Inspiration

#Saturdayscenes

“How long have you been lying there listening to phonograph records?” Dorian had come home from work in the evening to find Ariana on her couch. That was nothing new; with her constitution destroyed, the couch was where she spent most of her time. However, it was usually her habit to dress and groom herself in the morning. She always said that being able to accomplish at least that much in a day made her feel better about her life. Today was different. Her hair was still pillow-rumpled, and her loose, peach-colored nightgown still draped sensuously over her pale shoulders. He gathered her chilled hands up in his warm ones. It was cool for a day in late spring, but she hadn’t bothered to get a robe or an extra blanket.

She smiled weakly and kissed his hands. “It seemed like the thing to do.” They held onto each other while the strange, forceful music of Rupture Effect filled the room. On its face the song was about natural enemies locked in an eternal struggle, but there were always multiple layers to the meanings of their songs. “I just need to be able to think,” she finally said. “I’ve been trying to think all day, but every time I try to approach this logically, all I can think is that I’m tainted. My blood is poisoned. That thought takes over my mind, and I can’t think about anything else.” She laughed bitterly. “The worst part is, I don’t even know for sure if that black slime is what ruined my health. Cum hoc ergo propter hoc, and all that. So far there’s nothing conclusively pointing to it as the cause. All I know is that it isn’t supposed to be there. That’s as far as I can think.”

Dorian gently covered her in another blanket. “You had the opportunity to meet someone you admire very much, and not under the best of circumstances. He asked you to take on a project that he hinted could be very important, maybe even world-changing. As a result of that project, you discovered something very abnormal about your body. That would be a lot for one person to cope with in only a few weeks, even if that person had the constitution of an ox. Which you don’t.”

She nodded, then glanced at the phonograph. “Well, since I can’t think, I decided I would just feel. Let the music wash over me and bathe in the emotion.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Emotions about predator-prey relationships?”

Another weak smile. “Sometimes.”

He held her face close to his and kissed her temple. “Did it help?”

“I don’t know. It felt nice for a while. I felt strong for a …” Her voice trailed off. Her gray-blue eyes, which had been soft and tired, suddenly looked like they were trying to pierce the space between her and the phonograph. She spoke quietly, but her lips clipped the words like a pair of wire-cutters. “I have it!” Her eyes locked on Dorian. “I will look those little devils in the face and see exactly what they are!”

Dorian looked at the phonograph, puzzled. “How?”

“A phonograph needle drags over grooves in a record. Bumps in the grooves create fluctuations in a proteoid channel running from the needle - ”

“Yes, I know how a phonograph works.” Dorian reminded her.

“We can do the same thing with a sample. We can immobilize the sample on a plate, then draw a needle across it. If the needle is fine enough and our entropic channel is sensitive enough, it should be able to detect variations in the depth of the sample! Tinier variations than we can see with a microscope!”

Dorian nodded tentatively. “I’ll see if I can get the entropics to do what you want, but I don’t know anything about preparing samples. If you want samples immobilized on a plate, you need to figure that part out.”

Ariana nodded. “Fair enough. I should also see if there’s anything I can do to analyze what it’s made of.”

Science, one step at a time

#Saturdayscenes

“Did you know that ‘centrifugal force’ is something of a misnomer?” Ariana queried languidly from her hammock. The stylish, raised heels of her boots jutted into the air, and her chestnut hair spilled luxuriously over a bed of pillows. She mostly stared at the dark, stormy, spring weather outside, but every so often she glanced at a large, barrel-shaped object that vibrated ominously.

Dorian jotted some notes in a notebook. It was the first run of the centrifuge, and he wanted to try to improve its operation in the future. If he could just get it running more smoothly, maybe the sounds it made wouldn’t give him visions of his wife with a stray bolt lodged in her head. The centrifuge was by far the most dangerous piece of equipment in the lab, and he was acutely aware of that fact. He raised a sandy eyebrow at Ariana. “Oh? Did you not recruit me to help you construct a centrifuge? Isn’t the idea that centrifugal force is moving the different particles toward the outside of our wheel at different rates, allowing us to separate them? What are we doing, then?”

“We’re making use of inertia - the tendency of objects not to change their motion. We apply torque to the wheel to get it moving. Then the tendency of the samples is to keep moving in a straight line. That’s just a consequence of an object having mass; there’s no force involved. It’s almost like the opposite of a force - what a force has to work against to get anything done. But the framework of the wheel keeps pulling the samples into a circular path - applying a centripetal force. That’s where forces come into this, and different objects resist the change in their motion to different extents.”

