Burning North

Stairway to Heaven

Sun, 25 Sep 2011 01:08:00 -0700

I found this on a backup disc from last year. I have only the faintest memory of writing it. Posted with the bare minimum of proofreading.

Carver’s Glen was not what you’d call a decent town. In fact, calling it a town would be charitable. Amounting to little more than a handful of shacks clustered around a wind-scarred general store, it was not the sort of place where anyone could live for long. Prospectors on their way into the Rockies would rest there for a few days, saving their energy for the push across the jagged range that would lead them to fresh wilderness, unpanned rivers and a fortune in gold. Prospectors on their way back east would stop by for slightly longer. Some held fast to denial, telling all who would listen (there was not much choice but to listen, when there was only one saloon) of their inevitable success.

The motherlode was just over the next ridge, they’d say. They could smell the gold. It was a skill that ran in the family, you see. My grandfather’s father could smell a vein of gold at thirty yards. The scent carries, but only some can smell it. I know it’s out there, I’m sure. I just had to come back and stock up, you see. Gonna be a lot of gold to carry out of that river, I tell you.

Inevitably, the optimists would charge headlong back into the mountains, perhaps returning once or twice more before giving up, or messengers on horseback would arrive with draft notices from back east, or they’d disappear along with two borrowed mules. Killed by catamounts, folk would say. Or by those mountain savages, or the fanged, frigid wind. None would say what they all knew: that they’d just as soon kill each other if there were none to hear the shot.

The owner of the Carver’s Glen general store, who also rented out the flimsy shacks and tended the bar in the saloon, had been a prospector himself once. Shrewd as he was, he soon learned there was more money to be made from men in search of gold than there was in any of Colorado’s high rivers. He’d seen all kinds. The men who’d been panning for decades, living off small findings in the Mississippi Basin, who longed for fresh territory. They knew the land and loved it, and the gold mattered less when they could hunt and live comfortably with nothing. The twitchy youngsters who sought fortune and a life of luxury, too feckless or weak-willed to work for their living. Those rarely passed through Carver’s Glen but once. Once in a long while would come a dark man from the plains, leather breeches cinched at the waist with braided rawhide cord, dreamcatcher about his neck and the smoky shape of his totem spirit standing in his place when you looked at him out of the corner of your eye.

But in all the years he’d tended the place, the last vestige of god-fearing civilization before the ascent toward those haunted summits, nothing had prepared the barkeep for the man who stumbled from the forest in late evening, running from the darkness as the setting sun stretched the shadow of the Rockies over the glen. He burst from the trees, boots broken and feet bleeding, carrying a leather satchel and a bloody knife (though whose blood none could tell, or would), his breath coming in great whimpering gasps. The look on his face was neither fear nor despair nor ecstasy, but some combination of all and none of those things. His eyes were wide like a child’s, and he gazed at the boundless prairie to the east below the village as though he had never seen beauty in his life. Some expression tugged at the corner of his mouth - perhaps a smile, or a grimace of pain - when the last ember of the sun disappeared behind the mountains and he dropped dead in the village square.

The Game We Played With The World

Mon, 02 May 2011 20:27:00 -0700

So here we are. Osama bin Laden - terrorist, religious fundamentalist and angry rich guy - has been pronounced dead by the United States government. Hurray for that, I suppose, but I’m not particularly excited or encouraged by the world’s reaction to this news. I tried very hard this morning (yeah, for like an hour - ed.) not to express any opinions about the announcement, because I really didn’t want to invite others’ indignation upon myself. Unfortunately for all of us, the emotional forces at work here are a bit too clear, the trend too noticeable, and the bloodlust too sickening for me to just keep my mouth shut. I don’t imagine my writing this will accomplish much of anything, but perhaps, if nothing else, it will allow me to move on to things of more immediate importance.

I should begin by saying that I’m not belittling the strategic significance of bin Laden’s death, nor would I claim that he should have been spared the justice that was (allegedly) visited upon him in Abbottabad. I will not discuss the very real possibility that he is still alive, or that he may in fact have been several men hiding behind a common identity. I will speak on the assumption that he’s actually deceased, but if he releases another video to declare that he still draws breath, I will not pretend to be surprised.

Know also that I despised the man. I have no love for religious fundamentalists of any persuasion, even less for violent ones, and nothing but contempt for those whose crusades lead them to order the slaughter of innocent thousands on crisp fall mornings. I was on a Hudson Valley hilltop on September 11, 2001. I saw the smoke. I heard the wailing of those whose loved ones were lost. I witnessed my mother’s near-fatal descent into depression at the loss of the building, the office and the company where she had once worked for years, though she’d long since moved on to other things.

That afternoon, when I spoke with my father, he said: “Remember this day. Today, everything changes. Nothing will ever be the same.” I don’t know if even he realized just how right he was.

They say that history moves in circles, and today’s event has only served to highlight how multifarious and all-encompassing this notion truly is. Some have pointed out that bin Laden apparently died on the anniversary of Adolf Hitler’s death, which is perhaps appropriate. Do I believe that the US military may have fudged the date by a few days (a discrepancy conveniently sidestepped by his burial at sea) in order to gain an emotional victory at home? Of course I do, but such is the reality of top-secret military operations, and I suppose Obama needed the charisma boost after the embarrassing spectacle of Donald Trump’s “birther” movement.

But as circular as the events themselves may be, it is a very different world - and very different people - reacting to the death of a violent, morally bankrupt leader. Only three days ago, a famous rich white dude (who seems like an okay guy, all things considered) got married in a lavish ceremony that brought the United Kingdom to a near-standstill in celebration, and now the United States is celebrating with similar enthusiasm the death of a single human being. I’ll let my good friend and colleague Sam Mathis put this into perspective:

When a man endangers the lives and wellbeing of others, it is the responsibility of caring and courageous people to do something. All situations given their own careful consideration, that ‘something’ may involve the use of lethal force. Under no situation is the death of a man the cause for celebration. Under no circumstance is the death of a man a joyous occasion, regardless of the nature of that man’s character.

The argument I’ve heard most often in defense of this behavior is that it’s okay for us to do it because the people of Afghanistan did it on 9/11. It was wrong for them to do it because they’re evil, but we’re the good guys and we suffered, dammit. Those supporting this argument, in a disappointing and utterly transparent display of using human suffering to appease their own bloodlust, will claim that the Americans who lost their loved ones on 9/11 should be celebrating the death of the man responsible.

Remember, however, that many of the Afghan extremists who celebrated the fall of the towers had lost their own family members to US-led military operations during the Cold War, and the Taliban’s attack on American soil was as much a cultural victory for them as bin Laden’s death is for us. There are no “good guys” here, and there never were. In a recent Facebook thread, Kendall Davis explained it thus:

It feels eerily evocative of the latter days of Rome, in which people were easily seduced by illusions. Osama’s death, while important for justice, does nothing to bring back the people who died during 9/11 or in Iraq and Afghanistan. The only way to honor the dead is to live a life worthy of them… not to celebrate this illusion.

Human beings have been murdering each other on the battlefield, assassinating each other’s leaders, raping each other’s women and enslaving each other’s children for centuries upon centuries of unspeakable horror and death, and every nation on this sad, beautiful Earth has the blood of thousands on its hands. You don’t get to point your finger and petulantly declare “they started it”, because no one started it. This is all the same brand of cruelty that has plagued humanity since the first cities were built between the Tigris and the Euphrates.

The vicious, heartbreaking pattern of war and revenge has followed us down through generations, and still - still, in this supposed age of enlightenment - we lack the strength to break the cycle. We repeat the mistakes of our fathers, and our fathers’ fathers, and so an unbroken chain of fatal mistakes reaches back unto the first moment that a human being committed violence upon another.

Some months ago I created a character - a Finnish soldier named Arto Vaeltanen - whose main purpose was to provide a philosophical lens for a series of stories I’m writing about humanity’s turbulent near future. Upon seeing the news of bin Laden’s death, I heard Vaeltanen’s voice in my head: “The trouble with war is that it’s easier than peace.” I then proceeded to quote him on the internet and thus completely destroy my credibility, but hey. Win some, lose some.

