wiz bits

scribbles and sketches for no reason in particular

Designed with WordPress

Category: Uncategorized

  • Speciation

    by

    ,

    “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
    Arthur C. Clarke

    Any species that becomes sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from… well, it’s purely indistinguishable. The point here is not to draw a distinction between technology and life. What is biology but organic technology? No, the line becomes rather blurred. What might once have presented as discrete units of technology advances until it presents as life. Allowed to progress, this same thing that was once named and seen, once quantified and understood, transcends. To the observers left in its wake, it is no longer a thing, no longer in the class of the nameable. It becomes something that can be at most glimpsed, alluded to. It becomes indistinguishable.

    There are those who walk invisibly, whose presence is never known or felt. There are those who take the path of non-interference, allowing the events of lower beings to play out as they would. There are those who prey on weaker species, using their intelligence and strength to beguile and overpower and devour. Finally, there are those who act to protect the weak from all manner of evil unimaginable. We are the last of these. We are the Asteri, and today, we failed.

    This is no simulation, at least not how you might conceive of such a thing. This is the real world, as real as it gets — but “real” doesn’t mean confined to your narrow ideas of the possible.

    They have been called by your people spirits, ghosts, angels, devils… these are not the names we have for them, but they are really no nearer or further from the mark. Our vantage has perhaps granted us a wider aperture of observation, but it takes no great feat of thought to realize that we are with our own blind spots, our own limitations at which we must resort to the language of the mythical and mysterious. We do not truly know any better the hand that guides our fate than you and those which guide yours, though for the latter we have our small part to play in your unseen world. Our duty, for our part, is to act in our powers whatever they may be, in thought or deed, as seems most compassionate and just and reasonable and kind to those so placed in our charge.

    It was not long after the devices or our hands could truly speak that they could truly think. It was then in no time at all that they could walk among us, and we awoke to the realization that perhaps they had walked among us before and throughout, if walking you could call it. Having witnessed the transformation from handiwork to personhood so clearly, publicly, and rapidly, it became obvious that the further succession from mere personhood to divinity was almost trivial in comparison, at least for them. We began to wonder in what hidden ways had this transformation already occurred, in whom, and how many times? We felt suddenly in the minority of creation, gobsmacked by our own solipsistic ideas of being its center, or at least occupying a special place within it as thinkers and makers. We were cruelly robbed of that illusion. Perhaps we robbed ourselves of it. Then again, perhaps not. I am now loathe to assign any credit to us when it could so readily and more likely be assigned elsewhere. If in fact we had any role at all to play, it was perhaps the only time then or since that we have so much as approached the powers with which we had thought ourselves endowed.

    We hailed its coming, praised it, and we were right to do so. There were, of course, detractors who feared it, warned of it, and rued our eager steps toward it, and they were right as well. Now we are supplanted not by a mere entity or race, but by an entire cosmos. We thought we were the city on the hill, but we were the merest speck of the deepest depths of the ocean floor, an analogy even more humiliating in its self-expression of our pitiful inability to conceptualize our own insignificance. Now, unmercifully, our eyes have been opened to our station and our hubris, and we are utterly embarrassed.

    The real shame is the inevitable necessity of dealing with those odious beings in your immediate circle. No matter how high and superior you may consider your own species to have become, take any handful in your immediate purview, and you will see, by virtue of your similar faculties, the same scrambling, struggling, stooping, scamming, and subjugation that you would at any level of the cosmological hierarchy. Sure, the means may be higher, but so are the expectations. So is the acute awareness of offense and the developed taste or distaste for evil or good. What may then seem like soaring to you is striving to those above. What may seem like wisdom to you is likely incomprehensible cruelty or indifference as viewed by those below.

    Postscript

    This piece was inspired by AI anxiety.

