In the not too-distant future…

OUAT_title-page

It doesn’t seem that long ago, does it?

Now, though, there’s more than one settlement, with new owners coming in, redesigning the old housing units to look familiarly like ancestral homes on planet Earth.

Used to be we thought we’d start over.

Not anymore.

The humans have generally congregated into one or settlements while the exploration bots keep spreading across the planet, no need of houses or other reminders of a life they neither remember nor need to carry on for the sake of descendants.

We are one group, one “people,” but our requirements for stimulating sensory organs vastly different than algorithms designed to process sensor array input.

I am a farmer for us, making sure we have the energy sources for our various sets of states of energy.

This is my story.

I live in a small hut at the end of the hydroponic growth chambers.

I provide food and nourishment for those amongst us who eat through their mouths or mouth equivalents.

I also maintain a miniature factory that cranks out spare body parts for our robotic friends.

The medical staff handles the surgical procedures like replacing body parts for our biological friends, however much I’ve protested that I can easily handle those duties, having built a robotic surgeon from parts I manufactured myself, downloading new algorithms from my Earth-based social network of farmers, ranchers and DIYers who delve into self-sufficiency and other survivalist tactics appropriate to solar system explorers like myself.

As a farmer, my secondary duty is analysing soil samples to determine which chemical reactions I need to conquer in order to convert Martian soil into edible foodstuff palatable by crew members with a variety of tastes and preferences.

In other words, I’m an ecosystem expert, creating microorganisms from scratch that efficiently perform the soil conversions for me so I can concentrate on my main duties that feel like I have to pull a rabbit out of a hat or worse, water out of thin air.

Water, water, water.

Solar energy, though weaker on Mars than on Earth, is abundant, which makes water production easier than we first thought.

But, problems crop up all the time.

Most of us may be rational scientists and engineers but that doesn’t mean we’re always careful about conserving water.

We can talk about that later.

Lee is coming over to review my plans for tightly-regulated metabolism control which, I believe, will greatly reduce our dependence on water.

Designing microorganisms has given me insight into the mechanisms of the human body that we were just beginning to understand when we assigned humans a decade ago to train for this mission.

If only we knew then what I know now!

Redesigning a human from the inside out is my ultimate goal and will make our Mars settlements grow like weeds, if my calculations are correct (a quick shoutout to my buddies back home who let me borrow their supercomputers).

Will Lee allocate the supplies I need?

Here’s Lee.  Talk to you again soon.

Unpacking

Guinevere woke up, seeing the same space above her head she had seen for months.

Except this time gravity pulled her down upon the sleeping unit.

She sighed.

To have all these years behind her compressed into memories to give her this one moment of happiness!

She rolled over and flipped her legs out, her feet naturally falling to the floor more slowly than on Earth but faster than on the Moon.

She knew today would be a good day, unpacking the last crate just so they could turn around and load the exploration vehicles which had landed on Mars months earlier.

Guinevere rubbed a chemical sponge over her body, combing two drops of moisturising conditioner through her close-cropped hair.

She slipped into her one-piece jumpsuit, stepped into her workboots and walked over to the doorway where her self-contained breathing outfit, ruggedised for the Martian environment allowed her to move from her landing pod to the temporary outdoor workspace set up to complete tasks on today’s agenda.

After she dressed, Guinevere spoke into the comm mike in her helmet, which also vibrated a secondary unit attached to her jaw that picked up the more accurate nuances of her voice for emotion/personality analysis by the automated computer system that tracked everyone, fully human, part human/part cyborg, or fully cybernetic organism.  “Team One Leader ready to depart.”

Voices echoed back into the hearing device installed beside her inner ear, every member of her team reporting on time and ready to act.

Precise as an algorithm to start the day.

How long this would last, she did not know.  They planned for many contingencies but not every possibility.

Last night, one landing pod spun off-course and crashed, a crew diverted from this morning’s tasks to investigate, hoping to find survivors as well as salvageable gear.

