Fiction: Bittersweet

Author's Note: This is one of my lost stories, originally written sometime in July 2005 and hidden away for the last three years. I know of only one other person who has read this, and I figured that it would be nice to finally take it down from its shelf and dust it off. I choose to present this as it was originally written -- with the exception of a few grammatical edits -- if only because it's interesting to see how my writing style has changed over the past few years...




When she first met him, he was already made of chocolate.

She grasped his hand in introduction, and to her delight it was smooth and warm with the muddy copper of milk and cocoa. She breathed his wonderful scent, and almost fainted in pleasure when he smiled at her and said, "Hi."

She nibbled at the edges of his fingers, mostly because she couldn't help herself. They were as deliciously sweet as she expected them to be.

But that was when she noticed all of the others. She was not the only one who liked the taste, after all. There were many of them, nibbling at the skin of his arms, the folds of his shirt, even the tips of his hair. One girl had a jealous vise-like grip on the small of his back, and snapped at her when she came too close.

She backed away and stared at the fawning, adoring crowd. There seemed to be no way to get to him at all. But it was not easy for her to forget the sweet, luscious taste, and she would not allow herself to retreat so quickly again.

*

They met once more, and it was a sudden, unscripted meeting borne of pure coincidence. He smiled at her, she smiled at him, and this time she had him all to herself.

But she was too shy to do anything but nibble at the edges of his fingers, and laugh at the words he said... even though she wasn't really listening. He was chocolate, dark and light and bittersweet and kind, and in moments she had already lost herself in the taste.

They talked -- and she nibbled -- for about an hour, maybe two, before he had to leave. She almost wished that she could tear some scraps from his arm and take them home, but she knew that it wouldn't be the same. She knew that it would neither be as dark, nor as sweet.

As he rose from his seat, she clutched at his arm hoping for one last bite. But that was when she noticed the marks of teeth upon the small of his back.

She slumped in her chair, and said a forlorn goodbye. She could not get the taste of chocolate out of her mind, and it would fill her dreams with the anticipation of the next meeting.

*

He called. She was happy.

Visions of chocolate danced in her head.

*

While they sat, he glanced at the stars and named each of the constellations one by one. She ran her mouth along the length of his arm, entranced by the scent and the taste.

He glinted of dark silver in the moonlight, and underneath the stars she discovered caramel underneath the skin she had been nibbling. It tasted glassy and sweet, much as she expected it to taste, and she reeled with the unexpected blessing.

He knew her then, and she knew the caramel that flowed in streams beneath his chocolate skin. And she was happy with him, underneath the stars.

*

His chest was brown-black and bittersweet, as was dark chocolate. She placed a single hand upon his waist as she nibbled. The scent was stronger there, and it filled her ears with the sound of his strong voice.

The caramel there was thinner and more watery, yet it still tasted as bittersweet as his confectioneried skin. And as she continued sampling the creases and the folds of chocolate, her hands reached the small of his back...

...And stopped for a moment. Then she paid it no mind, smiled, and continued to nibble.

She did not feel a single mark there.

She knew that he was hers, and hers alone.

*

They were inseperable now: He of chocolate, and she who loved chocolate.

Every day she continued to nibble at him. His chocolate skin, and his caramel veins. She gave him her presence and she took his candied sweetness, both in kind.

It was on the morning of the fifth month when she finally found his heart, and she was happy. It was his utter, inner self, and it gave much the same sweet smell that she had grown accustomed to love.

She closed her eyes, and began to nibble. And nibble. And nibble some more.

And then her eyes suddenly flew open, and she staggered back. He smiled at her, but it was a different smile, a glare of stark whiteness against the endless features of chocolate brown. She fell to her knees and retched violently, spilling the nibbled pieces of his heart upon the ruined floor.

Where his chocolate skin had been bittersweet, his heart was another matter entirely. She shuddered at her revulsion, and denied that it was what she came to be.

Slowly she picked herself up and reached for his heart once again. But even before she touched it, her fingers began to tremble, and eventually she had to sit down.

*

He was still made of chocolate, and the next day the heart was whole and unmarked as though nothing had happened. But she no longer dreamt of chocolate, and instead stared into the inky, bittersweet blackness whenever she slept.

She envied the women who gathered about him now. They yet savored the scent of his chocolate skin and nibbled at his irresistible fingers, while she would taste the saccharine sweetness of his arm and immediately feel a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach. He smiled, and the smile itself was so sweet that she wondered how much chocolate he really was.

She saw only one girl at the back of the crowd, one girl who stared back at her with a look that belied the purest of understanding. The look was much farther from jealousy than before.

They did not speak, but they stared into each others' eyes and knew.

She was not the only one who had tasted him for what he was.

*

She shrank underneath his gaze, and the sight of his pulsing heart made her nauseous. So nauseous, perhaps, that she could only drag herself into a corner to get away from the smell.

At first she had felt the same sweetness of chocolate as before, and she had started nibbling. But the more she nibbled, the closer she got to his heart. And the closer she got to his heart, the more the thought soured the taste in her mouth and almost left her weeping where she stood.

He screamed that he did not know her then, and she did not know him. But she knew his heart all too well now, and the guise of his chocolate shell.

And she wept, remembering the bittersweet days, the days of sweet caramel and the short nibbled whispers. She remembered the sweetness of chocolate, dark and light, and could not comprehend the being that faced her now.

*

She could still imagine his scent then, late at night. It was sickly-sweet, and it knew the smoothness and warmth of his skin. Much as she did once.

She used to dream visions of chocolate. But now she awoke from the memories of his sweetness, from the knowledge of dark and light, from the time before she finally found what lay beneath.

She then dreamt of his pulsing, beating heart. And she shuddered at how truly hidden it was.


.

Fiction: Ground Floor, Please

I talk to elevators, sir.

...

Yes, sir. I'm perfectly aware that I get a lot of reactions like that, just like the one you're giving me right now. It startles people at first, and then they usually smile for a bit, probably wondering if there's a joke in here somewhere. But I assure you, sir, that there's no joke here. I talk to elevators.

Yes, I am completely and certifiably sane.

One of your employees called to avail of my services. He mentioned that you were the best person to talk to, because I imagine that you're the man who makes the decisions and signs the approval forms. I hope you don't mind if I don't mention his name, sir -- I've found that my profession can be a little... off-putting... at times.

Your employee has taken the liberty of giving me a complete summary of the problem, so I only ask that you give me a few minutes to explain. I guarantee that I won't take up too much of your time today, sir. I will try to put things as gently as possible.

Thank you, sir.

I have been told that your company has been encountering problems with the elevators in this building. This, I imagine, has been very frustrating for you, seeing that your company actually installs and maintains the elevators themselves. The idea of a company not being able to provide support for its own products produces quite a negative image, I have to admit. Although I've been informed that there have been no accidents yet, I fear that it is only a matter of time before one takes place.

I noticed that your building houses a bank of six elevators, sir -- three on the western side and three on the eastern side. The three western elevators are built to access everywhere from the second floor to the twelfth floor, whereas the eastern express elevators service the fourteenth to the twenty-sixth floors. Your building does not officially have a thirteenth floor, but it is actually available as a mezzanine, and accessible via the fire exits.

How do I know that, sir? Your elevators told me. They're curious about why they never get to stop there, after all.

...

Fair enough, sir. Most of my clients usually don't believe me during our first consultation.

I took one of the eastern elevators up to this office, sir, and the first thing I noted was a marked instability in its movement. This was the one that was farthest left among its bank -- let's call it Elevator One -- and I can infer that its condition has degraded significantly in the last few months. Have your technicians been finding problems with its hydraulics system, sir? That would be the most likely root cause.

I see, sir. I'm glad to find that your teams have noticed the same thing.

No, I imagine that they haven't been able to fix it yet. I believe that this is not a technical error -- I feel that it is more likely due to the fact that your Elevator One is overworked. I'm informed that you have a standing policy of shutting down all but two elevators in the evenings; I would guess that this is the one of the two that is left to work at night.

Yes, sir... that's correct. Your teams can run reasonability checks on the hydraulics as much as they want, but the plain fact is that your Elevator One is overworked. That affects their psychology, in a way. This one feels rather tired at the moment, and a little bitter at the fact that the other elevators get to sleep at night.

...

That's a good question, sir, and I'm glad to see that you're getting into the spirit of things. Yes, I detected a certain amount of fatigue in the other elevator, the one on the western bank that you leave on overnight. However, because this elevator services only the lower floors, it does not feel the same pressure that Elevator One does. The fact that your western counterpart -- let's call this Elevator Two, for reference -- has certain late-night habits only adds to the situation.

Yes, this is the elevator where the sound system is not working. The explanation is quite simple, sir -- the fact that it stays up late at night has given it the impression that it wants to be very quiet around the other elevators. As a result, it simply cuts out the sound and often forgets to put it back on. That would also explain why your technicians have not been able to find anything wrong with it.

...

I'm glad to see that you have a sense of humor, sir. I assure you, however, that everything I say is completely serious.

You wouldn't want to pick up that phone, sir. Apart from me, you don't have any other choice. You've been trying to get these problems fixed for the last six months without any effect at all. At any rate... what harm would my advice do? I do not ask for exorbitant fees or expensive repairs, only that certain policies be changed to allow for the welfare of your elevators.

The choice is yours, sir.

...

Good. Thank you, sir.

