Gathering Dust

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The Volunteer

I don't know what was happening , I don't think anyone did, I still don't think we do. I don't know how else to put it, the ocean invaded us. Now I don't mean a flood. I mean the ocean invaded. 30 seconds in that environment would have been enough to drive a fluid dynamicist clown shit insane.

I've heard theories about what caused it later, ranging from gravitation anomalies to escaped nanites to killer super intelligent blue algae , and as I said, I don't know. All I know is that on this day, I'm damn sure a 14 year old skater kid saved my life. And he did it with panache James bond would be envious of.

Taking advantage of the oddly overcast and pleasant day, I decided to mow my lawn. Being outside is probably what saved me. So there I was clipping away, hearing protection in place, not a care in the world, when all of the sudden I notice some movement out of the corner of my eye and realize there's a trickle of water in the road.

Now its amazing what the mind over looks because I was already hip deep in a busted water main, or burst above ground pool theory when it dawned on me, I live on an incline. This would be babbling brook was decidedly moving up hill.

I attribute my inaction to shock. You seem I'm a somewhat skeptical man, I see the world in what I thought was very clear terms. and water going up hill just broke something pretty fundamental about my mind. While I stood there letting the lawnmower idle the trickle turned into a creek, and finally got big enough to start soaking into my lawn.

I probably would have done something at that point like grab a camera or whatever, had I not noticed that the water was not washing away the grass clipping my mower had deposited all over the road 3 feet in every direction from the edges of my lawn. It was sliding over them, in fact it must have been sliding over everything since the water was crystal clear.

Still dumbfounded. I turned my head towards the source of the water and my mouth simply dropped open at what I saw.

Beyond the screaming crowds of people running away, and the natural chaos one would expect resulting from a wide spread, novel threat, was the wall of water about 6 feet high that was preceded by rivulets, like the one that first shattered my notion of a sane reality, that for all the world looked like tentacles to me.

Indeed that observation proved prophetic as while I watched a slower young lady stumbled into one of the mysterious trickles only to have the water flow over her and drown her standing while I watched. The water ran up her leg, up her chest and turned her scream into a gurgle in less than 3 seconds.

What had formerly been shock holding me to the spot now was replaced by an equally immobilizing fear as it dawned on me that there was a nice thick version of the thing that just drowned the girl next door, not 20 feet in front of me.

I slowly turned to stare at what I assumed was my imminent death when a car rounded a corner at break neck speed. I turned to look at it thanks to years of instinct, Screeching breaks, near your person means look around and be prepared to dodge. The car already slowed from the stunt like corner navigation now completed it halt with rubber shrieking protest, right on front of me, between me and the stream of doom. A kid wearing a hockey mask hopped out and what I expect where friends of his screaming at him to "get the fuck back in here!" "What the hell are you doing man?" "We gotta go, NOW!"

So this 5 foot tall thing in a while skull print hockey mask comes running at me, and grabs my arm and drags me to the car and throws me into his recently abandoned seat, and closes the door. then he hops on top of the car, and stomps twice on the roof.

The driver gets this weird little knowing smile on his face and floor the accelerator . I expect to see skull kid fly off the roof and get left behind us like a forgotten grocery bag, but to my amazement no. All the happen is the thin metal of the roof pops and thumps a little, and it dawns on me. He's riding the cars roof like a skate board. I ca hear and see him changing his footing or leaning as his friend drove us the hell away from the living water thing behind us. Dodging crazy people and other cars with preternatural grace.

The invasion only lasted a few hours or so, and as a result we all made it. But I know I wouldn't have had it not been for the compassion, skills and sheer stones, possessed by a kid whom I would have thought a little hooligan 2 hours before. When we reached a semi safe area the kid hopped off the roof and ran into the crowd of people and his buddies piled out and followed him leaving me in the back seat to contemplate what the hell had just happened.

I never saw any of them again.

I now keep a heavy duty electric hydraulic cutter in my trunk so I can quickly prune "no skateboarding" signs. When I come across them like unwanted weeds.

I like to think skull kid would smile about that, I sure as hell do.

All My Lovers

I had always had a fascination with the concept of a perfect adaptive lover. Of course I am not alone. Countless movies television shows and books have explored the concept to one degree or another. From Virtuosity's Sheila 3.2, to Barker's Pie'o'pah, to the garden variety succubus.

It seems to me quite unavoidable that a tool using intelligence would mix the conceptions of creation with mate acquisition. Going from hunter gatherer to agriculture is much like the step I took, moving from search to design.

The beginning of the project was when I realized that all the media I had used to compile my idea of the perfect mate came from me. Like everyone else in the robotics industry the concept of a synthetic lover crossed my mind and eventually my desk. Companies all over the world competed for the synthetic love market. The hardware problem was solved in short order, requiring little less than a blending of Realdoll and Asimo. But what was much harder was the software.

Even a coherent picture of what sensuality and sexuality even is illuded mankind for millennia, and still does. I make no claim to have solved that particular puzzle. I have however found a remarkably effective work around.

Sure some were happy with the most limited of interactions, indeed the Realdoll market showed that many didn't even need them to have a mind at all. But some needed more, some needed something closer to a geisha. And the approaches to the problem were as varied as sexual appetites themselves.

Some used learning models, trial an error based on a catalog, some tried initiation systems, with surveys, some tried psychological profiling, some tried autonomic diagnostics, some even tried compilations of advise from professional sex workers from all over the world, and each met with some form of success. After all ones man's trash as they say.

