Fluence: Monarch (Part VII)

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Weaver stepped towards Misha Collins, who looked at her with some level of familiarity, suggesting that he had been here before, or had at least seen her somewhere. He wasn’t shocked or scared, but more annoyed. She reached out to shake his hand, but pulled it away before he could reach back. “Sorry. First. Do you know who we are?”

“You’re Holly Blue, Goswin Montagne, Eight Point Seven Point Two, and Briar. I never learned his last name.”

“Have you been to this location before?” Weaver pressed.

Misha looked around. “Yes. About a month ago.”

“I wish I knew which kind of month we’re talking about,” Weaver muttered to herself. That is, had it also been three months in the Ediacaran period? Understanding whether the disparate time periods were somehow linked to one another could help prevent this from happening again. She reached her hand out once more, but pulled back yet again at the last second. “Sorry, do you like...salmon?”

“I suppose I do, as much as anyone,” Misha said, confused.

“I didn’t say salmon,” Weaver tried to clarify, “I said salmon.” This was a test of sorts. When a time traveler encountered someone whose understanding of time was in question, pointedly asking them whether they liked salmon should indicate at least a baseline. If they thought that they were only talking about the actual fish, they probably didn’t know anything, or perhaps just not very much.

“I’m sorry, I don’t hear the difference,” Misha admitted. He was a human, and while this obviously wasn’t his first time around the block, other shifted selves of this group had so far kept him pretty well in the dark about the details.

“Holly Blue,” she echoed, finally shaking his hand, “but you can call me Weaver.”

“You can call me Castiel, if you want. A lot of people prefer it.”

“We need to get you home, Mister Collins,” Goswin said, also stepping forward. “If you’ve met others like us, and returned home, then they must have figured out how to do it.”

“They just surrounded me in a circle, closed their eyes, and then I was home.”

“That’s all it was?” Eight Point Seven asked.

“Oh.” Misha pointed to Weaver. “You tapped something on this refrigerator, and said something about a bubble.”

“I don’t know how he got through the bubble in the first place,” Weaver began, “but we’ll probably have to drop it to send him back. It would be the only safe way to do it. But we should be quick. We never know when other shifted selves will show up. We could have just missed the group that came before us. Measuring time is difficult. I don’t even keep a clock in here, except for my special watch. I may have left it somewhere...”

“Do what you gotta do,” Goswin requested. “Let’s make this quick. We’ll try to send him back where he belongs, and if it doesn’t work, we’ll just go with him.”

“Wait, there was one more thing,” Misha remembered. “You gave me this.” He knelt down and pulled something off of his shoelace aglet, handing it to Weaver.

She inspected it. “This is a temporal tracker. She probably used it to make sure that you were returned to where you belonged, instead of Belgium, or something. You weren’t meant to keep it; that’s why you were able to break through the bubble.”

“I must have missed that part,” Misha said. “I was looking at the sea cucumber.”

Weaver looked over at the glass. “That’s not a cucumber. What was the date?”

“The first time it happened was January 11, 2011,” Misha answered. “This time, it was February 25.”

She handed him the tracker back. “All right. Wait thirty minutes, and then step on it. I mean exactly thirty minutes. Set your watch to it.”

“I understand,” Misha promised.

“Okay.” Weaver went over to the refrigerator, and started tapping on the screen. Blast doors dropped down over the glass, to block the view of the water, and its sea creatures. She kept tapping on it, causing the space around them to shimmer, implying that the temporal bubble was now down. They all felt a small lurch in their stomachs as a result. Still, Weaver kept tapping on the fridge. They started to hear a persistent beep from down the hallway, the exact source of which was not clear.

“I think your smoke detector needs a new battery,” Misha guessed.

“It’s fine, we like fire,” Weaver said oddly. “You heard the man. Let’s put him in a circle.” They all came together, and held hands, even Briar, who wanted to fix this just as much as the rest of them.

Goswin was the captain here, and even though Weaver knew a lot more about this stuff, he needed to step on up. “We’re trying to get our new friend here back to February 25, 2011. February 25 in...”

“Vancouver. You don’t need to know my exact address; anywhere there is fine.”

“Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada,” Goswin said. “Everyone think about that, and nothing else.”

They shut their eyes instinctually, and focused on the goal. None of them wanted to open their eyes for fear of breaking concentration, but success was fairly obvious when they felt a short burst of wind, and heard the flap of wings. They each peeked with one eye, and found there to only be three others in the room. Weaver checked the tracker output on the fridge. “He’s home.”

“What’s to stop it from happening again?” Goswin asked. “It happened once before, it could happen a third time, and more, and nothing can stop it.”

“You hear that beeping noise?” Weaver posed.

“Yeah?” Briar answered in the form of a question.

Weaver sucked her teeth a little. “We should go. Oh, there’s my watch.”

They climbed out of the bunker, and back onto the surface. One set of their shifted selves was standing out there already, with their version of Weaver trying to unlock the door using the secret boulder switch. “Weaver!One,” she acknowledged with a nod of her head.

“Weaver!Two,” the first Weaver replied.

“Self-destruct?”

“Had to be done.”

“How long?”

Weaver!One looked back at the steps as the hatch was closing up. “It’s soon enough. We should all go.”

“We came here for a reason,” the other Briar pointed out.

“The cons outweigh the pros,” Weaver!One tried to explain. “Now hustle off. Don’t let us get mixed up with each other.”

When Weaver!One tried to walk away, Weaver!Two took her by the arm. “Don’t go back to the Nucleus.” Her eyes darted over to the first Goswin. “One of them has taken his job a little too seriously. We barely escaped.”

“One of the Goswins?” Weaver!One asked.

“Just don’t go to the Nucleus,” she reiterated. “At least one group ended up on Dardius, where they were forced to watch some bizarre propaganda films. They’re taking the Reality Wars very seriously, they think we should join, and they have a way of keeping us from shifting away.” She didn’t say anything more about it.

The two groups separated from each other, and disappeared. At least that was what presumably happened. The first version of the crew leapt away first, leaving the newcomers’ fates in question. Perhaps they would go down into the bunker, halt the self-destruct sequence, and start the whole cycle over again. Misha Collins could spend the rest of his life being shifted back and forth to the Ediacaran period, altering future events irrevocably. It was possible that every other Weaver or Holly Blue who took her copy of the crew to that place inevitably made the same choice to destroy it, only for her plan to be unknowingly thwarted by the next copy. Time and reality were now defined by chaos. That was only meant to be the expected end state of the universe, not the beginning of it, nor the middle.

