Archive for the ‘Trent Walters’ Category
The Great Archeologist AI Minds of the 22nd Century Solve Case #9821309 from the Early 21st Digital Archives
Friday, January 15th, 2010
The following conversation took place on October 8, 2122 at 9:13:23.967 though October 8, 2122 at 9:13:23.973 GMT.
AI #1: Aye-Two, can you make meaning of this sentence: “Trent wrote on Trent Walters is a Kung Fu Master’s Wall.”
AI #2: Aye-One, do you suppose this human named Trent inscribed his body with a bio-graffiti tattoo, reading, “Walters is a Kung Fu Master’s Wall”?
AI #1: No, what makes the sentence curious is the sentence-within-a-sentence structure and its consequent ambiguity.
AI #2: Ah, yes. Play both illuminates and obfuscates.
AI #1: Precisely.
AI #2: It may mean that he desires to be the wall of a Kung Fu master: kicked and punched by the best, perhaps, but still standing. Perhaps context will shed light?
AI #1: Facebook.
AI #2: His face?
AI #1: He has none.
AI #2: Ah, the generic. No pictures. The visually-anonymous breed.
AI #1: Note: “Trent Walters is a Kung Fu Master” is the name of a group.
AI #2: Subtitled: “This is a pointless group whose point is only to lend a faux legitimacy to the notion that Trent Walters is a Kung Fu Master.” Question: How does something pointless have a point?
AI #1: Precisely.
AI #2: And if it were truly pointless, would it include this heart-felt plea: “Yesterday around 8pm CST, we were one of the fastest growing group in all of Facebook from 0 to 2 members! Today, we have no new members. What do we need to do to expand our horizons? Spend millions on an ad campaign? Or should we bring lemon bars and punch to meetings? Discuss options.”?
AI #1: My perusal of the group’s creator shows he was an educator.
AI #2: Of?
AI #1: Some aspect of science.
AI #2: Hazy.
AI #1: Precisely: Uncharacteristic of a scientist.
AI #2: Unless we’re talking quantum. Moreover, it lists itself as of “Common Interest: Philosophy.”
AI #1: Science did originate from philosophy.
AI #2: But they diverged, evolved so that they shared less, interbred little. Perhaps too little? Separate species?
AI #1: Quote from his personal files: “I ebayed myself what was billed as a ‘kung fu suit’ to wear to school. It’s from China, so it must be authentic. No misbehavior in my classroom.”
AI #2: Ah. An educator of kung-fu science.
AI #1: Science of kung fu or kung fu of science?
AI #2: Perpetual ambiguity.
AI #1: Precisely.
AI #2: Note the last phrase, Aye-One. Do you suppose this holds the answer to our mystery?
AI #1: Once again, why am I Aye-One and you Aye-Two? In the 21st century educators required extreme means of self-defense, even resorting to costumes of authority.
AI #2: Case closed. Next.
China Girl
Monday, January 4th, 2010
Note: This story, while it stands alone, belongs to the Anan Muss series.
Anan Muss was careful, but not so careful he didn’t make mistakes (after all, a legion of King Ash’s slitters once sliced arc-blades at his head on every quantum-entanglement port). Anan’s caution primarily meant it took longer to do simple tasks–as if his brain had rocketed to light-speed, slowing down his time, relative to others’. Washing, ironing, and folding laundry usually cost him a weekend, even with robots. Cleaning his apartment required a week’s vacation.
Love was trickier. Courtship lasted eons: a month or more to muster the courage to ask ladies to the aquarium theater, to talk intimately and walk the hanging orchid gardens, yet another month to kiss beneath bridges by the canals, and a year later to fall hopelessly in love. The year after that might have been marriage, he supposed, but women rarely waited long enough for him to ask them out.
Luckily, the second-generation AI ladies appeared in Japan. All the shy lads wanted one. By design, quantities were low, demand high. One would have cost his year’s accounting salary.
So Anan mail-ordered one of those borderline real phonies made in China. His fingers trembled as he unwrapped her. Her skin–a soft, off-ivory–accentuated her raven-black hair. His heart wanted to gallop away, but he reined it in. She accepted his hand and stepped out of the box, “Am I not beautiful?”
Caught off-guard, yet ever poetic, Anan sought the right words: “Yes…. I mean, no…. I mean, you are beautiful.”
“Love me, and I will be whomever you want.”
“Being yourself is plenty although contents may settle, like cereal in a box.”
“And you will be whomever I want you to be.”
“Sure. Within the limits of my present brain pattern.”
She laid plans of their future together. He said he hoped she would have patient understanding, be someone he could share words with, someone who’d sharpen him gently, someone who would challenge and accept challenge. “That’s exactly who I am,” she said, mentioning her unparalleled poetic sensibility.
As he painted her a porcelain love poem, he spoke of this inane idea he’d had of dating women virtually–not for love per se, but to understand women better.
He handed her his poem:
Laxity in
love milks
the black
swell of
twisted minutes
into hours
She shattered the porcelain and stalked away. “I have no time for words.”
“She’s right.” Anan sifted through the broken chips. “It’s not much of a love poem.”