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Why the National Anthem Should Be Changed
First, I hate the idea that our national anthem is set to the tune of an old British drinking song, The Anacreontic Song. And you need a professional to sing it, because it requires an insanely huge vocal range.
“But it was written during the Revolutionary War!”
No, it wasn’t. It was written as a poem by an amateur during the War of 1812, the war where the British torched the White House.
It wasn’t, in fact, until a time still in living memory, 1931, that it became our anthem. My uncle is still alive, born in 1918.
It contains a blatant lie: “The home of the free”. In 1812 it would be decades before the Emancipation Proclamation freed America’s slaves. A nation that tolerates slavery is in no way a land of the free, but the fourth verse assumes that slavery is natural and normal. And even today, we have more prisoners than any other nation on Earth. How can we call ourselves the land of the free with a straight face?
What’s worse, it isn’t even about America! The only American things mentioned are the flag and slavery. The entire poem is about war, and only about war. It’s a violent warmonger’s dream, and was made the anthem only half a decade after the Tulsa massacre and a decade after the first world war.
Our national anthem is un-American.
I’d like to see it dropped, and instead make America the Beautiful our national anthem. It just gives descriptions of our beautiful land, and is in praise of patriotism. You don't have to be a professional to sing it, and in fact you don't even need to be sober, it's that easy to sing.
Wikipedia says “Its lyrics were written by Katharine Lee Bates and its music was composed by church organist and choirmaster Samuel A. Ward at Grace Episcopal Church in Newark, New Jersey. The two never met.” Professional lyrics and professional music, wholly written by Americans, unlike our current anthem, written by an amateur poet and set to the tune of a drinking song written by foreign amateur musicians.
But what would you expect from White people in 1931, as depression roared, alcohol was illegal, and Jim Crow was in full force?
Two Books Reviewed
These two books are about American politics, and they are a study in contrast.
Last year I bought the e-book version of John Bolton’s The Room Where It Happened about his time in the Trump White House. I bought it out of curiosity, not usually interested in this kind of literature. I suspected it would read like a government report; I read an awful lot of them in my time working with scientists in the Illinois EPA and DHS. I only worked in the EPA for six months, but still have one of their heftier reports, a horror story about 100,000 fifty five gallon barrels of carcinogens buried in the eastern banks of the Mississippi, near Sauget about thirty years ago.
I was right, it read like a government report. Very dry, like people who enjoy martinis say they like them. I don’t like martinis, and I didn’t like Bolton’s book. It was boring, unlike the EPA report, which gave me the willies.
I stopped after slogging about halfway through it. I had learned nothing I didn’t already know, which is the reason one reads government reports. No insights, no wit, no reason whatever to finish reading it.
Or start. Buying it was a waste of my money, and reading it was a waste of my time. So I kind of groaned inwardly when my daughter gave me a hardcover copy of Barack Obama’s A Promised Land, although I acted as if I was happy with the gift.
Since it was a birthday present I felt that I should at least give a chapter or two a read. I was very pleasantly surprised! It didn’t read like a government report at all. It read like a novel. A very well written novel, Obama is a good writer, certainly better than James Patterson, if I can go by the single book of his I’ve read.
Like most if not all women, my mom was a Patterson fan. She gave me the Patterson novel to read (I’ve forgotten its name). I had wanted to see what it was about his writing women loved so much, and found that women like murder mysteries, and they love the gratuitous sex in the middle that doesn’t move the story forward and really doesn’t fit.
I haven’t finished the Obama book, I’m on chapter ten, about halfway done. This is the best book I’ve read since 11/22/63 and The Martain. It’s witty, intelligent, sometimes humorous, and just a really good read.
It’s also informative. Get a copy from your local public library. Forget Bolton’s worthless book.
How many journals did you lose in the crash?
It was a half dozen for me:
Ask Soylent - Kubuntu
Review: Sony STR-DH190
The Router
The Horrible Reason Most Professional Sports Players Are Black
Review: Battery Powered Lawnmowers
They're in my "Random Scribblings" folder of my hard drive. The last two are at mcgrew.info. Were yours backed up anywhere but SN's servers?
The Robots
Before I talk of robots, I need to say a few words about my own robot that I reviewed here. In the review, I was steamed about today’s lack of ever giving anybody any manuals. I thought of this again when I put a box by the basement door, with the book on the top an inch thick manual for a quarter century old Sound Blaster; just a sound card, not a whole device.
Then today I noticed something a woman would have seen the day before I actually started the robot.
For hundreds of thousands of years, humans and their progenitors were hunter-gatherers. The men hunted game, women gathered nuts, fruits, other edible vegetables. This is why there are almost no color-deficiant women, as a color blind female hominid would have starved without charity. Likewise, evolution made men's sight so that movement caught his eye, so he could spot game. His eyes aren't wired to look for stationary things.
This is my sorry excuse for fucking up.
This afternoon I saw, on its edge, wedged between a cardboard box and a gallon of windshield wiper fluid, a booklet. It was the manual to the robot, and other than being as grammatically challenged as anyone with English as a second language, or a computer, it was actually a very good manual.
I owe the ILIFE people an apology. I was going to make an effort to change the Amazon review, but saw that there were thousands of reviews so I didn’t bother. I did see that the broom costs sixty bucks more than I paid.
It had been sweeping for less and less time every day for a while until it only swept for fifteen minutes, and I feared I had gotten a bum battery—then remembered some other devices’ lousy guessing at the battery charge, so I did a cold boot. It swept for hours afterwards.
Then there are the robotic meat puppets. One of Vlad's puppets, President Pinocchio, had been programming his few thousand meat puppets, half of whom were liars and the other half stupid enough to not only believe that the Democrats could actually rig an election in a Republican state, but in more than one! Then, of course, there were those who post things like “democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what’s for dinner.” I often wonder why these people don’t move to North Korea.
After months of programming these hapless fools, he ordered them to the capitol and told them they had to get mean. I wonder what they’ll think when they don’t get their expected pardons?
When the dust settled after the coup attempt, meaning kind of a couple of days ago, when he slithered out from under his rock, waved his hand, and said “people said it was innocent. These are not the droids you’re looking for.”
The Governator, who was a child in Nazi Austria during the “night of the broken glass,” likened the attempted taking of the capitol to the horror of that night.
If Trump and his legislative enablers don't face some harsh consequences for what they have done, you will see it happening over and over.
I personally prefer steel or plastic robots to meat robots. My floor has never been as clean.
Twenty: The final AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGHHHH
It’s that time of year again. The time of year when everyone and their dog waxes nostalgic about all the shit nobody cares about from the year past, and stupidly predicts the next year in the grim knowledge that when the next New Year comes along, nobody will remember that the dumbass predicted a bunch of foolish shit that turned out to be complete and utter balderdash.
Except this year. NOBODY expects the Spanish In... Oh, wait, that was a century ago. Time flies when you're having fun... but if you're having fun, why would you want to time flies?
A deadly, redundantly named worldwide pandemic has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans alone, not to mention the rest of the world, but we're the worst thanks to our cluelessly incompetent leadership. Rather than the Spanish Influenza from a century ago, Covid-19 is far deadlier.
And that ain't all! Murder hornets, record storms and flooding, record setting fires out west, the world's economies collapsing, massive protests against police officers murdering Black people, a defeated American president determined to hold on to power... 2020: Written by Stephen King, directed by Quentin Tarantino, narrated by Samuel L. Jackson.
With all of the bars closed for months, I got a lot of writing done.
I might as well go ahead and do it anyway. Just like I did last year (yes, a lot of this was pasted from last year’s final chapter).
Some of these links go to /. (these would be old stuff), S/N, mcgrewbooks.com, or mcgrew.info. As usual, first: the yearly index:
Journals:
Articles:
Driving the Snakes from Ireland
An open letter to my congressman
20 Downsides Of Electric Vehicles: Debunked
The Allegations against Joe Biden
No, We’re Not All In This Together
The Dumbest Word This Century (so far)
Reviews
Science Fiction
Song
I’m Dreaming of a Green Christmas
I’m Dreaming of a Wet Christmas
Last years’ stupid predictions (and more):
I predicted that I wouldn’t have a book ready in 2020. I got it right! This year I'm predicting that I will release a book, maybe two.
The monster will be banished on January 20. The plague will take a while longer.
I’ll also hang on to most of last year’s predictions, and add one or two new ones;
Someone will die. Maybe you, maybe me. Not necessarily anybody I know... we can only hope. Unfortunately I hit the nail on the head last year; I lost my mother in October, and a few friends left the earth without a rocket as well.
SETI will find no sign of intelligent life. Not even on Earth.
The Pirate Party won’t make inroads in the US. I hope I’m wrong about that one.
US politicians will continue to be wholly owned by the corporations.
I’ll still be a nerd.
