The Last Man

[Wayne23]

3/9: We play #5 seed Tulane in the quarter final round of the conf. tourney. They won by 8 there, we won by 8 here so it could be interesting.

3/10: 70-57. We took an early lead, built it to 13 at the half, 18 in the 2nd. Barr led us with 17, Hall had 15, 5, 4, Seal 13, 6. +11 TOs, +8 RBs.

#1 seed, #6 ranked Temple, 24-4, 16-2. We just beat them but it will be difficult to repeat that. They’re a very good team.

3/11: 71-88. We stayed close for a long time but they were too powerful. 26 for Barr, and 17 threes, but they went to the line 21 times and we went 8.

20-9, 12-6, RPI #44. I’m guessing an 11 or a 12 seed.

3/12: #10 Midwest. We play #7 seed USC, 21-9. They’re very strong outside, not so strong inside.

3/16: 76-77. Close all the way, never more than 8 points separated the teams. At the end they had the ball last and their SF hit a three with a hand in his face. We played well and I’m proud of my guys.

4/3: #5 Louisville beat UConn for the title.

4/4: Awards: Junior SF Gem Barr made conf. 1st team. Junior C John Seal made 2nd.

4/9: I don’t see Central FL as a place I want to stay at for long but I’m here for another year, and after this season I am not at all unhappy about it.

4/23: We very much need a budget increase. 20-10, 12-6. Great season, and everyone is coming back, with some good people coming in. Overall I’m 77-43, .642.

We get $9,300. I’ll take it!

[Wayne23]

April 2127: I had a cruising day yesterday. Just cruised around the Lake all day. Loved it. Then we got a storm today so I stayed docked. Rains were very heavy at times and the winds got as high as 50 mph. The boat handled it fine but there was no way I wanted to be out on the water in that. I actually love to be on board in rough weather. If it were less dangerous I would have been cruising, and I do cruise in storms that are less severe. But I even like it in port. Being bounced around like that is fun. Oh, and sleeping in that is the best!

I haven’t talked about my age much because I want the story to develop naturally when I get to it during my time as a coach. But I will say that my 127th birthday will be on May 1. I’m in great shape and I show no signs of aging. I can still do the things I’ve always done, and my stamina is excellent. The story is a very interesting one, and I’m not holding it up on purpose, but it didn’t happen while I was at Central FL, so you’ll just have to wait.

[Wayne23]

5/1: Still can only afford the national basic.

6/5: A soph guard we didn’t play much last year transferred out.

Looking.

6/12: We get 2 bigs.

6/26: 6 scholarships. We probably want 4 bigs, 2 guards.

8/21: We offer to 3 guards and 3 bigs.

9/18: No one has committed yet but a few seem close.

The pre-conf. schedule is a little more challenging, especially the home games.

9/25: We get a PG and a C.

10/2: We got a PG and a PF. 2 to go.

First day of practice. We should be better this season, if for no other reason than the fact that everyone is back. At this point the new guys will need to prove themselves. If any do, we’ll be better than last season.

We’re picked 3rd in conference. We’ll see, but we finished tied for 3rd last year.

10/9: We got the last two recruits, which kind of surprised me- pleasantly!

11/6: 7 man rotation, at least for now.

Junior Sean Hall plays both guard spots but starts at SG. Senior Dave Jack starts at PG. Senior Jaq Trip backs up.

Senior Gem Barr and junior Beau Ping play both SF and PF; Gem starts at SF, Beau at PF, but they’ll move around.

Senior John Seal is back at Center. Senior Bik Cham backs up at PF and C.

There are a couple other guys waiting for their shot.

[Wayne23]

July 2127: I am writing this with a pen, in a notebook.

A week ago, at about 7:30 a.m., I was cruising, about 2-3 miles from shore when an earthquake hit. It was a huge earthquake and it felt like its center was directly under the boat. It almost threw me into the water before I could hang on and try to ride it out. Less than a minute later I heard a huge “CRACK” and the boat was broken in half; it didn’t actually fully break immediately but it was clear it was happening very quickly, and water was pouring in. I raced to the lifeboat and barely had time to get into it and launch it before the boat sank. I had no time to get either the 3D printer or the HC. I found myself in a lifeboat with the water going crazy- huge waves, continued tremors, everything moving and shaking wildly. I was soaking wet. I clung frantically to the sides and bottom of the lifeboat. Eventually things quieted down. I looked around, thought I knew which way to go to get to the nearest land, and started rowing. I had no food, no water, no shelter, no dry clothes, and no way to get any of those things.

I didn’t row in a straight path, and it was farther than I thought, but I rowed in a generally straight path and eventually I got to shore near what I eventually discovered was Thunder Bay, Ontario.

First things first. I secured the boat very carefully, well out of the water, and began walking, hoping to find downtown. As I rowed, exhausting as it was, I thought about a plan. I needed water, dry clothes, and food, in that order. Everything else, including a plan for long term survival, would come after that.

I found the warm clothes first. I stripped down naked and dried myself as thoroughly as I could and then dressed. It was not cold but I was chilled badly from the storm.

I next found 3 big pots, a ladle, a cup, a plate, a fork, spoon, a skillet, and a big, sharp knife. I knew that I needed to boil water for at least 20 minutes to make it drinkable.

I went to a hunting, fishing, camping supply store, got all the fishing gear I thought I’d need, and a stove that burned sterno.

I went and got 2 of the pots full of water, threw them in a wheelbarrow, and brought them back to boil on the sterno stove.

25 minutes later I was drinking hot water. I was famished as I hadn’t eaten since breakfast at about 6:30 a.m. and it was now- well I had no idea, but it was late at night and pitch dark. I knew I would not be eating tonight so I got blankets, and curled up in a store to sleep.

Before falling asleep I decided food had to be priority one, so I would go back to the boat and fish in the morning.

The next morning, after drinking water and bringing two big water jugs with me, I got all the way to the boat when I realized I had no bait or lures. I damn near cried.

I trudged back to the store, got some lures, walked back to the boat, climbed in, and went fishing. It was later in the day than I would have liked, but I caught a beautiful lake trout, and then another, and then a small mouth bass.

I had had no way to transport everything I needed so I rowed to shore, and walked back to where I had left the camp stove. I cleaned the fish- badly, cooked and ate all three.

Oh, no one had “gone fishin’” for at least 30 years so the fish were completely unused to being fished and had no defense mechanisms at all. A fish took the lure as soon as it hit the water, every time.

Again, I had been trying to think my way through a plan all this time. I knew getting a solar powered pickup ready to drive was at least two days of work, so that would need to wait for a bit. I found a bicycle that would haul a small… wagon, I guess. I loaded the wagon with the stove and the other things I had gathered together, found a bicycle pump to pump up all the tires on the bike and the wagon, and when I was ready to fish toward sunset, I would be able to haul everything to the lifeboat.

I can’t tell you how exhausted I was by this time, and everything ached badly from the “adventures” of the day before and today, but I felt it was important to eat again before I rested. I guessed it was the middle of the afternoon.

On my ride to the boat dawn came up on Marblehead. They sold 3D printers in stores back before everything went to hell. Could there possibly be even one left in a store? It wouldn’t work of course, but if there were printers there would be solar batteries for them, which could be charged. With any luck I’d have a functional 3D printer by the next day. I fished, and then I found a cottage near the boat, and crashed.

The next day I fished and then ate breakfast, and then I searched all the stores I could find. Not a single printer, not a single solar battery or solar cell for a printer. Damn. Back to the water. Back to the fishing, cleaning the fish, cooking, eating, crashing and sleeping like a dead man.

