The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 27, 2398

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Leona inhales deeply as she stands before the surprisingly small, nondescript building. She pulls in air so fast, it tips her backwards, into the car.

“Are you okay?” Mateo asks.

“I’m fine.” She doesn’t look away from her future.

“You got your phone?”

“Yes,” she answers.

“Call or text me when you need a ride back. I’ll plan to return here at 5:00 unless I hear otherwise.”

“All right, dear.”

“Were I you.”

“Sure, dear.”

“This is all you ever wanted, isn’t it?”

Now she finally turns to face her husband. “In another life...literally.”

Now he breathes deeply, and looks down at the car. “We’re right back where we started.”

She purses her lips into a tight smile. “I’ll see you tonight.” She can feel him watching as she walks up the steps. He doesn’t begin to drive away until she proves the door is unlocked.

Her key contact is eagerly awaiting her in the lobby. “Magnus Matic. It’s so nice to have you here. We’re all really excited to hear your thoughts on our projects.”

“What kind of projects would these be?” Leona asks.

“Not here,” Petra warns. She faces the security guard. “She’s with me.”

“I already have a badge,” Leona says. Whoops, she’s probably not supposed to yet. They didn’t think this through.

Petra doesn’t seem to care. “Okay.” She must assume that Denver made it for her.

She crosses the infrared barrier with own badge, and doesn’t even look back as Leona does the same using hers. They walk through several sets of doors—each of which requires their badges, despite the fact that there are no turn offs—before stepping into an elevator, which is open and waiting for them. There aren’t even any buttons to press, but there are security cameras in all four corners, as well as one where the buttons would normally be found, so someone must be operating it remotely. It feels like it moves pretty fast, but they’re in it for a really long time. They must be going many, many stories underground.

When the doors open, all they see is yet another set of heavy metal doors. Petra places her hands on the crash bar, but waits to push them. “Brace yourself.”

“Okay,” Leona says, sure it’s nothing she hasn’t seen before.

She’s right. Petra opens the door, and leads her down one more short hallway, then through an open blast door. They’ve walked into an expanse. A rocketship is towering above them. It’s maybe 150 meters tall. Petra’s not looking at it, but instead at Leona’s face, hoping for a profound reaction.

“Oh. Oh, wow,” she pretends to be impressed, though probably not convincingly.

Petra is the shocked one here. “Have you ever seen anything like this before?”

“No, of course not!” Oh God, more bad acting out of this dumb girl. Take some lessons, why don’t ya?

“Holy shit, do the Croatians have this kind of technology?”

What Marie and Heath decided after some thought is that Croatia in this world is a prosperous and fairly self-sufficient country. While Leona supposedly most recently conducted research in Denver, she came up in Osijek. It would be hard to disprove it. It fits nicely, because of her last name, but God forbid someone ask her to try to speak the Croatian language.

“What, uh...what is it? I mean, I know what it is, but what is it specifically designed for? Luna? Mars?”

Petra chuckles once. “Try Alpha Centauri.”

“Oh, okay.”

Petra scoffs.

That’s right, she’s meant to be amazed by all this. “I mean, that’s astonishing.”

“Magnus Matic! The fastest our current rockets could potentially arrive at the nearest star system would be four hundred years! This thing is engineered to get us there in half a lifetime. How have you not fainted by now?”

Leona looks over at her boss. Acting is not going to work, at least not in the way it should have from the start. Now she’s going to have to come up with a reasonable lie. “What is your form of propulsion?”

“Fission drive.”

“Ten percent of light speed, huh?”

“That’s right. Why? You think you can do better?”

Leona nods. “What you may not know is that I’ve spent a lot of time researching fractional theory. I can get you to at least 30 percent. I can get you fusion.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 26, 2398

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Mateo and Angela are sitting in the living room together, reading their respective books from the library. Marie and Heath are out on the balcony, having a private conversation. Though, it probably can’t be too private, because any other resident could potentially hear them. A phone rings from their bedroom. Upon seeing that the two of them don’t hear it, Mateo gets up and goes inside. On the nightstand, he sees four phones lined up next to each other on what’s probably a wireless charger. On top of each one is a scrap piece of paper, tucked into the case, labeling them by name. Using his newfound genius level intelligence, he surmises that the one labeled LEONA is Leona’s new device. He answers it, and clears his throat. Then he almost laughs, because he remembers that being a problem back when he was just a normal person in the main sequence. The rational thing to do would be to clear one’s throat first, and answer second.

