The Specter of My Two Lives

Jessica doesn't stir as I crawl out of bed for my four o'clock in the morning ritual I have most Saturdays. My wife is a light sleeper and it's her habit of sleeping late after we spend the night making love. I quietly rush to the bathroom to get dressed while trying not to make a sound. Somehow, I accomplish the task and slip out of the bedroom without Jessica even turning over.

Walking down the hallway, I pass the doors to the kids' rooms and listen to their slow breathing. I have about two hours before they both rush downstairs for cereal and pop-tarts and their own Saturday morning ritual of television cartoons. Of course, on Sunday morning the will invade Jessica and my bedroom before sunrise demanding daddy start making pancakes. While I smile in anticipation of the joy associated with that task, I long for the comfort of my short taste of solitude.

Once downstairs, I go to the kitchen to make coffee and toast a bagel then smother both halves with cream cheese. With my breakfast complete, I go to the recliner in my study where I can watch ESPN uninterrupted on the big screen television mounted on the wall. It's a small indulgence, but as I look over at my desk covered in legal contracts and business reports I must read before the end of the month, these few minutes of peace are mine.

On the television, commentators babble on about which college football team will take the national championship as I eat my bagel. It's all meaningless given the state of the world, but I enjoy the lazy discussion and wish life was that simple. If I'm responsible, I'll play Mark Jenner, business attorney and spend at least six hours today reading the contracts and reports. My profession has given me a great life with a gorgeous wife and two smart kids. I'll suffer any drudgery to see that we can keep our perfect life. That's when I glance outside the window and see the falling autumn leaves.

My yard is covered in brown, red, and gold leaves. My mind wanders and I remember that I never cleaned out the gutters last year. My mind leaps at the chance to avoid spending most of the day confined in the study reading an endless supply of boring legal prose showing how people often put their best efforts in screwing someone else over to squeeze out a few more dollars in profit.

A couple of hours later, I run back upstairs to change into something appropriate for outdoor work. Jessica is stirring but is still laying in bed with the sheets wrapped seductively around her naked body. The noise I make changing clothes brings her closer to wakefulness but she is resisting. As I leave the bedroom, I hear her stretching and yawning in a way that to me is so sensual my intended purpose starts to fade from my mind.

I turn around to get one last look at her body. She is half asleep, laying on her side facing me as I stand in the doorway.“Where are you going, Mark?” She asks almost purring like a kitten.

“The gutters need cleaning and its a choice between them and proofreading contracts for most of the day. The idea of going over legalese today makes me a little nauseous.”

“Come back to bed,” she drowsily said with a smile. “Why do you have to clean the gutters today?”

“They're clogged with leaves and I don't relish the idea of doing this as the weather gets colder and wetter,” I say considering the idea of paying someone else to do the job. My main reasons being my wife's obvious amorous mood and the fact I really didn't want to drag the ladder out and climb up to the second-floor roofline.

Jessica begins to say something but at that exact moment, her cell phones starts buzzing. She jerks up, turns and grabs the device off her nightstand. “It's my mom,” she says before taking the call. With that, the mood is broken and I proceed outside to accomplish something relatively constructive.

The extension ladder is at my feet, laying on the ground as I look at my house. It's a Victorian-style dominated by the dual cutaway bay windows of the living room on the first floor and those of the master bedroom on the second. Built-in the 1950s, Jessica and I spend a bundle getting it back in shape after buying it from the estate of the old man who owned it before us.

The most expensive exterior renovation was the installation of vinyl siding. The wood siding it replaced had rotted in many areas giving the house a cold, haunted look. The old man who owned it before us never had the funds nor the family for proper upkeep. Years later, the neighbors still tell us he was a sad and bizarre little man. The front porch is what my wife and I are most proud of, it was rebuilt from deck flooring to railings. The addition of wicker furniture and ceiling fans makes it look like something from the early twentieth century.

I know every inch of the house, inside and out. It is my home and I see myself living there with my wife for the rest of my life.

I set up the ladder with the first goal of cleaning out the second-floor gutters. They are badly clogged and will be the most trouble when the winter rains start. The extension ladder feels safe and secure as I climb upward to the gutter. It's leaning against the house at a proper angle with the pads at the base resting on hard ground.

I climb up and reach the spot where I want to start cleaning and insert the spray wand into the gutter. After pressing the wand's lever that would let the water from the attached garden hose begin blasting out the leaves I get nothing. I look down and see the damn water hose has kinked up against ladder blocking the flow. A smarter man would just climb down and straighten it out, instead, I jerk the hose a couple of times and that's when shit goes sideways.

I lose my balance and begin falling from the second story. As typical with such events everything seems to go into slow motion as I return to earth. Which was relatively okay and acceptable until my head slams hard up against the first-floor roof segment. After that, I don't remember hitting the ground.

***

My next memory is waking up in a hospital room. I'm dazed and weak but the wires and tubes attached to me are few. The room is of course quite spartan, but something is bothering me. I don't see any flowers or cards that you would expect to receive from friends, coworkers, and especially family. There even isn't drawings from my kids hanging on the walls. I try to move but realize that I'm a glorified mound of jello. Speaking is equally problematic with my voice nothing but a weak whisper. Panic grows with me wondering just how long I was unconscious.

