Conan the Adventurer

CHAPTER ONE
Thisbe, the thief, sat with his back to a tree in a moonlit clearing in the northern reaches of Brythunia, near the border of Hyperborea. At one end of the clearing, a rock face held a small waterfall which collected at a small pool at the base of the face. The singular most notable spectacle in the clearing was a podium to one side of the pond and near the face of rock. Upon the pedestal was an inscription in a script older than the hills themselves. No mere chance had brought the thief to this particular clearing. It was rumored that the pedestal was a key into a cavern the riches of which could buy a kingdom. The thief Thisbe, then, was trying to ascertain the method of entry and the role that the strange pedestal played.

Surely, the strange earthen jugs played a role in unraveling the tale. Some sort of sorcery must have been laid on the two jugs, since they bore the same ancient script on their faces as the podium they must be aged uncountable years. Of course, they would have to be ensorceled to have stayed intact this long! Indeed, on an earlier attempt at unraveling the mystery of the podium and the jugs, the thief Thisbe had accidentally dropped one of the jugs to have it shatter into pieces at his feet. Yet the next time the thief returned to the clearing, there two jugs stood. It appeared whatever sorcery had been laid on the jug allowed it to repair itself, or at least, for another jug to be called into existence!

It was these events that the thief now pondered. He stared at the podium and the jugs set nearby. He had no hope to discover the meanings of the texts written upon them, for the script was too ancient. Perhaps the waterfall?

In a flash of insight, the thief jumps up and snaps his fingers together. The waterfall! Of course, it was so simple, he must fill one of the jugs and place it on the pedestal. But which one? The jugs differed in size, the larger of the two being about five palms (an ancient water measurement) and the smaller being about half that size. But which should he pick? Indeed, a man seeking riches would choose the larger of the two, since it is greed and lust for more which drives him to the cave of wonders. But there were also stories of ancient writings and the secrets of old held inside the cave, and would not a man of wisdom choose the smaller of the two knowing that in excess one finds to defeat oneself?

Thisbe, the thief, halts in front of the podium for a moment, then chooses the larger of the two jugs. If it doesn't work, he thinks to himself, then he can always try the next jug. Walking over to the pool of cool water, the thief fills the larger jug and places it onto the pedestal. For a moment nothing happens, until the thief sees a shimmering by the water fall. In amazement, the thief watches as a hidden door opens and a pathway is raised leading across the pool. Wonder and excitement fill the thief, and he walks as in a dream towards the opening in the fall. As he enters the door, the walkway descends back into the pool and the door rumbles closed. Once again, all is still in the clearing and the moon shines down on an empty scene devoid of movement save the rustling of the leaves in the night summer breeze.

CHAPTER TWO
In the blaze of noon day summer heat, and on the rolling hills of Hyperborea can be seen a large youth walking across the landscape. His long, dark hair is held by a woven braided band across his forehead, and his piercing blue eyes seem like gems in the strong summer light. Favoring comfort over protection, the youth wears a buckskin loincloth and naught another stich save his thronged walking sandals. His dark skin burnt from sun and scoured by wind would essay him from the southern races save his blue eyes, which are not of that race. Too, none of the southern races were built as he, with such broad back and thick thighs and arms. He wears a broadsword across his broad back and a dagger on his belt and too he carries himself with the air of one who is not unaccustomed to use each one.
This is Conan of Cimmeria, the freebooter and adventurer of that fierce mountain peoples. He walks over hill and over stream in a due course, yet he has not a destination. He walks to adventure and whatever fortune may present itself.
It is an hour before sunset when the youth comes upon a campsite. The site is nothing more than a fire pit and a small hut on stilts. As the Cimmerian approaches, he loosens the broadsword on his back and walks at an angle, ready to dive to the side or fight as the need arises.

"Who approaches?" A voice calls from inside the hut on stilts.
"Who wants to know?" The youth responds.

Out of the hut pops a shaven head. The one who it belongs to soon follows the heads notion and descends the stilted abode to the ground below. One sees a small man, not overly old but past the prime of life with a small greying beard and a short mustache. His shaven head and almond shaped eyes disclose that he is from the far Eastern lands of Khital, lands of wizards and strange customs.

"I am Mako, a wizard. And who might you be? Your size and demeanor announce you to be a warrior, surely, but come now, what is your name barbarian?"
"I am Conan, wizard," says the youth, not yet sheathing his sword. Being a man of Cimmeria grants one certain preferences, like strength and agility. But, as with most warriors, the barbarian was wary of the supernatural or magical. It was one thing to grapple with a foe of blood and sinew, but how to grapple with a magical enemy? The youth had been through trial enough of the former, and seen enough of the latter to know to avoid it whenever possible.
"Ah, Conan. To what gods do you owe allegiance, barbarian," The wizard asks, "and what can I do for you?"
"I swear by Crom," the youth replied, "but Crom requires no allegiance from any Cimmerian. He bestows upon us our strength and the fire within which gives us the desire to fight and be tested, but then he is done with us and requires no more."
"Ah, I have heard of Crom and Cimmeria. You are a long way from home," the wizard Mako noted.
"Aye, and I've been walking for several days without a proper rest," the Cimmerian said, "and I'd be happy to share your camp and whatever hospitality you can offer." Saying thus, the youth finally returns his blade to his sheath and takes a more congenial stance.
"Ah, glad to have you, my lad. Come, let us dine and you can tell me about what brings you to this part of the world."

After several days of walking, the meager repast of bread, wine, and dried meat barely sated the furious hunger of the barbarian. The two, wizard and warrior, sat long into the night talking of the sights they had seen and the adventures they have had. Mako, being the elder of the two, told stories of far away lands and the kings that ruled them to the youth and the youth was awed. He knew, of course, the world was large and had even heard of many of the lands the wizard spoke of, but many of the lands he had never heard of before and he found some of what he heard disturbing. In turn, the youth spoke of the score adventures that he had encountered in his travels. While it was clear that the man Conan was young, perhaps in his early twenties at the most, it was the wizards turn to be awed at the number of adventures that the youth had already conquered.

