ÿþ<HEAD> <title>Eric's Archive</title> <META NAME="description" CONTENT="Eric's Journal, the irregularly updated journal of Eric Lis"> <META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="eric, lis, emperor, aerica, aerican, journal, eric's head"> </HEAD> <left><font face="Times New Roman"> <font face="Monotype Corsiva,Bernhard Modern Roman,Unicorn,BellGothic,News Gothic MT"> <center> <big><big><big><big> Eric's Archive<br> Entries 511-520<P> </big></big></big></big></font> <I> Those who forget the past<Br> Are doomed to reread it.<p></i> </center> <a href="http://www.aericanempire.com/eric/index.html">More recent</a><BR> <a href="http://www.aericanempire.com/eric/501-600/521-530.html">Entries 521-530</a><BR> <a href="#520">Entry 520</a> September 14 2008<br> <a href="#519">Entry 519</a> September 11 2008<br> <a href="#518">Entry 518</a> September 8 2008<br> <a href="#517">Entry 517</a> September 5 2008<br> <a href="#516">Entry 516</a> September 2 2008<br> <a href="#515">Entry 515</a> August 30 2008<br> <a href="#514">Entry 514</a> August 27 2008<br> <a href="#513">Entry 513</a> August 24 2008<br> <a href="#512">Entry 512</a> August 21 2008<br> <a href="#511">Entry 511</a> August 18 2008<br> <a href="http://www.aericanempire.com/eric/501-600/501-510.html">Entries 501-510</a><BR> <a href="http://www.aericanempire.com/eric/archive.html">Archive</a><BR> </blockquote> <HR> <a name="520"></a> <U><B>Of Babylonians and Martin Luthers</b></u><p> I've exchanged a few emails in the last few days with a friend, discussing the topic of dreams. When I say dreams in this context, I'm not talking about pseudorandom images generated by uncoordinated synaptic firing during REM stage sleep, but rather the hopes and wishes that sit at the depths, at the very core of What We Want. I operationalize dreams here as being those things which we want and strive for, the wants which give our lives meaning. When someone answers the Second Question with such things as "money" or "true love" they're describing their dreams. Some people can go their whole lives getting all kinds of things they want but never once fulfilling their dreams, living existences that would make William Blake weep, where others find it oddly easy to fulfill their dreams. Some dream-achievers manage because their dreams are relatively easy, such as to go sky-diving once in their lives or to have a child, whereas others have totally implausible dreams but, through a combination of hard work, cleverness, and the devil's own luck, find that they can achieve dream after dream. The astute reader already knows into which category I think that I fall.<P> Looking back at this Journal, I actually talk quite a lot about my dreams. Above and beyond my occasional Six Answers posts, I actually fulfill my life's dreams fairly frequently. I don't take that for granted for a moment; whether it's because of my own efforts or the patronage of the gods I venerate or even just blind chance and the cosmic power of potato salad, I accomplish (or at least take frequent steps towards accomplishing) my dreams with moderate ease. One might suggest that this means that my dreams are too easy. My New Year's Resolutions tend to be stuff that I was going to do anyway, which perhaps makes those unfairly easy resolutions, but my dreams aren't easy ones. If anything, I think that I reach farther than most people ever think to try. My most recent accomplishment was, of course, selling a story to a magazine, and it must be pointed out that even if the story has been sold, I won't rest easy until the contracts are signed, the cheque's been cashed, and the magazine with the story is in my hand, because until then tens of thousands of things can still go wrong all too easily. That's a pretty big dream right there, but I've also seen my name in the New York Times, attracted hundreds people to join a country I founded, met people who begin to believe in the god I invented, ended a three-year D&D game on schedule and on purpose, entered medical school, loved and been loved by beautiful women, found and eaten a chocolate monkey, published a scientific paper, and even worked as a model on one occasion. I freely admit that I've got an inflated ego, but speaking with uncharacteristic humility and objectivity, I think that covers a pretty wide spectrum of the dreams that most people have. True, I have yet to obtain a fulfilling, respected, and high-paying job, but I'm on the way and I've got a clear path on how to get there. I'm twenty-six years old and already running out of life goals, having acheived them too soon.<P> I think that by my very nature, I don't separate my possible dreams from my impossible ones. Two years from graduation, for example, I see "becoming a doctor" as being about as realistic as "conquering Switzerland and taking all the chocolate." Of course, the relative difficulty of dreams changes with time and with each step towards them, such that this time next year, becoming a doctor will have become the much more plausible of the two (unless I fail a few more exams... hasn't happened in two years, but I'd be a fool to assume it's impossible). Of course, to the enlightened mind, every goal is always merely a step towards the next, ever greater goal. Six months ago, my dream was to write a story good enough to deserve publication. Two months ago, my dream was to sell it to a respected magazine. Today, my dream is that the story will get picked out to be in one of those "year's best horror" anthologies or otherwise meet unrealistic levels of critical acclaim for a first publication, attract the attention of a publishing house editor or a literary agent, lead to a book deal, maybe turn into a series of novels, eventually a cheesy movie (sci-fi, fantasy, or horror, I'm not picky) and finally, the greatest accomplishment of all, a line of action figures. The endpoint of the dream, I suppose, is to one day have on my shelf a twelve inch tall statue of KP 42 that says "I hate my life" when you push the button on its base. Is that one dream or many? It's all the logical extension of a single accomplishment, simply with exponentially increasing levels of improbability. Feasible? Certainly! Likely? Not in the least. Worth striving for? With every ounce of hope, malice, cunning and wisdom in my artificially-sweetened soul. Dreams are funny that way.<P> The trick with me is that all of my dreams sort of weave together, and to a degree are inseparable. That may actually be my semi-profound thought for the day... you might be able to tell that your dreams are someting that are truly a part of you because you can see how they intermingle with every other dream you have. Looking at my own dreams, the inescapable conclusion is that they all link and build on each other, forming a web-like lattice worthy of Anansi if he'd had a combined PhD in engineering and fine arts; Dirk Gentley can only wish his life connected that well. Dreams of money, power, and career all naturally (or at least potentially and conveniently) relate to each other. So too, though, does the dream of becoming a sucessful author; if I could pay the bills as a writer, that would qualify as money and career, if not power, whereas the dream of becoming a doctor brings money and power and also brings the leisure and security which would certainly facilitate finding the time to write, even if I never sold another story. Becoming either a doctor or a celebrated author would both be mighty strides on the path to world domination... either (or, even better, both) would put me in the position to recruit many new like-minded people to swell the Empire's ranks. All of it eventually pours down the "The Higher, The Fewer" funnel to become the two dreams which drive everything I do: the aquisition of power and the ability to go through life having a good laugh. These are my dreams; I'm a long way off from achieving them but nobody can say I haven't made respectable progress. The truth is, I'm not in any great rush to fulfill them... what would be the point of living if I ran out? <HR> <a name="519"></a> <U><B>Nine Lives</b></u><p> On September 9th of this year, I received a letter from Weird Tales Magazine, a popular magazine of short stories and the heir to the defunct magazine of the same name in which, decades ago, writers such as H.P. Lovecraft first made their names. The letter was from their fiction editor; I had sent them a story some weeks earlier, a Lovecraftian horror story first written in this space, and not only had they decided to buy the story, they were going to made special place for it in their holiday issue, even though the layout for that issue had been set up weeks before. After many years of off-and-on trying, I will at last be seeing one of my short stories in print in a respected mass-market magazine (and getting paid for it, no less). Understand that my writing has been rejected by some of the finest magazines in the world, so receiving this email from Weird Tales is quite literally one of my life's dreams come true. The moral is, no matter how many times somebody tells you that your work isn't good enough, it should never stop you from trying again, and again, and again. Persistence pays off, especially if all the practice makes you better while you're at it. I regret only that I didn't receive the email on the 10th instead of the ninth; either way, it's the absolute coolest (and most expensive) rebirthday present I've ever been given.<P> Happy ninth rebirthday to me, because, and let's be honest, I'm fantastic.<P> This was something of an odd rebirthday for me. For the last few years, I've celebrated my rebirthday by seeing near-and-dear friends and sharing some raspberry pie and tea with them over stimulating and laugh-provoking conversation. This year, I wasn't able to do that, due to circumstances entirely beyond my control and impossible to change. I wouldn't say that I was entirely without friends during the day -- I've become fairly close to some of the people I'm working with at the hospital where I'm currently stationed -- but it wasn't spent with the people with whom, in a perfect world, it might have been spent. Add to this the fact that I was, in fact, on-call that evening and thus working in the hospital until midnight; it was a quiet evening and I got to sit and write a post (this one, in fact), but because I'm always feeling a low-level anxiety waiting for the next potentially-emergency patient to arrive, it's not really conducive to relaxation. I particularly keenly felt the absence of my beloved raspberry pie and tea that night; the hospital cafeteria was serving a strawberry crumble, ironically, but it wasn't the same by any means. It was, perhaps, a slightly bittersweet rebirthday.<P> That said, I did receive some very nice emails on the 10th, at least one of which included a picture of a delicious-looking raspberry pie. It's not as good as the real thing, but it's nice to be thought of.