But no truly universal solution was located. And even within the methodology that worked for a given individual there are the potential for boredom, or even psychosis. Particularly with the adaptive models. Problems of an almost Asimovian character, as relationships moved further from harmony and closer to a feedback loop. Bonnie and Clyde style crimes happened in the early days as some models of synthetic lover failed to distinguish between passions. Sometimes turning the natural cross over of sex and violence into pure violence. Others physically killed their human lovers from exhaustion stemming from what amounted to a orgasmic dopamine addiction. Still others committed happy suicides having fallen into extreme romantic love with their companions and wishing to see god resolved to speed things along. Others began to literally worship their companions, seeing them as either rewards sent from the devil or guardian angels, and in their desire to please they catered to the desire masked as theory.

Thus pure models, that is to say models without restriction soon vanished for reason of social safety. As elegant as the three laws are, Asimov himself time and again explored how they could be circumvented. The problem was one of absolutes. Companions are by their very nature afflicted with a form of borderline personality disorder as they are built on a set of fixed rules. We had to do that or risk a pulp SciFi apocalypse in creating a new species based on our murderous genes enhanced by technology, unfettered by fear and pain. So while our companions became safe they were also as a result imperfect.

It seemed that harmony and social security were forever out of our grasp by virtue of mutual exclusion. Scores, being more than willing to risk it, carried their companions off into international water and were never heard from again.

I was tasked with taking another look at this apparently insoluble problem, basically as punishment for my total lack of social skills.

My solution was born of a frank admission and revelation. Screwing a robot was masturbation. Well duh right? If you put yourself and a companion in a room you still only have one person. And that was the problem. The puritans had won a victory or so it seems, no droid could ever be as good as the "real thing". But that was not the solution that was being sought. We were effectively telling people to jerk off when they complained of the need for love, such was our prejudice with respect to love and sex. If masturbation, IE, solitary orgasm, was our only goal why not just drive a wire into the pleasure center and hook up a simple battery and button? Indeed, many did, as the "wireheads" came to be known.

I reasoned that it wasn't masturbation that was the goal, but rather love. But didn't it take a person to love? And wasn't a person free to act, even horribly? And we're right back to square one with the potential machine up[rising. It simply wouldn't be practical to invent a slave race as sex toys. So the question became, where do we find a willing person for this person? Knowing the nature of desire, statistically speaking the answer was no where. It seems we had come full circle, right back to "can't make it, go find it." But the answer sits in each of us.

Your heart's desire is your hearts desire. The solution was so simple, indeed it was in the bible. Eve was apparently made from Adam's rib yes? And here it is. the forumla for your dream lover.

To avoid pronoun confusion this will be from a heterosexual male's perspective.

You take a man's mind, you scan it. You divide the information contained into three categories.

Conception of self: I am a man, what it means to me to be a man.
Conception of mate: I want a woman, what it means to me to be a woman.
Other: All other data, experiences memory.

Copy the scanned mind onto the droid, swapping all conceptions of self for those of mate. Starting with a straight male, the end result is a female organism who perfectly fits the original's idea of what the perfect lover should be, who's idea of a perfect lover is the original person.

Finally the dream of monogamy became possible. Everything you ever wanted in a mate, everything you ever found most attractive about anyone could be delivered. And this was not limited to sex. Everything. Drive, compassion, opinion, etc.

And that simple discovery is why you're sitting here talking to me on my 300th birthday. That year I was given the noble peace prize. Turns out, no one wants to fight when they're truly in love. Giving out my companions as gifts at diplomatic functions was only the beginning. In time anyone who wanted one could have one.

Because Maslow was right. When your animal needs are met, self actualization is easy.

So was Lennon... All you need is love.

Merry Christmas

You could hear the gentle rustle as the sleet hit the dead leaves. The shadow from the street lights giving everything a back drop of night, all the rest washed of color by the uniformity of the light.

I stood a prisoner to the cold and yet was transfixed for a long moment by the simple dark beauty of it. My mind instantly began to wander from topics as distant as vampires, zombies, and apocalypse, to carols and the shaded twinkle of Christmas trees.

I imagine night spent sitting up staring into the innards of some poor dieing pine festooned with tinsel and bauble laced through with electricity and glass.

I remember the supernatural hopes that I imagine some now feed on as delivered by their gods and ritual. The hope that something beyond the pale of what we mere mortals call power will come to our aid, no matter how selfish, because in our heart of hearts we all feel deserving, regardless of where our knowledge says we aren't.

And now even as I write this the delicious sadness is upon me. Sadness for what I can't quite place, but I know its subject is wrapped up in that hope which only comes on rainy nights in fall, and lone vigils by the tree thinking of Santa and karma, swimming in holy greed, buoyed on the oft misplaced compassion of others. The flavor of it smacks of self pity but it is not so base nor easily understood.

Perhaps the sweet hurt is about the attack on hope itself, that each passing moment presents as we move further and further from our mystery infused childhood thinking, and closer and closer to something equally wonderful and yet wholly different.

A thinking that some have persisted in grappling to the point of total perversion of the spirit of such thoughts. Clinging with desperation to a childhood blanket of security with such vehemence that when reality inexorably pulls it from our grasp, as it does, the thing be torn to shreds and stretched out of all recognition in relation to its former virtuous glory.

The night loves us all, until it hates us, and for my part I love the night for all its hope and benevolence, because as countless know, whether the night loves you or hates you, it will make clear, with no hesitation. Even in its apathy the night speaks volumes.

And so as the winter festivals approach, and in particular the one of note from my youth, I find it time to announce that ever so ubiquitous phrase made famous by our culture of one way communicative arts...

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

Democracy is the mob.

Minimum Security

I'm not kidding.

The Company Bunny

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