Well I’ve gone and thrown away another summer weekend on chess. It will be the second one in the last three weekends. The first one was the First Annual BC School Chess Championship that was being run by my friend Umang, and he recruited my help. It was a big event with over 210 kids from 110 schools competing, and of that number, about 130 of them had never played in a chess tournament before. So once each round began, the kids having trouble started putting up their hands for help from the Tournament Director (hereafter referred to as TD), in this case me, and I had to run over and solve the dispute. Sometimes there were half a dozen arms in the air and I was running around like a crazy person. All the while outside it was sunny and warm, perfect weather to go paddling or have a cold beer on the patio. Maybe there should be a chess ‘season’ that runs through the fall and winter so that no one suffers the angst of watching the days you’ve longed for go by outside without you. Which brings me to today. It is early morning, but later this afternoon I have to go TD another tournament that will run through the weekend. It is the exact opposite of the last one as this one is the BC Seniors Championship, open to players 50 years or older, so there won’t be many people panicking about tiny rules being broken and very few wrinkly arms in the air. Fun fact: if you went back in time the age of all 36 competitors combined, Jesus would still be in kindergarten.
School tournament: poor substitute for an outdoor life.
Anyway, my biggest apprehension about this tournament is the fact that I have to do some public speaking, which if you read my blog much, you know is my paralyzing fear. I only have to address the crowd for a minute or so before each round to make small announcements, and it’s pretty small as only 36 players are registered. Of that 36 I am on friendly speaking terms with about 25 of them, so it isn’t even strangers I have to speak to. Still I have been having dreams about it and spending my days worrying about it. At this point I imagine normal people would be rolling their eyes at my chicken behaviour, and I wouldn’t blame them.
Speaking of summer, this is already among the worst fire seasons on record and it is technically still spring! An area 1.5 times the size of Vancouver Island has already burnt up this year in Canada, and back east in the big cities you can hardly see the hand in front of your face in the thick smoke. The weird thing is the people who are denying this has any relation to climate change, or that the smoke is even harmful. Some lawyer from the coal industry was on TV saying this smoke was natural and no one ever dies from polluted air, even in badly polluted cities in Asia. Actually 4.4 million premature deaths in India and China last year that were attributed to unhealthy air. No doubt there has, or will be, some premature deaths across the eastern seaboard due to this, but sadly, not enough of those deaths will be coal industry lawyers.
Perfectly normal day in New York, no health implications at all.
Greetings bloggy people. Normally paragraph #1 is where I complain about the weather, but lately it’s been perfect, so I won’t rock the boat. Well, perfect is my opinion, not necessarily one shared by people whose towns are on fire in Alberta and northern BC. Those people could make a good case for liking rain right now, and I would understand.
We have taken up bowling lately. We went five pin bowling twice now with our friends, and it is a nice way to spend some time. Of course after a 15 year layoff, give or take a few years, the first time we went we overused some dormant muscles and spent a few days toddling along like stiff little penguins. The second time seems to have been ok, and those whiny little muscles have left us alone. Note: a woman at my work who comes from England tells me back home they don’t call it “whining” but instead “whingeing,” with a soft G so it rhymes with “binging”, like drinking every day for a while. This is new info to me and I kind of like it. In the tick boxes of personal attributes, good and otherwise, one of my faults would be that when down in the dumps I can be whiny, so I may get some use out of whingeing.
I have decided on three story competitions I want to write for this year. The first one has a submission deadline of June 30 – 44 days in the future as I write this – and so far I haven’t written a word or even thought of an idea. Last year I left it until 48 hours before the deadline and I won (?) second place. The difference is, last year I had a story I just needed to put into writing. I’m thinking about entering another one of those 250 word contests so I’ll be forced to at least come up with a basic plot idea I could take to the pasta buffet afterward and plump up to 2000 words. Later in the year I would like to submit to the CBC fiction contest and the Writer’s Trust one. They have great prizes and great exposure for anyone who even makes the final 25, or whatever number they put on their long lists. Being long listed in one of those would be the sort of thing you’d mention subtly on your resume. Of course, my chances of success go way up if I dream of a usable plot and quit wasting time watching dumb TV shows and playing Scrabble on Facebook.
I think I have come up with an idea for a book, but it’s very early on. I want to think it through a whole bunch more before I start committing to writing it, but it seems like a possible idea. Anyway, I’ll elaborate another time if it seems like it wants to be written. For now, it can slumber away somewhere in the back of my head.