<P> The problem facing me now is that, as I discussed on this day last year, I was well on the way to making raspberry pie the traditional food for the celebration of a rebirthday in much the same way as cake is the traditional food of a standard birthday, zeppole are the traditional food associated with St Joseph's Day, and roast beast sandwiches are the feast food following the migrations of the Perfectly Normal Beasts of Lamuella. As I'm fond of repeating, I believe that traditions are adopted according to the rule of thumb that "once is a fluke, twice is a pattern, and three times is a tradition." Last year was the second year in a row that we celebrated with raspberry pie; this would have been year number three, but for a full two weeks in either direction of the date itself that celebration will be impossible. Nobody says that a celebratory pie can't be a bit late, or indeed, several months late, but somehow some of the momentum seems to be gone. What we have here is a failure to traditionate.<P> Does something have to stop happening just because it's not a tradition? Obviously not, since when we first started having rebirthday pie it had never been a tradition before, and that didn't stop us. Heck, most holidays, I make an effort to do stuff that's as non-traditional as possible -- the classic example being Topin Wagglegammon, which has never been celebrated the same way twice. It's also perfectly possible to eat the pie even if it never becomes a tradition; the pie is just as yummy and the company is equally sublime. It is one of the fundamental beliefs of my life, though, that everything is sweeter when it comes with a joke, and I think that "the traditional raspberry pie" will be even more wonderful than "the raspberry pie I ate on my rebirthday." There's no harm in trying and seeing what happens... I have nothing to lose and that much more pie to gain, so long as my metabolism stays fast and my waistline narrow.<P> The obvious solution is to start over again from scratch, naturally... have a raspberry pie again next year as a complete (yet oddly predictable) fluke, and then make sure to have it for at least two subsequent years so that it becomes an official tradition. I've got plenty of time and I'm confident I've got plenty more rebirthdays in me, even if the date might change at any time. This time around, I failed to get the new tradition started, but if the last day or so has taught me anything, it's that no matter how many times most things fail, you never know if the next time you try will be the time you suceed. When I'm writing stories, I always at least get the joy of having created, and when I celebrate my rebirthday, even if it isn't a tradition yet, I still get my pie and friends. In the former case the whole thing rocks much more when you succeed, but in the latter, even if it's a complete failure, it's still just as much fun to make the attempt. <HR> <a name="518"></a> <U><B>From The Files of KP 42: The Case Of The Skull-Cruncher Mist</b></u><p> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp The bloodcurdling scream is the first indication I have that something's wrong. That's a heck of a way to start your evening.<br> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp I've always hated being assigned to colonial duty. Fringe work can be terribly annoying, and not just because you're a long way away from a decent entertainment suite and a bottle that's more than a year old. Out on these undeveloped worlds, there are all kinds of ridiculous perils, and sure enough, there's always some explorer or scout ship or something that's uncovered mutant badgers or spleen-eating plants or something, and the KP, by virtue of our reputation for property damage, get sent to cope with it. I'm durable but I'm not indestructible, and this far out, and I can become even more at-risk than the regular humans; at least the colonists I landed here with have a couple of doctors with them, but if anything happens to me, the nearest cache of repair parts is four suns away. More KP die on fringe work than any other duty.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp And when I say "ridiculous peril?" According to preliminary reports, this one falls under that heading. On their way here, the colonists sent out two advance scout parties. Both made landfall. Both took up residence at the same set of coordinates, where the prefab buildings had been landed by the planetary surveyors who were here before. Both reported a weird mist that rolled in, then something about bodies being found with their heads broken open, then nothing. Now I'm here with six hundred lightly-armed men, women, and children, only a dozen trained soldiers to protect the whole camp, and wouldn't you know it, it's foggy tonight.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp I'm patrolling between some of the outbuildings when I hear the scream. I'm about two hundred feet away from the center of the camp at the time, and the fog is thick enough that I can't see more than eight feet in any direction using standard roy-g-biv vision; I've had my eyes flipped to infrared for over an hour, which lets me make out the edges of buildings and tell when I'm near the other soldiers on patrol, but gives me such a headache. The scream starts suddenly, rises sharply in pitch, and then cuts off suddenly, which is never a good sign. I turn in a quick circle; even with my enhanced audioceptors, I can't tell which way the scream came from; the prefab buildings are layed out in a logical grid pattern, with narrow roads between each one, but having been here only a couple of hours and with the fog obscuring everything, it may as well be a labyrinth, and the close-set buildings distort any sounds that come from more than a few corners away. There are only thirteen people out and about tonight -- the twelve soldiers plus myself -- and athe civilian colonists are all holed up in the defensible central building so long as there's a heightened state of alert. Anything outside those walls at the center of the settlement is either a soldier, me, or whatever's dangerous enough to have gotten me assigned here.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp "Everyone report," crackles a voice in my head... the soldiers' officer over their communication channel. Only eleven voices check in. I bring up a map of the settlement on my field of vision and overlay the assigned patrol routes, which tells me that the soldier who isn't responding wasn't far from my current position. With some car, I start walking quietly through the mist towards him.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp It looks like my map is spot on, because I'm able to find the body before long. Infrared shows a warm body lying on the ground near, ironically, the empty med center, a spreading pool of warmth around his head. I get close enough for standard vision and switch over; a good-sized chunk's been taken out of the front of his head and grey matter has spilled out. Contrary to popular belief, the human brain is actually pretty tough and solid; it doesn't just spill out of the nearest hole. No, this looks more like it was pulled out, and rad me if those don't look like tooth marks.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp "Brains..."<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp I spin around. The white mists are impenetrable. In anything, it feels like they've gotten thicker. I can't see a thing out there; I can barely see my own hands. I turn up the gain on my audioceptors and I hear a faint, shuffling footfall about twenty feet off to my left. I twist in that direction and bring up both arms, fists pointing in the direction of the sound, and my cannons emerge from the sliding panels on the backs of both. I still can't see anything, so I hold my fire. My vision cycles back to infrared, but the only heat signatures I can see are Leaky the Wonder-Corpse and my own. <BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp "Braaaaainsss..."<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Ten feet away that time. I switch back to standard sight, send out a sonar ping, and overlay the 3-d map over my field of view, and now in addition to the corners of the nearby buildings I pick out a manform advancing on me slowly. My sonar isn't precise enough to make out facial features, but the creature's moving like it's wounded, dragging one leg behind it and shuffling, and one arm hangs limply. I dismiss the sonar map and now I'm just looking at normal wavelengths again, and I get my first view of it.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp The creature is humanoid, and probably used to be human. It's skin is a pallid grey and it's wearing human clothes, albeit of a fashion I'm not familiar with, torn and stained by mud and other less sanitary fluids. Its eyes are dark and filmy, but seem to focus on me intently. Its mouth hangs open limply and a black, swollen tongue lolls out to hang over a chin stained with fresh blood and trailing strands of what look like dura mater. Both arms end in five-fingered hands, with broken and chipped nails and fingers that have twisted into wicked hooked talons. This close I get my first smell of it, and I inhale a foetid stench of rot and disease, the mixed scents of putrefaction and bacterial digestion with a faint overlay of acetone and fresh blood, and my vomeronasal organ shuts off given a high probability that its smell is poisonous. It's a shambling, reeking, leaking nightmare given form.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp I've seen worse.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Before I can open fire, it leaps forward with surprising quickness and agility and wraps its arms around me in a horrid parody of a hug. Fingers curl around my biceps with surprising strength as the thing grapples me, and its mouth gapes open ever wider, almost unhinging, before it clamps its teeth down over my face. From inside the safety of my helmet, I can see it futilely grinding its teeth; I can stare right down its throat from here, close enough to see its uvula humping wildly and tell that in life this poor thing never had a tonsilectomy, and it is not a pretty sight. Whatever the thing is, it's strong, fast, and dangerous, but I'm a tougher morself than the soldier it killed a few minutes ago. Servo-enhanced muscles flex and I shrug the thing off of me; it stumbles back a couple of feet and a bring both arms back up to send bolts of energy into it. Its clothes and flesh sear and burn where the blasts hit it but don't seem to have any effect beyond that, so I shift my aim upwards and let my firing computer take a half-dozen headshots, right into the eyes and brain, but still, it leaps at me again. I'm ready for it this time' I plant my right foot behind me and put the full-force of my motorized limbs into a straight-arm open-palm strike, combining its furious momentum with my own strength. Head and palm meet with a terrific clang and its head comes off in a shower of black fluids, to bounce onto the ground a few feet away. The body keeps stumbling forward a few more steps and then flops forward bonelessly.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp My damage report system kicks in and tells me that my helmet is scratched. My armour was engineered to deflect bullets and blasterfire and it's rated strong enough to resist hard vaccum, and this thing scratched it. With its teeth. That's not right.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Wait... clang? I've crushed a few skulls in my time, and human bone does not go clang.