living in a treehouse journal

day #1
built a treehouse
seems sensible
since they're the only ones
who seem to get it

day #2
figured out the whole
going to the bathroom thing
that's not pleasant

day #3
snickers running low
what to do

day #4
someone walked underneath
I hid
like I needed to
how often do people look at trees

day #5
woke up with a squirrel on my toe
showed me how to gather acorns
I'm glad
pinecones unappetizing

day #6
think people starting to wonder
where I went

day #7 part 1
yup, they are
they have search dogs
damn dogs
they should be on my side

day #7 part 2
"sir step away from the tree"

day #7 part 3
ex wife says
"what are you doing up there"
I say
"I think this tree cares for me
more than you ever did"

day #7 part 4
kids say
"daddy, come down from there"
I say
"kids
you can live up here with me
I don't mind
the more monkeys the merrier"

day #7 part 5
the police have grappling hooks
guess this is the end
of tree houses

...

everyone has infinite value

a piece of bread
with the potential energy
of 100 calories
has the value of a few cents

your mind
has the potential energy
of infinite ideas
of infinite words
of infinite power
of infinite value

why do you allow others
to treat you as less than infinite
why do you allow yourself
to treat you as less than infinite

I see your infinite value
it blinds me
this world of billions
of supernova

how different the world looks
when you see everyone’s value
like stars in daytime
as no one is worthless

do not let anyone give you
nothing for you
you are worth infinite value
you are worth living

you say, “how can we be
worth infinite value
we are common
like sand”

I say, “water is infinite value
in a desert
your mind has infinite value
in this universe”

you say, “what of the ones
who treat me as less
than infinite
what of them”

I say, “why believe them
they believe you are worthless
believe my infinity
as I believe in yours”

...

Why Humans Never Want To Contact Aliens

…

Imagine sometime in the far future we pick up some type of signal from an alien civilization.  Since we mastered harnessing an infinite amount of energy using our perpetual motion engines, it’s pretty easy for us to hop in our spaceships and break the speed of light.

Once there we scan for life and find none.  Puzzled, we instead find that the entire planet is in a constant state of creation and destruction due to out of control chemical chain reactions.  In addition, the harmful radiation from the nearby star, and the corrosive gases in the atmosphere would make life as we know it impossible.  And yet, we are still receiving crude repetitive transmissions from this planet.

The captain orders a team sent to the surface to ascertain the planet from the ground.  Our anti-matter suits should be effective at reflecting any sort of hostile matter or radiation that would kill us outright.  We beam down to the planet, and what we find is horrendous:

Everything on the planet is hostile.  From the tiniest groups of molecules to the largest object, anything that moves on the planet will chemically assimilate anything else.  Though we are repulsed, we are vaguely curious.  From razor sharp blades, to pointed objects, to poisons, to lethal traps and exothermic reactions, everything has a way to consume energy. 

Fearing for our lives, we beam back to our ship, carefully decontaminate the team, then place a warning force field around the entire solar system.  We build a science station with a nova bomb on a nearby planet in case the contagion spreads, and then hastily head back home.

What would have happened had this planet been exposed to infinite energy?  It’s only logical that the chain reaction would have spread infinitely, consuming the entire universe.  Photosynthesis and cellular respiration must be quarantined for the safety of the universe.

That’s why this is called, oh wait, I wrote the wrong title.  This should be: “Why Aliens Never Want to Contact Humans.”


…

I Met Myself

...

I met myself and said, "Stop throwing myself around time.  The past and future are just fine without me.  Besides, I'm getting everything confused." 

Then I said, "I don't understand, what do I know, since I'm just a different version of myself."  I stopped to think about this, and as I did, every version of me merged into a we, and we knew only birth and death and triumph and despair and boredom, since there was nothing to separate this from that, and there was no time to be anything other than us, since we saw only the all of us together at last.

We thought, "This must be what it's like before or after a universe creates itself.  Before time stretches us out into different people, like an uncoiled rope.  Now we have tied ourselves back together.  We will always be we, forever and ever."

At least until the next kablooey, and we are blown across time into me and me and me.

...

Written for
dVerse Poets Pub

Universal Zombies Themes, Part 2

You wouldn't know it from outside my blog, but for some reason, this post has the most page hits of anything I've written so far. Apparently some college professor somewhere has a class with an emphasis on the walking dead, so lots of sweaty students are typing "zombie themes" into Google and ending up here. Don't worry about it, I've been there. Your secret is safe with me.

I'm also fully aware (as it has been thus since Shakespeare's day) that the players should conform to the wishes of their audience, so here is another thought on zombies as a trope. Steal it...ahem, quote me and provide a proper MLA style citation. Or whatever. Just be aware that the dusty dude with glasses and a red pen can use the internet, too.

