All the Cats in Latvia

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And I'm home!  Exhausted, but home.

I seem to have dropped a day somewhere . . . no idea how.  Which means that I'll be finishing this in forty-four days rather than the forty-three originally scheduled.  Odd.

Oh well.  I've got a good one today.  It's called . . .

All the Cats in Latvia 

by

Michael Swanwick

 The cats of Riga are more fastidious than cats are elsewhere.  With their breakfasts they require tea – milk, but no sugar – and little napkins to wipe their whiskers with afterwards.  There’s a special fork they use to eat mice with, and a spoon that’s only for canned tuna.  Though they control the city, and some say the entire nation, they do it secretly so they won’t have to deal with humans constantly petitioning them for favors.

They granted a favor once, and that was enough for them.

The one exception occurred in 1909 when a Latvian merchant was refused membership in the Great Guild, which at the time was controlled by Germans.  Now this merchant was very kind to his cats of which he had a great number due entirely to his refusal to have them neutered.  For this and other reasons the cats of Riga were kindly disposed toward him.

Thus, when the merchant begged his cats for help, the oldest and scrawniest of the lot stretched his paws one by one, bit at the claws for a while, and finally said, “Oh, well.  So long as it’s no more than ten minutes’ work.”  And he ordered the younger cats to go up on the roof and turn around the statues adorning its two steeples.

The statues were of two proud cats, feet together on the steeple-peaks and tails held high.  When they were turned around, their backsides faced directly toward the Great Guild.  Since their backs were arched, they looked like they were spraying the German merchants who had rejected their building’s owner.

Businessmen are not easily intimidated.  They can stand up staunchly to threats of violence and economic sanctions.  But no man can long withstand the laughter of an entire city.  The Latvian merchant was installed in the Great Guild, the statues were turned back, and all was well.

For a time.

But then the merchant’s nondescript dumpling of a wife died and a flashy younger woman caught his eye.  In no time at all, the two were married and – a new wife being, as the saying goes, like a new broom – she set out to sweep away all of the dust and clutter and cobwebs of his old life to make way for the new.  The merchant, who might have been expected to know better, was dazzled by his new mistress and did anything and everything he was told.  Among the many things that disappeared were all but one of the merchant’s cats – and that one she had neutered.

Cats are not merciful creatures, nor are they proportionate in their revenge.  The cats of Riga took away their protection from the merchant and the city in which he lived.  Worse, they spoke to all the cats of Latvia and got them to withdraw their protection from the entire country.

Two world wars ensued, and afterwards Latvia was absorbed into the Soviet Union.  Only then did the cats of Riga decided that there had been punishment enough and return to their usual complacent ways.

This is a story that two kittens named Orli and Akira told Sabina Hahn when she was a little girl.  Later, Sabina told it to me, and now I’ve told it to you.  So you know it’s a true tale.

Just don’t tell anyone I told you, okay?  The cats of Riga would be displeased if word of what they did got around.

*

Sunflowers and Abstract Dancers

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Still on the road!  But rust never sleeps and neither do I.  Here's today's story, the fortieth in a six-week series of 43.

Abstract Dancers

by

Michael Swanwick

When the first crystal lattice quantum light chips became available, Joshua Ott immediately saw their potential: It would be possible at last to paint in three dimensions.

He set out to create an app. The major corporations would all be working on 3-D Paint programs, of course. So he concentrated on making something a non-artist could use. Move your fingers over the pad and – voila! Slim and twisting shapes that would merge and separate, multiply and evanesce with preternatural grace. Varying speed changed the shapes, moving nearer and further from the pad made them shift from color to color, from beauty to beauty. Once set in motion they would continue moving rhythmically forever.

Abstract dancers.

All well and good. But when Ott was writing the code he chanced to read a particularly abstruse mathematics paper and the extreme effort it took to comprehend its implications kicked his mind into hyperdrive. He was struck by what can only be called a once-in-a-lifetime idea. Feverishly, he embedded it into the application.

When he was done, Ott hit the patent app on his iMedia and then slapped the patent-pending Beta onto the Web for open-source testing. A decade ago, this would have taken weeks, even months; the technology had improved to such a degree that now he did it without thinking.

Then he hooked up a hologram generator, flicked off the lights, and played the Abstract Dancers app for the first time in high-rez. Hoping against hope that this first rendering wouldn’t be unbearably crude. And it wasn’t.

