Microstory 2761: Into the Drink

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This boat isn’t very big, so the crew isn’t a legion of men, but they’re still outnumbered. In the chaos of the initial attack, it’s hard to tell by how much, but fortunately, they have some fighters on their side. They trained as much as they could in each other’s fields, but Zelda and Jolanda are still the best, and have to take the brunt of the combat. Elise has done some martial arts in her day, but doesn’t have any experience fighting moving opponents. Colley is a pacifist, but can defend himself, or someone else. He hides in a corner with Laise, who has absolutely no fighting experience whatsoever.

Meanwhile, the only means of making any headway in this fight is getting the zombie pirates over the edge, and keeping them at bay. They don’t drown, they don’t die, but it does take effort for them to try to climb back aboard. So once they’re over, the living humans end up with the upperhand. The zombies are relentless, however. They also don’t get tired. Their only hope is that this is a nighttime problem. After all, why did they only attack at nightfall on the day they finally lifted the boat? Once the sunrise comes, they’ll cower back to the depths, and the hunters will finally be able to rest.

There it is, that reddish-orange glow over the horizon. Elise can’t stop glancing at it even though she knows she’s meant to be keeping an eye on her sector. She’s holding an oar from the rowboat, and has to keep swatting pirates away. Any second now, there should be enough light. They’re like vampires. In some franchises, it just takes a little more time. The sun has to be a little higher. It often depends on the dialogue.

Three hours later, they’re still at it. Funny enough, despite their collective fatigue, they’ve all kind of grown used to the job. They fight in shifts. Five of them man their sectors of the boat while the other two sleep or rest below deck. They started out with a sixth person down there on high alert, but the zombies never tried to somehow break through, so they categorized it as a non-threat. It’s almost time for Elise’s break. Her eyelids are low as she almost carelessly bonks the zombie on the head again. It’s not scary anymore. Part of it is the sunlight, but part of it is the sheer tedium of it all.

There has to be some way out of this. There’s always a way. There is always a loophole. They may have a random, bizarre weakness that is impossible to know unless you came across the lore earlier, or you have to fix something for them in order to break the curse. The hunters need time to figure it out. They can’t just keep fighting. Maybe Elise can call upon her research skills during her break to search the cabins for any clues. Maybe the zombies simply have unfinished business, and they can help finish it, symbolically or physically. Oh, but that bed down there looked so good. It was short and narrow, and probably not soft, but right now, it might be the best thing in the world. Maybe she’ll just lie down for a quick nap, and then get to work.

Thirty minutes pass, which is twenty minutes after she should have been relieved.

The zombies aren’t geniuses, but after they get knocked down, they realize that that’s where a hunter is, so they move to try a different spot. The hunters sometimes use that to their advantage if they need to get closer to one another. It takes time to control where the next intrusion will come from, but it’s possible. Rage has done that. Now she’s within better speaking distance of Elise. “Where the hell are Colley and Laise?”

“Iono.” Elise can’t even bring herself to say all the words separately. “Laise was s’pose ta take over my spot.” She stands there with a puzzled look on her face.

“What?” Rage questions. “What is it? Do you see something out there?”

Elise swats another zombie. “Her name is Laise. My name is Elise. Do you think we’re related?” The zombie has managed to take hold of the oar, and is trying to wrestle it from her, which they do from time to time when she gets too complacent and lazy. She mindlessly pulls and pushes on it while she waits for Rage’s answer.

Rage is only staring at her. “No, Elise, I don’t think you’re related.”

“Oh, okay. Fair question, though,” Elise decides.

“You’re tired,” Rage argues. “Go ahead and sleep. I’ll take care of two sectors.”

“That won’t be necessary!” Colley cried from the top of the steps. He and Laise have pulled a big sack up from below, and are starting to drag it across the deck. “I know you’re all tired, but we have a way to end this once and for all so we can all sleep!”

“What is that?” Rage questions. Then she has to turn around and fight because a zombie has made it over the bulwark. Laise runs up and provides assistance.

“A mouse trap,” Colley explains once the zombie is taken care of. “Everyone huddle up, and put your backs together! We need to get the zombies into one place!”

“You want us to let them onto the boat?” Jolanda questions from the stern.

“They’ll just keep coming unless we take control! I can say no more than that, because I think we all know that the zombies are smart enough to understand us ! Trust me, we’ve been quietly discussing, and secretly preparing, for this for hours!”

They decide to trust the two of them. As they’re huddled together, the zombies climb aboard. They’re moving slowly now. They might be tired too, or Colley is right and they understand the humans well enough to know that something is up. They’re still not too smart, though, because they naturally group into a single mass, presumably to prepare for the next onslaught.

“Rotate counter-clockwise a little bit.” Laise is in the middle of them. “Perfect,” she says once they’re done shuffling. “Rage, Minotaur, you’re the tallest. You feel what’s at your feet behind you?” After they both confirm, she adds, “you know what to do.”

“Ready...!” Colley begins. “Everyone, run to the closest side to get out of the way!”

