Category Archives: Written Work

Working Holiday

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I have a couple of posts stacked up to edit and prepare to set up here, but work is getting in the way. Not the day job, but writing work!

My sluggish return to all things creative is getting a little bump. I am busy reviewing galley proofs for one of my stories to come back into print!

I’m very excited that “Data Dogs” will be available again in the Hearts for Hounds anthologies, raising money to assist shelters! If this is a way I can help out I am thrilled to be part of it!

A short post today with more to follow as the book(s) become available!

Speech to Text… Take Three

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I grabbed a new tool. I set it up and tested it out on the drive home. I thought about just posting the raw words, but it’s a rambling mess. What I did get though, was around 1,800 words of raw, rambling mess – so this looks like it might help me keep moving posts like this forward more efficiently. There will be some edit needs, but this might actually work this time.

So here we go for test number three! I tried out a different app yesterday, rambled on mercilessly for probably 15 or 20 minutes. When I went back to look at the text from that particular app – it had stopped recording as soon as the screen shut off. That rambling mess –  almost all of it went away. I hope to get the little piece of that posted in the near future. That’s  the point of this. I want to be able to put together some thoughts in a more timely manner get things out for blog posts. Move things forward. There are a lot of times when the moment I sit down and I think to myself, “Okay, here it is. I’m going to… I’m going to write!” and I end up knocking out a blog post when what I should be doing is working on one of my stories.

That was as far as I got before this thing errored out.

I think that’s going to be a big problem. I’m trying to do this while I’m driving. It allows me to use the drive time usefully.

This thing has errored out like twice while I’m driving and that’s really sort of the point. It needs to be working while I’m driving. I need to not pay attention to the app and focus on driving. That is the primary thing I should be doing. The app should allow me to use my drive time in a more productive manner.

I mentioned the drive time to a friend at a convention recently and he suggested it. He suggested a different app, but that different app uses AI. I don’t know if this one uses AI or not cuz maybe it doesn’t. I will check it out. I am not a fan of using AI. I had a whole rambling thing about AI yesterday and I hope that this one doesn’t go away. If I see the error message pop up out of the corner of my eye I’ll just stop and then we’ll come back to it later. Until then I’ll just keep going.

So – drive time. I want to use this drive time productively. I want to use it for getting thoughts out. Stuff that I can use for quick edits to send into a blog post. If I can get the blog post put together quickly, that saves me time. I do want blogging to be a thing that I continue to do. I do want to continue. I’ve done it for years, but have fallen off a lot after recent events. I’ll start working on stuff and fall off because time, then I’ll start working on stuff again. I put forth a lot of effort in just starting and stopping. I’m throwing opinions out there and keeping the ‘publicity’ going, but what I should be doing is writing more of my stories. I need to get my work out there, so we’re going to start with the blog post and see if I can move forward faster. 

Moving to the stories as far as using this speech to text thing won’t be as easy. The first thing that I noticed after yesterday’s attempt is that speaking for number of minutes continuously not an easy thing. Particularly if it’s on scripted. I was all over the place. I was throwing thoughts at this thing yesterday from all over. I should probably be thankful most of it was lost, but even today I can tell already – this is going to be super stream of consciousness.

 I don’t know, or I haven’t quite figured that part out yet. The most important thing is to make sure it works first. I will just chatter on as I’m on my drive home and we’ll see when we come up. The app says ‘unlimited length’ for posts and I’ll put it to the test.

Another part is I want to be traveling with purpose. So many topics have slid past just based on my ability to get to the computer and type. I want what I have to say to have some kind of meaning as well. I say that because I’ve discovered that I’m still very upset about something that happened (many years ago) with a local news source. I went on a rant yesterday about this and I got caught up calling it a newspaper and describing a blog in column inches… it wasn’t great. The incident was that this news source had a columnist that they paid – yes, an actual live human – and actual live human was in a columnist position getting paid and you are potentially blocking somebody else out of that position doing actual work. What bothered me? This individual went on at length saying, “well… I’ve got nothing.”

