By Scott Bailey © 2014
We don’t understand
The fight between them and us
There is only us
Only Us
Technology
Confined
By Scott Bailey © 2015
Space. It stretched out before him – endless, dark, enticing. The stars were faint and blurry through the thick glass view port, moving in a slow arc across his vision.
He could feel the endless nothing all around, calling to his soul, a siren’s whisper.
Float with us. Float with us forever! Float and forget.
The dark song was as endless as dreams.
He shook his head, fighting off the draining sensation.
He needed to concentrate.
He turned away to look out the only other viewport.
This one was dominated by the dark shadow of the dead ship. It was only visible against the deeper blackness due to the fading embers of molten metal fragments of its destruction.
They too fade from sight to and die.
Like everyone inside.
He shivered.
Looking out that viewport was hurting his neck. He faced forward again. He was too cramped. He could only move his head left and right and his arms enough to use the control by his hands and the keyboards before him.
He was stuck.
Daydreams had led him here – he couldn’t let them end him here.
A beep from the computer brought his senses back to proper alertness.
It had started. The attacks were coming.
He had anticipated it, though not so quickly and not all at once.
Float….
Concentrate!
“Update”, he commanded.
The computer’s calm voice responded.
“Interceptors are on the way they will arrive in precisely 623 seconds.”
“They must be responding to the distress call from the prison,” he muttered.
“That would seem a high probability.”
Dammit! He hadn’t been able to cut that off in time.
The computer went on.
“We should send our own distress call, they will be equipped to rescue you.”
“Do not!” he commanded. “Keep radio silence!”
“Affirmative.”
They were not only equipped for rescue. They were heavily armed. Once they learned the truth – and very soon they would – weapons would their first response.
“And our firewall?” he queried.
“The outer defence has been breached but the systems have not yet been compromised.”
That wouldn’t last much longer. The authorities were suspicious already – the presence of such a strong firewall did not to allay those suspicions – so they were hitting the firewall with the best they had.
“And my program?”
“Approximately 800 seconds to completion.”
Not enough time!
He swallowed hard and took a deep breath. There was too much at stake here to fail.
He needed more time.
“Instigate firewall program 42!”
The computer complied and ran the program for him. That would keep the cyber attacks at bay for a little longer.
He shook his head. He had the nagging feeling that this was all just too fantastic!
Only a year ago the only thing he did on a computer was check social media and chat! Spaceships were a thing of science-fiction! Now here he was a master programmer and a fugitive from the authorities flying in space. It all seemed too unreal.
It was the stress of the situation he told himself and he could not afford to be distracted by it.
Besides he wasn’t actually flying a spaceship right now. He was drifting in what was little more than an escape pod.
But the ship he had escaped from was real. As were those bearing down on him. And these were not the only truths he had discovered lately.
He looked at the countdown on the program he was running.
“OK,” he told the computer, “prepare a distress call. But inject the virus I prepared.”
“That is against regulations,” the computer informed him. He barked an override code at it and it proceeded to prepare the distress call.
It was amazing what you could learn in prison. Hacking, override codes. The truth about the universe out there.
Putting him in prison had been their mistake.
Daydreams and curiosity had led him to that prison. he asked too many questions and that had got him into trouble at work and with the Government. That alone would probably not have condemned him but he had also an inventive streak. And a paranoid one.
When they hauled him for questioning he had snuck in a crude listening device.
It had not worked very well but he had caught snippets of conversation.
“He seems immune..”
“Is he any harm though?”
“ … control … inherited or just a ….. “
“He is a dreamer, not a revolutionary.”
“There we go then. We make him a believer…”
Unfortunately, the listening device was discovered – and that sealed his fate. He was shipped off to a deep space prison ship.
A deep space prison ship! One day he was in a world where the space shuttle was the most sophisticated space vehicle man had created and smartphones where the best man seemed to be able to achieve – the next he was in a world of spaceships – and space police!
It was a culture shock, to say the least.
He was dumped into prison and forgotten.
And that was the strangest thing of all. In prison, he flourished.
On earth – in his old life he had been Mr Average Joe to a T. Prison should have broken him. Yet he found that he had more freedom stuck on this ship than ever before.
He learned the truth for one thing.
There existed on earth (and space) a super élite far above anything anyone even suspected existed. They had science and wealth beyond the imagination of most people.
