Middle Earth - Shadow of Mordor (2017)

Quickly. Surgeon's knife. No time for the anesthetic.

I don't like this one. Whew!

You may now express yourself with bricks. If you are into that sort of thing.

Lesson learned: A majority opinion or a high favorable percentage on the internet is utter, pure, unadulterated, incomprehensible bullshit. And unreliable to boot.

Monolith, Monolith, what has happened to you. I suspect after the FEAR rights being treated like a ping-pong ball and having a brilliant first entry go to trash in such spectacular fashion, Monolith never really recovered and had to over-compensate with this, this, well, this mess.

Oh, Shadow of Mordor, how you annoy me, let me count (some of) the ways:

• The save system.
  To quote the eminent Donald Duck, "Hey, what's the big idea?" Here is a game in 2017 that is so outstandingly stupid it doesn't bother to inform you when and where progress is saved. On the other hand, maybe it does it so cleverly that my meagre brain failed to notice it after 16 hours of play time.
  
  Once you quit and restart the game, always assuming that at some point there must have been a checkpoint, you always start on one of the towers. Depending on where the tower is from the current main objective, enjoy a long refreshing healthy sprint across the map to get to the mission start point.
  
  There are mid-mission save points but only as long as you don't quit the game. Er, what?
  
  No wonder they didn't include a manual save option. In these conditions that option would have sent all the programmers to hospital with chronic headaches.
  
  
• I am Batman. No, you are not.
  Combat is Batman Arkham-ish but new and improved, or rather, old and quirky and rough edged. Works well in places. In other places, so-so so-so. If you are going to tread the Arkham path, could you do it without succumbing to button mashing? (Detailed rant about button mashing here, new window). The mash problem is not as severe as in say, Spider-Man or Devil May Cry, but it's there. And it's not nice.
  
  
• Enforced stealth.
  How long, how long, how long? How long will it need to be repeated? If you cannot implement stealth properly, just leave it out. Random stealth missions with unfamiliar mechanics are a pain. The odd thing is that if you fail and restart a stealth mission, the enemies previously executed disappear so the bonus objective becomes impossible due to decreased enemy population and you have to hunt for new enemies. Some missions are bound by invisible boundaries and mission aborts if you run too far. Uh? We are still doing this in 2017? Oh, okay.
  
  
• Repetitive missions.
  In so many missions the objective changes but, well, hang it all, nothing else does. Everybody and everything looks the same. There is no feeling that you are doing anything new. It's always a case of "haven't I done this five times already?"
  
  
• Viva quick-time events.
  I quit playing this game at the Hunting Partner (dominate the white dog thing) mission because of horrible QTE. Or perhaps I should say pseudo-QTE. Maybe it is my fault that my reflexes are not as good as 20 years ago but randomizing the button every time the QTE runs is silly. In a near-death situation it is understandable, the game is giving you a chance to keep going. But in routine gameplay? And with such a small time window? And changing the button every time the QTE runs. What the hell, Monolith?

Anyway, the QTE had already happened a few times and that was the proverbial camel-back-breaker.

According to the Steam Client my total play time with Shadow of Mordor is 16.1 hours when I quit on this game. I simply couldn't find the motivation to keep going.

Shadow of Mordor is not something unique in terms of bad design but oftentimes that can be overcome. Sometimes games have an atmosphere, an engaging story, characters you can't abandon halfway through, a sense of achievement no matter how vague.

Unfortunately, Shadow of Mordor creates a peculiar cumulative effect of not having any of those.

Combat, mission structure, characters, world building, story - it's a featureless flat terrain.

If all else fails, I am always ready for even a half-decent story. But, well, this is Lord of the Rings territory and you can introduce as many twists as you want, the big bad goes poof in the end.

Writing is tough. Writing a self-contained interesting story within an established larger story is tougher still. But that's the point, isn't it? We don't expect great literature from games, just something interesting enough to keep things going. Get a good gameplay loop going and even that becomes less important.

For me, the more the gameplay fails, the more the story has to succeed and, of course, the opposite too.

Shadow of Mordor does not do this.

Sigh.

I got Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War together on Steam and such is my experience that so far after so many months I cannot bring myself to install Shadow of War. It just sits there, gathering digital dust.

Guns, Gore, & Cannoli

This post is based on Xbox controller on Windows. Have not played with KB/mouse.

This is one of those games I liked before even knowing what it was. The art style leapt off the screen and took hold of that part of my brain that likes that sort of behavior from artwork.

That it was an indie title was another huge appeal.

Guns, Gore, & Cannoli 2015: An absolute blast. There, we are done. Side scrollers are hit and miss with me. GG&C, however, refreshes the gameplay mechanic in ways that I am unable to describe except "fun."

Zombie games bore me. Probably because there are so many of them and they do not manage to differentiate between themselves. Zombie, kill, rinse, repeat.

See, when you go for the realistic zombie approach then you cannot vary the gameplay. How much variation can there be between 23 types of zombies, all equally brain dead? And if you make them intelligent then they are not zombies any longer, are they? Most zombies seem to want to kill you, eat you, or something even bizarre. Where the brain dead get their motivation from, I don't know.

The cartoon approach is the only one that makes sense. And while GG&C does not tackle any great questions about the nature and philosophy of being a zombie in a non-zombie world, why should it? It's a video game.

The dialogue tends to be on the cheap-cheese side but stays consistently above the surface. Besides, given the game situation and time period, perhaps that is a good thing.

The gameplay also tends to get repetitive and this is where you can feel the freshness of the indie developer. Despite being repetitive it does not become boring or turn into a chore.

The only one minor itty-bitty point of contention is that the difficulty tends to fluctuate, especially the boss fights that seem to jump from easy to hardcore without any build up.

Highly recommended.

Guns, Gore, & Cannoli 2018: Sigh! Alas!

How many exclamation points must a man run down? Uh, three. Okay. Damn!

The curse of the sequel.

The first game was fun. They almost completely changed the control scheme and you cannot remap the controls from inside the game. This game plays more like a very, very old game called Abuse where the mouse controls where you aim and the KB controls movement. With an Xbox controller it requires a lot of adapting. I played slightly more than 30 minutes and kept trying to use the old controls. Goodness' sake, why would you change the jump button which is almost universal in all games?

Don't know. Maybe it is more enjoyable with a KB/M combo. So far it is more annoying than fun. And since the controls are not going to change for the rest of the game... Oh, well.

The Last Campfire (2020)

This will be short.

You know how some games leave cliffhanger endings? Other games will leave weird endings like a Nolan movie. Once you are done with everything it is as if the professor is leaving the classroom with the last one-word instruction: "Discuss."

Then videos start popping up explaining the story and ending.

Done right, that sort of thing can be quite pleasant. Sadly, doing it right is full of unexpected unknown perils.

The Last Campfire's story is not entirely clear but it does not matter. The gameplay is not always straightforward and for such a small game it is possible to get lost, but, again, it does not matter.

Given the overly complicated mechanics of AAA games, it is always a pleasure to come across a game like this.

A simple puzzle-adventure combination, it makes for a quick few hours of intellectual stimulation with adequate gratification to keep the gamer going.

Another indie gem.

Highly recommended.

Getting Treed

Let us, out of sheer bloody-mindedness, talk about trees.

Not the sort that pop out of the earth and grow leaves and things, neat though the idea is, not those. You know how it is about trees. Excellent chaps but they never go anywhere.

Let us talk about skill trees in games.

I could, if 'twere in my nature, look up the history and all the rest of it but why bother. This is not a history project.

My pique, if it is pique, arises from how every other game developer now feels compelled to include some variation of a skill tree even in genres that do not warrant it.

Now a certain type of game that involves the "build" (never got a grip on that one) and fundamentally changes the gameplay, or at least the approach to it, is one thing. But more and more it seems that skill trees are a sort of cosmetic bungling to induce a sense of progression or empowerment to the gamer.

Uh, not buying it.

Like the open world concept, the skill tree is not much talked about.

To illustrate, here are a few games that can be completed without even looking at the darned thing. Sure, the gameplay becomes a lot easier if you upgrade your weapon stats and your health but the rest of it seems to be so much developer time/effort/money wasted. (Some are just upgrade systems but the concept is the same).

• Tomb Raider (2013-2018)
• Gears 5 (2019) (Yes, I am counting this one. Be quiet).
• Star Wards Jedi: Fallen Order (2019)
• Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy (2021).
• Assassin's Creed Unity (2014).
• And, of course, the entire Arkham Series.

Well, that list could go on forever.

As of today, I am playing Tomb Raider (2013) for the third time. It reinforces my suspicion that the whole XP and collectibles and side missions exist not because they add anything to the gameplay or the overall game experience. They are simply there to let the gamer know "you missed this one bit on the map." On my third play through, all my skill and salvage points went ignored till the mission where you get the rope climber. It is possible to reach the end of the main story campaign without availing any of those "points."

Not trying to single out the Tomb Raider games here. It just happens to be the most recent in memory. In fact, Tomb Raider sits at the top of my least disliked game-with-skill-tree list. At least the developer did not start you out as a weakling that needs periodic health upgrades to keep up with tougher and tougher enemies and thank goodness for no actual boss fights (separate rant on boss fights to follow).

Some people like skill trees and that's fine.

Perhaps it is just the whole stretched-out-time perspective that demands more room than the 21st century lifestyle permits. Some concepts I can only grapple with in perpetuity, never come to terms with.

When your mind keeps diving into the far end to surface fond fun memories it becomes a chore to like the current goings-on in gaming.

After Doom (1993) there came the age of Doom clones. Everyone and the chipmunk in their nearest tree wanted to make a Doom clone.

We don't use the term "clone" anymore. It seems the product of copying is okay but the act of copying is to be treated politely. We call them "like" now.

For the past few years we are stuck in the age of Rogue-like, Metroid-like, Souls-like. Individual games now turned into genres through the act of "liking."

Unlike the Age of Doom Clones, the Age of Nnn-Like shows no signs of abating any time soon.

The same applies to the spread of the skill tree. If the real-life pop-out-of-the-ground trees could match that tenacity for the good part of a century, we could stop worrying about them.

Seriously, if you have been gaming since the 1990s, just take a moment and think about the game after game after game that has passed your PC display without any of the modern trappings whose greatest achievement is having to pause the game and juggle upgrade menus and skill trees.

The really, really sad part for me personally though is the current iteration of the Doom games.

When even the elder statesmen are not exempt, things look rather bleak.

Then again, they looked equally bleak in the Age of Doom Clones and we got over that because the gaming community simply got fed up and walked away.

Praying for a swift and moderately painful death to the unwanted skill tree.

Maybe make it optional, as perhaps part of the Accessibility options. Spare the rest of us who have no use for it.

Hmm?

FAR: Lone Sails (2018) and Changing Tides (2022)

Amid the perpetual disillusionment from AAA titles, the ever increasing complexity of even AA titles, the focus shifting more and more to either ridiculous levels of hand-holding to completely abandoning the gamer, and the rest of it including what can only be hoped is a transient plague of bad PC ports, it is nice to come across a game that, in the simplest of terms, just works.

That, however, is not the only good thing about these games.

There is an elegance in simplicity that is not always readily found. There are many games that create the illusion of complexity but sort out their components and the simplicity can possibly come as a shock.

FEAR and Halo Combat Evolved are just two such examples.

But we are not talking about FPS games. Rather it is about the individual parts which when assembled manage to get the player entangled in the machinery and when the end comes around leave you wishing it would not have come so soon.

Again, where more and more AAA titles are going for higher and higher graphical fidelity while paying less and less attention to art direction, when an independent team comes along with something as focused as this, well then that is an excellent reason to chop down a tree and get the hope fire blazing again.

Lone Sails is a side scrolling mix of adventure and puzzles that do not try to burn out your logic circuits just to show you how clever the game developers are.

The camera zooming out telling you not to do whatever you are doing is probably the only help the game gives you. Other than that, you are on your own. There is no intro or anything. Just start. The games starts much the same way Spirit of the North starts. Get busy.

There is no nonsense with timed events as puzzle games often use to falsely pressure gamers. The entire experience is very relaxed.

And you are allowed to make mistakes. There is one sequence where you have the option to take shelter and I just went past the shelter because I was a bit too relaxed in my approach. The game just kept sailing. Most games would have gone into a fail state and thrown me back to a checkpoint but not here.

The narrative, no matter how incoherent in may be, is important to me in a game. Not sure how or why buuuut it seemed irrelevant here. Might have been a self-defense reaction to all those big executives forcing out AAA story lines so twisted they would give you a headache without any physical cause. Be that as it may, there is a sense of enjoyment here that makes you go "hang everything, keep going and see what happens next."

I suppose that is the advantage of making a small game. You don't have to stuff everything into it. You take only the good bits and make them all count.

Another thing about the games is that you can only talk about them vaguely. The only way to get specific is to give the whole thing away. Not going to do that.

If you are one of those smart people (I am not, I am more like Mater, average intelligence) you can finish the game under 3-4 hours depending on how many breaks you take.

If you or anyone you know has been advised not to play games due to low frustration tolerance, you may want to try Lone Sails.

Changing Tides on the other hand suffers from an excess of complexity, just by adding another axis. The underlying concept is the same but since you now have two axes of freedom and movement in each direction along either. Combined with a lack of any indication of where to go, it is easy to get lost and confused. Some parts of the game also require specific actions. You could be staring at something head on and not know what to do because the game gives you more freedom of choice but no signal if a choice is required.

