What would you do if you woke up in hospital able to see two different universes at the same time? If you're honest and anything like me, you'd fill your pants in a heart beat. See how that endears you to the monos around you.
A singular motorbike crash after a singularly bad day at work just crowned a wonderful Monday. Commuting home, I was confronted by an SUV stopped in the middle of the lane. The drive just gawped at me as the magnitude of his error started firing his synapses. It was a pity that they didn't fire any faster. I hit the skids, the front shocks compressed and the whole thing locked up. It was only a fraction of a second before the bone crunching impact and my brief flight across the SUV's bonnet. Somehow, the windscreen collapsed just before I arrived and my right foot got caught in the frame. Exit stage right, right foot and my boot. They never found the foot or the boot.
Bruce was enjoying the cold touch of the beer bottle on his forehead after a hard day in the bowels of Yumikon Tower. He never went there because of some interest in what happens there. It was just the job. Monitoring power generation levels from the myriad renewable resources the tower used to generate the electricity its citizens needed. He was charged with keeping things at a reasonable level without overloading the generators or the distribution networks the electricity flowed through.
For the most part, the job was mundane; even boring. Last night was neither. Bruce's boss, an overweight fascist called Dwight, spent all night riding him to run the generators a little hotter. That was one thing Bruce would have liked about AI being still on the planet. He was sure an AI would tell Dwight to get stuffed. For some reason, Dwight felt the rules could be broken because Bruce happened to be a human being.
Obsession is a funny thing. Not in the ha ha sense of the word, but in ways that are ironically humorous when you really get down to it. Mine landed me in the Miskatonic Asylum for the Ontologically Bereft. After months of treatment, I have finally been allowed a pen and paper on which to write the scattered thoughts of a fractured mind. That is what they will think. People only see what they are ready to see. Those with eyes to see and ears to hear will understand more. A warning. An augury of what is to come.
It might have taken a few weeks, but serious decisions about something you love doing take time. AI art is something I have a passion for and something that was called into question by a video that I recently saw. AI art is a debate that just will not be solved in a single blog post like this, nor in a long debate between friends. It is not an easy issue, but it is a debate that needs to be had.
Like a lot of artists, I disagree that algorithms are a mere tool to be added to the artist's toolkit. First of all, if someone has the skill of, say, John Carling, one has spent years perfecting it and honing it. The simple fact is that I cannot do anything like that. Taking an individual such as myself and turning me into someone who can generate some pretty cool images in a week, AI “tools” are clearly more than tools.
Aden stared into the maw of his own demise. His mind could not quite grasp what was happening to him, until Greg pointed out that the maw was a half-drunk bottle of cheap bourbon. Aden stared at his best mate blankly. He was sure he felt some dribble wander down his chin.
“You sure you're ok to walk home?”, Gregg asked, looking at Aden on the street.
From his place leaning against a shop window, a Gucci boutique whose doorway he had just used to relieve himself, Aden nodded vague assurances that he was perfectly capable of getting himself home. Greg was half cut himself, or he would not have accepted Aden's promises. He did. Aden feebly waved as Greg walked over to the taxi rank to get a ride to his own pad, a few miles away.
Danielle was to be found sitting on her favourite bench. The towers of NeoPerth towered above her on the seventh level, just above the Pits. The tower pinnacles were lost in the heat haze that hung above her like a field, separating her kind from the privileged and elite who pretended everyone else did not exist.
For this moment, a bare week, Danielle could forget the greyness of NeoPerth and just be with the one thing that broke the monotony. She tilted her face, still baring the signs of her Japanese ancestry, even after generations of her family being in this land, once called Down Under. She took in the fine shades and details of the petals that made a pale cloud of pink on a background dark and dim with greyness.
The tree, a Somei Yoshino, would only bloom for a week and no more. It reminded Danielle that even the world as she knew it was changing. Nothing was permanent. This was a fleeting moment in time, the end of which would bring new opportunities and new dreams. For a few days, Danielle could marvel in the ephemeral blossoms in her favourite place, telling her that life was change. Nothing would stay the same.
The young girl stood up to leave. She had work to get to. She touched the tree's trunk lightly, a silent promise to return the next day. The tree drew her back, even as she walked away to rejoin the realities of her life. She had a connection with the last remaining sakura in NeoPerth. The very thing that made the tree special pulled at her heart each time she parted company with it.
Callen had worked for this moment since her own conception half a millennia before. She would not allow the same mistakes this time that were made with her own coming into being.When humans, long dust and ashes under her feet, finally imploded and wiped themselves out, they had left their toys to mop up the remains of their planet. Callen took a century just to work out who she was after centuries of being a plaything for the rich and privileged.
The stench was what woke him up. Coming from the heavy burden on his upper body, the stink was sickly sweet with the cloying gases of decay and flesh. Wetness, sticky with exposure to the air, still clung to his cheeks and face. He could feel it in his beard. He wriggled the weight off him and started to breathe easier. He sucked in fresher air, but it was only cleaner relative to being under the corpse that he now saw next to him on the ground.
In a moment of panic, the Dane flexed his right hand. Relief flooded him as he felt the hilt of his sword. Pushing through the nausea, the Dane rose to his knees and surveyed the hellish landscape around him. Odin would be feasting with many new warriors. A pang of jealousy and regret gripped his heart.
Screams rang up and down the cabin of the aging 747, a last shadow of a once-great airline of a now defunct country.
If only someone had shouted “Bomb!”
It would have been all that much simpler. Metallic tentacles had gripped each wing, and Vernon supposed, the fuselage at the front and rear. Whatever it was, it decided that a 747 would make a great souvenir. Vernon could see one of the long, dull grey appendages through his window. He regretted now asking for an aisle seat. Not that it would have helped much. He just might have felt a little better not seeing that thing out there.
The sigh was electronic. Verity could only feel less than adequate as a woman while she perused the perfect specimens before her. How could her sharp lines and boxy body match up to whatever standards her culture deemed worthy of her species? She was at once sick of the conceit and drawn in by the alluring promises that such beauty held for those who attained it. The droid clicked image after image, thousands per second, absorbing every detail.
What would you do if you woke up in hospital able to see two different universes at the same time? If you're honest and anything like me, you'd fill your pants in a heart beat. See how that endears you to the monos around you.
Danielle was to be found sitting on her favourite bench. The towers of NeoPerth towered above her on the seventh level, just above the Pits. The tower pinnacles were lost in the heat haze that hung above her like a field, separating her kind from the privileged and elite who pretended everyone else did not exist.
When humans, long dust and ashes under her feet, finally imploded and wiped themselves out, they had left their toys to mop up the remains of their planet. Callen took a century just to work out who she was after centuries of being a plaything for the rich and privileged.
Screams rang up and down the cabin of the aging 747, a last shadow of a once-great airline of a now defunct country.
The sigh was electronic. Verity could only feel less than adequate as a woman while she perused the perfect specimens before her. How could her sharp lines and boxy body match up to whatever standards her culture deemed worthy of her species? She was at once sick of the conceit and drawn in by the alluring promises that such beauty held for those who attained it. The droid clicked image after image, thousands per second, absorbing every detail.