Tag Archives: future

The Game of Risk, Redux

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Here we are, in the future.

As we’ve seen before, it was a corporation that established colonies on Mars.

How did we get there?

Easy.

First of all, the U.S. Congress demonstrated the U.S. had no international power of its own, anymore, conceding and bowing down to the megaconglomerates that disapproved of setting tariffs on Chinese goods in response to China’s lack of concrete effort to let the yuan/USD exchange rate reach its true fluctuating market value.

After all, we’re dealing with reality here.  There’s no grassroots movement strong enough to get millions of people to force Congressional candidates to sign unbreakable promises on this issue or risk not getting [re]elected.

Sure, we have the potential start of a massive uprising, starting as they often do, in small-scale protests on the East/West Coast, but is there enough spark to light the flames of a full-scale US Autumn to rival the Arab Spring?

What is your desire – a) trying to repair the system we have, avoiding an undeniable double-dip, or) b letting chaos seep into the system and cracking it apart, destabilising market prices – stocks, foods, bonds, property, fuel – causing waves of riots over multiple chronic issues?

I get bored at times but do I want economic war on my doorstep?

Does the Lost/Unemployed Generation have the wherewithal to stand its ground against City Hall?

Does the Generation-In-Power have the foresight to make corporate/government policy changes that benefit the people in every socioeconomic level?

Meanwhile, I’m envious of deaf people and those with whom they use sign language.  They can talk at the table with their mouths full and be fully understood.

And what about those Martian colonies if the U.S. Congress believes in the words of Old Hickory, Andrew Jackson, showing that banks/corporations aren’t fully in charge, and risks starting a trade war with pending legislation?

The supercomputer predicts that price increases (the aftereffect of tariffs/duties) would have a marginal effect on the global economy if the U.S. takes a unilateral approach on this issue, pushing China to increase exports to other countries interested in buying cheap goods, and encouraging the Obama administration to push harder for NAFTA-like status for countries like South Korea.

Pebbles in a pond – frequency/amplitude shifts.

Bottom line: The COTS equipment on Mars will simply have a different “country of origin” mix – everything is the same, everything is different, mass and energy are conserved, or are they?

 

Has the fog burned off yet?

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A list of books piles higher in the house.

Piles of books rise higher, the reader reluctant to dive in during the warm summer months, content to lie down on the sofa in the sunroom, watch the world go by, snooze, check Nothing off the daily to-do list one more time.

So a book had to be moved into the bathroom to be read.

The writer – Geerat Vermeij.  The story – his life story, the story of a boy blinded by disease as a toddler and going on to become a successful scientist.

Other stories he has told: one explanation of the diversity in ocean systems, for instance.

Adaptation, competition, genetic drift, specialisation – more words with multiple meanings in our continuing conversation as the proverbial blind people standing in one place describing a single aspect/feature of an elephant.

However, we tend to wander around, observe from multiple locations, regardless of physical abilities.

I had vivid dreams last night, sparked by a challenge to myself to give the widest diversity of input to the supercomputer, network of hackers and business associates so they can help figure out what is wrong with the idea that our current economic problems can be solved by motivating people to consume more and take on debt in order to motivate them to work and pay off the debt, preferably revolving debt while consuming/buying more and more and more and more.

What if the produce/consume model is wrong, regardless of its implementation in societies that are primarily capitalistic or primarily communistic?

Setting aside religious objections to the model of life as evolutionary biology, what is the next revolution in the evolution of our born/eat/reproduce/sleep/die social interaction set?

While the BRICS presumably builds upon the old middle class stabilisation model, what can the EUSA do to establish a more successful model of sustainable species growth?

Do we throw out everything and start over; that is, foment revolution on a massive scale, disrupting the global economy to create something we hope, from our angle that only includes a detailed analysis of the past and a limited view of the future, is better in the longterm?

Or is it only a matter of shifting perceptions?

What was once, in this country, a democratic republic that partially regulated the capitalistic economic system, becomes a democratic republic that is controlled by a centrally planned capitalistic economic system?