Now, I've covered two of your elevators so far -- Elevator One on the eastern bank, and Elevator Two on the western bank. These are the two elevators that you leave on in the late evenings while the others sleep. I've mentioned that one of them feels overworked, while the other one feels an uncertain tendency to be quiet around the others.

The other two express elevators on the eastern side -- let's call them Three and Four -- have their own issues as well. Three is the central elevator, which has been mentioned to me as the most reliable of the six. However, Three has encountered quite a few incidences recently where passengers have reported a slight trembling sensation inside.

Again, the cause of this issue is quite obvious -- Elevator Three is nervous. It has found itself elevated (so to speak) to a certain standard due to the others' performances, and is unsure about its own capabilities. It does its job well, I assume, but I can also see that your technical teams have been able to find the source of the 'wobble'. The good news is that you do not have to resolve this issue directly -- Elevator Three's performance will most likely stabilize once the others are brought into line.

Now, Elevator Four... well, Elevator Four is a unique case. To put it simply, Elevator Four is in love.

Yes, sir... they can certainly feel love, or at least something reasonably close to it. Working in the same quarters as other elevators usually fosters a certain familiarity. In this case, your eastern Elevator Four has become infatuated with the central elevator on the western side -- let's call it Five, to avoid confusion.

Five, unfortunately, is not an express elevator, which means that Elevator Four almost never sees the object of its affections throughout the course of each day. This is why Elevator Four has a tendency to ignore floors -- I can only assume that it constantly wishes to return to the ground floor in order to catch a glimpse of its beloved. I feel that this practice may become a habit with time, so I would suggest that your Elevator Four be given a brief one-hour "break" within the course of each day. It would probably suffice for now, but in the event that the problems persist, I would advise that you call me in to observe further.

...

Yes, that's right -- I'm aware that Elevator Five has a habit of stopping between floors. However, sir, this is not a psychological problem. My guess is that the pressure pump in the main hydraulic engine is not working properly. Your maintenance team will just need to double-check that, and replace it if necessary.

Now, as for your last elevator, Elevator Six... Elevator Six happens to be a special case. Your employee made specific mention of it, and I've already heard the stories where it falls between floors.

...

Two people, sir?

...

I see. I wouldn't be surprised that they would resign, after what they went through with that elevator. At least they were from other companies in the building.

Your Elevator Six has developed a certain mean streak, I'm afraid. I don't think it likes its task. I am almost certain that it remains the most antisocial of the six. Has it ever dropped floors while there are groups of people inside the cab?

...

I see. Yes, that confirms it. All the incidences involve times when only a single person was inside. This is a very bad indication, sir. Elevator Six basically holds a certain malice now -- it's not going to harm people directly, but it's going to scare someone whenever it gets the chance.

Why? Because it's gotten lazier in the past couple of months. I'm not certain as to why this is the case... there are some things about elevator psychology that cannot be adequately explained.

Yes, I would recommend that you shut it down for a while. That should help give it some form of perspective; give it the impression that it has a job to do, that the job has to be done properly or else... and it will eventually give in. You just have to know how to deal with these machines, sir.

All in all, sir, I would simply advise that you consider rationing the operation times of your elevators. There are a lot of people in the building who work late, is that correct? Yes -- I noticed the call center on the nineteenth floor as well. However, the fact is that most of the changes in your elevators' behavior can be traced to their overuse.

I would suggest that, first of all, you distribute the overnight duties between elevators. This will ensure that Elevator One is able to get some rest, as well as allow Elevator Two to make better use of its time late at night.

In addition, I would recommend that you shut down one or two of the elevators in the middle of the day, perhaps during non-peak hours. This will allow them a second opportunity to rest. Any loss in service may be offset by the use of the stairs, I think.

Finally, I would keep Elevator Six shut down for the meantime. In this case, I would prefer that I maintain regular visits here in order to assess the change in its attitude. I believe that your Elevator Six can be made to run smoothly again, but it is important to know when that time can begin.

Yes, I have a calling card. Let me just write my mobile phone number on the back.

There we are. Thank you, sir.

...

I am available for consultations during normal work hours -- normally I make my rounds from about one to four in the afternoon, but I will be available for appointments in the morning. I normally only charge clients who wish to retain my services.

For this case, sir... well, let's just call this some free advice. Try my recommendations first, and let me know if they're effective. In any case, I can just pass by during my free time to see how your elevators are faring.

No need to do that, sir. I can show myself out.

Do be careful with your elevators, sir. They do have minds of their own, after all.

Disclaimer: November 2008

I really wanted to put something creative together for this month.

Unfortunately, the Fully Booked contest has taken up virtually all of my time this weekend. See that little marker at the bottom of this post? That indicates that I'm writing this at a little past 1:30 in the morning. I mention this because I only just finished my submission less than an hour ago, and I'm now waiting for the printer to finish spitting out the four copies I need to tuck into an envelope and hand-deliver it halfway through the metropolis.

Chances are that it won't hold a candle to the other one million, seven hundred three thousand, six hundred and fourteen submissions. I'll probably never see my manuscripts or CD again, which is a bitter pill to swallow when you consider that my work is eighteen pages long. Fair enough -- at least I know that I'll still be able to beat any eventual winner in a wrestling match involving kiddie pools and fettuccine carbonara.

Of course, November also happens to be NaNoWriMo month, which means that I have a few contacts urging me to get my act together and scribble something for the novel-writers. I'll say this now, though: I have no plans of joining NaNoWriMo. Writing a novel is extremely different from writing a short story, and I'd rather stick with the latter over the former. There are too many hack novelists floating around nowadays, and not enough hack short fictionists.

I will make one concession, however: This month, I will attempt to write no less than ten short stories for this blog. Yes, that's right -- I will aim to put up a piece of fiction for each and every one of my posts this month. I make no guarantees as to the length or the quality of the writing, and I may pull something from the crank file every now and then... but if I'm physically incapable of putting together a novel with my busy schedule, then I might as well try for the next best thing. And, heck... you'd like to see me try, now wouldn't you?

Now that that's out of the way, let's go ahead to the basic tenets of this disclaimer. If you've seen any of my other disclaimer posts, then these should be immediately familiar -- but heck, let's go through them again:

1 - Every post on this blog is an original work that was written and developed by Sean. The basic exceptions are those items that belong to other authors, in which case I am careful to provide the correct acknowledgements and attributions. If the author has a web site that I deem safe to visit, then I will provide a link to that site. Otherwise, I actively try to give every creator out there the credit that is due to them.

2 - If your work is exhibited on this blog in an unauthorized manner, or if it is shown in a method that you deem offensive to the general public, you are free to contact me for negotiation. I am a perfectly reasonable person who is willing to listen to perfectly reasonable arguments. I am willing to comply with requests to remove the disputed item/s, or possibly provide compensation for their use so long as the agreement is fair.

3 - If you wish to use anything on this blog, you are welcome to contact me in a similar manner and ask for permission to use the work. I may ask for compensation (especially if the work will see a certain degree of exposure), but this will often be no more than a simple attribution and link to this web site.

4 - I hold a heavy anti-plagiarist stance. I look down upon people who take other people's works and try to pass them off as their own... much less people who do it to me. I expressly state that you should not take anything from this blog with the intent of submitting or publishing it under your name, nor should you attempt to use my works in a manner for which they were not intended. If you do this anyway, I will come after you with either a bunch of lawyers or a pack of pit bulls, and I personally don't know which of them will feel worse.

5 - I adhere to the tenets of the Creative Commons License, which can be found at the bottom of my right-hand sidebar here. Not only does it offer some means of protection in pseudo-legalese, but it also makes for good reading in the wee hours of the morning.

That's it, ladies and gents. Wish me luck.

The Monty Hall Problem

My recent foray into math problems yesterday brought something interesting to mind as well. In fact, I was just discussing it at the office a couple of weeks ago, and it illustrates part of my fascination with probability. (Yes, the word "combinatorics" lies on the list of hobbies on my resumé.) Even if you don't have a background in math, this is still a pretty good exercise.

The Monty Hall problem is actually a rather well-known probability puzzle. It's named after the original host of a 1960s game show called Let's Make a Deal, although I assume that Mr. Hall never actually came up with the situation below on live television. Regardless of that, for the purposes of this puzzle, you just happen to be a contestant on his game show.

For your final prize round, you are shown three closed doors:


The game is simple: Choose one of the three doors, and whatever lies behind it will be yours to take home. One of the doors has a car behind it, and the other two have goats.

Needless to say, you don't want to have anything to do with the goats, but you do want to win that car.


That little graphic above doesn't necessarily illustrate the actual positions of the car and the goats, of course. It's just there to give you an idea of what the game is like. Hypothetically, your potential prizes could also be arranged like this:


Or they could be arranged like this:


You don't know, really. All that you know is that there are three doors in front of you. You don't know which one holds the car, and you don't know which one holds the goats.

So you choose one of the three doors. It doesn't matter which one you choose, really -- given the circumstances, your chances of winning the car are obviously one in three, or 1/3.


But... wait a minute. Your host, Monty Hall, now decides to make the game a little more interesting. As a token of his generosity, he opens one of the other two doors (the ones you haven't chosen) to reveal... a goat.


Now he gives you a choice: You can either stay with the current door that you've chosen, or you can switch your choice to the other door. You still want to win that car, so... should you switch doors?

...

...

...

This is a lot harder for most people to wrap their heads around, it seems.

The common perception is that the switch doesn't matter. When your friendly game show host revealed a door with a goat behind it, he effectively cut down your choices to two doors. Each door therefore has a one-in-two chance of holding the car, or 1/2, which means that you have a fifty percent chance of winning the car regardless of which door you choose. That's just cake, right there.

