The Secret Lair

“Now,” said the administrator while  opening the door to the lab, “we have a practical experiment in the development of clean energy sources for the future. This is Dr. Roland Jeffers, head of the project. Dr. Jeffers, would you show our visitors your results?”

With the administrator were two official-looking people. The man wore a dark blue suit; clean-cut, clean-shaven, greying a bit at the temples. The woman was also middle-aged but quite beautiful, brunette hair pulled back, blue eyes that took in everything in the room: the control console, the man in the plexiglass chamber with the wires that led from the console to his head and chest, and the small toy monkey on a stainless-steel table, also connected to the console by another long set of wires.

Jeffers began. “My experiments have to do with developing forms of renewable energy for the future, specifically coming from biological sources. In this case, we have the gentleman in the chamber hooked up to my device, which stimulates the memory centers of the brain. The energy generated by the subject is captured and transmitted, either for use or for storage.”

Jeffers flicked his eyes to the administrator with a question, the administrator nodded. Jeffers turned a central knob on the console about half-way. The results were immediate; the man in the chamber began to smile dreamily and the toy monkey chattered and clapped its cymbals together at a moderate pace. After about thirty seconds, Jeffers turned the device back off, and the monkey stopped.

‘What you just witnessed was the device’s ability to harvest clean emotional energy from a happy emotional response. It is also possible to trigger other emotions for more or less intensity, depending on the quantity of energy desired.”

The woman asked, “The subject volunteered for this?” She looked both intrigued and repulsed by the results.

Jeffers smiled. “The subjects have been told that they will be going under a new form of therapy. We hook them up to our device and induce memories that are emotionally relevant to the energy we want to capture. As you might expect, the more difficult and complex emotions…anger, betrayal, and despair produce the strongest and most efficient energy.”

The man who looked like he worked for a branch of the government asked, “What is the most powerful?”

“Regret. Without a doubt. Regret is the most powerful.”

The government man nodded. The woman in the sharp suit asked, “Don’t you have any ethical qualms about using people this way?”

Dr. Jeffers shook his head. “No. You have to understand…these people are already destroying themselves. We find them in bars, wandering through grocery stores, sitting at playground watching their kids, in cubicles unable to work but unable to do anything else. They are already in pain. We are simply using that pain for the betterment of society.”

The woman nodded. “And does this actually help them?”

Jeffers cleared his throat. “In a manner of speaking. The brain can only handle so much. After a while, it reduces the capability to feel in order to protect itself. In many ways, we are simply accelerating the process an individual would go through naturally.”

The administrator smiled, “Well, now,”  he said, clapping his own hands together, reminding Jeffers of the chattering monkey. ” This is good work, and you can see how it will pay off in the long run.” The government man nodded, the woman in the suit pursed her lips but nodded after a moment.

“Excellent,” the administrator said. “Let’s take a look at the other labs, shall we?” With that, he ushered the official visitors out.

After the door closed, Jeffers released a long breath he did realized he was holding. He sighed and looked at the man in chamber with the electrodes attached to his head and heart.

“You poor bastard,” he said, and twisted the knob all the way to the right. The monkey on the table began to chatter away faster than before.

In the chamber, the man began to cry.

Like any man who wants to know what is going on in the world, I prefer to start my day with a cup of coffee and my morning paper.  Like any modern person who is well-versed in the ways of the Internet, I know that I can get better news, more timely, more interesting, more custom tailored to my needs by subscribing to a number of RSS feeds and social stream instead of subscribing to my local newspaper.  The hitch in the plan has always been the laptop…I dislike having the laptop and keyboard in front of me when reading.  The reason is purely psychological: as someone who spends all day in front of a traditional computer, I prefer that my off-time be a lap- and desk-top free as possible.

Until recently, this was an impossible dilemma. When I received a Samsung tablet at Google I/O last year, that changed.  It became possible to sit and read on my little Star Trek-like device and still pull the most current news from the web. Additionally, when I got my new iPhone, this became even more interesting.

