I've had this idea for a couple of weeks. Just the idea of a robot left with a zombie sort of creature. Zombie is so over-used so I didn't use it. There is no plot really. It just moves along until I stopped writing.

It was loud for so long I didn't notice when it became quiet. The wounded continued to gather. I did what I could for them. It wasn't enough, they moaned always, but didn't complain. My owner mingled with them all. Often I had to search to sort him out from the crowd. I didn't miss him asking for my services and the service I could give now seemed to make very little difference to him. But, you understand, it was a contract I was built to honour. What is death... no heart beat but still mobile with brain activity. So I stayed.

I didn't need much myself. A sunny spot to recharge without being bumped into. Clean water was harder to find. There were rivers, streams, even skimming from deep enough puddles. As the crowd of wounded migrated around I'd have to find water where I could. I liked being clean. Fresh changes of clothing were easy. There were so many empty places to restock clothing supplies. Of course, I didn't need food. A little touch up of fluids which I could find in wrecked or abandoned vehicles. I carried some steel wool for those odd spots that would get a touch of rust.

We seldom encountered what I cam to think of as fresh people. Some of those were wounded too but, not the same. They would run from the wounded crowd. I'd have to be vigilant and not get in harm's way when they attacked the crowd. I didn't help the fresh people, even when one would notice me, see that I wasn't one of the wounded, and try commanding me to attend them. I was under contract and that hadn't changed. Besides, they just wanted to use me, my services, and I wasn't interested in providing for them.

My life, I think of it as a life, would have gone on that way forever, or a very long time at least. But, one day I noticed the quiet. Not complete silence. There were still moans from the wounded, the odd wild or feral animal, wind blowing, all of those sounds. The overhead noise from bombs, rockets, airplanes, and all the war mongering was gone. I stopped to listen and waited for it to continue. It didn't.

What did it mean? Did people run out of things to throw at each other? Did the war run out of people to keep throwing things?

The wounded didn't notice, but they weren't very aware of much at all. I began to wonder if there was anyone left to communicate with at corporate headquarters. Could I find someone to talk to? I tried. I'd find a location with a bit of height and search for signals, even the old radio waves. I would hear fresh people talking, but no one I could report to and get updates from.

I wasn't easily surprised but the day the androids came... I was extremely surprised. There was no sign of them and then, there they were. A pack of them, assorted sizes, functions, and state of repair. My people! I decided my contract with my owner was null and void. The first big decision I had ever made for myself, about myself. I was nervous as our group moved away from the wounded. But, most of them didn't notice, just kept moaning and wandering. I did say "good bye" to my owner, to let him know I would be gone. It seemed polite.

I'm starting to get fed up with cookies, especially having those notices half filling my screen and no option to say NO/ deny them. Some sites do let you say no to cookies and then you can go on to see the site. Most do not. Why not, wasn't that the point of being asked? Otherwise why ask at all if the site is still sticking me with cookies I don't want?

The other thing, are sites that try to make me shut off my ad blocker. Yes, they want to make money, fine. But, how can I decide if I care enough to look at their site before I've seen any of it? They could give people an option to at least see the site before they stick me with a bunch of ads which most likely include cookies, tracking and whatever other junk.

Marketing continues to suck the life out of the Internet, like a parasite.

I posted this to the forums on the Curlie site. As someone who reviews, edits, and lists sites (a lot of them) the cookies and assorted marketing junk really get annoying, quickly. Before you think sites are not asking me to list them... you're wrong. I'm reviewing sites which have been submitted to the directory. I'm not usually looking for sites to list, out of the blue.

Also, last night I was thinking about advertising in general. I've written before that marketing and advertising preys on people, finding weaknesses to sell them stuff they likely could do without. Last night I went a bit farther down that idea.

