Entropy is high. I repeat, entropy is high.
Posted on 07/12/2016 8:03:24 AM PDT by BenLurkin
Very true, Nully. :)
But what I had in mind involved several tons of liquid expanding foam.
Installed before the iceberg was inconvenienced.
Worth a try.
Not when you time travel.
Word has it that Dr. Who ran off with Mrs. Whatsit and Mrs. Which.
Something about Thor stealing a tesseract or some such.
If I had a time mahine I’d vandalize the Lincoln Memorial.
I’d spray paint “Never ever elect a man named Barack” in with all the other famous sayings.
I also understand that if the Captain hadn’t believed it was unsinkable and backed off the iceberg she might have stayed afloat, although stranded.
In the US in 2016 that's an oxymoron.
Every morning it’s the same thing:
“May I have your attention please. This is the fire safety director. This is a test of the building speaker system. Please disregard this message.”
It takes at least 30 minutes to properly disregard a message after you’ve been asked to pay attention.
WHO WROTE THIS ANNOUNCEMENT???
I have to pay my bills before I can think about buying clothes, even at deep discounts, though it’s true I need some new ones.
Just came back in from the peeps, and got asked to go gamble at a small casino nearby. Nope. Cigarette smoke. And besides: I need that money for other things.
I don’t think any of the peeps have been through what I have, and as a result, I don’t take money for granted. It is a tool to make my life livable, and I don’t want to squander it.
Of course, I often feel guilty when I use it for craft materials and fabric to make clothes with...my bad on the guilt thing...
Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol
Excuse me while I finish my coffee.. ;-)
You're in NYC and you need to ask that question? A bureaucrat. With tenure. Of course.
Hover your mouse over it for effect.. ;-)
Dang. This had been one of those, “Hey, Mikey! Let’s go bother ‘Face today!”
I swear: So many people have knocked on my door today, I feel a little flummoxed, like Bilbo! (But not that little.)
It started this morning, and there were two then, and again this afternoon, there were two more, plus a text and a shout from two other people. Boy. Do I ever want bedtime to roll around, though I have to call an attorney in the next hour for the Trust, first.
And I am so very tired! Whenever my chest pains start, I get really worn out and looking like the ragwheels of heck. (One of the neighbors came over to see if I was OK, because she said I looked so bad, yesterday.)
Anyway, that was enough excitement. (Now, if I can just find my checks and the bookmarks...)
O hai. I had a nap with Jake. Now I’m back. I’ve got the byos started making supper, and later we’ll go the gym. Then I’ll sleep more.
Hillary Transvestite Training Program???
Saving the Titanic ...
.(Scene: Alice and Henry’s boat) ...
.
Alice and Henry were watching with delight.
They walked over. “It’s bigger than I thought it would be.” Timmy said.
“We’re not going to be sailing alone,” said Henry. “We wanted to have room for guests.”
“Where will you go?” Jeff wanted to know.
“Out there!” Henry pointed.
“What’s out there?”
“We’ll find out!” Alice giggled.
“Any sunken ships?” Jeff looked at Timmy.
“How could there be any sunken ships?” Timmy responded.
“How could there be a lake?” Hannah pointed out.
Timmy looked out toward the far side of the lake. It could have been twenty miles. “I believe you may be right. Out there, toward the center, there’s a big ocean liner sitting on the bottom.”
“Ocean liner?” Hannah stared at him.
“Uh-huh. It’s the Titanic.”
“What?” Jeff jumped.
“I have an idea,” said Timmy. He looked at Jeff. “It’s a kind of buried treasure.”
All of the faces were watching him now.
“We’ll have guided tours out to the Titanic. We’ll bring in people from the real world, and charge them admission, so they can go out and walk around on the Titanic.”
“Walk around on it? It’s lying broken in half, and covered over with marine life.” Henry reminded him.
“Oh, no,” Timmy answered. “It’s fully intact, lying straight and level on the lake bottom. And the lights are on.”
Now everyone was looking at each other.
“When your boat is built, you can go out and look down. You’ll see the lights, and if the water is still, you’ll be able to see the people dancing.”
“The people? They all died in 1912.” Alice said.
“No, they’re out there dancing, listening to the band, showing off their finery, and enjoying the fourth night of the ship’s maiden voyage. You can hear the music. It’s April 14th, 1912, but only on that ship.”
“I think you’ve gone around the bend, Tim,” Hannah said.
“Off the deep end, you mean,” said Jeff.
