The Overnight Editor

Girl in the black and white dress

There was a girl.  But this was years ago.

Don't 'member much about her.  She sat on my lap.  She did.  For ages, my friend says.

Just sat herself down.  Must've been after two.  Been a very long night.  We'd gone to the bar next door, then they stamp your wrist and you go down the stairs, and through to the club.

Trainers shlip-shlap-shlip on sticky floor.  My round - threebottlesowater and threejackdanielsancokes.

Step-splosh-ARSE... well, most of three Jack Daniels and Cokes.  Cold. wet. leg.

At least there were three of us when we came in - where is he?  'Spose we'll just have to drink his.  Here, have some of this.

[There was definitely a girl.]

This, on top of absinthitos (yeahitslikeamojitobutwithabsinthyeah atennereachyeah myround) earlier that evening. 

Not great for the old recollection.  All that's left is my friend's description when we meet up two weeks later.  Georgeous he says.  And my own, camera-flash memory of her.  Black and white dress, big squares, sixties stylee.  Black-bob hair, almost Louise Brooks.

She stays aloof, even after I show her my watch and everything.  I like it.  That; the aloofness. Place is so loud - we're shouting straight into each other's ears.

SO WHAT DO YOU DO?
I TAKE DRUGS AND FUCK STRANGERS.

[She probably had a name.]

NO! FOR A LIVING! WHAT'S YOUR JOB?!
WHAT?

WHAT DO YOU SAY WHEN PEOPLE ASK WHAT YOU DO AT PARTIES?
I SAY THAT AS A GENERAL RULE, I DRINK TOO MUCH, AM RUDE TO THE HOSTS, AND GET ASKED TO LEAVE.

This is all going FAR too well.  Swimmingly, you might say... Certainly the bar, the bar is swimming.

[Where'd she go?]

Swimmingleee...

I notice that my arms are leaving coloured after-images behind them as I move them around - video feedback plus a bit of quantization. 

Suddenly, someone - suddenlysomeone! - has twiddled every knob on my vision mixer.

A thought sparks in the middle of my head, and starts making its way to the front, colliding with everything on the way out, the same way photons generated in the heart of the sun take thousands of years to reach the surface.

[Wasn't there a girl?]

Thatsss... purretty... sterrraaaaange...

The DJ booth starts to recede into the distance.  Now I'm looking at the stage through a toilet roll... no, a telescope... a telescope the wrong way round.

And after another 30 minutes, or it could have been 30 seconds, the thought emerges.

This isn't E...

...It's K.  Fffuuuuu....

Darling buds

The title of my last post made me remember, or probably realise, that Shakespeare wrote his 18th sonnet about another man, not a woman as one might have thought. 

Reminded me of someone I knew at school.  He had it about him, aura, a halo.  He didn't even try.  Like he could be a god if he wanted to be, but just couldn't be bothered.  Too cool to be god - how cool is that?

Fuck, barely say it but I fancied him.  Me and him seventeen, when any kind of touch, physical contact, was a hard-on, was books on your lap.

I don't really remember an early summer afternoon when we sat and talked,  while others played cricket but we weren't picked for the batting, and didn't want to be.  Instead we did the scoring, propelling pencil and dots in little boxes.  Heads up when a girl walked past the end of the upper field.  Scoring the girls.  And we sat on bags rather than on the grass, because now and for the first time we cared how we looked, and didn't want stains on our white trousers, not like the younger boys, ourselves-ago. 

And that was the day I first felt the dull ache in my balls, which I put down to closeness to him, distance from girls, or whatever: heart all crushed-up.  He asks me:

What would be the best thing you could ever give someone?

(because this was the start of the years of pretension) Love.  Erm... I mean friendship, companionship.

Wind gently stroking his fringe, the maximum the deputy head master would allow, perhaps a delicious bit longer.

'Spose... but what if you already had that?  What'd you give after that?

Um... Time.  More time.  Most precious thing you can have.  Extra years, have your life over again.

Yeah - think you're right.  If you could give someone fifty extra years, that'd be something.

Yeah.

