cbr 3 / spring & summer 1999
~
car 3 / spring & summer 1999
Daughter! I Forbid Your Recurring Dream!
An excerpt
James Chapman
Blizzard
Esther Clibon
Five poems
From Shrine of the Tooth Fairy
John Lehman
An Award for Elia Kazan
Jan Levine Thal
Commie Dearest
Jan Levine Thal
Glass (pray the electrons back to sand)
James Chapman
Reviewed by Bob Wake
.357
Marcus Gray
Reviewed by Bob Wake
Words for the Taking: The Hunt for a Plagiarist
Neal Bowers
Reviewed by Gay Davidson-Zielske
I Married a Communist
Philip Roth
Reviewed by Jeremy Harrell
The House of Doctor Dee
Peter Ackroyd
Reviewed by Steven E. Alford
A Decent Reed
Bruce Dethlefsen
Reviewed by Matt Welter
The Perfect Day
Andrea Potos
Reviewed by Matt Welter
~
cbr 2 / spring & summer 1998
~
cbr 2 / spring & summer 1998
Sugar Road
Excerpt from a work in progress
Rod Clark
On Levertov
Kevin Ducey
From The Land, Always the Land
Mel Ellis
From The Tenting Cantos
R. Virgil Ellis
The Man Who Once Played Catch with Nellie Fox
John Manderino
Reviewed by Gay Davidson-Zielske
Omens of Millennium
Harold Bloom
Reviewed by Bob Wake
Tabloid Dreams
Robert Olen Butler
Reviewed by John Lehman
Just Above Water
Louis Jenkins
Reviewed by John Lehman
Handwriting in America: A Cultural History
Tamara Plakins Thornton
Reviewed by B.C. Brown
In the Deserts of This Earth
Uwe George
Translated from the German by Richard & Clara Winston
Reviewed by David Steingass
~
cbr 1 / winter 1997-1998
~
cbr 1 / winter 1997-98
Three poems
Jim Stevens
From Earth Hunter
Two poems
César Vallejo
Translated by Mary Sarko
Greta’s Wail of GreatPlains Law
David Steingass
From GreatPlains: A Prairie Lovesong
Mitchum & Stewart
Jeffrey Corcoran
From Unconscious Cinema
Pereira Declares
Antonio Tabucchi
Reviewed by Mary Sarko
Infinite Jest
David Foster Wallace
Reviewed by Bob Wake
In the Shadows of Mountains
Edited by John E. Smelcer
Reviewed by Rod Clark
Signposts: New and Selected Poems
Frances May
Reviewed by David Steingass
In the Gathering of Silence
Levi Romero
Reviewed by Ken Hunt
Esperando a Loló
Ana Lydia Vega
Reviewed by Nancy Bird
In the Gardens of the North American Martyrs
Tobias Wolff
Reviewed by John Lehman
The Global Media: The New Missionaries of Corporate Capitalism
Edward S. Herman & Robert W. McChesney
Reviewed by Amitabh Pal
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
Rebecca Wells
Reviewed by Kate McGinnity
I Was Amelia Earhart
Jane Mendelsohn
Reviewed by Dori Knoff-Roselle
~
Consultation (cont’d)
“And how do you distinguish one creature from another?”
“Simple. I added a random name generator to the program, and it ascribes a name of several words to each creature. Sometimes the names are rather hilarious …”
“Like … ?” The Professor became interested.
“Like, for example, Theophrastus Phillippus Aureolus Bombastus von Hohenheim—this one I like more than any other.”
“Can you sum that up?”
“Yes! Paracelsus, meaning ‘greater than Celsus’—so he nicknamed himself. With him I have fully succeeded. He teaches that amusing creatures ‘are made by me, God, from the alchemical extraction of the world, like in the great laboratory, and bear the image of the Creator.’ I am not sure about the ‘extraction’ but, as you can see, Paracelsus realized whom he looked like and who created him. And he is not the only one who has cracked me.”