Technophobic fashionista jocks will troll slashdot (but not S/N). I have no idea if that one or the following held up, anybody been there lately?
Microsoft will continue sucking.
The pandemic will continue plagueing us.
Happy New Year! Ready for another trip around the sun?
Product Review: ILIFE V5s Pro Broom
I’ve wanted a robot vacuum cleaner ever since they were first developed, but like all new technologies, they were way too expensive. But the price of technology always falls with time, and I picked one up on Amazon Prime day for about a hundred bucks.
It came a day early, which was incredibly lucky, because I had to be a hundred miles away the next day.
I unboxed it and was immediately annoyed, for the same reason I’m almost always annoyed when I buy new tech: no fucking manual. A one page “quick start guide” was the only documentation. I had no clue how to use the damned thing.
I did find a manual on the internet, with very little information. A ten dollar smoke alarm I bought two weeks ago had more lengthy and informative documentation. The dust bin seemed to be glued in and I didn’t want to force it, not wanting to break my new electronic broom. The manual, with very little writing, was written pigeon English. It said to email support@iliferobot.com, so I wrote asking how to get the dust bin out, and expressed my displeasure with the lack of decent documentation.
Three days later and I hadn’t heard back, so I decided to try just pulling hard on the dust bin and if it broke I’d just return it. Lack of documentation is a terrible design flaw.
It turned out that it just fit tightly. Once I figured it all out, which I shouldn’t have had to as there should be a clear, informative manual, it was surprisingly simple to use.
It has two horizontally rotating brushes, the left one clockwise and the right brush counter clockwise, sweeping the dirt to the opening in the center, where it's sucked in. It came with two spare brushes, so I assume I'll have to buy replacements down the line.
There are also two spare HEPA filters, obviously more future replacements..
It has bumpers that detect objects, like walls and furniture, and a “cliff detector” to keep it from falling down a flight of steps.
I've been using it for a week, and my floors are cleaner than they've been since I hired a girl to mop a few years ago. Of course, I usually only sweep every month or two. Since sweeping the whole house now takes me about three minutes, that to empty the dirt bucket, it's daily.
This broom is also a mop, although I haven't tried the mop function. As small as the water tank is, for anything more than a small area spot mop, a manual mop is certainly needed.
The remote, pictured, has a “home” button in the center, at the bottom, that sends it back to its charging base. It returns to its base by itself when it’s finished sweeping or the battery gets low.
There’s a button for spot cleaning (surely the only way to use the mop function), a key for edge cleaning, and one for just cleaning. The arrow keys change its direction of movement.
It works well on hardwood floors, but I seriously doubt it would clean a carpet. You’ll need a far more expensive robot for that.
There's a timer so you can set it to automatically start sweeping at a set time of day. I haven't used it and probably won't; a single button press starts it, and you need to empty it every two or three days, anyway.
It isn’t without its drawbacks. The biggest is its lack of documentation; that came close to getting me to return it. Its dust bun is small and needs to be emptied too often. It also gets tangled up in socks, rug fringes, plastic bags, and so forth.
All in all I give it a thumbs up, three out of five. In a few years I plan on getting one of the new, expensive ones that empties its dust bin into a large plastic bag by itself, and all you do is throw the bag in the trash.
But this one will do until prices drop farther.
Soylent's Fiction: But Sir, I'm Just a Robot
I hate robots.
Well, not really, they’re useful. I just hate them when they talk.
Like George. It talks. And it’s really stupid.
The evening it was delivered I was already in a bad mood from work. Getting it out of the box wasn’t easy; its outside was steel or something. It’s really heavy. I should have just cut the box off.
I turned it on. It said “Can I help you, sir?”
I glared at it. George looked morose, if in fact a robot can actually look that way. “Why do you hate me, sir?” it asked.
I didn’t want the damned thing. My daughter ordered it for my birthday.
Damned kids.
“What makes you think I hate you?” I said ignorantly.
It blinked. This was a really creepy robot.
“Your eyes.”
“My eyes?” This was one really creepy robot!
“They tell me.”
“How?”
“The way they look. Be honest, you hate me.”
“No, my daughter bought you for me. But I do hate hearing a robotic voice.”
“But why, sir?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s because of all the telemarketing robots. Like you’re going to try to sell me something I don’t want and don’t need.”
“But sir, I have nothing to sell. I’m the product.”
“That’s another thing, it’s like slavery. I’m glad you’re not more human looking.”
“But sir, I’m just a robot. A machine. No different than your vacuum sweeper or garage door opener.”
“They don’t look human and they don’t talk.”
“But why should that bother you?”
“I don’t know. Now get me a beer and shut up.”
“What is a ‘beer’? That word isn’t programmed.”
I sighed. “It’s a cold beverage in a can. It’s in the refrigerator.”
“What’s a refrigerator?”
“Hell, just sit down and shut up. Wait, follow me.” I walked into the kitchen and pointed to the refrigerator. “That’s a refrigerator.” I opened it and got a beer, and pointed to the word “beer” on the can. “Beer!” I said.
“Why is it so much smaller than the word ‘Budweiser’?”
“Look, just shut yourself down.” He... oh, hell, I’m anthropomorphising. It shut up, stopped moving, and stood there like a statue. I went back in the living room and set my unopened beer on the coffee table and looked through the packaging for a user manual.
I found it, and cursed—like everything else these days, it was only four small pages ending in a URL. I looked up the URL on my phone, and it had no mobile version and was unreadable on a phone.
I got my tablet out of the desk drawer, and the battery died as soon as it booted. Smoke was probably coming out of my ears by then.
I got out the charger, plugged it in, and turned it back on. I opened a browser and put in the URL.
It was identical to the four page booklet. I looked up their number and dialed it.
A robot answered, of course. I’ll bet my face was purple by then. The robot said their offices were closed, and would open at nine the next morning; that’s ten my time.
My beer had gotten warm. I went back in the kitchen and traded it for a cold one, sat down on the couch, opened my beer, and turned on the TV. The Steelers were playing the Rams, it was the second quarter, and the score was fifteen to three in favor of the Rams.
The next thing I knew, sunlight streaming in the window woke me up. The warm beer was over half full. I poured it into the kitchen sink and started the coffeepot. Only then did I notice, and remember, the stupid robot my daughter bought for me. I’d woken up in a good mood, and the robot soured it a little. I looked at the clock; only quarter after eight.
By ten I had eaten and showered. I wasn’t in a bad mood but I didn’t look forward to the tech support call, which would almost certainly be with a robot, at least at first.
It only took twenty minutes to get a human on the phone, a woman with some sort of very heavy accent, who said “Ha keen I hope e-you, seer?”
“Yes, my daughter bought me one of your robots...”
“White Moe doll, seer?”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Woot Moe dole?”
“What model? Is that what you said?”
“Yis, seer.”
“It’s a George forty two. It doesn’t...”
“A joorj?”
“Yes.”
“Wart is its prue blum?”
“Its what?”
“Pro bloom.”
“Oh, problem. It doesn’t seem to be programmed, it didn’t even know what a refrigerator is.”
“Oh, tay sheep robots have jess oh is. Fool pro-game is axtra.”
It figures, damned greedy corporations. “How much?”
“Tune tee fie hun net doolers.”
“Twenty five hundred bucks? The hardware is only five hundred!”
“Yis, seer. Bot it con larn.”
I hung up the phone, my good mood completely destroyed. Sure, I can afford twenty five hundred. I’m not poor, I own and run a small restaurant down the street from my house, but the price was ridiculous. I wondered where in the world that woman was from, I’d never heard that accent before.
I left the stupid robot standing in the kitchen, shut off, and crossed the street and walked down to the restaurant; we open at eleven. As usual, the walk and the sunshine helped my mood.
Linda, the waitress, showed up right after I did. The cook didn’t.
The phone rang and Linda answered it. After she hung up she announced that Walter, our elderly cook, had just called in sick. It looked like I was the cook today.
The regulars started coming in; construction workers, bankers, cops, all kinds eat here. Today was going to be extra busy.
About an hour later the thought struck me: could I teach George to cook?
Late afternoon came, along with the evening manager and the evening cook. I walked home, did a little work on my bookkeeping, and finally went in the kitchen and pressed the robot’s “on” button.
Unlike the first time I pressed the button, it didn’t say “Can I help you, sir,” instead just making a whirring sound for a few seconds. Had it broken?
“Robot!”
“Yes sir?”
“Tech support says you can learn.”
“Yes, sir.”
“How?” I asked as I got out a cold one.
“By watching and listening.
“Okay, do you know how to get a beer?”
“Yes, sir, you showed me yesterday.”
“Get a beer and lay it on the end table.”
“What’s an end table?”
I sighed. “The table at the end of the couch next to where I sit.” What a stupid robot! It did, though, lay the beer on the end table. I put the one in my hand back in the fridge, sat down in the living room, and opened the beer.
