The Science of Communicating & Marketing Your Business

Inflation is rampant everywhere these days, yes?

I promise I will get to the game and first I want you to read Tag, I'm It! and Tag, Was That It?. I encourage readers to pay special attention to the latter because Kimberlee's tagging me is pointed to in that post in the references to social play behavior and how memes mutate through time.

This is fascinating stuff, folks. Even more so when you knew it was going to happen and it does right in front of your eyes.

So thanks to Kimberlee for making the kind-of prediction come true and, okay, here we go again...

From Kimberlee's post:
Okay obligatory stuff first:
1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
5. Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them they're tagged, and to read your blog.

Okay, it's now two hours later. I got five things on a list, thought no, those aren't for sharing, started a list I thought trivial and erased that, went back to the original five and added three more, all very personal and revealing, went back to see what Kimberlee had written, saw that it was "random", started that list, decided that it was both trivial and trite (a great combination if you can get it).

I like the idea of the game. It's an interesting strategy for creating community, The Village, and I'm all in favor of that.

Knowing someone has little to do with knowing facts about them. More to the point, knowing someone means not being shocked or upset when you learn facts about them.

So I'll chose to opt out of the game by mutating it.

Here are the new rules:

• You have to write a story and publish it on your blog once you are tagged.
• It doesn't matter what the story is about or how long it is so long as you write it.
• You have to publish the story you write on your blog.
• You need to read the story written by the person who tags you and comment on their story on their blog. You must comment honestly, sincerely and openly.
• You must tag five people whose blogs you read but with whom you have no other social interaction.
• You don't have to publicize who you tag. Just wait and see if the meme spreads.

There is a planet on the scanners. It is large and round and red. The sun is yellow and warming, and the planet is in the sun's life zone. The gravity is slightly stronger than Earth's. The air is a bit richer, and there is abundant water under the surface.

The red coloring comes from two things. The surface of the planet is covered with red vegetation and their spores are everywhere. The ground is also red, although not with spores but with clay and slate like so faraway Connecticut.

The dog beside me raises his massive head and growls. I scratch behind his ears and his hind legs start thumping the cabin floor. I make him thump in time to songs I sing, switching legs as I go from chorus to lead and back.

"We'll go down, see if this is the one."

His ears go up slightly. I wonder how many of the words he understands.

"Take the dog," my wife said. The cabin has room for me and one more. The taste of her lips is still on mine. The smell of her hair is here before me. I can delight in her touch and feel her sun-warmed and reddened skin.

The dog growls and I scratch. His legs thump. I sing.

This is the third planet my scanners have shown. The first too cold, the second too hot; the third just right?

Landing is hard. There isn't much fuel left. Forty-seven years in the ship. I was twenty-three when I left. "Take the dog," my wife said.

I check the gauges and say, "This place will have to do. We don't have enough fuel to take off again." The dog growls. I scratch.

There are mountains in the distance, behind a clough of trees beyond the field where we land. The dog goes ahead, sniffing. He is a big dog. Black and furry, about two-twenty-five on earth. Perhaps closer to two-fifty here. He adjusts well. I'm glad my wife took that decision away.

He stops and sits, silhouetted by the trees, mountains, and sky, and memory's shutters click as if a slide has dropped into a stereocam. The trees shift slightly, righting their angles between earth and sky, and a home -- my home -- slips down from the stars and comes to rest against the mountains and sky.

I cock my head left, my eyes wide with wonder, and scratch behind my ear. My leg thumps. The dog sings. My wife comes out on the porch, her gasmask hiding her features, hiding her brilliant gold hair, as she checks the house for leaks against the burnt, reddened sky. "They've chosen you," I hear over the radiophone, and I wave acknowledgement. Her voice is sad and so is my wave. I'm happy to go, but it is not what I would have chosen.

The dog comes closer, his big eyes lighting.

"We'll have children there," my wife says. We're inside our home, safe from the sun, safe from the air, safe from the things which float on the sea and land. Our masks are off and we make love, knowing nothing will come, twisted seeds finding no purchase on desert soil.

"When you get to a suitable world," they tell me, "you'll have a memory, a signal. An implant will trigger the reaction. You won't be able to resist it. When the signal occurs, it will already have begun."

I nod. I agree.

"Take the dog," my wife said.

He scratches. We thump. We sing.

He stops before me, facing where the house might be. The flanges on his sides open. His back shifts and parts slightly, along his spine, as a saddle forms. I'm glad my wife made the decision. I could not do this if they had fashioned the regenerator after her. I mount the dog as if he were a horse. From the saddle and flanges I feel sweet needles enter my legs, pierce my femurals, enter my buttocks, lift my groin. "We'll have children there."

His legs go deep into the red, clean earth. A ground where things grow. A sky where stars shine. An earth where water brings life. My wife is before me. I feel her lips on mine, taste her tongue, smell her hair.

The dog is shaking, thumping, but I have no hands with which to scratch. Inside his computers, inside his organic cells, are the matrices for all those we left behind. All those who here are soon to be.

"We can have children there."

My body provides the map. "We can store the matrices and we can store the genetic codes, even correct the errors environmental pollutants have made. What we can't store is the raw material. We don't know how that might survive."

My body dissolves as the dog's computers tear me apart to see how sequences are made, his legs go deep into the earth to find the organics necessary to synthesize. This earth the materials of man, his computers the equations for a race, my body the templates of our salvation on a world with a warming sun, a sky still high, and waters you drink and do not breathe; a sanctuary from our own disgrace.

My wife reaches for me. "We'll have children there," but there's nothing left to hold.