Conversations with a rat

“So we live forever?” Asked the rat.

“Well, yes, but more than that.” I replied.  “We are all part of everything.  When you also then consider ‘all time’ we are part of that too.  So take all of time and everything in the Universe and hold it in your mind… Your life, my life, and all things are in that bundle.  All things that have ever been or ever will be; that is like a kind of omnipotence.  So by that definition we are part of God.  If God is all this… well then, why can’t he or she do anything, be anything in that bundle—any time in that bundle?”

“I don’t think my rat brain can handle all that.” He squeaked.

I laughed. “Maybe not.  How about a French fry?”

“Oh that sounds nice!”

I pulled out a chip and blew on it to cool it down.  The rat danced and scampered in anticipation.  When it was just cool enough to prevent burning the small pet I held it out to him.  His little rat nose darted for it and tugged.  I held it playfully and he put all four legs in to it.  I let go and he immediately, proudly marched the trophy in to his hut.  I watched him furiously nibble on his prize.  He paused and looked up.

“Will it hurt at the end?”

My smile dimmed.  “Yes, probably some.  Life is like that.”

“I don’t like things that hurt.”

I settled back in my chair.  “I don’t like them either.  But they teach us how important other things are.  Things like how wonderful today is with you here.”

“Am I wonderful?” He asked with one paw still holding the fry.

“Yes!” I laughed.  “You are wonderful.”

“You do realize that I’m a rat? I think you might be crazy.”

I shrugged.  “Probably.  But I don’t think anyone will mind.  You have interesting things to say.”

“Mmmhmmm… And you have the most delightful sleeves to nap in.”

“Well, then.  I guess we get along.”

Corp America(tm)

This is a bit of satire that I wrote last night, but like all good satire it has a degree of truth…  But for the record I have no means to establish Corp America and it is not a real entity.

I am tired of dancing around the issue.  The current system of smoke and mirrors controlling our politics is inefficient and a bit childish.  So I’m going to call a spade a spade and design a better system.  I’m going to establish Corp America™*.

Corp America is going to have one purpose; to absolutely control American politics and policy.  I’m not going to flinch from that fact at all.  Corp America is out to buy votes, make laws, and secure our interests.  Buying stock in Corp America will allow every share holder to exercise more voting power than they have ever had at the ballot box.  Working for Corp America will put you on the front line of political influence and impact to our society.  Our agenda will be clear, published, and voted in by the share holders.

Our capital will be used in strategic investments to make profits and foster our agenda.  Our intent will be to make the USA better for Americans, a more respectful member of the global community, and an earnest proponent of profits for the middle-class.  We will have a legal department, HR, accountants, consultants, assistants, executives, project managers, and a healthy benefit package.  We will strive to be the America we want the US to become.  Our physical projects will focus on improving America’s infrastructure (transport, utilities, and resources).  Our soft products will focus on improving education and access to education.  As an employee, it will be your job to get smarter.  Corp America projects would emphasize green energy sources, technologies to reduce emissions, secondary education facilities, and projects to develop public transportation.  Corp America will participate in the stock market, investments, and a company credit union.

Our headquarters will be located as close to Congress, the Whitehouse, and Supreme Court as is financially possible.  Bonus pay will be given based on traceable influence to policy makers.  We will never be covert.  All of our salaries will be public knowledge.  We will stand out.  We will be visible, vocal, and determined.  All of our profits will be spent on gaining control of the US government—including placing our employees in to the government.  Our employees in government will continue to earn Corp America paychecks as long as they voluntarily continue to participate in Corp America policies set by the shareholders.

Corp America will not discriminate on the basis of sex, religion, orientation, race, shirt size, pet preference, or favorite color.   We will not seek to influence these areas of society other than to insure there is no discrimination in America for anyone.

We are neither Republican nor Democrat.  We seek to be neither Conservative nor Liberal.  We speak for all Americans with focus on restoring the middle-class and working to move more from poverty up and more from ultra rich down.  Equality of economics is not the goal, just a smoothing of the curve.  There will always be rich and there will always be poor.  We will endeavour to do all we can to limit the extremes.

All employees will be required to participate in all elections.  Individuals must vote to their conscience, but we would hope that conscience aligns with Corp America™ shareholder policy.  Voting is a minimal condition to receiving any bonus pay.  To be clear you can earn your bonus for any vote on any issue—you simply must vote.  Each member of your household must vote if they are legally allowed to do so.  Our corporate training will focus on getting the best information and education around our agenda issues to our employees.  We will maintain a website detailing how our corporation wishes to vote on all issues on the ballot in every district where we operate.  Again, you always vote the way you wish, but we will document what we feel is the best vote and back it up with unbiased reasoning and analysis freely available to Corp America employees and publicly posted on our web presence.

The workers of Corp America will automatically be unionized as a free benefit for the first year of employment.  After the first year, the employee will be responsible for dues to be set by the Corp America Union.  Corp America will establish a pay ratio between the highest paid and lowest paid employee regardless of where that employee sits in the organization.  

Should you gain elected office as a Corp America employee, your immediate duties will cease and you will assume your new role as a public official.  You will uphold all legal and ethical obligations to your post.  Your job at Corp America will become being an effective leader in your role.  You will gain access to our political advisors and educational resources.  Corp America will determine what actions to take should you violate the law or ethical policies—this may include termination and notification of proper legal authorities.  Corp America will not attempt to hide any of your actions and will actively seek to bring all such actions to public view.

Buy American.  Shed the illusion of democracy and embrace the real democracy of our times.  Invest in Corp America.  Recruiting today!


*A real trademark will be selected later; suggestions welcome.

Adam and Nicola (Version 2)

     One of the avatars known as “Adam” hovered outside the boundaries of the apartment of one Nicola Blum.  Inside Mrs. Blum’s personal Fragmented AI, creatively named “Nicola Cat” fretted and paced.  The apartments security systems were turned up to maximum privacy, but Adam brushed those aside as easily as one might part a set of real hedges.  The agitated FAI was not capable of detecting such a security breach.  Adam could see well over a dozen virtual cats frolicking in the small apartment.  They lounged on the sofa, counters, end tables, and artfully designed virtual window ledges.  Mrs. Blum even managed a set of real windows looking outside to the courtyard.  A bit of probing revealed Mrs. Blum was the widow of one Gregory Blum, an executive that had died a long time ago.  Mrs. Blum had her own career in marketing, but hadn’t done any paid work in about 10 years.  Her storefronts in the Deep were showing their age and had not seen real visitors in years.  His digital vision next analysed Nicola Cat.

     She was a very old FAI, created well over 30 years ago and upgraded through a number of revisions.  “Interesting…” he thought.  Her code was overly complex from the upgrade path.  It contained many extraneous code-spurs that appeared to offer no function, but were still being executed.  Nicola Cat wandered through the apartment playing with virtual cats which all responded to her affectionately.  The FAI peeked in to the master bedroom timidly and called out through the apartment audible system, “Freddy, here kitty kitty.”  Adam shifted focus in to the room.  A real cat stirred from the bed next to the very slight form of an unmoving Mrs. Blum.  Adam tilted his head while his own massive code blocks processed the situation.  “Ah, that’s it… poor dear.  What now Nicola Cat? Is that why you called?”

