Category: technology

Today’s Theme Music

I don’t know about you, because I actually don’t know you (I barely know myself), but I could use a rebuild every now and then. Take this gut. Please. Rebuild it. Put my twenty-five year old version back in there. Like a lot of things, I like my body as it used to be.

But c’est la vie, my friends. That’s life and we can’t get rebuilt.

Except that’s not how it was for Steve Austin. He was a man barely alive, and they rebuilt him. I wonder, though, you know, if you can rebuild him, did they rebuild all of him? Was this a ground up restoration or did they just pick and chose? I suspect the latter. They’re always talking about one of his eyes and his legs.

That’s what worries me about being rebuilt. I worry that I’ll ask, “Which of my parts should I replace?”

After softly clearing her throat, my consultant tells me, “Well, on your budget, you’re pretty limited.”

Of course I have a vision about how I want to be rebuilt. “What about Brad Pitt? Can I order anything out of the Brad Pitt catalog?”

“Yes.” My consultant clears her throat. Again. “You can afford anything out of his fingernail sections. Here, page through the website. It’s organized by body parts. So, just select limbs, and then click down to arms, hands, and fingers. See? Brad Pitt’s fingernails are quite reasonably priced. We can rebuild you with a couple of those.”

“A couple?”

“Yes, you can afford a thumb and a little finger.”

“From the same hand?”

“No.”

“What about my mid-section?”

Heavy laughter ensues. When it ends, my consultant tells me, “Oh, you can’t afford Brad Pitt’s mid-section.”

“I can take out a mortgage on my home.”

“That won’t be enough, I’m afraid.”

“How ’bout a bun?”

“Excuse me?”

“Can I get rebuilt with one of Brad Pitt’s buns? You know, his rear end? His ass, to be crass, his derriere, if you want posh.”

“Oh my gosh, excuse me. I spewed coffee when you said that! No, you can’t afford Brad Pitt’s buns, and don’t even think about anything off his face.”

“Not even an earlobe?”

“No.”

“Well, what can I get?”

“Here, let me show you our John Goodman collection.”

“John Goodman? From ‘Roseanne’?”

“Yes, I think you can afford his mid-section.”

“I don’t think that’s an improvement.”

“Are you sure? He is a star.”

So, anyway, I won’t be doing any rebuilding on this cyber Monday. I’m still saving for improvements I can afford. Meanwhile, here is the opening from ‘Six Million Dollar Man’. Oh, sure, they can rebuild Lee Majors. What’s he got that I haven’t got?

That was rhetorical; you don’t need to reply.

0

Sex, Memory & Imagination

You’re living a long time. One hundred and five is now the average age of a human. That average is creeping up. We’re all living longer as medical technology monitors and addresses issues 24/7. People aren’t being born, and some children are being kept as children.

Thereby is an argument: if a child is kept physically, emotionally and intellectually at six years old because that’s the age their parent(s) prefer them, but they’ve been alive for forty years, how old are they? Most planets, corporations and governments hold that if they’re maintained at an age, they count at that age if it’s an age whereby they’re somebody’s wards or in a protected status. So, for example, some are adults (which varies mightily in the future) but look like they’re twelve, because they liked how they looked then, so they’re counted as their true age. But if they’re twelve and are treated as twelve years old even though they’re fifty, they’re treated as twelve.

Civilization is more complicated in the future.

One decision many face is what to embody. As memory is augmented to provide greater storage and enhance recall abilities because people are living longer, people typically embody their memories as an avatar that can be compiled as a physical presence. That way, instead of just engaging in internal dialogue with themselves, they can call out their memory and invite them to have a drink or share a meal while they discuss their recollections. Brett’s memory is a tanned blonde woman in a red dress (who doesn’t have a name) and Handley’s memory is a pirate named Grutte Piers, based on the real Piers Gerlofs Donia. These aren’t their first memories but they’re their current memories in ‘Long Summer’.

Something similar has evolved for sex. Many people have decided that fake sex with an avatar of their design is more enjoyable than having sex with another actual person. People have foibles. Foibles can be very irritating. The foibles can be mitigated to some degree but people are a bit unpredictable. Many people have learned that they don’t like their sex partners to be unpredictable.