Then we come to the fiction of our hunt for bin Laden, the ongoing narrative that has become a hitching post for the dreams of a thousand neoconservative mouthpieces, and once again the past rears its ugly, pustulent head.

“We are safe once again,” the pundits declare. “For the first time since September 11th, Americans no longer have to live in fear.” This massive investment of malice, this all-encompassing attribution of an entire ideology to a single human being, is the culmination of a cycle that began with the death of Adolf Hitler in 1945.

When the leader of Germany’s Third Reich died in a bunker in Berlin, the Nazi regime had already been defeated. Hitler was disgraced, pathetic and utterly helpless without an army of goose-stepping stormtroopers at his command. His death served as a symbol of Allied victory, and the clear, unmistakable evil of the Nazis would eventually become the inspiration for dozens of fictional villains during the twentieth century. The Imperial officers of Star Wars even mimicked the Nazi uniform, down to the leather jackboots and inflexible posture.

But our cultural interpretations of evil inherited a fatal flaw from the defeat of Nazi Germany: the notion that an enemy’s power lies exclusively within its leadership. When Hitler died, the Nazis were already finished, but somewhere this understanding of cause and effect became reversed. When Sauron was defeated in The Return of the King (written shortly after the end of World War II), his vast, uncountable army was swallowed up by the earth at the Black Gate of Mordor. When Emperor Palpatine and his Death Star were destroyed in Return of the Jedi, the entire Galactic Empire basically rolled over and gave up.

Art imitates life, but shortly thereafter life imitates art, and something always gets lost in translation. America’s reaction to the death of Osama bin Laden shows that we have allowed this creative license to distort the way we look at real-world conflict. When we associated Hitler’s death with the defeat of the Nazis, we created a template for vanquishing evil in fiction. Now we have begun to apply this template to the real world, and we have abandoned all perspective in the process. George W. Bush invoked the “Axis of Evil”, making our enemies out to be comic book supervillains with secret underground lairs and a nihilistic hatred for freedom qua freedom. Today, we have assassinated the figurehead of an organization that will no doubt revere him as a martyr, and somehow we expect that everyone who hates us will simply lay down their weapons and declare “Congratulations! You Win!” We’re playing games with the world, and frankly it’s a terrifying thing to watch.

“We feel safe now,” we say. “We can sleep at night. We are no longer threatened.” Threatened by whom? By Osama bin Laden, personally? The man has an army, for fuck’s sake. Killing him is like scoring a slam dunk against the manager of a basketball team. There are still thousands of religious extremists who want us all dead in the name of their jihad, and now they have another reason to hate us.

Yes, I do believe that bin Laden was rightfully eliminated, but this is not “ding dong, the witch is dead.” It’s more like “okay, nice job, now can we please get back to patching things up with the rest of the world?” The (inconvenient) truth is that it’s going to take a lot of work for humanity to survive the rest of this century without being wiped out by global war, famine or environmental collapse. The death of Osama bin Laden has accomplished very little in the face of this, and frankly I think it’s ridiculous to be having a grand ol’ street party when we really should be keeping our noses to the gods damned grindstone and striving to better ourselves lest our complacency lead directly to mutually assured extinction. We don’t get to celebrate when there’s work to do.

As the eminent Ben Bassak put it…

…maybe this is a turning point. Maybe we can once again unite behind a common victory, pull our troops out of the Middle East (and ultimately all foreign bases) and slash our military budget by billions, while reinvesting it in applied science, education, clean energy and infrastructure! Right, guys?…. Right?……..

The human race is not okay. We need to stop patting ourselves on the back for killing each other, and start putting real effort into not destroying ourselves. And I really, really don’t want to end up saying “I told you so.”

Don’t get caught up in the frenzied carnival of death and bloodshed. Acknowledge the assassination of a powerful and corrupt human being, see the small victory for what it is, and carry on with your integrity intact. Future generations will thank you for not contributing to the cycle of violence.

I have written for too long and said too little. I shall stop here, get to bed and tell my girlfriend that I love her. Because that’s what actually matters.

Perspective Bomb

Thu, 03 Feb 2011 01:18:00 -0800

I thought very hard about whether I should write this. Two weeks ago, I decided that I want to stop sharing my opinions on the internet. After all, if I’m going to add my voice to a discussion, I need to be damn sure that it’s actually going to contribute, and since I’m not really an expert on anything, this doesn’t happen very often. Perhaps, after years of being stubborn and arrogant, I’ve just gotten tired of preaching half-baked nonsense when there are so many more meaningful things I could be doing instead.

But one thing I do feel qualified to talk about is perspective - specifically, what happens when we lose it. Perspective is part of being a functional adult. It allows us to calibrate our reactions to things. Perspective is not just saying “this stuff is important, and this stuff is not.” Rather, it’s the way we decide how to approach problems, and it keeps our emotions in check when things go awry. And I’m beginning to realize that the culture of the internet impairs our ability to do this.

Thanks to services like Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr, we’ve grown used to expressing ourselves in bite-sized chunks of raw data. This is not necessarily a bad thing per se, but it comes with a nasty side effect: when everything you say has to fit into a strict limit, be it 140 characters or 256 or whatever, you’re naturally going to deliver all of your thoughts at the same level of detail. And for human beings, that very quickly begins to imply the same level of importance as well.

Humans are incredibly sensitive to communication, even (especially) when we hear ourselves communicate. You know how they say if you force yourself to smile when you’re sad, you actually start feeling a little better? That’s because communication is a feedback loop. Whatever we broadcast to the world also influences us, because our emotions still react as though it came from without. Over the course of a week, you might post these two status updates:

“Coldstone was out of cookie dough ice cream. FML”

“My dog died in her sleep last night. FML”

Rationally speaking, you probably understand which of these things is more significant. But when they’re both so condensed, your emotions have a hard time making that distinction. How long could you talk about Coldstone running out of a flavour? Two, maybe three minutes? But that was your dog. You loved that dog. You have memories and experiences and a hundred thousand little things that might pour out of you for hours and hours because you fucking miss your beautiful goddamn dog.

But there they are, eight words apiece. The human brain makes a lot of shortcuts, and one of those shortcuts is the leap from level of detail to level of importance. After a while, whatever you can fit into a text field becomes your standard for what matters to you. Maybe that still matters a lot, but you’ve set a standard nonetheless. Anything you say is going to fit within that standard. Sooner or later, everything becomes just as big a deal as everything else, and it takes the same amount of time for you to forget about the massacre of 100 sled dogs in British Columbia as it takes for you to forget about some sophomoric bullshit a game designer said.

Sooner or later.

You’ll wake up one morning, the global climate will be laughing in your face, a multinational democratic revolution will be sweeping across the Middle East, and you’ll genuinely believe that the best use of your time is to childishly disrupt what should have been a constructive, rational debate about the boundaries of feminism to spit venom and bile all over your Twitter feed.

Okay, the dickwolves thing. I know. Look, here’s what happened: Mike and Jerry of Penny Arcade made a lame comic with a rape joke in it. A number of women (and probably some dudes) were justifiably outraged by the tasteless joke and complained to Mike and Jerry. A few of them invoked the contentious topic of “rape culture”, which appears to imply that American society as a whole tacitly condones rape. This is a pretty big generalization, and it has the (probably unintentional) side effect of making decent, respectful men feel guilty just for having a Y chromosome.

Confronted with this minor fallacy amongst other, more legitimate complaints, Mike and Jerry could have just said “we’re sorry, we didn’t realize so many people would be offended, we thrive on tasteless jokes so sometimes we can’t be sure where to draw the line, etc.” I’m sure an apology would have been enough for everyone involved. But they chose instead to act snide and petulant. This was stupid.

In response to this stupidity, the voices of dissent quickly turned to vitriol. Railing against everything Penny Arcade stood for, they coalesced into a focused beam of hate and burned Mike and Jerry at the stake. Maybe even that was justifiable. I’m nowhere near educated enough to judge.

