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2019: The first computer program is written that fully passes the Turing test.Getting Around
For the majority of the day I’ve had my mind stuck on two wildly different methodologies of travel.
Have you heard of the Northrop Flying Wing? We’ve certainly discussed the concept before, but I’d never encountered footage of this beast till now, and I can’t help but to, again, imagine a future we never had:
[youtube_sc url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlYnou2mvSM]
Thirty years later, in April 1980, Jack Northrop, now quite elderly and wheel chair bound, was taken back to the company he founded. There, he was ushered into a classified area and shown a scale model of the Air Force’s forthcoming but still classified Advanced Technology Bomber, which would become known as the B-2A; a sleek Flying Wing. Looking over its all-wing design, Northrop was reported to have said: “I know why God has kept me alive for the past 25 years.”
What could possibly be competing with this beautiful monster for my brain-space?
Ancient, giant, wombats – aka diprotodons.
This particular wombat is generally thought to be the largest marsupial to ever walk the Earth. They weighed nearly 7,000 pounds and were as much as 14 feet long. The new skeleton dates back to about two million years ago, but these creatures went extinct only recently, roughly 50,000 years ago.
– io9
Give me a team, saddles, a bit of DNA, and the most advanced bio-engineering lab humanity has ever known, and I will bring back polo as something people actually care about.
Traffic jams certainly wouldn’t be a concern this all-terrain colossus – and they even come with a mouthful of built-in anti-theft devices.
183 – The Murder Plague: Buggy, Part 1 of 3
Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode one hundred and eighty three.
Tonight we present, The Murder Plague: Buggy, Part 1 of 3.
(Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)
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This week’s episodes are brought to you by the The Flash Mob on Facebook.
Like discovering a clown car under your bed – a clown car full of hugs.
Find it here
Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.
Tonight, Harm Carter is told a tale of mechanical menace and human tragedy.
Flash Pulp 183 – The Murder Plague: Buggy, Part 1 of 3
Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May
Our strenuous rescue from the sharpshooter, and the sort of sleepless unrest you’ll get when someone is attempting to assassinate you, left us fatigued and eager for unconsciousness – once we’d extensively thanked our slab-armed liberator.
The strongman, Newton, had setup a small camp alongside a creek. The site was entirely sheltered from the road by a thick wall of trees, and we took turns sleeping, bathing in the mucky water, and keeping a watch for any roaming infected paranoiacs who might suddenly pop out of the bush like a game of rabid whack-a-mole.
After a quartet of raggedly snored symphonies, we gathered at the edge of the brook and, by the moon’s glow, did some accounting.
Jeremy, Minnie, and I, had little to offer beyond the empty gun I’d taken from Tyrone, whereas Newton displayed an array of tinned stews, a bright blue high-powered-flashlight, and a functional knowledge of the area.
It certainly appeared that we were getting the better part of the deal.
“I thought,” said Jeremy, “that all of the houses ‘round here were booby-traps? If so, where’d you find the cans? You had to get those somewhere, why are we sleeping on the dirt?”
More than looking a gift horse in the mouth, it seemed to me that the lad’s tone was smacking the nag in the teeth, but our host answered before I was able to say so.
“Let me tell you a story,” said Newton, laying his massive frame out on the grass. “Like I said, back before the engine quit, there were twelve of us. We all knew the situation, we’d stolen – uh, borrowed – the bus hoping to ride it straight to the military blockade. Everything was easy-peasy, until…”
He paused then, tossing a stone into the river. I remember it because I knew it was a sign that he was truly agitated; no hardened survivor of the Murder Plague, who isn’t distracted, makes unnecessary noise.
“I don’t wanna go through the whole list, but, after some politics, some infections, and some poor choices, it came down to me and Pam and Larry. Wasn’t so long ago that they were the ones sitting here. Anyhow, they got hungry, and we started arguing. They were pushing to try looting another place, but that was mostly how we’d lost the other nine, and I thought it was a better idea to just start walking and hope for the best, or, at least, a town.
“Now, there’d been this buzzing sound going by – it’s hard to describe, sort of a souped-up weed whacker. Of course, we’d avoided it, which was easy enough, since you notice it coming at a distance – and it’s always pitch black out when it blows by.”
“You don’t know what it looks like?” asked Minnie. It was a strong question, but she proposed it in the softest tone I’d heard from the teen. I rather think she’d taken quite a shine to our Hercules by then. Less approving was the scowl on Jeremy’s face.
