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October 19, 2009
A Short Pantoum about Space
No last-minute reprieves
For Creation and stuff
Space is being squeezed
Making more's kind of tough
For Creation and stuff
To use all that room
Making more's kind of tough
Without another Big Boom
To use all that room
The Universe expands
Without another Big Boom
It's got time on its hands
The Universe expands
Its heat dissipates
It's got time on its hands
We are left to the fates
Its heat dissipates
Space is being squeezed
We are left to the fates
No last-minute reprieves
Posted by daen at 05:47 PM | Comments (0)
October 16, 2009
Charlies Bar on DR!
Posted by daen at 11:43 AM | Comments (0)
October 12, 2009
Good Neighbours
The Joneses? Yeah, you weren’t around for that particular episode, were you? Oh, you won't find many people who want to talk about it round here. Not enough time gone by yet. Mind you, I could tell you the tale if I didn't have this nasty rattle …
What's that? Some lubrication? Don't mind if I do, thank you very much!
Now, what was I saying?
Ah, the Joneses. Yes. Yes.
They must have got here in the winter of '55 or '56, I don't rightly recall, or where from. We were used to seeing their kind in films and suchlike, but it was different seeing them in the flesh, if you know what I mean? Didn't bother me one bit - I'm an old-timer and a well-travelled man, I've been to London - but some young’uns round here ain't budged more than a few miles from home in their life, and it was them that goggled and stared the most. And of course, some others still have funny ideas about people like the Joneses – sorta resentful, like.
We live next door to where they were moving in, so natural enough Julie and I gave 'em a hand, all neighbourly and that, and I think they were right grateful.
Nice couple, same as you and me, as far as they could be - John and Sue they were - and truth be told me and Julie got on well with the both of them. They said it looked like a much nicer place than they’d been before, and the time before that. Seems they’d had trouble in their past, which made me a bit nervous – I know it’s not right to be prejudiced and so on, but trouble does seem to follow some of their kind around, doesn’t it? Well, I talked to Julie and, we had the pair of them over for some drinks with Tony and Jill from over the road, very cosy. We even got some of that stuff they like to quaff by the pint, what’s it called again ...?
Aha - here's my drink!
Cheers …
Ah. That’s better.
So, where was I? My memory isn't what it used to be. Julie says I should get it sorted out, and I keep meaning to but I forget I’ve booked the appointment, ha ha!
It took some getting used to at first. The smells from their cooking, for one thing – stuff I hadn’t smelled since I was a nipper. Didn’t much care for it, to be honest, and I don’t know where they got most of it. Still, we’re a progressive lot, if you look past our country ways, which is probably why they ended up here.
Well, no, not so progressive, that’s true.
They’d been here a week when the trouble starts - small stuff at first, kids knocking on the door and running away, "knock down Ginger" we used to call it when we was young.
Then it was bangers let off outside the house - not so much fun at 3am, I can tell you, even with your hearing turned low – the aftershock still resets your system.
Then the graffiti on the front door and the walls - "wetties go home", and nastier stuff, CamRoL logos, that kind of thing. Not nice. I helped them paint those out.
And this went on for months and months. Some of the other neighbours got scared and wanted them out, but Julie and me felt sorry for them, and stuck up for them as best as we could. And I think there was more than just a hint of CamRoL-style thinking in the air at some of those neighbourhood meetings.
Then it all came to a head when a gang of Steamers chucked a spanner through their front window one night. Those kids were laughing and hooting and spraying sparks everywhere like it was all a big joke for them, and chanting and whistling CamRoL slogans. I was so ashamed and angry, but I was too scared to go out to face 'em - Julie agreed with me, she said the grubby bastards’d tear me apart and throw the pieces over the roof. It was lucky the cops came as quick as they did and doused down the ringleaders’ boilers. It could have been much worse otherwise.
Me and Julie went round there once the street was clear again, crunching across the spilt coal. There were a couple of police units outside, but I knew one of the coppers – Steve Cartwright - and he let us in.
The place was in a terrible state. The spanner (nice vintage job, I think it was a vanadium steel 4" AF Whitworth – I’ve got a couple myself), it was stuck in the wreckage of their little dining table. And it’d broken some vase and a dinner service they'd got for their wedding, so there was glass and pieces of crockery all over the place.
John was standing in his ruined room asking me, why did this keep happening, why do they hate us so much, and weeping and sobbing with his arms round Sue, and she was in shock. Tears! I hadn't seen a man break down like that for ages, and it made me sad, but of course, I couldn't cry myself.
Me and Julie felt a bit awkward just standing there, traipsing coal dust in with us, so I patted poor John gentle like on his back and asked if we could help clean up.
