Saturday, March 27, 2010
Thursday, March 18, 2010
And then it hit me
If St. Patrick's Day is essentially a celebration of the broadest, most negative of stereotypes about the Irish, suppose we expand on this? For example:
St. Patrick is also the Patron Saint of Nigeria, so next March 17th, try and commit as much Internet fraud as possible.
May 3rd. Take May 3rd off. It's the feast day of St. James the Lesser, patron saint of Paraguay. Nobody gives a crap about Paraguay.
May 30th is the Feast Day of St. Joan, the Patron Saint of France. Let's all commit adultery and surrender to somebody.
June 5th is St. Boniface, of Germany. Get yourself really organized, exterminate some innocents, and annex Czechoslovakia.
June 22 is the feast day for St. Nicetas of Romania. Give your children away.
Doubting Thomas is the Patron Saint of Pakistan. His feast day is July 3rd, so you have two months to get really good at cricket and then blow yourself up.
Saint Rose of Lima's Feast Day is the 23rd of August. She's the Patron Saint of the Philippines, so you have until then to learn "My Way" and then kill a bunch of people.
October 4th is St. Francis of Assisi, Patron of Italy. Go out and steal something.
November 30th is St. Andrew's Day. Andrew the Apostle is the Patron Saint of Russia, so drink vodka until you're silly, embrace political corruption and try to get involved with the meanest gang you possibly can.
December 3rd: St. Francis Xavier. Japan. Two words: Tentacle. Porn.
December 4: Iran. St. Mathuas. Death to America. You know what to do.
December 12th is the Feast Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Patron Saint of Mexico. Stop working.
By the time the new year rolls around you'll be ready for St. Ansgar, patron saint of Sweden, and you'll finally have something to do with all those Allen wrenches.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
One of These Things is Not Like the Other
There are many things which fill me with anger. Other drivers. John Boehner. Things that make no sense. John Boehner. The Texas Board of Education. The Itawamba School Board. Drunk people on a Wednesday afternoon. John Boehner. But there's one thing that sticks most in my craw, today.
Mad Men Barbie.
Now, normally I'd be content to dismiss this as yet another marketing scheme, like, say, Mad Men Transformers, My Little Mad Pony Men, or Lego. But this is beyond the pale.
Barbie Joan.
Mattel: This:
Does not equal this:
Not here. Not anywhere. The only way in which these two could possibly be confused is by inhuman tentacled alien explorers from the Andromeda Galaxy who, without frame of reference, might confuse the two for being in the same genus.
There are a perishing few unapologetically curvy actresses in the state of Hollywood, and the sight of one being reduced to an impossible caricature just FILLS ME WITH RAGE. I want to kill them with fire.
Mad Men Barbie.
Now, normally I'd be content to dismiss this as yet another marketing scheme, like, say, Mad Men Transformers, My Little Mad Pony Men, or Lego. But this is beyond the pale.
Barbie Joan.
Mattel: This:
Does not equal this:
Not here. Not anywhere. The only way in which these two could possibly be confused is by inhuman tentacled alien explorers from the Andromeda Galaxy who, without frame of reference, might confuse the two for being in the same genus.
There are a perishing few unapologetically curvy actresses in the state of Hollywood, and the sight of one being reduced to an impossible caricature just FILLS ME WITH RAGE. I want to kill them with fire.
Hagiography II: Stigmatic Boogaloo
Once again it is St. Patrick's Day and despite my move from downtown Ann Arbor to downtown Ypsilanti, my (admittedly beautiful) afternoon was smudged a bit by random bouts of emerald-clad drunken revelers. So, in lieu of buying a three-piece orange suit and pissing off the people to whom this holiday actually matters, I'll act out by pointing out more saints than the Patron of Delirium Tremens:
For heaven's sake, how did I miss him last year? Today is the Feastday of St. Joseph of Arimathea, so we should all be drinking our watered-down green piss out of clay cups, because if you've seen 'The Last Crusade,' you know what his deal was. HOLY GRAIL, people. Holy Grail.