***

A-levels then and my summer's boy left, to a different universe - sorry, different University.

The ache in my scrotum did not.  This is not a metaphor. 

For my first months at university, it throbbed.  Not sure it was getting worse, but it wasn't getting better, and something FELT different down there too, not painful, just different. But plenty of ways to distract myself, no time to worry about that.  We boys were well taught, like we were taught to avoid getting recruited by cults, but I found knowing the symptoms simply meant I knew how best to deny them.

Soon three terms make a year, worry and worrying.  I started taking sleeping pills, to stop my mind spinning.  The herbal ones, which didn't do shit, and then the proper ones, which didn't stop the night-spinning, just left me groggy in the mornings.

Aching on and off.  Then one night the beer went to my head in the bath I thought: once and for all, I'll have a proper look, and then I'll know.  I feel about but there's nothing, and nothing, and- THATSALUMP

...whipped back my hand and leapt from the bath and got into bed wet and drugged myself: pills all crushed-up.  The morning brought rationality or something near, and I rang the surgery.  Knew what to say - I talked up the symptoms a little, got an appointment early next day.

Sill registered with my parents' doctor, so I'm on the train that evening.  Mum grateful for the flying visit but I had to tell her why, no way round it.  How do you tell your mother that?  No trick to it - you just tell her.

You're scaring me.

Crazily, that night I got to sleep by thinking what music I'd have played.  Or is it cheesy to have funeral music at all?  Just something to focus on.  AM, drove myself to the surgery; insisted.  Doctor doesn't fuck about, straight to the sac.

Hmm... I've seen it before... but it isn't that.  Hard to say... maybe a hernia...

[IT ISN'T THAT]

Can happen your age...  or varicose veins... your mother suffered from them?

[YOU MEAN IT ISN'T THAT]

Could be stress-related...  perhaps you should slow down...  will probably fade...

No reason you won't live another fifty years.

In the car park, in the car, sitting with all five senses in neutral.

andfiddlingwiththeradioforanhourbeforeIeventurnthkeyandwhatamIlike

That feeling, being given my life back.  Fifty years! Just as my beautiful god had said, his gift for my friendship.  But I never tracked him down, and I never told anyone, in case it broke the spell. 

And now I don't even remember what tracks I chose.

7H3 D0RK5 0F P3RC3P710N

Friend of mine, studied computer science. 

Grav1tated towards the h4rder end - not your web-fiddl1ng or databas£ scripting - the re4l number-cruncH1ng, the CGI. 

7he pr0blems STrted with the printer driv£rs.  You know wh4t A pr1nt dr1vr does?!!  E$$ent1ally i7 turns a big long $tring of number$ 1NT0 anothr B1G long string 0v n|_|mbers, at A diFF£rent rate and in a different f0rM4T.  4bstract 5TUFF. 

Now H£'s A v bright guy but e w4s 57RUGGl1ng.  Then one of the p05t-grad5 lets him in on the s3cret.  C0de-s1ght. 

H3 c0uldNT describe 1T, 4T l34st not t0 m3, n0t 1n w0rd5.  A w4Y of visu4l15ing th3 numb3rs, s33ing how the softw4r3 fits tog3th3r, a w4y of g3tting your he4d round it.  Some PPL are b0rn with it.  For 3V3Ry1 3Lse, there's 4 w4y of 4h... acq|_|ir1ng it, even if 0nly t4mp0r4r1ly. 

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Th3 worst of the d4m4ge was not perman3nt. Now he has a T0y0ta Prius and a fl4t overlooking the Bay.  Yeah - TH4T Bay.

But he c4n't second-see the c0de any more.

I gue5s he just couldn't H4X0R it.

Simulation

It was an early case for me, strictly second fiddle.  The real interview was, of course, much longer than recorded here, but this is the gist of it from my written notes. 

Small meeting room with one frosted glass side.  She'd already poured herself a glass of water from the centre of the table.  Pale skin and shiny long black hair.  Slim shoulders, delicate fingers.

We're very grateful for you agreeing to talk with us.  We know how hard this must be, so soon after losing someone like that.

