… because I know what puts eyeballs on the page, ladies. 😀 OK – maybe not that. It’s a bit of a hassle to shave in the morning and people seem to like me with a beard. So, I might just go on ahead and let grow out for the winter.

If you were looking for deep philosophical discussions and keen insights into society – you might want to look elsewhere. Sorry – this is only the warm-up for my head in the morning, or to rant about TV shows or movies. Don’t worry, if I get one of those keen insights, I’ll put it here first. I promise.

We’re about a third of the way through I/O Error and I am getting ready to bring in the Sisters. I’ve been waiting to get to this point since I started to put words on the page. When this little scene is done, I’ll get to Rob’s scene in the airlock – although I think I might move around some things and get the airlock scene earlier to ratchet up the weirdness factor of everything. I also don’t remember is I discussed this or not, but one of the things I was doing was having Gail’s consciousness (?) split into two sides: the quantum side (which deals in quantum processing and allows to tackle non-linear things and to work better with people in general) and her logical side (a traditional computer processor, albeit one that could run laps around anything we have today). When I would write – I would have them interacting with each other like some sort of Odd Couple:

The logical side of her processor noted that Milo was an independent device and did not need or benefit from any sort of increased attention. The quantum side of the processor told the logical side to put a sock in it.

It’s a cute line – it gives us a lot of information in few words. We see one of her internal conflicts and that could come into play in later scenes:

“Get a hold of yourself.” She muttered as she walked down a flight of stairs. “It’s only a CME. Milo’s been through worse. I’ve been through worse. The guest pods are working fine. There is absolutely nothing that’s going to happen.” Her logical processors pointed to everything she had said earlier and affirmed that the probability of anything to endanger the functioning of the Massive Internal Logical Operator, the guest pods and the android identified as Gail unit 23-Green were infinitesimally small enough to be categorized as non-existent. The quantum processors emphasized that even a stopped clock was right twice a day. Gail rubbed her temples – less a command of her dithering program and more of a mannerism adopted from one of the techs she worked with.

Again – interesting lines, but alas; they are not lines that should be in this story. The concept is that the reader is seeing everything that Gail sees, so when the others start to doubt what she is experiencing is that we are sitting in our comfy (or uncomfy bus benches) and harshly whispering ‘Yes, it’s there! Just look!’ So – in keeping with Pixar’s Rules of Storytelling, I am going to have to cut lines like this; however, I am going to wait to do the first round of re-writes first. Everything in its time.

Well, speaking of time – time to dunk under myself warm water and scrub myself clean. I hope y’all have a good day.

Sincerely,

Seething Apathy