The year is 2033. Carl Blotts of New Ohio is
calling for a mass book deletion to be held at the local jetpack landing zone
this Thursday. The 56 year-old moon philosopher is demanding that all copies of
Dr. Leo Hackett’s much talked about book “Mars Has No Marriage Laws” be deleted
from computers and e-readers during a protest that is estimated to attract 7
real people, 19 robots, and 6.7 million online people via web cams.
"I want the good people of this planet, and the so-so people of the Moon
to take their fingers and click 'delete' with all their might," said
Blotts. "And then, when the dialogue box pops up asking, 'Are you sure you
want to delete this item?' we will all press OK. And we shall press OK with great ferocity!" Blotts added that
his followers would then need to empty their trash folder, and perhaps set fire to their computers, or at least restart them
to make sure it was a clean deletion.
Leroy Tibitts has already said that he will skip
work on Thursday to join in the deletion, saying, "This is going to be fantastic. It's time we sent a message to the people of
Mars." Tibitts has even taught his six-year-old daughter how to delete a file. "I don’t let her delete anything large. I’m not stupid. But she can delete
small files, like low-res pictures of my cat. She’s good at it too. She’s going
to have a blast on Thursday. We even copied the book to a different computer so
that we can delete it twice."
Some in the community are not so thrilled. "I read about mass deletions, but
I’d never thought there’d be one in my own town," said space farmer Allison
Jackson. She is currently organizing a counter-protest in which people will
save the book to an external hard drive, and then store that drive in a
temperature-controlled room. There is also talk of using extremely thin slices of tree pulp to somehow transfer
the text and preserve it in a physical form that doesn't require electricity or
magic crystals, but details are sketchy.
Dr. Leo Hacketts simply laughs at the planned deletion party. "You can delete
the file. But you can’t delete the idea. Besides the book exists on servers
throughout the country. The only thing these loons are deleting is a shortcut
icon that retrieves the book from the servers."
Blotts isn’t deterred. “If the book is saved on servers, then we will delete
those servers.” When asked how he would accomplish this, Blotts said something
about freedom of speech and pointed to a huge faded
tattoo on his left arm that showed the iconic image of Arizona digging itself underground to form
its own society called Cave World. "This is what it’s all about, man," said
Blotts.
Cameron Algee, Blotts space lawyer, is defending his client’s actions, saying
book deletion is protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution and the
Thirty-Fifth Adjustment of the Moon Pact. “Deleting a book isn’t a crime. It’s
an expression.” He frowned energetically. "Like
that," he said. Algee recently made headlines when he defended
Melissa Jones, a young woman who deleted a jpeg of the American flag on the
steps of Capitol Hill. "Deletion is a
natural act, like secretion, excretion, and all the other cretions," he
said. "Do you want to live in a world where someone can say whether you
can or can't accrete or be discrete?" He paused. "I didn't think so,"
he concluded.
Dan Bergstein--what can we say about his duckpins skills, when his scores speak
so forcefully for themselves?
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