(Start with Part One)

I watched the two of them sleeping while I waited for the blood test to finish. Little chests rising and falling. So adorable.

And one of them was my Jacob.

He didn’t look like me at all, of course. He’d swapped bodies a few times already. That’s why it’d been so hard to track him down.

There are ways to tell that a body has been swapped. You can’t access any memories, so meeting old friends or family is always awkward. They’d trained us in some techniques used by stage magicians to fake being able to read minds so we could pass as the original person. That’d only get you so far, though.

The chronic sickness was another way to know. No antibiotics would cure that.

Turns out the host bodies start making cells of the swapper’s blood type. Eventually the body is making two types of everything, incompatible with each other and fighting for resources. That’s what makes us sick, why we have to leave every body we swap into.

So if you test someone and find two blood types, you know the body has been swapped. I was a little proud of myself for figuring that out. No need to question every kid, no need to wait for them to get sick before moving in. Just a little blood, a quick test, and you knew. Cheap, easy, and objective.

The test finished. I checked both tubes looking for the telltale signs of two incompatible blood types.

There. I set the tubes back down, gazed back over at the boys, and started crying.

I’d found him. The one on the right, the one calling himself Marcus. That was my son.

(Start with Part One)

The man in the charcoal grey suit smiled at me. “True. But the FBI has clear jurisdiction here, and they’re turning the case over to me. Trust me, you don’t want to fight this one.”

“Fuck you.”

The man - he’d introduced himself as Agent Blake, but he was The Man to me - nodded as if I’d just said good morning. “I’ll need all your files on the case, of course. And access to your witness.”

“My what, now?”

He glanced at his smartphone. “I believe her name is Mary Rogers?”

“That’s our suspect, asshole. She didn’t witness anything she didn’t do.”

He grinned again. His teeth were way too bright. And even. “Right. Silly mistake. Suspect. I’d like to talk to her, please.”

I sighed. “Yeah, sure.”

I led him to Interrogation Room 2 - the smallest one - then called for Mary to be brought over.

He poked his head out of the door. “You will, of course, not record anything said in this room, or watch behind the false mirror?”

I tried to smile at him. Failed. “Of course.”

He nodded once, then ducked back inside.

I went in to the observation room to turn off the recording equipment before Mary got there.

We had plenty of footage of Mary already. Mary crying when accused of kidnapping those kids. Mary taking the psych eval, and coming through as a scared but perfectly normal person.

Mary insisting she didn’t remember anything of the last three weeks.

She shuffled in from the stairwell, escorted by a uniform. She kept her eyes locked on the floor in front of her, raising her head only to cough. She looked better than when we’d brought her in: not as pale, and able to walk without stumbling. Still had that cough, though.

The uniform escorted her into the interrogation room, then came back out half a minute later. Agent Blake didn’t want anyone to see or hear his talk with Mary, it seemed. The uniform stood sentry next to the door, thumbs hooked in his belt.

Mary and Blake stayed in the room over an hour. Mary came out with her head up, looking around like she’d never seen the place before. She didn’t cough once as the uniform escorted her downstairs.

Agent Blake poked his head out of the door again, waved for me to come inside.

“What did you find out?” I asked. I settled into one of the hard chairs as he shut the door.

“Nothing I can tell you about,” he replied, taking the other chair. “This is above your pay grade.”

I gritted my teeth, but didn’t say anything. He smiled.

“Now, I need you to go over what happened when you caught her.”

“It’s all in our report. Or don’t you know how to read?”

“I’m quite familiar with reading, Detective, but sometimes verbal questions are best. Now, walk me through that day, step by step.”

Just to piss him off, I started at the beginning, with my regular morning BM. I moved on to talking about traffic, how some jerk had cut me off before my exit that day. I went through how well the morning coffee tasted, the dead leads Lacey and I had followed through most of the day, then how we finally got the address of the last set of plates. How we checked the owner’s background, canvassed the building before getting a warrant for it that evening. How we entered Mary’s place, chased her down, then brought her in.

Through everything, all the mundane details, Blake sat in his chair, fully at attention. He didn’t take any notes, didn’t yawn, even nodded along with me when I bitched about my commute.

That pissed me off even more.

He didn’t stop me until I got to our first interrogation session with Mary. “Thank you, Detective, that’s far enough. Tell me, what happened to the owner of the apartment you and Mary barged into?”

I rolled my eyes. “I already told you. She was pretty shaken up, but there hadn’t been any damage. We talked with her a while till she calmed down, then left.”

“Who talked with her? You?”

I shook my head. “I was busy getting Mary back to a squad car. I think Lacey spoke with her, maybe a uniform or two.”

Agent Blake stood. “I’ll need to talk with anyone that had contact with that girl.”

I sighed. “Really? Look, I can tell you everything you need to know about her. She was this tall, maybe early 20s-”

“Can you tell me her name?”

I blinked. “No, I don’t remember. Lacey might know.”

He smiled. “Bring her in here for me, so I can ask her, will you?”

