Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in richm90071's LiveJournal:

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Tuesday, December 8th, 2009
11:37 pm	Countdown to Breakdown I've been tracking several trends. You might call it my "worry index." The closer real-world events get to the series of events described as the Final Breakdown in Ultimate Marty Stu, the more I worry. It's one of my hobbies. ( Things to worry about behind the cut... ) People debate whether Verner Venge's technological singularity could really happen. I think it's already happening. Right now. Copyright © 2009 by Richard C. McCluney, III (Comment on this)
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009
9:13 pm	Timeline for the Final Breakdown Ultimate Marty Stu version 1.1 === I decided to pin some dates down so I can keep them consistent. I set the Breakdown in "2010" because I liked the sense of immediacy. However, in a few weeks it will probably start looking kind of silly. I guess we'll have to consider this an alternate history. At least I hope it's alternate. It would kind of suck if all this really happened. While typing this up, I noticed that events are way too compressed. Should've made them months apart instead of weeks. Oh well, really too late to change it now. Also, I had to reschedule Armageddon/WWIII for March rather than April, in order to have the global pandemics by June. Mac's life prior to the Breakdown: * July 14, 1984 Mac born. * Circa 1991 Although Mac's parents are agnostics, they let his Roman Catholic grandmother take him to church. Mac takes First Communion, and later Confirmation. * 1996 Mac's grandmother suffers a stroke, is confined in a nursing home with dementia. Mac begins studying comparative religion, gets interested Stoic philosophy. * 1998 Mac's grandmother dies. * 2002 Mac graduates from high school, begins freshman year at Virginia Tech. * 2003 Fall: Mac's parents killed in an auto accident by a drunk driver. Mac becomes a teetotaler -- he's not quite old enough to drink yet, but he decides he never will. His parents leave him enough money to finish college. He becomes withdrawn, hiding his grief, but his grades actually improve. He tells his councilor that he considers his schoolwork a memorial to his parents. He strives to excel. * 2005 Fall: Mac and most of his college friends are now drinking age. He finds he doesn't enjoy being around drunk people when he's not drunk himself. He becomes more withdrawn socially. * 2006 Mac graduates. He gets a job at a "Web 2.0" online sales firm. * 2008 The U.S. Banking crisis, plus Mac's experiences at work, convince him that human beings may not be capable of managing the civilization they've built. He quietly begins stocking up on non-perishable food and other survival supplies. * 2009 Aware that the company he's working for is not doing well, Mac prepares for a period of unemployment. 2010, the Final Breakdown ( More dates behind the cut... ) Copyright © 2009 by Richard C. McCluney, III (Comment on this)
Saturday, November 28th, 2009
9:54 pm	We may be the dumbest, but we suck less Ultimate Marty Stu version 1.1 === Mac's group reached 21st Street, where Interstate 264 debouched into the oceanfront area. They found the street blocked by the wreckage of an overturned tractor-trailer and several "Federal Police" Humvees, all badly burned. "Oh, this was that big explosion you heard right before the plagues got bad," said Omega. He pointed at the truck's trailer. Mac saw the whole trailer had been ripped open by a huge explosion. "Damn. Truck bomb. A big one," he said. He looked around. All the windows in the surrounding buildings were broken. That wasn't too unusual -- most of the stores in the area had been looted when the fighting broke out -- but the windows in the upper stories were broken, too. "Looks like they lost somebody," said Iota. He and several other duplicates were standing around a Death Pod wedged into the narrow space between two wrecked Humvees. "Damn. Poor kid was only nineteen." "Surprised they only lost one," said Omega. "Maybe they evacuated the other casualties," said Iota. "Don't see the truck driver, either." The truck's cab was missing its glass and badly burned, but otherwise intact. The driver probably would still have been in it if the Feds hadn't removed him. They continued on to the library, broken glass crunching underfoot. They found the library relatively intact, locked and boarded shut. Stenciled signs warned FACILITY SECURED PER EXECUTIVE ORDER 14042 CONTINUITY OF CIVILIZATION THIS IS A CLASS 'B' C.O.C. FACILITY UNDER PAIN OF DEATH DO NOT ENTER WITHOUT FEDERAL APPROVAL VIOLATORS WILL BE SHOT ON SITE. ( Less suck behind the cut... ) "I've been thinking about thinking, like you asked me to," said Delta. "And I think the quality of thought has changed during your lifetime, Mac. Critical thinking seems to have become unfashionable lately, in favor of something like 'all opinions are created equal.' Only some opinions get treated as more equal than others. People who have access to mass media can make their opinions seem weightier simply by repeating them over and over. And it doesn't occur to anyone else to question this, because questioning other people's opinions is non-inclusive and judgmental." "I think you're onto something," said Mac. "My specific command to you is to find evidence to support your hypothesis." === I wanted a better word than "ended" to describe what the Interstate does at the oceanfront, however the one I picked may be a bit obscure: debouch. I was surprised that Microsoft's spell checker let "oomph" pass. Turns out it's actually a word in the dictionary. What the world needs now is critical thinking. With all due respect to Jackie DeShannon, love isn't the only thing that there's just too little of. Copyright © 2009 by Richard C. McCluney, III (Comment on this)