"Ah, but you say that you have yet to venture to the distant lands of the south, Conan?"
"Aye," said the Cimmerian, "but all in due time, wizard. For I plan to see much more in the years to come."
"Surely," agreed the wizard, Mako, "but perhaps I can entice you into a adventure of the more local type first."
Intrigued, as was usual for the youth when it comes to adventure, he says, "my ear is yours, wizard."

And so the wizard and barbarian spoke long into the night about a secret cave which holds riches of gold and the writings and magics of an ancient people. It was not until a few hours before dawn that the two finally succumbed to the pull of sleep, and for those few hours the youth dreamt of gold riches and of the wine and women he could purchase with them.

CHAPTER THREE
Upon the hills of Hyperborea, under the brilliant summer sun, two figures are seen walking. One dark giant, naked save a loincloth and a smaller man dressed in the flowing garb of the far eastern nations walk the rolling hills. The larger of the two is broad of shoulder and back and carries on it a broadsword, while the smaller seems to carry only a small pack on his back. They walk with a purpose and in a direction which will bring them across the border of Hyperborea and into the land of Brythunia. Their ultimate destination is a certain cave of wonders, the location of which even the small man, Mako the wizard, has only a vague notion. The larger youth, however, walks with the goal of adventure and the riches attained by it.

All day they walk and into the night, only to stop for repast and a short rest before they walk on. It is not until the middle of the third day that they walk over one of the hills to see a small village of several cottages below.

(to be continued...)

not too good to be true

Last week, I got an email in which a mother was looking to find a tutor for her daughter. I get a few of these emails every couple months, so that was nothing new. She wanted to know what I charge per hour; ok, fine. Finding my rates acceptable she wants to know how much it costs for three weeks, three times per week, two hours a day; ok, get a calculator, but ok. It's $495 if I have to make the extra driving I say, and to her and to her husband this is acceptable; we have a deal, she says. She wonders if I can help her by taking $1,950 in leftover funds from the previous tutor who had to quit because his wife died and then for me to take the difference $1,455 and send it via money order to the travel agent for her daughters travel expenses to come into the country from the UK. Well, really I just want to be paid for my bit, I say, and I don't want to be involved in your daughter's travel arrangements, I say. Am I missing something? Isn't there an easier way for this to happen? Why are you trusing me with nearly $1,500 to a total stranger that you don't know?

She says her husband and her trust me, "especially with money", and it would be a big favor because of the hassle to transfer the money into dollars or some such thing. Now, generally, I'm a nice guy, a trusting guy. This is strange, though, and I say so.

Of course, the money order she sends me is fake. When I give it to the bank I don't know any better, and I'm glad the bank is kind enough to see me for the sucker that I am (and not be mad for handing them a fake money order). I'm glad that I have enough sense to find out that they are fake before I write the money order to the "travel agent". I'm sorry that I let it get to this point, but I have to ask: where did I go wrong?

I realize that I've actually heard of this scam before, in NYC. My dad had a fax machine and he would get a one page fax that said, "I'm coming to America from my home in Kenya and I need someone to write a local check to the travel agent. I'm sending you $2,000 and I need you to write a check for $1,400 to the agent and you can keep the extra $600 for your trouble."

Obvioulsy a scam. Later, recently, I find out that a friend of a friend was taken for $2k when she did the same thing for someone who was going to sublet her lease for six months and needed the money for travel expenses. The cleverness of this new twist is of course that the victim really does need someone to cover $4,000 of rent that she is leaving town and she WANTS to find someone to sublet the apartment. She wants it so bad that she believes the scam artist to be true when he sends $5,200 and says he needs the other $1,200 sent to a third party, or even more clever when she gets the $4,000 and a last email saying that the person had an emergency and needs $800 back (out of the $4,000) and that she'll get paid the other $800 later if that is ok.

What I think is important is the artistry of the "crime". The fact that the line between the totally reasonable need for a tutor and the obvious scam is blurred with such finesse. This scam artist even gives a local adress and it seems that you are not getting $500 for free, but in exchange for a service. I think of myself as intelligent, even recently, and I think that this event has been heavily on my mind, hence the need to blog about it. The fact that it was as close as it was creates a lot of discord in my understanding of things. I'm freaking out when people call and when I get an email like, "is your name REALLY john?". I'm trying to realize what has happened so that I can be better prepared for it; I'm trying to assimilate this new, poignant information into my greater understanding of the world. Being nearly the victim and certainly the intended one has tarnished my otherwise "everyone in the world is inherently good" attitude. Which, of course, sucks. I really don't want to be the guy who, after getting the 'can you tutor my daughter' email, is like: I'll need two social security numbers, a certified letter of intent, and your mother's maiden name. Hopefully, in the next couple days I'm sure I can find some kind of balance between my earlier trusfulness and recent suspiciousness.

It used to be that "if it is too good to be true, then it probably isn't". I guess what the new saying is is that: it no longer has to be too good to be true. Just watch out, everyone. Stay alert and keep yourselves safe. Let your conciousness be full of order and your discord come in manageable amounts. Love you all,

zero recall

i had a thought

it lasted for a moment

then it was gone

it changed the way i look at things, but

i'm not sure what change was made.

it's kind of like not remembering what it was like

to not know how to read

when you are a kid

this happens all the time, and you wouldn't even know it.

i mean how many times does a kid radically change his veiwpoint of the world

like on a daily basis

and when they are older, do they remember it?

the point, as if i had one, is this: think all the time,

think about lots of things, and figure a lot of stuff out,

and don't worry to write it down, or to feel bad

when you can't remember your good ideas. the point

it's not whether you recall, but just that you have stretched your mind.