Speaking of heads, my employer has just made it mandatory for all us workers to wear a hard hat at all times, regardless of how dangerous or benign a job we are doing. I say why stop there? I want to show up in a fucking scuba suit in case I encounter some deep puddles. Yeah! That’ll show them! As for the hard hats, everyone is against it, and I feel like if they keep insisting on it, they may be flirting with revolution. We may need to organize a protest, or try to petition WorkSafe BC to rescind their rule, (which only appears to pertain to our place of work, btw.) Water meter readers are wandering around quiet neighbourhoods wearing a helmet that is stifling hot and uncomfortable for no reason anyone can explain. I could accept it if the Canada Post delivery people had to wear them, too, but they don’t. I mean, at least it would be equal for a very similar job. And all day I drive by people working outside, weedeating shoulders of roads, surveying, picking up trash, and none of those people are wearing a damn hard hat. Office workers should have to wear them too, as they sit under acoustic tile that could potentially shake loose in an earthquake or if Weight Watcher’s has a dance party on the floor above. As for meter readers meandering around cul de sacs, where is the danger? Once I saw a dead crow fall out of the sky for no apparent reason, so maybe I was lucky it missed my hatless skull. Other than that obviously isolated event, I can’t even come up with something a hard hat would prevent someone walking around from suffering.
*this might be lapsing into an episode of whingeing, so please accept my apology.
I just finished watching 60 Minutes. Tonight’s episode was on Artificial Intelligence and how it is about to be unleashed on the world. Last night I had a conversation with my son about AI, and it was news to me that there were already programs available that will write you a story, or a procedure manual, or paint you a lovely picture. That conversation and 60 Minutes both sort of frighten me. I had no idea AI had come that far and was poised to take over.
Earlier in the week I heard a news story that said a large group of scientists, including Elon Musk, had signed an open letter asking AI developers to stop for six months, but that news item just seemed like background noise I could safely ignore. The unsettling part of the 60 Minutes story, for me at least, was that AI can tell lies, and frequently does. It showed an AI bot being asked a question, which it answered quickly. The answer included references to a half dozen or so books a person could go to for more info, except not one of the books actually exists! The AI just made up some legit-sounding shit like the human receiving the answer was to be trifled with. The story went on to say that AI lies were very common. So what happens to the truth? What if AI starts making up conspiracy theories or expounding well known BS like election fraud? It still won’t be true, but it will have more of an air of legitimacy because it will appear to be researched and cross referenced. So instead of trickles of nonsense coming out of the keyboard warrior’s basement lair, it will be coming from the research source itself. Take the volatile political environment in the US today. It really only got out of hand when truth was questioned (fake news, alternate truths) and fringe ideas got a national pulpit to preach from. What if a few million people who already believe the government should be overthrown get some fresh fertilizer from their AI bots, who suggest they amass and coordinate? And the humans who created the AI are only on the sidelines already, by the look of it. The AI is teaching itself to do stuff, then turning around and coding and programming the next computer in line, and no human is in between making sure they are virtuous and honest. And if any company stops for six months like the scientists want, then the company down the road they are competing with will get a six month head start and surpass them.
What will become of writers? NYC Midnight, the place that runs the short story competition I went in a few times, have a new rule in their contests that states if they detect your story was written by AI you will be disqualified. On 60 Minutes, the AI they used wrote very convincingly and I think what it wrote would be hard to sniff out as fraud. Worse of course, is the fact some poor bastard will write, edit, re-write, rinse, repeat for weeks to make a good story and years to write a decent book. But his AI counterpart can crank out a compelling story in a few seconds, and could literally write thousands of books in the same time. If AI would be a good sport and sign itself as the author of whatever it writes, then no harm done I suppose, but the technology has already show itself to be a serial bullshitter. And some guy could get his bot to write him a million dollar idea for Hollywood just for the asking, so why get all sweaty trying to be honest?
Maybe the biggest irony will be that the programmers who created AI will be the first job category eliminated by their invention. It will be the real life equivalent of Frankenstein’s monster coming to life and choking his creator.
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is still relevant today. It’s amazing to me that book was written by a girl of 18 and was published in 1818, without any help from her tech.
