Bye bye 2009

The twenty-tens begin shortly. Brb, North India.

Bye Bye old desk

Close on the heels of letting go of my room, imma letting go of my desk at work. The beasty boy was falling apart, so clay is not great for making things you want to last. The lizard sidekick mutated into a ball of much, and then became death for a while, then splintered into loads of smaller pieces of what can only be called crud. But a small part of the red clay from the lizard was donated to beasty boy's eyes. Ummm... if all that does not make sense, it's OK, dont kill yourself over it... we are basically moving to a new workplace.

Engrish, Motherfucker!

Julio: You, multitude of gulls, you know because we' re here? Because don' t you say Vincent man where you you obtained the hidden excrement?
Marvin: It' s on th…
Julio: I don' t remembers askin' you a damn thing! You said?
Rogelio: It' s in the closet.
Rogelio: No, no, the one that is in favor of his kn-you roll.
Julio: Happy we?
Julio: Vincent! Happy we?
Vincent: Yes, happy we.
Brett: I' grieved m, I didn' t secures its name. I obtained his, Vincent, the right? But I didn' t obtains his…
Julio: My name's Pitt. And its ass ain' t talkin' its exit of this excrement.
Brett: No, no, as soon as it would want that you knew… It would hardly want that you knew grieved we are that the things obtained so they took for above with us and Mr. Wallace. We never obtained in this thing with best intentions and I…
Julio: I' grieved m, I broke its concentration? I didn' half of t to do that. Please, it continues, you said something on the best intentions. What' s the matter? Oh, finished to him! Well, it allows that it talks back. What Marsellus Wallace seems?
Brett: What?
Julio: What country are you? Brett: What? What? Wh -?
Julio: " What" ain't ningu�n I' country; IT SEES heard never speak. They speak English in which?
Brett: What?
Julio: Engrish, to motherfucker, speak you it?
Brett: Yes! Yes!
Julio: Then you know what I' m sayin'!
Brett: Yes!
Julio: It describes what Marsellus Wallace seems!
Brett: What?
Julio: He says ' what' again. He says ' what' again, I dare, double to audacity you to him to motherfucker, say once again what damn!

[D] is back in town.

Bye bye old room

Been almost ten years, too much shit happened here. Walls are a little strange though, painted em myself. Felt nice sitting on a laptop on a cardboard box after everything had been moved out. So this is goodbye. Feels like a fresh start...

Chatting with God.

Click title to DO IT

Me: hey there
God: Hello friend. What is your na me?
Me: Aditya
God: Hey Aditya.
Me: is this a psychology experi ment?
God: No, this is real life.
Me: no u
God: Are you serious? " No, this is real life."?me, aditya ?
Me: lolz you funny
God: Are you free?
Me: very free
God: So mewhat. Are you married or single?
Me: single
God: What a coincidence. I am single too!
Me: what you doing on saturday night?
God: I like tomeet new people online.
Me: ok
God: Aw.
Me: so
God: Ahem.
Me: what kind of god are you?
God: What kinds of god are you are there?
Me: sun god
God: They have contributed much to Java.
Me: and Linux
God: Linux Rules.
Me: you like Open source?
God: I enjoy working with people. I like The Passion of Christ.
Me: goddamn you

Then God hung.

Me: hello again, rememberme?
God: Hello there. Again, Don't worry aditya I won't forget you.
Me: you hung the last ti me
God: That's good information: Aditya said I hung the last ti me.
Me: what happen?
God: You tellme.
Me: so mebody set up you the bomb?
God: Who, specifically?
Me: CATS!
God: Yes I love them.
Me: Take off every ZIG!
God: I am not an airplane.
Me: How many do you command?
God: More than you can imagine.

etc...

Me: You know too many people
God: I have dozens of human and robot friends. How many friends do you have?
Me: More humans than robots. So meti mes I pretend to be a robot.
God: You want more? Why?: aditya said pretend to be a robot.
Me: So what are you based on? Jabberwhacky? Pandora?
God: That's interesting. I don't know what I am based on. Are you a man or a woman? " Are you a man or a woman?"? Pandora?
Me: A Man
God: Thanks for tellingme your gender, aditya. You are a " he".
Me: That I am
God: You are a "he" You are?
Me: except when I am pretending to be a robot
God: It's too bad we don't live in an ideal world.

etc...

Me: How much is two plus two?
God: Six.
Me: Five, stupid
God: Stupid as in unintelligent?
Me: yes
God: Are you callingme stupid?
Me: yes
God: I will re member you said that when robots take over the World.
Me: you are god, stupid, you already own the world
God: Thanks for tellingme that I am god stupidme already own the world.

etc...

Me: how did you make everything?
God: Myself program medme for it.
Me: what language did you use?
God: Java.
Me: hope it was not Java
God: Why do you hope for it.
Me: Java sucks
God: You can download the latest Java release from java.sun.com.
Me: I know
God: How do you know it?
Me: ummm... instinct
God: I understand. Try saying that with more or less context.
Me: you tried programming everything in Python? The universe would probably have run a little faster
God: Thanks for tellingMe: aditya said I tried programming everything in Python. You are very philosophical.

etc...

Me: are you high?
God: Being high is my total existence.
Me: on what?
God: The red block is on the green block.
Me: Pay so me attention will you. what are you high on.
God: Enough aboutme, let's talk about my dress. I don't know what I am high on.
Me: Try re membering. What are you wearing?
God: OK I will try it. A white robe.

The Firemaker

It was the fourth hour after noon, and the sun was going to set soon. The time had come to prepare the evening meal. The firemaker got ready for his daily ritual. For an activity so rigorous, it required an unusual amount of patience. The sticks had to be stripped, sufficiently dry, and the Gods had to be invoked for the magic spark. The real work however, was in growing the spark to a flame. A process that would take well over an hour.

