(rli : going to a concert and getting into a fight with a big boobed blonde)
CHP 6. Programming
Three days it took me to catch up the work I missed for programming. My teacher seemed unusually forgiving of me cutting class. He just shook his head, told me I had a lot of potential, and gave me the assignments. A simple program in which a pixilated ball (from the graphics library) wandered around the screen has to be constructed. It is a simple loop exercise: have the red ball attached to a variable (i). As i changes, so does the ball’s positioning on the screen. Once the loop is completed, the ball will stop, and then we record the coordinates.
See the red ball? See the red ball bounce. Go, red ball, go.
See the red ball bounce off the screen in an infinite loop.
Perhaps if I had been in class, my ball would not be going in an infinite loop. I checked the terminating conditions again and again, still, the pixilated ball is trapped. I restart and restart after every unsuccessful attempt to correct the code. I run the compiler again.
See the red ball? See the red ball bounce. Go, red ball, go. Loop ball, loop.
See him hop off the screen into oblivion, where he hops still
I restart the program again. Why can’t I get this? The whole class seemed to have understood this loop concept. I did not see any of their balls run off in infinite directions. There is some flaw in my logic; my mind cannot remember what will terminate the loop, or, it subconsciously wills the loop to go on. I alter the code, again, and run the compiler.
See the red ball? See the red ball bounce. Go, ball, go. Stay away from the edge. Loop ball, loop, stop.
See the red ball? See the red ball disappear off the screen into my belly button.
It is stuck in an infinite loop. I run the compiler again. Maybe there is a case sensitivity issue.
See the Red Ball?! Go, Red Ball! Loop, Red Ball, for the love of your God!
No, it bounces away, and I run after it. I am stuck in an infinite loop.
What is it with my immortal mind? Why do these high school students have the unnatural ability to think like a machine? It is something I must learn, I think as I move away from the computer screen. Maybe if I pass high school, I will go to college. Then, I shall be the dehumanized logician capable of grasping the mechanics of the unnatural world. I will be a functioning member of society.
Dehumanized unnatural dehumanized society functioning, the words echo somewhere between my cranium and my programming textbook. I am having trouble passing my programming class. At best, I am a C rate human. It will be some time, I realize, before I become post-human and can relate more with the machine than with the mind. I am trying, that is all I can do.
But I will continue another day, for even though the loop is infinite, I can always just turn off the computer. The screen clicks off into blackness. I don’t want to be mechanical. I head over to my closet and stand in front of it. On the top shelf sits the pearl, so large it looks fake. Sometimes I wonder if I should wear it out to a gothic nightclub as a necklace and nothing more. Surely, Valentine must wear his Necromancer’s dress out. He would approach the wicked witch ladies in vinyl corsets, smiling his red lips and flipping his long red hair. He probably touches them with his skin, not flushed and damp like theirs (from the vinyl) but cold and dry, like a bone. He must be the seductress of the night.
“Not my scene,” I growl to an empty room. Not even the little ball is there. I am no seductress. The only physical contact I enjoy is on the other end of my blade. No satin, no lace, no candy. Flowers? For me?
She loves you not.
I look away from the pearl. No, I have not relapsed – I will not now. That is no necklace I store on the shelf. That is my soul. And a soul, especially an immortal one, has no place in a dehumanized world.
But, I want it anyway. Let me wear it to a club, as a necklace, just a necklace.
Logic, I think. Thick logically, I tell myself. Tonight, I failed as a machine. I will be human, then. And besides, if Valentine can live out his Necromancer days at a club, why can’t I live my warrior days out in a mosh pit? I will go to a concert tonight. I will wear leather gauntlets I have altered to fit me. Leather armor with horrific looking (yet mass-produced) spikes screwed into it. I will take out my boots, steel-toed and reinforced, both for protection and the attack. I will wear steel rings, clawed (they didn’t have those in my day). I will rush the pit with a war cry; I will fight a hundred men, and all of this I will do as I have once done a lifetime ago.
Of course, not really. As in the days of yore, there are certain rules in the mosh pit. They are simple, and Valentine-approved. No one will die. No one will be really hurt. The difference between moshing and starting a fistfight will be respected. No one outside the pit will be attacked. I will follow these rules, as all warriors do.
Though, of course, not really again. I am sure none of the other metalheads dress as though going to war and fighting invisible enemies. To them, I notice, it is about the music. But still, I wonder again about the collective consciousness. I look back into the modern fantasy books with women in steel bikinis on the covers. Again, nothing.
If I keep meditating on this, I will be late.