Except that that's a fallacy of thought. It turns out that that's not the right answer.

It turns out that the correct reasoning sources from the very beginning of the puzzle, right as you're about to choose a door for the first time. Any door that you choose will obviously have a 1/3 chance of winning the car to begin with:


So let's say that you choose a door, along with its attached one-out-of-three chance of winning the car.


When Monty Hall opens one of the other two doors to reveal a goat, that effectively drops your chances of finding a car behind that door to zero-out-of-three:


But given this logic, the chances of the car being behind the third (unselected) door must be... two out of three!


And therefore it is actually in your best interest to switch doors -- because you have twice as much chance of winning the car if you do so!

I've seen arguments erupt over this proposition, of course. It wouldn't be interesting if I didn't know a couple of people who stopped speaking to each other over this. I did mention it, after all - some people just find it difficult to wrap their heads around such an idea. ("The probabilities change just because somebody opens a door? That's preposterous!")

If you'd rather see a more physical proof of this, however, consider the fact that there are really only six ways by which the car and the goats could be arranged:


Yes, the goats are considered to be distinct from each other. We can call them Bluebell and Cornflower, if you like. Or Laurel and Hardy. Or Bonnie and Clyde. For the purpose of this blog post, however, we'll call them One and Two.

Each column represents the range of possibilities that you have whenever you choose a specific door. What that means is that, given that you choose one of the three doors to start with, you effectively have a 2/6 chance of choosing the car outright, a 2/6 chance of choosing Goat One, and a 2/6 chance of choosing Goat Two.

If you choose the door with the car from the onset (a 2/6 chance), Monty Hall can open any of the two remaining doors to reveal a goat. In this case, it would definitely not be in your best interest to switch -- because the other door has a goat as well.

But if you choose a door with a goat from the onset (a 4/6 chance in total; you can get either Goat One or Goat Two), Monty Hall opens the only one of the two remaining doors to reveal a goat. In this case, it would be best for you to switch, because the other remaining door holds the car.

In short, given the situation above, it's better for you to switch doors two out of three times. And that's despite any intuition that screams the feasibility of a fifty-fifty chance.




* The goat silhouette was sourced from http://www.fotosearch.com. The car image (a Ferrari Enzo, if you're curious) was sourced from http://www.seriouswheels.com. Neither image is used for purposes of promotion or financial gain. Don't sue me, or I'll write another mathematical proof for you to read. And we wouldn't want that, now would we?

Fiber Optics

The Internet connection has always been a problem in our household. For one, it's about two or three times more expensive than the more common Internet services, and isn't that much faster in comparison. Then, there's also the fact that I'm the only one with a reasonable idea as to how it all works, so I have to suffer through the inconvenience of calls from my siblings at the most inopportune of times. The biggest issue, however, has always been the fact that we only have one connection for three young internet addicts, which results in quite a few conflicts every night.

As of last Friday, that third problem should be a thing of the past.

I don't remember why I'd put off getting a router for the longest time. Maybe I couldn't find something of good value. Maybe I didn't think that we had enough additional units to support it. Maybe I was afraid that it would suddenly come alive one night and try to chew on my artificial hairpiece. Whatever the case, I was pretty sick of having to wait four hours in order to write a blog post, so I took the plunge.

I got a nice recommendation from our favorite speakethed geekette, to whom I now owe dinner in exchange for a good router price. It took a fair bit of walking just to find the darn thing, and about half an hour's rooting through the usual mess of wires before I could get it up and running, but it almost immediately smoothed out our Net requirements. My mother has gotten rather curious as to how we could all suddenly work on our respective computers at the same time.

That said, it will probably be a while before our late-night habits will settle down. I've gotten a little too used to writing blog posts at two in the morning, whereas my sister already spends the wee hours of the morning editing her papers. I'm expecting that the situation will improve, though, especially with the new router in the mix.

The last benefit that I plan to pull from the new device, however, mostly applies to me. My exposure to work over the previous weekend pointed out that I might have to allow for such arrangements in the future; the presence of a wireless router means that I don't have to go through all the hassle of connecting and disconnecting LAN cables just to negotiate with my ISP. In short, I can work from home more easily now. Why I would possibly want to do that is still up in the air, but at least the opportunity is now sitting right at my desk.

All this leaves one lingering concern, I think: With such easy access to the Internet and everything that comes with it, should I now expect ourselves to mutate into reclusive zombies, refusing to do anything but surf the online waves every night?

Time will tell, I suppose.

Mathematical

I've felt like doing a few puzzles for some time now, so humor me for this one. The local bookstore had some copies of a book called Hard-to-Solve Math Puzzles (by Derrick Niederman), and the first random page that I opened had something that caught my attention:

It turns out to be impossible to "reverse" a number by multiplying it by 2. In other words, there is no number of the form abcd, for example, such that abcd x 2 = dcba. (The equation is not only impossible for four-digit numbers, it is impossible for all numbers.)

However, there is a three-digit number abc in base 8 such that abc x 2 = cba. Can you find that number?

This was quite tempting, so I thought I'd answer it here... especially since I'm too lazy to grab a sheet of paper right now.

Okay... the first given that we have is that A, B, and C are all non-negative, single-digit integers that are each less than 10. Assuming that the number ABC is in base 8, its base 10 (i.e. regular decimal) equivalent would be (A x 8²) + (B x 8¹) + (C x 8⁰).

ABC base 8
= (A x 8²) + (B x 8¹) + (C x 8⁰)
= 64A + 8B + C

Using the same logic for the reversed number CBA:

CBA base 8
= (C x 8²) + (B x 8¹) + (A x 8⁰)
= 64C + 8B + A

Back to the original equation:

(ABC base 8) x 2 = (CBA base 8)
> (64A + 8B + C) x 2 = (64C + 8B + A)
> 128A + 16B + 2C = 64C + 8B + A
> 127A + 8B - 62C = 0
> 127A + 8B = 62C

From here, the first gut instinct I've got is that A has to be an even number. This is because, in order for C to be an integer, (127A + 8B) must be evenly divisible by 62. Thus (127A +8B) must be an even number, therefore 127A must be an even number, and as a result, A must be an even number -- either 0, 2, 4, 6 or 8.

If A = 0, then 8B = 62C and the solution is indeterminate. If A = 6 or 8, then 62C becomes greater than 558, and C has to be greater than 9 (which does not fit the given). Therefore A is either 2 or 4.

If A = 4, then 8B + 508 = 62C. Since 62C can only be equal to 558 at this point, we have 8B + 508 = 558, and 8B = 50, which gives an indeterminate solution. Therefore A = 2.

Seeing that A = 2, then 8B + 254 = 62C. 62C can hypothetically be any value among 310, 372, 434, 496 and 558 -- these are the only values where 6C is greater than 254 and C is an integer less than 10.

However, since B cannot be greater than 9, the maximum possible value for 8B is 72. This means that 62C cannot be greater than 326. Therefore 62C can only be equal to 310.

If 62C = 310, then C = 5.

Thus 8B + 254 = 310, and 8B = 56. Thus B = 7, and ABC is therefore 275.

To wrap up with a reconstituted proof:

[(64 x 2) + (8 x 7) + (1 x 5)] x 2 = (64 x 5) + (8 x 7) + (1 x 2)
> (128 + 56 + 5) x 2 = (320 + 56 + 2)
> (189) x 2 = 378
> 378 = 378

...Yes, I'm aware that most people do Sudoku in their spare time, or maybe the odd word search or crossword puzzle. Yes, I'm crazy.

Now, let's see what's next...

Life and Death: A Character Profile

One of the discussion forums that I frequent decided to host a little creative challenge, which involved creating a random character and his/her background story. In this case, the character was supposed to be both "life-aligned" and "death-aligned", existent in a fantasy Pan-Hellenic setting, and open enough to be used in a possible nonlinear storyline. The inspiration hit me as I was heading home this evening, and I spent the last three hours writing up the entry for submission. I offer it up to you now because I just happen to like the work at the moment.




In the western quarter of Mirambar stands a single temple hewn from white marble and black obsidian. It stands greater and far more grand than almost any other temple in the Sacred City, yet sees no regular worshippers. The only citizens who come here are the most desperate of supplicants, offering sacrifices for fear of the god in question, and begging his mercy for those who would soon be lost.

This is the temple of Nemerion, ruler of the dead and lord of the greater underworld. And within the walls of its inner sanctum, the High Priest Temarcheus watches the people as they plead, weep and debase themselves before the most taciturn of gods.

Temarcheus has been the mouth of Nemerion for almost two hundred years now. His hair has turned gray and his skin has turned both sallow and pale at the endless vigil he keeps. Those people who know him would shudder involuntarily at his touch, or turn their faces away from his very presence.

It was not always like this. Temarcheus was a different man once before, a long time ago.

*

His mother was a healer. She was not one of Lainara's chosen, no matter how much she wished to be one, but she was benevolent and religious and would never turn away a person in need. She knew which herbs were good for which maladies, she knew how to make poultices to treat the most serious of wounds, and she knew that the priestesses of Lainara would constantly frown at her efforts. Most of all, however, she loved her husband and only son, and impressed upon Temarcheus a sense of the sanctity of all life.

And when Temarcheus's father fell gravely ill and all her backwater remedies could do nothing, she gave in to despair. The Lainarans told her that the disease was too far advanced in its stages, that there was nothing they could do but pray for their goddess's intervention, but Temarcheus and his mother knew the truth behind their wrathful eyes.

