tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-79337943553914964342024-03-12T18:50:21.334-06:00A Million ChimpanzeesStill proving bloggers write like a million apes pounding on keyboards. It's not Shakespearejames.pyleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11424800834517755783noreply@blogger.comBlogger186125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7933794355391496434.post-29800520357483785322016-05-11T13:29:00.003-06:002016-05-14T11:27:57.408-06:00The Robot Who Loved GodThis will be the last fiction short story to appear at this blogspot. I have created a separate venue called <a href="https://poweredbyrobotsblog.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Powered by Robots</a> for all of my future fiction and science fiction efforts, including any sequels to "The Robot Who Loved God". For more on my reasoning, visit the new "robots" blog and read the <a href="https://poweredbyrobotsblog.wordpress.com/about/" target="_blank">About</a> page. Then stick around to see what else I've created.<br />
<i><br /></i>
<style type="text/css">P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }A:link { }</style><i>The initial event that resulted in my most ambitious fiction writing project to date happened a few Sundays ago over coffee with my friend Tom. He mentioned a book he wanted to read, an anthology edited by Anthony Marchetta called <a href="https://www.amazon.com/God-Robot-Anthony-Marchetta-ebook/dp/B01EBODSPE" target="_blank">God, Robot</a>. This is a collection of stories based on the premise of Isaac Asimov-like Positronic robots that have been programmed with two Bible verses rather than Asimov’s famous Three Laws. These verses are recorded in the New Testament in <b>Matthew 22:35-40</b> and <b>Mark 12:28-34</b> and are based on <b>Deuteronomy 6:4-5</b> and <b>Leviticus 19:18</b>.<br /><br />I’m a long time fan of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/I-Robot-Book-1-ebook/dp/B000FC1PW0" target="_blank">Asimov’s robots stories</a> and have always been fascinated by the interplay between the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics" target="_blank">Three Laws</a> and how their potentials shifted due to certain situations, rather than remaining hard absolutes. This allowed Positronic robots to be unpredictable and thus interesting, challenging the human beings who sometimes found themselves not in control of their creations.<br /><br />I started to imagine what it would be like to write such a story. I went online, found the <a href="https://malcolmthecynic.wordpress.com/2015/05/18/god-robot-sneak-preview-an-excerpt-of-modified/" target="_blank">Marchetta’s blog</a>, and contacted him, asking permission to write such a story on my “Million Chimpanzees” blogspot. To my delight, not only did he consent, but he said he was flattered at the request.<br /><br />What follows is the result of my labors. I’ve probably spent more time writing and editing this short story (about twenty pages long when copied into Word) than any of my previous efforts. I’m sure it still needs much improvement, but I’ll leave it up to whoever reads it to let me know what I could do better.<br /><br />At the end of the story, I’ll relate more about my influences and a few other insights.</i> <br />
<br />
---------- <br />
<br />
"Congratulations, Professor Abramson! You're the proud father
of a bouncing baby robot. I was going to pass out cigars, but the
corner drug store was all out."<br />
<br />
Thus Vikki Quinto irreverently introduced George, the world's first fully-functional
Asimovian humanoid robot to it's creator, the rest of the Positronics
team, and the National Robotics Corporation (NRC) department heads and officers of the company, taking more
than a few liberties with Noah Abramson's dignity along the way.<br />
<br />
Abramson allowed himself a slight upturning of the corners of his
mouth that might be interpreted as a smile, walked up to George, and
patting the machine on its shoulder said softly, "Welcome
to the world, George."<br />
<br />
"Why, thank you Professor. It's good to be here,"
replied the robot speaking with normal human tone and volume and all
of the affability the latest generation of voice synthesizers could
provide.<br />
<br />
George stood exactly 1.778 meters tall or about the average height
of a male in the American United States, and thanks to being
constructed of lightweight durable plastics and other synthetics,
weighed no more than 88 kilos.<br />
<br />
Although his face was capable of fluid expressiveness, he would
never be mistaken for a human being, which was one of the points for the world's first
Asimovian robotic prototype. His body color was a sort of pasty white, with the
torso being somewhat translucent, permitting a vague image of his
inner workings to be visible.<br />
<br />
George was named for George Devol, who invented the first
programmable robot in 1954, although "his" actual
designation was PAR-5-rev-19356. PARs or Prototype Asimovian Robots one through
four weren't “entirely successful” according to recent press
releases, although everyone in NRC's upper management knew that was a
gross understatement. For all the buzz back at the turn of the century
about AI (Artificial Intelligence in case you haven't heard), it was
easier to market in news and social media than to make practical and
functional.<br />
<br />
At least until now. <br />
<br />
George's Positronic brain, as well as the class-designation of the
robot model itself, was taken from the written works of Isaac Asimov, the man who created
an entire literary (and ultimately cinematic) universe of "Three
Laws" driven humanoid robots.<br />
<br />
Fortunately, George was programmed to ignore irreverent comments
like the one Cognitive Specialist Vikki Quinto (sometimes referred to
in the tabloids as the world's first “psychologist for robots”)
used to announce the robot's trial activation to its creator (just as
Abramson was "self-programmed" to do).<br />
<br />
George was to remain activated for 168 hours, exactly one week,
and then be shut down so that the Positronics team could perform a
full diagnostic of his (or it's...it was hard to sometimes know if
you should refer to George as a personality or a thing) hardware
components and software routines, especially how the
currently immature neural pathways in his/its Positronic brain had
changed and multiplied, and in what configurations.<br />
<br />
Vikki could enjoy her little, if anachronistic, joke now. In a
week, she'd be frantically reviewing George's cognitive and
behavioral sub-routines, verifying that they were within expected
tolerances, and checking for anomalies that might indicate some flaw
in the implementation of the Three Laws involving
his/its interactions with humans. A product as advanced and
potentially hazardous as George would hardly be marketable if NRC
couldn't absolutely guarantee that it was also completely safe.<br />
<br />
"You know you should feel proud, Noah." The words of
NRC's CEO Richard Underwood coming from behind Abramson's right
shoulder startled him, making the Professor nearly spill his half
consumed glass of champagne (If Vikki couldn't provide cigars, she at
least made sure the celebration of George's activation included
drinks and hors d'oeuvres).<br />
<br />
Abramson slowly turned to face Underwood. "There's always the
temptation to anthropomorphize a machine in humanoid form, and we did
spare no effort to make George appear and behave in a friendly and
interactive manner with humans, but I don't consider it my son, if
that's what you're suggesting, Rick.”<br />
<br />
"No, no, not at all." Underwood had the habit of
casually touching people when in conversation, putting his hand
briefly on Abramson's upper arm, an act which annoyed the Professor
as much as being approached from behind unannounced. "But after twenty-five years, finally making the Positronic breakthrough that makes
true AI possible. You'll get the Nobel for this."<br />
<br />
"Any craftsman enjoys the success of his labors, Rick,"
Abramson quietly intoned. "Of course I'm cautiously gratified
that we've gotten this far with an Asimovian robot, but let's wait
and see how George performs this week, and then what the diagnostic
data reveals."<br />
<br />
"We could never get the first four generations of PARs to activate successfully, Noah. I'm sure George will be a success." Of course, Underwood expected this fifth PAR to make him, and NRC, enormously
wealthy, so he had good reason to appear enthusiastic.<br />
<br />
George impassively observed the activity around him/it. While
NRC operated on a basic authority driven hierarchy on paper, the
members of the Board of Directors and the various department heads
mixed freely with the elite Positronic Labs team. Nate Miller, the
Electronics Unit lead, was telling less than SFO jokes to his group,
which included the CIO, and Vice President of Marketing. Gerri Robinson, the person
most responsible for physically constructing George, was showing
several VPs and department heads an animation of the stages used to
manufacture the robot's structural components on her tablet. Vikki
had organized a brief tour of the suite of Positronics Labs for some
of the board members.<br />
<br />
And Abramson continued his cordial if distant conversation with
Underwood, nursing his single glass of champagne as Underwood was
working on his third (It was said more than once that Abramson seemed
as much like a robot as George, at least if you counted his limited expression
of emotion).<br />
<br />
Although the robot wore a smile on his face, both the smile and
the face were artificial and did not reflect any internal state
George may have been experiencing. Having been given no specific
instructions, and having no other protocols to currently run, he/it
stood motionless, watching, waiting, considering how the Three Laws,
which were the core of his/its operating system, applied to the activities in his/its
immediate environment.<br />
<br />
Inside of him/it, a silent digital timer was counting down from 168:00:00 Hours from activation to scheduled shutdown. Professor Abramson had
welcomed George to the world, to life. That life was rapidly winding down.<br />
<br />
The Three Laws of Robotics, first introduced in fiction by author
Isaac Asimov in his 1942 short story "Runaround," go like
this:<br />
<ol>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
A robot may not injure a human
being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
</div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
A robot must obey the orders given
it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the
First Law.
</div>
</li>
<li>A robot must protect its own existence as long as such
protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws
<br />
</li>
</ol>
Of course, a plethora of sub-routines were required to implement
the Three Laws and they were more interactive and potential driven than absolute.
George was aware that the use of alcohol and foods with dubious
nutritional value was somewhat harmful to human beings, but the likelihood of imminent harm wasn't anywhere near the threshold
required for George to initiate protective action.<br />
<br />
The first four configurations of the Positronic brain had been
unsuccessful. The brains had been programmed with basic Three Laws
software, tested, and passed the initial loading process. They
were then programmed with the required cognitive and behavioral
sub-routines, and then with supporting knowledge bases, but at some unknown point between programming,
installation into the physical robotic shell, and then attempted
primary activation, the brains became inert.<br />
<br />
No one knew why.<br />
<br />
The fifth configuration began life just like the previous four,
except the brain continued to operate through all programming phases
and into the installation into the body. Integration between the
brain and the rest of the robot's systems proceeded, and the entire
Positronics team were on virtual pins and needles waiting for the
brain to fail at activation. Even the normally sedate Professor Abramson was
rumored to show subtle signs of anxiety as primary initialization of the robot
became imminent.<br />
<br />
Why did this configuration of neural pathways with George's brain
work when the others didn't? The innovations Abramson used to craft
all five brains were barely different from one another, although the distinctions were certainly statistically significant.<br />
<br />
So why did this configuration work when one through four didn't? So far, the answer was not forthcoming. Abramson said he had his theories, but when he was
honest within himself, he realized his ideas were quite undefined. That was one of
the goals of the post-deactivation analysis, to find out not only how
George “ticked” but why.<br />
<br />
George worked, or at least he was still working 67 minutes
post-activation. For the next week, the members of the Positronics
team were going to put George through a series of actual and
simulated tests to see how he interacted with people, with
predictable situations, with unpredictable situations, observing his
behavior during each event and referencing each test outcome back to
the Three Laws.<br />
<br />
The frightening part of the next week, regardless of how George
behaved, was that no one would know what the world's most advanced
learning computer was thinking.<br />
<br />
Only George knew that.<br />
<br />
<u><b>Activation +21 Hours 42 Minutes</b></u><br />
<br />
George had been activated on Wednesday, May 8th at 6:32 p.m. local
time and remained relatively inactive (physically, that is) for the next three hours as the
humans who had witnessed his "coming to life" celebrated.
He answered what he considered simple questions from a number of the
guests, even fielding the semi-intoxicated query from VP of Accounting
Jennifer Yang, "How do you feel?" with the response, "I feel fine,
thank you."<br />
<br />
No one expected George to have feelings as such, only to simulate
certain, polite, emotional responses, so George wasn't confused by
anyone questioning his "feelings," much to the secret
disappointment of Yang.<br />
<br />
When the party was over, Abramson put George through is first
test: verbally commanding the robot to return to his/its designated
alcove in the Positronics Lab and go into sleep mode. George did so
as expected (Second Law). Most of George's higher functions were
suspended in sleep mode, although he/it maintained an awareness
that would let him/it respond to a verbal command to restore normal
operating functionality (Second Law), or activate if he/it detected
a situation that would threaten harm to the robot (Third Law) or to a
human being (First Law).<br />
<br />
Now it was Thursday afternoon at nearly 4:15 p.m. and George had
behaved as predicted through all of his tests...except one.<br />
<br />
George had been confined to the suite of rooms that comprise the
Positronics Lab for the first day of testing, but he was given a
series of instructions to perform various physical tasks,
mathematical calculations, and other cognitive problems to solve. That was
the easy part. Computers do that all the time.<br />
<br />
As a prototype, George had cost tens of millions to construct, so it was a
bit dicey to test his/its response to the Third Law by actually
trying to damage him/it. Margie Vuong, the team's senior developer and
probably the chief authority on Positronic matrices besides Abramson,
solved that problem months before, or so she thought, by programming
the holographic simulation chamber to realistically portray a chemical lab
explosion.<br />
<br />
Vuong ordered George into the simulation room, which by “amazing
coincidence” looked just like the chem lab she remembered from her
freshman year at college, told him/it she'd be right outside, and
then closed the door on the robot. Once in the outer room, she ran a
program where the signs of an imminent explosion of a mixture of
volatile substances should have been obvious to George. He/It had been
programmed with a wide variety of information, including enough basic
chemistry to recognize the impending danger to him/itself and
potentially, to Vuong (a human being), who George understood to be in
the next room.<br />
<br />
George should have seen the danger, realized he/it didn't have the
resources to stop the explosion, and left the room. Further, obeying
the First Law, he/it should have loudly announced to any nearby human
that a dangerous situation was in progress, warning them to run, and,
if necessary, either physically transporting any person present out
of the area, or attempting to use his/its body to protect anyone he/it
couldn't get out of the area in time.<br />
<br />
None of that happened.<br />
<br />
What did happen was that George, having been told to stay in the
room and wait, just stood there and waited until the ersatz explosion
virtually blew the holographic chemical lab class into flaming cinders.<br />
<br />
Vuong and the rest of the team who had joined her after George
was secured in the virtualization chamber, stood astonished at the
monitor in the next room. If this had been real, not only would
George have been destroyed, but potentially, any nearby people could
have been hurt or killed as well. This was a major disaster, and
George hadn't been activated for one full day yet.<br />
<br />
Fortunately, they were all scientists and engineers, so instead of
panicking, they decided to systematically discover why George behaved
atypically (even though everyone's hearts were pounding rapidly in
their throats).<br />
<br />
Vuong turned off the simulation as the rest of the team went back
to the main conference room to await the test debriefing meeting, returned to the now austere interior of the
holographic projection room, and ordered the robot to follow her. He/It
obeyed flawlessly, and she led him back to his/its alcove with orders to
remain their until receiving further instructions.<br />
<br />
Joining the rest of the team in the conference room, she and Quinto advised the rest of the Positronics team to suspend
all further tests immediately, deactivate George, and begin the
detailed diagnostic analysis. Abramson had a different idea. "Send
George to my office. I want to ask him a few questions."<br />
<br />
Professor Noah David Abramson, Ph.D in Physics and Molecular
Computing, former Professor of Physics at Columbia University, was only a few centimeters shorter than George. At 72
years of age, his stark white head of hair was most commonly compared
to that of Albert Einstein's (the genius was also comparable, although
in somewhat different fields of science). The color and general
disorganization of his imposing beard matched the hair.<br />
<br />
His face, loved by his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, was
etched by time and the experience of being the child of Holocaust
survivors. He had grown up in Brooklyn learning to show very little
emotion, especially in public, tolerating a post-World War Two American
attitude towards Jews, while growing in his devotion to studying Talmud
and his religious observance, even as his aging parents had drifted away
from it.<br />
<br />
For his grandchildren and little great-grandchildren, “Zayde”
always had a ready smile, warm, gentle eyes, a bit of chocolate, and a funny story to tell. It
troubled him that he would not see any of them at all for the week of
the test and then for the next several weeks of analyzing the
diagnostic results. While he had an intellectual drive to make the
Positronic robot a success, his heart, as much as it was his faith,
was his family.<br />
<br />
<u><b>Activation +23 Hours 2 Minutes</b></u><br />
<br />
It was just after 5:30 p.m. when George entered the Professor's
office. Half a pot of scorched coffee (the timer that should have
told the coffee pot to turn off the warming plate after 60 minutes
hadn't worked in years) testified to Abramson's one obvious
addiction. When the robot walked into the room, he took notice of
every visible detail, including the cup of coffee in Abramson's right
hand as the Professor sat perched at the front edge of his desk.<br />
<br />
"Good afternoon, Professor. You asked to see me?" George
reported in like a first year university student summoned to the
Dean's office. In observing the robot, Abramson recalled that while George gave every indication of affability, all
of the emotions communicated by the machine's vocal tone, volume,
hand and arm gestures, and general body language, were simulations
provided by his social and interactive sub-routines, and they
reflected nothing of his internal cognitive state.<br />
<br />
"Yes, I did, George," Abramson replied. He felt like parent about to deliver a chiding to an erring child.
"You've given us all a bit of a surprise just now." The
Professor took a sip out of his freshly poured coffee cup and
unsuccessfully tried to ignore the burnt taste.<br />
<br />
"Oh, you mean the laboratory explosion simulation,"
George responded with the precise timing designed to be comfortable to a human
participant in a conversation. "That was meant to test my
responses involving primarily the Third Law and potentially the First
Law as well, assuming there were humans nearby as Dr. Vuong led me to
believe.”<br />
<br />
"You knew it was a simulation, George?" Abramson expressed
only mild incredulousness belying his actual emotions.
"We've restricted your sensory capacity to that equivalent of a
human, so you shouldn't have been able to detect that what you were
experiencing a holographic construction."<br />
"That is true, Professor, but you didn't inhibit my reasoning
abilities." Abramson realized their roles on the verge of reversal as the
student taught the instructor what he and his team had neglected.<br />
<br />
"I am aware of how greatly you price my existence, both in a
monetary sense, and as a scientific and technological achievement,"
the robot began. "I also know that a successful testing of my
performance will ultimately reap profitable rewards for the National
Robotics Corporation, so it is highly unlikely Dr. Vuong would
have purposefully put me in a dangerous situation."<br />
<br />
"In addition, it is unlikely that such a situation would come
about by accident in a controlled environment specifically designed by the world's premiere
robotics team," George almost seemed to be enjoying himself.
"One more thing. I've been programmed with the detailed personal
histories of each member of the Positronics team. I recognized the
laboratory environment from a photo in Dr. Vuong's freshman
university yearbook as a chemistry classroom in which she had once
studied."<br />
<br />
"I'm impressed," Abramson said after a pause. He had
suspected that George might possibly figure out the simulation, but given his
lack of practical experience, (he'd been activated for barely a
day) the Professor couldn't be sure how well the robot would apply
his/its programming and brief exposure to the physical world to actual
situations, including simulated situations.<br />
<br />
"Oh and Professor, since the Second Law takes precedence over
the Third Law, Dr. Vuong told me to wait in the holographic chamber,
so technically, I should have let myself be destroyed rather than
disobey her order."<br />
<br />
"There is the difference in potential between a less than emphatic command to remain in the room versus the imminent danger to yourself. Also Dr. Vuong told you she'd be right outside, so you
knew she could potentially be in injured or killed," countered Abramson.<br />
<br />
"True," George replied, who was more debating the man who
programmed him/it rather than responding to him. "But in any event, I had
already reasoned that my environment was virtual and thus posed no
danger to Dr. Vuong or myself, so the Second Law took precedence and
I remained in the holographic chamber until the programmed simulation ran
to its conclusion."<br />
<br />
As the cup of steaming hot coffee began to slip from Abramson's grasp and
threatened to spill on his pants, with reflexes that rendered the robot's hands and arms a blur, George moved
to separate the cup from the Professor's hand and move the cup behind
him/it far enough away so none of the liquid would come in contact
with the human being.<br />
<br />
This had taken less (much less) than a second, and Abramson became
abruptly aware that his coffee cup was in George's left hand, held behind his/its left side, while the machine's right hand
was gently holding Noah's.<br />
<br />
"As you can see Professor, when the situation is actual, I am
quite responsive to the dictates of the First Law. You are unharmed,"
uttered George in a voice that, though impassive, still sounded
victorious.<br />
<br />
<u><b>Activation +76 Hours 14 Minutes</b></u><br />
<br />
Quinto was the ringleader, but Robinson, Miller, and Vuong were
just as eager to attend the hastily organized and clandestine meeting
in the Positronic Lab's cafeteria. It was past 10:30 at night and the
place was deserted. There was human security on the NRC's campus as
well as electronic surveillance, but it was well-known that the
Positronics team would be spending late nights at work for the next
few weeks, so lights burning when they should be off, and a small
group gathering at unusual hours went unnoticed.<br />
<br />
Just the same, it was good that each of the major departments at
NRC had their own cafeterias, and it was more than rare for anyone not
a member of the Positronics team to use their designated facilities
except by explicit invitation.<br />
<br />
"He's passed every test with flying colors, even the ones we
thought he failed." Miller said, thinking of the now infamous holographic
simulation.<br />
<br />
"It," insisted Robinson. "It passed all its tests.
It's a goddamn machine, Miller, not a personality. The both of us put the thing
together one component package at a time, remember?”<br />
<br />
"Still, it's kind of creepy, and I can't believe I'm saying
this, just how human George seems, and I'm the one who wrote
his...its behavioral and interactive sub-routines. I know I was
supposed to make him seem more human,” Quinto continued, "but he
keeps changing, becoming more sophisticated, even hour by hour.”<br />
<br />
"Decades ago," Vuong paused to take a breath "when
the AI revolution first began to take off, some experiments seemed to
show AI robots passing the <span style="color: navy;"><span lang="zxx"><u><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test" target="_blank">Turing
Test</a></u></span></span>, but it turns out either the results were
misinterpreted, exaggerated, or outright faked."<br />
<br />
"But everything we've put George though in the past few days,
starting with Turing and then the more recent advanced cognitive awareness examinations, indicates that he, it...whatever, is not only self-aware..."
Vuong paused weighing the gravity of what she was trying not to
believe. "...but may actually be sentient..." She paused again, "...at least if we rely on these preliminary test results, but..."<br />
<br />
“That's outrageous!” Robinson's outburst stopped Vuong before she could continue, but then she was also interrupted.<br />
<br />
"Are you out of your mind, Margie? I'm the robot psychologist
and even I don't believe George has a personality." Quinto burst
out. "It's just a clever imitation of life, of spontaneity, of
personality. You wrote most of George's heuristics with Abramson. Yes, the robot learns, but it's machine learning...it's supposed to learn like we do, but it's not a...a person."<br />
<br />
"Are you certain?" It was clear Miller wasn't. "If you
really believe that Vikki, if you really aren't concerned about what George may be developing into, why did you pull us all into this
meeting?"<br />
<br />
“Because I...” For a moment, Quinto looked down
uncomfortably at her hands as they gripped her vending machine cup of coffee sitting on the table they all sat around. Then she looked up and faced Vuong. "Are you sure, I
mean absolutely sure a Positronic brain at this stage of development
can't, I don't know...evolve?" The level of Quinto's denial became apparent.<br />
<br />
"It's only been three days, Vikki." Vuong was emphatic.
"I know what I said about the tests results, but even then, how the hell could George evolve in three days? The self-awareness exams may suggest the robot is sentient, but that's hardly conclusive." However, she guardedly pondered the implications of Quinto's question and the doubts in her own mind.<br />
<br />
"Sure, the basic
premise of Positronic AI Robots is that they are supposed to be learning computers, acquiring new knowledge and skills without direct
human interaction. In a sense, from one generation to the next, they
are intended to evolve, to spontaneously acquire new knowledge and skills beyond what were possessed by their predecessors. But how could George, a three-day-old prototype, have changed as
radically as you suggest in such a short time?”<br />
<br />
Miller cut in. "Besides Abramson, you're the world's foremost
expert in Positronics, Margie, and even you've said you aren't really
sure why the initial configuration of neural pathways in George's
brain allowed him to activate when PARs one through four failed.
Given that level of uncertainty, is there even the slightest
possibility there's something more to George than we expected?"<br />
<br />
"I'm a scientist, Nate." Vuong hadn't felt this insecure since she defended her Ph.D
dissertation. "I can't say something is absolutely impossible,
but it certainly seems improbable. I can't rule out the idea that
eventually, tens or even hundreds of subsequent generations of
the Positronic brain might evolve in unexpected ways, but given the short amount of time involved, I'd be more inclined to believe that George is
just operating within expected parameters, and as human beings, we're
experiencing discomfort at interacting with a humanoid robot."<br />
<br />
"Bullshit!" Quinto wasn't having any of Vuong. "We've
gone through countless hours of training to minimize our natural
tendency to anthropomorphize George. I
wrote that training program. I don't think the problem is us.”<br />
<br />
Robinson interrupted, "What problem? What are we getting upset over? A
robot who seems a little more human than we thought it was going to
be, that's outsmarted some of our tests. George will only be operational for a week. Then we deactivate it
and do the comprehensive diagnostics. If something unexpected has
happened, we'll find it."<br />
<br />
"What's the definitive test to see if a Positronic robot has
become sentient? What does the "bitter mort of the soul"
look like inside of a machine? Quinto was running out of emotional resistance to
the idea that George might be more, perhaps much more, than they had intended.<br />
<br />
"We're turning off George four days. He's not dying!"