It’s been over two months since I last wrote anything. Not just in my blog, but anything including anywhere. The reason is, I got told no one wants to read about my boring life. Even if that’s true, you ought not to run around telling people that, as it tends to be hurtful. But I got to thinking about some of my favourite blogs – Feeling Funny, Snoozing on the Couch – and realized they are just about someone else’s boring life. How about John Steinbeck? Can you think of a better writer, he and his Nobel Prize? Most of what he got famous for writing about was the Selinas Valley in California where he lived, and his books were filled with characters derived from his friends and neighbours. Most of his early books and stories occurred in places he could see from his kitchen window, with the notable exception of the beginning of Grapes of Wrath which starts in Oklahoma but moves on to Selinas later. I always sort of thought of this blog as something of a diary, maybe something my kids would read later to know me better, since I’m such a crappy communicator normally. Maybe they could read exerts of this at my funeral, that might be fun. Well, this is my boring life and I’m paying to maintain this domain on line, so I’ll keep writing about it. Besides, what else do I know to write about? You probably don’t want me writing about your life, boring or otherwise.
What I really wish for is that whatever I write about is relatable. If I was Spiderman, and I was swinging from a web in a dense, urban setting catching criminals, I could write about it, but it wouldn’t be relatable to anyone. It would be escapist fantasy, held together by a suspension of disbelief. I mean, the premise would be far fetched, but as long as we all agree not to point out that the story contains a million glaring absurdities, we could just enjoy the ride. I got over comic books early in life. I used to read Superman, but one day I bought a Superman comic that was so stupid my brain snapped in half trying to suspend my disbelief. What happened was Lois Lane’s house got blown up and Superman arrived just in time, caught every little fragment of debris and reassembled it so fast that Lois didn’t even notice her house had just exploded and Mr Spandex Alien had superglued it back together. Huh? You can’t even ask a 10 year old to agree to that bullshit. Like she didn’t even notice her vase had a new crack in it? Right away I started wondering if Lois had her arm blown off, let’s say, and how fast you’d have to do reattachment surgery for her not to even notice?! Good God I hope the guy who wrote that quit his comic book job and found something more suitable to do, like rodeo clowning or cleaning public toilets.
If you’re still hanging in there, thanks for reading. I think it helped to talk about all this, and hopefully I can get through this little snit and start writing normal stuff again.
Well here it is, another new year. The last few have been busts, so let’s hope 2023 is better. First big thing – at least for me – was I turned 60 a few days ago. I had a lot of fun getting cool presents and going for dinner and to a hockey game, but I also did some reflecting. I remember hearing that usually the 50’s are the best years of a man’s life. By that time, the children have probably stopped being a burden, he is likely in a position of power at work and well paid, and he is typically still strong and healthy. There are a million exceptions, but in an overview of trends, that’s what “they” say. The term they used was something along the lines of “the apex of his villainy.” So a few days ago I passed out of my 50’s into a decade everyone can agree is the beginning of the long decline. I figure 60 is about the 2/3 mark of my life, barring any sudden accidents or the onset of any major diseases. Oh well, I had a lot of fun in the first 60 years, so I can’t complain.
Ok, a subject I haven’t written about in quite a while: Burns Lake and the absurd amount of BC 50/50 lottery wins that take place there. During the Covid years, the jackpots were generally lower than before and since, but Burns Lake kept on winning. In 2022 the prizes were back to pre-Covid levels, so let’s add it up. It may be that more money was won in Maple Ridge, as a store called JV Convenience won many times too, and it also won the largest prize of the year, $75,000 won on Super Bowl Sunday. But Burns Lake still won way more than its share, winning 74 times for $171,881.50 That’s just over 5% of all the draws last year, split amongst 0.03% of the province, or about 166 times what it should have based solely on population. There are some people spending big money up there! I am still considering playing heavily for one month, understanding that my money and I might be waving goodbye to each other.
I do a lot of dumb stuff. For some reason I have been getting invited to a weekly Zoom meeting of chess players. I say for some reason because the group often contains several master level players, and I am a moderately strong club player, but certainly no master. Anyway, they tolerate my feeble suggestions as we analyze positions and toss out move ideas. Last night we were analyzing a position together when suddenly my cat started gagging. I jumped up and tried to grab the cat to throw her outside where she would be free to barf at will, but the cat evaded capture. So I dashed back and forth, swearing like a sailor, trying to grab her while some of the province’s sharpest chess minds watched us on Zoom. Finally the cat sprinted downstairs and threw up partially digested kibble on our newly steam-cleaned carpet, the wall, and the couch. Tomorrow I am playing in a tournament with a couple of those players, so I may find myself explaining my odd behaviour, hoping they will invite me to future Thursday night chess chats.