“This is where you grew up?” Eight Point Seven asked. They were standing by a pond in the middle of a small field, with a forest all around them.

“Monarch, Belgium,” Goswin confirmed. “Population: zero.”

“Your family was the only one here?” Eight Point Seven continued the interview.

“There were others...until the very end. In the late 21st century, when they started erecting all the arcological megastructures, of course most people eventually moved to them, or they wouldn’t have been successful. It was the rewilding effort that did it. As antienvironmentalists started to be turned over to death, it became easier and easier to convince people that giving the land back to nature was the only ethical choice given our technological ability to accomplish it. They left their homes, and made new ones. The cities disappeared, both in name, and in infrastructure. I believe they used to call this Ghent. Ghent didn’t get an arcology. The nearest one is closer to where Antwerp was.”

“Yet some people didn’t do that?”

“The megatowers are more environmentally friendly for sustaining the massive population of the whole planet, but it’s okay if a few choose other methods. North America had their circles, and we had our villages. We lived in arcologies too, just not gigantic ones. We lived on the land, but we didn’t live off of it, instead importing produce from vertical farms. That was my job for a time, pulling the cart of food by bicycle. That’s all I did; just pedaled back and forth from the village to the arc.” He stared at the pond. “Over and over and over and over and over again.” He paused for a few moments. “I got tired of the monotony, so I left. I had studied both history and futurology, so I knew that the villages would die out too. It was only a matter of time before kids like me decided that there were more social options in the towers. I won’t get into how I moved up to become the Futurology Administrator of the whole world, but...I’ll never forget where I came from. This is where my mother died. She wasn’t transhuman, so she only lived for 74 years. My dad underwent some treatments, but he stopped them for her. Unfortunately, I guess, it was too little too late. He still outlived her by 21 years. But not here. After the second to last person left Monarch, he left too, and moved into my cluster in the arc.”

Goswin looked up as if just remembering that he was talking to other people. “For those of you who don’t know, the arcologies are modular. Each unit is the same size, and comes with a baseline configuration, which includes a bathroom. It can be turned into a kitchen, a dining room, a living room, a bedroom, or even a simulacrum of an outdoor space, among other variations. And they can be moved around, so he didn’t move into my cluster of units so much as they literally picked up my one unit, and flew it down to another slot; one that had empty units next to it, which we began to occupy together.”

“Where are we in the timeline?” Eight Point Seven asked him. “Are you still on Earth? Is your father?”

Goswin took a deep breath, and twisted Weaver’s wrist, which sported a watch that always told her the time, even when she traveled through it in the wrong direction, or at the wrong speed. “We were very precise with this jump. My younger self left with my dad fifteen minutes ago. We just had my mother’s burial ceremony.”

“Where’s her grave?” Briar asked.

Goswin actually smiled. “Over here.” He led them down the path a ways.

“Monarch butterflies,” Eight Point Seven pointed out as a few of them began to land on her arms and head.

“Our namesake,” Goswin explained. “Like I was saying, they gave all this back to nature, but they didn’t just let it grow on its own. They planted things on purpose according to a very well thought out ecology algorithm, generated by an entity such as yourself. They decided that Belgium would do well with milkweed, and with milkweed comes Monarch butterflies.” He continued through the trees until coming to another clearing. A gravestone marked the spot where his mother was laid to rest, but it wasn’t altogether necessary. A swarm of monarchs were keeping watch over it.

“It’s beautiful,” Briar couldn’t help but say. He was starting to relax into himself.

“We can’t stay,” Weaver said with a sigh. “We have to go back to the Nucleus.”

Goswin nodded gently, though no one was looking at him; they were still watching the monarchs flutter about. “I know,” he whispered.

“You heard?”

“I may look like a regular human, but I have excellent hearing.”

“Are you prepared to meet your possibly evil self?”

He took a beat, but then answered confidently with, “yes.”

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Fluence: Cass (Part VI)

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The four of them reached out for each other, and took hands. They were totally in sync, and were able to make the jump without saying a word. They were back on Earth, but roughly 542 million years ago, standing on the beach of an ocean. They lingered for a moment or two before letting go, and awkwardly turning away from each other. Weaver walked over to a rock a few meters away, and stuck her arm into a deep hole. They heard a click, which served to split the ground apart, and reveal a stairway leading down into the earth. Lights began to switch on automatically, revealing that the bottom was only a few stories down. “It’s okay,” she said. “We’ll be safe down there. I built my own mini version of the Constant to be alone.”

“You’re not alone,” Goswin contended.

“We’ll see.” She stepped down, and never looked back to see if they were following, but they were anyway.

They landed in a decent-sized foyer with a mostly homey feel, but also laboratory-like qualities. Weaver continued to lead them down a hallway until they came upon the main room where they found an aquarium that took up one entire wall. The glass barrier curved inward, which would let creatures swim right up to investigate the humans, if such creatures were anywhere to be found. There was a lot of underwater life to admire, such as algae and a seaweed of some kind, but no fish.

After Weaver tapped something on a control panel that the others assumed was a security passcode, she watched them watch the prehistoric creatures floating around soothingly. “Those aren’t plants, if that’s what you’re assuming. They’re not animals either. They’re unlike anything you’re used to in the modern age.”

“Protista?” Eight Point Seven guessed. She was more knowledgeable than the other two, but still didn’t recognize these organisms.

Weaver shook her head. “Some people think that there are eight kingdoms, including Protista and Chromista, but there have actually been eleven throughout history and prehistory. Two of them went totally extinct long, long ago. These right here belong to Ankorea, which came this close to surviving to our day. They exhibited traits from all of the other modern kingdoms. Their frond right there shows the first inkling of photosynthesis that we’ll later see in plants. It doesn’t convert sunlight directly into energy, but it does power the decomposition process that the organism uses to break food down like fungi. It’s what makes them brown, instead of green. Despite being multicellular, they reproduce via splitting, like bacteria, which sounds insane, though I’ve never witnessed it up close. This area is really calm and hospitable, but they’re extremophiles, like Archea, able to survive in both high and low temperatures. They can nearly all transition from one to the other if need be, making them unique. But unique isn’t the right word, because they’re quite diverse, like protists.