I woke up to the sun in my face, went to the bathroom, walked into the living room, and saw the answer to all my hopes. Sitting right in the living room, with a large supply of solar batteries and solar cells nearby, was a great big beautiful 3D printer. How I had missed it before, I do not know, but I had been very narrowly focused, and had waIked within a few feet of it without seeing it. I immediately set it up and brought it outside to charge the batteries. Seeing as they were at dead zero this would take at least a day and a half of sunshine. Fortunately, it was a beautiful sunny day.

I walked to the boat and went fishing, came back and cooked. Then I went in the house to see if I could figure out which programs were loaded onto the 3D printer. You can print anything in one of these but it has to be programmed for it.

It turned out there were very few program disks. I tried to remember if I had seen any disks in stores and I just couldn’t remember. I unloaded the wagon but kept it hitched up in case I thought of something or things I wanted to bring back, and I peddled to the shopping district.

No disks anywhere. Thinking things through I realized that my best shot at finding disks was to go into houses and look for them.

I peddled around until I found what looked like an affluent neighborhood, and I started breaking into houses. Doors were locked but I just smashed windows and climbed in. No one would be living in these houses again, so why not.

Within a couple of hours I had found disks for every 3D item I could possibly want or need.

Then another thought struck me. Some of these houses had to have holographic chambers. These were rich people houses. They HAD to have them. So I started searching again, and the second house I entered had a HC in the very plush basement.

I haven’t mentioned it but a hand truck is needed to move a HC, and it really helps with a printer. That meant going back to a store.

Every hand truck had flat tires. Most of them were not very well equipped to be reinflated but I finally found one with really big wheels, and that would take a hand held bicycle pump, which I had, as I’ve mentioned. It was getting late, but I wasn’t leaving town without the HC so I went back to the house, brought the hand truck downstairs, and hauled the HC out and loaded it into the wagon. I brought the HC, the hand truck, the disks, and three changes of clothes and a few towels back to the cottage, and went fishing, as it started to get dark.

After supper, and I was REALLY getting sick of fish, I brought the HC and the printer into the house.

Next time: Further adventures.

[Wayne23]

11/20: 2-0. Our front line players are doing the bulk of the scoring, Barr with 20.5, Ping with 15.5. Seal is rebounding. The guards are taking good care of the ball, and our #6 Cham, and #7 Trip, are doing very good work.

Everyone signed except our only juco recruit. They often sign late.

11/27: 3-1. Considering that 3 were on the road, I’ll take it. The one we lost was due to a huge disparity in fouls.6th man Bik Cham is playing very well, as is #7 Jaq Trip.

12/4: 5-1. We’re rolling along. The schedule is a little stronger this year, but not a lot. Ping and Barr are our horses, but the other 5 who play are all playing very well. I like this team!

12/25: 8-1. Great pre-conf. play. RPI is 55. +10.4 PPG, +3.6 RBs, +6.6 TOs.

Let’s see how we do in conf.!

[Wayne23]

July, 2127: It rained for the next four days- nonstop. So I fished in the rain, and tried to stay warm in the cottage. The rest was probably good for me, but damn, I wanted some sunshine to get the 3D printer and the HC, which also operated on solar cells and solar batteries, operational.

On the first rainy day I went “truck shopping.” I found one pretty far away from the water. I pondered relocating. It would take three trips to haul the 3D printers and the HCs- I now had two. If I moved everything here I could work on the truck most of the time and peddle to the water to fish twice a day.

I said no. I had no desire to peddle through pouring rain twice a day. The truck could wait until the printer and HC were working. Then I could make my own food. No need to fish, and no need to be near the water.

Two days after the rains ended I fired up the printer… and it didn’t work.

I peddled back to town and squeezed three printers into the wagon- barely, brought them back to the cottage, and put them in the sun to charge.

I then fired up the HC, and realized I had exactly one program disk for it, the one that was loaded. You guessed it. It was a porn program. Tempting as that was, there were WAY higher priorities. I peddled back to the rich neighborhood, did some scavenging, and by the end of the day I had every program I could imagine needing.

