From: HURH@FNAL.FNAL.GOV (Patrick Hurh)
Subject: STORY: Journal Entry 1
Date: 7 May 93 05:27:16 GMT
hey all, I really haven't posted here (well ok once) before but have been
writing sci-fi for awhile (uncriticized and unpublicized) and tonight I did
one of my ramblings with a word prosessor, that one has to do every so
often, when I realized... this is a chatsubo type of story (IMHO) a story
that's open ended, a story that the author is not sure where it is going, a
story with under developed characters (at the start) and with a
questionable story line. OK so I have read some really good stuff that
does not follow what I just wrote, here on chatsubo before. But I've
always had a hard time serializing my stories with the subject matter I
usually like to write about. By personality, I'm a wannabe
perfectionist... so posting something I spewed in one go is not easy, but
maybe I'll continue it, if there are others out there who want to read,
laugh and enjoy something other than the cyberpunk _techwar_ stories that
I usually see here.
JOurnal EntRY ONE.
Three cars line the opposite side of the street. A pick-up truck is parked
on this side. There's barely enough room for a car to travel down the
middle. I breathe in the filtered, stale cigarette smoke that drifts up
from the floor below me. This ninety year old house I live in seems to act
like a funnel for the loud bickering and uproarious laughter below me. In
their poker game, the camaro driving fools lose their money to the Chicago
stereotype that lives under my apartment flat, Andy. Andy just got married
to Megan, who was living here with her best friend until they both got
boyfriends, got sick of each other and got married. Now just Megan and
Andy live below me.
Andy seems to always feel like he's just been the butt of a joke
and then has to prove what a witty and well meaning guy he is by coming up
with a sly joke during otherwise normal conversation. He plays heavy metal
music, but not too loud, cause he stopped his drug habit when he met Megan
(she 'saved' him) and the louder the music is the more a person lives it,
right? So anyway, Andy's put on about twenty pounds since he's lived below
me and has spent about 2 minutes total within my apartment walls. Maybe I
should get him up here for a couple of hours and see if he ever recovers
from the ballooning. Of course, it could always be the marriage, couldn't
it?
The more I think of Andy, the more I think he might just be the
front for a certain group that's been keeping tabs on me for a couple of
years now. I once read that a guy met the one real rational god in an
irrational world through a laser beam of pink light. I've been looking for
that type of laser for awhile. I think Andy's got one. Sometimes through
the floorboards of my bedroom I see an eerie glow... pinkly-laser-colored
light, of course. The color of alien enlightenment.
Megan's hardly ever home anymore. She always seems to go out
when Andy has his friends over for poker. The way I look at it, it's for
one of two reasons. One, she doesn't like her husband's friends (in which
case she has no grounds for liking her husband) or she's really bad at
poker. I really hope she's really bad at poker. I once had a girlfriend
who didn't like my friends. She only liked me because I liked her.
Everett is the guy who's been painting our house for the past two
weeks. He definitely doesn't have a pink laser. Andy thinks he's gay. I
just think he's kind of odd and lonely. Although I let him use my bathroom
whenever he has to, I really get irritated when he comes timidly knocking
on my door at seven-thirty in the morning when he's just been pounding
nails in the house for a half hour. "I gotta reframe the whole god damn
thing" he says. Sometimes he tells me these really strange stories. Right
out of the blue. I'll be walking from my back door to the garage quickly so
I can avoid him because, to be honest, he gives me the creeps. I'll open
the garage door and he'll be sitting there, mixing paint in the dark of the
garage. He's sitting on the edge of a one foot tall paint can for god's
sake! So I say to him, "Everett, what are you going to paint today?"
"Oh I don't know... hey, you know a while back I knew this
girl. She was a nice girl... anyway, I could never get up the gumption to
ask her out, but we were taking a class together so we talked all the time.
She was real pretty but I never let her know that I wanted to do something
with her. Anyway, I started having these dreams. They were wierd dreams,
ya know what I mean?" I shake my head. "Well, I was always getting beatup
by this kung-fu chick. You know? I'd be there dreamin' away and then I'd
get beat up. Always by the same girl and with the same damn kung-fu
moves."
"Oh really?"
"Yeah. So I tell this girl about my dreams and you know what?
She tells me she's been taking karate for fifteen years!" He says 'karate'
like it's some kind of cajun shell fish. "Now that was weird!"
30 seconds later I'm getting in my car, saying, "Now that was
wierd..."
The guys are leaving the apartment below me, all having lost
their money to Chicago Andy no doubt. I wonder if Andy will use his pink
laser tonight? I wonder if he has a choice?
Tapping the floor silently with my blind man's cane, I sound
out the hollow section of the floor where I've hidden the inverted
periscope. When I hear the thud, thud, thud go klock, klock, klock I set
down the white stick and kneel by the sqeaky floor boards. The set of
three boards comes loose with slight pressure and now I'm looking down at
the ceiling fan in the dining room of the apartment below. The fan is
going round. In its angled reflective circles I see the sporadic figures
of Andy and one last poker player. I recognize Andy from his overweight
gut and the blaring sweat/leotard pants that he's so fond of wearing in
front of his manly camaro driving friends. I don't recognize the other
figure. I cross to the window and peer out through dusty blinds at the
driveway. Megan's not here yet, although I already knew it couldn't be
Megan. She's bigger than Andy. Still the human (or what seemed human)
figures were not clear through the shifting and blurring of the fan's
reflections.
Returning to the hole in my floor, I look at the fan and see a
chattering, strobed image of Andy bending over a small black blur in the
corner of the room below. Suddenly, blinding pink light fills the fan's
blades. I roll over onto my back and stare at the ceiling. Shards of
reflections are whirling about on my apartment ceiling. The fan is
propelling the pink laser of knowledge into my domicile. Unfortunately the
loads of information are garbled and distorted by the fan blades. I'm not
getting the full picture. I shut my eyes, trying to escape the influx of
jumbled information. The vast living intelligence that is the pink light
does not stop. I become inundated with extremely dense and specific
amounts of philosophic knowledge. Threatened with the danger of learning
only a little knowledge (and not all the knowledge), I jump from my prone
position to my feet in one fluid motion, (I've never done that before), and
run to the door off the kitchen and down the enclosed stairwell.
