Anarchy by dictat
The existence of a global society with weapons of mass destruction lead Einstein to the conclusion that there would be a world government. Inevitably, it would be formed by joint agreement or by the military victory of one empire. He preferred the first.
So much I cribbed from Andrew Sullivan.
But democracies, nuclear powers, and especially nuclear powered democracies tend not to attack each other. If, as we honorary neocons suspect, a New World Order composed solely of peaceful G8ish societies is developed, then they would live in a state of anarchy amongst themselves.
If enlightened self interest can create a lawless, yet peaceful, society of individuals, then it should also be able to do so for rational states.
Dictatorships tend to be as irrational as the dictator.
Let's suppose this New World Order arises eventually, as history seems to suggest it will. Won't the states tend to compete for resources and try to increase their productive output? Won't this gradually, painfully slowly, lead to deregulation? The example of an anarchist virtual world government will be there for everyone to see.
Of course there are many countervailing tendencies- I hardly place my hopes in logic and enlightenment- but history has been creeping toward increased organisation and decreased centralization of what organisation exists. Chaos is controlled by brute force and slowly evolves into an orderly, emergent system.
Unless we run out of energy. Then all bets are off.
Sun, 11 May 2008 18:41:18 -0500
It hit me when I got out of the shower. A portable keychain-type thing with a 128 bit hardcoded random sequence and a 128 bit flash sequence that could be reset. You pop it into a USB slot and use it for encryption. The algorithm would be hardcoded into the chip.
My sister was like, yeah, then I can download whatever I want at work, put it on my USB drive, and they won't know what it is.
And I'm like... yeah. but maybe a female connector so you can put your USB drive in one end and stick the other end in the computer and it automatically encrypts and decrypts whatever goes through it?
And then I'm like, maybe a USB stick with preloaded encryption software would be better. The chip would be cooler, but I can't design ICs and the speed bonus and cost aren't really worth it.
So now I'm making it.
Sun, 11 May 2008 19:07:31 -0500
Shilo's drooling corpse reclined in an office chair, festooned with wrist straps and contacts and cables. Every few minutes it kicked, stiffly, as if struggling to rise from its sleep and feast on the living.
Half of a human head leered at something unseen in the southwest corner of the room.
Jonas huddled over a tablet in the northeast corner of the room, wedged into the corner of the black couch.
"Man, I'm hungry. Jonas, you want some pizza?" "Ah, no, I'm fine." "Right. There, I ordered some. You can have some." "Is it safe to leave here yet?" "Sure."
Exactly four minutes later, pizza was delivered to a spacious private lounge. It was appointed in royal purple and red and had a new car smell. The lounge did- the pizza was yellow and smelled like cheese.
Black Alice was slightly frazzled, black haired and green eyed. "Concerning your associate's actions, I must ask: WTF, mate?" "Well, ya know, he's an African." "He's white." "There are white Africans. So, ya know, they're not steady state and all. They don't follow, uh, the Code." "If, by the code, you mean common sense, I thought that everyone follows it because it's the most rational system and if you deviate it costs you money." "Right, well, we follow it here. Don't initiate force, life liberty and property, so on and so forth. And you're right, it's purely rational self interest to follow it. But they're not rational. Say you kill someone and take their car, you'll be executed by their insurance company or RDI or something. Or some vigilante will kill you and take the car and no one will care, cuz you're a murderer. But in Africa, there's no network coverage, so how would you get caught? And if everyone's guilty, and no one follows the code, then any retaliation can result in a bloodbath. Rational decisions require perfect information, so rational societies can only exist where there's extensive information technology." "I'm not buying your propaganda, but ok, what's the point?" "So when I found him, he was fighting in Thailand. This was two years ago. I didn't want to hire him, but my boss wanted him and Tyson wanted to come to America." "What the fuck is America?" Jonas wiped sauce from his lip and said, "It's the continent we live on." "Uh, yeah, but more specifically it's this center region between the Gulf and the Great Lakes. People over there call it that because there used to be a nation state here." "What-" "Don't worry about it. Point is, Betty's trying to catch him, which is kinda funny." "It's hilarious." "No, but see, he has no hardware and she's all hardware. It's like, social commentary."