To solve these issues, people often create one (0r more) sex avatars (sexatars?). Like the memory, it’s an embodiment that’s compiled to exist for a period. People can decide exactly who they resemble and how they’ll act. If they want, they can create animal avatars and have sex with animals as a human or compile or modify themselves to be animals and enjoy their sex. Whatever creepy depravities humanity enjoys can be indulged by creating sex avatars. A few people have married their sex avatars. Avatars are people, too, my friends, except they have different rights.

Sex and memory are the two main items people have embodied as avatars but a few people create others. Some have their intelligence or imagination embodied as an avatar that they can call out for visits. Brett has created an embodiment of his personal computer and communications systems, and calls it Carl. Others have gone the good and evil routes, creating twins of the opposite end of their moral spectrum (as they see it). A few enjoy themselves so much that their have avatars that are exactly like themselves created so they have themselves as company. Most find this doesn’t work well, that as people, they’re not the wonderful companions they thought they are.

All of the avatars are as that as anything humans create. Maintenance is needed or the avatars break down and cease functioning.

With all these facets acting in parallel, the population of humanity is slowly cresting, and the average age is creeping up. The oldest humans are upward of three hundred years old. Despite proliferation of new communication technologies and people living longer, people are living more and more in isolation, with only their memories, sex and other embodiments as avatar companions. Sometimes, they miss family or friends and have ideal avatars of them created, too. It makes for happier holiday meals. Meanwhile, Mom, Dad and Sis are alive on other worlds but never hear from Bro.

Yes, it’s an interesting and complex civilization, in the future. Another day of writing like crazy is in the books (ha, ha).

This post has been brought to you by coffee. Coffee: it’s good for thinking (and bowel movements).

4

A Momentary Lapse of Reason

You’re hungry and you’re in the middle of nowhere. The morning walk took you to places that you didn’t expect. But that was the plan: you wanted to surprise yourself.

Well, you have. Look east, south, north, west – baking hard cinnamon and sand toned ground. Far away to the north are low purple and blue mountains. Turning west, you see the sparkling Bay Dome, so you think yourself there, specifying, downtown Palo Alto. Your bioworks connect with your wetworks and even out here, five bars are experienced. Your thoughts are translated into digits, which become transmitted commands, and the Earth Teleport System takes you to the bay area. In effortless seconds, you’ve gone from one place to another.

It’s a beautiful day under the dome in Palo Alto, blue and sunny, a little chilly in the shadows with hints of burned off fog. Electric cars hum along University Avenue but most people are strolling. Designated as a California Historic City, it’s unchanged since the early twenty-first century. Finding a Peet’s, you think, I’ll have a latte and croissant. The order has been placed before you enter the cafe and the systems direct you to the table along the window where your beverage and pastry await. A cup of tea and a shot of espresso appear on the table’s round surface. As you realize friends are arriving, they’re asking via your friendnet, “Can we join you?” Laughing, you answer, “Your drinks are already here.”

They port in. Hugs are exchanged. Books and art are discussed. “There’s a new art gallery opening in Mars New York,” Silvie says. “Want to go?”

Yes, of course. You’ve never been to Mars so this will be a special treat. Enjoy the gallery, have a meal, maybe do some dancing. Should others be invited? They are via the friendnet.

Soon, you have a platoon of friends, destination, Mars. You all port to the Interplanetary Teleport System in Utah. Signs direct you to the various space station and planet plazas where you can port yourself off of Earth to these other places. There are also teleport stations for bigger domes – Paris, London, Moscow, Sao Paolo – where stricter controls are required to visit these city states. But you’ve been to all of them, and the Moon. You’ve never been to Mars. You’ve always had a fear of flying, and as you aged, you thought, I’ll never see Mars.

But, wow, technology is amazing. So here you are, one hundred years old and retired, the prime of your life, really, off to Mars for the first time, at last.

All for just twenty-five dollars.

4

A Bullshit Free Day

I’d like to declare a national day free of bullshit. We can call it National No Bullshit Day. NNBD. Although bullshit is spelled as one word, some call it as BS, or more colloquially, B.S.. So we could do NNBSD. Naturally, I like my idea better. We can have shirts and tee shirts, and raise money, or some other bullshit.