Regardless, things got out of hand. And because the debate was happening on the internet, people who should have been explaining their views with the utmost precision and clarity decided that they would rather reduce everything to pithy 140-character slogans, which then bounced off each other in midflight like collinear bullets. With reason and grace all but abandoned, the combatants pummeled each other with threats and acid cruelty until there was no longer a debate to be had. Everyone had already decided that The Other Guys were industrial-grade assholes, and the only thing left to do was to make a bigger dogpile than they did and shout them down until they surrendered.

No one has surrendered yet.

Here’s the alarming thing: I have seen precious few attempts - on either side of the discussion - to empathize with the opposition. Dude, people are in Cairo right now playing dodgeball with Molotov cocktails and you mean to tell me you can’t at least try to understand each other?

Perhaps there’s a crucial element to this whole situation that has managed to escape me. I can’t even begin to imagine what it must be like to be raped, so maybe the extremity of the emotional damage is enough to excuse a lack of empathy toward people who don’t understand your pain. But then again, maybe watching an angry mob eviscerate your entire body of work over a single misstep is traumatic enough to justify acting like a douchebag on the internet.

I certainly don’t agree with either of those possibilities, but I can still contemplate their existence, and I can do my best to factor them into the discussion. And look: I’m a writer and a programmer. I am probably the most narcissistic, self-absorbed human being on the western hemisphere. If I can do it, then so can everyone else.

I think there’s something fundamentally wrong with the way we’ve come to understand arguments. Usually, when discussing a difference of opinion in person, we’re acutely aware of the person with whom we’re conversing. We read facial expressions, body language, subtle hints in vocal tone. Our exchange is fluid, points being raised, disputed, molded and compromised in an uninterrupted two-way flow. These are the discussions that lead to growth. Even if we don’t agree by the end, we’ve at least learned more about our own beliefs simply by having to explain them.

But on the internet, we exchange chunks of text, prepared statements zipping back and forth in all their premeditated glory, never once meeting in the middle. Point, counterpoint, countercounterpoint, ad nauseam. What is there to do but pick apart the other guy’s words? You found a flaw in one of his assumptions! His entire argument is a flimsy house of cards! SEND IN THE CAVALRY ETC.

When did arguments become wars? When did we, as a people, come to this weird consensus that the whole point of having an argument is to shut down the opposition and win? Where is our desire for understanding and harmony?

I’ll tell you what the real point of an argument is: the point of having an argument is to not have an argument anymore. “Winning” is only one way to get there. Yes, sometimes one side really is right and the other is wrong. But to not even contemplate the possibility that the truth lies somewhere in between is, quite frankly, selling your own intellect short.

Arguments are not supposed to be like war, they’re supposed to be like sex. Those engaged in debate should be tuning into each other, open and attentive. Look for common ground and explore from there. Even if you remain convinced that the other is wrong, at least grant them the courtesy of your best, calmest explanation. If agreement is still impossible, enjoy the fact that you did your best and move on.

Have I always followed this advice? Fuck no. I’ve said some pretty awful things on the internet. Most of them aren’t even that hard to find. But I like to think that gives me intimate experience with the dangers of not keeping things in perspective. I was never really an adult until I started trying to do that. Still trying every day. In fact, I failed at it this afternoon during a dispute over a proposed design change to my final project game at Full Sail. So you can’t be perfect.

But you can try.

Fixing the World

Mon, 24 Jan 2011 22:31:00 -0800

The afterparty went late into the night. Sullen music echoed across the warehouse roof as disillusioned twenty-somethings shuffled past each other in the August heat. The smell of cigarette smoke and warm beer mixed with the silent, screaming angst of the partygoers, their masks of indifference haggard and misplaced.

Awkward advances fell flat against the glare of the skyline, the girls alternating coquettish and stone-faced while boys fumbled through vapid conversation, struggling to feign disaffection without blowing their chance at temporary relief from self-loathing.

Dean Fixer stood at the edge of a higher rooftop overlooking the affair. Gazing down at no one in particular, he nursed his beer and tried to guess at the content of the pleasantries. He grew tired of this, his mind wandering instead toward things of substance.

His sketchpad felt heavy in his breast pocket; there were still engineering problems to be tackled. He could barely remember why he had agreed to come out here in the first place. Perhaps it was the respectful thing to do, not to turn down an invitation from those who had taken advantage of him. It pained him to think that the wayward artists down below might never find their place in the world to come. The cynicism on display sickened him.

“Hey! There you are.”

Lucius Delgado strode across the empty rooftop, silhouetted against the floodlights of adjacent warehouses. Once a stablehand in Arizona, now a political activist, Lucius was even more out of his element than the bemused sculptor.

“God, I had to get out of there. Was like giving my soul a fucking acid bath.”

Dean smiled. “I told you, dude. Least you’ve never gotten cozy with ‘em.”

Lucius knew what this meant. He pretended to be smug.

“Well, that’s the price you pay for trusting people, right?”

Dean gave a weak laugh. “Yeah, guess I’ve learned my lesson.”

The smile faded quickly, and his eyes turned back to the miserable crowd. He took a sip of his beer and frowned at the bottle. Lucius sighed.

“Look, you’re better off, man. People suck.”

Dean squinted at him. “Do they, though? I don’t think anyone’s evil. They’re just lonely and insecure. They’re all desperate for something, but they don’t even know what it is.”

“Hey, that’s what makes us different. We know what we want and we know what it takes to get it.” Lucius paused to finish his beer. “I mean, we are still trying to fix the world, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Dean nodded. Conviction had crept back into his voice, but his shoulders sagged as he exhaled. “I can’t help feeling like we’re the only ones left who really have a purpose. Maybe there’s something wrong with us. What if we’re delusional?”

“Maybe we are. That going to stop you?”

“Pfft. No.”

“Well, there you go.” Lucius made a sweeping gesture, half at the sky, half at the dwindling gathering below. “Just because everyone else in the world is lost, don’t mean you’re supposed to be.”

Dean smiled again. Lucius dropped a hand on his shoulder.

“The future is ours, man. But right now, let’s ditch before you get dragged into any more drama.”

“Amen to that.”

The sculptor and the activist walked toward the fire escape, descending from the industrial brightness of the rooftop to the cooler embrace of the street. Dean walked quickly, the first rough sketches of a perfect machine resting lightly in his breast pocket.

Metaposting (Oh Snap!)

Tue, 11 Jan 2011 22:59:00 -0800

This post is not a story, nor is it quite an editorial. It is about the thoughts and realizations that led up to me writing it, if that makes any sense.

The past few days have been rather interesting, as far as my writing is concerned. Thanks to a suggestion from the excellent Krystian Majewski, I wanted to write a short story with Roche limits as its central theme. I’m still going to do that, but when I sat down on Sunday and began to write, I just couldn’t get the words out. That happens with fiction. Sometimes, you just have to wait and try again.

Monday came and brought a few opinions with it. Tuesday followed suit. With the story on the back burner and my Full Sail final project occupying the daytime hours, I considered filling this week with an editorial of some kind.

Have you ever had a really great idea, started working on it, and then discovered a few days later that someone else is already way ahead of you? It happens to me all the time; years ago with Advent Rising, then with Cloud Atlas, then recently with PaperPlane. I was going to write a huge post detailing my theory that this phenomenon is neither telepathy nor coincidence, but rather suggests that creative people are highly sensitive to subtle cultural undercurrents that manifest themselves in parallel works.

Or, after reading an explosive argument on Twitter between the voice of Dr. Venture and a guy with a lousy attitude, I was going to tackle the absurd yet seemingly ubiquitous assumption that creative people are “public servants” with a “responsibility” to produce the content their audience expects. This argument expanded when my lovely girlfriend remarked on the overpowering cynicism with which people respond to celebrity activists, as though it’s impossible for a famous person to use their fame for anything other than self-promotion.

Then I watched this video and nearly wept at my desk, longing for the bright futures that I try so hard to describe in my stories. I wanted to elaborate on this, linking the video’s profound message with my desire to create lasting works of fiction that capture the same feeling of adventurous wonder. I might have gone on and on for hours about the true purpose of storytelling and the inspirational power of wild speculation.

But ultimately, I’m tired and I’d rather be telling stories. Sure, there’s nothing wrong with expressing an opinion on the Internet, but it takes a lot of time to build a well-supported argument and it never feels like I’m accomplishing anything. I could be discussing these things with the people I care about and leaving my blog for stuff that’s more universally interesting and less exhausting for me to write.

