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==========================================
InterText Vol. 1, No. 2 / July-August 1991
==========================================
Contents
FirstText ........................................Jason Snell
Short Fiction
Dragon Financing_...........................Kenneth A. Kousen_
Regression_.......................................Dave Savlin_
The American Dream_............................Robert Hurvitz_
The Ambiguity Factor_............................Pete Reppert_
Haircuts $20_.....................................Jason Snell_
New Orleans Wins the War_.........................Greg Knauss_
The Explosion That Killed Ben Lippencott_.........Greg Knauss_
....................................................................
Editor Assistant Editor
Jason Snell Geoff Duncan
jsnell@etext.org gaduncan@halcyon.com
....................................................................
Send subscription requests, story submissions, and
correspondence to intertext@etext.org
....................................................................
InterText Vol. 1, No. 2. InterText (ISSN 1071-7676) is published
electronically on a bi-monthly basis. Reproduction of this
magazine is permitted as long as the magazine is not sold
(either by itself or as part of a collection) and the entire
text of the issue remains intact. Copyright 1991, 1994 Jason
Snell. Individual stories Copyright 1991 by their original
authors.
....................................................................
FirstText by Jason Snell
===========================
Do you remember the television series The Incredible Hulk,
starring Bruce Bixby as David Banner --?a man cursed with
becoming a monster whenever his pulse (or was it his blood
pressure?) reached a certain height?
"Don't make me angry," Bixby's character would say. "You
wouldn't like me when I'm angry."
I'm not the pushover I appear to be, he was saying. I'm not like
anything you've seen before. So watch out.
InterText isn't like any magazine you've read before. I'm not
bragging by any means -- in fact, I'm not talking about the
quality of InterText at all. I'm talking about the fact that,
unlike professionally edited and distributed magazines, this is
one magazine that relies on all of you.
You see, all of you don't just make up the reader base of
InterText -- you're also the writers, editors, publishers,
advertisers, corporate executives -- just about everything.
So what the hell is this guy talking about?, you're asking
yourself.
One of the problems with a magazine like InterText (and its
predecessor, Athene) is that it is absolutely dependent on the
efforts of those who submit stories to it and those who put it
together. What this means is that, with InterText, the work of
about six people is read by over a thousand.
Distributing a magazine via computer network is a new idea, one
that's only been around for a handful of years. But for all the
applause we give to this new mode of communication, the fact is
that it all still boils down to a small group of authors sending
editors stuff now and again. I edit this magazine, Dan
Appelquist edits Quanta. My stories appear there. His appear
here. Phil Nolte appears both places. The snake eats its own
tail.
And everybody else is left on the outside. The names blur -- if
they pay attention to the names at all.
Last issue, I mentioned the potential of computer networks to
assist in communication. It was a positive picture, an
optimistic (a rarity for me, I can assure you) view that these
networks can create a "global village."
That's what they said about television, too. It didn't happen.
Instead, television fulfilled another, less honorable, aspect of
its potential.
The other potential of a medium such as this is that it degrades
into just another clique -- you've got the haves and have nots,
the writers/editors, and the readers. And then we're no
different from any professional magazine, at least in the
barriers that we've erected between readers and writers.
This magazine is not just for me -- I do this in my "spare time"
(whatever that is; now that it's summer, I've got a little more
breathing room), and I'm certainly not getting paid for it. But
I like being an editor, I like publishing, and I saw a need for
something to fill Athene's space.
But I can't do it alone, and neither can the other names you see
on issues of InterText, Quanta, and such publications.
If you have something you'd like to have over a thousand people
read, submit it to us. I don't want netnews-style posts here,
but if you write something in magazine style, I'd love to run
it.
If you've written a story, submit it. Take an old one, dust it
off, re-work it to your satisfaction, and send it in.
Non-fiction stuff, personal narratives, anything about computer
fiction, or about computer networks.
This is a plea for submissions, true, but it's more than that.
It's also my way of telling you that this is not just my
magazine, it's your magazine. In newspapers, readers' comments
are left to one section: the letters to the editor. Here, the
whole thing is open to you. I encourage you to take advantage of
it.
I think I'll stop here, if for no other reason than to slow down
my quickly-beating editor's heart. >Calm yourself, Jason old
boy, calm yourself. Don't make the readers angry -- you wouldn't
like them when they're angry.<
This magazine isn't like other magazines. And you aren't like
other readers.
And on that note, I wish you all well. See you next time.
Dragon Financing by Kenneth A. Kousen
========================================
The day dawned bright and clear as King Teradoc and I rode off
with our honor guard to challenge Pfotor the Dragon. It was the
first fresh day of spring after a frustratingly long winter, and
I was eager for the hunt.
The winter had been spent pouring over scholarly texts written
by ancient masters, and learning from my tutor. Old and stodgy,
he forced me to spend more time than I would have liked learning
and reciting. Still, however interminably, the winter had passed
and I was free again. The Chancellor informed me that the King
wished me to accompany him on his quest to suppress Pfotor, and
I eagerly accepted the challenge.
Adventure filled the air. I took out my sword and watched the
sun glint from its blade.
"Prince Dorn," my father said, surprising me from my reverie,
"are you so eager to fight a dragon? Pfotor is a wild beast, and
a worthy foe."
"Of course, father," I mumbled, abashed. I noticed a twinkle in
his eyes, though, which belied his stern words. He too must have
been feeling the sweetness of our quest.
As we neared the town, signs of Pfotor's attacks became evident.
Instead of containing fresh plantings, the lands around the town
were blackened and deserted. We rode past the charred frames of
several farmhouses, but saw no one. At length, we reached a fork
in the road. To the right lay the town, to the left lay the
route to Pfotor.
"Go to the town and secure lodging for us there," my father said
to the guards, dismissing them. "Prince Dorn and I will go
confront Pfotor."
I gulped. "Alone?" I asked.
"Yes, my son. Against a dragon, a few guards will not make any
difference." He led his horse to the left.
Mystified, I followed. I felt excitement and fear in equal
proportions. To face Pfotor alone, virtually unarmed, seemed the
height of folly, yet also the pinnacle of bravery.
Eventually we reached the black mouth of an enormous cave at the
base of Mt. Fire. Without a word, my father dismounted, lit
torches for us, and led the way inside. I followed warily.
The torches provided a dim illumination as we proceeded. The
stench of dragon was overpowering, and grew worse as we neared
Pfotor. My eyes began to water, making it difficult to see.
At the end of the passage was an immense cavern filled with
jewels of every type and description, piled in heaps. To one
side golden items were strewn haphazardly. I could identify
lyres, goblets, various coins, and scepters of different
lengths. These objects surrounded an old, golden throne. In the
distance, the cavern vanished into blackness, from whence came a
great rumbling.
"Who dares enter the domain of Pfotor the Invincible?" boomed a
powerful voice.
I am forced to admit that I immediately froze. My father,
however, did not. In a loud voice of his own, he replied, "It is
I, King Teradoc, ruler of all the peoples of Bailia. I command
you to approach and be recognized."
A low roar filled the cavern in response, and the terrifying
green bulk of Pfotor entered the light. He moved to the center
of the treasure, extended his wings, and belched fire upward
toward the roof of the cave.
"No one commands the mighty Pfotor!" he bellowed. "Do you dare
to challenge me?"