Pulse

The program I use most often is Pulse. Pulse allows you to subscribe to suggested feeds, feeds aggregated by the Pulse service into several Top lists (top tech, top politics, etc) , your Google Reader feeds, or any RSS feed you can enter into their system. The design of the program is especially nice, articles from a source are arranged into horizontal bands with photos and their headline. Selecting an article allows you to read it, then flips across the page with your finger will move you to the next article. The motions and gestures are intuitive and simple. On top of this, Pulse allows share interesting articles to your social feeds with a touch of a button¹.  Reading the paper is a simple and pleasing experience, and when I’m done, I feel like I’ve got a better handle on my day.

When I picked up my iPhone, one of the programs I downloaded and use most often is Flipboard. Same idea as Pulse, aggregating personal, social, and featured feeds into a single interface, but Flipboard uses the form faction of the phone to great advantage. TO move between pages, you swipe up with your thumb or finger. The graphic animation is as if the page is folding up to reveal the next article in the queue. The main selling point, beyond the simplicity, is the use of excellent typography and brilliant images — the graphic design of program is stellar. It is the perfect companion when waiting in line or relaxing at the coffee shop of your choice.

How do you keep up with your favorite news? What programs would you recommend?

1. if you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you’ve seen me sharing links first thing in the morning. [↩]

I have no intention telling you what I want to accomplish this year.

I’m not listing any projects, any promises, any resolutions. I have them, sure, but I’m not telling you what they are.

We denizens of the Interwebs, we talk so very much. Talk is cheap.  Social networks are easy, full of sound and fury, amounting to very, very little in the end.

You will only hear about what I’m doing this year when it is complete.  Until then, it’s not worth talking about.

Image via Wikipedia

Devin opened the back door of the café and let the old woman shuf­fle in before clos­ing  it behind her. The bag lady, glad to be out of the Feb­ru­ary cold, smiled weakly; her rheumy eyes flick­ing about to take in the room.

“Have a seat,” Devin said, ges­tur­ing at a wooden chair with black stains on the vinyl seat. The woman did not hes­i­tate, she dropped her blue plas­tic bags to the ground with a wet thud and sat.  She con­tin­ued to look around the room, not meet­ing the young man’s gaze. Her cheek twitched;  she mut­tered some­thing unintelligible.

“Would you like some­thing to eat?” Devin reached into one of the stain­less steel cool­ers and pulled out a slice of sponge cake. He held it out the old woman. She paused, wary, then one of her pale white hands reached out from the lay­ers of old jack­ets and sweaters to take the offered food. She sat there, chew­ing the food. Small bites, chew for a long time. Get all the fla­vor. Make it last.

Devin watched; she kept her eyes low, star­ing at the ground. “She remem­bers you, Mag­gie. Do you know that?”

The woman stopped chew­ing. Her gaze darted about the room ner­vously, look­ing every­where but at the man address­ing her. Devin stood and walked over to the slop sink where the large grinder sat.  He brushed the machine, clear­ing out the remains of yesterday’s grind. “She knows how hard it must have been. With your daugh­ter leav­ing like that. And with Frank dying so soon after the trial.”

The old woman sat stock still. Star­ing at the floor. Devin took out a metal­lic artic­u­lated hose and set it in one of the stain­less steel mix­ing bowls. He took a strip of duct tape from a roll above and fixed the hose in place. “How could you be expected to take on another bur­den? The food stamps barely fed you. And Frank, well…you know the insur­ance barely cov­ered the funeral. Where was the money going to come from?”

Devin turned and smiled com­pas­sion­ately at the bag lady. He brushed a lock of blond hair out of his face. “She knows you did the only thing you could.”

