Sibling Lessons in Game Theory

The last slice of cake, the last slice of pie, the ice cream served in one bowl: at first, the ability to allocate my portions from theirs was part of their divine rights of parents, and I more or less accepted this. At five, my parents began permitting me to choose which dish was mine. The slices of cake were always disappointingly similarly sized, so this didn't change a lot, but I enjoyed the power.

I distinctly remember my dad sitting me down on the floor with a slice of cake and two plates. "Today's your turn to divide the cake, and I choose." I set a very small portion on one plate, and left 70% of the cake on another for myself. He began reaching, very slowly, for the larger plate, eyes locked on it, wordlessly explaining in no uncertain terms what was about to happen. I scowled, "Let me try again."

When Isaac was three and old enough to express his interest in cake, it was my duty as the six-year-old to divide the cake and let him select. Isaac was not the same sort of opponent as my parents. At first he could be tricked by putting the smaller portion near him, and after a few rounds of that he could be tricked by my pretending to hide the smaller portion from him and acting like it was somehow better. Just as they later did when the addition of Firefly lead to kickback and collusion dynamics, the divider was severely punished for such dishonest play. Rules emerged: plates had to be equally presented, divisions were final once the first person took a plate, choosers could only select a plate for themselves, and all games were discrete instances: debts incurred in one game couldn't be repaid in another.

It was a long while before Issac was ready to play as the divider, but one day my parents informed me he was. A long bar of brownies was placed on a plate, and my brother pulled off a small square from the end and put it on the second one. I grinned and reached for the larger one as my brothers face scrunched up in a scowl.

"That's not fair."

"It's the rules."

Isaac sighed, annoyed, "You're suppose to want the little one!"

Being Supportive

I went to one of those schools which, unbeknown to me, was where a lot of the gay kids went because it had a reputation of being respectful and accepting. I had a reasonable number of friends confide in me that they were gay during college, many of whom had not yet told their parents. No matter how many times I give this speech, I still feel like I never deliver it right in person, so I felt like maybe it was worth writing up, both for other people who don't know what to say and for me. Maybe the next time I give it I'll say it right.

Not being heterosexual isn't a big deal, and yet it is. It isn't a big deal because I don't care what your sexual orientation is, I just want you to be happy. I care deeply about my friends and want all of them to be as happy as possible. At the same time, half the time when people tell me this its through tears, or I can see how long and difficult a struggle this was to come to grips with. I can see the fear of rejection, and admire the bravery of acknowledging that not all people will accept you for who you are, but that you will be who you are anyway. That courage is rare and beautiful, and never something I would want to ignore in anybody.

The conversation always comes around to "how do I tell everybody?" and I always botch this by responding over-briefly with "you don't have to if you don't want to. I never felt the compulsion to tell the world I'm straight, and you don't need to run around explaining your sexual preferences to anybody just because they aren't the same as mine."

It's a true fact, but I'm not saying you should stay in the closet. What I'm actually trying to say is "You do not owe the world an explanation for who you are." You never have, and you never will. As long as you're not hurting anybody, you need to do whatever you need to do to live a happy life, and the rest of the world can go screw itself. You don't owe them anything.

When it comes down to it, I couldn't care less about your sexual orientation: you are my friend and that's what's important. Your sexual orientation is about the same to me as your chosen career, or what set of talents you were born with. It doesn't really change what I think of you. What makes this important to me is that it is important to you. I want to be supportive and help you find all the things in your life you need to be happy. I really truly want you to be happy.

So please, if you want a coming out party you'd better believe I'll be there. I'll do whatever you need: wear a cheesy shirt, run around in a pride parade, help you pick up dudes or chicks or whatever you want. I'll stand next to you if you tell people, or we can giggle as we walk home after parties because none of those incredibly dense people there realized that the guy you came with was your boyfriend. This is just like everything else: you tell me what you need, and I will be there. I just want you to be happy, because I love you.

Eye of the Beholder

(This post should be safe for work, but it probably isn't)

Surely a little late to the party, but I finally ran into Kate Perry's video of running around with Elmo on Sesame Street and the surrounding controversy about the appropriateness of her attire and the sexuality of the entire deal. In case you feel a need to examine Katy Perry's controversial cleavage personally, I've included the video.



Some people might argue that children will take this as overly sexual, and that it isn't appropriate for them. This is all I have to say


Depending on how your mind works, you will see either a couple holding one another or nine dolphins which are not all the same size. Take a moment, and find both in the image.

This piece is called "Message d'amour des dauphins" (A message of love from the dolphins in English) by Sandro Del-Prête. Born in 1937, this man is a fairly underrated artist who is still alive and kicking ass, but that's a rant for another day. The point is that he routinely makes illusion images with a second, more adult meaning in them, such as Life in the Rose (1990).

This one is far more direct in displaying both images.

Now, I'm sure you're all quite capable of finding pictures of naked people on the internet, so why is this relevant?

Large amounts of anecdotal evidence (I was pretty upset to spend an hour on the internet and not find a single legitimate study) say that when children look at these paintings (particularly the dolphin/couple one) they see only the dolphins.

This tendency of adults to make things horrible when kids don't care is a well explored phenomenon at such credible research institutes as 4chan. Lazytown is one of their favourite targets.



But, when it all boils down what we're basically looking at is a glorified version of a Rorscharach or ink-blot test. If you haven't ever looked through the 10 "traditional" cards on wikipedia its a good laugh, although I have no idea what a doctor would make of me finding Cthulhu, the sword in the stone, human vertebrae, jellyfish polyps, rabbits and the Eiffel Tower in there.

The point is, we see what we want to see, and if your 5 year old kid looks at these things and can't imagine anything but sex, maybe you should thank Sesame Street for alerting you to a problem and get your kid to a doctor.

Getting Lucky

Unshockingly, I wasn't exactly winning at high school. I was socially a disaster, didn't even try at sports, and regularly arguing with teachers to leave me in the advanced classes despite my poor performance and complete inability to turn homework in on time. The honors classes weren't even weighted, so I graduated with a stunning 2.9/4.0 GPA.

Reconnecting with my peers from high school through the internet has been a very sobering experience. I am decidedly in a more favorable bracket of career success compared to my peers than I was in high school. I realized, slowly, that all that really set me apart was an incredible string of good luck which has miraculously lasted about six years.

They tell me I must have had talent in me all along, and a few even claim to be able to have seen it in me when I was young, but they are wrong. I am not a genius.

People write to me from this blog, and tell me I must be the luckiest person in the world to have had all this happen to me in such a short time, but I do not believe in six-year lucky streaks.

I do believe in statistics.

***

Father Jerry wasn't the greatest college guidance counselor, but he did excel in looking pretty annoyed. "You can't apply to this many universities. It is a waste of your time. You should figure out what you want and apply to a more targeted selection of schools. You realize most students here apply to four schools at maximum."

"I'm paying the application fees all out of pocket."

"Do you realize how many recommendations you are asking your teachers to write?"

I rearranged the files in my hands, "Here, if I cut these, I can do all of them on the common app except for these three. That's the same amount of work for you as four, isn't it?"

He glared.

"I'll bring you stamped and addressed envelopes and everything."

Applying to 11 schools turned be a lot of work for me with all the supplemental essay questions to the common app. Nobody wanted to proofread that many essays, and I had trouble making enough time to finish them all. I spent over 700 dollars on application fees alone, money that comes slowly for a babysitting high-schooler.

That money remains the single greatest financial investment I have ever made in my life. College application systems are too complicated for somebody like me to really predict, especially at 18. I got accepted to what I thought were stretch schools with full rides and rejected from safety schools. I held acceptance letters in front of schools I could not afford, to try to get them to increase their financial aid offers. This safety kept me cool under pressure, even when a scholarship interviewer pulled out my university application and pointed out I had written "National Merit Commended Schollar" under the awards category.

PS: Hell yeah I won that scholarship anyway.

***

I'm curled up with a laptop on the floor, which must have not been mine because I couldn't afford one at the time. Batman is flipped upside down on the couch with his legs swinging against the back, his face just off the floor near Jace's.

"Ugh, I am tired of writing essays for the Feds."

"How many?"

"37"

"WHAT?"

"I'm applying for 14 internships at this center"

Jace gives me a look which expresses how little pity he has for somebody who set themselves up for this.

"What's this one on?" Batman asked.

"Why... why I want this internship opportunity..."

"Oh," Batman said, "Well... you want the opportunity to fucking learn shit, and what's more important, to learn how to learn some shit, which is a skill you'll need all your life..."

"You're brilliant."

"Nah, I'm drunk"

I removed all the expletives, cleaned up the grammar, and submitted his rant as an essay anyway.

And that was how I came to work for the feds.

***

My senior year of college I had an interview almost every Friday from January to March. Teachers thought I was just making it up to cut classes. When the school hosted a career fair I would take the afternoon off to walk up and down every single aisle and talk to every interested company, to see if I would be happy there, and to see if they would hire me.

The long and the short of it is that I am not more clever than anybody else: hell, most people can probably put together a better essay than a drunken friend's rant, or at least can spell the name of awards they win. I don't even think I'm luckier than anybody else.