"No, I do not," my father replied, his voice returning to its
customary low volume. "I have come to talk."
The laughter of the dragon filled the cavern. "Talk? The great
Pfotor has no need for talk. His strength speaks for itself."
My father did not reply, and a silenced stretched on as he and
the dragon studied each other. The king looked strangely calm,
as though he were in no danger. Pfotor seemed puzzled by this.
I, on the other hand, was still staring wide-eyed at the dragon.
His long, scaly tail swayed back and forth, knocking treasures
to each side. At long last, he settled his huge mass onto the
ground and broke the silence.
"Pfotor has no need for talk," he said, "but he is curious. Why
have you come here to disturb him? Speak."
"Pfotor," the King said, "there has been peace between humans
and dragons for generations. Why do you choose to break it now?"
"I did not break it!" Pfotor roared. "You foolish humans did!
You breed like rabbits and move into our lands! Three hundred
years ago, your puny kingdom did not even exist, yet now you are
everywhere." The dragon shook his head. "At first we welcomed
you and the treasures you brought, but now there are too many of
you, and too few treasures."
The King ran his eyes around the cavern. "If this is too few
treasures for you, you are going to be sorely disappointed with
Bailia."
"Then you will have to get more," Pfotor demanded. "Bring them
from other lands, or I will destroy you! I must have more!"
The King moved to the throne, brushed away the valuables
covering it, and sat down. To my astonishment, he winked at me.
"Pfotor, old boy," he said, "there may be a way out of our
dilemma." He paused as Pfotor snorted, then continued. "Have you
ever considered letting some of your wealth work for you?"
Pfotor raised his eyebrows, which on a dragon is quite an
impressive sight. "Work for me?" he asked.
"Yes. Look, you've got an enormous amount of money sitting
around here doing nothing. You are also surrounded by ambitious,
hard-working people who lack the funds to begin any of the
building they'd love to do. I'll tell you what. We'll help you
exchange some of your valuables for coinage, which you can lend
to the people for their own uses. They then will pay back their
loans with interest."
My father's enthusiasm was infectious, and I could see Pfotor
considering the plan. My father continued. "By pumping money
into the local economy, everybody wins. The townspeople get the
capital they need in order to improve their standard of living,
and your wealth will increase as they repay their loans."
"And you," Pfotor said, "get a thriving kingdom with peaceful
borders. But suppose some of your subjects refuse to pay?"
The King gave him a dour look. "It would be a brave man who
would default on a loan to a dragon. Besides, we would set up a
group to handle such problems ourselves, wouldn't we, my son?"
The last was directed at me, and I almost jumped. "Yes, sire," I
said. Suddenly I realized that my hours spent studying this
winter had been neither by accident nor in vain. My father was
giving me a chance to take part in a great expansion of his
kingdom. "I would be honored to help organize such a project."
He smiled at me. "There you have it, Pfotor. The royal seal of
approval. Prince Dorn will act as a liaison between you and the
local populace, and will help set up the guilds necessary to
acquire, use, and repay the money. What do you say?"
Pfotor leaned back on his haunches, folded his wings, and cocked
his head thoughtfully in a manner I would soon come to know
well.
"I agree," he said.
The next several years passed quickly. I sold the idea to the
town and collected applications for loans. These went to Pfotor,
who selected the necessary valuables which were then exchanged
for currency at the hastily established Royal Mint. The funds
were then distributed to the people. New houses sprang into
being almost overnight. Schools, public meeting houses, and even
a great cathedral soon followed.
Pfotor turned out to be a pretty good fellow, once you got to
know him. Interestingly, he had the same opinion about humans.
He really hadn't wanted a conflict at all, but when we started
encroaching on his territory he became a laughing stock among
the other dragons. Now he was envied. When I discovered this, I
started communications aimed at establishing a series of Dragon
Banks throughout Bailia, each near a dragon hoard.
During one of my reports to my father in his private council
chambers, I told him about the methods we were using.
"One of the beautiful things about the entire system," I said,
"is that we never have to spend anything on security. There's no
place in the world safer for all that gold than in a dragon's
lair."
"Indeed, and not just for the gold," my father replied, the old
twinkle in his eye returning. "Can you think of a better
guardian for the heir to the throne?"
Regression by Dave Savlin
============================
Marc stepped out and pulled his towel off the hook. The vacant
spot in the four-stall shower room was immediately filled by
another disheveled boy, tired and sweaty with a few cuts healing
on his lithe body. Most of Marc's dormitory hall had just
returned from a great game of rugby, and the race to the showers
may as well have been a continuation of the game. Sterling and
Kris, two of Marc's closest friends, had slammed into each other
outside the door, giving Sterling a bloody nose and blacking
Kris's eye -- much to every one else's amusement.
"Hey! You should have pulled that head-knockin' move earlier,
Kris! You woulda taken that other butthead's nuts off!" was
yelled several times -- Kris had tripped and sent his head
between an opponent's legs. Half an inch higher ... well, enough
of that.
"Not _my_ fault he wasn't wearing a shield!" was the quick
retort. "He wasn't even using an old cup!"
This day and age, most college sports, a typical college
experience, are played with a small shield generator in the
waistband, which protected the abdominal area from injury, but
even in a University as upper class as the one Marc was in, a
few people could only afford plastic cups. More than one
occasion had seen a broken cup, however. This was not a nice
sight.
Marc was remembering this as he closed the door to his room, a
shoebox (but still a Single), and examined his cup. The crack
was still there, but it hadn't broken all the way across. He
disliked playing with it, but didn't have any cash credits to
spend to get a new one. He could use his loan cards, but the
interest rate was too high. "_Sigh._ Oh well. I'll just have to
keep getting lucky," he told himself.
"No, you're wrong! The integral of e to the minus j two pi f not
t is not negative. It's positive," said the TA, a slight man
with thin hair and faintly Polish looks. Not surprising,
considering his last name is Slawecky. "Besides, that's a moot
point. You are still not going to pass this exam by collecting
measly single points on signs. Now, if this were a borderline C
or B or something, I'd maybe give you a point for the hell of it
more than for correcting my grading, but there's no way in hell
that's going to happen now. Your score might as well be confused
with a golf score or something!"
Ouch. That hurt. This TA was a real asshole, telling me this in
front of the rest of my class. Like I need my academic status
announced as though it were another of those homework
assignments. Why am I an engineer? I can't be an engineer. I'm
not good enough to make the grades.
"Marc!" came the fierce whisper. Sterling pushed a note my way.
'I just got this great book on regression. I talked with someone
at home about it who does this type of stuff for a living, and
she said it's genuine. It's putting you in a trance' ... I know
that already, and nodded my head in Sterling's direction.
'Anyway, it's kinda simple, and I want to try it. Just on Kris,
but with you, Kenny and I to watch, we can take turns. Want to?'
This looked kind of fun. I'd heard about regressions, the way
people hear about some sort of new magic forces coming about
that science can't explain. I snorted (bringing a glare from
Slawgeeki the Tweaking Assistant) and wrote down 'Yeah right you
can perform that. Count me in...' (I seriously doubt he can do
it, but it'd be fun to toy around with anyway.)
'I gotta go to the sporting goods store and get a new cup or a
shield or something though before tomorrow's game, Okay?' was
the next thing written down. I passed it back and concentrated
on the bizarre formulas that were slowly transmuting themselves
across the blackboard. Why they haven't put in a glowboard in
here I have no idea; the dust from the blackboard makes me
sneeze, and you can't see the writing when the sun reflects off
the board.
