The Daily Doodles

“The Blank Tape”

Simón Martínez presses his nose against the TV’s monitor, his hot breath fogging the glass, as he tries to position his face as close to the television screen as humanly possible.  

He remembers doing this during his bored moments as a child, thinking he may find something secret being broadcast that he’d miss if he was watching from the couch like a regular person.  

The static fills the screen with its never-ending frenetic dance, never stopping to stay still even for a moment.  Simón focuses on just one black or white dot, trying to track its trail as it hops wildly across the screen, but each time he loses the poor thing as the rest of the static overwhelms it.

Having found this blank VHS tape in an ancient box that he forgot he ever had, Simón hoped there was some sort of lost treasure from his childhood recorded on the cassette… but nope.  Just static.  He guesses he was saving it to record something special, something special that never came.

But still, for whatever reason, he actually likes it this way.  The static is somehow soothing, filling his field of vision with the endless movement while the white noise quietly hisses on and on.

The magnetic tape inside the cassette *snaps*, and Simón hears the gears of the VCR grind to a halt as it struggles to eject the broken VHS.  The picture goes black.

Simón unwinds the magnetic tape from around the VCR’s reels, the strip crinkling in his hands, and throws the useless blank tape away.

Posted 5/10/2013

(Thank you to the extremely talented Samantha of other-side-of-the-universe.com for helping me gif this!)

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“The Old Mix Tape”, the Haiku version.

Finding old mix tapes
Makes you nostalgic for how
Lame you used to be.

Posted 10/1/2012
(To read the original prose version from 3/14/12, click here)

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(Source: thedailydoodles)

“Billions and Billions”

Floating at the edge of our solar system and facing the far reaches of open space, Dr. Allistair Richmond gazes out at the billions and billions of visible stars and planets…

The console *beeps* as the ship’s instruments have finished scanning the current quadrant, so the Doctor moves his spaceship less than 1/10000000 of a degree over to begin scanning the next quadrant, hoping for some sort of sign of the existence of intelligent alien life.

Despite the lack of evidence to support the claim, Dr. Richmond (and the fellow top scientists of the day) believe that intelligent life must exist out there— it’s simultaneously too mathematically improbable and mathematically depressing to believe otherwise.

But while the billions and billions of stars twinkle at him invitingly, the Doctor knows much of it is fool’s gold— many of these stars have faded away millions of years ago, and the immense vastness of the universe enables us to time travel each time we stare into space.

And that same vastness means we can only look at those faraway stars, as even the closest ones would take many lifetimes to reach. We’re anchored down by our technology, and our human bodies.

And perhaps any intelligent life out there is also suffering from the same limitations…  maybe they’re tucked away in their own corner of the universe, behind the billions and billions of stars we can actually see.  Maybe we’re all simply stuck where we are.

Everything is just too damn far away.  For now, at least.

So, as the ship’s console beeps again, all the Doctor can do is move his ship less than 1/10000000 of a degree over to scan even more billions and billions of stars, and continue to hope for a sign.

Originally Posted 3/1/2012

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“Uploading the Mind’s Eye”

Nervous about the procedure but knowing that his organic-casing has been feeling kinda rundown lately (he tripped and scuffed an elbow the other day, plus his nose has been running for at least a week now), Franklin MacMurray settles down into the chair as the Robo-Assistants start threading the wires through his pupil and under his eye and he can hear the familiar crunch of the connections clicking into place.

The downloading of his Virtual Soul (a compilation of his memories, thoughts, feelings, personality— all that makes him, him) and subsequent uploading into a new organic casing has become remarkably easy, but still… as they hook up everything and he feels the memories be duplicated and pulled out, Franklin always feels regretfully uneasy.  He can’t shake it.

Plus, he doesn’t need a new body (the current one works fine, just a bit slow is all), but with the deals they got now it’s sooooo cheap to upgrade, and they have all these amazing features… yeah, he probably won’t use 99% of them, but he thought the same about the Clearview Retin-A after all, and he doesn’t know what he’d do without it.