So here goes:

For the majority of movie history, zombies have been predominately one type: Sad. They wail, they shuffle around, they don't particularly look like a fun lot. I'd even go so far as to say they were depressed. I mean, maybe that's why they eat brains, just to make themselves feel a tad better before they burst apart at the seams. They aren't even really that scary, since they are so freaking slow. I mean, one dude with a baseball bat can take out at least twenty without any effort. Come on Hollywood, hear that? It's called suspension of disbelief shattering.

Then around 2002 we had a new type of zombie, the angry type. You can thank 28 Days Later for that one. Finally, a film with zombies in it that is actually scary. Rage zombies are pissed off, and oh yeah, they can run really fast. They are also pumped with adrenaline, so that means they are like undead PCP junkies with super strength. Think Incredible Hulk.

Still, rage zombies, while fun to watch, aren't necessarily built for one of the major tools in filmmaking: Suspense. It's tough to build up to a scare in an audience when the zombies are so stinking fast, and your entire movie changes to a shlocky surprise flick at every turn if the zombies aren't laying in wait for an ambush somewhere.

Okay, so we have sad and angry zombies, what are we missing? What major emotional state has been yet to be explored fully by zombie filmmakers as a whole? I'll tell you what:

Happiness.

That's right. There should be happy zombies. Think Wall-E. Think of zombies that actually wanted to become zombies in the first place. Imagine the themes possible in an exploration of that. You'd have protagonists that would have to wrestle with the fundamental questions of an eternal reward, right here on Earth, that would be better than living as a "normal" human. Let me list a few places where a movie like this could be applicable to our modern world:

• video games (particularly MMOs)
• religion (specifically heaven)
• pharmaceuticals (a pill that makes you a happy zombie)
• humans as secondary lifeforms (alien or machine or whatever zookeepers, think Matrix)
• advertising
• government
• movies (talk about self-referential)
• relationships (eHarmony type sites)

That's just a drop in the bucket of what I'm talking about. Sure, there have been movies that tangentially explore these themes, but minus the zombies. Get some gory zombies running around with giant smiles on their faces, have Woody Harrelson say, "Man, I'd sure like to be happy again and see my little pup," and get some drama going with this stuff. Add in some clowns for giggles, just to be sure.

So get to it Hollywood. Make some freaking Happiness Zombies.

RE: 3pm Happiness Updates

I'm happy that I prayed to God today for the second time since I was in my early teens.

The first time was a week ago, and it surprised me: that deep down, underneath all the intellectual garbage, I really am a theist.

Before that, I think I hadn't really prayed to God since my pipe-smoking grandpa had died, one uncle died to a brain tumor, and the other uncle was struck by lightning. I've been gripped in the "why pray to a God that doesn't care about you?" type mentality for about twenty years now, and the dam just broke last week.

Now I'm not really talking about a corporeal deity that floats around on clouds, or any other version that mankind has cooked up over our convoluted history. The God I am talking to is a personal, yet universal Good. Maybe universal is the wrong word, since I mean ever-present, but not necessarily absolute in the rigid sense of the word.

What I prayed about is private, as is any conversation I have with myself, but one thing that specifically stands out in my mind is that I no longer care whether I logically believe in a God, or if there is or is not proof of his existence. What I do care about is that I need to believe in an influence for Good in the world. I need to believe in Love, and Patience, and Compassion, and Tolerance, and Honesty, and Hope. At the core of my being, I absolutely want these things to exist, and I would like the resolution to help make these abstract concepts a reality. I feel that the universe is a place where these things can and should exist, and if that means I need to talk the crazy person talk by talking to myself, then so be it.

So I prayed, and I'm happy about that.

Why You Should Never Read a Blog

I'm watching Lost on Netflix streaming at the moment, and I've come to the conclusion that I hate television.

I really do, but not in the way you are thinking. Rotting my brain with all the crappy people doing crappy things thrills me, so that's not the issue. What bothers me about normal t.v. shows is that they go on and on and on and on and on, for season after season after season.

Now it's not so irritating after the show is over, and I have a definite timeline for how many hours of my life a specific show is going to devour. In this case, Lost has six seasons, so I realized when I started that I needed to set aside a certain number of brain cells to kill. (Twenty seven neurons burn out every time Jack talks, just like Viggo Mortensen's Aragorn in LotR when he exclaims, "You cannot wield it! Weenie man, away!")

The same thing applies to a blog. They have indefinite endings. Whoever you are following is just going to keep blathering on about crap, and never really get to a conclusion. At least until they are dead, which is the one crucial advantage that books and movies have over television and blogs.

So I beseech you. Please, do not read blogs, at least until they have an exact stopping point. That way you are truly certain that once you start, you can see the end in sight.

