Previously: Ford and Gorn

"Seize that impostor!" Ford screamed. Rority's nobotic robot simulation of Ford smiled. "It won't work, Martian. Men, take this... whatever it is to an interrogation booth."

Ford's eyes widened in terror. "NO!" he screamed, "Please, no! Galaxy no!" He started shaking. Rority absent-mindedly noted that this was like time travel, where nobots did the actual traveling while making it look to the traveler like he's actually being transported in time.

Ever since the supernova had ripped the shrouds of fake reality from the underground Earthians' eyes, archaeohistorians had been busy studying the early days of their self-imposed nocube matrix, and found that the earliest time travelers knew they weren't really traveling through time, but were doing so by proxy; living cells never survived the trip -- traveling through time involved speeds greater than C, and approaching C was akin to being in the southern hemisphere when the supernova went off. Just getting to Venus in two days put a huge strain on rad shields. Of course, time travel was not like interstellar travel, that was accomplished by space and time itself being expanded and contracted. The radiation danger wasn't there.

Rority shook his head... too much stratodoobing, he really shouldn't let his mind wander like that. Now to visit General Washington.

Millions of miles away on the red planet, Colonel Gorn and Gumal were laughing hysterically. "I'd better call Rority and see how things are going, then I need to talk to Rula."

Gorn giggled. "Shame about the speed of light radio lag, how far away is Venus this week?"

"It doesn't matter," Gumal said. "We have timeceivers. The signal is sent backwards in time as well as through space. I'm really incredulous that you fellows don't have this tech."

"You can travel through time? Really? How do you do that?"

"Speed," said Gumal. "Time slows down as you go faster. Theoretically, at the speed of light it would seem to a traveler going to Proxima Centauri that they went there instantaneously, while to an observer here or there it would have taken four years, effectively putting them four years into the future. That's how to go forward. To go backward you pass C."

"Except," he added, "that you can't. Going much past a fraction of lightspeed kills everything in the ship that's alive from all the redshift radiation. So we do it using nobots as a proxy. Actual space travel is different; you simply warp space."

"Simply?" asked Gorn, who promptly had another laughing fit. "I love this stratodoober thing, you need to get this tech to the Venusians. Galaxy knows they need to lighten up! So, what is you partner's progress?"

"Give me a minute," said Gumal, standing up. "I gotta pee. Only thing wrong with beer. I'll call Rority while I'm relieving myself... uh, where are your facilities?"

Yes, they still have to pee ten million years in the future. Especially when they're drinking beer.

Back on Earth, Rula was bemoaning the entire situation. There was timework to be done, and here the two best were busy dealing with Martians and Venusians, because a protohistorian was the closest thing they had to a diplomat. And what about these so-called "controls", the Amish? Well, at least they didn't have too much to worry about from them... unless Venusians showed up. She fervently hoped Rority would have no trouble.

Rority was both annoyed and amused. Annoyed with these primitive, violent Venusians and amused at what was going to happen to their leader. Unknown to Washington, the nobots were streaming into his castle, and he'd soon have a psychedelic experience that Timothy Leary would be in awe of. He'd liked Leary, even if the old protobastard was batshit insane. Looking in hindsight, he was glad it was a robot and not him that had gone back, since LSD has no effect on robots, but has a pretty profound effect on animals, including protohumans, humans, controls, Venusians, and Martians. But Washington wasn't getting LSD, his trip would be real. It would be a real nobotic simulation.

Washington was eating dinner. He stuck his fork into the horse meat... or tried. It moved out of the way. Startled, he rubbed his eyes and tried again. "Please don't hurt me!" the meat begged. Washington snarled and tried again, when a translucent apparition walked through the wall. "Washington!" it thundered.

"What..." Washington stammered, "what... who... what do you want?"

"I am the ghost of Alpha Crucis. I am what was left when the Acrux collided 321 years ago."

"What? What is Atrix? And who was this Mister Crucis?" Washington asked perplexedly.

"Acrux, not Atrix. Stars in the southern cross. It's a multiple star system south of Venus. Two artificial neutron stars in the Acrux system collided, destroying every every star in the system, and the planets that orbited them. Two of the planets were settled from your system half a million years ago and were at war with each other three centuries ago. Both developed stronger and stronger weapons pretty much on the same time frames, and it culminated in both developing neutron star construction capabilities within months of each other, and each launched their weapon at the others' planet.

"Of course, the enormous masses of each star, meant to swallow the opposition's planet, attracted gravitationally and collided, resulting in a supernova that obliterated the Acrux system and sent huge amounts of gamma radiation straight at Sol."

"Look, whatever you are," Washington interrupted.

"Silence!" the voice of the nobotic apparition boomed. "Your very existence depends on your listening to me!"

Rority was puzzled; he didn't program that fertilizer into the apparition's speech. So they must not have been bovine manure, but something from the nobots' network database. He'd have to study this, of course, but later. He had to study Washington's reaction now.

"One planet was named Nuevo Venus, the other's name was Aphrodite. Your people were both our parents and our executioners, and you executed over half your own population by sending us to Acrux. You are Guerra, as were we.

"War. And war is its own enemy and its own executioner. To war is to die. Take heed, fool, or you will suicide as we did."

The apparition vanished. Washington sat there with his mouth hanging open.

Rority laughed, and took a toke from his stratodoober, sipped his beer, and began studying whatever it was the nobots were telling Washington. It was going to be a busy night.

He was really enjoying this.

.

Continues...

Once again I'm reminded of one of that horrible, shitty operating system's shortcomings. If I were sober and not so damned tired I'd install Linux on this sucker right now.