I swore and stormed out. Crazy feds.

Turned out Lacey didn’t remember the girl’s name. Neither did any of the uniforms that had talked to her. Apparently they’d asked her her name first thing, but she’d been so freaked out she hadn’t answered.

Blake just smiled at that.

Two hours later, he slapped a warrant for her arrest on my desk. “Her name is Daniela Hernandez.”

(Start with Part One)

I was careful this time. I picked a runner, someone who could last long enough for me to find Jacob. Someone with a flexible job, no current boyfriend, and family out of town.

Someone that wouldn’t leave any tracks if she went out searching every night.

They almost had me, would’ve caught me if that girl hadn’t opened the door. Lucky break, there. Swapped just in time.

I was still shaking when they dragged the old body away. So close.

But I’ve got a new body now, and a new name. Plenty of fight left in this one for grabbing the last two.

And some other advantages. They took all my notes, all my equipment. According to my new body’s id, though, I’m pre-med at UCSD. Should be able to score replacements there.

I’d hoped to catch the last two one by one, spaced out at least a week apart. But if the cops know, that means the Department will be here soon.

If they find me, I’ll never see Jacob again.

(Start with Part One)

When we questioned her about the kids, she insisted she had no idea what we were talking about. Lacey leaned on her hard, shoving pictures of each kid in front of Mary, yelling at her to talk about why she took those children.

That only made her cry, though. Eventually she threw up, all over the interrogation room’s floor. We moved her to a holding cell while we cleaned up the mess.

Lacey came to see me after, sat on the edge of my desk. She looked frustrated.

“Get any on you, Lacey?”

She checked her shoes, shook her head. “No, thank God.” She sighed. “If she’s faking being sick, she’s missing out on an acting career.”

I nodded. “Yeah. Funny, none of the kids have gotten sick. You’d think she’d have given it to ‘em.”

She shrugged. “Could have just gotten it herself.”

“True,” I agreed. “Think it’s messed with her memory, too?”

Lacey chuckled. “Now that, she’s faking,” she said, sliding off my desk. “Forensics is going over her place now, and the bike. There’s going to be plenty of evidence to help her remember.”

I nodded. “She hasn’t asked for a lawyer yet, has she?”

Lacey shook her head.

“Good. Let’s go ahead and get a preliminary psych eval, then. While we’ve got her here.”

Lacey raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t it the DA’s job to worry about the insanity plea?”

I grinned. “Humor me.”

“All right. Go check if they’ve finished pulling all those photos off the stalker wall for me, will you?”

“Sure thing.”

She went back to her desk, and I headed downstairs to Evidence.

Something was seriously wrong with this case. Everything pointed to us having the right woman in custody - the photos in the closet, the bike, the needles we’d found in the apartment.

But the perp wasn’t reacting right. She didn’t have Dahmer’s inhuman stare, or Manson’s crazy one. She didn’t even act like she was hiding something. It was like we’d picked up some soccer mom and accused her of plotting to kill the President. She acted like she’d never even thought about doing what the evidence told me she’d done.

I hoped the shrink would be able to make sense of it.

(Start with Part One)

I waited one heartbeat, two, three. No answer.

The cheap lock gave easily when I kicked it. One more kick opened the door wide enough to see the entire studio apartment.

I went over the potential hotspots: kitchen to the right, bathroom on the left, balcony just past the kitchen. Gun held out in front of me, I ran to the right, along the living room wall. Lacey went left.

No one in the kitchen. I looked over at Lacey coming out of the bathroom. She shook her head. No one there, either.

Shit. That left the balcony, or nothing.

The balcony door was closed. Lacey slid it open while I watched for signs of movement outside, pistol ready.

As soon as it was open I hurried through, gun pointed to the right, towards the balcony corner we couldn’t see from inside. Other than a few recycling bins, it was empty.

“She’s not here.” I said it out loud, just to cover my disappointment. We’d finally managed to come up with a suspect from one of the plates: athletic woman that lived alone, kept weird hours, owned a red Suzuki bike. Neighbors said she was usually home this time of the afternoon. We’d hoped to grab her, finally put a lid on this case.

Wasn’t meant to be.

I went back inside. Lacey was already poking around the living room section of the apartment, checking the magazines left on the coffee table, pulling a cigarette butt out of the ashtray for later DNA testing.

There were two closets, one beside the area she’d turned into her bedroom, the other along the wall facing the bathroom. The first was mostly open already, filled with an assortment of women’s clothes.

The second one held a goldmine of evidence.

I had to turn the bathroom lights on to get a good look inside. The closet doors folded almost all the way against the wall, leaving plenty of room for a small desk, a chair, and hundreds of photos and news clippings lining the walls.

Lacey let out a low whistle when she saw it. “Looks like she’s been doing this a while.”

I nodded. “And not just here. These clippings are all from Arizona, those are from Texas, and those are - Jesus Christ - those are from Virginia.”

Lacey arced an eyebrow.