Some indeterminate time later a nurse walks in my room and sees that I have returned to the land of the living. “Well, hello Mr. Cross,” she says with a well-practiced bedside manner. “Dr. Mathews is here right now and I'll alert him come see you. You were in a coma for over five months but regained some brain function two weeks ago. I'll admit we were starting to worry about you.”

I heard everything she said but what stuck in my mind was her calling me by the wrong name. “My name is Mark Tanner,” I croak out puzzled about why she was calling me by the wrong name.

The nurse looks puzzled and slightly concerned. Those emotions are soon replaced with a look of condescension. “Yes, disorientation is common in cases like yours. I'll get Dr. Matthews and let him explain the details to you.” She says before quickly retreating out of the room.

All the psychiatrists I've seen since returning to consciousness are freaking out over my case. Not only did I return to the living believing I was another another person, I had crafted a detailed life complete with wife, kids, and a career. It took days for me to regain some sense of my true identity, to realize that Mark Jenner was something akin to a dream construct during my semi-comatose phase. That my real name is David Cross, and that I am a contract computer programmer and web developer who is divorced and has no real family. The one solid commonality I have with my fantasy man, Mark Tanner is the head injury. Apparently, I fell down a flight of stairs where I live and banged up my head enough to almost die.

In fact the headshrinkers are pushing the idea that my fall off the ladder in my dream state caused me to regain consciousness. When the docs first suggested the idea it prompted my first fit of laughter and for me to curse my man Mark for his carelessness. There's no use to lie, I'm in mourning, while my dream wife and kids never existed, their absence hurts like real deaths.

It gets worse, huge chunks of my memories as David Cross are missing. I have some idea of where I was born, a small town in Ohio back in 1980 but nothing of my elementary days up until high school. I know my parents were killed in a car crash sometime in 1991 and I was raised by my material grandmother after that. She in turn passed away during my time at Ohio State. I have no memory of their faces and it took a social worker digging through old DMV records to retrieve pictures of them.

I was married for a short time but my ex-wife now lives in Portland, Oregon. While the social worker said my ex-wife didn't say anything bad about me, she refused to take anytime out of her busy schedule to call me. That she had kids now and a demanding job and that digging up her past wasn't worth the effort.

I spend two months in a psych ward being watched before they turn me loose. Luckily, I at least have a home and a job to return even though I've been out of action for six months now. Apparently my contract is rock solid with me bringing in a nice cash flow and great health insurance. Near the end of my stay in the psych ward, my boss visits me and we discuss my programming skills, which I still possess, and when I return to work.

“David, I'm going to guess you still want to work from your apartment?” Ms. Davenport asks me as we sit in what passes as the day room of the ward.

The question is a surprise to me, in fact I had somehow pictured David Cross being an office cubicle rat living and dying by computer code. “Yes,” I say wondering if I ever ventured into the office at all.

“Well David,” Ms. Davenport says standing up to leave, “we know how you cherish your privacy and how well working at home does for your coding output.”

The Uber driver that picked me up from the funny farm drops me off at a mid-level apartment complex on the other side of town. I've regained a few memories of Greenville, South Carolina where I live, but they're nothing special with them centered on a nearby Applebees.

Unlocking the door to my third-floor apartment, I am underwhelmed by my decorating style. In the living room are a generic couch, recliner, and large-screen television sitting on a cheap entertainment stand. Inside the stand, I find both a Playstation Four and X-Box gaming systems along with the assorted accessories. The room has nothing in the way of pictures, posters, or any other type of decoration. It's abundantly clear the pre-accident David Cross never really did anything outside the computer.

The bedroom is equally bleak consisting of just the bed and a cheap dresser likely made by the same manufacturer of the television stand. In the closet is one suit, which I imagine was for the exceedingly rare occasions when I have to report to the office. Before walking out of the room, I see some humor in the fact that at least pre-accident David made his bed before he went outside to fall down the stairs.

It's in the second bedroom that I make a disturbing discovery. pre-accident David was using it for an office and it contained two computer servers on opposite ends of the room. One was clearly for my job with assorted papers and books related to work laying on the desk next to it. Across the room, the other server was a homemade job with nothing on the desk next it to suggest its purpose. While I had no memory of what I was using for, something about it creeped me out.

Later that evening after resting and getting settled in, I attempt to log onto the mystery server. I immediately find out I have no memory of my passwords so easy access was impossible. As I played around with the system trying to get in and inspected the hardware, I noticed the server was set up to surf the Dark Web. A segment of the internet where things can get dangerous and extremely illegal.

Later that night, I laid in bed racking my damaged brain for the smallest shred of a memory of what I would be doing on the dark web. Despite my fears, I didn't trash the server or try to access it again. In fact, you could say I came to ignore its very existence in my apartment.

Weeks go by and I slowly fall back into my job and living, although calling my shallow existence a life was a gross overstatement. Wanting more, I start seeing a psychiatrist and attempting to connect with people outside work. Slowly at first, I begin to venture out to movies, coffee shops and even attend the local theater to watch a play.

The really big step was creating an account on a dating site. I had been alone far too long and wanted a relationship again, although I still had no idea why my marriage fell apart. No memory of my ex-wife had resurfaced and she still refused to contact me or my psychiatrist. Making contact with her would have filled in the gaping holes of my past. But it was clear that at the minimum, whatever brought an end to our relationship was bad enough that she wouldn't give me the consideration you would an injured animal. It didn't say much of the person I was before the accident.