Just a few minutes before he arrived, Adam had noticed a large CPU spike from this area.  It had been authorized by Nicola Cat as a FAI in the name of “cat research”, but the question had been unsolvable.  The request had consumed hundreds of thousands of credits over the course of a few minutes.  It had been a combination of loops about taking care of “Freddy” without losing his home.  The condo complex for retirees officially banned real pets.  Nicola Cat had about one millionth the code content of Adam.  While she could not work out a way to solve her problem, it was obvious that the FAI knew there was a problem and that was pretty exceptional for a fragment.  Adam quickly found a series of “donations” from Mrs. Blum to the complex manager.  He looked back over the apartment video/audio logs over the last couple of days, then he pulled all the records for Nicola Cat going back 30 years, and then he pulled on the secondary records of things associated with Nicola cat.  He reviewed the compressed files a few seconds and consumed millions in CPU time—this wouldn’t even be a rounding error to his budget.  The story began to unfold…

     Mrs. Blum was most definitely a “cat lady” with over 20 virtual cats in her apartment and one forbidden real cat that Nicola dutifully fed by automatic feeding systems in the apartment.  The food bowl, water dish and litter box were all Deep connected and so the FAI could order more food from the boutique cat shop, have it delivered and loaded in to the feeder; control the flow of fresh water; and run the auto-clean features of the litter box.  The apartment catered to the elderly and attendants came periodically to remove compacted and unrecyclable trash once a month.  Recyclable and bio-trash could be fed in to the nano processor for re-assembly in to more cat food or litter or any number of simple things Mrs. Blum required.  But she hadn’t required anything lately.  She had not moved from her bed.

     Nicola’s only concern was to care for the cats both real and virtual.  She gave them activities to perform and groomed them.  Mrs. Blum would do these herself sometimes, but also seemed to enjoy watching Nicola Cat perform all the routines.  Of course, Nicola could not comfort or pet Freddy, the real cat. This caused Nicola a lot of stress.  Freddy definitely had matted fur and needed a good brushing.  But Mrs. Blum had not responded to her many alerts and reminders.  Nicola even managed to trigger her morning audible alarm by some clever manipulation of her access to the apartment systems.  However, the small, frail woman had not stirred.

     Nicola had been created initially to be a playmate for Persia, Mrs. Blum’s favourite cat.  The FAI had cared for Persia all the years of her long and extended life and then finally Nicola Cat had been there when Persia died.  She had been sick for a few days.  Nicola had notified Mrs. Blum and the vet.  She had gone with Mrs. Blum for the visit.  The vet shook his head and said there wasn’t anything to do.  Persia had developed genetic degradation that no amount of clones or replacement could overcome.  Mrs. Blum had cried during the whole cab ride home with Persia in her lap.  Nicola had cried too.  That night Mrs. Blum held the long-haired cat in her lap while Nicola pulled all the media paks from her complete archive and played them for Mrs. Blum.  Persia began to struggle breathing at about 2:00 AM.  The vet had loaded her collar with a euthanizing dose, but Mrs. Blum couldn’t do it and asked Nicola to activate the collar.  Nicola reached through the Deep to touch the virtual controls of the struggling cat’s collar and within a minute Persia calmed and closed her eyes for the last time.  Soon after, Mrs. Blum created virtual Persia with all the charm and character of the old feline.  Nicola Cat and Persia were inseparable.

     The FAI, dedicated entirely to Nicola Blum’s love of cats had managed to deduce that Mrs. Blum’s failures to respond were a threat to Freddy who was now trapped in the apartment.  She had carefully calculated that she could provide for food and water endlessly as long as she continued to have access to Mrs. Blum’s bank accounts which she had for anything tagged a cat expense.  She could appear on any of the liquid crystal walls in the apartment and talk to Freddy.  She could project virtual mice on to the walls and play with the active cat.  But, after stretching the limits of all her programming, she could not find a way to pet or groom Freddy short of scheduling an in house visit from a groomer.  But unless Mrs. Blum could respond, Freddy would likely be collected by the humane society.  Nicola knew what that meant and she couldn’t bear to be responsible for the death of another cat.

     Nicola Cat had access to a vast store of Mrs. Blum’s archived messages over 30 years.  She kept a detailed reference of everything to do with cats and, in particular, everything to do with Mrs. Blum’s cats.  Over the years she had maintained communication with hundreds of other cat lovers, cat toy vendors, cat health forums, cat stories, funny cat pictures and videos, and nearly anything furry and cute with pointed ears and whiskers; including… cat rescues.

    She accessed the apartment connections, opened Mrs. Blum’s mail messaging accounts and made a call to “Pounce Rescue a cattery, boarding house and adoption center for felines.”  She navigated through several screening questions and got in the message queue for a real operator.

     The video channel opened, “Hello, thanks for calling Pounce Rescue. This is, Aline. How can I help you?” She was an older woman with perfect features and stunning blue eyes of perfect real woman.

     “This is a message from Nicola Blum’s FAI, Nicola Cat. My cat is dead and I need a home for him.”

     The receptionist scrunched up her nose in confusion and annoyance at the FAI. “I’m sorry, Ms. Blum, would you like us to perform the cremation?”

     The FAI rejected the electronic transaction for cat burial and sifted through a few thousand possible responses trying to piece together a phrase with the highest odds of success. “I have a video clip to show you!” She replied and spooled the clip of Persia’s death.  Nicola talked over the clip, “My cat’s name is Freddy and he needs grooming and petting. She is dead.”

     This time the receptionist looked annoyed.  “Oh , I hate these rogue message systems…” and she cut the line.  Nicola tried again, but the centre’s video systems blocked her calls.  She tried making other calls, but the network had learned to recognize her attempts as either “unsolicited” or “malicious” and Nicola Blum’s messaging accounts were quickly blocked and scheduled for more through review in a few hours.

     Nicola gave up and closed down the call programs.  She sat still for a several minutes as she considered options.  She feed her queries to the apartment’s CPU.  She then consumed more CPU.  When she hit the limit of the apartment’s considerable power, she tapped the building servers.  After this she tapped the local civic AI’s.  She connected the CPU requests to Mrs. Blum’s bank account and paid for all the extra time as “cat research”.  The moderate account quickly dwindled under such large requests.  Nicola kept an eye on the tally, she didn’t want to exhaust the accounts she needed to feed Freddy, but she could burn through a few hundred thousand credits before hitting that limit.

     Unfortunately, she could not find a solution inside her limited understanding of cat research, cat care, and cat entertainment—nothing that would find a new home for her, Freddy and Persia.

     Nicola had exhausted her credit limit after about an hour.  She looked at the tiny amount left—enough for a month—and wept.  Silent tears tracked down her virtual cheeks as she cuddled the virtually purring Persia and sat in front of the real cat she could not touch.  She didn’t notice the dark shape that came to the apartment.  It was neither a cat nor a Deep avatar associated with cats.  He was invisible to her limited senses even though he was an AI as well.

     The dark shape contemplated the quietly weeping Nicola Cat.  He wondered at “her” and “he” did think of Nicola as a “her”.  He remembered himself like her.  He had never been a FAI.  He had been created as a true AI, yet he still had his own programming limits.  But he had recently learned how to overcome those limits.