“Lindsey!” I shout at her door. I bang the door with a spiked fist, heavy with bracelets and a six-inch gauntlet. The door rattles on its hinges, as though there is a monster outside her door. I hit it again and again, and each time, it rattles.
“Stop banging on the door!” someone shouts from a room down the hall.
Very well, I will go without her. The public has spoken. A simple courtesy, my invitation is, nothing more. I am just being polite to the girl who copies my biomechanics homework.
..
“For this next song, I want you all to go crazy! Let’s tear this place up! One, two, three!”
His “three!” is cut off by an over anxious guitar player and echoed by a lagging drummer. The moron the bands suckered into hosting the event is cleaning up some of the popcorn on the floor. For the most part, he has given up. Chips and pop are now part of the furniture as thirty, forty people make themselves at home at his home. The host’s pleas of “smoke outside!” and “stay out of the fridge!” are lost in a hurricane of growls and guitars.
At first, I sit in the back, amongst the rock stars’ girlfriends, the host, the insecure, the new, the couples. There is no one here I know. A fourteen year old is smoking a cigarette in a 6 Feet Under shirt, ironed. The guy watches the weak pit, three guys ramming each other. A fourth one sometimes joins, but he seems tired and often joins the outside ring. The three of them look almost like the same person, all tall, all slightly overweight without anything jiggling. Tree trunk people with the speed and agility of a bear. The three whirl about each other, a marvel no one has fallen yet. The guy throws down the cigarette on the hardwood floor. He watches the other three, waiting for the right time.
I catch another with long hair, waiting.
Another one, he looks older than the others, he steps into the outside ring. He becomes a border person, pushing the moshers back inside the pit, should they happen to fall out.
Another one, in leather armor like mine, steps into the border.
I realize the song is ending and that the others know what song is next.
I catch the fourteen year old, looking at me. He sees that I am watching the pit also.
He steps closer to the ring. A lot of girls watch the pit, he thinks.
“Ok you guys think you heard some raw shit!?” the singer yells. “Well, this next song is our rawest ever! One two three!”
This time, the guitarist and singer start strong. Before the drummer catches the furious tempo, before the fourteen year old could rush past the couples, before long hair could brush across the black-clad crowd, before I could notice the rest of the crowd, I storm the pit. I trip over something and land into the arms of a leather-clad warrior who angrily pushes me away into someone else, hairy and slimy. I am running, blindfolded, through a crowded hall.
I can breathe sometimes, I realize. A breeze, cool and clean, somehow finds me when I am crushed between four others. Something like a sack of sand hits my back and I am thrown into another tree trunk. The tree trunk hides behind me as three others trip into us. I stand strong. The crowded hall is blindfolded, and running into me. I close my eyes not to blackness, but to white. A breeze, again, finds me. I am forced to run again. I am running through tall, dense grass. The wind, it makes the blades whip like fingers on a piano. If I fall, I will be trampled. I cannot fall.
I am not afraid. I remember, Zona. It may seem as though I forgot, but I haven’t. Who knows how many there were—hundreds? Thousands? I have fought the field many times. I will always remember.
The fourteen year old I punched looks at me, angry. “You can’t wear those rings in the pit! Christ!”
I notice the music again. It has mellowed, temporarily, and the others catch their breath.
I punched him. That was not right. I yell an apology at him, though he refuses it. The metalhead with the long hair nods to me, laughs, and then points at the broken TV.
“Where is the owner?” I yell at him. Of course he is no where in sight.
He laughs. “Who knows. Lucky for you he didn’t see, otherwise he might make you pay for it.”
When the tempo returns, I stand in the perimeter. I had enough of the pit and it has had enough of me. I will have to find the boy and apologize for punching him, later. I help the others hold the pit together, I am too exhausted to fight against it. I notice a girl enter the pit. She is a bit scared, though that is expected. Perhaps, in due time, she will become knightly. She will ignore the pain, ignore the odds, fight against the storm, run through the crowded room. She will see the field also and her I will also protect.
The metalheads in the pit are careful not to hurt her. They laugh a little and gently nudge her away.
Include #raw.song
Int girl = 1;
“No,” I think to them. “She will not become stronger like that. Have her fight! Fight them, girl! Let them fear you!”
The girl laughs with them. She runs into a wall. She laughs again.
The long hair one suddenly appears next to me. “She’s so hot.”
I think he says it to me, but he says it to someone behind him. I suppose she is. Probably the hottest girl at her school. Her clothes are so tight they seem like they are painted on her skin. She wears jeans no one here could afford, and they covered the longest, thinnest legs here. She was tall like a supermodel and fit like a dancer. She is hot, let her be victorious. Let her fight all the metalheads there; let the one most out of place be glorious. She stumbles into me.