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp I take a few steps forward in the mists, and there's the head. Now that I can take a clear look at it, I can see what I missed before. Where the cannon's bolts took it before, the "flesh" has been burned away to reveal a metal endo-skeleton, one part dented inwards in the shpe of my hand. An electronic photoreceptor has come loose in an eye socket and I can see something sparking deep inside. The black fluid that came out of the severed neck looks to be oil, or maybe something akin to my own synthheme. Whatever these things are, they didn't rot naturally... they've been designed and built to look and act the way they do, killer robots engineered to cause as much fear as possible when they attack. A pretty impressive piece of work, actually, and tough to take down. I wouldn't want to have to take a whole swarm of them and they'd certainly be more than the human soldiers here can deal with.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Then I think an unhappy thought. I dial up my audioceptors to maximum, and in every direction and from multiple distances I can hear an odd, shuffling gait and a slurred, murmured call of "brains..." Another sonar ping picks out three of them advancing on my position from the North. Woudn't you know it, my brain's practically the only organic thing left of me inside this armour.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp With my audioceptors all the way up, I can hear more shouting from around the settlement, which tells me I'm not the only one being attacked. The soldiers are all off singly, trading off safety because of the ground they needed to cover on patrol, and I'll wager a concussion grenade that it's too late for me to do anything for most of them. Out in the night, I hear voices rise up if terror and then stop suddenly. That's the soldiers, then; my sole concern now is the colonists.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp I break into a run. Whoever designed designed these things didn't make them to be fast, or at least, not as fast as me. I'm very, very tempted to get out of the settlement and leave the colonists to cope with them, but the KP pays me to throw myself into danger for the sake of others and I've got a paycheck to earn, so I run back towards the center of the settlement. The fortified central building of the settlement is a combination granary, community center and fortress; its purpose is to provide a last-ditch hiding place for the colonists in the event that the rest of the settlement becomes unsafe or gets over-run by pirates, invaders, or as the case may be, brain-eating robo-zombies. I got a good look at the central building on my way around the settlement this morning, and it's pretty secure; about two hundred feet wide, square, and boring-looking, the building has only two exits, both very durable, and on top of that it was placed on a natural rock pillar jutting out of a nasty-looking chasm some twenty-feet across. It's a military-grade bunker with a three-hundred-foot deep moat around it with only one ten-foot bridge connecting the outside world to it,l and if the soldiers had been inside of it instead of on patrol, they could probably have held out for months against anything short of a tactical orbital bombardment. Unfortunately, the soldiers aren't inside, and neither am I, and I also suspect that the robots have the combined physical strength to force the doors pretty easily. I keep the sonar pinging as I run and I get a good view as I round the last corner and come to the chasm.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp There's the bunker, right where it should be. There's about thirty of the zombie-things shambling towards it, slow and inexorable, moaning, and two colonists with hard-ammo rifles standing outside the front door, taking potshots. They're actually good shooters, killshots with each bullet, but their ammunition can't hurt this enemy. FOur of the robots have started crossing the bridge already, and one of them is almost halfway across, which means I can't just walk across the chasm. Fortunately, I'm already doing fifty kippers, and I go even faster as I near the edge.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp I run to within steps on the edge, give a little hop, slam down with both feet, and push off the ground with all my momentum and all the force in my enhanced muscles. It's a sizable chasm. I jump across it.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp I hit the ground still running, though on impact I feel my left medial malleolus crack and pain shoots up my leg. I skid into a turn and grab one of the posts on the end of the bridge to help myself turn around, and come to a stop on the end of the bridge, between the closest robot and the closest colonist. Knowing that my guns aren't much use, I pop open the twin compartments in my back, and out come two toughened steel bars, my beloved bonkin' sticks. I take one in each hand and turn to look back at the colonists behind me, intending to say something reassuring.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp "Get back inside and lock the damned door, you half-gened idiots!"<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Maybe "reassuring" isn't the word. Either way, they hop inside and slam the door shut behind them. I look back to face the closest robot, now mere paces away.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp "Brains!" it says helpfully. I consider ordering it to stand down, as protocol demands that I attempt. I haven't tried to communicate with these things yet; it's within the realm of possibility that they're capable of communicating and understanding, and by all rights, I have a duty to try to find a peaceable solution before resorting to violence. On the other hand, I'm not much of a conversationalist myself; I draw back my right arm and swing it forward with enough force to dent my stick two inches into its metal skull, and the force sends the first zombie plummeting off the bridge to the hard ground below.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp The rest, of course, aren't intimidated, and charge.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp I'm not a great warrior myself. I keep myself in decent shape and I've studied how to fight but I'm not a killer by nature. Fortunately, I don't have to be. As the first two robots reach me, I let my battle computer take my body over. At ten thousand thoughts per second it calculates every possible permutation of the next few seconds of combat, and from my perception, the whole fight seems to move into slow motion. The two charging zombies both brain themselves on my sticks, which just happen to be where their heads are going, and before they can regain their balance a roundhouse kick sends them both off of the bridge. The next leaps forward and grabs my arm, pinning it. I throw the stick in my left hand at the robot behind it and it passes halfway through the monster's skull before the monster (and my stick) topples over. I shrug off the one holding my right arm and shove it off the bridge with my foot and bring up both arms in a guard to meet the next three, charging me at once. They're stronger than they look, same as I am, and their weight pushes me back a step. The fusion cutter in my left index finger ignites and I melt the eye sockets of the one in the middle, shoving it into the one next to it, then pull my right arm loose and crush the far one's skull. As it falls, its hand snaps up and grabs my second stick, and as quickly as that I've lost my second weapon. The one whose eyes I melted stumbles off the bridge all on its own but the third is on me and gnawing at my helmet, actually striking sparks off of it. With no other weapons handy I do the first thing I can think of; my right arm comes up to level with its nose, the panel on the arm's ventral surface opens, and I fire my grapling hook through its head. The impact of the grapnel knocks the zombie off of me and over the far edge, but I'm overbalanced and I go off the near edge, and then there's nothing under my feet but emptyness. Kids, gravity is not your friend.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp My fall is arrested suddenly with a sharp jerk that tears the tendons of my trapezius... they've always been defective. My grapnel's still lodged in the zombie's lead, and since we went off opposite sides of the bridge, it's actually counterweighting me. Built mostly of metal, I mass well over four hundred pounds and no human body would be enough to keep me from falling, but the zombie's got a metal skeleton too, maybe something denser than mine; I'm still dropping, but not that fast. It's below me and rising quickly, and as we pass I swing out and grab its leg.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp So... now I'm hanging over a three hundred foot drop, supported only by a rope attached to my right arm which is being counterbalanced by the body of a dead robozombie whose leg I'm holding onto in my left hand. And I've got maybe twenty seconds before the first of the zombies still on the bridge crosses and reaches the door to the bunker. I admit, this isn't my finest moment.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Duty the first, of course, is to preserve the colonists. Saving my own skin, though of much greater importance to me personally, has to come second. I swing my legs up to grab around the dead zombie's torso to keep my weight supported, then reach down with my left hand to the utility belt at my waist, flip open a pouch, and take out a plasma grenade. I mutter a quick prayer to whatever god watches over fools and supersoldiers and toss it straight up; it hits the bottom of the bridge, beeps twice, and cheerfully explodes. Three hundred foot drop... under ideal circumstances, I might even survive this, though the raining chunks of concrete and killer robot don't improve my odds. On the way down, I have to admit that it's a beautiful view. I've got onboard cameras; I take a picture. The ground rushes up to meet me and I open up my arms to give it a hug.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp It's some time later when I awaken; the bright sun is directly overhead and the mist has been burned away. I'm not in any pain, but the computer informs me that this is in part due to my spine being crushed, and my system's been pumped full of painkillers to account for the rest. I'm mostly buried under a pile of rubble and broken bodies; say what I sometimes will about the engineers who designed my body, but they sure did build me to last, at least better than whoever built the zombies built them, since I'm still moving and they aren't. The pile of zombie bodies around me looks to number well over forty, which is certainly more than I knocked down here... I think that after I knocked out the bridge, the whole swarm of them must have just kept walking off the cliff after me, which tells me that I sorely overestimated their intelligence.