Wed, 07 May 2008 01:27:13 -0500
I wish
I wish I could see the world that people live in. The world where Columbine, 9/11, and Jeremiah Wright are surprising. Where you don't see these things coming a mile away. Where every new threat is existential and must be overreacted to immediately, just like the last one.
I remember in the 90s, the problem was landfills and soil pollution and acid rain. What happened to them? They're probably still a bigger problem than Global Warming.
How on Earth can you be surprised by 9/11? I heard someone say "they blew up the world trade center" and the first thought that popped into my head was "Again?" The second thought was "Frickin Bin Laden."
The third thought was that it could be some elaborate ploy by the Chinese Army. Probably not.
Flying planes into buildings? First of all, I had the same idea. The Columbine shooters considered it. It was mentioned in some crazy pamphlet McVeigh had. It's not original. 7 years later, people think it was an unforeseen event, and they still think it was horrible.
Do you realize the intention was to knock the tower over sideways? No evacuation time and goodbye to 4 blocks of lesser buildings. 50000 dead, at least, plus the white house. We got off easy thanks to American Engineering (TM) and cell phones made in Taiwan. Also, they didn't have the A380 available.
Fortunately, with reinforced cockpits, no one will be able to stop the next hijacker who tries it.
In what dimension is Hillary a genuine person who brings hope? I find it unfathomable.
Why haven't any of the successors to C++ been adopted? For bonus giggles, check out Intel's new whitepaper on parallelization.
Felicity: The American Girl Movie or somesuch. It has a glaring flick flub: secular humanism. Yes, that's what 18th century Americans relied on in times of struggle. Way to fail, Hollywood.
50 years from now, old people will be listening to the Top 40 crap from today. Avril Lavigne will be a classic. Dynamite Hack and MC Lars will be down the memory hole. Millions of Gwen Stefani fans have never heard of No Doubt.
People still can't make ends meet. I live like a frickin KING on less than the average poor schlub makes. At least, I think so. Hot water every day, as much as I want. All the groceries I can eat. Thousands of years of culture, at my fingertips. Music on demand. And people are starving, trying to borrow enough money from EZCash or whatever to get something to eat at Starbucks.
Gas is so expensive that it's hard to go see the NASCAR races with your family.
Scientists are 1) Studying evolution 2) Trying to save the Giant Panda 3) Making sheeple and humanzees in test tubes 4) Researching new drugs to save the infirm and stop that damned evolution
What I've noticed is that we're fragmented into a number of cultures and subcultures, but we generally get along by being totally oblivious to our surroundings. We just interpret everything we hear as though it were we who said it.
Wed, 30 Apr 2008 18:30:02 -0500
Betty made it to the corner of the Quadrangle at 2214. The Quadrangle was a system of streets that comprised the most expensive real estate in the city, though recent years had seen it drop to more reasonable levels. This corner was an intersection like so many others, 200 meters or so from the bridge between Plaza 43 and Plaza 44.
The span was a grey wisp in the night sky. Betty ran toward it, eyes fixed on a tiny inky droplet that depended from its keystone.
The keystone was a plastic facade. The droplet was Alpha Point local.
As she watched, a puff of whiteness and a piercing synthetic drumbeat broke the haiku that was the droplet's eternal equipoise. It oh-so-slowly... dripped.
Betty stumbled to a stop. Bemused onlookers turned from her sweaty, heaving bosom to find what she was looking at. More than one neck popped, unused to tilting up.
Slowly- only .6 G, and against a kilometer backdrop, the faceted spheroid office building dropped toward streetlevel.
"Oh shimatta." Wha- OH FU trailed off in a stream of noise and 2600 baud.
