Young woman, 162 cm, 58 kg, grey dyed hair, red lipstick, Ray Ban sun glasses. Black one-piece, pink finger nails, black sandals. Smokes cigarettes

Not knowing the young lady’s name, I named Francine.

This character study was the reason I decided to stop writing character studies of other people and write one of my own, because I was afraid that the author avatar would leak into everything.

I’m born in September, so back then when deciding whether I should start primary school, my parents decided I was “too small”

Through the summer holidays I had grown, and my chest had grown too, so in 3rd Jr High I started hanging out with the 4th graders.

I picked up smoking from them. At first it was a dare, but as the weeks went by I became more and more the initiator of those dares and was soon inventing my own ones. (n.b.: Which?)

I learned swimming when my baby brother almost drowned when he was three and I five. We were with our parents on a lake and they hadn’t been paying attention for a minute when he ran off. The second he was down I ran after him.

For years I was absolutely terrified to think of it, let alone go there. 10 years in I basically forced myself to go.

I went alone, by bike. It took me almost an hour to find the spot, and when I stood before I understood why: It looked harmless and anything but threatening. The water was peaceful and clear, but only after I had stepped in did I realize how beautiful it was. I had gained an epiphany about perspective and growing up that boys whistling after me couldn’t quite have provided: My parents had always loved this place, but we didn’t go here by an unspoken contract for ten years. I was a bit sad. This place was beautiful.

I named my favourite puppet Bob, and insisted that my brother’s Bob the builder was actually Pauline.

My parents gave up on buying me toys when they realized all I was doing was hold them and grin widely.

At that time I cannot say if it really was like that, but they “decided” for themselves and insisted for me that I was actually playing in my head. These days I am, but I don’t know if I was doing it then, or if they made me do it.

When my mother bought a computer for her job I would sometimes on those lazy or rainy weekends play games that would let me project my fantasy onto them. (n.b.: Again: Which? Why, for each.)

By the time I was in Jr High it was getting much harder to find such games. By the time I was in High school I started writing.

I bought one of those notebooks with starts and ponies and with lots of pink and rainbows. The idea was that writing my thoughts down in something so “grossly girly” would keep my brother from looking into it.

I had filled the notebook within a week or two - it was in a flash and blur - I missed out a lot in school, I suspect. It must’ve been a boring week, or weeks. I just know that when I was done, I paused and read through it. I concluded a number of things then:

Nothing in this book was worth its cover: This was the most grown up thing I had ever done - It shouldn’t be in such childish cover. If only because it was quite costly and if I kept writing at this pace it’d be pretty damn expensive. But most importantly: It was nothing I wanted to hide, not even from my stupid little brother. This was what I wanted to do. Some day the whole world will see my writing and I don’t care how … aehm … rough the style of this first attempt was — there was nothing to be embarrassed of.

When my tumblr dashboard isn’t about lesbian feminists, it’s about

Sometimes a sudden realization strikes me:

I am happy with my life.

Then, when the harsh of reality comes crashing down, I remember:

Screw everything! I have a packed backpack and an escape plan.

George, I’m sorry to contact you so early, but this is not about what you think - or hope? It’s about a case. I need your help, or rather I need The Captain’s help and I need your help to contact him. Please..

t

The Captain was an elusive character, tall and thin and dark, long arms and strong hands. His tiny black curls loomed like the shadow of a crown in a certain light.

He closed his eyes because he was too far away from calmness that actually seeing what kind of shit was going down would have broken the last restraints. At this point it wasn’t even anger. He couldn’t get angry about it anymore. And yet, it hurt, and he was glad to be alone in his office right now..

He looked over to the pad. It had the same book loaded up that he still hadn’t finished in the last four months. “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.” He tabbed over to the control panel to find out how far down they really were.

The Ursus Majora was a nuclear submarine of a simple and sturdy build. Rather than actually using its nuclear reactor to propel the ship through the sea, the crew much preferred to use the currents of the oceans to travel from satellite point to satellite point. The Captain had been a pirate for the better half of his life but he knew the courses of these satellites much better than he knew the shifting sea currents, for he had helped put them up there and on their course in a life not too long gone when he was the leader of an oil rig and still known as Hook.