“If so, then you deserve praise, God, you accomplished a lot!”
“Ah, Professor, if it were not for one thing: These amusing creatures are mostly busy destroying each other. With each new cycle of the program they create increasingly sophisticated weapons to kill their relatives.”
“I do not want to repeat myself, God, but your single time dimension causes the problem. It leaves them no alternative; so be it, keep these three spatial dimensions—they are certainly accustomed to them—but introduce at least one additional time dimension, and you’ll see it all will change for the better.”
“I’ll try, Professor, but I fear that this would come as a shock for them.”
“So introduce it cautiously, slowly, so that initially only scientists can guess the existence of the second time dimension—there should be scientists there, right? And so on, until you reach the politicians, and then these will decide how to proceed,” the Professor suggested with sarcasm in his voice.
Knowing that the sarcasm was caused by the Professor’s recent failure in the elections, God in his own way wanted to comfort him: “Professor, you should see how my amusing creatures hold elections. Recently the opposition there has won sixty percent of the vote and, nevertheless, lost.”
“It cannot be true,” the Professor was astonished. “I do not believe it! You mean your amusing creatures have been able to think of nonlinear logic?”
“Yes, imagine that … but not the scientists, no. Scientists out there were persecuted for centuries! A few hundred cycles ago they burned at the stake a philosopher who claimed that the creation of only one universe is unworthy of me, God.”
“Imagine that! They managed to hit upon it! What insight! And what was your philosopher’s name?”
“Giordano Bruno,”[*] replied God.
“Nice name, I like it,” the Professor said thoughtfully, and unexpectedly added: “Excellent! Really, I did not expect this much from you, God. I will recommend your work for the prize.”
The Professor looked at God, wanting to see the seeds of joy on his face, but God was silent. He sat with his head bowed.
“Is something wrong, God? You’re not happy with that?”
“I am glad, of course,” God sighed. “But, you see, Professor, the data of these two visionaries, Paracelsus and Bruno, are long in the archives, and few of the amusing creatures are aware of them. There are now various fashionable theories about the origins of the amusing creatures. While some do recognize me, God, as the creator of the universe, for some reason they have decided that I did this in six days, in the end personally sculpting from clay the first amusing creatures. Complete misapprehension of the problem. Then there are those who believe that the theory about six days is a fairytale, and argue that amusing creatures emerged during the evolution of other, equally funny though less intelligent creatures. That is closer to reality, but they have completely eliminated the possibility of my very existence, while, in fact, I conceived and wrote the program that really drives their evolution,” God said with undisguised bitterness in his voice. “And one of the highest authorities in this school of thought is trying to convince everyone that I, God, am just some mental virus that gets into the heads of amusing creatures in early childhood. I do not know what to say. Me—a virus?”
“Do not worry, God,” said the Professor. “One cannot avoid surprises in such a complex problem. But that’s why it is so interesting! I was wrong. Do not delete this universe. Leave and continue to monitor its development. At the same time, here is my advice: make a backup copy and cautiously enter the second time dimension—you will see a lot of new interesting things. But only after exams!”
_____
[*] The great Italian philosopher and poet Giordano Bruno was burned alive at Campo dei Fiori in Rome on the morning of February 17th, 1600, after spending eight years in the jails of the Holy Inquisition.
___________________
Ruben Varda (Vardapetian) was born in Yerevan, the capital of Soviet Armenia. He wrote and later published in Moscow his first fantasy novel in Russian, The Girl with a Lute. Ruben is now writing his second novel. He received his PhD in physics from the Moscow Lomonosov University and then worked in Armenia, teaching and doing research in in the Yerevan University and in the Academy of Sciences. In 1992 he moved to Denmark and in 1996 was posted by the Danish Ministry of Research to Brussels. Since then he has lived in the Belgian capital, mainly occupied with the management of R&D projects, the latest being on EU-Russia cooperation in nanoelectronics.