The rests of the population were kept in drug-induced ignorance. Cattle whose sole purpose was to provide this élite with their lifestyle.
Knowledge seemed to flow freely in prison and he absorbed it all. He learnt to program and how to hack computers.
He had vowed to expose the truth and free the world.
So he had concocted his escape. It had cost him the lives of everyone on that ship – and probably his own life too but he didn’t care.
He was filled with fury. He wanted to free the enslaved population of the human race for sure. What he wanted more though was to see the smug bastards who ruled them get their just deserts.
“Distress call is ready to send.”
He nodded, he was about to tell the computer to send it when it preempted him.
“New contacts.”
“What?”
“There are two more ships, coming in from the direction of Saturn.”
“More interceptors?”
“No. They bear all the signs of space pirates?”
Space pirates? Pirates? How could pirates exist? That would imply ….
He shook his head. There were too many questions threatening to distract him. He had to concentrate.
“Program completion has been suspended.” the computer announced.
What!?
He flung his fingers at the keyboard and dove into code. They had not yet got full control but they managed to stop his program.
Which implied they knew or guessed what he was doing.
He glanced at the other screen. The pirates would get here quicker than the interceptors! And they would shoot first!
He didn’t hesitate now. He called up his virus and made a few changes, then he told the computer to prepare it again and send it.
Then he dove back in and started a counterattack against the hackers. He managed to regain control and get his program running again. He then spent the next few minutes both fighting the hackers off and keeping his exit channels open.
While he did this he also watched as his virus took hold of the interceptors and turned them towards the pirates. They would be forced to fight each other for a bit.
The program was also done. The hackers came on in full force. He struggled to hold them back.
A fireball briefly bloomed in space. All the pirate ships and interceptors signals went dead. They had destroyed each other.
Almost there.
Now the hackers could see the program running even if they couldn’t stop it yet.
A signal flickered back to life on the screen
One interceptor had survived.
It was closing in, weapons charged.
Almost.
“Program completed!” the computer announced.
“Run it!” he shouted.
He watched the screen as the truth – all the truth – was sent out to every single person on earth.
The lies were exposed.
Come now, float with us…
No!
The interceptor would be in range soon.
He breathed easier.
He had done as much as he could for the world. Now he had to look to his own survival.
He was stranded in space, with limited resources and little time. Air and supplies running out and no hope of rescue.
After the years and years of confinement, he welcomed the challenge – relished it.
“Now this,” he said, with an almost feral grin, “is living!”
Self Publishing Ups and Downs
Well, it’s only been a week since I venture onto Smashwords so this is probably premature – but…
Emotionally it’s been up and down. I was elated that I got through to the premium catalogue on the first attempt – gives me confidence that I have the technical skills at least!
Seeing my book in the Nook store and on IBooks have me a real pleasure.
On the Smashwords dashboard, I see that 14 people have sampled the book already and over 100 pages read.
However, 0 sales.
That’s making me feel despondent. I thought that maybe I just wasn’t reaching anyone through Amazon Kindle. That my feeble marketing attempts just weren’t going anywhere.
Now? It seems that it’s getting noticed – but after reading some of it, they are not buying it to read the rest.
What do I have to do?
It’s hard to tell what’s going on though. Under Kindle, there were not stats on how many people sampled the book. So maybe I wasn’t getting noticed there. And the stats at Smashwords don’t give me reasons and details. Maybe those 14 people were expecting a different kind of book? Maybe my description is misleading in some way that I haven’t spotted?
Or maybe they just didn’t like it. There’s no feedback so I can’t really tell.
So – I am feeling a bit defeated and tired. But it won’t stop me ultimately – I will get back to writing a bit more now instead of marketing. The writing is the pleasure anyway.
Are Our Phones Snooping On Us?
This is the question posed in this recent article.
I am becoming increasingly convinced by this. Obviously having read the article I am now on the lookout. I have seen what appears to be supporting evidence.
My wife and I had a conversation about me needing a new shaver – mine has broken and it’s my birthday coming up. I have done no searching at all on shavers as what I actually want for my birthday is a cheap lightweight laptop. Despite this, I have now seen three adverts for shavers online.
Scary.
If you think about it the mobile phone has the potential to be the ultimate tool for “big brother”. It knows where you are, what you are doing, what your plans are, what your interests are and if they are listening to us then our most intimate conversations.