The Captain’s crew was equally elusive and professional as their captain was. This ride had, of twelve members only two amateurs, Katharina and Christopher, who’d pick up their studies in the next haven they’d drop them off, and, maybe, next spring join them, or another ship.

Thinking of the people most close to him calmed him down enough that the tears had dried up before they had a chance to shed.

He tried to focus, If, rationally, he thought about it, he couldn’t bring himself to hat Peter. He couldn’t be angry with him, because, deep down he knew, whatever Peter was doing, he did, because he felt it was the right thing to do. Yet, The Captain couldn’t help but feel left down.

“If only I had…”, he caught himself thinking. If only I had known him three - no two years ago - and then he stopped right there. He couldn’t change the past, that much he knew.

He had some impact on the present and that’s what he tried to concentrate on: That tiny speck of hope he and the people who shared his dream had: The hope to change the future.

24 knots/h, moving eastward, 3 hours until they hit the crossroads, or 4 hours until they hit the coast.

Soon he’d have to decide, and he didn’t like the outlook. He didn’t like the idea of another person’s faith to be the center of his decisions. He didn’t like the idea of any person’s faith be the center of decisions. He like simple, unselfish ideas. Ideas reaching out and touching everyone.

“I’m getting too old for this shit.” - He almost had to restrain himself saying those thought out aloud - even if he knew the chain of thoughts was inevitable: He had to deal with Peter.

“East it is,” he thought. “Face it,” he said.

He felt heavy as he got up. Not the wrong kind of heavy, just the heavy kind. But he knew damn well this is the kind of news you deliver in person to your crew. This is the kind of decision you give your crew a chance to back out from. Are they still with you on this course?

As he walked down to the bridge, as the doors to his quarters closed down with a soft swish, he thought who’d be with him. He discounted Julian, and maybe Anita. They both had family, even if Juan’s kids were older. He thought about Hannah, Ahmed and Xi Jian - they had some background with Home - or Home-like agencies - but then, so had he…

He held his hopes up high for Juan, Lana and Mehmed - they were engineers, hackers and artists - they’d run with anything - or so he hoped.

He slowed down as he approached the door to the bridge and asked himself… Only Ahmed and Gregory were older than him - not much, mind you. But if he, The Captain, was ten years younger, like Katharina or Christopher, would he follow down this road?

No, he probably wouldn’t - but the fuck it mattered? Now is Now. Not yesterday, not five or ten years ago. Now was the time to act, to change the future.

He stepped through the door as it opened, and while walking towards the captain’s chair, he acknowledged ever greeting with a slight nod. Once seated, First Lieutenant Ahmed bowed down, awaiting the captain’s orders.

“Bourbon. No, make it double. Assemble the crew, please.” Gently, he spoke in his ear. The Lieutenant nodded, and as silently as he had appeared, he vanished.

The Captain waited…

The agent t needs to contact you about the client p in the town of s. ASAP.

g

The Captain looked down on his control panel and smiled a smile long unseen. Then he took another sip from his bourbon, put it down on his CP and stood tall and proud and ready.

“Thank You, First Lieutenant,” and they nodded and bowed to each other and Ahmed felt The captain’s uneasiness.

“The Captain,” he said, bowing to the new comers. “The Captain Hook,”, he said, bowing to his oldest crew members.

“The Captain,” he repeated, to no one but himself, “is no Captain Ahab.”

“His Enemy is not a metaphor. His Enemy is not his enemy alone. His Enemy is not The Zeitgeist. His Enemy is real.”

“This is not a war. We’re fighting one battle. But there’s another battle going on and we have to decide. Because our decision will count in its outcome.”

He stepped back, took a sip from the bourbon and started anew.

“I wish this was as simple as black and white,” he said, while looking at every single member of his crew.

“Do you want to support Peter? Do you want to support the Pirates? Do you want to fuck-it-all, and do something entirely different? I don’t mind.”

“Two hours from now, we’ll hit Honolulu π. Three hours from now, we’ll hit Agamodo Xi. Four hours from now, we’ll hit Seattle Town.”

“What I want is your decisions. Where you wanna get off?”

“That is all,” he said, taking his seat and nodding to First Lieutenant Ahmed, who’d come back to him, bowing and waiting The Captain’s instructions.

