SFX Monsters

Posted in Classic Sci-Fi, Sacred Geometry with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 11, 2012 by javedbabar

Before managing the Transfer Station’s 3D Unit, Sami had acted as Guru Baba’s assistant. During this period he had also taken freelance jobs, such as local project manager for the global launch of the film HUMANITY, by auteur Manish. Nobody knew if Manish was his first name or last name; being so artsy he only required a single moniker.

The film could have been launched in London, New York, Paris or Mumbai, but the idea had come to Manish whilst climbing mountains in the Lucerne Valley, and he wanted to “return the idea home”.

The film received huge media attention, and being part of the launch crew got Sami noticed. He received requests to help out with films around the world, but many of the producers seemed hokey. They didn’t know anything at all about Sami, they just wanted him involved. After harassment on social media he had gone underground, but people still tracked him down.

His cell phone rang. “Hello, Sami? Oh good! I called you a few times yesterday but couldn’t get through. Where are you these days? Out in the bush?” It was Manish’s assistant, Sarah.

“Hello, Sarah, I’m at Lucerne Industrial Park. Cell reception is terrible here. Sorry about that. What can I do for you?”

“Manish is in Lucerne for three days. His visit was spur of the moment. He dreamt about the end of the world, but he said it could also be its beginning, and he wants to film his vision right now. He wants a mix of audio, video, photography and virtual reality. We can do the optical effects on set, and CGI after, but we need props for mechanical effects. Manish wants you to make monsters.”

“Make monsters? What kind?”

“He says it doesn’t matter,” Sarah attempted a Manish accent, a hybrid Hindi-American. “I can work with anything, okay?”

Sami attempted the accent too. “I am not saying that I am genius, but I have the genius gene.”

Sarah burst out laughing. “He said you decide – make them prehistoric or futuristic; he will use them either way.”

“Okay, when do you need them? I’ve got a busy day today. I could probably fit them in tonight.”

“Definitely?”

“Yes, definitely. I’ll have them done by twelve. Can you send me reference materials? Ideally in CAD, but I can work with photos and models too, and give them a Sami Style makeover.”

“Thanks, Sami, can I come over at… oh, hang on, it’s Manish on the other line. Why doesn’t he just come over? He is literally 10 metres away. Can I call you back?”

“Sure.” Sami put down the phone and then became nervous. This work takes careful planning and choreography. What had he been talked into – making monsters today for use tomorrow!

An hour later, he still hadn’t heard back from Sarah. He’d better start thinking. What was the nastiest monster he could think of?

He wrote down a list of scary things.

Huge. Uncontrollable. Unstoppable. Bloodthirsty. Destructive.

He could add the worst human qualities to give it personality.

Violent. Extreme. Paedophile. Murderer. Deranged.

We don’t want to overhype. Maybe tone them down a bit.

Trivial. Superficial. Anarchist. Lying. Cheating. Controlling.

He realized he didn’t have to invent anything. He just logged into his social media account for further inspiration. Everything he needed was there.

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Diamonds Are Forever

Posted in Classic Sci-Fi, Mystical Experience, Sacred Geometry with tags , , , , , , , , , , , on December 10, 2012 by javedbabar

Guru Baba appeared in the 3D Unit. It seemed the retired holy man had manifested miraculously. He had in truth walked through the doorway, with Sami too busy to notice, tinkering with feedback loops causing unexpected effects.

“I hate to ask,” said Guru Baba, “but can you please help me with some admin? You know it’s not my strong suit.”

Sami had felt bad about leaving Guru Baba’s side but he’d had no choice. The Authority had repurposed him, changing him from the holy man’s personal assistant to manager of the Transfer Station’s 3D Unit.

His new job was enjoyable – prototyping designs, fabricating components, and creating unusual gifts – but he was aware that Guru Baba’s organization was in trouble. Its charitable projects were struggling, and recent events had been poorly attended. This was all due to a lack of organization, leading to a lack of funds.

Sami had to face the fact that he’d left his previous employer in the lurch. Widows, orphans, disabled people and disaster victims were suffering because of him.

“Guru Baba, I will come to your office after work. I’m sorry I can’t come right now as I have many orders to complete today. Shall we say 6.30pm?”

The sage nodded and left.

