[Writingworkshop] Alternatron D11

[Neale Morison]

Alternatron D11


I wish to make a complaint.

Select Department: Sales/Billing, Technical Support, Pre-purchase

Technical Support.

Product: Eternitizer 3000, Alternatron D11, MixWhizz 98

Alternatron D11.

Priority: Low, Medium, High, Emergency, Critical

Critical.

Problem Area: Response time, Scan precision, Matter transfer integrity, 
None of the above

None of the above.

Please briefly describe the problem.

Like it says in the manual I scan for an alternate and when one comes up 
green I press Transfer, Enter but nothing happens.

Submit.

Your support enquiry is being assigned. Please wait.

My name is Troy. How may I help you today?

Is your name really Troy?

No.

Do you look anything like that photograph?

No.

Ok. I just wanted to establish an honest relationship.

Understood.

Did you read my description?

Yes.

So any ideas?

Have you got it plugged in?

Yes, I've got it plugged in. It comes up green.

Sorry. You wouldn't believe the people I get.

I get a green, I press Transfer, Enter, zilch.

Do you have it there?

Yes.

Can you press Transfer, then hold down Enter for three seconds, then 
release Transfer and press it quickly two more times?

Ok, hang on. Wow, there's all this scrolling text and flashing lights.

That's right, now scroll right down to the bottom. What do you see?

The portal has rejected your application for access.

Ok, good.

What does that mean? How can it reject my application?

It's just the message that gets logged, what's really happening is 
they've shut down the portal.

They? Which they?

The guys in the other universe.

How can they do that?

It happens in the preferred alternate universes. There's going to be 
ones that are really crap and ones that are really cool, you know, like 
they have world peace and cake grows on trees and they still have 
unicorns and the dolphins can really talk. They end up with all these 
people arriving with attitudes from bad universes and bringing them all 
down. So they figure out how to close the portal.

I mean how can they do it? You can't close a wormhole can you?

No, I don't know, they do something with gravitons, we haven't figured 
it out yet.  

But it came up green.

We know, the next version fixes it.

When's that out?

We haven't announced the release date yet, that thing has so many bugs, 
I tell you.

Well, I don't want to upgrade, anyway.

Ok, there's this workaround.

I'm listening.

What you do, you get your green, then you save the code in your favourites.

Ok.

Then you go to your favourites menu and select the one you just saved.

Got it.

Then you choose Show Me More Like This.

Right.

Then you choose the second one from the bottom every time.

Second one from the bottom.

And you keep doing that until you find one that's open.

That's going to take a while.

It doesn't take too long, there's some quantum statistical effect, I 
forget what it's called. Helmholtz?

That's when someone's choking, isn't it?

Heidegger?

Never mind. So the second one from the bottom?

Yeah, and oh, when you find one that's open, right, so you press 
Transfer, Enter, and it goes yellow and says Confirm?

Yeah?

Press Enter again right away. I mean don't even hesitate for a second.

Why?

Just take my word for it.

Come on, Troy. Why?

Well, there's this possibility that they're going to shut the portal 
between the time you press the Transfer Enter, and the Confirm Enter. So 
you leave, but you don't arrive.

How likely is that?

We don't really know. Not very. Maybe in some universes it happens every 
time. Skip that universe, right?

And where are you, if you don't arrive?

Don't ask me.

Well can you get back?

It's hard to tell, we're trying to find someone who did it and came back 
so we can put it in the manual.

What do you think happens?

We were talking about it next to the coffee maker and this one girl, 
Ray, says maybe you disperse into an evenly distributed interstitial net 
with psychic access to all universes simultaneously.

What made her say that?

She's always saying stuff like that.

That would be great.

It would be kind of cool.

So you just wait a while before you press Confirm Enter?

Yeah, but you don't know how long you're going to have to wait. And I'm 
not saying it does that anyway, you know, Ray is pretty weird.

Anyway, I wasn't trying to turn myself into some kind of Star Child or 
anything, I just wanted to find a store where they haven't run out of 
Ginseng and Lemon tea.

They have that in the MegaHealth downstairs.

Oh, really. Where are you?

Three blocks down in Main Street.

Ok, I'm just going to zap over. Why don't we meet for a coffee? Wait a 
minute, it's not coming up green.

What isn't?

This universe. What does that mean?

-

Troy?

 

 

-- 
Neale Morison
neale at nealemorison.com
http://www.nealemorison.com
31 Maple Ave #2, Cambridge MA 02139
+1 617 460 9969