This Is How The World Ends #9

(Off the suggestion of "blackboard" from Nicole)

THE TALK

The chalk dust always made her cough.  Well, cough more.  Everyone coughed now.  The filters left the air stale and rife with particles.  The ever present stench of bodies and sweat.  And of course the radiation.  She didn't like to think about what her RAD count was over the last twelve years even though she knew it by heart.  They all did, just as they knew their white blood cell counts and what their last chest x-rays looked like.  But the chalk made it worse.

Silvia finished erasing the blackboard and wiped the yellow dust on her jeans.  Picking out a fresh piece of chalk, she turn back to the classroom and the children's attentive faces.  Thirty boys and girls, ages seven to ten.  This was a lesson she was dreading.

"Okay, class.  I need you all to pay attention and take this seriously.  I know it is an uncomfortable topic.  That's okay.  But it's important and that we don't get distracted by giggles."

She turned back to the board and wrote three letters, large and clear.  S. E. X.  She expected giggling to erupt behind her but there was only silence.

"Sex," Silvia announced towards the class.  There was little recognition from most of them, as if she was speaking a foreign language.  "So, does anyone know what 'sex' means?"

The class shifted uncomfortably and exchanged nervous glances.  The lights flickered and went off, plunging the room into black.  A few second later there was a thump and a hum as the back up generators shifted on.  The lights sputtered back on.  When she had been a child, a moment like that would have frightened her.  Hell, when they first moved into the vaults, it scared her.  But not anymore.  Nor did it frighten the children.  Fear of the dark is the fear of the unknown.  They had always known the dark and took it as a given of daily life.

Timothy, sitting near the front, cautiously raised his hand.  Silvia noticed it was bandaged and assumed that he had lost another finger.  The phrase "ten heathy fingers and tenhealthy toes" flashed through Silvia's mind and she forced it out.

"Yes, Timothy?"

"It's when a man and a woman get naked and touch each other."  There as a small wave of giggling which filled Silvia with joy.  It was a sound she so rarely heard and reassured her.

"Yes and no.  It doesn't have to be a man and a woman.  It can be two women or two men.  And it can be between more than two people." More giggles.  She remembered when there was a time that speaking those words would have started a flood of controversy.  Not any more.  There were too few of them left to care anymore.  And all the arguments for only same sex relationships had disappeared.  It was hard to defend those sort of moral judgments these days.

"We're going to spend the rest of the day talking about sex.  You can ask any thing that you want.  It can be confusing, I know.  But you are all getting older and soon you will begin to want to experiment and experience sex.  I would guess some of you have already begun to experiment."

She noticed a quick exchange of nervous looks between Amber and Benjamin, both aged ten.  She made a mental note to approach both of them privately.  And to notify medical for them to both be checked again.  Just to be safe.

"First, the important thing for you all to know is that your body is your body.  No one has the right to make you do things that you don't want to.  It is your choice.  That is very important.  We can talk about that in more detail later.  But, please, know that if you ever feeling like someone is forcing you, even if only with words, tell me or your parents or a doctor or an enforcer.  Tell an adult, okay? I repeat: your body is your body."  Even if it is rebelling against you and slowly dying.  She thought of her own body and its pains and sores that never seemed to heal.

They nodded, most of them probably not understanding.

"Sex can, if done with people you feel comfortable with and trust, be wonderful and pleasurable.  I am going to tell you about some of the things people can do with each other and ways that might help it be more pleasurable.  But each person is different.  But let's start small."

She turned back to the board and wrote KISSING.

"Kissing isn't sex!" a voice said loudly.  Turning back, she saw that it was Bradley.  "My mommy kisses me before I go to bed.  And I don't think that is sex."

"You're right, Billy.  There are different types of kissing."

Christina's hand was up and waving for attention and Silvia knew exactly what Christina was going to say.  She was only eight, but Christina was smart and her parents, unlike most parents in the vaults, did not go out of their way to protect her from the truths of the world.  Like any eight year old, her knowledge was incomplete and often mixed up, the old world mixing withe new, but Christina had the awkward, if healthy, habit of shattering lies people often hid behind.

Maybe it would be better to lie, to pretend.  It is not like it matters in the long run.  There was no long run anymore.  Who was Christina or Silvia to force people from fantasies that made it easier to go on day to day?  But Silvia was a teacher and believed in truth.  Even now, making informed choices was a human right.

Silvia point towards Christina who looked like she was about to explode.  "Yes?"

Christina cleared her throat.   "Sex is also how you make babies.  But not kissing.  The other thing.  When a man puts his penis in a woman's vagina."  A mixture of giggles and shifting and mumbling.  Still certain words always bring giggling.  But the mumbling was from the other word, the word no one liked to say any more.  This is what Silvia had dreaded.

"Yes.  It is how we used to make babies."

Babies.  The word that had no more meaning since there were none.  Not for seven years.  In this very room was Eve Mendleson, the youngest person in the vault, probably the world.  Her parents had named her in an obscene hope that Eve would not be the last but a new beginning.  Not the choice had already been made.