Marketing and advertising finds ways to make us feel incompetent. "You can't do this without buying that." ... "You can't wash your car without buying this or that product because without it you will do a botch job". You get the idea, I hope. Marketing is training people to think they can not succeed at life on their own. It belittles people and softly bullies them. The whole thing about adulting as a verb is a marketing scheme. There is no reason you can't be an adult. Adults are not omnipotent beings. Why make people needy, unsatisfied, neurotic even unless you have the cure/ solution they need for 3 easy payments of $9.99 a month...

AI is set up to "help" us even more because we are just that incompetent. Why can't people make a cake, fix a toaster, etc, etc, etc, as they did twenty years ago? Of course they can. But, they are trained to believe they can not. Think about the ads you've seen lately. How many have told you (not in so many words) that you can't do something? Ads making men look like clumsy fools. Men are not, in general, clumsy or fools. Children are not uncontrollable wild animals and women are not idiot trolls trying to look like Barbie dolls, or whatever the marketing twists people into so it can sell us stuff.

How will people be living in another few generations? If you're not generating money somehow, in order to buy stuff, will people become a nuisance population? Like an out of control population of mice. Will we be herded up like cattle, as some science fiction has suggested? (Even that will dwindle down as supply and demand fall off). Will we be used as sort of living batteries to power the machines, the artificial intelligence? Our abundance of population will only be useful if we contribute to the economy and then... what if the consumer economy tanks?

What happens when there are not enough human consumers to support the industries, the businesses, and services geared to human beings? How much of what exists, only exists for some form of human consumption? Whether physical, mental, or emotional... so much of what marketing sells is based on having a human population with the money to support it. If things keep going as they are and humans become useless, how will that change everything? Quite a lot, I'd think. Hard to even imagine once you start to think about all the pieces falling out of place.

Life after humans... what would it really look like?

Far Above the Earth...

One hundred delinquent teenagers have been shipped down to a contaminated wasteland. Once up on a time the wasteland was our home planet, the Earth. But we left when it got too messy, too hard to live there. The human race has lived in spaceships above the Earth for about 100 years. Several generations have lived and died on a collection of spaceships over time. At one point the spaceships gathered together to share resources. The renamed themselves and their collection of spaceships, the Ark.

At this point the story makes me think of Starlost, a science fiction series from the 1970s where people lived on a spaceship called the Ark. That Ark was built up of a lot of biospheres, different pockets of humanity who had been on the ship so long they no longer knew about each other and some did not even know they were floating around in space. That Ark was also fleeing a dead/ destroyed planet Earth. There was only one season of Starlost, The 100 has been giving a second season due to start in October. So, the storyline will continue for The 100.

The 100 is a new science fiction series from The CW TV.

The Mysterious, Sometimes Creepy, Inhabited Uninhabited Planet...

The adults stay on the Ark and send down teenagers to test the water, literally. Not that life is a picnic on the Ark but no one knows what the situation is like on the planet. They think it is uninhabited... but it's not. There are Grounders and Mountain Men and animals with strangely divided heads (though still edible apparently).

A few don't make it to the ground. A few are killed off by the toxic mist. A few more are killed by the Grounders. But the teenagers are surviving, building their own camp and creating their own civilization. Clarke is becoming the leader with Bellamy (the self elected leader) by her side. Clarke and Bellamy could evolved into a relationship and they would make the most interesting couple - but, Bellamy appears to have been fully and completely killed off at the end of the first season. I think there is hope for him, however.

Bellamy is the only guy from the Ark who has a sister and Bellamy's sister is in love with a Grounder. A mystery man with a painted face, wearing animal skins, skilled in herbalism and illustration.

Clarke likes Finn who used to like Raven, until he thought he would never see her again and slept with Clarke.

Yes, this is a story about teenagers, created for the US market. Usually, the need to pair everyone into couples annoys me. But, the Bellamy and Clarke thing is interesting enough to be watchable. I can't say the same about Clarke, Finn and Raven (the triangle).

A lot of this show is teenage stuff, young adult fiction. But, the backstory is leaking through and getting into focus. I keep watching to find out what did happen on the planet when mostly everyone seems to have left it. People were left behind and others seem to have come back at some point.

The 100 is more than young adult fiction. The writers are pulling up a real story, with twists and turns to keep viewers guessing. I will be watching for season two in October. Here, it is shown on NetFlix so I can watch season one from the start a few times, commercial free!

The 100 Book by Kass Morgan - mentioned in the show's credits.

The 100 book (by Kass Morgan) doesn't have great reviews on Amazon. Seems it is almost a pre-quel for the series now on television. You don't need to read the book to understand the series but it might give you more of the back story for Clarke and Bellamy.

I read this book in high school, a long time ago. The story has stuck with me. It's science fiction but it could be horror. Not because it's gruesome, creepy or morbid. Just because the idea of seeing yourself so clearly and so much better than you had been before - only to then be returned to what you had been... that seems horrifying to me.

The book came first. There are at least two movies created from the story in the original book. I've seen the older movie and I've read the book. The book had more impact and meaning to the telling of the story. It was less like seeing the story through someone else's vision rather than your own.

Algernon is the mouse in a lab experiment. Charlie is the man picked to take part in the same experimental brain surgery. It all seems to work so well at first.

Algernon is exceptional, the experiment seems to work with greatly positive results! So they pick Charlie because he has never been exceptional, intellectually, and this is what the experiment is all about. Can they improve the intelligence and thus the whole life of someone who started out the level of below average? Can they turn Charlie into a genius?

At first Charlie is still being beaten by Algernon, the mouse. Charlie doesn't like that, of course. He has always known he was not as smart as some people but he looks up to people and thinks well of everyone. He believes the people he works with are his friends. One of the saddest parts of the book is Charlie's realization that they were making fun of him, even treating him badly but he never understood enough to know.

Charlie improves, understands more, sees more and begins to want more for himself too. It's not long at all before he is beyond any intelligence level in Algernon, the mouse. Charlie even surpasses the scientists who created and performed the experiment. Charlie falls in love, makes plans for the future... but one day Algernon dies.

Algernon had started losing his super intelligence, gradually. Charlie, knowing he had the same surgery, expects his results will backslide and now, knowing and understanding so much more he knows he is going back to who he was before. the difference being that now he sees a very different picture of who he was before and how he was treated by other people.

If knowledge is power, is ignorance bliss?

How would it feel to have come far, learned so much, changed your life and yourself and then have it all taken back until you are reduced to so much less than you had been even for a short time? I can't imagine living each day as someone who understands the jokes people made about him when he was less intelligent and knowing you would soon be back to that life again.

Of course, there is a movie too. Read the book first.

Can you see yourself living your own science fiction adventure, road tripping all over the universe?

I love the idea of being far into the future, a space chick, running around the galaxies on a universe-wide backpacking trip. Best road trip ever!

I read The Hitchhiker's Guide when we had to, in school. I barely remember it from then. But, when the movie came out I was eager to see it. How can a series of books reach such popularity and not be great? Of course, popular is in the eye of the masses of beholders.

The movie based on the books was good, only good, not great. Too much was packed into one movie. As if they had to get the entire series of books in just one movie. Maybe someone knew the author, Douglas Adams, was not going to live to become a very old man. Maybe someone just felt the movies would be tough to sell or keep in budget or... who knows? I don't.

Welcome to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe

I found the movie good, but I thought it came from such great, original stories - it could have been better. The Hitcher's Guide to the Galaxy movie gives you a sense of the books, the type of humour and a snapshot of the story. It is not enough.

If the movie draws you in, pick up the series of books. Find a comfortable reading space and make your popcorn at home. The movie was like a spin cycle version of the books, your clothes get dry but you missed all the adventures of getting dirty clothes in the first place.

Don't Panic... Did you Bring your Towel?

Towel Day is May 25th!