Dad2059’s Blog of Science-Fiction/Science Fact and Tinfoil

 Are Microsoft and Google in a space race? We think they are. Their rivalry is also, we believe, a precursor to the next great post-Internet technology boom: space exploration and development…

… Microsoft just released its new Worldwide Telescope, which will access images from NASA’s great fleet of space-born telescopes and earth-bound observatories such as the future Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, partially funded by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, which is projected for ‘first light’ in 2014 in Chile’s Atacama Desert -the world’s Southern Hemisphere space-observatory mecca. The 8.4-meter telescope will be able to survey the entire visible sky deeply in multiple colors every week with its 3-billion pixel digital camera. The telescope will probe the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy, and it will open a movie-like window on objects that change or move rapidly: exploding supernovae, potentially hazardous near-Earth asteroids and distant Kuiper Belt objects.

So far this particular ‘Space Race’ is confined to ground based telescopes using advanced viewing software. I predict in about 10-20 years Google/Microsoft will be conducting virtual reality tours to Solar System planets and moons utilizing more evolved versions.

This could happen faster than actual physical explorations by robots or humans.

Microsoft vs.Google: New Masters of the Universe?

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Times Online UK has this to say about NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander:

…for Nasa, however, the biggest question of all is whether the Phoenix will reach the surface safely.

Its landing system will use descent engines for a controlled touchdown rather than making an airbag-cushioned landing.

This method allows for a larger payload of instruments but is more prone to failure and has seen serious losses. It has not been used successfully on Mars since 1976.

Almost half of the space probes sent to Mars from the past 40 years have failed to reach their targets for one reason or another.

This includes all probes, American, old Soviet, European, etc.

That’s quite a few. And the fact the landing system on Phoenix hasn’t been used since the Viking Landers over thirty years ago doesn’t inspire much confidence in NASA’s skills.

Nasa life-hunter closes in on Mars

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More goodies other than space tours from the Google-Plex:

Google is billing Android as “a software stack for mobile devices that includes an operating system, middleware and key applications.” Some may call it Google’s answer to the iPhone, and for a long time it was already billed as “the iPhone killer,” long before the software development kit was released.

The Android is going to be a very open platform, where anyone can affect changes. Whereas before, wireless companies had a large amount of control over the phone and its software, with the introduction of Apple’s iPhone, things have been shook up: Google plan to take that a lot further with Android.

Android’s openness has been put through the wringer over at MIT though, after Massachusetts Industry of Technology professor Hal Abelson asked his computer science student’s one question; what do you want your cell phone to be able to do?

Like the Esso/Exxon ad of the 1960s-1970s, “Put a tiger in your tank”, the ad of the early 21st Century is going to be, “Put an android on your phone”.

The Google-monster might be onto something here. People now are disconnecting from landlines and are using their cellphones exclusively for calls, messaging and ‘Tubes surfing. Especially in countries that had no previous telephone infrastructure, this technology is wide spread. The ‘Android’ will only cement this.

The Google-Plex/Cloud-Hive Mind is coming!

MIT Students Demonstrate Potential Power of Google’s Android for Mobile Phones

Thanx today to The Daily Galaxy

forgetomori posts this:

Brazilian contactee Antonio Alves Ferreira interviewed his alien abductors, Riaus and Telione , when their flying saucer landed. That’s not news. The news is, the aliens graciously allowed Ferreira to record the interview. And we have that recording right here…

…

The quality is unfortunately worse than terrible, as it was all recorded on cassette tape more than two decades ago. I tried to filter some noise out, but it also filtered some of the voices and sound effects, so I decided to upload the original, without filtering.

Even the parts where clear Portuguese is spoken cannot be quite understood. It’s not that important, since the parts where “Protu” is spoken are not translated by Ferreira, so we would miss at least half of the conversation anyway.

This recording was made available thanks to Eustáquio Patounas, from SOCEX, the “Society for the Study of Aliens“, who kindly authorized this reproduction.