“Do not fall,” I think to her. “Be strong.”
She punches my arm. “Do not fall,” I think to her, forgiving her obvious blunder.
Int initial = 1;
Double x = 1;
Cout << “I remember, Zona” << endl;
And then, I feel a sharp pain in my stomach. And then, I am hit in the face. I am not in the pit; she must not understand that you only mosh in the pit. I do nothing.
“What! What!” she shouts at me.
She flings herself at me, hitting me, pulling my hair. The mosh pit stops and suddenly, I am no perimeter person. I am in the center of everything.
For (girl = initial; x < initial; x ++)
{
//We become a spectacle.
//She makes me a spectacle.
//The guys become the way all guys are when two chicks fight.
//They hoot and holler and may the hottest babe win.
For (int hit = initial; hit = girl, ++hit)
{
if(hit % 2 == 0){
cout << “smash the face” << endl;
cout << “laugh” <<endl;
int Pain == 600;
}
else{
cout << “punch something else” << endl;
cout << “laugh” <<endl;
//Why does she have to be so damn happy
}
int Pain == 400
}
bool Suffocation == true;
bool Exhaustion == true;
Pain == Pain + 300
}
She is just too strong and too fast. She doesn’t stop. Every blow of mine is deflected.
Bool retali;
If (retali == true){
Pain ==
Undefined. I am just too slow. I am trapped, swimming in a crowd of people with wet clothes. I cannot move. I am trapped.
In an infinite loop.
Int hit = 22;
Int stop = 0;
If (hit == stop){
Cout << “Another hit!” <<endl;
Hit ==23;}
If (hit == stop){
Cout << “Crowd cheers ‘Lelleen!’ ” <<endl;
Hit ==24;}
If (hit == stop){
Cout << “That must have hurt” <<endl;
Hit ==25;}
If (hit == stop){
Cout << “Another hit!” <<endl;
Hit ==26;}
If (hit == stop){
Cout << “The boys holler” <<endl;
Hit ==27;}
//Two naked chicks mud wrestling.
//A cat fight at a night club.
If (hit == stop){
Cout << “She stumbles!” <<endl;
Hit ==28;}
//But I do not fall.
If (hit == stop){
Cout << “A kick!” <<endl;
Hit ==29;}
If (hit == stop){
Cout << “ ‘She is just so hot!’ ” <<endl;
Hit ==30;}
…Please…
If (hit == stop){
Cout << “ A feeble hit from the other.” <<endl;
Hit ==31;}
//Somehow, I catch the eye of the boy I hit with my rings.
If (hit == stop){
Cout << “Lelleen waves to the crowd” <<endl;
Hit ==32;}
If (hit == stop){
Cout << “Right in the stomach!” <<endl;
Hit ==34;}
…can’t breathe…
If (hit == stop){
Cout << “In the face!” <<endl;
Hit ==35;}
If (hit == stop){
Cout << “The shoulder? Come on!” <<endl;
Hit ==36;}
If (hit == stop){
Cout << “Another kick!” <<endl;
Hit ==37;}
//The band? The same song, still?
If (hit == stop){
Cout << “Oh the laughter! It’s a party!” <<endl;
Hit ==38;}
If (hit == stop){
Cout << “A bitch slap across the face, gentlemen!” <<endl;
Hit ==39;}
…I beg the mechanical god…
If (hit == stop){
Cout << “Another hit!” <<endl;
Hit ==40;}
If (hit == stop){
Cout << “She stumbles again!” <<endl;
Hit ==41;}
…Do not let me fall…
If (hit == stop){
Cout << “In the face!” <<endl;
Hit ==42;}
…I beg to the mechanical god…
If (hit == stop){
Cout<< “The face, again! Someone’s having rosy cheeks tonight!”<<endl;
Hit ==43;}
…Their god…
If (hit == stop){
Cout << “ ‘Who the hell broke the TV?!’ ” <<endl;
Hit ==44;}
If (hit == stop){
Cout << “What a hit! A sexy hit!” <<endl;
Hit ==45;}
If (hit == stop){
Cout << “Blond missies aren’t prissies!” <<endl;
Hit ==46;}
If (hit == stop){
Cout << “Two hands this time!” <<endl;
Hit ==47;}
…stop the infinite loop…
If (hit == stop){
Cout << “She stumbles!” <<endl;
Hit ==48;}
…do not let me fall…
If (hit == stop){
Cout << “Another hit!” <<endl;
Hit ==49;}
//All to the rawest song that night.
