Another stain appeared on the ceiling, nearer to the point where two sloping surfaces of the cathedral ceiling meet than where the first stain materialised.
Shadowgrass, a name the boy accepted from parents who thought that labels were arbitrary, pulled out a golf ball ranging device and measured the width of the stain from where he was standing 15 feet below.
First, he stood directly beneath one edge of the stain and wrote down the distance. Holding the device at the same height, he rotated it slightly until he measured the new distance and wrote it down. Assuming the first measurement was a right angle, he calculated the third leg of a triangle and decided it was close enough to call the width of the stain.
As a quadriplegic, Shadowgrass had developed special skills, exercising his thoughts so that he was able to invent appendages that most humans didn’t need.
Sometimes, he simply found new uses for commonplace items.
He heard a door open and knew his parents were home from their latest sojourn, scouting out a location for a new Martian laboratory, far from the watchful eyes and ears of satellites constantly circumnavigating the planet.
“Guin and Lee, I’m in here!”
Guin followed Shadowgrass’ voice into the Sanctuary Room, a space modeled on old religious structures on Earth.
“Well, whatcha got there?”
Shadowgrass pointed at the ceiling. “Another stain.”
Guin nodded. “Probably a leak. Can you fix it?”
Shadowgrass shook his head. “The repair bot is out for repair and refurbishment because our 3D printer is not working.”
“I’m sorry, honey, but we’re short on supplies right now. Only essential lab gear is getting repaired until the next supply ship arrives from the Moon.”
“Mom, why do they still call Earth’s only natural satellite the Moon?”
“I don’t know, dear. It doesn’t make sense, does it? Why don’t we call it something else…”
“…like Shadowgrass?”
“Well, sure, why not? We call Mars Mars and we call Venus Venus. It makes just as much sense to call the Moon Shadowgrass.”
“Sure, Mom. It doesn’t have arms or legs, either!”
Guin smiled, turning her head to one side slightly. “Good point.”
Lee walked into the room. “Hey, kiddo! What’s going on?”
Guin and Shadowgrass nodded at the ceiling.
“Hmm…isn’t that an oil coolant supply line that runs through there?”
“Yes, Dad.”
“Can you fix it, son?”
Guin and Shadowgrass shook their heads.
“Oh yeah, the repair bot’s down, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Dad.”
“Well, son, I think this calls for you to assert your ingenuity toward reinventing yourself.”
Shadowgrass closed his eyes and let the active voice in his thoughts go silent.
His parents sat down and waited, knowing that Shadowgrass, their ultimate achievement in reproducing the best traits of themselves, would take Lee’s challenge and come up with a solution that neither one of them could if their put their heads together, let alone if they tried separately.
Shadowgrass accessed the spare computing cycles of the colony’s computer network, every object from a solar tracking memory circuit to the amplifier circuit in a tourist’s hearing implant.
He put himself in the role of the last leak, taking into account the growth rate of both leaks, their locations, the time the first leak started and stopped and the time the second leak started.
He looked at the blueprint plans for their living quarters, estimating the pressure of liquid passing through pipes in their building.
His thoughts worked backward from the leak, determining the shearing force on pipe joints, the corrosive qualities of the oil coolant and the path that leaking oil would follow from weak points in the pipe.
He saw that his body was full of nanobots making spot repairs in the blood vessels and other circulatory tubes.
His parents had given him the ability to reprogram the nanobots in his body as he saw fit.
He opened his eyes and turned to his parents. “Do you give me permission to pass some of the nanobots from my body into the pipes of our habitat?”
Guin raised her eyebrows. “Have you…have you thought through the unintended consequences of what you’re about to propose?”
Shadowgrass shook his head. “Not yet.”
Lee stood up. “Son, tell you what. Spend the next hour or so working through case studies where unacceptable error rates cause us extreme discomfort and work your way back to what you’re asking us now.”
“Okay, Dad. It should only take me a few minutes at most.”