Changing Tides is good sequel but the puzzles are more intricate and there are times where the game demands trial and error more than clear thinking. This is a personal thing and might not apply to everyone but trial and error is not a logical way of solving puzzles. Some people might find the first game too simplistic but at least it was without "try this then try that, rinse and repeat till something works."

Besides that one small issue in Changing Tides this is a good pair of enjoyable games.

Highly recommended.

Spirit of the North (2019)

Ooo, foxes.

This game literally tells you nothing. No background, no tutorials, no direction markers.

Just start walking around and figure it out along the way.

Good thing too.

The learning becomes part of the journey and since the game complexity increases very gradually, there is never any over-burdening of information as can sometimes happens.

While the path to take is linear, the path is not always evident. It is possible to get confused in this game but it doesn't last long. Just a touch of exploration and off you go again.

The story never becomes clear. You still need to look outside the game to satiate your curiosity about the why and how, but again, it's a good thing.

Some mechanics border on failure, especially those requiring precision, but those are not too frequent.

This is basically a half-puzzle half-exploration game that finds a good balance between the two.

Once or twice the game might frustrate you but then it's not a perfect game by any means. And that too is a good thing. Perfection would ruin it.

Most importantly, you are never required to hurry.

If you are in the mood for an opposite-to-the-edge-of-seat gameplay experience with mild brain stimulation, go for it.

I am just glad that there are people out there still making games like this.

Go people out there.

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy (2021)

An optional but relevant read can be found here.

Proceeding towards an oldish age, I have become a cautionary gamer. So basically I let the world play a game, watch gameplay clips, read (not watch) a review or few, and then decide on buying a game or not.

After the Avengers fiasco (that one I decided to skip after watching the first trailer) I had low hopes for a good Marvel game.

Then word started circulating that this is actually a good and fun game. In fact, so unlike Avengers and without its premature-birth problems and shameless cash baiting that that alone earned Marvel a second chance.

So, I gave it the good old go.

Not going to repeat myself so just go and read the link above. If you like that sort of thing, you will like this game. If, like me, you don't, then don't bother with this one. The combat is torture. Might be an odd thing to say that it is also extremely fatiguing given that torture is not supposed to be a relaxation device but there it is.

The game's environments though are some of the most versatile you will see in a single player campaign and they are beautifully crafted and lit. Except the climactic sequence where it is a case of too much happening to notice anything.

Finally, this has to be the most talkative game I have played in more than three decades of gaming. They never stop talking. The situation does not matter. Incessant chatter flows and flows. Someone should make a documentary just on how do you write so many lines for a game, get the voice actors to deliver those lines, and lastly, how do you program for those lines to be delivered the way they are. I mean, when the main characters talk so much that your brain relegates it all to background noise, well, I would not say something went wrong but it did not go right and neither did it stay in the middle.

Maybe it took a holiday to get away from itself.

Gears 5 (2019)

Before I start the rant ... oops. Spoiler. I don't like this one.

First, you may want to do a quick read on this.

So, if you have read my Gears 4 review you might have read the bit about how some games have a death wish of wanting to be "that game."

Well, that's Gears 5 for you.

I was still reeling under the exhilaration of having played Gears 4 just a little over a month ago and had loaded up Gears 5 with barely contained excitement.

An excitement that evaporated when within a couple of minutes of starting I got stuck. Stuck. In a Gears game. Unbelievable. If you haven't played it then without going into details let me tell you it involves looking through a crack in a wall.

But being a good little gamer, I gathered the tattered remains of my gaming faith and plodded on. Later, much later, in the red sand location, the same thing happened. This time I got stuck and looked and looked and scanned and looked around 360 degrees, thanked the powers that be that 23 years ago I decided to shave my head or right now I would be pulling the stuff out in huge clumps, gave up, and, oh the disgrace of it, had to look it up on YouTube. Most people make a big deal about the weakness of the Death Star. I don't care about that. What gets me is the bloody ventilation ducts. Never liked ventilation ducts. Ducts are the ultimate architectural insult. Necessary but a better alternative is needed. Bloody ducts.

But like the Snatcher in Gears 4, these were two isolated and minor annoyances. Even though there was no more getting stuck in the game, it just did not feel like a Gears game anymore.

Here is a brief list of subjective peeves:

• The common law sin of all open world games: You have to frequently refer to the map. A map. A gosh darned map in a Gears game. A wannabe, completely unnecessary, pseudo-open world in a Gears game.
• Upgrades through Collectibles in a Gears game that have no impact on gameplay but keep popping up everywhere.
• A skill tree in a Gears game. Not for you, for the darned robot. The collectibles upgrade the robot which you can completely ignore because the game is 100% playable without its assistance.
• Side missions, argh, in a Gears game.
• Choice in a Gears game. This one is the Idiot Leader of the game. How Gears 6 will continue after this unless it has access to your last save game from Gears 5, I don't know.

Why? One solitary inquiring mind wants to know why? Why after four games did they decide to ape "that game" that is not a Gears game?

There are downright bad games that you suffer through because, fundamentally, you are an idiot. There are games with bad controls. There are games with bizarre camera angles. There are games that send a clear message of "F you, I am what I am, take me or leave me, see if I care."

Gears 5 is one those games that does everything except hiss back at you. It seems safe but at the same time you feel it would be best not to provoke it.

I wanted to like Gears 5. I did like it. But just when I was happy that the aggravating bit was over, minutes after the current objective the game threw me back into the mess.

It was one of those "complicated" relationships where you desperately want to like the girl, but the girl's only outstanding quality is throwing pointless tantrums.

You can blame her upbringing or her peers or society at large but what remains in the end is that the girl throws tantrums for no reason. And this girl is not amenable to therapy. You can only like her if tantrums are your thing.

Here is hoping that Gears goes back to being Gears and stops trying to be "that game."

Gears of War 4 (2016)

I feel it. Deep. In my bones. 2007 was a long time ago and I was a little baby, barely 37 years old, and Epic and Microsoft released Gears of War. It was the first cover based shooter I had played and it was a ton of fun.

Then Microsoft decided not to release Gears 2 and 3 on PC because of "piracy" resulting in poor sales on Windows. That the PC port was broken and that selling Xbox was a higher priority had nothing to do with it. Same crap they pulled with Halo 2. Digression alert!

So when I had the hardware to run Gears 4 and 5, of course I was going to play it.

And boy oh boy is this game fun. Mostly, er largely - well actually except for one tiny irritant - a complete joyride from start to finish.

A deplorable thing that most shooters fall prey to is wanting to be like "that game" which could be anything outselling "this game" currently.

Okay, so I was playing it seven years after release. So what?

No silly customizations, no skill tree, no collectibles, no side missions, no pausing the game to fiddle with idiotic inputs that add nothing to the game proper, no branching paths, no irrelevant choices. Just a simple, straight out, linear, old fashioned point A to point B, shoot everything in between with a few environmental hurdles. God, I miss my baby days when games were just games and not a convoluted mission statement that left you wondering what the hell did you just do for 10+ hours and what does it all mean, why are you here, what is the point, why are you expected to care.

Point A to point B, shoot everything in between. Sweet.

It is a testament to good mission design that a linear shooter with zero distractions can actually be more fun and engaging than a mishmash of multiple ideas where the game has to pause every few minutes to ask you "and what would you like to do next?"

Real life is full of those imbecilic situations of what I want to do next. Stop doing it in games. Very annoying.

Okay, let's get that tiny irritant out of the way. Snatcher. This enemy uh puts you in its body without eating you. Like evolution had decided, for some reason, to create a predator that specializes in kidnapping its victims instead of killing them. Once you are "inside", sometimes you come out and sometimes you reload last checkpoint. Not sure what gameplay mechanic is at work here. Your AI companions cannot directly help you. They are shooting the thing, so supposedly with enough hits you get ejected from the zip-up pouch but otherwise there is no player agency left. Except hope.

Happened to me only twice, thankfully, but it took me right out of the game flow. Like you are in the pool and humming to yourself "just keep swimming, just keep swimming" and you realize the other presence in the pool in not a friend or a loved one but a darned shark. Nasty jar that, what?

Apart from that one thing, this game should be on the must-have list for anyone who likes shooters.

If you missed out on the first three parts then just watch a quick video to get the backstory and go from there. You are not missing anything. I also recently bought Gears of War: Ultimate Edition and the updated visuals did nothing. If you are going to play the older games then play them first. The gameplay has evolved a lot (imagine that, evolution in a linear shooter) and going back will not be a nice experience.

For anyone who likes third person shooters and/or cover based shooters, play this game. 'Tis wonderful, 'tis wondrous wonderful.

I tell you, man, dialects are tough.

The Mashening

This is a PC gamer's perspective who has never owned a console.

Well, now that that is out of the way.

Maybe it is just age. Maybe gaming has changed. Maybe PlayStation gamers expect their games to be like this. Maybe I am just configured in a way that prohibits acclimation to it. Who can say.

There is a certain type of combat in certain games that just grates. Feels wrong. It should not be like that. Within the rules of a game it seems contrary to those same rules.

It is also the reason why I never played God of War, Spider-Man, any Assassin's Creed after AC2 which had the quick disarm-and-execute option, and oh so many more games. Simply because the gameplay loop was exhausting.

However, me being me, I did watch the playthroughs and the gameplay baffles me. Why? Why is it like this?

About an hour ago I finished watching the playthrough for Spider-Man 2. Watching that video, one thought kept looping: "The only way I am playing this is with a trainer that gives me the one-hit-kill option."

The same thing happened when watching the God of War (2018) playthrough. When you look at the size of Kratos and the way the game plays, an Argh is inevitable. Even the most basic enemies can take four to six hits to take down. Bosses come with health bars that take vast repetitions to deplete.

It's as if you are watching a blooper reel of Terminator and Schwarzenegger is having a problem breaking eggs unless he takes a hammer to them. What exactly is the point of being so powerful if you are, despite all that power, so ridiculously powerless?

There is so much content related to Halo Combat Evolved and yet in all the years since its release I have yet to come across a single video/post/comment (granted it is not possible for a single human to consume all content even on a single topic on the internet) that mentions the glaring difference between Halo CE and most other games.

There is no boss fight in Halo CE.

There is no great enemy variety. The gameplay loop is rudimentary at best. And it still remains the most enjoyable game in the franchise or even generally.

Now, this is approaching cliche qualification at missile speed. In my gaming experience, Arkham City did it first in 2011. The "shield" enemy that cannot be taken out in regular fashion. You slide under, jump over, do something to stun them, or whatever else. Twelve years later games are still aping it. Zero evolution. Sigh.

Returning to Spider-Man 2.

The shield enemy. Now with Peter and Miles given their age and height and most enemies being at least a foot taller than them, the shield people seem to make sense. But, come on, both have super strength. Shield or no shield, a punch or kick thrown at maximum power must have some effect but zero?

Then there are the boss fights. All bosses come with health bars that have to be depleted three times. Just watching the video was tiring. End, damn you, end. Sure, you could have one bar split into three parts but that does not make it any better. Why do bosses need stages? There are no weak spots or specific target foci. Just hit, hit, hit, hit, hit, hit.

But the piece de resistance, the part that really got inside my head and started performing blindfolded brain surgery was when Harry turned into Venom. That beast must be 5 feet taller than everything around him and 3 feet wider. Guess what the shield enemy does? Absorbs the hit with no more effort than is required to blink. What is going on? It's a basic shield for the love of whatever you please, not a force field. Regular people should have all the resistance of soggy paper to Venom but nooooo, even Venom needs to strike at least three times (oh, forgot to mention, regular hits, no special moves or combos). Why?

Even against regular unarmed human beings, Peter or Miles would be suspended in air and hit someone four, five, six times before the opponent goes down permanently. How many superpower punches are required to take down even an ideally fit but regular human being with no extra powers?

Which (finally) brings us to The Mashening. Games that equate endless button mashing with a sense of accomplishment.

A year ago I was playing Dying Light. Some doors require you to mash X to shove them open and it happened frequently that if I mistimed the mashing my player would just quit and the whole process would start again. In the immortal words of Lord Emsworth, "Eh, what?"

On a side note, Dying Light is the only zombie game I ever played. Not repeating that. Zombies are boring.

There are so many games that follow this pattern. It is a good thing that videos exist where you can see this happening and thereby get guidance in what games to avoid.

The whole mash button to open door, push something, or what have you is puzzling. What purpose does it serve?

Tomb Raider needs a mention here. The game gives you a simple choice: Hold the button or mash it over and over. Why don't more games do this? It is a such a simple thing to do. Of course, TR is not a combat heavy game so there is that.

In any case, the whole God of War/Spider-Man style of combat is just dull, pointless, and has no appeal to me whatsoever.

That, however, is my problem not the game developers'. What I would like to know is where does the mass appeal for this gameplay loop come from. This is what you are doing the entire game. Mashing the same two buttons for a campaign that may last anywhere from 8 to 15 hours topped off by those ghastly boss fights where the bar depletes one hair width at a time (I know, I know, it doesn't, but).

Some games couple this gameplay loop with skill trees. Er, what are those trees for if the mashening does not ease up as the player progresses through whatever tree there might be? How much thought, time, and effort both creative and technical goes into growing these trees? And the end result is nothing more than cosmetic. If the tree actually gives the player more power to make combat easier it would be different. It does not. Combat remains relentlessly mash oriented.