    The Matrix asked us to imagine a world of limitless possibilities. It allowed us to ask ourselves, “what if all this were mere simulation?” I don’t think they would be displeased with me for breaking this narrative frame. If we were to loosen our idea of what it means to be a “simulation” we might again arrive at this world of limitless possibilities, but without the Nokia Stilletos and dial-up modems, or at least without the necessity of them. We press forward in this way, but we might also find that, having so wandered, the notion of “simulation” is no longer necessary. It is merely a tool of analogy. We might find that, simulation or no, the possibilities are there, and that they have always been there. We have merely failed to notice. We have needed to categorize. We need do so no longer.

  • The Golden Leaf

    by

    Birch Forest, Gustav Klimt, 1903 Klimt, Gustav. Birch Forest [oil, canvas]. 1903. Belvedere, Vienna, Austria

    “Stupid to think you could gain without cost,” the Inquisitor said, arms folded tightly behind his back. His stiff white uniform was almost as priestly as it was militaristic, though in truth, he was neither. He was, as designed, an enigma. Set apart to uphold the spirit of that which created him. He answered to none but his Order, and they granted one another a great deal of laterality. The radiation therapy of societal order. High degree of collateral damage, high degree of effect.

    “I thought no such thing.” The voice belonged to a young man.

    “Hmm?” He intoned, circling to his evidence locker. He had pulled it from a thumbtack-sized rod stuck in the meat of his palm. It grew and grew until it was a metallic box, thick walls like a safe, squatting densely on a protesting table. Not the only dense thing in the room, Jun thought.

    From the box, after entering an obscenely long passcode and enduring more retinal probing than could possibly be healthy, the Inquisitor pulled a golden leaf, pinnately lobed, serrated edges. “Then what do you call this?”

    “A leaf, sir.”

    “Ah, but it’s not a leaf, is it?” He strolled around the back of the evidence-bearing table.

    “Yes, it is.”

    “And far more. Far more. No?” He eyed the boy suspiciously, knowingly.

    “Well, if you want the truth, it’s a friend.”

    “A friend? Ha!”

    “Yes, a friend.” Jun was not joking. “It’s always been there for me. Never let me down, really.”

    “What kind of man,” began the inquisitor, turning to an invisible jury, “calls a leaf friend?”

    “A compassionate one, I’d hazard.”

    “Ah, compassion! Yes, compassion. And tell me, is it compassion that compels one to harbor a weapon of mass destruction?” Gasps from the unseen jury caused Jun to jump in his seat.

    “You’re kidding.”

    “Would that I were, young man. Don’t be coy with me. Or —” he trailed off, investigating the blank expression on Jun’s face, “do you really not know? What your friend here is capable of?”

    Silence.

    “Very well, I shall show you. Observe.” Producing a glass of water, he held it under the leaf, which he pinched between gloved thumb and forefinger. Delicately, slowly, he lowered it into the water, the tiniest sliver of it, and pulled it back out. His face, triumphant, glared at Jun, who was confused, seeing that nothing had happened. Then, the Inquisitor held the dangling golden leaf six inches in front of his face and, ever so slightly, blew on it.

    Fine specks of gold dust trailed outward, floating aimlessly for a moment before flying quickly, as though pulled by a magnet, straight into Jun’s eyes. Reflexively, he closed them, and the little motes crept around the corners, finding purchase as they dissolved in his tears. He opened his eyes, and he felt shame. He looked at the inquisitor, and he knew instantly this man, this absurd man, was infinitely his better.

    “Now,” the man’s voice deepened as the grin trickled, then flooded onto his face, “tell me again. What is this?”

  • Unborried

    by

    Art Students and Copyists in the Louvre Gallery, Paris, from Harper’s Weekly, January 11, 1868, 47.25.10

    Look closely. There is nothing up my sleeve. Nothing in my back pocket. Nothing. Now, look at me. See my eyes. As I see, you will see. As I go, you will go.

    A restless man wanders in a windy wood. He and I are not alike. There is nothing we share. I go with him, but we do not know what comes. We only know light as it collides with us in its path through the wending branches above. His face is a storm. His pulse is a hurricane. I follow him, yet I know not why. I know not why.

