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Hanna and I

The CWA of Dr. Z Smith: Episode #113: The Future

The Machine landed.
It landed, not in the haphazard way it had a moment and fifteen years ago, but gently, and into the cradle which had been built specifically for it.
  “So, this is the future?” asked the boy. “Seems awfully…white.”
  “That's because this is my garage.” Replied Dr. Smith.
  “It's really big. Where are we?”
  “Legopolis.”
The boy examined the garage. It seemed to him, to get a room this large, one would have to demolish the entire block. Maybe even the entire town.
  “Wow.” Was all he said.

-=-

-=fig. 689: all this, one day=-

  “One day, boy, all this will be yours.”
  “Gosh. Do I make it big, or something?”
  “Yes, but you won't need it. This is the same house you–I–We've always lived in. Something happened, I'm not sure what, but I'm not looking too close. Look too close and it might fall apart, or it might not.”
  “That's the problem with Quantum, you don't know if it's there until too late.”
  “Exactly.”
Capt. Brown watched the two Zachary Smiths from the kitchen table.  Jeeves poured him a mug of tea.
  “Don't see why we couldn't have brought back Little Me too.”
  “We're you being threatened by a time travelling maniac?”
  “Might've been. Can't remember. Which reminds me, what are we going to do about Him? He's still there. There's a dead guy in the yard, and I'm inside with Zachary's parents!”
  “Fifteen years ago.”
  “Fifteen years ago.” Capt. Brown admitted. “But how is it we escape from that?”
  “Do you remember being kidnapped?” Jeeves asked. 
  “…No.”
  “Then You Probably weren't. The Master usually has a plan, and even when he doesn't it works out.” 

-=fig. 690: the hall of robotics=-

  “And this,” Dr. Smith said, “Is Jeeves MK12. Actually, it's just the skin model, the actual MK12 is in the…somewhere around here.”
  “Nice. Big design change, though.” 
  “Yeah, the whole ‘Robot’ look was frightening people. But hey! We need to get you back to your own time!” 
  “Why? You have a time machine.” 
  “Because, that's why. But before you go, I'd like to show you my laboratory.”

-=fig. 691: strapped down=-

  “This is a memory eraser isn't it?” asked the boy.
  “What makes you say that?” Asked the man. 
  “Because you've shown me everything I'll invent in the next fifteen years. You can't let me go back with that knowledge, It'll be a paradox. A circle with no beginning or end. And by the way ‘ERASE MEMORY? Y/N’ is blinking on that monitor.”
  “You got me, kid. I had fun today, though.”
  “Me too.”
The man pressed Y.
The boy forgot.
  “JEEVES!” Dr. Smith shouted over his shoulder, “FIRE UP THE TIME MACHINE, WE HAVE TO GO SAVE JAMES AND MY PARENTS. OH, AND BRING THE PORTA-RASERS!”
 “Are you sure, Sir?” Dr. Smith jumped about a foot,  Jeeves was right behind him.  “Those heven't been field-tested to their fullest extent. Sir.” Jeeves continued. 
 “They've been field-tested enough, Jeeves.”

-=fifteen years earlier=-

The time machine landed. Again. 
Dr. Smith made sure had his Sabre, Capt. Brown made sure he had his favourite guns, with the reenforced triggering mechanisms, but at his side was Dr. Smith's secondary sword.
The brainwashed boy slept.

  “Good afternoon, Dr. Smith. We meet again.”

Today's Phlog

The CWA of Dr. Z Smith: Episode #112: It's a 207

Von TipRău and Mr. Monoid held the boy high, he wouldn't escape. 

He sure was struggling, though. 

A brilliant flash of light, a noise like a giant metal contrapion landing heavily, and the words “So, Where are we now?”

The words came from the lips of Capt. James Brown, the noise from Dr. Smith's time machine. 