"a mind once stretched never returns to it's original dimensions," I think the guy from Star Trek said that, but I'm not really sure.

new entry

now I think of what to write

I write to annihilate the blight

inside my head

can't go to bed

until the night awakes my fright

until the dawn

ill slumber on

without dreams a dreamer is done

forget the sound

above the ground

the birds song sung is first light come

today again

my dreams begun

alone at last in company run

to pass the course

the rest remorse

never choosing that choice

was the first right one

too many plates in front of me

never had enough to eat

but lately find

my mind and body

could not eat to satisfy its longing

not hunger nor fear

but contemplations near

the one course which ive fought before is clear

but from now on

there is only one

my life is not my life to run

the end in sight

I think I might

wish to sleep in peace tonight

the aftermath

"clear! make way, coming through!"

Jake, covered in blood, both his own and otherwise, came crashing through the double doors of the medical part of the facility. Covered in dirt, guts, blood, he looked terrible from the neck down. Ironically, he was grinning from ear to ear like a cheshire cat.

"unbelievable!"
"Allright Jake, try not to talk too much or else I'll have to sedate you,"
"Doc, you should have been there, it was..." Jake couldn't even begin to describe what it was.
"Well now, if I would have been there, who would have been here to take care of your mangled leftovers?"

Jake was asleep, probably from loss of blood.

"That's right, Jake, you sleep. When you wake up, you'll be about as good as your going to be,"

"he's going to make it, doc?"

The Doc didn't reply, but his eyes spoke for him.

Upon waking, Jake found himself staring up at ten or so happy faces.

"there he is, good man" it was the Sergent.

"good boy jake, glad to have you with us," said the Captain.

"Doc was right, he woke up right on schedule."

Tell us about the battle, Jake.



The amazing sense of fantastic that Jake had been feeling prior to passing out due to blood loss had been replaced by an overwhelming sense of good fortune and a perma-grin.

"Now, now, don't press him too much, he's been through a lot, give him a minute now."

"Actually," Jake smiled at them, " I feel great."

"That's fine, Jake, really that's fine," Doc was smiling too, "just try not to overdo it right now, okay?"

"Sure, doc. No problem."



All of it was like a crazy awesome dream where you are a super-hero with all these powers and get to bone all these hot blonde porn-stars, but when you wake up, all you have left is the good feeling that's remained, while the details are sketchy at best.


The Doc was the first to speak, "Now, if you can, could you tell everyone what happened at the DOT?"

"Man, what a fight!" Jake sounded like a sports fan that had just watched his favorite team trounce their rivals. He didn't sound at all like the only survivor to the biggest all out battle-royal between good and evil that the New World had ever seen.


"It all started with Techno music, we were so scarred in that little room that we would have probably froze when the call cam in, but then..."

Jakes eyes became distant, his face relaxed, everyone in the room waited intently on his silence. A tear started rolling down his dirt smeared face.

"They're all dead, aren't they." It was not a question.

"You're still here, Jake," the captain couldn't cry, so he was the one to speak.

"We knew there was going to be security, but there wasn't just a force of VM guarding the component, there was a small army, five hundred at least. A whole armored guard of tanks, trucks, motorcycles, fuck. I think they were thinking to just make it so fucking obvious NOT to fuck with them that is why we won."

Everyone knew the outcome, 100 of the facilities warrior class, those with a strong kind of combat skill or other combat qualification, against 500 armored guards both VM and mercenaries. And even against those odds, the machine had been destroyed, the VM force destroyed, scattered to oblivion. It was as if equal parts of matter and anti-matter had come into coexistence, only to obliterate both simultaneously. What nobody could understand was: why?

"The music, it was the music," said Jake, "it made you strong, fast, and brave to the point of idiocy." Over the next few hours, Jake spoke of those that had passed, of their heroic efforts against impossible odds, how one good-heart had taken down a socre of armored trucks by confusing of the tanks with illusions, how the music, blasting through the air out of a combat helicopter speaker system had just as much of a negative effect on the VM force as a positive one on the facility's; How the music caused some of the VM to turn and run, only to be gunned down by their own support troops, and others to freeze in their tracks with their guns pointed with the dangerous end towards the fight.

"It was as if they were so shocked by the fact that we were actually attacking them, and the sheer force of will, the sheer ferocity of teh attack, that they felt that they were fighting on the losing side." Said Jake, as if one statement could ever explain the unexplainable event that had occurred.



That night Jake slept the sleep of the just. The VM scheme to tip the scales had resulted in a cataclysmic event, severely damaging both sides resources and leaving both licking their wounds. But one thing was true, all the momentum was with the facility and their attempt to stifle the Vice Magistrate's efforts to bring the New World down into chaos. Never before had the goal of defeating the VM and instituting a world where equality and justice were the bread and water of the people been so real. Jake never woke up, but he was to be credited as the hero of the Battle of the New World, not for his actions, but because he survived it, giving those left behind the story, the legend that was to become the Legacy of the Just. His job finished, Jake died.

calm before storm

dark. always so fucking dark. ok, stay calm buddy.

no sense getting your head blown off when your acting like a fool. might as well be calm as shit when you get your head blown off. ya. cool as a cucumber. might as well be coll when you get your cucumber blown off. damn fuckers.

Jake, along with the rest of the team that was chosen to fight that night, in his own head only. unaware of his fellow cannon fodder crouched against the walls of the small hallway of the DOT building, about to run out into the night, guns blazing, for what could possibly be the deciding battle of the goodhearted vs. the Vice Magistrate. Even though every single one of the 100 or so soldiers were shit their pants scared, you wouldn't have known it. all you could see on their faces was grim determination like warpaint made of hard lines and fixed eyes. very likely, most of them were going to die in the great conflagration that was going to follow. the prize was to stop what was potentially the most devastating accomplishment of the vice magistrate, the ability to turn regular people into people with powers, evil powers. with the Arcane project on the line, the vice magistrate was about to have an unlimited supply of personnel to throw at the good-hearts efforts. this advantage would be more than enough to ensure the VM victory, to tip the scales.



