For some reason known only to the eblogger idiots, they chose to tell me that my blog didn't satisfy them in its design and urged me to "upgrade" to a better design -- because for whatever reason, they thought that I don't know what I want and that they DO.
So my blog has currently been messed up by some idiotic "technogeek teenager".
I'll get it back to what I wanted as soon as I can...
April 5, 2013
Eblogger Messed Me Up
Guy Stewart is a husband; father, father-in-law, grandfather, and retired teacher/school counselor who maintains POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS offering his writing up for comment. His new novel, MARTIAN HOLIDAY will be released on December 23, 2025 and takes place in a world 500 years in the future of his first novel, EMERALD OF EARTH (YA/MS, 2024! He also writes on other worlds that have touched his life: GUYS GOTTA TALK ABOUT DIABETES, ALZHEIMERS; BREAST CANCER. He has 70+ publications in Analog, Cast of Wonders, Shoreline of Infinity, Cricket, Stupefying Stories, Nanoism, an essay in The Writer, and has created experiments for episodes of the PBS science shows Newton’s Apple, and The New Explorers—for which he became the Science Museum of Minnesota’s Teacher of the Year in 1997. Really.
April 4, 2013
STEAMPUNK MONKEY #11
The idea for this starts with a story I tried to write about a thieving monkey who took keys and used them to unlock its cage. That was it. The story was called BRIGHT FLASH THE MONKEY’S PAWS. It was my third or fourth attempt at writing a picture book – and it was really bad. With the advent of the genre of steampunk, I started rethinking the story. Here it is – OK, just realized that I wrote something entirely different for #5 than I thought I did. So…this is going to be where the story SHOULD have gone. If you don’t mind, ignore #6 above!
Clementine knew she would sneeze.
She sneezed at dogs and cats. She wheezed at birds and fish. Frogs were no good. Turtles were bad.
She said, “Ah...”
The bird’s eyes got big, the cat held its breath, the fish stopped its moving around.
The frog froze in place, the turtle lay in the sun. The steam monkey’s nose shot steam into the warm, sunny air .
Guy Stewart is a husband; father, father-in-law, grandfather, and retired teacher/school counselor who maintains POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS offering his writing up for comment. His new novel, MARTIAN HOLIDAY will be released on December 23, 2025 and takes place in a world 500 years in the future of his first novel, EMERALD OF EARTH (YA/MS, 2024! He also writes on other worlds that have touched his life: GUYS GOTTA TALK ABOUT DIABETES, ALZHEIMERS; BREAST CANCER. He has 70+ publications in Analog, Cast of Wonders, Shoreline of Infinity, Cricket, Stupefying Stories, Nanoism, an essay in The Writer, and has created experiments for episodes of the PBS science shows Newton’s Apple, and The New Explorers—for which he became the Science Museum of Minnesota’s Teacher of the Year in 1997. Really.
April 2, 2013
IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 106
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.
H Trope: Above Good and Evil (objectives are more valuable than meaningless considerations of good and evil)
Current Event: “Swat Sociopaths? I came up with the idea because I thought it would be useful for sociopaths to be able to speak to one another. I thought that I would like to meet other like-minded people, but there is absolutely no way to do that in general life. Thus, an anonymous forum of sorts seemed the best way to go about it.” (http://daily.swarthmore.edu/2013/03/20/qa-with-founder-of-new-anonymous-group-swat-sociopaths/)
Niya Ouellet stared at the email. The minute she’d seen the advertisement on the UofM Confessions wall, she’d been captured, bound, and gagged. Her pulse pounded in her ears as her finger hovered over the SEND icon. A club for sociopath’s sounded weird to her.
It also sounded perfect. All she needed was to get together with others who thought like her and together they could get rid of the people who were so jealous of her – and others like her who were so gifted and talented.
She sent it.
Mehdi Claes stared at his computer screen. The Dean of the Computer Science Department sat across from him, staring at a mirror screen. She said, “How many of these have you gotten so far?”
“Twelve,” said Mehdi.
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope.” Mehdi took a deep breath, held it, then let it out slowly. “It was a joke.”
“How many of these people do YOU think are joking?”
Mehdi pursed his lips. “I’m only a college freshman.”