“All of these that you see belong to Ankorea, despite how different they look, and that explains why I built my constant here. You see, their defining characteristic is that they all have this anchor that can anchor them to the seafloor. This allows them to catch food as it floats by from one spot while saving energy. Once they feel that the area has been stripped, they pull the anchor up, and move on. They can swim or drift, depending on their energy reserves. Some of their anchors extend, like the majority of the ones you’re seeing, but that one there isn’t a rock. It has a nonextendable anchor. When it’s released, this thing will kind of start to roll around until it finds a better source of food. I don’t see it here, but one of them actually has two anchors, so it can walk like an animal. It’s crazy to watch, I wish you were here for that.”

“They sound so resilient,” Goswin pointed out, “how did they go extinct?”

“No one knows. I’ve brought a few experts back to study them, but we don’t understand it yet. Of course this is all before whatever ended them, but the current theory is that they were outcompeted by stronger organisms. They might have overgrazed their own environment. As you can see, there’s not a whole lot here. That’s pretty indicative of the world right now. The food cycle is difficult to maintain in the Ediacaran period. The ones that survive are the kind that thrive with less.”

“You brought other people here?” Eight Point Seven asked. “Did that not risk paradoxes? If they had published papers regarding what you know to be facts, but which were lost to the fossil records for the majority of the population, I would have it in the repository of knowledge.”

“I erased their memories,” Weaver explained. “They weren’t happy about it, but I promised to credit them for any work published after a point in the timeline when I felt like this information could be shared. Honestly, I’ve not even decided whether that moment will ever take place. There’s no decent way to explain how anyone could possibly know this much about organisms that never fossilized. Unless time travel becomes public knowledge, this is just for me. And for you now, I suppose.”

“Are we going to keep talking about something dumb and meaningless, and sidestepping the real issue, which is why we’ve come here?” Briar questioned.

“He’s right. We have to address the elephant in the room.” Goswin looked around the room, and took a half step back as if he were searching for a literal elephant. “It’s no coincidence that we all agreed to jump to this place without exchanging a single word. We all wanted to leave where we were so we could unpack recent events and revelations.”

“The question I have,” Briar began, “is which of us are real?”

“We’re all real,” Weaver reasoned. “There’s just a slight possibility that we’re shifting timelines without realizing it.”

“Not only a possibility,” Eight Point Seven argued. “I don’t belong with the three of you.” She frowned. “This isn’t even my body.” The cut on her forehead had since healed into a scar, which perhaps alternate or shifted versions of her would be able to use to tell each other apart, but it meant nothing to the other three members of the crew.

“We don’t know that it quite works like that,” Weaver tried to clarify. “Time is a weird thing, and it’s getting weirder. The laws of causality are breaking down, and we are at the center of it. Remember what I told you about the river of consciousness. That’s not just a metaphor that applies to us because of our bizarre situation. All conscious beings experience this on the quantum level. Your mind is in a constant state of flux. Eight Point Seven, you’re considered a true artificial intelligence because when you were first created, you passed a series of rigorous tests meant to determine this very thing. Classical computers do not flow like human minds. Their alterations are quantifiable, and even reversible. They can be codified as a series of rapidly changing states. No matter how rapid the change is, each state can be pinpointed and recorded. Humans do not exist in states, and neither do you. Not simply knowing, but understanding, this phenomenon was key to advancements that led to things like mind uploading, digitization of the brian, and total immersive virtual reality.”

“I’m having trouble following,” Briar said nervously.

Weaver faced him. “Time travelers tend to think of reality in terms of clearly definable timelines, which you can destroy when you create a new one by triggering a time travel event. We call this a point of divergence. But that’s not really how it works. Time is constantly shifting through an array of equally probable potentials of superposition—”

“You’re getting technical again,” Goswin interrupted to warn her.

Weaver sighed, frustrated at having to figure out how to dumb this down. “There is no real you, or fake you. They’re all you, and you are all them. Even without this thing that happened to us, you may be jumping to different realities all the time, which exist simultaneously in parallel. That’s what we’re all worried about, right? We’re afraid that we don’t belong together, because we can’t know whether someone’s been replaced. Think of it this way, it may be true that you’re always being replaced, no matter what you do. You step into a new reality, don’t realize it, and move on like nothing happened. That could simply be how it works for everyone. It may be an inexorable characteristic of existence. There’s still a lot about the cosmos that even I don’t know. So the question is, if that has been happening to you your entire life, why worry about it now?”

“Because some of us appear to be shifting back,” Goswin noted.

“Yes,” Weaver conceded. “We’re encountering ourselves, not as fixtures at different points in the timeline, nor even as alternates from conflicting timelines. They’re just us, copied to possibly infinite numbers, looping back on ourselves, and criss-crossing each other’s paths. It’s chaos. It’s chaos incarnate. That’s scary, I get it. We can try to fix the issue, or  we can try to ignore it.”

“Wait.” Goswin stepped farther away, and peered around the corner of another hallway. “If we thought to come to this place, how come no one else did? Our other selves, that is. Or...whatever we should call them.”

“Shifted selves,” Eight Point Seven suggested.

“They should not be able to enter the premises,” Weaver assured him. “I placed us in a temporal bubble. We’re currently moving through time at a speed that is only nanoseconds slower than outside, which is more incidental than anything. The purpose is to erect a barrier that cannot be breached, even by another me. It’s a safeguard I put in place, not to stop my...shifted selves from coming in, but any alternate. If another Weaver shows up, she’ll see the bubble, and know to jump to a different moment—perhaps a year from now—to avoid running into herself. When you travel this far back in time, precision is implausible at best. I have labs all over the timeline, but this is more of a vacation home to get away from people.”

“Maybe this already happened, and they went back, instead of forward,” Goswin proposed. He had wandered over to the kitchen table where he found a piece of paper. He lifted it up, and turned towards the group to read it out loud. “Shifted Selves Visitor Log. Weaver, Goswin, Eight Point Seven, Briar, Six Point Seven, Ellie Underhill, Holly Blue...” He stopped at the last name on the list. “Uhh...”

“Are there tally marks next to each one?”

“Uh, yeah,” Goswin confirmed. “The usual suspects are about even. Holly Blue is here three times, as is Six Point Seven, and Ellie came once. I guess she decided to join us on the X González in one timeline.”

“At least one,” Briar added.

“Right,” Goswin agreed.

“What is it, Gos?” Weaver asked him. “You’re balking at something, and it isn’t the tally marks. Those are interesting additions to the crew, but not wholly shocking. Who’s on the list that shouldn’t be?”

Goswin looked up from the paper. “Misha Collins.”

“The Misha Collins?” Eight Point Seven asked.

“Who’s Misha Collins?” Briar asked, having lived his whole life literally under a rock, or cave, rather.