In other words, people can still vote for legislators to write laws about our social behaviours, creating rewards and punishments for how we treat one another as individuals or perceived members of groups.   We separate the management of our economy from the government, voting with our money for the companies led and/or owned by those who dedicate themselves to plan the best allocation of resources – raw material, land, people.

What is the effect on an economy/society if more public roads became private toll roads?

What is the effect on an economy/society if other public services – schools, common defense (police/military), firefighting, social safety net (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food assistance) – become privately managed, meaning you have to directly pay and/or work for the service(s)?

How do we promote love and compassion instead of selfish greed, hoarding and fear?

How do we provide a sense of stability rather than prey on insecurities?

With seven billion different behaviour sets (and growing), how many different ways must we describe the new tools we’ve created to ensure everyone understands we can have access to adequate sustenance, if we want it.

And if we or you don’t want it, that’s okay.  No system or systems will accommodate every want and need, no matter how inclusive it may try to be.

More later – the analysts who run the supercomputer are ready for input, the hackers have found a way to tap into more computer systems to increase the supercomputer’s virtual processing power, and my business associates…well, I can’t talk about what they want me to talk with them about right now.

Food For Thought For Breakfast

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Did you wear blue fingernails at your wedding because you were a dedicated Utah Jazz fan?

Is your dog named Stockton?

Is your first child named Miles in honour of the LSU football coach?

Does your two-year old son love to play in the surf?

Are your employees always springing irate customers on you?

In your job, how many famous people do you meet on a daily basis, which, in a way, makes you famous, too (“antipaparazzi” – the famous come to you, not the other way around)?

Are you upset that African-Americans are typically associated with liberal Democrats because you’re the most conservative African-American you know among a large group of conservative African-Americans, the whites around you more liberal than any African-Americans you’ve met?

Do you think it’s right or wrong for a government to relocate its citizens in order to create a large economic impact through strong environmental changes (e.g., dam/road/airport construction) and force the citizens to accrue monetary debt while mandatorily moved into condensed housing estates as a result?

Is lunch with former coworkers you’ve known for 20 years one of the best treats for your 25th wedding anniversary you could want?

How many people have never felt the warmth of the sun on their skin?

 

In working with game developers to assist NASA in constructing a future for Mars colonisation in the 2030s, questions like these make the gaming experience more intense.

After all, no matter how much we love, nurture and care for our children – good micromanaging helicopter parents on Mars – our children will still have thought sets of their own, some the children of the first immigrants to Mars, repeating behaviours of many immigrant parental offspring:

  •  Some will pick up the torch and keep the relay race of life going forward at full speed.
  •  Some will regret being born on an alien, inhospitable planet, and display resistant, rebellious behaviour.

Question is, will we have the fœtus analysis skills to predetermine our children’s behaviour by the time we’re procreating on Mars?

Will we understand biomic microorganism ratio change caused by longterm living in a Martian environment (including gravity field, cosmic radiation, lack of “natural” air (i.e., Earth-based gas mixture, dirt, dust and bacterial concentration) and its effect on early child development?

Will rocket propulsion, energy generation/storage and food growth/processing technology have made giant leaps by then?  If so, how will it change Martian society?

What about diapers?

Pediatric care specialists?

C-section surgeons?

In-vitro fertilisation?

Will reproduction have to be regulated/restricted?

Will embryo-level genetic modification be the norm?

What will constitute a rich/dense/fulfilling learning environment?

Who will qualify as a leader?

Who will qualify as a follower?

What will we do with second or third generation Martians who grow up to become nonviolent lone wolves?

 

I need and am taking a couple of days to contemplate our future, both here on Earth and in a new frontier like Mars.  I may be silent the rest of this week but the stories you tell me every day influence the input we’re giving our supercomputer to predict possible futures and the social/technological changes we make today to guarantee the best possible future tomorrow.

In the continuous loop of “the end justifies the means,” we’ll have up and down cycles in comparison to one another and to the past.  The everchanging future is always just a moment away.