“Well, no. I figure, if I can see it, it can see me,” Newton replied. “My point, though, is that we’d noticed it a bunch, but, despite it only showing up when it was night, those two idiots thought they’d go out to hunt grub in the dark. Larry was a bit of a goof, but Pam had her head on pretty straight generally, and I argued with her for quite a while before they left.
“I watched their backs disappear into the trees, then I was alone, for the first time since the outbreak. The minutes dragged on. I lost track of how long they were gone. I started sweating, pacing, and generally freaking out.
“Hours later, I heard Larry, laughing. He was pretty far off – across the road still – but he was celebrating with that annoying chicken chuckle of his: rubbing it in that they’d found treasure.
“However annoyed I might have been at the jerk, I was eager for a little grub in my belly.
“Then came the shriek; that maniac yard equipment sound.
“I don’t know what happened – maybe they thought their luck might hold, or that it was a patrol of some sort – maybe they couldn’t tell how much faster it seemed than before. In any case, it ended with them screaming. Larry kept asking for help, relentlessly, but Pam was just crying and squealing. She didn’t even sound human. I thought that the roaming buzz-saw noise was leaving, but it was just giving itself running room. It came by at full tilt, then – well, then there was nothing. Silence.
“When the sun came up, I went looking. Bits of them were spread out over a good half-mile of pavement. I found a duffel bag, with those stew cans in it, next to Larry’s severed hand. The bugs had already done quite a number on the stump.”
On that note of gore, he understandably stopped the recital, but Jeremy lept into the gap with a question.
“We must have driven by this spot in the Escalade, and I didn’t see a people smear anywhere?”
“I spent a good portion of the day tidying – and vomiting. You may have noticed the duffel wasn’t amongst my contributions.”
He pointed over the stream, at a sandy patch behind a cluster of immature spruce. I hadn’t noticed, up until then, how churned the area’s earth appeared, but I was pleased with my inadvertent choice of slumbering on the bank furthest from the burial site.
Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Canadian Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.
Text and audio commentaries can be sent to skinner@skinner.fm, or the voicemail line at (206) 338-2792 – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.
– and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.
Function: The Roar of the Greasepaint
It’s easy, given our modern understanding of camouflage, to mock the sort of grandiose headgear these gentlemen are wearing – especially given their role as sharpshooters – but, consider:
It’s 1812, and you’re standing alongside your sweating and anxious French brethren, on the dewy grass of a Russian morning, while staring down an enemy battle line.
The tiny emperor’s claims of easy victory have brought you hundreds of miles from your home, and you’re feeling pretty good about having encountered these fellows with their convenient “shoot here” plumes.
Mid-mock, your best friend, Jean Francoise, is suddenly cut down by one of the silly-hatted peacocks.
Who’s laughing then?
Listen, all I’m saying is that there may be something behind the idea of equipping NATO troops with heavily armoured clown outfits.
Homicidal Inequality
I stumbled across something that I found odd – stick close behind me as we take a quick stroll through a rogues gallery.
The Original Night Stalker is the moniker for an unidentified serial killer and rapist who murdered at least ten people in Southern California from 1979 through 1986 and sexually assaulted at least fifty in Northern California from June 1976 to July 1979.
The “Original Night Stalker”: a dark, dangerous, sort of moniker.
“Freeway Phantom” was the name given to an unidentified serial killer known to have abducted, raped and strangled six female youths in Washington, D.C. from April 1971 through September 1972.
The “Freeway Phantom”: ethereal and mysterious – a name that conjures up the image of a ghost wandering dimly lit pavement.
The Honolulu Strangler […] was Hawaii’s first known serial killer and responsible for the death of five women in Honolulu.
The “Honolulu Strangler”: a practical label, perhaps, but still evoking a sort of classic villainy.
“The Doodler” (aka “The Black Doodler”) refers to an unidentified serial killer believed responsible for 14 slayings and three assaults of men in San Francisco’s gay community between January 1974 and September 1975. The nickname was given due to the perpetrator’s habit of sketching his victims prior to having sex with them and then stabbing them to death.
The Doodler? Seriously? I don’t mean to cast aspersions on whoever the SF journalists and police had coming up with nicknames, but it seems to me that this fellow wouldn’t have been known as something quite so lame if he hadn’t been targeting the gay community.
I don’t know what I would have gone with for an alternate – the San Francisco Slasher? The Artist? – but even “The Black Doodler” sounds like a poorly paid caricaturist who intentionally draws over-sized noses on all of his clients.
