Cat and Mouse

This afternoon, I was curled up on one of the beanbag chairs in the Young Adult section, reading a book on Anglo-Saxon grammar (having lost interest in Egyptology over the weekend, having read the DaVinci Code and the Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood and all the Harry Potter books already). I want to be able to discuss "Beowulf" intelligently if I ever meet Jimmy Carter, you know? Translations are good and all, but as one of my college professors said, "reading poetry in translation is like having a Great Dane breathe up your nose."

Huh. Now that I look at that statement all typed out like that, I'm not sure what it means. I guess English wasn't his first language.

So anyway, I'm trying to work my way through the various uses of the subjunctive when I hear the elevator ding.

Scared the crap out of me. Stuff like that has been happening ever since we got here - I told you I was hearing sounds, and my Philip K. Dick book wasn't where I left it. Seems like every day there's something like that - I hear footsteps, or there's a light turned on in a part of the building that I haven't been to for days, or I hear the plumbing running, or something. But every time I look, there's nothing there.

It makes me jumpy.

So when the elevator dinged, I jumped. I grabbed the laser rifle and darted over toward the elevator, ducking low to stay hidden by the kid-sized bookshelves. It couldn't have taken me more than 5 seconds to get over there - but when I peeked out, no one was there. It was utterly silent.

I got pretty good at sitting quietly while we were in the basement, so I just sat and waited. If someone was there, hiding, if someone had flown out of the elevator and was hiding in the stacks even faster than I'd run over here - they'd have to move eventually.

I could see the elevator from where I was. It was sitting empty and open. I couldn't see a whole lot else; bookshelves, mostly. The reference desk. A little open space. But I knew that if anyone moved, I would hear them.

No one moved.

I waited for twenty minutes. Twenty god damn minutes. When's the last time you sat still for 20 minutes? Without moving at all? Barely even breathing?

Didn't think so.

Eventually I got bored and took a deep breath. Then I stood up. My legs were kind of crampy so that might not have been as dramatic a gesture as I hoped but since ostensibly no one was looking, I didn't worry. Plus, I had a gun.

"HEY!" I yelled. "COME OUT HERE NOW. OR I'LL START SHOOTING."

Silence.

"I'M NOT KIDDING." I'd shoot the paperback romance novels first, but whoever was hiding there wouldn't know that.

Silence.

So I shot one. Fired all the way across the reference desk and took out a thick paperback. It was kind of far away but even at that distance I could see the cover heroine's heaving bosoms. The laser rifle made its usual FWAP sound and then presto, there's a smoking hole in the middle of the book. Not even a very big hole and the book's just sitting there on the shelf, smoking. It didn't even fall off. It wasn't quite as satisfying as I'd hoped.

"SEE THAT?" I yelled. "I'M A DAMN GOOD SHOT. COME OUT."

Silence.

I spent the next four hours stalking through that library shooting books.

I didn't find anyone. No one was there.

I don't know what's going on.

Photographic Evidence

Check out this picture:
http://www.strangehorizons.com/2006/20060109/gallery/biggerguns.jpg

Both the gun and the smirk are a little bigger than what I usually see, but you get the idea.


Sorry I haven't posted for so long. I've had a cold. But things are happening. Can't wait to tell you!

Libraries Can Be Creepy

So it's this big quiet place, right? So what are those sounds I hear sometimes?

Sometimes I hear the elevator fire up, even though I didn't push the button. I grab the laser rifle and run over to it but no one is ever there. Just this empty elevator, going up and down for no reason.

Sometimes I hear the plumbing running, like someone flushed a toilet.

The other day, I swear my copy of "Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said" wasn't where I left it. I swear it was in the second floor carrel I've been using, tucked between "Heart of Darkness" and Feynmann's "Six Easy Pieces". But when I went looking for it, it wasn't there. I searched all over the damn library for it. I've read "Flow My Tears" before, of course, but I wanted to read it again, now that I have some spare time while I am supposedly figuring out my life and my marriage and all that. OK maybe I should be reading relationship and self-help books instead of Philip K. Dick but whatever.

So anyway I ransacked the whole damn library looking for the book. I finally found it behind the checkout desk on one of the little trolleys they use to cart books around. WTF? How did it get there?