My point is that I play absurd odds, but that I win because I play a lot of times. I was denied from 12 of the 14 internships from that program alone. Most of my peers did not even apply for 12 internships in total, let alone at one center. I was denied from more colleges than most of my high school classmates applied to.

Some people get an idea fixed in their heads, and they keep trying until they succeed. Kudos if it works for them, but I am never sure enough of anything to do it. I just reach out to every good opportunity I see, and see which ones respond back.

Some people keep a bizarre tally of wins and losses. I don't understand this. In five years nobody cares how many colleges you were denied from: they care which one you attended. Your resume doesn't include the jobs you never got, your transcript doesn't include the independent study proposals that got shot down, your checkbook doesn't reflect the scholarships you didn't win, and your boyfriend doesn't care how many boys turned you down for coffee before you met him.

The only person, in the vast majority of cases, who will ever know about your rejections is you. Your story will only be written of the opportunities you won, and what you did with them.

Affording to Eat

I have been pretty absurdly poor in my life, and I learned to eat cheaply. Enough people have asked me for how to do this that I decided to finally write it up. A lot of this is based on living in the United States, but a lot of it is globally applicable common sense.

There are a few major rules to eating cheaply:

• You need to cook. If that's a serious problem tell me and I guess I'll post fast easy recipes and instructions too.
  
• If food goes bad before you eat it, that is lost money
• You are descended from a lizard and if you see excess you will eat more
• Your freezer/refrigerator space is limited, your room temperature storage is less so
• Not all items have equal markups for buying in small quantities
  

So now lets apply this

1. Anything you buy frozen, are ok about freezing, or store at room temperature you should buy in bulk.
   
2. Anything frozen you buy in bulk but eat thawed should be rebagged. Bags should be equivalent to whatever you expect to eat between when you first thaw it and when it would go bad. If it is a raw ingredient bags should be the size you use to cook one meal. Err on the side of bags that are too small, you can always thaw another one early.
3. When you prepare food that doesn't mind being frozen, make extra and freeze it. It means you can be lazy another night.
   

Breaking up bulk

You must keep everything extremely clean when you break food up from bulk orders. Any germs you introduce at this stage will have a very serious impact on the shelf life of the product. All containers have to be very clean, and anything which touches the food has to be very clean. I would often turn the ziplock bags I was transferring food into inside out and use them like gloves when handling the food that was going into them.

If you do Tupperware tubs do things that stack, and get ones so cheap you don't mind throwing them out if one falls to the back of the fridge and gets really horrible. Get ziplock bags in bulk.

Did you forget that this stuff freezes?

• Cheese
• Meat (some people don't like it that way)
• Bread products (bread, tortillas, rolls, bagels, english muffins)
  

Substitutions:

• Bread: about 30 cents to make, about $1.25-$1.65 to buy. A bread machine costs 50 dollars and the work involves dumping the materials in, hitting a button, and coming back 3 hours later. Materials for bread are water, flour, oil, and yeast which do not go bad. Figure out if that saves money.
• Candy. You are not allowed any more candy. If that's really hard you can buy bulk candy at costco/etc, or better yet raw baking ingredients. Chocolate chips are about 30 dollars for a 30 pound bag, aka the same price as about 5 packs of chocolate bars. Never buy individual candy bars. Rebag and hide the bulk candy from yourself so your lizard brain doesn't let you pig out.
• Pancakes: making your own mix is no more work than a mix, honest. Don't get prefrozen pancakes: make a bunch on the weekend and bag them up for breakfast each morning.
• Bakery items: No. Make them yourself or do without.
  

Serious discounts in bulk and lives forever:

• Flour
  
• Sugar
• Brown sugar (rebag airtightly so it doesn't get weird)
• Rice
• Lentils (seriously, actually kinda tasty. Steal Indian recipes)
• Beans (warning, soaking these sucks, prepare in bulk and freeze)
• Pasta
• Alcohol. If you like it cold/have a bad lizard brain refill smaller bottles in the fridge.
• Coffee
• Laundry detergent
• Toilet paper
• Paper towels
  

Co-Op for shelf life

You're probably not the only person interested in saving money. There are some things which have huge bulk discounts but not an infinite shelf life, so break up bulk runs with friends. These friends are likely to be also good for splitting a costco membership with you. Don't go in on bulk orders for stuff you don't like.

• Potatoes
• Onions
• Cereal
• Yogurt
• Cheese (if you are running low on freezer space)
  
• Meat (if you don't like it frozen)
• Fresh fruit
• Fresh vegetables
  

Co-Op for interest

These things you may never finish if you get the super bulk quantity, split among friends

• Spices
• Peanut butter (advise against rebagging)
• Nuts
• Olive oil
• Other cooking oil

Quirks

Local grocery stores really price gouge on vegetarian substitutes, dietary requirements and foreign food. If you get any of the following things but don't get them in bulk, you should strongly reconsider.

• Soy milk
• Nutella

Up

My mom's dad dreamed of a better life. Born in Hell's Kitchen, he permanently damaged his heart swimming in the polluted rivers as a child. They sent him on a charity cruise for dying children to give him one nice experience before he kicked it, but he's the one child that lived.

My mother dreamed of a better life. She hates mint ice cream. Once her family ran out of money, and used the last five dollars to buy a gallon of it for dinner. She's never told me what happened after that. She chose a career at my age to support her dying father and lives a reasonable middle-class life now.

I lived a sheltered and comfortable life. My father was out of work intermittently, but I didn't know. My parents, two siblings, and I would split one can of spam and a pot of rice for dinner, but for a kid my age that combination of grease, overprocessed meat, and carbohydrates was one of the coolest meals around. It wasn't until my mother announced one day that dad had a job and we wouldn't be having spam anymore that I figured anything out. I went to college, graduated into a respectable cube farm career that paid more than my parents made combined some years, and settled down to wonder if there was anything better.

Enron always wears polo shirts, says it's just what happens to you when you go to prep school. I give him no end of shit about it. He too was the poor kid in his highschool, but mostly because his family didn't have a jet.

***

"You're almost at the end!" I hugged him.

Jace didn't look up from screen and his keyboard, "The end?"

"You're level 54 now, you'll be level 60 soon. That's the highest level."

"See, that's the difference. Some people think they're hot shit when the reach 30, or 50, or 60, but for each person who considers something a goal, there's a better player who shrugs it off as a simple prerequisite. Those girls you coach dream of getting into college. You consider it a simple rite of passage on your way to the next thing, and always assumed you'd go."

"It's... still an achievement?"

Click click click went the mouse. He sighed and rolled his eyes, "The game starts at 60."

***

I sat on the deck of the Torii with Enron.

"I'm thinking of running for the board."

"Why?"

"I dunno, seems like a thing to do. I'm not sure what to do with myself anymore. I achieved most of my major goals. There is obviously more out there than a cube farm and toys, but I haven't any idea what it is, let alone how to get it."

"There's lots more,"

"Your life isn't interesting to me. There has to be another path 'up' other than the useless socialites."

He shrugged.

***

Six months later we, the four cofounders, are standing in a mall on a Monday afternoon staring.

"Neutral colors, all the products are very brightly colored, so the backgrounds are all very neutral to let them pop."

"Floors have busy patterns."

"Mmm, casinos are like that too."

"Let's go in the bookstore. Pretty dense product display there..."

***

"This has the potential to make us all life-changingly rich"

"I was looking for life-changing-lulz, but I also accept cash."

"That puts each of us past the only phase change in real wealth: buying your freedom. Below that is all gradations of slavery, and above that is all gradations of rich."

***

In a white suit coat he looked strangely out of place in the party. When he took us outside to talk to him, suddenly I begrudged Bluebeery and Enron a lot less for constantly wearing those damn polo shirts. Now I was the one who looked out of place, and they both needed me to make a good impression on the Angel.

"You guys are working on something pretty exciting," he said.

***

We're in a pool at a, for lack of a better term, corporate mansion. The pool is full of eager biologists playing water volleyball, and the garage is filled probably over a million dollars in lab equipment.

Enron taps me on the shoulder and laughs, "This, this is 'up.'"

Tree Blood

You could get almost anything to eat in Hong Kong, provided that you didn't ever want to eat potatoes or cheese, and normally didn't want to eat wheat or dairy. The Mexican food I also advise against, and it is fair to warn you that they fry the french fries in McDonald's in fish oil for that uncanny "familiar and yet alien" taste you haven't been pining for.

Bread was made with wheat, sold in little 8 slice packs since it was such a novelty, and we found one grocery store that sold cheese, in the entirety of everywhere they looked. They had three kinds, and normally about two packages of each. With these we could make grilled cheese sandwiches on our single-burner heating plates in a wok. Milk came in individual glass jars.

Fresh fruit was an adventure. We made a game of bringing random fruit home and trying to guess how to eat it.



After several incidents of eating rinds, seeds, stems, things which weren't suppose to be eaten unless they are cooked, and various grossly unripe or overripe things, we more or less gave up and stuck to pineapples and pomelos. Most of the fruits we never learned the names of, but the red thing with the green spines is a Dragon Fruit, the one with the points is called Star Fruit, and the one opened on the newspaper is Jackfruit.

