Bewarethewumpus

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

Are we robot zombies or are we the pinnacle of humanity? Are we ahead of the evolutionary curve? Did we make the leap that all creatures with a finite lifespan have to or are we freaks? The universe remains as silent as it ever has on the subject.

No one dies of natural causes anymore.

We count our blessings but we’re scared. Dr Hansen saved us and doomed us all at the same time.

The year was 2020. “A year for vision”, they called it. And Dr Hansen delivered.

Immortality, eternal youth, the cure for AIDS and the Big C. All a person had to do was cease to be human.

“You see, our spirits are not our bodies. Our bodies are not our selves,” Dr. Hansen said. “Our brains are meat but our minds are something altogether different. We decay too quickly. The problem is what we’re made of, not who we are.”

He proposed a consciousness transfer into mostly artificial bodies. Sausage meat into a bullet casing. Nervous systems became calm systems. The hot red of blood became the cool blue of coolant. Neurons became nanocapacitors. Shreds of the original brain and nerves survived but were coffined into layers of hermetically-sealed exoskeletons.

The eccentric rich went for it. After that, Hansen cut corners and lowered prices, extolling his wares on telnet and oldweb. It sold well. The older folk, the terminally ill and the daredevil visionaries lined up. It created a very lively debate amongst the existentialists and religious scholars.

The military departments loved him. Living weapons were a reality; more predictable than the alien algorithms of flaky A.I.s. Unregistered mercenaries loved him as well.

Dr. Hansen became rich off of the patents involved, the factories that made the equipment, and the laboratories that made the switch. The black market, the grey market, and the legitimate downtown offices all were booming.

The thing that freaked the naysayers out was that it was a one-way switch. Just a glance at the metal skin of the warmechs or even the plastic skin of the short-lived humanomorph fad made a lot of people shut their eyes and shiver.

Sex was no longer possible in an artificial body. Orgasm programs and virtual reality were available stims for the fakebodies but it wasn’t the same. That fact made the young people stay away.

Dr Hansen was trying to figure out how to pitch to their demographic when the plague hit.

An airborne flesh-eating virus dubbed The End with a 98% communicability rate killed all the non-transferred people, Dr Hansen included. The higher primates all died as well. In one year, the population of the earth nosedived.

Everyone in Shells survived.

The earth is populated now by the minds of out-of-work soldiers, old people, and the once rich. Hulking metal weapons and artistic interpretations of the human form. Basic automaton models mixing with shining, high-end custom jobs. The population is holding at ten million, two hundred thirty thousand, and sixty-six.

Scared minds in tin cans.

We’ve been building shells again in an effort to propogate the species but we’re finding it difficult to clone new nervous systems with the virus still in the air. It hasn’t gone away. And most of Dr Hansen’s notes were lost in The End riots.

We are a closed system now. A finite population that can only get lower unless we figure out how to reproduce properly. Our scientists are working on it but not that many of them made the switch, oddly enough.

Until we can figure out how to reproduce, we wait.

When you ask members of the Jasper Parks Canada visitor safety team if they remember the search for George Joachim, a common response is a deep sigh, and something like: "Ah yes...George." Four years later, the name still conjures head shaking and wary glances.
...
Joachim unintentionally misled searchers by listing his destination incorrectly in the climber's registry, and then behaved so unlike other people previously have in his circumstance that he was repeatedly missed in the search. Parks Canada's search and rescue community considers his case a valuable learning experience and have since tweaked search protocols to account for other behavioral outliers.

Author : Rick Tobin

Log Entry: Friday, August 19, 2033

I doubt anyone aboard will miss me, but how to go? No cords or a decent rope for hanging. Not a belt on the whole ship. Velcro won’t cut it with the smooth walls on the Jones. If I had a decent cook’s apron I could use the ties, but no, I have to wear my single-issue jumpsuit. If nothing else, having to wash the thirty crew members’ undies while I have to stand nude would be reason enough for suicide.

It’s not the adventure the recruiter described: cleaning walls, clothing, cutting hair, and preparing meals. I can’t fly this heap, navigate, perform science experiments or make repairs. My spec sheet says duties as assigned, basic labor. I might as well be a toilet shadow…another thing I have to keep clean. Four went to Mars on the first 2029 exploration. I can’t figure why these thirty need special consideration. Why depend on me to make their travel pleasant? True, I can make a gourmet meal out of rat’s guts and straw, but for all that why treat me like a stowaway? And when we get to Bush Argo 1 I’m assigned to tend the hydroponic garden because of my green thumb. We’re only a week from landing. I can’t face that.