Paul of Cyprus was martyred for not being an iconoclast and Jan Sarkander was canonized by none other than JP2 for being a Catholic with the wrong zip code at the start of the Thirty Years War.
And if you missed celebrating today, raise a glass tomorrow to St. Cyril of Jerusalem (not to be confused with that son of a bitch Cyril of Alexandria) who fed the poor in Jerusalem and hung fast with the Athanasians rather than the Arians during the whole Nicea business.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Gay Panic
Rumors persist that Torchwood, the BBC's "for adults" Doctor Who spinoff starring the omnisexually fabulous Captain Jack Harkness may be making the trip across the pond, like so many successful British shows, to a series in the United States. And like so many UK/US remixes, including the DOA travesty that was 1996's FOX 'Doctor Who' TV movie, this fact is troubling. Take a look at this comparison between Steven Moffat's wonderful early-aught's sitcom 'Coupling' and its US version.
It's called acting. Google it. And while you're there, check out the televisual abortion that was the US version of 'Red Dwarf.' Worst. Adaptation. Ever.
It's not that Torchwood is a phenomenal show, either, and occasionally the sun shines and the wind is in the right direction and we get something like 'The Office' (hell, 'All in the Family' is a remake of a British show). What concerns me more is Captain Jack.
Captain Jack Harkness sauntered on to the scene in 2005, and by the time he got his own show a year later, had emerged as really the gayest action hero ever. Tell me, America, because I'm dying to learn. Is there anyone else? With the exception of Ianto Jones, Jack's lover in the second and abbreviated third seasons of Torchwood, alternative sexualities don't fare very well in actioners. Sure, you can be a butch lesbian Vasquez-esque action hero if you're a gal, but if you're a guy and you enjoy anything other than the love of a good woman (not that there's anything wrong with that) you're reduced to mincing ineffectuality. The only exception I can possibly think of is from 2008's 'Death Race,' in which it's slyly hinted that Tyrese Gibson's Machine Gun Joe is, possibly, gay as hell.
Would a US version of the show smooth Jack out for NASCAR Dads? Is America ready for a bisexual male action character? Adam Lambert, openly gay American Idol contestant raised the collective hackles of America when he smooched his dancing partner in the finale for 'So You Think You Can Dance.' Angry letters were written. Call-in shows were called in to. "My kids watch this crap," they say, though we've been getting girl-on-girl love at prime time hours for at least a decade. It's totally fine if Olivia Wilde makes out with some lady (or ladies) in a given episode of 'House,' but if Omar Epps were to do it? (Admittedly, it might finally make Foreman interesting.)
My money is on "you betcha." Should Torchwood emerge in the United States with the same male lead it had in Britain, my presumption is that Harnkess' proclivities won't, to say nothing of a relationship between two men that doesn't paint itself in a super-broad, 'Will & Grace' sized brush.
If you ask me (and you haven't) at root of all this is the fact that female sexuality is not taken seriously by the media at large. Perhaps not by the culture. Olivia Wilde's makeout scene in House is harmless because lady-to-lady sexuality is harmless, unthreatening, and, let's face it, kind of awesome. But male sexuality, now that is serious business; and male homosexuality, if it's used in an action-TV show context at all is likely to be employed as threatening, prison-set Soap of Damocles. This is a shame.
Here's hoping they prove me wrong.
It's called acting. Google it. And while you're there, check out the televisual abortion that was the US version of 'Red Dwarf.' Worst. Adaptation. Ever.
It's not that Torchwood is a phenomenal show, either, and occasionally the sun shines and the wind is in the right direction and we get something like 'The Office' (hell, 'All in the Family' is a remake of a British show). What concerns me more is Captain Jack.
Captain Jack Harkness sauntered on to the scene in 2005, and by the time he got his own show a year later, had emerged as really the gayest action hero ever. Tell me, America, because I'm dying to learn. Is there anyone else? With the exception of Ianto Jones, Jack's lover in the second and abbreviated third seasons of Torchwood, alternative sexualities don't fare very well in actioners. Sure, you can be a butch lesbian Vasquez-esque action hero if you're a gal, but if you're a guy and you enjoy anything other than the love of a good woman (not that there's anything wrong with that) you're reduced to mincing ineffectuality. The only exception I can possibly think of is from 2008's 'Death Race,' in which it's slyly hinted that Tyrese Gibson's Machine Gun Joe is, possibly, gay as hell.
