Diminished Capacity
or
Murk
Living here is an experience in diminished capacity. The medium tends to marginalize everyone, it is very difficult to make your self different than everyone else's self. This problem is magnified by the fact that we expect meaningful measurements to translate from the real, and they don't, just as the systems that work here are useless there. The new land is crowded with many voices striving to be heard. It may seem at times that each and every fool under the sun has arrived in the new land and is yelling at the top of their lungs, it is so and I am just one more, I do not doubt this.
I set out to write a story about Tim Luke and realized that I really didn't stand a chance of being able to figure out the controls of the crazy train, any questions that needed answers are as faded as the flowers I left there at Tim's graveside. The fact that these members all left at the same time as Tim is the thread that joins these stories together. I do not have any special access to the SI database, I wish I could make special queries but for now it is all brute force. In writing a short story like this one I had to start with the source material, us, and look at every profile for every person who posted in a given time period, literally many thousands of clicks. This is the first step in seeking to extract an essence and this essence may or may not be pleasant. I knew from first inception that this story was to be a bitter piece of work, turning over thousands of bodies (clicking on thousands of profiles) to examine each one more closely. The size of this world is a facet of the viewer, it is as big as you can see it, as small as you can be, there is no scope beyond the one you fashion for yourself. For those who can only see dimly through the digital murk, this world is a reflection of a limited inner landscape devoid of pleasant features. It is easy to find those who cannot see, it is far easier to find those who will not see, members who operate in a permanent mode of diminished capacity, a considerable accomplishment given that we are all diminished to begin with. |
