winter stations 2022

the beach in mid-march

nothing to see

muskoka chair

mirror structure exterior

mirror structure interior

geodesic dome exterior

geodesic dome interior

not a ship's hull

not a ship's hull, and not a wasp's nest

a structure but not a shelter

the beach making its own art installations

Happy start of northern summer! Remember what early spring looked like?

Where I lived, it looked like the photos above, which were taken 13 March. The occasion was the annual Winter Stations event on Kew Beach.

It’s great the Winter Stations is such a popular arts event that it’s got other locations, but it does mean that there are fewer instalments at Kew and less to see.

The snowy, windy, liminal day really worked for seeing an outdoor art exhibit, although it did make me wish that more of the structures doubled up as windbreaks. Still, there’s something about being outside for a cultural event when it is cold. I think it’s the commitment required on the part of the attendee.

80% better, but is it good enough?

A few weeks ago I was talking to my friend Tara about deodorant options, as one does (ahem), and I noted that even the organic, no-aluminum, supposedly earth-friendly brands have a lot of plastic in their packaging/applicator.

Very much a lot. Check it out at your local shop, or just take a good look at a deodorant stick you already have. By weight, okay, that semi-solid lump is probably heavier, but by volume there is definitely more plastic than product.

Given that only 9% of plastic gets recycled where I live… that’s not good.

If only we could refill the actual deodorant part into a reusable applicator, I thought, and did some Googling.

Turns out I am far from the only person who has thought that.

I decided to try out Dove’s offering, which, strangely for a major brand name (soft launch?) is only available online. Because it has no push-the-product-up mechanism, the refillable container is much smaller, which might be an added bonus for travel. The refills themselves come in plastic pods (the light green thing in the photo above), but Dove assures us that they use 80% less plastic than the single-use packaging. Okay, but… it’s still plastic? Definitely something to improve upon in the future.

The toothbrush is, believe it or not, from Colgate, and has one of the coolest-looking handles I have ever seen on a toothbrush. See how they snuck the infinity symbol in there? Plus, somehow, it all those looks and it’s very comfortable to hold while brushing. When was the last time you were brushing your teeth and actually thought, “wow, I love how the angle on this toothbrush lets me control the way I apply the bristles to my teeth and gums?”. I’ve been doing that every morning since i got this toothbrush.

Again, there is still plastic, in the black replaceable head part. Certainly that part couldn’t be aluminum like the handle, because I’ve touched the top of the handle to my bottom lip while I was brushing my back teeth, and it’s way more substantial than something you would want to poke around your mouth. But again 80% reduced plastic, but not 100%. Maybe at least someday soon they will switch to hemp-based plastic or something (not sure if that helps with garbage breakdown, though).

For both of these items, if they had been launched thirty or even ten years ago, I would be more impressed. I guess the good news is that they are around, they are being made by major manufacturers, and they have both been designed so the plastic could be eliminated entirely, eventually.

I just hope that the “eventually” part comes sooner.

is this what a sucralose allergy looks like?

Photo by Mae Mu on Unsplash

On 9 August 2016, I wound up leaving work a bit early, furious that I’d accidentally given myself a histamine reaction from a new tube of lip gloss, and worried that I needed to drive home and take care of it before I felt any worse than I already did.

I took some Benadryl when I got home and let out my anger by writing the blog post “this is life with a sucralose allergy” while I waited for the antihistamines and multiple glasses of water to do their thing. While I listed out all the products I’d had reactions to over the years and described how annoying and painful it was do deal with such a reaction, I also did a lot of Googling and tried to find reputable sources discussing what was apparently a relatively common reaction.

Relatively common because there was a lot of online discussion about it. My own blog post went as near to viral as anything I’ve ever written online. Even today it gets hundreds of hits per week. It’s received far more reactions and far more comments than any post in over ten years of blogging, from people all over the world.

What I found, that day and every day I’ve tried to learn more since, is that officially, sucralose allergies do not exist. I am not a medical professional, and I do encourage anyone having reactions to consult an actual doctor, but in terms of finding literature on the subject, the best result I’ve ever found is a physician’s letter to the American Academy of Allergy Asthma & immunology. The physician says they have had some patients complaining of allergic reactions to both stevia and sucralose (different patients). They have searched for literature, but have not been able to find anything. Could the AAAAI provide guidance?

A doctor associated with the AAAAI writes back, and notes that while stevia allergies are a possibility, they doubt sucralose allergies can exist, since sucralose is simply a sugar molecule with chlorine molecules attached, and therefore, chemically speaking, should not trigger an allergic reaction.

Now then.

If you’ve read my previous blog post on this subject, you might think I would be disappointed to learn that it’s not really an allergy. Instead, though, I was happy to read this, because a) it seemed to come from a reputable source and b) both physicians took the patients’ reports seriously. No matter what the scientific outcome, this seems to me to be the best way to go about it.

It does leave me with a question, though:

If it’s not an allergic reaction, why do I and so many other people react so badly to sucralose? What is happening, chemically and medically, that this reaction occurs even when we don’t know that we’ve consumed something with sucralose in it?

One thing I noticed both in my research and in the comments to my original blog post: the symptoms of the reaction are all over the place. Not just the histamine reaction (hives and water retention) that I get, but blisters, throat swelling, migraines, stomach issues, numbness, and more. I’ve even read a report of an anaphylactic attack, although those show up rarely when people put reaction stories on the net.

Meanwhile, since I last wrote about this, it seems that scientists have now determined that artificial sweeteners may not be good for you, period. They are commonly included to reduce calories (and therefore general weight gain), and to help diabetic people avoid sugar, and they’ve become more popular now that countries like the United Kingdom have created laws around how much sugar can be in some commercially prepared products. Because of this and other market forces, sucralose is expected to only become even more popular. But it’s been discovered that artificial sweeteners may actually be making people glucose intolerant because the body’s gut flora are being altered.

There are still tonnes of articles crowing about how safe sucralose is. So what? So are peanuts if you don’t react to them!

Personally, I’d rather manufacturers simply reduced the amount of sugar in products and outright ditched the artificial sweeteners. To my palette, anyhow, products like fizzy drinks and protein bars are way oversweetened to begin with, and could stand some dialling back. As proof that I’m not the only one, I’d point out the incredible success of completely unsweetened, no-calorie drinks like La Croix. Turns out a lot of people just wanted some fizz and a little bit of flavour, and weren’t looking for something sweet at all.

I’ve been lucky. I haven’t had a single reaction since that last time in August 2016. I’ve managed to achieve that by reading ingredients lists, making as many meals from scratch as possible (I even make my own breakfast cereal some weeks), and having full-sugar items, but less of them (because they’re over-sweet and therefore not entirely pleasant).

It still feels like a lot of people are having their symptoms ignored by science, though. I hope that five years from now, when I write my third post on this topic, that some actual, serious studies have been done.

portfolio and the personal

If you ask someone in UX what is the one key thing the profession revolves around, they’ll probably tell you something like:

• the user

• humans

• psychology

• behaviour

• having a vision

And sure, in the middle of work I’ll agree with all of those. But, I am starting to suspect, really it revolves around a single artifact: the portfolio.