I mentioned gifts earlier. Well here is the grandaddy of great gifts: a refurbished chair from the Montreal Forum, built in 1924. My son saved this chair from a house fire and spent a year and a half cleaning it up and turning the clock back many decades. How many times did the person who sat here see the Stanley Cup won? I have to bolt it to a base because it’s a tipping hazard, especially if I am enjoying some hockey juice. At my advanced age, falling from this chair might cause bodily harm.
So I was wandering around outside today, doing various things related to work, when I realized my hands were cold. It wasn’t crazy cold out, or snowing, or even raining – just cold enough that my hands kept getting cold and stiff. When the body feels as though it is being threatening existentially by the cold, it quits keeping the extremities warm and concentrates on making sure the core and the organs are warm enough for it to stay alive. That’s great, but you know you have to ask yourself what kind of crappy climate do I live in when a regular outing forces your body’s survival mechanisms to make dire life-and-death decisions several times a day? And we are pretty warm in comparison to most of this country. We may get used to it, but inside my head there is a siren going off and my brain is ordering the system to leave the hands to die each time I’m outside for a few minutes.
I read that cold hands and feet can also be caused by iron deficiency and some other diseases, so maybe I should take this seriously? At my age I am trying to resist becoming a raging hypochondriac, and it isn’t always easy. Every little chest pain is the Final Jammer getting started; each headache is an aneurism winding up to pop my brain; every little pain is a new, spreading cancer. I try to be brave and not alarm those around me, but I am quietly preparing myself for the worst, overreacting to stimuli much like the systems that would throw my hands overboard to keep my organs cozy.
If my hands fell off, my whole system would have bigger survival problems than cool weather, that’s for sure – like making it difficult to eat organ meat to lessen my iron deficiency.
I see my grandparents’ house was finally torn down last week. It’s amazing it lasted as long as it did. It was one of the last original houses left in the neighbourhood, and without a doubt the one that was in the worst condition. I spent decades on that property, playing as a child, being an idiot mostly as a teen, then bringing my children there as an adult. But its time was due. I was sad when I saw the churned up ground where the house had been, and I was surprised at how small the yard seemed now. The guy who rented the house after my grandpa died said he thought it was haunted, almost certainly from my grandma who died in the house. My story “Moving On,” which I put on here (October 2021) was about her and the boarded up wreck the house had become. I hope she has moved on and found some peace. She had a beautiful magnolia tree in the corner of the property that they must have planted soon after moving in around 1959. My uncle said one time he had thought about applying to have it protected as a heritage tree, but I see it has no protective fence around it, and it has the same little nailed-on tag as the other trees, all getting cut down to make way for some huge eyesore house. I broke a few branches off the magnolia, and I will try to find some way to propagate them to keep it alive. I want to share them with my sister who will have better odds of making it happen than me, as she has a yard full of trees to graft on to and a way with such things that passed me by.
And so it goes, the world jettisons the unnecessary: the old house on the block of shiny new mansions, and the hands and feet trying to hog all the warm blood.
I decided early on this year that this was the year I was going to devote to my hobby, writing. By some measure it was a success. My goal was to receive payment for something I wrote, which, to my great surprise, happened. Otherwise this year has sort of sucked as I have been complaining about for months. The war in Ukraine (is it the Ukraine, just Ukraine, or Ukrainia?) has been threatening to become a nuclear affair which could end us all, making any pebbles in my shoe pretty meaningless. Weather wise it was full on shit weather followed by 90+ straight days of sun and above normal temperatures, followed by the sudden return to monsoon conditions. Hockey-wise, my two favourite teams have managed to acquire some hot young talent, only to continue losing steadily. I meant to write for the CBC Fiction contest, but I had no ideas for a story, and the time I would normally spend alone at work dreaming up stories has been spent with someone foisted upon me. So the polite natter, natter of conversation has drowned out any plots. Disclaimer: the person I’ve been riding with is a fine person, and I nearly always enjoy his company, but sometimes I, like Greta Garbo, prefer to be left alone. But worse yet he is interfering with my singing. Usually I drive around singing at the top of my lungs like a fool, but it’s probably a United Nations human rights violation to subject the poor guy to my voice. American troops ‘tortured’ Afghanis by repeatedly blasting the Metallica song Enter Sandman at them, and they can actually sing. Just imagine the auditory discomfort a screechy, off-key seagull like me could inflict in an eight hour drive! Let the record show I have shown mercy on the prisoner in my truck.
