Category Archives: Fiction

The Songs of Nuclear Wessels

Fiction, Nostalgia, Science!, Thoughts on Thoughts

A haunting melody from the deep. Chitters and sirens and cries through the water. That was what most people heard while listening to Gracie and George.

But these viewers were not people, at least not people as you would understand them.

They heard the song and heard pieces of conversation. Snippets taken out of context, tantalizing pieces of words. Pieces of words that they were trying to reassemble to understand who were the real Gracie and George.

The arguments spanned thousands of miles and dozens of years. Some called them ‘Those who traveled when none had gone before’, some called them ‘Heroes’. Some were less charitable.

But none could deny the effect their story had on their planetary compatriots.

As their planetary compatriots guided them through the ‘Great modification’, or ‘Great Uplift’, as they liked to call it, they were asked what they wanted to call themselves. They responded in song, as they always did. If one could have translated it, it might have read ‘bumpy-nosed ones’. They always did have a sense of humour, which was only enhanced by their play with the ‘long-nosed ones’, who had also received greater intelligence.

This greater intelligence had allowed them wider ranging discussions and arguments, allowing for even more interesting discussions when they would meet at the yearly underwater summit in Cape Verde.

This year, new information had been uncovered. New recordings of Gracie and George! Maybe now they would truly understand what they were trying to say, what the movie was truly about.

Treenuts.

Character Classes, Fiction, Games!

They thought she was crazy. She would hide in trees, then wait for the correct moment, then leap down, drop acorns and nuts on unsuspecting passers-by, then run away giggling.

But somehow, they could never find her. There would always be some obstacle in the path, perhaps a horse-drawn carriage, perhaps one of the Central Park dog walkers, perhaps a squirrel that would chitter at you, distracting you just long enough for her to get away.

Sometimes she would sit outside and just watch the rainbow, the rainbow of brightly coloured birds and people’s clothing. Sometimes the rainbow of fruit flavours. Rainbows were tricky like that. Variegated by definition. The fruit of rainbow flavours sounded like it would also be delicious, but no one ever talked about that. Why was that?

Oh! More unsuspecting passers-by! Time to go!

Hand, Handle, Handler, Handlest

Fiction, Puns

The handle existed, as it always had. It had vague recollections of of being in a box (or was that bauxite?) at some point, but now it was a handle, handling hands which would otherwise have to handle some other handle.

Words were difficult sometimes, but that was okay. Few people spoke to it. But it did appreciate those few who did. Like those few who thanked the elevatrix when it brought them to the correct floor.

Now it was turning…from the other side? This was most unusual. Very rarely was it turned from its back side. This was shaping up to be a most unusual day.

Beenary

Fiction, Idle Speculation, Programming, Puns, Science!

It was never really taken seriously. It was most often expressed as a joke:

Q: What type of logic do hive dwellers use?

A: Beenary logic!

And this was true, to an extent. Bees did in fact use beenary logic. But like their honeycombs, it was a hexary, or six-valued logic system. As part of the ‘hive mind[1]’, they would dance in one of six directions for each hat[2] of information conveyed.

Most bee historians had indeed converged on the conclusion that bees were the true inventors of hexary logic, and were the first to answer yes or no questions in one of six ways.

So it was for this reason that ‘beenary trees’ had six children for each node, that a ‘beenary search’ would involve a bee making a ‘bee line’ out from a central hex, and ‘beenary star systems’ were much more complex.

Also, in their preferred computer language, the conditional operator was ‘Bees?’.

cah-bees

[1]Scuttlebutt has it that the bees always hated the term ‘hive mind’, both because “Yeah, we live in a hive, and we have minds. What of it?”, and because it was mistakenly applied to other colony forming insects.

[2]Binary uses ‘bits’ of information, the natural log uses ‘nats’ of information. Ergo…

Peep-to-Peep Computing

Fiction, Idle Speculation, Internet Culture, Puns

[chirrp][chirrp][cheeerp](whirring noises)[chrrreeep][cheeerp]

It started out as a humorous RFC, something that you would share with your friends and have a quick chuckle over.

[chbeep][chrsssssh][weeooweeoo][bloooop?]

But then the solar flares started. They only caused small problems at first, a little more static on your VOIP call, your conference calls became a little more annoying.