It was mesmerizing.

It was more than mesmerizing.

It was . . .

Long hours later, he became aware that his wife was shaking him. She looked alarmed. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “I came in here and you were lying on the floor, practically catatonic.”

Ott sat up. He looked at his iMedia. Its batteries were drained. A fugitive memory of dancing shapes, impossible to grasp, ached within his mind. “It was . . . just too beautiful,” he said. “I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t think of anything else.” A terrible thought occurred to him. “And if the batteries hadn’t been low, it would have caught you too.”

Abruptly he remembered that he’d put the program up on the Web. “My God! I put it up on the Web! I’ve got to take it down before –”

But by then the app had already gone viral.

*

Above:  Here's a good example of why I love living in the city.  Every year, an eccentric family in my neighborhood grows sunflowers in a gap in the sidewalk.  The name of that family?  Well ... (cough! cough!).

Robots!

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Annnnd . . .  I'm on the road again.  Got an appointment outside of Pittsburgh for 2:30 p.m.  So I got up far too early this morning in order to write the following.

Merrick is five years old, and he just became a big brother.  Congratulations, Merrick!  I'm sure you'll be a great one.

Robots!

by

Michael Swanwick

The three laws of robotics are:

1.  All robots must be very, very cool.

2.  Robots must be able to go places and do things that human beings cannot.

3.  But they must always be Merrick Hanna’s friends and do whatever he tells them to do.

Merrick Hanna made up those rules, and very good rules they were too.  Especially the third one.   Robots all liked him anyway, which was why they let him invent rules for them.

One night after Merrick went to bed but before he fell asleep, a robot dragon lifted the roof off of the house and stuck its head in his bedroom.  “Wanna go flying?” it asked.  There was a saddle on the robot’s back and Merrick climbed up onto it.  Together they flew all the way to the Moon.  It was an interesting place and there were lots of robots there.

But when he got home his parents were waiting for him.  “You know you’re not supposed to leave the house without asking permission first,” his mother said.

“Especially after your bedtime,” his father agreed.  “No dessert for you tomorrow.”

Merrick was sad, of course.  But the very next day he heard a tapping at the window and when he opened it, there was a gigantic robot squid in his back yard.  “Let’s go play,” the robot squid said.  It picked him up with one of its metal tentacles and put him down in the control room inside its head.

They went galumphing across the countryside.  Then they came to the ocean and plunged right in.  Deep, deep they went into the darkest part of the ocean.  There were lots of robots there of course, but also strange crabs and fish that lit up like a passenger train whooshing by in the night.  Merrick liked them a lot.

But when he got home, his parents were waiting.  “What did we tell you about leaving the house without asking first?” his father said.

“We’re very disappointed in you,” his mother said.

So Merrick was sent to bed early that night. 

The next day there was a knock on the back door.  When Merrick went to answer it, he saw an enormous robot army standing there.  There were robot soldiers and robot cowboys on robot horses and robot dinosaurs and robot elephants and giant robots shaped like giant robots – they were the best.  A robot ninja said, “We’re going to fight a war against the monsters.  Do you want to come along?”

Almost Merrick said yes.  But then he shook his head.  “I have to ask my parents,” he said.  Then, “Hey, Mom.  Hey, Dad.  Can I go along with the robot army to fight a war against the monsters?”

“Well . . .” his father said.

“Since you asked nicely,” his mother said, “you may.”

*

Inception and Time's Silent Daughter

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I saw Inception today and believe it or not, it's not bad.  All the reviews say it sucks.  But that's just because the reviewers are baffled by it.  Plus it has a lame title.  Why on earth didn't they call it The Dream Thief or some variant thereof?

I won't do a movie review.  But I will observe that there were five levels of reality revealed onscreen, and there was never any doubt as to which one the viewer was watching.  Well done, moviemaking people.

As to what's going on (other than the obvious "surprise" revelation at the end, I mean) . . . the best I can do is to refer you to Gary Westfahl's review on Locus Online.  No computers, no cell phones, no televisions, no product placement.  Is Nolan saying that only in our dreams are we free?

It's not The Matrix.  But it's well worth seeing.



And today's story is . . .

