Outside of science fiction and fantasy, no one has ever been able to reach into another person’s mind and extract those unspoken words. But that may change in the future, because modern technology is making it possible to see what happens in the brain when we hear someone talking—and because this activity is thought to be pretty much the same whether we hear someone say a sentence, or think that sentence ourselves, it may not be long before we are able to turn hidden thoughts into spoken words via computer.

(Sound familiar? Back in September, I wrote about similar work that used brain activity to recreate images people saw.)

New Scientist recently ran an article, written by Helen Thomson, on the work of a research team at the University of California, Berkeley. Led by Brian Pasley, the team presented spoken words and sentences to 15 people undergoing surgery for epilepsy or a brain tumor, while recording neural activity from the surface of a portion of the brain near the ear that’s involved in processing sound. Then they tried to associate different aspects of speech to different kinds of brain activity in the recordings.

The brain breaks down speech in terms of frequency (pitch), frequency fluctuation, rhythm and more. And sure enough, the team was able to correlate many of these aspects of speech to the neural activity they recorded in their subjects’ brains.

Next, they trained a computer program to interpret the neural activity and turn it into a spectrogram, a graphical representation of sound that shows how much of what frequency is occurring over a period of time. To test the spectrograms, they compared the ones they created from neural activity with spectrograms they created from the original sounds.

A second computer program converted the reconstructed spectrogram into audible speech. The result? “Coarse similarities” between the real words and the reconstructed words, says Pasley, that human listeners can kind of pick up on, but which computers were able to analyze more accurately.

Recording brain activity and turning it into spoken language via a computer would have one very obvious and very exciting application: helping those who have lost the ability to speak through paralysis or some other physical problem to once more communicate with the outside world.

Nor is Pasley’s team the only one working toward this goal. At Boston University in Massachusetts, Frank Guenther interprets the brain signals that control the shape of the mouth, lips and larynx to try to figure out what a person is trying to say. So far, all they’ve managed to produce are a few vowel sounds; nothing more complex. But it’s a start.

Steven Laureys at the University of Liege, Belgium, is seeking ways to distinguish brain activity corresponding with “yes” and “no” to help those who cannot speak.

Pasley is anxious to try to develop technology to make the thought-patterns-to-speech translation happen. He’d like to develop safe, wireless, implantable devices suitable for long-term use.

Of course, having anything implanted in your brain is going to be a tough sell, and to begin with, at least, only people already undergoing essential brain surgery would be likely candidates. And the words-from-brain-activity software is still in its infancy, anyway.

But the concept certainly seems viable, and exciting…although I don’t think it’s something most of us would want installed, no matter how safe, cheap or effective it might become.

“It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt,” goes an old saying

If the day ever comes when our every passing thought is revealed to the world, the number of people revealed to be fools will surely astound.

Although, now that I think about it, hasn’t that already happened with Twitter?

That opening was:

Emily streaked through the phosphorescent sea, her wake a comet-tail of pale green light, her close-cropped turquoise hair surrounded by a glowing pink aurora. The water racing through her gill-slits smelled of blood.

As the week progressed, I attempted to turn that opening into a short story. And did so–but I never submitted the story. Before I got back to it, DAW picked up Lost in Translation, and Ethan Ellenberg agreed to be my agent, and we needed something to propose to DAW for my next book. I constructed an entire novel around that initial opening sentence: Marseguro. Terra Insegura followed, and this April, the omnibus edition of the two of them together, The Helix War (that’s its cover above, obviously).

But lo and behold, that never-submitted short story still lurks on my hard drive…and here it is. Those who have read Marseguro will see a lot of elements here that made it into the final book. If you haven’t read Marseguro, well…you should! And you can, when The Helix War is released on April 4.

Without further ado…

***

Sins of the Father

By Edward Willett

As his hoverboat burst into flames, Richard Hansen plunged into the water.

Thanks to the envirosuit, he felt no shock of cold, no sensation of pressure as he let himself sink into the darkness. But he was shocked and under pressure all the same.

The hunterbot had fired on him!

By God, I’ll have someone disfellowshipped for this when I get back to Safehaven, he thought.

He looked up at the bottom of the hoverboat’s hull, outlined by the red glow of the fire consuming it. If I ever get back, he amended. Something cold wound its way down his spine, and for a moment he thought his envirosuit had sprung a leak. But then he recognized the sensation for what it really was:

Fear.

Without the hoverboat, the only way he was going to get back to Safehaven was to swim. He hadn’t come more than twenty kilometers or so since he’d left the harbor that morning, so it wasn’t impossible–but it wouldn’t be quick, or easy. Especially not for him. He might be a Superior Deacon in the Office of Developing Omniscience, but he normally worked surrounded by dataspheres and holodisplays, not out in the field. He wasn’t exactly fat, but he wasn’t exactly fit, either.

Well, he’d do what he had to. One problem at a time, and his first concern was the hunterbot.

He needed information. “Jihad Revelation,” he said, and his faceplate lit with the head-up display for his Indweller, the microputer implanted at the base of his neck. “Display Safehaven Purification briefing material relevant to term ‘hunterbots.’”

Words appeared, apparently floating in the black water. “Despite the best efforts of the Holy Warriors, it is inevitable that some of the merpeople will escape; we have no technology on board capable of blocking the five-kilometer-wide mouth of the harbor. It is imperative that these escapees not be permitted to reach and warn other merpeople pods currently at sea or in other communities.

“In addition to warriors in hoverboats tasked with searching for and destroying any survivors, we will deploy a large number of hunterbots, programmed to detect, track and destroy merpeople, which they can locate through a variety of means, including infrared signature, visual recognition and DNA traces. To ensure maximum effectiveness, a positive ID through any one of these means will be sufficient to trigger an attack.”

It must have been the envirosuit, Richard thought. It made me look like a merman to that stupid ‘bot, never mind the fact I was driving an OHD hoverboat.

A stolen one, another part of his mind insisted on adding, but he argued it down. It all belongs to the Church of Humanity Purified, and I am a servant of the Church.

The argument would have held more water if he had bothered to tell the servants of the church actually responsible for the hoverboat that he was going to “borrow” it.

“Page,” he said, and another screen of text appeared. “Hunterbots come in a variety of specialized forms. Aerial ‘bots will identify targets and attack those that they can. Targets which cannot be attacked by the aerial ‘bots will be tracked and attacked by submariner ‘bots as soon as they can intercept.”

“Jehovallah preserve me!” Richard whispered.

How close would the submariner ‘bot be?

No way of knowing, but it wouldn’t be far away, not if it was meant to support the aerial ‘bot. It could arrive any minute.

He needed shelter. “Light!” he snapped, and his headlamp came on; it showed nothing but drifting white specks, thick as falling snow.

It might also show the aerial ‘bot or the probably incoming submariner ‘bot exactly where he was, he realized.

“Light off!” It wasn’t doing him any good anyway.

“Sonar!” he said instead. It would give him away even more surely than the light, but it was his only hope of locating any hiding places that might–please Jehovallah, did–exist among the rocks of the nearby cliff or the seafloor blow.

His display lit with a sonar-generated image of the surrounding five hundred meters or so. His heart almost stopped when he thought he saw a moving blip, but it vanished before he was even sure he had seen it. If it had been a submariner ‘bot, it wasn’t homing on him yet.

Probably just some local wildlife, he thought. I’ve got bigger fish to fry.

“Analyze,” he told his microputer. “Identify possible caves.”

Instantly the display showed him two bright green spots. One was far below his current depth, but the other was above him–right at the water level. Perfect, he thought. The deep one was designated 1 and the higher one 2. “Guide me to Target 2,” he said, and a spot of red light appeared in his faceplate, well off to the left. He turned until it was centered in the display, and swam toward it.

He kept the sonar sweep active–no point trying to hide now, he suspected–so he could see how close he was getting to his target. He was about twenty meters from it, and the red dot had grown into a ragged red, almost-circular opening sketched against the blackness, when the microputer beeped at him. “Moving target acquired,” its uninflected male voice murmured inside his head. A red blip appeared on his display, tagged, “Submariner Hunterbot Mark III.” Numbers below that told Richard the target had been acquired at 465 meters and was closing at 5.2 meters per second, and would intercept him in…

Less than two minutes.