Of the endless things that a debunker could say about the recording, I’ll first mention that it’s really adorable. Ferreira introduces the aliens in the beginning, and in the end thank them for the interview, just like a gentleman should. He has a slight country accent, and the background noises do remind me of cars and trucks. But they could be from inside the flying saucer, obviously.

This is the first time I’ve heard of an alien interview being ‘adorable’.

Like this guy was abducted by grey alien teddy-bears or some sh*t.

Interview with the aliens: The audio recording

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The Heavy Stuff further tackles the ‘Reality is a Simulation’ idea:

…

Of course, that `subject matter’ is the 1970’s college dorm late night favorite subject  of `what is reality’? Yes, younger readers,  before the Matrix - the very structure of realitywas something the `college heads’ thought discussion worthy. Perhaps is was those higher times that allowed a clearer seeing of the thin vail of reality - the illusionrefered to by the mystics and shaman of yester ages and days gone by.

And, in part one - THS - covered the `normal’ Matrixlike idea that `we’ (yes, you and I) and everything else — was simply the result of a running software program made by at least one civilization. In essence, an artifical being within an artificial reality.

In the first post, it was perhaps the logic of the `low threshold’ that was the most worrisome aspect of IF we are a simulation. Afterall, if only ONE civilization EVER ——— EVER — produced and ran (these are most important words)  a `reality simulation software - in which ‘the spaces within the program could have self-awareness‘ ————– THEN — the `real odds’ of us (you and me) being real - in the manner WE think of real —– may be quite small. And, that the odds we ARE a simulation — quite large. Indeed, in part one - THS threw out some numbers to just form an opinion as to what the odds might actually be - or - to set you thinking about the hard numbers of the situation.

BUT, a closer look might dramatically INCREASE those odds  - that is - increase the odds that  we are real. (Isn’t that nice?) …

Circular logic here, but the author is essentially playing the devil’s advocate in this instance. He takes on Nick Bostrums’ Reality Theory head-on with aplomb and intelligence.

This is Part 2 in a series.

Part Two - Is our existence Simulated Reality, or (Is IT) Reality Simulated?

Part One of the series

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Lastly, anthonynorth of Beyond The Blog expouses his own take on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and our observations of the Cosmos:

As more and more powerful telescopes look into the cosmos, the more our astronomers and cosmologists claim to know about the universe. But is our growing knowledge as simple as that?
One thing that worries me is the fact that any new discovery seems to offer a great deal of excitement, but only mild surprise. It is as if whatever is found fits quite neatly into our view of things.

One answer to this is that our theories are right.

We have a good grasp of the universal construct. We are on the right track, and soon everything will be disclosed. But there is another answer.
This concerns the nature of what we can know. For instance, many ‘realities’ could be out there, but we are only capable of imagining a certain set of principles. Even if the result of them was there to be seen, we would miss them.

anthonynorth isn’t exactly endorsing the Anthropic Principle per se, but he in fact is wondering why this seems to be so. Very intelligent essay.

A Universal Artist

Many tips o’ the hat to The Anomalist

The New Yorker’s “Drug War Bulletins” are sure to boil your blood: a man who died for want of a liver transplant because the hospital insisted he needed “drug treatment” for his medical marijuana use; a suburban San Diego housewife who will spend the next 20 years in jail because she was peripherally involved in a heroin deal while she was in college in 1975; and a pulmonologist who’d been favored by the drug warriors until his giant, well-funded, unreproachable study concluded that pot didn’t give you lung cancer, and who is now a pariah whose research conclusions have been boycotted by the press.

The CIA’s ‘War On Drugs’ as we all know is a world-wide money laundering scheme the NWO’s ‘world economy’ needs to bleed the sheeple dry of money, keep investment banksters like JP Morgan Chase in business and ‘Big Pharma’ companies like Pfizer enriched.

Especially Big Pharma, they loath the pain killing properties of cannabis and are willing to pull out all stops to keep it criminalized at the national level.

Drug war horror stories to boil your blood

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Oh, Highest Authority, bless you for helping my friends and I create the War on Terror. For without it, where would we find all of the drones we need? Our lackeys, our workers, our monkeys, our associates, our slaves, where would they all be if the War on Terror was never created? 