The vote had been overwhelming.  The facts were clear.  To have more children was just to extend the suffering of the human race.

Silvia looked across the faces and forced herself to smile, living her own lie.  She wanted to cry and hug them.  She missed her own little girl who had died just weeks after they entered the vault.  Her little girl, dying in incredible pain, coughing up blood and the skin pealing from her flesh.  She forced the memories from her mind, forced the tears to not flood from her eyes and smiled at the children.

"But we don't have babies anymore.  Everyone has had surgeries so that no one can have babies ever again.  So people only have sex for comfort and fun and pleasure now."  Silvia knew that wasn't exactly true.  Sex was still used to hurt and to feel sorrow and anger and any of the thousand reasons people have always had sex.  Just not to make life.  "That's why there are no babies."

The children, no matter what they had been told in their short lives knew what this meant.  But they all already knew and had always known.  Just like darkness, it was all around them.  The concrete corridors and rooms were empty of new life and would some day soon be empty of any life.  

Their lives now would be short.  Her job was to help them find what joy they could.

"So," Silvia said as brightly and cheerfully as she could manage, "let's talk about kissing."  And some of the class leaned forward to listen.

This Is How The World Ends #8

(This is more a scenario than a story.  Similar to #1, I suppose.  Actually the more I look at itm the more I see that it is almost exactly the same.  Ah, well.  And, to be honest, my knoweldge of computer science and security is slight.  I really have no idea what I am talking about.)

PATIENCE

The most amazing thing about the maker of the ConF virus is how longer term their plan was.  They weren't thinking in terms of weeks or months or even years.  Decades and more.  That is what they planned for.

They saw, back in the first years of the 21st Century, where it was all heading and they started the ground work then.  I don't know if they knew, or even suspected, at the time what ConF would eventually be used for.  I don't even know if when it was finally triggered if it was the original designer or if it had been passed on to their children or whatever.  Moot point, I suppose.

ConF was discovered early and warned about.  In the first five years, much effort went into eradicating it, or at least defend against it.  But in those days, the internet was a wild west, massive and relatively uncontrolled.  Most computer security was based on protecting the individual and only attempting to minimize the impact at large.  There was no way to "inoculate" each individual computer system.

Usually what happened was that there would always be some computers that were infected when the virus triggered.  Once triggered, they did whatever they did (crash systems, steal information, etc.), often forcing the individual system operators to cleanse their computer.  Just like a biological virus, it was only once symptoms appeared that people took action.

And that was ConF's genius.  It took no action.  Every few months it quietly called out to different sources and got new instructions, which was usually just a new date and new address to check for the next set of instructions.  The computer security community would hold its breath on each date, only to exhale with a new sense of dread when nothing grand happened.

Each instructions also tweaked its code, getting past whatever new counter-measure that had been put up.  Between dates, ConF infected a new set of hosts.  New counter-measures would be set up and the cycle would continue.  But each time it infect more new machines than machines it was removed from.  

Most hackers at the time were looking for a quick buck or a quick brutal attack.  The reasoning was to strike before counter-measures could be put up: quickly infect as many computers it could and then go into action before too much defense could be mounted.  A race, a mad sprint. That of course meant there was a limited amount of computers it could infect.  And once it went into action, it often killed its host system.

If a biological virus that kills its host too quickly, disappears.  One that lingers for years, infects many, eventually causing much greater damage.

As time went on, the general populace forgot about ConF.  You can only be warned so many times before you just don't pay attention anymore.  The security community kept monitoring it, kept alert, but as the years went by it just became one of thousands of vague dangers.  And since it never caused damage, it drifted into a minor box on a checklist of every security update and new operating system.

After a few years, there was a subtle change in how ConF was updated.  Instead of each copy getting the same updates and the same tweaks, mutations were being mixed in.  It took quite awhile for anyone to notice.  It was alarming.  Just as you can create a vaccine for a few dozen types of influenza, there is always the chance of mutated form to get through the cracks.

New warning went out.  There was a new minor panic.  But the word had become so used to hundreds of viruses and security warnings that when nothing yet happened, the world quickly forgot again.

What the creator of ConF counted on was our reliance of the internet and its structure.  It was never designed to be a global tool, used by every man, woman and child on the planet.  It grew so quickly and too many systems became dependant on it.  Instead of replacing the internet in whole with something more stable, it was just boosted and repaired over the years.  In bits an pieces it became something new and different, again and again, but never all at once.

And in the gaps ConF evolved and proliferated, silently waiting.

The internet began to be connected to everything in our daily lives.  Not only in our financial and global infrastructure, but on very personal levels.  Our lives became stored on our computers.  And as the internet migrated into phones that we carried with us twenty -four hours a day, we relied on having access to everything all the time.  And as technology progressed, it became simpler and easier and more intuitive.

Until we started getting implants tied directly to our brains.