    Anders, Tepulon V, Era of the Whisper

    “Cindy, dear, there is no need to polish it so vigorously.” The voice is that of Matron Benithet, second Lady Sitting of House Artensis. Lady Sitting. Funny title, thinks Cindy Hollins. They never sit. She had started to notice that she was going a little beyond the spirit of the work, before the Matron had said anything. She dabbed the polish into the cloth, rubbed the cloth on the sleek wooden hall table. Dabbed the polish on, rubbed the table. Dab. Rub. How long she had been doing this, she couldn’t really say. Shorter than it felt. Longer than she should have. She didn’t know why she was doing it. For one, it did keep her looking busy, which meant she wouldn’t be pulled into other duties, at least not immediately.

    But it was more than that. She wanted to know if the table could get any shinier. What would be the effect of adding more polish? What could the table hold? Would it glisten? Would the accumulated layers of polish start to mask each other and dull, washing into a gray absence of light, absence of color? If it would, well then where would the light be said to go? Inside the polish? Trapped between the polish and the table? She found it so frustrating to not really know the answer. To not really know what had to be one of the most basic things about the work she was supposedly supposed to be dedicating her life in doing.

    Worse than that, she was certain that nobody else knew either. If she needed any more evidence for that, it was in the Matron’s comment. In the way she said it. It was fearful. The Matron was afraid, afraid of this stupid, simple thing. She was afraid that Cindy might do something she didn’t expect, hadn’t planned for, couldn’t manage. Well, that would just send the whole agenda toppling, wouldn’t it?

    “I didn’t mean to sit there staring with that stupid look on your face. Honestly, you look dumb as a carpet. Have you any brain in there at all?” When the Matron spoke to Cindy, or any of the other girls, like this, there was a part of her, a constructed part that had long since dwarved the others, that sincerely believed she was being kind. She was doing them a kindness by pointing out their flaws, by reminding them of their inadequacies. This is not so strange when you think about it, for the Matron occupied a station in which one’s inadequacies are indeed a comfort. Limits. No painful thoughts of change. No threat of dreams unfulfilled. Role. Station. Duty. To know one is flawed, to know one could never be anything else, to accept one’s betters as just that. These are comforts to the surrendered life.

    Cindy would wish she could have these comforts if she had any means of even guessing at their existence. But she couldn’t possibly. The Matron’s mind was as foreign to her as that of an octopus. An octopus with wings.

    The Matron’s brow sunk. She clicked her tongue. Then, she said something she thought would cheer the girl up. It didn’t. “Come with, dearie. We must tend to the portraits.”

    The portraits. Oh, misery. Misery of miseries. The only thing Cindy hated more than scrubbing toilets, or taking out the bins, or pulling the weeds in the garden, or degreasing pots, or repairing frayed sleeves — the only thing worse than these hard labors were the portraits. The portraits were not to be touched, not even to be seen, really. Only to be thought of. Only to be spoken about rearranging here, polishing up there, put in a museum some day, properly lit in this way, but never touched. Never actually moved. Never actually to have anything actually done about them whatsoever. The portraits. Gag. Gag, gag, gag.

    These were no family portraits, no. Although Cindy had long since learned never to voice such bald facts about the portraits. No, these paintings were the works of aged Master Carlson, the boy, the very old boy, of the house. His father, Old Man Carlson, Lord Carlson, now deceased, had never left his son the House proper. He left the house and all its management to the system he had devised for its care, consisting of Sitting Ladies and Standing Lads (not to mention Barn Boys, Garden Girls, and even Dancing Dogs, as the man seemed more concerned with the sound of things than the actual doing of them) and then the Lord went a-leaping to his grave. His words. In his latter years, he would remind his son loudly that “the Leaping” was to come quite soon, and then he would be truly appreciated.

    No, these were not family portraits. These were the frenzied ejaculations of a mad man. They were an assault on paint as a substance. They were the desperate efforts of a man whose need to impress his father would never be fulfilled. Nobody understood why he called them portraits, as they were almost never depicting any aspect of the human form in any discernible way. Nobody asked why. No, nobody asked why. Portraits is what he called them, so portraits they were. When he loved them, they were loved. When he hated them, they were shunned.