Would a US version of the show smooth Jack out for NASCAR Dads? Is America ready for a bisexual male action character? Adam Lambert, openly gay American Idol contestant raised the collective hackles of America when he smooched his dancing partner in the finale for 'So You Think You Can Dance.' Angry letters were written. Call-in shows were called in to. "My kids watch this crap," they say, though we've been getting girl-on-girl love at prime time hours for at least a decade. It's totally fine if Olivia Wilde makes out with some lady (or ladies) in a given episode of 'House,' but if Omar Epps were to do it? (Admittedly, it might finally make Foreman interesting.)
My money is on "you betcha." Should Torchwood emerge in the United States with the same male lead it had in Britain, my presumption is that Harnkess' proclivities won't, to say nothing of a relationship between two men that doesn't paint itself in a super-broad, 'Will & Grace' sized brush.
If you ask me (and you haven't) at root of all this is the fact that female sexuality is not taken seriously by the media at large. Perhaps not by the culture. Olivia Wilde's makeout scene in House is harmless because lady-to-lady sexuality is harmless, unthreatening, and, let's face it, kind of awesome. But male sexuality, now that is serious business; and male homosexuality, if it's used in an action-TV show context at all is likely to be employed as threatening, prison-set Soap of Damocles. This is a shame.
Here's hoping they prove me wrong.
Monday, March 8, 2010
First Contact
(1) The Great Beyond
It was during simulated midnight when the good ship Josephine Baker powered down above 61 Cygni B II and Barstowe told them it was going to be just like that film Alien.
“I’m telling ya,” he said from the secondary Nav interface. “Strange radio transmission, little backwater planet, us…we’re gonna get all kinds of chomped upon.” Barstowe had this theory, and by now all 96 of the Baker crew had heard it. His theory was the movie Alien, and Star Wars and Star Trek and what-have-you, on and on, these movies were all part of a conspiracy, going back two centuries, to the 1940’s. They’re preparing us, Barstowe would say, desensitizing us to the prospect of alien life because they know its’ out there. They know who we’re dealing with.
Someone would inevitably point out that humans had been in space a whole century now and nobody had heard so much as a rustle in the proverbial trees (the actual, literal trees also being absent) with respect to alien life.
Greer said nothing. The only thing more useless than whatever it was Barstowe was on the ship was Greer. A thousand ships in the competing navies of Earth and not one jot, not even the barest suggestion of extrasolar life. There was nobody onboard less useful than the ship’s Theoretical Anthropologist.
The planet was a gray, hulking rock, a little larger than Earth but less dense according to the screens. Only the thinnest of atmosphere blanketed the place. There were books, whole volumes dedicated to what might be out there while silent ships a thousand strong surveyed the stars, alone. Haltham Greer had begun to suspect his life was one long, boring joke.
"We even have a Vasquez,” Barstowe joked, pointing at the ship’s geologist.
“Pipe down.” Captain Ching. “Besides, Vasquez was in Aliens, not Alien.” Didn’t that just shut Barstowe up. Finally. In the ensuing quiet the control deck’s crew shifted attention to Lieutenant Chandrasekhar at the comm cowell. His headphones on. Scanning through frequencies, through flavors of oscillation. Searching.
Sixteen years ago an imager probe traveled through 51 Cygni, picking up faint radio waves, possibly artificial. The good ship Josephine Baker was dispatched eight years later.
“I’ve got something!” Chandrasekhar announced, and there was a feeling on the control deck as though the air had gone out. Tense. Waiting. “Coming from the planet below. It’s very faint, but…could be artificial.”
“Confirm, Lieutenant,” Ching said, her voice tight with the anticipation they all felt. “Is this the real thing?”
“I don’t know how else you’d see a radio source like that.