I’ve been aching to write more fiction these days anyway. :)

Tron: Legacy and Thinking Too Hard

Sat, 01 Jan 2011 19:56:00 -0800

“The Grid. A digital frontier. I tried to picture clusters of information as they moved through the computer. What did they look like?”

Thus begins Disney’s Tron: Legacy, the crusty baritone of Jeff Bridges rumbling lazily between programming genius Kevin Flynn and carefree slacker The Dude, who now seems to just be part of the actor’s persona. Thus also appears a remnant - a mere coffee stain - of the film it could have been, of a thought-provoking story whose intricacies were sanded down or simply ignored by standard Hollywood screenplay mangling.

I’ve always been fascinated by the ability of literature and film to tackle questions of philosophy. From Orwell’s dystopian vision of statism, to Lem’s musings on identity, to Herzog’s exploration of man and nature; stories have always had the power to act as tools for understanding reality. This, I believe, is the value of fiction. Escapism, while still kind of nice, is just a sugary coating.

It’s not hard to notice that most of our books and movies are basically 100% sugary coating with nothing in the center. Which is too bad, but it’s especially frustrating when you can tell that a movie could have had so much more substance, if only someone had the conviction to stick it out through dozens of market-driven rewrites (the true bane of forceful writing).

While the entire internet may have decided that Tron: Legacy is a boring pile of exploding nonsense, I actually quite enjoyed myself. But in retrospect, the movie I enjoyed was happening entirely in my head and not anywhere on the screen. In my mind, I was watching a film about the futility of perfectionism, the resilience of the chaotic universe, the power and accompanying weakness of the furiously singleminded, and countless other philosophical ideas that would have dovetailed very nicely with the events of the story if they had actually existed in the story at all.

If you haven’t noticed, I have a very active imagination.

So maybe Tron: Legacy, when taken at face value, actually does suck. But what of the unsprouted seeds littered across its gorgeously barren landscape? What about the ideas that could have been there, or maybe even were there in earlier drafts? What do you do with a film that does nothing intellectual on its own, but still has so much empty space where intellect could roam free?

If you’re like me, you sit and sputter and gesticulate, your mind shooting off in a hundred directions where the film idly glanced but should have plunged head-on:

The characters in the world of Tron are computer programs with an explicit purpose in life. Since each character is the personification of a goal or an ideal, their conflicts serve as illustrations of the conflicts between the ideas that define them.

A man in search of perfection creates a digital copy of himself whose goal is to create a perfect system, but the copy is in itself too perfect and too rigid to understand imperfection (the uncanny valley in CLU’s computer-generated likeness of Jeff Bridges mirrors the uncanny valley in his own perfection-obsessed philosophy).

The goofy jargon “isomorph” simply refers to a Hollywood vision of bottom-up computing; the idea of heuristic programs that use genetic algorithms and neural networks in order to increase their own complexity and grow into the tasks assigned to them. They are created without an explicit purpose, in direct contrast to the singleminded programs of the Grid, and mirror the resilience of life in its comparative imperfection.

While trapped in the Grid, Kevin Flynn comes to terms with the futility of his quest for flawlessness, embraces the childlike imperfection of the “isomorphs” (I’m sorry, that’s still a pretty silly word), and reaches a Zen-like understanding that the universe will do as it pleases, and one must always live in harmony with that. This contrasts with his earlier desire to impose his will upon everything in the Grid, which is of course manifested in CLU. Flynn is kind of a bodhisattva in that way.

You start thinking like that, and suddenly CLU turns into Nietzsche, Tron/Rinzler turns into an allegory for a half-dozen other things, and before you know it you’re shoehorning all kinds of otherwise valid philosophy into a Disney movie about neon motorcycles. Whoops.

Of course, none of this stuff appeared anywhere in the film. But the opportunity was there, and I think it’s a shame that no one seized it. Tron: Legacy could have been a really philosophical movie. The version that exists in my head is a really philosophical movie. Unfortunately, I can’t figure out where one ends and the other begins, so all I can do is hope that the next movie with this much potential actually goes ahead and taps it.

On Echo Chambers

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 01:48:00 -0700

Lately I’ve become wary of situations in which everyone appears to agree on something. There are plenty of reasons; the most coarse is simply the vague dystopian creepiness of an entire group adhering to an idea without harsh enough inquiry. Less cynical is the scientific concern that homogeneity leads to stagnation, and progress can be stunted when there isn’t enough variation in the gene pool. But perhaps the most important reason - one that I learned from Iain M. Banks’ A Few Notes on the Culture - is this:

It’s boring.

If this sounds flippant, allow me to elaborate. I’m convinced that the proper objective of sentient life (or at least human life) is self-actualization and the betterment of one’s surroundings, whether immediate or distant, in time or in space. I believe that a happy life revolves around the continuous ascent of Abraham Maslow’s somewhat cliché, but no less apt, hierarchy of needs. This is the root of my love for science fiction. Sci-fi is a window into the possibility space of our future. It is a way to predict, plan or simply wonder about the next stages of our ascent. For just as individuals have a pyramid to climb, so too do civilizations and entire species. And this is only possible through variation and originality. Through the pursuit of the new, the exciting and the totally wild.

Boredom is the sound of the mind suffocating. It is the sound of stagnation, of progress halted, of self-defeat. It is the only true torture I know, because it denies upward movement.

So then, this unease with homogeneity. My fear of echo chambers. They rear their heads often, in science fiction and in games, the fields to which I am most dedicated. Per Sturgeon’s Revelation, the sad majority of sci-fi regurgitates the same ideas across decades, sapping them of whatever originality they may have once held. Frank Herbert’s future of political intrigue begat scores of faceless interstellar hegemonies and clairvoyant demigods, while Arthur C. Clarke’s homicidal supercomputer has already copied himself into a thousand doomsday scenarios from Jupiter to post-apocalyptic Earth.

The truth is that sci-fi writers often appreciate sci-fi to worrisome exclusion. They start writing not because they take joy in speculation and the pursuit of intellectual novelty, but because they want to tell stories about lasers and hyperdrives and all that cool stuff they used to enjoy as readers (note the subtle irony of me making this observation from the bleachers of amateur grandiosity).

The same dozen or so ideas get lobbed back and forth like so many frisbees until all the interesting material gets stuck on the roof and the players stagger about, blithely wondering where all the creativity went. Sometimes they leave the genre in disgust, or become post-modernists. Sometimes they make a living on extended universe fiction. But precious few ever manage to make the world a more interesting place. Somewhere in the distance, Harlan Ellison and Samuel R. Delany sigh in exasperation.

Science fiction is prone to echo chambers, and so are videogames.

“Ahh,” you think, nodding your head. “The man is finally making his point.” I just hope that I can break it down with enough clarity and fairness that I don’t come off like a total maniac.

I’ve found that I’m really uncomfortable with the world of videogames. With all aspects of it; commercial, indie, academic and journalistic. My reasons for this are still largely intuitive, but I know enough to say that homogeneity is at least partly to blame. Some convenient blindness, perhaps a kind of willful ignorance, glares at me from the shadows whenever I skim the blogs, glance at the scores, gloss over the magazine covers and stare blankly at the reams of analysis and critique produced by our most talented thinkers.

At my worst, I get insecure about it. “What the hell do I know about all this stuff anyway?” I ask myself, mostly rhetorically. “I’m just some stupid engineer. I’m not equipped to criticize an entire medium.”

This from a guy who demands intellectual stimulation from sci-fi literature.

In truth, I’m not really stupid. I have ideas about videogames, and I know why I have them. I’m perceptive enough to find our reliance on memes a tad ridiculous. From bald space marines to aesthetic art-film mimicry; from dubiously practical deconstruction in pursuit of scholarly publication to weekly top-ten lists and flamebait article headers screaming desperately for more page views; every aspect of the videogame world has some pretty major issues it needs to work out.

And I truly believe that they will get worked out. Mainstream games will grow out of their adolescence, indie games will become more than an isolated commune of cynics, games academia will find relevance, and games journalism will find its voice. But I don’t know if I’ll ever fit comfortably into the system. My goals are, to varying degrees, incompatible with the prevailing theories.

