Damage Control

- Hey.
- Hm? Eh, hi. What’s up?
- Same-o same-o. It’s hard to keep current with anything that’s not work lately anyway. How´s it going?
- Well, you know, I’m contractually bound to a life of servitude with no entertainment breaks. But seriously, I’m swamped.
- Cool blueprints.
- Hah, yeah, I’ve been working on these for quite some time now.
- What’s that?
- Parts designs. Remember the incident with Building C, some time ago?
- Are you kidding? We’re still cleaning debris from that one.
- Yeah, it was pretty bad. Many people got killed.
- Well, it had been waiting to happen for a long time. We informed Operations that the device was failing, but they wouldn’t shut it down. Said they couldn’t.
- It doesn’t matter anymore. Thing is – right now, they need to repair it, so I’ve been assigned to work with Reengineering. They don’t want…
- Wait a minute, is that thing still running?
- Of course it is.
- But I thought the building had gone through the air!
- It did – most of it did, anyway. Quite literally.
- Then how…?!
- Well, turns out the contraption in Building C – like every other piece of old machinery within the Complex – goes very deep. It was severely damaged during the incident, but it never stopped functioning.
- That’s about the scariest thing I’ve ever heard.
- I know. This whole situation is messed up on many levels. After the collapse, they had to send in teams of technicians to do underground maintenance. At present, it’s relatively stable, but back then it was still kind of unpredictable. Dangerous.
- You mean the bodies that were removed last…
- Post-incident casualties. But listen, you’ve got to keep it quiet.
- …of course.
- I mean it. I want to go through with this job. It’s very important.
- I said “of course”, so don’t worry.
- Alright.
- Now tell me, why do they need reengineered parts? Couldn’t they fix it with spares from our current stock?
- No. Apparently the mechanism’s malfunction was primarily structural. They do not want it to happen ever again, so I need to come up with entirely new parts.
- To do what? These parts you are designing, what are they for?
- I am not entirely sure.
- Excuse me?
- I´ve studied some of the blueprints from before the incident, and there seems to be a lot of redundancy in the system, whole sections if intricate machinery without any specific purpose. As far as I can tell, all they do - ehm, all they DID was dissipate energy. Yet, they somehow contributed to keep the whole thing’s integrity. I don’t know. I wonder what those sections would have to be like without the redundant components. Moreover, there’s the problem of attaching static parts to a continuously working – and not perfectly steady – instrument.
- Looks like a nice pickle.
- It is. But I believe I’m on to something.
- Good luck with that. Just tell me something, since you have already had access to the original device’s blueprints. Something I’ve been thinking of a lot lately…
- Shoot.
- What’s so damn important about this machine? What does it do, anyway?
- I understand your concern. Most of us had never considered the matter until the incident, me included.
- So tell me. What is that thing? What does it really mean to us?
- Well, ultimately…
- Yes?
- Everything.

Waking up from the Postcard Dream

Scene: A phone rings in a dark room, its blinking red LED is the only source of light. The silhouette of a hand reaches for the panel and punches a series of keys, until the correct one is pressed. A white screen lights the room. Switch to caller's screen (bad image reception), and back to the dark room. Close on hand. It rubs a sleepy eye and reaches for a pair of glasses. Switch back to caller's view; he talks first.

[1] Hi.
[2] [hoarse voice] Hi. Hi there. [yawns, runs the hand through his hair]
[1] Are you alright?
[2] Yeah... Yes. Good Lord, what time is it?
[1] Noon. 12:15 actually. Look, do you want me to...
[2] 12:15? Oh wonderful...
[1] Want me to come over?
[2] What? I don't know. Where are you?
[1] I'm on my way. I'll bring lunch.
[2] Uh, nice. Thanks.
[1] What have you been doing anyway?
[2] Ah, don't get me started. I'm still half-asleep...
[1] Some night, eh?
[2] No. Not really... [yawns] I was having this dream, this really messed up dream...
[1] Tell me about it.
[2] Yeah, let me see. There was this table, with a bunch of bricks on it...
[1] Were you going to eat them?
[2] What? Why would I do that?
[1] It's your dream.
[2] I didn't eat no brick.
[1] Okay. What then?
[2] There was something, I can't put my finger on it. I felt something...
[1] What?
[2] I don't know, like I couldn't talk about anything anymore.
[1] What do you mean anything?
[2] Like, anything at all. Because of the substance of my ideas. I was losing it.
[1] That's messed up, alright.

[2] I know! People would ask me these really simple questions like “Hey, nice to see you, man. How are you?”, and I would just stand there with a dumb look on my face because I didn't want to lie but I didn't want to tell them how the meaning of things was slipping through my fingers either. I mean, in the dream, you know.

[1] Yeah, I see.

[2] And... and I needed to find half-truths because I didn't want to upset anyone and I didn't want to ask for help, you know, because I thought no one could help me. So I didn't want to bother people with something they couldn't do anything about, right? Then...

[1] Dude, how long was this dream?
[2] I don't know, it seemed pretty long to me. Anyway...
[1] Go on, go on.

[2] Where was I? Oh yeah. So everyone was sitting around this large table with lots of bricks on it, and I felt like they were, you know, really angry at me, because I had been so quiet all the time.

[1] Did you do anything with the bricks? Like, throw them at someone or something?
[2] No, I didn't touch them. They just were there.
[1] Cool. That must mean something.
[2] Beats the hell out of me. I don't believe in dream interpretation anyway.
[1] Well, you should.
[2] I should what?
[1] Start figuring that dream out.
[2] And why is that?
[1] 'Cause it ain't over, pal.

[Open camera to display dimly lit room with absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. Play eerie music. End of scene]

Postcard from a dream.

Hi.
I hope everyone's doing ok.
(sorry I couldn't write sooner)
The sea is going shallow,
And I wanted to swim
and take lots
of pictures.
I will show them to you.
Love,
Alex.

Fine Tuning

It is much more difficult than it looks.

[1] I’ve always led a life of unrestrained thought. The offspring of my mind has always moved in freedom, and never before had I guessed that it could be otherwise. Until now, there has never been something like "too much thought". I'm stuck in the middle of a highway, though, and at any moment one of those speeding ideas might come right at me and run me over. Apparently there could be such a thing as too much thought, after all. Now I need to bring it under control, I actually need to learn how NOT to think, and it is like hunting flies with a hammer.