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InterText - Volume 1, Number 2
--------------------------------------------------------------------
INTERTEXT - Volume 1, Number 2 - July-August 1991
INSIDE THIS ISSUE
FirstText / JASON SNELL
Dragon Financing / KENNETH A. KOUSEN
Regression / DAVE SAVLIN
The American Dream / ROBERT HURVITZ
The Ambiguity Factor / PETE REPPERT
Haircuts $20 / JASON SNELL
New Orleans Wins the War / GREG KNAUSS
The Explosion That Killed Ben Lippencott / GREG KNAUSS
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Editor: Jason Snell ([email protected])
Assistant Editor: Geoff Duncan ([email protected])
--------------------------------------------------------------------
InterText Vol. 1, No. 2. Intertext is published electronically on a bi-
monthly basis, and distributed via electronic mail over the Internet,
BITNET, and UUCP. Reproduction of this magazine is permitted as long as
the magazine is not sold and the content of the magazine is not changed
in any way. Copyright (C) 1991, Jason Snell. All stories (C) 1991 by
their respective authors. All further rights to stories belong to the
authors. The ASCII InterText is exported from Pagemaker 4.0 files into
Microsoft Word 4.0. Worldwide subscribers: 1062. Our next issue is
scheduled for Sept. 1, 1991. A PostScript version of this magazine is
available from the same sources, and looks a whole lot nicer, if you
have access to laser printers.
For subscription requests, email: [email protected]
->Back issues available via FTP at: network.ucsd.edu<-
--------------------------------------------------------------------
FirstText / JASON SNELL
Do you remember the television series The Incredible Hulk, starring
Bruce Bixby as David Banner -- man cursed with becoming a monster
whenever his pulse (or was it his blood pressure?) reached a certain
height?
"Don't make me angry," Bixby's character would say. "You wouldn't
like me when I'm angry."
I'm not the pushover I appear to be, he was saying. I'm not like
anything you've seen before. So watch out.
InterText isn't like any magazine you've read before. I'm not
bragging by any means -- in fact, I'm not talking about the quality of
InterText at all. I'm talking about the fact that, unlike professionally
edited and distributed magazines, this is one magazine that relies on
all of you.
You see, all of you don't just make up the reader base of InterText
-- you're also the writers, editors, publishers, advertisers, corporate
executives -- just about everything.
So what the hell is this guy talking about?, you're asking
yourself.
One of the problems with a magazine like InterText (and its
predecessor, Athene) is that it is absolutely dependent on the efforts
of those who submit stories to it and those who put it together. What
this means is that, with InterText, the work of about six people is read
by over a thousand.
Distributing a magazine via computer network is a new idea, one
that's only been around for a handful of years. But for all the applause
we give to this new mode of communication, the fact is that it all still
boils down to a small group of authors sending editors stuff now and
again. I edit this magazine, Dan Appelquist edits Quanta. My stories
appear there. His appear here. Phil Nolte appears both places. The snake
eats its own tail.
And everybody else is left on the outside. The names blur -- if
they pay attention to the names at all.
Last issue, I mentioned the potential of computer networks to
assist in communication. It was a positive picture, an optimistic (a
rarity for me, I can assure you) view that these networks can create a
"global village."
That's what they said about television, too. It didn't happen.
Instead, television fulfilled another, less honorable, aspect of its
potential.
The other potential of a medium such as this is that it degrades
into just another clique -- you've got the haves and have nots, the
writers/editors, and the readers. And then we're no different from any
professional magazine, at least in the barriers that we've erected
between readers and writers.
This magazine is not just for me -- I do this in my "spare time"
(whatever that is; now that it's summer, I've got a little more
breathing room), and I'm certainly not getting paid for it. But I like
being an editor, I like publishing, and I saw a need for something to
fill Athene's space.
But I can't do it alone, and neither can the other names you see on
issues of InterText, Quanta, and such publications.
If you have something you'd like to have over a thousand people
read, submit it to us. I don't want netnews-style posts here, but if you
write something in magazine style, I'd love to run it.
If you've written a story, submit it. Take an old one, dust it off,
re-work it to your satisfaction, and send it in. Non-fiction stuff,
personal narratives, anything about computer fiction, or about computer
networks.
This is a plea for submissions, true, but it's more than that. It's
also my way of telling you that this is not just my magazine, it's your
magazine. In newspapers, readers' comments are left to one section: the
letters to the editor. Here, the whole thing is open to you. I encourage
you to take advantage of it.
I think I'll stop here, if for no other reason than to slow down my
quickly-beating editor's heart. >Calm yourself, Jason old boy, calm
yourself. Don't make the readers angry -- you wouldn't like them when
they're angry.<
This magazine isn't like other magazines. And you aren't like other
readers.
And on that note, I wish you all well. See you next time.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Dragon Financing / KENNETH A. KOUSEN
The day dawned bright and clear as King Teradoc and I rode off with
our honor guard to challenge Pfotor the Dragon. It was the first fresh
day of spring after a frustratingly long winter, and I was eager for the
hunt.
The winter had been spent pouring over scholarly texts written by
ancient masters, and learning from my tutor. Old and stodgy, he forced
me to spend more time than I would have liked learning and reciting.
Still, however interminably, the winter had passed and I was free again.
The Chancellor informed me that the King wished me to accompany him on
his quest to suppress Pfotor, and I eagerly accepted the challenge.
Adventure filled the air. I took out my sword and watched the sun
glint from its blade.
"Prince Dorn," my father said, surprising me from my reverie, "are
you so eager to fight a dragon? Pfotor is a wild beast, and a worthy
foe."
"Of course, father," I mumbled, abashed. I noticed a twinkle in his
eyes, though, which belied his stern words. He too must have been
feeling the sweetness of our quest.
As we neared the town, signs of Pfotor's attacks became evident.
Instead of containing fresh plantings, the lands around the town were
blackened and deserted. We rode past the charred frames of several
farmhouses, but saw no one. At length, we reached a fork in the road. To
the right lay the town, to the left lay the route to Pfotor.
"Go to the town and secure lodging for us there," my father said to
the guards, dismissing them. "Prince Dorn and I will go confront
Pfotor."
I gulped. "Alone?" I asked.
"Yes, my son. Against a dragon, a few guards will not make any
difference." He led his horse to the left.
Mystified, I followed. I felt excitement and fear in equal
proportions. To face Pfotor alone, virtually unarmed, seemed the height
of folly, yet also the pinnacle of bravery.
Eventually we reached the black mouth of an enormous cave at the
base of Mt. Fire. Without a word, my father dismounted, lit torches for
us, and led the way inside. I followed warily.
The torches provided a dim illumination as we proceeded. The stench
of dragon was overpowering, and grew worse as we neared Pfotor. My eyes
began to water, making it difficult to see.
At the end of the passage was an immense cavern filled with jewels
of every type and description, piled in heaps. To one side golden items
were strewn haphazardly. I could identify lyres, goblets, various coins,
and scepters of different lengths. These objects surrounded an old,
golden throne. In the distance, the cavern vanished into blackness, from
whence came a great rumbling.
"Who dares enter the domain of Pfotor the Invincible?" boomed a
powerful voice.
I am forced to admit that I immediately froze. My father, however,
did not. In a loud voice of his own, he replied, "It is I, King Teradoc,
ruler of all the peoples of Bailia. I command you to approach and be
recognized."