Sadly, my games were gone, my girlfriends were gone, my guy friends were gone, my recipes were gone. All I had were canned programs. BUT, I had meals I could program up. True, they were not tweaked to my taste, but no more fishing. I had a program for a hot shower. I had a program to clean my clothes. I had a program I could sleep in.

For the first time since the earthquake I was now able to get enough calories, get some variety in my diet, and get things to drink without the hassle of boiling water. Life was getting better!

Two days of sunshine later I fired the first printer up and it worked. So did the others.

I hauled one printer, one HC, all the disks, the hand truck, a very good tool box I had picked up along the way, and a few basics back to where the pickup was.

Before I got there I decided that a bigger truck might not be a bad idea. I biked right into the car dealer’s shop with my wagon load of supplies. I unloaded everything in the showroom and just pondered for a while.

Hm. I decided I wanted the kind of truck that moved furniture if I could find one that was empty or nearly so.

The next day I biked around until I found one. It was half full of furniture but I just dumped the stuff out and moved it out of the way. I set everything up in the warehouse and started working to get the truck going.

Next time: Getting the truck working. Tweaking programs for the printer and the HC.

[Wayne23]

1/1/2033: We opened against the only ranked team in conf., there. We lost by 10. Then we won at home.

9-2, 1-1.

1/15: 12-3, 4-2, RPI #31. Tied for 3rd. We’re playing well. Ping and Barr are leading the O, with a lot of help from Seal, and the guards are taking care of the ball.

1/29: 15-3, 7-2, RPI #21. In a tie for 3rd, one back of 1st. +10.7 PPG, +6.1 RBs, +4.8 TOs. All 7 guys who get major minutes are playing really well.

[Wayne23]

August, 2127: I told you about the day the earthquake took everything but my life from me, but I skimmed over a lot of things. First was my fatigue. When I got to shore after rowing maybe the equivalent of 3-5 miles, I literally fell on my face. I forced myself to get up and to bring the boat out of the water and to secure it and then I fell on my face again. I was exhausted, my throat was totally parched, and I was hungry, really hungry. But I knew I was fighting for my life, and I knew I had to find a way to get some water into me. The walk to town was agonizing. It was dark, I was soaking wet and shivering even though it wasn’t really cold, and every step was a considerable effort due to my exhaustion. All along the way my body was telling me to just give up, to just lie down and go to sleep, and if I died, I died. I’m pretty sure that if I had listened I would have died.

My hands were covered with blisters from the rowing, and they burned like hell since many of the blisters had broken.

Everything I did in town took more will power and discipline than I would have believed I had. And when that water had finally boiled for 22 minutes (I wanted to be sure), and cooled enough for me to drink it, although I burned my mouth because I really couldn’t wait any longer, it was the most wonderful thing that had ever been. That water was the nectar of the gods.

When I woke the next morning I stood up, and immediately fell to the ground. My muscles- all of them, hurt too much to support my weight at first. Eventually, I did get up, did get my supplies together, did walk to the boat.

When I realized I didn’t have bait or lures I was more devastated than I have ever been in my life. And because of my exhaustion I wasn’t thinking straight. I was at the shore with a marina right there. There were bait shops. I could have found lures. But my exhausted brain never figured that out so I walked back to town and then back to the water.

I think the rain that struck on the third day, and stayed for four days, may have saved me. The entire first days consisted of me forcing myself to keep doing, to do one more thing, and then one more, and then one more. I was moving like a zombie, too exhausted for my brain to function. The rest I was able to get during those four days didn’t completely revive me, but sleeping 12-16 hours a day did an awful lot for me.