Friday, November 27th, 2009
8:44 pm	More than one life to lose Ultimate Marty Stu version 1.1 === Mac and his duplicates went home to a late supper. Alpha's team, exempted from moving duty to stay behind and watch the place, had prepared a salad with some lean chicken and low-fat cheese. "We should eat light for the next week or so. We've had pizza twice this week," said Mac. During dinner, Mac and Ep filled the others in on Mac's conversation with the Sparks, warning them that the Sparks could be watching them, or even reading their minds, at any time. Everyone was very tired, so Mac called it an evening. They took turns in the showers, then went to bed. The next morning, they were all sore from all the moving. Mac particularly so. He hadn't slept very well on the couch. He asked the SUAUN to replace it with a futon. "We'll take it easy today. I was thinking today would be a good day to check out what's left of the local library," said Mac. Alpha and Beta would remain behind to watch the place, and to continue working on their current projects. The library was just a few blocks away from Mac's building. After breakfast they walked there in a big group. They passed the corner where Mac had been harassed by the gangs. Mac chuckled. "What's funny?" said Ep. "Them gangs better not mess with me now," said Mac in mock-Gansta. "Got my own gang now." "Might be wise to get some guns and learn how to use them," said Omega. Mac frowned. While Omega had a point, Mac preferred to avoid violence. Not just because it was messy and distressing and morally questionable. Mac didn't think he'd be very good at it. He was slow and a bit clumsy. Mac was afraid that if it came down to a fight for his life, he'd lose. Then it occurred to him that he now had more than one life to lose. If he made sure he and his duplicates shared information, then, as long as one of them was left alive, the survivor could carry on for the others. And, though he hated to think like this, any losses could be replaced, quite easily. So, they could do it. They could defend themselves. "Are you pondering what I'm pondering?" said Mac to Omega. "I think so," said Omega. "But we'll have to outnumber any enemies by at least two to one to be assured of a win. We aren't going to be the fastest guns in the East." "Close enough," said Mac. === Mac's futon is the Western kind. Copyright © 2009 by Richard C. McCluney, III Current Music: Rage Against the Machine, "Bulls on Parade" (Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 25th, 2009
12:44 am	Mac images Messing around with Poser 6.0, I managed to get a decent representation of Mac. In other news, I should have guessed that Localism is already an organized political movement. Bah, humans are so predictable. Copyright © 2009 by Richard C. McCluney, III Tags: ultimate marty stu, ums1.1 (Comment on this)
Sunday, November 22nd, 2009
6:24 pm	Truths, Damned Truths, and Statistics Ultimate Marty Stu version 1.1 === It was getting dark by the time they finished unloading the trucks. On the way back, Mac rode in the cab with Epsilon. Ep (as the others were already calling him) noticed Mac was stewing about something as he watched the darkened buildings go by. Ep had an idea what it was. It was nibbling at the edges of his own mind. But he had to concentrate on driving stick shift (which Mac had rarely done) with only his own headlights to see by, and there were abandoned cars and debris and such scattered in the road. So he didn’t have time to dwell on it. Mac did. The Sparks appeared over the hood of the truck. Ep swerved reflexively before he realized what they were. "God dammit! I do not need that right now!" he said. The Sparks seemed to pass through the windshield, and hovered over the dashboard in front of Mac. "We're sorry," they said. They weren't talking to Ep. "'Sorry' doesn't cut it," said Mac. "'Sorry' doesn't come within a megaparsec of being adequate." "One of the failings of the human brain is that you have a hard time understanding that statistics are always made up of unique individuals...," said the Sparks. "Don't get speciesest on me," said Mac. "You're telling me Missy Gwen Evans is a statistic." "Yes, we are," said the Sparks. "You didn't even know her name until today, so don't pretend you care about her personally." "You sat and watched her die," said Mac. "No. As a matter of fact we didn't," said the Sparks. "We're not omniscient, you know. We only see what's in line of sight of our manifestations. What you see as a cloud of swirling sparks." "Oh? You seem to be