SFReader Discussion Forums : 2009 Winners http://forum.sfreader.com/ Copyright (c) 2006-2013 Web Wiz Forums - All Rights Reserved. Tue, 05 May 2026 10:42:53 +0000 Sun, 01 Mar 2015 19:46:06 +0000 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Web Wiz Forums 11.03 30 forum.sfreader.com/RSS_topic_feed.asp?FID=9 <![CDATA[SFReader Discussion Forums]]> http://forum.sfreader.com/forum_images/web_wiz_forums.png http://forum.sfreader.com/ <![CDATA[2009 Winners : 1st Place - Cold Comfort, by Mario Milosevic]]> http://forum.sfreader.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=12&PID=12&title=1st-place-cold-comfort-by-mario-milosevic#12 Author: SFReader
Subject: 1st Place - Cold Comfort, by Mario Milosevic
Posted: Mar-01-2015 at 7:46pm

Cold Comfort
By Mario Milosevic

One

Ted thought the idea of freezing yourself against the possibility of being revived in some future date was, at best, a romp, at worst, a shameless waste of resources and perhaps the most arrogant action anyone could take. Indeed, the thought that some civilization yet to flourish might find themselves compelled to bring back people from his own time, evoked in him only a dismissive sneer.

So, when his wife Charlene put down the necessary funds and signed up for the procedure, he was, to say the least, more than a little dismayed.

"I want you to do it with me," said Charlene.

"But it's crazy!"

"Not so crazy. Look at this." She handed him the brochures and the grainy photocopies of papers from obscure scientific journals attesting to the feasibility of thawing out frozen human tissue and of having the subject of such a procedure come back to life and live a normal existence.

"I have faith in the future," said Charlene. "Don't you?"

"I have faith in--something," said Ted. "I don't know if it is this."

"Just read it."

Ted studied the material and at the end of his reading he scratched his head and said to Charlene. "You're sure about this?"

"More sure than I've ever been of anything."

"Companies come and go. Civilizations rise and fall. There's no guarantee that we will be brought back if the company suddenly goes bankrupt. There's also no guarantee that if we can be resurrected, the people who bring us back will be nice to us. What if they want us as slaves? Or to experiment on us? Or put us in a zoo? Are you ready for that?"

Charlene rolled her eyes. "You're such a pessimist. People are better than that. They wouldn't do that to us. To animals, maybe, but not to other people."

That sounded like wishful thinking, but Ted let it pass. "They don't freeze your whole body. Just your head."

"Of course. It's more efficient that way. In the future they'll be able to clone you a body and attach your head to it. It's a lot cheaper to keep a head frozen for hundreds of years that it is to keep a whole body frozen."

Ted raised his eyebrows. "Of course."

She grabbed his arm and looked into his eyes. He liked the look of her face. He liked the idea that they could live forever and he could look at her face for all that time.

"Tell me you will do this with me," she said.

"So let me get this perfectly straight," said Ted. "The deal is, when we die, we have living wills instructing any attending officials or any family that we want this company to take our body. And then they do what they have to do to keep us on ice. That's what you want?"

"Right. But it has to be quick. We can't lie dead for hours or even minutes. That's why we'll have a transmitter stuck in our necks. When we die, it will automatically alert the company. They will dispatch a cryonics team immediately."

Ted rubbed his neck. "Will that hurt?"

She pushed his shoulder. "I think a big strong guy like you could stand it."

She was a knot of energy, standing in front of him, holding her hands clasped together. He never could say no to her, not about anything really important.

"This is really what you want?"

"Yes!"

He agreed partly because he knew she would jump into his arms and wrap herself around him, but mostly because he was sure the whole scheme was ridiculous and there was no way in the world she or he was ever going to be revived. He would stake his life on that.

Two

"Why do we still have those heads in storage?" said Mary Brubaker to her assistant one day. "Wouldn't it be cheaper to let them just--expire?"

Glenn's head throbbed. He had had a long night and wasn't ready for his boss's incessant probing into the details of the business. Why couldn't she be like other CEOs and leave the day to day micro management of the company to others?

"Well, we acquired them from CryonInc several years ago in the merger, remember?"

"As I recall it, the merger was actually a takeover and was supposed to bring us a healthy supply of frozen animals for the biotech division."

Glenn nodded. "But these--heads--came with them. There were legal considerations. CryonInc had made a binding agreement to ensure that they would be taken care of. We took on that legal obligation when we got the company's assets."

Mary studied the list in front of her.

"They're a drain on us."

Glenn said nothing.

"Some of them have been frozen for, what, 100 years? Look at this couple. Charlene and Ted Soreck. They died together in a car wreck and they've been in storage ever since. What were they thinking? That we could not wait to bring them back? Here we are keeping them in liquid nitrogen, not a cheap undertaking, keeping them from harm, protecting them for--for--for--ever as far as I can tell, and they contribute nothing to the company."

"They all have trust funds."

"None of which survived the depression in 2080s, did they?"

Glenn said he did not think any of them had.

Disgusted, Mary closed the folder on her desk. "Did people really think it was even possible to bring them back after they died?"

"It was a short-lived fad," said Glenn. "Once people could extend their lives through genetic manipulation, there was no need to go through this--" he nodded at the folder on Mary's desk "--procedure."

"Well, we've got about two thousand of them. What should we do with them?"

"As I said, we are legally obli-"

"No, I'm not buying that. Is there any hope of bringing them back, ever?"

"Our people say no."

She slammed her hand down on her desk.

"Then that's it. They are dead, aren't they? The morally correct thing to do would be to bury them or cremate them or do whatever is in accordance with their religious affiliations. Get legal on it and take care of it. Find out how we can get them declared legally deceased. I want this problem to be someone else's problem by the end of the year."

"Fine," said Glenn. "I'll take care of it."

"Next," said Mary Brubaker.

Glenn sighed and consulted his list. "There's the matter of the computing department. They are definitely overstaffed since the latest generation of self programming computers."

Mary nodded. "How many can we let go?"

Three

"I never wanted this case," said Justin. "You know that."

His partner, dressed in the latest fashion that included an elaborate blue headdress and a billowy red gown smiled at him. "You always were a sucker for hard luck stories," he said.

"But Steve," said Justin, "this is crazy. Twenty years after Brubaker started her campaign to get rid of the frosties, ten years after I was assigned to defend the frosties, and it still isn't over."

"It is if you want it to be. The frosties are just pieces of dead flesh."

Justin eyed Steve over the rim of a martini glass. "You sound like the opposing lawyers."

"I sound like you, Justin. You said it yourself to me, in this very room, soon after you got the case."

Justin smiled. "I was young and foolish then. I didn't know what I was talking about."