-=fig. 687: the time machine=-

  “We're exactly where we started from James,” Said Dr. Zachary Smith “Just fifteen years in the past.”
  “Well, what are we doing here?”
  “We're rescuing me.”
The duo lept from the contraption, which looked to be a cross between a rowboat and a glasblowers nightmare.  Also, there were spinning bits.
  “Unhand that…Child!” Cried Dr. Smith. He gave Capt. Brown a hand signal. 
  Capt. Brown became armed. 
 Von TipRău laughed.  “Guns? Really? After our last encounter, Capt. Brown, I took the precaution of inventing this brilliant little doohickey, Mr. Monoid?”
  Before Capt. Brown had had time to react, Mr. Monoid had a device in his hand, a small device, and he had pressed the only button. 
  “Amazingly delicate thing, a firing mechanism.” Von TipRău said as Capt. Brown clicked the trigger repeatedly. 
  “Looks like we'll have to settle this the old-fashioned way.” Dr. Smith said, drawing his sword. 
  “Indeed? Vell, as I always say, the old vays are usually the best vays. Don't  you agree, Mr. Monoid?”
  “Indeed, Boss.” As one man they drew their weapons. 
  “Ah, Both of you then?” Dr. Smith asked, eyeing the razor sharp blades being handled with the practised hands of experience. 
  The sort of experience where your enemies don't live very long.
  They answered his question with their weapons. 
  Dr. Smith was good, very very good, but this new development was worrying him. 
 Not that he had much chance to properly think about it as he dodged the blades of death. 
Capt. Brown watched the spectacle. 
So did the boy. 
After awhile, Capt. Brown watched the boy. 
The boy was sitting cross legged on the ground, right where he had been dropped, watching the fighters very carefully, as if trying to work out where the wires were.
Dr. Smith knocked Von TipRău's hat off, and Von TipRău feinted left, which Dr. Smith didn't fall for, there was a flash of steel and Mr. Monoid fell. 
 Von TipRău saw him fall.  For a moment, nothing else mattered. 
 Then all that mattered was driving Dr. Smith back. 
Dr. Smith was surprised by this new effort, he took a step back, then another, and another. 
  “Time to go,” Capt. Brown said to the boy. 
   “No.” Said the boy, “I Don't know you people. You could be…terrible people…for all I know.”
   “We're not, I'm Capt. Brown, Capt. James Brown.”
   “Could you tell my friend that I was right about it being a very common name?” 
   “ I AM Your Friend! Tall kid? Goofy grin? Long brown coat that suits him well? This is the same long brown coat! We're from the future! It'll make more sense in a minute, but now is the time to leave, before you get killed by that madman.” 
   “But I'm not even over there.”
   “Yes you are. Now Come on, we need to get out of here.”
They ran to the time machine, Capt. Brown grabbed the back of Dr. Smith's shirt as he ran past, holding him a foot above the ground, one handed. 
   Von TipRău chased them he watched them leap to the boat part of the time machine, he watched as the lights came, he saw them disappear. 
He walked back and checked Mr. Monoid's vitals. 
The man was dead. 

-=fig. 688: yorrick=-

He stood up, devastated. Monoid had always been there for him, thick and thin, he'd saved him a couple of times, helped him when the madness came, and now he was gone. 
Von TipRău realised the wind was whipping through his hair. 
He reached down and picked up the hat at his feet. 
It was monoid's. 
He felt a little stronger, and he swore Dr. Smith would pay for what he had done. 

Then & Now

The CWA of Dr. Z Smith: Episode #111: Yesterdays

KnockKnockKnockKnockKnock

  “I'm Coming, I'm coming.” Replied Mrs. Lisa Smith. 

 She opened the door.

-=fig. 682: the cat=-

  “Zachary?” She asked. “What's this?”
  “It's not a ‘what’ ” Zachary replied, “It's a ‘Who’. His name's James, I found him on the street. Can we come in?”
  “Zachary, What have I told you about pets?”
  “He's not a pet he's a–”
  “This isn't one of your…Projects…Is it?”
  “Projects? No, He's a real person, His name's James. James…?”
  “Brown. James Brown, Ma’am.”  James Didn't mind standing on the porch as these huge swaths of dialogue flew past, but he wished the porch was a bit more interesting.
  “Brown?” Zachary asked incredulously, “Really?  James Brown? That's one step removed from John Smith.”
  “Oh yeah?” Replied James, “So what's your last name?”
  “…Smith.”
James laughed.  He had an nice, deep laugh. Completely incongruous with his kind of squeaky child voice.
  “Well…I guess you can come in. But wipe your feet.”  Lisa could see that this street person had ‘Dirt’ Written all over him. In Grime.
  “Thank you very much, Ma’am.” James replied, as he conscientiously wiped his boots on the mat.  It took some doing, but he managed to get most of the dirt off.
  “C’mon, James,” Zachary said “I want to show you my room.”
  “What did…”
  “Mrs. Smith.”
  “…Mrs. Smith mean when she called me ‘One of your Projects?”
  “I make stuff.”
  “What sort of stuff?”
  “Everything.  Mostly electrical things, but also some chemical engineering, monsters, robots–”
  “You mean…she thought I was a monster? That you made?”
  “Yeah, I was getting pretty good at making them right up until, um, I stopped. ”
 James decided to let that particular subject lie. “So, robots, huh?”