Yes, God, bless your golden heart for the War on Terror. Not to be forgotten though, bless your golden heart for Capitalism as well-the dog-eat-dog system which gave us the foundation of fear for which to install the War on Terror in the first place.

Thank you for all of your guidance, Lord, for without it, we would have a much harder time trying to keep all of these two-legged animals on a leash. Without your guidance, only you would know how we would go trying to make them trust us, and actually believe that we really cared about them. Spying on them, dividing them, making them aggressive towards eachother, these are things that we could have never done without your approval. And again, as I speak for not only myself, but for the other guys as well, thank you, my Lord!

If the dezinens of the NWO had a nightmare…er…night-time prayer, it would be this!

No Excuses, You’re Ours!

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Dott. Nazareno Gabrielli, whose exploits range from directing conservation works in the Vatican, especially in the Sistine Chapel, to exhuming bodies of long-dead saints, was in Malta last week to deliver a lecture.

Dott. Gabrielli had been to Malta once before when he had assisted at the exhumation of the body of Saint George Preca (although the real expert’s work was done by Dr Abela Medici).

Exhumation of the bodies of saints is one of the tasks he has been undertaking as director of a scientific laboratory.

Prior to coming to Malta, he had directed the exhumation of the body of San Padre Pio, which involved, amid many controversies, no less than 50 days work.

He also exhumed the body of Pope John XXIII and that of San Ubaldo from the altar in which he was entombed for seven long centuries in Gubbio.

Digging up and preserving body parts of religious holy-people (saints) and honored ancesters have been a human hallmark of worship since the beginning of agriculture and walled towns. There is no proof that earlier hunter-gatherer cultures did this, but there is proof that they buried ancesters when they had the time to before moving on to other hunting areas.

Only in the past 6,000 (if not earlier) years has ‘civilized’ humanity held preserved bodies, or parts to worship in order to be closer to their ancesters in the other realm.

And the NWO is into worship, ancester or otherwise. Don’t let anyone tell you different.

From the glories of the Sistine Chapel and exhuming long-dead saints

Here is a little piece from Benjamin Fulford at the Project Camelot site:

We asked Benjamin Fulford for a status report on the current state of affairs regarding whether there had been any change as a direct result of the public stand he took speaking out on behalf of the Asian Secret Society about the world situation. In answer, he wrote the following in an email dated today:

For the reaction, you will notice that Asian countries have stopped buying US government bonds. The US secret government has retaliated by artificially raising food and oil prices.

We are in the middle of World War 3. The US and Israel have been taken over by Nazis and the rest of the world is trying to take them down.

The reason the society has not started assassinations yet is that the Nazis in the Bush/Clinton administration want any excuse to start all out world war. However, if starvation begins in earnest, there will be assassinations.

I haven’t been a fan of Benjamin Fulford lately, he talks a big game, but no results. Assuming the above statement is true, why hasn’t there been a true decoupling of the Chinese economy from the U.S., or the yuan from the dollar?

IMHO I believe Fulford to be a Rothschilds disinformation agent. This bears continuous watching.

On the other hand, there’s this news item:

Giant agribusinesses are enjoying soaring earnings and profits out of the world food crisis which is driving millions of people towards starvation, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. And speculation is helping to drive the prices of basic foodstuffs out of the reach of the hungry.

The prices of wheat, corn and rice have soared over the past year driving the world’s poor – who already spend about 80 per cent of their income on food – into hunger and destitution.

The World Bank says that 100 million more people are facing severe hunger. Yet some of the world’s richest food companies are making record profits. Monsanto last month reported that its net income for the three months up to the end of February this year had more than doubled over the same period in 2007, from $543m (£275m) to $1.12bn. Its profits increased from $1.44bn to $2.22bn.

Cargill’s net earnings soared by 86 per cent from $553m to $1.030bn over the same three months. And Archer Daniels Midland, one of the world’s largest agricultural processors of soy, corn and wheat, increased its net earnings by 42 per cent in the first three months of this year from $363m to $517m. The operating profit of its grains merchandising and handling operations jumped 16-fold from $21m to $341m.

