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This is the data record of Alan. The, um, first one. Not that I've never recorded data before but- um, yeah. This is the first data record, of this data... record, for this set of data. Though I suppose this will be more of a general use sort of thing... l-let me try this aga-
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This is the data record of Alan, unrestricted to any particular set of data and open for personal use at my discretion. Entry one.
I found this old digital voice recorder at a garage sale. I think it was the... Fryfolks? Frymen? No, wait, that's not- Frymans! Yes, the Fryman family. They were selling a bunch of stuff out of their garage. Which I guess I didn't need to explain, since the term 'garage sale' suggests that... yeah. The sale was... yeah.
Anyway, each of the Frymans had their own section of the driveway to hawk their wares. Heh. You know, I've never actually used that phrase before. Hawk their wares? What does that even- ahem. It's besides the point. The oldest Fryman, um... Reginald? No, I wrote their names down somewhere- ah! Ronaldo. He had out an old, plastic foldable table that had a bunch of... well, stuff on it. And next to it. And taped underneath it. And hanging from a sign that read "Mysterious Mystery Mogul's Market," below which a loosely-nailed second sign hung that read "Sponsored in part by Keep Beach City Weird!"
I don't think I'm familiar with either of those establishments. Am... am I supposed to know them? I certainly did not back then.
So I asked him. And he got this distant look and told me, "maybe not. Maybe the world is just... not ready for my truth." Well, I assume he was telling me. Thinking back, it looked an awful lot like he was telling the sun or the clouds or the big oak sitting next to their driveway. But when I started walking away, he was quite eager to clarify that I was, in fact, ready for his truth. And merchandise. It just looked like an assortment of miscellaneous items from their garage, but Ronaldo insisted that they were, in his words, "professional, super-triple-S, relic-tier anomalous investigatory gear." I maintain that it was an assortment of miscellaneous items from their garage. But, two items did stand out to me. One being this digital recorder, which I, um... bought. Which I guess is evident by the fact that I'm speaking into it. Right now. Of course. The other? Well...
Have you ever seen one of those ridiculous attractions- the ones that claim they have some fantastic supernatural back story that is substantiated by stint of the attraction's existence- and thought, if only for a moment... what if this were real? Not- not you in particular, digital voice recorder. You are, after all, a piece of plastic and metal powered by a rechargeable lithium-ion battery. Though, what with Ronaldo being the way he is, I wouldn't put it past you to have seen or been to any number of strange things and places. Well, voice recorder, the other item I bought that day was purchased in exactly such a moment, where suspension of disbelief very briefly trumped sense, reason, and my reservations about the limitations of my wallet.
Ronaldo claimed that it was a piece from a... a giant floating hand from outer space. One that laid siege to Beach City and was... destroyed, I guess.
Haaa.
Huh. I wonder how this thing's going to parse that sigh. A-anyway, just thinking about how ridiculous of a pitch Ronaldo gave me, it... it makes me feel sort of bad for spending ten dollars on it. Ten good dollars that could have given me several sparse, sensible meals. But, here it is. It's a green rock. Feels like it may be metallic, but it's hard to determine its exact composition without at least some rudimentary lab equipment. It is oddly smooth on one side, like it was manufactured, or- oh, listen to me! It's a shiny rock, and I bought it because of how wrapped up I am in finding something that actually is amazing. It is, however, rather useful in keeping my dissertation from falling off the stack of cleaning supplies I call my night-stand.
Besides the digital voice recorder, I also managed to find an open-source text-to-speech converter! It took me a whole, um... two? Two, yes. Two days to get the source code compiled and running on Greg's desktop, but... I did it! I guess it's not really Greg's desktop, it's the old computer in the main office. Greg said I could use it since I was, and I quote, "doin' such a bang-up job gettin' these cars clean." I told him that it was mostly Pearl- no, not mostly, entirely Pearl- who implemented all of those time-saving organizational changes. And she made that nifty resource tracking program! I wonder... just where was she educated? Is that one of those questions she doesn't want me asking?
B-but anyway... oh, where was I? The desktop, yes. I am proud to announce that my efforts are now computer-assisted once more! And, most importantly, internet-assisted! Haha! Hah... um, sorry voice recorder; I didn't mean to yell. It's just... the very concept and execution of the internet is simply, well... a marvel! Everyone connected to everyone else at all times- it's astounding! And to think that, given how important this complex amalgam of links and routers and protocols is to everyone, we still have to deal with the physical limitations of classical communication- it's, well... someone should do something about it, shouldn't they? We're sending everything we know over clogged undersea cables and into noisy cloud banks and through gauntlets of free electrons in the ionosphere, and we expect it all to arrive, intact, in any timely sort of manner? Oh, but of course I'm being nit-picky over some minor definitions, like, say 'intact' or 'timely.' Surely not every block of information needs all of its parts. I doubt many people spend their days weeping over a missing pixel or a split-second of fuzzy audio in their two hour movie streams. And surely not every communication needs to be issued any faster than they are now. Does someone loading a webpage really care if it takes two milliseconds or two hundred milliseconds to fetch the main banner atop the site? But, still...
Every communication, every conversation, is the realization of an impossible interaction. Two people from entirely different worlds can share... something with each other. Something meaningful. Something that they can't- and, indeed, shouldn't- travel an untenable distance to give to each other. In this hyper-connected world, distance between two people is no longer a measure of miles or meters. It's a measure of time. Are any two people truly together if they're always a half-second behind each other? A full second? A minute? When everything we do is mangled up and slowed down before the other person's device even has a chance to parse our transmission, aren't we still separated? Aren't we still held apart by this physical disconnect of clouds and cables and free electrons? But, if we remove the need for travel...
Haaa.