Stoplights turned red. Traffic halted. A few pedestrians, then a mad rush stampeded away from the point of impact.
Eighteen seconds was long enough for most to escape serious injury.
It hit like a bomb, or an earthquake. It sank into the hollowed out skin of the city and buckled concrete in two separate waves. It fractured ten thousand windows. A front of debris like a dust storm whipped down the canyon, throwing laggards from their feet. It nicked exposed flesh. The building screamed its last so loudly that it was as if the whole city groaned in steel.
She watched the wandering rows of glass facets crush, successively, under the weight of the next. A fountain of hydrogen gas ejected upward, popping, flaming, raining pure water through the greasy air. Droplets struck her face, her 200 meters away. Her silky red dress whipped up in the sudden gale, revealing a silky red rounded butt. A water main burst, but that sprinkle was lost in the hulking devastation that settled, finally, five stories high, embedded in a sinkhole and a skyscraper's front.
"Oh. Oh. Oh Shilo." That's what ... I like to hear ... I got nothin. wow.
The field marshal exited the stairwell onto an observation platform lost in the night sky. Smog was thinner here, so thin that the gleam of satellites and planets could be seen overhead. He looked up at the sky for a moment. His grip almost loosened.
Not quite. He followed the curve of the platform around the tower until it opened up into a wide span, bridging two great towers. Not that great, he thought. The Elevator in Ecuador is bigger.
In the light of streetlamps that luminated the grand catwalk, twenty men with carbines stood side by side. They formed a wall of flesh and shiny new military gear that believed itself unbreachable. More were stationed in the service tunnels and ventricles below.
Tyson stood alone in the center of the causeway, 10 meters from the enemy line, gripping his nagamaki overhand. The blade dripped to his right, at thigh level. "Put down your weapon." Tyson put his right foot forward and raised the point. "PUT YOUR WEAPON DOWN NOW!" The speaker carried a bullhorn and stood behind the rank of riflemen. He was rattled, first by the situation, and second by the complete uselessness of the weapon he was demanding surrendered. Why, in the name of all that was holy, did he have to try to capture this nut? "Surrender now and live," Tyson said. "What?" "Surrender now and live." "No, you surrender. The exits are blocked. We want to discuss this peacefully." In our interrogation cell you filthy bastard. Tyson sniffed. "You may also retreat." "SURRENDER NOW! DROP YOUR WEAPON!" If the enemy demands your surrender, you have no need to surrender, he thought contemptuously. He pondered the situation and twisted the butt of the nagamaki another notch. "Why should I?" "Why- because it's better than dying! What the hell kind of question is that? The longer this goes on, the more likely one of my men gets twitchy and shoots your dumb ass!" On cue, one of the riflemen collapsed in a heap of bloody foam from the nose. His nearest neighbors turned to look, and then they too fell to the nerve agent. Tyson dove back into the shadows. "Shoot him!" Several men tried to follow orders. One managed a spritz in Tyson's general direction. A few turned and ran- one made it, by some chance, to the far tower and safety.
The rest, including the lieutenant with the bullhorn, collapsed into bleeding, writhing balls of agony. They had all been exposed by the time the first symptoms appeared. It was a fast acting agent, dispersed by a highly pressurized aerosol delivery system.
Chemical weapons are one of the few area weapons that, like blades, are silent. Tyson had cut down twenty men without a sound.
Sun, 27 Apr 2008 21:29:20 -0500
Her feet rolled on the pavement like a Masai tribeswoman's, spraying dust and gravel when she turned the next corner. The deserted jetstream district with its 30 story zoning limit had changed into Uptown, with its incredible concrete canyons. People became more numerous - at ten, many were leaving home for the city nightlife.
They stared at the red and peach streak that covered decameters per second. Rocks and bits of bits embedded insensibly in her feet. The occasional red drops splatted from her shredded right hand.
A car's lights flashed over a bump- she leapt from the curb and kept running on the other side of the street.