Consultation
Ruben Varda
From Voice from the Planet: An Anthology of Living Fiction
Edited by Charles Degelman
Harvard Square Editions 2010
~
“You’re making progress, Kit, I like your universe. You managed to achieve rapid stabilization. This promises long life without any shock. Tell me, how do you see its future? What might its zest, or uniqueness, be, so to speak?”
Kit smiled, flattered by the words of her Professor. “You are right, Professor, it is stable, that’s true, but because of this, it is not very lively. Not much happens there. At the moment I do not see any zest, and I’m afraid I have to add one more spatial dimension.”
“And if you continue to play with the initial conditions, without adding a new dimension?”
“Fine, but remember that not much time is left, examinations are coming soon. If you need my assistance, come and see me.”
“Is there anyone left behind the door?” asked the Professor. “Tell them to come in.”
“I believe only God is waiting,” Kit said, gathering her papers.
“Come in, God, come in. As usual you’re the last,” mumbled the Professor. “Well, has there been any progress?”
“I took into account all your remarks, Professor, and look what I got,” said God, unfolding his paper.
“Well, and what have you there, God?” asked the Professor in a tired voice. This group of students was his biggest, and they exhausted him with the results of their numerous simulations.
“You see, Professor, since your last consultation I have considered many different models. You know, my specialty is bio-universes, so I tried to build a model of the universe where at some stage of the development bits and pieces based on silicon or carbon emerge. In the beginning nothing good happened, and even when I succeeded for a short time in creating large molecules, they soon broke up into component parts. But once I got lucky: I managed to create quite a complicated and twisted helix molecule, after which the process went with astonishing speed. And then I set a goal: to create, firstly, a biological object in my image, so that in its appearance it would be like me, and secondly, to ensure that sooner or later the object would realize that by its very existence it is indebted to me and only me.”
“Modesty, God, humbleness! You’re still a student and look at your ambition! You think I do not know where this new fashion comes from? Creationism, or so they call it? And what good is it? What have you achieved with it, God, tell me.”
God’s mood began to worsen. He had expected praise and support from the Professor, and it turned out that all his efforts were in vain.
Noticing this, the Professor felt his duty to support the talented, but somewhat presumptuous student.
“Do not worry, God, if it does not work with this one, build another universe. Your universe is just a file, and it can always be deleted.”
“I would like to leave it and see what happens with these amusing creatures.”
“You can leave it if you like, but for me everything is clear: your universe has entered into the nonlinear mode. You managed to create life, but it turned out that to sustain one life another one should be destroyed. These amusing creatures, as you call them, will continue to deteriorate and, eventually, they will destroy this very life for which you created your universe. My advice to you, God: Go for a new universe. By the way, how many dimensions did you have there?”
“Initially there were many, but eventually only three spatial and one time dimension survived.”
“That’s it! And does time flow back and forth there, or only in one direction?”
“Only one, Professor,” mumbled God.
“All clear! With only one time coordinate you make them forever hurry, jump like grasshoppers and overtake time, whence all this aggression. Why not try to build inverse bio-universes with one spatial and three time dimensions?” the Professor suggested cheerfully.
“I did try, Professor,” God sighed sadly. “Even worse: they crawl along a single spatial coordinate and perpetually fight, either with ancestors or with descendants, and even with both simultaneously.”
“Well, I do not know what to advise you, God. I am afraid that as long as you stick to your creationism, nothing sensible will come out. Look at Kit and others. They created quiet universes. It is a real pleasure to look at them.”
“You know, Professor, I would have removed this universe and started a new one long ago if not for some amusing creatures. You laugh, but I have become attached to them.”
“I do not understand, God.” The Professor was genuinely surprised. “You mean to tell me that you learned to work at the level of individual creatures? There should be billions of them there! How do you do it?”
