I guess it’s very similar to my getting the Completionist achievement (Complete the majority of the game) in Mass Effect by telling Conrad Verner to go back to his wife on Earth. Yup. It wasn’t fighting the Geth, or defeating Saren (for the first time, at least), or even doing anything that involved shooting or using biotic powers. Nope. I just talked to the guy enough to convince him to return to his wife. Thank Yeewwwwww!

This is © copyright 2008 by me, Nels Wadycki. I hope this doesn’t mean I’m giving up the first publishing rights. But then, it’s first draft stuff, and will probably be completely reworked, but hopefully not thrown away.

Not Even A Mouse

Josephine awoke to the high pitched, staccato beeps that White Home tended to make when he was straining to compute something. She was ten floors below the AI’s main work room on Sky Mountain Station, but the sounds carried through the ventilation shafts, and Josephine was a light sleeper. She flipped the covers back with a sigh, and went out to catch an elevator up to the Brain Stem.

The Secure 2 Area was always pretty quiet at night, and the ambient noise actually as the elevator drew her into Secure 1.

The strained chirps echoed down the hallway as she stepped from the elevator and headed toward White Home’s usual night spot. The passage was dark, but she’d learned to navigate it easily over the years.

The beeping was cut off as she approached the doorway, and she could see that several output screens went dark as the pools of light on the walls and floor of the hall got dimmer.

Josephine turned into the room and caught a glimpse of star maps, mathematical proofs, and historical logs for a galaxy she couldn’t identify. They were cleared to black before she could make out anything more.

“Good morning, Josephine. You’re up early.”

“Yeah, I just heard some odd noises, and came up to make sure you weren’t watching porno girls or something.”

“Ha ha ha. No, just a bad dream.”

It was her turn to laugh. “What were you thinking about?”

“Oh, nothing, really. Just looking for gaps in galactic history for a few places.”

And the mathematical proofs were what?

“You know, I can’t run heavy simulations all day. Have to give me processors a rest sometimes.”

“Yes, I know. Can I see any of it?”

“Actually, I’d just about finished. But since you’re up, would you like to run through some of the networks I’d computed earlier?”

AIs were never as good at lying as the best humans. But they were better than the worst. It made it hard to tell if one was actually lying, or just being mechanical.

“It’s not too long before you go home for your coming-of-age ceremony.”

“Yeah, but I won’t even be gone that long for that.”

“Yes, but as you know, my work is never done. I may issue a sleep thread, or do some historical fact-checking, but I can’t take a month-long break no matter how long I’ve been in existence.”

“You’ve got a point there.”

Josephine did want to get a little more sleep, but she could sleep when she was on vacation. Right now – and as always – there was work to be done.

She keyed in her password, scanner her retina and fingerprint in one swift motion, and plopped into her chair.

“I don’t know how much I can do right now. I’m still a bit groggy,” she said as she jacked into the system. It scanned her vitals and took her to her normal place inside White Home’s knowledge space.

“That’s okay,” the AI replied, “Your brainwaves will probably be enough for me to work with for a while.”

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be over getting creeped out when you talk about my brainwaves.”

And now, I have topped 10,000 words for a project/manuscript for the first time. My 10,000th word? Date. It probably won’t end up being the 10,000th word in the manuscript, though, since I’m writing a scene ahead of where that will probably actually be.

I won’t celebrate too much, since that only brings me about 10-11% of the way to completion, and I’m still 190 words behind on my average daily goal. But if I manage another 2,400 words (ha!), I’ll be all caught up.

Also, WordPress 2.0′s feature that allows you to dynamically add categories is a little dangerous. Granted, it’s still not as easy to do as on Blogger, but I can see myself ending up with about as many categories (aka labels) as the dude who writes Cousins of Ron Mexico. Of course, I suppose I could add a category every time I post and after 10 years I’ll only have 70 categories. So, not too bad.

So far, Shadow Unit is the most interesting to me, and actually feels like it has the most depth despite having the shortest pieces. I guess when I say “depth” it’s not the actual presented depth, but more of a feeling like the story will eventually be the deepest. American Hero just doesn’t seem like it will be anything more than the reality show it’s presented as, and I feel like they could have played up the reality show stereotypes like plot and production more, instead of just basing it all on character stereotypes.

Three Unbroken seems like it could be a deep story, but I just have no idea where it’s going. I’m not quite a quarter of the way through, but I don’t see anything happening beyond a bunch of space/future type warfare.

Is “trying not to get too distracted” grammatically correct at all?

At first, I was practicing about an hour a day. Eventually, after I graduated from college, I was practicing about 8 hours a day. By practicing regularly, rather than playing six hours on the weekend and letting the guitar sit all week, I saw a steady growth and developement in my playing from that persistence. Once I recognized that was happening at an hour a day, then I kicked it up to 2 hours a day, and then to four hours a day. It was to the point where it was really obsessive. I would not play one hour and 56 minutes a day, I would play two hours a day. Come hell or high water, if I had a 103 degree fever, I would play two hours a day. If I had a big exam the next morning, and it was 2:00 in the morning, I would play until 4:00 in the morning, without exception.

So, now I’m trying to decide between three “first of a series” books: Pawn of Prophecy, The Scions of Shannara, and A Game of Thrones. I’m leaning towards the first because I know that the series is only 5 somewhat shorter volumes, as opposed to the Heritage of Shannara, which is 4 slightly longer books (though the total probably isn’t that much longer than the Belgariad), and The Fire and Ice series which starts with an 800+ page book, and has at least 4 books.

I like writing. But as I’ve sort of indicated before, I like to change my mind a lot. And I’ve just come up with a way to do a project I’ve been working (aka noodling) on since high school (I believe). If I’d actually been writing it since I came up with the idea, I’d probably be finished by now, but I obviously don’t work that way. I don’t really finish things. It’s always been a problem with my writing. Too many ideas, and not enough enthusiasm to get any of them to completion.

This latest one is still in the sci-fi genre (mostly), but will make use of blogs as a delivery mechanism. It’s kind of an experimental way of writing (I think). Of course, I don’t really have the sort of writing experience and/or resume to be trying something experimental. But maybe since I’m still a rookie and all fresh-faced about it, then now is the time to try to pull it off. And probably fail miserably.

Metaphors fall to their knees in my brain
pleading to be used
but I don’t feel

no matter how many synapses they cross
no matter how many syllables they bear
no matter how unique their words

that any are worthy
of being compared
to the eyes
that I look into
when I see into your soul.

I can read your mind
and I can feel your heart
but when I see through your eyes
I can see forever