“The Trick-or-Treat kidnappings? From last October?”

She continued to stare at me blankly.

I sighed. “A dozen kids went missing around Halloween in the Shenandoah. I’ve still got family up there. My dad joined one of the search parties.”

“My god. Did they find the kids?”

“Yeah, they found ‘em. Wandering along a country road, scared out of their minds, with no memory of how they got there.”

Lacey’s radio crackled. “Suspect entering the building. Shall we intercept?”

She unhooked the unit from her belt. “Negative,” she barked into it. “We’ll get her from here. You cover the exits in case she flees.”

“Roger that.”

I moved into the kitchen and crouched behind the counter. Lacey took a position against the wall where the opening door would hide her.

A few minutes later, we heard a racking cough from outside the door, then keys jangling and the lock turning.

As soon as I heard the door swing open, I popped up, gun in hand. “San Diego Police! Put your hands in the air where I can see them!”

The woman coming in - blonde, in her 30s, wearing a red leather jacket - dropped the bag of groceries she was carrying and ran out the door.

I swore. Lacey called down to our backup while I hurried to follow the suspect.

Right out the door to the hall, then left, my heart pounding in my chest, yelling at her to stop. Then down two flights of stairs, into another hallway.

I was catching up with her. She looked back, saw me getting closer, gritted her teeth.

Down another flight of stairs then, and right down another hallway. She was headed for the back. I knew we had the exit covered, but I wanted to catch this one. I pushed myself to move faster.

Almost to the next stairwell. Movement to my right - someone opening a door. I yelled at whoever it was to stay inside, but it was too late.

The suspect pushed into the apartment, started to slam the door behind her.

I dove for it, made contact just before the door shut, pushed back. I heard a high-pitched scream on the inside, then the resistance against me went slack.

I tumbled into the room. A college girl was standing on a couch, screaming and crying. The suspect - Mary, I told myself, the woman that took those kids is named Mary - was laying on the floor, coughing.

I cuffed her before she could stand and started reading her her rights.

“No more kids for you, you sick fuck,” I whispered in her ear.

(Start with Part One)

I’m too close to go just yet, though. I’ve narrowed it down to two. Just two more catches, and I’ll know.

I’ll have my son back.

Those bastards pretending to be doctors told me he was dead. Lied right to my face. Kept me doped up so I wouldn’t resist, wouldn’t know what was really happening.

Had to swap to an orderly’s body to find out the truth. Just 15 minutes walking around: that’s all it took to learn the hospital was a jail, and my son was being raised by someone else. Someone they had picked.

I didn’t stay long after that. Swapped the orderly for a nurse, the nurse for a cop, and the cop for a string of truckers to follow my son’s trail.

Now I’m almost there, almost to him. Just gotta keep this body together for another day or so. Maybe three.

I can swap out once I’ve found him. He’ll understand. After all, he’s just like me.

(Start with Part One)

“I took the liberty of going through the footage,” she announced as I came in. She waved me over and spread out some glossy photographs on her desk. “We’ve got shots of three different red bikes at that light in the last two weeks. Two of them multiple times.”

“Plates?” I asked, afraid the answer would be no.

She beamed at me. “Tech came through for once, we got plates on all three. We’re running ‘em down now.”

“Wow. You’re beautiful, Lacey.”

She nodded. “And smart.” I laughed. “What’d you dig up at the Walker’s?”

I shook my head. “Mostly nothing. Kid saw a red bike, all right, even gave me a drawing - " I showed her the sketch - “but that’s it. Didn’t see the driver’s face, didn’t hear their voice, nothing.”

“That’s too bad. I’ll let you know as soon as we have names and addresses for those plates, then.”

“Thanks, Lacey.”

“You can thank me by getting me some coffee. Venti soy latte, with an extra shot.” She nodded toward the door.

“Yes, ma’am,” I replied, heading right back out. Small price to pay for a break in the case.

(Start with Part One)

It was street parking only, so it took me a good ten minutes to find an empty spot. The walk back to the house gave me time to think of the questions I wanted to ask little Justice.

Mrs. Walker answered the door, barefoot and wearing a light blouse and skirt. Small wrinkles around blue eyes.

She smiled when she saw me. “Detective Jack. Good to see you again. Please, come in.”

I did my best to smile back and followed her into the house. It felt bigger on the inside, with high ceilings and a mostly open floorplan.

I settled into an easy chair in the living room as Mrs. Walker went to fetch Justice, her bare feet brushing the hardwood floors.

They came back a short time later, hand-in-hand. Justice looked better than when I last saw him: less pale, eyes not as wide.

“Hello, Justice,” I said, offering my hand. “How have you been?”

He looked up at his mom, who nodded, before shaking my hand. “Okay,” he replied.

“Justice, could I ask you a few more questions about what happened three weeks ago?”

“I guess.” Mrs. Walker led him over to the couch, so they could sit facing me. Justice looked down at his toes, as if he’d been caught doing something bad.