When Andy answers the door, I'm standing there with pink
crystals still swimming in my eyes. He's looking at me with that friendly
cystic acne smile.
"Hey, Andy... I thought you were having a party and I thought
maybe I'd..."
"Oh yeah! Sorry not to let you know about the poker night, I
shoulda invited youse. But I forgat."
I stretched my short Korean neck past the large left shoulder
of Andy. I saw the unknown figure behind him silouhetted in, not pink
laser light, but an ordinarily drab flourescent. Still, I did not
recognize the back lit figure. "I, uh, guess you're done with the light
show then, huh?"
"Light show?"
He looked at me like I was some kind of foreigner.
"Uhm.. I mean... the poker game, you know, a show..."
Just then, Megan walks up behind me from the outside door to
the stairwell.
"Hey guys, what's going on?"
Andy looks at me with a why-don't-you-tell-her look.
"I just thought I'd let you know that Everett's going to work
this weekend so don't plan on sleeping too late," I invent.
"Oh god," Megan sighs, "that guy never takes a day off."
On my way back up the stairs, I hear Megan's muffled voice greet
the stranger who I never met. It sounded like Everett. But maybe I was
hearing things. The figure I saw definitely wasn't the forty year old,
gaunt and crane necked Everett I knew.
Later, I stare at the ceiling from my bed/loft. Four feet away
the cracking ceiling is grinning at me. I'm waiting for it to turn pink.
--------------------------------is my news software putting the carriage
returns in the right places? I've always wondered.-------------
--patrick.
From: hurh@fnal.fnal.gov (Patrick Hurh)
Subject: STORY: Journal Entry 2
Date: 12 May 93 03:33:07 GMT
[Note - there's a rewrite of section 2 below - Joel, WWW convertor]
Here's the next entry, again I really haven't proof read this except for
typos. For what its worth I didn't even read over Entry One until it
posted. Thanks to the couple votes of confidence for my inane ramblings.
I might as well do the post humous copyright to this:
THE NEW JOURNAL comprising of all numbered entries is copyright 1993 by
Patrick Hurh with all the good stuff that goes with it.
JOurnal EntRY TWO
I pull the car into the garage, barely. Everett's left piles of paint cans
on both sides of the already narrow stall. I attempt to maneuver my small
car over to the right, towards the middle of the two car garage so when I
get out I don't slam the door into the exposed framework of the wall. I
succeed.
As I reach back with my right arm to pull the top up, I glance at the
rafters of the wooden garage roof. There is a thin white rope tied off on
one of the cedar beams. My arm still splayed out behind me, I trace the
line back down between the cars. I lift the top into place and snap the
latches shut.
After I lock the car door I walk around the car to the narrow aisle
between my car and Andy's defunct chevy. The end of the rope is tied to
the upright of a prone ladder laid out on its side. Yesterday I had noted
that Everett tied off his ladder from the windshield wiper of Andy's junk
car so it wouldn't fall over into my section of garage. Now it looks like
Everett decided to not risk pissing Andy off and tie it off from the twelve
foot high rafter. How the hell did he get up there with his ladder on the
floor? I shake the ladder on the floor. Stable as a rock, with or without
the rope.
I boil the cake of Garak U-don ramen in two and two-thirds cups of
water. I look at the boiling water and try to see the 8 picocuries of
radium I know are in there. I know they're there 'cause I got a notice
when I moved in this suburb telling me that there were abnormally high
levels of radium in the water. But it's ok because it's always been that
way, since they dug the wells anyway. I've never noticed anything strange
about the taste of it, though. Tastes ok to me, I think.
Underneath me, I hear Andy get up. He usually gets up at about six,
puts on some soft heavy metal and gets ready for work. He works at the
fuse factory over off the NorthWest Highway. One time I asked him about
fuses. He smiled at me and told me he just runs the shaker. The shaker is
this machine that sorts out thousands of small parts by vibrating them real
fast, he tells me. Sometimes he holds onto one of the shaker trays for a
real long time and when he takes his hand off he feels like its still
shaking. Sometimes the feeling doesn't wear off until he gets home. I
think he told me about that so I wouldn't think he had a pink laser. I've
never seen him come home, but I always see him leave.
Just then the phone rings, I remove the pan from the heat and get the
phone. It's my mother.
"How are you doing, Sahgoo."
"I'm ok, mom. how are you?"
"Pretty good. I just got off the phone with your sister and I thought
I'd tell you about the party she's having for Eileen's hundredth day."
"Oh yeah?" I say. "Is it interactive?"
"Well, I guess so. Walter's was."
"I kinda been real busy at work, mom" I lie. "I'm not sure if I can
make it down to Peoria but I'll try to tune into the celebration on the
nets."
"Sahgoo, you know how much it means to us when you can make it down.
We really want to see you. In person."
"I know, just let me see if I can out of these next couple of project
installations and maybe I'll make it down." I know if I start talking
about work, she'll get bored and hang up.
"Well, do your best."
"Always do, mom."
I return to eat a now mushy bowl of noodles and contemplate my
mother's call. A year ago on my nephew's hundredth day birthday
celebration, I had sent a faxonality over the nets to attend the
celebration. By then my family was used to my communicating with them over
the crude still-image vidphone service I had installed for them. I didn't
pay for it. I just installed it. But last year was the first time I had
answered one of their calls with a software construct of my personality.
It was crude, but at the time I could pass off incongruencies as technical
problems with the new system. I hope they still buy it this year. They
should. The technically inept are the technically gullible.
Looking back on the short conversation, I wonder if it was really my
mom talking to me. It could of been a construct sent to convince me. Its
language did seem a little too stilted and it did say a lot of very
mother-like things at the exactly right mother-like times..... Mom, mom,
mom... Do I know you?
I wake up a little startled. I'd fallen asleep while reading again.
I roll over and hit the light switch. Just as I do, I hear a whirring
noise ascend from a low growl to a high pitched, barely audible whine.
Like an electric drive starting up. As my eyes become adjusted to the
darkness around me, I begin to see the faint glow of the painted walls of
the room and white blinds of the window. The glow gets brighter and
changes in hue to a light pink. Not gradually, more like I just notice
that the glow is pink and not beige or yellowish white like I'm used to. I
close my eyes and I'm suddenly thinking about vast information. No, I'm
not thinking, I'm being shown information. Information that comes in
flashes like music television comercials. I catch a flash of a city map.
