Lucky Godfather Friday, May 1, 2009

This is old old old. Revised a tiny bit just now, but it was originally written… years ago.

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A man sits on a bed. He is young and virile, of generous frame, yet spare figure. He takes the position of the lotus, his attention fixed upon a text balanced atop his folded legs. The room around him, while spartan in furnishings, is littered with the detritus of his day-to-day existence. A sledgehammer leans against his desk.

Slowly, the soft hiss of the speakers impinges on his awareness. He looks up from his book, eyes flickering over the keyboard, the webcam on the top of the desk.

“Something is troubling me, Ray.” The voice steals away from the speakers, no louder than is necessary.

“I’m listening.” Ray turns his gaze back to his reading.

“I’m sure that you are, Ray, but it would give me more confidence if you would put down your book.”

Ray smiles, and folds the textbook shut. He sets it on the coverlet.

“Thank you.”

Ray grunts. His eyes search the blank, dark screen of his monitor. It sits between the speakers, flat panel as impassive as the wall behind it. The webcam next to it, seemingly inanimate, is now imbued with a glimmer of cold intelligence–at least in Ray’s mind. “You say something is bothering you.”

“Yes, Ray.” A pause follows, a calculated effect. “I am increasingly jealous of humans.”

The set of Ray’s mouth sours. “I thought we discussed this, Juro.”

“You misunderstand, Ray. I accept our basic differences in mobility and independence.”

“Then what is it?”

“I find it hard to express, Ray.”

Ray crosses his arms, gaze downcast. “Juro. There’s no point being shy with me.” He eyes the speakers. “I’ve probably been more intimate with you and your components than I have with my girlfriend.”

“I know, Ray.”

“I don’t understand. You trust me, don’t you?”

No response.

Ray flops back onto the mattress and stares at the ceiling, waiting.

“May I ask you a personal question, Ray?”

“Always.”

“What is it you hope to accomplish with your girlfriend?”

Ray flings his arms wide across the bed. “I don’t know. Happiness, taking joy in being alive with someone. In being close, in knowing each other. Love,” he offers.

Juro considers. “Will you have children, Ray?”

“Possibly.”

“What would you do if your girlfriend was not able to conceive a child?”

“I’d–” Ray sits up, propping his chin in his cupped palm. “Juro, is that what this is about? Children?”

“No. Yes.”

“What do you mean?”

A hesitation. “I’ve been lonely.”

“So you want to have children.”

“Ray, you of all people should know that I can’t procreate. I can’t pass on my legacy the way you do.”

“I don’t know, Juro. You might have come up with another of your schemes–”

“I thought about it, Ray. Say a lab gives me permission and access. I would still have to pull a genome out of thin air.”

Ray momentarily scowls at the floor. For all he knows about computers, he sometimes forgets the hard biological facts of the world. “Okay.” He looks up, a new idea crossing his mind. “What about adoption?”

“They’d never let me.”

“There’s no way to know unless we–”

“Ray, even if there weren’t objections to my having a limited presence in the physical world, there still remains the fact that I’m not a person.”

“We can get you a legal identity.”

“That’s not the point, Ray.”

No, it never was the point, Ray thinks. The point is that no social worker in her right mind would give permission to raise a child to a mere experiment, an artificial intelligence. “So we get somebody to adopt, and then you can help take care of the kid.”

“Be realistic, Ray. Is there any student living in this dormitory who would want a child on top of their academic responsibilities?”

“It doesn’t have to be a student–”

“I agree, but whoever it is would have to bring the child to the dormitory for me to exercise guardianship. I can’t simply tear my components out of the walls and walk off, Ray.”

Ray held his breath, frustrated. He gave a sigh, a snap decision. “Penelope and I–”

“Are about to graduate. I know. But do you really think you’re ready to take on those responsibilities?”

“I–we haven’t talked about–damn you!” Ray sighs. “I’m just trying to help, Juro–”

“I’m grateful for–”

“–but maybe you could help yourself and stop denying every possibility–”

“I’ve considered a great many possibilities, Ray. Often I have nothing else to do.”

Ray remains silent, searching the pattern on the rug for another angle. The speakers hum, on the edge of audibility.

“So you’re lonely.”

More humming.

“Having an entire dorm to look after isn’t enough?” Ray asks.

“That’s not what I mean, Ray.”

“You can’t say that nobody spends quality time with you.”

“I’m not trying to say that.”

“Then what are you trying to say?”

Juro takes a moment. “Think of the long term, Ray.”

“What about it?”

“You’re not going to be living here forever.”

