Showing posts with label capital. Show all posts
Showing posts with label capital. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 13, 2023

Microstory 2038: Maryland and D.C.

It takes a long time to adopt a child, especially one that is in the situation that I was in. My parents put in their application right away, but it was almost three years before it finally went through! I lived in an orphanage while I was waiting, and the people in charge had to first find out if there was any way to get me back to where I was born. In the year 2016, and evil man started to run for president. He doesn’t like people who look like me, or who are from countries like my home country. He thinks that everyone who wasn’t born in this country is automatically bad. Even if they were born here, if their parents weren’t, he just doesn’t like them anyway. He believes in a lot of other bad things, and a bunch of people wanted to vote for him, because they felt the same way. My fathers are good people, who feel nothing but love for everyone. So while they were waiting for me to come into their lives, they drove down to Washington D.C. to protest against the presidential candidate. Washington D.C. isn’t a state, it’s a district, but it’s pretty much in Maryland, and my fathers’ hotel was really close to the border, so they spent a little time over on that side of it, and I think that it counts. They marched on the streets to let people know that they didn’t want this man to win the election, and guess what, he didn’t! He was never a president, and I say my fathers had something to do with it. They obviously weren’t the only ones who protested, but as my grandma will say, every voice counts. I think that’s probably true. If you feel a certain way, and you want people to know it, then you should say it. That’s what it means to be in a free country. Even the bad man had a right to say what he didn’t, even though it was all bad stuff.

Monday, November 6, 2023

Microstory 2011: Arizona

My papa applied to go to a ton of different colleges, and got into a lot of them. Grandma says that he filled out more applications than most students do. She laughed when she talked about how much money that they must have spent to send in all of those applications. Did you know that just asking to go to a college costs money? Maybe I won’t go to Harvard. It’s probably really expensive just to apply! As I was saying, grandma can’t remember why he did it for so many of them, but she thought maybe he was playing the odds, but I’m not sure what that means. He only went to visit a few of them, mostly to the ones in the states that he had already been to, but it was the first time that he went to Arizona. He didn’t end up going to school there, so no one can remember which school it was, but everybody thinks that he only chose it because it was on the way to California, which was where he really wanted to go. He wasn’t going to San Diego for a college, though. On the next slide, I’ll tell you why he was there instead, but apparently, he didn’t really care about touring the college. It was just an excuse to drive south. The capital of Arizona is a phoenix, which my dad says is his favorite mythical animal. I think it’s pretty cool too.

Friday, September 1, 2023

Microstory 1965: Aggression

Generated by Google Workspace Labs text-to-image AI software
Leonard: Hey. This is a nice jet. How did you swing this? To be honest, I don’t know where our department gets any of its money, full stop.
Reese: The government didn’t have a black budget in your version of the U.S.?
Leonard: Yeah, I guess it did; I just didn’t give it any thought, because I didn’t work for any entity that would use it. So the public doesn’t know how much we spend?
Reese: They don’t know how much we spend, but they know the current pot for the entirety of the black budget, which is eight hundred billion dollars this year.
Leonard: Jesus, that’s a lot.
Reese: Yeah, so that pretty much makes the cost of this jet a rounding error. You don’t ever need to worry about our funding. National Command takes the largest portion, and we’re a part of that. The Office of Special Investigations enjoys both a transparent, and a black budget, because the Director reports directly to the National Commander.
Leonard: I see. Well, anyway, that’s not why I came over here. I wanted to learn about Mississippi before we landed. Everybody groaned when you told them that that’s where the mission would be. Where I’m from, the state suffers from a lot of racism, but it’s certainly not universally despised, like it seems to be here.
Reese: Did your version of the country have legal slavery until the eighteenth century?
Leonard: It actually lasted through the nineteenth century. About halfway through.
Reese: Oh. Well, it didn’t take us quite that long to end it, and preserve the union, though we did not come out of it unscathed. I am no historian, but what I do know is that it came at a cost, and that cost was the state of Mississippi. Even after the U.S. Internal Conflict of the 1790s was declared over, the southern National Commander would not let go. He chose Memphis as his capital, because it was at the border of the three most steadfast secessionists during the war, and the years leading up to it. Because of this, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi refused to accept that the south had lost. They continued to enslave people, and fight against anyone who attempted to put a stop to them. They lost eventually, but the post-war is considered by some to be bloodier than the main conflict. Arkansas and Tennessee finally admitted defeat, and started getting with the program. The southern NatCo and Mississippi did not. They held all of Memphis hostage, and—long story short—the union ultimately gave up and gave in. The city, and some surrounding lands, were absorbed into the half-state, half-independent nation. Again, long story short, it currently exists more as a territory than a state, and did later abolish slavery. You noticed that we crossed over into Colorado and Wyoming on our first mission without issue. Mississippi’s borders have only recently opened up. Until a few years ago, it was no one in, no one out. Now we can move back and forth, but we have to register. This team is technically on a diplomatic mission, which means that only the jet and the pilot registered—they don’t know that you and I specifically are on it—but we’ll have to be careful while there. If anyone we run into finds out that we’re not Mississippians, they may have some feels about it. It’s not illegal, but...
Leonard: Wow. This is a strange world. We had slavery for longer, but we kept the union intact. Though racism has lasted for the better part of two centuries after that.
Reese: I wouldn’t say we have all that much racism. It’s all a matter of perspective.

