Mojito/NaNoWriMo
Nov. 5th, 2007 06:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kiyakotari
Okay! So, I'm about six hours into day 5 of NaNoWriMo and I'm at...6,671 words. Which is pretty far behind my personal target of 2,000 words a day, but not terribly off the goal of 1,667 words a day (the minimum you have to write to hit 50,000 words by November 30). Also, it means that if I write 3,319 words today, I'll be right on for my personal goal. Woot!
In other news, here's a drabble (that's actually counted toward my NaNo wordcount, since it totally fits right into my novel) that was inspired by the Resinality prompt for Week Number 7 (this is in the ABJD Writing Usergroup, of course). The prompt was "Confessional." I wrote this yesterday, but then had some computer issues and wasn't able to post it until this morning.
Anyway, without further ado!
Mojito
Abigail is already drunk, and doesn't seem intent on stopping any time soon. She smiles at Talon, leaning forward on the table. The movement presses her elbows against the sides of her chest, pushing her cleavage toward him. Talon enjoys the view, and waves for a waiter to bring them more drinks.
The man sets down another Mojito in front of Abigail, and a cocktail glass filled with something orange in front of Talon. He looks at the drink critically, lifts a curl of something that looks vaguely like citrus rind off the top and considers it, then raises his eyes to the waiter. "What is it this time?"
The young man smiles, showing perfect teeth between perfect lips - Talon wonders how much it cost him, to have lips like that. "Its a Bittersweet Jack. I think you'll like it, since you said you liked the Cable Car."
Talon nods and raises the glass, sipping it experimentally. "And it matches my hair."
Abigail laughs. "Not quite, Talon. Your hair isn't as bright as that thing." She takes another drink of her Mojito, and Talon realizes he never noticed her picking it up. Maybe he's starting to get a little bit tipsy himself.
The waiter nods and laughs and walks away, still smiling. Abigail watches him go, her eyes fixed to his ass, and Talon chuckles. He sets his drink down - after sipping from it again - and leans his elbow on the table, propping his chin up in one hand. "You know what I haven't been able to figure out, Abigail?"
She drags her eyes back to his face and tilts her head. "Yeah, what's that?"
"You obviously like a nice der- derrie- ...rear. And I've never seen one quite as engaging as Darryl's, so why haven't you ever gone after him? I've never even seen you watch him walk, at least not like you just watched that waiter. You'd think, with how much he obviously trusts and adores you, that you'd have-"
Abigail blanches and shakes her head vehemently. "I could never do that!"
Talon grins - no leers - at Abigail. "Why not?"
"It...it wouldn't be right." She isn't smiling, quite suddenly. She's staring down into her Mojito with a strange expression on her face, and when she looks up at him again he's startled to see that her eyes are watery. "I couldn't take advantage of him. Not after everything I've already...after what I've done to him."
Talon blinks. "What?" It's not the most intelligent rejoinder, but he's suddenly having a little bit of trouble keeping up with this conversation. Why were they getting drunk, again? Oh, right. Darryl's out on a contract with three days still before he's supposed to check in, and Abigail decided she was too 'mopey' and needed to 'cheer up - with help from the outside!' Talon had had a very startled moment then, as she grinned at him, when he wondered if that meant she wanted him to sleep with her (she's gorgeous, no doubt about that, but also not quite his type) or call a prostitute for her.
He snaps back into the present when Abigail, on the other side of their little table, sniffs. Loudly. "I've done so many horrible things to him. I helped - I tortured him! I'm the reason he gets so messed up, sometimes. I couldn't - hic - couldn't hurt him like that."
Talon decides that one of them is most definitely not drunk enough for this discussion. He takes another large swig of his orange-thing. It really is pretty good. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"Darryl! What I did to him! I wiped his mind, over and over and...I didn't think anything of it. It was just part of my job. Even if everyone else always thought I was - I was too soft, I still didn't even realize it was wrong." She drinks from her glass again, then goes back to staring into it.
Talon swallows, then clears his throat. He's feeling a lot more sober, suddenly, and he doesn't like that. He looks suspiciously at the orange-thing, then back at Abigail. She seems like she might burst into tears at any second. "What...ah...what happened?" Because obviously, this is something that's bothering her, and while they might not be friends, strictly speaking, they aren't quite enemies, either.