Manipulating the player’s expectations is considered bad game design; it’s one of my favorite tools. Dialogue is considered the enemy of immersion; I can’t tell a story without it. Forcing the player to act against his own judgment is considered callous; I believe it can lead him to a greater awareness of ethics. Refusing to offer scheduled rewards is considered dishonest; to me it’s a gesture of respect for the player’s self-motivation.

To me, games can be a window to our own potential. What better way is there to know oneself than to witness one’s own reactions to as many diverse scenarios as possible? Games can lead to personal growth, to better people and to a better world. And I think I know how to make that happen.

But I hear “no” far too often, and that doesn’t sit well with me. I think I’d rather find out for myself than take the words of experts. So, my colleagues and I are building a game and a studio from the ground up, avoiding outside influence as much as possible, and when the time is right we’ll set up shop here…

…and we’ll see how fair the wind can carry us.

And The Stars Said "Come Home"

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 23:43:00 -0700

The break in the clouds lasted several days. It had been years since the sky had permitted more than a glimpse beyond the atmosphere, and now a freak high-pressure system had unfolded the velvet night like a gift. The astronomer would have taken advantage, but he was miles from any observatory, and he knew the constellations by heart. He would have gained nothing from retracing his charts, aside from the small comfort of a familiar tableau. He had learned to live without such respite.

He no longer dwelt on the uncertain future. The centuries had taught him that.

He knew that one day everything would come together. Somewhere on Earth, the rest of his crew still lived. Their paths rarely crossed, but in his travels the astronomer knew that there was hope, as long as they all kept moving.

Every decade or so he would return to the hangar, following secret paths hidden in forbidding places. Earth was cool beneath her surface, the rust still fresh. Miles underground, he would check up on the ship, activating repair systems if necessary, fixing things himself when the occasion arose. Sometimes it would take months, shirtless under ancient worklights, his body feeling a fraction of its age; the slow work of rebuilding an engine the size of a house, or resealing an airlock that could fit a small asteroid. Physical labor focused his mind.

He would go to the command center and perform a pre-launch check, going over every last system to be sure that the enormous machine was ready. In his heart he lamented the fact that they’d only had time to build one before the world stopped. Before the sculptor died.

Often he would find letters on the main console, left for him by the others when they made their visits in the intervening years. Sometimes it would be a terse checklist from the pilot, scrawled in his hasty script, probably in the midst of some subterranean debauchery (the astronomer shook his head and laughed at these). Other times words of encouragement from the engineer, or repair notes from various crewmen.

But above all he cherished the letters from the physicist. He would fold them and keep them in his breast pocket until they disintegrated. He left replies for her, and always he would return to find her precise handwriting in place of his own.

They had all agreed to travel apart, to keep their knowledge safe from the cannibals and luddites, but he longed for her. Her presence was as real as it had been centuries before, when the future was bright and nothing lay between them save a table and a set of blueprints.

He no longer dwelt on the uncertain future. But still he felt the touch of her lips upon his own.

Handle With Care

Mon, 05 Jul 2010 21:48:00 -0700

I miss photographing animals. Since I have few opportunities to snap photos in the wild, I took advantage of a day trip to the Norwalk Aquarium in CT.

Old Summit Photos

Sun, 04 Jul 2010 20:59:00 -0700

I’m visiting family in New York for the rest of the week. Went through some old photo albums at my mom’s place and found these. Sorry about the reflections; I snapped them with my phone camera on the kitchen table.

Sword In The Rain

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 01:30:00 -0700

From the letters of Arto Vaeltanen to Martina Strannikova, ca. Aug. 2023:

…but it is not [the bloodshed] that tears at my soul and finds me whispering your name in the night like a mantra, like a ward against darkness. It is the mentality, the brutality of thought, the oppressive air of antagonism and mental violence that blankets this desert. One does not ponder in this place; one only reacts. One does not discuss; one only defends. Everywhere the message is clear: seek not to understand. Seek only to resist the attack from without, lest your weakness be found and the pale sand painted in broad strokes with your blood.

There is no place for compassion here. To see the battered faces of women and children, the corpses left in the street, with anything more than stifled indifference would destroy any man in this army. We have to bury ourselves to have any hope of survival. And that part of me resists, would rather die than be callous, but I remember that it is only your love that matters. So I fight, when every fiber of my body screams against it. I fight to live, I fight to win, I fight to come home.

Yet it is coming home that I dread most of all. For though I may leave my weapons behind, I must still bring back the soul that has seen this place. Try as I might, I will return to you having fought and killed. Though my hands may be empty, I will enter your home still armed, my mind cold and sharp, trained to resist and riposte. Even philosophy has become a weapon of the state. And what purpose is left for that when I have returned to you? Will I be able to unearth the part of me that loves, or will I still be at war, striking at the world like a sword in the rain?

But I will endure for you. I will do what I must to stay alive, and I will find a way to come back to you whole and unchanged. You are the light that draws me back from the darkness, and I will kiss you again…

Corporal Vaeltanen was declared missing in action in September 2023, when he and two other soldiers from his unit failed to return from a routine patrol on the outskirts of Separatist-controlled Tehran. Strannikova never remarried, and disappeared from her office in midtown Manhattan in January of 2027, several weeks after the Delgado incident. They are presumed dead, but eyewitness reports claim that they have been spotted in Hong Kong and Bombay as recently as 2031. These reports have been neither confirmed nor investigated.

Angry Young Man

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 04:59:00 -0700

The boy was raised far from any city. He knew little of their verticality and their coddling sterility. Baptised in the falls of Supai, he knew the laws of nature long before any others. His world was pure and his heart undaunted, and the sun shone on his head every day of his young life.

He was raised to know himself, his every strength and weakness. He was raised to know what a man is and is not. He was taught to love until his heart would break, to fight until it bled, to lead until it ceased. His will and his dreams were unshakeable and vast. The whole of the world was his first love, and even when his knowledge grew to encompass technology and cities, he wove them into the tapestry of his mind, at home among the iridescent patterns of creation.

His parents brought him books whenever they made the day-long trip to the nearest town. He adored philosophy, astronomy and humanism. He often rode on horseback out of the canyon at night, far from its high walls and the few electric lamps of the village, to take in the expanse of the stars. He wished to visit them all one day, his heart aching to see every corner of the universe. He would find a way, and he would bring everyone he loved with him, to sail across the stars for eternity. He trusted in science to open the path, and he wished only to guide the world to the first stepping stone. He knew that Man was inherently good. He knew that war and darkness would soon be forgotten. He would be a great leader.

There was a girl in the village who loved him, and he never ceased to gaze at her when he thought she wasn’t looking. She was a poet who longed to hone her craft at a great university, and he promised her one night, panting and sweating beneath the desert moon, that one day he would take her to such a place; that together they would become a clear voice in the darkness for all of mankind, and lead the way toward the stars.

The cartel disputes of 2018 left the boy’s village in ruins. It was impossible to tell whether the cartels or the police had taken more lives; both were bloodthirsty. The boy saw his father dismembered with hunting knives, his coughing, lolling head kicked through the village by men with missing teeth and bloody noses. His mother died slowly, her body cut by the same knives, screaming and pleading for death as federal agents took what they wished of her, thinking her nothing more than a drug lord’s prostitute. The girl he loved had vanished, and he already knew what they must be doing to her.

In one night, all the joy the boy had felt - all the love, ambition and inspiration - evaporated. Humanity laid itself bare before him, base and loathsome, and he hated it. Either he was the only Man in the universe, or Man was the only evil. The true law of existence was suffering, and it was mankind that perpetuated it. He remembered the oppressive darkness of history, and his hope that progress would leave it behind. He knew then that violence and hate could never be truly abandoned. That human beings were vicious, murdering animals, barely contained by their paralyzing fear of retribution.