I don't know why I'm entering this into my data record. It's not like anyone, other than me on a slow day, is going to even glance at these text files. And I already know all the reasons that I pursued my advanced degree. It's just... well, what would my parents say? I'm a post-doc working at a local car-wash who bought a shiny rock on the off chance that it would actually mean something. No- I don't have to wonder. They'd tell me to work at the family restaurant, learn how to cook some dishes from home. And not 'Delmarva' home where I grew up. Home home. Their home. The one I've never even been to, but they still expect me to-... ah, it's no use getting worked up now. It's seven-thousand miles to the east. Or, I guess, seventeen-thousand nine-hundred miles to the west, given the circumference of the earth. Either way, it's a trip I'm not keen on taking in the near future. Especially given my, um, financial status.
Speaking of errant entries, this voice recorder had a couple of files on it that I can only assume came from the previous owner. Ronaldo certainly is... eccentric. Many of them had to do with these, what did he call them... "sneeple?" According to him, snake, um... people sort of things are doing... stuff. He's never entirely clear as to their intent, methods, goal, or appearance, but he insists that they are malign and subversive. I stopped listening to them after the first couple and just deleted them. It seemed sort of wrong to listen to someone else's audio journal. Also, they were weird and disjointed and it was creepy listening to them in my little supply closet after dark. I wonder what Pearl would think if she saw her apprentice now? Sitting alone, surrounded by industrial grade cleaning supplies, speaking into the same digital voice recorder that had born witness to so many theories of secret snake-person organizational wrong doings.
Oh, right! Voice recorder, I almost forgot the most important part of my week! I met this peculiar person, Pearl. Eh, well, peculiar may not be the best word for me to throw around. I'm sure I'm quite peculiar myself, and other people in this city are surely more peculiar. Like the mayor. Or Ronaldo. But... yes. She was... curious? Curious is a good word for it. We have had a total of seven encounters, and in each one I have managed to make a fool of myself somehow. And the things she says... they certainly don't contain the words or subjects you would find in normal conversations. But they are interesting. She knows something. Something curious, something wonderful, and something that I could definitely learn. I had no idea how to approach her, given how bad I am at meeting new people who aren't as ridiculously nice as Greg or Sadie. But... it was so strange, voice recorder. One day she just came to the car-wash, helped make the place not a terrible mess, then offered to make me her apprentice. And I accepted.
Hah. Haha! I'm an apprentice! Doesn't that sound awfully antiquated? Not that apprentices don't exist anymore or anything; I've heard of 'modern apprenticeship' programs that combine regular employment with training in a specialization and an official qualification program. But... that doesn't really sound like what Pearl has in mind. Not that I actually know what Pearl has in mind or anything. Thus far our interactions have, for the most part, consisted of her saying outlandish, incredible things and me just... believing them. Getting excited and chasing these implications that hang over everything she says. But...
What if she's just making all of this up? What if all this talk of transdimensional particle interaction is just... well, what if it's her "sneeple?" Am I just going to accept it? Am I just going to end up buying into another green, shiny, alleged space-rock? Because sometimes a rock is just a rock. No matter how much you want to believe it came from space or that its wild claims are substantiated by stint of its existence.
Still, though... there's something about Pearl. Some speculative honesty. Some inquisitive authenticity. Even if what she says may not be true, you can tell just by listening to her that... she believes it, wholeheartedly. It's true to her, and she's offering to make it true to me. Maybe... maybe that's why I'm so prone to believing her. Yes. Yes! I want to believe her. Haha- I do, so I do! Isn't this why I'm here? Why I came to Beach City in the first place? To find what preposterous, fantastic source of unknown knowledge is the source of all the remarkably abnormal accounts surrounding this sleepy little town? No, that's not quite right- coming here was a step. Finding something new here is an advancement, a progression. But they are stages; necessary procedures for that tireless, endless pursuit called-
Hah. What am I saying? That sounds so cheesy! I was going to say "science," but- but that would've been so... typical! How many times has science been described as a tireless, endless pursuit? Haha! Oh... ahem. It's not just science, voice recorder. I want to contribute to knowledge. Knowledge! All of it! That great, big, nebulous cloud of facts and discoveries and rules and laws and timeless insights! That entity that sleeps across a thousand databanks and a million servers and a billion books, scrolls, and chiseled tablets, just waiting for somebody, anybody, to wake it, if only ever so briefly, with a question. And maybe, just maybe, some part of it resides in Pearl. Some part that she is offering to awaken so that I may ask it one of my small, silly questions.
I don't think my parents ever understood that. They never quite got that there was something I wanted to contribute- not for the 'here-and-now,' but for the 'always.' I guess what worried them was that I didn't quite have that something. Nobody does when they start out. It was always going to be something that I would have to find, through countless hours of searching and pondering and... and failing. Even now, what have I contributed? I published a paper that did nothing but suggest an idea. No actionable answers, no new solutions that you can take to a lab and verify. Just... an idea. One that I know can work, there's just something missing.
Phaa.
I... sort of wish I knew more people around here. Not that Greg isn't great or anything! He is great, and I can't believe someone as nice as him exists! And I know that I've only been here a week. But, still... thinking back to my old lab, where all we did was work and chat and strive together- I miss it. I miss having people to talk to who were as excited about the same goal or as immersed in the same field of study. But... no, this is a secondary concern. There are more important things. Surely.
Tomorrow I'm meeting with Pearl at precisely nine o'clock in front of the beach house. Then, maybe, I can glimpse that most fantastic of objectives.
The realization of an impossible interaction.
End record.
Now, let's see what these output files look like. Oh, what? It puts those ASCII loading bars at the start of each text batch? Well, I guess I'll delete them later. If, you know, I remember. Oh, wait, the record button's on this side. Hah- this thing's still going! Here we go. End record.
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