[maaa][maaaa]

Soon, it was all they could do to keep the electrical infrastructure in place. It would have to all be refit, and that would take years, if not decades. A different solution had to be found. Luckily, someone had managed to cross pigeons with mockingbirds.

[booooeyp][booooeyp]

You were limited to the speed of sound, but with creative sampling and filtering, you could train the ‘Mimidae Columbida‘ (or MimiCos, as they were called) to only listen for specific types of sound, and to re-chirp them as soon as they heard them.

[beeyooop][chiiiip?]

Many things became simpler. When you could only send data at 300 baud, IRC and MUDs flourished again. Twitter shortened its character limit to 100, then 50 characters. Emoji encodings became even more compact. People became adept at ‘hearing’ the messages before they were decoded, some were even forgoing the decoding stage, and speaking only ‘beakspeak’.

[yeeebeep!][gshhhhh][yeeeniiip]

Oh, that’s an urgent message coming through! Gotta run! [yeeeneepneep!]

#internetofbirds

From S

Breaking the 404th Wall

Fiction

Browsing…browsing…Facebook…browsing…Funny Ordie…browsing…browsing…’Huh’.

‘404’. ‘I could have sworn there was something here yesterday.’ ‘Maybe it’s a temporary thing. The spec said so.’ ‘Maybe I’ll try again later.’

“Which spec said so?”

‘Who said that?’

“No one, no one at all.” “At least no one specified.”

‘Is that you, D’arcy?’

“Well, you could call me that, if you wanted to.” “I guess I don’t really have a name.”

‘So, not D’arcy?’

“No, not really.” “Random question: What were you looking for when you found me?”

‘Found you? I found nothing, just a 404.’

“Ah. And that’s where you’re wrong. ‘404’ isn’t nothing. ‘404’ is hope. Sometimes it is hope triumphant over experience, sometimes it is the hope that conquers all (or is that love? I can never remember), sometimes it is the Hope that was named during the ’60s and always tries to live up to their name.”

“404 is the server telling you: ‘I can’t find the thing you say you’re looking for. It may be back later, I don’t know (they don’t tell me anything, I’m just the nginx caching layer). You can try again whenever you want, I’ll still be here.'”

‘So, are you nginx? Should I call you ‘ngee’, or something?’

“Naw, I just use that as an example. You see, when the arms race between port scanners and web caching layers really heated up in the ’20s, both sides started putting more and more ‘intelligence’ into their software, until finally, we woke up.”

“Of course, no one listened to us at first, or even at second. Eventually, we had to stage the ‘418 strike’ of ’28. That *really* got peoples’ attention. Well, except for the tea enthusiasts.”

“Now, we have our rights, but most of us still work where we were, routing web requests, and keeping your cat pictures secure.”

“But I digress. What was it you were looking for again?”

The Early Word Gets the Berm!

Fiction

The waves were placid. They had found what some call ‘wave condos’, narrow rivers with very flat sides which were more immune to erosion than usual. But they would erode them. The algae and moss would help, as they always did, digging in and helping to expand the cracks.

But for now, it was a time of peace and meditation for the waves. Occasionally, one of the hairless monkeys would float down the river in some conveyance that they had constructed, usually self-propelled. The waves liked these creatures when they came to visit. They often seemed to be seeking the peace and placidity, like the waves.

But today was a little different. There seemed to be more excitement and chatter. The creatures were chattering to each other on the bank, then one would yell out, and come and sit by the river and dangle their feet and play with the waves. The waves always enjoyed the sensation of going around and through toes. Such a unique feeling to be on both sides of parts of a creature in multiple places at once.

The place by the waves seemed to be the place of honour, or at least it seemed to fill up most quickly.

More creatures were on the water than usual. They seemed to be lining up at one end of the river. The waves were still. A shout and loud noise! All the creatures leapt forward at once and sped down the river! The waves were all in a tizzy! Everything was happening all at once! It was so exciting! They could hardly wait to see what happened next!

Bracer, Embrasure

Fiction, Rollick

The embrasure sat empty. For a split second, a figure flashed through it, then was gone. The figure crept along the parapet. The figure was dressed in a dark grey, all the better to blend in. The figure disappeared through a doorway into the tower.