There was another long moment of silence and then a deafening cheer. They’d found life. They were sitting on it.
Haltham Greer hated Jeremy Barstowe. The man was crass, aggressive and totally at ease with himself in a way Greer desperately envied. Ching rode in the liftcar with them to the hangar deck, detailing their instructions. Greer was to lead the operation. “After all, Doc” she said, “You’re our boy.” Barstowe, Vasquez and two grunts would fly down with him in a minnow and scout around. Whatever civilization that might be there had to be subterranean; the Baker could find no trace of them on the pitted, cratered surface of the planet.
“Good hunting,” Ching told them as the minnow left Baker’s hangar deck and angled its way down to the planet. “We’ll be awaiting your signal.”
A half hour later they landed and Barstowe immediately began giving orders. “Doc, you and Vasquez scout to the north. Al-Hamidi, Huang and I will establish a perimeter.” Greer didn’t know whether to be annoyed or relieved at Barstowe for this. He wasn’t a leader, after all, right? He was a scientist, and frankly the responsibility for those people’s lives—not to mention the billions AstroCorp had spent on the Baker—made his stomach churn. Still, Barstowe just marched in wherever he felt like. This could be the most important day in human history and already it was off to a rotten start. Greer was absorbed in this line of thinking when he realized that Vasquez had vanished without a trace.
(2) A Hole in the Sky
It should have been to the interval. To the interval would have offered a perfect, bitter irony. Sub-Hierophant Chttk of the Northern Warrens (Divided) moved quickly through the detention block. He scented his apologies for his brusqueness to the guards. Thirty-four seasons nearly to the interval, and here he was standing next to one. An alien. A Heavensent. A nightmare angel.
And what a creature, too. Flat, with only four limbs and what was apparently a swiveling head, all bound up in a carapace. One of the invaders was dead already from a pierce in its carapace. “They bleed air” was the rather baroque description radioed during the encounter. Two creatures captured, the so-called air bleeder being dissected now.
Of course Chttk’s disciplined scientific mind, well divorced from the heat of the moment of actually meeting one of these creatures, took the carapace for what it was. The angels could not breathe the thin air of Up Above either.
The creature stirred, and spoke. At least Chttk thought it spoke. Its voice, if it could be called that, was slow and soft like stones falling on moss. How could it see with a voice like that? Chttk sounded a greeting. In the name of Peace. In the name of Understanding. Please identify yourself.
Nothing. Not even a change in the thing’s posture, really, just more slow dull sound. Chttk remembered the day, thirty-four seasons before, that Kyrrkyr broke through the wall of Up Above. He was driven mad by that great expanse above the ceiling of the world. The hole in the sky. It was all he said, when he returned. Great vastness, so that he could not see a higher ceiling above. Simply an unending airless plain, beyond glimpse of sight. There was nothing above them. Nothing.
So where did the creature come from?
More noise now, a frantic call from General Vllst, two more creatures sighted in the south warrens, attacking with some kind of heat weapon.
(3) The Walls of Heaven
Jeremy Barstowe was breathing hard, hunched behind a wall, waiting for the laser to cycle up. Aliens. Real, honest aliens. He let it sink in for the first time. He wondered wildly at the implications of, say, his belief in Jesus. Did Jesus preach to the moles? Was there a Molechrist out there? Betrayed by blind mole Judas, in the dark?
They were blind, yes, and totally eyeless, but they could see like bats, which meant (a) he only had a chance if their back was turned and (b) just about every surface was covered in a frieze or bas relief of something. Not that the words “frieze” and “bas relief” were of easy retrieval in Barstowe’s brain.
Greer was nearby. The guy could barely hold his gun. So much for a fancy degree in fake aliens. Barstowe had that degree, surely. He’d seen Alien a dozen times. He hissed at the “scientist” to get over here. “Greer! Greer we gotta beat feet back to the minnow. Come back with reinforcements! The cavalry.” His breathing was still labored. They should have been awakened weeks before, from cryo.
“Why?”
“Why, what do you mean, why? Because everybody is dead.” What this was not time to do was nurse some sort of existential crisis, Barstowe had a pretty good bead on that.