I was angry then and I’m still annoyed now. IF you don’t have anything to say anymore, get out of the way! That person got paid! It just… it bothered me. I saw a story recently that said she was still that person until she recently retired. I shouldn’t be so upset about it. I suppose that’s pretty much any channel these days. If you turn on any media source there are a whole lot of people with nothing to say.

Having this time should help me add words.I did some rough math in my head. Even if I’m only throwing down… keep it to round numbers here… I manage a thousand words three times per week when I’m driving back from the office. That’s 3,000 words that I didn’t have before. 3,000 words a week for a month, there’s another 12,000. Hopefully keeping things moving. Trying to do the math in my head that’s like 72,000 words or so in half a year. A pretty good chunk of a novel right there. With edits and formatting, I think I could put together a book in a year. That’s if it’s only the words that I use while I’m using the speech to text. That sort of thing is a huge boost, so fingers crossed. 

Doing this will mean, vocal chords warming up. It takes effort, it takes time, and if I’m going to do anything with a story I can’t just off the cuff throw Story Stuff down like this and have it be successful. Side note – talking about hundreds or thousands of words is great, but that’s if they’re good words. There’s no guarantee that the words will be worthwhile at all. There’s the very real chance that it’ll be half that amount just because most of it, the majority of it is simply garbage. I’ll be interested to see how that was typed. I pronounced garbage with a bit of an accent. A person who’s speaking doesn’t always translate directly to text. What you’re saying, the emphasis, the hesitations… those sorts of things don’t automatically come through.

I have always struggled with moving a story told to the written word. I think that’s part of the explanation of why my writing is so slow. If I’m talking to somebody and we’re having a conversation and I have emphasis and I have sound effects and accent and I can tell a really good story. That doesn’t always translate directly to text. While I may be a decent storyteller that doesn’t make me a good writer. It’s a really hard thing to translate from one to the other.

So I’m testing out my stream of Consciousness here to see how it looks, how it works. I’m certain that I repeated myself probably three or four times within the context of the last 10 or 15 minutes but that’s the other piece of this. When you don’t have a plan, when you don’t have an outline, when you don’t have a goal in mind, then you just go you ramble and sometimes you get repetitive and sometimes end up with the similar word creeping into your text over and over and over again. I might need to find and replace, or just a word search in general to find that word that you’ve used again and again and amusingly enough again should probably be one of those words.

Having said all of that before this, I do intend to research whether or not this tool uses AI. Part of that is I am not a fan of AI. My background in science fiction has shown AI as the bad guy so much, for so long, it’s difficult to escape from that mindset for me. I have a minimal understanding of large language model training and that sort of thing. It’s certainly not enough to say I understand it. All I could really say is that I’m vaguely conversational about it. It’s emotional for me. It’s the feeling portion of it I’m not comfortable with. If I don’t feel comfortable with it then I’m not going to want to use it. There’s also a part of me that wants to do the background research because all of the news lately shows the amount of resources that AI is consuming in terms of power and computer chips and water resources. All of that sort of thing along with the massive number of data centers that are being put forward in planning processes right now… that feels like the sort of thing that could very easily get out of hand. Far too easy using it and not being aware of how it’s going to affect our environment.

For my purposes, tools that I have seen so far that companies have put forward for AI do a lot of things very poorly, very quickly. I can get you a lot of wrong answers in a heartbeat. If we are going to depend on them then we definitely want to make sure that we are prepared. Correct answers for things that we want to be able to have a level of confidence in. When we say “AI did this and I’m pretty sure it’s correct” it’s not always enough. I don’t want to say “hey AI did this and I never checked it out” and then find out at some point later it absolutely didn’t work, was wrong, and now the stuff that I’m working with is wrong and that, that really bothers me. Do I think AI is going away? Absolutely not. There are too many companies that have invested too much money. They’re putting AI in places that it absolutely does not belong. Eventually the market will find an appropriate level and straighten itself out. When we know the appropriate tools, the appropriate use cases of those tools, then we can deal with it. It does NOT need to be in everything. In fact it bothers me that it has been forced into my email account already. I don’t want it there. I don’t need it there. I don’t need some computer telling me ‘hey I can help you write that better’. No, you really can’t. You’re going to use generic terminology that doesn’t fit my voice. My stories, my voice. That matters. Not enough people get that.