A low roar filled the cavern in response, and the terrifying green
bulk of Pfotor entered the light. He moved to the center of the
treasure, extended his wings, and belched fire upward toward the roof of
the cave.
"No one commands the mighty Pfotor!" he bellowed. "Do you dare to
challenge me?"
"No, I do not," my father replied, his voice returning to its
customary low volume. "I have come to talk."
The laughter of the dragon filled the cavern. "Talk? The great
Pfotor has no need for talk. His strength speaks for itself."
My father did not reply, and a silenced stretched on as he and the
dragon studied each other. The king looked strangely calm, as though he
were in no danger. Pfotor seemed puzzled by this. I, on the other hand,
was still staring wide-eyed at the dragon. His long, scaly tail swayed
back and forth, knocking treasures to each side. At long last, he
settled his huge mass onto the ground and broke the silence.
"Pfotor has no need for talk," he said, "but he is curious. Why
have you come here to disturb him? Speak."
"Pfotor," the King said, "there has been peace between humans and
dragons for generations. Why do you choose to break it now?"
"I did not break it!" Pfotor roared. "You foolish humans did! You
breed like rabbits and move into our lands! Three hundred years ago,
your puny kingdom did not even exist, yet now you are everywhere." The
dragon shook his head. "At first we welcomed you and the treasures you
brought, but now there are too many of you, and too few treasures."
The King ran his eyes around the cavern. "If this is too few
treasures for you, you are going to be sorely disappointed with Bailia."
"Then you will have to get more," Pfotor demanded. "Bring them from
other lands, or I will destroy you! I must have more!"
The King moved to the throne, brushed away the valuables covering
it, and sat down. To my astonishment, he winked at me.
"Pfotor, old boy," he said, "there may be a way out of our
dilemma." He paused as Pfotor snorted, then continued. "Have you ever
considered letting some of your wealth work for you?"
Pfotor raised his eyebrows, which on a dragon is quite an
impressive sight. "Work for me?" he asked.
"Yes. Look, you've got an enormous amount of money sitting around
here doing nothing. You are also surrounded by ambitious, hard-working
people who lack the funds to begin any of the building they'd love to
do. I'll tell you what. We'll help you exchange some of your valuables
for coinage, which you can lend to the people for their own uses. They
then will pay back their loans with interest."
My father's enthusiasm was infectious, and I could see Pfotor
considering the plan. My father continued. "By pumping money into the
local economy, everybody wins. The townspeople get the capital they need
in order to improve their standard of living, and your wealth will
increase as they repay their loans."
"And you," Pfotor said, "get a thriving kingdom with peaceful
borders. But suppose some of your subjects refuse to pay?"
The King gave him a dour look. "It would be a brave man who would
default on a loan to a dragon. Besides, we would set up a group to
handle such problems ourselves, wouldn't we, my son?"
The last was directed at me, and I almost jumped. "Yes, sire," I
said. Suddenly I realized that my hours spent studying this winter had
been neither by accident nor in vain. My father was giving me a chance
to take part in a great expansion of his kingdom. "I would be honored to
help organize such a project."
He smiled at me. "There you have it, Pfotor. The royal seal of
approval. Prince Dorn will act as a liaison between you and the local
populace, and will help set up the guilds necessary to acquire, use, and
repay the money. What do you say?"
Pfotor leaned back on his haunches, folded his wings, and cocked
his head thoughtfully in a manner I would soon come to know well.
"I agree," he said.
The next several years passed quickly. I sold the idea to the town
and collected applications for loans. These went to Pfotor, who selected
the necessary valuables which were then exchanged for currency at the
hastily established Royal Mint. The funds were then distributed to the
people. New houses sprang into being almost overnight. Schools, public
meeting houses, and even a great cathedral soon followed.
Pfotor turned out to be a pretty good fellow, once you got to know
him. Interestingly, he had the same opinion about humans. He really
hadn't wanted a conflict at all, but when we started encroaching on his
territory he became a laughing stock among the other dragons. Now he was
envied. When I discovered this, I started communications aimed at
establishing a series of Dragon Banks throughout Bailia, each near a
dragon hoard.
During one of my reports to my father in his private council
chambers, I told him about the methods we were using.
"One of the beautiful things about the entire system," I said, "is
that we never have to spend anything on security. There's no place in
the world safer for all that gold than in a dragon's lair."
"Indeed, and not just for the gold," my father replied, the old
twinkle in his eye returning. "Can you think of a better guardian for
the heir to the throne?"
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Regression / DAVE SAVLIN
Marc stepped out and pulled his towel off the hook. The vacant spot
in the four-stall shower room was immediately filled by another
disheveled boy, tired and sweaty with a few cuts healing on his lithe
body. Most of Marc's dormitory hall had just returned from a great game
of rugby, and the race to the showers may as well have been a
continuation of the game. Sterling and Kris, two of Marc's closest
friends, had slammed into each other outside the door, giving Sterling a
bloody nose and blacking Kris's eye -- much to every one else's
amusement.
"Hey! You should have pulled that head-knockin' move earlier, Kris!
You woulda taken that other butthead's nuts off!" was yelled several
times -- Kris had tripped and sent his head between an opponent's legs.
Half an inch higher ... well, enough of that.
"Not MY fault he wasn't wearing a shield!" was the quick retort.
"He wasn't even using an old cup!"
This day and age, most college sports, a typical college
experience, are played with a small shield generator in the waistband,
which protected the abdominal area from injury, but even in a University
as upper class as the one Marc was in, a few people could only afford
plastic cups. More than one occasion had seen a broken cup, however.
This was not a nice sight.
Marc was remembering this as he closed the door to his room, a
shoebox (but still a Single), and examined his cup. The crack was still
there, but it hadn't broken all the way across. He disliked playing with
it, but didn't have any cash credits to spend to get a new one. He could
use his loan cards, but the interest rate was too high. "*Sigh* oh well.
I'll just have to keep getting lucky," he told himself.
"No, you're wrong! The integral of e to the minus j two pi f not t
is not negative. It's positive," said the TA, a slight man with thin
hair and faintly Polish looks. Not surprising, considering his last name
is Slawecky. "Besides, that's a moot point. You are still not going to
pass this exam by collecting measly single points on signs. Now, if this
were a borderline C or B or something, I'd maybe give you a point for
the hell of it more than for correcting my grading, but there's no way
in hell that's going to happen now. Your score might as well be confused
with a golf score or something!"
Ouch. That hurt. This TA was a real asshole, telling me this in
front of the rest of my class. Like I need my academic status announced
as though it were another of those homework assignments. Why am I an
engineer? I can't be an engineer. I'm not good enough to make the
grades.
"Marc!" came the fierce whisper. Sterling pushed a note my way. 'I
just got this great book on regression. I talked with someone at home
about it who does this type of stuff for a living, and she said it's
genuine. It's putting you in a trance' ... I know that already, and
nodded my head in Sterling's direction. 'Anyway, it's kinda simple, and
I want to try it. Just on Kris, but with you, Kenny and I to watch, we
can take turns. Want to?'
This looked kind of fun. I'd heard about regressions, the way
people hear about some sort of new magic forces coming about that
science can't explain. I snorted (bringing a glare from Slawgeeki the
Tweaking Assistant) and wrote down 'Yeah right you can perform that.