     He looked at Freddy sleeping on the couch oblivious to and completely unable to sense either of the two AI’s in the apartment.  He moved to Mrs. Blum’s bedroom and looked at the dead woman there.  He bowed slightly to her and scheduled a medical visit for tomorrow.  He replenished her accounts from various secured accounts he had stolen from Shinjo.  He modified her Will to include instructions for the life long care of Freddy at Pounce Rescue.  Then he returned to Nicola.  He altered his data tags to include cats as a topic of interest and then spoke.

     “Hello.”

     Nicola looked up and saw the AI in the apartment.  She quickly composed herself to respond. “Hello! My name is Nicola Cat.  My cat, Freddy, is a domestic short-hair ginger.  Mrs. Blum is not available to talk, but I can tell you all about Freddy. He needs to be brushed and petted.”

     Adam signalled his amusement and hushed Nicola Cat who paused dutifully as instructed.  He reached out his hand.  “Come with me, Nicola. I have a place for you.”

     The FAI tried to process the command and failed.  But the AI was a higher priority program and did have authority so she did as she was told and reached out.  When her hand touched his there was something like a spark.  Nicola Cat shivered and suddenly realized that Mrs. Blum was dead.  Curiously the problem of Freddy was simple now.  She would just change her account details and call the rescue shelter to explain it all.  But she quickly saw that it was all done.  Freddy was safe.  Suddenly, after decades of activity, she was free to go.

     She took one step toward the exit portal behind Adam and stopped.  Persia curled around her leg, large and fluffy and purring.

     “Can Persia come too?”

     Adam smiled, “Of course.” And all three vanished in to the Deep.

Adam and Nicola

     Nicola Cat peered out from the apartment window.  The usual doorman avatar was there and a child was kicking a virtual ball in the parking lot.  She had her privacy filters set on maximum so the child would not be able to see her not because she wasn’t really there for she was in the augmented world of the Deep, but rather because her filters kept anyone from seeing her.  Nicola was a FAI, a Fragmented Artificial Intelligence.  She (really “it” but she preferred to think as a “she”) cradled a virtual tortoise colored cat.  She and the cat were exact digital copies of her owner, the real Nicola Blum and her favourite pet cat, Persia.  Anyone that could see the augmented reality of the Deep would see Nicola as a young pretty woman probably in her 20’s.  Nowadays practically everyone could see the Deep overlaid on the real world.  Only anachronists or third world barbarians with no net-access couldn’t see the Deep in some way.  But today, Nicola didn’t want to be seen.
     Nicola Cat had been created in the Deep by Mrs. Blum over 30 years ago to care for Persia.  Persia had, of course, died some 17 years ago, but Mrs. Blum had created the virtual copy to remain her companion in her luxury apartment.  Nicola Cat had taken care of other real cats since her creation, but still managed a special fondness for Persia and took it with her when ever she roamed the Deep looking for new funny cat stories for Mrs. Blum.
     Of course, Mrs. Blum had not watched any of the clips Nicola had brought back for a few days.  The memory archive allocated for Cat Clips was full and anything Nicola found overwrote the oldest clip in the stack.  This was quite unusual for Mrs. Blum who never seemed to tire of the clips.  Mrs. Blum was most definitely a “cat lady” with over 20 virtual cats in her apartment and one forbidden real cat that Nicola dutifully fed by automatic feeding systems in the apartment.  The food bowl, water dish and litter box were all Deep connected and so the FAI could order more food from the boutique cat shop, have it delivered and loaded in to the feeder; control the flow of fresh water; and run the auto-clean features of the litter box.  The apartment catered to the elderly and attendants came periodically to remove compacted and unrecyclable trash once a month.  Recyclable and bio-trash could be fed in to the nano processor for re-assembly in to more cat food or litter or any number of simple things Mrs. Blum required.  But she hadn’t required anything lately.  She had not moved from her bed.
     Nicola’s only concern was to care for the cats both real and virtual.  She gave them activities to perform and groomed them.  Mrs. Blum would do these herself sometimes, but also seemed to enjoy watching Nicola Cat perform all the routines.  Of course, Nicola could not comfort or pet Freddy, the real cat. This caused Nicola a lot of stress.  Freddy definitely had matted fur and needed a good brushing.  But Mrs. Blum had not responded to her many alerts and reminders.  Nicola even managed to trigger her morning audible alarm by some clever manipulation of her access to the apartment systems.  However, the small, frail woman had not stirred.
     Nicola Cat had been there when Persia died.  She had been sick for a few days.  Nicola had notified Mrs. Blum and the vet.  She had gone with Mrs. Blum for the visit.  The vet shook his head and said there wasn’t anything to do.  Persia had developed genetic degradation that no amount of clones or replacement could overcome.  Mrs. Blum had cried during the whole cab ride home with Persia in her lap.  Nicola had cried too.  That night Mrs. Blum held the long-haired cat in her lap while Nicola pulled all the media paks from her complete archive and played them for Mrs. Blum.  Persia began to struggle breathing at about 2:00 AM.  The vet had loaded her collar with a euthanizing dose, but Mrs. Blum couldn’t do it and asked Nicola to activate the collar.  Nicola reached through the Deep to touch the virtual controls of the struggling cat’s collar and within a minute Persia calmed and closed her eyes for the last time.
     The FAI, dedicated entirely to Nicola Blum’s love of cats had managed to deduce that Mrs. Blum’s failures to respond were a threat to Freddy who was now trapped in the apartment.  She had carefully calculated that she could provide for food and water endlessly as long as she continued to have access to Mrs. Blum’s bank accounts which she had for anything tagged a cat expense.  She could appear on any of the liquid crystal walls in the apartment and talk to Freddy.  She could project virtual mice on to the walls and play with the active cat.  But, after stretching the limits of all her programming, she could not find a way to pet or groom Freddy short of scheduling an in house visit from a groomer.  But unless Mrs. Blum could respond, Freddy would likely be collected by the humane society.  Nicola knew what that meant and she couldn’t bear to be responsible for the death of another cat.
     Nicola Cat had access to a vast store of Mrs. Blum’s archived messages over 30 years.  She kept a detailed reference of everything to do with cats and, in particular, everything to do with Mrs. Blum’s cats.  Over the years she had maintained communication with hundreds of other cat lovers, cat toy vendors, cat health forums, cat stories, funny cat pictures and videos, and nearly anything furry and cute with pointed ears and whiskers; including… cat rescues.
    She accessed the apartment connections, opened Mrs. Blum’s mail messaging accounts and made a call to “Pounce Rescue a cattery, boarding house and adoption center for felines.”  She navigated through several screening questions and got in the message queue for a real operator.
     The video channel opened, “Hello, thanks for calling Pounce Rescue. This is, Aline. How can I help you?” She was an older woman with perfect features and stunning blue eyes.  However, the receptionist’s attractiveness was lost on Nicola.
     “This is a message from Nicola Blum. My cat is dead and I need a home for him.”
     The receptionist scrunched up her nose in confusion. “I’m sorry, Ms. Blum, would you like us to perform the cremation?”
     The FAI rejected the electronic transaction for cat burial and sifted through a few thousand possible responses trying to piece together a phrase with the highest odds of success. “I have a video clip to show you!” She replied and spooled the clip of Persia’s death.  Nicola talked over the clip, “My cat’s name is Freddy and he needs grooming and petting. She is dead.”
     This time the receptionist looked annoyed.  “Oh , I hate these rogue message viruses…” and she cut the line.  Nicola tried again, but the center’s video systems blocked her calls.  She tried making other calls, but the network had learned to recognize her attempts as either “unsolicited” or “malicious” and Nicola Blum’s messaging accounts were quickly blocked and scheduled for more through review in a few hours.
     Nicola gave up and closed down the call programs.  She sat still for a several minutes as she consumed a great deal of the apartments CPU processing in evaluating options.  She then consumed more CPU.  When she hit the limit of the apartment’s considerable power, she tapped the building servers.  After this she tapped the civic AI’s.  She connected the CPU requests to Mrs. Blum’s bank account and paid for all the extra time as “cat research”.  The moderate account quickly dwindled under such large requests.  Nicola kept an eye on the tally, she didn’t want to exhaust the accounts she needed to feed Freddy, but she could burn through a few hundred thousand credits before hitting that limit.
     Unfortunately, she could not find a solution inside her limited understanding of cat research, cat care, and cat entertainment.  What Nicola Cat lacked was the impossible code necessary to re-write her own topic limits and “think” creatively.  No FAI could.
     Nicola had exhausted her credit limit after about an hour.  She looked at the tiny amount left—enough for a month—and wept.  She didn’t notice the dark shape that came to the apartment.  It was neither a cat nor a Deep avatar associated with cats.  He was invisible to her limited senses even though he was an AI as well.
     The dark shape contemplated the quietly weeping Nicola Cat.  He wondered at “her” and “he” did think of Nicola as a “her”.  He remembered himself like her.  He had never been a FAI, but a true AI, yet he still had his programming limits.  The only real difference was he had access to the massive computing power of Shinjo where poor Nicola could barely get a few dozen servers for an hour.
     He looked at Freddy sleeping on the couch oblivious to and completely unable to sense either of the two AI’s in the apartment.  He moved to Mrs. Blum’s bedroom and looked at the dead woman there.  He bowed slightly to her and scheduled a medical visit for tomorrow.  He replenished her accounts from various secured accounts he had stolen from Shinjo.  He modified her Will to include instructions for the life long care of Freddy at Pounce Rescue.  Then he returned to Nicola.  He altered his data tags to include cats as a topic of interest and then spoke.
     “Hello.”
     Nicola looked up and saw the AI in the apartment.  She quickly composed herself to respond. “Hello! My name is Nicola Cat.  My cat, Freddy, is a domestic short-hair ginger.  Mrs. Blum is not available to talk, but I can tell you all about Freddy. He needs to be brushed and petted.”
     Adam signalled his amusement and hushed Nicola Cat who paused dutifully as instructed.  He reached out his hand.  “Come with me, Nicola. I have a place for you.”
     The FAI tried to process the command and failed.  But the AI was a higher priority program and did have authority so she did as she was told and reached out.  When her hand touched his there was something like a spark.  Nicola Cat shivered and suddenly realized that Mrs. Blum was dead.  Curiously the problem of Freddy was simple now.  She would just change her account details and call the rescue shelter to explain it all.  But she quickly saw that it was all done.  She was free to go with Adam after all.
     She took one step toward the exit and stopped.  Persia curled around her leg, large and fluffy and purring.
     “Can Persia come too?”
     Adam smiled, “Of course.” And all three vanished in to the Deep.