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Certain that I don't want to know, I call up a damage report onto my eyeballs; I've got one working arm, half a working leg, my artificial heart has been ruined and I'm using the emergency pumps in my neck to keep my synthheme flowing, and I've likely sustained some brain damage. That said, my nanobots are working overtime, and I can feel them swarming through me, repairing damaged organic cells and restringing my steel muscles and tendons at the same time. It's going to take me a few days to fix myself and I'll need some professional refitting done when I return to civilized space, but I'm going to make it out of this one alive. Off in the distance, I can see humanoid forms -- some of the colonists, I see as I zoom in -- and I wave to them weakly. As they start climbing over the rocks to help dig me out I put on some music and feel the buzzing of nanos working to reset my femur. <HR> <a name="517"></a> <U><B>Three-Book Monte</b></u><p> For the past three weeks or so, I've been slowly reading Philip Pullman's <I>His Dark Materials</i> trilogy, the famous first book of which, <I>The Golden Compass</i>, was turned into a big-budget film not too long ago. The Golden Compass, like Harry Potter before it, is noteworthy in that it's a relatively hard-fantasy book which managed to make it big in the mainstream and thus became acclaimed as a seminal and groundbreaking work of fiction. For those who don't appreciate the last sentence fully, a discussion of 'hard' versus 'soft' fantasy and sci fi is beyond the scope of this post, so if you don't know the terms, you're screwed. In any case, the series is interesting because it made it big in pop culture, and that means that a lot of kids and some few adults who might otherwise have never picked up a fantasy novel in their lives read and loved the series, while a small number saw the film and became equally enamoured. The Golden Compass is guaranteed not to have the world-shattering impact that Harry Potter did, in part because it's not as good and in part because it's not as long, and in part because the book-to-film adaptation was an unqualified disaster. I never read the Harry Potter books, despite the strong recommendations of many people I know (few of whom are connoiseurs of fantasy stories, mind you), but I have very nearly finished His Dark Materials and seen the gilm version of the first book (after reading the book, of course). I'm left with a curious feeling about it. The series is okay -- it doesn't offer anything very new or exciting, nothing that I haven't already seen done better by other authors, but people whose opinions I otherwise know and respect had their lives changed by the book. Either I'm missing something, or they are.<P> To put it another way, Brisk iced tea may seem like a wonderful and refreshing drink if you've never tasted slow-steeped Red Rose with a dash of lemon and sugar. A hole in the ground may feel like luxury if you've never heard of indoor plumbing.<P> Not that I mean to knock the people who enjoy the proverbial hole in the ground. His Dark Materials is by no means a bad story. The characters are a touch unidimensional, but they grow and develop somewhat over the course of the books, and the language is way below my fluency level, but it's a children's book, and it manages to convey some incredibly complex philosophical ideas in very simple language. Terry Pratchett can convey simplistic ideas in a beautiful tapestry of language, which is what makes his books some of my all-time favourites to read, but I equally have to respect Pullman for his ability to try (if not wholly suceed) to deconstruct the whole idea of god and the Church in the vocabulary of a ten year-old (for the record, I don't think I could have done it as well as he does). The series is a long way below my level, but then, I'm an experienced reader of fantasy with the vocabulary of a graduate student in literature who finishes multiple novels per month; I do not think that I was the books' target audience. <P> As a jumping-on point for people who've never read much fantasy before, the series might be a wonderful one. It has the capacity to instill (in the uninitiated) a sense of wonder and curiosity, and maybe even stimulate them enough to get them to pick up more books afterwards. It's just a shame that I read the series after I'd already read Heinlein, King, Goldman, and Gaiman.<P> I think this might be the core of why I never really got into the Harry Potter series. The Harry Potter books are crafted to make young kids and young adults imagine, for the first time, what it's like to live in a world of wizardry and bend reality by the force of will. I've been inventing universes and trying to will my enemies to disintegrate since before I could spell "legerdemain." Which, ironically, I mispelled a second ago on my first go at typing it.<P> People who know me well know that I didn't like the Lord Of The Rings. I'm one of only two or three people I know who didn't like the series, and that's saying something because almost everyone I know (who matters) has read their Tolkien. Most of the people I know read Tolkien as one of their very first forays into true fantasy (as opposed to fairy tales or something, which is to hard fantasy as tonka trucks are to a Harley Davidson). I read the Rings trilogy a decade after I started devouring books, and everything Tolkien wrote, I'd seen done better already. Tolkien is to be worshipped for the fact that, if not for him, it's possible that nobody else I'd read would have ever set pen to paper, but that makes him influential, which isn't necessarily the same as good. Someone in history deserves accolades for being the first person to ever try sticking a room on top of four walls, but I'd still rather live in a solid house than a thatched hut. I see His Dark Materials in much the same way (except that I think it was a bit better than Lord of the Rings and significantly less original).<P> I have no idea why I'm using so many brackets tonight. It's just turning out that way (for some reason). <P> I liked His Dark Materials. It didn't change my life and I'm glad I bought the 10th anniversary collector's edition, because it sold for the price of a single novel instead of three (everybody say it with me: "you get what you pay for"). It might not be accurate to say that I enjoyed His Dark Materials, but I never felt sick of it and was never tempted to stop reading it and pick up another book instead. I can see why someone who's never read American Gods (for example) would find it full of ideas they'd never seen before. I can also see why Christians might find it a thrilling critique of their own church, and perhaps as a Jew, and an apostatic Jew at that, I'm not excited by the idea of someone criticizing the Pointy Hat Brigade. It's what it is: a book, and a solid fantasy story for people who don't already love fantasy. I hope very much that the kids who fell in love with this series found themselves picking up something like Matthew Stover or David Eddings next... if they didn't, if they just read His Dark Materials and stopped there, then I think someone somewhere failed to do their job properly. <P> As for the film version, the less said about that the better. Whoever decided that it'd still be a good film if they removed all the explanatory bits and just left in a smattering of disjointed thirty-second scenes was horribly, horribly mistaken. It just goes to show that they can't all be The Princess Bride, but bonus points for having lots of shots of an ermine, which is respectably close to being a weasel. <HR> <a name="516"></a> <U><B>Wine, Cheese and Doom</b></u><p> Today, I ate some white cheddar flavoured popcorn. Really, that statement should be further qualified, by saying that "against all reason," I ate some white cheddar flavoured popcorn. I hate white cheddar flavoured snacks. I know that I hate them, and I've hated them for years and years. I find that they have a taste which is extremely close to mayonaise, by which I mean, mayonaise which has gone slightly off. None the less, I was in the clinic today, and it was at that curious hour where four in the afternoon is about to be five, when it always feels like snacktime no matter how much I've eaten or how sick I am, with an hour left before I can leave but with no patients to see. There was me, a doctor, another student, and an open bag of white cheddar flavoured popcorn that nobody else had the courage to try, and my curiosity, as has been known to happen to me on a reasonably frequent basis, got the better of my good sense. I tried a small handful of the popcorn, and indeed, it tasted like death. Actually, it rather more tasted like cheap popcorn that has been dusted with a coating of sour mayonaise and then lightly salted, which probably isn't what death tastes like at all (I personally envision death as being very bitter, tylenol-like sort of flavour), but for the sake of argument and in so far as it's not important to the overall point of things, I stand by my initial assessment: it tasted like death.<P> This, of course, begs the question of what death tastes like. Understandably, this is not a question which has plagued the great thinkers of our time. Descartes never sat down to posit any pithy statements on the topic. Socrates never said anything about it, although given his own story, he probably had a better idea than most. Even Kant (who I include here as an example of someone I don't necessarily think was one of our great thinkers), who made his living and his fame by spending his entire life sitting in his chair and coming up with his comments on Everything In Existence, never wrote one single sentence on the topic. Thus, here we are, early in the third millenium of our calendar and, depending on who you ask, the seventh or so millenium of our recorded history, and nobody has ever written a particularly impressive or persuasive tract on the important question: what does death taste like? Or at least, nobody has that I know of; I reluctantly admit that, as yet, there remain human authors whose books I haven't read, and I suppose it's possible that somebody has elucidated some thoughts on the matter. Just nobody important enough for me to have heard of.<P> It's a tricky question. Oh, sure, the knee-jerk reaction might be to say that death has probably got a dry, dusty, bony sort of flavour, probably not tasting like much of anything, but I wrote the word with a small d, not a capital one. Rather than any particular given anthropomorphization (you don't get to use that word often enough), I'm referring to the general abstract concept. Many people think that general abstract concepts probably don't taste like anything, and I can understand where they'd get that idea, but I think it's been pretty well accepted by society at large that mornings smell like coffee, trouble smells like deserted rocky canyons, and victory smells like napalm, and the biological link between smell and taste is so strong that there's got to be a connection there. You can't taste coffee when you have a blocked nose, after all, though admittedly, victory probably tastes a bit sweeter than jellied gasoline, and it's certainly less spicy.<P> I've personally always envisioned death as tasting like things that can cause death, like poisons. Tylenol, to my mind, tastes kind of like death... it's a bitter, unpleasant sort of taste that a primitive part of your brain evolved twenty thousand years ago to recognise as "bad, spit out now." Even more than tylenol, I think actifed pills are the worst tasting pills I've ever had, and that's probably what death tastes like. On the other hand, I've also believed for years that vodka probably tastes like death... again, it's a perfectly obvious evolved-response, given that when you get right down to it, vodka is an extremely pure distillation of a deadly poison. Alcohol turns off and kills brain cells -- getting drunk is really just inducing a controlled and reversible form of brain damage, and sometimes it's not really so reversible. Tens of thousands of years ago, when homo sapiens was just begining the long, slow climb towards sapiens sapiens, sapiens callidus, and sapiens miscellaneous, there must have been a pretty decent natural selection against the drinking of alcohol, which is why it tastes bad to most people even today, and why it has to get flavoured and scented before it sells widely. Alcohol tastes like death, because it's deadly, and vodka, to my mind, is the deathiest. That's what I strongly suspect that death tastes like, and it goes a long way to explaining why I'm not a drinker.