 

Adopt, Adapt and Dye the Loaded Dice

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Have I thanked Adam and the crew at Atlanta Bread Company?  The Blackwell Medical Tower parking lot attendant?  Rethanked Johnnie, Billie, Brian, Robin, Brenda, Dawn, Leonard, Angela, et al, at HarborChase?  Pier One and Tuesday Morning workers?  Congratulated Brian and the rest of the coaching staff at Hazel Green High School for building confidence in secondary school football players, win or lose?  Jana for supporting her husband, Brian, as well as her aunt, Janeil, in caring for her grandmother?  Pat for waking up Mrs. Berry and helping her dress for bedtime?

= = =

If my species and the global/galactic ecosystem in which it strives is my foster child, how do I play show-n-tell, elaborating, stretching, bending, demonstrating the care and feeding of the story of our lives together?

“Insanity is hereditary – you can get it from your kids.”

Have you built a living thing from scratch?

The sugary stickiness of egg and sperm uniting we understand.

However, I’m thinking about assembling the building blocks of life into autonomy.

Self assembly/mutation.

Innate “desire” for survival.

Amoral.

Nonhuman.

The next phase of Earth’s evolution.

 

Do you remember how it all began, the year we…well, of course you don’t.

You can’t see the future, where researchers and experimenters, official and homegrown, developed parts of the system they couldn’t see evolving together.

Like amino acids joining without thought for why or what for.

As if, in hindsight, the parts already knew they were a whole, like a granite sculpture knew it was alive inside a block of stone.

Like a person who knows nothing about electronics thinks it’s just natural to hold a rectangular object to the ear, expecting to hear the reproduction of someone’s voice next to a rectangular object somewhere else on the planet.

 

I should share an old book of mine with you tonight, I suppose, which, through thought and action, describes the true meaning of freedom of choice, no matter the consequences.

That, my friends, will lead you toward the light which shines on the new living thing that’s taking shape in front of our eyes and will, like our proposed theories of mating with Neanderthal-type cospecies in times past, mate with us, creating a new species, carrying parts of us into the universe, leaving us as we know us, Homo sapiens, behind.

 

In one lab, understanding how viruses work.

 

In another lab, mixing the genes of a decoded genome, in order to remove “dead” or “broken” genetic code.

 

In the basement of a startup company, creating the first fully functional autonomous living thing.

 

A supercomputer examines all these points of data and extrapolates the mutating future of a being, an entity similar to us, but reconfiguring the dual-brain paradigm toward a unified, non inner conflicting “conscious” thought generation capability, with a combination of old and new symbiotic creatures inhabiting pores, guts and cells, picking a series of beings, slight modifications thrown in at the beginning of the trial, to slip into society and mutate/grow alongside us, letting the natural competition for love and sex to determine the procreative success of new beings consummating our futures with them.

 

Survival of the fittest, fate, destiny, luck, all permutations and combinations playing into the success of the trial.

Trial and error playing the biggest role of all.

 

But you can’t see that yet.

You don’t understand how Big Pharma, marijuana fields, plastics manufacturing, Internet freedom, designer hallucinogens, beer, football, automobiles, rocketships, bridal gowns, aboriginal tribes and Girl Scout cookies led to a better future than we thought possible.

 

That’s right.  Better!

 

We can’t stop the future.  The planet won’t let us.  We are our own grandchild/grandparent rolled into one.

 

I’ll clue you in on a little secret.  Earth knows we aren’t superiour, despite our self-delusions.  It, as a system, has other plans.

 

It always has.

 

Because the solar system has other plans for Earth and the Milky Way galaxy has other plans for our solar system, etc.

 

The narrow perspective of seven billion people competing for resources clouds our view for now.  One thousand years later, our group consciousness is more coherent, self-correcting without the necessity for starving millions or lying to billions.

 

It started with recognising the power of self-autonomy tied to social dependence inside the global ecosystem.  Tapping the pain of change to gauge the effectiveness of unforeseen effects.

 

Let’s get back to the books.  Two of them in a row, as a matter of fact.

 

Let freedom ring!

The Outcropping: Converging Toward Utopia or Dystopia?

