Beautifully Unique Sparkleponies: On Myths, Morons, Free Speech, Football, and Assorted Absurdities (12 page)

The two men amble toward the southern printer, lying in its shallow nest. When they reach it, both plop down.

“Okay, so the way I figure it is, for a gun, you have to have three parts. You need a barrel for the bullet to travel down, a hammer to hit the bullet and ignite it, and a trigger to cock the hammer back and then let it forward.”

“Let’s make the barrel first—that should be easy.”

“Sure; I’ll download a cylinder macro from the net.”

The first man leans over the 3D printer and inputs a command. Seconds later, it starts assembling two gray cylinders, each approximately two feet long and two and a half inches in diameter, and each with a hollow tube running the entire length.

“Why are you making two?”

“Well, I figured it wouldn’t be fair for me to be the only person to have one, you know?”

“Hey, thanks, I appreciate that. Looking good so far!”

The printer chimes and both cylinders pop out.

“Okay, what next? The firing assembly?”

“Yeah, that one might be a bit more fiddly to find. Let me take a look online.”

Several minutes pass, and the second man entertains himself by doodling in the dirt with the tip of his gun’s barrel. Finally, he sees the first man shake his head.

“Nope, no good, no one has a public copy of a firing assembly.”

The first man sighs and drops his head, looking defeated. The second man looks sharply at him.

“Whoa, let’s not get all down in the dumps here. Just because we can’t print one off doesn’t mean we can’t make it.”

The first man looks up blankly. “What are you talking about?”

“Well, you see, back on the farm, we had to learn to make our
own tools; a lot of the time, the online connectivity was down, and the printer wouldn’t respond. I got to be a pretty fair hand at metal crafting—here, I’ll show you.”

The second man scootches up alongside the printer, and a short time later, he has a cutting-and-grinding tool, several ingots of metal, and a small quenching bucket, which he hands to the first man.

“Do me a favor, yeah? Go fill this up with water?”

“Sure thing. I’ll be right back.”

The first man goes to a nearby stream. Whistling, he dips the bucket down into the water, fills it up about halfway, then heads back to the bunker.

Meanwhile, the second man has been busily shaping and carving one of the ingots according to an old diagram on the printer screen. His fingers move slowly yet surely over the polished metal, cutting here, polishing there, until it seems to come alive in his hands. Grinning, he finishes off the first hammer and tosses it into the quench bucket, where it raises a cloud of hissing steam from its still-glowing edges. He starts in on the second one, humming a tuneless ditty.

“So you grew up on a farm, yeah?” the first man asks when he gets back.

“Yeah, parents liked the sustainable life. Nothing too big, just a couple acres, but I had to learn all sorts of useless information. Stuff like metalworking.” The second man smiles before turning back to his project—both hammers are now done, as is one of the triggers. The pieces are rudimentary, yet they possess an undeniable grace.

As the man works on the second trigger, he frowns and looks over.

“I just realized something. How are we going to put these together?”

“Oooh, good question.” The first man purses his lips. “Tell you what: I’ll run off a trimming plane and some wood stock. We should be able to set the barrel into the stock and then run the firing assembly up through the middle of it.”

“Wow, look at you, Mr. Hidden Talents. Where did you learn woodworking?”

“Oh, I picked it up in college. Took an elective on building birdhouses; turns out I was pretty good at it. I make a pretty mean cuckoo clock too.”

The two men laugh and work on their respective tasks. A short while later, all the parts lie neatly grouped on the floor of the bunker.

“Let’s see, if you hold the main stock there, I can hammer in the barrel…”

“Careful with that binding agent, it’ll glue your hands together…”

“Okay, now slide the trigger through here…”

“Too far, too far, let it come back a bit…”

“And done!”

The two men look at each other, aglow in the shared triumph of creation. Lying before them are two crude and primitive firearms, gray composite barrels set in rich oak frames along with dark steel firing assemblies. Somehow, the disparate parts come together to make a seamless whole.