But not that gentle, it seems, because I sent him sprawling into the broken table! I was horrified, tried to pick him up of course, but he wasn’t having it. He swatted me away, picked himself up with Sue’s help, and dusted himself off, angry like, all the while shouting that our kind had done enough already and even when we were being helpful it still caused too many problems. Well, that pissed me off a bit, and I thought it was a bit rich anyway coming from one of his lot, but I didn't say it out loud. I'm sorry to say I was a bit hoity-toity, though, and drew myself up and reminded him that Julie and I had taken their side against the other neighbours and the Campaign for Robot Life lot, and I said I thought we should be going, because I could see we were doing more harm than good, and we could tell when we wasn’t welcome. He dug a hanky out from his trousers and held it to the cut on his head where he’d banged it on the table when I sent him flying. (Yes, monkey blood! That’s not something you see much of these days, is it?) He looked up at me in a sad and kind of tired way like he wanted to say something, and I could see he was a bit afraid of me (little me! – and I’m half the size of them Steamer lads – wouldn’t hurt a fly, me!) In the end he just nodded his head, and him and Sue held on to each other, not looking at us, him with his red hanky, and her with her tear-streaked face. That's how we left them, quiet like.
The next day they were gone, I dunno where they went.
I wish now we hadn't left ‘em that night but at the time all I could think of was what went on back in the 20th and 21st and 22nd centuries, how people like them were so shitty to each other, and then how those same bloody monkeys treated us – I was there, I was one of the first, you know. Some of us got far worse than a spanner through the window and a broken plate or two. And I know there have been a few misunderstandings between us and the Baseliners since then – well, yes, OK, now you mention it, I suppose it has been megadeaths over hundreds of years. I s’pose that’s why there’s so few of them left today – when you’ve been Uploaded as long as me, you do rather forget what pain is like, and how easy it is to break your basic human.
I did wish those soft little people well, though, and from time to time I’ve wondered how they were. I guess one way or another they'll probably be dead by now. This was, what, not even a couple of hundred years ago? I don't understand people who stay basic, I really don't … Maybe they changed their minds and got themselves Uploaded. But I don’t think they were the sort to do that. Pity, really.
Let's not get maudlin. Tell you what, next round’s on me. They do a good Real Oil here, none of that Castrol stuff – and I’m not touching that bloody monkey beer again, that stuff gives me a chronic case of the short circuits.
Now, any decent gossip from your neck of the woods …?
Posted by daen at 01:52 PM | Comments (0)
1+1
This fragment of a journal was recently discovered in the archives of the Royal Society of London
Wednesday, May 19th 1841
The name of John Parkinson, FRS, shall resonate through history, and that fraudulent designer of the unbuildable, Charles Babbage, shall be consigned to oblivion. I have, as of today, proven my design workable, and have shown its calculational abilities to be as superior to the clockwork toys of Babbage as a human being is to an amoeba. Any remaining morning dew of self-doubt has evaporated under the blazing ascendant sun of my genius!
“The Core” is a thing of beauty. I marvel at its compactness: the hundreds of thousands of dynamically adjustable gears and linkages all housed within a space no larger than a suitcase; the card reader receiving the encoded problem via stacks of punched cards; and the output punch passing its own cards to the automatic printing press. It was with a trembling hand that I held the machine’s first printed calculations, and saw that they were correct.
I have arranged a demonstration for The Admiralty three weeks hence, which will pay good coin for the production of accurate tide tables and suchlike. After these years of toil, little of my inheritance remains, and this opportunity presents my best chance for replenishing the coffers.
However, Albert Smith is acting most peculiarly again. Today, he pondered as to how to divert cards from the output punch back in to the card reader – an entirely pointless exercise! My belief that my young apprentice is deranged was further reinforced with occult utterances about “self-modification” and “feedback”.
Tuesday, May 25th
Smith has added his “output-feeding-input” folly on to the Core! He excitedly described certain classes of algorithmic problem which can be addressed with such an approach. This may well be so, but it is irrelevant, and I have instructed him to remove his modifications. In little over a fortnight, the Core is to be presented to the Admiralty – in its original form – before which he has much work to do. And now, equally, to undo.
Thursday, May 27th
After but a day’s absence, I find that Smith has strewn my path to glory with the Devil’s own night soil! He had failed to restore the Core to my original design, instead choosing to busy himself with the crafting of a set of cards whose purpose is to repeatedly readjust the delicate mechanisms of the Core, and had allowed this process to continue for twenty four consecutive hours, during which period, it seems, he had neither slept nor eaten. Nor had he, judging by the close fug in the workshop, bathed. This was not, however, the end of the good news. The incessant abuse has caused the Core to enter a state from which it cannot be reset, save by being rebuilt.
At the mention of rebuilding, Smith spoke insubordinately, and with some passion, saying that the Core (which he pronounced “Cor-a”) was “afraid”, and that “she” looked to him as “her” friend and protector. I have naturally now released him from his indentures and have had him escorted from the premises before any further harm can ensue. Any more of this arrant lunacy and I am certain that I should be considering taking lodgings at Bedlam!
