There is an interesting interplay in what we have witnessed in the past half century with regards to technological advancement and creative endeavor: both have literally exploded, reaching levels and realms heretofore never dreamed of. And now, as we stand on the edge of yet another seemingly endless ocean of opportunity—social media—there seems to be nothing holding either technology or imagination back.
But that would be rather shortsighted to believe in.
Moore's Law, first described in a landmark paper in 1965 by Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore, describes a trend in the history of computing hardware, vis-à-vis: the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit (i.e., processing speed) doubles approximately every two years.
Originally described for the period from 1958 (the invention of the integrated circuit) to 1965, Moore predicted that the trend would continue “for at least ten years.” His guess has, in fact, proved to be uncannily accurate. But now, for the first time in over half a century, the trend is expected to slow considerably. Physical properties of materials and our very own technological limitations place very real constraints on the boundless growth of computing power, and with it, our ability to expand effortlessly and endlessly.
The law has been an important analytical tool for technology companies, but it has also become a metaphor of social change in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Who can deny the revolutionary effect the internet has had on us? There is no longer us and them; we have truly become globalized. What happens in China affects us here in the United States; news spreads instantaneously, from individual cell phones to major news outlets; supply chains no longer distinguish between interstate and intercontinental commerce.
Will the slowing of growth in computer processing power bring about a slowing in humanity’s effects on itself and the world, or will we learn to move beyond our dependence on technology?
Like The Grin, I set out in The Scenario Egg to write a different story than the one that eventually made it onto these pages. I was intrigued by the simple idea of a man who had woken to world where he had recklessly wished the rest of humanity away. But then I realized that there might be a much more interesting story here, one exploring the seemingly endless possibilities offered by both technology and the imagination…as well as its unrecognized limitations.
The Scenario Egg, as Jennifer calls it, is a piece of technology, a device that enables its “operator” to imagine any of an infinite number of possibilities, but at the same time those possibilities are limited by the perceiver’s own set of experiences and biases.
In the end, what will happen—to us, to the world—will happen, and neither one man’s wishful thinking nor a single device will have any visible impact on it (well, with the possible exception of Steve Jobs and anything whose name starts with the letter i). Perhaps I am showing my own biases, but, for better or for worse, I hope and pray we learn to get out of our own way.
‡
A THING FOR ZOMBIES
“Kevin Velasco!”
I pretended not to hear Jamie and instead kept my eyes glued to the figure in the skimpy two-piece bathing suit. Truthfully? Skimpy didn’t even come close to describing how little she was wearing. The thing was practically nonexistent. A pair of Twizzlers and a strategically placed Dorito would’ve hid more skin.
I shifted awkwardly in the lifeguard’s chair, straining my neck to keep her in sight as she wound her way past the kiddy pool and toward the splash zone. After four hours without moving a muscle in the baking August sun, the bright light bouncing off the water and searing my retinas, I’d gotten a little stiff and dopey. But seeing the ‘bette wander in here like that had jolted me wide awake. I felt like I’d just mainlined a six-pack of Monster energy drinks.
There was something familiar about her, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. You’d think someone like that—brassy blond, long legs, long arms, still in pretty good shape—you wouldn’t forget. But if I’d ever met her before, I just couldn’t remember where or when.
She paused when she reached the row of plastic lounge chairs by the diving board, just sort of stalled and acted like she was trying to remember what she was doing here. I’d seen it enough times to know that she might be stuck there for awhile, idling like that. But I kept watching her anyway.
It’s funny, the things you get used to seeing, now that they’ve passed the Undead Amnesty laws. Funny how quickly you learn to ignore them. But then one of them walks in like this and you realize there are some things you’ll just never get used to.
Like zombies wearing g-strings.
“Close your mouth, Kevin. And stop staring.”
“I’m not staring,” I said, irritably. This was all her fault.
“Oh, my bad. I should have said stop gawking!”