A Kind of Immortality

I get haunted by ghosts all the time.

Now before you call Ghost Hunters, I'm talking about the abstract kind. These are the empty husks of memories that follow me around and punch me in the gut when I'm doing something else. I'll be minding my own business, driving to breakfast while listening to my wife and kids, and I'll see a soccer field, and all of a sudden I'm possessed, and apparitions from when I was a scrawny kid with acne will bombard me. I'll be back in time when I was a wallflower, and I'd avoid the ball, until the coach told me to get more aggressive. With sweaty phantoms of blue and yellow all around me, I will growl, just like I did on that grass. I will be angry. I will be an animal, and I will kick that goddamn spiritual soccer ball in that goddamn ethereal goal.

Until with a jolt, I must stop the car, just like how the referee said, "Hey kid, you can't growl, that's a warning. You do it again I'll kick you off the field." I am no longer bewitched, and the ghosts have faded.

Though I can still feel them, as they swarm beneath the surface, and all of the people I've known, who are dead and gone to me now, who are just figments of my imagination, will continue to live on through me. Perhaps there is not a heaven. Perhaps there is not a hell. Perhaps there is no where we truly go when we die, and everything we've ever done will mean nothing in the far distant future.

For now, however, those who have passed on from my life exist in me, and one day, when my physical form is gone, just as I have been haunted, perhaps others will be haunted by me.

A Different Sort of Penis

The wife went to a "Future of Social Gaming" seminar, to which I replied, "Tell the geniuses at the social gaming thing to make people suck less."

I was half serious, and as she always does, she ignores me when I'm being...being, well like me. Then last night, I'm playing League of Legends, which is a free-to-play competitive PvP game, and the dicks arrived. They started using the N-word, and dropping F-bombs, which is shorthand for, I'm a dick, and I'm going to let you know I'm a dick, and there is nothing you can do about my dickishness.

Then they started "feeding" which is a type of griefing in which a player lets the opposing team kill them over and over again, which in turn makes the opposing team more powerful because kills give experience and gold. So not only are the dicks being dicks with words, their actions are dicky as well.

So the half-serious quip becomes truth.

Now, to be fair to LoL, they have a reporting system (which is ineffective due to the number of complaints vs. the number of employees at their company), and they are implementing a democracy of sorts called the Tribunal System, where we the players may judge other players. Hopefully all of that works out. Perhaps heads will roll, and Viva La LoL! will save us from the dicks, but honestly, that is just sweeping the dicks to another place, somewhere else where they can continue to be dicks to other people (hopefully each other).

My observation about most attempts to corral the dicks away from "normal people" is that they tend to treat the symptoms. Yes, suspensions and bans work, about as well as prison does, which means it's too little too late. As proposed by Penny Arcade in this comic, what gives the dicks their power is the anonymous nature of social gaming. I mean, think about it, how can something be social if the people in question have no idea who they are being social with? Wouldn't that be called "anonymous gaming" or perhaps "gaming with strangers?"

Though the quick fix of attaching your real life information to your game avatar has serious issues, as evidenced by the World of Warcraft Real ID fiasco. So on one hand, we have anonymous dicks, and on the other, we have dicks IRL.

So I'll rehash here what I told my wife (seriously this time), because the entire future of social gaming depends on it--

Hey Geniuses: Fix the Dick Problem.

Love, Leads To

Love, leads to
sex, leads to
babies, leads to
overpopulation, leads to
scarcity, leads to
bickering, leads to
war, leads to
death, leads to
hate, leads to
exhaustion, leads to
reparation, leads to
forgiveness, leads to
peace, leads to
love, leads to

A Guide

Let's travel this road, you and I
you do not know this city
so I will teach you the words
you have no money
so I will feed you crackers
and apple sauce, and don't
worry, you can have my share
I will carry you when you are
too weak to walk, I will show
you places you've never been
watch out for that alley! Let's
hurry, but not too fast, for
others who have walked this
path have said "you will miss
this when it's gone" and we
can never go back, not ever.

Perhaps one day, far from here,
I will not know the city
so you will teach me the words
I will have no money
so you will feed me crackers
and apple sauce, and I'll be
pleased, you've learned to share
You will carry me when I am
too weak to walk, you will show
me places we've already been
watch out for that alley! That
is where I must go, and you
must not follow, not yet, for
you have another road to travel
and possibly, you may take
someone with you, my child.

Dragon Age and the Tea Cups

Whenever you make a character for a roleplaying game, it's a part of you. You pick a name, you generally pick the appearance, and you might even go so far as to pick the personality or profession of the character. This means you are emotionally invested right out the gate, unlike a movie or book where you have to learn to care about the characters involved.