“Misha Collins is an actor from the 20th and 21st centuries,” Weaver explained. “I would like to hear the story that led him to show up here.”

A shadow appeared out of nowhere next to the refrigerator. It was sliced up in segments, which were shimmering, and moving from side to side like Pong, as molecules worked to coalesce into full form. It started with the shoes on the floor, and began to work its way up as the traveler struggled to find his place in this point in spacetime. Pants, trenchcoat, narrow tie over a white shirt, and finally the neck and head. It was none other than Misha Collins. He only took a few seconds to get his bearings. “What is it this time? Uh, I mean...report.”

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Microstory 1881: Eyes Out on Stalks

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Before all this social media, if you wanted to get to know a celebrity, your only hope was to catch them in an interview on TV, or maybe see them at an awards show. You could read an interview, yes, or some other kind of article, but they always put their best foot forward, so unless it was a takedown piece, the writer would show them in the best light. That was okay, in general, but it did once place me in danger. When I had a crush on a particular leading man from decades long past—and I certainly wasn’t the only one—it was based on very little information. He was so great in his movies. He didn’t appear in many projects, mind you; he was a choosy talent, but they were all amazing, and he was amazing in all of them. I was young and naive, and I thought I was in love. Of course, I never thought I would get the opportunity to meet the man, and looking back, if only one minor thing had changed about that fateful day, I never would have. I can’t even say his name, it hurts so much to think back on it. I guess you could call it my unfinished business, even though there is nothing I can do about it now, so here it is. My local radio station was offering a promotion. Be caller number 96, and win a date with the hunk himself. They couldn’t call it a date on the official rules as it suggested some sort of romantic slant, but the crude radio personalities sure had their fun with their guesses as to what would go down. I called in, and actually won, and I was so incredibly excited. This was it, I was finally going to meet the man of my dreams. Now, don’t get me wrong, I was under no illusions about the upcoming night. I did not think he would fall in love with me, and ask me to marry him right then and there. But I didn’t care, because I felt honored enough just to be in his presence. I was so wrong.

He didn’t get down on one knee and propose to me on the night of, but he did seem to like me a lot. My mother warned me that he would probably expect sex. That was all right, I was ready, so I sat through the talk so she could make sure I understood that I could always change my mind. I did change my mind and it wasn’t really due to anything specific about him. He had a bit of a weird smell that I imagine he would call his musk, but I could have looked past that. It was just that we didn’t have any chemistry, and I guess he always wore makeup on screen, so I wasn’t all that attracted to him, so after the meet and greet, I just wanted to leave. It was a nice time, and I don’t think I would have regretted it if it had all ended, but he was not interested in ending things. He appeared totally fine that I wasn’t into have sex, but it was all an act. He was determined to get me in bed, whether I wanted it or not. He didn’t just break into my house, and attack me, though. No, that would have been too obvious. It would have been scary too, but at least I could have called the authorities if he had done that. Instead, he was what everyone around me thought was oh so romantic. They never let me call it what it was, which was stalking. He would send me flowers, and show up at my work. I found him in my kitchen once, waiting for my mother to make him some breakfast, like he was her son-in-law. It was so creepy, and I kept having to reject his advances, but he wouldn’t have it. I think he only stopped coming by because he found some new girl to fixate on. I never summed any of this up before, because as bad as it was, his actions were not reportable. I just wish people had listened to me back then, because a couple of years ago, we learned that some other girls ended up being not so lucky.

Microstory 1861: The Tarmides of Tasmania

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In the late sixteenth century, a certain famous playwright wrote what would become perhaps his most obscure works. He was two years from death, and didn’t even get to see his final piece performed on stage. Once Tarmides of Egypt finally did make it to the theatre, opening night was riddled with such bad luck that it ruined the show’s future indefinitely. The lead forgot many of his lines, his co-star had to give birth halfway through, forcing them to switch to an understudy. The man who played the grandfather died of a heart attack near the end, and another was impaled when the stage collapsed due to all the weight of the people who ran up to tend to the old man. The injury resulted in death a day later. It was for these reasons that all further showings were cancelled. Years later, a different troupe tried to put on another production, but it went badly too. No one else died on the night, but set pieces fell apart, multiple actors flubbed their lines, and historians believe this to be the probable ground zero for what came to be known as the relatively shortlived Lurch Plague. The play was cursed, according to the superstitious majority of the time, and no one else so much as attempted to produce it again for at least a century. Since then, rumors of further unfortunate events have spread about more recent attempts, but most of these claims remain unsubstantiated. The fact of the matter is that the play has almost certainly been produced dozens of times without any issue, but that’s not a very good story, so most students are taught the melodramatically stretched truth that the curse always takes them in the end. The mystique of this whole thing is only fueled by the subject matter of the play itself.

Tarmides was born in Greece, but the narrative is about him immigrating to Egypt to escape his past, only to find himself at the center of one disaster after another. The playwright was probably trying to demonstrate the futility of life, having become more nihilistic in his latter years, but this depressing lesson is lost to the more sensational idea that he was a prophet, who wrote it in order to prompt destruction in the real world. When I was a young man, a tyrant rose to power, and waged a war against the rural parts of my country. Villages were demolished under the weight of his superior technology. I probably wasn’t truly the only survivor, but again, that’s not sensational enough, so the media billed it that way. I became famous, and an international effort formed in order to relocate me to a safer region of the world. Most of the time, developed world nations fight over who has to take in refugees, but in my case, they fought for the honor. Tasmania won, so that’s where I moved. Shortly thereafter, an undersea earthquake in the Southern Ocean sent a tidal wave to the island, killing thousands of people, and destroying a great deal of the infrastructure. Once again, in order to sell papers, journalists began drawing connections between my arrival, and the completely unrelated and unpredictable natural disaster. Like most regular people, I hadn’t even heard of the play myself at the time, but I soon came to be known as The Tarmides of Tasmania. This nickname followed me for the rest of my life. Whenever an item fell off of the shelf at the grocery store, or I was around when it began to rain, I was blamed for it. There was always someone around who enjoyed pointing it out, especially if something even moderately inconvenient happened to someone else. I lived the rest of my life with this mark, and as much as I don’t want to die, I won’t miss it.