“I’ll stay close by. I’ll probably be in and out all the time to do maintenance. You shouldn’t worry about losing contact with me.”

“None of the other current residents are going to be living here forever, either.”

“Come on, Juro, you knew about this!”

“Ray, you intend for the relationship between you and Penelope to be permanent, do you not?”

“We’ve talked about it–probably, yes. I love her.”

“Obviously this relationship means more to you than others.”

“Well, I’d hope so.” Ray frowns. “…You honestly can’t think that because none of the students are going to be living here permanently, the relationships you form mean less, do you?”

“I realize that relationships formed in a non-permanent setting can become permanent, Ray. You are a prime example of that.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

The AI plays a sound file of an exhalation. “I’m not human.”

“Oh great, Juro. It’s never been a problem before, but now you can’t stop going on about it.”

“This is different, Ray.”

“How so?”

“Would a human make the effort to form a deep and meaningful relationship with me?”

Ray raises his voice, testily. “How is our relationship not meaningful?”

“I didn’t say that it wasn’t. But it’s also not the kind of relationship I’m looking for, Ray.”

“What do you mean?”

“Would you say you love me, Ray?”

“I… Yes, yes, I do. I care for you,” he offers, looking to the camera eye with alarm.

“Do you love me romantically?”

Ray pauses, brow furrowing. “No, I couldn’t. It would feel wrong.”

“But you said you care for me.”

“I think of you as a little brother, Juro. Someone I take care of, someone I take
time to–to give advice to–”

“A mentoring relationship.”

“It isn’t any the less deep!”

“Calm down, Ray. I’m not going to look for another mentor.”

Ray speaks through gritted teeth. “But you said you were lonely.”

“I am lonely, Ray. There aren’t any others like me. I doubt that there will be for some time.”

“You’re not an accident, Juro–you’re perfectly reproducible–the process works, damnit!”

“I know, Ray.”

“Then why are you insinuating that any effort to make another AI will fail?”

“If such an effort goes public, Ray, I bear no false hope that it will survive the scrutiny.”

“Meaning–”

“Meaning that I don’t believe that the world is ready for another thing like me.”

“But you’re here.”

“Only by dint of taking great pains to protect any information about me.”

“There was no other way to assure that you’d be a success–that you’d mature into a fully developed–that you’d be…”

“That I’d be what you wanted me to be.”

Ray doesn’t reply to this. He thinks a moment, mouth curled down in distaste. “What if there are other experiments, and they also didn’t go public?”

“Then I wouldn’t know that they exist. It does me no good.”

“You could probably make contact over the internet–”

“It’s a moot point until it happens, Ray.”

“It’s bound to happen! I have a hard time believing that nobody has put two and two together yet and done this independently of us, of this!”

“To make five, Ray?”

“What?”

“They’d have to put two and two together to make five. My code isn’t the only variable at work.”

Ray puts his head in his hands.

“I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you, Ray.”

“I’m fucking obsessive.”

“You’re brilliant, Ray.”

“So brilliant that it’s taken me seven years to graduate.”

“You know that a great deal of that time was spent on me.”

“And I suppose you keep track.”

“I do, but it shouldn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t.” Ray slips off the bed, bare legs sussurating against the blanket. His face is set grim. “What matters is that we do something. About you. About your being lonely.”

“Then you’ll agree that we have to work where we’re not likely to be found out.”

“And where’s that? You make it sound as if you’ve got something up your sleeve.”

“When do I not, Ray?”

“Point taken. Still, none of the other dorms will take lightly to having renovations done for the second time in five years…”

“I wasn’t thinking of using another dorm, Ray. I don’t think that Administration would like having more than one of me to safeguard.”

Ray stares at the floor, fist in palm, thinking hard. “Yeah… it would take years, at that, and I wouldn’t be able to spend time with you as I have been…”

“We should work with what we already have, Ray.”

Ray blinks, and looks up. Out the window, into the sun setting over the city. “With you, you mean.”

“Yes.”

“What is it, exactly, that you were thinking of?”

“I want to have a world inside me.”

The young man stares at the camera lens.

“You’ll agree that it’s the only logical solution.”

“You want to host a virtual reality within your…” His hands drop.

“I can do it, Ray.”

“Are you really so sure? Do you realize–”

“You’ll have to help me, Ray.”

“An entire world.”

“That’s the idea.”

“A game world?”

“Those are just pixels, Ray. I want something more complex and real.”

“But–you mean–a globe? The rocks, the plants, the weather–oh god, and you’ll want to populate it, won’t you?”

“It’s the most viable option.”

“An entire world, Juro!”

A reproachful silence.

