Posted on November 20, 2022
The Three Questions of Life
The verdict is in: life is hard. Show me a person who claims they have never struggled and I will show you a liar. Of life’s many obstacles, understanding it is often the most difficult. Anyone can put their head down and grind through rough times, but having a reason why apart from survival takes so much more. Those rough times are like sandpaper—they wear away at reasoning, leaving either a hardened truth or nothing at all. Knowing your truth is a personal question that only you can answer, and it takes a level of introspection hard to accomplish in the cacophony of today’s world. But it can be done, and done in answering just three questions: where you come from, where you are going, and who you are.
Where you come from is not just a geographical question. While the location you were raised does have some impact, the circumstances of it mean far more. Those circumstances had two major effects on you. First, they established the playing field for your development. Second, they resulted in the experiences on that playing field that shaped your development. My old playing field of middle-class Southern California is as different to that of an illiterate child that has to work to survive from an early age as a checkers board is from a rugby pitch.
While some of the boundaries are universal—nourishment requirements, a need for community—some playing fields are far more forgiving than others. The harder the playing field, the more extreme the experiences upon it are likely to be. For example, a child raised in a Sao Paolo favela is likely to face much harsher trials than one raised in a posh section of London. Understanding the playing field you came from and what the experiences there taught you are step one to understanding your life.
The next question is where you are going. Again, this is more than geographical. What you need is an understanding of your desired circumstances in life. A person who wants to settle down in the same town they grew up in with a high school sweetheart will need to take radically different choices from someone who wants to emigrate to another country and leave their original playing field behind.
Where you come from has a huge impact on where you’re going. Those earlier experiences mold what you like, what you hate, and what you need. Those factors shape the desired boundaries of any future playing fields, which help you target the right circumstances. The issue with not knowing your answer to this question is that if you don’t exercise your agency to choose, the world will choose for you and you’ll never realize it.
Answering the final question requires answers for the proceeding two, though at first it is not evident why. After all, isn’t knowing yourself key to understanding your past and planning your future? The three answers are inextricably linked, but knowing yourself cannot take place in a vacuum. If you tried to define who you were without pulling on a single past experience or future desire, what would that leave? A formless husk, indistinguishable from any other judged by the same criteria. It is the answers to the first two questions that provide the context for a satisfying answer to the third.
Perhaps you overcame personal tragedy in your original playing field and strive to create a new one where the likelihood of such experiences is smaller for your children. That dictates certain attributes about who you are that are unique to you, far different from someone who never had those experiences and thus do not share similar desires. Knowing yourself is difficult, but likely the most important of the three questions for personal contentment.
Together, these three questions—where you come from, where you are going, and who you are—are the keys to understanding your life. Having the humility to ponder on the answers as they are instead of how you wish them to be is the necessary step we should all take to know ourselves.
Posted on November 6, 2022
Russia, Iran, and Autocratic Friendship Circles
I live my life by a simple set of rules. Rule Number One? Don’t go to jail. It’s not relevant to today’s Wandering, but it always bears repeating. Rules Number Two and Three, however, are germane: read, and read often. The written word remains the most efficient way to spread ideas, and they can come from anywhere. Case in point, this line from the novel The Light Brigade: “Any human power can be changed by human beings. That is a truth, a constant. Humans can’t build power structures that cannot be destroyed. We are the power structure.” I love that concept and want to apply it to a thought loitering in my mind—autocratic friendship circles.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine took a nasty turn recently as Iranian-made kamikaze drones started targeting civilian buildings and critical infrastructure across Ukraine. Leaving aside how Russia seems intent on racking up war crimes like Stalin is grading their performance, Iran’s support marks the first time the country has gotten involved in a major European conflict. Given how poorly Russia has fared in the conflict and in international opinion (though not nearly poorly enough, unfortunately), it seems odd that Tehran would look at the situation and think yeah, that seems like something we want in on. Why would they do this? Sure, Iran has a history of fighting Western interests via proxies, and yes, their economy can use whatever boost arms sales can provide, but I think the driving reason is more environmental.
The internet credits Jim Rohn with coining the phrase we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with. Pair this with Dr Marshall Goldsmith’s thoughts (with Mark Reiter) on environment in his book Triggers: “We think we are in sync with our environment, but actually it’s at war with us. We think we control environment but in fact it controls us.” Together, the two points indicate that the people we spend the most time with are our environment, and our environment shapes who we are and what we do. Now we come back to autocratic friendship circles.
Whenever Russia does something naughty, it can rely on its clique of fellow ne’er-do-wells to have its back. It says something about a country when its closest partners are China, Iran, Syria, and North Korea. I think it’s fair to say that the five of them are responsible for a truly depressing amount of the sum total of human suffering in the last century. And much like any Mean Girl crew, none of them see anything wrong with each other’s horrifying behavior. Assassinating political opponents on foreign soil? Not a hint of condemnation. Illegally annexing territory of a sovereign nation and launching a proxy insurgency to claim more in the future? Nothing to see here. Launching an unprovoked invasion of that same sovereign nation in a naked land grab attempt? Not only do they fail to condemn it, they appear fully onboard.
