Josh Writes a Blog

A Life Blog about My Life, Dawg

  • 101: dr carla broker (hyperspace lessons pt 3)

    the frame-of-reference drive system, which you likely know as the “fardrive,” works by utilizing the third aspect of hyperspace to create a “touchpoint” between two objects with significant mass–basically planets or planetoid objects. the fardrive does this by taking the two objects in realspace and “compresses” them into two-dimensional mathematical equations. this is basically what i and many of my colleagues back at MIT worked on for roughly five years, with the help of the bethzoans, who we were actually helping by utilizing math in a way they hadn’t thought of before.

    the fardrive effectively “thinks” in hyperspace terms. the bethzoans had done numerous studies on hyperspace physics over the three centuries since they discovered it, leading to some strange equations they used to create technology to harness hyperspace “hubs,” controlled by gates. rudimentary fardrive technology has been unearthed and discovered by countless beings in the galaxy, but so far nothing that could fit on, say, a ship the size of a starfighter.

    in order for you to understand how the fardrive works, let’s imagine a routine trip from tersus to second earth, in the sixth arm. these two planets are about 26 thousand light years away from each other, and obviously there are countless things in the way: planets, stars, nebula, et cetera. in realspace, these things are spaced far enough apart that we would likely be able to navigate a straight line from planet A to planet B without running into anything that would cause us trouble. problem is, it would take us thousands of years to get there, even if we managed to hit the speed of light. which we wouldn’t, thanks to albert einstein.

    now, in hyperspace, it was the opposite problem: objects were incredibly close, but were all in the way of each other, making a straight line impossible. it’s like trying to get to neptune from earth but having mars, jupiter, and uranus in the way. many races circumvented this by plotting curved paths, basically flying from planet to planet, but this could only be done safely for a few planets before hyperspace physics began eating through neutral shields and breaking down the ship itself. this made colonization of planets slightly easier, but kept colonies confined to a few core systems.

    so my colleagues and i, way back when i was a grad student at MIT, we came up with a solution. going back to earth to neptune–the problem there is that, from our perspective, three other planets are directly in the way. but … and i remember my dear friend jitendra coming up with this in the wee hours of the morning–we were talking about this very thing, going from earth to neptune and having planets in the way–and he said, “what if we could find a point in space where it would appear like earth and neptune were touching?” and it worked. it worked! so brilliant! the solution was to shift our viewpoint–the frame of reference, in other worse–until nothing was in the way, creating an artificial touchpoint between two planets. then, using hyperspace’s third aspect, we could “flatten” the third dimension into a two-dimensional picture, creating a “touchpoint” between two faraway objects in realspace. this touchpoint 95% of the time exists as a reality in hyperspace. voila, now we could jump from point A to point B with ease!

    i … can see you’re not as thrilled about this breakthrough as we were. it’s okay. it wasn’t foolproof anyway: the amount of energy needed to both  find an artificial point in space and then flatten it in a photo-realistic model on a quantum supercomputer is a lot more than we realized at the time. you basically need a detailed map of the universe, which is why you see a lot of sensor trucks scanning basically everything everywhere. fortunately, the bethzoans are masters at creating and harnessing tremendous amounts of energy.

    so anyway, once we had this info the bethzoans and we began R&D, we had ships built within two years that had traversed parts of the galaxy no one had ever seen before, and we were getting money left and right to help hone our research. that was 27 years ago, and today, the terran galactic alliance has colonized ten worlds, alleviating centuries of overcrowding and pollution on earth. and you, congratulations, you’re among the first generation offworlders! you’re the future our ancestors thought we’d never have. you owe the courage infused in your bones to help push your generation farther out into the galaxy. there’s a lot even the bethzoans haven’t discovered yet. it’s a brand new world out there to explore.

    and if that bores you, then maybe you deserve to be flipping burgers. i’m kidding. thank you for listening to me babble on. does anyone have any questions?

    [the kids all raise their hands.]

    oh, good!

