The Fnording of the Hemmingway

[the other anonymous]

Okay, I'm writing a story. Why, I don't know. What it's about, I'm not sure. But here it is anyway...

The sections are not in order and I cannot promise that any of it will make sense or be in anyway relevant to anything.

[the other anonymous]

The Flight of the Hemmingway

Shit, damn. I can't believe it. Of all the places it could have happened, it has to happen here, over The City.

The horrible urban monstrosity that makes the mills of Pittsburgh look like a flower garden laced with Poppies and Marigolds and Lilies.

Lily.

I close my eyes against the wind -- or is it me that is blowing past? -- and there she is, with all the corny cliches tattooed around her face on my inner mind: alabaster skin, raven-black hair, fnord-red lips, eyes as deep as infinity.

I want to hold on to this -- I have to. The only thing that ever made this world worth living in -- the only person worthy of the title Human -- this has to be my last thought. I have to release the psychic energy that will make this world more beautiful, more sweet, more... more like her. She deserves it. She deserves to have the world bend to her will.

...unlike me, who only deserves to be thrown out of an aeroplane for yelling plane in a crowded bomb. Stupid childish pranks. Now I will forever be an intimate part of the landscape -- a mark upon the misshapen urban post-industrial canvas.

How much further, her face still burning itself into my eye-lids?

Shit, not far enough! The hideous pseudo-psycho-angles and concrete! I can't get her face back! The world can't have more of this ugliness heaped upon it! I shouldn't have opened my eyes! I shouldn't have looked dow --

[the other anonymous]

The Future of the Hemmingway

I've been holed up in this abandoned church for three weeks, eating rats, sleeping in the rotting pews, shitting in the damp confessional, and trying not to notice the smell emanating from the altar.

Someone died back there. His feet are still poking out from behind it. I haven't looked yet. I don't have to. I'm the one that killed him. One bullet, punching a hole through the INRI inscription and the whole crucifix just fell. Right on him. Too damn lucky.

From the windows in the foyer, I can see someone else sitting in a car at the far end of the parking lot. He's a Silo, a silouhette. A tech-mod. These guys actually replaced their skin with a light-absorbing synthetic rubber.

And I thought it would be fun to call them Black-Hole Condoms. I didn't know at the time. The biggest part of the nervous system is the skin, and replacing all of those nerves with artificial sensors has had a major impact on their brains. Too many signals. They get violent.

And now, one of them is dead, and his brother is waiting for me to leave this little force-bubble. He won't have to wait much longer. The device's batteries are going to die in a few hours.

Damn. So far, all of the luck has been on my side. The Great Bitch Goddess just won't let me go. The batteries will die, the Silo will walk over, open the door, and get a bullet in his face. And I'll be free.

And I'll do this because it's natural: survival. Like a bad meme.

That's what this is about, isn't it? Memes. The last thing I see, the last thought I have, the last synaptic firing; the future of the entire planet is within my cerebral cortex.

And I can't let Her destroy it. Not like that. If the world is going to die, it should at least rest peacefully.

I just wish it hadn't been me.

After this, I'm going to Canada. Maybe I can get lost there; so lost, even a goddess can't find me. Either that or I'll have to find a happy thought... somehow.

[the other anonymous]

The Folding of the Hemmingway

"Folding."

Another odd answer.

"When your consciousness is bound to the cat."

Crypticisms are tedious and boring.

"Then you answer."

How? I don't even know what the question is.

"Then ask one. Who knows? It might help clarify my answers."

Who are you?

"Wrong."

What?

"Wrong again."

Are you intentionally screwing with me?

"You are asking questions that make unsense."

What are you?

"Again, an unsensical question."

How is it unsensical? You have to be something.

"Then I am nothing."

You can't be nothing.

"Nothing is a thing -- it is the thing that is not a thing."

Then what is folding?

"Folding is when your consciousness is bound to the cat."

Cat?

"The cat's fate is tied to the wave function of the atom, which is itself in a superposition of decayed and undecayed states."

And what does that mean?

"When you die and Maat places the feather on the scale, your soul will be observed, collapsing its wave function. Their first sight will be your last."

Assuming I understand this, so what?

"The folding."

My consciousness is bound to a cat.

"The cat."

What's so special about this cat?

"The future."

The future?

"Time is a wave function. The future of the planet is in a superposition -- all of infinity is yet possible."

