Space Force 7

You see son, look at that white vertical rectangular at Mile 6, and then look at your length counter and tell me how far it is to the next sign that reduces the speed again.

“Mark fifteen, counter tach open.”

Yeah. Now you know. So I’ll ask you son, and I don’t want you to say the answer, but just think it, here’s the question … what was the approximate percentage of angry letters received by Lady Senator Sanchez versus letters of praise for Lady Senator Sanchez that were directly correlated to this sign change, with correlation to within 5% of error management standard deviation?

“Mark sixteen, counter tach choked.”

Keep an eye on your Gaussian Shields son, if you exceed the orthogonal to your velocity vector of the mean free path in this medium of one molecule per cubic centimeter, the efficiency of your shield will exponentially decrease.

“Mark sixteen, counter tach open.”

The ratio was 1.02. That was the most evenly distributed ratio we have ever seen since Lady Senator Sanchez’s term opened. I don’t know what tells you, but it tells me that probably have some 70% more taxpayers on the happy side than on the mad side, because the typical response of happy taxpayers in letter-writing mode is considerably lower than angry mode writers. Happiness is far less likely to spur a taxpayers to actually put pencil to paper and fold it into the envelope that we provide, and put a stamp on it, and drop it into the mailbox.

“Mark seventeen, counter tach quarter-choke, Gaussian Shield at ninety six percent efficiency.”

My point in telling all of this to you son, is that you need to understand the rhyme and the reason to why we put these road safety signs where we put them. We have a legal obligation to optimize the efficiency curve to the safety curve. And ultimately, the people who die on this road have given their lives to optimize transportation efficiency, while the people who sit in traffic on this road while their dinner gets cold have given a tiny bit of their happiness to optimize the number of people who remain alive on this road. Every sign with every speed is placed on this road to optimize those curves relative to each other.

“You can’t optimize an inverse relation sir!”

WHAT’S YOUR FUCKING MARK RECRUIT!

“Sorry sir, Mark senventeen, counter tach choke open. Gaussian shield holding”

You can’t fuck up like son. I don’t care if I just told you the secret password to your wife’s titties, you do not think of any thought but what is on that accelerator helm. And yes, I told you to think about things, you think about them, but when you let them approach the vicinity of your voice, you then remove the ability of your trainer to claim plausible deniability. I talk, the rest of us will talk. You don’t listen, you don’t respond. You think, you modulate, you interface with that accelerator.

“Mark eighteen, counter tach choke open.”

We optimize an inverse relation because we have no choice but to optimize an inverse relation. And at the end of the day, it works for the same reason the Kronecker Delta works, and the way renormalization works … because Mother Nature sometimes takes a steaming shit all over Math. And she gets Math’s dick in a vice, and she says to Math “I don’t give a fuck where you been, where you going, you’re going sit your ass on that couch and watch a goddamn Netflix with my fine ass, and I’m going to plop my fat arm over your chest and you’re going to put up with it, motherfucker.”

“Mark eighteen counter tach open … hold please.”

“Mark eighteen counter tach open … hold please.”

“Mark eighteen counter tach half-choke, Gaussian Shield at ninety five percent efficiency, drop in efficiency correlates to increase in ground state density with modulation on relative uncertainty to minus zero zero zero one, repeat, zero zero one.”

We optimize the inverse relationship of transport efficiency and safety because we have no choice but to do so, and the correlation factor changes depending on the economic necessities. If we need more money and few lives, we move the correlation to the left, if we need more lives and less money, we move the correlation to the right.

“Mark eighteen, counter tach open. Gaussian shield holding, ground state density holding on relative uncertainty to minus zero zero zero one.”

So Lady Senator Sanchez gets these letters, half of them say “Why did you put in that dumb ass sign that kills the flow on that road?” The other half say “Thank you for finally making that road safe, I’ve lost a loved one on that road, and the speed was too high.” That told us that there were a lot more people happy with reduction in speed than unhappy about it, and perhaps we had the speed on that road too high to begin with.

“Mark nineteen, counter tach half choke.”

I file my review on that, and the next thing I see we have a rule change to decrease the mean distance for velocity changes between speed limit signs. And it was a huge difference too, something like 15% decrease. That means the road is sped up because of our legal obligation to optimize the transport efficiency on the road. I know what happened … my review told the actuaries that our curve to optimize the number of people who stay alive after driving this road was less than optimal, and the speed was too low.”