“But you have a brain. You also had the sense to text me and have me come and look at these.” Professor Lenae touched her computer. If even one of these people is seriously a sociopath...”
“A what?”
“Sociopath.”
“What’s that?”
“They aren’t ‘its’, they’re ‘whos’. They have brains that compel them to certain behaviors.”
“Like what?”
“Sociopaths are charming, charismatic, spontaneous, intense, and are happy to betray people, threaten or harm others without giving it a second thought. They are also outrageous liars. They hate to lose anything; use their brainpower to deceive others; are entirely self-serving master wordsmiths; they never apologize; are delusional and literally believe that what they say becomes truth.”
“And there’s one of these here?”
Professor Lenae stared at him for some time before she said, “According to what you have here, there are twelve.” She paused, shook her head and added, “And they think you’re going to be their leader.”
Names: ♀Israel (Jewish), French Canadian ; ♂ Tunisia, Belgian
Guy Stewart is a husband; father, father-in-law, grandfather, and retired teacher/school counselor who maintains POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS offering his writing up for comment. His new novel, MARTIAN HOLIDAY will be released on December 23, 2025 and takes place in a world 500 years in the future of his first novel, EMERALD OF EARTH (YA/MS, 2024! He also writes on other worlds that have touched his life: GUYS GOTTA TALK ABOUT DIABETES, ALZHEIMERS; BREAST CANCER. He has 70+ publications in Analog, Cast of Wonders, Shoreline of Infinity, Cricket, Stupefying Stories, Nanoism, an essay in The Writer, and has created experiments for episodes of the PBS science shows Newton’s Apple, and The New Explorers—for which he became the Science Museum of Minnesota’s Teacher of the Year in 1997. Really.
March 28, 2013
Love In A Time Of Alien Invasion 1 (Reboot)
Try again:
When me and Kashayla kissed for the first time, there was fireworks. That would have been great except that the fireworks were real, they were in space, and they were mostly between the alien Kiiote and the even more alien Yown’Hoo.
Kashayla pulled away first, her eyes open. Nothing kills the mood like your girlfriend staring into your eyes from four centimeters away. She lifted her chin to the red and blue streaks in the sky and said, “There isn’t anything on the net about this.”
“You don’t read the right netnews,” I said. She was sort of irritating that way. She saw the world from only ten netnews sources which she checked only four or five times a day.
What can you find out about the real world from only ten points of view? I kept twenty-nine active links and got updates every half an hour. I said, “LunarEye saw all kinds of ship movement. Started yesterday.”
Kashayla pushed away from me and dropped with a thump on the park bench. We were in Spooner Park, not far from DownTown Minneapolis. The City had turned its lights out for the night, so we had a clear view of the eastern sky. It was easy to see the Twin Stars overhead now. One was a Yown’Hoo foldable plateship, the other was a Kiiote orbital den. She said, “When were you going to tell me?”
“I thought we talked about it? You don’t want to know...”
She snorted and started walking toward Dunwoody Boulevard. I ran to catch up with here. “Hey! Come on. We still have an hour before we absolutely have to be at the Dome!”
We weren’t supposed to be in Spooner Park. We were supposed to be meeting the other Triads in the old MetroDome. Me and Kashayla were in different Triads and while the Board didn’t care if we mixed up among ourselves, we were sure to get in trouble because we’d ditched our Kiiote and Yown’Hoo mates to have some alone time.
She said, “We need to be there, Oscar.”
I winced. Everyone else in our local branch of The Cooperative called me Car. She was the only one who used my real name. I let her ‘cause it sounded good in her mouth. I just didn’t want anyone else hanging around to hear it. She made it to Dunwoody and flagged down a bus. It hovered over the black surface of the CHEAPALIN road, on a magnetic cushion.
“Just wait!” I grabbed her.
I was looking up at her trying to catch my breath, thankful she’d thrown me so that I landed on the little strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street rather than on the hard concrete.
The bus driver – who was another woman – grinned down at me. Then she looked at Kashayla and said, “You want me to wait or let him walk?”
‘Shayla scowled at me and said, “You gonna grab me again?”
I managed to wheeze a, “No. Sorry,” as I lifted my hands from the ground.
“You better not.” She turned to the driver and said, “When’s the next bus?”
