The Perfectly Lazy Blog

Chapter 6

2011-12-22T05:24:00.000-08:00

Star Trek: Myriad Universes

Paradiam Shift

by Lewis Wells

Chapter 6

Finally, the rain had passed, and after another night, the prediction of the scientists and engineers in Southeast Asia, in a region Xevera had learned was called Cambodia, had come to fruition. They had successfully duplicated the interphasic technology, and shortly, authorities all over the world had received the blueprints and begun replicating it.
           What Xera found especially interesting was the way the interphasic navigation was quantified.
           "All matter," the recording explained, "resonates on a subatomic level. So does the fabric of space. All the matter in a given universe resonates at a set frequency, and that universe's fabric of space resonates at another. These frequencies are not equal, but they are directly proportional, and constant. They cannot be changed by any known process.
           "In other quantum realities, the frequencies of these resonations are different, and this enables us to identify and differentiate quantum realities on this basis and navigate them. It allows us to tell which quantum reality we are in and how many others we have to pass through in order to get back to our own. If the matter that composes object A resonates at one frequency and the matter that composes object B resonates at another, this clues us that these two objects are from different universes; different quantum realities.
           "The closer the resonation of two universes, the more closely their events are going to mirror one another, unless, of course, these events have been influenced by interaction with other quantum realities."
           Xevera had majored in baseline engineering, but at times like these, she wondered if she should have majored in physics, instead. She sighed, realizing that, of course, if she had, she would have ended up wondering if she should have majored in something else. Such is the curse of the multi-talented, she thought.
           Just as planned, the Intelligence Bureau had begun its reconaissance. In the event that the Empire had recon. satellites of its own, the ones used by the IB were brought to the very edge of the solar system before beginning their information-gathering journey. Interestingly, although the imperial lines they found had extensive, exhaustive material-gathering operations throughout the system, they found little military infrastructure anywhere except the Earth, the Moon, and their general vicinity. It was in this vicinity that their interphasic and military technology was concentrated. It seemed the Empire always spearheaded their invasions at Earth and the Moon. Also curiously, it seemed they were completely unprepared to be spied on themselves.
           The discouraging news was that the recon. satellites had spent hours phasing deeper and deeper into the imperial timelines and had yet to find their limit. There were hundreds of them and counting. The Empire had at its disposal the resources of hundreds of solar systems, including their space, and they were applying them to the end of conquest. No single tribal timeline could possibly stand up to them.
           But then the Bureau had also found a number of lines with tribal worlds similar to their own and the planetary government had begun making contact with them in search of allies. An interphasic, tribal coalition had begun to form.
           The people of the tribal timelines seemed to understand. Their only hope for standing against the Empire lay in joining the Coalition, and as more joined, more also joined the contact effort. This meant that the Coalition's growth rate would increase exponentially. If they could prevent the Empire from finding out about them long enough, the Coalition would be an easy match, at least, logistically.
           But how much time was enough, Xevera had wondered.
           And what about their technology, a few others in this conference had wanted to know. That too was cause for concern, given that the Empire's war machine was gigantic, and growing constantly, and the Coalition's was still nonexistent.
           The Captain making the presentation had acknowledged that these were good questions, but advised them to hold on to them until the end of the recording.
           The General on the screen answered by explaining that such was also mainly a matter of time. The resources that the imperial authorities had applied to conquest and power consolidation tribal authorities had instead applied to education, science and technology.
           "If you want to drive an empire," he explained, "you can have a relative handful of educated elites and leave the masses ignorant. If, on the other hand, you want to drive a republic, you have to educate the masses.
           "Indeed, maintaining control of an empire depends on depriving the masses of quality education as much as possible, given that the more educated a population is, the harder they are to control.
           "So given their necessary tendency to restrict access to education, contrasted with our tendency to do what we can to facilitate it, we can infer they do not match our ability to innovate. We can predict they are bound to have fewer scientists and engineers per capita and that their technology is subsequently less able to advance than our own. Given comparable logistical resources, we will have the equivalent of an unstoppable juggernaut on our hands as soon as we can get him to his feet.
           "The trick is to buy enough time. Our only real advantage at this point is that the Empire does not know about this effort. Once they do, we will have tipped our hand and it will be time to fight.
           "Our objective at this time is to prepare for this moment as best we can before it arrives. To that end, we have begun assembling a number of industrial replication infrastructures on planets in timelines with resonations at frequencies dramatically different from the resonation frequency of any of the timelines the Empire has already conquered. This we have done because, from what we can tell, the timelines closest in frequency to the ones already conquered are the ones most in danger of being invaded next. Imperial forces will, essentially, have to pass through those timelines to get to any with greater differences in resonation frequency."
           Xevera realized she had not heard of any such infrastructures being built in her timeline. Surely, her expertise would be needed if they were, so she and/or a few colleagues of hers would have been recruited, so she would have heard about it. What did this mean? Was her home in danger of being conquered before the Coalition made its stand?
           "But of course," the general went on, "having an infrastructure is of no benefit without something to assemble. So presently, we have panels of specialists being convened to examine the intel we have been gathering on the Empire's technology to begin developing countermeasures."
           Suddenly, the screen went blank and the lights came up.
           "That, ladies and gentlemen," explained the Captain, his hand still at the controls, "is where we come in."
           "Captain," Xevera piped up.
           "Lieutenant," he replied by way of acknowledgement.
           "I have a question."
           "A suspicion?" he asked.
           "Yes."
           "I had it as well, and it is confirmed."
           Xevera scoffed in disgust. "Phase-based discrimination! I can't believe it! How long do we have?"
           "I'm afraid there's no way to tell just yet."
           "So it could be any minute?"
           "Actually, no. That is not likely."
           "How can you conclude that?"
           "Well, remember, different timelines have different resonations, but the more similar the frequencies, the more parallel run the events in the two timelines in question. This places the two timelines, effectively, adjacent to one another, which makes a conquering force from one likely to reach the other before it reaches any with resonations more out of sync. When traveling from timeline to timeline, one reaches those more in sync before one reaches those less in sync."
           "You're saying there are other timelines more in sync with imperial timelines than our own, and so the Government figures this timelines is not in danger until they have been conquered?"
           "That's correct."
           "Might I interject?"
           This had come from the man seated across from Xevera who had a hand raised and a very concerned look on his face. He was an olive-complexioned fellow with buzzed, black hair, a clean shave, and an angular jaw. She remembered his name was Jaskeerat Kapani and he was an aeronautical engineer.
           The Captain gestured to him. "By all means."
           Lowering his hand, he asked, "What do the people in these other timelines think about that?"
           The Captain seemed hesitant to answer.
           "Captain," Jaskeerat prompted, sternly.
           He seemed uncomfortable. "They... do not possess this information."
           The full significance of that sank in slowly. Xevera noticed a lot of grim looks around the room as she felt her own ire rising. It lifted her to her feet.
           "Captain, what are you saying?" she demanded.
           "I am saying that the Coalition has not made contact with them."
           Scoffs were heard all around the table.
           Her new suspicion confirmed, she could only stare and struggle to hold down the outrage rising within her before it overwhelmed her. "Let me get this straight. The people in these timelines face imminent invasion, we know about it and we are not even going to warn them? We're just going to sit back and let it happen?"
           "What do you propose, Lieutenant? How would that warning help them? What would they do with it? Hide? Tell the Empire off in the strongest possible language when they arrive? File some kind of protest? What are they going to do with it? Because they sure as hell are not going to put up any kind of struggle."
           "What good does it do us to have this information if we can't use it?"
           "We are using it; to design our own war machine. But until we are ready to make our stand, we can't help them and we cannot risk tipping our hand."
           "Ahem."
           This had come from a woman sitting at the side of the table opposite the presentation screen. She was pale, with curly, crimson hair drawn back into a bun and lime-colored eyes. She also had a hand raised and wore a look of concern.
           Xevera knew her as well. Her name was Fiona O'Dwyer and she was a chemical engineer. She had this odd habit of actually saying "ahem" to get attention instead of actually clearing her throat.
           "Yes, Lieutenant," the Captain sighed.
           "What about our own timeline? No part of the industrial infrastructure is being built here because the Coalition does not believe it will have the machine built up enough by the time the Empire arrives to prevent this timeline's conquest. What are we supposed to do?"
           "By the time the Empire arrives at this particular timeline, we will all have been evacuated."
           That surprised all the other assembled experts. "Evacuated where?" Fiona asked.
           "Other timelines."
           Xevera mulled that over. A world of nomads could make that work, but she had serious problems with sacrificing these other timelines just to buy time. "Why can't we do that with these others?" she asked.
           "The Empire has already begun to conduct reconnaissance on the first. There would be no way to even begin evacuating it without them seeing. Invasion there is imminent. With the rest, as soon as the Empire begins to find worlds with no people, they will being to wonder why and search for an explanation, and the sooner they begin the search for that answer, the sooner they will find it."
           "Then how can we afford to evacuate this one?"
           "From the fact that, here, every man, woman, and child knows about the discovery of the Empire and the beginnings of our opposition efforts. Any person, archive, or piece of industrial infrastructure left behind is a clue we don't want the Empire finding. It's the same thinking that prevents us from building any part of that infrastructure here, lest it tip off the Empire in the event of their invasion. Basically, we will be evacuating this timeline because we cannot affort not to."
           Jaskeerat spoke up again. "Let me get this straight. You're saying that the whole reason some people are worth evacuating but not others is to protect the information they possess?"
           The Captain was unflinching. "Yes."
           "That's abominable!" Xevera exclaimed.
           "Such is war. You have to understand, Lieutenant, in their escape, the refugees passed through those timelines to get to this one, and once here, they considered just moving on, knowing that, if they stopped too soon, the Empire would just overtake them."
           It was at this point that Xevera realized her hands had balled into fists.
           "The best thing we can do," the Captain went on, "is to build up the Coalition in the hope of liberating those timelines later. Now make no mistake about this, any of you. No one wishes more than I do that we could do more, but we can't and we don't dare try."
           Xevera leaned on the conference table and breathed deeply through gritted teeth. Those people on those worlds were just going about their lives, content to go on doing so, but just because someone else wanted their worlds for themselves, they wouldn't get to, and there was nothing she could do about it. She almost found herself wishing the refugees had moved on, so someone else would be in this situation.
           "In the mean time," the Captain resumed, "we have initial intel. regarding their technology, so I recommend we concentrate on analyzing it in search of weaknesses."
           He was right. Damn him, he was right. That was all they could do and she knew it.

* * *

           Sometimes, the group ran in formation, calling cadences. Sometimes they ran in formation without them, keeping a pace that was too fast for most of the group to draw enough breath to vocalize. Sometimes their run was through a patch of forest way too dense over terrain that was much too uneven for them to remain in formation, or in step.
           Sometimes, the pace of the run was steady. Sometimes, it was occasionally varied by a trainer.
Once in a while, the pace would be relatively slow and the run seemed to go on forever. Tom found he hated these the most, not because they were grueling (because they were not), but because they were monotonous.
           But sometimes, the run would just entail a starting line, a finish line, and a predetermined route, and the trainees were trusted to set their own pace. That was the case today.
           Tom found he preferred these runs. He understood the point to all of them, but these he preferred. He was not sure why. Maybe he enjoyed the freedom of not having to deliberately lengthen or shorten his stride or push or moderate his pace to accomodate others. Maybe he just found it a relief not having to wonder what the cadence caller had just said. Maybe it was the way that, not having to use his attention to watch the movements of the running formation, this freed up his attention instead to contemplate his surroundings and his own thoughts, which was something that most of the tribe had not had as much opportunity to do since the threat of the Empire loomed. He knew he was not the only one who missed this activity.
           It happened now and then that the steady beat of his own running began to mingle with the beat of others. He would find himself gaining on someone else or someone else gaining on him.
           Now and then, when in view of the finish, he would break into a sprint to get things wrapped up. Other times, he would be content to maintain a trot, while others sprinted.
           Sometimes, two or more people would race one another in that final sprint. Sometimes, he would be included.
           On this run, he was not feeling competitive. He paid it only some mind as two very driven young men came tearing past, clearly trying to outdo one another.
           He recognized them. They competed frequently. He knew little else about them, but he knew that.
           They crossed the finish line too closely for him to tell which had crossed first and then slowed directly into their cool-down trot, then rounded the bend and disappeared from sight.
           Shortly, Tom trotted across the finish line himself, but was already trotting, and so maintained his pace. Then he rounded the bend himself and saw the two a little further ahead.
           They had slowed to a walk, and were holding hands.
           That puzzled Tom. He had come to recognize and accept most of the cultural differences this time had from the one he was from, but he had never encountered this particular one. Men holding hands?
           As he was just about to pass them, they stopped walking and turned to face one another. In astonishment, he gained full comprehension as their lips met, then he had passed them.
           For some reason, he found the idea of slowing to a walk unfavorable and elected to maintain a trot just a little longer.
           Men kissing? Men didn't kiss. But then, if that was the case, what had he just seen?
           But men couldn't kiss.
           Well sure they could. He had just seen it.
           But men were supposed to kiss women.
           According to whom?
           If men got romantic with other men, there would be no more romance with women and then there would be no more children, and humanity would die out.
           Why was he assuming that it had to be all one way or all the other? Was he seriously under the impression that the only reason he was with Xevera was that there was some sort of social constraint between him and romance with other men? Was he seriously under the impression that the reason he was with her was something other than personal preference?
           An annoyed scoff escaped his lips. Dangit, Xevera, he thought. You're in my head, now.
           Finally slowing to a walk, he deliberately directed his thoughts to other things, not wanting to lose an argument with someone who wasn't even there.
           After completing the cool-down stretch, Tom made haste to the medical tent for his last treatment of the day, and after that, went to the simulation tent in search of Xera.
           The sentry recognized him and let him in, and inside, he found her among a number of other people, each reclined in chairs well tailored to fit them, with their eyes closed, and with metal frameworks fitted over their heads. This was the Time-Compressed Simulation Technology he had heard about.
           Part of him was morbidly curious. Another part was fearful. No one had mentioned it yet, but he suspected these would be used for the psychological part of their training; training which, so far, had been entirely physical.
           One of the equipment monitors informed him that they were scheduled to come out in another twenty minutes, so he found a seat.
           They had immersed themselves in a shared, time-compressed simulation in order to pour over the intel. gathered by the Bureau as quickly and thoroughly as possible, and begin designing countermeasures. They had been immersed only a few hours, but from what Tom understood, in that time, they would have experienced months. For them, weeks would have passed between the time Tom found a seat and the time they came out of the simulation.
           Tom pondered that. What would it be like to meet up again with people who had last seen him only hours before, but whom he had not seen in months?
           Grateful for some actual downtime, he sat and waited, admiring Xevera's aesthetics, as well as those of a few of the other women lying before him. He remembered a time when he would have hesitated about doing that so freely, but not anymore. Many times, Xera had caught him noticing other women, and had responded in her usual manner: by making a punchline of him.
           He had also caught her, now and then, with her gaze lingering on other men, and had responded in much the same way, though his jokes were never quite as good as hers.
           He reminisced, and managed to lose track of time, and so was surprised when the same equipment monitor notified him that they were coming out of it. He watched with fascination as the equipment audibly powered down and then the frameworks slid back on the seats so as to no longer cover their heads.
           Tom rose to his feet and came to stand beside Xera, studying her features. Her movements were those of someone waking from a long nap. Gradually, her eyes began to open, and once her gaze came into focus, it moved right to him.
           "Hey," she said, warmly, brightening, as she sat up and reached for him, giving no regard to his sweaty attire.
           He was expecting nothing more than a warm hug, and so was pleasantly surprised when her lips came right to his. Her kiss was somewhat more passionate than usual, but surprisingly brief.
           "I missed you," she said after breaking it, then climbed off the chair, took him by the hand, and moved hastily for the exit.
           "Uh- Uh- Bye, folks," Tom stammered to the other people in the tent as he stumbed through the flap after her.
           That time, a shared shower was exciting.

* * *

           Hours later, the two lay there, in each other's arms, exhausted, but refusing to sleep. They had not discussed it, but somehow, they knew each other's thoughts on this. The grim spectre of war hung over everything they did. War: the paragon of horror.
           The two of them had been training for combat. One thing that was certain about combat was that however well trained, organized and equipped one's troops, some would not be coming home. Either might, very well, lose the other. Their time together might run out. For this reason, each felt an especially urgent need to make the time they had count. It seemed no amount of it would be enough, but they could at least make the most of the time they had. Each knew, the moment they fell asleep, hours would be irretrievably lost.
           Then something occurred to Tom. "I still don't understand where this invasion is expected to come from."
           "Oh. Well of course, such requires thinking very different from the norm for the time you come from. Hmm." She was not sure how to begin. She thought for a long moment. "Consider the day you went hunting and ended up here. What if, for some reason, you hadn't? What if you had done something else that day? Then you probably would not have encountered whatever anomaly transported you here. You would have gone on living your life in 1955, you would have had to go on making due with your pinkeye and the pain in your finger and you probably would have met someone and fallen in love back then. Of course you probably would have settled down, started a family, and had a few kids, who, a few decades later, would have had kids of their own who would have gone on to have kids of their own. Countless generations of your progeny could have come and gone between that time and this one who would have had an impact on history. Therefore, history would have unfolded very differently.
           "Well what if there was a way to step through a door and visit a world in which that is what happened?"
           Tom was quiet for a long moment. "That... would be extraordinary."
           "Maybe. Maybe not."
           That got his attention. "What do you mean?"
           "Well there's no telling how such a timeline might have unfolded. It might have lead to some kind of nuclear holocaust which would have wiped out all life on Earth. It might have lead to humanity exploring the matter-antimatter reaction which probably would have destroyed the planet itself. Then again, it may have given rise to an empire, thriving on conquest and expansion. That empire, once it finds out about the world you come from, is going to want it for itself, and suddenly, you will be in danger."
           "Oh!" Tom said, and Xera knew he understood. "So that's where this empire is coming from?"
           "Yes."
           "Huh. But we have managed to find other tribal worlds as well?"
           "That's also true."
           "How different have they been?"
           "Well, it depends on how closely the frequency of their subatomic resonations matches our own. The closer that match, the more similar the history."
           "So these timelines have other Xevera's?"
           She chuckled. "Yes, and other Thomas' as well."
           "Huh. Other Thomas' who nearly froze to death. Other Tom's who've had to get comfortable with losing an argument."
           She chuckled again.
           "So somewhere, there's another Tom and Xera lying there in the dark contemplating other Tom's and Xera's also lying in the dark contemplating."
           Xera was charmed by the wonder in his voice.
           "Do you suppose we could arrange to get together with one of these couples and maybe have a double date?"
           She laughed, merrily. "Having a double date with ourselves? Sounds confusing."
           "Well sure, but it would make things interesting as well. Besides..." he wrapped both arms around her. "...one thing I've learned from you is that being confused is not necessarily a bad thing."
           She felt the smile spread across her features entirely of its own accord. When had he gotten to be such a sweetheart?
           Last Tuesday. Four p.m, part of her responded. Before that, he was two notches less of a sweetheart.           She was glad he could not see her rolling her eyes.
           The two lay there, content, hovering on the brink of sleep but refusing to cross it, Xera did not know just how long, before she was awakened by the feeling of Tom suddenly tensing.
           "What's wrong?"
           "I just had a very unsettling thought. If these various timelines are places where history took a different turn, that means there are probably some where I actually froze to death before this tribe was able to rescue me."
           Xera sighed, sympathetically. She had had the same thought more than once.
           "That could just as easily have been me."
           "That was you. Each Thomas Phillips that happened to was just as much you as you are."
           Tom was quiet for a long moment. "Was that supposed to make me feel better?"

Chapter 5

2011-12-19T03:09:00.000-08:00

Star Trek: Myriad Universes

Paradigm Shift

by Lewis Wells

Chapter 5

The latest reports were exactly as the Legate had predicted. These naive savages were still living their lives just as they had been since the Empire had first begun monitoring their sphere. They made such little use of the resources at their disposal, living in the dirt, immersing themselves in the most libertine, trivial pursuits. He predicted this conquest would play to the same pattern as the previous... he did not know how many.
           At first, he had relished his job. The early days of expansion into other spheres had presented some interesting tactical and strategic challenges. But as the first few spheres fell to his meticulous planning and the dogged determination of his troops, the Empire soon found itself so powerful, so vast, in command of so many resources as to be virtually unstoppable. From that point on, he found his vigorously-honed expertise of gradually less utility.
           And then they had reached the last of the imperial spheres and begun to encounter savage spheres instead, and suddenly, his expertise was of no use whatsoever. Consistently, the savages on these undeveloped worlds had had no military infrastructure. Curious, he had often found it, that people so advanced in other ways could be so fundamentally backwards. Their weapons were astoundingly compact and efficient, yet so weak as to have virtually no effect in combat. Their fighting skills had been negligible. Their tactical and strategic skills had been effectively nonexistent.
           In a few cases, the Legate had had to scold a few of his officers for carelessly disposing of entire tribes instead of merely capturing them, in the process depriving the Empire of valuable new subjects. Even the most independently-minded, defiant conquest, he had seen, could be conditioned to zealously value the Empire above all else.
           So ignorant were these savages as to actually object to the Empire's civilizing embrace. So ignorant and backwards were they that they could not see how much superior was imperial living to what they had. How, after all, could they know right from wrong without collective loyalty?
           But of course, they did not know right from wrong. That was why they objected. So backwards were they as to think themselves happy on a world of dirt.
           As they received word that the first wave of the attack had begun, he experienced the much-predicted first touches of boredom, and immediately, his thoughts turned to the harem he had made of women he had taken from various spheres. Not for the first time, he found himself wondering if it would make any difference if he sat this battle out.
           The first progress reports started coming in, and just as before, this new sphere's sattelite network had been knocked out effortlessly. These savages were now incapable of global communication or topographical monitoring, and from all indications, still had no suspicion they were under attack.
           Then he received word that the second wave had begun. This would incapacitate most of this sphere's inhabitants.
           The progress reports shortly confirmed this. Now, most of these savages were unconscious from an attack they had never seen coming.
           The planet was all but theirs, now. One final aerial sweep followed up with a sweep by the infantry would find any missed by the gassing.
           Again, the Legate found himself wishing he had spent this time in his harem, but at least the Empress would be pleased.