Sami’s first job today was fabricating a range of jewellery. It was amazing how things like this could now be designed and made locally. No India or China required.

He set the printer to multi-materials, loaded metal, glass and pigment powders, processed the design, set it to high definition, and pushed GO.

While the jewellery was fabricating, Sami thought about Guru Baba’s situation. How could he help his organization. What was…

A flash of white caught his eye, and then a blue flash, a red flash, and yellow, green and brown. He was dazzled by light. Diamonds! That was the answer, diamonds!

Guru Baba had often used a diamond metaphor for spiritual growth.

Its cut was how you caught and revealed the light that was given unto you.

Its carats revealed your spiritual weight, which was substantial yet also weightless.

Its colour was every colour possible, fused together and shining alone.

Its clarity was the vision that guided your life, making all things manifest.

Sami could make diamonds to fund Guru Baba’s charitable projects! Sure, they provided good abstract metaphors, but they were even better as material goods, and there wasn’t any law against fabricating diamonds, as there was against printing cash.

He knew that a diamond’s atoms form a rigid lattice, allowing very few impurities to enter. The ones that do enter may degrade, but can also improve, the diamond, like grit in an oyster forming a pearl. One impurity per million atoms is all it takes. Boron creates a blue diamond, nitrogen a yellow or red one, lattice defects make brown diamonds, and radiation exposure, green. Their desirability differs by culture. Green diamonds had once been the most precious in Europe, but now it was blue and red.

What didn’t change were superlative physical properties. Diamonds are incredibly hard and have remarkable optical dispersion, creating dazzling lusters. Guru Baba said they were the mineral equivalent of great souls. Like those of diamonds, the tints and taints of people were easily confused.

Sami could fabricate diamonds easily at the 3D Unit. They were allotropes of carbon arranged in variations of cubic crystal structures. He could build these lattices at the push of a button. GO.

What about the powerful natural forces required to make these wonders: high temperatures, hundreds of kilometres of depth, billions of years of time, and volcanic eruptions? In the modern age are these things inconsequential?

He produced a test diamond, and showed it to the rag-pickers working the trash after school. “You joker!” said Jamz. “Trying to trick us! That’s not a real diamond. It’s too perfect. It seems artificial.”

“Isn’t it good to be perfect?”

“Maybe it is, but it is better to be real.”

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Feedback Loop

Posted in Classic Sci-Fi, Conceptual Art, Sacred Geometry with tags , , , , , , , , , , on December 9, 2012 by javedbabar

The mayor seemed angry and not in a good way. There were times when his ire was productive, like when he stood up for local citizens, local issues and local foods. Lucerne’s citizens admired him then. That’s why they had elected him thrice, despite his style of politics being known as B&B: Bullying and Boring.

“Just coming,” said Sami, opening the door to the 3D Unit at the Transfer Station. He had seen the mayor’s truck pull in, and the way he had stalked towards the container and banged the door. He was angry about something.

“Those models you made for me, they’re not the same. They’re all different!”

How could they all be different? Sami wondered. He hadn’t checked every one as it came off the printer, but he had checked each batch. The mayor was accurately depicted, looking handsome and strong.

Sami said, “I’m not sure what you mean. I thought they turned out okay.”

“Look!” said the mayor, handing him a pair of small blue busts. Sami examined them carefully. The colour was consistent, so was their size and texture. The shape was the same.

Upon close examination, he realized it was true. They were different. Not in a dramatic way, but a series of small differences accumulated, creating a big difference. Thick hair became wiry, bright eyes became beady, a slim nose became thin, and the strong jawline became clunky. All in all he became a different person, not the one people were voting for.

“I am really sorry about that,” said Sami. “Can you please leave these with me today, and I‘ll look into the matter?”

“Well, you’d better hurry. Today is Monday and the election is next Monday. I need to get them all out by the weekend.”

When the mayor left, Sami tested the printer. It was fine mechanically but he noticed a quirk in information transfer. There seemed to be an extra factor, a hidden one, causing replication variations.   Sami had produced them in ten batches of a hundred. He needed to examine some more models, so called the mayor and asked him to bring one from each box. He checked and then rescanned each sample bust.

He detected qualitative and quantitative components. There was confirmation, correction, explanation, diagnostics, and elaboration of information involved. He detected gaps between actual and reference levels of system parameters, and dynamic data exchanges. He realized there was a feedback loop, a chain of cause and effect.

