The Case of the Disappearing Words

(Simon Rose is a children's author who lives in Calgary, AB, Canada. He has written six books, gives many appearances at schools and presents writing workshops for adult authors. He is also a contributor to The Complete Guide to Writing Science Fiction: Volume One, published by Dragon Moon Press. You can connect with Simon on Facebook, MySpace, or www.simon-rose.com.)

I came into the lab early one morning, hoping to get a few experiments started before lunch, which can be a challenge on the best of days as things don't always turn out the way I hope they will and science can be an unpredictable thing. As I donned my lab coat and got things started up, I recorded what I was doing in my notebook so that I could look it over later and hopefully interpret my results in some meaningful way. Halfway through the morning, I looked back through my notes and noticed what I had written didn't make sense.

"Hmm. Perhaps I should have had more coffee this morning," I mused, trying to correct the last page. When I flipped a few more pages back, I realised the problem was much more serious. Half a page of my notebook was completely blank, and as I watched, another word just vanished, making a little pop and spewing a small cloud of ink into the air.

"This can't be!" I exclaimed, and wrote a few more words on the newly blank page. They promptly disintegrated, this time a little bit faster. When I rewrote the words a third time, they were cast from the page almost angrily.

I knew I needed expert advice. I couldn't continue to do experiments without recording the results, as that would be a complete waste of time. I needed someone who knew the English language better than anyone else, and that would be someone from England, where they invented English in the first place. I went to talk to my friend, Simon Rose.

According to his schedule, Simon was to read one of his books in the children's section of the Crowfoot Library that afternoon. Knowing how careful Simon is about his work, I was fairly certain he would be there early to set up and make sure everything was perfect before the reading would start. As I drove there from the lab, I saw something rather strange developing in the sky over the library. At first I thought it was a trick of the light, but then, reasoning that it was much to early for the sky to be changing colours thought that something even more serious must be going on, because even though the weather in Calgary can be unpredictable, rarely does one see a large, purple vortex churning up the sky!

I pulled into the parking lot and raced to the library entrance, wanting to warn the people inside, but when I pushed through the glass doors – I found the library eerily empty. Where was everyone? Had they disappeared like the words on my page? Where was Simon?

I made my way to the children's section and saw that an armchair had been set next to a table, on which Simon's books had been displayed, as well as a sign that read, "Author reading today! Meet Simon Rose!" Next to the table were Simon's briefcase and his left shoe. So he had been here! But where was he now?

A strange, intermittent hissing sound started up behind me. Ominous, electronic, it sounded at the same time as a flickering light that cast weak shadows over the table and armchair. I slowly turned to find myself staring at one of the library catalogue terminals that appeared to be trying to turn itself on. Then, the screen came to life, but it didn't invite me to search for books. It showed me the image of an old man's face, flickered to the outside of a castle, then the entire screen turned into another vortex, which sucked me in.

"Help!" I shouted, trying to grab onto something so that I wouldn't become lost in the swirling mists within the computer screen, but it was too late. I was tumbling helplessly through the dark winds until I felt someone grab my hand and pull me out. I found myself sitting on a cold concrete floor with my left shoe missing.

"I hate it when that happens," said Simon, casting an annoyed look at my left sock. "Must be a problem with the dimensional transfer relays."

"The dimen-hawa-what?" I inquired.

"Dimensional transfer relays. I use them all the time to research my books. They allow me to travel through time and space so that I can observe events first hand and make sure I get things right. Here, let me help you up."

Simon helped me to my feet, then went to over to some video screens which seemed to be hooked up to several security cameras. He had quite the lair, complete with holes in the ceiling for fireman poles, complex computer equipment, a Nintendo Wii, a wine cellar, and the slickest, dark blue PT Cruiser I had ever seen. It was so blue it was difficult to see, and it had wings on the sides with jet packs and torpedo launchers.

"What is this place, Simon?" I asked.

"It's my transdimensional junctional nexus node. I know that term sounds redundant, but when you consider the overlapping of the multiple universes that's required for it to work, and the 14-D model used to describe it, it becomes obvious that that's the best way to describe it."

"O . . . K." I had dropped calculus after first year undergrad, having been unable to follow it. Thus, I had no idea what Simon was talking about now.

"Simon," I began, "several words have gone missing from my notebook, and then I saw this great, big purple vortex over the library, and everyone inside was gone. Do you know what's happening?"

"Yes, it's the work of my arch nemesis, the nefarious Dr. Samuel Johnson."

"The man who wrote the dictionary?"