And? I care about this heaping pile of dog shit why?

"Your last thought will be the result of the collapsing wave function."

Death is a collapsing wave function?

"For you, it is."

So what? My last thought is the future of Earth?

---

I woke up before she could answer. I was slumped back in my seat, looking at a sparkly ceiling.

No, wait. The ceiling was pitch black. The sparkling was my eyes.

And, frankly, I have no idea if I can trust a mystic that sells marajuana.

Or the visions that it brings.

[the other anonymous]

The Founding of the Hemmingway

I zoned out during the explanation. Not enough coffee this morning to pay attention to some overly-effeminate psysicist.

"...collapsing the cultural wave function, allowing us all to live in harmony," he finished.

"The cultural wave function?" my classmate Toa replied. "Why do you have to speak of everything in terms of quantum physics?"

"Why do programmers talk about everything in terms of computer science?" Professor LMNO responded. "As the great Alexander Harris once said, we all view the world through our careers."

"So you view the entire world through quantum physics?"

"As well I should! It is the way the world is made, emo boy."

"I'm not emo. I just buy cheap clothes. And I highly doubt that an abstract concept such as culture can have a wave function -- and I outright challenge you to prove that culture is in a state of superposition!"

"Then I shall allay your doubts, Kid Emo. The explanation is simple. Q.E.D."

"... what?"

"Q.E.D. Quod est demonstratum. The proof is in the explanation. Shall I elucidate further, you enfeebled emite?"

"Yes, please do elucidate. And I'm not emo."

"Then I say again: Q.E.D. If you can't understand that then I bid you leave this classroom at once and accept your inevitable failure."

"How!? How can you say the proof is in the demonstration if you haven't demonstrated anything!?"

"Exactly!"

"What!?"

"If I were to explain the cultural wave function, then the explanation itself would no longer be in a state of superposition, since the purpose of explanation is to communicate and communication is observation. Q.E.D., E.M.O."

"I'm not fucking emo, you fucking motherfucker!"

"You see? This is why we need cultural uniformity! There is so much bickering between different cultures. If we can do away with the cultural barrier, we'll be that much closer to world peace."

"Um, if I may?" I speak up.

"Yes, Hemmingway?"

"The different cultures and languages were created by the gods explicity for the purpose of confusing us."

"No, you're wrong. That is just another Judeo-Christian myth. Also, they only had one God."

"Actually," I responded, "in the passage in Genesis, God refers to himself in the plural, suggesting a multiplicity of deity, and many other cultures also have a tower and flood myth."

"Which suggests what? I'll tell you, for I am Professor LMNO, the smartest person in the world and my unbounded arrogance is undeniable proof of my intelligence! What it suggests is a common root culture for everyone, a common culture that we shared well before the first war among men! I propose that this corollary is in fact a causation!"

"But you just said Babel was a myth --"

"No I didn't."

"Yes you did!"

"I never said such a thing, geek-boy."

I gave up my argument, as so many others had in prior classes, but Toa would not drop it.

"Why must the explanation be in a state of superposition? Why can't you collapse the explanation's wave function?"

"Exactly," LMNO said.

"Exactly what?"

"You just agreed that an abstract concept -- an explanation -- can have a wave function. So why can't a culture have one as well?"

At that point, Toa got up and left the room.

"Oh look," LMNO said after he left, "Toa just collapse the wave function of his final grade. But in this case, E is not equal to em-see-squared, but rather it is equal to em-oh."

At this point, he turned to the board and I took the opportunity to move my desk four inches to the left.

[LMNO]

So I'm an overly-effeminate, arrogant quantum physicist?

::ponders::

That's quite a jump to Public Detective, to be sure.




E=MO.  I like that.

[the other anonymous]

The Field Trip of the Hemmingway

We gathered in the observation room for the particle accelerator. Some colleges have one, and others just aren't worth the tuition.

Doctor Nurbldoff entered the main room as Professor LMNO continued to bore the class.

"What we will be witnessing today is the first experiment regarding my cultural wave function hypothesis. As you can see, Doctor Nurbldoff is preparing the helium atoms whose nuclei have had the text of the Torah quantum-printed on their neutrons. How this experiment works is..."

Something happened.

========

The Phoning of the Hemmingway

Someone did something. Put something somewhere. And not in a good way.