"He started remembering things." Her voice is barely a whisper, and strangely terrified. Talon blinks at her.
"Excuse me?"
"He started - the wipes weren't working. We were deleting his memory files just like always, but he was starting to show signs of recognition, when he shouldn't. We put years and years - decades, even, before they hired me - of research into setting his mind up the right way, so we could program him however we wanted, but for some reason deleting the files just wasn't...it wasn't working."
Talon stares as her, horrified now himself. "You mean - you put him together like a computer or something?"
Abigail nods morosely. "We built him from the ground up - well, he was already built by the time they hired me, but I worked on his brain. I helped with - with formatting and - hic - setting up templates for memory structures and - and recording his neura - ner - his brain responses when things touched him, or made him feel pain or when he had to pee, or was hungry, or...and then I translated those into binary and we fed them back into him, worked out the kinks so he'd be able to behave like a person without being a person, only he was, he wasn't a machine, and I didn't realize it for so long and-"
Talon has no idea how someone would go about programming a person's brain with binary code, or any other kind of code for that matter, but he does know how computers work. "Well, that was the problem then."
Abigail looks up at him blankly, interrupted in the middle of her self-flagellating tirade. "What?"
"You were only deleting the files." He can't believe he's saying this about a human brain. "If you want something to be really gone, you have to shred it completely. Overwrite it with random data. All deleting does is destroy the file path. It's still in there, and it can be uncovered - recovered."
Abigail stares at him with wide eyes. "We...I never thought of that."
"Well, if you set him up to function like a computer, then you would obviously have to follow the laws of computers." Or something. Talon's not really sure that made sense, but Abigail seems to get what he was going for. He tilts his head back, finishing the orange-whatever thing.
Abigail stares down into her drink, then nods. "Well, that's why. I can't take advantage of the way I programmed him to trust me when I stole him."
Talon blinks at her, startled - again. "When you st-"
"Besides, I'm pretty sure he's gay." She raises her glass, finishes the last of her Mojito.
Talon chokes on air, remembering quite suddenly that this is Darryl they're discussing.
In other news, here's a drabble (that's actually counted toward my NaNo wordcount, since it totally fits right into my novel) that was inspired by the Resinality prompt for Week Number 7 (this is in the ABJD Writing Usergroup, of course). The prompt was "Confessional." I wrote this yesterday, but then had some computer issues and wasn't able to post it until this morning.
Anyway, without further ado!
Abigail is already drunk, and doesn't seem intent on stopping any time soon. She smiles at Talon, leaning forward on the table. The movement presses her elbows against the sides of her chest, pushing her cleavage toward him. Talon enjoys the view, and waves for a waiter to bring them more drinks.
The man sets down another Mojito in front of Abigail, and a cocktail glass filled with something orange in front of Talon. He looks at the drink critically, lifts a curl of something that looks vaguely like citrus rind off the top and considers it, then raises his eyes to the waiter. "What is it this time?"
The young man smiles, showing perfect teeth between perfect lips - Talon wonders how much it cost him, to have lips like that. "Its a Bittersweet Jack. I think you'll like it, since you said you liked the Cable Car."
Talon nods and raises the glass, sipping it experimentally. "And it matches my hair."
Abigail laughs. "Not quite, Talon. Your hair isn't as bright as that thing." She takes another drink of her Mojito, and Talon realizes he never noticed her picking it up. Maybe he's starting to get a little bit tipsy himself.
The waiter nods and laughs and walks away, still smiling. Abigail watches him go, her eyes fixed to his ass, and Talon chuckles. He sets his drink down - after sipping from it again - and leans his elbow on the table, propping his chin up in one hand. "You know what I haven't been able to figure out, Abigail?"
She drags her eyes back to his face and tilts her head. "Yeah, what's that?"
"You obviously like a nice der- derrie- ...rear. And I've never seen one quite as engaging as Darryl's, so why haven't you ever gone after him? I've never even seen you watch him walk, at least not like you just watched that waiter. You'd think, with how much he obviously trusts and adores you, that you'd have-"
Abigail blanches and shakes her head vehemently. "I could never do that!"
Talon grins - no leers - at Abigail. "Why not?"
"It...it wouldn't be right." She isn't smiling, quite suddenly. She's staring down into her Mojito with a strange expression on her face, and when she looks up at him again he's startled to see that her eyes are watery. "I couldn't take advantage of him. Not after everything I've already...after what I've done to him."
