Month: March 2020

Most of what I write is Shadowrun, a speculative future roleplaying game that merges the aesthetics of corporate dystopia with the magic and multi-species glee of Dungeons and Dragons. The game is primarily concerned with how magic and science coexist in said dystopia.

The world I write in feels like it was built in William Gibson’s 80’s and is trying to still wear that punk rock world like a badly outdated suit. So, I’ve decided to update that world out of canon through a series of 10 minute posts. I’ve tried to update the world in-canon (moving to wireless web, etc.) and others have pushed the envelope even further with nanoware and the concept of monads (sentient non-biological parasites that use humans as hosts). Where I want to go next is geneware.

Biological manipulation has been very much in the spotlight since Crispr technology came into being. For those who don’t know about the tech, this is a really good article that explains how it works on a basic level. Crispr is still just a tool in a toolkit, however. In order to realize its potential, we have to consider what we want to and can do with the tools.

So, this first Shadowrun what if is about using bac-mod tech to influence the genome structures of attraction. In other words, draw biologicals to certain items/people/smells/etc. the way that bees are drawn to flowers. If this could be edited in, then all sorts of trickle down effects will follow. Gene-edit sheep to be compelled to a certain smell, and use that smell to humanely prepare them for slaughter? Gene-edit bees to only pollinate certain types of flowers, forcing weeds and other invasive plants to die out. Gene-edit plants to be responsive to specific soil types which otherwise have a low grow rate?

The possibilities of this are endless and I am just getting started thinking about what could be.

I am bedridden. Perhaps that is an oversimplification of the situation, but bottom line is I am in bed at 8pm writing my blog because it hurts to stand. I have struggled greatly with my health as of late. I am struggling mentally as well, because I just learned that my mechanic who lives a few houses down from me had a widow maker’s heart attack. That has me on edge and considering my own failing heart health. I do not wish to die any time soon. I do not wish to die at all. Though I recognize the inevitability of such things, I am not powerless in prolonging my life. Why do I feel that way then? Why do I continue to search the medical sites I find through google for heart disease information. If I trust this research, I have dilated cardiomyopathy. That same extended research suggests that if I am already in the stages of Congestive Heart Failure, “A 2016 study estimated that about half of people who develop heart failure live beyond 5 years after being diagnosed.”

So, five years.

Maybe my apathy is about the realization that this is a reality I need to accept and deal with in some meaningful way.

I told my son I was bored and he asked me why. That got me thinking about the answer. Bored was not the right response. No, it was a different feeling. I would start playing a video game and not want to make the effort to continue. I would wander off mentally while doing simple tasks. I lack the desire to do any tasks. Depression? Nope, not that either. While depression has been a constant shadow over the last few months (you cannot recognize that you consider end of life nearly weekly and not admit to some level of being depression adjacent), this is not that. I think it has to do with passion.

I’m lacking passion in a lot of what I do.

I know passion when I see it. I recognize that feeling that swells inside of me when I am really about something. I recognize the focus and dedication that comes with wanting to succeed, do well, or relish in the moment of an action. I also recognize when it is not there, though less so. It goes back to the gaming–where I start to play and then immediately asking myself if I even care to continue. Usually the answer is no and it is habit that makes me finish or some misguided concern for loss of position in a game where as I may want to come back to it later in life and not be in a bad spot. Honestly, it feels like burnout, this lack of passion. Perhaps I am burned out on the daily life and I am looking for a way to reset, rest, and reignite. Yet I am not really allowing myself to do so in any measurable way.

(Dis)passion and boredom can be easily misconstrued in my mind, but it also may be true that they possess the same DNA. I wonder about the roots of such things and how I came to be in a state where I am dispassionate about every facet of my life save one, obvious, exception.

It isn’t Covid-19 that is making me this way. The roots of the feeling run deeper and older than that.

I spent the workday thinking about conspiracy theories and weird missing persons cases. That kind of stuff puts me in a different mindset. It makes me consider the mysterious and the wondrous and the all around appeal of strange things that suck readers (like me) into a narrative. As a result I’m thinking about the kind of characters that wind up in these situations. So, here is one.

Charles Loomy

Often people define themselves by their obsessions. Loomy started with coins. When it looked as thought the world was moving towards an obsession with digital money Loomy sold all his coins and invested in stocks. He was a big looser. He kept pumping money into the new obsession until he realized he didn’t have the talent for it. He switched to reality TV, relishing in the false lives of Kardashians and others. As a man with a wonderful memory and feel for history he was suited to track all the shows and all of the conflicts.

This life kept him at home during the hours he wasn’t working maintenance and he self-isolated in the hours that he was at work. Nobody knew Loomy and there was little to no outlet for his knowledge and the things that made him happy. So he became a homebody. He learned to use a computer and found reddit and found a community there that he could explore and be a person. As he did his outside world suffered.

People around him noticed him shrinking away from the world and his home grew less and less presentable on the exterior. He stopped caring and fell into his obsessions. On reddit he was loved. He was respected. He was an expert. Meanwhile in the real world he was the strange old man who lived in the crumbling house.

I have Covid-19 on my mind. I am concerned about the failures of our state to test a significant population of people. I’m worried about my kids and their risk of exposure. I’m worried about where we all go from here as a community. It has not hit the worst of it yet. People are not being crazy outside of stores. That time will likely come. This is a conceal and carry state after all.

It feels in ways that the fiction I consume has guided my understanding of the now and of the new normal. I read a ton of post-apocalyptic and end of the world fiction, which speaks of scenarios like these. It happens a great deal faster in books, but it does happen a lot like this. One anomaly is the weird resurgence of the stock market. That itself leads me to argue that the market is artificially inflated and influenced primarily by a handful of people–bilderberg style. These people have decided to put the market back to the ‘right’ spot and have adjusted their algorithms to make that happen.

It sounds like conspiracy theory, but it also sounds incredibly believable. There is no good reason the market should be having record days one after the other in light of the growing number of cases and deaths in the USA due to this virus. And still we are talking about “re-opening” the economy as we are only starting to discover how wide this is spread and how many lives are being lost in percentage to those who get it.

The hard truth is, the richest Americans and the majority of the leadership don’t really care if 1% die. This whole cure worse than the problem thing automatically values dollars over lives. More and more I recognize that dollars over lives is exactly what capitalism means.

This understanding is starting to filter into my writing already as this moment is influencing how I construct my next piece. The plague (for this is certainly that) will make a brief appearance and will influence how the technologies for the next story came together.

Meanwhile, everyone is trying to make a profit off of this situation and I am growing more and more disturbed by how easily people are doing so. We are looking at 3.3 million unemployed and nobody wants to think about the drain that will put on our nation and her states. Still, if there is a chance to make a dollar, lets do that. Capitalism indeed.

Some Thoughts:

1. I want to work from home. Seriously.

Here we are, in a world where the only sports are virtual and the sports books and everyone else in the industry is struggling to find a way to shift gears from a mode that is about fans in stadiums to one that is predicated on fans on TV. I am reminded at this moment of Death Race 2000, where all of the fans were casting the show live and the cheers and jeers were largely simulated. This seems entirely doable in this context. We could keep going. ESports can carry for a while.

At the very least we can rely on the beauty of games like Modern Warfare to lead the way. Yes, I know I should be talking about Fortnite, but it is not a beautiful game or even a particularly good one. However, it is set up nicely for weekly competition and will capture a larger audience in the age of Covid.

Meanwhile in the physical sports world all we can do is wait for good free agent signings and speculate about the draft. Presently the draft is secondary to the hoopla about Tom Brady going to Tampa Bay. The man trademarked TB X TB. Smart man. There is another QB on the move to somewhere. That is the man they call Cam Newton. Cam was cut. Cam has been a shell of himself since 2016 ended in a cavalcade of injuries. Now he has to prove he can do something. I think he should take a low budget contract with the Patriots and see what happens. Once they clear off all this dead money they’ll be ready for a reload. No, Patriots don’t rebuild. I think Cam can be their franchise guy until Stidham is actually ready.

Some Thoughts:

1. Middle school spring sports are cancelled. I wonder if they would’ve cancelled football? As of now Spring football (club) is still on and poppin.
2. Just waiting to find out when it is going to pop.

So, I was wrong about the date. I found the error as I was wandering back through the posts and counted the dates back up. Yeah, I was about 100 days off, an error that was caused by changing a 2 to a 3 at some point. This means the deeper reflections are somewhat on hold at this point. I am going to be doing this in a monthly fashion–taking time to reflect on 4 and considering what comes next. There may not even be a 5 any time soon. I may roll this thing into two years.

Meanwhile this Covid-19 situation is rolling into more than a month. It is more than likely that the schools will be pushed online or canceled outright. So now I am adjusting to summer-style living with the caveat that my kids cannot actually spend time with their friends. They are stuck with each other, which is great for an hour or two and then goes sour.

In terms of the writing, I am getting back around to a schedule that I can write on effectively. I’m happy about it and happy about getting myself back in gear. This change has been jarring, but the truth is I want to absolutely live like this. I’m a fan.

Almost a full year ago I moved from series three to series 4 with the promise to develop, in this year, a different way of living and loving. This was not the exact promise, but it was the heart of the matter. Things were changing, and I was looking forward to evolving along the way. In four days I will be offering a full ten minute reflection on this, mitigated by how much has changed just in the last few days/weeks. I don’t know that I even would recognize the world of just one year ago. Along the way it is important to consider what I wanted personally out of this last iteration.

I wanted to publish more. I did that, to an extent, publishing more in the past year than I had the previous year, yet not actually publishing the stories I wanted to be writing. So, there is a win and a loss all rolled into one there.

I wanted to be happier in my working life. I am not. I am also not settled in my working life, though I am faced with more and more interesting challenges and I am making much more money than before.

I wanted to be healthier, and I am quite the opposite. In truth I’ve come close to an understanding of my own mortality and the limited time I have left on this planet. It has not been the kickstarter one would presume. It is quite debilitating.

I wanted to be happier in my personal life, but I am an angrier and far less settled person who often stuffs things down deep and tries to evade confrontations at every possible turn. Perhaps that was always me, but now it is so glaringly at the surface that I wonder if I am going to explode or implode. It is unhealthy. It is extremely unhealthy to have a weekly conversation with yourself where you ask if it is better to be alive or dead. This shouldn’t even be a question, let alone the guiding one.

I need a deeper reflection on these things. A ten minute blog will be the culmination, but the analysis ought to run far deeper, considering the heaviness of the subject matter and the impact all of this has on my daily existence. Moving forward requires looking back and knowing what steps to take next.

***Post Blog Edit***

Turns out I am 100+ days off on this thing. I mistakenly upset the number system. I discovered this by returning to 4.1 and reading through my post on that day in early July and thought… WTF? So, yeah. That happened. Still, there is always need of reflection.

I am struggling with my mental state to the point that it is having a physical impact on my body. In this time where I want to be carefree and loving and focused on the work to be done I am bombarded by worry for the mental state of others and tiptoeing around every word, phrase, and suggestion. This virus has exposed and enhanced a great deal of worries in my life. The things that are most insecure are heightened tenfold to the point where all feels like performance and nothing feels real or genuine or connected. It is as if we are all playing roles here in some apocalyptic thriller as we wait out the next step towards our inevitable end.

I do not think the Coronavirus will fundamentally change our world and interpersonal relationships for very long. I am, by nature, an optimist and one who believes in the resiliency of man. This is not a popular opinion. Everywhere I turn suggests the opposite and to hold fast to that promise of resiliency makes me feel very alone.

Much makes me feel very alone and unsafe in this situation. Perhaps that is the deepest and most honest feeling that I am registering in all of this. Perhaps that is the truest pulse of my present existence. I feel unsafe in nearly every possible way. I feel unsafe physically, as there are idiots out wandering about; as my health teeters on the dangerous edge of this pandemic and I greatly suspect if I do get this, I will be numbered among the dead. I feel unsafe emotionally, as though navigating a mine(mind)field of emotions and actions that trigger suggestions of emotion and cause those already on the edge of last light to move further into darkness.

In all of this I feel forced to carry on a lie. I feel forced to maintain this sheen of impenetrability, because that is the expectation of the man of the house, is it not? I feel triggered towards unnatural action and expectation not in line with who I am or want to be.

In all of this the one bit of security I have is my job. Sadly, this is the one area of my life in which I feel in control. I have easily digestible tasks that, once ordered into a list, can be carried out. However, I cannot do my job without guilt. Any focus on the work is largely seen as a lack of focus on the other pillars of my life. It becomes a this or that scenario that is both false and divisive. So, I do try to do the work, but it comes in starts and fits–it arises when an email catches my eye or my mind wanders towards a problem I can actually solve; towards something I can do and be done with and feel that dopamine release of success.

Yet that release is clouded by guilt as are most things in my daily existence. I am not seen as focused on the right things. I am asked and left to ask myself why that is. Perhaps in these words above there is a truer answer.

Listening to Mr. Nightmare again and I am struck by the thought that people will, in time, lose their minds. I say this because a number of people really are looking for someone to do/believe/act upon. Often people are not looking for the best within themselves but instead looking to get ahead and take advantage of other people. I fear this is the basic human nature which is mitigated by social expectation and the law. We, as a people, will get away with what we can.

What does that mean for Covid? I suggest we look no further than our fiction. There is an overwhelming thematic feel in fiction that once things get weird, we get violent and stupid and very very scared. Parts of this are unfolding now. Parts of this are purely story elements designed to make the fiction more engaging. How much do we rely on these fictional expectations in order to determine what happens next?

Here is what actually worries me: We have, for some time now, been dealing with an increasingly armed and militant sect of the American public. Often that element is associated with right wing ideology, racism, and hoarding. These militias are also largely associated with rural America. I don’t live there, but it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t matter to me or to the people I love.

This time is trying. We have to figure out how to stay together and stay sane as a nation.