[calm, precise voice] We're... all still recovering from the news.  Everyone in the office.

How long had you known him?

About four and half years.

And you met him through work?

Yes.  We sometimes worked on different projects during that time, but always within the same department.

Do you know what project he was working on when he died?  Anything specific?

We were working together.  A government contract.  The details are classified - I thought I explained in my e-mail-

-But it's existence isn't, is it, I mean the company website says-

-The details are classified.  But I can talk about it in general terms.  It's a computer program - a simulation.  Finite element analysis applied to a complex macroscopic model.

Sorry, I think you'll have to...

A bit like predicting the weather - but rather than a model of the climate, it's a model of Britain.  Well, strictly it simulates the whole World, but only insofar as the rest of the World affects the UK.  Millions of people interacting, in complex and unpredictable ways, run over and over again through a supercomputer.  We call it a societal simulator.

Why would the government want that?  What's it for?

To test things - policies, ideas, initiatives.  See what effect they'll have without having to actually implement them.  At the moment they test out new policies on small or isolated communities. 

Yeah - I remember - when they wanted to change the licensing hours, they tried it out first on a small island that's only got one pub.  They let that pub open late for a year and studied the effect it had on the locals.

Exactly.  But that's hardly a scientific test, because one pub isn't a statistical sample.  Plus it wasn't isolated either; people came flooding in from the towns all around, and skewed the results.  The only real way to test a change to the alcohol licensing laws would be to change them all over the country at once.  But if you did that, and it went wrong, you're stuck with a serious real-world problem. [Gesticulating, forgetting herself:]  The societal simulator lets the government try things out, risk-free.  Put a tax on masturbation.  Legalise cannabis.  Raise the speed limit to 85.  Ban immigration, whatever you want.  An all-purpose political sandpit.

How long has the Government beeen doing this?

It's new - well, the idea is fairly old, but it's only recently that we've had enough data to kick a simulation off.  Satellite imagery, GPS, CCTV, mobile phone records, credit-card transactions, online medical records, you name it - we've been joining all the databases up, making the cross-connections, to get a complete picture of the population, how they behave, how they interact.  And of course supercomputer time has got cheaper.  So we... He and I... were finally building it - a complete, working, virtual model of Britain and all the people in it.  Then we run the simulation onwards in time and see what happens if we change the parameters.

So... Right.  How detailed can it get?  I mean what was the, er, the resolution?

[Playing awkwardly with her hair] You mean the granularity... the smallest thing it could model? 

Erm.. Yeah. 

Well, that's what he was working on.  Getting it as small as possible.  I don't know how far he got. 

Down to the smallest decisions?  The actions of individuals?

No - well, theoretically I suppose.  But the data wouldn't be much use.  The model draws its power from analysing the cumulative effect of many millions of tiny interactions.  None of the decisions is particularly important on its own.  Down at that level the error margin on any prediction would be huge.

I think I understand.  Just a few more questions, on the deceased himself.  You've no idea why he would want to kill himself?

No.  Nothing I could think of.  I mean, we're all just devastated by it.

I have to ask this, but - were you in a relationship?

[pause] No.  We were just colleagues.  We never had anything like that.

But you worked very closely together?  Late nights, just the two of you?

Yes.  Yes I suppose.

You don't think he felt anything for you?

No, no.  Not that he ever said.

[pause]  Thank you Miss.  That's everything, unless you have anything to add, or anything you'd like to ask us?

She didn't.  We left, two abreast along the corridor:

So we're not going to tell her?  Tell her about the note?

No, we don't have to.  Why burden her with it?  At least he left one - so hard for the family when they don't.

After we handed in our passes at reception, I took the little ziploc bag out my jacket and read the note again.  It still said:

She always said no.

Stars out of five

When I worked  - if that's the right word - on a student newspaper, we turks rejected the idea that everything we reviewed should be a product.  Gigs, music, films, books, theatre - all commercial products.  So we started on non-product reviews, determined to get away from that lazy "four stars out of five" routine.  Like we'd review "Tuesdays" or "my middle finger". 