Sun, 27 Apr 2008 23:43:15 -0500
In a black space that extended to infinity, a space with no real physical dimensions, a dozen constellations were under attack.
Shilo moved his fingers, fingers that he didn't really have, but it seemed futile. Eight golden rings surrounded him. Sigils spun through space of their own accord with every flicker of his eyes. They fixed flickering flowcharts as fast as the universe dissolved, but the swirling debris told a tale of vast destruction. Seventeen color codes represented the seventeen estimated opposition hackers. Streams of gibberish issued forth in seventeen- eighteen- colors to dash and deflect against logical constructs of sublime beauty. One font of bits, a lovely teal, was swallowed whole by the Riemann function.
Shilo's army was invincible. Twenty infuriated godlets surrounded him. Slowly, they had been gaining on the data streams that constituted supply lines. Slowly, they broke each new encoding faster than a new one could be implemented.
Then they stopped. At fourteen seconds, fifteen, his code stood. Subterfuge? No.
2 concussions, one ruined hand, and an old man dead of a heart attack. The survivors were marketers, schmoozers, up and comers who knew people who knew people. Their survival would be more destructive to the organization than their loss.
On the 301st floor, he destroyed a number of servers. Their databanks he carelessly released into the wild. They represented the entire codebreaking apparatus of the city's security forces. The lost business ran into 9 digits.
The server farm was dark, and now silent. Four large boxes lay torn and charred. The front door hissed open, spilling light. "I don't know, they all went offline five minutes ago! Yes." A man followed an older woman into the darkness. They paused, unbalanced when the lights failed to come on. "Could it be a power outage?" Tyson stepped out of the shadows to their rear and pierced the man's neck with his nagamaki. The blade's tip issued cleanly from the man's Adam's apple, like a lancet. It sliced its way out.
"Then find him and tell him to come back." I can't. "You can find anyone." I can correlate every sensor in the city and extract data. I can home in on the implants in your skull. But I can't find Tyson for one simple reason. We're breathless with anticipation. Shut up, Alice. It's because he doesn't have any electronics.He doesn't have so much as a filling. And he's like a cat. He can see the network blind spots. "How?" It's.. look, we know where he's going. That's not the problem. If you think you can physically stop him, please try. "Iku." Betty, no. Someone else try to stop him. "Try?" "Iku."
Sun, 27 Apr 2008 19:00:50 -0500
Tyson bailed out of an unmarked white van at a rear entrance to Plaza 43. Kelly closed the door remotely, concealing a pile of black and grey, and drove away bewildered.
Tyson didn't care. He popped open the exterior door with a crowbar- an elegant tool from a more civilized age- and tossed it in a dumpster. He entered a disused stairwell.
On the 300th floor, a white haired man was cracked across the back of the skull and fell unconscious. The office was empty now but for a back room. Five men watched a presentation of Alpha Point's new marketing campaign. Charts and figures hovered above the table they surrounded.
The door opened. Bryant turned to speak but found a black, varnished piece of wood in his solar plexus. Tyson spun the other end to smack the presenter's temple. Both men crumpled. Tyson lifted the meter of wood and brought it down "What are-" on the soft spot of a third skull. The two businessmen on the other side of the table glanced at each other. One began to draw a pistol, but Tyson swept the stick across the table and unleashed a 90 cm blade through the man's hand. He brought it back and grasped the handle like a staff. The blade sheened like oil. "Uh"
Sun, 27 Apr 2008 18:34:25 -0500
They sat, once again, in a circle around the office.
"I don't see how we can trust somebody who calls himself Maniac. Obsessive." Daniel said, "I agree. Look at the way he tried to kill off Tyson. He's a hack." Tyson was silent. His scars had gained another layer, but it was barely noticeable. Moe had called it 'distinguished.' The boss said, "Doesn't matter. We have no choice but to go along with him."