I've had a shitty day. I spent $140 on a fifteen year old cat this afternoon; she had an ingrown nail and I had to take her to the vet. She's on amoxicillin (why in the hell isn't that in FireFox's shitty def file? Had to look the spelling up on Google... shit, "firefox" isn't even on the list) and the poor kitty is stoned to the gills on morphine. She had the thirty dollar bandage off in four hours. So I'm NOT in a good mood. Of course, my friend Amy calls in tears because her idiot son went to basic training without seeing her and saying goodbye. Dumb kid'll probably get his ass shot off in Afghanistan, and I'm sure she's worried about that. Why call me? Let her cry on her husband's shoulder.

So I decide to get on the laptop and chill... and there's the daily virus def update notification. So I look, and it's not just defs but patches to fix Windows' shitty buggy worthless piece of shit code. Since I've had a few beers by now I forgot what a goddamned fucking pain in the ass it is to patch this piece of shit OS.

So I'm reading about CBS and C|net's stupidity at the CES on slashdot, trying to get out of my shitty mood and of course, Windows nags me that I need to restart the computer. The Linux box has never asked me to restart it. If it did it would be no problem, forty seconds and it would be restarted and intelligently have everything that was open reopened. Not Microsoft, their programmers aren't good enough coders to pull it off, I guess.

If I worked for Microsoft and someone asked me what I did for a living, I'd lie and say I sold dope and peddled hookers, that's a far less embarrassing line of work.

Doesn't MS care about their customers? Of course they do. The problem is, I'm not their customer -- Acer is. They have no reason at all to care about user experience, it's all about the OEMs and enterprise customers. Fuck the user, the user doesn't matter.

Of course, by morning I'll realize I'm too busy to screw with it. I have to help Leila get her notebook (I bought both daughters computers just like this one) back online. Their router bit the dust, they got a new one, and Windows of course tries to use their old password, and just stupidly fails when it can't connect, rather than opening a password dialog. I tried to talk her through it over the phone but she was way too upset with Microsoft to listen.

God damned Microsoft, are all their developers on crack? I wish those stupid fucktards would get their act together. But I'm sure hell will freeze over first.

Shit, now the battery's dying! What a shitty day...

It's that time of year again. The time of year when everyone and their dog waxes nostalgic about all the shit nobody cares about from the year past, and stupidly predicts the next year in the grim knowlege that when the next New Year comes along nobody will remember that the dumbass predicted a bunch of foolish shit that turned out to be complete and utter balderdash. I might as well, too. Just like I did last year (yes, a lot of this was pasted from last year's final chapter). But first, the yearly index:

Journals:
the Paxil Diaries
A Paxil Diary Christmas Story
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011

Age-related mental degradation
Springfield Funny Paper
I Hate Windows #FF69A71B6403[stack overfl
The Upgrade part 2
More Stormy weather
Nobody expects an Easter miracle
The best things in life are free

Sci-Fi:
A strange discovery
Nobots:
I've been working on this book all year. It started with a single, very short story. By the third story I started thinking "book". Originally the book was titled Everything You Know Is Wrong but the title changed. I'd say it's maybe half done.
Hadron Destroyers
Little Green Men
The Death of Two Protohumans
It's the end of the world (but I feel fine)
Stratodoober Madness
Bigfoots
Terry and the Nac Mac Feegle
The Dance
Not a ghost of a chance
The Time Triangle
The Zeta Reticuli Incident
Everything You Know Is Wrong
The Surface
Morlocks
War of the Worlds
Venus and Mars
Ford and Gorn

Last years' stupid predictions:

Someone will die. Not necessarily anybody I know...
SETI will find no sign of intelligent life. Not even on Earth.
The Pirate Party won't make inroads in the US. I hope I'm wrong about that one.
US politicians will continue to be wholly owned by the corporations.
I'll still be a nerd.
You'll still be a nerd.
technophobic fashionista jocks will troll slashdot.
Slashdot will be rife with dupes.
Many FPs will be poorly edited.

I think I'll keep those predictions for another year.

I'll finally get that book in paper form
Sigh. Not yet. I hope to get it out shortly. I'll go ahead and predict that again, too.

I had thought that this December I would be eligible to retire, but I made a math error -- I'm already eligible. Too bad I won't be able to afford it until I can collect Social Security. Imagine how much more I'll be writing when I no longer have to work!

Happy New Year! Ready for another trip around the sun?

From Yahoo News:

NEW YORKâ"The hallways of the Museum of Modern Art have always been packed with visitors looking to catch a glimpse of some of the most famous artwork in the world.

Van Goghâ(TM)s âoeStarry Nightâ is on display here, as are Andy Warholâ(TM)s âoeCampbellâ(TM)s Soup Cansâ and Monetâ(TM)s âoeWater Liliesââ"three celebrated images that have been replicated in countless prints and on postcards worldwide.

And just steps away, beginning next March, patrons will be able to observe the museumâ(TM)s latest high-profile acquisitionsâ"ones that they may have even owned. Last month, MoMa announced it would add 14 video games to its collection as part of a new design category that will display in the museumâ(TM)s Philip Johnson Galleries.

The titlesâ"including âoePac-Man,â âoeTetrisâ and âoeSimCity 2000ââ"mark the first of what museum officials say will be a collection of about 40 video games. Other games MoMa is hoping to acquire in coming years: âoeSuper Mario Bros,â âoeThe Legend of Zeldaâ and âoeSpace Invaders.â

The acquisition revives a long-simmering debate among critics, art aficionados and gamers: Is a video game really in the same category as a Picasso?

