"He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it."
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Art by bg burke. Reproductions on archival paper available for purchase. Contact drollduck@gmail.com with inquiries.
Art and sculpture by Michael Horvath. Reproductions of the artwork on archival paper available for purchase. Contact drollduck@gmail.com with inquiries.
Photos by BA Rutelonis. Prints on archival paper available for purchase. Contact drollduck@gmail.com with inquiries.
the woman on the train
stories by b. g. burke
What is there to say but that I was the woman on the 1904 train as it passed by Albert in Bern with his stopwatch on that fateful moment of enlightenment? That I was on the train as it passed through the crossing and that his reckoning was wrong?
He miscalculated, Albert did. But he was of an age and a time, when such miscalculations were commonplace amongst inhabitants of planet Earth. E=mc2 had been but part of the equation, as he had intuited and had confided to me when last we spoke.
"Think, Albert, think. Think up, up, up or sideways: not to infinity. There's your solution."
I do believe, when I drop in to visit him from time to time at his home on Smades1, that he is becoming more amenable toward considering my alternate theorems. Or, it could be, he just likes looking at my ass.
You should hear he and Douglas Adams go at it though when the two of them are together. Adams drops in from Smade2 (where he shares digs with Asimov, Kubrick, Heinlein, et al) every Sunday to watch the physicists slug it out over solar electric ion propulsion or splitting the atom down to its nth. 'Slug' is probably not the right term . . .but, but, there was that time when ________ aimed his solar-powered wheelchair toward Feyman and, if not for Marie Curie throwing herself bodily between the two, who knows who might have ended up with a bloody nose or worse. Beats wrestling or Sunday afternoon football.
No doubt you're wondering along about now what a woman such as myself was doing on that train to begin with, how I came to be there..
Hello, hello . . . "you're fading. Damn these robotic operators. Some things never change!"
* * *
As I was about to say when interrupted by the disconnect:
Strictly speaking, I'm not a woman; I was just designed to look like one. My designate name in earth language is 000XX0003Alpha a) Alphas one and two having been scrapped due to faulty design. Just nothing more than a collection of bits and bytes, really, with terrible mood swings and insecurities.
Nagge *, at TIM. berates Hcssinesaf* across the galaxy at Yelekreb: "Now look what you've gone and done, Hcinnesaf,* you've made her cry. I warned you against injecting the hormone gene, but would you listen? Oh, no."
Hcssinesaf:* "You try separating the intellect from the feelings, you're so smart. Let's see what brilliant idea you come up with, Mr. Know it All."
(author's note: * she doesn't think all that much of Nagge or Hcssinesaf or their waste of taxpayer dollars pursuing their esoteric theories of what makes us tick. They can't find the mystery, the dreams, the dreadful end of life looking through their microscopes. Author can just imagine them on a date or a dance floor.)
And, so it goes.
Myself, I try to spend as little time as possible with bickering astrobiologists and exit, following a good cry in the ladies loo, the lab. "Nobody's perfect," as Michael Logan wrote in Fanfaren der Liebe; later put to film by Billy Wilder as "Some Like It Hot."
Oh, yes, even us numbers are allowed some entertainment.
* * *
Speaking of Michael Logan reminds me of my next assignment, the one I dread the most: smoothing down the ruffled feathers of writers. You think crocodiles are fearsome beasts or that religious fanatics causing carnage are the worst you will witness? You haven't met the writers yet. Just ask Hemingway. No, wait, that's my job and, oh, my father's whiskers, there Mailer to deal with now. And, oh yes, the detours. Douglas wrote in the 'Hitchhikers Guide" that earth had been demolished to make way for the super-duper to end all super-duper galactic bypasses. Though we later found out that Arthur had merely been hallucinating and that the earth had not been demolished by Vogons, plans are still underway for the construction of bypass.
The override. according to the engineers, is going to amount to about three googols. One googol equaling
10100 equaling 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,00,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 .
(Milton Sirotta, having popularized zeros at the age of nine in 1911 died tragically some seventy years later wondering if he had discounted the significance of ones. Milton's uncle, mathematician Edward Kasner, you might remember, wrote a boring 1000 page tome titled "Mathematics and the Imagination," unnoted but for his coinage of the word, 'googol, ' hoping to capitalize on Milton's zeros. Milton's father took issue with Milton's uncle. . .oy, veh. . . and they do not speak, though housed together on TJBM**. Milton, meanwhile, is undergoing therapy on SBBS* with a blonde bombshell movie-star-seeking-intelligence who inexplicitly not only survived the implosion of earth but, who along with Elvis and Lennon, continue to emit light into ad nauseum.)