Talon blinks. "What?" It's not the most intelligent rejoinder, but he's suddenly having a little bit of trouble keeping up with this conversation. Why were they getting drunk, again? Oh, right. Darryl's out on a contract with three days still before he's supposed to check in, and Abigail decided she was too 'mopey' and needed to 'cheer up - with help from the outside!' Talon had had a very startled moment then, as she grinned at him, when he wondered if that meant she wanted him to sleep with her (she's gorgeous, no doubt about that, but also not quite his type) or call a prostitute for her.
He snaps back into the present when Abigail, on the other side of their little table, sniffs. Loudly. "I've done so many horrible things to him. I helped - I tortured him! I'm the reason he gets so messed up, sometimes. I couldn't - hic - couldn't hurt him like that."
Talon decides that one of them is most definitely not drunk enough for this discussion. He takes another large swig of his orange-thing. It really is pretty good. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"Darryl! What I did to him! I wiped his mind, over and over and...I didn't think anything of it. It was just part of my job. Even if everyone else always thought I was - I was too soft, I still didn't even realize it was wrong." She drinks from her glass again, then goes back to staring into it.
Talon swallows, then clears his throat. He's feeling a lot more sober, suddenly, and he doesn't like that. He looks suspiciously at the orange-thing, then back at Abigail. She seems like she might burst into tears at any second. "What...ah...what happened?" Because obviously, this is something that's bothering her, and while they might not be friends, strictly speaking, they aren't quite enemies, either.
"He started remembering things." Her voice is barely a whisper, and strangely terrified. Talon blinks at her.
"Excuse me?"
"He started - the wipes weren't working. We were deleting his memory files just like always, but he was starting to show signs of recognition, when he shouldn't. We put years and years - decades, even, before they hired me - of research into setting his mind up the right way, so we could program him however we wanted, but for some reason deleting the files just wasn't...it wasn't working."
Talon stares as her, horrified now himself. "You mean - you put him together like a computer or something?"
Abigail nods morosely. "We built him from the ground up - well, he was already built by the time they hired me, but I worked on his brain. I helped with - with formatting and - hic - setting up templates for memory structures and - and recording his neura - ner - his brain responses when things touched him, or made him feel pain or when he had to pee, or was hungry, or...and then I translated those into binary and we fed them back into him, worked out the kinks so he'd be able to behave like a person without being a person, only he was, he wasn't a machine, and I didn't realize it for so long and-"
Talon has no idea how someone would go about programming a person's brain with binary code, or any other kind of code for that matter, but he does know how computers work. "Well, that was the problem then."
Abigail looks up at him blankly, interrupted in the middle of her self-flagellating tirade. "What?"
"You were only deleting the files." He can't believe he's saying this about a human brain. "If you want something to be really gone, you have to shred it completely. Overwrite it with random data. All deleting does is destroy the file path. It's still in there, and it can be uncovered - recovered."
Abigail stares at him with wide eyes. "We...I never thought of that."
"Well, if you set him up to function like a computer, then you would obviously have to follow the laws of computers." Or something. Talon's not really sure that made sense, but Abigail seems to get what he was going for. He tilts his head back, finishing the orange-whatever thing.
Abigail stares down into her drink, then nods. "Well, that's why. I can't take advantage of the way I programmed him to trust me when I stole him."
Talon blinks at her, startled - again. "When you st-"
"Besides, I'm pretty sure he's gay." She raises her glass, finishes the last of her Mojito.
Talon chokes on air, remembering quite suddenly that this is Darryl they're discussing.
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miich...
Re: miich...
Date: 2007-11-05 02:56 pm (UTC)Re: miich...
Date: 2007-11-05 04:36 pm (UTC)Electrical impulses or chemical erasers, I wonder. Prolly be hard to control EMPs.
Re: miich...
Date: 2007-11-05 05:29 pm (UTC)Programming is controlled via a - this is clarified in my mind by New Caledonia - small 'digital insertion point' on his right retina. There's an electrical-impulse generator (similar to, though more advanced than, the ones used to treat tremors in sufferers of Parkinson's) attached to his ocular nerve that sends signals back into his brain, based on what the digital insertion point picks up (assuming it's correctly aligned with the equipment constructed to interface with it). Those signals are synonymous with binary code, and (because of the initial neuron formatting, and the nice coincidence that DNA strands function on the same on/off binary principle as Turing machines and basic computer language) direct his brain to create or ignore/destroy pathways.
