Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
He went to the bathroom and entered the code. It blinked red — occupied.
Thinking it through, he thought the light had blinked red twice. He’d never seen that before, so he tried it again. It again blinked red twice.
That seemed odd. Beginning again, he suddenly laughed. He’d been entering his ATM PIN. With the correct digits entered, the door blinked green.
A small rant, s’il vous plait. A first world thing. First, apologies.
Apologies to the people being denied rights for me being so upset by my ‘plight’. Apologies to women who have lost control over their bodies to male-dominated governments who arrogantly decide what is right and wrong for you because of what they decided their religion tells them, regardless of your religion or circumstances.
My apologies to those dying in wildfires, or fighting wildfires, or enduring the terrible smoke.
Of course, apologies to people still getting COVID, still dying from it, or coping with long COVID.
I’m sorry, everyone having heart attacks and strokes, or dealing with cancer, and other diseases.
Likewise, apologies to everyone still rebuilding after a hurricane or tornado flattened your domicile, or who lost their home, loved ones, and belongings in a flood or other natural disaster.
My abject condolences and sincere apologies to the LGBTQ+ community and the indignities forced upon you by people too ignorant and uncaring to give you sympathy or empathize with your situation, who instead monstrously decide to compound your problems by building bureaucratic walls and persecuting you.
I apologize for those who have governments who think material goods and wealth is more important than health, security, and welfare of their citizens.
Apologies to the victims of racism and sexism, discrimination, and hate crimes.
Apologies to the food insecure, to the homeless, to the murder victims, gun violence victims, and police brutality. Apologies to the abused children, to the mentally ill who can’t find help, to the struggling and working poor, and the refugees around the world. Apologies to the people dying in famines and wars, and apologies to those working multiple jobs just to get by. Apologies to spouses with cheating and abusive partners. Apologies to the desperate and hopeless.
I haven’t covered everyone but I’ve done what I could, apologizing to everyone who has truly serious matters to deal with. That out of the way, you wouldn’t believe how long my Microsoft update took today.
So frustrating, you know?
Hello, you lucky people. Time to embrace another Wednesday. It’s also an opportunity to celebrate Jun 14, 2023. If it’s your birthday, have a happy one. Same toast to you if it’s your anniversary.
This is Flag Day in the U.S., a celebration of the congressional resolution in 1777 about the new nation’s flag design.
Although we’re a week away from summer’s start in Ashlandia, we’re doing a chilly one this morning, 52 F. Sky is a sea of softly rolling gray-tinged white with sporadic islands and atolls of darker grays. No blue. A white lagoon represents our sun. High of 76 F is in the deck. Same is planned for tomorrow, with cold front delivering us overnight lows in the mid to upper 40s. Get a blanket out.
You can guess that the house floofs are saying nope to this weather. Not expecting the cooler air, they were out with their usual bravado. Now they’re sitting in the other room, telling me, “We thought we’d visit you today. Help celebrate flag day. Seems like a silly celebration. When will we celebrate treat day? How ’bout lap day? That’s worth celebrating. We’re not even sure what a flag is.”
I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s Star Wars Day somewhere as on this date in 1977, the first Star Wars movie was shown in the U.S. My wife and I, then stationed at Randolph AFB, just outside of San Antonio, TX, went with my cousin and his friends to see the movie. Pretty entertaining.
I have Eric Clapton’s cover of the Bob Marley song, “I Shot the Sheriff”, in the morning mental music stream. I don’t know why The Neurons tossed it into the morning mental music stream. I think sometimes they do things just to see what happens, like mixing and coffee. Both are good. Wouldn’t they be better together?
Stay pos and fresh as a winter day. Don’t know where I was going with that. Maybe coffee will help me find answers. Won’t hurt to try. Here’s the music. Cheers
Abfloofdicate (floofinition) – To yield or surrender to an animal’s wishes, desires, or intentions.
In use: “Whenever her dog presented Bob with his tilted head, floppy ears, silly grin gaze, Bob abfloofdicated, saying, “Just tell me what you want,” because he knew that resistance was a joke.”
Awakening to light, slowly mobilizing brain cells and muscles to enjoin the day, I sensed something different. The sense catalyzed my awakening, catapulting me into a full upright position.
This was not my room.
But it was my room from…when?
Rock groups, astronomy, and Formula 1 racing posters, blue bedspread, simple small room layout were absorbed, an answer gained: this was my room when I was seventeen.
I was in my bedroom from when I was seventeen. I had to be dreaming.
Almost as I went through this, I heard a voice inside me saying something similar. As I endured my shocked understanding, I stood.
Almost as I went through this, I heard a voice saying something. Freaked out, I stood up. “Who are you?” I asked in my head.
Then I did something I never thought I’d do. I asked a voice in my head to identify itself.
They seemed to be doing the same.
They seemed more panicked. And younger. So I took the initiative. “My name is Marshall Chamberlain,” I said in a calm voice. “What’s your name?”
“That’s my name, too. Marshall Chamberlain. I’m Marshall Chamberlain.”
Although I’d almost expected it, my throat dried as realizations took over. I couldn’t accept them but logic forced me to say things, searching for truth and understanding. “I’m in my bedroom from when I was seventeen, living in Pennsylvania with my father. Do you know where you are?”
I turned and looked into the dresser mirror as I spoke, staring at my young, skinny self. Thin dark mustache and goatee, thick, brown curly hair, unibrow, muscles.
“No. I’m…I’m in a bedroom.”