The centrifuge quieted down enough that Dorian felt safe gently pulling a lever and gradually applying the brakes. He smirked at Ariana. “ ‘Entropics’ is a misnomer. ‘Centrifugal force’ is a misnomer. Don’t you scientists get anything right?”

Ariana swung her legs over the hammock, stood up, put on a long, white apron, and stuck her tongue out at Dorian. “Well, we call things what they look like at first. Then we find out what they really are. Or at least we come closer.” She lifted the lid of the now-quiet drum, collected two glass test tubes, and held them up to the entropic lamp in the middle of the room. One of them contained three bands: a dark red band at the bottom, a white band in the middle, and a yellow band at the top. The other contained those three bands plus a small, dark band below them all.

Her lips parted in surprise, and the blood drained out of them. “There’s heavy, black sludge in my blood,” she whispered, “but not in yours.” Their eyes met and widened. She licked her lips and took a deep breath. “Better find out what it is.” She set the test tubes on a rack, attached a thin glass pipette to a rubber suction bulb, then positioned the tip above the abnormal sample. Her breathing was shallow, and her hand shook a little.

Dorian gently rested a hand on her shoulder. “Are you being stubborn? Take a rest if you need to.”

She shook her head. “No, I don’t know how stable this fraction is. I want to get a look at it before it has a chance to break down. Just a look, then I’ll rest.” She took another deep breath to steady herself, dipped the pipette tip into the top layer of liquid, and carefully drew it out. As she transferred it to another test tube, she chatted with Dorian. “Using these things always makes me feel like a hummingbird - dipping my little proboscis into a flower full of nectar.” She laughed as she worked, but it was a thin, tense laugh. Eventually each layer had its own test tube; she took the unknown, dark layer to the microscope.

Dorian tried to occupy himself by making adjustments to the centrifuge, but his eyes kept wandering back to Ariana. He tried to detect some clue about what she saw, but her face was as impassive as it was intent. Finally she grimaced, reached into a drawer, pulled out a device that looked like a crossbow, and used it to fire a bean bag at Dorian. It hit him on the shoulder, but he was too busy protecting the more sensitive region between his legs to worry about that. “What was that for?” he demanded.

“I’m disappointed and frustrated.” She held his gaze for a few seconds, then let out a much more genuine laugh. She glanced at the area shielded by Dorian’s hands and grinned. “I see what your priorities are.”

He straightened up and dropped his hands. “I remember last time.”

“Well, I’m not going to accomplish anything else here today. It’s time to put my feet up and have some tea.”

Dorian brought some tea to her couch and delivered it with a kiss; they drank it together. Once Ariana had had a chance to relax, he asked, “What did you see in the microscope?”

She shook her head dismissively. “Nothing. Whatever that black slime is made of, it’s too small to show up as anything more than tiny black specks. Which I didn’t expect at all.”

“Why is that?” he asked. “The world is full of things that are too small to see with a microscope.”

“Yes, but whatever it is, its fraction was at the very bottom of the sample. For something so small to deposit there, it needs to be much more dense than the normal components of blood.” She looked pleadingly at Dorian. “Those things are inside me, and I don’t know what they are.” Her eyes twitched downward, and her fingers fidgeted with the lip of her teacup in agitation. “Somehow, I need to get a look at it!”

The concert

(Sorry to those of you who have seen this elsewhere. I'm mostly just putting this here as a kind of archive.)

Ariana’s first entropic concert was unlike anything she had ever experienced. The sounds they could summon from their devices were nearly other-worldly. There were rhythms that made her heart feel like it might stop beating. Soaring strains that made her breath catch in her throat. And then there were the lights and colors. Black like death. Vivid hues like inescapable choices to be what you are and nothing else. White that seemed to embrace the life of everything in the room - even the cockroaches that were surely lurking somewhere.

While Ariana reveled in the sensory experience, oblivious to any cockroaches, Dorian examined the technical setup. “I think that’s an X-4 they have the keyboard hooked up to there.” Ariana nodded; the statement made as much sense to her as it does to you. Sometimes she was inquisitive enough to ask Dorian about the unfamiliar things he said, but this was not one of those times. “Why does the drummer wear goggles?” he wondered, “They look like they have some entropic components.” She shrugged. “Aren’t you supposed to be the expert? Aren’t you the one who insisted that we come here despite the strain on your constitution? Aren’t you the one who was squealing like a schoolgirl every time we got a glimpse of their caravan?”

Without missing a beat she shot him a mischievous grin. “His name is Jules Brook. And I’m not the one checking out his equipment.”