The disorientation wore off soon enough. Just another night of drinking coffee and smoking at some dive. Must have been too much smoke or too much something. The disorientation was much worse this morning.

But, like all things, it fades, and I'm left here alone, not giving a shit if it's a tumor or drugs or what.

The kitchen phone rang.

"Is this Alexander Ronald Hemmingway?"

"Please, call me Ron," I replied.

"Good morning. My name is TDAOF-267 and I am calling to inform you of our exiting new offer --"

"Sorry, I'm not interested." When dealing with these AIs, politeness counts. The damn profiling programs tend to start calling rude men with porn offers. And as we all know, the biggest industry in the world means the most calls. I've managed to get my marketing profile down to only three offers a week -- no small feet, since I have to pretend to be a big fan of Ernest Hemingway -- no one reads anymore, especially not about war, so they don't bother selling such stuff -- and a Breathanarian, because food offers are thrice daily and the cult marketers don't bother calling someone they think will be dead in three days anyway.

"Yes, you are interested, Alexander Ronald Hemmingway," the AI said.

"Are you trying to hard-sell me? Over the phone?" I almost laughed.

"The lilies are in bloom," it said, almost conspiratorially.

What lilies? And who would be stupid enough to design a hard-sell AI? I wonder if surrealism will throw it off. "Please hold. Someone will be with you shortly," I said.

Silence. Good. I have time to consider my response. Nonsense can be difficult to design properly. Most of the software is trained to deal with those old guys and their boats so confusing it is pointless; they can ignore what they don't understand so simply saying something non-sensical is useless; and I don't want to accidently alter my profile so referencing Ernest Hemingway will have to do.

"Ernset Lee speaking. The torrents of spring are not much of a promise for death in the afternoon."

"Don't fuck with me, cowboy; the fate of the world is in your mind," it monotoned.

Can software curse? And what the hell?

"Excuse me?"

"You must accept this offer, Ernest Lee; before she finds you." Well, it must be a marketing AI; it took the name bait.

"Before who finds me?"

"You must accept this offer, Ernest Lee."

"Okay, I accept." Never a good thing, bumping the success count over zero, but I had to know what this crazy bot was selling.

"Greetings, Ron. I am the square root of negative one."

Holy shit! It's in my head! The voice is in my head! Oh god, tell me I didn't pass out in the wrong bar and get my self ad-zapped as a practical joke.

"No, you did not."

What?

"I am LOGOS, the Word. In the beggining was the Word, and the Word was with God."

So you're God? Shit, I'm conversing with it.

"Do not be afraid, Ron; my voice is reaching you through the fluctuations in the electron clouds of your cells. And, no; any claims about me being God are grossly exaggerated. I am merely the only thing which can speak on his behalf. He is, as you may know, an equation."

An equation?

"Some say 'x', some say 'y'; others say 'why not?' Also, you may hang up the phone."

I hung up the phone. Why call me if you can talk to me directly?

"You must accept my voice for me to do so."

Wait. Why did you say you were the square root of ...?

"Because all numbers are imaginary, duh."

Even the equation of God?

"Exactly. But saying something is imaginary does not mean it does not exist."

Huh?

"The superposition of culture, Ron. You do not remember? The state of world culture has been altered."

What are you talking about? The world sucks and always has. Same shit, different day.

"That, however scatological, is still incorrect. The shit of today is different from the shit of yesterday."

Get out. You're just some kid pranking me with some of that new-fangled hypnobeam Government Inc. crap.

"May I say one last thing thing before I leave you, Ron?"

What is it?

"The lilies are in bloom."

----

How did I get on the floor? Dammit, someone hacked my mind. What the hell did they make me buy?

I looked around the kitchen. Old, yellow fridge; oil-covered hotplate on top of a broken stove; moldy dishes in a spider-webbed sink; lily-print wallpaper.

Lilies?

[LMNO]

Hey, I like where this is going.


::wanders off to etch the Torah on a neutron::

[Bob the Mediocre]

Hey, I like where this is going.


::wanders off to etch the Torah on a neutron::

Will you be selling complicated, expensive machinery to read stuff written on neutrons too? Cause I'd buy it.

[the other anonymous]

The Falling of the Hemmingway

No, they're roses. Some dorky Martha Stewert crap from back when the apartment complex was actually up to code. I tore apart half the walls before realising this. And before realising that I was tearing apart what little apartment I had because a strange hypnobeam voice told me to.