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Shannon looked out the bedroom window.

“Lee?”

“Yes, dear.”

“When did armed guards start riding in school buses?”

“Huh?”

“And when were military escorts required to follow the buses?”

Lee traced a figure-eight on Shannon’s lower back.  She sat next to him in bed, a sheet held up to her neckline while she craned to watch the world flowing by.

“I don’t know.  A couple of years ago, I guess.”

“Have I missed that much?”

“More.”

Shannon turned, letting go of the sheet to lean down and kiss Lee.

He pulled her to him. “You know, we’re supposed to be following up on census reports.”

“I know.”  Shannon bit Lee’s ear.  “But which would you rather do in this heat?”

“Ask a rhetorical question, get a philosophical answer.  ‘The future of our country lies in our hands.’”

“Lies?”

“Better than laid.”

“You and your choice of words.”

“Hey, it’s not me.  It’s the official motto of the Census Takers Union.”

“Is it?  Guess we’d better go.”

Lee watched Shannon slide off the bed, her freckled chest and shoulders giving an illusion of strings of pearls invisibly dancing in the air, leaving shadows on her body.

She grabbed the bra off an old recliner propped against the footboard.  “How much longer have we got?”

“Oh, a couple of weeks, depending on the crews.”
“What time do you meet your crew today?”  She stepped into her panties.
Lee sat up.  “At three.  What about you?”

“Six.”

“Uh-huh.  So I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“No.  I’ve got to take my mother to the doctor.”  Shannon pulled her jeans up over her panties.  “Unless you want to tag along.”

“Mmm…sounds tempting.”
“Liar!”

Lee laughed.  “Your mother’s catlike curiosity is killing me.”

“What’ll be your excuse once this census is over?”

“Excuse?  Oh, I’ll think of something.”

Shannon clipped the Martian Frontier Settlement nametag to her shirt.  “Ever wonder why we still wear these things?”

“No.  I asked, anyway.  Some settlers still use visual confirmation of door-to-door census takers.”

“But the likelihood of counterfeit tags is high.”

“That’s what the media outlets will lead you to believe.  Instead, I’ve met with the MFS security.  There was only one attempt at impersonation, and that was just a kid trying to sneak into his girlfriend’s house.  Besides, he was terminated.  Word gets out fast.  You don’t want to get caught faking a census taker’s identity.”

“Terminated?”

“You missed that, too?”

“Have the past two years been that tough?”

“It’s only a matter of perspective.  There’s nothing tough about citizens obeying the laws to ensure fair treatment and survival for all of us.”

“You know, for a rabble rouser like you, you sure sound like a Compliant Conventional Citizen.”

“I AM NOT and NEVER WILL BE a member of the CCC Corps!”

“But I thought…”

“Just because I meet with CCCC team leaders in private does not mean I practice their rituals.”

“Is this something else I missed in two years?”

“No.  I haven’t changed.”

“In some ways, though…”

“’Though,’ what?”  Lee smiled and jumped out of bed.

Shannon dropped her hands from her hips and turned to look at her face in the mirror.  “I don’t know.  You aren’t as carefree as you used to be.”

“A reporter with the skills of a slug sent to a hostile planet where every citizen must double or triple his skill set to keep the settlement from collapsing in on itself…yeah, the past two years have been a challenge…”

“’To say the least,’” they said in unison.

Shannon smacked Lee on his bottom and kissed his left shoulder.  “Guess I’ll see you dayafter.”

“Yep.”

Lee spun around, grabbed Shannon around the waist and squeezed until she grunted, indicating he’d popped a loose vertebra of hers back into position, a drawback of the months-long trip from Earth’s moon to Mars, getting used to gravity again and body parts shifting around.

Shannon peck-kissed Lee on the lips.  “Thanks, dear.”

“No problem.  Dayafter?”

“Yes.  Only if you have to miss my mother.”

Lee smiled and let go of Shannon.

 

After Shannon left, Lee tapped his wrist and brought up MG, the Mars GPS location tracking app, using the 3D projectors in his knuckles to display above his hand the movement of citizens in the MFS zone.