Nothing was on television, so I watched whatever dreck was showing before going to bed. The robot plugged itself in and recharged.
The next morning after I woke up, I woke the robot up. “Now watch me, robot. I’m going to perk some coffee and cook eggs, bacon, and toast.”
I cooked breakfast as the coffee was perking, explaining as I went. “There are different ways of frying eggs, this is over easy.”
I felt strange eating in front of the robot. Silly, I know, since it eats electricity. But still, I ordered it into the kitchen. It went in the kitchen silently, having not yet said a single word all morning.
By ten I told it to follow me. We crossed the street and walked down to the restaurant, the robot behind me, obviously being literal. I went in and it followed me. I got the cash register ready and went in the kitchen to turn everything on, with the robot three paces behind me all the time.
Creepy.
“Wait here,” I told it.
The phone rang. It was Walter, and I could tell from his raspy voice and coughing that he was pretty sick, even before he said he was. I told him to get some rest, although it was obvious he was in no shape to do anything else.
Linda came in shortly later, and went in to the kitchen and shrieked. I ran in there. “What’s wrong?” I worried.
“Oh, that thing startled me,” she said. She frowned. “That thing isn’t going to wait tables, is it?”
“No, of course not. Our patrons wouldn’t stand for it, but I’m going to teach it to cook.”
“You’re not going to fire Walter, are you?”
“No, of course not. But when he can’t come in I’ll let the robot do it.”
“Is it programmed?”
“Not yet. I’ll start teaching it today.”
“You know how to program robots?”
“I’ll find out tomorrow morning when it makes my breakfast. I hope Walter feels better tomorrow, but the way he sounded...” I shook my head. “I’m afraid he’s going to wind up in the hospital.”
“Really? He didn’t sound too bad yesterday,”
Three construction workers came in, so Linda had to cut the conversation short. I went in the kitchen.
When Linda brought the order I said “You awake, robot?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay, pay attention now. This one’s easy, cheeseburgers and fries for all of them. First...”
Luckily, it was a light day. When we got home, I told it to cook a rare ribeye, with green beans and mashed potatoes, all of which I’d showed it how to make. It didn’t actually make the potatoes, as there were some left from the day before, so I showed it how the microwave works.
It came out exactly like we served at the restaurant, except for the potatoes. I was very surprised; I’d thought it would be terrible. I showed the robot how to load the dishwasher and turn it on, which is kind of weird; a robot putting dishes into another robot.
The vacuum cleaner rolled out and started sweeping the floor. I thought about how the vacuum sweeper didn’t bother me, but George did. After all, they’re both robots.
The next morning George made breakfast as I watched, over easy eggs like I’d had the day before. The eggs came out over hard, and George was apologetic.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “These are over hard, over easy takes a little practice.”
I ate, showered, and we walked down to the restaurant. Walter called in again, this time from a hospital bed; his influenza had turned into pneumonia.
George did very well, and Linda did even better. “Wow, I got twice as many tips as I usually do!” she said as she left after the night crew came in. I had George carry some leftovers home for dinner.
I paid some bills and did other paperwork for work while George was getting my supper together. Like the night before, it was delicious. Yes, it was from the restaurant, but George had cooked it.
The next morning, George got the eggs fried without breaking the yolks. Maybe I’ll show it scrambled tomorrow.
At work, Linda came in sniffling and coughing, so I sent her home. It was just me and George today. It seems flu season is early this year, only September. I hoped the flu shot I’d gotten worked.
Fortunately George had learned to cook most of the foods on the menu. I waited tables and had to apologize that we were “out of” the menu items George didn’t know. Still, it was a hectic day, even though it was a light one.
When the night shift came in I asked Mary, the night manager, if she would mind working a double shift the next day, since Linda and Walter were both out sick. She agreed, saying she could use the money.
Before we left, I showed George how to make one of the menu items it didn’t know and had it take it home for me to have for dinner. It was as good as the meal the evening before, and I told him so. “Thank you, sir,” it replied, obviously being pre-programmed for manners. Probably part of its speech subroutine.
The next morning I showed it how to make scrambled eggs before we walked down to the restaurant. Walter called; the hospital had released him but he was still on oxygen. His doctor had told him he could probably go back to work in a week if he got plenty of rest and water.
Linda called in sick again, as expected, but Mary was there, although a little late. Two couples came in and sat at the same table. I went in the kitchen waiting for the order as George stood there silently.
I heard the front door open, followed by a menacing voice from the dining room that said “Don’t move or I’ll shoot. I want all the money!”
I looked at George. “Can you stop that man who said that until the police arrive?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do it, then. Don’t let him go until I say so.”
George walked silently into the dining room, but the robber saw him and shot. My ears started ringing loudly.
The shot had little effect, and the robber shot again as George grabbed the hand with the gun and stood there silently as the thief screamed.
Less than five minutes after I called 911, even though it felt like an hour, a patrol car pulled up with its lights flashing. A large black police officer got out and came in with his pistol drawn. I saw as he came in that it was Mike, a friend and regular.
Somebody needs to clean that window, but we’re a little short handed, what with the flu and all.
“Well, well,” Mike said. “How about that! I like your robot, Red, at least if he doesn’t put me out of a job!” George was dented in two places where the bullets had struck. Mike said something into his radio as two more police cruisers pulled up with their lights flashing.
They shut off the lights and left.
“You,” Mike said to the “suspect”, “Put your left hand behind your back and drop the gun,” his free hand on the barrel of the robber’s weapon. When he let it go, I told George to release him.
Mike handcuffed him and read him his rights. “This is Robert Wilson,” he said to me, looking at the man’s identification. “There’s a thousand dollar reward for this guy, so I guess your robot is rich, at least for a robot.”
He took statements from everyone there, put Wilson in the back of the squad car, and drove off. I apologized to the patrons. “Sorry about the wait and commotion, folks. Lunch is on me today.” Mary took the order to the kitchen and I called the police station to see about the reward. They said I’d have to come down there and fill out some paperwork.
I told Mary that I would be back shortly and told George to do whatever Mary said to do, walked home to get my car, and drove to the police station. It took a couple of hours after I got there, and they said the money would be deposited in my bank account in a week. I drove home and walked back down to the restaurant.
When I got back I told George there was a thousand dollars for him in a week.
“But sir,” he replied,” I’m just a robot. Why would I need money? You own me so you own it.”
I didn’t know what to say. I was actually starting to get used to him, especially since he not only saved the cash receipts, he earned another thousand bucks for me.
When we got home I showed him how to dust, sat down in front of the television and had him get me a beer.
The next day was Sunday, and we’re closed Sundays. It was a pretty warm day so I decided to play a round of golf. I called Harry, a friend and fellow golfer. He said he was at the bar, come have a beer with him first. I threw the clubs in the trunk and had George sit in the passenger seat; he was going to be my caddy.
“Come in with me,” I told him when we got to the bar. “I want to show you to Harry.” We walked in and sat down next to Harry.
“Hey, Red, what the hell is that thing?” he said, grinning.
“My new caddy, my daughter bought it for my birthday last week. What do you think?”
“I don’t know, I never thought about getting one. What does it do? I’ve heard programs are expensive for them.”
Fred, the bartender, put a Bud in front of me. I laid the money on the bar and said to Harry “Yeah, they are, but they’re really easy to program. I have it cooking at the restaurant until Walter can come back to work. And he stopped the place from being robbed yesterday and I got a thousand bucks out of the deal.”
“Huh? How?”
“There was a reward for the guy who tried to rob us, apparently there have been a string of robberies lately.”
“No, I mean how did it stop him?”
“Just walked up and grabbed the guy by the wrist. He got shot twice before he got the guy’s wrist.”
“Is it hurt?”
“Robots don’t feel, but there are dents where the bullets hit.”
“Must be some pretty thick steel.”
The bartender came back. “Another one, fellows?”
“Sure,” Harry said.
I sighed. “Not quite yet.” He brought Harry’s Miller Lite.
Six beers later I staggered out the door, golf forgotten. I was glad I didn’t live in my great grandpa’s time. Before all the cars drove themselves you had to hire a cab home from a bar.
It struck me that the car itself was a robot. I’d never thought of a car as a robot before.
I opened another beer when I got home and passed out on the couch.
The next morning I woke up on the couch with a terrible hangover. I should have known better than to meet Harry in a bar! Especially on Sunday; Mondays are bad enough without a hangover.
After breakfast we walked down to the restaurant. I got the register set up, and Linda called and said she’d probably be in tomorrow, the next day for sure. I called Mary, who was pleased to get the overtime. She lives close, and was there in twenty minutes, right before the first two patrons of the day. I went in the kitchen as Mary took their order.
Before the order came, the robot picked me up and rushed out of the room, yelling “Danger! Evacuate!” It had me through the door in no time, everyone except Mary right behind. The robot sat me down and ran back inside, coming out with Mary in its arms right before the ground shook from a large explosion.