November is my least favourite month. There, I’ve said it. It sounds negative to say, but really it is an acknowledgement that things are going to be getting better starting soon. The weather sucks, and since I work outside, that is a big deal to me. Even the one holiday this month is a somber occasion with lots of tears, black and white newsreel footage, and lonely bugles playing. Bah. I understand the significance of it all, but it is not a celebration of anything, just a reminder of how stupid humanity frequently is. If I need to be reminded about stupidity, all I need to do is read some news and find out what Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene have been up to, and the sad guy can put away his bugle.
Socializing has picked up lately. We went to a Halloween party for the first time in years last weekend. I dressed up as Alice Cooper. My costume was pretty good, but facially I don’t look much like Alice. Luckily the costume didn’t prevent me from drinking irresponsibly and playing beer pong. Tonight we’re going to a surprise birthday party. I have a cold, so an upcoming week of coughing and snot will be my gift to all who attend. I think I used up all my mercy on the young guy who wasn’t tormented by my renditions of Supertramp and CCR, among others, the past couple weeks. Maybe I could give Dave a preemptive box of tissue as a gift? He might not realize the value in it until 48 hours later, but it will dawn on him eventually.
We just got back from another weekend away, this time we went to Victoria. We stayed in a bed and breakfast in the Victoria suburb of Sooke. I was picturing awkward mornings around a table with a bunch of guests and hosts, simultaneously trying to wake up and make conversation with strangers while adhering to breakfast etiquette. Thankfully, what it was actually like was the hosts put a tray of breakfast-ish things out the night before, and we squirreled them away in our room until the next morning. We ate in private, came and went in private. Very nice. If anything, it may have been not enough people. Meanwhile, back in Cloverdale, our cat and water-sucking plants were kept alive by our friend Red while we were gone. Still, it turns out that our trip was the least exciting one in the family, although we did see a couple of whales. One party of five went to Disneyland, and another party of four (five?) went to Nashville to see Elton John in concert.
My work posted a job today that I am going to apply for. It is for a “Field Supervisor” which is a regular old charge hand with a fancy handle. It is the culmination of all the courses I have been taking over the last year or so. Anyone who has read this blog lately has heard me bitch about studying for tests or taking supervisory courses, so yes, there was a point to it in the end. Now I just have to do a good interview. Last time I had an interview for a job at Surrey I fumbled about and couldn’t think of anything to say. What saved me that time was that a couple of the interviewers knew me well. After I was finished, they managed to convince the HR girl that I wasn’t normally the complete dolt she had just seen in action. This time, those people won’t be a part of the process, so I better brush up on how to answer questions in coherent English. It’s times like this I could have really benefitted from having a debonair twin brother.
Two of our daughters have rescued a couple more dogs from Morocco. Why Morocco? It must be a place with a lot of wild dogs, but I have never been there to see. Again it involved an agency on their end sending the dogs as far as Montreal, and our middle daughter going there and putting the pooches on a plane heading West. The daughter who was living with us up until a couple months ago got a testy little mutt who refuses to interact with my wife and I. I must remind the poor dog of someone abusive back in Morocco, because all it does is snarl at me. Which is weird as normally I’m pretty good with pets. This would be another great use for a twin brother. He could get in there and gain the dog’s trust, and I would be ready to take him for stitches as required. I would make him wear my clothes to get the scent right, and the clothes would fit him as well (or badly) as they fit me. Brilliant plan, but alas, there is no twin to rescue my dumb ass. My early life was the lonesome one of a single zygote, swimming about by myself in the womb, unaware that I would be forced to live a life in which I would have to do all my own stunts.