<P> But wait... what's this? Death, it seems, tastes like the proverbial bitter pill to swallow, and death also tastes like alcohol. If that's so, then that means that death tastes like two different things, which themselves taste nothing at all alike. That's possible, for a couple of reasons. First, it's simply a fact that some foods can taste radically different in dfferent situations -- chicken if cooked differently, tofu is seasoned differntly, orange juice before and after you brush your teeth -- and if real, material food can taste differently depending on the circumstance, then abstract concepts can certainly have different flavours at different times. Second, death's a pretty subjective thing... a kindly friend to be welcomed in some cultures, a great mystery or the ultimate enemy in others. Naturally, death would have different flavours, because it has to have different meaning for different people. Irrational as it may seem, some people do, after all, enjoy the taste of vodka.<P> And there you have it: one of the great questions of history solved at last. A question which surely stymied Aristotle and Confucius -- they didn't write about it because they could never figure out the answer, not because the question never occured to them -- has at last been answered. Death tastes like actifed, and vodka. And, of course, white cheddar flavoured popcorn. <HR> <a name="515"></a> <U><B>Across Tick</b></u><p> A Hymn to Forsteri<BR> (Valid Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday, during abnormal business hours)<p> An unwise voice counsels,<BR> beware of unknown things, for they<BR> carry with them fear, and pain, and that which is<BR> dangerous to your beliefs. An unwise voice, too, counsels, beware<BR> each thing that is old, for the new must be embraced, the exciting attempted.<BR> For wisdom is the voice that says, be afraid neither of the new, nor the old, but<BR> go forth, with open mind and open heart. Look upon the world with wonder, and with<BR> hope, and strive always to improve the world around you while improving yourself.<br> It is the voice of wisdom which says, embrance the balance, and grow.<BR> Just as the ice cream thrives in the desert and the banana in the ice,<BR> keep ever watchful of that which can lead you astray, lead you to ruin,<BR> lead you to the ways of fear and mistrust. Oh bringer of balance,<BR> may we look upon the unknown, not as a threat, but as an opportunity.<BR> Not as a danger, but a chance. So too, may we embrace the old, the comfortable,<BR> our roots which sink deep into the ground from which we came and anchor us,<BR> preparing us with a strong foundation as we stretch forth to explore and reach to the heavens. <BR> Quickly shall we ever adapt to change, for Chaos is our strength.<BR> Relentlessly shall we pursue order within chaos, for we are masters of both and slaves of neither.<BR> Safety and security, in excess, become boredom. The far star is never reached by the sleeper.<BR> The wise voice counsels: reach, grasp. Jump into the abyss. Tie a cord first, should the<BR> unforseen drive you to climb back up. The wise voice counsels, know when the time is right, and<BR> venture forth from the familiar to the new. To embrace the one, does not require sacrificing<BR> wholly the other. The wise voice whispers to you, and reminds you not every puzzle has a solution,<BR> x need not always be solved. The joys of life depend, from time to time, on the mystery.<BR> Yet, such is the pursuit of balance, and such the counsel of Forsteri. Not enough words start with<BR> zed.<br> And the people intoned, boffo, which in the olden tongue meant "we should be so lucky." And they nodded their heads, and pretended it was profound, and sold shiny trinkets to the tourists who came to look upon it, and laughed at them behind their backs. And this, too, is a kind of wisdom. <HR> <a name="514"></a> <U><B>Censational</b></u><p> As we speak, there's a census going on within the Empire. This is particularly exciting for me, for a few reasons. First, this is exciting because, being relatively close on our last Cullin of the Inactive and based on some recent very popular discussions on the mailing list, I think we might be at one of our highest activity levels ever, which I hope will make for a lot of fun data. Second, it's exciting because I'm not the one who initiated the census; one of my citizens cared enough that he did all the set-up work himself, he's going to collect the data, and he's going to analyze it. I get all the fun of looking at pretty numbers and statistics without any of the annoyance of having to receive a hundred letters and put it all together. This is what being an Emperor should mean: sitting and and leting others do all the real work, while they feel priviledged just to have permission to do their part. That's leadership.<P> We've had a couple of censuses... censi... censususeses... we've done this sort of thing in the past before, and the big question has always been what questions are worth asking. A census is a tricky thing; ask too few questionsand you get no useful data, ask too many and people fail to respond just because it takes too long. This is compounded by my citizen base, which is composed of people who have, sometimes, a very loose definition of reality and a very broad sense of what's funny, and even if a section of a cnsus is specifically labeled "serious portion, please tell the truth" it's almost inevitable that least five or six reponses will come in where, for example, people put down their gender as "gerbil." Finally, there's the question of what it's appropriate to ask. At heart, I'm a psychologist; I want to know all sorts of personal and incriminating stuff about people. I'd be fascinated to know the prevalence of, for example, homosexuality within the Empire, but that's a sensitive topic to many people and I'm confident that many people would be uncomfortable answering, meaning they'd lie, or worse, not send back the questionnaire.<P> The questions which always interest me most in any census of the Empire are the demographics. I like to imagine my Empire as being a truly multinational vernture, but I'm well aware that the majority of my people come from middle class United States. That can be narrowed down even further; statistically, I believe, the majority of my citizens are under the age of eighteen, and I say this based, not on careful counting, but based on reviewing citizenship applications as they come in. I value a census because it allows me to really see, empirically if not with 100% accuracy, what the real age distribution is. Is my population really composed exclusively of pre-pubescent young'uns, or it more that those are the ages I happen to notice? I really hope I'm mistaken about it, but I can understand that the themes and symbols of the Empire might be most likely to appeal to, let's say, a younger portion of the population. The question's made more complex by the fact that, of the citizens I'm closest to and know best, the majority are over 20 and a good chunk are married and in their 30's or older, so I value the census because it'll tell me if my gut is right (and most people joining are young) or if there's really a pretty decent mix of adults (don't call them "grown-ups" because they get as offended by that as I do) and kids. The scientist in me says that there's only one satisfactory way to answer this question for sure, and that's by rigorous data collection.<P> Then, there's the similar question of gender. In my experience, most micronationalists tend to be male. This might be my imagination, or it might be that declaring yourself independent and founding a new nation is one of those "male" things to do, reeking as it might of aggressivity and chest-thumping. On the other hand, I know for a fact that a lot of my citizens, and indeed a solid percentage of our government, is made up of women (very intelligent, very capable, very funny women). I'm not really sure if most micronations are predominantly male, but I like to think that the Empire has about a fifty-fifty split... a sign that the population is demographically analagous to society at large. I can make whatever assumptions I want, but nothing beats going out and collecting the data. Except perhaps finding someone else to do it for you.<P> I personally wish very much that I had a reliable and socially-acceptable to obtain data on how much my citizens weigh and how attractive they are. A big part of me really wants to know if they're overweight computer geeks, socially-withdrawn computer nerds, or perfectly ordinary people coming from all walks of life. I honestly believe it's the latter, but I don't know for sure. Maybe that'll be a question in a future census, if I can think of a good way to ask it.<P> Of course, this is still the Aerican Empire, so spirit of scientific method or no, there still has to be silly questions. In one previous census, for example, there was one question which asked citizens to give us their favourite recipe for cooking an endangered species... we got some phenomenal replies to that one. This year, the census asks for such things as, do you put your pants on left leg first or right leg first, and to describe the motion of your spoon when you eat soup. These are the questions for which we not only expect but actually encourage silly answers, and the population has never let me down. This data might be less useful for statistical purposes, but it shows me something else very important: each and every one of my citizens is different and special, capable of coming up with snappy answers to questions that I might never think of myself. Ruling over a population isn't very interesting if the people aren't worthy of your leadership, and I've always been blessed by the nifty people who've joined up over the years. The serious data might end up on Wikipedia; the non-serious data is stuff I'll remember more than five minutes after I've read it. Both have their own sorts of value.<P> Finally, there are questions which fall somewhere in between, like the question which asks what religion or spiritual path people ascribe to. I'm genuinely curious what sort of range of faiths we have, because I've always taken great pride in being one of the few nations in the world which has Muslims, Christians and Jews and they all get along. Then again, there's always a few people who write in "jedi" -- and some of them really mean it, I'm sure -- while others, myself included, quite happily write in "Silinist." Demographically, perhaps, it's not useful data, but it's neat.