After getting tired of fruit, the Russian Roulette activities continued as a drinking game using random candy with no English on it whatsoever, which became nearly ubiquitous during New Year's celebrations.

Pizza Hut was, unbeknown to us, a very classy establishment. The first time we went we had already had a few beers before we piled in to order pitchers of beer and a few pies, which we ate barbarically with our hands, without noticing the black tile floor, the nicely dressed waiters, the pasta dishes and mocktails on the menu, or the violin music in the background. Half way through dinner I turned around to see a local man wearing a tie and looking rather forlorn. His girlfriend, in black dress, looked unhappy, and I was suddenly struck with the realization that we had ruined the very nice dinner he was trying to treat her to.

We found wheat flour and made pancakes at home sometimes, because they were familiar and easy. We searched high and low, but couldn't find maple syrup for them anywhere. Eventually we started asking coworkers about it.

"What does it look like?"

"It's thick brown sauce, and it is sweet"

"What's it made of?"

"You take sap from Maple trees"

There was a pause, and my coworker gave me a very blank face

"Liquid in the bark, it brings food to the rest of the tree..."

"Yeah yeah"

"Then you boil it down a lot,"

"Ok"

"And then it's ready!"

My coworkers looked at each other for a long moment. Then one smiled, and in his most polite and patiently culturally-understanding voice he explained, very delicately as to not offend us,

"We're sorry, but we don't drink tree blood in China."

Magpie's New 5 Ton Truck

Why Magpie has been wanting to buy a 2.5 ton truck ex-military vehicle since 2006 isn't a question I can answer. All I know is he wanted one. The holdup had always been how to get the giant vehicle in an unknown condition transported home. So he sat and he lurked on government liquidation websites and craigslist waiting for the idea to come.

The truck he found on craigslist was 5 tons instead of 2.5 tons. It gets a glorious 5 miles to the gallon. A gallon of what you ask? Pretty much anything, the engine plate reads "fuel spec - all petroleum distillates up to a maximum octane rating of 85m-95r." Magpie offered $2500 on a whim, expecting to be laughed out.

The offer was accepted but the owner remained skeptical it would run without towing. It had only been driven about 15 miles since being purchased, and Magpie would have to drive it 550 miles to get home. The owner offered to send more pictures of the truck that weekend so Magpie could think this over, but Magpie had already started packing.

Magpie, Lion and CoLo drove all through the night Friday and arrived at the owner's place at 7AM, where they discovered that people don't answer their cell phones at 7 in the morning on a Saturday. Around noon they found him. The owner thought they had bailed on the offer and that they were completely crazy, but also was delighted to see them.

In Magpie's words, the owner had "a large quantity of approved lawn art and fun toys," including a lifted Jeep Grand Cherokee with big tires, a few spare transmissions and engines, a jeep c10 pickup, a stack of tires, and a jeep cj on what must have been at least 38" tires. The owner himself rolled up in yet another jeep with 56" mud tires in the back. I can understand why the two of them liked each other so much.

A few quick repairs on the military truck later the thing is ready to roll, and Magpie realized he didn't know how to drive stick, so they found a parking lot and started practicing.

Mall security was highly distressed to find Magpie with all 10 wheels and 20,000 pounds of military grade near-tank learning to drive stick in the Macy's parking lot, but didn't really seem to know what to do about it. Never to be taken for not being in charge, they had Magpie to solemnly promise to not run over anything, and permitted him to continue.

On the road home the group split up at about 10PM. CoLo had some friends to see in another city, and Lion and Magpie wanted to take the truck off-roading. Lion trailed Magpie in his vehicle to make sure he didn't break down, and promptly lost him as everybody's cell phone simultaneously stopped working. Lion arrived at the campsite at midnight, but Magpie didn't get in until 5AM because he looped back to find Lion. The whole affair was rather miserable seeing as the truck had no roof and it was absolutely pouring.

3 hours of sleep in Lion's car later they wake up, still soaking wet, to find the rain hadn't let up. Determined to still go off-roading, they demolished some trees with their 20,000 pound military cargo truck, and empirically verified how bad their turn radius was. The mirrors seemed slightly in danger of coming off, but the rest of the truck didn't seem to mind the abuse in the slightest. The military made this thing rock-solid and no frills: no roof and no muffler. Magpie drives it with earplugs.

On the road home Lion was in fine spirits, driving loops around the truck since it topped out at about 55 mph. He saw a large number of chunks of what he assumed was one of Magpie's 10 tires blowing up, but when he saw Magpie continue driving, he assumed everything was ok and didn't say anything.

Turns out Magpie had lost the air compressor belt, which took the tachometer belt with it, which took the water pump and fan belts with it, which in short order caused the truck to have zero air pressure, the alternator to stop charging the battery, and the engine to heat up. He tried to pull over, but he had also lost mechanical assistance to the brakes, and wound up more or less standing on the pedal for half a mile on the shoulder before the truck finally ground to a halt 180 miles from home. Lion was terribly amused, and Magpie wasn't.

The inside of the hood was covered with bits of belts but both the phones and the data plans were working again. An auto store, a few belts, and four gallons of coolant to top the tank off at a nice even ten later all the important bits were spinning again, and the truck was drivable the whole rest of the way home.

Come Monday morning, Magpie decides his life isn't interesting enough, and so opted to drive his new vehicle to his very respectable cube-farm of an employer where he was forced to park it across three parking spaces to fit it, but politely left enough room for the neighboring Prius to back out. He was sorry for being late, and explained that his new truck needed 15 minutes to warm up, 5 to cool down, and topped out at 55mph. One question led to another and once his boss had confirmed that Magpie had somehow managed to fit this monstrosity in the parking lot, he started laughing.

"Bet that thing is a real chick magnet!"

It was meant as sarcastic, but two girls about Magpie's age overheard the conversation and were the first to go out and see his prize. When he drove it to work a second time on Friday apparently every girl in the department came out to see it.

And that is the story of how Magpie got four hours of sleep on a weekend, bought a battle wagon, learned to drive standard, and won the attention of all the ladies.

Disgustingly Happy

We met because his roommate was trying to hit on me at a conference. He was too tall for me, but you couldn't really tell when he was sitting. He had beautiful eyes which were one shade with contacts and another without. He hadn't the faintest idea about hardware, but in almost no time we wound up rearranging things to attend the same lectures. He had wild dreams about where computers could go in the next 40 years, a big interesting stack of books in his room, and we both liked beer.

"So, what's going on with you two?" his friend asked him.

He was also a pretty terrible liar.

We both knew the odds of seeing each other ever again were rather low, and in some senses it made the time we did have a lot more precious. Sometimes I was annoyed at him for always being nearby, but as soon as he did give me some space I found myself looking around, and that I missed him.

"So, how far do you want this to go?" he asked hesitantly.

I didn't really have a good answer for him.

He saw in me all the things I wished I was. He loved that I was both a professional at my career and a female, and that I could interact with him as either. He liked it when I smiled.

I dozed off sitting next to him on the last night of the conference several times, and each time I woke up he was still holding me, and looked down at me sadly. We had walked home from the bar through the main strip of Vegas more or less hand in hand. We laughed at the fake plaster everything in the hotels, watched the crowds stumble from bar to bar, and pitied the people swept up in the shopping, which dress was cute, and the tourist photo ops with their yard-long margaritas in hand.

"Pretty sure I don't even like this city normally."

We stopped and watched the fountain at the Bellagio from across the street play. Not a lot to see, but it was nice to be held. We found Optimus Prime and a stormtrooper street performer, and tried to convince them to fight.

"Pretty sure I'm never going to forget this."

We considered elaborate schemes to joyride the boats at The Venetian, and watched another street performer paint. We laughed at the astroturf park, and admired how many ways Las Vegas had figured out how to twist an escalator. We found a rippled plastic wall of a fountain, and stood there grinning, pressing our hands in the thin coat of water which ran over top of it, reaching up and letting the water run down our arms and onto our clothes. We did a million stupid, meaningless things, but mostly we did them together.

And we were disgustingly happy.

Choices

I'd like to tell you I spent a few years playing cards for money, but it isn't strictly true. Sometimes we got a little cash, but mostly the money fed the lifestyle: the gas, the tournament fees, and of course, the game itself.

I'd like to tell you we counted cards or played poker or blackjack in a big casino, where we saw fortunes made and lost while coolly sipping our drinks at the bar, waiting our turn, but mostly we sat in event centers at one of hundreds of fold-up tables, elbow to elbow with our neighbors, flicking the card sleeves as we nervously passed the cards from one hand to the other.

I'd like to tell you that I had been serious about playing competitively long before meeting my partner-in-crime and at-the-time boyfriend, Jace, but realistically I had only played casually at best in high school, and I picked up the game as a way to spend a little more time with him.

Mostly, I'd like to tell you we weren't playing Magic The Gathering.

For those of you not dorky enough to know what that is, it's a strategy card game with a base set of rules, and then a large number of cards. The rules of the game more or less continue to change according to what cards are in play. Another way to imagine it would be "what if you could play chess but players could choose to use 4 knights instead of 2 knights and 2 bishops" but with literally many thousands of such options.

