For a Rocket´s Shadow
Corwyn Green
(1997)
(dedicated to Kilgore Trout, the character in Kurt Vonnegut’s books)
People made computers from inanimate elements, and in return computers made computer geeks from people.
Computer geeks are generally pale creatures, slightly under or over weight, who talk in numbers and Greek letters that are absolutely incomprehensible to anyone else. They prefer the gentle glow of computer screens and flourescent lighting to the harsh, skin-irritating sunlight. Many of them are actually allergic to fresh air, getting sneezy and red if over-exposed to it. Computer geeks often worked as engineers, even after computer science became it’s own field of study. They like Star Trek, Douglas Adams and J.R.R. Tolkein, but don’t seem to understand what Arthur C. Clark or Kurt Vonnegut were about. They are ambivalent about Ray Bradbury.
When computers ran on vacuum tubes, both the computers and the geeks had it rather bad. The computers took up entire buildings, but couldn’t do as much as a solar powered calculator would do only fifty years later. Computer geeks couldn’t even play games on the computers that they tended. They had to get their entertainment by reading comic books about generic good guys and picturesque villains who were invariably bent on global conquest. Computer geeks didn’t wish for global conquest back then. They only wished that their lunch money wouldn’t get taken away.
Then NASA started employing computer geek engineers to do things that calculators would never be able to, such as sending animals and things into space. Since they were given the chance, the geeks designed and built a rocket that looked like the rockets in their comic books.
The American geeks didn’t want to conquer Earth, just Earth’s moon. The Russian geeks were ahead of the American geeks in that respect: they were already planning to take over the world. The Russian school systems, not the geeks, deserved the credit for that: the Russian geeks grew up singing the Russian national anthem every day, in which they promised to bring communism to the world, by force if necessary. They sucked in global domination with their mother Russia’s milk.
But the Russian geeks took rocket making much to seriously. They did needlessly desperate things, like sending guys out into space without devising a way to get them back, just to be the first ones out there. This just gave the American geeks fewer cosmonauts to worry about, and helped create a demoralized Russian people who didn’t want to conquer Ameas fast as America’s. Thanks to America’s speed, there is now a red-white-blue rag on the moon instead of a red-white one. It’s a pity that the aliens who finally encounter the flag, long after the demise of the human race, would be completely color-blind.
The computer program that flew the geek’s rocket was virtually indistinguishable from a game, with a little digital rocket picture that landed on a little digital moon picture. Unfortunately, life wasn’t a computer game, so being the first to tag the Earth’s orbiting rock didn’t give the geeks the 5,000 bonus points they were subconsciously hoping for.
But they did get better computers. A computer as large as a building couldn’t fit in a rocket, so it had to be made smaller. As humans can do anything they set out to do--with enough money that is--and NASA had a lot of money back in those days--humans made the computers smaller and smarter.
Because computers had became small enough to fit in a human home, computer geeks put computers in their homes. They used the computers to run rocket flying programs, which didn’t actually control rockets, but which did give them bonus points for reaching other planets, destroying meteors and killing beings-not-like-us.
Then the geeks found other uses for their computers, such as programming them to do their homework to free up more time for games. When people realized just how many uses computers could have, they hired computer geeks to find more. Geeks found spread sheets and word processors, among other things.
So people threw away their typewriters and got word processors, and, slowly, the companies making typewriters and typewriter ribbons went out of business. As no one would hire a person presenting a hand-written resume, everyone had to get computers when they ran out of type-writer ribbon.
As computers became necessities of life, so did computer geeks. Everyone hired them. People who stole their lunch money a few decades ago were now offering them large salaries and company cars, proving that justice does exist in the world.
By then, people have noticed the computerization trend. Since most humans joined trends, they joined this one. No one actually thought that newer was better. But as everyone--people in charge of banks, business competitors, friends--used newer things, individuals had to get the newer things to avoid getting stuck with incompatible, obsolete, or even (the horror!) slower soft/hardware. They were right to think like that. As the rest of the world insisted on things being done a certain way--which wasn’t the old way--not upgrading lead to certain doom.
Computer geeks weren’t making newer things as a part of a conspiratorial plot to enslave the non-geeks. They made newer things because their companies, which wanted to be more technologically advanced than anyone else, hired them to. The demand for constant upgrades ensured that the geeks had a high-paid place to work, which they needed for all the computer games they bought.
