They say there’s nothing more dangerous in the world than a man who believes in something so thoroughly as to actually kill for his belief. Sam believes in Santa Claus, and as we speak he is somewhere wondering the aisles of the Dead Santa book store with enough dynamite strapped to his chest to ensure that the explosion could be seen from even the North Pole.

See the Dead Santa was founded by a bunch of loonies whose sole goal in life appeared to be the disillusionment of small children. It started simply enough – one man, Bill, in his basement with a strong desire to make people stop believing in Santa Clause. Alright, so the guy was a little nuts, but he held services in his basement in which people would burn images of Santa and sing songs of Santa hatred and tell stories of how Santa had let them down. They would say that Santa was a lie from the pits of hell. They even went so far as to spend most of their weekends running around town trying to “convert” random strangers – and this in the middle of April!

All went fine and dandy at the Dead Santa for quite a few months. But then somebody burned a four foot tall paper machete statue of Santa. Bill’s house caught on fire and burned to the ground. It seemed that the Dead Santa had come to an end.

Well, it seemed that way, at least until Bill decided to hold a fundraiser on top of the ashen remains of his house. He was in his boxer shorts, but in his defense the rest of his clothes were smoke stained and he didn’t want to look like a slob while officiating such serious business.

He may have had nothing other than a bunch of loonies attending his meetings, but they were apparently rich loonies. He raised enough money that they were soon able to open the Dead Santa “book” store. They insisted that it be called a “book” store, but it was a book store in the same way that Christian “book” stores are book stores. That being they had almost no books – just a few written by members of the club and all self-published. They also sold things like “There is no Santa” bumper stickers, “Just say no to Santa!” buttons, and the ever popular “Friends don’t let friends celebrate Christmas” T-shirts.

For a while it seemed that all was good. The members of the club got to have their fun, and now they were getting paid by the few non-club members that shopped there. Things soon changed, however, when a group of Santa lovers decided to start a war with the Dead Santa book store.

The war started – as most good wars do – with a hobo. This particular hobo was a man by the name John.

John had spent the better years of his life wondering the city streets looking for a free handout. He was perfectly capable of having a good job, but he was lazy, and, well, people were easy. So, he collected their money everyday sitting out on the street corner with his sign. Usually, the sign said something like “Will work for food,” or the overly simple, “Spare change?” But, one morning John sat down in front of the Dead Santa book store with a sign that said, “Santa is real.”

John didn’t intend to start a war. He just wanted people to believe in the man that made his childhood so great, but in his defense, John technically didn’t start the war, his dead body did.

Sometime that night, a passing stranger saw John’s sign and gave him a Santa hat and beard, but it turns out all John really needed was a blanket. He froze to death that night while wearing his new hat and beard. That was fine by John; life was just a passing thing to him, dying just proved that assumption. The next morning, however, a Santa supporter found his body and started spreading the rumor that it was the Dead Santa book store that had poor John assassinated for trying to undermine their efforts to stop Santa belief.
In response to that one unfortunate event, a group calling themselves the Santa Alliance For Everyone (SAFE) began vandalizing the Dead Santa book store. The Dead Santa members mostly handled this with speeches of outrage against the “minions of the red devil.” The Dead Santa members were mostly calm people, since, contrary to popular belief, crazy people are rather cool and collected.

Things got heated, however, when a SAFE member brought a shotgun to one of the speeches. Bill, the Dead Santa’s much loved founder, died from one slug to the head.

The Dead Santa members reacted with essentially an escalated form of hate speech. See, they didn’t kill anyone, but when you burn down the Times Square Christmas Tree, you tend to gain more enemies than friends.

And now we come back to Sam, who was prompted to take his current mission after seeing the Times Square Christmas Tree burning on television: Sam finally finished his slow meander toward the middle of the Dead Santa book store. He walked there with his head hung low, staring at his feet wondering if he was really able to go through with it. He loved Santa, and these people were clearly a threat to Santa’s position in the world. But there are some things that just seem wrong, even if they are done for the best of reasons. As he came to a stop at the center of the store, Sam had begun to release his grip on the bomb’s trigger. Breathing a deep sigh of relief at having decided to not do it, he looked up.

There standing in front of him was giant stuffed Santa – clothes torn and half naked – tied to a stake with glowing artificial flames at his feet. Sam felt like he was going to be sick. The sight of something so horrible once again bringing all his hatred of these people to the surface…

Sam pushed the button.

One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter, there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small that perhaps in the course of the hour, one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges, and through a relay releases a hammer that shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The psi-function of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts.¹

Today, Billy was going to be the cat, well…sort of. Billy devised a deviously simple yet powerful spin-off experiment. He would be the creature in the box. Only he would be unconscious – after all, he didn’t want to observe anything and throw the experiment off – and the box would also be able to save him by means of another device that would be triggered by the presence of hydrocyanic acid. The device, upon triggering would inject Billy with an antidote, thus reconciling his living and dead selves into one coherent whole…without outside observation. The box would then open and he would be allowed to step out.

