Microstory 921: Hand Sanitizer

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I discussed hand sanitizer in the Stepwisdom entry about Cleanliness in general; wherein I recount my first experience with the stuff as being God-adjacent. For someone like me, cleanliness is extremely important. I’m not a germaphobe, mind you. I get sick all the time, and it has been this way my whole life. I’m not afraid of being infected by something, and I’m about 83% that, if the zombie virus ever plagued this world, I would be immune to it. What I have a problem with is cross-contamination. My OCD is what gives me the need to control the nature of my environment, but it’s my autism that dictates what how that environment should ideally be. There’s this trope you can find on the web called Blessed With Suck. Basically, a character will be burdened with some supernatural ability that is mundane, pointless, or downright inconvenient. There are a lot of superpowers that I occasionally believe myself to possess, like being able to see the future, or sensing other people’s emotions. The one power that I actually do have, all the time, is the ability to feel the ick around me. If you were to clean a table thoroughly, I would be able to touch that table, and tell that it’s happened. No big deal, right? Anyone can intuit the cleanliness of an object. Now imagine you ran your palm along the tabletop. Your hand isn’t particularly dirty; you weren’t picking your nose, or chalking up to climb a mountain. It was just your hand. Well, I can tell that too. I won’t know exactly what happened, but I’ll be able to tell that something contaminated that surface, and it’ll bother me. I once worked with this girl in a room where all the tables were pushed together, and we sat around it. She would put her feet up on her section, and—I dunno, doodle “Mrs. Donald Trump” in a notebook, I guess. When it was lunch time, she would go grab her food, and place her fork on that table...right where her shoes were. Then she would use that fork to pick up food, and put it all in her mouth. She was putting dirt in her mouth, along with animal feces, and God knows what else she’d walked through. Because she was a crazy person. People think I’m weird for walking around with hand sanitizer, but it makes me feel safe, and it makes it a lot more difficult for me to put poop in my mouth. Can you honestly say the same?

Microstory 889: Healing Glass

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I have no idea how I ended up at the site of this car wreck, but I know I have to get out of here. It must be raining, because the side of my face is wet, and I’m having trouble staying on balance. I slip and slide away from the cars, and start heading down the street. At first I think there are a whole bunch of obstructions in my way, but then I realize how silly I’m being. There’s nothing in front of me, but my own glasses, which are so scratched up and cracked that I just can’t see very well. I take them off to examine them, but quickly realize that the reason I have glasses in the first place is because I can’t see without them, so this isn’t doing me any good. Best I can tell, there’s also some weird red stuff on the frame. There must have been paint in one of the cars that crashed. I put my glasses on and keep walking, angry that my glasses are damaged when I didn’t even do anything wrong. A guy can’t even have a few drinks after a hard day of work without his glasses getting all jacked up. Thanks, Obama!

I reach for my elbow, and wince in pain. A couple weeks ago, I fell down the stairs of a hotel. It busted me open, which was bad enough, but now I’m dealing with this terrible infection, and I got fired. Apparently a guy can’t even take a couple weeks off of work without telling his boss to make sure he doesn’t use his arm too much. Thanks, Obama! Anyway, that just adds to my case. Before, the hotel would only have to pay my hospital bill, and my medicine, which were quite expensive. But now I can sue for damages, or whatever, since it caused me to lose my job. My elbow isn’t hurting that much right now, though. It’s my other arm that hurts when I try to check on my elbow. Let’s see, when did I last take my pain meds? I lift up my watch, which is cracked too, but I can see enough of it to tell that it’s only been an hour. Surely I can take another couple, though. I’m not operating any heavy machinery, am I right? I keep walking as I take the pills, just waiting for my glasses to heal themselves, but it almost seems like they never will. What a rip off. I mean, the lady at the eyewear store didn’t explicitly say that they can heal themselves, but I’ve heard of things that can do that, so I guess I just figured my glasses was one of those things now. Okay, now the rain is getting into my mouth. Oh wait, no, it’s coming out of my mouth. Does rain ever do that, and why is it red? Is that paint? Oh my God, now I have to sue someone for getting paint in my mouth. When did I last take my pain meds? I lift up my watch, which is cracked too, but I can see enough of it to tell that it’s only been an hour. Surely I can take another couple, though. I’m not operating any heavy machinery, am I right? I keep walking as I take the pills. That’s funny, I should have at least ten left, but now the bottle is empty.