Besides, it’s almost his birthday.  He’s allowed to give himself a nice gift.

The dreamy glow that the absence of self brings is tingling through his body, acting as a natural sedative, and Franklin knows it won’t be long now before the transfer is complete.  While he can’t “see” his thoughts and memories in his head, he can still feel them being sorted and compiled in the new frame…

But something… something feels off.  He can sense the gaps in his memory that everyone has (you can’t remember everything, of course), but instead of them remaining empty and void, he can feel something… new being installed.  Something foreign.

He tries to hone in on the blank gaps in his consciousness being artifically filled, but as his sense of self drains away he finds it harder to focus… the outrage he feels over this invasion becomes more and more difficult to muster and maintain… 

All he knows, is that that is not him.  Something must be going wrong, they’re not meant to put anything besides me in the new me…

It must just be some mistake, he tells himself.  It has to be.

As the last bits of his Virtual Soul are downloaded and everything fades to black, he swears that he will remember it… when he wakes up, he will get to the bottom of this.  He will fix it.  They can’t do this.

Unbeknownst to Franklin, however, this is the 5th time he has made this promise to himself.

And just like before, the memory of it all is left in the dead husk of his former body, which is soon to be melted down and reappropriated into various breakfast cereals, off-brand kitty litters, and glue.

Franklin wakes up, confident in who he is, but subtly unrecognizable from who he was. 

Posted 8/22/2012

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“Adventures Through the Multiverse”

Joy looks up as the console beeps, alerting her to the fact that one of the spheres within her holo-map of the giant, seemingly limitless Multiverse has registered a hit… She touches the sphere to check the data, and it’s clear: she found yet another version of herself in a parallel reality.

And now, just like before, there is only one option: she must murder this version of herself before this version of her kills her own version of herself first.

Since discovering the methods and technology that could enable one to travel between the various alternate universes via the nebulous void that connects all versions of reality, Joy quickly came to the realization that if this version of herself could make this discovery, then the other Joys could too…

And as her first thought immediately was “I must kill them and rob them of their life savings before they do the same to me”, she knows it was likely their first thought as well.  And so, obviously, the only proper thing to do is to find them and kill them first (which the other Joys may rudely be trying to do to her as well).

Luckily, in all of the Multiverses she’s found herself in so far, she is the first version of herself to make this discovery and has gotten the jump on every single version of Joy she has encountered yet.  Most weren’t even scientists working on the Hidden Multiverse Project, so it was comically easy to take advantage of their shock from realizing they were seeing a perfect replica of themselves and shoot them in the face before they could even process it.

Or, she’d pretend that she was them from the future and that she needed their help to save the galaxy, and then they’d foolishly trust her as she lured them to a safe place for her to shoot them in the face.

From there, she’d pose as herself and withdraw all of that parallel reality’s Joy’s money from the bank, and then escape back into the nebulous void before anyone’s the wiser and on her way to a new universe, with a new Joy to kill…

Since she’s only killing and robbing herself, it’s perfectly okay, Joy reasons.  It’s a victimless crime.

And there just isn’t room in the Multiverse for two Joys to exist peacefully.  She knows it, they’d know it, and ya know what?  It’s a shame but dangit it’s just a fact of life.  There can only be one.

With the wormhole closing around her and having successfully escaped back into the nebulous void after yet another murder/robbery, Joy smiles as she crosses another Joy off the list…

831 Joys dead, and only possibly an infinity left to go.

Posted 6/28/2012

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“The Old Mix Tape”

Listening to his old mix tape that he found in a shoebox full of junk from high school, Henry Singleton remembers how much time he spent meticulously pausing and stopping the cassette player/recorder as he constructed the perfect mix for himself or his friends…

It was something that he used to do practically every week back then, but he had almost forgot about the time consuming activity entirely until he saw the tape.  

Each song unleashes forgotten memories associated with that age— not all bad, of course; Henry just feels odd to be back in that young mindset, thinking the dumb thoughts he used to think all the way back then.   