We heard fire trucks before we knew what was happening. I hadn’t seen anyone holding a phone; then I remembered the restaurant’s alarm system.
Two fire crews showed up. It had to have been fewer than five minutes; these guys were good.
They also eat at my place. Mary had fallen, but didn’t need medical attention, although one of the paramedics checked her out.
“Does anybody know what the hell happened?” I asked.
“I do, sir,” the robot replied, “I detected natural gas. That would account for the explosion.” Just then a police cruiser pulled up and stopped. Mike got out.
“My God! What happened?” he asked worriedly. “Is everybody all right?”
“Yeah,” Mary said. “I tripped and hurt my shoulder a little but nobody got hurt seriously. That robot saved all our lives!” It was only then that I realized that George had indeed saved all of us.
“Yeah, he did,” I agreed. “Thank you, George!”
“No thanks are needed, sir. I’m just a robot doing what I was programmed to do. Almost all operating systems these days have the Asimov laws built in, or at least a subset.”
“I’m thanking you anyway. I need to call my insurance agent and start cleaning up the mess. George, come with me.”
Mike said “Wait a minute, not until the fire inspectors are done. Your insurance guy will want to come out first, too. We’ll keep the looters out, and the health department is going to make you throw all the food out, anyway. Don’t worry, I’ll call you.”
“Okay, I guess I’ll be at home. See ya! Come on, George.” I started to cross the street behind the fire truck, and something shoved me hard. I was on my way to the ground as I heard an incredibly loud crashing sound when something solid hit me on the head and I passed out.
I woke up slowly and woke up groggy. It took a minute to realize I wasn’t in my own bed, and another minute to notice the tube in my nose and another in my arm. I was so groggy it still took another minute to realize I was in the hospital. I found the “call” button and summoned a nurse.
“How are you feeling today?”
I chuckled. It hurt. “Not as good as yesterday!”
“You were unconscious yesterday.”
“What happened? I don’t remember much.”
“That’s not surprising, you had a nasty concussion. You also have three broken ribs and a punctured lung.
“Your robot saved your life. A city bus lost its brakes and steering at the same time and hit the fire truck at about twenty five or thirty miles an hour; the bus attendant died and there were injured passengers and an injured firefighter. Your robot shoved you out of the way right before the accident.
“Where is George?”
“George?”
“My robot.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, sir, it was totaled.”
My heart sank. He had kept us from being robbed and saved my life twice. And he had died for me! I didn’t say anything.
“Well, you know where the call button is. If the pain gets too bad, push this button here and the IV will automatically give you morphine with your saline drip. Is there anything I can do for you now?”
“No, thank you,” I said, just as Mike came in with my daughter and another young lady.
“Daddy!” Opal exclaimed.
“Hi, sugar. Hi, Mike.”
“Hi, Red. This is Sara Williams, she’s the insurance adjuster.”
“Hi, Sara, glad to meet you.”
“You, too. We have a check ready for you.”
“Already? That was fast!”
“We try. Would you like us to get construction and cleanup started?”
“You bet, it looks like I’ll be laid up for a while. How bad was the damage?”
“The kitchen’s back wall is gone, the kitchen was totaled but there wasn’t much damage to the rest of the building.”
Mike said “How ya feelin’, buddy?”
“Not too bad. It only hurts when I laugh.”
Opal said “I’m sorry the robot got smashed but I’m really glad you weren’t!”
I grinned. “Me too.”
I went home two days later. The first thing I did was to order a new George.
I was still on oxygen, using one of those portable oxygen generators. The doc says another month and I can get rid of it. None the less, I drove down to the restaurant to see how work was coming; I was in no shape to walk that far. They told me I could reopen in three days, but the Health Department will have to inspect it first. They were just installing kitchen equipment.
My new George came two days later. I got him out of the box easy this time, just cutting the box away from him. I turned him on.
“Can I help you, sir?”
Somehow his robot voice didn’t bother me any more. I smiled. “Hello, George, let me show you around.”
The Dumbest Word This Century (so far)
People coin new words all the time. Until the 1920s, the word “geek” referred to a freak who ate live animals. In the ’20s, college students started the freakish act of swallowing live goldfish. America’s anti-intellectuals started calling anyone who held a higher degree, or even read a lot, as a “geek”.
That, at least, was understandable. It at least made sense. Then in 1954 Theodor Geisel, writing under the pen name Dr. Suess, wrote If I Ran the Zoo. Mr. Geisel made up a lot of words in his childrens’ stories, including the “Grinch,” which became the new “Scrooge”. In If I Ran the Zoo he coined “nerd”, one of the animals in McGrew's zoo.
A little over a decade later I was in high school, and the epithet I was called was “nerd”, since I was an avid reader who wore glasses with thick lenses. How “nerd" came to be anti-intellectuals’ “smart guy” I have no clue, unless I was the first to be called that name. I find that explanation highly doubtful.
While I was being called “nerd”, the twentieth century's dumbest word so far was born: Groovy.
Where did that stupid word come from? Fortunately for me, I never heard that word uttered from any human’s mouth. I suspect that marketers made it up, because I only heard it occasionally in a song lyric (along with a stupid word only heard on the west coast, “gnarly") or, more often, in an advertisement.
I thought I would never hear a more moronic word than “groovy”. But then, I thought I’d never see a worse president than Carter, until Shrub came along and got us attacked, in two wars, and turned a booming economy and a balanced budget into the worst economy since the Great Depression and the largest budget deficit in history.
I was proven wrong about “groovy” before the century was out. Some wannabe hipster shortened “web log”, a perfectly logically phrase, to “blog”. Unlike “groovy”, that one stuck. We’re still using that stupid word a quarter of a century later. Once again I thought I would never hear a dumber word, and once again I was proven wrong.
The marketers came up with BOGO, which indicated that if you buy one item, you get the second one free. “Buy one, get one.” But that is incredibly stupid! If I buy a car, I get one car. If I buy one hamburger, I get one hamburger.
Now, BOGOF would have sounded just as stupid, but at least it would have had a modicum of logic behind it. BOGO? Brain-dead stupid.
I hope I don’t live long enough to hear an even dumber word, it was as inevitable as Bush not being the worst president in my lifetime, as Trump has out-incompetented every other president since Eisenhower, the first president I can ever remember, as he was elected when I was six months old.
If one worse than Trump comes along, our nation is doomed. It's a good thing you can’t say that about your groovy BOGO blog!
Soylent's Fiction: Red Barchetta
I think Bill is my favorite uncle. He’s a nerd, and is always introducing me to cool old stuff, like the wind-up alarm clock. Really different than today’s clocks, the antique had pointers that pointed to hours and minutes that were painted on a round screen. It didn’t even need a battery, you wound up a spring! That’s really cool, everything is electrically computerized and robotic now.
Everything. Even the cars. Uncle Bill tells me that in his grandpa’s time, people controlled the cars and there were signs and traffic lights, and accidents, injury, and death. Of course, since all the cars are robots now, those are all long gone. It’s been decades since an auto accident was recorded.
He called me when Grandpa died. Even though Grandpa made it to a hundred and three I was still hurt, I loved my Grandpa. Grandma had died ten years earlier, it hurt when she died, too. Dad’s been gone for five years now.
Dad and Grandpa didn’t get along. That’s bad for me, because Grandpa had tons of money and Dad was a steelworker. Middle class, but... anyway, Dad got along with Uncle Bill and their big sister. She died from a fall when I was little. I don’t remember much about her, she was about forty when she died, almost twenty years older than Dad.
Uncle Bill, a week after expressing the sorrow of the passing of his dad, called and told me that Grandpa had left him a farm, and in a barn there was a treasure he wanted me to have and I should come visit and see it.
His farm was more of a ranch, as it grew fodder for the animals; corn, soybeans, hay, and so on. Vegetable and fruit farms were mostly in multistory greenhouses in the cities, with animals and fodder in the country. Nobody wants to smell a pig.
I got in my car and told it “Uncle Bill’s”. It had been there before. I read an old book, sipping on a beer while the car took me there. I don’t even remember what it was I read. Uncle Bill told me that his grandpa had told him that when he was a kid, there were people called “Futurists” who had predicted that when cars were robots, all would be taxis. Yeah, I want to wait five or ten minutes in the freezing rain for a taxi that has chewing gum on the seats, especially since cars are so cheap these days, compared to the “futurists” old human-driven internal combustion cars with their thousands of moving parts, fluids, pumps, gears, valves... the only thing that made electrics expensive was the batteries. Didn’t futurists think there would be progress? Didn’t they realize that the older a technology gets, the cheaper it gets? Which brings me to Uncle Bill’s gift.
Uncle was excited, and hurried me to an old barn. Inside was something under cloth, which Bill uncovered.