  • 100: dr carla broker (hyperspace lessons pt 2)

    i’m getting ahead of myself slightly. the third aspect of hyperspace was incredibly difficult for scientists to understand for many years. it actually took us over six years just to replicate the experiment! but once we could replicate it safely, we began to amass a tremendous amount of data regarding these hyperspace particles. a lot of that data is very technical and deals with very advanced levels of physics, so i’ll just cut to the chase: we found that by utilizing certain subatomic particles through a process of fusion, we were able to open small tears into hyperspace for longer and longer periods of time. this was an incredibly important moment for humanity, but also game with a grave cost. again, hyperspace physics do not follow conventional laws of physics and mathematics, and when an object in realspace directly interacts with hyperspace, and vice versa, bad things can happen.

    you all may have heard of “hyperspace sickness,” also known as “the madness” or “swiss cheese disease.” in hyperphysics circles we call it “the sight,” as in, once you see hyperspace, you’re dead. this is why all starships have blinders during hyperspace jumps. the problem is that our brains cannot comprehend direct visual contact with hyperspace–it’s like an overload of the senses, to the point that it causes mental and physical symptoms leading up to insanity and death. scientists during the early experimentation years would catch these brief glimpses of another world and would suffer from bouts of madness and dementia. subsequent viewings of larger portions of hyperspace can even create holes in a person’s brain. this is serious stuff! hyperspace is effectively very radioactive, full of what we call “radioactive physics,” which causes decay in all matter in realspace due to being incompatible with our physics.

    now, of course, a few decades later and we’re traversing the galaxy and colonizing new worlds. how did we do it so quickly? well, of course we had help from the bethezoans, who gave us the technology to develop quantum shielding, but they did not help us with our frame-of-reference drive system. in fact, prior to the development of the fardrive, hyperspace travel was very rare within the galaxy, usually confined to “hubs” where successful hyperspace jumps had occurred again and again. the co-chin race, in the twelfth arm, built these massive hyperspace “gates” which would open enormous holes into hyperspace, and, over the centuries, cause massive decay of the surrounding realspace. one gate was destroyed due to the nearby solar star collapsing into a supernova due to hyperspace radiation. as intelligent as these other races were, and still are, they hadn’t come up with a feasible way to plot hyperspace jumps until the terrans arrived. the reason was this: we had math derived from visual observation of hyperspace that they didn’t, along with a conjecture the legendary physicist dr nera van boolen came up with twenty-five years ago, that if hyperspace is realspace condensed, and that hyperspace acts as both a three-dimensional and two-dimensional space, then perhaps coordinates can be created in realspace that would make a single “touch point” between two celestial objects in hyperspace.

    am i boring you yet? listen, not everyone will grow up to become a hyperphysicist. some of you may be bankers, or teach, or hell, even flip burgers for a living. just do what you’re good at. i don’t mind if you use this time to sleep. for the rest of you, i will break down the frame of reference drive and explain how it got us out of the solar system, and fast.

  • 099: dr carla broker, terran galactic alliance, head hyperphysicist (hyperspace lessons pt 1)

    well, it’s been a couple of decades since i’ve taught a high school course, let alone one on the nature of hyperspace, but i owed your beloved physics teacher and good friend of mine mr stoller a favor and, as you can see by the various cameras in the room, teaching advanced level hyperphysics to a group of wide-eyed freshmen science students makes for great publicity.

    my name is dr carla broker, i’m the head of the terran galactic alliance’s college of hyperphysics at MIT. i have a laundry list for an educational background, i suggest you just search for me through newnet if you want specifics. suffice it to say: i have a lot of education, nearly 40 years worth at this point, and 90% of it directed toward astrophysics and hyperphysics, the latter of which i will be discussing with you today.

    so. hyperspace. what is it? it’s fundamentally two things: one, a completely upheaval of all physics we’ve ever encountered in realspace, and two, the catalyst that changed the future of humankind. before hyperspace, we were apes sitting on a rock in the middle of the galaxy–sure, we might have been smart apes, brilliant apes, but we were still stuck, save for a few shoddy missions to the moon, mars, and the moons of jupiter. einstein’s rules still apply to realspace: we can’t travel faster than the speed of light, and there is significant time dilation the faster we do travel, which, when reaching light speeds, makes a ten minute journey from your frame of reference a 3,000 year journey from the reference point of someone on earth. [looks at camera] please don’t do the math on that one, it was just a loose example.

    now, about a hundred and eight years ago a group of scientists working with the large hadron collider on earth made an important discovery: a particle from another world. how did they know it was from a different world? well, they had a few reasons: one, it didn’t react like any particle we’ve ever discovered in realspace. it was a much denser, much heavier particle that seemed to not serve any function in our atomic structure. two, it was devoid of light but acted exactly like a light particle, suggesting that it was something like dark matter. and third, and this is the important one: when observed, it suggested both three-dimensional space, and two-dimensional space, and shifted between them multiple times before disappearing back into hyperspace.

    i’ll expand on that in a second.