With nowhere else to turn, his mother prostrated herself before the priests of Nemerion, promising the only other treasure that she had: Temarcheus would be given over to them, raised as a cleric of the god of death, if only she would have her husband back. And in an uncharacteristic display of favor, Nemerion granted her request.

One day later, Temarcheus's father was once again up and about. It was a miracle, the priests whispered, and his mother would not forget her promise.

One week later, Temarcheus himself began his tutelage in the temple of Nemerion. It was a strange place with strange people, all hollow and sterile and devoid of life, but his parents were happy, and that was the only thing that mattered.

One month later, his father was killed when a team of wild horses set upon him on a busy street. His mother cried and screamed and wept for days on end.

Temarcheus was left sullen and numb. What cruel joke was this, he wondered, to have his own father taken from him after so much sacrifice in Nemerion's favor? The priests refused to answer his questions, ordering him to progress on his studies instead, and Temarcheus spent long hours looking for answers in the face of the great god of death.

His mother was never the same after that. It was as though she had aged forty years in the course of a single day. She trudged through the tiny home where they had once lived together as family, dazed and confused at the mere passage of time. She would look up only whenever Temarcheus came to visit; sometimes she would ask him why his father had not come home yet, or why he was not joining them for dinner. And whenever she spoke, Temarcheus could feel nothing but the sound of his own heart breaking just a little more each day.

On the day she finally died, the frustration finally became too great to bear. Temarcheus was with her in her last hours, holding her soft white hair in his hands, listening to her as she asked time and again as to where his father was. In his rage he carried her withered body to Nemerion's sanctum, ignoring the cries of his fellow priests, and set her on the altar before the great and terrible statue there.

As her life ebbed slowly away, he demanded answers from the distant god. He cursed Nemerion for his callous acts, and hurled accusation after accusation to the ever-rising winds. There was a roar of thunder then, and a terrible silence before Nemerion spoke... directly to the young man himself.

Death was always there, Nemerion had said. Death was always the inevitable end. Death knew neither good nor evil, neither malice nor compassion. It was the place of mortals to die, which was something that Temarcheus had never understood. Death waited for none. Death was, Death is, and Death will be.

And if Temarcheus refused to understand this lesson, Nemerion said, then he would have all the time he needed in order to do so.

Temarcheus would have insolently answered the god back right then, regardless of the consequences, if it were not for the slim, emaciated hand that suddenly caressed his.

His mother's eyes were open, her expression strangely peaceful.

"Do not question the gods, my son," she whispered, "but seek to know them as you would know yourself."

And with that, she died.

*

Temarcheus has been High Priest of Nemerion for almost two centuries. His figure is everpresent among the supplicants at the temple of the god of death. Some say that he is beyond human. Others whisper that he is little more than a ghost.

Temarcheus watches each and every visitor to the temple. He watches the poor plead for mercy. He watches the rich offer lavish sacrifices. He watches the philosophers rationalize Nemerion's will, and he watches the ignorant pay their own brand of lip service. He knows them all, he knows of the embrace that shall take them at the end of their lives, and he feels the pain of seeing each and every one of them die. He is the vessel of the god of death and lord of the underworld, but he is one with a conscience, who looks at the world through haunted eyes.

And through it all, he struggles to understand.



.

Agonistes Dentistes

That tooth has been acting up for the past two days now. It started tingling early Monday afternoon, only a couple of hours after I confirmed a dental appointment for Wednesday this week. By the evening of the same day, it was actually painful to the touch; I could poke it with a fingertip and set off alarm bells all over the right side of my face.

Naturally, I ignored it and went about my usual business. I go through a lot of stress on a daily basis already; what's one painful tooth?

I do find that it's quite distracting to the creative process, though, especially since I constantly run my tongue along its lower edge to see if the temporary filling is still there. Recent events have convinced me that I grind my teeth in my sleep; the last thing I need is the tooth breaking on me mere hours before I head to my friendly neighborhood dental officer.

And of course, this is a little funny, because I was made to believe that the underlying nerve was no longer active. This is a tooth that's well on its way to becoming deceased; I'm not supposed to feel anything at all. I guess that means that there's still life in the old boy yet.

Regardless, I'm sure I'm going to feel it when that drill bores into the enamel tomorrow afternoon. It's an experience that I'll be all too familiar with -- the concept of pain so great that it actually transcends the human experience -- but it'll be a good cost for the ability to to think scatterbrained thoughts again.

And to think that I'm looking at five or six of these sessions in total. Eh... just as long as the tooth doesn't bother me on a regular basis, I suppose.

It's a Living

Work is spilling over my weekend at the moment. There's a significant server upgrade taking place halfway across the world, and while I don't have any direct involvement in the technical details, I've still got to watch it for potential problems.

What that means is that I'll have to be glued to my laptop around the clock for status updates -- 5:00am, 11:00am, 7:30pm and 2:30pm respectively -- and I'm keeping the phone lines open in case Europe feels a pressing need to call. I've handled weekend watchouts before, mind you, but none with the intensity of this one; let's just say that the consequences will be pretty bad if something goes wrong.

Fortunately, my weekend turned out to be fairly open; the only obligation I have involves the matter of my dad's death anniversary (which actually took place on the 16th, but we're dropping by his resting place on Sunday morning). The visit fits quite neatly into my schedule, which means that I don't have to consider uncomfortable questions like, "Is the cemetery a Wi-Fi hotspot?"

Speaking of Wi-Fi, the main issue I've encountered involves connecting to the company network in order to check my e-mails. I have a single cable internet connection at home, which I do plan to use after an eternity of attaching and un-attaching wires of various shapes and sizes. I had plans to pick up a wireless router last week in order to make the process more painless, but I never found the time to go shopping.

Of course, if my home internet connection goes down (or if I can't figure out the silly thing), then my next option is to head towards the nearest Starbucks for three straight sessions. Starbucks will only give you a connection if you're willing to pay for it, however, and I'm wondering if I can file an expense report for this. (Our Accounting department probably has a field day with my messages.) If that comes up short, I'll have to travel all the way to my office building and set up shop there. You don't need me to tell you how painful that option would be.

And that doesn't even consider the possibly of something happening to the upgrade -- something horribly wrong that could potentially stop operations, drop stock prices like a rock, and bring an end to the 21st-century world as we know it. (Yes, I'm exaggerating here.) However, if something does happen, then we go into full recovery mode, which will almost certainly require my time in the office for Sunday afternoon. Yes, this is still painful.

Not that I'm complaining, of course. This is my job, after all. I picked it up when the offer was made, and I was perfectly aware that there would be days like this. In these cases, I feel that it becomes less a question of a lost weekend, and more a question of whether or not the company will have some operations to return to on Monday. That's enough to convince me that I have to take some time out and provide some form of responsibility here.

So yes, I'll be glued to my laptop for a while. It won't prevent me from trying to enjoy a couple of days off work (so to speak), though; I'll just be a little distracted today.

Now let's just hope that something bad doesn't happen to Europe...

Gesundheit

Sorry, I'm out wid a code right now. Must hab been dat rain las Sunday.

But seriously, my medical condition hasn't affected my typing. In fact, it shouldn't affect my typing (short of my spraining an arm reaching for the tissue box)... but it's a little fun to work this into the text somehow. You get something that feels a little like l33tspeak, without the burden of linguistic idioms.

In fact, "coldspeak" is a little more straightforward than other text effects -- you just replace all the hard "v" and "h" sounds with their softer counterparts, and you're all set. The only problem lies in finding a sentence that can effectively demonstrate your condition; you obviously won't be using those phonetics all the time.

Coldspeak aside, though... I've been out for the whole day. I spent the whole of yesterday sneezing every fifteen minutes, and my continually runny nose got some strange looks from a couple of people. The office clinic informed me that my allergies were most likely acting up because of the change in weather, and recommended that I get plenty of fluids and a bit of rest.

So far today, I've gone through half a box of tissues, realizing that I just asked for some sick leave before I actually felt bad enough to skip work. Gosh... my life is so dependent on the appointment book right now.

I don't get a lot of colds nowadays. Having gone through a lot of contagious diseases as a kid, I find myself woefully unprepared to get sick as an adult. My idea of curing a cold involves consuming massive quantities of soup (which isn't much different from when I don't have a cold), and looking for crazy things to do outside of the recommended rest. It's enough to frustrate the doctors in my family.

The worst part about colds, of course, involves having to sleep with them. Eventually your nose gets clogged and you find yourself breathing through your mouth. In my case, that means that my snoring immediately becomes louder and more obnoxious. It got so bad tonight that I actually woke myself up a few minutes ago.

The process of blowing my nose has also affected my computer habits, too. Now it seems that I have to stay a good distance away from the keyboard, lest my olfactory emissions go wild. I've had to clean a few keys so far, one of which turned out to be connected to the standby utility and almost caused me to lose this post. :/

I'm heading back to work tomorrow, though, so I probably won't have to worry about my home computer for a moment. I'd just have to worry about spreading the contagion to the rest of the company (and potentially to the rest of the world)... but really, what can you do when it's not an option to vegetate at home?

Ah well. I could have saved the world today, but I couldn't. Too bad.

*Sniffs*

Sanguine Thoughts

Now, let's suppose that you were a vampire...

...

Yes, darn it. My mind works like this on a regular basis. Let's get back to the topic at hand.