“An hour.”
‘Shayla nodded. “Would you mind waiting a minute while I peel him out of the grass?”
“No problem, Honey. I haven’t seen such a good show in weeks.” She shook her head, still grinning and muttered, “Young love.”
Me and ‘Shayla said at the same time, “We aren’t in love.” ‘Shayla reached down. I took her hand and scrambled to my feet. Triad members were trained in multiple forms of unarmed combat. I wouldn’t have been so easy to throw – if I hadn’t been distracted by how much I like her. I brushed myself off and we got on the bus and sat down. It slid forward like it was on ice.
“What did you mean?” ‘Shayla asked.
“I meant,” I stopped. More than likely we were heading for our old argument. We’d been having it since we were ten so I was pretty sure we weren’t going to resolve the issue right here. On the night the Alien Cold War all of a sudden became a Hot War, I said, “One thing we can agree on?”
The bus stopped again. Outside were two of the alien Kiiote and two of the even more alien Yown’Hoo.
Our mates. The bus driver looked back at us, then hard at ‘Shayla and said, “You know them?”
“Yeah. They were supposed to be with us, but we ditched them.”
The woman grunted, no longer amused and opened the door, lowering the ramp for the lumbering, llama-like Yown’Hoo.
‘Shayla looked at me and said, “What’s that?”
I lifted my chin toward our mates and said, “I’m scared. How about you?”
We locked gazes, then she sighed and slid closer to me. Leaning her head on my shoulder, she said, “I think that’s an awful powerful thing to have in common.” We pulled apart as our alien mates got on the bus and started talking in the mixed up language only Triads understood. Despite how much I liked ‘Shayla, I relaxed as we separated. I’d been with my mates since we were all born. They were my friends.
The last Yown’Hoo in walked past me and with one of its strong manipulating tentacles, smacked me in the arm and whistled, “Idiot!”
I slugged him back and said, “Snotugly!”
The Kiiote that crouched into the seat behind me poked me with her prehensile tail and said, “Deviate!”
I jerked my head back, catching her tail between my neck and the bus seat and said, “Jealous.”
It was great to be with my best friends.
Guy Stewart is a husband; father, father-in-law, grandfather, and retired teacher/school counselor who maintains POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS offering his writing up for comment. His new novel, MARTIAN HOLIDAY will be released on December 23, 2025 and takes place in a world 500 years in the future of his first novel, EMERALD OF EARTH (YA/MS, 2024! He also writes on other worlds that have touched his life: GUYS GOTTA TALK ABOUT DIABETES, ALZHEIMERS; BREAST CANCER. He has 70+ publications in Analog, Cast of Wonders, Shoreline of Infinity, Cricket, Stupefying Stories, Nanoism, an essay in The Writer, and has created experiments for episodes of the PBS science shows Newton’s Apple, and The New Explorers—for which he became the Science Museum of Minnesota’s Teacher of the Year in 1997. Really.
March 26, 2013
IDEAS ON TUESDAY 105
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. Regarding Fantasy, this insight was startling: “I see the fantasy genre as an ever-shifting metaphor for life in this world, an innocuous medium that allows the author to examine difficult, even controversial, subjects with impunity. Honor, religion, politics, nobility, integrity, greed—we’ve an endless list of ideals to be dissected and explored. And maybe learned from.” – Melissa McPhail.
Let’s do that!
F Trope: dark lord
Current Event: “In November 2012, satellite photos revealed a half kilometer long propaganda message carved into a hillside in Ryanggang Province, reading, ‘Long Live General Kim Jong-un, the Shining Sun!’. The message, located next to an artificial lake built in 2007 to serve a hydroelectric station, is made of Korean letters measuring 15 by 20 meters, and is located approximately 9 kilometers south of Hyesan near the border with the People's Republic of China.” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/23/north-korea-hillside-homage-kim-jong-un)
Ardian Goodpaster tapped on his tablet-computer – t-comp – and said, “Look, you have to read this!” He held it out to her.
Noemi Zweifelhofer grunted, hunched over her own t-comp. She said, “Doar stai un minut!”
Ardian’s eyes grew wide and he whispered in German, “Ich denke nicht, dass Sie Rumänisch in diesem Augenblick sprechen sollten! Wir sind in genug Schwierigkeiten, wie es ist!”