A glimpse of a molecular diagram. A shuttered vision of rows of granite
ridges pumping up and down in an endless sea of stone. These flashes are
not turned on and off at the source. Rather I see all the information
there in front of me, spans of static pink noise staring at me until my
feeble mind catches the pattern and then, flash. It's visual. It's in my
mind. I can see everything.
I stare at the inside of my eyelids, now. The shade of pink is
wrong. I'm staring at the color of sunlight through my capillaried lids.
I open them. It's morning. I don't think I slept at all last night. I
feel like shit. I turn over and push the radio alarm switch off. It stops
shouting static at the morning. I get ready for work.
Everett pokes his head in the bathroom window as I shave. It didn't
surprise me. I'd heard him setting up his rodeoed ladder outside the small
window. His head pushes agaisnst the drawn blinds.
"Hey, Pat! You done in there, yet? I gotta piss like a race
horse..."
"Almost Everett." I rinse half the lather off my face without
bothering to finish shaving. For some reason, my beard is sparse and thin
this morning. Everett is having trouble pulling his head back through the
blinds. I raise the blinds to help him extricate his head.
"Thanks, Pat. I was kinda stuck."
I stare at Everett's face. It's not his. I mean, it's obviously
his, it's part of his body. But it sure looks different, younger and
longer somehow.
"Sure, Everett."
I finish getting ready for work quickly. As I head out the door, I
grimace in frustration. I forgot my film badge. I go back to the second
bedroom of my apartment, the one I use as a kind of dressing room. The
pile of clothes from yesterday lays there looking naturally disheveled. I
search through the clothes but can't find my film badge. I find myself
mouthing the words: 'Where's my film badge...Where's my film
badge...Where's my film badge...' I go to the bathroom and look in the
medicine cabinet. I hear Everett painting just outside the window. I look
in the mirror and watch my lips as I mouth the words, 'What the fuck is a
film badge?'
I walk out of the house and to the garage. I look back over my
shoulder without breaking my stride and see Everett grinning back at me. I
round the corner to my car and climb in. As I put the top down I see the
white rope hanging from the garage rafter. I quickly start the car, and
back out to the street. I snick the shifter into first and speed off to
the lab.
--patrick.
PS::::King Crimson is the right music to listen to when you read
this; ...............(Lark's Tongue in Aspic).
From: HURH@FNAL.FNAL.GOV (Patrick Hurh)
Subject: STORY: NEW JOURNAL (entry2 edit,entry3)
Date: 31 May 93 17:25:57 GMT
Well, I've gotten a few encouraging mail messages concerning this thing.
Unfortunately I had a disk crash and along with some other stuff I lost
entry 2. I've since rewritten it (I didn't like the original anyway) and
added entry 3.
This is not cyberpunk, some people have said. And I agree, it's me trying
out a new style of writing on you. Usually it takes me a long time to
write, re-write and hashover stories. This is not the case here. What you
see is usually first draft with one read through for spelling and
punctuation. Much like what (I think) most posting authors do here.
This short story will be finished in two more entries. There is now a
definite concept for the story, but argueably without a defined plot. I'd
be interesting in knowing what people think this all about and any other
criticisms. please e-mail (hurh@fnal.fnal.gov)
BTW, I've ripped off PK Dick and VALIS for most of this... ideas (not
style or plot)
--patrick.
New Journal Entry Two and Three (REVISED) copyright Patrick Hurh, 1993
I wake with a kick, the kind of kick that my leg usually makes when
I'm just dozing off and happen to dreamjump a barking dreamdog. Close
enough to consciousness to spasm the muscle, but far away enough to feel
foolish on awakening even in a darkened room by myself.
I open my eyes to look over the edge of my plywood and pine loft at
the radio alarm on the desk below. 3:59 am it says with blinking colon. I
roll over and squint at the ceiling. I squint since the light from the
distant streetlight out front is peeking between the blinds, striking a
line across my eyes. I adjust the tilt of my head and a line of darkness
shades my eyes. Within this relative gloom, I take in the dull glow that
the walls reflect from the soft light outside. The light eeriely begins to
darken it's hue. Red twinges edge into my peripheral vision like when I
press my palms to my eyes for too long.
My mind realizes that the glow from the surrounding walls is not
actually changing color. My mind says that it has been a deep lavender
since I first opened my eyes a few seconds ago. I'm just beginning to
notice it now. My mind tells me this as a rational voice. I accept its
revelation dully. I wonder why this light is tinged with a deep lavender
hue rather than the beige color of sandpiper brown that Everett slopped on
the walls three months ago. My mind refuses to tell.
Removing one of the feather pillows from the stack behind my head, I
recline completely so my eyes scan the hued pattern of cracks above.
Everett didn't paint ceilings. "Ceilings aren't supposed to be painted,"
he says to my mind. I picture his grinning face. My eyes shut and I fold
my right arm over the front of my face. The slight rise of the bicep
presses into my right eye socket. In time, I am amused by the sparkles and
color patterns that sprinkle onto the back of my eyelid. With some
concentration I can control the vision. I pretend that the streamers and
spots of colored light that dance on my eye are coagulated into a deeply
rendered ball of pink string. My field of vision narrows and I zoom
towards and into the ball. Clumps of strands evolve into large patterns of
ropes and tubular appendages. I am sucked into these apparitions, towards
the heart of a single massive clump.
My left eye is not pressured as is my right. It does not convey
the same twisted image as my right eye. Thus the illusion of depth is not
complete. I want to press my left eye to complete the hallucination, but I
hesitate and the conscious thought breaks me from the reverie. I sigh,
release my right eye from the pressure and lay my arm over my chest. Both
eyes open, I look at the chipped ceiling. The previously imagined pink
strands of light are there, rotating on the bumpy watermarked surface. I
close my left, non-pressured eye and the patterns are still there, not
projected like the reflections off a multifaceted disco ball, but in
extreme detail, floating on the ceiling's surface as before. The patterns
do not extend to the surrounding walls. With eerie precision, the
appartitions seem to be naturally confined by the ninety degree boundries
of the room. I close my right eye and open my left. I see the same
vision, except now I percieve the patterns floating about an inch or two in
front of the surface of the ceiling (or a mile or two beyond). Opening
both eyes, I sit up and look down at the floor, seven feet below. A
pulsating pink light shines in a series of inverted jacob's ladders from
the thin cracks between the floor boards. I look back up at the ceiling,
head tilted back and arms splayed out behind me to support my upper torso's
weight. I cannot tear myself away from the patterns that emerge there.
