fiction – An Occasional Story or Magazine

George Packard on Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles

George Packard, retired schoolteacher, took a stroll down Wilshire Blvd. He’d walked this stretch of Wilshire Blvd. countless times before. They called it the Miracle Mile area, a euphemism, a PR ploy. Whatever. George Packard just knew that he liked to walk down Wilshire. It was the most city-like of all LA’s streets. George Packard prided himself on his familiarity with the streets and neighborhoods of Los Angeles. Say what you like, George had become enamored of the huge, sprawl that comprised the metropolis called Los Angeles. He enjoyed learning its streets, it’s freeways, its endless thoroughfares.

George had always been fascinated by geography. It was a particular fascination, particular to him. That is to say, most people were not so curious, not nearly as interested in geography as he was. George was unusual in this respect. Aside from delivery men and taxi drivers, most people didn’t care about streets and where things were. In any case, today many people relied on GPS devices; they never figured streets out; they never really knew where they were, where they stood. But George had always loved to learn about geography, about other countries and cultures. He loved to travel for this reason. A new city was like a new book, unopened and unread.

His Grandmother used to call him “Curious George”, a disparaging sort of moniker, at least that is how he perceived it. And young George was correct. For “being a curious monkey” was not a compliment in Grandma’s book. Indeed, Grandma herself possessed no curiosity, only a thirst for money and position. What was the sense in being curious? One had to be practical in life. As a child, George couldn’t understand why he couldn’t be practical, why he could never really fit in. But now that he was older, he was glad that he was still a Curious George.

The Story of the P’s (#7)

Additional Historical Notes

By Prof. Robert Dejean

I think it interesting to point out at this point in the story that the idea, the image, of a hero who saves the world, saves his people in an act of sacrifice is not a new one. We have on record numerous accounts of exceptional individuals who perform exceptional deeds. Warriors, saints, prophets, and the like. We even possess recordings of stories and legends of gods and godesses who intervene heroically to save their people at critical junctures. The John Marshall story is not a unique one – only a more recent one.

Also not original is the idea of the great American novel, the GAN, a notion that inspired many pre-computer-age American writers. One, a writer named Philip Roth, even wrote a novel titled “The Great American Novel”. Interestingly, it revolved around the sport of baseball – which we have already seen was a “national pastime” that clearly possessed some sort of mythological import.*

* The sport of baseball and its function as a “splinter mythology” has been cited many times in the literature, and the archeological record presents a rich store of baseball memorabilia and legends. See Prof. Markowitz’s “Babe Ruth and the Other Baseball Mythologies”, 2122 edition.

Click here to go to Story of the P’s #8

The Story of the P’s (#3)

This in the third installment of The Story of the P’s, a serialized science fiction novella.

The Grid: More Historical Perspective

The achievement of “Grid Unaniminity” via the P’s was only the final stage in a long series of developments. Beginning with the personal player inputs for video games back in the beginning of the 21^st century, the consumer, or would-be consumer, was given the program capacity to scan her or his own face and physical dimensions directly into an arcade game character and thus enjoy a more personal gaming experience. Soon the pp’s or personality profiles, were added to the games, and the player’s feeling of identification with the figures on the screen was solidified. The personality profiles were naturally shared within the Grid (Congress passed the Profile Protection Act in 2018), and soon were used to individualize all commercial messages and computer uploads. Market research was soon superfluous, obsolete. By the twenties the pp’s provided not only the information about the consumer, but the control link as well.

Just as direct marketing was “personalized”, regular television and internet programming – the sitcoms and reality shows of the time – also were individually tailored to elicit full identification. “The Magic Man”, the best-selling show of the 2022-2023 season, was the first to feature a full pp link. The viewing experience had become fully personal. Each viewer was now herself a player on the screen, a star in her own virtual world. And that world was individualized. And – with the viewer at the center of this virtual world- a sort of primitive or infantile mind was established. Television had already monopolized people’s time since the late 20^th century, but in the 21st, with the advent of “personalized programming”, many people became increasingly “connected”. Whether by phone screens or direct link, people were connected to the Neo-Grid nearly all their waking hours.

Off-screen “personal projections”, initially rudimentary holograms, were refined in the late 20’s to incorporate the pp’s or personality profiles. And with the advent of “emotional simulators”, and later the “Artificial Mom” and “Monster Man” and the other famous “projections”, the momentum of VRP or virtually real participation swept over the screen – and then moved in a great tide past the screen and into its own world. All boundaries were erased* Personality functions were released from the body and tied instead to the pp matrix.

Prof. Dejean adds:

*Perhaps I need to make it clear that the people of the mid -21^st century had already become quite different – neurologically and behaviorally – from their predecessors in the 20^th. As well as they were from us, I must add quite thankfully. Virtually another species had arisen from the ashes of the Terror Wars of the 20’s: a new species – which functioned without wires and increasingly without the old, soft, biologically-inherited cognitive circuits. This new “connected and protected”* human species occupied most of what was left of the planet.