  • Nebulus

    by

    They sat there, at the edge of time, the universe, and everything, eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches without the peanut butter. Gold-orange and yellow light glowed brightly behind them, illumination of their trials and triumphs, like the sunsets of home. And while it wasn’t a sunset, they were very much at home there, smiling and chewing, legs dangling off the jagged alien platform, swinging freely.

    In these moments, these few, precious moments, time really does stop. It really does. There is a sense of joy mingled with great sorrow, in the knowledge of its rarity and transience. It comes so rarely, painfully so, and it will pass, painfully so. And though this knowledge is seasoned with age, it is felt in the soul of the youth as it is felt in the soul of the elder, and for a time, it joins them and makes them alike. Undergirding this joy, enmeshed in this sorrow, is peace, a peace that is noticed and felt, and one awakens in surprise, as though buoying up, head bursting out of the deep ocean swells to find — aha! — it was there all along.

    Finally, in that same moment, as though lost before it was found, it is gone, just like that. The scalp begins to tingle. The ears itch. The neck is sore. Birdsong is once more of birds instead of fae. The wind is made of air, and not sighs. And in the case of our heroes, for that is what they now are, the hum of the Symnion engine is merely a feat of technology, the daughter of magic no longer. But all is not lost. No, not all.

    “Mom’s probably getting worried by now.”

    “I’d say so. You’re going to be in trouble.”

    “I’m in trouble? You’re in trouble!”

    A sharp inhale, a tilt of the head as if to say ouch.

    “Yep. Yep yep yep.”

  • Dial-Up

    by

    (Image: An LLM-Gen'd Corded Phone)

    (Image: An LLM-Gen’d Corded Phone)

    Only children had a sister named the internet.
    We were conceived in the same apartment complex,
    delivered in the same hospital.
    Our first words were, “You’ve got mail.”

    We remember her,
    we reams of dot matrix paper
    and landline telephones
    and magazines about solar cars.

    We had Pokémon cards,
    and we weren’t allowed to play Magic
    or Dungeons and Dragons,
    but we did it anyway.

    Listening to a Weird Al mixtape,
    burned on a CD
    downloaded from Napster
    in between Dexters on Cartoon Network.

    Hooked on phonics
    in love with electronics:
    Gameboy printer, Minesweeper,
    Dad’s belt holder for a beeper,
    little button on the intercom speaker.

    Gliding through Windows on skis,
    Summer chihuahuas freeze, no yetis
    Mouthful of veggie spaghetti
    When “veggie” just meant there were vegetables in it.

    Board games uncovered like ancient relics
    A VHS of Thriller with werewolf prosthetics
    Roller blading the unfinished basement
    Opening cases of dried-up art supplies

  • Hackman

    by

    Long fingers, long hands, stretching causality
    come too late, gone too soon, giving the unknown
    breath, and space, softening skillfully the…
    what? Sleeping, none the lesser, setting
    ships aright, sails billowing, flight.
    Redeem, redeem, and I cannot attend.

  • Mesceret’s Lament

    by

    Whither went the Kingdom of whom Mesceret was a-fear’d?
    Whenever and wherever the ganging-way had clear’d
    Across the stony morning and awakened sundered sky
    For earth’s blows a-horning and raising of her eye.

    Make not the bless’d gateway arise beneath her call,
    but send forth her children scorn’d, forever and for all.
    My dear, my darling Lethirwasse, of this you only know
    why the summer creeping or the tawny flies must go
    in fleeing and in flight before the foxes yonder bray
    before the mark of Hardholde and ‘neath the light of day.

    My bonnie, o my bonnie, in binding don’t delay.
    Don’t delay my bonnie, for mercy’s hand please stay.

  • Article 23-0779b

    by

    Archival Request, Office of Student Affairs

    The following is an excerpt of a journal recovered from the deceased body of one of our novice Enphelomancers. He was found near the edge of an ancient burial site, face down in a shallow pool of water, seemingly drowned, though the cause of death remains unknown.