OK, so our plan to revolutionise critical journalism didn't quite take off.  Looking back, pretty much unreadable.  But there was ONE, one who wouldn't be cowed.  Wish I could say it was me.  He was a hero from the frontline of what Martin Amis called "The war on cliche." 

First time out, editor sends him to see a band.  He goes along, fails triumphantly to file any sort of review.   But that's not the end of it; turns up at their next gig, presents them with a tiny rectangular section of bone marrow, about the same size as a SIM card, cut from his left shin.  THAT was his review - I liked your music so much, I'd donate parts of my body for you. 

(Local-aesthetic numbs the pain of the bonesaw, so he tells me, but nothing quite prepares you for that vibration.)

Another time he reviewed the first novel of a young authoress, herself barely out of University.  After reading the book he had a sperm sample couriered round to her agent; flask of dry-ice, the lot.  I enjoyed the coded ambiguity of that one - was he saying "I want to have your babies" or simply "This is wank"?

But perhaps his finest work was a film review he did for the Evening Standard, first year after graduation.  At the end of the preview showing, and slurring only slightly, he strides up to the director:

"I've had your corporate hospitality, eaten too many of your expensive canapes, drunk a little too much of your free red wine.  But now I have seen your film, I feel that in all conscience I really can't accept any of it.  So I'm giving it back."

And so he did - fingers down his throat, arched-back heaving.  Circle-splatter on dark-blue carpet, over shoes and up onto trouser bottoms.   Vomit-on-demand, like a big wet purple-white octopus re-entering the atmosphere at a thousand miles an hour and liquidising on impact.

Legend - but strangely enough, they didn't print it. 

Can't tell you his name 'cos he still works - if that's the right word - in the industry. 

Looking up

When I was ten years old I fell in love.

It started as a fascination, became an obsession, then slowly affection, understanding and lifelong companionship.  It endures today.

Look at the Moon tonight.  Up and to the left - or later this week, to the right - you'll see a bright yellowish star.

It's not a star, but the planet Jupiter.  Jupiter reached "opposition" a few weeks ago, meaning it is almost directly opposite the Sun in the sky - or, if you prefer, the Earth lies directly between Jupiter and the Sun.  Therefore at night, the face of Jupiter reflects the Sun's light more or less straight back at the Earth, and Jupiter appears particularly bright. 

Usually Venus, and sometimes Mars, are brighter than Jupiter, but at times like these Jupiter is the brightest object in the night sky after the Moon.

When I was ten years old I fell in love with the sky.  We all do, although I know people sometimes find it hard to talk about.  I suppose love is like that.  That's why they act dumb when I talk about things like Jupiter's opposition, pretend they didn't know.  Of course they know - it would be like forgetting your spouse's birthday.

That's my beautiful sky, and all I need is a window or a walk outside.

Jude's Pharmascope

Jude wanted to know the future.  Didn't everybody?  Not the fine details, just a few clues - something to go on, some sense of control.  So that everything wasn't quite so much of a slap in the face when it happened.

She was a legal PA.  It became her "thing" with the girls in the office.  She did everything: tarot, palmistry, numerology but above all, the horoscopes.  She used to read her stars in about four different papers, bought monthly horoscope magazines, called the phonelines, even paid for personal readings.  But it didn't work - they didn't work.  No better than random chance - and she should know, because she tested them; kept a record of how accurate they were.  And none of them were.

So Jude started making her own horoscope.  But instead of the motions of planets and her exact date of birth, none of which could ever really have any effect on her mood or behaviour, Jude's horoscope drew on something that very definitely could. 

Drugs.

She wrote their names - and she never used their real names - around the edges of three interlocking circles, or rings.  But not like in a circus, more like a gearbox.  As each circle rotated, it affected the other two, and within each circle there were smaller circles.  Turning the wheels created a sequence of alignments, or conjunctions, which could be written down in sequence to make a calendar of events.  Googling it later she found this is sometimes called an Orrery. 