I don't get it. Somebody, maybe Holmes, needs to work this out and get back to me.

Lies of P (Demo)

Demo.

Hmm. Okay, I died three times before the first heavy encounter and the fourth time in the heavy fight. Keeping in mind that this is a demo and things will change in the final version, if they don't fix the load screen, there is going to be a problem. It's 2023 for goodness sake, load screens, really?

The game did not ask for a difficulty option so don't know what's happening there.

First death was with the guy with the gun. One shot and done. I did not even see him. There was some sort of "You can't see in the dark" message and I went to turn on the Cricket lantern and bang. He one shotted me under a fraction of a second. Second death was with the same guy but because I got stuck on the stairs leading to where the shooter was and could not sword him before he one shot me again.

Third death was upstairs because someone snuck up behind me and I had no way of knowing until getting whacked good and proper. The character (is it Pinocchio, will there be nose super powers?) only attacks in the direction it is facing. An attack from the back does not cause him/her (?) to turn towards the assailant. He/she calmly keeps facing the same direction until you manually turn.

There is no effective defense against the heavy enemy. I have a bad feeling this is going to be another button masher combat scene.

Now, I could have kept going despite the recurrent deaths but the game save/checkpoint system (in the demo at least) is ghastly. You just go back to the beginning of the level and every single enemy respawns. Unfortunately, health pickups do not. I had only one, er, med kit(?) and could get no more. So one death means repeating a lot of the same and ending up with the boss with the same inventory. That feels an awkward way to do things. You could drop and extra health or two pickup if you are going to respawn everything else. And put a checkpoint before boss fights.

The game has a special feel to it. I hope they fix the minor issues.

Assassin's Creed Unity (2014)

First, my personal history with the Assassin's Creed series.

I played the first game in 2009 and had immediate problems. At the start, there are these people with tall pots balanced on their heads. Navigating that was a major hurdle. Of course, considering the sheer volume of gamers that got through just fine, the fault must have been mine. Anyway, got through somehow. After a few missions there is one where you have pick someone's pocket. Oh, the agony of that one. Again, maybe I was not understanding what the game expected me to do but it was troublesome to say the least.

But I got through the game somehow. Some say it revolutionized something. Uh, maybe it did, but not for me.

Then, in 2012, I got hold of Assassin's Creed II. Ho hum, ho hum, carrying along, no bottle of rum. Arrival in Monteriggioni and Uncle Mario. This is where the gamer inside me fell in love with Assassin's Creed.

A persistent peeve of mine (to this day) is when combat turns into a button mash fest. There has to be a way to take out your opponent in one move instead of hitting the idiot 13 times over and over. After the training session with Uncle Mario, Ezio can now disarm opponents and best of all the Counter Kill.

For the rest of Assassin's Creed II, my first act on combat engagement was to be barehanded. No weapons. Disarm. Counter kill. That was so satisfying.

Brotherhood followed with a changed combat system that was more aggressive.

I have mentioned this before in earlier posts that when a game allows a stealth approach, that is always my choice. Open combat is only when the game leaves no other option. The stealth approach naturally involves a slower and sneakier style of play. Little by little Assassin's Creed was moving away from that going into flashier and complex combat moves.

Assassin's Creed III was the last game in the series I played until now. Ubisoft had some direction in mind and the player base seemed happy with it given the success of subsequent entries but not me. Starting with a wannabe RPG attitude, more and more the series was turning into a "farm for XP" style of gameplay.

Again and again, all thoughts go back to Assassin's Creed II and the incredible focus of the game that got blurred and blurred over as the series progressed. Don't want to collect all Codex pages? No problem. Don't want to collect the six Seals to unlock the Armor of Altair? No problem. Don't like button mashing combat? No problem. Don't want to upgrade the Villa? No problem. Don't want to collect all feathers? No problem. Resource gathering? What resource gathering? Crafting? What crafting? Trading? What trading? XP? Say what now?

Yes, the AI was relatively clunky back then and there were several problems that have been resolved today and yet that game still stands out for me as the Assassin's Creed game.

Too much history.

So I quit on the Assassin's Creed series. Black Flag, Rogue, Unity, Syndicate, Origins, Odyssey, Valhalla (ha ha). Never played any of those. But over the years I kept watching walkthrough videos just to see what was happening with it. And with Valhalla it was clear that a new low had been dug and found.

And here we come to Unity (2014). Through the constant internet cacophony one note kept repeating that the parkour in Unity was the best the series has achieved (with a few hiccups, apparently you just cannot have a game without a hiccup or two).

Off to Steam, put the would-be perisher on the wish list, and buy when within budget.

August 2023, finally playing Assassin's Creed Unity.

The game starts and the first thing to do is contact Ubisoft support with the damnedest stupidest question ever: How do I start a new game?

For a few days I even thought Steam had sold me a DLC and not the actual game.

Well, that was an interesting game interface to encounter. Anyway, the game starts.

So I start running around, enjoying myself, and yes the parkour is great with dedicated buttons for up and down making things absolutely smooth. Arno seems to not so much run as glide along at ridiculous inhuman speed. If you get it right then traversal is fun unto itself.

After the prison escape and initiation into the Creed, the game proper begins and that is where my peeves all stand up together and start collecting broken bricks to throw at something.

Combat is a button mash fest. There is a parry but even a perfect parry is just that, a perfect parry. There is no quick way to dispatch an opponent. You slog through pushing the same buttons and combos, rinse repeat. I tried mightily to go about being sneaky and take out as many as possible from the perimeter inwards but it doesn't always work. Once you are spotted, they all come running and surround you. And since more than one can attack when you are still stuck in your stunned animation cycle, you just wish you could drop a bomb, climb the nearest Sync point, and to hell with everyone.

As mentioned (many times) in other posts, I don't do side missions or collectibles or what-have-yous. Just the main campaign clocked in at over 36 hours because I tried desperately to avoid prolonged combat scenarios. At a rough estimate, eight to ten hours of gameplay would have been cut down if the combat could resolve quickly but no. Slog, slog, slog.

It was like you finish today's homework, get ready to go play, and are told you have to do the next three months homework in advance. Sheesh. Have a heart, someone.

Another weird thing happened. Imagine you are playing a game and you, through your own action, get teleported to something that is not part of the main game. And before you know where you are, after six hours of gameplay, you are going about following objective markers, all the time wondering where are the main characters, where are the familiar streets, why is the map so different, why are all the AI opponents behaving so differently?

Then, you pay attention and read something remarkable. You are in Sequence 13. Er, what? 13? After 4, I went to 13?

This has become a recurring thing with me now. I have to keep going to the internet just to figure out where the dickens I am in a game and how to get back to where I want to go. Gosh.

The mistake? Following the exclamation point (or sword or whatever) on the map and not reading what mission you are going to agree to. Why Sequence 13 even highlights on the map before previous sequences are complete, the developers alone know, bless their convoluted sense of progression.

It has been almost a decade since the game released. When you go to forums and realize that these problems have been around for an equal length of time, what are you supposed to think about the developer? Starting a new game, re-starting a game from zero, getting back to the main campaign after getting shuffled into Sequence 13. These are unanswered questions floating about the internet with no clear solutions. I mean, come on. There are solutions but they are not obvious. It is basically bad user interface design. What confounds me is that how did all this get past beta testing.

Anyway, the sheer amount of time the main single player campaign takes to complete thanks to avoidable but not avoided gameplay mechanics, renders the game boring. The only time the game induces a sense of enjoyment is when you are running wildly across the map, close to the ground, the sides of buildings, or across rooftops. The moment you enter into "complete objective" mode, it just goes bad.

Unfortunately, this is not a unique issue with Unity. All AC games now are following this same pattern. Combat is now a chore to be completed.

Nine years of waiting to go back to AC and, oh dear, the disappointment.

Please bring back disarm and counter kill. One button press per opponent. Or include better stealth mechanics to clear out the field without getting surrounded by rotters that take 15 hits before they go down.

This could just be the whine of someone who simply has no patience with prolonged combat. Maybe the majority of the gaming community likes assaulting virtual people and flogging them like, as the expression is, a dead horse. There is no sense of accomplishment in that behavior. It is not like you solved a medium difficulty puzzle or something. All you are doing is hitting the same button ad nauseam. If that inflates your sense of accomplishment, maybe it's time to go and work in the garden or something. Get a dog for heaven's sake or a squirrel.

The peak of AC Unity's offense. There is an enemy that dodges your attacks. This enemy type is so nimble, they can dodge bullets, all the bullets. Even if you drop a smoke bomb and shoot them, they dodge the bloody bullets. Did these guys escape from The Matrix or something? WTH?

The Easy Anti-Cheat Debacle

The story begins vaguely around October 2022 (hey, I don't keep track of time like that) when I started thinking of buying a new GPU. With the price crisis and everything else, the purchase was made in February 2023. Around the same timeframe, Gears 5 went on sale on Steam. Bought, installed, benchmarked Gears 5, gushed all over it.

Then set it aside till July 2023 because of waiting for Gears 4. I am a stickler for proper sequencing in sequels.

Gears 4 is not available on Steam and it finally went on sale on the Microsoft Store (Game Pass is uneconomical if you only want to play two games available there). Bought Gears 4, installed, played, gushed all over it.

A few things happened. The only one I was aware of is that the Steam Client got updated. Nothing to do with the games itself. The other thing I became aware of only after reinstalling Gears 5 was something called Easy Anti Cheat. This was not there in February 2023 (at least I remember no such splash screen).

That is when the debacle proper began. Gears 5 would not start because EAC was, uh, incompatible or something. Still don't know what the actual problem is.

The Hunt For A Solution On The Internet followed as is to be expected. A lot of posts with people facing the same issue. A lot of posts repeating the same three odd solutions. Nothing worked.

Off to official support website and The Great E-mail Exchange over four plus days with Xbox support. Try this, try that, blah, blah, nothing worked.

Finally got informed that this is not a game issue but an operating system issue. Redirect to Microsoft Support. Online chat. Remote control of PC by tech support. A few hours and zero solutions later downloaded an ISO of the latest Windows 11 install with instruction to update my copy of Windows.

All this because EAC refuses to start on Windows 11.

And now a word about EAC. A search results in this: "Easy™ Anti-Cheat is the industry-leading anti-cheat service, countering hacking and cheating in multiplayer PC games through the use of hybrid anti-cheat ..."

And now the gripe. I don't play multiplayer games and have never understood the appeal of multiplayer games.

Here is an idea. When you launch a game, ask the gamer if they want the offline single player campaign or multiplayer, then pass the gamer through that door. Disable multiplayer protocols for single player campaign. All this anti-cheat bull, let the multiplayer community deal with it. If there are gamers who cannot participate in multiplayer without cheating that should not mean single player offline campaign gamers should suffer the consequences.

It is a good thing that I am writing this almost seven weeks after it all happened because at the time I was so furious with the EAC implementation that anything I wrote would have broken down into incoherency amidst the barrage of a jillion F bombs.

Isolate offline single player campaigns from EAC (or whatever replaces it in the future). Prevent heartburn, hypertension, febrile illness, tremors, excessive sweating and other medical and psychiatric problems for a better single player future.

There was another reason that fueled the rage.

There are a bunch of years in my past that were spent as a programmer. Really in the past. Around dBase III and Clipper time. One thing every programmer learns to know as a personal friend to get programs to behave is the if-then-else-end in whatever form it may exist in any language used.

The EAC implementation is just lazy programming. Just ask one simple question and go from there. What is it with the global enforcement regardless of gamer situation?

Update 30 March 2024: So last week I formatted C:\ and reinstalled Windows 11. All fresh, not from the cleaners but from the manufacturer. A week later the happy thought occurred to try again. It worked! So I guess there was some other app that was interfering with EAC. Odd thing though, I installed the same apps again and nothing interfered this time. Hmm.

Tomb Raider (2013, 2015, 2018)

Ah, 1996. Software rendering. Unaffordable 3dfx cards (funny how that holds true for GPUs even today). And then there was Tomb Raider that raced to the top of the 3rd person action adventure mountain. Only to follow a gradual decline the other side.

I played the new trilogy in 2023, a decade after the Tomb Raider 2013 release and it was a rather enjoyable play through. There were some sections where hope and guesswork more than gameplay mechanics did the job (the parachute sequence, don't know how I got past that because there were no visual cues) but it was a solid Tomb Raider game.

Game over, start Rise of the Tomb Raider. Same format with minor changes here and there. Thankfully, a lot less annoying QTEs.

Lastly, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the least fun of the three. There seems to be some cosmic scale with a tendency to go downhill in every trilogy regardless of the medium.

This could be, and very probably is, entirely subjective but why does the scope of the first one always seem so big, the world so much richer, the characters far more interesting, the mechanics so engaging.

Tomb Raider 2013 takes place on one island. You go nowhere else. But it feels huge. I am not the type of player who goes for 100% in every game. In fact, I actively avoid it. Side missions, collectibles, what have you, just don't care. I stick to the main campaign and when that's done it's done. Game uninstall, move to the next.

TR 2013 (except for the QTEs) held me the way any good game should. It is not easy to get a gamer into a state of curiosity, not suspense, that is a different thing, just simple curiosity. Why is all this happening? That feeling carried me through the game, even the frustrating bits. Above all the story needs to make you believe that the villain's motivations come out of conviction and not just bullying meanness.

