Selected Jack Spratt v2.0 Use Cases

in

USE CASE: Gets Hitched

Actors

  • She (Pretty in a dumpy, pot belly sort of way; her deep eyes glisten in the hospital light.)

  • He (Handsome in an emaciated invalid sort of way. Sunken eyes and cheeks; he smells like urine and vomit.)

  • Hospital Room (where She visits He)

Triggers

  • User wakes up in hospital bed after binge drinking

Preconditions

  • User has met She while binge drinking

  • User drank enough to end up in hospital

  • User was successfully treated for alcohol poisoning and survived

Post Conditions

  • She will become pregnant

  • The taste of tartar sauce, her favorite strawberry dip will grow on User over time.

Normal Flow

  1. She will hold the cold rails tightly, smiling with crooked teeth and a tired, sagging face.

  2. She will stand by User’s hospital bed, wearing a summer dress printed with skulls grinning of the dead.

  3. User will not to speak, and User will not to smile, as User will lie, his gown draped over his bony frame like a table cloth.

  4. User will slowly reach through the tangle of wires and tubes keeping User alive, hold She’s hand and sigh.

  5. She and User will listen to rain patter on the window and know She and User will be together, eating strawberries, that will be dipped in sauces.

Alternative Flows

3A1. The user wishes to speak and let She know that while She physically is not his ideal woman, She will do.

  1. She will say that will not do for She

  2. She will leave hospital room

  3. User will be alone

3A2. The user wishes to speak and let She know how grateful User is that she is with him now.

  1. User will attempt to smile, but cannot

  2. User will slowly reach through the tangle of wires and tubes keeping User alive, hold She’s hand and sigh.

  3. She and User will listen to rain patter on the window and know She and User will be together, eating strawberries, that will be dipped in sauces.

USE CASE: Loses Control

Actors

  • She

  • He

  • Child

  • Car

  • Icy Highway

  • Truck

Use Case Description: During a winter in the Midwest, She will tell User to slow down, right before Truck swerves in their path on the snow-dusted, glistening-black highway. User will tap the brakes lightly, and the car will start to glide towards the formidable treeline along the roadside. User will turn the steering wheel, and the car will spin around, and around. Child in the back seat will laugh and laugh and have a rocking good time.

Alternative Flows

N/A

Superposition of the Schrodinger Kid

in

It could be that the Schrodinger Kid is fished out of a snow drift in North Dakota in the mid-twentieth century. Found by Little Hans of the Jorgensen family. 95% probability.

It could be that the kid is dead, and his story ends right then and there for him, like a wave crashing on the beach or a wave quietly flowing across a lake until it gently dissolves onto the shore, while the waves for Jorge, Little Hans, and Pa roll through the blizzarded plains to the farmhouse. 50% probability.

It could be that the kid is alive, tended by Ma as her own—50% probability--as the rest of her family nor the Schrodinger’s are never seen again. 80% probability they are murdered by Yellow Gloves; 9% probability they all migrate to the Bahamas; 1% chance they are sucked into a wormhole that formed on the Schrodinger property.

5% probability that the Schrodinger Kid isn’t fished out of a snow drift in North Dakota. Alternatively, he is a student attending Old Dominion University in Southeastern Virginia. He drinks a half-gallon of gin and ends up in Sentara Medical Center’s ER.

When he arrives, none of the medical staff know how much he’s been drinking. He's vomiting all over himself and his pants are soaked in urine.

The Doctor pushes the needle into his arm, an intravenous drip to top up his water, blood sugar and vitamin levels. The staff strips off his clothing and fit him with a catheter. The Schrodinger KId struggles and must be restrained.

He shouts, “The third memory. I have one memory left. But it’s not my memory!”

The Doctor pays little attention to the barely comprehensible babbling, weird things about strawberries and memories, alluded to some memory recovery drug that doesn’t exist. Of course, he is stupendously intoxicated.

The Schrodinger Kid wasn't going to say much more, because the Doctor inserts a tube down the kid’s throat to secure a passageway for breathing, to prevent him choking on his vomit.

Next, the Doctor feeds a plastic tube through his nose and keeps feeding it. After feeding quite a bit in, he pushes some air down the tube and listens. The tube has made it to the stomach. He secures the tube with some medical tape and uses a large syringe to push saline into the stomach. The Schrodinger Kid is now comatose, although tears streamed down his face. It's common for this sort of thing to happen. 97.5% probability.

After the Doctor fills the stomach with saline, he uses the syringe to pull it all right back out. He fills and refills the Schrodinger Kid's stomach, repeatedly, for 20 minutes or so. Then the kid throws up and his lungs fill with vomit.

At this point, things have gotten quite serious. The doctor suctions out his lungs, and the staff sedate him and put him on a ventilator, hoping that the injury to his lungs recover during the course of the next 5-6 days. Pump him full of antibiotics, Flagyl and Cefuroxime.

He's transferred from Trauma to the ICU, still touch and go.

75% probability he never regains consciousness and dies.

20% probability his parents fly down from North Dakota, arriving when he regains consciousness. The Doctor lectures him about alcohol abuse. Since the kid doesn’t remember any of it, he is unimpressed and once leaving the hospital, continues to binge drink until he dies (69% probability) or hits bottom, goes to AA, and recovers (31% probability)

5% probability a woman visits regularly, sits by his bedside, and holds his hand. Later, they marry, have a child, and move back to North Dakota. He wakes up one day and stops drinking.