I signed onto the computer and connected with the sporting
good's store terminal. It took awhile to set up the connection,
as I didn't have a nice machine like all the other rich pigs on
campus. Punching in "jock shield" produced a description and a
cost of 220 cash credits. I wouldn't be able to buy that one
textbook required for my antigrav fields course... well, I can
probably live off of Sterlings' book. I would be able to
appreciate a real shield more than I would
(. . . appreciate the water I need to stay healthy for the next
few days. Besides, I can ...)
Huh? Water? Why was I thinking of buying corn seeds for 220
dollars instead of water? ... I shook it off and punched in the
order for the shield.
"SCRKEEEK! SCRKEEEK!" jeezus but the phone system here is weird.
It has different rings depending on whether or not you are using
the Panasonic optical box for data. I picked it up. "Marc! Get
down here! We gotta do the regression! On the Double! <snick>" I
smiled. Sterling has this annoying habit of ordering people
around, but I find it funny. I'm the only person here who's met
his father, and his father was a general in the Province Wars.
He jokes around with his younger kids like that, and they laugh
-- well, so does his older son. On my way out the door I snagged
an ID card and my loan card (First National Loan Bank's own
MasterCard) and headed out, planning on stopping off at the
sports store at the bottom of the campus to pick my new toy up.
This toy would provide nearly
(two hundred ears of corn, from which from which I can harvest
kernels and sow even more)
...what? I stopped and looked around. At the other end of the
hall was someone chewing a camph, but that's it. Nobody around
me here trying to shake me up by whispering something over my
shoulder. Bad enough that I have to wear a hearing aid due to a
birth defect, almost unheard of in this day. Pun intended.
The door opened right when I was about to swing into it, and I
stepped on Kris. "There you are. Why don't you get yer ass in
here, already!"
"I gotta go down to get something from the store. I just bought
some corn."
"What?"
"I said, I gotta go pick up a jock shield. I just put the order
through over the computer."
"That's not what you said. You said you bought some corn," said
Kenny. The only oriental in the group, he was fairly heavyset
and quick. He never missed anything. I stared at him
suspiciously, wondering if he was somehow putting these corn
things in my head. I was getting confused and annoyed; and a bit
scared, although I wasn't about to show them that.
"Must be thinking of corn then, I had some for dinner. I meant a
shield." I saved myself. "Let's go. What's involved with
regression anyway? Who's going first?"
"I don't really want to go first. I would feel more comfortable
if someone else went first so I can see what happens," said
Kris. Carcernus Polapas, commonly known as Kris, an American
with an incredibly Greek set of parents (he was adopted) had a
kind of worried twist to his nervous, rugged face.
If it weren't for the fact that I'm a guy, I'd say he was
downright handsome. Funny how he never seems to get...
(. . . the girls seem to love him, aside from the fact that one
of the three females left is adding to the community's
population and longevity courtesy of Kris. . .)
...any girls, even with all the looks he gets from the rare girl
on campus.
What?
You know, these weird subliminal thoughts that keep popping up
are getting really annoying... agh, never mind.
"I'll go then. What the hell, the store is gonna be open for
another hour anyway." I decided to go ahead and be the guinea
pig.
"OK, Marc. Close your eyes. Wait, no, don't use the couch, use
the floor. Maybe if you move around when you're regressed you
won't fall off." I climbed down to the floor, thinly carpeted
with a burnt red carpet that was noticeably worn in front of the
threedy box in front of the room. There was a burnt-in
impression on the ceiling where somebody'd taken a huge
magnifying lens and focused the threedy's beam onto the ceiling.
"Close your eyes, and feel the muscles in your eyelids relax.
They seem to naturally gravitate closed. You're not even using
that section of your body. Now the midsection and arms. They are
slowly relaxing, the muscles turning into putty, letting your
arms slide to the ground. Now, the legs ..." I began to relax,
letting my mind envision a completely limp Marc on the ground,
with three other guys sitting on chairs and the sofa-thing
around me, one glancing at a book and saying things. The room is
full of detail, the wood frames of the furniture, the two tone
paint on the walls, a few windows...
Then the scene was suddenly different. It didn't change right
off the bat, to use an ancient cliche, but slowly seemed to
swirl in, as if certain parts of my thoughts disappeared, the
visions that didn't really matter, such as the color of the
walls or what furniture was in the room. Suddenly I noticed a
new thought, a new sight, and that led me to realize that I was
in an entirely new surrounding. I was fully aware, just like
that, and saw that I was in a sort of barren earth, with the
opposite side of the long, shallow valley a few miles down the
way. I could barely see that side, though, under the sick grey
clouds with sparse breaks in it, letting the sun shine though
onto dirty brown and grey earth.
There were a few pinpoints of murky green vegetation -- even
this was limp and sick looking -- scattered around the valley,
next to a lot of what looked like sod-house cellar stairs
leading right into the earth, like the pioneers of the American
Plains all those decades ago.
This was nothing like the world I had envisioned I would see in
a former life. I expected to come back as some guy in the 1800s
or something, getting ready to go into town and shoot some guy
in the street like those old westerns or something. I'd walk
into the bar -- and then it hit me that there were no buildings
out here. From the looks of it, there were dwellings underneath
the soil... then I realized where I was standing. I was leaning
against a tree, one that had to have been here longer than any
other tree in sight, judging from the fact that it was
supporting my heavyset body... no, a thin, sickly, starved body.
What happened? I used to be strong, able to knock down any Rugby
player... I seemed to have lingering thoughts of a voice talking
to me inside my head but I can't place it anymore. I was wearing
what looked like old T-shirt material wrapped around my waist,
in my "relaxation" clothes. Or what my fuzzed mind was insisting
I was wearing. The cloth did not provide very adequate coverage,
and I found myself blushing, when I realized that nearly half
the people (and all the children) in sight wore no clothes at
all.
It seemed then that cloth was a rare item, and I seemed to have
two outfits; this thing that scantily covered me and a full work
outfit that included denim and some form of leather. This placed
me in some kind of prestige position, but why? I turned, and saw
that there was a grove of perhaps twenty trees behind me, the
largest being the one that supported me.
Suddenly it hit me, the full truth of it all, the full reality
of the world I was in: I was a survivor of World War III,
started when PISC cut way back on production. PISC stands for
Producers Internacionalle de Solar Cells, a basic equivalent to
the oil exporting countries' coalition of the late 1900s. Wasn't
that OPAC or something? A war began; Argentina launched nuclear
missiles at the United States, and several other countries
simultaneously began tossing missiles at each other, all of
which were supposedly part of a "permanently dismantled nuclear
armament". I had been one of those lucky few to have a fully
stocked shelter underground, apparently, and had saplings frozen
in state to later grow trees with. These saplings were fast
growing softwood and slow growing hardwood; I was a tree
producer, able to supply other survivors with construction
materials and easily producible tools (easy to carve wood into
tools and building materials). I was a success in my day, but
what a sad day it was. A world so bleak ... three colors on this
world: gray, brown, and dark green -- there were no flowers, no
red, blue, or mixes of green. How destroyed this world is...
"Marc, you have to go." spoke a voice behind my left shoulder.
