Bell and Whistle: September 2009

Yaaaargh!

Ok, I wanted to have Space Pirates Episode II done by today.

That didn't happen. Not nearly. So I will tide you over with some excerpts.

Firstly, the whole of chapter 1. (Very long; 16,500 words). I have not yet gone through it with the fine-toothed comb of editing, so this does not represent my best writing style.

Secondly, the scene below. I am introducing a new character, who I think will recur through the rest of the series. (Bonus points: Count how many inside jokes and references you can find.)

* * *

Jack scanned through the list of names on the directory, but did not see a mention of Chris White anywhere. He then browsed them by apartment number, looking for the number on the card Damian had handed him. He found the listing for apartment 472 next to the name J. Galt, and pressed the intercom button.

A voice sounded, speaking in a very fake French accent. “Allo?”

This caught Jack by surprise and he stuttered over his response. “Um, hi.... uh—who is this?” he finally blurted out.

“I don't know. I can't see you,” the voice said. Jack wasn't sure what to make of that and stumbled some more.

“Um, yeah. I'm trying to reach Chris White. Is this he?”

“Who wants to know?” By this time Jack was beginning to clue in.

“Me name is Jack Flint. Me first mate, Damian Braun, sent me.”

“What's the password?”

“Excuse me?” Jack asked, once more completely lost by the conversation.

“What's the password I told Damian? The password to get in?”

Jack's brain searched frantically, trying to remember some lost part of the conversation, fearing that he may have forgotten some crucial detail. He stammered once again. “Um, I don't, uh, recall a password being given in the conversation.”

“That is correct,” the voice solemnly replied. “I also would have accepted 'swordfish' or 'xyzzy'. Bottom floor, second door on the left,” the voice said before being cut off by a buzzer, indicating the front door had unlocked.

Jack proceeded into the complex. It was the type of thing that would have been built with government funding for low income people, except that Arcas didn't have that type of program. So instead, it was probably built by someone who, unable to squeeze any additional money from the middle income class, decided to see what he could get from those with less. Even still, some aspects of the design didn't make sense. He could understand some of the cost-cutting measures, like not fixing the flickering lights, or cleaning the vandalized walls. But he really had to wonder if paint in a color that could only be described as “baby shit green” was that much cheaper than, say, white.

He made his way down the stairs to what was the fourth floor down from the entrance. Judging by the directory, this building also had two floors going upwards from the entrance as well, which would mean there was at least one floor that protruded through the surface into the air-less sky of Callisto. Due to safety considerations, such floors were usually more expensive, and must have catered to the upper-lower-class.

He stopped outside the second door on the left and raised his hand to knock, but paused upon noticing the sign that said “Utility Closet”. He thought it through a moment but before he could come to a decision, there was a click sound and the door slowly opened inwards with a creak. There was no one immediately on the other side.

He stepped into the rather dark, cave-like interior. The smell was the first thing that greeted him. It gave the general impression of a closed, confined space with poor ventilation, inhabited by a creature that did not bathe frequently, and only rarely deposited the remaining morsels of food from its meals in a waste receptacle, which was rarely emptied; and only when the lingering smell became so overpowering that breathing became difficult was an air freshener liberally applied.

Only after his eyes became adjusted to the dim light was he able to take in his surroundings. “Utility Closet” was not a bad description for the place. It was a single room apartment, deeper than it was wide, stretching away from the door. To the left of the door was a small kitchenette, with a sink piled with dishes that clearly—judging from the new civilization of mold emerging on them—hadn't been washed in some time. The recycling receptacle was so over-piled with disposable dishes that it was hard to discern exactly which ones qualified as “in” the container. To the right of the door was—well Jack had to assume it was there somewhere, as all that dirty laundry surely couldn't just be floating—presumably a dining table of some sort, although Jack couldn't imagine it having been used for that purpose in a past time measurable on a calendar. At the very back of the right wall was a door that Jack assumed led to a head. Judging by the state of the rest of the apartment, he was very glad he currently had no urges of that nature.

But all that was window dressing. Inconsequential trivialities to the main attraction, the real attention-grabber in the room. For filling at least half the room was perhaps the largest and most robust computer set up that Jack had ever seen. Zack would surely have wept had he seen this, Jack thought, upon the realization that all his engineering and technical pursuits were mere dust when compared with this monument to sheer geek ingenuity. It easily cost more than the apartment itself, perhaps more than the whole complex.

Practically the entire back wall and half the left wall were covered in large, vibrant displays; some continuations of one large image; others displaying their own image, ranging from local video programming, games, news, and some other highly technical data that Jack couldn't make heads or tails of. There was a large desk—the word being used in the loosest possible sense, only conveying the description of a surface on which one does work, but continent may have been more appropriate to describe its size—on which, and under which, were at least a dozen computers, three portable computers and five servers, not to mention the associated keyboards, pointing devices, and at least a few game controllers.