able to hear me, or read my mind, when I can't see you around," said Mac. "We don't always make our manifestation visible to you," said the Sparks. "So you're spying on me?" said Mac. "We've been monitoring you for most of your life," said the Sparks. "Your mental traits interested us long before the Final Breakdown." "Well, that's very flattering. And also really, really creepy," said Mac. "But you're changing the subject. You could have stopped the plagues at any time, but you didn't. You let six point three billion unique individuals become statistics." "Yes. We've already told you why," said the Sparks. "We were using up resources too fast," said Mac. "That's not what you told everybody else. You said you were afraid of causing cultural contamination." "There's no contradiction there," said the Sparks. "In some ways, the cultural contamination is even worse this time. We underestimated the moral hazard. The last time we helped out the human race, you didn't have sex toys and designer drugs and planned obsolescence." "So? Tell the SUAUN to stop making that stuff," said Mac. "Once you start making exceptions, there's no end to them," said the Sparks. "We're trying to keep the rules as simple as possible. The more complex they get, the easier it is to find loopholes, and your species is annoyingly good at that." "Least we're good at something," said Mac. "Look, I'm not going to argue with you. If we can't agree, then I'd just as soon agree to disagree." "That's one of the mental traits that interested us," said the Sparks. They swirled away. "Don't assume they're gone just because you can't see them," Mac said to Ep. "Yeah, I got that," said Ep. "So, we're not trusting them?" "No, we're not," said Mac. "Even though we're utterly dependent upon them?" said Ep. "What are we going to do?" "Stay out of Stockholm," said Mac, "and look for loopholes." === Speciesism. Mac is speciesist when it comes to human vs. animal. The Wikipedia article on moral hazard doesn't seem to cover when charity gets taken for granted and comes to be seen as an entitlement. Perhaps I'm thinking of another term. Stockholm syndrome Copyright © 2009 by Richard C. McCluney, III (Comment on this)
Saturday, November 21st, 2009
8:24 pm	A Sad Task Ultimate Marty Stu version 1.1 === Rho through Upsilon checked out apartment 202. They found the words DONT COME IN IM SICK crudely painted on the door. "Is it okay to go in?" Rho asked the Sparks. "Yes. We've cleaned up all the infectious micro-organisms. That's why the plagues stopped," said the Sparks. "However, the door is nailed shut from the inside." ( More behind the cut... ) A sad little convoy carried the deceased's possessions to the storage place. They'd be safe there if any surviving next-of-kin wanted to claim them. Failing that, Mac had tentative plans to build a museum to honor the fallen. A really big museum. === I'm going to cut back on the long "author's notes" because my audience appears to be largely imaginary. Relevant links may appear here for my personal reference; otherwise, I'm done. I'll probably keep posting this story. It's not like I'm writing it. It's more like it oozes out of my fingertips when I sit at the keyboard. And, since I have all this text, I figure I may as well post it. Maybe someone will read it someday. Mausoleum internal dimensions: 16' long by 8' wide and 8' high. External: +1' length and width, +1/2' high. Copyright © 2009 by Richard C. McCluney, III (Comment on this)
Friday, November 20th, 2009
9:05 pm	Full Employment Ultimate Marty Stu version 1.1 === Mac decided there would be four duplicates per apartment, so he set up his own apartment for Gamma and Delta to move into. The closet contained mostly work clothes that Mac wasn't planning to ever wear again, so he sacrificed those to make room to cram the dresser in there. In the living room, Mac got rid of the coffee table he never really used and they moved the exercise machine there from the bedroom. This made space for two more workstations in the bedroom. Then Mac replaced his own bed with a bunk bed. "There you go, boys," said Mac to Gamma and Delta. "There's going to be five people living in this apartment, remember?" said Gamma. "Where are you going to sleep?" "Oh, yeah. Well, I guess I can sleep on the couch," said Mac. He surveyed the apartment with a sense of satisfaction. "How's that for efficient living?" "Better than some people," said the Sparks. "They're moving into huge mansions and expecting us to keep them heated and cooled for them." Mac lived in apartment 101, ground floor nearest to the parking lot. He sent the duplicates out in teams of four to investigate the other apartments. Epsilon through Theta checked apartment 102. They had the SUAUN duplicate the key, then unlocked the door. As they expected, it was empty. The tenants, a nice young couple, had lost their jobs and been evicted months before the Final Breakdown. The dupes gave the apartment a thorough cleaning, then asked the SUAUN to duplicate the furnishings of Mac's apartment in the new one. "We've got an extra workstation," said Epsilon. "Make it into a server," said Mac. "We're going to have our own wiki, web logs, and an online forum." "Too much trouble