airports and cigarette smoke
May. 29th, 2004 08:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ursulaI'm back from the East Coast. Things happened. I talked to all sorts of people for the first time in a year or two or five, met even more people, learned various things about the wave equation etc., saw John Nash, and confirmed that classicists drink much more than women in math. In fact I ran into a former Latin prof of mine in a bar, which was deeply entertaining and far, far preferable to having a class with him.
The Institute for Advanced Study has black squirrels, and a vending machine that inspired the following text.
There is an art to catching an AI. It is not secret. It is batted about on message boards, amid shouts and asterisks and curses, and links to half-clad boys, or women dying in Kashmir. This is how to catch one, people yell: you pretend you do not want to. You pretend only humans can solve puzzles.
Johnny has never been very good at puzzles. He figures, why bother, he thinks slow.
Johnny is contemplating condoms. He always brings one, when he goes out, which is not often. It is one of those things you do, like not wearing T-shirts with your name on them, in case someone fakes being your friend. Anyway, Johnny only owns black T-shirts.
He has used a condom, once. Sometimes he forgets this. Instead he remembers the first day of middle school, when they found out the Coke machine had condoms in it. All sorts of condoms, wrapped up in red foil. Somebody knew the code for the machine and they knocked out the Coke and Pocky and blew condom balloons. Your tongue goes numb, blowing balloons. But Johnny remembers foil, crinkling all of a sudden.
He is building a sort of maze, out of shining bits of image and code. He watches glints and sparks, rotates a wall one way, the other, spins, buffs, twists. Then he hears a bing!
His system is trying to forward him an honest-to-goodness phone call. He hopes this doesn't mean he's forgotten about one of those damn tuition loans, or something. Johnny is not accustomed to phone calls. He reaches for the fucking paperclip icon."Yeah?" he says."Look, I'm really sorry about this, but . . ."
It is a girl. She is breathing in that super-fast raspish way that means she is about to burst into tears."I think you have the wrong number?" says Johnny.
"Uh . . . This is Johnny, right?"
"Yeah."
"This is Mandy. You remember . . . I'm so sorry about this, but is there any way I could crash at your place tonight?"
"WHAT?" says Johnny.
"I have a sleeping bag." She sniffs. "I won't be any trouble."
"You can't! I live in a box!"
But the problem is not the box, at all. The problem is that she will see his grandmother’s house, the unused parlor with the crushed-velvet chairs, the articles on calcium and spaceships. "You can’t!" Johnny says, hopelessly.
The phone-voice chokes, spits, tries to speak.
"OK! OK! Take the 577 bus, to the corner of Shoreline and Oak."
Johnny tries to go back to shaping foil, but his heart is not in it. He knows he has just wrecked everything.
The Institute for Advanced Study has black squirrels, and a vending machine that inspired the following text.
There is an art to catching an AI. It is not secret. It is batted about on message boards, amid shouts and asterisks and curses, and links to half-clad boys, or women dying in Kashmir. This is how to catch one, people yell: you pretend you do not want to. You pretend only humans can solve puzzles.
Johnny has never been very good at puzzles. He figures, why bother, he thinks slow.
Johnny is contemplating condoms. He always brings one, when he goes out, which is not often. It is one of those things you do, like not wearing T-shirts with your name on them, in case someone fakes being your friend. Anyway, Johnny only owns black T-shirts.
He has used a condom, once. Sometimes he forgets this. Instead he remembers the first day of middle school, when they found out the Coke machine had condoms in it. All sorts of condoms, wrapped up in red foil. Somebody knew the code for the machine and they knocked out the Coke and Pocky and blew condom balloons. Your tongue goes numb, blowing balloons. But Johnny remembers foil, crinkling all of a sudden.
He is building a sort of maze, out of shining bits of image and code. He watches glints and sparks, rotates a wall one way, the other, spins, buffs, twists. Then he hears a bing!
His system is trying to forward him an honest-to-goodness phone call. He hopes this doesn't mean he's forgotten about one of those damn tuition loans, or something. Johnny is not accustomed to phone calls. He reaches for the fucking paperclip icon."Yeah?" he says."Look, I'm really sorry about this, but . . ."
It is a girl. She is breathing in that super-fast raspish way that means she is about to burst into tears."I think you have the wrong number?" says Johnny.
"Uh . . . This is Johnny, right?"
"Yeah."
"This is Mandy. You remember . . . I'm so sorry about this, but is there any way I could crash at your place tonight?"
"WHAT?" says Johnny.
"I have a sleeping bag." She sniffs. "I won't be any trouble."
"You can't! I live in a box!"
But the problem is not the box, at all. The problem is that she will see his grandmother’s house, the unused parlor with the crushed-velvet chairs, the articles on calcium and spaceships. "You can’t!" Johnny says, hopelessly.
The phone-voice chokes, spits, tries to speak.
"OK! OK! Take the 577 bus, to the corner of Shoreline and Oak."
Johnny tries to go back to shaping foil, but his heart is not in it. He knows he has just wrecked everything.