A part of me couldn’t help it. It was like seeing a horrible car crash, before the cops have come and covered up the bodies and washed away the gore. You just know that the image is going to be seared onto the backs of your eyelids for the rest of eternity, so you really don’t want to look. But then again, you can’t not look, either.
The zombette shuddered and seemed to come to her senses. They do that occasionally. It’s creepy when it happens, like their brains get a jolt of electricity or something, and they act as if they’re alive again. It only lasts a few moments, though. Then they’re back to moaning and shuffling along.
Her hand gave a twitch, then slowly rose. When it got halfway to her shoulder, it sort of ran out of gas and just hovered there. Then, in a series of quick, jerky movements, the zombie looked like it was trying to insert her thumb into her bikini top strap. She failed, tried again. Finally, in it went.
She was a young ‘bette, mid-twenties I’d say, obviously recently turned. You didn’t need much imagination to know she’d been hot when she was alive, stacked. Despite the pale greenness of her skin, there was no sign of tissue wasting. Yet. No sagging, either.
A few seconds passed, then she gave the strap a tug. The adjustment didn’t seem to make any difference, at least from where I was sitting. There was still way too much zombie breast showing.
“See something you like, Kevin?”
I frowned down at Jamie. She was the one with the zombie obsession, not me. “Since when did we start letting them in here?” I asked.
“Uh, since spring. Remember?” The edge in her voice was noticeably sharper. “What’s wrong with you? The sun fry your brains or something? Or did you fall asleep and get bitten?”
I felt my face grow red. Two months ago she would never have thrown my own insecurities back at me like that. She knew zombies still scared the living shit out of me. I still wasn’t convinced the Treatment was one hundred percent effective in preventing them from attacking us.
“I didn’t mean her,” I snapped back. “I was talking about that suit she’s got on. Christ.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
I rolled my eyes at the irony. Modest Jamie with her totally drab one-piece bathing suit and her baggy clothes was asking what was wrong with that? I couldn’t decide if what I was witnessing was pornographic or horrifying. Actually, it was a bit of both.
“What’s wrong,” I told her, “is you can find dental floss thicker than that. I mean, aren’t there rules about what zombies can wear in here? There are for warm bloods.”
I knew I should drop it, especially since it was clear Jamie was in another one of her moods again. They’d been coming a lot more often this past summer.
I wanted to express to her that it was disgusting. I wanted to tell her that if she truly believed there should be equal rights for zoms, then why was she treating them like children? But I knew another argument on the subject would just set her off again. So, instead, I squinted against the glare of the sun reflecting off the water and backed off a little.
“Just never seen a zom wearing a Ronnie Marx original,” I said. “Not even sure why they’d even bother.”
“What’s it t
o you?”
I shrugged. “Just saying. I hear they’re like three hundred bucks a pop.” I gave her a wry grin. “You’d look nice in one of those.”
Jamie dropped her duffel by the lifeguard chair and puffed out another exhale of disgust. She wasn’t going to take the bait. “So now you’re an expert on bikinis? You been subscribing to Victoria’s Secret catalogs or something?”
“What? No! Sports Illustrated,” I mock protested. “The bathing suit edition.”
“Oh, ‘cause that’s much better.”
“SI happens to be a reputable sports-themed publication. I read it for their valuable in-depth reporting on all ilk of athletic endeavors.”
“Ilk, right,” she snorted. “And you read Penthouse for their high quality photojournalism.”
“I think you mean high resolution. Ow! No fair pulling hair.” I slapped her hand away from my leg and scowled, though I was glad to see a trace of a smile touch her lips.
“Go home,” she said. “I’ll see you later.”
“Gwen take off, already?” I asked as I gathered up my towel and water bottle and prepared to descend from the guard perch. Gwen was my twin sister. She was supposed to drop Jamie off and wait for me in case I wanted a ride, but half the time she ‘forgets’ and leaves without me so I end up having to walk home. Usually it’s on the hottest days too, when the streets are packed with zoms and they’re a bit more animated than usual so you have to watch were you’re going and make sure you don’t get too close to one. “Or, you know, I can stick around here awhile, keep you company.”