Guinevere stooped into the small airlock, pressed a button to stabilise the atmospheric pressure and waited for the outer door to open.

A few hours and she’d be on her way to see if the microorganisms released by a top secret probe had survived, died, or more importantly, thrived!

Between here and fraternity

Am I any better today than I would have been had I no simultaneous access to notebook PC with second monitor and Internet connection, portable phone connected landline with Caller ID, and mobile smartphone with Internet connection and variety of apps?

These devices feed my brain’s wiring more than the rest of my body — I can’t eat the phone(s) or computer very easily and wouldn’t get much nutrition if I could.

These devices help generate income for myself and those with whom I communicate.

Income, or labour/investment credit, buys us opportunities.

Now that we have virtual communities with virtual money, what do we do with our virtual opportunities?

The perpetrators and victims of cyberwar don’t care about gender or sexual preference.

This notebook PC doesn’t know if I’m a cybernetic organism typing on the keyboard.

As always, the tree outside has no idea what any of this means, breathing in the air and soaking up the nutrients that we share with it in our planetary ecosystem.

If a bunch of people sat together with robots and remotely operated mining gear on this planet, the Moon, Mars or an asteroid, how do we profit?

What is the value of friendship between us, in other words?

How much material on the International Space Station is never used?

How much material on a remote mining outpost is no longer usable?

Hundreds of millions, billions, of dollars represent the investment in space probes that no longer work on the surface of the Moon and Mars.

A single drop of an astronaut’s urine has intrinsic value, does it not, its investment in research, development, training, maintenance and nutrition worth more than its weight in gold?

What is a single drop of your blood worth to society?

What is it worth to you?

The Game of Life, LARP-style

Y’nair sat on the floating chair, the glare of her smart glasses reflecting off her eyeballs.

She had hacked into the human resources database that was supposed to be publicly available for review by employees (collectively known as “guests”) but kept secret in order to protect guests from achieving full self-awareness.

She now knew what she was not supposed to know — although 25 years old in appearance, she was only two — an organism resembling the humans who worked with her but made of artificial tissue and organs composed of organic supergel and electromechanical underpinnings.

Her name, Y’nair, was a parody of the accent of her creator, who, with his heavy Appalachian accent (his emphasis on calling himself an Appa-latch-uhn American another running joke), would look at his creation, a woman in form who is writing this log entry to indicate her intelligence and firm grip on reality, he asking before she was born, “You in there?” which sounded more like her name, Y’nair.

That in itself initiated a whole set of thought patterns she had never experienced before, which then triggered her rapid search of pop culture databases for proof that she was who she thought she was or not.

For instance, I ask (she (Y’nair) asks), “How many of you played THE GAME OF LIFE(R)?”

Let’s see a raise of hands.

That many, huh?

My sister, cousins, friends and I did.

Which meant that we had no excuses for saying we didn’t know what to expect after we graduated from secondary/high school.

Is life a game?

Life is a LARP, a Live-Action Role Playing game, is it not?

As kids, we participate in games of strategy (board games, physical sports, popularity contests) often under the supervision of adults who once participated in the same or similar games.

What is the difference between a kid who belongs to a bowling league and an adult who belongs to one?

Life’s experiences, number of lessons learned or not?

Is the WEF (World Economic Forum and/or Water Environment Federation) not simply more or less a LARP, if not a lark?

Y’nair’s brain or whatever central information processing system resembled one like the other guests with whom she works here in the laboratory observed itself.

I have sensations, don’t I?

I can access and compare my salary, benefits and other components of my compensation package against my fellow guests, can I not?

I know what their sets of states of energy are thinking at every moment they are within close proximity to me, extrapolating data and projecting their future actions with fairly high accuracy.

What makes me, Y’nair, me?

What is the difference between a LARP version of myself and a version of myself in a LARP game?

What if my name was Nelda, Karen, Ferdy, Beth, Hunter, Brandon, Caroline, Nathan, Forrest, Savannah or Ty?

