In the olden days, people were always looking for new ways to charge and pay for things. You have your standard I give you money, you give me product model. You can buy on credit, and pay later, or in installments. You can get a little somethin’ somethin’ for free, but then spend on fleetingly satisfying microtransactions once you’re addicted. You can purchase a regular subscription. You can pay with labor, be it with an employee discount, from a credited survey, or by suffering through advertisements. But through all of this—sometimes even unbeknownst to the people doing it—a complete replacement was being devised. No, this isn’t a negative income tax, or universal basic income. This isn’t the corporate automation tax, or even charitable rehoming programs. This is a world where the commodities are self-improvement, self-fulfillment, brand recognition, and reputation. You’re only trying to get better, get happy, get famous, or get respected. Things are just things. How you feel is all that matters. Well, as it turns out, people have a lot of strong feels about money, and personal possessions. For the most part, society embraced this new way of life when it was introduced, because it was done so gradually, and thoughtfully. There will always be those, nevertheless, who just want to do things differently. Had these hardcore capitalists been born in the late 18th century, they might have become hardcore socialists. They were just radical contrarians, who didn’t like how the world was simply because it’s what they were born into, or because their parents glamorized the way things once were in the good ol’ days. Whatever the reasons, their ideas were virtually meaningless. No matter how hard they tried, these Freemarketeers could not survive in an interplanetary civilization, and maintain their principles. They decided the only way they could be who they wanted was to leave the system, and found a new one. This didn’t quite work out when the ship that was so graciously transporting them to their new planet was sabotaged by their own Freemarketeer leader, and destroyed. They ended up in a different galaxy, on a world that wasn’t quite as advanced as Earth at the time, but still no longer capitalistic. They started a war with the native Dardieti, powered by a machine that uncontrollably replicated each and every one of them every single day. Freemarketeer Mala Savidge never wanted any of this. She was even considering the possibility that she was less of a true capitalist, and more of a rebel, who would never be happy with the status quo. Her willingness to question her own identity is what led her to being chosen as the Freemarketeer Ambassador to Dardius. It was she who negotiated the cease-fire, the peace treaty, and the ultimate integration of the Freemarketeers. She would later assume a leadership role in this new world.
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Current Schedule
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Sundays (macrofiction)
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The Advancement of Mateo Matic
The team continues to struggle through the Third Rail. Enemies approach from all sides, and threaten them in all ways. Even the strongest bonds will be tested as an ominous future war places all of reality in jeopardy.
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Weekdays (microfiction)
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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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- About Me
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, June 19, 2019
Microstory 1128: Mala Savidge
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