* * *

           One moment, Thomas had found himself buffeted by the Chief's voice from every direction. The next, he might have suspected he had suddenly gone deaf if not for the audible ruffling affect by the wind on the canopy overhead.
           Why was everyone so quiet? In every direction, all the people Tom could see only stared at the Chief, wide-eyed and unbelieving. Since his arrival, he had heard a lot of things here he had found hard to believe but which these people had not. What was it about this announcement that had this effect on the rest of these people?
           Somewhere behind him, Tom heard a slight ruffle, then also to his left and his right, and suddenly all around him as people were opening pockets, pulling out imagers, activating interfaces and looking for news.
           "I'm afraid," the Chief interjected, "there is not much information beyond that available just yet. The scientists and engineers in the southeast Asian tribe have been analyzing the technology these refugees used to come here. They predict they will be able to duplicate it within the next two days, at which point the newly-commissioned Intelligence Bureau will begin to conduct reconnaissance and experts all over the world will be called upon to analyze the information gathered; especially information pertaining to the Empire's technological capabilities as well as its tactical and strategic methods.
           "In the mean time, it falls to us to get this tribe into some kind of general fighting shape, and to that end, I have appointed a commander of our military forces..." She gestured to the two men sitting by the podium.
           The one to the left raised a hand.
           "...and a commander of our militia."
           Then the one to the right did.
           "Every adult in this tribe who is not a member of one will be a member of the other. For those of you wondering, yes, even me."
           That, Tom found surprising.
           "So without further ado, I'll turn this over to our military commander." As she stepped away from the podium, she tapped her comm twice and the crowd followed suit.
           Tom found that puzzling. What did it mean? He would ask someone, but the man the Chief had introduced as the military commander was already on his way to the podium.
           Upon reaching it, he tapped his comm twice, and just as with the Chief, the audience did the same. Tom found this all very puzzling.
           "Good afternoon," he said with a voice lower than Tom's but not nearly as low as some of those in the tribe. Just as with the Chief, his voice was heard from every comm in the room, except, Tom noticed, his own. "My name is Vinicio Acuna, and once a bill from the Council signed by the Chief officially commissions the Tribal Military Forces, my rank will be that of a colonel.
           "I'm afraid, until the intel. begins to come in, I will have very little to work with and report on. The physical part of the training for the two will be identical, but that part the militia commander will be drawing up, conducting, and leading. So with that, I will turn this over to him."
           True to his word, he stepped away from the podium and delivered two tapps to his comm unit in rapid succession.
           Again, the audience did the same and Tom believed he understood. This triggered an intercomm protocol.
           As the other man stepped up to the podium, he too tapped twice and Tom joined the crowd in its mimic.
           As he spoke, his voice was heard from every comm in the room, this time including Tom's. His voice was not quite as deep but had an edge to it. "My name is Hootan Smith, and my rank of colonel is pending the same action with regard to the militia. Most of you recognize me from my tendency to participate in athletic competition. Hardly a day goes by in which I am not training myself or coaching someone else."
           Tom understood why this... "Hootan?" had been chosen for this.
           "I have drawn up a physical training program to maximize general, physical combat readiness. The specifics as well as the psychological aspects will have to wait until we have a better idea of what we are up against and how we plan to respond.
           "The part of a workout routine that produces the results is not the workout itself but the recovery from it. for this reason, we will be coordinating our efforts with Medical to accelerate that recovery. That which would take one or two days will instead take less than an hour. Between workouts, each trainee will report to Medical to spend whatever time necessary undergoing treatment with a bioregenerative field and an osteogenic stimulator. This we are doing to compress thirteen weeks of physical conditioning into three."
           Tom's head was spinning. What had happened here? Less than an hour ago, they had all been looking forward to the journey to their next campsite and now they were staring down the barrel of an invasion from... where exactly?
           So in an effort to prepare for the invasion, suddenly the entire tribe had been drafted. The entire tribe? He gaped at himself, inwardly. The entire world! Then he understood why this was such a surprise to everyone around him. War was something no one in the world alive today (aside from him) had actually had a taste of. It dawned on him that he had skipped over centuries of peace and arrived just in time for war. He could not believe it. How had this happened?

* * *

           James did not know what had happened. He and his instructor had left in the flyer for what would be his final lesson before the test for his license, and on their return trip, the comm had fallen silent.
           They had thought this meant that their comm system had malfunctioned, but the diagnostics had checked out, and their attempts with their personal units had had no success either. They had also had no luck raising other tribes.
           When they had come within view of the camp, they saw that every single person lay unmoving on the ground. Sensors had shown them alive, which had deepened the mystery.
           They had landed and were about to break the seal and open the flyer when they realized that the source of everyone's unconsciousness may have been a foreign gas from which that seal was their only protection. At this, they resolved that it would be wiser to begin their investigation with only the means at their disposal from the cockpit.
           They had barely begun an active scan of their surroundings when they were blinded by a brilliant flash of light pouring in through the forward viewing port. When they looked again, there stood a mass of people facing them with their bodies covered in copper-colored metal.
           One of them held up something roughly cylindrical, and pointed it at the flyer. Something very bright appeared from it, flashed across the distance and destroyed the flyers port engine in a fiery boom.
           The flyer rocked, and for a split second, James was livid, wanting to tell off whomever that was. But then he realized this meant danger and the two of them needed to escape.
           In the next instant, he realized that, without the engine, this would be impossible. The two of them were hopelessly trapped.
           Through the forward viewport, he saw them approaching and sensors showed them surrounding the flyer. It was then that he realized that he was sweating and breathing much less deeply than usual and his heart was racing.
           A very small part of him realized that this was the fight-or-flight response he had read about. A smaller part cared. As a bang and a screech coming from the door told him they were beginning to force it, other parts of him started demanding answers. Who were these people? What did they want? What had they done to the tribe?
           But as a high-pitched groan from the door told him it was beginning to give, these questions were all pushed aside by one far more urgent. What would they do to him?
           His ears bled with agony at the loudest, shrieking, metal groan he had ever heard which coincided with their prying tools working their way between the doors. He whirled that direction, expecting them to come pouring in, and with no clue what he and his instructor would do about it.
           But suddenly, the prying tools were simply removed and the doors stopped their screeching protest.
           James looked back through the viewport and saw them just standing there, watching... waiting. A strange odor filled his nostrils, and everything went black.

* * *

           As suddenly as it had been called, the meeting adjourned and the tribe went to work putting the seats, stage, and podium away and taking down the canopy. This, however, did not require everyone and the rest piled outside to begin construction on the circuit course Hootan had designed.
           Tom found invigoration in the way that, despite the dated nature of his education, his skill with his hands here came in as handy as anyone else's. He lost track of time as parts were joined and structures raised. He had never seen structures quite like these before, but he suspected he knew which exercises each was for.
           In relatively idol moments, he marveled at the efficiency with which these people applied themselves to the task at hand. None of those currently alive in this world had ever seen war, but one would not guess it from this. They were highly motivated and remarkably organized. One would never suspect, the way they took to leisure, that they would take just as well to work, given the right circumstances.
           A few times, he spotted Xevera at the other end of the construction site. Sometimes, while he was watching, she would look his way and their eyes would meet, and he would catch the briefest hint of a smile before she would break the gaze and return her attention to the work before her. He found that disappointing, but he understood. The priorities were different now.
           In a few hours, the construction was complete. They had flown by. Then the workout began. With a momentary demonstration, Hootan... Colonel Smith showed them how the exercises were performed one by one, and then it was their turn.
           The rest of the afternoon and early evening were a blur. Tom spent time walking up and down steps carrying weights, hanging from a bar by his hands with his back against a wall, raising his knees as close to his chest as he could get them, supporting his entire weight on his arms atop a set of parallel bars and lowering and raising himself in a slow, controlled manner, and a variety of other exercises. By the end of the circuit, muscles throughout his body ached, and seemed to briefly catch fire whenever they were exerted.
           Then it was time for the run. The pace of the run varied frequently. So did the terrain. Every time his foot connected with the ground, the thigh in the corresponding leg flared up. Every change in the angle of the ground under his feet touched off a different burning pattern in the muscles in his legs and it seemed to go on forever. From the groaning around him, Tom knew he was not alone. Finally, the run was over and it was time for the stretch.
           After that, he promptly reported to the medical tent where he was injected with nutrients and treated just as Colonel Smith had said.
           In the bioregenerative field, Tom was struck at the odd sensation of the soreness in his muscles fading at a rate he could actually perceive. But when they were done, he got to get right back into the same sweaty clothes and do it all again.
           This time, his muscles did not get sore.
           The tribe completed the workout three times that day before the time came to wrap it up.
           After their third visit to medical that day, Tom and Xera went to the sonic showers, eagerly. Normally, a shared shower would have been exciting, but not this time. Their fatigue was too great.

* * *

           In the pre-dawn darkness, Xevera heard Tom stir. "Are you awake?" she asked.
           "Yeah," he said, sounding groggy. "You?"
           "Yeah, for a while, now."
           "Trouble sleeping?"
           "Yeah."
           "Mmm. War has that effect."
           "How come it isn't affecting you this way?"
           "Good question. Maybe the full significance of it just hasn't sunk in yet." She heard him yawn. "It probably will. Give it a day or two."
           Then she heard him climb to his feet and stumble to the lavatory.
           Xera spent the rest of the night drifting in and out of sleep. At some point, she became aware of a faintly familiar sound. A moment later, she realized it was rain hitting the tent. It was the first rain she had heard in months. Just as the outside of the tent was awash in rain, the inside was awash in the sound of it. She groaned quietly, realizing this would mean muddy conditions tomorrow. As if being at war was not bad enough.

* * *

           So they were at war, it was raining, there was mud everywhere, and to top it off, they still had to do their workout... outdoors... in the rain.
           With the rain washing over her, leaching her bodyheat away, Suvi found the pull-ups and chin-ups a lot more of a challenge than yesterday, given the greater tendency her hands now had to slip off the bar. Still, Hootan and the other trainers expected results and they had a knack for getting others angry enough to deliver them.
           In her subsequent visit to medical, she received word that a bill passed by the Council and signed by Kai had made it official. The tribe now had a military and a militia, which meant that Vinicio Acuna and Hootan Smith were now, both, officially colonels.
           She then received word that the Southeast Asian scientists and engineers were beginning to get ahead of schedule in their analysis.
           After four cycles through the workout, Suvi noticed herself performing better than the first time, and this ignited a spark within her. She found herself practically charging into each workout with an aggression she had not previously been inclined toward.
           Eagerly, she charged into each new cycle. Eagerly, she watched herself getting stronger.
           Once, she caught sight of Kai, and noticed she looked more troubled than before. She was concerned, but immediately put it out of her mind. Maybe it was just the rain bringing her down, but whatever it was, it would have to wait.
           Later, she saw Kai again, casting that troubled look right at her.
           After her next visit to medical, she plunged right back into the rain, intent on hitting the circuit again, when Colonel Smith stopped her. Apparently, she had the rest of the day off.
           "Why?"
           "The Chief will explain."
           That surprised her, so she slogged off through the mud to track down Kai. When she found Kai's tent, the flap was closed and a sign was hung reading MEETING IN PROGRESS. She listened but could not hear anything inside, and she was not sure if it was being drowned out by the rain or blocked by the privacy screen.
           She figured it must be pretty important, so she stood there in the rain, and waited.
           After a few minutes, suppressing a shiver, feeling the brief flashes of cold with each drop against her face, ears, neck, and hands, and the rain soaking its way deeper and deeper into her clothes, she began wondering if she would miss anything important by going to dig up a rain cloak. Finally, the screen was deactivated and she could hear ambling discussion inside. People began to file out. Suvi recognized several members of the Council and exchanged nods with them.
           Squinting, she saw several of them note her soaked appearance. Normally, they would have expressed amusement, but for some reason, not this time.
           Then Colonel Acuna stepped through. He was in a sleek, black outfit with a red collar and two red stripes down the sleeves which Suvi instantly recognized as a uniform.
           "Colonel."
           "Lieutenant," he replied as he stepped past her.
           Taking advantage of the break in traffic, she stepped through the flap and found Kai alone in the tent, sitting by the edge of the canopy, tapping away on an interface.
           She looked up and flashed a sad smile at her. "Hi. Just a minute."
           Suvi waited, glad to at least be out of the rain.
           Shortly, Kai put the interface aside and rose to her feet, then walked to Suvi, took her hand, kissed it and clasped it firmly.
           Having no objection, but puzzled, Suvi asked, "What's this all about?"
           Kai's eyes met hers and they had tears. "You're in the Military. This tribe's military is lead by Colonel Acuna, a man who takes orders from me. You take orders from him, he takes orders from me, and you and I are a couple. It has been observed that this creates a conflict of interest."
           Suvi believed she saw where Kai was going. It alarmed her.
           "To resolve it," Kai continued, "you will have to take your orders from someone not beholden to me. You will have to go serve in the military of another tribe."
           Suvi was stunned. Moments passed before she was able to find her voice. "When do I leave?"
           "Tomorrow. That's why I pulled some strings and got the rest of today off for the two of us. I figured..." She trailed off.
           Suvi picked up the thought. "You figured we should make this time count."
           Kai nodded, her eyes noticably moist. "There's no way to tell how long it's going to be before we see each other again."
           At that moment, a terrifying possibility crossed Suvi's mind and the rain became deafening.

Chapter 4

2011-12-15T12:33:00.000-08:00

Star Trek: Myriad Universes

Paradigm Shift

by Lewis Wells

Chapter 4

Lying there, in the darkness of the tent, Tom realized that the nubian arm draped across his stomach felt no different. Curiously, he realized that a colored arm probably would.
            What a difference a word makes, he thought. Then he realized that he was grateful to these people for introducing him to this marvelous term.
            "Mmm. You're awake," she said.
            "I am," he replied. Then a curiosity occured to him. "Why were you so hesitant about showing me your work?"
            She chuckled. "I was afraid things might get awkward when you came across the picture of you."
            He was immediately curious. "Of me?"
            "Of you."
            Suddenly, he was conflicted. "Is the pad within reach of either of us?"
            "Well, no. It's still in my pack which is on the other side of the tent."
            He sighed and wrapped his arms around her naked form. "I'll look at it later."

* * *

            Thomas Phillips did not like what he did not understand. He had been on his regular weekend hunt when all his gear was suddenly torn from him and he found himself making a hard landing on a cold, concrete floor. The room he was in was pitch black.
            "Hello?" he called, and guessed from his echo that the room was not very big. Feeling around, he found a brick wall and started feeling his way along it in search of... anything.
            Moments later, he heard muffled, angry shouting which became much clearer when a door only feet away, which he had not seen, burst open. In poured a stream of small, piercingly-bright lights, punctuated by the sound of pounding feet. The lights all turned his way.
            "Don't move!"
            "Put your hands up slowly!"
            "Who are you?!"
            "How did you get in here?!"
            His last conscious perception was of his nose breaking under a blunt impact.

* * *

            "So you're an engineer?" Tom asked.
            "Indeed," Xevera answered.
            Tom pondered that. How come no one in the tribe ever answered a question with a simple "yes" or "no?"
            "What kind of engineer?"
            "Baseline."
            Tom was silent for a moment. "I have no idea what that means."
            Unsurprisingly, she chuckled. "You know what a computer is. They were kind of rare in the time you came from, but now we have them everywhere and I know you've had a few occasions to use them. Well people who design computers for a living are called computer engineers. Baseline enginering is an overarching specialization of that."
            He sighed. "Can you use an explanation that does not, itself, require an explanation?"
            Again, she chuckled. Thinking a moment, she admitted, "Actually, I don't think I can."
            "Well... then... what's it like doing that?"
            "Surprisingly philosophical."
            "What do you mean?"
            "Well think of it like this. Would you object to being deliberately deprived of food?"
            "Of course I would."
            "Why?"
            "Well... because deliberately depriving people of food is wrong."
            "Why is that?"
            He was at a loss for words.
            "You've gone hunting a few times, right?"
            "Sure."
            "That sometimes entails sneaking up on an animal, right?"
            "Yeah."
            "Why do you have to sneak? Why can't you just walk up to the animal and shoot it?"
            "Well because if it sees me coming, or hears me coming, or even smells me coming, it runs away."
            "Why do you suppose that happens?"
            "Well because it knows that I'm trying to kill it."
            "But why run from something trying to kill it?"
            "Because it wants to live."
            "Why's that?"
            "Because..." She had done it to him again.
            "You and that deer are both animals, and as such, you are wired to assume that life has value; that death is something to avoid when possible. It's in your nature. Animals that don't make this assumption don't apply effort and resources to their survival, and so, don't survive, leaving those who do to survive and reproduce. You assume that life has value, not as a rational extrapolation, but as a survival adaptation. Every animal that runs from danger is assuming that life has value, and every animal runs from danger."
            Her reasoning made sense. He could not deny that, however alarming he found the conclusion. "But what does any of this have to do with engineering?"
            "I'll show you that in just a moment. But first, consider, you like to do fun things, right?"
            "Of course."
            "Why?"
            ... His mouth opened as the compulsion to speak rose within him, but that compulsion was not accompanied by any thoughts, and so could not form any words. He figured he probably looked pretty dumb lying there with his mouth open and counted himself fortunate that she could not see him in the darkness of the tent.
            He could hear the smile in her voice as she said, "We just did something fun, right?"
            "Yeah."
            "How do you feel?"
            "I feel great."
            She briefly took hold of his cheek and gave it a squeeze, and with that same smile in her voice, said, "Good answer." Then she let go and asked, "Now why do you feel that way?"
            Again, he had no answer.
            "What is that great feeling?"
            He did not know.
            "It is the state of being glad that you exist. Am I wrong?"
            He pondered his feeling and realized that was what it was. "You are not wrong."
            "Another good answer. Of course, you are glad that you exist right now, because if you didn't, you would not have been able to experience that. What we are doing when we have fun is celebrating being alive. We are showing our appreciation for life, and in so doing, we are exercising the most important freedom of all. We are making life all the more valuable.
            "All throughout human history, every time any given civilization has curtailed the freedoms of its people, thereafter has followed an increase in the suicide rate. The loss of liberties renders one less able to appreciate life, and therefore, the love of freedom is also a survival adaptation. The love of freedom and the love of life are unavoidably linked. Having only life consigns one to choose between a continuous push for freedom and a life appreciated to a lesser extent if at all."
            Suddenly, Thomas flashed back to a history class. Someone once said, "Give me liberty or give me death." He did not remember who, but suddenly, these words took on a lot more meaning.
            "So human beings are hard-wired to have an aversion to death, to value life, and by extension, freedom. Normally dealing with animals and people means being accustomed to dealing with things that automatically make this assumption. Animals and people fall into this category. Computers don't, necessarily. There are a number of assumptions that people and animals are normally hardwired to make because they enable our reproduction, and so get passed on. But since computers don't reproduce, they are not so wired unless someone deliberately wires them that way."
            "Umm..." Tom was very confused. The idea of computers valuing things was foreign to him.
            The two of them lay there in the dark. Tom did not know or care exactly how long. It could have been hours. She spent the whole time making a very noble effort to explain concepts of baseline engineering. Finally, he got tired of being lost and changed the subject.
            "Remember my conversation with Suvi?"
            "I remember you telling me about it."
            "Right. She said the Chief was her mate."
            "Yeah."
            "They talk that way in Australia, right?"
            "What way?"
            "Calling people 'mate.' My dad told me about it."
            Xevera laughed, heartier than usual. "Yes, the Australians sometimes use that word to refer to casual acquaintances, chums, drinking buddies and such, but that's not what she meant."
            "What did she mean?"
            "She meant that she and the Chief are a couple."
            "A couple what?"
            Xevera laughed again. "They are together. They are a romantic couple."
            Tom was quiet for a long moment. "You mean..." He seemed unable to finish his thought.
            "Like we are," she offered by way of explanation.
            He scoffed. "Two women can't be a couple."
            "Well sure they can. Why not?"
            "Well... because women don't want to date other women."
            "Sometimes, they do."
            "But women can't date other women."
            "Why not?"
            "Well because they can't have children together."
            Xevera gasped. "Is that the only reason to date? Is that why you are with me? Are you suggesting that people should only be allowed to do things that result in children?"
            "No, of course I'm not saying that. But women dating each other is wrong."
            "I thought your argument was that they can't do it. Are you arguing that it's impossible or that it's wrong?"
            "Wha-" The rest of the sentence died in his throat. Then he tried again. "If women date women, who are men supposed to date?"
            What was so funny?
            "Where does this notion come from that if women are allowed to date each other, we are all going to stop dating men? Why are you assuming that, either we must all go one way, or we must all go the other? I understand that things were different in your day, but today, women have been allowed to date each other unimpeded for centuries, and most women still date men. Which the woman prefers to date is up to her. Are you under the impression that I'm with you just because I'm not allowed to hook up with another woman?"
            "But if women are allowed to date other women, how long until they start dating animals?"
            "How does the act of preventing women from dating one another prevent them from dating animals? Are you okay with that sort of thing as long as the animal is male?"
            Tom scoffed in disblief. Where were all these arguments coming from? He had heard of this sort of thing before and public figures had always railed against it and it had always seemed like such an open-and-shut case. But he had never heard any of these counter-arguments. Part of him wondered why not.
            Now, suddenly, one of those public figures was one of these people and she had ordered him rescued from the freezing cold and given medical care better than he had ever imagined.
            She probably wants to brainwash me, part of him said. Still, he could not deny that he had not heard these arguments before.
            He remembered hearing and reading about soldiers who had been captured in Korea and brainwashed by the Chinese, and this was not how it had been done. That had depended on severe, prolonged, social isolation, sleep deprivation, and other forms of psychological stress, none of which had been the case here.
            The argument continued, and over and over again, when Tom made a point, Xera made a counterpoint he had not heard before that he had not been able to see any problems with.

* * *

            A while later, a couple people were heard walking by, engaged in what sounded like very animated conversation. At the sound of them, Tom felt Xera tense.
            "What's wrong?"
            "Oh, crap," she groaned as she collapsed, deflated, beside him. "I forgot to set the privacy screen."
            "What?"
            "The privacy screen. It makes the tent sound-proof. If someone walked by while we were having our fun, they would have been able to hear us."
            Tom went cold. "How bad is that?"
            "Oh..." she seemed embarrased. "I know my tribe. If they heard us, we get to spend a while as their punchline of choice. It's going to be a while before we get to live this down."
            "Oh. So they're just going to give us a hard time about it?"
            "Probably."
            Tom drew her close again and kissed her, lightly, on the cheek. "Worth it."
            She was flattered. He could not see her face, but he could tell.
            A while later, without warning, Xera said, "Computer, lights," and started to get up as the illumination rose.
            "What are you doing?" Tom asked, regretfully.
            "Having cabin fever. Let's go outside." As she got to her feet, she realized he was not moving. She looked and caught him gazing at her body. "Come on," she chided.
            He blushed and smirked, then started getting to his feet. "Right. Right," he offered, apologetically. "I'm coming."

* * *

            The next day, Tom found himself reflecting on the ways his perspective had changed since he arrived in this time. He had thought that nubians and women were just unintelligent. Then he met a nubian woman with an education and a stubborn tendency to win arguments. He had believed that flying could not possibly be smooth, then he went through a takeoff without realizing it. He had believed that tribal living was unavoidably primitive, then he met these people.
            He had believed that the way one saw a people could not be biased by something as minor as one's choice of words, then he had come here and learned otherwise. At this, he began to wonder what other long-held beliefs of his were mistaken.
            He found himself doing a lot of sitting and thinking these days. Without the need to spend one's time toiling for survival, there was a lot of that in this world.
            As Spring progressed, when he had occasion to walk through the camp, he found people more and more often just sitting around and talking. Sometimes they talked about news, sometimes art, sometimes philosophy. Once in a while, he walked in on discussions he could make no sense of whatsoever, and with a few questions, he had determined that these were discussions of a technical nature that he was centuries too behind-the-times to understand.
            He also took to reading, which he had never had much of an interest in before, but Xevera had suggested that was probably because he had never tried the right type of book. She made a few suggestions, showed him how to use the data interface, and he began to realize that she was right.
            With the change in his ethnic and gender attitudes, he found himself receiving more visitors. This tribe was a very inquisitive lot. He was visited by psychologists, philosophers, historians and musicians. He was once even visited by a teacher who invited him to come talk to his class about the time period he was from.
He was surprised to find a class being taught in real time instead of the TCST, but apparently, that was reserved for people in the philosophical stages in life which tended not to begin until one reached one's twenties.
            He found himself learning a lot. He had previously had no idea there were so many ways to see the world. This, of course, provided fodder for his contemplation sessions.
            As Xevera predicted, they had been overheard and the tribe started making a lot of jokes at their expense, but Xera knew how to take a joke and had taught him and they laughed it off.
            As Spring turned to Summer, Tom made an astonishing realization: somewhere along the line, he had come to think of this tribe and this time as home. These people were his friends and neighbors now. He still had his problems with the Chief and Suvi, but somehow, he had begun to think of himself as an Orien. He had begun to refer to the people in this tribe as "us" instead of "them."
            He found he looked forward, quite eagerly, to the various performances; especially those hosted by the debate team. There, he found enough food for thought to keep him thinking for days.
            Then one day, he was looking at the community calendar and he noticed one date was just labeled "BC." He asked the first person he could find and the explanation he received was that this stood for "Break Camp." This was the day the tribe would pack everything up and begin the move to its next campsite.
            He had had his reservations at first, but Xera, and others, had reassured him that he would pick it up in no time. Still, as a precaution, he was compelled to get a head start. He started packing two days beforehand, and found himself waiting a day when he was done.
            When the day arrived, the camp was swamped in a flurry of frenetic activity. The air was alive with the most incredibly focused conversation and coordination. One tent came down, then another and another, and before Tom knew it, where the camp had stood, a wide open clearing stared back at him. Just like that, the camp was gone, and the people who had lived there had all their worldly possessions slung over their shoulders.
            As if to sound a final note of officialdom, the flyer lifted off and the tribe began its trudge to the northwest with the flyer circling overhead.
            Never in his life had Tom found himself immersed in a moving tide of humanity. He found it invigorating, at first, then the novelty wore off and he found that the way they conducted themselves on the move was not much different. They still had a tendency to collect in small groups and discuss, but now it was broken by the occasional swig of water or comment about watching one's step.
            Here and there, someone would begin to play an instrument, then after a few songs, would stop and the discussions would resume for a while, then someone else would begin to play.
            Xevera teased Tom about the greater tendency he seemed to have to stumble when she walked just ahead of him.
            Hours passed. Tom did not keep track of exactly how many. He just noticed, each time they paused to rest, that his shadow extended just a little further to the east. Before Tom knew it, the order came down to make camp for the night.
            Night? he had wondered. Then he noticed that the sun would be setting within the next few hours.

