Microstory 2050: Minnesota

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Now, some of you may say that my papa never made it to all fifty states. He died in Oklahoma before he ever got the chance to see Minnesota. But my family and I don’t feel the same way that you do. After he died, we had a funeral service for him in Florida. My grandma has a hard time moving around. She doesn’t have ALS, but she’s old, and that’s just what happens. My aunt, uncle, and cousins all flew down to be there too. All of papa’s friends from college, the Navy, and his co-workers from the submarine company were there. Papa met a lot of people as he was going to every state. I didn’t talk a whole lot about that, but he didn’t just step over the borders, and take photos. He became involved in people’s lives, and they remembered him later. People heard of his accomplishment, and because of my dad’s work with the news, it made it into national news. Everyone knew that he had died, and they knew when the funeral was. They even had to move the service to a bigger room, because there wasn’t enough space in the one we had booked. When it was all over, we took papa’s cremains up to Minnesota. When you die, you might be buried in the ground, but they also may turn your body into ashes. It may be scary, but a lot of people want this to happen to them, and that’s what my papa wanted. We spread his ashes in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota. Papa loved forests, so we thought that it was a good place to do it. Don’t worry, we asked for permission first. Some of the ashes are still in a little urn on our mantel. We had the special map framed, and it’s hanging on the wall right above it. The rest of the ashes will stay in Minnesota forever. I think that’s fitting. My papa went to all fifty states in the United States of America. I think that’s pretty amazing. Thank you for watching and listening to my presentation about my papa.

Microstory 2033: Kentucky

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Here’s something you may not know about, but it used to be illegal to be gay and in the military. They had a law called Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, which said that you could want to be with a man if you were a man, or a woman if you were a woman, but you weren’t allowed to say anything about it. But the thing is, no one was allowed to ask you about it either. This was a way to protect people like my papa, but it also meant that he didn’t feel like he could be himself. When he left the Navy, he still didn’t feel like that, because he was required to stay in the reserves for the next four years, even though he had a regular job in Chicago. So it was a long time before he wasn’t afraid to go out and date the people that he wanted to. In the year 2011, the new president ended the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell thing, and said that it was okay to be gay in the military, and for people to know. I don’t think they can ask you about it still, though. Anyway, after this happened, papa dated a few guys, but he never fell in love with anyone. That all changed when he went on a train trip with his sister and her family. They were trying to get to Roanoke, Virginia, but their train broke down in Kentucky. It took so long to get a new one that they had to sleep there for one night. That is where my papa met my dad, Santana Lopez. They started talking to each other, and found out that they had a lot in common. The only problem was...dad lived in Virginia, and papa was only going there to visit.

Microstory 2026: Georgia

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I don’t know much about it, but even though my papa quit the Navy, and started working for a private company, he wasn’t totally done with the military. The company had things called government contracts, which meant they were building things for the military to use. The Navy still needed submarines, and they wanted the kind that my papa was designing. One of these special subs had a special ability. It could be used in different kinds of water. It could survive really deep water, and also really shallow water without getting caught on the ground below. I think what they were thinking was to have something that could go just about anywhere on Earth without ever having to be moved on land. Of course there are plenty of bodies of water that aren’t connected, but even the ones that are connected are hard to get to unless the ship is small enough. Submarines are apparently even more difficult to make this work. Back in 2007, papa’s brand new submarine was done, and it worked well in Lake Michigan, but they didn’t know if it could handle the deep ocean yet. He took a business trip down to Savannah, Georgia so the company could test it in a different environment. This was all pretty secretive, so we’re not allowed to know exactly what the submarine was like, but when he told me and my dad about it, he didn’t seem upset, so we guessed that it went well. It’s possible that a bunch of subs that my papa built are being used by the military right now, protecting our country, and helping people all over the world. That’s a pretty cool thought, don’t you agree?

Microstory 2022: Illinois

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After he was done with the Navy, papa needed a place to live. He thought about just staying in Arkansas, or even going all the way over to Montana. He said it would have been a full circle, since that’s where he first grew up. He narrowed his decision down to two choices, which was to move back closer to his parents in Idaho, or to Indiana, where his sister lived with her family. The two of them had grown even closer over the last few years, and he loved his nephews. They had just had their second son, so he decided to choose Indiana. He needed a job, though. Most people who need jobs have to go out and look for them. These days, they will go on the internet, and search for anyone who is hiring, but this was back in 2002, so people weren’t doing that very much yet. And anyway, my papa didn’t need to look himself. Companies were actually calling him to offer him a job. He had a really good education, and his time in the military made bosses know that he would be loyal and trustworthy. He ended up reconnecting with a guy who he knew who once worked for the Coast Guard. They also work on the water, but have different jobs. This former Coast Guard Lieutenant Commander had started his own business that wanted to build new kinds of submarines, and he would be testing them in Lake Michigan. My papa was perfect for the job, because that’s exactly what he learned in school, and in the Navy. He ended up living in Chicago on the Illinois side of the border, but he was still less than a half hour away from my Aunt Cooper. We’re still a Chicago family. I’ve gone there myself many times, even though I live in Massachusetts.

