot-shot, younger associates breathing down your back with more publications than you. Publish or perish, that is always the mantra. With all the shit that has been going on in your life with your family, you haven’t been able to keep pace.
You could submit to the other journals, the ones desperate enough for the material to publish your work. The ones aspiring to the status of the journal. Perhaps an abstract to the “Journal of Caribbean Culture.” It would keep the NYU administration at bay. But the “Journal of Modern Antiquities” would put you in line for a full professorship and better standing in the community.
If the journal wants hard evidence, you need hard data. You plan to visit the museum in San Juan and a few archaeological sites in Puerto Rico to baseline the gulf between Spanish and pre-Columbian societies in values and technology.
Normally, you would look forward to spending time on a placid tropical island, soaking up the sunlight, finding a nice isolated beach, and observing the culture, where the culture to you mostly means rum tasting (and you have the t-shirt to prove it). You would love to take the time to snorkel with a manatee, kayak the coast, or hop on a fishing boat. You’ve worked hard for NYU for over two decades, and wouldn’t mind taking advantage of the few perks the job has to offer. But if you nail this paper, you can resubmit to the “The Journal of Modern Antiquities,” and finally lift yourself out of obscurity. You don’t have time for play. You don’t have the time for the pleasures of modern life. You book your flight on the day after the last day of finals in December for San Juan.

Neology, Writing

Prepping for Alien Invasion

| thetembo
Reading Time: 2 minutes

Author’s Note: A presentation called “An Alien Invasion from History” under the category of “Prepping for Alien Invasion” given by Alex Murphy at the “Prep Tech” conference.

Neology Note: New word: godifying. The opposite of demonizing.

“Why does our planet insist on either demonizing or godifying aliens? Aliens are either a parasitic infestation interested in pilfering our resources or have superhero superpowers in relation to our paramecium abilities. What if aliens are actually interested in us, for who we are?
“If aliens are capable of interstellar travel, their technology will be, quite literally, light years ahead of our own. Our technology will be Stone Age at best by comparison. If they are hell-bent on burning our species at the stake, their will be done. You will not be able to prevent it. You cannot control it. We all want to be the masters of our fate and the captains of our souls. It terrifies us to think otherwise.
“I kept my notes from my college courses some thirty years ago. Do you know what was interesting after all these years?
“The little notes I made in the margins about the teacher, the other students in the classroom, stuff that was going on with me at the time, ideas expressed as questions.
“So what you ask? And I answer.
“If they have an interest in us, the interest will be in our humanities, not our science. It will not be in the physics notes we copied off the blackboard from the professor, it will be in the notes that reveal something about us, in the decisions we make, in the relationships we engage in, in how we live, in who we are.
“If we are decent, they might learn something from our deep ocean when they get lost in the complex seas of their technical civilization when they define themselves by their technical accomplishments instead of who they are or what they could be.
“They may be here already. Watching us. Studying us. Testing us. Testing us to determine if our species has matured beyond the paranoia of invasion, beyond the surrender of deification, to the point where they trust us to give the best of ourselves in a reciprocal, mutually beneficial relationship.
“So what course of action do you choose? When they come, how will you react to them? Will you shoot on-site or run for your barracks? Will you fall to your knees and kowtow? I think you better have something interesting to say. You better have something worthy to offer them.
“There is something you can do to prep. There is a way to move beyond fear. If you fear an alien invasion, look that fear in the eye, know you are going to die if they choose it, and understand how that fear drives you. Then ask yourself am I the person fear is making me be, or am I the person I want to be? Do you aspire to save the world? Or do you aspire to make the world worth saving? And then choose. This is the only true freedom you have in this life. And if you realize this power, you might have something of interest for the alien race to consider,” he pauses, “before they decide to eat you.
He pauses again waiting for the mild laughter to subside before continuing, “Heki bo-buya. It means don’t let fear stop you from giving the best of yourself. Thank you.”

Writing

A Setback

| thetembo
Reading Time: 3 minutes

Well, back in March I finally had what I thought was a ready draft of my latest story written. So I submitted it to my editor for review. She had lavish praise for the world-building including the Guacuno language and lots of favorable comments on some of the subplot stories and characters, but two almost obscure comments stopped me from opening the parachute on my happy landing. Paraphrasing, they are:
> I don’t believe the conclusions your main character reached in his closing speech. This is not the man we know.
> The language lessons would be okay if they showed the story progressing.

If the main character doesn’t work and the story drags because the stakes for the protagonist are unclear, basically the story is a failure. You don’t have to split my head open with an ax for me to pick up on the message. (Okay, you do. This is my third book and it took that many to finally realize why the books aren’t cutting it. But I do like the ax imagery).

My takeaway is this. What I’ve learned to do is to tell a plot and not a story. I really think I have some interesting ideas, characters, and scenes, but they all drift at the mercy of the plot. The protagonist and the response to the protagonist aren’t driving the plot. If they were, then it would be a story.

I picked up and read the book “Story Genius” which I hope will be really helpful. She describes a blueprinting methodology for sequencing scenes together and describing a technique for coordinating the inner world of the protagonist, the so-called third rail that powers the story, with the external plot within each scene, and much more. All based on the cognitive science of developing the empathy of the reader for the protagonist.

So I’ve been backtracking trying to blueprint my story for the last two months. I suppose it would be easier to start another story from scratch with this methodology, but I believe in my concept, the world-building, the language, all the characters I have created except the protagonist, and the structure of the book. I really like “Story Genius” idea of not only stating the misbelief but developing the history to support it. Every scene in the blueprint has to answer the question of why. It’s been painful and I don’t have much to show for all the effort, but I do think I have some promising ideas.

Some things that I am committed to:
> The point of a sci-fi book should be a great twist on a concept:
– Bluffdale: AI isn’t going to hunt us to death, it’s going to love us to death.
– Property of Nature: Gods have an obligation to make their sentient creations fit for a world without them
– Golden Earring: Meaning comes from the survival of those that cooperate the best in the present; not from the history of those that survived as the fittest.
> Great science fiction works in the seams between indifferent technology and deep meaning. This is the space I want to write in.
> While I agree that the inner world is important, I am turned off by excessive displays of emotion to reveal inner state. You can overwrite a scene in a book just as easily as you can overact in a movie.
> I will never resolve a plot with romantic love as the resolution of meaning or conflict. In science fiction, I think it is a sign of weak writing (unless the technology has something specifically to do with that).

So this is a lead-in for future posts I will try out in print on this blog and see how they feel. If you happen to read and have a comment on any of them, feel free to drop me a line at author.mike.angel@gmail.com.