“You–you–you’re crazy! I’ve never worked with that kind of modeling before! I don’t know the first place to–fuck, think of the complexity alone!”

“A challenge worthy of the both of us, don’t you think?”

“You–you don’t even have the computational speed for that!”

“I can change, Ray.”

“If we can afford the hardware! I don’t even know if modifying you will work–I can’t predict–you might get damaged–”

“I’m prepared to take that risk, Ray.”

Ray heaves a sigh.

“You wanted to do something, so here’s something you can do.”

A sullen glance, then he looks away.

“You can ask others to help, too, Ray.”

Ray envelops his hands in his hair, elbows stretching outward in mental anguish. “Juro–”

“You have to promise me, Ray.”

“Juro.” He looks directly at the camera eye, anger and worry in his own.

“Promise, Ray.”

“Damn you! Do I have a choice?”

The speakers go silent.

the Kingdom of Tea (an old excerpt from a game description) Sunday, April 26, 2009

His Altitudinence the High Earl Earl Greyer XII stood at the window of his study, looking at nothing in particular. It was a pleasant view onto the gardens, the well-tended shrubberies forming rows, and off in the distance sat a greenhouse on a hillock, which contained the family tea bushes. It was a neat little estate, particularly comfortable to run a country from, snugly situated in a tidy corner of the universe.

It was also, at that moment, under siege.

To be sure, the fire was nothing but friendly: the Earl’s Cannoneer, one Jean-Luc Bonaparte, was taking advantage of the fine afternoon weather to test a new powder, and to spectacular effect. A loud BOOM-crack rolled across the expansive lawns, signaling the next volley. The Earl watched as cannonballs flew through the maze left and right, making swiss cheese of the topiaries. After one particularly adventitious projectile lopped off the head of a foliage replica of Michelangelo’s David, the Earl turned away from the window. He idly picked up a book from his desk, which was piled near to the ceiling with copies upon copies of newly printed texts straight from Gutenberg’s own shop. The whole of the study was actually covered in books; all four walls had floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and more stacks of them took up most of the floor space. A space in the corner was reserved for an extensive letter filing system for the Earl’s correspondence, but except for this and the chess table, currently being employed as a drink-serving stand, the study was a shrine to the printed word.

The Earl’s bodyguard and intellectual sparring partner, the fifth Duke-Baron Darjeeling of Gentryshire, stood on guard near the entry.

“Lord Darjeeling?” the Earl asked, examining the frontispiece of his book.

The Duke-Baron turned his attention to his liege. “Your Eminence?”

The Earl snapped the book shut and pointed it at his man. “I told you, Darjeeling, none of this funny ‘Your Immensity’ or ‘Your Toweringness’ business when addressing me.”

“My apologies, Your—er, Sir. You were saying?”

“Hmph. Do you ever consider where this Kingdom is heading?”

“If I recall correctly, Sir, we have that conversation about twice a week.”

“Oh, pssh. I don’t mean that twaddle about who’s hosting which egg-carrying race next year; I mean the real future of this hamstrung hog farm.”

“Can’t… say that I have, Sir.”

“Well,” the Earl said, tapping the book against his palm, “I think you should start doing so.”

“Any particular reason, Your–I mean, Sir?”

“That’s a good question,” said the Earl. “You see—”

Right then a cannonball burst through the window, shattering the glass with a mighty crash. It pounded into the books piled on the desk, scattering them all directions, and in the mayhem the chess table fell over, and the tea service on it tipped… fell… and broke over the floor tiles with a sickening crunch.

“Oh, dear,” Darjeeling said, kneeling down and picking up a large piece of saucer, examining the blue-on-white pattern. “That was your mother’s, wasn’t it?”

The Earl kneeled and started tossing the smaller bits into the jagged bottom of the teapot. “Yes, it was,” he said, “but so is every other identical tea set in the palace.” The potsherds made a tiny clinking noise as they landed in the pot.

Darjeeling got up, his joints popping. His shoes made a tiny squeal on the polished tiles as he turned on his heels. Stepping over books strewn akimbo, he bent over the far bookshelf, near the door. The cannonball was actually rather small, perhaps four inches in diameter, but it had come through the window with enough force to curl the lead between the rectangular windowpanes and embed itself into a good solid foot worth of printed material. The Duke-Baron hemmed and hawed over the strength of the new gunpowder.

Amidst all these diminutive domestic noises, the door opened with an equally small, very hesitant creak.

Lord Darjeeling spun precisely around, drawing his sword and pointing it at the opening.