to step next door and say 'hi?'" said Epsilon. "I want a system that'll scale up," said Mac. "People on the network won't necessarily be living next door to you." Nu through Pi investigated apartment 201, directly above Mac's. They found the lock broken, the door ajar. This wasn't a surprise. The Feds had come for the occupant, a middle-aged man, when his unemployment benefits ran out. The government's latest method of dealing with unemployment had been to round up jobless people and ship them off to "employment camps" scattered around the countryside, where they apparently did forced labor. Rumor had been that no one ever came back from these "employment camps." Mac had avoided this fate by registering as "self employed" after getting laid off. That meant he couldn't collect unemployment, but he felt that was a small price to pay to keep the Feds away. What was unexpected is the former occupant's possessions were still in the apartment, disturbed only by vermin who'd gotten in the open door. The Feds had come only a couple of weeks before the plagues had gotten bad. Apparently there hadn't been time for the landlord to get the apartment cleared out, or for thieves to notice the broken lock and loot the place. Mac determined that the personal effects of the missing or dead would be preserved. There was a service station down the street from the apartment building that had rented light trucks. The trucks were still there, so Mac had his duplicates duplicate the truck keys and borrow some trucks. A couple of blocks away was a self-storage place they could move the personal effects into. Nu's team began boxing up the contents of apartment 201 and loading them onto a truck. === Apparently, this is how the government plans to deal with people who can't afford health insurance: people who "fail to maintain 'adequate' health insurance" will be charged an "excise tax" of approximately 2.5% of their income. People who fail to pay the excise tax (because, say, they can't afford it, for the same reason they can't afford health insurance) may be hauled off to jail and fined, apparently depending on which version of the health care bill gets passed, but both versions include the tax. I wish I was making this up. I'm not sure what happens if your health insurance gets dropped if you have the temerity to actually get sick (as sometimes happens), but I bet it's not good. So anyway, I figure unemployment could be dealt with in a similar manner. You don't have a job, you get hauled off to an "employment camp" and are put to work. That should get the bums off the streets. Copyright © 2009 by Richard C. McCluney, III (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 19th, 2009
8:21 pm	What's love got to do with it? Ultimate Marty Stu version 1.1 === The picnic tables formed a line across the lawn. Mac stood at one end, with Alpha and Beta sitting nearby. Omega sat at the other end, watching them. Beta made a joke at Mac's expense, and everybody laughed, including Mac, looking at Beta fondly. Then Alpha stood up. "We have another surprise for you guys," he said. "We're making you hats. It's going kind of slow..." "We couldn't think of any teams with Greek letters on their hats," said Beta. "Alpha and I faked it, but Gamma and some of you others are out of luck." "So, remember that guy Mac saw at the mall last year, who had that machine that would embroider a custom logo on a hat?" said Alpha. "We've duplicated his machine, and we're making the hats right now. Problem is, it takes a few minutes per hat, so it'll be a couple of hours before we get you all hatted." ( Existential angst behind the cut... ) Omega resolved to try it. Just making that decision made him feel a little better. What makes you such an expert on human feelings? he thought. Seventy thousand years of observing human neurological activity, said the Sparks. Oh. Well. I guess that would do it, thought Omega. === Meh. I'm trying to convey that Mac and his duplicates care for each other like family, because they are family. However, the English language has degenerated to the point that there's no way to describe this without making them sound gay. The only kind of affection English allows any more is lust. For the record, they aren't gay, and they will actually regret this a bit, because they'll realize they'd be having a great time if they were. The awkwardness of a couple dozen of identical men all seeking romance will come up in the story, eventually leading to a rather extreme solution. Copyright © 2009 by Richard C. McCluney, III (Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 18th, 2009
