Return-Path: Date: Tue, 29 Dec 92 03:15:33 -0500 (EST) Reply-To: quanta+@andrew.cmu.edu (Quanta Magazine) From: quanta+@andrew.cmu.edu (Quanta Magazine) To: +dist+/afs/andrew/usr/da1n/Quanta/Dlists/asciimail.dl@andrew.cmu.edu Subject: Quanta - December 1992 - ASCII - Part 4(4) The process loop included the musicians, so by extension, all the Eternals would be required to process potentially huge amounts of negative and positive energies while performing before an audience. The megastepped physical vehicles would be much more efficient than ordinary Earth bodies. The Eternals would be capable of processing the very energies that often facilitated horrendous excessive substance abuse by musicians who took the substances to feel more comfortable while processing the high-intensity energies. Precisely because of his megastepped condition, Lyle developed an exquisite understanding of how any performing musician could have trouble handling the energies of high-volume music production and a large audience to boot. But during rehearsal now, the Eternals aimed at producing a mixing board mellowness. The DAT recorder worked fine, and Lyle made a stereo mix off the board while they were rehearsing. The long minimalistic tune in open E minor was turning into a good Time Tunnel. Lyle programmed 200 bars of the tune into an older Yamaha keyboard that had built-in rhythms, and the tune synchronistically just turned out to loop nearly seamlessly at bar number 200. So it made for very long and drawn-out jams on top of a background suggesting Eastern themes and meditation. After the rehearsal, Lyle made a cassette dupe of the DAT and popped an ultraWalkman and ear buds into his bag with the notebook computer. Never know when they might have a chance to review the tape before the next rehearsal. And on a modern flying saucer, well, things would probably be so automated that listening to the tape would give Lyle something to do instead of twiddling his fingers. The Eternals dressed in the Indian bedspread tunics that Pearl E. Mae had put together for the group. We were a little squeamish about leaving She-Ra and Bullet alone in the house, but we reprogrammed Bruce the talking Geranium and set up Al's hexadecimal sound net. We hugged both dogs and left. It was getting pretty dark by the time we got to Kennedy Park on South Bayshore Drive. We had to walk by Julian's house, but I didn't notice any signs of activity. We walked along the thin inlet of sulfur-smelling mangrove that divided up two lobes of the green running areas. At the ocean's edge, the park was bounded on one side by Rockerman Road and its canal. There were too many boats in the canal for anyone else to be able to get in there. So it seemed to me that the other green lobe of running area would be a more likely landing place for Yo-Vah. We walked over the curved wooden bridge at the ocean's edge that led from one side to the other. The sound of Monty's outdoor band was already reflecting off the waters in the islands and anchorages of Dinner Key. The side of Kennedy Park that was away from the urbanization of Rockerman Road had an area of quiet mangrove facing Monty Trainer's groups of Docks. The transparent flying saucer was waiting there for us when we got there. As we approached the area that looked like trees and shadows from a distance, the saucer's outlines because quickly apparent. With a soft hum and a muffled vibration, a sparkling panel slid open to reveal Yo-Vah smiling at us. He extended a hand and we entered the craft single file. I was too overwhelmed by the novelty to notice the startled glance of recognition that Yo-Vah had given us for some reason. We were all impressed at how much bigger the saucer seemed inside. The internal structure was, for all intents and purposes, a forty foot geodesic dome with internal panelling made of a sparkling transparent material that resembled plastic more than metal. There were panels of controls everywhere that controlled, for one thing, the transparency or translucency of the individual walls. Some of the walls were not quite transparent, giving us a visual hint of the individual cabins looked like. The central chamber contained a tube-shaped compartment with a two level command center. Individual cabins were spaced like orange sections around the command center. Each cabin was subdivided into work and sleep areas. A superficial glance suggested that all the cabins were exactly alike with no variation in either furnishings or lighting. The command center had more than enough recliners for all eight of us surrounded by a beautiful combination of different color displays and control panels. We manned the recliners at Yo-Vah's request and were treated a spectacular view of our own solar system as the craft left Earth's gravitational field with little more than a shimmy of the saucer. The g-force we experienced was barely more than your average jetliner taking off, but the craft itself was whisper quiet in comparison to a jet plane. At close range, and when viewed in the flesh and from the flesh rather than an out of body perspective, Yo-Vah was less ephemeral and more humanlike. In fact, he really looked like an older guy with a lot of mileage. He had a grandfatherly air. There was still a strangely familiar cast to his face, but I could not catalog my response. Yo-Vah's ship turned out to be a high tech wonder, and not an imaginary reflective fantasy craft. The accelerated view of our solar system that was whizzing by on the full-circle surround screens resembled one of the PBS specials I have seen that showed the same view, except that it was simulated and much slower than Yo-Vah's craft which was deftly burning a path straight for the Milky Way. At least that's what it looked like