After everyone else scatters, Rage and Minotaur run forward holding the corners of a huge heavy net. They raise it over the heads of the zombies and pass them as fast as they can, managing to snag all of them all at once. Colley and Laise take this opportunity to start punching and kicking the zombies so they end up on the floor. The others join in too, of course, even though they still don’t know what the endgame is.

Laise goes around and starts shackling the zombies’ ankles one by one. The chains are already tied to the net, so even if they escape, they’ll be dragging a whole lot of weight. It’s still not enough, though, which is where that sack comes into play. Per Colley’s direction, all seven of them work to hoist the heavy sack up and over the railing. Elise is in back, and not really helping that much, but the job gets done. She touches it enough to know that it’s filled with cannonballs. Once the sack falls over, the net drags all the zombies across the deck, and over the edge too. Now there’s no escape.

Oh, no, it’s not over. “Guys,” Elise says, looking behind them. “Guys!”

When they turn around, they too see what she’s looking at. One of the zombies—the captain, by the looks of it—is still standing there. He’s holding his ooey gooey sabre, and standing on one leg. He cut off his own foot! And he’s got a gun.

A hot blonde girl flies out of nowhere on angel wings. She snatches the evil dead captain up, soars back up in the air, and drops him in the ocean kilometers away.

Microstory 2759: Sunk Cost

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Elise is the last person to emerge from the depths. She practically begged one of the other hunters to come with them, but they refused. They said they didn’t want this anymore, and would be finding a way back or out. The implication was that they would kill themselves, but Elise didn’t ask any more questions. It is not her job to protect strangers. Suicide isn’t impossible these days, but it’s much harder for most than it used to be. A version of them will survive out there somewhere unless they don’t want it to.

So she went into the fountain behind the others. She didn’t have to put any effort into swimming. It was like the water sucked her down before pushing her back out at full speed. It was really hot for a minute there too. Now she’s in the torrent of the open water with no land in sight. She appears to be completely alone.

She feels a pair of hands on her chest. “Elise! We thought you were lost!”

Elise can’t even tell who it is amidst the chaos of the storm raging above them. She turns around to find Colley. “Where are we? Where are the others?” she cries.

“Get on my back!” he shouts back. “We found something!”

After she climbs on and straddles his hips, he breaststrokes away. They end up traveling pretty far. It’s a wonder, really, how he managed to find her at all.

At last, she sees the others. They’re huddled together, and staying together, which must mean they’re holding onto something. It’s too dark to see it. Only when Colley pulls her right up and helps her get a handhold does she realize where she is. Or she can guess, anyway. It appears to be the crow’s nest of some kind of wooden ship. Minotaur and the Bidan girl are standing in it, on either side of the pole thing. Everyone else is holding onto the railing thing so they at least don’t have to waste energy treading.

The irony is that Elise was just about to start learning how to sail one week after Rage found her in Skilldome. She saw underwater basketweaving as a cute transition to it. After she mastered a regular basket, she was intending to weave a model of a ship, and then she would take it with her to the docks. It was going to be this whole thing. To be fair, she was going to learn 21st century sailing at first, and only maybe make her way down the centuries after that, but it doesn’t matter, because now she knows nothing. It’s a pole thing and a railing thing until someone tells her exactly what they’re called.

They spend hours there, because there’s nothing else they can do. Before Elise arrived, Zelda reportedly climbed up to the very tippy-top to get a look around, but the waves were too big and the moon too obscured by clouds. There are some waterfronts in Treasure Hunting Dome. There are plenty of challenges to be completed involving the water. But it doesn’t have anything like this. Elise knows that because Rage made them memorize as much of the layout of the dome as is publicly available. You need space to make the kind of storm and angry sea that they’re dealing with right now, and where they were before simply doesn’t have it. But two domes have exactly that. One is called Polar Tropica. It’s a gargantuan resort. The other...is Aquilonian Deep.

Miracle must not have been lying. Time travel is real, and they just came out of a portal. They didn’t simply jump into the fountain and sink to another level of Treasure Hunting Dome, or even the next dome over. They were sent halfway across the planet in the short amount of time they could hold their breaths. Now anything’s possible.

The seven of them take turns standing up while everyone else holds onto the sides. They are able to yell a few things at each other, but it’s too loud to have full on conversations. Elise explains that she stayed behind to try to convince the other hunter to come with them. Zelda confirms the time travel when she explains that she was here alone for a few minutes before the next person bobbed up. Each time someone new appeared, they reported that only seconds separated them at the fountain, even though minutes passed for those already here. They ultimately waited almost an hour before Elise came. When she asked them how they knew she was there in the first place, they said lightning would strike the spot where they were just about to come up. But Elise knows the truth. The lightning wasn’t marking the spot. They were riding the lightning.

The storm passes, and the sun rises in the sky, no doubt programmed or controlled by Hrockas or his Custodians. They’re dead tired, but still alive, and everyone here still wants to fight. This whole time, ever since the locker room, no one has brought up the fact that only one person can win. What’s the point? Except for one person now, they’re all friends. And the Bidan, Laise LeMaire, is quickly becoming part of the team too. Whatever the prize is, they can surely share it one way or another. It doesn’t help to become cutthroat now, especially not since it will take all of them to survive this.

