Sunset

Chris: Yesterday when the sun was setting I saw a castle out that way.
Alex: You should tell Erin. She'd like that.
Chris: Well it wasn't really a castle. It was a big building. But you can only see it when the sun is behind us. Then it reflects off the top.

At sunset Chris found Erin and brought her to the window. It was a clear day, and the flatness of the desert made it feel like you could see forever. When the sun had almost gone below the horizon the building appeared as a shiny specter. Only the top was lit, which made it appear to float in the air.
Erin: Wow... that is pretty.
Chris: I'm surprised it's there at all. And that we haven't seen it before. Maybe you can only see it on a totally clear day.
Erin: That must be illegal, how few lights they're using. It doesn't look illuminated at all. Except for the sun.
Chris: How long does an alien occupation usually last?
Erin: Haha, there isn't any usual outside of science fiction. Why are you thinking about it?
Chris: I just want to be able to talk to people without it having to go through an automatic translator.
Erin: You wouldn't be able to talk to me without it.
It was true; Erin wasn't from Earth.
Chris took his frustration out on the translation algorithm by calling Erin a made-up word. She must have heard something else because she answered "I can't".

Next day Chris had disappeared. Erin waited for sunset to watch the castle and imagine Chris had gone there.
Alex found her standing by the window.
Alex: Wow, there really is a castle.
Erin: That can't be legal, can it? Using no lights like that?
Alex: I have trouble believing it's even real.
Erin: Let's measure it, though.

They got a spectrometer and found that the total power emitted was many times below the legal minimum.
Alex: Unless there's something way down in radio waves, or way up in gamma rays.
Erin: That would be scary.
Alex: It would be fitting.

Eda

There was an answer. KMFE unfolded the piece of paper and looked at it.
Then he looked back up at EKA and smiled.

EKA cringed slightly and looked away. He glanced up at :P. She briefly
made eye contact then looked away. EKA walked out of the room and KMFE
followed.

Outside it was raining. EKA got out an umbrella. KMFE did not seem to
notice the rain. EKA felt very cold. They sat at the bus stop not talking.

The bus got in an accident. They stood outside for three more hours in
the rain. KMFE stared at the Delaware the whole time. EKA thought
eventually he'd have to get bored and look at something else, but KMFE
watched the river for three hours. When a bus finally came KMFE didn't
get on it.

KMFE walked two blocks to the bridge, then into the middle of the bridge
and stood there, watching the river. He tried to imagine that n was
standing next to him, also watching the river, but he couldn't. She
didn't exist for him anymore.

He wasn't really sure if the n that he knew ever existed. Perhaps he
just made her up. So that n did notexist for herself. Or for anyone
else. She once existed for KMFE, in a strange symbolic story, but not
anymore. She's gone entirely.

Most of human history is lost entirely. Most dreams are forgotten. Most
people are forgotten. Millions of years from now it won't matter if the
story of n was lost. KMFE tried to look at the river and think
ofCrossing Brooklyn Ferry. How many people had stood here wondering
about a lost dream? But his mind felt blank.

John Hurum says a website about the primate Eda got 1.2 billion hits. Do
these people want to recover the lost memory of evolutionary history?
But more importantly, did someone know Eda, and idolize her, and dream
about her, and form an imaginary story about who she was?

Music

KMFE: Hey, how about we play that one that goes like...
He hummed a few notes.
EKA: Yeah, that's a good one.

Jo: You mean you play that song together and you don't know what it's
called?
KMFE and EKA looked at each other. KMFE shrugged and shook his head.
KMFE: I don't know. I don't know if anyone ever told me the name. I
learned it from listening.
EKA: Yeah, me neither.

When they started playing Jo interrupted.
Jo: That's called Sausuma.
EKA: Oh. Cool. Now we know.

Later that day,
EKA: Hey, how about we play that one again, that one that Jo had some
name for?
KMFE: Right, that one. Sure.
From then on they called the song "that one that Jo had some name for".

KMFE: This song has too many notes in it.
EKA: It goes faster if you play them all at once.
KMFE held down the sustain pedal and smashed his foot on the quiet pedal.
KMFE: True, that was a lot faster.
EKA: It had a lot of different harmonies. Some interesting dissonance.
KMFE: Yeah I think we've run out of ideas.

SIRS

I said to AR "I confessed my love to someone in an instructional rating
survey"
"Oh god I hope it wasn't me"
I looked at her and said nothing.
AR laughed a horrified laughter.
I told her it was for expos.
That means that the professor knows you. I wonder if she'll know that
it's me who wrote it?
"I hope not." AR said. "I don't like it when my professors know too much
about me"
"Well I'm sorry I ruined that"
AR tried to say something that started with "That's ok" but there was no
honest way to do that. She gave a few false starts and asked "What did
you write?"
"I wrote that I admired you, that I enjoyed knowing you this year, that
it was too bad you were so happy to see the semester end because I would
miss you. And I wrote that I do miss you, because when she reads it you
will be far away. But even after writing all those papers I still
couldn't say what I really liked about you, or how I really felt. So I
left that out."
"Yeah I really was happy for this semester to end - but not because of you"
"I know - but it still hurts a little bit"

Communism

KMFE set up the Committee for a Reasonable Communist Revolution (CRCR)
because it was the best thing he knew how to do at the time. He
explained their purpose at the first meeting.

KMFE: People are not particularly enthused with communism.
Brian: I hope this was not some sort of a trick for you to say
everything you don't like about communism.
KMFE: All economic systems are out of fashion these days. Capitalism has
taken the hardest hit, but really people won't trust something new and
dramatically different.

KMFE: The goal is to tie the goals of this revolution to a fight against
corruption. People can see the harm corruption does.

