Visions by Tain L. Barzso

[kailhofer]

Come one, come all… join now in the harmonious brotherhood of the Church of Steve. <br><br>Brings out that Jewel song. “What if God was one of us, just a slob like one of us, just a stranger on the bus, just try'in to make his way home…” :)<br><br>This story had a pretty ambitious goal: to bring us back to creation’s start, the biggest of all the bangs. To do so, it brought us to a point before anything was anything, to before the beginning. The problem with that was that if there is nothing there, there is nothing to describe. There aren’t any words that tell us what creation was like before it was created, and it showed in the story. Some of the experiences Stephan had were too abstract for me, and I couldn’t follow it.<br><br>This was a little thing, and it’s arguable, but once a sensory deprivation chamber is filled with gear and instruments, it’s not really a deprivation chamber anymore, is it? By definition, it would be devoid of things to notice, not the other way around.<br><br>Stephan was an ok character. He was conflicted, messed up in his own hopes and in his mind. I liked that, it made him sound human. Solstice, on the other hand, was a bit confusing. I suppose if it were programmed to keep him on track, I could see it reminding him. But the part where it agrees with him that the thing was something they both needed to do--didn’t seem real. Solstice made a value judgment, and there was nothing in the story that showed the AI was advanced enough to make such an opinion. <br><br>It was a little unclear exactly how machine and man would merge, but, ok, I suspended disbelief on that. <br><br>I liked that he was trapped in time by a fundamental miscalculation, that the computer would always see the current moment as the starting point. Very good, that. It fit in well with the basic premise of the trip, that one could only go backwards.<br><br>I didn’t understand why Stephan didn’t try to resolve his inner conflict. He makes it all the way back to Samantha, and then runs away to where he can’t go back. Why run? This is why he made the trip in the first place.<br><br>Exactly what was memory and what was real was hard to follow. Just after establishing he couldn’t go forward, he’s in the ice age. In practically the next sentence, he’s in a snowball fight as a teenager. Since he can make things happen by thinking about them, this implies that Jenny White was suddenly there, but she couldn’t have been. The laws of this story’s universe prohibited it.<br><br>This was a interesting story, and it reminded me of Noel Carroll’s story in the November issue. However, I didn’t feel a good depth of emotion from it, and it’s abstract nature was a lot to think about with a head cold as bad as the one I have. Perhaps if I had all my IQ points up and running, I would have thought otherwise.<br><br>I see Donald's mind hung on... What about somebody else?<br><br>Nate<br>