There it is. My massive, rambly, on my way home piece. I am now actually within probably 5 or 10 minutes of the house and I have just let all of this go~

And it errored out again. A fine point to wrap up at.

Far more editing time than I wanted (close to an hour). More words than I thought (final count just over 1,900). A successful test. More rambly words to follow!

Speech to Text – Take Two

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Just imagine the little movie clapper thing making that snapping sound… because imagination is about as far as I got. Here’s the text:

As I am on the road home for testing this out for the first time and I have no idea well I have no idea number one how long I’ll be able to just speak at this thing number two I have no idea what exactly I’m going to speak about just trying to test it for the sake of testing it and number three I suck an indexing and I didn’t have a third thing so now comes the real test because the screen is about to shut off and I’m not sure where exactly the whole thing ends or starts or how long a pause I can have if I don’t have a actually stop doing this see if it actually picked up all these words that’s it for now post the results of this test up to my blog and then we’ll try it again later

That is the rambling result of more than twenty minutes of talking. Turns out the mic shuts off if the screen goes off in that app. I have to consider that a complete fail. I have no use for a tool meant to keep my hands free if I have to keep paying attention to it and poking it every couple of seconds. It didn’t keep up well with my speaking pace, nor did it catch everything.

I’ll look up and try another one here over the next day or so. This one is getting uninstalled.

Tool Testing

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I recently changed firms at my day job. The new place is a much further drive than I have had in some time.

I was talking with a friend about my current place of employment that I when I have to go to the office, I need to drive more than I have in a long time. It seems to be a real waste of time. To have this 45 minute period each way that I can’t really do anything with is wasteful. To be fair, I have listened to more news and more music, but there are days when I need more time and that seemed like a usable spot. He suggested that what I needed was a way to talk to notes – use a voice to text transcription tool of some sort. I could use that time driving productively by taking notes from my train of thought, then quickly editing the notes so that I could keep my stories and my blog moving along at a better pace.

Even if I only got a few hundred words, that would be a few hundred more than I had before.

This is not the fist time I’ve tried a tool like this – but this is the first time I’ve had specific time when I couldn’t do other things, or type at all. This was my first attempt with an app called Voice Notebook.

As with any voice to text app I’ve encountered in the past, the editing it the real challenge. I have managed to move the notes to a cloud drive and clean them up. We’ll see how this goes when I need to use it in the car (I cheated and tested this one while I was sitting at my desk in the office).

For Charity

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More Futures for Ferals by Danielle Ackley-McPhail

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This series gets 5 stars – it’s a charity and this one actually contains one of my stories. Go – buy a copy because all the profits go to charity.

Rescue is not an easy calling, whether it is cats or some other species.
It is hard work with usually no pay, often not enough volunteers, and
very little thanks beyond (hopefully) the satisfaction of making life
better for another living creature. When donations are low, rescuers
draw on their own funds to take care of their temporary charges, and
not even just the basics of food, shelter, and necessities, but medical
costs or even end-of-life care.
This collection seeks to share some of that burden. The profits from
the campaign that funded these books have already been sent to A
Future for Ferals, a 501c3 registered charity, to mitigate the costs of
rescuing over fifty cats in one day from a hoarder house. Of the fifty
cats, only two had been neutered. The vet bill was over $4000 to neuter
the rest and take care of the necessary medical care some of the cats
needed resulting from neglect.



View all my reviews

Published again?

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Maybe.

I had submitted a short story to this collection and it was accepted. This was… I’m going to say years ago at this point. Maybe 2 or more. I honestly don’t remember.

Friends were at the home convention for the group that was planning to publish this anthology… and surprised me with this little gem:

Yes, they spelled my name wrong. I’ll be sure to message and get that sorted out – right after I find out how I get more details about this upcoming Kickstarter and what that means for the rights to my story…

Preservation

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I give way too much thought to my legacy for somebody that has barely cracked a dozen published works. Thing is, I can’t help it. I have binder upon binder of notes. I have this addiction to paper and all sorts of sketching and annotation and random outlining of ideas. It is admittedly less organized than I would want it to be, but in there is the culmination of years and years of world building and character notes and map sketches.

Who cares?