KMFE: I don't really buy that communism is an economic system. It's
really a way of thinking about things. It's a social concern. And
honestly, when capitalism enters the debate, it too is more of a social
concern than an economic system. At heart, every society is capitalist,
even the most oppressively controlled.

KMFE: So that brings us here, basically. And where else are you gonna
find a communist revolution committed to free markets?

The discussion then turned to what the specific goals of the revolution
should be. KMFE made it clear that the protection of free markets was
not for efficiency (in fact, he admitted he didn't really care about
efficiency). It was for peace. Free markets may be the most viable
defense against war.

They decided that before spending too much time figuring out the goals,
they ought to put some limitations on what the revolution could and
could not do. The problem with so many revolutions is that they are
tainted – sometimes irreparably – by actions counter to their original
goals. So it was thought necessary to lay out some strict rules:

Freedom of speech, of the press, of religion, of assembly, and all other
freedoms currently granted by the US constitution will not be restricted
in any way, including through legal action or intimidation.

The basic function of the economy necessary to sustain life in this
country will not be interrupted.

No one will be killed or threatened.

No action will be taken that has a good chance of causing anarchy.

All actions that affect the country as a whole will be decided in a
manner as democratic as possible.

No revenge will be taken on parties that oppose or resist the revolution.

While the goals of the revolution were still unclear, they all agreed
that they had one of the best set of prohibitions. This was an
encouraging start.

The Mermaid

So I was impressed by a few things. I was impressed that
xxnucl34rk1tt3nxx had written a coherent story entirely through Twitter
over the course of 7 months. I don't generally think of people named
xxnucl34rk1tt3nxx as having that kind of attention span. I was actually
even impressed by the content of the story. But what really piqued my
interest were the things the story didn't say, the gaps in between the
tweets.

So I'll spare you the juicy details (you can go read them for yourself
if you want. This is the internet, after all) and say that it was a
fairly straightforward first-encounter-to-culminating-sex-scene romance
between a man and a mermaid. The man's boat had been smashed apart on
the rocks near the Orkney Islands and left him stranded. As he's sitting
on the rock at sunrise, head in his hands going over his miseries and
wondering what can he possibly do next, he hears the mermaid, who
happens to be sitting on the same rock behind him, playing a harp.

The next tweet is what caught my eye and got me to actually keep
reading. It read simply "she was playing good day sunshine". Then the
story moves on, no further comment. That's a Beatles song. It's not some
eerie mermaid tune. But if you think about it, if mermaids actually
exist, and if they can have harps and play music, it's not any harder to
believe that they can play Beatles songs. So I was impressed that
xxnucl34rk1tt3nxx trusted her audience to realize and accept this fact
with no further explanation. This story was meant as a mutual exercise
between author and reader.

The story allots 23 tweets to describing the man. xxnucl34rk1tt3nxx
tells us every detail of the man's physical characteristics. And he is
beautiful. The mermaid gets only one tweet: "she was blond". Since this
is fiction, the man could have had this romantic story with any woman on
earth. xxnucl34rk1tt3nxx chose to involve a mermaid, a creature known
for its beauty, and then make no use of it. From this I can only
conclude that xxnucl34rk1tt3nxx saw herself as the mermaid, but why that
would be so, and even then why she would give herself no defining traits
beyond hair color, is still to me a mystery.

The next couple of months aren't as good. So far xxnucl34rk1tt3nxx had
given the narrative a sort of melancholy bite that made it sound like
she was two weeks away from suicide. The enigmatic "she was blond"
preceded a two week pause during which xxnucl34rk1tt3nxx apparently
cheered up quite a bit, and it just wasn't the same. It didn't get good
again until the scene with the kiss.

The kiss itself warrants no more words than "he kissed her", but it's a
really big deal for the mermaid. The man sees she's so pleased and
surprised that he asks her if she's ever kissed before. "You mean it has
a name?" she asks, presumably shocked. She decides it must be "some
silly ritual from New Jersey" (which is where the man is from). She's
quite hurt, because she thought it was something new and special the man
had made up, and it's just part of some game they play back home.

The rest of the story isn't interesting until the end. Specifically, how
abruptly it ends, just at the close of the first and only sex scene. The
man's still stuck there on the rock. He has no food or fresh water, no
phone, no clothes at this point, no transportation. xxnucl34rk1tt3nxx
has been with this man in fiction for 7 months now, and she leaves him
there. Leaves him either to die there, as things are set to happen, or
be rescued in a plot the reader must dream up.

Rereading the story before I wrote these comments I noticed that the sex
scene itself is a bit rushed, like she's trying to get it over with real
fast. I suspect the motivation to ditch the fictional man existed long
before the story actually ended. But then in Twitter everything seems a
bit rushed, and I might be imagining it.

True Statements

JL: Everything is determined.
KMFE: Can you elaborate on that?
JL: For every thing that happens, there is a true statement that says
that that happens. You take this set of true statements, and it
describes everything. So everything is predetermined.
KMFE: Ah, so, if, say, thing 'x' happens, you say there is a true
statement that says that 'x' happens?
JL: That's
right.

KMFE: And what is that
statement?

JL: 'x' happens, for whatever 'x'
is.
KMFE: That's not a
statement.

JL: Yes it is. 'x' happens, where 'x' is some event. How is that not a
statement?
KMFE: Because you didn't say what 'x'
is.
JL: 'x' could be anything. If 'x' were 'it rains today', the statement
would be 'it rains today happens'.
KMFE: Ah, but you see the key there is you had a way to describe what
'x' is. If you can't do that, you can't form a statement. Now give me a
chance to explain something, because you happen to have wandered into
one of my favorite philosophical
traps.