“Fine, son. When you’re finished, run some regression tests on the regression tests. I think where you’re going with this will work out but I want you to have a backup plan for when something you haven’t thought of yet will support any changes your nanobots experience when they’re no longer part of your body. We had not created them for extracorporeal purposes.”
“Sure thing, Dad.”
“And submit a request to rename the Moon Shadowgrass. I like your mother’s idea. With all you’ve done to save this colony and us serving as a reserve unit should climate change continue to cause population decreases on Earth, you deserve a moon named after you.”
“Thanks, Dad!”
“No problem, son. You make us proud.”
Guin hugged Shadowgrass’ neck. “That’s right, dear. You have exceeded our wildest dreams for a child of our own.”
Shadowgrass smiled. “Would you all dance for me? It makes me feel happy.”
Guin and Lee slipped out of their exploration gear, tumbling up and over Shadowgrass while he finished his calculations for a self-sufficient nanobot repair system servicing the pipes in their home. If the system worked, he would be able to sell the idea to his neighbours and fund his dream to build an exploration vehicle designed specifically for him, able to join his parents when they ventured far from the colony, risking their lives, living out their motto, “Vive ut vivas.”
In the private chambers of one’s marriage nest, would you describe your actions as sexy?
In other words, what is your comfort zone?
Tracy and her husband James enjoy dancing so much that they not only dance together but they also own a dance studio together.
She teaches at the studio while he has a job outside the studio, often working shifts such that when they’re home together, one of them is usually too tired for intimacy, desiring sleep first and foremost.
Tracy laughs at this tale every time she recalls it.
Her husband, already in bed, maybe in the mood for more than sleep, looked at her as she entered the bedroom.
She’s dressed comfortably, ready to crawl into bed.
He’s maybe in the mood for something more than sleep.
He looked at her and honestly asked, “Is that supposed to be sexy?”
She looked down at her attire — multicoloured muumuu dress, over which an old camisole is pulled, ‘to keep the ladies in place,’ as she said, [because they’re much too large to call “the girls“] and long, loud, but colour-coordinated socks — and replied, “No, it’s comfy.”
His response? “I guess that means we aren’t having sex?”
“No, it doesn’t.” She laughed because she hadn’t connected that the clothes she wore had anything to do with her mood for sex.
Neither she nor he would say what happened next.
She did say that she added, “Hey, at least my socks match!”
How many discharges to rock a solar-powered hula dancer does a capacitor have before its intended useful life has been depleted? How many heartbeats do you have left?
Let us imagine.
Let us put ourselves in the boots of a young, not fully-hardened, 21-year old military leader.
Further, let us put him in charge of French peacekeeper troops, part of KFOR, guarding a bridge over the Ibar River in Kosovska Mitrovica.
In normal, peaceful military exercises, conflicting orders challenge many a field officer’s goals and objectives, often involving politics outside the officer’s circle of influence.
You needn’t stretch your imagination to comprehend the conflicts that crop up in the fog of war, when spot decisions while you and your troops in the line of fire are made under duress as you interpret the implied meaning of the only two orders you’ve received that directly contradict each other.
For instance, one order tells you to protect and defend your troops by maintaining peace while guarding a bridge that acts as a de facto border between two ethnic groups. The second order tells you to protect and defend the civilians against violence in your peacekeeping jurisdiction while maintaining peace and guarding the bridge.
The bridge itself is a nonpeaceful symbol to the locals — one group wants to prevent another group from using or crossing the bridge.
Let’s say two of your troops are injured — could be by rocks/bricks or by a sniper’s bullets, doesn’t matter because you simply know it violates your first order, which motivates you to take action.
Unfortunately, the action you initiate violates the second order because protecting and defending your troops from further injury requires attacking the civilians, many of them armed with rocks, bricks and in a few cases, armaments.
What if you had to order your troops to open fire on a sniper in a civilian’s business/residence?
How do you keep the peace when you’re required to protect everyone in your jurisdiction, including ethnic groups willing to die killing each other to regain old territory, causing chaos through roadblocks and random violence, your troops stuck in the middle by international/NATO/KFOR decree?
Ultimately, politics prevail.