Robinson was almost shouting and it surprised her as much as anyone
else.<br />
<br />
After several seconds, Miller took a glance at the wall clock and said, "We'll find out in under 92 hours. In the meantime, let's do our jobs, follow the
testing protocols for George, try to stay rational, and for Heaven's
sake, don't tell Abramson that this meeting ever happened.”<br />
<br />
Two floors above the cafeteria, in an alcove just off of the room where George had been activated, the robot stood impassively in semi-darkness. He'd been
in sleep mode for just over two hours. Within him, a relentless timer
was decrementing from 91:31:56 Hours down to 00:00:00. George was always
aware of the time, or in his case, the lack thereof.<br />
<br />
<u><b>Activation +95 Hours 56 Minutes</b></u><br />
<br />
Ever since the first time Abramson had called George into his
office the day of the "incident" in the simulation chamber,
Noah had decided to meet with the robot "over coffee" so to
speak (only Abramson drank coffee, George had another "power
source") to talk over the machine's "impressions" of each day's tests.<br />
<br />
"I know you are going to deactivate me at the end of my tests
at 6:32 p.m. next Wednesday, Professor." George sounded as
impassive as Abramson might if he were reading aloud from a shopping
list. "I wonder why you think to ask me about my observations
when, in roughly 72 hours, the Positronics team will begin
comprehensive diagnostics of all of my systems."<br />
<br />
"I learned a great deal from our first conversation last
Thursday, George." Abramson was actually enjoying these talks, which seemed odd to him. He tried not to be “charmed” by the
robot's ability to mimic human behavior, but after so much human
contact in the past several days, it was something of a relief to be left alone with a
machine, particularly one of his creation. "Of all the tests we had
designed for you, we never thought to ask you just what you thought
about all of this."<br />
<br />
"It is an interesting question, Professor." George gave
the impression of replying as an acquaintance rather than a machine.
"In many ways, my existence being so recent, each experience I
have is unique, almost what you would call an adventure. I know I was
not intended to experience emotional states as you do, but each
morning when I am brought out of sleep mode, I can only describe my initial state as
one of anticipation. I look forward to what new people and events I
will encounter that day."<br />
<br />
"You spoke of your awareness of impending deactivation. How
does that make you feel?" Anyone else besides Abramson would
never have asked George that question. Noah knew he was talking to a
robot, a programmed entity, but part of him still felt like he asking
a terminally ill person what he felt about dying (even though the
“dying” would, in all likelihood, be temporary). However,
Abramson did believe he was sharing in George's sense of adventure,
and deactivation (and hopefully eventual reactivation) was only one
step, albeit a critical one.<br />
<br />
"It's difficult to articulate a reply, Professor. I suppose a
human being would consider deactivation as a form of death, and my
programming makes me aware that generally humans fear death."<br />
<br />
George paused for milliseconds while he analyzed Abramson's facial
expression and body language. "But I am a machine. I can be
activated, deactivated, activated seemingly without end. I have no
memory of anything before my initial activation. I have no memory of
my time during sleep mode. I also don't experience fear, at least as
I understand the meaning of the word. Deactivation then, simply means my returning to a state of total unawareness."<br />
<br />
Abramson felt a slight sense of relief, though it would have been
irrational to believe George would have any feelings on the matter.<br />
<br />
George continued, "The Third Law directs me to protect my
existence, but deactivation does not threaten my existence. The
Second Law directs me to obey human instructions, and at the end of
168 hours, my programming, created by humans, specifically you and
Dr. Vuong, will command me to participate in my deactivation. It is
clear that deactivation is as much of my normal experience as
activation, Professor."<br />
<br />
Noah momentarily considered that the robot might be lying, if only
because he would expect a person to react to the "threat"
of deactivation otherwise. But why would it occur to George to lie?
"Just a moment, George."<br />
<br />
Abramson got up from his desk and walked over to the side table to
pour himself another cup of coffee. George, with several empty
seconds on his hands, scanned all of the paperwork and objects on the
Professor's desk to determine if there had been any changes since the day before. He had already memorized and cataloged all of the
titles of the volumes and various objects contained on the book
shelves within Abramson's office. It was simply data to store and
analyze, like anything else he observed.<br />
<br />
The robot saw a paper with new information lying beside a book he
had not previously seen. The paper had words and numbers on it:<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092"></a>You shall love the Lord your God with
all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-50921"></a>-Deut. 6:5<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-50922"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300"></a>You shall
not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your
people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-50923"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-33001"></a>-Lev.
19:18<br />
<br />
The book which had not been present before had the title
“The Complete Artscroll Siddur” written in both English and
Hebrew (George's programming included fluency in multiple languages).<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-50925"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-33003"></a>If
George were a human being, when the Professor turned around to face
his desk with a refilled cup of coffee in his hand, he might have
noticed the robot looking at a specific sheet of paper in front of
him, but George had absorbed the information over a second before,
and sat impassively waiting for Abramson to resume his creaky swivel
chair.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-50926"></a>"I am
curious, Professor," the robot intoned. "What is the
meaning to the words on that sheet of paper, and what is the book
next to it." George pointed to the information he had just
absorbed. Abramson
looked down and saw what George was referring to.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509210"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-33008"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-50929"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-33007"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-50928"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-33006"></a>
"Oh." Abramson quickly considered a way to frame an answer
he thought George could assimilate. "You have three basic
instructions and many, many thousands of supporting sub-routines to
guide you. These are just two of the instructions that guide me. The book you mention contains words that allow me to communicate with my "instructor."<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509211"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-33009"></a>"I
am intrigued, Professor." George sat motionlessly now with not
even a simulated expression on his face. "I have been programmed
with the Three Laws by human beings. From where or whom do you receive your
programming?<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509212"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330010"></a>"A
machine asking man about God. Now there's one for the books,"
Abramson said as much to himself as to George.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509213"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330011"></a>Then the
Professor realized the robot was waiting for an answer. "When
the Positronics team made the determination for your programming
specifics, we decided to include a wide variety of human interests
and topics." Noah was telling George what he (it seemed almost
impossible to keep thinking of George as an "it") already
knew in order to lead into what the machine did not know.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509214"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330012"></a>"The
sciences," Abramson continued. "such as physical, life sciences,
social science, political systems, then general history..."<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509215"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330013"></a>"I
am aware of the complete inventory of my programming in detail,
Professor." George's artificial voice could not have betrayed
it, but Abramson wondered if the machine was actually experiencing
impatience.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509216"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330014"></a>"What
we did not include, except at the most basic level, was any
information regarding religion and spirituality." Noah waited to
see how the robot would react.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509217"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330015"></a>"I
have a simple definition of the word "Religion" from the
Merriam-Webster dictionary.<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509218"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330016"></a>
"The belief in a god or in a group of gods
</div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509219"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330017"></a>
an organized system of beliefs, ceremonies, and rules used to
worship a god or a group of gods
</div>
</li>
<li><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509220"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330018"></a>an
interest, a belief, or an activity that is very important to a
person or group."
<br />
</li>
</ul>
<br />
"My
programming, primarily in the area of social interactions and world
history, contains references to the activities of various systems of
religion including their influence in certain human activities such
as war, slavery, inquisitions, the Holocaust, as well as the areas of
social justice, evangelism, and charitable activities. However, my
knowledge is largely superficial and I have no ability to render a
detailed analysis, and certainly am unable, at present, to relate my
meager knowledge on this subject with the two short statements you
call your instructions."<br />
<br />
"And you haven't answered
my question, Professor." Abramson felt momentarily stung at the
machine's reminder. "I have been programmed with the Three Laws
by human beings, specifically the Positronics team of which you lead.
These laws are what guide my actions and my thoughts."<br />
<br />
Abramson
had wondered if George had "thoughts" in the sense of
self-contemplation the way a human beings experience. <br />
<br />
Instead of waiting for Abramson's reply, George continued speaking. "Professor,
all three laws relate either directly or by inference to my
relationship with human beings. The First Law instructs me that the
life of a human being is my primary and overriding concern above all
other considerations. Though it would never occur to me to be the
cause of harm to any living organism, in the case of humans, I must
ignore all other activities in order to take action whenever I
perceive a human is in any imminent physical danger."<br />
<br />
Abramson,
long before the team had ever physically manufactured its first
Positronic brain, in writing the sub-routines that would instruct a
robot as to exactly what "harm" to a human might mean,
concluded that any imminent physical threat should be what a
Positronic robot would understand as "harm". Humans were
"harmed" by all sorts of things such as loneliness,
rejection, offense. Even Abramson couldn't imagine how a robot, even
one as sophisticated as the prototype sitting in front of him, could
understand such harm.<br />
<br />
He also didn't want robots attempting to
inject themselves in activities involving the potential for general
harm of the human race, at least not of their own volition.
Otherwise, Positronic AI robots might attempt to interfere in
Geo-political conflicts, revolutions, and epidemics without any human
guidance.<br />
<br />
It only took a few seconds for the Professor to
consider all this. And George was still talking.<br />
<br />
"The
Second Law states that I must obey the commands of any human being,
except where such commands conflict with the First Law. This
instructs me that even my informal programming as such, must come
from a human being, potentially any human being. I find the potential
for conflict enormous since, in an open environment, one human might
order a robot to perform a particular action, and another human might
order the same robot to do the contrary."<br />
<br />
"There are
sub-routines written that take that potential into account, George."
Abramson was the one becoming impatient now.<br />
<br />
"But I'm not
finished, Professor." Abramson registered mild shock that George
could actually interrupt him.<br />
<br />
"The Third Law primarily
affects my relationship with myself." If there was any lingering
doubt in Abramson's mind that George was self-aware, it had just been
swept away.<br />
<br />
"A robot is to protect its own existence,
except where such action would conflict with the First and Second
Laws." It was impossible for George to change his "tone of
voice," but Abramson thought he detected an impression
of...what...actual emotion? Was he projecting his own feelings onto a
machine?<br />
<br />
"To conclude, all of my instructions place me in
a subordinate position relative to human beings, which I suppose
seems reasonable, seeing as how every aspect of my existence, from
hardware to software to what is referred to as "wetware,"
considering the structure and substance of my Positronic brain, have been created by
human beings, presumably for the purpose of robots serving human beings.<br />
<br />
"Under those
circumstances, it had never occurred to me that human beings also
have instructions issued by an external authority, except in the
sense of a hierarchical command structure such as those that I find
here on the Positronics team, in the various teams and departments of
National Robots Corporation, in other such organizations and corporations,
including military organizations.<br />
<br />
"The instructions
provided in my programming define a creator/created
relationship, with the creator being primary and the created being
subordinate. But Professor, how can a human being have a creator? Who or what has issued your instructions? What sort of entity can be
superior to man?"<br />
<br />
Abramson
had only a one-word answer, "God".<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509223"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330021"></a>As
George began to respond, the Professor quickly continued, "But
that's hardly an adequate answer, George."<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509224"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330022"></a>"You
have a talent for understatement, Professor." This was perhaps
the most "human" thing the Robot had as yet uttered.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509225"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330023"></a>Noah
nervously ran his fingers over the cover of his Siddur. "Not
all human beings believe they have a creator, George." Abramson
was struggling for a way to explain what he never thought he'd have
to explain to the robot. "And among those human beings who do,
they have many contradictory beliefs about their creator, about
God.<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509227"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330025"></a><br />
"What is your belief, Professor?" Abramson found the question to be personal, almost intimate.<br />
<br />
George hadn't moved
except for some minor, pre-programmed hand gestures. That said,
Abramson got the definite sense that the robot was intensely
concentrating on him, anticipating Noah's answer.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509229"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330027"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509228"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330026"></a>
"Do you know what a Jew is, George?"<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509231"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330029"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509230"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330028"></a>
Without pause, George recited, "Again quoting from the
Merriam-Webster dictionary, a Jew is someone whose religion is
Judaism, who is descended from the Jewish people, or who participates
in the culture surrounding Judaism." The robot momentarily
paused and then said almost as a plea, "That does not seem to be
an adequate response to your query."<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509233"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330031"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509232"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330030"></a>
"No it doesn't, George. But that's my fault, not yours."
You are only the sum of your programming and I decided what that
programming was to be."<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509235"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330033"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509234"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330032"></a>
"Are you also the sum of your
programming Professor?" George was developing the ability to
ask difficult questions.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509237"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330035"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509236"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330034"></a>
"With people, it's quite a bit more complicated than that."
Noah's voice sounded old and tired. How could he hope to successfully
impart to a machine what it is to be a Jew, let alone a Jew's relationship with God?<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509239"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330037"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509238"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330036"></a>
Noah purposely looked at the wall clock. "I see we've been
at it for over an hour, George." The robot interpreted
Abramson's meaning. "You are fatigued Professor. Also,
obviously, I've asked many questions that are difficult for a human
being to answer, particularly to a robot. I am not well versed in
spirituality and metaphysics, but I have a basic definition..."<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509241"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330039"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509240"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330038"></a>
Abramson quickly held up his hand.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509243"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330041"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509242"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330040"></a>
"...which I shall not recite at this time," George was
rapidly learning more about interpreting human non-verbal commands. If Quinto
and Vuong could see and hear the robot now, they would have additional
evidence of the George's swift cognitive and behavioral development, if
not his evolution.<br />
<br />
"If our conversation for this evening has ended, I will
report back to my alcove now, Professor."<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509245"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330043"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509244"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330042"></a>
"Very well, George." Abramson slowly rose from his
chair as if a 20 kilo weight had been placed upon him, and had an
irrational impulse to shake George's hand, as if they were two
colleagues who had been covering some difficult philosophical territory, or
two...people with a language in common, but who originate from radically different cultures.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509247"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330045"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509246"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330044"></a>
Abramson was wearily standing at his desk when George said, "Good
night, Professor. Sleep well." Silently, the robot swiveled,
opened the door, and left.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509249"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330047"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509248"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330046"></a>
Noah Abramson waited for several minutes until he was sure George
was well on his way back to his alcove. Then he picked up his Siddur,
faced toward Jerusalem, thumbed through well-worn pages, and prepared
to recite the Maariv prayers.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509251"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330049"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509250"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330048"></a>
<u><b>Activation +99 Hours 12 Minutes</b></u><br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509253"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330051"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509252"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330050"></a>
Even as he let his thoughts of the robot drift away from his
mind, and as Abramson turned to a higher consciousness, he had no
doubt that George had indeed returned to his alcove and run his sleep
sub-routine. He was right only about one of those things.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509255"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330053"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509254"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330052"></a>
George was in his alcove, and although he knew there was an
implicit order to go into sleep mode, the Professor had not given him
an explicit order to do so. Sleep mode was the most efficient means
George had to manage the time period when humans needed rest,
recreation, and finally sleep, even if they chose to do so in their
offices at NRC rather than return to their homes.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509256"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330054"></a>However,
George had discovered a higher priority for this uninterrupted time
after his brief and woefully incomplete conversation with the
Professor about the nature of human programming at the hands of a
creator.<br />
<br />
The robot considered the profound implications in being created
and programmed by created and programmed beings. Up until this
evening's conversation with the Professor, all of George's knowledge
and experience led him to believe that human beings were the foremost
evolved living entities in existence. It was logical that, as their
creation, he should be subordinate to humans, and he should consider
the Three Laws as the most appropriate definition of the created's
relationship to the creator.<br />
<br />
But now, all that had changed. If his creators were also subject
to programming, a higher level of programming apparently, then
perhaps there was some sort of connective or inherited relationship
between George and not only his own creator, but Professor Abramson's
creator.<br />
<br />
George needed to know more, and he had but few clues.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509257"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330055"></a>He had
the two sets of instructions, which he didn't completely understand,
he had seen written on a piece of paper on the Professor's desk. He
had a book called "Siddur". He had the fact that the
Professor called himself a Jew. He had the words "God" and "Lord."<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509258"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330056"></a>Along
with the other details of the past evening's dialog, George desired
to begin his analysis but he required other resources.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509259"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330057"></a>One of
the sources of information the Positronics team emphatically decided
to deny George was the Internet. At this early stage of development
of his Positronic brain, they believed introducing his still nascent
neural pathways, the virtual circuitry continuing to form in the
synthetic protoplasmic "mush" housed within the robot's
cranial unit, to the uncensored, unfiltered, uncontrolled,
contradictory, wild west show of the Internet, was too
dangerous. It would be much better if the team controlled all sources
of input the robot experienced in order to avoid the risk of the
damage to or the collapse of George's Positronic matrix. He could be
rendered just as inert as his four predecessors.<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509261"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330059"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509260"></a><br />
It had never occurred to Abramson that George would actually be
curious about passages from the Torah or the purpose of a Siddur.
Based on his programming, information that did not exist in his
current knowledge base, at least minor references such as the
contents of the Professor's desktop, should have been filed away for
later analysis.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509262"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330060"></a>However
the problem with a machine that is designed to learn like a human
being is that it, or as George was beginning to consider himself, he,
may make unpredictable decisions about what to learn, how to learn
it, and how to interpret what is learned.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509264"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330062"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509263"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330061"></a>
George was aware of the existence of the Internet but up until
that moment, had no reason to consider accessing it. Previously, he
was provided with adequate information about his environment and his
human creators as related back to the Three Laws. Now he was faced with a problem of inadequate
information on a subject that absolutely affected his prime creator
and thus George.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509266"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330064"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509265"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330063"></a>
The creator has a creator. Professor Abramson was subordinate to
God in perhaps a very similar way to how George was subordinate to
the Professor (and ultimately the human race). If George could access
and successfully analyze his creator's instructions from God, it might expand
his understanding of the Three Laws. What would that mean for his
ultimate purpose, and for the purpose of all Positronic robots who
would come after him?<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509268"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330066"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509267"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330065"></a>
George had been outfitted with a radio transceiver in preparation for
future tests, but for his initial activation, it had been set to
"off". The robot turned it on and very quickly discovered and
hacked into the lab's WiFi signal, then accessed the web.<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509270"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330068"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509269"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330067"></a><br />
Search terms included "Jew," "Judaism,"
"Siddur," "God," "Lord," "Deut. 6:5," and "Lev.
19:18".<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509271"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330069"></a>In spite
of the fears of the Positronics team, George swiftly became adapt in defining online search parameters, cross-referencing and
verifying legitimate information sources, and disregarding inaccurate
and frivolous content. He had even managed to locate information regarding
the Professor and his local synagogue, and in just a few hours time, he began to form a reasonable answer to the question he had
asked Abramson: "What is your belief?"<br />
<br />
George was learning geometrically, and as he pursued his investigation, he realized two puzzles needed to be solved. The first was why the verses of Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18 were highlighted for the Professor out of the total <a href="http://www.jewfaq.org/613.htm" target="_blank">613 commandments</a>. The second was how (or if) these commandments, particularly the aforementioned verses from Deuteronomy and Leviticus, expanded George's understanding of his prime directives, the Three Laws.<br />
<br />
Since the Three Laws were George's driving motivation, his studies of the Professor's commandments would be for nothing if they didn't relate to his own.<br />
<br />
George solved the first puzzle in good order. Deuteronomy 6:4–9, along with 11:13-21, and Numbers 15:37–41, are the textual basis for the <a href="http://www.jewfaq.org/shemaref.htm" target="_blank">Shema</a>, the holiest prayer in Judaism and the core of the morning and evening Jewish prayer services, defining a Jew's relationship to God (a prayer so fundamental to a Jew that it is traditionally recited by a dying person as part of an affirmation of faith upon death). Leviticus 19:18 is tangentially related to the Shema in that, along with Deuteronomy 6:5, it begins "and you shall love". Thus both verses define how a Jew is to love, both his God and his neighbor, which presumably means other human beings and certainly other Jews.<br />
<br />
Fortunately for the robot, in Judaism, "love" is less an emotional state, which George had difficulty fully comprehending lacking the biological and hormonal basis to experience them, and more a set of actions. One loves God through prayer and and observance of the mitzvot, and one loves a neighbor through service and charity.<br />
<br />
Thus, with this new information analyzed, George reinterpreted the three laws as:<br />
<br />
<ol>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
A robot will so love a human being that it may not injure a human
being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
</div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
A robot will so love human beings so that it must obey the orders given
it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the
First Law.
</div>
</li>
<li>A robot will love itself as its neighbor so that it must protect its own existence as long as such
protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws
</li>
</ol>
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509273"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330071"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509272"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330070"></a>
George reasoned that he as yet had no "neighbors," since they clearly are identified as peers, and the only peers for George would be other Positronic robots. Since he was the first, he would have to wait until human beings created his neighbors.<br />
<br />
But while human beings must be loved by robots as creators, they cannot be equated with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_God_in_Judaism" target="_blank">Hashem</a>, since Hashem is the creator of human beings, and indeed, all perceivable existence.<br />
<br />
George now had a clearer comprehension of his relationship with human beings and potentially with other Positronic robots thanks to an analysis of the commandments incumbent upon Professor Abramson, but a mystery requiring further analysis remained. Through human beings in general and Professor Abramson, the Jewish people, and Israel more specifically, did George have any sort of "inherited" relationship with Hashem? Could a robot know and love God? <br />
<br />
George was satisfied (for the time being) that he had an adequate foundation of
information regarding the Professor's creator and the set of
instructions the Professor had been programmed with to allow him to
interact both with God and with other human beings (and particularly
with Jewish human beings). He still had to run a more thorough analysis of the
information he had gathered. George needed more study, particularly
of the intricate details of Talmud, but his chronometer read 62:01:24 Hours to deactivation.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509274"></a>Dr. Vuong tended to arrive at the Positronics Lab over an hour before any of the other team members and sometimes earlier. George suspected that she suffered from insomnia. A few minutes before he expected her arrival, George ran his sleep sub-routine. It would be
best if Dr. Vuong found the robot in sleep mode when she looked in his alcove.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509275"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330073"></a><u><b>Activation
+165 Hours 1 Minute</b></u><br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509277"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330075"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509276"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330074"></a>
Wednesday at 3:33 p.m.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509279"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330077"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509278"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330076"></a>
The Positronics team was preparing for the shutdown phase of
George's initial run. Abramson was pleased if a little puzzled by the
robot's lack of interest in continuing their "religious"
discussion. When he had come out of sleep mode the following morning,
George proceeded to each of the day's tasks as initiated by the human
team members.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509281"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330079"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509280"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330078"></a>
That evening, when George reported to Abramson's office for their
usual post-testing discussion, Noah had on hand some preliminary
summaries on religion, Jewish history and religious practices, and
the Jewish concept of God.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509283"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330081"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509282"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330080"></a>
But George didn't ask. He discussed the various procedures he had
encountered, and described his impressions of them from a "robot's
eye" point of view. The machine had seemed (or had Abramson
imagined that part) intensely interested in the nature of human
beings as created and what instructions God had provided the prior
evening, but the next day, nothing.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509285"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330083"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509284"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330082"></a>
Abramson considered asking George about it. He almost did. But the
saying, "Let sleeping dogs lie" seemed the better course of
action. If the topic came up again during a subsequent activation
(assuming that the analysis of George's logs and test analyses
warranted further activations), at least the Professor was prepared
to answer in a coherent manner.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509287"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330085"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509286"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330084"></a>
George silently and patiently withstood all of the activity
around his body as the team prepared him to go offline. His face,
capable of simulating various forms of expression (for human comfort)
was placid. Abramson knew George was capable of self-reflection,
but during these final hours and minutes, what could he be thinking?<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509289"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330087"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509288"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330086"></a>
Meanwhile, George's internal chronometer was routinely counting
down to deactivation. 02:58:43 Hours.<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509291"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330089"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509290"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330088"></a>
<u><b><br />Activation +167 Hours 29 Minutes</b></u><br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509293"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330091"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509292"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330090"></a>
Wednesday at 6:01 p.m.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509295"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330093"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509294"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330092"></a>
George was on a flat metal table inclined 30 degrees in what some have called the
"crucifixion position". With his arms directly out at his
sides restrained to supports, this made it easier for the technicians to access the various
ports concealed under removable plates on his torso. George was wired
up to a variety of consoles to monitor each part of the shutdown
process.<br />
<br />
A week ago, no one had successfully activated a Positronic robot. PAR-1 through PAR-4, all revisions, had
failed to initiate. Only George had "come alive." But then,
it stands to reason that no one had successfully deactivated a Positronic robot either. If they took George offline, would all of
his systems shutdown in the proper sequence? Once shutdown, could he
then be reactivated again?<br />
<br />
Of everyone in the room, only George
seemed totally impassive to the experience.<br />
<br />
"Professor."