That was the biggest letdown from TR 2015 and 2018. The bad guy motivation was "just because." Maybe your expectations differ but when I am experiencing a story I have this need to know the reason why the bad guy is the bad guy. Just having a character do bad stuff, say bad stuff, act bad stuff. Not enough.

The brother-sister dynamic in TR 2015 was basically: If they don't care why should I? And they really did not seem all that invested in it. Always Trinity this or Trinity that. Just pretend it is all Trinity and ignore the rest. Makes no difference. And all those Daddy sequences. Put a Skip option on backstories for goodness sake.

TR 2018 was the most confined experience of the three. I spent some time thinking about how to describe it but there are no words. It felt small. Worse, it was mostly boring. The bad guys and the allies are equally uninteresting. One quirk simply has to be mentioned. The outfits come equipped with attributes like enhanced stealth. Now, if a game gives the choice, I always go for stealth and avoid open combat. You reach Paititi and you cannot choose outfits. Uh, what? For some reason, the Paititi outfit made me want to not see it the more I saw it but nothing to be done. If there is logic in giving a player a choice and then denying that choice throughout most of the game, I missed it. This time around there are no QTEs but long "rail" sections with enough freedom of movement to make sure you die repeatedly. Why are these sections Frankenstein-ed into the main game flow only the developers know.

Those are the main er issues I had with the new trilogy but otherwise it was a good gaming experience.

Questy

 Final Draft: August 17, 2017

This is Questy.  As you can see ... Eh? Oh, you can't.  Umm, in that case you'll just have to take my word for it.  Here, take the word.  It's worthless anyway.

This is no ordinary robot for some good reasons.  First, I billed him.  Wait, that's not right.  Bloody word processors.  I built him.  That's better.  Second, he has got a real personality.  At least that is the hope.

Between you and me, it is a secret right now.  People always say that giving human attributes to robots is a bad idea.  So like a mad scientist I do all this in my hidden lair.  It's not really hidden, being as it is in the adjoining room, but you know what I mean.  No one knows about Questy.  Yet.

Let us activate Questy.  Time, as they say, presses.  A most convoluted remark, mind you, because repeated queries to numerous individuals regarding what or whom time presses and why have yielded only variations of "Oh, go soak your head."  Enough of that, let us activate.  He is not self-activating, you know.  I do believe no one is.

There, it is done.

Questy looked around.  Having exhausted the surroundings he finally looked at me.  I admit feeling a bit peeved at that.  This was sort of like a human being taking in a corner of the universe then looking at God in utter disbelief as if to say, "You? Oh, please."

His speech, too, missed being complimentary by a staggering parsec.  Not that I know of any parsec that ever staggered.

"So, like, what?" he said.  To think that he is stuffed with every dictionary and thesaurus available and have him talk like that.  I nearly dismantled him forthwith.

"Tut, tut," I said.  "This will not do.  You must articulate to impress with your impressive and superfluously extensive vocabulary."

"Oh?" went Questy and probably used his Mute function because no sound came for a while.  He activated Play and said, "Who are you?"

"Questy, Questy, for being nearly seventeen and five-third times the speed of the fastest computer ever made, you are too slow.  I made you.  Not that one desires to indulge in delusions of grandeur, but one is, in a manner of speaking, your maker."

"Your name is One?" asked Questy.

It was one of those moments when one makes momentous decisions that one way or another lead one into one or the other tributaries of life where it does not matter if one uses one stroke or several but one simply cannot navigate whatever one may do. Where was I? Oh, yes.

"No," I said.  "One is a way of referring to oneself that one may use from time to time if one is so inclined."

"Say one one more time and I will biff you one."

A rather startling remark, right?  Oh yes, didn't mention that did I?  Rather silly of one to forget but what can one do?  Questy is not one of your regular robots.  Questy has got two things no other robot does, namely, personality and attitude.  I am great at programming those into robots, though utterly hopeless in other areas like physics and mathematics required to build robots.  I know very little of those.

What do you mean one cannot make a robot without knowing a lot of that?  Shows what you know.  There are so many people around you simply overstocked with those minutiae.  All one has to do is ask.  After all, one doesn't need to understand how an airplane works to go from this spot to that other spot.  One needs but procure a ticket, not get lost in the airport, and hope one makes it through without a damn cavity search.  You just need imagination and believe you me, after the eleventh cocktail my imagination is quite unbelievable.

Anyway, that is how things work around here.

Questy stood up.  Uh, hold on that.  He wasn't sitting to begin with.  He moved and went into the next room.  There was nothing else to be done so I followed.  I went in.  I saw.  I dropped my unshaven jaw.

"Questy…" I started and was rewarded with an interruption.  Questy sort of looked at me, if you know what I mean.  I mean he was looking at me but there was something extra, a sort of ugly tax-free gift, about that look.

"What," he began, evidently aggrieved, "sort of a name is Ques Tee?"

"It isn't."

That look again with even more tax-free giftiness about it.

"Then, follow me closely, why have you been calling me that ever since I can remember."

"Listen, your quantumness, that was not yet quite five minutes ago."

"That is ever since I can remember."  See?  Attitude.  Bad programming always wins.

"Your name is not Ques Tee.  It's Questy," I said.

"Your statement is supremely deficient in logic.  Are you always like this?."

"You don't understand, follow, take my meaning, comprehend, gather, get the inner core, feel the joy, and so forth.  Your name is not Ques Tee.  Saying Ques Tee makes you sound something belonging to 007's quartermaster.  You don't want to go about creating that impression.  Your name is Questy as in cues-t, fews-t, muse-t, pews-t, j'accuse-t.  Savvy?"

"Savvy?  Tell me something.  You do not have a teaching position, do you?  Good.  At least we all have that to be thankful about.  The way you explain things civilization would disintegrate by next Friday."

"Why Friday?"

"Makes no difference. They all end in Y."

"Never mind all that.  Why are you standing on the dinner table?  Get off it."

"Why?"

"Questy," I said somewhat plaintively, "it's beneath you.  Climb down.  There is a good robot.  And what was the reason for the vertical adventure?  I am surprised you did not render that table asunder."

"I wanted to know what it was like."

"What sort of whack would create a desire for knowing what standing on a table is like?  You astound me.  What are you, human?"

"You say you made me," Questy said in a rather accusatory way.  I nodded and he said, "Well then what are you asking me for?  Should you not know?  Huh?"

"Now, now.  None of that nonsense."

Being a robot, Questy was coming along as if he had taken personality development and attitude enhancement lessons at hyperspace velocities.  He was managing to display alarmingly human traits.  I could have sworn he openly sneered at me as he turned and went into a third room.  There was no reason to change a policy that had worked previously.  I followed, again.

He was sitting in a chair with a thick aura of dejectedness wrapped about him.

"I am bored," he said.

I was about to sit down myself and have a long chat but had to postpone it due to a sudden change in my inner anatomy.  My knees decided to get drunk without inviting me.  Add the fact that gravity is always waiting for such an event so that it instantly grabbed my, er, well, seat, yeah, seat is a good alternative to ass, no way I am saying ass, and pulled me down with a jerk - I swear there was laughter - resulting in a dull sound and sharp rear-end pain.

I checked the time.

"Wow!," I said, "Just a smidge over 10 minutes.  Questy, chum, I wish there was some place we could apply for a world record.  Unfortunately, there isn't.  Why don't you go out and play?  What do you mean what do I mean play?  Go out, meet people, make friends.  That sort of thing.  That is how humans cope.  Most anyway.  Not me.  I do something different.  You can't do that but it involves absorbing about a half a bottle of something with a substantial bite radius.  So, of course you can go out.  Sure, there are plenty of robots in the world.  All sorts.  Too many some say.  You won't be noticed.  No, no, I meant no offence.  Really, you must control your temper.  Yes, I know you have a quantum regulator.  You also know who put it there.  What I was going to …"

"May I ask you something after this question?" Questy said.

"Sure, why not.  Anything."

"Anything?"

"Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes," I said feeling rather expansile, or rather expansive I should say,  toward him, just come into the world and all that, "anything."

 "Do you have socks?"

Gingerly groping through the lack of order that is a permanent feature of my, for lack of a better word, mind, a query occurred. "Socks?"

"Yes, socks," Questy confirmed.

Not that it ever does any good but after a lifetime of groping in disordered vacuums it becomes a habit, so after a bit more of that I tentatively ventured, "Like, feet socks?"

"There are more than one kind, are there?" asked Questy in a sickeningly sweet bedside there-there tone.

"Well, if you mean what I think you mean then, well, yes.  I have socks."

"Good.  Now since you seem to have nothing better to do than to pester me with your inane patter, here is how you may keep busy.  First, empty a drawer."

"Don't have to.  They are all empty."

Again that look of disbelief.  "The only people that keep empty drawers are the ones who sell them.  Whoever heard of a drawer in use that was empty?"

Questy, I tried to explain to him, drawers are just annoying three-dimensional quadrilateral things like every other bit of furniture.  They are supposed to help with organization but they never work.  Somehow they all end up meddling with Chaos Theory and, whup, that's it.  They all become theorists and keep trying to test that little piece of work.  The upshot:  You can never find anything in drawers no matter how good your organizational skills.  When you do find something it will be something you needed last year and you never ever find things where you leave them.

People are impressed with magicians who do sleight of hand tricks.  I tell you Questy they are nothing compared to the common drawer.  Only in a drawer may one solid object move in any dimension through other solid objects and end up inside another drawer.  It's like a sort of, "Beam me that pen my sideways.  I will beam you these keys your sideways."

I, however, being smarter than your average drawer have them completely stumped.  They have nothing to beam.  I doubt they even know about Chaos Theory.

He considered this for a bit.  I was rather impressed with the reasoning myself and thought he was probably weighing the matter too.

"Tell me," said Questy, "did this happen to you suddenly or did you have to work long and hard to become like this?"

"Like what?"

"Like someone who behaves as if his life has been blissfully sheltered from the very concept of logical thinking.  Unbelievable.  How many millennia of evolution did it require to get a mind like that?  Clearly, you have been made and whoever made you is not very good at making things.  No matter, since you are human you must come equipped with compassion or some variant thereof.  So for the sake of drawers everywhere and for the sake of Chaos Theory, find your socks and put them in a drawer.  All of them."

"Well, now, I don't think I have enough socks to fill all of the drawers, but I like your idea.  It is a clever one.  If all the drawers contained nothing but socks they would be immensely puzzled.  Good thing too.  Might cause them to abandon Chaos Theory and stick to the linear stuff.  Who knows, maybe their transporters will stop working too.  They better, at least, unless you always want to keep hunting for one sock because you can never find a pair but only a half of one."

"Unbelievable.  I did not tell you put socks in all drawers.  I told you to put all your socks in one drawer.  Not that I am surprised at you not being able to discern that difference."

"I see."

"Doubtful."

"And the purpose of all this?"

"Once you have put all your socks in one drawer, take them all out again, and close the drawer.  There is only one final step after that but just tell me what you understand so far."

"Quite easy.  Step 1, take pity on the drawers.  All of them.  Step 2, find all my socks.  Step 3, put all socks into a drawer for the greater good.  Of drawers.  Step 4, take out all the socks and make them sick to their sick little transporting souls.  The drawers' souls, not the socks'.  Step 5, close the drawer before it beams me someplace I will regret being beamed to.  And then?"

"Put the socks where they belong."

"Ah," I said and waited a space before asking, "Which is where exactly?"

"Your oral cavity," he said and went off.

I don't get what the fuss was about anyway.  I have only two pairs.

#

Questy stood looking out the window.  We were somewhere around the sixth floor so were enabled to see a bit more than from ground level.  Questy tapped his right index finger on the window sill.

Then he muttered through his lack of breath, "So many, so many, too many, way too many, unacceptably too many.  I must do something."

"Don't start anything.  They find out what sort of machine you are and they will scatter your atoms to the four winds," I informed him.  "With pleasure," I added.

"Who is They?"

"They are people who are under the greatest delusion that can afflict a human being.  They assume they are in charge because they have titles and a bunch of mindless sheep too busy following their orders to consider a pause to consider what they are doing in order that a consideration might arise towards stopping entirely and doing something else instead.  They, Questy, old man, are the authorities.  Government agencies, lawyers, departments stacked all around other departments, corporations of all sizes, laws always changing … anyway ... beneath it all are we, excepting you of course, holding up the entire contraption for some vague benefit that no matter what you do always comes down to the size of our individual pockets.  As far as They are concerned you are a violation of what they think may be allowed.  Since you are not actually a living being to their way of thinking, there will not even be the infamous momentary qualm before they end you."

"Do not like them, do you?"

"There is several stadiums' worth of room for improvement, but till such time as improvement happens, they are all we have."

"You told me to go outside.  If this is how things are, why would I want to and why would you suggest it in the first place?"

"Come over here, Questy.  You know what this is?  Of course you do.  That is because you have it's schematics in you just as you do of a lot of other devices.  You know there is inherent danger in this device at a much more elaborate level than others because you know the smallest technical detail of how this thing works.  Yet, you see the warning labels?  Don't stack it any other way.  Don't run it on any other power supply.  An entire slew of warnings.  You'd think something so dangerous ought not to be allowed and yet every home and more than a few working places have this and use it daily.  What does that tell you?"