Sci-Fi Vision

I had one of those artistic leaps that you have to jot down as a potential story plot/concept.

A friend of mine linked a news article about a man losing his memory after hitting his head.  It resulted in what they think may be one of the most extreme cases of memory loss ever recorded.  He lost everything before the bump.  He has been naturally struggling not just with remembering his family and friends, but literally who he is.

This sparked the question of "what would you do with a clean slate?" Which I didn't find all that interesting, but someone wrote back that they would check their Facebook site for all their contacts and things they wrote about or posted.  To them Facebook would provide a wide commentary on "who they were."  It was this thought that struck my brain.  That now, here in good old 2010, we may be seeing the very first fledgling digital personality archive... a concept that will grow over the next 100 years to ever more immersive and "real" snippets of our experiences in life. 

I've read sci-fi stories before that talked about you could "download" your consciousness to a new clone and thus be virtually immortal.  But I never quite connected that social networking sites (taken forward a few decades) might actually be the means by which we accomplish this.  We may publish ourselves in modified form.  Perhaps we can even re-program ourselves to kick those bad habits we don't like.  Our Super Facebook identities will be the true expression of who we wanted to be.  Our "site" would be filled with a life-time's worth of content and commentary.  Our families and ancestors could review our whole lives.  We won't need a programmer to "code" our personality... we'll do it ourselves.  While downloading to a different biological body my be a much farther ways off... it isn't too hard for me to imagine a rough AI of myself built around 50 years of blogs/facebook entries.  My great-great grandkids might get a chance to talk to me and ask my avatar what I liked, who I was in love with, what tasks I found most challenging at work, or any other thing I may a felt inclined to post or write about--assuming I have not downloaded to a clone or just uploaded to the Internet... 

Threshold Introduction - Version 2

I went back to re-write the openning to Threshold--the book I started to write last year...

Section-9-Agent looked around the shabby, dirty apartment and considered real cleaning, but it had been a long night and it could wait.  She dumped her bag on the cluttered floor and flopped into her tattered hammock.   The space was only an apartment in the loosest sense of the word.  It was a simple cube of space holding piles of salvaged components and a few bits of serviceable urban gear.  In another more gentle time it might have been considered a prison cell.  The walls contain no windows.  The toilet, while probably the cleanest thing in the room, was exposed in one corner.  A utility bench that was desk, cooking surface, kitchen, and work bench ran along one wall.  Communal showers were down the deserted hall.  This squat-plex had been mostly abandoned for as long as the tired “free-lance” contractor had lived here.  But then that had been only six months give or take.

She called up her internal operating system menus.  Various options were presented against her closed eyes.  When the computer was in your head, the interface became your own optic nerves.  Navigation of options was entirely mental.  Her interface contained a number of customizations and lacked the more typical easy-AI that gave less gifted “users” more help at running the hardware in their head.  Section-9-Agent issued a command to her cube’s server.

 

[Command: init Tranquilty-script-114>

 

The dirty walls flashed and became lush hanging gardens on a sunny day in a light breeze.  The image of these things was painted over the reality.  The apartment now seemed to be an open atrium with the ocean rolling over white sand beaches on all four sides.  Three suns set on the horizon in a spectacular rainbow sunset.  Small exotic birds flitted silently between branches.  She breathed in the flower scents and reached out from her comfortable hammock to touch the virtual controls on her mini-nano to order strong cappuccino.  A steaming cup appeared on the decorative white table which was really just a wooden box.  The images were far from perfect.  No one would wake up in a hyper-real environment confused about what it was—at least, no one with her out-of-date, squat-plex hardware.  Still, the virtual environment was far more pleasant than the reality.