Richard said a frantic prayer, but he said it silently: he needed all his breath for flight. He kicked as hard as he could, forcing his way through water that only pushed back harder the faster he tried to go, as though doing its best to hold him up for the hunterbot to catch.

The mouth of the cavern became visible in his helmet lamp–and at the same instant a red gleam like a single baleful eye appeared in the water behind him.

He hadn’t thought to read far enough in the briefing material to find out what weapons the submariner hunterbot was armed with. Just as he swam in through the cavern opening and dared to think he might yet escape, the first torpedo caught up with him. Only the fact he had turned abruptly upward, following the path of the cavern entrance, save him. The torpedo impacted on one of the rocks outside the cave mouth.

The explosion hit him like a hammer blow, hurling him upward in a welter of bubbles and mud, spinning over and over, out of control. Dazed, he felt himself slam into a rock, then another–a knife-like pain stabbed him in the chest–he collided with something else, this time more yielding–and then he erupted into open air, tossed up in a fountain of water like a leaf.

He splashed back down, went under, then rose to the surface and floated, face down, dazed, consciousness fading.

In the last instant before he blacked out, he saw the face of a young girl, eyes closed, drift upward into the light of his helmet lamp.

#

An insistent beeping roused him, an indeterminate time later.

He opened his eyes. He was floating on his back. His helmet lamp reflected off a wet rock ceiling, just a meter or two above his head. He hurt all over, but the worst pains seemed to be coming from his chest–he must have broken a rib–and his shoulder, which he thought he must have dislocated. “Revelation Jihad,” he whispered.

Nothing happened.

“Revelation Jihad,” he said louder.

Still nothing.

The shockwave must have disabled my microputer, he thought, and felt the first budding of panic.

Those buds blossomed into full-fledged terror when a girl suddenly erupted out of the water beside him and stared down into his face.

He screamed, and her eyes widened and she screamed back, then disappeared under the water again. That didn’t reassure him; she must be underneath him, and he knew what she was:

A mergirl. There could be no mistaking that strange face, with eyes the size of an old Earth anime character, a nose whose nostrils were sealed tight into almost invisible slits, a mouth filled with sharp, triangular teeth–and the triple-frilled gill flaps on each side of her shapely neck.

She was one of the very abominations he had brought the S.S. Simon the Zealot to this planet to destroy, and if she found that out…

He was hurt. He was unarmed. The merfolk were much stronger than ordinary humans, and they could breathe underwater. All she had to do was open his faceplate and drag him under, and she could finish the work of the hunterbots.

Maybe the hunterbots weren’t after me after all, he thought. Maybe it was really chasing her, and I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

That might explain the sub-bot, but it didn’t begin to explain the air-bot.

He couldn’t stand the thought that she might be sneaking up on him from underwater, so he rolled over. The envirosuit, having gotten him to the surface (even if that surface was inside a cave) had no intention of letting him go under again without a fight. The buoyancy it had established made it possible for him to recline comfortably on top of the water; it also made what he intended to be a swift, decisive move into a clumsy, floundering, splashing struggle.

At the end of it, he was pointing face down…and there was the face again, looking up at him. Underwater, it looked less alien than it had in the air, more as if it belonged. The gill slits were open, pulsating gently as the frills weaved a slow, silent wave. The eyes glowed in his helmet lamp. A halo of close-cropped, green-tinged hair surrounded her skull.

He could see her body now, too, naked except for a silvery smooth belt around her hips. Her hands and feet were out of proportion to her body, bigger than they should have been. Her toes were almost as long as her fingers, and webbed; her fingers were also webbed. But the rest of her was disturbingly human–disturbing, because the sight of her nakedness woke in Richard a sexual urge that shamed him. It would be like mounting a sheep! he thought, deeply disgusted by his weakness. She may look human, but she’s an animal.

And then the “animal” spoke. “Who are you?” she said.

The sound was high-pitched and inhuman–whatever method she used for producing it obviously didn’t involve moving air over her vocal cords, since she didn’t breathe air–but perfectly clear in his ears.

Don’t answer, a wary part of him insisted, but, “Richard Hansen,” he heard himself saying. I’m trapped in here with her, he defended himself to himself. (He wanted to think of her as an “it,” but she was all-too-obviously female). I can’t very well ignore her. He didn’t give his title, though. She probably had no idea who had attacked her colony, or why–but some part of him, remembering those sharp teeth, seeing her sleek, muscular form, so at home in the water, thought it the better part of valor not to give her immediate reason to connect him to the slaughter of her friends and family.

“My name is Emily,” she said. She paused, as though having her own second thoughts, then finished, “Emily Hansen.”

Richard felt as though he’d been punched in the stomach. “We have…the same last name?” he finally managed to squeeze out through his constricted voice.

“I am a descendant of the Shaper,” Emily said. Her voice didn’t change–or if it did, he lacked the skill to interpret it–but her face showed pride. “Direct in line from his grandson, the First.”

Richard felt sick. His great-great-grandfather had not only polluted the human genestream, he had modified the gametes of his own son–Richard’s great-great-uncle–and his wife so that they gave birth to the first of these monsters.

He swallowed, hard. Throwing up in an envirosuit was a really bad idea. “How old are you?” he asked instead, trying to regain his mental balance.

“Nine and a half.”

Richard did the mental math. One Safehaven year equaled 1.42 Earth years, so that made her…it took him a few moments–he’d gotten used to having his microputer calculate things for him…

Oh, God. Not quite 13 1/2. Now he felt doubly ashamed of his lustful urges. She was only a child…

No. She was not a child. She was a monster–a young monster, perhaps, but a monster. And among monsters, she might very well already be a mother many times over. Maybe they gave birth to whole litters before they were ten and another one every year thereafter. He must not think of her as a human being…

…not when everyone she had every known was being turned into bite-sized bits of fish food back in the harbor.

She watched him closely, obviously wondering if he was going to say anything about her age. When he didn’t, she said, “Why do you wear that thing? How can you breathe?”

She doesn’t know, he thought. She doesn’t know who or what I am.

“It’s a…protection,” he said. “Things here are different from my…home waters. This keeps me from…getting sick.”

“Would it protect you from the machine thing outside?” she said, her voice going even higher. Eagerness? Fear? He couldn’t tell. “Could you help me get past it? I have to get back home. My mother will be worried.”

She doesn’t know, he thought again. She doesn’t know what has happened!

“Why were you out here?” he asked.

“Allie and I were camping,” Emily said. “Down in the Featherbed Fish Canyon. It’s a protected area, no large predators. My church has a cave down there. Allie and I are prayer buddies.”

Richard heard the words, but couldn’t believe he was hearing them. Didn’t want to believe he was hearing them. “Church?” he said. “Prayer?”

“Are you all right?” Emily sounded concerned.

No. No, I’m not.

Animals don’t go to church.

Animals don’t pray.

Animals…

“Where’s your friend? Allie?”

Emily’s eyes blinked rapidly. For the first time, Richard saw that she had a nictitating membrane that slid back and forth from side to side. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m so worried. When the machine thing came into the canyon we got separated…the machine went after her, first…I swam the other way. I was trying to get home, to get help, but the machine…” her voice trailed off.

Allie was almost certainly dead. Richard knew it, and suspected Emily knew it, too, but wasn’t allowing herself to think it, yet.

“The machine chased you, too,” Emily said. “What were you doing out here?”

“I was just…arriving. From my trip. My hoverboat–”

Suddenly remembering she thought he was a merman, he broke off, but she’d already noticed.

“Hoverboat?” She stared at him. “Oh! You’re an air-breather! Why didn’t you say so?”

“You’re not…frightened by that?” he asked, taken off guard. Of course they had known there were surface dwellers here as well as the abominations, but they’d assumed the two groups had nothing to do with each other…

“Why should I be? I have many air-breathing friends.”

There would be a great deal of work to be done in Purifying the land community, too, then, Richard thought, but did not say.

“I didn’t know how you would react,” he said truthfully. “I’m from…very far away.”

“Do you know what those machines are?”

Tread carefully, Richard thought. She’s still dangerous–and amoral.

“I think they came…from another place. Another…planet.” Would that mean anything to her?

“You mean one of the other worlds settled by the Ten Thousand Ships?” she said, her eyes widening. “But why would they attack us? We’re all of Old Earth.”