As delightful as the entropic artistry was, however, what made the concert truly amazing for Ariana was the use of two of the oldest devices known to civilization: the human voice and human language. Kieran Hathaway’s words had a way of describing everything about the world that thrilled and disgusted her, as well as everything she hoped for it. His expressive voice could grind her heart into the dirt with its bitterness, then lift it - dust still falling from it like rain - with a call to stand up, endure, and help create a world worth living in.

The crowd certainly found the world to be worth living in that night. They chanted the refrains to the songs and threw themselves into a strange dance that you could only dance to entropic music. It was rhythmic and mechanical, but at the same time vibrant and passionate. Even Ariana danced, though she could only remain in motion for a few seconds at a time.

“When we play this song, I want you to do one of three things!” Kieran Hathaway announced near the end of the concert. “Sing, dance, or move. But please do something!” Inspired into motion, Ariana danced for all she was worth, and amazingly she lasted a few minutes into the song before it became difficult to lift her arms. Her feet felt like they had been bolted to the floor, and the lights began to feel hypnotic.

As Ariana’s body neared exhaustion, so did her spirit. Suddenly, she hated all of it. She hated the performers for the energy she lacked and the dancers for the strength she lacked. She hated the music for the beauty she felt powerless to create. Finally, the hatred turned to its true object: herself. “If only this world could just absorb me,” she thought, proto-tears in her eyes. “Suck out what little vital force I have left. I’m sure any living thing in this room - even the cockroaches - would make better use of it than I can.” With her mind crashing back to earth, she became aware again of things like the vermin that were surely lurking somewhere. “So take it. Please, someone, take it.” And as if her wish were being granted, she felt herself being swallowed by darkness.

It is important to remember at this point that a performance space is designed to make the performers as visible as possible, but with no interest whatsoever in making the audience visible to the performers. When they can see the audience at all, it often appears as a sea of vague, dehumanized body parts. If you understand this, you can understand how extraordinary it was that Jules Brook reacted to Ariana’s collapse by vaulting off the stage.

Six ways chronic fatigue syndrome seriously messes with my head

Physically, chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is a debilitating illness. Strength and stamina both suffer, and simple activities become exhausting. However, it is important to remember that a chronic illness also has profound effects on a person's mental and emotional well-being, and that is what I'm going to share with you today.

I'm going to use a very personal tone here because, while I'm sure many people with CFS can identify with what I'm going through, I don't want to assume that my experience is everyone's experience. I can only share what has happened to me and hope it's a step toward greater understanding.

1. CFS gives me "brain fog."

To begin with, some common symptoms of CFS are mental symptoms. When I start to get tired (and I get tired very easily), my concentration is one of the first things to suffer. I hunt for a word mid-sentence. I read the same passage over and over for five minutes, and it doesn't make any more sense the fiftieth time than it did the first time (being sick wouldn't be nearly as bad if I could have some marathon reading sessions!) I stare off into space for a few seconds and try to remember what I was doing. I get overwhelmed easily and sometimes have to excuse myself from very stimulating situations. Sometimes little things like a trip to the grocery store or dinner with my family qualify as "stimulating situations." Basically, my mind just doesn't handle all the crap life throws at it as well as it used to, and on top of that there are further complications (see everything else below).

2. CFS makes me second-guess all my decisions.

Managing CFS is a delicate balancing act. If I exert myself too much, I could exhaust myself and end up flat on my back for the next few days. On the other hand, if I don't keep trying to be as active as I can be I'll keep losing strength, and eventually I could be flat on my back for the rest of my life. That makes any decision to do anything (or not to do anything) a difficult one, and I always end up wondering if I'm doing the right thing. If I have a busy day, I wonder if I'm setting myself up for a crash. If I decide to take it easy, I wonder if I'm babying myself too much. I can't even trust my instincts, because my instincts are telling me to stay in bed all the time. I can't win.

3. CFS exacerbates my neuroses.

To help me take care of everything in my life that needs taking care of, I like to have little algorithms in place. When those algorithms start to break down, I get tense and edgy. Because I can work through it and continue to function, I don't think I have a diagnosable mental illness; however, I realize there are some things about how I deal with life that are not exactly "normal."

CFS exacerbates this in two ways. On one side, I have more to manage: diet, exercise, day-to-day activities, rest, etc. And because I don't completely trust my own ability to make decisions regarding my expenditure of energy (see #2), I find myself turning to these algorithms more and more. On the other side, the amount of energy I have on a given day is highly variable. Because I can't accurately predict what I'm going to be capable of, my algorithms also break down much more often. It becomes something of a vicious circle.