Sami analysed the mayor’s nose, which had gradually become thinner. This shouldn’t happen with digital reproduction, where every replication is exact. There was evidence of informational feedback, dependent on the context of the gap. Like the mayor’s nostrils, or his vote margins, there was widening or narrowing.

Sami examined the mayor’s jawline, which had become clunkier during the production run. He found traces of motivational feedback, dependent upon the context of action. The mayor used words as awards or weapons, and they were returned in kind. There was a tense dance of reward and punishment.

“So?” the mayor said that afternoon on the phone. “Are you making some other ones?”

“I don’t think they’ll turn out any different. The 3D Unit is a self-regulating system, and recognizes the local democracy process as its analogue counterpart. Your features are affected by your behaviour. It is modelling this over time.”

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Private Parts

Posted in Mystical Experience, Sacred Geometry with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 8, 2012 by javedbabar

“Hello Sami, its Alfred from AMP Co. How are you doing over there?”

“What a nice surprise,” said Sami. He said it to be polite, but it wasn’t really. He hadn’t seen or heard from Alfred for three months, ever since the government had declared his 3D printing lab a National Strategic Asset, banned him from opening to the public, and made him a government employee. At the same time, they had repurposed his casual assistant, Sami, to the Transfer Station to run the 3D Unit there, deemed an acceptable public interface for the new technology.

Sami said, “I am doing some good work here. Maybe not pushing the boundaries of science like you are, but I am playing my part in helping humanity. It’s open…”

“Did you say part?”

“Yes, I said part. Why?”

“I need help with a project. Can you come over?”

Last time Sami tried to visit Alfred, he had refused to let him in, and an immediate text had come through, repurposing Sami. He said, “Isn’t your work secret now? I don’t want to get into trouble again.” The Authority knew everything, always adding information to your files. He didn’t want to become a repeat offender. He had heard what happened to them.

“It is secret, but I’ve checked with The Authority. They say you can help me.”

Sami was busy today at the 3D Unit. He had a range of appointments booked to prototype products, print components, and create unusual gifts. His rag picker assistant, Jamz, was still at school, so he couldn’t just leave.

“Look ear!” said Alfred. “You are allowed to be nosy, as long as you don’t mouth off about it. Just come and see, and then give me a hand.”

What is he talking about? Sami wondered. Some kind of private joke? Alfred really is a strange guy.

Sami went over later. Alfred opened the door immediately when Sami arrived. He must have seen him on CCTV. “Come in, come in, my friend.”

Sami saw a selection of artificial body parts scattered around the lab. He understood the puns now. They were pretty tasteless, considering.

Alfred watched his face. “Sorry about that, I was being subliminal.”

A shaven-headed oriental man stepped out of a doorway. Alfred said, “Meet Yojin. I am afraid he doesn’t speak English. He has come here from China after suffering a serious kung fu accident.”

Sami wondered about the “serious kung fu accident.” Guru Baba had once told him about kung fu’s relationship to the power called Tao. It bends like a reed, rather than being stiff like an oak, and has the fluidity of water, the most powerful element, wearing away even stone. Maybe Yojin needed to improve his alignment.

“He was more of a hustler than a fighter. One day he offended a real kung fu master, who removed half his face. He said that was appropriate punishment for half a man. But can you tell that? Take a look. You can’t!”

It was true. Yojin didn’t look at all disfigured. Sami asked, “Has he had plastic surgery?”

Alfred looked very pleased, and said, “Yojin!”

Yojin removed half his face, beneath which was a mass of horrific congealed tissue. His nose, left cheek, left eye, left ear and half his scalp came away with the mask. He stood erect, bravely, still lacking fluidity.

Alfred said, “I scanned him yesterday, did processing overnight, and printed off the replacement tissue using a dollar’s worth of materials this morning. This is the future of cosmetic surgery. What do you think?”

Sami wondered if Yojin was now more himself, or less himself. He looked different on the outside, but had his interior also changed?

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Rag Pickers

Posted in Lucerne Village with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 7, 2012 by javedbabar

Sami let rag pickers work the Transfer Station’s bins. He wasn’t really allowed to, as it reduced the waste’s recycling value. However it could be termed a grey area, as people were allowed to “retract and repurpose extant waste”. He had skim-read regulations and found that phrase. He could quote it if questioned.

He called out, “Jamz, how’s it going over there?”

A thin boy in a red hoody, crouching in a bin, straightened up and waved. He cupped his hands to his mouth and said, “A good day so far, Mr Sami. Let’s hope it gets even better!”

Sami loved these kids. He saw them most days after school, analysing the day’s new arrivals, before the waste was shipped out the next morning. At weekends they were usually away, helping their families with odd jobs around town.

They were poor kids from the trailer park. The rich-poor division in Lucerne was extreme. It was often referred to as the professional-unprofessional problem, but in truth it was more about privileged and unprivileged members of society, if such a thing existed.

A famous British Prime Minister had said, “There is no such thing as society”. Sami’s teacher, Guru Baba, had wanted to meet this lady to ask her what she meant by that, but she had recently died. He referred to her as an “anti-role model”.

When Sami worked on film crews, he had learnt about the effect called persistence of vision, where an image remains on the retina for a short period after its source is removed. This effect is used to create the illusion of continuous motion between frames in movies.

There was a similar effect in societies called persistence of privilege. Studies showed that children of wealthy people were physically and mentally healthier, wealthier, and ultimately happier in life. You can’t blame the parents, as their biological imperative is to promote their genes, and you can’t blame the kids for having good role models, and for enjoying their lives. Who can you blame then for children picking rags daily after school?

Jamz was the rag pickers’ unofficial spokesman. He came over later and said, “We’re all done for today. There’s nothing much out there, but slim pickings are better than thin air. Thanks again.”

There was an informal agreement that rag pickers would not take the right materials from bins, only misplaced materials. They took plastic from metal bins, metal from wood bins, wood from fibre bins, and fibre from paper bins. This cleaned the waste stream, making it easier to sort later; less labour was needed to dismantle complex consumer products, such as cell phones, and there were fewer breakdowns at the processing centre. So the value of materials lost was recouped in efficiency. Sami felt it was a case of win-win, or maybe bin-bin.

Sami began training Jamz on the 3D Unit. He taught him to prototype products, print components, and create unusual gifts. At Christmas, he called the rag pickers together and said that he and Jamz would make them each a model of anything they wanted.

At first they were shy, but then began to speak up.

“A dad.”

“A mum.”

“A house.”

“A car.”

“Money.” This wasn’t allowed at the 3D Unit, and would set The Authority’s alarm bells ringing.

“A better future.”

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Fossilicious

Posted in Classic Sci-Fi, Sacred Geometry, Unknown with tags , , , , , , , , , , , on December 6, 2012 by javedbabar

“Stop! Stop! Stop!” Sami shouted. The truck didn’t stop, and continued reversing towards the compost area. He ran towards it, waving his arms, and shouted up to the cab, “Where are you going?”

The driver stopped.

“You’ve got bulk building waste, it doesn’t go there. Can you please put it in the bin over there?” He pointed to a double-height yellow steel container.

Maybe it was an honest mistake, thought Sami, a new driver backing up to the wrong bin. Or was it deliberate, a trick to reduce costs?

Dumping compost was free, but building waste was $200 per truck load. Why didn’t he go to the commercial facility, which was cheaper and better suited to bulk waste? Coming to Lucerne’s Transfer Station was a soft option, especially with the regular guy off today and Sami managing the 3D Unit and waste facility. The driver thought he’d get away with it.

“It’s quite tight here. Shall I help you back up? No? You’re okay? Then go ahead.” Sami kept an eye on his manoeuvres. Truckers were always the best drivers on the road, but they were careless here. He didn’t want any more bins bashed.

As the trucker tipped his building waste, Sami saw it was mainly red, but with cream flashes. Had they demolished a clay brick structure, held together by mortar? Who built like that around here?

When the trucker handed over the cash Sami said, “Where is this waste coming from?”

“The Taxila area, up towards Mt Negra. They’re digging out an old water channel. It’s a long way to haul it here, but there are tough regulations for heritage areas.”

“Was there a structure? Why is the waste red?”

“I don’t know, pal. I just bring it here.”

The trucker drove off. Sami was curious about the waste, and walked to the bin. He saw one of the cream objects, and another one, and more. Though it broke regulations, he climbed into the bin and poked around. The cream flashes were bones, huge bones, bigger than cows and horses. More like elephants. But no, Guru Baba had an elephant’s foot stool as a reminder of man’s brutality to beasts, and Sami knew the scale of elephants. These bones were bigger.

Sami hauled them out, one by one, and lay them on the ground. The red material fell away. Some bones were bigger than he was. He treated them like pieces of a puzzle, but he couldn’t fit them together successfully. Then he had an idea.

He scanned the bones individually with the hand-held scanner, and then modelled the form on his computer. It was the strangest beast he had ever seen – like a triceratops, but with six legs, and horns all along its spine. He looked the creature up online but found no references.

He scaled it down 1:50 and printed out a model in red. It was the first Samisaurus seen in Lucerne for two million years. Sami took it for a “walk” in the yard on a trolley, and said to the creature, “Look, there’s Mt Alba, and over there, Mt Negra. Imagine them smoking, like they were when you were alive.”

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Know Thyself

Posted in Conceptual Art, Lucerne Village, Mystical Experience, Sacred Geometry with tags , , , , , , , , , , on December 5, 2012 by javedbabar

“Guru Baba! What are you doing here?” Sami was surprised to see his old boss, who had been away on pilgrimage for weeks. During his absence, Sami was told by officials that he had been repurposed  to manage Lucerne’s 3D Unit, and he’d had no choice but to leave his position as the sage’s assistant. He enjoyed his new job but felt bad about leaving Guru Baba, who was like the grandfather he’d never known.

“Can’t I come to see how my assistant – sorry, my ex-assistant – is getting on in the big, wide world?”

Sami had started this new job almost immediately. He had tried to wrap up as many projects as possible before leaving, but there was only so much he could do in two days. He hadn’t been able to find a successor so the projects lay abandoned. Because of Sami, assistance to widows, orphans, disabled people, and disaster victims was being delayed. He said, “Guru Baba, I am so sorry about…”

“Don’t be sorry about anything! Ha-ha! I know you were forced to go. Who would willingly leave the divine embrace of the great Guru Baba?”

He puffed his chest out, stood straighter, stroked his long black beard, and then shook his saffron robes with laughter. Sami shared the joke.

“Can I make you some tea, Guru Baba?”

“No! No tea! It makes me pee!”

That wasn’t one of his best mantras, thought Sami, but okay, no tea.

“Sami, you know I love tea. Have you ever heard me refuse it before?”

Sami pondered, with fingers stroking chin. “Come to think of it, I haven’t.”

“So why am I doing so now? Solve the mystery.”

“You only drink hard liquor now!”

“Ha! Good one! Go on, try again.”

“You have realized it is cruel to cut up plants and boil them to death.”

Guru Baba looked down for a moment. “You have a point there too, but no.”

“You now only drink invisible tea that only really clever people enjoy. Here, have a cup.” He handed him an empty mug.

“No! Your three questions are up. The reason is that I don’t want to interrupt the scan by going to pee.”

“What scan?” Sami’s eyes opened like flashbulbs. “You want a scan?”

“Yes, make a model of me, life size.”

“Life size? It will have to be done in sections. I only have mid-range equipment here. The high power model is at AMP Co. Do you know what happened there?” Guru Baba nodded, indicating he knew about its possession by the Authority as a National Strategic Asset. “It will take an hour for scanning and a week for production.”

“That’s why I don’t want tea. You know an hour is a very long time at my age. Let’s get started.”

While his lower half was being scanned, Guru Baba said, “You know, when you leave here, you should focus on this. Personal scans. You will make a lot of money. People want models of themselves. They spend their whole lives trying to shape their outer world to be like their inner world. They want to manifest themselves, substantially. This could really change things. If a copy of them exists out there already, they can stop trying to change the world, and start appreciating it instead.”

A week later when Guru Baba saw his model, he looked at himself sternly and said, “Know thyself.” Then he giggled and said, “Pleased to meet you.”

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Beautiful Baby

Posted in Lucerne Village, Unknown with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 4, 2012 by javedbabar

Sami was closing up for the day. There had been a trickle of customers coming to the 3D Unit, mainly single mums working as designers and who needed prototypes fabricated, builders and plumbers wanting small components printed, and people who wished to create unusual gifts. There weren’t that many of them though. People were still confused and a little scared of 3D printing. Every new technology takes time to catch on.

