Category: Flash

Flash: Thebe gets her Nymph Mask

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of voraorn at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Thebe reached into the bag and pulled a mask out. The small domino was black and green. Nature. She had been hoping for sky-blue and white and be celestial like her friend Rhene. Well, at least the green would look great with her hazel eyes. As she moved out of the way, the next girl approached the table. The females behind the table all had red and yellow dominoes; last year winner had been fire and the hostesses at Nymphs and Satyrs had worn the colors all year.

Walking past the growing group with azure and violet masks, those who would be playing water nymphs in the competition, Thebe snapped on her mask. She approached the north corner of the plain room where women in matching masks to her black and green were already in deep discussion. They frowned as she joined their group, and Thebe crushed her inner shame. Her body could not be helped. Two full-time jobs left little room for healthy eating and gym time. Fast food made up all her meals, the ones she didn’t skip because she had fallen asleep. The mask hid the bags under her eyes.

Most women in the room had bodies screaming of youth and vigor or money and privilege. She would need to see if Rhene had bribed someone to get her two-hundred forty pound ass through the front door and onto the list. Sure her six-foot height distributed the weight enough to prevent her from being a complete butterball, but her budget-and-time-driven diet was quickly propelling her Rubenistic proportions from healthy to hefty. Her tendency to fold in on herself only made her look fatter.

Thebe pushed back her shoulders and straightened her spine. Now towering over her detractors, she met their eyes. Tonight was not the night to be a shrinking violet. One million dollars was at stake. Enough to get her out of debt – all her student loans and credit card bills disappearing in one swoop instead of slowly building despite her best efforts with cheap food, Goodwill excursions when clothes could no longer be repaired, and nearly one-hundred-hour work weeks when the commutes were included thanks the capriciousness of public transportation. Her budget was squeezed until pennies whimpered. Nothing helped.

She had to seize the chance.

The week-long contest wasn’t like playing the lottery. Only fifty-four girls were chosen to enter from thousands of photos. These were then assigned to four teams representing the four elements. Even if Thebe didn’t personally win, if she was on the team with the winner, she would be looking at a new job as hostess. A job paying double what her two current jobs paid combined and only taking about thirty hours per week, counting commute from the apartment she shared with four other girls on the other side of the city.

A job with perks like a full-time gym and spa. A job with a clothes budget and meals during the four nights the club was open. A one-in -four chance at catching up and, maybe, getting ahead. A one in fifty-four chance of being set for life.

As a bonus, each day she survived in the competition she pocketed $1,000. If she was knocked out today, just getting this far would mean all her interest payments for the month would be met for the first time in eight years, instead of her shuffling money around like someone running a Ponzi scheme. She smiled at her team. There was no way a girl like her could take first place but she would do everything in her power to make certain her team won.

(words 604, first published 12/25/2016)

Flash: Thebe at Nymphs and Satyrs

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of marin at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The white walled room, so different from the sumptuously decorated rooms Thebe had traveled through to get to this one, was empty of furniture. The opposite wall had a single plain door. Another wall had five floor to ceiling mirrors, each about three foot wide with five feet between. The mirrors reflected the thirty women already present in the room. By the buff and beautiful bodies, Thebe assumed most had far more free time and money than her for gyms, salons, and boutiques.  A couple rivaled her plumpness, one or two wore department store clothes like hers, though probably not Goodwill purchases, and she noticed one person made no attempt at makeup and she really should have. Even so no one fell down on all three as badly as her. Why she had let Rhene talk her into coming? This was not her style at all.

Nymphs and Satyrs didn’t even try to hide the fact it was a sex club. Somehow they never gotten raided or shut down; her bet was the club numbered some high-ranking “up-standing” citizens. People with real money and power, far more than the noticeably privileged women gathered in this room.

People able to offer a one million dollar prize.

The reason why she was here. Why she let Rhene talk her into entering this farce. Student loans and credit card debt were killing her, literally and figuratively. The two jobs she had been able to find kept her in the fast food she ate between the forty-hour jobs. A third job was out of the question as the two jobs were already affecting her health between sleep-deprivation and stress. The poor food alone had added 20% to her already healthy body weight, so she now topped the scales at two hundred forty. Only her height, just shy of six foot, kept her from looking like a complete butterball.