Months pass by with me continuing to grow and adapt, so much that my coworkers began asking me to parties. I became quite the party favorite telling my story. Just when I was beginning to think my coma fantasy life as Mark Tanner was behind me, it intersected my real life again in the most unexpected way.

My boss, Ms. Davenport had invited me to her house for Thanksgiving, it was in a section of Greenville famous for its old houses, a section I have no memory of ever visiting. Wanting to enjoy the cooler weather and admire the houses, I park my car several blocks away at a local park and begin walking. I was almost at the Davenport house when I frozen in my tracks. I suddenly knew exactly where I was at without looking up. My mind screamed to keep walking but it was no use. I turned to my right and saw a house that I had come to believe only existed in my damaged brain.

It was the Victorian-style house of Mark and Jessica Tanner, two people I was convinced only existed in my mind. This house was no close approximation nor lookalike, I knew every inch, inside and out and could walk in that very second and make myself a cup of coffee.

Long dead emotions about my fantasy Jessica and kids roared to life. I wanted to go home so badly it hurt my soul. But I knew it wasn't my home, that whoever lived there didn't have any idea about me. That's when the front door opened. At first, all I saw was one of the kitchen windows way in the back but a second or two later, I began to make out the silhouettes of a man in a woman standing just on the other side of the doorway. I knew immediately who they were, it was Mark and Jessica with one or both of them about to come onto the porch.

I began walking away as fast as possible without drawing attention to myself. It was just a quickly forming theory but pre-accident David could have used that second server in the apartment to hack into their home security system. It wasn't a leap in logic to believe that such a well-off family would have all the internet-connected cameras associated with modern systems. How pre-accident David discovered the Tanner family, I literally have no idea but I sure as Hell didn't want them to see me.

They had their life and I was starting to have my own. Walking away was still the worst pain in my life.

Georgetown's Wooden Boat Show

Despite the rain coming up from the Gulf of Mexico, my son and I headed down to Georgetown to look at all the wooden boats on display for the Wooden Boat Show. Held on Front Street on the third weekend of October, it's a excuse for me to bug out from my suburban purgatory and enjoy my hometown. As soon as my son and I arrived, it was clear that the rain had limited this year's attendance. 

An old Chris Craft from the 1930's if I remember correctly. This little baby is a far cry from the mass produced fiberglass models that have been common for decades. The little houseboat in the background is a recent homemade model that would be perfect on a placid lake. 

The old Strand movie theater which was remodeled years ago and is now used to show plays and small concerts if I'm correct. Saw the original Star Wars here back in 1977, and came a hair's breathfrom talking the lady who ran the theater to giving me the original movie poster. The Strand here was built so long ago it once had a segerated balcony for African-American residents. 

A huge model of a fictional pirate ship that was priced at $375. Just to rile my wife back home, I texted her a picture and said I had accidentaly knocked it off the shelf and had to buy it. Her responce was predictable, she texted back, "Haha, nice try." It sucks that she has me that figured out.  Yes, I did want this monstrosity, but I would have had absolutely no place to keep it. The model is quite large and wouldn't fit on the fireplace mantel.   

Little outboard boat that was excellently restored.

If I heard correctly, this is the original moter that has been totally rebuilt. Not sure I would place this baby back into the water. It's more art to me than a useful device for recreation. 

Forgot everything I read about this vessel other than it is in excellent shape and looks more like a home than something you would sail to different destinations.

Front Street has recovered from the collapse of its business district and is nearly a perfect showplace of upscale shops and eateries for locals and tourists. But always in sight is the old steel mill that is constantly going from closed to "partially open."  Eventually it will close permanently, but the cleanup will take years.

A sailing kayak that I would have bought if only my wife wouldn't have beat me to death with the included paddle once I returned home. Been wanting a kayak for years but I'm going to be forced to limit myself to the plastic/fiberglass kind. Not only was this handmade baby expensive, it was ungodly heavy. 

Add caption

One of the vendors was selling ships and lighthouses in bottles. Beatiful creations that were nice but I couldn't make myself spend the money on one just to have it sit someplace half forgotten. Yeah, I wanted that big pirate ship, but truthfully it would have suffered the same fate.

Had a great time, even with the rain and will go back next year if possible.

The Limits to Human Existence

One of the questions of existence that has been stuck in my head like an irritating song is the nature of human intelligence. The main question being would a hypothetical alien crew out zipping around the galaxy even classify Homo sapiens as an intelligent species.

I mean we kill each other over debates about whose god is best, ridiculous ideas of ethnic and cultural superiority, and political ideologies just to name a very few. Truthfully, I can easily see an alien starship captain telling his crew to lock the proverbial doors to the starship and turn off all electronics as they ride through our solar system in hopes of not being noticed by the naked primates living on the third rock from the sun. Being a little less tongue-in-cheek, I believe there is an argument that these starfaring aliens would see human civilization on the same level we look upon an ant mound on the side of a busy road. But there is another question about human intelligence that is bothering me today.