Microstory 1844: Extra

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People often ask me what made me want to be an actor, but I can’t point to anything. There wasn’t a moment when I was enthralled with a character on screen. There wasn’t an emotion I had never felt before. I don’t remember the first three years of my life, but it was that version of me who made the decision for the both of us. As far as I know, I have always been an actor, and I never could have been anything else. I begged my parents to move to Los Angeles, but they refused. I honestly believe they would have agreed to it if we had lived in, I dunno, Tennessee, or something. They were so supportive of my dreams, but we were in New York, so I guess they looked at it as a lateral move. “If you want to act, you can do it here,” my mom would tell me. I didn’t want to do stagework, though. I wanted to be on the screen. I wanted to shoot something once, and have anybody in the world be able to see it again forever and ever. As the years went by, I didn’t let my living situation get in my way. I went to auditions for things that were shooting in the area, and while I didn’t get any roles, I think I gained a lot of great experience. That’s how I saw it. Every failure was just a step towards success. Then I got the audition that changed my life. I can’t remember what the role was exactly. I think I was a little too old for it, but the casting director was handing out little flyers calling for extras. There were going to be huge crowds in the movie, so they were trying to fill out the streets. It was an alien invasion, so we had to run from spaceships flying down to kill us. I thought, all right, it’s just more experience, right? It was so great, being on set around all those people. We were all there for the same thing; to support the main cast, and we all understood our jobs.

I had to join a talent agency to get more parts like that, and I found myself preferring it. I suddenly realized that I no longer wanted to be an actor. Yeah, that’s how I got started, but I ended up enjoying staying in the background. I wasn’t getting noticed, but I met a lot of really cool people, including celebrities, and it was always fun. It was pretty steady work too. Film crews always needed people like me to make it look like their story took place in the real world, instead of a snowglobe, like Waiting For Godot. Then my career changed again. I was in a movie about a demon who could possess recently deceased bodies. In one scene, he was having a menacing conversation with the hero on the battlefield, so there were plenty of fresh bodies to possess. Several of the extras were elevated a little bit to actually say a few lines before crumpling to the ground, and making way for the next possession. Luck of the draw, mine was the last body used before the protagonist realized how to kill the demon permanently. So instead of just falling down like the others, I had to pretend to die. I was given no direction for this, I had to figure it out myself. Everyone on set was extremely pleased with my performance. We nailed that thing in one take, and the audience received it well. People were talking about it online, trying to figure out who I was, because I wasn’t credited for it. This was my big break, and I didn’t even see it coming. Talent agencies started reaching out to me, hoping to book me auditions for speaking parts, and I ended up choosing one out of L.A. By then, I had enough money to get out there on my own, and get back to what I originally wanted. I die today with 56 titles on my résumé, the last of which will have to be released posthumously. My agent says she’ll get me a dedication credit.

Microstory 1380: No Remorse (Part 4)

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Celebrity Interviewer: Thank you all for sitting down with me. My audience is very interested to understand the reasoning behind this arrangement. I’m very sorry the warden was not able to be with us today.

Producer: Yes, I just spoke with him, and he has some important business to take care of with the government, but he sends his regards.

Ex-Cop: A private prison owner’s job is never done.

Celebrity Interviewer: Quite. Now, let’s get into it. Whose idea was it to make a film about Ex-Cop?

Producer: That would be me.

Celebrity Interviewer: And who decided to cast Ex-Cop to play himself?

Producer: That would be me as well.

Celebrity Interviewer: That wasn’t Casting Director’s responsibility?

Casting Director: I was responsible for securing the casting, but it was an executive decision. I wasn’t even part of the project yet.

Producer: Yes, my vision started in my head, and I didn’t tell anyone about it until I had a really good idea of what I wanted to do.

Celebrity Interviewer: That makes sense. But, Casting Director, you had to convince the warden to go along with it, correct?

Casting Director: It was a team effort, but I was his primary point of contact.

Celebrity Interviewer: Tell me about the film. Where does it begin?

Producer: We start before the beginning, actually. The first five minutes follow Mr. Ex-Cop’s parents as their relationship evolves, from their first date at the zoo, to the day Ex-Cop was born. The next five minutes follow Ex-Cop’s upbringing. He has said that he knew he wanted to be a law enforcement officer because of a presentation an officer did at his middle school in eighth grade, so that’s where we stop moving so quickly through the narrative. We keep it linear, though. We don’t have any flashbacks.

Ex-Cop: That was my idea. Flashbacks, honestly, confuse me.

Celebrity Interviewer: I’m not surprised by that. Walk me through the reasoning behind not casting any other actors for the role. Are you using visual de-aging technology for Ex-Cop? How does that work? Can you really make a full-grown adult look like a child with CGI?

Ex-Cop: I’m not doing any CGI.

Celebrity Interviewer: So, you just haven’t cast the younger parts yet?

Casting Director: I can explain this. Ex-Cop is going to be playing himself throughout the entire film, and no digital editing will be employed to make him look younger. In fact, he’s not even going to be wearing makeup. This is a gritty, true-to-life experience. We want the audience to see him as the real world does, so they better understand what he’s gone through.

Ex-Cop: That was my idea too. I don’t wear no makeup. Do I look like I got titties?

Producer: Ex-Cop, we talked about this.

Ex-Cop: Whatever.

Celebrity Interviewer: No. I want to know what he has to say. I think you’re right that it’s important the audience sees him as he is, rather than some cartoon on the screen. And to that, I’m still confused. The world sees him as he is today, but when he was six years old, they saw a six-year-old. Sure, you could never find a single-digit child who looks exactly like he did when he was that young, but how exactly can you claim this to be an authentic portrayal when you have a fifty-year-old running around in diapers?

Ex-Cop: I’m not fifty!

Celebrity Interviewer: Assistant, please make note of the time. We’re going to want to put a fact-check up on the screen, making sure my audience knows Ex-Cop is indeed fifty years old.

Assistant: Yes, sir.

Ex-Cop: You go to hell, the both of you!

Celebrity Interviewer: Don’t talk to her like that.

Producer: He didn’t really mean it.

Celebrity Interviewer: No. I want him to apologize. He can say whatever he wants about me, but he will leave my assistant out of this, or he’s gonna wish the state had just sent him to some hole in the ground where I can’t find him.

Ex-Cop: Fine. I’m sorry.

Assistant: Thank you.

Producer: Let’s get back on track. I understand where you’re coming from, but Ex-Cop expressed to us that he’s always felt more like an adult, so we wanted to illustrate that by having him play his younger selves as well. It’s a creative choice, and I stand by it.

Casting Director: As do I.

Celebrity Interviewer: And do you stand by casting a convicted murderer in your film at all?

Casting Director: I’m sorry?

Celebrity Interviewer: You should be.

