Blogs

  • The Hard Lane

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    image by Comfreak at pixabay.com

    the hard lane

    there are fast lanes that do not wait,
    we either get crushed,
    or get there sooner,
    or we can stand by to see the rush,
    and think of falling,
    and rising water.

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  • A Companion Reader to Babel Rising: Augmented Eternity

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    image is by geralt of pixabay.com

    The fictional series, Babel Rising, written in the period 1998-1999, breathes of technologies that, at the turn of the century, were just about emerging. By now, in 2018, a lot of these technologies are almost ubiquitous already: large-screen video walls, Internet-enabled smart ovens & refrigerators (just attend consumer electronics shows where leading developers the likes of Samsung, LG, Apple, Google present their latest wares to find out what’s out there already on the Internet of Things); intelligent personal assistants (such as the Alexa app), artificial intelligence (AI) content writers, poet-bots, chat-bots…

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  • last man standing

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    car park interrupted, photography by SSJ, 2018

    last man standing under the moon

    this day each day the clock reminds
    my eyes are tired as if i do not know,
    the dark room unclasps me into the dusk
    to grapple with bleary visions of tomorrow,
    i am the last man standing under the moon

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  • Babel Rising: 5 – In the evening

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    Graphics is a mashup by SSJ from pixabay.com pictures contributed by xresch, PublicDomainPictures,  dimitrisvetsikas and Marisa04

    5 – In the evening

    In the evening, Salm fixed his room more tidy than usual, combed his hair longer in the mirror and was more particular with the choice of the pajama he put on, before he sat at his study table and turned on the tabletop and the deskcam. After some effort, he located Hans through the Qualia service and opened a chat line.

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  • Babel Rising: 4 – At 4:00 am

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    Graphics is a mashup by SSJ from pixabay.com pictures contributed by xresch, PublicDomainPictures,  cocoparisienne and Marisa04

    4 – At 4:00 am

    At 4:00 am, Salm woke up with the ethereal feeling that the whole night sky was shining through the window. His tabletop, tilted 110o to face his bed, was glowing softly. It was strange that his favorite pillow was almost inaudibly but repeatedly playing one of his mother’s favorite classics, Tchaikovsky’s Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. He had expected to be roused up later in the morning by some strong vocals sung a cappella, as that was what the agent was bringing him for several mornings now. It must be one of those times when the agent was playfully glitchy and did not exactly do what it was supposed to do, or, Salm wondered, did Mother mess around with my agent?

    On the dimly glowing tabletop, below the small headings on ownership copyrights, bibliographical information, addresses and all that legal speak, Salm read the following:

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  • Babel Rising: 3 – There were days when

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    Graphics is a mashup by SSJ from pixabay.com pictures contributed by xresch, PublicDomainPictures,  RogerMosley and Marisa04

     3 – There were days when

    There were days when Salm felt that his father gave him the personal agent for a grand but mysterious purpose, maybe deeper than the purposes of those characters in that classic cult film, “Men In Black.” Over the past year though, Salm had learned to apply the agent into more straightforward and less grandiose uses. The best use he had of it lately was when he fed it in great detail with his preferences about music and songwriters, and let it loose on the Net before retiring for bed at night. In the morning, the sound system embedded in his favorite pillow never failed to wake him up with some of the best, according to his taste, fresh songs and tunes that he was hearing for the first time. Most of the artists that his agent picked out were unknowns, which suited him better than the more hyped but commercialized hits.

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  • Babel Rising: 2 – Now that he was growing

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    Graphics is a mashup by SSJ from pixabay.com pictures contributed by xresch, PublicDomainPictures, geralt and Marisa04

    2 – Now that he was growing

    Now that he was growing into his own man, Salm needed to gravitate around other people, mostly his friends in high school, which was mainly why he did not relish being away from school for long periods. Salm’s mother would dismiss his concern as a tendency to readily panic. When you were younger, she would say, you were always quick to catch up on your studies. A few moments of reviewing your schoolbooks here and there, you always did fine. How much more these days when they have the entire curricula all bundled up on the Uniweb? Surely, you can still keep up with your lessons on the Net. All you need is the hotel’s refrigerator set. 

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  • Babel Rising: 1 – In a time and place

     

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    Graphics is a mashup by SSJ from pixabay.com pictures contributed by xresch, PublicDomainPictures and Marisa04

    1 – In a time and place

    In a time and place whose technology was just a little bit more advanced than ours, there existed a schoolboy named Salm. The past year, on his 15th birthday, his father had given him his own personal agent on the Net. Soon everyone will have his own software agent, his father proudly told him then, but for now, you are one of the privileged few who can afford this. Make good use of it, son. 

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  • the edge of a continent. . . .

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    image is mashed up by SSJ from pixabay.com images of Marisa04 and cocoparisienne

    At 4:00 am, Salm woke up with the ethereal feeling that the whole night sky was shining through the window. His tabletop, tilted 110o to face his bed, was glowing softly. It was strange that his favorite pillow was almost inaudibly but repeatedly playing one of his mother’s favorite classics, Tchaikovsky’s Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. He had expected to be roused up later in the morning by some strong vocals sung a cappella, as that was what the agent was bringing him for several mornings now. It must be one of those times when the agent was playfully glitchy and did not exactly do what it was supposed to do, or, Salm wondered, did Mother mess around with my agent?  

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  • the unshining

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    image is mashed up by SSJ from pixabay.com images of Eduardo-Silva and OpenClipart-Vectors

    the unshining

    there were these smart crows
    who picked open the house locks,
    and watched late night shows.

    © said sadain, jr. 2018

    Author’s Note: 

    If you’ve seen that 1980 movie of Stanley Kubrick, The Shining, then you would already be familiar with the story of Jack Torrance, a writer who accepts the work of being a caretaker to an isolated hotel closed down for the winter, hoping to cure his writer’s block in the solitude of it all.  Things do not turn out well for Jack and his writing though. The story slickly, horribly unravels to tell us that no sir, you cannot have your work and your play both at the same time!!! 

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