Noemi finally looked up, her dark eyes flashing and said, “Do you think speaking in English would be all right?”
Ardian snorted, “Better than speaking Romanian. We can get in trouble for that…”
“You don’t think believing that Kim Jong-un is an incarnation of The Dark Lord will keep us out of trouble?”
“I didn’t say I believed it – just that it seems…logical given what Mom and Dad say about how he acted when he went to school here.”
“Your mom and dad were his friends! He hated my dad!”
Ardian shook his head, “I’d probably dislike your dad, too if he stuck my head in a toilet and flushed it…”
“That was a kid’s prank!”
“…fourteen, fifteen and sixteen times on ten different occasions in honor of the illustrious North Korean leader’s birthdays?”
Noemi glared at her best friend, then burst out laughing. Finally she said, “All right, it wasn’t a kid’s prank. But all of our parents agree he was creepy and mean.”
Ardian tapped the t-comp and said, “You really believe that the inscription means what they say it means?”
“‘Long Live General Kim Jong-un, the Shining Sun!’?” He stared at it then slowly shook his head. Noemi continued, “I know my Korean is adequate…” Ardian snorted, but she overrode him, “But I’ve cross-referenced this in half a dozen dictionaries.”
“So what do you think?”
She zoomed in on the image of the inscription then swung to the right, saying, “When it’s written like this, left-to-right and with the order of the characters – and given that the archaic form was used intentionally, it reads, ‘Long dominate Kim Jong-un, Darkest of the Dark Lords’.”
“And no one else in the world reads it that way?”
She held out her t-comp, “I wouldn’t say that.” Their eyes met and for a moment locked. Ardian felt the blood drain out of his face. She handed him her own t-comp. “Read it.”
He kept his eyes on hers then finally looked down. The headline was in German, from a recent edition of Die Welt. “Different Interpretation of North Korea’s Paean of Praise?” He read, looked at her.
“Scroll to the next document. Two weeks later.”
He did and read, “Interpreter Found Murdered”…
Names: ♀; ♂ Today, both are entirely Swiss names
Guy Stewart is a husband; father, father-in-law, grandfather, and retired teacher/school counselor who maintains POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS offering his writing up for comment. His new novel, MARTIAN HOLIDAY will be released on December 23, 2025 and takes place in a world 500 years in the future of his first novel, EMERALD OF EARTH (YA/MS, 2024! He also writes on other worlds that have touched his life: GUYS GOTTA TALK ABOUT DIABETES, ALZHEIMERS; BREAST CANCER. He has 70+ publications in Analog, Cast of Wonders, Shoreline of Infinity, Cricket, Stupefying Stories, Nanoism, an essay in The Writer, and has created experiments for episodes of the PBS science shows Newton’s Apple, and The New Explorers—for which he became the Science Museum of Minnesota’s Teacher of the Year in 1997. Really.
March 24, 2013
WRITING ADVICE: Bruce Bethke’s TWELVE STEP PROGRAM FOR WRITERS #7
Somewhere around thirty years ago, I met Bruce Bethke for the first time – when I responded to an ad in a newspaper for a science fiction writers group seeking new members. I called, then sent in an “audition story” and was invited to join the group at the ORIGINAL, original Loft Literary Center (before grant money started flowing) in Minneapolis. One of THEM reviews books now, the other published a few books and short stories but no longer writes. Bruce doesn’t write much lately except for non-fiction; he is currently executive editor of STUPEFYING STORIES, an irregular anthology of new speculative fiction, he mostly works for a super computer company as well as presiding over Rampant Loon Press. These nuggets of wisdom can be found here: http://www.sfwa.org/2009/06/a-12-step-program-for-writers/. They are used with the author’s permission.
7. We humbly hope our new publisher will not find out what we said about our last publisher.
An example of something like this happened several months ago. I posted a rather disappointed review of a writer’s SF novel for young adults that concluded:
After that was posted, the most unusual thing happened. These posts appeared first:
DSRDenton – “...I've never heard of Dom Testa or Guy Stewart, but it seems like Testa has some loyal supporters who have seen his work. All of this made me interested so I googled him and found a lot of sites…I ordered his book today and will give it to some of my best readers. No offense but I don't usually go by reviews for teen books when they are written by adults…”
luv2teach70 – “...a deflection point. It's most often employed by one who otherwise has no defense. It's also, by the way, condescending. It infers to your readers that my comments are based on emotion, rather than facts and/or experience, which is insulting...”