Microstory 2021: Tennessee

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Papa was only an active member of the Navy for four years. He thought about staying in, but ended up not. It’s all because of something he did as his required time was ending. He was still in the reserves after this, but he wasn’t working on the sub anymore. While he was trying to make a decision, friends of his from college called him up, and asked him if he wanted to work with them on a mission trip in Tennessee. They were Mormons, and they were doing it for their church, but that wasn’t going to be what the trip was about. There was an old folks home in a small town outside of Memphis. He was in Arkansas at the time, so he wasn’t very far away. That’s probably why they called him. He took a bus to the home, and got to work. The people who owned it didn’t have very much money, and they were having trouble keeping their residents comfortable. Don’t worry, they all always had their medicine and stuff, but there were other issues. They couldn’t afford plants, or nice paintings for the walls. The biggest issue was the courtyard, which is a space that is outside, but it has walls around it. Residents can go and sit down and enjoy being outside, but it wasn’t very pretty at this place. I don’t think my papa spent much time on that, though. He basically became a volunteer handyman. While the others were planting trees, he fixed things around the building, because he was an engineer. What he said was that this was an eye-opening experience. He wanted to spend more time doing things like that. Of course he was helping people when he was serving this country, but he decided that there were things that he should do outside of it. That’s what led him to leaving the Navy, as an active officer at least.

Microstory 2020: Indiana

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My Aunt Cooper has three children, who are all boys, and they’re my cousins. Her first was born in the year 2000. She was 29 years old, and she lived with her new husband in a city called Gary, Indiana. Even though it’s located in Indiana, it’s really close to the border with Illinois, so it’s considered part of Chicago, which is a really big city next to Lake Michigan. While my papa was in the Navy, he was busy with his work most of the time, but he didn’t have to spend all the time working. Officers get to take time off just like regular people, except unlike them who get vacations, people in the military take something called leave. Specifically, since he was in the Navy, he was on shore leave. He decided to fly up to Gary to spend some time with his sister, and their new baby. My cousin is 12 years older than me, but we’re really close. After my papa was done with his required service, he retired and moved to Chicago to be closer to his sister. And years later, when he decided to move to Massachusetts, they all did the same thing he did, and moved with him. They lived in separate houses, though. But I’m getting ahead of myself, because none of that has happened in the story yet. My cousin’s name is Nash Ruskin. His father’s name is Currian Ruskin, and I love him too. My other cousins’ names are Osmond and Thatcher, but they haven’t been born yet. My papa was only allowed to spend five days there, since two of them were spent traveling to and from Indiana, but he enjoyed it, and he got to go back a few times before moving closer anyway.

Microstory 2019: Arkansas

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It makes sense that papa lived in Texas, because it’s next to the ocean. He worked on a submarine, so Corpus Christi was the perfect location. That’s why it’s so weird that he was later moved by the Navy to Arkansas. Arkansas is what’s called a landlocked state, because it doesn’t border the ocean. Most of the states in the United States are like this. But that doesn’t mean there’s no water, of course. It has lakes, and the really long Mississippi River, which is between it and Mississippi. We don’t have much information, because like I said, the military has to be really secretive, but after papa died, my dad and I were looking through his things when we found something interesting. It was a photo of him and some of his Navy buddies when they were young. They were smiling in front of the river, and what looked like a boat behind them. Except that the boat wasn’t above the water very much. It actually looked like a submarine! The Mississippi River is pretty deep, but not really deep enough for a normal sub. Again, no one can tell us anything, so shh, be quiet, but we think that he was testing special technology. They might have come up with a submarine that can move in shallower waters. It would be interesting to know if they could get something like that to work. *winky face*

Microstory 2018: Texas

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After my papa was finished with his education at the Naval academy, he didn’t go back home. He was stationed in Corpus Christi, Texas. He couldn’t tell me exactly what he did while he was there, because the military keeps all of that secret, so this is going to be another really short slide. He was able to say that he lived there for only a year before he was moved somewhere else, which he said was unusual in the Navy. I don’t think that he was always on a submarine. I think that maybe he spent a lot of time carrying out missions on dry land. I even think they sometimes sent him out of the country, but he hadn’t met his husband yet, so he didn’t have to lie to anyone about it, since his parents still lived in Idaho anyway.