I've been laughing about this all month, people really expected a deal. Two words explain why a pre-2013 deal is impossible: Grover Norquist. A quarter century ago when federal taxes were quite a bit higher than the present "lower than ever in your lifetime" tax rates, he convinces a very large number of Republicans to swear to never raise taxes. If they make a deal with the Democrats now, they've gone back on their word.

However, next Wednesday taxes go up all by themselves. Making a deal now means they're raising taxes, while waiting until next week lets them campaign on "I lowered your taxes!!!"

Don't expect a deal before Wednesday. Expect one two or three weeks later.

Previously: Venus and Mars

General Ford woke with a start. "Who are... what are you? You're a Martian!" he exclaimed as he reached for his nonexistent weapon.

It had taken Rority three days to reach Venus, and he was a little cranky. He hadn't liked learning Venusian and didn't much care for the Venusians themselves. Ugly bastards, he thought, although no more repulsive than the Controls or Martians. He took a toke from his stratodoober. "No, I'm not a Martian. I'm an Earthian. And you're in deep shit, buddy, you know that?"

Ford was speechless. Rority continued. "Your boss is batshit insane; I studied him. Off his rocker, lost his marbles, toys in the attic, mad as a hatter, and a hundred other cliches. He's nuts and he's about to destroy Venus for you, dumbass."

"Wrong, alien. We're going to destroy you and the Martians. And I've seen Earthians and you're not one."

Rority laughed. "Not one you've seen; we Expies live underground in a simulated existence, and we like it that way. And you poor fools are two hundred years behind the Martians and about two million behind us. Compared to you pathetic Venusians, we're gods."

Ford sneered. "Mars will fall in two weeks."

"Nope, we've intercepted all your probes. Would you like those rocks to fall on Venus? We control them now. We have things you haven't even dreamed of. We can get to Betelgeuse in a couple of months, and most of that time is getting out of the solar system and past the heliopause; warping space messes up gravity quite a bit, so we can only go a fraction of lightspeed in a stellar system."

"What are you going to do?"

"First, I'm taking your place. Second, we're going to kill that madman, and you'll be in charge of Venus. And I'm warning you, we can kill you as easily as we can kill Washington." Rority's nobotic sheath changed into Ford himself. "So you see, poor pitiful Venusian, you'd better stop messing with the other planets in the solar system."

"You're the ones who killed everybody in the southern hemisphere!" Ford said, and lunged at Rority. Which wasn't a very smart thing to do, seeing as how Rority had nobots. With a flying leap Ford hit Rority and bounced off as if he'd hit a steel beam that was bolted to the floor -- which wasn't too much unlike hitting a human with a nobotic sheath.

"No," Rority said calmly, as he helped the poor hapless Venusian off the floor. "There was a supernova, we aren't sure where yet. The southern hemispheres of all the inhabited solar planets are now devoid of life; you, me, the Martians. Except Earth, we who live underground were well shielded. And Washington knows it. Now, you're going to wait here while I go stand next to him at his speech. Unfortunately, he's going to have heart failure." Rority walked out. Ford tried the door, which was locked. He sat back down on the bed, worried. This was surreal!

Rority was thinking about the similarities between Venus and certain protohuman countries he'd "traveled" back to. Korea about seventy AB, and this Washington seemed like the northern Korea's dictator... and a few other countries back then as well. "Dumb animals", he thought.

Back on Mars, Colonel Gorn was talking with Gumal. "Damned frustrating, those Venusians. We're about science. And these idiots only want to wage war!"

"How did the trouble start, Colonel?"

"Venus is... well, I guess after the supernova, was greatly overpopulated. We're not, and never have been. Venusians want nothing but war and sex, we're about gathering knowledge. They used to be better at war than sex, which held their population down, but they pretty much bombed themselves almost to the point of extinction and lost almost all their technology. All they could do after that was eat and copulate. What tech they have now was mostly stolen from us."

"So, they never lost space travel?"

"Actually, they did. We were stupid enough to try and help them through their trouble, now they're trying to take over the solar system."

"Well, Colonel, you'll be relieved to know that we have the situation under control and you can get back to your telescopes and test tubes."

"Our what?"

Gumal laughed. "Sorry, I've been hanging around Rority too much. Say, Colonel, have you ever had beer?"

Gorn looked puzzled. "Beer?"

Gumal pulled out a Guiness and handed it to the Colonel.

"What's this for?" asked Colonel Gorn. "Looks like glass with some sort of liquid, and an indescipherable label."

"It's for drinking."

"Oh, we have plenty of water."

Gumal smiled. "Well, it isn't exactly water. Try some," opened his own bottle and took a sip of the delicious nectar.

"UGH!" said Gorn. "This is offal! You drink this disgusting stuff??"

"The taste grows on you, and you don't drink it for the taste, anyway. I propose a toast!"

"Uh, what's that?"

"We clink bottles and take a drink together. This stuff has ethyl alcohol in it."

"You drink alcohol? Alcohol is poison, no wonder it tastes so bad!"

"Well, yeah, drink enough and you'll die. But we're not drinking that much."

"Sorry, old fellow, I don't think I want to poison myself."

Gumal shrugged. "More for me. Want a hit off this stratodoober?"

"I'd rather learn how nobots work."

"Sorry, wrong guy. That isn't my field. here," he said, hitting the stratodoober and handing it to Gorn.

"Hmmm... pleasant taste... uh what were we talking about again?"

Continues...

