Ongoing Webnovel: Goddess of Computation

Ongoing Webnovel: Goddess of Computation

There's not much description of the looks of the characters in the web novel but here's an image to spice your imagination who is a goddess of her own - Tessa Fowler.

Since last September or so, I have been writing the online novel Goddess of Computation. Though I stopped for a few months earlier this year, I have picked up at least a weekly update since August 2020. Check it out when you get the chance!

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/27016/goddess-of-computation

Synopsis

Doing a coding assignment last minute, Ada Newth, a computer science student, fell asleep and woke up in a different world where she was informed by the System that she was randomly selected from an infinite number of universes to be a Goddess of Computation.

The trouble is that she's barely passing her first class and now she's meant to be a Goddess? Worse, she can't understand why she's needed in this world where the technology level is about equivalent to that of Earth's Middle Ages. Clearly, most people can barely read or count and even the other gods are of no help. In fact, most of them are rather dangerous idiots. If she can't convince them to help her change the status quo, she'll just have to gather her allies and followers and make some major changes to the system.

[Craigslist] Dream Post for Third Book

Just posted this on Craigslist today:

https://houston.craigslist.org/crg/d/houston-dream-material-for-new-book/7014097426.html

My name is Shen and I am working on my third book which is focused on dreams planned to be published in early 2020. I am currently collecting dreams (either dreams at night or life aspirations) from people around me. I would like to talk to you at a cafe and learn about what you have experienced or wish to experience.

If you're interested, please reach me via this email indicating your availability on the weekend. Saturdays work best for me but I can accommodate Friday evenings. Also note that though the postal code is put down as 77004 I have other locations in mind.

[Poetry] New book out! Requiem: The Space Between Words

My new book called Requiem: The Space Between Words is now available on Amazon.

The second book of poetry is a collection of poems covering inner space and outer space written by Shen Ge in the years from 2015 to 2019.

[Poetry] Photos Batch 1

Visual Poetry

[Story] Bug Priest

Originally written on July 7, 2015, this story was updated on July 24, 2019.

Bug Priest

Bob sat up in the hospital bed. He had just woken up yesterday and didn't plan to sleep his life away. His head still hurt like hell but at least he could feel the pain now. From what the doctor told him, he was in a coma for about a few days after the accident and couldn't feel anything.

Looking around the room, he saw that he was by himself. It looked like an ordinary boring hospital room. There was a pile of fresh flowers and some get-well cards on the table next to his bed. He was too tired to read any of them and frankly he didn't care to since most of them contained the same platitudes. It's funny how people who don’t care to talk to you for years suddenly feel an urge to check up on you when something bad happens to you.

Bob shook his head. Now's no time to get riled up, he thought. He tried to remember what caused him to be in this state but he still couldn't remember. All he remembered was taking a walk near his house late one night and the next thing he knew he was here. He was told that a neighbor of his found him collapsed unconscious by the side of the road. The ambulance came and took him to the hospital where he was in no better state until yesterday.

The police told him it probably wasn't a robbery. There wasn't anything taken from him. His wallet, phone, and money were all there. The hospital did a battery of tests on him but so far uncovered that he was just perfectly healthy. Apparently, he has just mysteriously collapsed and just as mysteriously woken up a day later.

[Story] Farmer Brown and the Cow

via GIPHY

Farmer Brown and the Cow

Farmer Brown woke up feeling mighty fine. It was a bright sunny day outside. The cows were mooing, chickens were crowing, and the birds were chirping. There isn't a day better than hearing nature's calls, he thought as he got up from his simple wooden bed. He didn't brush his teeth or comb his hair since milking the cows gotta be more important than personal hygiene.

The eggs and bacon on the table were still warm when he got to the small table. Guess his wife thought of him this morning before she left for town with her friends to do the kind of shopping that only females like. Might as well eat the food or else they be going back to the chicken and pigs as their feed, he thought. Farmer Brown chewed his food deliberately and slowly. It'll be nice to have a glass of milk but there ain't any milk around until he goes and milks the cows.