“I wrote a little program called ‘Guardian Angel.’ It follows the life of every amusing creature from birth to death, after which it automatically enters the data into the archive and destructs itself. As soon as a new creature is generated, the program copies a new guardian angel for it.”
| Continued >> |
____________________
Ruben Varda (Vardapetian) was born in Yerevan, the capital of Soviet Armenia. He wrote and later published in Moscow his first fantasy novel in Russian, The Girl with a Lute. Ruben is now writing his second novel. He received his PhD in physics from the Moscow Lomonosov University and then worked in Armenia, teaching and doing research in in the Yerevan University and in the Academy of Sciences. In 1992 he moved to Denmark and in 1996 was posted by the Danish Ministry of Research to Brussels. Since then he has lived in the Belgian capital, mainly occupied with the management of R&D projects, the latest being on EU-Russia cooperation in nanoelectronics.
The Masturbator (cont’d)
What would she have said to Kevin if there had been some kind of closure to their marriage. No, that was impossible to imagine even now. But what if he had been a different man, not just a good provider, not just her mother’s idea of a suitable choice for Sylvia. What if he had been someone she loved. But why, if that were the case, would they have been breaking up. For the time being she couldn’t go there.
“I’m sorry,” Jerod said looking up at her, “you seem like a nice person. I didn’t mean anything. Really.”
She smiled a little.
He sat back in the chair. She noticed her blouse from yesterday still hung over its arm.
“After our second child, my wife insisted I get a vasectomy. I didn’t want to, but she insisted. Said she wouldn’t ever have sex with me again unless I did. I understood that she didn’t want any more children and it wasn’t as if giving birth had been easy—both girls were born by Cesarean section—but she could have easily have been fixed, herself, during the second delivery. It was almost as if she wanted revenge. In fact, it was after I had the surgery, she told me she wanted a divorce.”
Sylvia stared at him. What if closure wasn’t telling your husband anything but listening to what he had to say instead?
“I mean, if I had become impotent, that would have been all right, but to have it done to me seemed, somehow unreasonable. I felt I was giving up something. Going in, undressing, having someone apply a local anesthetic and then the doctor making cuts in my scrotum, tying off the seminal tubes …”
“Is that any worse than having a baby by a Cesarean operation?”
“No, of course not. But that wasn’t a planned thing, at least not the first time. We’d both gone through Lamaze training. Oh, I don’t know, after the vasectomy was done, it didn’t seem to matter. No, that’s not true. I want to start over. But can’t.”
“Why? Because of a vasectomy? Most women my age don’t want more children.”
“Oh, I know. I don’t mean that exactly, but …”
“So what do you want, besides what you asked for already, because that just is not going to happen.”
“What I would like is to sit in this chair …”
“Ok.”
“And have you take off your clothes, as you would if you were going to shower.”
“And then …”
“And then, with you on that bed, naked, and me sitting in this chair, I want to masturbate.”
“Masturbate?”
“That’s it. I promise I won’t touch you. I won’t go near you. And afterwards I’ll get in my car and leave and you will never hear or see me again.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
After a minute Sylvia pulled her tank top over her head, straightened her hair a bit and took off her bra. She untied her tennis shoes and after shaking them off, stood up to push her sweatpants and shorts to the floor. She kept her white socks on and hiked back up onto the bed.
Then it was his turn. Sylvia watched as he unzipped his pants and pulled out his penis. It reminded her of a pink, blind mole coming out of its hole. There was a time when their back yard had been soft with mole tunnels just under the grass. The exterminator had shown them a picture of one. It had been taken at night with an infrared camera. The head and little mouth of the mole pointing up through a hole, like a penis. Like this penis.
The visitor began to tug on himself. He eyed the fur patch toward the bottom of Sylvia’s white torso. His right hand went faster and faster. Slowly she opened her legs.
Outside cement started to slide from the truck along a metal shaft toward the framed-off area on the ground.
It rushed forth. Then was done.
