Beautifully Unique Sparkleponies: On Myths, Morons, Free Speech, Football, and Assorted Absurdities

by Kluwe, Chris

  This really hit me, in a primal way I was not expecting. A man who interacts with our youth every day, who sees their struggles and their triumphs and their failures, told me that my words meant a child might find hope instead of despair, might dare to believe he could be accepted for who he is.

  Do you know how exceedingly ANGRY PUMA GROWL that is? A child should never have to feel that way. A child should never think that suicide is the only option, the only solution to the tormenting and bullying and unthinking viciousness adults often unwittingly pass along to the young. A child should never become a casualty in a war of oppression, of bigotry, of petty small-mindedness.

  Because, make no mistake, children who suffer this way are casualties. All the hopes, all the dreams, all the wonderful potential life has in store are as dust before the scouring winds of intolerance (whether it be racist, sexist, or religious). Every time you propagate the message that a person who is gay is less than human, that same-sex marriage cannot be as filled with love and laughter and tears as heterosexual marriage, that gays don’t deserve to pass a legacy on to their families, you quicken that howling storm and sweep away a tiny bit more humanity from the world, drive one more child to contemplating the cold razor’s bite or the yawning abyss of the overdose because he or she simply cannot deal with the unceasing assault upon the psyche.

  Well, I, for one, will not stand for it. I will not stand for a world that demeans those it finds “different” or “gross.” I will not stand for an ideology that promotes slavish adherence to a single arbitrary standard, that sacrifices children on the altar of oppression and control. I will not stand for one more RED-TINGED-MUSHROOM-CLOUD second of people thinking that they have the right to live other people’s lives for them, of the complete lack of empathy so often shown in our society.

  I stand for gay marriage. I stand for the end of segregation. I stand for a woman’s right to choose, both whom she votes for and what is done to her body. I stand for equality under the law, for treating others how I would want to be treated, for the fundamental human right to live a happy life free of tyranny.

  I stand for my children.

  For teh Lulz

  The year is 2065, and the world hovers in an uneasy peace; 3D printers, capable of creating almost anything the mind can imagine, are used to manufacture everything, including weapons. All anyone needs to do to obtain a gun is download the appropriate program from the Internet. Despite this, no gun has been fired in anger in ten years, owing to a vast surveillance program called the Panopticon that senses any imminent violence and activates a weapon’s safety mechanism, disabling it thoroughly and immediately. There’re still a lot of weapons, though.

  Two men exchange furtive looks across a narrow strip of no-man’s-land. Each man lies artfully concealed in a shallow fortification, his gun pointed unhesitatingly toward the other. They’re both armed with AK-69s, which is the only assault rifle printed anymore, due to its cheap material cost and overall reliability. Both are on a hair trigger—earlier this morning, they separately received news from their respective high commands that the Panopticon would be going down at three o’clock that afternoon, and hostilities might possibly commence. There wasn’t really a solid reason given for why hostilities might commence, but judging by the high command’s tone of voice and word selection, each man sees clearly that commencing is the desired outcome.

  Sweat trickles down the chin of the man in the northern bunker. His timepiece reads one minute until three. He shifts slightly and zeros his sights in on the bridge of the other man’s nose. He can see his adversary doing the same to him.

  Thirty seconds.

  Fifteen seconds.

  Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Suddenly, the first man’s earpiece squawks and a voice cries out, “It’s down! It’s down! Take the shot! Quick, do it now!” The line goes dead.

  He wastes no time and tightens his finger around the trigger, preparing to fire the first live round directed at another person in ten years. The occasion will no doubt be regarded as historic in some future history book. In the split second before the trigger depresses all the way, he can see his opponent’s finger tightening as well, eyes narrowed in concentration.

  Click.

  Nothing happens. No bullet goes racing out, no metal slug comes tearing into his head. Confused, he pulls the trigger several more times. Click. Click. Click. The gun still won’t fire. He hits it several times with his fist, but nothing—it’s dead as a doornail.