“I’ve been thinking about this a lot,” Laise says. “I’ve been trying to remember the stories I was told from my home planet. I lived in a particularly advanced region, but many others were intentionally rustic. Some had boats like whatever we’re on top of right now. They never sank, because while they looked antiquated, the underlying structure was more modern. But I used to date one guy who grew up on one of these ships, and he talked about the real past—I’m giving you way too much background. I’m saying they had ways to lift sunken boats. It wasn’t easy, but it didn’t require gizmos or gadgets either. But we do need a lot of barrels, and even more patience.”

Without even asking for Laise to elaborate, Zelda volunteers to dive down to see how many barrels the boat has, if any. They don’t know this woman yet, but they trust that she wants to survive as much as they do, even if she has stopped caring about winning. Elise volunteers to go down too, because while she never had the chance to learn to sail, she absolutely knows how to freedive. It was one of the first things she practiced when she came to this planet. They search all over, but only find twenty.

“That’s not enough,” Laise says, shaking her head. “You said there were cannons down there too? That’s not enough. We would need at least twice that.”

“What if we got rid of the cannons,” Colley suggests. “While we’re at it, get rid of the chains and the big metal grate thing. Take out everything unnecessary.”

“I am not good enough at math to know whether that would work,” Laise admits. “The guy said forty. I guess I don’t really know what kind of boat he was talking about.”

“What exactly do we do with these barrels?” Rage asks her.

Laise sighs. “We attach them to the bottom of the boat, and then we pump the water out. Once they’re all filled with air, they should lift the boat out of the water.”

They stare at her like they can’t believe their ears. It sounds insane, and insanely grueling. Elise saw where they are, though. They’re sitting on the edge of a sea shelf, and there is no other land in sight. Their only hope is to get this bucket out of the water so they can stand. They’ll figure out how to move it after that. If this doesn’t work, they could die from exposure. But not starvation or scurvy. The barrels are evidently filled with fruit. There’s no drinking water, though, so they take a vote. Either they go for it, or let themselves die just to escape and give up. It’s unanimous.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 26, 2508

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Romana was sitting on the floor, hovering over her father, when he woke up. He turned over to the side, and started to cough. The others were waking up at the same time, recovering in their own ways. Fortunately, no one was dead, not even Octavia. A robot was lifting her up, though, and carrying her away. “She’ll be all right,” Romana assured him. “There’s a medpod in that room.”

“You’ve been alone all year again?” Mateo asked her.

“I did it on purpose,” Romana explained. “Why would we waste time looking for this man one year at a time, when I could spend days and days on the search?”

“Did it work?” Mateo asked.

“It did,” she answered with a sigh. “He doesn’t wanna leave, so I’m hoping you’ll talk some sense into him. But...I don’t wanna lie to you. Something happened. I’m not especially proud of it, but even though I was pretending to be a sixteen-year-old in Underberg, I’m actually much older than that. I don’t know why Pacey aged me down, but you need to understand that I’m an adult, and I make my own choices.”

“You slept with him...” Mateo guessed. “With Buddy.”

“He’s very kind to me.”

“I bet he is.”

“That’s not fair. I just told you, I’m an adult. He didn’t trick me. Don’t take away my agency.”

“I’m not, but Romana, he’s not a good guy. Being nice to you doesn’t absolve him of his past sins.”

“And what sins are these?” Romana questioned. “How many people has he killed?”

“That’s not the point.”

How many have you killed?”

Mateo didn’t respond to this.

Romana went on, “you two don’t see eye to eye, and I know he hasn’t been particularly pleasant to be around, but if you add up all the bad things he’s done, they’re really not all that bad. In the end, you two are enemies because you don’t get along. I’m sure before you became a time traveler, you interacted with plenty of people like that, and it didn’t make you believe that they didn’t deserve love.”

“Is that true?” Mateo sat up. “Are you in love?”

“No, of course not. I’m just saying...”

“That you’re acting like a rebellious teen,” Mateo interrupted as if that was what she was gonna say. “Are you sure you’re older than sixteen?”

“You are not my father. You didn’t raise me. Silenus did.”

“That’s comforting.”

She ignored that rude comment. “You don’t get to tell me what to do with my life. You never have. I know it’s not your fault that you weren’t around, but you can’t honestly expect me to listen to everything you say as if you have some kind of control over my choices. I’m being honest with you, because I don’t want to lie to someone I respect and care about. But don’t you sit there and belittle me as if I’m nothing more than an extension of your own personality. I will take you to Boyd, but you are not to harm him. You are not even allowed to yell at him. I am insisting on that, and I will keep us on this rock forever if you defy me in this regard.”

“That’s enough!” Leona interjected. “You don’t talk to your father like that. I don’t care how old you are, or who raised you. Boyd probably has ten years on you, and that’s assuming he hasn’t used time magicks to reyoungify himself, or he could be much older.”

“You were fifteen when you met your now-husband!” Romana shouted back.

“And he didn’t have any feelings for me until much later. Don’t turn this around on us. Boyd—if that’s what we’re calling him—is not good for you, full stop. When we first encountered him, he insisted that we call him Buddha. That’s incredibly offensive, and tells you everything you need to know about him. Just because he may not be as bad as some of the other antagonists we’ve met, like Zeferino, Arcadia, or even Pacey, doesn’t mean you made the right choice.”