“Why do they listen to you and not to me? Did. Why did they listen to you and not to me? I’m smart, I have qualifications.”
“Are you going to make this about you now?” Barstowe said. He looked over the low wall, casting about with his AstroCorp flashlight. The moles must be regrouping. Tough fuckers, but lasers they do not have. “We have to go.”
He was altogether surprised when Greer shot him from behind, in the head.
(4) Conssions of a Theoretical Anthropologist
Vasquez is dead. So are al-Hamidi and Ng. I can only surmise that if Barstowe is not, he soon will be, at the hands of the moles. His term, not mine. It’s all gone a bit wrong, I’m afraid. I’ve nearly got the minnow working, and I’m gone. Back to the good ship Josephine Baker. I’m leaving this. My confession, and my warning, for those who may come after us.
61 Cygni B II is inhabited by a race of blind, mole-like creatures living in an ecosystem a mile beneath the planet’s crust. Somehow, life evolved from the underground seas and lava vents. Algae provide oxygen at a level which is agreeable to the moles but unfortunately toxic to humans. The moles live in a large network of caves and lava tubes. Vasquez fell through a fissure, a weak point in the crust, the source of our radio transmissions. She was probably dead by the time the moles found her.
They are quite intelligent. They have carved great cities from the rock. They have weapons, too. Their speech is based on the same supersonic frequency they use to echolocate. All our attempts to communicate with them so far have failed. I am not optimistic for future attempts.
I’ve run the tests. I know every vagary of every simulation. I know what will happen if Captain Ching finds out the truth. That we are not alone. The moles will not survive us.
That’s why I did it. Why I will do it. Why I must. Imagine your whole life spent in a cave, never seeing sky. Imagine you and your ancestors, spreading back to the dawn of time, never even having words for the sun and stars. Imagine breaking that wall. Or worse. Imagine seeing it broken by something else.
Barstowe was right: we’ve been telling ourselves stories of what it might be like out there. The moles haven’t. Not once. Not ever.
The Minnow’s engine backfire should be enough to fuse together the small hole in the rock we found. I’m leaving this recording device behind. Officially, my report will read that the radio source was due to a decaying element in 61-B2’s core and that a caving mishap killed everyone but me. Should you find this, you’ll know I am a liar. Know however that I did this all with the best of intentions, for Earth and for 61-B2, which I would like to rechristen Barstowe’s World, in honor of my good friend Jeremy Barstowe, who gave his life in the quest for understanding between human and alien.
If you have landed here I beg you, turn back. Barstowe’s World belongs to the moles, not to us.
(5) As Above, So Below
Geonauts confirmed that the fissure opened by Kyrrykr to Up Above had been closed. At Chttk’s orders, no attempt was to be made to pierce the Wall again. It was decided at the High Council that the events of that terrible interval be carved over. Rumors would persist, of course, too many people saw the strange figures for rumors not to persist. But there was no reason the Church’s overall plan could not incorporate them. Eat your blooms, Chttk imagined countless mothers intoning to their broods, or the Nightmare Angels will come for you.
They must have come from another cave system, somewhere across Up Above. Vllst agreed at this, and already had begun to lobby for the expansion of the military. More expeditions into the South Tunnels was clearly called for. What they would find would be anybody’s guess. In the meantime the Nightmare Angels would fade, be replaced by predictable worries about the economy, polar fever vaccines and the possibility of war with the Jtmpr Barbarians. They would become a story. The nation would march on.
In the meantime, it might be a good idea, just in case, to start telling stories.
It was during simulated midnight when the good ship Josephine Baker powered down above 61 Cygni B II and Barstowe told them it was going to be just like that film Alien.
“I’m telling ya,” he said from the secondary Nav interface. “Strange radio transmission, little backwater planet, us…we’re gonna get all kinds of chomped upon.” Barstowe had this theory, and by now all 96 of the Baker crew had heard it. His theory was the movie Alien, and Star Wars and Star Trek and what-have-you, on and on, these movies were all part of a conspiracy, going back two centuries, to the 1940’s. They’re preparing us, Barstowe would say, desensitizing us to the prospect of alien life because they know its’ out there. They know who we’re dealing with.
