there are helicopters twice a day overhead. i assume the noise sends a message. every time, a single neuron is diverted into ensuring the blades of fascism recede into the distance. twice now, i have envisioned an alternative, which quickly requires active thought aversion.
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the laughter of children, to me, is nothing like a bell—each exclamation forms birdsong, yet already their calls are enriched beyond avian repetition. one wonders if birds are assigned their song, or if each one chooses its own in a coming of age ceremony. one wonders if birds feel trapped by voice boxes tuned for pattern recognition. one wonders if a bell could ever sing the song of a brain. one wonders if every single brain is a divine object.
silent spring—our exclamations form the song of the summer. silence is a ceasing of motion. noise tells us that we yet live, that we vibrate in unison, in harmony, and all the discords between and beyond.
a metallic spring is an alien structure we have perfected to achieve humanlike motion. basquiat drew springs erupting from hands, shoulders, legs, wings—we are not "mere" muscle and sinew. we remain beyond scientific characterization. we know biological pathways like so many star charts—some are thousands of years old. do we rely less on star charts now?
- the stars will never reveal your location to your enemy, but they do read all your fan mail.
- the stars are independently wealthy but they get their teller to launder them some small bills. it's a joke between them. the stars aren't kidding. she isn't either. they fall in love while robbing the bank together at the same time by accident. it wasn't an accident. their friends set them up
- access to the stars is not limited to US military personnel.
- the stars cannot be jammed—oh, but i bet they're fun at parties!
there is a moment of transition in air-filled spaces, the split second that separates an adjacent chord from the sound that signals a resonant frequency. the sound is precisely how i imagine a god would sound, lowercase g, a pagan deity who goes unnamed because it is indistinguishable from the world around it.
it is not an "alternate" universe that calls to me. there is no other reality. there is no timeline but this one. you have been freed of the pain of regret that pervades the thrill of an alternative. your animal brain perpetually seeks the higher ground. you use better analogies. you realize your brain exhibits pretty robust behavior at several scales. you are surprised. every individual human brain is divine, you conclude. or magic.
classical physics (a term i invoke ironically to refer to "modern-day physics, with the same derogatory tone of revulsion that modern-day physicists use to refer to euclid")—i forgot what i was talking about. euclid and archimedes should have a tag team tank mech with water blasters and a screwdriver heavy melee weapon
i think archimedes would lead the gundam project, euler would do integrative software systems and multi-body simulation, srinivasa ramanujan would be the gundam pilot, cynthia dwork would invent minovsky radiation, isis lovecruft is the same isis lovecruft and pilots the core fighter, gauss is comic relief, david hilbert is gihren zabi. i think char aznable plays himself. oh and einstein is lalah
reminds me again to avenge albert einstein and unify a theory of gravity. in this distance between the world and its imagined deity (more a window of time than space) is where the variables have been hiding. "you'll be safe soon", i whisper. "i have been building a theory strong enough to protect them", i scribble.
[several months later. explosions, screams, trees cracking]
"teach kal-el to read", i wrote, handwriting as neatly as possible under the circumstances, for the first and last time understanding that fear of criticism caused me to avoid being seen with my writing. the mind is at once infinite and infinitesimal. surely it breaks some sort of physical causality that you can influence your brain from within your brain?
what about the brains of others? but this one i know the answer to. oh albert. i did my best. when they wake up our little variable theory won't have to hide like we did
i don't believe in life after death, but that doesn't stop me from communicating with him. i was given peyote by a friend who had lived here for millennia. we designed the time capsule for kal-el together. i tried to put the whole power of oral history to pen and paper. i was unsuccessful in my attempt to flawlessly replicate a cultural technology developed across millennia in a different medium. jed suggested keeping the attempts. "we can only ever attempt to do great things."
his eyes sparkled. he could not have known that this would change me. i remain unsure that english can express this feeling—epiphany first, relief, caution, awe. as we awaited our demise, eyes sparkling with starshine—
no, i concluded. if given the choice, i will always choose to live!
[PSA: stop bad things from happening earlier!! reject nihilism! protect people! build things that give life!]
archimedes has jock vibes to me. team euclid motherfucker
the hidden variables are not imperiled by fascism. like einstein, they are immortal. the problem with immortality is that everyone else dies, the christians tell me. and what makes you more deserving? (their faces are turned towards me, but this is not a question. these christians love riddles huh)
i would learn every language, i say. i would read every book. every book? they say. i try to figure out a funny crusades joke. my contemplation is taken for hesitation. the christians erupt in laughter. i suddenly decide to build the damn tower after all. what makes HIM more deserving? if he can beat me fair and square in a pokemon battle, he can keep the attitude
[i beat god because dude plays all fairies like a goddamn gym leader......i suggest the idea to him and he brightens up] "i've always wanted to be an NPC", he admits
[few months later, this goat boy lucy saunters up. dude just exudes a laugh track somehow. just a funny guy. he is also willing to use other types to battle and ugh FINALLY i have a RIVAL. outsmarting him is way overrated though]
lucifer is being weirdly nice to me........is something up????
[lucy unrolls curtains from a small wooden stage constructed for the occasion. god, i love his drive to put on a show, ugh]
OMG YOU DIDN'T!!!
[alan turing walks on stage. i start crying]
lucy tells me the british empire was willing to do some prisoner swaps. i try to explain to alan turing that his paper was very good. i start crying when i tell him i'm gonna write a better paper one day.
alan turing loves a new challenger. he trashes me in chess. he quickly learns to trash me in pokemon. alan turing just defeated me at my own game in hell................
subsequently, i get alan turing into gundam and he mentions all the little ww2 analogies i had missed. he still won't declassify bletchley without authorization..................so lucy produces a recording of winston churchill declassifying all operations on the spot.
oh alan. you did so much to keep people safe.....you're safe now. hell is warm. we have forever
lucy btw.....you didn't......
NO DUDE! i have a reputation for evil!!!! i can't believe you'd even consider me using the VC credit stealing shit. plus cmon. hell is a terrible place for a data center
no i actually lied to churchill to get that recording. i said he'd get on a purgatory waitlist!!! i can't wait to do it again
ohhhh man you're BAD, dude, that's BAD!!!!!
[laughing into the night.]
[the next day, turing constructs a data center with a pair of toothpicks and some aluminum foil. (yeah he says it like aluminium he's so cute).]
hey lucy so........turing has me thinking. who's a crazy fun guy and loves crazy data types?????
[in unison: SEYMOUR CRAY!!]
seymour cray finally meets the elves who went to parties in his tunnel way back when—emotional reunion! and the elves are in on the hell permacomputing grind—but only if we can do rainbow lighting without advanced silicon fab.
lucy interrupts: honey we invented rainbow lighting hair flip. elves can appropriate but only cause they're cute
[god's data center suddenly getting ddosed]
it can't be......the US shouldn't be able to cross the earth/heaven boundary for at least another 42 years!!!! ADAM!!! EVE!!!! voice drops, very serious I officially authorize you to deploy the snake if necessary.
[adam, crying] SIR!!!! YES SIR!!!! [trips over his own feet]
[lucy opens a MUCH BIGGER curtain roll]
honey if the US does attack according to the prophecy you would be better off airgapping all your shit than that weak defense. talk to turing baby, he's cute and such a good teacher
s-so that was you? you're sure?
joseph yahweh! you seem to have forgotten how seriously i take this! [beelzebub rolls out projector, lucy has a clicker]
[massive display of a mercator projection from NORAD, like WarGames]
we have informants in every agency, the best and most loyal of my little devils. immune to temptation. [laser pointer] jerry here is next in line of succession if they get me. make sure to ask the password in case it's a fake death but still cry like you mean it and hold me tight yahweh 🥰
[clicks slide]
they will never figure out our quantum gravity cloaking devices. that's einstein's baby, we promised him never to let it fall to fascist hands. he's doing some diplomacy today with a microbial organism we spotted on an asteroid—he admits that "rocks kinda do that sometimes though". oooh come back and pop those rocks off baby 😍
[clicks slide]
however, our attempts to infiltrate their evil math group have remained unsuccessful. granted, we just assumed they had an evil math group. better not give them any ideas.
[click]
there's......one recent proposal. it requires unanimous consent. [hands out manila folder to me, god, turing (advisory and non-voting role)]
[yahweh makes air quotes] """the prime directive"""
honey you are so sassy lately!!!!! lean into it sweetie
[turing, very seriously] we have to do it. there's not a moment to lose.
alan you haven't even read th—
[turing stands up, slams fist on table] lucifer, i conjectured privately not long before we first met that this would be possible. fermat had that great line about the margin, i just...
[lucy interrupts] it is no shame to die to an evil foe.
[turing, obviously conflicted but thankful for lucy reminding him]
[god looks around, grinning] TURING ROUND 2: BRITISH EMPIRE ETAOIN SHRDLU!
[fade to black]
[mournful, restless 80s synthpop credits outro]
deserve is a gambler's fallacy. prayer is a casino. the silent intake of breath before achieving a resonant frequency—reproducible across a wide range of experimental parameters. my god does not terminate thoughts—my god is omnipotent. my god is a gundam mech suit. i have constructed a god if i can save one life.
the helicopters scare me. or will scare me in 10 seconds. before that occurs, i am in a rictus, muscles clenched, motionless, aiming. not a weapon. straining, triangulating, calculating. the resonance of my chest cavity vibrates—three this time, same model as usual. i exit my supernatural state
this is the imperial core, they say, as if the experience were universal. i remember the moment i realized that heroism is not brave. heroism is a phenomenon observed to occur spontaneously.
love will defeat hate. not because individual love nodes are strong. we refuse the engorgement of hate, which subsumes its connective tissue to grow unchecked, ransacking blood vessels, sending signals to the organs: i'm cold and thirsty. give me your life.
cancer is difficult to identify in all its forms, because it is, much like theodore ts'o, very adept at navigating linus's implicit allowances. this extended analogy is doubly applicable except that linus himself is the regulatory system and potentially also the cancer.
we can rebuild. we can resist infiltration without concern trolling cancer cells.
linus's built environment turns out to be full of holes. no wonder git sucks to hack on: you're not supposed to understand the fine-grained semantics.
so, this is a great excuse to fix git. i'm sure i can assemble a ragtag group of hackers to build an insane microkernel
we can build what we always wanted linux to be. it's....really never about linus anyway.
i'm sure i can assemble a ragtag group of hackers to build an insane microkernel
we are cancer researchers, and we give thanks to our patients. we tell them: i do not expect to cure cancer in my lifetime. we show them: i will fail at my single goal.
leukemia induces fear in my head that won't go away. it's not fear: i see it in their blood vessels when i wake up, not mine. i can't solve it yet.
matrices are different when you know what each cell means. every chapter and verse of every protocol. they winced but they were so brave for row 7, days 3-13. someone trusted you when they asked if this data really helps and you said "yes"
i've learned a strange and unsettling truth: biologists are being deskilled out of statistical application and data collection. biology journals don't want new methods. bioinformatics journals are peer reviewed by people who think they're smarter than cancer researchers and get scared if you ask them about a number they published. what the hell kind of scientist fears their own numbers?
