Microstory 2061: Anyway, I’m Taking Some Drugs

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If you’ve been following my microblog, you know that I got sick again. It’s not even the same thing. The first one was a virus that I can’t pronounce, but this one is a bacterium that I can’t pronounce. I guess my immune system was in shambles for so long that something else managed to get in there before I closed up shop. I should have known. It’s definitely happened to me before. I just forget these things. The thing about being immortal is it doesn’t change your brain chemistry. It’s a purely physiological situation. It’s pretty much impossible to study the condition, because no one could ever take my blood, or anything, but I think that one of the downsides is an inability to improve in certain ways. I could never get stronger. Lifting weights, doing cardio, none of it mattered. Exercise didn’t make me feel better (it also didn’t make me feel worse at least). Nothing could change. The brain isn’t a muscle, but I think it suffers from the same limitations. I could gain new memories, of course, but I couldn’t really grow as a person. Anyway, I’m taking some drugs besides the antibiotics, so I’m not sure if I’m making any sense, but basically what I’m saying is my memory sucks. People would always tell me I should keep a diary to remind myself of my own history, but I would always forget to do it, so that never really worked. I’m surprised at how diligent I’ve been about this. Don’t expect me to keep going. If it’s anything like my previous attempts, I’ll stop by the end of the month. The only thing more boring than this world is talking about my personal experiences with it. Nick Fisherman IV, signing off. Oh, wait. Did I never tell you what my name was before? Oh my God, that’s kind of funny. Maybe I’ll explain where the name comes from, and what makes me the fourth out of four. It’s not anywhere near as simple as that my father was the third, and so on up the bloodline. It’s more like how they name kings.

Microstory 2060: Of Opium Floating

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Finally got a call from the garden this afternoon. My boss tells me she can’t pay me very much, because of my lack of experience, but she’s sure I’ll start getting raises after I prove myself. Unfortunately, the place is a little strapped for cash at the moment, so they’re going to make-do without the help until the end of the month. Still, I’m not going to complain, because I’m pretty grateful for the opportunity. In the meantime, I’m learning more about the history of this Earth. A lot of it sounds pretty familiar, though I was never good at history, so any number of details could be wildly different, and I wouldn’t know the difference. If you told me that Monroe was the president before Madison, I would believe it. And if you told me the opposite, I would believe that too. I’ve still not yet figured out what went wrong here, though. Why is it so boring? There’s no war, but I think that’s because nobody cares enough about anything to fight over it. The poor stay poor, and the rich aren’t all that wealthy. They spend it on whatever they need, and when they die, their assets usually end up with the state. You don’t seem to have the concept of charity or inheritance. It’s all very strange. I’m beginning to worry that there’s something in the air that makes everyone so chill, and not in a good way. I read a book and watched a TV show adaptation before I came here where they went to a magical land that had a little bit of opium floating in the atmosphere all the time. I suppose if something like that were the case, I would be feeling the effects. I’m no longer immortal, but I feel the same as I did before all of this, so that doesn’t necessarily explain it. In at least one universe, men don’t have scrotums, which is not something that would be immediately apparent if you met a native. There are so many possible differences that I couldn’t even hope to detect a small fraction of them. Will do more research, and get back to you, but will probably just assume for now that dudes here have scrotums.

Microstory 1732: Delphinus

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I am not against science, though my detractors would certainly hope you believe that about me. I believe in medicine, vaccinations, surgical intervention. I even believe in a woman’s right to choose. But I’m not going to let researchers move forward with whatever technologies they dream up without any consideration of the ethical ramifications. A few years ago, a new startup was formed in the valley with one goal. They wanted to create an artificial womb system capable of not only supporting a transplanted fetus, but of fostering life from the very beginning. This would remove the need for a mother and a father. There are some great things about this. Same-sex couples would be able to have their own children, which I’m also not against—I’m not a conservative nutjob who doesn’t believe in the future. I’m an ethicist who focuses on precaution, and isn’t interested in developing everything scientifically possible in the name of supposed progress. It seemed pretty simple to me at first. God, evolution; whatever you wanna call it, decided that we would produce offspring a certain way. A biological male and female come together to conceive the child, and then that child gestates in an organic womb, inside of a human being, who is charged with protecting this new life. I’m all right with surrogate pregnancies. I’m even fine with the concept of an artificial womb. But I can also see how dangerous the technology is, and how many problems it can cause down the road. I have been fighting hard to prevent it from becoming legal, and letting Delphinus Obstetric Advancements win, but a friend recently pointed out an undeniable implication. Even though I am pro-choice, I don’t want anyone to have an abortion. Before focusing on this issue, I regularly went out and informed women about their options. Abortion is not the only way, and we should be working on ways to make it unnecessary. The artificial womb seems to accomplish that.

The problem with abortion is that it’s the destruction of life. However you define when a developing...entity transforms from a group of cells to an actual person is irrelevant. Abortion means death, that’s what it is. If a pregnant person does not want to have their child, that child can be transplanted from the carrier, to an artificial gestation pod. It can then develop in there, and be born in the lab. Of course, this comes with its own ethical problems. What happens to the baby when it’s finally born? Who takes care of it, raises it, teaches it? Who is responsible for finding that person, or those people? The lab? The egg provider? The state? More to the point, who has the right to make such decisions? Furthermore, this complicates the matter of the egg provider’s rights in the first place. Being unable, or unwilling, to raise a child, or even unwilling to birth a child, are not the only reasons to have an abortion. If a state can supersede one’s choice by simply saying “fine, if you don’t want it, we’ll take it, and we’ll do it right now,” then is that really fair to the original carrier? They weren’t necessarily choosing to simply have nothing to do with their offspring. They chose to have an abortion, and an artificial womb is not inherently synonymous with that choice. Ethics is a complicated subject, and I don’t have an answer to any of these questions. But it’s causing me to question my convictions, and stop thinking that I can understand the issues clearly. All I know is that we can’t let the government, or the corporations, take our rights. We must retain our humanity, or all the technology imaginable can’t save us.

Microstory 1731: The Cygness

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We don’t know where it came from, but the disturbing rumor is that someone in our town once lay with a swan. They’re calling it the cygness as a pun. It starts out with a white skin rash. According to reports, scratching it will cause it to grow worse, so family members have bound the arms of their loved ones, hoping to stop the process, but they always fail. It can be slowed, but it can’t be stopped. All succumb to the transformation sooner or later. Once the victim’s skin is completely white, bumps will begin to rise. Out of that, chutes will appear, like seedlings bursting from the ground. These chutes will spread out, and form something that the researchers call powder down. Over time, as this down fills in, the feathers will mature, and eventually become just as beautiful and full as a swan’s real feathers. The victim will not grow wings, nor a beak, nor flat feet, but their shoulders will lock their elbows behind them, limiting movement, their face will blacken, and their toes will become webbed. Lastly, and we still don’t understand how this works—well, we don’t understand any of it, but especially not this—the patient will lose their ability to produce vocal sound. Something about their vocal cords will change, preventing them from not only creating speech, but other sounds as well, like hums or whistles. They’ll still be able to breathe and cough, but that’s just about it. From start to finish, the transformation takes weeks. At times it’s painful, at times it’s uncomfortable. Once it’s complete, however, patients report feeling better than they ever have in their entire lives. Some wish it to never end, but it does. The last stage is death, and it follows the patient’s returned voice. If someone with the cygness begins to talk again, you know that their life is nearly over. I have been fairly lucky thus far, but the condition has recently fallen upon me, so I know that I need to make arrangements.

I experience the same symptoms as anyone else, in the same order, and according to the same timeframe. They place me with all the others who are in the same stage as me, I suppose so we can all die together. As our conditions worsen, I notice something strange about the others. They’re flapping their lips, and moving their laryngeal prominences up and down. It takes a moment for me to realize that they are all trying to speak. Evidently, even though they know that they have become physiologically mute, they cannot help themselves. They don’t even just forget their limitation every once in a while. They appear to be constantly attempting to communicate with each other, hoping that with enough hard work, it will suddenly start working again. I know better. I know that that is not how it works. I sit quietly, and mind my own business. No one else seems to notice that I’m unlike then. I guess I’ve had more practice being quiet, since I wasn’t one to talk much when I was a regular human. One by one, they fall. They make one last call to our people, and then their eyes shut for good. Finally, I’m the only one left. I stay in isolation for a few more weeks, knowing that people are watching me, trying to figure out what makes me different. I can feel that I have my voice back, but I dare not use it, for I remember what happens next. The researchers come in, and demand that I use my voice. They need more data, so they can come up with a treatment, and they don’t care if it kills me. I refuse, but they threaten the lives of my family, so I give in. I speak. Then I sing. And then I survive. I am the human swan.

Microstory 41: Fast Food

Half the crowd at the fast food restaurant aren’t even eating. I guess at some of their motivations, unable to hear them with my headphones on. Many people go to coffee shops and libraries to study, but one college-aged girl is studying anatomy here. I can see the flashcards of the human body. What an odd choice of location. A man who had already finished his meal when I came in sits with his arms folded, watching one of the employees fiddle with the interface for the drink dispenser. An exhausted woman walks in and lets her two children run to the play area, happy to be free from them for a few moments while she orders. A younger man eats with his son who looks relieved to be there. He probably doesn’t get to eat fast food very often. A large family huddles around a small table. Why they didn’t pick a larger table when there are plenty of options, I couldn’t tell you. An elderly woman steps in, takes one look at the menu board, and immediately leaves, as if she didn’t realize how cheap this place was. A young girl moves back and forth from the car to the counter, taking turns with the people established in the queue. They seem to have messed up the order, and are having further troubles fixing the problem. A couple drives by the windows, stuffing their faces. They look like they haven’t eaten for days. A teenage boy uncomfortably stares at the wall, occasionally getting up to throw something away or look through the options of the drink dispenser, without a cup. He looks nervous. Maybe he knows something. And me. As I nurse my soda, I massage the grip of my gun, anxious for what I’m going to do next.