"What?" I couldn't place the voice, but it was naggingly
familiar.
"You have to come back. You need to go to the store."
"Oh, right, I have to get the corn." CORN? No wonder I was
having those premonitions earlier... uh... what premonitions? I
don't remember where I came from. No, I do remember; I came from
right here. But what was that hauntingly familiar voice in my
head coming from?
"Marc..."
I whirled around, eyes wide.
"You have to...
"You must return to us, Marc...
"You don't have to buy any corn, Marc...
"Marc...
"Mah...
"M...
...
"THREE!" I jolted up, a strange buzzing sensation in my head. I
looked around, seeing the familiarity of the study lounge where
my hall mates and I began a regression. A number came to mind,
and I immediately said it, lest I forget it; at this point
anything I remembered might be neat to examine. 2138. It is a
year. The year that I regressed to. Then all visions of my
vision disappeared, and I was left with a shocking memory of
what happened...
Or rather, what was to happen. This year, the year here at
school, is 2132. Sterling said that every time he'd asked a
question when I was in the trance, I shook my head and had said
"Later". I told Sterling what had happened, what I remembered of
it (most of it, anyway). He grimaced and looked aghast... more
so than the others, who looked just shocked. Then Sterling
explained.
"Every so often, according to my friend back home and this book,
a person 'regresses' into a former state ... sometimes of their
present day. And thus they see their current state. Which is in
the future. Every time this has happened, it has been true...
they are usually only a few hours or days in advance and the
visions are always, always true. I was regressed by my friend
and went to the future too -- I saw myself in California
somewhere watching my car's rear windshield wiper get ripped
off. Two weeks later, we cruised down there and it happened.
Exactly. To the letter. So what you basically saw is that the
world is going to end in six years." He looked aghast.
"Hell no, I refuse to believe that. I can't accept that in six
years the world is going to be politically unstable enough to
warrant a war," said Kris. I didn't respond, but Sterling
slumped back into his chair. Kris was being stubborn; relations
between the US and the Argentinian government, the major
producer of solar cells, had recently broken down again.
"Um. I want to think about this, guys." I got up unsteadily, and
left quietly, to pick up my shield. The world may end in six
years but I was going to at least protect my manhood until then.
Besides which, I may actually use it to further the continuity
of the community. I did have fading thoughts of being married
and having two children with a third on the way. Picking up my
shield was at least a real-life thing to do right now; it wasn't
a vision. I needed something to do to keep my sanity.
If this world I had "reverse regressed" into was real, then it
showed I was to preserve myself and, I don't know, build an
underground shelter. This pleases me. But... what if I do this
and it's for nothing? What if I don't and the regression is
real, and a nuclear war is started? Who can I tell about this
regression? Or rather, who would believe me? A small handful of
psychics, who are routinely thrashed by the free press? My small
group of close friends believe me, because they knew about the
"power" of regression to begin with. We had all seen the results
of it at one time or another. Nobody would believe me; with
relations with PISC having gone downhill for the last two years,
it's not that hard to think that there's a war in the future,
but who would believe that? People are too busy enjoying their
current life to worry about world situations. I think that
solution is definitely a "not quite" situation.
Oh hell. I don't know what to think.
Life sure was simpler when all I had to do was play rugby, one
of the most typical college experiences there are. College
sports.
I'll just pick up my ... corn ... and get ready to ... plant
some more rugby players in the field tomorrow. Final day of the
tournament. If I can just stop treating the others like
vegetables.
Ignorant, nonbelieving vegetables.
Typical college experience.
Dave Savlin (dhs1@ns.cc.lehigh.edu)
-------------------------------------
Dave Savlin is attempting to study Electrical Engineering at
Lehigh University, where he dreams of one day having his own
private room. In between attempts at accomplishing a writing
minor, his tired hands scribble meaningless chatter, like the
previous few paragraphs -- which can be intepreted any number of
ways.
The American Dream by Robert Hurvitz
=======================================
John Griffiths was sitting on a bench in the little park
conveniently located a couple blocks from his house. It was a
sunny and warm Sunday afternoon, and he couldn't stay inside. So
there he was, in the park, feet crossed and hands clasped behind
his head, squinting across the small stretch of grass at four
small boys -- no older than six, he guessed -- who had just
arrived at the basketball court there.
John sighed and tried to remember when he last played
basketball. He shook his head. It had been a long time.
The boys started playing, dribbling and passing and stealing the
basketball. Rarely did they take a shot, and when they did, they
invariably missed; the hoop was much too high for them. John
smiled as he watched them.
Birds were singing in the oak trees that lined the park, and a
cool breeze whispered by, playing with a few strands of hair
that hung down over John's forehead.
The sudden stench of urine and filth made John Griffiths flinch.
He quickly looked around in alarm and to his right saw a
homeless man shuffling towards him. John recoiled at the sight
of him: unkempt hair, deep-lined face smeared with dirt, soiled
and tattered army fatigues, and dragging a rusty shopping cart
filled with junk.
The vagrant stopped about a dozen feet from John and stared.
"Spare some change?" he asked hoarsely.
John felt paralyzed. He didn't know what to do. It was usually
he who was walking and the homeless man who was sitting down,
and so John would always shrug and sometimes quicken his pace.
But now the tables were turned; John was trapped.
"Uh," John muttered, "yeah." He dug into his pocket and pulled
out a five dollar bill, which he then nervously held out.
Smiling, the panhandler stepped closer, and John gingerly placed
the money on the outstretched hand so as to not risk the chance
of getting his fingers dirty in any way. The five dollars
quickly disappeared into a well- patched pocket.
"God bless you, sir," the homeless man said. He returned to his
shopping cart, grabbed hold, and started back on his way. As he
passed in front and then to the left of John Griffiths, his odor
began to dissipate, much to John's relief. "Yes sir," the
transient was saying, mostly to the asphalt path he was on, "God
bless you. Have a nice day, sir. You're a real humanitarian, you
are. Yes sir."
"Actually," John Griffiths said, "I'm a lawyer."
The homeless man stopped and turned. "Eh?"
"You called me a humanitarian," John explained. The homeless man
nodded, a quizzical look on his face. "And I said, 'Actually,
I'm a lawyer.'"
The homeless man nodded again, then smiled dumbly. "Well, maybe
you can be my lawyer next time I get arrested."
John laughed out loud. "Yeah, right."
He watched the vagrant lose interest and turn back to his
shopping cart. "I drive a Porsche," John called out.
The homeless man stopped again and looked at John.
"I'm married to a beautiful woman," John added. "We live in a
four- bedroom house, right near here."
The homeless man blinked, and several seconds ticked by before
he did anything. Then his hands suddenly clenched into fists.
"Who the fuck do you think you are?" he yelled. "I act nice
after you gave me money, and you start hollerin' at me how
successful you are, how wonderful your fucking life is!" He
pointed at John now, and trembled. "Well I don't give a shit!
You hear? Fuck you! Fuck your wife! Fuck your car! Fuck your
whole fucking life!" He spun back around and stalked away, the
shopping cart clattering as he pulled it along behind him.
Stunned, John Griffiths stared at him as he made his way down
the path, reached the end of the park, and crossed the street,
disappearing behind some trees. His gaze lingered for some time
afterwards.
Fuck my wife, he thought. Fuck my car.
He slowly faced forward, looking straight ahead, at the boys
still playing basketball. They hadn't noticed a thing.