Sun, 27 Apr 2008 17:56:39 -0500
WHAT did she say? The morlocks flinched under the sudden demand. It hit them all at once. "Uh, Central-" She said Tyson would counterattack? "Shy-kun, that's his job, to plan the coun-" You know that tiger tattoo on his back? "No" Why did we have to hire The stream ended abruptly. "Shilo? Shilo!" What? "You scared me." You should be scared, we've got a PTSD soldier running around the city. Moe started to shake in Daniel's arms. He wrinkled his nose and interjected, "So what's the problem?" I can't even explain it. He follows a different philosophy of life. Africa isn't like here. And these glorified mall cops that hit us are nothing NOTHING like the kids in Africa.
Sat, 26 Apr 2008 15:26:21 -0500
I danced my way up and back down Mill. Some places it's called 6th street, but usually it's Mill. It's the street with nothing but restaurants and stores full of crap. Sports memorabilia, record stores, theme stores with vintage clothing, philly cheese steaks and clubs and a post office. Sober tourists on a Saturday afternoon, inebriated crowds at night. It was the end of a long afternoon- I saw the 6 PM news van leaving as I did.
I skipped to a halt at a mysterious green door, set in the wall between some crappy store and some crappy restaurant. A cryptic sign read "Fetchback. The Retargeting Company."
Well, retargeting sounded good to me, but why was there no storefront? It must lead upstairs to a trendy loft studio where men in shiny shirts used Macs to do whatever Macs supposedly did. I pondered the sign. At this time of day, it was probably closed.
Suddenly, a small, paunchy Mexican man appeared. He pulled repeatedly on the brass handle and said, "Unado." "Uh?" I replied. "wahwahwahwah?" he asked. "I was just wondering what this company does." "No comprende." "Que typo del trabajo?" "Que?" "Uhhh." "wahwahwahwo." "Yo no se."
"Moe? Moe, talk to me." In the cool, dim underground, Daniel held her by the shoulders. Her radiant reds were dulled; despite her curves, she seemed small.
Behind her, the tech shifted awkwardly in a lawn chair. "Moe, Moe, we need you, right? We have to know what's coming next." Behind her, Betty frowned in confusion. She twirled an index finger around her ear. The tech choked on her soda. Daniel stepped forward and hugged her. "It's fine, this was all predicted. We have procedures. Tyson's just checking on his people. You have to do your job now." Ne Dan whats this about Moe n Ty??? I have no clue. Did you find him? Theres like 10 deaders up there but I think they were all bad guys. And his guns and stuff are gone. He felt Moe sniffling into his chest. Christ Almighty. The oracle seems to be... broken. What's the exact body count? Theres 2 many pieces. I don't want to go around counting arms. Like people arms, not weapons. .. pieces? nm What's the update. "Brenda's okay! Sweet. She got hit by an element of Alpha Point."
Moe looked up and softly said, "The opfor targeted the HQ, command and control, operatives on the J account, and the military division. Simultaneous time on target, 18% of Alpha Point personnel, and elaborate subterfuge were incorporated. Information warfare was employed as a secondary measure. The implied goal was to eliminate all knowledge of Solomon's Key. The planning implies that the opfor has access to the key. Means and motive indicate some part of Central Intelligence operating covertly. The primary targets should have been destroyed; it was only chance that they encountered resistance here-" her voice skipped a beat- "and fortune that Betty is a hardened target. Their information about our capabilities has now increased." "They have lost 18% of Alpha's manpower. Analysis of force effectiveness shows that our contractors would be victorious against opfor assets currently in the metropolitan area, assuming parity in cyberwarfare assets." "Usotsuki! Shilo ga motto better than parity!" "Assuming parity in cyberwarfare assets. At any rate... we... ah, they will consider a second wave, but they won't launch. CI will try to infiltrate. The boss missed the first target point. Assuming Tyson survived, he will counterattack. The motor pool will renegotiate their contract when the net is restored. We have to begin propaganda efforts. The first narrative should be beginning on newsfeeds now: bloody shootout, espionage, industrial warfare. Temporary chance to exploit internal division between AP muscle and brains. Betty, your hands." Moe buried her face once more into Daniel's button-up shirt.
