180.
We leave it at that.
I am not one-hundred percent sure what the others assessments are, but the fact that the success of our entire operation rests squarely on the shoulders of a teen-aged computer hacker who once jacked Air Force jets and jammed military and commercial radar, and has a history with a felon doing hard time in a Super Max facility, a place where terrorists go to die, could be considered questionable at best and borderline insane at the worst.
I am on the hot seat here. It was my recommendation, based upon her extraordinary performance in the ad-lib prison breakout and subsequent intense and accelerated training — along with the many hours of philosophical, moral and ethical conversations that led me to believe that she was a perfect fit to become an asset. She again performed admirably during the foiled plot to assassinate the VP. I have no reason to doubt her veracity, courage under fire or loyalty. Still, as every mailman will tell you, once bitten, man’s best friend gets second suspicious looks.
I have a late flight out of Reno, I am flying commercial, and invite Drysdale along for the ride. He has done a terrific job of supporting Davis and Saunders in Vegas and an even better job in his negotiations withe the local ACLU bureau. The slime-ball Senator from South Carolina has all but thrown down with his money-guy, Adelson, making the back-up con game Drysdale was running obsolete and unnecessary. We will make a graceful exit and keep them, the local chapter, at the top of our ‘favor to be named later’ list.
It is a hot night in The Biggest Little City in America and we have a couple of hours before the scheduled flight time. He returns the Honda to the extreme-sports rental center and I do likewise with my Jeep. We decide to meet for a quick dinner downtown. Due to our extremely different preferences, we opt for Mexican.
“Nice work in Vegas,” I begin as the waiter takes our order and hurries away to fetch a pair of Negra Modellos and a bowl of chips.
“Thanks, it was a little tense at first, the slot machine play, but once we were introduced to Adelson things ran pretty smooth. The guy will listen to anyone if he thinks they can make him some tax-free money.”
“And Davis was superb, playing the riverboat gambler role to the hilt. Saunders too, wow, I never knew she had that type of talent. She killed it, you could see Adelson ogle and sweat nines when she talked about the sensuality of gambling and the rush of adrenaline as the game goes down,” he continues.
We are interrupted by the waiter, Miguel his name tag reveals, as he pours our beers into frosty mugs and sets the home-made corn chips at the center of the table. He takes pride, or is it showmanship?, in his placement of the salsa bowls which include a healthy dollop each of avocado and sour cream.
Miguel takes our order, Drysdale the fajitas and a plate of spinach and onion enchiladas for me. I can hear the mariachi band move closer so I lean towards Drysdale to encourage him to continue the accounting as the trumpet player takes off on a wicked solo.
“You guys did a bang-up job on the internet bios, all three of us came out looking exactly as advertised, maybe even better.”
“That was all Julie, Harlan and The Queen. I was dealing with the Warden and Hartaugh during that time. Tell me, since the subject has been breeched, what is your opinion of Her Majesty, your honest and off-record opinion?” I ask as the sextet shuffles ever closer.
He looks around, perhaps a touch unnerved by my cavalier casualness, and leans in, almost directly over the huge wooden bowl of chips and says in a low, serious voice, “She is a diamond in the rough, sir, she is brilliant and I have no reason to doubt that the algorithm she is testing,” he looks at his watch, “right about now, will be equally as incredible as what we witnessed this afternoon.”
He ends this powerful and convincing testimony by sitting back in his chair and starring over my shoulder at the mariachi violinist who is playing what I can only describe as Hendrix with a fiddle.
Sunday, June 28, 2020
Do the Trick
179.
It is the high point of our weekly video conferencing update. Following positive updates from Davis and Saunders, who report that Las Vegas billionaire and staunch Republican supporter Sheldon Aldeson and his nefarious gang of white-collar thugs will be making the final go-no-go decision on Wednesday. In DC, Julie, Harlan and TOM update their status with Senator Hartaugh and Warden Daniels, keeping both occupied, and hence distracted, with a constant stream of thinly veiled propaganda. It is after their briefs that I take center stage to inform the group on the results of the Drone test.
“It was even better than I expected, a complete success. In every phase of the test the device performed above expectation, with two specific functions standing out, the Drones ability to carry a payload and its uncanny ability to add a sophisticated degree of artificial intelligence to the mix, one that makes it virtually impossible for human error to be the cause of failure.”
At this implication, there is a pronounced silence from the panel of eight as the ‘head and shoulders’ aspect ratio captures each in a rare state of shock. Everyone but The Queen. She sits with her pink hair seemingly afire blankly starring into the camera showing the facade of a professional card hack. Everything we have accomplished to date has come from the combination of her dedication and talents, traits I overtly recognize in my short summary. Still she sits in stoic silence.