The EMP generator is charged by his body by leeching off natural electrical-impulses traveling along the nerve, usually as he sleeps, so there's no need for battery replacement.
Re: miich...
Date: 2007-11-05 05:33 pm (UTC)Re: miich...
Date: 2007-11-05 06:27 pm (UTC)That must have been gnarly.
Wonder what they would have done with the results, presuming they got anything off him.
I love the last few lines of the drabble, BTW, so offhand.
To get back on par, I must write 3000 words today.
Findzeit: Mustard stations? What the hell is a mustard station?
Re: miich...
Date: 2007-11-05 08:08 pm (UTC)Also, I second Findzeit: What the HELL is a mustard station? Because my HAZMAT-trained brain immediately went "Mustard agents what? Where? What type? Do we have SLUDGE/M symptoms?" Then calmed down for a second and went, "Oh, wait, cruise ship...are we talking actual condiments here?"
Needless to say, I laughed my ass off at this response. SO you must tell me which was (more) correct.
Re: miich...
Date: 2007-11-06 07:20 am (UTC)“Well, I don’t know if you’re ready for this,” said the guy next to me, gesturing at my socks, “but actually this is a muster station. See that colored tag on your lifejacket? Even though it is saffron yellow, and coincidentally does seem to reference mustard,” he added thoughtfully. “That’s interesting. Each muster station has a different colored tag, and depending on what deck your room’s on, you muster—see how that works?—in a different place.”
“So this is some kind of, um, special solidarity ritual thing? Like in college—like a dorm mixer?”
“This is where you go,” the man replied, “in case we get hit by a cruise missile, friend.”
Re: miich...
Date: 2007-11-06 11:06 pm (UTC)"So this is some kind of, um, special solidarity ritual thing? Like in college—like a dorm mixer?"
"This is where you go in case we get hit by a cruise missile, my friend."
I love these lines! I can just see the look on Findzeit's face after THAT response. Hah hah!!
Re: miich...
Date: 2007-11-06 07:22 am (UTC)No idea what it does.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-05 10:40 pm (UTC)Also, the end killed me XD.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-06 01:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-06 05:08 am (UTC)However, I am wondering about the myelin you mention in another comment.
Parkinsonism is from damage to a particular layer of brain tissue.
Would the myelin begin failing on long nerves from excessive electrical activity, which is probably wearing/damaging in similar ways as oxidation agents within the tissues and inside the cells are to DNA, MRNA, and so on. If you ahve that kind of myelin damage, say the ocular ones, then you don't just have Parkinsonism, you have Lou Gehrig's disease, multiple sclerosis, that kind of thing.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-06 09:28 pm (UTC)I'm not sure if it's possible that increased electrical stimulation would cause demyelination. All the research I've looked at has suggested the opposite, in fact - that electrical activity within the brain is the main cause of myelination, and that brains with low levels of activity have less myelin sheathing. Because of this, it seemed to me that the stimulation that this subject's brain has been subjected to would have led to greater myelination than that present in non-stimulated subjects. As increased myelination allows neural electrical impulses to propagate by saltation, the speed of electrical impulse transfers within the brain rises. This was the side-effect I was suggesting.
Also, strong myelination provides increased chances of regrowth in severed nerve fibers. While this applies mainly to peripheral axons, not those in the central nervous system, it does play nicely into the 'failed deletions' idea, suggesting yet another avenue for recovery of supposedly 'lost' neural connections.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-07 07:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-07 11:10 am (UTC)Dysmyelination, of course, is a different story altogether. Rather than being a loss of myelin sheathing, it is a malfunction, and is often connected to conditions such as schizophrenia.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-06 06:42 pm (UTC)Not that you need a demonstration of drunken antics, but next time I'm in SF we'll get Jan and together we'll have an exhibition for you :D.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-07 07:47 am (UTC)I was thinking a bit, and realized...I DO have a lot of exposure to drunk people. VERY drunk people. Like...blowing a .35-.6 or higher on blood alcohol content. I see them in the ER every shift. I just wasn't thinking about it, because I don't think of them as drunk. I think of them as APC.
But anyway, I guess that means I do have some references going for me, and just hadn't realized it. ^_~