Let's suppose that you were a vampire. But I don't refer to the concept of the ultra-modern vampire as we now know it, so let's get all thoughts of Bela Lugosi, Anne Rice, Joss Whedon, Stephenie Meyer, and the World of Darkness out of your head for a while. Let's get down to the basics -- and when I say basics, I mean the concrete essences of what makes you vampire in the first place:

1. You consume blood. This is pretty much the traditional characteristic, although it remains to be seen as to whether or not you'll actively go for the human variety.

2. You're undead. You're presumably still alive around the time you get "converted", so you're not exactly decomposing by the minute like some ordinary zombie.

3. You live far longer than necessary. This is one of the consequences of not really being alive. Being a walking corpse also implies that you're tougher than usual, which isn't too bad a deal.

4. You're adversely affected by sunlight. Meyer's "sparkly" vampires aside, mere exposure to sunlight will leave some really painful burns on your skin. Prolonged exposure to sunlight will kill you, plain and simple.

5. You're severely debilitated by a stake to the heart. Don't worry -- the same can be said of anyone else, I suppose.

6. You can create other vampires. The processes are too varied to list, I'm afraid.

So now that we can suppose that you were a vampire, I'll ask a single basic question: Just what do you do with your existence?

Oh, I imagine that some people have a quite a few answers already. Maybe you'd go clubbing every night. Maybe you'd indulge yourself in drink or drugs (particularly since none of them would leave your system with any long-term effects). I figure that your sex life would probably be nothing short of incredible.

Nevertheless, I'd still ask: What the heck would you do with your existence?

I mean, you can't necessarily go dancing, drinking, drugging or sexing yourself forever. You'd get bored, darn it... especially when we're talking near-immortality here. Ordinary humans can probably take on only about ten to twenty years of hard partying before it all starts feeling like the same old, same old. Face it -- you're bound to start looking for meaning sometime.

I imagine that the hunt would be a significant factor for at least the first couple of decades. You'd need some nice warm human blood to feed on, I mean, and no matter how long you live, every single victim you encounter will react in a completely different manner to your... efforts. In short, you'd probably get some entertainment value out of stalking and feeding on humans.

The problem is that this would also degenerate into the usual "same old, same old", with some very practical reasons attached. A trail of exsanguinated bodies, after all, attracts attention... and after a while, like some advanced RPG player, you'd start developing techniques that will always guarantee you a meal for the night. You'd get bored of the whole game eventually. And besides... why not just raid the local hospital or blood bank for samples? The longer you stick around, the more pragmatic you're likely to think.

Modern literature is full of vampires who have been around for a long time, perhaps about a couple of hundred years at least. This provides a lot of rest periods where you can sit around and wonder just what to do with your (un)life. The catch is that there are no good immediate answers, and those first things that come to mind will only last you a few decades before you get bored.

The first practical consideration that comes to mind is the possibility of furthering oneself. That is -- you can pick out virtually any field you want, and delve into such an interest. You can master the intricacies of writing, I suppose. Or you can learn the art of gemstone appraisal. You can earn that double degree in medicine, or you can memorize each and every nuance of the law. You can become a respected stage actor, or hone your skills as a jazz musician. I mean... you've got the time, and you'll most likely be able to procure the resources. You'll probably get more out of this than your original clubbing itinerary, and if you ever get bored, you can change fields.

The second consideration is that you can go into business. This is the kind of thing that will almost certainly change with each generation; you could be selling horseshoes and buggy whips one century, and fiber-optic cables the next. There will always be a demand for business around here... and if you get bored with your line of work, you can just switch to a new product or service. Heck, if you're still not convinced, just think about the possibility of selling your stock in a company one hundred years after your initial purchase -- you'd have enough funds to cover every luxury to be invented.

The third and final consideration in my book just happens to involve politics. I'm not saying that you should take over a country and become a vampiric despot, of course -- I'm merely saying that politics is an extremely complex field that can never really be mastered. What that means for you, however, is that it's a game that constantly changes with time... and can therefore keep your interest for a good long while. It will probably take you generations you ascend to the rulership of even a small country, and if you find yourself dissatisfied with your lifestyle then, you can run it to the ground and try to manipulate another region.

And if by some chance you still find yourself horribly, horribly bored even after all that, then you've been exposed to the inherent curse of immortality: Life is ultimately a passel of limited experiences. You might as well sit on a high cliff and wait for the sun to come up -- that way, you get a good view before it scatters your form into dry ash.

Yes, this is what goes through my mind whenever somebody so much as brings up an idea where traditional vampires exist alongside humans. I mean, it's an interesting concept and all, but you really have to think long-term here. Despite their obvious disconnection to us, I like to assume that vampires are still human, deep down inside that tough bloodless exterior. No wonder they get characterized as the brooding, angsty types.

Vampirism sucks, I suppose. And I do mean that in a truthful, yet painfully pun-induced manner.

About the Author

I never quite know what to put together for my author write-ups. I have a reasonable idea as to what is expected of them, yes, but I can never seem to dash one off in the space of a few minutes. It's like being asked to introduce yourself to a complete stranger in the middle of a fancy-dress party -- they have this strange idea of who you are and what you do, they expect you to fill in the gaps in their perception, and you have absolutely no clue what to say.

I mean... "Hi, I'm Sean, and I'm a writer." What else could I possibly say beyond that? It's not like I'm going to tell them that I use the literary approach in order to pick at the essence of humanity, much less start talking about the elements of style, verbiage and denouement.

So I stand there, smiling stupidly at their questions, until they get creeped out by the silly grin on my face and wander off towards the buffet table.

About two years ago, when one of my stories was on the precipice of release by Philippine Genre Stories, I sent the following write-up for accompaniment of the work:

Sean is a writer, a manager, a critic, a conceptualist, a strategist, and a logician. While this doesn't mean that he'll try to force square pegs into round holes, it won't stop him from looking for something that will actually fit. For that matter, it also won't stop him from asking why the pegs are square, or why the holes are round, or why the sun is bright, or why the sky is blue. This is why Sean never gets invited to polite gatherings, you see.

A good write-up should have certain qualities associated with it. For starters, it should help clarify the identity of the author, and give an idea as to the background from which he sourced his/her story. It should grant an impression of what the author aims to do with his work, and perhaps include any current honors or future aspirations. All in all, it should leave readers to feel as though the writer has become a small part of their lives.

I break these rules for no particular reason, and in fact, I don't know why. My write-ups are given to vague, unmeaningful ramblings that serve little purpose other than to weird people out. The fact that they're usually accompanied by a photo of a stuffed penguin does not help matters.

I'm still using the infamous penguin photo, mind you, which happens to be the same one that I use on both my Blogger and Multiply sites. I'm using it again when another one of my stories comes out in a forthcoming issue of Philippine Genre Stories.

For the record, the write-up that I handed in for this new work reads as follows:

Sean Uy is a writer, an analyst, a mathematician, and a creative consultant. He fantasizes about playing the saxophone, collects stuffed toys, and observes the collective strangeness of this planet's inhabitants. He occasionally comes up with short stories like this one, which will probably earn him another visit to the local psychiatrist once his family finds out.

No, it still doesn't say anything substantial. If it's supposed to make me feel like a member of the reader's family, I'm likely to be the Weird Uncle Who Makes Funny Armpit Noises.

Somehow I'm thankful that the story is a lot longer than the write-up itself. Hopefully people will dwell on those two thousand words long enough to politely ignore the write-up at the end. Or perhaps the shorter work would lose out in a battle of normal deviance.

Besides, you're reading this blog. That means that you already have an idea as to what kind of person I am, right? That means that you can enjoy the story without necessarily having to figure out that little bit of strangeness at the end, right?

...Good. If you need me, I'll be right over there by the buffet table. I hear that they have an excellent selection of cheeses today.

Pyromania

I originally wanted to write something about the blossoming viral issue that was the Ateneo post-championship bonfire, but after an hour's thought, I decided that it was best to shift focus. For one, I've checked and read a lot of the salvos from both sides, and I figure that the bonfire incident is already a popular blog topic. Moreover, most of the responses I've read seem to be quite open and level-headed, and I believe that the issue will probably defuse itself in a couple of days. In addition to that, I usually pay almost no attention to the basketball rivalry at all, much less college athletics around here.

What still irks me, however, is the fact that the culprit hasn't really apologized for his misdemeanor. Oh, sure... as of this writing, he's given a great big "sorry" for the inconvenience that he caused the university. However, with regards to his unwarranted display of effigy-burning... he offers nothing. Absolutely nothing at all.

And that just goes to show that you can live to be seventy years old, and not learn a single thing about civility.

On top of that, the Philippine Genre Stories blog notes that, for all intents and purposes, this seems to be the same person who organized a book-burning session two years ago, where copies of Dan Brown's controversial novel The Da Vinci Code were consigned to the flames. Some people have already pointed out the obvious parallel here -- while I won't repeat it for fear of parroting the multitude, I must point out that I would actively keep any and all matchbooks and cigarette lighters away from this person.

Personal zealotry is a very powerful force. When used correctly, it can move mountains, restore deserts, and possibly even raise the dead. When used incorrectly, well... it beats dead horses, stirs hornets' nests, and generally makes a complete ass of oneself. This is why we end up with caltrops scattered on major thoroughfares. Or hijacked kindergarten school buses. Or, God willing, written effigies by misguided septuagenarians.

