Category Archives: The Ask Alistair Letters

And here you will find the greatest Q&A of all time.

Not a Dad

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Alistair,

Since I was young I have only ever dreamed on a very rare basis. I do not feel shortchanged, however, because my dreams – though simple and infrequent – have all come true. When I was ten, I dreamed that our dog would be hit by a falling airplane part and the next day, Peaches was crushed by landing gear. When I was twelve, I dreamed that I would win a spelling bee that I was entering, and two weeks later, I did exactly that. When I was fifteen, I dreamed that my brother would become unemployable, and that very weekend he got a neck tattoo. Two years ago, I made a fortune by buying low-key stocks that spiked shortly thereafter, making that decision based on a dream. Last night though… last night I dreamed that my wife is actually a killer android sent from the future to bear my child and then kill me like a psychotic, blond praying mantis. Do I assume that this is just an ordinary dream (such as normal people have, where outlandish events transpire that have no bearing on reality) or. . . What do I do, Alistair?

Glad I’m Not a Dad in Pontycymer

Not a Dad,

The phrasing of your question implies that you believe this last dream to be somehow on a different scale of plausibility from the others. It’s not as though femme fatales are a groundbreaking concept. It’s also not as though sleeper-borgs are brand-new territory.

You seem to have abandoned the main detail inside your question: Why the dickens would anyone want your child? Is there a family prophecy? Latent genetic abilities? Just a general lack of average humans in the future? In short, what you need to do is find a reasonable substitute. There’s no shortage of Prophesied Ones, powerful individuals, or – by definition – average schmucks. Someone, somewhere, would be thrilled to sire a child with a robot who then killed them. It takes all sorts to make the world go ’round. Apparently.

Alistair

Standing Alone

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Alistair,

There’s a dragon and he’s invisible to all but me. I saw him crash-land in a field near my house where he sustained some minor injuries. Since then, he’s been licking his wounds while circling our village in a predatory manner. I’m certain that he’s planning an attack. It turns out that the local constabulary doesn’t take my story seriously and everyone I speak to on this troubling subject shares their skepticism. How does one raise an army to battle an invisible dragon?

Standing Alone in Kirkwhelpington

Standing Alone,

As it is a circling dragon, it’s probably gathering its strength to begin devouring the weak. Lone knights are a long tradition, and there’s a glut of precedence for charging directly at the dragon, sword in one hand and reigns in the other. Keeping in mind that there’s also a precedent for armor littering the ground where the true hero walks, your instinct to raise a little bit of popular support is a solid one.

The most reliable way to get people to support something utterly absurd is to explain how it is somehow the solution to their problems. On the unethical end of the spectrum, the problem and solution is other people. On the slightly less unethical end is making the problem that feeling you get when you wake up in the middle of the night, you know the one. Or only being able to breathe out of one nostril. Heck, just make something up and explain how it’s problematic, and the only way to solve the problem is to throw rocks at a specific patch of dirt outside Kirkwhelpington. If you sell the rocks, you’ll probably have flocks of volunteers.

Alistair

Helmet-Wearing

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Alistair,

The company I work for just hired a survivor of that zombie outbreak that happened earlier this year. He’s apparently been certified 100% virus freed and we hired him on a re-assimilation program where the company gets kickbacks for his hire. I love the spirit of the thing – I mean, the guy was . . . is a person and this is the least we can do after all that he’s been through. But still. The decay-reversal process is super slow and even once I get past the fact that he stinks and occasionally has to put his eyeballs back in when they fall out, it’s hard to ignore the fact that he spends his entire shift Googling images of human brains and muttering to himself in a gravelly, melancholy way while gazing at my head.

I said something to HR about maybe rotating his desk position so that I don’t have to ALWAYS be sitting next to him and I’ve now been flagged for discriminatory behavior. Am I being a terrible person here, or is my discomfort justified?

Helmet-Wearing in Swindon

Helmet-Wearing,

You are, in the end, being a terrible person. You file him under “that zombie outbreak” without even bothering to consider which outbreak you refer to. Are you referring to the Tokyo outbreak, the St Petersburg outbreak, either of the New York outbreaks, the Little Italy outbreak, or any of the dozen smaller outbreaks? This is a very important part of the undeceased’s identity, and you lump him in with the entire batch.

If it’s St Petersburg, though, he’s probably not cured. Run like the dickens. Or at least request a move.

Alistair

Librarian and Custodian

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Alistair,

Bought a used bookshelf about three weeks ago. It came with some old books, which I threw out. Every day since then, the shelves have been refilling themselves with books. Anything I set on the shelf is pushed out the next day and replaced with a random collection of old books. What, exactly, is going on here, and what should I do about it?