____________________
John (Jack) Lehman is the founder and original publisher of Rosebud Magazine, as well as the literary editor of Wisconsin People & Ideas. A nationally published writer and poet with twenty-five years experience teaching creative writing, Lehman grew up in Chicago but now lives with his wife, Talia Schorr, and their three dogs and multiple cats in Rockdale, the smallest incorporated village in Wisconsin.
The Masturbator
John Lehman
From Lost on Clearview Road
Zelda Wilde Press 2011
~
Jerod did not want to enter the house, but was asking if he could. She wanted him to, but was acting as if she didn’t.
“I lived here. We were married and now we have been divorced for several years. It would mean a lot to me to just wander through and see the place again.”
“I don’t know. My husband is at work and the kids …”
“Ah yes, I understand. I was just driving by—I have returned to live in Madison—and had an impulse to stop back here and ask.”
In reality Sylvia and her husband were separated. They had moved to this small town, Black Earth, ten years earlier, were raising their two sons there and had learned to live separate lives together—he was on the road Monday through Friday, she wrote a little and was a devoted mother. Now the company wanted him to work out of the Milwaukee office several hours away. She had decided to keep the boys in school and not to move. Kevin, her husband, who had just rented a new place, was tired of her and their relationship anyway.
Sylvia had recognized the last name, Latimer, of the visitor at the door, and when he mentioned he and his now-divorced wife had brought up their son and daughter here, she had relented and invited him in. It wasn’t that he was not appealing, but she was tired of men. Tired of agreeing with them, disagreeing with them; tired of having to deal with them. On the other hand he seemed decent enough. She thought, who knows, in a few years she might feel like visiting the past herself, at least briefly. They had walked through the living room, the dining area, the bedroom her sons shared and even peeked into the kitchen. Now she was heading up the stairs with him following, to the bedroom she and her husband once shared together. There was a small bathroom and shower off the hall and a spare bedroom to the back that as long as she could remember was filled with boxes from their initial move.
When they entered the rather simple, second-story master bedroom with a dormer window and queen size bed, Jerod touched her elbow. She jerked it away.
He wore a grey polo shirt, khaki pants and penny-loafers. Sylvia had been jogging earlier this morning and still had on a turquoise tank top and sweat pants.
“Sorry,” he said. “It’s just that this room and this morning bring back so many emotions.” Jerod slumped down into an over-stuffed chair across from the bed.
She looked at him in an irritated way.
“It’s like you are watching a play,” he continued, “… called ‘My Life.’ It’s not as interesting or as exciting as you expected it would be. Maybe you switch seats, but it doesn’t matter. So you sit in the dark waiting for it to be over.”
“What do you want,” she finally asked.
“I want to have sex with you.”
“No.”
“Right here, right now.”
“No.”
But she wasn’t frightened. This was not an aggressive man who was going to press himself on her against her will. He was a defeated man, and for some reason she felt sorry for him, as she would have for Kevin if he would have let her.
“No,” she repeated, “and perhaps you’d better leave.”
But when he closed his eyes and continued to stay in the chair, Sylvia sat down on the edge of the bed. There was a green satin bedspread on it. A wedding gift from one of Kevin’s fellow workers. Sylvia had high cheekbones and short blonde hair. She was in her mid thirties and in relatively good shape. In that moment she thought back over her own life. Both she and Kevin had had some sexual infidelities over their fifteen years, but their marriage had ended later, that sexual mischief far behind. All she wanted, all she ever wanted was a man in love with her who was not looking for more. What was amazing was that they had remained together as long as they had. Maybe it was the boys.
