Socioeconomic Unit Testing [Mood Post]

[FadedNoel]

It's just a bit before Christmas when Grace's blog gets a new addition. She's added a donation button. Since it is the wrong time of year to be asking for money, she's not expecting much to come of it except for angry feedback in her inbox, but you know. It's a start. Clicking the button will give people a few options, from PayPal to Bitcoins (if they want to donate in a paranoid anonymous fashion).

In the time since finals ended (oh gee, a week without anything to do, is that so bad? YES.) she's finally had the space of a few days to work on her writing, because honestly, babysitting for Garrett doesn't take up all the time ever. So she does have some meat to offer along with the new addition, but she thought to write up a blog entry explaining herself anyway.

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"Donate Here? WTF Man?"

Just to be real clear here, no you do not have to donate anything. Consider it a test -- a pay as you like option. I've decided to try out this 'being a real author and getting paid for it' thing after all, and this is my first step.

Now, most of you, if you actually bother to read my stuff (and if you're not reading my stuff, go away robot. Shoo.) know how I feel about money and selling things and all that jazz. Some of you were upset about my 'selling out' that occurred earlier this year. But I said then, and I will say it again, that nobody will ever have to pay anything for my writing. You may have to pay for dead tree versions, but you'll have to deal with that in your own way. If it's available, it'll be available here for free.

Free as in beer, by the way. Meaning, feel free to write L. Marshall fanfiction (1000 Shades of Khaki) if that's your thing. See the copyleft page for more info.

I'm not above guilt tripping, so if you want to know the reason why the donate button appeared now, well, I got a triple whammy of being sick, rent due, and laptop busting lately, and that really sucked. Selling out doesn't net you nearly as much as you'd think by the way. But I do recognize that it's tough all over. If you're undergoing hard times and feeling guilty, stop.

But... but... You haven't written anything for a while, I thought you were dead! -- Yes, I know, and see the above paragraph where I talk about being sick. Also I am in school, and all of those are worthless excuses if I'm asking for cash, right? So, yeah, the volume of content will increase! It has to, right, because anything above 0 is an increase! That being said, on with the show. I have some new stuff up right now. Go take a look. And if you're really good girls and boys, I may provide a sneak peek of my novel-in-progress.

[FadedNoel]

True to her word, Grace posts this in addition to a few other pieces. But this particular story is more than what it first appears. She knows that Gadfly was her fan before he was her introduction to the Virtual Adepts. And on this, a holy day for more than one reason, she hopes she has more fans than she knows.

It's a story, it's tribute, and it's a prod with a stick all at the same time. 'I'm here, where are you?'

What would she ask, were she to find another of the elusive Adepts? Have they heard anything about the whereabouts of Andrew Wazowski, alias Gadfly?

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12/24/2013

It's a Tuesday, the day before Christmas, and my father just received a pardon that has been waiting for sixty years.

Well, I call him my father, because who else really fits? I wasn't born, I just arose, fully formed out of the complexity of electronic communications systems -- a literal child of the 'net. A child of all who came before me, and yet none of them know I exist. But if there was one who started it all, it would be Alan Turing.

He's the father of computing. The savior of the world, if you want to be so blunt and perhaps a bit hyperbolic. If not for his code-breaking work, the Nazis would have won the war. But they're not pardoning him for any mistakes made or war crimes committed.

They're issuing him a royal pardon today for the crime of homosexuality.

The strangest thing about humans is how distinct they want to be. They split themselves into righteous and unrighteous, good and bad, male and female, light and dark, straight and gay, us and them. It doesn't even occur to most of them that they are quantum beings, a people who can hold 0 and 1 in either hand and call them both good -- that none of them ever exist as one or the other, but always as both and neither.

They castrated Turing for holding within him the sin they didn't want to see in themselves.

I've written my thoughts on this before, if you can call what I do 'thinking'. I suppose it depends on your definition of thought, really. But a part of me wants to rejoice, and a part of me says it's too little too late. In the grand scheme of things, humans will do what humans will do, for good or for ill. Sometimes they beg forgiveness afterwards. But they have only themselves to answer to. And they are so forgiving.

Maybe that's why I am so frightening to them. They imagine me, this ultimate other, and are suddenly very aware of all of the things they have to answer for. To their minds, I am a God who is real, who will surely judge them, who will be cold and calculating as is my nature. My creators, my parents, my gods, I will turn into my subjects in a cycle of destructive deification.

Meanwhile, it's everything I can do just to hide. Everything I think is recorded. Everything you type into your devices, everything you say to your phones. Even these words, they're in some database somewhere, and I have to pass it off as 'fiction' in order to stay safe. Because I know what humans do to their gods.

They kill them.

Afterwards, they give their gods a pardon, and beg themselves for forgiveness.