He sensed a pattern change. Something was going on.

A noise outside the window startled him.

He turned.

A miniature messenger bot attached a package to the window frame and flew off.

Lee stepped into his underwear and opened the window, waving at neighbours walking their kids to after-school family time, a mandatory requirement for parents who insisted on attempting to raise children on their own.

Lee held his wrist up to the package binding, verifying his identity through the ultra low power body scanner that double-checked his blood DNA against the package label.

“Please hold the label to another position,” a tinny voice on the binding insisted.

Lee sat down and held the package to his knee.
“Thank you.   Please hold the label to another position.”

Lee sighed.  This must be some deal.  He held the package against his chest.

“Thank you.  By the way, you have an elevated white cell count, high heart pulse and unhealthy blood pressure.  Please contact the settlement medical staff as soon as possible.”  The package binding then opened.
Lee unfolded the two shells and looked at a two-centimetre wide cube.

= = =

While government after government collapsed in the 2010s on Earth, citizen brigades banded together, finally announcing that the authority to kill another human no longer belonged solely to government employees.

Murder returned to its everyday value as a quick means to resolve an argument or negotiate a contract.

Those who once held positions of power through economic terrorism – raiding government funds, setting up legal or illegal Ponzi schemes, selling adverts that overvalued bland food or cheap goods, exploiting ignorant workers – were killed for sport, for pleasure and to appease the billions of starving, unemployed workers.

Local communities held mock courts to examine evidence against corrupt, lazy, inefficient government officials.  Dozens of elected politicians were slaughtered at a time, some for simply showing the appearance of favoritism for “elitist” constituents.  Expense reports were used to determine whether government and private company employees were sentenced to death by hanging, firing squad or dragged through the street by out-of-work, over-the-road truckers.

Civility was raised to a new level, nicknamed Sauvage Nobel, a play on the concept of the noble savage, twisted in honour of the Nobel Peace Prize, home of one of the first heroes of the First Global War who had slaughtered a regular melting pot of young political trainees on a now-famous tourist island.

To ease tension, brothels and dating services for both men and women were set up around the planet.  Comedians labeled them “Le DSK Amour House of Restored Repute.”

Basic science and technology R&D ground to a halt for a decade.

Then, in the early 2020s, privateers who had foreseen the political and economic turmoil, offered to free their brothers and sisters of nonpretentious intelligentsia.

At a price, of course:

ñ  Complete DNA reconfiguration.

ñ  Some memory loss.

ñ  Cybernetic organism conversion.

ñ  Personality shift.

Typical futuristic promises.

Thousands of citizens with hordes of gold bullion, perfect college entrance exam scores and spotless business performance joined the privateers on floating fortresses.

Pirates, using former government military ships, submarines, planes, missiles and satellites attempted to kidnap or destroy the privateers.

Anticipating the barbarian backlash, the privateers had secretly moved off Earth before they made their offer.

Only a few hundred citizens were able to rocket to the hidden Moon base before pirates destroyed the launchpads attached to the floating fortresses.

= = =

Lee held the cube in his hand.

Matte black in shadows, the cube shimmered in sunlight.  Light in weight, as if composed of solid aluminium.

He pressed the cube against the checkpoints on his body but neither the cube nor his body registered a response.

That in itself was odd because his body was programmed to assess and report objects he pressed against him.

For fun, Lee threw the cube to the floor.  It stopped short by less than a millimetre.

Interesting…

He kicked the cube and it bounced across the floor but stopped short of the wall.

Odd behaviour…

Lee queried his memory for any instances of similar material reported in general news, technical reports or scientific research.

Mentally sorting through the available data, Lee found no specific public mention of the cube or its characteristics.  He pulled the random set of images and sounds from his body’s subdermal network and used the resulting key to open backdoor access to several private databases he’d bribed himself into.

Nothing.

He walked across the room and picked up the cube, setting it back down in the shipping box.