"The very same. We became literary rivals during one of my research trips through time, when I went to research the year 1756. I should have known back then, that he had written the Dictionary of the English Language to commandeer English as we know it today. I couldn't foresee that it would lead to him having control over every word in existence." Simon pressed a button at the bottom of one of the screens, and the face of the old man I had seen on the library catalogue computer appeared. "There he is," said Simon, "and this is his castle." He pressed a second button, and the creepy looking castle I had seen before also appeared.

"But what about the purple vortex? And all the people in the library?"

"Oh, not to worry. I've transported all the people to safety, and the vortex is mine. That's how I travel between dimensions. What we really need to be concerned about is what Dr. Johnson is doing to our words! His first attempts to mess things up was by convincing Americans that it would be a good idea to stop doubling consonants before adding suffixes in some words, but not all. 'Signalling' is now 'signaling', same as 'traveled', but 'stopped' still has two 'p's, and the 'u' has been taken out of almost all the '-our' words except for 'glamour'. It's how he seeks to confuse us. But it didn't work. Both the Americans and the British are completely secure in their spelling, and only the Canadians are confused, which hasn't done much to affect the world economy. He's taken it further now, determined to mess us all about, and has gone into actually making the words disappear!"

"You can do that by writing a dictionary?"

"If you also have a transdimensional junctional lexiconal nodal derectifier, you most certainly can."

"I see."

"Well, we've got no choice. We'll have to storm his castle!"

"We?"

Simon ignored my confusion and opened a copy of The Emerald Curse. "Karakor!" he called. "We've got a mission. Meet us at Johnson's castle, and bring the pen!"

A demonic green hand arose from the pages of the book and gave a salute.

"Right, Boss!"

"You too, Isabella and Luke!" Simon tapped on the covers of The Heretic's Tomb and The Clone Conspiracy. "Isabella, bring the resurrection amulet, and Luke, we might need some clones!"

"Oh dear," I said. "This does not sound good."

"Well we've got the stuff," said Simon. "May as well bring it along. Might come in handy."

We got into Simon's PT Cruiser and buckled up.

"I usually ride shotgun," said a gruff voice through the open passenger window. I looked over to see a dog talking to me.

"Not this time, Maggie," said Simon. "I need you to hold down the fort."

"Hrm, ruff," said the dog, before slouching off to play with the Nintendo.

Simon revved up the engine, fired up the rocket jets and punched a few buttons on the dash. The front end of the car tilted upward as a large door slowly opened in the ceiling. Simon put on a pair of sunglasses with all sorts of blinking lights and electrodes on them, pulled on a pair of black leather gloves with even more electronics and wires snaking out of them, and flipped up the collar of his black leather jacket, which had what looked like circuit boards imprinted on the underside.

"Does flipping up your collar give you access to those electronics?" I asked him, "Or does it protect you from evil signals being sent into your brain?"

"No," said Simon, "but it does make me look extremely cool."

The car rumbled up the launch ramp, then rapidly picked up speed until we shot out of the launch bay and into the sky. The rocket jets shot long bursts of fire, propelling us forwards, but not up.

"This thing doesn't actually fly," said Simon, "so we're actually just jumping over to the castle."

"How nice to know," I said weakly, wondering when the airbag on the passenger side had last been inspected.

We hit the road with a fairly rough bump, but otherwise remained intact without setting off the airbags. Simon hit the gas and we sped towards the castle at alarming speed.

"Um. Simon. There's a wall in front of us," I said. "A really solid looking one."

"Yeah," said Simon, grinning. "I've been wanting to try this for a long time. I don't get to drive like this in Calgary."

He flipped open a cover on the stick shift and pressed a red button that was underneath. A volley of eight rockets shot out from under the car wings and blasted a gigantic hole in the wall. We sped through the dust, not waiting for it to clear so that we could see where we were going and crashed into a wall of books. Simon floored the gas pedal, reversed and spun the car around so that we were hurtling down a brick-lined corridor before the books fell on us. At the end of the corridor was a large, steel door that looked reinforced with other bands and bolts of metal, with the words "Secret Laboratory of Dr. Samuel Johnson. Do not enter!" stencilled on it in red paint.

"Are we going to shoot through that too?" I asked, wondering if Simon would let me fire the missiles.

"Nope. Out of explosives."

We skidded to a stop outside of the door and got out of the car, me with one shoe still missing. Simon, I noticed, had on a very nice pair of black leather boots with large buckles up the side of the legs. He pressed a series of buttons on the side of one of his gloves and waited patiently while it made several beeps and chirps.

"I'm just letting my gloves hack the door," he explained.