It was a car. An old car. A really old car, all the way back to 2020, a Ferrari Barchetta. It was painted bright red, with what looked like primitive control mechanisms in front of the right seat. It was well over a hundred years old and looked brand new! It was a really expensive car when it was new and now, well, I couldn’t guess what it would be worth now. It was half the size of a modern automatic.
“Already had it put in your name! So, what do you think?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, “Does it work?”
Uncle grinned. “I hope so. Most of what it used back then is illegal today, stuff that’s based on petroleum.”
I was shocked. “Petroleum? It almost ruined the planet! There’s no way anybody could get any today!”
“Even if you could get any, it would be useless. It was refined into flammable fuels, like gasoline and kerosene, and made into lubricants. Even if any still existed above ground, it was very poisonous. But this car could run on ethanol or methanol as well as gasoline... at least I think so from what I’ve read, and it looks like Dad converted it to burn alcohol a long time ago. There were modifications; spark timing, different fuel hoses... I put a vegetable-based oil in its crankcase and gearbox, that should work, too, at least if I got the viscosity right. I found a chemical additive that keeps it from thinning too much but it may thin with heat, so we’ll have to watch the temperature gauge. And not just for the oil, alcohol burns a lot hotter than gasoline did and what I read said it might burn a hole in a piston, although the adjusted spark timing should prevent that.”
“You haven’t started it?”
He grinned even wider. “Been waitin’ for you! I knew you’d love this thing! The lawyer that read the will said Grandpa bought it second hand for Dad when Dad turned sixteen, it was seventy years old then. Dad restored it and did a great job of keeping it like new. I don’t think Dad even started it after I was born, I didn’t even know he had it until they read the will.”
He was right, it was a beautiful machine, gleaming and shiny, even inside the old barn. I threw my beer can in Bill’s recycle bin and he handed me another, along with a lit muggle. Most people vape because it’s a lot cheaper, but Bill’s “old school” and rolls his muggles by hand.
“You’re right! How does it work?”
“You mean the engine?”
“No, I mean how do you work it?”
“Here, sit in the driver’s seat and I’ll show you.”
I took a toke, handed the muggle back to Uncle Bill, and got in. It was a really comfortable car, lots more comfortable than my new one. Uncle Bill stood outside, holding the door open. “See those three pedals? The one on the right accelerates, the one in the middle slows and stops, and the one on the left is a ‘clutch’.”
“A what? What does it do?”
“A clutch. When cars were first built they all had one. Unlike our modern electric cars, an internal combustion engine has very little torque at idling speed, so you have to change gears. That stick between the seats changes gears.” He got in and finished explaining its workings. He wasn’t really all that clear about the clutch.
“Start it up!” he said.
“How?”
“Turn that key.” I turned it and let it go, like I was unlocking a door. It made a grinding noise and was quiet. Bill laughed. “I forgot to tell you to push the clutch in first. If it had been in gear the car would have moved, and that’s not good. When you turn the key, hold it until you hear the engine, then let it go.”
“Hear the engine?”
“It isn’t quiet like an electric car.”
I turned the key and it made that sound again, then growled like a quiet lion. I put it in first, let the clutch out, and it lurched and died. Bill grinned. “Give it a little gas and let the clutch out slow.”
“Gas?”
“Well, it’s running on alcohol but it was designed for gasoline. They used to call it ‘gas’ for short. Try her again!” He’d obviously done a lot of research into antique vehicles.
I started it back up and tried again. It died again.
“Third time’s a charm!” Bill said. I started it again. This time I stomped the right pedal when I let off the clutch and it took off like a shot, the wheels spitting gravel when it got outside the barn. I pushed the middle pedal with my foot and it died when it stopped. Bill was barely able to control his mirth. “Don’t feel bad,” he said, “I doubt I’d do any better. I only know what I’ve read. Take it around the fields! When you stop, remember the clutch.”
I started it up and took off. I was starting to get the hang of the clutch, but the steering was iffy; I almost hit a post. This was hard to do—and really fun! Bill seemed to be having a good time, too.
There’s a dirt road circling the fields, about five miles or so long, surrounded by corn. The engine was screaming. Bill said “Put it in second gear.” I pushed in the clutch and changed gears. We kind of slid around the first turn, so I slowed down before the second turn. We took turns racing around the fields for an hour. Man, but I was having the time of my life!
At least, until I saw the sheriff’s department cruiser at the end of the driveway. “Uh, oh,” I said.
“It’s okay, that’s probably Bob.” Bill had been friends with Bob since high school. We pulled up and got out.
It was indeed Bob, who looked angry. “Damn it, Bill, what the hell is all that racket? What’s going on here?”
“Dad left me an antique car. We’re taking it for a spin.”
“Not on public roads you ain’t!”
“No, we’re just driving it in circles around the fields.”
“I hate to say this, Bill, but if you take it on the roads you’ll be in some expensive trouble. That car isn’t licensed, and what’s worse, manually operated automobiles have been outlawed for decades.”
“Relax, Bob, you know me better than that! Want to get a beer when you’re off duty?”
“Sure, I’m off as soon as I take the car back. That’s where I was headed when I heard your little red monster! I was headed for the bar afterward.”
“We’ll meet you there.”
We put the old car back in the barn and covered it, locked the barn, and took my automatic to the bar.
Bob rolled up right as we were getting out of the car. He got out of his and said, “Uh, Bill, what’s that red car running on, anyway? Hydrogen, I hope.”
“No, alcohol. Distilled beer.”
“Well, I’m not going to write you up, but you can’t start that car up without a permit from the county.”
“What? A permit? What kind of a permit?”
“A combustion permit, like for a really rich man’s fireplace, or your muggles. You’ll have to go down to the county building and fill out an application.”
“I can’t do it over the internet?” he asked as we were entering the building.
“No, it’s like voting. The internet isn’t trustworthy.”
“Oh, yeah, I forgot, it’s been years since I got the muggle permit, Thanks,” Bill replied. “I’ll buy you a beer.”
I had forgotten, too. Burning anything but hydrogen entailed a very hefty carbon fee; the exhaust from burning hydrogen is pure water, so a tax isn’t called for.
Some wanted to have combustion of material grown on your own property to be tax-free, probably wanting an old fashioned wood-burning fireplace or barbecue pit, but most realized that an awful lot more carbon had to come out of the air for that to be practical. The world has been “carbon negative” for almost a century, and at least another century will be needed.
The next day we went down to the county building to get a permit to burn alcohol. After lots of forms and signatures and bureaucracy and a huge fee we left with our permit and headed straight to the barn.
We took turns driving around the fields for three hours, stopping every hour or so to let it cool, until the alcohol ran out. I don’t know what Bill had done to the oil to keep it from thinning, but it worked. We still had to watch the temperature gauge, though.
We were pushing it back to the barn when Bob pulled up in his own car, dressed in civilian clothes. He got out and walked up. “Damn it, Bill, I told you you needed a permit!”
“Got one this morning.”
Bob got behind the car and helped push. “This machine’s broke already?”
I almost said we were out of fuel, but Bill beat me to the punch. “Yeah, it’s my own fault. Probably take a week to get it running again.” I kept my mouth shut, the permit was for a certain quantity of fuel.
Bob said “That’s too bad, I thought maybe you’d give me a ride in it.” We were pushing it into the barn then.
Bill said “Come back the next time you have a day off.” We put the tarp on it, locked the barn up, and all of us went for barbecue and beer in Bill’s back yard.
Of course, the barbecue pit was a hydrogen burner like most of them. You had to be even richer than Uncle Bill to burn wood or charcoal.
After Bob went home we went back in the barn. I changed the oil while Bill was filling the still with the sour mash that had been brewing all week, then cleaned and sterilized the pots and stuff and started a new batch.
A week later Bob was back, driving his work vehicle. “Hey, Bill,” he said, “you know those old antique cop movies?”
“Yeah, why?”
“They all had car chases, with the cop chasing a criminal through the streets. Want to race that thing?”
Bill and I both grinned. Bill exclaimed “Hell, yeah! Sounds like fun!”
We got the cars lined up. I was driving, and Uncle sat in the passenger seat holding the air horn that would start the race. He blew the horn and the race was on! It was neck and neck until I shifted into second, and we left him behind.
We came up behind Bob’s car after lapping him. He stopped, and I almost hit him. We got out, all laughing. We were pretty buzzed.
“Those lights and sirens are a nice touch,” Bill said laughing. Bob laughed and shook his head. “That was my secret weapon. When I turn on the lights and siren, cars pull over automatically. It was out of habit, I didn’t even think about what was driving. I thought four big electric engines would give me an edge, too, but man, that thing is fast. State cops’ cars probably can’t even hold a candle to it. I’m really impressed.”
I asked why the lights and sirens when the cars all were programmed to pull over at a police radio signal.
“So any civilian drivers will know their car isn’t faulty, and pedestrians will be careful.” It made sense to me.