8:06 pm	Mission Statement Ultimate Marty Stu version 1.1 Long. No apologies -- Mac is assigning his duplicates to study the sum total of human knowledge, so yeah, it's long. === Alpha and Beta emerged from the apartment to meet their new brothers. The younger duplicates applauded them for ordering their favorite pizza. It seemed they would all get along after all. Mac tried to get along with other people whenever possible, even when he disagreed with them, and his duplicates shared that trait. ( Literally everything behind the cut... ) "Is there a reason for all this?" said Alpha. "Yes. Let me tell you what our mission statement is," said Mac. "To perpetuate the illusion that we are adding value to the enterprise so we continue to receive funding..." said Beta. Mac gave him a look and he shut up. "Our goal is nothing less than building a new civilization," said Mac. "I want us to build such a civilization that when the movers and shakers of the old civilization see it, they will cry, because they'll see what they could have built if they hadn't chosen to squander the Earth's resources on instant gratification." "Look upon our works, ye mighty...," said Beta. "Exactly! No, wait...," Mac flushed, and all the duplicates laughed. Then he smiled and joined them in their laughter. === Are you getting it? The lack of feedback disturbs me sometimes. I don't really know if I'm communicating my rather strange ideas effectively or not. Here's a couple of things I worry readers might not get in today's post. The reason Gamma, et al., know some things Alpha and Beta don't is because they are things Mac thought of after Alpha and Beta were created, that he hasn't told them about. "Look upon our works, ye mighty" is a reference to the Percy Shelly poem "Ozymandias" Copyright © 2009 by Richard C. McCluney, III (Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
4:12 pm	The Rest of the Alphabet Ultimate Marty Stu version 1.1 === Mac and Beta returned to the apartment and entered the living room, where Alpha sat at his desk. "Hello, fellow robot," said Beta. "Robot?" said Alpha. "I told the mailman you and Beta were robots," said Mac. "Robots can be biological. The robots in the play by Karel Čapek were biological constructs. So are you guys, technically." "Robots aren't people," said Alpha. "We are." "Wait, it gets better," said Beta. "Tell him about the others." ( It gets better behind the cut... ) Mac stepped over to where the next duplicate was waking up. "Hello. Your name is Delta." And he proceeded down the line, until he said, "Hello. Your name is Omega." Then he turned around, and saw a twenty-third mound on the lawn. This one was smaller than the others, and roughly square. "What's that?" he said. "Alpha and Beta ordered pizza for the birthday party," said the Sparks. "I think seven pizzas ought to be enough to feed twenty-five people, don't you?" === The play by Karel Čapek is R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), which popularized the word "robot." Copyright © 2009 by Richard C. McCluney, III (Comment on this)
Monday, November 16th, 2009
3:58 pm	Dead Letters Ultimate Marty Stu version 1.1 This got long and exposition-y, too, but again, I thought it best to get it out of the way quickly. === After lunch, Mac finished the yard work. Once he got things to where he felt he could safely claim to be maintaining the building, he went inside for a second shower. It felt so good to have hot water again. Then he saw about getting Alpha and Beta settled into his apartment. ( Settling in and a long talk with the mailman behind the cut... ) --- On the way back home, Beta said, "Robot?" "I couldn't think of what else to call you," said Mac. "You've made several more?" said Beta. "Will have. I'll tell you and Alpha about it when we get home," said Mac. === Rapid Prototyping See the related articles for a number of emerging technologies that just might put a hell of a lot of people out of work. The mail truck was the first vehicle Mac's heard moving in weeks, but I'm getting tired of writing things like that. Social anxiety. I've been there. It's not a fun place to be. Mac deals with it using detachment. Detachment has some similarities to the depersonalization disorder Mac started to develop while isolated, the main difference being detachment is voluntary and conscious while depersonalization is perceived as an affliction. I remember rumors about the US Post Office having plans on how to continue operating in the event of nuclear war, but I couldn't find anything online. The Postman is a book by David Brin that was made into a movie. In both the book and the movie, after civilization has collapsed, a man who finds a postal uniform pretends to be a postman and becomes a symbol of hope, encouraging people to rebuild. My own observation is that many postal workers are highly motivated. I suspect that after a disaster such as that described in this story, at least some of the surviving postal workers would try to get the mail moving again. According to my calculations, a Breadbox has a capacity of a little over six US gallons. However, I found some gas cans online with the physical dimensions given, and it looks like the 1-gallon can is the biggest that would actually fit inside a Breadbox. [Edited 11/21/09: delayed the town meeting by a week because Mac & co. have more to do between now and then than I first planned on.] Copyright © 2009 by Richard C. McCluney, III (Comment on this)
Sunday, November 15th, 2009
8:55 am	Better Ending I thought of a better ending for Ultimate Marty Stu version 1.1 story than what I had in the outline I posted earlier. It's a major spoiler, so it's behind the cut, just in case anybody cares. ( Optimized performance behind the cut... ) Copyright © 2009 by Richard C. McCluney, III (Comment on this)