I just got back from Penticton, where my partner and I attended the Wine Country Writers’ Festival. That was the event that sponsored the writing contest I came second in, so we took Friday off work and drove to get the prize. Of course, they would have mailed everything if I could have sat still and waited, but where’s the fun in that? Our motel was a flea bag operation, but we didn’t spend much time there. We just checked our stuff in then took off to the fancy hotel where the conference was, in our rented Cadillac SUV, no less, so we looked like snobby assholes to anyone who didn’t know us – which was everyone. They announced my second place story and called me up to receive a certificate and a book with my story in it. I have photographic proof that I got up on stage and smiled without having an anxiety emergency! I’m such a wienie sometimes, really. The room was filled with writers, most of whom have had something published and/or have won prizes that put mine to shame, so I was humbled that I was congratulated several times by some impressive people. The man who judged the fiction was Garry Litke. He won the Surrey Writers’ Festival competition last year, and is a published author and former mayor of Penticton. He gave me a great complement when he told me my story reminded him of Robert Heinlein. So here is my stretched out version of Lieber’s Report. If you read the short one, this one follows the same trajectory, it just elaborates on a lot of details I couldn’t include in a 250 word flash fiction story.
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Lieber’s Report
Inside the dark, silent Exoplanet Explorer the lights flickered slowly to life, and the cryogenic systems began to raise Captain Lieber’s metabolic functions. Soon his resting place of heavy saline began to cool, and his stiff limbs creaked to motion.
The intensifying light burned his eyes as he rolled out of the suspended animation chamber and clumsily toweled off the excess saline. He squinted around the cabin as the mental fog started to clear. He pulled on his underwear and suit for the first time in 17 years and stretched his tingling legs.
The retro rockets were firing and the ship was breaking hard, falling into a geosynchronous orbit above his destination, the planet Wolf 1061b. Little was known about it besides its size and the fact its relative proximity to its star made it a potentially inhabitable refuge for mankind. Soon Lieber would determine just how hospitable it was.
Lieber drank some water and turned on his monitor. The Exoplanet Explorer was one of six ships sent to nearby planets outside Earth’s solar system with the intent of trying to find humanity a home to make a new start. A start that would be engineered, calculated not to destroy the host planet with petty wars and greedy overharvesting of resources.
Lieber found five reports on his computer, all the other explorations were complete.
He trembled with excitement as he opened the first one. Proxima Centauri b: barren, void of atmosphere, uninhabitable. There was much more, but the point was made. Then, Proxima Centauri c: heavy acidic atmosphere, oppressive gravity, uninhabitable. Next was Barnard’s Star b: incomplete report, mentioned potentially aggressive civilisation then ended abruptly. Lieber swallowed hard and took a quick break to pace around the small work station to calm down. That mission was captained by Williams, his training partner back in Florida. There was clearly no way to return from these missions, but shuddered to imagine what poor Williams’ last moments were like.
Ok, there were two more chances for the missions to have had success. Ross 128 b: thin atmosphere not suitable for humans, highly acidic oceans with no apparent life. So it was down to Luyten b: another barren planet, crisscrossed with what seemed to be roads and large structures in ruins, but the verdict was still uninhabitable. Lieber had prayed that this wouldn’t be how it ended. He hoped beyond hope that ships full of migrant people would be settling the nearest planets by now, not waiting for his report to either save or doom the human race.
He peered through the portal at the ever-nearing surface of Wolf 1061b. It was a planet that rotated in synch with its star, keeping one face baking in the sun, and the other side frozen in the eternal darkness. Between the hemispheres was a strip hundreds of miles wide that would be somewhere between the extremes and potentially life sustaining. Either way, the whole mission was implemented quickly and on a small budget, with no plan for a return trip. Lieber was looking at the place he had come to die.
Lieber could see he had a few hours before the ship was in place. He ate some packaged bread and protein paste that was imitating peanut butter with little success. He went over his equipment and made sure everything was powering up and in the landing pod. He stashed a few groceries behind his seat, then a few more. He re-read some of the reports in greater detail, avoiding the Williams mission. And he waited, in time that went both too fast and too slow.
He closed his eyes and relaxed. Short daydreams came that marched by without his interference. They took him to his boyhood home in Manitoba, the merciless winter wind driving the snow across the stubble in the fields as he watched from his bedroom window. He thought of those gentle June evenings after dinner, sitting on the porch with time standing still. He thought of the way Mary would innocently stand in front of the sun and the light would outline her body through her thin summer dress. And all those years studying, plying his engineering skills, the years that went by too fast. They weren’t fond times necessarily, but the fruit of them was here before him, in the service of his species.