Now, I don't know much about the real world. So I'm going to start by
talking about abstract things. I want to convince you that it's naive to
assume that "x happens" must be a statement.

Do you know about cardinal numbers? Or countable and uncountable sets?
JL: Yes, I do.
KMFE: All right, good. So let's talk about the real numbers. Because
there are more real numbers than integers. Now we form statements out of
symbols, and we have at most countably many symbols. So the set of
statements is at most countable. That means that there is a real number
about which there is no statement.

It goes deeper than that, in fact. Our brains have at most countably
many thoughts. So there is a real number that it is impossible to even
think about, even given an infinite amount of time.
JL: But you're assuming you have countably many
symbols.
KMFE: Well, it doesn't actually matter how many symbols you have. You
take the power set of the set of symbols, and you've got something too
big. So no matter what there are some "things" you can't form statements
about.

JL: So how does this apply to the real
world?
KMFE: Now, I don't know whether everything is really determined. And I
don't know whether there really are countably many things in the real
world. I suspect you don't either. So at the very least your argument is
inconclusive. But I would like to show that while these true statements
might, in some universes, determine every "thing" that happens, they
wouldn't... really. Not the way we think of things. They wouldn't get
every interpretation of every thing, which is what we really think about
when we think about a thing.

So, say thing 'x' happens, and we have (because we're lucky, mind you) a
statement P that basically says"x happens". And say we have lots of
statements like this, P0, P1... etc., for every thing at every timeand
place.

Now another way to interpret the event at P0 is "not P1", which is
guaranteed to be a statement. Or, if P1 happens to be true then, too,
you could say "P1" instead of "not P1". It's not important, really. The
point is that's another way to interpret what goes on. For example,
you're sitting on the grass. Another way to interpret that is "you're
not eating potatoes". Makes sense, right?

In fact, for every subset of the statements P0, P1... you have a
corresponding interpretation. (Note that if the subset is infinite the
interpretation cannot be phrased as a statement, yet it is clearly still
a distinct way of looking at it). So the number of interpretations is at
least as big as the power set of the number of statements, so, again,
too big.

JL: This all sounds very abstract and contrived.
KMFE: It is, but I don't think it's any more abstract or contrived than
a true statement for every thingthat happens. Mind you statements are a
very human construction. They don't lend themselves to defining the
universe. And if you try to use them that way you have to expect to run
into mathematical problems. And if you're dealing with a mathematical
concept anyway, it's not fair to say that those problems don't matter.

Classroom

AR looked up from her desk and saw KMFE. He was resting his head in his hands and was still wearing a thick coat. His pockets were filled with newspaper and books. She took out an mp3 player she had bought two days ago. Set it on her desk in front of her. Pushed a button. Jumped back. KMFE watched and wished she weren't distracted so he could talk to her. MK walked in looking tired and sat down in front of AR. He turned around. MK: Hi AR AR: Hi MK. Did you finish your essay? MK: I'll start it tomorrow. AR: It's due tomorrow! MK: I know. I'll do it before class. AR: I finished mine. I did it over the weekend. KMFE got out Das Kaptial and started reading. Then he took off his coat and went back to reading. He glanced at AR for just a second. He'd try and say hi to her later. David and Chris walked in with takeout. It made the room smell like food. AR was hungry but she didn't want to eat anything. MK asked for a fry. David said something in a faux-cocky voice and handed one over. KMFE wouldn't have time to eat before his next class. David and Chris hadn't started their essays either. They weren't worried. KMFE had several pages of stream-of-consciousness thoughts. He didn't understand his strategy, but somehow it worked. It was more about thinking than about writing. David and Sonali started arguing about whether there had been a police officer in the dorm the previous night. More people came in and not everyone could sit where they wanted to. The professor set lots of stuff on her desk and started moving papers into piles. She took a drink from her gallon seltzer bottle. Everyone wanted to get out of there for some reason. The professor didn't enjoy this class. The students were all in the engineering school and didn't like writing. AR wanted to go back to her dorm room. It was nice and peaceful there and people didn't ask you to do things. You didn't have to talk there. But KMFE thought it was worth it to be there because AR was there. She even lived on the same floor as him but he'd never see her in the dorm. Here he could at least talk to her. Though he didn't. He wished she didn't want to leave, but if he could have got her out of there, he would have. KMFE put away Das Kapital. David and Chris finished their takeout and threw away the styrofoam trays. AR put away her mp3 player and got out the New Humanities Reader. KMFE decided to say hi to her after class.

Semantic Externalism

On October 21 Robert Varley was arrested for seeking to sell weapons to terrorists. Over the past three months the FBI had conducted a sting, posing as a representative of Al Qaeda. Mr. Varley, who owns a manufacturing business in West Virginia, was approached by an undercover FBI agent seeking to purchase a large quantity of "dual-use" equipment. The FBI agent informed Mr. Varley on 8 separate occasions that the supplies would be used as weapons in anti-US terrorist attacks. Semantic Externalist Russel Nguyen will defend Mr. Varley. Mr. Nguyen argues that because Mr. Varley had never been approached by actual terrorists and only by FBI agents, when Mr. Varley expressed approval of selling dual-use equipment for use in terrorist attacks, he was actually expressing approval of selling equipment to an undercover FBI agent. The meaning of Mr. Varley's statements, which were recorded and will be used as evidence in the trial, must be interpreted in the context in which they were expressed, and their meaning is partly determined by external reality. Mr. Nguyen claims that Mr. Varley is guilty of nothing more than cooperating with a US government agency. The FBI is not impressed by Mr. Nguyen's argument. They argue that since the mental state of Mr. Varley was identical to that of a person approached by actual terrorists, within Mr. Varley's own reality a crime has been committed. Since no experiment performed by Mr. Varley revealed a distinction between an FBI sting and actual terrorists, the two situations are one and the same. Solopsist Michelle Clunn argued that the FBI's argument does not go far enough. No experiment performed by Mr. Varley could reveal that he was not a brain in a vat being dropped from a three-story building on a passing pedestrian. According to Ms. Clunn the Justice Department should be prosecuting Mr. Varley for all crimes that experiment cannot rule out. In response to criticism from Mr. Nguyen that this would be "a mockery of innocent until proven guilty", Ms. Clunn said "we cannot rule out" the possibility that someone has proven Mr. Varley guilty of all these crimes. The case has been dubbed a "philosophical judgment day". "The federal courts of the United States will have to decide, once and for all, whether statements derive their meaning only from the mind of the speaker, or in part from the external world" said Louis Patmos, a lawyer familiar with the case. Mr. Varley will be tried by a federal district court in West Virginia.