Saturday, November 14th, 2009
5:56 pm	If it were just us... Ultimate Marty Stu version 1.1 === While they ate, Alpha told the other two about what he'd found out from the shortwave. Mac and Beta shared Alpha's skepticism of the various ideological groups. Growing up at the end of the twentieth century had left Mac with a deep distrust for anyone who claimed "We just want to help people." "If there's one thing people should have learned from the twentieth century -- though I suspect they didn't -- is that monsters like to hide behind pretty ideas," said Mac. "True, but...technocracy almost makes sense," said Alpha. "If you tied the prices of goods to the cost of the resources required to make them, instead of whatever the oligopolies could scam people out of..." "Yeah, but how would you decide how much each person is allowed to consume?" said Mac. "Easy. Divide gross domestic product by current population," said Alpha. "How are you going to get people to work if they all get paid the same, no matter what?" said Mac. "They won't do it out of the goodness of their sweet little hearts, even if you try to brainwash them into it. The communists found that out." "If it were just us, we could make it work," said Beta. "We'd do the work because we're idiots." Mac laughed sourly. Beta's words brought back an unpleasant memory... ---<flashback> ( Street entrepreneurship behind the cut... ) ---</flashback> If it were just us, there wouldn't be gangs hassling people in the streets, thought Mac. He could think of a lot of ways the world would be nicer if it was just him and his duplicates. === Oligopoly. Many US markets are controlled by oligopolies. Markets controlled by oligopolies typically have high barriers to entry. The existing firms can stifle the entry of new firms pretty easily. This means a market controlled by an oligopoly is not really a free market, because a truly free market should have very low barriers to entry. Thus, when you say America is a "free market" society, you should put an asterisk after "market." Gold production really does seem to have peaked, and counterfeit gold really is turning up on the global markets [edit 11/19/09] maybe -- it now looks like this may just be an Internet rumor. Copyright © 2009 by Richard C. McCluney, III (Comment on this)
Friday, November 13th, 2009
9:44 pm	Birthday Party Ultimate Marty Stu version 1.1 === Mac returned to the apartment, covered in sweat and grass stains. "Damn, I'm going to need another shower," he said. "Yeah, me too," said Beta. "No, wait, I haven't had..." His eyes widened. Alpha guessed he was just now realizing what Alpha had realized earlier, that he had a head full of another person's memories and was actually less than a day old. Mac went into the bathroom and wiped the worst of the mess off with a wet washcloth. "I'm not done outside yet, but I'm getting hungry," he said. "What do you guys think about pizza?" "Frozen pizza again?" said Beta. "We...you had that for breakfast." "How about Contralto's Pizza You Can't Refuse™?" said Mac. That was Mac's favorite take-out pizza, which he hadn't had since college. "All right!" said Beta. "I'm gonna make you a Pizza You Can't Refuse™," he said in a mock-threatening voice, imitating the old commercial. "It won't fit in the Breadbox," said Alpha. "The what?" said Mac. Alpha pointed it out to him and explained what it was. The Sparks swirled into existence in the kitchen. "We didn't think you'd want another hole in the wall, so we're making the pizza outside," they said. "You usually got that with two liters of Mon Cherry Cola, right?" "Oh, yeah!" exclaimed Beta, imitating the Kool-aid Man. He slammed the front door open and ran outside. Mac stared after him, then looked at Alpha with a raised eyebrow. "He's been a little hyper," said Alpha. "Hmm. It occurs to me that there's no data on the psychological effects of duplication on humans," said the Sparks. "Oh, now you tell me," said Mac. ( Pizza party behind the cut... ) "Well. Happy birthday, boys," said Mac. "What?...Oh," said Alpha. "Thanks." "I'm onwy zewo yeahs owd," said Beta. "So, where's our barbells?" "Huh? Well, I guess we'll have to take turns on the exercise machine...," said Mac. "No. Rocky Horror," said Beta. "Oh!" said Mac. And he laughed. It felt good. === Cut: "Huh. I was thinking about Gronthr while I was mowing the grass. 'Your blades are no match for my 'lite mower!'" said Mac. This was cut because there's two things going on with the duplicates right now: their personalities are very similar to Mac's, but they're already starting to diverge. I decided to emphasize the latter. So Beta's identifying with Gronthr while Mac's a little embarrassed about having created Gronthr. Copyright © 2009 by Richard C. McCluney, III (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 12th, 2009