* * *

The second day was similar. Having only settled in for the night instead of for the season, the tribe took even less time to get organized.
This time, for the hike, a few of the tribe's musicians thought it would make things interesting if they performed some marching music, and for a while, it was, but then everyone got tired of that and they resumed their normal pattern, and again, the time came to settle in for the night.

* * *

            The third day followed much the same pattern, until Tom noticed that the Chief was not hiking. The tribe continued moving past her but she was just standing there, seemingly unaware of anything except the data interface she was gaping at.
            No one paid this any mind at all, until everyone's normal activities were interrupted by a priority alert from the Chief. She was halting the hike.
            This caused a lot of surprise and confusion and a lot of people called for confirmation. They received it. The Chief was cancelling the hike and ordering the tribe to make camp, and it was not even noon.
            This was not like her, but the tribe trusted the Chief they had elected and started setting up their short term camp, and when they were done, they received another order to set up the big tent for a tribal meeting.
            This was another dramatic break from the norm. What was going on? What was so urgent that it interrupted their migration?
            The rumor mills began to operate and Tom found himself surrounded by the wildest stories, but he knew better than to believe rumors. Shortly, they had the tent up, and at the Chief's direction, they had set up a stage with a podium and three seats alongside as well as several rows of seats facing it; enough to accomodate the tribe which shortly seated themselves, eager to find out what this was all about.
            Two of the seats on stage were shortly taken by men who looked somewhat familiar. Each had brown skin a few shades lighter than Xevera's, and black hair, but otherwise, Tom was too far away to make out any other identifying characteristics.
            Without preamble, the Chief proceeded promptly to the podium, data interface in hand, faced the crowd and tapped her comm twice.
            Following her lead, the onlookers did the same, and when she spoke, her voice was heard from each comm.
            "My fellow Oriens, thank you for your patience." She looked and sounded very uncharacteristically grim. "You're all curious and eager, so I will come right to the point.
            "All of our physicists will be glad to confirm that, in Quantum Physics, there is a theory that every possible outcome of any given situation that can happen does happen in a different quantum reality. Recent events have supported this."
            At that, Tom noticed a lot of surprised looks in the crowd.
            "A tribe in Southeast Asia has received visitors from a different quantum reality. Perhaps a better word would be 'refugees,' since they arrived here in search of escape. They came here in the hope of escaping the conditions and laws of that world; a world governed by an empire. The empire in question is not indigenous to that world, but rather, conquered the empire that had previously governed it. This conquering empire originated in a different quantum reality.
            "Apparently, in the last few months, this empire somehow acquired the ability to travel between timelines, and being an empire, it began applying its resources to the end of conquering the parallel timelines it found.
            "With each new conquest, it has become more powerful. At first, it found only other imperial timelines, but now, it has begun to find tribal worlds such as our own.
            "An empire, by definition, thrives by conquest and expansion. This one is expanding across temporal timelines and it is only a matter of time before it reaches this one." As she continued, it was clear she was fighting back tears. "This world...which has known peace for centuries... must prepare itself... for war."

Chapter 3

2011-12-12T06:31:00.000-08:00

Star Trek: Myriad Universes

Paradigm Shift

Chapter 3

by Lewis Wells

Thomas Phillips did not like what he did not understand. He had been on his regular weekend hunt when all his gear was suddenly torn from him and he was standing some place dark and freezing cold in snow drifts he sank into past his knees. He did not know how in the world he had ended up here, where the snow had come from, how it had accumulated without his notice, or for that matter, where "here" was. All he knew was that it was cold and dark.
            He counted himself fortunate, though, that there was no snow currently coming down, and no clouds between him and the starscape. This enabled him to see the North Star, and thus, he was able to get his bearings.
            It was still cold, though; bitter cold. Typical of a Montana winter. Odd, considering that it was supposed to be spring. Spring was what he had dressed for, and now he felt the heat draining from him.
            Instinct compelled him to curl into a ball but he fought it. He had dealt with the cold enough to know that under such extreme conditions, he had to keep moving to generate bodyheat.
            But then he found himself facing a dilemma. It was nice to have his bearings, but what good did it do him if he did not know where he was? The nearest road could be dozens of miles away and it might almost never be traveled, especially at this time of night. And that was if he just happened to choose the right direction. Any given direction could be toward help, but probably was not. And what if the nearest road was covered in snow and he did not realize it and walked right past it and kept on going?
            He suppressed that thinking by force of will. It would not help. He reflected on what he knew, and to his dismay, he realized that all he could do was pick a direction and start walking, so he did.
            As time passed, he felt colder and colder, feeling melted snow dripping into his boots. He shivered for a time. It started mildly and got progressively worse. He found himself shivering more severely than he had ever imagined.
            He stumbled once and found himself lying on his side in the snow. Sluggishly, clumsily, he struggled back to his feet.
            The shivering subsided and he began to feel oddly warm and drowsy. It occured to him that he could sleep right where he was, and pick this up again in the morning when it was warm, so he lay down where he was.
            That was his last thought.

* * *

            The Carter townsfolk had regretted their departure, but Aaron and Xevera had seen no alternative. Thomas had been silent for a long moment, then proceeded promptly back to the flyer, got back into his seat and stared into space. He wore a defeated expression, responding to nothing anyone said or did.
            Under different circumstances, Xevera might have thought such behavior rude, but in this case, she understood. Having finally come out of his denial, Thomas was now caught somewhere between anger and depression.
            An awkward silence permeated the air in the flyer on their way back to the camp. Xera normally refused to tolerate such, preferring to break them with humor, but this time, she conceeded to tact.
            Out of the corner of her eye, Xera saw Aaron pull out his digital interface and the silence in the flyer was lightly rippled by the faint tinkling sounds it made as Aaron operated it. She surmised he was probably sending word to the Chief about how their visit had gone.
            After about a minute, he put it away. Even in the quiet of the flyer, his sigh was barely audible.
Minutes later, they arrived in the camp, and again, Xevera set the flyer down with the same lack of ceremony.
            When the door slid open, the Chief was standing there, waiting. "Mr. Phillips," she said, "or do you prefer 'Tom?'"
            He was slow to answer. "I suppose... 'Tom' will be fine."
            The sight of his withdrawn, sluggish manner was heartbreaking. Xera almost preferred him angry.
            "Tom," the Chief continued, "I have arranged a tent for you."
            Again, he took a moment to answer. "Thank you." His tone made it clear that he did not, currently, actually have the capacity for sincere gratitude.
            Xevera and Aaron had gotten to their feet, raised their hoods, and put on their snowshoes and mits. Then they stood there, patiently waiting for Tom to do the same, unwilling to rush him.
            After a moment of gazing into space, his eyes focused on his surroundings. He looked around, noting the expectant looks he was receiving. "Right," he said. "Of course." Then he looked around and, haltingly, gathered his things, rose to his feet and put his hood up. He turned to the door.
            Upon emerging from the flyer, Xera saw that the shadows had progressed noticably along the gound. At this point, she knew that only the tents at the western edge of the camp would not have the shadow of another tent falling on them. For a brief moment, the camp seemed to race eastward, toward the night, away from the sun. For the next, the night seemed to race westward toward the camp. Then she remembered Tom's situation and both slowed to a crawl.
            Wordlessly, the Chief indicated a direction into the camp, Tom nodded in acknowledgement and followed her lead.
            On their way, Xevera noticed the attitude of anticipation that had permeated the air earlier had been replaced with something more somber. Everyone had been looking forward to an evening of pomp and celebration in honor of Tom's arrival, but now, no one saw the point if the guest of honor himself would be unable to enjoy it. The rest of the tribe were disappointed, of course, but they too understood. The celebration would wait until his spirits improved.

* * *

            Tom's thoughts were few, scattered, disconnected, and unfocused. It had been almost an entire day since he had unexpectedly found himself snowbound and immersed in night with all his gear lost. These people had rescued him from that but he found himself wondering if they had really done him any favors. Alive or not, his world had ended.
            A few of his neighbors had lost friends and loved ones in Korea, and they had been a wreck for months, sometimes years afterward. He suspected he had some idea how they felt.
            That town's population was totally different now and Tom found himself hating them all.
"Tom," said the woman with the impossible name, "in the days and weeks to come, you are going to have times when you will feel the need for privacy. That is the main purpose your tent serves. You are also going to have times when you will feel the need for company. I want you to know that, at such times, the tribe is here for you."
            "Thank you," he said, only faintly aware of the exchange.

* * *

            So began a long period of adjustment for Thomas Phillips. He had been through a few in his day, but none quite so awkward.
            At first, they had given him a replicator programmed only for food. Then, at their insistence, he took a course on situational ethics and also learned how to assemble the components of a replicator, and then they saw fit to give him a pair of his own.
            That surprised him at first. Why two? But they explained that, this way, in the event that one stopped functioning, he could use the other to replicate the tools and parts he would need to repair it.
            Other than that, though, the rest of the tribe seemed to prefer to avoid him; especially after his encounter with the radiant blonde and her dog.
            Thomas had always gotten along great with dogs, and so welcomed the chance to visit with this particular wet-nosed ball of fur, but when he tried to get it to sit up, she seemed to appear out of nowhere, and bore down on him with a tone that made him think she was about to have him write his name on the board 100 times.
            "None of that! None of that!"
            "Hmm?"
            "My dog does not sit up. He does not roll over, play dead, speak, shake, juggle, or any of that crap." She crouched beside the dog and started scratching behind his ears. "He's a companion, not a performer here for your amusement." She looked back to the dog and said, "Isn't that right?"
            The dog's tail wagged eagerly and he gave her face a lick.
            She laughed and scratched behind his ears a little more vigorously. "Well all right. He's also a rascal."
            "You don't teach your dog tricks?"
            "Well, he's housebroken of course, and he knows how to fetch, but that's as much for his own entertainment as anyone else's. He also knows how to heal and not to jump up on people. But tricks just for the entertainment of others? No. Absolutely not."
            "Why not?"
            "Well because it's demeaning, and really does not make sense. I mean should I do tricks for him?"
            This philosophy surprised him, but then he was coming to expect that by now. "I'm Tom, by the way." He offered a hand.
            She accepted it. "I'm Suvi. Suvi Sini."
            Another exotic name, he thought as the handshake ended. "Where is that name from?"
"Sweden."
            "How did you come to be here?"
            "Well my outlook on exploration and travel used to be very different. I used to be more focused on quantity than quality, so I did my exploring by air, determined to see as much of the world as possible."
            Thomas mulled that over.
            "But then I traveled here and met Kai, and that changed."
            "Kai?"
            "You know her as 'the Chief.' There are not many members of the tribe on a first-name basis with her, but I am one of them."
            "Where's her name from?"
            "Here."
            Tom's only response was a blank stare.
            Suvi smiled, knowingly. "When you think about North American names, you think about names like 'John,' 'James,' and 'Betty," right?"
            He nodded.
            "Those names were brought here from Europe, but before the first European explorers arrived, Kai's people had been here for thousands of years."
            At this, Tom only became more puzzled, searching his brain for any reference he had ever heard to people in America before it had been discovered. He thought and thought but finally guessed, "You mean... the Indians?"
            Now it was Suvi's turn to look puzzled. "Um... no, Kai is not Indian, although I believe she did once tell me that she has visited India. But no, the people who had been in the Americas for thousands of years before the Europeans arrived made up many different tribes in many different nations and that of the Kai's ancestors was called the Navajo."
            "I've heard of them. They were Indians."
            "No. An Indian is someone from India."
            "No, no, no. The Indians were the people Columbus met when his voyage first arrived."
            "Then what do you call someone from India?"
            At that, Tom was brought up short. "Well okay. So whatever the people who were already here when the Europeans landed are called, that's who the Chief is descended from?"
            "Yes."
            "Is it really wise to have one of them in a position of so much authority?"
            Suvi bristled. "Why wouldn't it be?"
            "Well, because they tend to be ignorant, violent, ruthless and savage. They are known for plundering, raiding and intimidating good prairie pioneers."
            Suvi practically exploded in a rant more dramatic and emphatic than he had seen in years... or rather... centuries. Sometimes she appeared to address him; other times, no one in particular.
            Her dog recoiled and whined a little.
            Thomas, though, could not make out a word of it. Was this Swedish?
            Finally, she calmed down a little, fixed him with a withering glare and said, "First of all, 'ignorant?' She has a Master's Degree.
            "Second, your ancestors spent centuries continuously driving hers off of ancestral homelands they had lived on for millennia, driving them further and further west until there was not 'further west' for them to go to, then you forced them to endure centuries more living on reservations in poverty and squalor, all the while watching your ancestors reach ever more stellar heights of affluence and luxury through the exploitation of those very homelands and you call her 'savage?'"
            "What has you so fired up?"
            "This is how I get when someone slanders my mate!"
            At that, Tom's confusion deepened. "'Mate?'"
            "That's right. My mate."
            Why was a Swedish woman referring to a... Navajo woman... with Australian slang?
            He had had other occasions to talk to people from the tribe, but that was the last time in weeks anyone from the tribe had gone out of their way to talk to him, except the nubian woman. For some reason, she came by often, and she wore that amused expression with such regularity, he wondered if her face was stuck that way. On one visit, he asked her why.
            "Well," she explained, "I derive a lot of entertainment by pointing out absurdity when I see it, and frankly, you are bursting at the seams with it."
            Like many things she said, that annoyed him at the time but evoked a quiet chuckle from him later during a moment of reflection.
            In one visit, he called her a monkey and she responded with another thoughtful smirk before asking if he also planned, at some point, to call her an armadillo.
            Of course, that made no sense. "You don't look like an armadillo."
            "I don't look like a monkey, either."
            His frown deepened. "Yes, you do."
            She regarded him very incredulously before producing a thumb-nail sized device from her pocket. She set it on the table and pressed a button on it and a broad, flat device, the size of a piece of paper but slightly thicker appeared around it.
            Tom had seen this a few times before, but he still found it quite unnerving.
            She then picked up the newly-appeared holographic display device, inclined it to face her and started tapping it, causing many light beeping sounds.
            How curious, he thought, how much of life in this strange world consisted of tapping panels.
            "There," she said after a moment and handed it to him.
            Curious, he took it and turned it so he could see the display. It had a picture of a monkey, and beneath it, the words "Pan Troglodytes," whatever that meant.
            "Is that the animal you are referring to?" she asked.
            He considered it and nodded.
            "Look at its complexion."
            He did, but did not see what she was getting at until she pointed it out.
            "It's white."
            He gaped.
            "By comparing me to one of them, you are saying I'm white. Is that supposed to be an insult?"
            In that, she had left him at a loss for words. She was the only woman he had ever known who had that tendency.
            He had seen other colored... nubian people in the tribe, but she was the only one who came by. She was the one who had shown him how to use the various pieces of 25th-century technology. She was the one who answered all his questions about tribal living.
            At first, he was apprehensive about talking to her, but once that passed, he realized she was actually rather pleasant. It had never before occured to him that he might actually enjoy talking to one of... them. Often, after one of her visits, he would find himself reflecting on a wise crack she had made and seeing the humor of it; humor that had eluded him at the time.
            Shortly, he came to realize that being at a loss for words was not necessarily a bad thing. Shortly after that, he realized that he actually looked forward to her visits, though for some odd reason, she always had that cane.
            He tried to ask her about it once, and all he got was a correction of his choice of words. For some reason, she insisted on calling it a scepter.
            "So what do people do for fun around here?" he finally asked.
            "Oh, a lot of things," she had answered. "Most of us are proficient in at least one musical instrument, many of us are skilled with two or more. We practice hobbies, we play sports, we have performances..."
            "Performances? What kind?"
            "Oh, well, several kinds. The tribe has a band, a choir, a drama club and a debate team. We also have several sports teams. When our camp is near a rock face, a lot of us enjoy climbing and rappeling. When it's near a major body of water, weather permitting, we like to swim. I'm fond of those last two myself."
            "Are you?" he asked, intrigued.
            She smiled and nodded.
            He had difficulty picturing a female rock climber, but found, oddly, that he had no objection to the thought. "What else do you like to do?"
            "Mainly, I like to read, sketch, hike, ski and snowmobile."
            "'Snowmobile?'"
            She looked surprised. "You've never heard of that?"
            He shook his head, looking puzzled.
            "Well that won't do at all."

* * *

            Thomas Phillips did not like what he did not understand. He had been on his regular weekend hunt when all his gear was suddenly torn from him and he was standing some place dark and freezing cold in snow drifts he sank into past his knee. He did not know how in the world he had ended up here, where the snow had come from, how this much snow had accumulated without his notice, or for that matter, where "here" was. All he knew was that it was cold and dark.
            He counted himself fortunate, though, that there was no snow currently coming down and no clouds between him and the starscape. This enabled him to see the North Star, and thus, he was able to get his bearings.
            It was still cold, though; bitter cold. Typical of a Montana winter. Odd, considering that it was supposed to be spring. Spring was what he had dressed for and now he felt the heat draining from him.
Instinct compelled him to curl into a ball but he fought it. He had dealt with the cold enough to know that, under such extreme conditions, he had to keep moving to generate bodyheat.
            But then he found himself facing a dilemma. It was nice to have his bearings but what good did it do him if he did not know where he was? The nearest road could be dozens of miles away and it might never be traveled, especially at this time of night, and that was if he just happened to choose the right direction. Any given direction could be toward help, but more likely, was not.
            He suppressed that thinking by force of will, knowing it would not help. To his dismay, he realized that all he could do was pick a direction and start walking, so he did.
            As time passed, he felt colder and colder. He shivered for a time. It started mildly and got gradually worse. He found himself shivering more severely than he had ever imagined.
            He stumbled once and found himself lying on his side. Sluggishly, clumsily, he began struggling back to his feet, but then realized his hand was resting on something metal. The snow had buried it.
            Thinking it might be a potential shelter, he applied his shaking, numbing hands to the task of digging. He did not know how long he had been at it when he realized with astonishment that it was a robot.
            It was not like any he had seen in the popular fiction. It was clearly not a person in a costume, but it had clearly defined bodyparts; a torso, a head, arms, and if it had legs, they were still buried.
            He had managed to uncover a number of lights built into it, though none were lighted. But it was entirely too small to provide any shelter.
            He was having trouble thinking, yet his shivering had subsided and he realized that a warm feeling was coming over him.
            Realizing that he must be tired, he decided he would figure this out in the morning. He lay down in the snow to go to sleep and never woke up.

* * *

            The rustles the wind produced in his clothing were furious enough to make his arms reminiscent of percussion instruments. Was this flying? No. Surely not. Surely, even flying could not be this fast. The flyer had provided a remarkably smooth ride, but surely its speed fell short of this. Surely, this must be falling. Thomas was falling sideways.
            He had seen people riding in pairs on horses and motorcycles a few times, and when one was a man and the other a woman, the man usually rode in front with the woman's arms around him. At first, Tom would have preferred something like this, or his own vehicle, but he had no idea how to operate one, so he had had to accept the inverse arrangement instead.
            He had, initially, been very hesitant to sit behind this woman with his arms around her in this way. There was something about it that filled him with a very odd fear. He had contemplated a few times over the years the idea of putting his arms around a colored woman and the idea had scared him, but the fear of putting his arms around a nubian woman was different.
            Years before, (give or take a few centuries), Julia Peterson had said that she was going to teach him to dance and one of the instructions she had given him was "Put your arm around me." That part of the fear he felt now was the same.
            After the trip, he found himself saying, "I don't think I'm quite ready for this yet. Could we go for something a little more slow-paced?"
            And so they started going on hikes, instead. Suddenly, home did not seem so far away after all for the young anachronism. Here was a piece of it.
            "Young?" What an ironic choice of words. When he had occasion to do the math, he realized that he was now 464 years old. He had celebrated his nineteenth birthday, and barely a month later, he had just skipped 445 of them.
            He had enjoyed hiking, but never quite this much. He was not sure why. Part of him suggested that it might be the company, but he was not ready to accept that.
            As the weeks passed and the weather began to warm, the snow cover began to thin, and shortly, Tom noticed leaves beginning to bud on the trees. He also found it a refreshing change to not need the cloak or parka as much anymore, and indeed, this changed the appearance of the entire tribe, including his hiking companion.
            Before, she had been unrecognizably swallowed in the parka and the cloak, but now, she took to attire which fit... much better.
            For some reason, he found himself much more aware of this fact than other facts. Time and time again, his attention was drawn to a part of her figure outlined very well in her outfit, and over and again, he would yank his thoughts elsewhere. He was not sure why. For some reason, he was just compelled to react this way.
            Still, such content pervaded his thoughts, and in his occasional conversations with other members of the tribe, it seemed they had no such reservations. At first, he was downright aghast at the ease with which they discussed some subjects, but as he became accustomed, he began to wonder if that had been an overreaction.
            On one hike, the two stopped to rest at the top of a nearby hill which provided a fine view of the camp, and Xevera pulled a sketchpad from her pack and started drawing.
            Tom peered over her shoulder and watched with fascination as she recreated the view right before his eyes. Her skill was extraordinary.
            He noticed the thick stack of used pages folded back behind the pad. "You've done quite a bit of this."
            Remaining otherwise focused on what she was doing, she said, "Indeed."
            He extended a hand. "May I see?"
            Her pencil halted. She was quiet for a long moment. A smile slowly spread across her features. She turned her head to look at him peripherally.
            Tom could not believe it. Was she shy? Surely not. She was never shy. It was as if an entirely different woman had slipped in and taken her place while he had not been looking.
            "Okay," she finally said, and handed it to him.
            Still unsure what to make of this unexpected change in her behavior, he took it from her hand and started flipping through it.
            The first picture he flipped to he recognized as the horizon to the west. The use of shading showed him it was sunset. He recognized it automatically. It was unmistakable. It was like a photograph, except with more feeling. It moved him. "Is this how you see it?"
            "Close. I can never seem to get it quite right."
            Spoken like an artist. He took a few more moments to regard the sunset, then flipped to the next drawing. This one he also recognized instantly as the flyer. "Why did you add emphasis to the curves while taking it away from the angles?"
            "I've just always found the curves that much more significant."
            ...curves...
            Many others struck him in one way or another. There was one of a tent covered with strange markings which she said was the Chief's. She said the markings were reproductions of Navajo art.
            "You trust her in that position?"
            She reacted with her usual amusement. "Of course we trust her. We elected her."
            "'Elected?'"
            "Now don't tell me you're not familiar with elections."
            "Of course I am, but not tribal."
            "Oh yes. This tribe practices democracy. So do they all. We vote to elect our Chief, each member of the Council, and a number of other positions as well."
            "How can you possibly elect a savage?"
            "We didn't. We elected Kai... Tsiishch-... we elected her!"
            "She's an Indian, though."
            "No, she's a Navajo."
            "Okay, fine. Whatever. Her people are savage."
            "We are her people."
            "I mean her real people."
            "You're suggesting that we are imaginary?"
            "The people she's from are savage. They ride the plains in hoards, raiding and plundering good folks just trying to live their lives."
            "That's enough!"
            Thomas was stunned. He had known her for a couple months and this was the first time she had raised her voice. It was virtually inconceivable. As difficult as it was to picture her suddenly transforming into a brick wall, so difficult it was to picture her angry. Yet here she was.
            "The people using force to throw another group of people off of land they have lived on for thousands of years just because they want it for themselves, brutalizing them, degrading them, and forcing them to endure poverty and squalor the whole time don't have any business calling someone else 'savage!' Now I will have you know that I voted for her myself and I did not make that decision lightly! She lent her policies and ideas to scrutiny more vigorous than you have ever imagined! This trust that you so quickly dismiss is not something that comes easily to anyone in this particular tribe, least of all to someone in a position of public trust! I promise you, every consideration you could make we have made!"
            And suddenly, their eyes met for just a moment and Thomas beheld the scalding inferno blazing in hers and was transfixed. He could no longer hear what she was saying. He could only see and hear the passion she said it with. It was breathtaking.
            He lost track of time. It could have been seconds or hours before their eyes met again and suddenly, she stopped speaking and returned his gaze.
            He was several inches taller than she was, yet suddenly, their height difference vanished and their lips met. Yet again, time disappeared from his consideration as she pushed all other subjects from his thoughts.
            When the kiss broke, much too soon, Xera yanked the pad away from him, closed it, stuffed it back into her pack, slung it over her shoulder, grabbed Thomas' hand and started leading him back to the camp.