Why didn’t I use an air lock? They put rotating codes on the locking keypads. Only the CO and Exec have numbers. I just want out. They use me for amusement; first just short-sheeting the bed, or hiding my pillow; then, peeing in my boots or hiding shoe polish in my toothpaste. Lately the mad crapper leaves piles around the rig. I have to clean it and listen to laughter as I walk to recycling. If that wasn’t bad enough, someone is going through my stuff. I’m still missing Granny’s wedding ring. Why take that?

I’m not brave. I don’t get paid for that. I only left to get out of debt. They clear all that when you sign for a one-way. I simply can’t get up the nerve to slice myself with my butcher knives or try to find a loose wire to put in my mouth. So, I’m going to make up some special chocolates, just for me, with some of the sleep meds I slipped out of the dispensary cabinet. I’ll just go to sleep and they can take care of my mess for a change. I’ll bake the fudge bars tomorrow and cover them with a killer dose of frosting. So when you read this, know that I had a sugar high before I left this crate, so you creeps couldn’t make me your pendejo gardener on Mars.

Mom, I’m sorry. I know you expected more. I love you. See you someday.

“That’s the end of the log?” Inspector Connolly asked his associate, Spenser Willis, as he finished reading.
“That’s it, Chief.”
“The crew must have distracted Hernandez long enough to break into his room, take the chocolates and consume all of them. That seems clear. Agree?”
“Perfectly, except for the missing body.”
“Sure, we got all the crew after the John Paul Jones landed, except him. Any clues?”
“No, and there’s no suits missing. No sign of Hernandez. That’s a big one driving Space Central nuts. It’s causing a Press circus. It could set back our program a decade. We’re going to be hurting if they don’t send more ships.”
“We’ve got plenty of useless pilots and navigators, but no one to keep our gardens going or cook.”

Author : Gray Blix

“I don’t see anything, mommy. I want to go inside.”

He was lying in his child-sized lounge chair next to her adult-sized lounge.

The nights were clear and warm in Stella’s corner of the world after the astronomers’ announcement, so people looked up at the sky expecting to see new stars pop into view every few minutes, like flashes of light during a meteor shower. They were disappointed. It was too soon to see the phenomenon with naked eyes. Not enough photons reached earth. Only telescopes with special lenses and cameras that accumulated light over long time periods and recorded them as digital photos proved the astronomers correct. Since only astronomers had such equipment, a lot of people didn’t believe. They thought it was a scheme to get government funding.

“All right, Todd. Get ready for bed. I’m going to lie here awhile longer.”

The photos weren’t very convincing. Views of a distant glowing cloud. And there was no catchy name for the phenomenon, since scientists weren’t sure what it was. A rebound from the Big Bang — the Big Crunch? Or the opposite, cosmic expansion speeding up and tearing the universe apart — the Big Rip? Or another universe crashing into ours like a tsunami, piling up galaxies in a wave of debris sweeping towards us — a Cosmic Collision? Even ten years later, when the brightening night sky was apparent to all, scientists still couldn’t agree on what it was or what to name it, but a journalist called it “Starshine,” which caught on.

Through the screen, “Mom, that guy is at the door. Should I send him back here? I’m going over to Kristi’s house to study.”

“All right. Send him back. And you be home by 11:00. No excuses.”

As her son’s car backed out of the driveway, Craig pulled a lounge next to hers and joined her looking up at the night sky.

“Todd still won’t call me by my name.”

“He’ll come around.” Unbuttoning his shirt, “And I’m glad you came around.”

“What if Todd comes back?”

“He’s going to have sex with his girlfriend… so you can have sex with yours.”

As more years passed, people grew increasingly fearful, turning to religious leaders, to politicians, and to scientists for answers. Could the stars be stopped before Earth was destroyed? Amidst prayers and proclamations of martial law, scientists explained that even though the approaching galaxies appeared to be a solid wall of light, individual stars were actually far apart and none might pass close enough to collide with our Sun and its planets. Of course, they downplayed the likelihood that even if it escaped direct hits, our solar system would be torn apart by the gravity of massive objects passing nearby and pulling us into the wave.

Stella closed her eyes against the starshine. She didn’t know what time it was. She didn’t care. When nights became as bright as days, daylight saving time was abandoned. Time itself was abandoned by many. Unless you had a job or other time commitments, what did it matter when you slept or ate or did anything else?

As Craig closed the screen, Todd whispered, “She hasn’t said a word since we got here. The baby’s sound asleep, but maybe we shouldn’t go to the service.”

“No, no, you two go ahead. I’ll watch the baby… and your mom.”

He sat in a lounge next to hers and took her hand.

She looked over, “They said it was billions of light years away. That’s billions of trillions of miles.” Looking up, “And yet, twenty years later, here it is.”