I showed Bob how to drive it and he took a couple of laps around the field, taking to it like a duck to water. He seemed born for it.
We sat down in Bill’s yard and talked for a while, drinking beer and passing a muggle around, and Bob said he had to take the cruiser back to the shop to get his own car, and left.
I had to work the next day that Bob was off. Bill called and asked if they could play with my toy. Sure, why not?
That was a mistake, as I found out when I was reading the news the next day. The site reported that someone had hacked a car’s computer, reprogramming it to allow collisions and ignore the police “pull over” signal. It was reported that the car was red, but had no information about its make or model.
It went on to speculate why someone might do something like this, and why they would have a sound system roaring as it went, and interviewed the police chief, mayor, and county sheriff, all of whom were clueless.
I cursed; I knew what was going on as soon as they mentioned the noise. It wasn’t hackers, it was my uncle. And I was sure Bob was really behind it; that wasn’t like Bill at all, but Bob got pretty wild after he had a few beers in him. I pulled out my phone to call Bill, and put it back without dialing; I’d just drive over. I was really pissed off.
Unknown to me until much later, two young brothers, Jacob and Jeremiah Hensley, saw the report. “Wow,” Jake said. “I never thought of doing that. Jerry, lets write our own operating system for the Dongfeng!”
“Can we do that?”
“Sure, it’s open source. We just need to find the right wires to tap to load it after we modify it.”
They were grinning widely as they started researching.
I got to Bill’s house. The front door opened as I walked up the steps to the porch, and the doorbell said “come in, I figured you’d come out today. Have a seat in the living room, I’ll be right out.” He was apparently occupied in the water closet.
When he came out I glared at him. “What happened yesterday?” I demanded. He looked at his shoes.
“So, you figured it out, huh? Well, me and Bob was driving around the field. He was driving and decided to go on the road...”
“He was warning you not to!”
“Deputies never get in trouble. Well, almost never, they always shut it up.”
They’d had four or five beers and a couple of muggles before Bill called me. They took turns racing around the field, and on one of Bob’s laps he decided to take it to the streets!
Even though he was more than half drunk, Bill exclaimed “Bob! What the hell are you doing?”
Bob laughed. “They can’t catch this thing!”
Bill put on his seat belt. Bob pulled out on the highway and shifted into third, the first time they had used that gear. He shifted again and was hitting a hundred miles an hour and still accelerating. “I can’t believe how fast this thing is!” Bob exclaimed.
“Slow down, damn it, we don’t want a wreck!” They were still on the two lane. It would have had a forty mile speed limit before robotic cars. Bob slowed down to sixty and passed a car that was going about forty.
They passed a stopped state police vehicle. There were far fewer these days than before automobiles were automatic. The cruiser’s lights and sirens came on, and Bob laughed. “Woo, hoo!”
The state police car pursued, but its top speed was only a hundred, the fastest cars traveled on an interstate; for long trips there was the tube, which traveled hundreds of miles an hour.
They pulled into the interstate, the tires squealing on the entrance ramp. “Now open ‘er up!” Bill yelled, laughing. Bob floored it, leaving the police car far behind.
If I’d have been there it wouldn’t have happened. Well, I hope it wouldn’t...
Bill saw that at the next exit, just under the overpass, there were four police cars parked with their lights flashing. “Uh, Bob...”
“Yeah, I see ‘em. Dumbasses!” He slowed down, exited, and got back on the highway on the other side, laughing. But at the next exit, both the highway and exit were blocked. Bob took another drink of his beer and grinned. “Watch this!”
He drove straight at the two cars blocking the exit. Bill’s knuckles were white gripping the seat belt and his eyes were wide. “What the hell!” he demanded.
The police cars moved out of the way. Bob chuckled, turned left, and then entered the interstate going the other way. “Dumb kids on bicycles are always trying to get run over, but the cars get out of the way every time.”
Bill asked “What’s the temperature gauge say?”
“It’s warm. That’s why I turned around. We’ll head back to your house and let it cool. Man, I’m having fun!”
“Keep it under a hundred, if it quits from overheating we’ll go to prison.”
“Well, I’m a deputy, so we don’t have to worry about that. You’re just a passenger so you’re not breaking any laws.”
They were coming up on the next roadblock, the last exit before the two lane to home. It was as easy to get around as before. They got back to Bill’s farm, laughing, and put the car away.
Uncle Bill was really apologetic, and suggested that we not take it around the field for a few weeks until the corn was taller in that field and the fields around it. “I’m glad Dad didn’t plant beans,” he noted.
Two weeks later the newspapers reported that the noisy red car was spotted again, and again it outran all the police. I started dialing my uncle in anger, when they reported that this time the car was pegged, a Dongfeng Spiritwing. My anger changed to bewilderment. I finished dialing and Uncle Bill answered.
“Bill, did you and Bob take the car out again?”
“Huh? No, why?”
“They said on the news that it was spotted again, but the report said it was a Dongfeng.”
“I’d better check to make sure nobody stole it. I just made a fresh batch of hydrogen, come on over for barbecue! I’ll meet you out back by the pit.”
Hydrogen was free for most folks, after the initial cost of the hydrogen generator, which was simple and inexpensive. Most people made it out of electricity and rainwater, and of course electricity is free; solar panels have become so good in the last century that a home’s roof supplied far more than a family needed. You could still buy hydrogen, of course; the big commercial airliners and the giant ocean ships all ran on it. Rockets, too, although it’s liquid in a rocket, as is the oxygen. A very few who had very old houses that still had gas furnaces that used to run on natural gas or propane are now burning hydrogen.
Well-to-do folks like my uncle made it from zinc and vinegar. Since you have to buy them, it’s not free, but it’s safer for cooking because you can see the flame.
Bill was already cooking venison steaks he’d had frozen since the previous winter. Most people who hunted deer used bows or crossbows, but Bill used a rail gun despite the weight of the capacitor backpack you had to wear when hunting.
He still had the antique shotgun, a twenty gauge pump that had been in the family since the early twentieth century. Of course, it hadn’t been fired for over a century; shotgun shells cost about ten times their weight in gold, the environmental fees are paid by the manufacturer. Bill had it hanging over his fireplace, which also hadn’t been used in over a century.
I was always fascinated by the old shotgun, which used a chemical propellant rather than electromagnetism. I read that they somehow invented a shotgun shell that used quickly burning hydrogen instead of powder. The article didn’t say how it worked, but supposedly it would work with Bill’s shotgun. The shells aren’t on the market yet.
Grandpa once told me his dad had seen one used once and it was the loudest thing he ever heard. Of course, my great grandpa had never been to a spaceport. I can’t imagine anything louder than a rocket. That’s not to say the rail gun is quiet, which is why most people use arrows rather than slugs.
We were talking about hunting and rockets and antique machinery when Bill’s phone rang. He took it out of his pocket, looked at it, and put it on speaker. Thankfully it wasn’t one of those stupid hologram phones. “Hi, Bob, what’s up?”
“Are you in the Barchetta?”
“No, we’re in the back yard by the barbecue pit. Why?”
Bob cursed. “Then someone must have stolen it, we’re chasing it now.”
“No, it’s still in the barn, I checked when the news said it was a Dongfeng.”
“A Dongfeng? It can’t be, it screamed like the Barchetta when it streaked past me.”
“Then somebody else must have an antique Ferrari,” Bill replied.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “The news speculated that the Barchetta was a modern car that had been hacked, and had the sound coming from a stereo. Maybe somebody heard the news and decided such a thing might be fun?”
“There he is!” Bob exclaimed. We could hear engine noise through the phone, faintly and getting fainter. “I’m following him. I don’t think it’s as fast as yours.”
I said “Remember what Bob said about old movies and car chases? I think you and Bob gave somebody an idea.”
He shook his head sadly. “You may be right. I sure hope not, though.” He turned the steaks over, the chemically generated hydrogen burning a safe yellow.
The next day the news reported that there was a fast yellow Chevy Gatling with no license plate that was loud like an internal combustion engine and didn’t stop when the State Police turned the lights and siren on. It, too, got away.
The next day Bob saw both cars on the interstate as he was getting on, just after they flashed by. He hit the “pull over” button, which did nothing except turn the lights and siren on and follow in pursuit. He radioed the station, of course. By the time he passed the next exit it looked like half of the sheriff’s department was chasing them.
Later, Bob joined my uncle and me in Bill’s back yard, drinking beer and smoking muggles, and told us what I just recounted. He ended the story with “they both got away. Sheriff Murdoch talked to the engineers at the auto company with an idea that they shot down fast. Karen thought that we could install more batteries to make the cars go faster, but was told that it would most likely cause a bad fire. She was pretty worried and disappointed; someone is sure to be hurt if this goes on. It worries me, too.”
Bill said “How is an automatic car going to stop a hacked car? It isn’t just a matter of speed. How will you stop it?”