There are two reasons why this autocratic friendship circle is so strong. First, because it pays to have friends when you decide to cosplay as a tzar and the majority of the world treats you as a pariah. No country can go it alone, a case proven by how even the infamous Hermit Kingdom of North Korea relies on lifelines to China and Russia to keep from collapsing in on its own incompetence. Second, the autocratic friendship circle provides what Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jung Un, Bashar al-Assad, and Ali Khamenei all really want—a friend. More importantly, a friend who never critiques.
At the surface level, autocratic regimes seem like an efficient way to get things done. If only one person is making decisions, you don’t have to worry about pesky things like elections or compromise to make forward progress. However, that advantage fades as that sole decision maker becomes a bottleneck. The situation worsens as the decision maker inevitably surrounds him or herself with Yes Men that only feed the decision maker what they want to hear, regardless of its veracity. Putin invading Ukraine, Xi doubling down on draconian COVID policies, Asaad using chemical weapons on his own people, and literally anything Kim Jung Un does are all examples of actions that a stable of sane advisors could have talked those respective dictators out of if they had any shred of humility left inside them. We can now add shipping thousands of Iranian-made kamikaze drones and ballistic missiles to Russia as they target civilians to that list.
I like to imagine that Supreme Leader (not a joke title) Khamenei had a moment like this as he made such a terrible decision. His advisors come to him with the proposal. “Sir,” they say, “you know how Russia has become a comic book villain while also getting its collective posterior handed to it by Ukrainian forces?” The Supreme Leader nods—of course he knows how his buddy Vlad is doing, such a shame how his invasion—I mean, ‘special military operation’ has gone. “What if we tied ourselves inextricably to that situation?” the advisors suggest.
Khamenei goes to answer, then stops himself with a frown. Wheels long atrophied start cranking as he considers the ramifications of helping Russia double down on becoming the war crime champion of the century. He opens his mouth to order the execution of his advisors for wasting his time with such a stupid idea when his sleeve slides down and reveals something colorful on his wrist– the friendship bracelet Putin made for him at their last autocratic friendship circle. He smiles fondly, then gives the go-ahead for his country to further alienate itself from the world with little to no benefit in return. After all, what else are friends for?
Posted on October 24, 2022
Xi Jinping and China’s Downhill Sprint
‘90s rap is a trove of wisdom and quips. Coolio coined the phrase “Ain’t no party like a West Coast party / ‘Cause a West Coast party don’t stop” back in 1995. In homage to Professor Coolio and in line with the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, I present the following adaptation: Ain’t no party like a Chinese Communist Party, because a Chinese Communist Party can’t stop.
The CCP hosted its every-five-year Congress this week, and President/Party Secretary Xi Jinping has followed in the path of dictators the world over by functionally declaring himself President for Life. This comes as no surprise, as he lit groundwork for this move with strobing neon lights. One fun example is how last year, Xi went ahead and removed pesky reminders of the threat behind cults of personality and the need for collective leadership in a document meant to enshrine how the CCP views its own history.
What is driving President Xi to make such a radical shift? The trite answer is that power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, yada yada. And to be fair, there could be an element of that involved. Xi obviously thinks he alone has the vision to usher China into global dominance. But I think the environment he finds himself in drives him as much—if not more than—overweened pride.
First, a caveat. People making grand proclamations of how the Chinese system works ooze out of Western sources like leftover orange chicken sauce from the dumpster behind a Panda Express. Chinese culture and practices are complex, having been formed over thousands of years of tradition and oppression. Take any claims otherwise with a shaker full of salt. That said, I’m going to go ahead and do that now anyways.
Modern China revolves around the Chinese Communist Party and its primary goal: survival. Any political power or regime fights for its survival, of course, but to the CCP, it is an all-consuming priority. I am not knowledgeable enough in Chinese history to know where that comes from, but my guess is millennia of violent dynastic overthrows mixed with decades of civil war and a Japanese invasion during its formative years means the CCP has a paranoia streak that would make a doomsday prepper want to pump the brakes. Historically, China has been difficult to hold together in a unified whole without excessive force (there’s a Romance about it and everything). As the leader of the CCP, Xi must pursue regime survival at all costs or risk losing support of the Party that gives him his power and legitimacy.
The CCP has a long and storied history of purging those who don’t toe the Party line to maintain internal order, and maybe I’ll cover that in a future Wandering. What I find more interesting is the rest of China. The vast majority of Chinese citizens are not members of the CCP, but hold the ultimate “torch and pitchfork” threat over the CCP should they get sufficiently riled. How does the CCP maintain control over a billion-plus people? Bread and circuses at gunpoint.