The mission status on his monitor let him know the stationary orbit had been achieved. There was no reason to rush, but there certainly was no point in waiting in the main capsule either. Outside was a beautiful greenish yellow world of rocky hills casting long shadows over high mesas and valleys. The wide valleys were dotted with what appeared to be small lakes, glittering in the low sun, even at this distance. The infrared thermometer read 26 Celsius below him and gradually 25 as he pointed it to his right, further from the star. This would be a permanent summer afternoon where he was from.
Lieber climbed into the landing pod and powered it up. The diagnostic checklist scrolled down the main screen when suddenly it encountered a problem. “Too much weight on board. Alarm level: medium.” He had squirreled nearly every crumb of food aboard, so the alarm was no surprise. “Tough shit, ship. I may get hungry down there.” He relented and tossed a few litres of water back onto the loading dock, but the alarm remained. Oh well, it probably wouldn’t matter.
He sealed the hatch and started the descent sequence. He was still hundreds of kilometres above the planet when the landing pod broke free, and the automated thrusters maneuvered the tiny pod to the correct angle for atmospheric entry. The velocity increased and the small space got hot and stuffy. All the insulation they could afford couldn’t fully keep the friction of the atmosphere from heating up the craft. For several minutes it became nearly unbearable, the tiny ship shook wildly as the temperature rose. The thrusters kicked in again and adjusted the angle and slowed the pod down enough to keep the heat constant. Then it began to cool slightly, and the pod offered Lieber control of the vehicle. He was now only 10,000 metres above the ground, and he looked for a smooth place to land. On the screen he watched for a clearing as he skimmed above a flat mesa, and finding none, he decided to try to land on whatever vegetation was there. He gradually floated down on some tall plant-like growths and found them yielding. He secured his breathing apparatus and opened the hatch. Outside was a gust of cool, refreshing atmosphere. There was a soft breeze blowing toward the star, and the plants were permanently bent, bowing to their god, Wolf 1061.
The mesa gave him a panoramic view for many kilometres in every direction. There was no sign of a civilization, no buildings, no clearings in the vast grasslands, no insects, no obvious animal life. His gas analyzer gave a reading of 19 per cent oxygen, with no known toxic elements. Cautiously he opened his mask and took a breath. It had a strange smell, acetylene almost, but he found the air sufficiently palatable. He turned off his suit’s oxygen and removed his helmet. Next he examined the plant life. It was what would pass for a stiff grass on Earth. It seemed to cover most of the area he could see, and it seemed to grow to about waist high as a maximum. He might experiment later to see if there was anything edible growing, but first he concentrated on the soil itself. He scraped together a small shovelful of coarse dirt and dumped it into the analyzer. It was moist and full of nutrients. Crops could thrive here.
He waded through the grass to the edge of the mesa. The nearest lake was only a kilometre or so away, and an examination of the water, or whatever liquid it was, was in order. He returned to the landing pod, had a quick snack and armed himself with a knife, just in case. He shut the hatch and was going to lock it with his fob, like he had parked his car at the mall, and the absurdity of it made him laugh out loud. “Better lock up! Looks like the rough part of town,” he said to no one in particular.
He tested the slope for loose rocks that may send him skidding down the embankment, but the ever present grass kept it stable. Part way down he turned to see if he was making a trail through the grass that he could follow back, and he could faintly make out his route. Either way, finding the pod would be easy on top of the hill. After an hour or so of scrambling he reached the shore of the small lake. It was definitely water, and very clear water at that. There didn’t seem to be any plant life in the pond, and he saw no sign of any aquatic creatures. He studied the gravelly shoreline for signs of animals that may come to drink, but there was no sign of any disturbance. He dipped a lidded beaker into the water, dropped in a green pill and shook the tube. He poured the water into an analyzer and waited for the readout. The test result was ideal, like everything else to this point. Ph of 7.0, no sign of waterborne bacteria, no coliforms. With great care and caution he took a small sip. It was tasteless and odourless, like distilled water. It hit him that he was likely the only one of the six explorers who got as far as performing all these tests.