Fri, 25 Apr 2008 13:36:43 -0500
How to Win Friends and Influence People has been cited by a lot of successful peeps. And let me tell ya, it's frickin' magic. I was reading chapter 3 today and this Singaporean dude I know rolled up. So I used what I'd learned on him and within a couple of minutes he said, "I bet you'd be a cool boss." I'm like, yo, this book is da shizzle. I GOTS ta write me a post on it.
My enthusiasm was such that I lapsed into the jive of my youth. Trust you me, it's a worthwhile book.
Thu, 24 Apr 2008 20:23:45 -0500
Nonexistent Right Under Attack
April 23, 2008 - The Senate is likely to approve on Thursday a new bill that would prevent companies from discriminating on the basis of genetics. The greatest effect would be on the insurance industry, including corporate pensions and health plans.
"This will set back health care twenty years," said one Ford executive, speaking on condition of anonymity because I made him up. "The UAW has enough healthy children to supply the industry even without this bill."
Others point out that this bill could be struck down by the Supreme court, citing language in the 11th amendment guaranteeing "Free use of ye information... The Congress shall make no laws respecting Thoughtcrime."
As of this morning, the relevant part of the constitution could not be found. An examination of the original Bill of Rights reveals no evidence of tampering with the Xerox copy paper it is printed on.
Constitutional law scholar Barack Obama, asked about the pending legislation at a town hall Monday, smiled and nodded.
Wed, 23 Apr 2008 18:34:51 -0500
I ran in the street when it was 103 out. Humid. I ran because I was homeless and jobless and had nothing better to do. So I got to her house, let myself in, got a glass of water in a glass cylinder with little crosshatched squares on the outside, and plopped down on the couch. It was so cool and leather. My head throbbed. I didn't move again. I fell asleep.
And when I slept, I dreamt of a city made of encryption. It was transparent and sprouted up from a round beveled base of the same stuff. The buildings were generally taller in the center; the skyline was a noisy 3d fourier series. And though the walls were made of nothing more than mathematics itself, they were impenetrable. They were translucent, matte grey, and opaque all at the same time. Streams of squiggles wiggled around the surfaces. I saw it for one timeless moment. I still see it.
I woke with useless muscles and nausea and thirst.
Mon, 21 Apr 2008 17:41:24 -0500
A black space. A safe space. The safest place in the world. "YeaARGH!!" What? What is it? "Infowar. Jonas, may want your assist." How? Hey, it's starting to smell out here. "Clean, hell."
The endless night sky was filled with constellations, multicolored apparitions, so many that the farthest ones began to blur due to the lack of resolution of the human brain. Shilo's halo had reproduced and now four sets of sigils spun around his waist at arm's length. He pulled copies loose, stuck them together, nested them, and sent them spinning into orbit.
The nearer structures around him were under assault. To his right, they represented his external servers, accounts, and clouds. Those were fine, for the moment, but soon enough his forward operating bases would be attacked. They were replaceable.
To his left were the assets of the company and its supply chain. These were being scanned- not obviously, but the bandwidth couldn't be hidden. A few were being probed for weakness. Shut them down? No.
Symbols- the universal network language- danced. They could be translated into a human language, or the unicode, or geometric proofs, but here they were used in a simple syntax that expressed things that didn't translate into any reasonable concept. Sine your pitty on the runny kine. an empty product, or nullary product, is the result of multiplying no numbers. Its numerical value is 1 He rerouted the explorers between a whirlpool and a kraken, into a Turing Machine that would pretend to be a real server. Shilo, find my Oniichan! moto hayai! Others.. the motor pool was under a deluge. Take it offline compromise action query? He zapped it, set up another Turing, and pinged to alert the network. They were rerouted onto his rotating anonymous freenet. But the bandwidth might compromise stealth. This is Brenda, checking in. Only two left, then. He didn't tell her that no one had been interested in her safety. To his right, a proxy went down ugly. Unplugged? They had seen him, not him, of course, but the other end of the secure line was open.