Chapter 2

2011-12-08T18:51:00.000-08:00

Star Trek: Myriad Universes

Paradigm Shift

by Lewis Wells

Chapter 2

Tom had gotten tired of the situation. He had long ago gotten tired of this tent and the various medical personnel always looking puzzled over every little thing he said. He had gotten tired of the burly men who blocked his path whenever he tried to leave.
           He was tired of calling this situation wrong and unbelievable. He was tired of the doctor, whomever it was at the time, threatening to sedate him if he didn't calm down.
           He did not want to calm down. He wanted to go home. He wanted to know where he was. He wanted to know how he had ended up here and where all the snow had come from.
           He wanted to go outside. Maybe he was not dressed for it but at least it would be a break. What was going on here that they refused to even allow that? What could possibly be wrong with just going outside for a moment?
           He found himself wondering if there might be a way for him to yell loudly enough to get the attention of local authorities. This was, after all, kidnapping. It was nice to have been rescued from the cold and to have the pain in his little finger gone for the first time in years, but he would accept the pain back if it meant regaining his freedom.
           How the hell could people who did this sort of thing live with themselves? If this was the way they treated patients, how did they treat prisoners?

* * *

           The Chief and the historian stepped through the flap to put a face on this walking anachronism for the first time. His scowl was hugged by a trimmed, blond beard and he regarded them with two scathingly critical, piercing, almond eyes within a square face crowned by tousled blond locks, each only a few centimeters long.
           "Who the hell are these people?" he demanded of Dr. Fehringer.
           "I'm Kai Tsiishch’ili. I'm the Chief, and this is Dr. Aaron Bigby. He's one of our historians."
           "You're the Chief?" he asked, skeptically.
           Irritated, but not surprised by his attitude, she replied, "I am."
           He scoffed, then looked at Bigby. "What the hell is going on here?"
           "It's a long story. How much patience do you have?"
           "None."
           He mulled that over. "That will impede my explanation efforts."
           "Look! Can I just go outside for a minute?"
           The Chief spoke up again. "Of course. We will just need to provide you with a few things, first."
           "I have them, Chief," Dr. Fehringer interjected.
           "Good. Let's have them."
           Fehringer opened a cabinet and took out a few folded garments which, when unfolded, were clearly a parka and a cloak. "You will also need these," she added, pulling out a couple snowshoes.
           The fellow who had been identified as Tom needed a moment's contemplation to recognize them.

* * *

           A moment later, fitted with the parka, cloak, and showshoes, Tom pulled back the flap and instantly drew back at the sheer intensity of the sunlight that poured in.
           "Check your pocket," came the voice of the one who had been called a historian.
           When Thomas did, he found an odd plastic object. When he pulled it out to examine it, he realized it was a pair of sunglasses, but much sleeker than he was accustomed to. He put them on and was struck by this odd feeling on his face.
           "You have seen sunglasses before, surely."
           "Of course I have, but they have never fit quite so well."
           "Ah. Yes. We design them that way to minimize peripheral glare which, we find, is a major source of irritation. Shall we be going then?"
           "What happens if I go outside without these?"
           There was a pause. "You... will probably end up... doing a lot of squinting... which gets annoying after a while."
           For some reason, Tom had been expecting a more climactic response. Not seeing any further reason to delay, he pulled back the flap, and this time, was not compelled to recoil. He stepped through, and the first thing he noticed was a gathered crowd, all with their attention on him.
           He looked to his right just as Bigby came into view beside him, having followed him through the flap. "What are they looking at?"
           "They're curious. We don't get many visitors."
           "Why not?"
           "Well we're pretty far from the nearest town. Sometimes we encounter other tribes, but that's pretty rare. So when we have a new arrival, it makes for quite the occasion. There is talk of celebrating."
           "'Celebrating?' What do you usually do to celebrate around here?"
           "A lot of things. For one thing, we set up the really big tent and dine in one big group instead of the groups of handfuls or less we usually do. While we dine, the band, the drama team and the various soloists from each take turns performing. They're always working on something, so of course, they're always eager to show off their latest work.
           "By the time they're done, everyone's usually done eating and tired of sitting, so at that point, the whole thing just turns into a dance. Let us walk," and he gestured to the right.
           Tom started trudging the direction Dr. Bigby had indicated. "Anywhere in particular?"
           "Not really. I plan to show you around the camp."
           "Why?"
           "Because it appears you'll be here a while."
           He halted. "What do you mean?" he demanded.
           "I mean, Mr. Phillips, that our best efforts to determine how you got here have failed, which means we can't even begin to figure out how to send you back."
           "What the sam hell does that mean? Where the hell am I?"
           "The appropriate question, Mr. Phillips, is 'When?'"
           Tom wanted to ask another question, but he was tired of asking about meaning. All he could do was stare.
           "Do you know what year this is?"
           Tom's gaze was more incredulous. Cautiously, he answered, "1955."
           Bigby sighed. "Actually, this is the year 2400."
           Tom could only stare. Part of him wondered if he had heard the historian right. Another part wanted to know what the game was. A dozen other questions arose from other corners of his thoughts and all demanded to be heard at once. He closed his eyes and put his hands over his ears in an effort to shut the noise out, but of course this effort failed and he silently chided himself for expecting otherwise.
           When he opened his eyes again, it was with the expectation of a hint of humor on the other man's face. There was none.
           "Burning questions are forming. Walk with me and I will answer the ones I can." And with that, he stepped away from Tom in the direction they had started walking earlier and beckoned for him to follow.
           The next few hours were something of a blur. Tom had never taken much interest in science fiction but now he was hearing it by the load. It seemed odd that there were no references to space aliens named Graznock.
           Tom had never heard of genetics before, but apparently, it had paved the way for a war toward the end of the twentieth century between conventional human beings and those with "enhancements" whom history had come to call "augments." The conventionals had won and most of the augments had died in the fighting, much of which, curiously, was between each other. When the dust settled, all but a handful had been accounted for.
           Sadly, humanity could only rid itself of war for another couple decades before the Third World War broke out. Tom's heart sank upon hearing that. He did not buy it, of course, but it was still a sad notion. His grandfather had charged across No Man's Land and his father had fought the Nips in the Coral Sea, a few of his cousins had had occasion to serve in Korea, but so far, he had not seen any service himself. Still, the Second World War loomed large in the national consciousness and that included his own.
           He had been a child when VJ-Day had happened. He remembered the streets strewn with pomp and celebration, even in his normally sleepy little town. He remembered the formation of the United Nations in the hope of preventing any additional wars and he found the thought that such a noble undertaking might ultimately fail disheartening.
           Also, in keeping with the greatest fears of the time, it had been a nuclear war which had wiped entire countries off the map. Six hundred million were lost to nuclear weapons alone.
           Of course, the loss of that many had had repurcussions for years--indeed, for generations--but curiously, a few had been beneficial.
           Someone whose name he could not pronounce reasoned that a key psychological component in war is economic desperation, and that one good way to prevent this was by making sure that everyone had something valuable to trade. But there are only three things traded: goods, services, and currency. Two of these unavoidably had a tendency to run out, so the best way to make sure that everyone had a means to conduct trade had been by concentrating on services. Services utilize skills, and once one has an in-demand skill, it never runs out.
           Every economic situation placed certain skills in demand. The key had been to maintain a continuous, pro-active effort to teach the skills which were in demand to the people who most needed to be.
           "Wait a minute," Tom said. "If you concentrate on the blind expansion of skills, won't that make more people able to wage war? Doesn't that mean more people are going to?"
           "Only if they have the motive," came the reply. "No group--or person for that matter--takes any action unless in possession of both the opportunity and the motive. Now you can concentrate on preventing war by taking the opportunity away from those who have the motive or by taking the motive away from those who have the opportunity. Only one of these approaches protects freedom. If everyone in the world has the opportunity, but no one has the motive to go to war, then no one will."
           "Why did the Nips bomb Pearl Harbor?"
           "Why do you call them that?"
           "Call them what?"
           "'Nips.'"
           "What else would I call them?"
           "Japanese."
           "What difference does it make?"
           "One is a dehumanizing term. 'The Nips' are just bodies while 'the Japanese' are people. It's a lot easier to morally countenance the nuclear bombing of Nips than of Japanese. One has much less difficulty being comfortable with the internment of the one than of the other."
           Thomas rolled his eyes and grumbled. "Alright, fine. 'Japanese.' Why did the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor?"
           "Expansionist imperial ambition. Britain and France were the dominant imperial authorities in the Pacific, and Japan sought to replace them in that capactiy. But Japan knew that the United States got along much better with Britain and France than with them and figured that we would probably be involved in the war sooner or later. Japan sought to cripple the United States' Pacific war machine.
           "Those, at least, were the motives of Emperor Hirohito and General Tojo. But of course, they would not have happened without the cooperation of their subjects, and that depended on giving them a motive as well. That was accomplished by speaking of the act of abiding the will of Japan's leadership in glowing terms like 'honor' and 'loyalty' and rewarding those who participated with prestige and public commendation, and by regaling them at length about all the horrible things that allegedly would happen to Japan's people in the event that the Allies won, and supporting these claims with the goings on in the internment camps."
           At that, Tom was quiet for a long moment. He remembered learning in history class about how news of the treatment Japan gave its prisoners had further strengthened American resolve against them. It had never occurred to him that the effect may have been reciprocal. He was not sure what to make of this.
Bigby persuaded him to put other questions on the back burner for the time being while he finished the history lesson.
           A group of experts in physics, electronics, psychology, neorology, and several other subjects was assembled to figure out a way to accomplish this and time-compressed-simulation technology was the result.
           TCST made it possible for someone to be completely submerged in a simulation in which perceived time could proceed much more rapidly than actual time. Thus, one could experience years of going to school and studying but emerge from the simulation after only a few hours. In a few hours, one could obtain full fluency in another language, master an art form, or obtain a college degree. In a few hours more, one could obtain a graduate degree. But given the few resources it took to power the equipment, and given the superabundance of those resources, education became dirt cheap, even under the worst of economic, social, or political circumstances.
           This invention ushered in an age of education and enlightenment never before conceived of. Suddenly, there were doctorate degrees popping up everywhere, and with them, new specializations and innovations.
           Science and technology seemed to have new specializations every day. This drove production costs through the floor which meant more parties getting into the production of consumables, which drove supply ever higher, in a steadily more competitive market, thus driving price ever lower, which drove down cost of living so far that virtually everyone could meet it, and poverty vanished.
           It was at this point that despotism lost its grip and war became the exception rather than the rule, but things took a really interesting turn with another innovation. With the sudden rush in advancement, science soon figured out how to convert matter into energy, transmit that to a different location, and convert it back into matter, and so teleportation was born. But then it was realized that what became matter did not have to originate as matter. If one has the ability to convert energy into matter, and one can choose the shape and composition of that matter, one can make food, water, clothing, tools, construction supplies; anything one needs. If such technology has a readily-available enough power source, like cold fusion, one does not need to remain near supply depots. One can convert any supply one has in abundance into any supply one has in shortage.
           At first, this lead to droves of humanity leaving the cities to live in remote cabins or collections of them, but then they realized that with such technology available, fusion-powered and subsequently portable, one had no further need for permanent, stationary dwellings. All the modern conveniences were available anywhere.
           At this realization, the latent, nomadic instincts of humanity reasserted themselves and large groups formed tribes and took to life on the move. A tribe would move to a location they liked, set up camp, then live there until they got tired of it, then pack up and move on.
           "What if you don't want to live on the move?" Tom asked.
           "Well it's not as if it's the rule. It's just that, with technology bringing this option within reach, most people elect to take advantage of it."
           "So there are people who don't?"
           "Sure. Indeed, I myself had a stationary dwelling for a while."
           "What happened?"
           "I got tired of it."
           So then Bigby wrapped up the lesson by explaining that this situation characterized the circumstances for most of the people on the move.
           "Well look," Tom said. "This has all been quite entertaining, but I've had enough. I would like to go home now."
           "You don't seem to understand, Mr. Phillips. Your home is four and-a-half centuries in the past."
           "My home is in Carter, Montana."
           "A place which, if it still exists, is bound to be profoundly different."
           "Look! No more of this nonsense! Home!"
           A lone chuckle came from the crowd.
           Annoyed, Tom looked the direction it came from. "What's so funny?"
           A woman stepped forward; a darkie, who for some reason, was carrying a cane. "It's just that you look so unseasonably red."
           A chuckle ran through the crowd.
           Thomas' ire increased. First he was held prisoner, then he was spoon fed this load of nonsense, and now a woman was addressing him disrespectfully; a colored woman, no less. He looked back to Bigby. "You don't have a colored section?"
           Bigby looked uncomfortable at the question. "Umm... no. As a matter of fact, it has been quite a while since anyone has?"
           The colored woman who had spoken gave the historian a puzzled look. "'Colored section?'"
           Tom glared at her. "Shut up! We're talking!"
           To his surprise, she cast a smirk in his direction. "How are we supposed to talk if one of us shuts up?" Then to Bigby again. "What's a colored section?"
           "In the days of segregation, it was the norm to reserve one section for caucasians and one for everyone else."
           She responded with another of those insufferable smirks. "Mr. overripe tomato is calling me colored?"
           Tom looked back and forth furiously between them. What were they talking about? Why the hell was she so amused? What was so funny about all this? "Back to the subject," Tom asserted. "Home."
           Bigby sighed. "Alright. I'll ask the Chief."
           "You plan to take the flyer?" the darkie asked.
           Tom had never been so galled in his life. Who did this woman think she was? Why was she still talking?
           "Probably."
           "You'll need a pilot."
           The historian paused. "Are you volunteering?"
           "Sure," she answered.
           Another light chuckle came from the crowd.
           What did they mean "pilot?" A colored pilot?
           Bigby sighed. "Alright. I'll ask her." At that, for some reason, he tapped his sternum and said, "Bigby to Chief."
           Tom looked around to see who he was talking to.
           "Tsiishch’ili here," came the reply.
           The most evident thing on the scene was Tom's bewilderment. What kind of name was that? Who was he talking to?
           "Chief, our guest is having difficulty accepting my explanation and is insisting on being returned to his home town. Request permission to use the flyer."
           "Granted. Have you a pilot?"
           "Miss Gunawardina has volunteered."
           The reply was laced with a distinct tone of amusement. "In that case, proceed."
           "Thank you, Chief." Then, for reasons which likewise eluded Tom's comprehension, he tapped his sternum a second time. "Alright," he said to Tom and the colored woman. "Let's go." Then he walked into the camp with Tom following.
           For some reason, the colored woman was walking with them.
           As they walked, Tom did not like the fact that he was stuck relying on strangers who had so far been handing him a continuous train of hogwash, but he did appreciate the way they had rescued him from the cold. What did they mean, though, by having Miss Guna-whatever as pilot? Who was that? Was it this colored woman?
           Tom believed he had once heard something about colored pilots, but woman pilots? The idea left him uneasy. What would they have next? Horse pilots? Still, the alternative to relying on these people was trying to make due on his own, and considering that he still had no idea where he was or what his bearings were and these people at least had the means, so it seemed, to survive out here in the middle of nowhere and a willingness to share it.
           Were these tents? If so, they were very strange looking. He had seen a few tents in his day, but none that looked like these. He had seen the very occasional tent city before, but never with this much variety in the size and shape or irregularity in its arrangement. Doing his best to follow the "historian" and the "pilot," he found himself weaving left and right with no confidence he was not being led in circles. Once again he found himself wishing for his compass.
           All at once, they came to a clearing. Ahead lay... or... stood (he was not sure which word was more accurate) an object with a size and shape that resembled (less so with the shape) a van. It was then that he realized that his escorts were watching him expectantly.
           "What?"
           "We're just wondering about your first impression."
           "Of what?"
           They indicated the object. "Our transportation."
           Transportation? Thomas gaped. "Where are the wheels? Where's the road?"
           The colored woman looked amused again. "It flies," she explained.
           Again, Tom had to scoff. Was there no limit to the malarky? "How can something fly with no wings?"
           At that, she laughed out loud. "We'll show you." And with that, the two approached it and Tom, incredulous and hesitant, followed.
           When they were less than a yard away, a segment of its wall popped out a few inches and slid back. Once again, Tom halted in his tracks and stared, incredulously. As far as he could tell, there was nothing behind the panel except darkness.
           "Don't worry," she chided. "It doesn't bite." Then his two escorts stepped inside.
           Cautiously, Tom crept toward the opening.
           "Come on," came the woman's voice from inside. "Do you want to go or not?"
           Then Tom remembered the sunglasses on his face, pulled them down, just a little, and peered over them. Squinting against the glare off the snow that now assaulted his peripheral vision, he became able to discern chairs and faint lights inside, and then his trepidation faded and he stepped in.
           "It's about time," came another tease from the same source.
           Tom ignored her and found his way to a seat. There were not many, but they were enough. Upon sitting, he was again surprised. He had not known that a chair could be this comfortable, and while this realization was setting in, he was only partly aware of the door sliding closed again.
           The colored woman started tapping a dark piece of glass in front of her that resembled the one he had seen in the medical tent and a faint beeping sound emerged from it that Tom might have missed if he had been having a conversation with someone. Were these controls of some sort? Where was the stick? What kind of aircraft didn't have a stick? What kind of aircraft did not need a runway?
           "You look uncomfortable," commented the historian.
           Thomas realized he had been scowling at the colored woman. His gaze moved to the historian whose face, he suddenly realized, was completely unobscured. It then occurred to him to remove his own sunglasses completely.
           "What has you so bothered?" came the follow-up question. "Never heard of a black pilot?"
           "Actually," Tom replied, "I have."
           "Oh, that's right. From Tuskegee. Well what, then?"
           "I'm not comfortable with the idea of a woman pilot."
           "I assure you Miss Gunawardina is quite capable."
           "Well, I guess I'll see as soon as we're in the air, if she can even get it off the ground."
           Now it was Bigby's turn to be amused. "She has."
           "Has what?"
           "Gotten us off the ground."
           Thomas groaned. More hogwash.
           "See for yourself," and he indicated the row of windows along the front of the aircraft.
           Tom frowned. What was he playing at? Hesitantly, he got to his feet and stepped forward.
           True to Bigby's word, the ground was far below, moving past at a steady clip. It was the oddest sensation. It was as if the floor beneath his feet was absolutely stationary while the earth itself was in motion. He had difficulty finding words.
           "You did not feel the take off because of the inertial dampening system."
           Thomas' puzzled frown turned to the historian. "What's that system called again?"
           "The inertial dampening system."
           "What does it do?"
           Then it was the historian's turn to frown. "It dampens inertia."
           "What's that?"
           Again, the historian frowned. "The tendency of an object to remain at rest or in motion in a particular direction unless acted upon by an outside force."
           The colored woman groaned.
           Tom looked at her, then at Bigby, questioningly.
           "As an engineer," he explained, smiling, "she finds this definition somewhat crude."
           "Well it still doesn't make any sense to me."
           What was that about an engineer?
           At that, Bigby waved off the question and said, "It's a long story. For now, just suffice it to say that this system makes for a really smooth ride. Of course, it tends not to be quite this smooth if the skills of the pilot are at all lacking."
           Thomas followed his very deliberate gaze to the colored woman who smiled graciously, glanced his direction and nodded at the compliment before promptly returning her undivided attention to what she was doing.
           Tom's attention drifted back to the sheet of glass. It had several rectangles with different lengths and widths and a lot of these rectangles would change brightness or color when the colored woman touched them. He turned back to the man and indicated the sheet of glass. "What's that?"
           "What's what?"
           "That sheet of glass in front of her with all the lights?"
           "Why are you asking me?"
           Again, the turn to frown passed back to Tom.
           "Why not ask her?"
           "You want me to ask the colored woman?"
           "Nubian."
           "What?"
           "The word is 'nubian,' not 'colored.'"
           Tom was incredulous. He had never heard the word before. "Noo-bee-un?" he asked, hesitant about his pronunciation.
           "Close enough."
           "You want me to ask the... nubian woman?"
           "She has a name."
           Tom sighed. Could he just get his question answered? "What is it again?"
           "Ask her."
           Again, Tom sighed, then turned to the colored... nubian woman. "What's your name again?"
           "Xevera," came the quick reply.
           Tom blinked. "Could I hear that one more time?"
           Again, she was amused. Did this woman know any other emotion?
           "Xevera."
           "Ze-VE-ruh."
           "That's it."
           "What kind of name is that?"
           "Brazilian."
           "You're from Brazil?"
           "No, but my name is."
           Again, Tom frowned.
           "In fact," she continued, "I have yet to set foot outside of North America."
           "How did you end up with a Brazilian name?"
           "Well I like exotic sounds, so I figured it would be nice to hear one every time someone called my name."
           Tom mulled that over. He had never cared for exotic sounds, personally, but otherwise, he supposed that made sense. "So anyhow," he said, making an effort to return to the original train of thought, "what's that piece of glass in front of you that you keep touching?"
           "The control panel. Ah, here we are."
           "What?"
           "Carter. We'll be landing in just a moment."
           Tom was surprised again. "Oh. Uh..." He strided back to his seat. Upon sitting, he noticed that Bigby was giving him an odd look, then he remembered that he had not felt the takeoff. It occurred to him that he was probably almost as likely not to feel the landing. "Oh. Right."
           "Okay. Here we go," the colored... nubian woman... Xevera announced.
           The ground came into view, and shortly, stopped rising, and true to his suspicion, there had been no other indication that they had landed. Thomas had to admit, only to himself, that he had never imagined flying being so smooth. That whatever-it-was-called system was something pretty fancy.
           With a hiss, the door to his left slid open, and reflexively, he winced and reached for the shades they had provided. When he looked again, he was struck by the sight of pavement.
           "Where are we?" he demanded.
           "Carter, Montana," the woman replied.
           "Carter doesn't have paved roads," he retorted.
           "A lot can happen in four and-a-half centuries," Bigby explained.
           Tom sighed in frustration. At least they were consistent.
           "Just take a look," Bigby continued. "You should see a few familiar sights."
           Tom sighed again, rose from his seat, raised his hood, and stepped through the door.
           Immediately outside the vehicle, he was struck. There was something very significant and alarming about his surroundings, but he could not quite put his finger on it.
           The flyer itself had snow underneath but the street before him had not so much as a flake. It extended to his right only a few blocks before suddenly reaching a dead end but continued to his left further than he could see.
           More people started gathering, regarding him with curiosity.
           "Morning, folks," came the nubian woman's voice from behind him. "Sorry to drop in on you like this. We hope you don't mind."
           "Not at all," one of them said, stepping forward. "We're always looking for an excuse to make an occasion of something, and what better occasion than the arrival of visitors?"
           The conversation continued, but Tom was barely aware of it. He started walking down the road to his left, perceiving significance in that direction.
           Apparently curious, Bigby, the crowd, and the nubian woman followed.
           After one block, the feeling of significance increased. After two, it increased further. With each block, it increased. Finally, at the end of one very long block, he reached a cross street that met it at an angle, after which the road he had been following swung slightly to the right, then continued straight for only a few dozen yards before arcing to the right and disappearing behind what he now recognized as the grounds of the capitol building. Those grounds were right where they should be; right where he had known they would be.
           The roads. He knew the roads. They were paved, but nonetheless, he had been able to navigate them because he knew them.
           This was Carter, Montana. There was no denying it. It was different in many ways that disturbed him, but similar in ways he could not deny and that disturbed him even more. He wanted to deny it, but he could not. Different though it looked, he knew his town. This was it.
           His eyes stung and seemed to close of their own accord as his breathing became unsteady. He suddenly felt weak and leaned forward, resting his hands on his knees.
           His home was gone. His world was gone. His family and all his friends were gone, swept away by time, with just enough residue remaining to mock him. He would never see any of them again and he had not even had the chance to say goodbye.
           He was aware of the crowd gathering around him and he did not care.