“The deep end, that’s right.” Timmy eyed Jeff and Hannah. “We’ll have to do some research out there, find the experts and harvest their knowledge, and then build the most accurate version of the ship anyone has ever seen … I mean has never seen. It will have functioning elevators, grand staircases, carpets and paneling, and the guests will all be arrayed in their finery, drinking champagne and laughing together.”
“How can you do that? That’s impossible.” Henry said.
Timmy smiled. “I did this,” he pointed around.
Hannah gulped. “Oh, boy, here we go!”
“Yep!” Timmy smiled. “This is going to be fun!”
Jeff shook his head. “Tim, it can’t work. They’ll know it’s a fake.”
Tim turned to him. “Who will know it’s a fake?”
“The people! The ones who’ve researched it and know what it looked like.”
Timmy grinned. “Those are the people who are going to show us what it’s supposed to look like! No one who knows what to expect will be able to claim it’s false, because they know what to expect, and that’s what we’ll show them!”
Jeff was still shaking his head. “This is impossible!” But he was saying it softly.
“That’s what we do here, Jeff; the impossible.” Timmy said. “It’s on the other side that we have to work the miracles!” He looked at Henry and smiled.
Jeff looked puzzled, but Hannah was nodding her head slowly. “You want to make money. This part won’t cost you anything. But how will you make money?”
“By charging admission!” Timmy said. “Our tourists will pay to visit the Titanic, to walk its decks, and listen to the band. They’ll pay plenty!”
“But Tim, they can’t come here, and then go back. No one can.” Jeff pointed out.
Alice and Henry looked at each other. Henry shrugged.
“You do it,” Timmy said softly, “you and Hannah.”
“What? You’ll bring them here, dressed like this?” Hannah said incredulously.
“Exactly so, Hannah. Dressed exactly like that. They will think that they are not real, but that the Titanic is.”
“Do you have … the capacity for this?” Hannah asked.
“It’s growing all the time.”
Hannah looked around. “Yeah. That for sure.”
23 It All Sounds Like Doubletalk
Theo McMasters was presenting. Dressed to the nines, he was on stage, illuminated by footlights, and speaking into a microphone.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to our first performance of “HypNautica!” We hope to repeat this miraculous presentation in a dozen cities across the country, but this is the premier.”
“I would have liked to charge you more. It would be worth it. But this is unproven technology. You have your doubts. It all sounds like doubletalk.”
He looked around.
“It is doubletalk!”
Knowing they could not see his smile, he gave a short bow to acknowledge his accidental honesty.
As he was speaking, ushers in speckled white tunics reminiscent of hospital technicians were moving among the seated patrons, securing their “electrosonic head-gear” and seeing to it that each one had a numbered tag chain hung artfully around the neck.
Timmy was moving among the ushers, disguised as one of them. He had to get to every person in the theater, and there were a lot of them.
Theo continued.
“We don’t want our competitors to be able to steal this proprietary technology, so the explanations are a little sparse. It combines hypnosis, electronic stimulation, hyper-ultrasound and perhaps even a bit of mass hysteria.”
“We’ll take what we can get.”
“What you will get is the privilege of walking the decks of the Titanic, seeing its passengers as they dressed in their finest clothes. You will mingle with the famous personages of history who were said to have been lost. We have found them!”
“You will see the grandeur. You will experience the splendor! Yours will be a first-person view of the art and the majesty of the time.”
“But you were not alive in this time. You cannot see these things with your own eyes, so we have arranged to have other eyes for you to see with. You will not recognize the person you become. Accordingly, if you are traveling with a companion, take a look now at your companion’s number tag. Each of you has one. Memorize this number, for your companion will look different, and so will you! Your number tag is your only clue!”
“And now also, I want to thank you for your generous contribution to help defray our enormous costs for this venture. You have paid a price for admission, which you may think is steep. But I hasten to remind you that it is less than half of what the original passengers you are about to see paid for their cost of passage!”
“One final thing. At the end of our journey, you may wish to stay around, to kick the tires of the Titanic, and see how we managed this illusion. If you want to do that, simply keep your number tag firmly clenched in your hand as you leave the ship. Others will be surrendering theirs in order to return here.”
“You who retain your numbers will be allowed to stay. But I must warn you, we are not serving refreshments! And any food you see laid out on the Titanic is for the passengers, not for all of us visitors. They paid for passage, and we only paid to look around! Do not try to eat anything there. I can guarantee that it will not agree with you. It’s a little old, you know! It’s “sell-by” date is long past!”
“All right, it looks as though everyone is strapped in and ready for take-off. Ushers, are we ready? Ladies and Gentlemen, are you ready? Then let us proceed! On to HypNautica!”