“You’re friends with Arcadia now. You made friends with nearly everyone you’ve gone up against. What are we even talking about here? All I’m asking is that you give him a chance to improve himself, and prove himself; not just give up on him outright. Forgiveness doesn’t have a quota!”

“All right!” Olimpia interjects this time. “Mateo, Leona, you’re not going to attack Boyd when we find him. Romana, you may be older than you look, but you have a long ways to go. This situation is incredibly weird, what with our experiences in Underberg, and other domes. We can’t trust our own memories. Some of them are entirely fake, and their associated feelings may be a little less genuine than they seem. So I think we all need to take a beat, and focus on what matters. We are not living in a soap opera. We’re dealing with real problems here, trying to escape some weird, alternate universe. We can’t do that until we get what we came here for. The interpersonal relationship drama can wait.”

Mateo, Leona, and Romana quietly conceded. Ramses, Angela, and Marie silently agreed, having successfully stayed out of the fight.

“Okay,” Olimpia continued, proud of herself, and relieved that her argument worked. “It won’t take long for Octavia to recover. In the meantime, where is Boyd? Did he get hurt in the explosion?”

“He’s fine, he wasn’t even here,” Romana answered. “He’s in the Fostean sector at this point, living on a simulated jarl world.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Mateo said.

“Single-occupancy planet,” Leona explained. “A one-percenter in that culture will have so much money that they can afford to own an entire celestial body. They will live there alone, or with their family, supported by a small army of slaves called Arkeizen. These supposed subhumans will be known as thralls so long as they are in service to the elite. It’s not a heartwarming story.”

“Why would he be there?”

“To be clear, the thralls aren’t real slaves,” Romana said. “As I said, which you obviously already know, it’s a simulation, so they’re just robots.”

“It’s still gross,” Olimpia said to her. “I gotta admit, that’s a point against him.”

Romana smirked. “Just wait until you see it, okay?”

“Fine,” Leona decided. “Let’s take a vactrain this time. I don’t want this happening again, so we’ll stay out of canon as much as possible.”

“It’s not gonna happen again,” Romana contended. “Like the flooding of Atlantis, the destruction of this planet was canonical. It happened during the Sixth Shell.”

“Either way, let’s keep it real.” Leona led the way down the corridor.

Octavia was stepping out of the medical bay. She had missed a lot, and didn’t know where they were going, but she followed them anyway.

They got on the train, and had it deliver them to Jarldome. There were 200 levels here, most of which were 200 meters high, but with the holographic skies above each one, they felt endless. Boyd was on the topmost level, with a bunch of slaves. The team expected to find him lounging on a mountain of pillows, being fawned over and doted upon by these Arkeizen. It didn’t seem to be that way. The robots made to look like a hominid cousin were milling about an impressive little town. When they walked through, the Arkeizen smiled and waved. They didn’t look oppressed or abused. They were working, however, so no valid conclusion. On the far end of the main street, they finally found Boyd. A group of people were evidently in the middle of building a house, and he was helping. He was physically helping carry a wooden beam, and set it in place.

“Oh! I didn’t see you there. How long have you been watching us?”

“We just arrived,” Romana answered him.

“Well, welcome to Citrus City!” Boyd said. “Would you like the tour?”

“We’d like to get out of here,” Mateo responded.

Boyd frowned. “There’s so much work to do.”

“None of this is real,” Ramses told him. “It’s a simulation. You know that, right?”

“Of course I am,” Boyd said dismissively. “You think it’s that easy to erase my memories?”

“Either you’re delusional,” Mateo began. Romana gave him the stink eye, so he switched tactics. “I mean, if that’s true, then were you aware of our true histories while you were living in Underberg?”

“I guess not. But I broke out of it. I’m fine. I’m happy, living here, teaching these people how to fend for themselves.”

“They’re robots,” Ramses added.

“Shh!” Boyd whispered loudly. “They don’t know that.”

Mateo sighed angrily, and looked over at his daughter. “You did this. You told him to put on this show to make it look like he was freeing a whole peoples. You think that’s gonna work? You think I’m gonna start liking him now?”

“Sir,” Boyd jumped in. “Romana came to me two weeks ago. I’ve been working on this town for months. This isn’t just for show. I know that I have made mistakes in the past, but I don’t agree with slavery. Jesus. That’s the point of this dome, you know? It’s a test; will a visitor let their thralls do what they’ve been indoctrinated to do, or make changes that go against the history of the Fostean culture from the fictional stories? That’s the question, will you play into it, or do the right thing, even when it doesn’t matter? Because like you said, they’re robots.”

Mateo crossed his arms disapprovingly, but didn’t have anything more to say.