The brilliance of this was, of course, that with no intelligent observation performed on Billy while he was in the box, he would continue to be both alive and dead, because once the box was open, one state would not be distinguishable from the other.

Most scientists would have been content just to have hypothesized this experiment, and would have never gone through with it. What good could it serve the scientific community? The facts were proven without ever having to kill yourself to get them.

Well, Billy didn’t give a tiny rat’s ass about the scientific community or anybody else for that matter. He was doing this for himself.

Billy had his own hypothesis of what would happen when the box opened. It’s a fairly well regarded fact that matter in a wave function (matter existing in two simultaneous states as per the laws of quantum physics, such as Billy’s body be in this experiment)  no longer follows the laws of classical physics. It, in fact, follows no laws. The matter within a wave function is essentially free from the laws of gravity, friction, mass, energy, and even density. It could be everywhere at once, or nowhere at all. It could fly across the entire universe in a matter of seconds. Its power is limitless!

And therein lies the reason for this mad endeavor. Billy’s body would be permanently stuck in a wave function. He would be infinitely powerful. He would be like a god.

Billy entered the box thinking that in the course of the next several hours, he would become a god. What Billy didn’t realize, however, was that his powers would also be uncontrollable. Control relates to observation, and that can’t be done on wave function, or else it ceases to be a wave function.

As Billy left the box, his mind stopped sensing his body. He couldn’t feel it. He couldn’t see it. He couldn’t use it to interact. To everyone else his body had disappeared also. The box just opened to dead air. But Billy was still alive, his mind containing every known square inch of the universe. He could not feel his body but he could feel the center of the sun at the same time he felt the absolute zero of the coldest portions of the universe. Saw the brightest bright and the darkest dark at the same time; every color bombarding his non-existent eyes at once. He smelled every atom at every second. He even tasted them. He knew what the center of the sun tasted like. He could even have told you that the milky way actually tastes something like a red hot chili pepper with extra vomit. He could have told you that, if he could have talked. But he had no control over any of it. His mind became a passive input machine for every scrap of data that the universe put out. He wished that he could commit suicide, but his mind persisted. It persists even to this day. Coldly observing everything, wishing for death to come and end its endless torment.

“They walked carefully, talked carefully, ate carefully–whatever it took to make sure that the Imagination Purity Service – IPS for short – didn’t bother them.

“They thought that they gained something by this. I guess it was the luxury. They didn’t have to worry about making their own decisions, the IPS took care of that for them, without any substantial thought on their part.

“Whatever they gained, it’s what they lost that we remember. They lost the ability to dream. Their whole lives were consumed with making sure that they followed the rules of the IPS without failure.

“No matter how hard they tried, everybody eventually failed. They would allow themselves just a few seconds of true thought, and then it would be over. The IPS computer had only two options: follow it’s laws perfectly, or die.

“Eventually, their society died, and the computer that killed it, died shortly thereafter. Now, all that we have left of the species are these few artifacts that you see here.”

Rodney knew he had lost the children. To them, this was just another boring field trip to the museum. But then again, nobody ever cared about the human-dominated period of earth history. Maybe he could regain their interest with squid-dominated earth. Damn kids who don’t care about learning.

“When you cease to dream, you cease to live.”

Malcolm S. Forbes

To the most beautiful girl in the world,

I’m sorry that I had to leave you so soon, but I promise that I’ll see you again on the other side. I’ve always loved you, even when I was too scared to say it. I know you loved me as well. My one regret was not kissing you when I had the chance. I promise to make up for it. I’ll shower you in my love for all eternity.

Don’t cry for me. You must be strong, not for me, or even for yourself, but for the man you call husband. He can never see this letter. Our love must be kept a secret until it is the only one that matters. Go now, and be strong through the pain.

Remember that I’ll always love you in death, just as I always have in life.

Untill we meet again,
Mrs. Robinson

It’s been way too long since I wrote on here. I plan on writing more now that I know I can access it from Alicia’s blackberry and not have to visit the in-law’s everytime I want to post on here. I have a few flashes written out long hand that I’ll post soon, but this is just a life update.

I moved this last February into a mobile home. It’s one bedroom larger than the town house we were renting but it’s also cheaper per month to own this than to rent the old place. The extra space is so nice.

I started writing a book. I’m about thirty pages into a spelunking sci-fi adventure. I’m hoping to actually be able to publish this one, and not just self-publish on lulu. Don’t know the first thing about getting it published though, but I’ll burn that bridge when I come to it. Right now I just want to finish writing it. Of course at the rate that I write, that will still be like six months.

Not much else to write about now. I’m gonna try to keep the flashes and short stories coming and not let this slip so far out of date again.

Here’s to a new beginning!

Beside the Angel today was a little girl. She looked to be maybe four years old. She wasn’t. She was technically zero according usuall standards of counting age, but in reality she was twenty-six weeks old. She just hadn’t had a “birth” day yet. The little girl had curly black hair, and the sweetest most innocent eyes. She never knew a bit of pain, only the happy, black wetness of her mother’s womb. But right now her innocent eyes were full of worry. She looked to the Angel and said, “April?”

“Yes sweety?” the Angel answered.

“Mommy looks like she’s in trouble. What’s wrong with her?”

“She had a stroke, baby.”

“Will she be coming with us today?”

“No baby, she has a lot of good left to do down here.”

“Oh, OK.”

“Come on Random, we need to get going. Your grandpa is waiting for you on the other side.”

“What’s Grandpa like?”

“He’s a good man. You’ll really like him.”

“What’s it like in heaven?”

“You ask a lot of questions.”

“Cut me some slack! This is the first time I’ve seen anything but blackness.”

“All right, I’ll give you that.”

“Thank you… But you still didn’t answer my question.”

I love you Random. I miss you.

Well, Alicia is pregnant again! We don’t know yet if it’s going to be a girl or a boy, but definitely the last If it’s a girl we’re going to name her Random Isabella Lynn Weirick. If it’s a boy, we’re going to name him Chance, but we haven’t decided on the middle names yet. Can you tell we’re wanting a girl? Either way, Random/Chance lived up to her/his name. Alicia passed out at work and got a cuncussion, so the next day we took her to the ER because she could barely stand she was still dizzy. A few hours and a few tests later, the doctor tells us she’s pregnant and her uteris pressing on an artery caused her to pass out. She’s ok now though. She’s due March 21, 2009. We’re a little scared, but overall, excited.

In other news, I’ve opened a store on Etsy.com. It’s called Recycled Chic, and I sell mostely jewelry made out of things like pop tabs, junk mail, and such. Check it out and maybe buy something!

Ok. I don’t have a computer so I don’t update. Sue me. Nonetheless, Alicia insists that I do post an update for you all.

Let’s see. Alicia’s job did get extended. She has to complete a ten week training course (paid), and she’s still technically employed through a temp service. But it usually takes at least six months to get hired in to the company, and she can work through the temp service indefinitely now instead of having a four week cap.

I’ve just been a stay at home dad. I have been working in my spare time on a book that has been in the work for the last two years called Eternity. I’m about half-way done. I hope it won’t take me another two years to finish the second half, but who knows.

Right now I’m sitting at my mother-in-law’s house because my house is getting sprayed for roaches. I tried when I first noticed them to get rid of them myself, and it hasn’t worked. So after fighting with my land lord for several weeks I finally got her to spray the apartment. I have two hours left to wait for it to be safe, but at least I don’t have to worry about them anymore, thank God.

Ok, not much else that I can think of for now, so until next time!

My wife got a job yesterday! We finally have income after two months of scraping for every dime to make ends meet. It’s only a temp job scheduled for four weeks, but there is a good chance that her job will be extended indefinitely. She’s actually making more money than I was at my old job so that is very good. It looks like I will get to be a stay at home dad, which is very good because I love spending time with my two little munch kins.

In book news, the only person who bought my book was my mom. Which honestly doesn’t surprise me. I didn’t really think that people would be too excited about buying a book of stories that they could read for free here, but I thought I would give it a try.

As always, I know that I don’t write a lot of stuff here, but I have a lot going on in my life right now. The blog has had to take a back seat to the rest of my life. I’m sorry to the very few loyal readers who look forward to when I post, but I gotta take care of real life before I can spend time taking care of my hobby.

Lots of news since last time I posted. I found out Monday that my job laid me off, permanently. Alicia was also fired from her job about a month ago because she had to have a limited availability because of child care. So now my family has no source of income so we are trying very hard to find new jobs. I just finished applying for unemployment this morning, so that might help with some of the bills, but we could really use your prayers right now.

On a lighter note, however, I’ve used the free time to publish a book using Lulu.com. The book is called Wounded Souls. The book is a collection of flashes that I have previously published here and on “365 Tomorrows.” It’s nothing new, but I hope that some of you will like to have a copy of those flashes printed with some nice cover art, courtesy of my lovely wife. The book is 60 pages including the Creative Commons license text. The price tag is $9.95, which is honestly more than I would like to charge for the book, but that’s the lowest price that I could charge and still make a reasonable profit using Lulu. Check it out if you get the chance, and please consider buying it.