“I know I asked you this last time, Justice, but do you remember anything from before you were knocked out? Anything you might have forgotten when I talked to you last time?”

He nodded.

“What’s that?”

“There was a motorcycle. A red one.”

“Ok, a red motorcycle. Was there anyone on it?”

He nodded.

“Do you know who it was?” He shook his head no. “Did you see their face?” No again.

“Justice, could you draw the motorcycle for me?”

He looked up at me then, thinking, then nodded.

I handed him my notepad and pen. He set the pad on the coffee table, then slipped off the couch onto the floor. Bending over the pad, he started sketching.

When he was satisfied, he hopped back on the couch and handed me the pad. “It looked like that.”

I checked the drawing over. The sketch was more blob than bike, but he’d tried to put indentations in certain spots, to give it some shape. It looked like it’d been a snub-nosed, compact bike, though - maybe Japanese? - not some long-necked Harley.

Again, not much. But more than I’d had before.

“Thank you, Justice. This is a good drawing; it’ll help us catch whoever hurt you.”

He nodded, looking down at his shoes again.

I stood up. “Well, thank you again, Mrs. Walker, Justice. I’d better be heading back to the station.”

Justice and I shook hands again, and he ran off back to his room.

Mrs. Walker stopped me at the door. “Do you have any more you can tell us, Detective?”

I hesitated. Could I tell her there’d been other kids? Would it make her feel better or worse?

“We have another witness that can confirm a red motorcycle and a helmeted rider in the area,” I admitted. “We’re tracking down traffic light footage to try to get a good photograph, maybe pull a license plate.”

She nodded slowly. “Okay,” she sighed. “Don’t hesitate to call if you need anything more from us.”

The door clicked shut behind me as I trudged back to my car. I hoped Lacey’d been more lucky than I had.

(Start with Part One)

I groaned. “This a real one, Lacey? Or just another groggy?”

“See for yourself.” She dropped a pile of papers on my desk. “The parents are coming in in an hour.”

I sighed and sat up in my chair. Pulled the latest stack a little closer so I could start flipping through it.

Taylor Benson, age 8, left for school at Washington Elementary at 7:30 yesterday morning. Half an hour later he showed up at home, with no memory of how he got there or why he had a cotton ball taped to the inside of his elbow. Photographs showed a small, neat hole underneath the cotton ball on the boy’s arm. A few drops of blood on the cotton matched the kid’s. No prints on the cotton ball, no witnesses saw the boy being taken, nothing explained what had happened to him.

Another damned groggy.

The third one in as many weeks, which was three too many for me. They weren’t really kidnappings, since the kids were always returned. But why take them at all? And why poke a hole in their arms?

Thank God no one had talked to the press about this. None of the parents had known each other - the first had been in Encinitas, the second in Del Mar, this was the first one downtown - so as far as they knew, it was just some random weirdness that hadn’t really hurt their kid.

Lacey tapped my desk, breaking my reverie. “The Bensons are here. Room 3.”

“Thanks.” I stood up, grabbed the Benson’s casework, and strode over to the cramped meeting room.

The Bensons looked young enough to make me feel old. Firm handshakes from both - Mrs. Benson’s toned arms meant she probably did yoga, Mr. Benson looked like a runner. Young, trim, nice clothes. They looked more puzzled than angry, shocked that something like this could happen to their kid.

“We moved to Little Italy because it was quiet,” Mrs. Benson - Tanya - explained. “Taylor could walk to school, and we both work downtown, so…”

I nodded understanding. “Can you tell me if you’ve seen anyone new, anyone strange, hanging around your building?”

Mr. Benson - Jeff - shook his head. “Not really. There’s this one guy that likes to hang out at the 7-11 and ask for change, but he’s been there for months.”

I walked them through the rest of the routine. Had they met any new people that showed an unusual interest in Taylor? Were there any bullies at school that might have wanted to scare him? Were they Russian spies whose bosses were sending them a message?

Okay, I didn’t ask that last one. But it would’ve explained a lot.

When I’d run through all my questions, I thanked them for coming in and told them we’d be in touch as soon as we knew anything. I could tell they were both frustrated, but they just nodded and left.

I took my notes and the rest of the file back to my desk. Just to see if it jarred anything, I rummaged around until I found the files on the other two groggies and flipped them open.

Justice Walker - poor kid, with a name like that he’d have a hard time at school - was the first case. 7 years old. Snatched while riding his bicycle to a friend’s house. Dropped off 45 minutes later at home. Woke up crying and shaking.

Billy Jessup, age 8. Disappeared from a playground three blocks from his house. Found at home 20 minutes later, still bleeding from the tiny hole in his arm.

I started making more notes. All the victims were white males. All about the same age. All sent home after being taken, so the perp probably knew them socially. No ransom calls.

It wasn’t much to go on, but I had to start somewhere.

My desk phone rang. It was Jeff Benson.