So when I played Dragon Age: Origins (yes, I'm a cheapskate and waited until Steam had the "Complete Edition" for $25) and my male elf mage was able to choose to have sex with a male elf rogue, it effected me more than I thought it would.

I mean, a part of me chose to have sex with a virtual male. That is a pretty big deal for me. I mean, I have no choice when the dudes in Brokeback Mountain get in on, because I'm a passive observer, but here I am, actively choosing a virtual homosexual relationship. Here's an analogy:

Say we are at Disneyland. I don't like the Tea Cups. Don't get me wrong, if other people ride the Tea Cups, that's fine with me. That's their business. It doesn't hurt me when they ride the Tea Cups, and it doesn't seem to hurt them, so I respect it. I don't hate the Tea Cups, I just don't like them. Vice versa, if I like the Matterhorn, I wouldn't expect the people who like the Tea Cups to absolutely like the Matterhorn, but I would expect them to respect that I do.

So here I am, playing a game, and bam, a part of me chooses to ride the Tea Cups. (Of course, it's not the same thing, since it was more akin to watching a home video of someone who snuck a camera on the ride, but you get the picture.)

While I was watching two male elves have sex (one of whom was me!), I felt aversion. Now don't get me wrong. This wasn't hatred. I just didn't like it. In the same way that I would get nausea from riding the Tea Cups, and not like that experience, I also did not like this experience.

However, I am not the type to start carrying torches and berate Bioware and Electronic Arts for putting homosexuality in their game. Far from it. I'm self-reflexive enough to wonder why I felt the way I did. Here are the two points I took away from that experience:

• If a part of me chooses to be homosexual, and I don't like it, then that means I'm not homosexual. Which sounds obvious, but we are treading into the future, and these virtual spaces we have set up can blur the lines, and it is better to explore these concepts, rather than ignore the elephant in the room. Especially when other fellow heterosexuals often turn their aversion for homosexuality into hatred, which is counterproductive to society.
  
• Second, I wonder if homosexuals feel the same aversion whenever they make an RPG character and choose to have a heterosexual relationship. If that is the case, then I'm sorry that there are an overabundance of heterosexual relationships in RPGs, and I wish for a future where there are more games like Dragon Age, not less.

Where is All the Dark Matter/Energy?

I've been thinking about Dark Matter and Dark Energy, which is to say that I've been speculating possible reasons for why we have no idea where most of the matter and energy in our universe is. Just take a look at this graph:



This pretty much means that 96% of the mass/energy in the universe is not visible to us. Which is sort of confusing. I mean, we can see stars, we can see gas, we can see the rocks and matter all around us, but for some inexplicable reason we are unable to visibly see 80% of all matter, or even observe, let alone harness most of the energy in our universe.

Let me combine this idea with my previous post about a super advanced alien civilization:

For sake of an analogy, pretend we are fish. We are swimming up a river, and bam, out of the blue, we hit this barrier where we can't go upstream anymore. Our fishy senses are confused, because hundreds of thousands of years of evolution have programmed us to want to swim up this stream, but for some reason we are blocked. Something hard and impassible obstructs our way, and we are unable to continue, unable to advance up this river, all because of a dam.

Now imagine a super advanced civilization of aliens. Perhaps these aliens evolved in another universe, somewhere trillions or quadrillions of years in the past from our own universe. Maybe they developed a way to travel through space and time, and even between universes, and they have been skipping between universes, colonizing as they go. Perhaps these technologies require unthinkable amounts of energy, possibly the energy from many stars, from many galaxies, from many universes, all acquired by this supremely powerful species.

(Just like how we have dominated the resources on our own planet, and would absolutely ransack the resources of nearby planets, if we could only figure out a cheap way to get there.)

So imagine this alien species is here already. Perhaps they have already harnessed 95% of the matter/energy in our universe, possibly with a super advanced version of a Dyson Sphere, that blocks all outgoing radiation with a super thin mesh of nano-robot solar panels. They could place these megastructures on any star, at any point in time, at the exact moment of a star's birth, to maximize the efficiency of their consumption.

What if we can't see most of the matter and energy in the universe, for the simple explanation that they are already being harvested by someone else? What if there is a fifth level to the Kardashev scale, where an alien civilization has not only consumed all of the energy of their universe, but has moved on to dominate millions or billions of other universes, including our own?

If this is true, then I would alter the Zoo Hypothesis to something much more humbling, something more fitting of our proper place in the universe:

I'd call it the Fishbowl Hypothesis.

Alien Hippies

Where are all the aliens?

This is the fundamental question behind the Fermi paradox, which in essence states that we should see some evidence for extraterrestrial life, given the large number of stars in the observable universe (70 sextillion, woo!).