What did revive me? Not much for the first couple of weeks. Once I got the printer, the HC, and the truck set up, and once I found a place to stay and set it up, I was able to get proper rest, and was able to get myself back together. Thank goodness I was in excellent shape. And yes, I know, you’re thinking about my age. Sorry, I’m not ready to tell about that yet, but assume I had the body and mind of a healthy 50 year old and you won’t be far from the truth. But I was damaged by my ordeal. I have not yet returned to the energy level I had before the quake. I’m not certain that I ever will. I lack stamina, and my strength is diminished even now.

It wound up taking four days to get the truck going. Hey, the newest trucks are about 60 years old, and they’ve been sitting around for most of that time. All in all it is all but unbelievable that I got the thing going at all. Only the fact that a real revolution in vehicle tire design and manufacture had occurred allowed me to have tires at all. Well, there’s also the fact that an old fashioned car battery would have been irretrievably dead, with leaking, dried acid all over the place. The truck’s solar cells and batteries were fine. I managed to find hoses- ALL the hoses were rotted out, of course, so they all had to be replaced with new ones. Let’s hear it for plastic. The new hoses were fine because they were sealed in plastic.

Anyway, I worked like mad, and I made a lot of bicycle trips to find the parts I needed, but eventually I had a truck that worked.

The next order of business was to find a place to stay. By the third day I’d been making mental notes regarding a temporary home, and on day 5 I settled on one and moved in. I knew I wanted to figure out where to live. Where, in the whole country, was there likely to be the fewest earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados, blizzards… I’d be using 60 year old data, but that was the next order of business.

But once the truck was ready, and I was moved in, I was NOT planning to spend all day working, researching… I needed to relax and pace myself, and I did.

Next time: Deciding on an area of the country to live in. Pace, health. Tweaking programs.

[Wayne23]

2/5: We beat 1st place in conf., #14 ranked Temple, here, 67-66. We were down 13 early in the 2nd when Trip, Hall, and Ping all started knocking down threes. We wound up with 15, 11 in the 2nd half. 8 TOs for the game. Hell of a game! Then we won by 4 in OT on the road in another real battle. Dave Jack hit a three with 1.8 left in regulation and then we took over in OT, scoring the first 7. 17, 12 for Seal, 11, 12 for Ping, 3 others with 11 or more. +8 RBs.

17-3, 9-2, tied for 2nd, 1 back of UConn. And maybe the best news of all, for the 1st time in program history we’re ranked, #25. RPI #17.

Our 7 man rotation continues to get it done.

2/19: We’re hot! 21-4, 13-3, 10-1 in our last 11, #21, RPI #17, in a 3 way tie for 1st.

2/26: We end the regular season on a 12-1 run. 23-4, 15-3, #19, RPI #20. Alone in 1st place. +10.6 PPG, +5.6 RBs, +4.7 TOs. All 5 starters in double figures, and great play by #6 and #7. We have already met all of the goals my A. D. set for us.

[Wayne23]

September, 2127: I’ve been doing all of that relax, pace myself stuff, but I still feel like I have lost a whole lot of ground physically, and maybe even a little mentally. I tire easily, and when I get tired I can’t do anything that requires keen mental alertness. At that point, if I’m not napping, I read, or play a game- not an HC game that involves my physical presence within the game, but a computer type game. I don’t play “shoot ‘em up” games. The ones I play involve some sort of problem solving, but again, they are not physically active. It’s hard to say whether I will bounce back. I’m hopeful, but it has been just under two months since the earthquake. Oh well, I’ll make the best of it and hope for further improvement.

One thing I’ve done, and I’m just about finished, is research on where the safest area of the country to relocate might be. That’s looking more and more like west central Massachusetts. No earthquakes, cool temps, some snow, but after climate change blizzards are rare. Hurricanes increased after climate change but they are still rare. Since I don’t plan to be very mobile, just enough to keep the truck in shape,

I’m thinking that my next big task will be preparing to move there.

I spend a lot of my time these days tweaking both 3D printer programs and HC programs.