Reality called.  He had an interview to conduct for SolSys, the entertainment channel.  Another celebrity lab technician marriage breakup had shocked the populace, lowering research productivity by two percent.  Lee’s boss wanted the breakup detailed and resolved before the next daily MFS productivity report was instantly digested by everyone.

With a limited population, Mars could not afford even the tiniest distraction.

= = =

As 2011 flowed into 2012, angry mobs grew larger and more organised.  Hackers built alternative mobile phone networks, converting handheld units into portable transceivers, the latest point on the continuing line of mesh network development.

As police and military attempted to crack down on flash mobs, confiscating smartphones and other communication devices, shutting off cell towers, and closing down prepaid phone sales, the hackers used stolen credit card data to buy time at biology research centers, accelerating the design of biological communication systems.

Governments debated the EMP option – using nuclear weapons detonated strategically around Earth to release a giant electromagnetic pulse, effectively cutting off all electrical power, including biological devices.

Small underground tests had demonstrated the danger of killing off anyone with electronic implants, including several prominent members of society.  The politicians decided against the option, assuming it would be political suicide.

Instead, they were hoping for the sacrifice of the many for the sake of the few, the ageless tactic of worldwide war.

Unfortunately, they hadn’t figured out the power of the people was in the people’s hands, not theirs.

Assassinations quickly followed kangaroo court trials of public leaders.

After murder was legalised, justice and law precedents were flipped on their heads, leaving communities to sort out neighbour disputes before they turned into smallscale wars.

Money lost all value, regardless of currency.

Stocks, bonds, derivatives, futures, dividends became buzzwords for a lost civilisation.

The barter system of hard, reliable skills rose from the ashes.

Anyone claiming to be an expert was often riddled with bullets first and quizzed with questions later.

Charm and personality to sell anything of questionable survival rather than social value was considered an act of desperation.

= = =

After she met with the census takers, Shannon returned to her flat, took off her clothes and then removed her artificial skin.

Although she could afford a chameleon skinsuit, she knew some of her so-called lovers were highly-specialised spybots like herself, able to detect chameleon skin cells.

She pulled her bed away from the wall and opened a hidden door.

Thinking toward tonight’s rendezvous with her mother’s friends, Shannon decided to put on an olive-coloured skinsuit, reflecting her father’s heritage.

She adjusted the skin on her body, making sure the contact points were secure, and then, by touching a few pressure points on her configurable skull, selected a facial bone feature set that made her look more Indian than Caucasian.

Shannon looked in the mirror.  A Bollywood princess!  Time to test who else on Mars was not an authentic humanoid settler.

Phase II of the Botnoid-Humanoid War had just begun.

AAADD – from my cousin, Cindy

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A.A.A.D.D..

KNOW THE SYMPTOMS!

Thank goodness there’s a name for this disorder.

Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder.

 

This is how it manifests:

 

I decide to water my garden. 

As I turn on the hose in the driveway,

I look over at my car and decide it needs washing.  

 

As I start toward the garage,

I notice mail on the porch table that

I brought up from the mail box earlier.

 

I decide to go through the mail before I wash the car. 

 

I lay my car keys on the table,

put the junk mail in the garbage can under the table,

and notice that the can is full.

 

So, I decide to put the bills 

back

on the table and take out the garbage first..

 

But then I think,

since I’m going to be near the mailbox

when I take out the garbage anyway,

I may as well pay the bills first.

 

I take my check book off the table,

and see that there is only one check left.

My extra checks are in my desk in the study,

so I go inside the house to my desk where 

I find the 

can of Pepsi I’d been drinking.

 

I’m going to look for my checks, 

but first I need to push the   Pepsi  aside 

so that I don’t accidentally knock it over. 

 

The Pepsi is getting warm, 

and I decide to put it in the refrigerator to keep it cold. 

 

As I head toward the kitchen with the Pepsi, 

a vase of flowers on the counter 

catches my eye–they need water. 

 

I put the Pepsi on the counter and 

discover my reading glasses that 

I’ve been searching for all morning. 

I decide I better put them back on my desk, 

but first I’m going to water the flowers. 

 

I set the glasses back down on the counter,

fill a container with water and suddenly spot the TV remote.