Sometimes I wonder why these people don't exert their energies towards something more constructive. Did they, in the waning years of their lives, suddenly decide that there was nothing else that they were interested in doing? Did they decide at some point that logic had to take a back seat to pure impulse and wanton speculation? Did they somehow figure that the best way to live life was to boggle peoples' minds by doing something utterly and insanely irrational?

No wonder this world doesn't make any sense at times.

Once upon a time, I mentioned that having all the heart in the world is useless if you don't have enough space left for a brain. I'm saddened to see that this is still quite true.

On the other hand, most of us are relatively young, and (presumably) still rational. But we're all going to reach this point in life one day. We're all bound to ask ourselves the same strange questions and get tempted by the same foolish answers.

When that day comes, I can only hope that we know well enough to aim the fire in the right direction. Otherwise, it'll end up consuming what little dignity we have remaining.

Disclaimer: October 2008

At dusk on the third day, we finally arrived at the end of the labyrinth. I pressed forward, the dark blade Hador drawn before my crested shield, only to find that a mammoth stone door separated us from the final room beyond.

Rheox immediately started forward, muttering something about the difficulty of dungeons. Behind me, Salah called out a dire warning -- we had already lost Embril and Azanthia to the maze's accursed defenses. The stone door, covered from top to bottom in strange arcane writing, almost certainly seemed as though it was every bit as deadly as its environment.

Rheox gave the priestess a long look. "All I can say is that this isn't dwarven, lady. Not any sort of language I recognize."

Salah crossed over to the door, while I scanned the area for any trace of the dungeon's guardians. Her brow furrowed as she first tried to read the strange runes, shortly before she began searching for something -- anything -- that would aid her comprehension.

"These are not words," Salah said, completely perplexed. "These are symbols, yes, but not words."

"What do you mean?"

"I suspect that these comprise a language, though it be long dead. This is a record... of sorts. Do you glimpse the succession of marks on the left side of these doors, left separate from the column on the right? It is as though their creator wished to provide some form of... cryptic semblance."

Rheox poked at the stonework. "It's a poor sort of carver that would do that for a door this big. Just how are we supposed to get in, then?"

Suddenly, an enormous voice boomed across the cavern. Rheox's hammer was in his hands before I could blink. Salah stepped back, her fingers tracing the marks of a spell.

WHO ARE YOU?

"Salah," I said.

She shook her head. "I sense no magic, Sir Kharzin. This may only be a consciousness built into this very chamber."

"Well, it could stand to be a little more quiet," Rheox said.

WHO ARE YOU?

I glanced at my companions. Rheox shrugged.

"We are adventurers," I called out. "I am Kharzin, a knight of the Parthian Empire. The woman is Salah, a priestess of the Silver Star, from the far reaches of the Azure Sea. The stalwart dwarf is Rheox Blisterbeard, a tracker of the Emerald Clan."

WHAT IS YOUR PURPOSE HERE?

"We mean no harm," Salah said.

WHAT IS YOUR PURPOSE HERE?

"We seek truth," I answered. "We seek knowledge, unseen one. It was written in the books of the ancients, hidden in the annals of the Great Library of Mersenne, that our ancestors possessed shards of the Ultimate Truths, those which allow the greater universe to rise and fall around us.

"The stars and the sands have shown that we are now in the twilight of our world, much as the ancients had been, and much as the ancients' ancients were. Thus do we stand before you, with no other purpose but to ask: How may this endless cycle be brought to a halt? How may we end the ageless, and bring passing to long constancy?"

There was a long, tense silence.

...

"I don't suppose you offended it?" Rheox asked.

THE ANSWER IS CHANGE.

"Change?" I asked.

CHANGE.

With that last statement, the chamber began trembling as the voice increased in tone. I noticed that Salah was listening intently, although Rheox had clamped both hands tightly over his ears.

THIS CHAMBER WAS BORN IN THE LAST DAYS OF THE CYBERNETIC AGE, CARVED FROM THE FEATURES OF THE PHYSICAL TO REFLECT THE COGNITION OF THE DIGITAL.

"I do not recognize these words!" Salah cried. "Perhaps... perhaps these are references to the ancients themselves?"

IN TIMES WHERE CHANGE HAS BROUGHT ABOUT A BETTER WORLD, HUMANITY TENDS TO ABANDON THE CREATIVE SPIRIT. SO IT WAS WITH YOUR ANCIENTS. THEIR COLLECTIVE MEMORIES ARE FILLED WITH EXAMPLES WHERE MAN HAS TAKEN THE THOUGHTS OF ANOTHER WITHOUT REGARD FOR CHANGE.

The words came unbidden to my mind. "But what of our world? You speak only of the transgressions of the ancients themselves!"

The voice ignored me, choosing only to continue its narration. It boomed across the chamber, nearly overwhelming us with the sheer force of sound.

THE WORDS THAT YOU SEE ARE A LAST REPOSITORY OF KNOWLEDGE FROM THE PREVIOUS AGE. THEY ARE ORIGINAL IDEAS FORGED WITHIN THE CREATIVE SPIRIT THAT ELUDES SO MANY AND SO FEW. INTERSPERSED WITH THEM ARE TOUCHES OF WISDOM FROM OTHERS; THEIR NAMES ARE MARKED ALONGSIDE EACH AND EVERY CONTRIBUTION.

IN THE EVENT THAT THESE CONTRIBUTIONS WERE REFUSED TO BE SHARED, DUE PROCESS WAS GIVEN TO THEIR CREATORS. CAMARADERIE AND NEGOTIATION ARE BUT SECOND MEANS TO THE IDEA ITSELF.

IT IS THUS THAT PIECES OF THIS KNOWLEDGE SHALL BE FOUND IN OTHER PLACES AS WELL, ALL BOUND BY SIMILAR MEANS AND RULES.

"The inscriptions..." Salah said, now almost inaudible against the pervasive tones of the voice. "It speaks of the inscriptions!"

THESE WORDS ARE WATERED BY THE SOULS OF THE OFFENDER, THE THIEVES WHO WOULD STEAL THEM FOR THEIR OWN BENEFIT. THESE ARE THE ADVERSARIES OF CHANGE, THE AGENTS OF THE CONSTANT CYCLE. THEY ARE PRESENT IN BOTH THE OLD WORLD AS WELL AS THE NEW.

KNOW WELL THE MARK OF THE CREATIVE COMMONS UPON THIS WALL, AND KNOW WELL THE RULES OF THIS KNOWLEDGE, THAT YOU MAY BREAK THE VICIOUSNESS OF THE CYCLE BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.

"Too late?" I asked. "Too late for what?"

And suddenly the chamber was silent, save for a single word.

CHANGE.

...

Slowly Rheox pulled his hands away from his ears. "Now what d'you suppose it was rambling about?" the dwarf asked.

"It spoke of the lost knowledge of the ancients," Salah explained, "but it appears that its significance has disappeared over time. All that I could glean from such a... feat... was that the loss of change brought about the entropy of the old age."

YES.

Salah jumped, startled by the sudden answer. I sheathed my sword in a single motion, listening to the sound of metal grating against wood and bone.

"Answer our question, unseen one!" I cried. "What must we do to prevent our world from slipping away?"

...

YOU CANNOT.

"What?" Rheox asked.

ALL WORLDS KNOW CHANGE. YOUR ANCIENTS KNEW THIS, YOUR DESCENDANTS SHALL KNOW THIS, AND NOW YOU DO.

CHANGE SHALL COME. IT MUST ALWAYS COME, NO MATTER HOW MUCH HUMANS WOULD DESIRE TO PUT IT AWAY. YOUR WORLD WILL END LIKE ALL OTHER WORLDS. THERE IS NO FOREVER, NOT EVEN FOR THE LIFESPAN OF A UNIVERSE.

For the first time, we were all struck silent by the truth, the grim foreboding truth that we had traveled so long to grasp.

CHANGE IS FREEDOM. RECURSION IS STAGNATION.

And with that, the chamber went silent.

...

After a long while, Rheox sheathed his hammer and turned to me. "So what so we do know, lord?"

I glanced at Salah, who nodded in her strange knowing way. "We return," I said.

"That's it? We go back?"

"Yes," I said, my heart weighing heavily in my chest. "We return with what we have learned."

"Perhaps if we could effect some measure of change within our own borders," Salah mused, "it would forestall the coming of the end."

"We have no other choice, I fear. Let us make haste, then... the empire will need time to prepare."

The Tale of the Tooth

Warning: This post is not for people with weak stomachs. So all of you who may be susceptible to nausea or slight queasiness... well, go have lunch first, or something. It'll make for an interesting experience while reading this.


When I woke up last Sunday morning, the first thing I felt was something rolling around near the back of my mouth. I reached in there, expecting to pull out a hair or a piece of lint or something like that, but I was amply rewarded with what looked like a tiny fragment of black stone. After I probed around the area a little more, I noted what felt like a gaping hole in one of my molars, and I was forced to conclude that one of my fillings had somehow shaken loose from its foundations.

This was bad news. I've been genetically blessed with weak teeth, to the point that my dentist constantly despairs over my condition. And, seeing that I had somehow degenerated to the point where my fillings were falling out, that pretty much indicated that something was rotten in the state of Dentistry.

So this afternoon, I left work early for an emergency appointment with my long-suffering dentist. She listened patiently to my story, critically inspected the fragment of filling that I had brought along (wrapped in Kleenex, for its luxurious benefit), and prodded at the gaping enamel hole with a variety of instruments.

