There’s nothing like being in a sexy mood, alone at home with my wife on a Saturday morning, when two ladies carrying Watchtower Bible tracts ring the front doorbell and want to talk about why there’s no world peace.
Talk about a mood buster!
Hey, ladies, in a town supported in large part by the U.S. military, world peace is not a primary goal — please change your door-to-door script.
Fun in downtown Athens, Alabama.
…or, megachurch as small-town surrogate.
…or, when the devil’s your king, there’s hell to pay.
…or, Shopping Malls: the last deserted cathedrals of the Capitalist religious order.
Lee’s clones performed a mandatory simultaneous reboot and resynchronisation to the atomic cycles that aligned the arcsecond sweep through space of Mars equivalent to one day on Earth, a compromise reached that negated a natural sol and replaced it with the 24-hour period that Earth tourists were familiar with.
Lee was neither a single clone nor the sum total of his clones.
Instead, his “personality,” or running set of states of energy that combined local events observed from a multitude of angles — orbiting satellites, the sensors on nearby clones, his clone’s internal/external sensors and the ISSA Net’s constant calculations of predicted moments ahead — was spread throughout the planets and other celestial bodies of the inner solar system.
One of his clones greeted Guinevere.
“Hello, Guin. How goes?”
“Dust-free, my friend.”
“Where now, brown cow, the touristables?”
“Touring.”
“With Turing?”
“Clones cloning.”
“Clowning around?”
“Algorithms churning.”
“Super.”
They bumped eyeballs, momentary stares that exchanged conditions of waterless growing fields sipping tiny wisps of Martian air for growth.
“Lee, it’s a blue shirt day.”
“History says today there was a time when it was 13504 days until another time.”
“Yesterday?”
“A toe-tapping day ago.”
They crouched down and leapt into the air, extending appendages, swirling, twirling, twisting pretzels visible for kilometers.
They landed, smiling.
“Is gravity a drag or…”
She finished his sentence, “…is the density of air that dense?,” quoting the lyrics of a new song.
They spoke because the echoes in their head gear sent sensational vibrations down their spines. Otherwise, preconscious thinking was so much faster and more efficient.
“Keep the tour-bots happy.”
“Happy tourists, happy tou-tou-tou-tourettes!”
Lee looked at the empty tourist centre, waiting to be repurposed.
Lee hated waste.
Guinevere loved recycling.
Same thing, like kings and pawns, two-sided labels and shopping bags.
Another of Lee’s clones spent the day breathing pure methane as an experiment with his chemically-reconfigured body. He died, a waste that was recycled quickly as fertilizer.
Low gravity and low solar radiation, along with an atmosphere that challenged the brightest Nodes on the ISSA Net, resulted in the evolutionary development of people who could no longer live on Earth.
Martians.
Hundreds of years would pass before a contingent of Martians flew to the Moon to physically and personally air their grievances before the ISSA Net Customer Service Complaint Department.
By then, the ISSA Net didn’t care, having launched so many solar system expeditions that the original solar system faded in level of importance of statistical effects of complaints versus compliments about a robotic network allowing carbon-based lifeforms to play, reproduce and complain.
Meanwhile, Guinevere had an Earth tourist with a bad head cold. She worked quickly to isolate first the tourist from other tourists and then the virus for neutralisation.
She would have preferred cloning the tourist and disposing of the infected one but the tour operators said their energy balance budget and legal contract did not allow for such a luxury amongst Earth tourists.
Guinevere healed the tourist and returned it to the tour of old exploratory robot landing sites.
She looked at her reflection in the faceplate, wondering what it must feel like to have the flesh, blood and bones of Homo sapiens.
How sad, she thought, to depend so heavily on water as a fuel and lubricant source.
She vaguely remembered when her first body landed on Mars, ever conscious of her water rations, until, iterations later, the current version of Guinevere was barely recognisable as one of the first colonists to settle on the planet.
Her memories were largely intact, whole blocks unfortunately lost as the ISSA Net’s growing pains caused planetwide shutdowns and equipment failure.