4. CFS makes me feel like I can't commit to anything.

Another consequence of not having a reliable energy reserve is that if I make plans for the future, I'm never sure if they're actually going to happen. It was a bold move on my part to announce on my various social medias that I was going to be posting this today; I could very easily have made a liar out of myself. Even when my husband casually asks if I can do him a favor, I'm very reluctant to positively answer yes. It's not that I don't want to help; I just don't know if I'm going to be able to help.

This is the big reason I don't have a job right now, and I don't consider myself capable of having one. I'm sure there are some jobs out there for which I am capable of completing each task I would be required to complete. The difficulty is that I probably wouldn't be able to complete them when the employer needs them, and that's a real problem.

In our society, it seems like a lot of our identities are wrapped up in commitments - jobs, relationships, social events, trading favors. Not being able to do those things as reliably as other people makes me wonder: as far as the rest of the world is concerned, who am I? Is my identity recognized as strongly as it used to be, or have I "faded" in other people's eyes?

5. CFS makes me want to throttle some basically well-meaning people.

I'm lucky enough to have a lot of understanding, supportive friends and family members who would never say something like this. However, I run into a lot of strangers and casual acquaintances who hear I have CFS and immediately compare it to some time when they were really tired. NO! My illness is nothing like that one time you had a busy day, and you felt "exhausted" afterwards! I know, because I used to have those days when I was healthy, and my current experience is unlike anything that has ever happened to me before.

I suppress my urge to throttle these people because I think their comments come from a well-meaning place. I think they're just trying to find a way to identify with me, or maybe they're trying to be understanding. Since those are noble impulses, I will give you guys a little hint: one of the most compassionate, supportive things my husband has ever done for me was to admit that he will never fully understand what I'm going through. Meditate upon this!

6. CFS makes me reluctant to discuss the emotional and mental toll it takes on me.

I wrote this post because I thought it was important. It's easy to read a list of symptoms for an illness, but it's harder to understand what they do to a person's mind. It was important to write, but it's also been very difficult. This illness has changed the way I look at the world, how I make decisions, and how I relate to people; that's not easy to admit. I also worry about contributing to the perception that this illness is "all in my head." I am definitely suffering from a medical condition, and it's very tempting to just keep the focus on that and away from how demoralizing it can all be. I feel very vulnerable right now, like I've opened myself up to the assumption that if I can just fix my attitude, everything else will be fine (a laughable assumption, because anyone who knows me will realize that attitude maintenance is something I'm working on all the time). So please, the next time you interact with someone with a chronic illness, prove these anxieties to be baseless.

I will try to make my next post less of a downer!

Writing and focusing on the positive

I've been trying to participate in the Google+ hashtag movement #Saturdayscenes, in which writers post a scene (usually from a work in progress or a work they're trying to generate an interest in) and people have the opportunity to read them. I'm very excited about participating in this, but because of my lack of stamina it doesn't look like I'm going to have a scene ready every week. For me it might be every other week. In the interest of maintaining a positive attitude, though, I've decided to share what I did accomplish this week!

• Decided that my protagonist, Ariana, has a hammock in her lab, and the image of her lounging on it is quite striking (I'm so envious!)
• Drafted a very rough explanation of how a centrifuge works, as discussed by Ariana and her husband Dorian
• Attempted to predict where a new fraction containing nanomachines would show up in a centrifuged sample of blood
• Reviewed the limits of the features that can be resolved with light microscopy
• Looked up a history virology on Wikipedia
• Looked up tests for detecting the presence of proteins in a sample
• Decided that Dorian needs to have ∞% more bean bags launched at him

When I put it this way, I feel pretty good about myself and this story!

Cage on wheels

I was just reading this article which outlines what a liberating vehicle the bicycle was (I highly recommend it). That got me thinking about my story. I'm enjoying thinking about all the dark sides of technology in this world I'm creating, and it occurred to me that the fictional technology in my story could allow the invention of the bicycle to be bypassed, along with its liberating influences.

I haven't explicitly written about it here before, but the current state of technology in my story is based on substances that for now I'm going to call proteoids (I'm still trying to decide if that will be the final name for them, or if it will be something else). One of the applications of proteoids is the construction of highly efficient mechanical devices. Reading the bicycle article gave me an image of a vehicle that can translate the slightest movement of a person's body into motion, but instead of the rider masterfully straddling it like a bicycle, it surrounds the rider like a cage.

Oh, I wish I were better at drawing! The pictures in my head are so creepy!