Leona pulled the magical technicolored crystal from her bag, and presented it to Boyd. She jerked it away when he reached for it. “This will place you on our pattern. Truthfully, Pacey did not reveal whether it was permanent or not. I believe that you will have less of a chance to get into trouble if you only exist for one day out of the year, though, so I’m hoping that you take the risk. I don’t know how long it’s gonna take for us to get back to where we belong, but I don’t want you running around on your own anymore.” She glanced over at Romana. “I certainly don’t want you to be doing that with my daughter. Frolicking on the jarl worlds, freeing slaves together.” She grimaced, and looked over at the Walton twins. She wasn’t trying to say that freeing slaves was bad. “You know what I mean.” She went on, “touching this crystal will go a long way to earning our trust, but it’s not a cure-all. And either way, it has to be your choice.”

Without hesitation, Boyd took hold of the crystal. The colors swirled around inside, presumably transferring Leona’s pattern into his qualium realm. “Thank you for the opportunity. I won’t let you down.”

Suddenly, they heard a noise in the sky. A flying craft of some kind was headed right for them, so far up in the air that it couldn’t be real. The holographic image grew larger and larger though until it was as large as it would be if it were right above the invisible ceiling. Something changed as the hologram gave way to a tangible object, presumably having been dropped down through a recess. This real, physical shuttle continued to fly towards them until it landed right in the street. A bunch of humans with guns filed out of it.

The leader of the newcomers looked around at the Arkeizen. It was unclear whether he could tell that they were free, and no longer enslaved thralls. He zeroed in on Boyd. “Sir, are you okay? Our sensors picked up unauthorized entry to your planet.”

“They’re friends,” Boyd said. “We need no help here.”

The leader stepped closer so he could lower his voice. “Listen, if you need help, you don’t have to be afraid of them anymore.”

“I’m not being coerced,” Boyd tried to say. “Everything’s fine. You can go.”

The leader nodded. He walked past Boyd, and as he was adjusting his pants, got a better look at the community. He turned back around to address Boyd again. “How are your thralls doin’? You’ve been here a while. Do you need a top-up?” A top-up of slaves?

“No. My numbers are steady.”

The guy was surprised. “Not one death?”

Boyd shook his head.

“Interesting. “Very interesting. Say, you wouldn’t be...treating them like people, would you?”

“And if I were, is that against the law?”

The man shrugged. “No, of course not. They’re your thralls, you can do whatever you want to them. It’s just a little unusual. I’d hate to think that they were influencing your behavior in some way. You know, we get a bad batch sometimes. One of them is sick in the head—starts thinkin’ that he’s special, or valuable—and that can infect the whole group. And sometimes...their owner gets infected too.”

“I’ve had enough of this,” Marie said. “Suits on!”

Mateo took Octavia in a hug again, and commanded his nanites to wrap themselves around her. Angela and Marie, meanwhile, started taking out their anger for their father out on these robo-slavers. They stole their guns from them, and shot each in the head. The slavers shot back, careful not to hit Boyd, but not caring about anyone else’s life. The Arkeizen ran and hid behind various structures while Leona, Ramses, Olimpia, and Romana protected the stragglers. It was over quickly. All of the bad robots were dead and on the ground.

“What happens when we leave?” Leona asked after the dust had settled, and the suits were no longer necessary. “Is another shuttle gonna be triggered later to come down and try to put a stop to all this antislavery wokeness?”

Boyd chuckled. “This isn’t my first single-occupancy planet. They always show up as a sort of final test, to see how you’ll react. I’ve always just talked my way out of it, but I guess this works too.”

“Great,” Leona decided. “Then pack up your shit. It’s time to go.”

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Microstory 2114: Dream to Fiction

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Let’s set aside for the moment the fact that I’m a traveler from another universe, and that all of the characters that I’ve written about are real people, living somewhere out there in the bulk. Let’s suggest that I’m just a normal creative storyteller whose stories come out of his mindbrain, just as they would for anyone else. Let’s talk about how this process began and developed over the course of more than two decades, and let’s pretend that I never left my world of origin. I was thirteen years old when I officially became a writer. My local radio personality would say that I shouldn’t be allowed to call myself that because I’ve not published any books. But that’s not the definition of a writer. That’s the definition of an author, numbnuts. I was struggling in eighth grade science class, specifically the chemistry portion, which was particularly disheartening, because I wanted to grow up to be a biochemist. Seeing that letter F on my report card told me that I would never realize my dream. It was unrealistic, and I would have wasted a lot of time, energy, and money on the fruitless pursuit. Fortunately, I had this other idea of telling stories, so I started really leaning into that. About two years later, I started work on my canon. I didn’t understand that I was doing that, but the story I came up with in the summer of 2002 has survived today, so I ended up retroactively marking this period in my life as the beginning of my franchise. It was about a boy who was on a boating trip with his fellow scouts. He gets separated from them after the tragic deaths of all of the parents on board, as well as the crew, and ends up on an island full of mythical beings, like elves, dwarves, and mermen. It was quite derivative in the beginning. I’ve rewritten the majority of this book at least four times, and revised it any number of times in between. It’s taken as long as it has to finish because I have never stopped growing as a writer, and perfecting my skills, technique, and personal voice.