Chapter 1

2011-12-05T06:25:00.000-08:00

Star Trek: Myriad Universes

Paradigm Shift

by Lewis Wells

Chapter 1

It was a dark and snowy night watch and Xevera Gunawardina was loving it. Not for the first time, it crossed her mind that she probably derived more enjoyment from the night watch than anyone else in the tribe.
          This, of course, was not surprising. She enjoyed a lot of things more, from examining the veins in a leaf to hearing and telling puns. She had long ago made it a point to hone her skill for finding the enjoyment in any activity; even the most mundane.
          "A wit." That was what they called her, and she wore the title with pride.
          Of course, there were times when even she could not bring herself to enjoy the night watch. When it rained, conditions turned slightly muddy, and her efforts to find the enjoyment in that had yet to meet with any success. She loved the rain, but hated the mud, at least, when she had to be on watch, and so this was one of those rare occasions when she envied the city-dwellers with their concrete and asphalt which filled the air with the mellifluous sound of rain on pavement.
          But who knew? In a few months time, when the rainy season was upon them, maybe they would have migrated into a city and she would be free to enjoy the rain without being preoccupied with the mud.
          She drew her cloak tight and felt the wind whip around her, then she slackened the cloak and made a visual sweep of the distance with her flashlight. "Yep," she thought aloud. "Still snowy."
          Then she put the flashlight away and brought out her binoculars. She swept the horizon left and right and, hardly seeing anything, she switched them over to infrared. Again, she hardly saw anything.
          This was not a surprise. The winter-time night watch almost never saw anything noteworthy.
          Putting away the binoculars, she took hold of her scepter, and with a tug, freed it from the snow where she had driven it in. The rest of the tribe insisted on calling it a cain, but she knew it was a scepter. She then held it aloft, indicating the direction of her patrol, commanded herself, "Advance," and strided in that direction, pausing with each step for emphasis.
          After a little while, she tired of that approach and worked some dance moves into her walk.
          "Need some music?" came a voice from the shadows.
          Xera halted in her tracks and whirled to face the direction it came from. "Hello."
          The figure was shadowy, of course, but her voice and tone identified her. "I keep thinking we need some kind of regulation against having that kind of fun on watch, but the Council just won't hear of it."
          With all the histrionics available, Xera snapped her fingers in disappointment. "Damn those checks and balances."
          "Heh. They probably have a hidden camera somewhere and they're sitting around watching you on a monitor and passing around the popcorn."
          "I installed it last month."
          "It would be nice of them to invite me."
          "Is that why you're ruining the show?"
          It was odd to hear someone normally so stoic laughing, but it was a wonderfully hearty sound. Xera, of course, reveled in the laughter of others, but especially that of this individual just because getting her to laugh was so much more of a challenge.
          "Alright. Alright. What's your status?"
          With practiced efficiency, Xera was suddenly all business. "No anomalies. Two centimeters have accumulated in the last hour and-a-half, but none on the flyer and only a light dusting on the watch station and the tents."
          "No animal tracks?"
          "Well no, but in this weather, there wouldn't be. First, of course, there aren't many animals out and about making tracks. Not many animals crazy enough to be out and about in this weather, except me, of course. Second, with each round, I've been unable to detect the tracks I left previously."
          "Even your cane marks?"
          The scoff escaped her lips before she could stop it. "Scepter. It's a scepter."
          "Whatever."
          The odd blend of serious joviality was interrupted by a soft, high-pitched chime.
          "Chief?"
          The Chief tapped her sternum through her clothing, to activate her communicator. "Go ahead."
          "Chief, I've detected an anomaly. At bearing two-four-six at a distance of 847 kilometers, I read a lone human life sign."
          One human being alone in weather like this? An anomaly indeed.
          "Status?"
          "Life signs are relatively steady but fading slowly."
          "Monitor that location and stand by."
          "Aye, Chief."
          She then tapped her comm. again to close the communique, then a second time to open another.
          "Chief to Doctor."
          There was a moment's pause. "Schultz here."          "Doctor, I need the medical bay prepped for emergency care."
          "Aye, Chief."

* * *

          Chief Kai Tsiishch’ili tapped her badge twice more as she excused herself and stepped away to leave Xera to continue her patrols unimpeded. "Vic. watch?"
          The reply was prompt. "Yes, Chief."          "Are you still reading that life sign?"
          "I am."
          "Feed sensor telemetry to the flyer."
          "Aye, Chief. Feed established."
          Moments later, the Chief had arrived at the flyer, stepped inside and powered up the teleporter and a moment after that, she had locked onto the life sign and teleported him to the medical tent from which the doctor reported having received a Caucasian male in his early twenties, unconscious.
          He had begun providing treatment for frostbite and hypothermia. The patient, as severe as his state was, would need continuous, meticulous treatment, but should make a full recovery.
          Then, with the most pressing needs addressed, Kai allowed her mind to wander and the initial questions came back to her. Who was this man? Where had he come from? How in the world had he wound up way out in the middle of nowhere, completely on his own?

* * *

          An hour later, information started coming in, but after the first few facts, the Chief found herself predicting, repeatedly, that each new fact would only deepen the mystery, and repeatedly, this prediction was borne out.
          "What's Conjunctivitis?" she had asked. Apparently, Dr. Schultz had not known himself until he had checked the man's symptoms in the historical medical database. It was a kind of bacterial infection first dubbed "pink eye" in reference to its most apparent symptom. This man was the first diagnosed case in four centuries.
          Of course, the reason this condition had virtually disappeared was due to the development of various treatment methods with 100% effectiveness which were also detailed in the database. The Doctor had administered one of these and now this case too had gone to the history books.
          There was also evidence that his left little finger had been broken and set very crudely years before. It was as if it had been set by hand. Why in the world would someone set a broken finger by hand?Apparently, he also had a defect in one of his kidneys which could lead to its failure in a few years. The Doctor had taken the liberty of correcting it.
          The Chief had never heard of an internal organ just failing without the person sustaining some sort of injury. Apparently it was because this too had become quite rare in the last few centuries.
          Not only was this fellow turning out to be quite a general mystery, but a medical one as well, but the most puzzling part was his innoculation status. There was a lot of immunological jargon the Chief did not understand, but apparently, the most up-to-date influenza strain he had been innoculated against was one that had arisen in the mid-twentieth century.
          Why did all his medical characteristics continue to point back centuries into the past? It was as if he had somehow crossed the centuries to arrive here.
          Finding this rather far-fetched, the Chief was not ready to accept it, but she bore it in mind as she went back to bed.

* * *

          The first conscious throught to work its way through the fog was just how remarkably warm and comfortable the bed was.
          The second was that his experiences in the freezing, dark forest must have been a dream, however remarkably real they had seemed.
          The third was that his bed had never felt nearly this comfortable before.
          The fourth was that the chronic pain in his little finger was gone.
          The fifth was that the feeling against his skin was not his pajamas.
          The sixth was something about just how odd these last three observations were.
          As the fog continued to lift and Thomas opened his eyes, he found himself in some sort of tent, lying on his back, with something draped over him that he was not sure whether to regard as a sheet or a blanket.
          Then it occurred to him that, beneath that... cover, he was no longer covered.
          He was still groggy, but he was conscious enough to hear a single, faint beep. It took him a moment to realize it had come from something on his forehead. He willed his hand and it moved sluggishly, making its way in that direction.
          He was only barely aware of the brief increase in illumination.
          "Ah. You're conscious," came a soothing, feminine voice, the source of which Thomas' mind willed his eyes to locate. "How do you feel?"
          Finally, his eyes managed to focus on the source. It was a tall, slender woman with shoulder-length, curly, dark hair and feline, blue eyes.
          He thought for a moment. "In a fog."
          "Not surprising, considering what happened to you."
          "What was that?"
          "You nearly froze to death. Fortunately, we found you before that happened and now you are recovering."
          "Who are you?"
          "I'm Dr. Kylene Fehringer and this tribe is the Oriens."
          "What?"
          "I said I'm Dr. Kylene Fehringer-"
          "'Doctor?'"
          She looked surprised. "Yes."
          He gave her a puzzled look. "You...are a doctor?"
          She chuckled. "Is that surprising?"
          A woman doctor? He turned the notion over in his still-foggy mind, unsure what to make of it, but then set it aside for something else puzzling. "Did you say something about a tribe?"
          Again, she nodded. "This tribe is called the Oriens?"
          "What do you mean, 'this tribe?'" His eyes, still slightly uncooperative, searched the tent for this tribe she kept mentioning.
          "You aren't part of a tribe?" she asked, looking puzzled.
          Part of a tribe? Were there still tribes in the world? "No. I've... never even met one. I've never heard of them except in history class."
          "You are a puzzle," she said. "Your clothes-"
          "-clothes," he interrupted. "My clothes. Where are they?"
          "In the drawer," she said, pointing. "They were as frozen as you were, so we took the liberty of getting them cleaned. We figured you probably wouldn't mind."
          "You figured right. I appreciate that."
          "You're welcome. Mind if I ask your name?"
          "Thomas. Thomas Phillips." The last few seconds of conversation had made sense and Tom was feeling more alert. He took that as a good sign. "So where are we?"
          "Presently, we are about eighty kilometers southeast of Hadron lake."
          The confusion was back. "Kilometers?" "Hadron?" He had no acquaintance with words like these. Were they in English? "What's the nearest city?"
          She looked puzzled. "I'm afraid I don't know. I could look it up and get back to you if you like."
"Please do."
          "Are you from a city?" she asked.
          He nodded. "Carter, Montana."
          She thought for a moment. "I've never heard of it."
          He chuckled. "That's not surprising. It's tiny. Our population is in the double digits." Suddenly, it occured to him to change subjects. "You don't have other patients you need to attend to?"
          Again she looked surprised and puzzled. "Not at all. Unless there's some kind of disaster, multiple patients are virtually unheard of."
          Yet again, it was his turn to be surprised, which was getting monotonous. Who are these people? he thought. They talk about tribes and kilometers and Hadron-something-or-other, they go weeks at a time without seeing a city, they provide quality medical care, yet they almost never have multiple patients. And where's that accent from? "Well," he grinned, "given all the attention, I certainly hope your husband isn't the jealous type."
          Oh for crying out loud! his mind yelled at him. If she keeps using that puzzled frown, her face will get stuck that way!          "Husband?" she asked.
          He signed in exasperation. "You don't have a husband?"
          "I've... never heard of one. I presume, if I had one, I would know it."
          Again, he chuckled. The fog seemed to be fading. "Yes, I'm pretty sure you would. She was turning out to be kind of an odd woman, but he had to admit she was a looker. She might look better in a skirt and high heels, but those were the only changes he would make.
          Her attention went to a table with some odd-looking objects on it. "Excuse me. I have some paperwork I need to wrap up."
          As she walked over to the table, he pondered that. How odd that she was familiar with paperwork, but not husbands.
          How much more odd that she was not actually doing anything with paper. She was sitting and she had one of the items in her hand. It was broad, flat, and rectangular. She was tapping it with her other hand, and each time she did, it made an odd sort of quiet chirping sound.
          This was all very odd. He would ask about it, but he did not want to distract her from professional obligations, so he patiently lay there and waited.
          Shortly, she set the last object down and said, "There. That's that." Then she got back to her feet, walked over to Tom's bedside and directed her attention to the head of the bed.
          Curious, Tom followed her gaze.
          He had not noticed it before, but there was a flat, smooth, black rectangle just beyond the head of the bed. It had several lights illuminating it from the back. From the way she studied them, he could only infer that these lights were significant in some way.
          "I'll be back in just a moment. Again, your clothes are in that drawer." Then she headed for the exit. As she lifted the flap, the sudden brightness from outside caused Tom to cringe and raise a hand to shade his eyes, but as the light faded, he heard the flap fall closed, and when he looked again, she was gone. He looked to the drawer she had indicated and then began to push the cover away.

* * *

          Once outside, Dr. Fehringer took a few steps away from the entrance to ensure that she would be out of earshot, then tapped her comm.
          "Fehringer to Chief."
          She had always found that easier than actually pronouncing the Chief's last name.
          "Chief here."
          "Chief, I'm pleased to report that our strange visitor has recovered... but..."
          "What is it?"
          "Well, Chief, I still hesitate to discharge him."
          "Why?"
          "Well, Chief, consider the facts for a moment. His clothing is from centuries in the past. So was his medical condition when Dr. Schultz first examined him. He has reacted with surprised to mention of a tribe and he talks about something called... a 'husband' which I seem to recall hearing something about in a history class I once took."
          "Yes. I seem to recall something about that as well. What are you driving at, Doctor?"
          "Is it not yet apparent?"
          "You are suggesting that our guest is the archetypal stranger in a strange land."
          "Indeed. Of course, the world today is fundamentally different from what it was centuries ago. If that is the one he is accustomed to, the act of simply discharging him, precipitously, could be quite a shock."
          "Especially if there is a way to return him. Very well, Doctor. I see your point. Keep him confined to the medical tent for the time being, and just in case, get security involved as well. I'll dispatch an investigation to the location where we found him."

* * *

          After dispatching the science team, Kai made it a point to contact the Tribal Psychology Council as well. They confirmed the Doctor's concern. They also became quite inquisitive at the prospect of possibly examining the psychology of someone from centuries in the past, but she advised them to rein it in.
          Then she contacted a few of the tribe's historians in search of information that might help her narrow down the exact point in time he came from, but the best they could give her based on the facts she had was 1952 or later, based on the exact style of his boots.
          She spent the better part of three hours consulting different experts to advise her decision-making and concluded it would be wise to keep him confined to the medical tent for the time being. Ethical considerations precluded detaining him there indefinitely, of course, and this tribe did not get visitors often, so curiosity was taking its toll. She resolved that she would need to release him 24 hours after Dr. Fehringer's prognosis had been made. By that point, if there were no leads from the science team about how he had gotten to this time, he would officially be a permanent resident and the Chief planned to have a full acclimation program in place if such an eventuality rolled around.
          She sent a message to the medical console advising the Doctor to be ready in case he went into shock, ordered one of the historians to prepare a lesson plan, then started contacting members of the Council to solicit other suggestions.
          All in all, her entire day was used up on this and she wondered if this fellow (the Doctor mentioned his name was Tom) would ever appreciate the trouble she was going to.
          She had some recollection of her head hitting the pillow, but the next thing she knew, it was morning. She checked with the science team and they had no leads. She checked with the Doctor and learned that the patient was developing an increasingly severe case of cabin fever. She sighed and thought aloud, "Well, here we go."
          Then she dragged herself to her feet, washed her face and hands, contacted the historian to verify that he was ready, drew her cloak around herself, put on her boots, snowshoes, mits and sunglasses and stepped outside, doing her best not to disturb her mate.
          On her way to the medical tent, she met up with the historian, a fellow named Bigby, and they walked to the tent together.
          "Chief, what do you know about prejudice?"
          "It has been touched on in a few history and psychology classes I've taken and in the last 24 hours, I've learned a great deal more about it from the Psych. Council. Basically, it is the presumption that a group of people who is different from one's own is automatically inferior; less intelligent, less capable, less moral, et cetera."
          "That's essentially it. This fellow is from a place and time where it was rife, when the act of stigmatizing this, that, or the other outgroup was a common strategy for gaining popularity and political points."
          "Nothing like the good old days, eh?"
          Sharing the sarcasm in her tone, he replied, "Indeed. Now this fellow, being Caucasian, is probably biased against other ethnic groups such as your own."
          "Mmm."
          "Being male, he is probably biased against women."
          "I'm going to hate him, aren't I?"
          Now it was his turn to sigh. "And finally-"
          "Don't say it."
          "Seriously?"
          "Seriously."
          "Well, alright."
          "The science team's deadline expires in less than fifteen minutes. I'm still hoping they'll uncover a promising lead or two, but if they don't, then this guy is officially our responsibility into the foreseeable future. The good news is that, according to a few psychologists I've asked, any biases he has should dissipate as he associates with people from the groups he's biased against."
          "That fits with my understanding as well. Either way, there's something to be optimistic about."
          "Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst."
          With the last concern addressed, they came to a few meters from the medical tent and stopped.
There stood two security personnel just outside the entrance. They watched the surroundings alertly and there was a crowd of onlookers regarding the tent with curiosity, but they were keeping their distance.
          Kai and Bigby would wait until the deadline expired.
          It was at this point that Bigby looked around the camp bathed in light from the sun just beginning to clear the horizon. "Well, at least it's promising to be a sunny day."

Prologue

2011-12-05T06:05:00.000-08:00

Star Trek: Myriad Universes

Paradigm Shift

by Lewis Wells

Prologue

Thomas Phillips did not like what he did not understand. He had been on his regular weekend hunt when all his gear was suddenly torn from him and he was standing some place dark and freezing cold in snow drifts he sank into past his knee. He did not know how in the world he had ended up here, where the storm had come from, how this much snow had accumulated without his notice, or for that matter, where "here" was. All he knew was that it was cold, dark, and snowy.
          When he held his hand in front of his face, he was able to discern only a dark slhouette. Around him, he saw nothing but snow, broken by the occasional dark shape which, on closer examination, turned out to be a tree or a bush. This was all he saw in every direction.
          Instinct compelled him to curl into a ball but he fought it. He had dealt with the cold enough to know that, under such extreme conditions, he had to keep moving to generate bodyheat.
          He wanted to get his bearings but his compass had been among the gear ripped away (not that he would have been able to see it well enough to use it) and the cloud cover concealed the stars and moon from view. He could only hope that, if he moved in a certain direction, he might find help.
          So move he did. For what seemed like hours, protecting himself as best he could with his early-spring clothing, feeling the snow working its way into his boots and melting, feeling his clothing becoming increasingly damp, feeling his bodyheat seap away, feeling the numbness in his hands and feet working its way inward, he moved.
          Repeatedly, it seemed that the snow might be letting up, but with greater disappointment each time, he realized that it was only his own wishful thinking.
          Out of the blue, he found himself lying on his side in the snow. He had tripped and fallen but had no recollection of it. He willed himself back to his feet and his body reacted sluggishly. The feeling had left his legs entirely and the only way he could tell his efforts to get back to his feet were working was by sight. Once he got as far as a crouch, he could will himself no further. His legs would not respond.
          Crouched in the snow, suddenly aware of the ice crystals forming on his shirt, all he could do was watch the snow come down. That was his last conscious thought.

Societal Attitudes toward Marriage and Divorce

2011-08-31T02:36:00.000-07:00

Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lO2FUpVEApE

Jay Leno once joked that, if conservatives want to punish people for being gay, the best way to do it, surely, is by letting them get married, since after all, same-sex marriage is bound to become the number one cause of same-sex divorce, and then they'll be sorry.

I once had a co-worker who joked that, the next time he thought about getting married, he would save time by just finding some woman who hated his guts and buying her a house.

I once heard the joke that, after a few years of marriage, the only type of sex the couple is having is hallway sex, which basically just entails the husband and wife walking past one another in the hallway and saying, "Fuck you!" And of course, after that, comes courtroom sex, where the wife and her attorney screw the husband for all he's worth.

I, myself, have observed the very curious similarity between the Spanish word "casado," which means "married" and the word "cansado," which means "tired." I once asked a Mexican lady about that and she said they were the same thing. She was joking, but I wonder.

Once, thumbing through a dictionary, I came across the word "fiancé," with one "e" (masculine), then "fiancée," with two "e"'s (feminine), and then the word "fiasco," in that order. I wonder.

In my more credulous days, I caught an episode of Dr. Phil in which he rattled off a few marriage statistics. I don't know how accurate these are, so I recommend taking them with a grain of salt, but he said that 50% of first marriages end in divorce, 60% of second marriages, and 70% of third.

Even at this more credulous point in my life, it occurred to me just how misleading this use of these figures might be, even assuming they are accurate. It looks as if it's saying, "If you can't make it work the first time, it's only going to get more difficult. You will be cursed."

But consider this for a moment. Let us assume a random sampling of 1000 people destined for marriage. Let's also assume monogamous marriage to people outside the sample. If 50% of first marriages end in divorce, and all 1000 of these people get married, that means that about 500 are eventually bound to get divorced.

Now let's assume that all the people in this sample are determined to keep trying until they get it to work. This means that all 500 are going to get married again. If 60% of second marriages end in divorce, that makes it sound like 60% of the original 1000, which is 600, when in fact, it's 60% of the 500 who got divorced from their first marriages, which is only 300.

So what if those 300 then go on to get married again? Well, 70% of 300 is 210. If 70% of third marriages end in divorce, that's only 210 of the original 1000 people. That's barely a fifth who have not managed to make it work by the third attempt.

So if 50% of first marriages, 60% of second marriages, and 70% of third marriages end in divorce, that means that 50% of the people have made it work on the first attempt, 70% by the second, and almost 80% by the third, if we assume that 100% of those who make the first attempt are determined to keep trying until they succeed. Of course, in real life, it's bound to be a little less than that.

But even so, so what? Dr. Phil, like much of the programming in the US is predicated upon the completely unwarranted assumption that divorce is necessarily some sort of failure. Such is about as absurd as a notion can get.

First of all, most marriages that end don't end in this huge, stereotypical, Hollywood style, hyper-drama. That's a stigma. Most marriages that end end with both people genuinely regretful that it just didn't work out. That does not necessarily mean that there's someone to blame for it, and there's no particular reason why two people have to become the most vitriolic of enemies after getting a divorce. Sometimes, two people just grow apart. Sometimes, two people just realize they are not in love anymore. Sometimes two people just realize that they got along better before they tied the knot. Sometimes, with the ever-increasing life expectancy, "until death do us part" is too long to wait. How much sense does it make to insist on making two people prisoners of one another, resentful of one another, perhaps even enemies of one another, when they would be able to get along if they were to split?

The fact is that people are human beings, and as such, we sometimes make mistakes. I have encountered the obsevation that this is the reason there are rubber mats around spitoons. People make mistakes, and sometimes, one of those mistakes is getting married. Maybe the mistake was the person one chose to marry. Maybe it was the act of taking oneself for the marrying type. Maybe it was just one's assessment of the circumstances at the time. Maybe the mistake was assuming that just because you and another person have a tendency to get along, that you should marry each other. But given the fact that people can make mistakes, what could be more absurd than to regard the admission of it as some sort of failure?

That is what you are doing, after all, when you get a divorce; admitting that you made a mistake; that you are human. If getting married was, indeed, a mistake, it was a mistake whether you admit it or not, so by refusing to admit it, you're only causing yourself, your spouse, and any children you may have undue distress.

Star Trek, the Transgendered, and Pronoun Trouble

2011-08-31T02:29:00.000-07:00

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiPNi0Xl5Jo

As most of my subscribers are, no doubt, aware, I am a Star Trek fan. One of Star Trek’s most popular authors is Peter David. Let me emphasize, these are authors I’m talking about, not screenwriters. One finds their work in print, not on the screen.

