for the first like 14 years of my life i thought that the story of saint valentine and valentines day were a celebration of a massive gay polyamorous marriage and let me tell you, i was sorely disappointed when i learned i had massively misunderstood that story
i was told the basic story of “the king had made it illegal for young men to get married so that they could be drafted off to go to war (as married men with families were not, apparently)” and that “saint valentine thought this was cruel, and married the young men in secret”
what this was supposed to communicate to me was “saint valentine would marry young men to their girlfriends in secret as a priest at his own risk and thats why we celebrate valentines day”
what i got out of it was “saint valentine married a shitton of dudes so he could protect his army of husbands from having to go to war and it was beautiful and love can halt war in its tracks and thats why we celebrate valentines day”
and thats why the assumption that a child would automatically get a hetero interpretation of the story and the innate unclarity of the english language made me think that valentines day was about mass gay poly marriage until i was like fourteen and recited the story to a friend who stared at me like id grown three extra heads
gosh but like we spent hundreds of years looking up at the stars and wondering “is there anybody out there” and hoping and guessing and imagining
because we as a species were so lonely and we wanted friends so bad, we wanted to meet other species and we wanted to talk to them and we wanted to learn from them and to stop being the only people in the universe
and we started realizing that things were maybe not going so good for us– we got scared that we were going to blow each other up, we got scared that we were going to break our planet permanently, we got scared that in a hundred years we were all going to be dead and gone and even if there were other people out there, we’d never get to meet them
and then
we built robots?
and we gave them names and we gave them brains made out of silicon and we pretended they were people and we told them hey you wanna go exploring, and of course they did, because we had made them in our own image
and maybe in a hundred years we won’t be around any more, maybe yeah the planet will be a mess and we’ll all be dead, and if other people come from the stars we won’t be around to meet them and say hi! how are you! we’re people, too! you’re not alone any more!, maybe we’ll be gone
but we built robots, who have beat-up hulls and metal brains, and who have names; and if the other people come and say, who were these people? what were they like?
the robots can say, when they made us, they called us discovery; they called us curiosity; they called us explorer; they called us spirit. they must have thought that was important.
and they told us to tell you hello.
this is far and away the most popular post i ever made on tumblr. people have asked me if they could illustrate it, people have asked me if they could turn it into a novella, people just messaged me to say it made them cry. that means more to me than i can say.
you probably heard that the mars opportunity rover died today.
it was hard news to hear. i cried at my desk at work. it doesn’t make it easier that it was only supposed to run for 90 days at all; it doesn’t make it easier that it lived 14 years longer than it expected to. it lived a full life. it lived a very good life. it was the first set of eyes on miles and miles of mars. it was an explorer, it was tough, it was very, very brave. and none of that makes it easier, none of that makes it okay that it is not going to sing happy birthday to itself again.
about a year ago, my childhood cat died. i loved her more than anything. i don’t live near my family any more, and i wasn’t there for it, but my parents were, and they held her while her body gave out, and they say she knew she was with them, she knew she was loved.
i know opportunity was a computer inside a movable body, and not a person, or even an animal. still, i wish it had had people to hold it. i wish it had been with the people who cared for it. it seems very hard to me, to die so far from home.
but i think – to the extent to which we can say computers “know” things, which i think is a great deal; i think knowing is most of what computers do; i think if they have a consciousness, knowledge must be nearly all of it-
i think opportunity knew it was loved.
every couple of months i dream that i’ve gone home and my cat’s there. even now, even though my grieving is over and done with, i visit her in my dreams, and i hold her, and every time, she purrs. she missed me. she’s so happy to be with me again.
that’s a very human thing, dreaming of what we’ve loved. what we’ve lost. dreaming things that outlast death. like robots, and singing.
“Hey Goediun, did you finish- ah hell, not MORE earth wildlife.”
“This planet’s completely fucked up Clyod.”
“What the fuck are THOSE?” Guenoid demanded, peering over his co-worker’s mass to squint at the pojection.
“Third-most dominant carnivore on the planet.”
“Yeah but what’s the little thing next to it?”
“Same species.”
“You’re emusifying me.”
“Absoultely not. This thing’s got the genetics from hell. Apparently they just have hundreds if not thousands of copies of any gene they might need and can suffer drastic radiation, inbreeding or rapid enviornmental selection and come out mostly functional organisms. Both of these are actually pretty far from the species average- here, this is a more common specimen.”
“Oh that’s not so bad-”
“Remember how the Humans are Pursuit predators?”