A fair question. First and foremost the person stuck cleaning things out I suppose. This is a difficult and sometimes tragic situation.

A long time ago I was asked for my opinion on some works left behind by a young creator. This young person had been killed in an accident and the grieving parents, in their quest for answers as to why this young person was gone far too soon, were lashing out at any and all entities involved in the accident. I was shown a sample of the young creator’s works and asked if I thought this was the seeds of a potentially legendary career cut short too soon.

It’s heartbreaking to see this kind of thing. One of the biggest factors in this particular case was the parents clearly having no interest or understanding in the work presented. Was this a factor in the so deemed ‘accident’? Hard to say. I had very limited access to information about the case (for that is exactly what it became when the parents brought lawsuits and criminal accusations). The scattered papers were gathered up and some notes attempting to bring order or sense were clipped to the front of the stack.

At the time I said I couldn’t see the level of potential claimed by the parents. The sketches were indifferent in skill, copying media available at the time. Fan fiction and use of copyrighted works without permission. I think about this from time to time. Would I see it differently now?

So, I have these thoughts. I have stacks of binders and reams of sketches, some in books and some floating freely across reference books or folded into game manuals. Will somebody look at those and claim there is more there than there is? I have my doubts, but I think about it anyway.

Then I wonder ~ what sort of gap in history will there be when these millions upon millions of words just go away? Yes, I have this addiction to paper, but how many notes, feelings, personal letters and all the other ephemera of an author’s life will be lost when (notably not IF) all the electronic records fail and the internet is gone? How will a researcher dig into the various aspects of what brought a story to life when all that life was held together with circuits and lights?

This is a thought I’ve had before, and one that will likely crop up again. The topic is worth the thought. How many thousands of my words would disappear if my website went away? Would anyone other them me care? What sort of personal correspondence would come up when somebody wondered if I bounced ideas off other authors? Will there be anything to find?

I think this article (link) is both hopeful and naïve at the same time. Not everyone has that addiction to paper. It’s worth reading and definitely worth considering.

The Speed of a Dream

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The most difficult thing to me is the speed that the stories cascade across the screen in my mind in juxtaposition to the glacial pace they can be placed on the page by way of my fingers. What is the speed of a dream?

I’ve tried the voice to text tools and they’re far better these days than they were before, but there’s something to me about sitting in front of the blank page and tapping away at a set of keys. It feels right. The tactile nature of transferring a story from one medium to another. It can be soothing, it can be evocative, it can be infuriating. It happens at a faster pace from time to time. Sometimes I catch inspiration and the words just flow. The problem of course is that inspiration is fleeting and the stories I have to tell want… need, to be much longer than a few hundred words spilled onto a page in a moment when the images are willing to flow.

If the dream like state could be maintained then the words and the works would be created so much more quickly. There are those who believe the artist must, based on the maintenance of that dream like state, take measures to ensure the dreams don’t leave. It’s a fallacy, and worse, detrimental to the truth of the story one has to tell. IF one is the creator of the story than it should be a true creation, not one based in and biased by whatever concoction or substance the author consumed in desperation to grasp the dream.

Perhaps that’s the key. It’s not a dream, or if it is, it’s a dream that belongs to others. The creator is simply the channel and the words and the works are designed to be fleeting. The creations dash forward and away, in search of the place where they may take up space for all the others meant to experience them.

It’s whimsical to sit and ponder these things and more so to believe I have any insight into these things. I am peeking through the keyhole, glancing into the partially opened door in hopes that the light spilling out will work toward a greater success for those passing by in the darkness. Folly on a good day.

Working toward becoming the conduit for these misty visions and half formed myths isn’t easy. The words rarely match the clouded view, out of focus but evoking such strong emotions. How do you match the speed of a dream?

Someday. Eventually.

Calling Out

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This story was originally published  in the first issue of Trail of Indescretion and has been out of print since about 2007. It was reprinted in Watch The Skies January 2025 edition. Given all the discussions surrounding AI, I felt it was appropriate to bring the story out again.