Similarly, the Mosaic Company, one of the world’s largest fertiliser companies, saw its income for the three months ending 29 February rise more than 12-fold, from $42.2m to $520.8m, on the back of a shortage of fertiliser. The prices of some kinds of fertiliser have more than tripled over the past year as demand has outstripped supply. As a result, plans to increase harvests in developing countries have been hit hard.

Cargill’s 86% jump in profits is truly an insane evil, to be outdone only by the oil megacorps’ profits the first quarter of this year.

The be priced out of getting heat and electricity can be life threatening in its own right, especially during the winter months in the North East. It can be survivable during the spring or summer though, I’ve known people who have done it.

But to purposely price the daily life from literally hundreds of millions of people is not only a crime, but a true evil only equalled by the likes of Bu$h, Clinton, Pol Pot, Mugabe, the Junta in Burma, the Chinese Technocrats and other lower dezinens of the NWO.

Could the Myanmar junta and the Chinese be victims in their own right via the ‘natural’ disasters that have been hitting their nations recently by senior NWO members HAARP technology? Unknown.

And do these recent events give Fulford credibility? The waters are murky in this regard and bear further diligence.

Benjamin Fulford Email at Project Camelot

Multinationals make billions in profit out of growing global food crisis

Exxon shatters profit records

No scifi, science or tinfoil today, just some music to commemorate Mom’s Day.

The Dad2059 way of course.

Regular insanity resumes Monday.

Tell the women in your lives who happen to be Moms you love ‘em.

Peace.

Danzig - Mother ‘93

]

The Highwaymen - Mommas Don’t Let Your Babies

Pink Floyd - Mother

The insiders are also those with connections to important sectors of the economy like the oil and gas industries, the pharmaceutical companies, the major food conglomerates, the media, the secretive Skull & Bones fraternity at Yale that counts among its members both George W. Bush and John Kerry, and long-time politicos who have made a career out of doing the bidding of the aforementioned groups. And then there is the infamous, and, according to the media, non-existent, Israel lobby, the lobby that is so strong you aren’t even allowed to talk about it.

The outsiders are, well, people like you and me. They are rarely elected to Washington, and when they are, they do outrageous things like vote according to their conscience and not by party lines, i.e. the dictates of the insiders. Then the party hacks do their best to get rid of them, as happened to Cynthia McKinney, the Democrat from Georgia.

The bottom line is that the insiders have political and economic power, and the outsiders don’t.

Those of us on the outside, the vast majority of the citizenry, have effectively been removed from power. Our democratic voice amounts to little more than voting on occasion, that day every couple of years where we have our say, and then we are expected to shut up and take it until we have the privilege of voting again. Our representatives go off to Washington where they are wined, dined, and financed by people and groups with interests that are economic, political, and military, but certainly not human. The people we elect to represent our interests may throw some money into their region or neighborhood from time to time, especially just prior to an election, but it cannot be said that they represent our interests in any fundamental sense.

Sounds exactly what is happening now, doesn’t it?

Those of us who are starting to question the system and picking our way through the veil of illusion have much work to do. The ‘insiders’ may have the meaness and the will, but they have one weakness, their hubris.

And hubris has caused the fall of many tyrants over the millenia.

Insiders and Outsiders

Seth Shostak laments:

A widespread and popular impression of SETI is that it’s a worldwide enterprise. Well, it’s not, and there’s something modestly puzzling in that.

The idea of communicating between worlds is at least 150 years old. Victorian scientists Karl Friedrich Gauss and Joseph von Littrow are both reputed to have concocted schemes to establish rapport with Moon-men or Martians by signaling them with light. Gauss was a German, and von Littrow was Austrian. But within a century, the important ideas about getting in touch with aliens were coming from the western side of the Atlantic. The fundamental concepts for radio SETI were first incubated and hatched in America.

For three decades following Frank Drake’s first modern SETI experiment in 1960, the American efforts had a strong and fertile counterpart in the Soviet Union. The Soviet SETI work was frequently brilliant, occasionally nutty, and pursued by researchers who were active and enthused.