In an unprecedented turn of good fortune, the facility had come across information that the transportation of the final, necessary component to the arcane project was being planned by the Vice Magistrate. Knowing the importance and vulnerability of such an endeavor, both sides saw this as a pivotal point at which to focus. The vice magistrate had acted accordingly, the facilities source had said, stacking the transport with enough firepower and soldiers to subdue any attack. It was Jakes hope, along with the 100 other good hearts, that they could in fact break the defenses in an all out attack. While some of those at the facility had what could be called "combat abilities": heightened agility or strength, the ability to make ones skin tough, or to set fires (or put them out), Jake was not one of these. Jake had been chosen because he was a cop before the Change. Almost a lifetime ago, he wasn't sure that it would matter. He didn't resent the choice. He was glad to do his part, put in his share. If his share was his life, so be it.


"It's almost time."

Softly at first, like the song of grass and trees in a gentle wind, then louder so that all the fears and hopes and thoughts were drowned out into perfect tonality, the music of Techno began to play.

dream number six

i'm at home, as a child, at my mothers house. i feel disconnected, and i feel something stuck in my teeth. i put my finger to the back of my mouth and discover that my back molar has become a thumbnail. when i pull out the thumbnail, i can feel a hole where the tooth used to be. now in my hand is this big, crescent shaped, nail clipping. i run to the nearest person in the house...

"look, look"

but they don't seem to see me. i yell, "everyone look!" i get a response, but they are just confused, as if they can hear me but not see me.

i start to spit like you are trying to get a hair out of your mouth...

"pfft, pssft, ppsstppstff"

out of my mouth start spraying thumbnails and fingernail clippings, like my teeth are disintegrating into shards. this continues until i have a fistful of fingernail shreds...

jump to...

i'm in the army, i have a black partner. we are special ops who are some bad ass mother-fuq-ers. we are headed to a new assignment where we are going to be stationed in a important city after civilization has destroyed itself. disease and nuclear bombs and starvation are all about in equal numbers in this new world. we arrive at the barracks...

as we walk in the door, immediately we have a sense of not belonging. all the soldiers in the barracks room walk to their bunks and turn their backs on the door we just walked in. we are being ignored. a small woman walks up to us to interview us on if we are supposed to be there, either me or my partner pushes her away...

"i'm not getting interviewed by you!"

she is too small and insignificant. instead, two bodies approach, they are wrapped in kind of a red leather, they are the newest recruits before us. this must be some kind of initiation. we will not be so intimidated and let ourselves be taken advantage of. let them try to do that shist to us. we find the empty bunk and swing in like the pros we are,

we put the blankets entirely over our body, as do the rest of the soldiers in the bunker. the image of 100 sleeping soldiers covered entirely by blankets so that only their shape is seen. as the camera pans towards a single soldier, the imagery is of the blanket rising so that the shape of the soldier is lost, first near the base, then only the head is discernible, then only the face....then as the blanket lifts, the details of the face are erased until a blanket of nothingness is all we see.

that night,

we wake up to a fight, two of the leading soldiers are fighting us. my partner fights first. he wins and then i fight, the one i fight has a bomb, i throw the bomb out the window, then i decapitate the one i fight, i throw his head out the mail slot by the window (it fits?!) and then it follows the bomb, since i was outside already (?) i fork through the mailslot (this means to me in my dream that feet first i enter through the mail slot, then i kind of limbo my torso through the slot and come out on my feet)...

when the bomb goes off, it was a nuke, everything is decimated. the bunker, the people, the base, and oh crap, my mom's pleasure cruiser is out on the water, she was coming in to visit me, but the blast from the nuke destroyed the cruiser, now it is just a flaming wreckage. i sit on the beach, too soldier to cry, sitting behind a tin-can dumpster just watching through a pinhole the cruiser burn. i get up....

a street urchin girl is near the street as i get up and start to walk back towards the base; her friend screems and points at a beer bottle that has become alive and is running at the first girl. the girl tries to get away through a door of a building that has been blown off it's hinges, but the bottle gets close to her and then goes off like a firecracker. the girl is dead even though the blast shouldn't have hurt anyone, it wasn't a big blast, maybe the glass got her...

i walk with my partner through the wreckage of the base...

"hey, when we find our C.O., i'm gonna have to ask for time to go help with my mom...this blast was bad for everyone, but he's not gonna like that..."

"actually, my mom got blown up, so i guess there is nothing really for me to go back to"

DREAM ENDS

puzzle

when you start out,

you are at home. it is tuesday.

you start walking on a tuesday at 12:00 noon, easterly, at a constant speed. thirty minutes later, after circumnavigating the globe (you walk really fast), you return. as you traveled, you kept asking people what day it was.

tuesday.

that was the reply for a while. but then, when it was near midnight by wherever you were walking (like tokyo), they started to reply

wednesday.

as you kept walking, you keep asking people what day it is.

what day is it when you get back home?

that thing about time

"So, tell me the thing about going around the world again, Teacher."

"So if you travel around the world, leaving Monday at noon, traveling so as to offset the motion of the earth, and take 24 hours to traverse the circumference, then the time that you arrive is one day later, Tuesday at noon. As you traveled, every hour from the time you left you would ask somebody,

'hey, what time is it?'

'Noon,' would always be the reply."

"But, then what day would it be for the people you ask?"

-----

It's 10PM where you live. you pick up the phone and call your friend Sara in seattle. It's 7PM there. They are in the same day as you, but London, at 2AM is in the morning, is already tomorrow.

Half way around the world, it's 10AM, what day is it?