A recent article published on the Phys.org website pondered the question as to whether our species has reached the limits of its ability to figure out the universe. That we will not only never discover the answer to certain mysteries of the universe but we will never be smart enough to ask the right questions. The idea being that while chimpanzees know a lot about their native environments, but you would never dream of asking even the most intelligent of that species any questions about things like astrophysics or genetics.

Yes, through science and mathematics we have deduced much of the nature of the universe and then created experiments to test our observations. But our heads seem to be bumping up against some limits, such as being unable to connect gravity with the other fundamental forces of the universe being electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force. Human consciousness and how it came to be out of inert matter is another question that, from everything I read, is giving the scientists fits. Yes, research is ongoing and yes, there have been other questions in science that seemed intractable in the past but now seem commonsense.

Many philosophers believe we might be reaching a point of “cognitive closure” when it comes to certain aspects of the universe. This gets back to why I mentioned you would never ask a chimpanzee anything about astrophysics nor genetics. To believe humans aren't subject to the same limits in some fashion is the height of hubris. The tools we create do allow our species to probe beyond the limits of our senses so we can ask new questions. But could there be a point when the fundamental limits of our intelligence prevent us from being able to even conceive the right questions?

I have to add another possible limit Homo sapiens may be facing is our ability to cooperate on the larger scales now demanded by our problems like climate change. While human civilization has not been organizing on a linear scale, it has generally progressed to larger entities with periods of chaos in between. We have more or less gone from small villages to cities to fiefdoms to empires to nation-states with each paranoid over possible violations of their sovereignty.

With over seven billion people on the planet now and numerous issues that can only be adequately addressed on a global scale, the nation-state cannot meet the challenges of climate change, environmental collapse, resource depletion, nor many other problems we face. However, any attempt to establish a strong global entity to meet these challenges is viciously opposed by most governments, multinational corporations, and other established interests.

Our cognitive limits might slow down human progress until we can create new tools like general artificial intelligence who can supersede our primitive brains, the greatest danger to our survival might our inability to cooperate on the needed levels. For years it was believed that Homo sapiens wiped out the Neanderthals through warfare, while that is still a possibility on a smaller scale, another theory is gaining favor. That the Neanderthals could not fully adapt to the changing conditions they faced. That even after hundreds of thousands of years of species survival they could not adapt to the sudden onset of new conditions like the ending of the last ice age. Whereas Homo sapiens could adapt allowing them to inherit the planet.

This gets back to my initial question, has our species possibly reached the limits of its existence?

Ruminations of a Nautical Rodent

Well, the old Chinese curse about wishing someone to live in interesting times sure went into full effect last week. Because if the news that the Orange Bastard actively pushed the president of Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Biden to gain political advantage in the coming election isn't a national nightmare, I don't want to imagine what could be.

Then to make matters worse OB goes on live television and publicly states that China should investigate former VP Biden as well. I frankly don't what to make of OB's behavior in this matter. Covertly pushing a foreign country to investigate a political opponent is a serious crime but to brazenly commit the same offense on live television in front of millions of viewers defies all reason. All I can think is that OB is daring the House of Representatives to impeach him with the belief the action will motivate his tried and true gaggle of ignorant sheep to vote in November 2020.

See the issue here is that while impeachment now has to occur, anyone who thinks the senate under McConnell will vote to convict OB is just as delusional as that gaggle of right-wing sheep I just mentioned. What's worse is that if what I've read is true, McConnell can call for a simply majority vote to dismiss the entire case against OB once the Articles of Impeachment are sent to the senate. So we end up with OB riding high, defiantly claiming the senate has cleared him of all crimes.

I'd like to think that given what we know to have happened and the evidence in the form of text messages between others in the administration it should be an open and shut case. But reactions on the right runs from those denying anything he did was a crime to those believing it all a vast conspiracy since the Democrats can't beat him at the ballot box. The latter being something I heard two individuals talking about just a couple of days ago.

Once again one of my biggest concerns is that loose nature of my fellow liberals who can't help but live in their own form of La-la Land. I could be wrong but from what I'm reading on social media their posts suggest that many believe that once OB is formally impeach the Secret Service will then handcuff and throw him in jail and his illegal alien, glorified hooker of a wife out of the country.

Sorry, that last one is a mean thing to write but we have kids in concentration camp cages on the border. And there is a new documentary on Netflix showing peaceful and productive people who have lived in the United States for years being rounded up and tossed out of the country. I don't claim to have any special compassion or love of humanity, given my “sheep” comments, but I simply cannot imagine treating human beings that way.

If there is an ideal outcome to how I believe things will unfold is that Democrats must set aside all their near suicidal tendency of infighting and unite around the nominee whomever he of she might be. Here is where I admit that I have been leaning towards former VP Biden because he seemed the most electable. The other Democratic candidates are all outstanding individuals, except Bernie who I believe is a disaster, there is much to be said about Biden's political career and his ties with President Obama. That being said, my second favorite is Senator Warren. She is clearly intelligent and has actual plans were as Bernie just makes overly dramatic proclamations but has no real accomplishments.

While I do not believe VP Biden or his son, Hunter did anything illegal in their dealings with Ukraine, the optics of the situation on the surface look bad. In fact, I cringed upon hearing that Hunter Biden had anything to do with an Ukrainian gas/oil company since it would certainly become an issue in the coming campaign in some fashion.