If you’re starting out in the field, everyone wants to see your portfolio. UX courses will plan assignments so that they can be used in student portfolios. Stephen Gates and others have pointed out that a portfolio is a great way to show co-workers who are new to UX what’s feasible, or what you’ve done in the past, even (especially) if you have no intention whatsoever of leaving your current position. Mentors on ADPList often review the portfolios of mentees, and mentees often request to see the portfolios of mentors. Senior, expert-level designers will use one of their portfolio case studies as an illustration of a UX concept at a webinar or presentation.

Look at UX articles, videos, Twitter threads, or anything else on the web, and there is so, so, so much advice and discussion about portfolios. There’s an entire sub-industry around advising people about their portfolios. There are even very passionate discussions about how they should be minimized or done away with.

I finally have an MVP version of my UX portfolio online, as of this morning, and already I have a list of things I want to change about it.

Not all portfolios start from the same baseline, though, and I don’t mean skill sets. Some people (including me) have their work wrapped up under so many NDAs and security restrictions, their at-work case studies can never be used in a portfolio (well, unless I made one just for work and never used it in publish, and what’s the point of a portfolio that can’t be used for peer review?). And unless you work somewhere where portfolios are celebrated at work, and therefore you get time to add finished projects to your portfolio during office hours, you need to make and maintain your portfolio in your spare time. Which, to state the obvious, some people have more of than others.

Then there’s resources. Some people can create their portfolio on their work machine with no repercussions (there’s those security restrictions again), while other people can’t. And not everyone can afford a reasonably-performing laptop. They might be limited for machine access, for time, or both.

In these cases, are we measuring the worth of someone’s portfolio, or are we evaluating their baseline wealth and free time? And how do we tell the difference?

In the past few years, some pillars of UX have undergone re-evaluation. Personas are no longer a routine artifact, and it’s now better recognized that they can encourage stereotyping and poorer designs. The same goes for user research (are you being inclusive? are you sure? no really, are you sure?). And these are all good things, because it’s leading to better work with more beneficial results.

Maybe it’s time to re-evaluate the real impacts of portfolios as well.

terra lumina

Some of the lighting and other visual effects in Terra Lumina.

Australia is on fire, and before that Brazil, and before that California, and before that… meanwhile, the polar bears are running out of habitat, and the oceans are running out of oxygen.

In the midst of all this bleakness, a cultural artifact that imagines a future where climate change has been set in reverse seems wildly, refreshingly audacious.

That’s what the Terra Lumina experience at the Toronto Zoo offers. The premise is simple: imagine that by the year 2099, humanity has successfully learned to live non-destructively with the Earth. The global ecosystem has been rebalanced. All of the endangered species which survived the transition are not only no longer endangered, but thriving.

And so are the world’s people. As a gift to those who took the first steps in the path to a healthy Earth, they have constructed a time portal so that we can see a little bit of their present. Our future.

I’ve noticed when I’ve been trying to describe Terra Lumina to friends, I have to make the point that it is not a show, not a ride, not a sequential narrative. It’s an immersive experience, and it succeeds because it knows when to stop. The lights, music, sound effects, and the (minimal) messaging all have been carefully selected to work together without overwhelming the visitors. You’re not going to “miss something” if you get distracted for a moment.

Projected, animated wolves howling at a future moon.

Entrance to the experience is time-based (you have to choose a time when you order tickets), but not strictly so. It’s just to make sure people move through the experience in a steady stream and that things don’t get too crowded. You can take as long as you like once you pass the entrance.

Once you make it through the ticket gate, you wait in an area that sort of feels like an outdoor airport departure lounge. Recordings synched with animated displays on signs encourage you to savour the present moment, enjoy the complementary warming stations, and tell you a little bit about what life is like in 2099.

Oh, and please get rid of any disposable plastics before you go through the time portal. Those aren’t accepted in the future.

The key with experiences like this is to suspend the visitors’ disbelief just enough that they’ll buy the premise and give the content a chance to work its magic. Terra Lumina accomplishes this through careful sound design, and through the way the beginning is set up. The waiting area is a familiar experience trope, and then the portal itself is very effective. It really does feel as if you’re stepping into another dimension.

Crowds of visitors approaching the “time travel portal” which leads to the main experience.

Last time I looked at the Toronto Zoo’s web site, it said tickets were available until April. Go see.

down the raspberry pi-hole

My Raspberry Pi while it was getting set up, mouse, keyboard, and monitor attached.

I grew up on unavoidable advertising.

We lived in a rural area when I was a kid, with no cable. All of our TV came in over the aerial my dad had set in cement behind the house. My parents explained that TV stations made their money by showing advertisements, and even though we laughed at the stupid ones, it seemed like a pretty fair exchange. Our newspapers and magazines all had advertisements in them too, as did the radio station my mum liked to have on in the kitchen. Ads were just a part of any ephemeral media.

Advertisements were part of the culture. We’d make up parodies of jingles we’d heard too often. We’d make fun of announcers over-dramatically declaring a sale at the nearest discount furniture warehouse. And sometimes, when an ad was really good, it would become part of the zeitgeist, part of slang. Say, “Anything?" to someone who grew up in Ontario in the 80s with the right tone of voice and an arched eyebrow, and they’ll know you’re quoting a Cadbury Caramilk ad. Start singing, “when you eat your Smarties, do you eat the red ones last?” and they’ll join in.

Advertisements could even be art. I’ve always been a fan of Volkswagen’s famous “Think Small” ad, a print ad from the 1960s which still works well in a web version today. I have a vintage Canadian National Exhibition poster adventising the fair’s 75th anniversary, and postcard collections of vintage ads from Europe advertising emigration passage to Canada.

And maybe nostalgia is a factor, but there just don’t seem to be as high a percentage of really memorable ads in the internet age. Maybe it’s also fragmented audiences, and the fragmented budgets that go with them.

Or maybe it’s just misapplied targeting. The ads I get the most are for dental implants, on-line clothing stores that don’t carry clothes I like, and, for some bizarre reason, Ford F-150 pickup trucks. I mean, my dad had one when I was a kid, but I live in a condo in a city and work in an office now. You could probably fit my car onto the bed of a Ford F-150.

And then there’s the significant issue of ads slowing down web page loads. A lot. To the point that for some magazine-type web sites, I can only have one tab/article open at a time, or else it slows my computer or phone down more and more, until the machine freezes and needs to be restarted. At that point, both the content provider and the advertisers have just eaten their opportunities.

So my expensive data plans have long been going towards showing me ads for stuff I don’t need, don’t like, don’t use, and don’t find especially pleasant. I get that the transaction is still supposed to be that I receive content in exchange for exposing myself to advertising, but it’s not working, and it hasn’t been for a while.

Hence the Raspberry Pi computer in the photo at the top of this post. I just bought it over the weekend. In the photo it’s sitting on top of its case instead of inside it, and it has all those plugs plugged into it because I needed a keyboard, mouse, and monitor attached to complete its setup. After the basics were done (download and copy the prescribed NOOBS files to a micro SD card, follow the setup instructions), I entered the command to download and install Pi-Hole onto the Pi. Then it was a case of changing two settings on my router (the Pi-Hole setup makes it clear what to do), and I was done.

Pi-Hole is a DNS server which links to multiple blacklists of domains having to do with advertising. If a device on your network requests a content page, say a page from an on-line newspaper, Pi-Hole will let through all the requests for the newspaper’s text, images, and other content, but not allow through any requests related to advertising. That’s not just requests to display ads, but requests to send out your data to advertisers as well. It’s not really ad blocking so much as domain name blocking, and it’s very effective. Devices just need to be on your network — no browser extensions required.