Once again, she caught him off-guard. She knew so much. He’d always assumed the merfolk would be simple barbarians, barely intelligent enough to talk–more like glorified dolphins than anything else.

She has as much of Joseph Hansen’s DNA as you do, his inner voice reminded him. Maybe more.

Modified DNA, he snarled silently back.

“I think…they came from Earth itself,” he said out loud.

“But Earth was destroyed!”

“No…we…” He thought quickly. “Where I live, we recently were visited by a space trader. He said he had run into a ship from Old Earth. It seems there was a…” Miracle? No– “…extraordinary bit of luck. Another asteroid collided with the Killer before it struck. It hit the moon instead of the Earth.”

“But…” Emily looked bewildered, insofar as he could interpret her strange features. “But why would Earth send machines to kill us? What have we done? Earth was our home…”

Not your home, Richard thought. Never the home of people like you.

He realized he had just thought of her as a person instead of a thing, and felt confusion again.

What to tell her?

Tell her the truth, he thought. See how she reacts. Valuable information for further Purification efforts.

He almost convinced himself.

“After the Ten Thousand Ships left…we were told…many of those left behind were convinced that the Killer was an act of God, a punishment for the wickedness and licentiousness that had descended on the planet.” He had heard this story so many times he could tell it in his sleep. “And so it came to pass that they rose up against the irreligious, the irreverent, the immoral and the ignorant; rose up and Purified the Earth with blood and fire, and the smoke of the burning cities had a sweet savor in the nostrils of Jehovallah, and he repented of his decision to destroy mankind. He sent the Savior, the second asteroid, to strike the Killer. But as a warning, he sent the Killer into the moon, where it destroyed Apollo City, a haven of sinfulness, the place where many of the abominations of the bio-meddlers had fled the Purification of the Earth. And so was the Third Covenant sealed. God would withhold punishment so that mankind might have one more chance to Purify itself. And if we succeed, then Earth will never again be threatened with destruction, and Jehovallah will bless his Chosen People, Humanity Purified, through all of space and all of time, forever and ever, amen.”

As he came to the end of the lesson, he realized what he had just done, but by then it was too late. Emily might be an abomination, but she was no fool, as she had already shown.

“My God,” she said. “You’re one of them. You’re from Earth. You brought those machines!”

“No,” he said. “But…I arrived with them.” And I found your planet in the first place and told those with the machines where to bring them, he thought. And your family is dead, and you don’t know it yet, and I brought the Holy Warriors who killed them…

He felt his heart pounding in his chest.

“How many of them are there?” she demanded. “Are they all over the planet? Are they in Safehaven?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re lying,” Emily said flatly. “I can hear your heart pounding, hear the tension in your voice. You airbreathers have no control.”

Think fast. “All right,” he said. “It’s true. They’re in Safehaven. But they’re not all over the planet.” Not yet. “The Holy Warriors are attacking one community at a time.”

“Holy Warriors? Is that the name of the machines?”

“No…there are humans, too. Soldiers.”

Her reaction wasn’t what he expected. She blinked. “Soldiers. Unmodified human soldiers?”

“Yes.”

“Are they all wearing envirosuits?”

What an odd question. “No…the air here is breathable.”

She suddenly flipped over and swam out of range of his light, then back again. “What have they done to the settlement?” she said. “If the machines attack on sight–what have these Earthlings done?”

Richard said nothing.

“Answer me!” she demanded, and then, faster than he would have thought possible, she darted forward and seized the suit’s air hose. “I can rip this out and you will drown,” she said. “What have these Earthlings done?”

Richard swallowed. “They have Purified the village,” he said.

“Purified?” Her face was suddenly pressed against his faceplate. “Killed?” she shrieked, the sound so loud, so high that he tried to clap his hands over his ears even though it was pointless inside the suit. “My parents? My brother? My friends? They killed them all?”

“I don’t know for sure…” Richard began, but she squeezed the air hose closed and his next breath failed. “Yes! Yes!” he choked out.

She released the hose and vanished again. “Jehovallah preserve me,” he whispered under his breath. “Jehovallah preserve me as you preserved the Earth. I am pure, oh Lord, preserve me. I obey you, oh Lord, preserve me. I–”

Emily was back, fluttering her hands and feet, agitated. “Who is this Jehovallah?”

“The Creator. The Lawgiver,” Richard said.

“Jehovah? Allah?”

Richard recoiled. “Those names are forbidden,” he said. “They reflect an imperfect understanding. The Church of Humanity Purified worships the One True God behind the false gods of the past, the one they saw through a glass darkly, but we now see clearly: Jehovallah.”

“I worshipped God,” Emily said. “We have…” she grimaced. “Had…a large congregation. We are Christians here.”

“That would not have saved you, even had we known,” Richard said. “Christianity is anathema. Along with Islam, and Judaism, and all other religions from before the Miracle. If you were air-breathing humans, you would still have been Purified.”

“You would have slaughtered non-modified humans the way you slaughtered my people? What kind of monsters are you?”

You’re the monster, Richard wanted to say, but he didn’t dare. “They would not have been slaughtered,” he said. “They would have been detained and re-educated, taught the error of their ways.”

“But because we breathe water instead of air, we’re fair game?”

Richard swallowed. “Yes.”

Emily shook her head, a human gesture beyond doubt.

“Great-great-grandfather was wiser than we knew,” she said. “He warned us all. We didn’t listen.”

That got Richard’s attention; her great-great-grandfather, after all, was also his. “Warned you? How?”

“He said that the rest of humanity might not understand what he had done here, that just as the Ten Thousand Ships fled the Earth to try to ensure humanity would endure among the stars, so his creation of the merfolk would help ensure humanity’s survival by opening up entirely new worlds for us to inhabit. He said some humans might not be able to see that. And so he made sure that even the airbreathers of Safehaven were not unmodified humans. They all, every one of them, underwent a minor modification that has been passed down successfully since.”

Richard shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

Emily swam close. “Great-great-grandfather also modified a local microbe. He made it lethal. And then, after everyone on the planet had the modification that made them immune, he had it spread around the planet–everywhere, from the seas to the air to highest mountain peaks. It is ubiquitous. It is deadly. Symptoms don’t appear for about 36 hours. When they do, the progress of the disease is rapid. Most victims die within 12 of the onset of symptoms. And there is no treatment.”

Richard swallowed. “I don’t believe you.”

“Wait a few hours.” Emily swam even closer. “There is only one way to save you or any other human who has breathed the air of our planet,” she said. “You must undergo massive genetic modification.”

“You’re lying!”

Emily’s face was now only inches from his own, though separated by glass and water. “Am I? How are you feeling? Take stock, Richard Hansen. Are your lungs a little thick? Does your head ache, just a little? Are your joints feeling sore?”

In fact, all those things were true, Richard thought, with something approaching panic. The power of suggestion! he told himself. “No,” he lied.

“Then you may have a little longer. But the infection, and the outcome, is certain.” She suddenly flipped on her back and swam out of his headlight.

“Come back!” he yelled. He suddenly didn’t want to be alone.

But she remained out of sight.

He swallowed. His throat hurt. There was a dull ache behind his left eye, an ache that had surely spread since he first noticed it. He took a deep breath, and felt a strange resistance in his chest.

She’s telling the truth, he thought. Oh God, she’s telling the truth!

He had to get out of the cave. Had to…

Had to what? He was many hours’ swim from the harbor. Most victims die within 12 hours of the onset of symptoms, Emily had said. And he would most likely be too sick to swim within far less time.

And if she spoke the truth, if he did make it to the harbor, what would he find there? Dead and dying Deacons.

And on the ship…?

There had been constant traffic between the ship and surface since they had arrived, with no decontamination procedures–after all, they knew humans lived on the planet successfully, so there couldn’t be anything here that could harm them, right?

We were fools, he thought. I was a fool.

Soon to be a dead fool.

Unless Emily’s offer…

No! He recoiled from the thought. How could he accept genetic modification? How could he join the abomination?

The Christian scriptures were forbidden, but those in the Church hierarchy had studied them to know the heresies they must combat. He remembered something that was not forbidden, something that had made the transition to the Pure Book, the scripture of the Church of Humanity Purified: “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, but lose his soul?”

If he saved his life by accepting the mergirl’s offer, he would lose his soul. He would no longer be Pure, and he would be cast out of God’s Kingdom.