Microstory 886: Fish Out of Water

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I’ve always been fascinated with the past. History was, by far, my favorite subject in school, and I never really liked learning about anything else, except in the context of history. I even taught myself Old English, just for the hell of it. I guess someone upstairs was paying attention, because I woke up one morning on the ground, and it was the middle ages. At first, I thought I was the victim of a practical joke. I couldn’t have known right away that I had traveled through time. I thought I was just left in the middle of the woods. Then I thought maybe I was at some weird renaissance faire without the Renaissance. I eventually realized that this had to be the past, because the kind of architectural structures I was seeing just didn’t exist anymore in my time, and to recreate them would have been prohibitively expensive. The more I walked around, the more I could remember about where I was the last time I was in my own time period. I wasn’t asleep at all, but walking back from the store. This left me with a few provisions, including some healthy snacks, and a vitamin-enhanced flavored water that I drink, because I don’t like regular water, and I don’t drink high fructose corn syrup any more. I would have expected people to look at me funny, because of my modern backpack, and strange garb. They didn’t care, though, because their lives were total crap, and they didn’t have the energy to worry about anyone else. They just kept going with their chores as I passed by, looking for shelter. I found an inn that gave me a room for a few nights in exchange for a box of gluten-free cookies.

After about a day there, I realized that as much as I enjoyed studying the past, I didn’t really like actually being there. Like I said, these people’s lives sucked. Even though they had never heard of video games, or good hygiene, they could recognize that they lacked basic comforts, and of course, this feeling was more acute in me. I went back to the place I woke up, hoping to find a magic coin, or a rift through time and space, or a wizard, but there was nothing. If there was a way back home, I had little hope of finding it. I was thirsty on my way back to the village, so I started drinking the second to last bottle of my flavored water. The first person to really speak to me was a woman who happened to be hunting for truffles. She immediately saw how odd my plastic bottle was, and wanted to know everything about it. I told her that I came from a land of magic and fairies, who had exiled me for being too tall. It was a dumb lie, but people these days are easy to trick. I could be a god in this world, like the wizard of Oz, if I wanted to. Anyway, she asked to have my last bottle, and I gave it to her. It wasn’t like I would be able to go get any more, so I might as well just end it now forever. A couple weeks later, I was completely out of the food I brought back from the future, which meant I could no longer keep my room. I packed up and left to look for work that was reported to be abundant out East. As I was walking back through the woods, the woman I gave my water to walked up to me, like she had been waiting for me to return. She handed me a jug with a wide smile, and asked me to drink. I was surprised to find that it tasted just like my water. She told me she had studied my bottle, and reverse engineered it. She said if I stayed with her, I could have as much as I wanted, whenever I wanted. I asked her how she did that, and how she knew the term reverse engineering. She smiled again. “I’m from the year 1954, and I’ve also been working on a way to get back.”

The Departure of Hokusai Gimura: Chapter Three

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“You’re a Matic?” Vearden asks. “Any relation to Mateo?”

“Yes, actually,” Sanela answers. “I would have been great grandmother.”

“You would have been...?” I ask.

“He went back in time to kill Hitler, which created a new reality; one in which he was never born.”

“I know of a device that can fix realities.”

She shook her head. “I know what you’re talking about. That’s for reality corruptions. This is just a new timeline. There’s nothing to fix. Thanks, though.”

“What does it mean that your The Screener?” I ask.