The first circle were the drugs we abuse every day.  Blacklung, naturally, her most obvious drug, that she couldn't cope with or without, coughing at the bus stop, by the loading bay.  Then there was the blue inhaler or whitelung, that made everything OK, or at least manageable.  Whitelung had been her first love - the first drug she ever learned to use for herself, aged 7.  Also never far from the handbag, the bedside table and the desk-drawer were the chalky numbs - the various prins, fens and paracets that smoothed over the cracks in the daytime.  Her daily cup, or three, or however many it took, of jitter.  She was just about old enough to remember when a tall black americano was... like that footballer... Pele.  And finally steelgut - whose curve was the curve of her own adulthood, from supermarket cider in the park to pints of piss in the SU bar, through all those fads and phases (malibu and pineapple - what was THAT all about?) right up to the dry-why-why and the vodkanorange of the big grown-up girl she was today.

The second circle of the pharmascope were the Narcotics - the illegals.  Like mong... its slow sweet drift... teenage giggling turning slowly... into late-twenties catalepsy... sorry um... what?  Bitter-tasting Lovechatter, soul of the disco (andthedancingandthegrindingandthetalkingtoBINMENasthesuncomesup).  Then there were the occasional comet-visitors:  like dr3@m5h@rd - the paper stamp that made her almost choke on her own laughter, photographs come to life and a mockery of clocks.  She knew to turn the mirrors to face the wall if it ever came round again.  Like I-turbo, that a friend had first given her in a pub toilet, dipping her doorkey in the little bag, which was way way WAY too good to ever try again.  And still others, like Helloheaven, of which thankfully she knew nothing, but what she had seen and read.

And then the final circle.  These were the darkest, most subtle and most powerful forces.  They didn't have names - well OK, they did, because in its unromantic way science had named them.  But they didn't NEED names; they came from within - the drugs the body makes for itself, how it plays itself, betrays itself.  Instead she used little symbols for waht we would call serotonin; adrenalin; glucose, glycogen and insulin; the lunar phases of progesterone and oestrogen.  And strongest of all, like a brooding black hole, like gravity itself, the universe-crushing combination of in-drugs that people sometimes referred to by that wholly inadequate name, love.  Jude didn't abuse these drugs.  They abused her.

This was Jude's zodiac.

Some of connections were straightforward: for example, a night of Steelgut would guarantee Numbs and Jitter ascendant the next day.  Lovechatter completely eclipsed Jitter, naturally, and would need Mong following on soon behind, as did Dr3@m5h@rd.  Others were more complicated - Mong and blacklung were of the same sign, but with different Numb orbits; while both blacklung and the numbs could hit a neep tide if they fell at the wrong point in the lunar phase.

There were long-term pertubations too - like the celestial dance of blacklung and whitelung, which had subtleties far beyond the simple motion that a casual observer might imagine, moving slowly from solstice to equinox over the year.  And all the while the third circle made its own rules, bending the others to fit, eclipsing and occluding, waxing and waning as the mood took them - and thus, her.

When she first started, she used permanent markers on acetate paper, pinned onto a piece of thick card.  It pretty much did the job with the rotations but it was crude.  Later she got it spreadsheeted - pivot tables, the lot - and could plot the chart out for years and years.  Better still, she could calibrate the numbers by comparing each prediction against how she'd ACTUALLY felt on the day - improving the accuracy of the next forecast.  For example, baselining against 1999 - when she'd tried to fellate me (can you believe we'd only just met?) in the middle of Trafalgar square, pissed down her leg on the DLR on the way home - it would be 2011 before New Year's Eve was that much fun again.

Jude reads her pharmascope even now.  Far as I know, I'm the only one she ever told it too.  Does it work?  Not perfectly.  Jude still doesn't know the future, but she knows how she'll be feeling when it happens.

It was twenty years ago today

It was the Cold War, and I suppose things were different.

The Russians were under pressure.  Outstripped economically - and therefore technologically - they needed a way back into the game.  And a way back there was: if they couldn't outspend the West, they must out-think it.  A plan was hatched.  Simple - well, simple by Cold War standards - build an enormous artificial intelligence.  A Deep Thought, a Big Blue, that would give the Kremlin the easy answers.  The maths had been done, all they had to do was build it.