Outside a cement truck with its noisily-churning load jockeyed into place with a series of grunts and beeps. The County was replacing a segment of sidewalk down the block that had been damaged when they widened the road. There was a pause, then someone revved the engine as a chute must have been lowered into place. Both Sylvia and the stranger listened.
| Continued >> |
____________________
John (Jack) Lehman is the founder and original publisher of Rosebud Magazine, as well as the literary editor of Wisconsin People & Ideas. A nationally published writer and poet with twenty-five years experience teaching creative writing, Lehman grew up in Chicago but now lives with his wife, Talia Schorr, and their three dogs and multiple cats in Rockdale, the smallest incorporated village in Wisconsin.
Lord of Misrule
By Jaimy Gordon
Vintage 2011 (McPherson & Company 2010)
Reviewed by Bob Wake
The West Virginia racetrack hangers-on that populate Jaimy Gordon’s 2010 National Book Award-winning Lord of Misrule have rich inner lives that sweep them up in ecstasies of insight or irrationality; guided by seer-like divinations; glutted and spellbound by sensuality; pulled apart by rage and self-destructive impulses. The story, set in 1970, is mythic yet rudely earthbound, refusing at every turn to romanticize the meanness of lives circumscribed by the hardest of luck.
Luck, after all, can turn on a dime or the dusty final stretch of a horse race. And luck, like God, requires faith in its intervention and patience with its mysterious ways. Tommy Hansel, a college-educated wannabe stable-owner, surmises:
It came because you called to it, whistled for it, because it saw you wouldn’t take no for an answer. Luck was the world leaping into your arms across a deep ditch and long odds. It was love, which is never deserved; all the rest was drudgery.
To Medicine Ed, the racetrack’s aged and superstitious dispenser of both conjured and chemical performance enhancers, Tommy Hansel is “a young fool.”
The only horses you’ll find at the fictitious Indian Mound Downs are past their prime and damaged physically and spiritually. They run in what are called “claiming races,” meaning they’re for sale prior to post time. It’s supposed to keep things level and fair: only horses of similar value compete against one another. Should a claimed horse win the purse, i.e., “win going away,” the major share of the winnings are awarded to the previous rather than the new owner.
Individuals trying to game the system (or trying simply to intuit the combined aerodynamic alchemy of grooming, feed, exercise, phenylbutazone, and a hopefully not-too-psychotic jockey) comprise the good, the bad, and the ugly at Indian Mound Downs. The novel’s most memorable heavy is the “slug-lipped” Joe Dale Bigg, a bullying mob-connected owner whose base of operations is the front seat of his “midnight blue steel-top Cadillac.”
Our lifeline to normalcy and human kindness in Lord of Misrule arrives in the person of Maggie Koderer, gangster’s niece and failed culinary journalist. Her grooming instincts with horses are preternatural (“she tried to believe in the blind connectedness of her body, its unknown powers”), the animals trust her and are attracted to her, as we are, as readers. Maggie is more often than not guided by her better angels, unlike her lover, Tommy Hansel, who increasingly loses his way in the narrative, his sanity crumbling while Maggie’s strength grows. As we gallop toward the fourth and final section of this startlingly original novel, when the portentous titular horse Lord of Misrule is scheduled to race, we’re in a symbol-laden no-man’s-land that seemingly draws from the richest of literary traditions, from biblical apocalypse to Shakespearean madness-on-the-heath.
Written in a kind of roaming second- and third-person-intimate narration with alternating points of view, each chapter is a slipstream connecting fluidly to the next, momentum and memories building steadily, sometimes abstractly, sometimes inscrutably. Then, about midway through Lord of Misrule, without our at first realizing it, we discover ourselves fully immersed in a world and a cast of characters—human and equine—with whom we feel eerily connected on the deepest elemental level. By the time Maggie is lured into Joe Dale Bigg’s Cadillac our concern for her safety is such that we’re breathlessly clicking pages on our Kindles dreading the worst.
____________________
Bob Wake is editor of Cambridge Book Review.
Origins of FIS (Factory in a Suitcase)
cbr 5 / winter 2000-2001
From Redshift: Greenstreem
By Rod Clark
CBR Press 2000
Appendix II
Selected Terms
from Encyclopedia Cybernetica
as of June 2nd, 2094
• Macroset
Factory in a Suitcase. (Illustration by Spencer Walts from "Redshift: Greenstreem.")