In that moment, a blind hatred consumed him. Fiery and painful, it tore at his chest as wildly as his knife tore at the flesh of the mercenaries. He stole rifles, hunted them at night, smeared their blood on his face and howled at the moon like a dog. He would cleanse the world of their evil, and he did not care that the killing was wrong. Better that he should be evil so others may be safe. He broke their bones and flayed their bodies, reveling in their helpless panic as he left them to the coyotes of the desert. When he was certain that every mercenary, gangster and thug was dead, the screams of his mother and father still raging in his head, he set the village ablaze.

The cries of his love pierced the flames, pierced his heart and his anger. In despair he searched the village, following the sound of her anguish until he found her at last, trapped inside a shed where she had hidden for days, afraid to emerge, still hearing the screams of dying men all around her. The boy said nothing. He lifted her onto one of the few remaining horses and rode east.

Years later, at a university in New York, the boy had become a political theorist, the girl an author. He spoke of love and compassion for her sake alone, for his distrust of Man festered still within his breast. She spoke of revolution and a new world order, wishing only for peace, unaware of what her love had become.

He looked upon the world he had once adored, and saw only suffering. Happiness was merely a temporary diversion. Millions of people starving to death, dying of disease, murdered, raped, bought, sold, reduced to statistics by the irresponsibility of hand-waving charlatans who fancied themselves great leaders. He acknowledged no state, no religion, no god. Freedom was his only sovereign, and logic dictated that the system must be cleansed of those who sought to impede on the freedoms of others. They abdicated morality when they flouted its rule, and killing them was acceptable if it could save the rest of mankind. That is, if the rest could be trusted not to be equally as evil. He would deal with that when the time came.

He befriended a sculptor and an engineer, themselves lovers, who built tools for him and those who fought at his side. A few dozen of them could stand against the army of an entire nation, and their technology remained a mystery to all save the two young minds who built it on government money.

His crusade began, and his army grew. Assassinations, puppet wars, military coups in third world countries, suicide bombings. He would wipe evil from the earth just as he had wiped it from the remains of his village. Better to burn it all than to let the pure suffer at the hands of the immoral. He thought of what they would do to his love if they ever got their filthy hands on her. They were all maniacs. He would fight to his death, if it meant leaving behind a safer world for those he loved.

Driven away at last by the violence within him, the poet left him for a young journalist, himself rising to power on the wings of manipulation and deceit. Wounded by the loss, betrayed by the one he sought to protect, he doubled his fury, acting boldly, defying the leaders of the world to stem his tide of anarchy. Millions died under his raised fist, but he no longer cared. He was no longer a man. He was only an empty husk, going through the same tired motions, fighting because it was all he knew, targeting anything he perceived to be immoral.

The sculptor and the engineer fell away from him then, seeing their mistake in helping him, no longer willing to feed the war he had started. In desperation and rage, he stole one last device from them - a mechanism with equal potential to power nations and to end lives - and ran with it to the heart of the great city, hoping to send one final message with his own death. He ran through armed barricades and military roadblocks, his body riddled with gunshot wounds, bones broken by bullets, screaming the poet’s name in a pool of blood as he opened the housing of the device, evaporating the tiny star inside and ending thousands of lives in a kilometer-wide flash of light.

The sculptor faked his own death and went into exile, the engineer became an activist and the poet found God. The journalist became a politician, and then a leader. He preached of the evils of technology, of the destructiveness of science, of subservience to the divine. And the world slowly began to take itself apart, piece by piece, so that no one would ever have the chance to destroy it. There would be nothing left to destroy.

Then the machines came.

Aldebaran's Kiss

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 03:19:00 -0700

As he sat cross-legged on the boulder, the wanderer let his eyes come to rest just above the horizon. The last sliver of sun had dropped from sight, and the clouds were aflame with its radiance, purple shadows on orange shapes. Directly above the wanderer’s head, the brighter stars were becoming visible. He visualized a thin strand - silk thread or lightning - running from the center of his forehead to a bright star near the Pleiades. In his mind, he grasped the strand and readied himself to ascend.

His consciousness focused in this way, he expanded his senses. He let the scale of the universe wash over him, now acutely aware of his smallness upon the globe beneath him. The taiga stretched away for miles around him, unbroken toward the feet of the mountains. As night fell he continued upward, feeling the insignificance of his world, feeling its rotation as the sky revealed its treasures.

The wanderer remembered the promise he’d made. He remembered the machines and their endless compassion. He thought of the trail they’d left, and the mission he’d sworn to finish. If mankind was not ready for the first stepping stone, he would not wait for them. He would not wait for anything. The wanderer cast his mind ever outward, reaching for the void.

The strength of life is the strength of fire. Love is the fullest expression of life. And the stars know more of love than all the great prophets. When the wanderer’s mind reached her, Aldebaran awoke from her fitful sleep, bent her lovely head to his, and kissed his forehead. Soon, he would be ready.

Peregrinus

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 03:57:00 -0700

Peregrinus paused at the crest of the hill. The city lay open before him, a dead thing no more alive than the marshes he had crossed to reach it. Buildings rose beaten and torn from the gray earth, rearing gray heads toward a gray sky, silently howling the Song of the End. He’d heard the song before, in the cries of refugees following the last death rattle of war, in the wailing of the starving and the sick, in his heart when doubt had taken his brightest hope from him. The fight had gone out of man. Try as he might, his will alone was not enough to rekindle the flame. So he had wandered until his name went from him like a painful memory and he became the wandering.

The Tempest

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 14:10:00 -0700

The android landed softly on the mountaintop, the engineer cradled in his arms. His metal feet made no sound on the rock. Masters of grace, the machines flowed through their surroundings like water, and he had been the first to teach this to the others. In this moment, as always, he was grateful to the generations of bodhisattvas who had lived before him, and to the engineer in his arms, who had nurtured his nascent consciousness in a world built from those masters’ teachings. Without this knowledge, he certainly wouldn’t have been able to keep her safe for long. The part of his sentience that he knew as his heart ached for the sculptor, most likely dead in the wreckage far behind him. He could not have saved them both.

From the mountains of Ellesmere, the polar base was only a thin feather of smoke on the northern horizon. The sculptor had probably died trying to stop the angry, infantile electric mind trapped inside. They had probably killed each other. The needless waste of life was painful to the android. He was, like most of his kind, a being of compassion.

The engineer’s hands were still clasped behind the android’s neck. She looked up at him, mesmerized by the supreme skill the sculptor had put into designing his silver and green body, and so immensely proud of the strong and virtuous mind that animated that body. The mind she had raised as though it were her own child. She thought it appropriate that she and the sculptor should have children such as this. The pain of loss was only a planted seed, and she fought against it; she would grieve when the time came.

Three more machines, similar in appearance, came to rest on adjacent mountaintops. The androids exchanged glances. The base had collapsed. The sculptor (poor father, he thought) was almost certainly dead. He pushed excess heat forward to keep the engineer warm.

The northern sky flashed white, taking the other machines by surprise. Perhaps this is all inevitable, he thought. Mankind will dwindle. They will forget. Of the few that remain, only a precious handful will know the heights from which they fell, or aspire to reach them again. The only thing that mattered was keeping the dreams of men alive.

A shimmering wave expanded from the north pole. A dome of rough glass, pushing away the clouds before it. The weapon was beautiful, destructive and fleeting. It pushed a cold wind ahead of it as it grew, tugging at the engineer’s clothing.

“Malachite?” she said to the android. “I think I am afraid.”

“Good,” the machine said. “Then all is not lost.”

Malachite and the other machines turned their backs to the encroaching blast. Solenoids flexed. They hurled themselves southward only seconds before the mountaintops were cracked and split by the frigid wave.

The androids glided through the valleys faster than sound, frictionless, touching the ground only to change direction or gather speed. Malachite gripped the engineer in his arms, bending space in from of him to shield her from the biting wind. There was so little hope left, and so much of it depended on her.

Heatsinks glowed orange between Malachite’s shoulders, his body struggling to outrun the cold fire. The shockwave tore at the atmosphere and the northern sky shredded apart like silk, its delicate fingers interlocked with those of the growing darkness, encrusted with stars and clothed in aurorae as it smothered the tundra in vacuum. Nearly a fifth of the earth’s surface would be airless by the time the blast died.