Without getting too far into the game, there are three kinds of competitive decks: control, combo, and aggro. Aggro decks start strong but lose in the long game. Combo decks do almost nothing, but then via a carefully engineered combination of things, suddenly blow up and win, generally in the mid game. They're irreparably screwed if you remove enough chunks of the combinations which make them tick. Control decks win by interfering with the other two in the early and mid games, then cleaning up the late game.

Flick. Flick. Flick. Flick. Jace held his cards in the other hand now. Flick. Flick. Flick. Flick, they were in the first hand again, impatient as ever.

He sighed, "Would you pay attention?"

"Why do so many people around here play control?"

"Better players play control."

"No, you play control."

"Not at all of the bigger tournaments."

There was a pause.

"Control decks," he explained, "are full of choices of when to stop your opponent and when to permit their actions and save your energy for a bigger threat. Simpler decks have less choices. Every time you have a choice, you choose what to do and your opponent chooses how to respond. Each of you has many choices. The better player will make good choices more often than the dumber player. This means that if you believe you're the better player, you want to force as many choices into the equation as possible, and wait for the dumber player to mess up. It decreases how much you count on luck, and increases how much you count on skill."

Jace almost always played control. I almost never did. It meant that he almost always did better at the small tournaments, but that at the end of a lot of the big tournaments where we played tiring rounds for 6 hours straight against some really good players, that the final scores were often in my favor.

It took me a long time to realize this lesson applied outside of a card game, but basically it applies to almost any zero-sum game: contract negotiation, trading, haggling: the rules are the same. When I'm the more clever one we lay out huge lists of options, and generally at the end I come out with something that normally would have been rejected if suggested outright. When I'm not, I explain that my hands are tied, that this is all I have been permitted by my peers to offer, or in Hong Kong, I'd fall back on the language barrier and pretending to not understand complicated offers. It doesn't make you instantly win, but it makes you very hard to completely scam.

At the end of the day, you can't force people to make good or bad choices, but you can present them with the right number of choices to benefit you.

Living

"She doesn't like me because I argued against her proposal, and maybe wasn't kind about it."

Kalei walks a few feet behind me this time in her never-ending attempts to avoid my eyes when she's being confrontational. She's looking at the stack of grocery baskets instead.

"We talked about that, she's not mad."

"What then? She thinks I'm obnoxious?"

"You're a lot of personality to take at once, especially for long periods of time."

Mint. Limes. Club soda. Kalei likes testing the limits of how mean she can be.

"Do you have any idea what I'd give to be the kind of person that other people want to be around?"

***

"Oh, where is the train going?"

I lean against the window and hold the phone close to my ear in an attempt to not be that ass on the train that dominates the air with a phone conversation, "North, grandma, I'm going to see a friend."

"Oh, well that's wonderful."

I have fond memories of this grandma from when I was very young: building a birdhouse, and how proud I was the first time I could bat a ball the whole way over her house. There were kittens in the abandoned barn next door, a bay window where I use to sit, and an empty concrete slab in her back yard where I use to stand and look out over the field. She had a hummingbird feeder, but I lacked the patience to ever see many birds.

I remember jars of fireflies, and plastic mugs with zoo animals on them, and the excitement of spaghetti-o's in a glass dish that the microwave heated unevenly.

I remember watching her fight with my mother, and slowly realizing as I grew older that my attention was one of the prizes. I remember Christmas dinners where she would insist on something, and all of my aunts and uncles would get upset and fight. What they were arguing about and what they were talking about must have been different, because nothing they ever talked about seemed important enough to fight over.

I remember reaching the age where my questions about the world were more uncomfortable than adorable, and I remember grandma becoming more and more distant through this.

"You're getting all grown up you know!"

"I'm 11."

"You were so much fun when you were little!"

We didn't talk for years. There wasn't really anything to say. The question isn't so much if you love each other but if you can stand each other.

She's dying now, some sort of cancer. She's been thinking she's dying for decades, but now it is actually happening. I call her now, and we can talk about nothing, because we know this relationship isn't really going anywhere. We don't need to worry about how she'll never change, and how I'll never change, because it isn't going to matter.

The dying are so easy. The living are hard.

Turpentine

"Miss?"

"What?" It hadn't snowed for days but the wind ripped the crystals around off the streets and into your face, your hands, and your lungs where the cold tore at you.

"Miss?"

They always called me Miss, or Miss Pika. At 19 I didn't feel comfortable with anybody calling me Miss Chu, but they didn't feel comfortable calling me just Pika.

"Miss you have to hurry!"

"I'm coming as fast as I can, and it isn't time for practice yet. You're going to have to learn to be patient Trinh."

"No you have to hurry! There's gonna be a fight in the machine shop!"

I burst into the room to find the team in halves standing around the robot, sharpies on the floor, shouting at one another. I had told them they could decorate the robot any way they wanted, and apparently the girls had formed an argument which cleanly divided them by the high schools they attended.

I slammed the door so they turned and looked at me. "What the fuck is going on?"

There was a pause, then all the voices started at once. "You know what?" I bellowed, "I don't give a fuck, you're all going to clean every inch of this robot and take all the markings off it, and I'm going to have a little chat with each and every one of you." I nodded to my co-mentor, and she understood that she was going to oversee the cleaning. We were both terrified that a newspaper reporter was showing up in two hours to do a heartwarming story on how our team was bringing two sides of a bad city together and help high school girls get their lives back in line.

"We haven't named the robot yet, for the paperwork."

I brought a pile of rags from the corner of the machine shop and put it next to the bottle of cleaner. "Robot's name is turpentine," I said pointing to the bottle, "because this is the day you're all going to learn that this is one team, and you're all going to work hard alongside each other."

Dramatic moments normally don't make sense anyway after the fact.

When Mechi came up for her talk she hid the knuckles of her right hand from me, under her left. I asked her to show them to me, and they were swollen and red.

"What is this?"

"I punched a wall."

None of the other students looked like they had been involved in a fight, so I let it pass.

"Why?" I asked.

"I was angry."

Mechi was always boarderline too angry to work. She was the sweetest girl, but her emotions often tangled her up when she was frustrated, and then fell out as rage. It isn't hard to imagine how. I know she once left practice to pick up her brother from a gang fight and get him to a hospital, and I know that like so many little sisters she idolized her big brother. I knew that if she had been born to a different family that her teachers might have noticed her tendencies, and that there might be therapy and medication for her. Now they just saw another at-risk-kid slipping, and threw her in suspension.

"You need to work on dealing with your feelings," I said.

"And what? Count to 10? Does that actually work for anybody?"

I smiled, "Not for me. Just remember that in a few minutes you'll care less, that it isn't worth being upset about, and that you just need to hold on until then."

"I'll try."

"You're a good kid, and I know that. You always give me 110%. We're going to show everybody what a good kid you are inside."

She smiled.

The next girl who I had a talk with looked scared and upset. She was the best friend of the girl Mechi had most likely been about to punch when she took it out on a wall instead.

"What... did I do wrong?"

"Oh, I don't think you did anything wrong. I just said I was going to talk to all of you about your behaviors, and it is important that I be fair and do not appear to play favourites, but I think you're doing fine."

"Oh."

"We've got about 5 minutes to kill here, is there anything you want to talk about?"

"I don't like to see them disrespecting you."

"We're working on it."

"They don't realize how much you're giving us. You came from winning teams, you like winning, you deserve a winning team, and if we behaved, you could make us win."

"Yeah, well this is the team where I can make a bigger difference."

***

Mechi and Trinh were crying. "We can't write like that, all fancy like you talk, and like our teachers want us to."

"Then write it another way, and we'll translate it."

"We can't do it!"

"You can do it, you're going to give me 110%, and I'm going to give you 110%, always. I will sit here with you for as long as you will keep trying. Whatever group of people finish this essay will be the co-captains of the team."

The sentences came back garbled and rambling, with the word "with" substituted for "wid." The essay was about four pages, but after hours and hours, we had translated their intentions into a proper essay. The girls were beaming. They showed their essay to everybody they could find. I was so proud of them, and so terrified. At 14 this should be easy, and they had so much catching up to do if they were ever going to make it against the kids I went to high school with.

Mechi couldn't go to the competition because she was suspended, but we told her how we were doing each day. The robot did well though, right up into the semi-finals.

The city was thrilled. They threw us a dinner which all sorts of fancy people attended. A member of the school board who had sometimes attended our practices gave little speeches about of us and thanked us as he gave us awards, except for Mechi. When he came to her he poked fun at her and her disciplinary issues, and asked her to promise to do better next year.

I could feel the girl's eyes on me. I had always promised them that as long as they kept trying that I would fight for them. To stand by as this man humiliated Mechi would mean they would never trust me again, and it would be the end of my ability to help them. However, to do something now would mean our funding would never be renewed. We had two sponsors, and the regional director of the league at that dinner. The team was over, and the only remaining question was how I wanted it to end. I stood up, and I finished the school board member's speech for him, highlighting all the good Mechi had done, and thanking her for her contributions to the team.

I tried to keep in touch with Trinh, but it was difficult. She went into AP US History as a junior. I was thrilled. I got stacks of books from my high school AP US History teacher to tutor her through the exam online, but I never was able to make enough time to memorize everything to answer all her questions, and I couldn't get her to practice essays. Eventually, she said she didn't want to talk about the exam anymore, then she didn't want to talk at all.