5:16 pm	Glossary of the End Times Ultimate Marty Stu version 1.1 Well, this got long, but I need to get the exposition out of the way so I can get to the people-doing-stuff part of the story. === "There. That should be adequate," said Beta, stepping back from the computer desk. It was much cleaner now. "Gronthr wouldn't settle for 'adequate,'" said Alpha. "Well, I could spend all day tracking down the last speck of dust...," said Beta. "Never mind, I was in the middle of something I'd like to finish," said Alpha. Beta bowed theatrically and started vacuuming the rest of the living room. Alpha sat down and opened up the file he'd downloaded, glossaryOfTheEndTimes.txt. It defined a number of recently-coined terms. The Aliens were mentioned near the top, so Alpha started with that. --- ( Breadboxes, miles-high cooling towers, global cooling, secret and not-so-secret conspiracies behind the cut... ) --- For some reason, Alpha was intensely curious about the Aleph Society. === Cascading failure I think it's possible for a series of disasters such as those described in the story to reach civilization-threatening levels. Hopefully it's unlikely, but we don't really know... Technocracy The geek shall inherit the Earth...or not. I really can't see the politicians and the financial community stepping aside for these people. Too bad, really. I'm not sure technocracy would actually work, but it would be an interesting change from the current mediocrity. The Aleph Society borrows some ideas from Technocracy Incorporated, including that of energy accounting. Copyright © 2009 by Richard C. McCluney, III (Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009
4:10 pm	Strange Interlude Ultimate Marty Stu version 1.1 === "Fear my 'lite vacuum cleaner accessories!" exclaimed a voice behind Alpha. "Waaaah!," replied Alpha, jumping and slamming his knees into the desk's keyboard tray. He spun around. It was just Beta, wielding Mac's collection of vacuum attachments designed for cleaning electronic equipment. "Dammit, what is wrong with you?" "I'm fighting a never-ending battle against dirt, dust mites, and web-slinging spiders!" said Beta. "I thought I'd clean that up before you got too involved," he added in a more normal tone, with a wave at Mac's very dusty computer equipment. "You're acting weird," said Alpha, starting to worry. If there were a problem with the Aliens' duplication technology, then Alpha might be in trouble too... "Uh, I was channeling Gronthr," said Beta. Gronthr had been one of Mac's World of Warcraft characters. Mac had played him as a parody of the over-the-top "elite" kids Mac found annoying. "All this dirt is depressing. Gronthr's cheering me up." "Okay," said Alpha dubiously. He moved aside and let Beta start cleaning. He went to the fridge for a drink. The fridge contained nothing but Mac's bottled water, but at least it was cool now that the power was back on. Alpha drank and thought about all the hours Mac had spent boiling and bottling water, the flame of the camp stove the only light in the dark, powerless apartment. Then he thought about how strange it was to have a whole lifetime's worth of someone else's memories in your head. With a shock Alpha realized that he, personally, was still not quite an hour old. He caught sight of Mac outside, struggling with a lawnmower he must have had the Aliens manufacture for him. The grass was so high Mac was having to tip the lawnmower up to cut it. He appeared to be in good spirits, though. He looked a lot happier than Alpha remembered him being recently. As he watched, Alpha felt something he knew Mac hadn't felt in years. He realized it was affection. He looked over at Beta. Beta was busy with his vacuum attachments, bobbing his head and singing, badly, the tune Mac had adopted as Gronthr's fight song. Like a goofy kid brother, he thought. Then he realized that was technically true. Mac, Alpha, and Beta were identical twin brothers. And Beta was the youngest by several minutes. Mac has a family again, Alpha realized. And so do I. === I edited a previous entry because the Sparks don't actually seem to be doing any cleaning. It's funny when the characters in your head don't do what they say they're going to do... Copyright © 2009 by Richard C. McCluney, III (Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
11:36 am	Lurking Ultimate Marty Stu version 1.1 === Mac had assigned Alpha to check out the radio. Beta was giving the apartment a thorough cleaning. Mac had stayed outside to check out the apartment building's badly-neglected lawn. After a little while Alpha heard a lawn mower start up. Alpha scanned the shortwave channels. There were a number of discussions going on about whether the plagues had deliberately released. The general opinion was that some of them probably had been. For instance, smallpox had broken out in Asia, Africa, and South America, nearly simultaneously. Since smallpox had been eradicated in 1979, these had almost certainly been biowarfare attacks. Questions of who'd done it, and why, remained unanswered. The Sparks, which most people just called "the Aliens," were also a popular topic. Mac wasn't the only human they'd talked to. There was much discussion about what they had said. The Aliens claimed they normally didn't interfere with human culture, but chose to act when it appeared the rapid decline in human population was approaching extinction level. The Aliens said that humans wouldn't have died off right away, but the surviving groups might have been too small to avoid inbreeding and too far apart to exchange mates, ensuring extinction within a few