I hear this hiss of white noise molded every now and then with the
spasmodic waveform of spurts of what sounds like hispanic laughter from old
Eastwood movies. I still watch the pink patterns, only now they're visibly
still. I realize my eyes are closed. I don't remember shutting them. I
am looking at bright sunlight shining through my capillaried eyelids. My
lids flutter open and I blink in the daylight. The bedroom window blinds
are open. I am still sitting, leaning on sore outstretched arms.
I let my right arm mercifully collapse and lean down over the edge
of the loft to shut off the radio alarm. The clock says it's 8:30 am and
I'm late for work. Good thing I work for a government laboratory: "Hours
are fairly leanient as long as the work gets done." I hope this is true as
I swing my legs to dangle off the loft.
The drop to the floor seems somehow to be cut short. I find I'm
already on the floor rebounding from the downward momentum without having
experienced the impact, then I'm falling again as if I had never reached
the floor, waiting for the impact of bare feet on hard wood. Another jump
and next thing I know I'm in the bathroom with shaving cream on my face and
a Good News double edged razor in my hand.
I place the razor to my upper lip and I hear a rattle just to my
right at the bathroom window. Everett sticks his head in through the
lowered blinds, grinning.
"Hi Pat, ya 'bout done in there?"
"Uh, hi Everett.... No I've got to finish shaving."
"Well, I gotta use the can when you're done."
"Yeah ok," I say, then a little more forcefully,"You know you should
respect my privacy a little more and knock or something before... well you
know, before you look in my windows."
"Hell, Pat... I was just painting outside here and I thought I'd
have a look-see to make sure the john was free!"
"Even if it was, you couldn't use it without me saying."
"Sorry Pat, I... I just thought you were one of the guys..."
Everett looks at me with a frown and then pulls his head out of the
window taking the bottom edge of the blinds with him. I lean over and help
him extricate his head. As I do so, I notice his hair isn't shot through
with grey like I thought it was. I pull the window pane shut and look back
in the mirror to shave. My face is free of shaving cream and smooth as if
I just shaved. No, actually smoother, like I never had a beard to begin
with. I look at the razor still poised, upturned in the air near my face.
I put it down by the edge of the sink and begin to brush my teeth.
My car is blocked in the wooden shack of a garage by several rows of
large paint cans, buckets really. I curse Everett and begin to
methodically remove the plastic lidded buckets and place them in a neat row
between the rear bumper of Andy's defunct chevy and the lowered garage door
on his side. The buckets feel light and almost empty although they look
unopened. I retreat out onto the driveway after moving all the paint cans
to view the house. Only about a quarter way done with the primer. I
return to my car confused. There was no way Everett could have used all
that paint from the seemingly empty cans I just moved. I sit in the car,
and am about to turn the engine over when I hear the other garage door open
with a creaking rumble. I glance in the rearview mirror and see Andy
standing there, one hand still on the handle of the door above his head,
staring at the paint cans lined up in front of his rear bumper. "What the
fuck?" I see him mouth.
I start my car and back out onto the short, flat driveway. I get
out of the car to close my garage door. Andy's busy piling the paint cans
into the center aisle between where my car just was and where his car now
is. I reach up for the handle as Andy places the last bucket and turns
around.
"Morning, Pat. What's the deal with Everett piling his shit in
front of my car?"
"I don't know. Maybe he was pissed at you for winning all his money
last night."
Andy looks at me funny. "What? He wasn't over last night. No way,
man... I wouldn't invite that guy over. I'd be afraid to bend over and
pick up a poker chip if I dropped it!" He looks at me, waiting for me to
laugh. I just begin to close my side of the garage. "He probably wouldn't
know what to do with a poke_her_ chip!" he adds. I put on my best friendly
smirk. Andy takes it as a chuckle and begins to make a snorting sound;
this is Andy laughing I think to myself.
I close the garage door while saying bye to Andy. The sound of
Andy's car starting follows me as I walk to my own. I thought it had been
in a state of disrepair for three months, something about the timing chain.
It doesn't surprise me much though. If Andy was from the Group then
stranger things have happened.
By the time I get to work all the good spots are taken. I ease my
small convertible into the gravel lot on the other side of the p-bar
source. I park next to Marrenor's car. He's still sitting in it, probably
listening to NPR. As I get out, my door almost caresses the steel wall of
his small Toyota. The slam of the door breaks him from his still position
and he climbs out of his car. The new head of the Tevatron (world's
largest particle accelerator) walks with me across the gravel and asphalt
to the wing of offices I've worked in for the past four years.
"Well, Patrick, I heard Jerry's little talk yesterday and I have
to admit that the two nanometer resolution is a little hard to believe."
"Yeah, if that's what Jerry says than that's what Jerry gets." I
really am not sure what Marrenor is talking about. But then again a
published physicist's countenance is generally not to be questioned.
Jack Marrenor replies with silence as he watches the small rocks
disappear under his feet. I believe I've said something wrong. Actually
the only Jerry I know is the broad faced technician named Gerry that works
on magnet stand assemblies for me. If he gave a talk yesterday I'm sure I
would've known. Marriner speaks,
"I mean, how do you measure two nanometer movement? Atoms fall
off the edge of a table with a two nanometer shove."
I ponder this and open the glass door in front of us. I grab it
by the wrong handle and my elbow snaps straight as I jerk on the firmly
locked door. John pulls the unlocked side and holds the door open for me.
I recover and say, "That's what the literature states. I imagine
they use laser inferometry to detect such small motions." I've now caught
on to what Marrenor is talking about. Piezoelectric inchworm motors. I've
used them in some of my stochastic cooling designs. "They're primarily
used for electron scanning microscopy," I continue, then think, but is
'Jerry', 'Gerry'? The 'Gerry' I know wouldn't know about the resolution of
an inchworm.
"True," Marrenor says. "I guess it can be done... Now, if we can
only tune the Tevatron to a two nanometer accuracy..."