I saw one of the girls bagging groceries near the school. I asked her how things were. She was doing great and had the part time job to help her family. She was applying for some pretty good colleges in the fall. I told her I was so proud of her, and she shrugged and looked at me and asked, "What, isn't that normal? You didn't think I could do it?"

Mechi was thrown out of the school before I had even finished the paperwork of the season. I remember the school board member showing me a photograph on his desk. He explained to me that it was of a student who he had tried to save, but who was in juvi now. I didn't recognize his kindness, and was rude to him a second time, insisting that I would never give up on Mechi, and that she was a good girl, and going to make it. In the coming months Mechi was thrown out of her second school, and out of the special disciplinary school. I continued to write to her, but eventually she said she was worried I was ashamed of her, and stopped writing back.

I've still got the newspaper article they wrote the day we cleaned the robot with turpentine. The reporter was thrilled with us, and really believed we were going to save these kids. It breaks my heart.

Punishment

I run into an awful lot of people who get upset at somebody, and believe they need to be punished, pretty much because the punisher feels that the other person deserves it, in some great karmic sense. I understand that some people believe people who have been bad deserve, or even need, to be punished, but it just isn't practical to run everything from strictly that perspective.

If I reached across the table and punched you in the middle of a normal conversation, that wouldn't be an effective teaching tool. You might be confused and wonder what you did wrong, which seems like it is on the right track, but human interactions are so complicated that the odds of you selecting precisely what upset me are low. More likely, you would decide that I was mean and irrational, and just picking on you. Punishments are truly meaningless if you don't understand what you are being punished for.

Even worse, sometimes people punish other people after explaining to them what they did wrong, but before the other person believes that what they did was wrong. If somebody doesn't believe a punishment is fair, they're going to resent the punishment or the punisher instead of suddenly agreeing with you. If you're particularly lucky, they might even believe you have been bad and intentionally try to upset you again as a punishment.

Real World

I'll call him Pippin. He always looked a little like a hobbit: short, with bright eyes and determinedly curly hair. He dropped out of high school when he found a hack for a popular piece of hardware. He traded the hacked hardware for a car which he selected because he'd recently seen it in a movie. Driving that around was fun for a while, but he sold his toy pretty promptly when he found out the price of an oil change. He tried college for a year, then started bumming around Umbrella, and rooming with Carne, which is how I met him. A year later I ran into him in Vegas and he hitched back with us to California to sleep on the couch. Now he sat in the living room couch of Alpha, sprawled in the pile of clothes he dumped out of his backpack.

"I need a job," I said, "Acad's ending soon, and I don't know what I'm going to do."

"Jobs suck. You're smart, why should you have to work 8 hours a day?"

***

Green actually finished school, but that was mostly because he enjoyed it. Writing apps for the iPhone had always been his real source of income.

I met him when he emailed a list of about 400 some people asking if anybody could give him a ride from the train station to the Torii. At the time I was sure I didn't like this kid who couldn't figure out how the public transit worked, but it is hard to stay mad at anybody who always smiles and means it. He stayed with Nexus for a week then disappeared, to return for one of Tynan's lectures. We asked him how long he planned to stay in the area, and he shrugged.

In reality he lived on our couch for about a month. Pretty sick deal for us, since he kept cleaning the house for us during that time.

***

"Hey," Ray says into the phone, "You should come out here." He puts his hand over his other year and tilts his head to smile at the phone, "You'll never guess who's here." There was a pause, and the bounty hunters in the lab and I looked at each other. "She says she knows you," he continued, "honestly, I didn't even know you knew Pika."

Pippin arrived from Chicago two days later. Apparently he'd been bumming around there buying beer for a fraternity in exchange for a spot on the couch to sleep. During the day he snuck into classes at the local university, sometimes to learn things, but mostly pretending to be an English major in order to pick up chicks.

"Good to see you again,"

"You too," he smiled, "you still working full-time jobs?"

***

"I'm going to Vietnam," Green said.

"Why?"

"Frozen yogurt?"

"What?"

He laughed a little, "my friend is opening a frozen yogurt shop there, I figured I'd come up for the grand opening."

I didn't get it.

"Cost of living is low there, and I'm self-employed, so I can work from wherever I want really."

There was a pause.

"Don't look jealous like that. Why don't you come with me?"

"I... can't program iPhone, I don't even have one."

"You'll figure it out, and if not that something else. You just need to believe you can really do it."

I sat, and I thought about it, but his plane was leaving before I had really gotten together the nerve to do it.

"I'm leaving this book with you," he said, "I want you to believe you can do it."

It was called "The four hour work week" and had a picture of a man on the cover laying in a hammock under palm trees. It called people like Pippin and Green 'the new rich.'

***

It's one of those relaxed evenings, and we're both sitting on couches staring at the ceiling in Alpha. I'm playing with a ball, and Pippin is idly turning a new Defcon blackbadge over in his hands.

"Do you think you could go back to the real world if you wanted to?"

"I live in the real world."

There is a funny sort of pause as I raise my eyebrows and catch his eyes.

"Ok, so I don't, but why would I want to go back there? The real world sucks."

"Yeah, well lets say you wanted to."

"Of course. I can do anything if I want to."

Jump

It's gotten to the point where I can almost tell when he's crying through the instant messenger. Honestly though, that's not a terribly difficult feat as it seems like he's always crying.

First love is a truly terrible thing. I wish I could explain this so that those of you who have not yet experienced this will believe me, but that just isn't how life works. Perhaps you'll remember my words in the back of your mind and then, someday, come back here and read them in a fresh light if you find they might apply to you.

He's sick to his stomach and shaking a little through the tears.

First love, the first time you really truly believe it is going to work out, is an intoxicatingly beautiful thing. You absolutely and wholeheartedly believe that you have struck a bond with a person that you will never find in anybody else again. Slowly, you feel comfortable with that person. Over time you feel you have grown so you mentally fit well together like you have with nobody else, and the thought of life without this person becomes unimaginable.

This is, in fact, precisely why these relationships can be so damaging.

Two people, on a very logical and grossly over-simplified level, will remain together so long as they believe that their life together is better than their life would be apart. When the idea of not being with somebody begins to be considered impossibly unimaginably bad, the relationship will continue to exist even when the situation is unimaginably bad minus one. When you believe that you will never find a bond with another human like you do with the first person you really love, life apart begins seeming infinitely worse, and this brings us back to my sobbing inconsolable friend.

***

The two white weathered shelves stood abandoned in the driveway.

His truck is this bizarre sort of contraption, even by the standards of a girl who spent a year trolling around in Magpie's frankenjeep. It's a low-to-the-ground truck, still outfitted with the tool enclosure the previous owner put on it from when it was an electrician's truck.

"Man I love Craigslist."

He opens the back and together we tip the first shelf so it can be carried to the truck.

"Huh," I ask, "You carry an extra mattress in your truck?"

"What?"

I looked at him for a minute. I knew guys who kept mattresses in the back of their trucks during highschool for various sketchy purposes, but we were both adults and that would be highly unusual.

It was very quiet.

"I suppose," he adjusted some wire baskets hanging from the ceiling, "I never showed you where I live."

I poked my head in, "It's like a spaceship, with little rattle-proof lockers and every wall used."

"It's actually mostly from IKEA."

"...versatile solutions for modern living."

We loaded in the shelf, and now that he realized I was comfortable with his story he was grinning and recounting all of it. "My last apartment had black mold, my housemate moved out on me under doctor's orders that it was going to make him absurdly ill. In many senses my quality of living improved when I started living in this truck.

"Huh,"

"I save a lot of money this way."

"Yeah I can't see a downside really, well unless girls don't like it?"

"I actually lost my virginity in this truck anyway, and I did have an apartment."

"Yeah, you know, there are some things people just believe they can't live without, and they'll go through fairly extreme efforts to even have pale imitations of them."

"Yeah, that moldy apartment rented out again almost right away when I left."

***

"I plan my life out a lot. I always know what's coming."

"You don't think you miss some of the better opportunities by being so risk-adverse?"

***

"I hate my job."

"Yeah?"

"And so do you."

"Yeah"

"You want to be professional adventurers?"

***

"So he said 'you want to be professional adventurers?'"

"What the hell does that mean?"

"You know, quit your job, and go have fun."

"You can't do that."

There was a pause.

"You need money," he persisted.

"Well, we started working on getting some contacts so we could do freelance photography, pay for the costs of travel and such. You can live pretty cheaply if you put your mind to it..."

***

"Sometimes," my boss said, "I worry that you don't like this job."

I'm not sure I said anything to that.

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm God, Baby!"

A good machinist is hard to find.

The arrival of our first one predated my hiring only by a little, but he had already found time to fall behind on his work.

We knew we were meeting our new machinist that day, but after waiting for him for 20 minutes most of us had busied ourselves with our computers doing trivial work or trying to figure our if we had the time wrong. We barely noticed him when he wandered in: you don't normally expect strangers to show up on a federal base, and sometimes you just stop looking for them. The man wandered up to Tie-Dye's desk where he made himself comfortable, primarily by kicking his muddy shoes up onto my boss' keyboard. Tie-dye looked at him, then at me, then back at the man at his desk, trying to piece together what was going on.