“Oh no. Don’t tell me it can do that endless “Fun Run” Human-Steve did last year for the Beeblebrox Children’s Hospital?”
“It can!” Goeduin writhed gleefully at his partner’s discomfort. “They can do continuous runs for hundreds of miles through the polar regions of the planet, and at tremendous speed! Some of them have a sustainable gallop of over 50 miles per hour!”
“What’s that in civilized Units?”
“uuuuhhh… 210?”
“FUCK.” shouted Clyod, collapsing back into the sleeping tank, though he suspected that there would be no rest for him this cycle as images of the wretched earth creature pursuing him flashed through his ganglian network.
“They’ve got a bite strength that can snap through our building materials and even human bone!” Goeduin continued, vibrating with the kind of wild humor that belied genuine terror. “Thier senses are even more accute than Human-Steve’s! It’s got his entire hearing range and then up into our ‘hypersonic’ vocal range!”
“Great, it can tear me apart after hearing me talk smack. Terrific.” Clyod sighed, dedicating himself to another round of nightmares.
“And it’s Chemosensitivity! They can track prey by the oils left from the prey’s footsteps for MILES! they can even track scents through the air and underwater or buried in in six feet of ‘concrete’!”
“Good grief. With compettion like that, it’s no wonder the humans are so barbaric. Please tell me it’s stupid.”
“They’re comparable to juvenile humans in terms of reasonaing capacity and may be more socially intelligent than adult humans, living in communal groups that can have DOZENS of members. Also they hunt in packs.”
“WHY??” Clyod begged “Why do you even subject yourself, and furthermore, why subject ME to this kind of knowledge? I won’t be able to rechage and be all gross and floppy in the morning.”
“Human-Steve is getting one.”
“…Pardon?”
“Humans keep them as domestic companions. Apparently they’re socially intelligent enough to get humans to raise and feed thier young for life.”
“and. Human-Steve. Is taking on one of these? He’s not worried about it eating him?”
“He said it might nibble on his appendages while it’s teething but that the one his parents kept when he was an infant-”
“HIS PARENTS HAD A DANGEROUS CARNIVORE IN HIS HOME WHILE HE WAS AN INFANT?”
“He showed me many images of them playing and cuddling together. They are quite fond of human children, and not just as snacks.”
“Please tell me he’s getting the little kind.”
“He’s getting a variety called a “Siberian Husky”. He said it was very fluffy.”
if you don’t know the difference between a hare and a rabbit you’ve never gazed into the cold wild eyes of a hare and known that if it could speak it would speak backwards
Jack Rabbits are North American Hares and they’re the WORST to encounter at night becuase:
You all know how big a rabbit is. Jack Rabbits and hares are much bigger. they’re the size of large cats or small dogs or just-walking-age children.
They also like to hang out in gangs of a hlf dozen to over 30.
and in the middle of backcountry dirt roads.
perhaps they’re dustbathing
or blood sacrifce
I don’t know because when you come up the road at night because your dog has a tiny bladder and needs to go out at midnight and you have no yard so you’re walking him on the dirt road around your neighborhod because you might aw well get some stargazing in, and you come just over the ridge to see a coven of twenty jackrabbits in the middle of the road
and
they
all
stand
up
not just onto all fours like a proper prey animal
No they get up on thier hind legs and don’t just sit but STAND like tiny rabbit-skinned toddlers, wobbing slightly as they stare directly at you eyes shining in your flashlight’s glow
…Blood Red.
And a chill goes through you on that warm july night because while they’re a puntable size and allegedly herbivores they’re standing and watching you just like people and you are vastly outnumbered.
everyone freezes
you’re considering your odds aganst roughly 200lbs of Suspiciously Humanoid Hare
and they’re considering their odds against you
the only sound in the never-ending high desert wind
somewhere in your peripheral vision you can see the streetlights but they seem awfully far away
The nearest Jack Rabbit
Blinks
and takes a single shuffling step
forward
You area an overdevloped monkey and your prefrontal cortex is capable of some amazing feats but it runs very slowly compared to the reflexes of a rabbit and you’re frozen as you desperately scramble for the appropriate course of action, hands feeling thick and useless, mouth dry and feet imeasurably heavy there’s no way you’d outrun THESE, god there’s a rabies outbreak going around that shit’s not curable-
The Dog
L U N G E S
It’s only the briefest of movements but the animal you’d picked out for his gangly legs and floppy ears and goofy smile is suddenly a dark shape of muscle and teeth and had flung himself at the horrible goblin rabbits faster than mere physics should dictate, appearing in the circle of the flashlight for only the briefest of moments before the jolt from the leash makes you stumble and the light falters
The Jack Rabbits
Scatter
Vanishing into the faintly starlit sagebrush in as so many faint gray shapes that might be mistaken for the dustclouds they kick up
Later, you sit on the couch disquieted
and you wonder
If the sight of the Jack Rabbits standing and studying you was frightening enough to make you yearn for the safety of the yellowed streetlights
Y’know, I ain’t around these parts too much anymore (Yahoo can go huff a dong), but I just wanted to tell y’all my tale of the 2018/2019 holiday season…
December 17-20: Got the flu (later confirmed to be one of the strains protected by this season’s vaccine). Felt shite, took cold meds, still felt shite but not so much that I could justify not starting the Q1 spreadsheets at work.