Then Henry posted – “No, you're not wrong, topher. Both comments are from the same IP address. While I'll readily admit that I don't entirely agree with Guy's column, resorting to sockpuppetry as a response is childish in the extreme and, among readers of this blog, likely to lend credence to the position Guy has taken. At the very least, Guy has the courage to post his opinions under his own name.”
What’s this have to do with the point of the day?
Be careful what you say and to whom you say it because people know each other and talk. If I am less than professional in what I say – and I confess, I lost my cool (though I still think the books are less-than-stellar (so to speak) and that celebrity sometimes supplants skill) and should have used the tools I’d laid out in a previous essay (“Heirs of Heinlein” here: http://thefridaychallenge.blogspot.com/2009/11/ultimate-geek-fu_11.html) and kept it more clinical. I am emotional where my writing is concerned and doubly so when it comes to writing for young adults. I continue to wonder how it is some of them write for a group of people with whom they have minimal contact...
Be that as it may, I reiterate the Wisdom of the Wise when I say, “Don’t dis on people in the industry (or out of it for that matter!).” As far as I can tell, SF/F author Julie Czerneda is a stellar example of a positive attitude toward everyone. She regularly ends her posts on Face Book, “I love my life”...
And there you go.
Guy Stewart is a husband; father, father-in-law, grandfather, and retired teacher/school counselor who maintains POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS offering his writing up for comment. His new novel, MARTIAN HOLIDAY will be released on December 23, 2025 and takes place in a world 500 years in the future of his first novel, EMERALD OF EARTH (YA/MS, 2024! He also writes on other worlds that have touched his life: GUYS GOTTA TALK ABOUT DIABETES, ALZHEIMERS; BREAST CANCER. He has 70+ publications in Analog, Cast of Wonders, Shoreline of Infinity, Cricket, Stupefying Stories, Nanoism, an essay in The Writer, and has created experiments for episodes of the PBS science shows Newton’s Apple, and The New Explorers—for which he became the Science Museum of Minnesota’s Teacher of the Year in 1997. Really.
March 21, 2013
MARTIAN HOLIDAY 40: Aster of Opportunity – Faith
On a well-settled Mars, the five major city Council regimes struggle to meld into a stable, working government. Embracing an official United Faith in Humanity, the Councils are teetering on the verge of pogrom directed against Christians, Molesters , Jews, Rapists, Buddhists, Murderers, Muslims, Thieves, Hindu, Embezzlers and Artificial Humans – anyone who threatens the official Faith and the consolidating power of the Councils. It makes good sense, right – get rid of religion and Human divisiveness on a societal level will disappear? An instrument of such a pogrom might just be a Roman holiday...To see the rest of the chapters, go to SCIENCE FICTION: Martian Holiday on the right and scroll to the bottom for the first story.
Aster Thiel gathered her bag and left Mayor Etaraxis’ offices a moment later, wondering how she would tell the Mayor she would be going back to the office pool below.
She took the drop tube from the ninetieth floor, the uppermost level actually poked into real Martian atmosphere, offering a sweeping view of Opportunity City from the highest point of the rim of Tyrrhena Mons Crater. Down on the street, she dodged a phalanx of twenty self-balancing two-wheeled scooters as she scurried across the street. She glanced up at the Dome and the pucker around it where the Mayor’s Pylon breached it. Then she turned back and walked down the block until she took a sharp left, following a narrower, older path barely wide enough of a pair of the scooter.
The Qalipu Qoffee shop was marked by single caribou horn imported at great expense from Earth. It stuck out of the wall over the door. She turned in and the scent of strong Martian coffee rolled over her. Bushes grown on the slopes of Mount Olympus produced a bean that had a strong iron flavor. Steeped in hot water, the brew was strong, almost brittle; Earthers disdained it as tasting “wrong”. Martians sucked it down like it was going to go extinct after half a Martian year. She sometimes thought real coffee addicts took on a rusty glow. Smiling, she pushed to her dad’s table.