generations. So the Aliens acted to preserve a viable population. Alpha noted that this didn't quite square with what the Aliens had told Mac. The Aliens said that this wasn't the first time they'd helped out the human race. Seventy thousand years ago, an immense volcanic eruption had caused sudden, rapid cooling of the Earth's climate. The human population had been reduced to less than ten thousand individuals. The Aliens had helped them survive. However, the contact had caused "cultural contamination" that the Aliens deeply regretted. They wouldn't give any details, but hinted that humans' fascination with "supernatural" phenomenon could be traced back to that time. Thus they had avoided further contact until now. Alpha found station giving out instructions for accessing AMPRNet, the Amateur Packet Radio Network. He tried it out and found a number of stations operating computer bulletin-board systems. He browsed a few of these and found a file called "glossaryOfTheEndTimes.txt." He downloaded it. === The prior population bottleneck the Aliens are referring to is the event described by the Toba catastrophe theory. It's not a theory in this story. AMPRNet actually exists. I figured it would be a good way for people to exchange data if a disaster brought the Internet down. Alpha's radio set includes a radio modem. I've created a character list for the story. Yes, it actually has other characters besides Mac and duplicates thereof. Copyright © 2009 by Richard C. McCluney, III (Comment on this)
Sunday, November 8th, 2009
7:27 pm	Mac's Philosophy Ultimate Marty Stu version 1.1 I was going to append this as an "author's note" to the next installment of the story (which is almost finished) but it grew so large I decided to make it a separate post. Mac is a theist with a personal belief in a god he calls Logos, drawn from Stoic philosophy. To him, Logos represents Order in the universe. He also sees it as a personification of Truth. He believes humans have a moral duty to create and maintain Order, resist Chaos/entropy, discover Truth, and share it with each other. Mac lives his life in service of these ideals. To him, every act is an act of worship. When it comes to discovering how the physical world works, Mac believes that a rational, empirical approach gives the most reliable results. (I was going to call him a rational empiricist, but "rationalism" appears to mean "reason and nothing else" and "empiricism" appears to mean "empirical inquiry and nothing else," and Mac would agree with neither statement.) Mac notes that humans no longer live in the environment their ancestors evolved in. Therefore, we have no reason to expect human emotion or intuition to be a reliable guide to discovering how our complex, technological world works. In his personal life, Mac tends toward asceticism. He believes excessive indulgence coarsens the mind. He disdains the use of recreational drugs, including alcohol and tobacco, and the obsession with sex in modern Western culture. Although he occasionally indulges in "fun foods" like pizza, he generally eats a balanced diet and exercises regularly. In pursuit of his ideal as a servant of Order, he keeps his surroundings neat and clean. He struggled to uphold his standards as best he could even as civilization collapsed around him. Socially, Mac has become very alienated (the Wikipedia article on "Social alienation" has little to do with the individual psychological/social condition, and I cannot find or think of a more appropriate term. I note that Thesaurus.com lists "alienated," "ascetic," "cynical," and "misanthropic" as synonyms for "antisocial." It's not a word I would have selected to describe him, but we have four hits among his mental traits.) He is not a cynic in the Classic Greek sense, but he's become very cynical about humans and human institutions. His negative experiences with other people over the past few months have caused him to start developing misanthropic tendencies. It may be assumed that most of the above qualities contributed to the Sparks' choice of Mac as the one human they've entrusted their technology to. Writing this up, I realized that Mac's alienation can be explained simply by noting that his particular constellation of personal beliefs make it very hard for him to find compatible companionship in contemporary America. Since there is some congruence between his beliefs and mine, I further realized that certain aspects of my own personal life are similarly explained. Copyright © 2009 by Richard C. McCluney, III (Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009
8:26 pm	Outline for the end of the world Ultimate Marty Stu version 1.1 An outline for how Mac witnesses the collapse of civilization is posted below. An outline of more of the story -- I've gotten up to where Mac occupies West Virginia -- is posted on my wiki. It contains many spoilers, if you're worried about that sort of thing. I thought I'd go ahead and post it all in case we have a global pandemic or something, and the Internet gets shut down so Wall Street traders can keep trading. ( Watch them fall away behind the cut... ) Copyright © 2009 by Richard C. McCluney, III Current Music: Tool, "Schism" (Comment on this)