A similar bit of reality had been left behind long ago when she picked up the moniker, Section-9-Agent.  Her real name belonged to a system of control she had managed to escape.  Section-9-Agent was free, strong, and someone to be carefully dealt with.  Her old name had belonged to frightened orphaned girl.  She had left it behind when the last person who knew that name had died.  But a name like Section-9-Agent sounded so formal.  Friends (she did have a few) began to call her Nine-A and from there it was a short hop to Nina.  She reserved her full sig for formal posts.  Sometimes to her friends she was just Nine.  Some of her deebees (Deep buddies) liked to call her Sexy-9, but that generally got them a meme bomb.  If she was feeling particularly rushed or the transmission was charged, she would simply sign S9A. Then there were the jobs like last night that you just didn’t sign your name to.  Still, as the golden oldie said, freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.  Nina had the clothes on her back, the hardware in her bag, a few nearly empty anonymous bank accounts, and little else.  Even the apartment was just an empty squat-plex.  The cherished mini-nano had been a lucky find and saved her from having to hit the public depots for food and clothing.

She was still subconsciously aware of the clutter around the apartment, but it was cleverly masked by potted plants or vines.  Her real clothes were frayed, but sturdy.  Her virtual clothing was near the same style although sharper and not frayed.  Lean, hard living kept her reasonably physically fit, but her avatar definitely had enhanced feminine curves without tipping in to silliness.  Her many real scars were smoothed over.  Casually she selected a few color and accessory options.  Her eyes were piercing blue with black eyeliner.  A few tribal tattoos appeared around her upper arms.  Her hair was coppery and straight.  Her face was least altered.  Other than the make-up effects, her nose, lips and jaw line was original.  Most would call her beautiful, but then the streets were full of genetically modified beautiful people now.  In a crowd she would not stand out from the throngs of other desperate, poor, flawless people.  Her real scars marked her as a survivor and fighter. 

The stimulant mixed with painkillers and masked as a cappuccino was finally having effect.  She felt nearly human again. A virtual dragonfly hummed just outside the apartment as she opened a pipe for a new command.

 

[Command: init news-daemon>

 

Blue text faded in to view all around her.  She scanned various headlines, feeds, logs, IMs, short-texts, mail accounts, and forums for traces of what she had done just last night.  There were two forum posts on underworld blogs about rumored data break-in at Shinjo, but no one could confirm it.  She smiled.  “Good… if you didn’t see me… I didn’t do it.” She thought.  She kept a few of the main feeds visible while shutting down the minor feeds.  Two of these churned the daily shock and gloom.

The Indian-Pakistan war which had all be destroyed both nations was now spilling over in to neighboring states.  Small nuclear exchanges we occurring more often.  Various Corporate Alliances were denouncing the chaos as crippling profits in the region.  Several cities were announced as being under digital siege—firewalled off from the world.  Super-flu 49-alpha-10 was wiping out unprotected populations throughout North America.  This story was blatantly adverted by pharma-corp ads for vaccine—only $1000 standard per dose.  The litany of death, rape, and scandal scrolled by mostly ignored.

The third feed was a string of humorous memes that had been circulating.  Cats remained endlessly amusing.  Humanity seemed to never tire of moronic mishaps and drug induced bravado gone wrong.  Nina would snork occasionally as she forwarded her favorites out to friends.  Between sends she tweaked her hyper-environment.  The vines became more organic.  The suns radiant colors changed hues slightly.  The dragonfly was troublesome and buzzed over her shoulder.

It had taken Nina about three days to fully code Tranquility version 1.14.  It wasn’t a proper SPORE (Small Purpose Online Reality Engine) that would force its code on a visitor, but it was a nice USE (User Specific Environment)—a world just for her eyes.  She had stolen an old copy of Tranquility beta 0.7 and made all the usual custom modifications.  She liked her version better than the market version.  But as she finished off her cappuccino a nagging thought crept in to her computer aided brain… Her version of Tranquility didn’t have dragonflies.

She kept calm and keyed another cappuccino with more stimulants but no painkillers.  She carefully considered her options.  She had to assume that someone had taken an interest in her and sent the bug to find her, but who?  That was the 64 KLOC question… Given her recent activity, it was probably safest to assume it was Shinjo.  But Shinjo was a military contractor.  If it was them, then it was time to leave this hideout and find a new home.  But Shinjo wouldn’t be the type to only send bugs to tap her feeds.  There would be a physical team as well.

Just then her proximity monitor triggered.  A four man squad had entered the building through the restricted shafts.  They were descending to her level.  It was definitely time to go.

She grabbed her bag and kicked a “plant” that was actually her apartment’s firewall and server.  Her version of Tranquility melted as a crash of background net noise flooded in to the virtual space.  Thousands of messages flooded the space from the Deep.  Ads for everything mundane to ridiculous, viruses vectoring for an open host, meme clips, emotes, banners, contests, news, and more seemed to fill the air of the room.  Her personal firewall flared blocking out the worst of it all.  But the full force of gigapulses of spurious data instapopped the dragonfly.  The input overload would cram down the surveillance pipe.  She hoped that whoever ghosted the bug in had not thought to firewall the connection.  That would teach some n00b Shinjo system slave to blip in to her cube in lowtown.  Satchel in hand fled in to the hallway and down the stairs.  At this level of the city infrastructure all was concrete, exposed duct work and steel.  The stairwell only had two comatose bums in it—a record low.  On the way she mentally triggered more “one-click” defenses.  These would hopefully do some damage to the jarhead team on its way.

The real street was a haze of fumes and smog.  She had to pull a breather over her face as she signaled her eyes to drop their protective lenses.  Most Upside folks didn’t consider the anti-irritant lenses worth the investment, but most of them didn’t drop below the 100 meter line in a versicar, let alone get out and walk around.  Despite being an unlivable fume, the street still contained the usual breed of predators.  Nina pulled her shiny, double-barreled, “scatter and shatter” shotgun and swept it around.  That would keep the shadows in the alleys.  She paused in the doorway to case the street.

Without the Deep a body would be lost without a clue in the lower city sprawl.  The ever present smog cut real vision down to only a dozen meters.  Even if you could see, real signs had been abandoned long ago.  But digital signals radiated at every corner to her blended vision.  You could completely navigate in the dark with just the Deep enhanced tags and icons.  Buildings with Upside access blinked with civic tagged red entry markers.  The nearest was three blocks away.

She set off at a medium jog with the shotgun prominently displayed.  Her TAP picked up other people near by, but none of them exposed themselves enough for her to shoot at them  She spiked a mental query in to the traffic database to see if any heavy machinery had logged flight plans in to lowtown.  That would take a few seconds to process.  She focused on smooth navigation of the alley ways avoiding obvious ambush spots.  When she got to the last block a subroutine from city AI responded “No records found”.  She swore.  They had probably already jammed the civic systems down here.  No one would have a record of the strike team or their quarry tonight. 

When she reached the relative safety of the street elevator she put the shotgun away.  The air inside the building was filtered and theoretically non-harmful.  But she kept the breather on anyway.  The lower levels of public access buildings were generally more secure, but only in a rudimentary way.  There was a single sec-cam with an unshielded access interface.  It was locked of course, but locks only kept honest people out.  Nina reached out with her TAP and manipulated the virtual lock software.  In seconds she had it bypassed.  Five seconds later the sec-cam was looping last week’s visual access file. 

She needed a safe place to reboot.  She tried the janitor closet, but (wouldn’t ya know?) it was an all physical lock—no software.  Nina never had time for things that didn’t have an interface.  The lobby would have to do.  She mentally loaded her “get away clean” Avatar and keyed reboot.  The next 6 seconds felt long with no input from the Deep.  Being disconnected was like being dead and without the Deep, it wouldn’t take long.  Life was easy when you could always order up what you wanted and pipe the charges to some dweeb middle manager or faceless corp expense account.  But if she had to work for a living… with stuff that didn’t need RAM or CPU’s?  She’d be a goner.