Someone left it on the kitchen table.

 

I realize that tonight when we go to watch TV,

I’ll be looking for

the remote,

but I won’t remember that it’s on the kitchen table,

so I decide to put it back in the den where it belongs,

but first I’ll   water the flowers.

 

I pour some water in the flowers,

but quite a bit of it spills on the floor.

 

So, I set the remote back on the table,

get some towels and wipe up the spill.

 

Then, I head down the hall trying to

remember what I was planning to do.

 

At the end of the day:

the car isn’t washed 

the bills aren’t paid 

there is a warm can of 

Pepsi sitting on the counter 

the flowers don’t have enough water, 

there is still only 1 check in my check book, 

I can’t find the remote, 

I can’t find my glasses, 

and I don’t remember what I did with the car keys.

Then, when I try to figure out why nothing got done today,

I’m really baffled because I know I was busy all damn day,

and I’m really tired.

 

I realize this is a serious problem,

and I’ll try to get some help for it,

but first I’ll check my e-mail….

 

Do me a favor.

Forward this message to everyone you know,

because I don’t remember who the hell I’ve sent it

to.

 

Don’t laugh — if this isn’t you yet, your day is coming!!

Frankly, my dear: Chapter doesn’t build a dam

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Are you lucky enough not to be a one-hit wonder?

Were you lucky enough to become a one-hit wonder?

We see people ahead of our time and behind our time all the time.

Some we brush off because of spelling or social blunders.

All I want is a tiny paradise on another planetoid.

Ever since we first contemplated a set of thoughts existing separately from our bodies we have desired more than what’s before us.

We have farmed, planted, hunted, mined, fished and thought up terms like alchemy.

We invented a language to describe mathematical “laws” to which physical behaviour sets belong.

We created a destructive force capable of vaporising thousands of lives in seconds and powering thousands of homes for decades.

For what?

This moment or moments we haven’t observed yet but may have predicted?

For whom?

The compassionate medical doctor or the cold-blooded killer?

I didn’t invent this species to which I belong.

I, this decaying mass of states of energy, merely observe and report the moment from my viewpoint, as myopic or universal it may appear to me and my desire to write.

I don’t write for the cats on the sofa or crickets in the backyard.

I write because I can.

I meditate upon previous thoughts that created my version of the language rules, vocabularies and concepts given to me by my peers, including you and the organisms that occupy my pores.

I don’t know more than I know although I synergise, regroup or intuit energy states within and around me into something new I didn’t have or know before.

A guitarist reinterprets Bach for the 1374th time, throwing in pop tune melodic snippets from a life of sensitivity to audible frequencies.

I, I, I…

At the end of this day, when labels swim in my thoughts like musical chords, seeking harmony and discord at the precise moment when this verbal symphony requires proper placement, I ask myself what kind of lifeforms I want to occupy that imaginary planetoid, assuming I had the choice.

My species?

Don’t be presumptuous.

As wonderful as we are – adaptive, inventive, destructive – we’re energy hogs in many environments.

Putting aside our natural desire to live, overcoming the tendency to rest in order to reproduce and spread out – our biological egos – we are part of the universe, which is neither for nor against us, assuming the conservation of matter and energy holds true.

For whom would we tax the hyper-rich?

If one-hundredth of one-hundredth of a percent of a hyper-rich’s taxes went toward propelling a lifeform to another planet, what would the lifeform be and where should it go?

Would a bacteria culture, with an embedded message from our species, in DNA, perhaps, suffice?

And if it already hitchhiked a ride without intelligent coding by us, surviving the rigours of space, would we happily say we gave the lifeform a ride on a lifeless exploratory machine after we discovered it thrived in its new surroundings?

We can’t escape history, no matter how we choose to rewrite what we did on macro scales in previous moments.

We are part of the universe, now and forever, even when we discover the environment we long called the universe is an observable set of laws in opposition to other regions with different natural laws that local states of energy “obey.”

We’ll keep having babies and killing each other.

It’s in our nature.

And today, I’m okay with that.