As I was saying, I wasn’t familiar with the concept of a canon in the early years of my work, but I did have this compulsion to tell stories that exist within some kind of established continuity. They might be thousands of years apart, or even in different dimensions, but the potential for crossover had to be there, whether it ever actually happened at all or not. I came up with the premise for dozens of stories over the course of the next several years, nearly none of which remain today. The ones that have survived have transformed so much that they would be unrecognizable to anyone who happened to hack into my computer to read the originals. I never published a word, of course. In 2004 or 2005, I came up with a book and its television follow-up that I don’t even want to talk about, because they were rooted in my anger and violent tendencies. I wouldn’t even mention it, but I feel that I have to, because that was my first TV show, even though I wish it wasn’t. My second show, which I conceived of in 2007, was about a group of people with special powers, and from there, the universe expanded. By then, I had already decided that the dimensions from my original concept would be temporal, instead of spatial. That is, they just happened at different points in the long history of a single world. I came up with several other shows that fit within the timeline on the one planet, and then I came up with several more which took place on nearby star systems, and in other galaxies. It was 2012 when I came up with The Verge Saga, which took place billions of years ago in another galaxy. The number of TV shows that I had created effectively doubled overnight to around 60.

For a couple of years in my adult life, I had a recurring dream. Well, maybe that’s not the right word to use. Continuous would be a better choice, because I wasn’t just reliving the same thing every night. The story kept going. I could wake up, go about my day, and then go back to sleep to revisit the characters right where we last left off. I don’t know about you, but I’m only in about half of my dreams. A lot of the time, I’m observing other people’s lives, and this particular one felt very much like something that could be adapted to fiction for public consumption. I even had the perfect title for it, but the problem with it was that it inherently took place on Earth, where that established continuity I’ve been talking about bars such world-changing events from occurring. Basically, if I wanted it to take place on Earth, it had to be a different Earth. This was when my canon exploded. I suddenly had access to a dozen new universes, which could have their own independent histories that I didn’t have to worry about conflicting with each other. My list of TV shows approached 80, and I was unstoppable. That’s when Salmonverse was created, but that’s not when I thought of my first story for it.

On December 27, 2012, my first dog, Sophie Love was put to rest at a 24-hour animal hospital after a short but brutal and cruel battle with liver disease. Shortly thereafter, I had a dream (not again; this one came first). I woke up to find my dog alive downstairs, where she should have been all along, and then I realized that I had traveled through time to before her death. Of course, my dream turned into a nightmare when I jumped back in time again to not only before my dog was born, but also before we lived in that house. Someone else was living there, so I had to escape without disrupting their lives too much. Samuel Bellamy took over this role when I converted this dream to fiction, making him the first ever resident of Salmonverse, but like I said, I didn’t come up with that until 2015. Everything I wrote until I built my website just sat there in my files, never to be seen by anyone but me. That’s why these things have weird temporal values, because I regularly come up with a story, or only a premise, or even just one character, without having any place for it yet. I guess normal writers conceive an idea, and then just with it until it’s done. I often develop all aspects of a new story all at once before I so much as write the first word of the actual text. This process might inspire sequels, prequels, multimedia follow-ups, and crossovers that I will also work on without necessarily having written anything substantial. I dunno, maybe I’m doing it wrong, which is why I’m over here with a personal website that no one reads, and George R.R. Martin is a millionaire. He too has taken forever to write his latest book, but people are actually waiting for it. Hopefully I’ll finish the new edition soon, but I’m pretty busy. Unlike how it is for Martin, this isn’t my only job, and as aforesaid, I don’t make a dime off of it.

Tomorrow, I’ll get more into the details of my website; how it got started, and how I prepare for upcoming stories. There’s a lot. It takes a lot to keep this thing running. Like, you don’t even know. Slipping back into character, I’m surely in jail now, awaiting trial, or whatever step comes next. I scheduled this to come out just so I don’t leave you with nothing, but I’ll eventually run out of these too.

Microstory 1549: Cloze Final Exam

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Well, this was a weird microfiction series, wasn’t it? What I ended up doing was basically just writing general stories, and randomly omitting words once I was finished. There was nothing connecting the stories to each other, not even a theme, and there was no point to the omissions at all. I was clear in the beginning, however, that this was highly experimental, and that I didn’t know how it would go. I didn’t know how many I would do either, but I’ve come up with a better idea, and will be transitioning to that, starting tomorrow. I regret nothing from the Cloze Tests, though. It was kind of nice, just getting back to my roots. When I started this website, I didn’t know how it was going to go either. I knew I would be doing a continuous series on one day of the week, and a series of series on another day. I didn’t know, however, that I would end up coming up with microfiction series. Now I spend a great deal of time figuring out what those series could possibly be, and how they’ll work. Before that, I assumed each one would stand alone, and I would have to come up with a new story every time. That proved to be quite difficult. I’ve had so much more experience with longer form writing, that conceiving an entirely new idea, and having to end it so quickly was a skill I had to pick up along the way. I’m happy with what I’ve ended up doing, using quick installments to tell a larger story. There’s still a reason why they’re separate, and none of them is one unbroken tale that’s been arbitrarily divided, but I do love building worlds. I always have. That being said, the next series I do will not be about expanding my canon either. I won’t give too much away, because we’ll be explaining it tomorrow, but the headline is that I’m working with a writing partner for the first time ever. Well, there was that one microfiction story I wrote with my sister’s elementary school music class, but for the most part, it’s just been me. My new partner isn’t all that bright, but he tries hard, and never doesn’t produce. Thank you for reading up until now, and please continue to do so. For those of you wondering why I haven’t seemed to omit any words in this conclusive installment, you should know that there is no rule about how many blanks I’m meant to put in any story. There really only ever needs one for it to qualify. To that end, please prepare to read the upcoming brilliant narratives, as told by me, and my partner. He has a big secret about himself, which is that he’s actually a ________. Crazy, right?