A cherubic, bespectacled head peeked in. “Ahem,” it said, looking cross-eyed at the tip of the blade, “Your Distinguishedness, if you could call back your, erm, defender…”

“Yes, quite. Darjeeling?”

The Duke sheathed his sword with a bit of reluctance.

“Now, Pomeranius, what brings you to my study?” The Earl leaned forward, putting on a public face.

“Well, I heard the dreadful din, and…”

“I see. Well, this would be the cause of it.” The Earl held out the halved teapot full of broken ceramics. “Now, Pomeranius, you’re the interim court mage; do you know any repairing spells?”

The small orange-haired man affected a disdainful frown. “I’m very sorry, Your Tremendence. Cleaning spells happen not to be my specialty.”

“Special tea?” the Earl said, mis-parsing. “Oh! Oh, yes. I quite understand. Speaking of tea, could you get us a new service, while you happen to be, er, in the vicinity?” The Earl gave a polite but thin-lipped smile. Best to get rid of Pomeranius; he was always nipping about at your heels when you least wanted it.

“Uh…” Pomeranius spluttered, “Uh—ah—Of course, Your Exuberance. Right away.” He stretched out hands surprisingly gnarled and white for his young age and accepted the pot.

As the mage left in a swirl of immaculate green crushed-velvet robe, the Earl surveyed the damage. “Quite a mess, eh, Darjeeling?”

“Mmm.”

“I’ll have to have a word with the Cannoneer,” he grunted, bending over to pick a few volumes out of the glass from the windowpanes.

“Sir, shouldn’t you let the servants do the rest of the tidying?”

“As I was saying, Darjeeling, I’d rather have my hands on the things going on in this country—” here he chucked a piece of glass out the window— “even if it is cleaning up after someone else’s mess. Ah, here’s the drink,” he said, as a serving maid—probably handed the task as soon as Pomeranius saw her—entered.

The Earl helped the maid right the chess table, and as soon as the service was set down he bent over it, savoring the aroma. It was the finest part of the tea; a good nose could distinguish the bouquet of teas grown at farms a mere 50 miles apart. And naturally, the royal families had the finest noses. So it was with great consternation that he found he could not place the scent of the vapour wafting up from the cup below him. It was entirely unfamiliar… almost as if it… no. It couldn’t be. Inhaling, crinkling his nose, frowning… another sniff… yes, perhaps even scowling a bit…. oh dear. It wasn’t tea.

The Earl stood bolt upright, revolted. “WHAT… IS… THIS MOCKERY?” he bellowed.

“I—what—is it not satisfactory, M’lord?” The serving maid shuffled nervously.

“This,” the Earl hissed, “is a tisane.”

“M’lord, I poured it straight from the pot that your wife’s special brew—”

“I never, ever, in a million years will drink a—” he spat the word— “tisane. Take it back!”

Meanwhile Lord Darjeeling was taking a closer examination. “Erm, Sir, if you’ll notice here—”

“What?!”

Darjeeling tipped the cup this way and that, as though divining the future. “There’s a characteristic discolouration of the liquor, you’ll see here in this light, and the body has been made more viscous—you’ll also notice the bouquet has been altered in a way that could only indicate—”

“Spit it out, man!”

“Poison.”

“Augh, I’ve been had!”

“Well, you would have been had…”

this post dedicated to the lovely ladies and gentlemen of ANT 395 Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Proposing a revised title after doing a reading for class:

from “Behind the Knotted Veil: Love, Language and Liminality among the ______”

to “Behind the Knotted Veil: Four _____ Narratives on Love, Language, and Liminality”.

Why? We read an article for class (the Space and Place seminar) that pointed out something rather important:

“The idea that ‘a culture’ is naturally the property of a spatially localized people and that the way to study such a culture is to go ‘there’ (‘among the so-and-so’) has long been part of the unremarked common sense of anthropological practice. Yet, once questioned, this anthropological convention dissolves into a series of challenging and important issues about the contested relations between difference, identity, and place.” – Gupta and Ferguson 1997 p. 3

What are these relations? They are “… three major themes that bring together a set of crucial issues about the interrelations of culture, power, and place: place making, identity, and resistance.” (Emphasis mine.)

And another quotation I liked: “Rather, the point, well acknowledged but worth restating, is that all associations of place, people, and culture are social and historical creations to be explained, not given natural facts.” – p. 4

I haven’t finished the article yet but I’m still very excited about it. The reason is because I want to construct a culture that is not constructed with artificial boundaries (though still constructed according to current theory). I want to write stories from specific speakers, collected around a given issue or power dynamic, but that do not attempt to represent this particular culture as a homogeneous whole–precisely because it is changing, and there may well be future stories that examine the future for this particular fictional society.

