The Plight of Mongo

Deborah Harris confronted me today in the student union cafeteria. With her shrill , nasally voice she berated me with insults and accusations.

She had been turned down for the Hawking Grant. The very grant I had been awarded yesterday.

Dr. Harris is an expert in contained habitat Botany, agriculture, and low gravity cultivation. Her work was the key to the colonial ships communal farms and oxygen generation, as well as the great domed ecosystems on Mars and the Moon.

Her day however, had come and gone. Mine had now arrived. I pleaded my case to her, that obviously the Hawking Institute at Oxford had come to the same conclusion. She would not listen to me. The damnable woman began to raise her voice. She had to nerve to tell me that her work was only beginning, that it was the key to the permanent colonization of the planets and moons, that it was the key to the complete survival of the human race. A bit much. She continued to rant, how we would be nothing without food and air, and her technology and theories would free man from any threat.

I tried to explain that I appreciated that, and that I agreed, for long, interstellar multi-generational interstellar voyages, her technology, advancements, and theories were priceless. I tried to explain that with my work, those trips would not be necessary. If I could just open a gateway, a wormhole to a point in space, the ships could pop out at the other end of the galaxy instantaneously. I do not understand why she then retorted.

“You have no concept of should Anton, only can.”

I have no idea what she was so concerned about. I began to question it when she blasted me again.

“You are like a kid driving with the headlights off. Launching a rocket with no trajectory. You have no idea where you are going to open your little hole too. You risk all of us to prove your genius. No one doubts your genius Anton, but you need to plan this further.”

Well I took this personally. She told me that she was at my presentation before the alumni. That after the demonstration, when i had created a miniature wormhole from the podium on the stage connected to the balcony. I then folded a paper airplane, and tossed it into the wavering shimmer of distorted light. When it emerged from the matching distortion that hovered from above the balcony I knew my future was set.

What did it matter that I do not know the nature of what is inside the wormhole. The science tells me it is nothing, a fold in space, where two spots appear as one. I push the energy to the right level, the other side of the wormhole is farther away. She has had enough, and swears to me that she would bring this up to the trustees and the university President.

I swear, that woman will complain herself out of her richly deserved Nobel.

¹Pulled from the wreckage of his MIT laboratory.
₂ T-minus 62 days from activation of wormhole device.

As I drifted away from Earth, my sails capturing the gusts of solar wind, I thought of those left behind. I was pained with the guilt. I kenw, that in the end, it was I who was responsible.

I was sure I would never know the total extent of my mistake; the full price of my arrogance that was being paid with the blood and suffering of the people of Earth, I would never know how many had died, how many would soon join them in death. At that time, cowardice protected me from that truth, propelling my escape and into this floating tin can.

That cowardice protected me from reality, it could not prevent my mind from speculating. My speculation produced horrific visions of blasted cities, subjugated peoples, piles of corpses left to rot, and the established new rulers of Earth, the Ovarox basking in their glory. The hive mind conquistadors from an unknown galaxy, the force I had allowed to reach my home, my planet, through the shear blind force of my ego.

Curiosity is said to kill the cat. In this case, curiosity probably spared the cats. Curiosity had killed mankind. Curiosity had killed my sweet Ophelia.

Loss and guilt filled my being and I vomited up the tea colored nutrient broth supplied by my floating prison of a spaceship. Most made it to the waste system spout, but enough splashed into the interior. The scent forced another heave. It would be days before the air scrubber would be able to filter out the stench.

Hello to my very few readers.

I have decided to begin writing a short / medium sci-fi story, published as a serial, here on my blog.

The Working title is “Gateway of Doom”. Yeah, full of cheese, bad sci-fi monsters, over the top characters, and huge plot devices. I expect that the SyFy channel will be optioning the rights by the time I finish. That bad.

Expect the first installment later today, comments will be enabled, I hope for heckling, cheering, and trash talk.

Enjoy!

Schrodinger’s Cat Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
After reading the Illuminatus Trilogy, I was really anticipating this novel. Robert Anton Wilson’s high mind style of writing is enjoyable, if a bit fractured. I really had high hopes.

This book fell kind of flat however, as Mr. Wilson attempts to visualize the concept of the multiverse my creating different versions of each of his characters, many of whom first appeared in the Illuminatus. However what the author does not do is adhere to any kind of real plot, and just when you think you might have a bit of a narrative or the resemblance of a coherent story he changes the world again.

The point of the book is to show you how everything you do or do not do, is inversely done or not done in a connected universe. I believe the author is also trying to convince us that we are all Schrodinger’s cat, living in a state that is neither living or dead, up until the moment we are observed, upon observation we will either die or live.

However, I could not stop reading this book, as the vivid imagination of Wilson’s is enticing and extremely visual. Having read the Illuminatus first, I recognized the characters, and how he was attempting to show the variations based on quantum variability.

A good read overall, but not nearly the quality of his first Trilogy.

View all my reviews >>

Has anyone ever told you to make time for something?  Or have you promised yourself or other that you would make time for something?  Sure, what is meant by this overused cliche’ is to simply fit something into your daily routine.  However, the simple concept of “making time” bugs the crap out of me.

Time is not a material, it has no corporeal existence.  Most of what we simple earth creatures consider time is really just a measurement of the moon’s orbit.  Thanks to our good friend Albert, we understand that there are forces in this universe that can alter our perception of time, and even alter time itself.

Now consider what would happen if time could actually be created.  If you could step into a chem lab and whip up a fresh batch of seconds, minutes, hours or even days.  Time that could be contained, consumed, and poof.  A new hour with no plans.  Would it change time for everyone?  Or could it just contain you inside a bubble of your own time, only to catch you up with the rest of the world.  Imagine, a bottle of liquid time.  I think it would look like mercury, because liquid mercury looks cool.

Dude, you just spilled like three hours.

So you drink this bottle of liquid time, at say 3pm.  You got about your business, only everyone else seems frozen.  And then the hour runs out, and the world starts back up for you at 3pm.  Only the things you worked with had changed.  Or, imagine that others who were drinking the liquid time at the same time were there with you until you dropped out of the bottled time space into real time.

Entire groups of people would age by years in what seemed like days.  However, research to ease the pain of aging could be done in the bottled time space.  Vehicles would pop in and out of traffic, causing massive accidents.  Some people would never return from bottled time.  One day they would buy years of the silver magic drought,  and then appear the next second ancient and dying.

There you go, making time will create massive car accidents, people disappearing and reappearing as withered old crones, and the only science that would be making progress would be to keep people around for longer.  Something we really don’t need.

So the next time you are asked to make time for something, or promise yourself to make time for someone, understand the consequences.  Ask them if they really want all those people to die, and all those old people taking Viagra and living on social security for 100yrs.

Those assholes.