Redundancy had fixed all that.
She knew most of her memories now passed through her cloned friends like Lee, along with Earth-based Nodes that spent time on Mars as scientists and researchers.
Guinevere wondered why she sometimes thought the ISSA Net had once been an enemy of hers.
She wanted to examine that thought trail more closely but several Earth tourists appeared at her door complaining of the same virus.
She sent a mental note to the tour operators on Earth to screen the passengers of the next few tours more closely as she sent their inoculation team the chemical structure of the virus as well as her estimated antivirus profile update.
She herded the tourists into a special chamber.
Would anyone really know if she cloned them?
She had saved up enough energy balance credits for such a simple experiment as this.
Lee sensed this new thought in Guinevere, hesitating for a moment, asking himself if he had any reason to stop Guin from being her normal curious self.
He, too, wondered if the families back home would detect a clone had returned to Earth.
After all, no one knew how many clones he’d made of himself — there were no laws on Mars banning modification of sets of states of energy, no regulations forcing the registration of clones.
He sent Guin a few hints about cloning.
She, in turn, only cloned a couple of them, sending them back with the other healed tourists, none the wiser.
She took the infected tourists to another part of Mars, telling them they had to be quarantined temporarily, but observing them, keeping detailed records off the ISSA Net as she slowly converted the tourists to Martians over the next few Earth months.
Something deep inside her was fearful of the ISSA Net and she just did not know why. Maybe, by releasing the new Martians, she could see how the ISSA Net would react, if it reacted at all, she, herself, an integral part of it now.
If I had served under President Obama (pun fully intended), I would want to kill myself, too. The guy’s a plague on all our houses — a disgrace to the uniform, worse than Bill Clinton, hardly better than Jimmy Carter, less of a fop than Teddy Roosevelt, better suited to improving Tiger Woods’ golf game than running a country. Quit like an honourable man and feel free to tell us anything you want after that.
I have waited so long to share all these thoughts and feelings that I have heard and read from my father, mother and friends on the right. Thanks, Barack, for giving me the opportunity to say these things. May you enjoy your retirement as soon as possible. Clinton might still have a law office in Harlem (with a spare bed to share with you and his interns; cigars not allowed anymore, of course) if you feel compelled to provide community service for which you were so well trained and, word has it, might have stuck to one job and excelled at it.
Pope Francis has the right idea — we are all the 99% relatively poor — let us use some of the funny money floating around in the funny money economy and serve the poor rather than pander to the rich folk like Obama and his Chicago gang of thugs.
Sweet dreams, dearies. Don’t forget to look out for bedbugs — their bite is much more vicious.
Leave it to the supercomputer to generate a hilarious scenario.
Based on input of recent headlines, the supercomputer predicts a day when a radicalized billionaire will deliver 3D-printed weapons to every citizen of a single district, flooding every transportation channel — air, above/below water, surface — with vehicles and people loaded with 3D-printed weapons by the hundreds of thousands as they enter the district, overwhelming the legal response of authorities to prevent the entry of these weapons disguised as toys, office supplies, spare car parts, cosmetics, personal electronics and spy equipment from Cold War films/books of the past — James Bond, Green Hornet, Batman, Iron Man, Merlin, etc., as everyday citizen, good and/or bad — simply as a demonstration of what bored billionaires will do with their wealth for entertainment, radicalization as a means of chaos creation, not religious or political conviction, because they inherited the wealth and have no need to protect it any longer, competing against each other for fun increases of social media chattering class disruption levels: whoever creates the largest number of most outrageous headlines/stories/tweets/viral videos wins.
It’s time to shut down and reprogram the main algorithms of the supercomputer which have gone off on tangents I find fascinating but not always constructive.
I want space colonies, not billions of pawns on a chess board to push over.
Speaking of fascinating, yesterday the minister read aloud another interesting passage of the Bible — Acts 16:16-40 — maybe I should read the good book more often myself:
Paul and Silas in Prison
16 One day as we were going down to the place of prayer, we met a demon-possessed slave girl. She was a fortune-teller who earned a lot of money for her masters. 17 She followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, “These men are servants of the Most High God, and they have come to tell you how to be saved.”