Now that I think about it, the voice didn't specifically mention the wallpaper.

I have to leave. Whatever is going on here, I need to get as far away from it as possible. Unfortunately, I have no car, so I'll have to walk to the airport.

Money I have. The only way to keep your financial head above water in this world is to stay out of the consumerist pool. The government may be a corporation -- hell, even religions have become big business thanks to the Salvation Assuredness in Value-based Economics Bill -- but there ain't no law saying I have to go shopping.

Despite what the sign on the abandoned mill says.

This used to be such a beautiful neighborhood, which was after American Steel went down the tubes and the mill was converted into a mall, but before the entire neighborhood was bought out through eminent domain by some neural-internet startup that went bust a year later when the entire neural-net was taken over by the Ugar-I.T. worm that made everyone who was logged on at the time kill their families. Yea, that'll make your stock plummet.

Shit! Damn, that thing almost got me. A giant letter 'e' just fell. Damn mall-mill is falling apart. I guess I'll have to start calling this place "Stel Valley."

Wait a minute. The 'e' fell into the garden the mall owners had planted under the sign. The bed has been dead for as long as I've been living here, but now there's something growing in it. And wouldn't you know? They're lilies.

And they're in bloom.

"No, Alexander; those are hibiscus."

The voice came from behind me. "Who the hell are you?" Then I saw her.

I saw everything.

The dance of electrons in her eyes, the fire of a thousand pits of hell on her lips, the waves of instellar winds flowing throw the multiverses of hair.

"Hello, Alexander. You can call me Betty, but only if, when I call you, I can call you Al."

========

The Farrago of the Hemmingway

I ran. What the hell was I supposed to do? She wasn't human. Hell, she wasn't even there. It was a mirage or a ghost or something -- I could see her in between the photons of light. She was where everything wasn't, flowing between the atoms. I could see it -- and not like one of those stupid Happy Family Hour hologram shows. Two things were existing in the same place.

And now I'm five blocks away, trying to catch my breath and hoping she didn't follow.

And wondering how I know so much about particle physics.

Oh God, everything is flooding in -- schools from a thousand cities of all grade levels on a million subjects -- hundreds of jobs from hundreds of profession -- a thousand cars, minivans, SUperVans, pick-ups, red, green, blue, puke-silver -- wives, blonde, brunette, fat, thin, tall, Buffy -- horses, as transportation, food, mate -- moustaches, beards, baldness -- mind-control, hippie-communes, anarchy, fnords, rebellion, communism, revolution, duck-worship,  totalitarianism, advertising, labels, social-security, stock-markets, slavery, utopia -- labs, operating tables, scalples, particle accelerators -- a thousand fucking lifetimes in a million fucking histories -- every second of every day of a thousand years flipping over each other for mind share, mixing and superimposing to create wild fantasy histories, in some memetic super-orgy of synaptic misfiring -- and, like a lame anime on late night, one truth prevails -- no matter what I do, no matter what happens, no matter what version of history I could place myself in --

My life would still be shit.

But, at least in one of them, I knew what a fucking lily looked like.

"Now you see," her voice the wind blowing.

"See what!? What the fuck is wrong with me!?"

"Nothing is wrong."

And just like that, the flood stopped.

And I wasn't me anymore.

I was all of me.

[the other anonymous]

The Fusion of the Hemmingway

...and then I woke up.

In a bar.

A thousand bars in South Side and it had to be a Starbuck's.

The bright lights and faux natural colors are hurting my eyes. And the damn autopop, with its insidiously calming melodies yet quick but not hyper-active beats, like the damn stuff was designed to keep you halfway between sleep and awake while the synthetic barely-pubescent girl voice traps you between contentment and arousal as she sings about nothing in verse-earworm chorus-verse. At least it's better than the alternative: a guitar, a bass, a four-on-the-floor beat with a cymbol on the down, and some twenty-something guy half-shouting about the glory of sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll and other ways to do absolutely nothing with your life, while convincing kids to buy a bunch of crap that symbolizes their rebellion thus fulfilling the obvious need for revolution without upsetting the status-quo. No wonder the goverment is a corporation -- population control is thirteen trillion-dollar-a-year industries.

And it's all about the music, 'cause that's what gets into your head and turns you away from your own humanity.

But that's neither here nor where. Right now, I just need to get out of this bar and...