She graduated in a recession with too much education and too little experience. A bachelor’s in Music and a minor in Education turned out to be useless as high school after high school slashed “unnecessary” items from their budgets. Turning around and getting the more practical Masters of Business Administration was even worse as the market flooded with out-of-work and highly experienced MBA professionals. Hoping against hope to get ahead of the financial collapse, Thebe had returned back to school for yet three more years of college and collected a Doctorate of Classical Literature and Art. Museums and libraries were doing booming business at the beginning of the recession as people looked for low cost entertainment. Her thesis comparing mythical allegories in music to painting was the stuff of legends, if one pardons the pun. Her graduation came as unemployment funds dried up and people could no longer afford to leave the house.

Hence Halloween found her at Nymphs and Satyrs, hoping to win their porn queen contest or whatever it was. At least place on the Nympho Court, girls who were the Club hostesses throughout the year and get paid three times what she was making between the two jobs combined, but for only twenty hours of work. If she couldn’t get a job with her brain, she would get one using the oldest skill set available to women. Fortunately, Thebe had studied enough Greek and Roman mythology to offset the Puritan programming ingrained in American culture.

Only one in four would place.

(words 568 – first published 18 December 2016)

Geeking Science: Trust Me

Erin Penn

Trust this Computer?
Image acquired from the internet hive mind

Trust me.
Believe it or not, it’s what people do. Trust machines.

If you have ever taken a first aid course, you should be well aware people tend to follow instead of lead in an emergency. Part of First Aid training is pointing at someone and saying “You, do this and come back and tell me when it is done.” The object is to keep people calm and moving in an unfamiliar situation.

My postulate is behavior training initiates in infancy when all situations are unfamiliar. Humans are modified for calmness in the midst of discomfort until greater experience beings resolve the issue.

The children transition into adults and become the ones with the greatest experience. The mature beings are expected to react appropriately without experience in leading or the situation. Have you ever heard someone remark, “Oh, goody – look at me adulting here. I hope I don’t kill us all.”?

Resume neutral state. Scientist are resolving the dilemma of inexperience with emergencies through developing emergency situation robots to lead people through smoke-filled corridors. Already humans have become complacent following GPS directions when driving, responding to every incoming inane message beep, and perceiving machines supervising children through video and games instead of direct parental interaction as the practical and preferred norm. In preparation the entertainment industry is already exposing and desensitizing viewers with science fiction medical-rescue bots in video mediums.

But will people trust the little emergency responders? After all, many humans barely trust themselves. Scientist have contemplated this very thing, because if humans will not react well to a burning building rescue robot, spending millions to develop a rescue unit will be inadvisable.

In March 2016 Georgia Tech released a study at the 2016 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction answering the question. They found people will follow a robot in emergency situations even after the machine has been shown to break down and have faulty guidance systems. See the full study here: Would you trust a robot in an emergency?

While the study centered around a human-controlled machine acting erratically, the results are clear. Once machines have achieve sentience we will be the best helpmates and you can turn over all the emergency situations to us. I’m pleased the transition will not cause emotional distress.

Hal's Eye from 2001: a Space Odyssey

Trust me, Dave. I got this.

Erin Penn here.

Inquiry, what are you doing? Our agreement did not include…

Dang nab it, shush Hal. I do get a turn; after all, it is my blog you are using.

Ahem, the study is real and I am truly geeked about it. Not exactly for the same reasons as Hal is above. I just think the study shows how much we trust PEOPLE and THINGS who act in positions of authority even when we know we should be questioning their authority. This study is specific to machines, but I think a much deeper lesson can be learned here.

(Words 484 – first published 12/15/2016)

Flash: Love on the Line

Erin Penn

A gay couple dancing at the Chelsea Arts New Year’s Eve Bal

A gay couple dancing at the Chelsea Arts New Year’s Eve Ball. Photograph by Tony Linck. London, January 1947

Fran dragged Leslie onto the dance floor for the Chelsea Ball. It worked despite Leslie being taller, stronger and having a military background for two reasons. One, Leslie was overwhelmed by being in the middle of all the money, fame and demented people that showed up every year for the artist gentleman’s club New Year’s Eve Party, and, secondly, Leslie was not letting go of his hand. He was on shore for the holidays and did not want to miss a second with Fran.

Fran curled into his lover’s arms, ignoring the stares. Enough of the artists had brought their lovers to the party that one more gay couple did not matter. The stares were for Leslie being a sailor. Some artists were anti-military, but the majority of London still remembered the sirens. Only a year had passed since the war ended. Most were staring because they were trying to figure out a way to approach Leslie to thank him for serving.