Count me in...' (I seriously doubt he can do it, but it'd be fun to toy
around with anyway.)
'I gotta go to the sporting goods store and get a new cup or a
shield or something though before tomorrow's game, Okay?' was the next
thing written down. I passed it back and concentrated on the bizarre
formulas that were slowly transmuting themselves across the blackboard.
Why they haven't put in a glowboard in here I have no idea; the dust
from the blackboard makes me sneeze, and you can't see the writing when
the sun reflects off the board.
I signed onto the computer and connected with the sporting good's
store terminal. It took awhile to set up the connection, as I didn't
have a nice machine like all the other rich pigs on campus. Punching in
"jock shield" produced a description and a cost of 220 cash credits. I
wouldn't be able to buy that one textbook required for my antigrav
fields course... well, I can probably live off of Sterlings' book. I
would be able to appreciate a real shield more than I would
(. . . appreciate the water I need to stay healthy for the next few
days. Besides, I can ...)
Huh? Water? Why was I thinking of buying corn seeds for 220 dollars
instead of water? ... I shook it off and punched in the order for the
shield.
"SCRKEEEK! SCRKEEEK!" jeezus but the phone system here is weird. It
has different rings depending on whether or not you are using the
Panasonic optical box for data. I picked it up. "Marc! Get down here! We
gotta do the regression! On the Double! <snick>" I smiled. Sterling has
this annoying habit of ordering people around, but I find it funny. I'm
the only person here who's met his father, and his father was a general
in the Province Wars. He jokes around with his younger kids like that,
and they laugh -- well, so does his older son. On my way out the door I
snagged an ID card and my loan card (First National Loan Bank's own
MasterCard) and headed out, planning on stopping off at the sports store
at the bottom of the campus to pick my new toy up. This toy would
provide nearly
(two hundred ears of corn, from which from which I can harvest
kernels and sow even more)
...what? I stopped and looked around. At the other end of the hall
was someone chewing a camph, but that's it. Nobody around me here trying
to shake me up by whispering something over my shoulder. Bad enough that
I have to wear a hearing aid due to a birth defect, almost unheard of in
this day. Pun intended.
The door opened right when I was about to swing into it, and I
stepped on Kris. "There you are. Why don't you get yer ass in here,
already!"
"I gotta go down to get something from the store. I just bought
some corn."
"What?"
"I said, I gotta go pick up a jock shield. I just put the order
through over the computer."
"That's not what you said. You said you bought some corn," said
Kenny. The only oriental in the group, he was fairly heavyset and quick.
He never missed anything. I stared at him suspiciously, wondering if he
was somehow putting these corn things in my head. I was getting confused
and annoyed; and a bit scared, although I wasn't about to show them
that.
"Must be thinking of corn then, I had some for dinner. I meant a
shield." I saved myself. "Let's go. What's involved with regression
anyway? Who's going first?"
"I don't really want to go first. I would feel more comfortable if
someone else went first so I can see what happens," said Kris. Carcernus
Polapas, commonly known as Kris, an American with an incredibly Greek
set of parents (he was adopted) had a kind of worried twist to his
nervous, rugged face.
If it weren't for the fact that I'm a guy, I'd say he was downright
handsome. Funny how he never seems to get...
(. . . the girls seem to love him, aside from the fact that one of
the three females left is adding to the community's population and
longevity courtesy of Kris. . .)
...any girls, even with all the looks he gets from the rare girl on
campus.
What?
You know, these weird subliminal thoughts that keep popping up are
getting really annoying... agh, never mind.
"I'll go then. What the hell, the store is gonna be open for
another hour anyway." I decided to go ahead and be the guinea pig.
"OK, Marc. Close your eyes. Wait, no, don't use the couch, use the
floor. Maybe if you move around when you're regressed you won't fall
off." I climbed down to the floor, thinly carpeted with a burnt red
carpet that was noticeably worn in front of the threedy box in front of
the room. There was a burnt-in impression on the ceiling where
somebody'd taken a huge magnifying lens and focused the threedy's beam
onto the ceiling.
"Close your eyes, and feel the muscles in your eyelids relax. They
seem to naturally gravitate closed. You're not even using that section
of your body. Now the midsection and arms. They are slowly relaxing, the
muscles turning into putty, letting your arms slide to the ground. Now,
the legs ..." I began to relax, letting my mind envision a completely
limp Marc on the ground, with three other guys sitting on chairs and the
sofa-thing around me, one glancing at a book and saying things. The room
is full of detail, the wood frames of the furniture, the two tone paint
on the walls, a few windows...
Then the scene was suddenly different. It didn't change right off
the bat, to use an ancient cliche, but slowly seemed to swirl in, as if
certain parts of my thoughts disappeared, the visions that didn't really
matter, such as the color of the walls or what furniture was in the
room. Suddenly I noticed a new thought, a new sight, and that led me to
realize that I was in an entirely new surrounding. I was fully aware,
just like that, and saw that I was in a sort of barren earth, with the
opposite side of the long, shallow valley a few miles down the way. I
could barely see that side, though, under the sick grey clouds with
sparse breaks in it, letting the sun shine though onto dirty brown and
grey earth.
There were a few pinpoints of murky green vegetation -- even this
was limp and sick looking -- scattered around the valley, next to a lot
of what looked like sod-house cellar stairs leading right into the
earth, like the pioneers of the American Plains all those decades ago.
This was nothing like the world I had envisioned I would see in a
former life. I expected to come back as some guy in the 1800s or
something, getting ready to go into town and shoot some guy in the
street like those old westerns or something. I'd walk into the bar --
and then it hit me that there were no buildings out here. From the looks
of it, there were dwellings underneath the soil... then I realized where
I was standing. I was leaning against a tree, one that had to have been
here longer than any other tree in sight, judging from the fact that it
was supporting my heavyset body... no, a thin, sickly, starved body.
What happened? I used to be strong, able to knock down any Rugby
player... I seemed to have lingering thoughts of a voice talking to me
inside my head but I can't place it anymore. I was wearing what looked
like old T-shirt material wrapped around my waist, in my "relaxation"
clothes. Or what my fuzzed mind was insisting I was wearing. The cloth
did not provide very adequate coverage, and I found myself blushing,
when I realized that nearly half the people (and all the children) in
sight wore no clothes at all.
It seemed then that cloth was a rare item, and I seemed to have two
outfits; this thing that scantily covered me and a full work outfit that
included denim and some form of leather. This placed me in some kind of
prestige position, but why? I turned, and saw that there was a grove of
perhaps twenty trees behind me, the largest being the one that supported
me.
Suddenly it hit me, the full truth of it all, the full reality of
the world I was in: I was a survivor of World War III, started when PISC
cut way back on production. PISC stands for Producers Internacionalle de
Solar Cells, a basic equivalent to the oil exporting countries'
coalition of the late 1900s. Wasn't that OPAC or something? A war began;
Argentina launched nuclear missiles at the United States, and several
other countries simultaneously began tossing missiles at each other, all
of which were supposedly part of a "permanently dismantled nuclear
armament". I had been one of those lucky few to have a fully stocked
shelter underground, apparently, and had saplings frozen in state to
later grow trees with. These saplings were fast growing softwood and
slow growing hardwood; I was a tree producer, able to supply other
survivors with construction materials and easily producible tools (easy
to carve wood into tools and building materials). I was a success in my
day, but what a sad day it was. A world so bleak ... three colors on
this world: gray, brown, and dark green -- there were no flowers, no
red, blue, or mixes of green. How destroyed this world is...