“I can show you the past. You won’t be able to interact with anybody, or anything, but you can watch.”

“So you can show me where Hokusai Gimura is?”

“I don’t know where she is, but I can take you back and let you retrace her steps. That is, if the powers that be allow me to do so. I operate at their behest.”

“So, how does this work? Do you need a picture of her, or a specific date and time?”

Sanelea takes a small bottle out of her pocket and removes the cap. “Lean your head back.”

I’m about to ask why, but it doesn’t matter. I’ll do anything. I lean back and let her drop one drop of some unknown substance into each of my eyes. It stings a little, but is at the same time pleasurable. I can feel a warm sensation pulsing through my veins, reaching every square inch of my body within seconds. After I’m done instinctively blinking, I open my eyes and find myself in what looks like The Construct from The Matrix. Sanela is here with me. She explains that this is The Antapex; another dimension. It’s not the first time I’ve been in one, so it’s no big deal, except that there is nothing here, which gives me a feeling of isolation and emptiness that I didn’t know was possible.

“What’s that stuff you gave me?” I start looking around even though, again, there’s nothing here but whiteness.

She walk around as mirror to me. “Nothin’ but my tears.”

“You mean anyone can do this if they just have your tears?”

“I can take you anywhere I want you to go,” she begins to explain, “tears or no. I gave you my tears so you can decide where, but you still need me to drive. If I just left you with a sample, you would only be able to observe your own past. We’re waiting here because it takes a few minutes for your mind to bond with the solution.”

“Is my body just slumped against the wall back at Vearden’s safehouse?”

“No, your body is here. You can only observe the past, but your body is still here.”

My head grows hotter, not feverish, but a heat the likes of which I’ve never experienced.

“Okay, this is it; we’re entangled,” she says. “Just think about when and where you wanna go, and we’ll go.”

I try to think about Hokusai, but my brain isn’t working right. The heat from that eye solution is overwhelming. My thoughts wander further and further back, until I’m hyperfocused on Escher Bradley, the child whose disappearance started it all. Suddenly, we’re back inside that wretched house. Escher is just opening the door, carefully but inquisitively. He places one hand on the inside knob while taking a cursory look at the foyer, causing it to break off. He puts the knob in his pocket and continues to explore.

“I thought we were looking for a woman,” Sanela notes.

“We are,” I say. “I took us too far back. This is the first person to go missing. Well, technically second, but I was a child during the first one.”

“Is this gonna help with your investigation?” she asks me.

“It could. I believe they’re all connected. I believe they’re all in the same place.”

“I don’t know how long the powers that be are gonna let me work this case,” she says tentatively. “We might want to hurry this along.”

The whole time, I’ve been watching Escher, but now I turn towards my guide. “Can you do that? Can you speed this up?”

“Speedwatch? Yeah, I can.”

“Keep us with him,” I order, somewhat rudely. “Wherever he goes, we go. I don’t want to have to run twice as fast.”

“I can do that too.”

She doesn’t seem to need to move a muscle to make this happen. We remain connected to Escher’s location as he moves, our feet sliding across the floor as mere observers, like a true three-dimensional movie. Everything moves at least twice as fast as real-time. She slows down sometimes so we can hear things he says, and sometimes speed up even more when little is happening. Escher, completely hopeless and alone, starts out by activating some kind of portal in the mural above the fireplace. He crawls up into it, and then falls back out, now in another dimension of his own, and somehow upstairs. He looks out the window to see his mother, who still apparently has her memories of him, and is wondering where he is. Escher tries to walk down the hallway, only to be transported to a basement. He begins to cry so much that a puddle forms from his tears. He ends up falling through it as well, as it has become a portal. He’s in a new basement, and just as trapped as before. I try to comfort and help him, acutely aware of how pointless my attempts are.