It wasn't too bad, she said. I had apparently done what I could to keep it clean for the past two days, which included abstention from bite-worthy foods and a paranoid obsession towards chewing on my left side. The culprit was most likely a stone from a dinner long past, which shattered the filling and impacted certain shards into its own dental crevice. My estimate was that it had been a month or so before the largest piece -- which still sat in all its Kleenex-wrapped glory -- finally worked its way loose.

That, however, was where the good news ended. The filling was one of my oldest ones, from way back in 1992, and it had apparently shattered because the inside of the tooth had decayed significantly. In short, it had plugged its respective cavity for a good sixteen years... but nevertheless, the tooth had continued to rot away from the inside, which left a good-sized hole into which the pieces of the filling could get stuck.

Things took a turn for the worse when she asked if I could feel any pain. When I told her that I couldn't, she gave me a curious look and tapped the tooth about once or twice.

"Did you feel that?" she asked.

I shrugged. I hadn't felt a thing.

She tapped it again, and gave me the same questioning look.

I shook my head.

She played Jingle Bells on the enamel with one of her metal picks.

I still didn't feel anything.

That was bad, she said, because it meant that the dentine part had almost fully gone. This apparently severed the tooth's connection to its corresponding nerve, which was why I couldn't feel anything. This also brought about the possibility that every other piece of dental work in my mouth actually concealed a slew of dead teeth... and I had a lot of fillings in there.

Fifteen minutes later, though, she was breathing a sigh of relief at my x-ray results. It looked like the sole offending tooth was the only one of its kind, which got her to breathe easy. There was a huge gaping hole sitting to the left of that tooth, yes, but at least that was the only thing we could worry about for the moment.

She strongly recommended that I sit through a root canal for the tooth -- five consecutive sessions to take place over one or two months -- in order to restore the tooth to workable condition. That is to say, we both wanted to significantly arrest the possibility that the tooth itself would break apart the next time I used it. Moreover, she suggested that I look into the possibility of capping it with a porcelain crown, which would strengthen the tooth further. The catch with the latter option, though, was the fact that it would require regular maintenance for the rest of my natural life. (The fact that my teeth degenerate extremely fast did not sit comfortably with either of us.)

As for the gaping hole itself, she plugged it with a temporary filling and told me to make an appointment as soon as possible. I think I'm going to have to make some arrangements at work in order to go through with this.

So now I'm sitting here, typing about my little dental experience. The temporary filling feels a little strange, as though it were merely half-finished... but then again, my dentist will probably be drilling through it in a few days. It tastes a little like dried plaster, with a hint of whatever medicine she used to dull the (nonexistent) pain.

I asked to bring the fragment of filling home, and she gave me a strange look about the matter. Nevertheless, she did allow me to wrap it up in the Kleenex again, and drop it into my shirt pocket. It's sitting in my room now, perhaps waiting for the day when I'll have it bronzed and preserved to show my grandchildren.

Then again, maybe not. I suppose that the removable dentures will have to do...

Thus Spake Zarathusra...

Dean's notice finally arrived in the mail today, and it was actually a little heartening:

Dear Sean,

While Nikki and I enjoyed elements of “The Whispering” , we regretfully need to pass on it.

Ultimately, it was not a fit for this year’s anthology.

Though we’ve passed on your story, we encourage you to polish and submit it to other markets, such as the Philippines Free Press, Story Philippines and the Digest of Philippine Genre Stories.

Thank you for your interest in Philippine Speculative Fiction. We hope to read something from you next year.

Best regards,
Dean Francis Alfar
Nikki Alfar

The short story in question was a piece of almost three thousand words, written dangerously close to this year's deadline and featured on this little ditty of a blog post. I feared that I got some elements of the story right -- tone and atmosphere, if you must ask -- but that the plot and progression itself was a little sparse.

At first I felt a little defeated by seeing this e-mail message in my inbox. Then, just for reference, I went back to the rejection notice that I received last year for the same publication and noted a few interesting things that immediately piqued my interest (and generally woke me up better then the usually cup of coffee).

In an effort to replicate my thought processes, I'll break down Dean's letter below. Hopefully no one accuses me of being anal-retentive as a result.

Dear Sean,
No, this doesn't mean anything. Dean's rejection letters are simply a lot more personal than other publications', which means that his addressing me by name doesn't automatically imply that the story stood out for him. It probably just means that he knows my name, but that's it.

While Nikki and I enjoyed elements of “The Whispering” , we regretfully need to pass on it.
That's what the story is called, by the way -- "The Whispering". Mentioning that certain elements of the story were enjoyed doesn't imply that much; it could be anything from a sincere expression to a standard boilerplate.

The real find here, however, is the fact that the story got mentioned by name. I find this remarkable, assuming that the anthology gets at least a hundred submissions each year. This, I think, implies that the story must have been interesting in some way, or that Dean decided to become very detailed with at least some of his letters. :)

Ultimately, it was not a fit for this year’s anthology.
This I find interesting, however. Does this mean that there was a certain theme to this year's anthology that I somehow missed? Then again, it could just mean that there were already about twenty other far better stories in their estimation...

Though we’ve passed on your story, we encourage you to polish and submit it to other markets, such as the Philippines Free Press, Story Philippines and the Digest of Philippine Genre Stories.
Still very interesting, mind you. Did the story get their attention to the point where it could be a worthy contender for these publications after a little spit-and-polish? Or was this a standard template that just mentioned the other major venues for local spec fic? If it's the latter, then this was a great way to build awareness for the literary community -- sort of like a "hey, there are three other places to which I can send my works!" realization.

Thank you for your interest in Philippine Speculative Fiction. We hope to read something from you next year.
Just a standard template. The placement of implied timings indicates that Dean has recently resolved a few life-related concerns, though. The complete mention of the anthology's title notes that he is starting to settle back into work from these concerns, and the use of the word "we" punctuates a close spousal relationship at this point. Moreover, the curve of the capital "S" and the deliberate decimal spacing reveals that he likes steak (medium-rare), prefers vodka over gin, and patronizes the Dockers clothing label. :)

And who was Zarathusra, anyway?

Fiction: Fortress

The little brick house was starting to feel a little stuffy towards late afternoon. Pieter woke from his traditional nap, stretched for a few minutes, and then decided that he would get an early start on the night's dinner.

He kicked his slippers out from underneath the bed, yawning as he slipped them on. All things considered, he was looking at a rather good lifestyle. The days were quiet and secluded, the lot provided almost everything that he and his brothers would have needed, and the security was top-notch.

He opened a dresser drawer, reached in among the tins of grease, and pulled out a clean white shirt. It was Hamnet's turn to make dinner tonight, he realized, and the thought left a sour expression on his face. His youngest brother was certainly the bright and inventive sort, especially in his pensive moments, but he couldn't boil water without leaving a burnt smell. Jolyon was probably the best cook of the three, and Pieter wasn't too far behind (if he could say so himself), but Hamnet... well, Hamnet was probably best left to his machines.

Pieter pulled on a pair of trousers and found a pair of suspenders after a good search; they were tangled among the telescopic sights he had cleaned the previous day. After a while, he decided that he looked presentable enough despite the fact that he was only half-dressed; what was he worrying about, really, when it was only him and his two brothers hanging around?

He made sure that the emergency handgun was still in its case, opened the door to his room, and began to descend the two flights of stairs that led to the ground floor. The fifth step down held a pressure-sensitive detonation trigger; he remembered to hop over that. Moreover, the second-floor landing concealed a trap door that opened to an acid vat in the basement; he disabled it with a hidden switch and re-armed it once he had safely crossed.

There was a bright green mat just in front of the first step; that meant that the external security system was on manual mode. Hamnet immediately came to mind -- Jolyon, after all, was not the sort who was given over to random perimeter checks. Given that his favorite rifle was sitting on top of the mantel at the moment, however, Hamnet was probably outside playing with bigger toys.

Pieter crossed into the kitchen and its checkerboard floor, carefully stepping on the black tiles so that he would not release the tranquilizer-tipped darts. He opened one oversized cabinet and felt among the items there -- crockery, wineglasses, flamethrower, cleaning solution -- before wondering exactly where he had left his gardening basket. After a long search, he eventually found it next to the gun rack -- apparently one of his brothers had seen fit to use it to hold a collection of shotgun shells. He sighed.

Despite how much he liked his current arrangements, there was something to be said about living in close quarters. Nevertheless, it was Hamnet's house -- his youngest brother had laid the foundations himself -- and Pieter figured that, the less ingredients that Hamnet would have to make dinner with, the lower the chances that he and Jolyon would end up with upset stomachs the next day.

He pushed back each of the five deadbolts on the front door, retracted the five-inch spikes, and made certain to avoid touching the doorknob, lest it burn his skin off. Instead, he pulled on a handle that Hamnet had screwed to the inside of the door for that very purpose, and emerged into the bright sunlight.

Jolyon waved at him from the rose bushes, and Pieter waved back. The flowers were coming in very nicely this year, and the blooms were so thick that Pieter could barely notice the machine-gun nests hidden behind them. He glanced around, noting the freshly-manicured lawn, the barbed-wire hedges, the vegetable garden, the double-layer titanium fencing, and his eldest brother's puzzled look, but didn't see what he was looking for.

Then the light bulb came on in Jolyon's head, and he pointed upwards. "He's on the roof," he said.

Pieter looked upwards, careful to screen his eyes, and nodded. "Hamnet!" he called.