Tuesday, August 9, 2022

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 6, 2398

Ramses is standing, but hunched over, hands in a steeple over his mouth. He’s looking at the floor as the rest of the team looks at him from the audience, and waits patiently. No one has anything else to do for the rest of the evening, so they might as well just give him the time he needs. Finally, he drops his arms, and picks the book up from his chair. “This book could hold the key to everything we ever needed to know about this world, and the next. I’ve read it twice already, and there is no denying that it was written by a time traveler, or perhaps a human compatriot. The attention to detail is unmatched even by The Superintendent’s words. At first, I thought maybe this was all a coincidence, and I didn’t know exactly what I was reading. I didn’t recognize any of the names of the characters, but upon my second time, I realized they were surely changed to protect the real individuals. There’s a family of powerful people who are obviously the Prestons. There are two people who call themselves gargoyles. There are even those I recognize as leaders of the Freemarketeer movement that I was a part of. That’s the focus of the story. The travelers are really just secondary to a historical account of 22nd and 23rd century Sol.” He stops to gauge their reactions. “Nothing?”
“Wait, are you done?” Mateo asks.
“No, I just thought...isn’t this exciting?” 
“Yeah, of course,” Mateo agrees. “We just didn’t want to interrupt. Who’s the author?”
“It’s a man by the name of Ildemire Lorenz. I did a little digging, and I believe that he’s still alive, and doing so in an Austrian city called Innsbruck.”
Leona taps the query into her tablet, sets the device on Ramses’ chair, and throws a hologram into the space between them and Ramses. “It’s not too terribly far from Croatia. We were planning on going to Austria anyway before sneaking over a couple borders.”
“Well...we were,” Mateo corrects. Everybody already knows by now that Mateo, Ramses, and Marie will be doing this one alone.
“Hold on, hold on, hold on,” Heath jumps in. “You’re just going to add a new destination to the itinerary. It’s not even on the list.”
“We had no reason to believe that anywhere in Austria belonged on the list before,” Mateo explains. “Now we do. It’s probably our best lead since The Constant imploded.”
“This is what you’re gonna do?” Heath asks his wife. “You’re gonna go on a mission just before your procedure?”
“It’s just talking to someone,” Marie defends.
“That doesn’t mean it won’t be dangerous,” Angela says. “I don’t like that the three of you are doing this alone. I don’t like that our bruiser isn’t going with you.”
“I don’t either,” Leona concedes, “but I have work to do, and even though I don’t always have to be in the office, it’s best that I stay close; as I’m able, anyway.”
“The fact of the matter is that it’s Marie’s decision,” Mateo reminds them. “Ram and I will go wherever, whenever, and do whatever. If you just want to go straight to the doctor, that’s all right.”
“We need a good reason to be in Europe,” Marie decides after a certain amount of time. “A short tour is a good idea. We could visit Germany, Czechia, and hell, maybe even where London ought to be. The longer we stay in places other than Croatia, the more time we’ll have to slip away unnoticed, and take care of business.”
“If that’s what you wanna do, then I support you,” Heath says. “I can’t go with you anymore, but I can use my excellent travel agent skills, and plan it for you. Would this be acceptable?”
“I would love that,” Marie tells him graciously. “He’s really good at it. He told me about how he planned a family reunion at age thirteen.”
“I can’t remember why they asked me to do it,” Heath adds. “I guess they just saw my potential. Or they just didn’t want to deal with it themselves.”
“There’s another order of business,” Leona begins, “if we’re quite finished with the Innsbruck one for now.”
“There’ve been so many,” Angela says with a laugh.
Leona reaches over to select a recording on her phone. The forger’s voice comes through, “how would you handle someone like me? Would you teleport into my house at night, and slit my throat?” Mateo was secretly live-streaming the maddening conversation. It was his idea.
Who are you, and why do you want me to become a federal agent? What can I do that you can’t do yourself, or have done for you by someone you know you can trust?” Mateo’s voice returns.
I’m the only one in this world who’s on your side. The war is coming, Mr. Matic. You can either support the war effort, or put a stop to it. You’ll need a badge either way.
Mateo releases a frustrated sigh. “Looks like you got me by the balls.
I wish.
Leona pauses playback. “All right, that’s enough. You get the point.”
“That sounded like the forger,” Ramses figures.
“It was,” Mateo confirms. “I’m a little suit piggy now. She’s going to make me go on missions, or whatever. I don’t know what she has planned.”
“What does that mean for us?” Marie questions.
“It means that my husband is leaving the country without telling this woman anything about it, and if she needs someone to complete one of her missions, then I’ll do it in his stead.”
“How exactly do you think that’s gonna work?” Heath questions.
“Oh, I’ll make it work. That’s what The Olimpia is for. You don’t have to tell no one where you’re going. I’m sure she’ll make the appropriate arrangements when she realizes I’m a better choice. I’m going to pay her a visit tomorrow. You three just need to focus on getting packed and ready to leave. We’ll handle the war at home.”