Someone would inevitably point out that humans had been in space a whole century now and nobody had heard so much as a rustle in the proverbial trees (the actual, literal trees also being absent) with respect to alien life.
Greer said nothing. The only thing more useless than whatever it was Barstowe was on the ship was Greer. A thousand ships in the competing navies of Earth and not one jot, not even the barest suggestion of extrasolar life. There was nobody onboard less useful than the ship’s Theoretical Anthropologist.
The planet was a gray, hulking rock, a little larger than Earth but less dense according to the screens. Only the thinnest of atmosphere blanketed the place. There were books, whole volumes dedicated to what might be out there while silent ships a thousand strong surveyed the stars, alone. Haltham Greer had begun to suspect his life was one long, boring joke.
"We even have a Vasquez,” Barstowe joked, pointing at the ship’s geologist.
“Pipe down.” Captain Ching. “Besides, Vasquez was in Aliens, not Alien.” Didn’t that just shut Barstowe up. Finally. In the ensuing quiet the control deck’s crew shifted attention to Lieutenant Chandrasekhar at the comm cowell. His headphones on. Scanning through frequencies, through flavors of oscillation. Searching.
Sixteen years ago an imager probe traveled through 51 Cygni, picking up faint radio waves, possibly artificial. The good ship Josephine Baker was dispatched eight years later.
“I’ve got something!” Chandrasekhar announced, and there was a feeling on the control deck as though the air had gone out. Tense. Waiting. “Coming from the planet below. It’s very faint, but…could be artificial.”
“Confirm, Lieutenant,” Ching said, her voice tight with the anticipation they all felt. “Is this the real thing?”
“I don’t know how else you’d see a radio source like that.
There was another long moment of silence and then a deafening cheer. They’d found life. They were sitting on it.
Haltham Greer hated Jeremy Barstowe. The man was crass, aggressive and totally at ease with himself in a way Greer desperately envied. Ching rode in the liftcar with them to the hangar deck, detailing their instructions. Greer was to lead the operation. “After all, Doc” she said, “You’re our boy.” Barstowe, Vasquez and two grunts would fly down with him in a minnow and scout around. Whatever civilization that might be there had to be subterranean; the Baker could find no trace of them on the pitted, cratered surface of the planet.
“Good hunting,” Ching told them as the minnow left Baker’s hangar deck and angled its way down to the planet. “We’ll be awaiting your signal.”
A half hour later they landed and Barstowe immediately began giving orders. “Doc, you and Vasquez scout to the north. Al-Hamidi, Huang and I will establish a perimeter.” Greer didn’t know whether to be annoyed or relieved at Barstowe for this. He wasn’t a leader, after all, right? He was a scientist, and frankly the responsibility for those people’s lives—not to mention the billions AstroCorp had spent on the Baker—made his stomach churn. Still, Barstowe just marched in wherever he felt like. This could be the most important day in human history and already it was off to a rotten start. Greer was absorbed in this line of thinking when he realized that Vasquez had vanished without a trace.
(2) A Hole in the Sky
It should have been to the interval. To the interval would have offered a perfect, bitter irony. Sub-Hierophant Chttk of the Northern Warrens (Divided) moved quickly through the detention block. He scented his apologies for his brusqueness to the guards. Thirty-four seasons nearly to the interval, and here he was standing next to one. An alien. A Heavensent. A nightmare angel.
And what a creature, too. Flat, with only four limbs and what was apparently a swiveling head, all bound up in a carapace. One of the invaders was dead already from a pierce in its carapace. “They bleed air” was the rather baroque description radioed during the encounter. Two creatures captured, the so-called air bleeder being dissected now.
Of course Chttk’s disciplined scientific mind, well divorced from the heat of the moment of actually meeting one of these creatures, took the carapace for what it was. The angels could not breathe the thin air of Up Above either.