Suddenly, the communicator buzzes and a voice issues forth.

“To anyone listening, here’s the situation. The Panopticon is still down, but it looks like none of our weapons are working. Apparently some joker decided it would be funny to alter the code
in all the databases to make every gun template nonfunctional; something about four channels or some childish nonsense. Whoever it was didn’t even bother to leave a name.”

Incoherent mumbling laced with profanity streams forth for a minute or two.

“Anyway, no one noticed it because we all assumed the templates were sound, and it’s not like we could fire one off to test it with that stupid Panopticon watching. I mean, who
does
something like that, hacks a weapon template?” The voice sounds aggrieved. “If I get my hands on whoever did this, his butt is going to hurt likes blazes when I’m done with him. This is just making a mockery of the whole system, guns that don’t fire…”

The voice trails off, then picks back up with a brightly false sincerity.

“Regardless, if you’re listening to this, your orders are still the same: Eliminate the opposition. No survivors. There can be only one victor, and it must be us.”

The communicator falls silent, and the men look at each other, then down at the two guns lying at their feet. Their shoulders droop.

“Whelp, I guess there’s no help for it.”

“Nope. Orders are orders, after all.”

Sighing, they each reach for a weapon; each man’s hands close on rough wooden grain. Two stocks settle against two collarbones; two barrels swing around to aim at a face; two fingers settle on two triggers; two shots ring out.

A startled bird takes flight. Night descends.

A
fter fifteen years, my football helmet weighs pretty much what it did in 2013. The shape is almost exactly the same, except for two recessed pinhole cameras on each side and the plastic visor that lies underneath the face mask. From the outside, it looks almost identical to what you used to see on the field, slightly sleeker with barely noticeable bulges.

Inside, the future lives. A sturdy output system creates a functional heads-up display on the inside of the visor, augmented reality that’s capable of updating in real time from multiple cameras placed on the periphery of the stadium overlooking the field. This data is used to highlight open receivers to pass to or cover, running gaps to fill or burst through, and incoming tacklers/blockers out of visual range. The raw feed is available to both teams; each team’s sorting and collating algorithms are the crown jewels of their offensive and defensive systems, striving for that perfect balance
right before information overload where every necessary datum is instantly grasped by the mind, all extraneousness cut away.

Inside the huddle, each player sees the currently called play flashing on his visor—visual memory instantly accessible, alternative routes and audibles flashing across as updates. No more excuses about forgetting your playbook or missing an assignment. The good players glance at it occasionally for a refresher, and the great ones integrate it into their sense of the game, just another instinct to guide split-second reactions.

GPS-tracking devices and accelerometers provide an exact diagram of what happens on every down for all twenty-two players on the field, a plethora of stats that spawn obscure fantasy leagues based on player acceleration and newtons applied, as well as an abundance of metrics for evaluation and color commentary. Information technology and applied statistics are job requirements for scouting and player personnel; adaptability and pattern recognition are the hallmarks of successful coaches and managers, now more than ever before.

This is all a sideshow. The real future lies in the hands of the consumer, the fan, the observer. No longer do people gather in front of a flat-screen to watch a single view of the action—instead, VR feeds allow them to immerse themselves in the viewpoints of the players. You, the fan,
are
the player, and you don’t have to limit yourself to being just one. Flip from the center to the quarterback as the snap comes back,
you
quickly scanning the secondary before rolling out and dumping a short pass to the running back, and all of a sudden
you’re
sprinting down the field, stiff-arming one defender, spinning around another, until
you’re
the safety closing in like a heat-seeking missile, vision narrowing and
impact,
and it’s time to head back to the huddle to wait for the next six seconds of action.

The opportunities for profit are immense, of course. Networks charge premium prices for premium players—if you want to be the star quarterback or middle linebacker, it’s going to cost you, and during the huddle, the ads flock to the corners of your vision.

“Fifty-three rhino x slant z double go, brought to you by Walmart, where the best prices go deep every day!”

“Two jet over cloud, stack the box because it’s Miller time!”