<P> For anyone who's wondering, by the way, my answer to the soup question was "parabolic." It may not be a very clever answer, but it's true, and when I tell the truth it's always noteworthy. <HR> <a name="513"></a> <U><B>From The Files of KP 42: The Monster That Ate Talislari</b></u><p> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp By the time I stumble out of my quarters, the alarm's been blaring for at least twenty seconds and the hallway's been filled with so many running bodies that I'm shoved back through the door as soon as I've taken a step out. I'm way too tired to cope with this after the last few days, but the pharma unit I've got instead of a left kidney is pumping liquid wake-up juice into my synthheme and I'm perking up by the moment. I can't make out what anyone in the hall is saying, what with the awooga awoogaing away and the sounds of dozens of voices all competing to be heard, but the looks of fear make it clear that whatever's happening, it's something big and unexpected. The sound of an explosion makes itself insistently heard over the assorted other noises, even drowning out the alarm for a moment; the whole building shakes, but then again, these eighty-storey towers are designed to shake rather than shatter, and when the rumble quiets away we're all still vertical and gravity's our friend, not an uninvited guest. The blast knocks some of the panicked energy out of the crowds outside my room -- though I can't imagine why, since explosions are exactly the sort of thing that gets me moving faster, personally -- and I take the moment to insinuate myself into their midst and start shoving my way towards the situation room, a few doors down the hall from my own guest quarters for the few days I'm on this world. <br> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Once I'm into the flow, it's pretty easy to get through; when people see the armour, they get out of my way, and the crowd parts before me like calm water before a cavitary submersible. I slip my helmet on and allow myself the self-satisfied smile of the armed-and-dangerous. Whatever's causing this ruckus can't possibly be capable of more collateral damage than I am.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp I'm still a few steps away from the command room when my on-boards finally link in with the tower's network and get me a situation report. According to the KP's alert code system, my computer reports, we're currently in the midst of a "code 195419982004." It's an alert code I've never seen before, which is saying something given how long I've been doing this. I send the computer a query and the reply stops me in my tracks suddenly enough that a young lieutenant scampering behind me can't stop in time and nearly breaks his nose running into my back. 195419982004: giant monster attack. This has to be a joke. Someone out there got word that I was staying on this floor and bribed a platoon of junior officers to trip the alarm and run around outside my door screaming, and I'm supposed to run into that command room during my first downtime shift in some fifty two hours and look ridiculous. I start to turn back around, and that's when we all hear the roar. It comes from outside the building but it's loud enough to shake the floor and my audioceptors automatically dial themselves down a couple of notches to protect my hearing. Whatever made that sound has very big lungs and its head isn't too far off from being level with the upper floors of this building. If it's a prank, it's a good one. I risk looking stupid and rush into the command room.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp I see the creature as soon as I'm through the door -- not because there are any windows in or out of the command room, which there aren't, but because its image is displayed on a half-dozen screens, including the main viewing-screen that dominates the center of the room. Based on the buildings that it's standing near, it's somewhere in the area of four hundred feet tall. Vaguely reptillian but with some odd insectoid features and what looks like the occasional polypoid tentacle, it's in the process of dragging itself out of the water a few blocks away from this building, and it's already knocked over a couple of seaside skyscrapers in the process. The monster looks bipedal, though it doesn't look like its forelimbs have opposable digits (always a good sign; I hate it when giant monsters come with giant weapons). The thing's taking some small-arms fire from local security forces but it dosen't look like hand-held energy weapons are doing much. Talislari is a civilian center, not a military outpost; it's equipped to deal with small crimes, not... whatever the heck this situation is. The closest thing they've got to someone trained in dealing with giant monsters... is me. <BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp I hate my life.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp "Forty-Two," one of the officers says, as she looks up to see me. I know I met her at the reception after I finished cleaning up the drug smugglers I came here to find, but at the time I couldn't have been bothered to catch her name any more than those of the other three generals who were there. She's obviously in command of the situation, and judging by the way that the younger officers are jumping to her orders, she's good at this. "We don't know what it is, but it just appeared in the harbor ten minutes ago. It's heading steadily inland. Suggestions?"<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp I gaze at the display. It's lugged its whole bulk out of the water now and it's stomping slowly down the street -- slowly in terms of paces, at least, though those huge legs mean each step is a good chunk of a city block. My battle computer kicks in of its own volition and, at ten-thousand thoughts-per-second runs through every possible permutation of combat between the creature and myself. None of them end well; scenario eight-hundred and twelve makes me feel a little queasy.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp "Portable weapons won't do much against it," I say. My voice-modulator gives me the Voice of Authority, though to myself I sound like I've got a bit of a quaver. "You need artillery, heavy weapons platforms. Your forces are also wasting time going for center-of-mass... there's too much tissue between you and anything vital. Redirect fire to vulnerable points: joints, sense organs."<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp The general doesn't get down on her knees and proclaim me her saviour; any idiot could have made the same suggestions, and from the look on her face, she obviously already has. Well, genesplat that, I'm a soldier, not a strategist, it's not my job to get the bright ideas. That's what I keep a computer in my head for, anyway.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp "We have a couple of platform-mounted mass-drivers," she says, pointing at one of the smaller screens. "One's downstairs and the other is being moved into position along this street here. They'll be charged momentarily. If that doesn't work, we'll have fighters here within ten minutes. Go find some way to help."<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp I snap off a quick -- well, let's be generous and call it a salute -- and duck back out of the door. Ten minutes for those fighters to get here; at the rate that thing's walking, it'll have wiped a couple of miles of city off this world's map by then. The particle cannons, then... as long as those can get a clear shot, they should be able to hurt that thing, so my priority should be to get to street-level and hang out around the cannon there. Not that I'll contribute much; the guns will have their own trained fire crews, and my armour, handy as it might be for deflecting bullets and blasterfire, won't do much against a giant foot with a thousand tons of pressure behind it. I turn the corner to march towards the elevator and, through a beautiful and expensive floor-to-ceiling picture window, I have the most astounding view of a bloody great tail swinging through the air towards me.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp I was on the bridge of a capital ship one time during a pitched fleet battle when a burning starfighter hit the bridge and blew out the atmo. We had this clear five-second period when everybody on the bridge could see that it was going to hit us dead on, and it was obvious that the bridge's blast shields wouldn't close in time. I'd always assumed that most people scream in that kind of situation, but what I remember most is the way everything went dealthly quiet for those five seconds. I get that again as that great green tail swings towards us, slow, inexorable, almost graceful in its own way. It's kind of like staring into the face of inevitability itself, and somehow it's almost beautiful. There's maybe a half-dozen people standing near me and seeing the same sight, and every one of us is perfectly quiet. Until a second or so before impact, when everybody starts screaming like they've won the biggest lottery in the galaxy and the prize is being delivered via asteroid express. <BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp I'd like to say that I face the moment with a calm and quiet dignity befitting a man who's been through the things I have, but I can't because I'm too busy shrieking in horror.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp The window itself bursts inwards on impact. A storm of glass washes over us, doing nothing serious to me but ending the larger worries of everybody standing near me. Servo-enhanced muscles and computer-reflexes give me every ounce of speed they can squeeze out and I hit the floor as the tail swings by, narrowly missing pulverising me. The rush of wind from its passing itself nearly picks me up and slams me against the wall. There's another horrendous crash as the tial hits the far wall and keeps going, followed by a horrible ghastly silence which resolves itself in the space of a second into a horrid, high-pitched shriek. Eighty-storey buildings aren't designed to have large sections of their middles smashed out, and with a cry of protesting metal and stone, the ceiling above and floor below give way.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp It's a credit to the engineers who built me that I'm still alive when I hit bottom. My heads-up display is filled with an extensive damage report, but it looks like nothing critical is out. A forty storey fall like that would normally do me more harm, but luckily the tons and tons of raining construction debris broke my fall (in addition to my left arm and several of my ribs; nanorepair is already working on it, which is more than the poor losers buried all around me could say even if I did have a ouija board on me). I stagger out of the mess and take in the situation. The creature is some seventy feet away, I think, momentarily distracted by the next building over. My heart goes cold as I look at the destruction arond me and I remember the particle cannon, which was supposed to be not far from where I've landed. I take a few stumbling steps and see it. The cannon itself looks intact, but...<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp But a chunk of masonry the size of a luxury ground transport's landed on what looks like the control platform. I curse eloquently and wobble towards the gunner crew standing all around it.