“Leona Matic’s phone.” A bright light shines into the corner of his eyes. He pulls his head away from it as fast as he pulls the phone in the opposite direction. He didn’t realize that it’s a hologram. “Oh, sorry. I thought it was audio only.” He didn’t even know holograms were a thing here in this time period. They have some weird expectations when it comes to technology.

The little lady standing over the screen nods respectfully. “That’s quite all right. Is Magnus Matic available?”

She must be talking about Leona. That’s his newfound genius coming through again. “I’m afraid she’s unavailable, she’s at work.”

Apparently surprised by this, the woman looks all around her. “I’m sorry, I was to understand she would be starting here soon.”

“Starting where?”

“Oh, forgive me,” she says in a horrified tone. “This is Magnus Petra Burgundy of the University of Usonia Kansas City Astrophysics and Cosmology Department. According to our records, Magnus Matic has recently requested transfer from U of U Denver.”

“Oh, yeah, right, of course. Yeah, she’s just working part time in retail. We were to understand it could take months for the transfer to go through. We sort of had to move out here on late notice due to family circumstances, so she just took what she could right away to support us.” No joke this time, that was a decent lie.

“That’s understandable,” Petra responds. “We foresee her ability to maintain her position, assuming it’s not too demanding, and still be able to work with us. However, when we received the notification for the request, we were quite ecstatic. Someone with her credentials and experience is exactly what we were looking for in regards to a special project we’ve been struggling with. I can’t say much over the phone, or to you, but we would be greatly relieved if she could begin work here immediately.”

Really? What fanciful claims did the forger make on her fake background documents? Magnus sounds like some kind of educational title, which he knows Leona not to have achieved in real life. Hopefully it’s not something she can’t fake her way through. “I imagine she would be happy to do that, though I cannot speak on her behalf. We just got new phones, so she forgot to take it with her today, but she’ll be back in the next few hours, if you would like to speak with her directly.”

“Yes, we would. And I apologize if calling today has caused any faith conflict. We know quite a bit about what Magnus Matic has accomplished in her time at Denver, but she did not list any shabatica. We operate seven days a week, but we respect our team members, and their disparate religious observances.”

“Rrrright,” Mateo answers, not sure what a shabatica is, but sure that he’s supposed to know. “I’ll give her the message.”

“Thank you.”

“Thank you.”

She just kind of stands there a moment.

“Could you hang up first? I’m not good with technology, she’s the smart one.”

“Very well.” The hologram disappears.

Mateo spins around, and comes face to face with Heath. “You found the phones?”

“Yes, Leona received a call.”

“Yeah, we bought them years ago. I don’t know why we bothered, it’s not like it would have been urgent. But we stuffed them in a drawer, and kept paying the data plans. I don’t know what kind of devices you’re used to, but you don’t ever turn these off. They will last for weeks on one charge, but they will eventually lose power. Even if you were to indeed switch them off, they would trickle it away slowly. We forgot about them, then Marie remembered last night, and rushed to charge them up. Y’all left before we could get them to you.”

“It’s okay,” Mateo determines. “She’ll be back soon.” He starts to walk towards him, like he’s trying to leave, but Heath doesn’t budge.

“One question.”

“Okay.”

“It’s going to sound random, but...do you like oyriri?”

“Do I?” Mateo asks as if it’s obvious that he does. “Do I?” he repeats, but in a more genuine tone. “What is that?”

Heath pulls a hologram up on his own device.”

Mateo squints and turns his head into different angles. “That’s a pineapple.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 24, 2398

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Angela walks back into the library. She’s only been gone for the last sixteen hours, but it feels like too long. She could learn all she needs to know from the internet, from the comfort of her alternate self’s home, but there’s something about being able to literally walk through the data that makes this place feel like her home.

The head librarian smiles at her. “Back so soon?”

“Not soon enough,” Angela notes. “Why are you only open 10:00 to 18:00?”

Madam MacDougas frowns just a little. “Hm. Seems normal to me.”

Angela nods, but still doesn’t agree.

“What would you like to study today?” Madam MacDougas goes on.

“I’m still working on history.”

“Are you just going to go from the beginning of recorded history, and continue chronologically?”

“I imagine that’s going to make the most sense in context.”

“All right, dear.”

Angela walks past the counter, and into the stacks, heading for the history section. She passes by the sciences, where she notices someone she recognizes. “Mateo?”

“Oh, hey,” he responds, looking up from his book on quantum mechanics.

“How long have you been here?”

“Twelve years,” he answers. “I’m from the future.”

She chuckles.

“Thirty minutes,” he answers truthfully.

“It just opened,” she points out.

“I didn’t know that when I walked down here this morning. The librarian let me in early.”

“I see.” She drops her gaze down to his book. “Little...uh...little advanced, don’t you think?”

He tips the book towards him to check the title from above, even though he obviously already knows what he picked out. “Yeah, I’m starting to get that idea. I don’t understand most of these words, but I don’t know where to begin.” Or whether to begin.

Angela slips back into the stacks, and isn’t gone long before she returns with a thin white book with lots of pictures. “At the beginning. This is for children, but I assume you could use a refresher since it’s been so long since you were in school. Not judging, by the way.”

He’s embarrassed, but she’s right, and he sees that. “Thank you.” He sets the big book down, and cracks the new one open.

“Can I make another suggestion?” Angela asks after watching him for another few seconds.

“Okay.”

“Don’t study that if you don’t care about it. Couples don’t have to be interested in the same things, or even be at the same level of intelligence.”

He sighs. “I know.”

“Does Leona ever make you feel dumb?”

“Sometimes,” he replies. “She doesn’t do it on purpose, but I see how annoyed you people are when I can’t follow what you’re talking about.”

“I can’t speak for the others, but for my part in that, I apologize.”

“It’s okay, Angela. I’ve been this way my entire life. It’s not like I thought I was a genius. I just assumed I would end up marrying a retail clerk, or maybe another driver.”

“Well, I didn’t know you back then, but I’ve already seen improvement. Honestly, it’s a lot faster than most people I watched develop in the afterlife simulation. Granted, most of them weren’t trying, because they saw it as their end state reward, but they had a lot more time than you, and essentially infinite resources. I saw the value in enriching myself while I was there, but that was a personal decision. I never considered it some kind of universal maxim. It’s okay that you can’t pilot a spaceship, or build a computer from scratch with a toothpick and some twine. You’re still part of the team, and no one thinks less of you. I can make sure they don’t make you feel like that again.”

“Please don’t say anything.”

“Okay, I won’t. But again, don’t study that if you don’t want to.” She looks around the library. “There’s a topic in here somewhere that you genuinely do want to learn more about. Let’s try to find that instead. Let’s find your niche. We already have a physicist.”

“I guess, maybe...

“Go on,” she encourages.

“I could look into philosophy?”

“Sounds perfect. I’ll go find you some starter books.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 22, 2398

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If Marie and Heath didn’t work out their issues, they didn’t let the rest of the team know. They came out of Angela’s bedroom after an hour, and sort of pretended like nothing had happened. Their friends could occasionally hear muffled yelling from the other side of the door, so they obviously said something to each other, but it’s unclear where they were going to go from here. Instead of saying anything about it, they decided it was time for the other four to secure their own new IDs, because they could be in this reality for a while. Nothing came from screening the footage from the parking lot, so they planned a field trip for the next day.

In the main sequence, they could have gone to a man by the name of The Forger, who could create actual new identities for all of them. These weren’t just fake papers, backdated as far into the past as possible, but a rewritten history of their lives, using real documents from the real past. And they could rely on the Forger to not leak the truth about them anywhere else, because he’s one of them, and just as susceptible to exposure. The Third Rail is a different story, obviously. It took some doing for Heath to find a forger for Marie, and they are at constant risk of being discovered. If their forger is caught by the authorities, he could give up his clients. He says that he doesn’t maintain records—and in fact doesn’t even ask for people’s original identities—but he had to take their pictures, and pictures can be copied. It’s dangerous for them to go back to the same guy, but even more dangerous to try to find someone else. At least he’s lasted four years without confessing to the cops. Theoretically, he could last four more.

He’s not there, but this is clearly still a document forging operation. They can see all the equipment behind the counter. A very young woman has her legs propped up on it. She’s scowling in a this place was better before they put in a door sort of way, and apparently upset about having to put down her book. She has an abstract tattoo along her jawline, and a funky haircut with a purple streak. The only thing missing is a lollipop in her mouth, or maybe seventeen sticks of gum. “Yeah, he’s dead. I’m his replacement.”

“Replacement?” Marie questions, “like, you interviewed?”

“No, I was more like an apprentice. Now it’s all mine. Behold, old ones, my exquisite palace of shit.”

“You don’t sound too enthusiastic,” Ramses says.

She turns to look at him. “The way I see it, if I’m too eager to do my job, I might be too eager to remember anything about my clients. I don’t care who you are. I don’t care why you need this. I only care if you have the money. Once you walk out of this room, you’re gone. I don’t wanna see you again. And if I do, it won’t matter, because I have a superpower.”

The team looks amongst each other.

“Not literally, they actually call it a disorder. I cannot detect or recall faces. Like, all I see are six people standing in front of me. I can’t tell you apart. When I hand you your packets, you’ll have to figure out whose is whose. That’s why I’m so good at this, and why Ramos chose me in the first place to carry on his dumb Kansas City secret legacy. Now. Do you want your IDs, or not?”

“Can we pick our own names?” Angela asks.

The forger shrugs.

Angela turns to Marie and Heath. “There’s no reason we can’t use our normal ones, right? I mean, we just need to be able to drive, and stuff. We don’t need to hide.”

“That’s how we saw it,” Heath replies.

“In fact,” Mateo says. “If anyone out there recognizes one of our names, we probably do want them to approach us. Even if they’re dangerous, we need answers.”

“I can explain,” Marie says to the forger, trying to think of a believable lie.

“Like I said, I don’t care. I need three things: your money, your chosen names, and for each of you to sit in that chair over there, and pose for a few photos. I have multiple backdrops for different IDs, along with some shirts you can borrow. I always do birth certificate, passport, and driver’s license. Those are included, but you can pay more for student IDs, certain employee badges, and even bank cards. I’m currently running a deal where if you buy one of the extras, I’ll throw in a library card for free. If you cough up enough money for a military ID of some kind, we go into the backroom, and I’ll let you do whatever you want for twelve minutes.”

“Uh, that’s okay,” Leona tells her. “We don’t need that.”

“You all can get whatever else you want,” Heath promises them. “Don’t worry about the money.” He jiggles his duffel bag of cash.

“We might could use a military ID,” Mateo declares.

“Excuse me?” his wife questions.

“But instead of twelve minutes in the backroom, I want to stay here and watch you work, for however long that takes.”

The forger narrows her eyes at him, and thinks about it. “It’s $10,000.”

Mateo looks to Marie.

“Okay, you can get it, but you’re eating all of your vegetables tonight,” she agrees. “And no dessert.”

“Oh, he can have dessert. I may not recognize his face, but I can see dat body,” the forger explains.

He grimaces, but of course, nothing happens between them that night. He just wanted to make sure she would do the job as they asked, and he was also curious how it would all come together. They may never need the military ID, but it could prove useful. Stolen valor is no joke, but Mateo can conceive of a situation where it’s their only way to solve a problem, or get out of a predicament.

He’s not the only one who opted for upgrades. Both Leona and Ramses ask for employee badges; her to an astrophysics lab, and him to an electronics corporation. It’s not the largest, nor the best, but it’s the only one the forger has access to. Now they can take all the equipment they might need, and also have some means of studying this reality. Angela takes one of the library cards for herself, and Mateo takes another. She wants to learn more about their new world, and he wants to finally learn something. All told, this ends up costing them $28,000, but neither Marie nor Heath are fazed, and it could one day save their lives.

“How was your night?” Leona asks when he returns the next morning.

“It was fascinating,” Mateo answers. “You probably would have liked it.”

“That’s great. One thing, though.”

“Okay?”

“You’re sleeping in the living room with Ramses tonight. You can come back to bed tomorrow.”

Microstory 1372: Space and Time

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Lifelong Student: Hi. I know people don’t really do this anymore, but I was hoping to get some help finding a book. I’ve looked for information online, but I’m struggling with understanding what it is I’m trying to research. I get a lot of results, but none of them is what I’m looking for.

Librarian: Not a problem. You came to the right librarian for help. I hail from the old guard, so I still remember what it was like before the internet gave everyone all the answers. I’ll try to find you that one perfect book. Let’s start broad, and whittle our way down from there, shall we?

Lifelong Student: Okay. Uh...space.

Librarian: All right.

Lifelong Student: And Time. Space and time. Is there a difference?

Librarian: I think..maybe not. But they both fall under astronomy and astrophysics. What would you like to know about space and time?

Lifelong Student: Well, I guess I’m less interested in learning the physics of it all, and more about the relationship between people and spacetime.

Librarian: Okay, give me a second to think. Yeah, 527 is Celestial Navigation. That will help you understand how seafarers traveled the oceans using the stars.

Lifelong Student: No, that’s not it either.

Librarian: Oh, okay. Well, if you’re talking about space travel, you may be more inclined towards the social aspect of space. Water, air, space transportation can be found in 387. If you need to know about space law, like who owns the moon, and whatnot, you’ll wanna go to the 340s. Though, to be honest, I’m not sure how to get more specific than that. Space law isn’t in my personal brain archives as its own decimal classification. It may be more history.

Lifelong Student: It doesn’t matter anyway. I guess I could get into some ethics, but I don’t care much about the actual laws. That’s too particular. I’m thinking more broad space and people, and what we think about it.

Librarian: Oh. Philosophy of space and time.

Lifelong Student: Yes! That’s it. Philosophy. Why didn’t I think of that word?

Librarian: That’s okay, I got you. Metaphysics are in the 110s. Let me think again...space is 114, and time is 115. Maybe they are different? Anyway, I assume you’re looking for something introductory?

Lifelong Student: Actually, now that I finally know what it is I’m actually looking for, I think I can take it from here. I can probably find better information on the internet. No offense.

Librarian: It’s okay. I understand that times have changed. I’ll keep helping until the day the last person ever leaves my library, and then one day after that.

Lifelong Student: Thanks so much. You really have been a big help.

Microstory 992: Astrophysics

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For the most part, I didn’t get a lot out of the classes I took in college—or high school, for that matter—but there were a few gems. There was a math class that taught me some interesting real world skills, focusing less on solving equations, and more on time and project management. There was a fascinating linguistics course that was just an hour of looking at examples of words in language after language, and trying to comprehend its grammar. I also took a fun astrophysics course that was tailored towards people who weren’t planning on going into the field. More classes should be like that. I understand that college is meant to help you figure out what you want to do with your life, but there aren’t a lot of people who hated algebra all through grade school who are suddenly going to become world-class mathematicians. I ended my own dreams of becoming an important scientist when I started failing science in eighth grade. A love of science remained in my heart, but I ignored it, because I felt that I needed to work on my writing. This class, however, reminded me why I was interested in the subject in the first place. I have horrible retention, just as a general rule, which is why I like to watch my favorite shows at least twice, so I couldn’t tell you anything I learned in this introductory physics class, but I remember loving it. I remember it igniting new fires of my canon. It, combined with my binging of the Stargate franchise a few years later, opened a plethora of science fiction stories that I wouldn’t have been able to tell without it. Because of Tolkien, I thought I was a fantasy writer, but that isn’t me at all. I’m all about space and time travel. Everything in this universe is physics, but I single out astrophysics because it involves things that are so foreign. I want to go out and see the rest of the cosmos; not that I’ve seen everything on this world. I want to live on alien worlds, and seek out alien life. Hmm, I guess I just want to be on the Enterprise.

Microstory 968: Evolution

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Over the years, I had some teachers that I liked. They were cool, or helpful, or otherwise impactful. True, there was not one that really stands out; that I can point to today and say, “that one. S/he did a lot for me”. But the real problem with education, in this country at least, is that it’s designed to have students regurgitate whatever the policymakers believe they should know, regardless of who they are. Understand this, the problem is not the teachers’ fault. Humanity has been looking at education all wrong for all this time, and it’s gonna take a lot of effort to dismantle those institutional ideals. In the past, education was for the elite. You had to be born at the right station to get it, and you had to be a man. Though this is no longer the case in the western world, it still has an effect on us. I grew up hating school because no one had the time to find out what I liked, or how to relate it to me. I would have loved to have studied a number of topics in school had I known back then I liked them. One of these things is astrophysics, which I’ll discuss later, but another is evolutionary biology. I am positively fascinated by all the different little organisms, and how they’ve mutated to fit their environment. Dragonflies have arms in their mouths to catch prey, and live underwater in nymph form for up to five years, before maturing into adulthood, and living another several months on the wing. Why? Why does it do this? Why does it spend so much time in the water, so little time in the air, and then just die? Why do lobsters never stop growing until they die from exhaustion when it starts taking too much energy to moult? Which came first; the honeybee, or the flower?

Scientists can study the traits of various animals, plants, and other organisms all they want, and they can infer what might have led to any given mutation surviving in a species, but no one really understands what it took to get to this point. There are only a handful of examples of evolution happening right before our eyes. Most of our understanding of it comes from a fairly static perspective of its present state, because we’ve not been observing scientifically for very long. I want so badly to go back in time and watch the Tree of Evolution split, and split, and continue to split over aeons. I want to experience the changes in real time so much that I’ve created characters that are time travelers and immortal, so this is exactly what they’ve chosen to do with their lives. I just haven’t found a good story to introduce them, but they’re coming. Education is a very linear construct. You learn simple stuff when you’re young, and gradually introduce more complex concepts. A few people have a bunch of degrees, but most of them are geniuses, because colleges don’t really expect you to keep coming back. It is simply not a feasible or affordable life plan. Yes, there are other options, like educational online videos, but I still think it would be best if I had an authority who could prepare a structured syllabus for me to follow. No one told me how amazing evolution is, especially not since I grew up in Kansas, where half the people were telling me that God made humans from scratch six thousand years ago. In case evolutionary biology is your thing, and you still haven’t reached a point of no return, then this is your opportunity to change course. Don’t you wanna know why platypodes and echidnas are the only mammals that lay eggs?

Microstory 927: The Universe Itself

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The anthropic principle is an infamous, and oft misused, scientific maxim that basically states that we exist within a universe that has itself come into existence to allow us to exist and evolve, so we can observe it. That was a bit of a whirlwind. So I’ll break it down some more. This does not mean the universe exists, or exists in the way it does, in order to support our lives. It simply points out that if it did not allow us to exist, we would not be observing it at all, and couldn’t remark on it. This may sound mundane, and even obvious, but it’s actually a perfect way to illustrate the rarity of life. Take this further, and recognize that even a minute change in the cosmic temperature would result in a wildly different set of circumstances. So we have heat going for us. Gravity is at a constant, allowing objects to coalesce, and form the heavenly bodies, so we have somewhere to stand. Atoms contain varying subatomic particles, which allow for an array of useful fundamental chemical elements, and by extension, molecules. Our solar system lies at an ideal distance from the galaxy’s central black hole, and the its edge, to support the creation of topographically asymmetrical rocky worlds. The gas giants, the moon, and interplanetary gravitational interference in general, protects us from many bolide impacts that once created life in the first place. We have an atmosphere and magnetic field to protect us from solar and cosmic radiation. The primordial ooze that started it all adapted to suit an ever-changing environment, to eventually evolve into the creatures we know today. Your biological mother and father joined at the exact right time, under the exact right circumstances, and your mother carried you under the exact right conditions to eventually make you the person you are today. I say all this, because it barely scratches the surface of what it took to get us to this point in time. While the universe is an unfathomably massive place, literally—and it would be practically impossible for alien lifeforms to not exist somewhere, in some way—the chances that anything exists is negligible. The math was never in our favor. The fact that the universe is here at all is, quite honestly, a miracle. There is just too much working against reality to allow for the creation of something, in place of nothing. A lot of people believe in a God, the creator; some supreme being that has determined what shall be, and what shall not, and some believe this entity continues to make decision. But I worship the universe itself, along with time and reality, because it’s far more a marvelous thing that it just suddenly came into existence, when it really shouldn’t have. This entry began as nothing more than an ode to the powerful force of the tides, but the moon and sun are only a fraction of what I’m grateful for cosmically speaking, so I just had to mention everything.

Microstory 917: Photography

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Every time I go to the bulk store, one of the first things I see is the electronics section. This makes sense. As much as they move things around in that place, they still want to make sure everybody gets eyes on the most expensive things there. I pass longingly by the cameras, wishing I could afford one, but knowing that I can’t. Years ago, I started getting into Instagram. I didn’t use it to take pictures of friends, or myself, or the cool places that I visited. I was snapping photos of random objects at close range, and overusing filters, in order to create an image that you wouldn’t necessarily be able to recognize. A few weeks of this made me realize that I was into photography a long time before the service even existed, but in order to take a class in high school, I first had to take some other art class, and I was just not into that. I’ve never wanted to be a professional photographer. I had no dreams of opening my own studio, or traveling to far off distances with Sean Penn to shoot wildlife. I just wanted to take pictures. And that would be a fine dream if it weren’t just another one in a whole cluster of them. Filmmaking, astrophysics, evolutionary biology, medicine, futurology. These, and more, are my other passions, to varying degrees, and for different reasons. I don’t have time to do them all, and I don’t have the money to do any of them. Not even my writing actually makes me any money. I’ve earned $27.45 from Google Adsense on my website over the course of more than three years, which isn’t even enough to cash out. But my writing career holds the number three priority spot over anything in my life. It’s third only to family, and revenue. Photography is probably number four. It would be nice if I could purchase a decent camera, plus lenses, and anything else that goes with it, along with a couple classes so I understand how the damn thing works. I don’t know that I would ever do anything beyond more interesting Instagram posts, but it would at least be a start. If you personally would like to see my dreams come true, then spread the word about my website. The better this does, the more chance I have of publishing a real book, and the closer I get to pursuing any or all of my hobbies. Thanks!

Microstory 907: Stargate Franchise

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Circa 2006, I went to one of my illegal television streaming websites, which I was just getting into, and tried to start watching Stargate SG-1. Well, the premiere bored be too much, and I gave up halfway through. Four years later, as I was ending my tenure at the University of Kansas, I noticed that Hulu had every episode up for free. Now for you kiddos out there, this was before Hulu was a subscription service. The point of it was to provide a single source for recent primetime television series, from three of the four major networks. For free. It was only later that content providers started expecting people to pay hundreds of dollars for cable, Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime. Anyway, in 2010, I had but 42 days before all 214 episodes Stargate SG-1 were to expire from the old Hulu. I tried the first episode again, and liked it so much that I watched the next episode right away. Then I opened up my Google Calendar, and made up a schedule for how quickly I would need to watch them in order to catch each one before I lost them all. I surpassed my quota, and finished every episode with more than a enough time. Hulu later decided to extend their deal with MGM, which would have been nice to know ahead of time. After that was done, I moved on to Stargate: Atlantis, and—armed with a three-month Netflix subscription as a graduation present from my sister—I was able to watch the first half of the first season of the third series, SGU Stargate Universe, on DVD. I was then able to watch a season and a half of SGU in realtime before it too was cancelled, and we were all left Stargateless. As I recently explained, I don’t read as much as you would expect from a writer. What I do is watch a lot of TV and movies, and that is where I get my inspiration. I don’t need a books to tell me how form sentence or congratulate a verb. I just need to know how to tell a good story, and any good story gets me that. Hell, bad stories give me that too; they teach me what not to do, which is just as important. I remember thinking Battlestar Galactica was the best space opera in existence, until I discovered the Stargate franchise. Whenever I feel down, I can throw on an episode of Stargate. It has opened me up to so many ideas about physics, astrophysics, engineering, anthropology, sociology, psychology, technology, and more. I’m a better writer for having watched the series, and this website wouldn’t exist without it, because my view of the world was so limited before. Now they’re talking about a fourth show to reboot the canon (Infinity and Origins don’t count) and I am all for it. Here’s hoping it becomes more than just talk. Get to the gate.

Microstory 554: Telescope Reveals Most Planets Aren’t Flat

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Double rough scientist and enterprise leader, Golzar Germano has made one of the most important discoveries in recent history. When Germano was a child, he dreamed of being whatever he wanted to be, and rarely listened to what others told him. His parents were at a loss as to how to discipline their son. It seemed that, no matter what they said, he would always do the opposite. They eventually learned how this worked, and figured out a way to get him to fall in line by demanding he do the opposite, and letting him “defy” them. Upon growing up, Germano began to understand his own personality better, and decided to use his contrary attitude to his advantage. When he came of age, he went through the normal testing phases, and was told that he was a natural-born Warrior. This was unsatisfactory, what with him being a complete pacifist and all. Once again, he chose to go against the grain, and rough into a different suit. As a Creator, he studied all of the natural sciences, but found himself particularly fond of astrophysics. After a few years of working in his field, he had become bored with his life. He had only attained Mariner rank, and had very little interest in pursuing it further. He has had this to say about his decision to rough into a second suit, “I’ve never wanted to be like everyone else. Nor have I wanted to be special. I chose to not follow my suit, nor even try to trump into a higher rank of the suit I chose. Nor did I think I would be well equipped to handle the life of a double packer, which a lot of people assume I’m going for. Being a jack of all trades sounds nice, but it’s not for me. I have a wide range of interests, but that does not include all of them. I just want to be me.”

With his experience as a scientist, and now as a Leader, Germano went on to form his own company. He gathered the best scientists and support staff from all over the system. In fact, no one under the rank of Karek was allowed anywhere near his laboratories. He instructed his Creators to develop the most marketable inventions for his Providers to sell, and eventually, Majorwood Industries was one of the top names in electronics. His true passion, however, was still astrophysics. These inventions were really only tools used to gather enough capital to accomplish something else. He wanted to build a space telescope. Not only that, but he wanted to build the best telescope in the system. He called it TALON. Many of TALON’s predecessors were capable of determining the features of distant stars, but none was able to grasp the details of any orbiting planets. So far, the only exoplanets cataloged are not flat; they are spherical, news that will shock all physicists. Only around a hundred planets have so far been observed in the last few months, but Germano, and Majorwood, are confident enough to announce the fact that most, if not all other, planets are, in fact, spherical. The next question to answer now...is why? Why are we different? How did our flat planets come to be? After that, Golzar Germano has another question...how do we go to these fantastical round planets, and what would it be like to stand on them?

Microstory 488: Inventor

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Like I said with the last one, some of these titles will be more literal. The Inventor is one of these. If ever something needs to be repaired, or built on the fly, she is your girl. She seems to know more about what’s going on than she lets on, frequently dropping hints as if under the assumption that people already know what she knows. She needs others to ground her so that she does not abandon a project in excitement for another one. Because of this, her workspace includes a number of half-done inventions that she finally finishes and uses later, but only when and if the need arises. She tends to reject traditionalism, preferring instead to look for new, improved, and especially interesting, ways of getting things done. She has a goal towards universal efficiency. Even if she doesn’t actually operate like this herself—often jumping into new projects without any sort of planning stage—her creations are designed to ultimately increase the end user’s speed and accuracy. Others like her for her ability to both be social while recognizing that not everyone is like her, but also know her to be absent-minded. The longer her friends know her, the more they accept her quirks, and the more they love her for them. She has magnus degrees in astrophysics, quantum dynamics, plex mechanics, radionics, and engineering, as well as a sub-magnus degree in matterology. She has studied a plethora of other subjects on her own time too without ever bothering to earn formal recognition for them.

Microstory 343: Authority

Click here for a list of every step.
Mastery

People with authority are a special breed of masters. I’m not talking about people who just happen to be in charge of something like supervisors or judges. Authority, in this case, refers to a master who’s become so versed in their field that they’re matched by no one but a few other authorities. These are the people you call when only the best will do. When a meteorite lands in Russia and alien insects start tearing out politicians’ brains, you call authorities on geology, astrophysics, exobiology, neuropsychology, etc. I said in my previous step that mastery is not a lofty concept; that you could become a master in what’s considered a “low-tier” job. This is not so with authorities. They’re the tippy-top masters of a relatively small number of fields. This is not to them just about a job, or even a career. This is their whole life. Not everyone is going to become an authority. By its very nature, only a handful of people will succeed. You can be a master cashier, but there’s really no such thing as an authority on cash registers, because what would that even mean? Unless, that is, you’re talking about an engineer, or maybe a technician or mechanic. Now, I know what you’re thinking, where is he going with this? Nowhere. This is one of those entries that sounded good on paper, but can’t really amount to much. This would probably be better as an inspiration poster, or something. So why don’t I tell you how I came up with this series in the first place? I don’t remember. But I know that I took every major aspect of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Then I stretched them out so that I had 33 of them. Then I broke each of those into thirds so that I would have 99 in the end. That’s why I sound so repetitive. It seemed like a great idea, but hasn’t turned out like I had hoped. At least landing on the right number of words hasn’t been as hard as

Career Integrity

Microstory 97: Homeless Tenant

Everyday around 8:30, I look in the windows and make sure that no one was in the house that I didn’t know about. Sometimes the homeowner doesn’t leave at all, and I’m stuck outside; but if she does leave, she always returns at exactly 6:30 in the evening. The first time I discovered this house, she had accidentally left it unlocked, but then I found a spare key in her desk. I had an extra one made and have been using it every day since. I don’t ever steal anything valuable. The first thing I do is take a nice warm shower. That way, the water heater has time to compensate by the time she gets back home. She keeps a lot of fruit in her kitchen, so I pick and choose what won’t be noticed. I also like to have a piece of toast, careful to clean up the crumbs. Since she doesn’t own a television, I spend the rest of the day reading the books she has in her library. After a couple years of this, I had all of the narrative fiction read; some of them twice. I moved on to the more technical material that would have been far beyond me before. She was apparently some kind of astrophysicist. I was this close to finishing high school, but I’ve learned more in the last few years of reading on my own than I ever did as a kid. I found her educational literature to be fascinating, and wished that I had had an opportunity to go to college. After exhausting her resources, I started to check books out of the public library, but I would always read them in her house. It felt more like home to me, even though I could never sleep there. One day, I was in the middle of a book about exoplanets, when the door opened. The homeowner walked in and dropped a stack of papers on the coffee table. I’m stunned. “Applications for your GED, college admittance, and financial aid,” she said. “I think it’s time we move you on to a formal education.” How long has she known?