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The New Japan BGM Philharmonic Orchestra, an orchestra that specifically does video game music, recently published this video on YouTube – it’s the song that plays when you’re walking around in Winters!

Man, this sounds so nice! And guess what? There’s a lot more!

• Bein’ Friends
• Twinkle Elementary School
• Twoson
• Snowman
• Humoresque of a Little Dog
• Threed
• Eight Melodies

It’s a musical dream come true!

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In EarthBound, Orange Kid is working on a silly invention to turn boiled eggs back into raw eggs. We all had a good laugh.

But now chemists have just accomplished that in real life! Check it out here!

Thanks to crabbyRhys for the tip!

No educational messages this time from the purple T-Rex.

You can also forget the cute songs and dance moves. ADHD's scientifically accurate Barney, a new version of the purple T-Rex from the 90s show Barney & Friends, is simply just hungry.

And although ADHD's animation is full of blood and destruction, the original Barney is still scarier on a whole different level.

To contact the author of this post, write to: gergovas@kotaku.com

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Nintendo's first arcade video games were, to be honest, pretty terrible. Way more interesting were the machines that came before those, starting with 1973's Laser Clay Shooting System.

The first of seven amusement machines that would be released before 1978's true video game cabinets, LCSS wasn't just a pioneer; it could also have spelled disaster for Nintendo's gaming ambitions were it not for the heroism of a man by the name of Genyo Takeda.

Takeda, who is now head of Nintendo's Integrated Research and Development team, first joined the company in 1970, straight out of college. Shortly afterwards, he was given the honour (though the significance may not have been known at the time) of being one of Nintendo's first ever game designers.

In 1971, Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi asked company legend Gunpei Yokoi to see what could be done about making a simulation based on clay pigeon shooting, which he'd just read about in a newspaper and thought was the bees knees. The company had already been testing a light gun - designed by Masayuki Uemura - so this was seen as a great opportunity to make a commercial venture out of it.

Yamauchi had the idea of installing the shooting galleries in abandoned bowling alleys, of which there were plenty after the sport's popularity had died out in Japan in recent years. So Nintendo purchased a number of these properties, and Yokoi had Takeda (left) and Uemura help him design a "game" to go along with them.

The idea was to build replica clay shooting ranges, so the team came up with the Laser Clay Shooting System. This consisted of a large woodland mural on the wall, on which images of flying clay pigeons would be displayed via an overhead projector. Customers firing at the pigeons would have their shots registered by a network of reflective surfaces, and if they hit, the projector could switch out and show the image of a destroyed target.

In January 1973, the first Laser Clay Shooting System was ready to open its doors to the public. The customers piled in, the system was fired up and...it broke down. Yet this setback, which could have killed Nintendo's gaming ambitions before they'd even begun, was overcome when Takeda leapt behind the scenes to save the day.

With the LCSS's automatic hit-detection and score-tallying systems down, he reportedly managed to both display customer's "hits" and add up their scores manually, and did this so efficiently nobody noticed there was a man behind the curtain instead of an advanced computer system.

The day went by without further incident, and the LCSS was quickly a hit, to the point where Nintendo were not only opening several new outlets in Japan, but were receiving orders from other countries in Asia as well. The company even found the chops to use famous martial artist and actor Sonny Chiba in advertisements for the LCSS. After years of jumping from business idea to business idea, it seemed like Nintendo had hit paydirt for the first time in a long time: with arcade gaming.

What could (and should) have been a raging success for Nintendo, however, quickly turned into a disaster. Only a few months later, the oil crisis of 1973 hit, and it hit Japan especially hard, as the island nation imports nearly all of its oil from outside sources. Having borrowed large sums of money to expand the LCSS business, and building machines for numerous new facilities, when the crisis hit most of these orders were cancelled, leaving Nintendo in the hole to the tune of around ¥5,000,000,000 (around USD$64 million).

It took Nintendo seven years to pay off that debt, the company kept alive only by the continued faith and generosity of its shareholders and some quick-fire successes in the arcade and home video game business.

So what became of the Laser Clay Shooting System? Well, to cut costs Yokoi had the concept miniaturised and released for the home market. Duck Hunt, the famous NES game, actually began life as one of these home units.

As for the two men behind it, Takeda is credited as being Nintendo's first ever video game designer, for his work on the company's earliest arcade machines. He later went on to direct and/or produce Nintendo classics like Punch-Out and PilotWings 64. He also led the team which came up the original Zelda's revolutionary back-up battery, invented the analog stick on the Nintendo 64 controller and, perhaps most importantly, has headed up the hardware design of both the GameCube and Wii.

