Archive for the ‘Luc Reid’ Category
43 Futures
Tuesday, November 25th, 2008
The principle of the thing was simple: establish linked universe chambers with 43 randomly-selected possible futures and vow to show up at the place and time where the device would be activated so as to make contact with the present from all 43 different possible realities. In this way, Garrett could communicate with 43 of his future selves, figure out which future was most advantageous for him, and use a device he had just invented to force the entire universe to follow that particular path.
If only, he thought regretfully, he weren’t such a self-involved, megalomaniacal liar. He wouldn’t be able to trust anything any of his selves said to him, since each of him would be trying to influence the present him to choose their reality in order to prevent their existence being erased. But he could work around that.
Late on a rainy spring evening he flipped the switch, and only 7 Garretts appeared in the phone-booth sized chambers arranged around him (out of which none could step without becoming unmoored from his own stream of probability). Having less than 78 minutes for questioning, Garrett tried to ignore the implications of so many of him not making it to the rendezvous and instead concentrated on questions.
“Where’s everyone else?” said Garrets number 29 and 14.
“Immaterial,” said 5. “If they had advantages to offer, they’d be showing them. Look at these pictures of my girlfriend.”
“The you from your best future will be concise,” said 40.
“Number 40 looks pale. Some kind of disease?” said 12.
2 said nothing, but smiled and began piling up stacks of money from a case at his feet.
Garrett stepped up and examined each self intently in turn, alert for signs of illness or stress on the one hand or health and satisfaction on the other. When he got to 35, he stopped.
“You haven’t said anything,” he told 35, who was hiding a hand behind his back.
35 nodded. “I’ll say this: if you were a better man, you’d abandon this idea of changing the path of the entire universe to suit yourself.”
Garrett shrugged. “If I were a better man, you’d be a better man,” he said.
“Whereas the reverse is not necessarily true,” said 35, and he took out the revolver he had been hiding and shot Garrett three times in the head. Garrett collapsed as his seven analogs flickered out of existence.
Garrett was found dead in the midst of an incomprehensible apparatus the next day. For lack of a better explanation, the death was ultimately written off as a suicide.
Miners’ Dialect
Monday, November 17th, 2008
NOTE: This piece may or may not contain objectionable language unsuitable for children, fine ladies, and other persons of delicate sensibilities.
Harald and his translator Gothica stood up when the Mining Belt envoy entered the room. The envoy was still wearing his atmosphere suit, a tarnished-looking garment that looked like metallic longjohns. Harald waited for the envoy to speak first, through Gothica.
“Yahhh, mother-flicking candleraper.”
“Good morning,” Gothica translated.
Surely that couldn’t be the miner’s dialect, Harald thought. But then, communication had been all but cut off between earth and the asteroid miners for a hundred and twenty years, so only expatriates like Gothica would have any idea what the dialect was like.
“Good morning!” Harald finally managed. The envoy nodded: apparently he understood Default English, even if he wasn’t willing to speak it. He sat down heavily in the conference seat, and the display lit up with the treaty document. Harald sat cautiously opposite him.
“Tha dox, it’s faint-stinkin crap, yahh shove it up yer beefhole,” the envoy said.
“He has some minor concerns about the proposed treaty,” Gothica said.
“What kind of–”
“Cork yer rodsucker, ya windae-licker!” the envoy cut in. “Allshate stick yer lucre-baiting, stick yer muddamned stufftops, yer goatspucklickket grandma.”
“If he may get right to the point,” Gothica translated, “it’s primarily the interest rates and production caps that concern him.”
Harald fumbled with his reader control and brought up the applicable sections.
The envoy nodded at Gothica. “Like ta cram ya splat and ream ya, tartess,” the envoy said.
Gothica nodded back. “Like ta chop yer marblesack, ya bungtaster.” She smiled at Harald. “Just pleasantries,” she said.
“The concern, uh, the concern we have with your original proposal for interest rates …” Harald began. The envoy took out a data probe and began to pick his teeth. Harald tried not to stare without looking like he was trying not to stare. “… um, for interest rates, is that it doesn’t account for changes in the base rate, so of course we’re suggesting a variable structure.”
“Spill yer shate anna blood and lickket yer merd yer dam ainsel, ya anna yer spewin girlbrat,” said the envoy.
“Interesting,” Gothica translated.
Harald looked from Gothica and back to the envoy, his face blank. “Will you excuse me for a moment?” he said finally, and left the room. They could hear him running in the hallway before the door irised shut.
For a moment there was complete silence, until Gothica, who had been turning a little red, couldn’t hold herself back and made a little snorting noise. Within a moment both she and the envoy were laughing so hard that tears ran down their faces.
Several minutes later, the envoy wiped tears from his face and blew his nose on a clean nanohandkerchief. “Do you think it’s working?”
“Even if it isn’t,” said Gothica, “it was worth it to see the expression on his face!”
This brought on more laughter, which took a few minutes to wind down.
“Screw you, whore,” the envoy said affectionately.
Gothica just smiled. She knew he loved her, but she liked when he said so anyway.