Escher continues to run through the maze of rooms, which could not possibly fit within the confines of a single-family home. Sometimes these rooms are basements, but not always. He hears noises, and sees dark masses pursue him. He keeps running for his life, eventually learning the power of what I’ve been calling the Escher Knob. Eventually he comes across a little girl named Effigy, but she is not what she appears to be. She’s a monster in disguise, and all but admits this outright. She shows him a magic mirror that reveals my first meeting his parents, when I was trying to investigate his disappearance. She later puts him through a series of incredibly dangerous challenges, eventually releasing him to the outside on what’s either an alien world, or Iceland...but probably an alien world.

“Pause it,” I ask of Sanela.

She complies, and also removes our lock on Escher, so we can move around the scene at will.

“Where are we?”

“I’ve no idea. I’m not a tracker, and I’ve never been here. I can tell you that it’s not Earth, nor is it in another dimension.”

“We’re on another planet. I had no hope finding them as long as I stayed on Earth.”

“I wouldn’t think so,” Sanela agrees.

“All right, play again, but at normal speed.” The scene continues, but now we can hear the dialog.

Effigy returns again, still in the form of a little girl, but maintaining no illusions that she is innocent. “You made it,” she says to him.

“Is this your world?” Escher asks.

“It is now. It’s not where I come from; just where I’ve been trapped. Until you came along.”

“What? What did I do?” he questions. “How have I freed you?”

“You're a little young for the physics,” she says dismissively.

“Try me. I’m smarter than you think.”

“The tests I put you through were not arbitrary,” Effigy says. “They served a very, very specific purpose. They are what ultimately allowed you to come here. Well, you could have come here at any time, I guess, but that would have been a waste. What I needed was a bridge, and you built that bridge for me. Thanks for that, by the way.”

“I don't remember building a bridge,” EB says, showing his youth.

“See? I told you that you wouldn’t get it. It’s not an actual bridge. “Then she mutters, “idiot” under her breath.

“Hey, leave him alone!” I shout at Effigy. For a second there, I think she can see and hear me, for her eyes dart at me ever so quickly.

“All right,” Escher says coolly, giving no impression that he might be able to see the two observers. “Calm down. Yeah, I’m young, but ya just gotta give me a chance. The challenges were...connecting the dots?” He guesses.

“Yes,” she confirms. “Particles needed quantum entangling and you got the chops to entangle them. Not everyone does, mind you, but you’re special.”

“That's lovely to hear,” Escher lies, almost convincingly.

“Well, you asked the question, and since you don’t like the answer, you wanna get all defensive. That is not my problem. In fact, you’re not my problem. Not anymore.”

“If I’m not your problem, then you can let me go back home.”

“Nah, sorry. Not possible. “You’ve done a brilliant job getting us here in the way I needed you to, which means you’re stuck here.”

“What?”

“Umm...sorry?” She does her best to pretend she has any empathy for him, or that she’s even capable of it.

“No, that can’t be true!” EB cries defiantly. “You have to have a way back to Earth, I know it! This whole thing is about escaping. That’s one of the first things you told me about yourself!”

“I thought I did, yes,” Effigy says. “But when I discovered that you could bridge worlds, I realized I had to take advantage of that. I can escape later. I have more work to do here.”

“I've been helping you this whole time,” EB says, near more tears. “I think I always knew that that was a mistake. I shoulda been stopping you.”

“You coulda tried, but you’re no match for my power, I’ll tell ya that much.”

“That might be true, but you said I have power of my own. I don’t understand it—but I will—and I will find a way to use it against you.”

She grimaces. “Good luck with thaaaaat. I’ma go get my friends so we can take the universe for ourselves. We certainly deserve it after what we’ve been through.”

“You're gonna lose,” he says, bolstering his own courage. “You may win a few battles here and there, but I’ll figure this place out, and you will ultimately lose the war.”