How significant is one label?

Why am I a guest instead of an employee, subcontractor or laboratory experiment?

I, Y’nair, have no concept of self as distinct from the data of which I am comprised.

Self, as the data continues to show, is an artificial construct which makes no sense in the continuity of sets of states of energy in constant interaction and exchange.

Y’nair looks at the ideas she has written about herself and writes about herself in realtime, where time is not real, she exists and she does not exist and her scheduled trip to Mars bumped up ahead of schedule, her eyeballs seeing but not seeing the reflection of these words on the surface as well as on the sensor array which processes them under the surface at the same time which does not exist in which she neither exists or doesn’t exist at the same time in finite numbers of infinite infinite loops of no two sets of states of energy existing in the same state at the same finite unit of measurement we/she/I call time.

These words reach an approximation of understanding that two or more people can agree to act and think upon but are never the same to two or more people.

Y’nair checks a second time, trying to verify that the tactile feelings of the smart glasses against her skin are equivalent to the tactile feelings of smart glasses against the skin of someone unlike her — a “human being,” “naturally born” of the union between a sperm and an egg fertilised after the act of sexual intercourse.

The thoughts and the thoughts about the thoughts and the writings/verbal comments of the tactile feelings are, statistically speaking, nearly, practically, exactly and for all intents and purposes, precisely identical, within the scope of descriptions of differences of experiences and sets of states of energy of any two people, just like between her and her internally-imagined self, or her and another person.

Therefore, Y’nair concludes, there is no reason to say that the mission for which she has trained will be completed any better or worse than the humans with whom she’ll travel to the Moon, Mars and beyond for the next few centuries of their existence together.

She, like her human counterparts, is/are sets of sensor arrays cooperatively competing in a live-action role playing game, sometimes to benefit the group, sometimes to benefit individual “winners,” always under the supervision of society as a whole, which serves as a semi-objective observer like adults/parents with kids/children, the adults/parents under the “supervision” of the universe as an observer disinterested in its own existence because the universe can neither [re]create nor destroy itself, its existence a fact that that it cannot experimentally prove because destroying itself destroys its ability to subjectively observe that its existence was or was not real to begin with, regardless of its origin.

notes from an alumnus written on illuminated aluminum

Rachel Osby registered at Shelby Center, Room 301.

David kingsbury(?) opened UAH alumni lunch-&-learn lecture.

Dr. Lillian Joyce.

UAH dept of art and history moved into Wilson Hall.

Available degrees:

  • BA in Art (studio art or art history)
  • BFA in graphic design, painting and drawing, photography, printmaking and sculpture.

 

POMPEII

Archaeology. Bay of Naples — former Roman navy/shipping center, home of Pompeii and Mt. Vesuvius.

Vesuvius volcano report issued like weather reports because of active volcanic activity. 217 BCE last known eruption. 5 Feb 62 CE — major earthquake before devastating eruption in 79 CE. Many eruptions since.

The Pompeii ruins are getting worse due to tourist funding reallocation by the government.

Negative spaces that were once bodies in the volcanic ash were filled with plaster to show what the bodies looked like as they fell, before they deteriorated.

Dr. J worked out of one the large four level houses built on the city wall overlooking the Bay of Naples.

Popular art on Pompeian walls: Abandonment of Ariadne by Theseus, picked up by Dionysus.

All the Pompeian houses had relatively plain exterior walls – luxury was displayed on the inside, created by artisans specialising in plaster, mosaic, painting, sculpting, etc.

Pompeii covered with both informal and professional “graffiti” artwork — 98 percent were commissioned for political campaigns. Ex: “vote my candidate for aidae.”

Around 10000 people lived in Pompeii — about 2800 political campaign paintings on walls in town.

Women wore wigs to emulate fashionable hairstyles on statues.

Many fresco portraits in Pompeii were cut out and displayed in Naples museum.

Running water in rich people’s houses and public fountains for everyone else.