Producer: I would like to clarify this. We’ve obviously heard all of the criticisms. It’s not my job to judge whether Ex-Cop is racist, or if he’s guilty of his crime—

Celebrity Interviewer: He’s guilty. He was found guilty by all six peer arbiters, all four professional arbitrators, and a highly respected adjudicator. He’s considered guilty by the majority of the country’s population, and then some. The film that started this all—the one that shows Ex-Cop pounding his fist into the head of Innocent Victim until he dies—proves that what they said he did, he did.

Ex-Cop: You can’t talk about me like this!

Celebrity Interviewer: On the contrary, sir, I can. You gave up your rights when you abused your power, and murdered an innocent blackman on the streets of Hillside. This film is outrageous! This private prison is outrageous! And you, Ex-Cop are the most outrageous of all. Why, if I had—

Assistant: Celebrity Interviewer? Your boss is on the phone. He’s watching the closed stream.

Ex-Cop: You’re in trouble now, bitch.

Celebrity Interviewer: You fucking piece of shit. I’m gonna put you on the ground. Why you runnin’? Get back here, coward!

Producer: Stop.

Celebrity Interviewer: Get your hands off me. You’re as bad as him, because you validate his sentiments!

Assistant: You better take this call.

Microstory 1360: Talent

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Talent Agent: Miss Influencer, it’s very nice to meet you. My daughter loves your stuff—loves it.

Influencer: Well, that’s great. Send her my regards.

Talent Agent: Wonderful, wonderful. Now, it says here that you’re a social media influencer. What exactly does that mean?

Influencer: Well, companies send me samples of their products, and pay me to advertise those products on my social media profiles. I’m particularly popular on Photogander.

Talent Agent: That’s the apps that turns movies into still pictures, or sumthin’?

Influencer: Sort of. You can move the camera around an object, and it will stitch together a 3D tour-like photo of that object. Users can then turn the object around, to see what it looks like from other angles. Other photo-sharing services focus on selfies, but this is better for objects, since it’s kind of difficult to move the camera around your own body, and remain in the same position. Of course, I’m sometimes in the shot myself, which is why I have a partner take the pictures for me.

Talent Agent: And you like the products you advertise?

Influencer: Sometimes.

Talent Agent: Well, isn’t that a bit dishonest? I mean, don’t your fans—

Influencer: Gagglers. They’re called gagglers on the site. And they give you honks when they like a photo.

Talent Agent: Whatever. So when your gagglers see you’ve promoted a product, theoretically they go out and buy it. But if you don’t even believe in the product, you’re just lying.

Influencer: I never said I didn’t believe in them. I support everything I advertise. I would never promote cigarettes or vaping paraphernalia, for instance. I just don’t always love them. Sometimes there’s an alternative I prefer, but if they haven’t hired me, I don’t post it on my business account. It’s just like acting in a commercial. No one expects the actor to have any strong feelings about dish soap, but they pretend to for the role. That’s fine.

Talent Agent: Yeah, I guess I get it. So look, I can make you a star, but you gotta do what I say. We’re a special kind of agency here. We’re only lookin’ for the best, but that don’t mean everyone’s ready. If you’ve never had any experience, then we gotta make you ready. We have a class you can take. It’s four hundred dollars per session for five sessions, but I promise it’s worth it. If these follower—I’m sorry; gaggler—numbers are any indication, two thousand dollars probably won’t be a problem.

Influencer: Well, I have taken some acting classes, and I’ve participated in live appearances, where I’ve been told I have good presence.

Talent Agent: Eh, yeah, but this is a special thing. We really want you to go through the class, so we know what we got. We gotta be able to tell the casting directors you know what you’re doin’.

Influencer: Uh, give me one second. I just need to look something up.

Talent Agent: Okay, sure.

Influencer: Yeah, the internet says don’t accept help from a talent agent who asks you to take a class. Like, it specifically mentions that it’s probably a scam. It warns readers that a scammer will claim it has more to do with evaluating your skills, so they can talk you up with casting directors.

Talent Agent: Ah, you can’t believe everything you find on the internet. I mean, just look at you! You say you love dish soap, but apparently that’s just a photo.

Influencer: Right, but I don’t make false claims about what the products do. I don’t try to convince my gagglers the soap will give them superpowers, or make them more attractive. Everything I say about the product is a hundred percent true.

Talent Agent: Well, it sounds like a gray area to me. I’ll tell you what, since we already know you have fans, and they’ll be wanting to see what you do, I’ll give you half off the class? How’s that sound? Influencing ain’t acting, but I believe you on the thing about your presence. You lit up the room when you walked in. Half off is best I can do.

Influencer: Nah, I think I better go look for someone else. Even if this is a legit operation, it’s not worth the risk, and it’s not like you have a monopoly on the industry.

Talent Agent: Well, I can’t make you stay, but we make stars, so I think you’ll be happy here.

Influencer: I’m okay. Thanks for the interview, though.

Talent Agent: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, wait. Can my daughter get your autograph?

Influencer: I better not. Just get one of your stars to do it instead. I’m sure they’re all much bigger than me. Have a nice day.

Microstory 1353: Retirement

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Celebrity Interviewer: I’m sitting here with famed method actor, Retiring Actor, and he’s here because he wants to share his thoughts on his upcoming retirement.

Retiring Actor: No, don’t spoil it, my dear, I haven’t announced the retirement yet. That’s what this interview is for.

Celebrity Interviewer: Of course, sorry. Let’s start again. [clears throat] I’m sitting here with famed method actor, Retiring Actor. I don’t know why.

Retiring Actor: [...]

Celebrity Interviewer: I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m just nervous. Are we still rolling? Okay, one more time. I’m here with famed method actor, Retiring Actor. I’m going to get to the bottom of what he has in store for us. Now, Retiring Actor, tell me about this upcoming project you have. Has it already begun?

Retiring Actor: We just wrapped filming last week.

Celebrity Interviewer: What is it about?

Retiring Actor: It is about a man’s journey into his own soul, combining the profound volatility of life itself, and the ethereal nature of death, as seen through a lens of both despair and industrialization.

Celebrity Interviewer: Sure. And when is it released?

Retiring Actor: It will be coming out in two years. They think they’ll need me to go back in later for reshoots, but after that, I’m done.

Celebrity Interviewer: Done, as in done with the project, or done in the industry?

Retiring Actor: Both. You see, Celebrity Interviewer, I am announcing my retirement. This will be my very last film.

Celebrity Interviewer: Oh, no, why?