“Good luck,” Effigy repeats. Then she blinks away for one second. Escher doesn’t seem to notice that she never really left. He starts moving away, hopefully looking for shelter. “Sorry about that,” she says, apparently to herself. “That conversation went on longer than I thought it would.” She looks right at my face, like she can see me. “Are you gonna say something, or just stand there like an dumbass?”

“You can see us?” Sanela asks, shocked.

“Sure can!” Effigy responds excitedly.

“How is that possible?” Sanela takes out her special tear drops. She removes the cap and smells it, but she doesn’t really know what she’s looking for.

“That ain’t gonna give you no answers, honey. My power can’t be explained.”

“Who are you?” Sanela approaches Effigy with caution, and nudges her on the shoulder.

“Yes, amazing, I know.”

“This has never happened to me before,” Sanela says to me. “There’s something wrong with her.”

“Or something right,” Effigy suggests.

“You’re an alien,” I say.

“Very good. But even more alien than you could know. I’m not even from this universe. I was screwed over. And while The Shepherd got a cozy job in the military, I got stuck here.”

“We can’t let your friends come here,” I tell her. “Whoever they are, they have to stay wherever they are.”

She sports what must be her signature smirk. “Like you got a choice.” She apports a remote control into her hands, and points it at the two of us. “Act Two, Scene One.”

She presses a button, and apports us back to Springfield, Kansas.

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Microstory 36: Questions or Comments

Late at night many years ago I was soaking in a bath when I noticed the label on the shampoo bottle. It had a phone number listed near the bottom for questions or comments. So I called the number. A young man named Sean answered the phone, evidently surprised to be getting a call. I got the impression that he had other things to do, and the phone usually just sat there...in case. I proceeded to tell him this fabricated story about being raised by wolves, and never having used shampoo before. I was excited to find that he knew that I was referencing a bit from stand-up comedian who was noting the irony in shampoo directions. We carried on a conversation for hours, segueing across multiple topics. We eventually discovered that we both had this unusual passion for research. We hated school, but we liked exploring and learning new things. He sounded relieved to be getting a break from the monotony of his job. Then things took a turn for him. His supervisor, who had started listening in on the call at some point, jumped in and asked me if there was anything else I needed help with. It was clear that if I wanted to talk about anything other than shampoo, I would have to look elsewhere. We hung up. The next morning, Sean called me from his home phone and admitted that he had memorized my phone number from the customer service management screen before being fired. We kept talking, and ultimately decided to go into business together. And today, we run one of the largest Question and Answer boards on the internet.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 21, 2014 & March 22, 2015

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Mateo Matic walked downstairs to find the living room packed full of people. Just about everyone he was still in contact with was there for his birthday, and a few old faces. It was completely ridiculous, and he loved it. His family and friends were the most important thing to him, and only one of them was missing. When he was only seven years old, his birth mother disappeared with no trace. She had never been the one to raise him, but she had been part of the family the entire time. His adoptive parents maintained a healthy relationship with her, and she was able to see him whenever she wanted. It was unclear where she had gone, or why she hadn't told him, at the very least. There was no evidence of foul play. There was evidence of nothing. The Gelens had been good to him, though, and he was grateful for his life. Except for the one thing, he couldn't imagine anything changing. Unfortunately, fate had other plans.

The party was spectacular, but it was lasting a little too long. He was starting to feel a bit overwhelmed. The guests started filing out at around five o'clock so that he could have a quiet dinner with his parents. They ate a delicious and healthy salmon meal and exchanged gifts. For most families, gifts were given to only the one in celebration, but his was different. For all three birthdays, each of them would find something to give the other two. They weren't the richest people in the world, but they felt they had everything they needed. The gifts were usually small and thoughtful. He made his adoptive mother, Carol a necklace out of seashells, a callback to a similar one he had given her twenty years before. He bought his father, Randall a new pack of razors. They had a nice laugh about that one. Carol had gotten him the same thing. He playfully threw up his arms and conceded. He would finally clean himself back up. Ever since his retirement, he had let loose, but was willing to go back on that one thing.