Theo walked majestically off the stage, to thunderous applause.
Then the house lights dimmed even further, and the curtains drew back, to reveal a laser light show on the stage, a kind of hypnotic point of concentration …
On the rising grassy embankment leading down to the lake’s shore, people started popping into existence in orderly rows.
They were all children. They were all ten years old.
Each one had a copper neck chain, and a number engraved on the copper plate attached to it.
The numbered plate had a background color of green, to help make the numbers stand out. This verdigris color tone was repeated in the shorts that each individual was wearing, a kind of interwoven-ring metal cloth, securely fastened at the hips by hoops of metal.
These costumes of metal were the only decorations or garments that the children wore. Each child looked like the next one. Each had a tapered, rather tousled hairstyle of a soft brown color. The abundantly visible skin was the mild tone of a healthy tan. The occasional smile flashed a brilliant white out of the relative darkness of the evening.
And every one of them had strikingly beautiful green eyes.
They may have all been boys. They may have all been girls.
They may have been boys and girls. At this distance they were entirely indistinguishable.
But each one had a different number.
They assembled in silence, except for the imagined pop of air as another body would appear. The change in everything that they were experiencing was too different for them to do anything other than sit still in completely stunned silence.
And then the arrivals were complete.
Corrie was there to greet them. She stood on a small wooden stage in front of them, and spoke with assurance and authority.
“Welcome, travelers!”
Her blond hair, and shiny corseted bottom marked her as different from them, and perhaps an authority figure. She had the confidence.
“Soon we will get on to our transportation, to be taken to the purpose of your trip, the majestic Titanic! But we have to start somewhere, and we’re starting here, on the shore of this calm sea. The Titanic is out there, and we will be taken to her.”
“Before we start, I remind you again to look for your companion’s number. Find your companion! Remember, “Your companion will look different, and so will you! Your number tag is your only clue!”
She paused for a moment, to let the expected confusion sort itself out.
“While we’re getting ready to leave, let’s take a look at our transport vessel, the wonderful “Locker Room Belle”, a genuine river-bottom side-wheeler!” She gestured over her shoulder, where an enormous ferry was crawling up out of the water, its side-wheels turning, not to move water, but to grip the muddy bottom of the lake, and drive the boat up toward the shore.
A second set of side-wheels came into view. This vessel was a four-wheel drive ferry cruiser, designed to walk along the bottom of a river or lake. It was a river-bottom side-wheeler, and the only one anyone present had ever seen.
A transparent canopy covered the top, shedding water from its rising out of the lake. Beneath that, other children, presumably crew, were moving about, setting out deck chairs and such, checking the lines securing cargo, and doing the things one would expect a river-bottom ferry crew-child to do.
The majestic vessel stopped, and projected forward a gangway, which then lowered itself to the shore. Several crew-children scurried down the gangway and positioned themselves to assist people coming aboard.
The gangway also had a transparent cover that telescoped as the device extended.
“Let’s go aboard, shall we? Titanic awaits!” Corrie walked to the gangway and began climbing aboard. She looked over her shoulder from time to time and smiled.
The new arrivals stood up, looking around themselves and at themselves in astonished disbelief. But they had no time to get accustomed to something they would not be able to comprehend, for they had to get aboard the transport.
Heads moved in odd ways as the children looked at everything around them, and at every aspect of their own bodies.
Overweight men and women, accustomed to waddling and wheezing, suddenly found that they were filled with boundless energy, and a desire to dance and skip.
The crowd slowly laughed and merrily proceeded on to the ferry. In minutes they were all loaded, and the gangway began rising back to its former location. The open end of it sealed over with a covering.
The boat lurched into action, moving further out, and farther down, along the lake bottom.
Several hundred feet out from shore, it disappeared under the waves.
The transparent canopy seemed ridiculously incapable of holding back tons of water. And yet their course drew them deeper and deeper under the water.
Green eyes looked upward at sixty feet of water held up by something little more substantial than a soap bubble. But it held the water back as if it were no more than fog.
They could hear the ship. They could hear its generators; see its lights.
They could hear the music! And then they were there. The mighty ship loomed before them, sitting calmly on the bottom of the sea, (or lakebed, people spoke interchangeably of the two), about thirty feet deep in the mud.
It wasn’t going anywhere.
But it didn’t need to go anywhere; it was the where that everyone came to see.
This was Titanic, April 14th, 1912, an evening forever; an evening to remember.
The ferry stopped, and reached up with its nuzzling gangway to find an opening for the passengers to disembark. It stopped against the railing, which had its own transparent material to hold out a hundred foot depth of water, as if it were a mild drizzle.