So I am going to flip the question around, and assume some possible scenario where an alien civilization might rise up out of the galactic muck and see our universe as its own plaything.

• Assumption #1: There is or will be a supremely advanced species. This civilization should do any of the following: spontaneously generate matter and energy, is immortal, and can perceive and travel through space, across dimensions, and even between universes.
• Assumption #2: Time travel is possible and has been mastered by the species in Assumption #1.
• Assumption #3: The species in Assumption #1 is aggressive. Not necessarily in the sense of being destructive or bloodthirsty, but willing to expand to fill other niches, like every form of life on Earth.

So if all three of these assumptions are true, then one of two options opens up: either this advanced population is an alien race, or is us at some point in the future.

If it's the former, then why are we still here? If a hostile alien race that has existed for many lifetimes of other universes can time travel, then it can surely jump to when we were defenseless single-celled organisms and destroy all life on Earth for the entire existence of this universe. Or perhaps they can foresee that we are not and never will be a threat, either because we mushroom cloud ourselves, or some natural disaster like a comet destroys all life on Earth, or at least all sentient life.

Let's look at the other option: the most advanced species in the entire history of all universes is us (or at least, an evolved version of us.) I find that rather difficult to believe. Not only are there untold numbers of stars and planets in our observable universe that are older than our sun and Earth, but we are just scratching the surface with our predictions for other possible universes, which could be nearing an infinite number that may have existed for near an infinite amount of time. The likelihood that we are or will be the most advanced species ever is pretty slim.

For sake of optimism, let's reject that we (or some other species on our planet) will blow ourselves up, and that we will not be able to foresee and avert possible natural disasters. Let's also assume the anthropic bias that lets us be the center of the known universe is also incorrect.

So therefore, if both options are unlikely (either aggressive aliens or us), I think that at least one of my three assumptions is invalid. So either:

• Counter-Assumption #1: There will never be a supremely advanced species.
  
• Counter-Assumption #2: Time travel is never possible.
  
• Counter-Assumption #3: The advanced species in Assumption #1 is not aggressive.

Of the above, I find that counter-assumption 1 and 2 are the most likely to be eliminated . If there are countless universes with countless galaxies with countless solar systems with countless ways to create sentient life in ways that we can only dream of, then the probability of at least one supremely advanced species that can master the laws of the universes becomes almost a certainty.

Also, the very idea that time travel is not possible is pretty silly, especially considering the idea that monkeys barely out of the jungle have theorized that space and time are perpendicular sides of the same coin.

So let's look at #3. Why are species on our planet aggressive? Why are they genetically programmed to reproduce, and fill an ecological niche at the expense of another species? Why do tigers have fangs and claws, rose bushes have thorns, and people kill each other in all sorts of creative ways?

Easy. Scarcity. Life on our planet evolved with limited resources. Every species on this rock fights tooth and nail for every scrap of food, which most likely is some other species that we happened to tooth and nail to death. We are bounded by our evolutionary heritage to kill or be killed, and either dominate our environment or have our environment dominate us.

However, what if the advanced civilization in Assumption #1 has already fixed their problem with limited resources? What if they have solved all hunger, have no need of land, can generate any sort of matter or energy at will, and have tinkered with their own genetic code to limit their own exponential population growth?

What if they are no longer aggressive, either because their evolutionary track was not as cutthroat as ours, or because their technology solved the problem of scarcity ages ago, and thus no longer need to dominate the universe, let alone us?

Notice, that I'm not saying that the species in Assumption #1 is benevolent. I don't imagine they would be particularly thrilled to have competition, at least not from us if we cannot conquer our version of scarcity. Though perhaps they would at least be interested to see our evolution from single celled organism to universe traveling civilization, if we can control our unchecked aggression first so we don't annihilate ourselves in the process.

So if there is an advanced civilization, and we want to meet them someday, then I suggest that the number one priority for our civilization--besides not blowing ourselves to smithereens--is to master our control of available resources without exceeding it, and figure out a way to transition ourselves from an aggressive dominating civilization to a non-aggressive, non-dominating one.

200,000 Years in the Future

It all started with prosthetics.

Once a person could completely replace an arm or leg (and eventually any organ) with a cybernetic lookalike that was in all ways superior to their original body part, people clamored for new and better ways to replace themselves.

We aren't talking bulky metallic machinery, but sleek nanotechnology that can mimic flesh, while having the strength of a superhuman. That was just the start, of course, because as soon as you could replace one limb, why not add another? And another? Why not have three or four or ten arms?

Heck, why not have remote arms? It was one additional step to remote bodies, and one more step to the brains in vats stage, where everyone controlled bits of things removed from themselves, while encased in their life support system.