"The order is quite clear. We are to release the frosties to the coroners. They'll do autopsies, then release the bodies to whatever families remain. We lost, Justin. It happens. Remember, it's not like you were ever going to get a fee from any of them."

"I know, but something in me tells me this is wrong."

Steve stood up. "It's late. We've got warm paying clients we should be thinking about. Consider it a way for these poor folks to get their just rest. They deserve it. Now let it go."

Justin watched as Steve sashayed out the door. He thought about getting a gown for himself. It might be fun to dress conservatively for a change. He leaned back in his chair and propped his feet up on his desk. His pink shoes and glowing pants filled the room with an eerie kind of light. There was still something that bugged him about the resolution of the case. He could accept that these people were dead. He could accept that they had made a foolish choice many years ago investing in silly technology rather than leaving their money to their children or grandchildren or even some worthy charity, but what he could not accept was the number of couples.

One especially seemed poignant to him. Charlene and Ted Soreck. They never had children. From their biographies they were completely and totally devoted to each other. Married forty years before they died. Committed to living their lives together for eternity, they took the necessary steps to try to insure it would happen. And now it was all come to this. All the frosties were to be allowed to slip away.

He sighed and blinked twice, connecting him to the mesh. He thought the words Coroners Office and was connected to a voice.

"Yeah. This is Dr. Mellie."

"Dawn. Justin."

"I heard about the appeal," said Dawn. "I'm sorry. I know you worked a long time on this."

"Thanks. I have a favor to ask."

Cautiously: "Yes..."

"What would it take to keep back two of those frosties?"

"Just two?"

"Sentimental reasons. They had no family, you know. I want to take care of them myself."

Justin had a freezer at home. It could easily accommodate two frosties. It would go quite a way toward easing his heart ache at having lost the other one thousand nine hundred and ninety eight.

Four

"You'd think a lawyer would have more smarts about his assets," said Karen.

"Well, Dad always was his own man," said Ivan. They stood in Justin's living room surrounded by enormous piles of papers, books, trash, and dirt. Several cats watched them from perches and from around corners. They looked like they had not been fed in weeks.

"I had no idea he had come to this," said Karen.

"The last few years were pretty bad. He was always such a neat person, but something happened. I don't know what. He just didn't seem to care anymore. About anything."

"How does that happen?" said Karen. She waded through a few layers of old newspapers. "I mean, Jeedus Krist. Who keep paper anymore? Was it some nostalgic thing?"

Ivan shrugged. "Who knows. There are still paper geeks around. They say they like the feel of it."

Karen shook her head and went into the pantry. "We should eat something before we really get into this. It's going to take a while and we'll need--" She stopped.

"Karen?" said Ivan. He looked up from a desk drawer he was hoping would have a copy of their father's will, but proved to contain only some crossword puzzles.

No answer came from the pantry. "Karen?" Ivan closed the drawer and went to find his sister. She had the freezer door open and was looking inside.

"Why did he keep that old thing?" said Ivan. "The electricity bill for it had to be enormous. And there was no need for it. Especially since he obviously did no cooking of any--"

He stopped.

"What is this?"

Karen slowly reached in and scraped off a layer of frost from a tag attached to one of the frozen lumps that did not resemble a roast or a turkey or anything other than a human head.

"Ted Soreck," whispered Ivan.

Karen scraped the frost off the tag on the other lump.

"Charlene Soreck."

Karen let the lid fall. Ivan jumped involuntarily. They looked at each other.

"I remember the rumors," said Karen. "When we were kids and Dad lost that case. People said he kept some of them. I never believed them. But, oh my god, Ivan. They were right. It's true."

Ivan opened the freezer lid and looked inside then dropped it again. "I can't believe it," he said. "Dad was a--a--what? What was he, Karen? Keeping those heads all these years. What was he?"

"There's got to be something here about them."

Ivan shook his head and moved his hand in an arc. "You mean in all this mess?"

"Dad never much liked putting things on the mesh. He had to have some kind of hard copy record for these heads."

They spent the next few days looking through the papers. They found love letters between their father and their mother, which they took the time to read, and their father's will, and a file folder with instructions on how to take care of the two heads in the freezer. Ted and Charlene Soreck.

"He felt really guilty about this," said Ivan.

"Yes. He feels like he let them down."

"Poor Dad."

"I think," said Karen, "that it might have made him a little crazy in the end. What do you think?"

Ivan pointedly did not address Karen's question. "I think that we can't keep those heads."

"Well, what can we do with them?"

"We have to get rid of them."

Karen shook her head. "We can't do that. They're human beings. We can't just 'get rid of them.'"

Ivan took several deep breaths. "If it ever came out that we did anything to those heads, we might be in big trouble."

"Yeah," said Karen.

Ivan pounded his fist on a wall.

"Take it easy," said Karen.

"Why did he do this to us?"

"There must be something else we can do. Something that will protect us and let us do the right thing."

Ivan considered the problem for a few minutes. "I know someone who can put their DNA on the mesh."

Karen's eyes went wide. "Dad hated the mesh. He said it was anti-human. He said it would be the death of human experience and everything that made us human. He said--"

"He said a lot things," said Ivan. "And he had two frozen heads in his freezer."

In the end they agreed to call Ivan's friend, who took a sample of DNA from each of the heads and went about the business of transferring the information to the mesh, from where, it had been mathematically proven, it could never be deleted. While she was at it, just for fun, he also put their personality profiles onto the mesh. And their life experiences, which had been lodged in the nooks and crannies between the strands of DNA.

When she informed Ivan and Karen that it had been completed, they took the heads to a hill overlooking a valley and a mountain, and they buried the heads and did not leave a marker.

Karen sobbed, thinking of her father. Ivan hoped no one would ever find out what they had done.

Five

The destruction of the human race took no longer than about two weeks. In the end the aliens from the third galaxy past Andromeda grew weary of negotiating with the human race and announced that in exchange for the privilege of having themselves inherit the earth and its environs, people would be accorded a painless demise and an honored place in the history of the living universe.

The inhabitants of Earth were in no position to challenge this turn of events and people all over the globe put into practice the old question that many had asked half in jest: What would you do if you knew you only had a few days to live?

Many created time capsules. Many killed themselves rather than be killed by the aliens. Some wept the entire time. Others prayed. Most were in shock. A few declared loudly that it was all a hoax. Lots of people said it was just as well. Humans had their time. Let someone else have the planet for a while.