“Mark nineteen, counter tach open.”

So, yeah, you can’t optimize an inverse relation, it’s always going to force me to rob Peter to pay Paul.

…

…

Shit.

“Mark twenty, counter tach closed.”

Son, have you ever tried chicken-on-a-stick? For coming from a gas station, I don’t care what you tell me, that’s some high quality food. It’s chicken, and it’s on a stick. And you can smell the fueling depot.

“Mark twenty, counter tach closed. Inlet shield funnel off, accelerator off.”

Good job you fucking ass-wipe.

“Thanks man. I nearly shit my pants when I saw the ground state uncertainty fluctuate like that, I’ve heard about that happening, it was my first time I’ve seen it.”

You’ll see it happen, not so much near here. Supposedly it’s just some aneutronic reaction nearby, it just pumped a lot of energy into the ground state, and the Planck time couldn’t buffer it, so the uncertainty has to absorb the extra energy, it’s the only thing that can buffer it, just means now you have more uncertainty in the position, but that’s a huge asymmetry, you can’t really get a handle on how big that is just by looking at the gauge, you have to get a notepad and a pencil to really see it.

“I’m out. That thing with the secret password to my wife’s titties, I nearly pissed myself when you said that.”

By the way, you gave me your pay today, thank you.

“Wait, huh? I fucked it up?”

On that Uncertainty deviation, you did the repeat at zero zero one. The gauge was zero zero zero one. The engine room fed back at zero zero zero one though, I made sure of it.

“Holy shit.”

Yeah. Don’t take it hard, you’re a human, and now you gave me your day’s pay. Next time you’ll focus better and be less human.

Hey Raheem, what it is Brohemian?!

Hey, what’s up brother dude?

So uh, are we still on for that terrorism that we had planned for next Tuesday after the India-Australia cricket match?

Hell yeah Dudenheimer! We’ve been planning this terrorism for years, you think I would cancel on you, bro?

Right, yeah … it’s just that the Americans killed General Soleimani, and I gotta, say, I’m kinda bummed, my heart just isn’t in this whole terrorism thing anymore. You uh, know what I mean man?

Well … I mean, yeah Duderoni and Cheese, I didn’t want to say anything, but yeah, I’ve been kind of bummed about that. It’s just so hard to go do terrorism when I’m all bummed over Solly. I know a lot of other terrorists get into the whole “martyr for the cause thing” but I gotta say, it’s just never been my bag, you know? I was more into just like chilling with my man Solly, just kind of being a global menace, you know, like Bushwick Bill, right?

Bushwick Bill from the Geto Boys! And Raheem! Were you named after him dude?

I was named after my mom’s great uncle Raheem, he paid for her nursing school, so she named me after him.

Anyway, you okay if we just shitcan the whole terrorism thing? I was thinking that after the India-Australia match, we could just hang with the fellas, maybe play some Madden NFL on the X-Box? Does your sister still make that German potato salad? I could eat a gallon of that stuff.

Yeah, the last time you did eat a gallon of that stuff and within an hour your farts were like Improvised Explosive Devices. It smelled like a polecat crawled up inside you and died.

Ha! I guess I can always find a new line of work now that this whole terrorism line of has shit the bed, huh?

What do you mean?

I’ll eat shit-tons of your sister’s potato salad and then fumigate houses for termites!

Ha, it’s funny being terrorists that some asshole in Davenport, Iowa invented on his computer, huh bro?

Hey man, I’m just doing my part to help keep someone from having to make an exit plan.

Yeah! Exit plans! Those are for pussies, right Bro?