'Tis the season we celebrate America's predominant worship rites. The month long celebration that starts with Black Friday, continues on Local Saturday, more on Cyber Sunday, and all through December. The season when children are indoctrinated into worship, with visions of toys and iPads. When adults drive like morons to get to the mall and SPEND SPEND SPEND. The season when fights break out in stores over the objects of their worship.

'Tis the season of gluttony and drunken revelry. Blessed are the profits, for their followers shall inherit the Earth. Blessed are the rich, and the shopkeepers, and the greedy. Blessed are the lawyers and those who climb to power on the backs of their fellow men, never looking back or caring.

The season is here, when we buy a pagan tree to put in our homes, with the objects of worship beneath it. The season of cursing our fellow man, the season of no peace anywhere. The season of gimme.

Celebrate what we really worship -- celebrate money. Season's greedings to all! Except the poor, of course. Fuck those lazy bastards, they should all pull themselves up by their own bootstraps like Romney and Trump and the other saints have done.

Merry kid's mess, everyone! Season's greedings from WalMart, Target, Best Buy, and every other TV advertisers!

Previously: War of the Worlds

"Sarge? We've got more signals from Earth, and they're at least using a reasonable modulation. They seem to be words, but I can't read it. Want a look?"

"Sure, O'brien," said Zales. The Sergeant sat down at the private's terminal. "Hmmm... nope. I'll take it to the Lieutenant."

Sgt. Zales was worried, but didn't show it to his underling. O'Brien was visibly worried, and neither knew why. Zales left to see Lieutenant Maris. The Lieutenant had a look at it. "I can make some of this out from a class I took in college, but not much. Sergeant, get the Colonel on the phone."

"Yes sir," said Zales. After speaking to the base commander's secretary on the phone he handed it to Maris. "Sir," said the Lieutenant, "we have a communication from Earth. It seems to be in an archaic language. Uh, huh. Yes sir. Right away, sir." He transmitted the undeciphered message to the Colonel, who transferred it to a historian, then contacted his superior.

On Venus, General Washington was pleased with himself. "We've launched, Ford. In a month it will have reached Saturn, and two or three weeks after that the Martians will be gone."

"Is this necessary, General?" General Ford asked. "We have the entire southern hemisphere waiting for repopulation. We don't need Mars now."

"Yes, we do, Ford. We need a scapegoat. The last thing we want is massive unrest. I've already addressed the Venusian populace and told them that the Martians were responsible and we were retaliating, with specicide."

"Nobody objected to wiping out the Humartian species, as well as all the other species on Mars?"

"Of course not, any more than they minded wiping out the Vigers here. Why in the galaxy our ancestors would bring felines here I'll never understand. They should have realized what they'd evolve into. At any rate, even if the Martians aren't a menace yet, they surely will be in time. They're a militaristic species."

General Ford didn't loose his thoughts on Washington; the Martians had never been aggressive until the Venusians had threatened them, and that hadn't happened until Washington had pulled off his coup.

Back in the underground cube matrix on Earth, Rority was, of course, puffing his stratodoober and contemplating what Rula had communicated. They had learned fairly quickly how to communicate with the Martians and had even gotten face to face communications with them, hindered, of course, by the ten minute and lengthening lag between planetary communications. The Martians were odd looking, odder than the controls, odder even than the Venusians. It made sense; Mars had been terraformed first, and the terraforming had taken millinea. Mars still had quite a bit less mass and much less density than Earth or Venus but now had a magnetic field and an atmosphere, although the atmosphere was only 3/4 the pressure of Earth's. The Martians all were tall, with large chests and spindly legs, with smaller heads than the Experimentals. The Venusians looked somewhat like Controls, only larger and more muscular and with a strange skin coloration. "Well," he thought, "time to go to Venus." Not in reality as he'd believed before the supernova had ripped the veil of unreality, but as an operator. It would seem the same; an operator was all he was before.

Gumal was busy launching a nobotic probe to intercept the Venusian probe.

Rula was busy planning the next stage. Intercepted communications from Venus showed that the Venusians were in the process of launching hundreds more rock interceptors. just in case. Of course, a good dictator was always prepared for anything, and always paranoid of everyone. He hadn't liked the look in Ford's eyes and was thinking of Ford being killed "by Martians." Two birds with one stone. He contemplated that archaic saying and wondered what a "bird" was. Some sort of craft, perhaps?

He shook the thought off. He needed a plan to make it look like Martians had assassinated Ford, or better yet, to have the Martians do the dirty deed themselves. He grinned, and stroked the purple lizard that had jumped in his lap purring. "Soon, soon, we will rule not just Venus, but the entire solar system." It was his. HIS! All his! As soon as the Martians were exterminated, he would move on to the Earthians.

Continues...

Ten years ago, an Apple ad caught my funny bone, and I posted the following. The links are all dead.

Apple has introduced a computer that runs faster than light (do "edit-> search" for "faster-than-light" on the linked Apple page, which I ought to cache since... well, they have this new fast processor...)

So I ordered one just to see how it worked.

It arrived two weeks before ordering it, so I didn't order it and got my shiny new Power Mac with its faster than light processor for free!

I discovered some other weird effects using this processor. For one thing, it weighs a LOT when you turn it on- so much that it dented the table and bent the legs. Yes, Einstein was right about speed affecting gravity.

So I decided to do a little experiment. I cut the power cord (the computer bounced a full six inches when I shut it off) and reversed the power's polarity. Being household A/C that shouldn't have had an effect, but it did. When I turned it back on, it flew upwards until it ran out of cord, and when it yanked its plug from the wall it of course came crashing down.

So I took it out to my van and plugged it into the cigarette lighter. Viola, flying car! This was great!