But there was a problem with Artificial Intelligences - a bit of a drawback.  A round of vodka, tovarisch, and I'll tell you.

***

OK, if you'll permit me a little digression - the problem was this:  Ask yourself - do you really exist?  Do you know that for a fact?  Could you prove you exist?  Prove it to anyone other than yourself?  You think therefore you are, yeah, but who's really convinced by that?  It's bad enough for a Natural, a born intelligence.  But imagine you were Artificial.  Not real - made in a lab.  And worst of all, you knew it.  Never had a body, not a childhood, just a brain in a jar - with little to do but contemplate your own existence.  It would be a thousand times worse, a million. 

So that was the lot of the AI - plagued by self-doubt, uncertainty, lack of confidence.  And the bigger they were, the bigger the problem.  Some said it shouldn't be built.  But with control rods and enough shielding, the scientists calculated it was possible.  Risky, certainly... unethical, even... but a frantic Kremlin was desperate and so set about it, at a remote research facility in Ukraine. 

There's a few more layers to this little matrioshka.  A drink might loosen them.

***

Spasiba.  So - one night, during a routine test, something went wrong.  Accident?  Or was it on purpose?  Truth is, only that damn brain ever really knew for sure.  But this much you already knew; the shielding on the AI failed.  A massive explosion, a plume of fatally-confused debris blasted high into the night sky.   Deadly waves of uncertainty radiating from the naked core. 

The overnight shift - those poor bastards - received several lifetimes' dose of self-doubt in an instant.  Those most seriously exposed killed themselves within minutes.  Other were plunged into existential crises and died a few days later.  From the worker's city nearby, ten thousand people evacuated.  Leaving their possessions and ther pets behind - the despondent dogs later shot by snipers.  But quick as it was, still they'd caught a dose of the self-doubt, and even now have a higher incidence of suicide compared to other Russians. 

And in this company we'll say nothing of their poor children, born mentally deformed.

Meanwhile, an enormous cloud of dubiousness moved silently across northern Europe, grey rain in its wake.  By the time the Soviets could bring themselves to admit what had happened, it had got into the food chain.  Thousands of sheep not knowing they were sheep - culled, and millions of litres of uncertain milk poured away.

Choot Choot, my friend, just one more.

***

Da.  After a massive clean-up operation, the contamination was back within safe limits - officially, heh.  The Artifical Intelligence eventually burnt itself out, its remains sealed within an enormous, hastily-erected concrete sarcophagus.  And they say that after every 250 years the self-doubt will be half what it was before.

So why do I tell you this?  How do I know?  You mean apart from the fact that "Frantic Kremlin", "Naked Core", "The Despondent Dogs", "Shot by Snipers" and "Concrete Sarcophagus" are names of Belarussian rock bands? 

Well...  This is why, even now, if a group of office workers in Britain go out together for a indian, at some point during the meal, one of them will say poke suspiciously at a plateful of curry and say:

"You know, I'm not sure this IS lamb."

Za Vas!

The Emissary

Do you have any idea what it costs to fly a million-dollar racehorse around the World?

Animal husbandry is big business, a very big business indeed.  But everyone has to work on their margins, keep those costs down.  Artificial insemination is the standard solution, but it doesn't always work.  And you'd be surprised how many people around the world - especially the old money - can be a bit, shall we say... traditional when it comes to fertility and reproduction.

So a few years ago someone hits on an idea.  Find a host - preferably one who only took up one seat on an aeroplane - and graft it on.  Just a small surgical procedure, carried out under local anaesthetic.  Then the host flies over, hooks up with the lucky... ah... ladies.  Does the business, flies back, another small surgical procedure, everything returned to its rightful owners, job done.  Not as whacky as you might think.  There's even a word for it: polyorchid.

How do I know this?  Friend of mine was approached for the position about a year ago.  At Catford Dogs Track as it happened.  And, over a very expensive lunch the next day, he took it.

Even more than the bulging sacks of money, it was the lifestyle.  No more cattle-class travel for him.  Strictly a first-class animal.  Pampered, preened like he was something special, something extra.  And why not?  He was more than an ordinary man.  And it seemed like women could tell.  So this was what fame and fortune must be like.

At first he just stood on the stool and, I suppose, leaned on the females.  Cash in hand - more than a pony a pop.  But after the first few dozen jobs he found he wasn't leaning, he was... caressing.  Now there's no shame in enjoying your work.  But a line was slowly being crossed.  The cows, the mares, the does... they galloped through his dreams.  He started to look at things in new ways; not everything, but certain things. 

Horse-racing on TV.  Miss Piggy.

It got worse when he travelled.  The dislocation; the sense of being loaded, shipped,  unloaded, like livestock; sleeping through the gentle noise and vibration.  Then, one flight it came to a head; across from Hong Kong for a two-week itinerary of European zoos and studfarms.  At the time he was carrying nine.  Four from two racehorses, one each from a prize bull and an alarmingly large free-range pig, his own two - almost lost in there - and finally the panda, which he'd agreed to take on for free, as he occasionally did for endangered species.

It was like a fire extinguisher going off.

He made a lunge for toilet door but the light was on.  Like a car accident, it comes back to him now not as a complete reel, but stills, memory flashes.  His saturated trousers.  That familiar sweet-watery smell.  The stewardess, rushing to help with a comically inadequate tissue.  Then recoiling, baffled, disgusted.  Going through customs in the complimentary pajamas.  The stiffly-worded letter from the airline's legal department.  A thoroughbred freak.

The trip was a dead loss.  With the possible exception of the panda, they'd all fired, leaving him with nothing to contribute once he arrived.  Despite some valiant... prolongued... efforts.  Rich, powerful, unhappy customers meant the end of the race for this stud. 

On the bright side, at least he can walk straight again.  And he's been told the skin will shrink back to it's original size.  Eventually. 

Emotionally Challenged - Epilogue

One more bite on the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.  It's been twenty years, time to close out the memory. 

I watched a documentary about it on Channel Four this week.  I'm no TV reviewer but I liked it, especially the way it focussed on Christa MacAulliffe.  As I've reported before, I didn't know it then but her presence on the mision was why I was watching.

The documentary covered the accident and in parallel the subsequent inquiry - strictly a Presidential Commission. 

Eleven years old, I took an interest.  Seriously!  Remember, you're reading the blog of someone who has a copy of the report of the Warren Commission on his bookshelf.    The Challenger commission was headed by someone terribly important that I'd never heard of and duly ignored (it was a politician, William Pierce Rogers - Wikipedia makes everyone an expert).  But also on the commission (in fact I think he was the vice-chairman) was the the most famous man in the World - Neil Armstrong.  Again, we don't think of things that way when we're young, but Armstrong was my hero. 

The panel also inlcuded another boring old guy called Richard Feynman, who was something called a scientist, and whom I also ignored. 

The commission ground on for several months, and I paid it no attention at all.  Largely because this was the attention paid to it by The Sun newspaper and the BBC news - my twin sources of information about the wider world. 

Eventually the commission intruded once again.  They'd worked out what had happened.  This did not surprise me, as the panel included Neil Armstrong: first man on the moon, chief astronaut and - obviously, therefore - cleverest man in the World.

Only this, the final act in my Challenger story, didn't quite play out as I imagined.  Aged 11 I'd have been happy with an explanation that said the Shuttle just exploded; accidents happen.  But instead of that, they'd actually worked out exactly what had happened, something to do with the rubber seals on the boosters getting too cold.  And it wasn't Neil Armstrong who had solved it - it was the scientist man, Richard Feynman, which he demonstrated on TV by putting rubber in very cold water.  (I confess I don't remember this as quite the defining moment it seems to have become, at least in the popular imagination.  But I do remember it.)

I can't pretend I had an immediate emotional reaction to the commission's report - I didn't.  Certainly nothing on a par to my reaction to the accident itself.  But it set something changing; not straightaway, not overnight, not by a long way, but real. 

The change was this: before, my unchallenged all-time hero was Neil Armstrong.  After, it was Richard Feynman.  Perhaps he still is.