The creature stirred, and spoke. At least Chttk thought it spoke. Its voice, if it could be called that, was slow and soft like stones falling on moss. How could it see with a voice like that? Chttk sounded a greeting. In the name of Peace. In the name of Understanding. Please identify yourself.
Nothing. Not even a change in the thing’s posture, really, just more slow dull sound. Chttk remembered the day, thirty-four seasons before, that Kyrrkyr broke through the wall of Up Above. He was driven mad by that great expanse above the ceiling of the world. The hole in the sky. It was all he said, when he returned. Great vastness, so that he could not see a higher ceiling above. Simply an unending airless plain, beyond glimpse of sight. There was nothing above them. Nothing.
So where did the creature come from?
More noise now, a frantic call from General Vllst, two more creatures sighted in the south warrens, attacking with some kind of heat weapon.
(3) The Walls of Heaven
Jeremy Barstowe was breathing hard, hunched behind a wall, waiting for the laser to cycle up. Aliens. Real, honest aliens. He let it sink in for the first time. He wondered wildly at the implications of, say, his belief in Jesus. Did Jesus preach to the moles? Was there a Molechrist out there? Betrayed by blind mole Judas, in the dark?
They were blind, yes, and totally eyeless, but they could see like bats, which meant (a) he only had a chance if their back was turned and (b) just about every surface was covered in a frieze or bas relief of something. Not that the words “frieze” and “bas relief” were of easy retrieval in Barstowe’s brain.
Greer was nearby. The guy could barely hold his gun. So much for a fancy degree in fake aliens. Barstowe had that degree, surely. He’d seen Alien a dozen times. He hissed at the “scientist” to get over here. “Greer! Greer we gotta beat feet back to the minnow. Come back with reinforcements! The cavalry.” His breathing was still labored. They should have been awakened weeks before, from cryo.
“Why?”
“Why, what do you mean, why? Because everybody is dead.” What this was not time to do was nurse some sort of existential crisis, Barstowe had a pretty good bead on that.
“Why do they listen to you and not to me? Did. Why did they listen to you and not to me? I’m smart, I have qualifications.”
“Are you going to make this about you now?” Barstowe said. He looked over the low wall, casting about with his AstroCorp flashlight. The moles must be regrouping. Tough fuckers, but lasers they do not have. “We have to go.”
He was altogether surprised when Greer shot him from behind, in the head.
(4) Conssions of a Theoretical Anthropologist
Vasquez is dead. So are al-Hamidi and Ng. I can only surmise that if Barstowe is not, he soon will be, at the hands of the moles. His term, not mine. It’s all gone a bit wrong, I’m afraid. I’ve nearly got the minnow working, and I’m gone. Back to the good ship Josephine Baker. I’m leaving this. My confession, and my warning, for those who may come after us.
61 Cygni B II is inhabited by a race of blind, mole-like creatures living in an ecosystem a mile beneath the planet’s crust. Somehow, life evolved from the underground seas and lava vents. Algae provide oxygen at a level which is agreeable to the moles but unfortunately toxic to humans. The moles live in a large network of caves and lava tubes. Vasquez fell through a fissure, a weak point in the crust, the source of our radio transmissions. She was probably dead by the time the moles found her.
They are quite intelligent. They have carved great cities from the rock. They have weapons, too. Their speech is based on the same supersonic frequency they use to echolocate. All our attempts to communicate with them so far have failed. I am not optimistic for future attempts.
I’ve run the tests. I know every vagary of every simulation. I know what will happen if Captain Ching finds out the truth. That we are not alone. The moles will not survive us.
That’s why I did it. Why I will do it. Why I must. Imagine your whole life spent in a cave, never seeing sky. Imagine you and your ancestors, spreading back to the dawn of time, never even having words for the sun and stars. Imagine breaking that wall. Or worse. Imagine seeing it broken by something else.
Barstowe was right: we’ve been telling ourselves stories of what it might be like out there. The moles haven’t. Not once. Not ever.