If I may add another interesting footnote: “Connected and protected” was actually a popular catchphrase or advertisement from one of the early Net-Grid promotions. It was also freely adopted and employed by a number of politicians. President Knox used it as his campaign slogan in the 2032 election.

Click here to go to Story of the P’s #4

The Story of the P’s (#1)

The Story of the P’s

with Introduction and Explanatory Notes by

Dr. Lionel Dejean

a short story by Stephen Baum

Bumbastories Inc. have obtained the following files which we hereby release to public view. They were sent to us by a retired schoolteacher who calls himself George Packard. Packard claims that these files were transmitted to him via the medium of nano-wave, and the claim is that they come from the year 2125. Our own technicians have yet to fully understand how this transmission across time was performed. But having nonetheless fully transcribed all of the files, we proudly publish the following story in its entirety.

The story is called The Journey of John Marshall, which apparently is (or will be) a well-known saga or movie-legend for the people of the 22^nd century.

The actual story is preceded in the transmission by the following Historical Introduction, which appears to be a neuro-recording of a lecture delivered in the “Second Summer, 2125” to a class of university ”firsties”, or freshmen, history students. The lecture is by Dr. Lionel Dejean, who is, or will be, a prominent and highly respected historian of the early 22^nd century.

Delivered as an audio-line lecture-series to a class of American History 101 students, Dr. Dejean’s introduction and variously interjected explanatory notes and remarks, albeit pedantic and heavy-handed, nonetheless serve to provide a useful overview of some of the major themes of 21^st century American history. Also, Dr. Dejean’s remarks serve (we hope) as a sort of introduction and guide to our story: The Journey of John Marshall.

We apologize in advance for Dr. Dejean’s instructional style. It appears that college professors of the future turn out to be no less pompous and stuffy than the present lot.

Historical Introduction by Prof. Lionel Dejean

It was almost precisely one hundred and one years ago – in the first quarter of the year 2024 – that the large P’s were first isolated. According to our best estimates, the small personality profiles (the small p’s) were first introduced into all Grid marketing operations and were plotted for the first time onto the early Net-Grid in 2017 (according to Ginsberg. 2118). But judging from the available disc and archeological data – and this, I must emphasize, is my own, personal judgment – the actual discovery of the large P’s was an entirely serendipitous event. Yes students, it appears that many of the momentous events in our recorded history are simple chance occurences.

In any case, the small p’s had been too data-rich, too heavy. A dead-end had been reached. Thus it was that once the 21^st century hi-tech institutions (the HTI’s) extended the convergences of the small p symmetries – and then afterwards when they traced the additional convergences that were revealed with the mapping of the additional dimensions – the large P’s emerged. They virtually jumped off the screen!

Of course, screens in the beginning of the last century were actual physical screens and they were quite massive in many cases. Thus, we can understand that the emergence of the large P’s was made especially dramatic or “large”. Thus the name, or is that obvious? Additionally, the speaker modules were simply gargantuan compared to today’s nano-links and implants. However, we must not forget that back in the early 21^st century, technology had yet to evolve to sub-atomic chips. The present generation of 5D environments and four-generation mind-tunnels were still unknown. I mention the technology because it is important for us to understand and to appreciate the impact of electronics in general on our history as a species, and in particular the impact that this original piece of technology, this creation of the triple P’s, actually had upon our grandfathers’ generation. It was clearly a milestone in history. Therefore it is very important that we tell this particular story. And, I must add, it is always (and in all cases to the best of my knowledge) a valid and noble enterprise to study history and to obtain a proper understanding of one’s place in this universe.

Unfortunately, our study of the 21^st century is fraught with difficulties due to the destruction of records and files that occurred in the various wars and insurrections. But aside from the physical destruction, I must add, and quite notably too, that we have almost no credible commentary from the historians or scholars of the early and middle 21^st century. And that is because there were almost no independent or “unconnected” historians left! Morgenstern* has rightly termed the 21^st century the “Second Dark Ages”. The Grid, which by 2038 had become the dominant Net hook-up, was indeed a sort of black hole. Indeed, the Grid mimicked the galactic black holes in that the Grid absorbed and saved all input. Once everyone was connected to the Grid, independent thought disappeared.

Prof. Wilson of Greenland University has cited the “commercialized academic establishment” and the “psychology of mercantilism” that obviously were essential to the development of the early net-grid in the beginning of the 21^st century. But once established, the Grid automatically channeled all thought and energy toward its own maintenance. The Grid was its own raison d’etre, as it were. In any case, reliable academic work by historians (and by all scientists in all fields for that matter) effectively ceased in the early years of the 21^st century.