Lieber made his way back toward the landing pod, following his trail of slightly bent grass. The uphill hike was grueling and hot, and he stopped to rest and drink some of his Earth water a few times. This planet was a blank canvas of possibilities, he thought. How rich in minerals it may or may not be he couldn’t easily assess, but humanity could at least be fed, hydrated and kept warm here, with nothing threatening showing up to this point. It was nearly time to send his report, but there was a nagging sadness he couldn’t quite identify. Was it the fact that this might be his final transmission home? That didn’t really capture the mood. He was fairly content on his own, so it wasn’t loneliness. If he was prone to loneliness they would have screened him out long before he left. Then, inexplicably, he burst into tears. He buried his face in his hands despite the fact the nearest person to be ashamed in front of was quadrillions of kilometres away.
Lieber opened his transmitter and began to compose his report. “Planet b, star Wolf 1061, Earth year 2039, the findings of Captain Lieber, Exoplanet Explorer 6. This planet is rocky and inhospitable. There is no growing medium for crops, no potable water and a hostile atmosphere. My meager supplies will be enough for me to survive a while, but there may be aggressive native life who will shorten the process for me. I am hunkering in my landing pod, awaiting the end. I wish you luck in your continued search for a refuge for our species, and I am sad I couldn’t be part of the solution. Please pass along my love to my wife Mary, and warm regards to the faculty at the University of Manitoba and any well-wishers.”
His hand shook as he hesitated a moment, then he pressed SEND.
Peace and relief swept over him. Planet Wolf 1061b would be far better off without us.
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So there it is. If you read the whole thing, thanks, but I’ll understand it if you didn’t.
Me accepting my award behind a strangely placed speaker
Everyone was being nice to me, but they might have stepped on my foot if they saw the ostentatious Cadillac we arrived in. Saturday morning I went to a one hour workshop on writing a first draft. It was excellent, and I wish I had taken notes, but I went in unprepared with no pen or paper. At least I got to hear some good advice that I will try to remember when the time comes to write something longer.
I see the blog hosting site Bloglovin’ is sending out notices again, so, who knows?, maybe they’ll send an alert about this again. I should be so lucky! I don’t have a lot to say, or a lot of time to elaborate on whatever I could say. But I want to get something out there to test the notification process.
I had a lucky spell this month, but it seems to be receding now. First I bought a keno ticket and it won $50. I bought another one and it won $41.50. Then another that won $308, then one that won $134. After that I won fifty or so a couple times, but the thrill was gone after the 308. I put a bunch in savings and pocketed the rest. Since the flurry of winnings, I have bought a few losers so I’m cutting back while I’m still ahead.
Next weekend is our big chess tournament. We haven’t had one in three years, and the response has been crazy. Normally we get around 60 players, but this year we could have had double that, but we cut registration off at 100. I have no idea if that many players will fit in our building or if there are enough chairs and tables. It should work out, but the potential for disaster is moderate. Every day I am bombarded with emails and queries, and some days I spend literally hours responding to people and transferring money. My last weeks of summer are blowing by. The guy who usually helps set up this event is having cognitive troubles, so I have done way more correspondence than normal, and I don’t know if I want to do this every year by myself. Although, to be fair, the TD I talked into helping is doing a lot of the organizing of the tournament itself, so I can be thankful for that. I complain about this event every year, but the truth is it takes me out of my routine of sitting on the sidelines. And without this sort of disruption in my life, I would stay cozily in the shadows.
I had a conversation recently with a blogger named Sherry Cassells, who writes a blog called Feeling Funny. It’s sort of like this blog (except more polished) – it’s a day to day blog of thoughts and stories, with bits of fiction she’s written added in. I highly recommend it to anyone. One thing she said to me that I am wanting to adopt, is the idea of changing this blog’s name to eightbeer_shakespeare like my email address. I have to admit, it’s catchier than Teflon Ghost for sure. When I used to walk around reading meters I would avoid getting drawn into long, time-sucking conversations with people by being so intentionally bland that people lost interest in me immediately. The downside was I often heard a snippet of their life’s story before I bored them away. So months later I would sometimes encounter the same person, and I would say something like “How did the operation on your mom’s hip turn out?” and they would be shocked and swear they never met me before etc. In my mind, I was comparing my disappearing act to the mafia boss ‘Teflon Don’ who no one could get a criminal charge to stick to, except I was more like a teflon ghost in that no one ever saw me before either. It’s sort of a sad name. If I can figure out a way to change it without deleting the 100 or so posts I’ve written, I probably will.
I’m through rambling for now. I will now resume my life as a stress case who is organizing a medium sized event and studying for a career-altering test he doesn’t really want to take. Can’t wait to see if anyone gets a notification!