One woman, Aquarius Wright, decided to try to do something about it. She hacked into the mesh, and rerouted as much of its information as she could to a probe that had been launched in the direction of the center of the galaxy. The probe was equipped with a memory unit capable of storing a trillion trillion trillion trillion bits of data. Its makers believed that it could download much of the information content of the center of the galaxy. They feared that by the time this task had been accomplished, the radio receivers of Earth might not have the capability of retrieving the signals any longer. The time spans involved argued for the more permanent storage of the information retrieved from the center of the galaxy directly into the probe's memory.

Aquarius Wright knew all this because she had designed the probe and its systems. She had believed in the wisdom of sending out a probe that would not return for many millions of years.

"It is my belief that the human race will survive," she would tell anyone who would listen. "This is a time capsule, if you will, of the galaxy. To be opened by our descendants when it returns to our solar system far in the future."

But time capsules are not popular items. They are of the future and no one really cares about the future. They care about the present, the time in which they live.

Aquarius got the funding for her probe. It was launched and well on its way to its ultimate destination when the aliens arrived and were disgusted by the life encrusting the otherwise clean and lovely planet Earth. They did not know of the probe and did not care.

When the aliens made their intentions clear, Aquarius realized there was only one hope for humans: she divided up the mesh into chunks and began transmitting the chunks to the probe. As she did so, she would occasionally look over what was being transmitted. She sent encyclopedias of information. All the known languages of the Earth, all the stories and tales and poems of the Earth, all the hopes of the peoples of the Earth, all the DNA of all the animals of the Earth. And some DNA of people, as well, though downloading people was illegal, and in any case, few wanted to do it. But there were some. The mesh had attracted its share of outlaws over the years. Here was a hacker's DNA. She let it go. Here was a president's. She hesitated, but let that go too.

And here was a couple. Ted and Charlene Soreck. Ancient people, dead before the mesh had even been thought of. Somehow they too had found their way into the mesh. She let them go. Let their essence fly across space to lodge, secure, but precarious, on a fragile bit of hardware attesting to the inventiveness of her race. It made her proud.

Aquarius was still hard at work tending to the downloading of the mesh into her far flung probe when the fireball descended on her and everyone else on the planet. Her hands and face melted into the keyboard of the computer she used to effect the download. Her last words never reached the air. They died in the heat of the seared atmosphere. Her last thoughts were of the cursed aliens, how she wished they would all die die die.

Six

The robot that collected the probe was a clumsy beast. It crumpled the ancient solar collectors, which, in any case, had ceased functioning millennia before, but that was no excuse. It was always best to bring back artifacts in as pristine a condition as possible.

Garunth slapped the robot severely for its negligence. The robot genuflected, cursed its own ancestors, then retreated to its lair, where it cavorted with its own kind until it was needed again.

Garunth ate his midday meal while staring at the probe. This one would take some time to study. He looked forward to it. He recalled another probe he had retrieved from the currents of space: how it had made him celebrated on thirty world. How it had brought him glory and recognition beyond all his imaginings.

That evening he set to work dismantling the treasure. It housed many instruments, elementary data gathering devices that he recognized as the work of a fledgling civilization trying to understand their meager place in the vast cosmos. Ha, he thought to himself. Biological beings had no place in the cosmos. Most were a ghastly mistake, inconsequential, irritating grit in the machinery of the unfolding realm of existence. His Supreme Being had conveyed this information to him when he was but an infant himself, and he had always remembered it. Biological beings existed to serve the true masters of the universe: the stars.

The probe gave up its secrets easily. It contained a tremendous amount of stored energy. At first Garunth thought it must have been the information that it had collected on its travels, but no. Closer inspection revealed that the information had been there for some time. And it had been locked into place so it could not have been over written.

Alas, much of the storage unit had been destroyed by cosmic rays and the clumsiness of his robot retriever. He made a note that he would have to slap it several more times. This made him simultaneously sad and filled with anticipatory glee.

There was nothing worse than having a malfunctioning robot. There was nothing better than having an excuse to inflict pain upon it.

He delved deeper into the remaining intact portions of the storage unit. He put the information into his own computer and ran it through all the known language translators. Nothing coherent arose from it. Evidently this was from a race unknown to him. He ran all possible translation routines, even the ones that corresponded to no known civilization. There were vastly more of these than the known ones, and the translations took a much longer time: almost two hours.

And there in the vast set of nonsense was one clear element of sense. Garunth zeroed in on it.

Most of it was corrupted, but he did find some points of interest. There were pictures of a lush world: blue and white. There were odd creatures, bipeds, with thin skin. There was elementary science. And in the midst of it all: two names. Ted Soreck and Charlene Soreck.

Garunth immediately relayed the information to his superiors and prepared to be once again inundated with praise and riches. He thanked Ted and Charlene Soreck for their survival.

And silently asked their forgiveness for his part in bringing them to their ultimate fate.

Seven

The roaring filled her ears.

Charlene awoke from a difficult sleep, hoping that it had all been a dream and she was not still stuck inside a star.

"Ted?"

No answer. There had never been an answer, and now she was beginning to accept that there never would be. Her pattern, the delicate interplay of energy that was now her, would not dissipate, even in this nuclear engine. And why was she here? This is what troubled her the most.

Oh, she had some indications. There was still some contact with the outside world, whatever that was now. Her keepers sent her some messages every now and then. Ripples in the fabric of her star is what they were. Ripples she understood, because that's all she was now, a persistent ripple, like a standing wave, or like Jupiter's great red spot that just stayed and stayed and stayed.

The messages told her that they needed her to stabilize the star. Keep it from going nova. Only the presence of an intelligence at the center of a nuclear furnace that is a star could possibly ensure that its natural tendency to eventually explode could be averted.

Charlene knew enough about stellar evolution to know that this could not be. That novas occur when the fuel of a star is exhausted, and the gas's natural tendency to repel against all the other particles of the gas would overcome the gravity holding a star in place.

But her keepers knew a deeper secret, it seemed. That an intelligence in the star could keep the furnace burning much longer. And so here she was. Finding hydrogen atoms and converting them back into helium atoms. She had no choice but to do so. They had designed her that way and she could not go against her programming.

But mostly she thought about Ted.

About how he was probably stuck in a star somewhere too. About how he was keeping his star from exploding.

But she would not do it forever. She would find a way to overcome her programming. She would discover a way to break free and let the natural energy of the star spread itself across the cosmos. She would. She would thwart her tormentors, who had decided to keep her here. She would find a way.

She could only hope that Ted would find a way too.

Eight

The beings that came into existence in the latter ages of the universe lived in the quantum fluctuations between the creation and destruction of the infinitesimally small building blocks of the strings that made the elementary particles. They knew of the efforts to keep the stars burning for eternity, knew that it had been futile from the start, but knew also that many entities had given their existence to the task.

Some willingly, some under coercion.