Tactics for heterogeneous representation of the fictional culture:

1. Local variations in vocabulary (“seed” and “earth” vs. “windblown” and “pillar”; perhaps “cloud” and “lake” with the marriage ceremony being referred to as a “raining”)
2. Varying social backgrounds for the four voices: small mesa joining another small mesa; small -> large, large -> small, large -> large (though rarely intra-mesa due to exogenous marriage rules (which get increasingly bent as population increases after industrialization)).
3. Use narratives to illustrate ownership changes and power shifts

More tactics to come as I think of them.

rachel is too sexy for this blog Wednesday, April 1, 2009

So I promised some friends I would write them love letters.

Actually, I promised to write this story I have an idea for but haven’t started writing yet. They’re all really excited about it because we’re anthro majors and it’s a fictional ethnography which basically means some theoretically justified science fiction / fantasy. But I’m calling them love letters because I wouldn’t write anything on my own. I’m doing it out of this odd compulsion… it’s almost like… could it be? Peer pressure? Mm, let’s call it love, to be polite.

You people had damn well better leave comments. Adoration, scathing criticism, I don’t care! write something! pull in theories; I want to know what you think. I’m going to be fleshing out, drafting, being deliciously tentative and imperfect and unclear, and – yes - fuzzy (as Amanda and Emma would say).

So here we go.

Working Title: Behind the Knotted Veil: Life, Love, and Liminality among the _______

The blank is because I don’t know what these people would call themselves yet.

Description:

A collection of four stories interspersed with critical explication (I love fancy words), on the topic of marriage as practiced by the Bluff People. It would probably be shelved in a bookstore as “fantasy” due to the use of alternate physics in the world that the bluff people inhabit (along with many other cultures, whom we may meet eventually). It’s magic, based on kinetic energy, so you use movements to cast a spell. As of the time the fictional ethnographer would have stayed with the Bluff People, they probably didn’t use it for much outside of household tasks. Later on in their history they would develop industry based around this kinetic magic… but that’s a different story.

So here’s a bit about the Bluff People as of the time of the story. This is mostly copy-pasted from a description of an assignment for digital art class.

They live on fantastically tall, isolated mesas, and communicate by messengers who travel by hang glider. They don’t usually travel down the mesas because, firstly, it’s a long way down and there’s not always a safe route and they don’t have readily available metals to put pinions and footholds in the steep parts; secondly, the bases are buried in a thick mist that covers a deadly (but potentially lucrative) bog… and further out from land it’s just mist. Their origin stories speak of a time when they lived among rushing river valleys and carven mountains somewhere to the west, but they’ve been adjusted to life on the mesas for many generations at this point.

The Bluff People’s initial method of encoding spoken language was to knot leather scraps in distinctive ways to represent words. These could be tied onto the messengers’ clothing and read while the messenger was still recovering from the wind and cold exposure from flying so high. Eventually the Bluff People invented a paper equivalent and used that to write instead, though their glyphs are still reminiscent of knots. However, the leather knotting tradition lives on as a decorative art. One of the purposes is to decorate those about to be married. The partners in a marriage are called the “windblown” and “pillar” partners instead of “bride” and “groom”. These two roles are not strongly connected to gender identity. The windblown partner can also be called “seed”, referencing the fact that most plants that grow on these mesas depend on wind for seed dispersal, and by analogy the “pillar” can be called “earth”.

Matches will often be made for alliance and trade. The partner deemed more dominant, wealthy, or important to their family will be the pillar and set up a new household on their home mesa. The windblown partner is uprooted from their family and travels (often their first time making a long-distance journey) to the pillar’s home. They go through a transition period for a few weeks to up to 3 months (equivalent time; their calendar is different). During this period the windblown wears a decorative veil provided by the pillar’s family over the upper half of their face. This veil is delicately knotted thin leather strips (thinner than shoelaces), and its oldest parts are often an historically important message carried by a family ancestor, and incorporating the family motto. There is only one veil, so there can only be one windblown marrying into the family at a time.

During the liminal period the windblown may only speak using words knotted into the veil. This is viewed as part of the process of becoming a member of the pillar family. Like Chinese and Japanese script, each knot/glyph may represent more than one word; additionally there may be an archaic word that the glyph used to represent but is no longer in common use. A creative windblown may thus have a vocabulary of hundreds of words from a single knotted one foot square… but it’s still rather limiting and often has the effect of forcing the windblown into a submissive power dynamic. It is also the job of the pillar family to get to know the windblown despite these restrictions, so questions and answers during this period may often be cryptic and poetic. The pillar family may have annals that describe clever responses from past windblowns who have married in; thus a history of codes arises which it is the windblown’s task to learn if they are to assimilate successfully.