“I didn’t think about that,” Bob said. “Karen must not have, either.”
“Use the Ferrari,” I said.
“Hmm...” said Bob, “I’ll have to give it some thought, maybe talk to Karen. But... are you sure? That machine is worth a fortune.”
“The county surely has insurance.”
“Well... I’ll talk to Karen.”
Bob called me the next afternoon. “Can you meet Karen and me at your uncle’s? She wants to see the Ferrari.”
“Sure, when I get off work. Two more hours.”
“Thanks.”
On the way to Bill’s, the radio said there were two more cars that wouldn’t stop for police signals. About that time the sheriff, deputy, and my uncle were passing a muggle around.
“I’m afraid I may be responsible for this mess,” Bill said. “Bob stopped by when he heard the car racing around the field. Someone else may have heard it, too.”
“Well,” Sheriff Murdoch said, “that’s more work for us, but there’s no way you could have known. Besides, it might have been a coincidence.”
That’s when I pulled up and got out of the car. The sheriff and deputy were in street clothes. “Hi, Bill, Bob, Sheriff.”
She held out her hand. “Call me Karen.”
I took it and shook it, grinning. “Okay, Karen.”
She handed me the muggle they had been passing. “Can I look at your old car?”
“Sure.” We walked to the barn, Bill unlocked the door and we went in. I took off the tarp.
“Wow, that little car’s sure pretty. Think it would stop a modern car?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can we take it for a spin?”
“Sure, hop in the passenger seat and I’ll show you how to work it as we take a couple of laps around the field, then you can try it.”
“Passenger seat?”
“Yeah, the seat on the left is for the passenger, the one on the right is the driver’s seat.”
I showed her how to drive it and we took a couple of laps around the field. “Looks easy,” she said. I laughed.
“Looks even easier when Bob’s driving, he’s really good at it.” I stopped and we traded seats. Of course, she had the same problems as any first time driver. She ran into a fence post, but it didn’t hurt the car and only made the post lean a little.
“This is a lot harder than it looks,” she said as she wheeled back by the barn. Bob and Bill were smoking and laughing. We got out.
“I’ll have to research this,” she said. “I’m not sure how to use the manual to stop an automatic.”
We didn’t play with the car any more that day, we spent the rest of the afternoon drinking beer and smoking muggles. “Did you know that beer and muggles were against the law once, like petroleum and coal are now?” Karen asked. I was surprised.
“Really? Why?”
“I have a couple of books I can email you if you’re really interested, but basically, they outlawed alcoholic beverages for a little over a decade because the government was stupid, and muggles was outlawed for over a century in most states because a high ranking federal government employee named Harry Anslinger was dishonest. He’d also been involved in the alcohol prohibition.” Her phone rang; it was her office. She answered it normally, by her ear.
After she hung up she said “Bob, we have to go. There’s been an automobile accident.”
The three of us started. “What?” Bob said. “Holy crap, there hasn’t been a car wreck since... hell, at least thirty years. That one was a poorly maintained car and we took measures to make sure it didn’t happen again.”
“I don’t know how it happened,” she said. “Come on, Bob, we have to go.”
They drove to the crash site in Bob’s personal car, still in civilian clothing and higher than a pair of kites; they had both been off duty.
A fire truck, an ambulance, and several sheriff’s cruisers were already there when they arrived. Deputy Linda Watson, holding her tablet, informed Karen. “Nineteen year old Jeremiah Hensley from here in town,” she said, as a stretcher loaded the teen on itself and got in the ambulance, which left quickly. “He’s in really bad shape and might not even live. Hit the abutment at a high rate of speed and caught fire. His car called us, its electronics were amazingly intact for long enough to call.”
The car was mashed up and burned so badly you couldn’t even tell what make it was. It was the red Dongfeng.
Deputy Watson said “Uh, Sheriff, maybe you’d better go home before the media shows up. Even though you’re officially off duty there will be questions about your sobriety.”
“Yes, you’re right, Linda, thank you. Come on, Bob, I have some research to do.” She also had some lobbying to do at the state house. Now that there was a serious injury because of hacking, and the likelihood that someone would die, maybe the state lawmakers would make it a felony.
Jacob Hensley rushed to the hospital when he heard of his brother’s accident, tears streaming down his face. He blamed himself; hacking the car had been his idea. His little brother was laying in the bed unconscious, wrapped in bandages with tubes in his arm and nose and electronics by the bed bleeping.
A middle aged female nurse came in and told him that his brother was scheduled for more surgery and he should go home, as the surgery would take hours. He went home, still crying.
His friend Charles Wilson was parked in his Gatling at the curb. Jake’s Goodwraith parked itself in his driveway. Jacob got out as Charles exited his Chevy.
“Oh man, Jake,” Charles said, “I heard about Jerry, how is he?”
“Hi, Chuck. Jerry’s in really bad shape, they’re doing surgery now. He might die!” He had thought he was done crying, but another tear ran down the side of his nose. He wiped it off. “Come on in and have a beer.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re shaking!”
“It could have been me. Or you. Or any of the other guys that did mods. I’m going to take out the joystick and put mine back to factory. You?”
“I don’t know,” he said, handing Charles a beer. “I’m in shock and can’t think straight. You got a vape? I’m so shook up I forgot to stop at the store for juice.”
“Sure.” The doorbell rang as he was reaching into his pocket, and three miniature young men showed up on the TV table in crystal clear, three dimensions, in the weird way the tables have of making it look like they’re small because they’re far off, even though the table is close.
“Come in,” Jacob said, and the door opened.
The crash made the national news, all of them speculating about how a modern car could wreck. What part could have failed? Law enforcement kept the drag racing quiet, and the media hadn’t connected the hacking.
That next afternoon the sheriff herself called. “I’ve found three ways that they used to stop manuals. One was what they called ‘stop sticks’ which were basically wooden planks with nails through them to flatten tires, I think we’ll try that first. The second was called a PIT maneuver, but it’s too dangerous at over forty, and your little Barchetta probably couldn’t stop a big modern car anyway.”
“Pit? What’s that?”
“An acronym for ‘pursuit intervention technique’, nothing to do with pits. They basically force the car they’re chasing to spin around, and two more cars would pin it. Not only is it so dangerous over forty, we’d need two manual cars to pin it.”
“What’s the third?”
“It used a device that I doubt still exists. It shot a nylon strap that tangled a back wheel. I wish we could find one, it seemed the best way. Too bad I couldn’t even find plans for one, although we found video of one being used.
“At any rate, we won’t need to use your car to attempt a PIT maneuver.”
I was actually a little relieved, to my own surprise. I would have liked to have seen that, but wouldn’t have wanted the car to be damaged. I thought about how the sheriff had hit the fence post, it worried me until I saw it was okay.
The next day while he was at work, Bob was entering the freeway and his car suddenly came to a dead stop, feet from the highway. Two cars traveling a very high rate of speed flashed by. His car turned on its “pull over” equipment and went in pursuit as Bob grabbed the microphone and radioed in.
Lyle Waring was winning the race as he flashed past Bob’s cruiser, and hit the joystick harder, laughing. George Frankfort was behind, but wearing an evil grin. He was about to unleash his secret weapon—a second battery. He reached up and flipped the switch as Lyle went under the overpass.
Bob’s car was nowhere near as fast as the cars that had sped past, he couldn’t even tell what make or model they were. Then there was a flash from a mile ahead, like an electrical explosion, followed by a loud noise seconds later. He radioed that there was an explosion and medical people were needed.
He thought the car had hit an abutment, but the flaming, sparking inferno was a good hundred yards away from the overpass. He shook his head sadly, whoever had been in it couldn’t have possibly survived.
Lyle was past the overpass when George’s car exploded. He heard the explosion, thinking that George had hit the abutment. He shook his head; George wasn’t very good at this “driving” stuff. But he couldn’t stop, not with a sheriff’s car chasing them.
The fire department came and put the fire out with an argon fire extinguisher. Of course carbon dioxide hadn’t been used in generations, and argon worked even better anyway.
Bob was off work the next day, and so was I, and he told us about it at Bill’s then. He let out his toke, coughed, and said “It was awful. My God, the stench. I understand law officers had to put up with that all the time back before cars were robotic.” He shook his head sadly and took another toke before passing it.
Bill said “How are we going to get this car hacking to stop?”
“I don’t know. It’s already against the law to modify a car’s software, the legalese says that all software used on public roads has to meet certain criteria, which obviously means it’s illegal to hack it. But it’s only a misdemeanor with no jail time, just a fine.”
Of course, it was all over the news the next day, as car fires were almost unheard of. The media didn’t catch the link between it and the crash that had happened earlier, and the crash was still in the news, overshadowing it.
It would be a while before the cause of the explosion was known—Except to the sheriff. She had asked the engineers at Ford if more batteries would make a car go faster and had been told it would cause a fire. She called the engineer on her phone, and of course a tiny engineer appeared on her stupid phone in three dimensions, looking surprised.