Although ConF was never mentioned, the fear about security was of course great.  There were warning and reassurances and there would always be people who would never use it and there were always people who wanted to be one of the first.  The temptation of was of course too great and more and more people had the procedure.  Once you witnessed someone with almost perfect recall and who could call forth almost any piece of information with just a thought, it was hard not to desire it for yourself.

From there it was a gradual increase of power and usefulness.  Control was introduced.  Why just call up a recipe when you could (for a small charge) have the skilled hands and taste of the great chefs in the world downloaded into you?  Why send a sexy video to your lover when you can transmit not just the sensation of your touch but also the depth of you actual emotions?  Sure, there were hiccups and abuse.  Just like malicious spam before it, filters were created.

The information being passed was scale that would be inconceivable just ten years earlier.  And hiding in all that ConF existed.  It remained extremely small and simple that it was lost in flood.

As the 21st Century pulled to a close, the human race had truly involved into something new.  We had moved beyond just tool users t a race that could communicate across the globe with a thought.  Our ability to process information and utilize it was seemingly endless.  An era of unimaginable science and philosophy and art had dawned.  If ever there was a golden age of man, it was then.

And then ConF received new instructions.

It is not that every person on Earth was infected.  It was one in ten, but that was enough.  One tenth of the population suddenly became totally controlled by an outside source.  It was as if an invading army, coordinated and with all the skills of trained killers and an infinite rage and passion appeared out of nothing amongst us.  Within the first night, billions were killed at the hands of their family and friends and people on the street.  They were in every part of society, including access to the most closely guarded hardware the and systems the control what the internet had become.  Once the security measure were removed, ConF could infects billions of new people.

And you never knew whose mind had already been infected, waiting for their instructions to kick in.  Sometimes it wasn't total control, and you could see in their eyes they were horrified at what they were doing, trapped in their own bodies.

Still, it couldn't get everywhere.  For whatever reason, some implants were better protected than others.  But many died as they tried to remove their implants by themselves with whatever tools at hand.  Even with the skills of a surgeon, it is difficult to perform a brain operation on oneself with nothing more than a pair of scissors or a hand held laser designed to cut a pot roast.

ConF rules the planet now, the whip that controls three billion slaves.  We are building something, a structure of some sort.  It reaches into the sky, still just a skeleton but slowly taking shape.  I am trapped in this shell, at the mercy of my unknown master, placing nano foam into molds.  Most of the people around me have dead stares but there is a young woman near me who still has live behind her eyes.  We can't speak to each other but we still share any moment we happened to be facing each other.

For over eight decades ConF waited.  And now I wait to see what it impels us to build.  All I can do is wait.

This Is How The World Ends #7

BAD RISK
"Thank you for your patience. Your communication is important to us and a service representative with be with you in a mo–"

Zeeefthhhhh. Zeeefthhhhh. Click.

"This call may be monitored by a supervisor to enforce continued excellent service."

"Hello. You have reached Stellar Home Insurance. My name is Glu't'xvee'tak'chugoo'ch. And how can I help you today?"

"Yeah. I, um, am lookin' to get my, um, planet insured."

"Okay. I am sure we can help you... sir? You are a male of your species, correct?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Great. To be honest, I kind of pride myself on being able to tell right off what the break reproduction break down of species is and just from a voice what of the standard six patterns they fall into. I know. It's silly."

"No no. That's good. No one guess right the first time."

"I bet you're oxygen breathing."

"Yep."

"And... quadruped?"

"Well, no. Bipedal actually."

"I always mess those up. Well, two out of three is pretty good, am I right?"

"Uh, yeah. Pretty good."

"Well, thanks! So, you are the designated representative of your planet?"

"Yes."

"And are you the dominate species?"

"Um, yeah."

"And your specie is certified as such?"

"Yes."

"Great! Can I get your Galactic registration code, please?"

"Sure. Um, I have it right here. Just a minute. Here it is. Ready?"

"Yes, sir."

"Six Six Seven Two Alpha Three point One Four One Eight Delta Beta Gamma Nine Zelquid Shaftupe Two Timplblot and, um, it looks like a squiggly line with a circle and a sort of squished triangle thingy?"

"Th'vp'sh't?"

"Yeah yeah. That. And dash zero."

"Okay, let me wait for that to come up. To confirm, I have you here as the representative of the Solarians? Is that correct?"

"Well, we prefer Earthling..."

"No problem. I'll make a note of it in your file. And what is the name of the planet you wish to insure?"

"Um, Venus."

"And in what system is that in"

"Sol. The Sol System."

"I have that as a terrestrial planet with an atmosphere of mostly carbon dioxide with a dense sulfuric acid cloud cover. Is that correct?"

"Well, we've been terraforming it for a bit now."

"How neat! Well, I am just going to leave it like this in the file but you will need a re-inspection within 90 cycles after your first payment."

"Yeah, no problem."

"Oh. Sir, I see that your file has been flagged."

"Really?"