"Simon! Come in, Simon!" came a tinny-sounding voice from somewhere. Simon pressed his fingers to one ear.

"I read you, Isabella. What's your status?"

"You killed Karakor with that explosion!"

"Well, use the amulet to resurrect him! Then tell him to draw in a door for us with the emerald pen so that we can get in. I don't think my hacker codes are working."

"Right, Boss!" came a gravely voice. Karakor must have already been restored.

A wooden door magically appeared at the bottom of the steel door and we opened it and ran through. I nearly screamed in fright as I saw that Dr. Johnson had transformed his body into that of a sixty foot tall scorpion, his eight legs tapping restlessly as he scurried in front of us, and ten little boys were trapped in his two front claws. Several books lay open on the floor.

"Rose," he sneered. "Did you think that you were the only one who had control of an emerald pen? As you can see, I've drawn myself a new body. One far more powerful that you with all your pathetic little gadgets. And as for all of your little clone boys, they are useless. Useless! Mwah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! You can't stop me. I shall continue to destroy words!"

As I watched, Johnson's scorpion tail came down on a book page and destroyed another word. In all the books around his feet, several puffs of dust came up from the pages as the same word was destroyed on every page it had appeared.

"Wow," said Simon. "You're even more annoying than I remembered. Jen, pass me that football."

"Which one?" I asked, looking around. Simon sighed in exasperation.

"The soccer ball," he said, pointing at it.

"Oh, right." I handed it to him, and Simon elegantly booted it right into Johnson's face, better than David Beckham could have done. Johnson screamed in rage and dropped the clone boys, who immediately went into ninja mode and began duct taping rockets to the scorpion's legs.

"I thought you were out of rockets," I commented.

"I am. Those are Johnson's."

"Ah."

Simon punched more buttons on his gloves and set off the rockets, which shot Johnson right through the castle roof. Then, again pressing fingers to his ear he said, "Zortan, do you copy?" An unintelligible string of syllables came out of the earpiece. "Right," said Simon. "You've got incoming. Make sure it never lands. Thanks, Zortan. Next time, dinner's on me."

Simon turned to me and gestured that we should go over to one of the video screens. He tapped in a few commands and outer space appeared, but the planets seemed to be out of order.

"That looks different," I said. "Are the planets arranged differently because we've gone through your transdimensional whatsit?"

"Hmm. Partly," said Simon. "In this version of reality, Zortan and his fellow Martians decided putting the planets in alphabetical order would make it all easier to remember. Also, after they'd done it, they found that winter on Mars was a lot more pleasant. Not as toasty."

I thought about that for a moment. "That must mean Earth is really close to the sun," I said.

"Yes. No one really lives there anymore. Global warming, you know."

"I see. So there are Martians in this alternate universe?"

"Oh yes. There are Martians in all dimensions, they're just rather shy, so we don't normally see them in our reality. Look, there he goes."

I turned to the screen and saw a tiny flash of light on the Martian surface. A small white dot flying through space eventually connected with the struggling scorpion. After a few seconds the screen flared blinding white as Johnson was destroyed.

"Will my lab book be restored now?" I asked.

"I'm afraid not," said Simon. "Look, the words are still missing in these books."

"I can fix that!"

Karakor arose like mist from the ground, clutching an emerald pen in one hand. "I will rewrite the words in the master copy of Johnson's dictionary, and then, all will be restored."

"Thanks, Karakor," said Simon. "You're doing a fantastic job."

"I always do," replied the demon.

"Well, Jen," said Simon, turning to me. "Let's get you back to the lab, shall we?"

"Sure. But you've missed your appearance at the library."

"No I haven't. I'll just make sure I teleport the people and myself back into the library at the correct point in the space-time continuum, and all will be as it was before."

"You're awesome, Simon."

He just grinned.

World Fantasy Convention 2008

The big weekend has finally come and gone, the great coup for Calgary and Canadian genre publishing, the World Fantasy Convention. Needless to say, I had a great time. How could I not, with so many wonderful people there? The venue was the Hyatt Regency in downtown Calgary, and while the hotel was very nice, getting there by car was a nightmare -- I had to wind my way around the C-Train, several incomprehensible one-way streets, construction, and believe it or not, a movie set. I'm still trying to find out which movie it was.