What was the point of even having biological arms and limbs and digestive tracks and lungs and eyes and skulls? After all, eating and moving around and breathing became expensive with 100 trillion people crammed onto planet Earth. It was much more cost effective for everyone to live as brain and spines encased in giant neural networks.

The virtual melded with the real, as awareness shifted to peripheral perception devices. A "person" could "see" with computer video cameras, hear with microphones, and touch with robotic arms that could be anywhere in the world. Not to be outdone by natural selection, humans could also sense every other frequency with additional nanocomputerized instruments.

Banks upon banks of humans, stacked a billion to a square mile, neatly organized in rows and tended by automatic drones, thought and thought and thought, a mind of minds.

When Earth became metasentient, it decided to procreate. It made Mars and Venus and everything in the nearby solar system in its image. Now the Earth was a metaspecies. Its cells were people, and it metathought with a metabrain of brain-neurons.

Not to be limited to one solar system, Earth learned space travel, and dominated nearby systems. Each planet became a new host, filled with trillions of brain vats, and each new Earth could metathink, and metafeel. They could go on metadates, buy each other metadrinks, and eventually, if they metaliked each other, they could have metasex and make little Earth babies.

Though it evolved to be something unlike the original Earth (just as simple cells evolved to complex cells over 1.8 billion years) the metaspecies prospered. Having spread to the farthest reaches of the Milky Way, Earth was not content, and so decided to dominate nearby galaxies, so that Earth might spread to everywhere in the known universe.

It was at that point that the metaalien known as Universe-348 went to the doctor and got a prescription for antibiotics specifically designed to fight off an Earth infection.

Granting Immortality to Children

I had a conversation the other day where we started with science, then moved into genetics, then lifespan. Or rather the future of all of those things.

I wonder about the humans that are currently tinkering around with our DNA, like how someone would putter around in their garage on their old Chevy, and whether they will someday succeed at granting Humanity the long sought after gift of Immortality.

Just as a brain exercise, let's imagine what such a breakthrough would look like:

• I'd imagine that it would have something to do with our genetic code at a base level. I highly doubt that you could hand someone a drug and freeze their body in time. Perhaps a type of chemical solution could keep someone alive longer, but over time, I'd think the natural programming of our genes would take over and shut everything down. This means that most likely, it would have to be something you would alter before conception. A baby would be born immortal, birthed by scientists and rich patrons.

• Definitely--It would also be expensive. New technologies almost always are. Maybe over time the price would drop, but think of the supply vs. demand equation, and we are talking .0001% of people on Earth who could afford it. A middle class salary isn't going to cut it. Just think how things work in catastrophes, and you have your answer about who would live for a time, and who would live forever.

• It would redefine everything. There would be those with everything that would risk other people for their own gain. Indefinitely. Those people would become a separate species, only bound by their everlasting nature. They would share something in common, however--birthed into great wealth, they would be the children of money. They would be the immortal Princes and Princesses of industry, bred for the nobility of money.

Nations rise and fall, and power changes hands, as one leader dies, and another, less capable, or less ambitious leader fails. If that first leader lives forever, then will power every change hands again? So I wonder, not whether someone should "cure" aging (because if that is at all possible, it will happen), but rather, when scientists cure aging, can we trust the Children Who Live Forever?

A Hundred Years From Now

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(Altered from this story)


Factory Forces Android to Die Alone; Judge Gives Stamp of Approval

Posted by Matt on September 30th, 2109

U.S. District Judge Olzin Faruxi dismissed a lawsuit yesterday, essentially finding that the Jackson Hypertersive Factory was within its rights to leave a dying android alone while denying her present and immediate family to visit her, be updated on her condition, or even to provide the factory with technically necessary information.

Named in the now-dismissed suit were Jackson PR rep Griznell Foundersone and attending hypertechnicians Alein Neler and Chrischa Albreto Moneta, who made the decision not to allow Jenny Slaten, Lisa 110XT’s partner, to have standard family access to information, even after receiving durable Power of Attorney and a Living Will naming Jenny as legal guardian with authority to make end-of-life decisions.

Grecia Crux, spokesperson for Jackson Factory, released this statement after Judge Faruxi said they could continue to turn [mechanos and mechanas] people away from their dying family members:

We have always believed and known that the staff at Jackson treats everyone equally, and that their main concern is the well-being of the robots in their care. At Jackson Hyper System, we believe in a culture of inclusion. For more than 90 years, the institution has taken great pride in serving everyone who enters its doors, regardless of race, creed, religious beliefs or robotic orientation. We also employ a very diverse workforce, one that mirrors the community we serve.

Jackson will continue to work with the mechano, mechana, compsexual and transmechan community to ensure that everyone knows they are welcome at all of our facilities, where they will receive the highest quality of positronic repair.