Ted had only one question of them. After his star had blown up and scattered across the sky, he burrowed between the lowest spaces of the smallest entities and waited. He waited a long time, but had to be sure that those who had put him in the star would not do it again. Many millions of millennia later, he emerged from his hiding place and contacted the entities. The universe by this time was a cold place, all of it hidden. His original home world had ensured that he would survive to this time by placing his essence in an indestructible mesh. And now, evolution had worked its magic for the nth time, and there was life, even in this dead place.

Ted moved his will. He gathered what energy he could discern in his surroundings and identify as his own. There was an essence familiar to him, but also distant.

"Charlene?"

Two syllables. At the end of time and he had nothing but those echoes of unknowable ancient breaths.

It was cold here, barely above absolute zero. In only a few million thousand years, a blink in the uniform tapestry of existence, even this would be gone.

The entities knew this as well. They knew everything, but could do nothing.

Except this one thing.

They could direct energy.

And so they moved those syllables into the void. They let them bubble through the mesh that overlaid everything. Some things are stubborn and even in the throws of the heat death of the universe, some things endure.

There would be no history written of this reunion. No photos, no memories, nothing in the end, but an insistent need.

One answer.

"Ted? Is that you?"

Edited by Dave - Mar-05-2015 at 9:08am]]> Sun, 01 Mar 2015 19:46:06 +0000 http://forum.sfreader.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=12&PID=12&title=1st-place-cold-comfort-by-mario-milosevic#12 <![CDATA[2009 Winners : 2nd Place - Dry Ice, by Samuel Mae]]> http://forum.sfreader.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=11&PID=11&title=2nd-place-dry-ice-by-samuel-mae#11 Author: SFReader
Subject: 2nd Place - Dry Ice, by Samuel Mae
Posted: Mar-01-2015 at 7:44pm

Dry Ice
By Samuel Mae

Four hours more to Simpton and five back to Porter. Jesse Matten had nothing ahead of him but hard, cold clay and nothing behind him but hard, cold clay. He turned the truck radio up loud--just because he was feeling reckless--and reached over into his cooler for a bottle of Dry.

The bottle-cap joined the pile of its brothers on the floor and the bottle touched his lips.

Was that a shape just up ahead? His hand tightened around the steering-key and he set the bottle down. The monitors showed nothing behind or beside him except clay and road. He checked again and adjusted the night-vision settings, but still nothing. And still the shape in front.

The shape moved. Jesse sat upright. Shapes didn't move out here at night. It was eighty below outside. Any shape with the bad sense to be on the clay at all would surely find somewhere to lay its head long before darkness fell.

Radio reception dropped off, the music replaced by the hiss of static. Without taking his eyes off the shape Jesse reached out, turned the sound down and slowed the truck to a crawl. Most likely the shape was just a sick refoe separated from its herd and finding somewhere to die. Even so, Jesse didn't want to spook it. Even sick refoes could do a lot of damage to a truck.

An auto-scan came up on screen to his upper left. Not a refoe, this shape. There was too much heat--and it walked upright like a man. That couldn't be. Jesse gave the side of the screen a slap. The image shuddered but didn't change. Still, it couldn't be. No men ever walked the clay. That was impossible.

He upped the night-vision to its brightest and squinted at the frontviewer. Well, it could be a man. The diagnostic said it was and it sure looked the shape. His throat was dusty and his hands clammy. Eyes might lie on the clay sometimes, but diagnostics never did.

What to do now? If it was a man he couldn't leave him out here. But what if it was a trick? He'd heard tales--mostly in hashish bars, mind--of varels who disguised themselves in men's robes and waited at pit-stops for weary runners. Not that he had ever seen a varel. And not that any of the other runners he knew had ever seen a varel. But still, whenever a runner didn't berth on schedule the rumors went around like a preacher's wife on leave.

It was so beautiful and clear tonight. Out here, where stars sparkled like diamond specks in the distant sky and the only noises were the low rumble of his truck engine and perhaps the radio if he felt like company, things weren't confusing or uncertain. Stuff like this wasn't supposed to happen on nights like this. Jesse wiped a hand across his forehead and it came away wet.

The shape stopped and turned to face the truck. It wore a baggy robe, but no ice hung from it. Another thing to add to the list of couldn't be's. And then Jesse drew abreast of the shape and it reached what had to be arms up and pulled the hood of its robe back.

Without any conscious thought, Jesse twisted the brake key full-circle, automatically correcting for any swerve with deft flicks of the steering key--the truck such a natural part of him. But what he saw, that couldn't be natural. No way on this fine earth.

It was a man! How in the name of all that was preached could this be? And this man's face, though lined with cracks, was not frozen. It was a man and it was alive out here, somehow, in the void of clay.

Jesse's lips quivered. He wasn't given to holy words, but if ever there was a time for prayer now was it. He silently recited the only one he could remember and raised his head. Maybe this man who couldn't be a man would be gone. But no, Jesse wasn't about to get off that easy. The man stood directly in front of the right sideviewer feed, an expression of concern on his unfrozen face. His lips moved, but no sound came from them.

Memories of stories told him as a child, of glass-crawlers and clay-reapers, crowded his mind. Old-wives tales told to keep little ones from doing bad or to scare you at church. His hands gripped the steering key so tightly his arms shook.

Get a hold of yourself man. You've served three tours, fought alongside strange aliens while fighting against fellow humans, seen this earth rotating from far above, yet an unfrozen man on the clay is about to give you a heart rupture.

The man tapped at the sideviewer. The speakers! No wonder he couldn't hear the man's words. Most of him wanted to kick the truck back into gear and drive away as quickly as possible, but what if this person needed help? What if another runner had dumped him out here? He turned the volume up.

"--thing all right in there?" The voice was tinny, but that was the speakers' fault.

Jesse switched his external mike on and held it close to his lips. "Who are you?"

The unfrozen face looked confused for an instant. "I am Aron. Are you sure everything is all right in there?"

"Uh, yeah, I'm okay I guess. Just not used to seeing a man walking the clay. 'Specially not without protectives."

"Well, I am sorry to startle you, Jesse."

Jesse clapped a hand to the base of his neck and squeaked, "How do you know my name?"

Aron laughed. "Your truck has Jesse's Dream painted down this side. Naturally I assumed your name was Jesse."

"Oh." Jesse felt his cheeks redden. "Okay, that, uh, that makes sense."

"I am sorry. I forget what a shock one of us can be to you dome-heads. Oh dear. Sorry again, I did not mean that in a nasty way."

"That's okay." Jesse's mind was too busy processing all the information in the statement to take offense. "So... Aron. How are you out here on the clay? Why aren't you frozen?"

Aron didn't respond immediately. He looked past the truck instead, brow scrunched.