Malachite and the other machines traveled hundreds of miles in seconds. He now had to shield the engineer from his own waste heat, melting the armor of his back as he passed the 60th parallel. Mountains gave way to taiga, and hundreds of other androids appeared as droplets of water on the horizon ahead. If he didn’t reach them in time, he would overheat and implode, killing the engineer. He pushed on, the shockwave slowing its advance. Miles vanished beneath him.

The other androids rose into the air, sensing his approach. In seconds, they were behind him, and he turned to face the hole in the sky. The other machines hovered in the air, bending space in front of them to stop the blast. They remained this way for several minutes, holding back the cold wind that was not wind, until the shockwave finally died and the air grew still.

They were motionless for a brief, peaceful moment, then one by one they fell from the sky, their frozen bodies shattering and imploding on the frost-dusted prairie. Malachite recited a sutra; it would be eons before he would see them again. Smoke wafted from the blackened armor of his back as he placed the engineer on her feet. She looked up, resolute and strong even now, and nodded. It’s finished, she thought to him.

Perhaps not, he thought. A warm breeze came from the south, seeking to fill the starry void in the northern sky.

Alpine Lake (1:50) Still making soundscapes rather than actual...

Sun, 13 Jun 2010 00:42:00 -0700

Alpine Lake (1:50)

Still making soundscapes rather than actual songs. Not the most original combination of sounds, but I wanted to evoke the feeling of standing on the moonlit shore of a mountain lake just after sunset. Was pretty fun, actually!

Goddess and God

Wed, 09 Jun 2010 23:29:00 -0700

The young man rose to his feet, his eyes still fixed on the corpse of the slave trader. He hadn’t wished to kill the man, but violence redirected is still violence nonetheless. The young man had only changed the angle of the blow, and in a moment the slave trader had gutted himself with his own blade. The young man bowed and said a prayer.

The women locked inside the wagon looked at the young man, confused by him but hating him nonetheless. How could they not? They knew little of men save their brutality. He felt the sting of pity, made fierce by the knowledge that they had neither need nor desire for what little sympathy he could offer. Compassion or not, he was still a man.

The dull clank of armor from behind the wagon shook the thought from him. Had the trader more guards? His heart sank. He did not wish to end any more lives today. The young man approached the side of the wagon, never looking at the women inside. The shame would break his meditation.

He found himself locked in the sharpened gaze of a woman with hair the color of rust. Her eyes, moss-green and harder than a blacksmith’s hammer, dissected his every weakness with a fury the young man had never seen. He had fought with men three times her size, smashing houses and toppling trees in their rage, but she was the first worthy opponent he had ever seen.

Her body was covered in stained, battered plate armor from her neck to her feet. A bearskin cloak hung from her shoulders. The halberd in her right hand was many heads taller than she was, but she held it as though it were weightless. Her body was powerful, standing with a poise that was both violent and delicate. It occurred to the young man that she was extremely beautiful.

The halberd swung, stopping inches from the young man’s throat. He cursed himself for being so distracted.

When the young man did not flinch, the armored woman narrowed her eyes. The man wore only a gray tunic and leather sandals. He was defenseless, yet calm. She decided he was bluffing, and gestured toward the corpse at his feet.

“Where are my sisters who killed this man? Speak, or I’ll kill you as easily as they killed your brother.”

The young man laughed.

“Amused?” the woman said. “You are arrogant.”

“And you are quick to assume. Your sisters are still locked in their cages, and this was no brother of mine.”

The armored woman raised an eyebrow.

“He was weak,” said the young man. “Like most Shivans, or at least the ones you’re likely to find. He lashed out in anger when I offended his pride, and I can assure you that anyone who attacks me soon falls by their own hand.”

The woman turned to one of the angry faces looking out from the wagon. They exchanged a glance; a single look that held an entire conversation. She looked back at the man, her halberd now loose in her hand.

“You’d kill your own kind, then?”

“He was not my kind. Worshiping a male god does not make a man, and there are few men among Shivans. The majority are boys, at best. Dogs at worst. They don’t understand what it means to be a man any more than you do.”

The young man’s indignation took the armored woman by surprise. He exhaled, locked eyes with her again.

“Though I have also found precious few women among Devites.”

The halberd came back up, touched his neck.

“You have no right to say that.”

“Don’t I?” said the man. “I’m not the first to wish to mend the divide between Shiva and Devi, yet others like me have been cut down by your warriors just as you intend to slay me here. Only angry little girls would be so quick to silence harmony.”

“Choose your words carefully, then,” said the armored woman. “What would a woman do differently?”

“Oh, she would laugh…”

The woman lowered her weapon, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

In Which Food is Love

Wed, 09 Jun 2010 00:48:00 -0700

I neglected my blogging responsibilities over the weekend. Gotta work on not letting this happen in the future, but first I gotta work on being able to focus on my daily responsibilities when my mind is fully preoccupied with the magnetic presence of another human being whose very existence is an effortless validation of every notion that I’ve held about the world since childhood, but was told were unreasonable and foolishly idealistic by cynical wet blankets with the nerve to call themselves “adults.”

“HEY GEORGE WHO’S THIS PERSON YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT ALL THE TIME WHAT WITH YOUR CRAZY HYSTERICS ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER I HAVEN’T THE SLIGHTEST CLUE WHO SHE IS WINKING SMILEY FACE”

What an excellent question, you of the decrepit punctuation! And I shall now attempt to explain it to you through the use of my favorite Overused Personal Writing Crutch: The Hilariously Inept Food Analogy (second only to Extreme Semicolon Usage in my writer’s toolbox).

Imagine for a moment that you’ve never tasted a filet mignon in your life. In fact, imagine that you can’t even be sure they exist. This particular delicacy is mythical to you. You’ve never seen one, nor any evidence of one. But this one time, when you were a child, you saw a movie that had a filet mignon in it. It was perfect. It was the greatest meal ever conceived by the dreams of mankind. But it was just a movie.

“Silly boy,” the grownups said. “You are watching a fiction! Cast thy eyes down from the clouds, dear child, and wallow in the collectively sanctioned nutritional negligence that our society has so graciously prepared for your kind.”

You read a book once that was all about filet mignon. The person who wrote the book even claimed to have had one before! You loved this book. It made you look forward to the day when you found one of your own.

“Stupid boy,” the grownups said. “This book is rubbish! Everyone knows there’s no such thing. Turn your back on these juvenile fantasies and join us in the real world where everything tastes mild and predictable.”

One day, when you were a little older, one of your friends gave you a stale cheeseburger from a chain restaurant. “Try it!” she said, sincerity and treachery fighting for real estate upon her brow. “I know what this looks like, but it’s actually a filet mignon. Honest!”

You were young. You didn’t know any better. Perhaps, you thought, they just look different in real life. You bit into the thing as her smile changed into a rictus of wanton glee.

“Wretched boy,” the harlequin said. “There is no filet mignon in this world! No one has the will or the strength to make one. You are stupid and weak for believing in them. I hope I have taught you not to expect anything more than what I have given you.”

The harlequin vanished in a puff of mesquite smoke. You wandered on, hungry, daring not to hope again. The disappointment of those lofty expectations was far greater than you had anticipated. This mythical food meant more to you than you had first believed. Best not to take any more chances.

You found a chain restaurant. When they offered you a cheeseburger, you accepted. It wasn’t a bad cheeseburger, all things considered. But with each bite you began to realize that you didn’t even like cheeseburgers. The staff hovered over your shoulder, begging you to enjoy the thing, but you couldn’t. It didn’t matter to you. But they pressured you, insisted on a hefty tip for even bringing you a burger at all. You left some cash on the table and ran out.

“Evil boy,” they said. “You should have been grateful for this meal when you had the chance! This is the best you will ever get, and you’ve ruined it all. We’ll find you some day, and we’ll make you pay for all the other customers too.”

You ran into the night, confused. How could you have known what to expect? It occurred to you that you’d forgotten what a filet mignon even looked like. Maybe you’d better just keep running and forget about the whole thing. At least you were moving now.

Up ahead, you saw another restaurant. Looked like a steakhouse. Filled with hope, you rushed inside, grabbed a table and pointed at something on the menu. The waitress brought you a vegan seitan filet. Not knowing what to expect - and barely expecting anything, for that matter - you took a single hesitant bite. It tasted a little funny, but at least it wasn’t another greasy burger. At this point, you were so desperate that you began to think this might be the real deal. Still didn’t taste quite right, though.