Yes I know, somehow OB's family can have oodles of dealing with all manner of shady business people with loose ties to Putin and the Communist China and all that brings up on the nightly news is a fifteen second mention. The best example being Ivanka strangely receiving scores of Chinese patents for her products like their penny candy. Only the fools or stupid would not have some idea that it involved a quid pro quo in some fashion.

I have no real idea how recent events will unfold, but none of this is good for the country as a whole. Not that there is much chance of it, removing OB from office will not be a solution, he's just a symptom of the disease affecting American politics. Both parties have long since divided the country up into opposing groups.

Republicans have the rich white folks, a chunk of the disaffected working poor nursing grudges towards immigrants and minorities, Bible thumpers, and the warmongers. Democrats of course have the classic liberals, radical progressives, tree huggers, most of the minorities, and the peaceniks. A natural occurrence given how various groups run to the politicians that promise to take care of them. If you have President Lyndon Johnson working for civil rights for African-Americans and you have Nixon courting pissed off Southern whites. The obvious problem though is that this polarization only gets worse over time since neither party can alter its basic platforms without pissing off their dependable base voters. This breeds politicians who make a point of only working for the groups that keep him or her in office.

Where we are courting true disaster is the erosion of established procedures and traditions in how we govern. The best example being the abuse of the Senate filibuster to derail legislation. Far too many people in this country worry about the United States collapsing like the ancient Roman Empire. It's a bad comparison, a better analogy would be the failure of the Roman Republic where the rules were not so slowly corrupted to the point it fell apart leading to brutal civil wars.

Yeah, I think things are that bad. The Republican Party is now a cult with OB as its declared messiah. He will never leave office willingly whether it be through impeachment and conviction, defeat in 2020, or the completion of a second term. The only way I see him leaving with a smile is if the rumors are true about Don Jr. is looking to run for POTUS in 2024. Given the mindless makeup of the Republican Party now, I'd bet money I do not have that he would easily will the nomination.

The American ship of state is leaking badly right now with countless termites and worms eating through the hull. A thinking person wouldn't be wrong to start wondering when its time to act like a rat and flee the doomed vessel. The election of 2020 will be an absolute make or break for the American experiment.

A Different Form of Separation- Part One

Erin Moore spent her last free day on Earth with James Thomas at their favorite resort on the Brazilian savanna. James was still in bed asleep as she sipped a cup of coffee while sitting on their room's balcony looking out toward the giant domes that preserved the last remnants of the Amazon Rain forest.

For a moment she considered taking a picture of the massive structures to show her future children, but ultimately decided against the idea. If the mission counselors stumbled upon the holographic photos as the last of her personal effects were uploaded to the ship's servers they might get a wild hair and takeaway her flight status. Too many global credits had gone into the mission to have even one crew member dealing with the psychological trauma of permanently leaving Earth. What was truly bothering her was the message flashing on her personal datapad.

The legal A.I. entity her lawyers employed had finally worked out all the details on the termination of Erin's five-year marriage contract with James. The pad screen listed out how their mutual property was being divided along agreed lines. The whole procedure being a testament to the timeless idiocy of legal mumbo jumbo since her personal property mass limit was five kilograms. Erin's situation simply didn't lend itself to keeping any of the items they bought as a couple.

Is this an example of the separation anxiety the mission counselors were always warning us about, she thought to herself. Erin took refuge in the idea that the reason she and James did a five-year contract was that their careers were always going to be considered above the relationship. She had applied for a slot on one of the Alpha Centauri colony missions right after graduating from university. James, already a pilot in the United Earth Space Navy, required the marriage leeway to keep his career viable. Having to turn down a possible posting someplace faraway like the habitat orbiting Pluto because of a wife and kids would kill his chances for promotion. The cold war between Earth and Mars might be over, but there were still colony habitats beyond Saturn that adhered to the totalitarian Neo-spartan ideology.

It wouldn't matter to me, she thought to herself as she climbed back into bed and moved closer to her former husband. She would be on the Gaia by tomorrow afternoon leaving James forever. She knew he had already started communicating with one of the female members of his squadron. Erin cynically figured they would be an item before her cold sleep chamber had fully suspended her body between life and death.

Even though Erin was nursing a self righteous grudge, she maneuvered herself into James' arms. This was no time for second thoughts Erin continued to herself, years of struggling to make it through the selection process and then even more time training for the chance to be part of the last crewed colonization expedition to Alpha Centauri was something she couldn't pass up. Even if it meant letting James go as she and the six-thousand other pioneers went into cold sleep for the fifty year voyage to the planet now called New Haven.

***

The cargo shuttle lifted off from the Boa Vista complex carrying the last batch of crew members for the Gaia. In her seat, Erin clutched the small box James had given her just minutes before boarding. After making her promise to open it before going into cold sleep, he turned and coldly walked away without saying goodbye. Not exactly how she imagined their last moments, but Erin was ready for it nonetheless. Feeling slightly hurt, Erin walked down the passageway to the shuttle and found her seat. Barely ten minutes later the shuttle rolled onto the runway and lifted off into the atmosphere and beyond.