The old woman started to moan. She did not speak, she did not move. Some­thing like a sob escaped her throat. Devin crouched down in front of her, using his free hand to reach out and take her chin between his thumb and fore­fin­ger. She resisted him, look­ing to the side. “She under­stands. Even though she was just a baby, she under­stands why you did what you did…why you had to do it. ”

He stroked the old woman’s cheek softly with the back of his hand. She began to cry. Softly, then with greater vol­ume until her whole frame was wracked with sobs. Devin felt the grief, watched the pain sur­face. He guided her gaze to meet his.  This time, she did not resist. Her  eyes met his.

“She under­stands,” he said. “But she does not forgive.”

Devin plunged the pointed end of the hose into the old woman’s tem­ple. She shrieked, kick­ing and knock­ing Devin back­ward. Arms flailed weakly and legs kicked. Her face was a ric­tus of pain.

Devin stood and, steer­ing clear the thrash­ing woman, looked over at the bowl. A black ichor was drain­ing from the woman through the hose. As more of the wrong­ness flowed from the hose, the weaker the woman’s strug­gles became.

After about five min­utes, she was still. Her breath came in shal­low gasps. When the ichor stopped flow­ing, he took a towel from the dry­ing rack, pulled the noz­zle at her tem­ple. It came free with a wet pop­ping noise and he held the clean white­ness to the wound. Keep­ing the pres­sure con­stant, he sang the woman a lul­laby he’d heard when he was a child. Her breath sta­bi­lized until she was calm, as if asleep.

After a few min­utes, he helped her stand. She blinked but was oth­er­wise silent, her eyes scan­ning the room in a haze of con­fu­sion. He opened the back door, put the bags in her hand, and led her out into the cold. He met her gaze once more after step­ping back into the warmth of the café. She looked at him hope­fully from the alley. He smiled and shut the door.

By the time Devin returned,  the ichor was set­ting nicely. He took a spoon and stirred the dark­ness, break­ing it into smaller and smaller pieces until it was a bowl of small black beads, glistening as if coated with oil. He poured the beads into the grinder, set the dial for auto-drip, and let it run.

Author’s Notes  I was drink­ing Star­bucks cof­fee when I wrote this. Fit­ting. I can­not remem­ber where I first heard the phrase “Black as night, sweet as sin” to describe how a per­son liked their cof­fee pre­pared, but it’s always stuck with me. (It pre­dates Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys, so don’t you dare whip that quote out.).  In the fine tra­di­tion of fig­ur­ing out ways to make the world a weirder place, I wanted to write a story about where the higher-end cof­fees really come from. Orig­i­nally, the story was sim­ply called “Fresh Cof­fee” and had Devin col­lect­ing the tears of an inno­cent child to brew the cof­fee. The tone was all wrong, and did not address the the ori­gin of the beans.  Then I remem­bered that phrase, that won­der­ful phrase. What else would some­thing that the world loves as much as cof­fee be made from?  Sin, of course. The more griev­ous the sin, the darker the brew.  What did Mag­gie do, pre­cisely?  I leave that to you to decide. The best sins occur in the imag­i­na­tion, don’t they?

In this episode:

• Chris Miller, “The End” (from 2006)
• Tee Morris, “The End” (from 2007)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 12:27 — 11.4MB)

In this episode:

• Chris Miller, “What Day is It?” (from 2006)

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• Chris Miller, “This One Is Perfect (Montage)” (from 2006)
• Seth Harwood, “What’s Next” (from 2007)

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In this episode:

• Chris Miller, “Two Days Left” (from 2006)
• P.G. Holyfield, “Talk It Out” (from 2007)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 6:37 — 6.1MB)

In this episode:

• Chris Miller, “What Would Magneto Do?” (from 2006)
• Chris Miller, “Writing Rituals” (from 2007)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 3:17 — 3.0MB)

In this episode:

• Sam Chupp, “NaNoBreaks” (from 2007)
• Erik John Bertel, “Are You A Writer?” (from 2007)

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