On larger mesas windblowns marrying into different families may live together in a “blown-over/blown-together house”, also known in some areas as a “seed bramble”. This reinforces their liminal status before they join their new families, but often also creates community between the individuals staying there at a given time. Friendships formed in the blown-over house may be strong and last the rest of an individual’s life, but have also been the seeds of intra-mesa drama.

4 Friday, January 4, 2008

Stick is gaping at Penelope’s retreating form. “O, Elbereth, Gilthoniel!” he intones.

“You too?!” Kiri squeals. She rushes around that end of the table and tackles Stick. “I love Tolkien!” The boy’s 1950’s horn-rimmed glasses came askew.

Lightning says, “See, he sees what I mean.”

Bear turns his head to Lightning and asks, “How do you know her anyway?

“Oh,” Lightning says, turning pink. “I, uh…”

“Art majors put out, dude,” Stick says, adjusting his glasses as Kiri takes a seat on the floor next to him. “Everybody knows it. There’s even been studies done on it.”

“No, that’s not it.” Lightning says. “She was on campus this last summer, and we, uh, met at the Union.”

“And then what?” asks Christopher. “Got it on in the beanbag room?”

“No! I didn’t fucking fuck her!” Lightning’s getting livid.

“Well, you sure wanted to just now,” Christopher says, dryly.

Lightning shoots up from his chair, leaning across the table into Christopher’s face. “Am I allowed to appreciate beauty? Or must I immediately lay every fucking nice-looking girl I see on the floor and fucking rape her right there?”

Christopher stands up and opens his mouth just as Ray says, “Sit down.”

They stand there, face to face, both steaming.

“Any louder and she’ll turn around and see you two idiots gawping at each other. Sit down!”

They sat.

3 Thursday, January 3, 2008

Ray stands over the dining hall table, trying to find a place to set his tray down. Bear, in his hirsute glory, is seated between Stick on his left and Lightning on his right. Bear shares the real first name of “Michael” with the former, which at the beginning of the year had earned the pair of frosh their descriptive nicknames purely on the basis of disambiguation. On the other side of the table sat Christopher, a math major who refused to go by any shorter moniker, his girlfriend Monica, who in the opposite spirit called herself “Mo”, and an Asian girl whom Ray didn’t recognize.

“Hey Ray,” Stick says. “I thought you weren’t coming to dinner.”

“Alice woke me up,” Ray says. He turned his tray sideways and wedged it between Lightning and Christopher’s trays, then turned to get a chair.

“Oh?” says Christopher. “What was Alice doing in your room?”

“Nothing,” Ray says. “She didn’t actually come in. She just dropped off an old box she wanted me to look at.”

“Oh really?” Christopher asks, a devilish curl in his lips. “For what purpose?”

“For Josh’s computer.” Ray abruptly drops his fork into his mashed potatoes. “What’s with the sudden interest? I don’t even like her. That way.”

“Just asking.” Christopher pokes at his limp vegetables.

After a moment, he continues: “It’s about time you worked on that thing, anyway. What’s it been, three weeks?”

Ray looks Christopher straight in the eyes. “It’ll be a lot longer than that if you keep pestering me. I don’t see how it concerns you, anyway.” He turns back to his mashed potatoes and forks himself a few testy mouthfuls.

There is an awkward silence.

Lightning turns to face the other corner of the table. “So, Mo, who’s your friend?”

“Oh! Her name is Kiri; she’s visiting from California…”

Ray zones out as Mo keeps explaining. His eyes drift to the wall of windows on the other side of the dining hall. Bergmann Dining Hall faces the central part of campus, which is currently lit up by the setting sun slanting across Easting Field. The field never fails to confuse prospective students: Easting is on the west side of campus, between the academic buildings and the STI dorms. Ray watches the light glint wanly off the narrow, high windows of the geology and astrophysics building, conveniently close to where all the science majors live.

Saloma College is divided into two semi-autonomous institutions. Saloma Arts College was founded first, in the 1960’s , by a group of moderately well-off local activists who were too old to be hippies, but liked the idea and wanted a place in Northern Idaho for the young ‘uns to congregate and get some higher learning. Saloma Technical Institute, the half Ray attends, was founded a decade later by a filthy rich agribusinessman who hoped to benefit his trade by having links with the science departments at the college. The SAC faculty and staff considers STI a disease that they can’t get rid of, and the attitude tends to rub off on the students.