Let’s start with the bread. China has made remarkable progress lifting its citizens out of poverty. Over the last four decades, China was responsible for three-quarters of the global poverty reduction by bringing wealth into their country. Between 1990 and 2005, GDP per capita increased 400%. This has also resulted in significant wealth consolidation amongst CCP elite, with Party officials making bank as money pours into China. The CCP likely thinks that so long as it keeps people flush with cash, they’ll stay content enough to never pose a threat.
I’ll roll in the general thought of circuses as leisure entertainment into the bread points above and focus on a different sort of pastime China enjoys: nationalism. Internal Chinese narratives love to use foreign entities as whipping posts to focus Chinese citizens on external threats over internal issues. That said, they use such a tool strategically—allowing protests in some cases to exert political pressure on foreign governments, while stifling them in other areas when it suits them. This gives them an unwieldy pressure valve to help manipulate and control the populace, but one that carries significant risk as we’ll talk about later.
Finally, the gun. One of the convenient bits for writing negative articles about China is the Chinese are very good at providing extreme examples of just how oppressive they can be to their own people. Here are some of the highlights from just the past few decades: the Uyghur genocide, crushing agreed upon democratic freedoms in Hong Kong, continued oppression in Tibet, disappearing inconvenient critics, forced organ harvesting from persecuted minorities, and the wholesale massacre of peaceful protestors. When you put it all in one place like that, it’s clear that the CCP has yet to encounter a problem they didn’t think a boot on the neck would suffice to solve.
So the CCP has things on lock, right? Well, maybe not. The issue with maintaining absolute authoritarian power is that it’s an all or nothing gamble. The moment enough cracks show up, everything comes tumbling down. And while I am not predicting the imminent downfall of the CCP, I think it’s fair to consider the numerous issues across China that may have driven Xi to trump tradition to maintain power. The slowdown in economic growth means the quality of life increases the average Chinese citizen has come to expect may slow as well. An ongoing collapse of major firms like Evergrande is wiping out savings across the country and leading to widespread protests. The populace has been worked up into such a frenzy over Taiwan that the CCP might be forced into an armed invasion to satiate them. When you run out of bread and the circus is out of control, how much longer can you maintain things with just a gun?
Allow me one more strained metaphor, dear reader. The gentle folk of Gloucester, England, have a tradition. Every year, men and women line up at the top of a 200-meter hill with a 50-degree slope and chase a rolling wheel of cheese to the bottom at full tilt. Injuries are, of course, frequent. But a few lucky souls occasionally make it down unscathed, keeping their footing the entire time.
Xi is at the 100-meter point in his sprint downhill chasing after CCP survival cheese. He has kept his footing so far, but like anyone who has run downhill before knows, stopping is no longer an option. As he faces looming hillocks and gopher holes like economic collapse, North Korean instability, and a demographic crisis, he must somehow stay upright or crash terribly. And the thing about making yourself President for Life? When you crash and burn, you tend to take a lot of people down with you.
Posted on October 10, 2022
Story Snafus: Plot Armor
One of the unfortunate side effects of learning how to write is that some of those lessons stick and bleed into how you view media. These range from the mundane (sentence structure, slight character or plot inconsistencies), the moderate (flat characters, overuse of cliches), and the extreme (deus ex machina, unlikable protagonists). It drags you out of the story when you run out of eyebrows to quirk at the issues you see, especially if you then spend the next week-plus seething over how you could have done it better. The one that frustrates me the most? Egregious use of plot armor.
For those with too much sense to spend their time delving into story mechanics, plot armor is “when a main character’s life and health are safeguarded by the fact that he or she is the one person (or one of several) who can’t be removed from the story.” When you need a character to accomplish something later in the story, you can’t very well kill them off in the beginning. On the other hand, if you don’t have them face any challenges along the way, they are boring enough that there’s no point in following their journey. Thus, plot armor. Every character has it, to an extent—so long as the author needs that character to do something, they have to be able to perform that task. Where the issue lies is when that authorial protection becomes grossly apparent.
Like for many things, the worst recent example I can think of comes from the last three main Star Wars movies (episodes seven, eight, and nine). You have several examples to pick from, but my haterade flavor of choice is Rey in The Force Awakens. Up to the start of the movie, Rey spent her entire life scavenging scrap and hitting people with a stick. By the end of the movie (which we have no reason to think took longer than a few days), she flies multiple spacecraft she’s never seen before, escapes captivity multiple times utilizing abilities she’s had no training in, and wins a lightsaber duel against someone with years of experience while never having touched one herself. This dips into Mary Sue territory (another trope for another Wandering), but the two feed off each other in a story-killing form of parasitic symbiosis.