On the seventeenth of March, at 0300 morning, a crew of twelve landed in S. Haven, soon to be joined by a thirteenth.

Silently she stepped into the apartment and noticed his shoes immediately. It’s not like George always wore the same shoes, it’s just that his shoes always looked worn.

Wendy loved her Uncle, and she didn’t… quite know. George was so easy going with them kids, yet, lately, she couldn’t help but notice how grown up - not to say old - he was. Wendy wasn’t foolish, she knew well that his was no age, but it was at times like these, when she heard him talk to the grown ups, and to her parents in particular that she almost distrusted him, feared him, hated him and hated herself for feeling that way because she new she’d grow up to become the same as he was.

Moving between a childish naïvety and a cynical darkness that you notice once you accept that you too have a dark side. Wendy almost hoped she’d grow up to be like that, because maybe then she’d understand what grown ups thought of George.

The reason George’s shoes always looked so worn, was because he actually traveled the world. Stepping through foreign countries with a spring in his step, walking through deserts and unknown cities the same. With child like naïvety and most of the time without a single credit on his card - if he had a card or anything for that matter about his person.

Most members of the family were, simply said, astonished how he was still alive, others wondered, sincerely, why he wasn’t dead yet.

How he could afford that penthouse in Seattle where he didn’t even spend half the year, or what exactly his “consultant” job was, nobody even wanted to know - rather they would gossip. Oh, how Wendy hated the gossip.

Whenever she had a chance, whenever George was in town, she’d “accidentally” run into him and talk. Just talk for hours. You see, while George was a good ten years younger than her father, he sounded a lot like someone Wendy never had: A grandfather.

Tonight, she had the chance to hear him talk without having to ask, or as she sometimes thought, embarrass herself.

“Listen, Micheal, I’m sick and tired of this talk. I have literally been less drained when crossing Gobi, then I am right now coming from a stroll to your bullshit talk. You are not my father, and frankly, even if you were, I would not be listening to your well prepared, well reasoned, and worst of all, well meaning advise, as I have refused to listen to his.”

“Yes, the family does talk, yes settling down and starting a family of my own is perfectly reasonable, and no, I still don’t give two fucks about it.”

“The reason I’ve been single for the past three years is not because there is no women or man - don’t look at me like this! - ready to travel the world with me. I got to know plenty, thank you Janet.”

“The reason I don’t settle down is because I enjoy my life alone. I don’t feel any sad loneliness that only can be filled with someone equally sad and lonely.”

There was an uneasy, heavy silence, but Wendy’s Uncle was far from done: Before her mother could even attempt to sigh, continued:

“And the reason why I don’t put any sprog in this world is because I think there already are plenty of people on it - and more fucked up children than I would have cared to see. And they certainly don’t need someone fucked up like me as parent.”

“And believe me one thing at least when I tell you - cuz I’m not talking about Nairobi, or Cambodia. I’ve talked to your kids more than you have. Do you even know where they are?”

“They’ve got RFID, George,” Janet said, with resignation in her voice. She hadn’t seen her husband’s brother in two months, but she hadn’t heard this talk in two years. She hoped he had grown out of it. Looking over to Michael, her hope was soon gone. He knew his brother. Right now Michael had put on his stoic face. Their father’s stoic face. In this moment George hated his brother and his dead father with all the passion they never had expressed.

“I’m leaving,” George said abruptly, finished his drink and took for the door.

Wendy panicked, her face all red she didn’t know what do do, where to go or what to say.

“Kiddo,” he said with all the warmth he’d always do, brushing through her hair. He slipped in his shoes, she tried to find her voice: “You.. in a hurry?” A croak and a whisper was all she found.

He filled his lungs, straightening his back - there was a flicker of a smile on his face. He looked down to her, nodded and was gone.

In the living room, Wendy could hear her mother asking: “Do you think he’s in love again?” Vividly she pictured him cross his arms, press his lips together and nod. “Do you think it’s as hopeless as last time?”, he replied?

As silently as Wendy had come, she now left. She needed to find her brothers. She needed to take her mind off of these things. She didn’t want to be involved in grown-up stuff. Not yet. Her thirteenth birthday was still so far away. So much can happen in two days.

“Do Androids dream of electric sheep?”

Oh she hated waking up with that sentence on her mind. Sleep drunk she tried to shake away the thought by actually trying to remember what she had dreamed of. Philip K. Dick however, while appearing only occasionally, remained persistent enough to bring her doubt to her very foundation. Tinker Bell tried to tell herself that it was only a side effect of transferring into a new body. She tried to convince herself that, while it wasn’t very well researched, it was very well known. She tried calming herself by recalling, almost word by word, the white papers that all said it would pass once the patient had gotten used to their new condition. She buzzed and flapped her wings and felt terribly inadequate. She would have sighed, if this body had allowed for it. She would have put her hand on her face if in this body it wouldn’t look ridiculous and ineffective. With her options so reduced she instead focused on her mission.

It’s been two days now and her leads were few and weak. She needed to come up with a plan and it’d better be a good plan. She buzzed and took off for the ceiling. No matter how weird it might have seemed to her only a couple of days ago, right now it helped her think. Searching for patters she looked at the data she had collected, but none of it was outstanding give the case at hand: All around Town Central kids were disappearing. Most of them were left by their parents to their own devices/and or into drugs. Some Jokers had dubbed the case The Lost Boys, others looked for a Door to Narnia. It made her feel sick in her stomach. Figure of speech. If anything this body was resistant against all kinds of shit. Literally speaking.

Buzzing. There was a buzzing that ripped her from her thoughts and she was painfully aware it wasn’t her. This family didn’t have flies. She wasn’t even sure if they liked them. How big is the chance this was another agent? What if it’s a counter agent? She didn’t dare flying but slowly inched over to the light where she wouldn’t be seen but could see everything herself. Meanwhile she evaluated her options: Phone Home and get caught exposing herself via wifi. At least Home wasn’t going to think she’s crazy paranoid. The reason their agents stayed well and alive was precisely because they were crazy paranoid.

She put her wifi on passive and scanned the usual channels. Then the unusual ones. Nothing. Was it just a stray? “Fuck the sheep,” she thought and took off for the window. Outside the drizzle kept keeping on like it was a contest. It was the reason she had sought shelter in the first place. It was the reason she had discovered this family with three kids. Sometimes she thought the rain was the driving force in this city.

Momentarily her thinking apparatus kicked into high gear and she ran down the protocol: The “counter agent” was a stray. It happens. If she were in a human body she wouldn’t think that everyone she meets is out to get her, now would she? Yeah actually she would.

Focus. Where are the kids? She was out for twenty minutes max. This body didn’t need much sleep - but just in case she waited until the boys themselves were fast asleep. But just now when she scanned the other fly there was one thing really sticking out like a sore thumb: Nothing. No wifi tags of the boys’ pads. No RFID of their pids. No elevated CO2 from their breathing or heat from their bodies. They were gone.

This was getting interesting. She thought as she flew out into the night and into the ever persistent rain.

Call Home. Request search for RFIDs and wifi tags. It’ll be a matter of seconds until the call was processed. Hours until the approval arrived but with Home’s resources just a minute until they were found. Ending in another dead lead with abandoned pads somewhere down the haven, along with a pair of bloody RFID cutouts.

There was no time to wait for approval. Her fellow agents on the case could help by scanning their surroundings but it would be pure chance if they caught a glimpse of the boys before they became lost. Despite this world growing into a global village this was a huge town and her colleagues were few. She sent the call anyway. Not because she was desperate, but because it was the right thing to do. Maybe it would make up for what she was about to do, what she’d need to do sooner or later anyway: Real detective work. And that meant calling for people and AIs who operated outside of Home’s self-imposed restrictions and laws.

The rain grew heavier. Heavy enough to actually make out drops. Thick long lines of water that gave off a clash when they hit the street. Tinker Bell sped up her flight dodging the drops. She genuinely enjoyed herself.

“I think it’s starting now,” she thought while deciding how to contact the Captain.

The woman outside the café’s huge window was all dressed from head to foot.
The only bits of skin you could see were her hands, carrying three target bags
packed to the rim, and her swollen face - a pointed nose staring from under
headscarf. She stopped not even two feet away from Wendy. She sighed a deep
sigh, changed one of the bags to the other hand, straightened her back and
continued her rut.

If it wasn’t for the window, Wendy was sure, she could have reached out and
touched her. At least that’s what she liked to think when running her fingers
across the pad in front of her. All the world’s knowledge a glass plate away.
And yet she couldn’t feel it. She couldn’t hope to imagine what the women
with the swollen face and the equally swollen feet felt when she took off
again. And she couldn’t hope to imagine where her swollen feet would take her
today.

She looked down her pad. “All the world’s knowledge - none of its wisdom,”
echoed the voice in her head exactly as she felt. She noticed the smears on
the lean device and they made her think of parental love. Of the richer kids
who didn’t have no smears on their pads - and of the really rich who didn’t
even own any to begin with. Who needs that middle class shit?

Wendy was a little upset with the voice in her head and she couldn’t quite pin
down if it was because the voice kept saying “shit” - a word her parents
weren’t very fond of, especially since her little baby brothers had picked it
up from her. Or was it because she was - perhaps just in her head, right at
this moment - equating parental love to smears on her pad. She tried to
remember a better time - and it didn’t escape her attention that she saw her
parents smile a lot more when her baby brothers weren’t around yet. Or saw
them, for that matter.

Quickly, Wendy grabbed her cup of tea which was slowly getting colder, while
she kept staring out the window, no longer even pretending to pay attention
to the lesson. She’d have to watch it again if she wanted to have even the
slightest chance of understanding thaumatic engineering.

Her thirteenth birthday was drawing closer, she thought while taking the cup
of tea as close to her body as she felt she could without looking ridiculous,
trying to inhale the last bits of warmth that the outside of Seattle couldn’t
give her.

The words of the professor were long fading, mixing with the buzz of the café.
She took off her headphones and, without looking, put them neatly besides the
pad. She took a satisfied gulp from the cup and kept staring outside, wondering
if she shouldn’t maybe start one of those bad habits most of her friends
already had. Tea was definitely a little ill fitting for a soon to come teenage,
and while coke or speed she didn’t really care for, angel dust did strike her
fancy.

From the corner of her eye she noticed the lesson closing, so she dared to tab
over to the video mixing program, giving it a tough stare down while gripping
her cup just a little tighter. She found herself sighing a deep sigh. And like
that woman she couldn’t tell where that heaviness was coming from, nor where it
would take her. All she knew was that no great remixes would be created today.
At least not by her.

She took a deciding drag of musty café air, abandoned her cup and put on her
coat against the ever persistent Seattle drizzle.

“Soon I won’t be a child any more,” the voice in her head said. While
technically Wendy had to agree, she couldn’t grasp what that was supposed to
mean.

The coat wasn’t enough a shield. This weather and the mood called for a frown.

I’m a Unix dork. Really. I love the command line. It’s highly expressive and responsive. Alas, in a Web 2.0 world, everything needs to go over the overused HTTP protocol and it has to use tons of JavaScript which in turn leads to my browser eating tons of CPU. No matter how much I love to be on the edge of the new social media, I don’t like doing it at the expense of burning my hands on my laptop.

Fortunately, tumblr offers an API, so I hacked together an extremely ugly Perl script to do the posting for me:

#!/usr/bin/env perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use diagnostics;
use Modern::Perl;
use WWW::Tumblr;

my $t = WWW::Tumblr->new;
$t->email('i.galic@brainsware.org');
$t->password('My Extremely Awesome Password');

die ("Need two arguments: Title and markdown-file with post content!") if $#ARGV ne 1;

$t->authenticate() or croak("Can't authenticate, please check email/password.");

my $title = $ARGV[0];
open(my $postf, "<", $ARGV[1]) or croak("Cannot open file $ARGV[1]");

my $text = do { local $/; <$postf> };

$t->write (
    type => 'regular',
    title => $title,
    body => $text
) or croak ("Unable to post to tumblr!");

To post this text, I finally invoke:

igalic@tynix ~/Documents/blag % tumblr-post "CLI Web 2.0" posting_from_the_command_line.mdtext

n.b.: In order to actually post Markdown, you have to switch your editor to use it. You can do that in https://www.tumblr.com/preferences

Lately I’ve been stumbling into more and more intersting stuff on tumblr and have finally decided to give it a try and I’m amazed at how simple it is to create content on the site.

…now I just need to find a way to create content on my computer (a text file) and publish it — effortlessly.

Yeah, I’m probably asking too much.