Thursday, March 28, 2013

HEP - Short Echoes 2 - That's Not Snow


 That's Not Snow
By CM Stewart

“Not everybody gets a private tour of Argonne National Laboratory.”
“I know. Thanks for showing me around.”
“Will you remember this when you go back to school?”
“Of course.” Annette smiles up at her uncle.
They turn a corner and enter command central. Rows of black-capped processors fill the expansive computer room. Theo waves his hand at the machines.
“This used to be the Sequoia Blue Gene Q. I modified her to run at 20.1 petaflops, and renamed her ‘Mira,’ after your aunt. She’s now the most powerful supercomputer in the world. Mira has 49,152 compute nodes, and 70 petabytes of disk storage – the fastest to date. And this is confidential,” Theo says, stooping to whisper. “I secretly programmed her to calculate the correct M-theory of the universe.”
“M-theory?”
Theo scans the room for late-working lab assistants. Seeing none, he continues. “The 11-dimensional string theory, birdie. The quantum structure of the universe.” He chuckles and taps Annette’s head. “Soon we’ll have the theoretical physics equation which will perfectly describe universal reality.”
“Soon?” Annette says, ducking her head.
“By my estimations, Mira will gift us with the equation tomorrow. Then Theo C. Stout will be recognized as the most accomplished and celebrated scientist in history. And science – as we understand it today – will be turned up-side down. Nothing will be the same.”
They stroll between the towering computer cabinets.
“So what’s that pretty head of yours thinking?”
Annette shrugs. “ ‘Knowledge is power,’ as Sir Francis Bacon famously said.” She smiles up at her uncle.
“You’re close, dear,” he says, running a finger along a casing. “The correct phrase is ‘Scientia potentia est,’ and we have the philosopher Thomas Hobbs to thank for that gem. Have you passed your Latin courses yet, sweetie?”
“I’m not taking Latin.”
Theo stops abruptly and blinks at Annette. He bursts out laughing. “You almost had me fooled there, dolly. Imagine that.” He playful tugs at her ponytail.
Annette frowns as Theo polishes the casing with his sleeve.
“Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Annette purses her lips. “And I know Lord Acton said that.”
“I suppose that would pass at your university. But his proper name is ‘John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton.’ And the un-butchered quote is, Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ You say you’re a humanities major?”
Annette’s face reddens, and Theo pats her head.
“Yes. But I-I-” Annette stammers, “I’m in my second year.”
“I’m sure they keep the city library open all summer. A solid self-education can fill in the gaping cracks and holes of an institutional education. What’s on your summer reading list, dear?”
“Well, I’m keeping up with the major authors – I mean, the top-sellers in fiction – so I can better understand the, uh, sociological impact of… of popular culture.
Theo raises his brow.
She bites her lip. “You know – John Grisham, E. L. James. Well, I kinda flipped through ‘Fifty Shades… ’ Borrowed it from a friend. Didn’t much care for it.” Her face reddens again, and she turns away and studies a processor rack.
“You know, you should think about cracking open a practical book now and then,” Theo says. “You’re welcome to borrow any of the computer science and physics books in my office library.”
Annette’s gaze sweeps over stacked silver trays and black and white wires. “Would any of those books tell me what’s inside Mira? The inner workings?”
“Sure. A few of them might give you an idea of the mechanics, but to learn what’s really going on inside Mira, you’d have to spend decades studying everything from advanced software engineering to quantum mechanics.”
Annette sighs. “Well, I was more interested in what Mira actually looks like on the inside. I’m taking an independent art class in the fall and was hoping to get inspiration – a peek at the guts of a supercomputer. I want to see something none of the art students have seen.”
“I can let you have a peek inside, right now, if you’d like.” Theo winks at her. He takes a multi-tool from his pocket, unscrews the top two screws of a cabinet, and carefully flexes the plastic casing back a couple inches. He switches on the flashlight extension and hands the tool to Annette.
Grinning, Annette positions the flashlight and peers into the crack.
A slight jumping movement. She focuses, and sees a large black spider tensed on a webby mass of white wires. Annette frowns and steps back.
“Well? Did you get your inspiration?” Theo says, snapping panel back into place.
Annette is silent.
“Do you need another look?”
She clears her throat. “No. Thank you.”
The next morning, Annette is quiet at breakfast.
“Something on your mind, dear?” says Theo.
“I was just wondering,” she says, “If an insect somehow got into Mira, would that potentially affect her M-theory calculations?”
“A bug? Mira is one-hundred percent bug-free. I coded a customized anti-bug subroutine into her software. Even with the quantum calculations she’s doing, there’s no way a software bug could pop up.”
“I don’t mean a software bug. I mean a spider.”
“Of course!” Theo says, laughing. “Mira has a web crawler constantly scanning the academic libraries for the latest research in theoretical physics.”
The phone rings, and Annette answers.
“Uncle Theo – it’s Charlotte. She says there’s an emergency at the lab.”
Theo grabs the phone. “Charlotte? Theo here… What? Actual spiders? Is this a joke?… Okay. Thank you.”
Annette shivers.
“Charlotte told me the lab is quarantined,” Theo says, trembling. “Filled with spider webbing and… millions of spiders. Can’t even open the doors. The spiders spun layers of webbing over everything.” He collapses on the sofa and pulls back the window curtain. “Snow? In July?” Theo crouches behind the sofa back and peers out the window at a glinting white landscape. “This catastrophic global climate change is happening faster than anyone predicted.”
Annette stoops and pats Theo’s head. “That’s not snow.”
Annette stoops and pats Theo’s head. “That’s not snow.”
 