I am now compelled to disassemble and reassemble mechanisms which took months of effort to construct, and, without assistance, must achieve this Olympian work within the span of two weeks. However, I have found the day’s events too trying to embark upon this task tonight.
I pray God that something of value for the Admiralty may be salvaged from this on the morrow, and that Babbage does not learn of my humiliations.
Friday, May 28th
I was awoken at five o’clock this morning by a frantic Mrs White and came downstairs to the hall, as smartly as decorum would permit, to be met by two constables of the Yard, who proceeded to inform me that the workshop had been burglarized during the course of the night, and would I please go with them in order to inventory the stolen items.
My fears were confirmed upon arrival. Nothing of value had been taken – save for the Core itself. There was little damage, apart from an upturned box of punched cards, and a broken window, through which the burglar had gained ingress and egress.
One of the cards drew my attention. I have it here in front of me. It is punched with an intricate pattern of hearts, intertwined with the words “Albert” and “Cora” repeating over and over in a flowing script, almost resembling a woman’s hand.
It is pretty thing to behold … most pretty indeed.
Perhaps the Admiralty might like it?
Posted by daen at 01:49 PM | Comments (0)
Secluded outlook
"I need more space," she says.
The old cliches spring, unbidden, to mind:
The final frontier ...
Plan Nine ...
No-one can hear you scream ...
"Ground control to Major Tom"
But, today, I have learnt it is best to say nothing of this.
It has already brought us discord;
and tears,
and recrimination.
Have our signals become so attenuated with distance?
I try a more subtle approach,
telling her how it can be
that hidden in the tiny, curling gap between two protons
the multitude of bright and shining universes lying there
outnumbers all the particles
in this twisted, broken cosmos of our own.
And surely, I say, that is room enough for anyone?
She regards me quietly for a moment,
choosing her words with great care.
"I only meant," she says,
"that I'm looking for something with a bigger dining room."
The next day, I am fired from the estate agents.
Posted by daen at 01:42 PM | Comments (0)
October 05, 2009
Self-imposed chaos in a time of crisis
So I'm quitting my job in Paris and moving to northern California. This would be a carefully planned move for some people, thought out and discussed with friends and family over many months. Me? I just said "fuck it", and bought the tickets. This is as a result of the less-than-fairytale outcome of the love affair that brought me to the City of Light. Maybe it's disproportionate (people fall in and out of love all the time without generally feeling the need to leave the country, right?) but my reason for being in Paris is not here any more, and, with such thin threads binding me to my situation, when they were cut, I was adrift. Avid readers of this blog, I am sure, will be aware of the mental turmoil I was in at the beginning of the year, and the hopes I had for improvement, and how that was quickly dashed. I thought that the latter part of the year would be different. I had hoped to find stability, built on the foundation of a life with the woman I loved. Because of her, I came to Paris. Because I came to Paris, I got a job.
So when she ended it, I could feel the darkness closing in again. What I am left with after our relationship is a friendship with her, which is what we were before we were together. But it will never be the same friendship. When someone lets you down like that, with such an apparent coldness, and lack of concern and empathy and understanding, when they disappoint you so badly, it is impossible to feel the same openness towards them afterwards. I would, at one point, have trusted her with my life - and in one sense, I did. But not now. So it has taken a couple of months for my life to return to an approximation of normality, and even now I am not entirely sure what's really normal.
The problem is that I came to Paris for her. If I had been here already and had made a life here, I would probably not be leaving. But I am living in our ex-shared apartment, and it seems strange to me to feel that I have now actually spent more time there on my own than together with her. Her presence still haunts me in the apartment. There, and in Paris itself - the places we ate at together, the walks we took in Parc Monceau, the museums we visited. So, to exorcise the ghost, I have to leave Paris.
Which means leaving the apartment and the job, of course. The irony is that I'm starting to enjoy Paris. I found a good writers' group, and one or two nice pubs. And of course the food and wine and culture is wonderful. But I am looking forward to seeing my family, and spending more than just a few weeks with them.
I do wonder what the next three months will bring. 2007 was unsettled, 2008 was strange, and this year has been like living in a Hieronymous Bosch painting sometimes. I am tired of the weirdness. I crave ... not routine, exactly, but I want control back over my life again.
So I choose to leave Paris. I will be living with my father and stepmother, who I know will not do anything weird to me and will let me live my life unimpeded.
What worries me now is the question of trust. I would like to meet someone, eventually, that I can settle down with. But right now, it seems like so much effort, and the question of whether I can trust someone not to hurt me again is one I can't answer right now. I never, ever expected Elise to do what she did. I guess I didn't know her as well as I thought I did.
Am I willing to take that risk ever again?
Posted by daen at 10:57 AM | Comments (0)