(author's note: the **denotation, used throughout this narrative, equals zero googols.)
I digress, having been lured from the narrative by the zeros. What? You expected that ones would have more sexual appeal? Or that a robot would have no sexual desires?
to be continued
©burke '08
He miscalculated, Albert did. But he was of an age and a time, when such miscalculations were commonplace amongst inhabitants of planet Earth. E=mc2 had been but part of the equation, as he had intuited and had confided to me when last we spoke.
"Think, Albert, think. Think up, up, up or sideways: not to infinity. There's your solution."
I do believe, when I drop in to visit him from time to time at his home on Smades1, that he is becoming more amenable toward considering my alternate theorems. Or, it could be, he just likes looking at my ass.
You should hear he and Douglas Adams go at it though when the two of them are together. Adams drops in from Smade2 (where he shares digs with Asimov, Kubrick, Heinlein, et al) every Sunday to watch the physicists slug it out over solar electric ion propulsion or splitting the atom down to its nth. 'Slug' is probably not the right term . . .but, but, there was that time when ________ aimed his solar-powered wheelchair toward Feyman and, if not for Marie Curie throwing herself bodily between the two, who knows who might have ended up with a bloody nose or worse. Beats wrestling or Sunday afternoon football.
No doubt you're wondering along about now what a woman such as myself was doing on that train to begin with, how I came to be there..
Hello, hello . . . "you're fading. Damn these robotic operators. Some things never change!"
* * *
As I was about to say when interrupted by the disconnect:
Strictly speaking, I'm not a woman; I was just designed to look like one. My designate name in earth language is 000XX0003Alpha a) Alphas one and two having been scrapped due to faulty design. Just nothing more than a collection of bits and bytes, really, with terrible mood swings and insecurities.
Nagge *, at TIM. berates Hcssinesaf* across the galaxy at Yelekreb: "Now look what you've gone and done, Hcinnesaf,* you've made her cry. I warned you against injecting the hormone gene, but would you listen? Oh, no."
Hcssinesaf:* "You try separating the intellect from the feelings, you're so smart. Let's see what brilliant idea you come up with, Mr. Know it All."
(author's note: * she doesn't think all that much of Nagge or Hcssinesaf or their waste of taxpayer dollars pursuing their esoteric theories of what makes us tick. They can't find the mystery, the dreams, the dreadful end of life looking through their microscopes. Author can just imagine them on a date or a dance floor.)
And, so it goes.
Myself, I try to spend as little time as possible with bickering astrobiologists and exit, following a good cry in the ladies loo, the lab. "Nobody's perfect," as Michael Logan wrote in Fanfaren der Liebe; later put to film by Billy Wilder as "Some Like It Hot."
Oh, yes, even us numbers are allowed some entertainment.
* * *
Speaking of Michael Logan reminds me of my next assignment, the one I dread the most: smoothing down the ruffled feathers of writers. You think crocodiles are fearsome beasts or that religious fanatics causing carnage are the worst you will witness? You haven't met the writers yet. Just ask Hemingway. No, wait, that's my job and, oh, my father's whiskers, there Mailer to deal with now. And, oh yes, the detours. Douglas wrote in the 'Hitchhikers Guide" that earth had been demolished to make way for the super-duper to end all super-duper galactic bypasses. Though we later found out that Arthur had merely been hallucinating and that the earth had not been demolished by Vogons, plans are still underway for the construction of bypass.
The override. according to the engineers, is going to amount to about three googols. One googol equaling
10100 equaling 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,00,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 .
(Milton Sirotta, having popularized zeros at the age of nine in 1911 died tragically some seventy years later wondering if he had discounted the significance of ones. Milton's uncle, mathematician Edward Kasner, you might remember, wrote a boring 1000 page tome titled "Mathematics and the Imagination," unnoted but for his coinage of the word, 'googol, ' hoping to capitalize on Milton's zeros. Milton's father took issue with Milton's uncle. . .oy, veh. . . and they do not speak, though housed together on TJBM**. Milton, meanwhile, is undergoing therapy on SBBS* with a blonde bombshell movie-star-seeking-intelligence who inexplicitly not only survived the implosion of earth but, who along with Elvis and Lennon, continue to emit light into ad nauseum.)
(author's note: the **denotation, used throughout this narrative, equals zero googols.)
I digress, having been lured from the narrative by the zeros. What? You expected that ones would have more sexual appeal? Or that a robot would have no sexual desires?
to be continued
©burke '08
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Copyright 2008, Barbara Burke
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