Dec 21: Knew the crackles in my lungs were pneumonia. Couldn’t keep my blood oxygen above 90%. Went to the ER that night. They wanted to send me home. I said “I know something is wrong, I would be very uncomfortable going home.” They managed to find a bed in the hospital, said “fine, we’ll give you observation until tomorrow.”
Dec 22: Decompensated quickly. Parents apparently came up north, though I don’t remember seeing them before I woke up again. Couldn’t get aortic O2 saturation above 65% so I ended up intubated.
Late Dec 22-Early Dec 30: Completely unconscious, with the first
two days on paralytics so that the ventilator did 100% of my breathing.
The 36 hours on either side of my sedation are completely blank in my
memory.
At some point my secondary infection (which was never discerned, though extensive testing for bacteria and fungi was done) caused me to become critically ill, and there were preparations made to fly my to Mayo for ECMO. Thankfully, the high-dosage steroid treatment they gave me when I started getting worse helped, and I began improving slowly.
Dec 31: I start to see the world again. My first “memories” are strange delusions brought on by the anesthetics. I thought I had been in a coma for 6 years, and that I was in Cleveland. Why the fuck would I be in CLEVELAND?
I remember seeing the news, something about New Year’s Eve. I fell back asleep, into Seroquel dreams.
Jan 1: My memories start genuinely coming back. I discovered I was too weak to
extend my arm fully, and too shaky to eat Jell-O. The Jell-O DID get
delightfully wobbly, though.
Jan 2: Little Raven’s Birthday. Finally get out of ICU. Moved up to the general wards. Still can’t breathe easily. Food is vile-tasting. Can barely eat. Choke down a lemon bar and cry about how much better Brendan’s were and how much I miss my brother and how I refuse to make my parents go through that again.
Jan3: Manage my first wobbly steps with a walker. The floor hurts my knees and feet. The blood in my eyes is finally being cleared by my body.
Jan 3-5: Slow improvement. Slow for an otherwise-healthy young adult, at least. It feels like forever. My dad and I watched an unbearable amount of cross-country ski qualifying races for the Olympic teams. There’s a terrifying night-vision cam in my hospital room, which wouldn’t bother me if it didn’t have a creepy smiley face.
Jan 5-9: Transitional care, getting physical and occupational therapy. I finally
got home to my apartment (and cat!) that afternoon. I spent the next week regaining my strength and seeing specialists to try and find out why I got so sick. Consensus so far is “flu sucks and you’re unlucky?” I’m hoping to have better answers next month at my secondary follow-ups.
I aged my husband and parents about a decade during my hospital stay. I missed a month of work and am still fixing problems that arose with the backlog.
My Christmas dinner was a 10% dextrose solution, since I was still paralyzed and couldn’t have anything down my NG tube yet. New Year’s Eve drinks? “GIVE ME SOME FUCKING WATER!” – but not being able to have any, because I was still overloaded with fluid due to the standard protocol to prevent hypoperfusion when someone goes into septic shock.
Just to make it clear: I would not have survived without the tens of
thousands of hours of training and practice that my medical team devoted
their lives to acquiring. I would not have survived without the
millions of hours of research and trials that allowed the machines that
kept me monitored, cooled when my fever continued to spike, and breathing in a life-sustaining way when my lungs weren’t able to exchange gasses.
I am a fat bitch, but I am physically active, eat fairly decently, and don’t smoke or drink excessively. I am not someone who “should” be threatened by deadly complications due to influenza-caused pneumonia.Yet I was.
And YOU could be, too. Get yer flu shot, if you can. If you can’t, yell at others until they do.
It’s not too late in the season, trust me. People still die in March. People like you.