    this experiment was completely random and ended up nearly destroying the LHC, because the particle from hyperspace did not follow the laws of the standard model of physics, or quantum physics, and, as we now know, if you bring something with one set of physics into a world with a completely different set of physics, the change is enough to destabilize and potentially destroy an entire planet. fortunately for the scientists at the LHC, the tear was atomic in size and the ensuing explosion was much like setting off an M80 in a drainage tube.

    but what’s more important is that discovery led us down the path which brings us here, now. hyperspace. hyperspace has three fundamental aspects: first, it is effectively a mirror image of realspace. every object in realspace exists in hyperspace, down to the smallest atom. so tersus exists in hyperspace, as does earth, though we could never land there. objects in hyperspace take up the same space as they do in realspace as well. second, there is no “space” in hyperspace. what this means is, everything is condensed. right now sujena is 210,000 miles away from tersus, but in hyperspace they are touching. in fact, everything in hyperspace is touching, which is what makes it an incredibly valuable tool in traveling through the galaxy. third, hyperspace is visible in both as a two dimensional object, and a three dimensional object. this is tricky to explain simply, other than to say that hyperspace physics does not follow our own. but what’s important is that this ability to “flatten” is what gives us the ability to travel between distant worlds nearly instantaneously. there is, i suppose, a fourth aspect to hyperspace–that traveling through hyperspace greatly reduces time dilation between distances–but it’s more a side effect of the third aspect.

  • 098: thom

    it didn’t sink in until i went back to work. i walked in, sat down at my desk, people asked me if i was feeling better and i honestly said, “no.” i looked at my hands, dry from the drugs. stared into space for longer than i realize. this was the rest of my life, slightly tweaked, slightly more on edge, now more nervous to touch, to kiss, than before. i tried to keep my spirits up during the whole ordeal but no matter what you think or what you read, the stigma always creeps in. when people look at me i just assume they know, that they can see it on me, because they *can* see it on me. that somehow they are able to look through me to all the fear and embarrassment, the guilt and the shame, as if i did something wrong. but i didn’t do anything wrong. so why am i so shaken about it? it was one time, one night with one person that changed everything. but not everything! one thing, one arguably small thing in the grand scheme of life. i should be okay with this, right? it’s the stigma, it’s just the stigma.

    my sleep schedule is all fucked up. i basically wake up every hour or so, adjust myself, fall back asleep, and so on. at one point around 4am i had to pee so i got up to pee, and as i was peeing i was hit with a terrible dizzy spell. i felt like i was going to pass out, or puke, or both. it was really unnerving. i walked back to bed in the darkness and could see these little firework explosions of light inside my eyes. sometimes i would wake up incredibly warm. other times i would be fine, but my fingers would be asleep. but that’s something i’ve been dealing with for years. oh and eating, my jaw is so sensitive from the swollen lymph nodes under my chin, it makes eating a nightmare. the aches, the pains, the constant tired feeling. it’s my body adjusting to a new life.

    in the end i feel like something massive has happened to me, but only i and some people close to me get to know about it, because it’s personal and it’s a big deal and etc etc. it’s probably for the best; my life is my own and doesn’t deserve to be known by everyone. it’s just … a really weird, really sudden change, and now i have to go through it mostly alone. which is odd. that’s all.

  • 097: sean

    i’m driving through the woods, right, in this really amazing ford thunderbird. 1957, 1956 maybe. gorgeous, cherry red, all shiny and shit. white vinyl seats with lipstick red trim, all that good stuff. and this baby purrs, even going up to 70, 80 miles per hour, just hums like a kitten. kelly’s in the passenger seat and she looks beautiful, she looks like a million bucks, she gives helen of troy a run for her money. she’s using the mirror on the back of the sun shade thing to freshen up her makeup, pursing her lips and using her pinky finger to take off excess lipstick and eye shadow. she turns and looks at me occasionally and laughs gleefully, kicking her heels against the floor of the car, and sometimes she pulls a silver flask from between her breasts and pulls from it. she hands it to me. i pull from it. we’re in love as fuck.

    but the woods are dark and we get lost and end up stopping in the middle of nowhere, on the side of the road. kelly’s giggly but i can see the fear in her eyes. i tell her it’s gonna be alright and she shooes me away playfully, saying, “i know, silly.” and then i look out and the woods are like, i dunno, like they’re underwater, and the trees are undulating, the ground is roiling, it’s like a bad trip or something. i look back to kelly and she’s gone. the door’s open and she has run off, and now the car is full of water. and i’m underwater. i suddenly feel the need to hold my breath.