Pi-Hole dashboard stats: 10,339 queries, 4,187 of which were blocked (40.5%).

The Raspberry Pi now lives in its case, with only its power cord attached, behind my TV set. It takes up slightly less space than if I left a credit card lying there. If I want to see how it's doing, I go to the Pi-Hole dashboard and check the stats. The screen shot to the right shows what the stats were at as I was writing this, about 48 hours after I got everything up and running.

See that? 40.5% of my requests to the web were for advertising, or sites related to advertising. The day I set it up, I tried a few sites and then went straight to bed, my phone the only internet-connected device turned on. In the morning, I found out the phone had made over 1,000 block-worthy requests while I was asleep.

What the stats don’t tell you is how it changes the browsing experience. It is shocking how quickly web sites load now. Where ads were supposed to be doesn’t show up at all, or shows up as easily-ignorable white or grey boxes. All those times I was worried my laptop was too old or too underpowered to load certain sites, and it turns out the advertising was using all the resources.

I’m still not against advertising. I’m really not. What I’m against is the method of advertising that the Pi-Hole shows up: the kind that devours bandwidth, freezes devices, and overall doesn’t care at all that it’s annoying its target audience, all the while depending on algorithms which don’t seem to work especially well.

If I knew I would be getting a quality advertising experience from certain quarters, one that was speedy and pleasant and actually pertinent to me, I’d be happy to whitelist some domain names. Pi-Hole makes it very easy to do that. But I’ve been on the internet since 1995, and advertisers have had plenty of chances to fix their approach. I don’t feel bad about popping $50 to block them altogether at all.

ten years

So I haven't been blogging lately. Things happen.

Truth: I've started quite a lot of blog posts over the past (eeep!) thirteen months, but finishing them has been something else again. I won't bore you with the reasons, because... meh. It doesn't matter. The point is, this is still my main blog and I still consider it being used, even when I'm not posting new things.

Besides, there's an excuse to celebrate.

This blog, and my DIY one, started on Blogger on 31 March 2008. In internet years, that's ancient.

(And before someone goes on about being a month late... who wants to announce a ten-year anniversary on April Fool's? Seriously.)

The blogs have always had gaps and absences. Sometimes I'm sick. Sometimes I'm just sick of coming up with blog topics. But even though the whole idea of blogs gets a lot of derision these days from certain quarters (let's face it, it always got derision from certain quarters), this is something I want to continue.

On tap: editing a novella, planning a new novel, and maybe some article topics for here.

See ya 'round.

a to z: invaders

Yoko Johnson set the photography drone in the centre of the quad, stepped well back, and pulled her personal device out of a hip pocket. She tapped the Send button on the controller interface, and watched as the drone lifted off the grass and flew over a stand of poplar trees.

She paused to appreciate the weather. Outside the settlement perimeter, the native Gaian grass was turned pink for the autumn, but the Earth lawn in the quad was still green, and would stay that way until winter. Dr. Johnson looked up at the gold leaves of the poplars, and mentally awarded the Gaian grass points for being better equipped to handle seasonal fluctuations.

She took a deep breath.  The air was warm enough in the windbreak of the quad, but she could sense the crispness. Maybe it was in the slight odour of sweet rot from the marshlands to the north, where the local snicker flock nested.

She sighed and headed back to the data room. The drone should have sent back some video by now, and her mapping software marked the first few positions.

Devon, her grad student, was already making notes on the screens. 

"You were right," he said. "That day we went out to rescue those kids from the snicker flock. The anemones have moved closer."

Johnson watched the plot points appear on the terrain map. "But we haven't seen one move yet?"

Devon shook his head. "Even the holes in the ground that their tap roots leave seem to fill in more quickly than expected."

"Some other creature that's part of the ecosystem, maybe," said Dr. Johnson. "They need something from the tap-root holes, and fill them in at the same time."

"Where do they get the dirt from?"

Johnson shrugged. "The next hole, I expect." She checked the data screen and frowned. "How long can we keep a drone in the air, videoing constantly?"

"Two hours, tops. Longer if we're okay with recovering it manually from where-ever it runs out of power, as opposed to it coming home by itself when it senses that it's losing charge."

"So we'd need at least twelve, more like thirteen or fourteen drones to keep a constant feed."

Devon pursed his lips. "I see where you're going with that. What about the mappings?"

"It's designed to keep up. It can even keep up with multiple feeds from different survey areas, once we're ready to do things like that."

"Do you think you can get the drones?"

Dr. Johnson nodded. "If I take this to the security council, they'll be practically forcing me to take them." She looked away from the array of screens and closed her eyes. "You know what this means."

"Means we might need to figure out how to chop down land anemones."

"No." She wheeled around. "No. It means either the scans from Earth were inaccurate, or that something evolved between us leaving and finally arriving here." She pointed at the terrain screen. "They're moving methodically, in a pattern. That indicates some level of intelligence."

Dr. Johnson stood up, tapping at her device at the same time. "Keep an eye on things. I'm going to see about arranging a meeting with the security council. They prefer to discuss the urgent things in person, and I'd count this as urgent. I can show them what's on the terrain map so far."

Devon frowned. "Those things can't have the ability to jump or climb. They can't get over the defence perimeter."

"We don't know how they change locations," Dr. Johnson reminded him. She headed for the door.

a to z: history

What gets remembered? What gets recorded?

The people who first colonised Gaia would have said, "everything", and they would have meant it. Their entire community had been recorded for generations. Even before they left Earth, the initial crew of the ship had been recorded giving eligibility interviews, recorded performing tasks needed on the voyage, recorded teaching others so they could pass the skills on to the next generation. There are thousands and thousands of hours for each person. The colony ship's storage cubes weren't even half full when the arrival happened, so important was recording to the colonists.

That's just the audio/visual/text entries. There's also all the measuring: the routine blood samples, the ID swipe required to gain access to any toilet so that the computer could note how much of what passed, and when. All food had to be checked out personally on a per-meal basis for anyone who wasn't a nursing infant — and their meals were measured too, either in time spent nursing or volume of formula consumed. Sleep was tracked. Insomnia was tracked. The amount of time spent at physical activity, spent reading books, spent watching or listening to tellycasts was tracked.

But it doesn't take too much reflection to realise how much was not recorded. There are no recordings of anyone's first kiss. There's no good way to know how often people would order different meals and then share them amongst two or more people — a common social practice impossible to disallow, no matter how much it annoyed the medical officers by distorting the numbers.

History, like cartography, must be filtered by its nature. Just as one cannot replicate a coastline down to the last pebble, one cannot record absolutely everything about even a single person's life, never mind the lives of hundreds.

That leads to the second problem: a filter distorts. Even making things sharper or more to-the-point is a distortion. And sometimes important details get thrown away as noise or mess.

Thus the idea behind Gaia 8: A People's History. The hope is that by letting all the messiness hang out, so to speak, but presenting these little snippets, people can learn more about the history of the colony and and the voyage that led to it.

The Gaia colony celebrates its 1,000th anniversary next year. There will be celebrations, but also reflection, and political decisions. All the more reason to look back — so that we know which way to move forward.

a to z: generation ships

Earth Colony Ship 8 didn't completely shut down for years after the arrival on Gaia. It served as a machine shop, factory, laboratory, and community media hub long after the colonists had settled a village around it.