You know BS when you hear it and you call it by your expression. Mularky. Bull. Bullshit. B.S. Garbage. Crap.

We were used to it in the military. Bullshit inundated us, which, if you think about it, which I try not to do, is actually a lot of B.S. We had our bullshit meters. Hearing something that we knew as bullshit, we’d say, in a sort of laconic way, “That just pegged my bullshit meter.” That statement meant that the needle went all the way to the right. Another expression used was, “That buried the needle on my bullshit meter.” Buried the needle was an old expression referencing tachometers and opening throttles to the point where the needles entered the red zone or went as far as it could. Of course, the ultimate bullshit expression was, “My bullshit meter just broke.”

Most bullshit meters used to go to ten. Mine, of course, went to eleven. It was the Spinal Tap Special. (rim shot)

I suppose, in this precise digital age, that bullshit meters are way more accurate. They’re probably on a scale of one to a thousand, enabling the ability to assign a more accurate bullshit value to a given statement, action or news. There are probably apps that can be downloaded and installed on your smart phones, iPhones, iPads and tablets. Being sixty, I don’t need a bullshit meter, and will tell you, with a sniff, “I don’t need a meter to tell me when something’s bullshit. I’ve experienced enough bullshit to know bullshit when bullshit is around.”

But many naive and gullibles do not recognize bullshit. They believe you can get something for nothing. I, of course, believe that’s bullshit. Of course, the problem with bullshit is, once it’s in your system, you can’t get it out, debilitating your immunity to bullshit. You soon can’t even detect it.

Still, there times when my bullshit meter gets broke. For example, when a car manufacturer, like Ford, declares they’ve completely re-invented a car, I think, that’s bullshit.

When they announced literally no longer means literally, I shook my head and said, “What bullshit.”

When I see the price of my quad shot mocha is five dollars, I think, that’s outrageous bullshit, even though it’s not, really. Bullshit often depends upon your frame of reference. I have some years behind me so my frame of reference has gotten pretty damn big. First, I would tell you, “Nobody sold mochas when I was a kid. We didn’t have a Starbucks or coffee house on every corner. Coffee houses were part of the beat generation. Only artists and poets went there, not people.”

And then I will tell you, “I remember when a cup of coffee cost less than a dollar.” Someone with a bigger frame of reference will naturally top that and declare, “I remember when it cost ten cents a cup,” and another will say, “I remember when it was free.” I’m not sure if coffee was ever free, so that moves my old bullshit meter needle a little bit, but that’s okay, because they’re old, and it’s honest bullshit.

The Internet doesn’t help. I mean, come on, there is so much bullshit on it that it seems possible that the bullshit will take it down. Which would be a pretty good news lead: “In today’s top story, bullshit broke the worldwide web. More coming up, after this word from your sponsors.” Which is bullshit in its own right, to need to wait to hear about this important news until you’ve heard someone try to sell you something.

I may be showing my age there.

You’d think some tech company could design an application that not only detects bullshit but blocks it, just as intrusion detection and prevention software works. Then, as you’re downloading a page, a little popup arrives on your screen and says, “Warning. Bullshit was detected and blocked.”

We could even assign the bullshit levels of threat: faint, mild, average, serious, dangerous, and OMGWTF infuriating.

I dream of a time when television commercials could contain the disclaimer, “This commercial contains no bullshit,” and you can sit back and listen and know, you’re not hearing any bullshit. Because if they were spreading bullshit when they made the commercial, some great Bullshit God would zap them with a laser and declare in a thunderous voice, “No bullshit allowed. Not on my watch.”

But, yes, that’s a fantasy. For now, I’ll dream of a bullshit free day, or even just, like an hour when I don’t read something and say to the cats, “Can you believe this bullshit?”

I don’t think it’s going to be until after November 8th.

 

2

Greetings from a Sexagenarian

Back when my mother was in her late seventies, she went dancing on Friday nights. She often mentioned how much she enjoyed it, and enthused about the old people and their dancing skills and energy.

That always drew my laughter. “The old people? Mom, you’re old.”

Impatience snapped through her response. “I mean the really old people, you know, in their nineties.”

While I understood her point, it amused me that she didn’t think of herself as old. Now, at sixty, I understand better.