“Hey, sweetie,” he said, looking up from his tablet computer – his T-comp – and said, “Have a seat.”
Shaking her head, she sat and said, “Dad, why do you insist on reading your Bible here?”
He grinned and jerked his head toward the barista’s station. “They’re all Christians here.”
“Dad! I don’t want you to get arrested!”
“Honey, we can’t be ashamed of our faith.”
“I’m not ashamed – I’m practical.”
“Practical is all right, but when push comes to shove, what will you say?”
Aster sighed. She said, “I’m leaving my position as the Mayor’s escort.”
“You can’t,” he said, eyes flashing. He glanced at the entrance leaned forward, then repeated, “You can’t, sweetheart.”
“What? I thought you hated the idea of me being the Mayor’s Escort?”
“I do.”
“But...”
“There are things you can do there. You have the Mayor’s ear and you can make changes on Mars.”
“What kind of changes?”
“You can make faiths other than the official one legal again.”
“Dad!” Aster exclaimed. “That’s sedition!”
He opened his mouth to reply as silence dropped over the coffee house like vacuum and everyone turned to face the door.
A figure stood there. A woman in a uniform. Behind her, though outside, were shadows. She stepped into the light of the main seating area, spied Aster and broke into a wide grin, calling, “Ms. Thiel! We’ve been looking for you!” Hanam vo’Maddux stopped at the table, bending slightly at the waist, “I am Mayor Etaraxis’ personal assistant. You must be Aster’s father, Jerome Thiel.”
He stood up, offered his hand, shook it and said, “I am. Won’t you please join us, Honorable vo’Maddux?”
She grinned, and though Aster saw now joy in the eyes and certainly no peace, the woman said, “I’d be delighted to join you.”
Guy Stewart is a husband; father, father-in-law, grandfather, and retired teacher/school counselor who maintains POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS offering his writing up for comment. His new novel, MARTIAN HOLIDAY will be released on December 23, 2025 and takes place in a world 500 years in the future of his first novel, EMERALD OF EARTH (YA/MS, 2024! He also writes on other worlds that have touched his life: GUYS GOTTA TALK ABOUT DIABETES, ALZHEIMERS; BREAST CANCER. He has 70+ publications in Analog, Cast of Wonders, Shoreline of Infinity, Cricket, Stupefying Stories, Nanoism, an essay in The Writer, and has created experiments for episodes of the PBS science shows Newton’s Apple, and The New Explorers—for which he became the Science Museum of Minnesota’s Teacher of the Year in 1997. Really.
March 19, 2013
IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 104
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.
SF Trope: genetic memories
Current Event: http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2013/jan/23/digital-files-stored-and-retrieved-using-dna-memory
Iker Dương flexed his bicep.
Leonie Gonzalez shook her head and rolled back over on her stomach.
“What? I thought you said you wanted to see a trick?” Iker said.
Without looking at him, she pulled up the latest Kathy Reichs Temperance Brennan book on her Kindenookpad – or knop – and got back to her reading.
“What are you mad at?”
Leonie said, “Listen Iker, I like you and all, but if you want us to be anything more than buddies, you’re going to have to actually talk to me.”
Iker sat down. The sappy sad look on his face almost made Leonie give in and feel sorry for him. Instead, she rolled over with her back to him.
He arched over her, planting his hands firmly on the ground then flipped his feet over, landing lightly. She almost grabbed him then, too. But they were almost done with their college freshman year, she wanted to get into medical school – she was aiming to be the first forensic anthropologist on Mars because now that the population there had topped three million, there were going to be MURDERS…
He flexed his bicep again and said, “I’m trying to show you something.”
She sighed.
“Not my muscle! I’m showing you what we’re doing in the lab!”
“Trying to create muscles from nothing?”
“Hey!” He pouted and she relented a bit. “I’m sorry, but the Mexicans and the Vietnamese are not known for producing Olympic weightlifting champions...”
“It’s not my muscle, it’s what’s in my muscle!”