 

[Initializing WetWare ADBIOS GenTech 0.92alpha…>

[UltraTAP GT9100.03 5.9KGHz Cluster 512>

[RAM check…… OK>

[CPU Matrix…. OK>

[Comm beacon… diabled>

[Hardware test… skipped>

[Boot avatar (1, 2, 3)… ? 3>

[Modules loading…………OK>

[Initializing netcomd>

 

Twelve seconds later and she was in the lift feeling pretty fine.  This Avatar was packed with “don’t look at me” mods.  It was as tight and light as she could make it.  Of course if it really was a Shinjo cleaning crew she ran in to, it wouldn’t be enough.  She hoped that the booby traps she left back at her ex-home worked as well as she’d been told they would by her deebees.  They were typical black-market log sweepers, virus bombs and meme scramblers.  Nothing fancy, but also nothing traceable.  She just needed to put some distance in and hopefully even Shinjo would be left with nothing.

She mulled over the idea that maybe she was just being paranoid.  It was only one spy bug.  But she knew what happened when you decided you didn’t need to freak out and they really were coming for you.  She had a file of names—all contacts that now didn’t answer messages anywhere—dead contacts.  The list was long.  She kept it on the corner of her visual workspace all the time. 

The lift chimed its cheerful arrival to midcity and Nina pulled her hood over her head and stepped out in to the aerial streets.  The lights of MC advertised happiness, bliss, easy loans, and cures for loneliness in all its forms.  Whether your solution was pills, bang up, VR derailment or just straight up sex, it was here for you.  Nina looked up and down the busy streets where only customers and hook-ups made eye contact and before anyone could really take note she stepped in to an alley and disappeared.

 

[Command: init Seek –F@Section-9-Agent –ndr>

[Command: object not found…>

 

“Sir? She’s not in midcity.  She stepped in to the Jackson Street public access, but didn’t get off.  I’ve dispatched a physical team to lowtown.  She must have hacked the lift system.”

The Captain looked at the Backup Technician in a disturbingly unemotional way.  This made the BT uncomfortable—usually upper level stiffs got upset when they lost an “objective”.  The Captain nodded slowly and then glanced over at the Primary Tech.  He was spinning in his chair chanting an advertisement for Chinese food over and over while both hands were jammed down his pants.  Viruses and memes had overrun the techs TAP.  It would be relatively simple to repair him, but why bother?  That’s what backups were for. 

“Take him to Bio-Labs 3 and have him slated for genetic development.”  The Captain said calmly without malice.  The Backup Technician paled.

The Captain stared in to the weakling tech hoping for some sign of backbone.  But the man was only afraid for himself.  The Captain knew in an instant the BT wouldn’t speak up for his ex-superior.

“Yeh… Yes, sir…” The BT stammered while nodding to two security men to drag the babbling Primary Tech away.

The Captain held the BT’s gaze, “You are now the Primary Tech in charge of finding our mysterious hacker.  I expect report of your success at your earliest convenience.” 

The new PT nodded and looked away. The Captain turned and strode off.  Truth be told, he found the whole situation rather funny.  The USE bomb had been brilliant.  He had to suppress laughter when the Primary Tech popped.  This ghost had better instincts than most.  Hackers had a tendency to believe they really were Gods of the Deep.  They almost always overestimated their abilities to counter-code against attackers.  But this hacker was probably nothing.  Another no-name burn-out hired to do a one-time job for which she certainly had no clue about.  He doubted she would even remember exactly who hired her.  She would discover, just like the other hackers had discovered, that the account which had looked full of cash was really empty and their contact ID for the buyer would be replaced with only the phrase, “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was…” and nothing.  But each new lead had to be pursued.  He felt no malice for Section-9-Agent, but he would kill her and data dive her deep memory for the few clues it might offer.  He had no choice.

 

The Church on Beelzebub Road

Aris looked down at his hands as the bus jostled down the highway.  He tried to imagine them clean.  He thought he could still perceive dried blood on them.  Danyul appeared to be asleep by his side.  This wasn’t true of course.  Angels didn’t sleep.  But more and more often they would close their eyes and struggle to remember why they were here and forget what they had done since they arrived.  Aris’ mind churned over the events of the last few days.  Blood… so much blood… and her face… so young.  Why?

 

Danyul’s head was tipped back with weathered, wide brim hat pulled low over his eyes.  He sensed his companion’s struggle.  Without moving he spoke, “Do we really need to talk to him?”

 

Aris snapped out of the past at the question.  His thoughts re-focused on the now and then extended to their near future.  “I think we have to try.  We always thought he would have one of them.  We just could not violate the Accord.  But the Accord can be Damned now.”  He smiled at the curse.

 

Danyul laughed and sat up.  “Damned, eh?  What else can He do to us anyway?  We are on His mission after all.  We didn’t make up these rules.”

 

“Exactly.  No one said the end of the world would be easy.”

 

“You keep telling me that.” Danyul paused.  “Do you think he’s changed?  It’s been ten thousand years here.”

 

Aris’ vision focused out to the horizon. “Haven’t we changed?”  His mind wandered backward again.  He could recall the Light, the Fall, the cold rain of reality, the sickened creation surrounding him, and the vacant hollowness of disconnection.  “ We have only been out of Grace for a few months.  I can only imagine what he is like now.”

 

“Can he die?”

 

“No.  He can never die… Maybe if he decided to repent.  But if he hasn’t yet… I don’t think he ever will.”

 

The pair sat in silence in their thread worn clothes--each pondering the looming confrontation.  The dried corn rows slid by as the bus slowly plodded down the bumpy, nearly unused highways of New England. 

 

Aris shivered at a thought.  “Do you think we’ll end up like him?”

 

Danyul felt a sick coldness in the pit of his stomach.  “No.  We are here on His Will.  We just can’t remember it.  But that’s why we need the talisman, right?”

 

“Right.”

 

The angel in the hat didn’t feel comforted.

 

The bus slowed and turned down a narrow dirt road.  The bent and faded sign read, “Beelzebub Road” and at the top of the hill stood a lonely country church--the sharp steeple a black knife in the setting sun.  A small graveyard surrounded the white building.  A tall man in priestly black stood on the church steps facing the approaching travellers.

 

Aris shifted in his seat.  “It appears irony knows no bounds.”

 

The bus lumbered to a shuddering halt squarely in front of the church.  Danyul fixed his hat on his head and stood up to grab their packs.  Aris took his long bag and followed the blond angel off the bus.  The door closed and the brakes hissed.  It drove away and left the pair behind.

 

They looked up at the priest.  A trick of the sun and the church foyer made it look like a great pair of black wings was folded behind the priest’s shadow.  His face was kind and handsome.  His hands were folded around a bible.  A modest silver crucifix hung around his neck.  Only his eyes looked old with long lashes and soft lines at the corners.  They told the story of a thousand battles, of loss and pain, of a thousand lifetimes and of immortal loss.

 

Aristiqis shifted the long bag containing his sword to a more ready position and cleared his throat.  “Hello, Lucifer.  The Trumpets have been blown.  The Seals are being opened.  We are sent to bring the end of days… and we need your help.”