The waitress returned, and you asked about the thing in front of you. It’s okay, you said, but it’s not really what you expected. She said that it was exactly what you wanted. Couldn’t you tell? Maybe you just weren’t ready for it yet. Maybe you had to learn to enjoy it.

You sat there and tried to eat it. Each bite had less flavor than the one before it. After a while you were just eating for the sake of having something to do. The whole thing made you sick. In truth, this grotesque substitute had been poisoned, but you still felt like a fool for not enjoying it as you were told. The waitress took your half-empty plate.

“Sad boy,” she said. “Maybe you’re just not good enough to appreciate this delicacy. I’m going to give your leftovers to someone else before they get cold. It doesn’t matter; he’s been stealing bites of your meal the whole time anyway.”

You walked outside and sat on the curb. No one seemed to know what a filet mignon was supposed to be. No one seemed to care. Even you could barely remember why you ever wanted one. You’d run too far; the whole idea was so distant it hardly seemed worth it. Maybe you’d been childish after all.

“Screw it,” you said. “I don’t need this. I have better things to do than obsess over mythical foods that I’ll never be able to find. Better to just forget that any of this ever happened.”

So now you walk on, ignoring the restaurants and the diners as you pass them by. You feel the sun on your face, the breeze at your back, the ground beneath your stride. Maybe this is all you really need. Once in a while, you still contemplate what a filet mignon might actually taste like, but you always let the thought drift away. Who has time for these fantasies anymore?

One evening, you see a light behind the trees at your side, just off the main road. A narrow driveway weaves from the street toward a cottage nestled in a clearing, the pinpoint glow of candles visible as drops of copper in its windows. A hand-lettered sign swings from a wrought iron post, French calligraphy glistening in the light of the driveway lanterns. You realize, slowly, that you are hungry. You know also that you cannot afford another disappointment. But something in your heart - something you thought long buried - leaps at the sight of this tiny restaurant.

You pick your way along the driveway slowly, checking the parking lot for other cars. Empty. You approach the door, wondering if the place is even open at all.

The restaurant is empty. Candles wink on every table. The place smells of basil and thyme. There is one waitress. She leads you to your seat, pours you a glass of water, and tells you that today’s special is filet mignon. Your throat tightens. You ask for a minute to look at the menu first.

Everything here seems so perfect. The bread is warm. The menu bears the mark of an exquisite palate. You could enjoy anything in this place.

But they have filet mignon tonight.

You are bewildered. Is this place even real? Have you conjured it purely out of wishful thinking? Could you even recognize a filet mignon if you found one? Something tugs at you. What about the adventure? What about the risk? What is life if I cannot try just one more time? The waitress returns.

“Have you decided?”

You stammer the words. You hope that she understands. She smiles and strides purposefully into the kitchen, switching aprons and pulling a cutting board from the shelf. This place is hers alone, and she is the chef.

The wait is nerve-wracking. You are unaware of the passage of time, tapping your foot and rolling the tablecloth between your fingers as a lump rises in your throat. If this is to be another lie, the cut will be deep indeed.

The woman places the plate in front of you. You didn’t even hear her approach. A filet mignon rests on the table, looking every bit like you imagined. Despite your reluctance, you cut a small piece and take one quick glance at the woman. She is smiling, her eyebrows raised in anticipation, eager to know what you think of her handiwork. Closing your eyes, you take a bite.

Perfection.

All the memories of everything you ever wanted come flooding back. Now, though, they are but shadows next to the reality of what you’ve found. This is more than what you’ve been searching for. This is the best thing you’ve ever tasted. You are overwhelmed. You turn to the woman, who is laughing. You struggle to tell her how incredible it is. It’s a masterpiece. It’s perfect. But you can’t say much with your mouth full. She nods and stifles another laugh.

“Silly boy,” she says. “This is just the way it is here! There’s no need to lavish me with praise. I just do things this way because it makes me happy. But you’re very sweet to say so.”

You are not being sweet, you tell her. You are only telling the truth. She laughs again, pure and undaunted. You join in the laughter this time, your voices the only sounds in the forest, you and this incredible woman alone in a candlelit cottage, far from the road that led you from one lie to the next until you thought you’d never find what you wanted.

The truth is, you’d been right all along.

(I’m going to end this here, fully aware that I’ve just compared the love of my life to a piece of meat, and hope that I’ve somehow managed to convey even the tiniest symbolic representation of what this woman means to me.)

Byzantium After the End

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 20:42:00 -0700

It never stops raining on the upper levels of Umut Sehir. The steel-reinforced asphalt flickers with wetness under the low ceiling of the sky. Little remains of the city below, known by many names over the tired, wind-beaten centuries since the first of our many lapses in judgment.

There had been no apocalypse; no cataclysmic event to mark the dawn of a new age, or even the end of the last. There was only the slow, deliberate dismantling of everything we had taken eons to achieve. We lay still and let the blood drain from Man.

The machines have been gone for decades, or longer. We have done what we could in their absence, but our faith has worn thin. Without their guidance, most of us drifted away from the future, returned to our petty obsessions while the last of our race dwindled to mere millions. It was myopia that brought us to the edge, and despair that keeps us from climbing back.

Sometimes, when it gets cold, the clouds part for a few days. It’s the only time I can see the stars. The sight fills me with a feeble hope, like the clicking of a key in a lock. The inky streak of the galaxy crosses the sky - a rainbow after a storm - but the relief is fleeting. The clouds return, trapping the heat. The door slams shut. Earth has become a prison.

What little technology we have is borrowed and ancient. A hydroponic greenhouse here, a Hawking battery there. But with the machines gone, only a few remain who remember how to maintain them. Most of the power plants have broken down or imploded. The hulks of unfinished starships lie rusting in the waist-deep waters of the shrinking Marmara.

When the machines left, we swore to follow them. They had promised to lay a path for us, just as the Sculptor had left one for them (I still think of him sometimes). I’m sure they’ve honored their promise, somewhere just out of reach. Bodhisattvas never break their word.

Back then, we could see the stars. Back then, we were ready. I was to lead the fleet that carried us to the first stepping stone. But the others succumbed to fear and abandonment. We are alone now, they said. We have no guarantees. We’ll all die out there in hard vacuum. I guess the only difference now is that our suffering has been prolonged.

It makes me feel old, but surrender is a forbidden luxury. Time has worn me smooth, like a polished stone. I’ll find the path if it takes me centuries, and I’ll follow it to the very end. It is only the waiting that hurts.

There are so few of us left. And it never stops raining.

Dead of Night

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 00:18:00 -0700

Beautiful thunderstorm tonight. Sky was low and heavy, green-gray with a restrained fury that only Mother Nature can manage. I was very nearly struck by lightning, actually. A single bolt hit one of the lampposts in the parking lot about twenty yards off, leaving my ears ringing for several minutes.

I came home a little after midnight to find that the power in my neighborhood had gone out. It’s come back on, but my cable is still fried so I’m using my fancypants smartphone to connect my laptop to the interblag.

Having the power out at 1:00 in the morning made me realize just how long it’s been since I’ve seen a legitimate night sky. It never gets dark in Orlando; there’s too much light pollution. But with the streetlights out, I remembered just how much I love nighttime. I broke out my Surefire and my Canon T2i and took a stroll through the darkness.

Neighboring districts still created a lot of glow near the horizon, but my immediate surroundings were dark, just barely underlit by the moon through the muggy haze. Torn leaves and tree branches lay scattered here and there, ripped to pieces by wind and hailstones the size of grapes. The light reminded me of early morning on the moraines of Ruth Mountain in the North Cascades when I was a teenager. I found myself pining for the alien landscapes of high altitude once more, and my thoughts were drawn to someone I love, who will soon know that alpine longing as intimately as I do (hey, you’d better get used to how often I think about her).

Then the lights came back on, and the banality of central Florida returned. It was a brief, wistful reminder of where I truly belong, and it’s only a matter of time before I return to the mountains that made me what I am.