My wife was in a conversation with a man in his mid-eighties. She’s a few years younger than me and mentioned to him that she was middle-aged.

He seemed amused. “Middle-aged? Isn’t that well behind you?”

I was taken back when she told me. If she’s younger than me and she’s not middle-aged, than what am I? What constitutes middle-age?

Does it matter?

Not really, and yes, and no. Middle-aged, as already demonstrated, is a vague, inaccurate term. Definitions by psychologists and institutions vary, as it does by era and culture.

Part of it, which disturbed Mom, and bothers me, are the connotations associated by these terms, young, middle-aged, and elderly. Think ‘young’ and contemplate the images and ideas springing to mind. Substitute ‘elderly’ and ‘middle-aged’.

Yet, in most of the advanced world, these labels mean less and less. So I’m taking up the Latin route. I’m sixty, so call me a sexagenarian. I like it. Easy to spell, and it has sex embedded right in it. Mom, in her eighties, is an octogenarian.

I mean, what does middle-age conspire to mean? I’ve been accused of being immature, old beyond my years, and an old man before his time. I’ve also been deemed young at heart by some, immature, or young in spirit by others. My older friends – in their late sixties to upper eighties – call me their young friend.

It’s all context and impressions. Like everything else, a spectrum of behavior, expectations and impressions establishes others’ perceptions and judgement. Yet this can change by day. Give me a short night of sleep and I can appear as a cranky old man. Pour a little beer in me and I can be as immature as a two-year old. Mostly, I’m somewhere in between.

I don’t dress ‘old’ but nor I dress ‘young’. I adopt dress that is neat without calling attention to me. My hair is thinning and retreating as fast as antarctic ice (but with less alarm), and when the sun gets its rays on it, it goes silver and white. Do I care?

Hell, yes.

And hell, no.

See, I’m trapped on that spectrum. I logically understand aging and its impact. I also appreciate the freedom of aging, and its limitations. I know I can’t do anything about it, nor influence others’ impressions of my age and their labels, so why care? But then someone says, “Isn’t middle-age behind you?” and I’m newly irked.

In the future setting of my novels, ‘Returnee’ and ‘Long Summer’, you can bet it’s addressed, because we’re driven by advertising, perception and self-image, themes that sharpen in that future setting. You can bet that a civilization that has developed a technological work-around to dying has done the same with aging’s impact and their appearance.

It becomes an exercise for the characters and their thinking. Many embrace genetic sculpting to develop a look which they like and others appreciate. It’s just like hair, mustache and beard styles and colors, or even jewelry. Some take up the approach, how do I want to look today? What color should my skin, eyes, and hair be? Others emulate famous people, but more establish a look and keep it. A few chose to resemble cats, dogs, dragons, centaurs, and other creatures. It’s almost free and relatively easy.

The 4G in my future (the fourth generation of space colonists) have taken it to an extreme, part of their statement about who they are and their stand. Their leaders look prepubescent. That fad is spreading. They think it’s a meaningful statement of who they are and represent, but others who have lived longer and done more, mostly understand how little that appearance really means. There are some who are more easily swayed, or want to be included in the new youth movement. It’s fun to think about and one of the great joys of writing fiction.

In one of my vaguely conceptualized ideas, people who become zombies immediately look young and beautiful, which sways a large segment of weak thinking people, who want to look young and beautiful again. And as zombies, they have no cares about work, taxes, politics, wars, civil rights or the environment.

Which takes me from here to there and back again. Because, after all, weren’t we really talking about mindless zombie thinking about what it means to be old?

 

0

‘Speak, Memory’ and Me

‘Speak, Memory’  is a recounting of one person’s creation of a bot based on a friend to cope with their grief. The bot is based on her friend’s emails. It is a fascinating read into how one person turns to clever use of technology and information to bridge her loss.

The tale has meaning to me for my writing. Memory is an enormous aspect of the future in ‘Returnee’ and ‘Long Summer’. While death is conquered through complex machinations involving resurrection, regeneration or cloning (multiple paths exist), and diseases and illnesses are staved off by embedded nano-meds (which use compilers and teleporters to seamlessly import medicines and treat you without pause), memory is a larger problem. First, your pre-death memories must be stored and accurately restored to you when you’re returned to the living. People living longer need to remember more, especially as space exploration and colonization exponentially expands and technology keeps racing ahead. Memory thus becomes augmented with biological drives as well as networks. You’re constantly connected.