As John Marrenor disappears up the stairs into Booster Tower West,
I turn the corner into the curved hallway that leads to my office. My
office shared with new office-mate, Walt Riemer.
ENTRY THREE
Walt walks up to the locked door, carrying some car magazines and a
reused brown paper lunch sack. He unlocks it, removes his water proof felt
fedora, and enters the room. Two seconds later I enter the office with
portable hard drive in hand and mutter my greetings to Walt. Walt replies
with his normal, "made it in to work so it couldn't be all bad" type of
comment. With over just a week of good mornings to Walt, his responses
have blurred into a conglomeration of complaining but well intentioned
nonsensical phrases.
I connect my hard drive to the computer and wait for the startup
sequence to complete. Meanwhile, Walt sits and starts to leaf through the
car magazines he brought in with him. Typical. I wonder if he'll start
working on his own today or if he'll require the normal prompting from a
visiting physicist to snap him into work mode. This morning however he
looks up at me as I watch him read and begins to speak:
"I can't believe this. They're some weird people out there."
"Makes the world go round," I reply, confident that the comment is
colloquial enough to be understood as fluff by almost anyone.
Walt's eyes open wider in two distinct half milimeter motions.
Like the nictating membranes of a cat.
"Not my world," he says with some audible spittle. I notice that
he's not reading a car magazine this morning. It's a newspaper folded in
quarters so people looking in from the hallway will think it's a pile of 8
by 11's.
"Did you know that eight states have okayed marriages between
homosexuals and eleven allow legal abortions on demand?" His emphasis on
the word 'homosexuals' sounds like he's saying it in french or something;
home-o-sect-u-als.
"Hmmm...," I hum. I suddenly realize that for Walt, and perhaps
many others, actions and items are either one thing or another. Good or
Evil. Right or Wrong. One or Zero. This simplistic quantum mechanic
dualism is engrained in his very personality. I think how nice it would be
to be able to simply identify everything and immediately know how to act
out the correct response without any deliberation. A binary man is Walt.
So binary, in fact, that he has a default setting: evil. This default
reduces his inbred gnostic dualism further so even the most rudimentary
arguements to overturn a either/or labelling are ignored. There is no in
between for Walt. If it's not right then it must be wrong.
As I think about Walt's mired and never befuddled one bit brain,
my computer screen flashes up a purple rolling desktop with icons displayed
in seeming randomness across its face. The digital playing field I see
does not seem quite correct. I recognize icons and the overall feel of the
desktop image, but the symbols seem to just exist in my mind as icons. The
reality the electronic facade hides is unusually distant. Icons that used
to mean something to me yesterday are disturbingly obtuse today.
My confusion must have been obviously displayed on my face
because Walt now returns to his silent and fuming newpaper reading. After
just a week, Walt knows that when I stare into my monitor I'm usually not
coming out of the trance for a couple of hours. This morning however I
cannot penetrate the two dimensional screen before me. The symbols are
only recognizable as symbols without any deeper meaning.
I turn away from the computer to my desk. The paper litter is
dense but much more understandable than the computer desktop. The symbols
on the paper form themselves into words which hold a connotation for
themselves individually without relying completely on the literary context
they are conveying. I can read meeting notices and scribbled equations
with ease. The surface meaning is there: show up at two o'clock for a
group meeting to discuss target hall activities. However the significance
of the meeting is still missing. I can feel the heat build up under my
arms and across my forehead as the panic starts:
I am in my office, at the lab. I know I'm supposed to be working
on something but I can't remember what. Rather, everything except the most
mundane actions and behavior seems to be novel... and a bit strange. The
press of the chair feels so familiar but the desktop (both computer and
real) is covered with symbols that have no overall meaning. What am I
supposed to be doing? And what was I working on yesterday, how do I extend
it into today? How easy it would be, to be like Walt and sit there
categorizing everything without effort. Always being shown the way.
Treating the world as a bitmap.
I retreat from the questions and quizzical faces presented to me
at the two o'clock meeting. "I must go to the bathroom," is the excuse I
give. The bathroom is deoderant clean and institutionally private. I
stare at the feet positioned below the urinal next to me. I'm sitting in
the one toilet stall provided in the bathroom, pants still on, stomach tied
in knots. The feet next to me shuffle and I hear a zip. The urinal
flushes automatically as the person steps away.
The small conference room was full of people when I got there. A
secretary had intercepted me just outside, handing me a sheaf of
transparencies and wishing me luck. I walked in and at least a dozen pairs
of eyes swiveled in parallel to track my movement into the room. The only
place to sit was at the head of the table. After sitting there for a few
seconds, I realized everyone was expecting me to say something. I stood
with my pile of transparencies still clutched in both hands and opened my
mouth.
And closed it again. Although I was nervous I was overly aware of
the fact that I really did have something to say, except I couldn't
remember what it was. I placed the first transparency on the overhead
projector and turned the light source on. I backed away, looked at the
pull down screen, and as someone at the back of the room turned out the
room's lights, I began to speak.
What I said, I have no idea. As I sit here on the toilet, I find
it hard to think about anything but the present. There had been a pink
glow to everything in that darkened meeting room. Words that I understood
the individual meanings of flowed from my mouth forming, to me, an
incomprehensible smattering of contextual jargon. When I was on the last
transparency someone turned on the lights and then the questions started.
The pink crystal patterns I had been allowing to lead my speech patterns
faded and I looked back blankly with a sweaty pale face at the questioning
stares around me. I had to flee.
A new set of feet enters the bathroom. This time they stop at
right angles to the neighboring urinal.
"Pat, are you ok?"
"Yeah, I reply. Must've been something I ate."
"Well, alright. Everyone else has left, but I was wondering if
you thought that the phase difference you were encountering gave any rise
to the eventual shitty response of the feedback system? Perhaps some
individual optical tuning should be employed to flatten the response."
"Uh... yes. We're working on it. Look could we discuss this
later? I'm kind of embarrassed sitting on the can and all."
"Oh, sorry," says the feet. "I'll catch you tomorrow at the
Director's Coffee Break."
The sound of the bathroom door swinging shut is relief.