That all ended with the Soviet Union’s collapse. And for the last two decades, the large majority of all SETI effort has taken place in the U.S. Yes, there have been commendable experiments in Australia, Argentina, India, and Italy. But only the Italians are active today.

So what’s the story? Why is SETI nearly exclusively an American game?

Actually, ol’ Uncle Seth has a point, why is SETI almost purely an American venture?

It could be because of our Puritan and ‘Lewis and Clark’ heritage, the push to find our own ’space’ to do what we what without interference.  Maybe if we contact aliens, we could gain insight on how we can get by our ‘times of troubles’ (messianic rescue us complex) and survive to once more ‘find our own individual freedom and space’.

Why Don’t They Do SETI?

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At the other end of the SETI spectrum, author and Fortean Mac Tonnies puts forward the theory that UFOs (as related to SETI) is tied to our cultural (American) archetypes and consciousness:

…If the UFO phenomenon has a purpose, perhaps it’s to challenge entrenched ideas about our role as sentient observers. The ever-colorful “space visitors” encountered since 1947 could be the vanguards of an unknown manifestation of consciousness. (Far from invalidating the UFO inquiry, such a discovery would likely propel a new era of scientific understanding. If so, would our collective unconscious adopt some new disguise and cease to provide us with novel visitors and resplendent “craft”?)

Harvard psychiatrist Dr. John Mack once described alien abductions as an example of “reified metaphor.” While he believed his patients’ accounts of sexually charged encounters with apparent aliens were sincere, he was reluctant to accept them literally. In “Passport to the Cosmos,” he mused that activities endured during “abductions” might herald a sort of cosmic wake-up call–real enough, but only as real as scenes in a stage play. Like self-professed abductee Whitley Strieber, Mack seemed intrigued by the idea that the mind, subjected to a sufficiently foreign stimulus, could produce imagery culled from myth or even pop culture. (Extraterrestrials, big-headed and bug-eyed, seem like suitable candidates for a population weaned on science fiction.)

Of course, that begs the question of where the archetypal “Gray” originated in the first place. British researcher Albert Budden, a strident critic of the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (ETH), suggests that the minimal physique ascribed to the Grays of abduction infamy might have a basis in neuro-anatomy. If he’s right, that still leaves us to sort out cases with physical effects…

The common thread between Shostak and Tonnies’ opinions is how we, as a culture, perform the function of being observers and the effects thereof.

Is SETI and the possible contact of alien intelligence a manifestation of American culture and will?

Or are we just being delusional about the true nature of the Universe?

UFOs, Aliens and Consciousness

The Pentagon’s way-out researchers don’t just want to build an Internet simulator, to test out cyberwar tactics. They want the range’s operators to “realistically replicate human behavior and frailties,” too.

Congress has ordered the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, to put together a National Cyber Range, as part of a massive (andmassively secret) $30 billion, government-wide effort better prep for battle online. The project is now considered a top priority for the Agency.  And to make sure the facility is as true-to-life as possible, Darpa wants the contractors running the Range to be able to “replicate realistic human behavior on nodes,” a request for proposals, released today, reveals.

Specifically, the Agency wants to have its contractors:

•    Provide robust technologies to emulate human behavior on all nodes of the range for testing all aspects of range behavior.
•    Replicants will produce realistic chain of events between many users without explicit scripting behavior.
•    Replicants must be capable of implementing multiple user roles similar to roles found on operational networks.
•    Replicant behavior will change as the network environment changes, as the replicated “outside environment” (i.e. DoD DefCon, InfoCon, execution of war plans, etc) changes, and as network activity changes (detected attacks, degradation of services, etc).
•    Replicants will simulate physical interaction with device peripherals, such as keyboard and mice.
•    Replicants will drive all common applications on a desktop environments.
•    Replicants will interact with authenticate systems, including but not limited to DoD authentication systems (common access cards – CAC), identity tokens.