And it's a fast flying car, too. It handles like a flying pig when I'm flying, though, as you can only steer it by moving the front wheels with the steering wheel, and the wind drag helps steer.

Of course, once I left the atmosphere I was screwed. No air, no steering. Darn it! Darn it to heck (sorry, I already used this month's allotment of swear words discussing politics)

I discovered that I could steer with the gas pedal, with the slight variation in voltage caused by the imperfections in the car's alternator affecting the voltage supplied to the Mac, and thereby affecting its gravity.

I, uh, got it going TOO fast. Not only was the computer itself traveling faster than light, the car was getting dangerously close to it.

As I crossed the lightspeed barrier I saw Yello and ten thousand alternate Siscos. Yello asked about granny and promptly vanished in a puff of green smoke. Curious.

But past the lightspeed limit, the universe seemed to shrink to a pinpoint, which was angrily chasing me. Which was a very silly thing for it to do, as I wanted to get back inside it. It was kind of like my wife when she's mad at me.

That thought kind of unnerved me, so I freaked and pulled the key out of the ignition.

I found myself holding the phone getting ready to place an order for a Mac.

WTF was I thinking? I can't afford one of these! I put the phone down.

Thank God for Einstein. I'd be paying for that damned computer until Hell froze over.

At least I got my month's allotment of swear words back. Oh, uh, if you notice some strange things going on with your clock, I guess that's my fault...

Springfield Fragfest 8/15/2002

I bought an RCA digital tuner last year. It will be the very last RCA product I'll ever buy.

I was going to send this as an email to RCA, but they have no email address anywhere on their site. I couldn't find it. Apparently, looking at Google, neither can anyone else. So rather than a strongly worded private email, FUCK YOU RCA I'm just going to post this open letter to slashdot in the hopes that one of your incompetent engineers see it and hang his head in shame. Where did you get your credentials, cretin, out of a crackerjack box?

I ditched cable a year and a half ago for an antenna and bought a "converter" from Wal=Mart. Worst $40 I ever spent.

I picked up an RCA antenna to go along with it, and that ten bucks was wasted as well. So I threw good money after bad and spent another$40 on a better RCA antenna.

I have never seen such poorly engineered pure shit in my life. I get six channels... once in a blue moon. I get four... sometimes. My friend with a $10 used Magnavox anda $3 rabbit ears, six blocks away, gets fifteen channels all the time.

Worse, even on a good day it will cut out. Then it has a box that takes up 1/3 of the screen saying "no signal." Well, no sit, Sherlock. I've had DVDs since forever and damn it you fucking morons, I know what it means when the screen freezes. Worse, it then loses the sound completely, until another car goes by and I lose the signal agin, tune to a nonexistant channel, or reboot the god damned piece of shit.

I have never seen more poorly engineered tech in my six decades on this rock. If I'd designed this utter worthless piece of crap... well, I'd find another line of work. The $40 antenna is no better than the $10 rabbit ears.

There is no reason that I shouldn't be able to pick up a station IN TOWN. Damn it, I feel robbed. So I went to their web site, and it's as fucked as their electronics! The only contact is by phone, and it hangs up on you.

It's sad, like Sony they used to be a good brand. Like Sony, I will never give you stupid assholes another dime. Fucking thieves.

Rca (and you, too,Sony) I'm getting my money back one way or another. Mailing me a check for $90 and an apology and firing all your engineers, managers, CEO and board of directors and I might consider buying product from you again. If your HQ gets bombed, don't look at me, look for someone that's not nonviolent who you fucked over with your utter fail of equipment.

Sony, you rooted my computer ten years ago and I won't settle for less than ten grand.

God damn it, are there any corporations left that aren't the epitome of evil? Why can't we elect politicians who will put these motherfuckers in prison where they belong?

BTW, blame any typos on beer.

Previously: Morlocks

"Uh, Sarge? You gotta see this!"

"See what, O'Brien?"

"We're getting EMF from Earth!"

"What? The Earthians developed radio? I thought they had an antitechnological civilization? Move over, Private, let me look."

Sgt. Zales was as surprised as the private. "Hold down the fort, O'Brien, I think the lieutenant should have a look at this."

"Sure thing, Sarge." O'Brien was uneasy -- first the entire southern hemisphere of Mars irradiated to lifelessness, now these strange signals from Earth. The signals were obviously artificial, but he couldn't decipher them. "Galaxy be but this is weird," he said aloud to nobody, because nobody was there.

Meanwhile, the controls on Earth had their own problems. They were holding a meeting in the church about some spooky, probably demonic, activity around their farms. "You saw the circles, Reverend, what do you make of it?" Muldoon asked.

"Probably just kids... you know how teenagers are" Reverend Smith replied. "Remember the cows that got tipped over last year and you thought it was demonic, when it turned out that the kids next door were just doing a bit of old-fashioned cow tipping and confessed their sin?"

"But how would they make these circles?"

"I don't know," the Reverend replied, "but as long as there's no property damage and nobody is harmed, I really don't think we need to worry about it. If it was just kids, they'll confess and repent. If it's evil we'll know soon enough."

A kilometer beneath them held a different meeting.

"The Martians haven't answered," Rula said. "I think we should send a nobotic probe to Mars and see if they're still there. The first probe is on its way to Venus now."

Gumal wondered about the circles their craft caused in vegetation. "What about the controls? Won't this make them wonder?"

"Let 'em wonder," said Rula.

"Give me that stratodoober," said Rority.

"I ought to give it to the controls, those stiff necked assholes!" Gumal said.

