Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY
IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I
generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family
rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to
write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration
(quote, website, podcast, etc) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These
will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate,
test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything
comes of them.
Change of pace for a bit – I’m going to
look at elements of EXTREMELY popular SF, F, and H; break them apart and use
each element as a jumping of point for a story idea…
Popular Science
Fiction Story/Series: Dune
SF Trope: Artificial
Intelligence is a “crap shoot”
Current Event: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2014/01/the-new-york-times-artificial-intelligence-hype-machine.html
Logan Andrist
called out after Gichigami, the Ojibwe man, “Wait!”
Nkokoyanga
Pomodimo spun on him and knocked him down.
“What’d you do
that for?” Logan exclaimed, scrambled to his feet, fists at his sides.
“You’re
surrendering everything we’ve worked for.”
“‘We’, who?
We’re supposed to be for the planet!” Logan said.
“We already are!
Aren’t you? I sure am,” Nkokoyanga said.
“I am – but who’s
to say that our way is the only way? How does dumping more iron into a lake
that already has tons of iron sunken on its floor,” he drew a shaky breath, “How
is that going to help?”
“It will! You
know the science. I don’t need to sketch it out for you. It’s a proven
methodology. We’ve been trained...”
“Trained in
what? The plans of a single group of people. What if there are other ways to
approach the recovery of Lake Superior? What if what we’re doing is wrong?”
“You’re just
thinking of this now?”
“We’ve never met
Gichigami before now.” He scowled, stared at her for a bit, then said, “It
doesn’t bother you that in all the classwork we’ve done; all of the ways we’re
out to change the world; that we’ve never talked about more than one way of
doing this? ‘Dump iron filings and kill the spiny water fleas and the
holopedium!’ Hasn’t anyone ever thought of another way? Are there any other
ways?”
“We’re not smart
enough to know that,” Nkokoyanga said.
“So you’re
stupid?” Logan fired back.
She folded her
arms over her chest, lifting up her breasts slightly. Logan squinted as she
said, “No more stupid than you.”
“Then I accept
that I’m stupid. Gichigami lives here! He looks out over Superior every day. He’s
named after the lake!”
She shook her
head, saying, “So someone tells you they’re named after a lake and then mutters
some hocus-pocus and you’re ready to give up science and follow them?”
“If they offer a
proven alternative to what’s already being done.” He paused. “How long has EGov
been dumping iron into Lake Superior?”
Nkokoyanga
shrugged, but turned away. “We’re continuing work begun in the late 2020’s.”
“Has the lake
changed since then?”
“I’d have to
review the data.”
He tossed her
his scanner and said, “There. Review the data. There aren’t any other files
under Lake Superior reclamation. This is all they’ve been doing. Check the
dates – then cross reference and let me know if the original phytoplankton has
made a comeback.”
While she
worked, she said, “Thirty years isn’t a very long time for something this big
to take effect, Logan! It make take centuries for us to rebalance the lake.”
She lifted the scanner and read. A few moments later, she looked up, “There’s
been no statistically significant change in the Holopedium gibberum population in the years
since iron fertilization began thirty-eight years ago.”
“‘No
change’,” he echoed. “You’d think there might be some fluctuation, don’t you?
You’d think after nearly forty years the domeheads down in MSP Vertical would
have tweaked the process or added another or something, don’t you?”
He
lips had thinned to near invisibility. Then she thumbed off the scanner, handed
it to him and said, “I’ll listen. That’s it. Listen. I will not abandon a
methodology that has a solid research foundation and has proven effective in
the past for some Noble Savage mumbo-jumbo…”
Names: ♀ Popular African American name,
Australian Capital Territory, Common African American last name; ♂ Popular American name, Brazil; Ojibwe
name of Lake Superior
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