Botober 30: To Be A Dog
Oct. 30th, 2020 10:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alfvaenNot continuing the story from the last couple of days, because I had a better idea for this one. The Botober prompts for today were:
To Be A Dog
It doesn't know what it is. It could be anything. It could by any of an uppercase Infinity of things. It could be anywhere. But until something collapses its waveform, the Uncertainty Principle dictates that it can't stay for very long.
It appeared on the Mongolian steppes in the 13th century AD, in the form of a brick, and didn't do anything except make a horse stumble. It appeared as a piece of bark on a sidewalk in Boston in 1892 and was swept into the gutter and washed away. It appeared as a cluster of sugars in the tail of a comet orbiting Arcturus, which would have puzzled anyone who had been able to observe its emission spectra. It appeared as a strand of a chemical almost, but not quite, identical to RNA in the tiny habitable zone of Gliese 667 Cc. In none of these circumstances was its wavefunction collapsed enough to have an effect on its wandering ways.
At some point its spatial distribution function narrowed in on Earth again--the northern hemisphere; Europe; Scandinavia; Sweden; Rättvik Municipality.
Trina Oden was sitting on a rock outside of her apartment building. She hadn't been able to play with her friends for a long time, and she missed them. Seeing them on the Internet just wasn't enough. She watched cars go by on the street, wondering how long before her mother would tell her it wasn't safe to sit on the rock like that.
She glanced over her shoulder, and saw a small dark shape in the hedge. What was that? A little animal of some kind. A dog? A few people in the apartment had dogs, but she didn't recognize this one. She got up off the rock and walked over the hedge, crouching and looking underneath. She didn't want to get too close in case it was scared, but what if it was hurt and needed help? "Hello?" she said.
Trina wasn't quite sure what it was, and so it wasn't either. The consensus was narrowing down upon "dog", though. "Small black dog". "Small black dog, scared but friendly". It whimpered a little bit. "It's okay, I won't hurt you." She extended her hand for it to sniff, and it did. She caught a glimpse of shiny black fur, maybe a beard? She'd seen a dog like this once, it was so cute... The dog's form focused in on "Scots terrier" and stabilized there. It climbed out from under the hedge and timidly wagged its tail.
"That's it, girl," Trina murmured. "You don't have a collar, do you? Where'd you come from?" It seemed clean enough, but no trace of ownership.
Trina began marshalling arguments in her mind for her mother. She was old enough to look after a dog. She knew you had to clean up their poop and feed them and take them for walks. She would do that. She would!
And so the object which had been so indefinite and unwanted for so long began to learn what it was like to be a dog, and to be loved.
- Things: An uppercase infinity
- Concepts: What is it like to be a dog
- Advanced: An artifact that teleports every few minutes to a new location, where it waits for someone to actually want it
- Terrible: A piece of bark
To Be A Dog
It doesn't know what it is. It could be anything. It could by any of an uppercase Infinity of things. It could be anywhere. But until something collapses its waveform, the Uncertainty Principle dictates that it can't stay for very long.
It appeared on the Mongolian steppes in the 13th century AD, in the form of a brick, and didn't do anything except make a horse stumble. It appeared as a piece of bark on a sidewalk in Boston in 1892 and was swept into the gutter and washed away. It appeared as a cluster of sugars in the tail of a comet orbiting Arcturus, which would have puzzled anyone who had been able to observe its emission spectra. It appeared as a strand of a chemical almost, but not quite, identical to RNA in the tiny habitable zone of Gliese 667 Cc. In none of these circumstances was its wavefunction collapsed enough to have an effect on its wandering ways.
At some point its spatial distribution function narrowed in on Earth again--the northern hemisphere; Europe; Scandinavia; Sweden; Rättvik Municipality.
Trina Oden was sitting on a rock outside of her apartment building. She hadn't been able to play with her friends for a long time, and she missed them. Seeing them on the Internet just wasn't enough. She watched cars go by on the street, wondering how long before her mother would tell her it wasn't safe to sit on the rock like that.
She glanced over her shoulder, and saw a small dark shape in the hedge. What was that? A little animal of some kind. A dog? A few people in the apartment had dogs, but she didn't recognize this one. She got up off the rock and walked over the hedge, crouching and looking underneath. She didn't want to get too close in case it was scared, but what if it was hurt and needed help? "Hello?" she said.
Trina wasn't quite sure what it was, and so it wasn't either. The consensus was narrowing down upon "dog", though. "Small black dog". "Small black dog, scared but friendly". It whimpered a little bit. "It's okay, I won't hurt you." She extended her hand for it to sniff, and it did. She caught a glimpse of shiny black fur, maybe a beard? She'd seen a dog like this once, it was so cute... The dog's form focused in on "Scots terrier" and stabilized there. It climbed out from under the hedge and timidly wagged its tail.
"That's it, girl," Trina murmured. "You don't have a collar, do you? Where'd you come from?" It seemed clean enough, but no trace of ownership.
Trina began marshalling arguments in her mind for her mother. She was old enough to look after a dog. She knew you had to clean up their poop and feed them and take them for walks. She would do that. She would!
And so the object which had been so indefinite and unwanted for so long began to learn what it was like to be a dog, and to be loved.