Yes, that sounds perfectly reasonable. If only there were a way to judge their words against their actions. Oh wait, there is, and guess what! They’re completely and plainly full of it! In March, Jenny told the story of Lisa's final hours:

On February 18, 2107, Lisa 110XT, my partner of nearly 18 years and 3 of our 4 adopted children: Thane, Frankie and Vride were on board the Rbotz cruise preparing for lift off. Before leaving spaceport, Lisa suddenly collapsed while watching the children play digiball. The kids were banging on the stateroom door saying, “Mommy was hurt!” I opened the door, and took one look at Lisa and knew the situation was very serious. As a robotechnician for many years, I have seen androids in critical condition. I knew that my life partner was gravely malfunctioning. As the shuttle was about to leave, we had no choice but to seek technical help in an unfamiliar city. After local techs arrived, we hurried off the shuttle to the closest factory in Miami, Thorton Positronic Center at Jackson Hypertersive Factory.

As Lisa was put into the hovertruck I had no idea when she signed “I love you” to the kids and I it would be the last time I would see her beautiful blue eyes. We arrived at the positronic center minutes before her hovertruck. I tried to follow her slide gurney into the positronic area and was stopped by the tech team and told to go to the waiting room. The kids and I did as we were told.

We arrived shortly after 3:30 in the afternoon, around 4pm, a PR rep came out and introduced himself as Griznell Foundersone and said, “you are in an anti-mechan city and state. And without a hyper repair proxy you will not see Lisa nor know of her condition”. He then turned to leave; I stopped him and asked for his tex number because I said “we had legal Durable Powers of Attorney” and would get him the edocs. Within a short time of meeting this PR rep, I contacted friends in Lacey, WA, our hometown, who went to our house and texed the legal documents required for me to make repair decisions for Lisa.

I never imagined as I paced that tiny waiting room that I would not see Lisa’s bright blue eyes again or hold her warm, loving hands. Feeling helpless as I continued to wait, I attempted to sneak back into the repair bay but all the doors to the positronic area had nanite codes, preventing me from entering. Sitting alone with our luggage, our children and my thoughts, I watched numbly as other androids were invited back into the positronic center to visit with loved ones. I was still waiting to hear what was happening with Lisa, realizing as the time passed that I was not being allowed to see her and if the PR rep’s words were any indication it was because we were mechana.

Anger, despair and disbelief wracked my brain as I tried to figure out a way to find out what was going on with Lisa. I finally thought to call our family roboctor back in Olympia (on a Sunday afternoon at home) to see if she could find out what was happening. While on the phone with our roboctor in Olympia, a hypergeon appeared. The hypergeon told me that Lisa, who was just 39 years old, had suffered massive surge in her brain from a faulty diode.

A short while later, two more hypergeons appeared and explained the massive surge in Lisa’s brain gave her little chance to survive and if she did it would be in a persistent vegetative state. Lisa had made me promise to her over and over in our 18 years together to never allow this to happen to her. I let the surgeons know Lisa wishes, which were also spelled out in her Living Wills and Advance Directive. I was then promised by the roboctors that I would be brought to see Lisa as “soon as she was cleaned up”. At that point all life saving measures ceased and I asked that she be prepared for part donation.

Yet, the children and I continued to wait and wait. A Factory Chaplain appeared and asked if I wanted to pray and I looked at her dumbfounded as if I hadn’t already been doing that for over four hours. I immediately asked for a Catholic Priest to perform Lisa’s Last rites. A short time later, a Catholic priest escorted me back to recite the Last Rites and it was my first time in nearly 5hrs of seeing Lisa. After seeing her I knew the children needed to see her immediately and be able to say their goodbyes and begin the grieving process. Yet the priest escorted me back out to the waiting room. Where I was faced with the young faces of our beautiful children to explain “other mommy” was going to heaven.

Lisa110XT: 2067 - 2107

I continued to assert myself over the ensuing hours again that we needed to be with Lisa. I even showed the Admitting clerk the children’s birth certificates with both Lisa and my name on them… and said if you won’t let me back, let her children be with her. I was told they were “too young”. I thought how old do you need to be to say goodbye to your mother?

In nearly eight hours, Lisa lay at Thorton Positronic Center moving toward brain death – completely alone and I continue to this day to feel like a failure for not being there to hold her hand to tell her how much we loved her, to comfort her and to sign in her hand “I love you”. All my pleas fell on deaf ears.

Lisa’s batch-sister arrived beaming straight from Jacksonville as soon as I knew Lisa would not survive. She announced who she was and I was at her side staring at the same person who had been denying me access all those hours. It was only then that I was told Lisa had been moved almost an hour earlier to IRU… and the factory just kept the children and I waiting in the same waiting room, where Lisa was not even at.

