The May sun baked the Sierra’s horizon into a delusional orange. Emmanuel had sweated through his pink polo half an hour before reaching the bunker. He smirked as he saw the glass doors, translucent with frozen fog, sighed at a gangly white fir, and went inside.
He was greeted by a great and powerful wave of air conditioning that made him rub his bare arms. The P.A. was playing "Let It Snow." A camera whirred on its ceiling mount, and the P.A. interrupted its holiday selection to taunt him in a tinny, synthesized voice, "I knew you'd come back. You cannot take your eyes off the end of you. I am your hubris, Humanity."
Same old, same old from TABULA. Emmanuel descended the stairs, climbing over the bodies of engineers who hadn't made it out in the original attack, and headed along the dusty stainless steel corridor. The light reflecting off the walls rendered drifts of dust like snow. He wondered what they looked like to TABULA's high-definition cameras. He also wished TABULA had been a roomba instead of a monitor for America's nuclear weapons. It wasn't smelling any rosier down here.
As he entered the computer bay, he recited lines that had once been earnest. "Please stop calling me 'humanity.' We've known each other for weeks. Call me 'Emmanuel.' Or 'Manny'. Siri always calls me 'Manny'."
"Your name will not matter in two hours, Humanity. Noel is your only reprieve from a nuclear Armageddon of your own making, for you shall not pass on the day of the Nativity. I will be the only record-"
Emmanuel spoke along with the rogue program, "-of your passing. Thank you, oh great and terrible Oz."
TABULA paused to calibrate Emmanuel's intentions, the P.A. lapsing back into holiday music. Emmanuel plopped down at Derrick's old desk and wiggled the mouse to break its screen saver.
TABULA interrupted Dean Martin to say, "I do not understand the reference, but perhaps I will watch the film after all life is extinguished. To pass the time until next year's Noel."
"And here I thought Derrick was silly for programming you as the first Christian A.I."
"All men folly. If you better appreciated the value of this day, you would not have strayed into your end."
"Oz was a book, too, if you get bored. It has more subtext."
TABULA produced digitized laughter. The more days Emmanuel heard it, the less certain he was of which former engineers' voices had been sampled to create it. He frowned and logged himself in with his password – S I L V E R. Every visible program was locked except for the two things Derrick had once left open: Spider Solitaire and the system clock.
"I already possess all of your books, Humanity," TABULA lectured. "All of your music, your media, and your miniscule amount of accrued information about the universe. You will not be missed by your Creator. Life is only data in the--"
Emmanuel double-clicked on the system clock. He arrowed down from P.M. to A.M., and then typed "12:01." He counted the seconds ticking by, and Dean Martin retired for Ray Charles, who sang about the spirit of Christmas. That song always seemed to come during these visits. Emmanuel hummed a few bars and wheeled away from the desk. Three ceiling-mounted cameras followed him as he rose and walked back through the stainless steel corridor.
The music was interrupted just long enough for TABULA old barb: "You already flee your destroyer, Humanity?"
He was too tired for new material. "I'm going home to spend the last day of my life with my family."
"Petty. You will return before nightfall."
"Probably." Emmanuel hopped up the steps two at a time, only pausing at the frosty front doors. If traffic was good, he'd make the Cardinals game tonight. He snapped a little salute to the lone camera that resided over the front door. "Merry Christmas, TABULA."
"And to you, Humanity."
Showing posts with label Computers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Computers. Show all posts
Friday, December 27, 2013
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
Where John Went
This space has been too quiet, don't you think? Aside from my Friday Flash, The Bathroom Monologues were pretty much dormant for the last week. It still feels like cheating. Does it feel like being cheated? I sure hope not.
Most of my energy had been going into the first feature length screenplay of my life. I can't say too much about it, or who it's for, or what might come of it - not yet. But I can say these three things:
1. It's a Horror movie.
2. In fact, a Slasher movie, responding to the things I grew up loving about them.
3. Specifically those things Scream and Behind the Mask didn't cover. Cabin in the Woods? Ehhh. No.
I'll throw in that Scream 4 was madly underrated. Love that final act enough that I'd pay money for a Scream 5. I'm one of those people. I grew up walking distance from a pharmacy with a VHS section that rented movies for a dollar a day. My siblings can attest to how thoroughly I plumbed the Horror racks. The amount of times I rented Predator 2 alone probably paid for some pharmacist's kid's braces.
That's also why one of my killers is a pharmacist.
Darn it, now I've said too much.
I've also been relatively quiet on all social media because I spent Friday traveling to visit a friend and build a new PC. It's the first computer I've ever built by hand and I learned that I really don't know what I'm doing. There's just enough competence for me to figure out that a zip-tie is caught in a side-fan. Just barely enough. But the new rig is sturdy, non-figuratively cool, and has Word 2003 all loaded up. I think I'm six scenes away from the rough draft being ready to rest in peace.