Honesty

Jo: You don't want to admit that you really want to know about n. KMFE: I want to know about ll way more than n. Jo: You want to know about other people, not you or her. That's why you don't want to be specific. She asked if you'd like to clarify, but you're not going to do that, are you? KMFE: I'll have to give it awhile. Maybe I should give an example. About ll. But that would sound like I'm accusing her. Jo: She's not your spy, however much it may have seemed that way once. KMFE: How am I going to complete the stories if I don't know... the stories? It's like taking statistics from a biased sample. If you don't know how it's biased you can't get a good result. Jo: That's really how life is, isn't it? You never get an unbiased story. Ever. There will always be mysteries. KMFE: I am a curious person. Jo: That is becoming increasingly obvious KMFE: A long time ago I came up with a trick to aggravate my curiosity. I would avoid finding out what the color puce looks like. It worked well because it's a little detail I could have looked up any time I wanted. MC liked that idea. Other people tortured me about it. Jo: Did you eventually give up? KMFE: No. But honestly I lost interest. It's enough work for me not to figure it out based on context. But the story about n, that bothers me. And with that one I don't have a choice. Nobody knows the answer. The answer doesn't exist. Jo: Did you ever ask PL the answer? KMFE: I might have. I don't remember. Did I ever tell her what n means? I've honestly forgotten so much. Jo: She might know. KMFE: I don't want her story. Jo: You should, though. She'd want yours. KMFE: No she wouldn't. She doesn't like my story. Jo: It looked like she did in that last email. KMFE: I don't know what the deal with that was. It was late. And she avoided the question. Jo: She didn't understand the question. You hid the question on purpose. KMFE: She tried to make it about her. Jo: As well she should have. And it should have been about her. KMFE: That email did actually make me feel a little better. Jo: I don't think the scary story is true. KMFE: It is, though. Maybe not with the real n, who I don't even know. It's true somehow. Or I'm scared of change. Jo: Well, I don't mean to criticize your whole way of thinking. Just have some faith in what PL told you. I think she meant it way more honestly than you will ever admit.

Snowman

I pushed snow around into a large ball and watched David do the same. We hauled the snow together into amessy stack. I gouged out three cavities to make eyes and a mouth. Then I stepped sideways to a door, turned the knob, took out some white rope, and tossed it to David. We pushed stakes into the ground and wound the rope around them, tying it into a loop. The rope made the pattern of a five-pointed star around the snowman. I waved to a face staring out of a window in the chocolate factory. More faces accumulated at the windows. Orange gloves threw a stick over the fence and I pointed at it when it landed. David picked it up and threw it at the snowman, knocking off a piece of snow. I picked it up and threw it again. We repeated this over and over again until the snowman was obliterated. A truck drove by with a picture of the dead snowman on the side. A dark cloud came overhead and Orange gloves went inside as snow began to hit my head. The snow pushed me around and it was heavy. David and I ran inside as the sky turned black and it became night. Looking out the window at the chocolate factory I saw there were new people there, with torches lit on poles and laughing and talking. They were there all night. In the morning the house was surrounded by snowmen. I felt sick and didn't want to go outside. It was still snowing.