That's right. He gotta milk the cows. He gobbled up the rest of his food and walked the twenty steps or so to the outdoor pens where the cows were kept. They seemed awfully quiet today though they knew what was gonna happen. Farmer Brown thought it a bit strange but thought nothing more of it.

After he milked the cows, he fetched his shotgun. There were still a few cows left but those are the old fat ones that's eating up more grass than making milk. They gotta go and maybe their bodies can fetch at least a fair price for their meat. His gun was just itching to do the trick.

The sun was shining and the birds were chirping. The cows weren't going to go anywhere and neither would he. Farmer Brown decided he's just gonna sit down and appreciate the fine scenery for a bit to catch his breath. He found some shade under an oak tree near the biggest fat cow. He put his head down and breathed deep to regain his breathe. He looked up a minute later and saw the big cow. She was the first to go. Her name was Bessie and she used to be a prize milk cow. Now she's just a lazy old bum who doesn't make any milk but instead spends a lot of her time eating grass and fooling around with the younger cows doing things only cows would do.

[Story] Romance at the Bagel Shop

First wrote this story back in ~2008 as a joke. This has never been posted before so whatever you see is the original drafted back when I was an undergraduate. Not intended as the rating of R but you decide.

Romance at the Bagel Shop

           

            It was like any other Saturday when Sharon walked into the bagel shop. She had the job for a few weeks now and work as always was quite boring. She got along well enough with her coworkers but she found them almost as dull as the taste of the bagel she ate every Saturday morning. There was little expectation from her that folding fermented edibles for most of the day would be exciting but at least she had thought that she could pass her time by chatting with some of her coworkers. She was wrong. Since she couldn’t strike a decent conversation with them, she stuck with her personality and made witty remarks. But this didn’t help either for every joke she made convinced them more that this girl was weird and should be avoided.

            Most of the day passed like the dreary norm. Customers came and went without a care for the boredom of the employees. Though she has been there only a few weeks, she had realized by the third time that the customers thought the workers at the bakery as dry as the food themselves. Sharon got more attention than most but they were mostly from pubescent teenagers or overweight college kids. A few times she saw scrawny nerdy college kids glancing at her. They were generally too shy to look at her directly. Once she had been stared at for a full ten minutes or so by a fat bald guy that must have been the age of her father sitting by the window slowly chewing his sandwich. That was the most attention she had ever gotten at the bagel shop and it was also the creepiest thing that she had ever experienced in her life. Luckily for her, he was not a regular.

She was only too glad that the day was over. Since the manager was out today, she had to close shop. Suddenly, there was the clinging of bells as she heard the door open.

            “We’re closed for business,” said Sharon without looking up as she wiped the last table.

            “Can’t you take one last customer?” she heard a pleasant sound drift over to her. It sounded like chimes tinkling from an ocean breeze in midsummer. It was melodious and contained a certain feminine quality. Yet, it was definitely not feminine.

[Poetry] Summer Shower

Summer Shower

Subdued light reflects hazily from glass

Rain passing in sheets on asphalt streets

Down these red-green torrential arteries

Hard metal canisters of soft bodies coasting by

Warm rainbow sewers clogged with leaves

A summer shower for the city and me

[Poetry] Inner Demons

Inner Demons

Scars are temporary we all like to say

Oh just a minor bruise; part of life’s cruise

Yet, some wounds are more than just skin deep

They cut past hard dry bones to the soft wet heart

And here, they fertilize the seeds of inner demons

I know – when I seek myself and turn people away

My inner demons giggle and come out to play

My mind their playground, my heart their banquet

Their play a blinding maelstrom running rampant

A torture of tortuous feelings –

pain, fear, anger, sadness, shame, guilt

Are these demons saying truth or lies?

I clear my thoughts and close my eyes

Who knows where inner peace lies?

Summer turns into fall as time flies

When is the season for me to rise?

[Story] Girl Born in 2039

Originally submitted for a Tec Prize which was via the challenge site Herox.com, I put it here for anyone to read. I did not win but it was a good experience.