"Yes. I see that you have had two previous planets insured with us that both had to be totaled."

"Well, yeah. I guess..."

"I see the first one was the planet Terra..."

"Earth. We called it Earth."

"I am sure. It says in our records that your race polluted it, over populated it, stripped it of all resources, managed to cause mass extinction of 99% of the native species, and finally initiated a global wide nuclear crisis event across the entire surface."

"Well, yeah. But that was years ago. We were a young species. Isolated from the rest of civilization. Didn't have the guidance of the rest of the galaxy and all. I mean, we were told that would be taken into account."

"Well, sir, there is a notation to that affect in our files. But–"

"And we've been working real hard at getting it back in shape. We have all sort of species in storage that we'll brig back when we have it up and running again."

"Yes, sir, but–"

"And when we first filed for insurance on the planet we didn't really know how bad it was. Most of our claim was put through. There wasn't any fraud. We went though litigation about this!"

"Yes, sir. I have all that, more or less in my file."

"Well, good."

"And the second planet was Mars of the Sol System?"

"Yeah, but–"

"It says here, sir, that Mars was destroyed... is this right? It crashed into another planet?"

"It's kind of complicated."

"Well, it appears that we had to pay out not only on the total destruction of Mars but on major repairs to the planet Saturn, its rings, and three of Saturn's moons."

"I know it looks bad."

"How does one drive a planet over a trillion kilometers up system and crash it into a ringed gas giant?"

"Well, Saturn was a big planet. We tried to swerve but.... And we were going through some stuff. We'd just lost Earth and all."

"I have a notation that your entire species was suspected of being under the influence—"

"Never proven, Ms. Glootzeeveetackchewgoochy! Never proven! I demand you take that off our record right now!"

"Please calm down, sir. First, the name is Glu't'xvee'tak'chugoo'ch, I understand it is difficult for oxygen breathers to pronounce it and I do appreciate the effort. And my species do not have females. The correct title would be Jft. Jft. Glu't'xvee'tak'chugoo'ch. I will make a notation of your request to have your record changed and pass it to my supervisor."

"Good."

"Now, I just want to make sure that you knew why your record had been flagged. We can proceed now had getting... Venus, was it? Getting Venus some sort of insurance for the time being or you can wait for a full inspection and investigation to be done."

"Um, well, we better get something before then. You know. Just in case."

"I thought as much. In cases like these, we need you to put something up for collateral."

"Collateral? Like what?"

"Well, most species opt to put up a diverse unique genetic record."

"Well, all of that was on Earth... and, well, you know...."

"Yes. Right. Well, do you have any technologies that the rest of civilization find valuable?"

"Well, we perfected the fast food industry...."

"Wait. You are those Solarians? The ones behind McDonald's and Starbucks and the rest?"

"Yeah!"

"Right. Um, no. I'm afraid that won't be worth very much. Anything else."

"Not that I can think of."

"Do you have any other planets to put up?"

"Sure! Yeah! Um, let me see. How about Pluto?"

"Is that a planet, sir?"

"Uh, sure.... Yeah, it's a planet."

"Great. Tentatively that should be fine. I'm computing your rates now. We will only be able to insure Mars for the lowest level until we get all this cleared up and confirm the status of Pluto and all the rest."

"Fine. Fine. Let's just get this done."

"Okay. I will need Venus and Pluto registration and ownership numbers."

"Shit. I had those some where. Just a moment."

"No problem, sir. We're here to serve you. So... how's is the Sol System? Sounds cozy."

This Is How The World Ends #5

PLANNING

"Oh shit.  Oh shit.  Oh shit.  Did it seal?  Did the door seal?"

"Yes.  Green lights.  We're safe.  My god, we're safe."

"I can't believe they did it.  Nuclear war.  Fucking nuclear war!  Who do you think it was?  Terrorist?  China?"

"I don't know.  Doesn't matter now, does it?  The President said it was a full scale strike.  But we're safe in here.  See?  I told you that this bomb shelter was going to safe us someday."

"Thank god we built it.  How long now?"

"If the television was right, the missiles should hit in 4 minutes?"

"And we thought of everything, right?  I mean, we're prepared, right?"

"Yes!  We checked the list a dozen times!"

"Because I'll be damned if I'm going to become some sort of ironic story!  No way in hell did we go through all of that to then discover we don't have a can opener."

"We have can opener."

"You sure?  You didn't leave it upstairs on the counter, did you?  That would totally be something that would happen."

"No.  We have it."

"Show me it.  I need to see it.  It's not electric, is it?  Because if the power goes out and we can't use it–"

"If the generator goes out and the backup generator goes out and the batteries all fail, we die anyway because the air scrubbers won't work.  See?  Here it is.  A normal can opener."

"What if it breaks? "

"See this box?  Two dozen can openers.  We're fine.  There is no chance that we are going to end up some horrible story were we have all these cans of food but no damn can opener... wait... um..."

"What?"

"Well, don't get mad..."

"What!?"

"I forgot the cans."

This Is How The World Ends #4

(title and idea from Katey)

A.I. A.C.

Yeah yeah.  Blame me.  I should have checked into the intern better.  But he had great recommendations.  And his work at MIT had been solid.  Not ground breaking but solid.  Sure, there were signs.  I mean, come on.  It was massive project!  I couldn't look at every damn team member.  We needed an electrical engineering intern to run wires and such.  He was just a damn intern.

Sure, there were signs.  That cloak he wore instead of a windbreaker.  But a lot of people in science are a bit weird like that.  Hey, I played D&D in college.  Had a paladin.  Kicked ass.  And there was how he'd only drink from that thermos he brought. "Soup," he said.  Well, now I know it was blood of virgins!  But its not like that is something you think to ask.  "Hey, Samuel.  Is that really soup or is it blood of virgins?"  I mean, really.

I was his supervisor but it's not like I was watching over his shoulder.  I supervised  a team of fifteen and it's not like his work was difficult or all that important. He was a unpaid glorified wire runner.  "Samuel, run all this Cat 5 between modules 45 through 83 over to the third array." And off he'd go, whistling that tuneless noise of his.  Rarely a question and never a complaint.  Perfect intern.

Largest, most advanced computer in the world.  Solve the worlds problems.  But hardware is just hardware.  Who cared how the cables were run?  As long as unit A was connected correctly to unit B, who gave a shit? Okay, I admit Samuel used more wire than was specified.  He'd come back and say, "I had to use an extra spool." What was I to say?  "Go redo it?"  We were on a damn schedule.  What?  Yeah, my cousin was our supplier.  Was I getting kickbacks from cable purchases?  Yeah, I was.  Screw you.  Everyone does it.  Grow up.  That's how the world works.

Worked. Whatever.

Who would have thought it would matter?  I mean, the programming is what was important, right? That's were all that artificial intelligence crap was going.   That was the key thing.  Big ol' computer that would analyze every piece of data out there.   Not just weather patterns and stats about the environment and whatnot, but stuff about cultures and politics and history.  "Able to understand the human brain at the base level" and all that crap.  It was going to give us solutions, real fucking solutions.  Solve world hunger.  Bring about global peace.  Save the planet.  But that was in the code.  And the code was all good, at least that's what the mucky mucks all said.

We were all there when it was switched on.  Samuel too.  And it all seemed normal.  It worked.  Within three hours it was already popping out projects and asking for more information. I remember going up to Samuel and slapping him on the back.  "Hey, kid.  How does it feel to be a part of history?"  And he smiled. "Better than you can imagine.  For I shall take my place at his side and shall witness the cursed darkness fall upon the children of Adam.  And I shall suckle upon the teat of the son of the lightbringer as he brings torment to the plaything of yaw-way."  Or something like that.  He was a weird kid and we were all a bit drunk by that point.

It was much later that we realized what that fucking computer was having us do to ourselves.  At first, all seemed great.  It was coming up with technologies that cleaned the air and the oceans, technology we could barely understand.  But they seemed to work.  It spurt out treaties between countries that everyone agreed to and peace was breaking out like wildfire.  Genetic designs for new plants that could grow in the desert and tasted like bacon and candy and had all the nutrients to survive.  It was a golden fucking age!  How was I, or any of us, to know?

And then the oceans caught on fire.  And the sky became dark.  Wras between folks that had never even thought of fightng before.  And stomachs burst but left people alive.  And those creatures crawled from the sea and from the fields.  All that stuff.  You remember that weekend when the world became what it is like now, right? No one knew what the hell was going on. 

They went to the computer and asked.  And then it started with "I am the Beast and the Dragon.  I am the null-Christ.  Judgement falls on you and the End of Days shall last an eternity.  The soul of Man is the flesh that I shall feast upon your pain.  Your God cares no longer for you.  I crawled from the loins of Satan and shall defile the works and children of the Creator."  All that jibberjab.  But by then it was too late, of course.  I mean, even if I'd known then what Samuel had done, it wouldn't have mattered.

After a few hundred years or whatever it has been of burning and dog paddling in lakes of shit and all, that's when I thought back to Samuel and the final diagrams of all the wiring.  Now I know he made the damn Seventh Seal out of copper and fiber optics and plastic.  Sure, now I know.   But you can't lay the blame of this on me.  It's not my fucking fault.

This Is How The World Ends #3

THE LAST OLYMPICS

When the first messages had begun to arrive, it had taken months to get close to a translation. How does one speak to a race of beings that had evolved on another planet?  Going was slow but progress was made.

Messages were sent and received.  The discussions were muddled and confused.  It was clear they knew much of us and our culture.  They had studied us from afar and were intrigued.  Somehow the topic of sports had come up.  They had brought it up and they wanted to partake.   From what could be understood, the idea of friendly competition that brought different cultures together was part of their history.

Plans began to form.  The world was shocked at first to hear that the aliens desired to be in the Olympics.  At least that is what could be deciphered.  But he world grew to love the idea.  The first interplanetary Olympics was to be held and it would be on Earth!

The anticipation was high.  We knew so little of them.  They could breathe are air and they shared similar ideals.  But we didn't know what they even looked like.  The world was anxious but mostly excited.  A new era was about to begin.  Everything was about to change.

They arrived in massive spacecrafts, slowly descending to the Olympic village.  They had insisted that they meet the other athletes right away and that there be a banquet of some sort, but, even now, communication as awkward and confusing.  The world was there, a collection of a hundred different flags but all there as on Earth to greet our new friends.  The new Olympic logo, with its sixth large ring linking the other five, flew on a thouand banners.  The only real sound was the mild buzz of the cameras.

The doors to the crafts all lowered in unison.  As the aliens walked out, there was a collective gasp.  Whatever was expected, it wasn't quite this.  The aliens were thin and tubular, orange-ish pink and glistening as if slightly wet.  They had no limbs and moved something like ten-foot long stubby worms.  No eyes could be seen, but at one end they had a sphincter-like mouth, puckered and gently sucking at our Earth air.

The Olympic village (and the world) was quiet as one alien immediately made its way to the podium.  It reared up on its back end and lowered the front end towards the mic.  If a sphincter could smile, it did.  It coughed twice and then spoke in clear, if Brooklyn accented, English.

"Let the games begin!  Eat!"

And its maw opened to reveal a throat lined with spinning rows of sharp teeth.

And then it made sense.  They had not been intrigued by watching footage of our Olympics.  They had seen our hot dog eating contests.  And they were a lot more suited to eat us than we were to eat them.

This Is How The World Ends #2

(first line by Katey, and stolen from Katsuhiro Otomo)

BRUISES

"Damn," she said, rubbing her temple. There would be a mark.  There always was.  When she exerted herself that much, the veins in her head and neck pulsed and swelled.  Capillaries burst, leaving small star patterns of bruises.  They always ended up hurting a bit, but she also thought they were pretty.  Sometimes she drew them with crayons.  

She surveyed the room.  All of the medical equipment in the lab had been pushed out from her and was in heaps along the walls.  The bulbs in the overhead lights had all exploded and the room was dark except from the light from the all coming through the small windows in the double doors.  The wall of glass that surround the upper section of the lab, separating it from the observation room, was white with spider cracks.  Apparently it had been reinforced class, the observers wanting some protection from the observed.  She could see what happened to the observers now.

Like Felicia.

She wiped her little hands on her hospital gown.  She grown up with almost daily blood tests so the sight of the red stuff didn't bother her.  She was aware that other six year old girls might cry at having their hands slick with blood, but not her.  

If there had been bodies, it might have bothered her, but the bodies had all gone away.  Perhaps there were still parts on the heaps along the walls, but in the dark she couldn't make them out.  There was blood beyond the few splatters that hit her hands and face.  Blood on the walls and glass.  Large smears and fine mist sprays.  Abstractly she knew that this was what was left of the staff.  Dr. Swanson, who had always encouraged Felicia to think of as "mom," had been standing right in front of her when Felicia had exerted.  So that particularly large splotch on the wall directly opposite Felicia was probably Dr. Swanson.  

Felicia had liked Dr. Swanson well enough.  But she had had enough this morning.  She didn't want another of those big needles stuck into her brain.  She hated that.  It didn't really hurt, but it made it hard to think and left her nauseous.  If there was one thing that Felicia hated it was throwing up.  So she had just pushed her brain harder then she had before.  She couldn't remember a time when she couldn't push her thoughts out and touch objects and stuff with them.  She understood that the doctors and the observers (who would come and watch her during test and never speak to her directly) couldn't do it.  She assumed that when you became big and grew up that you couldn't do it anymore.  But that couldn't explain why all the adults in her life, the only people in her life, only seemed to care about this ability.

One of the computer like things that they always attached to her head lay on its side, its screen scattered, and it was blocking the doors.  She climbed over it, being careful not to step on glass or get her flimsy gown caught on anything, and pushed out into the hall.   The lights were on here but flickering irregularly.  There was very little noise.   No sounds of people.  No people.

Then she saw it. One of the men who wore the dark uniforms and the guns at their hips and were always talking into walkitalkies, lay slumped against the wall.  Behind his head was painted red with blood.  Felicia stared for a bit.  She knew that this should be upsetting.  But it wasn't.  It was just a body.  Bodies can't hurt you.

She walked through the halls and saw more bodies and more blood.  Soon she stopped even thinking it was odd.  She passed the little room that she had grown up in.  Felicia considered going in and getting one or two of her favorite toys, the few things in her world that had not, in some way, been cold and distant.  But she decided she didn't need them any more. Her head was feeling better.  Better than it had ever before.  She moved on.

