I watched with curiosity as the man I worked for began to tie a wire around his own rooster’s leg. I had only been working on this farm for the last few days, and had learned a lot, but this one was new to me. I was born and raised in the city, but when the war began, the only safe places to live were in very rural areas. Sometimes not even small towns were safe enough from the danger. I knew I had to adapt, and figure out how people survive around here. He wasn’t trying to show me what he was doing, but he wasn’t hiding it either. I asked him to explain it to me, and he said it was a teaching tool. He said roosters are as intelligent as dogs and pigs—which I wasn’t convinced was true—and he wanted to teach his to do things for him. I pointed out that this would be virtually impractical, as birds don’t have hands, but he wouldn’t listen to me. He was sure that an army of roosters could protect his lands, and perform simple tasks autonomously. All he was concerned with right now was conditioning the animal to follow his commands. The teaching tool was, as you may have guessed, designed to send a small but painful current up the rooster’s leg. Negative reinforcement, my boss called it. He’d read about it in a book. I was horrified by what he was doing, but was too afraid to say anything, or try to stop him. I learned long ago to accept these people’s way of life, recognizing it to be wildly different than mine, and that I’m the stranger here. One of the other farmhands, however, was not so tolerant, nor did he fear losing his job, like I was. While the boss wasn’t looking, the other guy replaced the wire with his gum wrapper. This worked for a little while, but then the boss wised up to what was happening, and went about fixing the problem. I’m not sure why the farmhand thought that would work in the long-term. The question was whether he would live long enough to regret it. As soon as the boss replaced the the wire on the rooster’s leg, he sent a test shock to it. The farmhand shuddered in pain, which surprised us all. The boss tested his makeshift device again, and the same thing happened. While the rooster was indeed feeling pain, so was the farmhand. They had somehow become linked to one another, so that when one felt pain, so did the other. A twisted smirk fell upon our boss’ face, as his head started filling with all sorts of nasty thoughts. A shock was easy to take, but what were the farmhand’s limits, and how could the farmer exploit him? I grabbed the rooster with my bare hands, and deftly removed the shock wire. “Run!” I screamed. We’ve been hiding out ever since, doing everything we can to protect the rooster, and hoping to find a way to disconnect these two, so that the human doesn’t die when the animal does. If it’s the only way, we’ll even consider defecting to the enemy.
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Current Schedule
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Sundays (macrofiction)
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The Advancement of Mateo Matic
Now that the lineup has been irreversibly established, and their reliance upon the direction of any external force removed from the equation, Team Matic must decide for themselves what missions to take. As they approach the year that changes everything, they may find themselves on a long detour.
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Mateo Daily
Daily installments of The Advancement of Mateo Matic have temporarily replaced all weekday stories.
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Mateo Daily
Daily installments of The Advancement of Mateo Matic have temporarily replaced all Saturday stories.
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My name is Nick Fisherman III. It's not my real name, but that's not because I'm trying to hide from my former agency, or something. I named myself after someone I've known for most of my life, and he chose it in honor of his late best friend. I took up writing when I found myself failing 8th grade science, and realized I might never reach my dream of becoming a biochemist, a meteorologist, and a quantum physicist. I started developing my canon after a scouting trip to an island inspired what I thought would be my first novel. I founded this website upon the advice of many people, who told me I needed to get my work out there, and not wait for an agent to accept my manuscript. You can expect one new story every day. Weekdays are for microstories, which are one or two paragraphs long. They're usually only thematically linked, so you won't have to read one to understand another, but they do sometimes tell a combined story. Sundays are for my continuous longer story, The Advancement of Mateo Matic, which I started in the beginning, and won't end until 2066. Saturdays are for long series, most of which take place in the same universe as Mateo, and add to the larger mythology.
Wednesday, April 11, 2018
Microstory 818: Gum Up the Works
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