Girl Born in 2039

I had lived a privilege life. The only nightmare that I ever saw was in virtual reality games and when they became too horrifying I could always disconnect and watch a comedy. It took the end of the world to snatch the veil from in front of face. I felt and saw for the first time what most of my fellow humans endured almost every single day – a society where the amount of money not only determined your social status but also your health and basic human rights. I laughed sadly as I dug into my pockets and pulled out the only money I had which was barely six dollars. A US dollar was mostly worthless these days so unless I steal again I would die from hunger.

The start of the downfall of my life began surprisingly enough on graduation day. The beginning never anticipated a tragedy. The year was 2057 and I was about to graduate from high school. I live in a world where we have virtual reality worlds, artificial intelligence, personal flying vehicles, self-driving cars, quantum computers and full-body tissue engineering. This is not to mention the space hotels in low earth orbit which even the average middle class citizen can afford to spend a few days. It was even cheaper than flying to Fiji sometimes. The first fully underwater city off the coast of the United Arab Emirates has also just been built last year. We, China, and Russia all have permanent settlements on the moon though a trip there was still beyond the price tag of most folks. We don’t have a presence on Mars yet but we do have an advance research base. I do feel that this is a wondrous time to be alive.

Entrepreneurship: Some Ideas

Recently, I have been rediscovering my creativity. Over the span of last year, my creative spirit has dipped, probably due to a combination of tedious managerial and organizational duties I held as well as a persistent nagging financial worry. Now, I have reduced my boredom and anxiety allowing my mind to dedicate a portion of the day to dream and think of new projects to pursue in the future.

I have listed out the creative ideas which I plan to work on in the next decade:

1. Predict Plan Website (Time Management Tool)
I started this out a while ago but stopped on it since I realized it's far more difficult than anticipated. I want to create a web application that can take your schedule and your mood which matches your schedule and analyze it through some algorithms to offer you the best schedule for tomorrow or even several days in advance. I realized after two months of working on it that I need to get another web developer to help me as well as talking to psychologists and management experts to actually develop the algorithm.

Income will be from advanced user subscriptions which will charge monthly.

2. Funny Survival Book (Print Information)
This will be a survival book which is also funny. Most survival books are terribly boring. When I'm dying or close to dying, I will like to be able to laugh at a last funny joke. I want to write a similar book with humor like Max Brooks' Zombie Survival Guide.

Income will be from book sales and collecting royalties. Originally, it can be sold via Amazon Kindle.

3. Subliminal Website (Social Media Website)
This website will allow users to upload a stream of images and one line of text. The image algorithm will then take the images and text and combine them in a way that the original message is lost to the conscious mind. However, the subconscious mind will still be able to decipher the message. Users can then take these messages and spread them like a virus on the web impacting millions with the hidden messages. I will need to talk to some cognitive scientists and visual perception researchers to develop the algorithm.

Income will be from advanced user subscriptions which will allow more images to be uploaded and no restriction on length of text.

4. Bottle Rockets for Kids (Social Entrepreneurship)
This social organization will help kids in poor neighborhoods build bottle rockets. I saw an inspiring video a little while ago on poor kids in slums who were so inspired by playing music made from junk. While I was sitting at the airport in France a month or so ago drinking from a water bottle, I thought to myself: Why can't the same inspiration for space can't be translated to these kids? This organization will send rocket scientists to poor slums around the world and teach them how to build bottle rockets from empty bottles and junk.

Income will be from government and private foundation donations as a nonprofit.

5. Slow Time Choices (Entertainment/Film)
Time shouldn't always go this fast. There's plenty of movies which show action scenes in bullet time. Just look at the Matrix or any John Woo film. However, what about having an entire film which plays at slow motion and yet doesn't annoy the viewer since it's so slow? What I want to do is take slow motion in short sections and string them together. For instance, the first scene can be a glass vase falling from a table crashing onto a marble floor. The second scene is a guy running  across the room towards the vase to catch it before it falls to the ground and breaks. The third scene is a closeup of the second hand on the guy's watch while he is running. These three scenes alternate between each other. The purpose of this project is to promote the idea of stopping and appreciating the nature of time.

Income will be from a crowdfunding site such as Kickstarter.