-=fig. 683: mk1=-

  “I call him–” Dramatic pause “Jeeves!”
  “Kinda small, innie?”
  “You would say that. You're huge, But watch this.”  Zachary ran to the control panel that took up the majority of the back wall, yanked a lever, turned a dial, and set a valve. The robot started humming.
  It jittered.
  It shook.
  It beeped.
  James stepped back. This looked…kind of dangerous.
  Jeeves took a jerky 90° turn, and raised one arm to his fore-brow.
  “BEEP” He said.
  “Is that all he can do?” James asked. It was sort of an anti-climax.
 “Well, yeah.” Dr. Smith replied “It's actually surprisingly hard to program him to do things. That–thing–he just did? Took me an hour and a half.”
  “You mean he doesn't just do stuff by himself?”
  “Autonomy?” Zachary scoffed, “That's the dream, the dream of every robotic engineer ever!  I can't program in autonomy! Robot language is hard enough as it is!”
  “You mean it's in a whole ’nother language?  What's wrong with Legopolian?”
  “You can't program a robot in Legopolian.”
  “Why not?”
  “Because…um…you just…don't. They only understand ones and zeroes, you would have to translate Legopolian letters into…that wouldn't be too hard, actually. Hold on.”
  He typed something into a nearby computer monitor.
   “Done, but I'm going to need something with more keys–” He spotted an old typewriter. “Perfect.”

-=later=-

     BEEEEEP            BEEP
“BEEP,      BEEP    BEEP    BEEP, BEEP BEEP 
              BEEP,                        BEEP."
  “Oh legopolis, Legahhhhp-o-lis,” James muttered absentmindedly.
  “AH HA HA!” Cheered Dr. Smith.  “By typing in the notes, I got him to sing the national anthem! Yay! This new robotic language will revolutionise the world! No more binary! At least, not on top.”
  “So is he Autonanana…can he think for himself, now?”
  “No. But it's only a matter of time.”
  “What if you did, say, this:”  James reached over to the terminal and typed:
+VAR.JEEVES=STATUS.POWERON+
++<RUN>SCRIPT.AUTANANANA++

  “How do you spell that?”
  “A-U-T-O-N-O-M-Y. But it won't work, James, because you're referencing a script that doesn't exist.”
  “Is that important?”
  “Yes.”
  “Alright, humour me, then.” And he kept typing.  He had figured out how to write the language from watching Dr. Smith invent it.

+VAR.JEEVES=STATUS.POWERON+

++<RUN>SCRIPT.AUTONOMY++

+++<IF>SCRIPT.AUTONOMY=STATUS.RUNNING+++

+++++<REPEAT.UNTIL>USER.ZACHARYSMITH=COMMAND.[JEEVES+STOP+BEING+AUTONOMOUS]++++

//++/NEWLINE/++//

  “Okay, We need a complex thing for him to figure out with his autananamy.”

  “This won't work, but um, here. Put in…let me.”

//++/NEWLINE/++//

+<RETRIEVE>OBJECT.TEACUP+

++<END.LOC>USER.ZACHARYSMITH++

 “There.” Zachary pressed the Carriage Return key, and the code was uploaded into Jeeves.
 “That dosen't seem all that difficult of a task, retrieve a teacup?”
 “Trust me, it is.”
They watched Jeeves.
At first, nothing happened.
Then, something did.
Jeeves lifted his stubby robot legs and stomped across the room.
He reached out both his arms, for he didn't have fingers {or even claws,} and gently grasped the teacup.
He then stomped his way across the room, until he was standing in front of Dr. Smith.
Then he dropped the cup and it smashed on the concrete floor.
Zachary was dumbfounded.
He had worked for months learning binary, teaching his robot simple things, terribly difficult simple things, and this…stranger comes in, not even a genius stranger, and in an afternoon they had a completely autonomous robot.
But what really got him was that they did so by referencing a file that does not exist. 
  “Are you a genius? A Savant?”  Zachary Smith asked, staring disbelievingly into James’ eyes.
  “I…Don't think so. I would know if I were, wouldn't I?”
  “It's just, to get that sort of behaviour, I usually have to start with some sort of organic brain or something.  But I've abandoned that method ever since we had to leave Quagmireland because of it. Organic brains are finicky, too randomized. So I made another robot, a new one, a completely mechanical one. But all these things understand is binary, so I learned binary, and it's hard! Really hard! And then you come in, no experience, and all of a sudden we have a new language, a simple one, and my completely mechanical robot is thinking for itself!”
  “You sound, are you angry?” James asked.
  “No.” Zachary replied, “Just don't ever leave!”
James looked at the completely insane child sitting next to him, and said “Well, I have to. I don't live here.”
  “You know what I mean.”
dingdongdingdong dingdongdingdong 