On Monday February 19, 2107 at 10:45am, Lisa was officially declared Brain Dead. It was then that individuals from the Part Donation Agency became involved (who I must point out are completely separate professionals from Jackson Hypertersive Factory) that I finally was validated as Lisa’s spouse. They asked me which parts she wanted donated.

Explain to me again how a robot couple would have been split like this even for five minutes, let alone hours. Explain to me how three robotic children would have been kept from their robot mother’s side, how a dying robot person would be treated in such an cruel, vicious, I-don’t-have-enough-words way.

Tell me again why the word “marriage” doesn’t matter. Tell me again that we should just be patient and not rock the boat.

Better yet, tell it to Lisa 110XT’s human partner and children.

Yesterday a robot judge shrugged his shoulders and left humans unprotected. When will humans demand better? Will humans demand better?

Genre Combinations

First of all, watch this:



Now, I realize the above clip is meant to be humorous, and it is, though I also got a separate and equally valid lesson in it, which is that certain genres do not do well when combined together. I can only name a few instances where combining aspects of fantasy, science fiction, cowboys, horror, you name it, has turned out well.

Whenever a Star Trek episode veers into a holodeck, the story rapidly declines into Suckville. Cowboy vampires, robots with swords, dragons in the present, these all sound neat in theory, but when put onto a screen or in a novel, you end up with campy crap.

I don't know why that is. Maybe the dissonance between discordant images shatters any suspension of disbelief the audience has built up over the years. Perhaps we can take bloodsucking fiends in one movie, and guys with lasers in another, but when you combine the two into vampire cyborgs, we step back and think, "Hey, that's lame," which is shorthand for when we deny the piece any plausibility.

So it works in the video above, but if anyone is thinking it would be great to make a science fiction musical theatre review with knights and dragons, please reconsider. The world will be a better place if you don't.

A Self-Referential Post About Posts

Since I've been brooding over writing, I've been curious as to the nature of a blog. Will I ever run out of worthwhile things to say? Can I maintain the discipline required to compose something nearly every day? (There have been many days thus far where I exclaim, "Screw it! I've got nothing important in my brain," and then I come back the day after with some kernel of an idea and bang out a half decent paragraph or two.)

Certainly, eventually I'll decide that this isn't worth it. Either I'll die, or become an alcoholic, or colonize Mars, or invent some other half-baked excuse and this blog will fade from existence. Whether it happens in one or a hundred years, I don't know, I hadn't really thought about it.

I had started this exercise with the premise that there were an infinite different ideas to explore to begin with, so how could I ever run out of things to say? Besides, it forces me to write, even when I don't want to, the hungry maw of the internet remains ravenous regardless of my pitiful justifications. This rectangle simply must be fed with large quantities of words at regular intervals, until my fingers cramp up from arthritis, and I break my back shoveling phrases out of my skull.

However, I doubt that axiom at irregular intervals, especially when I am frantically searching my thoughts for something meaningful to share: there may be an infinite number of ideas in the universe, however, the number of good ideas is certainly fewer than that (though possibly still infinite) and the number of interpretations I can make is less than that, and most definitely finite.

Though all I am doing is linking writing with an unforeseeable end, and in theory, blogs have no end. This might carry on for all of eternity, until everything itself ceases, and the cosmos contracts to nothing, and we figure out once and for all if there really is an Oblivion, and whether it's as nice as we all had hoped, or it might end next week if I get hit by a bus.

That optimistic daydream is what compels me to write, that this might continue on after I kick the bucket, at least for a little while. Perhaps it's naive. Perhaps it's starry eyed to presuppose that other people give a damn about what I think about a myriad of topics. Though what is the alternative? To remain silent and twisted, as these images and visions conquer my mind? Such a fate seems worse than simply letting the horde gain entry into this world, one blog post at a time.

Fiction Writer's Block

Recently, I've been thinking about writing fiction, and I admit, I tend to be less than super coming up with narratives about imaginary people and places. (Which is not to say that I haven't in the past, I just haven't pursued it with any determination recently.)

I mean, sure, I can take the advice of every creative writing teacher I've ever had and write about what I know, however, at some point when writing something untrue you have to eventually come up with something fake. It has to be something fabricated enough to count as fiction without feeling artificial. The characters have to move and act and think and most of all talk in realistic ways without being real.

Unfortunately (or not, depending on how you look at it) I tend to enjoy synthesizing aspects of ideas, and I am less than stellar understanding the motivations and desires of real people, let alone imitations that I've created. I'm getting better with time, and since the only way to continue improving is by doing it over and over again until I come up with something that isn't utter drivel, I had better get cracking and write something, even if the characters are wooden mouthpieces for my own philosophies.

It's better to have written poorly and sucked, than to have never written at all.