Now, since the revolution of 2068 we have resumed our study of history, of course. But it is clear to us now that the years of the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries were indeed a sort of Dark Ages in our peoples’ history. Indisputably, many remarkable advances were made in the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries, especially in chip technology and in time management/travel. And certainly the construction of the Grid was a formidable accomplishment. We cannot forget that. But the study of history, as well as any other pure scientific study of any kind, was not exactly encouraged by the Grid, to put it mildly. Pure academic study, as I say, essentially atrophied in the early 21^st century. It is all quite regrettable, I suppose.

But to continue: By 2050 the first generation of computers as well as the old capitalist system of economics had reached its logical end. A new mythology, a new set of directions, a new orientation for the world-system, was needed. Consumerism, and the economics of constant growth could only go so far. The earth’s crust had been plundered and already lay half-barren. The world’s consumers, the human population base – 99% of whom were either connected to the Grid or otherwise under the “unanimity umbrella” – had been stimulated and out-wired for nearly three generations to want more and more consumer items. The physical health of the species together with their productive capacity – their ability to work – degenerated — just as the earth and the natural environment was becoming less and less able to sustain them. Eventually the whole machine was bound to run out of energy. And it did. But the creation of a new mythology is an arduous and lengthy process. It takes time to grow, time to take root.

Of course, the Grid was programmed to observe the onset of any new mythology and to thwart it. According to some revisionist historians, the Grid responded to that threat in the year 2040 by generating the PPP’s. My personal opinion, as I mentioned earlier, is that the discovery of the large P’s was serendipitous. In any case, the Grid was effectively rescued or extended for another twenty years by the P’s – nearly another human generation.

The PPP’s, the large projected personality profiles, once implemented, enabled the Grid to have nearly total control. For no new grid systems could be introduced once personality and free will (to use the old 20^th century term) were deleted.

(Prof. Dejean’s Introduction, and the Story of the P’s/The Saga of John Marshall to follow)

Click here to go to Story of the P’s #2

George Packard Writes (Intro to Story of the P’s)

George Packard was also a writer. He had several books he was working on, all unfinished. George lacked discipline.

All of his mother’s and grandmother’s rules and instructions had gone for naught – all their scoldings and conditions and threats had just passed over his head – or perhaps harmlessly through his youthful grey matter.. In fact George could still remember that, as a child, he learned to avoid his mother and grandmother as much as he could. George stayed busy at school, away from the house. He stayed late at school and played baseball or basketball much of the time. He avoided them, and obeyed their instructions only when he absolutely had to. Mentally he had always been free of them. In sports, and in study of science and history George had other worlds to inhabit, better worlds.

In short, George was short on discipline.

So when he decided that Wednesday morning that he was going to sit down and write, and furthermore that he was going to resume a regimen of writing every morning, he knew that he would have to work hard to maintain his resolve. Thus it was with considerable effort, and a bit of a heavy mind, that he sat down at the computer keyboard to write that spring morning.

George had in mind a science fiction novella. It was to be called The Story of the P’s.

In it, a man named John Marshall in the year of 2167 saves the world from the tyranny of the Grid – an outcropping of the cyber-revolution. Marshall is not “connected”, he is not connected to the Grid. By 2167, most everyone is “connected” via their PPP’s, their Projected Personality Profiles.

Marshall, who is sort of a noble savage, together with another “unconnected” woman, Rozina, set out to save the world……..

George had John Marshall and Rozina fleeing from “the securities”, literally heading for the hills, the mountains. ………And there he was stuck. He didn’t know just how to proceed.

George Packard on Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles

His Grandmother used to call him “Curious George”, a disparaging sort of moniker, at least that is how he perceived it. Being a curious monkey was not a compliment in Grandma’s book. Indeed, Grandma possessed no curiosity, only a thirst for money and position. What was the sense in being curious? One had to be practical in life. As a child, George couldn’t understand why he couldn’t be practical, why he could never really fit in. But now that he was older, he was glad that he was still a Curious George.

George Packard Rides Again

Chapter VIII

All the same, George Packard, retired schoolteacher, would think back on his past from time to time as most men do. And, as he sat in the large library reading room holding in his lap a book written by Einstein on the theory of relativity, he thought back on his past kindly. That is to say, with affection. It had been a very lovely life on the whole. He could have no complaints. He had been fortunate. He looked at the people in the library room. They were separate from him, separate from each other. His generation had been a happier one.

George Packard and Family

Chapter VII

It was in juxtaposition to his father that George was compelled to view his mother and the rest of the family. He felt, much like his father must have felt, that he would just rather not deal with them at all. And that, in actuality, they could and would manage better without him most of the time. Furthermore that – once he was apart from them – he, George Packard, seven-year-old boy or 66-year-old retiree from the public school system, could actually be happy.