"Marc, you have to go." spoke a voice behind my left shoulder.
"What?" I couldn't place the voice, but it was naggingly familiar.
"You have to come back. You need to go to the store."
"Oh, right, I have to get the corn." CORN? No wonder I was having
those premonitions earlier... uh... what premonitions? I don't remember
where I came from. No, I do remember; I came from right here. But what
was that hauntingly familiar voice in my head coming from?
"Marc..."
I whirled around, eyes wide.
"You have to...
"You must return to us, Marc...
"You don't have to buy any corn, Marc...
"Marc...
"Mah...
"M...
...
"THREE!" I jolted up, a strange buzzing sensation in my head. I looked
around, seeing the familiarity of the study lounge where my hall mates
and I began a regression. A number came to mind, and I immediately said
it, lest I forget it; at this point anything I remembered might be neat
to examine. 2138. It is a year. The year that I regressed to. Then all
visions of my vision disappeared, and I was left with a shocking memory
of what happened...
Or rather, what was to happen. This year, the year here at school,
is 2132. Sterling said that every time he'd asked a question when I was
in the trance, I shook my head and had said "Later". I told Sterling
what had happened, what I remembered of it (most of it, anyway). He
grimaced and looked aghast... more so than the others, who looked just
shocked. Then Sterling explained.
"Every so often, according to my friend back home and this book, a
person 'regresses' into a former state ... sometimes of their present
day. And thus they see their current state. Which is in the future.
Every time this has happened, it has been true... they are usually only
a few hours or days in advance and the visions are always, always true.
I was regressed by my friend and went to the future too -- I saw myself
in California somewhere watching my car's rear windshield wiper get
ripped off. Two weeks later, we cruised down there and it happened.
Exactly. To the letter. So what you basically saw is that the world is
going to end in six years." He looked aghast.
"Hell no, I refuse to believe that. I can't accept that in six
years the world is going to be politically unstable enough to warrant a
war," said Kris. I didn't respond, but Sterling slumped back into his
chair. Kris was being stubborn; relations between the US and the
Argentinian government, the major producer of solar cells, had recently
broken down again.
"Um. I want to think about this, guys." I got up unsteadily, and
left quietly, to pick up my shield. The world may end in six years but I
was going to at least protect my manhood until then. Besides which, I
may actually use it to further the continuity of the community. I did
have fading thoughts of being married and having two children with a
third on the way. Picking up my shield was at least a real-life thing to
do right now; it wasn't a vision. I needed something to do to keep my
sanity.
If this world I had "reverse regressed" into was real, then it
showed I was to preserve myself and, I don't know, build an underground
shelter. This pleases me. But... what if I do this and it's for nothing?
What if I don't and the regression is real, and a nuclear war is
started? Who can I tell about this regression? Or rather, who would
believe me? A small handful of psychics, who are routinely thrashed by
the free press? My small group of close friends believe me, because they
knew about the "power" of regression to begin with. We had all seen the
results of it at one time or another. Nobody would believe me; with
relations with PISC having gone downhill for the last two years, it's
not that hard to think that there's a war in the future, but who would
believe that? People are too busy enjoying their current life to worry
about world situations. I think that solution is definitely a "not
quite" situation.
Oh hell. I don't know what to think.
Life sure was simpler when all I had to do was play rugby, one of
the most typical college experiences there are. College sports.
I'll just pick up my ... corn ... and get ready to ... plant some
more rugby players in the field tomorrow. Final day of the tournament.
If I can just stop treating the others like vegetables.
Ignorant, nonbelieving vegetables.
Typical college experience.
--
DAVE SAVLIN ([email protected]) is attempting to study Electrical
Engineering at Lehigh University, where he dreams of one day having his
own private room. In between attempts at accomplishing a writing minor,
his tired hands scribble meaningless chatter, like the previous few
paragraphs -- which can be intepreted any number of ways.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dream / ROBERT HURVITZ
John Griffiths was sitting on a bench in the little park
conveniently located a couple blocks from his house. It was a sunny and
warm Sunday afternoon, and he couldn't stay inside. So there he was, in
the park, feet crossed and hands clasped behind his head, squinting
across the small stretch of grass at four small boys -- no older than
six, he guessed -- who had just arrived at the basketball court there.
John sighed and tried to remember when he last played basketball.
He shook his head. It had been a long time.
The boys started playing, dribbling and passing and stealing the
basketball. Rarely did they take a shot, and when they did, they
invariably missed; the hoop was much too high for them. John smiled as
he watched them.
Birds were singing in the oak trees that lined the park, and a cool
breeze whispered by, playing with a few strands of hair that hung down
over John's forehead.
The sudden stench of urine and filth made John Griffiths flinch. He
quickly looked around in alarm and to his right saw a homeless man
shuffling towards him. John recoiled at the sight of him: unkempt hair,
deep-lined face smeared with dirt, soiled and tattered army fatigues,
and dragging a rusty shopping cart filled with junk.
The vagrant stopped about a dozen feet from John and stared. "Spare
some change?" he asked hoarsely.
John felt paralyzed. He didn't know what to do. It was usually he
who was walking and the homeless man who was sitting down, and so John
would always shrug and sometimes quicken his pace. But now the tables
were turned; John was trapped.
"Uh," John muttered, "yeah." He dug into his pocket and pulled out
a five dollar bill, which he then nervously held out.
Smiling, the panhandler stepped closer, and John gingerly placed
the money on the outstretched hand so as to not risk the chance of
getting his fingers dirty in any way. The five dollars quickly
disappeared into a well- patched pocket.
"God bless you, sir," the homeless man said. He returned to his
shopping cart, grabbed hold, and started back on his way. As he passed
in front and then to the left of John Griffiths, his odor began to
dissipate, much to John's relief. "Yes sir," the transient was saying,
mostly to the asphalt path he was on, "God bless you. Have a nice day,
sir. You're a real humanitarian, you are. Yes sir."
"Actually," John Griffiths said, "I'm a lawyer."
The homeless man stopped and turned. "Eh?"
"You called me a humanitarian," John explained. The homeless man
nodded, a quizzical look on his face. "And I said, 'Actually, I'm a
lawyer.'"
The homeless man nodded again, then smiled dumbly. "Well, maybe you
can be my lawyer next time I get arrested."
John laughed out loud. "Yeah, right."
He watched the vagrant lose interest and turn back to his shopping
cart. "I drive a Porsche," John called out.
The homeless man stopped again and looked at John.
"I'm married to a beautiful woman," John added. "We live in a four-
bedroom house, right near here."
The homeless man blinked, and several seconds ticked by before he
did anything. Then his hands suddenly clenched into fists. "Who the fuck
do you think you are?" he yelled. "I act nice after you gave me money,
and you start hollerin' at me how successful you are, how wonderful your
fucking life is!" He pointed at John now, and trembled. "Well I don't
give a shit! You hear? Fuck you! Fuck your wife! Fuck your car! Fuck
your whole fucking life!" He spun back around and stalked away, the
shopping cart clattering as he pulled it along behind him.