His youngest brother leaned out from the cockpit of their anti-aircraft cannon. Hamnet almost never smiled; it was as though the gesture had never been built into his genes. Instead of saying anything, he grunted acknowledgment and returned to watching the horizon.

"It's your turn to make dinner," Pieter called.

Hamnet waved him away, almost irritably. This was to be expected, although Pieter did hope that he would be more conversational at the dinner table later.

"Got enough shells up there?" Jolyon asked, in jest.

Hamnet glared down at his eldest brother. "Got enough," he finally said.

Pieter took a few steps back, careful not to fall into any of the lawn's pit traps. "What are you doing up there, anyway? There's nothing around for miles!"

The weight of his youngest brother's gaze was suddenly upon him. "Had a hunch," Hamnet said. "You gotta feed hunches."

Pieter knew better than to argue. If he and Jolyon only had Hamnet's finely-tuned senses, their own homes would have still been intact. And yet, this was a fine arrangement regardless.

"What're you planning to make for dinner?" Pieter asked.

Hamnet merely grunted, which was not surprising. Hamnet barely cared about what he ate.

Beside him, Jolyon sighed. "Check if the tomatoes are ripe, will ya? I think that the potatoes should also be ready by now. And for goodness' sakes, don't bring in any cabbage -- you remember what happened the last time he decided to make a casserole."

Pieter agreed, and started walking down the little stone path in the direction of the backyard.

"And if the apples are ripe," Jolyon said, "let me know. We could do with a bit of pie this week."

Pieter nodded, skipping over the stone plug that would trigger the spring trap. Between his misappropriated basket and Jolyon's requests, he was finding it difficult to keep track of things. The tomato patch sat in the rear end of the garden, right next to the cache of automatic weapons, and it turned out that his eldest brother was right -- the tomatoes were good for the picking. There was only the question of how he was expected to trot them back to the house.

Above him, he could hear Hamnet announce that he was turning the automated system back on. Pieter selected a few ripe red specimens amidst the sound of whirring machinery, then proceeded to make his way back to Jolyon.

Between the living arrangements and the good-looking harvest, Pieter had to admit that life was better than he would have expected for himself. It was enough to get his tail wagging.

Hopefully, the big bad wolf would never come around. But until that happened, the three of them were going to make the best of things. Even with Hamnet's cooking.

The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes

Remember those shoes that I mentioned in this blog post? The comfortable ones with the really thick soles that I mentioned would likely last for a really long time?

Well, five months after I picked them up at the local mega-market, the in-soles wore out on me. Such sweet irony.

I suppose that it was probably something about me that did it. I walk around a lot -- enough, I assume, for the sweat to collect in my socks and leech into the padding at the inside bottom of my shoes. Around Tuesday, I imagined that something felt wrong whenever I so much as took a step. On Wednesday morning, the in-sole of my right shoe finally wrenched free of the glue binding just as I was on my way to work... and I was in constant discomfort for the rest of the day.

Having only had the shoes for a few months (and unwilling to give up the thick soles), I elected to get them repaired. There's a leatherworker near my office, you see, so I figured that it would be convenient to bring them to work in a paper bag, drop them off during lunchtime, and pick them up in time for the weekend. Hypothetically, a good glue job would have fixed everything.

Unfortunately, the only other wearable pair of shoes that I owned were a pair of ratty five-year-old rubber shoes. They were ancient, crumbling, and practically falling apart themselves, but they were at least vaguely serviceable. Besides, my only other option was to trot out my fine leather shoes (the ones I reserve for weddings, golden anniversaries, champagne wishes and caviar dreams) and scuff them about for an entire day. The former option was infinitely preferable.

My co-workers, however, thought otherwise. First, the shoes looked as though wild mongrels had dragged them out of the local landfill. Second, I was wearing standard office casual, which most definitely did not go well with shoes that had been dragged by wild mongrels out of the local landfill. Third, the office dress code apparently did not like rubber shoes, landfills or otherwise.

Needless to say, I had to do a bit of explaining by the time I managed to drop off my shoes at the local leatherworker. The woman at the counter was quite helpful, at least -- she noted that my in-soles were actually multiple layers of cloth and leather all stuck to each other, suggested that I get another layer stitched on to make them last longer, and charged me P300 for the whole mess. By that time, I wished that I had just gotten some new shoes.

Of course, there was one thing that could have made the day any worse, and that was the possibility that my rubber shoes would finally, inexorably fall apart and die. But they saved me the embarrassment and decided to hold together for one more day, despite what more than a few readers may have possibly thought.

I still have to wear the ratty pair tomorrow, though, because I still have to pick up the repaired shoes sometime in the afternoon. I guess this means that I'll be sitting stationary for most of the day, hiding behind my desk lest the sight of my deteriorating footwear disgust anyone.

On the other hand, I did mention that I'd bend over backwards for good shoes. If this doesn't demonstrate that, then it's at least a good backache-inducer that'll keep me bedridden for weeks. Now if only that leatherworker would only do a good job...

The Five Drafts

I just barely finished a story in time for Dean Alfar's deadline (for the 4th Spec Fic Anthology), so it's been a hard day. I'm beginning to suspect that, between my workload and my sister hogging the computer at night, I'm finding it more and more difficult to delve into fiction. I'll need to factor this into my calculations next time, I think.

What complicates matters every time I put together a new work is the fact that I will slog through multiple drafts before settling on one to develop. I'm a wastebasket kind of person -- if I feel that a draft doesn't seem to be working out, even for the slightest instant, I'm liable to crunch it up and toss it in the garbage. This wastes a lot of time, a lot of effort, and more than a few plots, but it usually ensures that my attention is riveted only to those stories that are capable of holding my interest.

So far, my record lies at eleven separate drafts (I think), waaaay back when the first Spec Fic Anthology was accepting submissions. This particular one clocks in at only five drafts, fortunately, although I'm not counting the occasional attempt at story from months in the past. I was all but willing to give up after the fourth draft, but sometime in the middle of the afternoon today, I decided to give it one final go.

Here, then, are the rakings from my wastebasket this year. In case this fails to satisfy morbid curiosity, I'm pretty sure that I'll have even more unsuccessful attempts before the month is out.

First draft, circa September 5th: I start writing out the foremost plot in my mind, which involves murder in a bookstore. It's written from a first-person point of view, with the main persona being a local criminal psychologist. Because I'm out of town without access to a computer during this time, I scrawl out the story in longhand. I get as far as eight or nine paragraphs before I decide to call it a night.

Two or three days later, I get to a computer and begin transcribing the story. Eight or nine paragraphs later, I'm ready to continue writing the plot... except that I don't seem to know what comes next. After half an hour's worth of thought, I conclude that the story doesn't seem to be as workable as I originally assumed, so into the wastebasket it goes.

Second draft, circa September 13th: With only two days to go before the deadline, I convince myself that the previous version of the story was actually workable, and that I was just taking the wrong approach. So I start writing the tale again, only from the point of view of a bookstore worker this time. I get as far as five hundred words before I start telling myself that the narrative is getting more and more implausible by the second. Three minutes later, I'm crumpling it up.

Third draft, circa September 14th: I start working on a plot that's been spinning in my head for the past year, which involves a rock guitarist and his deal with the devil. I particularly like the characterization -- the devil manifests in the form of an agent named Harvey with blow-dried hair and a clip-on tie -- but the narrative eventually starts to slow down with all the exposition. Soon enough, it begins wandering around while I struggle to inject some order into the chain of events, but it ends up a barely incomprehensible mess. I pull the plug on this effort shortly after it hits eight hundred words.

Fourth draft, circa September 14th: At around eleven in the evening, I decide to try the "white heat" approach. I write whatever description comes to mind at the time, which turns out to be a cosmopolitan sci-fi setting that involves deactivated robots and people in white lab coats. Thinking that I may just have something here, I invest in some definite names for the characters and begin plotting out a pattern of events for them. It's slow going, though, and at three in the morning, I'm too tired to continue. As a result, I zip up my results, e-mail it to my work address, and tell myself that I'll fix up the rest of it the next morning. I write a short blog entry to mark my current spot in this development phase, and drift off to sleep.

The next morning, I open up my plans for the story at work, and immediately hate whatever I've written. It's unfocused, it's derivative, and it's unoriginal. I trash it without further word, and resign myself to the fact that I won't make the deadline this year.

Fifth draft, circa September 15th: Sometime in the afternoon, I get the idea of combining elements from all four previous drafts into a single story. I have no idea what to write at this point, so I try the "white heat" approach again. Thirty minutes later, I have an even six hundred words, which is impressive for something that was only spun out of thin air. By the time I exit the office, I've got one thousand words under my arm, which puts me on the threshold to a workable story.

After dinner and some interesting conversation, I move back to the office by 9:00pm to try and hash out the rest of the piece within three hours. Progress is fairly quick this time; I'm racking up the wordcount due to the extensive metaphorical descriptions that the story needs. By 10:30pm, I'm on the last section of text, which I finish and put on cleanup by about 11:00pm.

By 11:10, I've got a document formatted and on its way to the editor via e-mail. He shoots, he scores. I still have yet to see if I get to win the game as well, but that'll just be an afterthought now. At least I managed to hit the deadline today.

Now if only the story were readable. I'll probably go over it within the next couple of days to see what I should expect from it. Either it'll get in the anthology and I can relax, or it won't get in and I'll have to fix it up for submission to other venues, or it'll stink up the joint so bad that I'll have to put it to sleep.

Such is the life of a writer / fictionist / corporate lackey. No one said it was easy, I suppose.