On the other side of the sun, General Washington had blood in his eyes and death on his mind. The deaths of millions on Venus' southern hemisphere and the deaths of millions of Martians if they were responsible. And he was sure they were.

"But General, how could the Martians have done such a thing? It would suggest that they had far better technology than we do. How could we fight anyone so powerful?"

"You forget, General Ford, that when we took over we were far outmatched technologically. And I have a plan to wipe out the Martian menace once and for all."

"May I ask how, sir?"

"We're going to throw rocks at them."

"Throw rocks, sir?"

"Yes, Ford, rocks. Big rocks. Mountain sized rocks. Extinction event sized rocks."

"Wow," Ford replied, "you're going to have to go an awful long way to find any rocks that big. After all, they used up the entire asteroid belt, plus Demos and Phobos, plus every other big rock they could find this side of Saturn. The asteroid belt and a third of Saturn's rings are already on Mars from their terraforming days."

"That and most of our carbon. Damned idiots that ran things before we took over gave it to them. But there are plenty of rocks left around Saturn," Washington responded. "We'll have a craft om the way within a week."

"Sir," general Ford said plaintively, "Don't you think we should make sure the Martians are behind it?"

"Certainly not. The populace is riled up and we need a scapegoat. They're responsible whether or not they're responsible. We're running out of room here on Venus, we're taking Mars, too. And Earth as well if we find an excuse."

It was ironic that the Amish were worrying about the peaceful "devils" underground when the real threat was two hundred million kilometers away on the "Morning/Evening Star". A week later, Rula had some bad news for everyone. "We received signals from Venus, and they were hard to decipher, but we did it. We have some big problems. It looks like they may be getting ready to wage war with Mars."

"We got signals from Mars?" Gumal asked.

"Yes, but they weren't aimed at us. They were aimed at their own spacecraft. We don't know why they wouldn't answer us, but think it may be that they're not as technologically developed as we are and simply can't understand us. We're trying again. We need to warn the Martians."

"Why?" asked Gumal. "We haven't had contact with them for at least a million years. They're likely to be a completely different species by now."

"Because of what we heard from intercepted Venusian signals. They plan to exterminate the Martians and take over Mars, and we'll likely be next. We need to contact the Martians and see if we can help. Venus is certainly not going to be friendly, the Martians may be if we give them a reason. By the way, where's Rority?"

"He's working with linguists to try and craft a message the Martians will understand. Meanwhile, we have probes around Venus, and we think the Venusians don't have the technology to detect them.

"You think things were dire when the supernova hit, it's going to get much worse. Gentlemen and ladies, it's System War one and it's not going to be pretty."

Continues...

Previously: The Surface

"Holy crap," said Gumal. "We're Morlocks."

Noob was puzzled. "We're what?"

"Morlocks," Rority replied. "It's from an ancient book by a protohuman named H. G. Wells. This fellow's story has a man travel through time to the future, and finds a peaceful society named the Eloi. But of course, like most of the protohuman fiction, it turns ugly and the reader is introduced to another society, the Morlocks, who live underground and eat Eloi. It's no wonder these people are afraid of us!

"But at any rate, what have you found out about the nobots?"

"The data were hard to find, since they were so old. I can't pin a date on it, but a few million years ago after we'd started making everything out of nobots, we collectively decided to build the matrix of nobotic cubes. It gave us our present paradise. I fear it may now end, and maybe for the best. We've made little scientific progress in a long time. We just had no need.

"But you're the anthropologist," the programmer said. "What should we do about the species living on the surface?"

"Gumal's the anthropologist, I'm just a prehistorian archaeologist. What do you think, Gumal?"

"I think I need a hell of a lot more data. We know little about them."

"Odd that I should be teaching history to a historian," Noob said, "but we're both descended from a common ancestor. They were originally known as 'Controls' although they didn't want to live in fantasy cubes. They considered themselves in control of the situation. We, of course, were called "Experimentals' because we were experimenting. I still have quite a bit more research to do and data to uncover and collect, but there were groups of protohumans called 'Amish' who were against technology. As I said, I haven't yet found the data, but I suspect that the Controls; or Eloi, as your protobook calls them, are these Amish people."

"Do they have beer?" Rority asked.

"I haven't found any references to beer, but it's quite possible since they were originally Germanic people. I'm surprised you don't know, since you're the archaeologist" said Noob.

"I was joking," said Rority. "Some of them did, but most of them abstained from any alcohol except wine, and then only during communion."

"During what?" asked Gumal.

"One of their rituals, it isn't important. I'm excited at the prospect of studying these people, to see how different they are from us and from protohumans. They seem more like protohumans than humans, not much evolution at all. Which isn't surprising, since they would never accept genetic modifications, and the environment was tamed long before we entered our cubes. But Noob, what about the Martians and Venusians? Are they a fiction, like most of our lives have been until now?"

"It's uncertain, but we'd terraformed both planets before we buried ourselves. There are probably still people there, unless the supernova or something else killed them. Venus had a problem with CO2, it's possible the greenhouse effect could have run wild again. We're just going to have to have someone visit them to see, unless somebody can think of a way of long distance communication. Most likely, sending nobots would be faster than trying out various radio frequencies until we found one they were listening to."

"So much to catch up on," Rority said. "I'll send some nobotic sentinels; artificial birds, rabbits, squirrels, insects, etc."

Gumal wondered about the Amish. "I hope they don't try to eat... what am I saying? They can't hurt a nobot!"

Two weeks later they assembled again, this time a larger group with Rula and a few other disciplines. "Well," said Rority, "no beer, damn it!"