TOM takes his allotted time to reiterate the need for caution and diligence, lifting a line, interestingly, from Robert Hunter, “When life looks like easy street there is danger at your door.” He cautions us to keep our guards up because, and this comes in the dire tone of an experienced captain of intelligence; “These people, although our every action to date has proven to be effective and well-planned, have achieved their current status not so much because they are lucky, but because they are willing to risk immediate failure for the sake of long-term success. They are willing to lose a battle or two to emerge victorious in the war. Do not underestimate them,” he says.
Again, we sit in muted absorption of his sage counsel. Confidence and preparation are one thing, arrogance and false bravado another altogether.
The Queen is last to speak. She reports that she has managed to get a firm commitment from the security guard at SuperMax Florence and that they have been successful in transmitting the message to Mr Big that he needs to lose fifteen pounds asap. She is complimentary in her address to her older and more experienced teammates, to the extent of refusing to bask in the adulation the small audience has presented, and updating us on the roadblock-like challenge she is currently facing with the ‘Big Board’ code writing. It seems that she may have finally met her match with whatever or whomever wrote this particular piece of legal scamming code. It is, she admits, “fucking brilliant.”
For the third time in the conference, the eight members of this elite group of off-board mercenaries, the last line of defense for a country at war with itself, the fires of which are stoked on a daily basis by the sedition of the POTUS and the complicity of the Senate, are silenced.
Without this final piece of the puzzle, the plan, all their united effort and preparation, the entirety of the operation, will fizzle like a waterlogged cherry-bomb.
Finally she breaks the painful silence.
“But I will be testing a new algorithm tonight, one I am hoping will do the trick.”
It is the high point of our weekly video conferencing update. Following positive updates from Davis and Saunders, who report that Las Vegas billionaire and staunch Republican supporter Sheldon Aldeson and his nefarious gang of white-collar thugs will be making the final go-no-go decision on Wednesday. In DC, Julie, Harlan and TOM update their status with Senator Hartaugh and Warden Daniels, keeping both occupied, and hence distracted, with a constant stream of thinly veiled propaganda. It is after their briefs that I take center stage to inform the group on the results of the Drone test.
“It was even better than I expected, a complete success. In every phase of the test the device performed above expectation, with two specific functions standing out, the Drones ability to carry a payload and its uncanny ability to add a sophisticated degree of artificial intelligence to the mix, one that makes it virtually impossible for human error to be the cause of failure.”
At this implication, there is a pronounced silence from the panel of eight as the ‘head and shoulders’ aspect ratio captures each in a rare state of shock. Everyone but The Queen. She sits with her pink hair seemingly afire blankly starring into the camera showing the facade of a professional card hack. Everything we have accomplished to date has come from the combination of her dedication and talents, traits I overtly recognize in my short summary. Still she sits in stoic silence.
TOM takes his allotted time to reiterate the need for caution and diligence, lifting a line, interestingly, from Robert Hunter, “When life looks like easy street there is danger at your door.” He cautions us to keep our guards up because, and this comes in the dire tone of an experienced captain of intelligence; “These people, although our every action to date has proven to be effective and well-planned, have achieved their current status not so much because they are lucky, but because they are willing to risk immediate failure for the sake of long-term success. They are willing to lose a battle or two to emerge victorious in the war. Do not underestimate them,” he says.
Again, we sit in muted absorption of his sage counsel. Confidence and preparation are one thing, arrogance and false bravado another altogether.
The Queen is last to speak. She reports that she has managed to get a firm commitment from the security guard at SuperMax Florence and that they have been successful in transmitting the message to Mr Big that he needs to lose fifteen pounds asap. She is complimentary in her address to her older and more experienced teammates, to the extent of refusing to bask in the adulation the small audience has presented, and updating us on the roadblock-like challenge she is currently facing with the ‘Big Board’ code writing. It seems that she may have finally met her match with whatever or whomever wrote this particular piece of legal scamming code. It is, she admits, “fucking brilliant.”
For the third time in the conference, the eight members of this elite group of off-board mercenaries, the last line of defense for a country at war with itself, the fires of which are stoked on a daily basis by the sedition of the POTUS and the complicity of the Senate, are silenced.
Without this final piece of the puzzle, the plan, all their united effort and preparation, the entirety of the operation, will fizzle like a waterlogged cherry-bomb.
Finally she breaks the painful silence.
“But I will be testing a new algorithm tonight, one I am hoping will do the trick.”
Saturday, June 27, 2020
Sink or Sky
178.
My indoctrination to the Helmet/Glove/Drone trio illuminates the unmistakable reality that I am the weak link of the quartet. In a four-piece ensemble, the places to hide are few. Luckily The Queen had refined the stock GPS programming to include a ‘bailout’ feature where if potentially catastrophic directions were initiated the unit would override them and return the device to its last recorded safe coordinates. If not for this code-red feature, we would be building a new drone to replace the one that I crashed and agonizingly watched burn. However, after a break-in period, the sink or sky experience, I quickly gather confidence and enough piloting skills to attempt a snatch on my own.
Her Majesty keeps one step ahead and instructs that I conduct a dress rehearsal and navigate the Drone as if I was preforming the live demonstration for the Warden, or, as she puts it, “With the game one the line.”
I engage the Verometer and hear the now familiar tone indicating an operation in progress. I have to shake myself into meeting up with this dramatic moment and almost immediately sense a tingling of augmented power. Like, I can imagine, a pauper waking from a dream to remember that he is the Prince. I open the narration that is intentionally scripted to result in a pair of crucial conclusions: The first to overwhelmingly shock the Warden with the awesomeness of the aerial device, and secondly to prod him into wearing the Helmet for himself to test it out firsthand and witness the absolute thrill and ethereal beauty of unmanned flight.
I open the narrative by reciting the lines I have studied like a Shakespearean actor playing Hamlet for the first time. I hear the Vermonter concur with every exaggeration, prompting me to keep the momentum flowing with enthusiasm and flair. It is guiding me musically, as Beethoven might, into seizing the moment, a tone poem ode to the joy of dynamic presence. I find it magical to be conducting both operations; the flight of the Drone and my gaslighting effort, in a simultaneous flow of artistic technology. I bend the drone’s vector in jazzy choreography with dramatic emphasis of the narrative’s key inflections. I steer the Drone to the hover and snatch position and lower the cable. Drysdale’s bike makes another ascent and lands safely about one hundred meters from us.
I am dancing with fireflies and thunderbolts in the painted desert when I hear the warning sound.
The Verometer makes an instant segue from benevolent mentor to highest ranking officer in a series of short beeps followed by the command-voice announcement that we are running on less than ten percent remaining battery power and that emergency landing operations will be automatically initiated in ten seconds if I do not override.
I look at The Queen and she gives me the ‘you are the pilot and must respond to this’ look. I pause the narrative and address the current situation. I need to set the Drone down now. I audibly request available flight time and the distance from current position to the make-shift landing pad. I am told that the distance is too far for a conventional landing.
In the heads-up display of the Helmet I see the flight path back to our location. I immediately point to the spot with the glove and set a horizontal approach. I hear that battery power is at one percent. I look again at The Queen for either instruction or support and get neither. I steer the Drone directly overhead but it is still over four hundred feet up. I hear the dismal report that power will fail in ten seconds, nine, eight……
The drone gets to one hundred feet elevation and runs dry, its eight propellers suddenly still and silent. An alarm sounds in the helmet. On the heads-up display I see a two-word, full-caps question flash: ENGAGE PARACHUTE?
She is dropping fast, I shout ‘ENGAGE PARACHUTE’ into the Helmet and a stealthy chute flies open and gently sets the Drone at our feet a few inches from its take-off spot.
My heart is pounding. I pull off the Helmet and bark at The Queen. “Why didn’t you tell me about the chute function?”
“There might be a time when we need to ditch the Drone to keep it from enemy hands. In that case the default is to do nothing, if you are still at the controls you have the option of a safe assisted landing or a ditch. It was a last minute addition.”
I recover from my momentary loss of control, take a deep breath and humbly agree.
“Right.”
My indoctrination to the Helmet/Glove/Drone trio illuminates the unmistakable reality that I am the weak link of the quartet. In a four-piece ensemble, the places to hide are few. Luckily The Queen had refined the stock GPS programming to include a ‘bailout’ feature where if potentially catastrophic directions were initiated the unit would override them and return the device to its last recorded safe coordinates. If not for this code-red feature, we would be building a new drone to replace the one that I crashed and agonizingly watched burn. However, after a break-in period, the sink or sky experience, I quickly gather confidence and enough piloting skills to attempt a snatch on my own.
Her Majesty keeps one step ahead and instructs that I conduct a dress rehearsal and navigate the Drone as if I was preforming the live demonstration for the Warden, or, as she puts it, “With the game one the line.”
I engage the Verometer and hear the now familiar tone indicating an operation in progress. I have to shake myself into meeting up with this dramatic moment and almost immediately sense a tingling of augmented power. Like, I can imagine, a pauper waking from a dream to remember that he is the Prince. I open the narration that is intentionally scripted to result in a pair of crucial conclusions: The first to overwhelmingly shock the Warden with the awesomeness of the aerial device, and secondly to prod him into wearing the Helmet for himself to test it out firsthand and witness the absolute thrill and ethereal beauty of unmanned flight.
I open the narrative by reciting the lines I have studied like a Shakespearean actor playing Hamlet for the first time. I hear the Vermonter concur with every exaggeration, prompting me to keep the momentum flowing with enthusiasm and flair. It is guiding me musically, as Beethoven might, into seizing the moment, a tone poem ode to the joy of dynamic presence. I find it magical to be conducting both operations; the flight of the Drone and my gaslighting effort, in a simultaneous flow of artistic technology. I bend the drone’s vector in jazzy choreography with dramatic emphasis of the narrative’s key inflections. I steer the Drone to the hover and snatch position and lower the cable. Drysdale’s bike makes another ascent and lands safely about one hundred meters from us.