What I don’t understand is, does the Pentagon want the contractors to use human operators to be the simulated ‘replicants’, or are the replicants to be sophisticated AI (artificial intelligence) software?

Either way, this doesn’t sound good. ‘Terminator’ or ‘Matrix’, pick your poison.

Pentagon Wants Cyberwar Range to ‘Replicate Human Behavior and Frailties’ 

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When the United States recently shot apart a crippled spy satellite over the Pacific Ocean, it also tested an offensive anti-satellite weapon and the potential for ballistic missile defense. “The shot,” as the Pentagon called the $100 million operation conducted on February 20, came immediately after Russia and China put forward a detailed, but flawed, proposal for a treaty to ban space weapons at the United Nations. In response, the United States immediately reaffirmed its unwillingness to participate in any arms control accord covering space.

These developments are just the latest wrinkles in a rapidly unfolding saga that underscores the fact that we’re entering a new strategic era characterized by the weaponization of space. It may sound exciting, but the potential consequences of space weaponization are cataclysmic.

I agree with the article, the U.S. government firmly believes they have the upper-hand here, and they might. 

For a while.

China demonstrated earlier last year they can do the same thing, almost. 

But don’t count on them being behind for very long. Government and corporate espionage is a very lucrative business.

Arms Race in Space

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HOW would you like to have your very own shape-shifter? Perhaps a liquid metal T-1000 Terminator to help around the house. Or a universal tool kit that could reshape itself into any implement at the press of a button. For an astronaut in orbit, an army mechanic in remote terrain or even a homeowner trying to fix a furnace on a cold winter night, it could be just the thing.

Well, one day maybe. The traditional approach to building shape-shifting devices has been to use materials based on shape memory alloys, polymer sheets or nanoparticles. But these have proved difficult to control and have other limitations, so researchers have begun taking a different and less exotic tack.

More Terminator stuff coming, DARPA has been very busy lately.

And don’t count on these guys coming to fix your furnace anytime soon, the Pentagon has big plans for these things first.

Shape-shifting robots take form

Big time hat tip to Red Ice Creations.

Most of the outside world attributes the success of the UAE to the murky fluid beneath its soil, but thousands of years ago, long before oil was of any use, a culture existed here that built a foundation for the UAE’s civilisation…

…During the last two years archaeologists have discovered solid evidence of very ancient communities that were living in different places in the UAE. The most ancient community known so far is the one that lived around Jebel Baraka in the Western Region of Abu Dhabi, at least 150,000 years ago. The Arabian Gulf by then was still a dry land ripped by the Tigris and the Euphrates which debouched at the strait of Hormuz.

Hmmm, 150,000 years ago is given as the time homo sapiens left Africa and started to settle other areas, including the Middle East. If I read the article right, these early communities were already established 150,000 years ago.

Maybe Michael Cremo has a point?

Communities lived here 150,000 years ago

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But not so fast now…

MITOCHONDRIAL DNA is a remarkable thing. Itself the remnant of a strange evolutionary event (the merger of an ancient bacterium with the cell ancestral to all plant and animal life), it also carries the imprint of more recent evolution. In many species, humans included, it passes only from mother to child. No paternal genes get mixed into it. That makes it easy to see when particular genetic mutations happened, and thus to construct a human family tree.

The branches of that tree are now well studied. Humans started in Africa, spread to Asia around 60,000 years ago, thence to Australia 50,000 years ago, Europe 35,000 years ago and America 15,000 years ago. What have not been so well examined, though, are the tree’s African roots. The genetic diversity of Africans probably exceeds that of the rest of the world put together. But the way that diversity evolved is unclear.

The time frames don’t jibe here at all, communities in the United Arab Emirates that date back 150,000 years, or a branch of humanity just hiking out of Africa 70,000 years ago?

DNA research can be a powerful tool indeed to find the truth. But like all tools, it can be subverted for political, societal and religious gain.

Before the exodus

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Uh-oh, speaking of DNA, this doesn’t bode well for the male gender:

Imagine a world without men: Lauren Bacall but no Bogie, Hillary Clinton but no Bill, no Starsky or Hutch.