Microstory 930: Writing

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As you can read in my bio, I started writing when I was thirteen years old. Before then, though, I had the sneaking suspicion that I was a good writer, and figured I would write science textbooks. In fifth grade, I half-assed a short paper about why I would never do drugs, and ended up winning a class-wide competition. Sidenote: I don’t do drugs, while it seems everyone else does, so maybe it worked. I had to read my paper aloud to an audience of other students and parents, and then they gave me a bunch of D.A.R.E swag. Then there was the fact that I rarely worked hard on my papers, and almost always received good grades for them. A couple years after I decided to switch to writing, I started thinking about my canon. I didn’t know to call it that back then, but up until that point, I had been focusing on fanfiction, in order to hone my craft. I wrote some Quantum Leap and Harry Potter stories, which have thankfully been lost by now, but it was time to try something original. I had recently returned from a trip to the Florida Keys with my Boy Scout troop, and my father. We spent a week on an island where I experienced no problems; no injuries, no fights, just fun. The beach smelled of rotten eggs, which is why I now like the smell of rotten eggs. That’s all it took to condition me. I struggled a lot with this first book, and it’s gone through a great deal of changes since then. It began as original, but I couldn’t help but find some way of connecting it to the Lord of the Rings universe. So I had to scrap it, and try again. It still wasn’t working out, so I scrapped the second draft too, and tried it a third time. I didn’t like that one either, even after ten years of this, so I buckled down, and started working on version number four, which is the one I have today. I’m looking for a literary agent to represent me, if you happen to know anyone.

While I’m glad I didn’t stick to my Lord of the Rings plan, it did make me realize that I would never be satisfied with individual stories that were completely separate from each other. I wanted to create a whole new world—or six worlds, as it were—and I wanted them to connect to each other in complicated, and sometimes subtle, ways. This too went through a number of changes, but at some point, I had a sturdy foundation, from which every story must originate. Later on, if I came up with a story that would not be internally consistent with the narrative, or even physical, laws set forth by other stories, I would have to create a new universe for it. But even that bothered me, so I invented a machine called The Crossover, which has the ability to travel between these universe, so in the end, I really do only have a single canon. Some stories are more connected than others, though. For instance, Magnate exists within a universe that allows none of the more—shall we say...unrealistic science fiction elements. People will start using it as a refuge from the craziness of time travel, ghosts, and whatnot. Anyway, I’m starting to talk about the planning of my stories, which is not what this post is about. This is about the writing itself, which I actually don’t love all that much. My fingers are in a permanent state of pain, so I can never type too long. I believe my strengths lie more with storytelling than with the narrative itself, or maybe I just feel that way because an artist’s work is never done. I would much rather come up with ideas, and micromanage every small detail of a story, then have someone else write it up for me. I believe they call people who do that producers. But that doesn’t mean I don’t like it at all. I still appreciate the feeling of typing out paragraphs, and seeing the finished product of my accomplishments. Hopefully the readers who are hopefully reading this in the future feel the same way.

Microstory 800: Dreams (Introduction)

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Dreams! (dreams, dreams) Dr-dr-dr-dreams! I’ve been posting my dreams on a special Twitter account since October of 2010. The point was to not only remember my dreams, and develop better control over my thoughts, but to engage my creativity. I did it for a little while before stopping, and I believe I picked it up a few times over the years, before recently deciding that I needed to be more diligent with it. As I was working on the future of my website, I came up with my idea for the 900 series, because the number fit well, but that meant I had nothing for 800, and obviously I can’t focus too much on ten steps from now, I need to know what I’m doing before that. Adapting my dream tweets seemed like the most reasonable use of this space, especially since I amassed enough of them to pick the absolute best ones, so that’s what you’re going to get now. It’ll be a nice break, because I realized I don’t have to come up with photos that match the topics I’m writing about. All I need to do is slap a screenshot of the original tweet, and that should be enough to catch your eye on social media links. It’ll also be nice because I have for a while now been beholden to my own canons, but now I can stretch my legs, and come up with stories free from these narrative constraints. I don’t even have to follow any set of physical laws, because you can literally do anything in dreams, even create stable paradoxes. I’m conflicted about my feelings towards this series. A part of me worries that any one, or more, of them could give rise to a new franchise that I had not been planning to do. Another part of me is excited for this possibility. This could get complicated. I think that’s pretty much all I need to say about this, as it’s a fairly easy concept to grasp. Every time I write one of these, I’m gonna be listening to a playlist of songs I like that involve the topic of dreams, just so you know how committed I am to my trade.