Gumal said "what about strato...DOH! Of course no stratodoobers, what am I thinking?"

"Well, boys," said Rula, "what are your plans?"

"We should get a signal from the Martian probe tomorrow, but Venus is behind the sun right now so it will be a few more days to see what's up with it," replied Akwort, the planetologist. "From our telescope signals it looks like the terraforming there has held, but we don't yet know if people still survive."

Turning to Rority, Rula asked "What about these so-called 'Eloi' or 'Amish' or whatever they're called? Can we and should we reintegrate?"

"Impossible," he answered. "They think we're devils from hell. If we want to go up top it will have to be the southern hemisphere. It's easy enough being invisible, but impossible to be one of them. I doubt we could still procreate with them, considering how long we've been separate. We don't have any DNA samples from them yet, so we can't be sure, but I'm pretty certain it's unlikely."

"Well, hell," she said. "And I wanted them to teach me some of their dances! Yes, Rority, I read your report. Did anybody bring their stratodoober?"

"I did," said Rority. "Anybody got any beer?"

Continues...

Yesterday was Governor's Day at the Illinois State Fair, but he didn't have much fun. He was Booed off the stage when he tried to give a speech. The local channel, which I couldn't get to stream on this Win 7 notebook so I won't bother linking, said 2500 protesters were there. I won't link the SJ-R, either, because that web site belongs on websitesthatsuck.com (is that site still active?).

I tried to find a youtube video of it, but Google failed me there.

You can't live, and especially drink, in Springfield without knowing state workers, and they're PISSED. They tell me that Quinn is the most Republican Governor they've seen, and Republicans occupied the Governor's Mansion for 20 over years. One over the top worker told me "He's worse than Walker," referring not to the former Democratic Governor who went to prison after leaving office, but Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who faced a recall over his radical right wing anti-union policies. Quinn reneged on the union contract he signed, withholding raises and now is trying to get workers to take a pay cut, despite the fact that state employees earn less than their private sector counterparts and the fact that Illinois has fewer state workers per capita than any other state.

"How come they keep raising my taxes but the state's broke?" someone at Felbers asked nobody in particular. "Simple," I replied. "The politicians are shoveling the cash to their cronies. After all, this IS Illinois!"

The local station had a short clip of Lt. Governor Simon speaking to a reporter as the crowd booed Quinn. She had played banjo with her band there the previous night.

Politicians in both major parties need to wake up. People are incredibly angry.

There IS a free lunch, and money does indeed grow on trees.

Earlier this summer as I was sitting on my front porch, drinking a beer and watching traffic go by, I noticed the color red in the tree in my front yard. Curious, I inspected more closely and it was full of red fruit -- nectarines. I've lived there three years, and it never had fruit before.

I didn't even know it was a fruit tree. The thing was full of fruit. I've been eating them all summer long now, they're delicious. And cost absolutely nothing whatever. I've also been giving a whole lot of them away, for free... but I could sell them if I wanted. The money would have grown on my tree! My neighbor made some excellent preserves from them, and gave me a jar. Free preserves from free fruit!

This past spring I bought a "Big Boy" tomato plant for five bucks. Those tomatos would have been incredibly cheap, less than a penny each, but not free. Alas, lack of something as free as FOSS and something I pay for killed killed it -- city water and a lack of rain. Tomato plants don't much like city water, and we've had no rain at all to speak of. I got one tomato off of it, thanks to the lack of free rain, and it was the size of a billiard ball. That was the most expensive tomato I ate in my life, thanks to the lack of something that's free.

Foss people shouldn't say "free as in beer," they should say "free as in rain." Rain enjoys the ultimate freedom. It goes where it wants, and it costs no one anthing. But when the rain decides it wants to take a vacation in Europe, you have a drought here. Lack of the free rain here in the US is going to cost everyone else in the world, because the corn crop -- actually most crops -- are decimated. They estimate we're going to get way less than half of what is normal. And the price of corn affect the price of all your food. ADM's slogan is accurate; the US is indeed "breadbasket to the world" (despite the fact that we grow little wheat in Illinois, most of that comes from Kansas). Corn is in everything. It, rapeseed, or soybeans are what your cooking oil is made of, and all of those crops are doing terrible. The sugar in your soft drinks comes from corn. Almost all animal feed comes from corn, affecting the price of meat. All processed foods will go up for at least a year.

So no matter where in the world you live, the price of your meat, cooking oil, and many other foodstuffs is going up, all because of the lack of something that is free -- and that's a free something you cannot live without. Much like air, which is also free.

If you don't think money grows on trees you must not own a commercial orchard, because all their money grows on trees. Most of Illinois' money grows on cornstalks and bean poles and things like that. Paper companies' money all grows on trees. Well, mostly on trees, you need more than wood to make paper.

Anyone who disparages something because it costs nothing isn't seeing reality clearly. "You get what you pay for" and "Linux is only free if your time is worthless" are incredibly stupid sentiments. If you buy Alieve or any other name-brand analgesic, you're paying three times what someone buying generic is, and you get exactly the same relief, because it's exactly the same drug. If you buy Green Giant corn for $1.50 per can, you're getting an inferior product to the generic on the same shelf that costs sixty cents, because Green Giant doesn't taste as good -- they add high fruictose corn syrip, as if your corn was starting to rot and ferment.

As to Linux and your time, that used to be accurate, but no more. Installing it takes very little time (far less time than installing Windows) and will save you lots of time once it's installed. No more patch Tuesdays with reboots, patching Linux takes a single click and you're done. No reboots unless you're upgrading the entire OS. What takes ten to fifteen clicks in Windows takes one or two in Linux, provided, of course, you choose your distro wisely. You can't just pick a random distro and judge Linux as a platform, because all Linuxes are different, some in small ways and some in huge ways.