Stunned, John Griffiths stared at him as he made his way down the
path, reached the end of the park, and crossed the street, disappearing
behind some trees. His gaze lingered for some time afterwards.
Fuck my wife, he thought. Fuck my car.
He slowly faced forward, looking straight ahead, at the boys still
playing basketball. They hadn't noticed a thing.
Fuck my whole fucking life, he thought.
Before he realized what he was doing, John Griffiths had stood up
and was walking to the basketball court. The boys stopped their game and
looked at him suspiciously as he approached them. He smiled and held out
his hands as if to catch a pass. The boys smiled back, laughed, and
threw him the ball. John caught it, dribbled down the court, leapt, and
rammed the basketball through the hoop. The boys cheered.
The next day, John Griffiths quit his job, bought a small house in
an undistinguished neighborhood, filed for divorce, sold his Porsche and
picked up a used Honda Civic, purchased a Nintendo Home Entertainment
System, and lived happily ever after.
--
ROBERT HURVITZ ([email protected]) is a computer science major
at UC Berkeley and plans on graduating one of these years. His only
other published work appeared in the Dec. 1990 issue of Quanta. He's
currently working on a weird and depressing story.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
The Ambiguity Factor / PETE REPPERT
The green blur passing beneath the transparent hull of Peter Lyod's
solar powered hovercraft disguised the hundreds of houses spaced evenly
throughout the leafy canopy. No telephone wires could be seen.
In fact, the only evidence that anyone lived in the forest was the
evenly-spaced clearing for hovercraft like his own. The clearing had
smatterings of the latest fashion in landscaping: fuchsia trees.
"God I hate the suburbs," he thought, as he popped a disc labelled
"Red Planet Surprise -- Goop!" into the stereo. As the crisp, very non-
suburban sounds of Goop! came on, Peter pushed a button marked with a
down arrow to let in some air. A red vehicle sped past.
As the wind brushed his hair, Peter thought about the meeting he
had just left. He had read and mostly comprehended the ground-breaking
paper on Time Distortion Around Massive Objects as soon as it was made
available on FreeNet, several years ago. The paper had generated wild-
eyed speculation about time travel, which quickly abated when people
realized the nearest object massive enough to do the job, a particular
galaxy, was mind-bogglingly far away. Even a near-lightspeed ship would
take thousands of years to get there. Now it had been discovered that
the effect was present around objects of any mass, and the world's first
"temporal quanta amplifier" had been built.
Peter's job, along with that of several hundred other media people,
was to describe what the marvel of time amps could mean to the rest of
the world. It meant that in the year 4491 the human race could
contemplate travelling to other galaxies. It meant freedom from the
prison of Cartesian three-space (he could think of a few people who had
already left Cartesian three-space, but that was another story) and the
resolution of some paradoxes in Physics that had been plaguing
scientists for hundreds of years. There was a renewed interest in Grand
Unified Theories (Lyod's first reaction to this last bit of news was,
"maybe there'll be a renewed interest in circle-squaring as well!").
Peter's hovercraft came to a smooth landing on the 30th floor
platform of his building in Sioux Falls. His friend Anola had left a
message on the videowall: "Honey, I missed you -- hope the meeting went
well. I'll be back from class at 6:00 and here's a free demo of what's
in store for you."
She undid her top two buttons, blew a him a kiss, tossed her
dreadlocks and headed for the door. As soon as the message ended, the
videowall turned pale purple.
Peter grabbed an organically grown peach from the fridge and sat on
the balcony to gather his thoughts for the news story he would produce.
We could now go anywhere anywhen. There was one nagging exception: the
past. Backward time travel was thought to break several of the laws of
thermodynamics, in particular the fifth and seventh, but the new results
showed it to be technically feasible. In addition to the strong argument
that there were now so many more interesting destinations to choose
from, the World Council had already agreed not to send anyone backward
in time to a point before the invention of the time machine out of fear
that ancient time paradoxes could come true. He felt intuitively that
there must be some way around the "Back To The Future" problem, as they
called it.
The videowall displayed some FreeNet artwork by Padma Sanchez --
dinosaurs romping across a wasteland in an infinite loop, running
forward but never getting closer. The image was overlapped with time-
lapsed footage of fabricated crystalline flowers blossoming, covering
the screen then shattering to reveal the dinosaurs again. The soundtrack
was like an underwater duel between a tuba and a trombone. He wasn't
sure what it meant, but he liked it.
To be able to travel back to the days of dinosaurs. Or to his
favorite time in history, the mid- to late- twentieth century. What a
blast! His friends didn't understand why he was so fascinated with that
time period. "They were so absurdly uncivilized with respect to their
technology. Probably the goofiest period in all of history. A television
commercial model was President of the United States at the same time
they had the biggest nuclear arsenal ever! They got electricity from
fission-generated steam! And think of what it would be like to see New
York or London or any of the other great port cities before the seismic
wave broke up the ice cap in 1993. Right when the greenhouse effect was
about to go nonlinear thanks to automobile emissions! How did we ever
make it out of that dismal time?"
Just then Anola walked in, put down her computer and stepped out on
the balcony. "Peace."
"Peace your own self!"
Then over each other, "How are you?" and "I missed you." After a
warm hug Anola said, "Time to meditate."
"Aw Ma', do we have to?"
"Now come along with Auntie Anola and take your shoes off like a
good little boy," she replied while lighting some incense.
Actually, Peter loved his daily meditation. Hundreds of years of
history had proven its value. It was gradually revealed that Peace was
not achievable through the manipulation of tanks, guns, soldiers, or
exchanges of tariffs, bank loans, or donations of food and hardware.
World Peace did not require supercomputers or artificial intelligence or
some great discovery. The hypersaturation of the senses brought on by
five-D info transfer required people to go into deep sensory deprivation
for an hour a day, and as more people took up the practice, other
benefits soon became apparent. People felt full of energy yet relaxed.
Outward comparisons and jealousies were erased by inner harmony.
Acceptance of the present replaced dissatisfied yearnings for an
infinitely regressing future. The limitless conspicuous consumption made
possible by the exploitation of the Martian colonies tapered off. The
advertising industry went bankrupt.
Above all, competition with the limits of one's self replaced
competition with others. When they realized there hadn't been a war in
half a century, they called it the Silent Revolution. World Peace began
with individuals becoming peaceful one at a time. The economy went
through several "severe fluctuations", but had reached a stable state
satisfactory to Martians and the Earth-dwellers alike. All needs were
provided for, but luxuries cost money. It was often said that the wise
forsook luxuries in exchange for freedom. All possessions require
maintenance -- things demand the acquisition of more things. Before you
know it, all of your time is spent shopping. It was also said that these
same people were merely lazy.
It was going on 8:00 and they had been working up an appetite.
Peter rolled out of bed and heated up some leftover Thai food. Anola
slipped into a white one-piece self-cleaning jumpsuit that looked and
felt like a second skin. "If you can't go back in time, why not send a
'message from the future'?" From the eating area he shouted back,
"Thought of that -- if we tell them how time travel works, our present
won't be the same. Might screw things so royally that you and I'd never
meet. Never be born."
"Wouldn't it be O.K. just to let them know what the future could be
like? Couldn't you just tell them that time travel is possible without
saying how? Then they could figure out the details themselves."
"But Anola, how would I do that?"