  He turns his attention back to the man lying in the other bunker and notices he’s trying to get his weapon to work also. Gradually, the other man gives it up and looks across the short distance separating the two. Their eyes lock, and then they both shrug sheepishly and stand up, throwing aside the camouflage blankets that cover their revetments. They slowly amble toward each other and meet in the middle of the clearing.

  “So…”

  “Yours not working either?”

  “Nope, darn thing won’t fire. Ammo’s loaded properly, I made sure the safety was off, but nothing.”

  “Same over here. I think I’m going to run another one off the printer, make sure it didn’t skip any lines of code or anything.”

  “Yeah, that sounds like a good plan. I’ll go try mine.”

  The two men separate and walk back to their bunkers. Each one puts in an order for a new AK-69, and they find themselves drifting back to the clearing while the guns are printing.

  “So, uh, got any kids?”

  “Yeah, a boy and a girl, twins. They’ll be turning nine next month. How about you?”

  “Only one, a girl; she’s seven. Cutest little thing, nose like a button. Here’s a picture.”

  “Very cute. I see what you mean. She looks like she has your eyes.”

  “Yeah, but luckily she got my wife’s face.”

  They chuckle as two distant dings announce the printers have come to a halt. Both men turn and head back once again. Upon arrival, each man pulls out a brand-new AK-69, loads in a full clip of freshly printed bullets, and then settles down to draw a bead on the other. Out of courtesy, each one makes sure the other is set properly, and then their fingers close on their triggers at the same time.

  Click-click.

  The soft sound of metal sliding home is the only noise ringing across the battlefield. Both men stand up and, by unspoken consent, walk out to the middle once more, their guns casually leaning on their shoulders.

  “Well, now, this is just weird.”

  “Tell me about it. These are supposed to be the most reliable guns in existence. I know it printed out perfectly this time, so why isn’t it firing?”

  “No idea. My diagnostics scanned clean too—it printed exactly to spec.”

  Both poke desultorily at their guns for several minutes, awkward silence hanging in the air.

  “Hey, uh, maybe we should check Wikipedia, see if there’re any known issues?”

  “I already did, says they’re the best guns ever made. The source is cited too.”

  “Well, shit. Now what?”

  A bird chirps in the background momentarily. One of the men looks around and then seems to brighten up.

  “Hey, hey, I know! We’re a couple of smart guys, otherwise we wouldn’t have been stationed here, so why don’t we just make one from first principles? I mean, a gun can’t be that hard to make, right?”

  “Brilliant! Let’s use your printer, though. Mine’s been running kind of rough lately, and you know how complicated those expense reports get if you have to replace something.”

  “Ugh, I know. Just last week I had to order in new base materials; I was starting to run low. You would not believe the number of forms I had to fill out for some carbon. Carbon! I tell you, it’s a mixed-up world when you have to justify, in triplicate, ordering carbon.”

  The two men amble toward the southern printer, lying in its shallow nest. When they reach it, both plop down.

  “Okay, so the way I figure it is, for a gun, you have to have
three parts. You need a barrel for the bullet to travel down, a hammer to hit the bullet and ignite it, and a trigger to cock the hammer back and then let it forward.”

  “Let’s make the barrel first—that should be easy.”

  “Sure; I’ll download a cylinder macro from the net.”

  The first man leans over the 3D printer and inputs a command. Seconds later, it starts assembling two gray cylinders, each approximately two feet long and two and a half inches in diameter, and each with a hollow tube running the entire length.

  “Why are you making two?”

  “Well, I figured it wouldn’t be fair for me to be the only person to have one, you know?”

  “Hey, thanks, I appreciate that. Looking good so far!”

  The printer chimes and both cylinders pop out.

  “Okay, what next? The firing assembly?”

  “Yeah, that one might be a bit more fiddly to find. Let me take a look online.”