As I drive home that night, I pass through a thicket of forest
trees. The twilight fog coats the edges of the two lane road and obscures
the view ahead. I let my subconsious mind take over the steering. I have
driven this road so many times, my body reacts to it's turns and bends with
well modulated caresses of the steering wheel. I turn my head to look at
the passing clump of landscape. Over the shadow of the trees and through
the wispy fog, I can make out several dark figures, mounted on horses and
carrying long poles with fluttering horizontal feathers. Their faces are
obscured but their bodies look at me as I pass like pedestrians watching
traffic.
I emerge from the thicket into halogen street lighting. The rest
of the drive home is automatic.
From: HURH@FNAL.FNAL.GOV (Patrick Hurh)
Subject: STORY: New Journal (entry 4)
Date: 3 Jun 93 00:47:01 GMT
The New Journal: Entry 4 COPYRIGHT by Patrick Hurh 1993
Today at work is even more strangely discombobulated than yesterday.
JJJJJJJJI finally figured out how to work this glorified typewriter that
I'm writing this entry on. Everything at work has changed... I'm sitting
here in an office, alone. No office mate. What happened to Walt? The
walls are covered with touch panel drawing boards with responses rivaling
that of an etch-a-sketch. The industrial low shag carpet that should be on
the floor is replaced with a web of hard foam rubber. All my notebooks
have been labeled on their spines with titles in my handwriting, but as if
I were left handed...
JJJJJJJJI got home last night and even before I got upstairs to my
apartment I heard strange whirring noises from Andy and Megan's apartment.
Like an army of DC stepping motors whining in an asynchronous cadence.
Stepping up to my door, I was about to insert my key when the door below
opened. Reflections filled the enclosed stairwell. I felt like I was
floating upside down just above the bottom of an inverted pool, strands of
purplish light dancing lazily on Everett's freshly painted walls.
JJJJJJJJ"OK, I'll be back in an hour... your time," I heard a nasal voice
say accompanied by many shuffling footsteps.
JJJJJJJJ"Whenever," Andy's voice. "It really doesn't matter now. Insanity
is the only socially accepted excuse."
JJJJJJJJ"Still, he could make the transcendence easier for the rest of us
and as of now we'd like to keep the efforts up."
JJJJJJJJ"I can't believe the little guy's brain is so deeply imprinted.
Most of the threads we've been able to pull out of him so far are only
surface. It may not be worth it."
JJJJJJJJ"Hmph... Obviously you don't remember the brain canyons I had to
raise you out of before you could even receive the intelligence without
proclaiming you were Joseph Smith incarnate!"
JJJJJJJJBoth voices laughed then and I heard the outside door shut. Key in
hand, I stood poised by my door. The screen door that I had pulled open to
reach my door lock had long since swung back. It was pressed into the side
of my face as I held my breath. Why didn't Andy go back inside his
apartment and shut his door?
JJJJJJJJI heard some slight movements on the landing under me and then Andy
said, very casually, "Goodnight, Pat."
JJJJJJJJThe office I'm in has no door, just a doorway. I'm typing this
more to look busy than anything else. It's funny because every once in a
while a character will appear on the screen that I know I didn't type.
Still going back to fix it is harder, since almost half of the characters
on this keyboard are indecipherable to me. I'm just plodding my fingers
down where I remember the qwerty to be and for the most part it comes up
right...
JJJJJJJJSomeone just stopped by named Jerry. Apparently he's the head of
some project I'm working on. I really can't remember too much of our
conversation except that everything he asked of me I somehow knew had
already been delivered. He asked me some really basic questions about
phase stability through transition and the identity of certain granular
cell structures in mitochondria... wait that wasn't Jerry that was the
secretary or someone... I think I'm going nuts...but I still recited all
the answers.
JJJJJJJJI stopped in the secretary's office on the way to my new office
this morning. A small infant sat in her chair. The child was wrapped
within the folds of an adult woman's blouse like a make shift sarong. The
flapping arms ended with six fingered hands holding good luck rabbit's
feet. Several people passed through the office while I stood gawking.
Everyone seemed in a hurry. One person even noted that he would have to
figure out the fax machine with the secretary absent.
JJJJJJJJAfter I found my newly redecorated office, I sat and contemplated
my strange surroundings. I pushed a little button I'd never seen before on
the corner of my desk (I'm eyeing the button now as I write this) and the
curtains of the full length windows opposite me whooshed open. Several
dark figures stood behind the glass staring at me. Large headdresses of
foot long feathers ornamented their heads. Their gaze did not seem
unfriendly and I stood to approach them.
JJJJJJJJOnce I moved, however, and my eyes were acquainted with a
triangulating view, I realized the figures were overtly two dimensional. I
walked toward the window and touched the glass. The figures were painted
on the inside of the glass in thick, dark strokes. The texture felt like
some kind of acrylic. On closer inspection, the strokes were broken and at
times wispy, reminiscent of ink calligraphy.
JJJJJJJJI returned to my desk, pushed the corner button again and listened
to the curtains close. I looked at the already glowing crt terminal on my
desk and spent the next hour attempting to discover how to create a file
with a computer protocol that was of such higher level than any object
oriented code I had encountered, that it was just plain cumbersome.
JJJJJJJJThe noise of people rushing around within their offices has
strangely faded. Silence broken only by the hiss of industrial ventilation
surrounds me. I hear a thud, a door at the end of the hallway closing.
Then another far away door closes ...and another. In rapid succession I
hear office doors slam shut from one end of the hall to the other like
falling dominoes. My back is to the doorway and I can't see what is really
happening. I turn to look out my doorway with no door and suddenly the
lively noises in the office hallway resume. I stare at the doorways
visible across the hall. I do not see any doors in them either. A strange
man in a suit walks quickly by more doorway waving yellow paper.
JJJJJJJJI am strangely calm. Somehow I know that I am central to all these
odd phenomena. I possess the knowledge to accept these hallucinations as
being real without being confining. My mind gives me this knowledge. It
tells me that the normal patterns I am used to encountering are not the
only patterns that exist. Reality is information and information cannot be
accurately described by human defined binary logic.
JJJJJJJJSuddenly I realize that my thoughts about Walt Riemer yesterday
were true, but I did not grasp the full implications. I'm not sure anyone
I would call human can. Reality is continuous, not discrete. This is not
to say that reality is a mathematical function, at least not as can be
plotted on the coordinate axes of any human defined dimension. Just that
the incredible vast patterns of information that make up the universe as I
now see it are merely a sampling of the patterns that are available. I
choose to view the information in these confining few patterns that I have
always called reality. And these patterns cannot be approximated by
discrete bits and pieces of the mathematical models that we have built
because these models are built from tools that only exist within our
preconceived universe. I cannot find the sum total of an action's
consequence in reality by dividing the action up into infinitesimally
segments because the method is, by definition, an approximation. A forced
approximation of how we already view the universe.
JJJJJJJJThis insight is still very hazy and shrouded in mystery to me. I
know somehow my mind has been soaking up the vast amounts of information
shown to me at night by Andy's pink laser. My mind has been parceling out
this information to me as it sees fit. Now I begin to see the impact of
last night's pink session.
JJJJJJJJAs soon as I had entered my apartment I felt watched. Andy's
knowing remark had completely thrown me off guard. I turned, locked the
door behind me, and quickly crossed to the refrigerator to search for a
beer.
JJJJJJJJI found one immediately and popped it open before even closing the
fridge. I stepped into the empty dining room. I had never bought
furniture for it because living alone had never necessitated it. I sat
down on the bare floor and hunched over my beer, trying to piece together
the time jumps and odd visions I had experienced that day.
JJJJJJJJI lay back when I finished the beer. I hadn't eaten anything all
day and the beer plus the day's events tired me quickly. I just wanted to
put my brain on hold.
JJJJJJJJAlmost on cue, pink light shot up through the floorboards. I saw
my body silhouetted by pink flashes of light on the ceiling. My mind
opened up for information flow.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
as posted earlier, Entry 5 will be the summation of this story, probably
posted on friday.
ANY COMMENTS or CRITICISMS WELCOME!!! email to hurh@fnal.fnal.gov
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++=
From: HURH@FNAL.FNAL.GOV (Patrick Hurh)
Subject: STORY: New Journal (Entry 5)
Date: 6 Jun 93 23:34:55 GMT
Well, contrary to what I posted earlier I'm going to have to write one more
entry after this one to wrap things up. I'm afraid I got a little long
winded today. This is turning into a really weird story. I'd like to know
what other people think it is about... if you've gotten this far in the
story please give me a yell. I promise to do the same.
The New Journal: Entry 5 COPYRIGHT 1993
by Patrick Hurh
I decide to leave the office and return home even though it's still
morning, at least I can recognize my surroundings there. As I walk down
the office hallway, all the other engineers emerge from their doorways
carrying briefcases, papers and coats.
"Good night, Pat," someone says.
I turn and it's Mark, he's on his way past me towards the east
exit from the cross gallery. "'Night, Mark," I manage.
"See ya tomorrow," says another voice. I nod at Larry who's
brushing past me in the narrow hall. I follow about three other engineers
down the hall to the west exit.
I'm having a hard time understanding why everyone is leaving at
the same time I am. Usually everyone leaves at slightly different times
and never in the middle of the morning like this. I glance at my watch.
Its digital face tells me it's 7:00 pm.
The outside air is cool and dry as it hits my face. The
engineers in front of me fan out toward the line of cars in the horseshoe
parking lot. I look at my watch again. It really doesn't seem like I just
spent an entire day within that strange office, more like a couple of
hours. This time my watch flashes the LCD message of "N O W".
I look up from my watch to see all the other engineers finish
looking at their watches and climb into their cars in unison. I climb into
my car too. Talk about synchronicity.... Funny, I don't remember parking
here.
An urge hits me as I'm driving through the wooded area just
outside the lab. I pull over and get out of the car. There is very little
shoulder here and my car is parked half on the grass and the other half
juts out onto the narrow road. I round the front of the car and head out
into the woods. Insects are making insect noises and my crunching
footsteps create a small area of insect silence where ever I go. I try to
walk in a straight line away from the road. I'm not sure what I'm doing
but it seems linked to an intense feeling of curiosity. Curiosity about
what, I don't know.
Eventually I stop walking. Standing here, fills me with some
peace. The confusing sensory overload of the day leaves me. There is
nothing here to disturb my view of reality. Its dark and I can't really
see anything even if there is anything odd and out of the ordinary to see
here. All I can feel is my own presence, my own weight pressing down into
my shoes, my own heart as it pulses within my chest. After a few minutes,
the insects resume their clicking music all around me. By standing still
I've blended myself within their reality. They probably cannot even
remember that three or four minutes ago a large beast was moving amongst
them, threatening their existence and silencing them with fear.
I wonder how long some unknown ethereal creature has to stand
still before it blends into my own reality. I reach out with my mind to
try to sense some other watcher, some other being who perceives my actions
and thoughts as just instinctual noise. Maybe I somehow became aware of
some larger presence when I had the urge to pull the car over. Maybe this
insatiable curiosity I am feeling was sparked by just a slight awareness of
a larger reality or maybe just a different perception of my own reality.
I move again after a few minutes of contemplation. I sense no
other presence. I fail to alter my perception enough to view any higher
powers. I chuckle to myself that I really walked out here in the woods
just for a few minutes of silence. No watcher in the woods except myself.
There's no one else out here, my mind says to me, just you and a bunch of
crickets.
I head back towards my car. I can make my way confidently
because I can see what I assume is moonlight reflecting off the worn
asphalt of the road. As I draw near, the reflected light becomes projected
light. Something is glowing on the edge of the road where my car is. It's
a yellow glow. Finally a mysterious glowing light that is not pink, my
mind says.
Thin tree branches waving slightly in the evening breeze
obscure my view of the glowing object or objects. The glow seems to
emanate from four or five bumpy columns surrounding my car. The glow does
not reflect off the car's smooth surfaces. This has the effect of making
the car look like a two dimensional black silhouette.
Through the last few steps to the ditch on the side of the
road, the glowing forms coalesce into standing figures. I am not afraid.