When their child is four years old, the Schrodinger Kid, no longer a kid, is driving his family on an icy road, when a truck cuts in front of them. He taps the brake, and loses control of the car, which spins and spins. Their child is laughing, because it’s a fun ride.

The car smashes into a large tree (67% Cottonwood, 33% Oak) at the roadside. 99% probability she dies. 91% probability the child lives, but suffers from a severe brain injury. She if fed by a tube, as she relearns how to eat.

It could be that the Schrodinger Kid lives these moments, soon after George H Bush is elected President. 88% probability.

It could be that the kid lives these moments seven decades after Tsarist Russia and the Western Powers defeat Germany and the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires, which results in a Cold War between the US and Russia. Socialism dominates US politics to counter the threat of the Russian monarchy. 12% probability.

It could be that he lives these moments a millennia after homo sapiens has annihilated itself and is not himself human, but one of the sentient cephalopod creatures that evolved to become the next dominant species on the planet. .000001% probability.

Confessions of a Strawberry Eater

in

When Sarah pressed her warm lips to his neck, he had already eaten the Strawberries that would take their goodbye kiss and hide it away in the synaptic nooks and crannies of his gray matter.

When his brain flipped from blackout to daylight, he remembered that Sarah had been upset. Now, he was alone and sitting in his pickup, parked on the shoulder of a still road under an overcast teal sky. His head stuffed full of cotton. Empty plastic Strawberry containers piled up on the passenger seat.

He didn’t remember that she had told him that they couldn't see each other, as they stood next to a truck stop gas pump, holding each other tightly and shivering in the cold drizzle. He could not recall their tears, their good-byes, or her leaving in her father’s SUV.

He started the pick-up and drove onto the road. A Strawberry, nestled next to the windshield, jittered around on the dashboard. Reaching forward, he grabbed the fruit and popped it into his mouth. He would call Sarah tomorrow, he thought.

He road through the countryside, and ten years passed.

Sitting in the back of a car full of strangers that had just left a New Years Eve party, he listened to tales of Strawberry eating: in the downtowns of bustling cities, handfuls at casinos on the outskirts of town, slurping smoothies with street musicians, popping them at a friend’s wedding at the seaside, eating them wherever.

Sitting in the back seat with a large bucket of the red berries between his legs, he looked out the window at a horse walking along a stream shrouded in a tear of mist. Someone named Kate was chattering about how much she liked strawberries and tartar sauce. He picked three berries from the bucket, popped one, two into his mouth. Fruit and sweet saliva rolled in his cheeks, and then he swallowed.

From his coat pocket, he pulled out a small plastic box, his 21st birthday gift. A label on the box read: MEM THE BEST DRUG! RECOVER THOSE LONG BURIED STRAWBERRY MEMORIES, CLEAN AND UNDEFILED BY THE ACT OF REMEMBERING. THE ULTIMATE! BY LITMINOV ENTERPRISES, LLC. He flipped open the lid and removed one of the three small syringes in the box, as well as rubber tubing.

“You gonna do that, now?” Kate asked him, as he tied the tubing around his upper arm.

“Pull that tight, would you?” he asked. She obliged.

The drug wrapped him in a warm nap, as a random strawberry memory bubbled back.

#

It was a Christmas Party with his 6th grade church youth group.

The party had been held at his teacher’s house and featured a Secret Santa gift exchange. Lusting after one particular wrapped box, he’d knelt next to the tree where the gifts had been placed and held the package. He caressed the distinctive edges of a Whitman’s Sampler box of candy.

“Wow, I wonder what this could be ... I think this is the gift I’d like ... This could be a good gift ... I might like this one.”

He grew light-headed with the prospect of pralines, jellies, chocolate fudge, an infinite variety of crap, all arranged in their cardboard cells, their locations mapped out on the lid of the box. He degenerated into a drunk-like stupor. As it turned out, he was a mean candy drunk.

“Who do you think you are?” he asked the teacher’s boyfriend, who was picking a few peanut M&Ms from a dish. “Eating candy?”

Like hyenas congregating around a carcass, his insolence spread through a dozen Methodist middle schoolers. The pack ganged up on Mary Patterson. That night she had the simple misfortune of picking her nose while another kid was watching. They all teased her with taunts like “No wonder yer so stupid. You poked yer brain out picking yer nose”. Their taunting had reached a fever pitch when Angus McDougle, who sang in the youth choir and had a wonderful voice, asked her why she didn’t just kill herself.

As the car continued on its New Years Eve trek, he ate the third Strawberry, swishing the chewed fruit in his mouth to wash out the bad taste of the grade school memory.

#

And then he was in a hospital bed getting an IV drip. Kate held his hand, stroking the palm with her thumb.

She smiled. “Are you feeling OK?”

Apparently, they had been married for years. He had written her a love poem, rife with misspellings. They had gone on a few dates, followed by rather casual sex, quickly followed by a baby. They each had affairs of mutual self-destruction. And then another baby.

And then later a car crash sent them all flying off the highway and into a tree; he used the second syringe at home, alone. The rain drizzled departure at the truck stop flooded back to him. An old loss merged with new losses. His chest broke with sobs, mended with a few shots of vodka and a fist full of strawberries.

The last syringe remained unused, as his body grew older. Hair grayed and fell out. Untamable eyebrows. Winded after a walk up a flight of stairs. Weight gained, then gone again, giving way to bony hips. Sexual desire, strangely increased, just enough to make unwelcome comments that made young women uncomfortable.