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp "Heavy crew, report," I call out as I get close. First rule of dealing with the miltary: make every question an order to quicken response time.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp "Sir," a sergeant says in my direction. "The cannon can fire but the controls are wasted." He pauses, swallows. "So's the gunner, sir." <BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp I know this model. It's similar to the tank-rated cannon I was using the day the the KP decided to put a note in my file to never, ever issue me heavy weapons again. The unit is modular and is meant to be mounted on a mobile weapons platform to move it around, because between the gun and the power source, it takes about ten men to lift it. Under normal circumstances, the weapon takes one, ideally two people to operate, and all the hard work is done by the firing computer, because you really don't want one of these things firing with only human aim behind it. Used improperly, one of these things can end a war. From the look of it, the gun's barrel is undamaged and the power supply is intact, but the main control panel's destroyed. No human personel can operate it.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp I, on the other hand, have this handy-dandy retractable data-port. I open up a maintenance panel, unhook the input jack, open my finger, and plug in.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Most computers don't think in any way we'd understand. I've known a few real artificial intelligences in my time, but understandably, software like that doesn't usually get mounted in military hardware, because that's just asking for trouble, Three Laws or no. The computer in my head isn't capable of creative thought or autonomous action, but it is designed to allow my human brain to interface with other computers in a manner I can find comprehensible. Plugging into the cannon's operating system, I have the impression of standing next to a big, dangerous, endlessly patient and utterly stupid man whose purpose in life is to point at things and erase them. My senses merge with those of the cannon, and I see the world as its sensors do, as a complex mathematical interplay of distance, air resistance, gravity and electromagnetic fields. With little more than a thought I swivel the cannon's barrel towards the great beast. My world is consumed by a vast hum as the weapons' generators cycle to peak efficiency and magnetic coils power up. Using only enough juice to drain the smallest amount of power, I send a small beam of power into the beast's shoulder; it's enough to draw its attention, and the monster swings its great fanged maw towards us. It opens its mouth, preparing to roar a challenge. In response, I zoom in, center my reticle on the middle of one large slitted pupil, angle up towards the brain, and release.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp This might just be the happiest moment of my life. <BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp The cannon's generator goes quiet, its power drained, and I disengage from it. The ground shakes as the beast's body hits the ground hard, steam rising from the front of its head. I find a flat piece of debris to sit on and watch as the curious slowly approach the fallen body... in a vid it would probably surge back to its feet to give the audience one last scare, but I think it's genuinely down and that means it's the xenobiologists' problem, not mine. I'm going to be stuck on Talisari for a few more days while the higher-ups write their reports on this and try to figure out why this thing just happened to rise from the sea while I was here -- if it's somehow related to the case that brought me here, I've got a bunch more busy days ahead of me. That's a concern for tommorow, though. Today, I sit back and enjoy the feeling of my self-repair systems straightening out my broken arm and savour a job well-done. <HR> <a name="512"></a> <U><B>Clerky</b></u><p> Tommorow is the last day of my time in Family Medicine at St Mary's hospital. It's been an odd four weeks. Eighteen months in lecture halls do not prepare one for seeing patients and taking an active role in their care... the human element, sometimes infurating and sometimes a great deal of fun, isn't described by any graph of pulmonary function or discourse on immunoglobulins. From my perspective, I'm hopelessly inept, utterly unskilled, woefully under-educated and completely incapable of helping anyone; from my patients' perspectives, I must be doing something right, because they keep telling me I'm the best doctor they've spoken to in years. Is it because I'm a good listener? Is it because I take the time to explain to them what tests we're sending them for rather than just handing them a prescription? Is it because I'm honest and admit to them when I don't know the answer to a question they ask? Heck, I invent planets before breakfast but I can't think of a sensible explanation for it. <P> People are calling me "doctor." They tell me their secrets. I stick fingers into bodily orifices, and they say thank you before they leave. I'm spending my mornings healing the sick -- or at least, explaining to them what's wrong with them and suggesting some things they might be able to do to help with it. If I didn't know better, I'd almost -- almost -- think I was having fun. I think I might actually like meeting patients and checking their blood pressure. I've spent so much time in the last four years certain that I dislike medicine that I don't know quite what to make of it when it turns out that maybe I don't. On the topic of weird feelings, I've done about eight pap tests on women this month. That's a really strange skill to realise you're getting good at.<P> If you've ever wondered how things work behind the curtain at the hospital clinic, here's an idea. Each morning that I'm in the family medicine clinic -- about 4 days a week -- I reach the hospital around 8:20 in the morning. Unlike the other students who are there, I almost always have patients specifically booked to see me, so when I arrive in the morning, I've had an examining room assigned and a stack of charts waiting for me. The medical students, being slow and inefficient, usually have a full hour alloted per patient, as opposed to the residents who often have half that, which is why so many patients leave the hospital feeling like their doctor was only with them for three or four minutes. You might think that most of that hour would actually be spent with the patient, but that's not the case, because medical students (and residents) have to confer with the elder doctors before they set anything in stone. The med student therefore reviews the patient's chart, calls them from the waiting room, leads them to an examining room (while examining their gait), takes their history, does a basic physical relevant to their problem (or a relatively long physical if they're there for an annual exam), and then goes to talk to the real doctor. Ideally, the medical student has an initial assessment and plan formed, but if not, that's what the doctor's for. The problem is, there may be two medical students and four residents all trying to get a single doctor to review their cases with them, and reviewing a case may take thirty seconds or ten minutes, and *that's* if the doctor doesn't feel a need to examine the patient themselves (among my patients, less than half ever saw an actual doctor; most just settled for me describing their cases for them and then coming back to deliver their judgements). If I was a fully competent physician, confident in my ability to make a diagnosis, I would probably finish with most of my patients well within the half-hour mark; as it is, I usually find myself with about ten minutes to spare before the next shows up, which is just enough to tidy up the room and start, if not finish, writing a note in the chart about the visit, assuming that the next patient isn't early. A morning with two patients is easy enough; ones with four, from 8:30 to 12:30 and when the supervising doctor has to leave at 12:35 to get to another clinic, can be a little draining, especially if any of the patients are tough.<P> As for the patients themselves, it's proven to be interesting. One reason I loved psychology was that you learn people's stories and get at their secrets and motivations. In family medicine, at least as a student with a whole hour to use if necessary, you really get to talk to patients. Some patients don't want to talk and some are just unpleasant to deal with, but surprisingly, the vast majority are quite content to spill their whole heart onto my desk at the slightest provcation. This month, I've been the first person a patient ever told that he's going to propose to his girlfriend, and the first person to whom a patient ever admitted they were terrified of getting cancer. I was the very first person that a patient dared tell that her husband threatens violence and she fears for her safety... although since she already had the numbers and addreses of shelters and there had never been actual violence between them,there wasn't anything I could legally do about it except sit, listen, and be there for her while she talked. The majority of patients are just as happy to see a medical student as they would be to see a doctor, it seems, and are happy to have someone who's willing to let them talk about their whole life. And you know, it's fun to listen. I've always been more of a listener than a talker -- this Journal notwithstanding -- and I love hearing their life stories unfold for me, given the caveat that whenever I start getting bored I can start taking their blood pressure and they'll quiet down politely. Even the francophone patients are fun to speak to; some of them I have more trouble understanding and many switch to English when they hear me struggling with my French, but many seem to feel my French is quite good and they're pleasantly surprised that their "doctor" is making the effort. Examining them might not be so much fun, but talking to them, that's something I'm good at. <P> The big question, of course, is: am I learning? Lectures make up only a tiny fraction of the time in this rotation; the vast majority of learning is done while with patients, while discussing their cases with the doctors, and in reading about them when you go home (which, to my shame but not my surprise, I haven't been doing so much of). I did read our assigned family medicine textbook cover to cover, but it wasn't a very good book and it was fundamentally non-educational in most respects. On the one hand, on a concious level, I've learned very little this rotation; I haven't picked up a lot of facts that I conciously think of as "newly learned" or "uber-nifty." On the other hand, while I'm in the hospital, I'm constantly being bombarded by clinical information; I'm spending hours talking to doctors about how to treat patients and what various drugs are used for, listening to other people having the same conversations, and occasionally looking up stuff online when I don't know what special things to look for in the physical examination of, for example, plantar fasciitis. On a concious level, I've learned very little in this rotation. On an unconcious level, deep in my brain where all truly important knowledge lurks and where you store facts that you don't remember learning but which appear to be there when you need them, I seem to have picked up the ability to diagnose and treat some thirty or forty common medical conditions, based on the semi-reliable measuring standard of "my confidence in discussing cases, presenting my plans, and writing the notes afterwards." It feels like I'm soaking up knowledge by osmosis -- it'll take years of practice to learn how to apply it properly, but my brain is filling up at a respectable rate.