In Star Trek: The Next Generation, two of the main characters are Commander Riker and Counselor Troi, who apparently had a romance before TNG’s pilot episode. In one of the novels for which Peter David is famous, called Imzadi, he delves into this tumultuous romance.

Now just to explain, Counselor Troi is half Betazoid, meaning that her home planet is Betazed, and "Imzadi," is a Betazoid word which doesn’t translate precisely. Apparently, "Imzadi" is a sort of pet name one applies to the first person with whom one reached a certain level of intimacy that entails a telepathic component; the first person with whom this level of intimacy was both physical and mental.

It has to do with Riker being assigned to Betazed as a lieutenant where one of his first official duties entails attending a Betazoid wedding.

I have a number of subscribers whom, I know, are fans enough themselves to begin deriving a little amusement at the idea already. You see, at Betazoid weddings, it’s the custom for the bride, the groom, and all the assembled company to be nude.

Apparently, Riker doesn’t know about this in advance, and so is caught a little off guard when, suddenly, everyone around him starts stripping down, but not one for modesty, and not shy, as soon as this custom is explained to him he decides to join in. He steps out of the room long enough to find a place to store his uniform, then returns to his seat, and a Betazoid woman on her way past pauses to contemplate him and says, "You human men are certain hairy. Why is that?"

Without missing a beat, Riker says, "Traction."

That’s what Peter David’s writing is like. Well apparently, after a few years, Peter David got tired of playing in the sandboxes of existing Star Trek series and decided to start one of his own. This is a series found in the novels only. It’s called Star Trek: New Frontier. Its events revolve around the Starship Excalibur and a number of characters Peter David created himself, but also a number found elsewhere in Star Trek though mainly as secondary characters who have only appeared once or twice, whom, evidently, Peter David found interesting enough to bring in and make main characters. This includes Commander Elizabeth Shelby and Dr. Selar.

The Excalibur is assigned to patrol sector 221-G, the territory of the late Thallonian Empire, the collapse of which has left a power vacuum. Their mission is basically just to prevent any given conflicts from becoming violent and possibly escalating into all-out war. Apparently, Starfleet thought one ship would be enough for that.

The Captain is a fellow named McKenzie Calhoun, whose actual name I’m not sure how to pronounce, but this is its spelling: Mk’n’zy. He’s from a planet called Xenex whose population he previously organized in a successful revolution against another race that had occupied the planet. In negotiating the final truce after their withdrawal, they appealed to the Federation to arbitrate and that’s how McKenzie met Picard.

After the arbitration is complete, Picard asks McKenzie what's next for him, and when he doesn’t know, Picard recommends service in Starfleet.

His first day at the Academy, an upper classman tries to have a little fun at his expense and makes the mistake of starting in on his father. He then regains consciousness three hours later in the medical bay with a broken jaw and McKenzie earns himself the nickname "One-Punch Calhoun" which follows him all the way to graduation.

Calhoun turns out to be a bit of a cowboy. He’s very reminiscent of Jim Kirk. The author here seems to be very good at finding at least one opportunity in every book for him to lay someone out with one punch. In one book, it takes two, and then Calhoun complains about getting old. Yes, he is very reminiscent of Kirk, yet monogamous. In book after book, he only has eyes for Shelby. Only three times has the notion surfaced of him being intimate with anyone else. One of these times was before he met her, another was when he had been out of contact with her for months and she thought he was dead, and the third seems to have been in a book in the series I have yet to come across.

Calhoun is the only Xenexian to have ever served in Starfleet, and apparently, since this makes him something of an outsider, he prefers to compose his entire crew of outsiders; that is of people who are a little out of the ordinary, and subsequently, don't normally fit in, anywhere, except together.

One good example is his chief of security, a fellow named Zak Kebron, who is the only Brikar to have served in Starfleet. Kebron is a towering hulk of a figure who has a knack for being mistaken for a rock formation if he stands the right way. It’s funny, because over and over, Kebron is introduced into the story from someone else’s perspective.

"Shelby came around the corner and bumped into a mountain range. She looked up... and up."

Apparently, in Starfleet Academy, Kebron was roommates with Worf who introduced him to the hardboiled detective novel. Worf hated it just because, by his assessment, the detective’s approach as well as the approach of each person he dealt with wasn’t warrior-like enough.

But apparently, Kebron loved it, and one reason was that, in his words, "...the detective always had all the subtlety of a hurricane in a feather factory."

Another outsider in the crew is Soleta, who was apparently conceived in an act of nonconsensual sexual contact between a Vulcan mother and a Romulan father. She basically has to make her way through every book with this grim spectre hanging over everything she does, grappling with her own highly conflicted heritage the whole way.

There's also Dr. Selar, whom we met in an episode of TNG. She is characterized by an aversion to intimacy which is high by even Vulcan standards, and apparently, this is because she was married once, and she and her husband, in the act of mating, also bonded telepathically, both being Vulcan, of course, and while they were like that, the husband had a heart attack. She realized it and started trying to disentangle herself so she could do something about it, but apparently, this takes a moment, and by the time she was done, he was gone. As a Vulcan, Selar tries to be detached, but as a doctor, she blames herself, since afterall, if she could have come out of the meld a little faster, she probably could have saved him.

But the reason I’m bringing all this up is the approach Peter David takes to the difficulty of gender-neutral pronouns with one particular character; the Chief Engineer and later First Officer, a Hermat named Burgoyne 172.

As I recall, it was a fourth season episode of TNG which introduced us to a race with no gender, in which every single person is neither male nor female. The Hermats, on the other hand, are both. Every single one of them has both male and female organs, internally as well as externally.

It was funny, because for a while, it appeared that the doctor, Selar, was pregnant by Burgoyne, while Burgoyne was pregnant by the helmsman, a human named McHenry. That was how it seemed. It turned out not to be so, but that was how it appeared.

The Hermats, being both male and female encounter pronoun difficulties whenever they make contact with another race, because usually, that race has two distinctly different genders, and sometimes more. So one of the most urgent orders of business when this happens is for a team of Hermat linguists to sit down with a team of linguists from the other race and hash out in all that race’s most common languages a group of non-gender-specific pronouns.

In English, instead of "he" or "she," it’s "s/he." Instead of "him" or "her," it’s "hir." Instead of "himself" or "herself," it’s "hirself."

Clever, I think, but awkward. Peter David, while a very skilled author, is not much of a linguist. How come we in the English-speaking world can’t just rid ourselves of this manner of difficulty in establishing gender-neutral pronouns? How hard can it be for someone with the right expertise?

It’s fair, unless speaking of a particular person, to say "he or she," "him or her," etc. It is fair, but incredibly monotonous. That is one sort of pronoun trouble we run into here.

This is not going to seem immediately related to this, but bear with me. I find the company of transgendered people uncomfortable. It’s not fair, and I recognize that, and I offer my apologies for whatever they are worth, but I think, in my case anyway, most of the discomfort stems from pronoun difficulty. Clarity, utility and accuracy are very important to me. I don’t like language that is vague or ambiguous, because although it can be quite emotional, it doesn’t actually provide anything for reason to work with and scrutinize. A preference for it when clear language is available is dishonest.

A common objection I have to political discourse is that, all too often, the person in question talks up a storm without actually saying anything. I don’t like discourse that describes two distinctly different groups of people (homosexuals and child molesters, Muslims and terrorists) or two distinctly different acts (defending the religious liberties of Muslims and paving the way for Sharia Law) as if they are the same. Clear, useful, meaningful, accurate language strikes me as honest and so I have an aversion to situations in which such is not an option. That’s the other sort of trouble we run into here.

But it doesn’t make sense to me for something like this to remain such a consistent problem, given the fact that any given language is always undergoing change. Why can’t we just develop gender-neutral pronouns? Why can’t we come up with one word that means either "he" or "she," either "him" or "her," etc? Why can’t we just bring a team of linguists together to figure this out? First and second person pronouns as well as plural are not gender specific; at least not in English. Why do third person, singular pronouns have to be?

The Psychology of Belief and Bias

2011-08-31T02:21:00.000-07:00

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3ZGRW8ESb4

Two of the most well known concepts in Psychology are Classical Conditioning and Operant Conditioning. The first of these is attributed to a fellow named Ivan Pavlov, who was, interestingly enough, not a psychologist, but a physiologist, but I digress.

Pavlov is the fellow you have probably heard of who ran experiments on dogs. His famous experiment entailed fitting dogs in captivity with an oral tube to measure their rate of salivation and then subjecting them to two sensory stimuli: first, the sound of a bell, and second, the sight and scent of meat powder.

Of course, the salivation rate of these dogs increased when the meat powder was presented. This is what is known as an unconditioned response; that is, an innate response. This is a way the dogs responded without having been trained to respond this way.

But, over and over again, as this exercise was repeated, the presentation of meat powder followed the ringing of the bell, a sound the dogs were not exposed to at any other time during the experiment. This was the sequence over and over again, until there came a point at which Pavlov only rang the bell and the salivation rate of these dogs increased without the meat being presented.

The salivation rate increasing in response to the presentation of meat powder is an unconditioned response. The same thing happening in response to the ringing of the bell is a conditioned response; conditioned as in learned.

If one can find a friend who is game, one can duplicate this experiment. One can have the friend sit in a room with no especially attention-grabbing stimuli, ring a bell and then shine a flashlight in the friend’s eyes.

What is the unconditioned response to the bright light in the eyes? Shrinking pupils, of course. So if one does this a few dozen times, in this order, one will reach a point at which one can ring the bell without shining the flashlight in the friend’s eyes and those pupils are going to shrink anyway.

If one instinctively responds a certain way to stimulus B, and stimulus B has a tendency to follow stimulus A, one can expect to learn to respond much the same way to stimulus A. There are many ways this particular concept manifests.

A cat who consistently hears a can being opened in the kitchen right before being given food soon begins to come trotting into the kitchen at the sound of the can opening.

A young man who responds to pornography by becoming aroused and resorts to looking at pornography whenever he is bored soon finds himself becoming aroused in response to the boredom as well. I can personally testify to this one.

A child who responds to being spanked with fear, sobbing and the need to escape, when the spanking is usually preceded by shouting, shortly finds himself responding this way to the shouting as well whether it is followed by spanking or not. I am sorry to say I can also testify to this one.

Someone who grows up in a situation which leaves him consistently at the mercy of authority figures whom instinct compels him to trust but who are abusive learns to associate trust with abuse and regret. Years later, after growing up and having outgrown that instinctive trust, the conditioned association between trust and regret remains and this fellow has difficulty cajoling himself into any situation which depends on trust, including social situations, dating, and intimacy.

A woman who happens to be white is called to undergo vetting for jury duty, but since the defendant in the case in question happens to be male and black and the woman was raped years earlier by someone who likewise held both characteristics, she is disqualified from sitting on the jury.

But in order for Classical Conditioning to produce a conditioned response, it must have an unconditioned response to begin with; a response that is already part of the behavior of the animal in question. Operant Conditioning is different, and for this, it causes me more concern. This manner of conditioning is actually able to introduce new behavior. This school of thought was pioneered by B. F. Skinner who was able to use it to train pigeons to play ping pong; a behavior far from typical of pigeons.

Operant Conditioning relies on three main concepts: positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, and punishment. Of these, the first is best understood by the general public. When a certain act coincides with a favorable stimulus, that act tends to be repeated. A dog who rolls over on command, and afterward is rewarded with a dog biscuit, is more likely to remain willing to roll over on command. A mouse fitted with an electrical lead which provides a charge to the pleasure center of the mouse’s brain whenever a certain button in his cage is pressed subsequently presses that button until exhausted by the exertion. One who has ways to make a workout routine fun tends to have a lot less difficulty finding the necessary motivation to keep that routine going. One who enjoys videos made by a certain YouTuber tends to seek out additional opportunities to do so. An act that has a tendency to be followed by positive stimuli tends to be repeated. That one’s pretty straightforward.

Now here, personally, I have to hand it to people like J. K. Rowling, Gary Paulsen, Beverly Cleary, Sidney Sheldon, and of course Peter David. These people contribute to literacy by writing books that are fun to read. When people enjoy reading, they do more of it, and subsequently, their skill for it is honed, their literacy is reinforced, which opens the door for them to branch out into reading other subjects and being exposed to new ideas. But reading about a certain subject is different from watching videos about it, because reading depends on mental exertion. Reading depends on thought. People who do more reading also do more thinking, and so get better at both. But I digress.

Punishment is also usually well understood.

A cat which accidentally sits on a hot stove will never repeat the mistake, but neither will it ever again sit on a cold stove. A shepherd who has noticed a wolf stalking his flock kills one of his sheep, seasons its carcass with a drug and leaves the carcass for the wolf to find. The wolf finds it, consumes it, and soon finds itself in a state of severe nausea. It subsides, but the wolf never hunts the flock again.

An action which leads to an unpleasant outcome or no discernable outcome tends not to be repeated.

Negative reinforcement, on the other hand, is usually not so well understood. Contrary to popular belief, it is not the same as punishment. It is what takes place when a behavior which ends or avoids an unfavorable situation has a tendency to be repeated. A woman begins nagging her husband to take out the trash whenever it accumulates past a certain point, but stops nagging the moment he does, and he begins taking it out with less and less delay, until one day, he takes it out just before she begins. A father wants his son to clean the plate and puts pressure on him whenever he begins to complain about being full, but stops as soon as the plate is clean, and the son learns to associate finishing the food with ending or escaping pressure, and later in life, develops a tendency to eat in response to stress.

A smoker tries to quit, but goes into withdrawal. In the midst of it, he or she knows that lighting up will end the symptoms and is tempted a great deal with this. If this smoker does it once, the experience of lighting up coinciding with the end of the withdrawal symptoms serves as a negative reinforcement and this makes quitting more difficult.

A father with a tendency to abuse his son, when that son finally moves away, puts pressure on any of the rest of the family who remain in contact with him to take his side about spending time with the old man, but stops as soon as they do. The rest of the extended family learns that taking the father’s side is a way to escape or avoid such pressure, and so begin to take his side habitually. Sadly, I can also testify to this one.

People participating in a campaign of persecution of another group find themselves hating themselves for doing it, and especially detest this state of self-loathing, but soon discover that they can escape this state by devaluing the lives and identities of the other group and hating them instead. This they find far preferable. This exemplifies negative reinforcement.

Unfortunately, sometimes, one can be misled by one’s own operant conditioning into misapplying it with others:

A father wants his teenage son to do something, so he nags, and the son does it. This shows him that nagging is a good way to get his son to do what he wants him to do, and so the behavior of resorting to nagging whenever he wants the son to do something is positively reinforced.

The next time he wants the son to do something, he nags him again, and again he does it. Thus, the behavior is positively reinforced further.

But one of these times, as soon as he finishes doing one thing the father has nagged him into, the father makes the mistake of immediately starting to nag him about something else. So the son carries out the new task, and the father immediately nags him about something else. Each time the son completes one task, the father starts nagging him about another.

Now the reason this has worked to get the son to do things so far is that, as soon as he has done them, the nagging has stopped. The lesson to the son here is that "Doing what my authority figure wants ends or prevents the nagging." This approach only works so long as it has this result; so long as it ends or prevents the nagging. But the father is not seeing this. Completely unaware, he is teaching his son that nothing stops the nagging, and in the process, he is removing his son’s motivation. If nothing stops the nagging--if he is nagged just as much whether he carries out the task in question or not--then there is no point in trying. The act of carrying out the task in question does not end the unpleasant stimulus.

So the next time the father wants the son to do something, he nags him and the son responds a little more slowly than usual. The father responds by putting on a little more pressure than usual and the son picks up the pace again, and as soon as the first task is done, the father drops back to a normal pressure, unaware that this is a crucial step.

The day comes when the father starts nagging and the son does not respond, but the father puts on a little more pressure and the son responds, but then the father has more things he wants the son to do and so keeps on the added pressure. The first few times, this works, so this behavior is reinforced for the father.

But one day, the son also learns that, just as nothing stops the nagging, nothing stops the added pressure, and so he loses his motivation here as well.

Little by little, this cycle repeats with higher and higher levels of psychological pressure until the son stops responding altogether and develops a reputation for being lazy and unmotivated. Here we have what is known as learned helplessness. Next thing you know, the father is on the news explaining why he has to discipline his son with a cattle prod because, allegedly, "He doesn’t respond to anything less."

Learned helplessness also manifests in the elephant who is chained to a stake in the ground while very young and very small. He tries to pull it out and free himself, but he isn’t strong enough. Eventually, he stops trying, since acts that lead to a negative outcome or no outcome tend not to be repeated. As the months go by, if the elephant is properly cared for, he grows, and one day, he is strong enough to pull the stake out and free himself, but he still doesn’t because he has learned not to try. He has been trained to be helpless.

Sometimes, Operant Conditioning scares me.

In a nation pervaded by an attitude of white supremacism, any people who happen to be white but don’t share the attitude run the risk of having this violence brought to bear against them whenever they make this known, and so are pressured to conceal it. That’s punishment. If one of these sorts begins to have thoughts that go against this sentiment, this individual runs the risk of giving those thoughts away with something he or she says or does, and so is pressured to suppress them, and if possible, to replace them. If such a person finds himself or herself the object of suspicion for dropping such hints (an unpleasant state), but then manages to conceal the hints in question and escape the unpleasant state, such is negatively reinforced.

I don’t know about any of the times more recent than this, but in the 1950’s, in China, one thing the government did to control the population was to require the entire literate population to keep diaries to submit to party members for regular examination. Any time the party member in question found in the diary any thought that conflicted with the party's philosophy, the keeper of that diary faced severe punishment. The image of this punishment then dominated this keeper’s thoughts any time it occurred to him or her to write anything that the party would not approve of, and to escape this image, that individual would learn to exclude such sentiments from his or her writing. In time, with these individuals practicing more and more the act of guiding their written reasoning away from such thoughts, they also became ever more adept at guiding their actual reasoning away from them.

In the Korean War, US Soldiers captured by the North Koreans and the Chinese were, of course, confined, but permitted to correspond with their families through the Red Cross. Sometimes, though, the Chinese army was not very expedient about getting that correspondence to the Red Cross. Of course, they insisted on reading it first.

US Soldiers in Chinese captivity soon learned that their letters tended to get through more quickly when they contained sentiments about how the US or democracy really isn’t all that great or how the Chinese aren’t so bad, or things along those lines. That is, such sentiments were rewarded, and positively reinforced, motivating the soldiers who came up with them to come up with more such sentiments, and of course, the more they did it and were rewarded for it—the more it was reinforced—the better they got at it.

Often, these soldiers were confined in cells by themselves with no human contact except the people who brought them food and the occasional Chinese psychologist who would come around to ask about such sentiments in their correspondence and then ask the soldiers to expound and elaborate. In this, the soldiers learned that coming up with advantages to the Chinese approach and disadvantages to the US approach meant an escape from solitude, and so it was reinforced, providing additional motivation to these soldiers to practice finding such caveats.

As these behaviors were reinforced more and more, they came to characterize the soldiers in whom this happened. The more the soldiers were rewarded for finding advantages with the Chinese system and disadvantages with the US system, the better they got at it, until eventually, it became automatic and their loyalty to the US dissolved. Here we have what western historians of this period typically refer to as "brainwashing" but which Chinese historians and psychologists more often euphemistically dub "re-education."

My real concern here, though, is how this ties in with deconversion. This is a problem whenever a nation has an established religion. It cannot do so without subjecting those who don’t practice it to the status of second-class citizens, and as a result of this, those who do practice it are confronted with the prospect of becoming second-class citizens in the event that too many doubts arise. Thus, they learn that examining these doubts could result in punishment and misery, and this image is dispelled from their minds every time these doubts are. Thus, the act of suppressing the doubts in question means escaping the thought of second-class citizen treatment, and so is negatively reinforced.

"These points can't possibly be cogent, because if they are, I become a second-class citizen."

But the forces of Operant Conditioning are also found in many countries that lack an established religion but which still have large or forceful percentages of their population who practice one in particular. The practitioners of this faith, every time they consider leaving, are confronted by the notion of being alienated and ostracized by friends and family. This notion is escaped every time doubts about the faith are buried, and so the act of burying these doubts is negatively reinforced and becomes habitual.

"These points can't possibly be cogent, because if they are, I will be ostracized and alienated by all my friends and family."

"These points can't possibly be cogent, because if they are, it will mean that I have wasted years of my life."

There are some, though, with even more on the line. There are those in their fifties and sixties and older who have made a career out of their faith and no longer know how to do anything else. It is a recurrent conclusion in the books of Michael Shermer that it is extraordinarily difficult to get someone to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it, and I’m using male pronouns here because, unless I miss my guess, it happens to men much more often.

Even after one has examined one’s faith, and indeed, the idea of faith in general, and found they don’t hold up under scrutiny, one is strongly compelled to maintain the guise in order to earn a living. There are a number of clergy, theologians and apologists who don’t believe but who don’t dare let on. To have a living, they have to live a lie; a terrible position for anyone to be in.

"Those points can't possibly be cogent, because if they are, I have to admit that my financial empire is built on a lie."

"Those points can't possibly be cogent, because if they are, I have to choose between living a lie and living on the street."

What can be done? This is not a rhetorical question. I really would like to know. As the nonreligious following in the west grows and organizes, we should be able to come up with solutions to this problem. We should have advice we can offer people in this situation; maybe even organizations which can help. One in such a situation is currently confronted with the notion of losing both affluence and solvency. That’s not right. Surely there are things we can do for them to spare them the latter alternative. Honesty should not equate with poverty.

This ties in with a more politically focused concern of mine. It’s something I explain in my video about educational expenses. Since the 1970's, at least in the United States, as time has gone by, educational costs have slowly-but-consistently inched their way skyward. Financial aid in the form of grants and scholarships has also become gradually less and less available and the lost ground has been made up by loans instead. Both trends combine to produce an incrementally larger percentage of professionals in debt and the amount of that debt also continues to climb. There are bound to be many professionals in any given field motivated by greed who are going to stick to the high-paying corporate positions no matter what, but there are also bound to be plenty of others motivated instead just by the desire to make a difference; people who would be quite content with lower paying positions with small organizations and charities if not for all that debt.

The desire to get one’s debts paid off or to avoid getting into debt in the first place is the desire for freedom. In such a situation, the more high-paying the job, the more it helps one to make progress on paying off one’s debt, which places one in a position to equate wealth with freedom and thus, the most greedy are the first to achieve independence. Thus, greedy behavior is rewarded and reinforced, and generous, altruistic behavior is punished.

It is one serious reinforcement when greedy behavior is reinforced with money, but it is quite another when it is also reinforced with freedom, resulting in a conditioned association between the two. The greater the debt at graduation, the stronger the motivation afterward to take steps to make oneself more appealing to the more high paying prospective employers.

There is a direct positive correlation between just how high paying any given prospective employer in this country is and how right-leaning their dominant political attitudes tend to be. Thus, the more any given professional leans to the right, the more this professional tends to be hired by such firms. The more right leaning the professional, the less time it takes him or her to get all that debt paid off. So one is strongly motivated to bias one’s views to the right in the hope of gaining one’s freedom.

If it is difficult to get someone to understand something when his or salary depends on him or her not understanding it, it does not bode well to have more and more people in this situation where their salaries depend on not seeing the absurdity of things like supply-side economics. How charitable and rational can we expect such people to be when being charitable and rational impedes their debt payment? That is, effectively, a punishment. When escaping from the notion of taking longer to pay off one's debt is the consequence for not being charitable or rational in one particular case, this is negatively reinforced.

"Those points can't be cogent, because if they are, I have to work years longer to get out of debt."

Prepositions Made Simple

2011-08-31T02:01:00.000-07:00

Video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKJXMamsqPM

Recently, I had occasion to check out from the library the first season of the TV show The Big Bang Theory. I found it pretty entertaining, though more so toward the beginning of the season than toward the end.
These guys are supposed to be smart, yet one of them, in one episode, develops the tendency to put his fingers to his temples and give people a very intense look every time they do something he doesn't like, as if to harm them with just the force of his mind. Now, I'm sorry, but if you are sincerely under the impression that this does anything, you don't get to call yourself the smartest guy in the room.