As part of this extrapolation of what might be, memories of specific people, such as grandparents, are further developed through big data/social media mining. This creates a far deeper and broader database of their personality. Further, the database is housed in an avatar and AI dedicated to being that person. So, for example, your grandfather can be summoned into your presence as an avatar and converse and interact as your companion, even though he passed away several hundred years ago, or still lives, but is on the galaxy’s far side.

Last, as people struggle to remember specifics, many have created a separate avatar that houses the augmented, expanded personal memory. For Brett, his memory is an attractive tan blonde. He does not name her but calls her ‘memory’. Madison Handley, however, once based her memory on Mal Reynolds from ‘Serenity’ and ‘Firefly’. After out-growing it, she changes her memory’s appearance and disposition several times. By the time of ‘Long Summer’, when she’s become a pirate, her memory has taken on the aspect of Grutte Pier, the Frisian pirate formally known as Piers Gerlofs Donia.

As a further component of memory and extended living, I had to determine what route memory will take. Are future people’s memory perfect? What does it mean to perfectly recall a moment? Recent studies show that our memory is very imperfect, and those imperfections help us cope with existence and survive. Oh, the lies we tell ourselves. As part of that, which version of memory is collected? The perfect, unbiased version, or our personal edition? In the end, both are collected but only law enforcement normally accesses the perfect memory to resolve conflicts and solve crimes.

The rest of us prefer our personal recollections.

2

Nobel Prizes

Love the Nobel Prize for Physics this year. You’ve probably heard but I’m a pedantic beast so I’ll tell you that three Brits, working in the US, won the Nobel Prize for their work in exotic matter.

David J. Thouless, F. Duncan M. Haldane, and J. Michael Kosterlitz are the three awardees. Being a science fiction fan, I love such work that pushes our thinking into new directions and recognizes new potential.

Over in Medicine, Yoshinori Ohsumi won for his work on cells that eat themselves in a process called autophagy. I pay less attention to medicine than physics, so my reaction was…whhaaat?

These discoveries and the explanations behind them unroll reams of imagination and story ideas. I swear my brain began overheating. I’ll never understand this stuff but it’s cool to think about theoretical applications and situations, and how you can take off into new directions. So many ideas and stories, so little time. My mortality and human limitations really limit me.

(Hah, and there’s another kernel of an idea for a story/novel/incident. So many ideas….)

Knowledge! Got to love it.

 

 

4

The Pirates

I’m at a point in the novel, Long Summer (sequel to Returnee) where the pirates are about to enter.

Yes, this is science fiction. Yes, these are space pirates (cue dramatic music). Or cue a Monty Python moment.

I always like ‘fly in the ointment’ tales. That’s the pirates’ role in Long Summer. They’re naturally a plot trigger to cause the stories to bank sharply into another direction, bringing the three disparate story lines into contact with one another at last, thirty-five thousand words into the novel. Creating  the pirates enabled me to embark on my favorite fiction writing activity: making things up. In this case, I was given permission to make up the pirate ship and crew. Who are they, why are the pirates, where did they come from and how did they come to have this ship?

The ship is the CSC Narwhal. CSC is Castle Corp Security, a spin-off from the original Castle Corporation that dominates the Returnee series as one a major part of the setting. (The corporation is constantly restructuring, re-organizing, acquiring and divesting.) As Castle Corporation was originally an Anglo-American effort when they first formed on Earth (with roots in 3D printing, with specific focus on home security devices…from there to space), the company sometimes invokes its heritage when naming ships. This was strongly evidenced in the naming of the security ships (the preferred nomenclature over warship). I’d remembered Narwhal from my history lessons, so I looked up Narwhal and confirmed its role in England’s maritime history, confirming it was part of the Arctic Fleet. Two Brit submarines were then named the same, along with a US sub. So, sweet, that worked out.

(I had to refer back to my Returnee notes a little as I worked out that naming, confirming corporations and financial consortiums led the way into space. Governments had little to do with it.)