Why does it matter if the main character succeeds? That’s the wrong question. What matters is how that character succeeds. Because Rey consistently shows she can overcome any obstacles with zero training or explanation, nothing the story throws at her matters. This leaves the audience in a perpetual state of disbelief because the writers put no effort into making the challenges against her appear formidable or realistic when matched up against her plot armor. Why would I let myself feel any suspense or care for the character when I know that she’ll just manifest whatever power she needs to win at the exact time she needs it? There’s a reason most video games with cheat codes turn off achievements if you use them—at that point, you haven’t earned anything.
* * * Spoilers ahead for The Rings of Power * * *
All of that brings me to episode six of The Rings of Power. My rage tanks were full of righteous indignation as I watched a bunch of peasant farmers and a single elf somehow take down an entire company of battle-hardened orcs. The fury came to a crescendo as somehow the injured child of the town healer not only holds his own against multiple armored combatants, but triumphs over them. I prepared to roll my eyes hard enough to give myself whiplash when the writers revealed their clever little trick. Turns out the peasant farmers weren’t wildly successful against orcs—they just managed to slaughter a bunch of other peasant farmers being led by a few orcs.
Not only does this scene convey a palpable sense of the characters’ horror at killing yesterday’s neighbors, it leads perfectly into the realistic outcome. The good guys got lucky with their trap at the tower, but when it’s the orcs’ turn, they crush the good guys. And of course they do! That’s what you’d expect when a battle-tested, armored force goes against people who’ve never fought before in their lives. Granted, there’s still plenty of plot armor to go around (assuming that shoulder wound doesn’t get infected), but at least this conveys a sense of consequence. It’s all well and good to stand up and fight against evil, but if there’s no believable reason why you should succeed, then the right answer is that you don’t. Otherwise we end up with the last Star Wars trilogy, and no one wants another one of those.
Posted on September 25, 2022
Joining the Military: A Tale Told in Three Parts
Our society has an unfortunate tendency. We expect children on the cusp of adulthood to know what they want to do with their lives before graduating from high school, regardless of further need for emotional and maturity development. Occasionally, however, a few get lucky. I consider myself in that latter category, but it has taken me an additional fourteen years to understand it. While I only signed on the dotted line once, I have “joined” the military on three separate occasions. With each joining, I grew closer to knowing why.
The first time I joined the military came from my obsession with reading. Tired of constant trips to Barnes and Noble with his 6th grader, my father dusted off a box of his old books from the attic and cut me loose. From that trove came one that changed my life—Fight like a Falcon by Philip Harkins. In it, the main character is an aimless teen who meets a cadet from the Air Force Academy. The teen then turns his life around and gains entrance to the Academy, then experiences his doolie year. I was hooked.
After finishing the book, I happily informed my father I would attend the Air Force Academy and be an officer in the Air Force. Having endured the weekly changing of “what I want to be when I grow up” dreams from multiple children, my father patted me on the head and promptly forgot about it. But the seed was planted and took root. From 6th grade on, the Academy was the only college option I considered. Even after an initial rejection, I kept at it until gaining entrance with the Class of 2013.
When asked why I wanted to join the Academy, the answer I always gave was that I wanted to do something different. Only a cousin had served since the draft in WW2, and none of my friends interested in it. I wanted something beyond the usual nine-to-five gig (joke’s on me, I’ve never had a duty day start later than 0730). This longing for the unique sufficed to drive me through seven years of yearning and four years at the Academy.
The second time I joined the military was when my initial commitment expired. My five years came and went while I was stationed in Germany, working for the USAFE-AFAFRICA/A6. In many ways, the job was everything I had wanted to avoid—I worked in a cubicle farm, spending most of my time on a computer typing emails and plans. The other part of my job, however, was going TDY to work with our Allies and Partners across Europe and Israel. That experience is what made me join again.
I spent my first five years firmly at the tactical level. It had many rewards, but kept my scope so narrow that I allowed the bureaucratic grind of life in the Air Force to jade my experience. I actively considered getting out when my commitment expired. However, what I gained from working with our partners in the EUCOM AOR—Israel and Ukraine, in particular—was an expanded perspective.
I went on dozens of TDYs to these two countries and spent days planning major exercises with our partners. I saw firsthand what it meant for a country to plan for its survival in what my Israeli friends often called “a rough neighborhood.” While the War on Terror had been ongoing since well before I initially joined, Al Qaeda and other VEOs never threatened America’s survival. Israel and Ukraine had to deal with an existential threat every day, one we have seen born out by Russia’s recent invasion. This took my initial reason of wanting to do something different and gave it a framework. Now I was not joining just to be different, but to be different for a purpose: defending a way of life I hold dear.