But anyhow, there came an episode with our heroes dealing with this upstart, North Korean child prodigy, whose genius was so great that our heroes felt threatened by it. One of them, early in the episode, said to him, "May I say, your English is very good."

He replied, "So is yours, aside from your occasional tendency to end a sentence with a preposition."

Now as far as I know, there's nothing wrong with using a chair as if it were a chair, a toothbrush as if it were a toothbrush, or a set of nail clippers as if they were, in fact, a set of nail clippers. So perhaps this adolescent twit would care to explain what's wrong with using a Germanic language as if it were, in fact, a Germanic language.

Ah, but wait a minute. What does he mean by "ending a sentence with a preposition?" What do I mean by "Germanic language?"

You see, all over the English-speaking world, one finds grammatical experts who will swear to you left and right, whatever else happens, a preposition is something a sentence must never end with. You will also find experts who will tell you it's no big deal. The key difference is whether the expert in question is more a fan of German or of Latin.

Ah. But why those two languages in particular? You see, Latin was the language of ancient Rome, and as such is called a Romance language. Rome-->Romance. Spanish, French, Italian, and Portugese are all descended from Latin, and as such, are each also classified as Romance languages.

Once in a while, someone whose first language is English begins to study one of these other languages and finds a lot of common Latin roots, and so mistakenly comes under the impression that English is also descended from Latin. But in fact, English is a Germanic language because it is descended from ancient German, along with modern German, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and Icelandic.

Now what does this have to do with prepositions? The World English Dictionary defines the word "preposition" as "a word or group of words used before a noun or pronoun to relate it grammatically or semantically to some other constituent of a sentence." Personally, I don't find that particular definition especially helpful, so let me see if I can improvise a better one. A preposition is a word in the sentence which describes the relationship (usually in space or time) between two or more of the nouns or pronouns within the sentence.

"The computer sat on the desk." "On" is the preposition here.

"The pretentious know-it-all monologued in the video." "In" is the preposition here.

"The student had to study while his friends got to play ball in the park." "While" and "in" are the prepositions here.

"He went to use the bathroom during the commercial." "During" is the preposition here.

"She took a nap after watching her favorite movie." "After" is the preposition here.

I find, a good way to develop one's skill for identifying prepositions is by practicing using different words in conjunction with the words "the fence."

"The squirrel sat on the fence."

"The cat walked along the fence."

"The baseball flew over the fence."

"The gopher tunneled under the fence."

"The basketball bounced off the fence."

"The riding lawn mower that Tim Allen had been tinkering with crashed through the fence."

That is how a preposition is identified. Now, "Never end a sentence with a preposition" is an absolute iron-clad rule of Romance grammar, not Germanic. It is the norm, in English, to give our prepositions the Germanic treatment instead, and there's nothing wrong with that. There is nothing wrong with using a Germanic language as if it were, indeed, a Germanic language.

Now remember, I referred earlier to those common Latin roots that one finds between English and insert Romance language here. Those are there because, although technically and officially a Germanic language, English has, over the centuries, come under a lot of influence from the Romance languages. One consequence of this is that we can give our prepositions the Romance treatment and they still make sense.

"The Internet is an information resource we can turn to," becomes "The Internet is an information resource to which we can turn." "Such-and-so is a leader we can rely on," becomes "Such-and-so is a leader on whom we can rely." "That is something I have a problem with," becomes "That is something with which I have a problem."

Now personally, I recommend practicing and developing a skill for phrasing sentences both ways. I recommend practicing taking sentences phrased one way and rephrasing them the other. This, in my experience, is a tremendous help in analyzing and understanding the arguments one is presented with. Or shall I say, "...the arguments with which one is presented." It's also a tremendous help if one's first language is Germanic and one is now trying to learn a Romance language.

I recommend developing a skill for both because one will find situations in which one is preferrable, and situations in which the other is. I recommend not being determined to stick to one or the other. Such is, after all, a good way up with which to get mixed.

So the next time some pretentions know-it-all presumes to take you to task for ending a sentence with a preposition, just say, "Oh. So you are saying that such is the sort of English up with which you will not put?"

Republican Logic

2011-05-12T06:58:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hbL3I1RoCo

It was not until I first started watching videos on YT that I encountered the word “facepalm.” Since then, I have found it delightfully broad in its application.
At one point, in the comments on I-don’t-remember-which video, I asked someone why Bush said there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. His answer was that the WMDs are in Syria. Hmm. So the reason he said they were in Iraq was that they were in Syria. When Bush says there are WMDs in Iraq, he means there are WMDs in Syria. Interesting. What if they actually had been in

Iraq

? Where would he have said they were then?
            As the protests in Libya were taking off, someone from the Bush administration (I don’t remember who) made the insistence that this wave of successful revolutions sweeping through the Middle East was a delayed reaction to his handling of Iraq. Interesting. So the way you cause successful revolutions in Jordan, Tunisia and Egypt is by invading Iraq.
            The Republican fondness for the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy is quite well documented. “Event B followed event A. Therefore, event A must have caused event B.”
            “Well, you know, the wonderful economic prosperity which characterized the Clinton years was a delayed reaction to the policies of Reagan. After all, it takes a long time to build a strong, prosperous economy.”
            Right. Or perhaps they were a delayed reaction to the policies of Polk, or better yet, the policies of Caesar. After all, it takes a long time to build a strong, prosperous economy.
            Here’s another explanation that makes just as much sense. Perhaps the wonderful economic conditions which characterized the Clinton administration were just left by the economy fairy. How about that?
            “God was angry about healthcare reform and unleashed Hell in the form of a volcanic eruption in Iceland.”
            Hmm. So when a natural disaster happens in one country, it means that God is angry about something someone did in another country. I wonder what country God was angry at when He caused the earthquake in

Haiti

.
            It is just as likely, if, indeed, God is responsible for that eruption, that it was because he was angry for Xerxes sending his forces into the Thermopylae pass. After all, if it is true, as I am told, that God works in mysterious ways, that is just as likely. Given God’s mysterious nature, it could be that this is his way of saying, “No healthcare reform in the United States!” or maybe it is his way of saying, “No more battles in the Thermopylae pass, damn it! It’s holy ground!”
            Great. So if something bad happens to me, I have no way to tell whom God is angry at. If something bad happens to someone, somewhere, it’s because God is angry about something, someone did at some point.
            What’s going on here? Maybe those on the other side of these debates are trying to get us to spend so much time with our faces buried in or palms that we end up suffocating.
            But it’s not just politics that gives me occasion to facepalm. The other day, I came across an attempt to glorify religious pluralism; that is, the attitude that one religion is as good as another. I agree with the technical details of this argument, but not the spirit of it. The spirit of it is that all religions are equally good while mine is that, well, that’s true, but that’s not saying much. For me, equally good means equally ridiculous.
            Presumably, one who practices Christianity does not practice Buddhism, and vice versa. If it does not matter which of the two one practices, then it also does not matter which of the two one does not practice, so why practice either? There are thousands of religions in the world. If it does not matter which one practices, then it also does not matter which thousands one does not, so what reason has one to practice any?
            This played a part in my deconversion. My father, a Mormon, tried to raise me with the notion that Mormonism is the best religion. My mother, on the other hand, a Christian, but very pluralistic about it, raised me with the notion that one religion is as good as another. They are all part of what Mitt Romney would refer to as “the chorus of faith.”
            But then... if all religions are equally valid, how come only one of them is asking me to spend all this time with its practitioners? How come only one is asking me to prepare for some mission? How come we are only attending services with and making donations to one? How come we are only celebrating the holidays of one?
            This started me thinking, and once that happened, my religious belief was effectively doomed.
            But with this particular “poem,” that was not the cause of my facepalm. The cause was its choice of words. Basically, it was about the god of all faiths. “The God of Adam. The God of Noah. The God of Abraham. The God of Moses. The God of Mohammad. The God of Hindu.”
            Who the hell is Hindu? Even the Hindus don’t know!
            “You know. Hindu. The god of Hinduism.”
            FYI: Hinduism is polytheistic. That means it has several gods, not a single one of whom has the name Hindu! Am I to infer that the individual who wrote this “poem” did any research at all on this subject? Am I to believe that he or she attached any priority whatsoever to a little thing like getting the facts straight?

Atheist goes Political, vol. 6: Altruism and Politics

2011-04-25T12:47:00.000-07:00

Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfSaa1At8BM

            Donald Trump makes use of an interesting piece of reasoning. He observes, the more one has, the more one can give. This rhetorical gem may sound enlightened at first glance, but I see the makings of a terrible rationalization in it.
            “Sure, I can afford to give you $2000, but you know, if I hold on to this, I can use it to make more money, and then next quarter, I’ll be able to give you $4000.”
            ...three months later...
            “Sure, I can afford to give you $4000, but you know, if I hold on to this, I can use it to make more money, and then next quarter, I’ll be able to give you $8000.”
            ...three months later...
            “Sure, I can afford to give you $8000, but you know, if I hold on to this, I can use it to make more money, and then next quarter, I’ll be able to give you $16,000.”
            Do you see the pattern here? If your focus the whole time is to increase as much as possible the amount you can donate but not the amount you actually do, then you are not actually making any contributions and this is not really altruism. You end up never actually getting to the point of benefitting the other party.
            “I could give two million to charity,” is just another way of saying “I have two million that I have not given to charity.”
            “Ha. I could give 4 million.” Translation: “I have four million.”
            “I could give 10.” Translation: “I have 10.”
            “Would you believe 200?”
            “Okay. So you are all so well off that you could give literally tons of money to charity. But what if I stop fixating on all these hypotheticals you are dispensing and pay attention instead to actualities? How much are you giving?”
            “Well...”
            Now don’t twist my words. I am not making the insistence that charitable donation must be the rule. All I am saying is that using a piece of rhetoric like this to create the illusion of charitable intent to help your own PR is dishonest and I ask the general public not to be taken in by it.
            It brings to mind a “disagreement” I had once, online, with someone who tried to refute my argument that none of us can afford to be fools with our money by saying, “Well, you know, money is just a concept.”
            I asked, “Well then what did you use to pay for the computer you are using?”
            He replied, “Why are you so closed to the possibility that it could be a library computer?”
            Don’t you love that choice of words? “...the possibility that it could be a library computer...”
            Okay. Well first, I know it is not a library computer, because if it were, this knucklehead would SAY that IT IS instead of just insinuating that one could infer that it might not be inaccurate to suggest that it could be interpreted as something which might be accurately called a computer in what could be seen as the possession of an organization which could be called a library. But second, whoever that computer belongs to, SOMEONE at SOME point BOUGHT it from SOMEONE with MONEY! Someone who could not have carried out that transaction unless he or she had been wise enough not to waste that money before the transaction in question took place. But I digress.
            This act of using a very rosy-sounding hypothetical to distract from a far less rosy actuality is a very insidious red herring, I find. It rears its ugly head every time there are Republicans campaigning.
            “When we tax corporations, we deprive them of funds that they could use to invest in their employees.”
            I’ve got to love that choice of words. Not “would,” but “could.” Of course, they cannot say they would, because that would set them up to be busted for lying down the road if they don’t. That’s the fallacy of nonfalsifiability.
            I suppose this could also be called an Appeal to Optimism which would be just the opposite of a scare tactic. In a scare tactic, one is presented with a hypothetical situation and asked to fixate on one of the frightening possible outcomes and ignore the rest. Here, instead, one is presented with a hypothetical situation and asked to fixate on one of the hopeful possible outcomes and ignore the rest. Yes, I suppose, they could use that money to invest in their employees. They could also use it to line their own pockets or buy themselves more mansions, yachts, and public officials. Why should we give less consideration to these possibilities? Why should these be considered any less likely?
            It seems to me this could also be considered a lie by omission. After all, the complete sentence is “When we tax corporations, we deprive them of funds that they could but probably won’t use to invest in their employees if their track records are any indication.” How can I be so sure that they won’t use it for that? From their own lack of motive. The only time a corporation has a motive to “invest” in its employees, whatever that means, is when other organizations are trying to entice them away and so the corporation in question has to compete in order to hold onto them.
            Ah, but what does it mean to “invest” in one’s employees? That sort of sounds like educational funding to me. How else could one “invest” in an employee? Well, if the corporations in question are run by people who want to see more funding to education, then they won’t mind paying more taxes to provide more revenue for spending that we can be sure will, based on the language of the act itself, be applied to that end; language which relies on actualities, not hypotheticals. The fact that the people in question are not supporting any such act demonstrates pretty clearly that contributions to educational spending are not, in fact, their interest, so screw ‘em.
            Here is a more probable revision: “When we tax corporations, we deprive them of funds that they could use to buy Republicans and blue dogs.”

Atheist goes Political, vol. 5: Labor Unions

2011-04-21T13:20:00.000-07:00

Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxQQea5H0-I&feature=channel_video_title

There are those who use the freedom of speech to spread hate and lies. There are those who use the freedom of the press to the same end. There are those who use the right to keep and bear arms to rob stores and banks. One cannot find a right or freedom that is never abused. Does this occasional abuse mean that every right and freedom must be gotten rid of? Of course not. Now consider this in light of an argument often made against collective bargaining rights. The allegation is made that labor unions are not what they used to be.
            “Now, the union bosses are in bed with the corporate bosses.”
            Hmm. So what you are saying is that this right is being abused, so we should get rid of it? This is an argument for greater transparency of both that is being presented, instead, as an argument to get rid of one of the two.
            Furthermore, just as the opposite of a utopia is a dystopia, the opposite of a euphemism is a dysphemism. Clearly “union boss” is a dysphemism for “union leader.” It is a word used in this case only to evoke the connotation of a mob boss. This, while not clear enough to be necessarily misleading, is highly dishonest.
            Are labor unions impervious to corruption? Probably not. Nor, for that matter, is any organization. Shall we get rid of them all?
            The most effective safeguard against any organization’s corruption is transparency, which one finds much more of in the labor union than the corporation. One also finds much more of it in the Democratic Party than the GOP. The GOP, on the one hand, discloses the source of only 25% of their funding and asks us to just trust them. The Dems disclose the source of 96% of theirs. But I digress.
            The people running the corporation have one motive above all others: their own personal profit. There is nothing about the profit motive which automatically backs up worker’s rights. Therefore, the corporation must be checked by an organization with such an interest as its paramount concern; an organization led by someone democratically elected by his or her fellow employees to act on their behalf. If that person is, indeed, in the pocket of the corporation, this is a reason to vote this person out and vote in someone else. It is not a reason to abolish the more transparent of the two organizations. This is how a vote works. Thus, labor unions are much more able than corporations to rid themselves of corruption.
            But what about union dues?
            Well, if an organization opens the door for me to make at least $300 per month more than I would make otherwise, I, for one, will be glad to kick back an extra $10 per month to that organization. Such is money well spent.
            But what if it raises the overhead expenses of the company so much as to price you out of the market?
            Well then the company can compensate by lowering the CEO’s salary to only $9 million dollars per year instead of 10. If any particular wealthy person in this country has to be content with only three mansions instead of four, I am confident he or she is going to survive.
            If someone is so well off that he or she can afford to drop more than $20 per meal on every meal without even waiting for special occasions; if this person already has a personal entourage waiting hand and foot; if this person has gotten to the point where every exertion is optional, where one need not lift a finger, where one can, indeed, pay others to lift one’s fingers and save one the trouble, this person is well off enough.
            The relationship between a corporation and a labor union seems, to me, analogous to the relationship between capitalism and democracy; two fundamentally different concepts by the way. So of course, given that capitalism and democracy are going to have occasion to conflict, by the same token, corporations and labor unions are bound to come into conflict sooner or later as well. But of course, sometimes the interests of a corporation tread on the rights of workers, and under such circumstances, conflict must be had and that’s the whole reason labor unions were invented.
            The central tenet of capitalism is that profit is good. There is nothing in it that is intrinsically honest, altruistic, or reform-minded. These are concerns of democracy instead. There is nothing in capitalism which automatically pushes to abolish slavery, segregation, or apartheid, promote woman’s suffrage, or wean us of nonrenewable resources. If profit is, indeed, one’s paramount concern, one supports such efforts only insofar as they have potential to benefit one’s bottom line. If, on the other hand, they stand to detriment it instead, one can be expected to stand against them.
            Ah, but if profit is good, then the workers’ profit is good.
            Huge corporations rip off millions—sometimes billions—of people and the government is compelled by voters to step in and take steps to prevent this from happening again. The profit self-interest then compels the people who own these corporations to mount publicity campaigns to oppose this effort. One common buzzword in these campaigns is “big government.”
            Really, though, there is no such thing as a market completely free from government influence. There cannot be. Every country which has ever existed has subjected its economy to some measure and some form of government influence. It is government influence that makes it a market. It is the government who prints the money and puts it into circulation. It is the government who collects that country’s currency in tax revenue and spends it, thus keeping it circulating. Thus, every party in a country who has occasion to deal with its government, or with other organizations that have such occasion finds their currency valuable to that end, and so trusts that currency. But I digress.
            Now when it comes to the act of passing laws against collective bargaining rights, or establishing warrantless wiretapping, where does all the rhetoric against “big government” disappear to? Why is it that laws that impede the efforts of the obscenely, absurdly wealthy to become even more so constitute “big government,” but not laws that disregard the privacy of the middle class and the poor?

Atheist goes Political, vol. 4: Educational Expenses

2011-04-10T14:21:00.000-07:00

Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87sOK3igQZc

            I’ve been subscribed to xxxThePeachxxx for a while, and I usually like her vids and have a hard time finding aspects of them to disagree with, but in one video from a little while ago, I found a point of contention. She made three videos addressing the subject of prostitution, and in those videos, she made a number of points I hadn’t considered previously. Her argument, in each case, is that prostitution should be legal. Afterall, there’s nothing necessarily illegal about consenting adults having sex and there’s nothing necessarily illegal about consenting adults exchanging money, so why does it suddenly become illegal when the two activities are combined?
            I understand making it illegal to sell tobacco and alcohol to people underage because it is illegal to give tobacco and alcohol to people underage. I can understand making it a crime to have sex for money with someone only 15 years old, because it is a crime to have sex in general with someone only 15 years old. I can understand making it a crime to have sex with someone for money against her will, because it is a crime to have sex with someone in general against her will.
            In every other case, activities that are a crime with money are also a crime without it. Why the exception? To borrow the immortal words of George Carlin, how can it be illegal to sell something it’s legal to give away?
            Additionally, when prostitution is legal, a prostitute who is assaulted by a client has the option to go to the police. She cannot rely on the protection of the law if she, herself, is a criminal. Instead, the best she can hope for is the protection of a pimp whose behavior is not governed by the same accountability mechanisms as a law enforcement agency. This leaves her open to that pimp’s exploitation.
            Clearly, the Peach anticipated, perhaps from experience, finding herself dealing with people determined to equate all prostitution with human trafficking, and so was compelled, in each of the videos in question, to emphasize that she was referring to LEGAL, CONSENTING ADULTS. She was, and so am I.
            Her main point in these videos I am hard-pressed to dispute, but in one, she made an adjacent point that I have a problem with. She said that prostitution is always a choice; that there are always alternatives. Clearly, she is convinced that this particular premise is well founded. I, on the other hand, am convinced otherwise. Here’s why.
            Consider two long-term trends in this country: First, every year, on average, it becomes just a little more difficult for the less educated to find work. Every year, education becomes just a little more important to the work force. Some years are exceptions but this is the overall trend.
            Second, every year, on average, education becomes just a little more expensive, and therefore, less available to the work force. Increasingly more so, the only way to have work is by having education, the only way to have education is by having money, and the only way to have money is by having work. With increasing frequency, one who has no work, no education, and no money, has no prospects for obtaining any combination of the three.
            With the increasing proliferation of this particular catch-22, with this particular trap snaring more and more people, with more and more people having fewer and fewer options, I am hard-pressed to see how one can say that there are always alternatives. In order for this premise to be well founded, one would have to account for every situation which could arise. Indeed, if such is the case, then why is the exploitation of a pimp a problem?
            If I’m right about this, though, it only strengthens her main point that prostitution should be legal.
            This dovetails with my next point about educational expenses. Consider student A and student B. Each wants to be an attorney and each begins college the same year, and after graduating from college, goes on to law school, and after three years, each graduates and passes the bar and is officially an attorney. But student A was able to pay for the whole thing with grants and scholarships, while student B had to use loans instead. Student B graduates with more than $100,000 in debt hanging over his head.
            Now they hit the job market and each finds abundant opportunities. Each finds plenty of prospective employers or clients who would benefit from their services and who are willing to provide pretty generous compensation for them. But Student B can’t work with most of them because the compensation they offer, however generous, is not enough to help him make progress on paying off his debt. The only places that offer enough to help Student B make this progress are huge corporations.
            These huge corporations realize that, the less available they can make these grants and scholarships, the more they can replace them with loans, and the higher educational costs become, the fewer attorneys there will be like Student A (potential legal adversaries) and the more there will be like student B (allies in their pockets). The more beginning attorneys they will have competing for jobs with them, which means the less they will have to pay to the ones they hire. So they mount a campaign to steadily erode educational spending by arguing that it’s not fair to ask people who are already financially strapped to allow their hard-earned tax dollars to be used to pay for the educations of other people’s kids. In this case, quality legal services become ever more available to the extremely wealthy and ever less available to the average Joe.
            A number of these huge corporations are credit card companies who take advantage of the low price of quality legal advice to add caveats to their credit applications of ways for them to tack on fees. Suddenly, credit applications which were maybe a page and-a-half long are four pages long, then eight, then fifteen, then twenty, and packed with who knows how many excuses to tack on fees and countless legal traps for people who try to pay off their account and close it; legal traps written in such dense jargon that more than 99% of the people in this country have no hope whatsoever of understanding them, and therefore, no hope of seeing the traps or even of understanding them once they have fallen in.
            Now what if it’s accountants, instead? Accountants who graduate with huge debt hanging over their heads are in the same situation. That’s bad, because that too means accountants going, in droves, to the big corporations for work after they graduate, to help those corporations find ways to milk and game the system and con the little guy. So too with scientists, engineers, doctors and economists. So too with every variety of professional, which puts the big corporations ever more in a position to decide who moves up in the world.
            Debt is bondage; bondage to creditors and monied interests. The more skilled, talented professionals we have in debt—in bondage—to the wealthy, the more of those skills and talents are reserved for their use, not our own. The higher educational costs climb and the more grants and scholarships are replaced with loans, the more power and profit this takes away from the general public and allocates instead to the exploitation of the financial elite. Debt is bad. Debt is bondage to the direct detriment of those who have it, and to the indirect detriment of all those of us who aren’t wealthy enough to help them pay it off, and the more difficult it becomes for skilled professionals to start out debt free, the fewer of them are going to do it which means the more skills beholden to the whims of the very wealthy, who are, of course, going to use them to get even wealthier, to the indirect detriment of the rest of us. That’s why educational spending is important. That’s why the slippery slope of gradually-but-inexorably rising educational costs must be reversed.