Thursday, October 30th:
This was the first day of the con. EDGE had hosted a pre-con party the night before, featuring a band called "The Plaid Tongued Devils", but I had worked all day, was feeling a bit under the weather, and chose not to attend in favour of being fully "on" for the actual event. When I picked up my badge and banquet ticket at the reservation desk, they also gave me a little red chip, which I was instructed to take to "the book room" across the hall. On surrendering the chip to the book room attendants, I was given a large bag full of promotional books. It was pretty heavy, and in my estimation, worth the price of entry! I had intended to listen in to some of the panels, but got so caught up chatting with friends I hadn't seen in a few years that it fell by the way side. I also went through the dealers' room and found my publisher, Gwen Gades at the Hades Publications booth. We ended up going out for supper with some other writerly types and by the time we got back, it was a bit late and the day had caught up with me, so I sat in on a reading by children's author Simon Rose, and decided to leave after that.

Friday, October 31st:
I attended many panels this day, and they were truly excellent. TOR publisher Tom Doherty spoke about how he formed his business, artists discussed how to craft soft backgrounds, David Morrell and David Drake spoke about violence in fantasy, and Barbara Hambly, Patricia McKillip, Irene Radford and David Keck talked about Medieval Mysteries. Stephen R. Donaldson was supposed to be on the "violence" panel, but for some reason did not attend any of his panels or readings. Despite that, I felt this was one of the best panels, as horror writer David Morrell has a fantastic sense of humor, and David Drake, a Viet Nam vet, had plenty to say about how his life experiences affect his writing. He was bluntly honest and impressed me greatly. David Keck (another David!) must be one of the funniest and most inventive people on the planet. If the writing thing doesn't work out for him, he could easily pursue a career in stand-up comedy.
Gwen treated us to dinner at a local chinese restaurant, then the evening was left open for the "Autograph Reception". I had assumed this was only for the big names, but it was actually for anyone who had signed up as an author, editor or publisher. So when I was finished running around getting autographs from my favourite authors, I managed to get in on the action myself - I signed and sold one book. Well, I might have had more success if I set up shop earlier, but getting Barbara Hambly to sign my copies of her books might have been a once in a lifetime sort of thing. This was the only part of the conference where Stephen R. Donaldson was sighted!

Saturday, November 1st:
I went to a few panels and readings on Saturday, but spent most of the day at the EDGE/DMP booth. Gwen and I officially signed the contract for my second book, currently called Wicked Initiations, which is the prequel to The Longevity Thesis. I was interviewed for the EDGEcast, had a signing "appearance" (no one came so I just chatted with Anita Hades - don't schedule these things too close to lunch!!) and then went upstairs for a multi-author book launch put on by EDGE and DMP. They served lots of gooey chocolate.

Sunday, November 2nd:
This was banquet day, when the World Fantasy Awards were presented. Tad Williams was the MC, and he gave this absolutely hilarious speech describing the history of fantasy writing. He changed everything to say all had evolved from cavemen situated in the North American continent, specifically the US, and tried to convince us that fantasy has never been written by any non-American ever. According to him, apparent Canadian fantasy writers are actually "geographically confused Americans", and Guy Gavriel Kay does not actually exist. The event was over by 3:30, so I spent the rest of the afternoon in the pub with some other writers, gossiping and discussing business. Good times.

New Story Posted

Hi Peeples,

I've got a new short story posted at novel-storm.org, under Short Stories, Sci-Fi. It's called Jonas of Shotz. If you happen to take a look, feedback would be welcome.

Enjoy!

Novel Storm

As a new novelist, I'm always looking for ways to promote myself as a writer, and one way to reach new readers is through distributing short stories in places where my target audience will hopefully see them.

I've been finding that it's much harder to get a short story accepted than an entire novel! In reality, all I need from my short stories, is for them to be seen. I really don't need the $20 - 50 that most magazines pay, I don't need to be spending as much in postage, and the rejection letters are disheartening to say the least.

The readers who do manage to find my short works are very encouraging.

Here's one comment from "Terry", who read "From Alpha to Omega" on MySpace:

"That was very cute and fun Jennifer, and I liked the ideas in it. Well done."

And this is from "Damon", who read "Karmic Intrusions" on Novel Storm:

"I enjoyed your story very much. Interesting concept, the sci fi with a micky spillaine detective type feel to it's narative quality. I haven't read a first person story in quite some time and it felt like I was listening to you tell the story. You are a very talented story teller and I look forward to reading more...very well done."

While I do care what editors and critics think of my work (very much so!) the readers are the ones I really enjoy connecting with.

Novel Storm is the mind-child of Matt Townsend, who invites other writers on the home page of his website with the following passage:

"Have you written a complete Novel, Childrens Book, Short Story, Poem or Script? Would you like others to be able to read it?