Monday, August 8, 2022

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 5, 2398

For the last five weeks, Mateo has had a standing appointment at Magnus Sharpe’s office to discuss his psycho-emotional issues in a presumably safe and consequence-free environment. He hasn’t been able to make it to every Friday, but he’s always made it up. Today, he doesn’t feel like going in, but he didn’t come to this decision in time to cancel appropriately, so Ramses has asked to take his place. He could do with some therapy himself after the recent abduction, and Mag. Sharpe has apparently proven herself to be reliable, and to provide a safe space for time travelers, so he figured he would give it a try. It’s an uncomfortable feeling, because he didn’t grow up in a world where this sort of thing was available.
“What do you mean?” Magus Sharpe asks. “Had the science of psychology not yet been developed in your time?”
“Oh no, it definitely had. From my team’s perspective,” Ramses begins, “I’m from the future, not the past. And that’s why this is weird. You see, in my time, and in my culture, trust was a real issue. Artificial intelligence dominated our lives, and it was just about impossible to get away from. It made decisions for us, and gave us everything we needed. If you wanted to avoid it completely, you were shit out of luck. Oops, sorry.”
“It’s quite all right,” Mag. Sharpe promises.
Ramses nods, and pets her dog some more. “My family taught me to be a capitalist...to essentially fetishize a world of haves and have-nots. I’m not sure if that’s an idiom that exists in your world.”
“I can grasp the meaning. Go on.”
“Of course, the capitalist movement was composed of rich and privileged people, because if anyone who believed in it started to lose their status, they would...well, they would jump ship, and go back to normal society. That’s why it didn’t work, but obviously the diehard fans could never accept that. They just kept fighting and fighting for it, and it eventually died out, because capitalism survived for thousands of years on a planet founded upon capitalism. It only lasted because everyone agreed to it. Once the majority of inhabitants agreed to reject it, it became unrealistic and unsustainable. I’m kind of overexplaining things, because the reason I’m telling you all this is because therapy was sort of the one thing that never went back to the capitalistic format. It just didn’t work. Humans stopped studying medicine almost altogether, so if you needed mental health help, you got it from an AI, whether you were normal, or like me and my family. So yes, we had psychological tools, but we did not have human support, so I don’t know how to do this, which is why I’m rambling on about unimportant nonsense.”
“I don’t think it’s unimportant nonsense,” Mag. Sharpe says. “It’s clearly important to you, or you wouldn’t have said anything.”
“Well...”
“You would have just told me you had never tried therapy, and moved on, but you went over the basics of your society, because you want me to understand where it is you come from. It seems as though that’s what you’re struggling with. I’m not supposed to do this, but from what I gather, the way you grew up was wildly different than your friends. Do you have trouble relating to them because of that?”
“I don’t know about that, I love them.”
“Sure you do, and they love you too, but how do you feel about the changes you experienced over time? To them, the future was an idealistic paradise; full of adventure, yes, but noble in its pursuit of equality. You, on the other hand, were born into such a world, but were denied its advantages by a subculture that spurned its teachings, and romanticized an economic format that prized winners over losers.”
