Men curling

By Bill Pearse on February 18, 2026 • ( 0 )

It might have been our one shot at snow this winter in the lowlands, though scant. At the trailhead the sign meant to say Discover Pass Required but someone had whited out the P so it said Discover ass Required. The US men’s curling team had lost back to back in the Winter Olympics; what if an AI could present the outcome differently? Could show footage of the match with small alterations tailored to your expectations, produce news reports with different scores? We could use simulations to change what we saw out the window to make it look like snow, or a dramatic sunset. Wasn’t much different than the background screen options on our video calls. Could use filters on ourselves even.

It might have been the one shot at snow in the lowlands this season and boy did it deliver. At the trailhead there was the rust-colored Porsche he’d seen before; they’d moved the portable toilets for a recent running event. The storm drains made a queer dripping sound that echoed in the dark underground chamber.

The US men’s curling team were fucked, you could tell by their faces. He always started off his hikes underdressed and cold to force his pace so he could warm up but not so much that he’d sweat because sweat made him cold. The US men’s curling team were down by two and Italy had the hammer, or the last shot, which had extreme strategic advantage if you knew your curling. In fact what happened is the US team peeled off Italy’s two guards and then Italy overcurled their final stone in a surprise victory for the US which no one anticipated. You could use technology to make small edits on the present or go back to alter digital records of the past just like Orwell said.

So there it was, apparently: the invention of the alphabet birthed literacy and writing and broke the oral tradition. Now people didn’t need to memorize what other people said; they could create their own stories with letters and use their own words. The oral tradition (words pushed by mouth to ear) shifted to literacy, words made by hand, presented for the eyes. Then we got too tired for our hands and went back to our mouths and short videos, little screens. Books got too hard, just like the oral tradition or videocassettes they got consumed by their successors.

He needed the portable toilet but it was moved a small distance from where it normally sat, by the last stall where he always parked his car. There for a moment he debated the merits of walking further to use the toilet, driving home to use his own, or a third option of peeing right there by the fence. When he opted for the first option he found the unit locked with a steel cable and brass lock. Kids sometimes vandalized the toilets with minor explosives or got high or drank by them and left their evidence scattered nearby. So he went with the third option (hold it, drive home). Life was like a video game: choose your own adventure. Then in the car, limitless choices for the aux. But to deny himself this choice was to be like some 21st-century monk confined to a few CDs or cassettes and live in a world of deeper appreciation, an island of scarcity in an ocean of abundance. The island felt more real, though maybe it was just what he knew.

He went backwards on the trail (not literally but in the opposite direction he normally went) and though it was the same path it all looked different seeing it from that perspective. It was like going back in time, seeing everything in reverse. And if you spent your whole life like that, living in the past, you could get a pretty warped view of reality. Or make your own, depending on which you preferred.

He was reading a fantasy novel that was maybe a thousand pages, he never checked. The chapters were really short though and he just read one a night, and over time as the spine loosened it developed wrinkles you could feel like wrinkles in the skin of an old man. It was hard to get into the book. But over time his mind formed images of the characters and it was less about the book and more about the experience in his head, what the book meant for him. Just watching the scenes unfold. Being there, in a sense.

He got to the end of the trail, to the parking lot, and where it all began. His car in the last stall, the rust-colored Porsche since departed. The sun was coming up though you couldn’t see it; it illuminated all the colors on the forest floor though they were scant. There was no snow, just some birds. The portable toilet was back where it belonged, like always. The sign read Discover Pass Required.