Have your creative talent displayed in an online virtual book and made available for people to read, turning the pages just as they would a physical book. This will surely create a fantastic buzz about your literary work in the forums. You can earn money from your posts and as always there is the prospect of having your work published. Some areas of the Novel-storm site are absolutely free; others may require a small nominal charge to become involved in a project.

Upload your submission now."

For short stories and poetry, there is no charge for uploading, but for illustrations and novel chapters, there is a submission fee of £2.50, however, "Novel-Storm will endeavour to present completed novels to chosen publishing companies in an effort to get the books published. In the event of a publication, 80% of the profit derived from the sale of the published novel will be distributed between the contributing authors and illustrators as advised by Novel-Storm in advance. The remaining 20% is retained by Novel-Storm." More information is available by clicking on the "Terms and Conditions" link at the bottom of the page.

I asked Matt what the traffic was like on his site, to which he replied, "We are 1 month old and have had over 340,000 hits to date." Not bad for getting my name out there as a writer.

Considering the ease of publication, and friendliness of the administrator and effectiveness of Novel Storm as a promotional site, I think I know where my future short stories are going!

From Alpha to Omega

One of the most beautiful things in the universe, is the universe itself. It's a dynamic thing, a body in motion, at the same time silent, volatile, vibrant and peaceful. For the twelfth time, Ricca Lipski woke from stasis to regard the silent burning gases that were stars and nebulae, and bask in their cool irradiation while waiting for his body to come up to the right temperature. He wouldn't be able to make this journey more than another two times; he was getting too old and heavy. Using Greene's String-Slice Travel, the trip was shortened to a phenomenal 5 gigaparsecs each way, from one end of the "coiled spine" of the universe to the other, and he had been making it ever since he had been old enough to finally leave the university with his own fellowship. His mission in life was to measure the rates and directions of the expansion of the universe. The continual trips from one end of the "spine" to the other were to re-measure these points over time, which allowed him to make corrections to his calculations, so that he could painstakingly piece together a map the universe in four dimensions. He was hoping that he could extrapolate from his data, the position of all mass in the universe at time zero, essentially providing the final evidence that the "Big Bang" theory was either true or a pile of bunk. It probably wouldn't earn him a Nobel Laureate, but it might get him published in Science. The concept of the universe having a coiled spine was his own, and his theory essentially stated that either one end of the spine or the other, called the Alpha and Omega points, respectively, had to be the centre of the universe, the initial position of the primordial bolus of matter that had exploded in the Big Bang, as these were the only two non-moving regions in all of existence. Once he had completed collecting his data between these two points, he could finalize his map and present his model of the origin of the universe. The initial concept had gotten him his doctorate, but Omnus was the only journal willing to accept the speculative manuscript without the completed model. Not bad for a start, but it wasn't really his idea of a serious publication.

His body hit 35°C and he began shivering. This was the unpleasant part, but it only lasted as long as it took for the freighter to dock momentarily with the hotel port and eject his stasis pod into the waiting arms of the concierge.

The hotel staff were exceedingly friendly and saw him to his room with an excess of inappropriate patting and smiling. It was funny, he mused, when he was young and gawky, the ladies wouldn't come near him, and now that he was growing portly . . . well, perhaps now they saw him as harmless. Or a complete quack. He had been interviewed by the National Enquirer just before he had gone into stasis, and forgetting himself once they got him going on his subject, had given one of the best lectures of his life. He had earned a standing ovation from the reporter, and regretted not having delivered that speech to the Discovery Channel instead.

It was when he was dressing for supper that he first noticed the cracks. Branching upwards from his waist, he saw a deep red fissure running up his right side and towards his back. He was completely shocked. He hadn't felt a thing, and it didn't hurt now. Not convinced that it was actually there, he ran his fingers over it, and was dismayed when the edge of the crack erupted into a series of blebs that protruded from under the skin.

"I need a doctor!" he called, and began to curse the freighter captain for not having frozen him properly.

Forty-five minutes later, in the infirmary, the fissure was still in his side, but the blebs had retracted. The doctor tried again to seal the rupture in his skin, and finally, at her wits end, used an old fashioned needle and thread to sew it shut. Ricca lay there on his good side, with one arm lifted over his head, listening to the doctor mutter over and over again, "I don't understand why it doesn't bleed!" That, thought Ricca, was completely irrelevant. The doctor should be putting her efforts into understanding how it had happened in the first place, so that she'd make a good expert witness at the freighter captain's trial.