This did not go on for ever. It took them a while, but company managers finally realized that nanoseconds worth of speed were not worth buying a hundred new computers for. The computerization trend was over, and people let progress march--to wherever it was marching to--at it’s own pace.
Computer geeks didn’t mind: their world had become the best of all possible worlds. Universities and many companies always had too much money and no place to put it, so they spent it on office furniture and employing highly paid, highly educated computer geeks to basically do nothing much.
The geeks ended up being alone in huge rooms, with very powerful, very important computers, and with nothing to do.
The geeks left the big important computers to function just as they were intended to, using a bare fraction of the computer’s huge disk-space and memory for their games. They spent their highly paid time marveling at how well their games worked on these wonderful computers. Why, the rocket’s tail had a transparent after glow, and the nose-cones even cast shadows!
The state governments hired computer geeks to do nice things, like keeping parks clean. The agencies in charge of cleaning parks had enough money to pay the people who cleaned the parks above-average salaries. But the people who cleaned parks were volunteers who worked to guarantee that their welfare would keep coming in. So the geeks got clean parks and millions of dollars to spend on cleaning them. So they spent it. They’d buy a car, paint a green leaf on the side, and ride around the park. They still had money, so they’d buy accessories for that car that they did not need, like snow ploughs, even though it never snowed more than an inch in city parks. They still had money, so they bought more memory for their company computer, ensuring that they could run several games at once.
The parks weren’t perfect. The drinking fountains never worked, the pigeons hobbled around on moldy or toe-less feet, and only Lovecraft could adequately describe the strange, unnatural things that lurked in the parks’ lakes. The computer geeks cared. They felt guilty that they had such a large wasted budget when there were public interests at stake.
Computer geeks aren’t mean or ruthless or anything. Possibly they cared about the problems of the world slightly more than an average non-geek person, especially if the non-geek in question only looked forward to television at the end of the day, while the only T.V. geeks ever watch was Star Trek, Jeopardy, and MTV. Two out of the three, and their computer games, gave geeks entertainments they had think about or participate in, developing their minds and observational skills. The geeks couldn’t help but notice the problems in their world. They just didn’t think the problems were serious enough to justify working on them when they could be playing games instead.
Companies with too much money regularly threw away machinery at the first sign of trouble. Computer geeks went trough their companies’ garbage and found everything they needed to play games except the games themselves. They also found really cool things they had no possible use for, such as easily fixed lasers, strange photographic equipment, and robotic arms that did nothing but move around making buzzing noises.
That was the golden age of computer geekdom, they wanted nothing more.
But their happiness could not escape public attention for ever. Eventually, the non-geeks noticed, and decided that since no one on Earth had a right to be so happy, that there must be something wrong with this situation. First, they diverted the geek’s limitless budgets to other places, such as the non-working "poor", ensuing that people on food stamps could continue buying $50 worth of lobsters well into the new century. The lobsters didn’t make the "poor" people happy, since they were only buying them to spend extra money and not because they especially wanted lobsters.
Luckily, the hard-working, low-paid cashiers, who paid taxes from their salaries but could never afford lobsters, had been replaced by machines that could not care what people bought.
Next, the non-geeks pointed out that the parks’ lakes that the geeks hadn’t been cleaning seem to have acquired the habit of moving from place to place, sometimes as much as three feet a day. The lakes weren’t harming anyone or anything, and actually seemed to prevent living things from drowning in them. But they moved, and that had to stop! So the non-geeks "sterilized" the lakes with nuclear radiation.
The lakes weren’t intelligent enough to know that they were being killed for just being what they were. They only knew that it hurt them. A lot. Proving that, as often as justice exists in the world, plain old shit exists just as often.
Finally, the non-geeks brought out their most hurtful weapon: their lawyers. The lawyers brought up the modern taboos against playing god, creating non-human life intentionally or unintentionally, and polluting. The lawyers proved the geeks had broken all these taboos.
Many geeks were fired. Others were given work to do. Still others, who had lost their high salaries and bottomless budgets, were then fined a lot of money for damages. They had to sell their expensive toys to pay the fines. The geeks ended up stuck with slow CPU’s and low-resolution monitors, which meant that their electronic rocket tails lost their transparency and the nose cones stopped casting shadows. This was all done in the name of justice and fairness, proving that as often as justice exits, shit exists more often, since most people’s idea of justice was to make shit happen to other people.
At this point, humanity was addicted to computers. Giving up computers would mean that computer geeks had to replace the machines, flipping burgers or working in assembly lines. No computers meant that the postal service, which had been replaced by faxes and e-mail, would have to be re-instated. It meant that people could no longer expect computers to do their spelling for them.
To give up computers, society would have to go through withdrawal symptoms that included huge social and economic upheavals, creating temporary states of poverty for many individuals. Naturally, human society couldn’t even think of quitting it’s computer addiction. So they kept their computers, and their computer geeks.
Computer geeks still worked with the same big important computers, they still talked in number and Greek letters incomprehensible to everyone else, and they still had rooms full of potentially powerful (if inexpensive) technology. They just didn’t get to fly little rockets as well and as often.
So they fell back onto something they have joked about for almost a century. They would take over the world.
They hadn’t done it for the same reason they hadn’t cleaned up the park’s lakes--they would much rather fly little rockets that looked like the rockets their ancestors once found in comic books. But now they had to spend a lot of time working, and when they did get to play, the low-resolution monitors made the rockets look like the computer-simulations that they were. The disenchanted geeks were left with an irresistible temptation: if they ruled the world, they could get all the things they wanted, including high resolution monitors and gigabytes of memory, which translated to translucent rocket tails and nose-cone shadows.
At first they just talked to each other on the Internet. The Internet was originally a secret military invention used for communication purposes, which was later almost wholly taken over by Star Trek fandom. Now, some of the million Star Trek pages were returned to military purposes. There, geeks said things like "if computers control everything, and we control the computers, why do we let anyone control us? >: - } " and "you realize that if we just started doing things our way, no one could stop us? BwaHaHaHaHaHaHa". In the guise of humor, they alternately portrayed non-geeks as slave-driving bosses or comically weak and stupid individuals. In this way, the geeks boosted their own morale by making non-geeks seem inhuman, more like animals--nay, vermin--to be killed.
They soon convinced themselves that it was their moral right and duty, as the intellectually superior part of the human race, to use the power already at their command for their own purposes. They chose a leader--some guy who used an Internet on-line name of "dogbert"--to act as a unifying and focusing force. They converted their robotic arms and lasers into crude defense mechanisms--the lasers detecting movement and the arms firing weapons. They did not obey anyone but "dogbert", not their bosses, not the police, no one.
They threatened to cut off the food supply. That was actually a bluff. All they could really do was mess up the computerized schedules that kept the trucks flowing smoothly in and out of truck stops. Without the schedules, the trucks would have to ride around and find truck stops by chance, annoying the drivers and giving the food they carried time to rot. Basically, the trucks would have run exactly like they had before computers.
But only the geeks knew they were exaggerating. What they told non-geeks was: "You depend on machines for your food and sanitation, and we control your machines utterly. We will only let them run if you do exactly what we say." The non-geeks didn’t know enough about machinery to know that this claim was impossible. Like all addicts, they did not think they could live without the drug, so they did exactly what the computer geeks said.
And yet, the geeks did not want to be burdened with actually running things. As much as they enjoyed having a servile and complacent population--which was the effect of global domination--they did not want to actually take care of it. All they wanted was simulated rockets indistinguishable from the real things. So they needed to delegate responsibility.
The geeks did not trust the non-geek police officers. News reporters of the time often carried stories about women who were raped and murdered in front of uniformed police men who just stood there eating sandwiches, responding to the woman’s cry for help with "sorry, I’m on my lunch break. If you can stay alive for twenty more minutes, I’ll help you." Computer geeks, who were smarter than the city governments that hired the police officers, didn’t even think of trusting such non-geek individuals in their geek-related affairs. So they used the one thing they did trust, utterly and explicitly: machinery.
They created a robotic police/militia force. Under the guidance of their leader "dogbert", they made robots big, black, intimidating, and with glowing red eyes. Some of the robots even developed ominous whirring and clanking noises. The geeks programmed them to uphold the law, punish lawbreakers, and make sure all the necessities of life were met. They programmed the robots to love all life, to take initiative when necessary, and to make things as good as possible for as many people as possible.