It's tomorrow.

------

you pick up a phone. anyone you call upon answering states the current time.

you dial the first number, "10PM, yesterday", it was your friend Sara again, in Seattle, it's 2AM for you on a Tuesday morning, but for Sara it's still Monday night.

You call NY, "2AM today" answers.

at 11 AM you can call yesterday, but at 1PM you can call tomorrow.

---

if you still don't believe me, check out this link i found when i wiki'ed International Date Line

International Dateline Wikipedia

P.S. The 3rd paragraph is legendary!

A Light in the Dark

The facility was quiet, darkened. Techno's music wafted through the air like an ambianic smoke machine had been left on. The whole place had the feel of a sleeping giant of some sleeping army after a day of marching. That is, all except for one office where the lights were still hot, and the music was off. The Captain and Jake were pressing Clyde Armstrong for questions. By the looks of their faces, they were not getting the answers they wanted.

"So when was project Arcane put on the table, then?" The captain was pressing hard and starting to sweat under the lights. Clyde had a look of purpose, albeit an evil one, that was completely absent back in the alley, noted Jake. Clyde took his time to respond.

"Well, your guess is as good as mine, Cap'n," he almost smiled the last word.

"You mean they hadn't started the project before you had left?"

"Well," Clyde sat back and looked at the corners of the room, "I didn't really leave, or at least not as much as they threw me out."

Captain Harcourt and Jake exchanged glances.

"You mean they forced you to leave?"
"Well," Clyde said, pointing at his neck, "you don't suppose I gave myself this scar, do you?"

"Dammit Clyde!" The Captain pounded the table, hard enough that the few heads outside on the main floor of the Facility looked up from that nights work.

"Captain, I think I could use a break," the speaker was a tall, pale androgynous male whose sense of peace and serenity more than was plain on the his face, it actually filled the corner he was standing in.

"Ha! If I'm getting you down then maybe the scales aren't so perfectly balanced after all," Clyde emphasized this with a table slap and a sneer of false joy.

"Come on Cap, I could use a break too," said Jake as he went over to the Captain.

"We've been at this for hours and we hardly know more than when we started. Maybe we shouldn't have put so many of our resources to finding this ... shithead."

"Well Cap, we didn't know that he had been forcibly removed from the Magistrate, so that's a leak we could work on."

"But, ... oh I guess."

"Please remember, spoke the androgynous one, "as a three, we have a significant advantage in the questioning, indeed. It is only by allowing him to influence your minds does he succeed in evading your intentions."

The statement almost, but not quite, set off the two big men. What stopped it was the calm that was spreading over them as Andy spoke. Mixed with the warmth and music of the Facility, the words had power of a sort. By the time they had stood and heard the words, they felt that the criticism had awoken them from a dark sleep. Calmly, they went back to the room where it appears that Clyde is laughing.

"Clyde, I want you to listen to me," said Jake. The laughing stopped.

"We want you to help us, and there is no way that we can force you to, but we're going to try anyway because according to all of our information, you're our best bet and figuring what's going on in the Vice Magistrate.

"We can't really offer you anything that you would usually want for helping us, but we can get you off the street and into some clean clothes, get you a shower and try to help you if that's what you want."
Fuck you. That's what Clyde wanted to say, he was too afraid to start crying, so he didn't. Jake saw that look again, the one from the alley. But under the hopelessness, just maybe...

"Now, we know that project Arcane has something to do with converting Naturals, is that right?"

A tear, golden sparking in the hot lights, snuck out of Clyde's left eye and started it's decent. Clyde nodded, but he couldn't understand why.

"We think is was started by someone outside of the Eight, maybe one of the Lieutenants, is that right?"
"It was Victor."
"Victor?" The Captain asked, Jake shot him a glance: don't break the spell the glance said. Clyde didn't notice, he was about to go off like a geyser.

"Yes, Victor Goodbane, he's the one who discovered the theory behind the project's research."

"When you were thrown out they beat you and gave you that scar."

"Yes," the tears were really flowing now.

"Why did they kick you out?"

"I told them it was rubbish, that it would never work, that converting Naturals had to be done with their consent, usually indirectly but that it couldn't be done with their will being bent against it," Jake and the Captain, until just now, had thought the same thing. It was common knowledge until that point, that despair either by self-abasement or other's wrongdoing could lead to that downward spiral which led Naturals to convert.

"But what Victor was suggesting was different, completely physical, a response to a stimulus that produced the emotional destitution required to damage a soul beyond repair. In a sense, nothing else was required than the treatment he was suggesting."
"What treatment?"
"The premise of Victor's idea was simple: Pain."

It had been a goodnight, thought Jake on his way home through the streets. They had accomplished with Clyde more than they could have hoped. It was Andy's intuition and Jake's insight, formed from years of dealing with hopeless people in the city, that had finally cracked the code. Even the Captain's sincerity and determination were a necessary part of the recipe for that evening's success. On the other hand, the news that they had received from Clyde wasn't really to be classified as 'good news'. The Vice Magistrate was working on some kind of treatment meant to convert Naturals to the side of despair. Project Arcane was real, not just some gossip on the street. It was real and it was coming for them, all of them. But now, with the Day shift starting, Jake was headed home for some R&R for the first time in weeks. They would fulfill their promise to Clyde. They would try to help him deal with his demons. Even more, he needed it now. Old scars are harder to heal than new ones, the Doc would say.

In the increasing light of dawn, walking down the dark streets of the city which was the center of this New World, but was equally about to come apart at the seems, Jake walked with his head high and purpose in his step. Just like the light of a new day, thought Jake, there is a hope.

The Smell of Sin

"So when is the last time you've seen him?"

The Captain was a big bald man. He looked like a lumpy, pale version of the incredible hulk as a high school janitor, but his resolve was as big as he was, or bigger. Questioning the whereabouts of a previous member of the Vice Magistrate was a funny thing to do, thought Jake, especially when the one you are questioning is a streetrat. Pictures of Clyde were strewn about the table.