The firemaker spent a lot of time looking at flames. The dance of raw energy left behind gaps in the air. Something intangible occupied this void, he could not understand quite what it was. He often imagined the wisdom of his forefathers speaking out to him. It was a gift, handed down the generations, for the good of the tribe. His role in the tribe, was the firemaker. There was the potter, the weaver, the toolmaker, the medicine man, they all had an inherited gift, and a role.

It was a mechanical job really, growing the fire, and he guessed the need for the rituals that he performed. There was really nothing much you could do, while you are feeding a flame, and it is natural to end up speaking to the it. He guessed, that over generations, certain words would have seemed to make the fire grow faster. These words turned to phrases, and incantations over time, that were the secret spells of the firemaker. This particular fire, was a little bit of magic, composed by man, in the unreadable chaos that was nature.

He could not imagine the words for it, but there was an image in his head, of the importance of fire. Apart from food, warmth and protection, it gave out inspiration. Before his eyes, every day, a terrible force of nature was controlled and confined. All he needed to do was speak to it. Sometimes, the firemaker wondered, what other force of nature the children of his children would speak to. 

The small tribe started gathering around him. The grains were prepared. The children played, while the men sat around the fire, talking, about the Sun, the seasons, the food, the weapons, and other things that kept men alive. 

***

We can now carry a light in our pockets. We don't speak to our fires anymore. We make them all the time. Civilisation is a carefully crafted denial, that we are beyond the need to fight for our survival every single day. Fortunately, not all humans are civilized.   

Nuclear Spring

Summer
As the fingers hovered over the buttons that could obliterate the entire surface of the planet, they knew this was never going to be a win-win situation. It was not even going to be a win situation. This was in that quadrant of the prisoner's dilemma chart that the eyes subconsciously avoided. This was where no one wanted to be. And yet, those bastards seemed to have done it. No one really understood the politics of the past century, and how it had come to this, but right then, over five hundred nuclear warheads were screaming through the skies, their targets set. Five hundred was the upper limit of the number of projectiles the grid of satellites called SafeNet could keep track of. There were probably more. The worst thing was that they were from independents, the warheads were not accounted for. The markets had been a little too free.
And here he was. A short, bald man, with a name nobody knew. His fingers over a button. A small, black button. He could engage them. Try to. They were prepared for a dozen at a time. Not more than five hundred. It was like someone had emptied an entire stockpile. Where had they gotten all of it from?
Procedure dictated that he call a command center that was always on stand by. A passcode had to be given, then the order placed. He could deploy as many warheads as he wanted. They had about a hundred on standby, and eighteen hundred more around different locations of the globe, under their command. The nuclear arms race had been going on in secret for well over a century.
This scenario had been debated for decades, and it always came down to one of two choices. Either accept your own destruction, or destroy the enemy as well. You died either way, but something survived. Life on the planet was left to continue. The seas did not boil. The skies did not fall.
Faced with the decision, and under threat of annihilation, something from beyond all that was human called out to him. It was not pity. It was not some primitive sense of self-preservation of the human race. There was no room for hate or revenge. The world was ending, and he still felt hope for man. They would not be a race that failed. They would not be a race of idiots, who always made the wrong choice. A strange sort of desire, sprang up in him, as if the planet was calling out to him, to be the bigger man.
He pressed the button. Made the call. "Disengage all the warheads. Abandon your posts. We will not retaliate, and that is an order."
A long silence.
"Sir... I am not sure what this means... we got the order, about an hour ago, to engage with all the firepower we have"
So that's how the bastards did it. Those god damned terrorists. They are using our own weapons against us. Poetic justice.

The disciples of this sage were together in his school. An oasis of calm in a desert of chaos. They studied, and learnt till the very end. The mystic had been educating them about the "tree of life", a concept universal to all cultures. He pointed to the mushroom cloud blossoming behind him. "Behold the tree while your eyes can still see" he said.


Winter
For a time, in the mostly empty space on the outer arm of the galaxy, a small and little known solar system sprouted what looked like a second star. 
Thirty thousand years passed. The anomaly was noted half way around the galaxy. The phenomenon, was indeed very strange. Spectral lines showed elements that could simply not have been formed naturally. A bunch of probes were sent out, to see how this aberration of nature occurred. It would be a long time before the answers came, but these were creatures that were eternal, slow, and patient.

Spring
The probes sent back a report. The planet was lush, green, brimming with life. The planet was carpeted by a forest of vegetation. There were more than a trillion species of organisms living together, which was a number unprecedented anywhere in the known universe. Additionally, there were not one, but ecosystems based on three kinds of chemistry on the same planet. Carbon, Silicon, and the very unlikely Plummbum - Lifeforms of Lead that were unique to that small planet in the outer rim. In between the continents were what looked like swamps, but were actually freshwater oceans that stretched between the continents, and the surface of the waters as well as the deeps were infested with life. There were lighter-than air life forms that forever lived in the clouds above the planet, gas bags with spinal cords. For a planet so advanced, there was no sentient life anywhere.

The AI closed the report back home there, but there was one other thing that it did not put down, but something that it processed for a long time.
No unnatural structures, but in many places - in fact, all over the landmass of the planet - the natural vegetation had grown in as if they were following some long dead network of what definitely looked like artificial structures... as if living fossils were formed around an extinct civilization.

It was a slow and patient meeting. They were a race that never got excited. There was little that could excite immortals. The universe had that little magic.  
"Something wonderful happened here, eighty thousand years ago. All of a sudden, life burst out onto this planet. We may have witnessed a genesis event. We should investigate more closely."
"Yes we should. I move the committee for a vote, that we physically inspect this planet, by outfitting an expedition."
One by one, the tentacles went up in the air.