Your orders are always going to conflict at some point in your career, military or private.
However, fail the newspaper test, especially on a world scale, and someone in the chain of command wants heads to roll, even if guillotines are no longer legal or effective.
Enter the court-martial.
Integrity is a curious behavioral trait.
If, in the course of your duties, you have acted not only to the best of your abilities but also followed the best course of actions based on limited information in the fog of war, have you not provided an unassailable defense of your character?
Unfortunately, life is not always about the fairness of your highest ethical actions, let alone your thoughts.
Fortunately, politics and the court of public opinion do not always prevail.
Years pass after you were found not guilty at the court-martial.
Life goes on, your military career having moved into noncombat situations, another civil military servant performing the duties that keep your government’s military units technologically proficient and up-to-date.
One small issue, though. You have to live with the decision you made that led to an mentally excruciating court-martial.
The casualties, the maiming and mental injuries that pile up during wartime can be justified for moral purposes.
What about the same during a peacekeeping mission?
And what if your morals and ethics are based on the viewpoint of a Bright — a humanist, naturalist or existentialist atheist?
In other words, as a Frenchman marching down a path heavily trodden by Sartre, should you concern yourself at all about your previous momentary selves that exist only in the perpetual fantasy of a storyline you keep repeating because you imagine that time exists because people want to know who you are and where you came from?
Do you develop complex computer algorithms based on the previous work of others or can you create genius out of nothingness?
History, as the saying goes, is a fable agreed upon, subject to interpretation as to tragedy, travesty or triumph.
Some races and ethnic groups will perpetuate their subcultural superiourity to the detriment of others, fully entrenched to protect their historic fables against outside influences.
If you are ordered to put yourself in harm’s way between two strongly opposed racial/ethnic groups, don’t expect to find an easy-to-obtain win-win situation.
The fallacy of history and politics may have been set up to trip you at every step.
All you can do is get back up, on your feet if you can, in a wheelchair if you have to, don’t look back and set your sights on your personally-satisfying longterm goals, influenced by a long line of momentary selves, temporary confluences of states of energy that constitute what you’ve been trained to see as self and others.
The universe is benign. The set of states of energy that imagines itself as you has a limited lifetime.
Take comfort in your impermanence.
A Rosie picture, huh? Like winning the lottery!
Shall we sue the government for violating, virtually raping, our online personalities?
Football/futbol is a religion. Religion is a ball, walking on foot to hand out religious tracts. Guns and costumes make distinguishing the wannabe cop from the real thing and the cosplay actor from the superhero.
Do children know if they are robots?
After a recent trip to New Orleans and a dinnertime discussion with my niece about the voodoo culture of the Big Easy, I looked down at my mother’s copy of Reader’s Digest and saw a totally different cover.
The original cover:
What I saw:
Seven minutes after midnight, somewhere on Earth.
Lee looked at Guin, freshly-returned from her big band tour of the mother planet.
Only one way to celebrate.
They danced.
Pas de deux.
Party of two.
Vines of sight and sound growing, curling, growling, party for one.
A light touch, no pulling, inviting, attracting, hidden algorithms of muscle cells and neurotransmitters, billions of years of experimentation, trial-and-error elimination.
Willing to give all, no secrets, to the song of the dance.
Puffins and Pushkin, Malaysia and aphasia, stone castles and fo’c’s’le.
Jack and Jill, deny and d’hill.
Conflicts of interested parties.
D’programming, detaching.
D’tachometer.
D’landing gear.
Dillinger’s daring deranged derringer, dead ringer for Daedalus’ DaDa black sheep.
Then, complete silence…no words.
Pure physicality of the dance speaks for itself once more but never just once once again.
“An example of reverse geekiness: I was at a bachelor party bar crawl with a bunch of computer programmers, and the local entertainment was a fantasy sports podcast guy. One of the partygoers heckled the fantasy sports dude by asking about quiddich scores (fantasy sports,, get it?) Which while kinda funny was a bit mean. Football fans are geeks too.”
treetrunkdings 