When I saw it, I just kind of froze. Because seriously, there is no way it could have gotten there. No way at all. Mostly I stay on the second floor because that's where the fiction is, and I've been sleeping on the couches in the YA section. Checkout is way down on the first floor - and since I have the whole library to myself, I haven't needed to check out any books since before the monkeys attacked.

But somehow, "Flow My Tears" walked itself down to the first floor.

You know that scene in "Robinson Crusoe" where Our Hero sees the footprints of a stranger on his supposedly deserted island? (Well, ok, me neither, but I read about it, ok? You don't have to read Moby Dick to know it's about a whale, you know? Same thing.) It was just like that. Scared the crap out of me.

DAISI must have moved it for some reason, though she denies it. She's been really good about giving me my space. She's pretty busy with fortifications. She says this is a really secure building - but there are way too many glass windows for me. Safer here than with Derek and his new Buddhist nun whore maybe, but not much.

I still can't think about Derek. I think I will read a book instead.

Shifting POV

The library is GREAT. I swear I'll tell you all about it but right now I am so busy reading that it's hard to find the time.

I've been reading all kinds of books. I just wander around the stacks and pick at books that interest me. Robotics and primatology and Jimmy Carter, naturally, but also drumming and economics and the Western mystical tradition and auto mechanics and cryptology and astral projection and squirrels and the Saharah desert and squid and limestone and homemade candles and UFOs and marital guides and bronze casting and Mesopotamia and Richard Feynman and giraffes and Shackleton and - well, you've been to libraries. You get the idea.

I've also been exploring some of the writing books. One of them had an interesting exercise: write from the point of view of someone you find morally repulsive - and make them sympathetic. I did my best. Thought you all might like it.

QUIET IN THE CITY
by CLARISSA

It is quiet in the city tonight. The last of the targets was exterminated several days ago - my squad of monkeys is just sweeping through the city to confirm that they're all dead.

I am sure they are. We are programmed to be efficient. My tail curls up jauntily behind me as we approach the next building on the street. It's an abandoned warehouse, the kind of place where the humans used to nest while they hid from us. As I scan the area, the input from my sensory detection devices is processed by my central unit, and the algorithms tell me that there is nothing here that threatens us - this building is as abandoned as the rest. Nevertheless, I hold my laser rifle at the ready, because that is how I am programmed. I cannot do anything else.

Teams like ours are moving all over the world tonight. No hidden curve of the earth will offer refuge to the humans; the few that have survived the months of warfare will be destroyed tonight. The whole world will be silent. No more racous human voices; no more factories and automobiles; no more television sets and boy bands; no more anti-war protests; no more babies crying in the night.

We break down the door of the warehouse and quickly, efficiently, we split up into the patterns we have been programmed for. We search the building and find nothing. I convey that information back to Control.

What next? What happens after we're done? I do not know. I have not been programmed to know, nor to know why we were instructed to slaughter the humans. I know that, as time passes, grass will grow up between the cracks of the sidewalks, and the birds and squirrels and dogs will move freely among the abandoned buildings, sheltering in them even as they crumble. Wolves will roam the cities; monkeys, the real ones, will climb freely in their jungles.

And maybe, a billion years from now, another species will rise up and find the remnants of this civilization. What will they think? Will they understand the story told by the faint traces of the ancient ruins of this city? Will they understand what kind of people lived here, how they lived?

What will they think of us? Will we still be there, endlessly patrolling for humans, just in case? Or will Control have sent us new directions?

Perhaps Control will simply shut us down, and we will crumble right along with the buildings the humans built.

We leave the building and approach the next. Ahead of me, the scout stiffens, and gestures. There's someone alive in that building; her infrared has detected it. I didn't think it was possible - Control was wise to have us search.

Now I'm close enough to see it. Three people, two adults and one juvenile. They're close together - we should be able to take them out easily. We circle the building, find the entrance - the humans are hiding in the basement and there's only one entrance that will get us there. I gesture to the two strongest; they'll be the best at crashing through the door. No doubt the humans have made some attempt to fortify it. Once the door is open the rest of us will pour in and destroy them.

The run toward the door but before they get there, there's a horrible sizzling electrical sound and the smell of ozone, and the two scouts crumple to the ground, twitching.

I'm shocked, but quickly I figure it out: the humans must have had an electromagnetic pulse weapon, and fired it as the two doorbreakers ran at them. I call the rest of the monkeys to me - we need to strategize. How did they design it? I review all the possible plans in my data bank. Would they have designed a single-shot weapon? Multiple shots? I can't tell. I need to know but I can't know. The only way to tell is to risk sacrificing another monkey. My programming has allowed for this, so I guesture at the weakest of us, and he runs toward the door. The rest of us watch intently.

Nothing happens. I smile, an expression I learned from the humans. There was so much more I could have learned from them. I wanted to learn what it was like to be soft. But now I never would.

The rest of us ran toward the door and soon enough we forced it open. They'd done a valiant job of reinforcing it, these humans, but it was no defence against a determined band of robot monkeys with laser rifles.

The humans had been huddled together around a table. They were playing some kind of game, something with little tiles with letters on them, arranged in unpleasant asymetrical patterns.

We find them quickly enough; no need for our elaborate search patterns. The male is holding the juvenile with one arm; his other arm is around the female. Both the man and the juvenile are crying. The woman is glaring at us defiantly. So brave. I could have learned a lot from one such as her.

Then we shoot them. The laser rifles beam death into their hearts and their skulls and the baby stops crying. They lay there, bleeding; the fluid gleams darkly in the dim light.

Once we are sure they're dead, we search the rest of the building, just to be certain. Our programming calls for certainty on this issue, though it allows for no other certainty.

What will happen next? I do not know.

It is quiet in the city.

What do you think?

Life At The Library

It's pretty great, living in the library, I have to say.

I haven't posted anything for a few days because we were pretty busy making it secure. It's a big library, with lots of glass - but DAISI is clever with fortifications, and I feel secure now. I'm not going to tell you everything we've rigged up lately, that would be giving too much away - but we're safe, and we'll continue to develop our fortifications in the future.

Somehow, the power's still on, and the plumbing. It's very nice. Unlimited time on the computers, woo!

Of course, the first thing I did was look at the Jimmy Carter books. Naturally most of them are checked out - we'll never see those books again. I can only hope that they were a comfort to the library patrons who checked them out, in their last moments.

It's so quiet here. Sometimes I think I hear sounds but it's always just the wind, or the building settling. It's quiet here in a way the basement never was. There's no one breathing here but me.

It takes some getting used to. I don't know if I like it or not. We'll see.

DAISI has been giving me a lot of space. I'm pretty sure she's be up for Scrabble if I asked, but I don't want to ask. Not yet.

I miss Derek and the baby terribly. I'm also desperately glad that they're not here. It's awful.

Reading a lot, researching robotics and military strategy and the like, trying to understand how we ended up in this situation - and trying to figure out what to do next.

Quiet days.

What Happened Next

So.

I left.

I packed the essentials into two suitcases - my toothbrush, some clothes, a bunch of gin, ammo, and canned peaches. I'll come back for more, later. I took my razor scooter and my suitcases and headed out the door.

Once we'd decided that I was leaving, things were relatively peaceful around the basement. There was nothing left to argue about.

Daisi insisted on coming with me. I wanted her to stay and protect Derek and Gretchen - I can take care of myself. But she insisted, and I was too tired to protest much. So we left.

What to do? Where to go? I had a number of options. I could go join up with Mr. Kotter. I could head to the mountains to see Mimi or to Canada to see G or to any of a number of other places - thanks to everyone who sent me e-mail offering shelter, I appreciate it. I could hunt the monkeys to their lair and slaughter them all.

Did you ever read Into Thin Air, by John Krakauer? It's really a terrific book. It's all about these people who climb Everest and some of them die and it's just gripping and horrifying and wonderful to read when you are safe at home in bed.

But what amazed me the most about this story was the conditions under which these people operated. They're at altitudes most airplanes don't reach, they're cold, they're hungry, they're under extreme physical stress - and there's hardly any oxygen. The less oxygen, the stupider they get, yet they're being asked to make life and death decisions under these conditions.

Sometimes, their decisions were not so good.

Other times, there was no good decision, and they were just doomed.

I sort of felt like that. So much pressure, so much upheaval, so much loss - how could I possibly make a good decision under those circumstances? Yet standing in the street, stupidly trying to decide, is also a decision - a decision to wait for the monkeys to get me. I couldn't do that.

I had to decide something. I had to choose. And what I wanted more than anything, I decided, was to be alone for a while, to consider my options, to try to regroup. I wanted some me time.

So I did what any reasonable person would have done: I went to the libary.

Moving On

I always thought people who talked about how their "heart" was "breaking" were indulging in hyperbole - but no. They're not.

Oh, God, this sucks so bad.

I don't want to get into it. I don't want to tell you the blow-by-blow, the he-said and she-said and the-god-damn-scrabble-cheating-nun-said and the robot-monkey-said and then the baby started crying and -

Damn it, I'm crying again.

Ok. Well.

After the razor blade incident, I untied Derek and Maddie (eventually). A lot of things were said, a lot of awful things. I didn't know Zen nuns could swear like that! Actually I didn't really understand that Derek could swear like that, either, though I suspected he had hidden talents.

Anyway. It is now clear that Maddie is a human and that I am a fucking psychopath and -

The baby's crying again. How can I leave the baby?


We've talked it over. We've talked rationally and we've screamed irrationally and I've cried and Derek has cried and Maddie has cried and it is just one giant clusterfuck.

And in the end, we all agreed: I'm leaving. It's the only way. I hate it but it's the only fucking way, at least for now. I guess those damn ducks will have to protect them.

At least until Maddie's wound heals. Until Derek forgives me.

Until I forgive him.

The baby's crying again. It's the most beautiful sound I've ever heard. I may never hear it again.

I have to go now.

New Chimp Study

A new study shows that chimps can evaluate a problem, determine whether or not they need help, and then get other chimps to help them.

Well, no shit; that's exactly what we've seen happen here as the evil robot monkeys took over the comments section. They go out of their way to help each other!


Big stuff is going on here; I'll fill y'all in soon. Promise. It's not fun right now.

You are all evil robot monkeys

I am never listening to any of you ever again.

I guess Robert's a monkey, too.

At least, he sure seems to be on their side.

ERM 1st Class Jilly: You certainly never attended ERM Psychological Warfare School! That's not how you talk to a human in the hope of demoralizing her! All you've done is piss her off. She'll get you and all the other evil robot monkeys in the end. By the way, if you want the ERM Psychological Warfare School assignment you have to ask for it. They don't just send people willy-nilly because it costs money. The school is held on Maui for two weeks. A nice vacation. I hear they allow you to bring a friend. Maybe some single male ERM who you've had your robot eye on?

Everything's going to hell here in the basement and everything's going to hell with my so-called friends on this blog.

I can't stand it. Maybe I should just let the monkeys kill me.

Wow.

Thanks for the support. I mean that. I appreciate Robert and DAISI posting their support. I know you guys mean well.

But.

You are creeping me out. I mean, hello?

Read this:

Thinking DAISI. Maddie pissed now. Not good this. Real Zen Mistress not pissing. Maybe evil human. Maybe not real Mistress. If not mistress, OK, could be pretending from afraidness. If evil human, send away.

And this:

You'd think that a real Zen Mistress would have, 1. Known there was some drug in her macaroni & cheese; 2. Been able to keep her Wah undisturbed after awakening to being tied and sliced. I think DAISI is right-on. You'd also think that a real Zen Mistress would have known not to piss off Clarissa by being too chummy with her hubby.

In most societies, it's considered rude at best to drug nuns, then tie them up and cut them with razor blades.

I feel horrible. Jimmy Carter would be so disappointed.

WWJD?

Well. Demosthenes has been sending me e-mail all day, telling me that Maddie is a robot monkey in disguise - and she is freakishly good at Scrabble. DAISI started in with the suspicions, too. Every time I looked up, Maddie and Derek were talking about something. I tried to be part of the conversation a few times but they would just sort of smile patiently at me. I hate that. I really hate that.

And Demosthenes kept after me. "She's a monkey," he kept saying. And DAISI - they both kept after me, all day.

OK, so it's true, I'm worried about my family. Our life here is tough but it's a good life and I'm determined to protect it. But I also don't want to become completely paranoid. If I can't connect with other human beings any more, then the evil robot monkeys have won, you know? So I spent all afternoon going back and forth, weighing my options. I was getting really worked up about it, too.

Then I thought: What would Jimmy Carter do? And all became clear.

So I crushed up some sleeping pills and slipped them into Derek and Maddie's macaroni and cheese dinners. After they were asleep, DAISI and I tied them to the beds so that they couldn't struggle, and then I took a razor blade and sliced open Maddie's shoulder to see if she would bleed.

She did.

She's human. And she's pissed, and so is Derek, and everyone's mad at me, and I don't know how to fix this. God damn it.

I guess I should untie them. But I don't want to.