That’s what I like about NYC … the peculiarities of the local economy there prevent much change from happening to the facades of those buildings, and much change from happening to the human contents of those buildings. A gentleman could visit some nondescript street on the Upper East Side somewhere, say above an hospital supply vendor, or down the street from a Yank-your-tooth fucking dentist, say around the corner of some church, say down the street of yet another Greek diners that changes ownership more often than it changes its menu, but still makes the famous Breath Mint Julep, named by none other than Rick Yukon when we was dumped there by the King’s County Sheriff, as a favor instead of leaving him at a processing station that the NYC Sheriff has to share with the NYC Police, because in NYC, even the fucking sheriff will say “Howdy” to you when you say “Howdy Sheriff.” And Rick Yukon got dropped at the door of that Greek Diner on Tuesday at 3:16 pm, a few school kids from PS-whatever-number-that-was-next-the-firestation walked by and asked if he was okay, because Hippie Parents taught their kids back then to be respectful of homeless political prisoners. He swept the dirt off his standard-issue Brooks Brothers suit but still looked like one of those old timey Irish miners in Colorado who used to wear their best suits to work in the mines. One can only assume that they wore them because those were the clothings they bought with them, back when shipping clothing out to the remote mountain shitholes like Colorado was expensive enough that only millionaire mountaineers like Tabor and Greeley and those guys and their families were buying fancy Eastern clothing. The rest of em went into the mines in their best clothing because that was all they brought, every last one of them. Before they leave, Mick MacLefkowitz is looking at all the shit in his closet, and he asks his wife “Oy ya babe, what’ll I bring with me to our new lives now that we’re about to be millionaires out in the silver fields of Colorado?” “Millionaires, you fat lazy bastard? Who told you that?” “Fuck you, I read it in the one of Horace Greeley’s newspapers. Millionaires!” So then the poor schmuck is out there, smartest guy in the bar back home, but there, he just stuck to digging trenches, and when the silver runs out, he’s still in that hole digging coal, organizing a union, a bunch of years later the same photographer from the Rocky Mountain News is in front of the same miner that once wore his tattered suit in front of that silver mine, from his old life because that was his penance for believing in fairy tales and make-believe and happy endings and he ended up a low-level employee with a life deemed disposable by his employer. And now he’s standing in front of that coal mine, and his employer wants to see him dead, because he organized a union and he took bread out of his children’s mouth. (Why in the hell should I be responsible for those lazy bastards?) The same photographer took a photo of the same miner, only this time with better gear, and this time he was dressed like a miner, only he kept his clothing clean somehow, even when he went in the mine. That was his job. He needed to appear to those miners that he could jump into any executive’s chair in that boardroom at the Brown Palace, any time he pleased, but he chose not to, because he has allegiance to the people from whom he came.

Yeah, he could have taken the board job, they all but offered it to him just so that the union could bring in a leader with all the charisma of hardtack and all the abilities of a plate of snails. But he was a dangerous man, because Scots teach their childen a bit differently than everyone else in the Holy Highlands. His dad taught him to never peach on a fellow, and his mom taught him to build an empire out of matchsticks and hairpins. They needed a new guy, a less effective guy because they saw the end of mining on the wall now that someone figured out how to make money pumping it out of the ground instead of having to dig it out of the ground. So yeah, they organized what happened to him and his brothers, and then they did it again a lifetime later because who the hell is going to remember a bunch of striking Colorado miners who get shot full of holes? But before there were holes in his work clothing, and before he stood before the photographer the second time, there was that first time, in his best clothing, covered in dirt, standing in front of that silver mine with a shit-eating grin on his face that you can see even with the long exposure times. He had a little money to at least buy some food for his children, he actually enjoyed picking away at the rocks, following the seam. If he worked hard maybe the mine owners would give him a promotion and he would become a millionaire after all and make his beautiful wife proud, and make his kids proud, and make his old man proud, and his mom proud. That dirty face, with the most elegant filthy clothing that photography has ever known, that was the image of Rick Yukon as he stood up from that courtesy ride from the Kings County Sheriff. He wanted a Mint Julep and he was damned well going to get it. Then the lovely Canadian employee of the Greek Diner Overlords said “we have the bourbon, we have some sugar packets, we have crushed ice, but we don’t have any mint here.”

“No mint?” Damnit, he was going to have a Mint Julip. And that afternoon was when Rick Yukon became legend, when he ground up a few breath mints from the counter tray with the edge of a Susan B. Anthony Dollar, lined it up like a few lines of blow on the hood of a 1969 Alfa Montreal, then sliced it, diced it, slid it, and lid it until it was the consistency of Peruvian Powderhorn. He brushed it all onto the back of a business card that was sitting on the counter from some guy at Datek Online Brokerage who probably would have really identified with Mick MacLefkowitz. Ricky handed her the card, said “use this”, which she did, and that was the very first Breath Mint Julip. Invented by Rick Yukon after being detained for questioning for that whole thing with the pre-production Alfa Montreal snafu, but they needed to get him out of harm’s way for a few days, so whatever works with Ukon.

A gentleman can stroll around a place like that near the diner and the hospital supply, down the street from the dentist, and year to year, the only thing that really ever changes are the dates on the tops of the newspapers. There are people who like their change to be well-controlled and predictable.