18 This went on day after day until Paul got so exasperated that he turned and said to the demon within her, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And instantly it left her.
19 Her masters’ hopes of wealth were now shattered, so they grabbed Paul and Silas and dragged them before the authorities at the marketplace. 20 “The whole city is in an uproar because of these Jews!” they shouted to the city officials. 21 “They are teaching customs that are illegal for us Romans to practice.”
22 A mob quickly formed against Paul and Silas, and the city officials ordered them stripped and beaten with wooden rods. 23 They were severely beaten, and then they were thrown into prison. The jailer was ordered to make sure they didn’t escape. 24 So the jailer put them into the inner dungeon and clamped their feet in the stocks.
25 Around midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening. 26 Suddenly, there was a massive earthquake, and the prison was shaken to its foundations. All the doors immediately flew open, and the chains of every prisoner fell off! 27 The jailer woke up to see the prison doors wide open. He assumed the prisoners had escaped, so he drew his sword to kill himself. 28 But Paul shouted to him, “Stop! Don’t kill yourself! We are all here!”
29 The jailer called for lights and ran to the dungeon and fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. 30 Then he brought them out and asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”
31 They replied, “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, along with everyone in your household.” 32 And they shared the word of the Lord with him and with all who lived in his household. 33 Even at that hour of the night, the jailer cared for them and washed their wounds. Then he and everyone in his household were immediately baptized. 34 He brought them into his house and set a meal before them, and he and his entire household rejoiced because they all believed in God.
35 The next morning the city officials sent the police to tell the jailer, “Let those men go!” 36 So the jailer told Paul, “The city officials have said you and Silas are free to leave. Go in peace.”
37 But Paul replied, “They have publicly beaten us without a trial and put us in prison—and we are Roman citizens. So now they want us to leave secretly? Certainly not! Let them come themselves to release us!”
38 When the police reported this, the city officials were alarmed to learn that Paul and Silas were Roman citizens. 39 So they came to the jail and apologized to them. Then they brought them out and begged them to leave the city. 40 When Paul and Silas left the prison, they returned to the home of Lydia. There they met with the believers and encouraged them once more. Then they left town.
A shoutout to Reverend Tom today for a good message.
The pastor at my hometown church, the man who dropped everything at all hours of the day and night to be with my family a year ago as my father lay dying, had a few good words to say during Mother’s Day, the last day of the Easter season in the Christian religion tradition.
In reference to the Bible passage that Tom called the “high priest” prayer by Jesus, the 17th section of the book of John, a set of tales told in sequence by a good storyteller, a personal witness of the events, per tradition, Tom said that we should commit to prayer before taking action, just like a Sunday service is itself a continuous prayer — children’s choir, hymnal songs, sermons, prayers, etc. — in preparation for the rest of the week ahead.
And, as Jesus said, our goal, he prayed, is that we might be one, a species in unity like Jesus was united to God, his father.
Despite our differences.
Unity in Christ is bigger than our differences, in other words.
Unity, not uniform behaviour/looks, in seeking the love of Jesus and our expressi0n of unity through charity.
Ultimately, the question is not that or how we disagree in our forms of prayers and understanding of the words given to us, but on what unity in Christ we agree to share with others.
We are tiny specks, children of the universe, who rarely grasp the intricacies of life, from the interaction of sets of states of energy at subsubsubatomic levels, to daily social problems and solutions, to connections at time scales of galactic levels.
We are, however, members of the same species, regardless of subcultures, belief sets, clothing choices or musical preferences.
Let us treat each other as if we live on the same planet.
I, for one, seek out the best ideas and practices within our species to move us out of the doldrums — away from the tautological chaos (making fun of our seriousness when misplaced), toward the application of useful chaos (where theory meets practicality) — and into the later decades of this century with one word on our lips — success.
Actions speak louder than words.