to us. Now, even in my megastepped days, I am not an astronomer, but the simulated screen was showing what looked liked clumps of stars that seemed to be going by incredibly fast, and I said so. Yo-Vah laughed good-naturedly and explained that saucers always travelled in bursts of speed to help conserve power and cut down on entropy disorganization. He said that we were travelling at intermittent bursts that were ten times the speed of light towards what I called the Milky Way because that is where the closest Time Zone Interchange Area was located. These areas were set up by the I.S.I. to help preserve whatever degree of integrity still remained in the Entropy Equations. Making time transits through the Interchanges minimized the associated problems like entropic scatter, dyssynchronism, and time shock. I.S.I. agents set up the Karmic Ring defenses at Time Zone Interchange Areas to help preserve crucial relationships across time and other dimensions. The Karmic Ring defenses were also something like the metal and explosive detectors in our airports. Atavistic metals, as determined by Carbon dating or other isotope techniques, set off alarms in the Guardian network. Usually, the metals were gold, silver, or platinum or - in the case of Primitive travellers - heavy element isotopes such as uranium or plutonium. The atavistic metals that were heading from the past into a future dimension were now automatically tracked and collated in a special registry. I.S.I. agents of the 3200th Century now could keep track of the problem "exports" and were able to combat the intratemporal ripping off. The agents regretted that the Rings had not been set up when time travel really became popular in the 2800's. I was the only Eternal who had never been in a spacecraft, but there was little time for incredulous wide-eyed reactions. Yo-Vah told us that the Karmic Rings allowed time dimensional shifts with minimum disturbance of universal entropy. He would be able to take us into our own future to demonstrate the truth of what he had told us. I reminded Yo-Vah that I was not able to understand any of the lettering or inscriptions on the control panels. He chuckled again, and there was something very familiar about the chuckle. The back of my mind reached for a memory, but I came up with a blank, and then forgot about the memory as I turned to my attention to what Yo-Vah was doing. He made some movements on the panel before him with his fingers and the main viewing screen went blank. Then the other screens went blank. The same pulsating flash of color now appeared on each of the screens. The pulsation continued for at least several minutes. It felt like I was getting a headache, which is very atypical for me because I never get headaches. After the headache sensation passed, a feeling of clarity emerged. My eyes could read the lettering and inscriptions on the control panel, just as though the panels had all been written in English. But part of my brain still somehow knew that the symbols were definitely not English. There were still a lot of mathematical symbols which I could grasp only with my imagination. It was possible to pick out one digital display which read "2105", and I wondered silently if I were going to have the chance to observe myself die. Yo-Vah said I would not see myself. Ignoring my startled expression, he continued on to indicate that we would be at a very safe distance from Earth's solar system. We were not supposed to view the final cataclysmic event directly within the solar system because it might produce very dangerous debris. As we approached the Karmic Rings, there was nothing special to be seen on the viewer. Yo-Vah told us we would feel nothing in particular as we made a time-dimensional transfer other than the blinking lights because the technology of interdimensional travel had been made very safe and smooth by the I.S.I. techniques. He tapped a rhythm on a part of the main control panel, and the large central screen abruptly switched to an excellent color version of Star Wars. I was the only Eternal who was shocked and surprised by us. Yo-Vah confessed that my Primitive planet produced some of the best albeit primitive science fiction entertainment. One paradoxical reason for the popularity of Earth's films was the excessive dwelling upon violent and destructive themes. Such art forms (except for Primitive planets and solar systems) were generally forbidden as negatively contaminating by the Guardians and the I.S.I. But Earth and its solar system were notorious throughout the future because of the entertainment value of Primitive violence. Even evolved beings occasionally appreciated escapism. As I watched the Empire trying to strike back, I noticed that the other Eternals were enraptured with the sleek Hollywood flash. We had not had much time to watch television during the past four days. Yo-Vah understood the fascination that the other Eternals had. All Guardians of the future were very very fond of Earth culture movies, books, and some music. Despite the extinction of the Primitive planet, science fiction movies of twentieth century Earth especially conveyed a powerfully charming view of the future for those beings who actually lived in the future. Possibly because of the vast numbers of forbidden behaviors to be found in Earth movies, Guardians enjoyed them as purely escapist, as physical violence and destructiveness simply do not exist on a regular basis during the times of the I.S.I. Of course there was still plenty potential for negativity. Destructive instruments of the future have become so efficient that the rare examples of violence and/or destructiveness can produce individual or planetary death with equal facility. But criminal types in the times of the