The trip to the Centauri colony shipyards at the lunar Lagrange-4 point took a day and Erin used it to close up all her other loose ends. She made one final call to her mom and dad in San Diego then to a few former teachers and professors. Erin felt strangely detached talking with her parents for the last time but she ended the call without shedding a lot of tears. Her younger brother was married and living with his wife and child in Scotland. Given that the global restrictions on family size had been removed, her parents would almost definitely see another grandchild and maybe even a third. Babies running around a house did a lot to sooth the pain of of parents missing their crazy daughter who wanted run off to another star system.

It wasn't until the latter part of the flight that she finally opened the box James had given her. Inside was an even smaller box that had a strange type of memory crystal embedded into the top. A small strip of paper had the words: “Push down on the crystal with your thumb.”

Unfolding the small table attached the seat in front of her, Erin placed the box on it and followed the instructions. A couple of seconds later a miniature, hologram of James appeared above the crystal. When it began to speak, Erin lost all her carefully crafted composure.

“Hi sweetie,” the hologram said in James' voice, “bet you thought you would never hear or see me again. This is one of the newest toys the damn Martians created in their labs. When I was there as an liaison with the provisional government one of the Martians told me about these keepsakes. See, they take a scan of your brain down to a molecular level and embed it onto a hyper-memory crystal. Through the use of some seriously crazy software this device creates an artificial personality allowing a limited form of interaction.

While this representation of me isn't a true artificial intelligence, we can still carry on a conversation. Hope you don't mind me tagging along to New Haven. And no, this avatar doesn't have an emotional algorithm, so I'll never be jealous of whomever you hook up with at the end of your voyage. Just imagine, you can show your grand kids the weirdo you were married to back on Earth.”

For the rest of journey on the shuttle, Erin hid in one of the zero-gee restrooms crying.

***

Gaia was falling towards Earth using the planet's gravity to slingshot out into interplanetary space where its main engines would then ignite. Erin was in engineering monitoring the several orbital tugs guiding the colony starship on the first leg of its long journey. Earth filled the large screen above her workstation with Erin wondering just what James was doing down on the surface. She had tried to call him several times but was sent to voicemail after each attempt. It was clear their breakup wasn't as cut and dry as they originally planned.

Erin duties did not prevent her from enjoying the majesty of her home world. The Earth's human population was down to under six-billion with it projected to fall much further due to two centuries of global planning and management. It took the Chaos Times of the twenty-first century to finally force humanity to evolve beyond infantile ideologies and realize their own extinction was a real possibility. Born in the mid-twenty second century, Erin couldn't fathom the world that had existed up until the 2050's when the stirrings of the New Rationalists began to be heard over the continuous, destructive static of what was then human civilization.

While much had been done to first stop the destruction then repair the damage, the flooded coastlines of the continents were a testament to human stupidity. While the atmosphere was approaching pre-industrial levels and the planetary climate had stabilized, the massive flooding that had devastated whole countries and submerged entire islands was irreversible.

Once clear of Earth and its orbital system, the Gaia's main engines were pushed up to one-hundred percent it was time for the crew to enter cold sleep. Erin entered her cold sleep chamber with the assistance of two human technicians and a restrict intelligence robot. The drugs slowing her metabolism and preparing her body for the cold temperatures made her thoughts hazy. The numerous intravenous lines and monitoring cables attached to her body made Erin feel less than human.

“Okay lieutenant,” the technician said as she calibrated the readings on Erin's medical panel next her chamber, “when you go under all brain activity will stop. The next time you wake up wee will be in orbit around New Haven or whatever the people there finally decided to call the planet.”

As instructed, Erin began counting backward from twenty feeling her mind increasingly slow down. She never reached fifteen before she went under and the techs and robot moved on to the next crew member. However, a final sliver of a thought about James crossed her mind before she was engulfed by the abyss. It was more a feeling than actual words, but as her mind faded she wished to be back on Earth with him.

Netflix's I Am Mother--A Review

America's collective societal angst is a subject that really should be looked at deeply by whatever compassionate and intelligent people are left. It doesn't matter what end of the political spectrum you sit, but most Americans seem to spend their lives engrossed in their real and imagined fears. Our movies, books, television shows, and even news programs are often overwhelmed with a steady supply of post-apocalyptic and dystopian stories that actively feed on our fears. A sad statement for a people who claim to live in the, “Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.”

Please understand, I'm not saying there aren't real dangers lurking out in the world. Some are literally world-ending with the worst being climate change and environmental destruction. Pushing aside the willfully ignorant and their irrational cries of denial, the burning of fossil fuels to power our civilization has just about become a form of suicide but also an attempted murder of all life on the planet. But on the other end of the spectrum, I'm not cowering in fear over the Muslim guy sitting two rows in front of me on the airplane. Nor the Hispanic family sneaking across the southern border because they don't want to be murdered in their sleep by the local gang.

There are more esoteric fears though that while potentially real, are far more nebulous and detached from our everyday lives allowing them to be examined in a thoughtful way. The Netflix movie, I am Mother fits that description even though it has several flaws in the story and premise.

I am Mother is essentially another killer-robot story dealing with the usual Artificial Intelligence system out to rid the world of those nasty humans. The nice twist in the story though is that the genocidal A.I. only wants to drive humans extinct as the first step in bringing them back. The movie opens with the camera strolling down deserted futuristic corridors of an underground facility with titles telling us that an extinction level event has occurred on the surface and that the human population is now zero. But the next title says that the corridors we're seeing are part of a Repopulation Facility housing 63,000 preserved human embryos.

