The Futile Life – Part 7

All of a sudden the King was gasping for air. The guards retreated to save their master. The King was in trouble. He stood up and started pacing randomly, straining to breathe. Then he collapsed to the ground. His lips were blue and swollen.

 

The room was filled with silent horror. My god. It finally sunk in. John had heard about anaphylactic shock. The King was probably allergic to the chocolate. Maybe it contained traces of nuts.

 

The guards rushed to the King’s aid. They tried to revive him for a few minutes but it was futile. All eyes now stared accusingly at John.

 

Sh*t – why had he frozen? John knew he had to get out of there quickly! The panic button was his only chance given he hadn’t requested any heavy weapons. He pressed it. It needed ten seconds to work. Stupid technology! Couldn’t they make it any faster?

 

Ten…

 

The guards came rushing towards him.

 

Nine…

 

It wasn’t going to be fast enough. The armor on his body was little protection when his head was completely uncovered.

 

Eight…

 

Now he had weapons pointed at him. One guard lifted his weapon into striking position.

 

Seven…

 

John cried out “It wasn’t me! It was the food taster. Why did he not die? This is his witchcraft!”

 

The guards weren’t convinced… yet.

 

“I saw him!” John shouted, “He put poison on the food the King ate. Think about it. Why is he still alive and the King dead? They both ate the same food.”

 

Now they looked confused.

 

Five…

 

“I did no such thing!” the food taster shrieked. “He is a lier and a killer!”

 

Four…

 

“Just kill both of them!” someone shouted from the crowd. One of the guards motioned and the food taster was dragged towards the group of guards that were surrounding John. He was kicking and screaming “Let me go! I did nothing! Please….”.

 

Three…

 

“Both of you will confess now!” shouted the head guard, “or your will be tortured and burned alive.”

 

Two…

 

There was a frightening silence. Then it was quickly broken. A guard grabbed John by the throat and spat in his face. “You heard! Confess!”. At the same time, another guard slapped the food taster across his face. The food taster was crying – “No… It wasn’t me. Let me go! I want to go back to my family.”

 

One…

 

John disappeared from the scene in an instant.

 

The food taster would not be so lucky.

 

 

***

 

John was back in the time-holiday centre. He was handed a towel to wipe the saliva off his face.

 

“What a rush John! You were on the edge.” The time helper sounded excited. He was a good salesman.

“What have I done?” John said quietly to himself.

His helper patted him on the shoulder gently. He went into emphatic mode. “Don’t be so concerned. They were created far you-for your holiday. They mean nothing. It’s not as if they have lives to go to. Just enjoy the adrenaline pump.”

“What will happen to them now?” John asked.

“It depends.”

“On what?’

“Well, if there’s a demand for the contents that remain, they may be used again- “recycled”, if you like. Given that the history in that copy dimension has been altered irrevocably, it will probably attract hunters or other destructive kinds of holidays. It will be held for thirty more days and then, if no one likes it, it will be archived.

“What happens when it’s archived?”

“Now you’re asking too much. That’s a trade secret.”

John couldn’t help feeling uneasy with that response.

Another Update to Wee Basic

Quote from the change log:

Alpha 1c:

fixed:

- for/next error on first parse
- let statement not ignoring white space
- assingment not ignoring white space
- boolean functions for if statement not ignoring white space
- boolean expression for if statement returning incorrect value when using brackets
- print statement not handling variables that have a value which is a negative decimal

added/changed:

- added basic graphics:
plot x,y,colour (x,y are coordinates; colour: 1-4 to display, 0 to erase). See pong demo
line x1,y1,x2,y2,colour. See pong demo

- added log(), sin(), cos(), tan() and sqrt()

- cursor moves to the top of the document after load file
- if there is an error in the basic code, cursor will move to the point of (or close to) the error after the program is ended to make it easier to debug
- you can now use up and down (as well as left and right) to navigate in the editor

Feel free to download – change the PPT extension to ZIP. The pong demo program is included in the download. Don’t forget to patch with DLDI.

Download:Wee Basic

This is a screen of the pong demo:

Brain death

 

She was having a party. A suicide party.

 

Speech time.

 

“Thank you for coming friends and family. I am very relieved to be getting out of this place. I know that some of you will miss me, but I’m just so, so bored. I’ve achieved everything I want to and now its time to go.”

 

Everyone cheered. “Good on you Loren. Hope you find peace,” a voice shouted out.

 

“Thank you,” Loren replied in a cheerful voice, “Now everyone have a good time. I’ve set the time for death to 10.05pm. You can hang around for it or leave beforehand. Also, I don’t mind if you keep partying after I’m gone, but don’t forget to clean up. My landlord will have a fit otherwise.”

 

Everyone in the room began dancing to the music. Those who were not yet robots ate party food.

 

Loren had thought this over for many centuries. She had vigorously debated the idea of suicide with herself and her friends. Why would I give this life up? I could live forever. There are many experiences that I’ve only had a few times. I could keep going. The world will change and I can witness the changes.

 

Life wasn’t all enjoyment though. To live, one had to keep working. Even as a robot, she had to keep herself well maintained. Parts were expensive. It was a never ending amount of peddling just to keep moving forward.

 

Why would she live forever? Ever since they had invented the technology to download the entire contents of the human brain on to a removable medium, anyone could live forever. The brain would simply be transferred from the frail human body into something more solid that could withstand the ravages of time.

 

There were no more involuntary deaths. Everybody kept an up-to-date copy of their brain stored safely in case there was ever an accident. Those who backed up their brains regularly could almost be exactly the same person if their brain had to be reinstalled. Also, those with corrupted software could always select a restore point.

 

In fact, psychology had become so much easier as well. As long as a person kept regular and up to date backups of their brain, they could have any number of restore points. If, for example, they suffered some kind of acute psychological distress, they would just select a restore point and reload their brain from that point onwards. Then they would be right as rain.

 

Loren had kep regular and up to date backups but she wanted them destroyed. It was enough. Living for two hundred thousand years was all she could take.

 

It was time now. She lay down on her bed, alone in her room. She could hear all of the happy voices and music downstairs. She pressed the “secure reformat button” on her chest.

 

“Are you sure you want to proceed?” a pleasant voice asked.

 

“Yes,” Loren replied calmly.

 

“Are you certain? Data cannot be retrieved after this process is complete.”

 

“Yes I am sure” Loren repeated.

 

Then she drifted into nothingness. She was finally at peace.

 

Little did she know that her mother had kept a copy of her just in case….

 

 

 

 

 

What to do next

I’m getting a lot of hits on the Nintendo DS program. Should I continue with that or does anyone want me to keep writing the stories?

Just trying to work out what to focus on.

Please comment.

Edit: ok so none of the two people (me included) visiting this site cares…. sob