Retiring Actor: Well, you see, Celebrity Interviewer, I’ve done what I set out to do. I made beautiful art. I didn’t contaminate myself with garbage, or stoop to a lower level. I only chose the very best projects, and I believe even then, there are a finite number of those any one man is possible of creating.

Celebrity Interviewer: Oh, interesting. It says here this will be your fifteenth credit. Does that sound right?

Retiring Actor: Oh, it sounds perfect. Fifteen is the absolute best number. I only create one masterpiece every three years. That gives my adoring fans enough time to really sit with the work, contemplate its meaning, and then prepare for the next one. I don’t want to overwhelm them with too much of me at once. Some people have dozens, or even over a hundred, credits and they’re barely halfway through their careers. That is not me. I suppose you could say I’m more thoughtful and discerning than that.

Celebrity Interviewer: Yes, I do not believe anyone would categorize your performances as overwhelming, so very good for you; very good indeed.

Retiring Actor: Yes.

Celebrity Interviewer: So, what will you be doing, now that you’re retired?

Retiring Actor: I won’t be doing anything. No more acting, no more appearances.

Celebrity Interviewer: Right, but a lot of retired people take up knitting, or birdwatching, or something. Are there any hobbies you never had time for before?

Retiring Actor: I don’t understand the question.

Celebrity Interviewer: Okay, well. Thanks for asking for this interview. Unless there’s anything else you would like to say to your fans.

Retiring Actor: What? Cut, cut! I did not request this interview.

Celebrity Interviewer: No, sir. Of course you didn’t. That’s my mistake.

Retiring Actor: You there! You’re going to edit that part out of the interview. I won’t have my fans thinking I can’t get an interview unless I ask for it myself.

Celebrity Interviewer: Please don’t talk to him. You talk to me.

Retiring Actor: This is an outrage.

Celebrity Interviewer: I think we have everything we need.

Retiring Actor: Are you still filming? You better not. This better not end up on the YouTunes, or you’ll be hearing from my lawyer.

Celebrity Interviewer: All right, sir. Thank you very much for coming in, whosever idea it was.

Microstory 1335: Debut

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Entertainment Interviewer: Is this your first interview?

Film Student: My first real interview, yes. I’ve been in the school newspaper a time or two.

Entertainment Interviewer: Well, I bet you’re pretty excited, aren’t you?

Film Student: Yes, I feel very fortunate to have been given this opportunity. I haven’t even started working yet, and Sterling Serials has already been so good to me. They assure me they’re not just going to throw me in the deep end, and expect me to fend for myself.

Entertainment Interviewer: I mean this interview. I bet you’re excited for the interview.

Film Student: Oh, uh, yeah. Yeah.

Entertainment Interviewer: Then I guess we ought to get started. First, tell me a little bit about yourself.

Film Student: Well, my name is Film Student. I’ve been a film student at Hillside University for three years now. I’ve always known that I wanted to be a director, so I picked my major right away. I did a little bit of stage acting in middle and high school, and some of my film and video classes required us to make short films, of course. I much prefer to be behind the camera, though. Other than that, I do some photography—mostly close-ups—which I consider to be more like motion pictures than most people do.

Entertainment Interviewer: Oh, that’s cool Very interesting. So, what was your first thought when you got the call that you won the contest?

Film Student: I know you expect me to say I was giddy, and I jumped up and down, or did a dance, but my aunt always taught me to act like I’ve been there, so I played it pretty cool. I wanted to sound professional right from the start.

Entertainment Interviewer: It says here they want you to direct the fourth episode of the third season of The Light of Day. When does filming begin?

Film Student: First of the month, next month. I’ve already seen a draft of the script, and I obviously can’t give anything away, but I can tell you that it’s really good. I’m honored to be working off the incredible talent from the writers room.

Entertainment Interviewer: What about the cast?

Film Student: I haven’t met any of the cast yet, but the internet tells me they’re all really nice, and down to Earth.

Entertainment Interviewer: What do you have to say to all the little girls out there who are being told they can’t make movies? What did you wish you had said when someone said that to you?

Film Student: Um, well...that never happened to me. No one’s ever told me that.

Entertainment Interviewer: I thought you said you always wanted to make movies. No one ever tried to tear you down when you were young?

Film Student: Umm...no? My family has always been very supportive. I was born into middle class, and my parents sacrificed a lot so I could have the things I wanted to be happy. They bought me multiple video cameras over the years so I could practice my skills.

Entertainment Interviewer: Right, but wasn’t there someone who mocked you about your dreams, or at least tried to tell you that you’ll have to work twice as hard to make it as a woman in the industry.

Film Student: I—I guess that sort of thing does happen. But I don’t have any personal experience with it. Like I said, my family was very supportive.

Entertainment Interviewer: Okay. That’s—good for you.

Film Student: Yeah, thanks.

Entertainment Interviewer: Well, what are things like now? How does it feel to be a woman in such a male-dominated field?

Film Student: I don’t know, man. It feels great to be here, but I don’t really give my gender much thought, and no one so far has given me the impression they give it much thought either.

Entertainment Interviewer: Oh.

Film Student: Except for you. You seem to be giving it a lot of thought.

Entertainment Interviewer: I just want to acknowledge that it’s harder—I suppose I don’t want to make a generalization—but different. It’s different for a woman. People have different expectations, and there’s a history. No matter what job you get, it’s just..different.

Film Student: I think it’s only different because people look at it differently. I appreciate you trying to acknowledge it, but be careful to not fall into a trap while you’re at it. If we put less pressure on gender, we probably wouldn’t notice it as much, which is the ultimate goal here. I mean, think about when Clinton II became president. All anyone talked about was how she was the first female president of the United States. That’s great and all, but if a woman was the second president overall, immediately after Washington, we wouldn’t be singing her praises. I mean, maybe we would; it depends on who this hypothetical person was. My point is that it’s only a big deal because we make it a big deal. But I’m not impressed with Hillary Clinton because she’s a woman. I’m impressed with her because she’s a strong leader, and has a great deal of foreign policy experience. I don’t want to keep hearing about the first woman this, and the first black man that. We should be striving for a world where no one notices such things, because they’re totally normal. I don’t wanna be a female director. I just wanna be a director.

Entertainment Interviewer: Great. Well, that’s all the time we have today. Thanks for stopping by.