I print out things like clothes, tools, and things that come up that I need, that I don’t feel like chasing all over to find. Mostly, since I have every disk imaginable, and I have them VERY well organized, and very carefully stored, I have what I need without tweaking. But there are a few things. I’ll mention those as they come up in this narrative.

HC programs are the real issue. As you know, I lost everything to the earthquake.

Food is important. I get all of my meals from the HC, either as prepared meals, or as ingredients that I use to prepare my own meals. And I like what I like. I had every meal, every side dish, every dessert that I enjoyed properly programmed, but now it’s just generic stuff. So every time I try a new food now I need to tweak it to my taste. It’s going to be a very long process since there are some things I eat regularly, but lots of things I only eat once in a great while. I’ve found a way to get the HC to produce a very small portion of a given food so that I can taste it, adjust the program, try again, taste again, and so forth. Once I get it just right I save the recipe and catalogue it and I’m all set with that one.

Here again, my record keeping and storing is meticulous.

As complex and time consuming as food tweaking is, it’s nothing when compared with some other things, such as Hologames, and Holocompanions.

Hologames are, of course, the total immersion games where I fully enter the game as myself, or as a character, and try to meet the game’s objective. That can be anything. As I said early on in this narrative there were six of these games I played regularly, and a whole bunch of others I played occasionally. I now need to tweak all of them to get them back to what they were. I’ll be doing that for a very long time, and it’s frustrating. I just want to play the games. But I’m a “get it right” kind of a guy, and that means that tweak I must!

Then there are people, “Holohumans,” if you will.

You remember that I had three “girlfriends.” Each had been very painstakingly put together. The physical aspect was important, but less so than the personality, likes and dislikes, interests… of each; and this is about a lot more than sex, so it’s multidimensional. My three women were exactly as I wanted them and I miss them terribly. Okay, they weren’t real. But in most senses they were completely real to me.

Rather than try to recreate them, which I recognized would be impossible, I decided to start over, and to create three new girlfriends, none of which were more than somewhat like any of the originals.

Here again, it will probably be years before I’m finished tweaking. It took years to create the originals.

Friends are a bit easier, since nearly all of the friends I create are used in 1-2 particular contexts- people to go on adventures with me, companions and buddies to play certain games, go on trips, come on adventures, hit the bars in particular times, places, and contexts… I have two guys who are deeper friends than that, and they’ll take almost as much time as my girlfriends. But all of the other friends will be a lot easier.

Other people- My Holo-PCP was perfect. She knew me so well, and knew how to take care of me. And I never had to wait for an appointment. Getting to that level is, again, going to take some time. Same with my dentist, and with the other specialists I see. My age isn’t a great factor, but there are things that need looking after, so these people are important.

Then there’s my barber, my waiters and waitresses, my fictional characters, my- well, you get it. Oh, my auto mechanic, who I “wake” when I get stuck fixing a vehicle. As you know, Holopeople can’t leave the HC, but I can go in there with a part, or with a “how to” question. Same with repair people for anything else that I use outside of the HC. The stuff I use inside the HC is easier; I just wake the proper person and let her/him do the job!

Finally, adventures, travels… If I want to ski jump, ride the rapids, hang glide, mountain climb, visit certain places where the visit involves adventure, I tweak the program certain ways to maximize the experience, or to be sure it’s as safe as I can make it, while leaving room for the risk taking I feel I need in order to enhance the experience. That takes time.

I should mention “Holospace.” The HC is just under 6 feet long by about 3 ¾ feet wide, and 7 feet high. Once a program is engaged, Holospace kicks in and the person (formerly it could be people as well, up to 6 could jam themselves in tightly- they all had to be in there at the same time) finds himself in as much space as is needed. I haven’t a clue how this works, but the engineers who designed this figured out the science and tech necessary to make it happen. So this roughly 6x4x7 space can include everything from a small room to a galaxy and more.

I’ll report in on all of this from time to time. It’s not going away any time soon.

Next time: Moving