"He was in the streets, ya' know. Bummin' and hustlin', but he didn't look like these pictures much. But I've been trying to tell you I 'aint been down there for a while."
"He's telling the truth Captain, I can smell it on him," which Jake meant rather literally. He could tell the sins of people in the vicinity just as if it had left a stink on them.

"He's been clean for a while, haven't ya bud."

Back out on the floor of the Facility, the usual amount of activity was taking place, creating a heavy murmur. As always, the music of Techno was wafting through the air, giving those present an ample feeling of productivity and a mood of pensive replenishment to those leaning back in their chairs. Coming out of the interrogation room, Jake walked to one of the desks nearby where a small boned good-heart was doing some menial task really well.

"Hey Roger."
"How's it goin', Jake? Any progress finding Armstrong?"

"Not really, just heading out again here in a minute. Hey, have you seen..."
"They're in your left front cargo pocket."
"Oh, so they are, thanks Roger."
"Hey Jake, when you're out there do me a favor, ok?"

"What's that?"
"Watch out for yourself, okay? Things have been getting real screwy lately, ya' know?"
"Ya, I know, see you around Roger."
As Jake walked away, he thought about the city he was entering. The contrast of fluorescent lights and the darkness, the extremes in speed and light. He thought about the smell. He almost took a deep breath walking out the door, leaving that warm little center that he was becoming more and more to think of as home. He was doing his part, he knew that, and he had his part to do. He only hoped that the little he could contribute would be enough to tip the scales in their favor. Almost holding his breath, mentally carrying the feeling of that place, feeling the hope and light, the industry contained within, he stepped out into the darkness.

some links

i thought i would provide two links of some recent stuff that i really liked on the internet. This first one is a digital telescope.

www.worldwidetelescope.org

www.msn.com/downloads

The first is the telescope page itself, but i needed a patch from the second website to get it going. Maybe you have less trouble with it than i did, and if this is the case then maybe you just googled 'worldwidetelescope' and got things going that way.



here is a free nine inch nails album, "The Slip", which was produced and is being given away by trent reznor, thanks dude!

Aside from tracks 3, 6, and 7, i think that all the songs have something to offer. I think the single Discipline is particularly catchy, like the nine inch nails that i like should be. The other truly notable track is Corona Radiata, which is a ambianic side of nin that i wouldn't have really considered until i heard it (*considered it's existance).

http://dl.nin.com/theslip/signup

soul-sniffer

Dark. The alley was so dark that Jake couldn't see the detritus and filth that he was practically wading through, but he could smell it. That wasn't the smell that interested him, though. The smell of rotting cardboard boxes and waste filling his nostrils wasn't why he had come down this alley, like a bloodhound on the hunt. A different smell had caught his attention, the smell of sin. Back at the street, it had been faint, almost undetectable. Now, however, it was getting stronger. It was getting stronger with each step he took down the alley, with his hands in front of him, trying to keep away the invisible obstacles. Walking this way, he kept his nose pointed like a compass toward his expected goal. Down the alley, it was becoming lighter. One of the street lamps wasn't out. The smell was becoming stronger: thievery, deceit for sure, but also despair, drug addiction, and anal sex. In one of the doorways a man was lying, or at least it could have been a man. To Jake's eyes it just seemed to be a ragged bundle of old, dirty clothes, roughly in the shape of a man. Jake stood over the man, and he took a photograph out of his jacket pocket. As he did this the man on the ground started to stir restlessly. As Jake's gaze began to take in the man's features, the man on the ground looked up at him. Physically, he smelled nearly twice as bad as he looked: unshaven, dirty face, with a look of hopelessness that Jake was only too familiar with.

"Clyde Armstrong?" asked Jake.

Although the man did not move or speak, nor make a sound, and even though some people in Jake's place might have said he made no reaction at all, Jake saw in the man's eyes a certain resolve appear in the man's features, and he knew that this was the man that he had come to find. The only problem was what he was going to do next.

"Now, " Jake said to himself, "how am I going to get you out of here?"

random sh*t

when? now the other one? now the chicken is cooked...
it has flown to the coop, the cooper tire planet, the one in to the other one,
what? random? theater neanderthal? you know that you're crazy when eyes...

the other one? lets go, ill be over, we'll go together....ok, sounds good, sounds perfect
sounds like a plan, sounds like the way to go, good stuff, right on, keep um comin,

no way man, that sh*ts whack

a morning dream

we were in an Avis van, my mom, my dad, and me. we were heading to the airport to go out of the country, to africa I think. when we got to the airport, it was really big but kind of run down. it looked like a mid-80's terminal with the architecture and old paint. when we got on the plane it turned out that there was a little problem with the throttle control. due to some wire, the engines would suddenly get cut, and then start again. it was like if you had a bad connection with a wall jack and the thing you had plugged in couldn't decide to stay on or turn off, so it would just flicker. the pilot, who was this old guy with wispy gray hair in a horseshoe around his head and a kind of shabby but not unclean outfit, was able to keep the plane from falling out of the sky. the trick, you see, is to use the potential energy from being high up in the air to give some speed when the engines cut out. at one point, (I was sleeping in the coach section, curled up with one of those pillows), my mom woke me up because they had lost enough altitude that the ground was coming up. I looked out and couldn't see much in the dark, but it looked like a huge, black, ocean. in fact it was trees. from the ground, anyone standing in the path of the airplane would have seen a huge 747 clipping the canopy branches. at one point we got so low we actually chopped off the top centimeter of a tree branch reaching above the rest of the canopy, "that is a sight you don't see everyday".

