fareldal

I bought this book for three reasons:  the back cover copy was interesting, it was more than 600 pages long, and it cost $6.  That's a pretty good value, even if the book is only mediocre.

The book is not mediocre.

But it is depressing.

Seven Types of Ambiguity is an extremely depressing book.  Except for in the first and last parts, you have to read it with a sort of oncoming-train fascination:  how could anything possibly get worse?  How come these people don't get off the tracks?  What else could possibly go wrong?

The book is written from seven different points of view -- a psychiatrist, a father, a prostitute, a financial analyst, a prisoner, a mother, and a first-year university student.  Parts of each section overlap each other, and it's interesting to see how different people see different situations.

There's a lot of good, interesting thoughts in it, some of which you saw just above this cut.  There's things you read and you wonder why they never occurred to you.  But by the time you get halfway through Part Six, you're thinking, "oh, please, please let this get better.  Please let something good happen."

I can't tell you whether it does or not.  That would spoil it for you.

For $6, I think I got my money's worth.  I enjoyed the book, even if it often made me sad.

When I was 17, through my friend Pam I met a girl named Jennifer.  She was 15.

We had sex.  Many times.  We dated for nearly a year.  All the sex was consensual.  I don't know who initiated it first, but I think it was mutually-done.

Had I grown up in Georgia, it is conceivable I could've been serving a 10-year sentence -- maybe worse, since all Wilson did was have oral sex with the girl, while Jennifer and I went all the way.  And I might not have gotten out as quickly as Wilson did; the fact that we live in a news-heavy culture means we see a lot more stories that aren't just local headlines on the 6:00 news.

Okay, let me start with the bad, because there's not a whole lot of it.  Willie McCoy's girlfriend is given the wrong name, and if I remember Burnt Offerings right, Sylvie is actually gay, despite it being said that she isn't.

My only other beef is that the whole thing is crammed into about 36 hours, and at the end, there's an awful lot of talking as if the bad guys aren't just standing there, waiting for the heroes to roll 3d20 and see how much damage they do.  Hamilton has weird time issues.

In the previous two books (especially the last), everyone was complaining about the overage of sex.  This book has very little, comparatively speaking.  We get back to the killing-the-bad-guys motif.  Edward and Olaf are back.  Peter is back.  There's extremely little mom-killed-when-I-was-a-kid and not a whisper of fiancee-left-me-in-college.  The sex is done relatively tastefully.

And the ending was perfect.  Absolutely perfect.  Except for the time issue I mentioned earlier, the climax was so good that when Anita was speaking, I thought I was hearing Dumbledore.  What happens to Richard... also good.

There's very little Jason, and I think we all miss him.  But it's okay.  We have Nathaniel now.

I give The Harlequin four stars out of five.  It's no <i>Killing Dance</i> but it's a damn sight better than the last two-and-a-half books.  Go read it.

You came to the job fair with high expectations. You’ve got experience in your field. You’ve got good references. You got a haircut, you shaved off that scruffy beard, you just picked up your good jacket from the cleaners and ironed your white dress shirt this morning.

You left the job fair the same way you came in, but with a severely-cramped writing hand.

Every application you filled out had that little box on it, with the line underneath:



MACHINE OF DEATH TEST COMPLETED [ ]

METHOD OF DEATH _____________________



You found it in different places. Sometimes it was under the Social Security Number. Sometimes it was near the end, near where you initialed that yes, they could look up your credit and criminal history and deny you a job based on the results. Sometimes it was an entire sheet of paper with a little rationale explaining whey they wanted to know.

But not a single job application was without it.

Just like your Social Security Number, you left blank the questions about the Machine of Death. You dropped off resumes and applications, kept your phone on vibrate in your front pocket, and generally tried to look as employable as possible.

And you got interviews. Your resume saw to that. You interviewed with a TV station who needed a webmaster. You interviewed with an insurance company who needed an application programmer. You even interviewed with the state government’s IT department, mentally biting your tongue as you were told that the job was chiefly fixing computers after noobs broke them by downloading chain letters or viruses or keyloggers.

Every interview, though, ended on the same note.



Papers are rustled.

“I noticed that you left your Social Security Number off the application. We need that for recordkeeping.”

“I understand that, but I don’t like to give that information out without cause. Under the law, I’m not required to provide it.”

“Well, okay, but I can tell you now that if you get chosen for a second interview, they’re going to ask for it, and they won’t take no for an answer.”

You shake your head slightly. “I’ll just tell them the same thing. Whether or not I get the job shouldn’t be predicated on whether or not I give out my Social Security Number.”

An eyebrow is raised. “That’s an interesting point of view. We can discuss it another time, if you want, but I have more interviews to conduct. There’s just one other thing…”

“Salary requirements?” You smile.

“No, no, not that. You left your Machine of Death line blank.”

“I know.”

“Same as the Social Security thing?”

You shake your head. “Nothing so grandiose. I just haven’t had it done.”

“Really?” Both eyebrows go up now. “Why not?”

Shrug. “I just haven’t. It’s not that important to me to know.”

“But… but…” There just aren’t the words.

You’ve come across this before. People are incredulous that you haven’t gone to the Machine of Death – any Machine of Death – and given over a few drops of blood and possession of your soul for foreknowledge of how you’ll pass.