“Six box solid punt right, flying down the field like the all-new Ford F-750, now with best-in-class fuel efficiency!”

Fan loyalties splinter and regroup based on the fans’ favorite teams, the most exciting player to experience, the merits of offensive versus defensive play, and a host of other competing variables, all of which can be endlessly discussed in their appropriate chatgroups. Highlight reels are a nonstop barrage of twisting, turning, juking, bobbing, hitting, and catching as seen from every possible angle. Players are more akin to reality stars than athletes, their every move dissected from the vantage point of their own eyes by a million armchair experts.

But don’t think this is limited to football. Movies, music, porn—anything that can be recorded is experienced, always for a price, always to turn a buck. Any fantasy someone can create is yours to enjoy, always on tap; escape is just a credit transfer away. Your life is as boring as you wish it to be. Your life is yours only if that’s what you want.

Some subsume their identities into others. Living the lie of another person for too long leads to the blurring of boundaries, a loss of self—id displacement. Time spent away from the feed is an
unwanted but necessary trauma to keep access flowing; you scrape up just enough to get by each day, your inner dreams buried beneath the distant weight of overachievement and adulation channeled into vacant eyes.

What will you do when your mirror shows you a stranger?

Are you truly living your life?

Ray Bradbury was wrong. We won’t need walls.

T
his is a letter to my children, and let me say right off the bat, this title sucks. It makes me sound old. I refuse to be old, and I hope both of you are the same (I’m assuming your mother and I didn’t accidently have another sibling for you two) (if we did, consider yourself included, future baby) (hopefully this isn’t psychologically damaging or anything) (WE LOVE YOU, POTENTIAL FUTURE BABY WHO MAY OR MAY NOT EXIST). Old is boring, and cranky, and vacantly staring at the world while waiting for the grave to swallow you up. You can be a teenager and be old, or you can be old and be old; really, it’s a mind-set.

So, yeah. Don’t get old.

Other helpful advice: Listen to us (your parents), but know when to ignore us (your parents). We’re going to try to keep you safe and protected and free from harm because that’s what parents do. We watched you turn from screaming poop factories into
stumbling toddlers into children with personalities all your own, and while you probably won’t remember all the times we tucked you into bed or read you a story or laughed when you did something funny, we do, and it’s tough to let you out into the real world with all its uncaring danger and random happenstance. At some point, you’re going to have to make your own decisions in life, and you’ll have to learn to get up after you fall down, so go fall down a couple times (just try not to do it too hard, if you can help it). Your mother and I will always have your best interests in mind, but you won’t realize what that means until you experience it for yourself with your own kids.

Try to avoid run-on sentences. They can get confusing.

Don’t be afraid to confuse people sometimes. Make ’em work to keep up.

Let’s see, what else? Oh, an important one: Never forget the golden rule. Treat other people the way you want to be treated, and expect the same in return. You don’t need to follow any particular religion or creed to understand this one—it’s pretty easy. Before you do something, ask yourself,
Would I be okay if someone was doing this to me?
If the answer’s no, you should probably come up with a different course of action. On the flip side, if you see someone breaking the golden rule, say something about it. Bullies and assholes rely on everyone around them being too afraid to call them on their shit, so tell them where they can stick it. Make sure you consider the consequences of your actions, though; sometimes a person will react poorly to being called a self-fellating fuckbeaver.

Appreciate the power of inventive invective, but know when to use it. You can’t just run around all day screaming obscenities (mainly because you’ll lose your voice), but a well-timed swearword
can help you make a point quite forcefully, especially when people don’t expect it. It has to be funny, though (and not just to you)! No one likes a lazy swearer. Also, remember that words can hurt, but only if you let them. One of the most effective defenses against an enraged not-funny swearer is to laugh in his face. People take themselves so seriously at times that you can really mess with them if you don’t react how they think you should (of course, this will probably make them more enraged, so be sure to have several escape routes planned) (bonus points if you can make them froth at the mouth so hard they stroke out).