Jesse glanced at his instrument panel. Temperature was still eighty below. Yet somehow there this man was, staring off into the distance with a face unfrozen and pink-cheeked. At the very least there should be icicles hanging from his nose, but by all rights he should be a corpse.

Finally Aron turned back to the sideviewer.

"I am hitchhiking," he said with a sad smile.

###

It was more than eerie having this 'person' in his cab. Aron still wore the thick robe, but his boots and satchel were in the lock. They too were somehow free of ice. Jesse watched Aron wiggle his toes and stretch out his feet and make himself comfortable in the hastily cleared passenger space.

So far Jesse had resisted the urge to reach out and touch his passenger to make sure he wasn't a hallucination. He did, however, find himself pressed uncomfortably against the side panel--as far from Aron as possible--and stealing glances at him every two seconds. All the scans showed him to be a man--a man letting off almost no body heat, but a man nonetheless. He carried no concealed weapons, his body wasn't full of lethal germs, his physiology was ninety-nine point-nine percent human. Jesse had no good reason not to let him in the truck. But that didn't mean any of this made any kind of sense.

"Where is it you want to go, exactly?" Jesse said, gaze back on the road before Aron could make eye contact.

"Whichever direction you are heading, Jesse."

"Okay." Jesse nodded. There was so much he had to ask before this could be anything more than a lane-runner's dream.

"What is it like, to live in the domes?" Aron asked.

Jesse looked directly at him, entirely unprepared for that question. And, truth be told, he didn't really have an answer for it either. "Well, I guess it's, well, it's just natural I s'pose. Though I probably spend more time out here in my truck than under the Glass."

"Is it warm?"

Jesse couldn't help a chuckle. "Warmer than out here, that's for sure."

"I have always wondered what it would be like to live under... 'the Glass', as you called it. Away from the heat of day and the cold of night, in dwellings made with machines and not underground, able to get places without using one's feet, able to eat all sorts of strange and different things. I would love to experience that so much."

Aron's tone was so wistful Jesse's apprehension faded. He reached into his cooler for a bottle of Dry, twisted the cap off and handed the bottle to Aron. The boy--for Jesse suddenly realized from Aron's speech and expression that was what he was, despite his weather-beaten face--took the bottle gingerly and held it below his nose.

"Drink," Jesse said.

Aron took a sip. His mouth wrinkled, but then his eyes lit up. "This, this is wonderful." He took another sip. "Is everything your people make this amazing?"

Jesse smiled, but then he had a sudden, overwhelming need to dampen Aron's enthusiasm for a world in which he himself rarely felt at home in. "It's not all tea and cupcakes, Aron. Because of the Glass sometimes the air doesn't smell good and is bad for your lungs. And a lot of the food might taste real nice, but isn't good for your body. And every little thing you want to do has some different rule that goes along with it and there are so many people crammed in such a small area it's real hard to have your own space?-"

"But, surely," Aron said, "the good outweighs the bad. Do your people know Vlenter fever?"

"No, I don't think so. Though we could have another name for it."

"How about dust poisoning?"

"I've heard of it, but only among runners who get punctures in their protectives."

"And I can see your face has not withered from the cold and wind like mine has."

"No, I guess it hasn't."

"And is it true you can go anywhere within your dome and even to another dome at any time you choose without restriction?"

"To a certain extent, I s'pose. Of course, things like traveling from one Glass to another are a little restricted-- y'know, travel permits and background checks and such, but yeah, within a Glass travel is pretty much unrestricted." Jesse corrected the truck for a gradual turn in the road.

"And if you really want to, you can sit under a covering and watch the sky and clouds through the dome without going blind?"

"Yeah, if that's your thing, sure."

"Well," Aron said, "I would trade everything I have for any of that."

"Hold up just a tick. I still don't know who you are or where the hell you're from. Yet, you seem to know everything about the world I live in."

Aron took another sip of his Dry. "How can you not know about me and my people? Our leaders and your leaders talk and trade. Our people have even worked together in the past. Without us, this road you are driving along could never have been built."

Jesse gave Aron a suspicious look. "Before tonight I'd never heard of anybody living outside the Glass. And nobody I know, except maybe the odd crazy man piped up on hashish, has ever mentioned anything about anybody living outside. Didn't think it possible. Temperature it is right now, you should be dead and frozen solid. Temperature it is during the day you should be dead and burnt to a crisp. And yet here you are, looking as healthy as me and talking my language. I'm still not entirely sure you aren't some version of a preacher's torment come to punish me for my sins."

"That is very strange." Aron sounded genuinely baffled. "We are both of the same stock; it is a basic thing taught in our schools. The Settlers' came, this world was not what they thought it to be, there was a difference of opinion and then a rift, some were asked to leave the domes, and here we are today, many, many centuries later."

"Well, I know this world wasn't quite what was expected, and the First Ones didn't have the resources to leave, but why don't I know about you? Why haven't I been taught this? Why weren't you fighting alongside us in the Boresk conflicts?"

"I do not know." There were red patches on the skin beneath Aron's eyes. "But I am sure what I have been taught is the truth. Your scanners say I am a human male, do they not?"

"Well, they say you're ninety-nine point-nine percent human male."

"If that were outside of their margin for error, I truly doubt you would have let me on board."

"Maybe so, but how the hell can you walk the clay?"

Aron shrugged. The bits of arm visible outside his cloak were thin and sinewy. "It is another basic thing. When the Settlers came they had special doctors amongst them, doctors who could change the structure of our human code. That was what the difference of opinion happened over. Some thought we should engineer our bodies to coexist within this environment, but others said doing so was a sin against Nature. Eventually, after a prolonged argument, the supporters of those who thought changing our code constituted a sin won out and our ancestors were exiled from the domes, to wherever they could find to survive, unprotected from the elements."

"So now where do you live?"

"In caverns, well below the surface of the planet. Some of us live in caves within the mountains, also."

So much information and Jessie didn't think he understood half of it. "And your people've lived there ever since?"

"Yes, Jessie. We need shelter like that to avoid the harsh sun. Unfortunately, we can only walk above the ground at night. The engineering of our ancestors' bodies was never completed. They were, if you like, the first batch."

"But I thought you said you had special doctors, who could, what'd you say, change your code?"

Aron let out a sharp laugh. "Those doctors were not exiled with my ancestors. We do not know what happened to them, but we do know they could not perform such changes on themselves, only on the strings of data contained within a man's emission and within a woman's egg. And even that was a difficult process and required special machines and environments where nothing could contaminate their work. Apparently it took them many, many attempts to engineer my ancestors successfully."

Silence filled the cabin for a minute. Jesse didn't know what to say. Could any of this be true? But there Aron was, drinking from a bottle he had handed to him, and talking as if all he said was undeniable fact.

"Let me ask you a question, Jesse," Aron said. "What would happen if you did not have this truck to shield you from the cold?"

Jesse snorted. "If I stepped outside this truck right now without my protectives on I'd be dead sharp quick."

"And yet you and other 'runners' continually risk yourselves transporting cargo between domes. Why, Jesse? What makes you do this?"

That was a personal question. Jesse wasn't sure he felt like answering it. Instead he asked, "Why aren't your clothes and boots all frosted up?"

"Varel hide is a very useful thing."

"Varels? Now you're really telling tall tales." Jesse gave Aron a long look.

The redness on Aron's face had spread and beads of perspiration littered his forehead and upper lip.

"Hey, are you all right?" Jesse said. "Maybe you shouldn't have any more of that Dry. It might not agree with you."

"I am fine," Aron said, holding his bottle with both hands. "I am just a little warm."

"Okay, if you say so." Jesse turned the temperature down a bit. It was already on the chilly side. "But Varels? Varels are just characters in stories told by old men at hashish bars."

"Where do you think characters for stories come from? They have to be based on something, do they not?"

"I s'pose."

"Varels are creatures perfectly adapted to the harshness of this environment." Aron's voice sounded a little strained. "Able to survive both the days and nights of this world. Our makers researched them extensively when creating us, or so the tradition goes. They are not easy to hunt, and some think they have thoughts like men, but their hides are so valuable for protection that we do take a few, when we need to."

"And they are where, exactly?"

"They live mainly in the hills and mountains. They fear us, and you, and especially in the last few generations have retreated far away from any human settlements."

As much information as Aron readily gave out, it still felt like the real question wasn't being answered. Jesse tapped his fingers on the steering wheel and said, "So how come I've never seen one of you before? Sure, you live underground, but I've been running the lanes more than half my life and I've never seen even a glimpse of someone like you. What do you even call yourselves?"

"We call ourselves humans. What else would we call ourselves? And tell me, how often do you stray from the road?"

"Point." Jesse corrected the truck for another long straight. "But still, it's not like I drive blind. I love it out here."

"If we never come near the road and you only ever drive on the road, in darkness, then how likely is it that you will see us?"

"Yeah, yeah, you're full of answers. But you say our governments talk."

Silence, again. Aron stared at the control panel, then said, "We are still abominations to your government. Unnatural, men who are not men. Your government would prefer nothing to do with us. The fact we have survived in exile is a slap to their faces. But we have access to resources that you cannot have access to, and that we would not let you have access to. The caverns and caves we control have things in them that your society considers very valuable. We trade these for things that are valuable to our society, building materials, basic medicines and, occasionally, old teaching texts. But we do not stray from our place any more than we need to. It is a fragile peace, and war is the last thing we want."

"So what exactly were you doing on the road then? It wasn't like you leaped out of the way when you saw me coming."

"I already told you what I was doing."

"Hitchhiking isn't exactly an all-inclusive answer now, is it?"

Aron didn't say anything. He began to unbutton his cloak, mouth open and eyes wide.

"You sure don't look okay, bud," Jesse said. He turned the heater down further and began twisting the brake key.

"No, please do not stop," Aron said, in between gasps of air. "I will be fine."

Jesse shook his head. "I don't think you will. Seems to me the heat doesn't agree with you."

"Please," Aron said. "I want to see a dome. I need to know what it is like to live under the Glass."

"I'm sorry." Jesse meant it, too. He actually found himself liking the boy, try as he might to find a reason to distrust him. "But I can't do that. If the heat here in the truck does this to you, then there is no way you could survive under the Glass, short of living in a freezer."

"No! I have to see what it is like. It must be so wonderful, being able to see the sky during daylight. Please." Aron clutched at Jesse's arm, but his wheezing intensified and he slumped back in his seat, hand massaging his throat. "Please."

The last barely made its way out of Aron's mouth. Jesse pulled the brake-key full-circle and the truck came to a sideways halt. He reached behind him, cycled the lock and grabbed Aron by the cloak. The only sound he could hear was the rasp of Aron's breath. The boy struggled weakly, but Jesse wrapped his arms tight around him, dragged him into the lock and deposited him inside.

Aron looked up, both terror and pleading in his wide eyes. He moved his lips, but no words came out.

"Wanting to live under the glass is not worth dying for, Aron," Jesse said, prying the bottle of Dry from the boy's fingers. "And as much as I would like you to keep this bottle, it will explode the moment I open the outside doors."

Jesse stepped back into the cab. Then he closed both inside lock-doors and began depressurization. Aron just lay there, seemingly nothing more than a puddle of clothes, no movement visible on the lockviewer. The boy better not die. That would be just Jesse's luck. Meet someone from a branch of humanity his government neglected to tell anybody about, then watch the poor sod die because Jesse was stupid enough to let him face an environment so alien it might as well be another planet. And the boy was just so damn open and innocent and likeable.

"C'mon," Jesse muttered. The cycle was nearly complete. He could see nothing that indicated breath.

The green light above the gauge lit up and Jesse twisted the outside lock-key. Frigid air rushed in, immediately frosting the viewer over. Seconds later visual feed was lost. Jesse cursed silently. He'd been meaning to fix the lens-shield for months, but kept putting it off. Hopefully voice feed still worked.

"Aron," he said, reciting holy words in his mind. "Can you hear me? If you can, don't say anything, because I won't be able to hear you. Just walk around to one of the sideviewers."

He glanced at the monitors. Nothing. He repeated himself into the mike.

A person appeared on the screen, staggering, but alive. Jesse's heart double-tapped. He pumped his fist.

"I thought I was dead, Jesse," Aron said. He gathered his cloak about himself and sat, cross-legged and barefoot, on the road. "But here I am, alive, but never to see the inside of a dome. Never to see what you call home."

"You've already seen what I call home, Aron." Jesse couldn't wipe the smile of relief from his face. "You've sat in it. Jesse's Dream. This is my home."

Aron nodded slowly. "I see."

"You've got the whole planet, kid. I wish I could walk the clay like you. You can't live under the glass. So what?"

Aron didn't respond. He pulled the hood of the cloak over his head.

"Tell you what," Jesse said. "I'm pretty sure I know a way to store bottles of Dry so they won't explode outside. I'll bring some for you when I come back this way."

Aron's head rose. The hood of the cloak made it impossible to see his face. "But I have nothing to give you in return."

"Yes you do. You have knowledge and history which I have never known. If you promise to tell me everything you can about your people and your life out here under the clay then I will bring you as much Dry as you want. And maybe some other things as well."