I.S.I. are really rare. Since systematic detection of the intratemporal rip-offs began, the actual incidence of the crimes had been slowly down exponentially. The amount of intratemporal ripping off that occurred before the I.S.I. installed the Karmic Rings was so great, that a critical amount of negative momentum had been gained. The known universe was experiencing entropy imbalance to such an extreme degree that the imbalance had long ago began ripping through the time barriers. So the actual entropy imbalance of the universe reflected backwards into the past from the future. The sins of the children began to be visited upon the great great great grandfathers. Then the retrograde effects, once started, continued to manifest more and more intensely. Burgeoning violence and destructiveness began to amass into retrotemporal pockets of Primitive cultures where the behaviors were either permitted or actively sanctioned. The destructive retrotemporal effects were also cumulative, and the I.S.I. had become very alarmed with the recorded extinction of more than 50% of the Primitive planets known to and charted by the Guardians of the I.S.I. When two planets that were definitely not Primitive, but possibly borderline, began to show signs of cultural backsliding with intermediate scale physical plane violence, the I.S.I. reasoned that possibly the retrotemporal effects were beginning to threaten civilized cultures. Thus something had to be to slow or otherwise control the entropic degradation. So DR TOMORROW was born as a project, one of three aimed at helping to correct the entropy imbalance of the universe. Violence and destructiveness have largely been weeded out in the far future of 32,000 A.D., but the intratemporal ripping off that went on between the years 28,000 and 32,000 was enough to guarantee dreadful repercussions to the past. As long as the repercussions were wiping out only Primitive life forms, no one got too upset. But when life forms clearly not Primitive began having serious problems, and then started regressing into Primitive cultural activities, the I.S.I. clearly discerned a pattern of possible ultimate danger if unchecked or uncontrolled. The I.S.I. were never certain that entropy imbalance was a puzzle with a solution, but all the Guardians generally hoped that the imbalance could be cut off at its source and then also possibly harmonized. Yo-Vah explained all of this to me. The other Eternals all seemed to be listening also with one ear but gluing most of their attention on the science fiction movie. I assumed that they already knew the facts we were hearing. What a universe! ______________________________________________________________________________ Marshall F. Gilula, otherwise known as NeXT Registered Developer (NeRD) #1054, spends a lot of his time with a customized white Steinberger guitar, and a couple of racks of rapidly-aging electronic equipment controlled by a Mac IIsi running MOTU's `Performer'. This version of DR TOMORROW was part of a Ph.D. Dissertation written for Columbia Pacific University. DR TOMORROW is a project that aspires to being a profitable multidimensional wellness learning system. Marshall Gilula lives in Miami with a black Cube, several Macs, numerous stringed instruments, and two beautiful gigantic German Shepherds, She-Ra and Bullet. `DR TOMORROW' and `Project Talking Dog' (She-Ra and Bullet) are two scientific activities of Life Energies Research Institute, P.O. Box 588, Miami, Florida 33133. DR TOMORROW will be continued next issue. mgilula@miasun.med.miami.edu ______________________________________________________________________________ If you like Quanta, you may want to check out these other magazines, also produced and distributed electronically: InterText Contact: jsnell@ocf.berkeley.edu --------- -------------------------------- InterText is the network fiction magazine devoted to the publication of quality fiction in all genres. It is published bi-monthly in both ASCII and PostScript editions. The magazine's editor is Jason Snell, who has written for Quanta and for InterText's predecessor, Athene. Assistant editor is are Geoff Duncan. The PostScript laser-printer edition is the version of choice, and includes PostScript cover art. For a subscription (specify ASCII or PostScript), writer's guidelines, or to submit stories, mail Jason Snell at jsnell@ocf.berkeley.edu. InterText is also available via anonymous FTP from network.ucsd.edu (IP# 128.54.16.3). If you plan on FTPing the issues, you can be placed on a list that will notify you when each new issue appears - just mail your request to jsnell@ocf.berkeley.edu. Core Contact: rita@eff.org ---- --------------------- CORE is available by e-mail subscription and anonymous ftp from ftp.eff.org. Send requests and submissions to rita@eff.org. CORE is an entirely electronic journal dedicated to e-publishing the best, freshest prose and poetry being created in Cyberspace. CORE is published monthly. Back issues are available via anonymous ftp at ftp.eff.org. (192.88.144.4). The Guildsman Contact: jimv@ucrmath.ucr.edu ------------- ----------------------------- The Guildsman is an electronic magazine devoted to role-playing games and amateur fantasy/SF fiction. At this time, The Guildsman is available in LaTeX (.tex) source and PostScript formats via both email and anonymous ftp without charge to the reader. Printed copies are also available for a nominal charge which covers printing and postal costs. For more information, email jimv@ucrmath.ucr.edu (Internet) ucsd!ucrmath!jimv (uucp) Back issues of The Guildsman are available via anonymous ftp at potemkin.cs.pdx.edu (131.252.20.145) in the pub/frp/ucrgg directory. Thank you, thank you very much. _______________________________