the next thing we were in the Avis van again, but no longer in america. we had ditched the plane because it was taking too long and we had got a van and were going to the local airport (now in africa or something) to get a new flight to our final destination. when we got to the airport it was nice, and there were a lot of africans with yellow and green colored outfits walking around, and quite a few of them were in wheelchairs. "it must be because of the heat, that they don't want to walk". we came to a door that said 'Le colonie HaHa's', which was the name of the dominant group at the time. My mom reached for the door and I told her to stop and explained. the door led to a corridor that we couldn't see much about. there was another door 'The Boy's Hatanian' which I thought they were from Haiti and were obviously the second most powerful group. Their room was dark, as in a unused movie theater, and in the same fashion had stadium style seating but the seats seemed to all be facing uphill, towards the back of the theater. "Come on mom", we walked down to a lower level, where there was a door that led in the same direction as the corridor above, towards the airplanes.

four dreams

I was standing in a crowded place, probably somewhere near the ocean. I started to hear screams, and I could tell that everyone started looking in the same direction. I followed their gazes and saw it: a huge wave. At first we thought it was water, but then the smell hit us, it was gasoline. the pungent odor changed things immediately, instead of worrying about drowning or clunking your head when the water hit, now we were worried about the vegetation, it was all going to die. I found an old cold meat locker which was neither cold nor had meat in it, but it had no windows and a door that locked airtight. when the water hit, I couldn't feel anything of movement of the locker, but I could hear all that was going on on the outside. I noticed a small, opened can of nacho cheese sauce and thought "im going to need to save this so when I get out of here I have some food, since there won't be any when I get out". I knew I had to watch out 'cause if it was water, a little drop of water in the cheese sauce wouldn't hurt it, but if gas got in it it would ruin it. eventually, the noises stopped, but I didn't know if I was at the bottom of the gas ocean or floating at the top, but then I could hear people crying coming from the crack in the door.

the scene on top was much different then the old world. only the tops of mountains had a few trees and is where all the people now separated lived. everyone had formed into zealous fanatical groups. there was one group who felt strongly about this, and this group thought we should do it this way and so they wanted to do it like this, and one small group was in charge of the food. you were lucky to get a crust of bread in a day, they were unfair with the distribution. I killed someone, stabbed them, when they tried to get my food, I didn't want to hurt anybody, I just wanted to live.

There were five of us, in some kind of a ghost trick house. shadows flew by just outside your vision and you knew if the shadows got you they would kill you. you walked slowly, trying to avoid the shadows, but if you saw one coming you ran. one room was cluttered with two doors in and out, and there was a disgusting bathroom that was a safe room, there were a few staircases that kept leading to different places. every once in a while, you heard a scream, now there are only four...now only three. finally, a shadow got me and I freaked out.... everything went out.

the game started over, but this time I WAS the ghost. I had to run, run as fast as I could because I knew if I was seen then I would cease to exist. I was constantly running, here comes someone run up the stairs, look for an exit, the sliding door into the closet, now what, there is a small staircase to a passage upstairs, look for an exit, run run run... finally, I was cornered, I couldn't get away from the human that was unknowingly trapping me in the room, he saw me, and I was so mad that I was going to cease to exist, I shook him, screaming, until he died.

she was really really big in the belly. she got a little smaller in the belly by having a little baby, but the big baby was still in the belly. we went to the woods and the baby was walking through the trees. we weren't paying attention for a moment. the woods took the little baby, we hadn't watched it for a moment and now it was gone. later, near the football fields where the band was practicing, we saw the cop lights coming. three cruisers pulled up, they were school cars, not the real thing. we thought they must have come to deliver a message to one of the people out here since there was no phone, maybe. but then they got out of the cruisers and started walking towards the woods. you could see flashlights. then, from far away, you could hear the calls of the persons name they were looking for, the woods had claimed another and they were looking for them.

the soccer game was very competitive, but we were up by a goal. we switched some positions, the large golden skinned guy with the mexican team shirt played behind me on defense. he shouldn't be playing defense. he makes a big mistake and they score. I tell him, "you are really good on offense, don't play defense", and he nods. I reassign someone else to the position and we take our places again in the center of the field. now I'm on a break away, but the guy behind me pulls on my shirt to slow me down, I fall. I chase after him and cleat him in the back of the leg with my cleated shoes. he says, "hey" and I say "don't pull my shirt and I won't cleat you". now even when I don't have the ball, he is behind me holding on to my shirt and yelling "faster, faster" because I am like a dogsled dog pulling him through the dirt. I put my cleat on his throat and step on it, then the same on his exposed belly. he looks at me with surprise, but no anger. the other team doesn't like that I'm abusing their teammate, so they start harassing me as well. I have enough cleats to go around. the game is very competitive.

and another thing

why is it that the little indian restaurants always charge you for everything everything. i mean, $1.50 for raita, $1.65 for onion chutney, you wanna have a refill? $2.00, you want some soup? $2.95 each, you spend $41 on a 'dinner for two' and spend $25 on 'extras'...

...and another thing

what, exactly, is wrong with a 28 year old getting a remote helicopter for his birthday? hmmm? no, what is wrong with that? what is wrong with going to the store and buying 10 more of those bad boys so all your friends can have one and you can have mid-air helicopter wars? huh? what's wrong with having a martini set and a remote controlled helicopter be simultaneously the best birthday presents you could have asked for?

...and another thing

what is up with your buddy coming over to your party, getting on the phone for 20 minutes, and leaving pubes on your toilet seat? is this normal? is this really something that i want to understand and have be a part of the 'things that i acknowledge as being understood', prolly not.