    i’m drowning, and i’m alone, and this whole time i’m thinking, “god i could use a drink.” so i swim out of the car and i’m underwater now, and i can see kelly’s dress shimmering in the darkness, she’s swimming toward me and she has a cigarette in her mouth which is lit. underwater. that kind of shit drives me nuts.

    she swims up to me and tries to speak but her words are bubbles, like the bubbles have words in them but it’s a dream so they’re all gibberish. at this point i remember i’m drowning and start struggling to breathe, which is when she comes up to me and kisses me, and while she kisses me she breathes into my mouth and for a second i feel this surge of life, the water is bright and i’m closing my eyes in the dream and it feels wonderful and then i open my eyes and i’m kissing kelly’s corpse.

    and then i wake up. and i remember she’s dead. and i get up and start to make breakfast.

  • 096: chuck

    jack fucking squat. i’ve been looking for hours and found jack fucking squat. you know aunt darlene’s gonna flip her shit when she sees what we’ve done to this place, right? she is going to murder us and stuff us in the holes we’ve made in the walls. hell i’m surprised i haven’t found any bones in here in the first place. nothing but insulation and old newspapers and the occasional bird’s nest. this is nuts, we’ve been led on a wild goose chase which i think is darlene’s way of getting us to tear this old shitty house down without having to pay for it. and all for what? money? jewelry? dad’s old porn stash? who fucking knows. all i can say is my hands hurt from tearing at drywall and itch from the insulation, so i’m done. if you want to get rich, go ahead, but i’m done. i don’t believe any of this bullshit anyway, it’s all you but for some reason you’ve decided to get drunk instead of help. just perched on your talons waiting to snipe the treasure away from me. fuck you! go find it yourself you dumb cunt. i’m done, you hear me? I’M DONE!

  • 095: sgt haskins, terran planetary alliance

    the seats are fitted with a parachute. once the cockpit started to break apart there was a rupture in the oxygen tank which caused it to explode. i don’t remember much of what happened afterward, but the medical logs from dr takahashi suggest that the tank or the pressure of the oxygen released hit me in my left side, meanwhile the cockpit itself broke apart, launching my seat into the atmosphere. i’m not sure what happened to the others. i must’ve been conscious enough to “eject” myself from the remnants of the cockpit, which in turn triggered the parachute altitude sensor, which opened at approximately 2500 meters from the ground. i was unconscious and still strapped into the seat when the paramedics arrived. i don’t remember any of this; my next memory was waking up in the ICU. the others … i mean you can see the photos for yourself. they didn’t make it. i don’t know why they didn’t try to eject. my best guess is that the oxygen tank explosion knocked them unconscious, or even killed them right then. i just happened to be very, very lucky, and i am keenly aware of that, every time i breathe.

    as to the allegations of sabotage, i can’t speak to that one way or another. every test i performed was green, including the second op tests i did for the other crew. i am aware of lt gustov’s extremist leanings. i knew nothing about it up until five days into the mission, nor did any of the rest of the crew, or anyone on the ground. none of us knew. now that we know in the aftermath, i don’t think it answers the question as to if the mission was sabotaged. to be honest, i think the capsule just couldn’t handle the stress of reentry, which i think is more of an issue for angel corp, who have routinely skimped on quality building materials, fudged quality assurance test results on multiple occasions, and who have connections with our government so deep, it’s nearly impossible to untangle them from the space program. so, despite lt gustov’s political leanings, i would be surprised if he had any involvement in the breakup of the galatian over earth space, unless he is somehow involved with the biggest mishandled corporation on the planet. all i know is that lt gustov was a good friend during our six months in orbit and that his death, slamming into the ground at terminal velocity, was completely and utterly unwarranted.

  • 094: gus

    i’ve fucked my way to the top and i’ve fucked my way to the bottom and i’ve fucked my way to the side and let me tell you, none of those fucks were as good as the fuck i’ve had just now. simply exquisite! your pussy is like a fine aged wine, mmmm, god, just thinking about diving back into that flesh yacht has my johnson hard as a goddamn rock! do you realize what you’ve done to me, bertha? you’ve made me love life again! i could dance on the fucking table i’m so excited. you stirred things in my cock that have never been stirred before, and coming inside of you was like attaching angels wings to my balls. hot damn! you drained me of my seed and filled me with this intense desire to be happy. it really feels good. before this i fucked just to fill that lonely hole in my soul. god. god damn. everything’s different now, bertha. i’m no longer a husk of a man, i’m a full blooded fuck device, bertha. what do i have to do now, marry you? is that what you want? cause i will do it, i’ll do it right now. of course i’ll pay you what i owe for the night but then let’s go to vegas and get married, let’s get married and then fuck every night, i’m a good guy, i can shower you with money, presents, jewelry, whatever you want! i just need a woman like you in my life, a woman who knows how to extract all the goodness from my dick, filling me with a joy i didn’t even know was possible! ugh it’s so great! i feel so great! bertha come on, let’s get married.

    [bertha snores]

    what! bertha you were asleep this whole time? i was professing my love for you, you stupid bitch!

  • 093: kelly

    sometimes you chisel through love like a prisoner escaping alcatraz. sometimes it hits you over the head like a ton of bricks. and sometimes, sometimes you realize you were there all along, that this person you’ve spent time with as a friend was actually someone you’ve loved from the beginning, and then they look at you in the dark of the movie theater and it’s so intense that you feel a little embarrassed, so you glance away, but you can still feel their eyes on your face, just watching you because watching you is a thing they love doing. in any other context it would be creepy, but not this one. this is the one everyone wants.

    it’s scary. it’s scary because it’s this kind of realization like you’re in quicksand, like you realize halfway through sinking that you’re in quicksand, and ideally in this instance you want to sink, you want to be a part of that sand, but you also know that once you do that’s it, that’s where you are, and the only way to get out is to kick and scream or have someone else pull you out. i’m sorry. this is a poor metaphor. love shouldn’t be something you want to kick and scream out of. but on the other hand, it’s not this easy, laissez-faire thing you just idly let happen. it’s an active force, a thing that must be cultivated, watered, harvested. it’s not an easy thing, not like how it looks in the movies. in the movies they cut out all the boring shit, they just heighten the emotion, but that’s like giving someone a lovely trellis without the wooden posts to hold it up. that’s the trouble. everyone wants it to be something special, but it can only be special when you’ve built the foundation first. everything special has the same foundation.

  • 092: bob

    so. you came all this way just to kill me, didn’t you? all these years of searching, and here i am, an old man resting peacefully in a wheelchair, with an afghan over his chilly old legs and a cup of warm earl grey tea in his slightly shaking hands. now, you think, after all these years, the time has come for revenge! for the things i did to your mother and father when you were just a boy. and other people. lots of other people. there. you’ve had my confession. cart me off to jail where i can die among the other murderers, thieves, and sexual fiends locked up there. but while i confess i would remind you that you keep looking at one side of the facts. i murdered your parents, yes, i raped your mother while your father bled to death, yes, i am not excusing my actions as i am a troubled, troubled man, but there is the other side. your older brother, for instance. where do you think he got his rambunctious ways? why do you think, late at night, he would go out in the backyard to find field mice to dissect? do you really think your boyhood dog chester just up and ran away one day? no. of course not. your brother is a fucking murderer, boy, and the only person who knew was me. and the only reason i knew is because i’m a fucking murderer, and i spent the last two years of your parents life learning everything i could about them.

    at first it was just your mother, back in the 70s my method was to track down young brunette women with wavy hair. i did this because they reminded me of my own horrible, troubled mother. i hope you’ll appreciate my frankness on the subject; i’ve spent nearly a decade in various therapies and psychoanalyses trying to figure out what is wrong with me. problem is, it’s hard to pinpoint the problem when you can’t tell your therapist that you frequently saw the limbs off people you’ve stalked. anyway, i had tailed your mother for a week when i noticed her and your father engaging in strange activity. you were, what, ten years old or so? maybe you’ve repressed those memories, i don’t know. i won’t go into detail because i can see from the look in your eyes that you already did your research. i saved your life, boy, saved you from a lifetime of bad decisions. but i wasn’t able to save your brother.

    and now you’ve come back to avenge your freak parents, aren’t you? you gathered up all the clues that led you here. congratulations. i guess you’re no better than they were. it’s alright. i understand. i was once like you, destined to follow in my father’s footsteps. i killed seventy-five people. did you know that? mostly women like i described before; i have a notebook logging each one. i suppose i should keep that a secret but what the hell, i’m going to kick the bucket whether it’s from your bullet or just being an old bastard. i killed seventy-five people because i hoped they would fill this hole my father left in my soul when i was six years old. each murder left me more and more disappointed, until it became rote to research the life of my next kill. it was like eating food; i had to do it to feel human.

    now i’m too old to give a shit. i don’t have the strength to kill anyway. i’m tired. maybe you shooting me in the head would ease this tired old soul, once and for all. but remember: it’s not about me anymore. my days are over. your are still in the prime of your life. you shoot me, you start down that path. remember that. you don’t come back from that path. you don’t come back.