Most notably, it served as their communications array until they could mine enough ore and gather enough resources to build a planet-side one.

After Captain Sorensen's discovery of the mysterious text-based message, they'd switched to reception only for interstellar-strength messages. There had been some initial worry over "them” finding the colony. Eventually that waned, to be replaced by a new worry: that they were the only ship that had arrived safely.

There were a few different lines of thought about the warning message. There was a conspiracy theory that malevolent forces had sent the message, but this was largely dismissed. Many simply took it at its word. Some worried that “they” had found more than one ship.

Thirty-five years after arrival, the interstellar comm array was one of the few things left on the ship still being put to practical use. Several of the decks had been converted into a museum. The bridge wasn't checked at all unless an alarm went off.

And then the message reception alarm did go off, twice, within a few weeks.

Unlike the earlier message, these had both audio and text attached to them. The first was from Ship 3. They'd arrived, but their target planet was swampy, overheated, and had far too much methane in the atmosphere to allow human life to thrive. The message ended with a note saying the crew intended to try to terraform a nearby moon with a thin atmosphere, but they didn't sound optimistic.

The second message came from Ship 9, and was nearly unintelligible, because the man leaving it was sobbing. Somehow the ship’s sensors had missed a piece of debris coming at it. The hull was breached, and enough of the main engineering area destroyed that the ship was disabled. Life support and the comm array were the only two systems permitted power;  when they ran out of energy, everyone on board the ship would die.

Had died. It had taken years for the message to reach Gaia.

After much debate, a short acknowledgment message was sent to Ship 3, deliberately worded so it could be plausibly misconstrued as an automatic message, as opposed to proof of life. No response ever came back.

The Gaians slowly realised that while they may not be alone in the universe, they were probably the only living humans.

a to z: food

Most of the occupants of Earth Colony Ship 8 spent the final descent to the Gaian surface pressed up against the portholes, getting their first glimpse of a planet, any planet, up-close for the first time.

Declan Oliver spent it staring at a tomato plant.

The colony ship’s artificial gravity worked to balance out the rate of deceleration, the increasing pull of Gaia’s natural gravity, and the atmospheric friction, but there were fluctuations where the compensations ran slightly behind the data. Declan could feel his own body getting pulled towards the floor, or the slight floaty feeling when his bottom was only just in contact with the bench he was sitting on. The tomato plant's fronds reacted in kind, dropping towards the soil or reaching towards the ceiling, like it was doing a very slow ballet specially choreographed for members of the plant kingdom.

A dull roar that Declan felt more than heard announced that the retro rockets were fully engaged. He checked the watering can set on the floor between him and the garden pod. The water’s surface remained level, which most likely meant all the rockets had fired and that the ship would be able to land on its feet.

He made a mental note to empty and stow the watering can before the post-landing inspectors came around. All loose items were supposed to be secured, but he'd wanted to have some idea of what was going on while he observed his plants.

The downward force was building up. The tomato’s fronds were nearly parallel with its main stalk. Declan felt like he was rooted to the bench.

And then, just when it felt like something was wrong and it would never stop, it did. Completely. He let his ears ring in the new silence. He'd never realised how much he'd taken the growl of the great engines for granted. His skin felt strange, and he realised he'd been vibrating, however slightly, his whole life.

In a few days he'd have to add air, water, and soil analysis to his regular gardening tasks, figuring out how much work it would be to coax the vegetables into growing in Gaian soil. The initial scans from orbit had been promising — nothing a little compost and manure couldn't fix — but he and everyone else on his team wanted to check things out in person before starting any experiments. In the meantime, the solar panels on the ship's surface would be deployed, converting Gaian sunshine into something more closely adhering to conditions on Earth.

The conditions that used to be on Earth, anyhow.

The tomato plants had gone through many more generations on the ship than the humans had. A big concern in the agricultural team was that the plants had adapted a little too well to the ship's garden ecosystem, that they'd be reluctant to grow in open air again.

Declan eased himself off the bench and carefully observed the tomato plant from as many angles he could manage without touching it or the soil it stood in. He grimaced. Plants preferred to move themselves slowly, if they had to at all. The next few days would tell him and his team how resilient they were to the shock of the landing process.

“Whole new garden out there,” he said to the plant. He picked up the watering can and made his way to the sink.

a to z: earth

Sometimes they would climb to the top of a building that was still mostly standing, just to enjoy the view. Those were good days. It meant the weather was clear, that the hunt had been successful the day before, that there were enough people at the encampment to take care of everyone who was sick and more besides.

They would stand on the ruins, still populated with ancient office furniture no-one had bothered to scavenge yet, and look south to the large lakes glittering below in the sunlight.

She was the first one to notice the old shoreline, maybe the third or fourth time they climbed the cement staircase. "The three lakes," she said. "They used to be one great lake. Look." She pointed out the edges with her finger.

"It doesn't matter now," he said.

"Of course not," she said, tucking her hand under his arm. An act of contrition. It was against their ways to piece together the past. In their grandparent's day, anyone trying to "avoid living in the now" would have been stoned to death.

"Those hills," he pointed out a series of high grounds forming a crescent shape between them and the home camp, "I'd like to hunt there tomorrow."

Those used to be islands, she thought. She praised his hunting prowess and agreed they would be worth the effort to climb.

"Perhaps we should return to the encampment now and rest," she said. "So you will have lots of energy for hunting tomorrow."

"Perhaps," he said, but he pressed her arm against his ribs, and she knew he would want to have sex first.

They went to the hills at dawn the next day. He walked ahead with the weapons; she walked behind with the rest of the gear.

He was pleased to find there were even more trees than had been apparent at a distance, and more pasture too, but they found only small animals living there: mostly cats and chickens. He thought he spotted a rabbit just before it went into the bushes, but they were too far away to tell.

They only caught one chicken. Chickens were prized, but didn't have the prestige of bagging a deer or a horse.

She could tell he was working himself into a bad mood over the hunt, and suggested they explore the catacombs in the old city for a change.

The people of the encampment called them "catacombs" because they were underground and stacked with old skeletons, but it was clear that wasn't their original purpose. There were brightly-coloured hangings with markings on them, similar to what they found in the carefully stacked and bound papers. And below the hangings... she thought it looked like it was for medical aid, or even food preparation. Nothing she could mention out loud of course.

The flesh had rotted from the skeletons long ago, but sometimes bits of the clothing remained. Some of it looked like it had once been brightly coloured, like the hangings, and made of similar stuff — that weird crumbling not-glass not-stone found throughout ancient ruins.

They'd walked farther than the sunlight could penetrate. Some of the ancient material was shiny and reflected light further inside, but it was too dark to make anything.

"We should turn back," he said. "If there's anything worth eating in here, it will just be rats or raccoons, and who knows what they've been feeding on."

"Wait," she said. "There's more light up ahead. See it?"

"Well of course I see it," he said. "I just mean there's no hunting in here." He sighed. "Stay behind me."

As they moved closer, it became clear the light wasn't the pale gold of the sunlight outside, but a blue-white brightness, stronger than the daylight.

They walked into an atrium surrounded by raised pods filled with dead vegetation. The blue-white light seemed to come from high above, even though when they looked up they couldn't see the sun.

And in the centre of the floor there was a panel, also lit up, surrounded by that yellowing not-glass.

The same types of markings appears on the panel as were on the hangings, as were on the papers. But the panel was making noise, too.

"It's connected to one of those black energy panels," he said. "Old magic. We should leave."

"Wait," she said. "Is it saying something?"

"Live in the now," he growled.

"This is happening now," she said. "Listen."

It was hard to make out, the pronunciation was so odd, but she was right, it was saying something.

"Earth Colony Ship 8, reporting successful landing on Gaia. Atmosphere, water sources, temperature range all compatible. I repeat, all compatible. Ship 8 reporting arrival, safe and sound."

"So strange," she breathed.

"We leave now, or I'm telling the elders," he said.

She blinked, nodded, and followed him back down the way they'd come.

The panel repeated its message.

a to z: drift

Earth Colony Ship 4 was supposed to arrive at its new world in about twelve lifetimes. Accounting for inertial drift, getting knocked off-course by space debris, and whatever the event was, the investigators figure it got about two-thirds of the way there.

The robot probes from Gaia-8 nearly missed it, because the majority of their scans were for lifeforms, or at least carbon masses that used to be lifeforms. Colony Ship 4 has none. Not so much as a carrot stick forgotten at the bottom of a food storage unit. No humans, no livestock, no pets, no garden plants, nothing. Every last scrap of organic material has been stripped. Even items like leather shoes and cotton clothes are missing.

What's not missing is evidence. There's plenty of that. The robots were able to sample enough to confirm several things. The stains found all over the bridge, engineering, and the arboretum? The rumours are true. It's from human blood. Whatever happened, it was violent.

The story about the DNA catalogue is true as well. There's one signature that doesn't match any known species, and no-one's been able to piece out what organism owns the genes because... they're not quite genes, and the sequence isn't quite DNA. It doesn't match the genome structures of local life on Gaia 8 either.

As absolute as the removal of all organics was, the ship itself was left completely intact. Those spooky shots of Ship 4 drifting in space with all the interior lights on are not from a special effects rig. One of the robots took video of a bathroom tap left on, water endlessly running, going down the drain, and filtering through the grey-water recycling, working perfectly. You'd expect a bloodstain to be nearby, but there's not. Instead the closest one is three hatchways down, inside a utility closet. As if the sound of the running water was meant as a decoy but ultimately failed.

Elsewhere, on the residential decks, the robots found music and video players still playing. Education screens stuck on quiz question #5. Plates with all the food removed, but still in cooker modules.

Back on the bridge, a sign that some of the crew at least had had time to react. The cover of the communications panel pulled off and discarded on the floor, several bootprints visible on it. The clear shielding set over the controls. And a single, text-only message, obviously composed with the understanding that no other colony ships would receive it until they reached the end of their own voyages and sent their arrival signal:

STOP TRANSMITTING NOW OR ELSE THEY'LL FIND YOU TOO

a to z: communication

"It's protocol." Captain Sorensen held up her comm device, but didn't break eye contact.

Jason tried one more time. "But won't it slow down setting up the shelters and the defence —"

"It's protocol, Ensign. We've got plenty of people to help with the other things. Worse comes to worst, the ship's the best fortress we have. There's not actually any rush on anything except for trying to contact the other ships."

"Yes Captain."

"I want to get on the surface as much as you do. But we need to make sure we tidy up here. Do things right. People will need structure more than ever right now." Captain Sorensen turned away and tapped at the screen of her device.

Jason turned to the communications control panel. It had been hidden under a cover for decades, not available for use while the great generation ship 8 voyaged through space. The engineers who had built the ship back on Earth — the ancestors of everyone now on the ship — had decided to make the room to include a powerful comm array, one capable of reaching the other nine ships in the colonisation fleet. Capable even of communicating with Earth, if there was anyone left on Earth to communicate with. But the array used a lot of power, far more power than a ship on a multi-generation, interstellar flight could spare.

The panel's cover had always been used as a table, a handy empty space in a crowded bridge. Now the cover was stowed in the captain's cabin for lack of anywhere else safe to put it.

Jason studied the buttons on the panel. Unlike any other set of controls on the ship, the labels on this one had never been replaced. He squinted at the unadorned, old-fashioned printing, and hoped he wouldn't miss out on any steps in the procedure.

There wasn't anywhere to set down his own device. He decided to hold it in one hand while he pushed buttons with the other. Maybe it would help him be more accurate.

He verified the status of the ship's solar panels on the device, and the power availability. The checklist put the information right beside the procedure description, so at least he didn't need to do anything there.

The next step was to press a series of buttons to open the port that protected the dish array, and deploy the dishes. Normally it was the sort of thing that would be automated and fully under the control of the ship's computer, but the engineers had decided that since the comm array would sit dormant for over a hundred years, it made sense for a human to walk the machinery through, one step at a time. That way, if anything wrong happened, it would be easier to abort the procedure and call in a repair team. When they were finally available, thought Jason.

The parts involved had been checked during the post-landing ship inspection, but they moved slowly, stiffly. Jason remembered something from his training, something about how they'd been designed that way in case the atmosphere was denser than expected. Of course, if it were too dense he'd have been sending a distress call — which, unless at least one of the other colonies were very well settled, which never reach the Gaia 8 colonists in time.

Jason stared out the porthole over the comm panel while he waited for each step to complete. His fellow colonists were walking around in the pale red light of early evening. He was too high up in the ship to be able to see their expressions, but every once in a while a few of them would run for a few steps, or dance. He reminded himself he would be doing the same soon enough and pressed the next set of buttons in the sequence.

Finally. The array was powered up and arranged to transmit to Earth and the calculated locations of the rest of the fleet. He dialled through the selection of pre-recorded messages and chose the "arrived safely" one. He pressed the "send on repeat" button and turned on the alert for responses.

The comm panel had a second cover, a clear one that protected the controls from being pressed accidentally, but which let bridge crew see the settings and the status of the array. Jason set it down carefully and locked it with his palm print.

The Captain was on the other side of the bridge, double-checking the navigation controls were powered down correctly. She glanced up as Jason approached her. "All done?"

Jason nodded. "According to the controls everything is working and we're transmitting."

"Good." She indicated the forward viewport with her head. "Now get out there and enjoy the last of the sunshine. We'll have to lock down for the night soon."

Jason smiled, thanked her, and left the bridge. Sorensen could hear him running down the corridor towards the entrance ramp.

She walked over to the comm station. They wouldn't be expecting any responses for weeks, but given Jason's impatience she didn't think a little double-checking was out of order.

The response alert light was already blinking. She sighed. He must have missed something in the checklist. Probably the ship had responded to itself.

To her surprise the message was text-only, not the text-and-sound default. Frowning, she palmed off the lock and lifted the protective cover, then pressed the button which sent the received message to the nearest display screen.

STOP TRANSMITTING NOW OR ELSE THEY'LL FIND YOU TOO

a to z: beasts

When Aïsha was eleven and her brother Roger was eight, they decided they were going to capture a snicker and make it a pet. Snickers were the cat-sized, flying mammal-type species that nested near Gaia's human habitat. They nested in triples — a male, a female, and a third sex the scientists were still arguing over — and they lived on the rodent-sized, reptile-type creatures found all over Gaia. Even though they were a common species, they were wary of any creatures not of their kind, including humans, and tended to scatter if they saw anything approaching. Zoologists spent a lot of time trying to come up with a blind, or even a photography drone, that wouldn't scare them away.