I recognize the headdresses, the feathers, the proud profiles. I look down
at my feet as I traverse the ditch. When I look back up, the figures are
still there, but no longer glowing. Rather the spot my car was in is
glowing. Glowing with the rage of a burning fire. In place of my car is a
burning funeral pyre. A hammock of woven hemp holds a body between four
upright wooden staffs. I look around at the circle of faces that I've just
broken into. Rugged, weather beaten faces look back. Eyes the color of a
raven's wing widen as they seem to recognize me. A mumbling of voices
rises. I do not understand the language. The two men on either side of me
back away, a look of panic on their faces. I feel an urge to run but also
an even greater urge to try to understand the situation I have stumbled
onto. I look again at the burning image and my eyes follow the supporting
wooden posts of the pyre to the ground in which they are buried. Flames
lick at the bases of those poles and a cry goes up as the body above begins
to catch on fire.
I look back at the bases of the poles. Dirt. I look at my
feet standing on a grassy hillside. The road I expected to see is not
there. I turn to look behind me at the ditch and the forest. Instead I
see an immense stretch of grassland. Very tall grass, too. Almost to my
chest. Savannah prairie grass, my mind tells me. Another cry reaches
through the night behind me followed by an indecipherable yell. That yell
seemed to be coming in my direction. I snap around to see...
...a young lanky form jumping through the edges of the fire
towards me. I instinctively take a half step back. The red man with the
stones in his hands leaps forward again. I look around me, the crowd has
mostly dispersed to the other side of the pyre. The man approaches me in
spurts, broken by several seconds of yelling from a crouched position. He
leaps, then crouches, yells, and hits the stones in his hands together with
a crack. Sparks fly off the stones. Then he jumps again towards me. I
can sense he is afraid of me.
I step forward and he leaps at me again. Now he stands almost
directly in front of me. His sweating form is framed by the light of the
almost consumed pyre. His face scrunches up in a gruesome parody of a
smile and for a moment I think he is going to kiss me. Then he opens his
mouth and violently spits a fine spray of white mist in my face. I
accidentally inhale some the mist and immediately begin to feel dizzy. I
hold up my arms in a gesture of helplessness and the spitting man takes a
leap back away from me. I stumble towards him and he jumps back again.
Now I see darkness creep in from the edges of my eyes. I fall forward
again, barely catching myself with my knees. The shaman dances to the side
and leaves me kneeling in front of the burning pyre. I sway uncontrollably
and fall forward into the fire as the pyre comes crashing down, its
carbonized pillars no longer strong enough to support the charred body.
The last thing I see is the head of the burnt body as it
detaches at the neck and drops to the ground. It rolls to face my blurry
eyes. It is me.
I woke up and got to my feet next to my car. I don't remember
the drive home after that. I assume I drove. The car is in the garage and
I'm in my apartment.
My body looks none the worse for wear and I decide to take a
shower to calm my very jumpy nerves. But even before I can cross through
the kitchen to get to the bathroom a timid, halting knock comes at the
door. I answer it in seconds since the door is just off the kitchen. It's
Everett, standing there smiling down at me.
"Hi, Pat."
"Everett... what are you doing here?"
"Andy and I want to have a word with you. I think we can
explain a lot of what you might have been going through lately."
I take in this statement with some trepidation. My mind is
telling me to not trust this man, or Andy for that matter. I decide to go
down and talk to Andy. My mind does not disagree but just points out that
I'm going to have to be careful with these two. They're definitely from
the Group.
"OK, Everett... " I stop short when I realize Everett is
already halfway down the stairs. I follow him down not even bothering to
put on my shoes. I feel the crush of dead insect bodies under my feet as I
descend the seldom swept back stairwell.
I enter Andy and Megan's kitchen. Andy's standing there in his
leotard sweats and a tank top, cigarette hanging from his bottom lip.
"Hey there, Pat! Glad youse could finally make it. Although
it may not be quite what youse expectin'."
I look into the dining room area and see a group of four men
and a woman sitting at a folding card table. Most of them are dressed in
casual sweats with Chicago sports team insignia. All of them are smoking
and staring at their own ration of playing cards, clutched in sweaty hands.
It is unusually hot in Andy's apartment.
"Looks to be pretty much what I expected," I reply.
"Just wait." Andy turns and calls out over his shoulder, "Hey
Everett..." Everett's standing over next to the stove, "Go turn the laser
on."
"Okey dokey."
Everett lopes into the card room and leans over a dark
contraption in the corner. Pink light fills the room. I look at the card
players. They continue to play unaffected.
Andy catches me looking at the card players, "They can't sense
the light." Andy waves a hand at the returning Everett, "We've surrounded
them with such a mundane and familiar setting that they become ....uh,
apathetic... to the light. It's a shame but necessary for transcendence."
"What do you mean transcendence?"
"Well, basically, Pat, Everett and I are very close to
approaching the single rarity that separates the men from the boys, so to
speaks." He flicks his cigarette butt onto the kitchen floor. When he
makes no attempt to extinguish it, a smiling Everett steps on its glowing
end.
"I'm not sure I understand... You mean singularity?"
"There's not too much to understand. Everett and me, along
with many other guys in the Group see the world differently than youse do.
Time and space are almost.. like not there, from our perspective. The pink
laser is an information ray that beams information about the patterns of
reality that we experience. It tells us that all time and everything is
just hogwash. Everthin' happens at once. There is no before or after.
It's just how we see it. Get it?"
"Uhmmm.... Yeah, I guess." Actually I had been taken in by the
laser light. I wasn't sure what Andy was talking about. But the laser
seemed to be beaming whole realities into my brain as he spoke. Somehow I
get the feeling that Andy and Everett are onto something via the Group, but
that they aren't getting it quite right. I say to Andy, "What is the goal
after transcendence then?"
Andy looks at me funny. "Well, then, of course, we're like
gods! The world will be exactly the way we perceive it."
"What about other people, though?" I ask. "Won't they perceive
it differently than you do? How do you guarantee that they see the world
the way you see it?"
"But they haven't gone through transcendence yet," Andy smiles
at me.
"What are the card players for?"
"They're here to play cards," Everett snickers.
"And to have their brains imprinted," Andy adds.
"Excuse me?"
"In order for us of the Group to remove the imprinting of this
reality, we use the laser. The laser takes that information from our
brains and imprints it in the minds of the suckers before you." Andy puts
a wet, thick arm around me and leads me into the dining room.
"So what do you want from me?" I ask.
"Information," says Everett.
****************************************************************
e-mail me with any comments at hurh@fnal.fnal.gov
and remember "reality is overated"
--patrick.
****************************************************************
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