One bright day when he was not yet dead, he walked. The distance made his fallen arches ache, so he settled down in a spot at the seaside. The waves rolled, and people drifted by.

With a slow trembling hand, he took the last syringe out of his box and tried to wrap the rubber tubing around his arm. He stopped a young passerby. “Pull that tight, would you?” The young person obliged.

A plunge of the syringe and then waiting for the memory to wash up like foam from a broken wave sliding stealthily along a seaside shore.

The Schrodinger Kid

in

#The Doctor#

The patient that I’d treated for alcohol poisoning had lived. It was a touch and go situation. The kid had shoved a cassette into my hand while I was treating him, and I just shoved it into a pocket in the scrubs I was wearing. I forgot about it, and then later, when I was taking my scrubs off, I found it.

#The Kid#

I pulled the cassette out of my pocket. It was Third Memory, my favorite microcomputer game. In the game, you unlock erased memories at random and play through them as if they’re happening for the first time.

Initially, I wasn’t particularly impressed; however, after repeated play, I explored path variations deeply connected to details that emerged. For example, I unlocked a memory where young children were teasing a girl about her weight. It reminded me of how awkward I felt.

The game had a cult following. I spent time on USNet and discovered message boards dedicated to the game and dissecting it for secret meanings.

What do think it means, when that giant Ostrich thing died, which was kind of absurd, but also sad.

I never encountered an Ostrich when I played. I was riding with my siblings when my mother ran the car up an embankment while driving in the rain.

From what I’ve heard, the next game might not get released. It’s being labeled pro-Tsarist.

Well, his games don’t quite adhere to Socialist Realism.

Does anyone know anything about the next game?

It Involves alternate realities. One in which the Russians surrendered during the World War and were overthrown by socialists, ending the Tsarist monarchy, and preventing them from being a world power.

Whatever. I didn’t like it at all. Now, The Jerusalem Engine, there was a great game. Got to love Scottish rugby players who are also secret agents.

I traveled to New York to see the National Gaming Exhibition of the Socialist US. At the exhibition I set out to find the High Castle game production company. As I approached their booth, an enthusiastic person met me with hand outreached.

#Doctor#

I reached out my hand and introduced myself to the Kid.

“That was quite a scare, you had there. I’d almost thought I’d lost you.”

The Kid simply stared at me.

“Do you often drink that much?”

Still no response.

“You know when you came in, you were vomiting and pissing all over yourself. We talked to the school administrators, and this isn’t the first time that this has happened. If you keep this up, you’re going to be dead. Now, go look in the mirror and see what a mess you look like.”

The Kid looked in the mirror and smiled.

#The Kid#

The enthusiastic person smiled. “Hello, would you like to learn more about High Castle games?”

“Is Gerald S, the game designer here?” I asked. “I’d really like to talk to him.”

“Matter of fact, I am Gerald S.”

“Holy shit, I’ve really wanted to meet you.”

“Really?”.

“Indeed. Third Memory is so amazing. It must have meant so much to you to be part of such an epic work.”

Gerald S laughed. “No, I didn't think that much of it. It was just another job, one of many projects."

“But surely, you must have meant something more to you than the others. It means so much to me.”

“Not really. I was creating a lot of games. I needed to make a quota.”

"But the inconsistency!"

"Inconsistency?"

“In part of the game, you’re a cowboy riding around in a pickup truck, but then with no explanation, you’re running a detention center for aliens. You were making a statement about the ephemeral nature of being and the realities that often go unnoticed."

"I don’t remember trying to make a statement. It was a mistake, most likely. I was on really strong pain medication when I programmed that one."

#The Doctor#

I needed the Litminov medication, an experimental drug. The Department for Public Health had dictated under what circumstances it was do be used and dispensed, criteria for eligible patients. As was the case with the rationing of medication at the polyclinics, it would have been difficult to obtain if I were a patient without paying for it under the table. However, I could get my hands on it by skimming off the inventory.

It was intended to preserve my memory, keep it from slipping into dementia. Sometimes, I thought that, rather than preserving my memories, it created decoherence, changing my memories, and the memories of those around me.

I take a pill. He takes one every 12 hours. Now, I had to have a conversation with this fucked up kid that almost died of alcohol poisoning this morning. What was this in my pocket?

#The Programmer#

“I see that you’re disappointed. Perhaps, you’d be interested in playing this game. It’s my latest, in 3-bit color, no less. Quite an achievement if I do say so myself.”

I had to admit I was impressed. 3-bit color in 1999. Wow! “Tell me more.”

“In this game you’re a Doctor, and you’ve just treated a young man for alcohol poisoning. The young man had had a disappointing encounter with an artist, whose work he had revered.

“You find a cassette in your pocket. You tell a coworker that the kid must have slipped it into your pocket while we struggled to treat him. I tried playing it, you say, but it just squealed and hissed. Maybe, it's part of that nonharmonic fad.

“The coworker turns the tape over in her hand. She doesn’t think it’s music. It's a microcomputer game. To play you put it in a special player hooked up to your personal microcomputer.

“I should return it to him, you say.

“But he’s dead, she responds.

“Ah yes, of course.

“You need another pill, so you go back into the stock room under the pretense of taking inventory."

Caterpillar Days

in

I would not have been the family man I am today, if it weren’t for the alien invasion. The spores, after drifting through space, landed on Earth’s receptive soil and sprouted, their tendrils waving in the wind, ready to inject their body-snatching virus. Fortunately, I became one and hatched out of a pod as an emotionally muted plant being.