The third time I joined the military was when I cross commissioned into the Space Force. While I valued my time in the Air Force, I believed the Space Force offered me something more. My final year on the A6 staff had me standing up a brand new Defensive Cyber Operations cell for USAFE-AFAFRICA, giving me a taste of how satisfying the act of creation can be in an organization. Now, I had the ultimate opportunity in front of me: jump into the chaos of standing up the first branch of service in seventy-two years and create something new. Not only new, but something that would leave an indelible legacy on the nation. My every action could help shape how a Guardian seventy-two years hence found his or her purpose.
Recognizing that led me to better understand my previous two reasons for joining. Was joining the Space Force doing something different? Of course—no one in the world had ever been a part of such an effort until we did so. Was it part of defending our way of life? Absolutely, and it will continue to do so well past when I eventually retire. But more than that, it gave specific focus to the How of my Why. Here was a purpose that no bureaucratic slog could detract from. The impacts I make now can resonate in a way I find hard to imagine finding anywhere else, and that inspired me to go all in.
I have since committed myself to a full career in the Space Force. Whether that’s twenty years or forty remains to be seen, but this is the path I have carved for myself. What else could I look back on after twenty-plus years of effort and find a similar level of fulfillment and purpose? And throughout it all, I will still fulfill that initial wish that my 6th grader-self recognized without understanding—spending my finite time on this earth in a different way, one with meaning.
Posted on September 11, 2022
A Short Repaste
I struggle with long sentences. Speaking them, writing them, thinking them. Trying to limit my verbosity ends poorly. So here is my nth attempt to do so. Each sentence here will be chopped in half. I warn you now, this will not be enjoyable. I will struggle through it. I will gnash my teeth all the while. But maybe at the end, I will learn something.
Which is worse: ignorance of one’s flaws, or knowledge with a failure to act upon them? We can all place that one acquaintance ignorant of their intolerable behaviors. Likewise, we can all identify a struggle all our own. Severity has an impact. So does circumstance. My longwindedness is less problematic on a non-existent readership than it is in person. Where to draw the line?
I can make a case for both. Let’s start with ignorance. It can break down in two ways. First, that born of pride. Second, that born of laziness. Pride prevents us from accepting what introspection reveals. Laziness prevents us from introspection at all. Of the two, pride is the greater sin. It willfully subsumes personal growth on pride’s altar. Often that comes at the expense of others around us. Always it comes at the expense of our own wellbeing. Laziness shows we do not care. Apathy is ugly. It worms its way inside and festers. It crumbles dreams and poisons relationships. Ignorance from pride or laziness is intolerable.
Now for failing to act on one’s known flaws. This breaks down in three ways. First, again, is pride. Second, again, is laziness. Third, though… third is fear. Fear is often at the root of laziness in this case, just as pride is at its root. We fear change. We fear the effort we know it takes to grow. We fear losing time to a pursuit with uncertain outcomes. All these fears coalesce into stagnation. A comfort zone is comfortable because one need not move. There is no fear there, because there is no growth. And because there is no growth, there remain flaws.
Which is worse: ignorance or willful negligence? The latter, for that we have greater control over. There are always blind spots to feed ignorance. We can work on these, but never fully resolve them. We can always fight our fear. We can learn to embrace it, let it pass through us. Only then can we make progress. One word at a time.
Updated on September 4, 2022
Lightyear: To Infinity, but Not Quite Beyond
I am a huge fan of science fiction, anything involving the concept of “rangers,” and cats. Pixar’s new Lightyear movie could not have targeted my niche demographic more if the intro crawl had said “For Jake.” And to the filmmaker’s credit, I did have a good time with it. It doesn’t quite hit the upper tier of Pixar movies, but Lightyear leaves some other recent installments in the hyperspatial dust.
***Spoilers Ahead***
I plan on covering a specific point, so I’ll breeze over most of my likes and dislikes. On the negative side, Evil Buzz as the villain didn’t quite work for me. The deus ex machina of him happening across a massive ship with a robot army in the far future that he somehow turns into a time machine gave me acid reflux. I get what they were going for. Showing Buzz the dark place where a focus on the mission over relationships might take him was a good thought. It’s the backstory supporting the villain that needed polish.
The star of the movie is obviously Sox. I now exist in a darker world, knowing I was born decades too soon to have a Sox of my own. The amusement of an artificial therapy cat piloted by AI advanced enough to solve a nigh-impossible mechanical and chemical engineering problem while also managing to distract himself with a built-in laser pointer cannot be measured. Where I credit the filmmakers most, though, was nailing to tranquilizer dart gag *twice* with the same “I bought you five minutes” line. I can say with absolute certainty that Evil Buzz stomping on his Sox was my most traumatic film experiences in recent memory.
Now, onto the point that made me want to write about Lightyear at all. Evil Buzz has a robot army at his beck and call that mostly serve as unremarkable cannon fodder. However, the first robot Buzz faces breaks the mold by getting significant solo screen time. The broken machine—who we see get lobotomized by a harpoon—claws its way back from virtual death to track Buzz down, scene by scene. The audience is led to believe this robot has significance. Why else would we see three-plus scenes focusing on just this one robot as it follows Buzz’s trail like a futuristic bloodhound? Then finally, the moment of delivering on that unexplained promise comes. The robot sees Buzz and crew fleeing from a host of other robots and boosts off in pursuit.
What comes next? Did the aforementioned lobotomy do the obvious thing and rewire the robot to want to help Buzz instead? Did it come with fiery vengeance and singlehandedly destroy their escape craft? Did it do anything of note? Of course not. The robot got in front of Buzz’s ship and gets run over. Then it falls in line with the rest of the cannon fodder with no discernible difference aside from its missing arm.
Why spend time talking about this virtually meaningless point from a movie that will soon fade from the collective media consciousness, you ask? Because promises are important.
I have written one novel and have half a chapter to go before finishing the draft of another. One of the areas I struggle with the most is setting up and delivering on promises across the story. That issue comes from writing these two novels as a gardener (aka seat-of-the-pants, stream of consciousness) instead of an architect (aka an outliner). When you plan your story out from foundation to crenelations, you can draw clear lines from promises to delivery at the outset, making it easier to form those connections in the reader’s mind. As a gardener, you have to look back on an overgrown patch of competing ideas and try to weed out the rotten bits without severing whatever connections do exist, all while growing new ones as necessary. This is, to put it in a word, difficult.
What I saw when I watched that robot amount to nothing was a visualization of my own problems. I can think of multiple unsatisfying promise fulfils in my first novel off the top of my head (thus why it’s on hold at the moment). The novel currently in draft has even more. Telling a story is a contract between the storyteller and the audience. The audience agrees to offer up a portion of their finite time on this world, and the storyteller promises to entertain them. That promise of entertainment then breaks down into countless other promises and fulfilments over the course of the story (good triumphs over evil, the hero/heroine gets the girl/boy, etc). If the storyteller fails to execute on those tactical level promises, they’ll never accomplish the primary objective—entertaining the audience.
Lightyear manages to entertain in a myriad of ways and fulfills plenty of promises. But like an unexpected tranquilizer dart shot from the mouth of a standard-issue artificial therapy cat helping its patient escape lawful confinement, the ultimately insignificant robot brings me down.
Updated on August 21, 2022
The Mortal Mercenary – Teaser
Writing my first novel was both a fantastic and sobering experience. On one hand, I accomplished a lifelong goal and told what I think is a fun story. On the other, I realized after I had “finished” just how rough the product was and how much fine tuning it would need to be palatable. Thus, it sits in the trunk for now as I try to take lessons learned from writing it onto my next project.
One of the areas I know it needs work is the intro. I wrote an entire prologue that has nothing to do with the story writ large and needs to be cut. That said, I absolutely loved this bit and don’t want it to wither away. So here it is in all its glory! I hope you enjoy it.
I took a deep breath, adjusted my polo shirt, and prepared to do battle with forces that had preyed on humanity since before our recorded history.
“Cucumber water, sir?” I asked.
The robed fellow sitting in the plush chair in front of me didn’t bother to look up from his tablet as he raised his hand. I took a glass from the tray I carried and placed it in his upraised palm, making sure the glass was the one with three slices floating in it. He took it without a word of thanks, dismissing me with a flick of his other hand as he continued reading.
I made my way towards the employees only area of the high-end spa, dropping the mandatory cheer from my aching jaw as soon as I pushed through the swinging doors. I checked my watch—according to the schedule Jeeves had lifted off their server, my target’s appointment was in four minutes. Plenty of time to tie up the last loose end before execution. I took a clipboard off one of the nearby desks and stepped through another door.
“Three down to the left,” I said to myself, counting doors along the back hallway attached to the VIP treatment suites. I came to a stop in front of it, confirming the name on the attached whiteboard before going inside.
A man dressed in the same spa uniform as me stopped putting new sheets on the massage table and glanced in my direction. “Who are you?” he asked.
“New hire,” I said, holding up the clipboard. “The boss said I’m supposed to take Mr. LeYensa’s servicing today.”
“That can’t be right,” the employee said, “I’ve been Tomas’s masseuse for over a year.”
I shrugged. “Don’t know what to tell you. Take it up with the boss if you feel like it.”
“Let me see that clipboard,” he said, coming around the table. I handed it over and stepped slightly behind him.
“Wait,” he said, his confusion deepening. “This is the potluck sign-up sheet. What are you playing at—”
Whatever else he had to say got cut off as I reached up and put him in a chokehold. He flailed his arms and tried to break my grip, but the hold was tight. I hummed to myself and counted out the seconds, slowly bringing him down as I hit ten. By twenty seconds, he was completely limp and laid out on the floor. I eased off the choke—no one was paying me for him, after all, and clean-up on mortals is always messy. He started coming back around as blood rushed back to his head, but a drop of wyrm venom on his lips settled him back down. I dragged him into the corner room’s tanning bed and tossed an extra sheet over him to keep him hidden. He’d wake up in an hour with a splitting headache and no idea what had happened the past day or so.
Another check of the watch showed I had sixty seconds to go. I finished draping the sheets over the massage table, dimmed the lights, and stepped out the front entrance to greet Tomas.
“Right over here, sir,” the receptionist said, pointing Tomas down the customer hallway towards me before returning to her desk. I plastered the mandatory cheer back on my face and greeted him, noting that for someone supposedly seen by the same man for a year, he didn’t seem to recognize a stranger in his normal masseuse’s place. I suppose we all look alike to his type.
Once we both entered, I closed the door and coughed to cover the sound of flipping the lock.
“The usual,” Tomas said, starting to strip off his robe. He made it halfway out before he hesitated. He shook his head once, then twice, before reaching out to steady himself on the table. I crossed my arms and leaned against the wall, watching as his symptoms worsened. His eyes jerked around the room, eventually coming to rest on me just as his legs buckled beneath him.
“What…is happening…to me…” he muttered, fighting against his numbing tongue.
“Nothing too extreme,” I said. “Just a sedative I slipped into your water.”
“You…?” he said, squinting to try to bring me into focus. “I will…rip your heart…out.” He bared his teeth, showing me two fangs extending downward where a human would have incisors. To his credit, he did manage to make it to his feet and take a stumbling step towards me before face planting on the teakwood floor.
“Normally, you would,” I agreed, making my way over and squatting in front of his still open eyes as his breath labored in short gasps. “But then, normally a sedative wouldn’t have this effect on a vampire. That’s why I laced it with holy water. Gives it a nice kick.”
Tomas tried to snarl, but it came out as a wet gurgle instead.
“Don’t worry, you won’t notice a thing when you go unconscious in a minute or so. But before you do, I have to read something to you.” I pulled out my phone and gave him a what-can-you-do grin. “Part of the contract. I’m sure you understand.” His eyes widened as he pieced together what must be happening, but the sedative had spread too far for him to do anything else. “Tomas LeYensa, the Los Angeles coven finds you guilty of theft, blood corruption, and sedition. Let death take you from your eternal life.” I put the phone away and gestured to myself. “I’m here for that second part.”
Fury filled Tomas’s eyes before they creaked shut like a struggling garage door. I gave it another minute to be sure, then stood and nudged him with a toe. His limp body didn’t react, so I started whistling and bent down to put him into a fireman’s carry. I hit the chorus as we reached the tanning bed. “Dirty deeds…” I sang off-key, dumping the vampire onto the bed. “Done. Dirt. Cheap.” I dropped the lid and plugged in the machine before putting a minute on the timer and hitting the start button. I tapped out the next verse of the song on the lid as the scent of brimstone filled the room, periodically checking through the gap to make sure Tomas was getting an even coat.
The timer dinged, and I lifted the lid up to see a vampire-shaped ash pile pouring out of Tomas’s spa robe. I picked up the robe and carried it over to the trashcan, emptying out what was left of the vampire before snapping the robe a few times to clear off the rest. Then I scooped out the ash from the tanning bed and dumped it as well, making sure there was no trace left. That done, I grabbed the unconscious masseuse and propped him up in one of the room’s chairs like he had been napping, before grabbing the trash bag with Tomas’s ashes and heading for the door.
My name is Zeke Hunter, and I’m the Mortal Mercenary. From the arcane to the profane, I take care of any of your supernatural needs for the right price. Vampires vanquished, ghouls garroted, and specters spaced or your money back—minus expenses, of course. But the most important thing you need to know about me is this:
I love my job.
Posted on July 31, 2022
Individualism versus Community
As an American, I was raised on a steady diet of individualism and what it brings to the world. At the same time, my upbringing in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints highlighted how community can and does benefit everyone involved. Unfortunately, these two forces exist in opposition. Where is the line drawn between them? More specifically, at what point do the costs of individualism outweigh its benefits?
As with most dichotomies, both sides carry unique pros and cons. Individualism is often associated with creativity, a push for change or growth, and a certain vibrancy hard to find elsewhere. On the other hand, community brings stability and security, along with the comfort of belonging. I’d hazard a guess that we all agree both sets of qualities are worth pursuing. That said, both sides of this equation also have their darker elements. When individualism is taken to the extreme, you get the Unabomber. Community taken to the extreme means a Jonestown. The sweet spot lies somewhere in the middle
Finding that balance is a never-ending assessment carried out within a community. I stress that it is the community that must decide on its accepted level of individualism. After all. the community owns the ultimate power over the individual with the threat of ostracism. This creates an interesting balancing of scales, because the individual can threaten the whole structure of the community through a single action. That particular equation generally goes one way—an individual can have an outsize negative impact far easier than a positive one. Mass shooters, suicide bombers, and the who guy who poisoned random pill bottles can change things far more dramatically for a community than a single positive action.
The battle between individualism and community boils down to two facts. The long term favors the community because of its stability and its ability to drive out individuals that threaten the status quo beyond accepted levels. Short-term favors the individual, whose actions can sometimes cause enough disruption to rock a community and force change that might otherwise not occur. If the action is destructive enough, the community might fracture along fault lines or newly discovered tribal loyalty. The community’s ability to resist this depends on its resiliency, which I think stems from its tolerance of individualism within its structure. A community willing to accept the eccentrics and oddballs within its circle is one more ready to ride out seismic change brought about by the same individuals.
What is the point of this diatribe? It’s me trying to understand potential solutions to the excessive polarization that my country faces today. I have no studies or evidence beyond my own observations from which to draw conclusions, but I feel that the rampant individualism at the heart of most Americans was always destined to end this way. The increased Balkanization of American community driven by extremists on the fringe threatens the stability that community should offer its citizenry. As that overarching community gets torn into smaller and smaller pieces, what security it once offered is sacrificed on the altar of individualism.
America needs a reset of its community. This goes beyond Republican versus Democrat, minority versus white, or any other arbitrary difference we might assign to fellow Americans. It’s more fundamental than that. It’s the willingness to go out of one’s way to help a neighbor. It’s the willingness to take joy in another success, even at the expense of one’s own. It’s the desire to see a more inclusive “us” instead of focusing hostility on a “them”.
Let’s strive for a world where it’s easier to have the word “we” on our lips instead of “I”.
Posted on July 18, 2022
Cybersecurity and the Infinite Game
Cyberspace. The infinite game. Sounds like a pitch meeting for the next Tron meeting. Alas, it’s just another ham-fisted attempt to glean Sec+ CEUs via blogpost. Today’s stretched metaphor will crib from Simon Sinek’s book The Infinite Game and the concept of, well, infinite games.
Let’s start with defining a finite game. This is the easiest to grasp as it comes up all the time in our lives. In it, you have defined roles of who is playing, what the rules are for the players, and what the end state looks like. Chess is an example of a finite game: two players, pieces can only move in prescribed ways to agreed upon effects, and the game ends either when one side checkmates the other or a stalemate is reached where no checkmate is possible. Easy peasy.
Infinite games, however, throw all that out the window. They have no set number of players. In fact, players coming and going as resources and will allow is a major part of what makes something an infinite game, so the number you play against today might be different than the number tomorrow. The rules are also in flux, as anyone—you included—has the ability to toss expectations out the window and flex to something new. Most importantly, an infinite game has no end set. There is no “winning” an infinite game, just the effort to keep playing as long as possible.
Running a business is an example of this. No one “wins” at business. You can have a good year and rake in some profits, but topping arbitrary metrics in no way makes you the best and forces other players to cede the field to you. The game continues as long as the company can operate, until eventually it can’t. But even at that point, the game goes on with whatever players remain until the cows come home.
Now let’s translate this to cybersecurity. Players shift, rules vary depending on the day, and just like in business, no one can win. You can go an entire year with zero breaches, but that gains you exactly nothing when it comes to the next attempt to crack your network. What does this mean for cybersecurity professionals? You have to view your efforts through an infinite lens if you have any hope of succeeding.
Another example. Say that you are considering educating your workforce on social engineering. A finite game solution might involve genning up a briefing, providing it to everyone in the organization, then chalking it up as a win with no need for future efforts. You’ve accomplished all the metrics, after all! Every player has been briefed, the rules are clear in that everyone had to attend and possibly pass a knowledge check to verify they paid attention, and you assess your victory if no one clicks on a suspicious link.
Cybersecurity (and organizational reality), however, do not fall in such clean lines. You have no guarantee that the organizational members you briefed today are the same as the ones who are a part of your team tomorrow, and you have zero control over what tactics and techniques adversaries may use trying to trick them. Rules mean less than nothing to a creative threat, and there’s every chance that threat can come from inside your organization. And finally, there can never be a victory in cybersecurity because there’s always another attack on the horizon.
Maintaining an infinite mindset is difficult. Our minds crave patterns, and a finite game provides those for us. By its nature, an infinite game forces us to look beyond the simple solution and accept that we do not have the level of control we’d hope for. But its in viewing that infinite horizon that a cybersecurity professional can protect his or her network for another day, which is as close to victory as we can hope to get.