The Minnow’s engine backfire should be enough to fuse together the small hole in the rock we found. I’m leaving this recording device behind. Officially, my report will read that the radio source was due to a decaying element in 61-B2’s core and that a caving mishap killed everyone but me. Should you find this, you’ll know I am a liar. Know however that I did this all with the best of intentions, for Earth and for 61-B2, which I would like to rechristen Barstowe’s World, in honor of my good friend Jeremy Barstowe, who gave his life in the quest for understanding between human and alien.
If you have landed here I beg you, turn back. Barstowe’s World belongs to the moles, not to us.
(5) As Above, So Below
Geonauts confirmed that the fissure opened by Kyrrykr to Up Above had been closed. At Chttk’s orders, no attempt was to be made to pierce the Wall again. It was decided at the High Council that the events of that terrible interval be carved over. Rumors would persist, of course, too many people saw the strange figures for rumors not to persist. But there was no reason the Church’s overall plan could not incorporate them. Eat your blooms, Chttk imagined countless mothers intoning to their broods, or the Nightmare Angels will come for you.
They must have come from another cave system, somewhere across Up Above. Vllst agreed at this, and already had begun to lobby for the expansion of the military. More expeditions into the South Tunnels was clearly called for. What they would find would be anybody’s guess. In the meantime the Nightmare Angels would fade, be replaced by predictable worries about the economy, polar fever vaccines and the possibility of war with the Jtmpr Barbarians. They would become a story. The nation would march on.
In the meantime, it might be a good idea, just in case, to start telling stories.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Another Way to Die
One day, more intelligent minds than mine will mine the rich depths of trashy TV, I'm talking Spike TV levels of awful here, specifically Spike TV's "1000 Ways to Die," which is on now, for the thesis of TV as a method of social control.
I'm watching this shit. It's on RIGHT NOW. "1000 Ways to Die." Some smug, gravelly-voiced asshole is intoning--again, smugly--all the miserable, urban legend-worthy (and probably a majority of them are actual urban legends) tales of accidental death. Stepping in to a giant dryer. Leaning too far while being some kind of peeping tom. Accidentally electrocuting yourself while on death row. Having the absolute gall to be beautiful and miserable and to die in your sleep. Most of these people, the narrator's coming-attractions-worthy voice assures me, aren't exactly what you'd call model citizens. Take voyeur guy. Overhearing, it turns out he caught his neighbor diddling herself, leaned in for a closer peek, and fell to his death. I dunno. He was in a tree or something. I'm trying not to pay attention.
This is what I get for not having Internet at my house. Still. In March.
There's a subtle undercurrent to these Implausible Tales of Mishap. Don't step out. Don't do something stupid, or perceptibly stupid, because you will die and be mocked in your grave. Don't be an asshole because God will electrocute you while you're watching Oprah. Except for all those assholes who never get electrocuted because they're not on death row they're in Congress. Or they own NewsCorp. Above all, be happy with what you have, because if you're not, there are a thousand ways to die.
I'm watching this shit. It's on RIGHT NOW. "1000 Ways to Die." Some smug, gravelly-voiced asshole is intoning--again, smugly--all the miserable, urban legend-worthy (and probably a majority of them are actual urban legends) tales of accidental death. Stepping in to a giant dryer. Leaning too far while being some kind of peeping tom. Accidentally electrocuting yourself while on death row. Having the absolute gall to be beautiful and miserable and to die in your sleep. Most of these people, the narrator's coming-attractions-worthy voice assures me, aren't exactly what you'd call model citizens. Take voyeur guy. Overhearing, it turns out he caught his neighbor diddling herself, leaned in for a closer peek, and fell to his death. I dunno. He was in a tree or something. I'm trying not to pay attention.
This is what I get for not having Internet at my house. Still. In March.
There's a subtle undercurrent to these Implausible Tales of Mishap. Don't step out. Don't do something stupid, or perceptibly stupid, because you will die and be mocked in your grave. Don't be an asshole because God will electrocute you while you're watching Oprah. Except for all those assholes who never get electrocuted because they're not on death row they're in Congress. Or they own NewsCorp. Above all, be happy with what you have, because if you're not, there are a thousand ways to die.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