The stitches pulled a bit, but otherwise were not uncomfortable and did not stop Ricca from enjoying his dinner. It turned out that the concierge was his great-great grand nephew, who had planned a surprise 250th birthday party for him (he had been frozen for 185 of those years), and sprung it on him once he had escaped from the doctor. There were many bottles of champagne, many balloons, and many polite people who seemed truly appreciative of the series of mini-lectures he delivered between refills of his glass. It was nice to still have family around, especially at the Alpha end of the spine, since he would most likely finish his travels at this end and settle here to write up his findings.

"So tell me, uncle," said the concierge, whose name was also Ricca, "which way is the universe expanding? Towards the Alpha end, or the Omega end?"

"I really don't know just yet. And it may be that the universe is not expanding infinitely, but expands and contracts rhythmically in a sine wave pattern, not moving continuously in one direction. This was difficult to measure for the longest time until cryogenics and light speed travel became a practical reality. But now, I think I'm really close. You know, it seems strange, but either this contraction cycle is approximately 13 years, or the universe really is expanding in only one direction, and just swirling by the Omega point. Each time I am here, the universe seems to be expanding. Each time I am at Omega, the universe seems to be contracting. Or perhaps my perception is biased, and what I'm really witnessing is the universe flowing around the Omega point, which perhaps creates an eddy, like a motionless rock in a stream. It just looks like a contraction. Oh! Once I have this model put together, it will be so much clearer."

Young Ricca grinned appreciatively, genuinely enjoying himself. "Perhaps, uncle, you have named the endpoints of the spine more aptly than you intended. Perhaps Alpha is the beginning of the universe, and Omega is the end. All matter is flowing from one to the other."

Ricca was momentarily flabbergasted. "How can that be?" he asked finally. "We'd see an increase in the mass of New Portugal, as it sits right next to the Omega point. Or it would be showered constantly with incoming meteorites, or something. It hasn't been observed!"

Young Ricca smiled and nodded considerately. "Of course. I'm only a poet, not a scientist. I think of things differently."

At the end of the party, Ricca returned to his rooms and was feeling quite tired, even after having slept for the last 13 years. He went straight to bed without giving much thought to his evening routine, rationalizing that he could take care of it in the morning. His dreams were filled with accolades and brown nosing as he presented his completed model to the Intergalactic Coalition for the Study of Quantum Mechanics (ICSQM). And then he saw it. In his dream, he held up the holoimage of the 4 dimensional model, turned it in his hands, played it back and forth through time, and watched, fascinated, as the flow of the universe moved past the limits of his data, showing him the origin of the universe . . . and then the end of it. And then he was distracted, as the butt-kissing president of ICSQM came to shake his hand in front of all the news media, and handed him a book.

"What is it?" Ricca asked in his dream.

"Your biography," was the answer. On the cover of the book was Ricca's name, and the exact date of his birth, followed by the exact date of his death.

He woke and sat up in a cold sweat.

In the dark of the hotel room, Ricca counted on his fingers the number of years of life his dream predicted he had left and came up with the number 13.

"Oh, you're being silly," he told himself. There were more important images in the dream, and he prodded his memory for the model he had seen ever so clearly. He replayed it in his mind, moving backwards in time, and then suddenly, when it reached the end of his data, he forgot what he had dreamt. Annoyed at the lapse and his own morbid fascination, he replayed the dream the other way, almost terrified that he would remember how he had seen the universe end. He reached the end of his data . . . and forgot. What had he seen?? It had been almost like a convoluted funnel, turning inwards on itself, folding inside out, but then what???

"Ah well," he sighed, and lay down again. Two more trips and then he would find out the proper way, with real data. The stitches along his side were a bit itchy, but he supposed that meant the crack was healing. If it went away quickly enough, he might not even bother suing the freighter captain.