In 1970, George Packard returned from the Peace Corps. Following nearly three years in Guatemala and the Dominican Republic, George had already opted for a different life style. Not that he was a hippie or anything like that, but George definitely understood the “Turn on, tune in, drop out” message. In Guatemala he had lived with real families. Decent, wonderful people of all sorts. Falsehood was not so closely interwoven into their lives’ fabric as it was in the Packard home. The peasants’ first response was generally one of trust. Surely there was horrid cruelty and awful tragedy in life, especially in the world of the poor. But there was no need to seek after it, to chase it down. It was better to avoid evil. Most people knew to be good, to follow the golden rule most of the time.

However, his own family was marked and scarred by his mother’s and his grandmother’s constant scheming. Always they harbored some ulterior motive, something that they were planning. Some scheme. Something that would make them richer and elevate their precious social standing. It meant little for them to lie. The end, usually some sort of social promotion, justified the means for them. And over time nearly any means was permissible. Their goals were the usual ones. They wanted money, prestige, respect. They sought membership in the great American upper class. And, as they were thwarted by the sinking of the great Packard flagship, and consequentially thwarted by their dwindling income, they became increasingly wicked, and more desperate.

George Packard Series

Chapter V

George Packard unpacked his lunch and ate it with a Starbucks in the park outside the library. Another day, another dollar. George Packard was getting used to the idea of being retired. No more need to produce, or to make money. He didn’t really need that much money any more. His pension was more than sufficient. Now that he was retired he used less than before. He had often taught his science class students about the “carbon footprint” concept. It was in the curriculum. Well, carbon-wise, George was tip-to-ing down the tulips; he was leaving barely a whisper of a trail. He rode his bicycle, he took the bus, he walked, he saved plastic bottles and bags to recycle. Perhaps he was atoning for the Packard family’s heavy contribution to the American CO² overload: their gas-guzzling sins. But simply it made no sense for human beings to be polluting the earth. So very simply George Packard tried to do as little polluting as he could. Yes, George was a bit of a Luddite, a back-to-nature boy at heart. He seemed to gravitate toward a simple life.

When he had been in San Salvador someone had once told him that making life easier for one’s self needed to be a goal in one’s life. George, the young Peace Corps volunteer, had stated that the fixing of one’s goal, and then the committed application of all one’s efforts toward the attainment of that goal was the only way he wanted to live. His friend Juan, an older man, had responded in a fatherly way, saying, “I don’t know, George, why you always want to make things so hard for yourself. Look to make things more easy for you self”.

Chapter VI

Sitting on the #20 bus, headed for the library, George Packard scouted the women on the seats in front of him. There were some very lovely young girls up front. They laughed, tossing their long hair back. Ah, but they were too young; they were not appropriate prey for George Packard the hunter. Of course George Packard realized he was an old man, but it remained a life-long habit (and pleasure) of his to “prowl” the women. So George Packard, retired school teacher, was “on the prowl” again. On the #20 bus headed for the library.

George Packard lived a life of fantasy nowadays. But he could quite easily come down from his fanciful daydreams. He could descend to the day-to-day world from his fantasy heights, and function quite adequately in the “real” world. This adeptness, this mental adroitness at switching modes, at quickly and smoothly changing gears from his fantasy world to the real world now enabled Mr. Packard to engage in fantasy thoughts quite often. Because he very rarely got caught. No one knew that he was perceiving “real life” in a very personal, “unreal” manner. He was getting away with it. Somehow, though, George Packard considered it a weakness, an indulgence.

“Better to keep your mind on things that are clean and pure”, had said his father. George Packard remembered clearly his father’s words, spoken to him while they were out in the garage. George had been six or seven years old. Dad talked while he worked: “That’s right, George. That’s right, my son. You see how sweet and clean this motor runs. Well, that’s what I mean. I mean, that’s how you want things in your life. That’s how you want to be yourself….” George’s memory of the exact words faded. But clearly his father had pointed out to him something important to him and fundamental in life, an ideal toward which to strive.

Of course, the vocabulary of machines and motors were only the words, the language in which his father, the mechanic, was comfortable. Joseph Packard was trying in his simple way to give to his son a gift, something larger. George remembered the grace of his father’s movements: the way he handled the heavy tools, the quiet, calm confident manner he assumed whenever he worked with his hands.

Joseph Packard seemed comfortable only in his great, cavernous garage – a large wooden barn from the old days. Outside the garage, his father was less graceful. In the house, at meals, at holiday gatherings, and whenever they were all together with his mother and grandmother present, father was quieter, and more reserved. Nearly detached from the rest of the family. Joseph Packard had simply never learned to be in the world of people and he was was not familiar with it the way he was familiar with the world of machinery.

George Packard remembered his father very fondly.