He swallowed, hard. It hurt.

Great-great-grandfather Joseph must be laughing his head off in hell, Richard thought bitterly. He has had his revenge.

Emily reappeared in his helmet-lamp light so suddenly he gasped, which triggered a fit of coughing. When it subsided, he felt substantially weaker.

“So it begins,” said Emily. “I came to tell you the machine has left. I cannot hear it within swimming distance.”

“That…doesn’t make sense,” Richard said. But he felt cold. It did make sense…if the Deacons of Holy Destruction had realized something was wrong, if they were falling ill, and had already withdrawn from the planet.

No one would look for him, if that was the case. He was on his own.

“Nevertheless, it is true,” Emily said. She swam up until her face was once again just centimeters from his. “There is still time for genetic therapy to give you a fighting chance for survival,” she said. “I can take you back to Safehaven. The vector we use results in a rapid delivery of the necessary genes to enough cells to halt the reproduction of the disease virus. But you must decide now. If you wait much longer to begin treatment, nothing can save you.”

And there it was. The martyr’s choice. Die for what you believe in, or live–and kill the part of you that believes, or else live with guilt and the knowledge of certain damnation.

Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief, was another line from Christian scripture.

“Leave me to die,” he said.

“As you wish,” Emily replied. She flipped on her stomach and disappeared into darkness.

Almost Richard called out to her, begged her to come back…but he bit his lip, held in the cowardly cry, until he was certain she had left the cave and could no longer hear him.

Then he took a deep, painful and constricted breath, and followed her.

When he emerged into the open water, he tried his microputer again. It still wouldn’t activate.

Well, he didn’t need it to find his way back to the harbor. All he had to do was follow the coast north.

He set off.

He managed to swim fairly strongly for the first hour. But each breath and each stroke was incrementally more painful than the last.

The second hour, he moved much more slowly, and the pain increased.

The third hour, his forward progress slowed to a crawl, and every movement seemed torture. His breath crawled in and out through slime-choked channels in his lungs. Ground glass seemed to have been injected into his joints. Occasionally, his vision blacked around the edges.

Sometime in the fourth hour, he came to to find himself simply floating, face up, three or four meters beneath the sun-dappled surface of the water. His breathing seemed less painful, but he felt no desire to move. He watched the play of light and water until it blurred and faded and finally went black.

When he woke again, he was no longer wearing the envirosuit…or anything else.

He lay naked beneath a thick white blanket, staring up at a white ceiling. Air moved easily in and out of his lungs. There was a faint discomfort in his left wrist that after a moment he realized must be caused by an IV line, which explained the bottle of clear liquid hung on a shiny metal stand to his left.

With difficulty–he felt as weak as a kitten–he turned his head in that direction. Through a window, he could see purplish leaves and a cloud-flecked blue sky.

He turned his head the other way. He was in a plain white room. Aside from the IV, the bed, and a table beside the bed, there was nothing in it except a simple wooden chair…and in the chair, a woman he had never seen before.

He frowned. Or had he? Her face looked…familiar.

She rose when she saw his head turn toward her. She wore a white lab coat and simple blue shoes. She walked over to him and stared down at him. She didn’t smile. “So, you’re awake.”

He licked his lips, tried to speak, failed, and tried again. “Where…where am I?” His voice was little more than a croak.

“Pinkshore Hospital,” the woman said.

“Pinkshore…? ” The name was familiar; after a moment Richard’s brain, which seemed to be spinning up to speed with agonizing slowness, managed to attach additional information to it. “I’m still on the merpeople’s world?”

“You are,” said the woman.

“But…I’m alive.”

“Brilliant deduction.”

“But…” Many things came back to him. “You didn’t–Emily didn’t–I haven’t been…modified, have I?”

“You have not,” said the woman, her voice hard.

“But Emily said…”

“Emily,” the woman corrected, “told you the truth. Every one of the murderers you brought to our planet is dead in orbit above us. But you survived.”

“I don’t–”

“I’ll let her tell you herself,” said the woman.

She went out without another word.

Richard’s mind raced. Everyone else was dead? Was that true? She could be lying to him…after all, he was alive. Maybe the plague wasn’t as fatal as they claimed. They might just be sick up on the ship. If he could get to a radio…

The woman–nurse? guard?–reappeared, pushing a cart with a vidscreen atop it. She positioned it at the foot of the bed. “Emily will be with you in a moment,” she said, and went out again.

Richard stared at the screen. Nothing happened for several seconds, then it suddenly lit with the face he had last seen just centimeters from his own on the other side of the envirosuit faceplate.

“We meet again,” the mergirl said.

“I didn’t expect to,” Richard said.

“Nor did I. I was more than willing to give you your wish, Richard Hansen. If you wanted to die, I wasn’t going to stop you.”

“So why did you?” Richard said hoarsely.

“I didn’t. A patrol from Pinkshore pulled you from the water when they went to investigate what had happened at Safehaven. By then you were too ill to treat genetically. They took you back to the hospital and waited for you to die…but you didn’t. And you won’t.”

“I guess your plague isn’t as perfect as you thought,” Richard said. “I think I see God’s hand in that.”

“Do you, Richard Hansen?” Emily smiled, showing sharp white teeth that reminded Richard of a shark. “Then God has a strange sense of humor.” Her smile widened. “You lived, Richard Hansen, because you already have the genetic modification that protects you from the plague.”

He felt cold. “You’re lying.”

“You’re always telling me that, but you’re always wrong. You became sick because you haven’t grown up with the microbe, like we have, but you are every bit as much genetically modified as every other human on this planet. Great-grandfather Hansen modified all his children, Richard Hansen…not just the one who came with him here. You are not, and never have been, a Pure Human. You are, in your way of thinking, an abomination.

“You’ve come home, Richard Hansen. You’ve come home…and for the rest of your life, you will live here, among the people you despised, among the people whose friends and family were slaughtered because of you, because they were modified just as you have been, because they bear the same genes you did…because, in fact, they are of your own blood.”

And then her shark-smile faded. “And here’s the difference between us, Richard Hansen, between what we abominations believe and what you Pure Humans believe.

“We forgive you. You will walk out of that hospital a free man. Your identity will be known to only a few of us. You may tell people what you wish, or nothing at all.

“We forgive you. Whether you can forgive yourself, or whether your God can forgive you…only time will tell.”

The screen went blank.

And Richard Hansen…wept.

These days, your car may even listen to you, if you have a voice-activated music system or phone. But generally, cars don’t pay much attention to what you say to them.

It could be that you just don’t have anything to say they’re very interested in. Perhaps what cars would really enjoy is conversation with others of their kind…and it may not be too long before they get it.

It’s called “vehicle-to-vehicle communication,” or “V2V” for short.  It is, literally, cars and trucks talking to each other. And starting this August, automakers will take part in a year-long field trial of the technology, a study being undertaken in conjunction with the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute and the U.S. Department of Transportation.

For the trial, 3,000 cars will be outfitted with equipment that allows them to broadcast their position, speed of travel and direction to other vehicles, and receive signals from those other vehicles in return, over a Wi-Fi network.

In an article about the “digital car,” Technology Review magazine compares the Wi-Fi signals to an alert passenger able to see in all directions at once. A V2V-equipped car could warn the driver if another V2V-equipped car was about to run a red light, or if there’s a V2V-equipped motorcycle in the blind spot.

A study sponsored by the U.S.’s National Highway Transportation Safety Administration looked at the scenarios involved in police-reported crashes involving unimpaired drivers, and found that V2V systems could potentially address a whopping 79 percent of those kinds of crashes: 81 percent of light vehicle crashes and 71 percent of heavy-truck crashes.

Your car might not just talk to other cars, either. There is also something called V2I, which stands for “vehicle-to-infrastructure.” That communication between vehicle and roadway, the study found, potentially dealt with 26 percent of all crashes: 27 percent of light-vehicle, and 15-percent of heavy-truck. Putting the two together raised the potential reduction in (or at least reduction in the severity of) all kinds of crashes to 81 percent.

If this year’s field trial and other studies produce favorable results, the U.S. government could start developing rules as early as next year that would mandate the inclusion of V2V systems in all new vehicles: pretty much a necessity if the technology is to be as effective as possible, since a one-sided conversation between a V2V-equipped car and one that’s effectively deaf and dumb won’t help anyone.