Steam

Solomon lumbered into the steamy room. David hadn't shown up yet so Solomon took off his backpack and sat down in front of the table. He wiped an inch of slippery soot from the surface with his arm, clearing a spot for him to write. The table shook at the cacophonous bellow of David's steam bike outside the window. Gravel blasted up by the studded tires drew fresh scars in the glass panes. Two minutes later David trudged into view, hair sopping wet, with plumes of steamy vapor rising from his soot-encrusted clothes. He spat a mouthful of grit into the floor and sat down across from Solomon. "Like a chip?" Solomon offered, fishing a limp sodden potato chip from the bowl in front of him. It tore apart, and Solomon plunged his fingers in to fish it out, trying futilely to separate the potato from the gravel. "No thanks, I just had some steamed kale" replied David, shaking the murky water from his tangled mane onto the chips. "All right, let me give you the story" began Solomon. "It started like this. In the middle of conquering New Vaporia, King Pistonio interrupted an alien invasion, which has triggered their wrath upon our kingdom of Turbineilles. Consequently Pistonio has asked us to redesign the steam car factory for weapons production. Here, let me sketch the factory in its current layout for you." Solomon removed the cap from his pen allowing thick billowing clouds of steam to escape and fill the room, blocking out all the light. The pen whizzed into action with a jack-hammer rattling, spraying David's face with a speckled display of ink. Solomon waited for the mechanism to heat up, then proceeded. "The perimeter has a U shape, like this." He ran the needle-sharp stylus over the page, tearing the limp paper and wadging it up in a crumple. He tried to piece it back together with chain-link brass tape, but this only made the problem worse. "Perhaps we could go there now and you could show me" David suggested helpfully. "Sure, let's do that!" Solomon coughed through clouds of amorphous undulating vapor. They went outside and hopped on David's steam bike. It was a marvel of technology and art. The exquisite brass-plated gears rolled over each other in perfect harmony, turning chemical energy to swift, linear motion in a kind of elegant dance. Or rather, it could have done that if the whole thing weren't covered in a thick gelatinous ooze, marked and scratched from grit, sand and the occasional projectile sledge hammer, and tragically equipped with a noisy, shaking, belching steam turbine, the heat from which warped and deformed the mechanism from its manufacturing specifications with startling enthusiasm. David and Solomon both wore goggles, helmets and thick leather coats to protect themselves from the onslaught of engineering. They rode into the heart of the city's manufacturing district. Massive rotating shafts carried power from the coal generating plants to the jigsaw puzzle of factories. These phallic symbols of industry, progress and raw, untamed power walled in David and Solomon on either side. Just under two miles form this mess a man named Benjummun Frankly was busy preparing a kite and a key in a way that would transform the industrial jungle beyond recognition, but for now that was just a far-off wisp of steam in the sunset. Against all odds they finally reached the factory, where they arranged a meeting with King Pistonio. "Let me tell you what the real question is" said Pistonio steamily. "Steam is the blood in the veins of our society. But where does the steam come from?" "From burning coal" answered David. "Exactly. But where does the coal come from? From organic matter, whose energy comes from the sun. It's one big orgy of thermodynamics. But the real question is, how did we end up in a low entropy state? Does it derive from the Big Bang, or was it a random fluctuation?" "Well, since low-entropy is by definition unlikely..." David thought allowed. "Ah, but you've forgotten the anthropic principle" the King pointed out femptoseconds before the aliens blew up the building and everything in sight. "Since then philosophers have debated whether it is appropriate to measure that interval in femptoseconds, given that the prefix fempto was not adopted until some decades later." KMFE was explaining to EKA. "But we know what the real moral of the story is." "How can you have a moral to a story that ends with a nihilistic discussion followed by demolishing everything in sight?" KMFE held his teacup in between their faces and let faint wisps pass before their eyes. "Steam, EKA. It's all about steam."

Hacking

KMFE: Ok, LLF, so the data Alan left is on this harddrive. I don't know if it's encrypted, but it's hard to get at. We have a program to get at it, but this thing's some 40,000 lines of assembly, no function call conventions, no stack. Just one dense mess. On this floppy. LLF: Have you run it yet? KMFE: Yes, but here's the problem. This thing runs on the bare metal. 80386SX, I was told. Could try it on a newer 386, but to avoid debugging ten things at once we got the real thing. LLF: Nice. Get that on Ebay? Greg: Of course not. This was in my attic. Dell 320N. Nice piece of brick. KMFE: LLF, the reason it's lucky Greg had one is that we can't communicate with anyone right now. That includes the internet. So we're stuck with the tools we've got. LLF: Was the code meant to be run on the 320N? Greg: I don't know. It seems to run OK. KMFE: Right, except for one thing. It randomly fails. LLF: ie it doesn't actually run OK. KMFE: Well, the puzzle is it fails in a different place each time. 869 seconds, 1106 seconds, and 237 seconds. LLF: How do you know it fails? KMFE: The machine resets. LLF: How do you know that's not functional? KMFE: We don't. At least I don't. But I checked the floppy and it hasn't changed after a reset, so it would seem to be starting from the same parameters. LLF: How about the harddisk? KMFE: There is no harddisk in here. LLF: Does the 320N have any EEPROM or other persistent memory? KMFE: I don't know. That's the problem, dammit, we just don't know anything. Greg: Ah yes, it's "security by obscurity". We all hate it and make fun of it, but it's a nasty thing to get around. LLF: There's a possibility you haven't considered. KMFE: I don't doubt that. LLF: Supposing Alan programmed a random failure into it on purpose, to make it take longer to get the data out. Run it enough times and eventually it will get to the end without failing. KMFE: That's assuming it's some kind of decay process. God knows where he gets the entropy for the random numbers. LLF: How much time do we have? KMFE: I don't know. The bill were in Philadelphia this morning. How long will it take for them to find us and get here? I have no clue. We've got four programmers and not one guy who knows something. Greg: But LLF, if Alan wanted it to take a long time, it would be so it would become readable after they'd searched his house but before they torched it. But an exponential decay process would have too much variability for that little window. LLF: Well we don't know it's a decay process, do we? Heck we don't even know it's random; in fact it would be easier for it not to be. I'm sure he could fake a decay process. Greg: How? LLF: I don't know I'm not a mathematician, but I bet it could be done. Greg: No, I mean, how is he getting the new seed each time in runs? In fact, even if it is a bug, something is still different each time. Which is starting to look like a hardware problem. KMFE: Well if we had any other hardware maybe we could deal with it. We don't even know we have the right machine. LLF: Wait KMFE, what did you mean there's no harddisk? Isn't the encrypted/obfuscated data on that harddisk? KMFE: Oh sorry, I meant no internal harddisk. This one's read only. And I checked it after a reset - no changes. Greg: Well something's changing. It might be as simple as running the floppy drive and timing it for the seed. But we're never going to be able to inspect this code. LLF: Is there an emulator for the 386SX? KMFE: I doubt it, and even if there is, we have no way of getting it. We can try it on a newer 386, though. Greg: Man, I wish we could have two of these running at once. First, because I want to see it fail a few more times and see what the distribution of running times looks like. Second, if LLF is right and the failure is intentional, then we might get lucky and it will work. KMFE: Well it needs to read it over the serial port. We only have one serial harddisk. I suppose we could try to simulate it on the newer PC. But the simulation would be a newer x86. LLF: Man, you guys, you don't have anything. KMFE: That's the problem with programmers. Everything's so easy to simulate on modern hardware. Put em in front of a real computer and they don't know what to do. LLF: But look, if you're going to try to simulate it, could you tweak it? KMFE: Tweak it how? LLF: Well, if it's reading from the harddisk over the serial port it knows something about the hardware. But we don't know anything about the hardware. If the 320N is wrong then we'll never get it right. So it may be our only option is to fiddle with the running environment. Greg: I can try to set something up in an emulator. But I wouldn't know where to begin 'tweaking'. LLF: Can you run it in a debugger? Greg: I don't see what use that would do. Can't do a stack trace with no stack, and we don't know where to begin looking at this code. KMFE: Well how much control do you have over the simulation? Greg: What specifically are you looking for? KMFE: Well, some processor instruction is ultimately causing a reset. And some other instructions are getting it there. Can you tweak the behavior of the simulated processor? Greg: I don't like where this is going. But... maybe. KMFE: Because we can't rewrite the whole code, or we wouldn't be in this position in the first place. But we could 'rewrite' parts of it in a sense, by changing the behavior of the hardware. And we could see what instructions are being executed right before the reset if we ran it through a debugger. LLF: How likely is it going to matter which x86 it runs on? KMFE: I honestly have no clue. I'm an applications programmer. What'll probably change are the IO addresses for various chunks of the hardware. Greg: Which would kill it outright, depending on how Alan wrote it. LLF: In other words we still have no clue what we're doing. KMFE: Dead on, LLF. Greg: All right, I'm going to set up a simulated i586. Let me know if you have any new ideas. KMFE: You might be interested to know it just failed at 632 seconds. LΟF: Which happens to be yet another multiple of 79. KMFE: Coincidence? LLF: If it's exponential with a time constant around 700 seconds, you'd almost never get a gcd as big as 79.