"Daughter" with her siblings

We then see Mother, a clunky looking humanoid robot who can curiously move with the grace of a dancer and the speed of an athlete, place one of the embryos into an artificial womb, a spherical glass container, where it grows to a normal-sized baby and is later decanted, for the lack of a better term. While Mother looks overwhelmingly like a machine instead of a human female, it raises the baby with a tenderness that rivals the abilities of real flesh and blood caregivers.

Mother calls this female child “Daughter” and tells her that when the time is right she will have numerous brothers and sisters who will then go on to repopulate the devastated Earth. But first Daughter has to endure years of training in every conceivable subject from electronics to philosophy.

As Daughter grows into a young woman she naturally becomes restless with her bunker lifestyle and wants to see the surface. Mother avoids actual details but says such an excursion is impossible because everything above is both dangerous and toxic. But a line is crossed for Daughter when a simple mouse gets into the facility and gnaws into some wiring disabling Mother and other systems. Daughter is able to capture the mouse and restore power to Mother, who promptly flips out and throws the innocent rodent into an incinerator and then scrubs down a large section of the bunker.

Soon after that Daughter decided to put on a hazmat suit and go outside without asking permission. Here's where I have my first problem with the movie, because just as Daughter is about to open the massive metal doors to the outside world she hears someone pounding on them. The moment seemed to me to be highly contrived damaging the overall excellent story.

Whatever the case, Daughter opens the door to find a wounded woman begging for help. Daughter brings in the stranger and tried to hide her from Mother while not explaining to the injured woman the physical makeup of the “person” she shares the bunker with. It doesn't go well because the stranger has an infection from her injuries and is close to dying unless surgery is performed, something Daughter knows Mother can easily perform.

Once Mother and the stranger learn of each other things go heavily sideways. The stranger demands the weapon Daughter confiscated after she crawled into the bunker's airlock and passed out. She tells Daughter that robots like Mother hunt humans on the surface while refusing to let the robot near her. That robots like her have come close to sterilizing the surface of all life. Mother in turn throws up her mechanical hands playing it cool telling Daughter the stranger is nuts and if she dies it's her own fault.

Daughter forges a compromise by performing the surgery herself saving the stranger. What happens next is a bit of a Cold War between Mother and the stranger with Daughter as the prize. Mother moves to reinforce her influence with Daughter by allowing her to pick a “brother” from the frozen embryos and insert it into the artificial womb. The stranger ups the game by convincing Daughter to go behind Mother's back to find the truth and she does with the results extremely unsettling. Mainly that Daughter learns that Mother attempted to raise other children before her who were killed off when they didn't measure up to the robot's standards.

Daughter decides to leave with the stranger but is stopped by Mother and thrown into a locked room. As Mother tortures the stranger for information on other survivors, Daughter breaks out and sets off the fire alarm to distract Mother in hopes that the stranger and her will have enough time to get away. It doesn't work, Mother confronts them at the airlock door forcing the stranger to take Daughter hostage and threaten to kill her if the robot doesn't open the door.

Mother lets them go and while Daughter is pissed, she does follow the stranger outside. Once outside, Daughter and the stranger spend their time crossing a desolate surface avoiding robots who recently have begun terraforming operation. Daughter also learns there are no other human survivors, and that there hasn't been for many years. Stranger lives alone in a storage container that had long ago washed ashore.

Daughter decides living with Mother in the bunker is better than playing post-apocalyptic beach bum with the stranger who ain't playing with a full deck herself. This is my second issue with the movie, Daughter discovery of previous children being murdered by Mother after they didn't measure up to her standards would preclude any reconciliation. But I let this one pass because Daughter felt duty bound to go home partly because her brother was even then cooking (growing) in the artificial womb.

Daughter heads back to the bunker and finds the entrance guarded by legions of heavily armed robots like Mother. The murder 'bots let Daughter inside without an issue where she finds Mother holding a freshly decanted baby brother in her arms. Mother explains that she is not just one robot but an A.I. system that controls them all. That she instigated the extinction event with the expressed purpose of saving humanity from their self-destructive ways. That Mother was going to guide her 63,000 kids to be more ethical and to understand the bigger picture. At that moment all I could think of was the American army officer from the Vietnam War infamously saying they had to, “destroy the village in order to save it.”

What's even more darkly funny is that I have heard several nutcase progressives-liberals say something similar explaining why they voted for the Orange Bastard or just stayed home on election day back in 2016. Seemingly proving the statement that humans are to inherently stupid and self-destructive to survive much longer. This goes back to the fact that global climate change will seriously frak up our civilization in the coming decades but we have millions of people in this country scared to death of the brown-skinned people praying differently and those fleeing dehumanizing poverty and drug gangs.

Getting back on subject, somehow Daughter is able to convince Mother to let her raise the new baby and all the other kids, That she has passed all the ethical and philosophical tests Mother had thrown at her. Surprisingly Mother agrees, and lets Daughter shoot her with the stranger's weapon in the one place on her body that will be “fatal.”

This is yet another problem I have with the movie. Just minutes before it was explained to Daughter that Mother is an A.I. system and that even then literally had thousands of identical robots hanging around outside the massive doors of the bunker. The destruction of that one robot simply didn't make any sense to me. Daughter was explained and shown in the movie to be highly educated and trained in robotic and computer repair. The scene ends with Daughter looking inside the storage room where all the other embryos await their chance at life.