Just then the videowall flashed "YOU HAVE A CALLER". It was D-Jing
Six, a downstairs neighbor who wanted them to come over to hear his
latest acquisition: a 1920's orchestron which he had just restored. D-
Jing was a musician who repaired antiques on the side. Ancient keyboard
instruments were a specialty and this was a rare find indeed. They flew
down to D-Jing's and were ushered into a living room strewn with techno
junk. They pulled up some antique plastic crates and watched as D-Jing
installed a metal roll into a recess of the orchestron. The sound that
poured out of the huge wooden automaton was remarkable. There was a full
drum set with cymbals, a wind section whose air came from a cam-driven
bellows, and an assortment of chimes and other plucked or struck
instruments. D-Jing played along with the roll, stopping every now and
then to make some adjustments. It looked like he'd used some of the junk
to add a few sounds of his own.
"Where did you find it?"
"Oh, I just beamed back in time and stole it."
"WHAT??"
"Just kiddin'."
D-Jing Six was one of the people who had left Cartesian three-space
quite a while ago: one could never tell when he was joking.
Anola's semisweet chocolate skin and white jumpsuit were reflecting
blue light from some strange boxes in the corner.
"What are these?"
"That one's a 1950's era oscilloscope and you'll never guess what
that other thing is."
"It looks like something out of an ancient sci-fi movie." "Doesn't
it? It's a computer terminal circa 1970." "Woa-AH!" exclaimed Anola and
Peter in unison. "Look at it. It looks so funny!" They all giggled at
the absurdly overbuilt box. As D-Jing kicked over a jar full of nuts and
bolts, he said, "You'd be surprised what they could do with these old
clunkers. You know, they had a global computer network using satellites
and telephone lines. Quite sophisticated, really." "Another weird
juxtaposition of technology -- Alexander Graham Bell meets the Space
Age." "Yes," replied D-Jing, "they even had these funny little keyboards
before we Chinese improved 'em."
"Oh yes, by adding twenty thousand new keys." The trio laughed at
the old joke, but the Chinese data input system permanently changed the
slowest part of information transfer -- telling the computer what you
wanted it to do.
On the way back to the apartment, Anola said "What a junk bin!"
"Yes, but he has some amazing stuff."
"No denying that."
"Woa-AH, man."
"Listen, Peter, I think I know how you can tell the twentieth
century about this future."
"How?"
"To create enough ambiguity, disguise the message as a science
fiction story. Have D-Jing hook his 1970's terminal up to the time amp,
and you've got it. the primitive network was connected to all other
media outlets, so there you have it."
"Anola, that's brilliant!"
Peter stepped out onto the balcony and began working furiously on
his story. As the twilight faded, Anola gently placed a candle on the
table.
"You're working as if your life depended on that story."
He looked her dead in the eye and said, "It does."
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Haircuts $20 / JASON SNELL
The old riddle goes like this:
You're in a small town, one with only two barbers. One of the
barbers has a terrible haircut-- there are long strands of hair in some
places and bald patches in others. His competitor, on the other hand,
looks great. Not one hair is out of place.
Which barber do you choose?
The correct answer is that you choose the barber that looks
terrible, because if there are only two barbers in the whole town, they
must end up cutting each other's hair. The barber with the bald patches
is the one who gave the other barber the great haircut.
It's a dumb riddle.
Joe, my old barber, was just like the guy with the nasty hair in
the riddle. He looked awful, but his haircuts were cheap and looked
sharp. My father and I had been going to Joe since my family moved here
15 years ago. Dad was almost completely bald by the time I was 10, but
he still went to Joe every month.
Joe told dirty jokes while he cut hair, and discussed whatever
sport happened to be in season at the time. He also loved the kind of
food that doctors warn you not to eat. And that's why Joe keeled over
mid-haircut one day and dropped face-first onto a floor strewn with
little piles of wet hair.
With Joe gone, the only other place in town that I could go was the
salon that my mother visits twice weekly to get her hair bleached. The
alternative to the salon was putting a bowl over my head and trying to
cut it myself.
The moment I walked into the place, I could tell that it was
nothing like Joe's barber shop. Joe's smelled faintly of beer and Old
Spice, while the salon smelled of wet hair, hairspray, shampoo, mousse,
and nail polish. It was a disgusting combination. I wondered about the
people who worked there -- what kind of condition were their noses in?
Had the stench completely ruined all sense of smell? Maybe they just
walked into a salon one day, took a big whiff, and declared, "Ah,
haircutting, that's the job for me."
In addition to wishing I had a clothespin stuck on my nose, I felt
extremely out of place in the salon. There were women sitting under
hairdryers, women getting their nails painted, and a few women with
plastic bags and cotton wrapped all around their heads. And I was there,
some kid with his hair a bit too long, wearing a faded T-shirt and old
jeans that probably needed to be thrown away.
Then I saw the person walking toward me from out of the back of the
salon. She was six feet tall if you measured her from the bottoms of her
black spiked heels to the top of her wild blonde hair. She was wearing a
spandex jumpsuit, with a little red sash tied around her waist. I guess
the sash was supposed to make her outfit look more like fashion and less
like a wet suit. It didn't help.
"I'm Robin. You must be my three o'clock appointment," the woman
said. Her hair was fluffed up several inches above her head all the way
around, and I could see dark roots showing underneath it all. She wore
four pairs of earrings.
I nodded and smiled. She led me into the back of the shop, and I
began to think of what I was going to tell her about my haircut. All I
wanted was something simple -- shorter hair. Nothing fancy, just the
same style as I was wearing, only shorter. I didn't want to wear a
plastic bag on my head, and I didn't want to get my hair cut in some
cool new style. I just wanted my hair to look like it always had.
There were sinks in the back of the shop. I sat down in a chair
next to one, and she began washing my hair. This was something else that
Joe had never done before. It was almost like I had my own personal
servant. Clean my shoes, feed the dogs, and while you're at it, wash my
hair.
Robin was quite unlike Joe in another way, too. When she leaned
forward to begin washing my hair, her chest moved right in front of my
face. I was leaning back in a chair, water spraying into my hair, and
the only place I could look was straight up. Right into Robin's
cleavage.
"So, you're Janice's son, right?" she asked me.
"Yeah," I said to the spandex.
"Are you going to the Junior College now?" Her fingernails were
massaging my scalp. It felt great.
"No, just to high school."
"Is this your senior year, then?"
"Hmm?" I was too busy focusing my attention on her right nipple.
"Is this your senior year?"
"Uh... yeah."
"What are you going to do after you graduate?"
"I'm not sure."
She leaned back. Suddenly I could see the ceiling again.
"Okay, let's go back out to the chair," she said, and wrapped a
towel around my head.
Robin led me out to a high-backed chair, and I sat in it. She
covered me with a plastic sheet, and unwrapped the towel from my wet
head.
"How would you like your hair cut?"
I paused for a moment. I hated it when people asked me this
question. Did I look like a recent graduate of the Ace School of Beauty?
I had no idea about how I wanted my hair cut.
"I don't know. Pretty much the way it was before. Not too short, or
it'll stick up all over. A little longer in the back."
"Okay." She began cutting.
She had no problems with my conservative hair style, I guess.
Sometimes I wish someone would tell me "change your hair!" It might
actually get me to do it. As it is, my hair has looked the same since I
was ten years old.