9 year old me, reading Forgotten Realms books; “God Elminster is so cool fuck damn he goes everywhere and has like a million names and is a BAMF wizard and a ton of enemies and can shapeshift and once turned himself into a woman and is a wily bastard and has a rad hat goddamn he’s my favorite.”
30 year old me, narrowing my eyes at Odin; “You…absolute MOTHERFUCKER.”
*Soft sound of divine snickering*
And somewhere in the 20th century in a pub in Oxford, a one eyed gent sees John enter and greet Clive and the rest of the Inklings.He’s been lurking just outside the college some days. Others, the shadow of a broad brimmed hat falls over a desk filled with Old English translations in a study filled with pipe smoke.
An old hand alters the slope of elf-speech, just so, and mirth is found when the girl named for the Roman goddess of the hunt is frustrated by her professor, all lost in his mythologies. Yet, she is inspired to spin tales of her own, tales of stubborn hot-tempered wizards with Moving Castles, parallel worlds, magical woodlands. She who was named for the huntress later becomes friends with the young man who gives Morpheus, Prince of Stories, Lord Shaper, his rebirth. Gives us Wednesday and Shadow and Mr. World and Low-key Liesmith. She befriends magicians, writes of them, though her old teacher frustrates her so.
Somewhere else that’s not the pub, across the sea, he asks a rhetorical question, knowing Gary will think on it and realise that things can be more than just words on a page, even as his friends blow on their dice, for luck. There, is after all, magic in the breath.
For now though, which is to say before, the gent sips his pint, watching the Inklings disappear into the snug. Many realms have been forgotten, but the trick with Memory is that it works in All Directions. It always comes back, despite the gent’s fears, new every time.
Eveything’s connected, after all.
“One more for the road, my dear?” he says, favouring the barmaid with a roguish grin. “And one for yourself, eh?”
He leans forward, giving her the full force of his charm. He has time, after all.
Like the goddess’ namesake’s young friend will later write:
“Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot.” Neil Gaiman, Dream Country (The Sandman, #3)
Ignore the wink the old gent sends in our direction across the years. That did not happen. He did not smile, and bend the weave of lives to his own ends, yours and mine and others. Did not give us the grin of an Old, Grey Wolf who is sly and wily and twice as slick.
In highschool I wrote a story about a middle-generation of stellar travelers. Their parents were born on earth and left as children, and the middle generation will not live long enough to see their destination. They live their entire lives on the ship and I wrote about them trying to find their place in everything. They will never know blue skies and warm beaches and open fields with warm breezes. They’ll never know birdsong or crickets or frogs. They’ll never hear the rain on the roof of a dreary day. I never could find the right way to end the story. I wanted it to be a happy ending, but I didn’t know how to do it.
I realize now that it was a book about me dealing with depression before I even knew it. Looking back at how blatant the projecting was, it’s obvious now. It wasn’t then.
In the story, the middle-generation people are lost. They’re apathetic. They’re just a placeholder. The only job they have is to keep the ship running, have kids, and die. As the middle generation of people began becoming adults, suicide rates were skyrocketing. Crime and drug rates were jumping. This generation was completely apathetic because they felt that they had no use.
In the story, a small group of people in the middle-generation create the Weather Project. They turn the ship into a terrarium. They make magnificent gardens and take the DNA of animals they took with them and recreate them and they make this cold, metal spaceship that they have to live their entire lives on into a home. They take what little they have and they break it and rearrange it into something beautiful. They take this radical idea and turn the ship into a wonderful jungle of trees and birds and sunshine.
And I realize now how much it reflects my state of mind as I transitioned from a child into an adult while dealing with depression. You always hear “it gets better” and “when you’re older things will be easier” and I was so sick of waiting for it to get better. I was in the middle-generation stage. And I was sick of it. I was so sick of waiting.
When I was in highschool I didn’t know how to end the story. I didn’t know how to have a happy ending. I didn’t have the life experience then to finish the story in a meaningful way. I didn’t know how to make it better for these middle-generation characters.
But now that I’m older, I’m learning. That if you sit and wait for things to get better, it never will. You have to take your life and break it apart and rearrange it into something beautiful. You have to make the cold metal ship into the garden that you deserve. You have to make your own meaning. You have to plant your own garden.
You have to teach yourself that being happy is not a radical idea.
I haven’t even gotten around to posting the story about the dead body yet.
The dead body isn’t even the most exciting part of the story.
PLEASE elaborate, my gods
So I want you to know that I’ve been sitting on this story for about a week and a half now because the amount of work drama is sometimes so intense that even the interesting parts of my job have to be shelved for the sake proper emotional processing.
But this isn’t about that. This is about milestones.