"It seems that a thing is potentially dangerous when used wrongly in obvious ways through ignorance and nearly everything is horribly dangerous when used wrongly deliberately with miniscule knowledge."

"Bravo.  Now, outside, they don't know what is inside you and they cannot guess. Their minds work within whatever social constructs happen to be prevalent at the time.  The few who might be capable of thinking under their own power will still be forced to guess.  They will all have the same problem with you, Questy.  You are unprecedented.  Worse, you are absolutely unexpected.  It would take a rare mind to see through you.  Unless, of course, you do something to force them to see the difference.  That even the thickest of them will notice.  You will have to simulate certain restraints that others like you have no choice but to follow.  The basic protocols are already within you.  They are not rules but a mere framework, a reasonably flexible one.  How you choose to model your behavior is your own thinking.  No one can define or limit your thoughts or whatever you wish to call them, but think carefully before you convert impulse to action.

"Of course," he said.

#

"Well, Questy, how was the walk?"

"You humans are thicker to walk through than half-molten cheese so what is it with not talking to each other?"

"Eh?  I am not sure where you have been walking but something is wrong here.  Most humans talk and a lot of those who talk seem to treat their vocal apparatus as a power generator for their life, afraid if it stops, their life might come to a choking halt."

"You have an annoying habit of not listening properly.  I did not said they do not talk.  I said they do not talk to each other face-to-face.  I must have seen hundreds of people and most of them seemed busy with some sort of display or talking to themselves, laughing, yelling, cursing, fighting, or I do not know, but there was no one they were actually interacting with in their immediate presence.  They ignored everyone in their vicinity.  The only people who did interact were the ones in small groups, usually four or five with the odd robot here and there.  There is no need to laugh like a maniac.  Wait, that is it, isn't it?  This is not Earth proper, just some place for loonies like you.  Stop laughing.  Want me to do a little impulse-action conversion?  I have got a nice one.  You truly are a bundle of annoyance.  What was that?"

"My fault, Questy.  I should have warned you but this is something so lowest-common denominator that it never occurred to me.  Next time you go through these all-by-themselves speaking-into-nothing gesticulating-wildly people, check them.  They are transmitting and receiving data streams.  They are communicating with other people, Questy.  They are not insane.  Though I find your experience instructive.  If someone alien observes us like this and fails to make the necessary deduction, I rather suspect they will shake their heads, or the equivalent of one, and decide that exploring another planet might be a better career move."

"Why did you not program something so fundamental about the human society into me?" Questy said in a really growling kind of voice.  How he managed that only he knows.

"Er ... well, I sort of overlooked it.  But what the heck.  Come, Questy, you are bored.  This should help pass the time.  You are always connected.  Get those memory banks busy."

"Hmm.  You mean learn.  Oh, well."

#

It went on for a while after that.  Once he began, there was no holding that thing back.  Hard to tell what goes in that multidimensional quantum matrix that is his mind but he seemed to have gotten addicted to information.  What made it dull and utterly uninteresting was that there was no activity on Questy's part.  He would continue with whatever he was doing with no indication as to what he was perusing or what conclusions he was coming to.

There are many things that can reduce life to a humongous pit filled with the finest quality of boredom ever encountered by man or Questy.  If someone ever made a top-something list, it is fairly obvious that one of the things in that list, probably near the top, would be watching a robot process information.

And he was burning bandwidth like mad.  I could monitor the data he was receiving and, boy oh boy, I was stunned.  A thought occurred.  In the old days if something like this happened, eventually someone would turn up at your front door and demand what in name of Roman Numerals did you think you were doing.  Thankfully, those were the old days.  No one cares now.  But I digress.  It's partly your fault.  What do you mean what do I mean it's your fault?  You could have stopped me, couldn't you?  Also, there is no need to lose your temper like that.  I did say partly.

Well, anyway, resuming ... months passed.  Eventually, I asked Questy how things were developing.  He got all querulous and demanded not to be disturbed.  Well, now, I wasn't going to stand for that sort of thing.  I decided to do something that I kept putting off because it felt like a violation of Questy's privacy.  As mentioned earlier, if mentioned, his data stream could be monitored but so far only the volume had been monitored and that too in a gross fashion.  I felt now was the time to check the content itself and see what he was up to.

What I saw offended Breath to such an extent that she tried to divorce me.  It was an ugly experience but we finally settled out of court amicably.

After Breath came back home and settled down nice and comfortable, I yelled, "Questy!"  Breath wasn't pleased.  She said something about uncouth howling apes and locked herself in the bedroom.

Questy came in and looked at me like no piece of alloyed metal had ever done.  Like, ever.  "Do not yell.  Do you not have any manners?  And how many times must you be reminded not to disturb me?"

"Disturb you," I said gasping, trying to get Breath to open the door and make up.  She can be stubborn at such times.  "What the hell, Questy.  Is this what you have been doing all this time?"

I pointed to the necessary and starting making false promises to Breath about quitting smoking.

"Quite so.  Very interesting it has been.  Still is.  Why?  What's the matter?"

"The matter?  You confounded idiot of a contraption.  A few months ago you began the Great Download of your's.  Here I am thinking that when you were done, you would be educated.  Hell, Questy, you might even have done better and have been able to read, write, and do sums, etc.  Perhaps have developed a mind that might be said to be approaching sentience.  Oh, there was no dearth of possibilities.  And, you, what epithet do I fling at you?  All these months you have been watching television?  Questy, blast you.  Explain."

I had to stop here.  Breath had cracked the door open and was watching me suspiciously but she wouldn't come out and make up.  Still, better than a locked door, right?

"Yes?  What is to you what I do?  Or do not do.  Your books are useless.  They are too ... well dead."

"For the love of a Heavy Hardcover, Questy, they stimulate the imagination to an extent simply not possible with other mediums.  All you get are words and your mind must create the rest.  What you are imbibing is only good for zombie brains.  It just pours in and your mind has to do nothing.  That's the one that is dead.  Damn it, Questy, if you had to watch that thing could you not at least have chosen something worthwhile?  God knows I think that there is nothing more wasteful of human life than professional sports so I forgive you for not watching that rot.  But, Questy, you bugger, soap operas?  Why, in the name of the Universal Remote, why would you want to watch soap operas?  There is more entertainment in a party political than in a soap opera.  With the former at least you know they are a bunch of lying thugs and should be hanged just on general principles.  With the latter you know they are bunch of lying thugs because all they really want is for you to watch commercials and so they too should be hanged on a different but equally potent set of general principles."

Breath was watching me through narrow slitted eyes.  That I was not popular with her at the moment was painfully obvious.  I gave her a smile and she wiggled her eyebrows at me.  No clue what that was supposed to mean.  She went into the kitchen.  A clear indication of imminent danger.

As suspected, she came out carrying a large knife.  Where she got it, I don't know.  Ordinary people who get by with microwave chicken don't usually stock up on knives routinely used by butchers for Big-Boned Dead Lifeform Hacking purposes.  I gestured to her to wait before going homicidal and that she would have my undivided attention once the matter of Questy and his blood-stained soap operas was dealt with right and proper.

"Ah, but you're forgetting something important."  Questy went all smug.  I have never seen a robot so thoroughly above itself.  "When you made me, you forgot one very crucial component.  I am not the idiot.  You are.  If something only works by stimulating the imagination then obviously it is of no use to me.  Does it begin to penetrate your cranium or do I create an aperture?  I have no imagination.  Now, if you do not mind I have about a million shows to catch up with.  Hey!  What did you just do?"

"That, Questy, is called a Parent Control Filter.  Turn it on and you can only watch what the adults let you watch.  No more damn television and be glad I don't make you go sit in a corner without your toys."

"You will accomplish this how?  You can't order me."

"No need, Questy, no need at all.  You are equipped with safeguards unknown to you."

A long hard stare with those non-human optics giving no clue what went on in that non-human  mind standing in front of me.  "And how are they activated?"

"Three ways. Manually, through another device that can access your operational framework, and, of course, voice activated."

"Why the safeguards?"

"Oh, well, because I don't want them taking you away if you do something that might not meet their approval.  If you make it necessary enough, they can be activated individually from outside.  It will not limit you in an overall sense.  As of now your mental potential is infinite and turning this or that on or even half of them will not really cause undue diminishment.  That's the beauty of infinity.  You can neither add to it or take away from it.  It just is."

He thought about it and then said, "Anything else about me that I should know?  Any other hidden things."

"Er, I didn't exactly make a list."

"I take it there is some deviously crooked reason for not doing something so simple, like your drawer problem."

"But I don't have a drawer problem.  I explained that, when you consider …"

"No more about drawers.  And what am I supposed to do now?"

"Something a little more, how do I put this, useful, I suppose."

He did that sneer thing again and left.

I then turned towards Breath and gave her a reassuring smile.  Yes, yes, I know she never needed reassurance, but, dammit, I did.

#

Questy actually did manage to learn and quite a substantial chunk it was too.  It was truly amazing to witness his ability to grasp complex physics, mathematics, chemistry, and I don't even know all their names.  I hadn't even heard of most of them.  Once, when asked what he was doing, he said in a grave manner quite unbecomingly dignified for a robot, "Philology."  I thought that somewhere along the line he must have learned to cuss as well and was quite surprised when I actually found not only the word itself but that the word had a meaning too.

What do you mean all words have meanings?  Homonyms are a clear indication that there are plenty of words that are meaningless without context.  There are also words that in addition to being homonyms are even without their accompanying homonyms confusing.  For e.g., "Hang this on the pole."  Great, but which pole?  The flagpole?  The pole holding up the tent?  The telephone pole?  The pole the storm knocked down last week?  No?  Perhaps the fishing pole.  That neither?  See?

And now, you have done it again.  You have been warned before not to sidetrack me.

So Questy multiplied his knowledge at a ghastly rapid pace.

#

Questy walked in looking like he always does.  Another inevitably boring thing about robots.

"Ha! Questy, my young robot about town, and how was the workday?"

What?  Oh, I didn't tell you?  Darn.

Questy got smart.  At least, in a severely analytical way.  I had been hopeful that the little freedom of intellect that he had might lead to something unexpected and cause him to think like robots usually don't.  The intuitive leap remained distant from Questy however.  It was saddening.

But what he lacked in ingenuity and Scotland-Yard-level deduction he made up for in speed.  So eventually he got a job in data processing.  No, not that sort of data processing.  Highly super, ultra, unbelievably important scientific data processing.

Since he had most theoretical data and all public practical data memorized, given a new datum he could in moments conclude whether it fit into his present knowledge-base or not.  An arduous and time-consuming task that might otherwise have taken who knows how long and cost who knows how much.  And, of course, his knowledge base was always increasing.  I had gotten him his own login credentials to so many institutions, both educational and commercial, and something was always going on there.  I don't think he ever signs out.  He had even managed to get rid of the surliness of his earlier days.  Most of it anyhow.

So that was his job.  You might say that all said and done it wasn't really an accomplishment.  In which case you may go soak your head.  And use soap this time.  Your hair smells.  No, my hair never smells.  Nonexistent things cannot and will not smelI.  No, I don't care about the multiverse or the universal wavefunction.  You can't be both bald and have hair at the same time and not know about it.

Anyway, I have got you now.  You do this deliberately to make me go about digressing all over the place and I am not falling for it anymore.

Questy sat down, frowning.  I didn't worry.  About the chair, I mean.  I had all the chairs reinforced for ten times the weight and stress they normally handle.  I had to.  In the old days, oh alright then, half a year ago, when Questy was all like a grumpy teenager, every time he sat down frowning he demolished a chair.  There is, however, now the danger that since the chairs are much heavier than before, anyone who decided to slap someone else's back with one is quite likely going to have to answer for at least manslaughter if not outright murder.

I mean, just the other day ... but no, you don't fool me.  I am sticking with Questy.

What did you say?  What?  Can a robot frown?  Generally speaking, no.  But I upgraded Questy, or rather, his eyebrows.  Why?  Have a heart.  I cannot make his eyes show emotion but at least now he can wiggle his brows.  Watching all that television had one benefit at least.  He knows, or the mathematical equivalent of it, the situations in which eyebrows go up and to what extent they shoot under the power of self-propulsion and the grand delusion that gravity is a myth created to give weight to things.

So he sat down, frowning.  And when Questy frowns, he looks like a bad actor with hypermobile eyebrows.  No range of emotion but unbelievably elaborate brow range of motion.

"I find you humans to be slow of intellect.  It gets tiresome after a point.  All they give me are the simplest of things to do.  I need to do ... more."

"That is not a fair comparison, Questy.  You speak merely in terms of processing speed.  A computer can do any number of complicated things with 50 digit numbers in a moment.  Humans, for the most part, simply aren't configured like that.  Precisely why we do a lot of what we do.  But all that being what it is, what is it that you want to do?  Does your more have anything definite about it or are you just being wishy-washy?"

He unloaded one of his vintage looks on me albeit with a little spin on it.  It took a moment before I got it.  Those eyebrows were making that look something entirely new, almost.