I took a tight grip on my sanity. It was like one of those crazy movies where a parent and child have switched places, except I’d been switched with myself. I was back in time, as had happened to Kathleen Turner’s character in Peggy Sue Got Married, except I’d also gone forward as a youth to my present existence, and we could hear one another.
“Tell me what it’s like. Is it big? Blue walls? Light-colored carpet, king-sized bed? Sliding doors to a patio, and a large bathroom with two sinks, a garden tub, sauna, and shower?”
“No. It’s…no, I don’t know.”
“Is it a nice, airy room with large windows, French doors leading to a balcony? Can you see a big body of water?”
Shock rattled me. A third voice. “Who?”
I was thinking fast, realizing as he spoke, thinking it as he spoke, as the young me also thought it, “We’re all past, present, and future. We all have a past while we live in the past, and have a future waiting to be lived.”
Then the ‘old one’ from my future said, “This could go very good, or very bad. I don’t remember anything like this happening to me when I was young. I think I would have.”
A younger voice asked, “What’s going on,” as another said, “I remember this room.”
Several of us thought, past, present, future, past, present, future. It’s not static but dynamic. The future almost immediately becomes the present and then moves on to the past.
“I hope this doesn’t spiral out of control,” most of I said. Sounded like seven, eight voices.
With a common thought, we all caught our breath and waited.
Tuesday’s here. Take advantage while you can because soon Tuesday will be gone. These fleet days add up.
It’s June 13, 2023. No clouds out there. 69 F in Ashlandia, so a warm morning with cooling tones licking in from the mountains and trees. Looking to a high in the mid 80s F before the sun’s exit just before 9 PM. Yesterday saw over 91 on the digital thermometer outside.
The floof boys so love this. In to visit, eat, drink, and zip back out. Back door is open so they’re going in out through the morning’s early hours before finding a napnest. Papi likes the vinka or the yard in the grass in shadows while Tucker prefers the front porch bushes. Both do the sun and shadow dance throughout the day.
I have “Calm Down” by Rema (2022) in the morning mental music stream. It’s a relaxed song, nice beat, interesting lyrics and inflections but what really had me going when I first heard it was, is he singing ‘condom’? So I had to look the song up. Didn’t know it’s name then or it was — they don’t like telling you who is singing what song on many radio stations. It’s apparently a game they’re playing with you. As the song gains popularity, they start telling you who and what. Well, when they said the song was “Calm Down”, the big light blinked on. Laughter followed because calm down made more sense than condom. Although thinking the song was being sung about condoms had Les Neurons imagining all manner of interesting lyrics.
Hope the tune rocks your Tuesday. Stay pos and don’t trip. If you do trip, don’t fall. If you fall, get up. Yes, simplistic; who knows what will happen between the beginning and end, things beyond your control? Oh, well. Calm down. Carry on and have some coffee.
Cheers
The habit to check my email is strong. Still do it every morning. It’s even more of a habit now that I’m dead. The body might be gone but not the habits. Those who died before email don’t really get it. Those who died after email died don’t either.
I had mail. I knew I would but I still heave a heavy sigh when I see the messages. It’s iMail so the box is bottomless. I haven’t been able to verify it, but I think the i in iMail means infinite. I have fifty-seven thousand six hundred seventeen unread messages and counting.
They’re all from ‘me’, that is, other versions of me who’d also died but were in a different heaven. The multiverse theory of reality is right; every decision, no matter how small or large or nuanced, generates a new universe. With iMail, the dead across multiverse heavens can connect with one another. The messages from me to me vary little from one another. It’s the same missive I sent to my other selves when I discovered this capability after I died.
“Hi Michael, it’s me. Or you, ha, ha.” With some small differences. Some open with ‘hey’. Or drop the name and call me ‘dude’. Or, Mike, M, Mickey, Micheal, Mychael, etc., or yo. Some start, ‘it’s you’ instead of ‘it’s me’. Some hyphenate the ‘ha-ha’ or leave it naked of punctuation, ‘ha ha’. ‘Hah’ is also used. And ‘ha’. And there’s every variation of all those, including capitalization and punctuation and language. Because some of me were born in NAZI America because the US lost WW2. Others write from the Second United States or the Commonwealth of the United States or the Confederate States of America because I was born in Virginia, and we all share that. That’s who we are but the similarities and differences become complex.
There are some, who, like me, sent out a request. “Please stop. Don’t send me mail.” But the newcomers, who survived the heart attack which killed me — or never had one at all — or were sober, high, stones, drunk, etc. — but were killed later by cancer, accidents, shootings, on Earth, in space or on Mars, the Moon, etc, or by the first wife second wife husband father mother son, etc., — and all the many ways one of those might kill me — and different ways in which the attempt is made — and the different dates, times, locations — all of them come onboard and send out that same damn email, with variations.
I might be in heaven, but it’s email hell. You’d think I’d have the willpower to stop, but here’s the thing about the multiverses: even dead, since I still exist but as another form, every decision creates a new verse. So some of me manage to stop and quit checking their email, but it’s not me. At least today.
I’ll see what happens tomorrow. I hopefully won’t lose it and kill myself in heaven, which apparently we can do.
I’ve seen that imail, too.
Flooftinnabulation (floofinition) – A tinkling or crashing sound associated with animals.
In use: “Hearing a noise from the bedroom, Keri assumed it was a flooftinnabulation — because Jade was in a mood — of course, as always, because she’s a cat and a queen and bored — caused by the little tabby going along, knocking everything off the dresser again.”
Michael Seidel, writer 