Meaning

There was a knock at KMFE's door. He got up from his computer and navigated through a maze of cables. It was Andrew and TDCP. TDCP: Can we come in? KMFE: Sure. Watch the cables. He led them over to where he had been working. They all sat down. TDCP: So, pretty... interesting place. KMFE: It fits my life. I'm programming pretty much 24/7 now. TDCP: Yes, we know that. KMFE: You're here to ask me a favor. Andrew: How'd you guess? KMFE: Old story. The patriarchal hero retires into a quiet life, the young people keep fighting. Then some powerful monster shows up and they come drag the old guy back into the mess. It's a classic plotline. TDCP: Beautifully perceptive, except as we are the same age I would not call you the patriarch. KMFE: Well since you're the one about to propose something crazy (I'm guessing) that makes me the wise one. So what arcane technology do you want me to beat up this time? TDCP: Actually, we weren't after your hacking skills. KMFE: All right now that is the second bad sign. The first is that you want to drag me out of my peaceful life. You know I have a job, work full time, and have given up on crazy schemes. TDCP: And give most of your money away because you don't know what to do with it. Andrew: In other words we think you're bored. Unless there's something we don't know about Democratic Republic of Congo. KMFE: Lowest per capita GDP. I don't trust silly schemes like shipping mosquito nets over to Africa. Poor people need money, plain and simple. TDCP: And the second bad sign? KMFE: You're not after my hacking skills. You see I understand hacking. If I'm working with computers I know what process I go through to get stuff done and I trust it. Of course it's not the only thing I can do, but I don't understand anything else. Even just talking to you people here is a mystery. KMFE opened the bottom drawer of his filing cabinet. He searched around for a folder and took it out. KMFE: But the other way this is like the classic story, is that I've seen worse than you. You guys have some ambitious and idealistic goals, I'm sure, but you haven't seen what that kind of thing can do. But I have. And if you want to know part of what pushed me into a normal life, is that I've seen unreal things. Things that are simply impossible. This world is messed up in a metaphysical way that you haven't even dreamed of. He opened the folder and showed them a picture of a woman standing at a train station. KMFE: And it didn't help that she died. She was the most amazing person I ever knew. She tormented me the whole time I knew her and I never resented her for it. At least never for long. TDCP: KMFE, you barely knew her. KMFE: Oh so you recognize her? TDCP: Of course I do. That's :P. She knocked down the church while we were in it. KMFE: Oh that's right. OK, well, then you have some idea. Andrew: Believe me, we do. KMFE looked nervously at Andrew sensing a hint that the favor they were about to ask involved :P. But she's dead now. TDCP: KMFE, we want you to travel back in time. KMFE paused for a few seconds, keeping eye contact so they wouldn't jump in and say something before he did. KMFE: I think it hardly needs saying that that is a fourth very bad sign. But this better not be one of those things. TDCP: No, it's not. KMFE: You're not asking me to kill Hitler, right? Because you know that's been tried before. TDCP: Time travel has been done before? KMFE: I said 'tried', not 'done'. I'm not meddling with history for you. But I assume you know better. So what is it? TDCP: The thing is, KMFE, we can't tell you. We just want you to do this. Andrew: We think you can ask :P to call you back in time. You met her a long time ago. KMFE: And you believe this because...? Andrew and TDCP looked at each other briefly. TDCP: We don't want to tell you that, either, KMFE. But we're pretty sure this will work. KMFE: Well, you haven't told me what my incentive is. I mean, you could argue that you're old friends, but I think this is a bigger deal than that. TDCP: I assume money won't work? KMFE: Of course not. Look, I'll make this easy, because it's pretty obvious what I really want. TDCP: OK. KMFΕ: I'll do this messed up plan of yours if you tell me why. Andrew: Look, KMFE, I'll give you an incentive. No one has ever gone back in time before. If you don't do this, no one ever will. KMFE: Andrew, you play mean. But come on guys, what is it? I met :P in September 2001; this better not have anything to do with that. Andrew: No, nothing to do with that. KMFE: And this better not be some silly hunt for meaning and purpose and the reason for existence because I'm sick of things like that. TDCP and Andrew looked uncomfortable. KMFE: This is, isn't it! Look, there is no meaning. There is no purpose. Not forward or backward in time. And what really gets me, is the notion that just because something's never been done before, like time travel, that it will provide meaning. People do things that have never been done before all the time. It never tells you anything new. TDCP: You sound pretty indignant for a nihilist. KMFE: Hah are you kidding? Nihilists can be the most indignant people you'll ever meet. But I'm not a nihilist because I never thought meaning mattered in the first place. Andrew: From your perspective then, your task is to gather more evidence that the universe has no purpose. KMFE: There's overwhelming evidence already. Andrew: Not from time travel. KMFE: What, so you want to turn the human race into some sort of grand proof of meaninglessness? Then when World War III comes around you can write it all up and say "look here, everything humanly possible has been accomplished and none of it meant anything"? Andrew: If that's how you want to see it. Andrew was visibly upset about this. KMFE sat there looking reproachful until TDCP tried to explain. TDCP: KMFE, Andrew's coming at this from a different angle. He keeps existing, forever, from one universe to the next, past creation and destruction time and time again. So you just go through your one life seeing no point to anything and you're OK with that. But Andrew's seen more universes than you can count, and every single one has been just as empty. Imagine how discouraging that must be. Now this girl :P comes along who can predict the future, read minds, knock down bridges by looking at them, and he thinks "I haven't seen that before". And he thinks that maybe this is the only chance he'll ever get to find a meaning to existence. KMFE: I further object to the idea that just because something seems to go against reality that it might have some mystery hidden in it. Just because something goes against the laws up physics doesn't mean it's special. TDCP: You may be right about that, but you could still do this as a favor to Andrew Andrew: KMFE, we've told you why, now. KMFE: That's right. You did. Well, I guess here goes.