Fuck my whole fucking life, he thought.
Before he realized what he was doing, John Griffiths had stood
up and was walking to the basketball court. The boys stopped
their game and looked at him suspiciously as he approached them.
He smiled and held out his hands as if to catch a pass. The boys
smiled back, laughed, and threw him the ball. John caught it,
dribbled down the court, leapt, and rammed the basketball
through the hoop. The boys cheered.
The next day, John Griffiths quit his job, bought a small house
in an undistinguished neighborhood, filed for divorce, sold his
Porsche and picked up a used Honda Civic, purchased a Nintendo
Home Entertainment System, and lived happily ever after.
Robert Hurvitz (hurvitz@cory.berkeley.edu)
--------------------------------------------
Robert Hurvitz is a computer science major at UC Berkeley and
plans on graduating one of these years. His only other published
work appeared in the Dec. 1990 issue of _Quanta_. He's currently
working on a weird and depressing story.
The Ambiguity Factor by Pete Reppert
=======================================
The green blur passing beneath the transparent hull of Peter
Lyod's solar powered hovercraft disguised the hundreds of houses
spaced evenly throughout the leafy canopy. No telephone wires
could be seen.
In fact, the only evidence that anyone lived in the forest was
the evenly-spaced clearing for hovercraft like his own. The
clearing had smatterings of the latest fashion in landscaping:
fuchsia trees.
"God I hate the suburbs," he thought, as he popped a disc
labelled "Red Planet Surprise -- Goop!" into the stereo. As the
crisp, very non- suburban sounds of Goop! came on, Peter pushed
a button marked with a down arrow to let in some air. A red
vehicle sped past.
As the wind brushed his hair, Peter thought about the meeting he
had just left. He had read and mostly comprehended the
ground-breaking paper on Time Distortion Around Massive Objects
as soon as it was made available on FreeNet, several years ago.
The paper had generated wild- eyed speculation about time
travel, which quickly abated when people realized the nearest
object massive enough to do the job, a particular galaxy, was
mind-bogglingly far away. Even a near-lightspeed ship would take
thousands of years to get there. Now it had been discovered that
the effect was present around objects of any mass, and the
world's first "temporal quanta amplifier" had been built.
Peter's job, along with that of several hundred other media
people, was to describe what the marvel of time amps could mean
to the rest of the world. It meant that in the year 4491 the
human race could contemplate travelling to other galaxies. It
meant freedom from the prison of Cartesian three-space (he could
think of a few people who had already left Cartesian
three-space, but that was another story) and the resolution of
some paradoxes in Physics that had been plaguing scientists for
hundreds of years. There was a renewed interest in Grand Unified
Theories (Lyod's first reaction to this last bit of news was,
"maybe there'll be a renewed interest in circle-squaring as
well!").
Peter's hovercraft came to a smooth landing on the 30th floor
platform of his building in Sioux Falls. His friend Anola had
left a message on the videowall: "Honey, I missed you -- hope
the meeting went well. I'll be back from class at 6:00 and
here's a free demo of what's in store for you."
She undid her top two buttons, blew a him a kiss, tossed her
dreadlocks and headed for the door. As soon as the message
ended, the videowall turned pale purple.
Peter grabbed an organically grown peach from the fridge and sat
on the balcony to gather his thoughts for the news story he
would produce. We could now go anywhere anywhen. There was one
nagging exception: the past. Backward time travel was thought to
break several of the laws of thermodynamics, in particular the
fifth and seventh, but the new results showed it to be
technically feasible. In addition to the strong argument that
there were now so many more interesting destinations to choose
from, the World Council had already agreed not to send anyone
backward in time to a point before the invention of the time
machine out of fear that ancient time paradoxes could come true.
He felt intuitively that there must be some way around the "Back
To The Future" problem, as they called it.
The videowall displayed some FreeNet artwork by Padma Sanchez --
dinosaurs romping across a wasteland in an infinite loop,
running forward but never getting closer. The image was
overlapped with time- lapsed footage of fabricated crystalline
flowers blossoming, covering the screen then shattering to
reveal the dinosaurs again. The soundtrack was like an
underwater duel between a tuba and a trombone. He wasn't sure
what it meant, but he liked it.
To be able to travel back to the days of dinosaurs. Or to his
favorite time in history, the mid- to late- twentieth century.
What a blast! His friends didn't understand why he was so
fascinated with that time period. "They were so absurdly
uncivilized with respect to their technology. Probably the
goofiest period in all of history. A television commercial model
was President of the United States at the same time they had the
biggest nuclear arsenal ever! They got electricity from
fission-generated steam! And think of what it would be like to
see New York or London or any of the other great port cities
before the seismic wave broke up the ice cap in 1993. Right when
the greenhouse effect was about to go nonlinear thanks to
automobile emissions! How did we ever make it out of that dismal
time?"
Just then Anola walked in, put down her computer and stepped out
on the balcony. "Peace."
"Peace your own self!"
Then over each other, "How are you?" and "I missed you." After a
warm hug Anola said, "Time to meditate."
"Aw Ma', do we have to?"
"Now come along with Auntie Anola and take your shoes off like a
good little boy," she replied while lighting some incense.
Actually, Peter loved his daily meditation. Hundreds of years of
history had proven its value. It was gradually revealed that
Peace was not achievable through the manipulation of tanks,
guns, soldiers, or exchanges of tariffs, bank loans, or
donations of food and hardware. World Peace did not require
supercomputers or artificial intelligence or some great
discovery. The hypersaturation of the senses brought on by
five-D info transfer required people to go into deep sensory
deprivation for an hour a day, and as more people took up the
practice, other benefits soon became apparent. People felt full
of energy yet relaxed. Outward comparisons and jealousies were
erased by inner harmony. Acceptance of the present replaced
dissatisfied yearnings for an infinitely regressing future. The
limitless conspicuous consumption made possible by the
exploitation of the Martian colonies tapered off. The
advertising industry went bankrupt.
Above all, competition with the limits of one's self replaced
competition with others. When they realized there hadn't been a
war in half a century, they called it the Silent Revolution.
World Peace began with individuals becoming peaceful one at a
time. The economy went through several "severe fluctuations",
but had reached a stable state satisfactory to Martians and the
Earth-dwellers alike. All needs were provided for, but luxuries
cost money. It was often said that the wise forsook luxuries in
exchange for freedom. All possessions require maintenance --
things demand the acquisition of more things. Before you know
it, all of your time is spent shopping. It was also said that
these same people were merely lazy.
It was going on 8:00 and they had been working up an appetite.
Peter rolled out of bed and heated up some leftover Thai food.
Anola slipped into a white one-piece self-cleaning jumpsuit that
looked and felt like a second skin. "If you can't go back in
time, why not send a 'message from the future'?" From the eating
area he shouted back, "Thought of that -- if we tell them how
time travel works, our present won't be the same. Might screw
things so royally that you and I'd never meet. Never be born."
"Wouldn't it be O.K. just to let them know what the future could
be like? Couldn't you just tell them that time travel is
possible without saying how? Then they could figure out the
details themselves."
"But Anola, how would I do that?"