...and another thing

what is up with your girlfriend changing your f-u-c-q-i-n-g desktop all the f-o-c-k-n-g time? she has her own computer, or at least she has her own settings or whatever. change your own god-dammit desktop and leave my shit alone dammit!

ok im done, but seriously...

life on earth and reverse time theory

one of the things i'll never forget about my dad are the times when I would be laying in bed, i've always had trouble sleeping, so he would come in and sit and we would talk about all sorts of stuff. usually somewhat science based. planets, extra-t life, the idea of huge distances, new technology on this planet, the future.

this has been a common way of me to communicate forever since then. sometimes it isn't what the situation is called for (think: girls), but this isn't something i can just turn off when its not appropriate. nope. this is the way i am.

my dad and i never talked about the past. or if we talked about anything other than the future, we would talk about the far distant past, saying "back then they didn't realize that the sun was really a big ball of gas, their explanation was ...", or "they used to think that the sun went around the earth, too..." and never about OUR past. again, for better or worse, i have a lot of trouble feeling regret, happiness about my own life up to this point. i don't think it is really a character flaw as much as a trait, after all, everybody is different.

as far as I can tell, the way I am is a result of where I have been. but couldn't it go the other way? Can't you look at it to say that the person I am now completely determines what experiences I must have had up to this point to make me do things the way that I do them? I call this viewpoint "reverse time theory" and it goes something like this:

ex: as i look out the window, i see a young man riding down the street on a bicycle. i think to myself, "that man is going somewhere". but then i realize, "that man is coming from somewhere, too". is he riding in front of my face as a result of where he is going or where he has been? of course, since i'm at my window, it must be a result of both since my window is likely to be in between both locations. but now make me an "impartial observer" independent of my own location. i'm just an observer watching this guy go by, ok fine.

then i would say (if i was being completely honest with myself) that the reason he is peddling on his bike is because of the decision he made at home to go, and the speed hes riding at is because of his past experience with riding bikes, and the pothole he swerved around was because he didn't want to crash. in order for me to be who i am, and make the decisions that i make, my past has to be exactly the way it is. any change in my past would have altered my present from it's current state.

we say that things had to happen in the past so that things in the present can be the way they are. in other words, if anything in the "past" had been different, then so would the present be different. so we in general think that the past influences the present. let me say it one more time, and please don't think im completely crazy: in order for me to be who i am, and make the decisions that i make, my past has to be exactly the way it is. any change in my past would have altered my present from it's current state.

can we "reverse the arrow of time" and find that everything still makes sense? I'm sitting here typing, clean as a whistle. before that i thought about typing, before that i was taking a shower, before that i was eating breakfast, before that i was hungry, before that i was sleepy eyed, before that i was asleep.

can we ask that effect implies cause? according to some physics books i've read, this is a completely acceptable way of thinking about things, but i've run out of time for now (when i get to school, i'll be on time) so i guess i better go now.

friends

who is going to listen to you? when you are talking stuff that somebody has to understand, to be normal. to be a person, and feel like everything is o.k.

who is going to be there for you when you need to do those things that are too hard to do alone. who can give you rides, and you can use their truck, and who are you going to give rides to? who can you be dinner guests with and invite over for dinner?

is it enough to feel like something, somebody by yourself? do you? why do you feel the need to get out and connect? is the connection there? if so, who is on the other end?

which is better: the best or good enough?

in economics, there is this idea that it is best to spend your money on something until the additional utility you get per dollar stops increasing. that is, until d^2U/dx^2=0. for example, if you could spend $1 on chocolate to get 100 utility, then $2 to get 300 utility, $3 to get 600 utility, and $4 to get 700 utility, then you should spend $3. This is because the 2nd dollar you spend gives you an additional 200 utility, the 3rd dollar you spend gives you an additional 300 utility, but the 4th dollar you spend only gives you another 100 utility. so even though you still get more "happiness" from spending $4 rather than $3, the extra benefit from that 4th dollar isn't as much as the extra benefit from the 3rd dollar, so the 3rd dollar is the last one you should spend.

this concept could be called, doing things 'good enough'. since in some sense, im not really getting the most possible utility out of chocolate if i employ this technique. maybe i could have maxxed out utility from chocolate by spending $10 and getting a maximum of 755 utility, and if i spend one more dollar i go down in utility (since then i have a belly-ache).

it's pretty reasonable, then to see that doing things good enough might be better than doing them to the best possible extent of how good you can do them.

the question that i want to pose is this: does the same argument work in every day to day life? Is doing things good enough (or half-way as my wife likes to call it : P) actually better than doing things the best you can?

I think i tend to employ the technique of doing things good enough. and the reason is that i have a lot of different pulls on my time, and if i focused too heavily on one then the other would suffer. so im constantly trying to find that line where i can stop doing something because the 'dollar' (in this case, just think arbitrary resource unit) i spend could be better used somewhere else. in short, my total utility looks something like a product of the utility i get from each facet of my life, with certain weights. maybe my utility function looks something like this

U(x_1,x_2,...,x_n)=prod_j (x_j^i_j) + L

L is some function which somehow records what has been happening in the last week and thus deforms the real utility function accordingly (ex. a bad week means L is negative, getting cookies means L is positive)

the point is this: you want to try to maximize your total utility, but if you lack on any one thing then you can't really be that happy. so even if you really do well in one aspect of the n things that you consider important, you better not neglect the other n-1 things that you want to do well at, otherwise, you can't be as happy as possible.

i think this idea has been a long time coming so long as i can think of myself as 'me' (this is another idea maybe ill tell you all at some point: how the 'me' changes, is born and dies, to become different 'me's from time to time, usually dying after some big change. i kind of talked about this briefly in the previous post, something like people tend to stay about the same unless something dramatic happens to 'change' them. the changing i call 'death', but it's not really death as in the termination of life, but rather the termination of the personality traits which signify the person as 'me', and the introduction of new traits which are somehow fundamentally different than the old 'me')

i think the reason i thought of this post is a talk i was having with a recruit; it was brought up if i thought that it was good to have a family and be in the dept at the same time. i said absolutely and that it was hard to balance everything at the same time, but totally worth it. of course, being me, i wouldn't make it any other way.