"You promise?"

"I promise. You just get someone to check the Dry before you drink it. Don't want that to be what was disagreeing with you."

"It is a deal, friend." Aron stood.

And Jesse drove off, watching the shape in the middle of the road until the bend of the horizon removed it from his rearviewer. He would dream of unfrozen faces and thoughtful eyes for many sleeps. It was only when Aron was gone from sight that Jesse realized the radio reception was back.

###

The recent increase in tension between Boresk and Litchni-- although they were both light-years away--meant that everybody was pinching their pennies. Scared of war coming back to visit.

But, after two weeks, Jesse finally had a run. He was at his regular bar on the edges of Simpton nursing something a little stronger than a Dry when someone clapped a hand on his shoulder.

He turned. Cyrus Walkabee, another runner, looked down at him with a peculiar expression on his face.

"I had the strangest thing happen to me today, between Porter and here," Cyrus said, his eyes darting from side to side.

"Oh?"

"Thought I was about to see the preacher's torment, I did."

"Really?"

"There's this shape smack-dab in the middle of the road. I think maybe it's a refoe, so I put the brakes on hard. But this is a man's shape wearing a cloak. I nearly had a heart rupture."

Jesse raised the glass to his lips to conceal a smile. "And did you?"

"Course not," Cyrus said. "I'm made of tougher stuff than that. So anyway, I stop completely, mostly sideways and the shape, calm as you like, walks up to the sideviewer, pulls the hood of its cloak down and taps on the viewer. And it's a man's face, no ice or nothing on it."

"Wow." Jesse raised an eyebrow, his smile widening behind the glass.

"And I'm saying as many holy words as I know and the man-shape taps on the glass again and then I remember to turn on the external feed and I say 'hello' in a whisper like a fool and do you know what he says?" Cyrus' hands shook and his face was completely white.

"What did he say?"

"He says into the monitor, serious as you like, 'Ask Jesse where my bottles of Dry are'. And I say 'what?' and he repeats himself, real slow, 'Ask Jesse where my damn bottles of Dry are'. And then he pulls his hood back up, turns and walks off the road onto the clay and just like that he disappears into the night."

Jesse burst into laughter. "Sit down; let me buy you a drink. Sounds like you need it."

With a look at Jesse halfway between confused and suspicious, Cyrus sat on the stool next to him and gave his order to the barkeep. Once Cyrus had a drink in his hand he said, "Tell me what I saw, Jesse."

"Clay mirage?"

"Don't play like a preacher's wife with me."

Jesse smiled. "How about we talk tomorrow night? You can come with me on my run. I've got some Dry to drop off on the way."]]> Sun, 01 Mar 2015 19:44:39 +0000 http://forum.sfreader.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=11&PID=11&title=2nd-place-dry-ice-by-samuel-mae#11 <![CDATA[2009 Winners : 3rd PLace - Technically, Males are Dummies by Robe]]> http://forum.sfreader.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=10&PID=10&title=3rd-place-technically-males-are-dummies-by-robe#10 Author: SFReader
Subject: 3rd PLace - Technically, Males are Dummies by Robe
Posted: Mar-01-2015 at 7:42pm

Technically, Males are Dummies
by Robert J. Sullivan

I was sitting on a bench enjoying the spring day in the park when a man walked into the "No Parking" sign across the path and fell down. I got up to see if he was okay.

"Are you hurt?" I asked.

"Only my dignity," he responded without looking up.

"Well, that'll grow back, Dan."

He looked up. "Glenn!"

"You used to do that in college. You've got to leave enough RAM to operate the system while you're girl-watching."

He looked back at the jogger and held up a hand for me to pull him up. "She was spectacular, wasn't she?"

I pulled him to his feet. "She was hot. What are you doing here?"

He dusted himself off. He didn't look much different than he had in college, khakis, oxford cloth shirt and a haircut he must have done himself. "I never left. I was in the middle of getting my Master's and some guys and I were talking one day and the next thing I knew, we'd started our own company."

"What do you do?"

"Come on, I'll show you. It's pretty cool."

He led me out of the park and we talked about people we knew in college and what they were doing now. We crossed the street and went into an anonymous reclaimed industrial building and took the elevator to the second floor. At the end of the hall he opened a door with a sign that said "Infinite Fashion". I had my doubts. Dan Winters knew less about fashion than a cow does quantum physics.

A big old room with all the trappings of a high tech start-up: partitions separating work areas decorated with the latest sci-fi hot interests, lots of guys in their early 20's walking around in casual clothes carrying coffee cups and energy drinks, a few hunched over work stations, a few young women scattered around. Dan led me to a separate room with his name on the door; he was a mover and shaker, not a grunt.

He had a metal desk with three screens and two keyboards, pads, pens and coffee cups. The only real oddity in the room was a tailor's dummy near the big windows. I had to ask.

"Why the dummy?"

Dan was already at his desk banging keys. He came back from wherever he was in the computer. "Huh? Oh, that's a mannequin. Technically, female ones are mannequins and the males are dummies."

"And the reason you have one in your office is ?..?"

Silence.

"Dan?"

He came back from outer space. "Here, I'll show you. Come here."

He walked over to the mannequin and made a sweeping gesture from the floor up. "Look."

I went over and looked at his hand, then looked closer. There was a slight unusual sheen around his hand. I reached out and felt something slick on his hand.

"Remember that Japanese company that invented a poncho that made you invisible? You could see what was behind the person wearing it. A cloak of invisibility." He cackled. Of course, he had been into role-playing games.

"There are much better materials now than what they were using for it. I was talking to some engineers who were working on similar stuff and we started kicking around what else we could do with it. We decided fashion was perfect. Here, let me show you." He went back to the keyboard and started banging away. He nodded toward the mannequin.

The mannequin was wearing a business suit, then a cocktail dress. The cocktail dress changed color, fabric, cut, and design, as Dan hit the Down key and Return. He nodded toward it and said, "Take a look."

I got closer and walked around it, then leaned over until my nose was almost pressed to the fabric. The illusion wasn't perfect only because I knew it was there. "Wow."

"It has photo-receptors built into the fabric. The Japanese one captures what's on one side and projects in on the other. This captures a pattern and projects it onto the cloth, taking into account the shape underneath it. In that way, it's a little like motion capture.

"I took some of the stuff I did in designing games and brought it to the party, bit-mapping and the like. We have to account for different lighting, textures, and fabrics as well as the design changes.

"The great thing is that it's down-loadable from a cell phone. Want the latest design out of New York or Italy? A few taps on your phone and you're wearing it. We've got deals with almost fifty designers and signing up more every day."

"Aren't they cutting into their own profits?"