I then needed to further define my new vessel’s manning, which is complementary to its role. As a security vessel, Narwhal is small, with three squadrons of droid fighters. Why droid fighters? I started with manned weaponry and realized that robots dominate my future. It would be weird to have manned fighters. But humans maintain control….

Essentially, I evolved the Droid Commander. Droid Commanders remotely oversee the flying of four droid fighters simultaneously from pods on the Narwhal. Yes, we have the sophisticated technology to do that in my future. Likewise, Droid Techs remotely manage maintenance/software/hardware, keeping the fighters armed and flying, repairing them via nano-bots, droids and automation.

Each Narwhal squadron has three Droid Commanders, each flying four droid fighters. So each squadron is twelve fighters. Three squadrons, thirty-six fighters, nine each Droid Commanders and techs. A squadron commander coordinates their activities with the ship and mission briefs.

Narwhal is structured to run silent, fast, launching quick strikes and then bailing. Their defensive systems are lightweight and automated. They’re not going to bombard a planet or take on a battleship. They’re more likely to run escort and interdiction missions.

Once I had those things in place, what did I need for manning for the actual ship, the Narwhal? Well, again, it’s automated, and lightly manned. I ended up with three defensive coordinators. Commander, DO, pilots to fly it (in the event of worst case situations), navigator (overseeing the droids and systems), intel officer, techs to treat it.

Shuttles? Escape pods? Logistics? Medical? All done by droids, except I decided the three shuttles would have human pilots. Ten techs oversee droids that do the repairs.

So there it was, forty-seven humans crewing the Narwhal and its squadrons.

Since it’s going head to head with River Styx, the stasis pod ship, I went through the  same exercise for the Styx (which has only light defensive systems). Then I mentally plotted the sequence of events as I walked over here to write today. The twists arose on their own, pleasing and exciting me, further evolving my sketchy plot.

(Quite deliberately, because the pirates are out to disrupt corporate domination of space and human activities, Castle Corporation also owns the River Styx. The pirates love the irony of a ship they appropriated from the Castle Corporation, stretching the truth, as the Castle Corp had spun off the division that owns and operates Narwhal,  attacking another Castle Corp vessel.)

This summarizes my basic writing approach. I begin with a concept or a character. In this case, three ideas came together. That gives me a bare structure. As an analogy, if my novel is a car trip, I’m getting in and pointing the vehicle in the general direction of a horizon I see, with the vaguest idea of what’s over that horizon, and what’s between here and there. That works for each chapter, story line and character arc.

Reflecting on all of this today, I recognize how much my writing approach parallels my other methodologies. As a senior NCO in the USAF, I was always imposing and maintaining order and discipline, but also loved instilling vision in my people about how to improve ourselves and our operations. To do that, I’d simply seize a direction and go for it, correcting as I went. Likewise, in my last position as a data scientist with IBM, when given a challenge, I mentally played with it until something formed, and then I launched myself into it. And in my youth, when I was taking art classes, painting and drawing, sudden inspirations would seize and carry me.

The confrontation between River Styx and Narwhal awaits. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

3

What I’m Following

I try to follow the news and escape the echo chambers. Demoralizing as so many American newspapers essentially offer the same take on every story. So vanilla. Meanwhile, columnists along the political spectrum are generally predictable about what they’ll claim, reducing their value. I like jumping out of the US and checking the news on BBC America, and British, Canadian and Australian newspapers for coverage of American events. I still dance through WaPo, SFGate, NYTimes, Boston.com, Forbes and a few others on a regular daily/weekly basis.

I’m following theSkimm because a friend recommended it. They read so I can skim. I wanted to see how they read and interpret.

Longreads take me into places I wouldn’t otherwise know. Longreads offer compelling, vivid stories. They take a lot of time to read. Yes, I read the Nation, the Atlantic, and Rolling Stone, which also have long articles. Oi.

Haven’t seen anything on theSkimm or Longreads about Lionel Shriver’s opening address at the Brisbane Writers Festival regarding cultural appropriation, but there’s an eruption of blog posts, newspaper columns and editorials about the complex, challenging situation. Wow.

Trying to drift into a different direction, I’ve been checking out Merry Jane’s website. Marijuana is morphing into a large and legitimate business in Oregon, with signs like ‘Exit here for the BEST marijuana’ emerging alongside Interstate 5, right beside signs claiming to have the world’s BEST pie.

