Microstory 2487: Skilldome

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I don’t want to speak for you, but I’m guessing that your life is pretty easy. Everything you need is handed to you, along with a few things that you might just want. There are those who spend their whole lives holed up in their modules, connected to VR or the network. Dayfruit growers provide them with food. Drones deliver their feedstock. Their electricity and water is piped in, and their waste is shipped out. Their personal robot does all their work. I’m not criticising people who live like this. This is just a preamble so you’ll understand what purpose Skilldome serves. So many things that you may or may not take for granted were either not cheap for our ancestors, hardly available, or outright didn’t exist. Obviously, different time periods came with different limitations, and over the years, there are skills that we’ve lost to automation, and engineered simplicity. I’m not saying that you’ll become a better person if you learn how to drive a car with your hands and feet. I’m just telling you that the skill is something that this dome offers. You can also learn how to churn butter, command an animal to plow a field, or write something down with a pencil and paper. It’s hard to describe what these activities are, since there’s such a broad range, but it’s basically everything that people used to have to do to be productive that we don’t anymore. To be sure, there are some things that still hold some merit in our world. You might not have access to a medpod or healing nanites, even today, so knowing how to perform first aid is one of those skills that some people have maintained anyway. But for those of us whose minds it didn’t cross to do it before, if you’re on Castlebourne, come on down and take a class. As far as skills that are less practical in the synthetic era go, like stuffing mail in envelopes, or coding a program in an obsolete computer language called C++, you can do it just for fun, or to have a greater appreciation for modern living. Or come up with your own reasons. There are no requirements on what you have to do when you come here, but if you do come, and you do choose a particular skill, it is asked of you to use the tools you are given, and not “cheat”. If you’re taking a math test, only use one of those old basic calculators that they will provide you with. Don’t just ask an AI to do it for you. That defeats the purpose. I actually saw a guy do this, which was so stupid, because no one was making him take this otherwise pointless test. What you get out of coming here is entirely up to you. Ain’t nobody gonna hold your hand. Nor should they have to.

Microstory 1885: Put on Ice

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Yesterday morning, I was walking my cat by the frozen river. Yes, I walk my cat. I know it’s weird, but he likes it, and I like it, so I don’t owe you an explanation. That’s not the point anyway. This is a story about how I nearly succumbed to death, and how that would have been okay, because I still would have saved a life in the process. The trail doesn’t run exactly parallel to the river—it bends away at places, to get around trees, and the like. As we were getting back towards it, I started hearing what I initially thought were birds. It was Buttons who heard it first, actually, he has such great hearing. I’m sure he knew right away that it was a human. Once I realized this myself, I dropped the leash, and left the trail. It was tough, getting through all the brambles and thorns, but I couldn’t wait until we got to a clearing, because then we would be too far upstream. Buttons followed me, he’s loyal too. Finally I reached the bank, and nearly slipped onto the ice myself, which may seem like it wouldn’t matter, because I was ending up out there anyway, but not right there. I discovered how unstable it was right there. I looked across, and saw a child on his stomach in the middle of the river. There was a rope swing nearby that kids use in the summer, so I assumed he came from that side. Irrelevant. He needed help, and there was no one else around, so I found my footing, and crawled out to retrieve him. I know now, you’re supposed to urge them to come to try to come to you, but he was so little. I tried talking to him, but he just kept crying. He wasn’t capable of meeting me halfway. Man, I wish I had been on that other side, though; then I could have thrown him the rope! Or maybe I would have tied it to myself, and been safer.