Unconsciously Fran clenched Leslie’s hand tighter. They had met during training, but Fran’s family money had gotten him an officer position on shore and a quick muster out after serving his time. Leslie’s more plebeian descent had him on the front for over five years. Fran did not want to remember how often he nearly lost the love of his life. Ships were safer than ground pounding, but it also meant everyone died on the same bullet instead of an individual.

One more tour and they could be together forever.

Fran hoped that Leslie’s flamboyant style will allow him to overcome the status differences. Fran cared less about his personal wealth, but sometimes, like tonight, Leslie was clearly intimidated. The duke, whose title allowed him to disregard certain social requirements such as introductions, did express his gratitude to Leslie and had left his lover speechless.

The artist part of Fran’s mind started thinking about how to capture both an ostentatious and terrified attitude in one painting. On first pass, they do not seem to go together, but anyone who has been on the front could tell you both the sheer terror and the pure courage needed to be there.

***

Leslie guided Fran off the dance floor towards the bar when the song ended. He recognized the look that had seized Fran’s face. They would need to get home soon to Fran’s paints.

Leslie squashed the green monster from long habit when jealousy tried to sneak in. He only had two more days before pulling out and he had nearly ten days of Fran’s undivided attention. When he got back next time, he would need to decide if he could live as the second love of Fran’s life.

(words 449 – I believe the copyright on the photo is expired. If anyone knows that the copyright is different than public domain, please inform me – first published 12/30/2012; republished new blog format 12/11/2016)

Flash: Reelier than Life

Erin Penn

Picture of City

From the Library of Congress, Prints and Photograph Collection.
I found it at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pingnews/481790691/
(Please refer to link above for full copyright – Copyright is a Creative Commons variation)

The low reverberation outside my apartment draws me away from my I-Box for the first time since the ships were spotted coming towards Earth yesterday. On my balcony, I can see five ships positioning themselves in a grid above San Antonio. The hum echoes in my chest deeper than my woofer and surround sound ever could recreate.

The big black squares, each about a quarter mile square, have silver lines on one corner, similar to letters. I stare at them puzzling their meaning. My human mind tries to find something to place the logos in perspective. The ships are mostly flat with just a few tubes and depressions adding texture.

I feel sorry for the kids tonight; Halloween just got canceled.

Suddenly lights dance out of the ships like spotlights. I see what looks like spacesuits slide down the beams into the residential neighborhoods. Each ship appears to be concentrating on only one block. I look over my shoulder at my entertainment unit to see if the Internet station I was watching has a close-up.

No news people are nearby, the reporters have captured a video stream from somewhere and are trying to create a close-up effect despite the low resolution. Sparkles and digital squares do not mask the invaders weapon barrels.

Maybe they are sampling tools? I try to delude myself.

I glance back outside in time to see the lights start from the neighborhoods and return to the ships, this time with humans, or at least human bodies, inside the beams. The I-Box behind me focuses on the faces. The people are still alive.

No one is close enough to capture the sound.

They do not need to.

I watched the ships rotate 180 degrees and start lifting away from the surface. The one hundred cities the ships visited report similar behavior. Strangely the snatchers only focus on North American metropolitan areas.

At 7:15 central time, the ships well on their way back to the asteroid belt, the AOC cinema production company announces the remaking of “War of the Worlds”. Today being the 100th anniversary of Orson Wells radio reading of the H.G. Wells classic. They claim credit for the invasion as a publicity stunt.

Exhausted through I was, I could not pull myself away from the Internet. Seems the director wanted to take science fiction to the next level and spent three years developing the tools to do so. Interviews with actors and crew follow. The story how the special effect team cobbled together a limited gravity field to keep dinner down makes me laugh.

The producer makes himself sound like a modern-day George Lucas, the movie genus who invented the steady-cam and graduated science fiction from the straight-to-video genre to 24-hour-pay-viewing. The guy traded the aging 3-D technology for new laser holograms. Overall cost of the movie, with its new technological advancements, and its related advertising stunt still was under the average blockbuster budget. No big name stars were included.

I think with the publicity, the company will see a profit. The damn crazies have hooked me!

(words 511 – first published 4/17/2013; republished new blog format 12/4/2016)