Atheist Goes Political, vol. 3: Recession, Recovery and National Debt

2011-04-05T11:11:00.000-07:00

Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-mLdFUphis

And then we have the national debt. Most people, unfortunately, don’t understand the ramifications of having a country in debt. You see,

debt is measured in increments of $10000 dollars. One such increment is called a bond. When one has $10000 to spare and decides to spend it on a bond, that $10000 is called the “principal.” For other bonds, the duration may be longer or shorter, but for US gov’t bonds, it’s ten years. That is what’s called the “maturity period;” that is, the period between when the principle is first put in and when it is paid back and the bond officially “matures.” Each year in between, that bond pays $1000 to its holder. Now where do you suppose that money comes from?
The taxpayers of course. Every $10000 of

debt costs the taxpayers $1000 per year. That’s money which could be spent on Pell grants, public works projects, paving roads, or laying out new electrical, communication, or plumbing infrastructures. Instead, it goes into the pockets of US bondholders. This is part of the reason that the world’s wealthiest country can no longer afford to keep its roads paved.
            So what if someone happens to have $4 million dollars? Well that someone has the option to buy enough of these bonds to generate $400,000 a year. That’s $400,000 of passive income every year. $400,000 of money flowing out of the pockets of US taxpayers into the pockets of US bondholders just for being bondholders; debt-holders.
            If we dichotomize US taxpayers into those who are wealthy enough to buy US gov’t bonds and those who aren’t, we find that one of the two is getting a free ride at the expense of the other. When the poor get money for not doing anything and it’s barely enough to sustain their existence, it’s called “welfare” and this has all kinds of negative, freeloading connotations, but when the wealthy get money for not doing anything and it keeps them in luxury, it’s called “bonds” or “financial wisdom” or “fiscal responsibility” or something along those lines and this has all kinds of positive connotations.
            But the fact is, if you’ve been following me so far, you now understand enough about US gov’t bonds to use them yourself this way if you have enough money. This is not difficult to understand. Therefore, success in this particular market is less a measure of the intelligence one has to begin with and more a measure of the capital one has to begin with. Thus, this is just one of many ways in which those who have lots of money are more able to make it than those who don’t even if their intelligence is greater.
            As it stands now, our national debt is $14 trillion. That’s one trillion, four hundred billion tax dollars every year going into the pockets of US bondholders. In a country with a population of a little over 300 million, that costs each of us almost $5000 per year. Think about that. That’s $5000 of your money which could be applied to educational spending or infrastructural spending or scientific research, which instead is going specifically to help the very wealthy get wealthier.
            Toward the end of Clinton’s presidency, we, as a nation, had been generating a surplus for several years. That means that we had actually been bringing in more in tax revenue than we had been spending. When a nation is as in debt as we were, that’s a wonderful thing, because every year of surplus is a year in which the debt is just a little lower than the year before.
            The economy was also doing very well. The GDP was soaring. The national unemployment rate was 4%. 4! In every major city, and most of the minor ones, it was nearly impossible to find a retail chain whose biggest promotion did not include the words “Now Hiring.” Two words one saw in the news every week were “labor shortage,” which is basically economic jargon for a situation with more jobs than employees. This made it kind of a drag anytime one went shopping for anything other than a job, but given a choice between a national labor shortage and a job market with dozens of people competing for each opening, which would you rather have?
            So the middle class and the working class had virtually no difficulty finding work, GDP was showing annual growth, and the national debt was showing annual reduction. The sweeping majority of the people in this country were very well off with this situation. The very wealthy, on the other hand, weren’t so happy about it, of course, because this surplus was generated mainly by taxing them. They remained quite wealthy, but of course, there’s no such thing as “wealthy enough.” They knew, of course, that they would be wealthier if these taxes were cut, so they started concentrating on getting someone into office who would cut them. Enter Dubya and a favorite Republican lie by omission.
            “We must cut taxes! Cut taxes! Cut taxes! Cut taxes!” Right off the bat, Bush commenced to pontificate about how, after several years of surplus, “...it’s time to start giving money back to the people.”
            “We must cut taxes and give money back to the people.” Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? The thing is, though, when a Republican in public office starts talking about the importance of cutting taxes, one must ask “For whom?” When a Republican in public office starts talking about the importance of “giving money back to the people,” one must ask, “Which people?” This is because, all too often, when a Republican talks about “cutting taxes,” he or she means “for the wealthy,” and when this Republican talks about “giving money back to the people,” he or she means “the very wealthy people who happen to be funding my campaign and furnishing me with kickbacks.” These details, of course, are omitted.
            If the situation Clinton had established could have been maintained, the national debt would have continued to decline, GDP would have continued to climb, the subprime mortgage bubble would never have formed in the first place, let alone popped, and we would not still be paying 10 years later for the mistake of electing Bush.
            Now let’s not lose sight of one key fact here. Even during Clinton, the very wealthy continued to get wealthier, just not at the expense of the middle class and the working class. The only people not benefitting from Clinton’s presidency were the few who slipped through the cracks here and there, and we were still managing to generate a surplus and reduce the debt every year. Even health care expenses were on the decline, because in the interests of competing for employees, companies negotiated competitively with healthcare providers.
            But no. The time to start “giving money back to the people” does not come after just a few years of surplus. It comes after the national debt is all paid off; a goal we would be much closer to now if not for Bush.
            Now look at how much of our debt is being held by the likes of

China

? China is a big

bondholder. That’s not just money we owe. That’s money draining out of one country into another. This is why we need to concentrate on getting this debt paid off; on getting this drain plugged. The last time we made any such progress, Clinton was president, and we managed it by taxing those who actually had money to burn.
            If you need water, you don’t look in the middle of the desert. Likewise, if you need tax revenue to help pay down the national debt, you don’t tax people who don’t have any money.
            So how do we make progress in generating enough revenue to pay down the national debt? Well let’s see. We could tax the poor, but they don’t have any money. We could tax the working class, but in order to generate enough revenue to make a dent, we would have to leave them poor. We could tax the middle class, but there we run into the same problem with just a slightly deeper dent. We could tax the wealthy, but the Republicans and the blue dogs won’t let us. So instead, we remain in debt and money continues to flow out of the pockets of taxpayers and into the pockets of bondholders, which means that bondholders don’t exactly have a reason to support efforts to reduce the debt.
            The real impudence of this is that Republicans insist on blaming this situation on Obama. It’s true, one of his first acts as president was a huge stimulus package, but this was the only option left to him to get the economy moving again after the Republicans wrecked it.
            Whether an economy is officially in recession or recovery is determined by the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This economic indicator is officially defined as a measure of the worth of all the goods and services sold within the economy in question in the period of time in question, but I prefer to think of it as a measure of the amount of money circulating—being spent—within the economy in question. Not the amount present; the amount being spent. All the money in the world has no effect on anyone, positive or negative if it isn’t being spent; if it isn’t circulating; if it isn’t being used to foster trade.
            You see, the money in your pocket right now is valuable to you because you are able to exchange it for goods and services that you need and/or want. But the whole reason this exchange is possible is that the money is likewise valuable to the parties you buy these goods and services from. The whole reason it is valuable to them is that they too can use it to buy goods and services from other people who can use it to buy goods and services from other people, and so on, and so on. Every time one of these transactions takes place, every time a certain sum of money is used to buy a final good or service, that trade gets counted in GDP. That’s what I mean by the amount of money circulating.
            Most of the time, when one of these exchanges takes place, it is to the mutual benefit of both parties, and it opens the door for other exchanges that are to this mutual benefit. Money freely circulating within an economy makes these trades possible. The extent of that circulation is measured in GDP. When GDP declines, it means that less money is circulating, which means that fewer such mutually-beneficial exchanges are taking place. If your customers suddenly aren’t earning as much money, it means that they’re not buying as much from you, which means you’re not making as much from them, which means that you, likewise, aren’t earning as much money, which means that you are not buying as much from others, which means that they, likewise, are not earning as much from you, and so on.
            When this process begins, like it did with the bursting of the sub-prime mortgage bubble in 2007, it precipitates a decline in GDP. When such a decline continues for at least two sequential quarters, then we have what is officially recognized as a recession. It remains a recession until the GDP has started growing again. So if we are going to get the GDP growing again, we have to encourage the spending of money within the economy.
            The money being spent within an economy comes from four sources: net exports, investing, consumer spending, and government spending. When Obama was inaugurated, all of our trade partners were in recession as well, so clearly, we could not count on more spending from net exports. The stock market and the bond market were both in rapid decline which meant no consumer confidence for investors, so clearly, we could not count on more spending from investing either. Prospective consumers were losing their jobs left and right, so consumers were pinching their pennies, worried that they would be next, and clearly, this meant that we couldn’t count on more GDP growth from consumer spending. The only option remaining was government spending, so that is the option that Obama and the Dems exercised.
            Perhaps they held some hope of paying for it by taxing the wealthy, but when the tax legislation was due to expire and the Dems wanted to enact new legislation concentrating the tax cuts in the middle class and the working class instead, the Republicans in Congress held that legislation hostage, filibustering it until the Dems agreed to extend the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy. So here we had a situation of increased gov’t spending and decreased taxes all around, resulting, of course, in increasing national debt, which meant more bonds ready to be bought by the well-to-do to funnel our tax dollars into their pockets.
            It is not Obama’s fault that he exercised the only option remaining to him to get the economy moving again. It is his credit, rather, that this move took an unemployment rate that was skyrocketing and leveled it off. Since then, the unemployment rate has had the occasional uptick, but overall, is slowly on the decline. Unfortunately, especially given population growth, this figure always declines more slowly than it rises, and the Republicans have been seizing on this. Unable to criticize Obama for costing jobs, except when dealing with people in no possession of any facts, they have to be content, instead, to excoriate him for adding them slowly in spite of the fact that this is still a great deal better than Bush could manage.
            Indeed, many of them allege “zero job growth.” If this were true, it would still be a vast improvement over Bush. Zero job growth is still better than negative job growth.
            Here’s a rhetorical question for my viewers to consider. How come, every single time someone brings up tax cuts for the working class and the middle class, the GOP insists that they have to be paid for by cutting something, but never when it comes to tax cuts for the wealthy? How come only one of these needs paying for?

Atheist Goes Political, vol. 2: Trickle-Down Economics

2011-04-04T17:10:00.000-07:00

Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKWRoOtj8Jk

            One subject my investigation has lead me into is economics. Politics can sometimes be considered without economics, but economics usually cannot be considered without politics, so the one offers a great deal of insight into the other. Conservatives are very fond of pedaling trickle-down, supply-side economics, which is the idea that, if the very wealthy are granted tax cuts, they will, of course, use their new-found savings to expand their businesses, adding jobs. After all, the extremely wealthy are practically chomping at the bit to add jobs, but they can’t because they don’t have enough money...right?
            But the people in question already have money up the wazoo which they are not using to create jobs. Why not? To understand the answer, you have to think of both opportunity and motive. Any time you want a certain group of people to take a certain course of action, you have to make certain they have both. Otherwise, forget it.
            The people in question, being so wealthy, already have the opportunity, but they’re not creating jobs because they don’t have the motive. A business owner’s focus is on maximizing profits. The only reason he or she has any motive to take any course of action, whatever it may be, is to that end. The only time these people ever hire more people—ever create jobs—is when they believe they stand to profit from doing so.
            So when does that happen? Business owners have reason to believe that they stand to profit from creating more jobs and hiring more people when they have reason to believe that they stand to profit from the act of increasing the supply of the goods and services their business provides. To increase one’s supply, one must expand one’s apparatus, and to do that, one must hire more people.
            So when does one stand to profit from increasing the supply of the goods and services one’s business provides? This happens when one has plenty of competition for those goods and services and the demand for those goods and services is on the rise. Under these circumstances, one understands that, if one does not meet this increase in demand with an increase in supply, one’s competitors will, which will lead to a loss of customers, business and profit. So if we want to foster an increase in hiring, we have to stimulate an increase in demand.
            So how do we do that? By concentrating the tax cuts among the people who provide most of the demand in this country. That’s the middle class and the working class, not the well-to-do. When the people in these tax brackets find themselves spending less on taxes, we are going to spend more on goods and services, thus driving up the demand for them; an increase in demand that suppliers are going to be compelled to meet with an increase in supply, and to do that, they will have to hire more people from these very tax brackets, which yields even more money flowing into these demographics, leading these demographics to do more spending, leading to an increase in demand, leading to an increase in supply, leading to more jobs, leading to more people hired from the middle class and the working class, leading to more money going to the middle class and the working class, and here we find ourselves in a self-feeding cycle.
            Now the biggest drawback to this is that, eventually, if enough jobs are added and the unemployment rate drops low enough, it’s bound to lead to a labor shortage, but so what? Sure, such can be inconvenient and annoying. It can be kind of a drag going shopping over and over again and never finding anyone available to help you, but compare that to the situation we have now. Which is preferable? At least, during a labor shortage, we are not wondering how we are going to keep our bills paid.
            This is one form of what economists usually refer to as “fiscal policy,” but which Robert Reich more descriptively dubs “bubble-up economics.” Economic prosperity does not trickle down. It bubbles up. The well-to-do usually understand enough about financial matters that we can expect them to prosper pretty much no matter what. This same guarantee cannot be expected with the middle class and the working class. Thus, we have to concentrate on ensuring that they are taken care of. A society which concentrates on directly benefitting these demographics indirectly benefits everyone.
            It’s funny. The case for trickle-down economics is all-too-often packaged with the argument for capitalism in general which purports to harness the profit self-interest as a force for good. But in asking the middle class and the working class to accept tax cuts for someone else instead of themselves, they ask them to abandon that very motive. Can it be trusted or not?
            “The self-interested profit motive can be trusted, unless it is yours.”
            So tell you what. Everyone watching who sincerely believes in trickle-down economics, try this little experiment. Try mounting a campaign to persuade all the people and organizations in the world to take all the money they have and give it all to me. After all, such will benefit them... somehow... some day... and if it doesn’t, it means that I still don’t have enough.

Atheist goes Political, vol. 1

2011-04-03T13:00:00.000-07:00

Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNPSGAFgF9Q

I was originally planning to make this all one video, but I’ve decided it would be wiser to break it up into smaller, more digestible increments; especially considering that it will probably be an ongoing series. I have tried to make it a point to exclude politics from the main focus of this channel, but I’m changing that. I am officially going political.
            For at least two years, it has been apparent to me that the most misunderstood term in the English language is “atheist” and the second most misunderstood is “evolution.” As I investigate ever more, it becomes increasingly clear to me that the third most misunderstood is “liberal.” These terms are the three most misunderstood and stigmatized because a lot of obscenely wealthy people stand to become even more obscenely wealthy by discouraging the investigation of these terms, what they actually consist of, and the reasoning behind them.
            For many years, I called myself an agnostic, avoiding the label “atheist” like the plague. This was because I saw theism and atheism both as forms of dogmatic, falsely-perceived gnosticism. But the reason I saw atheism like this was that, rather than investigating it, I accepted this stigma of it erected by well funded, dogmatic, zealous interests to the end of preventing this investigation.
            But then, one day, I actually began investigating atheism, and shortly thereafter, evolution and creationism, and began acquainting myself with the arguments on both sides, and I realized that the only times the arguments against atheism and evolution ever seemed to make sense was times when they addressed arguments that were not actually being made. In my study of logic, I learned that this is what is known as a strawman fallacy. The parties trying to argue against these positions, being unable to refute the actual arguments in favor, have to pretend that the arguments in favor are something else.
            Also, for many years, I called myself a moderate, likewise avoiding labels like “liberal” or “conservative” like the plague. But as I learned about atheism, evolution and logic, the differences between the two wings of the political spectrum became increasingly pronounced, coming ever more clearly into focus. In the ’08 presidential election, every time I watched part of one of the debates, I caught McCain relying on the same fallacy.
            “Senator Obama, what do you have to say about issue A?”
            “Oh, well on issue A, we have these facts, and using these facts as premises, I draw these conclusions, and using these conclusions as further premises, I draw these further conclusions, and on these grounds, I think this would be a good idea and I’m laying it all out there for the general public to examine, in the true spirit of democracy.”
            “Hmm. Interesting. Senator McCain, what do you have to say on that subject?”
            “Well look, my friends. I have experience, so just trust me.”
            This was his reply over and over again. He was like a doll with a string. This is what’s called an Appeal to Authority. You know who else has plenty of experience? Gadhafi. “Don’t examine my argument. Just take the fact that I am an authority of some sort as an excuse to stop thinking.”
            “Follow the example of my good friend Joe the Plumber, who isn’t actually a plumber, and whose name is not actually ‘Joe.’ Obama is elitist. I own seven mansions, but he is elitist.”
            What do you call a politician with tons and tons and tons of experience? Well, there are two things you call him, or her, in the unfortunate event that calling is, indeed, necessary. First, old. Frickin’ old. But second, and more importantly, corrupt.
            Public office is a position of public trust and authority. One who holds it is inevitably, invariably corrupted by it. Power corrupts. This is why the comparison is so frequently drawn between politicians and diapers. Both must be changed often, and for the same reason. This is one of the reasons the

presidency must have term limits. After eight years in the single most powerful position of public trust in the entire frickin’ world, one is most likely too corrupt to be trusted with it any more. Better, at that point, to accept retirement and spend the rest of one’s days lending notoriety and writing memoirs, and if you’re up to it, accepting less powerful positions of public trust, the way Taft did. But I digress.
            After reading up on atheism, I found it interesting that, virtually every single time a Republican campaigning for public office made an argument on that subject, it was either an argument I knew how to refute or a refutation to an argument that wasn’t actually being made. It was an argument I had heard refuted, and seen refuted over and over again and always the same way. This was always the case with Republicans, but virtually never the case with Dems.
            Then I familiarized myself to the same extent with evolution, and started noticing the same tendency. How in the world can a subject be a “controversy” if one side has not a single argument that has not been refuted? What does it mean if such a party continues to trot out those arguments over and over again?
            Can I really be expected to entertain the notion that, when Bush argues that “Evolution is still only a theory,” that he has never, in all his years, had this misuse of the term “theory” explained to him?
            Gravity, too, is “only a theory.” Cell theory is “only a theory.” Atomic theory is “only a theory,” but members of the general public are still being advised to maintain a distance of at least 80 km (50 miles) from the ruptured nuclear power plant in

Japan

. Why in the world would that be unless, in science, a concept being a “theory” does not prevent it from also being a “fact?”
            Atomic Theory is a theory; also a fact. Cell Theory is a theory; also a fact. Gravity is a theory; also a fact. Evolution is a theory; also a fact.
            In science, a theory is a school of thought. When the concept in question has so much evidence in support of it that the act of refuting it would be unavoidably revolutionary, then it is a fact, but becoming a fact does not mean that it ceases to be a theory. These two concepts (theory and fact) are not mutually exclusive.
            This particular argument has been made continuously for the past 1.5 centuries and it has always had this very problem. Yet, over and over again, it is conservatives, not liberals, who trot it out as if it’s new and completely irrefutable. Either I accept that the scientific consensus about evolution is lacking (and I can’t, because I know better) or I accept that no one has ever explained the problem with this argument to the conservatives (which I find extraordinarily unlikely) or I accept that a significant percentage of the general public simply doesn’t happen to know the problem with this argument and conservatives are participating in an effort to capitalize on that. I find the third of these the most likely, but if true, it paints a tremendously unflattering image of conservatives, or at least, the ones campaigning for and holding public office.
            Conservatives, over and over again, argue that evolution is “only a theory” and should therefore, not be taught as fact, since being a theory, allegedly, prevents it from being a fact. Liberals never rely on this particular canard.
            Conservatives, over and over again, argue that atheism is the “belief that God does not exist,” or the “hate of God” or the “belief that everything came from nothing” or “adolescent rebellion” or “communism” or “fascism.” Conservatives (especially Christian conservatives) make the argument, over and over again, that the

United States

was founded on Christian principles, in spite of the fact that this canard is demonstrably false. Liberals never make this argument.
            It is right wing organizations from whom one hears the argument that “Well, you know the Constitution doesn’t actually say ‘Separation of Church and State.’ It doesn’t have those exact words.”
            That’s true, in the same way that it doesn’t have the exact words “The people have the right to own guns.” Nonetheless, we do have this right. Why? Because of what it does say. “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
            Do I get to spin this and say that, well, it just means that the government doesn’t get to order amputation campaigns? Of course not. Do I get to insist that by “arms,” it means those things that have a shoulder at one end and a wrist at the other? Of course not. What does it mean by “arms?” Well, it means armaments—things with which one arms oneself. Guns. Knives. Swords. Cutlasses. Tomahawks. Battle-axes. Spears. Even suits of armor, if you like.
            “Well then why are the Democrats trying to take away the Second Amendment?”
            Are they?
            “Well of course they are.”
            Can you show me any bills to that effect that they have ever actually tried to get signed into law?
            “Um........”
            In the mean time, what about the First Amendment? “The Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion OR restricting the free exercise thereof.” “...no law respecting an establishment of religion...” Say it with me. “...no law respecting an establishment of religion...” That’s what it says. It doesn’t make exceptions for one religion in particular. The free exercise of a religion is one thing. The establishment of one is another. If a nation has no laws respecting an establishment of religion, it has no established religion, and a separation of church and state, mosque and state, synagogue and state, temple and state, or whatever, is the unavoidable result. Sure, it doesn’t have these exact words per se, but that’s irrelevant. This is the unavoidable effect of this particular clause.
            “Separation of Church and State” and “owning guns” are both examples of colloquial language; the language of the general public. “No established religion” and “keeping and bearing arms” are both examples of legal language, and since the US Constitution is, in fact, a legal document, the latter choice of words is appropriate and to be expected.
            Lack of an established religion does not guarantee freedom of the people, but it is necessary to that end. On its own, this will not establish or protect freedom to the people, but such freedom is not possible without this. A legal system that protects and preserves freedom needs many essential components, of which this is one. An established religion will, unavoidably, tread on the freedom of the people. It will tread on the freedom of those who don’t practice that religion, but also the freedom of those who do. Those who don’t will automatically be relegated to second class citizen status. Those who do, on the other hand, will face the prospect of becoming second class citizens whenever doubts arise about whether the religion in question is true, and will thus be motivated not to freely, honestly consider those doubts, but to bury them instead.
            If it is true, as is so often alleged, that Christianity rests on reason, then Christian authorities have no reason to discourage the honest examination of these doubts. They should be ready to address them. Every time a Christian or Christian conservative authority tries to undermine the no establishment clause and the subsequent separation of church and state, this amounts to an admission that Christianity does not, in fact, rest on reason and has to rely on force instead.
            The Federalist Papers make the case for the Constitution, at least, as it was first ratified. Every single clause of it has the case for it laid out there. This invites public scrutiny of the case for the Constitution. This is done in the spirit of democracy which is predicated upon the assumption that the people are, for the most part, smart enough to decide for ourselves how we are to be governed, by whom, for what ends, and by what means. One who does not believe that does not believe in democracy. Every time someone makes the case that the many should forego our own judgment in deference to the few, this is an argument against democracy.
            The Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution and the Federalist Papers because, among them, religious and nonreligious alike did believe in democracy. They were confident, first, that the general public was smart enough to use rational, critical scrutiny the vast majority of the time on any argument laid before it, and second, that the Constitution and the Federalist papers could withstand this scrutiny.
            Presently, no part of the Constitution tries to get itself accepted by threatening the rights and freedoms of those who don’t accept it. The moment a nation has an established religion, this is no longer the case. Why would any party seek to threaten the rights of the general public with second-class citizen status in the event that problems with their shpiel are found? It can only be because there are problems with their shpiel and they don’t want the general public to realize it.
            People who lend their shpiel to public scrutiny want any problems with it found. This opens the door for those problems to be corrected.
            The moment a nation has an established religion, those who don’t follow that religion are unavoidably punished, and those who do are discouraged from giving it any real examination, lest they risk that punishment. Every time in history that a nation has had an established religion, this has been the case, no matter what that religion has been. Thus, the freedom of both is unavoidably infringed upon if not discarded altogether. Thus, the freedom of religion and the freedom from it are unavoidably linked. A nation cannot have the one without the other.
            Personally, I would not want to live in a nation that does not defend both these freedoms vigorously. Just as it is not possible for the freedom of religion to exist separately from the freedom from it, the reverse is true as well. I am not religious, but my freedom not to be religious must coexist with the freedom of others to be religious, however obnoxious they may get about it sometimes.
            Over and over again, it is conservatives, not liberals, trying to undermine the no establishment clause. Over and over again, it is conservatives, not liberals, trying to tear down this vital safeguard of basic liberties; this fundamental component of democracy. Over and over again, it is conservatives—not liberals—trying to undermine democracy allegedly in the name of democracy.
            Conservatives reiterate these canards constantly; these and many others I have found. Liberals virtually never use them at all. When I noticed this particular track record, I was compelled to investigate the arguments to see what other refuted arguments conservatives are determined to rely on. My examination of those arguments and counter-arguments will follow.