“I, uh, just thought of something,” he said. “Last week, Taylor told us this story about how he escaped from a crazy guy on a motorcycle. We thought he was just making it up - he’s really in to spy movies - but after yesterday–”

“Anything seems possible.” I reach for a pen and started jotting some notes. “Did Taylor tell you anything about the bike? Did he get a look at the rider?”

I heard Jeff sigh on the other end. “No. The rider had a helmet on. I think he said the bike was red?”

A red motorcycle. One more tiny piece of the puzzle. “Red motorcycle. Gotcha. Thanks for calling, Mr. Benson, every detail like that helps.”

He hung up. I strode over to Lacey’s desk just as she was hanging up the phone. “Lacey, can you pull the video from the traffic camera at India and Grape?”

She grinned. “Sure. It’ll take a couple of hours, but you’ll be busy anyway.”

“How’s that?”

She nodded at the phone. “That was Ms. Walker. Seems little Justice has just remembered something about a guy on a bike chasing him.”

“You’re right, Lacey,” I admitted as I grabbed the Walker file and my coat. “I’m gonna be out for a bit.”

I chase children. Strictly catch-and-release, though. I bag ‘em, tag ‘em, and let ‘em go.

Almost didn’t get the last one. Every time I thought I had him he darted in front of an oncoming trolley, forcing me to tip my bike over to keep from crashing into the side of the train. The third time he did that, I spent a week nursing a nasty road rash, then finally nabbed him while he was walking to school.

Turned out it was a waste of my time. All that work, and he was the wrong one.

I don’t hurt them. I’m not a pervert looking for a sick time. I just knock them out and pull a little bit of blood. I run a few tests, then drop them off at home before they wake up.

I would never hurt them, because one of these kids is mine.

After having lived through the resurrection of the music of first the 70s, then the 80s, I’m finally starting to see a revival of the music of the 90s.

Not grunge, though; something more exciting than that. Something I feel was lost in the explosion of grunge and industrial bands in the mid-90s: a more personal and experimental music, music that was quirky and strange, full of distortion, but not aggressive.

www.youtube.com/watch

I’m thinking of the time period from about 1988 through 1993, when a series of bands came out (Pavement, the Pixies, the Meat Puppets) that made jangly, weird music. In another universe, their music would have formed the core of 90s alternative, and bands like Limp Bizkit might never have been inflicted on us.

www.youtube.com/watch

So it warms the cockles of my old cynical heart to hear that kind of music being made again. A slew of younger bands have released albums that fit right into that early-90s mold, for example: Speedy Ortiz, The Joy Formidable, and Parquet Courts

soundcloud.com/carparkre…

Here’s hoping the revival lasts, and I get to hear what might have dominated the 90s had the Seattle Sound not crushed everything else under its Doc Martens.

I was raised to believe there was one true career for me, one thing i could do for work that would make me fulfilled and happy, as well as prosperous. All I had to do was find it.

Every career-finding book I read, every counselor I talked to, gave me the same advice. I needed to answer three questions to find the right career for me: What was I good at? What would I do for free? What was fun?

It’s a trap. Work isn’t fun. Work is hard. Work can be rewarding, and it can make us wealthy, or it can just get us by. But it usually doesn’t do all three at once. By trying to find that “one thing” that hit all my buttons, I’ve switched careers multiple times. I would have been better served by picking one and sticking with it.

Much of the reward we get from work comes from achieving mastery. Mastery lets us feel the glow of success, of a job well done. Mastery of a skill that’s in demand gives us job security, and a steady income to keep us clothed and fed. As our mastery increases, we get more control over the jobs we take on, and over how we perform each job.

It’s hard to achieve mastery, though, when you’re always just 1 or 2 years into a new field. I ended up chasing happiness from career to career, searching for something that i could only find by staying put.

My last career jump was to programming, which turned out well for me. Programmers are in demand everywhere, so I’ve had a good choice of companies to work for and a great salary. But landing my current job, which lets me work from home in my favorite programming language with brilliant people, took five years. Putting in the work gave me the mastery I needed to get the autonomy i wanted.

Don’t make my mistake. Don’t get trapped thinking that if you don’t love your job all day, every day, you’re in the wrong field. Find something you have an aptitude for - writing, plumbing, cooking - that other people will pay you to do, and then stay with it long enough to master it.

It’s the only way out of the trap.

Last week I re-watched the Christopher Nolan Batman movies, one each night for three nights. Seeing them one after another for the first time, without a gap of years between to dull my memory, something struck me that I completely missed before: these movies are three chapters of a single story, and the story is Bruce Wayne’s, not Batman’s. And the reason it’s Bruce Wayne’s story, it has to be his story, is to finally separate the two characters. Batman is not Bruce Wayne, anymore than the League of Shadows is Ra’s Al Ghul.