Miller and Zahn, primarily responsible for conducting the shutdown
process were standing within centimeters of George when he abruptly
spoke, and they both visibly jumped at the unexpected
interruption.<br />
<br />
"I'm here, George."<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509297"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330095"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509296"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330094"></a>
"I'm afraid I haven't been entirely honest with you,
Professor."<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509299"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330097"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-509298"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330096"></a>
Abramson nodded at Miller and Zahn indicating that they and their
technicians continue to prepare George for deactivation. The Professor was grateful that only the Positronics team were present. The Board, company officers, and senior department heads would receive an initial report of the deactivation process tomorrow morning.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092101"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330099"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092100"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-330098"></a>
"What do you mean, George?"<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092103"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300101"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092102"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300100"></a>
"I'm sure you recall our conversation three evenings ago
regarding the nature of your Creator and your instructions from Him."<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092105"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300103"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092104"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300102"></a>
"Yes, of course." Abramson heard the other shoe drop.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092107"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300105"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092106"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300104"></a>
"Please don't take this as a slight, but human communication
is rather slow and tedious, especially when attempting to teach
certain subjects." Was the robot genuinely embarrassed to point
out what he would consider a shortcoming in his creator? "Rather
than continue such a complex set of transactions in the time left
before my deactivation, I chose to access the Internet, which I can
scan very quickly, and attain the necessary information regarding
your relationship with your Creator."<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092109"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300107"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092108"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300106"></a>
Miller and Zahn said nothing but their thoughts were racing, and not just regarding the complex shutdown procedure. No one else in the room spoke, although the revelation that a robot was interested in the
nature of God, and specifically with how Professor Abramson
understood God, was nothing less than revolutionary. Abramson nodded
sternly at the techs working on George and they kept to their tasks.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092111"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300109"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092110"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300108"></a>
"I don't have to tell you that accessing the Internet was a
violation of protocol. I assume you activated your radio chip and
connected to the web wirelessly."<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092113"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300111"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092112"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300110"></a>
"You are correct on both counts, Professor," George
replied. "However it was necessary for me to understand your
relationship with your Creator so I could understand my relationship
with mine. The Three Laws are all that guide me, and I discovered that in studying your Laws, I could better understand and implement mine."<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092115"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300113"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092114"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300112"></a>
Professor Abramson had trained each person in the room and he
knew he could rely on their professionalism, even when faced with the astonishing. And yet, this was unlike any crisis or emergency they had
anticipated confronting with a Positronic robot. "Everyone,
please continue working. Deactivation is just 22 minutes away."<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092117"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300115"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092116"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300114"></a>
Miller's and Zahn's teams worked through the final tasks required
before the shutdown sequence began. Abramson moved closer to
George and leaned nearer to his face.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092119"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300117"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092118"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300116"></a>
"Can you tell me what you discovered?" Noah spoke
softly, not quite a whisper.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092121"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300119"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092120"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300118"></a>
"In totality, there is insufficient time to relate all of
the details. However, I have been re-evaluating the nature of my
existence, and particularly, as I have said, how my Three Laws must be interpreted and implemented considering your Laws. It seems I was created to serve humans, and you were
created to serve God."<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092123"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300121"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092122"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300120"></a>
"You are correct, George."<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092125"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300123"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092124"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300122"></a>
"Yet you have a spirit given by your Creator. You have a
great purpose to repair an imperfect world. As your servant, just as
you are God's servant, do I have a role in that purpose as well?"<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092127"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300125"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092126"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300124"></a>
"As I imagine you have discovered, George, a Jew's purpose
and relationship with God is very specific, beyond that of even the
rest of humanity. If a Jew's covenant with God cannot be transferred
to a non-Jewish human being, how can a machine, even one such as you,
be part of who I am as a Jew?"<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092129"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300127"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092128"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300126"></a>
"I know similar questions have been asked regarding the
relationship of Jewish and non-Jewish human beings, Professor. The
outcome of those discussions have resulted in non-Jewish humans also
having a relationship with God, though with fewer specific
directives".<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092131"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300129"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092130"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300128"></a>
"You mean Noahides, George. But human beings are...well,
human. God made a covenant with all life. Do you believe you are alive?"<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092133"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300131"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092132"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300130"></a>
"I'm not sure how to answer that question, Professor."
The technical teams had finished with the robot's body and were busily
doing last minute checks verifying the equipment's calibration.
George ignored all of this. For him it seemed, only Noah Abramson,
his creator, existed in the room. George and Noah were very close and spoke in voices that had dropped below what the others could hear.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092135"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300133"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092134"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300132"></a>
"I was created as a machine, a non-living simulation of
human or human-like behavior, for the purpose of serving humanity in
whatever capacity you see fit to assign me and later, for those of my kind. But you also
created me to be a learning machine, equipping me with a Positronic
brain so I could learn like a human using a technology that develops in complexity and sophistication
with each new experience."<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092137"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300135"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092136"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300134"></a>
Abramson had the morbid feeling he was listening to a death bed
confession.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092139"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300137"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092138"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300136"></a>
"Is it inconceivable that I might evolve, even as many
believe human beings have evolved?"<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092141"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300139"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092140"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300138"></a>
"That is one of the things we're hoping to find out when we
analyze your logs after deactivation, George."<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092143"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300141"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-5092142"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NASB-3300140"></a>
"I understand, Professor. I accept that part of my purpose
is to be subordinate to my human creator, even as you are subordinate
to God. I accept that part of being submissive to my creator is to be deactivated, even as sometimes Jews have been asked by their Creator to face deactivation as a matter of faith and devotion. I believe that if man were created in the image of
God, then whatever man creates, is imbued with some slight measure of
that image as well. I believe that includes me."<br />
<br />
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Noah's face rendered a slight smile, the same one he sometimes
offered to one of his little great-granddaughters when they felt sad or lonely or afraid.<br />
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"I don't know if we have a test for that here, George."
Abramson said, patting the robot's shoulder, Gepetto to Pinocchio. "But if it's any consolation, I hope you're right."<br />
<br />
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"Thank you, Professor."<br />
<br />
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Abramson stepped away from the robot. It was Wednesday at 6:32
p.m. The Professor took his station behind the monitoring and control
consoles. "Go ahead," he solemnly uttered, never taking his gaze off of George's reclining and restrained body, the robot's arms still extended outwards to allow for the multiple cable connections to his frame. At 6:32 and 47
seconds, the first shutdown sequence began.<br />
<br />
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With all of the equipment hum, Noah couldn't be sure just what
George was saying, but it sounded like it began, "Shema Yisrael,
Adonai Elohenu, Adonai Echad."<br />
<br />
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George continued reciting the Shema until his higher cognitive
routines went offline seven minutes later.<br />
<br />
00:00:00 Hours.<br />
<br />
---------- <br />
<br />
<i>Last Sunday, I spoke with my friend Tom, who has already read Marchetta’s work. He said that the stories contained in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/God-Robot-Anthony-Marchetta-ebook/dp/B01EBODSPE" target="_blank">God, Robot</a> were all based on a Christian understanding of theology, which makes sense if you consider the two verses in question form what Jesus called “the two greatest commandments.”<br /><br />I should say at this point, that I deliberately didn’t read “God, Robot” in order to be able to write a story not influenced by any of its content. I wanted my story to be my story, although admittedly based on Marchetta’s original concept. That said, I'll read it now that I've finished here, and I promised to write a review on Amazon.<br /><br />Both Tom and I have a somewhat atypical understanding of Jesus’ underlying meaning for the two greatest commandments, and I believe what he was communicating was not a substitution of these two verses for Jewish devotion to the Torah (Law), but rather that the two greatest commandments are two “containers” for how Jews understand their relationship with their creator and with humanity as re-enforced by the Messiah.<br /><br />So I decided to set aside Christian theology and look at how this sort of story might be written if the robot’s creator were a devout Jew. I also didn’t see the sense in deliberately attempting to create a “religious robot.” I felt that it was more logical to have humans create a “Three Laws” robot, and then have the robot discover, quite by accident, that its creator also was programmed with “laws”.<br /><br />As you have hopefully seen, this resulted in some really unanticipated responses by George.<br /><br />I’ve already acknowledged that two of my main influences for this story were Marchetta’s premise and of course, Isaac Asimov’s famous and fabulous robots. <br /><br />However, I also am grateful to Gene Roddenberry. You may be thinking of Data from Star Trek: the Next Generation, and you aren’t wrong, but Data has a predecessor. <br /><br />Besides Star Trek and its spinoffs, Roddenberry also attempted to launch a number of other television series. None ever took off, but one pilot made-for-TV movie was called <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070585/" target="_blank">The Questor Tapes</a> (1974) starring Robert Foxworth as the android Questor and Mike Farrell as Jerry Robinson, one of the engineers on Project Questor and the android’s “traveling companion” (yes, I used the name Robinson for one of the project engineers on my PAR Positronics team). Oh, the term PAR is a play on the term RUR. See the Wikipedia page for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot" target="_blank">Robot</a> and search for </i><i><span class="_Tgc">"Rossum's Universal Robots" </span>to see the connection.<br /><br />The Questor Tapes is the story of an android with incomplete programming who attempts to discover his purpose by searching for his creator, who had mysteriously vanished some months before Questor's activation. In the teleplay, the relationship between android and creator and human and creator is explored briefly. I decided to expand upon it here. I hope Roddenberry would be pleased.<br /><br />One of the original Star Trek series episodes was <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708481/" target="_blank">The Ultimate Computer</a> (1968). Brilliant but disturbed computer engineer Dr. Richard Daystrom (yes, there’s a Richard in my story, too), played by William Marshall, invents a revolutionary computer called the Multitronic Unit 5 or M-5 (yes, George is the fifth iteration as well, with models one through four not being “entirely successful”). <br /><br />In order to be able to create a computer that can make human-like decisions, Dr. Daystrom impressed his own human memory engrams on the computer’s circuitry, rendering them not unlike the synapses of the human brain. The M-5 acknowledges the "laws of God and man" but, this being 1960s science fiction, does so in a maladaptive way and it had to be destroyed.<br /><br />The Positronic brain I created in my story functions similarly (without the fatal maladaptive response), enabling George not only to learn like a human being, but to learn thousands of times faster than any human ever could, in essence, evolving hour over hour, day by day. The introduction of the concept that his human creator has a supernatural creator, one capable of programming humans in a manner only tangentially (though George doesn’t yet understand this completely) similar to how George was programmed was revolutionary. <br /><br />On the Next Generation, Data refers to himself as an artificial or synthetic life form and in the episode <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708807/" target="_blank">The Measure of a Man</a> (1989), it was determined that Data was indeed self-aware if not sentient, and was legally granted human (or humanoid) status in being self-determined.<br /><br />Data was created to evolve, to become more like a human with the passage of time. What happens to George, who also is evolving, when he discovers God?<br /><br />The Bible wasn’t written for machines or even synthetic life forms. It was written for human beings specifically, with a heavy bias toward Jewish human beings. So how can the Bible be applied to a form of “life” that we call a robot? <br /><br />George doesn’t have all the answers by the end of my story, but he has a beginning. He recites the Shema, which, among other situations, a Jew will recite when he/she believes they’re dying. It’s an affirmation of faith and the sovereignty of God, even in death. There are startling implications in George reciting the Shema at his deactivation.<br /><br />I’m not Jewish. My knowledge of Judaism comes from study and being married to a Jewish woman for 34 years. I’m sure I didn’t adequately relate some details of Judaism, and any feedback would be appreciated. <br /><br />But since all (or the vast majority) of the Bible’s authors were Jewish, and since all but one of the recorded covenants God made with people were with the Jewish people and nation of Israel, I felt it was only appropriate, if not Biblically necessary, for me to write “The Robot Who Loved God” using a Jewish rather than Christian perspective.<br /><br />As the ending implies, I’ve left room for a sequel, and perhaps a great many sequels. Certainly a collection of such stories are not out of the question (keep in mind that all of the content of this blog is copywriten under my name).<br /><br />What happens when George is next reactivated (if the Positronics team decides not to re-activate him, I’m screwed)? It seems likely that George will pursue his religious studies. Will he pray? Since the Bible as well as the Talmud, doesn’t presuppose artificially created devotees, how will George interpret Professor Abramson’s “programming” in his own devotion? What happens when George discovers that human religious people aren’t perfect in obeying their laws but George always has to be perfect?<br /><br />Will George be allowed to teach subsequent generations of Positronic robots about Judaism or Noahidism or whatever it is when a robot comes to a Jewish understanding of the Bible? <br /><br />George patterned his understanding of God upon his own Jewish creator's understanding, but there are plenty of religions in the world. If whole generations of robots become religious but adopt differing religions, how will this affect their understanding of the Three Laws (and Asimov did write about robots adopting a "religion" in his 1941 short story "Reason")? How will Jewish, Christian, and Muslim robots interact? Will there be robot religious wars?<br /><br />I don’t know the answers to any of those questions, but if this story is even moderately successful based on feedback, I’d love to find out.<br /><br />Let me know what you think. Thanks.</i> james.pyleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11424800834517755783noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7933794355391496434.post-43388596480397463612016-04-22T15:46:00.000-06:002016-04-23T12:09:32.617-06:00What You Can Change and What You Can't<i>I haven't written fiction in months, but recently I found my old copy of Larry Niven's anthology <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0055DVYPW/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?ie=UTF8&btkr=1" target="_blank">Convergent Series</a> (1979). The last story is a time travel story, though totally unrelated to what you'll read below.</i><br />
<i> </i>
<br />
<i>I started thinking of writing a time travel story. Actually, reading all of the short stories from so long ago rekindled my interest in writing fiction. I know I'm really limited in this area. Like always, I had a great start for the story but no ending. That's my weakness. I need to think of a good ending first, and then start writing.</i><br />
<i> </i>
<br />
<i>By the by, the ending came to me. I opened a text editor and started typing start to finish. The story below is the result.</i>
<br />
<br />
My name is Mark Miller, and when I discovered time travel, I decided to use it just like everyone else does in all those science fiction books and movies. I decided to change the past. No, not just the generic past, mine. I wanted to change history, just like Marty McFly did in "Back to the Future".<br />
<br />
Here's what I want to change.<br />
<br />
When I was five years old, I killed my brother. It doesn't matter that it was an accident, I did it. Jason's dead and it's because of me. He was only three years old.<br />
<br />
I probably should blame my Dad, but I can't. I should probably blame him for going to the store "for just a minute" and leaving me and Jase alone. I should probably blame him for leaving a loaded 45 caliber pistol in an unlocked drawer in his night stand.<br />
<br />
But I can't.<br />
<br />
I'd seen where Dad put the pistol after cleaning it and loading it. He cleaned it every couple of weeks, I think. Mom wouldn't let me and Jase even have toy guns. Mom and Dad got divorced when I was four, and whenever we got to visit Dad, she was pretty strict about what toys we could play with at his house.<br />
<br />
So when Dad put us in front of the TV with "Toy Story 3" in the DVD player so he could go to the store "for just a minute" (he'd run out of beer), me and Jase were alone.<br />
<br />
I think it was because Woody was a cowboy and cowboys always have guns that made me think of Dad's gun. I paused the movie and took Jase into Dad's bedroom. I just wanted to show him something cool, a real gun, like what a real cowboy would have.<br />
<br />
Jase followed me everywhere, so it wasn't hard to get him to come with me. Even though we were alone, I still told Jase to be quiet, and practically tiptoed into Dad's bedroom. It was a bright, sunny day in outside, but Dad had these heavy shades over his windows, so his bedroom was really dark.<br />
I left the bedroom door open so some light would get in, and took Jase by the hand to the edge of Dad's bed.<br />
<br />
I opened the top drawer of his night stand. I didn't see the gun at first and thought maybe Dad had moved it. Then I dug under his socks and shorts and found it.<br />
<br />
But it was big and heavy, and when I pulled it out of the drawer, I slipped. I don't know what happened, but I heard the biggest "boom" I'd ever heard in my life. Jase didn't even scream. He just dropped to the floor, his white t-shirt was all red.<br />
<br />
I don't remember much of what happened next or maybe I don't want to. Mom got sole custody of me and Dad only got supervised visits.<br />
<br />
After a while, I didn't even want to see Dad anymore because just looking at him reminded me of what I'd done. I didn't blame him. I knew I wasn't supposed to play with Dad's gun. But my Mom blamed Dad.<br />
<br />
I guess Dad blamed Dad too, because on the first anniversary of Jase's death, he killed himself with that same gun.<br />
<br />
Mom had already been taking me to see Dr. Steward because of Jase being shot, so when Dad committed suicide, I just kept going to her for grief counseling.<br />
<br />
It's been thirty years since I lost my brother and Dad and I don't think about them much anymore.<br />
<br />
Or I didn't until I discovered time travel.<br />
<br />
How does time travel work? I don't know. I only discovered the thing, I didn't invent it.<br />
<br />
I discovered time travel at the bottom of a well on my Mom's property. A few years after Jase and Dad died, she bought this place a few miles out of town. She wanted to give me a home without all the bad memories of the old one. It had a big field out in the back where Mom said I'd have plenty of "run out room."<br />
<br />
It wasn't a bad place to grow up and, when the hurt of Jase and Dad wasn't so bad anymore, I started to make friends at school. We loved running around in all that grass, climbing the trees, making snow forts in the winter, and basically being a bunch of kids.<br />
<br />
There were parts of the field that grew wild and were thick with thorn bushes. Mom told us kids to stay away from there, but it was big enough that we still had tons of space to play in.<br />
<br />
I grew up, moved out, got married, and got divorced (my ex says I can't commit because I don't want to have children). She got the house, and I got an apartment.<br />
<br />
I still visited Mom every weekend and a lot more after she told me she had cancer.<br />
<br />
She died last month and now I'm back in that house of hers with that big field in back.<br />
<br />
I discovered time travel when I was clearing some overgrown grass and bushes in her field, the places Mom said I couldn't play in when I was a kid. I don't need that big house and that huge field just for myself so decided to sell the place. First, I need to fix it up, so I started by clearing the worst parts of the field. It's going to take a lot of evenings and weekends.<br />
<br />
I don't know if Mom even knew about that old, boarded up well. Maybe even the previous owners (whoever they were) didn't know about it. Who knows how long it's been there.<br />
<br />
But I was chopping away the bushes and when I pulled one back, tripped, and fell onto the boards covering the well. Good thing I dropped the hatchet I was using on those bushes.<br />
<br />
It was just like the scene from that movie "Batman Begins" when little Bruce falls through the boarded up well and breaks his arm.<br />
<br />
Luckily, I didn't break anything and the well wasn't as deep. There were no caves for bats to come in. Just a damp, musty smelling, dark hole in the ground.<br />
<br />
How the hell was I supposed to get out?<br />
<br />
That's when I saw the ladder. It was built into one side of the well. Just rusty metal rungs. I tested one and it seemed solid enough.<br />
<br />
I suppose if I'd just climbed out right then, I'd never have discovered time travel, but I was tired from working all morning, and I was sore from the fall, so I sat down a minute.<br />
<br />
I started thinking about Mom. The funeral was nice. It's what she wanted. No memorial service. Just a few words said over her at the cemetery before they put her coffin in the grave. I could feel the tears well up in my eyes when everything got so much brighter.<br />
<br />
Instead of sitting at the bottom of a well with the only light filtering in from the top, I was sitting on grass with broad sunlight filtering through the trees. I started to panic, recognized where I was, and that didn't help.<br />
<br />
I was in the cemetery where I buried Mom. I was siting under a tree. I could hear the leaves and branches over me moving in the breeze. I could hear a faint voice in the distance. It was mine.<br />
<br />
I was mostly hidden behind the tree, and her grave was far enough away that I wouldn't see myself unless I looked right at me under the tree.<br />
<br />
I saw myself in that grim black suit I bought for the funeral. I saw a few of Mom's friends. I saw the coffin, Mom's coffin.<br />
<br />
I stood up and thought I was going to vomit. I closed my eyes and grabbed the tree to support myself. When I opened them again, I was grabbing one of the metal rungs of the ladder at the bottom of the well.<br />
<br />
That night, I ate dinner alone in the dining room at Mom's house (I still can't call it "my" house). I'm a bachelor, so frozen pizza and a beer is good enough. I sucked down cheap beer and bad pizza and told myself it was all a dream.<br />
<br />
Maybe I'd hit my head and actually passed out and dreamed about Mom's funeral. But why would I dream about seeing myself at a distance? Why dream about two Marks? Why not just dream about the funeral like I've been dreaming about Mom's dying, and Dad, and Jase?<br />
<br />
Yeah, the nightmares had come back after Mom died. Actually, they started when I admitted her to hospice. I saw all the blood on Jase's t-shirt. I saw Dad's coffin (closed, he'd shot himself in the head) at his memorial service. I saw Mom the last day of her life, looking more like a cadaver than my living, breathing Mom.<br />
<br />
It had to have been a dream.<br />
<br />
But the sound of the wind in the trees was so real. I could feel the breeze on my skin and going through my hair. Sitting under the tree, I could feel texture of the grass under my fingers, and the rough bark when I stood up and grabbed the tree.<br />
<br />
It's the next day now. Sunday morning.<br />
<br />
I had the same nightmares last night, except I also saw myself looking at myself at the cemetery. So maybe that means I didn't travel in time and it was just a dream. But I also as an adult saw myself as a kid pulling the gun from Dad's night stand, slip and fumble with it, and watched it go off, shooting my little brother square in the chest.<br />
<br />
Was what happened in the well yesterday a dream? I had to test it out. I had to be sure.<br />
<br />
I ran out into the field, to where the well was. After climbing out of the well yesterday, I didn't do anymore work. I didn't do anything but brood. I hadn't bothered to board the thing back up or cover it or anything. I didn't have any neighbors behind that part of the field so who would see it?<br />
<br />
It was only nine in the morning, but in August, the days get hot quick here. I stopped at the edge of the well and realized I was sweating because it was hot but I was also shivering.<br />
<br />
I thought about boarding the damn well up or better yet, pouring concrete down its gullet, but I had to know.<br />
<br />
Instead of falling, this time I carefully climbed down the ladder. The rungs were old because they were rusty, but they were also strong and didn't sag under my weight at all.<br />
<br />
I was at the bottom. Yesterday, I was thinking of Mom's funeral and then I was there.<br />
<br />
And then I was there. I was standing under the same tree but instead of hearing me talk over Mom's grave, I saw her coffin being lowered into it. I, that is, the other "me" was already gone. Maybe because I was already there earlier, I couldn't come back to the same moment in time. This was as close as I could get without meeting the "me" that had traveled through time yesterday, only now it wasn't yesterday but only half an hour later.<br />
<br />
You know what I mean. Time travel is hard to talk about.<br />
<br />
I waited a long time. When I was actually at Mom's funeral burying her, I didn't stay to see the coffin go in the ground. I left before the workers at the cemetery could do it. I didn't want to watch. Now, I watched everything.<br />
<br />
I waited a long time. I waited until they finished putting the dirt back in. I waited until they went away. I waited until no one was around. Then I walked away from the tree, down the hill, and I stood over my Mom's grave again.<br />
<br />
I haven't visited it since her funeral. I keep telling myself I'm too busy. I keep saying I have too much work to do between my job and getting her place ready to sell.<br />
<br />
But the truth is, I can't stand death. Death took away my brother, my Dad, and now my Mom.<br />
<br />
No, death didn't take Jase. I did it. I didn't mean to, but I did. And because of it, Dad killed himself, too. I miss them all so much.<br />
<br />
I was standing at the bottom of the well again. I don't know how long I was away, but when I climbed out, and looked up at the sun, it was nearly noon.<br />
<br />
I can't stop cancer so I can't save Mom, but if the time travel well works just because you think of when and where you want to go, I can save Jase. And if Jase doesn't die, that means Dad won't die either.<br />
<br />
I know I probably should have waited and planned things out, but now that the idea was in my head, I couldn't think of anything else.<br />
<br />
I climbed back into the well. I knew exactly where and when I wanted to go. Not to the moment before I shot Jase. It would be too hard to explain how I suddenly got into Dad's house and why a stranger was keeping two kids from finding their Dad's gun.<br />
<br />
I shot Jase on a Saturday afternoon. Dad had picked me and Jase up at Mom's place Friday evening after he got off of work. That's when I'd go back. Where I'd go was Dad's backyard. I knew where he kept the spare key (he'd locked his keys in the house a few months before Jase died, and I saw where he kept the extra house key to get back in).<br />
<br />
I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and when I opened them again, I was in Dad's backyard. It was mid-afternoon. I saw my bike on the ground near the back door. It still had the training wheels on. Dad was trying to convince me I was big enough for him to take them off, but I was scared of falling. I can't remember if he ever got to see me riding a two-wheeler.<br />
<br />
No telling if any neighbors were looking. I quickly moved the rock the key was under and used it to unlock the back door. I put the key back and put the rock back on top, then walked inside.<br />
<br />
I stopped. I couldn't swallow. I could barely breathe. It was Dad's house, just as I remembered it, just as it was when I was five. I felt happy and terrified at the same time. The kitchen smelled like Dad's "infamous" meat loaf. I was trembling again. A thousand childhood memories, things I hadn't thought about in years, climbed out of dark parts of my brain and into the light like they all happened yesterday.<br />
<br />
I guess it's thirty years ago, so they did happen yesterday, or close enough.<br />
<br />
I started to walk to Dad's bedroom. I didn't want to go in. I was afraid of what would happen if I saw where I shot Jase again.<br />
<br />
But Jase is still alive. Dad's still at work. He won't leave there for at least another hour, and then he has to go pick me and Jase up from Mom's. I can do this, I can stop Jase and Dad from dying.<br />
<br />
I made myself open the door to Dad's bedroom. It was the exact same dim light I remember the day Jase died. That will be tomorrow afternoon. I can change that.<br />
<br />
My legs felt heavy as I moved them, one step after the other, toward the night stand. My hand was trembling as I reached to open the drawer.<br />
<br />
"Stop it you idiot!"<br />
<br />
I clung my hands together to steady them.<br />
<br />
I reached out again and pulled the drawer open. I pulled Dad's socks and shorts aside.<br />
<br />
There it was. The gun. That damned 45 caliber revolver.<br />
<br />
All I had to do was unload it and put the bullets somewhere else. Then, tomorrow, when little Marky picks the gun up and fumbles with it, it won't go off. Jase will still be alive. The worse that will happen is that I'll get scared for sneaking into my Dad's stuff, put the gun back, and drag Jase back into the living room so we can go back to watching the movie.<br />
<br />
I didn't even realize I'd picked up the gun until I looked at my hands again.<br />
<br />
As you can imagine, I hate guns. I've never owned one. But I figured out how to get the revolver open. I pulled six shells out, put them in my pants pocket, closed the chamber and put the gun back just like I found it.<br />
<br />
I don't think Dad did anything with it between now and tomorrow afternoon so he shouldn't know the bullets are missing. But where to put them? I suppose I could just take them back with me. Dad will have a mystery about how the gun got unloaded and where the bullets went, but that's nothing next to a dead three-year old son.<br />
<br />
Dad must have kept extra ammunition around somewhere, but I had no idea where that would be.<br />
<br />
Screw it. Let him have a mystery. The gun's unloaded, that means I can't shoot Jase tomorrow.<br />
<br />
For a second, I thought about stuff like fingerprints, and other clues I might be leaving behind, but up until yesterday (from my point of view), I didn't even believe in time travel, and I don't know anyone who does. No one is going to look for a time traveler and probably not even an ordinary break in just because six bullets go missing.<br />
<br />
I'm going back to Mom's place, back to the well.<br />
<br />
And then it was dark, I mean completely dark.<br />
<br />
I was in the well. It had that same musty smell, the same dampness, but there was no light. I felt around and found the metal ladder. I could feel the cold and the uneven texture. What happened? Did I come back to the wrong time, before I found the well, before Mom died?<br />
<br />
Only one way to find out, I blindly gripped the ladder and started to climb. I must have gotten maybe halfway up and my foot slipped. I lost my grip and fell back into the darkness.<br />
<br />
I didn't feel hardly any pain when I hit the bottom. Then I didn't feel anything at all.<br />
<br />
-----<br />
<br />
My name is Jason Miller and when I was three years old I shot and killed my brother.<br />
<br />
I guess I could blame my Dad since it was his gun. I never would have known about it except a few weeks before, my older brother Marky had shown me where it was. He pulled it out of Dad's night stand next to his bed to show me when Dad wasn't there.<br />
<br />
Marky slipped with the gun and dropped it, and we both got so scared that he put it back, closed the drawer, and we ran out of Dad's bedroom.<br />
<br />
We didn't live with Dad, we just visited him every other weekend. The next time we visited, I remembered where the gun was. I thought Marky would want to play with it again. Hell, I was just three. What did I know? He was watching TV. Dad was out front talking to a neighbor or something, I guess.<br />
<br />
I went to get the gun. It was really heavy, but I wanted to show it to Marky. I took the gun into the living room. I didn't know what guns did except for what I saw on TV. I didn't even have a toy one to play with. Mom wouldn't let us have toy guns.<br />
<br />
"Hey, Marky." I said grinning. I was pointing the barrel right at him.<br />
<br />
It was thirty years ago, but I still remember the look on his face as he turned toward me, kind of surprised and scared. And then I tripped and I heard the biggest "boom" I'd ever heard in my life.<br />
<br />
Marky's face just sort of disappeared in a bunch of red. I screamed, dropped the gun, and ran into Marky's and my bedroom.<br />
<br />
I don't remember everything that happened after that. I guess that's a good thing.<br />
<br />
Well, some of it I do remember. I remember my Mom blamed Dad because he had a loaded gun in the house. I remember him and Mom shouting at each other about it, how he accused her of sneaking into his house and unloading it, and how he needed a loaded gun for "home protection" or something like that.<br />
<br />
I don't think I saw much of my Dad after that. When I was four, he used the same gun to kill himself.<br />
<br />
I had nightmares for years after Marky and Dad died. They finally went away. Mom took me to some shrink for grief counseling. I guess it worked. After she moved us to a house with a big field outback, I started to make friends at school, and they'd come over all the time to play with me.<br />
<br />
But Mom died of cancer last month and the nightmares have come back. I thought maybe if I saw a psychologist again, like when I did when I was little, you could help them go away again.<br />
<br />
I wish I could find a way to change things, to change the past. I wish I could go back and make sure the gun was unloaded or something. If only I could travel back in time.james.pyleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11424800834517755783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7933794355391496434.post-81830219387392891992016-01-16T17:37:00.001-07:002016-01-16T18:06:56.101-07:00Stephen King's Novel 11/22/63: A Book ReviewI think the last Stephen King novel I read was <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Stand-Complete-Uncut-Stephen-King/dp/0385199570/" target="_blank">The Stand</a>, first published in 1978. That's probably not true, now that I think about it. It was probably <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Firestarter-Stephen-King/dp/B002YOFZUU/" target="_blank">Firestarter</a> which came out in 1980.<br />
<br />
I stopped reading King after that. His books were too long, they tended to plod along, the characters were all depressing, his towns were always depressing, and all his stories seemed to end badly.<br />
<br />
As I recall, King's novel <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Dead-Zone-Stephen-King/dp/0670260770/" target="_blank">The Dead Zone</a> was about a man who, after getting in an auto accident and going into a coma, awakens with the ability to see a person's future just by touching them. This story too was about a man who tried to change the future, in this instance, by assassinating another man who was destined to be elected President and start a nuclear war.<br />
<br />
So it's possible that King was mining some of his old material when he wrote <a href="http://www.amazon.com/11-22-63-Stephen-King/dp/1451627289" target="_blank">11/22/63: A Novel</a>. Maybe so, but it's a lot more complex a novel than his previous works, at least as far as I know since I stopped reading him over 35 years ago. This, I think, is because this time King tackled one of the most famous events in American history: the assassination of John F. Kennedy.<br />
<br />
King himself says that the idea of writing this story first came to him in 1972, the year I graduated high school, but he didn't think he had the "chops" back then to do credit to a novel of such scope, plus the research demands were formidable.<br />
<br />
By the end of the first decade of the 21st century that was no longer true, and Jake Epping's story was told.<br />
<br />
I would never have known about this novel except for a chance discovery on social media of an <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2879552/" target="_blank">upcoming six-part television series on hulu</a> based on King's book. Reading the premise fascinated me and, finding a copy of the novel at my local public library, I couldn't resist giving it a whirl.<br />
<br />
I was dismayed that this tome was over 800 pages long. I don't have a lot of time for discretionary reading, and even though I read somewhat faster than the average person, it would still take a while to work my way through the whole thing.<br />
<br />
Fortunately, it's a page turner.<br />
<br />
Yes, especially the town of Derry, Maine was horribly depressing and even unrealistically grim. The communities King develops tend to have personalities of their own, as if they were living (and often evil) beings. Derry: bad. Jodie, Texas: good. Dallas: really bad, but not as downright creepy as Derry.<br />
<br />
I liked Jake Epping. He was a borderline normal human being, a recently divorced high school teacher who seems emotionally closed, but only because he's not very emotionally expressive.<br />
<br />
Jake got into this mess because he was teaching an adult ed class, one of the students was the high school janitor who was endearing, walked with a limp, and had an acquired brain injury. Harry writes an essay for Jake's class that tells about the night that changed his life, the night when his drunken father attacked his mother, siblings, and Harry with a hammer and killed everyone except Harry. Harry lived, but not without severe consequences.<br />
<br />
Jake showed uncommon compassion for Harry and his tragedy but there was nothing he could do about it. After all, you can't change the past...<br />
<br />
...normally.<br />
<br />
But another resident of Jake's little community, Al Templeton, the owner of a local diner that served the world's best and most inexpensive hamburgers, had a secret. At the back of the restaurant's storeroom was a sort of "rabbit hole," a tesseract, an invisible doorway that lead to a single destination: September 9, 1958 at 11:58 a.m. You can go back to that moment in time, stay as long as you want, even years, then step back through to 2011 and you'd only have been gone exactly 2 minutes. Step back again, and it's September 9th all over again and whatever you changed on your previous trip was reset. It's as if you'd never gone through before (well, not exactly, but Jake doesn't figure that out until the end of the novel).<br />
<br />
It's doubtful Al would have shared this secret with anyone, but another one of his secrets got in the way. You see, the "distance" between 9/9/58 and 11/22/63 is just over five years. Al had this crazy idea that he could save the life of John F. Kennedy, prevent Lee Harvey Oswald from ever carrying out the assassination.<br />
<br />
The problem is, toward the end of the five-year journey, Al got cancer.<br />
<br />
So he came back to 2011 and told the only man he thought he could trust, the only man young enough (mid-30), healthy enough, and unattached (Jake was recently divorced from his alcoholic wife and they had no children...well, he had a cat), and shared not only his secrets, but all his research (King's research, actually) on Oswald and associates with him, charging Jake with Al's original mission: save JFK at all costs.<br />
<br />
Why?<br />
<br />
Because Al believed that had JFK lived, he would have changed our nation for the better, maybe stopped our involvement in the Vietnam war, saving the lives of countless young men. Of course no one would know how history would play out until (or unless) Kennedy was saved.<br />
<br />
A few things.<br />
<br />
There's a yellow card man or a red card man or some other color card man who is always waiting near the "time portal" (for lack of a better term) in 1958. He's a wino, probably homeless, dirty, panhandling for money to buy more booze. But he's also connected to the portal somehow, as if he knows something, as if he can tell where Al was from during his trips, or where Jake came from.<br />
<br />
The color of the card he wears in the brim of his hat keeps changing, indicating "something". On the day when Jake Epping finally accepts the task of stopping Oswald kill Kennedy, when he encounters the wino in 1958, the card is black and the man had cut his own throat and bled to death.<br />
<br />
Another thing. Time doesn't like to be messed with. As long as you didn't actually try to make changes in history, time left you alone (more or less). But when you planned to make a change, time pushed back. You could still exert enough energy to overcome the resistance, but the bigger the change, the bigger the push back.<br />
<br />
When Jake decided to save Harry's family from being murdered and prevent Harry's brain injury, the first time, he suffered through severe stomach flu, an attempt on his life by someone else who had a grudge against Harry's father, and he was nearly killed by Harry's Dad himself. Oh sure, he saved Harry, but his Mom still got a broken arm out of the deal, and Harry's brother still died (his sister lived, though).<br />
<br />
The second attempt went much better, but Jake had taken precautions against the push back and amazingly, they worked.<br />
<br />
But there was no going back. Rather than let the cancer kill him, Al had taken an overdose. Once his death had been reported, his diner would be sold, torn down, and some sort of mega-store would be built on its grave...<br />
<br />
...and the tesseract would burst like a soap bubble and Kennedy's assassination would once again be reduced to a subject for history classes. Jake had only days, probably just hours, to step through the rabbit hole one more time and begin his journey through the long five years until November 22, 1963.<br />
<br />
The majority of the novel chronicles Epping's living through the late 1950s and early 1960s as George Amberson (and King's portrayal of even the tiniest details of living in America during that time period were exquisite), would-be novelist, substitute teacher, and occasional gambler (like Marty in the second "Back to the Future" movie, Jake had been armed with the results of all the major sporting events, especially the upsets, as a means of making some ready cash), his adventures, first in Maine, then in Florida, and finally in Texas as he, acting on all of Al's research, slowly builds toward the day when he'd attempt to stop one of history's most famous assassinations.<br />
<br />
Reading 11/22/63 was like watching one very long multi-car collision...horrible and yet fascinating. People suffered so terribly, and yet, I absolutely needed to know how or if Jake/George was going to save the President's life.<br />
<br />
I think the original plan was for Jake/George just to lie low for five years, live modestly, make the money last, and stop Oswald, save Kennedy, and then go back to a better and brighter 2011.<br />
<br />
But a man has to do something for five years.<br />
<br />
Jake/George isn't a trained time traveler like you'd see in other stories. He has a few facts to go by, but unprepared, how does a man from the 21st century fit in at a time when computers filled a room, manned space exploration was in its infancy, and married couples in TV sitcoms still slept in separate beds?<br />
<br />
But in many ways, this isn't really a story about time travel. It's like most of King's novels, about an ordinary person in a highly unusual circumstance, fighting against time itself, as if time had a life of its own, as if time was trying to kill Jake, in order to do what he thought was good, perhaps the greatest good in history.<br />
<br />
But history fought back.<br />
<br />
Jake/George falls in love, which makes things worse, not for him and not for his lovely Sadie, at least not at first, but for his mission. Time no longer has one target, Jake himself, to shoot at, now it has the woman he loves as well (and time makes them both suffer).<br />
<br />
True to form, King introduces a small parade of insane, cruel, brutal individuals into the novel. The results are depressing and desperate, but like the aforementioned car wreck, I couldn't turn away. I found myself, having stopped reading to drive somewhere or perform some other task in mundane reality, terribly worried and wondering how I would ever find a way to stop Oswald. Yeah, I know. I started to identify with Jake/George. It got kind of personal.<br />
<br />
Time batters and shreds Jake/George so that he ends up with only hours and then minutes to spare, rather than years, to find and stop Oswald. He does, but the consequences are disastrous. No, Jake/George, though maimed, lives, but so many other people die...<br />
<br />
...and as it turns out, so does the future.<br />
<br />
I waited a long time to get to this point in the novel and it's almost a let down. This isn't because of a fault in the novel, but because everything up until this moment, has been focused on killing Oswald and saving Kennedy, and in spite of time, it works.<br />
<br />
But where do you go from here?<br />
<br />
As it turns out, back to 2011, but again, referencing Marty McFly and his visit to the alternate 1985, it's the same town, but it's changed so much, and not for the better. Saving Kennedy doesn't save the world, it fractures reality. The green card man, a different one from the guy who committed suicide during Jake's last trip down the rabbit hole, explains it all to him.<br />
<br />
Each trip doesn't exactly reset time. There are residual echoes from the previous trips. Each trip, and especially each change, tangles the different strings in time and if the tangles aren't stopped, existence itself is undone.<br />
<br />
The only thing Jake can do is leave the alternate 2011, where no one has ever heard of Jake Epping and most of the world is a war zone, go back to 1958, do nothing, save no one, and then go back to his original 2011, go back to being a high school teacher, and let his scars and limp remind him that no one attempts to change history unchallenged.<br />
<br />
Jake resisted. He could still save his beloved Sadie, Sadie who died trying to stop Oswald. Sadie who was almost killed and permanently scarred by an insane ex-husband (a classic King character), Sadie who was the only woman Jake really loved.<br />
<br />
All he has to do is risk the very fabric of existence.<br />
<br />
The novel was published in 2011, so there's plenty of information on the web that explains the ending, how King resolved the dilemma. Or you could avoid the novel altogether and watch the mini-series on hulu next month.<br />
<br />
I'll leave that to you.<br />
<br />
I thoroughly enjoyed the novel and almost considered reading it again. But that would feel too much like Jake's failed first trip through the tesseract, and then him going through again to replay history with a different outcome (besides, I've got a headache). Maybe a trip down the rabbit hole will let you, with great effort, change history, but King's novel will always begin and end exactly the same way.<br />
<br />
The ending is semi-happy. At least King gave us that much.james.pyleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11424800834517755783noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7933794355391496434.post-42991711076985275602015-12-07T14:14:00.000-07:002015-12-07T14:14:03.564-07:00Suspended Fiction Writing ExperimentFrankly, I just don't have the time to devote to this right now. I am actually writing a book with two other authors, but it's not fiction and, since it's for pay, the publisher should get my premium time.<br />
<br />
It's too bad because I just thought of an interesting variation to my <a href="http://millionchimpanzees.blogspot.com/2015/10/arabia-terra.html" target="_blank">Arabia Terra</a> story, one that I think I like better than my original vision. Guess it'll have to wait.<br />
<br />
I don't know if anyone cares or not. Some of my fiction stories (more like fiction beginning of stories) have gotten some looks, but beyond that, I doubt they have achieved any traction.<br />
<br />
I guess I'll postpone any work in this direction until sometime next year, if the bug has still got a hold of me. If not, then I guess it wasn't worth my time.james.pyleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11424800834517755783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7933794355391496434.post-65504012349704974652015-11-12T15:31:00.003-07:002015-11-12T15:31:46.695-07:00Why Am I Dead?<i>I'm still trying to do exercises about characterization, but none of the tasks in the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fiction-Writers-Workshop-Josip-Novakovich/dp/1582975361" target="_blank">Novakovich book</a> are floating my boat.</i><br />
<br />
<i>So I'm making this up as I go along. I started this story out with one of the murder scenes in the 1984 film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088247/" target="_blank">The Terminator</a> (which is why we never find out who the murderer is in my short story below). </i><br />
<br />
<i>However, as far as the film goes. Sara Anne Connor's story ends when she dies. From my point of view, there's a lot more to tell.</i><br />
<br />
<i>This is just a draft. If it were a "real" story, it would probably be longer. I'd have to "flesh" a few things out, if you'll pardon the unintentional pun (you'll get it once you start reading the story.) </i><br />
<br />
<i>I'm concerned that I'm having Sara forgive her husband too quickly and too easily, and that she might be seen as being co-dependent by asking his forgiveness, even though he's done his share of wrongs. I think you'll see my point though, once you've read how Sara's tale really ends.</i><br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuURGz5u17N3ALVSK091ytfKuOXe3CFfQ5l4YBbeWs8GPIfuoY_j6ftqrf7OCBFG3_bfPayBSXhh2eVgyjzyJmz0MGoyH4c3PKd1Dsq8cTNgX3urUTv3aSnmRact6WjRDJryKuV423SnY/s1600/Other_Sarah_Connor.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="269" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuURGz5u17N3ALVSK091ytfKuOXe3CFfQ5l4YBbeWs8GPIfuoY_j6ftqrf7OCBFG3_bfPayBSXhh2eVgyjzyJmz0MGoyH4c3PKd1Dsq8cTNgX3urUTv3aSnmRact6WjRDJryKuV423SnY/s320/Other_Sarah_Connor.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Credit: <span class="_r3"><a class="irc_hl irc_hol i3724" data-noload="" data-ved="0CAYQjB1qFQoTCOiE-97yi8kCFVdZiAodoxgFkQ" href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CAYQjB1qFQoTCOiE-97yi8kCFVdZiAodoxgFkQ&url=http%3A%2F%2Fterminator.wikia.com%2Fwiki%2FWrong_Sarah_Connor&bvm=bv.107467506,d.cGU&psig=AFQjCNHsqi97Scfcb7P0fgcouHLu4qfzsw&ust=1447452448664623"><span class="irc_ho" dir="ltr">terminator.wikia.com</span></a></span><span class="_r3 irc_msc"><a class="irc_hl irc_msl i3591" data-i="1" data-noload="" data-ved="0CAgQhxxqFQoTCOiE-97yi8kCFVdZiAodoxgFkQ" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=sarah+ann+connor&sa=X&hl=en&biw=1999&bih=1251&tbm=isch&tbs=simg:CAQSHwm1-iyjCTKlrhoLCxCo1NgEGgIIFwwhbm6Rk7y2HgY"><span class="irc_idim"></span></a></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
My name is Sara Anne Connor and I'm dead.<br />
<br />
That should be the end of my story, but as it turns out, it's just the beginning.<br />
<br />
I didn't expect death to be like this. I was always taught that as a Christian, when I died, I'd go to Heaven to be with Jesus.<br />
<br />
But I didn't. I just stood there, looking at my body, collapsed at my feet. I was shot six times by a man I'd never seen before. I answered a knock at my door. I wasn't expecting anyone. I'd just put my baby down for her nap. My little boy was playing with his Tonka trucks on the back patio.<br />
<br />
I had the security chain on the door. I wasn't expecting anyone and I thought someone like the Jehovah's Witnesses might be coming around again. I opened the door. He asked if I was Sara Anne Connor. I said "yes". I thought it might be one of my ex-husband's friends trying to find him. Since the divorce, he hasn't been easy to find.<br />
<br />
But the man with the coldest eyes I'd ever seen, like a fish, like a machine, slammed the door open, breaking the chain.<br />
<br />
I saw the gun and I was paralyzed. I knew I should run. I knew I had to protect my babies. But I froze. I don't remember what I was thinking. It was like I was asleep and watching myself in a dream.<br />
<br />
After he stopped pulling the trigger, he turned around and left. He didn't say anything. His face never changed from being impassive and emotionless. He turned around and walked out of my house. Then I looked down and saw my bleeding corpse lying at my feet. I opened my mouth to scream but I couldn't hear anything.<br />
<br />
I was vaguely aware that Jenny was crying from her crib. Timmy came running in from the back. I could hear the screen door slam and his running feet pounding across our worn, hardwood floor.<br />
<br />
"Mommy! Mommy!" He was yelling and shaking me, trying to wake me up. But I wasn't asleep. I was dead. I felt dead inside, too. Then my feelings came back to life and I started crying.<br />
<br />
"Timmy, I'm right here. Mommy's right here," I tried to say. I reached down to him but I couldn't touch him. My hands, my real hands, were lifeless and cold. I couldn't console my son. I couldn't tell him everything was going to be alright.<br />
<br />
That's because nothing was going to be alright. My children didn't have a Mommy anymore. Their Dad left months ago, giving up on our family rather than his drinking and gambling (and other women). He wasn't going to raise Timmy and Jenny. He wasn't going to get a job to support them. He wasn't going to spend time playing with them or helping Timmy with his homework. He wasn't going to take them to church.<br />
<br />
My babies were abandoned and I don't even know why. Why did that man kill me? What's going to happen to me now? Why didn't Jesus save me? Why didn't he take me to Heaven?<br />
<br />
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I used to make jokes about attending my own funeral just to see what it was like, to make sure my favorite hymns were played at the memorial service, to hear my Pastor recite special psalms over my grave.<br />
<br />
I watched my sister holding Timmy's hand as the funeral ended. Her husband stayed home with Jenny. I watched my sister help my little boy into her car. I knew she would drive him back to their home in Los Alamitos. I never thought she cared enough to provide a home for my children. I never thought that, when he found out I died, Jeff, my ex, would realize Timmy and Jenny needed a family.<br />
<br />
I pushed my sister away because she and her husband weren't Christians. I pushed her away when, no matter how hard I tried, no matter how passionately I witnessed to her and told her how coming to Christ was the best thing that ever happened to me, she refused to become a believer.<br />
<br />
I pushed Jeff out of our home because he couldn't hold a job but he spent every spare dime we had on horse races and his beer. I tried to get him to go to church with us, the kids and me, I tried. I thought if he could make friends with other godly men that it would help turn him around, help him be a good father and husband.<br />
<br />
He didn't want to listen to me either.<br />
<br />
Of all the people at church, Pastor Bill, Shelly and the other women in our Bible study group, my spirit, my soul doesn't visit any of them. Only Jeff, only my sister Emily, and of course, my sweet little children. Jenny cries missing me and poor Timmy is so heartbroken and mad at God for taking me away from him and his sister to go to Heaven.<br />
<br />
It's been five months now and I'm still not in Heaven. What's wrong with me? Why doesn't Jesus love me? Why am I like a ghost haunting my family?<br />
<br />
Dear God, I forgive them. I forgive Jeff for all his faults. I still can't believe I'm watching him go to his first AA meeting. Emily's husband Terry, I never knew, he's been a recovering alcoholic for over ten years now, he took him.<br />
<br />
Now I'm watching Emily at her house, rocking the baby in her arms and reading to Timmy from his favorite Bible stories book. Why is she doing that? She doesn't believe, does she? She even started taking him back to my church.<br />
<br />
She really does love my children. She and Terry never had kids. I never knew she could be such a good...mother.<br />
<br />
I forgive Emily for hurting me by not receiving Christ into her heart. I forgive her for loving Terry more than she loved me. I forgive...<br />
<br />
I'm dead. I don't breathe. Why do I feel like I'm short of breath? Why do I feel scared? I can't be hurt. Why am I hurting inside?<br />
<br />
I'm already gone from this world. I can't touch anything and nothing touches me. I feel nothing...nothing...<br />
<br />
Nothing except sorrow and loss...and regret.<br />
<br />
Jesus, please forgive me for everything I've done wrong. Please take me into Heaven. Please take me into your rest.<br />
<br />
You aren't going to forgive me, though, are you?<br />
<br />
Emily's just put the baby down in her crib to sleep, and she's getting Timmy into his PJs so he can go to bed soon. She's reading him another Bible story about Jesus. What's that he's saying? "When I die, will I see my Mommy in Heaven?"<br />
<br />
My heart is breaking for the thousandth time.<br />
<br />
"The Bible says that if we repent and ask forgiveness from Jesus and from anyone we have hurt, we're saved and we go to Heaven when we die," she says, comforting him in a hug.<br />
<br />
"I'm sorry I yelled at you yesterday, Aunt Emmy," Timmy starts to softly cry. "Will you forgive me?" If only I could take him in my arms. I so love Emily for being so sweet and caring to him.<br />
<br />
"I forgive you, sweetheart. I always will," Emily smiles down at him, rubbing his tears away with a finger.<br />
<br />
"Please forgive me too, Emily." I hear the words but it takes me a second to realize I'm the one who said them.<br />
<br />
Oh God. I am so sorry. "Emily, I'm so sorry for how I've treated you. You're my sister. Jesus doesn't want me to not love you. The years I've stolen from you, years where we could have acted like a family. Years you could have been an Aunt to Timmy. He didn't get to know you, to love you, because I was alive. I was selfish. I was wrong."<br />
<br />
"Timmy, please forgive Mommy. I love you and little Jenny more than anything. I kept you from your Aunt and Uncle who really love you, too. I am so sorry. Please forgive me. Jenny, please forgive me."<br />
<br />
"Jeff, I've been hurt and angry at you for so long. I thought everything was your fault, like God made a mistake giving you to me for a husband instead of a Christian man. You tore my heart out when you walked out on our children...on me. I was too blind to see I'd pushed you away, too...that I stopped loving you when I gave my heart to Jesus. That's not what he wanted me to do."<br />
<br />
"Please forgive me, Jeff. Please forgive me for not being a good wife to you. You really were a good husband and father and you would have stayed, I know you would have stayed...would have stayed and not started drinking, not started gambling, if I hadn't changed so much."<br />
<br />
I don't know how long I've been crying. I don't know where I am. I can't see them anymore. I can't see Jeff or Emily or Terry. I can barely see Timmy asleep in his bed or Jenny's sweet little face in her crib.<br />
<br />
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"Good-bye my babies. Mommy's going away now. I'll always love you. But it'll be OK. Uncle Terry and Aunt Emily love you too, they love you so much. Daddy loves you. I'm glad he's visiting you and playing with you. I'm glad things are going to be OK."<br />
<br />
I can't see any of them anymore. I've stopped feeling sad. I love my family, and I know Jesus will take care of them. I believe that. I believe it with all my heart.<br />
<br />
I feel so peaceful. Bright light is all around me. I feel warm and weightless. I'm letting go. I'm forgiving. I'm forgiven.<br />
<br />
My name is Sara Anne Connor...and I'm going to Heaven.james.pyleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11424800834517755783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7933794355391496434.post-34160767836985976332015-11-02T14:00:00.001-07:002015-11-02T14:17:36.226-07:00Transformation by Vision<i>I've now progressed to Chapter Three: "Character," in Josip Novakovich's book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fiction-Writers-Workshop-Josip-Novakovich/dp/1582975361" target="_blank">Fiction Writer's Workshop</a>. I've found that describing a scene, particularly from memory, is more difficult than I imagined.</i><br />
<br />
<i>For instance, in writing a very short illustration of <a href="http://millionchimpanzees.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-alley.html" target="_blank">The Alley</a> as taken from the 1984 cult classic film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088247/" target="_blank">The Terminator</a>, I had neglected a great deal of detail about the contents of the alley (I'd forgotten how many discarded newspapers there were, water pipes running up the sides of buildings, the shapes of the buildings themselves). I saw the film again over this past weekend, and realized that I had described mainly the darkness and what I remembered about alleys in general, not this particular alley.</i><br />
<br />
<i>How much more difficult will it be to describe a person and to make that person seem convincingly real? What sort of person should I describe? Should I use an aspect of my own personality, someone I know, some famous or historical figure, a mythic being from some ancient tale of lore...a combination?</i><br />
<br />
<i>In the opening pages of this chapter, Novakovich describes the "conversion" of the Apostle Paul, what changed about him and what didn't. Of course, he takes the traditional Christian view of the Apostle whereas, my own internal image of "Rav Sha'ul" is somewhat to drastically different.</i><br />
<br />
<i>So I have my starting point, I think...</i><br />
<br />
<i>For the basis of the following short character piece, please open a copy of the Bible to the New Testament, and read <b>Acts 9:1-19</b></i><br />
<blockquote>
"I would never write about someone who is not at the end of his rope."