Police had developed a prime suspect in the case, identified by two of his survivors, but authorities could not proceed with an arrest as the surviving victims refused to “out” themselves by way of testifying (one was an entertainer, the other a diplomat). Meanwhile, the suspect spoke freely with police, although he did not admit the slayings.
[…]
To date, the suspect has never been publicly named or apprehended, and the slayings have faded into obscurity; very little information is currently available about these crimes.
FlashCast 26 – Illegal Fireworks
[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashCast026.mp3](Download/iTunes)
Hello, and welcome to FlashCast episode twenty-six – prepare yourself for Jesse Eisenberg, Phantom of the Michael Jackson, Autobots, urban legends, illegal fireworks, and special episode one.
General Pulp
Fresh Fish, with Threedayfish/@Mc_Laughing
This week’s Fresh Fish: Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon
[youtube_sc url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHRf01Gjosk]
Mailbag:
- Joe in Colorado/@jmctee
- Another fantastic legend by Ingrid/Ella of dancingella.blogspot.com and Viennese Legends.blogspot.com
Backroom Plots:
- Nurture: a Blackhall Tale, Part 1 of 3
- Coffin: Nurture, Part 2 of 3
- Mulligan Smith in Nurture, Part 3 of 3
* * *
Also, many thanks, as always, Retro Jim, of RelicRadio.com for hosting FlashPulp.com and the wiki!
* * *
Freesound.org credits:
* * *
If you have comments, questions or suggestions, you can find us at https://flashpulp.com, call our voicemail line at (206) 338-2792, or email us text or mp3s to skinner@skinner.fm.
FlashCast is released under the Canadian Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.
Audioboo-ography 38: The Fourth of July
[audio:http://audioboo.fm/boos/404139-audioboo-ography-38-the-fourth-of-july.mp3]
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182 – Coffin: The Book Worm, Part 1 of 1
Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode one hundred and eighty two.
Tonight we present, Coffin: The Book Worm, Part 1 of 1.
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This week’s episodes are brought to you by Garaaga’s Children.
Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.
Tonight, Will Coffin, urban shaman, and his roommate, Bunny, receive an unexpected letter regarding an avid reader.
Flash Pulp 182 – Coffin: The Book Worm, Part 1 of 1
Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May
Coffin was staring out onto the apartment’s balcony from behind the sliding-door’s glass.
In the kitchen, Bunny was operating a blender and shouting explanations between bouts of ice-breaking.
“Yeah, I know they’re kinda lady-like, but sometimes I get feelin’ a little festive. Besides, how else am I going to get my vitamin C?”
It had been her idea to stay in for the evening.
“Flintstones vitamins,” he responded, only to have his words blotted out by renewed thrashing.
As the racket paused, it uncovered Bunny’s voice, mid-tune.
“…and getting caught in the rain.”
Then there was a knock at the door.
Will was mildly surprised to discover the mute standing in his hall. With an extended arm, he offered entrance to the newcomer, but the man shook his head in friendly refusal, and, instead, removed an envelope from his pocket and set it in Coffin’s palm. Nodding, the messenger then departed.
As the codger had lost his tongue early in life, the shaman was used to this being the extent of their conversation, but he couldn’t help but feel that the old bull had seemed shaken.
There were two slips of paper within the delivery, a single handwritten page, and a photocopy of scraps torn from the margins of what appeared to be fantasy novels. Beside a paragraph regarding the claiming of something called the Sword of Dawnswood was a woman’s name, Shirley Hartley, and a string of numbers. Along a bit of text describing an elven forest was another pairing – Cynthia Mayfield and a different set of digits – but also an apology. It read simply, “I’m so sorry.”
Scanning the accompanying notes, Coffin entered the kitchen.
“Forget the cocktails, we’re going out,” he said, but Bunny was already packing down a brimming thermos.
* * *
As they awaited their bus, Will muttered the letter into his roommate’s ear.
It read:
William
I have a matter which I believe requires your attention.
A kid I once knew was raiding his local used-bookstore for fiction, and came across the scrawl beside the bit about the sword. He’s a bit of a morbid little bugger, and he recognized the name from the news. He spent an afternoon tossing the shop, and he came up with the other. I have no idea if there are more – they may have been bought or missed.
Rather than find himself involved, he turned his discoveries over to me.
Those second-hand places have no real transaction records, but I got lucky – in the top right corner of the first page of both novels, the scribbler in question had signed his name: Neil Murray.
The missing both disappeared downtown, and, as you probably suspect, the numbers are GPS coordinates. As I write this, there are already uniformed men with tents and tiny brushes setting up in the woods at the edge of town.