Talking of phones, mine is up for renewal. The market appears to have changed. I have always chosen the top of the range models as I use the features and for me, they are worth it.
Each time I have been showered with gifts so to speak. The last two times I got a free tablet, the time before that my current (defunct) laptop. This time – nothing – in fact I am being expected to shell out for the privilege.
Time for cutbacks I think. Might have to settle for something less than top of the range, this time, around, especially as I am now getting paid a lot less.
Ho hum.
The Lost Art of Listening – to Albums
Pink Floyd had a good point when resisting the demands to release their albums digitally. They argued that their music was written to be listened to as a whole – that their songs melded into one another and were not distinct entities.
I am very guilty of that. I hop in the car, switch on my phone and stick it on shuffle* – I enjoy being surprised and not knowing what the next song will be. And as I have a wide and eclectic taste in music it can jump from one genre to the next with some startling contrasts.
However, I have become guilty of only listening to music in this way. I need to sit down, relax, and make the time to listen to a whole album in order the way it was meant to be.
Pink Floyd’s Animals is a good candidate to start with. So I am off to redress the balance.
* (when I am not listening to Audio Books these days).
The Triumph of the Subconscious
A while ago – and again I have lost any links or references to it – I saw a documentary on how the subconscious can take over and solve tricky problems for you. I think it was a BBC Horizon episode but could be wrong.
It described how many great thinkers often had similar habits – like going for a walk at midday, after which the ideas would come. For many years this was attributed to perhaps the health benefits of such activities, the increase in endorphins perhaps vitalizing the brain. Perhaps that is a part of it.
Recent research has shown though that certain parts of the brain that are normally dormant start to become active under these sorts of circumstances. When someone has been struggling with a problem or a puzzle and then their thoughts are diverted onto something else – something simpler and less taxing on the mind.
Its seem that while your conscious brain is trying to solve a problem your subconscious can’t or won’t go near it. Leave the problem alone and it gets it grubby hands on it. And unhindered by all the distractions thrown at the conscious mind does a better job if it.
Anyway – it seems like something I kind of knew at some level but had never vocalised or thought about in concrete terms. After watching the program though I began to see it happening more and more – or maybe I am now biased to see that!
Today was a prime example. All last week I have been struggling with a problem at work – I won’t bore you with details, it involved a very very complex SQL query that worked fine in one situation but not in another – with no logical answer. I had tried all kinds of solutions and approaches all week with no success. To be fair to myself there was an awful lot else going on as well so I was not 100% focused on it. But if I had been I don’t think it would have made a difference. I was kind of blocked from the answer.
So this weekend I forgot all about it and spend some quality time with the wife and kids. It was Rachel’s birthday and since I have spent so much extra time at work lately I was determined not to do any this weekend.
I went to bed Sunday night – not with dread but knowing that my task for Monday was to hunker and down and crack this particular nut. I woke up Monday morning and the answer – which should have been obvious – in my head. It just popped in there.
I rushed to work eager to try it out, now dreading the possibility that it might not work. It did! That is a good start to the week!
Ageing Movies
So I stumbled upon Bladerunner on the tellybox last night. There’s an odd effect with films like this. It’s set in the future – from when it was made. 2019 to be specific. Now that future is practically here, we can see that the ‘predictions’ were well out.
However, the film still works, many such films still do. You suspend your disbelief and ignore the dates, just taking it as some unspecified time in the future.
Taken like that Bladerunner still works very well. There is very little to age it. It is still one of the greatest Sci-Fi films made and in my opinion Harrison Ford’s finest hour.
But – there was one thing that suddenly broke the suspension of disbelief for me. Three little letter – or rather three very large, neon lit letters.
TDK
For anyone like me whose teen years crossed the 80’s these three letters should be recognisable. They were all over those cassettes we used to tape the top 40 off the radio. All over the VHS tapes we used to record the late night films.
It’s almost adorable that the film makers thought they would still be around in the high-tech future – with flying cars!
In today’s film environment of more and more product placement I wonder how quickly today’s films will age? It’s already very noticeable with mobile phones. A film only has to be a few years old and the phones they are using look clunky and out dated.
I wonder if in 30 years time someone will be watching a film made today and wondering who the hell Apple were?
How times change.
Scott Andrew Bailey - Author 