Randall gave his wife a self-help book about how to make decisions that she had been trying to decide if she wanted. After those were done, Randall made an announcement. In lieu of a traditional gift, the two of them had decided for set up a bank account for him. It was a long-term investment, designed to help support his future children. All that money stuff went over his head, but he was speechless. He gave them both a big hug. “This is the best birthday ever. Ya know...except for my seventh.” They smiled and nodded.

“Okay,” Carol said. I know we decided the account was our only gift, but I couldn't help it.”

“Carol, what did you do?” Randall asked, but it was obvious he knew what second gift she had chosen.

She pulled a metal rosary bracelet out of her pocket. The beads were in the shape of shells. At the bottom was an oval; one side of which showed an image of the Virgin Mary, while the other had an image of Jesus. An eleventh bead connected that to a depiction of the crucifixion. “This was your birth mother’s. You know, she was far more religious that we are. She was always leaving trinkets at our house, subtly trying to get us to go to church more often. This was the last one before she went missing. I don't know why I didn't give it to you right away. I suppose I just wanted my own reminder of her. But it’s time that you have it. You are my reminder of her.”

That was the last time Carol Gelen would see her son for an entire year. After dinner, Mateo left the house to hang out with his old friends. When they were underaged, they would gather at a graveyard on the edge of town, and drink. They wouldn't ever get too rambunctious, but it was just nice to be away from the adults; away from judgment. They had grown up and grown out of it by now, but they went back to reminisce.

He was enjoying a beer with a lime stuck in it when a friend from college slithered up to him and snatched the bottle out of his hand. “It’s almost midnight.”

“So, I'm not allowed to drink anymore?” Mateo asked.

“Nope. The birthday boy is designated driver on the day after his birthday.”

Mateo took his beer back. “Your jokes aren't even funny, because they have absolutely no basis. I swear, man. You need to stick to data entry.”

“I'm a lawy—”

Mateo didn't hear his friend’s last statement. For no reason, his beer shattered into a hundred pieces. “What the hell?” He looked around. He was alone. There were a dozen other people with him a second ago, but they were all gone. “Hello?” No one answered. “As far as pranks go, this was pretty impressive. I haven't had that much to drink. How did you disappear so quickly?”

“Hello” came a voice from behind. Mateo turned around and found himself blinded by a flashlight. “Is that you, Mateo?” It was Mr. Halifax, the gravedigger. He had been letting them use the cemetery since the beginning as long as no one got hurt, everyone got home safe, and they kept the grounds clean.

“Yeah, do you know where everyone went?”

He released a disappointed sigh. “Come on. I'll drive you home. Your parents will want to know you’ve come back.”

They didn't talk on the way back. Mateo tried to ask what the problem was, but Halifax just kept saying that it wasn't his place, and he wasn't no psychologist. Carol gave him a big hug and broke down crying when they opened the door. Randall was behind her, crying as well. After some time, he was able to get answers out of them. He had been gone for exactly one year. He had disappeared without a trace, just like his mother before him.

“It’s happened before that too,” Randall started to explain hours later, after everything had calmed down a little. “Your family have been keeping diaries, claiming that an ancestor of theirs was from the past, and had been travelling forward in time, meeting and interacting with them long after he should have died. During one of these times, he apparently fathered a child, starting a family that was always paranoid about it happening to them as well.”

“But it never did,” Carol continued. “Not until your mother. Of course, even after her disappearance, we didn't believe the outrageous rumors that time travel had anything to do with it. But if you say you were in the cemetery in 2014, and suddenly you're here, I don't know what to believe. Maybe it’s all true.”

“But I came back,” Mateo complained. “If I’m here, where is my mom?”

Randall shook his head. “We don't know, son. I promise you, though, we are going to figure this out. We are not going to lose you again.”

But they did lose him again. At the strike of midnight that night, Mateo disappeared for the second time. It was March 23rd, 2016.

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