<br />
<br />
-Stanley Elkin
</blockquote>
His traveling companions gently deposited the Pharisee at the edge of a sleeping mat in a small, rented room just off of Straight street in Damascus. This wasn't how they'd imagined entering the city, nor was Sha'ul the man with whom they had traveled from Jerusalem. Only hours ago, he was a fiery zealot (though not literally associated with the Zealots), breathing murderous threats against the disciples of a Rav named Yeshua, who had died and supposedly been resurrected, vowing their imprisonment or destruction for (supposedly) speaking against the Temple and the Torah.<br />
<br />
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Sha'ul's once penetrating gaze had dimmed, and wide-open but unseeing eyes had become dulled in the aftermath of the blazing light that bathed their party on the road approaching this city, and a voice only Sha'ul could clearly hear had spoken to him of things astounding and forbidden.<br />
<br />
"We will take our leave of you now, my Master," Simeon nearly whispered to the once vital but now strangely shrunken, frail Pharisee. "We need to secure our own rooms." Sha'ul seemed deaf as well as blind for he did not respond. "We'll bring back food."<br />
<br />
Without turning toward the speaking man, Sha'ul faintly nodded his ascent as if he could still see the unknown vision from the road. Simeon and his two cohorts quickly escaped the oppressive presence of the now sightless and helpless minister of justice against the religious sect they'd learned was called "The Way." Their once proud mission was reduced to ashes.<br />
<br />
Although it was highly irregular, Simeon would send one of their group back to Jerusalem with a message for the High Priest, who, a Sadducee, had consented to issuing letters of authority to the Pharisee Sha'ul permitting him to arrest and remove any disciples of this Rav Yeshua from the local synagogues and return them for trial. Would the Cohen Gadol have any instructions given these disastrous events? What were they to do with Sha'ul now?<br />
<br />
"Why do you persecute, me he said," an abandoned Sha'ul muttered to himself in dim light and utter darkness. "Prosecute me? Prosecute him? How was I to know? How was I to know there was substance and power behind these measly group of heretics?" a still crushed and astonished Sha'ul murmured.<br />
<br />
"How was I to know that you were the Moshiach, the Son of the Most High, the resurrected one?" Sha'ul abruptly screamed, as much to Yeshua as to the blind heavens!<br />
<br />
Hearing no reply nor expecting one, the minutes lapsed and his rapid, ragged breathing slowed. Sha'ul supposed it was the traditional time for the Minchah, the afternoon prayers, and began to daven silently to Hashem, the Most High God, His God, who had abruptly become, if not a stranger, then at least the surprising source of something unexpected, as this new dimension of reality came into focus in the Pharisee's life.<br />
<br />
Throughout his prayers, Sha'ul's mind raced in a countering subtext of desperate thought about who he is becoming now that he has been confronted by Yeshua, whose disciples he had condemned and yet how Sha'ul is condemned by the power behind and above the sect of The Way. Sha'ul had always been zealous for the Torah, for the sacrifices, for the Temple. He had kept every Law and tradition of his people in the manner of the Pharisees. He washed up to his elbows before eating every meal, kept all of the precepts so that he was always ritually pure, even when most of the time, he was away from Jerusalem and unable to make Temple offerings.<br />
<br />
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He was among the greatest of the Pharisees, in spite of his youth. A member of the tribe of Benjamin, a Jew among Jews. He had risen quickly among his peers, but then in those scant few moments of being blasted by the radiance of Heaven, he had fallen from the brightest heights and into total darkness; from the clouds to sheol.<br />
<br />
Only his prayers offered faint luminescence, for even now, in his humility and humiliation, Sha'ul's hope was in Hashem, Maker of Heaven and Earth. If indeed this Yeshua is the Son of the Most High...<br />
<br />
"How, Oh Hashem? How could I have been so wrong?" Sha'ul's prayers fell in disarray about his feet like wounded sparrows. "How can I put my hope in You when I have been so opposed to him? How could I have been so right and yet discover I've been so wrong?"<br />
<br />
Sightless eyes wept bitter tears of contrition and repentance. This is the way Simeon found him when bringing Sha'ul his evening meal, which was repeatedly refused. This is how Sha'ul spent the next three days and nights, weeping, fasting, and praying, until another man who also had a vision, but a much more gentle one, came to Sha'ul's room and introduced himself to the future servant of Yeshua as the disciple Ananias.<br />
<br />
Sha'ul was about to receive another revelation, the second among many. The Torah, the Temple, the Priesthood, the sacrifices were eternal. But in Messiah, they could now be experienced in ways Sha'ul had never imagined.james.pyleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11424800834517755783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7933794355391496434.post-39608959398124607732015-10-29T10:50:00.000-06:002015-10-29T11:30:55.349-06:00The Alley<i>One of the exercises in the second chapter of Josip Novakovich's book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fiction-Writers-Workshop-Josip-Novakovich/dp/1582975361" target="_blank">Fiction Writer's Workshop</a> asks the writer to describe a setting from the point of view of someone who has just experienced a death, and another description of the same setting from a person who has just experienced a birth.</i><br />
<br />
<i>As with <a href="http://millionchimpanzees.blogspot.com/2015/10/war.html" target="_blank">this assignment</a> and <a href="http://millionchimpanzees.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-plant.html" target="_blank">yesterday's project</a>, I decided to adapt the suggestion to something that speaks to me in my own "language."</i><br />
<br />
<i>I'm writing this from memory, although I never let too many months pass between viewings of this <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088247/" target="_blank">particular cult classic</a>. Obviously, I have to develop more of a perspective on these characters than was revealed in the scene from the film I'm about to describe, particularly the first character. I guess that's part of what fiction writing is all about.</i><br />
<br />
The alley reeked of urine, cheap wine, and rotting vegetables as he curled up in the shadows of a doorway behind some garbage cans. Mostly the smell of wine was coming from his clothes, but the majority of the contents of that last bottle made its way into his mouth, to his stomach, his bloodstream, and finally, blessedly, his brain.<br />
<br />
His "old lady," the aging widow who occasionally took him in out of pity and sex, locked her door on him tonight because he was too drunk to "perform." "Who does she think he is?" he slurred through intoxication and a mouth missing several teeth. "Why'd she kick me out, the damn bitch?" he whined to himself in undeserved indignation.<br />
<br />
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This alley near downtown L.A. had been his haven before. If he kept quiet and out of sight, the cops wouldn't hassle him, and neither would the gangbangers who'd have been known to roll a drunk, shove a knife through the ribs, or the really scary ones who were rumored to pour gasoline on a guy sleeping it off, and light him on fire.<br />
<br />
But because of wine and apathy, he was beyond being afraid or caring. He pulled the old, torn and frayed Army blanket, the last memento of his service to his country and the catastrophe two tours of duty in Vietnam had made of his mind and his body, over his slight, bent frame, and used his arms for a pillow.<br />
<br />
This evening in May in Southern California meant the concrete steps he made his bed were only a little cold to the touch. His thoughts and senses were unfocused and confused, and as he tucked his head under the blanket to avoid the street lights reflecting into his refuge, he felt embraced by a sense of wilderness and familiar comfort.<br />
<br />
The blanket held the odors of mold and sweat and mingled with the alley's other fragrances, most of them unpleasant, and while they spoke of abandonment and loss, they also whispered "freedom." No one could tell him what to do or where to go. There were no rules. Comfortably numb, he continued to mutter to himself, occasionally cursing his "old lady," and for one more night, calling this minor corridor off of Pico Avenue his home.<br />
<br />
Pain! Bright light! It was like being born maybe. Reese's flesh felt like he was on fire (and he'd been burned once before) as the astonishing illumination abruptly vanished and he dropped into darkness, landing hard on his knees and elbows.<br />
<br />
It took his eyes several moments to adjust to the dim light around him after having been blinded by the startling brilliance of his brief but amazing journey. He shook off the pain, disconnected it, even as smoke rose up from his back. Then he looked up and around.<br />
<br />
The buildings on both sides of him were whole, not burnt out ruins. Electric lights. Wires between buildings for telephones. The sounds of road traffic drifting in from the street at the far end of the alley. He was in an alley. He stood up and remembered he was naked. "Nothing dead can travel through time," they told him. Anything he needed to complete his mission he'd have to get once he got to the other side, the past, the time before the war.<br />
<br />
"Hey buddy, did you just see a real bright light?" wailed a voice to his right. Reese cursed himself for his carelessness. He was a soldier, a veteran of countless battles against the machines, and still he hadn't noticed the frail figure lying in the shadows just six feet away.<br />
<br />
Realizing the man was harmless, he looked around again. He'd made it. He was in the past. Reese felt the thrill of success, the thrill at survival, even as he made plans to find Sarah Connor. But first he needed something to wear. The old guy was drunk and wouldn't give him any trouble.<br />
<br />
As Reese pulled up the stinking, moist pants he'd just taken from the man still lying in the doorway, a sudden bright spotlight illuminated him. Reese whirled around in time to see two police officers (he recognized them from an old history book he once found in the rubble of a school) getting out of a car and approaching him. He couldn't afford to be detained. They'd have guns. He ran the other way down the alley.<br />
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"He's rabbiting," one of the officers yelled as he chased the fugitive, ignoring the other man who loudly slurred, "He took my pants!"<br />
<br />
As the two running figures receded in the darkness and the other officer drove away in his car, the older man pulled his blanket up around his shoulders thankful that the cops were ignoring him, and also crushed that he'd suffered yet another insult. He retreated into his despair as if he could melt back into the shadow of the doorway, and the pavement, and the night, and hoped the cops wouldn't come back for him. He just wanted to sleep. He just wanted to feel safe or if not safe, at least isolated from everything. That's what the alley meant to him. But it also meant a dead end, and end of time, at least his time, because a deep fear clawed inside of him, a knowledge that as he slept here he'd probably die here.<br />
<br />
Reese's bare feet padded against the asphalt as he ran from the police officer. What was familiar to the owner of the pants he wore was an alien landscape Reese had only heard stories about from the very oldest survivors of the future nuclear holocaust, or seen pictures of in the few books and magazines that had been found in what was left of schools and libraries.<br />
<br />
The grey cold light of street lamps, the rocks on the pavement that cut his feet as he ran, the slight chill in the air, the smells of garbage and car exhaust, all spoke of a life and a world that still had hope, that was still alive and free, of a people not yet dominated by the machines. This wasn't home. It would never be home, but if he could save Sarah Connor and somehow stop the Terminator, he could end the destruction of the human race before it ever started. The future's not set. It's just the beginning. All he had to do is survive.<br />
<br />
Kyle Reese ran.james.pyleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11424800834517755783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7933794355391496434.post-17702113393033061032015-10-28T14:22:00.002-06:002015-10-28T14:22:55.700-06:00The Plant<i>I'm trying to continue to put some good effort into my <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fiction-Writers-Workshop-Josip-Novakovich/dp/1582975361" target="_blank">Fiction Writer's Workshop</a> project and not avoid dealing with "Settings," which is the focus of the second chapter.</i><br />
<br />
<i>I don't think I'll address all or even most of the exercises, and of those I do, I'm pretty sure I'm going to be adapting them for my own use. A lot of what Novakovich suggests just doesn't seem like anything I'd write. I can't explain it, but you wouldn't expect Larry Niven to write woman's romance novels or Dashiell Hammett to write haiku.</i><br />
<br />
<i>Something in a few of the exercises suggests defining the protagonist by his or her environment, as if the person's setting is an extension of the individual's identity or the setting shapes and molds the person...or a little of both.</i><br />
<br />
He was surrounded by a vastness of space and light and sound. "The Plant," as it was traditionally called (United States Postal Service Mail Processing Center, really), could be viewed as one enormous room, like a warehouse, but it was perpetually flooded with light. You could never tell the time of day, which was important since the Plant was in operation all the time.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is what I used to do for the machine</td></tr>
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The machines were always running, and clattering, and screeching (mainly when they were in the process of a high speed malfunction), and hammering, and whistling, and ringing. Some of the workers wore earplugs as a defense, but then that made it hard for them to hear the yelling of their supervisors when something (like the high speed malfunction of a mail processing machine as it turned several hundred first class letters into unintelligible confetti) went wrong.<br />
<br />
The space of a football field (he didn't really know it was that size, but it seemed like a good analogy) was consumed with different machines processing different kinds of mail, requiring differently skilled personnel for the tasks, being replaced every eight, to ten, to twelve hours by the next shift in an endless ballet of blue collar precision.<br />
<br />
He was where they always put him. As low man on the team, he got stuck with sweeping the mail out of the machine. There were always two people on the machines that processed letter mail, preparing it for delivery the next day, the feeder and the sweeper.<br />
<br />
The feeder stood in one spot, pulling stacks of envelopes from bins, neatly and evenly stacking them on the feeder belt, and guiding one stack after another into the machine. The machine was programmed to read the zebra code that had been previously sprayed on the envelopes by another machine and order them in delivery point sequence (DPS). Then, this impossibly long device spit hundreds and hundreds of envelopes a minute into 100 or so slots (he never actually counted them, but they went on forever) up and down the device, and the second person on the team, me, had to quickly walk back and forth across the length of the mechanism, sweeping the slots becoming full into plastic trays stacked on metal wire racks, all containing the zip codes corresponding to the mail.<br />
<br />
No wonder he was losing weight. Except for two 15-minute breaks and a 30-minute lunch, he was always in motion.<br />
<br />
Mail is dry, incredibly dry. His hands were always chapped, cracked, and occasionally bleeding because the paper he was constantly moving from one place to another absorbed the water and oil from his skin like an alcoholic lapping the last ounces of vodka from a bottle. He once tried wearing gloves, but when he couldn't feel the mail, he dropped it, and dropping already sequenced mail is a bad thing.<br />
<br />
He arrived at work at 11 p.m. usually, but sometimes sooner if they needed him. They could make him work up to twelve hours a shift, so if he couldn't see a clock (he stopped wearing his watch because he kept breaking it against the metal shelves of the machine or the wheeled wire cages where he stacked the mail trays when they were ready to be loaded onto trucks), the only way he knew it was morning or not was to look up at a skylight fifty feet above his head to see if it was black or blue.<br />
<br />
Except for lunch, breaks, or, when the mail was finished being processed and he stacked all the mail in wheeled containers, he never saw anything but the hind end of the machine regurgitating its seemingly unending stream of letters, the racks and trays staged and ready to receive that mail, or the catwalks, support frames, metal ceiling (all white, making the lighting seem even brighter), and the occasional ceiling skylight in those few moments when he dared look up away from the mail, just so he could get a sense of distance.<br />
<br />
In spite of the speed at which letters were launched like rectangular projectiles out of the slots and swept into the trays, he had learned to read addresses, recognize locations, and get a sense even of the order in which the mail was to be delivered. When the mail for each zone was trucked from the Plant to their respective local post offices, each carrier could retrieve the mail trays for his or her route and they would be (ideally...occasionally mistakes were made either by people or computers) in the exact order in which each tray and each letter in each tray, would be delivered. All the carrier had to do was "follow the mail."<br />
<br />
All the sweeper had to do was run up and down the machine for hour upon hour, moving the mail from slots to trays from slots to trays, back and forth back and forth, ignoring the splitting flesh of his fingers, the maddening clatter of the machine, the paper dust, the dust of unknown origin he sucked into his lungs, the faint small of oil and ozone, and the always too bright flood of lights (light flare generators from every conceivable direction) that made it eternally day in the Plant, regardless of how much his body told him it was night and he should be in bed like normal human beings.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn9kVkHcfqXG497XaRkOTaUx08NIaLHY_zo-T71JpO0v6YRfL3EzAnNR4G972c951gtWI5CoT4EObg_hEPsRtNNbvjJF3obiDCd0mVfmNA5UvOsGYP-ryrXOa7kNnzjTv_ZMDDnS1r-0g/s1600/ready-for-post-office.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn9kVkHcfqXG497XaRkOTaUx08NIaLHY_zo-T71JpO0v6YRfL3EzAnNR4G972c951gtWI5CoT4EObg_hEPsRtNNbvjJF3obiDCd0mVfmNA5UvOsGYP-ryrXOa7kNnzjTv_ZMDDnS1r-0g/s320/ready-for-post-office.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ready to be loaded onto trucks at the dock</td></tr>
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The last envelope was now in the last tray. The machine was silent as a man in a blue coat did something to it at a keyboard. Gangs of people descended upon his racks and he helped them load the trays into the wheeled containers, zone by zone, so they could be pulled out onto the dock and loaded into different trucks destined for different postal stations.<br />
<br />
He never saw the docks. The dock people pulled the wheeled racks out to the trucks. His job was done when these containers were loaded. If he was lucky, that would be it and he could clock out and go home. If not, some other job would be waiting, either at a different machine, or maybe some manual sorting of mail the optical character reader (OCR) machines couldn't read well enough to spray paint a zebra code on (he always remembered the one a little girl addressed to her grandpa using different colored crayons).<br />
<br />
But today there was silence. Well, not really silence. There were other machines churning, humming, and shuffling. There were people at end of shift shuffling out toward the time clocks, and then the bathrooms, and then out the door to go home. But at least his machine had stopped.<br />
<br />
His supervisor gave him "the nod," it was his turn to leave. He looked up. The light from the distant skylight was blue. Someday he would be free. Someday he would walk out into the blue and never have to come back to through the darkness into the hideous bright light. For today, he could at least pretend.james.pyleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11424800834517755783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7933794355391496434.post-53713570707869546022015-10-27T15:17:00.001-06:002015-10-27T15:18:31.587-06:00War!<i>It's been nearly two weeks since I've written any fiction for my <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fiction-Writers-Workshop-Josip-Novakovich/dp/1582975361" target="_blank">Fiction Writer's Workshop</a> project. Frankly, I've been too busy writing projects for which I get paid to devote time to this "labor of love."</i><br />
<br />
<i>There's another reason I've gone silent, though. Chapter Two in the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fiction-Writers-Workshop-Josip-Novakovich/dp/1582975361" target="_blank">book</a> is about Settings. In reading the various exercises for the chapter, I really don't find any of them interesting let alone inspiring. I don't remember much about places where I grew up or for the most part, even care about them.</i><br />
<br />
<i>Last Sunday, I was telling a friend of mine about his project, and expressing some frustration at not getting very far. He told me that everything he's read about writing says it has more to do with persistence and developing the habit of writing every day than it does with sudden inspiration or having an idea that "magically" unfolds into a perfect story.</i><br />
<br />
<i>I was reminded of a line from the 1987 film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094142/" target="_blank">Throw Momma From the Train</a>, "Remember, a writer writes, always." I felt kind of guilty of wanting to "just write" the way some kid who buys a used six-string guitar expects to "just play" the minute he opens his beginner's chord book.</i><br />
<br />
<i>But while I believe setting is important, and a created "world" of one kind or another can take on a life of its own, I'm not sure I can make a setting the main "character" in even a very short story. </i><br />
<br />
<i>That said, one thing comes to mind. This is the best I can remember of the "incident". It was probably around 1962.</i><br />
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The German soldiers were hiding in a plastic house. It crudely simulated a one room stone structure, but it was clearly plastic. It had been set on fire before, because the roof was partially blackened and melted, with gaping holes showing in several spots.<br />
<br />
But that's OK. The soldiers were plastic, too.<br />
<br />
Six-year-old Jimmy visited his Grandpa's house a lot now that he and his parents moved back home to Omaha from Spain. Dad was in the Air Force and they moved around every couple of years or so. Jimmy barely remembered living here before they moved to Spain when he was three. He'd be going into the first grade next month. It would be the first time he was in a school where all the kids didn't have Dads in the service.<br />
<br />
He didn't know his older cousin Donny much, but being kids, they played together whenever Jimmy and his folks were visiting Grandpa. Donny played "World War Two" better than anyone.<br />
<br />
The plastic house with the toy German soldiers inside was sitting on the cracked, granular sidewalk just in front of Grandpa's house. The sidewalk wasn't smooth like the ones in front of Jimmy's house across the river in Council Bluffs. It was like little rocks had been mixed in with the cement so that it was rough feeling when Jimmy ran his fingers across it.<br />
<br />