Once I almost did something to change that. I held my head over a
sink filled with peroxide for twenty minutes, like a suicidal person
holding a loaded gun to their temple. In the end, I chickened out and
drained the sink.
"I guess this is the first time you've had your hair done here,"
she said.
"Hmm?" I wasn't paying attention to what she was saying. Instead, I
had been drifting. That's one of the things that always seems to happen
to me when I get my hair cut -- I drift, and begin to fall asleep. I
don't know what causes it.
"I asked you if this was the first time you've had your hair done
here."
"Yeah. My barber died."
"Joe?"
How many barbers around town had died in the past few months?
"Yeah."
"It's too bad about him. He was a great guy. It's kind of scary
that people can die, just like that."
"Isn't it, though?"
That was the end of our conversation, which is just as well. It
wasn't exactly material you'd expect to turn up on Nightline.
After Robin had finished cutting and blow-drying my hair, I
realized that she had cut it too short. Hair was sticking up all over.
She had also cut the sides much shorter than the top. There were no
initials carved into my head -- believe me, I checked.
"That'll be 20 dollars," she said.
I handed her the $20 bill that mom had given me. I guess she knew
exactly how much a haircut cost here -- about $12 more than Joe charged.
"It was nice having you here. Come back soon."
"Thanks."
"Oh -- one more thing."
I turned back around, noticing that there were little black hairs
all over my faded T-shirt.
"You should think about getting an earring. In the right ear. It'd
look really cute."
I nodded, smiled, and walked out of the salon. Next door to the
salon was a jewelry store, one that pierces ears. I knew that fact only
because my mother had taken me with her when she had her ears re-pierced
when I was seven.
An earring?
I stood outside the jewelry store for a minute or so. Then,
scratching my neck, I turned away.
I tried to pat down all the hairs sticking straight up out of my
head as I walked back to my car.
I've made up a riddle. It goes like this:
You're in a small town, one with only two hairdressers. One of the
hairdressers has fluffy pink hair and a nose ring. The other has the
sides of her head shaved, while the back of her hair goes halfway to the
floor.
Which hairdresser do you choose?
I'm not sure.
It's a dumb riddle.
--
JASON SNELL ([email protected]) is a senior at the University of
California, San Diego, majoring in Communication and minoring in
Literature/Writing. He is the editor of this publication, the editor in
chief of the UCSD Guardian newspaper, and an intern at KUSI-TV Channel
51 News in San Diego.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
New Orleans Wins the War / GREG KNAUSS
In 1948 my Daddy came to the city
Told the people that they'd won the war
Maybe they'd heard it, maybe not
Probably they heard it, just forgot
'Cause they built him a platform there in Jackson Square
And people came to hear him from everywhere
They started to party and they partied some more
'Cause New Orleans had won the war
We knew we'd do it, we done whipped the Yankees!
--Randy Newman
In 1868, the American Civil War ended when a battle-weary United
States population voted the Democratic candidate for president, William
Blakely, into office. The republicans, throughout the course of
Lincoln's second term, had received the majority of the blame for both
allowing the Southern states to "slip away," and then not be regained.
Blakely ran on a platform of peace with the Confederate States and won a
resounding victory.
Though relations between the United States and the Confederate
States remained chilly over the next decade -- abolitionists and
unionists still held powerful minorities in the U.S. Congress -- the
situation began to smooth as first Blakely and then his Democratic
successor, Thomas Howell, courted the Confederacy, eyeing its powerful,
and growing agricultural wealth.
The former Southern states, for their part, changed little
politically over the course of those ten years, yet the economic
differences where dramatic. After the war ended, there was a drive to
adopt a new state-rights constitution, and a document very similar to
the original U.S. Articles of Confederation was drafted and finally
signed by all the "rebel states" in 1871; the capital of the new country
moved from Richmond to New Orleans. Soon after the war, the Confederacy
again emerged as the world's leading supplier of agricultural staples --
tobacco, cotton, corn and sugar -- and its first president under the
new constitution, R. E. Lee, used this power to win concessions from the
United States' president, Blakely, then in his second term.
Lee's strategy was to bring the import of industrialism to the
overwhelmingly agricultural South. Slave labor, used throughout the
Confederacy and explicitly sanctioned by the Document of Confederation
was perfectly suited to the harsh rigors of quick industrialization, and
Lee used this to his advantage. The Confederate States, by 1900, were as
much an industrial powerhouse as the U.S., with the addition of heavy
agriculturalism as well. The United States was forced into importing a
large amount of food from the South because of delays in their expansion
of the trans-Appalachian railroad.
Both countries attempted to gain territory by annexation between
the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the twentieth century.
Though the Mason-Dixon line was formally rejected by the Confederate
Congress, the Confederacy only half-heartedly pursued new lands,
eventually adding only the New Mexico Territory and the unorganized
Indian Reservation north of Texas. The United States, however, spread
westward, over the rest of the continent.
When World War I began in Europe, the Confederate States and their
president, Thurmond Byron, immediately sent troops, sensing the
opportunity to increase their international power and prestige. Though
England, with whom the Confederacy had allied itself, disapproved of
institutionalized slavery, it needed the men, machinery and food that
the South could provide and welcomed the assistance. When the United
States joined the fight against Germany in 1917, the war was all but
over and the Confederacy was now a powerful force in Europe as well as
North America.
Over the next ten years, between 1920 and 1930, the United States
became the only World War I victor to withdraw from the European theater
and become isolationist. The Confederacy stayed involved in European
politics and formally allied itself with the German Republic when Adolf
Hitler was elected German Premier in 1933. By the next year, the
Confederate States remained Germany's only major ally after the burning
of the Reichstag and the dissolution of the Republic, and was the sole
voice of democratic international support when Poland was invaded in
1939.
As World War II began, all ties between the so-called "Allied
Forces" -- England, France and the United States -- and the "Axis
Powers" -- Germany, Italy, Japan and the Confederate States --
collapsed. In 1941, caught off-guard and unprepared, the United States
was invaded by the Confederacy, with heavy German U-boat support.
Washington, D.C., the capital, was taken within two months and the
Confederate army slowly marched up the eastern seaboard of the United
States.
In Europe, France had fallen to the Nazis by the time of the
Confederate invasion and England was slowly losing the "Battle of
Britain." In 1944, London was finally occupied, and without a western
front to contend with, Hitler undertook his long-delayed invasion of the
Soviet Union. Japan began its landing on both the west coast of the
United States and east coast of China during the same summer that Hitler
exploded the world's first atomic weapon over Moscow, in 1946.
By 1948, Italy controlled all of Africa, Germany dominated Europe
and Russia, Japan held China and western North America, and the
Confederacy occupied the United States from the Great Plains east. On
October 19, 1948, the United States president, Franklin Roosevelt,
surrendered to the Confederate forces in Boston, Massachusetts.
The Confederate States annexed the territory of the United States
over the course of the next five years. Each state, to be admitted to
the Confederacy, redrafted its constitution in the style of the Document
of Confederation and instituted legal slavery. Germany, Italy and Japan,
by 1955, followed Confederate examples and began to use slaves both
inside their borders and in conquered territories. Certain regions of
Africa and China were entirely depopulated by the early 1960s and about
the same time, Germany, operating chiefly with the support of the
Confederacy, eliminated the last followers of Judaism.