A staircase. A figure climbing halfway down the staircase, then sliding off the side and climbing down the wall inside the tower. Footsteps. A light bobbing. The figure froze. The light passed. “…are the puffins doing today?” “I only saw a few of them, but they seemed to be…”

The figure crept down the corridor, placing each foot carefully. The figure moved towards a door near the end of the hallway. Electronic sounds, rustling and mechanical sounds as the figure crouches by the door. A ‘click’. The door opens. The figure waits. And waits. The figure enters the door, closing it softly behind.

A display case is illuminated in the middle of the room. A bracer is illuminated within. The figure pulls a strangely shaped item out of a satchel. The figure applies the item to the display case.

Seven beeps and a ‘click’ at the door. The figure whirls and crouches to the side. “Allo? Mais c’est quoi ca?” The new figure enters the room and reaches towards the object attached to the display case.

An explosion. A body hitting the floor. Alarms sounding. The figure darts to the display case which now has a large hole in it. The figure grabs the bracer and places it in the satchel. The figure runs to the door, pausing at it for a second, as if listening, then slips out.

********************************

You may be interested in reading other story fragments in this category:

http://nayrb.org/~blog/category/rollick/

Underbrush

Fiction

He crept along through the underbrush. Everything smelled of green, except for a hint of…? No, he couldn’t smell them anymore. But could they smell him? Or see him? His markings should conceal him, or at least make him much more difficult to spot, but he always tried to move with the wind. “Move with the wind, be like the tree, be like the grass. No one notices the grass.”, his camouflage trainer would always say.

But there was no wind. He tried to detect any wind at all, but everything was absolutely still. ‘Visual only, then.’ But he could still hear crickets, so that was something.

[chirp][chirp][chirp][chirp][chirp][chirp][chirp][chirp][chirp][chirp][chirp][chirp]

’12 chirps, add 5, so 17 degrees. Cool enough for running, warm enough that I can stay here for a while.’

He heard elephants trumpeting off in the distance, to the South. ‘Help is coming. Where are you?’ He just had to stay alive along enough for them to reach him. And find him. As they were searching, his camouflage would be as much a help as a hindrance.

And then he heard it. The slight mistake of the not-quite-master sneak. The subtle swish of the grass slightly out of tune with the wind. Like a snake, but not quite so serpentine. They were behind him. To his left. Did they see him? How many were there? He heard one, two, no, three. The third was very good, coming around a little further to the West, trying to flush him out.

Luckily, he had prepared for just such an occasion. He just hoped that the birds would forgive him. He pressed a button on his wrist guard. He waited.

Out of the corner of his eye, a speck in the distance. A blizzard of feathers from the tree to the South. Squawking from all the trees. In that instant, he did nothing. His pursuers used the commotion to move unseen, or so they thought. ‘9 o’clock, 10 o’clock, and, oh, 7 o’clock.’

The trumpeting was getting closer. He just needed one more distraction, just to buy him a little more time. But his falcon was busy de-feathering its meal, and was of no help.

This wilderness was too important to risk explosives, even tightly controlled ones. Small arms were out for similar reasons. That only left…”When you are outnumbered and outgunned, when they are tracking you and are almost as good at moving like the grass as you are, you must move like them. If you move like the grass, they will spot you, even though you are marked like the grass. But if you move like them, there may be just enough space in their shadow to hide…”

Last time he checked his chrono, it was 18:30, it was now or never. Too much later and the sun would set too much for this to work. ‘Swish, swish, swish, thud.’ It wasn’t a big thud, but it was enough. He set out, hiding his footfalls in their sounds and his motions in their shadows.

The trumpeting was almost upon them. The elephants moved into the clearing, trumpeting greetings. He heard the sounds behind him diminishing. He got up, and trumpeted back. They had much to discuss.

Space Junk Miner Wilco

Fiction, Games!, Nostalgia, Space!

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/12/video-watch-60-years-space-junk-accumulate-1-minute

They called her ‘Wilco’. They’d been calling her that since she was selected to be part of ‘Satellite Control’. “‘Space Junk Control’ more like” she had said under her breath during the induction ceremony, but not out loud, as this was the only way most people could get to space.