"Excuse me," it was Tie-dye's very politest voice, "but, who are you?"

The machinist casually laced his fingers behind his head and pressed his feet into the desk to lean back, "Who me? I'm God, baby!" Turning to one side, he made a little clicking noise at Daniella and nodded at her in a manner I'm sure he thought was devastatingly attractive.

***

She was livid, "You have got to get rid of him."

Crash always believes in the best of everybody, "Aww now, I know you've had your misunderstandings... but he does great work..."

"You don't make Holocaust jokes to jews."

"How would he have known you were Jewish?"

***

I'm not sure if it was the fact that he tried to randomly purchase magnesium (a rather flammable metal) instead of aluminum, that he randomly powder-coated a component likely to overheat in black and billed the project for it, or the fact that he tried to make the body with tack-welds which fell apart. Personally, I was most amused by when Daniella tried to have a talk with him so they could sort out their differences and learn to get along, and he accused her of "trying to get him alone because she wanted him." No matter the cause, it wasn't very long until we sent him on his way.

"Fuck it," Crash threw the powder-coated tack-welded sheet metal box aside in annoyance, "I wouldn't use it as a urinal."

The next machinist misprogrammed an expensive CNC mill so that it thought the metal wasn't some place it was. It did a full plunge through the workpiece's surface, got stuck there, grabbed the part we were working on, shook it like a rag-doll, ripped it in half, and dragged the top half out of the vice and into the ceiling of the machine so it could trash that for good measure.

The next machinist hid his files on a secret server and regularly threatened to not let anybody have his work when he believed his paycheck was late. He was, in reality, one of the only ones being paid on time.

Another one sprayed Sys with a can of compressed air for cleaning things, turning it upside down so it sprayed it in liquid form. He thought it was pretty funny, but Sys got a hospital trip for the burn.

A good machinist is hard to find.

Dress Up

There's a new girl with purple hair here handing me a ukulele. "Do you know how to play?"

"No," I take it anyway and imitate her in picking out the guitar opening to 'Brown-eyed-girl.' It's a shame Ginger and Giraffe aren't here, they fucking hate this song.

Enron lags a little behind us, smartphone pressed against his face, one finger from his other hand covering the opposing ear, "No Jason, that isn't what we agreed to..." He's interviewing a candidate at noon just as we finish lunch, and discussing the results of it with his peers as we wander the next beach. He's got somebody calling him to schedule an appointment during the car ride home, and when we get back to the Torii he paces the front lawn working out the details.

"It's alright," Kaleidoscope laughs, "I looked at Nexus, I realized what a CEO was, and I knew exactly what I was getting in to when I decided to date him."

He's on the phone a few weeks later in the park, and he's huddled over his laptop while Kalei(doscope) and I are enjoying a beer. I'm not about to tear into Enron for being so involved in his work. He's as happy a person as any of us, and this is what he would do for fun anyway.

***

"I can't fucking believe this."

DC giggles and covers the microphone on the radio, "Hush a minute, we can't swear on the radio."

I can hear Sid's voice over the crackle through the radio, "You guys will never make it in that car..."

"Well if it's got to die, right in front of the dorms isn't a bad place..."

"WY1HBT here," the radio chirps, "I got this covered."

"Who's that?" I ask my carmates.

DC grins, "Whacker."

A few minutes later Whacker rolls up in an oversized truck grinning from ear to ear. There's a yellow lightbar bolted to the top of the truck, and seems like he just couldn't be more excited to be jumping the car.

"What's with him?"

"He's proud to be saving the day."

***

If I had known it was going to be this sort of party I probably would have tried to find some less ratty jeans to wear. The bar is full of people who believe they are slick and sophisticated. It is somewhat amazing to watch the similarities between people flirting and explaining their business plans to one another. I can watch streams of my contacts interact with one another from the balcony, and they all believe they're very important and influential.

***

"Yeah," he says taking a drink, "You see a lot of stuff."

"We had a sophomore come up with doll-eyes a few weeks ago."

"Oh for the love of CHRIST," CoLo looks exasperated, "No more EMS talk at parties!"

***

"It's like playing dress-up,"

We're back in the Torii parking lot, watching Enron pace around on his phone, and Kalei is giving me a very puzzled look. "But it's real..."

"That doesn't mean they're playing any less!"

I can watch Kalei trying to be very very patient with me.

"It's all just games. It's no different from when we were small and pretending to be important, except that, as a side effect of pretending for so long, some of these people actually made it real. That isn't the point, though, because they're still just playing. They don't do all this theater because it's needed. They do it because they love it, because they enjoy being the important person they dreamed of more than they enjoy the actual tasks of the job."

Kalei laughs, "Maybe we should get him a pretty princess hat..."

Acquaintances and Friends

We jumped behind the rock the first time the cops came past. Black clothes, black tar, and what was steadily becoming a black rock.

When the car came around the second time Magpie was standing up but I got behind the rock in time. He ducked, and the car sat and idled what seemed like forever.

"They saw me," he said.

"Let's run for it,"

"He's going to come over here."

"Let's book it, he's not going to catch us."

"You stay here, I'm going before he sees you."

"No!"

And, before I could argue, Magpie was bounding up to the car. "Good evening officer!"

***

Sometimes the sunshine and warmth here is surreal and almost too good to be real. Three thousand miles away in a convertible I sometimes feel like I'm in a completely different world.

"Where you from?"

"Boston," Nexus grins.

"I love New England! Why'd you leave?"

He points to the sky.

"I guess."

"People are nice here, friendly."

I must have frowned.

"It's not that people out there aren't friendly, it is just I love the community here."

"I think there's a scale. There places where the norm is a broad sprawling social networks of acquaintances, and then there are people that you know will have your back when things go badly."

There are other two people in the car and they both smile a smile that says they think I'm very silly. I can't see Nexus' face. All I can think is that must have simply lived lives where they have never been in a situation where they really needed somebody to bail them out.

"I was told once the difference between acquaintances and friends is a friend is somebody who you'd feel comfortable calling at 2AM when you really need help, and who wouldn't mind such a call."

I considered that for a moment, but mostly thought of how different taking a call at 2AM was from directly approaching an annoyed police officer so your friend can get away.

"I think you'd be surprised Pika, at how many people will come to help you out when you're in trouble. You need to have a little more faith."

Who are the kids?

It is the fall after my first summer with the feds.

"It won't move,"

"Go for the 50's"

A year and a half ago they said we this was going to be the next big thing. I'm told they hired Ph D's and respected field experts and moved them out here to build this.

"Is there still space for the 50's?"

"Better be..."

A year ago a senator said no. He said the project had to be moved to his state or it wasn't going to happen at all, that the funding would be all cut. They laid off all those respected experts and moved the project south, where they milked the prototype funds for all they were worth. The proposal they returned to congress was thousands of times above budget and got laughed out, but it served the purpose they gave it. It was a bridge between that center's projects, and it kept their very finest scientists fed until the center could bring them a new project to sink their teeth into.

"You were right, lotsa torque in the 50's."

"I'm getting pretty tired, I may nap under my desk for a bit."

A year ago, when they all left Crash said no. He squirreled away all the funds he could find and started picking up labor as cheaply as he could. He continued the program, but kept it a secret. That included the internship program I was going to be in.

There is probably 500 feet of cat5 under my desk, and I barely shove it out of the way to crawl in the sleeping bag and try to catch an hour and a half nap. If we don't take one a day we get less productive.

Five months ago I realized I was assigned to two different labs at once for my upcoming internship. Rather than ask for clarification I opted to wait until I arrived and got to see both. This way I could figure out which one was cooler and could angle for it.

Four months ago Crash was standing in the hallway trying to convince me his was the better lab. He promised me this project would change everything, and I agreed. He took me, Tie-Dye, and Gemini out in the hallway and explained our situation. I was the assistant to the assistant to somebody important. Many people quit, including the important person. The Canadian was added to the staff, but he wasn't quite ever meant as a direct replacement. My boss quit after 3 months for more theoretical pursuits, and then it was just the Canadian, Gemini and me.

One month ago we got delayed because legal hadn't worked out who would get sued if we died during the demo. I wish I was kidding you. I called my school and told them that I wasn't coming back to campus, but that it would look great for the school if they let me call this my senior project. I had to call a few different professors before I found one who wasn't upset about the fact that I was only entering my junior year.

A week ago the team agreed. We would take the last night off to be will-rested, calm, and collected for the director. Three days ago we found out the networking equipment wasn't compatible. This morning the man in the suit wanted to try to cancel for rain. Four hours ago we found out the 20's didn't pull enough to power the drive system. The rest of the night blurs, although I remember realizing this was the third 100+ hour week in a row, that I didn't want to see another fast food container for a year, and that there were marks on my arms from falling asleep in piles of communications cabling.

At 5:08 AM the robot drove for the first time. Talk about cutting it close.