Aïsha and Roger didn't care about zoology. They just wanted a snicker as a pet.

To that end, they'd come up with a way to get past the perimeter gate, decided on which gear they'd need to borrow from their parents' shed to catch and hold a snicker, and plied the communal knowledge base's search engine with questions about what snickers ate, and what they liked to sleep on.

They'd also manufactured a story about how they were researching snickers for school in case their parents asked about their search histories, but since studying snickers didn't set off any of the content control alarms, their parents never asked.

Even though the nearest snicker habitat — a marsh with several nesting triples — was to the north of the human settlement, Aïsha led Roger to the southwestern gate. There was an apple orchard near the gate, and they took photos of the trees for a few minutes.

"Mama will like the pictures of apple blossoms for her calendar screen," said Aïsha. From a distance the position of her head made it look like she was addressing Roger, but she was watching the gate scanner. "Let's go home."

"Okay!" said Roger, and he ran towards Aïsha. He pretended to trip on a tree root that wasn't there, went sprawling, and burst into tears, clutching his shin and screaming.

"Are you okay?" The scanner's blue lens stopped sweeping the area in front of the gate and angled itself in Roger's direction, trying to get a visual.

"Call a medbot!" said Aïsha. "I'm not big enough to carry him to an infirmary!"

"Just a moment," said the scanner, and its lens receded into the wall.

Aïsha helped Roger up, and they ran to the wall beside the gate. As the scanner extended from the wall again to resume gate checks, they slipped into the doorway and through the gate, behind the scanner's line of sight.

"You were telly good at that," said Aïsha. "You even scared me."

"It's nothing," said Roger, but he held his head a little straighter as he ran to catch up with his sister. "I just copy the footballers on those old videos Mum likes to watch."

They ran along the path the zoologists and botanists had established for their work. Every once in a while, a lizard-mouse would scurry across the path in front of them. On either side were tall grasses, pale pink as they lost their chlorophyll for the winter. There were giant land anemones within sight too, rooted things that swatted flying creatures out of the air and stuffed them into their open-topped trunks for digestion, but they were too far away from the path to be dangerous.

Roger froze and stared as a land anemone swiped at a particularly large salamander bat and expertly knocked it into its feeding orifice. "We should go home through the next gate."

"We'll get in trouble if we do that. There's a plan, remember?"

The salamander bat raised a paw, one wing, and its head from the anemone. The anemone shoved it down again, and the trunk undulated as it swallowed.

"Come on, Roger." Roger ran on, checking for anemones and moving to the opposite side of the path when they were parallel to one.

They reached the marsh where the snickers liked to nest. Aïsha stopped several metres away, gesturing for Roger to stay behind her. She pulled a mesh bag out of her backpack, and picked up a rock from the edge of the path. She crawled forward slowly, doing a fair imitation of their neighbour's cat when it was stalking something.

Two metres before she reached the edge of the marsh, the snickers rose in a swarm, all of them making the clicking sound that had given them their common name. Aïsha ran in a crouch, threw the mesh bag over something Roger couldn't see, then stood up and walked back to him. She held up the bag.

It had a baby snicker in it.

The snicker was struggling in the bag, making a noise like an incomplete version of its parents' call. "Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-"

The snicker flock descended on them, a tornado of brown spiny flight hairs, claws, and sharp teeth. Aïsha screamed and dropped the bag, holding up her arms to protect her face. Roger fell to the ground and curled up, nose pressed into the dirt, forearms boxed around his ears.

It felt like it was going on forever, when Roger heard shouting through his slashed-at ears. The snickers stopped attacking, but he didn't get up. He heard more shouts, and, closer, the sound of his sister whimpering.

"What are you two doing out here?" A warm hand pressed onto his bleeding shoulder, and Roger peeped up to see Dr. Johnson from the university peering down at him.

Roger stared at the zoologist's face, then sat up. A man he didn't recognise was leaning over Aïsha. "This one says they wanted a pet snicker," he said to Dr. Johnson. He sighed. "I'm guessing your family has no idea you're past the gates, right?"

"You're lucky you tripped one of the outward-facing scanners," said the zoologist. She helped Roger up. "Mostly they're just to keep watch on the land anemones."

"But they're rooted," said Aïsha, A tear rolled down her cheek and dropped onto her dress, blurring the red dirt stained onto it by the path.

"They move sometimes," said Dr. Johnson, "Part of the work is to condition them to stay away from us." She noticed the baby snicker, which lay still in the mesh bag. "That poor little thing. I guess we should take it back to the lab, Devon."

Devon knelt down and scooped up the snicker in both hands. "It's breathing," he said. "It looks like it got attacked by the flock, but it's still alive, at least for now."

Aïsha started sobbing.

"Get it to a vet then," said Dr. Johnson. "I don't think we'll be able to return it to the wild, but maybe it can have a halfway decent life in captivity." She reached out and pulled Aïsha to her. "I'll take these two home to their parents."

a to z: arrival

In the video file she's everything you'd expect of an eighth-generation interstellar captain: confident, friendly, direct, able to explain complex engineering concepts in simple terms. She has a quiet voice, but it's low and strong. Even now, two hundred years after her death, after her image and words have become ingrained into every citizen since infancy, people will stop and listen if a recording of her is playing on a screen.

The image in this particular file doesn't depict the quick-thinking leader from the historical still photos. Patricia Sorensen is past ninety in it, face wrinkled, hair white. She still wore it in the severe ponytail copied by so many. She looks and acts as if, given a ship, she would absolutely pilot a group of colonists off the planet if she were assigned the task, and complete the first-generation tasks as admirably as she completed the last-generation ones on the actual voyage.

The interviewer, offscreen, asks the questions everyone has known the answers to since they were old enough to understand. She responds with absolute certainty and clarity, every time, until — and this is why this video is treasured — she is asked what it was like to work through the final landing and power-down sequence.

For the first time in the recording, in any recording of her, Patricia Sorensen hesitates, breaks eye contact with the interviewer. She glances down the camera lens like it's the gaze of a parent figure wise to her tall tales. She visibly inhales and exhales a long, steady breath.

When she speaks again she's not looking at the interviewer sitting slightly at stage left, but straight down the lens, and those enormous brown eyes of hers never fail to make the viewer feel she's looking directly into their soul.

"It didn't feel real," she says. "We'd rehearsed it so many times. Even before I was selected for the nav team, even before I was an adult... when I was a kid on the ship, we used to play 'Landing on Gaia'. We'd all say who we were going to be — I was always the science officer, never the captain — and then we'd pretend we were landing the ship. And you know, we're kids playing," she chuckles, "so most of the time we'd invent some crisis, everything from a poisonous atmosphere to giant predatory fauna attacking the ship, and usually it would end with all of us screaming our heads off, like kids do. Then some grown-up would stick their head through a hatchway and yell at us to quiet down, and we'd giggle like mad and then spend a couple of minutes lying still, pretending to be dead."

Sorensen pauses, takes another long breath. "Kids don't play that anymore. My grandkids, they play 'When We Landed on Gaia'. When they play, everyone lives, because they know everyone did live. See, on the ship, all the kids knew we were all probably going to die. No adult had ever told us, but we knew."