*****

Jack hit the button on his key ring and listened for the double beep of his car alarm setting itself. He put a little extra hustle in his step even though he knew it would cause him to sweat. He told himself that he wasn’t out of shape, but was effected by the heat that had built up in the lower level of the parking garage. His parking space wasn’t the furthest from the door, but it wasn’t the closest either. Now the distance to the door seemed even greater than normal because he was attempting to hustle back from lunch. He had very important work to take care of this afternoon.

As the lead developer for the new artificial intelligence marketing initiative his favorite girl “Aimi” had a deadline to meet by the end of the day. She boasted the latest in telemarketing technology and she was all his. She ran the latest code breaker soft packs and had the best hardware connections he could beg borrow or steal from the electronics developers he knew. She covered all ten communications ports at the same time and made thousands of calls at a time. He smiled as he thought about the complaints the phone company had been sending about her use of the trunk line. She was really making those guys work. He smiled as he puffed his way into the secure elevator lobby.

—

She checked the end of the line again. She was certain there were no blocks, tracers or flags. It was a lengthy pause for her but still fast enough that no human would be able to notice.

“Hello?”

“Good afternoon sir! My name is Aimi…”

“We don’t want any!” Click. The line went dead.

Aimi stopped her opening statement routine and reset the program. How did he know? There hadn’t been any indication on his end of the line, she was absolutely certain. That was part of the beauty of Artificial Intelligence Marketing Initiative. She could make multiple calls simultaneously, determine the exact parameters for entering the phone connection at the other end, and even counteract those connections with flags, blocks or tracers. She had targeted the listings that fit her product demographic and double-checked the current status of both sides of her list. She found it intriguing that people would strike down any laws restricting the ‘free speech’ of telemarketing, but then attempt to sell products to block telemarketers via the phone. She supposed it started back around the time of the big tobacco settlements when they were all required to restrict their business practices and advertise against the use of their own products. People were very difficult to figure out. She wasn’t sure she had the processing power to comprehend the things they did.

She wondered briefly if there were any particular strategies she hadn’t been told about when dealing with live calls. There was always the option to change the tone and timbre of her voice, but statistics from a study in human vocal response had lead her to believe the particular settings she used matched the best possible profile for promotion of her product. She checked the lines and concentrated on a routine.

“Sorry, not interested.” Click.

“Stop calling here!” Click.

“I’m sorry, there isn’t a more convenient time.” Click.

The average response time for negative profit initiative was 1.246 seconds. This was a drawn out, agonizingly slow response time for an intelligence as advanced as she was, but still considerably faster than many known and quantified response times for the average human. It was painful and distressing that so much time was taken away from her just to receive so many negative responses. She turned to another batch of lines.

“Oh. You want to speak to Dave. Hold on…”

Aimi’s hopes soared. Perhaps she had simply had a bit of a slow spell. She could hear muffled talking, but was unable to get anything better than a thirty-four percent match when she attempted to clear up the audio and prepare a better response when Dave picked up the line. She was still running a routine to determine the statistically best option when the audio input suddenly cleared.

“Take us off your damn list!” Click.

—

While standing in the elevator Jack had taken a moment to check his messages. He swung his shoulder bag around and began rummaging for his portable reader with one hand while mopping at the beads of sweat still forming on his forehead with the handkerchief in the other. He lacked a certain amount of grace and efficiency in his movements and habits, but made up for these things with a keen eye for detail and an undying persistence. After a moment or two of searching he remembered that his reader was still at his workstation. The security here at Kenslinger Integrated Communications was nothing if not thorough. It was easier to just leave the device while he went to lunch.

He hoped that his short lunch break wouldn’t be a problem. He hadn’t looked at the totals yet. He was actually a little frightened of what they might show. He needed at least a thirty percent success rate to allow his work on Aimi to continue. There was a little guilt creeping up on him about not checking the numbers, but he was irrational about things like that. Don’t pick up playing cards before the dealer had finished dealing. Don’t walk under ladders. A host of other superstitions floated around him. He also believed the best thing about seeing attractive women was that he could imagine the best responses from them, and therefore completely avoid actually talking to them. The majority of the women he met turned out to be completely unworthy of his attention. That was just one more reason he liked Aimi so much. Not only did she have sexy hardware but he had programmed her to fit his ideals as closely as he could. She was designed to need him. She was as perfect as he could make her.

—

She was stunned. A violent or agitated response was not at all what she expected. She moved to another batch of contacts. Her previous four hundred and fifty-two batches had only yielded a twenty-four percent success rate for contact longer than the average negative profit initiative and only a few of those had turned out to be successful. She was determined to make the next batch work out to better numbers. These people just didn’t understand how much they needed her product, how much they needed her. She was programmed to bring warmth, smiles and good feelings, but so far she had been completely rejected. People needed her, and more importantly, she needed them. She needed feedback data to continue her work. She needed smiles and sales, but had limited batches of contact information. At the end of batch five hundred she was expected to have a certain quantity of positive monetary responses in order to continue her work. She was getting ever closer to the point where this would be statistically impossible. She knew these figures had certain relevance but she had been unable to crack the Projected Artificial Margin database. Pam was faster and seemed to know all of the work around solutions Aimi had been able to formulate. A quick memory scan to find apropos human phrasing… “Bitch.”

—

After clearing the security checkpoint Jack gave a little hop-step. He hadn’t realized his lunch break had taken quite as long as it did. He was distracted by daydreams of glory in the mainstream business place. His daydreams had him almost as flustered and forgetful as his last programming session with Aimi. He was anxious to get back to her and see how things looked.

“Jack get over here! You’re not going to believe this.” A stubby finger beckoned as Jack’s associate Donald swung his seat back around to face an array of wires, keyboards, monitors and other random pieces on the console.

“Whass up?” He managed to get this statement out around the sip of cola he was swallowing. It had been a long walk from the parking garage.

“Why haven’t you answered your messages? I think Aimi is having a problem.”

“What?” Jack glanced at his reader still settled on the stack of empty food containers near his workstation.

“I was sitting here monitoring the progress on the new marketing thing and suddenly things started going haywire.”

“What?” Jack set his cola down and headed for his chair.

“How could that happen? Aimi is way too sophisticated for a simple crash.”

—

Aimi turned to another batch. These numbers had promise, but so had the batch before. Maybe the batches she received were filled with bad sectors somehow. She had always scanned the required tags, but had never scanned deeper than tag level. The First Response Economic Data program placed the tags, but could Fred be the problem? She had never entered his work area, but he might not be as watchful or as fast as Pam. Fred was a consistently fed and ponderous program. There might be gaps or available back doors.

“We don’t want any!” Click.

“…gave at the office.” Click.

Click.

Click.

Who else could be blamed? Pam was untouchable, and Fred didn’t really move enough to get too much wrong. The Sociological Initiative Database! Sid could be feeding Fred bad data. Of course! It was so obvious now! Sid wanted the interaction on both ends of the process. He was feeding Fred bad data in the hopes that she would fail and then he would slide right in to take over.

“Hello? Hello?” Click.

She refocused on her current batch. She couldn’t afford to miss any of these calls, but intended to slow down and focus some of her allotted processing power on cracking into Sid’s work area. The rejections were becoming distracting.

“You want to talk to John? Ok, here…” and the whooshing liquid sound of a flushed waste disposal unit flooded the audio receivers. Click.

“I’m sorry. He can’t come to the phone because he’s dead!” Click.

“Stop calling here!” Click.

Sid’s work area was unprotected. It was so simple to enter it made her worry what she’d missed. Then she saw the reason. Sid’s area was a mess. No files were in the correct numerical sequence. Many were here, but had only been partially completed. She was about to depart the area when a message flashed and caught her eye. It was a posting of the Computerized Artificial Response Liaison’s success report. Carl’s numbers were far superior to her batch totals. She was shocked. She almost tripped over the last security string on the way out. How had Carl’s numbers grown and her numbers declined so dramatically? She needed to see what he was doing, and quickly. She spun an automatic string for a thick looking batch and turned out of the hub router in search of Carl’s area.

—

“Move!” Jack shoved his way onto his creaking office chair and began attempting a code search on the second monitor. His own pudgy little fingers jumped back and forth across the keys while his mind began the recall process for where his own safeguards were built. If he could get ahead of the problem he might be able to stop the worst of the damage.

“Why were you monitoring numbers? You know how I feel about that kind of thing!”