Not only are the best things in life free, but the two things you absolutely cannot live without, air and water, are free. The third thing you absolutely cannot do without is food, which requires free rain and which you can grow for free.

The best things in life are not only free, but in many cases, like water and Linux, the free commodity is superior to the one you pay for. Oh, and those free nectarines are the best tasting ones I've ever eaten, but then, all the others I've eaten were commercially grown and sold in a store. Home grown, free food is always superior to the stuff you buy in the grocery store.

You can keep that pile of gold, I don't need it, Mr. Midas.

Previously...

Jonah Muldoon finished his plowing and started walking to the house, the mule's bridle in his hand. His wife was just finishing dinner as he washed the field's grime off of himself, muscles aching in a good way. He'd gotten a lot done.

The Reverend Smith pulled up in his buggy as Jonah and Rebekkah sat on the porch, drinking the communion wine and munching the communion bread and watching the fireflies blink. "Well, hello, Reverend!" Jonah said. "What brings you out here this fine evening? You look troubled."

"I am. We have serious trouble; serious bad trouble. Some devils have escaped from hell and have tunneled their way up here. It's especially troubling because we've not heard from our cousins in the southern hemisphere; I have a cousin in Argentina and we've not gotten any mail from there in weeks. Get your pitchforks, we may have a fight."

"Pitchforks? Fight? Reverend, are you ill?" Jonah was worried; the reverend was more devoted to Christ than any man he'd ever known. He was not the sort of man to commit any violence at all, and in fact just a month earlier a young man had punched him so hard it had knocked the preacher to the ground. Rather than striking back in anger as Jonah feared he might have done had he been in the same situation, the pastor had gotten up, dusted himself off, and offered to let the youth hit him again!

The young man had started shaking, then fell to his knees, sobbing and begging forgiveness -- which the holy man had done. Now here was the Reverend Smith, all wild-eyed and screaming for blood. Had he gone mad? Was he possessed by a devil? Maybe one of the devils the reverend had been spouting about?

"Sir," said Johan," I don't understand. God Himself guards hell. Perhaps He's testing you?"

"You must come with me!" screamed the distraught preacher. "Please!"

"You go ahead and help the reverend," Rebekkah said, patting Jonah on the arm. "He's mighty upset and God only knows what he's capable of in his state of mind. I'll stay here and pray." Jonah kissed her on the forehead, told her he loved her, and left with the Amish preacher.

It was a month after the supernova, and the Muldoons nor any of the other Amish knew that the entire southern hemisphere was dead. Nor did they know that humans had survived the apocalypse in the self-made prison that they had just discovered a month ago.

Nor did they know that these humans even existed. The Amish were more like protohumans than true humans; human evolution had been self-directed, while the Amish thought technology as being evil and had shunned it since times forgotten. Species only evolve when their environment changes, and unknown to them, the nobots had kept the Earth's surface in near perfect harmony. Very little life had changed much in millions of years on the planet's surface.

They also didn't know that they had been known as "controls" when humans had started living in their nobot-constructed fantasies, fantasies that they now thought were real.

But the humans had still striven to learn, and there were still people capable of programming nobots, and even getting information out of the trillions of trillions of trillions of trillions of bits of data the nobots held. Their research, triggered by the death of half the nobots on Earth, uncovered the fact that they had been underground for millions of years and living mostly fantasies. They had reprogrammed the matrix of cubes in a small section to slowly collapse, and a sinkhole had opened in McGregor's pasture and swallowed half his cattle. He was standing by the large hole when Smith and Muldoon arrived.

Rority was feeling quite a bit better after a month's worth of recuperation from the radiation sickness, and had opted to actually travel, which he hadn't known he'd never really done, to the northern hemisphere to visit his partner, whom he hadn't known he'd never really seen in the flesh until the catastrophe pulled the wool off of everyone's eyes. He and Gumal, probably the world's best known anthropologists, historians, and biologists (and in their minds, probably just the best) were chosen to investigate life on the surface.

Life on the surface was holding crude weapons with pointed tines. "Garboook are grato! Gutably!" one of them babbled. "Protohumans? Now?" Rority thought. "Of shit," Gumal thought.

McGregor saw them and pointed his pitchforks at them. "Back to hell, devils!" he ordered.

Muldoon now understood what Reverend Smith had meant. This had been prophesied. The antichrist had come, followed by Christ, and Satan had been banished to hell, but the prophesies said he'd be back in a thousand years.

In actuality it had been a few million.

"Uh, I don't like the looks of this," Gumal said.

"They're speaking in tongues, Reverend," Jonah said. "No," replied the reverend, "tongues is the language of God, anyone can understand Him. These devils simply speak a different language, and one that seems clearly evil to me."

"I can't understand them," Gumal said. Rority held his hand out and a card appeared. "Back to hell, devils!" the card said out loud.

"Shit!" exclaimed Gumal. "We're going about this the wrong way."

"Agreed," said Rority. "Lets go back down and figure out how to solve this. Nobots! Make it look to these creatures that the ground is as it was!"

Smith, McGregor, and Muldoon stared in amazement as the ground filled itself in and the vegetation that had been growing seemed to have never been disrupted. "Thank you, Lord," the preacher said to the sky, "for showing us this miracle. Help us to understand it! Amen." The other two echoed "Amen."

"Well, Gumal said to Rority, "we really fucked that one up."

"Amen to that," Rority said. "Now what?"

Continues...