This is my new coworker. We share a desk.

She's possibly a little young to be working. Her final molt will replace her missing leg and probably tone down the racing stripes on the dorsal surface of her abdomen. And then she'll be fully grown.

Her name is Latrodectus mactans maria dei maternae, or words to that effect. I may not have heard her name correctly due to the excitement surrounding her introduction.

Right now she's on guard duty, hanging out with my little desktop toys I play with while my dual-core multiple Gigahertz processor workstation does what it does best, which is show me slowly creeping status bars. She's somewhere over there with Optimus Prime and Starscream and the smorkin' bone and the REDRUM smorkin' labbit and the ten glow-in-the-dark dinosaurs, currently in their "four legs good, two legs bad" configuration.

It's probably not fair to her hard-working nature to make her presence such a low-key thing. I should probably make her a name plate for her side of the desk. Maybe include her title as well. But maybe that would draw too much attention to someone who I know prizes her privacy....

Or maybe I should just put a card in front of her that says, "It behooves you not to fuck with the black widow spider. Thank you."

[*]

Posted by Laszlo Q. V. St-J. Xalieri

One of the reasons I like the idea of atomic clocks is that on the atomic scale -- on the quantum scale -- it's next to impossible to tell what time it is. On the quantum scale, anything that can happen can unhappen. More bizarrely, anything can happen as long as it unhappens so quickly just about no one had a chance to notice. There's no way to tell past from future.

Time, as experienced on the "I think it's about time for a sandwich" scale, is an aggregate of the bazillions of "just abouts", measured as the infinite APR interest rate on borrowing matter and energy from the void, from the future, paid back in one infinitieth of a second so you don't get kneecapped by Maxwell's Demon, Choronzon, Yog-Sothoth, or whoever it is who is the Keeper of the Gate these days.

The interest, the vigorish paid on the virtual particles borrowed from the nothingness ... this is where time and space come from. This is the source of the expansion force that pushes us apart and into the future.

Atomic clocks count the markers called back in by the void, reclaiming the tiny tiny tiny bits of glue holding lumps together that could only have been nailed together by a supernova.

It was an impressive feat at the time, an awesome spot of luck, but the house always wins in the end. It's predictable enough to set your watch by.

[*]

Posted by Laszlo Q. V. St-J. Xalieri

Even in the faint glow of the candle I couldn't deny her sexiness.
It oozed around us both. Wrapping me in it's heady rush. Teasing me into further heights of awareness.
I was about to lean and initiate the kiss when she spoke.
"SO which do you prefer. Your PSP or me?"
I looked at her in shock.
My mind did a quick compilation.
My PSP:
Dependable.
Never complained.
Got turned on in 0.0006 seconds flat whenever i wanted it too.
Hadn't cost me a dime ever since our first meeting.
Never once yelled when i hit it.
Or hit me back in turn.
I looked at her waiting stare.
And got up and left.

Silly girl.
Why didn't she just let me kiss her?

Posted by carlang

"We can't do that one, I said. There's no music playing."

"Also, there aren't any chairs."

"We could just sit on the ground."

"How does that rule someone out? There is, pretty much by definition, enough ground for everyone to have a seat."

"Last one to sit down is out."

"Not doing it. You know how it'll go. There'll be an argument every time. It'll be worse than Cowboys and Indians."

"Also: No Music. NO MUSIC."

"We could sing."

"And the one singing would pretty much always be the first one to sit, you think?"

"We could ALL sing."

"And how would we all know to stop at the same time?"

"Here we go 'round the mulberry bush! The..."

"Oak. And SHUT UP."

"Okay. How about 'Button, Button, Who's got the Button'?"

"I hate to even ask, but does anyone have a button? And if you do, don't tell me where you're carrying it."

"..."

"..."

"Thought so. I don't know why we bother."

"I know! Duck, duck --"

"Who are you calling a duck?"

[*]

Posted by Laszlo Q. V. St-J. Xalieri

The moon follows me around. It likes to keep me in its line of sight.

Yeah, I know, that's silly and paranoid. Not true.

The truth is that there's a giant interstellar form made of gravity-gnarled darkness, well and truly hidden in the blackness of the nearby night sky. It holds the spinning moon in its twisted limbs, using it for a lantern, and it likes to keep me in its line of sight.

When we send rockets to the moon, we're like ants climbing on its body, as unaware of its true scope as ants are unaware of the shape and purpose of the table at a picnic, unaware of the ankle they're traversing until they get swatted. We fling our little ships into the lined curves of its swirling body, trying our damnedest not to tickle....

The moon follows me.

What makes me so special, so worthy of attention? Here's the only answer. You're a kid, following some ant around with the burning focus of a magnifying glass at midday. What makes that particular ant so special?

Same damned thing. Nothing.

[*]

Posted by Laszlo Q. V. St-J. Xalieri

That little "X" is what's holding down the Earth.

The table legs. Where I'm sitting now.

The math supports me, so to speak. The force of gravity is an attraction between two masses. If you weigh ten stone, then, by very definition, the Earth itself weighs ten stone, pressing upwards on your feet.

Imagine yourself floating upside-down, balancing the world on your feet like some kind of circus acrobat. Because you are. When you run, you kick the Earth, spinning it. You and damned near seven billion other people. The world spins the way it spins by sheer law of averages. Very democratic.

Except this table, right where I'm sitting now, gets the winning vote.

I can tell. I'm leaning on it. And while I'm normally just a tad dizzy from all of you spinning this place I'm standing on with your feet, while I'm leaning on this table, I don't feel dizzy in the slightest. This table nails the Earth in place -- at least while I'm leaning on it.

And the rest of you are just spinning your wheels.

[*]

Posted by Laszlo Q. V. St-J. Xalieri

"You want to know what true happiness is? Knowing your place. Being given a job you know you can do, doing it as hard as you can, and knowing you're good at it."

"Really."

"Really. When you're in that position, what you do becomes what you are. You could be a doorstop. But when someone asks you, 'Who the hell are you?' you can say, 'My name is Tony Danza and I'm a motherfricken' doorstop.' End of story. Not everybody can do that."

"Tony Danza? As in, 'Hold me closer, Tony Danza'?"

"Forget it. First name that came to my head."

"That worries me just as much as your philosophy."

"Well. Worry about Tony Danza if you want, but the philosophy is sound. If you know your own name and you know what you're good for, you are nine-tenths of the way to true happiness."

"What's the other tenth?"

"Maybe not being a doorstop."

[*]

Posted by Laszlo Q. V. St-J. Xalieri

I am afraid of heights.
It is a pretty serious problem i am told.
Given my line of work there are certain things expected of you. Even more importantly, i am not told, are things that are not expected.
Fear of Heights appears to be one of them. It is why i am seated here waiting.
My condition has been referred to the people above me and some form of reckoning or reconciliation is scheduled to take place.
I think it's a lot of fuss over nothing really but everyone assures me that, in my line of work , it isn't.

You see I am an Angel.

Posted by carlang