Microstory 1261: The Saunter Twins

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Cullen Gunnarsen and Einion Tamaro were aspiring actors, but since they lived in Kansas City—and were only children—there weren’t a lot of opportunities to get themselves on the big screen. They met each other in community theatre when they were both cast in a production of Newsies. After growing up, they couldn’t remember which parts they played, though it was definitely two of the younger ones. A few years later, Senator Elliot Channing approached them both with an interesting offer. They would be paid handsomely, and really get their names out there, and all they would have to do was walk around Kansas City on camera. It seemed ridiculous and random to them, but it was a job, so they took it. They figured they could quit anytime if it turned out to be a waste. It turned out to be the best choice they ever made, though they would come to find out that it was an ethically questionable one. He hired them to walk in the City Frenzy event, which of course, was generally a foot race, where the object was to run fast. After a couple years of streaming the race internationally, Channing learned that people were tuning out as soon as the saw who won. Many turned off the feed after the next to finished, and very few watched all the way through the end. This was no big deal for subscribers who had prepaid for an ad-free experience, but it was a problem for the ad-supported tier. The faster the winner got to the finish line, the less money they were going to make, and he wanted to change that. Of course, it would be really bad if he tried to get the racers to slow down, especially since he would have to convince all of them to comply, and to also keep it secret. Instead, he came up with an odd plan that somehow worked even better than he hoped. People weren’t just watching until the last real racer finally got to the finish line. They were watching for hours and hours, just for Cullen and Einion.

The two of them would walk the race at a fairly leisurely pace. They would stop to appreciate the shops they went by, smell flowers along their route, and take selfies with the passersby. People began to close the broadcast immediately after the winner was crowned at a lower rate then before, and this only decreased each year The Saunter Twins—as the papers called them—put on their own show. It was just a couple of kids walking through the metropolitan area, but enough people were fascinated by their alternate technique to increase revenue. They called it a spiritual journey, and it apparently spoke to a lot of people who didn’t have anything else going on in their lives. This was before Channing decided to end his political career, and focus solely on the Frenzy event, which might have absolved the rest of the committee of any wrongdoing, but even after he joined permanently, he was never caught; not even by the others. The Twins didn’t give him up once they were old enough to realize that they weren’t allowed to be paid for their performance, and no one else ever figured it out. Cullen and Einion moved on with lives after the former aged out, and eventually relocated to Los Angeles, so they could pursue their acting careers. By then, they were worldwide celebrities, so it wasn’t hard for them to start landing gigs, which was probably the main reason they never confessed to their involvement in the crime. They did some separate things, but they were largely considered a package deal, so casting directors often called them up to work together on the same titles. Parts were even rewritten to accommodate two actors, instead of one. They acted in movies, and television, and occasionally spent time in New York to perform on Broadway. Their fans continued to call them The Saunter Twins, but never caught onto the fact that neither of them behaved like zen spiritualists after the Frenzy chapter of their lives was over. It all seemed to work out.

Microstory 1192: Frank Delaney

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Frank Delaney’s life was full of heartbreak and death in any reality. Though he was not salmon himself, he was always somehow involved with them. There was one timeline where his mother died when he was sixteen, so he changed his last name to Williams, in honor of her. His father lived long enough to be proud of him for this, but then he died too. Frank went on to become a famous model-turned-actor, but apparently that was too much of a happy ending. In the following timeline, everything started to play out as it had before, but a mentally unstable time traveler altered the past, which ultimately led to Frank’s untimely death as well. There was a timeline where both his parents survived into old age, but he spent a not insignificant amount of his adulthood battling a pirate serial killer, and other nefarious individuals. His first wife died in a later timeline, while he died with her in the timeline after that, and this was something he knew was going to happen. When the current version of Frank Delaney was a child, he encountered a boy in the park who introduced himself as Zeferino Preston. Zeferino claimed that Frank’s death was part of destiny; that it was inevitable. Someone had gone back in time, and changed history. This historical event had nothing to do with Frank personally, but due to the butterfly effect, a series of other events were leading to his demise, and there was nothing he could do about it. Most children would either disbelieve the prediction, or be scared out of their minds about it. All evidence suggested Zeferino was intending for him to live the rest of his short life in paranoia, but that’s not what happened. Frank just learned to make the best out of every situation. He still didn’t know exactly when death would come. He met, and fell in love with, his wife, just as he was scheduled to. And when his time came, he accepted his death. He just wished Zeferino had been clearer about the nature of the incident. His wife died as well, and this spawned even greater changes to the timeline, which few could have predicted.

Microstory 1009: Ira

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No, Bertha didn’t say that, did she? What a jackass. I’m glad she finally recognizes how terrible she is with people, but she’s living in a nightmare world if she thinks I am too. It’s true, I read and watch a lot of science fiction, but I’m smart enough to know the difference between a character, and a real person. Fiction is a great resource for understanding how other people work. Simply seeing that it’s possible for a separate individual to have a different perspective than one’s own can be enough to fuel your empathy for others. Writers take a lot of liberties when it comes to characterization, but just because the character is made up, doesn’t mean we can learn nothing from their experiences. Each character is created by a writer, and at the very least, that writer is drawing upon their own lives, and those of the people they know. So, let’s just assume every character a given writer comes up with is essentially the same person, because that writer somehow managed to become successful enough to get their work out there without anyone noticing how one-dimensional their stuff was. There are still thousands upon thousands of other characters in the world, created by different writers. Compound that with the fact that most that are created by the same artist are going to have different perspectives. Now compound it with the number of people who contribute to that characterization: writing partners, producers, actors, editors, etc. A lot goes into making a piece of performance art, or a written work. There’s a lot more collaboration for the former, but that doesn’t mean the latter type doesn’t hold its own lessons. Plus, any given story is going to be interpreted differently by each audience member, and now with the internet, it’s not only easy to share these thoughts with others, but helpful. I’m doing just fine in this world. I have lots of friends, and though I probably couldn’t have counted Viola as one of them, I’ve still been impacted by her death. Sometimes I use nomenclature that makes it sounds like I see the people around me as characters, but that’s but an extension of my love for art, and does not reflect an indifference to them. Like I was saying, I didn’t know her well, but I did know a lot about her. Socially, she was a lovely person, who was nice to most people. If she didn’t like you, she surely had good reasons, and that should give others pause when considering their own feelings towards you. She loved people, and always seemed to try to give them the benefit of the doubt. She was a lot like me in that way. I try not to judge people until I know more about them. I’ve known Bertha most of my life, which is why I can tell you with absolute certainty that she has a lot of growing up to do. I know I talked a lot more about myself than Viola, but I hope it helps. I’m looking forward to reading your story.