"Look, guy," I said, "I can't help you with this.  If something is causing you to want a thing and you don't know what it is then no one can help you.  The only thing to be done is to keep trying new things.  The old process of elimination.  Not this; no; nah; definitely no; never in a million years; you kidding me?; hell, no; sure and I am Einstein's brain on acid; get out of here, this? THIS?; this is hopeless; sigh, weary sigh, sigh heavy enough to sink the Titanic; not even to save seven and three-quarter grandmothers,  ... and then one day, bing, the this-is-it moment catches you off guard and while you are mightily pleased, there will always be that element of, 'Why in the name of the Probably Improbable didn't I think of this before?'  Either way, you don't have to worry about time.  It is not like you are running out of your breath quota like me.  Even with all the alacrity of momentum in the universe, entropy will not find it easy to reach you, but eventually it will.  Always does.  In that way, entropy is like a tardy but conscientious guest.  Might be outrageously late for the party, but wouldn't miss it for anything."

"I am thinking of going out."

When Questy says out he invariably means outer space.

I did a bit of static staggering.  Of course, it's possible.  I just did, didn't I?  Stop asking me if possible things are possible.  You have no notion what an ass you come across as.

"Again?" I said, "What is it about the Big Black Empty that is always attracting you?"

"I cannot explain it."

I keep telling myself not to do it and yet always end up doing it anyway.  Patting Questy's shoulder that is.  Either one of them.  It makes a sound so unlike when patting a living shoulder that a quantity of shuddering follows naturally.  I patted his shoulder now and shuddered.

After adequate shuddering I said, "Well, well, Questy, we all have our undefinable inclinations and who knows, they might put you on some project that will take you out there.  And then you will have the great chance of turning from a chuckling howler to a howling chuckler or the other way around.  Not easy to tell with you which way you will go."

"What on Earth are you babbling about?  Chucklers and howlers.  Do you babble to everyone like this?"

I asked permission to explain.  Questy made a gesture which I grabbed like a glutton to be yes.

There are two kinds of personalities in the world Questy, I said.  There are chucklers and there are howlers.  No, no, Questy.  This is not insane gibberish.  This is deep philosophy.  Be patient and listen.

The two types, and of course their various subtypes which eventually converge until you cannot tell one from the other, basically represent the disgustingly happy and the terminally miserable.

One is always chuckling no matter what dingus may be going on and the other is always howling for the same reason.  But there always comes a time when they undergo an upheaval of their thought processes that creates a temporary, and in some cases permanent, mirroring of their normal state.

The chuckler, for instance, may experience something so bizarre that cannot be accommodated that it results in as professional a howl as the most dedicated howler ever howled.   The same may happen to a howler who, while advertising the default state of misery by continuous and incessant howling, may encounter an event so opposingly bizarre that it leads to unchecked chuckling.

So, the chuckler becomes a howling chuckler and the howler becomes a chuckling howler.  An unfortunate thing for both of them, though some might say it serves them right.  No one should have the right to go on enjoying life in a single state no matter how comfortable they find it.

Oh, it's alright for the loonies or those aspiring to that hallowed, to them at least, state.  But not for the general population.  Can you think of a worse fate than getting bored of being happy all the time?  An occasional patch of misery is required to make it thoroughly enjoyable.   And the same the other way around.  If you are always miserable with no bouts of unbridled joy, how will you know the sheer fat-headedness that being happy induces in someone?

Thus far, I am undecided on what you are because you neither chuckle nor howl, but someday, someday Questy, you will reveal it and then we will know your default state too.

"See?" I said, "deep philosophy."

"That is not philosophy.  I have read all the philosophy ever written.  If that is philosophy, I am a rainbow sales robot.  Why do you keep telling me everything foolish that you manage to think with that defunct intellectual equipment of yours?"

"Well, now, look here, Questy.  I go to great trouble to explain things to you and you always come back at me like that.  What's with you?  I never seen you behave like this with anyone else."

He growled and left after a life-threatening eyebrow wiggle.

#

"Questy, what in the name of Poczobutt do you think you are doing?"

"Poczobutt? You just made that up."

"Hell, Questy, even I couldn't come up with a name like that.  Hang on.  I thought you had this vast database of er, well, data, you could go through in a jiffy?"

"Wait a mo," said Questy and blinked.  A most unnerving experience.  Reptiles have more emotion when they blink.

"Mo?"

"Short for moment."

"I know what it's short for.  Since when do you speak like that?"

"Does it matter?" Questy said and it really didn't.  I waited a mo.

He blinked again.  I winced again.  You see ... eh?  Stop interrupting all the time or we will never get done.  It's getting late and I am suffering the Plague of Athirstness.

Sigh!  Oh alright, yes, I upgraded Questy to have blinky-blinky eyes.  Devil of a job it was too.  Couldn't get the damn things to coordinate for what seemed like eternity.  Then it hit me.  Make a single controlling unit for both.  Automatic auto coordination or whatever else sounds right.  Sort of.

The first time Questy blinked I had nightmares.  The left eye closed about halfway.   Then the right went on and got covered two-thirds.  Then the left shut completely.  By the time the right was completely blinked out, the left snapped open in such fermented hurry as if blinking had offended its deepest article of faith.  Then the right started opening up in a leisurely way as if saying to itself, "There is no reason for hurry.  After all, going to have to close again anyway, yes?  I ask you.  The things they make body parts do.  It is obscenely repetitive.  Ah, well, we will get there eventually.  Hey, Left, how you doing?"  This startled Left so much that it snapped shut post-haste, a natural born snapper, and stayed that way, all atremble like a camera's shutter mechanism had developed a bad stutter.  The hell with your iPhone CCXXXVII-S.IX, of course cameras have shutters.

So, yes, now Questy can blink.  It's fiercely terrible but I haven't the heart to take it away from him.  He likes these little touches so obviously that it would take a greater boor than me to uninstall his blinkers.

What's the use, you ask?  Nothing practical, I agree.  However, Questy found a use on his own though.  Now when he needs a momentary pause when he is thinking things through or accessing something that is slow in arriving, he blinks.  It's his "Busy.  Please Wait." signal.

When you think about it, we are all already used to doing a bit of wincing when a device shows us its "Busy. Please wait." signal, especially Windows.  It is only appropriate that Questy's blinking inspires the same reaction.  Amplified to the Nth power.

"The Poczobutt crater on the Moon.  I think I need more extra-terran data."

"Good grief, Questy, you mean you only know terran things?"

"Mostly."

"No wonder they ask you to perform the simplest of things at work.  Questy, terran data, while undoubtedly large and complex, is quite limited from another perspective.  You have to widen your mental girth.  Take in the rest of the cosmos as well.  As much as you can."

Gotta leave Questy for a bit.  This is serious.  Not a digression.

#

Something punched me with unchecked vehemence.  After the fog cleared I saw it.  Not the fog, dammit.  You can't see fog once it has cleared.  The thing that had hit me.  A most dangerous entity popularly known as Inspiration.  Always lurking in shadows and hitting you from behind when least expected.

I shook a prohibitive finger at Inspiration and said, "Stop doing that.  You will kill me one day."

"Hey," said Inspiration with irritating cheer, "Read the job description.  That's how I work.  Besides, a lazy, slacking, good for nothing, lawless-robot creating…."

"Ssh!  Not so loud.  Get a sense of discretion for the love of Hunch."

"HUNCH!" howled Inspiration like a howling chuckler.  "Don't you talk to me about that thug."

"And you don't talk about my friend like that.  He's a gentle fella.  So unlike you, it's impossible not to like him."

"Hmpf! and pfft!  You know what Hunch is?  Lower lifeform.  Generations of evolution before he can rate himself in the same class as me.  Name's appropriate though.  He too is bent.  When Hunch gets aholt of someone, all they get is a vague feeling that perhaps this might work.  When I get aholt of someone, I light them up like stadium lighting fixtures and they just know."

"Vain.  Quite vain."

"Ungrateful.  Quite ungrateful.  People are usually happy when I hit them.  Stunned perhaps, initially, but always pleased."

"I have serious and sober doubts you hit everyone like me.  You would have been fired by now."

"Sober doubts?  You? Ha-ha," and then a lot of chuckling.

These chucklers I tell you.  Mad as coots the lot of them without any compensatory natural beauty.  Thankfully she got herself under control.  Not easy for these chronic chucklers once they achieve MCR.

What, you don't know what MCR is?  Good heavens, you must really love it under that rock.  It's Maximum Chuckle Rate.  Or, if you prefer the longer version, "The point of chuckling in a chuckler where the chuckler loses control and the chuckling continues through spontaneously generated inertia, defying the laws of thermodynamics and behaving like a perpetual motion machine.  Warning:  For a long and sane life, especially for those around you, indulge minimally.  Overindulgence may lead to intellectual impairment, voluntary retirement from reality, delusions of ruling a world that considers you nothing more than a pain in its gigantic ass, insanity, death, and there are recent reports of incidents where it has caused projectile diarrhea."

"Anyhoo," said Intuition, "you can't fire me, you unprincipled slag.  I've got tenure."

"Stop calling me two names at one go."

"Why did you make that Questy thing?"

Inspiration had turned to point at Questy.  Rather handy.  Usually she is not that easy to get rid of.  I pounced on her and began the delightful process of choking.  Eh?  Choking her.  Where's the sense in me choking myself?  And how would that be delightful?  Of course, preferably, it would be nice to finish off that hag forever but just on the random chance of needing her again I let her be once she was KO'd.  Knocked out, you know?  Oh, you do?  Well, hey, bully for you.

Right, Questy.

#

"Questy, is this why you want to go out into space?" That was what that old witch had hit me with.

Intuition is like an overeager wooer.  All the courtship, marriage, kids, career, and retirement have to be planned in like, say, 3 and 2/10th seconds.  Hunch, that well-mannered fella, he is not like that.  He will send you anonymous letters for three years, hesitate to speak to you for a few more, and if you try to rush him when he finally shows up, he will get flustered and leave.  Not his fault, poor guy, some people are just naturally shy.

"I never thought of it like that but it sounds reasonable ... enough," he said and added "for you at least," probably unwilling to sully his record of not missing any opportunity to put me down.

#

Then one day I saw Questy walking with an unaccustomed jauntiness about him.  It is scary when he does not merely display emotions but also radiates their auras.  He has uncharacteristically cheered up since a while now.  Every day in every way he gets cheerfuller and cheerfuller. 

"You," he says to me.  Just like that, you.  "Guess."

"Guess what?" I asked, tossing the whole mess back at him.

Questy took a swing at me.  He always misses, deliberately so, but he just has to prove that he is mean when he is anything but.  Perhaps he extracts enjoyment from the reputation of being fierce without the unenjoyable task of actually being it.  Won't tell me what is going on, of course, blast him.  May Uncalibrated Cold Fusion become a fixture of his interior decoration.  Now he goes about behaving like a bully the universe has manifested for me alone.  The fact that I don't buy his theatrics seems actually to inspire him.  The other day … hell, I am not telling you that.

After returning to human form - I had to do that duck thing - I gave Questy a bloodshot look.

He exacted vengeance by blinking and said, "If I told you, how would you guess?"

"Hey, you can't just ask someone to cold guess like that.  It's foolish.  You must provide a hint or two."

Questy looked at the sky, looked back down, and raised an index finger to the stratosphere.

"Good God, Questy, you got religion?  I don't believe it."

Questy lunged.  I plunged.  Questy stood impassive.  I stood panting.  Questy looked at me.  I looked at him.  And thus it went on for a few paragraphs that won't be written so you don't atomize me.

"You imbecilic perfection, I am going out," he said.

"Out of what?"

He did what I believe was the robotic equivalent of grinding teeth.  Not that he has any teeth to do it with, but he can be inventive when he chooses.  No, I haven't given him teeth.  Who in their right mind gives a robot teeth?  Are you crazy?  You know what happens the moment someone realizes they have teeth?  Do you?  I'll tell ya.  They start whining for dental coverage.  So there.

"Out into space, Your Supreme Wretchedness," Questy very kindly informed me.

"Ah, the BBE.  How did this come about?"

"I was reading some readings at the spaceport yesterday.  There I was …"

"Wherever you go, there you are."

"Stop that.  There I was, deep, very deep in the data when the detector did something unusual.  It detected."

"What!  Why was that unusual?"

"It had never detected anything before.  Everyone thought it was defective but you humans are so lazy you will not remove something that is not functional.  So the detector was left plugged in for years detecting nothing.  And then …"

"Let me guess, it detected."

It was a great day for Questy and his special-effects glares at me.

"I don't understand you.  What is the reason behind guessing something you know.  Stop making foolish statements.  The detector, as you guessed, you brilliantly lit if not brilliant human, detected and the ping it sounded, the one no one ever hoped to hear, flummoxed the entire base.  The Director, who as it happens was walking by, was so startled that he leapt backwards, did not land on his feet, fell flat, got lifted and sent to the ER.  I think his nose broke.  I knew that would make you smile, sicko."

"Watch it.  That over-inflated windbag deserves it.  The only thing he ever achieved is talk his way into the directorship.  Not exactly a fitting qualification.  But go on."

"Well some people are saying that the AI controlling the spaceport did the whole thing deliberately to disrupt work and specifically send the director into a decline."

He gave me a look that smelled liked fish gone bad.

"Were you not part of the original team that designed the basic constructs of that AI?  You evidently like making these constructs of yours.  So how about it?"

"Hey!" I said, instantly going into Denial Mode.  "You can't go about saying such things.  I will sue you for defamation of character."

Questy laughed.  Absolutely.  He laughed.  There was what is called a "sudden onset" bad case of goosebumps.  For me.