However things were shifting in the right direction. The rest of the Transfer Station was busier than ever. There was less trash and more recycling. The next step was material recovery, where the stuff people bought that they had no further use for could be transformed into something else immediately.

A small black car was speeding through the Industrial Park. He watched it take quick sharp turns as it came towards the Transfer Station. He had unbolted one gate already, and could race to pull both gates closed, but he decided to wait and see who it was.

A young woman lowered her window and said, “Hello, are you still open?”

“Well, it’s six o’ clock and I was just closing.”

“Dr Bungawalla sent me. He said I should see you.”

Sami favourite recent project had been modelling the doctor’s brain. He pulled open the gates and said, “Come on in, let’s see what we can do.”

The woman was distracted and kept looking away from Sami. She bumped her head on the door frame and almost fell out of her car. She had an awkward shape. Was she pregnant beneath her big coat? Sami dare not ask for fear of getting it wrong, which he knew was the ultimate faux pas.

She said “I’m not sure. I’m not sure if I should do this.” She looked weak, about to fall down. Sami felt he should do something.

He said “Would you like to come into the office and sit down? I’ll make you some tea.”

He checked his phone while the kettle boiled. No word from his pal, Shama, who was driving him to Strattus tonight. Cell reception at the Transfer Station was terrible.

After taking a few sips of tea, she said, “I’ve seen my baby in a scan. She’s beautiful, so beautiful, but I really want to hold her now. I want to see her in the nursery, to see if she will like what I have done for her. To see if she likes all the toys and colours.”

Sami’s previous job as Guru Baba’s assistant had brought him into contact with troubled people. This woman was really hurting about something. Sami was an expert listener, and where possible, a helper.

He said, “I am sure you have made a beautiful nursery. What colour is it?”

“It’s mainly pink and yellow. Pink because it’s such a soft colour, it reminds me of buds and petals, and yellow is like sunshine, so happy, so happy always.”

“It sounds really lovely. I’m sure your baby will adore it. When is she due to grace our world?”

The woman handed Sami her ultrasound scans, both as pictures and on disk. “Can you please make a model of her for me?”

“It would be better to wait till she is born. We can scan her then. Right now the spatial resolution and image depth of the embryo scans are…”

“She’s not an embryo! She’s a baby! Scale her up! I don’t care about spatial resolution or imaging depth. I don’t care about anything.” She began crying and said, “I do care. I do care. I do care. Please make her for me.”

Five messages came through on Sami’s cell phone. Dr Bungawalla had been trying to call him all day, to tell him about his patient whose baby had just died inside her.

Sami realized that this model was the only baby she would ever hold. He decided to work all night to deliver her baby the next morning.

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Executive Functions

Posted in Lucerne Village, Unknown with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 3, 2012 by javedbabar

Dr Bungawalla was waiting already when Sami opened the Transfer Station. Why was he so early? What was the hurry?

Lucerne’s veteran doctor drove to the trash area first, disposed of a few bags, on to the recycling bins, ceremonially depositing paper, card, metal, glass, and cartons in appropriate receptacles, and then came over to the new 3D Unit, called 3DU.

“Hello Sami, how are you? Good, good. I didn’t know you were running the Transfer Station.”

“Well, only for today. I am officially in charge of 3DU, but the other guy is attending a family funeral, so I am managing waste and recycling operations too. It’s mostly automated, pretty straightforward. Anyway, Doctor, what can I do for you?”

Dr Bungawalla shifted and smiled. This motion had put his patients at ease for forty years. He had discovered that moving his head from side to side whilst holding a fixed grin amused infant patients, and then he tried it with adult patients. Now it provided a gentle reassurance to all.

“I wanted to develop a project with AMP Co., something of great personal interest. Alfred said The Authority has declared his lab a National Strategic Asset, and nationalized his business. He told me to come here instead; he said you would help me.”

Sami had visited the Doctor’s office a couple of times this year but never got past the fearsome receptionist, who had given him practical advice and sent him home. It was great to finally meet Dr Bungawalla. What a sweet man. Why are the nicest people always surrounded by the fiercest? Maybe they require protection.

“What’s the project, Doctor?”

“Well, I have some brain scans from the MRI machine. They are all on this data stick. Can you please model them for me?”

“Sure, I’ll put them through the CAD systems and send them on to the 3D printer. Please tell me the key aspects, facets and dynamics involved, so I can highlight them in the system parameters.”

Dr Bungawalla handed over the stick. The file stated Confidential: file not to be removed from lab.

Dr Bungawalla looked embarrassed. “I am the confidante in question. You are allowed to proceed.” He pulled out a pen. “I will write some key concepts down for you.”

He wrote:

Lateralisation (left and right brain dominant functions)

Protection (thick skull bones, cerebrospinal fluid, blood-brain barrier)

4 lobes (frontal, parietal, temporal, occipital)

Functional divisions – cytoarchitecture – topography – cognition – weight – language – pathology – metabolism

Executive functions (self control – planning – reasoning – abstract thought)

Functional vs. anatomical definition

Encephalization Quotient

Neural tissue (closed head injuries, poisoning, infection, psychiatric conditions, degenerative disorders)

48 hours later, Dr Bungawalla picked up his brain model. Sami had added special circuitry as requested, powered by lithium cells. Flickering lights within the transparent model made it seem like a lamp.

Alone at night, Dr Bungawalla watched it crackle with activity as his own brain and body declined. His life had changed since he had self-diagnosed Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s Diseases. Every spark of life was now more precious.

He watched his thoughts.

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Village Facility

Posted in Classic Sci-Fi, Conceptual Art, Lucerne Village with tags , , , , , , , , , , , on December 2, 2012 by javedbabar

Sami was locked out of AMP Co. Maybe the lock was stuck, so he tried his key again, turning it both clockwise and counter-clockwise, but without success. He rang the bell twice and banged on the door. He opened the mailbox in case there was a new key in there, but there wasn’t. He called Alfred’s phone but didn’t get through, then walked around the back but that door also was closed.

“Thanks for all your help,” Alfred had said to him last week. “Next week, we’ll be ready to open the store. Advanced 3D printing will at last be available to everyone!”

Maybe Alfred had been so busy chasing technical progress that he had forgotten to pay his mortgage and business rates. Had the bank instructed repo men to remove his equipment and lock up the place?

Sami heard a sliding sound somewhere above him. It was Alfred at a second floor window of the old general store that was now his 3D fabrication lab.

Sami called up, “Hey Alfred! Let me in.”

“I’m sorry Sami, I can’t let you in. You won’t believe what’s happened. The Authority has declared my lab a National Strategic Asset; it’s been nationalized and is now closed to the public.”

“You’re kidding me!”

Alfred opened the window further and leaned out a little. “I am sorry, I’m not. I am now a government employee and must obey their protocols. I can’t let you in.”

Sami was a peaceful guy, but right now he wanted to climb and haul Alfred out, maybe throw him out. “But what about our work together? We’ve spent weeks preparing for the launch.”

“It was really good of you to help me, Sami, but I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do. The Authority heard about my technology.” Sami knew it had better capabilities than fused filament or deposition, laser sintering, powder bed, lamination, sterolithography, digital light processing, or anything else currently available.

Alfred continued, “They declared it a National Strategic Asset, and banned me from revealing it to the general public. That’s it.”

Sami wasn’t Alfred’s business partner; he wasn’t even an employee. He was simply a keen amateur helping out, who had become very involved in the testing phase of Alfred’s printer. Together they had produced another printer, a worm, a baby girl (now adopted by Alfred’s family), a 4D crab, holy objects and programmable matter. They were fully ready to open the facility, and now this!

“There is some good news though,” said Alfred, waving his arms in the window like a broken little windmill. “The Authority does want a public interface for the technology, to introduce it gradually. They want to extend their 3 R’s philosophy, following the Proximity Principle to reduce the waste stream, and achieve responsible self-sufficiency at a sub-regional level…”

Too much jargon already, thought Sami. You can tell he’s become a bureaucrat.

Alfred continued, “…by producing, transforming, consuming and recycling on site indefinitely. They asked me to run a facility at the Transfer Station but I am too busy, so I suggested you could do it instead.”

Just then a text came through on Sami’s phone. It was from The Authority. It said that he was starting work at the Transfer Station’s new 3D Unit next week.

“What about my job as Guru Baba’s assistant?”

“My friend, it looks like you have been repurposed.”

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