 
 
CMStewart is a fiction writer and a philosophy of technology enthusiast. One of her flash fiction tales is published in the anthology Twisted Tales: Flash Fiction with a Twist.

Her flash fiction bog is

CMStewartWrite.wordpress.com

and her G+ stream is

gplus.to/CMStewart

She lives in the USA with her husband and two cats
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HEP - 29 - [Insert Something Insufferably Clever About Cool Titles]


In the near future robots will control our lives by being super helpful, or at least so says the sappy indie dramadie Robot and Frank. (yeah, I said dramadie. Not taking it back either.) We dig into it's robotic guts, as well as hypothesizing about a catastrophic gravity inversion and talking about the benefits of a cool title.


Links

Next week we check out Sinister. Don't miss it!

Thursday, March 21, 2013

HEP - 28 - Of Filbert and Feminism


This week Al and Tony review Disney's videogame mashup movie Wreck-it Ralph. Then Al gets in way over his head talking about feminism, and Tony's smoke detector signs up for Twitter.

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Links:

Fred: The Movie
beep
The Rape of James Bond
The Frighteners
Dead Alive
Black Sheep
Start Your Novel

Thursday, March 14, 2013

HEP - 27 - Old Action Heroes Never Die, They Just Melt Away


This week the guys accept the dubious invitation to travel back in time with the quirky comedy Safety Not Guaranteed. Then they talk about artists with hard-to-pronounce names and argue about who the greatest solo fighters in history were.

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Links to Stuff:

The Book of Five Rings
The 48 Laws of Power
Snow Crash
Law Abiding Citizen
Zdzislaw Beksinski (try saying that five times fast)
"Take This Lollipop"
Children of Sorrow Trailer

Thursday, March 7, 2013

HEP - 26 - Bug Awful




This week, the guys talk about the psychological (probably) horror (debatably) film Bug. Also, they discuss the benefits of time travel vs. teleportation, pitch the script for the hit new cooking show Downtown Arby's and...I'm forgetting something here aren't I? It'll come to me. Just a second...BILL OBERST, OMG ITS BILL OBERST MAKING A GUEST APPEARANCE ON OUR PODCAST, I THOUGHT FOR SURE THAT WAS JUST A DREAM.

Download the full episode
Download just our interview Bill Oberst Jr.
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Links:
Bill Oberst Jr.
Take This Lollipop
Children of Sorrow

Morgellons Syndrom
A Scanner Darkly by Phillip K. Dick.
Drood
Downton Abbey

Next week we'll be talking about Safety Not Garanteed. Check it out on Netflix.

HEP Interview with Bill Oberst Jr.


Mr. Lincoln, a cult leader, an evil redneck, and a decade of being Christ, Bill Oberst Jr. is a man of many faces and a wealth of talent. In this interview, Bill talks to us about the life of a hard working hollywood actor. He also questions us on moral grounds involving a bride in the headlights.

 
We can't thank him enough for being the first guest on the Human Echoes Podcast. If you all enjoyed this interview as much as we did, find Bill at his website, or check out some of the movies he is in.

Directly download this episode here.
Trailer for Children of Sorrow.