They’re both ideas, legends. Bruce set out to create something greater than one man, and he succeeded. That’s the point of the three movies: it’s the story of how Bruce Wayne created Batman (Batman Begins), nurtured his legend (The Dark Knight), and finally handed the cape and cowl off to the next Batman (The Dark Knight Rises). Bruce Wayne the man was always meant to bow out at the end of it, but Batman would continue: that was the point. Christopher Nolan was giving us something we don’t get to see in comics anymore: a way for the main character of the comic to die, but the comic to live on.

The hints that this is what’s going on start in the first movie, where Ra’s Al Ghul tells Bruce to “become more than a man,” because “men can be killed, but legends are immortal.” When I first saw that scene, I thought he was just telling him to become Batman so he could inspire fear, but there’s another layer here: Ra’s is telling Bruce that in creating Batman, he’ll be creating a symbol that anyone can become. Kill Bruce, and Batman can live on, since no one knows it’s Bruce. Just as Bruce thinks he’s killed Ra’s Al Ghul in the fire, and thus destroyed the League of Shadows, when in fact the real Ra’s has been using the fake one as a “mask” to hide his identity. This theme is repeated in the third movie, when we learn that the League of Shadows has not been stopped by the killing of one man: that others have taken up its banner, because it’s a symbol, not a single person, making it unstoppable.

In the second movie, we start getting hints that Bruce might not be the best person to be Batman. He’s vulnerable in the people he cares about, he’s pushing his body past its limits (Alfred gets on to him for that), and as Bruce Wayne he has access to wealth and power that can be abused as Batman (the cell phone sonar network he sets up, that Mr Fox condemns).

We also see an echo of the idea that anyone can be Batman when Harvey Dent claims it’s him. People believe him, and the cops arrest him, because no one really knows who Batman is. That’s part of his power, and they use that power to capture the Joker.

The third movie is the culmination of all these plot threads. We see that Bruce has gotten so bad at being Batman that he’s hung up his cowl. His fears and broken heart as Bruce Wayne have even caused him to become a recluse, letting his charity work and his company decline. He begins the movie ready to die, since he thinks it’s the only way to stop being Batman. By the end of the movie, after listening to Catwoman talk about wanting her “fresh start,” Alfred tell him his fantasy of seeing him away from Gotham, and working with Detective Blake - another orphan angry at his parent’s death that rebels against the shackles the system places on his fight against injustice - to save Gotham, he’s ready to retire, and let someone else take over as Batman.

That’s what the final scene is. It’s not blake becoming Robin, or even Nightwing. It’s a hand-off from one Batman to the next, closing out Bruce Wayne’s story and making way for someone else to take over.

Because Batman isn’t Bruce Wayne. He isn’t Blake, either. He’s a symbol, a legend, something that can’t be killed. He’s immortal.

I’ve been re-watching Star Trek: TNG (yes, Picard is My Captain). Yesterday I came to the fourth season episode “Half a Life.” The basic premise is that Deanna’s mother falls in love with an alien scientist, an alien that comes from a culture that believes everyone should kill themselves on their 60th birthday. Naturally, the scientist is only days away from turning 60, and Lwaxana tries to convince him to defy his culture and live. The rest of the episode plays out this conflict: between the scientist’s desire to continue his work, his desire to stay with Lwaxana, and his desire to honor his upbringing and his home.

It could easily have been a throwaway episode, but for me it showcases what I loved about Star Trek. The conflict here works on several levels: we have the romance angle, the fear of growing old and becoming a burden on others, and the conflict between saving a life (the scientist’s) and honoring the Prime Directive. All the main characters react to that conflict in keeping with their natures: Picard stays out of it, Lwaxana fights against what she sees as a barbaric custom, and the scientist is torn between custom and his desire to live.

And the third conflict points directly to a problem American liberalism was facing in the 90s, and continues to face today: multiculturalism. The idea that people should be free to practice their own cultural traditions is an honorable one, but where do you draw the line? Where does honoring someone’s culture become dishonoring (or refusing to fight for) my own?

In the 90s, these questions came up over the conflict in Bosnia, female genital mutilation in Africa, and our relationship with China. We knew genocide was happening in the Balkans, but did that give us the right to go in guns blazing? We believed female circumcision to be wrong, but did that mean we should pressure other governments to stamp it out? And we knew human rights were being stamped on in China, but did that mean we should stop trading with them?

Domestically, it played out over civil rights - for women, for minorities, for gays and lesbians. With so many intolerant people in the world, using hateful language, discriminating against others, and claiming it was their right to do so, how much of it should we allow? How much intolerance should we be tolerant of?

Star Trek’s answer, with the Prime Directive, seems to be: all of it. At least in terms of foreign policy, the Prime Directive would tell us to butt out.

At one point in the “Half a Life” episode, one of the aliens from the euthanasia culture says “How dare you insult me and my beliefs?” When I first saw the episode, the line and its sentiment really resonated with me. Who was I to make fun of someone else’s culture?

Re-watching it today, the line seems ridiculous. How could anyone expect to be free from criticism? What kind of culture would we have, if no one could poke fun at someone else’s beliefs? And in this particular case, what sort of liberals would we be, claiming to speak for human dignity and freedom, if we didn’t speak out against a culture that asked its members to commit suicide?