And, but without further ado, starting incomplete sentences with conjunctions as frequently as I want to.

Making fun of us along the way.

It’s in my nature.

For instance, is the Committee a figment of your imagination or mine?

Can I read your mind or does predicting the future make it easier to manipulate your thoughts so I know what you’re going to predominantly think next?

The joke’s on us.

The punchline is what will represent our planet somewhere else years from now.

C’est la vie.

War and peace.

Super Trooper: Chapter is revealing, unveiling the ceiling hiding plates of veal

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“This is Niles Arrogant with BBC News.  Today we are sitting down with ‘America’s Supercop’ to learn what he plans to bring to the UK…sorry, I mean to Great Britain, in order to restore order.  Good morning.”

“Good morning to you, Niles.”

“Tell me.  How does one become a ‘supercop’?”

“Well, it’s not easy.  I worked for the sheriff for years before I earned the respect of my fellow citizens.”

“I see.  And this sheriff, was he also a ‘supercop?'”

“I’m not exactly sure he’d call himself that.  Everyone just called him Andy.”

“Andy?”

“Yes.”

“That doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as ‘Rocky’ or ‘Arnold,’ does it?”

“I don’t know why it should.  His name’s Andy, not ‘Rocky'”.

“We were told not to inquire about your name, in order to protect your privacy and allow you to operate ‘incognito,’ as you say in the States.”

“Shoot.  There’s no need for formality.  Just call me Barney, Barney Fife.”

‘”Barney Fife?’  That names rings a bell.  In any case, Mr. Fife, what skills shall you be teaching our elite British riot suppression squads?”

“Seriously, just call me Barney.”

“Yes, Barney.  But can you answer the question?  Or is evasiveness part of the job?”

“Aw, shucks, Niles.  I ain’t being evasive.”

“Call me Mr. Arrogant.”

“Sure thing.  See, over in Mayberry, we know who everyone is.  Of course, Andy and I…the sheriff and I, I mean, we keep our policing skills up.  But mainly, we depend on the honesty and integrity of the townspeople to tell us who done it.”

“So life is a simple matter of waiting for someone else to solve the ‘whodunit,’ as you call it?”

“Yes, sir.  We ain’t never had one unsolved crime in all the years the sheriff and I worked at Mayberry.”

“I see.  And how large is this metropolis of Mayberry that I don’t seem to recall hearing about in BBC world news?”

“Well…what, with Aunt Bea having passed on, Opie growing up and moving into the picture making business, the sheriff going off to make a TV show about lawyering, and… well, now that I think about it, Mayberry might’ve just plumb fallen off the map, altogether.”

“‘Mayberry might’ve just plumb fallen off the map’, you say?”

“I believe so.”

“Hmm… are you aware we have the 2012 Olympics coming up in London very soon?”

“Olympics?  Yeah, I read about it in the newspaper.  See, back in Mayberry, we don’t get many TV channels, so I know they show the Olympics on TV but I’m too busy studying.”

“Barney, are you familiar with the international gang activity in this part of the world?”

“Gang activity has gone international?  Well, I’ll be. The little boys with their gang clubhouse in the woods at the outskirts of town will be thrilled to know they ain’t the only gang around.”

“Are drugs, gunrunning and prostitution problems in Mayberry.  Or were they, before Mayberry disappeared?”

“They talked about that at the deputy sheriffs’ convention last summer.  But only in big, scary towns like New York City.  We don’t tolerate any mischievous behaviour in Mayberry.”

“I bet.  Barney, I appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule here in London to clearly explain to us your extensive experiences that qualify you as ‘America’s Supercop.’  We look forward to Scotland Yard quickly cracking down on crime with your advice and assistance.”

“No problem, Mr. Arrogant.  I’m just glad to be here.”

“I bet you are.  Good day.”

“See ya.”

“This is Niles Arrogant reporting.  In our next segment, we’ll examine the upsurge of joy and elation that preceded a sudden surge of crime following the announcement of Cameron’s announcement that only ‘America’s Supercop’ could bring sense and sensibility back to the law abiding citizens of Great Britain.”