Then next morning, he was delighted to find that young Ricca had arranged access to the Astronet Processor, which had been improved greatly during his last stasis sleep. He uploaded all of his data to the processor and began to construct his model, based on what he had so far. Astronet had several marvelous programs, including internal extrapolation functions, that allowed him to correct several of his vectors, and predict the best points of measurement for his next journey. Finally, he plugged in the last of the predictive algorithms, and with great relish, clicked on the function that would construct a graphical representation of the universe (making certain assumptions about the missing data). It did indeed look like a convoluted funnel that turned inwards on itself at the narrowed, farmost end (the Omega point), but the actual shape was difficult to discern. He removed the 4th dimension, and the model became a "snapshot" that was no longer in motion. Then he "sliced" through the 3-D construct to have a look at a cross section. The first horrifying realisation, was that he had completely miscalculated the location of the Omega point. He had been off by fifty three parsecs. How could he have been so wrong? He irrationally hoped that the National Enquirer would accept his apologies for having given them incorrect information. Ricca corrected the location, then clicked on the "linearize" function, to straighten out the structure and allow him to see what it looked like in only two dimensions. The structure was entirely too simplified and didn't make any sense. Keeping it linearized, he re-layered the 3rd dimension, and then stared at the graphic in disbelief. The second horrifying realisation, was that the Omega point wasn't the end of the universe at all. In fact it wasn't even the end of the coiled spine. He had a sudden creepy-crawling feeling ice its way over his skin, as he thought about having to retract his thesis. Don't be silly, he told himself. It was just a prediction, and still publishable. The modification of the theory will just show that I've made progress. What was the Omega point then? From the linear image, the universe appeared to be a long tube, with regularly spaced, periodic bulges, and the Omega point was like a constriction, that in four dimensions, would force the tube to convolute and fold into another set of directions, and then it would continue on with its periodic bulging. The predictive algorithms made it seem very likely that there were more than one set of Alpha and Omega points, each set demarcating discrete portions of the universe, and acting as anchors to seemingly hold the entire universe in place. Wondering why he had never found these points before, and where they might lie in the universe, he marked his original Alpha and Omega points with bright green, the others in bright red, and allowed the structure to fold back into its natural convolutions. He then set the whole thing in motion. The coiled spine reappeared, and the other points were nowhere in sight. Ricca sighed in exasperation and reset the model so that it would start at the beginning of his data, and move forwards only. The universe expanded, seemingly flowing in various directions, all eventually turning towards Omega. Then the entire universe imploded at point Omega and all matter clumped into one mass.

"What?" exclaimed Ricca angrily. The model was no longer moving, and he thought that the program had crashed. He hit a few keys, and the message popped up: "Continue simulation?" He clicked "Continue" and waited. After a few moments, the mass exploded, just like the Big Bang, and the universe re-expanded into a little bubble.

"Oh, this is entirely wrong!" He ran his hands over his face, and then pulled back in a fright. Had he felt cracks on the right side of his face? "Ricca!" he called his nephew. "Ricca, what's happened to my face?" The concierge came at once and took his uncle to the doctor. Neither one of them turned to see that on the graphic simulation, the debris of the universe had moved aside to reveal a bright red dot at the point of the explosion's origin, and after a few moments, as the universe unfolded a bit further, a second red dot winked into existence, right at the proper location to form a coiled spine between itself and its partner. All matter in the predicted universe was expanding outwards from Alpha2, and through convoluted, non-linear motions, was moving towards Omega2. Then it cycled again, imploding at Omega2 and re-expanding at Alpha3. A little while later, the housekeeping staff sympathetically shut down the simulation and logged off Astronet.

In the clinic, young Ricca was trying to soothe his apoplectic uncle who was inventing several methods of freighter captain torture and dismemberment. Instead of stitching the cracks shut, the doctor had filled them in with temporary synthetic tissue (unfortunately she only had it in purple), and had ordered Ricca to stay put until she had determined the cause of his rupturing skin, and why it did not bleed.

"Please be calm, uncle. You don't know whose fault it is, if anyone's. Your health is the most important thing now. Don't think of things that make you angry."

Ricca sat up again and pushed aside his nephew's arms. "I need to make sure my probes are recording properly. I don't have time to sit around here! In a few weeks I'll have to make my next journey back to Omega."

"You're too close to your work, uncle. It's affecting you badly. Take a step back from it, and I'm sure you'll be fine."

Ricca stood tried to ignore that last statement. Of course he was close to his work. That was his whole life! That was what he was, right down to the very core of his being. He was prevented from leaving by the doctor, who had just returned from her lab.

"Dr. Lipski, you've got a very unusual condition," she said. "I've never heard or seen anything like it. The strange blistering that you described when the cracks first appeared, it hasn't disappeared at all, just internalized. Here, you can see it on your body scan." The doctor pressed a key on her wristband and a hologram of Ricca's insides shot out from projectors in the wall. Indeed, several bulges were seen across the simulated peritoneum and muscle walls of the abdomen. "They appear to be migrating from your right side to your left. I would like to try magnetic resonance to prevent this from getting worse."

"What would that do?" Ricca asked.

The doctor looked sheepish as she replied, "Well, essentially I want to try to push everything back into place. I think I can do this with magnetic forces. I know it's a bit alternative, but it's worth a shot."

After twenty minutes in the magnetic chamber, Ricca's wounds began to bleed. He called this out to the doctor, who seemed pleased.

"That's a good sign that things are no longer being pulled to the left," she called back.