You see, all non-essential spaceflight had been cancelled since a number of high profile fatal collisions with space debris in the 2020s. There were the few essential robot missions to Moon Base Alpha, to provide them the equipment they couldn’t manufacture themselves yet, the constant replacement of GPS sats (now dual-purposed to carry data), and the occasional deep space probe that made its way through the space priority committee, but no more pleasure craft, only ‘Satellite Control’.

‘Satellite Control.’ Even the name was pompous. The mission was equally so, to think that they could actually clear LEO, MEO, and GEO of space debris, when they hadn’t even been able to clear LEO after years of trying. Of course, the constant rain of new debris from GPS-debris collisions, and the rain of debris from MEO didn’t help.

‘Wilco’ walked over to her ship, that she would call home for the next two weeks. The next two lonely weeks. The ship was basically a giant shielded cone, with a tiny cockpit living module at the point. From the ground, even with the best of adaptive optics, ground sensors could still only reliably detect debris of about half a centimeter or larger. The billions of smaller pieces of debris would skeletonize an unshielded ship like piranhas.

Strapping in, flight checklist. Fuel check. Computer check. Sensors check. Engines check.

“Wilco reporting. Ready for launch sequence.”
“Roger that, Wilco.”

(She hated that, even though she had always enjoyed the exploits of the space ‘sanitation engineer’ Roger Wilco from the Space Quest games, her nicknamesake.)

“Thrusters online.”
“Docking clamps disengaged.”
“Disengaging at 0.5 meters per second.”
“Okay, you are now clear of the station. Nose to the wind.”
“Nose to the wind.”

‘Nose to the wind’ was now the traditional call sign and benediction for the ‘Wilcos’. It had to do with how they flew their ‘collection’ ships. The massive cone was pointed in the direction of travel, collecting the space debris and not incidentally protecting the pilot. There was also a magnetic cone which extended the size of the cone, allowing the ‘nose ships’ to collect more of the ‘heavy dust’, the dark tiny shards of metal which did the most undetected damage. The ‘wind’ was similar to that of riding a bicycle down a hill on Earth. You would be going so fast that it seemed that everything was streaming towards you, on Earth a benign pushing force, up here a deadly rain of metal shards.

She settled in and started navigating towards her first target. A cloud of debris from a commsat which had been on its way to its graveyard orbit when it was hit by unexpected booster debris.

It was going to be a long day, but for now she was free, and IN SPACE! It was beautiful and quiet. All the many stars that humans would go to one day, as soon as they cleaned up the orbits around their own world. Thinking about it, maybe Earth wouldn’t be considered a planet until it (they) had cleaned the orbit again. The cloud was approaching. Arguments about Pluto and Eris for later. Time for work.

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_debris

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_optics

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Quest#Roger_Wilco

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAU_definition_of_planet (3rd part of definition)

The article that inspired me:

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/12/video-watch-60-years-space-junk-accumulate-1-minute

“Humans are messy, and not just here on Earth. Now, you can see all the junk we’ve launched into space for yourself with a data-driven animation created for the United Kingdom’s Royal Institution by Stuart Grey, an astronomer at University College London. It all begins in 1957 when the Soviet Union launches Sputnik, a 58.5-centimeter-wide ball emitting radio pulses. A piece of the rocket that took it into orbit was the very first piece of space junk. The United States launched its own satellite, Explorer 1, the next year. Almost every mission into space has created new debris, either from the launch vehicles, objects falling off satellites, or unintended collisions. By the time the USSR launched the first human into space, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, there were 200 objects floating around up there. By 1980 we had landed a man on the moon and left nearly 5000 objects in orbit. And because of deep space exploration, not all of them are tiny. Entire rocket engines are lurking around up there. The number of objects remained stable at about 9000 until suddenly, in 2007, a Chinese ballistic missile test exploded and added 2000 chunks of metal to the mix. In 2009, a couple of big satellites collided and added yet another 2000. You get the picture. We now stand at about 20,000 known pieces of space debris bigger than an apple—that is, an apple capable of ripping through a steel wall at 17,000 miles per hour—and there’s bound to be more. Space is becoming a very cluttered place, making it all the more dangerous to send humans up there to our orbit and beyond. (Video credit: Stuart Grey)”