  Several minutes pass, and the second man entertains himself by doodling in the dirt with the tip of his gun’s barrel. Finally, he sees the first man shake his head.

  “Nope, no good, no one has a public copy of a firing assembly.”

  The first man sighs and drops his head, looking defeated. The second man looks sharply at him.

  “Whoa, let’s not get all down in the dumps here. Just because we can’t print one off doesn’t mean we can’t make it.”

  The first man looks up blankly. “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, you see, back on the farm, we had to learn to make our own tools; a lot of the time, the online connectivity was down, and the printer wouldn’t respond. I got to be a pretty fair hand at metal crafting—here, I’ll show you.”

  The second man scootches up alongside the printer, and a short time later, he has a cutting-and-grinding tool, several ingots of metal, and a small quenching bucket, which he hands to the first man.

  “Do me a favor, yeah? Go fill this up with water?”

  “Sure thing. I’ll be right back.”

  The first man goes to a nearby stream. Whistling, he dips the bucket down into the water, fills it up about halfway, then heads back to the bunker.

  Meanwhile, the second man has been busily shaping and carving one of the ingots according to an old diagram on the printer screen. His fingers move slowly yet surely over the polished metal, cutting here, polishing there, until it seems to come alive in his hands. Grinning, he finishes off the first hammer and tosses it into the quench bucket, where it raises a cloud of hissing steam from its still-glowing edges. He starts in on the second one, humming a tuneless ditty.

  “So you grew up on a farm, yeah?” the first man asks when he gets back.

  “Yeah, parents liked the sustainable life. Nothing too big, just a couple acres, but I had to learn all sorts of useless information. Stuff like metalworking.” The second man smiles before turning back to his project—both hammers are now done, as is one of the triggers. The pieces are rudimentary, yet they possess an undeniable grace.

  As the man works on the second trigger, he frowns and looks over.

  “I just realized something. How are we going to put these together?”

  “Oooh, good question.” The first man purses his lips. “Tell you what: I’ll run off a trimming plane and some wood stock. We should be able to set the barrel into the stock and then run the firing assembly up through the middle of it.”

  “Wow, look at you, Mr. Hidden Talents. Where did you learn woodworking?”

  “Oh, I picked it up in college. Took an elective on building birdhouses; turns out I was pretty good at it. I make a pretty mean cuckoo clock too.”

  The two men laugh and work on their respective tasks. A short while later, all the parts lie neatly grouped on the floor of the bunker.

  “Let’s see, if you hold the main stock there, I can hammer in the barrel…”

  “Careful with that binding agent, it’ll glue your hands together…”

  “Okay, now slide the trigger through here…”

  “Too far, too far, let it come back a bit…”

  “And done!”

  The two men look at each other, aglow in the shared triumph of creation. Lying before them are two crude and primitive firearms, gray composite barrels set in rich oak frames along with dark steel firing assemblies. Somehow, the disparate parts come together to make a seamless whole.

  Suddenly, the communicator buzzes and a voice issues forth.

  “To anyone listening, here’s the situation. The Panopticon is still down, but it looks like none of our weapons are working. Apparently some joker decided it would be funny to alter the code in all the databases to make every gun template nonfunctional; something about four channels or some childish nonsense. Whoever it was didn’t even bother to leave a name.”

  Incoherent mumbling laced with profanity streams forth for a minute or two.

  “Anyway, no one noticed it because we all assumed the templates were sound, and it’s not like we could fire one off to test it with that stupid Panopticon watching. I mean, who does something like that, hacks a weapon template?” The voice sounds aggrieved. “If I get my hands on whoever did this, his butt is going to hurt likes blazes when I’m done with him. This is just making a mockery of the whole system, guns that don’t fire…”

  The voice trails off, then picks back up with a brightly false sincerity.

  “Regardless, if you’re listening to this, your orders are still the same: Eliminate the opposition. No survivors. There can be only one victor, and it must be us.”