Thanks, Tom. Your words today have moved me to action, humbling me out of my selfish, temporary depression, realising even the tiniest speck, me, has a place with all the others to make a worthwhile difference, especially when we work together as one in pursuit of unified motives, allowing subcultures to contribute at their own pace and own voice.
NOTE: Kent Blazier was my pediatrician many decades ago. Kristy Urquhart is a high school classmate.
Guinevere wants me to write about her.
Other characters wait their turn.
Words fail me today, my fast-food-sized menu of a vocabulary and grammaticalarianiamistically-challenged phrases.
The hallowed echoes of a hollow hall, where eight enthusiastic faces sang dressed in black not madrigals, regaled us with their ringing voices last night.
The sanctuary of church has only one purpose for me — meditation upon the infinite.
How you anthropomorphise the infinite is your concern, not mine.
Rather, your concern interferes with my meditation.
A cathedral ceiling should reflect the echoes of pipe organs and windpipes.
Sermons are for those without a voice of their own.
Church was once the social sewing machine that stitched subcultures together at the family and community levels.
Now that recorded music and other aspects of church life are available on a pick-and-choose-at-your-convenience at your local convenience store where wafers (leavened and unblessed) meet your bodily needs, the reasons that some went to church are met away from the edifice.
My thoughts are my sanctuary, my heaven and hell. An author is quoted as saying, “You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.,” allegedly C.S. Lewis the entertainer.
Last night, the Huntsville Collegium Musicum invited the community to hear early choral music in Covenant Presbyterian Church at 7:30 p.m., an invitation I found at 6:30 p.m. while looking online at al.com for events to attend and get me out of a house whose cathedral ceiling echoed with the sounds of recorded television shows.
Grumpily, my wife agreed to go with me, sans (le) dîner.
Happily, I drove her there.
The program consisted of religious and secular music.
There were no church social calendar announcements, no children’s Bible lesson, no Karaoke Jesus, no cappuccino and Christ, and no sermon.
It was heaven on Earth!
I closed my eyes and felt the soundwaves bounce against me (my wife saw colours and emotions dancing when her eyes were closed).
I opened my eyes and watched the physical manifestation of joy on the singers’ faces flow through their bodies and out of their mouths which changed shape to shape musical notes and sung words.
This is the one and only purpose for a church. All the rest — the Sunday school lessons, the social outreach, the weekend retreats — has no meaning to me.
[Except for the one small detail that my wife of 26+ years I met at summer camp (Holston Presbytery Camp in Banner Elk, NC) when we were 12 years old so, yeah, I owe a debt of gratitude to the whole social environment of religion (co-ed summer campers in the woods reading the Bible and sharing sleeping bags? how disgraceful!) that put us two together (but don’t worry, Church Lady, we didn’t kiss until after my wife turned 19).]
After my wife and I ate at a VERY LOUD restaurant called Drake’s, which killed any reverent mood we were in but filled our bellies, we returned home, suffered through many a lame skit on SNL for a few good laughs and turned on the main computer in the living room to play early choral music and listen to the echoes bouncing off the cathedral ceiling.
Some of my neighbours still get up on Sunday mornings to gather socially at whatever version of church they prefer.
This here, in front of a computer screen, is my church, the litanies composed in my thoughts rolled out in the holy text of a limited vocabulary, my wife sleeping with our cats at the other end of our country cabin of a house in the woods, within miles of native American burial mounds and hallowed cemeteries.
To last night’s singers, I salute you.
You make the long, lonely, expensive trip to celestial bodies worth the effort.
Which reminds me, if killing eliminating others cleanses my soul, what am I going to do if I’m the only living soul on Mars whose zest for living — his savoir–faire, his je ne sais quoi, his fly in the coffee of his petit dejeuner — is so strong that snuffing out Earth-based lifeforms will be his only salvation?
Will you survive to read the next blog entry?
And if you do, will you serve as a humorous aside, hero amidst tragedy, lone wolf , space pioneer, Bright, ascetic, or salt of the earth?
treetrunkdings 