Sun, 20 Apr 2008 09:07:42 -0500
Micah fidgeted in a corner under the iron sights of a square faced bottle blond. Brenda stood in the center of her living room, hands above her head. A sandy haired man stared at her over a machine gun. A young male lay on a sofa, pushed against the wall, staring at the ceiling, breathing blood. His neck was swathed in bandages.
There was a knock on the door. "That you?" Negative. The sandy haired man backed toward the door. He motioned the blond to cover Brenda, and then turned the door handle.
It blew open (again). A high pitched rattle sent gouts of blood spraying from the sandy man's back. Tyson stepped left and fired his machine pistol at the blond. Fourteen 8mm balls severed her thumb and buried into her breast. She swung her carbine toward him, but Tyson stepped right and held the sandy haired corpse between them. The blond collapsed onto knees and elbows, struggling to raise her weapon, but rich arterial blood flowed over it. She collapsed on her face in an indecorous position.
Tyson dropped the 70 kilo bloody rag and scanned the apartment. Micah goggled at him. He stepped inside, releasing the pistol to hang at his hip by its bandolier.
"That all?" "Sir! What's going on?" She lowered her hands. The purple dress was torn. Her eye was black and swollen. "HQ attacked. You didn't respond to accountability." "No, they jammed the place. I managed to stall them though." Tyson nodded and dragged the bodies into the center of the floor. He rolled the blond over and shook his head. "Shit, my carpet is ruined." "Momma-" "Not now, honey." In the light of the apartment, among the baroque furnishings, Tyson looked as bad as his latest opponents. His face and arms wore soot on burns on burn scars. Blood soaked his T-shirt and khaki cuffs. His hands were cut.
Tyson drew the blade from his left hip and raised it above the tender young- his own age- male on the couch. Ice blue eyes opened wide, and tried to roll away, but the blade came down and severed his head completely. Tyson pulled the nihonto from the sofa cushion and wiped it on one of the dry spots on his pants. "ah... Sir?" "The blade has no name. Consider it a wakizashi. The long handle gives more power in close quarters." He spoke in a flat, almost tinny voice. "Are you..." Tyson turned to the door. "When you're secure, try to find the boss. I'm counterattacking." He set the PDA from his wrist on an end table with a purse and eye patch. "Broke. Give it to Daniel."
Sun, 20 Apr 2008 04:55:36 -0500
The shadows looked at each other. The one on the left shrugged. The other, after a hesitation, signaled a third figure to enter the apartment. The door closed.
It peeled away its mask to reveal a sandy-haired man in his thirties, lined from sun exposure. The others followed suit. They were a hazy square-faced woman and a young male. The young male shifted his machine gun self-consciously and looked nothing like the most dangerous animal left on the planet. The woman's mask left a smear of lipstick on her upper lip. They gave the impression of disposable minor characters.
"Come out with your hands up." "Ha! You've seen too many videos. Let's negotiate like this." "What's that? The kid doesn't know anything?" Click. Micah tried to sit up. His mother pushed him back down by the forehead.
The sandy haired gunman moved to his left and followed the apartment wall until he stepped onto kitchen tile. He pointed his carbine at the kneeling woman. "Up." She rose. "Hands up." Ten lotioned digits pointed upward. Her eye blinked coldly.
The apartment was flavored with earthtones and style from ages past. Patterned drapes. A wooden table. Ceramic dishes with cooked food on them. A yellowboned boy and a caramel woman, both with silky black hair. Beyond a set of faux wood columns and a change of floor, her eyepatch lay on a table with keys and cards and a purse.
Her son sat to her left, where she could keep an eye on him, eating a fifth piece of yellow bread slathered in ginger cream.
An encringing BHACK! blew the door open. It slapped the adjoining wall, splintering composite. A shadow flitted out of view and another one threw itself through the doorway, sweeping the room with a rifle.