Highly recommended. Takes the interesting approach of covering China’s rise over the last 200 years by profiling a selection of leaders (intellectual and political) from each period. It’s missing a map of China, so you may want to read with Google Maps handy so you can get a sense of where things in the book are happening. Also seems slanted toward the position that China’s path to wealth and power has been a successful one, instead of a crooked road paved with the bodies of the dead (see Tombstone).

Three things I learned:

1. Sun Yat-Sen was not the “father of democracy” I thought he was. Rather, he was one more reformer vying for power in the period at the end of the Qing dynasty, and not a very successful one, either.

2. The feeling of humiliation for Chinese goes back to the nineteenth century. It’s not an invention of the communist party; the Chinese intellectuals of the time saw their treatment at the hands of the Western powers as humiliation, not simple defeat.

3. The Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989 was done at the orders of Deng Xiaoping, the same leader that started China on the path to a more market-based economic system.

The Hobby Lobby ruling didn’t make sense to me for several reasons. One thing that really bothered me was the way they asserted they could apply the religious exemption law to the corporation: they started out asserting that corporations are persons, then shifted to saying the rights of persons are protected by protecting the rights of the people employed by corporations, then shifted to saying the shareholders would be burdened by the penalties if they didn’t comply with the healthcare law.

It felt very slippery, and didn’t seem to hang together. Then it dawned on me: what they’re saying is that shareholders should be allowed to practice their religion through the corporation. Which sounds good at first glance, and is certainly not unconstitutional. But I don’t believe it’s a good principle for a liberal society.

Think of a Muslim-held company that decides to force its employees to pray while facing toward Mecca five times a day, or a Rastafarian company that expects employees to smoke ganja. Or worse, a company owned by Jehovah’s Witnesses that refuses to pay for health coverage that includes my kid’s vaccines, or my blood transfusion during an emergency surgery, or my mother’s kidney transplant. According to the logic behind the Hobby Lobby ruling, this would just be the owners practicing their religion through the corporation. Never mind that they would be pushing their religion onto their employees.

I don’t think anyone should have the power to force a religious practice on someone else - not my teachers, not my city council, and certainly not my boss.

I shouldn’t need to worry about my employer’s religion when applying for a job, anymore than they should have to worry about mine. When you enter the public sphere, you check your religious baggage at the door. It may be uncomfortable, you may not like it, but it’s necessary in a multi-ethnic, multi-religious society like ours.

If you don’t check your religion at the door, you can end up with Christian businesses and Muslim businesses and Atheist businesses, everything split along sectarian lines, like in Iraq. That’s not the kind of society I want to have.

In the past, our laws have been used to avoid precisely that kind of sectarian society. When Amish employers sued to be exempt from taking their employees' Social Security payments out of their wages, they lost, because you can’t exercise your religion through a corporate body. When shop owners in the South sued to be exempt from Fair Hiring laws, they lost, because when you enter the public sphere, you agree to be bound by the laws of that sphere.

By going against that precedent, the Hobby Lobby ruling undermines one of the core principles of our pluralistic society. I can only hope it gets overturned as soon as possible.

Worth the read, but takes a while to get going. The meat of his argument is in Part II, and you can basically stop reading there without missing much.

He often seems more interested in creating a mood, a shift in perspective, rather than advancing an argument or telling a story.

3 things I learned:

• Both the Vandal conquest of Africa and the Gothic conquest of Italy were less "invasions" than power grabs by elites that had grown up on the borders of the Roman Empire and wanted to be a part of it. Those elites were elites, in part, because of intermarriage with the imperial family and having served as imperial troops in previous wars.
• Justinian, the emperor who in most histories is a valiant hero trying to reclaim Roman glory, can be seen as the man who destroyed the new stability the empire was settling into, pushing it into dissolution.
• The popularity of the monophysite variant of Christianity in the Eastern Roman lands (Egypt and Syria), and its suppression during the reign of Justinian, probably paved the way for the rapid adoption of Islam in the seventh century.

Well worth the 400 pages. Graeber humanizes the history of debt, bringing anthropological insight to our understanding of the history of money.

Unfortunately, his multiple objectives - to overturn the common story of the origins of money, to critique capitalism as a system, and to give a comprehensive history of debt, among others - pull the book in different directions. They’re all interesting, but prevent the book from gelling into a coherent whole.

Three things I learned:

1. The interest for credit cards in the US used to be capped at 7% (!).
2. There were large periods of human history where things were bought on personal credit, not with coins. Only strangers used currency.
3. We can distinguish between capitalism, or the belief that money should always make money (interest), and free markets, or the belief that people should be free to start and run their own businesses. Being in favor of free-markets does not automatically make you a capitalist.

1. Everyone you know is happy

2. No one is happy

3. You can go anywhere, except to __.

4. No one wants change

5. No one knows what a dystopia is

I recently discovered my wife had never seen the first two Superman movies all the way through. We decided to take advantage of the long weekend to remedy that.