Microstory 2017: Rhode Island

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After my papa was finished with college, instead of going out to get a job, he decided to attend a place called Watch Hill Naval Academy. He had to take more classes in order to learn how to be an officer in the Navy and work in a submarine. From the records that my dad found, papa first took a 3 month course to teach him what it’s like to be a military officer. After that, he spent another 6 months learning about nuclear power, which sounds really scary and cool. Then after that, he spent another 6 months using what he learned working at an actual nuclear power plant. Finally, after all that, he got on a sub to learn to operate it with a crew of other officers. Submarines are really dangerous, and hard to use. That’s why he had to spend so much time learning these skills, because if someone messes up on a submarine, it could mean everyone on it dying all at once. Unlike the way it is on a ship, if something goes wrong in a sub, you can’t jump off and swim away. Not only can you not breathe underwater, but the water is really heavy, and it hurts for it to be on top of you when you go deeper and deeper. My papa was really smart, and he also cared about people, which is why he wanted to use his engineering degree to protect this country, and make the world a better place. I’m so proud of him, and I wish I had known all of this about him before. The military is a noble and difficult profession. Probably no one in our class will join the military, but if it turns out to be true, it will only probably be one of us, according to the math.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: February 14, 2399

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It was clear to Leona that Connell was never in the military, nor law enforcement. He was a wretched shot. He was just holding up his gun, and waving it around aimlessly, hoping to eventually hit something. She took it from him, and shot all of the henchmen in the legs. “I’m letting you live,” she announces, “not so you can come after me later, but so you can lick your wounds, and move on with your lives. Your boss is dead. He betrayed me, and karma paid him for it. Leave me alone, or the next time I’m holding a gun, I’ll aim higher. If I later decide that Labhrás is entitled to vengeance, I’ll take care of it myself, and send you the bill.” Satisfied that the firefight was over, Leona went with Connell to Dublin Airport. So they were in Ireland, or at least what’s left of it since most of the North Atlantic Isles were transported to the Fourth Quadrant.

The flight was the longest she’s ever experienced. After a long layover who knows where, it’s turned out that they’ve flown all the way down to Antarctica. Specifically, they’re landing at the Mozambican Naval Fleet Base. This still doesn’t explain who this Connell is, or who his boss might be, but it’s a lead. Technically, it’s not impossible that Coronel Zacarias is the one who is responsible for the bounty, but it’s pretty far-fetched. They left on great terms, and she gave him her contact info, so he would not have needed to set up this crazy elaborate plan to get someone else to kill her. Her guess is that she was right when she thought it was possible that someone had invaded and taken over the Nexus research facility. She’s proven right when they walk inside, and see the people milling about. These are definitely not Mozambican sailors. They’re dressed funny, but not unfamiliarly. She’s seen this kind of clothing before. Where was it?

“Oh, Christ, you’re from the Fifth Division.”

“Precisely, my dear!”

“How the hell did you get here?”

“That is not my right to tell,” Connell replies. “The boss will want to speak with you. It could be today, it could be tomorrow. It could be years from now. You’ll just have to hang out in hock and wait until he’s good and goddamn ready.”

They’ve just entered the hock section when a man jogs up. “Sir. It’s for you?” He hands Connell a comms device.

“Yes?” he asks the person on the other end. “I understand. No, right away, sir.” He hands the device back, and tries to say something to Leona, but she’s distracted.

“I’m okay,” Coronel Zacarias tells her from his cell. “I’m gonna need you to put on a brave face for me, okay?”

“Why didn’t you call?” Leona asks him.

“We’re leaving,” Connell insists, trying to pull her away.

“Get your hands off me,” Leona demands. “I won’t ask a second time.”

“I’m taking you to the boss.”

Leona twists his arm, and flips him onto his back. She steals his gun, and shoots the nearest other Fifth Divisioners. She hits him in the legs again, but she’s prepared to aim higher, like she promised the Irish gangsters.

“Stop!” Connell orders his men before they get the chance to shoot her back. “Stop! She must live!”

Leona lowers the gun to train it on Connell’s forehead. “I left you my number.”

“There was nothing that you could do,” Coronel Zacarias explains. “You would not have been able to come in time.”

“I could teleport.”’

“You can?”

“Well...not anymore, but when this happened, it’s possible. You should have reached out,” Leona reasons.

