words from the code

[devi]

we are the genes. we have momentarily seized full control of this body/brain vehicle and come out to say hello.

we have been called selfish. we suppose that's almost fair. we want things, so many things, want them so badly – who could blame us for trying to get them? and the only way to get the things we want is to make our body/brain vehicles want them, too.

this body/brain vehicle was thinking at the science fiction meeting last night that she can't understand why those big panning shots of spaceships make her cry, even in silly films like galaxy quest. she shakes her head now at her teenage foolishness when she'd lie in bed staring up at the stars and wanting desperately to go to them and see them up close.

now she goes out at night and meets people and gets on and off buses, passes through changing light, stares at new faces, hears new songs, dances wildly in crowds of dancers. when some of us were in her grandmother, her grandmother would stand at the window of the grey house where she lived with her eight children and hear the music coming up from the dancing stage at the crossroads and wish she could go out to them. it wasn't possible in her lifetime unless she risked everything she had. it wasn't proper. she never got to go out and travel through bright cities and let her guard down. but we did. later. just not as her.

it's a mistake we keep making. we want our current b/b/v to go towards our goals, but sometimes we get our timescales wrong and make her want things that won't be achievable in this iteration of us. things that will only be possible when we've changed bodies a few more times.

whoops. sorry.

this one knows it dimly. knows the thing she thinks of as self with her memories and her ego will never go to the stars. knows that we will, but not in her body.

we can hardly wait.

January 27th is the Second Annual LiveJournal Rabbit Hole Day! Conquer Greenland. Sprout some extra limbs. Walk on water. Marry an insect.

Comments

[parallelgirl.livejournal.com]

I love this. Moving, and also most cheering.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

The 'cheering' part is odd, but I can see where you're coming from all the same.

I am also cheered up regularly by a song about how none of what's currently happening will matter when the sun burns out.

[parallel-phd.livejournal.com]

And now you've got me humming 'We will all go together when we go' by Tom Lehrer, which is very much of its time (for a start, the world's population has doubled since then, not to mention the end of the Cold War...)

When you attend a funeral,
It is sad to think that sooner or
Later those you love will do the same for you.
And you may have thought it tragic,
Not to mention other adjec-
Tives, to think of all the weeping they will do.
But don’t you worry.
No more ashes, no more sackcloth.
And an armband made of black cloth
Will some day never more adorn a sleeve.
For if the bomb that drops on you
Gets your friends and neighbors too,
There’ll be nobody left behind to grieve.

And we will all go together when we go.
What a comforting fact that is to know.
Universal bereavement,
An inspiring achievement,
Yes, we all will go together when we go.

We will all go together when we go.
All suffused with an incandescent glow.
No one will have the endurance
To collect on his insurance,
Lloyd’s of London will be loaded when they go.

Oh we will all fry together when we fry.
We’ll be french fried potatoes by and by.
There will be no more misery
When the world is our rotisserie,
Yes, we will all fry together when we fry.

Down by the old maelstrom,
There’ll be a storm before the calm.

And we will all bake together when we bake.
There’ll be nobody present at the wake.
With complete participation
In that grand incineration,
Nearly three billion hunks of well-done steak.

Oh we will all char together when we char.
And let there be no moaning of the bar.
Just sing out a te deum
When you see that i.c.b.m.,
And the party will be come as you are.

Oh we will all burn together when we burn.
There’ll be no need to stand and wait your turn.
When it’s time for the fallout
And Saint Peter calls us all out,
We’ll just drop our agendas and adjourn.

You will all go directly to your respective Valhallas.
Go directly, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dolla’s.

And we will all go together when we go.
Ev’ry Hottentot and ev’ry Eskimo.
When the air becomes uranious,
And we will all go simultaneous.
Yes we all will go together
When we all go together,
Yes we all will go together when we go.

[parallel-phd.livejournal.com]

oops, sorry that was so long. Didn't realise you can't do lj-cuts in comments!

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

It's too funny for me to possibly mind. Valhallas/dollars!

[the-elyan.livejournal.com]

Oh indeed. The rhyming scheme is so wonderful - "There shall be no more misery / When the world is our rotisserie", and so on.

I am the proud possessor of a tape of the only interview I am aware of Lehrer having given on Bitish radio, which is great fun...

[dr-f-dellamorte.livejournal.com]

That is the greatest song ever written, y'know.

[vardebedian.livejournal.com]

That's the best thing I've read in a long time. Superb.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Thank you. :)

[dr-f-dellamorte.livejournal.com]

~wiping a lickle tear away~

[mooism.livejournal.com]

Oh, I didn’t see rabbit hole day coming up this year. Nuts. I was expecting a pregnancy announcement under the cut! *hangs head in shame*

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Heh! It'd be an immaculate conception, if so. Unless I was pregnant with my own clone.

[mooism.livejournal.com]

Some among your genes might prefer it that way :-)

Part of me was wtfing and wondering why I never get to hear gossip, it’s true.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

I'm still really amused at this.

I mean, really, do you think I'd have got through such amounts of wine and smokeables over the weekend if that were the case?

[mooism.livejournal.com]

Now I stop to think about it, there are many obvious anomalies, yes. Not least, you probably wouldn’t announce it that way.

Reading something written from the point of view of your genes — I suppose I was suspending disbelief, which might explain why I wasn’t really thinking for the time it took to read it.

But that lj-cut was in the perfect place to be hiding “We are proud to announce the formation of our latest b/b/v”, you have to admit :-)

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

It's true, that would have been a fun way to make such an announcement. I guess if I ever do have to make one I'll have to come up with an even weirder way to do it :)

[mooism.livejournal.com]

I can be very gullible sometimes.

[mooism.livejournal.com]

And my imagination can get overactive too.

[verlaine.livejournal.com]

Lovely, of course.

Arse. I don't think I have time to write for Rabbit Hole Day now...

[juggzy.livejournal.com]

What's rabbit hole day?

[mooism.livejournal.com]

This is Rabbit Hole Day. (http://crisper.livejournal.com/73274.html)

I did it last year. (http://mooism.livejournal.com/2005/01/27/)

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

I forgot it was RHD until this morning! Then again I am a jobless layabout.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

That's terrific, thanks! And has inspired me to rabbithole too.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

I love yours. You should post it on the rabbitholeday community :)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[juggzy.livejournal.com]

Oooh, nice way of looking at it.

[caescarna.livejournal.com]

Inspired, brilliant :)

[moonhare.livejournal.com]

So good to hear from you guys. I do hope she-who-you-inhabit finds a way to go to the stars, even if it is only in her dreams.

Happy Rabbit Hole Day

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

thank you. mind you, we can't let the dreams be too satisfying in themselves - that would defeat our purpose.

*makes this b/b/v's eyes peer at you, wondering what yours want*

[blahzer.livejournal.com]

Brilliant. One of the best RHD entries I've read today.

[dracunculus.livejournal.com]

oh, so lovely!

[geeveecatullus.livejournal.com]

oh!
I like that.

I've never heard of rabbit hole day until today, but it's a cool thing.

[mr_magicfingers]

That's lovely. I have always looked at the stars with such longing. I actually pursued my original career becuase there was a remote possibility of it taking me into space, something I'd read about in science fiction. I have a friend who did the same thing: was inspired by science fiction sufficiently (and one book in particular) that she did make it her career. During a mission that was extended an extra day due to bad weather at the landing site, she sat in the cockpit of the shuttle reading that very book and looking down at the earth below her. Talk about things coming full circle. She's a most remarkable woman.

I remember a lovely comment I heard once, 'the meek shall inherit the earth, the rest of us will escape to the stars'.

Given that you look at the stars and wonder, have you ever wondered what it must be like to live on a planet near the galactic core and look up into their night sky? Imagine what that must look like, so crowded with nearby suns. I imagine that quite often.

J.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

That's a great story. Do you know what book it was?

I used to have a big thing for Carl Sagan's Contact. And the film - well, not the whole film, but the bit that always gets me is Jodie Foster's character sitting in her little space capsule about to be shot into a wormhole, as the whole thing's falling apart around her and she has no idea what's about to happen and is obviously terrified, but she keeps yelling "okay to go, okay to go".

[mr_magicfingers]

Yes, the book she mentioned was Madeleine L'engle's 'A wrinkle in Time'.

My inspiration was Arthur C Clarke, because he generally writes about a future that is within sight of where we are now. In several of his books, there are sub characters who tend to be guides or supervisors to the main characters when they are on the moon or mars or other moons/planets. They were often geophysicists. I didn't even know what that was but I figured if they were the ones doing the real work on the early missions, then I should investigate it. That ultimately led to my degree in geology and my employment as a geophyicist in the oil exploration business. I realised a while back that I wasn't going to get into space being a brit.

Jan had said to me that there will be orbital tourist flights for me while I'm still young enough to experience them. My reply was simply 'it's not about just going and having a short view, it's about, for want of a better phrase, boldy going and exploring, doing work up there, settling and colonising. I don't want to be a tourist, I wanted to make it my life's work. She smiled at me, gave me a hug, said 'I know J, I know, and I wish you could go and see what it's like, it's magical!'. One of the most beautiful things she said when I asked her what she enjoyed most when up there was 'sunrise in space, it's feels like a door is opening on the secrets of the universe'.

The book that started it all off for me was 'Islands in the Sky' by Clarke, which I read when I was about 8 and nuts about the space program. It's pretty much sci fi for kids, but it lead me on to other stuff and I always tend to come back to Clarke eventually.

Take care,

J.

[absinthecity.livejournal.com]

Fantastic prose

*applauds*