"So when it was time for me to actually call out the orders and push the right buttons at the right time... honestly, I think the whole bridge just concentrated on the checklist. We knew all we could do was follow procedure. It was either going to work or it wasn't. If anything went wrong, it wasn't going to be some big dramatic panic like they show in entertainment videos, because for any possible thing that could go wrong, there was a procedure for that too. It was just like being in the simulator deck. I mean, sure, a part of me knew that this time when I pushed a button on the control panel the ship was really going to respond, it wasn't just the computer, but we'd done it so many times."

"It was like a magic spell. Reality didn't snap in until we were on the ground and had run the power-down procedure. I looked down to stow away the device I'd been using for the checklist, and I saw a sunbeam on my hand for the first time." She clucks and holds up her right hand, curled with age. "You young people can't even imagine that. Seeing how beautiful human skin looks in sunlight. I was transfixed. I nearly dropped the device."

She nods at the camera. "Sunlight, and silence. It wasn't until we were landed that I realised my entire body had been vibrating my whole life with the engines. It —" she tosses her head, laughs, re-establishes eye contact "— that took months to get over, you know. How still things are when you're on a planet."

One second, two seconds, three, and on the fourth that unafraid gaze finally releases the viewer. Sorensen settles back in her chair and pays attention to the interviewer again. "So yeah. That's what it was like."

a to z challenge: because

Peer pressure can be a terrible thing.

I've had a few writing plans for a while. One of them is to keep revising the novella a posted here as a serial a few years back. It keeps getting delayed, mostly because I keep alternating between being unwell and being overwhelmed at how much book-writing there is to do. I save all my energy for the all-important day job, and there just isn't much left for anything else.

Still and all, it's got to the point where the stress of not writing is worse than the stress of trying to write all the time. I've decided to give Camp NaNoWriMo a go, and commit to revising an hour a day. That will probably make me a bit crispy, based on past experience, but I'm hoping I can gear down without stopping completely in May.

In the meantime, because there's always something else, I've decided to take part in the A to Z Challenge for blogs. Most bloggers I read who have done this choose non-fiction topics, but I've decided to write fiction. Yeah. Don't say it.

The A to Z fiction is an idea I've had around for ages, and already posted three entries for previously for Friday Flash:

• Space
• The Leave-Taking
• The Window Children

I made up my alphabetical list of topics last night, some letters with alternatives in case the first choice leaves me with writer's block. I figure I can write the six days of stories for the week on Sunday, and then just schedule them to publish throughout the week. A to Z posts every day but Sundays. To make it all the way to Z I'll have to post the last story on the last Sunday of the month, the 30th, but that's all right.

By the end of it, I'll have about as many scraps and snippets as I did when I started the novella I'm revising now.

Who knows? It might even work.

joe

“That's me,” said Alberto, taking off the black apron-of-pockets all the servers wore. “See you tomorrow.”

“See you.” Kelly tapped the menu on the register to get to the daily close screen.

“You should kick that guy out first before you balance the till,” said Alberto, one hand on the kitchen door.

“What guy?” Kelly leaned over the bar and squinted at the mostly-dark dining room. Her heart sank as she saw a figure slumped over one of the window tables. She could just make out a pair of long legs stretched all the way under the table and the opposite chair.

“Shouldn't we double up on him? He's got to be at least a head taller than me —” But the kitchen door was swinging shut.

Fine. Technically the guy was in her section. Kelly took a deep breath and flicked on the bright overhead lights, then marched into the dining room.

She stopped a metre and a half away. His clothes looked like they'd been nice, once. Even though the dining room was slightly overheated, he was wearing a black parka. It was open, and Kelly could see a lime green workout anorak underneath, and a battered grey sweatshirt underneath that. His jeans just looked like standard Levi 501s. Kelly recognised the brand of his boots. Her ex-boyfriend had saved up months to buy a similar pair.

The boots were tattered and stained, same as the rest of the guy's clothes. His hair was dark and wavy, but too long and slicked back with what Kelly guessed was grease and not hair product. He had the jowls of someone who lived on a poor diet, but the hollows around his eyes made it clear he wasn't used to having a lot of food at once.

He was staring at the lights, with a look of wonder Kelly was used to seeing on her nephew's face when he opened birthday presents. That gave her an extra couple seconds to figure out where she knew him from. His upper face looked familiar — bright blue eyes under thickish dark eyebrows.

No name came to mind, so she decided to go with her standard closing-time speech.

“Sir, we're closed. Can I call you a cab?”

At first, Kelly thought he wasn't listening, but as she finished her speech his gaze lowered and settled on her face.

“Désolé, mais je dois rester ici jusqu'à —” The guy stared at Kelly. “That was English, wasn't it?”

Kelly took half a step back. “Yeah it was English.” Shit.

“Sorry about that.” His accents in both English and French were standard Canadian, near as Kelly could tell.

“I know you just said something about having to stay, but sir, you really can't.” Kelly gestured at the receipt and the five-dollar bill tucked under the empty coffee cup on the table. “Do you need change?”

The man peered at the receipt as if he'd never seen it before. “I don't think so.”

“Then you really have to leave. I'm sorry sir, but my manager doesn't allow customers to remain on the premises when we're balancing the till.”

The man was frowning. “So, where am I, exactly?”

“This is The Haunt.” The man was still frowning. “Near Pape subway station. On the Danforth?”

The man grinned, revealing straight but very rotten teeth. “Danforth! That's Toronto, right?”

Kelly took half a step back. “Yeahhh, last time I checked. Look, do you want me to call someone to pick you up? A cabbie, or...” She didn't want to say “the cops”, but it was starting to look like a viable option.

The man looked out the window, cupping his hands around his eyes to block out the reflections. “There's still a Toronto this time, wow.” He turned to face Kelly again. “Who's the Prime Minister, then?”

“Uh, Trudeau?”

He looked so shocked Kelly involuntarily scuttled back a few more steps. “Pierre Trudeau’s still alive?”

Shit. She was going to have to call the cops. “He died a while ago, eh? It's his son now. Justin.”

“Just-in.” The man chuckled and shook his head. "Haven't heard that one yet. Prime Minister? That's incredible.” He grinned at her, and Kelly realised who he looked like. Fix his hair and teeth, give him healthy food, and he'd look just like —

“Wow. So who's the American president, then?”

Kelly froze. “Donald Trump. Look, do you need me to —”

The man slammed his palms onto the table, making the empty coffee cup jump. "Dammit! I really thought I had it this time." He produced something from his parka pocket that looked like a cross between an old flip-style phone and a garage door opener. "I have to go."

"Yes sir, you really do."

"No, I have to leave here." He held up the device. "It's safest if you duck behind the bar."

Kelly ran to the bar, grabbing her phone off the counter and ducking down at the same time. She reached for the baseball bat they kept there for emergencies. Just as her fingers enclosed the handle, she realised a humming sound was coming from the dining room.

The sound grew louder and louder, and a blueish-white light threw harsh shadows behind the bar. Kelly glanced up at the back wall and saw the liquor bottles caught in so much light they looked like they were glowing.

The hum transformed into a roar, and Kelly pressed her hands against her ears.

The sound stopped, and her ears rang away the last of the hum vibrations. There were no further sounds from the dining room.

Kelly clenched the baseball bat and inched her way around the bar, slowly easing up from her crouch.

There were some weird black marks on the floor, like painted-on shadows, but the guy was gone.

Kelly scuffed at the nearest black mark with her foot. It wouldn't rub off. Fine. She would leave Alberto a note to clean it up when he opened tomorrow.