Silent Daughter of Time

by

Michael Swanwick

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard 
   

Are sweeter: therefore, ye soft pipes, play on

            -- John Keats

Her given name was Madison. Her friends all called her Maddie, because she was unpretentious.  Her father called her Madizon the Amazon, because she was athletic.  All of which went to prove the insuffiency of names, however, for she was also good at science and had been given no variant name for that, and she also threw pots under no particular name whatsoever.

One day she saw an episode of Mythbusters examining the notion that recordings could be pulled from ancient pottery.  The idea was that vases thrown on a potting wheel and inscribed with a fine wire would preserve vibrations picked up by the wire on the clay itself.  So that millennia later the vases might be put on a turntable and played back with a phonograph needle – or more likely a laser beam and some fancy software.  Great idea.  But after repeated attempts to make such a thing the best the crew were able to come up with was a squeak.  “Busted,” they concluded.

The show got her to thinking.  Perhaps you couldn’t record on pottery made by traditional methods.  But what if you chose the materials and methods specifically for that purpose?  She went to the Pennsylvania Academy of Art & Design and after talking to the people in their industrial design department, was granted use of a 3-D printer.  Then she took a scan of a Greek amphora and mathematically erased its handles to free up more area.

The trickiest part of the project was finding a program that would convert an audio file to the three-dimensional groove of a traditional vinyl record and then writing the necessary code to wrap that groove around and around the surface of her urn.  That was a lot of work.  But at last it was done.

She put a great deal of thought into what she would say and leave behind for some future civilization to discover or, as it might be, not.  Then she set the printer to work.

In short order she had her urn.  Very delicately, she centered it on a turntable, slapped on a laser stylus, and listened.  “Hello,” her own voice said, “my name is . . .”

She cut the sound.

The urn placed third in a local arts competition.  It would easily have taken first place if anybody had known about the recording hidden on its surface.  But she never told a soul.  Not then and not for the rest of her life.

Young women have their secrets, and their right to keep them private must be respected.

*

Bright Kitty Socks

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Yesterday I went to the main branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia to look up and read a Murray Leinster story which  I believe may have been an influence on R. A. Lafferty.  It was fun.  I'll probably write an essay on it someday.

I also wrote . . .

Bright Kitty Socks

by

Michael Swanwick

It was one of those weekend events where management gets together in a park and holds team-building exercises and everybody get to learn what their color and season and natural fabric and spirit animals are so they can gain new insight into the work environment in order to loft the corporation up into new realms of profitability.  Since the events hadn’t started yet, everybody was clustered about the bear claws and hot coffee.

“Has anyone seen Linda Ocasio?” Ron asked.  “It’s not like her to be late for one of these things.”

“Who’s to say what’s like her and what’s not?” Denise said.  “Have you seen those bright kitty socks of hers?  And those spiral earrings?”

“Yeah, but – what the heck’s that?!”

It was a bright red biplane that circled the park low, then spiraled slowly higher.  “Who on earth would –?” Clara said.  And then, answering her own question.  “Linda, of course.”

Everybody was staring upward.  Some pointed.  Others shielded their eyes from the sun.  Murmurs went up from the crowd:

“It has to be – ”

“Do you remember the time that –?”

“But why would she –?”

And then there was somebody out on the wing.  Walking toward the edge.  A gasp went up from the crowd as it tumbled into space.

Parachute silks blossomed.  There was a collective sigh of relief.

 “Definitely Linda,” Kyle said.  “But why?”

“Remember that book?  What Color Is Your Parachute?” Susan said.  “That has to be it.”

“No,” Jon murmured, “I think it’s a metaphor about confidently leaping into the unknown.”

“Or maybe it’s about the economic downturn?” Chuck said.  When everybody turned to look at him, he blushed.  “You know – making the best of sinking expectations?”

By now Linda had tucked, touched, tumbled, and stood.  She started gathering in the parachute.

Susan was the first to her.  “It was about the book, wasn’t it?” she said.  “The one about parachutes.  That’s why you showed up this way.

Linda Ocasio knew which book her co-worker meant.  But she smiled and shook her head.

“Oh no,” she said.  “I just did it because I could.” 

*

Keensight corrected

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I wrote yesterday's story in the final minutes before midnight and when I'd posted it staggered off to bed.  It was a long day and a long drive and a lot of things to do and I was exhausted.

Then I woke up this morning and re-read the story and it made no sense.  I can almost remember what I had in mind, but not quite.

So here it is again, with an improved ending.  This is why I always let stories sit on the desk for a week to cool before sending them out to the magazines.