Dog

As Jo and KMFE walked by the dog it growled and then started barking. This made KMFE nervous because it was dark and he couldn't tell if there was a fence. But the dog didn't come any closer. KMFE: I feel sorry for that dog. Jo: Yeah, he's all alone outside at night. KMFE: It's more than that. Here he's got this territorial instinct. He doesn't know where it came from or what it's for. He probably doesn't know many other dogs, he's lived around humans, who act and think differently then him. Now he's alone, bored, neglected, and this instinct surfaces, because he sees us, and he barks as loud as he can, and he keeps barking, it's the only thing that's happened all day, or else it's all been more just like this, nothing really purposeful to do, just letting some phantom desire fill the void. Jo: You make it sound so miserable. All dogs bark when people walk by. Or at least most do. KMFE: That doesn't mean they're not all bothered by it. Imagine if you grew up around dogs, and you still reacted to some things the way a human would, but you didn't know why, and no one else understood. And anyway I don't like the tone of his barking. It's not just that he's barking, it's the feeling in his voice. Jo: It's a dog, KMFE. You can't treat it like a human voice. There are different rules. KMFE: But... listen. It's still going on. They approached another dog and the same process started. KMFE: Maybe now they'll be barking at each other. It will give them something to do. Jo: Do you think they've ever met? KMFE: I don't know. At least they know about each other. When they were well past the dogs Jo asked Jo: So do you think going out with PL was a complete mistake, and you completely regret it? KMFE: I don't know. Sometimes I think I underestimate how cynical I used to be before I met PL. Jo: What does that have to do with anything? KMFE: Well I sometimes think PL made me cynical Jo: I think everyone gets cynical with time KMFE: That is the kind of generalization I do not like Jo: Why not? It's true KMFE: Supposing I killed you and said "well, everyone dies with time" Jo: That's not the same thing at all KMFE: There's a difference between something happening eventually and happening now. And there's still a right time and a right way for things. Learning how the world sucks is always hard, but there are nicer ways to do it. Jo: Arguably PL is not the world. KMFE had to think about that for awhile. Because it really was true. PL is not the world. But it didn't help him understand things. Eventually he gave it a shot. KMFE: See, the issue is, when I get to know other people well, I start to see elements of PL. That bothers me, because it reminds me of horrible things. Maybe I wouldn't be reminded of bad things if it hadn't been for PL. Jo: What kinds of things? KMFE: Well, I don't know how to say this without making it sound petty. But PL had a funny way with truth. She... was very comfortable interpreting things differently depending on how you want to. Like there are many situations that are sort of open to interpretation, and she'd explain herself one way to one person, and another way to another person, and really believe that both were correct. Jo: Well you succeeded in describing that one with no specific words. KMFE: Oh man, it's just, I don't know, I think the worst of it I'd rather not remember. Jo: That really doesn't sound like the kind of thing that'd be scary enough to block out. She bent the truth a little bit; people do that. Maybe she was a little dishonest, but that happens. KMFE: But... it can matter. A lot. It seems so silly now that I'm out of it. But when I really want to trust her, to the point that I do trust her, and then my trust keeps getting betrayed. And they way I so want to trust her that I am never OK with just not believing her -- I have to argue, and try and make her change her mind. Because what she says and thinks matters so much. Jo: But... just that she stretches ambiguous situations a little? Is that really something to argue over? KMFE: Oh I don't know. That's... what I remember describing to myself before. Or to her. See a lot of this I don't remember the incidents. I just remember how I analyzed them. And it did seem really terrible, at the time. If it doesn't seem terrible now, it's either because the emotion and the power of the situation is gone, or because there is a key detail I am leaving out. I remember what I felt, not why I felt it. Jo: I guess I'll have to trust you. But you can see why I don't like taking your word on this. You've already reached the conclusion, and you can expect me to take it on faith, but I can't use the examples you provide to justify it. KMFE: You caught on pretty fast. Jo: I take it that's one of the things that bothered you about PL? KMFE: It was a struggle for interpretation. As in, we have some anachronistic, enigmatic evidence, not good for proving anything. Now which one of us gets to decide how to interpret it? Jo: It seems at that point you should just admit that you don't know. KMFE: Oh but we thought we knew. Oh we'd talk for hours analyzing our feelings and saying what led to what and how it could be different. And we thought we could really know that kind of thing. Jo: For you, it seems just silly that you'd understand a social situation. KMFE: Thanks, Jo. But PL was really, when you look at it, just as clueless. We were caught up with this delusion that we could talk about stuff and know what we were talking about. It was all so awful.