Jamie didn’t answer. The scowl had mysteriously returned.
I sighed. I’d been flirting with her all summer, desperately trying to get her to go out with me. Unfortunately, it seemed like every attempt I made never had a chance to get off the ground. I was crashing and burning on takeoff.
Naturally, my dear sweet sister Gwen was only too willing to offer her own assessment of the situation, not that I’d asked her for it. Pretty sure it’s become her personal mission in life to make me miserable.
“You’re not Jamie’s type,” she told me. “So don’t even bother.”
Really? Not my type? That’s the best she’s got? As if that ever discouraged a guy before. We know the whole ‘type’ thing is just an excuse.
Normally, I wouldn’t make it a habit of listening to anything the Gwench says—much less acknowledge that we’re related, or that we speak the same language, or even exist in the same time-space continuum—unless I absolutely have to, but I thought I’d hear her out this one time.
“And what exactly is Jamie’s type?”
She shrugged, smirking in that annoying twin sister way that meant I’d just been suckered. “You really don’t know?” she asked. “And you two have been friends how long? Thirteen years? God, could you really be that dense that you can’t see what’s staring you right in the face?”
“Humor me.”
“Nyuh uh. You should talk to Jamie about this, because you won’t believe anything I say anyway.”
She was right about that. But I didn’t have to ask Jamie, either. I’d already figured it out for myself: it was the zombies. Gwen was playing coy with me, suggesting the zombies were Jamie’s ‘type.’ Yeah, she was totally obsessed with them, just not in that way.
What happened was, after the Pandemic two years ago, after the Seven Days of Slaughter when we finally stopped indiscriminately chopping their heads off and started actually trying to understand why the world suddenly acted as if it was going all to hell, Jamie got this wacky idea in her head that the zoms needed protection under the law, as if they were first class citizens and not undead denizens.
“They’re not monsters,” she said in a speech during a school rally for Homecoming. This was about a year ago, early in our junior year. She was upset because zombies weren’t allowed to attend football games. “Before they died and were reanimated, they were real people. They are real people! They’re our brothers and sisters and parents and children. They are our friends and coworkers and…”
Anyway, the point she was trying to make was that it was wrong of us to be branding them as evil, wrong to ban them from activities, wrong to chop their heads off. Yada yada yada. Honestly? I would’ve argued that it was wrong for them to go around biting people and eating brains and turning us into zombies too. But I didn’t. It wasn’t part of my Hook Up With Jamie strategy.
She was so convincing that she actually got people to forget we’d just barely survived the zombie apocalypse, that humanity had teetered on the very brink of extinction at the hands—no, teeth—of the Army of the Dead. Okay, slight exaggeration on the extinction, but still. In any case, if the Treatment hadn’t been discovered as quickly as it had, there wouldn’t even be any football games or Save-the-Zombie bake sales or Graveless Shelter fundraisers. Plus, I guess by then there was a lot of guilt going around at how badly we’d treated them, hacking them up the way we had.
Anyway, the way she depicted the zombies, you’d think they were just poor, unfortunate souls and nobody loved them, sort of like those old hippy stoners whose worst trait was having a really bad case of the munchies. Forget the fact that they had cravings for gray matter instead of brownies. And they have no souls.
The government finally passed the Amnesty laws last fall. After that, Jamie pressured the city council to give the zoms equal access to community services. We’d both been training to be lifeguards at the time—me, because I figured I’d get to see more of Jamie, so to speak—and when I realized she was talking about giving them access to the community pool, that’s when I finally spoke up. I had to. I couldn’t just sit back and let her go all fruitcake on me.
I told her it was a shitty idea.