Keensight

by

Michael Swanwick

The older he grew, the better his eyesight.  Ian Irving had no explanation for that.  It just was.  His optometrist had no explanation for it either – and it rather frightened him.  One year Irving’s vision was 20/20, a few years later it was 20/10.  And it kept getting better.  20/8, 20/5, 20/3, 20/1 . . .  There didn’t seem to be any limit to how much his eyesight could improve.

By the time Irving was in his nineties his vision had grown so acute that it became a problem.  He took to wearing blue-glass welder’s goggles, even at night, just to keep from being dazzled.

And then rejuvenation was invented.  For a fee no more than would buy a weekend at a luxury spa, anybody’s body could be restored to the health and strength and sexual vigor of a twenty-year-old.  To say nothing of the good looks.  It took no time whatsoever for everybody to realize that this was tantamount to immortality.  And only three decades after that for it to become obvious that when people keep getting born and nobody dies of natural causes, you’ve got a serious overpopulation problem.  Resources like space and water and food quickly grew scarce.

Twenty years into the Population Bloom, Irving was working for the Mont-Mégantic Observatory as a human research telescope, confirming observations made by their other land-based instruments.  By the time the Great Starvation was over and the world population had crashed from its height of five trillion to a more sustainable seventeen billion, the Canadian government had declared him a Living National Treasure, second only to the Hubble VII which, though built by their vassal territories to the south, was a wholly-owned property of l'Agence spatiale canadienne.

His eyesight continued to improve.

Civilizations rose and fell behind him as Irving’s sight pierced further and further into the universe.  He saw galaxies a-borning and the first stars coalescing out of primal smoke and gases.  He saw all the way back to the Big Bang and then, one glorious day, deep into what came before it.

Not long after, Death came for Irving.  He’d outlived everything else on the planet by then, so it was his turn.

But when the Great Anthropomorphization came to where Irving should have been, he was nowhere to be seen.  There was only a note which read:  Did you really think I wouldn’t see you coming?

*

Six to go!

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I'm fresh back to Pittsburgh (or maybe stale back would be the right term) and just eight minutes ago finished today's story.  Eep.  That close to failure.

Nevertheless, here is is.  Now to sleep.

Keensight

by

Michael Swanwick

The older he grew, the better his eyesight.  Ian Irving had no explanation for that.  It just was.  His optometrist had no explanation for it either – it rather frightened him.  One year Irving’s vision was 20/20, a few years later it was 20/10.  And it kept getting better.  20/8, 20/5, 20/3, 20/1 . . .  There didn’t seem to be any limit to how much his eyesight could improve.

By the time Irving was in his nineties his vision had grown so acute that it became a problem.  He took to wearing blue-glass welder’s goggles just to keep his sight down to crystal clarity.

And then rejuvenation was invented.  For a fee no more than would buy a weekend at a luxury spa, anybody’s body could be restored to the health and strength and sexual vigor of a twenty-year-old.  To say nothing of the good looks.  It took almost no time whatsoever for everybody to realize that this was tantamount to immortality.  And only three decades after that for it to become obvious that when people keep getting born and nobody dies of natural causes, you’ve got a serious overpopulation problem.  Resources like space and water and food quickly grew scarce.

Twenty years into the Population Bloom, Irving was working for the Mont-Mégantic Observatory as a human research telescope, confirming observations made by their other land-based instruments.  By the time the Great Starvation was over and the world population had crashed from its height of five trillion to a more sustainable seventeen billion, the Canadian government had declared him a Living National Treasure, second only to the Hubble VII which, though built by their vassal territories to the south, was a wholly-owned property of CANSA.

His eyesight continued to improve.

Civilizations rose and fell behind him as Irving’s sight pierced further and further into the universe.  He saw galaxies a-borning and the first planets coalescing out of primal smoke and gases.  He saw all the way back to the Big Bang and then deep into what came before it.

Then one day Irving was approached by a man dressed in the traditional beaver hat and ice-worm silks of the Northern Empire.  “I wonder if you’d mind, sir,” the stranger said.  “I’d like to measure your absolute visual acuity.”  He held up what looked to be a an optical instrument which the police were later to determine contained both blinding lasers and eyeball-penetrating knives.

But Irving just smiled.  “Oh no you don’t,” he said.  “I can see right through you.”j

*