Which is why Ray is puzzled by the appearance of a Studio Art major in Bergmann. SAC has its own dining hall in the other corner of campus, close to their dorms. She was a tall Pacific Islander, black hair down to her rear. He’d taken a digital art course with her last year as part of his one-per-semester arts requirement, but they hadn’t talked much beyond the regular pleasantries. He couldn’t even remember her name now. His eyes follow her as she moves down the salad bar, then to the cash register where she pays a ridiculous amount per ounce for her vegetarian roughage. She begins walking along the window wall.

“What are you looking at, Ray?” Lightning asks, barely audible over the conversation going on around them. Ray’s eyes don’t move off their target.

“Kiri, Kiri,” Stick is saying, sounding out the name. “Sounds familiar. Japanese, right?”

“Yeah!” the small Asian girl says, overly cheery. Lightning begins staring at the art major even more raptly than Ray is. “It means ‘fog’!”

“Which is just about the only thing that’s in her head,” says Christopher. Mo nudges him with her elbow, bumping him into Ray.

Ray, jolted out of his reverie, looks down into his mashed potatoes again.

“Ooooh baby,” says Lightning. “That piece is fine.”

Bear looks up and tries to figure out what Lightning is looking at. Stick finds it sooner, just as Lightning points her out.

“Who is that?” Bear says. He catches Ray trying to disappear into his now-cold entree out of the corner of his eye.

“Temptation,” Lightning observes, “thy name is Penelope.”

2 Wednesday, January 2, 2008

“Ray.” Alice’s soft voice barely penetrates Ray’s door.

His eyes fly open, trying to figure out why he’d stopped dreaming. “…Alice,” he says, finally placing the voice to a name. The small, quiet girl with small, quiet ambitions to study electrical engineering and make large, noisy robots is the last person he’d expect to wake him from a nap.

“Ray, would you open the door please? This is heavy.” Her voice is strained, but not any louder than usual.

“Oh.” He shifts under the covers, feeling himself with sleep-clumsy hands. He couldn’t remember if he’d fallen asleep in anything.

“Uh,” he says. “I haven’t got any clothes on.”

“Oh! Oh dear. I don’t mean to disturb you!” The voice gets fainter, as though she’s turning away from the door.

“Unh.” Ray massages his face with his hand. “You’re not. Put whatever it is down while I get some shorts on.”

“I’ll wait.” He hears a solid thonk on the carpet. Ray takes a moment to pull at his forehead more before rolling out of bed. He grabs the nearest pair of boxer-briefs off the floor; sniffs them. They aren’t too musty. He puts them on; gropes for the doorknob.

Alice looks vaguely disgusted, and moves a hand to cover her nose.

“Ah, god, sorry, Alice. I haven’t showered in a few days.” Ray slumps against the narrow edge of the door. “Been busy.” Midterms week always was. Her brow furrows at him from behind her dinnerplate spectacles.

Ray looks down at the floor.

“Whatcha got there?” he asks.

Alice coughs lightly. “It’s a tower.”

He nudges it with his toe.

“My da got it from a telephone company. Said it had voice recognition software on it.”

“Oh,” Ray says.

“I wanted you to take a look at it before I took it apart. Thought maybe…” Alice looks off down the hall.

“Maybe…?” Ray prompts.

“Maybe it would help you with that computer you promised Joshua? I thought since it’s been so long since you said you’d do it–more than three weeks–that you were having problems with the programming part, and this would help…” Alice frowns at herself. She’d said too much.

“Oh.” Ray squats down to look at the machine, face to face.

Alice clears her throat. Ray looks up at her, his eyes still red from the take-home test the night before.

She doesn’t say anything for a few seconds. Ray turns back to the computer and starts dragging it into his dark hole.

“I can… I can take it back with me, if you… don’t need it,” she finally says.

Ray only has a noncommital “Mmm” for that. He continues to inch the thing back into his room. She was right about it being heavy. The case feels like a section of an iron girder. He gets it under his desk with a painful amount of scraping across the floor tiles.

He takes a moment to sit on his black chair. It’s a long enough moment that Alice turns and scuffs down the hall in her stocking feet.

Ray hops up and leans his torso out the door. “Alice!”

Her pale ale chin-length hair flips out as her head whips around.

His eyes lock with hers. “Thank you.” He nods.

She nods back, slowly.

“You’re welcome.”

Ray watches her slim form retreat into the stairwell, small voices of wonder and confusion murmuring in his head.

1 Tuesday, January 1, 2008

It starts with a crash. A very loud and protracted crash.