“String beans?” She winced an instant after speaking the words but couldn’t say, “Iker, wait!” fast enough to stop him from sprint away. She also couldn’t quite stop the thought that he had a rather cute backside as well and even though he was sorta on the skinny side…”Iker, wait!” He kept going. She stopped, pondered for an instant, then put her ancestry to work and sprinted, catching him in ten long strides, grabbing his arm. She thought for an instant that the bicep wasn’t as wimpy as she’d imagined. “I’m sorry, Iker – but you’re just such a tempting target. What...”
“DNA – I have a data package in my bicep. I’ve been carrying it for the past week and we’re going to take it out tomorrow to see if…”
From the shadows of the science building, a voice said, “I don’t think you should be talking about this, folks.”
Names: ♀ Swiss German, Argentinian; ♂ Mexican, Vietnamese
Guy Stewart is a husband; father, father-in-law, grandfather, and retired teacher/school counselor who maintains POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS offering his writing up for comment. His new novel, MARTIAN HOLIDAY will be released on December 23, 2025 and takes place in a world 500 years in the future of his first novel, EMERALD OF EARTH (YA/MS, 2024! He also writes on other worlds that have touched his life: GUYS GOTTA TALK ABOUT DIABETES, ALZHEIMERS; BREAST CANCER. He has 70+ publications in Analog, Cast of Wonders, Shoreline of Infinity, Cricket, Stupefying Stories, Nanoism, an essay in The Writer, and has created experiments for episodes of the PBS science shows Newton’s Apple, and The New Explorers—for which he became the Science Museum of Minnesota’s Teacher of the Year in 1997. Really.
March 17, 2013
Slice of PIE: HOW DRIVERLESS CARS SPARKED WWIII
Excerpt from THE HISTORY OF POST-INDUSTRIAL EARTH (pp 434 ff):
“The last bastion of the illusion of self-government was responsibility for the operation of a 900 kilogram mostly-metal missile.
“Automobiles – or cars as they were called – once reached 1.5 billion in number just prior to the advent of the rush from human operation to complete computer operation. Up to that point, governments everywhere allowed anyone who could pay the fees to operate a proven, deadly weapon without supervision and without enforceable restrictions of any kind. It made the American penchant for toting absurdly powerful firearms pale in comparison.
“The date that computers, and by design the Government, took over the last freely operated car was almost exactly four years prior to the outbreak of the Third World War, also known as the Second Atomic War, or simply WWIII.
“While fiercely debated for some years during Global Recovery, historians, economists and scientists eventually gathered enough evidence to suggest that when Government seized control of an activity humanity considered more sacred than privacy, it was the watershed event that precipitated American aggression on the Korean Peninsula and eventually spread to China, India, the Middle East, Europe and finally North and South America. The only continent to escape nuclear exchange was Australia, but the Refugee Tsunami toppled the attempt at creating a World Government there leading to the Five Decades of Anarchy…”
While I’m sure many people would find this scenario absurd, I’d direct you to the links below that detail the rise in road rage and the strange connections it has. The author of the article in the StarTribune of Minnesota has a rosy view of the future of driverless cars, but given the continued restriction of movement and the increase in government surveillance of everyone, frustrated people (read “men”) who continually lose their perceived rights must respond in some way.
Anger always finds an outlet. Always. The connection between heart disease and anger, while still debated, seems to be clear. Internalized rage – when it has no release – can only lead to more and more obscure ways of release. Some may say that total computer/governmental control of all cars will effectively stamp out road rage, my contention is that the rage that finds its release on the road (the same rage that once led to barroom brawls, spousal abuse, child abuse, and Communist intent to dominate the world) will need to find another way to explode outward once road rage is effectively prohibited by complete traffic control.
It’s my contention that when this last bastion of self-control is stripped from frustrated people, there will be only one final, spasmodic outlet: provoking thermonuclear war.
Resources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_rage; http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/library/intermittent-explosive-disorder/DS00730.html; http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentaries/196631141.html?refer=y; http://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/features/rein-in-rage-anger-heart-disease; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWDqc_TLH90
Guy Stewart is a husband; father, father-in-law, grandfather, and retired teacher/school counselor who maintains POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS offering his writing up for comment. His new novel, MARTIAN HOLIDAY will be released on December 23, 2025 and takes place in a world 500 years in the future of his first novel, EMERALD OF EARTH (YA/MS, 2024! He also writes on other worlds that have touched his life: GUYS GOTTA TALK ABOUT DIABETES, ALZHEIMERS; BREAST CANCER. He has 70+ publications in Analog, Cast of Wonders, Shoreline of Infinity, Cricket, Stupefying Stories, Nanoism, an essay in The Writer, and has created experiments for episodes of the PBS science shows Newton’s Apple, and The New Explorers—for which he became the Science Museum of Minnesota’s Teacher of the Year in 1997. Really.