After forty minutes, the temporary tissue patch had been pushed out of place, and the stitches on his side no longer pulled. It took only a few minutes more for the doctor to seal up the cracks by conventional means. She seemed both relieved and satisfied as she released him.

Three weeks later, his data and new calculations carefully stored in his media case, Ricca bade a teary farewell to his nephew. The next time they would meet the concierge would be in his late fifties, and the relationship would necessarily be different. He didn't tell his nephew this, but before getting into his stasis chamber (first class this time), he had fired off a message to his lawyer to begin proceedings against the freighter captain. Hopefully, there would be a settlement waiting for him the next time he was at the Alpha point, and he could buy his nephew some new suits.

Upon arrival at New Portugal, 13 years later, Ricca's stasis chamber was automatically re-routed to the secondary destination, Arbitan, three parsecs away. The transport captain duly logged the vital signs of his passenger before sending him off, and other than noting that the metabolic activity was a bit higher than it should be, there were no abnormalities.

Arbitan was a pacifist colony, and while they tried to keep their technology up to date, they felt a bit backwards in terms of worldliness, and thus were confused when they thawed out Ricca's stasis chamber and attempted to wake him up. The window plate was frosted up from the inside, which prevented them from seeing through it. A passenger was there all right, all the sensors said so, but there was a strange vacuum inside that made it difficult to lift the lid. Worried that he might suffocate, they pierced the gasket and equalized the pressure before manually overriding the locking mechanism. The chamber seemed empty except for a thin rod of some strange, compact material. They were about to contact the transport captain, and ask what he had meant to ship in this chamber, when the rod suddenly unfolded, and expanded from left to right into a human being: male, thin, about 25 or 26 and completely speechless. He didn't seem to know who or where he was. The documentation didn't help, it obviously had gotten switched. There was no way this boy could be Dr. R. Lipski, unfrozen age of 65. They ran the recording logs on the freezer which spat out a hologram outlined in green light, of a rather portly, older gentleman going through the freezing process. Over the course of the 13 year journey, cracks appeared along his right side, and his entire body pulled all the way to the left, the movement of pixels on the hologram seeming to flow through an invisible funnel, until they formed the thin rod they had seen on opening the casket. The simulation continued, showing that after the vacuum had been released, the pixels reappeared, and flowed outward from whatever unseen dimension they had been in, now moving towards the right until the new body had been formed.

"Well, I've never seen that before," commented the Arbitan mayor. "Must be some kind of new shipping technology that rejuvenates you as you sleep. We don't have anything like that! I expect we'll be needing to get our systems updated again."

"Orlan!" said his wife. "You've just been through an update. Remember the doctor told you not to become your work. It'll be the death of you!"

"Sweetheart," the mayor responded, "sometimes my work makes me feel like a new man."

THE END

The Best Free Software for Protecting your Computer

Annoying as it is, having the larger corporations become more and more protectionist about their products is resulting in the beefing up the open source communities, rather than having the effect of getting the consumers to open up their wallets wider. It seems that making the Nerd Community grow ever more disillusioned is a good thing for the planet, and Collective Humanity thanks them, as they offer the fruits of their labours for free, undermining the efforts of the software giants and their money generating monsters. (Yes, I am referring to Vista, and BTW, I think the new copyright protection law will have the same effect in the entertainment industry, which could turn out very nicely for us small time content producers who would like to have all the disillusioned folks come our way. PLEASE download my stuff. I won't come after you for it!)

For the longest time, I used to recommend SpyBot Search and Destroy for eliminating unwanted spyware, adware, tracking cookies, and those sorts of things. While I think the work the originator is doing will generate him tonnes of good karma, there are two major problems with SpyBot these days: (1) Look alike programs that totally bugger up your system if you install them thinking you actually got SpyBot and (2) I'm very sorry to say this, but it just doesn't work that well anymore. I ran three different programs this morning, looking for whatever crap was slowing down my machine, and unfortunately, SpyBot performed the poorest -- it reported finding nothing, while AdAware (I just get the freebie, not the "Plus") and the AVG Free version 8.0 virus scanner found a whole mess of things. After clean up, my machine boots in about 1/3 the time it took before.

I also found that AdAware and AVG ran a lot faster, and are much more aggressive with their updates. In retrospect, I'll probably just use the last two from now on.

Unrelated to malicious code, I also have to mention the Open Office productivity suite, which is completely free, and does everything you would need Microsoft Office for, AND convert files into PDF format without having to purchase the Adobe plug in. Kudos to the community which produced that beauty as well.

Need Some Extra Cash?

I don't think American Comedians need to worry about losing their jobs to Canucks: