More Speculating

Could there be an organized form of energy that could be intelligent?

Just imagine if we had a different form that wasn’t composed of matter with energy…

Whoa. Stop.

I started to write that we are matter that converts matter to energy and uses energy to animate itself. The animated matter would then be organized into a structure capable of intelligence.

But is this life?


This kind of is the idea of a homunculus that arises within a shell. Are we such? Or is our intelligence/being more integral? Is there such a division between our consciousness and body or is that an artificial construct? Further, energy acting on matter isn’t necessarily life. Sunshine on snow is not life. It will possibly melt the snow but the snow is inert. Bacteria ingesting a dead form involves matter and energy acting on a form but the form is dead.

So if we were energy animated by conversions of matter would the improbability of beings composed primarily of matter be inconceivable?


This is the other side of the Universal mirror.

Could there be beings all across all states of matter and energy?

Liquid intelligence?

Gaseous intelligence?

Plasma intelligence?

Perhaps energy has shifts or transitions like matter. Rather than thinking of energy as a binary—absent or present—what if energy is possible in multiple forms? And there could be multiple forms of intelligent energy?

What if when we fired up the collider last fall we sent up a ‘halloo’ that echoed through the reality of energy beings who are now contemplating its inexplicable occurrence and speculating on the existence of beings made of matter?

Other questions: How would liquid beings reproduce? Or communicate? Same questions for gaseous and energy beings? What do you think would be probable? Why?

The Week that Evaporated

I have not blogged all week as in evident by the void of posts. I am in school for yet another round of degrees and started four courses in the last two weeks. This had eaten up time as I have struggled to work two jobs while going to school full time. This week I have been exploring the various free or trial compilers for C++ programming, trying to wrap my brain around matrices and spans and Rn mumbo jumbo, searching for information technology news websites, and thinking on water world aliens.

Oh. And then there was Monday night where a friend decided that he wanted to write horror stories and we e-mailed back and forth about what constitutes good horror. In the process it dredged up a memory from my past and I managed to wig myself out. Every noise in the house made me think that something supernatural was lurking. Somehow it is simply not fair that he wants to write horror and so I end up losing sleep.

I am trying to stick to a sort of schedule with the blog posts and my regular programming will hopefully resume this weekend.

First Installment of the First Story

So, I thought I would try something a little different to jump start my flagging writing endeavors. This is the first installment of what may be a short story or a series of short stories. I haven't really decided yet. I also set for myself the criteria that I had to use the words whir, corpulent, periwinkle, sweet, and skid. Let me know what you think of this start.



The jolt slammed into her instep and rocked up the bones of her legs, Evie felt her hips sliding backwards and took a staggering step to maintain her balance. Damn those two inch heels! A grey blur whirred past and brushed her blonde hair off her shoulder. She traced its trajectory back.

With a wide gapped smile that showed the pink of his gums, the Ba-luwa dipped his chin and gave Evie a coy look.

“Hey! Watch it with the whirlies, Obeng. This is a brand new leopard skin coat.”

Obeng's smile stretched and he let out a staccato series of clicking chuckles. “Ooo be too slow, E. V. Moooove that fine ass!” He paused and met the icey blue gaze of her eyes. “Unless you want me to catch you.”

Evie groaned. “Obeng, in your dreams.”

“What is a dream but another reality, sweet girl.” He took a delicate slow step towards her on his stilt long legs, his thin arms extended outward like a cage.

Evie felt the hint of warmth, a cinnamon comfort, spicy and seductive against the pale skin of her breast. Her eyes darted to the amulet that rested in her cleavage and then towards Obeng.

He laughed.

Snarling in fury, Evie grasped the gold locket that held a picture of Mama Tana, a hair from the head of baby Alice who had died of the pneumonia, and Georgina's ka. She gave a quick yank to the locket and felt the chain tug painfully and scrape up the delicate skin on the nape of her neck. “Ow.”

Obeng doubled over in mirth.

“Obeng, you are not fighting fair,” Evie accused as she reached around and undid the clasp to her necklace before tossing it to the ground.

“What do you expect? It is your destiny to come to me and yet you fight it. Your mama, she promised you to me.”

Evie's nostrils flared and she clenched her jaw. “The promise of my mother is not mine to honor.”

Obeng smiled and waggled a finger at her. He tsked and said, “No, no, no. Do not be sharper than the serpent's tooth.”

Evie lowered her arms to her sides and took a step backward to find her balance in the tall leather boots. She bounced forward on the balls of her feet and threw herself past Obeng into a handspring. He let out a roar like a wounded elephant and the sound reverberated off the brick walls of the alley as he lunged towards her. His arms extended out as writhing snakes and grasped the narrow of her ankle. Evie landed flat on her stomach with an oomph as the breath was knocked from her lungs. Obeng blinked his snake slitted grey eyes and his arms shrank to fit the long sleeves of his green velvet waistcoat. He lowered his chin. With an elegant smooth gait, he stalked towards her.

Evie gasped for breath like a fish on dry earth. Pushing herself up onto her hands and knees, she lifted her head and looked out towards the bright light of day beyond the shadow of darkness that the Ba-luwa had cast. With sharp red stabs of pain, she forced air into her lungs and crawled forward.

Obeng admired the round curve of her rear end. Her flesh was sweet. He smiled to himself. He had made a better trade than he had thought all those years ago. Forty pounds of flesh for honeyed revenge. When her mother had offered her up, she had been a scrawny girl with scraped knees and dirty straggly hair. Hardly worth a bother, but sometimes swans came from waddling ugly birds. His investment had certainly grown. Grown nicely. He smiled at her attempts to reach beyond his influence and placed his booted foot upon her buttocks. He shoved and she went down onto her stomach. Pushing his waistcoat back, he squatted beside her. “Sweet wife, come with me. I will give you every pleasure and our children will gladden your heart.”

Evie turned her head to the side and looked at him. “Obeng I have to answer your call, but I don't have to go with you and I don't have to cooperate with you. Your power over me is limited. Would you keep me in shadows? Would you keep me from the sun? How would you have me?”

Obeng considered his own reflection in the dark of her eyes. His large, thin face stared at him from her mirror. Before other mortals, he could change his visage. He could appear as a handsome young man with a luxurious mane of hair, but Evie could disspell the glamour with a casual flit of her small hand. She awaited his answer in impassive silence. “One day, you will come to me.”

Evie blinked and looked away.

Obeng rose to his full height and walked with purpose towards the back of the alley.

“Obeng.”

He paused.

“Obeng?”

Slowly he glanced over his shoulder and hissed, “What would you have of me?”

“The amulet?”

Stooping he scooped up the gold locket and brought it to his nose slits. He inhaled deeply and closed his eyes to savor the musk of her sweat. He tightened his grasp on the amulet and hissed, “No. I keep it as souvenir.”

“Obeng, you aren't being fair.”

Obeng continued to walk away. “No. No, I am not.”

Evie watched him fade into the place between. Sitting up, she leaned against the cool rough brick. She surveyed the front of her dress. The creamy white knit was besmirched with greasy brown stains. One of the heels of her black leather boots was scuffed where she had skidded to a stop. Sighing, she pushed against the wall and inched her sore body upward against the ragged raw protests of pain. She staggered out into the sunlight.

Obeng watched her return to the world of automobiles, computers, refrigerators, food that was never seen alive, and the magic of power that moved across circuits via the transfer of the particles of creation. When she was no longer visible through the veil, he turned to take his leave.

Osyth asked, “Were you able to obtain the desired item?”

Glaring at her, Obeng spat. Where the liquid fell, a sizzle of noxious grey-green smoke wisped away.

Osyth raised a periwinkle colored flower to her nose and looked away.

Rasheide scowled and lumbered towards Obeng. “Come now. There is no need to act in such a fashion.”

“It hurts her that I took this,” Obeng snapped.

Rasheide smirked and asked, “But is that such a horrible thing? By this act, you relieve her of one of her defenses. You want for her to call out to you.”

Obeng assessed Rasheide with a sidelong look.

Rasheide held out his round hand. “Give it to me.”

Obeng began to extend his hand to relinquish the amulet and then thought to reconsidered.

In a flash of motion that defied his corpulent form, Rasheide snatched the amulet.

“Give it back,” demanded Obeng.

Rasheide smiled slyly and held the amulet to his nose. He inhaled deeply and shook his head. “Oh no, Obeng. We have made a deal.”

Copyright Annette Bowman 2009


Any ideas on what should happen next? Do you have a list of five words that you propose I should try to include in the next installment?

Roving Science: Destiny or Hubris

So this week I have been doing my usual cruising around the internet in search of new and interesting science news. A friend of mine was reading the February 2009 issue of Sky and Telescope the other night as he hung out with me while I reviewed Calculus. (I get math anxious sometimes and just need someone to hang out with me while I do math until I get up to speed and feel assured that I really can do the math.) He showed me a photograph in the 'gallery' section that was taken in Marlette, Michigan that is entitled "strange clouds". The clouds are indeed strange looking. Somewhat saucer shaped with a central dividing line. I did a search on Google of 'strange clouds Marlette Michigan' to see if I could find a jpeg or a link to post, but nothing was available without a subscription to Sky and Telescope. During the search I discovered that Marlette, Michigan has had more than its share of reported UFO sightings.

Another article in Sky and Telescope was "Living Dangerously" by David Grinspoon. In the article he writes about the dynamic interaction between the atmosphere and earth and how because of things like hurricanes, volcanoes, tsunamis, and the like life has actually been possible on the earth. He points out that volcanoes replenish nutrients in the soil, storms water the earth, lightning causes fires that clear out overgrown forests and make them healthier, etc. He makes a case that the things that we consider to be natural disasters actually foster life. In contrast there is peaceful Mars with its sparse atmosphere, dry and windswept surface, and too thick for movement and heat transfer crust. Mars is most likely a dead planet that certainly at one point had a water cycle and, if not life, the potential for life. The article proposed that in looking for life that we consider looking for planets with a similar dynamic interaction between its core, crust, and atmosphere.

I googled David Grinspoon and found an interesting article on terraforming at:
www.space.com/adastra/adastra_terraforming_brody.html

The article is entitled "Terraforming: Human Destiny or Hubris" and it is by Dave Brody. In the article he talks about the dialog between different camps who argue either that humans should or should not terraform other planets. Mars is the planet that is focused on primarily. Grinspoon is quoted and gives a pretty good reason for humans to achieve interstellar travel:

“If you’ve got an endangered species, you don’t want to have just one little plot of it someplace,’ says David Grinspoon. “All life on Earth is that endangered species. If we get to that stage where we’ll be moving from one celestial body to another, we’ll have a pretty good crack at outliving the Sun. We may be manning the lifeboats, but in those lifeboats there will be all the species of Earth coming with us (well, maybe not the mosquitoes).”

While this does presume that we will as a species outlive the Sun and avoid a whole host of other extinction causing things, it is a pretty good reason to shoot for interstellar travel and to gain some knowledge of how to do terraforming. I mean even if the Sun were to stop producing energy today, it would take 50,000,000 years for significant effects to be felt at Earth, but still.... However, that's an ambitious amount of time for a species to survive I think, but, we humans, we can be ambitious on the whole scale of being alive in the galaxy. I mean it is good to have goals.

In his article Brody kind of questions the assumption of human chutzpah when it comes to the notion of terraforming, he rhetorically asks:
"Given our track record of modifying Earthly environments, can we safely conclude that Nature has pre-destined -- or at least deputized -- Homo sapiens to be the agent of its spread to the stars?"

He then provides a quote from Bob Zubrin:

“Human beings in bringing life to Mars will be, in a very real sense, continuing the work of Creation. We will not be playing God but engaging in that activity that God gets the most credit for doing. By so doing, we will show the divine nature of the human species and, therefore, the precious nature of every member of it. No one will be able to look at a terraformed Mars and not be prouder to be human.”

I have to ask a few questions at this point. Does anyone else think that we haven't changed our attitudes since the days when Spain, Portugal, England, France and the rest of the European monarchies set out to garner resources, convert the natives, and establish dominion over what was the world they knew?

Further, is this an okay attitude or not? Just cause we can go trouncing over the galaxy, does that make it okay? Are we entitled because of our mastery of the technology? Is that our prize?

Also, are we naively heading out into the galaxy and just setting ourselves up for the mega-smackdown of the epoch? Think of what could go wrong.

Ooooo. Actually don't. I can spin science fiction plots off of this for the next decade.

Instead, think of what could go right. Seems to me that this is a shorter list.

Another question. Just because so much could go wrong, should we not try to figure out how to terra form or how to go to the stars?

More questions. If we did find microbial life on Mars, should we terraform Mars to encourage that life to bloom? And would that be 'terra-forming'? Or should we wipe the microbes out and then selfishly proceed? Also, is it ethical to transform a moon or planet to an earthlike state for our own purposes if it has life? Or even if it doesn't have life? Consider the resources necessary and that we would be experimenting on PLANETARY levels. Also, what if we botch it? What if another alien species could have done it better?

Hmmm.....Maybe Venus and Mars have already been terraformed and botched. Maybe the earth was some kind of home chemistry kit that surprisingly overflowed the chintzy plastic petri dish and junior dumped it in the trash so mom wouldn't find out. Maybe we are some alien race's horror movie.

Speculating

I tutor students on Mondays this semester and there is sometimes time between students to sit and think or read. I have been thinking about a concept for an alien species that occurred to me over the weekend and I have been speculating about the nature of the beast-- this particular beast that has come up out of my imagination.

I originally envisioned a kind of creature that was in fact many smaller parts that composed a whole. I e-mailed a friend about this idea and he expanded on it a bit. At this point I am imagining a creature that is composed of several different types of components and all the components make up a whole. The creature lives on an ocean world.

The story scenario that I created for this creature is one in which the creature acts on its instincts and kills and consumes someone who is an off world being. The composite creature cannot digest the alien DNA and is severally injured and suffers a kind of death/amputation of some its parts.

I have been looking for a story line to put this creature and this incident into and have been speculating on the ecology of this water world and its place within the greater political arena of the galaxy I am creating. My thoughts at this point are that the ocean world is part of a trade federation, that the composite creature is an endangered species, and that unauthorized travel to this ocean world is restricted because it is frankly dangerous for both the off worlders and the inhabitants. The restriction is in place to reduce the likelihood of an inciting incident that could strain relations all the way around.

Okay, so I have this weird dilemma that probably arises from my own lack of an imagination at the moment.

I want there to be an intelligent species on this planet that are intelligent in a way that we as humans would recognize, but I am trying to stay within realistic boundaries of what adaptation and evolution might produce upon an ocean world. An intelligent species would not be humanoid shaped and their communication system would be vastly different than our own. Legs are of no use in the water. A powerful tail and fins move through the water. Our vocal chords and mouth structure use air to produce sounds via vibrating vocal chords, air moving over the structures of the mouth to produce sound because of obstructions, and modulating the sounds by changing the shape of the mouth and lips. An intelligent species on a water world would use wave sounds that could vary in frequency and pattern to move through the water. And then there is the issue of what would these intelligent creatures use to get off their world, how would that come about, and how would their technology evolve. Hands that produce and use tools are also useful for picking up food, but in a water environment the food could be simply snagged with the mouth. If these creatures have no use for hands to feed themselves, what other biological imperative would there be for them to have some kind of appendage that could manipulate materials and create tools? What might this look like and how would it function?

So could a species on a water world ever get off their planet? Probably. If we as air breathing creatures who need gravity and an atmosphere could conceive of leaving our bio sphere so could an intelligent water alien leave their biosphere, but how would they do it?

I think I may have to alter the ecology of this world. There needs to be something that spurs the development of tools. I don't know if in a water environment that that would come about. I don't want to just create something because I want it to happen like some goddess of print who deems things to be so. Alien is good. Illogical is bad. Creatures like us with fins is something that I don't think would occur.

Then a whole set of questions sprung up. A Trade Federation of Planets presumes that there is FTL travel. Or does it? What if the trade occurred over millenia? What if we are in the midst of a negotiated trade cycle at the moment and someone is going to turn up with goods and want payment that the Romans negotiated? How does first contact really happen on the galactic frontier? We always have these peaceful diplomatic visions that have arisen from a pacifist future where first contact has occurred because of a scientific expedition-- what if that isn't the case? What if it occurs because of venture capitalists? And communication. How does communication happen with no universal translator between beings that may process sensory stimuli in unbelievably different ways? Who may even have senses not conceived of by us?

Could math be used to communicate with another intelligent alien species? Or chemistry? Would they understand the communication if we move forward on the assumption that they want to communicate? What if they don't really care?

What if they are from a water world that doesn't really want to trade anything but we want something they have?

Just speculating.

Getting Creative Part 1

As I was walking this morning I was thinking about several things at once, very often thoughts and images and ideas and whatnot pop up and run a constant chattering competition in my head. Some of my ideas are frankly utter fantasy and totally unfit to put into a written form to share. Some just make me laugh to myself. Some make me wonder about things that probably nobody else cares about. Actually alot of them fit into this last category.

This morning I was thinking about the requirements for my own creativity. I have lots of times for whatever reason ideas just pop into my head. I once generated a list of about fifty plots for potential science fiction and fantasy stories in a weekend. If someone gives me a problem to solve and parameters to work with, I very quickly start running permutations of the entire situation and factors through my brain and can come up with a list of potential solutions pretty quick. However, for me to actually take those ideas and do anything with them requires that I spend time alone concentrating on the thought. I have to focus on it like it is a point of meditation and turn it over and look through it and pull it apart. I have to work it and shape and play with it and thoroughly understand it.

Now I work like a crazy woman. I have two part time jobs and I take classes. Working on my creative thoughts is also work even though it is great gobs of fun. I can never sit still and rarely watch television because it is just too boring. Sometimes I will watch movies on my laptop but I only do this when I am sick or while I do a craft or draw. And even then I might be doing something else like managing my mp3 collection on the computer. I multitask like a champion. If it was an Olympic sport I would be a gold medalist.

Still, being able to focus on creative ideas means not letting myself get distracted. This is tough for me and it is work. Even now I am trying to sit still long enough to write on this blog. And I am thinking about fabric that I saw at the fabric store that will make a pretty dress. And I am designing a new bag for my Macbook which is smaller than trusty VAIO. Also the bag needs to not be made of leather but that is another blog entry.

So while I decided to grant myself more time to do art and write, I also need to grant myself the space and time to center and get focused. I think I need to not see all of this as frivolity, but necessary and I need to carve out time for writing and for art. I need to make this be deemed more serious in my mind. Lately, I have been very distracted and somewhat discouraged, but now is not time for me to give up. It is the time for me to get very clear on the requirements of what I need to be able to do my work.

I may ask other people that I know and correspond with what they need to be able to write or get creative. I'll post further thoughts on this.