I did some poking around just after I called in the blues. Neil is a security guard, and very fastidious. I talked to his boss briefly, and the harshest language he’s ever heard from his employee is the occasional “gosh.” All he does is sit around a waste treatment plant, watching cameras, and periodically walking the fence. He reads constantly. I’ve been inside his place, and there are books stacked up on every available surface.
None of them held any further scrawls though.
I even got my hands on a little of the patrol footage from the plant, just so I’d know Murray to see him. I had to go back and ask for some older stuff to be sure, but you can definitely make it out on the tape: he was changing. Becoming sort of – bulbous. His skin was stretching and rounding. By his last shift he was like a walking sausage with arms, right down to the translucent skin.
What I’m banking on them not finding till tomorrow is his parent’s house. When Mr and Mrs. Murray died in a car accident, he closed it up as sort of a shrine. I only know about it because of my, uh, direct investigation methodology, and hopefully it’ll take a bit for the boys to properly make their way through the paperwork.
I realize it’s a long run down the bus-line, but you need to look into 279 View’s garage.
Smith
It was deeper than Will was used to seeing the former lawman incriminate himself on paper – unless he was at hand to see the sheet burned – and by the time they were done reviewing the dispatch, Coffin was cursing every impeding stop before his own.
After an hour of swaying with regular halts, and nearing the end of the public-transport’s route, the pair found themselves deposited in a sparsely lit, but well treed, neighbourhood. It was a ten minute walk to the driveway they sought.
The pavement was cracked, but the yard was trim, and the light-blue house looked as if it might still have been lived in. There was an external side-door to the garage, and Will was pleased to find it unlocked.
A moment’s careful fumbling brought his fingers against a plastic faceplate, and he flipped on the overhead fluorescent lights. Bunny was close behind as he stepped into the open space.
In the corner furthest from the entrance, above the wooden rafters, was a massive white cocoon. Although many tendrils detached from the main body to keep the thing in place amongst the roof’s beams, the bulk of the nylon-looking weave was in a ten foot cylinder, pressed across the plywood walls at the web’s center.
“Holy ####, it’s Mothra,” said Bunny.
“Sort of,” replied Coffin, “he’s undergoing a metamorphoses. He’s becoming a moth-man.”
“Like with Richard Gere?”
“No.”
The both took a tentative step towards the silken structure, and Will found himself surveying the collected yard tools that lined the nearest wall.
He cleared his throat.
“It takes a long time for this sort of thing to happen. Months of collecting the proper nutrients – mostly pilfered from cracked braincases. I’ve known some imps who specialize in this sort of bargain, offering to turn them into a unique butterfly and all that. You need to slip off the map of reality pretty far to start seeing those hooligans though. I’m surprised he wasn’t caught talking to himself.”
“If anyone had given a ####, they’d-a noticed this ####er turning into a ###damn man-erpillar,” replied Bunny. “I’ve seen these guys lurking in the corners of laundry mats and cheap coffee shops. Poor #######s are usually too awkward to even hold their end of the conversation if you do them the favour of making small talk. I’ve always figured it was probably their upbringing.”
“Not a bad guess – might also explain why he only caved after his Ma and Pa died. At least they raised him well enough that he had some guilt about what he was doing. He’s got another week in that thing, but he likely thought his confessions would go unnoticed until well after he was beating his wings against the night sky.”
“So,” said Bunny, after a long sip from the lip of her silver canister, “what do we do? Call in a hundred-foot-tall bat?”
“Nah,” said Coffin, digging out a jerrycan. “We give him what most moths are looking for. I saw a gas station back on the main drag, let’s hustle before Smiths’ friends arrive.”
Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Canadian Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.
Coffin’s theme is Quinn’s Song: A New Man, by Kevin MacLeod ofhttp://incompetech.com/
Text and audio commentaries can be sent to skinner@skinner.fm, or the voicemail line at (206) 338-2792 – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.
– and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.
Call of Callthulu
It’s that time again!
We’ll be recording FlashCast 26 tonight – if you’d like something discussed, debated, determined or derided, you can leave us a voicemail at (206) 338-2792, or email us text or mp3s to skinner@skinner.fm.
If you feel like your item is too short to warrant those levels of investment, please feel free to mention it in a comment on this post.
Mr Eight Tells Me a Barber Gag
[audio:http://audioboo.fm/boos/403340-mr-eight-tells-me-a-barber-gag.mp3]
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