Just then the videowall flashed "YOU HAVE A CALLER". It was
D-Jing Six, a downstairs neighbor who wanted them to come over
to hear his latest acquisition: a 1920's orchestron which he had
just restored. D- Jing was a musician who repaired antiques on
the side. Ancient keyboard instruments were a specialty and this
was a rare find indeed. They flew down to D-Jing's and were
ushered into a living room strewn with techno junk. They pulled
up some antique plastic crates and watched as D-Jing installed a
metal roll into a recess of the orchestron. The sound that
poured out of the huge wooden automaton was remarkable. There
was a full drum set with cymbals, a wind section whose air came
from a cam-driven bellows, and an assortment of chimes and other
plucked or struck instruments. D-Jing played along with the
roll, stopping every now and then to make some adjustments. It
looked like he'd used some of the junk to add a few sounds of
his own.
"Where did you find it?"
"Oh, I just beamed back in time and stole it."
"WHAT??"
"Just kiddin'."
D-Jing Six was one of the people who had left Cartesian
three-space quite a while ago: one could never tell when he was
joking.
Anola's semisweet chocolate skin and white jumpsuit were
reflecting blue light from some strange boxes in the corner.
"What are these?"
"That one's a 1950's era oscilloscope and you'll never guess
what that other thing is."
"It looks like something out of an ancient sci-fi movie."
"Doesn't it? It's a computer terminal circa 1970." "Woa-AH!"
exclaimed Anola and Peter in unison. "Look at it. It looks so
funny!" They all giggled at the absurdly overbuilt box. As
D-Jing kicked over a jar full of nuts and bolts, he said, "You'd
be surprised what they could do with these old clunkers. You
know, they had a global computer network using satellites and
telephone lines. Quite sophisticated, really." "Another weird
juxtaposition of technology -- Alexander Graham Bell meets the
Space Age." "Yes," replied D-Jing, "they even had these funny
little keyboards before we Chinese improved 'em."
"Oh yes, by adding twenty thousand new keys." The trio laughed
at the old joke, but the Chinese data input system permanently
changed the slowest part of information transfer -- telling the
computer what you wanted it to do.
On the way back to the apartment, Anola said "What a junk bin!"
"Yes, but he has some amazing stuff."
"No denying that."
"Woa-AH, man."
"Listen, Peter, I think I know how you can tell the twentieth
century about this future."
"How?"
"To create enough ambiguity, disguise the message as a science
fiction story. Have D-Jing hook his 1970's terminal up to the
time amp, and you've got it. the primitive network was connected
to all other media outlets, so there you have it."
"Anola, that's brilliant!"
Peter stepped out onto the balcony and began working furiously
on his story. As the twilight faded, Anola gently placed a
candle on the table.
"You're working as if your life depended on that story."
He looked her dead in the eye and said, "It does."
Haircuts $20 by Jason Snell
==============================
The old riddle goes like this:
You're in a small town, one with only two barbers. One of the
barbers has a terrible haircut-- there are long strands of hair
in some places and bald patches in others. His competitor, on
the other hand, looks great. Not one hair is out of place.
Which barber do you choose?
The correct answer is that you choose the barber that looks
terrible, because if there are only two barbers in the whole
town, they must end up cutting each other's hair. The barber
with the bald patches is the one who gave the other barber the
great haircut.
It's a dumb riddle.
Joe, my old barber, was just like the guy with the nasty hair in
the riddle. He looked awful, but his haircuts were cheap and
looked sharp. My father and I had been going to Joe since my
family moved here 15 years ago. Dad was almost completely bald
by the time I was 10, but he still went to Joe every month.
Joe told dirty jokes while he cut hair, and discussed whatever
sport happened to be in season at the time. He also loved the
kind of food that doctors warn you not to eat. And that's why
Joe keeled over mid-haircut one day and dropped face-first onto
a floor strewn with little piles of wet hair.
With Joe gone, the only other place in town that I could go was
the salon that my mother visits twice weekly to get her hair
bleached. The alternative to the salon was putting a bowl over
my head and trying to cut it myself.
The moment I walked into the place, I could tell that it was
nothing like Joe's barber shop. Joe's smelled faintly of beer
and Old Spice, while the salon smelled of wet hair, hairspray,
shampoo, mousse, and nail polish. It was a disgusting
combination. I wondered about the people who worked there --
what kind of condition were their noses in? Had the stench
completely ruined all sense of smell? Maybe they just walked
into a salon one day, took a big whiff, and declared, "Ah,
haircutting, that's the job for me."
In addition to wishing I had a clothespin stuck on my nose, I
felt extremely out of place in the salon. There were women
sitting under hairdryers, women getting their nails painted, and
a few women with plastic bags and cotton wrapped all around
their heads. And I was there, some kid with his hair a bit too
long, wearing a faded T-shirt and old jeans that probably needed
to be thrown away.
Then I saw the person walking toward me from out of the back of
the salon. She was six feet tall if you measured her from the
bottoms of her black spiked heels to the top of her wild blonde
hair. She was wearing a spandex jumpsuit, with a little red sash
tied around her waist. I guess the sash was supposed to make her
outfit look more like fashion and less like a wet suit. It
didn't help.
"I'm Robin. You must be my three o'clock appointment," the woman
said. Her hair was fluffed up several inches above her head all
the way around, and I could see dark roots showing underneath it
all. She wore four pairs of earrings.
I nodded and smiled. She led me into the back of the shop, and I
began to think of what I was going to tell her about my haircut.
All I wanted was something simple -- shorter hair. Nothing
fancy, just the same style as I was wearing, only shorter. I
didn't want to wear a plastic bag on my head, and I didn't want
to get my hair cut in some cool new style. I just wanted my hair
to look like it always had.
There were sinks in the back of the shop. I sat down in a chair
next to one, and she began washing my hair. This was something
else that Joe had never done before. It was almost like I had my
own personal servant. Clean my shoes, feed the dogs, and while
you're at it, wash my hair.
Robin was quite unlike Joe in another way, too. When she leaned
forward to begin washing my hair, her chest moved right in front
of my face. I was leaning back in a chair, water spraying into
my hair, and the only place I could look was straight up. Right
into Robin's cleavage.
"So, you're Janice's son, right?" she asked me.
"Yeah," I said to the spandex.
"Are you going to the Junior College now?" Her fingernails were
massaging my scalp. It felt great.
"No, just to high school."
"Is this your senior year, then?"
"Hmm?" I was too busy focusing my attention on her right nipple.
"Is this your senior year?"
"Uh... yeah."
"What are you going to do after you graduate?"
"I'm not sure."
She leaned back. Suddenly I could see the ceiling again.
"Okay, let's go back out to the chair," she said, and wrapped a
towel around my head.
Robin led me out to a high-backed chair, and I sat in it. She
covered me with a plastic sheet, and unwrapped the towel from my
wet head.
"How would you like your hair cut?"
I paused for a moment. I hated it when people asked me this
question. Did I look like a recent graduate of the Ace School of
Beauty? I had no idea about how I wanted my hair cut.
"I don't know. Pretty much the way it was before. Not too short,
or it'll stick up all over. A little longer in the back."
"Okay." She began cutting.
She had no problems with my conservative hair style, I guess.
Sometimes I wish someone would tell me "change your hair!" It
might actually get me to do it. As it is, my hair has looked the
same since I was ten years old.
Once I almost did something to change that. I held my head over
a sink filled with peroxide for twenty minutes, like a suicidal
person holding a loaded gun to their temple. In the end, I
chickened out and drained the sink.