Brenda hauled up on the kitchen table, sending plates and tureens crashing to the floor. Micah's eyes boggled. His mother leapt from her chair and tackled him, landing behind the counter that set off the kitchen. Another shadow, clattering with grey web and shiny, unused equipment, followed behind the first. They walked forward, trisecting the livingroom area between them.
Brenda crouched over her son in a dark purple, voluminous dress. She slid a long, greasy fillet knife from the counter. It flipped in her palm, blade forward, point down. Five soft, lotioned digits relaxed into the assassin's grip.
Thu, 17 Apr 2008 22:06:13 -0500
A black space. A safe space. The safest place in the world. Shilo stood in the center of a golden ring that held in its double wall seventy-two sigils. His arms, outstretched, grazed them. To his mind's eye they were eternal, unmoved by parallax, transparent to the utter blackness beyond.There was no source of light, but he was illumined.
"Bitchin'."
Betty stood on a throbbing mauve triangle. She opened her mouth to speak again, but was shoved off balance and stumbled into oblivion. Moe appeared on the triangle. Her glossy red locks were a little unkilter, stray hairs escaping. "What is Ty's status?" "I dunno. Didn't he go home?" "He was still working when they came and he fought them." Shilo thought- it couldn't be, but he almost thought he'd heard an exclamation point from her. "Well, I got the boards monitored. Everybody's checked in except the boss, Tyson, and the chick with the eyepatch." "Brenda." "Yeah, but we need a nickname for her. I was-" "Damnit Shy! Find Tyson!" "Uh, you've looked upstairs, right?" Moe turned paler and left.
Betty appeared. "Jeez, what did you say to her? You're insensitive, you know that? Well, I'm going to go look for Ty's remains. You find my oniichan."
Shilo was left alone.
Thu, 17 Apr 2008 01:43:08 -0500
Split Infinity and its sequels take place on a planet where it's fairly easy for some people to cross into an alternate dimension by poking around. One side is a planet (Proton) that exports energy-dense minerals- "Protonite."
The fun part is that Proton is a meritocracy/plutocracy. The mineral rights are collectively owned by the Citizens, who form a rich and powerful elite. They get annual dividends that amount to... um.... 400 times the wages of the serfs. Maybe 2000. At any rate, the Serfs are all immigrants that come, work as slaves for 20 years, and then leave with a nice retirement nest egg.
There are annual all-around competitions that grant the winning Serf citizenship. The losers are deported.
The competitions are head-to-head, agreed upon by the two contestants via a game of chance and bluffing ability. They can range from football to poetry to ice climbing to fencing.
So the Citizens are all intelligent, athletic, renaissance men/women. Even so, the vast mineral wealth makes them rather inefficient, petty and corrupt, sorta like the Saudis. Besides the dividend income, they rent Serfs from their collective and use them to run businesses. Some Citizens do the actual mining, some build robots, some run pony ranches, casinos, etc. They gamble vast sums on daily events, political outcomes, the color of the eyes of the next person to walk by.
A quorum of Citizens has absolute power, and votes are apportioned based on wealth. 1 gram of Protonite equals one vote, and the votes are tallied by throwing chips into a giant balancing pan.
I think the system is slightly more rational than ours, but it would be unethical if there were any natives being oppressed. Remember that everyone on the planet came (or stayed) voluntarily.
Wed, 16 Apr 2008 22:37:08 -0500
True Story
It's funny. Intelligence and looks are both genetic, but picking a mate based on one of them is considered "superficial." Thus complimenting a feminist's intelligence, even if true, is hilarious.
However- true story- I layed out that intelligence-is-genetic-don't-be-superficial theory to my friend. Now she dates dumb guys. I totally forgot about it until she brought it up years later.
I didn't tell her that my point was judging people by their looks is a good thing. She evidently took it the other way.
Wed, 16 Apr 2008 19:36:01 -0500