#

Now, I get dressed in the morning and go downstairs, where my daughter is already in the kitchen.

“Good morning, dandelion dad.” She will burble, shoveling cereal into her mouth.

“You’re not dressed?”

“Yes I am. I’m wearing this to school.” She’s wearing pajama bottoms, adorned with black leaping cats with wetness spreading, getting wetter as she stands.

“You must be uncomfortable in those wet pajamas. Perhaps, you should change”

“I’m not wet.” Urine runs down her pants leg and onto the floor.

And instead of yelling, I’ll give her an empty hug and tell her it' OK, and everything is as good as it will ever be.

#

The spore seedlings, shaped like split milkweed pods, shriveled like an old woman’s open hand. If only I’d found them earlier and one evening placed one under my bed, waiting for it to suck out the anger and pain,

I’d not have grabbed my daughter by the wrist and twisted when she stuck Mr. Tin Foil in my face, demanding dinner right now. And we’d not have gone to the psych ER again, because she’d been violent when I tried to get her to eat a carrot.

I’d not have spun her around and put her into a hold. She would not have dug her fingernails into my forearm and growled “Moths don’t have noses”. No choking sounds. No gasping. “You’re hurting me, Dad. I’m choking. You are suffocating me. You’re breaking my spine.”

No squirming. “My hands are numb. When they fall off and I have no hands, the police will see how I have been abused”

While in a hold my arms wrapped angrily around her, she would not have thrown her head back and smacked, busting my lip open. She would not have bitten into my thumb, growling through her teeth as she masticated my knuckle.

And the police would not have been called one more time, because she’d been violent again. I’d have been a better parent if I’d been a little less human.

#

And just as the caterpillar turns to soup in its cocoon, but later as a newly born moth can remember the smells from its caterpillar days, the buzz of a hive mind would fill by dreams, as I turned to epigenetic paste and shed by plantain placenta.

I’d remember the last time I’d seen my wife, when she looked up at me and said, “I don’t think our daughter will ever really love us.” Her tear-filled eyes. The faintest hints of crow’s feet.

I could have been a better spouse when I’d shrugged and replied, “We’ve got years.”

In the Decoherent Room with the Curtains of Some Color

in

A kid with short, spiked blonde hair lay on the floor in a fetal position. He wore a nicely tailored suit and sharp toed shoes. Both hands clutched his throat. His blood stained a large swath of the hotel room’s beige carpet around him.

"Looks like he bled to death," said the doctor.

"Obviously," Hans snorted. "Good thing we have a Doctor around that can figure those things out. How long has he been dead?"

The Detective stepped up to Hans and punched him in the stomach. Holding this belly and sputtering, the kid with the blonde hair fell to his knees.

The Doctor turned away, took a step, and leaned over Hans’s body. "It just happened. The blood is still seeping into the carpet, which is still quite wet. Not dried at all." He pressed his hand into the carpet, and then held up his blood red hand.

"The game is still playing." The kid pointed a bloody hand to a cassette player, which was hooked up to a microcomputer. Hans and the Detective walked up to the desk.

"How can you tell?" asked the Doctor.

"The cassette is still playing and on the screen ..." Hans turned to look at the screen. Bloody fingerprints on the keyboard. The detective ejected the cassette and held it in his bloody hand.

"What the hell did you punch me for?" Hans, on his knees, on the teal carpet, struggling to get the words out.

"I don't know." The doctor scratched his head with a bloody hand.

"Not you, him." Hans stood up and pointed at his dead body on the deep purple carpet. "Why'd you wipe that blood all over your shirt. How are we going to get out of here, now, without being noticed?"

"Both of you can just turn your shirts inside out. It will be fine."

"We should report this to the Committee for United States Security," said Hans.

"No, we go back to our room. Get our shit together, and get out of here," said the Detective.

"To where?" asked the Schrodinger Kid.

"Julia will lead us to the connection."

“Who the fuck are you talking about?"

“Kate, my dead wife. I never told you before that I had a period of drinking, before the alien invasion. That’s when I met Sarah.”

“The game is still playing. Should I stop it?” The exotically patterned carpet is admired.

“I don’t see why.”

“Speaking of games. I was once absolutely obsessed with playing this game, Third Memory, when I was younger.”

“I play it all the time, now!”

“I’ve heard that there’s a new game in 3-bit color.”

“3-bit. Wow. Technology. What is it about?”

“A guy goes crazy in a hotel room with mauve carpet, because his family died in a car accident, and he watches all these different TV shows and projects himself into the different worlds. But he never remembers one to the next. At the climax of the game, a giant wall of TVs melts.”

“Wait, that’s not new, it’s Third Memory.”

“Is it?”

He'll Love Her Until the End of the World

in

i

So she's half vegetable, a rutabaga in human form, born from a space spore that descended with its seedling kin on solar winds to invade our world.

Even though she hatched out of a pod and inserted her alien DNA into someone to snatch their body, he still loves her, even though she can't love him back. It isn't like she's completely emotionless and inhuman. She's just emotionally challenged. OK, she is inhuman. But the person she absorbed had been human.

Isn't accepting our partner for who they are and a little understanding what makes a relationship work, anyway?

His occupation, for example, complicates their relationship, as work can often put a strain on a couple. The planetary defense force had rounded her up with some other captured spore people and stuffed them in a huge barn. His job? To spray the barn full of defoliant and kill them all. Naturally, she might find this disconcerting, which would be the appropriate emotional response for a being with a muted emotional life. (She would consider alarm or panic to be reactions indicating a severe mental illness.)