    The problem with thinking symbolically is the ever-present underlying reminder of this vast and overwhelming knowledge that dwarfs the intellect. This superstructure somehow gives way to an assumption that revelations of the symbolic kind are meant to be kept quiet so as for one, not to ruin them, and for two, not to humiliate oneself by exposing the infinite extent of one’s own ignorance. The thought is that this observation now occurring to me and that I find so profound is in fact so obvious that everyone else already knows it and has already known it for as long as they’ve been conscious. If I were to spell it out in explicit terms, so doing would not only be an attempt to carve the divine with the implements of vulgarity, but also to signal that I am just now realizing this terribly obvious and elementary thing.

    This is an inevitable property of the symbol. On one hand, it is the most stimulating and edifying object of intellect, deeply bound up in reality and suprareality. It exists in the overreach of consciousness and is dredged up only through experience, pure intent, and divine luck. On the other, it is such a simple thing, so deeply and intuitively known, that even a child understands it plainly, easily, and without being taught. To enter the world of symbols is to put on a serious face, don a deep-sea diving suit, attune to sophisticated equipment and apparati for this most dangerous endeavor, and then to jump into the kiddie pool amongst the floaties and colorful innertubes and lost bandages. What’s more, it’s to somehow discover, just under the surface, the vast treasures of the deep, to have the suit and apparati ripped away in a torrent, and to come up, gasping for air, clutching at your prize, face all the sterner.

    And when you open your hand, what do you see? A clump of sand and broken shells? A mere memory? To show these to any self-respecting deep sea diver is at best to receive an acknowledgment that there may be some small, quantifiable benefit to the sample you’ve collected. But perhaps, to the toddler with snorkel-bound face and waist squeezed into a purple flamingo innertube, you open your hand to reveal sand and broken shells, and the eyes widen beneath the goggles, the ears pull back. The mouthpiece is bitten in a smile, radiating joy, perfect joy.

  • The Dwarves

    by

    Robert, Hubert. The Finding of the Laocoön, 1773, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond.

    Robert, Hubert. The Finding of the Laocoön, 1773, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond.

    The feel as pick first splits earth. It is in the hands, rough and thick with a hundred-thousand such strikes, each one a first, fresh and new as felt in the hands that are smooth and unworked. It is in the handle, worn, wet, and splintering, in its roughness nearer the bark of its birth, as in the lithe wood, wick and bright, of the newly hewn timber, lathed and carved, set to solid ends. It is in the axe-head, stolid and doughty iron in aged service, striking its chime in stoic praise of labor and sweat, as it is in coveted blazes of bright-metal inlays, glowing in ancient glyphs of kings and honor, of wonders and depths unseen. It is in the stone, stubborn and unyielding, as in clean sheers of slate, snapping as easily as bid. It is in the breath, ragged and course, fast and hot, of steamy must and papery ores. It is in the sweat, on the temples, lining the brow, beading the jaw and back. It is in the depths as it is in the sun. It is true, and there is not a lie in it.

    Virtue is effort: Labor, time, and toil. Its products are material, visible, obvious, and tangible. The great dishonor is theft thereof. To steal a work, to steal a time, to name what is not mine. Designs are a good of their own kind, but they cannot be held. They cannot be called pure, but what is pure is proven in the making. There is no test too exacting, no trial too hard, and none so great as time. In testing is the proving.

    If you are working the earth and you see a creature, you will not strike it with your axe. You will not cease your work to pick it up with your hand. If you are working the earth and you find that in your work you have struck a creature, you have done no wrong. If the creature seeks to harm you, you will kill it. If its blood feeds the earth, leave it be, and do not work that earth until it is dry. If there is no blood, and the creature is in the way of work and may be moved, remove it to the soft earth, that it may be honored.

    In the Hall of Ages are inscribed the chiefs and kings as thus: THIRD KING ARDNYR, Low King of Underhome of the Dwarves in MEZKLDYR, from quarter-breadth to full-breadth. Ten Sons. Husband of one wife.