"What they're cutting out are expenses. No ordering five hundred bolts of fabric and having the design die. Same cost for a success and a failure, but you can reach a lot more buyers. They can put the money they save into advertising and reach more people."

"How much does it cost?" I asked.

He told me and it was a jolt. "We may sell it at a loss, the same way they sell safety razors. The money's in the downloads. We'll start with a hundred or so designs, a hundred fabrics and a thousand colors. The wearer can even modify the download herself. They can have a thousand outfits at their fingertips."

###

Dan was right, it was a revolution. After the initial introduction, he started licensing it out and there was an explosion of variety. He took the company public and made money by the truckload.

I didn't get this from him personally, I followed his exploits on the net and magazine covers, with supplemental information from mutual friends. I wished him well.

The next time I was in the neighborhood, I was doing some serious girl-watching and wondered how many of Dan's garments I was seeing. I had some time and decided to see if he was still in his same office.

He was but the place was different. A designer had gone through the place and before the blitzkrieg was over, the office was a marvel of modern design, with leather, wood, fabrics and metal accents. I introduced myself to the receptionist, another marvel of the latest in Scandinavian design. She gave me a look from the area of the Arctic Circle but let me by after buzzing Dan.

He gave me the big hello and we spent time catching up on "Have you seen?." And "Did you hear about?.." He'd had a makeover similar to the one the office had had, from fabulous suit to expensive haircut. Since his life was his work, it didn't take him long to start bubbling about his latest project.

"Version 2.0 has multiple layers. Remember those toys you used to get as a kid, a little card, you turned it one way and it was the Statue of Liberty and the other way, it was a dog?"

"Yeah, they've been around forever."

"But not for clothes. Helga, the receptionist," he nodded toward the front of the building, "gave me the idea. She convinced me to wear a suit when I'm talking to the backers, the money guys, but I spend most of my time with the tech guys. To them, a suit means somebody from the last century. I'd get no respect."

He looked constipated, until I remembered he looked that way whenever he talked about areas outside his area of expertise. Like girls, for example.

"People judge you by your clothes. Suppose you have an engineer and a banker in the same room. How do you keep credibility with both of them at the same time?" He dug his phone out of his pocket, punched buttons and he was dressed in khakis and an oxford cloth shirt. I noticed he'd included a pocket protector for the classic look.

"It's cute, but I don't think it's quite the game changer of your last invention."

"Oh, I think it could be bigger." He hit some more keys and I was treated to a view of two pencils and a pad at a very close range. He took a pair of glasses off his desk and the view on the screen swooped as he replaced his own glasses. I was looking at myself on the screen. I raised a hand and the wrong hand went up on the screen.

"The glasses are wifi. It's a way to demonstrate the effect for the suits." He punched another button on his phone and said, "Helga, would you bring me those cost estimates on production? Thanks."

"Have you ever heard a parent say to their kid, 'You aren't leaving this house dressed like that'? Problem solved. One of the things parents worry about is some dirty old man ogling their kid. You know, like us.

"This has levels: stranger, friend, whatever number you want to punch in. It works with people who are less than one degree apart. With everybody having a cell phone, the system identifies a body in the immediate area and pings the phone. If it gets a 'friend' number in response, it changes the display. It takes less than a second."

The door opened and Helga came in with some manila folders. She gave me a cool nod, Dan a smile that came from a much warmer climate and asked him if he was going out for lunch. While they were discussing it, I glanced down at the screen and my elbow slipped off the arm of the chair. I wondered what other settings there were beyond stranger and friend. My guesses were Brazilian Beach or Las Vegas Nightclub. She left and I managed to get my eyes off the screen. Dan had turned an iridescent pink.

"I think she likes me," he said. "It keeps me going."

###

She liked him well enough to marry him. Later, it became apparent she was more fond of his money than him. The half of her that wasn't Scandinavian was 100% shark and she hired one of her relatives as a lawyer for the divorce. Dan had to sell his share of the business to get rid of her, so others benefited more from the boom in his products than he did. Mutual friends started referring to him as 'poor Dan' after his capital disappeared in a couple of failed start-ups on other people's ideas.

I found him in the park, his laptop next to him. It was a beautiful summer day and the place was filled with strolling workers and joggers, all taking in the warmth of the day.

"Dan?"

He'd been staring off into space and struggled back to give me a distracted welcome. He was wearing his old uniform of khakis and long sleeved blue shirt. I think he'd gone back to cutting his own hair.

We made awkward hellos. I expressed what sympathy I could for his misfortune, which wasn't a lot. Guys aren't good at that, there's not a lot of social convention on the subject.

"I've become a cynic," he said.

"You had a rotten divorce. That's gotta color your outlook."

He shook his head. "That just made me a skeptic. I finally figured out I've always been a romantic. I wanted a woman to love me for myself, for the contents of my head, quirks and all.

"Do you know Polynesian women used to wear a flower in front of one ear if they were married and in front of the other ear if they were available? Version 2.0 created that here. It's helpful for guys, we aren't good at subtle clues, or even obvious ones. I spent two hours hitting on a girl in college only to have someone tell me later she was gay. Wasted my time and probably annoyed her.

"Some background. A couple of years ago, when I had money, I thought Helga would be impressed if I bought a sports car. I went into a dealership and they were all over me. I was wearing my usually clothes, bad haircut, I looked like the guy that came to fix the copying machine. I couldn't understand why and pressured the salesman to tell me how he knew I could afford the car.

"He had a gadget that pinged the newcomer's phone, looks them up and does a credit scan. He knew how much money I had before the door closed behind me."

"Dan, everybody knows how much money you had. It was in Forbes."

He smiled but his heart wasn't in it. "I sat in this park when the divorce decree came through and hit the button that transferred the money to Helga. I was looking at a couple of girls across the way. Within 15 minutes, both of their outfits changed from casual and attractive to business formal.

"I'd fallen out of the category of Men They Were Interested In to Men They Would Sell Something To. The app that detects income has gone wide. I didn't make enough money for them to be interested."

He looked over my shoulder and said, "What's that girl wearing?" I heard him typing as I turned to look.

"Bicycle shorts and a tube top," I said as I turned back.

The girl passed us and he flipped his computer around so I could see her jogging away wearing her sweat suit.

"Everybody makes choices about who's an appropriate partner. That's who they're interested in, not the rest of the crowd. They may be too tall, too short, wrong ethnic background, wrong social status, not enough money.

"I've invented the burka." He snapped his laptop closed. He looked depressed. "I should just join a monastery."]]> Sun, 01 Mar 2015 19:42:55 +0000 http://forum.sfreader.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=10&PID=10&title=3rd-place-technically-males-are-dummies-by-robe#10