Messenger

In the pits I asked them “Do any of you know AR?” One of them said yes. “Cool. She lived on my floor. Can you give a message to her?” “Um.. yeah. I don't know when I'll see her, though.” “That's OK it's not urgent. Can you tell her I love her, and I enjoyed knowing her. And that I'm sorry Iscrewed up her life. And that I'd like to see her some time.” When I did see AR she asked “How did you screw up my life?” “Oh, sorry, when I'm speaking through a messenger I like to embellish to get them wondering.” Then I told her how my linear algebra professor had written her name on the top of my exam. She didn't believe me because she didn't know him. Then I showed it to her and she thought I had written it there to fool her. I got upset that she didn't believe me and she got upset that I was lying to her. We left mad at each other. I kept looking through the test to figure out if there was anything there that would have prompted him to write AR's name on the top. Nothing. Just her name, still there.

Origins

In the beginning god played music. He did this because he lived through the metaphor. He anticipated people reading the story. He wanted to write the story for their desires. Turns out he was wrong. First they messed up the story. Then they argued over it. It was lost on their ears. When KMFE asked God for the meaning of creation, it was so apparent that KMFE knew nothing of the music that for frustration and embarrassment God could not answer him. Thus has been God since then. KMFE stood on a mountain top and asked his question and received no answer, because God could not face him. And it was with this memory that KMFE met EKA. EKA was introduced to KMFE by dead philosophers. They are weak, the new friend said, but I am strong. “Kant even discusses the morality of having gout,” KMFE explained to EKA during one of their discussions. “He does to morality what the Ontological Proof does to God: gives it life only by sucking out all the substance, till you could walk right through it.” “His counter to the Ontological Argument is quite elegant,” EKA protested. “And that's just what makes him spineless. He can see the fallacy in the ontological argument, but he can't see the flaw. The argument is invalid because it assumes that the sofa that exists can be distinguished from the identical sofa that does not, but the argument is simply WRONG because it reduces the sofa to something you can't even sit in.”

Plastic Angel

KMFE sat in the corner of the parking lot. All around him there was lightening. He saw a small plastic angel from a soft-drink bottle on the ground and picked it up. He asked it to help him survive through the storm. Looking up at the sky he squeezed the angel so the plastic formed white creases. The lightening diminished and the sun started to show through the clouds. KMFE promised the angel not to abandon her after it was over. He headed back up the mountain. Beyond the second hill he met the Goat Man. The Goat Man was a botanist living with goats in the hills. This ecosystem is unique in the world and the blackberries are threatening it, he told KMFE. I wonder if he knows I have an angel in my pocket, KMFE asked himself. That night KMFE suffered every conceivable pain. The lonely bludgeons from C-puff's lair attacked him ceaselessly. He could never tell how many of himself existed. KMFE grabbed the angel off his pillow, tripped down the stairs and out the screen door. You cannot keep an angel. You cannot keep an angel. KMFE threw his undeserved token out of sight into the darkness. He stood silent a minute as the pain dripped away from his body. In the morning he was sure the Goat Man had found the angel.

Life

God: I just can't do this. I can't be that cruel. He slouched in his chair and stared at the desk. Saturn walked in looking distracted. God didn't look up. Saturn found the book he was looking for, then noticed God. Saturn: Something wrong, God? God: I'm not creating life, Saturn. I can't put them through that. Saturn: Well, it's your decision. But it's the only way you're gonna survive. God: I know, Saturn. Just let me mope on this for awhile. Saturn stood silently for five minutes, then spoke again. Saturn: If you don't create life, no one will remember you. You'll disappear into an eternity of nothingness. You won't feel the passage of time. You won't exist. God shuddered. He wished Saturn would let him stop thinking about it. Saturn: You know all along you would come to this point. We knew it too, before you were born. God: I know, Saturn. Please go away. Saturn quietly left the room. Half an hour later God got up from his desk and went to find Saturn. God: It just seems so cruel, Saturn. To put people through life, suffering from birth to death. Confused, unsure why they exist, dreading the future. And so many of them, created in the world only to be imprisoned forever in immaterial nothingness. All just to preserve some old deity. Saturn: It's cruel God, I know. God: I thought you might try to tell me about happiness in life. Saturn closed his book and set it on the table. Then he straightened up and faced God. Saturn: I wouldn't try to tell you that, God. Happiness just leaves a person something to be bitter about. The universe was made to be cruel and it will be so until the end. God stood there biting his fingernails. God: It's really very simple, isn't it? Saturn: It is. But it's your decision. God walked back into his room. A few minutes later he came out again. God: I won't do it, Saturn. Saturn: Suit yourself. He didn't look up from his book. God waited a few seconds and then left to go to bed. Saturn couldn't be so cruel, either. He had know God since God was born, and hated to see his friend vanish. Saturn put his book down, walked into God's work room, and created life for him.