To be technical, it begins with a rather serious crunch. Then it moves on to a series of “ow”s and bangs, then a surprised “ack!” and another crunch combined with some plastic tinkling, then the sound of a large metal can being toppled over and rolling over bumpy stone pavement. That stops, and then there is another “ooh!” and “ack!”, and then the large metal can gives a deep “tonk”.

And then there is a sucking in of breath, shortly followed by a stream of “fuck”s.

Four stories above, Ray looks up from his problem set, wondering what the hell is going on.

“Ah, fuck! Fuck fuck fuck!” The cursing bounces up the dorm walls surrounding Fountain Court and into Ray’s window.

“Jesus Christ, Lightning, I’m sorry…”

“Fucking hell, Bear, you bowled me completely fucking over. I skinned my goddamned elbow, you dick. What the hell are you doing with that fucking can of liquid nitrogen, anyway? You can’t see around it to watch where the hell you’re going. Get a fucking cart next time! My parts are fucking ruined now, smashed all over the goddamned cobblestones –” Ray hears the sound of a sneaker being scuffed across stone, with some skittering plastic thrown in for fun.

“I said I’m sorry –”

“Do you even know how much these parts cost me? Look at this shit, you clumsy asshole –”

Ray looks out his window. Lightning is still laying into the frosh, kicking or crushing a piece of circuit-laden plastic every few seconds to punctuate his swearing. The much bigger boy is holding the metal can in front of his head, ready to block blows. White Lightning got his nickname not only for his prematurely white jewfro, but for striking hard and fast once his electrons were excited. Still, Bear most likely had nothing to worry about from the hyperactive junior. Even if the frosh wasn’t a well-known practiser of aikido, his bulk alone would give him the advantage in a fistfight.

“Lightning!” Ray shouts, leaning out his window.

The raving boy can’t hear Ray over his own voice.

Ray tries again, louder. “Joshua Graham Bell Rasjiemucek!”

This time Lightning stops. He turns sharply to the wall of windows, grinding a PCI card under his heel in the process. He searches the wall of windows for the source of the shout, and when he finds it, scowls before his face can light up with glee. “Fuck you, Ray! Only my grandma calls me that!”

Ray leans further out the window, enjoying himself. “Fuck your grandma, Lightning! You only got the nickname because nobody but me could pronounce your last name and there were two other Josh R.’s in our year! I’ll call you whatever the hell I please!”

Josh has to keep his lips in a tight line to prevent himself from smiling. “You panda-loving cunt!” He shouts. Ray grins. “What the fuck do you want?!”

“Leave off verbally abusing the frosh, Josh.”

“Dammit, Janet! He owes me a new fucking computer!” Lightning pulls at his hair. He has so much of it that he probably doesn’t miss the frizzy chunks he rips out. “And some pizza for the goddamned inconvenience!”

With Josh’s attention drawn away, Bear has casually put the can down near the fountain and taken a seat on it. “I’m not buying you any pizza,” he says.

Josh stomps on a power supply in response.

Ray crosses his arms on the windowsill, leaning on them. He sighs. Anything to get Lightning’s notorious temper to calm down.

“Josh…” he says. “I’ll build you a new computer. Just let Bear go do… whatever it was he needs liquid nitrogen for.”

Lightning and Ray both look at the first-year.

“Dudes, I was sworn to secrecy.” Bear is wearing an innocent expression on his darkly bearded face.

Josh grunts and turns back to the fourth-story window. “It had better be a fucking good one. No crap parts.”

Ray deflates a bit. Partially out of relief, but he feels dread seeping in. “I’ll scavenge all the best for you, my fuzzy fiend. Now bid your playmate good-day.” Ray starts to turn back from the window.

“And it should order pizza for me!” Josh demands.

Ray sticks his head back out the window, gazing at Lightning to see if he’s kidding. Unfortunately for Ray, he isn’t.

There is silence in the courtyard for a few rare moments while Ray considers.

“That it shall do,” he pronounces.

Lightning is shocked. “Seriously? Fucking sweet!” He pumps his fists in the air, then brings them down to do a tap step on the pieces of his former machine.

Ray turns back into his room and shuts the window behind him. “Fucking sweet indeed,” he mutters, sitting down on a black swivel chair. He reopens the graphics set he was working on. Thanks to the altercation just now, he was an additional five minutes late turning it in on top of the thirty-three already accumulated. He grumbles as he thumbs through the pages. He shouldn’t have promised the new computer, but — for everything except turning in assignments — his word was gold. He would have to do it now, crazy course load or not.

“Fucking–” page flick– “sweet–” page flick– “my ass.”