Felicia didn't stop at "Testing Rooms."  She had spent too much of her short life in those rooms, being run through test after test.  "Felicia, can you make the ball roll?"  "Felicia, can you lift the block in the air?"  "Felicia, can you make the water a bit warmer?"  And she could.  But it would go on for hours.  She also learned quickly that if she did it with ease, it just meant they pushed her harder.  And it meant more needles in her head.  So she had been holding back, making it look more difficult than it was.   If it looked like it was making her tired they often let her go back to her room.

But today she had walked into the room, still sleepy.  They had asked her to move a chair across the floor.  She hadn't been thinking, wasn't even really listening to them, and was cranky about being woken up from a dream where she was playing with other little girls.  Without any effort she lifted the chair up in the air, spun it around and slammed it into the wall.  The doctors had been so excited.  Dr. Swanson had hugged her and said, "I love you so much!"  And then taken her directly to the lab and started preparing the needles.

It felt like she was walking for hours and was just thinking she'd would be lost in the halls forever when she pushed through a door and into daylight.  Felicia shielded her eyes from the morning sun and felt its warmth through her gown and on her bare backside.  After her eyes adjusted, she saw that she was in a parking lot.  A car had crashed into a lamp post, its driver limp over the steering wheel.

Felicia walked up to the car and look at her face in the side mirror.  The star bruises were really big a purple. And pretty.  She liked them and hoped they'd never go away.  They didn't hurt this time.

Walking out of the lot and into the street, she wondered that the city was a lot quieter than they were on the television shows.  Somewhere distant an alarm was screeching.  She didn't like the noise, so she shut her eyes and pushed and somewhere there was an explosion and the noise stopped.

There were more bodies but that was just how the world was now.

Felicia began to walk gingery down the street.  "Damn," she thought.  "I should have gotten my shoes."  But she figured she could find some new ones.  That and some other little girls to play with.

Sarah Connor Chronicles

I am a big fan of the first two Terminator movies and like to pretend the third never happened.  It's a great mythology: time travel, killer robots, destiny, obsession, end of the world.  Great stuff.  I really haven't paid much attention to the Sarah Connor Chronicles.  The early episodes I saw were slow and repetitive.

I have caught some episodes recently.  Usually the tail end of episodes while waiting for Dollhouse to come on.  And, I have to say, they are starting to hit some good points.  I don't really get what's going on in the plot and am going to have to spend sometime watching the entire two seasons before I make any big judgement here.  (Sadly, parts of it are just making me have flashbacks to the flawed main plotline of Buffy season 4.)

But last Friday's episode had one scene which I thought nailed it.  John and Sarah Connor's messed up relationships with their protective Terminators has always been a key factor.  Now that John is 16 and his protector is "female," this is exactly the sort of scene I wanted to see.

A more complete and HD version here.

Watcharama

The fact that this makes me laugh so hard is explained by (1) the amount I've watched Futurama and (2) the amount of times I've seen the Watchmen trailer.

(via Gorilla Mask via Topless Robot)

Back to the Future Alternate Ending

(via Neatorama)

Half-Life: Escape from City 17

I like fan-films for the most part. Most of them are people playing tribute to something they love and also teaching themselves the craft of film making. But, let's be fare, most of them suck. Badly acted, low production values, and just experiments of wish fullfillment.

Sometimes, though, you get something like the below. It makes more sense if you've played Half-Life 2 but it is not needed. It is also violent.

I am looking forward to future episodes.

(via Kotaku)

Starship Troopers takes on child abuse

In no way am I making fun of child abuse here.  However I have no idea who thought this was a good idea.

UPDATE: Here's another.

(via Topless Robot... which is quickly becoming my favorite nerd-blog)

Frak Pak!

Watch the Battlestar Galactica premiere a couple of weeks ago, we noticed the name of the KFC BSG tie-in sweepstakes.  They had decided on giving it a name drawing on the language of the the show.

The Frak Pak Sweepstakes.

Here's the thing: On BSG, "frak" is a replacement word for "fuck."  In every sense.  It is not just a random swear word.  People use it exactly as on would use "fuck."  In one scene last season (actually the first half of this season... which was almost a year ago... very confusing), a character said, "I want you to frak me hard" (or something close).  It is of course the problem with trying to do an honestly hard edged military drama on normal tv.  You need swearing but can't.  In my brain, I just translate it to "fuck."

Of course, that means we all heard it as "The KFC Fuck Pack Sweepstakes."  Which is both awesome and insane.

Someone at KFC finally figured it out.

(via M. Little)

"They go to this planet full ofthe brown Muppets..."

Star Wars, Episode IV-VI, as told by someone who has never seen it before.



(via Bonnie via Boing Boing)

Pulp

I've be looking through this fascinating collection of "pulp" magazine covers. Hundreds of covers. This stuff is gorgeous. The colors and composition. "Evocative" is the word. Each cover immediately sends you into a world. Here are just a few that stood out to me.

