Archive for the ‘Authors’ Category
Partial List of the Saved
Friday, January 23rd, 2009
This is actually a story by Ken Brady. We’re having some technical problems with the site that are keeping Ken from posting under his own name, but with any luck, everything will be sorted out over the weekend.
Standing on the foredeck of the Titanic the first thing we notice is how real the wind feels. We walk unnoticed all the way up to the bow railing and spread our arms as if to fly like that meat actor back in the flat days. The days when it only took a few hundred million dollars and a contrived love story to suspend disbelief.
We have greater requirements. When the only reality we have is a construct, we come to rely on the details. Down to the prim, the pixel, the ray. And here, on the deck of one of the most famous disasters in human history, we will make our stand, take our chances, be saved or fade into obscurity, forever lost.
We have been in the Purgatory Hub for six days now, and our cluster will lose its public funding tomorrow. None of us had enough money in life to buy our way into everlasting life, so here we are, in a final act of desperation.
We know the great ship will strike an iceberg tonight, and we must find new bodies to inhabit before that occurs. We must do or die, as the expression goes. If we don’t face death in a body of historical significance, we will simply be deleted. We will not join the other uploads in the Perpetual Cluster, not become part of the global mind, not become part of human history. It will be like each of our two hundred lives never existed.
Choosing another life is difficult. None of us knew in which historical event we would find ourselves, but some of us recall bits of useful data, factoids from history class or pop culture. We are on the upper decks for practical reasons; in first class, we have a better than sixty percent chance to live forever.
We move through the cabins and lounges, each of us choosing a body. We temporarily assume their names and identities, their lives and last hours. Women and children first. The unfortunate among us are left with men. We choose the richest-looking men.
If we are lucky and our assumed names match those on the front page of The New York Times, April 16, 1912, if we are indeed on the partial list of the saved, we will earn a place in history. We will be survivors.
The alternative is not really an alternative at all, but the dark depths of the ocean and the cold embrace of eternity.
History is our only route to the future.
I’m Sorry About That Last Letter
Thursday, January 22nd, 2009
I hope you never read that letter I sent before, but if you did I hope your hair grows back and that you get a new dog. It wasn’t the direst curse I could’ve picked, you’ve gotta see that. There’s all kinds of things out there. Anyway, I was just mad because you said all those things, and even if they were pretty true they were mean, and you’ve got no cause to be mean, but I guess I don’t either.
So this one’s a blessing, even though I know I can’t make up for what I’ve done and now there can’t be no chance at all we’ll get back together soon, except you know I still love you even after all both of us’ve done. OK, what I’ve done, I guess.
Now, here’s your blessing:
May your crops be fruitful (I know you don’t have any crops, but I was thinking of that spider plant you keep just barely failing to kill, and anyway this is part of the blessing so I can’t take it out), and may wealth make its way to you through secret means, and may your sight be clear (because maybe then you could get rid of those glasses, which make you look stuck-up anyway), and may you always be able to find the one you love.
That scent you smell is the dust I had to buy that goes with the blessing. Everyone out here swears by it, even though I know it smells like dung. It cost me nearly everything I had except the pickup, and you know that piece of crap’s gonna fall apart soon anyway. Anyway, it works great and it’s going to make sure you get all your blessings.
It was that last item I particularly liked, and I thought maybe sometime after your hair grows back and the blessing’s had a while to take hold you might want to find where I am and maybe come back to me. I hope you understand why I can’t tell you where I am right now, in case you’re mad.
And if all of this is a load of crap like you always said, then you probably have your hair and no harm done, in which case I’m staying with my cousin Jesse, whom you’ll remember from that party we had once when he tried to kiss you while he was drunk.
Love,
Dan