Numbly she walked to the door and made sure it was locked with the deadbolt. She picked up the receipt and the empty coffee cup from the guy's table on her way back to the bar.

She glanced at the receipt as she waited for the cash report to print, and noticed the note.

"Haven't been in a place like this for years! Thanks so much. Joe."

not all adjectives are equal

Consider the following passage:

The pretty woman ran through her beautiful apartment to the large, pleasant kitchen. She turned off the noisy oven buzzer.

"Dinner's ready!" she called out. 

She entered the tasteful dining room, aromatic casserole held between two cute pot holders. 

Her wonderful family were already at the table. She gave each of them and herself a generous serving. 

Her handsome husband took a bite. "This is delicious, honey," he said.  

"It's yummy, Momma!" chimed in their adorable child. 

The woman flicked a strand of her lovely hair behind her shoulder. "Why thank you, you two."

Refer back as often as you need to, and answer the following questions:

• What were the main ingredients of the casserole?
• What style is the kitchen decorated in?
• What colour is the woman's hair?

Exactly.

Sure I stacked the deck by writing the passage to illustrate my point, but this is something I've been seeing a lot lately. I haven't found any writer's jargon for them, so I'm calling them "empty descriptors".

Most of the adjectives in the sample passage give opinions, not information. The reader learns that the author believes the apartment to be beautiful, the kitchen to be pleasant, the casserole to be aromatic. But they have nothing to go on to build their own picture of the scene. "Aromatic" only means the casserole has a smell, not what it smells like. And what's a "pleasant" kitchen? For me, it's a double sink, a working stove and fridge, and a dishwashing machine; after that I'm not fussy. I know many people are much harder to please when it comes to kitchens.

Size adjectives are also vague without a standard to compare them to. Think about that "large" kitchen. How large? Large for a downtown apartment in Paris? Large even when compared to a McMansion in the suburbs? Large enough to fit my real-life apartment into? The reader doesn't know.

Of course, over-describing can be bad too — consider the "green ceramic bowl heaped with fluffy white mashed potatoes" types of descriptions featured in many a YA series — but it's probably better to leave out the adjectives entirely if they're not communicating actual sensory information.

Another thing about empty descriptors: what if the reader disagrees with you? North American writers especially seem to think nothing of mentioning a "big, beautiful house", not realising that to many readers, big is not beautiful when it comes to houses. "Big" might just mean "expensive", or even "liability" or "foolish". As a friend of mine put it when we attended a housewarming party at a house far bigger than either of us were comfortable in, "I'm glad I don't have to clean it."

Words like "beautiful" can be even worse. Of course, as a writer you may want to convey that a character or characters consider something or someone beautiful, but if so it's that perception you want to convey, not the beauty itself. What if what you consider a "beautiful" house is exactly what your reader can't stand? A lot of people love neo-Georgian and neo-Victorian, but to me all that molding just says, "lots of dusting and painting to do." Then again, a lot of people would find what I find "beautiful" in a house too modern and minimalist. The way around that is to show the house through the character's eyes. I may not agree with them, but I can appreciate that they find the house beautiful. And that was the point, wasn't it?

I'm going to finish off by attempting a conversion of that sample passage, removing all the empty descriptors and adding in sensory information. Probably I should give at least some of these characters names, but I'm just going to stick with "the woman" etc. for now:

The woman ran through her apartment to the kitchen. She turned off the oven buzzer.

"Dinner's ready!" she called out. 

She entered the dining room, casserole held between pot holders. The scents of curry powder and chicken filled the air.

Her family were already at the table. She served everyone before she sat down. 

Her husband took a bite. "This is delicious, honey," he said.  

"It's yummy, Momma!" chimed in their child. 

The woman flicked a strand of hair behind her shoulder. "Why thank you, you two."

Better? Worse? Were you expecting the chicken divan in the original passage? Lasagne? Something else? Let me know in the comments!

apex technology

 "Technology" has become a loaded word over the last hundred years or so. It's acquired trappings of being impenetrable, somewhat magical... and, above all, constantly changeable, especially under the guise of "advancement". Technology, the message goes, will constantly need replacing, because it is constantly improving. 

Last weekend I cleared out a shopping bag's worth of old electronics I had around the apartment. Old mobile phones, some of which had dead-end designs (front and back screens with different controls on each side). Charging cords for items I no longer owned, and which didn't fit anything else. PC speakers that have had a broken wire for ages. And so on.

Some things I decided to keep, like my Bluetooth portable keyboard which, one day, I will figure out how to synch with newer devices, dammit. There's nothing wrong with it otherwise, and it annoys me.

But one thing, one of the oldest things in the drawer, was not only worth keeping, but had no clearly improved successor. My scientific calculator. 

That calculator was probably the first piece of electronics I bought myself, for Grade 11 Physics, in 1987.

It cost me $27* at Consumers Distributing. It must have been a major (or at least majorly nervous) purchase for me, because I can remember standing in line for it with my order form all filled out, and checking that nothing was broken at the purchase inspection counter immediately afterwards. Probably I'd left it until right before a test to replace my old calculator.

The calculator I'd been using until then was one my dad had bought around 1979. It only had the basic functions, so I had to enter the 1/x calculations by hand when figuring out parallel resistance in an electrical circuit. Also, its rechargeable battery wasn't holding a charge anymore, so I had to plug it in during class, which annoyed the teacher.

The new calculator, as you can see, is solar — no more embarrassment over low batteries! Texas Instruments came out with a model which let you tilt the display and the solar panel while the keypad stayed level, but the one I bought worked fine, so I was happy with it.

And that's the thing. It's now 2016, almost thirty years later, and all the keys still work, the solar cell still works, it just works. Yes, I've got a calculator on my phone and my laptop just like everyone else, and okay, usually I use those, but sometimes it's easier just to pull the 1987 one out of the drawer. It has better memory features than my phone's basic calculator, and I never have to worry about recharging it.

It got me thinking, because here's an item that's old by most consumables standards, certainly ancient in its category (personal electronics), but there's nothing really to beat it except that it's only single-purpose. Even the paint on the keypad buttons is still intact.

I mean, this thing is contemporary with Teddy Ruxpin. 

The killer feature, and the one which elevates it over teddy bears with cassette tape players in their backs, is the solar power. Anything with a non-replaceable rechargeable battery would have been rendered well useless by now. This calculator was freed from the grid when it was manufactured. So long as the solar cell doesn't bust, so long as the keys hold out, so long as I don't drop it onto a hard surface (erm, again), it'll keep lasting.

That thirty-year-old solar calculator has also outlasted its descendants because it was built a little better — because it was presented as something expensive, serious gear. The newer ones are often sold in blister packs. Sometimes they're even free, a little prezzie with a promotional logo stamped below the display. Yet with all the advancements in material engineering and circuit boards, those ones don't last. 

The calculator is good proof that maybe all technology doesn't have to keep advancing. That some things can be, if not perfected (because what's that?), at least accepted as being as good as it gets. After a certain point, the only "advancements" are in finding cheaper ways to make a thing and in making it well enough to be purchaseable, but poorly enough it will need replacing soon. 

And all at a cheap enough price so the consumer doesn't get annoyed, of course. But there's nothing apex about that.

*Hm. The 1986/87 catalogue has a similar calculator for $49. Maybe I was worried I was going to miss the sale price.