I am dancing with fireflies and thunderbolts in the painted desert when I hear the warning sound.
The Verometer makes an instant segue from benevolent mentor to highest ranking officer in a series of short beeps followed by the command-voice announcement that we are running on less than ten percent remaining battery power and that emergency landing operations will be automatically initiated in ten seconds if I do not override.
I look at The Queen and she gives me the ‘you are the pilot and must respond to this’ look. I pause the narrative and address the current situation. I need to set the Drone down now. I audibly request available flight time and the distance from current position to the make-shift landing pad. I am told that the distance is too far for a conventional landing.
In the heads-up display of the Helmet I see the flight path back to our location. I immediately point to the spot with the glove and set a horizontal approach. I hear that battery power is at one percent. I look again at The Queen for either instruction or support and get neither. I steer the Drone directly overhead but it is still over four hundred feet up. I hear the dismal report that power will fail in ten seconds, nine, eight……
The drone gets to one hundred feet elevation and runs dry, its eight propellers suddenly still and silent. An alarm sounds in the helmet. On the heads-up display I see a two-word, full-caps question flash: ENGAGE PARACHUTE?
She is dropping fast, I shout ‘ENGAGE PARACHUTE’ into the Helmet and a stealthy chute flies open and gently sets the Drone at our feet a few inches from its take-off spot.
My heart is pounding. I pull off the Helmet and bark at The Queen. “Why didn’t you tell me about the chute function?”
“There might be a time when we need to ditch the Drone to keep it from enemy hands. In that case the default is to do nothing, if you are still at the controls you have the option of a safe assisted landing or a ditch. It was a last minute addition.”
I recover from my momentary loss of control, take a deep breath and humbly agree.
“Right.”
I Am Speechless
177.
I am the first one there. It is thirty minutes before our scheduled meet time so I have an opportunity to walk a bit, stretch my back and scout the location. It is just as I remember, red rock mountains of the moon. The only signs of life are the occasional passing of an RV and a floating of unhurried black prehistoric birds contrasted against the bright blue cloudless backdrop. If I had the time I am confident I could investigate deeper into the landscape and discover another layer of abundant flora and fauna but as I consider this anthropology I hear another Jeep approach.
I watch closely as the Jeep four-wheels over the crushed rock path leading to the established GPS coordinates and stop two feet from where I have parked. I surveil The Queen and her assistant, whom I immediately recognize as her former, and perhaps current, boyfriend, Cyrus. It has been three weeks since our last face-to-face and I am surprised to see her hair now shaded a hue of frozen pink. She is sporting huge leopard-skin sun glasses and wearing an Army surplus flight suit. Her footwear could be standard Army issue or Doc Martens, either way more utility than fashion. She indicates to Cyrus that the cargo is to be off-loaded and placed in the direction of her finger point. As he begins his manual labor we both turn to see what, and whose, machine is creating the internal combustion whine.
Slightly unnerved, I stifle a patronizing grin at the sight of Drysdale side standing his dirt bike and removing his helmet. He greets Her Majesty with a bow and fist bumps Cyrus who drops a huge Pelican case to accommodate the welcoming gesture. From behind a huge boulder I smile at the blatant camaraderie displayed by the assembled team and leave my cover to meet and greet.
“Glad you could make it,” I sarcastically open, looking at my watch.
Simultaneously they glance at their own chronometers and laugh at the inside joke, it officially being ten minutes prior to the etched in stone show time.
We all shake hands and I propose that we use our time wisely and begin the flight test. All agree.
Cyrus picks a flat spot in the center of a growth of tumbleweeds and cactus. He flips the six latches on the Pelican case and gently removes the Drone, placing it on the sun-soaked prehistoric gravel. He quickly adds the titanium propellers and installs the four battery packs. As he puts the finishing touches to the device, The Queen prepares the Helmet, appropriately painted in desert cammo.
In less than the time it would take to change a tire, she has pulled the Helmet over her pink hair and adjusted the shoulder padding. She ceremoniously nods her head like a welder about to strike a torch and the face mask responds by snugly closing with a snap. She adds the glove attachment to her right hand, looks around in a three-hundred-sixty degree scan and then at me.
I do likewise and give my non-verbal approval and good-to-go sign.
The Drone comes to life with a swoosh sending dirt and loose debris flying away from its calibrated high-pitch monotone. The Queen points at it and it follows her finger upwards in a smooth, controlled lift. She performs a series of maneuvers including spins, dives, holds and the most impression move, a tumble and turn inverted ascent to an elevation nearing invisibility.
I stand and watch the demo as I see her look at me, and from behind the tinted face mask I can almost see her expression saying, ‘watch this’. The Drone initiates a sudden kamikaze dive directly towards us. I want to run for cover but trust that the Queen has this under control. Amazed and awed by the in-flight capabilities of this device I watch agog as a thin high-tension cable unrolls from the unit’s fuselage and grips Drysdale’s Honda CRF150R dirt bike with a pair of hooks and lifts it into the air with ease.
I look at Drysdale to gauge his reaction but he is gone. The Queen pilots the Drone behind the boulder I had used for cover and I watch as it lowers the flying moto. In less than sixty-seconds the Drone has recoiled the cable and is dancing a thermal gig overhead.
Drysdale rides up on the Honda grinning like high-school kid on his first date.
They are all glaring at me waiting for my reaction.
For the first time in a very long while, I am speechless.
I am the first one there. It is thirty minutes before our scheduled meet time so I have an opportunity to walk a bit, stretch my back and scout the location. It is just as I remember, red rock mountains of the moon. The only signs of life are the occasional passing of an RV and a floating of unhurried black prehistoric birds contrasted against the bright blue cloudless backdrop. If I had the time I am confident I could investigate deeper into the landscape and discover another layer of abundant flora and fauna but as I consider this anthropology I hear another Jeep approach.
I watch closely as the Jeep four-wheels over the crushed rock path leading to the established GPS coordinates and stop two feet from where I have parked. I surveil The Queen and her assistant, whom I immediately recognize as her former, and perhaps current, boyfriend, Cyrus. It has been three weeks since our last face-to-face and I am surprised to see her hair now shaded a hue of frozen pink. She is sporting huge leopard-skin sun glasses and wearing an Army surplus flight suit. Her footwear could be standard Army issue or Doc Martens, either way more utility than fashion. She indicates to Cyrus that the cargo is to be off-loaded and placed in the direction of her finger point. As he begins his manual labor we both turn to see what, and whose, machine is creating the internal combustion whine.
Slightly unnerved, I stifle a patronizing grin at the sight of Drysdale side standing his dirt bike and removing his helmet. He greets Her Majesty with a bow and fist bumps Cyrus who drops a huge Pelican case to accommodate the welcoming gesture. From behind a huge boulder I smile at the blatant camaraderie displayed by the assembled team and leave my cover to meet and greet.
“Glad you could make it,” I sarcastically open, looking at my watch.
Simultaneously they glance at their own chronometers and laugh at the inside joke, it officially being ten minutes prior to the etched in stone show time.
We all shake hands and I propose that we use our time wisely and begin the flight test. All agree.
Cyrus picks a flat spot in the center of a growth of tumbleweeds and cactus. He flips the six latches on the Pelican case and gently removes the Drone, placing it on the sun-soaked prehistoric gravel. He quickly adds the titanium propellers and installs the four battery packs. As he puts the finishing touches to the device, The Queen prepares the Helmet, appropriately painted in desert cammo.
In less than the time it would take to change a tire, she has pulled the Helmet over her pink hair and adjusted the shoulder padding. She ceremoniously nods her head like a welder about to strike a torch and the face mask responds by snugly closing with a snap. She adds the glove attachment to her right hand, looks around in a three-hundred-sixty degree scan and then at me.
I do likewise and give my non-verbal approval and good-to-go sign.
The Drone comes to life with a swoosh sending dirt and loose debris flying away from its calibrated high-pitch monotone. The Queen points at it and it follows her finger upwards in a smooth, controlled lift. She performs a series of maneuvers including spins, dives, holds and the most impression move, a tumble and turn inverted ascent to an elevation nearing invisibility.
I stand and watch the demo as I see her look at me, and from behind the tinted face mask I can almost see her expression saying, ‘watch this’. The Drone initiates a sudden kamikaze dive directly towards us. I want to run for cover but trust that the Queen has this under control. Amazed and awed by the in-flight capabilities of this device I watch agog as a thin high-tension cable unrolls from the unit’s fuselage and grips Drysdale’s Honda CRF150R dirt bike with a pair of hooks and lifts it into the air with ease.
I look at Drysdale to gauge his reaction but he is gone. The Queen pilots the Drone behind the boulder I had used for cover and I watch as it lowers the flying moto. In less than sixty-seconds the Drone has recoiled the cable and is dancing a thermal gig overhead.
Drysdale rides up on the Honda grinning like high-school kid on his first date.
They are all glaring at me waiting for my reaction.
For the first time in a very long while, I am speechless.
Friday, June 26, 2020
Book of Rules
176.
While the common people like you and me
we'll be builders for eternity.
Each is given a bag of tools,
a shapeless mass and a book of rules.
The key elements of the Heptones seemingly fatalistic rock-reggae tune plays in my mind as I make the hour drive from Reno to Fallon. I consider the authors intent on his poetic celebration of the obvious and its possible message of hope to those willing to risk failure and experiment. We are all common people, regardless of stature, position, rank, privilege or pedigree, as we will build for the eternal satisfaction of meeting our spiritual obligation for the creative imperative.
I set the cruise control for seventy and adjust the seat. The rental car, this time a Jeep, has a decent audio system and with a few adjustments to the spatial EQ, I relax and enjoy the tune as the hot winds rush past.
In complete appreciation of the combined relevance of lyrics and a foot tapping back-beat, I am led down the rabbit hole of introspective analysis. I have been here before. It is the musical/historical deja vu of a thousand visits to the challenge of life. It is the film score of my personal journey, the soundtrack of my path to self realization. The things I see, feel and act upon automatically create an accompanying surround sound multi-track relentlessly playing underneath the chaos and cacophony of my life in the lane of speed. There is always a destination, a map pin on the Mercator Projection indicating that a fire, an uprising, an atrocity or a threat to our way of life needs to be hosed down. I have learned over the many years acting as fire marshal proxy that one needs to balance the heat with chill whenever the opportunity exists. This very moment is one of those.
I consider my bag of tools. From the destructive nature of my Glock to the creative potential of the Drone we will be testing later this afternoon, the framers of the tune most likely were thinking of hammers and saws. I chuckle at the irony of the comparison and tackle the last line of the chorus, the book of rules.
Is it a good book as the Bible is often called? Are we, according to the powerful ability of music to guide us, being asked to put more weight into the words of others, rather than those of our own? Or are these rules more like an instruction manual or users guide offering the step-by-step procedures required for assembly? Or both? Or a combination of the best of the rest. What are the implications to a society given free will? Surely the book, as our guiding document, needs constant revision to reflect the changing times, attitudes, technologies and ecologies? Does this book offer the freedom for additions, deletions and corrections? What would an amendment to the 'good book' mean to the separation of Church and State?
I ponder the synergy of my personal tools and their potential as might be laid out in a rule book.
Don't shoot first.
Don't bring a pocket-knife to a firefight.
Do your homework.
Never sit with your back to the door.
Always keep calm.
Always keep your word.
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
Use your head before your fists.
Respect others as you respect yourself.
Be humble.
Be kind. Be generous. Be happy.
Commit to the long game.
Live fully, love passionately and learn relentlessly.
Heed the lessons of the past and intend on success in the future, but…. above all other rules,
Be here now.
The song ends in perfect harmony with my internal soliloquy. The slate black Jeep hums along the desert highway like a hungry carbon-fiber rhino.
With these clever tools and our current book of rules, we are builders for eternity; The endless chore of defining this barren and bleak shapeless mass.
While the common people like you and me
we'll be builders for eternity.
Each is given a bag of tools,
a shapeless mass and a book of rules.
The key elements of the Heptones seemingly fatalistic rock-reggae tune plays in my mind as I make the hour drive from Reno to Fallon. I consider the authors intent on his poetic celebration of the obvious and its possible message of hope to those willing to risk failure and experiment. We are all common people, regardless of stature, position, rank, privilege or pedigree, as we will build for the eternal satisfaction of meeting our spiritual obligation for the creative imperative.
I set the cruise control for seventy and adjust the seat. The rental car, this time a Jeep, has a decent audio system and with a few adjustments to the spatial EQ, I relax and enjoy the tune as the hot winds rush past.
In complete appreciation of the combined relevance of lyrics and a foot tapping back-beat, I am led down the rabbit hole of introspective analysis. I have been here before. It is the musical/historical deja vu of a thousand visits to the challenge of life. It is the film score of my personal journey, the soundtrack of my path to self realization. The things I see, feel and act upon automatically create an accompanying surround sound multi-track relentlessly playing underneath the chaos and cacophony of my life in the lane of speed. There is always a destination, a map pin on the Mercator Projection indicating that a fire, an uprising, an atrocity or a threat to our way of life needs to be hosed down. I have learned over the many years acting as fire marshal proxy that one needs to balance the heat with chill whenever the opportunity exists. This very moment is one of those.
I consider my bag of tools. From the destructive nature of my Glock to the creative potential of the Drone we will be testing later this afternoon, the framers of the tune most likely were thinking of hammers and saws. I chuckle at the irony of the comparison and tackle the last line of the chorus, the book of rules.
Is it a good book as the Bible is often called? Are we, according to the powerful ability of music to guide us, being asked to put more weight into the words of others, rather than those of our own? Or are these rules more like an instruction manual or users guide offering the step-by-step procedures required for assembly? Or both? Or a combination of the best of the rest. What are the implications to a society given free will? Surely the book, as our guiding document, needs constant revision to reflect the changing times, attitudes, technologies and ecologies? Does this book offer the freedom for additions, deletions and corrections? What would an amendment to the 'good book' mean to the separation of Church and State?
I ponder the synergy of my personal tools and their potential as might be laid out in a rule book.
Don't shoot first.
Don't bring a pocket-knife to a firefight.
Do your homework.
Never sit with your back to the door.
Always keep calm.
Always keep your word.
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
Use your head before your fists.
Respect others as you respect yourself.
Be humble.
Be kind. Be generous. Be happy.
Commit to the long game.
Live fully, love passionately and learn relentlessly.
Heed the lessons of the past and intend on success in the future, but…. above all other rules,
Be here now.
The song ends in perfect harmony with my internal soliloquy. The slate black Jeep hums along the desert highway like a hungry carbon-fiber rhino.
With these clever tools and our current book of rules, we are builders for eternity; The endless chore of defining this barren and bleak shapeless mass.
Will This Work?
175.
By any measure my testing indicates success. I am amazed that something closely resembling the football helmet we wore in college is today a high-tech, crime-fighting tool of unlimited potential. To have this prototype at our disposal, designed, created and freely offered to us by a girl not yet legally able to order a cocktail in a restaurant, I find to be astounding. Tomorrow afternoon we are scheduled to conduct a live test using the Helmet’s original purpose, flight navigation and control of the drone, in the Nevada desert, a rather infamous stretch of stiflingly hot wasteland bordering on Area 51. The last time I was through this barren, moon-like terrain was on a fixed-gear bike trying my best to stay hydrated and avoid a plague of Mormon crickets that painted the hot asphalt a deep scarlet red with their blood and body parts. I can still hear the deadly crunch as our wheels rode over them at twenty-five miles per hour as we desperately made our escape from the hellish landscape. Hopefully my return will result a less dramatic visit.
Together the Helmet and the Drone constitute the most important pair of weapons in our mission’s arsenal. Both serving dual purposes and each with their own unique capabilities, they combine to allow us to do the impossible. Or, properly put, to do something that no-one has done before us. It isn’t impossible and with the tools at our disposal, might be considered routine - but - all this is on paper and as many times as I have reviewed the details of the scheme, there always exists the distinct possibility of error, human error being the most common. As the infamous bumper sticker proclaimed in the seventies: Shit happens.
It is my job, as protagonist in this drama, to ensure that we play an error free game. I am the lead, I wear the Helmet and my mission, a tightly scripted improvisation, prompted and assisted by the real time utility known as the Verometer, an embedded computer program keeping dialogue focused along the statistical path of best chance probability during the one-time faux demonstration of the Drone. My audience will be Warden Daniels, one of his most trusted lieutenants and my ‘assistant', most likely Drysdale who has been under-cover in Vegas working the ACLU angle for several weeks. He is close, capable and a perfect fit for this pivotal scene.
The test will be run by The Queen and one of her assistants, making the total number of people in attendance four, large enough to conduct the test yet small enough to contain it. We will meet in the small oasis outpost of Fallon, caravan almost one hundred miles south-east on Highway 50, and then four-wheel to the test site. In just under two hours we should have the answer to the biggest question facing us to date:
Will this work?
By any measure my testing indicates success. I am amazed that something closely resembling the football helmet we wore in college is today a high-tech, crime-fighting tool of unlimited potential. To have this prototype at our disposal, designed, created and freely offered to us by a girl not yet legally able to order a cocktail in a restaurant, I find to be astounding. Tomorrow afternoon we are scheduled to conduct a live test using the Helmet’s original purpose, flight navigation and control of the drone, in the Nevada desert, a rather infamous stretch of stiflingly hot wasteland bordering on Area 51. The last time I was through this barren, moon-like terrain was on a fixed-gear bike trying my best to stay hydrated and avoid a plague of Mormon crickets that painted the hot asphalt a deep scarlet red with their blood and body parts. I can still hear the deadly crunch as our wheels rode over them at twenty-five miles per hour as we desperately made our escape from the hellish landscape. Hopefully my return will result a less dramatic visit.
Together the Helmet and the Drone constitute the most important pair of weapons in our mission’s arsenal. Both serving dual purposes and each with their own unique capabilities, they combine to allow us to do the impossible. Or, properly put, to do something that no-one has done before us. It isn’t impossible and with the tools at our disposal, might be considered routine - but - all this is on paper and as many times as I have reviewed the details of the scheme, there always exists the distinct possibility of error, human error being the most common. As the infamous bumper sticker proclaimed in the seventies: Shit happens.
It is my job, as protagonist in this drama, to ensure that we play an error free game. I am the lead, I wear the Helmet and my mission, a tightly scripted improvisation, prompted and assisted by the real time utility known as the Verometer, an embedded computer program keeping dialogue focused along the statistical path of best chance probability during the one-time faux demonstration of the Drone. My audience will be Warden Daniels, one of his most trusted lieutenants and my ‘assistant', most likely Drysdale who has been under-cover in Vegas working the ACLU angle for several weeks. He is close, capable and a perfect fit for this pivotal scene.
The test will be run by The Queen and one of her assistants, making the total number of people in attendance four, large enough to conduct the test yet small enough to contain it. We will meet in the small oasis outpost of Fallon, caravan almost one hundred miles south-east on Highway 50, and then four-wheel to the test site. In just under two hours we should have the answer to the biggest question facing us to date:
Will this work?
Thursday, June 25, 2020
Two for Two
174.
Using a familiar statistic, the batting average, I admit that my testing to date is hitting a thousand, two for two. This afternoon's at bat will test the true ability of the Verometer function of The Helmet, as perhaps only a wicked curve-ball can.
So far we have tested the program's ability to discern good poetics from bad, admirable policies from profiteering ones, popular culture trivia (that road in Rome offering myriad destinations) and several minor tangential aspects linking them.
Today's testing trifecta concludes with another scantily concealed attempt at trickery; The philosophical. Thee premise being that should the Verometer be capable of differentiation in a category renown for subjectivity, we might be on to something. I suppose next I will ask if there is a God, and if so, what she was thinking when she created man and his eventual evolution into metaphysical thought. I am confident that one of the reasons was NOT so she could be entertained by men hitting (or attempting to hit) a small sphere hurled from sixty feet and six inches away.
I need to be careful with this one because the very nature of our jobs consists of violating, on necessary occasions, several commandments, tenants, rules, paths, philosophies, cultural mandates and laws. It is, as a footnote, our sworn duty to use this power for the sole purple of enforcing our own guiding text known as the Constitution. With this oath in mind I set abut to author the language of today's test. Adding another layer of subtlety, I try the first person narrative format.
"It is imperative that during the process of this investigation that my methodology presents a non-threatening and sophisticated appearance to the persons or persons being investigated. I need to be smart, talented, street-wise and connected in matters above and well beyond the average. I need to be a walking encyclopedia and a talking Google machine, capable of philosophical exchange, political commentary and popular culture familiarity. I must be competent in math, science, physics and art. I must be fluent in major religions as well as special weapons and tactics. Two commonly misunderstood concepts offer important clues in the search for meaning, and hence the answers to a thousand years of introspective analysis. They are:
Karma.
Forgiveness.
It is said that Karma is about intent, not about doing. This explains why the solder is innocent of murder, but the politician who ordered it, guilty.
We forgive not to grant the perpetrator absolution but to rid ourselves of the weight of carrying the immense emotional burden of holding the verdict in our hearts until time when the the confession is complete. It is more for us than for them.
With this in mind I submit that the meaning of life is to find happiness and that our mission, especially in regard to the current assignment, is in keeping with the intent of all non-violent philosophical doctrines and universal laws."
Again I place the digital recorder's external speaker into the Helmet and gently tap the play icon. I listen to the treatise and upon completion wait the obligatory two seconds for the response from the program.
"Base hit. Continue Your Practice."
Using a familiar statistic, the batting average, I admit that my testing to date is hitting a thousand, two for two. This afternoon's at bat will test the true ability of the Verometer function of The Helmet, as perhaps only a wicked curve-ball can.
So far we have tested the program's ability to discern good poetics from bad, admirable policies from profiteering ones, popular culture trivia (that road in Rome offering myriad destinations) and several minor tangential aspects linking them.
Today's testing trifecta concludes with another scantily concealed attempt at trickery; The philosophical. Thee premise being that should the Verometer be capable of differentiation in a category renown for subjectivity, we might be on to something. I suppose next I will ask if there is a God, and if so, what she was thinking when she created man and his eventual evolution into metaphysical thought. I am confident that one of the reasons was NOT so she could be entertained by men hitting (or attempting to hit) a small sphere hurled from sixty feet and six inches away.
I need to be careful with this one because the very nature of our jobs consists of violating, on necessary occasions, several commandments, tenants, rules, paths, philosophies, cultural mandates and laws. It is, as a footnote, our sworn duty to use this power for the sole purple of enforcing our own guiding text known as the Constitution. With this oath in mind I set abut to author the language of today's test. Adding another layer of subtlety, I try the first person narrative format.
"It is imperative that during the process of this investigation that my methodology presents a non-threatening and sophisticated appearance to the persons or persons being investigated. I need to be smart, talented, street-wise and connected in matters above and well beyond the average. I need to be a walking encyclopedia and a talking Google machine, capable of philosophical exchange, political commentary and popular culture familiarity. I must be competent in math, science, physics and art. I must be fluent in major religions as well as special weapons and tactics. Two commonly misunderstood concepts offer important clues in the search for meaning, and hence the answers to a thousand years of introspective analysis. They are:
Karma.
Forgiveness.
It is said that Karma is about intent, not about doing. This explains why the solder is innocent of murder, but the politician who ordered it, guilty.
We forgive not to grant the perpetrator absolution but to rid ourselves of the weight of carrying the immense emotional burden of holding the verdict in our hearts until time when the the confession is complete. It is more for us than for them.
With this in mind I submit that the meaning of life is to find happiness and that our mission, especially in regard to the current assignment, is in keeping with the intent of all non-violent philosophical doctrines and universal laws."
Again I place the digital recorder's external speaker into the Helmet and gently tap the play icon. I listen to the treatise and upon completion wait the obligatory two seconds for the response from the program.
"Base hit. Continue Your Practice."
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