It is 9:50AM. The director is arriving in 40 minutes, plus or minus 20. I brush my hair and wash my face in a bathroom sink, and try somewhat in vain to brush my teeth. With my hoodie zipped up the whole way you can not see my ratty tie-dye tank top, and my cargo pants are long enough to mostly hide my knock-off Birkenstock sandals. Funny, this is not how I envisioned looking when meeting one of the most powerful people I'll ever encounter. I throw Gemini my hairbrush and he tries in vain to make his hair lie down.

It's 10:05. The man in the suit is a little horrified at our appearance. He is slightly pacified by the fact that Crash changed into his suit in his truck. There isn't time for Gemini and me to go home and change anyway.

It's 10:30. Guess there was time, but we missed it.

At 10:40 the director arrives. My first thought was how human he seemed. All we knew was his history: a general who was told the military politically couldn't do this science, so he left the military to run this place instead. We were instructed to still call him general anyway. I liked him because he swore a lot and laughed while he did it.

Somebody ran over a cable with a truck and I'm on the radio shouting instructions while Crash stalls. We pull it back online and I stand next to the television. Gemini sits on the other end of the telecon in the red dirt, looking a mildly disheveled but entirely unfazed. He use to be so relaxed about everything. Crash is rattling off specs, but the director looks bored and is watching the two of us.

"Huh," the he asks, "Who are the kids?"

"The," Crash stutters, "...boy is a fresh college graduate, and the girl is a junior in college. They are our interns."

"Huh." There is a pause. "Keep 'em."

And this is probably what made my career.

Consumer Trust

Street cleaner bristles, a dremel, and piles upon piles of locks and picks. A small group of adults, mostly in their 20's, huddle around it tinkering. Every once in a while a latch clicks open and somebody is patted on the back.

"This," Dany says, showing us an unusual keyway, "is an older style lock. It just has a lever in the back and you just press the whole way to the back and rotate to open it, no tumblers at all. The rest of the stuff in there blocks the wrong keys, and is the sort of lock you build skeleton keys for."

A key for one of them, a dremel, and 10 minutes later and I'm holding a key with only two sets of bumps on the bottom. It opens all the locks of that style on the table.

Some of the newbies stand in mild disbelief. That's the most common reaction I get when holding this class: that this is only the sort of thing which happens in movies, or by extremely skilled people. The concept that I can teach a room full of people all the skills they would need to break into a hefty percentage homes in under two hours always comes as a bit of a shock.

"What's the easiest brand to pick?" Some of them fumble with their phones during the class to find a locksmith to call to upgrade their doors.

"Masterlock padlocks are normally the first thing you practice on. Next are kwikset and schlege...but a lot of it is personal preference"

"But those things are everywhere."

It is true. I have seen them on yard fences, electric equipment, government storage spaces, countless yard totes, virtually everywhere. People routinely trust in these products to secure their belongings, and yet most of the consumer-used security products blatantly do not offer much resistance to even a modestly trained individual.


"I am disappointed," he said, "I had always thought personal security was one of those markets which would sort itself out, with snake oil being readily exposed."

The taller girl from juggling class looks down over the edge of her glasses, "You do realize they're really just out to sell you peace of mind right?"

"But this is a really easy-to-test product and the free market right? Inferior products will lose out to superior ones via competition..."

"Like in what industries? What industries are governed by this law that the superior product can run an inferior one out of business? Can you name a time it has happened?"

We sat and thought for probably half an hour, and we couldn't think of any.

Related Posts:

• Security Theater in Airports
• People watching bad things happen and not doing anything

Amish

Bill looks a little out of place at the Umbrella Corporation. He has a tattoo of a woman on one arm and a sword on the other. He has more, but I never get a full view of the pictures since they disappear into his sleeves.

Bill in a previous life worked in a humanities field with a complicated name which meant he studied cultures of people. In his case this meant he spent some time living with the Amish in the absolute middle of nowhere.

They had one phone. It was used in the most dire of emergencies, such as once to call a medical helicopter to get a sick child to the hospital so they could do robotic surgery on him. When asked if they had an issue with that, they told Bill he was totally nuts. "It is a kid's life," they said, "Why would we make somebody die for our cultural preferences?"

Amish people probably vary, but Bill's crowd seemed on the whole pretty reasonable about most things. One once accepted a ride in Bill's car when stranded, "It isn't about following the letter of the law," he said, "it is about deciding to live simply and focus on what is really important."

"I locked my keys in my car once," Bill laughed. "They were such dicks about it.

'Oh hey Bill! How's that fantastic new technology improving your life?'

There was quite a crowd and I'm just standing there. We didn't have cell phones then so I had to pop the lock.

'Hey,' they're calling to each other, 'Do you remember that time I locked my keys in my buggy? No? Maybe because it doesn't happen!'"

Meet Pacem

"You want to come over later?" I ask Carne, "we're throwing a party."

"What's the occassion?"

"It's some kid's birthday..."

"Do I know this guy?"

"No, technically I don't either. He's one of the new kids in the program. Actually, I'm not even sure its his birthday. I just want a really good excuse to throw a party."

There's a pause. I can't see her face over the phone but I know exactly what expression she's making.

"So, you coming?"

Hilariously enough, she met her current boyfriend at that party.

***

"So," I ask the blond kid who just walked in the door, "you normally go by Xenu?"

He stares at me, "what? Oh! My facebook! Yeah, I like messing around with that..."

I start cracking up and hand him a drink, "Well, happy birthday stranger."

"Birthday?" he's laughing too now, "oh yeah! Today IS my birthday on facebook isn't it?" He grins and poses with the cake with his name on it for a photograph.

"You know," he says, "according to facebook, I have a birthday about every two weeks...and there are a whole slew of my 'friends' who haven't caught on yet."

"Whatever, I like having parties."

***

"Ya-pach-um"

It was his first phrase, or more, that's how I can best type it an Anglesized version of it. I can gesture vaguely verbally at the myriad of hidden consonants in the actual polish baby-talked version, but I'll never be able to type it.

I'm observing.

His grandfather had found him sitting in the family's garage and asked him what he was doing. I find it a fitting summary of Pacem in general.

I'm observing.

Most people when they want to understand another person "walk a mile in their shoes," or imagine themselves as being in the other person's situation. Pacem instead has the sort of mind which permits him to observe himself from the same third person perspective he sees other people, and to understand them that way. This has many side effects, one of which is his ability to look at himself and have a good laugh from time to time, which is one of my favourite things about him.

I'm observing.

***

"Dona nobis pacem..."

I distinctly remember preforming this piece in fourth grade. The harmony and simplicity mezmorized me, and still does to this day.

Let us have peace.

I remember singing at the very top of my lungs. The world is complicated, and the things which you know are beautiful are true are worth really clinging to.

***

He looked worn out, tired, and depressed. His boss was an asshole and his team's aptitude left much to be desired. Furthermore, two of the team members no more qualified than him had escaped the worst of it, and had a lot of goodies and attention from his boss's boss which would surely let them escape the looming fallout this work team would suffer. One of them wasn't being particularly nice to him either.

He locked himself in his room for hours with his laptop and didn't speak to much of anybody. I would come in to tell him when dinner was ready, but realistically there wasn't a whole lot I could do.

"Ya-pach-um," I grinned and waved to him from the doorway. When all else failed, I guess act like an idiot.

"Ya-pach-um," I repeated, falling into a game of word sounds, "Ya-pach-um, pach-um, pacem, dona nobis pacem."

"What?"

"Peace, you could use some probably."

"Huh?"

"Dinner's ready."

***

"Red four on the five."

"Oh man I didn't see that one."

Nerds do some fairly impressive things when deprived of internet, but the words "communal solitaire" still crack me up. I think it was one of the best things that happened to the house, because with nothing better to do we all got to really know and care for each other. Pacem and I remained close considering the distance my senior year, and we even found time to visit him on the road trip with Ginger and Giraffe. When I found we were both returning for a second year I was overjoyed.

***

"Quesadillas and bud lite," he looks down at himself, "I feel like white trash."

Pacem is wearing a wife beater and athletic shorts since the rest of his clothes are currently in the drier. The two of us are on our knees loading up gallons of milk and orange juice into the upper shelves of the refrigerator.

"I figure," he says as he hoists the 30 rack into the new space we have created, "Its all about the finer things in life anyway."

I'm on the couch later when Pacem wanders back with a box labled Xerox. It once to contained printer paper but now it carries his clean laundry. He sits down on a couch to begin folding it.

"You want...us to pick up a real laundry basket for you?"

He shrugs, "this works."

He pulls out a hilighter colored shirt with the bright pink AMP logo. Its the most horrendously beautiful shirt I have ever seen in my life, and I always make fun of him for it.

"Directing traffic soon?"

"Fuck, give me direct sunlight and I'll blind you!"

***

We've been fighting a lot recently for no real good reason. Well, I know mine. I have a terrible pressing need to escape and keep finding him in my room when I want to be alone. I guess that's one of those things roommates have been known to do. Pacem probably has his own reasons, but I wish he wouldn't vent them by helping in the efforts to circumvent me that have cropped up.

"We're heading up to the casinos that last weekend," he says.

I glare at him. We have four houses to shut down and clean and a ton of furniture to move and now he's skipping out with how many people?

"We'll clean up a ton on Sunday and Monday to make up for it. We don't really need a whole weekend to clean. I promise, we'll make up the time."