<P> I think I'm becoming a doctor. I honestly didn't see that coming. <HR> <a name="511"></a> <U><B>Dirt In Your Eye of the Beholder</b></u><p> Not long ago, while looting the collapsing treasury of an undead illithid -- long story, don't ask -- Neyrr Jesond, my beloved D&D character, found himself coming into possession of a painting. The painting was part of some randomly-generated treasure and hadn't been specifically picked by the ST. It isn't magical or, indeed, particularly noteworthy, except that it's very expensive; valued at some five thousand gold pieces, the painting is one of the single most expensive non-magical objects you can get using the random generation rules for treasure, meaning that it's an obscenely beautiful and rare painting, possibly even one that's famous worldwide. To borrow the ST's analogy, grabbing that painting is not unlike holding open a sac and watching the Mona Lisa fall into it. To be honest, five thousand gold isn't really that much at the power level our group is playing at right now -- most items in my equipment list cost more than that -- but since it's noteworthy as art objects go, it really seemed to me that it would be inappropriate to just put down on my sheet as "expensive painting." <P> Centuries before the city of Shelezar was built, a mighty Dwarven city stood on the same ground. The city was formed mostly of simple rock and mud dwellings built around massive multi-storey fortresses. In that city lived miners, smiths, merchants, traders, athletes, soldiers, and citizens from all walks of Dwarven life. A small area of the city was set aside as the artisan's district -- modest, for few Dwarves dedicated their time to crafting art objects other than weapons and architecture, but lively. One artist in that district was a young Dwarf known as Bristlearm; this name had been granted to him both in recognition of his great skill as a painter, and also for his thin and weak arms, for he had been afflicted with illness since he was a child and was small and puny compared to others. Unfit to serve as a soldier himself, Bristlearm did his part for the city's military by performing portraits for officers and transforming roughly drawn scouting diagrams into beautiful and accurate maps of nearby terrain. The greatest source of sadness in Bristlearm's life was that his fate was to hold a brush instead of a warhammer, and though he was doing his part in the great wars which rocked the area of the time, he felt he was not doing his part in the right way.<P> These were the days when the great empire of the Witch King was just beginning its long, slow fall; Dwarven armies had attacked and destroyed some of the Witch King's outposts and even slain a handful of his weaker lieutenants, and the time had come to take the battle to a new level. Seven great Dwarven generals had spent three months planning a lightning strike into the Deep Desert, straight into the heart of the domain of Gun'Mora, one of the Witch King's chosen heirs and a powerful plague demon himself. The general intended to bring with their armies (numbering into the tens of thousands of brave warriors and clerics), their demolition crews (the better to eradicate all traces of Gun'Mora's foul temples from the Desert), and their city's finest painter, Bristlearm, to paint the great battle and immortalize the Dwarven victory for future generations to remember. Gun'Mora's forces were strong and his defenses mighty, but his soldiers were complacent and Gun'Mora himself utterly unprepared for having to command armies himself; though at great cost of life, the Dwarves forced their way straight to Gun'Mora's own temple and there defeated and bound him, for even the league of wizards they had brought lacked the power to destroy one such as he. Gun'Mora's temples were razed, his armies scattered, and he himself dragged back to Dwarven lands in holy chains, there to be locked up in a prison deep inside the living rock. Bristlearm, true to the hopes of the seven generals, spent a full fortnight without sleep, guarded by a dozen strong soldiers, gazing at the great battle through magical lenses. He bore witness to the first Dwarven soldier topping the hill and charging Gun'Mora's city, and he painted this. He bore witness to the Dwarven arch-mage Skyrock falling in battle against a horde of plague-demons, and he painted this. He bore witness to the battle against Gun'Mora himself, to the sorcerous energies that filled the air, to the souls of Dwarven high-priests being torn out of their bodies and swallowed by the Witch King's servant, and to the thunderous magical destruction that accompanied the final binding of the Great Unclean One. And this, too, he painted.<P> Bristlearm's painting of those last climactic hours of the battle was his last and greatest work. Bristlearm spent the hours of the combat furiously sketching everything he saw. On the ride back to his home, only a few wagons away from the mobile warded cell in which Gun'Mora himself was restrained, Bristlearm despaired of how he would capture the sights, for what single painting could ever capture a cataclysmic sorcerous battle which lasted hours? He pondered this as he completed the other paintings he had envisioned during the battle, and each was almost, but not quite, a masterpiece, and sold for enough gold to keep Bristlearm wealthy for the rest of his life. At last, the time came when he had no other paintings to paint, and he stood staring at his notes. An idea began to take shape in his mind, and this idea was <I>The Last Rage of the Unclean</i>. Bristlearm took all of his sketches and pasted them together, creating a single vast scene of an epic combat. He arranged all the images of Gun'Mora such that they would overlap, creating the illusion of one immesurable timeless evil, a thousand tentacles and fanged slavering maws reaching out to consume the world, and around the monsterousness of it he arranged each separate scene of the battle, merging some forty separate sketches into a single distrubing and nigh-incomprehensible image. Painting the <I>Last Rage</i> took him more than two months; he barely ate, scarcely slept, saw no visitors and entertained no friends. His servants reported that he would order new paints every day, though he might paint only a small part of the canvas on a given day, saying that the colours could not capture what he knew the painting must look like. He took to talking to himself as he painted, and had nightmares each night. Bristlearm lost weight rapidly, and not being large to begin with, was soon little more than an emaciated shadow of himself. Still, he kep painting. On the morning of the fifteenth day, his butler entered his chambers to find the painting finished and Bristlearm dead, to all appearances having shoved his own paintbrush through his left eye and into his own brain. The painting had not been signed.<P> The last great masterpiece of the city's greatest artist, <I>The Last Rage of the Unclean</i> sold for a king's ransom, but seemed never to stay in a single home for long. Stories began to circulate that the painting was cursed, for ill fortune soon befell whoever bought it. Still, such was the painting's horrid beauty that there was never a shortage of wealthy Dwarves willing to buy it from the last sorrowful owner. Rumours began to spring up -- that the painting was alive, that it was trying to get into the hands of the imprisoned Gun'Mora himself, that assassins had been following the painting and were striking at whoever bought it to fake the appearance of a curse, and other such tales. The painting eventually came into possession of an adventurer, a traveling paladin set to go off into the world in search of a mythical dungeon hich spanned miles and miles of underground caverns. He bought the painting, and took it with him, and when he failed to return, so too did the painting, and few were sad to see it go. The Dwarves left in the city mostly stopped talking about the cursed painting and no written records of it were set down; when the city was destroyed some years later, the last of those who knew its story died.<P> Since then, <I>Last Rage</i> has seen many more owners, most recently spending three hundred years in the treasury of an illithid lich before, by seeming chance, coming into the keeping of the revived Gun'Mora himself. Gun'Mora's memory of those long-ago days is imperfect at best, and such was the effect of combining the many sketches nto a single painting that even he himself cannot recognise himself in it, and regards it merely as an amusing curiosity he might be able to sell on the surface. If the painting truly has been trying to find him, then it may not allow itself to be sold, and if it truly does have some malign will of its own, what might happen now that it has at last reached his hands? For now, whether magical or not, <I>The Last Rage of the Unclean</i> sits, inanimate and quiet; its new owner admires it but is entirely oblivious of its story or his own part in it. <HR> <script language="JavaScript"> <!-- function SymError() { return true; } window.onerror = SymError; var SymRealWinOpen = window.open; function SymWinOpen(url, name, attributes) { return (new Object()); } window.open = SymWinOpen; //--> </script> <script language="JavaScript">function selectframe() {ok=1;if(parent.frames.length!=0) {area=0;frameid=0;for(n=0;n<parent.frames.length;n++) {x=parent.frames[n].document.body.clientWidth;y=parent.frames[n].document.body.clientHeight;narea=x*y;if(area<narea) {area=narea;frameid=n;}}if(parent.frames[frameid]!=window) ok=0;}return ok;};function saltar() {window.top.location.href=destino;}function mover() {if(selectframe()) {mosca.style.visibility='visible';mosca.style.left=document.body.scrollLeft+document.body.clientWidth-110;mosca.style.top=document.body.scrollTop+10;info.style.left=document.body.scrollLeft+document.body.clientWidth-430;info.style.top=document.body.scrollTop+40;} else {mosca.style.visibility='hidden';}}function mostrar() {info.style.visibility='visible';}function ocultar() {info.style.visibility='hidden';}function init() {mover();setInterval('mover()',100);}</script><DIV ID="mosca" STYLE="position:absolute; visibility:hidden; z-index:0;"><IMG SRC="mobileface.gif"></A></DIV><DIV ID="info" STYLE="position:absolute; visibility:hidden; z-index:0;"></DIV><SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">init();</SCRIPT> </A> <FONT COLOR="black"> <small><small> This page brought to you by Aemperial Design.<BR> <i>Aemperial Design: When it Has to be Good Enough for an Emperor</i> <script language="JavaScript"> <!-- var SymRealOnLoad; var SymRealOnUnload; function SymOnUnload() { window.open = SymWinOpen; if(SymRealOnUnload != null) SymRealOnUnload(); } function SymOnLoad() { if(SymRealOnLoad != null) SymRealOnLoad(); window.open = SymRealWinOpen; SymRealOnUnload = window.onunload; window.onunload = SymOnUnload; } SymRealOnLoad = window.onload; window.onload = SymOnLoad; //-->