Uemura, meanwhile, has had an equally important career with the company, having led the team which developed the Famicom and Nintendo Entertainment System (as well as the NES Zapper, drawing on his work with the LCSS). He was also the head designer of the Super Nintendo before retiring in 2004.

[Laser Clay Image courtesy of Nintendo.wikia]

Total Recall is a look back at the history of video games through their characters, franchises, developers and trends.

This story was originally published in April 2011.

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Via KOIN.com: "After the third attack, park worker put up warning signs and suggested hard hats." Maybe this owl just really hates Doug Henning.

This dog has some incredible ball balancing skills, which he apparently learned all on his own according to the YouTube video description.

Nine out of ten doctors agree, anti-vaxxers are morons. The tenth doctor also agrees. So does the eleventh, twelfth and the War Doctor. The Valeyard could not be reached for comment.

We are now selling these brand new phone cases! Designs include Bunnies Monolith, Cornelius Snarlington, Dungeon Divers and more. Check ‘em out.

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Besiege is a devilishly simple, physics-based building game. You can create machines of destruction with ease.

For a game in Alpha, it's surprising how polished Besiege feels. I was creating absurd death machines within a few of minutes. Sure, some of them weren't exactly structurally sound, often resulting in a horrid crumpled mess, but the process of iterating on a design is just so fulfilling that I didn't mind.

You can see some of my successes, and failures, up above.

Besiege is available as early access on Steam and through the developer's website.

Send me your cool creations!

Yes! I'd love to see your Besiege creations. If I get enough of them I'll make a video of the best—or worst—ones. So get building!

Just save your wacky/stupid/great creation and attach the .bsg file to an email (the files are only a few kbs) and send it to: ohleoimadesomethingcool"at"gmail.com.

Provide a username, pseudonym, or however you want to be credited. You could even say hello in the email if you wish. That'd be nice.

Wish to tweet words at me? I can be found here @laserfrog.

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The police department in Columbia, Missouri, announced Wednesday that its lobby will be open 24/7 for people making Craigslist transactions or any type of exchange facilitated by Internet services. The decision fits into a broader trend that has been gaining traction over the past couple of years.

Internet listings like Craigslist are, of course, a quick and convenient way to buy, sell, barter, and generally deal with junk. But the worst part about using them is actually having to meet someone and navigate the moment of trust when money changes hands. The item being sold could be broken or fake, and the money being used to buy it could be counterfeit. Or something even more sinister could go on.

In Columbia, people can’t buy and sell weapons in the police department lobby, but anything else is fair game. Columbia Police public information officer Bryana Maupin told the Missourian that the police department lobby has surveillance cameras running 24 hours a day, plus the obvious bonus of a constant police presence. “People with stolen items may not want to meet at the police department,” she said.

On Tuesday, Virginia Beach police announced a similar policy, called “Find a Safe Place,” that will open the four local police precinct lobbies as safe transaction points between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m.

The East Chicago and Boca Raton police departments also created similar policies during 2014. It’s certainly a step up from meeting in a Starbucks.

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"I can't dance, I can't sing/I'm just standing here selling."

Hey everyone! Do you like SFAM comics? Now is your big chance to help out! Support the strip by becoming a Patreon patron and I will be able to purchase food and medicine, both important parts of what we do here.

Another great way to support the strip is to purchase one of our brand new phone cases! Designs include Bunnies Monolith, Cornelius Snarlington, Dungeon Divers and more. Check ‘em out.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. A handy flowchart by Scott Bateman.

Tags: flowchart, vaccination

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Photo: Jason Leopold.

VICE News FOIA'd the first disclosure by the US government that force-feeding war-on-terror detainees who are capable of making informed decisions about their own health is a violation of medical ethics and international law.

Jason Leopold writes:

The June 21, 2013 "Legal Authority and Policy for Enteral Feeding at JTF-GTMO" (Joint Task Force-Guantanamo) was prepared by a military lawyer in the midst of a mass hunger strike at the detention facility that involved more than 100 detainees. Its stated goal was to "provide information regarding the legal authority and policy" surrounding force-feeding. The detainees, many of whom have been cleared for release or transfer, were engaging in hunger strikes to protest their indefinite detention.

"While enteral feeding is solidly supported under US federal law and policy, international law and certain medical ethical standards holds that the 'forced feeding' of a mentally competent person capable of making an informed decision is never acceptable," states the very last paragraph in the legal guidance prepared by United States Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), which has oversight of JTF-GTMO. The identity of the military lawyer who wrote it is redacted.

"The Military Admitted Force-Feeding Gitmo Detainees Violates International Law and Medical Ethics" [VICE News]

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