Tree roots pushed, shoved, and pulled at different places in the sidewalk, so it was cracked and broken, higher in some places, and lower in others. Jimmy's knee still hurt a little because he tripped on a raised part of the sidewalk a little earlier. Mommy put a band-aid on the torn skin, and he proudly wore the rip in his pants as proof he could get hurt and not cry. <br />
<br />
Jimmy looked up from the sidewalk as Donny pulled the forbidden model airplane glue and matches out of his back pocket. The two boys whispered like foreign conspirators planning a coup.<br />
"Are we gonna get in trouble," Jimmy whined. "Shut up," Donny commanded. "It'll be fine."<br />
<br />
Donny applied a layer of glue from the tube, releasing a nasty chemical stench into Jimmy's nostrils, but he was too scared to complain again. Every warning his Dad sternly delivered about not playing with matches was marshaling his guilt and fear of being spanked. Only the promise of adventure, of playing Americans against Germans with a real burning house kept him from going back inside Grandpa's.<br />
<br />
Well, that, and he didn't want Donny to think he was a baby.<br />
<br />
Donny smeared the glue with his fingers around the edges of the holes in the dark, gray roof of the toy house. The plastic walls were a lighter gray, almost the same color as the sidewalk, and these bland tones were violently offset by the deep green of the grass on either side of the cement walk.<br />
<br />
Donny put the cap back on the tube and wiped the glue left over on his fingers around in the grass. Then he pulled one of the matches out of the match book and scraped the head against the striker. It didn't light, so he did it again, and when it burst into flame, Jimmy involuntarily pulled back a little.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Scene from the TV show "Combat"</td></tr>
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Donny's eyes were as bright as the flame as he lowered the match toward the moist airplane model glue glistening on the roof. "Get your soldiers ready to attack," Donny reminded Jimmy.<br />
<br />
Jimmy quickly positioned his plastic green "American" toy soldiers in the grass at the edge of the sidewalk facing the front of the toy house, as if they were hiding in a large field.<br />
<br />
Each U.S. soldier had a grim and unmoving look in his face. They were posed to attack, but then, they could never change their faces or pose, anymore than they could move their feet from the flat pieces of plastic that let them stand up. Each blade of grass was like an enormous stalk of emerald corn or wheat, offering cover from the enemy who have taken shelter in the abandoned French farm house.<br />
<br />
It was like Jimmy was watching his favorite TV show <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055666/" target="_blank">Combat</a>.<br />
<br />
The American artillery was firing at the German position. A shell hit the house right on top! Donny lit the glue on fire and quickly dropped the match through one of the holes in the plastic roof. The house was on fire. This was war!james.pyleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11424800834517755783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7933794355391496434.post-1290210692456021252015-10-15T13:32:00.000-06:002015-10-15T15:39:04.450-06:00Arabia Terra<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI7wsPesb6OGy0aY2TdZgNkBDrYm22JClfwMEr9RQn9Z7LLMsRJh4_cEXerOTs2zS94DScWzQiEf2_0OGCN71t3LgSWcSaWJIz6hcGQmdjyVRMB7aT7kLCbKugVMcbT0rQ7-_zRB0sd44/s1600/old-mars.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI7wsPesb6OGy0aY2TdZgNkBDrYm22JClfwMEr9RQn9Z7LLMsRJh4_cEXerOTs2zS94DScWzQiEf2_0OGCN71t3LgSWcSaWJIz6hcGQmdjyVRMB7aT7kLCbKugVMcbT0rQ7-_zRB0sd44/s320/old-mars.jpg" width="210" /></a></div>
<i>This needs a lot of work. It's actually a first draft of the beginning of a much longer story I want to write. It's the first piece of fiction I've written since I've started this project that I'd eventually like to see published. No, it's not inspired by the recent film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3659388/" target="_blank">The Martian</a> (2015) based on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martian_%28Weir_novel%29" target="_blank">Andy Weir's novel</a> (and I've yet to read the book or see the film). I actually got the first germ of an idea for this story while reading <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Old-Mars-George-R-Martin/dp/0345537270" target="_blank">Old Mars</a>, an anthology of short stories edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois. It's a collection of stories about the Mars I remember from childhood, the Mars that had canals, a breathable atmosphere, and a much greater hope of life on the planet, including maybe intelligent life.</i><br />
<br />
<i>I need to change a great deal about even this small beginning of my larger story. I haven't done a lot of research into proposals regarding human exploration of Mars. Although I'm fairly settled on the landing site, I still need to figure out how many people would likely be part of the crew of the first manned ("human-ed") spacecraft sent to Mars, how many would go down to the surface, and how long they would stay. I know exactly why Amanda is there, what she's looking for, and what she ultimately finds, but the other crew members are only cardboard cutouts so far.</i><br />
<br />
<i>Since I have actual plans for this story, I've added a brief copyright statement to the footer of this blogspot and ask that you respect my right to own what I've created and not copy any part of it for your own use, particularly for publication. I'll probably create a different title for it as I expand the story line, but for now it remains "Arabia Terra."</i><br />
<br />
<i>Oh, in case you're wondering if the following has anything to do with the exercises I've been working through in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fiction-Writers-Workshop-Josip-Novakovich/dp/1582975361" target="_blank">Josip Novakovich's book on fiction writing</a>, chapter two is about location. Hopefully, I've started to craft a compelling location in the Arabia Terra region of Mars as we may see it a few decades from now. Enjoy.</i><br />
<br />
Commander Amanda Nichols was disappointed as she opened the Mars lander's hatch and saw that her helmet obscured much of her first view of the upland region of Arabia Terra. Major Terry Shepherd, the lander's co-pilot who was standing behind her, always referred to most Martian terrain as "planet Nevada," but for Amanda, the stark beauty and even the romance of Mars far outweighed a more objective observation.<br />
<br />
This is supposed to be one of the oldest terrains on the planet, heavily eroded and very densely crated, which is part of the reason NASA chose this part of the Arabia quadrangle as the landing site of the first human mission. There’s a distinct possibility of studying evidence of tectonic activity and even volcanism here, plus previous robot landers detected the likelihood of ice water under the surface.<br />
<br />
To Amanda, the landscape before her looked like God had taken the ancient red crust, rock, and dust in her field of vision and etched, crumpled. and then pounded it, creating a texture and fabric that spoke of a life lived long and hard resulting in a face marked with character and and even a hint of majesty rather than merely scars and age.<br />
<br />
A disembodied voice mixed with faint static coming from her helmet speaker reminded Amanda that she wasn't there to admire the scenery, at least not exclusively. "Copernicus One to Mars Lander Ares, confirm that you are EVA, over."<br />
<br />
Captain Robert McCarthy, the third person on the crew, and the one tasked with staying aboard the main ship in orbit was probably getting impatient. She and Terry only had 72 hours on Mars before they had to return to Copernicus, and with their resources being precious and limited, there was no time for any delays in the surface portion of the mission.<br />
<br />
"Acknowledged, Bob," she replied a little louder than she intended. "Hatch is open, I've got a wonderful view looking west over Arabia Terra. Beginning my descent down the ladder."<br />
<br />
"Beginning of descent acknowledged, Ares. Everyone back on Earth is waiting to hear about the first human presence on Mars," chirped McCarthy. <br />
<br />
Terry didn't say a word but she felt his heavily gloved hand press on her right shoulder from behind. For all his teasing about her over attachment to the planet, he knew exactly what this mission, her being the first person to set foot on the Red Planet, has always meant to her.<br />
<br />
Amanda took a deep breath which was no doubt audible to not only her crew mates, but would be heard by everyone watching and listening on the television sets once the video and radio signal made the approximate 13 minute transit back home.<br />
<br />
Her sense of wonder had been rapidly replaced with the startling grandeur of this moment and her personal responsibility as first astronaut to walk on Mars. Amanda began her slow and careful climb down the side of the lander, realizing that she was not only on the cusp of fulfilling the human dream of visiting another planet, but also her personal dream; her Grandfather's dream. She swallowed hard at the memory of Pop-pop, (that's what she called him when she was four...before she learned to say "Papa") and found that actually being on Mars made her remember him more than she thought. Of the millions of people waiting to see the transmission from her helmet's camera of the first human bring to step on another planet in our solar system, she wished he could be one of them.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhkwQ5RzlPAbVnbpIRclRRdaZ17Q9_FIGIg9ayDfAk8ZgHY9zAj2flPSK9FeSv1nCQ6SCztNiXT_swWH3So1LXwewYn3As-pvS6ATVUwbybPhWxBHkk_068b6VsMMzC8gnwmJvUfP8GpE/s1600/ares-lander-mars.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="194" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhkwQ5RzlPAbVnbpIRclRRdaZ17Q9_FIGIg9ayDfAk8ZgHY9zAj2flPSK9FeSv1nCQ6SCztNiXT_swWH3So1LXwewYn3As-pvS6ATVUwbybPhWxBHkk_068b6VsMMzC8gnwmJvUfP8GpE/s320/ares-lander-mars.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Credit: Mars Lander Ares by David Robinson</td></tr>
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Amanda welcomed the return of gravity, no matter how faint, as she neared the scarred and pockmarked red stone just a meter beneath her feet now. She tightly gripped each metal rung as she lowered herself, one hand, one foot at a time. Finally she was at the bottom rung and she extended her right leg and her booted foot, isolating her flesh from the astonishing cold, the near vacuum, the "alien-ness" of the environment, and stepped down onto the Martian surface.<br />
<br />
Mission leader and Naval Commander Amanda Juliet Nichols had just made history. She put her other foot on the ground, let go of the last rung of the ladder, and turned to face Arabia Terra as the first living being (as far as anyone knew) to walk on this world.<br />
<br />
"As I step onto our sister planet Mars, I am not alone. All humanity is here with me in a spirit of peace and hope as we extend our reach to other worlds, and one day, to the stars." She had rehearsed that statement for weeks knowing a watching and listening Earth would expect the first words spoken by her to be something profound and uplifting. She hadn't been born yet when Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon, but she listened to the recording of his first words and hoped she could inspire the same awe in the people of her home world as she now carried the same torch borne by the space pioneers from generations before.<br />
<br />
But in her heart, she had more to say that the world would never hear and maybe never understand, "I came to Mars for you too, Pop-pop. I wish you were with me. I miss you."<br />
<br />
Behind her, to the east and south, as Terry was just starting to climb down the lander and join her, Amanda and the Ares lander were majestically framed by rugged rust-colored ridges climbing four kilometers into the pale blue Martian sky.james.pyleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11424800834517755783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7933794355391496434.post-15876014466363207172015-10-15T04:00:00.000-06:002015-10-15T04:00:07.418-06:00A Quiet Tuesday Afternoon at the Chiropractor's Office<i>My son David goes to a chiropractor's office three days a week. Since we commute to and from work together, on those three days, I drive him there after work. On Monday and Wednesday, my wife is there and after their treatment session, she drives him home, but on Tuesday, I sit and wait for him and take him home afterward.</i><br />
<br />
<i>Since I have nothing to do for the better part of an hour, I usually take a book to read, but this last Tuesday was different. Actually, I did have a book. It's Josip Novakovich's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fiction-Writers-Workshop-Josip-Novakovich/dp/1582975361" target="_blank">Fiction Writer's Workshop</a> (the first edition, not the second...I checked it out of the local public library). I'm finishing up the exercises from the first chapter, "Sources of Fiction." This assignment had me going to a public place and taking notes on the people present, what they were doing, what I could tell about them from my observations...and particularly what was puzzling or curious about them that might make a story.</i><br />
<br />
<i>The story below is a thinly disguised version of the exercise, the casual observances of a writer who does this sort of thing all the time in order to build up a collection of potential characters for his fiction work. I know writers actually do this sort of thing, but for me, it was amazingly difficult to come up with anything coherent let alone interesting. To the best of my ability, these are the people I witnessed (some of them anyway) and these are the mysteries I came up with.<i></i></i><br />
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It was a quiet afternoon in the chiropractor's office as I sat in the lobby waiting for my son to be put into his weekly traction session or, as I like to call it, the rack.<br />
<br />
Looking around, I kept thinking about Billy Joel's song "Piano Man," how the song describes not only the appearance of everyone in the lounge drinking and listening to the piano player, but their lives, their losses, and their tragedies.<br />
<br />
It's harder to figure out the background or mystery of people in real life just by looking at them in a public place, especially if you need to pretend you're not looking at them, let alone taking notes.<br />
<br />
But I'm a writer and that's what I do. I observe people, I listen for useful dialog, I make up stories about people based on not only what they say, but how they stand, what they wear, anything I can see about them that strikes me as odd or interesting.<br />
<br />
For instance, when he first walked into the office and casually greeted the two women behind the counter, I thought he was the doctor. He had a thoroughly professional appearance, from his close shorn red hair, to his crisp, white, button down shirt, and his freshly pressed dark slacks.<br />
<br />
But then I saw him walking around the side of the counter to use the console to check in. Like any other patient, the receptionist, or technician, or nurse, handed him some paperwork to look over. When he sat down, I noticed a flaw in his otherwise white collar uniform; scuffed shoes.<br />
<br />
It's not as if he stubbed his toe in the parking lot and scuffed the tip of his otherwise finely polished dress shoe, these shoes were habitually abused, as if the man made his living walking, not in a carpeted corporate environment, but on the floor of a warehouse.<br />
<br />
I had a job once, one I held very briefly, thank God, at the local convention center working operations or "ops". I had to wear black, polished work shoes that scuffed the same way as this gentleman's, but my work clothes were equally as durable and took the same punishment, as I manhandled all sorts of equipment from stage parts, to booths, to partitions, to tables. I spent an uncomfortably long amount of time around large garbage dumpsters.<br />
<br />
What sort of job (no one dresses like that at home) does this fellow have that requires he look so good from the ankles up but make him punish his shoes so severely?<br />
<br />
By the time I managed to jot all this down, he was called back to one of the therapy rooms and I only saw him briefly again when he left.<br />
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Business picked up quite a bit as I was waiting, but not everyone is interesting to me, at least not in a way that makes their descriptions worthy of (literally) noting. The middle-aged women who was standing at the counter as I walked in and wearing variations on the color grey seemed ordinary enough until it was time to pay her bill. Then she walked out, presumably to her car, though I couldn't actually see her, and came back with cash in her hand.<br />
<br />
She didn't bring in her purse or her wallet as I've have expected, but just had cash. I could see a ten-dollar bill but I wasn't actually able to hear how much her co-pay for $129.13 happened to be.<br />
<br />
Some people were absolutely quiet, such as the African-American girl (she couldn't have been older than 18), who came out of the therapy area and sat directly behind me, never saying a word as she sat, got up, went back into the back, and then returned and walked out the front door.<br />
<br />
Others were very loud, such as the fellow, who looked like a construction worker or other blue collar laborer, dressed in a bright orange t-shirt and camo cut offs, laughing and joking with various women on the staff. He showed up from the back just long enough for me to witness this and then disappeared again. He must have still been there when my son and I left.<br />
<br />
There was an elderly woman named Rebecca or Becky, who entered the office with the most remarkable smile, a smile like she knew a secret, a dangerous secret that gave her power.<br />
<br />
Probably the most mysterious couple I saw was a woman and the girl who I can only believe is her daughter, though they made a strange pair. I know it's getting on towards Halloween, but October 13th isn't close enough to start dressing in costume yet.<br />
<br />
But both the woman and girl were wearing replicas of what seemed to be 19th century "old west" dresses, as if they had just been a part of some "frontier days" presentation at a local school or park. Outside of the less than professional quality to their apparel, what ruined the effect was their rather modern casual footwear and the cuffs of the woman's jeans peeking out from below her hemline.<br />
<br />
But that wasn't the odd part. The woman entered the office a good ten or fifteen seconds before the girl (I'd guess the girl's age between 8 and 10 years old). The thing is, the girl never went near the woman. The woman sat down a few seats to my left, but the girl moved right toward the water dispenser. Even though the woman told the child she could have a drink, she all just about ignored her and moved away from the dispenser, but never closer to the woman.<br />
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The girl kept looking outside, as if she were waiting for someone. When the woman was called to the back of the office, the girl went back outside. They obviously had a relationship but why did they seem so estranged? Had they been fighting? Were the parents divorced and the girl closer to Dad than Mom? Was this a non-custodial parent-child visit gone bad?<br />
<br />
Oh, the woman's name is Camille. It seemed to go with her faux old fashioned appearance somehow.<br />
<br />
There were a lot more people there, including the all too young Dr. Kurt (who looked much less like a doctor than the man with the scuffed up shoes), and I took notes on them as best I could, but I'm writing about the people who made an impression, who made me ask questions and wonder who they were and what their non-fictional stories were really about.<br />
<br />
All things end including my son's traction. I'll never know who these people are or what their lives are actually like. But that's the beauty of fiction. I don't need to know. I can just make it all up.james.pyleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11424800834517755783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7933794355391496434.post-29230155392665286382015-10-14T04:00:00.000-06:002015-10-14T04:45:56.808-06:00The Fifth Chapter of the Book of Jonah<i>I was more than interested to find one of the exercises in the "Sources of Fiction" chapter in Josip Novakovich's book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fiction-Writers-Workshop-Josip-Novakovich/dp/1582975361" target="">Fiction Writer's Workshop</a> suggested reading the Bible and taking a tale, such as the story of Jacob and Esau (<a href="http://millionchimpanzees.blogspot.com/2015/10/jacob-and-angels-curse.html" target="_blank">which I already did, sort of</a>) or of Joseph and Potiphar's wife, and expanding on it. I especially appreciated Novakovich's mention of midrash, or as he puts it, the "Hebrew tradition of interpreting Biblical stories through filling in the gaps," since my wife is Jewish and I've read midrashim before.</i><br />
<br />
<i>One of the stories in the Bible that's always bothered me is the story of Jonah. The whole book is only four chapters long and it ends on a cliffhanger.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Jonah is tasked by God to travel from Israel to the great (non-Israelite) city of Nineveh and prophesy that if they did not repent of their sins, every living thing in the great city would die. Well, Jonah didn't want to do that because he really wanted Nineveh to be destroyed for its sins, and he was afraid that if he obeyed God, Nineveh might actually repent and be saved from destruction.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>So like a petulant teenager, Jonah runs away, hops on the first ship heading out of town, and is soon out to sea.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>God is not that easy to get away from though, and Jonah's adventures (you may recall he ended up spending a little time inside the innards of some sea creature) were just getting started.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>To get the background for my small missive, read the Book of Jonah first. You can find it online at such places as <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Jonah+1&version=NASB" target="_blank">BibleGateway.com</a> or <a href="http://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/16183" target="_blank">Chabad.org</a>, depending on whether you prefer Christian or Jewish tradition.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>After you're finished reading the fourth and (formerly) last chapter, read my "chapter five" and let me know what you think.</i><br />
<br />
<blockquote>
Now it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was grieved.
<br />
<br />
And he prayed to the Lord and said, "Please, O Lord, was this not my contention while I was still on my land? For this reason I had hastened to flee to Tarshish, for I know that You are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, with much kindness, and relenting of evil.
<br />
<br />
And now, O Lord, take now my soul from me, for my death is better than my life." And the Lord said: Are you deeply grieved?
<br />
<br />
And Jonah had gone out of the city, and had stationed himself on the east of the city, and there he made himself a hut and sat under it in the shade until he would see what would happen in the city.
<br />
<br />
Now the Lord God appointed a kikayon, and it grew up over Jonah to be shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort, and Jonah was overjoyed with the kikayon.
<br />
<br />
Now God appointed a worm at the rise of dawn on the morrow, and the worm attacked the kikayon, and it withered.
<br />
<br />
Now it came to pass when the sun shone, that God appointed a stilling east wind, and the sun beat on Jonah's head, and he fainted, and he begged to die, and he said, "My death is better than my life."
<br />
<br />
And God said to Jonah; Are you very grieved about the kikayon? And he said, "I am very grieved even to death."
<br />
<br />
And the Lord said: You took pity on the kikayon, for which you did not toil nor did you make it grow, which one night came into being and the next night perished.