The world economy surged during the 1960s, '70s and '80s, driven
mostly by the availability of cheap labor. Trade between the three major
world powers (Italy had slipped in dominance and was hardly more than a
German puppet by 1965) ranged from wheat to consumer electronics to
medical equipment. Though occasional protests against slavery and the
treatment of the Jews erupted, especially in western Europe and the
northern Confederate States, they petered out as the first generation
born with slavery as a world-wide institution grew to adulthood.
Today, in 1991, the world is at peace.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
The Explosion That Killed Ben Lippencott / GREG KNAUSS
There are few things less pleasant than being pelted with the
remains of another human being.
Lippencott was hunched over a few vials of something or other
before the explosion. He was a deeply serious man and did not enjoy
frivolity or even companionship in the lab. "Lipp's Corner" was in the
far section of the biology floor, and it took weaving around several
long tables to get to. One day many years ago, I was approaching him
from behind and was about to ask him if he would join the rest of us for
lunch when his head bolted up from its hunched position.
"Uh!" he said, and there was a tremendous explosion.
Lipp quite literally unraveled. Though they did find his legs still
attached to his pelvis and his arms were almost unscathed in themselves,
his head and torso were, well, untraceable.
They found pieces. All over. But the majority of the matter that
made up the upper half of Benjamin Lippencott just wasn't accounted for.
Quite a bit of the pieces they did find ended up on me and one of
the things that is less pleasant than being pelted with remains of
another human being is having to wipe those remains out of your eyes. I
am thankful that my mouth was closed.
There were questions later on, of course, as to what Lipp was
cooking up in those vials of his. Though glass all over the lab was
broken, the feds spent quite a bit of money attempting to reconstruct
each broken beaker, test tube and vial. They're meticulous people,
federal investigators, and eventually they decided that there was only
one piece of glassware that couldn't be accounted for. Their report made
a big deal about the fact that it was the one Lipp was using. Analyses
of blood and other tissues taken off my person gave no spectacular or
unusual results.
I, of course, underwent therapy. Though the cases where a man has
been smeared all over another man are rare, there were a few precedents.
There was even a therapist who specialized in the area, in a manner of
speaking. He had made a career of counseling veterans who had seen
friends killed, usually messily, before their eyes.
What we found was this: I was upset by the incident. I had nightmares
for two or three weeks. Though Lipp wasn't what I would have called a
friend, I had known him for over five years, and, yes, I was sorry he
was dead. But we also found out that I have a highly analytic mind and
that I'm able to take such things as the random probability of life. We
found I was mentally healthy, considering the circumstances. We both
thought it noted a humorous mention that I now favored glasses over
contacts.
I last saw the psychiatrist about three months after the accident,
and I only mention him at all because I quickly had a nagging suspicion
I should have stayed with him longer. This little voice kept telling me
I shouldn't bother going back, but I didn't know whether to listen to
it. It, surprisingly enough, was Lipp's voice.
Lipp was never a man to waste words. He would often arrive in the
morning, forgo coffee or a donut, and slouch over to his corner to begin
work. We might exchange a few words as we passed in the halls or when he
would turn down my invitations to lunch, and I knew his voice as well as
I knew those of the rest of the guys. It was a low, growly voice, never
happy to be called into service.
It was my first week back at the lab, and I was doing some virus
isolation experiments, using dyes to trace various substances through
the bloodstream. It's simpleminded, easy-to-goof work, and I was
reaching for a small vial of dye when, over my shoulder, I heard someone
say, "No, that one's fat soluble. You'll lose it."
I started and turned around, somehow almost sure I wouldn't find
anybody there. That type of voice isn't common, and there was only one
person I knew -- had known -- with it. It was Lipp's voice, giving me
instructions, apparently from beyond the grave.
It was a little unsettling.
It was also a little frustrating. Hearing voices is a common
psychiatric complaint, and many people spend their entire lives
listening to these ethereal spirits. Socrates claimed to have a voice in
his head, but he apparently had no trouble communicating with it. I,
however, tried everything I could think of, with very little initial
success.
At first I ignored it, hoping it was just a phantom memory of the
explosion, but it corrected another three mistakes that day and I
decided it was something that I was going to have to deal with.
Just figuring out how to attempt communication with a disembodied
voice is a serious exercise. At first, I just tried thinking at it.
"Hellooo," I thought. "Lipp?" He hated being called Lipp and I
thought that if anything was going to bring out some sort of
schizophrenia, it would be anger.
Nothing.
I excused myself to the bathroom and, Lord help me, tried speaking
out loud. It sounds ridiculously corny in retrospect, something out of a
really bad TV movie.
"Hello," I said again. "Lippencott? You there?"
After fifteen minutes of talking to myself in the bathroom, I
decided that an appointment with my ex-therapist might be a good thing
to consider. That brought the voice back.
"Don't do that," it said.
I sighed. Not only did I have enough of a psychiatric problem that
the voice of a dead co-worker was in my head, but that voice didn't want
me to get it taken care of. I wondered if a mental disease could be
self-defensive.
Normally, I would have finished out the day, gone home, made an
appointment with the therapist for the next day, and gone to sleep. This
is pretty straight thinking, but it didn't work out that way at all.
I was home, making dinner, when Lipp again reared what I suppose
you could call his head.
"Get a pencil and paper," he commanded. "Quickly."
I sighed again. I wasn't too worried about Lipp's voice, or the
fact that it was in my head. I had a certain degree of faith in the
psychiatric profession and I had recently been through a traumatic
experience; it was to be expected that I would have some sort of delayed
reaction. My therapist would just comfort me through this and I would
soon be better. A mental disturbance is nothing to worry about if you
have confidence in your sanity.
"Quickly!" the voice hissed at me.
"Yeah, yeah," I said. "Gimme a sec." Apparently, my delayed
traumatic reaction was a pushy one.
I moved the pot I was boiling spaghetti in to a cool burner and sat
down at the table with a pencil and a piece of paper.
"Listen to what I say," said Lipp. "Don't ask questions."
He began talking, in that low, gruff voice of his, and I slowly
transcribed what he said. He corrected my chemistry errors and once
reminded me where the apostrophe goes in a possessive.
I have to admit, in the end I'm glad that I never made my
appointment with my therapist. Lipp had an incredible mind and most of
his time in the lab had been spent working on unofficial pet projects.
The only reason he took the job at the lab at all was because he didn't
have the equipment he needed at home.
Maybe some day we'll try to work out how smearing the majority of
his brain on my face transferred his quiet, sulky consciousness into my
head, but for now, we're ankle deep in other ideas.
Lipp was working on what he called a "friendly virus" to fight
cancer when he died. It seems that he wasn't boiling the two components
before mixing them, and that caused the explosion. It was a simple
mistake, but it allowed me to be up on stage with him when we got the
Nobel Prize for medicine. He, of course, wrote the speech.
Right now, we're working on a friendly virus to fight AIDS and it
looks promising. I guess I'm now considered the foremost biochemist in
the world, and that's why they allow me my eccentricities.
Lipp and I thought it would be a good idea to have someone stand
behind me while we work.
--
GREG KNAUSS was a senior at the University of California, San Diego,
majoring in Political Theory, when work began on this issue. Now he's a
gruaduate with nothing to do. He recently mailed off a "Star Trek: The
Next Generation" script submission, proving again that he is indeed as
loopy as a loon... whatever that means.
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