For his part, when he has to spray, he takes care to set her aside without raising suspicion and cover her with a tarp. Some poisoning is unavoidable, but he does his best to protect her. Each time another truckload of Spores gets dumped in the barn, he makes sure that she doesn't get buried underneath.

He does this out of love for her. All of her. Even the pieces of her that have fallen off or rotted away. He loves the kneecap that just fell, in a big clump, off her stumpy left leg, as he embraces her and holds her tightly, but not too tightly, or he'll sever her spinal cord with his loving, manly arms.

Sometimes, when he gazes into her beautiful face--the half that hasn't sloughed off--he thinks he should surrender himself to the spores and join her in their hive mind, but he's not sure he can emotionally handle anything more than a conventional, monogamous relationship with an insidious alien virus from another planet.

But other times, he feels it's inevitable that he will lose himself, get his memories sucked out of him, while he gestates like a caterpillar before he emerges from a pod, looking and behaving pretty much like he did before. A little less joyful, perhaps, but then again, he wouldn’t get nearly as angry as he does when he loses at Scrabble. He'd probably need to find a new job.

And recently he heard that the alien spores have started replacing chimps and bonobos. Next will be the orangutans and gibbons. Before long, they’ll be after the cats and rats that scurry around the town, who would then continue to scurry around much like they always had.

Soon, the world will be completely different, except in all the ways it pretty much is right now. He‘ll feel less passion for his vegetable woman, but on the other hand they won't get on each other’s nerves quite as much.

Like recently she kept suggesting that he take some of the pods and plant them under the beds of my co-workers in our barracks. When he didn’t do it at first, she gave him the silent treatment for weeks. He got so angry. He thought that would be the end of it for them, but then he thought being in a relationship is all about listening to the other person and understanding their needs.

If expanding the hive mind was important to her, shouldn‘t he at least listen and work together to make it a win-win situation for both of them?

So for the sake of the relationship, he did this one little thing that he had some reservations about, but he could compromise on. And to be honest, the tensions and arguments and scuffles at work had been dramatically reduced when all was said and done.

ii

When they’d dumped a new truck full of spores into the barn without asking him, he panicked. Normally, he’d have known ahead of time and would have been able to set his lover in a protected space, where he could find her.

He stepped knee deep into the mounds of spore limbs and torsos—tangled sinewy bodies fused, heads lolling like daffodils. Pushing forward, he put his arms between a pair of adult-sized spores and pushed them apart. They ripped unevenly, exchanging limbs and chunks of rib. One, vaguely female, gazed at him but said nothing about dinner, suicide, depression, violence, retribution, swindles, or whatever had been part of her previous emotion-rich life.

With his hands, he scooped up dirt and debris and tossed it aside until he found her. He got so excited that he hugged her tightly, which severed her spine and left her torso and lower body connected by a thin, twisted spaghetti waist.

She was a bit perturbed by it, but also mildly elated to see him again.

He slid into the muck and nestled between her and a mature spore pod, tough and slick, like a giant spinach leaf. As he slept, little tendrils crept, furtively, from the end of the pod, caressed his arms, legs, his cheek, the back of his neck.

The Programmer Programs

in

“OK, I’ve got a lot of games to get out the door if I’m to satisfy the quota and keep the Department of Public Entertainment off my back.

“OK, I’ll just take this game that I’ve already done and change it a bit. I’ll reprogram it to take advantage of the new 3-bit graphic cards. Change a few things.

The programmer programs.

“OK, this one is a mess. There’s too much going on in this one. I’ve got strawberries that submerge and preserve memories. I’ve got drugs that recover them. I’ve got an alien invasion of spore people that kind of have emotion, but kind of don’t. As usual, this is going to be a mish-mosh mess. Fine, it doesn’t matter.

The programmer programs:

The car was waiting for you outside. You open the driver's door and got in. Your wife is in the passenger seat, and your son is in the back seat. He smiles as you start the car.

“OK, I need something to take off the edge.

“OK, much better.”

The programmer programs:

Hills rolled by like waves rolling in a sea, reaching high, falling deep; the surface, strange shades of sunlight and marine. Hills gave way to fields, flat and green, where you walked with a bucket, picking deep red strawberries with your mother in the summers of your youth.

“OK, this is getting too personal. I’m putting too much of myself into this thing”

The programmer programs.

“OK, I was having lunch with a friend, who writes the soundtracks for much of my work. We were talking about the creative process and how these intuitions happen. Like I’ve programmed out a story, or they have scored a soundtrack, and then there all these possibilities. You can’t do them all at once.

“OK, sometimes I try, and end up with a mess something like what I’ve got on my hands with this 3-bit deal I’m working on now.

The programmer programs.

“OK, like this part of the game that happens in the hotel room. Should there be a murder, or should there not be a murder? Who is in this hotel room? The character. I can’t believe I still haven’t got the character nailed down. Doctor? Detective? Some random kid?