Jack couldn't really appreciate it, not having been born with the Gene—that gene which compels young boys or girls, when presented with a device that performs some function, to take it apart to verify its operation—but the only suitable term to describe the computer set up, assuredly used by any professional in the field, would be “awesome”.

And in the middle of it all, seated in what had to be the most well-sat-in chair in the history of chairs, was a disheveled, moderately overweight, pale-skinned man, his clothing wrinkled, his long unkempt hair pulled into a pony tail, and his chin unshaven.

“Larger than I expected a utility closet to be,” Jack finally said, finding himself talking in an elevated tone, to be heard over the dull roar of what sounded like a jet engine.

“What? Oh, the sign. Yeah, I just put that up to fool the ninja assassins so they couldn't find me.”

“Does it work?” Jack asked as he crossed towards the back of the apartment, stepping around a large couch which must have served double duty as the bed, before stopping a few feet from Chris. He really didn't want to get much closer.

“I'm still here, aren't I? Hold on,” Chris said, before fiddling with one of his controllers. On one of the displays, a control panel opened up and he made some adjustments to it. The background roar died down to a volume almost suitable for indoors.

“Sorry about that. I just wanted to turn down the compressor for the liquid nitrogen cooling system,” he said, waving a hand towards a piece of industrial equipment tucked away in the back corner of the room.

“What, are you running a furnace to power all this?” Jack's limited experience with liquid cooling systems was in starship engineering, where a chemical that was usually a gas at standard temperature and pressure was liquefied to cool the several tens-of-thousands of degrees reaction inside the furnace.

“No, I steel the extra power from my neighbors,” Chris said, waving a hand over his shoulder, then adding, “it's savvy, though. They don't know about it. The coolant is for the computers.”

“What do you use all this for?” Jack said, looking around the displays again.

“Anything and everything. Over here, I've got a buffered feed of all the Earth's interplanetarily broadcast video and audio programming—on a thirty minute delay, of course—so you can catch all the reruns of all your favorite shows,” he said, indicating one display in which the image was split into easily hundreds of smaller images. “From that box, the feed goes over to my content hosting server, which holds a one-year archive of everything for anyone on Callisto who's watching. Except, of course, for Space Voyages. I keep archives of all the episodes of that show.”

He pointed at another display. “This box is currently running my clan's multiplayer server for the Littoral Operations expansion to Starship Combat. I'm in a pretty well-known clan. Ever heard of Plutonium Knights?” Jack, who hadn't followed much of what he had said since the words “anything and everything”, shook his head. “No? Well, they're pretty famous. Number one ranked on Callisto and, I think, number twelve in the system.

“On this server, I'm trying to assemble the system's largest collection of porn,” Chris continued. Jack rolled his eyes in disgust.

“And this server—this is the one that's soaking up most of the cooling; I had to slow it by a factor of ten while the cooling system is running on low—this is the one I'm using to try and find the next Mersenne prime. Well the main one. The others are all set up in an ad hoc Beowulf cluster—which is simple since they're all running my own home-brewed Torvix distro of course—and they'll share some of the processing load during low usage.” Jack just shook his head. It was all geek to him. “But ninety percent of the processing is done on her.” Chris looked longingly at the display of numbers rapidly scrolling up the screen. “She'll find it one of these days.” Somehow, Jack wasn't surprised that Chris had anthropomorphized his computers as female.

“Nice set up, but do you really need all this?”

Chris gave Jack a look as if he was equal parts surprised and offended. “Did... did Alexander the Great need to conquer the world?” he started. “Did Amundsen need to go to the South Pole? Did Cromwell need to invent the fusion propulsion engine?” He continued to hold his stare at Jack for several awkward seconds. “Well, did they?”

Jack, assuming it was a rhetorical question, fumbled for the answer. “No?” he finally blurted out.

“Of course they did! Who would remember them if they didn't?”

He had a point, thought Jack.

Quote of the Day/Week/Month.

While the deep concern of a woman bearing an unwanted child merits consideration and sympathy, it is my personal feeling that the legalization of abortion on demand is not in accordance with the value which our civilization places on human life. Wanted or unwanted, I believe that human life, even at its earliest stages, has certain rights which must be recognized -- the right to be born, the right to love, the right to grow old.

On the question of the individual's freedom of choice there are easily available birth control methods and information which women may employ to prevent or postpone pregnancy. But once life has begun, no matter at what stage of growth, it is my belief that termination should not be decided merely by desire.

I share the confidence of those who feel that America is willing to care for its unwanted as well as wanted children, protecting particularly those who cannot protect themselves. I also share the opinions of those who do not accept abortion as a response to our society's problems -- an inadequate welfare system, unsatisfactory job training programs, and insufficient financial support for all its citizens.

When history looks back to this era it should recognize this generation as one which cared about human beings enough to halt the practice of war, to provide a decent living for every family, and to fulfill its responsibility to its children from the very moment of conception.

Sincerely,
Edward M. Kennedy (ca. 1971)

How far he fell.

Bell and Whistle

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Monday, September 7, 2009

Wednesday, September 2, 2009