Well, crawling started feeling dangerous. I could hear the ice crack under my weight, so I decided to lie flat, and slide to him. I dug my fingernails into the top layer, hoping not to disrupt its integrity, and pulled myself closer little by little, ignoring the blood turning the snow red. He was facing away from me, so even though I kept talking to him, I didn’t think he knew I was on my way. Finally I was there. I took him in my arms, and together we kept going to the other side, because we weren’t exactly in the center. We were almost to the bank when the ice just fell out from under me. I held on as best I could, but the current was so strong underneath. The only thing I could do was push the boy forwards, and get him onto the ground. When he looked back, I told him to run for help, but it was too late. I was under. Another random citizen pulled my body out of the river more than twenty miles downstream, where the water was calmer, and not iced over. This was eleven hours later. He assumed that I was dead, but that didn’t stop him from beginning CPR, and having his niece call for help. The paramedics took over when they arrived, and my heart miraculously started beating again. I wasn’t conscious, but I was alive. They drove me to the hospital, where doctors continued treatment. I woke up several hours later, feeling terrible, but still alive. My family was all around me, crying because they thought they had lost me. They were all talking about how God saved me, and I don’t know about that, but I did feel lucky. My own niece was holding Buttons, having snuck him into the hospital in her purse. I was grateful that he was okay, but I told her to take him back home, because there are sick people here, and they don’t need any dirty animals. I was feeling tired just in time for visiting hours to be over, so I said goodbye to my family, and tried to get to sleep. But I never woke up.

Microstory 1855: Man in the Street

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Once upon a time, I was sitting at a red light, second in line, waiting for it to change, but in no big hurry. A car pulled up behind me, and started to wait too. Before too long, I felt a lurch. I checked my sideview mirror, and saw that he had knocked into my bumper, and he hadn’t even attempted to back away. My dog’s kennel was still in the back, because we had just gone to the dog park the day before, and if I lived with one fatal flaw, it was my procrastination. So I couldn’t see how the other driver was reacting to this with my rearview mirror. I could tell, however, that he wasn’t getting out of the car. There was probably no damage, because he was moving at less than a kilometer an hour, but I still felt obliged to exchange information. So I did get out, and approached him. I could immediately see that something was wrong. His face was pressed up against his steering wheel, and he wasn’t moving. I instinctively started knocking on the window, and trying to open the latch, but he wasn’t responding, and of course, it was locked. Just due to my interference, he slumped down a bit until his head was pressing against the horn. So it was blaring, the light was green, we weren’t moving, and the people behind us were honking too. There was only one lane, so they couldn’t go around. They probably thought we were stupid for not making a right turn, and dealing with this in that empty parking lot. I knew I had to do something; not for those people, but the hurt person in the car. I remembered that my son bought me and my wife both a special tool that could break through car glass. I ran back to retrieve it, and bashed the back window so I could unlock the stranger’s door. I didn’t know what I was going to do. This was just before cell phones, so I couldn’t call for help. I had once learned CPR, but I forgot all but the basic concept behind it, and I wasn’t sure I could pull it off safely.

As I was dragging him out, a motorcycle cop pulled up. He didn’t know what was going on, but he could see the broken window, and the unconscious man in my arms, so he assumed the worst. He pointed his gun at my head, and started screaming at me. It took a surprising amount of effort to convince him that I wasn’t the bad guy here. The man was hurt, and I needed help. After quickly calling for an ambulance on the radio, the police officer actually began to perform CPR, and I stood back to let him do his thing. Meanwhile, the other cars managed to find openings where they could drive on the wrong side of the road, and get around us. It was a slow process, but it was working, and people just needed to have some patience. One driver wasn’t patient. I don’t know if he didn’t see what was happening, or if he didn’t care, but he was going far too fast, and he was uncomfortably close to the line of cars waiting their turn. I had to think fast. I ran past the cop, and the unconscious man on the ground, took hold of the motorcycle, and summoned all the strength in my body to throw it to the ground. The reckless driver slammed right into it, and that was just enough to divert him away from the cop and his patient. I wasn’t so lucky. A piece of shrapnel shot out of the bike, and lodged itself in my chest. The first guy was still hurt, the bad driver wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, so I could see him halfway up on his dashboard. I think some shrapnel hit the cop too, because his forehead was bleeding. And I thought I was probably going to die. Obviously I didn’t. We all survived, and I’m still friends with the man I helped save, and the police officer. The reckless driver found himself going in and out of jail. This wasn’t his only offense.