I shrug. There isn't a whole lot of point to arguing with somebody whose mind is made up that firmly. Pacem knew damn well how much work this was going to be: he, the guy I was dating at the time, and I had spent a whole weekend last time cleaning up only one house, and that one had been subjected to a lot less wear.

***

They came home Sunday sunburnt and tired. They slept a few hours and then drank until one threw up on the carpet we had finished cleaning. The next day was Monday. They sat on the couch, still hung over, and announced they were going to the beach. I was carrying a load of food and supplies from Delta to Alpha when Pacem came up to me to say goodbye since they were getting on the plane right from the beach. He wanted a hug. His eyes were dead.

"You're going?"

"Yeah."

"You said you'd help..."

"Well the car's leaving now."

"We'll see you again soon Pika," Tiffany interjected.

"Yeah, whatever," I respond.

"Aww," she continues, "don't be sad, we probably will..."

The truth was that right then I never wanted to see any of them again in my life. Turning back to Pacem I hugged him so I wouldn't be that asshole who leaves somebody with outstretched arms hanging, "You promised," I said.

"Promised what?"

I'm pretty proud of not flat-out decking him right there. It was just the last straw after a whole summer of passive aggressive bullshit from somebody who I had relied on to back me up and help me out.

I walked back into the house and Joker's friend followed me. "Who were those guys?"

"People who lived here."

"Aren't they going to help us out?"

"Apparently not."

"That blond kid, you knew him well?"

I shrugged. What am I suppose to say other than 'I thought I did.'

"He seemed like a real asshole."

"Yeah I guess he is."

***

I left this post for months because I didn't want this story to end like this. Pacem was one of my closest friends in AMP. It wasn't that I was even mad at him, it was that I was disappointed that this was who he turned out to be.

We talked briefly only about business a few times over the next while in the course of wrapping up the house stuff. It was not until six months later when I had had yet another stupid boy-related adventure that I was upset about that we wound up striking up a serious conversation.

"I've been..." he pauses, "working through some stuff. I'm really sorry that I took it out on you."

I use to hear stories like this from my friends and tell them they're crazy to forgive people like this, but I guess if all people were held to those standards I'd be shit out of luck myself.

"I'm sorry too."

Childhood Dreams

"That's a lot of ice cream," one of my coworkers informs me as I come back to the dinner table.

"Yeah, it's fun."

I get a blank look.

"You know, to make a giant cone of ice cream. That was my ambition as a kid. People asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up and I use to say I wanted to run the ice cream machine at McDonalds and make giant cones for all the kids."

"What?"

I shrugged, "I was like five."

"What did your parents think?"

"They wanted me to pursue something a little more ambitious." I paused to take a bite of the cone, "Some people are really bent out of shape about never achieving their childhood dreams but really I'm not. I was a pretty dumb kid."

There was an awkward silence and I could feel my baffled coworker's eyes on me.

"When I was little," Petar offered, "I wanted to be the garbage man."

"What is with you people? That isn't normal."

"Well, you get to ride around hanging off the back of a garbage truck... and I thought that was pretty cool."

"You didn't play like... astronaut or something?"

"No," Mace added, "although I did run around my house screaming 'reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeer!' as loudly as I could."

"Why?"

"Well, when I was little I wanted to grow up to be a firetruck."

Piano Man

"Pika!"

I blink.

"Do you know who I am?"

I've never been good with names. The boy in front of me is 15 with shaggy brown hair and little round Harry Potter glasses. I couldn't work out if he was partially Asian or not, and he moved in long fluid movements that seemed unusual but still graceful.

"No?" Straightening his arms, he dropped them back and leaned forward. In a few steps he gained the speed to jump up onto a short brick wall where he stood, as if considering what to do next, "Well I'm not too important anyway. You're super cool, you have super cool stuff to worry about."

This is how I met Urza. I did it a few times actually because, in the sea of faces, I wouldn't remember the previous encounter until we were half-way through the next, each a near-perfect replica of the last.

***

I had resisted freshman hazing, and my social standing with my lunch group freshman year was tenuous at best, so I rapidly started looking for other places to spend time time where I was both out of the way and unlikely to become somebody's punching bag. He was locked in a practice room in the music building. The fluidness translated into the way he was playing, and he rocked a little back and forth with the music.

"Sing with me."

I'd never heard Piano Man by Billy Joel before, but soon it became a regular song that I would sing and he would play nearly every day we spent lunch together.

***

The grace was infuriating. I grabbed at the book in his hands, but now he was standing another foot back. I reached to find it was now over my head. I jumped to find he had swung it behind his back. I have met many people who actually do martial arts, but Urza will always stand out as the guy who exuded this feeling of being that sensei who just melts through physical reality while the rest of us stagger after him.

"Music theory," he says, holding the book out in front of me again to open it and begin reading my homework. "Oh, very good. You're much better than me." I grabbed at the book to find him perched upon the same little brick wall of the library where he introduced himself. His eyes never seemed to leave the page. "Crazy skills, you've got," he nods, "crazy awesome."

***

That was how Urza was about everything. Nothing ever seemed hard for him. He always had a girlfriend, he was never stressed out about homework, and he could make a piano sing, but when mentioned he would always put himself down and say he was nothing. It was difficult to be angry at him because his eternal response to an insult was to agree with you and, still sporting a giant grin, begin describing all of the horrendous things he deserved for being such a wretched person. He also had an infuriating knack for understanding how people tick, a thing I prided and thought myself unique for at that age.

It hadn't occurred to me that nobody understood how he ticked. It was difficult to tell when he was toying with me and when he was genuine (not to say he was ever not doing both), but over time his statements became progressively more alarming to paint a picture of him depressed and lonely. He could influence people to try to help them, but he would constantly feel responsible for the consequences. If he didn't protect them he felt responsible too. Furthermore, he could make anybody like a projection of him by acting but it simply left him close to people who weren't close to him because they had no idea who he actually was.

"I'm going to tell your parents and they'll take you to a psychologist to get help," I said.

"Then we won't be friends anymore."

"But he'll make you better."

"Nonsense, I've been taken there tons of times before. The exams are very obvious, just like a person. All you need to do is figure out how to say what they want to hear and they send you home with a clean bill of health."

***

"Do you think of yourself as attractive?" the scantron sheet asked.

I found myself lying on my exams too. I think this is why the song Piano Man appealed so strongly to the both of us: we could feel the weight of the decisions we had made and the paths we had not taken.

"I wish I could play like you," I said.

"You could, if you would put the time in. You could be crazy good."

***

Urza and I rapidly reached a comfortable mental place where we could communicate without a hassle. I think we both found it odd to be heard as well as able to hear. I probably spent more time with him than I did with anybody else during highschool, and he pulled me out of more scrapes than I can name. To some degree he civilized me and taught me how people from normal families lived. My siblings were certainly grateful for the cooking lessons he provided. He also stabilized my mother by threatening to let me live in his house when she threw me out.

When he was a freshman in college and I in my senior year of high school it became difficult. We spent less and less time online at the same time but when I moved to a new timezone for my freshman year we almost totally lost contact.

I visited once in the summer after my freshman year. Sitting with him, cuddled up on the couch or sprawled out on the trampoline in his yard, was strange now. In high school the understanding was too close for complicated implications to have spoiled things, but now we were playing this awkward dance of being sure to respect one-another's personal space because it was difficult to sense comfort levels.

When I came back for Thanksgiving to say goodbye to my grandma we almost missed each other completely, but eventually we both carved out time for the night before my flight back. It is alarming to see one another as adults when I still partly think of him as the kid who nearly lit his house on fire by lighting bottle rockets then throwing them random directions on the fourth of July.

We sit and talk and talk and talk. He and his girlfriend have a bird named Jake, and we bring it out of its cage to the adjacent guest bed and sit there for hours to talk. I have to pry everything out of him because he still thinks his life is uninteresting and trivial, but he's found genuine happiness and stability in it. He smiles at my stories and my ambitions. It took me ages in highschool to believe the words were not sarcastic, "You're crazy awesome Pika, you live a crazy awesome life." We're still very close, but somehow we have failed to make time for each other. And I thought I had regrets when I was 14.

***

"What's that?" I asked him. I was 16, and he was 17.

"New piece," he responds, rolling with the chords, "the second of three Argentinian dances."

"You play harder stuff than this."

"No this is hard. It can not be rushed."

***

When they started playing the piano at Prism House I left the library to sit at the foot of it, just like old times. I arrived to realize I had nothing to say and did not know this piano player, so I pretended the whole thing had been an elaborate motion to get another beer and went back to the library.

The pianist was hurrying through a rendition of the song from Charlie Brown's Christmas. He was very technically skilled and hitting all the keys, but you could hear the personality difference in the way he played.

"Man, I hate when people rush a piece," I said to Dreamer, who was sitting beside me.

"Uh-huh."

***

The lights flip on and I blink awake. Urza's over by the light, grinning at me, "You fell asleep in the middle of a sentence about a road trip you're planning in Prague."

"Oh...sorry."

He laughs and hands me my hairbrush, "Nah, it's great to see you excited about things. Come on, we have to get you to the airport. You can finish telling me all about it on the way. I can't wait to hear how it ends."