I delve into Pinterest, FB and Instagram to see what’s bouncing around those places. I still check Flipboard and BillMoyers daily, and read an overabundance of writing blogs and newsletters, along with Wired, Popular Mechanics, the Smithsonian, Union of Concerned Scientists, Delancey Place and EPI when their newsletters arrive.

What are you reading out there? You have any sites that you recommend?

 

2

Einstein’s Blackberries

Sheldon Cooper is struggling to penetrate some impenetrable physics issue. Leonard Hofstader reminds Sheldon that tedium will free his mind, which is why Einstein worked in the patent office. Sheldon takes a job at the Cheesecake Factory where Penny works.

This is all from The Big Bang Theory, a sitcom I enjoy. On to Einstein’s Blackberries.

1. We went blackberry picking this morning. Seventy degrees and sunny at ten AM, the perfect weather has been dialed up.

The picking is being done at a friend’s place, ten acres on a small town’s fringe. Silence is the rule. Aircraft and a few cars traveling Highway 99 are the only violators.

I worry about zombies.

This is a perfect zombie scenario. A serene scene of a couple engrossed with fruit picking activity. Then a zombie arrives.

Which zombie type is critical. If they’re the 28 Days/Weeks Later rage filled fast moving zombies, we could be in trouble, but if these zombies belong on The Walking Dead, we’ll probably get away. Unless there are a zillion, or we’re stupid about it, like stopping to get more berries as the zombies close. (“Oh, look at that big, beautiful, blackberry, I must have it, oh, no, a zombie got me.” Screaming and flesh tearing ensues (according to the captions).)

If our zombie pursuers harken from iZombie, it’s difficult to judge whether we’ll escape. They like to philosophize about their killing, life choices, and plans.

Something cracks on the brambles’ far side. Snorting and chuffing follow. It could be a zombie, or group of zombies, trying to be quiet as they stalk us. It could also be a horse pasturing in the next field. Whinnying follows. That could be a zombie pretending to be a horse. Or a horse. One never knows. It’s Schrödinger’s cat all over again.

2. Berry and fruit picking, yard work, washing and waxing the car, and walking are the tedium that frees my thinking. I work on novels, current problems (like tearing up the back yard and creating a drought tolerant space), and short stories. I probably stayed at IBM for all those years because it was so freeing. My mind was rarely required in that bureaucracy. So here I was today, picking berries, thinking, dreaming, wondering, soaking up sun and fresh air, and worrying about zombies.

The blackberries, like the blueberries, squash and peaches, are amazing. Our weather, after a fast, heated start, cooled substantially in July and August. Nights benefit from cool mountain air that drops the temp to the mid 50s on most days. Fabuliciously sweet blackberries are being quickly accrued.

3. The radio plugs songs from 1983 on the way home. It’s their thing, celebrating the music of different graduating classes.

Theme from Flashdance. Yes, “Owner of a Lonely Heart.” The Tubes. “Hungry Like a Wolf.” Toto IV.

1983 put me at Kadena Air Station, Okinawa, Japan. We were mid-tour in ’83, and living on the economy, less than 600 square feet, and no heat. It was great fun.

Kadena, with jaunts to Korea, Thailand, China, Singapore, mainland Japan, Hong Kong and Hawaii, was a memorable experience. Beautiful Pacific views. Typhoons. One earthquake. In between these matters were military issues, parties and college classes. They were ancient times, free of the Internet and computers, satellite TV, or cell phones that took photos and videos. CDs were just coming out, and VHS battled Beta Max for supremacy, but it was also a zombie-less era.

4. We were gone two hours. Seventeen pints are the result. I probably ate another pint. My wife is a faster picker than me. Perhaps I’m eating more of my pick. Or maybe my wandering mind slows me down. It could just be that she’s more focused, with quicker, more nimble fingers.

Arriving home, we check on the cats and conduct visual inspections for ticks and zombie bites (on us, not the cats). Neither are discovered (ticks and zombie bites – the cats are found, asleep).

The freezing machine (my wife) is activated. The freezer is precariously full of frozen fruits and vegetables. This year’s crops have been bountiful.

Einstein would have enjoyed the morning.

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