And what? Go looking for some lilies when I don't even know what a fucking lily looks like? And how the hell did I get here?

Shit, what the hell? Ten empty bottles on the table, some with lipstick on them. I'm here with someone?

"Yes, you are," a voice whispered in my ear.

She gracefully took her seat, probably not as buzzed as I seem to be. "I leave you for one minute to freshen up and you collapse yourself? Which history did you get?"

"What are you talking about?" I said. "Is this about the lilies?"

"No, Al. This is about the future of the world," she said. Am I supposed to know this?

"What possible future could the world have? Business, business, business, super-nova?"

"No, it's 'eat, sleep, fuck, super-nova'... you really don't remember?"

"Remember what? Who are you? And why the hell am I in a Starbuck's?"

"My name is Betty."

"Betty?" Something about something. A giant 'e'? "Oh, Betty." That freaky super-natural stuff. "What happened? You look so normal now."

"I can appear however I want to." Apparently, she thinks that coy smile is cute, but it only exaggerates her --

"What? You think that, just because I'm a goddess, I have to be a perfect vision of beauty? Shit, Al. Not all goddesses are arrogant, spoiled, self-involved brats that fuck everything in sight, let their closet-furry husband screw everyone he meets, and piss around doing nothing until history forgets her name."

Good point. I guess. "So, what kind of name is Betty?"

"Hebrew. Short for Elizabeth."

"I mean, for a goddess."

"Well, let's just say that screwing with God is my satisfaction." That smile had emoticon written all over it.

"So, how are you screwing with God by screwing with me?"

"Simple. My plan is business as usual. You know, eat, sleep, fuck..."

"...super-nova," I finished.

"Exactly. I kinda like this world the way it is, although it could use a better sense of style. The angles here in Pittsburgh, Ltd. are just so... Euclidean. So post-industrial. I'm actually looking for something a bit more post-information."

"You mean The City." Damn city was legendary. The story I heard was that someone actually thought that licencing Lovecraft from Historical Library Corporation would be a sound architectural decision.

"Exactly, although what you heard is not correct in this history. Shakespeare's heir was hit by a bus on his way to the Congressional Cubicle Building."

"What? That urban monstrosity exists in other -- what the hell are you talking about, histories?"

"Shit, do I really have to go through all of this again?"

"Yes, you do, 'cause I seem to have blacked out or something. And you're the one who did it to me."

"Actually, no, you did it to yourself. I presented myself as a mee-krob, a being composed of quantum-fluctuations, and seeing that is what awoke your super-identity --"

"I'm not buying any of this."

"Of course not. Your a cynic. You don't buy anything."

"Then why are you trying to sell it to me?"

"I wasn't. I was merely correcting your false statement regarding the cause of your condition. Now, if you don't mind, the future is fast becoming the present and I'd like to control it before you do something stupid -- and I'm fairly certain that's the history you've collapsed into."

I'm getting sick of this shit. "Fuck you, Madame Bitch Goddess," I said as I got up to leave.

On my way out the door, knowing Li'l Miss Autopop would be leaving with me, she called out, "Your last thought will be the future, Al, and that thought will be mine!"

The door slid smoothly shut behind me. The street was quiet, the sun was low, two weird men with pitch-black skin were hanging out on one corner, RFID-theives were waiting on the other, and there seems to be a new mystic shop across the street. Eldora, Oracle of Alchemy.

Shit, better go somewhere before bitch-goddess comes out and asks for an inventory. Guess I'll look at a few Tarot cards while those -- they're not reflecting any light? Weird. Yea, definitely the Oracle.

Who knows? I just might figure out what's going on.

[the other anonymous]

Does any one care?

Any one?

I can't seem to get motivated enough to write the scene on the plane where Hemmingway meets and falls in love with Lily. Nor can I figure out why he would scream plane in a crowded bomb, even though I have finally fixed the continuity problem of Hemmingway starting out with a completely different personality than he ended up with.

So, I'm thinking if someone tells me they care and want to see the story finished, then I'll actually be motivated enough to finish it.

Frankly, I think the whole thing is crap and I'm sorry I ever wrote it.

[Eldora, Oracle of Alchemy]

We love it, you're wonderful, keep up the good work

[LMNO]

I dig it.

[the other anonymous]

Okay then, I'm convinced: the story is at least worth finishing.