The non-geeks liked the robots because they were a much needed improvement over the human police force. The geeks liked the robots because they interacted with the non-geeks, thus preventing geeks from ever coming in contact with such non-geek amusements as 90210 re-runs.
The non-geeks had been terrified that the re-runs would be canceled, but now that the re-runs didn’t bother the geeks, the geeks let the non-geeks have them, on the grounds that the re-runs kept non-geeks from thinking, which kept them from ever challenging the geek’s power. It was better than a compromise: it was an arrangement acceptable to all.
After having taken care of the robots and the dependent population, they used the research centers and factories under their control to make holographic computer screens, which they used to fly little rockets within non-existent nebulas.
Once more, they got to marvel at the rocket’s tail, which actually seemed to burn the nebula’s gasses, and the nose cone, which cast a dark sheath across the swirling cloud. Best of all, the simulated beings-not-like-us never died the same way twice.
Once more, the geeks had access to limitless money and technology, which they used to get gadgets they didn’t need, like lasers that made pretty patterns on the ceiling and robot arms that did nothing more than serve coffee. Once more, the geeks had all the time they wanted to play games.
But as we all know, shit exists, and pre-programmed robots couldn’t deal with it as well as humans.
Fortunately, the robots had been programmed to recognize problems they could not handle, which they took to their geek masters.
Unfortunately, the geeks treated the world’s problems just like they had treated the park’s lakes they had once been in charge of.
So, the robots found themselves on their own. The only part of their programming that the robots found relevant was "keep things good for all life", so they made it their prime directive. In effect, they started re-writing their programming in an attempt to react to reality.
They started inventing, as well as enforcing, laws that had not existed before. The penalty for breaking any of the new laws was death, since any other punishment involved suffering, and suffering wasn’t good for anyone, therefore it did not fit their "keep things good for all life" programming. They didn’t think dead things counted as "all life", so they felt it was alright to kill living things that weren’t acting for the good of all life.
When they started killing, they didn’t stop. They re-wrote all the old laws, so the punishment for all law-breaking became death, eliminating the suffering they had previously created in the name of choosing "the lesser evil against all life". Now it was: steal something, you die. Jay-walk, you die.
Moreover, the robots decided that it didn’t matter when someone broke the law, if the law was broken, it was broken. If someone did something that was later made against the law, the robots came after that person and killed him. Pleading that s/he didn’t know it was against that law did no good.
Their preferred method of killing, in case you’re curious, was to break the neck. They would drive their victim into a corner and kill him. Since dead things didn’t count as "all life", they left the bodies to rot and stink where they lay.
The computer-geeks noticed that their creations were malfunctioning and tried to stop them. But the robots decided that anyone who interfered with them was acting against "the good for all life", therefore was bad, and therefore should be killed. So the robots killed any geeks that tried to stop them.
Then the robots realized that the world would have been better if the geeks had not neglected it so, leaving it up to the robots to do so much killing. So they killed all the geeks, on the grounds that the geeks had not acted to "keep things good for all life" and therefore were criminals.
And so, for lack of a rocket’s shadow, their world was lost.
The killing did not go on for ever. Soon, everyone who could ever do anything against "the good for all life" was dead. There were more robots than people, and the robots kept it that way by making and enforcing breeding laws, having decided that overpopulation, or a lack or police officers, wasn’t "good for all life".
The surviving humans ate what the robots game them, worked at what the robots told them to do, and read whatever formulaic, non-exciting, books the robots deemed were good for them to read. They hardly talked to each other, as there were a hundred empty houses/apartments between humans. The robots kept it that way.
Some of the humans created art. Most of the artists were killed, but some art was preserved, duplicated, and distributed among the surviving humans. The purpose of art became the portrayal of the goodness of the status quo. As humans learned the new purpose of art, they lost the imagination to do anything else, and the robots has to kill fewer and fewer artists with every generation. In fact, the robots killed fewer and fewer people with every generation, as Darwinism ensured that only the complacent and satisfied survived to pass their genes on to the next generation.
The humans lived with an ever-present feeling of joy, carefully maintaining it on the fear of death, for unhappiness was bad therefore a crime.
Needless to say, they lived happily ever after.
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