March 14, 2013
SHORT LONG JOURNEY NORTH #47: July 19, 1946
This series is a little bit biographical and a little bit imaginary about my dad and a road trip he took in the summer of 1946, when he turned fifteen. He and a friend hitchhiked from Loring Park to Duluth, into Canada and back again. He was gone from home for a month. I was astonished and fascinated by the tale. So, I added some speculation about things I've always wondered about and this series is the result. To read earlier SHORT LONG JOURNEY NORTH, click on the label to the right. The FIRST entry is on the bottom.
Two hours later and the sun was sitting on Lake Superior and Edwina Olds, Lieutenant, WACS (ret.), Tommy Hastings and Freddie Merrill were sitting at the edge of the St. John’s Catholic Cemetery.
“I ain’t Catholic,” Tommy said. “I’m Lutheran.”
Edwina puffed. “You and me both, son and thank God for that.”
Freddie scowled and said, “Aren’t the Finns Lutheran? I think there’s a Finn Lutheran Church somewhere over south.”
Both Edwina and Tommy looked at him as he bit into a peanut butter sandwich. Tommy shook his head and said, “Swedish.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
Edwina shrugged and added, “I don’t think the Swedes are Socialists. Least not here in the good ol’ US of A. Just them dang Finns, French, Italians, Poles, Turks and Russians. Oh, the Russians are Communists.”
No one spoke for a while, then Freddie said, “You know a lot about the world, don’t you, Mrs. Olds.”
“It’s Miss, and yeah, I do.” They ate for a while longer then she said, “I’m gonna say this with the kindest of intentions.” She paused. “You boys need to go home.”
Freddie nodded.
Tommy frowned then said, “I still don’t know why Mom and Dad got married. They both worked at the mansion and people said they knew them, but why’d they get married?”
“Did you ask?”
“Are you crazy? They want to kill us and the witch wants to curse us.”
Ed laughed, finished her sandwich and stood up. “Bring the bread and peanut butter. We’ll have a snack later. We have to get moving. It’s going to be dark by the time we make it to…” From down the highway came the rumble of a back-firing truck. “If I’m not mistaken, that’s them.” She glanced around – there’s was no one but her and them and the logging truck. “No offense, boys, but I think I’d rather a few more of my fellow truckers around when we face down your Socialist gang.” She smirked as she sprang to the truck and practically threw the boys into the cab. “I should probably get an exorcist for the witch.”
They roared away down the road, heading north as the last sliver of sun disappeared beyond the dark line of forest to the west.
They’d driven for twenty minutes when she said, “But you best not make the mistake of slipping by them again, Tommy. Clearly your Mom and Dad knew something that the Socialists didn’t want them to know.”
“What?” Tommy exclaimed. “They don’t know ‘nothin’ important!”
Grinding in the highest gear, the truck hurtled forward into the gathering night. “I beg to differ with you, son. I’m pretty sure the Socialists back there figure your Mom and Dad know something, too. Something that might be worth killing you and your friend for.”
Guy Stewart is a husband; father, father-in-law, grandfather, and retired teacher/school counselor who maintains POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS offering his writing up for comment. His new novel, MARTIAN HOLIDAY will be released on December 23, 2025 and takes place in a world 500 years in the future of his first novel, EMERALD OF EARTH (YA/MS, 2024! He also writes on other worlds that have touched his life: GUYS GOTTA TALK ABOUT DIABETES, ALZHEIMERS; BREAST CANCER. He has 70+ publications in Analog, Cast of Wonders, Shoreline of Infinity, Cricket, Stupefying Stories, Nanoism, an essay in The Writer, and has created experiments for episodes of the PBS science shows Newton’s Apple, and The New Explorers—for which he became the Science Museum of Minnesota’s Teacher of the Year in 1997. Really.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)