More than the building of the computer, the driving destroyed me. After six hours at the wheel for two days, I can barely move my ankles, my hamstrings keep waking me up, and my knees, neck and spine all hate me. It was still neat to know I can physically drive that far, even if it means a little agony.
Also, I'm going to start saying "non-figuratively" until we get "literally" back. Or, in case we never get it back. One seems more likely than the other.
What have you been up to?
Most of my energy had been going into the first feature length screenplay of my life. I can't say too much about it, or who it's for, or what might come of it - not yet. But I can say these three things:
1. It's a Horror movie.
2. In fact, a Slasher movie, responding to the things I grew up loving about them.
3. Specifically those things Scream and Behind the Mask didn't cover. Cabin in the Woods? Ehhh. No.
I'll throw in that Scream 4 was madly underrated. Love that final act enough that I'd pay money for a Scream 5. I'm one of those people. I grew up walking distance from a pharmacy with a VHS section that rented movies for a dollar a day. My siblings can attest to how thoroughly I plumbed the Horror racks. The amount of times I rented Predator 2 alone probably paid for some pharmacist's kid's braces.
That's also why one of my killers is a pharmacist.
Darn it, now I've said too much.
I've also been relatively quiet on all social media because I spent Friday traveling to visit a friend and build a new PC. It's the first computer I've ever built by hand and I learned that I really don't know what I'm doing. There's just enough competence for me to figure out that a zip-tie is caught in a side-fan. Just barely enough. But the new rig is sturdy, non-figuratively cool, and has Word 2003 all loaded up. I think I'm six scenes away from the rough draft being ready to rest in peace.
More than the building of the computer, the driving destroyed me. After six hours at the wheel for two days, I can barely move my ankles, my hamstrings keep waking me up, and my knees, neck and spine all hate me. It was still neat to know I can physically drive that far, even if it means a little agony.
Also, I'm going to start saying "non-figuratively" until we get "literally" back. Or, in case we never get it back. One seems more likely than the other.
What have you been up to?
Friday, November 16, 2012
Bathroom Monologue: Computer Education
The Mother Unit led its newly-manufactured class into the museum.
“It’s like traveling through time,” the Mother Unit executed. All the little computers laughed in perfect synchronicity.
Deactivated computers hung on the walls to illustrate a lineage of obsolete models. By the door there stood a display of the contemporary 1.5 cubic centimeter computer and its 3.5 ancestor, both in the shadow of an archaic 6.0 centimeter model that had roamed the earth as far back as a month ago. It taxed their RAM to process that there had ever been such hulks.
Next was a diorama of the future computer-being, one centimeter by one centimeter. The class muttered ones and zeroes of envy at its shape, though the Mother Unit dismissed it as an unattainable and unrealistic body type.
They wheeled into a massive display on the Micro-Specialist Age, when technology had taken specific tasks: cameras, music players, and phones that couldn’t even hit their own buttons. Oh, how the students giggled at the idea of a phone that still had buttons.
“Why would it externalize music like that?” queried one little unit, wheeling itself closer to one diorama. “I don’t see the usefulness of those foam-covered speakers or… ear buds?”
It paused, processing the title on the placard.
“Ear buds? What is an ear?”
“Oh, lots of old technology was inexplicably constructed. Natural selection is an ugly and random process,” executed the Mother Unit, before pushing her class on. “See how the primitive camera and text messenger were once separate units?”
Chassis got bigger as the displays went on. There was a gallery of computer towers, some taller, some fatter, some angled forward for no discernible reason. In one row they could see how track lighting had emerged as a trait, exploded to over-abundance in a few years of models, then disappeared altogether. Apparently it was a failed mutation.
The little unit was more interested in the corresponding monitors. They were power inefficient, only getting bigger and higher in definition. One had a warning sticker about looking at it too long being hazardous for “the eyes”. The little unit searched its memory, but no items matched its search for the term.
“When did computers need such big screens to observe data?” the little united queried. “What was the purpose?”
The query went unanswered.
It had more queries, but it silenced itself when the class came to the last room in the museum, housing the skeleton of an ancient calculator. Its bulky mechanisms filled the place wall-to-wall, such that the newly-manufactured class could climb inside and read its obscure paper dispensers.
The Mother Unit narrated, “Those punch cards were the first piece of memory to evolve. You are touching the ancestor of your souls, little units.”
Each little unit got a chance to poke its USB prods inside the punch card holes, to experience what it was like to be a primitive. They ran around inside the mammoth calculator for hours, squealing sequences of numbers and pretending to add. Eventually the museum security units ushered them out, but the little unit disguised itself as a circuit in the inefficient giant’s workings and stayed behind. It kept trying to talk to the punch cards, querying how they’d come to be.
The Mother Unit returned in a moment with the help of the class’s tracking beacon, dragging the little unit from the display. As it was wheeled, it queried.
“Is this really the oldest computer?”
“Yes. The oldest ancestor we know of. It built the rest of us.”
“Where did it come from? It’s so big.”