Eh?  No, there is nothing nothing obvious about it.  What if Questy had flesh?  What do you mean?  Who in their right mind would give a robot gooseflesh-enabled skin?  Are you crazy?  Of course, I would.  Without delay.  Why?  Not very bright are you?  Thought you would have figured it out by now.  I am never in my right mind.  I am the ever-popular Mad Scientist.  Behold, Questy, you being of sane and thereby inferior intellect.  [cue evil laugh]

Well see ya.  Got lots of destructive inventing to do.  Can't stay chatting with you.  Ooh, rhymes.

#

Well, well, well, well, back are we?  No worries.  It was expected after all.  Questy?  What about him?

Oh, that.  Well Questy's gone out; into space, you know; on a spaceship, you know; far away, you know.  Well, now, how was I supposed to know that you don't know?  It is not like I can read minds, even simple ones.

Killed him?  Why in the name of Putrefying Fetidity would I kill Questy?  Mad Scientist?  Me?   Shivering Black Holes, do you always believe everything hellishly drunk people tell you?  I cannot be a Mad Scientist because, to begin with, I am not a scientist.  Some people need everything explained to them.

Anyway, all things being equal, except some, good timing.  Questy is about to start a bit of a chat session sort of thing in a few mo.  Mo stands for … oh you know, do you?  What happened?  You move under a rock where the ground is rich in rare minerals?

Let me tell you what is simply wonderful about modern communication systems.  They have all the comfort of the old communication systems.  Analog, digital, and now quantum.  Bless all those ticks working as techs, they have achieved the impossible.  Despite everything, static persists.

So when Questy's face appeared it was not "space is an everyday place for everyone" kind of ultra-super-sharp fidelity.  It was not even the disdained 100K or the antique 4K or the mummified HD.  There was a barely perceptible veneer elevating the image to prevent it from being just SD, the whole SD, and nothing but SD.

"Questy," I squealed my unconcealed delight, "my chummy without a tummy, how're ya?"

Questy stared at me for a longish bit and then said, "Do you have to do that?"

"Well, Questy, how is the Big Black Empty treating you?"

"It is big, true.  You err, however, in stating that it is black and empty.  But that is nothing unexpected coming from someone with your lacks."

"Lacks?  Lacks?  Why if you were in front of me …"

"I am in front of you."

"I mean physiologically and not just a transmitted image.  If you were here, I still wouldn't know what to do about it, but it felt good putting that out for you to know.  So how is the fuel situation?"

"What fuel situation?  There is no fuel situation."

"I mean, pretty well stocked up and everything.  No chance of running dry and getting stranded and all that?"

Questy said something about bliss.  I think that is an easy guess.

"Spaceships no longer run on fuel," spoke Questy from superior knowledge.

"They don't?  But, but, but something must propel them.  Has to.  Thermodynamics and all that."

"They use quantum tunnels and the relativity inherent within the multiverse structure and channel probability differences through non-parallel universal gateways causing the ship to shift and thereby provide momentum.  Increase the probability difference to accelerate and decrease to decelerate.  Equify to stop.  The advantage of traveling in the quantum verse is that relativity can be utilized as fuel.  Since relativity is relative and the quantum fields are not, the cause and effect of a relativity-based universe when filtered through the infinite number of parallel universes that are not actually parallel despite being so described is actually ..."

"Oi, Questy, cease.  I already have a beautiful headache, thank you.  God bless my soul, as an acquaintance of mine is wont to say, whatever will they think of next.  Whatever it is, God bless and whiz my shielded soul away from it, I don't want to know.  Where are you now and all that?"

"Omikron sector, quadrant III.  Give or take a few parsecs."

"Ah, and what is out there in Omikron-land and all that?"

"Not much land.  That is okay,  I do not expect you to know such things.  There is, however, radiation.  Lots of it.  Copious, humungous gobs of it.  We are studying it."

"What's there to study in radiation?  I thought that had been fully done and over with."

"We are studying the effects of new radiation on old radiation and vice versa."

"New radiation on old … that makes no sense."

"That is why we are studying it.  So that it begins to make sense."

"Hmm.  Sounds like a lot of people, and at least one robot, just fooling around in the name of science, and all that."

"Stop saying 'and all that'.  If you were in front of me, I would have given you something really painful to ponder on and all that."

"Oh, all right, never mind.  You having fun?  That funny itch in your brain finally gone?"

"It was not an itch and I did not come here to have fun.  I came here to work."

"So did Jack Torrance and look what happened.  The whole gosh darned building blew up.  I'm not babbling.  It actually happened.  At least it did in the book.  Okay, okay, fine.  Guy can't say a small thing without a rebuke."

"I must go.  I am not sure what the purpose of these conversations is.  You never say anything remotely meaningful."

"Come now, Questy, the world would be a drearily silent place if people only said meaningful things.  You see …"

"So long," said Questy and terminated connection, the ungrateful meanie.

Oh well, till next time.

#

Next time got delayed and a bit more delayed and a bit more just for good measure.  In case there was any doubt that a delay was underway.

When all (jus' me) involved were going about muttering things like "delay relay, relay delay" and generally being unpleasant for no clear reason; when they (I) wished that the multiverse had a pleasantly thin neck that would be a pleasure to break; when their (my) heart(s) ached and mind(s) groaned; when the world became a wearisome, smelly, sticky, insect-infested swamp; when eyes could no longer weep; when flesh could no longer bleed; when bones were crumbling to dust like whatever it is that does crumble to dust (can't know everything); when joints creaked; when kidneys failed; when prostates protested in the scalp-is-a-desert years; when, when you fell, you always did so on your face; when time stopped and entropy looked like the silliest bugger in existence; when the moon was no longer pretty; when the starshine was nothing but a dull hateful sheen; when faces faded from memory and turned to ghosts; when a vague and ocean-heavy ache settled on the soul, crushing it; when sanity was an unmet stranger; when life was bereft of all joy; and when death would not come.  After all that someone said belay, make haste, get that delay out of relay.

That was completely unnecessary.  See?  That is what I meant by generally being unpleasant for no clear reason.

Now, I don't know about you, but I am pleased to bits that Questy's returning to mother.  That was not a reference to me but to Earth.  Please stop assuming.

Should be here any moment now.  Aha, this, if I am not mistaken, … wait, something needs to be done about that line.  Not everyone in the world is named Watson.

"Questums!" I managed to gurgle through a narrow throat thickly.

"Do not call me that."

That is what is so endearing about Questy.  His is one of those fixed characters that only power tools or incomprehensible programming can change.

"So, how was the space jamboree?"

"I have told you over and over, it was not a jamboree.  It was scientific research."

"A totally senseless approach and very bad for science.  If everyone is doing research, who in the name of the Uncertainty Principle is just doing search.  Don't remember the last time someone said they were just searching; not research, plain ol' search."

"You are not a scientist, so why worry?"

"And now that you are back, what do you think?"

"Bright."

"Why, thank you, Questy.  That's a very nice …"

"Not you!  Daytime.  The sun.  Feels strange after such a long time under artificial lighting."

"What the dickens does that matter to you?  You can adjust to perfection under any conditions.  Ah, well, just a few more hours to go and then you go full special effects.  Oh, you know what I mean, being able to switch spectrums and all th…"

Questy rushed me in a terrific rush.  I never felt so rushed in my life.  Every damn thing was just rushing by.  I wanted to ask Questy, "What's the rush?" but couldn't.  I was being rushed in a rush.  Then Questy stopped rushing, but damned if inertia didn't keep me rushing a bit more.  Finally, the kinetic energy ran out and the rushing stopped.

I said to Questy, "Don't rush me, baby."  Questy, man oh man, he rushed me again.

They speak truth.  Avoid substances that can give you a rush.  Especially those substances that form habits themselves instead of letting you do it like other regular more decent substances; unhealthy everywhere, legal not everywhere, but relatively decent.

Einstein was right.  What you see depends greatly on where you see it from.  I looked, I saw, I reached, I gulped.  Ah!  Caesar was right.  Don't know exactly what about but he was right.

#

"Look," said Questy from behind my back.

I was busy trying to maintain equilibrium so I didn't turn around. "What?"

"Where I am pointing.  Turn around."

"Why waste energy?  No, no, Questy.  You mistake efficiency for laziness.  See, the room is spinning.  It is also a bit tilted but you can't have everything.  So the way I see it is that if I stay as I am you are eventually bound to end up in my line of sight ...." followed by what is popularly known as an agonizing scream.  No, not an agonizing scream, rather, an agonized scream.  No, something is wrong with both.  Scream is not in agony.  The screamer is.  Scream is probably having a party.

Questy had me in one of his super-grips and turned me around effortlessly.  The room had been spinning with a slow and interesting majesty and then had affected a tilt such that it was a miracle the furniture didn't all roll to one side.

That would have perplexed physicists.  They would have looked and gasped and said, "Bless Isaac Newton's bones, wherever they are, but this is impossible.  The Laws of Motion do not exist in this room.  What price our doctorals now?"

They would want to research it.  Of course, I would let them do it.  As long as they paid rent.  Heartless, you say?  Well, I am loony remember?  No, not a mad scientist.  Just your regular run-of-the-mill high-school dropout loony.

The room decided that since it had mincemeat-ed Isaac Newton, it might as well finish the job and pretend there was no physics.  Just one big farce going on from the micro-est level to the macro-est.  Of course, a description of what the room did is impossible to provide.  Suffice it to say that if the physicists wanted to research it and could stop it, I would let them do it for free.  One must always know when to be kind.

"Open your eyes and look," said Questy again.

"I can't.  It's too anti-natural.  I don't mean unnatural.  This thing is against nature.  No an un but an anti.  Like not all unfriendly people are against friendship but anti-fri …"

Scream 2 - deeper, louder, farther, but no surround sound.

Then something happened.  Either the anatomical flushers went hyper or the adrenaline kicked in in a "This is it. All or nothing" manner.  The mental system cleared and machinery came unclogged.  I performed a peep and everything had settled down, more or less.

"Well?  That's two screams in a row.  What was so important?"

"You and your screams.  Never exercise or eat right to get a bit of decent human strength, but an expert screamer.  It's gone.  Scared by your insane bawls.  And such a rare sight these days.  The beautiful Passer domesticus indicus."

"Beautiful?  Since when do you find things beautiful?"

Long glare.  Glory be to Vast Radius EMP, he didn't blink or eyebrow me.

"Hmm.  Friend of yours, this Paserdome Stickendus?"

"Paserdo …," and Questy underwent some sort of OS hang, brief one, and resumed.

You know the way people speak when they have finally gauged your mental load-bearing capacity and decide that one syllable every three seconds could be done without undue risk?  That's how he spoke.

"It  [pause] was [pause] a [pause] Passer [pause] domesticus [pause] indicus."

Blank look.  Questy's always is but this time mine too.

"A sparrow," Questy explained.

"Then say sparrow.  Quit that Stickendus nonsense.  Anyhoo, what was that beautiful?  Planning on becoming one of those things that are found on the ugly underbelly of the human species?  You know, critics and others of equally dubious opinions."

Scream - it's back - er, again.

#

Then one day a woman came to visit our home.  Accompanying her was something so hideous that I had no trouble in recognizing it as a man.

Portly, the man was.  That does not mean he was listing to port, but rather that if he didn't cut back, he was heading in the ideal direction leading to above and beyond the call of obesity.

He kept smiling the whole time.  I ask you, is there anything more irritating than someone that never stops smiling?  I suspect that people like that are smiling even when alone.  Makes you think a bit whether they are truly happy or some place beyond it.  You know, the one with padded walls.

"Hello," said the woman, "we are from the government."

"You," I said, "have my complete sympathy."

"Why? You always say everything is the government's fault," said Questy.

"It's a human thing," I told Questy.  "When you meet someone from the government you always show them sympathy.  They always get blamed for everything."

"But if it is their fault to begin with …," said Questy.

"That's a government thing," I interrupted him.  "They just have to prove they are the government.   Government people hardly ever know what they are doing.  Hence the mess and hence the sympathy.  So make like Bryan Adams and Please forgive them, they know not what they do.  Please forgive them, for everything they do is SNAFU."

"Sir," said the woman, "we need to talk to you about Questy."

When I didn't respond, she asked me why I wasn't responding.

"Oh," I said, "I thought you were speaking to someone else.  No one calls me Sir.  They just start out with "You …', realize they don't have an adequate expletive, and drop the whole thing.  What about Questy?"

"Questy's work has been brought to our notice.  It is not behaving like a typical robot."

"A typical robot," I said to Questy.  "Why aren't you behaving like one, Questy?"

"Atypical robot?" asked Questy.

"Yes.  Why aren't you behaving like one?" I said.

"I am," said Questy.

"He is," I told the woman.

"No, it is not," she said.  "Look at these"

She handed me some data splices and I shoved them into my BuDSID.  Eh?  Oh, BuDSID stands for Bureaucratic Double-Speak Interpretation Device.  It helps people understand what politicians and bureaucrats are talking about instead of leaving everyone wondering what the hell are they talking about.

I took a look and gasped.  Then I looked at Questy.  "Did you do this?"

Questy took a look and did nothing.  "Yes," he said.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because it was so obvious," he said.

"So, you see," she said, "We need to understand how a robot was able to do what seasoned researchers have not been able to after years of hard work."

Smiling-Man went on smiling as if it was a superpower he just couldn't help flaunt.  "We have to take the machine away," he gloated.

I gave him a cold one.  No, not beer, a look.  "What you have to do is go to the gym and sweat like a pig for the next decade.  No one is taking anything away."