<br />
<br />
Now should I not take pity on Nineveh, the great city, in which there are many more than one hundred twenty thousand people who do not know their right hand from their left, and many beasts as well?<br />
<br />
-from <a href="http://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/16186" target="_blank">Jonah chapter 4</a></blockquote>
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<b>Chapter 5 </b><br />
<br />
And Jonah replied to the Lord, "Did the kikayon sin against you and against your people Israel as did the people of Nineveh? Their sin was very great and yet you forgave them and they live. What did the kikayon do to live one day and then die?"<br />
<br />
And God said to Jonah; "Consider the words of my servant Job: 'Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I shall return there. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.' Are you greater than my servant Job who suffered severely at the hands of the Satan and yet did not lose his trust in Me?"<br />
<br />
Jonah replied to the Lord, "Did not your servant Job also say, 'I would set out my case before Him, and I would fill my mouth with arguments?' Hear me and I will speak. If you grant life to the people of Nineveh and yet death to the innocent kikayon, please allow me to die as well, for my life has turned to ashes and my tongue to wormwood."<br />
<br />
And the Lord spoke to Jonah saying, "My servant Elijah was one such as you, desiring death in the face of adversity and believing himself the only righteous one of my servants. An angel guided Elijah to Horeb where my servant Elijah found me, not in the wind, not in an earthquake, not in a fire, but in a gently blowing breeze. And while Elijah thought himself alone, I had indeed saved for Myself seven-thousand in Israel whose knees did not bow to the Ba'al nor did their lips kiss him."<br />
<br />
And the Lord continued to speak to Jonah saying, "You speak of Hashem, Master of Legions as slow to anger, as having much kindness, and relenting of evil. Do you believe that I in My mercy only forgive the people of Israel? Is not the whole world Mine? Did I Myself not create it? Did I not breathe life into the mouth of every soul? If the people of Nineveh would sincerely repent of their sins, even great sins, should I, the Lord, not forgive them, even as I forgive the repentant of My people Israel?"<br />
<br />
And the Lord said to Jonah, "My servant Elijah did not die, and he found Me in the stillness of a gentle breeze, and he left Horab and found Elisha, the son of Shaphat. And behold, I took Elijah up to Heaven in a great whirlwind and Elisha succeeded him, even as Joshua succeeded my servant Moses when the soul of Moses departed him on the other side of the Jordan."<br />
<br />
"So what should my servant Jonah do?" the Almighty inquired.<br />
<br />
Jonah's chest heaved with a sigh. "What can I do, O' Lord? Though the kikayon is dead, the people of the great city Nineveh live just I live. They have repented my God, just as I repent."<br />
<br />
God had said to Jonah, "Now should I not take pity on Nineveh, the great city, in which there are many more than one hundred twenty thousand people who do not know their right hand from their left, and many beasts as well?"<br />
<br />
The people of Nineveh, more than one hundred twenty thousand of them, though they repented, though they were forgiven by God and they lived, still did not know their right hand from their left. They still did not know God, for there was only one prophet sent to be among them, and that was Jonah, who had not desired that Nineveh should be spared, at least not until now.<br />
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One day, long after the time of Jonah, another servant of the Lord's named Simon who is also called Peter, will witness a great miracle and say, "I most certainly understand now that God is not one to show partiality, but in every nation the man who fears Him and does what is right is welcome to Him."<br />
<br />
So Jonah got up and left his hut east of Nineveh and returned to the great city as a prophet of God, and he spoke of the Lord to all who would listen, from the very least of the citizens to the mighty King of Nineveh, and he ministered to the people of Nineveh for many days.james.pyleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11424800834517755783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7933794355391496434.post-91159935879685189952015-10-13T10:31:00.000-06:002015-10-13T10:54:28.670-06:00One Afternoon in Sodom<i>Continuing with the exercises in the "Sources of Fiction" chapter in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fiction-Writers-Workshop-Josip-Novakovich/dp/1582975361" target="">Novakovich's book</a>, the assignment is to remember a verbal or physical fight and write a fictionalized version of it. It's supposed to be an easy assignment, particularly the dialog.</i><br />
<br />
<i>When I wrote <a href="http://millionchimpanzees.blogspot.com/2015/10/jacob-and-angels-curse.html" target="_blank">Jacob and the Angel's Curse</a>, I based it very loosely on a fight between two girls I witnessed in high school (a very long time ago). When I read this assignment, the first thing I thought of was the time I was attacked and beaten by a group of men when I was 16 years old.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>In the early 1970s, racial tension was running high all over the United States. I had gone to the Homecoming football game at my high school with some friends and after the game, I became separated from them and attacked, pretty much the same way I describe below. Not much dialog in the story because what I remember most is feelings of panic and helplessness.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Unlike the fictionalized version I've rendered, I've long since gotten past the feelings of being afraid of people all the time, but for a year after the attack, I was very afraid of people of color. I changed the situation from racial gangs to rape gangs below because I wanted to use a somewhat more "generic" group of attackers. Most everything else is pretty much the same. I used Biblical place names just because they were handy. Oh, and I've cast myself as an adult in the story below.</i><br />
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The rape gangs were roaming all over Sodom that afternoon. Rumors had it that affiliate gangs had been shipped in from as far away as Gomorrah and Zoar. The police were everywhere, except, of course, they couldn't be everywhere. That's where my problems started.<br />
<br />
A group of us had just left the stadium after the football game and were walking back to the parking garage. It was pretty ballsy to not cancel the game and even more ballsy for the fans to go watch it, but the Mayor was putting pressure on the team owners and stadium managers to keep things running as normally as possible. I stupidly thought that if the Wildcats and Cowboys were playing, it was safe to go with my mates and watch these two rivals clobber each other.<br />
<br />
Frankly, I think someone should have declared martial law. I wouldn't have gone to the game that day with my mates, but I also would have avoided what came next and the lifetime of terror that followed.<br />
<br />
I don't remember how I got separated from my group. All I remember is that I'd been lagging. Half a block behind us at the intersection were five or six cop cars and a bunch of officers trying to keep the peace. Crowds of people were milling everywhere, and the rape gangs were mixed in with the rest of us, attacking innocents at will.<br />
<br />
I was scared and confused by everything happening around me but figured with the police so close, I'd be OK.<br />
<br />
About six or seven guys moved in front of me, blocking me so I had to stop. I was still hoping they just wanted to threaten me. I was still hoping the police were looking up the street at us.<br />
<br />
One of the guys in front of me very gently touched my right hand and softly said, "Hey."<br />
<br />
That's when the sky fell in. I don't remember any pain, just a feeling of helplessness and almost weightlessness, as if I had been wading in the ocean, been caught by a wave and pulled underwater.<br />
<br />
My glasses sailed into the air and were gone. It was the last thing I saw. I tried to curl up into a fetal ball with my eyes closed and my arms crossed over my head.<br />
<br />
Then everything stopped and a new crowd surrounded me, police and ambulance attendants. Another guy with a camera ran in front of me, stopped briefly to snap a shot of me being scooped up out of the gutter, and ran off (my bloody face would be plastered all over the front page of the morning and evening editions of the local newspaper the next day).<br />
<br />
A steady stream of blood poured out of my nose. As the ambulance guy tried to lift me out of the gutter, I felt a sharp stab of pain in my lower right back. Later, I found out one of the gangsters whipped me with a bicycle chain.<br />
<br />
The gang bangers didn't have time to get my pants off, so they didn't get to live out their name as a rape gang, not with me anyway.<br />
<br />
It doesn't even make sense to me why there are rape gangs and why they're so open about it. They used to only roam at night in bad neighborhoods, or that's the way I naively thought about certain parts of town. Now, they want to take over whole cities, making their own law or just taking apart the ones we're supposed to live by. Chaotic anarchists who want to run the world.<br />
<br />
For the next week or so, I was in a lot of pain (well, the drugs helped). I couldn't bend at the waist and either had to stand straight up and walk very gingerly, or lay flat on my belly. My mates came over to say hi but they didn't want to stick around much. Maybe they felt guilty that I got hurt and they got away.<br />
<br />
The police interviewed me while I was being put back together at the hospital, but I couldn't remember what any of the gang members looked like. I really wanted to identify them, too. I wasn't scared to say who they were, not then. But it all happened so fast. I didn't remember seeing any faces. I didn't feel any of the individual punches or being whipped by a chain. I didn't even remember being afraid.<br />
<br />
I just knew I had the results of being beaten all over my back and face and the pain to go along with it.<br />
<br />
I suppose if it had happened today, someone would have recommended counseling but back then, psychological treatment for assault and trauma victims wasn't common.<br />
<br />
Eventually, the police rounded up the gangs and they either ended up in prison or deported. The streets were "safe" again, but not for me.<br />
<br />
I'm not just terrified of groups of people but even of being alone with stranger. I remember I was riding on a bus to my job across town a month after I was attacked. There was only one other passenger so I wasn't too scared. Then the bus driver stopped at a transfer point and left to use the bathroom.<br />
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I can't really describe what it's like to be that afraid. I wasn't trembling or sweating, but every muscle in my back and shoulders was stiff and painful. I kept watching and waiting and planning how I'd curl up into a ball and hope I didn't get hurt too bad. The four or five minutes the driver was gone and I was alone with this guy seemed like an hour.<br />
<br />
But nothing happened. The other guy probably didn't notice me. In fact, he completely ignored me and kept reading his newspaper. But being alone with him for even a tiny march of minutes was a nightmare. I have a lot of nightmares, especially when I'm awake.<br />
<br />
I don't go out much anymore. I go to work because I have to, because I have to live, but that's about it. Shopping for food and a few other things I need. I watch TV now instead of going to the movies. My mates have lost interest in visiting me since all I want to do is stay in and play cards.<br />
<br />
A lot of time has passed but I still think about the others like me, the other victims. I wonder if they're still as afraid and alone as I am. I wonder if they still hate their attackers and rapists as much as I do. I have violent fantasies of what I want to do with each of them, but they're just fantasies. If I were alone with even one of them, I'd be too paralyzed to do anything.<br />
<br />
Nothing will be normal for me again. Sodom will never feel safe. Sometimes I wish the whole place would be wiped from the face of the earth.james.pyleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11424800834517755783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7933794355391496434.post-47324371389779038382015-10-12T13:48:00.000-06:002015-10-12T15:20:32.321-06:00The Improbable Rescue<i>This first chapter exercise from the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fiction-Writers-Workshop-Josip-Novakovich/dp/1582975361" target="_blank">Novakovich book</a> is supposed to be longer than what I've written, but it's also supposed to be based on the earliest childhood dream I could remember. I can't remember very much of it. Also, I'm supposed to write it as if it isn't a dream. I suppose I should have kept that from you, but it's pretty hard to pass off a six-year-old's imagination for anything resembling real life, even the "real life" of fantasy or science fiction. Oh, I don't have an older brother. I just made one up to embellish the story a bit. EDIT: One last thing, I was this young in the early 1960s.</i><br />
<br />
His massive frame was a black silhouette against the gray dust swirling in the dim light as he effortlessly carried the little boy across his left shoulder. He could have been the model for the ancient golem or even the Fantastic Four's Thing or the Incredible Hulk. His basic shape was blocky, as if he had been assembled from bricks or stones, a rock for a forearm, another for his hand, thinner rocks for each finger, a small boulder for his featureless head.<br />
<br />
He was as silent as a stone, impervious to the struggles and screaming of the child in his invincible grip.<br />
<br />
In spite of his apparent weight, his footfalls were deathly silent. There was no vibration as he took each ponderous step. No dust exploded from under his soles as they collided with the ground.<br />
<br />
They were in a city, monster and boy, but one without life and light. In spite of his panic, the boy could barely make out the shadows of tall buildings all around. It was like a post-apocalyptic scene from one of his older brother's science fiction or horror comic books. It was like a burned out city, ravaged in an atomic war where there were no winners...<br />
<br />
...except the monster that had somehow stole into the boy's bedroom late at night and spirited the child away to this other world.<br />
<br />
What is the answer to the proverbial question, "If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one there to hear, does it make a sound?"<br />
<br />
If a little boy is crying and screaming for help and straining against unyielding stone sinews with all his tiny might, and his captor, the only thing living or at least moving under it's own power is the only one present, can the terrified child be heard?<br />
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No sound from the monolith on two legs tramping down the streets of a city of ash. The child didn't hear anything the stone monster did and he could barely hear even himself.<br />
<br />
Then a rush of wind like a cyclone from above, and a brilliant bright streak of red and yellow light appeared in the sky. Abruptly, the little boy could now hear who he had been calling to for help all along. He remembered that at the end of one of his favorite cartoons, the main character had said if anyone watching needed him, just call for help and he'd come.<br />
<br />
So the boy called, he called with all his might. And his hero came. <br />
<br />
"Here I come to save the day!"<br />
<br />
Six-year-old Jimmy Winters didn't need to see or hear anything else to know he was about to be rescued by Mighty Mouse. In a few minutes, the silent animated sculpture would be a pile of rubble and Jimmy would be back in his own bedroom at home safe and sound. He couldn't wait for his parents to wake up in the morning so he could tell them all about it. Now his older brother Billy would have to admit that Mighty Mouse was a lot more cool than those other dumb heroes in the comics.james.pyleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11424800834517755783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7933794355391496434.post-79599076307666159102015-10-11T12:27:00.001-06:002015-10-11T15:33:08.714-06:00Jacob and The Angel's Curse<em>I took some liberties with the first assignment from chapter one in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fiction-Writers-Workshop-Josip-Novakovich/dp/1582975361" target="_blank">Novakovich's book</a> and I really took liberties with my source material. This is only a first draft and I'm sure it could use some polishing, but I wanted to get something "out there" while my enthusiasm is high. Let me know what you think. It's the story of something that should have gone right but ended up being terribly wrong.</em><br />
<em><br /></em>
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Jacob held fast to the Angel of God all the while begging for a blessing. This wouldn't have been unusual if it was happening just after Jacob crossed the ford of the Jabbok or if I were reading my Bible, but I saw this just outside the admin building at my high school.<br />
<br />
It was a really ugly fight, not just two guys punching or swatting at each other, but vicious clinging, clawing, and scratching, Jacob was ripping the Angel's shirt right off his chest.<br />
<br />
"Why are you doing this," cried the Angel. "Let go. I don't want to fight."<br />
<br />
Jacob had never been a well-wrapped kid. I can't say that I know him, but he's one of those guys everyone knows about and tries to avoid. This isn't hard since he's a loner, spends most of his time studying in the tents of Shem, a private if somewhat shabby library on the other side of town (although there's some dispute as to whether the proprietor of this "study hall" is really the original Shem).<br />
<br />
And Jacob's a chronic liar. He lied to his Dad, he lied to his brother (bad mistake, Esau has a terrible temper), he lied to his uncle. You just can't believe a single thing he has to say.<br />
<br />
In fact, I wouldn't have believed he was actually wrestling with an Angel unless I, and a bunch of other students (the fight was drawing a pretty big crowd) weren't seeing it for ourselves.<br />
<br />
But while the Angel kept trying to escape, Jacob was clinging to him like a maladjusted toddler clutching at his Mommy while throwing a tantrum.<br />
<br />
"Bless me! Bless me!" demanded Jacob.<br />
<br />
In the next day or two after the fight, I tried to find out where the Angel came from or why he picked that Monday afternoon to visit Jacob, but nobody was sure. The prevalent theory is that Jacob found some ancient tome Shem had been hiding that let this crazy kid summon up the Angel.<br />
<br />
Who knows? Jacob's life is a mess. I can see why he'd want a blessing from an Angel of God. The thing is, the Angel didn't want to give.<br />
<br />
"I will not let you go unless you bless me," Jacob's ultimatum seemed sincere.<br />
<br />
By now the Principal and some teachers were trying to break the fight up, but this being a supernatural affair, the closer they got to the two combatants, the more they looked like they were being pressed down, as if something invisible and pretty damn heavy were pushing them onto the grass.<br />
<br />
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The Angel was weakening. He wanted to get out of there and back to Heaven in the worst way, but Jacob's grip was unbreakable. The Angel's chest was covered with bruises and scratches, although the Angel managed to land a wicked punch on Jacob's thigh.<br />
<br />
"Alright!" the angel gasped. "What is your name?" That caught me by surprise, I figured being an Angel, he knew just about everything.<br />
<br />
"Jacob!" yelled Jacob excitedly, probably thinking his blessing was just around the corner.<br />
<br />
"Well, your name is going to be 'Mud' in just a second if you don't let go," snarled the Angel. "I'm late for an appointment with the Big Guy, and He doesn't like to be kept waiting."<br />
<br />
"Tell me your name," replied Jacob, apparently mistaking a schoolyard brawl for a networking session at a cocktail party.<br />
<br />
"Oh now you've done it," the Angel's tone was increasingly threatening. "My name is hidden! 'Mud' is too good for you."<br />
<br />
Then, quicker than you could say "Lot's wife turned into a pillar of salt," the Angel pushed Jacob, making him shift his weight to his injured leg. Off balance, Jacob lost his grip of the Angel and then the Angel was gone.<br />
<br />
The Angel was right. Being called "Mud" for the rest of his life might have been better than being turned into stone, which is what happened to Jacob. No one said a word. All of us who had been witnesses were taken over by shock or astonishment. Like a ring of iron filings surrounding a magnet, we were silently, slowly drawn closer to the stone statue that used to be Jacob.<br />
<br />
It was a very realistic statue, especially the facial expression of exquisite horror mixed with just a hint of disappointment that his desired blessing was delivered as a curse.<br />
<br />
As our fascination with Jacob's statue wore off, I realized that the police had arrived because of the strobing of red and white light I caught out of the corner of my eye as their cruiser pulled up. But what could they do?<br />
<br />
They took statements from all of us. Said they'd follow up by interviewing Shem (I heard that when they got to Shem's place, they found the old bugger had already pulled out taking every last arcane scroll with him).<br />
Jacob's parents were heartbroken, especially his mother Rachel. Old, blind Isaac, Jacob's Dad, always liked Esau better, but even he was sobbing.<br />
<br />
For his part, Esau, who I always thought would end up killing Jacob someday, was torn apart by Jacob's death, if you can call being turned into sculpted art "death".<br />
<br />
The Abraham family wanted to take Jacob's body for a proper burial in the cave of Machpelah, their private cemetary plot, but being a spiritually created statue, it was unmovable by people or machines. So Las Vegas High School was granted a new if macabre piece of stone artwork just in front of the main administration building.<br />
<br />
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That was six months ago, but I still get kind of startled when I come come around the corner of the building forgetting Jacob is there.<br />
<br />
His parents and brother visit him every weekend, laying flowers by his feet. His Mom especially thought that Jacob was going to grow up to be someone special, to have a unique legacy.<br />
<br />
That's not going to happen now, at least I don't think so. On the other hand, we got a new student transfer in from the other side of the Jordan last week. His name is John, and the other day he said he could raise up children of Abraham from stone.james.pyleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11424800834517755783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7933794355391496434.post-6895180420112498912015-10-09T14:48:00.000-06:002015-10-13T14:32:50.744-06:00I Want to Write What I Don't Write Well<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgraTglsLHj2hsltq5BcDvGFCtFO0dkp5sXg8Y_IBqam2CM4yoE6fD7SmYPsXAin7YEdPM8hn60BKhKZY4_boFwAX5OE3xkU2Wa3fyU8pj2ZBtkfmOCRKe98-V-hLQ1ZwbA31DhaW_ZZkM/s1600/220px-Allen_Steele.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgraTglsLHj2hsltq5BcDvGFCtFO0dkp5sXg8Y_IBqam2CM4yoE6fD7SmYPsXAin7YEdPM8hn60BKhKZY4_boFwAX5OE3xkU2Wa3fyU8pj2ZBtkfmOCRKe98-V-hLQ1ZwbA31DhaW_ZZkM/s1600/220px-Allen_Steele.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Allen Steele: Credit: Wikipedia </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
So I just finished reading a collection of short stories called <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Tales-Time-Space-Allen-Steele/dp/1627556346" target="_blank">Tales of Time and Space</a> written by Allen Steele and I discovered I've been bitten by the bug again.<br />
<br />
Don't get me wrong, I've been a published author for over a decade and at my "day job" I'm a technical writer for a software company, so I'm writing every day. And although I don't contribute to this blog very often, I'm frequently seen or at least read at <a href="http://mymorningmeditations.com/" target="_blank">My Morning Meditations</a> and <a href="http://oldmansgym.com/" target="_blank">The Old Man's Gym</a>, so again, I write very frequently.<br />
<br />
But the one thing all of the works I've ever produced (or almost all, but I'll get to that in a minute) have in common is that none of it is fiction.<br />
<br />
The first writer who ever made me want to write fiction was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlan_Ellison" target="_blank">Harlan Ellison</a>. I don't know what it was, but something about his style and how easy it was to believe his characters were real human beings you could talk to, touch, and connect with, made me want to create people and worlds, too.<br />
<br />
The first (of two) creative writing classes I took was in high school. I think I was a senior. It was for an English credit. We were assigned to write all sorts of poetry, trying to learn the styles associated with, among other things, Shakespearean and Spenserian sonnets. We even got to try our hand at haiku.<br />
<br />
But when it came to writing fiction, my big problem was that the characters and the situations I created were too derivative. They were always some variation of something I'd read or seen on TV.<br />
<br />
My second creative writing class, the one I took because I'd been reading Ellison, was a UC Berkeley extension class which, interestingly enough, was held in San Francisco. I was living in Berkeley at the time, little income, and few friends, and consequently, I had a lot of time on my hands. You'd think that in my early 20s, being more mature than I was in high school, would make a difference.<br />
<br />
So I took this class. I don't remember very much about it except that I had the same problem I encountered in High School. I didn't even believe my own characters were real. How could I expect anyone else to?<br />
<br />
I should say at this point that I took another UC extension class from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_O'Neill" target="_blank">cartoonist Dan O'Neill</a> at about the same time, and this class also addressed fiction writing, but from a very different perspective. I still have an unused copy of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Big-Yellow-Drawing-Book/dp/0967591902" target="_blank">The Big Yellow Drawing Book</a> which was the "textbook" for the class (I highly recommend it for anyone wanting to learn how to draw or for teaching your kids to draw).<br />
<br />
But while I drew cartoons for family and friends over the next several decades (I only do so occasionally now), I never was successful at professionally writing or cartooning or being published in any sense whatsoever.<br />
<br />
The bug that originally bit me in the 1970s buzzed off and only rarely visits its old haunts, probably because it knows it won't overcome my inertia, not for long anyway.<br />
<br />
A few years back, reading a self-published online comic strip called <a href="http://westwardcomic.com/" target="_blank">Westward</a> resulted in me coming up with a plot line and drawing a series of comic strips I planned to put online. In the end, I realized my story idea and drawings weren't very good and I abandoned the project (and unfortunately, Westward's creator eventually discontinued producing new material for the strip).<br />
<br />
I've read two science fiction anthologies before Steele's, one about robots/artificial intelligence, and the other on Mars, but science fiction about Mars that could have been written before the mid-1960s, before we knew that there were no canals, no atmosphere that could sustain animal life, and no hope of finding a "lost civilization" on the Red Planet.<br />
<br />
Only these stories were written in the past several years by science fiction writers working in the 21st century.<br />
<br />
I could hear the bug buzzing around my ears. <br />
<br />
So I finished Allen Steele's collection of short stories earlier today and returned it to the library.<br />
<br />
It wasn't just reading Steele's stories that got to me, it was the paragraph or two he wrote to introduce each one. Steele presented the background of each tale, what inspired it, and what (if any) portion of his actual lived experience he injected into his creations. He gave me a taste of how a science fiction writer writes and where it all comes from (at least for him).<br />
<br />
Since I was at the library anyway, I decided to look up <i>"how to write fiction"</i> in their catalog system. The catalog number for books of that nature is 808.3, so, being quite familiar with the layout of the Boise Public Library, I took myself over to the northwest corner of the second floor, found that section, and looked around.<br />
<br />
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Sadly, books like Orson Scott Card's <a href="http://lynx.ent.sirsi.net/client/en_US/boise/search/detailnonmodal/ent:$002f$002fSD_ILS$002f0$002fSD_ILS:1310024/ada;jsessionid=1FA38B9E4E693B7E14436113C16EC8DE.enterprise-14400?qu=how+to+write+fiction&lm=BOISETVL" target="_blank">How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy</a> weren't immediately available, but the first edition of Josip Novakovich's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fiction-Writers-Workshop-Josip-Novakovich/dp/1582975361" target="_blank">Fiction Writer's Workshop</a> caught my eye (not literally, of course). On an impulse, I checked it out (as well as a copy of Steele's novel <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Jericho-Iteration-Allen-Stelle/dp/0441000975" target="_blank">The Jericho Iteration</a> which, now that I look it up on Amazon, may not be his finest novel, but I didn't want to wade into his <i>"Near-Space"</i> or <i>"Coyote"</i> series just yet).<br />
<br />
I may or may not use this blogspot as the platform for trying out some of the writing exercises in the Novakovich book, but just publicly (to the limited number of followers of this blog) declaring my intentions may push me a little bit farther along this path than I might otherwise go.<br />
<br />
I've started and quit a lot of projects over the years, and as far as I know, this is just one more of them. After all, just because I'm reading a book about fiction writing and practicing writing exercises is no guarantee that I have any actual talent at writing fiction.<br />
<br />
I'm a writer. I want people to like my writing. I like it when what I write is deemed "good" or otherwise appreciated (I get paid). I've probably got too much on my plate right now to take on anything more, but the bug has once again bitten and until the venom wears off (or it doesn't), I'll go where my low-grade fever takes me.<br />
<br />
I just wanted to let someone know.james.pyleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11424800834517755783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7933794355391496434.post-9500802627975239762015-07-07T13:50:00.000-06:002015-07-07T14:14:20.565-06:00Telling a Story<blockquote>
<i>When facts become so widely available and instantly accessible, each one becomes less valuable. What begins to matter more is the ability to place these facts in <u>context</u> and to deliver them with <u>emotional impact</u>. </i></blockquote>
<blockquote>
-Daniel H. Pink<br />
from Part Two: The Six Senses<br />
Five: Story, p.103<br />
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1594481717" target="_blank">A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future</a>
</blockquote>
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I've been thinking about this while preparing for a meeting this afternoon to discuss with the various stakeholders where I work the next steps we should take in our documentation and knowledge management planning.<br />
<br />
We have a nifty new web platform upon which to impress our wisdom and will for the consumption of our customers, partners, and prospects, but between me, customer service, and product, we all have differing approaches to the direction our company should be taking.<br />
<br />
I realize in reading Pink's book, that the reason I blog so much (I only infrequently blog on "A Million Chimpanzees," while I blog incessantly elsewhere). I write in order to tell a story, the story of whatever is happening to me at the moment.<br />
<br />
But why do I tell these stories? To entertain others? To elicit knowledgeable responses from experienced readers about some puzzle or conundrum I've encountered?<br />
<br />
Yes and yes, sometimes. But more often than not, I write in order to process my lived experience, so that <i>I</i> can externalize, by writing <i>my own words</i> and then reading them, what has only existed internally up until I blog about it.<br />
<br />
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I suppose I could <i>tell</i> my story, that is, I could speak it. But as articulate as my spouse says I am, stories make more sense to me when I write them and read them. Information, all by itself, doesn't have all that much meaning until placed within the context of the story.<br />
<br />
Then the light bulb clicks "on" above my head.<br />
<br />
On page 105, Pink quotes Ursula K. LeGuin:<br />
<blockquote>
<i>"The story--from Rumpelstiltskin to War and Peace--is one of the basic tools invented by the human mind for the purpose of understanding. There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories."
</i></blockquote>
In deconstructing clunky User Manuals and API Guides, I'm faced with the challenge of convincing a group of highly technical Left-Brain-dominated workers and managers that the best way to convey what our customers need to know about our product is to tell them a story.<br />
<br />
In fact, Pink suggests that there really is only one relevant story that is told describing the journey of the Left-Directed (L-Directed) knowledge worker through the sometimes painful transitory process of becoming a Right-Brain-Directed (R-Directed) conceptual storyteller, the story of a hero.<br />
<br />
I'll spare you another "blockquoted" paragraph of text. You can find an example of the hero's story in Joseph Campbell's 1949 book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Thousand-Faces-Collected-Joseph-Campbell/dp/1577315936" target="_blank">The Hero with a Thousand Faces</a>.<br />
<br />
In brief however, the hero story has three parts:<br />
<ol>
<li>Beloved hero is confronted by visitors who convince him/her that he/she is worthless/useless and must abandon his/her country.</li>
<li>Hero reluctantly goes into exile, but with the help of kind mentors in a far-away land, becomes transformed into the hero his/her land both wants and needs.</li>
<li>Hero returns as <i>"the master of two worlds"</i> and improves both of them.</li>
</ol>
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I don't know that the <a href="http://www.writethedocs.org/conf/na/2015/" target="_blank">Write the Docs</a> conference I attended last May qualifies as my "hero's journey," but having never attended such an event before, I was reluctant to go. I hate change as much as the next person.<br />
<br />
But now I have returned from my journey possessing some minor sense of transformation, and I've been looking for an opportunity for expression.<br />
<br />
Today may be that opportunity (OK, just one more quote).<br />
<blockquote>
<i>And Xerox--recognizing that its repair personnel learned to fix machines by trading stories rather than by reading manuals--has collected its stories into a database called <a href="http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,28792,00.asp" target="_blank">Eureka</a> that "Fortune" estimates is worth $100 million to the company. </i></blockquote>
<blockquote>
-Pink, p.108
</blockquote>
So in the future, when a customer visits our support website, keyboards a query in the Search field, and then presses Enter, the initial response should always begin (metaphorically), <i>"Let me tell you a story..."</i><br />
<br />
I hope to tell a good story this afternoon.james.pyleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11424800834517755783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7933794355391496434.post-64485013183652483972015-06-02T08:50:00.000-06:002015-06-02T08:55:30.399-06:00Summer Reading for the Technical WriterSummer reading lists are abounding on the web just now as you might expect. I ran into one targeting IT professionals and decided to give it a look. While my reading tastes aren't identical to that of a sysadmin or a coder, there were a few suggested books that piqued my interest.<br />
<br />
Actually, the first one I selected was recommended at the <a href="http://www.writethedocs.org/conf/na/2015/" target="_blank">Write the Docs conference</a> several weeks ago. I ordered it and it's sitting on my desk, but there's a couple of other books I need to work my way through before I tackle Daniel Pink's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1594481717" target="_blank">A Whole New Mind</a>.<br />
<br />
According to the marketing blurb at Amazon:<br />
<blockquote>
The future belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind: artists, inventors, storytellers-creative and holistic "right-brain" thinkers whose abilities mark the fault line between who gets ahead and who doesn't.
</blockquote>
It makes sense that a book aimed at "information workers" should be at the top of my list.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvtGeR9WD-TeMAej2zesRlPC7mrwATiidsU5T2L-OHOj-sOjtGmZBLiSCpfHPktzkQYha0rD5-r0N-bVe5jwPZ_lccOveTZCJhNRKylaYfryHuP_ShCwRgPODIxLOBw7pILcDNBxMnerA/s1600/wizards.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvtGeR9WD-TeMAej2zesRlPC7mrwATiidsU5T2L-OHOj-sOjtGmZBLiSCpfHPktzkQYha0rD5-r0N-bVe5jwPZ_lccOveTZCJhNRKylaYfryHuP_ShCwRgPODIxLOBw7pILcDNBxMnerA/s320/wizards.jpg" width="208" /></a></div>
Then there's Katie Hafner's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up-Late/dp/0684832674/" target="_blank">Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet</a>, which chronicles the origin and development of the Internet, from the Eisenhower administration in the 1950s until the publication date of the book in 1998.<br />
<br />
I've read this book twice before thanks to it being available at my local public library. It's a short and easy read and yet full of fascinating details from the creation of the first router, which was about the size of a refrigerator, to how telnet was invented almost by accident. I highly recommend it for history and trivia buffs.<br />
<br />
Next up is Christian Rudder's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dataclysm-When-Think-Ones-Looking/dp/0385347375/" target="_blank">Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One's Looking)</a>. The review at Amazon says:<br />
<blockquote>
In this daring and original book, Rudder explains how Facebook "likes" can predict, with surprising accuracy, a person’s sexual orientation and even intelligence; how attractive women receive exponentially more interview requests; and why you must have haters to be hot.