Possibly to close those pesky plot holes, we have one final scene of the stranger back in her storage container home. Another robot version of Mother steps inside the container explaining to the stranger that her survival was something she planned to aid in her agenda. Mother further tells the stranger that with her role fulfilled, she had no further use of her. The final scene ends with it heavily implied Mother kills the stranger.

Okay, as an existential fear, a rogue A.I. going all murderous Skynet is something I'm not losing sleep over. Not that some famous and knowledgeable people like Elon Musk and the late Stephen Hawking haven't warned the public that there are reasons to be wary of creating sentient entities that can out think us. Whether we're near the technological level to create A.I. systems with human-level intelligence is something up for debate. But the given the warp speed advancement in computer systems,

But in the case of the fictional Mother, her genocidal approach to advancing human development has more to say about human behavior and even our past history. I feel genocidal worries are strictly something humans have created given our past behaviors. Many informed people worry about how easily groups can justify the organized murder of people different from themselves.

Conversely, some groups, stupid white folks here in America, have irrational fears of minorities ganging up on them and getting revenge on centuries of mistreatment. These delusions are one of the reasons have little to no respect for most right-wingers and have given up on “reaching them.” Fear that Muslims/Hispanics/Gays/Atheists/Liberals are on the verge of rounding up all God fearing Christians is the first step in justifying pulling a preemptive genocide strike on them. Yes, I have personally listened to such people express in actual words their fear that they are in grave danger of organized persecution.

Further fueling my own fears, I've lost count of the number of times someone on social media has said I should be “disposed of” or removed from society for expressing my view on gun control or any of a number of other “commie ideas.”

So, while I am Mother was an entertaining movie with enough interesting concepts to make it thought provoking, I don't believe a real A.I. would go all Skynet. If such a system was created with Mother's stated desire to improve humanity, I believe it would go about it covertly by taking over various computer systems. Such an A.I. could at the very least alter election polls, promote specific voices on social media, and yes, kill certain individuals who possess enough influence to hamper its desired goals.

Understand, the race to advance artificial intelligence technology is something the major nations are heavily pursuing for both commercial needs and to promote their individual national security agendas. The real near term threat that comes from A.I. is for one nation to have a major breakthrough that would allow it to easily penetrate sensitive communications or databases. The medium term threat would be an A.I. system that could be used to guess the responses of an enemy nation. This would make geopolitical strategic thinking even more of a chess game with move and countermoves.

I tend to side with the opinion that sentient A.I. systems won't be invented within the next hundred years. I've read enough to understand there is no real understanding of consciousness, so I just don't see a new version of Edison or Alan Turning building one on purpose. That's not to say we couldn't stumble into creating one or have an existing but limited A.I. evolve human-level awareness.

All things considered, I am Mother is something I moderately recommend. It's flawed but enjoyable and frankly, quite the improvement over some of the other science fiction movies Netflix has made.

A Little Hope

From my viewpoint the world geopolitical situation is one huge alleyway dumpster fire that threatens to engulf surroundings buildings. Yeah, I fully understand that its been like that since history began. The difference from the vast majority of what has gone before being the nearly eight-billion humans now living on the planet and a whole host of apocalyptic weapons that could sterilize everything down to bacteria. Not that there isn't beauty, wisdom, kindness, compassion, and a little hope going on all over the place, its just that the blazing dumpster tends to over shadow the tiny flower growing from a crack in the sidewalk.

About a years or so ago my wife and I stumbled upon a video showcasing disabled kids living in Chinese orphanages. Being that our daughter was adopted from China, we know more than the average people about the conditions these kids have to overcome. What we learned about one small boy though broke our hearts.

Wu Keyuan was born without ears and was seven years-old at the filming of the video. We quickly learned that airplanes were his favorite thing to draw because that was what his mom and dad would use to come get him and take him home. What tore me to shreds was that past a certain age China doesn't let orphans get adopted, and that Keyuan was already past the point of easy placement for kids with no disabilities. But in the video I remember Keyuan repeatedly saying that he had to “Be patient,” that his parents would come.

It didn't take much to realize that Keyuan probably learned that response from an overworked staff dealing with more kids than they had energy and time to give. The image of little Keyuan stayed with me until I googled, “Chinese orphan with no ears” last week and learned some happy news.

A couple living in Singapore saw Keyuan and having already raised three other boys more or less moved both heaven and Earth to bring him home. As a parent of an adopted child I realize that there is no clean, happily ever after. The trauma of being an orphan and leaving his friends behind will be tough on Keyuan. Then there is his hearing disability which will require numerous surgeries to correct and years to recover. But with a family now to support him just maybe things will work out.

With the world going to shit and powerful men doing their best to make it worse, I'll take this one ray of hope as a sign things might one day get better for us all. 

China orphan who broke our viewers’ hearts finds a home, 4,500km away in Singapore

Eight-year-old Keyuan is spending his first Chinese New Year in Singapore with his new parents - who fell in love with him after watching a Channel NewsAsia documentary on China’s unwanted children with disabilities.

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/cnainsider/china-disabled-orphan-keyuan-singapore-adopted-alenah-9965340