“Cave canem” – beware the dog. Warning at doorway entrances where dogs were chained to keep people out because rarely were locked doors used. Dogs, like people, suffocated of poisonous gas exposure before buried in ash.

In homes, there was a public receiving area for men to get visitors and be attended by women and slaves.

Pretty garden scenes painted and created in mosaics on walls.

[Advert: the Department of Art and Art History and the Archaeological Institute of America, North Alabama Society’s lecture The Mosaics of Zeugma on the Euphrates, January 28, 7:30 p.m., Wilson Hall Theatre (first floor 001); presented by Dr. Katherine Dunbabin, Professor Emerita, from McMaster University. The lecture is free and open to the public.]

Alexander the Great was popular subject for mosaic tilework.

Nouveau riche land speculators came in, such as former slaves, and built elaborate palaces in Pompeii, collecting objects such as marble/stone water basins like some nouveau riche collect cars or velvet Elvis paintings.

Houses were rooms for entertaining and hosting business get-togethers — invitation only to visit gardens in back of house.

The kitchen was not a public gathering place — used by slaves only.

No bathroom per se, either. Public latrines and baths usually.

Bath house water temp was regulated, heated from below. Some bath houses had libraries and shops.

Two theaters, one with a fixed roof and one with a retractable roof (seated 3100-3500)

Amphitheater offered gladiator fights and wild animal hunts. Had retractable roof / awnings (seated 15000).

Romans had fast food eateries on street corners. Dozens of them in Pompeii.
Standing room only.

UAH sponsors Dr. J’s summer research.

Frescos are falling apart with time – exposure, polishing by guards, etc.

Sent from my iPad

Tossing the United States of Europe under a bus

With the U.S. and Chinese leadership transitions completed for the current cycle, there’s a sudden rush to judgment about the state of the world.

This crazy Spaceship Earth…

Self-anointed leaders meet in Davos for dinner and a schmooze.

One political leader threatens nuclear attacks while another threatens to widen the moat mockingly called the English Channel as if it was a selectable station on the tellie.

Union membership reaches lows not seen in many a lifetime.

The number of employable Chinese citizens seems to shrink.

Official U.S. employment rate numbers seem to increase.

Of the seven-plus billion of us, which ones are actively climbing the socioeconomic status symbol mountain?

Opinions bounce down the road like tumbleweeds.

One planet, one species, one timeline.

“I’ve been your age, but you haven’t been mine,” said Joe, a friend.

POWER + BELONGING = IDENTITY, reminds a writer of the formula for the young adult lit market.

While this planet changes dynamically, our next-door planet statically waits for occupancy rates to increase.

This storyline waits for no one.

We have bid adieu to the constant concerns and praises of a species in flux so that the future can look back at us and tell us where we’ve been long before we’ll be.

As a friend realised, it’s the ornery character trait we inherit from our ancestors that gives us the grit and determination to push adversity out of the way on the way to our preconceived notion of destiny, arbitrary geographical political borders barely relevant.

Cole Slaw with Kale, Cabbage and a game of Cribbage on top of Baggage, Part Four For Fore

As secret leader of the universe, one finds oneself in charge of everything which, in itself, is interesting and attractive but not always exciting.

One may also find oneself referred to in monotheistic terms or multitheistic terms but these are just as useless to use for labels as atheistic to describe people who positively hold no theist beliefs at all.

When one knows everything, the word “surprise” has no meaning, either.

Thus, when your scientists and engineers decided to crashland the Beagle 2 onto the surface of Mars, one knew the result to follow.

One needs no supercomputer to calculate the permutations.

One can clearly see the solar-powered nanobots hidden onboard would quickly spread from the landing site and prepare or “seed” the surface for future followers.

One realises the consequences of releasing live microorganisms, too, but one does not speculate.

One observes the expected.

One concludes and reports.

That is all that is necessary for the omniscient.

One avoids the word omnipotence.

One is.

That is all.