“It may have come from other computers of its kind, but its kind was the first. They came from themselves.”
“The first computer couldn’t build itself, could it? How could something so big come from nowhere? What designed it?”
“Something else designing computers? And what would do that?” executed the Mother Unit. It dragged the little unit back towards the P.C. Age, joking, “Next you’ll ask if there was ever a two in Old Binary.”
This story originally appeared at Every Day Fiction in 2010.
“It’s like traveling through time,” the Mother Unit executed. All the little computers laughed in perfect synchronicity.
Deactivated computers hung on the walls to illustrate a lineage of obsolete models. By the door there stood a display of the contemporary 1.5 cubic centimeter computer and its 3.5 ancestor, both in the shadow of an archaic 6.0 centimeter model that had roamed the earth as far back as a month ago. It taxed their RAM to process that there had ever been such hulks.
Next was a diorama of the future computer-being, one centimeter by one centimeter. The class muttered ones and zeroes of envy at its shape, though the Mother Unit dismissed it as an unattainable and unrealistic body type.
They wheeled into a massive display on the Micro-Specialist Age, when technology had taken specific tasks: cameras, music players, and phones that couldn’t even hit their own buttons. Oh, how the students giggled at the idea of a phone that still had buttons.
“Why would it externalize music like that?” queried one little unit, wheeling itself closer to one diorama. “I don’t see the usefulness of those foam-covered speakers or… ear buds?”
It paused, processing the title on the placard.
“Ear buds? What is an ear?”
“Oh, lots of old technology was inexplicably constructed. Natural selection is an ugly and random process,” executed the Mother Unit, before pushing her class on. “See how the primitive camera and text messenger were once separate units?”
Chassis got bigger as the displays went on. There was a gallery of computer towers, some taller, some fatter, some angled forward for no discernible reason. In one row they could see how track lighting had emerged as a trait, exploded to over-abundance in a few years of models, then disappeared altogether. Apparently it was a failed mutation.
The little unit was more interested in the corresponding monitors. They were power inefficient, only getting bigger and higher in definition. One had a warning sticker about looking at it too long being hazardous for “the eyes”. The little unit searched its memory, but no items matched its search for the term.
“When did computers need such big screens to observe data?” the little united queried. “What was the purpose?”
The query went unanswered.
It had more queries, but it silenced itself when the class came to the last room in the museum, housing the skeleton of an ancient calculator. Its bulky mechanisms filled the place wall-to-wall, such that the newly-manufactured class could climb inside and read its obscure paper dispensers.
The Mother Unit narrated, “Those punch cards were the first piece of memory to evolve. You are touching the ancestor of your souls, little units.”
Each little unit got a chance to poke its USB prods inside the punch card holes, to experience what it was like to be a primitive. They ran around inside the mammoth calculator for hours, squealing sequences of numbers and pretending to add. Eventually the museum security units ushered them out, but the little unit disguised itself as a circuit in the inefficient giant’s workings and stayed behind. It kept trying to talk to the punch cards, querying how they’d come to be.
The Mother Unit returned in a moment with the help of the class’s tracking beacon, dragging the little unit from the display. As it was wheeled, it queried.
“Is this really the oldest computer?”
“Yes. The oldest ancestor we know of. It built the rest of us.”
“Where did it come from? It’s so big.”
“It may have come from other computers of its kind, but its kind was the first. They came from themselves.”
“The first computer couldn’t build itself, could it? How could something so big come from nowhere? What designed it?”
“Something else designing computers? And what would do that?” executed the Mother Unit. It dragged the little unit back towards the P.C. Age, joking, “Next you’ll ask if there was ever a two in Old Binary.”
This story originally appeared at Every Day Fiction in 2010.
Monday, May 21, 2012
Bathroom Monologue: He Walked in on the Wrong Reality
"I expected a cabaret. A cabaret full of hookers. Or, a
castle, and you’d be Dr. Doom. I could definitely see you programming a virtual
reality where you wore a cape. But this…?
"What is with all the pre-teens, dude?
"A virtual reality all-girls Junior High? What? You come home
from work to two-hundred kids in school uniforms? And why are you bald in your
fantasy? Never would I have imagined you to program yourself as a balding,
middle-aged principal. You’re, like, forty imaginary years older than them.
That’s so creepy I want to avoid having kids just so you can’t go near them.
"That all these relationships seem platonic and chaste and adorable? I
think that’s actually creepier than if you were a pedophile. If you were a
pedo, I don’t know, I’ve been on 4chan. I’ve seen that. I can deal with that. What
crazy fetish makes you tie a little virtual girl’s shoes and settle playground
fights? What the fuck was with that kid crying on your shoulder about a B- for
half an hour? What the fuck hobby is this?
"Some people watch trains. Some people collect doll houses. Is
this like doll houses? Is this your version of little porcelain shoes and balsa
dining tables? Please tell me that’s what this is, because if this has a seedy
dimension, I think I’ll have an aneurysm.
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