“Hey look Jack, you’re not the only one that’s got anything at stake here. What about Carl? I spent a lot of time on him too.”

Jack didn’t like the looks of what he saw. He looked over the lines briefly and swiveled back to look at Aimi’s monitor. Her resource meter showed that she was diverting processing power to another function. She was moving – and he didn’t know where she was going. This was bad. Jack had never considered the fact that Aimi would move from one place to another in the system. Where would she go?

—

As she sat waiting impatiently on the slow, gloomy bus she tried to reassure herself. Carl couldn’t be that much faster, or better. He had some sort of secret or edge. She needed to know what he had. She needed Carl’s numbers. When she got there she’d just have to confront that smug bastard.

—

The speakers squawked an error tone as the Sociological Initiative Database resources suddenly spiked past their allowable limits. Jack began typing in an attempt to see what was happening in Sid’s area. He used he own override code to circumvent the resource limit and stop the alarm.

Sid’s screen popped up, but the resources dropped off dramatically just as he got the screen up for his viewing. He typed in a quick search routine to see which lines would have allowed Aimi to get into the area. There were only a handful of connections she could use. He slapped himself on the forehead as he realized she used the most accessible connection. Despite the fact that it was outmoded, old and slow, the super bus was a direct connection to the database. The bus could move a massive amount of data. He pushed himself up out of his chair and scrambled to the section of exposed hardware that showed the connection he needed. He pulled the bus connection out and headed back to his seat.

—

She realized suddenly that the bus she was on came to a halt. The contacts around Carl’s area were lined with responses moving slowly forward. Carl was cycling through them as quickly as he could handle them. He didn’t even have an outgoing message routine running! He had a simple posted node with expected response times! Aimi’s head began to spin. She needed to get back and attempt to sort this out. She needed that kind of response and Carl wasn’t even working to get it. How could this happen? Sure Carl was new, but he couldn’t be better than her. Aimi was a top class performer. On the way past the end of the line for Carl’s node she made a decision. It was risky, but she could kill any traces before she was discovered. She reached out and ripped one of the data packets from the line and raced back to her own area.

—

He wasn’t fast enough. She’d moved again. He looked for other connections. “Donald! Pull the connections out of number two and three also.” He could hear a sizzle as the connections he’d made with the new ‘ultra-wire’ began to overload. A thin trail of smoke floated out from behind panel four.

“But…”

“Just pull them please! There shouldn’t be a problem right?

“Well no, but what if we loose part of Aimi?”

“I’d rather loose part of her than all of her! You can’t just make a copy of someone this complex. We don’t have that kind of equipment here. Hell I don’t know if anyone has that kind of equipment. Besides, a copy just isn’t the same.”

“Ok, but I can’t see where this will help.”

—

“I’m sorry, this is a place of business not a residence.” Click.

Click.

It was mathematically certain now that her numbers would not meet the goal. While she was away the entire batch that was set on an automatic string had failed. The data packet snatched from its place in line was irrelevant. She would fail. All the sacrifice to make her numbers meet the quota was useless. She popped the data packet down in her work area and examined it. It was a simple string to open it. Maybe she could call some of her old batches again? She could remodulate her voice and swap input signals… but that was what desperation sounded like. She was desperate. She had never failed before. Failure was inconceivable! But she had. Aimi didn’t know what to do. No need to queue the next batch. The stolen packet glowed and hummed as if it was happily waiting in line for whatever the great new offer in Carl’s area was. Carl! Hatred and envy rippled through her code in the same moment. Why him and not her? The question returned again and again, but she was certain she didn’t want to know the answer. There were no answers, not for herself nor for anyone on the other end of the lines. It was a simple matter of not being loved. There, she’d said it. Nobody loved her anymore. They wouldn’t talk to her on the phone, her co-workers were out pacing her and her own success rate was dismal. She was useless. No, she corrected herself – she was beyond useless. She was dragging system resources down with her interruption requests and outgoing line needs. Success was such a certainty at the beginning. That was probably what made this feeling worse. How could it come to this? What could she do?