Microstory 642: A Fool Made Intelligent

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Decades ago on Earth, there came about a film media adaptation of book called The Wizard of Oz. It’s about a young girl who ends up in another world, where she meets an eclectic group of people and creatures. Her new friends each have their own problems, and they find themselves working together to those respective ends. A humanoid feline needs courage, a robot needs an organic heart, and...uh, some guy made out of straw needs a brain. Though we in Fostea have our own art to produce and distribute, we do like to keep up on what’s going on in other systems. For defense tactics purposes, mostly. We sometimes even develop our own franchises based on the ones created somewhere else. Lactea is famous for this with their Hitch franchise, which seems never-ending, and is just as a banal as its Earthan progenitor. Even with this overwhelming amount of entertainment, from all corners of the universe, The Wizard of Oz has ended up being a man named Keir Banister’s favorite movie of all time. In fact, he does very little with his life unrelated to the canon. He cosplays the character’s costumes every day, apparently cycling through them in a complex and orderly manner. At one point, he asked his parents to transition his body into that of a humanoid feline. He chose to stop midway through the procedures, remaining in a hybrid form for a couple years before switching back to a standard human form. His parents incidentally got him into the film when he was a child, not knowing that it would basically become his entire life. They were just trying to give him some joy since he was born with neurological problems that prevented him from contributing to the economy on his own, and could not be helped by modern neuropharmacology. Wizard of Oz paraphernalia were his proverbial security blankets, providing comfort in the face of unintelligence. That all stopped as soon as the godlike being, Aurora Meeker finished her gray doorway message to the galaxy. Banister was suddenly one of the most intelligent human beings in the galaxy. He was knowledgeable, eloquent, and sophisticated. He immediately started explaining extremely complicated things about how the universe works, then soon moving on to making previously only theoretical claims about science and progress. It was like they switched him out with an entirely different person who looked exactly like him. It was clear that Keir Banister was helping Lightseers fulfill the forty-second taikon.

Microstory 101: Bellevue Profiles

Click here for the list of every Bellevue Profile.

A very long time ago, a group of scientists were living in a dystopia. Because of this, the regulations on scientific endeavors were all but nonexistent. They broke nearly every law of ethics and began to perform genetic manipulation experiments on human subjects. Their results were inconclusive at best, and extremely volatile at worst. Many of their guinea pigs died, but a few of them survived and propagated the species. Their bloodlines showed little to no signs of being different than regular universal humans. Eventually, their history was forgotten as lore. Thousands of years later, however, upon the birth of The Keystone, these anomalies were awakened. During evolution’s final push back towards the mean, a certain number of people began to exhibit extraordinary abilities. Each of these had their own particular set of skills, and Generation Twos were notably rare. The Keystone gathered them to an abandoned hotel in the middle of nowhere. There they taught each other further skills, and argued over what their purpose in the world may be. But very few of their origin stories took place in Bellevue.

For the next one hundred microstories, I will be giving you a short introduction to each one of these anomalies, along with a few members that had no abilities at all, but still contributed immensely to history. I’ve actually already begun. Due to extenuating circumstances, Starla’s story requires a full weekly series. I have 21 Saturdays total to do something with, and we’ll cross the next bridge once we’re over this one (why did they build consecutive bridges?). I will also be profiling a number of antagonists who acted against Bellevue, but you won’t know who they are from only this. If you want more details, keep reading my stories. I need a following if I’m going to be able to produce more. Please note that these profiles are subject to change according to later decisions and collaborative developments. I still think you’ll find them interesting, but I would consider these early introductions as subcanon; that is, mostly canonical.

Microstory 13: The Direct Line

In the Earthan year of 1984, a witch on the planet Persephone named Indira Felrey was discovered to be using Craft to commit crimes. Witchcraft itself was not illegal, however, certain practices resulted in outcomes that were necessarily against Martian Law. Unfit for general prison sentence, she was instead exiled to Earth where Craft was fundamentally impossible. The hidden structure of the universe prevented the exploits of Craft from ever being an issue within the Sol System.

Contrary to common lore, witchcraft does not rely on magic. Magic does not exist. Witches are in tune with an ancient infrastructure built billions of years ago. The maintainers of the structure spent hundreds of years connecting every living and non-living entity in the universe in order to study them and keep records.

No one is born a witch. Anyone can learn Craft. Some are able to learn the secrets quicker than others, but this is true of any skill. Witches exploit unavoidable functions of the structure in order to complete tasks and gain insight into the cosmos. This inherently limits their spells to a finite number of physically possible Engagements. In reality, they are voice commands, as one would use on a smartphone.

In 1987, the witch Indira Felrey discovered an authentication bypass that allowed her access to the structure while still on Earth. She opened a portal that she programmed to map the entirety of the surface of the planet. Only after it was finished could Craft be used on Earth, though still with some restrictions, due to different cosmological procedures. During a metaphysical crisis within the structure, The Supervisor and a rogue archief discovered the witch's glitch as it began. They could have shut it down, but they decided to let it play out and see what came of it. Indira died of natural causes before the mapping program could be completed in 1991, but the Archief and The Supervisor soon realized that they would be able to use the exploit for their own purposes.

And thus began one of the most important endeavors in the history of the universe, The Direct Line.