The problems and worries he remembers seem to match the music: immature, embarrassing even.  Henry wishes the him of 15 years ago was cooler, but sadly that’s not the case.  The music is awful.

He wonders if he should throw the tape out after he listens to it, to destroy any record of his lack of good taste…

In the misty haze of nostalgic idealization, Henry decides that mix tapes were more intimate… It took real time to make each mix, after all, so it meant something dammit!  And this was before every song ever made was available to download and listen to within moments.

However, he realizes, it IS pretty awesome to have every song ever made available to download and listen to within moments, so… he’s not sure if “intimate” is better or worse.  Or if it even matters. 

It’s just different, is all.

Henry then hits the record button and tapes over all of his old songs with the dead air around him, erasing any evidence of the bad music he used to like.

Posted 3/14/2012

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“Billions and Billions”

Floating at the edge of our solar system and facing the far reaches of open space, Dr. Allistair Richmond gazes out at the billions and billions of visible stars and planets…

The console *beeps* as the ship’s instruments have finished scanning the current quadrant, so the Doctor moves his spaceship less than 1/10000000 of a degree over to begin scanning the next quadrant, hoping for some sort of sign of the existence of intelligent alien life.

Despite the lack of evidence to support the claim, Dr. Richmond (and the fellow top scientists of the day) believe that intelligent life must exist out there— it’s simultaneously too mathematically improbable and mathematically depressing to believe otherwise.

But while the billions and billions of stars twinkle at him invitingly, the Doctor knows much of it is fool’s gold— many of these stars have faded away millions of years ago, and the immense vastness of the universe enables us to time travel each time we stare into space.

And that same vastness means we can only look at those faraway stars, as even the closest ones would take many lifetimes to reach. We’re anchored down by our technology, and our human bodies.

And perhaps any intelligent life out there is also suffering from the same limitations…  maybe they’re tucked away in their own corner of the universe, behind the billions and billions of stars we can actually see.  Maybe we’re all simply stuck where we are.

Everything is just too damn far away.  For now, at least.

So, as the ship’s console beeps again, all the Doctor can do is move his ship less than 1/10000000 of a degree over to scan even more billions and billions of stars, and continue to hope for a sign.

Posted 3/1/2012

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“The Kids of Today Who Were Raised in the 2130s Are So Spoiled Technologically and Have Bad Taste in Mass Media, Unlike Myself, Who Was Raised in the Superior 2120s”

It is my firm belief that the children born between the years of 2130 and 2139 do not understand how easy their living situation is!

In the 2120s, we didn’t have the holographic Mom-panions that the kids of today rely upon— we made do with old fashioned Robot Nannies, and often had to send them for repairs, which left us with no auto-assistant for hours at a time.  That alone is more than enough evidence to suggest that those of us raised in the 2120s had a much more difficult upbringing, but it does not end there.  Regenerative Food Pellets?  This food processing advancement was unheard during my pubescence!  We ate particalized cloned protein molds, and we enjoyed it greatly.  But if you were to attempt to try to get one of these 2130s kids of today to even take a bite… they lack the taste and sophistication that was inherent in my generation, and it makes their preferences incorrect.

While it’s hard to imagine a world without Surgically Implanted 5-D Psyber Scopes, many seem to forget that they didn’t gain prominence until around 2128… those of us raised in the 2120s therefore have a greater appreciation for this technology, and do not take it for granted like the spoiled simpletons raised in the 2130s.

And the omnivised programming they watch!  Their entertainment is clearly not nearly as good as the omnivision shows we had when I was a child, and I believe there is a direct correlation between the lack of quality of their popular media and the lack of positive attributes to be found in the entire 2130s generation.

The sharp decline between my own 2120s generation and the current 2130s generation is historically unheard of, and I plan on spending several years harping upon these enormous and appalling differences.

Without a doubt, it is quite obvious that the current generation is the worst generation there has ever been, and that people (like myself) who were raised in the 2120s are objectively superior and will always be perceived as such. 

I am proud to make the claim that I am a 2120s kid.

Posted 1/10/2012

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