Unwilling Librarian in New Delhi

AND

Alistair,

I got a bookshelf from a garage sale, as I’m an avid collector of first editions. It seems, though, to be “eating” the books. I’ll fill it up, and then the entire batch will disappear overnight. I can’t figure out where they’re going. Help!

Losing Custodian in Nassau

Librarian and Custodian,

Trade.

Alistair

Torn

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Alistair,

Short-time-reader, first-time-advice-seeker. So, I’m about to graduate from college, and have had a couple of promising interviews. One is for a market research position with a small start-up. The other is an assistant position for a self-proclaimed prophet hellbent on bringing back the forgotten traditions of a darker time. Both pay about the same, but the latter has better benefits. Which should I go with?

Torn in Two (maybe literally, dependent on job performance)

Torn,

That’s the tricky thing about startups, isn’t it? They demand performance, and quick, because they’re a half step from being tarred and feathered by the free market themselves

While the dark prophet definitely promises better benefits, one has to bear in mind that the thing about prophets is their ‘In for a penny, in for a pound’ nature. He’s already claiming to be in league with enshadowed powers and terrifying nightmares giving him a glimpse through the veil of time; it’s kind of small fry at that point to say you provide dental.

Neither job, statistically, is going to last very long. After you’ve weighed the enjoyability of the work itself, think about your exit strategy. Would you have your mind destroyed through having glimpsed horrors beyond that which man should see and end up slain as a sacrifice to ever-more-demanding remnants of ancient forces; or would you rather have to reenter the job search with a marginally stronger resume? I can’t pretend to tell you which is preferable, as that’s really a personal decision.

Alistair

Flipped Switches

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Alistair,

I live about three miles away from a local nuclear power plant. There’s an energy creature that feeds on the waste energy every night, and then makes its way home. Seems taking a longish walk immediately after is hard on the digestion, because it seems to be (if you pick up what I’m putting down) relieving pressure as it reaches my house. At any rate, the power goes out. Every breaker in the house is flipped and any lightbulbs on at the time blow out instantly. It’s a pain and kind of expensive. What do I do about it?

Flipped Switches in Kentucky

Flipped Switches

First of all, a very sharp ability to note interspecies digestion issues. He’s off-shooting. When raw AC is taken in by a creature made of energy (static), there will be a natural reaction to the reversed flow. In other words, it’s going to have to go somewhere. It’s basic electrobiology, and you don’t need to go out and humiliate the creature for its allergies.

Maybe try LED lights.

Alistair

Daylight Savings

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Alistair,

While recently testing a time travel device, I think I accidentally flipped the schematics; my maiden voyage sent the entire universe forward by one day, rather than myself. Unfortunately, the power demands of a move like that mean that the only way I’ll be able to reverse the move is to hook up to a nearby star. The hitch is that it would take a few billion years to establish the connection. I considered using time travel to skip ahead, but the power demands for that are even more ridiculous. Any advice on fixing the situation?

Daylight Savings in Brussels

Daylight Savings,

So everyone’s lost a day. In the end, nobody’s going to notice. Oh, there may be a schedule slip or a few lost items as people misplaced things in the missing interim, but in the end, it’ll be chalked up to exactly the same thing as it always is: ‘Gee whiz, where did the time go? Seems like just yesterday it was last week.’

Besides, on the scale of all things, people are constantly doing this nonsense. In the end, the universe won’t be ten years off in any direction.

Alistair

Aladdin

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Alistair,

Just found a lamp. Djinni can’t do anything right. Constantly bringing me random things, never what I want. How do I fix this?

Aladdin in Wyoming

Aladdin,

He might not be bringing you what you want, but is he perhaps bringing you what you need? Given that he’s a lamp-bound Djinn, this means he was almost certainly a prisoner of the last Great Djinn War of 563, which means he was born at minimum around 200 AD. This ethereal being is probably over 1800 years old. He has some wisdom to offer . . . Or he is suffering some seriously overdue dementia. Either way, he is giving you stuff that is free. Start an ebay account and make a little money on the side.

Alistair

Sparkles

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Alistair,

I think my boyfriend is a vampire. Should I cut him off or try to reform him?

Sparkles in Washington

Sparkles,

So you think that your man is a vampire and you want to bring him to your side… presumably the non-vampiric side. In my experience (and, quite honestly, the experience of anyone who is even passingly familiar with vampires), conversions between humans and vampires usually go in one direction and it’s not the one you’re thinking. Quite honestly, it’s only surprising that you’ve not already been bitten.

You say that you “think” he’s a vampire. Revisit the possibility that you’re wrong.

Alistair