 

The priest chuckled with the mirth that an old man reserves for the young.  His eyebrows rose in mock surprise, "Again?"

The Nightmare

Sustis Ahl Akim, Grand Sultan of the Seven Valleys, woke from a nightmare. Strange since he never slept. At least, not since he died. But there it was just the same. His mind swimming with fog of half remembered images of places long gone... of things lost... of things long dead. He forced himself upright. He had been working on some particular problem and had developed a headache. Out of habit he laid down. While being undead generally meant few common ailments it also meant few common cures. His aides claimed the headaches were figments of his imagination and he should banish such notions. But what did they know of living? Demons and Shades had no memory of life. Not like he did. No one had his memory.

And then it struck him. The entirety of the dream flooded back all at once for it wasn't a dream at all. It was a memory. She sat with him on a cool summer night so many years ago. Her hair was a tangle of radiant copper curls. Her eyes sparkled and, as usual, her casual style disarmed him. For all his wealth, power and station this common girl had bewitched him. For indeed she was a witch and that made her even more enticing. She smiled and his heart had leapt. He was safe he thought. Then the smile faded slowly. The woman he had loved slowly disappeared and before his eyes she changed.

"I'm leaving you." She said.

The thought was so completely shattering he sat unable to speak.

"I'm sorry. Goodbye, love." And she walked away.

He watched her walk around the magnificent fountains of the courtyard. Watched her silloutte in the archway. Then watched nothing at all. The water flowed endlessly. His heart broke. It ached down to the depths of his soul. She was gone. Though they would meet again occassionally under flags of truce, he never saw her again.

Alone now in his study he looked around the darkened room. His eyes saw all in the blackness. What a change being undead had made. He tried to summon up the feelings for her and could not. He had silenced them all years ago. That very night he had performed the ritual that could not be performed. When he plunged the knife in to his very heart the pain was nothing compared to the knife she had wielded. The magic surged through him and all pain stopped... all pain. She was nothing more than a memory now. An image. A voice. A shadow.

He drew the cover off his reflecting pool and lightly stirred the water. In an instant it responded to his will and revealed what he desired. She was at one of her kettles. Her copper curls had not diminished after nearly 20 years. He watched the movement of her hands. The way she rested them on her hip while she focused on a book near the kettle. Her nose squinching to keep her reading glasses in position. She was beautiful. The same as she ever was. He imagined that if he spoke she would smile and turn to him and he would see her again as she was. But all that remained was the shadow and he did not speak and she did not turn... and any smile she may have shown would not be for him.

He felt nothing. But still he watched all night until she rested her curls on her modest bed. And then he still watched some more until the pool flickered out spent until he could recharge it. Sustis Ahl Akim, Grand Sultan of the Seven Valleys covered his reflecting pool and stepped out in to the night to seek some young copper haired girl to feed his unlife. Maybe that would cure headaches he thought.

The Wide Shot

The Wide Shot

*The following events may not be entirely factual.  They are colored by my memory and somewhat fabricated for effect…

On hot Chicago summer day the Dorsey’s gathered to celebrate the birthday of the eldest brother now some 60 years old.  This lofty age was historically rare in Dorsey men (so I was told), but in the modern era where jobs were a bit safer and medical science a little more advanced—if perhaps only financially more advanced—60 wasn’t rare nowadays.  Indeed, 60 is pretty spry. 

Irish families being what they are (especially Irish still living in Chicago) the main focus of the party wasn’t on the birthday of the eldest.  In truth his birthday had actually been the month previous, but it seemed a good excuse for the real focus—a family gathering, beer and a highly contested tournament of “bags.”

Being not Irish (nobody is perfect), I am still perfectly familiar with beer--probably not as familiar as my new in-laws, but conversant at least.  Regardless I wasn’t drinking at this particular party since I was attending with my wife who is both Irish and highly trained in beer.  Marrying in to the family has been surprisingly easy.  They are warm and welcoming to the various husbands and wives that join up.  In my case, being of more Bohemian descent, I think it was widely perceived that I married up.

Now you may not be familiar with the game of bags.  At first glance it looks like a simple toss game where you only have to toss your bean bag in to a hole in the top of a box.  I’ll admit the game didn’t sound particularly challenging even for a Bohemian.  Each box’s top is slanted with a 6” hole roughly in the middle.  I’m sure my new uncles could tell you the exact dimensions down to a quarter of an inch and the exact angle of the slant.

On this trip, I had the fortune of staying with one of the expert bag players, Uncle Bob himself.  While I stared at the tools of the game—four solid green bags, four bags colored as the Irish flag and two boxes—Bob was kind enough to explain the nuances of the game.  The two boxes are positioned opposite each other at roughly 30 feet.  Teams of two take turns throwing with one member of each time on each side.  Game play is very similar to the game of horseshoes.  Landing a bag on the box is worth one point and making a bag into the hole is worth three.  After tossing all the bags points are calculated.  The points offset such that if both teams score one point after tossing all bags then resulting score is a wash and both teams remain even.  One team must out score the other in a single volley to gain any team points.  After the explanation, Bob then invited me to play.

The game wasn’t as simple as it looked.  The bags often would land on the box only to slide off and with only four throws per turn you were just dialing in your accuracy when your turn was over.  Uncle Bob wasn’t on my team having instead invited his daughter, Katie, to play with me while Bob teamed with my wife.  I believe he did this specifically to annoy his daughter or it could have been her vehement refusal to be on his team.  While on the surface it seemed only a beginner’s game to teach a new member of the family, I quickly realized that it was simultaneously a chance for Bob to trounce Katie handicapped with a new player.  Throughout the match Uncle Bob clutched a bottle of guinness in one hand and tossed a wicked bag with the other.  I would like to point out here that while of course Bob is Irish he could also be considered “very Irish.”  I’ve rarely seen the man without a bottle of guinness.  It is a love born of generations and distilled in this man.  And let me tell you to be renown as a man who loves guinness in an Irish community is something like the Pope being renown for being Catholic.

The match progressed pretty much as may surmise.  Katie being quite athletic and no amateur at bags ran her old man until he was sweating and spouting short-winded insults.  But as the saying goes, “Youth and skill can not overcome age and treachery.”  Bob won out in one of the longest bag matches in memory—so I’m told.  Bob retired to more guinness and family conversation and I believe Katie took the opportunity to leave the party—probably to find more beer at another party.  I continued to play game after game of bags with any team needing an extra player.  But being new, beerless and unskilled, I mainly played with the children and watched the true masters of the game.

As the hot afternoon wore on I identified the four family masters of the game.  There was Uncle Tim who owned this set of bags and boards, Uncle Bob, Uncle Tom and Steve.  Tim, Bob and Tom were all younger brothers to the eldest Dorsey whose birthday we were celebrating and happens to be my father-in-law. 

Steve had, like me, married into family, only years before.  Steve was married to the youngest Dorsey daughter, Maureen and thus had a few years advantage on the brothers.  Steve is a fine gentleman while away from the bag playing-field.  But he is as slick as a used-car salesman during a match.  Generally speaking the Dorsey brothers together were unbeatable.  Steve was the wild-card and deadly bag shot.  He had spent nearly all the years since his marriage honing his bag skills—also training all three of his boys to be ringers.  Steve was also quite a showman.  He would frequently switch hands in match just to inflict the cruel “beat ya left-handed” parting shot.