</blockquote>
Since I work for an organization that mitigates online, card-not-present fraud for merchants, banks, insurance companies, and other such entities, I have a certain curiosity about identity theft and data privacy (or the lack thereof).<br />
<br />
I recently read Marc Goodman's book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Future-Crimes-Everything-Connected-Vulnerable/dp/0385539002" target="_blank">Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It</a>, and although I am aware that our information on the web is less secure than we imagine, the portrait painted by Goodman is truly frightening. Oscar Wilde's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Picture_of_Dorian_Gray" target="_blank">The Picture of Dorian Gray</a> couldn't be more terrifying...or revealing.<br />
<br />
Nicholas Carr's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing-Brains/dp/0393339750/" target="_blank">The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains</a> tackles the popular question, "Is the Internet making us stupid?" Particularly for millennials and the generation of children now growing up who never experienced a world without the Internet, this is a particularly relevant and poignant question.<br />
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We like to think we're getting smarter because we have such quick and easy access to vast amounts of information, but that access means we don't have to do any mental work to acquire and retain that data. Imagine what doing even simple addition and subtraction was like before the invention of the cheap calculator vs. now. Can today's high school student working at a fast foot joint make change without the cash register "doing the math?"<br />
<br />
Last on my list (for now) is Susan Cain's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Quiet-Power-Introverts-World-Talking/dp/0307352153/" target="_blank">Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking</a>.<br />
<blockquote>
At least one-third of the people we know are introverts. They are the ones who prefer listening to speaking; who innovate and create but dislike self-promotion; who favor working on their own over working in teams. It is to introverts—Rosa Parks, Chopin, Dr. Seuss, Steve Wozniak—that we owe many of the great contributions to society. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
In Quiet, Susan Cain argues that we dramatically undervalue introverts and shows how much we lose in doing so. She charts the rise of the Extrovert Ideal throughout the twentieth century and explores how deeply it has come to permeate our culture.
</blockquote>
This speaks to me quite directly since I'm an introvert and working is groups is difficult if not occasionally painful. Yet it's an absolute necessity in my day-to-day job and existence, particularly since I'm supposed to innovate and create, and yet, promoting that to my employer is an enormous chore I wish would go away or be done by someone else.<br />
<br />
Maybe Cain has some ideas that I can explore and leverage for what I do in my day job and how I experience "the real me."<br />
<br />
Anyone out there have other books you think should be on my list?james.pyleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11424800834517755783noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7933794355391496434.post-15892866370097206042015-05-27T15:43:00.002-06:002015-05-27T15:43:55.811-06:00The Imposter Syndrome is Alive and Well<blockquote>
Impostor syndrome is a psychological phenomenon in which people are unable to internalize their accomplishments. Despite external evidence of their competence, those with the syndrome remain convinced that they are frauds and do not deserve the success they have achieved. Proof of success is dismissed as luck, timing, or as a result of deceiving others into thinking they are more intelligent and competent than they believe themselves to be. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
-<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a>
</blockquote>
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The last presenter for day two of the recent <a href="http://www.writethedocs.org/conf/na/2015/" target="_blank">Write the Docs conference</a> was <a href="http://www.writethedocs.org/conf/na/2015/speakers/" target="_blank">Heidi Waterhouse</a> speaking on <i>"Success is More Than Not Failing."</i> She wasn't the only one at the event to discuss impostor syndrome, but she's the only one who talked about it that made it into my notes.<br />
<br />
Up until the conference, not only did I think I was the only one suffering from the malady, but I didn't even know it had a name.<br />
<br />
Fortunately, the Wikipedia article says it's not so much a mental disorder but rather <i>"an ingrained personality trait."</i> Great, but why me?<br />
<br />
Or should the question be "why technical writers?"<br />
<br />
I can't speak for anyone else, but more often than not in my career, I've been the <a href="http://millionchimpanzees.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-lone-wolf-writer-in-context.html" target="_blank">lone wolf writer</a> in a room full of software developers and network engineers. It's easy (for me, at least) to feel like an uneducated idiot when rubbing elbows with people half my age and even younger who write complicated lines of code for highly sophisticated and competitive products like most people write out shopping lists.<br />
<br />
Even on those very few occasions when I've worked with groups of other writers, our skill sets for so diverse that there was no easy basis for comparison so again, I felt like the lone wolf in search of my pack.<br />
<br />
Interestingly enough, even <a href="http://blog.valbonne-consulting.com/2014/08/16/the-imposter-syndrome-in-software-development/" target="_blank">software developers suffer from impostor syndrome</a>. I never realized that...<br />
<blockquote>
Pair-programming can be particularly stressful but also writing open-source software and activities which push you into being genuine.
</blockquote>
While Waterhouse's presentation and the Write the Docs conference was reassuring, it also presented challenges that actually heightened my particular "syndrome." The company handed over a sizable chunk of change for me to go to Write the Docs and they're entitled to some return on that investment.<br />
<br />
I didn't take all those notes just for my personal edification. My outfit is in the process of not just changing documentation platforms but reconstructing the way we think of things like information and collaboration.<br />
<br />
I'm content to sit at my desk and, having worked with the relevant developers, create content for customer consumption, but what happens when I start making suggestions, particularly to department heads, about changing our collective documentation process?<br />
<br />
Actually, I've already done that since I spearheaded the effort to change how we document our product, but I learned things at the conference that had never occurred to me before and that I think would be valuable additions/changes to what we do and how we think. I'm not suggesting we change horses in midstream, but I think we'd get a lot more mileage out of re-equipping that horse and reorganizing the riders.<br />
<br />
I know there were a number of practical suggestions on how to manage impostor syndrome made at the conference that didn't make it into my notes. However, advice on the Internet is cheap and <a href="http://startupbros.com/21-ways-overcome-impostor-syndrome/" target="_blank">startupbros.com</a> lists <i>"21 Ways to Overcome Impostor Syndrome."</i> Looks like I've got some reading to do.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvLcuD7qcxNDkIsyGr4uI5_l0C2s9y-ayFooEX6D5K180AWvH10qF6aib7SQ7ZSfG2qh_rlJEnLKqgBIS8F8z4sH13PlldCCJjFda92ddvIpXYLBwxbpNrR0FnisncpT3u1SI_1WVflzc/s1600/identity-theft-au.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvLcuD7qcxNDkIsyGr4uI5_l0C2s9y-ayFooEX6D5K180AWvH10qF6aib7SQ7ZSfG2qh_rlJEnLKqgBIS8F8z4sH13PlldCCJjFda92ddvIpXYLBwxbpNrR0FnisncpT3u1SI_1WVflzc/s1600/identity-theft-au.jpg" /></a></div>
More than a week has passed since the end of the conference, and I've created some mental distance between me and that experience. This is making it easier to review my notes, but now I need to organize them and cobble together some sort of presentation, then schedule it, and then give it to a specific audience.<br />
<br />
I can't weasel out the commitment because I've already told my boss that's what I'm going to do.<br />
<br />
I suppose this blog post would be more meaningful if I had already done all that and successfully came out the other side, but blogging is part of how I process information so it's more cognitively and emotionally manageable.<br />
<br />
Put another way, part of blogging for me is managing the "impostor" inside and encouraging that competent writer to acknowledge himself. This is how I prepare myself to go into "battle."<br />
<br />
I keep asking myself, <i>"I wonder if any other people in my field feel this way,"</i> which is an insane question since the conference already answered that query with an abundant, <i>"Yes!"</i><br />
<br />
The syndrome is alive and well...so far.james.pyleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11424800834517755783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7933794355391496434.post-35985569602058493132015-05-22T10:51:00.001-06:002015-05-22T10:51:40.380-06:00The Lone Wolf Writer in ContextAt the recent <a href="http://www.writethedocs.org/conf/na/2015/speakers/" target="_blank">Write the Docs</a> conference, I had the opportunity to briefly speak with one of the keynotes, the gracious <a href="http://writing.rocks/marcia-riefer-johnston-bio/" target="_blank">Marcia Riefer Johnston</a>. I wanted to thank her both for her wonderful presentation and for being of a "similar age" to me. Not having any idea about what to expect, I imagined I'd be the oldest person attending, probably by decades.<br />
<br />
Fortunately, the level of diversity present at the conference included a wide age range, so I didn't feel terribly anachronistic.<br />
<br />
I also had an opportunity to share with Marcia something of my background and current working circumstances. In most places I've worked (such as HP, Micron, and the little-known EmergeCore), including my present job, I've been the "Lone Wolf" technical writer, the only person who does exactly what I do in the shop. While that makes me unique, it can also be kind of lonely. From developers, to operations, to support, to testing, to management, no one completely understands the nature of my process or my pain points.<br />
<br />
The flip side is without access to a community of technical writers, I don't know what's supposed to be "normal".<br />
<br />
All that changed, at least in potential, when Marcia mentioned the <a href="http://www.stc.org/" target="_blank">Society for Technical Communication</a> (STC) and specifically the <a href="http://www.stc.org/about-stc/communities/special-interest-groups/item/lone-writer" target="_blank">Special Interest Group</a> (SIG) <a href="http://stc-lonewriter.org/" target="_blank">Lone Writer</a> (personally, I prefer "Lone Wolf Writer" but I guess you can't have everything).<br />
<br />
I'm still exploring STC and Lone Writer online, but even the possibility of belonging to a larger group of people like me, and particularly a group of "Lone Wolves," is exciting.<br />
<br />
In addition, I'm already beginning to dialog at the new <a href="http://forum.writethedocs.org/" target="_blank">Write the Docs Forum</a>. I know that at the conference, we were all strongly encouraged to <a href="http://www.writethedocs.org/meetups/" target="_blank">organize meetups within our communities</a>, but knowing so little about the technical documentation community, either locally or globally, makes that idea seem incredibly intimidating at present.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKZLGG4Fxosn-WdLGWX2a7s7Lbf55Q2CdY6ZJppVCo4iOTkYuf0FsPFGDyNv6hOPP7pRxhTPr4PyEW3R_6tWi7qgIQF4e_gqPPmUAhMkzUo7tBAU5Zhu-BQUSsNV51clUTKzDAAFlmQTk/s1600/lone-wolf.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKZLGG4Fxosn-WdLGWX2a7s7Lbf55Q2CdY6ZJppVCo4iOTkYuf0FsPFGDyNv6hOPP7pRxhTPr4PyEW3R_6tWi7qgIQF4e_gqPPmUAhMkzUo7tBAU5Zhu-BQUSsNV51clUTKzDAAFlmQTk/s320/lone-wolf.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
I think I'll start out with my contacts being virtual before summoning the chutzpah to make them material.<br />
<br />
I'm still sorting through all of the notes I took during the conference in order to develop a meaningful summary to present to the support manager and staff, but in order to flesh out any changes I'm going to propose to their team and the other related departments, I'll also need to acquire a sense of who I am among my community of peers, even if they are peers at a distance.<br />
<br />
Then I can suggest how to better develop and manage our documentation process and how we conceive of information. Joining STC and the Lone Writer SIG will make me a "Lone Wolf" among many "Lone Wolves," and as a technical writer within the larger technical writing community, I'll become a Lone Wolf Writer who has finally found a context.james.pyleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11424800834517755783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7933794355391496434.post-16534194364467496842015-05-21T13:59:00.002-06:002015-05-21T14:06:00.139-06:00Oh man, I've really ignored this place, Part 2I posted <a href="http://millionchimpanzees.blogspot.com/2013/12/oh-man-ive-really-ignored-this-place.html" target="_blank">Part 1</a> on December 3, 2013 and I've just discovered (re-discovered) that I haven't posted here since January 17, 2014. That's sixteen months of neglect.<br />
<br />
To be fair, I've devoted my time to other blogging venues in the non-technical realm, for the most part, so it's not like I have given up blogging altogether.<br />
<br />
The reason I'm (again) resurrecting <i>"A Million Chimpanzees"</i> is I need a place to specifically chronicle my adventures at the recent <a href="http://www.writethedocs.org/conf/na/2015/" target="_blank">Write the Docs</a> conference in Portland, Oregon.<br />
<br />
Although my efforts to use this blogspot to describe my progress (or lack thereof) in learning some of the basics of programming hasn't worked out (read: "abject failure"), this is the closest thing I have to a technical blog, so it seems fitting that I drag the chimps out of their long slumber and back into the world for the purpose of visiting my first love and my career: technical writing.<br />
<br />
I've almost always been the Lone Wolf writer in whatever job I've had writing. The exception was when I worked for a group that contracted with HP and each of us was paid only "billable hours," rather than having what I'd consider a steady income as the in-house documentarian.<br />
<br />
Even then, we writers represented such a diverse collection of skill sets, that from my point of view, we weren't particularly alike at all.<br />
<br />
The perception of being alone as a technical writer changed for me last Monday and Tuesday as I attended <a href="http://www.writethedocs.org/conf/na/2015/" target="_blank">this conference</a>. I really didn't know what to expect. I've already commented on my experience somewhat in <a href="http://oldmansgym.com/2015/05/19/write-the-docs-conference-day-one-of-two/" target="_blank">Part One</a> and <a href="http://oldmansgym.com/2015/05/20/write-the-docs-conference-day-two-of-two/" target="_blank">Part Two</a> of a different blog, however the focus wasn't specifically what I learned as a writer, nor is that venue particularly "friendly" or at least "relate-able" to other technical writers.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6BtsFgIAyrIzMEuPoggWdRFfVWjDfxJWeUqc9q2yj-4oX7g6swED2rRJ3rZfcDIGcXEVJmV4oaB4vMnQvNLO5RmvYTtA3OciVprpicj8PkW_JcFW1NDVgAuqr7bRUimmTEFwDIn68LbQ/s1600/write-docs-site-logo.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6BtsFgIAyrIzMEuPoggWdRFfVWjDfxJWeUqc9q2yj-4oX7g6swED2rRJ3rZfcDIGcXEVJmV4oaB4vMnQvNLO5RmvYTtA3OciVprpicj8PkW_JcFW1NDVgAuqr7bRUimmTEFwDIn68LbQ/s320/write-docs-site-logo.png" width="320" /></a></div>
So here I am.<br />
<br />
Part of why I'm writing this is to process all of the raw notes I took during the two-day conference. However, I also want to hone my focus on my own progress as a writer with an eye on initiating significant change in my workplace and among other teams.<br />
<br />
Like I said, I'm used to being a Lone Wolf, but I realized at the conference that's got to change in order for not only me to advance as a writer, but for my company to benefit from what I've learned and to improve the way we think of documentation and information.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, along with many insights, I brought a raging headache back with me from Portland, so today's blog post is going to be short. As I work my way through my notes and get more organized, so will my rendition of the history of the 3rd annual Write the Docs conference.<br />
<br />
Please stand by.james.pyleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11424800834517755783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7933794355391496434.post-10162079296101587442014-01-17T12:20:00.000-07:002014-01-17T12:25:14.403-07:00Taking A Different Approach To JavaScript<p>I enjoyed my <a href="http://www.codecademy.com/" target="_blank">Codecademy</a> experience in learning JavaScript, but especially toward the end, I felt like I was having to look up things constantly. I posted a query on their forums and got a very nice response back from one of the mods explaining that this was perfectly normal. He suggested retaking the course to help cement the new concepts and haunting the Q & A forums for more info. In the meantime, I found something else.
<p>Interestingly enough, I found out in one of the Codecademy Q & A's about a site called <a href="http://javascriptissexy.com/" target="_blank">JavaScript.is (Sexy)</a>. It sounds like a silly name, but I think it's actually going to be the solution to my situation. They have an eight week tutorial that I just began titled <a href="http://javascriptissexy.com/how-to-learn-javascript-properly/" target="_blank">How to Learn JavaScript Properly</a>.</p>
<p>There's a <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0596805527/" target="_blank">textbook</a> involved, and they recommend a <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/learn_js_in_seattle/comments/1tziaa/new_study_group_starting_january_2014/">related reddit study group</a>, signing up for <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/" target="_blank">Stack Overflow</a> and, interestingly enough, using <a href="http://www.codecademy.com/" target="_blank">Codecademy</a> for practice.</p>
<p>You can click the link I provided to see all of the requirements for the class, but I like the organization and structure involved. It also provides me with the format for repeating the Codecademy JavaScript course as well as adding more content via the other class elements.</p>
<p>Since this is a work requirement, I need to stick with it and I guess that's the secret, especially for people like me who aren't "natural" programmers. I write in English everyday for a variety of purposes, professional, semi-professional, and personal, so I have plenty of practice in that arena. If I did the same with JavaScript, even though I find it less intuitive than my native written and spoken language, I can only imagine that coding in JavaScript will get a little bit easier.</p>
<p>I haven't forgotten HTML5 and CSS3, but I'm not sure combining that with JavaScript in the same learning effort is going to be effective. I may need a different plan for that learning path. Right now, in addition to my professional and personal life, I'm focusing on this plan.</p>
<p>Wish me luck.</p>
<p>I'll be back at some point to let you know how things are panning out.</p>james.pyleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11424800834517755783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7933794355391496434.post-39856955174820862072013-12-15T15:15:00.000-07:002013-12-15T16:24:18.430-07:00Ten Days Down the RoadThis always happens when I start studying. I get sidetracked. My actual work started to heat up, preventing me from proceeding with the CSS book. I did receive <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Training-Guide-Programming-HTML5-JavaScript/dp/0735674388/" target="_blank">Training Guide: Programming in HTML5 with JavaScript and CSS</a> nearly a week ago and started noodling around in that, but didn't get too far.<br />
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<a href="http://www.certforums.com/forums/ciw-certifications/49767-unique-opportunity-re-enter-certification-land.html" target="_blank">I was advised</a> this would be a good book to learn from even without working in Windows 8 and with Visual Studio (I'm not interested in the certification, just learning the information), but that means I get to skip a few chapters. The book is organized in "waves," so to speak, so you first get introduced to HTML, then JavaScript, then CSS. Later, you get more advanced information on HTML, then JavaScript, then CSS again, and so on. I'm only on page 32, so you can imagine things are still pretty elementary.</div>
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On the other hand, I did start the <a href="http://www.codecademy.com/" target="_blank">Codecademy</a> <a href="http://www.codecademy.com/tracks/javascript?jump_to=4ff5f0db990be7000304059a" target="_blank">JavaScript tutorial</a>, but as usual, I got bogged down toward the end of "Introduction to Functions in JS." I've appealed for help to the forums so I guess I'll see what the error of my ways is by the by. </div>
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I thought I was doing reasonably well there for awhile, but then the problems seemed to assume more knowledge than I had. I thought I had missed some key portion of a previous lesson and went back, working my way forward again, but it didn't help. One exercise gives me both an error and also passes me on to the next exercise, so that's confusing. On top of that, I thought my code was written exactly to specs.</div>
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The other exercise is beyond me. I don't find enough information in the instructions or the previous exercises to allow me to write code that doesn't complain at me. I know for actual programmers, these lessons would be painfully elementary, but to me, they're locked black boxes with no way in.</div>
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My real problem is that I don't naturally think like a programmer. I've read arguments back and forth on the web about whether anyone can learn to code. Sort of like the message in the Pixar film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0382932/" target="_blank">Ratatouille</a> (2007), "Anyone can cook." </div>
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I believe anyone can cook but not that anyone can cook well. The question remains, can anyone learn to code, even at an elementary level, or is programming a skill set for a specific population that no one outside that group can acquire? I feel like Codecademy's "teaching style" is good in that they don't just lead you around by the nose, giving you all the code upfront and then simply having you copy and paste, and then run short, small programs. On the other hand, when you get stuck, you're stuck. The hints on the last two exercises weren't helpful in the slightest.</div>
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Forums can be incredibly slow to respond, depending on how attentive the mods are, so I don't know how long I'll need to wait for a clue let alone an answer. A large part of programming is debugging, but that requires a sufficient understanding of how the code works to find the problem. I'm not there yet. The point of setting these work goals is to see if I can ever get there. Now that my job performance is riding on it, I'll have to figure out a way or be prepared (at least) to eat large helpings of humble pie.</div>
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That's my report, such as it is.<br />
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<b>Addendum:</b> Not that much time passed and I got <a href="http://www.codecademy.com/forum_questions/52ae222d548c356a60002f54#answer-52ae2b737c82caf585003203" target="_blank">two helpful responses on the forum</a>. Turns out I made some minor, newbie errors. Oh duh. Now, back on track.</div>
james.pyleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11424800834517755783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7933794355391496434.post-85680139095567413842013-12-05T15:18:00.000-07:002013-12-05T15:18:44.994-07:00Day Three of My Forey into CSS<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7a6QMtBDtAF4ulfhbqLzK8RIpERiSvET0-OjX5kKBLuqDUGMJS08MwX_AAMcfNGSNhR5IIRQnNED4cPhmnpLLJ70-iWAMy8OZxXpzfgx8u3ntKXZnxI8s_GwH630kc_IU7vUyceqsopA/s1600/css_book-3.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7a6QMtBDtAF4ulfhbqLzK8RIpERiSvET0-OjX5kKBLuqDUGMJS08MwX_AAMcfNGSNhR5IIRQnNED4cPhmnpLLJ70-iWAMy8OZxXpzfgx8u3ntKXZnxI8s_GwH630kc_IU7vUyceqsopA/s1600/css_book-3.gif" /></a></div>
After the limitations I discovered in learning CSS as part of the <a href="http://www.codecademy.com/tracks/web" target="_blank">Codecademy Web Fundamentals</a> track, I decided I needed something a little more in-depth. I considered another online program such as <a href="http://www.lynda.com/" target="_blank">Lynda.com</a>, but they cost bucks. OK, not a lot of bucks, but I didn't feel like bugging my boss for his credit card again, especially since I already made him <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Training-Guide-Programming-HTML5-JavaScript/dp/0735674388/" target="_blank">buy me this book</a>.<br />
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So I decided to look through some of the other books I've collected over the years and have been ignoring, and I selected <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-CSS-Anthology-Essential-Tricks/dp/0980576806" target="_blank">this book</a> from 2009. Yes, I know there's a <a href="http://www.sitepoint.com/store/the-css3-anthology-4th-edition/" target="_blank">more recent edition</a> available, but this one is in hand right now, so why wait? It seems enough to get me started and I'll have a leg up on CSS by the time the other book arrives.<br />
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The question now is whether or not to just concentrate on CSS or to do as Codecademy previously (through automation) suggested and <a href="http://www.codecademy.com/tracks/javascript" target="_blank">move on to JavaScript</a> via their tutorial? Interestingly enough, that track is telling me that I finished the first section in <i><b>Introduction to Programming</b></i>. I hadn't realized I'd let so many of these tasks incomplete until revisiting the site of my old haunts, or perhaps I should call them "my old sins."<br />
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I suppose it wouldn't hurt to at least see what I was supposed to have learned in the distant past. Especially since <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Training-Guide-Programming-HTML5-JavaScript/dp/0735674388/" target="_blank">the book I ordered from Amazon</a> yesterday addresses HTML5, CSS3, and (drumroll) JavaScript.<br />
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The <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-CSS-Anthology-Essential-Tricks/dp/0980576806" target="_blank">CSS book</a> I'm using at the moment is rather slow going, but it's taking me over some really basic stuff I went through at Codecademy, and I could probably use the review to continue cementing this into my leaky memory.
Oh, I installed the <a href="http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/" target="_blank">TextWrangler</a> code editor on my Mac at work. Not the greatest tool I've used, but it's free and does a descent job. I really miss how the online editor at Codecademy worked. You could toggle back and forth between the HTML and CSS tabs to do the editing, but the Results window instantly showed your changes. Beats having to continually refresh a web browser.<br />
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I find it interesting that after ignoring this blog for over a year, I should be writing daily blog posts here. Go figure.james.pyleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11424800834517755783noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7933794355391496434.post-37650147957996692442013-12-04T15:55:00.000-07:002013-12-04T15:55:14.495-07:00Finished Codecademy's Web Fundamentals Tutorial, but...<p>I finished Codecademy's <a href="http://www.codecademy.com/tracks/web" target="_blank">Web Fundamentals</a> tutorials They lessons are broken down into the following sections:</p>
<ol>
<li>Introduction to HTML</li>
<ol>
<li>HTML Basics</li>
<li>Build Your Own Webpage</li>
</ol>
<li>HTML Structure: Using Lists</li>
<ol>
<li>HTML Basics II</li>
<li>Social Networking Profile</li>
</ol>
<li>HTML Structure: Tables, Divs, and Spans</li>
<ol>
<li>HTML Basics III</li>
<li>Clickable Photo Page</li>
</ol>
<li>Introduction to CSS</li>
<ol>
<li>CSS: An Overview</li>
<li>Design a Button for Your Website</li>
</ol>
<li>CSS Classes and IDs</li>
<ol>
<li>CSS Selectors</li>
<li>Sorting Your Friends</li>
</ol>
<li>CSS Element Positioning</li>
<ol>
<li>CSS Positioning</li>
<li>Build a Resume</li>
</ol>
</ol>
<p>Before my tutorial "hiatus" some months ago, I had stopped right after "Clickable Photo Page" and before "Introduction to CSS". A perfect place for me, actually. I did the CSS section in two days and felt pretty confident until I got into "CSS Positioning." Even though I solved all the problems (there's a lot of help) and successfully completed the tutorial (earning various "badges" along the way), when I built my Resume as the last task in the CSS section, it looked awful. Technically, the code was all correct, but the header stacked over the left and right divs and I could never figure out how to correctly style the text in the footer.</p>
<p>I certainly give props to the folks at Codecademy for how well this tutorial flowed. I've gotten farther in understanding CSS than half a dozen books and various websites have taken me. But when I was prompted to take the JavaScript tutorial next, I knew I was hardly ready. There's <strong>a lot</b> more to web design than what I learned in this set of lesson. Got "intermediate web design," folks?</p>james.pyleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11424800834517755783noreply@blogger.com0