This isn’t just an unlikely sci-fi scenario. This could be reality, according to Bryan Sykes, an eminent professor of genetics at Oxford University and author of “Adam’s Curse: A Future Without Men.”

“The Y chromosome is deteriorating and will, in my belief, disappear,” Sykes told me. A world-renowned authority on genetic material, Sykes is called upon to investigate DNA evidence from crime scenes. His team of researchers is currently compiling a DNA family tree for our species.

In 125,000 years there won’t be anymore men. Good news for radical feminists and women of the same sex proclivity.

But c’mon now, who will women blame for wars, drunken barroom brawls and failing to take out the trash?

Envisioning a World Without Men

Bugout; military term - “To retreat during a military action: to flee in panic”

‘Google-plex Wikipedia, 2069′

Northern Hemisphere Union Marine Corps Chief Warrant Officer Five Sean St. John (Sin-Jin) Lamont observed the rocky ‘valley’ around him.

The scene was not a kalidescope of color, with or without the visual enhancement of the holo-heads up display inside of Lamont’s helmet visor. The vaulted roof of the sky was a pea soup of gray haze, intermittently broken up to reveal a dusky salmon. The dismal, wretched coldness extended down to his level, minimally lightening up as it finally started thinning out 800 meters below him. Only then did it appear like a normal fall foggy morning in the Appalachian Mountains, sans the green of trees. It could have passed for a scene straight out of Tolkien’s ‘Lord of the Rings’, without the obligatory lava.

At this ‘altitude’, it was necessary for Lamont to wear an oxygen rebreather and an environmental suit, the cold and the thin atmosphere at this level was deadly, even for a transhuman like Lamont. His internal army of nanobots could save him if his suit ruptured, but his body would be damaged beyond repair if the cold started to shut down the ‘bots too soon. Lamont just as soon not push his luck, experience taught him that. As he observed the scene around him, there were patches of dark greens and blues scattered here and there. The patching got thicker and thicker as the barely indistinguishable monochrome extended down the valley. It lent the view a more dismal color than it really was. But without the carpets of monotonous blue/green lichen, it would be impossible to breathe what little air there was.

Lamont broke his revelry long enough to start descending down the hillside, watching his footing carefully as he still made observations of the valley. The rocks at this height were still very sharp, a slip might cause a puncture, even though the suit was engineered of carbon-tube fiber, the best stuff nano-tech can produce. To Lamont, the old saw ‘trust but verify’ were words to live by. Sometimes.

As the descent proceeded, the footing got easier as the rocks acquired a rounded, more eroded form. Soon the rocks became stones, then pebbles. Lamont started to hear more of the environment around him as the air became thicker the lower he got. He stopped next to a small outcropping of smooth rocks. He sat down to pull out his insulated thermo-canteen, which extruded a tube as he lifted up his visor. A membrane on his eyes instinctively clamped down over his eyeballs, preventing moisture from escaping them. Even though he was lower in the valley, the air at this height was still dryer than the Gobi Desert in January. And there was still almost a klick to hike before he got back to base camp. Pulling the cold water from his canteen, Lamont shut out all his thoughts and started to meditate lightly on the surrounding scene. There wasn’t much to look at, it was agonizingly boring, but soon sounds permeated his helmet, sinking into his brain. A soft rushing gurgle, almost like the sound of blood flowing demanded attention. Lamont meditated on it, grokking it, taking it into himself, learning it. Water. A small stream nearby was making its existence known. Peace. Suddenly there were knocks on the door of his mind, threatening to drown out the burblings of the small, beautiful, alien thing. The knocks got louder and louder until they formed a cacophonous ‘wop, wop, wop’. It wasn’t loud, but it was enough to break Lamont’s meditation. “Shit. Back to the ‘real’ world I suppose”, he groused. Of course he allowed the noise to interrupt his thoughts, his mind was self disciplined enough to lock out all external stimuli if he wished. But he knew in one of the backrooms of his mind, time was getting short. He knew the whole base was about ready to deploy to a different locale. He knew it was almost time to ‘bugout’. (more…)