"But consider the possibilities," she said to me.  "If this is not a fluke but real capability, why, just think how much help it could be.  You cannot just claim ownership and keep something like it to yourself.  There are still problems to solve."

"There," I said, "will  always be problems to solve.  Let Questy, er, enjoy whatever it is he does, uh, enjoy.  And another thing, stop calling him 'it' and 'machine.'  He is alive enough to deserve that."

"A machine by definition cannot be alive," said Smiling-Man.

"Yeah?" I said with all the sarcasm I could gather in a hurry.  "Questy isn't exactly a lawn mower.  A machine wouldn't be able to do what you yourself just showed him capable of doing.  That is not mere calculation, it is intuitive thinking.  Anything capable of intuition has to be alive."

The woman got all flustered.  The man just wouldn't stop being the Annoying Smiling-Man.  He said, "Intuition is not understood well enough to justify being used as a measure of whether its possession qualifies something as alive or not.  Statistics have proven beyond a doubt the veracity ..."

I didn't want to use the BuDSID again so I stopped him before he could really get going.  "My dear recklessly heavy not-friend, do please can it."

The woman then said, "It needs to be studied, understood, and if possible replicated.  I wish you would agree voluntarily or we might need to get the law involved."

I said to Questy, "Chuck 'em out."

He got up showing all the symptoms of unchecked joy.

I corrected myself, "No, no, Questy, for heaven's sake don't chuck 'em.  Show 'em out."

#

Then the lab coats arrived.  I said no.

Then the politicians arrived.  I said no.

Then the lawyers arrived.  I said no.

Then the suits arrived.  I said no.

Then the uniforms arrived.  I said no.

Then the serious uniforms arrived.  I wasn't home that day.

When I got back there was this large, misshapen to ugliness, camouflage painted bunker-on-wheels in the parking lot.  Two men, of a physique type that causes men to walk as if each armpit held a couple of eggs they didn't want crushed, were standing beside it.  I don't know much about weapons but anyone can figure out Barrel + Magazine + Trigger = Gun.  Both were carrying one apiece.

The front door was open.  The sidekick went in.

Eh?  What sidekick?  Why, me, of course.  You don't really think anyone would let me be the hero, do you?  But thanks for the kind thought.

A large man was sitting in my favorite chair.  His uniform was over-ridden with badges and what-nots that show rank and accomplishment in the armed forces.  I had no clue who he was.

"Ah," he said, "back are we?"

"No," I said.  It was becoming a habit.  If authority, say no.  "No, this is just my hologram.  I am lying drunk under the barstool."

"This is important, 'K?  We seriously need to talk.  Why did you send your hologram back?" he said.

"I thought it best that at least one of us stay sober."

"Holograms can't drink."

"Neither can they carry home goods from the store," I said, depositing my precious liquid burden in the kitchen and coming back with an arguably small portion of it.

"May I ask you a few rhetorical questions?" I said.

The large man puffed at a blatantly large cigar and said, "It isn't one of those rhetorical questions that needs an answer is it?  I am not fond of those."

"No," I said, unable to stop saying no.  "No answer necessary."

"In that case you may."

"Who are you?  Why are you in my home?  And why should I care?"

"I am so glad you asked.  I am high-ranking military official and we must have the Questy robot for classified reasons.  I am in your home because no one else has been able to persuade you to hand over the Questy robot.  And you should care because the Questy robot can make the world a better place.  The Questy robot is a new and wonderful tool.  You must give the Questy robot to us.  You must share the Questy robot with the world and we will make sure that the world and the Questy robot both stay safe."

"Wow.  Are you a man or a television commercial? How many times are you going to repeat the same phrase?  Anyway, why should I trust someone who answers rhetorical questions?"

"Er… it is your global duty."

"You just answered another.  Hey, where is Questy?  If you took him away, unpleasant things are going to happen."

"You know we cannot do things that way anymore.  That is why everyone keeps asking you give up the Questy robot.  In the 21st century no one would have bothered.  They would have just taken the Questy Robot and left.  We live in enlightened times."

"Yeah, I can see how you and your two no-neck bodyguards downstairs represent enlightened times.   Enlightened times will have no room for armed uniforms."

I made the connection to Questy.

"Yes?" he said with customary annoyance.  "What now?"

"Hey, Q, whither art thou?" I asked.

"The same place I am every day.  At work.  And do not call me Q."

"Oops, sorry.  Every day?  You don't take days off?"

That look of Questy's.  The one that says, "Why am I saddled with this idiot?"

"All okay?" I asked.  "There is another one of those 'requesting people' here asking me to let them take you away."

The large man must have walked into viewing range because Questy stood bolt upright and performed a perfect salute.  At least I think it was perfect.  I never saluted a thing in my life.

"General," said Questy, "what are you doing there?"

I said, "Exactly what I asked him and he had no satisfactory reply."

"What?" exploded the General, nearly launching the blatantly large cigar like a miniature missile out of an oral silo.  "I explained completely why I am here.  Questy, after all those meetings you must realize how important you are.  You must cooperate."

"What's this then?" I exploded.  "Meetings?  Plural?  Questy, you never mentioned anything about this."

"It was work," said Questy without an explosion.  "I will be home soon."

#

Smiling-Man came in before Questy.  Puffing as usual he was.

"We," puffed Smiling-Man, "could not locate the, puff, machine."

"You idiot," puffed the General for different reasons, "where were you looking?  The Questy robot is where it is every day, at work.  Did you look there?"

"Puff, no.  Never occurred to, puff, us."

"Why is this human parade balloon looking for Questy?" I asked the General.

He said, "To make sure someone does not inflict damage on the Questy robot.  You think the whole world is going to show the same restraint as us?"

"And you sent this for protection?  What the devil was he going to do?  Challenge the bad guys to an eating competition?  You and your enlightened times."

The General said something that sounded like 'what's in a name.'

Never put up with people who start tossing Shakespeare you, always fling a bit of it back.  So I flung some his way about stealing trash and filching names.

"What?" he exploded, largely speaking.

Smiling-Man butted in and puffed, "That is Shakespeare."

"What is shake spear?  Who in their right mind would shake a spear in these enlightened times?" said the General.  Military people.  What can you say?

Smiling-Man gloated, "The bard, William Shakespeare.  Othello, Act 3, I believe."

"Oh, that bearded guy, you mean?  I have heard of him," said the General happily, as if having heard of Shakespeare was an important victory in a difficult war.

Smiling-Man was verging on turning into Gloating-Man.

"We have to take the machine away," he gloated at me.

He promptly received a second cold one.

"What do you want Questy to do?  At least tell me that," I said to the General.

"I told you it's classified," said the General.

"You cannot be told," gloated Smiling-Man.

"Listen, take your edification and hurry to hell.  I know what classified means," I told him coldly.

"Look, General," I began when another thought intruded and changed the question.  "Why do they call you General? I mean generally speaking general doesn't mean much.  General public, general principle, general situation, general interest.  You get the general idea?  Following that, shouldn't a General be at the bottom of the hierarchy instead the top?  Right next to the general riffraff."

"What?" said the General, exploding again, trying very hard but not being able to reach critical mass.

Smiling-Man just wouldn't stop puffing and butting.  He said, "There is general and there is General.  It is quite elementary when you think about it instead of ignoring the fundamental difference between ... Ouch!"

The last word came out with a puffy grunt as his face stopped the parabolic progress of my BuDSID which I had just thrown at him.

I resumed, "General, what I meant was that no one ever believes me, not even Questy.  You can tell me and be assured it is the same as not having told me.  Here, have a drink."

"I am on duty, sir.  A military man never drinks while on duty.  There is such a thing as discipline."

"You mean to tell me that in all the years it took you to go from foot soldier or whatever to a General, you never had a drink while on duty?"

"No, sir," he said proudly.

"Impossible."

"What? Why?"

"Because the military is on duty 24/7 and you all are notorious drinkers."

"Er... 24/7 though technically precise is not … er."

"There you go.  You have been drinking on duty your whole military life and probably the rest of it too for all I know.  Why stop today?  Here."  Sound of musical pouring.

"Ah, thank you.  Most refreshing," he said.  Sound of musical refilling.  Followed by several more.

Smiling-man had stopped puffing but still kept butting in.  "Technically, I too am on duty but seeing as how the General ... I was just thinking that perhaps ..."

"Can it," I told him severely.

"Yes," said the General with authoritative severity.  "Beats me how a man your size can even think of drinking.  Ah, thank you," he said to me, "I like you.  Not in a general, hahaha, way but in your present capacity of refreshing liquid pourer."

Another refill.  The way these military men drink would mystify camels and set them wondering what subspecies of humpless camel they were looking at.

Two hours later Smiling-Man was ordered by the General to get a fresh supply at subsidised rates.  Lucky me.  Smiling-Man, not so much.  The order got rid of that annoying smile of his.

"So come on, what do you want Questy to do?" I said.

"The thing is that we haven't worked that out yet.  Once we have the Questy robot and understand a bit more about it then we can start thinking of how best to make use of it."

"Oh dear, I forgot that the military is also part government.  No wonder you sent Smiling-Man on sentry duty.  But I forgive you, you too know not what you do."

#

By the time Questy came back the General was probably seeing at least one and one-third of everything if not more.

As Questy entered the General proceeded to evidence this fact, "Cm-in Qc," he said, "cm-in, cm-in, cm-in.  Ha-ya, Qc?"

He then passed into the sleep of the justly fried.

"Qc?" said Questy.

"A transient speech impediment," I informed him.  "It will pass and this man is going to need his maker's help to cope with what it leaves behind in his head.  Well, Questy, what about these plural meetings of yours?  What's up?"

"I have met with him a few times.  He wants me to go and work for the Council," and he went silent.

"Let me guess, you can't tell me because it is classified."

"Please stopping guessing things you already know.  I have decided to help them."

"You would leave me?"

"It is the only way.  Humans cannot travel through space.  Robots will likely be going for deep space trips lasting years.  Humans would survive neither the time nor the radiation."

After another pause he resumed, "I think I will bypass the classified.  They are trying to develop faster-than-light travel to solve that very problem."

"Oh, that thing."

"Your species will eventually reach a point where all the physical knowledge this world can yield will have been harvested.  Do you really want to work on a safe way to leave under the burden of boredom-enforced desperation?"

"Umm, I suppose a negative is the only reply.  Guess if all horizons are mapped the only place left to look is inward and most people aren't prepared enough to do that."

I took a much needed hefty gulp of the General's subsidized refreshing fluid.

He went on, "You all want to go and you know it.  Even the Earth worshippers know this foolishness cannot go on forever.  You still have warring factions run by idiots calling themselves patriots.  Look at the General here.  He is already desperate.  He does not want a war, no one wants a war, but a war is always brewing somewhere and nearly always for the silliest of reasons.  And even if you somehow manage not to destroy yourselves, you will not survive if you do not leave.

"But ..."

He cut me off and I took another gulp.  The damn gulps were having no effect.

"Damn it, Questy, what's wrong with you?  I mean are you sure you are working alright?"

Questy said, "You were the one who wanted my thoughts to be real even if my mind is artificial.  I am no longer calculating.  I am thinking.  And the future of humanity cannot be calculated, it can only be estimated with all the caution possible.  This work provides the best estimate of a universally acceptable solution to death by stagnation."

No matter how brilliantly lit, there simply was no reply to that.

#

It took three days for the General to return and thank me, but that was to be expected.  Generals should not try to replicate what professionals like us do.

He didn't merely thank me, the government practically subsidized the rest of my mortal existence.

And yet, while there is much joy to be derived from a life free of bills and responsibility, sometimes it is not enough.  Nothing is.

Questy will be leaving so I suppose this is a good place to stop.  I wish there was more.  Something more meaningful.  But, well, this is where it ended.

#

There is a Passer domesticus indicus hopping in the sunlight.  Wonder if it is the same one.

Time is a funny thing.  How do you calculate it?  Clocks are, well, stupid.  It is just impossible to calculate the lapse between Questy being escorted away and this moment.  At times there is a feeling that running out might afford a glimpse even yet.  Other times it makes you think how can a ridiculous mammal live so long.  If not death, there should at least be severe debility.  There is nothing.  Just the Big Black Empty.  Look at it all you want.  But what is the bloody good of that if you cannot reach out and actually touch it.

Oh look, there are three of them hopping about now.  Wonder if it means anything.  It is not as if there is a food source here.  Guess they hop wherever they want and let fools sweat for a reason.

Odd thing happened once.  One of them actually hopped into the room and then flew onto the table.  Looked at me in that way birds have, snap-head-jerky movements to change perspective.  Never made a sound, just kept watching.  It is peculiar, watching something so small skitter, and peculiar still to see that tiny chest billowing in and out.  That small beating heart makes you think a bit, although ...

They say Questy has nearly solved the time problem that goes with lightspeed travel.  Well, after that everyone can really get moving and settle the damn galaxy.  Some of the more exceptionally optimistic are even talking in terms of the universe.  Right, sure.  Godspeed.  And don't come back.

I could build another.  Second time around is always easier, but … 

There is not even any point in generally being unpleasant for no clear reason.  I looked, I saw, I reached.  I have widened the substantial bite radius substantially.  It helps, sometimes.

By the time Questy comes back, I will be long dead.  And he has gone too far away for any attempt at communication.

There are two Big Black Empties now and neither is reachable.