What turned out to be a shitty idea was me saying it was a shitty idea. I can safely say it hasn’t helped in the romance department.
But, the thing is, I guess I have this stubborn streak. Which is why I just couldn’t let the whole g-string thing drop, neither.
“Please don’t tell me you’re going to allow her stay in here like that?” I demanded. Technically, since my shift was over, the zombette in the Ronnie Marx wasn’t my problem anymore. Off-duty guards aren’t supposed to get involved. “You need to send her home to…change or something.”
“No one’s complaining.”
“I am.”
“I think you need to go home and change, Kev,” Jamie said, tiredly. Her voice was gravelly, like she’d just woken up. On the totally wrong side of the bed. Or maybe she just hadn’t slept well last night. I suppose making sure zombies get their fair shake can really wear you down.
But then again, maybe there were a bunch of hormones or something in the drinking water, because, come to think of it, Gwen had been a total f-ing bitch this morning, too. It wasn’t much worse than her normal bitchy behavior so I just hadn’t noticed it then.
“Come on, Jamie—”
“It’s embarrassing, okay, Kevin? You’re embarrassing me.”
Ouch.
I snapped. “Remind me again,” I said, “who exactly you’re supposed to be embarrassed in front of? Surely not the handful of zoms that are here, because the monsters don’t give a crap, obviously. Or maybe it’s the hordes of warm bloods? Oh, wait a minute. There are none. That’s because they won’t come here anymore since you pushed to let the Undeads have access to the pool.”
She glared up at me. Two words she absolutely hates, monsters and Undeads, and I’d used them both in the same breath. I was digging myself deeper, yet I couldn’t seem to stop myself.
Her eyes narrowed. “I can’t help it if some people are stupid and paranoid and won’t go within a hundred yards of one of them.”
I snapped my mouth closed.
I admit it, I am paranoid. I mean, sure, it doesn’t take much to stay out of a zombie’s grasp—they do move pretty freaking slow, a side effect of the Treatment. You practically have to stand still to be bitten. But it didn’t mean we should get
totally comfortable having them around. Even now, you still have to be aware of your surroundings when you’re out in public. Sometimes you’ll find one who’s missed a dose and they’ll start coming after you, all lurchy and stiff, but a little faster than the rest. It can get pretty hairy, especially if they corner you. You learn quick, though. After the first couple times, you pretty much learn to stay out of their line of vision.
So, yeah, maybe I am paranoid. But I’m not stupid.
“All I’m saying is,” I said evenly, “if warm bloods have more sense than to come in here dressed like that, why can’t they?”
Jamie let out a disgusted sound. She shook her head, then reached back to pull her hair into a ponytail. For a moment I wondered if she was doing it on purpose, the hair thing, to distract me. I’d told her a couple weeks ago that I liked it when she pulled her hair back like that, that it showed more of her face. I hadn’t thought she’d picked up on the hint, though.
“You know I’m right, Jamie,” I pushed.
She got the rubber band she was holding in her teeth and threaded her hair through it. When she lifted her elbow, I—okay, I admit it, I’m a dog—I peeked. But instead of seeing, you know, all I caught was a glimpse of an unshaved armpit. It worried me, because it was totally uncharacteristic of her. It was too…zombie-like. The Undead don’t give a hoot about personal hygiene.
“She’s not a warm blood,” she muttered.
“Huh?”
“You were saying warm bloods have more sense. Maybe. But she’s not a warm blood, she’s a zombie. They don’t sense anything.”
“That’s exactly my point,” I argued. “Different sensibilities. Different sensitivities. This is a community pool and that’s why there’s rules, for chrissake. People bring their families here, their kids. They don’t want to see…that. It’s just wrong.”
Give Jamie credit that she didn’t point out there were no families or kids here. All she said was, “And once more, you’re making excuses so you don’t have to say what you’re really thinking. You just want them all banned.”
Insomnia: Paranormal Tales, Science Fiction, & Horror Page 9