“OK, I’ll take a close look at this and then I’ll know what’s what, instead of this muddle of what might or might not be …”

Third Memory

in

I watched large flakes of snow
drifting to the hard ground

in waves washing over
dragging me through an undertow

of possible crashing currents
a brief, turbulent flow

I knew it wasn’t snow
falling from sullen sky

but plant like, clumps of seeds
tufts of milkweed strands sigh

in this scarlet field
snow fell and now it rains

something asphalt black flowers
stretching from these plains

my history muddled
moments skimming puddles

sinking below
water's skin

to dark, to sky
turning in tailspin

syringe drug,
a seed, feeling

that remakes my being
that lets me remember

a computer program
a line of sloppy code

that sends me down this road
quite drunk, spinning out on black ice,

rolling over an embankment
through a cloudburst of floating seeds

flying from the car, landing in
a bed of gentle weeds

Enter Barn

in

“Let’s see what happens, here.”

The kid typed “Enter the barn.”

The cassette tape whirred into action and the microcomputer screen went blank for a few seconds while the speakers pinged and squealed.

“Let’s see what happens, here.”

The Doctor typed “Enter the barn.”

The cassette tape whirred into action and the microcomputer screen went blank for a few seconds while the speakers pinged and squealed.

“Let’s see what happens, here.”

Hans typed “Enter the barn.”

The cassette tape whirred into action and the microcomputer screen went blank for a few seconds while the speakers pinged and squealed.

“Let’s see what happens, here”

The Detective typed “Enter the barn.”

The cassette tape whirred into action and the microcomputer screen went blank for a few seconds while the speakers pinged and squealed.

Then the screen glittered with points of colored light all over the screen. It's broken the Detective thinks. The screen was blotchy with glowing color, like lichen or moss clinging to a tree trunk.

Then the screen glittered with points of colored light all over the screen. It's broken the Doctor thinks, disappointed. The screen was blotchy with glowing color, like lichen or moss clinging to a tree trunk.

Then the screen glittered with points of colored light all over the screen. It's broken the kid thinks, disappointed. The screen was blotchy with glowing color, like lichen or moss clinging to a tree trunk. Some 3-bit game this is.

A pattern began to emerge, as the screen painted a picture. The Doctor felt a rumbling and tumbling of emotion in his gut, in his chest, as he recognized the image being painted on the screen.

The kid watched the colored points spread, filling the screen. A roadside. It was snowing or raining.

The sun reached in through the hotel window and slashed the screen with the glare of its light. The Doctor tried to hold his arms over the screen and block the light, but he couldn’t see the final image. He walked to the window. Although the sun is streaming through the blinds, It’s been a harsh winter. Snow drifts and possibly black ice on the road.

He heard rain, a background noise getting louder. It was the shower.

He stepped out of the shower and dried off. He’s alone in the hotel room.

On the coffee table a graphic novel was lying next to the ash tray. The ash tray was clean and different. He opened the book and looked through it. The pictures moved in small ways. One panel was an open field. The grass and the trees swayed in the wind. A few people in the distance moved up a field, from the bottom of the panel to the top. When they reach the top.

These animated graphic novels, the Doctor thought, as he remembered playing games on cassettes with on of the first PCs and then CDs and online on laptops.

The two small figures walked up the still life path over and over again on the graphic novel’s liquid paper. A box floated over the screen with the caption, "Snacking on strawberries as they walked, the mother took her child over the hill, where a cache of spores waited hidden on the other side."

The Doctor needed to pick up Kate and their child, soon.

On the next panel, a face of joy, framed by a pair of arms shrouded in a hospital smock, reaching up. Gloved hands cupped the scowling baby, his arms and legs slowly kicking in the static picture where it was bound. He set the animated novel down and picked up his keys.

He had some time, though, for a drink before leaving the bar. He entered the bar.

Function Crash ()

in

Function Crash () {

narrator i;
character wife;
character son;
setting i.automobileAccident;
i = “Waning day, flat and dark blue through the glass.”;
wife = “At the last model home, ’This could work. We could put up a bookshelf, the new bookshelf, right there.’ She points at a space between two bare windows in the living room.”;
wife + wife = “The garage is quite large. I know you’ll like that.”;
son = “I don’t like houses. I want to play a game.”;
i + i = “No more, please. At least, if it were to be blue, not that dark blue, but the blue of a cloudy white sky seen through the glare of morning’s sunrise. Sharp as a January Sunday.”;
i + i = “A game for the kid to play at the last house. Football players, composed of points of light, to slide across pixel fields. White lines of offensive schemes and formations to wield.”;
i + i = “The collision threw my body through the windshield, from the car. My brain crackled with zap, zap, zap, as I somersaulted through blue, through blue, through blue. Unbelievable, almost, that this is happening to me.”;
i + i = “A feeling, sinking into frozen earth, suddenly soft as newly turned soil. Mind, heart, and lips inseparable from the earth—becoming earth.”;
memory = new string [11];
memory(0) = “A bird hops up to my wife. She trills, ‘Hello birdy’”;
memory(1) = “I touch her pregnant belly, round and naked.”;
memory(2) = “How did she rack up fuckin’ $500 on the charge card?”;
memory(3) = “The new bookshelf would look good in that spot.”;
memory(4) = “A photograph of a child in summer, swinging on a tire, in flight. Turning and turning in circles. The child leaning back, looking up, his face spinning like speedy Mercury in an elliptical orbit.”;
i +i = “Still, smelling the pungent odor that steeps the earth.”;
i + i = “Unable to bear the earth in my nose, in my mouth, on my tongue.”;
memory(5) = “An interesting documentary the other day—watching the sky for large falling objects. Grainy pictures of star clusters, rings of rock and ice, planets traveling from satellite to satellite to NASA lab to servers to wires across the earth.”;
memory(6) = “My son reads a story to me. It’s Dr. Seuss.”;
memory(7) = “I can’t believe he drew all over his friend’s head”;
memory(8) = “When he hugged, he held with loving tenacity”;
memory(9) = “My son laughs as the car spins across the median”;
i + i = “There must be a way to shut down, restart, and put a broken mind back together from so many shattered shards, blood on the ground. Like the sting of a needle—biting and barbed—great black drops of rain, passing moments of clarity—sinking, rooting firm and deep—quickly evaporating .”;
i.final.memory(10) = “Lashing out in anger when my son won’t wear socks”;
i + i = "Pigeons landing, cooing between ribs and pecking at falling skin, weeping flesh.";
i + i = "The strong heavy rain, which would wash face, limb, bones away with the mud, approaching.";
i = “”;

}

My Relationships

in ,

I think it’s time that i settled down and made a commitment. For the long haul. For better or worse. I’ve just had enough of this bouncing around from one relationship to another.

There was my first true love. Where the bartenders were German cowboys, tattooed, and/or named Emily. The beer selection was great. Nice boozy stouts and porters. High end cocktail capabilities. Sazeracs. Brunch menu all day long. What was not to love?

But alas, time moved on. I moved around from one neighborhood to another, and I could no longer fit my first love into my daily routine. Then not even my weekly routine. Not as available as those that came later. Still every now and again, I hook up. On laundry day.

My next bar was much more convenient for where I was at the time. Just around the corner, so I could slip in for a quickie. They also had the Sazeracs. Wasn’t a big fan of the beer, although many others thought highly of the it. Belgian was always too citrus for my tastes.

What was nice about this place was that it had no TVs. You could really just engage. With the rugby player from Wales. The bartender with the same name as mine. And then there was the grotto downstairs. Dark with secluded corners if you chose not to sit at the bar. A place for a date. A few drinks before we scuttled off to my place.

Every now and again, I head over to this one bar, well outside of my neighborhood, for it’s exotic appeal. Not any meaningful relationship here, but it’s quirky and fun. Features the Bicycle Clown, where they customizes mixed drinks to meet whatever fetish you may have. And I have a few.

Another place, at a train station, a stranger passing in the night at the train station. A desperate choice, because you can’t be too particular when you’re waiting to catch a train. The staff was much too young, but I was in the middle of mid-life cruising. As it turns out I didn’t have the wherewithal to take advantage of the opportunities the bar had to offer. So many different oysters. One solid stout.

There was another place, that I would also see sometimes on the side for some variety. It never really appealed to me. Most notable for the BW photos from the 30s when you walk in. I always felt like I was walking into the Kubrick film, The Shining, which was not really what I was looking for in a relationship. I prefer the significant others in my life not be the spiritual reincarnation of a maniac, who murdered their family.

And then I find a place that I absolutely fall in love with. It feels like I’m really a part of something. They all know my name. And after awhile, I realize that there is nothing special about this place or my relationship with it. I am merely one of many. In fact, as a drunk, I was a bit hard to tolerate, and they didn’t really appreciate it.

Then the desperate grab for rebounds, looking to recapture that magic. Places with wonderful atmosphere. Awesome, friendly staff. Cocktail expertise most extraordinaire. After a bit afternoon quickes, getting drunk during lunch and finding my way back to work, just didn’t quite satisfy.

There’s this place, maybe the last place, where I sit now, enjoying a mezcal negroni. Already, it’s getting old and tired. I need another change of scenery. Maybe, something besides a bar. Hash runs?

Lunar Maze

in

Clearly his decision-making left a lot to be desired. First off, he was wandering through a maze. Never a good start. The Minotaur. The Shining. Nothing good ever happened in mazes.

Yet, here he was wandering through one right now, guided by a strange old man he’d met at a pub. Why would anyone follow a complete stranger into a maze in a foreign land? Especially a guy that limped with a little crooked wooden can and wore in eye patch and went on and on about ancient rites and rituals and something about the old ones.

Apparently, it was the sort of thing he would does, because here he was, drifting towards his ultimate demise and wondering how he ended up there. And now, of course, the wolves howling. And the mist. And the full moon. None of this suggested that things were going to turn out well.

So it did not surprise him at all when they had reached the center of the maze, and the old man had transformed into a werewolf or a tentacled Cthulhu or whatever. It didn’t really matter what it was. Suffice to say that he’d once again found himself leaving a pub or bar or roadside moonshine stand and ending up in an unhappy situation. One that he’d reflect on later and feel a deep-seeded feeling of existential dissatisfaction.

The old man completed his transformation into some sort of horrific creature that should have stuck fear into his heart. But really, this sort of thing happened all the time.

So here was the part, where he would flee. He started to run, but his heart really wasn’t into it. He’d likely need a lot of coffee and ibuprofen tomorrow.

The Graduate, A Police Report

in

Name of Accused: Braddock, Benjamin 

Charge: Stalking
Specifics: 
Accused loitered on Elaine Robinson’s college campus, where he was not a student, and repeatedly made unwanted advances to Elaine Robinson in the school library, in her own classroom, and other places that invaded Elaine Robinson's private space. The Accused persisted in these behaviors, despite the fact that Ms Robinson established clear boundaries by stating that the accused should “clear off” 

Accused accosted Elaine Robinson and her fiancé, Carl Smith, at the San Francisco zoo, and made bizarre observations about the monkeys at the zoo.  

Through subterfuge and misrepresentation, the Accused secured the location of the wedding of Elaine Robinson and Carl Smith with the purpose of disrupting the ceremonies and causing a "real scene".  