A macroset is a set of interdependent nanobots generally containing at least a billion nanobots whose operations are directed and coordinated by an AI matrix commonly referred to as a “hive.” Macrosets can be powered by a variety of means, including microfusion, old-fashioned microwave technology, and a multitude of biochemical reactions, in particular those related to the binding and unbinding of DNA molecules in bi-knit flow systems. The latter technology was combined in 2053 with human-derived DNA and neurotransmitters to produce an AI system that simultaneously powered and directed the newly invented micro-machinery matrices. Although such neurotransmitters and DNA matrices may be synthesized, the purest and most economic means of producing them is in human beings themselves, thus allowing a large portion of our planet’s population to earn a basic subsistence wage for doing almost nothing, and helping to solve the massive unemployment problem of recent decades.
The first experimental macroset was created by Engineer Jack Dougal McCool in 2042. He called it a “factory in a suitcase” or FIS, and stunned observers in the granite shield country near Rainy River, Minnesota by pouring an early FIS out of the back of a dump truck and having it carve part of a roadway through a half mile long granite shelf in less than three hours. This crude pilot model was nicknamed “the lamp.” It was set in motion not by an external switch, but by rubbing the titanium shell of the cylinder to excite and “wake” the blubit matrix, which then projected a tiny hologram avatar which requested verbal commands from the set “master.” It would then process the commands as riddles to be solved, and proceed with attempted solutions. Today, the macroset descendants of Jack McCool’s early FIS prototype can direct a wide range of nanotech “soups” to perform an astonishing variety of manufacturing or reengineering tasks at a high speed (and at any scale, including terraforming or metrostructing, depending merely on the size of the macroset and its parameters ). Today macrosets are capable of folding all their components into much smaller spaces with much greater capacity then was once contemplated. The massive FIS hives of the mid 21st century have given way to systems that can fit into a 5 kilogram attaché case. “Worldmaker” macrosets the size of McCool’s original FIS can now terraform and urban plat entire planetoids, complete with big box retail and Macrodonald arches from horizon to horizon in as little as forty-eight hours. All the marvelous achievements of macrosets are acomplished with essentially four kinds of bots: sensits, the eyes, ears and nose of the set; blues or blubits, which analyze, program and direct; quicks or quickets, which provide inter- and intra-energy transfer and communications; and redniks, which construct and deconstruct. These collaborate through the aforementioned system matrix called a hive.
Once set in motion, a macroset can be a dangerous tool, since it has the ability to radically transform any matter in its path, creating an astonishing repertoire of buildings, machines, goods and artifacts of all kinds—limited only by the sources of energy and matter available for it to tap, and by the reins of its managing software. Because of its potential for destruction as well as construction (as demonstrated by the tragic art-deco redesign of Cincinnati in 2068), the security, development and improvement of management and control systems has always been the focus of macroset engineering as carried forward by the Greenet Consortium.
Even in the early days of macrosets there was a considerable controversy over the best way to develop guidance systems to manage, direct, and control the energies of trillions of molecular sized nanobots in order that they might perform the many complex and sophisticated tasks that nano engineers anticipated for them. McCool’s orginal FIS was an “evolved” AI system which grew slowly at first, matured rapidly into a brief and useful life, and then became unmanageable as its experience grew exponentially—requiring “macrocide” when the system matured, began to question, and eventually overwhelmed control systems. This early control design was built on the “democratic” hive concept—with each class of nanobots being assigned tasks which it could carry out in any fashion it liked within crudely defined parameters. The “education” process proved extremely difficult, as the creative bots periodically found inventive ways to subvert and overwhelm their parameters—sometimes, as noted earlier, with disastrous results.