When it came time to watch Superman II, though, we had a dilemma: should we watch the original theatrical release, or the “Donner Cut” that came out in 2006?

If you don’t know the history: Richard Donner was the director for the first Superman movie, and was supposed to direct the sequel as well. In fact, he started filming both movies at once, since they were intended to be two halves of the same story.

He broke off filming Superman II to concentrate on wrapping up the first movie. Before he could come back to finish the sequel, the producers fired him and replaced him with Richard Lester. Lester re-shot most of the movie along with some new footage. The movie released into theaters was Lester’s.

Donner’s footage was rediscovered in the early-2000s, and after a huge fan campaign, Donner’s team was allowed to go back through and do their own cut of the movie using Donner’s shots.

So which one should we watch? We decided to do both: we watched the theatrical release first, then the Donner Cut.

I worried that we’d be bored watching the Donner version; I assumed we’d be watching basically the same movie with some different scene edits.

Boy, was I wrong. The Donner Cut is not only a completely different movie from the theatrical release, it’s a better one.

So many things don’t make sense in the Superman II released in theaters: Why did Superman have to give up his powers? Why was it so easy for him to get them back? How the holy hell does a kiss from Superman make Lois Lane forget he’s Superman?

All of those plot elements are better explained (or replaced with something more logical) in the Donner Cut.

The theatrical Superman II is a hodge-podge of stories: there’s some Superman-Lois romance parts, some General Zod antics, some powerless Superman bits, and a little bit of Lex Luthor. They don’t really cohere into a single story, but some of them are entertaining.

In contrast, the Donner Cut puts the focus squarely on the developing relationship between Kent/Superman and Lois Lane. Everything becomes part of their story, and in particular on the consequences of Lois figuring out that Kent is Superman. The result is a stronger, deeper movie.

Picked it up because of the movie’s release and as my next John le Carré novel.

Three observations on its style:

1. Very slow start. I almost put it down several times before I pushed past the halfway mark, when things finally got moving.
2. This is my third John Le Carre novel, and I realized I always spend the majority of the book confused. Can't yet tell if that's deliberate on the author's part - wanting to make the reader feel the confusion and stress of spy work - or if that's just me not understanding the late-60s early-70s British dialogue. Could be both. That said, I tore through the last half of the book, wanting to find out the answers to all the questions setup in the beginning. So while the technique is frustrating, it's also successful.
3. Almost everything is done through dialogue. Even character actions are conveyed through the dialogue that accompanies them. Leads to very realistic dialogue for the characters, but also made me feel sort of detached from everything that was happening. Again, could have been a deliberate way of conveying the distance these characters are supposed to keep from the world.

If you built a river bridge with Scrum:

The roadway would be built first, because that’s the Product Owner’s highest priority. Unfortunately, it would sink to the bottom of the river once deployed. This experience would be called “learning from failure.”

Realizing they needed to get above the waterline using some supports, the team would build a short set of pillars on top of the sunken roadway. The pillars wouldn’t reach above the waterline, but they would be valuable for the experience in building support pillars for this particular river.

Once the first set of pillars had been sunk, the team would use their new knowledge to build a second set of pillars that just breached the waterline, and construct a second roadway on top of that. This would make the Product Owner very happy, because “customers could use it” for the first time.

After the first week, they’d realize they’d built a leaky dam, not a bridge, and that all boat traffic was being blocked.

Working seven days a week, 14 hours a day, the team would scramble to fix the bridge. They’d cut channels in the roadway to let some boat traffic through, then build a third set of supports and a third roadway at the proper height.

Burnt out and frazzled, the team would begin pointing fingers, each specialty blaming the other for the death march at the end. Half would quit, and join a different company, building high rises. The other half would struggle to support the many bugs still left in the bridge, despite not having any experience with the things built by the members who’d left (what was the special concrete mix Nancy used?).

Meanwhile, the Product Owner would be praised for pulling off a miracle, and be put in charge of another bridge-building project.

Three years later, the whole thing would be bulldozed to make room for a ferry.

Don’t be put off by this book’s size. Caro converts the story of Johnson’s run for the Democratic nomination in 1960, time in the Vice-Presidency, and ascension to the Presidency into a thrilling read.

Three things I learned:

1. Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, not Kennedy. I always thought those were JFK triumphs; instead, they were JFK dreams that went nowhere until Johnson became President and pushed them through Congress.
2. Johnson came into Congress as a New Dealer (!). I had no idea he served over two decades in Congress before becoming Vice-President
3. Robert Kennedy and Johnson hated each other. I didn't know there was a feud between the Kennedys and Johnson, let alone that it was mostly focused between these two, or how deep their hatred of each other ran.

The simple word ‘a’ can, when placed in some sentences, completely destroy their innocence.

For example: “I’m getting furry.” Cute way of talking about growing a beard.

“I’m getting a furry.” Creepy way of talking about the fetishist you’re picking up later.