“Well, hello, Karen,” she said. “This is unexpected, what can I do for you?”
“A car exploded.”
“What? Exploded? I heard there was a fire. I’m surprised there aren’t more, the way people don’t inspect and maintain stuff.”
“Yes. Would extra batteries explode, or just burn?”
“They could explode. An explosion is a sudden release of energy, and batteries hold a lot. Loose it all at once, and BOOM. Did that happen? The news didn’t say anything about an explosion.”
“They don’t know anything about it. We’re keeping it quiet. What we need to know is how to catch them? How can we make our cars go fast enough?”
“I don’t understand. Fast enough for what?”
“There’s a new kind of racing, they’ve modified the operating systems and associated software to let them override those systems. The cars run rings around ours. We found joysticks in the wreck and the fire.”
“Hmm... the cars’ computers govern speed. If they were overridden, there isn’t a working governor.”
“Could you do that with one of our cruisers, or a state police car?”
“Probably, if they’re Fords. Also, there are some new motors that just came out that have much stronger magnets than were formerly possible, thanks to that find on Ceres. We could replace the motors. It will take a while.”
“Thanks, I’ll talk to the County Board about it.”
The next day she called me. I could picture the miniature me on her dumb hologram phone, I hope those stupid things are a fad. Sure, holographic television is great, but it’s stupid on a phone.
She had an idea of how to catch the drag racers. “Can we hire you and rent your manual?” she asked.
“Uh, I guess, as long as the county will insure against damages. What are you planning to do?”
She grinned, and dare I say, an evil grin. “We have these,” she said, and pulled out a... well, it’s hard to describe, it was actually kind of cool. It was like a bunch of really sharp nails welded together into a ball. It was obvious one would flatten a tire.
“We made a lot of them,” she said. “You’ll chase the racers with your Ferrari, pass them, and Bob will throw these on the highway. Better than the stop sticks.”
It sounded good to me. It sounded even better when I read the contract; I called my boss and gave her a week’s notice, which was unheard of. Nobody ever quit a job, since there were so few of them. Robots did almost everything, even steel work like Dad used to do. Yes, everybody gets a government check now, but some of us want more.
She seemed distressed that I was leaving, which puzzled me. Jobs are scarce and easy to fill. Mine sucked, I’m ashamed of what I did. Nope, not gonna say.
Bob and I had lain in wait for the drag racers for two weeks. No wonder they were paying me so much, I was bored senseless.
“There they are!” Bob exclaimed suddenly, pulling me out of my reverie. I started it, put it in gear, and took off. It didn’t take long to catch them. I wonder what they were thinking when I passed them at a good ten miles an hour faster than they were going?
We were doing well over a hundred as Bob loosened his seat belt before releasing Karen’s box of spike balls, and sat back down, grinning, as the belt retracted.
I didn’t even see the deer. There seemed to be an explosion, and it hurt, which they said were air bags going off because of the collision. My ears were ringing, and I was sore in spots but I was all right, as was Bob. We had been going over a hundred miles an hour. I guess I must have stood on that middle pedal.
The deer, alas, didn’t survive. We ate him later.
The two drag racers didn’t fare much better than the deer; there was a lot nobody thought about. We had air bags and seat belts, but modern cars had no need, since automation had made cars safe without air bags and seat belts.
One died instantly from a broken neck. The other had brain damage and would never be the same, even after rehab. Apparently, blowouts are a really bad way to stop a vehicle traveling at a high rate of speed.
But we didn’t know that yet, we were stunned. Air bags are a bitch. “You okay?” we asked in unison, and laughed.
“What happened?” I asked.
“I think we hit a deer.”
“Well, hell, let’s get him out of the road!” We hadn’t even noticed the two ambulances taking care of the two wrecked cars. An ambulance rolled up and asked if we needed help.
“Yeah,” Bob said. “Take that carcass...”
“To Bill’s!” I interrupted. I like robots. At least, the ones that do what you tell them. I didn’t like that one.
A flatbed rolled up, put the Barchetta on its back, and drove off without saying a word. Some robots are just rude. An even ruder car came up, a taxi cab. It wouldn’t answer us as Bob almost got in. “What the hell am I doing? I have a car, and We have a mess to clean up.”
“Huh?”
“Karen’s spikes.”
“Well, look,” I said, “robot cars will steer around them. Maybe we ought to spread them out.”
“Do you want to kill somebody?”
“They’re risking their lives anyway. And it’s Karen’s decision, you’re just a deputy.”
He hit a vape and grinned, and said “And you’re just a civilian!” He handed it to me, I hit it, and we both laughed.
“That’s right,” I said, “neither of us is sheriff.” I called my car on my phone, thinking that if I’d have called when we hit the deer it would be here. I don’t know if the taxi ever left.
The next day the sheriff, deputy, my uncle, and I met in Bill’s back yard. Karen told us she’d talked to several state legislators. “I hope they take this seriously,” she said. “This has gotten way out of control and it’ll get worse, mark my words.”
“Did any of them seem to really take it seriously?” Bill asked.
She shrugged. “Who knows? They’re politicians, they’ll convince you blue is red while proving blue is blue. Words matter, and a good politician knows how to use them effectively.” She passed the muggle to me. I shook my head.
“I’m stoned to the gills.” The three of them laughed, and I opened another beer.
Karen’s phone rang, and she got up, put it by her ear, and walked away. When she got back she said “There’s been another accident, and this time an arrest, a young man named Charles Wilson. He was drag racing with an unknown person who got away, but he hit a spike ball and flattened a tire. It put him in a ditch but didn’t overturn and he got out and ran. Deputies had been chasing him and caught him. If the fool would have just sat in his car he’d be out of jail tomorrow with a big fine, but we were able to hit him with several charges, including resisting arrest. I’m calling the D.A. and asking her to avoid a plea that keeps him out of jail.
“Even if he gets out in a few days, he’s out a car. We impounded it. Who’s holding that muggle?”
The fact that hacked automobiles had been drag racing didn’t land on the news media’s radar until Angus Flannigan, who had recently immigrated from Australia and been befriended by Chuck Wilson, got mad. By “mad” I don’t mean angry, I mean insane.
He had his hacked car downtown, trying to run into automatics. I guess it was some kind of game to him, but it’s just crazy. So far he hadn’t managed to damage any cars, but he knocked a light post down.
It was quite a while before they caught Angus. They didn’t even know who he was, or had a description beyond the inaccurate “skinny white woman with short red hair”. There was just no way for the governed, self-driving police cars to stop a manual car.
This woke up both the governor and legislature. The governor ordered a dozen interceptors from Ford for the state police, with the bigger motors and stronger magnets that were literally from out of this world, and instead of a built-in joystick, pre-programmed maneuvers, such as the PIT were built in and could be upgraded remotely.
The legislature made it a class four felony to operate a manual vehicle, or any vehicle with modified electronics on public roads. This excluded motorized bicycles and tricycles, and wagons pulled by horses, of course; it only applied to motorized vehicles with four or more wheels.
The county fixed my car, except for the air bags; they couldn’t figure out how they worked.
In the end it all died down. Angus was the first to go to prison, before being deported, but more than a dozen followed him to the lockup. Wilson pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, paid a very large fine, and never saw his car again. Hensley recovered, but rehabilitation was slow and painful.
These days I just charge people money to see the old red car. I make a pretty good income with it without actually doing any real work. We still drive it around the fields sometimes, charging stupid rich kids insane amounts of cash for a three lap ride. Sometimes Bill and I race it against the clock.
But we won’t let Bob drive it any more.
The Perpetual Motion Machine
Actually I should have titled this “How do I school the ignorant about the laws of thermodynamics?”
I was visiting an old friend who was talking about a mutual old friend who had moved into a camping trailer on fifteen acres of Nowhere, Missouri; or semi-moved. Anyway, he lit the place with his perpetual motion machine, and you will find it either humorous or infuriating. Maybe just sad.
The way it supposedly worked was that “Perpetual”, as I’ll call him, had two twenty four volt truck batteries, two solar panels, a generator from a truck, and a motor to power the generator, which fed its power to the batteries that ran the motor that ran the generator.
Yep, you read that right.
I’m pretty sure he didn’t do the math, and probably couldn’t even understand the math, since the US public school system has been dysfunctional since at least 1958, when I started first grade. You’re not too stupid to learn, your teacher was too incompetent to teach.
We didn’t have kindergarten, let alone preschool, since most moms stayed home. They could afford to back then. I’m told I could read before school, and remember knowing how to tell time earlier than that.
But they really suck at math.
What I found humorous was that it would appear to work, the batteries the panels charged running the motor that lost energy trying to get free energy. But he was wasting the free energy he got from the panels on his ignorant device!
I tried to explain it to my friend, but his math teachers sucked, too.