The McCool theory was that this nursery method of cultivating and educating macrosets, although expensive and difficult in its early stages, would produce the finest macroset hive in the long run. Challenges included the uncertainties generated by chaotic variation and the difficulties inherent in calculating Brownian tolerances of nanobot matrices when such systems are allowed perfect freedom and maximum learning opportunities (within loosely structured strange attractor parameters). The expenses and danger inherent in this process, which McCool called “training the genie,” plus the reasonable doubts of Greenet Executives that total mastery could ever be achieved over such continuously evolving AI systems, combined to move the “control” initiative in a newly secure and responsible direction. AI queens were established to build security envelopes around macrosets and help commercial interests direct them with tighter discipline. McCool, more interested in science than safety, did not care for the new approach. Unfortunately, his irrational opposition to the new control protocols deranged him, leading him into the unconscionable criminal activities of the 80s, and tarnishing his reputation.
In the interests of greater macroset security and control, Greenet’s 20th century predecessor, a clumsy and loosely structured capital matrix called the Fortune 500, directed Lucent and other ancient firms to create “plug and play central” control systems that would send predefined (fully cooked) imperatives directly from corporate engineers to the systems—crisply separating the problem solving and execution modes of macrosets. However, this proved too restrictive to be economically viable, since such macrosets did not have the creative freedom to sufficiently modify projects when presented with unexpected anomalies or flawed instructions. After a number of tragedies resulted from this well-intentioned but over-restrictive approach—this too rigid format was abandoned. Hence today’s “Chinese Box” macros in which successively more heavily controlled layers of directly programmed security bots encase a free thinking hive like the layers of an onion. Within this secure corral, the macroset is allowed to “think” freely, but is only allowed to “act” when off-system approval of change options is granted. Vicious rumors that some macros have escaped their molecular prisons and are prowling loose on the moons of Jupiter and elsewhere at the Solsystem’s rim are entirely false. Greenet’s management of such systems is secure and absolute.
There are, however, a small handful of FIS lamps—created for the use of McCool and his criminal descendants—still believed to exist, operating irresponsibly free of Greenet. These systems were deliberately released into Solsystem by McCool following his conviction for subversion under the Greenet protrust laws of 2063, and subsequent escape from custody and disappearance among the moons of Jupiter in 2087. These include three lost lamps, and one experimental “ring” which disappeared with him and may be at this very hour in the hands of subversive elements that are either ignorant of the dangers of such self-energizing, continuously self-modifying units or are involved in criminal conspiracies to perpetuate their use. The control of these maverick macrosets, sometimes called the “Y” series, can only be exercised by an imprinted male who shares (by direct descent) the same “Y” chromosome as Jack Dougal McCool. If the reader has any knowledge of these “loose lamps,” or the location of any direct male descendants of Dougal McCool, it is that individual’s responsibility to report this information to the nearest Greenet terminal so that these individuals can be placed in protective custody, and these maverick macrosets can be tamed or deactivated, and made safe for the good of all.
Solsystem, into which we are locked until (or if) the FTL drive can spread Greenet across the dark matter between suns, has a finite and diminishing amount of matter and energy supplemented to some extent by solar and galactic radiations. The FIS lamp piracies which may now operate sporadically throughout solsystem, may be depleting this precious reserve of matter and energy, maintained by Greenet for the good of all, thus threatening the very foundation of civilization as we know it. Remember, energy not managed by Greenet is energy mismanaged: “Loose Lamps Lose Amps!” Be sure to report any information you come across regarding these maverick lamps or McCool descendants to Greenet Central. As the reader is no doubt aware, these maverick lamps are known as Aladdins.
Redshift: Greenstreem is available from cbrpress.com or Amazon.com.
____________________
Rod Clark is a life-long Wisconsin resident. A professional writer and media-consultant, he is also the editor of Rosebud, a national magazine for people who enjoy good writing.
cbrpress.com
coffeespew.org
cambridge book review 