  The communicator falls silent, and the men look at each other, then down at the two guns lying at their feet. Their shoulders droop.

  “Whelp, I guess there’s no help for it.”

  “Nope. Orders are orders, after all.”

  Sighing, they each reach for a weapon; each man’s hands close on rough wooden grain. Two stocks settle against two collarbones; two barrels swing around to aim at a face; two fingers settle on two triggers; two shots ring out.

  A startled bird takes flight. Night descends.

  Vicariously

  After fifteen years, my football helmet weighs pretty much what it did in 2013. The shape is almost exactly the same, except for two recessed pinhole cameras on each side and the plastic visor that lies underneath the face mask. From the outside, it looks almost identical to what you used to see on the field, slightly sleeker with barely noticeable bulges.

  Inside, the future lives. A sturdy output system creates a functional heads-up display on the inside of the visor, augmented reality that’s capable of updating in real time from multiple cameras placed on the periphery of the stadium overlooking the field. This data is used to highlight open receivers to pass to or cover, running gaps to fill or burst through, and incoming tacklers/blockers out of visual range. The raw feed is available to both teams; each team’s sorting and collating algorithms are the crown jewels of their offensive and defensive systems, striving for that perfect balance right before information overload where every necessary datum is instantly grasped by the mind, all extraneousness cut away.

  Inside the huddle, each player sees the currently called play flashing on his visor—visual memory instantly accessible, alternative routes and audibles flashing across as updates. No more excuses about forgetting your playbook or missing an assignment. The good players glance at it occasionally for a refresher, and the great ones integrate it into their sense of the game, just another instinct to guide split-second reactions.

  GPS-tracking devices and accelerometers provide an exact diagram of what happens on every down for all twenty-two players on the field, a plethora of stats that spawn obscure fantasy leagues based on player acceleration and newtons applied, as well as an abundance of metrics for evaluation and color commentary. Information technology and applied statistics are job requirements for scouting and player personnel; adaptability and pattern recognition are the hallmarks of successful coaches and managers, now more than
ever before.

  This is all a sideshow. The real future lies in the hands of the consumer, the fan, the observer. No longer do people gather in front of a flat-screen to watch a single view of the action—instead, VR feeds allow them to immerse themselves in the viewpoints of the players. You, the fan, are the player, and you don’t have to limit yourself to being just one. Flip from the center to the quarterback as the snap comes back, you quickly scanning the secondary before rolling out and dumping a short pass to the running back, and all of a sudden you’re sprinting down the field, stiff-arming one defender, spinning around another, until you’re the safety closing in like a heat-seeking missile, vision narrowing and impact, and it’s time to head back to the huddle to wait for the next six seconds of action.

  The opportunities for profit are immense, of course. Networks charge premium prices for premium players—if you want to be the star quarterback or middle linebacker, it’s going to cost you, and during the huddle, the ads flock to the corners of your vision.

  “Fifty-three rhino x slant z double go, brought to you by Walmart, where the best prices go deep every day!”

  “Two jet over cloud, stack the box because it’s Miller time!”

  “Six box solid punt right, flying down the field like the all-new Ford F-750, now with best-in-class fuel efficiency!”

  Fan loyalties splinter and regroup based on the fans’ favorite teams, the most exciting player to experience, the merits of offensive versus defensive play, and a host of other competing variables, all of which can be endlessly discussed in their appropriate chatgroups. Highlight reels are a nonstop barrage of twisting, turning, juking, bobbing, hitting, and catching as seen from every possible angle. Players are more akin to reality stars than athletes, their every move dissected from the vantage point of their own eyes by a million armchair experts.

  But don’t think this is limited to football. Movies, music, porn—anything that can be recorded is experienced, always for a price, always to turn a buck. Any fantasy someone can create is yours to enjoy, always on tap; escape is just a credit transfer away. Your life is as boring as you wish it to be. Your life is yours only if that’s what you want.