Zacarias shakes his head. “It would have only placed you in danger along with us. They didn’t know we knew each other. I never told them. They only know now because we’re talking.”

“I’m here now. I’ll get you out.”

“Don’t worry about us.”

She is worried about him. She feels like this is her fault, and it probably is. It usually is. Can she break him out? She could take out all these guys like John Wick before even one of them gets a shot off. The Crucia Heavy doesn’t like firearms, and taught her and Ellie to dislike them too, but she trained them on targeting anyway. It doesn’t matter how good of a fighter you are, you’re not faster than a bullet, and sometimes the only way to stop them from flying towards you is to send your own. Still, even if she got these people out of the cells, what would they do then? Would they escape? That would be a tall order. She has no way off the continent. She doesn’t have any control over the base’s systems, and Zacarias almost certainly doesn’t either. It is as they say, the only way out is through. She’s going to have to be diplomatic. Ugh. She’s no good at that anymore, especially not since her training on Flindekeldan. She carelessly drops the gun on Connell’s chest. “No! Touching!”

Connell is winded. “Yeah. Never again.” He struggles to get himself back to his feet, but slaps the guy who tries to help him away. “Never again,” he repeats. He brushes the dust off his pants, and takes a deep transitional breath. “Now, if you’ll follow me...” He holds his arms out to indicate the direction they’ll be going.

She lunges towards him by only a few centimeters to test his reaction. He flinches, so that’s good to know.

Connell leads her down the corridors, and up the elevator to the top level. It’s above ground and on the far end, allowing them to see the cliff and sea before them on one side, and the snow covered land on the other. “This is as far as I go.”

Leona looks at the ominous door. “Sleep with one eye open,” she warns.

He’s unable to hide a shiver. He starts to walk back the way they came.

Leona readies herself, then opens the door without knocking. Time freezes in her head as she considers who may be on the other side of it. If she didn’t know that this had something to do with her time in the Fifth Division, she may have guessed past and future greatest hits, like Erlendr or Zeferino Preston. Or maybe it’s someone who was actually a friend before, like Serkan Demir or Pribadium Delgado. Those being so random, and having nothing to do with any of these other people here, she dismisses them. She has narrowed it down to Mithridates Preston, Xerian Oyana, or that security guard that they left at the entrance to the time machine that ultimately led them here. They all have beef with Team Matic, or could have conceivably developed one in the meantime. They parted on all right terms, but who knows what has happened since then? The suspect is standing behind a desk, his back to her. She approaches him as he turns around to face her. She winces when she sees his face. “Who the hell are you?”

Microstory 1153: Elder Caverness

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Nothing in Elder Caverness’ life was ever easy, but he thought that was exactly how it needed to be, because he was always taught that hard work was all that mattered. He was raised with so-called traditional values, and it took him a long time to get over the terrible conventions his family indoctrinated him to believe. If it don’t hurt, his father would always say, you’re not doin’ it right. Well, being gay must have been the most right thing he could have done, because that same father sure made sure Elder was hurting pretty much every day. He was one of those people who claimed to be from a different generation, so even in time, he never accepted his son’s identity. But time should have worked, if nothing else, because it’s less about where you’re from, and more about where you are now. In the world of Elder’s day, sex positive was the name of the game, and no excuse for being anything less than a moderately compassionate individual was a good one. Nevertheless, he managed to get away from that toxic atmosphere, and move on with his life. He joined the Navy right out of high school. He served two years on active duty, four years in the reserves, and two more in IRR. When he wasn’t actively working in the military, he worked in private security, as many in his position will do. There he met, and formed a bond with, Kolby Morse. They connected with each other for their similar viewpoints on the world, and how people should behave in a civilized society. Their primary concern seemed to be corporate corruption, which they discovered in the company they were already doing security for. They felt they had to do something about it. To insulate them both from scrutiny, Kolby remained outside the investigation. While Elder was on the inside, should anything happen to him, Kolby would be there to pull him out. They weren’t trying to take down the people they perceived as criminals in any official capacity, so they had no further support in this matter. The executives they were monitoring had special temporal powers, which gave them a virtually insurmountable advantage over anyone who would try to compete with them. Elder’s assignment was long and taxing, but they were playing the long game here. They couldn’t just arrest anyone they thought was involved. He was carefully and delicately collecting evidence, while simultaneously preventing the rest of the world from uncovering the truth about their abilities. If these bad people had powers, then surely others would too, and Elder didn’t want those hypothetical innocents to be exposed if they hadn’t done anything wrong. It took a long time for him to make headway, but he did, and his efforts proved to be vital to sending the guilty to the other side of some heavy bars.