All right, maybe the machine doesn’t take your soul. But you’re not taking any chances. So you tell that to the person who’s interviewing you, and after that, the interview comes to a close: a handshake, a promise to review the resume and application and get back to you if a second interview is in the offing.

You’ve been through that before. For seven months now, you’ve been looking for a job – a real job, not some under-the-table cash-only job to supplement the thin-on-the-ground freelance jobs you do at night. Even McDonald’s won’t hire you without a Machine of Death prediction; after all, if a fryer is going to explode and kill you, they’d like to know in advance.



Your car is long gone; you take the bus from place to place, or ride a decrepit bicycle that’s probably older than you are. You’ve boxed up most of your possessions and put them in the master bedroom of your apartment, and you keep all the doors closed. You live in the other bedroom because it’s the smallest room that can fit your bed, and therefore the easiest to heat. You’ve cut back on your utilities – no phone, no cable TV, as little electricity as possible. You read by the light of a hand-cranked lamp; you eat mostly sandwiches and fruit, foods that don’t need to be heated up. You pre-paid for a gym membership a year and a half ago, so you shower there instead of at home. If nothing else, you’re getting into better shape.

You just wish that you could get a job that didn’t involve a handful of cash being dumped in your hand at the end of the day.

You also wish you could move into a smaller apartment, but you’d have to sign a new lease, and management wants to make sure you won’t die in one of their units.



You remember the first Machine of Death. You remember it vividly. You remember sitting around after the Superbowl, finishing the last of the beers with your friends and a couple of guys from work. You remember that everyone laughed at the idea.

Now, years later, no one’s laughing. Once the scientists who designed it proved that it actually did work, its use spread like wildfire. News reporters lined up to test it, to do stories on it, to try and trick it.

No one could trick the machine. No one could beat the machine.

You remember the days when there was no such thing as a Machine of Death, when it was the purview of the science fiction stories you so enjoyed reading as a teenager.

You remember the days when kiosks in the mall only hawked screen-printed t-shirts and gaudy cellphone accessories.

You remember the days when you didn’t have to remind the doctor that you were opting out of the Machine of Death test.

You remember the days when your boss couldn’t let you go because you refused to submit to the Machine of Death.



You have no work today. You stayed up last night, finishing a website for a chiropractor’s office. For lack of anything better to do, you filled it with slick graphics and an interface that, in your humble opinion, was one of the best you’d ever written. It wasn’t like you had a chance to do this for a living anymore.

Your e-mail box is empty but for a couple of chain letters. Your MySpace bulletin board had one that said “auto accident”; when you opened it, it told you to repost the bulletin with your own demise, as foretold by the Machine of Death.

You sighed and turned off your monitor, then packed your bag and caught the bus to the gym.

To pass the time, you read a few more chapters of the third Harry Potter book – you’d read it before, but it was one of your favorites, worth a twentieth or thirtieth reading. You lost track long ago.

The bus comes to a stop. You look up; you’re about two minutes away now, so you finish your page, dog-ear it, and close the book.

A jolt as the bus begins to move. You hit the button that tells the driver you’ll be getting off at the next stop; there’s a small ding. A minute later, you get up.

There’s a strange screeching noise. Everyone looks around.



You open your eyes. You blink a couple of times, move your mouth, but no sound comes out. The ceiling is set with evenly-spaced white squares; there’s three fluorescent lights up there too. You try to move, but your body is sore and you can’t get your right arm to bend. There are a couple of tubes in it, clear but filled with liquid.

You turn your head. You see the monitor screens showing a heartbeat, respirations, pulse, blood pressure, and EEG; only then do you notice the leads on your chest and your temples, and the plastic clip gently attached to one of your fingers.

On the other side, you see four buttons. One is red. You press it and wait.



The doctor tells you what happened: a tractor-trailer pulled out of a parking lot, and an SUV veered around it, into the side of the bus. The driver was so shocked by everything that he hit the gas instead of the brakes and ran into the trailer.

You were the only person standing up; you were the only person with more than minor injuries.

“You’re lucky,” the doctor says.

You’ve had a few hours and a glass of water; you can talk now. “Lucky how?”

He checks your chart. “You’re supposed to die in a bus crash. I guess this wasn’t the one.”

It takes you a minute to catch your breath, but you mumble out something that sounds like “I guess not.”



From your hospital bed, you call one of the jobs you were interested in – there’s a medium-sized law firm that was willing to pay you more than you thought you were worth, and the job didn’t look too hard, just network support and some help on the website. A week later, you’re in the managing partner’s office, on a pair of aluminum crutches you thought you’d thrown away after you sprained your ankle in college. You’ve filled out your Social Security Number and your Machine of Death information.

You’ve got it. You might as well use it.

The next weekend, you go out and buy a used car. Now that you know your fate, it would be madness to tempt it.

But every time one of the junior associates screws up a computer and the diagnostic program says the bus has crashed, you wince.

In a thousand little ways, you change your life, not really realizing what you're doing. You park at the train station and ride to the airport so you don't have to take shuttle buses. You get a new apartment off the beaten path, no routes within five miles, even if it means you have to drive everywhere. When your family holds a reunion, you tell them you'll meet them at the park, lie a little and say you have to run over to your office for a few minutes. It's in the back of your mind, though you try not to think about it.

When will your bus crash?