Of course, “talking cars” may talk not only to other cars, but to the entire world, via the Internet. For example, Ford has a made a deal with Google to use the search engine’s prediction algorithms, software that analyzes large data sets to spot trends. The idea, presented by Ryan McGee, a technical expert in Ford’s Vehicle Controls Architecture and Algorithm Design research group at the annual Google I/O conference in San Francisco last year, is that your car would send data to Google’s data centers, where software would predict where you are headed, based on past trips. Technology Review describes it this way: “Google might predict, say, that there’s a 59.24 percent chance you’re headed over to Bob’s house. A hybrid car might use a map of low-emission zones to determine when to switch to battery power as you drive. Or the algorithm could pick a fuel-efficient path with few hills, no rain, and the least traffic.”

This isn’t coming soon, if it comes at all: it’s probably four to eight years away. But it’s only one example of the possibilities inherent in cars that are no longer big dumb objects, but essentially rolling computers with network connectivity.

K. Venkatesh Prasad, senior leader for open innovation at Ford Motor Company, puts it this way in that Technology Review article. “The first billion vehicles in this world are like [un-networked] desktops—each doing their own little thing. The next billion cars should talk to each other and share intelligence.

“Think of how the World Wide Web changed the world,” he goes on. “The automotive sector is ripe for a similar change.”

(The photo: A Ford Mustang California Special.)

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE SCIENCE CENTRE KIND

All shots are from POV of alien—half-height, maybe a manipulating device of some kind just visible in the lower part of the frame (i.e., Dalek POV in a Doctor Who episode).

1. INTERIOR: SPACECRAFT

We see the control panel of the spaceship of Imperial Scout Arkos 496, an alien. (Oddly, this control panel looks a great deal like the control panel of the Cable Regina master control.) We hear, with appropriate sound effects . . .

ARKOS

This is the Personal Log of Imperial Scout Arkos 496. I’m on my final descent to Earth. The target is in sight. I will land on the large flat surface next to it. Contact in five…four…three…two…one…

We hear an immense splashing noise. The lights flicker and go out, and we hear a glub-glub noise. Over black we hear…

ARKOS

Oops.

2. EXTERIOR: WASCANA LAKE SHORELINE

We hear the ARKOS’s inarticulate disgruntled muttering as we rise, water streaming down in front of us, out of Wascana Lake. Pan from side to side; lock onto Saskatchewan Science Centre.

ARKOS

Target located. Proceeding.

We begin to move forward. Ominous background music.

3. INTERIOR: POWERHOUSE ENTRANCE

We advance through the automatic doors; stop, back up, make them swing open again, then proceed in.

ARKOS

Now why didn’t we think of that?

We advance to the ticket counter, where VISITOR SERVICES CLERK reacts calmly.

VISITOR SERVICES CLERK

Can I help you?

ARKOS

Take me to your leader.

VSC

Sure! Uh—what’s that little robot thing floating over your head?

ARKOS

This is my Questioning, Independent Reaper of Knowledge—QUIRK, for short. During my visit he will be roaming your building and transmitting the images he records directly to me.

VSC

You don’t say? Just a second, kid.

VSC talks on phone as we hear…

ARKOS

Personal log: It appears human eyesight is poor. They have mistaken me for an immature member of a species of herd animal. No matter: I am about to meet their leader.

VSC

Our leader will be with you in a moment.

4. INTERIOR: FEATURE EXHIBIT

STEPHEN shakes manipulator device gingerly.

STEPHEN

How do you do? I’m Stephen Hall, Executive Director of the Saskatchewan Science Centre.

ARKOS

Greetings, Exalted One! I am Arkos 496, a humble scout in the service of the Mighty Emperor Ugwump the Incredible. I come on a mission of great importance.

STEPHEN

Well, then, maybe we should go somewhere where we could talk sitting down . . .

ARKOS

I am not physically equipped for that action. This location is adequate.

STEPHEN

OK, fine. Well, Mr. 496—

ARKOS

Please, call me Arkos.

STEPHEN

Arkos. What can I do for you?

ARKOS

Our world is in serious trouble. Our people have lost all interest in science and technology. They think it is too hard. They think it is too boring. As a result, we no longer have enough scientists or engineers. Our children all want to be professional slime-wrestlers when they grow up. His Imperial Majesty fears our civilization will crumble if we do not get professional help. So we have come to you. We have heard that here in the Saskatchewan Science Centre you have found a way to make people appreciate science. We must know your secret.

STEPHEN gives a three or four-minute monologue on what the Science Centre is, how it came about, the philosophy of Science Centre exhibits and how they’re created, and the future of the Science Centre.

During this, QUIRK begins exploring the exhibit floor . . .

ARKOS

This is very interesting. May I see more of your Powerhouse of Discovery?

STEPHEN

Of course. (Calls.) Ed! Just the man I’m looking for! (To ARKOS.) Edward Willett is our Communications Officer. He’ll give you the grand tour.

(Enter Ed.)

ED

You called—oh! (To ARKOS, holding up famous Vulcan greeting.) Uh—peace! Live long and prosper!

ARKOS

What?

STEPHEN

Ed, I’d like you meet Arkos 469. I’ve told him you’ll give him a complete behind-the-scenes tour of the Science Centre.

ED

Uh…right. OK. Fine. Why don’t we start with exhibit design and production? Stephen, if you’ll come along for this first part, too, since you’re in charge of area…right this way, Mr. 469.

ARKOS

Please. Call me Arkos.

We follow Ed toward the elevator and hear…

ARKOS

Personal log: These humans have no sense of propriety. We’ve only just met, and already I’m just a number to them. At home you have to know someone for weeks before your comfortable calling them by their number.

5. INTERIOR: DESIGN DEPARTMENT

ED

This is the design department, and these are our designers. They determine how an exhibit is going to look.

DAVID YEE

Hey, man, I love your colour scheme! I’ve never seen anybody put orange, purple and green together quite so…boldly.

STEPHEN gives a quick tour of the department and explains what happens there.

6. INTERIOR: PRODUCTION SHOP

We pass through the connecting door between Graphics and Production…

STEPHEN

And through this door is the production department, where we actually build exhibits. We have complete metalworking and woodworking facilities, and an electronics workshop.

Shots of cabinetmakers at work, and a peek into ROB FULLER’s workshop, where ARKOS gets sentimental over the pile of old equipment.

ARKOS

Awww…that’s just the way my pet robot Sparkums looked after the isotope delivery truck ran over him when I was an eggling.

At the end of this STEPHEN makes his exit.

7. INTERIOR: LAUNCH PAD (BY ELEVATOR)

ARKOS

This is all very interesting, but I don’t see how these things you build can be enough by themselves to interest people in science.

ED

Oh, but there’s a lot more than just inanimate exhibits. There are also programs.

ARKOS

Ah! Artificial intelligences!

ED

No, people programs. Come on, I’ll show you.

Strides off toward elevator, leaving ARKOS behind. Pauses and looks back.

Well?

ARKOS

I’m coming, I’m coming.

We move after the impatient ED.

Personal log: These aliens grow to ridiculous heights and have very long legs. I suspect genetic engineering. Warn the Interstellar Olympic Committee not to invite them to the games next millennium.

8. INTERIOR: DISCOVERY LAB

ED

Arkos, this is Kathryn Dotson, our Programming Director. Kathryn, this is Arkos 496.

KATHRYN

Hello, Mr. 496.

ARKOS

Please, call me Arkos.

KATHRYN: Three or four minutes on how programs are designed and implemented and what we try to accomplish with them, who our demonstrators and volunteers are and what they do, where our visiting exhibits come from and what kinds of exhibits they are. Might mention the problem of exhibit maintenance, too.

QUIRK continues to roam the exhibits while she’s talking…

ARKOS

All of this is wonderful, but how do you let people know about these programs? Is it through telepathy?

ED

No, it’s through sales and marketing.

ARKOS

I do not understand.

ED

Well, then, you’d better talk to . . .

9. INTERIOR: THIRD FLOOR, OVERLOOKING MAIN EXHIBIT AREA

ED

…Pat Brandino, our Sales and Marketing Director. Pat, this is Arkos 469.

PAT

Pleased to meet you, Mr. 469.

ARKOS

Please, call me Arkos.

PAT BRANDINO:

Three to four minutes on how we get the message of what we’re about and what we’re trying to accomplish out to the public; how we try to get the most “bang for the buck” through joint promotions, etc., the great interest media outlets have shown being involved with us.

QUIRK is still exploring…

10. INTERIOR: STAIRS BETWEEN THIRD & SECOND FLOORS

ARKOS

Very interesting—though I would still recommend telepathy. It costs far fewer fegwips.

ED

Fegwips?

ARKOS

Rodent-like creatures with ten legs. Our medium of exchange.

ED

I’d hate to be your banker…

ARKOS

Do you not have something similar?

ED

Uh, sort of. Our medium of exchange is called money. Fortunately, we have someone who raises it.

ARKOS

Ah! Like our fegwip-breeders at home.

ED

If only it were that simple…

11. INTERIOR: IN FRONT OF BUBBLE AREA

ED

Diana Choban is our fegwip-breeder—I mean, our development officer. Diana, this is Arkos 469.

DIANA

Pleased to meet you, Mr. 46 —

ED

Please, call him Arkos.

DIANA CHOBAN: Three to four minutes about how we’re funded and how we go about gathering the funds we need to continue providing the service we provide—talk about exhibit sponsorships, special campaigns, etc.

QUIRK explores such things as donor wall, various signs for exhibit sponsorships, the skeleton & periodic table…

ARKOS

It sounds very difficult. I will make a note to have His Imperial Majesty send your Mr. Hall a breeding pair of fegwips, instead.

DIANA

Thank you so much.

ED

There is one other way we make some money.

ARKOS

And what is that?

ED

It’s called the Kramer IMAX Theatre. Walk this way.

ED strides toward the theatre, leaving ARKOS behind again.

ARKOS

Personal log: Walk that way? Not without a lot of mutating . . .

12. INTERIOR: KRAMER IMAX THEATRE

ARKOS

That is a very large blank surface.

ED

It’s called a screen. We show moving pictures on it.

ARKOS

Ah, yes. What you call television. We have intercepted your transmissions. I particularly like Hee Haw…

ED

Uh, no, it’s not exactly television. It’s—well, you’d better talk to Don Copeman, our IMAX theatre manager. This way!

13. INTERIOR: IMAX THEATRE LOBBY

ED

Don, this is Arkos 469—and don’t call him Mr. 469. Arkos, this is Don Copeman. You can call him whatever you like.

ARKOS

Hello, Whatever-You-Like!

DON COPEMAN: Three to four minutes on IMAX, what it is, how films are selected, what kind of films we’ll see, and how it benefits the Science Centre as a whole.

QUIRK roams the IMAX…

14. INTERIOR: IMAX PROJECTION ROOM

ARKOS

This must be a very powerful weapon.

ED

It’s the IMAX projector.

ARKOS

A powerful projectile weapon?

ED

No, all it projects is light.

ARKOS

Ah! A powerful laser weapon.

ED

No! This is what projects the images on that big screen down there…

ARKOS

Oh…how?

ED

Just watch…

Visuals of the projector being loaded, or in operation, or something.

15. INTERIOR: IMAX THEATRE LOBBY NEAR CHECKPOINT CHARLIE

ED

Well, you’ll have a lot to tell your Emperor, won’t you?

ARKOS

If I am able to.

ED

What do you mean?

ARKOS

I have inadvertently landed in the large body of dihydrogen oxide adjacent to this structure. A critical component requires a large charge of static electricity in order for me to be able to retrieve my ship and take off again. At present I have no way of obtaining that charge —

ED

Wanna bet?

ARKOS

I fail to see what function gambling would serve at this juncture—

ED

Just follow me.

We move away toward the Powerhouse…

16. INTERIOR: POWERHOUSE – COCA COLA STAGE

We approach the Van Der Graaff Static Electricity Generator.

ARKOS

Greetings, robot! What is your function?

ED

It’s not a robot. And its function is to generate static electricity.

ARKOS

Indeed?

ED

Sure. Watch!

We watch a kid get his/her hair stood on end. ARKOS is overjoyed.

ARKOS

I am indeed fortunate! Wait while I position myself…

We move closer to the generator, and we see a nice fat electrical spark jumping from the generator to the grounding rod, which can double as ARKOS’s broken device.

ED

(Looking at watch impatiently.) Now can you leave?

ARKOS

Not yet! First I must gather images for transmittal to His Majesty! QUIRK!

Series of quick images from around the Powerhouse and IMAX.

17. EXTERIOR: IN FRONT OF THE POWERHOUSE

ARKOS

I thank you for your help. The Saskatchewan Science Centre may very well have saved our entire civilization.

ED

All in a day’s work. Well, it’s been a pleasure meeting you, Arkos—

ARKOS

Please, call me 496.

ED

Uh—sure. Whatever you say, 496. And, uh—QUIRK, was it? Have a safe trip home, and if you’re ever in the nieghborhood again, be sure to drop by.

ED waves and goes back into the Powerhouse.

ARKOS

Don’t worry—we will.

We move toward the lake…

18. INTERIOR: SPACESHIP

We see the control panel again.

ARKOS

Personal Log of Imperial Scout Arkos 496. Am preparing for takeoff from Earth. Mission accomplished. Launching—now.

The manipulator touches a button or lever. We hear splashing sounds, then rocket noises, and over it…

ARKOS

Feldercarb! I forgot to buy a T-shirt.

Music swells.

FADE OUT

At which point the pharmacist manfully chokes back his laughter at your pharmaceutical phonetics phailure, tactfully supplies the actual name of the drug, and the transaction continues.

So, why do drugs have such tongue-twisting names? Who comes up with them?

An article by Carmen Drahl in the latest issue of Chemical and Engineering News (C&EN) explains, in the context of failed efforts by Winston Pharmaceuticals to change the generic name of a compound chemically known as (deep breath) cis-8-methyl-N-vanillyl-6-nonenamide. Drahl reveals that drugs have something in common with T.S. Eliot’s cats: each must have three different names.

First, there is the chemical name, sanctioned by the International Union of Pure & Applied Chemistry (IUPAC). Then there is the proprietary name, the brand name the manufacturer gives the drug for marketing purposes. But in addition, each drug must be assigned a generic name. Brand-name drugs eventually go off patent, after all. As well, generic names can be used in scientific literature, on package labels and in educational materials without running into copyright issues.

The current system of assigning generic names is half a century old. By the late 1950s drug compounds had become so complex that the IUPAC names were too unwieldy for general use, so in 1961 the American Medical Association, the U.S. Pharmaceutical Convention and the American Pharmacists Association created the U.S. Adopted Names (USAN) Council to select concise generic names. The Food & Drug Administration became part of the process in 1967.

In the States today, the USAN Council names the active ingredients in everything from drugs to vaccines to contact lenses and sunscreens. It recommends its names to the World Health Organization’s International Nonproprietary Names (INN) program, and it’s that organization that eventually settles on the generic name that will be used worldwide, including in Canada.

The international nature of drug names is why you’ll never see a generic drug name containing the letters h, j, k or w: they lead to pronunciation problems in some languages. And some names put forward by the USAN Council, or other national bodies, are rejected by the INN program because they have bad or even obscene connotations elsewhere.

New generic names start with an established collection of name fragments called stems, each of which has a meaning connected to a particular class of drug, or a particular mode of action. For instance, the stem -ac relates to anti-inflammatory agents (derivatives of acetic acid), the stem -adox to a class of anti-bacterials, etc. The list of stems has slowly changed over the years as new drugs come on the market. There’s also a set of prefixes.

C&EN’s article gives as an example the popular drug Nexiuim, whose generic name is esomeprazole. The stem –prazole tells you (if you’ve memorized all the stems) that the drug is a benzimidazole antiulcer agent. The es- prefix, C&EN says, “describes the nature of the drug’s chirality—esomeprazole is destrorotatory and contains a chiral center in the S configuration,” an explanation I personally found less than helpful. But you get the idea.

Winston Pharmaceuticals’ efforts to change the generic name zucapsaicin to civamide (because, they said, civamide was commonly used in hospitals and by pharmacists) failed because generic names are rarely changed, provided standard protocols were followed: unless, that is, there’s a serious safety issue.

C&EN gives as an example the family of botulinum toxin drugs (which includes Botox), which underwent a generic name change in 2009 because under the old name dosage mix-ups had led to serious side effects and even deaths.

With prefixes, stems, and a few other conventions taken into consideration, the generic name is often three-quarters done. The originating company might then get to throw in a syllable or two of its choice. Often, it chooses to recognize one of the scientists involved in the drug’s development. For instance, the experimental hepatitis C drug asunaprevir gets the “sun” part of its name from Li-Qiang Sun, the chemist who first made it for Bristol-Myers Squibb.

So the next time you struggle with a tongue-twisting drug name, don’t take it personally. The name wasn’t chosen solely to baffle you and amuse your pharmacist. Drug names have specific meanings. Learn their building blocks, and you, too, can tell at a glance what a generic drug should do.

Well, provided you know what chirality is.

(The photo: A medicine from the days before generic drug names.)

*Yes, that’s a rule change: in the past, anyone could nominate but only members could vote. This year, you must be a member to nominate, as well.

Their description is nice, too:

The landing pod settled in the middle of the alien battlefield in an expanding cloud of copper-colored dust, its antigrav moaning away to nothing and its liftjets sighing into silence.

Vultor Caruso watched the pod’s descent through binoculars from the ancient camouflaged pillbox buried in the nearest hill, his lips set in a thin, tight sneer. “Damn claim-jumpers,” he muttered; after years of working on his own, he talked to himself. He thumbed the magnification control to max so he could read the registration markings on the pod’s side. “Oh, that’s clever,” he snarled. “Too bloody damn clever. ‘Interstellar Red Cross’ my ass.” He squinted through the binoculars. What was that smaller text underneath…? “‘Retrieval and Rescue,’” he read, and jerked the binoculars down so hard the strap cut into the back of his neck. “As if any of us coyotes would ever need to be retrieved. As if we’d let them.”

Something whined in his ear like a demented mosquito; he slapped a control on the harness of his multisuit and the sound died. The emergency call signal—he should’ve seen that coming. They’d play this ‘Interstellar Red Cross’ crap to the hilt, try to talk him into coming down to the pod, then grab him, lock him up, and strip-mine the site. He’d bet there was a full-sized digship waiting in orbit for the all-clear once they had him.

But they weren’t going to get him. And they couldn’t do a thing here until they did, because like any coyote worth his gravjuice, he’d seeded the whole battlefield perimeter with alarms and nanocameras. Anybody but him set foot in it, his ship would take their pictures, ID them, and squawk-burst it straight to the Patrol through one of the four quantamitters he’d left tucked in orbit—two t be found, and two for redundancy.

They had to grab him and his multisuit so they could deactivate that stuff, or else they might as well get the hell off. And there was no way they were going to grab him, not someone who’d spent the last twenty subjective Earth years salvaging alien materials and technology from the battlefields of some ancient interstellar war.

He saw movement, and raised the binoculars again. Two people emerged from the pod in white multisuits, and he ducked down quickly when he realized they had their own binox. He didn’t need to see them, anyway. He knew what they’d do. They’d set down right where he’d stuck his dummyship, shouting out an ID signal identical to the one his real ship would have been sending out, if he’d been stupid enough to leave it on. They’d poke around, scan the horizon, maybe even yell if they were desperate enough—and right on cue, he heard a faint cry of “Mr. Caruso! Vultor Caruso!”

Idiots, he thought, and stayed put for the next three hours, never looking out. It’d taken him two days to find the hidden entrance to this pillbox. There was no way these clowns would find it before dark.

He was mildly surprised when he heard the rising howl of antigravs winding up, but kept his head down in case it was another trick. Only when the liftjets roared did he poke his eyes back up to the level of the weapons slit.

The pod was gone, leaving behind only another cloud of coppery dust.

Vultor crawled out of the pillbox and brushed off his multisuit. He spat on the ground, the spot of moisture turning the alien dust as bright-red as freshly spilled blood. Damn claim-jumpers had eaten up the best part of his day. He’d be lucky to get back to his ship by nightfall.

Damn stupid claim-jumpers, he amended to himself as he clambered down the back side of the hill. He surveyed the vast battlefield with satisfaction. Littered with the decayed remnants of ships, the crumbling exoskeletons of the long-dead aliens, and anonymous dust-covered mounds that might hold anything, it was the richest site he’d ever found. No wonder the claim-jumpers came after it, but to think a wily old wolf like him would come crawling out like a whipped puppy just because they pretended to be some kind of rescue team…rescue from what? Monsters? Nothing bigger than a rat lived on this dump of planet. He snorted, and set off across the battlefield.

He was halfway home, and the planet’s tiny, brilliant star had just slipped behind the horizon, when he heard the moan of antigravs again. “Dammit, can’t you take a hint?” he roared, and turned around, expecting to see the landing pod descending behind him.

For a long moment, nothing made sense. Lights wove through the stars in an intricate pattern, throwing off eye-searing flashes like fireworks. Antigravs moaned, rockets shrieked, explosions thundered the air.

It wasn’t until the hulking ships thudded heavily down two hundred metres away and the insectoids swarmed out that he really understood.

The war had returned. And as the aliens raised their weapons in unison, as though driven by a single mind, Voltor had time for only one last thought:

What scavengers, he wondered, would pick his bones clean?

The key to keeping a resolution is willpower, obviously. But what is willpower? Is it some mysterious quality that some people have and others don’t? Is it a virtue we can build in ourselves with practice? Is it what separates saints from sinners?

None of the above, say some scientists. According to Roy F. Baumeister, a social psychologist at the University of Florida, willpower is simply a form of mental energy, fueled, like all brain functions, by glucose in the bloodstream. And that means that like any other form of mental energy, it can be used up.

Baumeister, in a 2007 experiment, gave students an attention-taxing task (watching a boring video while ignoring words at the bottom of the screen), then rewarded them with a glass of lemonade. Half got lemonade made with real sugar, while the others got lemonade sweetened with Splenda. They were then given tests of self-control—and the students who had drunk Splenda-sweetened lemonade consistently performed worse. Their willpower was literally unfueled.

Baumeister has co-written a book on the subject, Willpower, with John Tierney, science columnist for the New York Times. He calls this state of mental fatigue “ego depletion,” and there’s really nothing we can do about it: it’s just the way our brains work. So the real key to keeping resolutions, Baumeister and others believe, is, as Jonah Lehrer put it in a recent article for Wired.com, “to recognize the inherent weakness of the will.”

Nothing displays that weakness better than New Year’s resolutions. A 2002 study by John C. Norcross and other psychologists at the University of Scranton found that by the end of January 26 percent of resolvers had broken their resolutions. Half had broken them by March. By July, that had risen to 56 percent. A 2007 survey found that eventually 88 percent of all resolutions end in failure.

Bad statistics perhaps, but there’s actually a flip side. Sure, only 44 percent of those who made resolutions continued to cling to them by July, but only four percent of a control group who had the same goals (i.e., losing weight) had made progress in that same amount of time. Resolutions, in other words, made it ten times more likely people would actually change what they wanted to change.

And despite the odds, some people do succeed at sticking to efforts at self-improvement. How do they do it?

A new study says it’s not by any great feat of willpower, of which they have no more than anyone else. Rather, it’s by application of careful strategy.

In this study, led by Wilhelm Hoffmann at the University of Chicago, 205 participants in Wurtzburg, Germany, received specially designed smartphones. Over a week, they were pinged seven times a day and asked to report whether they were experiencing a strong desire: if so, they were then asked to describe it, how strongly they felt it, and whether it caused an “internal conflict.” If it did cause a conflict, they were asked about their ensuing success at controlling it: did they successfully thwart their desire to, say, eat a whole container of ice cream?

About half the desires were reported as causing internal conflict. In about 40 percent of those cases, the subject attempted to actively resist the desire. Resistance was not futile: only 17 percent of those desires that were resisted were acted upon, whereas 70 percent of desires that were not resisted were consummated.

The key finding, though, was that the best way to thwart self-conflicting desires isn’t through the application of weak willpower, but by avoiding temptation in the first place. As Lehrer puts it, “unsuccessful dieters try not to eat the ice cream in their freezer, thus quickly exhausting their limited willpower resources,” whereas “those high in self-control refuse to even walk down the ice cream aisle in the supermarket.”

The latest scientific findings, to be sure: but what it all boils down to for me is an old saying I heard many times growing up: “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

If you don’t want to yield to temptation, better to avoid it altogether: and maybe, just maybe, you’ll actually keep your New Year’s resolution.

(The photo: A dessert table at the International Festival of Wine & Food, Banff Springs Hotel.)

Two of the occasions were to mark the centenary of the Hill Companies, intimately involved in the building of the city and province. One of those was here in Regina, the other in Calgary, where I got to poke fun at our neighbouring province in front of an august crowd that included the then-Premier of Alberta, Ralph Klein. So that was cool!

The following version of the speech was given at the 2005 convention of the Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association‘s annual convention in Saskatoon.

It is a great privilege for me to be here on the occasion of the centennial convention of the Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association.  My name is Thomas Walter Scott, and I have–or rather, from your point of view, had–the honor of being the first premier of the province of Saskatchewan.

You will forgive any confusion in tenses, I hope. For you, as I understand it, it is January 29, 2005.  However, when I awoke this morning, it was January 29, 1912.  I therefore bring you greetings, not only from the government of Saskatchewan, but also from what is, to you, the distant past, a time when this great province was not a hundred years old, or even ten years old, but barely six.

Before I enter into the substance of my remarks, I must first express my gratitude to Mr. H. G. Wells, without whose invaluable invention, the Time Machine, I would not have been able to be with you here today.

I confess that, having just arrived moments ago, I have no detailed knowledge of conditions in this Saskatchewan of almost a century in my future; but I have made a few observations already that imbue me with confidence that our glorious province has indeed blossomed into greatness as I have always predicted it would.

I note, for example, that the legendary hospitality of the Saskatchewan people has not changed; for after having left the Time Machine in the street outside this great auditorium in a spot conveniently marked with the image of a wheeled chair–an image which looked remarkably like the time machine itself, and which I therefore took to be an indication I should stop there–I glanced back to see a gentlemen in a blue uniform writing a welcome note and placing it in a prominent place where I could not fail to see it upon my return, a generous action indeed.  I must congratulate the current mayor and city council of Saskatoon for establishing what is obviously a corps of men whose duty it is to issue friendly greetings to newcomers. I certainly look forward to reading his warm welcome when I return to the Time Machine after my address to you, and I trust that those of you representing other municipalities issue similar greetings to newcomers to your towns and cities.

And speaking of the street outside, it was with great pleasure that I noted it was paved, and bordered by concrete curbs and sidewalks. This is a great advance from the province’s early days; our standing joke in 1905 was that when it rains one could pick up enough topsoil to claim a homestead simply by walking down the street of any Saskatchewan city.  As one early resident of the province wrote home to Ontario, “we welcome the winters for the reprieve they offer from the sea of mud we live in the other three months”!

But even in my own time, we have made great strides in improving the roads of our cities.  Indeed, just last year, in the spring of 1911, we inaugurated that most civilized means of transportation, a streetcar system, in Regina.  Though I did not see it in my brief sojourn outside, I am certain that Saskatoon and other Saskatchewan communities must by now also enjoy this modern convenience. No doubt most of you rode these streetcars as you made your way to the convention from your various hotels.

I note that this room is lit most brilliantly by electricity–so brilliantly, indeed, that it is difficult to see anything of any of you from here on the stage–which gives me confidence that all the cities of Saskatchewan must enjoy the benefits of electrical power.

Similarly, I am confident that most residents of Saskatchewan now have access to a telephone.  This is of great concern in my own time.  In the last election, in 1908, our Liberal platform called for increased telephone service, and we have committed ourselves to public ownership of long-distance lines.  However, I am firmly against the public ownership of local telephone companies, or other public utilities.  Government oversight, yes; government control, no. This, of course, contrasts with the well-known Conservative position in my day that all public utilities should be government owned.  Now, I know that the Urban Municipalities of Saskatchewan have called upon my government to place telephones under public ownership.  However, I am sure by your time that concern has long since faded.  I have often said it would be suicidal for any government of Saskatchewan to try to provide a telephone to every rural resident. That is best left to private enterprise; and no doubt the decades have proved me right. No doubt by your time hundreds of local telephone companies across Saskatchewan are providing the handful of telephones needed by the smaller towns,you’re your organization and the Conservatives alike have come around the wisdom of the staunch Liberal belief that government should not assume ownership of ventures that could be handled by cooperative or private enterprise.

You know, when Saskatchewan became a province, just seven years ago for me, and a hundred for you, there were only 60 incorporated villages, ten towns and three cities–and yet, the Union of Saskatchewan Municipalities held its inaugural convention, cementing its reputation as a very forward-looking organization. In fact, it wasn’t until 1908, the year my Liberal government won re-election, that the Legislature passed the acts that set up the current system of cities, towns, villages and rural municipalities, and created the new Department of Municipal Affairs.

No doubt the acts have been amended many times since.  You may find it amusing to know that in those early days, a village could be incorporated as a town with a mere 500 residents, and it took only 5,000 to become a city!  But villages longed to be towns. Among other things, towns could acquire parks and recreation grounds, and establish skating and curling rinks.  (The latter power was insisted upon by the many Scots in the Legislature!)

And in my time, villages are springing up and becoming towns with astonishing speed.  To name just three, Melville, Outlook and Watrous hardly existed in 1907, organized as villages late in 1908, and incorporated as towns in 1909.  No doubt by your day they each contain many thousands of residents and are thriving cities.

When the province began, we had only three cities.  Already, in 1911, we have four.  And their populations continue to soar.  In 1901, Regina had just 2,249 inhabitants; that swelled to 6,169 five years later, and 30,214 in 1911.  Saskatoon had only 113 in 1901, 3,011 in 1906 and 12,000 in 1911.  Moose Jaw sprang from 1,558 in 1901 to 13,823 in 1911, and Prince Albert from 1,785 in 1901 to 6,254 in 1911.  Overall, the province’s population has almost doubled, from 257,000 in 1906 to nearly half a million in 1911.

And thus, though I have had no opportunity to confirm it, I am confident that today, in twenty-ought-five, Saskatchewan has proved the prediction I have made often:  “Just as rue as the sun shines there will be within this Province alone some day a population running into the tens of millions.”

That being the case, many of you must represent urban municipalities with populations in the hundreds of thousands, or even millions.  Regina alone, I am confident, has long outstripped the great cities of my age–London, New York, Paris–in population, beauty and culture, and though no doubt Saskatoon continues to lag behind Regina in population, even with only half as many people, I am certain it, too, must be a great city, as must Moose Jaw, Prince Albert, and all the rest.

I did my best, as premier, to spread the benefits of province-hood to all our cities. Regina, of course, was made capital and received the Legislative Building; Saskatoon received the University. Prince Albert was given the provincial penitentiary, and North Battleford the mental health hospital.  And Moose Jaw, the second-largest city in the province in 1911, received…um…well…well, no doubt something came up. Later.  After my time?

Perhaps I can share a little bit more about my time, though the political concerns of 1906 may make you laugh in this more sophisticated age.

I am ashamed to say, for example, that there is great concern about corruption in government in 1912.  My promise on becoming premier in 1905 was that I would present to the people of this province good, clean, honest government.  I am confident that the governments I have formed have set just such an example, so that never again have the Saskatchewan people seen politicians sullied by scandal.

In fact, if I may be permitted one partisan note, I am confident that my Liberal government has presented such an example of good government that Liberals continue to govern this province to this very day.

Peace, Progress and Prosperity was my slogan for the 1905 election.  I am certain all three have continued to be the lot of Saskatchewan residents in the years that lie in your past, but are still in my future.  This province’s people have unlimited potential. Already, in my time, your association has played a key role in unlocking that potential.  The fact that I am here helping you celebrate your 100th anniversary is proof to me that you have continued to do so.

And…Mr. Wells told me I shouldn’t tell you this, but…well, I happen to know you will continue to play a vital role in Saskatchewan for decades to come:  you see, I must now bid you farewell, remount the Time Machine, and make my way to my next speaking engagement–the bicentennial convention of the Saskatchewan Urban Muncipalities Association, scheduled for Saturday, January 31, 2105.  Reserve your hotel rooms now!

My congratulations and best wishes once again. Thank you for your kind attention.

(The photo: the Saskatchewan Legislative Building at sunset.)