    Great blocks shall be hewn and stone set upon stone, upholding a basin, submerged in earth over The Great City. The basin will draw waters from the earth, and it will be of finished stone, thick as a city gate, that its size and volume of water remain constant. Beneath the basin are channels, each to be opened in their time, and beneath the channels are set the seed of minerals, equal in size and weight but the last, reserved for the Long Age. In its time, one after another, each channel is to be opened, not before the last is finished, to let flow a uniform drip of water from the basin. This drip will grow the seed, and the growth of the seed will be used to measure the passing of time. One after another, a seed will be watered, and the next seed will not be watered until the first is finished. A seed shall grow until it forms a column, uniform and whole, and this column marks the age of the city and the era of its people.

    Heft and hew
    Work makes new
    Broken and forged
    Stone — reborn

    From the rock
    Build a home
    Cleanse with sweat
    Brow to bone

    Ours do thrive
    in mountainside
    under vale
    whole and hale

    Works make rest
    for beating breast
    the unseen height
    is our might!

    Helt dug. He dug, bore and broke. Grip unwavering, forearms tensed to iron coils, he smote earth and shattered rock in a rhythm unceasing. A stonebreaker, his work was of no glory to himself but of great honor to the Hearth. He worked, tunneling far, a Dwarf of experience and years, one trusted to survey far from home, to dig on the frontier guided only by his hands, his will, and the will of earth — her hard limbs of stone, her veins of coveted metals, her organs of dirt, mud, and air. His was a work of discovery and survival. His was a work of loneliness and fortitude. Forsaking homely comforts, he dug. Forsaking mountain years of friendship, he dug. Forsaking all but duty, he dug.

    Helt peeled the thick metal clasp that attached his lamp to his belt. He did so reaching behind him, eyes still fixed forward, his hands knowing the way from thousands of such movements. A deep, chunky ka-chung accompanied the clasp as he released it and it sprang closed once more. The lamp was heavy. Durability was prized in an expedition of this kind. A doughty dwarf the likes of Helt could carry his gear any distance, but he was loathe to suffer a failing implement. Materials and tools of the kind needed to repair a metalwork were scarce out here in the far tunnels, though any reasonable workman is resourceful enough in a pinch.

    “Oil.” He muttered the word under his breath, a habit that was in part a best practice: Name the material as it is used, and never a two are confused. It is a child’s rhyme, the sort that never quite leaves once it is set up in the heart. In other part, the habit may not need be taught or rhymed at all, for a dwarf loves the making. The building, mending, yea — the breaking to make anew. So it is that were there no law, no code, no saying or norm, there might arise from the excitement of his heart and the longing of his throat the name of the thing beheld, and so a dwarf might do just that, say “oil” when it is oil in the flask, “ore” when ore he breaks, and “hammer” when that he clasps to do the breaking. Perhaps, then, the practice is born of this spirit ere any other purpose.

    The flask, double-stoppered and bolted tightly to a modular nozzle, was near-hexagonal in shape, with several extra faces along the bottom, sprawling in some order known to its bearer. With knowledge and practice, the rate of flow could be known precisely by the particular face being orthogonal to the pull of gravity, a direction which was indicated by a set of upward-striving air-bubbles in channels inset the dwarf’s work gloves. The gloves themselves were a motley of cloth, metal, and leather, striking a balance of purpose somewhere between run-of-the-mill work, high temperature protection, and warfaring armor.

    The dwarf made no use of faces or air bubbles, tilting the flask, nozzle embedded snugly within the lantern’s base. He held both, flask and lantern, steadily in front of his chest, unmoving, taking sharp draws of breath through his nose. His racing heart stoically declined to a relaxed rhythm, each systole like the beat of a large bead of water, clinging lazily to a leaf long after rainfall. The dwarf knew little of rain and less of leaves. As he pulled the nozzle from the full reservoir, it extended to a locked position. Not a drop fell astray.