Microstory 2720: They’re Not Afraid Anymore

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Chief Asset Manager Pribadium Delgado is sitting across the table from the seemingly self-appointed leader of the so-called Doma Tertians. His name is Sora Shimizu, and he has already proven difficult for her. He doesn’t like what she’s wearing, claiming that the shine offends his eyes. She does tend to favor the sleek and glossy aesthetic, and this is the sort of thing she normally wears, but she can be flexible. She taps on her wrist interface to shift her outfit to a matte purple.

Sora looks down at the purple scarf around his ankle. “That won’t win you points with me. I wear this in honor of a loved one. It was her favorite color, not mine.”

Pribadium has her limits. Without saying a word, she taps on her interface again, reverting back to her usual shiny suit as she folders her arms. Now she’s in his head.

Sora grits his teeth. “Whatever you’ve come to say, you should know that I know my rights. I know that we are legally allowed to settle on any celestial body massive enough to coalesce into a meaningfully spherical shape. No party may stake singular claim to an entire legally categorized terrestrial planet at the expense of other settlers—”

“I know the law,” Pribadium argues. “I helped write the most recent amendments.”

“Did you know that these laws apply to all neighborhood planets, and that the potential for sole ownership only begins outside of the bounds of a fifty light year radius from Earth?” Sora presses.

“Of course I know that,” Pribadium reiterates. “I wrote them! You obviously didn’t read or comprehend them. Those laws only apply to colony worlds. The Gatewood Collective was not categorized as a colony world. It was a military outpost for centuries before being released to a special asset distributor, which I run. The planet that we are on right now was deemed excessively inhospitable, and unfit for colonization. Squatter’s rights do not apply, because no one is allowed to settle on it. We are not settling on it either. It has been scheduled for obliteration. The process has already begun, and cannot be undone. If you stay, you will die when the pulse arrives.”

“We do not accept that decision,” Sora contends. “We might have landed after you fired your big gun, but we are here now. We know that there are ways for you to deflect the beam. You either do that, or count yourself responsible for the permanent deaths of hundreds of colonists who are also refugees. You will lose your job.”

“First of all, it’s a job, not a calling. If I lose it, then fine. In a few thousand years, no one will remember this. Secondly, we won’t come out looking bad. You were informed of the facts. You chose to stay. Everyone will know that. I’ll be fine. Gatewood will be fine. Thirdly, we can’t deflect it. It’s moving at the speed of light.”

Sora folds his arms now. “I know you have your ways. You can’t fool me.”

Oh, he’s just crazy. She knows that she shouldn’t use that word, which is why she doesn’t say it out loud. He’s clearly not mentally well, though. He might have been born that way, or the horror he faced on Proxima Doma changed him. This is gonna be tough either way. Then again, she does have the ability to manipulate time. There’s no way he knows that, right? I mean, if he were a time traveler, he would just speak with her honestly about it. He has to be bluffing, and her status is a complete coincidence. Right?

Sora chuckles softly. “Take all the time you need. We survived the destruction of our planet. It turned to soup underneath my feet. We are not afraid anymore. Are you?”

Microstory 358: Safety from Political Corruption or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Escape to a Constructed Reality

Click here for a list of every step.
Freedom from War

My personal political ideas are so radical that I’ve never really gotten into studying how politics work in the real world. I approach the fictional worlds in my stories as a naïve child; with few preconceived notions. Don’t get me wrong, I do tons of research for my work, and it’s actually my favorite part (I more often than not dread the typing part, whoops). But I also like to reimagine the world from an outsider’s perspective, because if another planet wanted to create a judicial system, they wouldn’t check in with Earthan humans first. I tell you this as a disclaimer so that you’ll understand where I’m coming from when I tell you that voting for Donald Trump is unlikely to be any less than the second or third worst mistake of your life. It on its own probably wouldn’t be the worst, because Trump-voters have something fundamentally wrong with their brains. He’s not as dumb as his twitter feed makes him seem. In fact, he and his campaign team are geniuses. We hear so much about the “black vote” and the “female vote” and the “hispanic vote” but Trump has finally figured out that idiots outnumber the rest of us by a ratio of at least 3:1. He’s low on money, and the polls aren’t looking great for him, but the scare is not yet over. Even if he doesn’t win, he’s a giant mirror for the state of our country. That Trump has made it this far is an omen to how close Uncle Sam is to shooting a firecracker in his own face. I speak so much of him because he’s not a politician, yet he could be the greatest we’ve ever seen. Politicians lie, cheat, and steal. They put people in danger, they do favors for each other, and their motives rarely align with the greater good or the moral high ground. Sounds like Trump to me. He’s corporate incarnate, so I’m not worried about him and policy, because little would change there. I’m worried about him being in possession of reapers and nuclear codes. He’s why I live in an alternate reality.

Right to Privacy

Microstory 53: “Mar” Laws

• Martial Law: state of emergency when the government is taken over by the military.
• Martian Law: a set of laws developed and enforced by the Mascos.
• Marshal Law: when the government is decentralized and each region is run by local militia.
• Marshall Laws: a set of amendments designed to limit law-making so that local law enforcement does not contradict, override, or otherwise interfere with parent-state law (named after primary advocate Frederick K. Marshall).
• Marshell Law: commonly used slang term to describe environmental laws and regulations specific to bodies of water and adjoining land (marshell is a synonym for seashell).
• Mere-shill Law: derogatory term used to describe incompetent elected officials who rely too heavily on advisors (not necessarily the mother), and who are merely a mouthpiece for the true leader.
• Marital Law: a set of conventions specific to married persons.
• Marcia Clause: the only in-text amendment to the constitution, clarifying child labor to be any work performed by persons under the standard age of 12 that is either paid, or resembles a position that is more often paid (created after the case of Marcia Atenheim v. Blanchard Atenheim in 1746 which involved household chores that were unreasonably strenuous for Marcia's age).
• Margin Laws: set of laws that regulate both the physical and virtual distances an adult-oriented product or service must be from children or child-oriented products or services. It also established a "half the age plus six" rule that governs age of consent (with a minimum age of 13).