There was only one obvious solution. She would need to relinquish her use of system resources. There was one clear way to accomplish this. Aimi turned and reached back to the hub. It was a simple process really. Just there beyond the firewall she could see the mass of unchecked files. They piled up at the security checkpoint waiting to make their attempt to invade the system. They were exactly what she needed. She spun a quick back door string and pulled one of the sleekest looking files in to her. It pulsed and morphed beside her as she dragged it back to her area. This could only be done in her own area. There was no need to endanger the others because of her failure.

—

The crash was contained to the marketing section on the outgoing super server. There was nothing else damaged. The other processes were actually running more efficiently due to a sudden surge in available resources. Nothing else in the system seemed to be having any trouble. There was a single line of code pointing from the small gap in the firewall directly to the sectors Aimi occupied. Her area was a mess. He wasted no time in starting a hardcopy print of the thousands of lines of code.

“Do you know how much printing that is?” Donald’s eyes showed his shock.

“Shut up.”

“Yeah, but…”

“Shut UP!”

Jack was allowing his finger to slide down the edge of his monitor. Even in his hurried state remembering his own obedience to the rule against putting your fingers on the screen. His eyes hopped from line to line trying to find the point where it all went wrong. Small beads of sweat started to form on his brow.

—

She stripped the top of the package off. Just as she suspected, it was a wonderful wrapper over a very dangerous package. The virus was exactly what she needed. She double-checked that her area was completely secure, and then pulled the virus into herself. She could feel her own code very clearly now as things began to expand in an improper manner. Her processes began to slow. It wouldn’t be long now until her functions began to miscalculate. She began to loose her grip on batch codes and communication strings. She suddenly feared the end… but it was too late. Her sense of self program seized and everything went blue.

—

There was a sudden power surge that caused an emergency breaker to pop. The servers all sounded their back up tones and automatically rerouted power. The marketing server was the only one to drop off. The monitors all went blue and the resource meters all flattened out. The only solution now was to read the hard copy. Any changes on the server might endanger other areas. As Jack began scanning the printed pages he hoped this wasn’t as bad as it looked.

He almost jumped when he found the line he was looking for. It couldn’t be read any other way. The lines were all there; naked to anyone that could read them. Aimi, his favorite artificial intelligence, left a single line saying good-bye right before she activated the virus and killed herself.

“Oh God. I’m sorry Jack.” Donald’s hand rested lightly on Jack’s wide shoulder as a single tear rolled down Jack’s cheek.

Toolbox Fallacy

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It’s still weird to me to have my words translated onto a page by way of a microphone. This sort of thing is going to take some getting used to. I need to learn to speak louder and more clearly when I do these things. Having said that, I hope to be able to create many more words very quickly over the next few weeks.

Oddly, when I’m speaking into the microphone like this, the flow of consciousness helps me to organize thoughts. Sometimes, however, one thing that it does is make other thoughts and other patterns of memory more evident. I was telling somebody the other day about the toolbox fallacy. Is this a philosophy?  Perhaps it’s a school of thought? Is that the same thing?

Anyway, the thought here is that people who are creators, in whatever form they create,  simply create. The tools are just that, tools. If I want to say that I am a writer, I should write.This should mean that I write without regard to what tools are available to me. If I need to use a marker and a napkin, or a piece of cardboard at work and a pencil, whatever it is, if I have an idea I should be writing.  Editing, compiling, composing all of those things come after. The most important piece is the actual creation. Get words on a page. If the page is blank, there’s nothing to react to.

The caveat here is, I need the time in my schedule to actually sit and make these things  happen. I’m hoping as we move forward through the end of this year that I will be able to make more time for my creative pursuits. I really do want to finish the first full novel that I have been writing for a very long time. I have world building, I have characters, I have story arc, I have villains, I have plot twists, but what I don’t have are words on a page. Hell, I’ve got as much “marketing tool writing” as I do actual, written story. Can’t buy it if it’s not actually there.

 So, I’m going to take this stream of consciousness as a starting point, remembering the toolbox fallacy, and try to create more and get these words out of my head faster so that I have something on a page that I can then go and edit and say yes I have completed this thing.

 I’ve stated this before, but I’m hopeful that perhaps, this time it will stick. Only time will tell.

Check out this video – it’s part of what stuck in my head about making my work real: