From: Life #2

“!”” I know you’re not from around here….my name is Frank 2664499.
Yeah, just numbers for last names now…they justified it because
the said it reduced racial stereotyping….problem is, they pick the last few numbers as a code, like when they want to send you a little personal message….number slang, it’s called. I’m an L.P. technician…pretty evolved, stationed on Calysto, though I do my share of drives….uh…..slang for space trips between planets, star systems….that kinda stuff. Calysto sounds like calypso and that’s just what it does….it’s got a very large, very fluid core….and the surface doesn’t just have quakes, but mountain ranges form within a matter of months….so the settlements have to be anti-grav. bases. The mining is good and the views are spectacular. I go out on drives when they need an L.P. . All the ships class three and above
have to have them….so you have to do your share.

I got a call for a pinhole leak on the matter converter line….at half a mil., p.s.i., that leak could cut a man in half, like a monofilament, at forty yard. So, our work can be dangerous, but it’s not all that frequent….and molecular welding techniques have improved tenfold in the last year. Yeah, they still call us plumbers, L.P.’s.
I looked up the term in the history correlation tapes, and saw how the work and how society relates to the profession is very much the same…
I feel sympathy with those that worked at the “trade” in those old days of P.T. earth…oh, that’s Pre-Transformation, before the start of the new time cycle….(I’ll tell you in a minute)…anyway, I found a phrase on a zonecite somewhere, and I liked it, so I adapted it for today:

“Flush twice….it’s a long way to the matter converter.”



I guess you could say I’m a little obsessed about the past, particularly the time just before The Transformation, when people began to think seriously about space, (the Western technocracies, at least), those “T.V.” shows where the guy asks the computer for a
ham sandwich and it just plops down with pickle, into a hole in the wall…matter conversion. Well, the matter converters use less energy when what they use for raw materials is closer in characteristics to its product, like atomic weight and molecular structure…so, human waste, carbon based and organic, is cheap and plentiful…. the product bears no resemblance to what went in. But, I have all my steaks made out of carbon steel. That way, I get to have my own little chuckle…

I wrote the phrase on the toilet wall…graffiti is a high art form now…a mandelfad…a …kind of harmless glitch in the matrix, the interconnectedness of all worlds, that makes a certain style extremely popular over a lot of time and space….and makes the proponents of such a fad wildly popular…and rich….it’s called “getting Trump-ed” A lot of ‘em quark out….but others are able to handle it. I wasn’t trying to get discovered…art was just a hobby for me.

The toilets now are smarter than my grandparents…you sit down…and when you get up, you’re clean, dry, and perfumed…
and your vitals have been checked, seritonin and other hormonal
levels checked and adjustd so your mind is where it should be according to your blend. I have a P.H. D. in nuclear physics just to understand how the damned thing works. I have other degrees,
but the Doc. is minimum industry standards….couldn’t
happen without evolution therapy…




Occasionally, the pressure fluctuates, and I get a couple hemorrhoid calls…but not often.


I wanked through the wrong door once and there was a guy there, naked…he screamed at me: “Get out! Can’t you see I’m
evolving?!!” and slammed the door in my face.

Evolution therapy
is ok to do in your quarters, but sometimes people get to be evolution junkies, for the rush of a few extra limbs….but…not likely in my neighborhood. It’s to keep the instrument tuned, (the therapy)…the smart bit, not the manifestation….it’s supposed to be for that.

Am I going too fast?