"I guess this is the first time you've had your hair done here,"
she said.
"Hmm?" I wasn't paying attention to what she was saying.
Instead, I had been drifting. That's one of the things that
always seems to happen to me when I get my hair cut --?I drift,
and begin to fall asleep. I don't know what causes it.
"I asked you if this was the first time you've had your hair
done here."
"Yeah. My barber died."
"Joe?"
How many barbers around town had died in the past few months?
"Yeah."
"It's too bad about him. He was a great guy. It's kind of scary
that people can die, just like that."
"Isn't it, though?"
That was the end of our conversation, which is just as well. It
wasn't exactly material you'd expect to turn up on Nightline.
After Robin had finished cutting and blow-drying my hair, I
realized that she had cut it too short. Hair was sticking up all
over. She had also cut the sides much shorter than the top.
There were no initials carved into my head -- believe me, I
checked.
"That'll be 20 dollars," she said.
I handed her the $20 bill that mom had given me. I guess she
knew exactly how much a haircut cost here -- about $12 more than
Joe charged.
"It was nice having you here. Come back soon."
"Thanks."
"Oh -- one more thing."
I turned back around, noticing that there were little black
hairs all over my faded T-shirt.
"You should think about getting an earring. In the right ear.
It'd look really cute."
I nodded, smiled, and walked out of the salon. Next door to the
salon was a jewelry store, one that pierces ears. I knew that
fact only because my mother had taken me with her when she had
her ears re-pierced when I was seven.
An earring?
I stood outside the jewelry store for a minute or so. Then,
scratching my neck, I turned away.
I tried to pat down all the hairs sticking straight up out of my
head as I walked back to my car.
I've made up a riddle. It goes like this:
You're in a small town, one with only two hairdressers. One of
the hairdressers has fluffy pink hair and a nose ring. The other
has the sides of her head shaved, while the back of her hair
goes halfway to the floor.
Which hairdresser do you choose?
I'm not sure.
It's a dumb riddle.
Jason Snell (jsnell@ucsd.edu)
-------------------------------
Jason Snell is a senior at the University of California, San
Diego, majoring in Communication and minoring in
Literature/Writing. He is the editor of this publication, the
editor in chief of the UCSD Guardian newspaper, and an intern at
KUSI-TV Channel 51 News in San Diego.
New Orleans Wins the War by Greg Knauss
==========================================
In 1948 my Daddy came to the city
Told the people that they'd won the war
Maybe they'd heard it, maybe not
Probably they heard it, just forgot
'Cause they built him a platform there in Jackson Square
And people came to hear him from everywhere
They started to party and they partied some more
'Cause New Orleans had won the war
We knew we'd do it, we done whipped the Yankees!
--Randy Newman
In 1868, the American Civil War ended when a battle-weary United
States population voted the Democratic candidate for president,
William Blakely, into office. The republicans, throughout the
course of Lincoln's second term, had received the majority of
the blame for both allowing the Southern states to "slip away,"
and then not be regained. Blakely ran on a platform of peace
with the Confederate States and won a resounding victory.
Though relations between the United States and the Confederate
States remained chilly over the next decade -- abolitionists and
unionists still held powerful minorities in the U.S. Congress --
the situation began to smooth as first Blakely and then his
Democratic successor, Thomas Howell, courted the Confederacy,
eyeing its powerful, and growing agricultural wealth.
The former Southern states, for their part, changed little
politically over the course of those ten years, yet the economic
differences where dramatic. After the war ended, there was a
drive to adopt a new state-rights constitution, and a document
very similar to the original U.S. Articles of Confederation was
drafted and finally signed by all the "rebel states" in 1871;
the capital of the new country moved from Richmond to New
Orleans. Soon after the war, the Confederacy again emerged as
the world's leading supplier of agricultural staples --
?tobacco, cotton, corn and sugar -- and its first president
under the new constitution, R. E. Lee, used this power to win
concessions from the United States' president, Blakely, then in
his second term.
Lee's strategy was to bring the import of industrialism to the
overwhelmingly agricultural South. Slave labor, used throughout
the Confederacy and explicitly sanctioned by the Document of
Confederation was perfectly suited to the harsh rigors of quick
industrialization, and Lee used this to his advantage. The
Confederate States, by 1900, were as much an industrial
powerhouse as the U.S., with the addition of heavy
agriculturalism as well. The United States was forced into
importing a large amount of food from the South because of
delays in their expansion of the trans-Appalachian railroad.
Both countries attempted to gain territory by annexation between
the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the twentieth
century. Though the Mason-Dixon line was formally rejected by
the Confederate Congress, the Confederacy only half-heartedly
pursued new lands, eventually adding only the New Mexico
Territory and the unorganized Indian Reservation north of Texas.
The United States, however, spread westward, over the rest of
the continent.
When World War I began in Europe, the Confederate States and
their president, Thurmond Byron, immediately sent troops,
sensing the opportunity to increase their international power
and prestige. Though England, with whom the Confederacy had
allied itself, disapproved of institutionalized slavery, it
needed the men, machinery and food that the South could provide
and welcomed the assistance. When the United States joined the
fight against Germany in 1917, the war was all but over and the
Confederacy was now a powerful force in Europe as well as North
America.
Over the next ten years, between 1920 and 1930, the United
States became the only World War I victor to withdraw from the
European theater and become isolationist. The Confederacy stayed
involved in European politics and formally allied itself with
the German Republic when Adolf Hitler was elected German Premier
in 1933. By the next year, the Confederate States remained
Germany's only major ally after the burning of the Reichstag and
the dissolution of the Republic, and was the sole voice of
democratic international support when Poland was invaded in
1939.
As World War II began, all ties between the so-called "Allied
Forces" -- England, France and the United States -- and the
"Axis Powers" -- Germany, Italy, Japan and the Confederate
States -- collapsed. In 1941, caught off-guard and unprepared,
the United States was invaded by the Confederacy, with heavy
German U-boat support. Washington, D.C., the capital, was taken
within two months and the Confederate army slowly marched up the
eastern seaboard of the United States.
In Europe, France had fallen to the Nazis by the time of the
Confederate invasion and England was slowly losing the "Battle
of Britain." In 1944, London was finally occupied, and without a
western front to contend with, Hitler undertook his long-delayed
invasion of the Soviet Union. Japan began its landing on both
the west coast of the United States and east coast of China
during the same summer that Hitler exploded the world's first
atomic weapon over Moscow, in 1946.
By 1948, Italy controlled all of Africa, Germany dominated
Europe and Russia, Japan held China and western North America,
and the Confederacy occupied the United States from the Great
Plains east. On October 19, 1948, the United States president,
Franklin Roosevelt, surrendered to the Confederate forces in
Boston, Massachusetts.
The Confederate States annexed the territory of the United
States over the course of the next five years. Each state, to be
admitted to the Confederacy, redrafted its constitution in the
style of the Document of Confederation and instituted legal
slavery. Germany, Italy and Japan, by 1955, followed Confederate
examples and began to use slaves both inside their borders and
in conquered territories. Certain regions of Africa and China
were entirely depopulated by the early 1960s and about the same
time, Germany, operating chiefly with the support of the
Confederacy, eliminated the last followers of Judaism.