  “No, Don't get up.” Mrs. Smith grumbled, “I'll just get it then, shall I? It's not like we have servants anymore. Oh no, Wait, I forgot. You have me.” She was in a bad mood. 

  She opened the door. 

  “We don't want any.” She said. 

-=fig. 684: Sunt vânzarea acestor clone amendă piele=-

  “Oh, no! You misunderstand me, madam, I am here for Zachary Smith.” The stranger had a Romanian accent. 

  “Which one?”

  “There are more zan von?” 

  “Yes, there is a big one, who I'm married to, and a little one, who's my son.”

  “Oh, I am Looking for ze little von. He's a…friend…of mine.”

  “Figures. ZACHARY!” She shouted over her shoulder, “ANOTHER ONE OF YOUR WIERD FRIENDS IS HERE, Please, come in Mr.…?”

  “Von TipRău. But pleese, Call me Villiam.” 
  “Well William if you'll just–”
  “Villiam. Vith a ‘V’.” 
  “Oh, Okay, Villiam. Please Sit?”
  “Zank you.” He sat at the table. 
Zachary Morton Smith, Zachary Smith's father, came into the room carrying some boring papers. “Hi honey.” He said. “What do you make of this?  I say they're all exactly the same machine, But I need a second opinion because–”  He saw the guest. “Who's this?” 
  “Dear,” Said Lisa, “This is Mr. Villiam Von TipRău, He's here to see Zachary.”
  “Oh,” Said Morton “Nice to meet you Villiam, Names Zachary, Zachary Smith. But you can call me Morton, Everybody does.”
   “It's a pleasure, Morton.”
    “Ah, Romanian!” Morton said excitedly, “You don't happen to know Ludwig Aufenstien the brilliant scientist, would you?”
    “I am he. Von TipRău is the name zat I travel under, to avoid ze crowds, you know. Don't tell anyone I'm here.” He gave a smile like the last part was a joke. 
   Morton was overjoyed. He couldn't believe it. “You're really Ludwig? Or should I say Mr. Aufenstein? EEE! I have every paper you've ever written! Your study in the journal of scientific research on the hyperactivity of subcutaneous psychoanalysim? GENIUS! Wait right here, I'lll get it for you to sign OH MY GOSH!” He ran out of the room. 
  Mrs. Smith sighed. “Sorry about that, my husband gets a bit…excited about stuff sometimes. Which is weird considering the line of work he went into.”
   “Patent clerk.” She said in reply to Von Aufenstien's inquiring look. “Probably the world's most boring job.”

-=-

-=fig. 685: dinner party=-

“Ah, Zere you are my boy!” Said Von TipRău with a huge smile, “So nice to be seeing you…again.”
“I don–
“And Who's your friend?”
“This is James, In fact, we were just going outside to test this robot's–
“Just what I Vanted to talk to you about, You see, I'm having trouble with a robot of my own I vas vondering If you could help me.”
“Really?” No one had ever asked Zachary for help before, this was new.
“Yeah, he's just out back–Zat, is, if you'r mother say is alright?”
Lisa gave a brushing hand motion, as if to say ‘Off with you.’
They exited out the back door.
“So,” Zachary said, “Where's the robot?”
“About that, ” Von TipRău said, “I lied. Mr. Monoid?”
“Right Boss.” said Mr. monoid, as he grabbed Zachary.
“What, hey! Hel–”
“No you don't.”

-=fig. 686: kidnap=-

Seth & Jemma

SHOT ON: Canon T3i
EDITED WITH: FCPX
MUSIC: ‘Bill Bailey’ Toni Carroll
‘Scene From Tchaicovsky's Symphony No. 1’ Performed LIVE By Jemma Riedel.

Last sunday Seth and Jemma came over.
I filmed it.
They're my friends, they used to live here in Alaska, until they lived in washington, and they visited us for a bit.

Last sunday.

I also took these pictures: