Microstory 2483: Campodome

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Camping has never gone out of style, but it’s had its ups and downs. Once our ancestors invented computers, they realized how disruptive it was to be away from their devices. People in the 19th century were basically, like, “camping is just living without being in a building, and peeing in the woods”. Over time, the gap between regular urban living and camping in a tent widened. Then we started developing better portable energy storage, and more prolific satellite connectivity, and it started going back the other way in many respects. You could go out to the middle of the woods, and enjoy nature, while still maintaining a connection to the outside world, to just about whatever degree you wanted. There were snobs, of course, who said that you really shouldn’t have anything, and to a certain extent, I agree. Glamping is what they called it when you basically lived in a tiny home with no sacrifice of amenities. Really, what’s the point? The leaders on Castlebourne couldn’t answer that either, so it doesn’t exist here. There are all kinds of other camping formats, though. Forest, prairie, desert, even wetlands, and snow camping. What people don’t realize is that each dome is large enough to be fully capable of supporting a diverse multi-biome ecology. You just have to tailor the terrain to fit what you need, and maybe add a bit of scientific intervention. Colder regions are near the top of a mountain range, as you might expect it on Earth. It doesn’t have seasons, since the kind of engineering that would require is just a little beyond what’s practical. It’s not impossible, but it’s more logical to divide climates up by areas. You choose where you wanna camp, and how you wanna do it. Some people go out there and totally rough it. They have no supplies, no food, maybe not even clothes. There’s a subculture of people who go out there totally naked and alone, and survive on their skills.

As I said, there are no seasons, though these survivalists can replicate them by moving to different spots. I will say that that’s not quite right, because if you really wanted to start your journey in Spring, and see how you fared when the weather changed, you would build your shelter as well as you possibly can, and wait for it to become necessary. That’s not a feasible option when your campsite has to shift in order to account for that journey. So maybe they can improve upon that. I know it’s not easy, and maybe they shouldn’t try. After all, that’s why the flying spaghetti monster made Earth, because it already has everything you need, and the cycles kind of take care of themselves. I’ve not mentioned it yet, but there are hiking and backpacking routes, if you like to stay on the move. Some of them are pretty long, but nothing that compares to the grueling trek of the Pacific Crest or Appalachian Trails. There’s just not enough space. There might be a dome out there that winds you around enough times to cover that distance, but it’s not here. This is mostly about the camping and again, some things probably should be left to the homeworld. We didn’t spend decades rewilding the surface exclusively to leave it to nature. We still allow ourselves access to that nature, and are encouraged to camp when we feel like it. So, is this place better at what it does? No, I shouldn’t think so. You’re still in a snowglobe. You will always know it’s artificial. And it’s nothing we don’t have elsewhere, unlike say, the waterpark in Flumendome, or the realm in Mythodome, but it’s still pretty nice. I certainly wouldn’t cast your consciousness here with the express intention of coming to this dome, but it’s a great option if you’re already here, and need to take a break from civilization.

Microstory 2015: New Mexico

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Papa met a lot of cool new friends when he went to college in Utah. He was still friends with some of them even as an adult. A few of them were at his funeral. One summer, after he was finished with his junior year at Promontory University, some of these friends decided that they wanted to go hiking and camping. Normally in the summer, papa would go home to stay with his parents, but he wanted to go on the trip too. They had done trips like this before, but always somewhere close. A mountain called Wheeler Peak would have taken them twelve hours to drive, but none of them wanted to be on the road for that long, so they bought train tickets instead. The journey was actually longer, because trains have to make a lot of stops, but it was much more comfortable. It was a popular destination for college kids, so a train went pretty close to both places. They still had to take a car to get to the mountain. They didn’t want to spend money on a rental, so they hitchhiked, which means they asked for a ride from a stranger. Dad says never to do that, because it’s dangerous, but papa and his friends were okay. They hiked for several miles up the mountain, and it was really hard, but they enjoyed it. I’ve seen the pictures that he took while he was there. They’re very beautiful. Once they were finished with the hike, they went back to the train station, and took different trains, because they needed to go to different places. Papa did end up going back home to Idaho until it was time for his senior year.

Microstory 2013: Maine

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I’ve been telling you stories about my papa going all over the country, but that’s not all he did. He also went to other countries. After he graduated from high school, he and his parents didn’t think that he was ready for college. He wasn’t stupid or too young. They just thought that he should do something else first. A lot of people do something called a gap year, which is when you wait to go to college. This often means traveling to other places. What my papa decided to do was to go on a big ship all the way from the United States to Europe. Specifically, he went from Maine to Portugal. Portugal is a country in Europe where they may sound like they speak Spanish, but it’s actually its own special language called Portuguese. They speak it in Brazil too. Papa did a lot of driving, but he flew in planes sometimes too. This time, he flew to Maine, and stayed for a couple of nights before the ship left. It left from a city called Portland. You’ve probably heard of the Portland in Oregon, but there’s also one in Maine. The ship was this really big thing called a freighter. They carry a whole bunch of cargo across the ocean. Even though it was really big, there weren’t that many people on it. Papa didn’t work for the ship company, but they let him ride for very little money as long as he helped clean. It took three weeks. When he got to Portugal, which the capital of is Lisbon, he spent another couple of nights there, and then he started to backpack all over Europe. The whole trip took him about four months. Dad thinks that papa went through a storm in the middle of the ocean, but he’s not sure, and he obviously made it home safe and sound.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 25, 2398

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Marie and Heath don’t spend long in Gothenburg. It’s as boring as it looks when you search the web for it. They see no signs that there’s anything special about the area, or that a secret time travel pitstop facility has been buried underneath. They didn’t even erect a sign that designates it as the center of the country, like they did for Lebanon, Kansas in the main sequence.

They’re in Belle Fourche, South Dakota now, which doesn’t mean much in any reality, but especially not here, what with the different national borders. That’s fine, they heard that there were some lovely hiking trails around these parts, and being out in nature is precisely what they both need right now.  They’re not talking, though, which neither of them believes is healthy, but they don’t know what to say. Should they talk about the abortion? Should they pretend it didn’t happen? Should they fight? Should they reaffirm their love? It’s just so awkward that the moderately treacherous terrain is the only thing keeping their minds occupied.

She stops to catch her breath. “Okay, can you tell me what you’re feeling?”

“I’m a little tired, but I’m okay to keep going. Did you want to make camp right here?” Heath proposes.

“I don’t mean about the backpacking, I mean about what happened.”

“We’ve been talking,” he sincerely believes.

“Yeah, but...”

“Do you want to tell me what you’re feeling?”

“That’s all I’ve been doing, telling you about my mixed feelings. You haven’t been giving me your opinion.”

“It was your choice.”

“I didn’t ask you what I should do, it’s done. I’m asking how you feel about it now!”

“Why is this turning into a fight?”

She sighs. “I don’t know, I don’t want it to.”

He steps closer, but doesn’t touch her. She still doesn’t want to be touched yet. “I’m proud of you, Marie, for making that decision. I know it wasn’t easy. And I know how easy it is for me, never having to do the same. You want to know how I feel...I’m sad. I miss the baby that never was. You know how my mind wanders, it’s why I keep buying fancy things, like The Olimpia.”

“Yeah.”

“I knew what you were going to do, even while I was fighting against it. I knew you would go through with it, because you had to. My brain, however, was insistent that it go over a hypothetical life that I had with that child. It chose a boy for me, and named him Ferris, after my great grandmother. I taught him about the world, and you taught him about cyberspace. He became a teacher, like me, and lived only a few miles away from us with his family. I don’t resent you for preventing this fantasy, so I don’t want you to think that that’s what I’m saying. It’s just been—” He’s struggling to continue.

“It’s okay, you can say that this has been hard on you. You have a right to that.”

“It has been hard. I feel like I knew him, and lost him. And when I think about the fact that I didn’t lose anything, it just makes it worse.”

She takes his hand. “I’m sorry you’re going through that.”

Heath shakes his head, and looks away.

“I mean it. This did happen to you, in a different way, but you’re not this removed observer. I’m sorry you couldn’t be there too. That probably hasn’t made it any easier.”

He nods, but says nothing more.

“Let’s keep going,” Marie suggests.

She lets go of his hand, and begins to head farther up the hill, but she loses her footing, and slips off the edge. They’re not on a cliff, but she tumbles down pretty far, and she can’t stop herself. She only does stop when a partially buried rock gets in her way. It cuts open her hand, and breaks at least a few bones. She’s holding her now limp wrist with her other hand, and trying to breathe through the pain as Heath runs down as fast as he can. He’s aware that he could fall down too if he’s not careful. By the time he gets all the way down to her, the pain is still there, and so is the blood, but her hand is otherwise totally fine. She’s able to move it.

“What the...?”

“Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you, I can heal now. It’s a temporary consolation prize.”

Microstory 1831: Tour de Force

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At the moment, there are 216 countries in the world, but it wasn’t always like that, and not all of them are recognized by every international governmental body. That doesn’t matter to me, though. I’m not traveling to these places as a diplomat. If they have declared themselves to be an independent state, I have to visit them, even if I was technically already there when it was part of a different nation. Well, I don’t have to do any of this, but I’ve made it this far, so I need to see it through. Let me explain. When I was a girl, my parents received a hefty inheritance from a distant relative that my mother didn’t even know existed. According to her executor, my mom’s great aunt something-something didn’t have any other family left by the time she died. Mom didn’t get this inheritance just because she was next of kin, though. Her aunt knew of her, and even followed her career as a trombonist. Sadly, we never got to meet her, but we did get that money. The two of them took some time off work one summer to travel. We went to several countries in Europe, plus Egypt, plus India. Just like that, I found myself having seen three continents, and one subcontinent. I felt compelled to continue, so before I began my studies at university, I spent a gap year backpacking through Asia, seeing five more countries. Every year, I became more obsessed with adding to my itinerary. North America, South America, even Antarctica. I developed rules about my stays. I had to remain for at least one week for it to count, and I had to go to multiple cities. I couldn’t just hang out near the airport, or straddle the border between two neighbors. I could have done it much faster without these rules—which some people do, thinking faster is better—but money runs low fast, so I still had to work. It took me decades to do it right.

Word spread what I was doing. As I said, I wasn’t the only one, but I was famous for it before I was halfway through, because I was actually spending time absorbing culture. Airlines would send me free tickets to promote their planes. Countries would pay my way to draw in tourism. Everybody wanted a piece of the action, and it was totally fine by me. I was the girl who saw it all, and people wanted me to tell them about it. I tried to write a book about my travels once, but I’m not a very good writer, so I hired others to do it for me. I sent them updates to include in the book, and we realized that it was going to be too long for one volume. This wasn’t a travel guide; it was deeply personal, but the audience ate it up, because there are so many people out there who will never get to see this stuff. Finally, in my old age, I reached my goal. I went to some of the most dangerous parts of the world, but I survived, and no one could take that away from me. Except they almost did. A few years ago, a community in Spain called Catalonia declared its independence. Just last month, the rest of the world finally agreed to recognize this independence, and the Catalan Republic entered the United Nations as a separate body. This is great, but things are still shifting, and during this time, travel to Catalan is incredibly restricted. All tourism has been blocked. But that put me in a pickle. It was a new country, and we all knew it, but I couldn’t go there. Now, had I spent time in the area when it was considered only a community, I might have argued success, but I never did, and I needed to get there. The world united in my favor, and pleaded with the governments involved to let me in, just for one week. Surprisingly, my request was actually granted, and it is in a hospital in Barcelona where I draw my last breath.