The world economy surged during the 1960s, '70s and '80s, driven
mostly by the availability of cheap labor. Trade between the
three major world powers (Italy had slipped in dominance and was
hardly more than a German puppet by 1965) ranged from wheat to
consumer electronics to medical equipment. Though occasional
protests against slavery and the treatment of the Jews erupted,
especially in western Europe and the northern Confederate
States, they petered out as the first generation born with
slavery as a world-wide institution grew to adulthood.
Today, in 1991, the world is at peace.
The Explosion That Killed Ben Lippencott
==========================================
There are few things less pleasant than being pelted with the
remains of another human being.
Lippencott was hunched over a few vials of something or other
before the explosion. He was a deeply serious man and did not
enjoy frivolity or even companionship in the lab. "Lipp's
Corner" was in the far section of the biology floor, and it took
weaving around several long tables to get to. One day many years
ago, I was approaching him from behind and was about to ask him
if he would join the rest of us for lunch when his head bolted
up from its hunched position.
"Uh!" he said, and there was a tremendous explosion.
Lipp quite literally unraveled. Though they did find his legs
still attached to his pelvis and his arms were almost unscathed
in themselves, his head and torso were, well, untraceable.
They found pieces. All over. But the majority of the matter that
made up the upper half of Benjamin Lippencott just wasn't
accounted for.
Quite a bit of the pieces they did find ended up on me and one
of the things that is less pleasant than being pelted with
remains of another human being is having to wipe those remains
out of your eyes. I am thankful that my mouth was closed.
There were questions later on, of course, as to what Lipp was
cooking up in those vials of his. Though glass all over the lab
was broken, the feds spent quite a bit of money attempting to
reconstruct each broken beaker, test tube and vial. They're
meticulous people, federal investigators, and eventually they
decided that there was only one piece of glassware that couldn't
be accounted for. Their report made a big deal about the fact
that it was the one Lipp was using. Analyses of blood and other
tissues taken off my person gave no spectacular or unusual
results.
I, of course, underwent therapy. Though the cases where a man
has been smeared all over another man are rare, there were a few
precedents. There was even a therapist who specialized in the
area, in a manner of speaking. He had made a career of
counseling veterans who had seen friends killed, usually
messily, before their eyes.
What we found was this: I was upset by the incident. I had
nightmares for two or three weeks. Though Lipp wasn't what I
would have called a friend, I had known him for over five years,
and, yes, I was sorry he was dead. But we also found out that I
have a highly analytic mind and that I'm able to take such
things as the random probability of life. We found I was
mentally healthy, considering the circumstances. We both thought
it noted a humorous mention that I now favored glasses over
contacts.
I last saw the psychiatrist about three months after the
accident, and I only mention him at all because I quickly had a
nagging suspicion I should have stayed with him longer. This
little voice kept telling me I shouldn't bother going back, but
I didn't know whether to listen to it. It, surprisingly enough,
was Lipp's voice.
Lipp was never a man to waste words. He would often arrive in
the morning, forgo coffee or a donut, and slouch over to his
corner to begin work. We might exchange a few words as we passed
in the halls or when he would turn down my invitations to lunch,
and I knew his voice as well as I knew those of the rest of the
guys. It was a low, growly voice, never happy to be called into
service.
It was my first week back at the lab, and I was doing some virus
isolation experiments, using dyes to trace various substances
through the bloodstream. It's simpleminded, easy-to-goof work,
and I was reaching for a small vial of dye when, over my
shoulder, I heard someone say, "No, that one's fat soluble.
You'll lose it."
I started and turned around, somehow almost sure I wouldn't find
anybody there. That type of voice isn't common, and there was
only one person I knew --?had known -- with it. It was Lipp's
voice, giving me instructions, apparently from beyond the grave.
It was a little unsettling.
It was also a little frustrating. Hearing voices is a common
psychiatric complaint, and many people spend their entire lives
listening to these ethereal spirits. Socrates claimed to have a
voice in his head, but he apparently had no trouble
communicating with it. I, however, tried everything I could
think of, with very little initial success.
At first I ignored it, hoping it was just a phantom memory of
the explosion, but it corrected another three mistakes that day
and I decided it was something that I was going to have to deal
with.
Just figuring out how to attempt communication with a
disembodied voice is a serious exercise. At first, I just tried
thinking at it.
"Hellooo," I thought. "Lipp?" He hated being called Lipp and I
thought that if anything was going to bring out some sort of
schizophrenia, it would be anger.
Nothing.
I excused myself to the bathroom and, Lord help me, tried
speaking out loud. It sounds ridiculously corny in retrospect,
something out of a really bad TV movie.
"Hello," I said again. "Lippencott? You there?"
After fifteen minutes of talking to myself in the bathroom, I
decided that an appointment with my ex-therapist might be a good
thing to consider. That brought the voice back.
"Don't do that," it said.
I sighed. Not only did I have enough of a psychiatric problem
that the voice of a dead co-worker was in my head, but that
voice didn't want me to get it taken care of. I wondered if a
mental disease could be self-defensive.
Normally, I would have finished out the day, gone home, made an
appointment with the therapist for the next day, and gone to
sleep. This is pretty straight thinking, but it didn't work out
that way at all.
I was home, making dinner, when Lipp again reared what I suppose
you could call his head.
"Get a pencil and paper," he commanded. "Quickly."
I sighed again. I wasn't too worried about Lipp's voice, or the
fact that it was in my head. I had a certain degree of faith in
the psychiatric profession and I had recently been through a
traumatic experience; it was to be expected that I would have
some sort of delayed reaction. My therapist would just comfort
me through this and I would soon be better. A mental disturbance
is nothing to worry about if you have confidence in your sanity.
"Quickly!" the voice hissed at me.
"Yeah, yeah," I said. "Gimme a sec." Apparently, my delayed
traumatic reaction was a pushy one.
I moved the pot I was boiling spaghetti in to a cool burner and
sat down at the table with a pencil and a piece of paper.
"Listen to what I say," said Lipp. "Don't ask questions."
He began talking, in that low, gruff voice of his, and I slowly
transcribed what he said. He corrected my chemistry errors and
once reminded me where the apostrophe goes in a possessive.
I have to admit, in the end I'm glad that I never made my
appointment with my therapist. Lipp had an incredible mind and
most of his time in the lab had been spent working on unofficial
pet projects. The only reason he took the job at the lab at all
was because he didn't have the equipment he needed at home.
Maybe some day we'll try to work out how smearing the majority
of his brain on my face transferred his quiet, sulky
consciousness into my head, but for now, we're ankle deep in
other ideas.
Lipp was working on what he called a "friendly virus" to fight
cancer when he died. It seems that he wasn't boiling the two
components before mixing them, and that caused the explosion. It
was a simple mistake, but it allowed me to be up on stage with
him when we got the Nobel Prize for medicine. He, of course,
wrote the speech.
Right now, we're working on a friendly virus to fight AIDS and
it looks promising. I guess I'm now considered the foremost
biochemist in the world, and that's why they allow me my
eccentricities.
Lipp and I thought it would be a good idea to have someone stand
behind me while we work.
Greg Knauss
-------------
Greg Knauss was a senior at the University of California, San
Diego, majoring in Political Theory, when work began on this
issue. Now he's a gruaduate with nothing to do. He recently
mailed off a "Star Trek: The Next Generation" script submission,
proving again that he is indeed as loopy as a loon... whatever
that means.
FYI
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