More Noah Tortoise Fun

“Hello?”

“Andrew, it’s Noah.”

“Where the hell are you, man?”

“I’m on the corner of Blanchard and The Ave, and I need you to pick me up.”

‘Why?”

“I have a tortoise and I can’t walk that far.”

“You have a what?”

“It’s a tortoise and it’s hungry but it has a warm rock. Now come pick me up. You can use my car. Just--come. Please.”

“I repeat--you have a what?”

“It’s a tortoise. Kind of like a turtle, except it’s not for some reason?”

“I know what a tortoise is, you dolt.”

“Really? Do you know what they eat?”

“...No! Why do you have a tortoise?”

“His name is Ted.”

“I don’t care! Why do you have a tortoise?”

“He has contaminated dishes in with him. My car keys are on the banister.”

“Tortoise! Explain!”

“His name is Ted and he’s hungry.”

“WHY DO YOU HAVE A DAMN TORTOISE?”

“Because. Andrew, just pick me up. It’s cold.”

“I--oh, fine. I’ll be there in a few minutes.” The connection died and Noah smiled, whistled, and watched the activity around him.

That is, until a person on a bicycle nearly ran him down.

“Oy! I have a tortoise here!” Noah yelled. “A tortoise now showered in bits of timothy hay!”

He looked at the tortoise to make sure it was okay. It was looking around, seemingly dazed, before it began munching on the hay.

“It eats timothy hay! It’s not a starving tortoise after all!”

Someone threw a dollar at him. Confused, he looked around and realized that he was kneeling on the ground on a street corner, talking to a tortoise.

“I’m not crazy...but I am a college student...so thanks...”

Andrew pulled up in the red Toyota a few minutes later to find Noah sitting cross-legged on the ground with the glas aquarium in his lap, humming “happy together.”

“Tortoise.”

“Yes.”

“Get in the damn car.”

Noah Buys A Tortoise

As Noah was walking along the street outside the university district one day, just before he was about to move out of state, he wandered into a pet store.

"RUSSIAN TORTOISE," the sign in front of the glass tank read. "MUST GO. $250 INCLUDES TANK AND HABITAT."

"I want a tortoise," Noah decided, spur of the moment. "They're cool and I can name it Ted."

He approached the shopkeeper. "Hey, what do tortoises eat?"

"I have no idea," the shopkeeper said, shrugging. "Someone just dropped off the thing and we're trying to get rid of it before it starves."

"So you're asking two hundred and fifty for a starving turtle?"

"It's a tortoise. If it was a turtle we could feed it lettuce."

"I'll give you one fifty for the starving tortoise and his house."

"The tank alone is worth about fifty."

"And I reckon the starving tortoise and his trees and little rock there are worth another hundred."

"The rock is heated."

"Fine, a hundred and four. I'll give you a hundred and fifty four dollars for the starving tortoise and his house."

"Lemme call the boss."

The shoppkeeper went in the back room and Noah quickly did a balance check on his allowance credit account that his parents put money into for food and entertainment and so on. Since he hadn't had any date in the past month, there was a few hundred dollars. Yeah, he could spare a bit for a little buddy named Ted. Ted wouldn't call him a dick and key his car. Plus, he was kind of cute. He? She? How could you tell? Tortoises didn't have boobs.

"Boss says you can have it for onve seventy five," the shopkeeper said, returning to the main room of the shop. "That's our rock and our food dishes in there."

"Why not take the food dishes out, since you're starving the little dude anyway?"

"He's contaminated the dishes. We can't sell them for other animals. He may have a disease.

"So you're asking one hundred seventy five dollars for a starving diseased tortoise."

"We don't know he has a disease."

"So why not take the food dishes out?"

"We don't know that he doesn't have a disease either."

"Okay. So you seriously don't have any tortoise food around here anywhere?"

"No. We sell birds and snakes and mice, mostly."

"Tortoises don't eat mice?"

"No. No, they don't, that's sick."

"Okay. Fine. One hundred and seventy five dollars for the starving, diseased tortoise and his house with the comfy rock and his contaminated food dishes."

finally, an excerpt!

A thrill of excitement wove through his veins. He had wanted an opportunity like this for ages--the opportunity to try and hack something secure on the biocom internet! Everything that the biocom internet connected to had nothing to hide. Even the servers they run off of were boring and had no security. Everything was truly open-source. This was the first time he had come across something secured, which of course was nothing more than a red carpet for him.

He furrowed his brow as the information literally downloaded to his brain. It gave him an opportunity to think spatially as he hacked--the pages on the biocom net were as multidimensional as the human mind, which meant they were exceedingly hard to code as each human mind is slightly different. To make a page that would act the same in everyone’s head was very difficult. To make a page that would lock out everyone, however, should have been impossible.

After tumbling it around in his head for a long time, he was surprised to notice he had broken out in a sweat. This was easily the hardest thing he had ever done--like trying to solve a Rubik’s cube by seeing it once and manipulating it inside his head. Except with this Rubik’s cube, the colors kept shifting just when he thought he had it.

And then the colors all lined up, the tumblers fell into place, and he was in.

He collapsed back into his chair, wiping the sweat from his brow while trying to relax just enough to release the strain, but not letting the connection sever. It had taken all this time--there was no way he was going to let it slip away before he knew what was behind this.

"Who are you?" someone said sharply. Jason jumped and almost lost the connection before he realized that it was coming from his biocom line--someone had accessed it.

"Who are you?" the voice demanded again. It didn’t have the qualities of being actually spoken; it didn’t register in the same part of the brain that a phone conversation registered in. Jason's mind reeled. Had someone figured out how to message over the bio net, without using the telecomm features?

"Is this secure?" he tried to say, but he could tell it wasn’t getting any feedback over the connection.

Instead, he tried "typing" it into the page he had just accessed.

"Yes, it's secure. I’m looking for someone. Are you him?"

"No idea. Who are you looking for?"

"I read someone bragging about changing a DP history. I figured that the only way to find him would be to set up something he wouldn't be able to resist."

"He? Who says I'm not a girl?" Jason bluffed.

"Bullshit. I know you're a male. Your DP is pointing to all sorts of profiles, but they’re all male. You’re going to tell me how you changed your profile, Damascus. You're going to tell me how I can change mine."

"It's not a particularly easy thing to do," Jason said, the written mode of conversation coming easier now. He wasn’t surprised at the sudden use of his alias--everyone knew it was Damascus that had managed to change his profile, but no one knew who Damascus was.

"You did it. You did it months ago. Tell me, or so help me I will burn your brain."

"You can't do that," Jason dismissed. "Biocoms have safeguards. They don't allow overheating."

"I know a way past the safeguards."

"I'm calling bullshit on you, now. There is no way past the safeguards. It's impossible. I think you're just a little teenager who learned a few tricks."

There was a sudden pain in the base of his neck, as though someone had pinched him.

'Did that hurt, Damascus?"

"What the fuck was that?"

"You hacked directly into my biocom, Damascus. We're linked and I can access anything on your biocom...just like you could access anything on mine--IF, of course, you knew your way around a biocom like I do, and it wasn't taking all your concentration right now to keep this connection open. You haven’t eaten in a while...your blood sugar is low, and you’re tired...goodness, Damascus, you need to take care of yourself."

"If you're so good, why not just call me by my real name?"

"Etiquette, Damascus. A hacker never tries to crack another’s alias. Now, Damascus...you will tell me where I need to go to change my profile. And you won’t lead me astray, because I know how to find you again."

"If you know all this stuff, how come you don't know how to get to the mainframes?"

"I know biocoms. I don't know computers. Now tell me."

"No."

"Damn you! TELL ME!" The knot at Jason's neck rolled painfully. Despite trying to stay calm, Jason's flesh crawled. How was he doing this? How was it even possible?

"It's too much for me to tell you over a bio net connection," he said finally. "Give me a secure server address on the internet and I’ll dump directions there."

"Done."

"You're just going to trust me like that?"

"Honor amongst thieves, Damascus." The connection severed with a severity that left Jason reeling in his chair, feeling slightly nauseous, but with the clear imprint of a secure server feed.

For a second he considered getting something to eat, but then decided against it. His neck ached powerfully. He didn’t want it to happen again should the other person decide he was being too slow.

Who WAS that person? And how could he do the things he did?

For the first time in his life, Jason was actually scared.

Day One: Well, it's not a complete waste...

Was at Andrew and Manda's when the clock his midnight on November 1. Managed to bang out a good 2142 words in the first hour and a half, which is always good.

Then later that day, I got in another couple hundred waiting at Jiffy Lube.

However, at the kickoff party at Crossroads, I discovered to my dismay that my Alphasmart had been turned on in my backpack and the K key had been pressed--and K had filled up the entire memory of the damn thing. There wasn't enough memory left for me to select all and delete. So most of the kickoff party was spent by pressing the backspace key for 2 hours until I had enough memory to copy the actual content and clear the file, then paste the story.

Oy.

More Songs For The Songless

Few more songs. Not many, but enough to call an actual list.

NOAH

Wonderwall - Oasis
The Reason - Hoobastank
I Feel Fine - Riddlin' Kids
Look What You've Done - Jet


JASON

Boulevard of Broken Dreams - Green Day
I Walk Along - Oleander
Little Black Backpack - Stroke 9


DAVID

Iris - Goo Goo Dolls
Counting Blue Cars - Dishwalla
Identity - Greenwheel


JEFF

Weathered - Creed
In The End - Linkin Park
What If - Creed

Talk Like A Pirate Day

Arrrrrrrrrrr.

Stupid comments

I've turned on word verification to my comments, to prevent spammers from posting about their latest body building micronutrients and preapproved credit.

Not that anyone ever comments anyway.

Songs to Write By

Like last year, I have certain songs that I use to identify my characters and get in the right "mood" to write them. Right now there's only a theme song for each, but hopefully an entire playlist will grow for each one. This year I have an iPod (although suddenly I really want the iPod nano, for obvious reasons), and so I can block out the world (or at least Andrew's distracting antics :P) with the music--provided I can find a playlist for each.

If anyone has any suggestions that fit with the "theme" of each song, please, do comment.


DAVID

Iris - Goo Goo Dolls


JASON

Boulevard of Broken Dreams - Green Day


NOAH

Wonderwall - Oasis



The one I have for Jeff is the Jeff in Aegis Project, not Aegis Prologue. I'm still looking for an appropriate one for Prologue Jeff...

As though anyone knows what I'm saying.