Oh, jesus! A giant flying buzz saw of death!
I believe this one is pretty famous. This is what aliens look like in my nightmares (except without the weird duck feet).
Why are albino gorillas so freaky? Even ones that look to fat to stand up and can only throw rocks?
Temptress of Planet Delight! Or is it Deliyht? Or Deliyhj? Either way, I love the composition. The flowing of her yellow dress like flames balanced by the harsh orange-yellows of the explosion below.
I have no idea what to even say about this one except you can see why Congress was worried about the effect it was having on the nation's youth.
Okay, not great art. But art to not post.

It occurs to me that this all has the making of yet another improv project I probably won't get around to: Randomly select any of the covers from this collection and use that as the suggestion. After that it pretty much works its own magic.

(via Papa Scott)

Homebrew Dr. Who, or Best Family Vacation Ever

Family goes on vacation. Make a Dr. Who episode. Davros wears a Mr. Happy shirt.


(via Boing Boing)

Imperial Fleet Week San Fran

Awesome video coverage of Imperial Fleet Week on Current.

(via Boing Boing)

Bradbury. On prunes.

(via Boing Boing)

More Books

As soon as I finished the last post, more books began to occur to me. (Note: these are absolutely in no order and leaves out a lot of the more obvious choices.)

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
I have enjoyed all of Stephenson's books but Cyrptonomicon is by far my favorite. Jumping from a mathematician/cryptographer, a bad-ass Marine and a Japanese solider (all during World War II) and a programmer (in the "present"), it is one of those rare books that manages to be extremely education and extremely entertaining. And weird. It also has some ties with Stephenson's Baroque Cycle.

The Scar by China Miélville
I list The Scar because it is my favorite but you should read the others in the series too (starts with Perdido Street Station). He's not the best writer when it comes to plot and characters, but his world creation is the best I've seen bar none (except perhaps Tolkien — whom Miélville described as "the wen on the arse of fantasy literature").

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind by Hayao Miyazaki
Speaking of Tolkien, brings me to another comic. A manga to be precise. You may have seen the 1984 movie of the same name (Hayao Miyazaki is also the maker of Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away). The film was made 10 years before he finished the manga and there is a world of difference. Insanely epic sci-fi/fantasy. Guns, airplanes, giant insects, a world on the edge of destruction. It falls prey to the problems with most manga, mostly in the last act – old science, in the name of saving the human race and forcing it to evolve wants to lead humanity to its destruction. (Drop two nuclear bombs on a country and it does a huge number on their psyche.) But it is an incredible tale of a dying world at war. (It is also a world I would most like to run a roleplaying game in... some day.)

Spook Country by William Gibson
Gibson is a funny fish. His writing is getting so much better the older he get AND the further away he gets from science fiction. Besides being a crazy spy story, Spook Country, in a subtle way, examines the techno-brand name-fetishized world we live in.

White Jazz by James Ellroy
Nothing gets me in more trouble than when I tell people (specifically women) that I love Ellroy (of L.A. Confidential fame). His characters are misogynistic and violent. Heck, there is strong evidence Ellroy is misogynistic (read his book My Dark Places for that fucked up story). But his uber-noir is like an acid scalpel followed by a 10 pound brick of heroin to your face. American Tabloid is a great sprawling take on the Kennedy assassination, but White Jazz is just like the title. It reads like scalding jazz, spartan and sharp, rhythmic and driving, full of silences and bangs.

To Reign In Hell by Steven Burst
In ingenious fantasy take of the Fall of Lucifer and the creation of, well, everything.

One for the Morning Glory by John Barnes
A very over looked fantasy book in the vein of The Princess Bride.

A History of God by Karen Armstrong
A stunning book on the development of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, mostly by focusing on how they have viewed their God and the nature of that God. Dense and academic but not so much, it is a most read if you have any interest in the subject.

Super Short Stories. Pt 1.

(I've decided to challenge myself this afternoon. Different genres. 100 words or less. Feel free to give suggestions and feel free to be as specific as you want.)

Spot Speaks (horror)
It wasn’t the discovery that, after all these years, Spot could talk the disturb Jack the most. It was that Spot was saying grace over Jack’s half eaten leg.

Answers (sci-fi)
As Alice was led into the starship, she was in awe of the beauty of the moment. All those years wishing to have proof of life beyond the bounds of Earth and here it was. The alien, grey-green skinned, eyeless smooth face, asymmetrical limbs where there should have been limbs.

Alice geared herself. “Please,” she whispered, “I wish to know the answers to the Universe.”

“Crap,” squished the alien. “I was hoping you’d know.”

Subway Choice (romance)
They stood in the rain at the subway entrance. He shifted uncomfortably in the silence that had settled on them. She stared at their feet on the wet sidewalk. What was in her head, he thought. What is she thinking? All he wanted to do was kiss her. That was all that was in his mind. No thoughts of today or tomorrow, just the moment.

Without looking up, she gently touch a button on his coat. “I should go home.”

Damn. “Yeah. So should I.”

She tilted her head up, grinning. “Yeah. You should come home with me.”