Far above, the surface of the lake waters scattered rippled light down like an overcast evening sky.
The partitions opened, and a way aboard was made ready. Green-eyed children scampered eagerly up the way, and on to the giant ship. Quickly they scurried in every direction, fascinated to finally be aboard the object of their long obsession.
It was so big! It was so gorgeous!
It was so real!
The children dodged around passengers in elegant upper-class finery, like peasant children seeking a loose crumb or fallen coin. The passengers paid them no mind, as if they didn’t even see them. Chances are, had the children been actual impoverished ragamuffins in some port city, this group of people would have ignored them as utterly.
Children thundered into the radio room, the bridge, the majestic prow of the ship. They were the king of the world, for that fleeting moment they had the primary position.
All over the vessel, children scrambled, delighted as no picnickers could ever be. Not for food, but for memories, for a chance to touch, and see, and to be able to say, “I was there! I was really there! I can never forget it!”
This was the Titanic! The real Titanic! There was no question of its authenticity. Every test they could imagine proved it to be true. The proper number of funnels, the ship markings, the people, the Captain!
It was glorious!
And soon, all too soon, it was over too soon. The great ship’s horn blew, and children who were not green-eyed and green bottomed called to the others that it was time to depart.
One last look! One last glance! One last being dragged by someone for not listening.
Slowly they returned to the ferry, looking wistfully back up to the ship.
They watched as the gangway sealed itself and withdrew. They watched as the ferry began moving away.
They watched as children belatedly arrived at the rail and looked down, and then popped out of existence on the Titanic, and back into presence on the Locker Room Belle.
They watched the magnificent, majestic ship slowly disappear a final time again.
They were quiet.
Actually, they were quiet for a long time, considering. Kids, you know.
And then their excitement reasserted itself and there was whooping and yelling, and rather brash activity aboard the Locker Room Belle.
They continued exploring what it meant to be children again. Energy, vitality, …
Joy.
Belatedly they remembered that they had a choice. Upon departure from the ferry, they could surrender the number tags and return to their lives, or desperately cling to them and then, what? They didn’t know!
For some, there was no question. They had lives to go back to. They had jobs to do, and families to care for.
Responsibility.
As the Locker Room Belle propelled itself laboriously up the slope, like a sea turtle seeking a place to lay her eggs, the children made their decisions.
Most dropped the tags into the buckets, where crew-children showed them they were waiting. Most were going home. The majority; by far the largest majority …
But there were a few who had found something new and different; wonderful, in this short visit.
They had rediscovered childhood. A place and time too precious to surrender back again, no matter for what purpose.
They clenched the number tags desperately, and went down the gangway to an unknown fate in an unknown land, where the rules of science and of life itself did not seem to apply anymore.
No one seemed to notice that children were disappearing, the numbers diminishing. With every glance around there were fewer and fewer.
And then they were all gone. Every child who had dropped his number tag in the bucket, was gone. The only ones remaining were still desperately clenching their tags, as if for life itself.
Timmy was looking at the returning children, with their number tags. “It looks like forty-seven. Anyone surprised by that?”
Hannah and Jeff shook their heads. They had calculated that there would be a number, but no one had placed bets on what it would be.
“It seems a cruel choice, this life or the other one.” Hannah said sadly.
“That wasn’t the choice they had. But we couldn’t tell them that.” Timmy looked thoughtful. “Everybody in the theater came back to his life. They didn’t get a choice to stay here and not go back.”
“The choice was whether to do both.” He looked over the new conscripts. “I wanted to find some people who wanted to be here, in spite of everything. That’s the group I wanted. I thought they would be the most fun. Did you know that we have six sets of newlyweds?”
“Look at these two, father and son. Thomas and Tommy. What a delight! Thomas is thirty-six, and Tommy is only eleven! Isn’t that wonderful?”
Hannah smiled. “They do sound as though they will be fun people. But this recruitment isn’t your whole purpose, is it?”
“Oh, no. This is just icing on the cake. We’re getting the money we need, for our real estate purchases and college tuitions, and we’re filling out our ranks here with fun people. It’s a win/win.” He smiled.
Entropy is high. I repeat, entropy is high.
Entropy is high, the humidity is high, the temperature is high, and the sky is overcast. It’s a good day to sleep in, and to feel envy and pity for those who can do so, and not rise to make a difference in the world.
Would anyone like to trade a tiny kitten for three teenagers?
A bit early for rhetorical questions, isn’t it?
Is it bedtime, yet?
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