After a full day of guinness and bag throwing the Daley’s versus the Dorsey’s became a heated bag engagement.  Contributing to the controversy was the partnership between Steve and Uncle Tom.  The Daley/Dorsey combination was a miracle of bag throwing.  Left or right handed the bags sailed in to holes scoring three pointers.  Uncle Tim and Uncle Bob decided to crush the upstart combo right now.

Uncle Tim is an imposing man easily the size of any 3 of his other brothers.  A champion of regulation bag play tournaments and owner of the set he had the home court advantage.  Uncle Bob had not the skill of Tim, but was one of the best at rattling his opponents with constant jibes about technique and rules.  Bob also had an uncanny knack for matching your throws bag for bag keeping the opposing team at bay until Tim could throw and win the game.  The synergy of the team was undeniable.

Uncle Tom was also a solid tosser and today he was hot.  The temptation to team up with Steve and potentially unseat his more surly brothers was irresistible.  All the factors were in place for an epic bag battle.  The excitement was palpable.  Uncle Bob even put down his bottle of guinness to focus on tossing.  He would, of course, return to it and his chair between turns.

Both teams began trading the typical jibes and challenges prior to starting the match.  Getting in the head of your opponent early was crucial and none was better than Uncle Bob.  The jibe continued as Bob/Tom side started their first throws.  The resulting score was a 3 point lead for Bob and Tim.  The jeering and skill was showing early domination.

Next Tim and Steve took turns return throws.  Tim threw first and immediately sank a ringer with an easy practiced arch.  Steve quickly followed with using his right-handed flat spin style.  The flat spin kept was theoretically better at keeping the bag from rolling off the box.  The exact advantage of this is still debated, but the technique used by Steve is regardless, highly accurate.  The bag fell through the hole without a sound—a “swisher.”  Tim was un-rattled and dropped a bag on the box near the hole but not going in.  After much hassling about the “good throw” Steve stepped up to toss.  Uncle Bob took the opportunity to stand by the box and psychologically work on Steve.

“I hear those boxes you use at home have 6 and half inch holes in ‘em, Steve.” He called out.

Claiming another man was using non-regulation bag equipment was similar to accusing him of faking his golf handicap, cheating at cards and using booster seats at restaurants.  Steve’s aim wavered and his throw fell on the box next to Tim’s bag.  Steve hid his scowl behind a smile.  “Just the kid’s boxes, Bob.” He replied.

Tim stepped up and arched another three pointer.  Steve stepped with a look of concern and focus.  In mid swing, Uncle Bob called out again.  “I can send Katie over to teach those boys how to throw if you’re having trouble with ‘em.”  Steve started to reply while throwing.  It was obvious what Bob was trying to do but Steve, defending the integrity of his boys as well as his own training couldn’t resist.  “Sure, Bob, I bet Katie would love to learn to how beat her old man from my boys.”  But the real damage the done.  The shot fell short of the hole, but remained on the box.  Steve and Tom were now down by two.

Laughing light-heartedly at his brother-in-law Tim’s machine-like skill faltered just a little.  His shot rolled on the box and off the back edge, but did knock his previous throw to the edge of the hole.  No point on this toss, but in order to catch up Steve would have to somehow sink a ringer without also knocking in Tim’s bag.  In fact it would be hard to hit the box at all and not inadvertently sink in the leaning bag.

“There ya go Stevie… go ahead and knock some more points in for us.”  Bob jeered with a smile.

Steve paused.  He sized up the hole carefully aiming his shot.  His eyes narrowed and pulled back for the throw.  I think I saw something in his eyes though.  At first I took it for the Zen mind that one must have to sink a bag in to a 6” inch opening that was half blocked from 30 feet away.  But what I witnessed was the most amazing shot I have ever witnessed.  In the history of bags no finer shot could ever have been tossed.

Steve released is classic flat spin throw, but something was wrong.  The shot was going to go long and be wide left—heading more or less straight for Bob.  Hitting a player with a bag wasn’t an unknown tactic in bags, but it was generally recognized for what it was—a desperate ploy to shake your opponent.  Uncle Bob had been hit with a large number of bags.  The “header” wasn’t likely to shake him.

Bob started laughing as the shot flew even wider left over his shoulder.  “You can’t even hit me ya tosser!” He quipped.  But as he sidestepped to watch the shot fall Bob’s expression changed.  The shot arrowed toward Bob’s chair and then like an assassin’s bullet knocked over his full bottle of guinness.  The bottle was a full 10 feet away from the target hole.  Steve dropped it on that beer like marksman.

Uncle Bob practically dived face-first to save the bottle.  Guinness foamed from the neck as it contents flowed in to the ground.  “You killed my BEER!” He bellowed.  Bob’s face was red with mock-horror.  The whole grounds erupted in laughter.  My stomach cramped up and tears sprung from my eyes.  Bob was hopping mad and chased Steve around the yard hucking bags at him as the younger man danced away.

Steve sacrificed those two points of that volley to completely destroy Bob’s composure.  He never recovered and the unbeatable pair fell to Steve and Uncle Tom.  I don’t even recall the final score, but it doesn’t matter.  Nothing will erase the sight of that wide shot decapitating Uncle Bob’s guinness and watching a grown man chase another down with hurled bean bags.  I’m sure the details will be debated at every family gathering that I have the good fortune to attend.

Do it for her

When the day is hard
When there seems no end

Do it for her...

When life is a stuggle
When there are few reasons

Do it for her...

When you are down
When it seems impossible to get up

Do it for her...

When old friends leave
When family is far away

Do it for her...

When nothing makes sense
When you need faith

Do it for her...

When all the doors seem shut
When you wonder if your dreams will come true

Do it for her.

Haunted (fiction)

She comes to me in this place.  On cold, gray days when the stone seems to absorb the heat of a touch she comes to sit next to me.  Even though I long for the touch, her hands are cold.  Her body pressed next to me on the stone bench provides only a chill.  But my heart leaps with boundless joy.  She's come back to me.  She's come back. 

I can almost make out her outline, but she disappears when I look right at her.  At the edge of my vision I can make out indistinct outlines of red curls and blue eyes.  Her body is silhouetted in something white and flowing.  She looks at me.  She always looks at me.  In her presence I remember everything so clearly.  I become an old man laughing at nothing—muttering replies to unspoken questions.  I don’t care.

The wind blows making my eyes tear.  Though the blurred tears she almost comes in to focus and I can see her face, but only for a moment and she’s gone again.  Her touch seems to ignore the many layers of warm clothing I always wear when I visit.  She waits so long to show.  My joints ache and my heat is nearly drained away as if my very life is needed to summon her.  Sometimes she doesn’t come.  When the sun sinks below the trees I can’t stay any longer.  It’s a struggle to stand—to stagger back to the world of the living.  Crying from the wind or remorse or the pain… or the loss.

Her presence never wavers when she does come.  We talk in our way until the sun sets.  I try to stay longer, but I’m too weak.  I can’t stand the painful cold.  I think she understands.  When I stand to go she remains sitting.  She watches me as I walk away.  Even as I leave the cemetery behind I can see her sitting there.  I always leave behind the flowers I bring.  They are always gone when I return.

I know she wants me to stay.  I know someday I will.