Charge: Impersonated Clergy
Specifics: 
According to the Santa Barbara gas station attendant, the Accused claimed to be clergy officiating the wedding of Elaine Robinson and Carl Smith in order to use a phone to determine the location of the wedding.   

Charge: Disorderly Conduct
Specifics: 
At the wedding of Elain Robinson and Carl Smith, the Accused pounds on glass from a balcony overseeing the wedding ceremony. Multiple witnesses report the accused shouting "Elaine"  

Charge: Assault
Specifics: 
The Accused allegedly assaulted Mr. Robinson on two occasions. First, in the accused's apartment after an argument had ensued when Mr. Robinson attempted to protect his daughter from the accused's unwanted advances. 

The second assault occurred in front of multiple witnesses at the wedding ceremony of Elaine Robinson and Carl Smith. The accused beat Mr. Robinson with a large cross.  

Charge: Abduction and Kidnapping  
Specifics: 
Having worn Elaine Robinson down psychologically and broken her, the Accused abducted her and escaped in the back of a Santa Barbara city bus. 

Another Straight White Guy Sad about the End of a Relationship as the World Bursts at its Seams

in

They’d been drinking quite a bit before going to the Light Festival. While they’d stood in line for a ride the Ferris Wheel, a previously unfulfilled dating wish of his, she engaged a mother and her young kids waiting behind them, complimenting the young girl on her warrior costume.

(A car rammed into a crowd of protesters)

Once on the Ferris Wheel, they kissed, and out of the corner of his eye, he could see the Harbor spinning past as he pressed his hand between her legs and felt the wetness through her jeans.

The sex had been great fun with all the trappings that he enjoyed. Restraints and collars and floggers, and once he chained her to his mantel piece.

(and a state police helicopter crashed into the woods Saturday as tension boiled over at a white supremacist rally. The violent day left three dead, dozens injured)

And he thought nostalgically about the time while all four of her limbs were tied securely to the bed, he jammed his cock into her mouth.

And the time that she walked out of the shower in the morning, when she thought he had already left, stark naked with a towel wrapped around her head.

And when he went upstairs one night after watching an episode of the Wire, and she simply welcomed him into bed.

(The violent day left three dead, dozens injured, and this usually quiet college town a bloodied symbol of the nation’s roiling racial and political divisions)

But now, she pauses at the street crossing looking back, dressed in baggy pants and a black blouse, a single mother, adoptive daughter, religious rape survivor, recovered addict, and an international development worker. And then she waves goodbye and walks away.

( - Sarah Rankin, Associated Press)

Star Trek Fanfiction by Kathy Acker as Read by Jonathan Goldstein

in

Interspecies Fuckland

In Interspecies Fuckland, a lot of fucking is going on.  Romulans and Vulcans are intermingling to produce strange offspring with pointed ears. Klingons are violently copulating with humans, killing their mates and mounting their heads on spikes before giving birth to bumpy-headed babies doomed to a substandard living that lacks a good dental plan.

In Interspecies Fuckland, Cardassian night porters are performing sadomasochistic rituals on broken glass with the Bajorans they victimized during the occupation. The deviant behavior becomes more perverted by the fact that the Cardassian hemipenis doesn’t fit properly in any Bajoran orifices.

In Interspecies Fuckland, the Sheliak engage in contractual sexual relations that involves protracted foreplay in the form of legal maneuverings and negotiations to determine position, location, time , and amount of mucous that will be exchanged.

Inexplicably, the crossbreeding orgy of unmatched chromosomes by the different hominid species of the Alpha quadrant manage to produce reptile-ape-crustacean-squid offspring with bumpy ass-shaped heads, nineteen nostrils, fish mouths, webbed feet, hands covered with suckers, and leathery skin.

In the fucking free-for-all, the aliens of the 24th century are happy to get skull bonked by a giant hairy bug, but still get squeamish when faced with transgender Trills.

The most tolerant species in Interspecies Fuckland is the Slime Mold of Seti Prime which reproduces by consuming its mates, regardless of number and gender, and dissolving them to absorb their DNA.

50.3333333 shades of red, green, and blue in equal proportions

in

He admired her proportions. She was perfectly dimensioned, measuring 2×1.3333333333333333333×2 cubits. Her face exhibited all the ideal symmetry ratios, and it scored 18 on the von Luschan chromatic scale. They commenced to mate in the tribunal of love.

Initially, they aligned themselves perpendicularly, then parallel. After 600K milliseconds and expending 4186 Joules in the parallel alignment, they adopted a rhomboid configuration that exponentially accelerated the flow of endorphins in their bloodstream.

5500 milliseconds after returning to a parallel alignment, he rotated her 180 degrees on her longitudinal axis, and they maintained a perpendicular alignment. He administered a strike upon her gluteus maximus, expending 4 joules of energy, and then engaged the intestinal avenue.

After securing her carpus with jute, he used the instrument that had been constructed by wrapping its core in filler and then covered by an initial plait and then up to three additional layers–in this case only two, the belly plait and one bolster–and the stock starked with a round piece of wood and plaited over with leather.

Having reached a point where various emissions had occurred and their muscles were overwhelmed by lactic acid, they rested for 240000 milliseconds in overlapping physical proximity. Their respiratory and circulatory systems, which had been operating at high levels of activity, slowly reverted to normative levels. She told him that her limbic system was highly attuned to him, but he had already been seized by a fit resembling narcolepsy