“Yeah, well, you seem to get it.”
“I’m just going by what you told me. I can only imagine that your parents taught you that inequality formed the basis of a healthy and competitive world that valued innovation, which they likely believed was impossible to achieve without the possibility of true failure and loss.”
“You act as if you’ve been there before.”
“No, it’s just that the world you describe, I’ve heard of it before.”
“Where, one of the others on my team?”
“No.” She stands and steps over to her bookcase to scan the titles until she finds what she’s looking for. “Here.” She hands it to him.
Capital With a Capital C,” he reads aloud.
“It’s eerily similar to what you describe. You should read it,” she urges.
He speedreads the description on the back, choosing to read one excerpt out loud as well, “...but in this world are multiple subcultures who idealize the inequality of yesteryear. As they attempt to plunge the world into the darkness of the past—some in truly violent ways—another group desperately tries to make that past better than it once was. This is fiction?”
“You tell me?”
Ramses flips the book back over, half-expecting to find the author calling himself The Superintendent, or some self-aggrandizing bullshit like that. It’s not. “Who the hell is Ildemire Lorenz?”

Sunday, January 30, 2022

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 21, 2379

The Cassidy cuffs that they were still wearing—even though everyone on the team was bound to the same pattern, and no longer needed an unnatural way to stay connected—came with a lot of handy features, including a teleporter. They could not simply transport to wherever they wanted, though. When within range, they could only make jumps to each other. At least one of them had to physically be at a particular location in order for the others to come without dealing with that annoying realspace. This was why Mateo had to jetpack over to Xerian’s ship, but Leona didn’t once he had arrived for her.
Mateo was about to exit the no longer operational shower room when he realized how long he had been gone. He didn’t want anyone on the team to know quite yet that he had found a way back to the main sequence, but he also couldn’t explain why he just spent the last fifteen minutes standing naked in a portal closet that was also not supposed to be working. The cuff teleporter was his only hope. Everyone was already right there within several meters of him, but maybe he could fudge with that a little. Maybe he could jump to the other side of this floor, and come out of the working tub so he wouldn’t have to explain to Ramses what took him so long to figure out that the other one was useless. Did he just stand there like an idiot? Or had he realized his mistake right away, and Ramses simply hadn’t noticed him walking by a second time earlier?
Mateo gathered his belongings, but didn’t put his clothes back on, in case the AI had ended up filling up the tub for him. Again, the teleporter wasn’t designed to transport someone to a specific location, but just close enough to a teammate without appearing inside of a wall or floor. He was going to have to kind of do his best. He pressed the button, and jumped.
It was darkish, and he didn’t know where he was. Gravity suddenly took hold of him, and knocked him to his back. He landed on something smooth and soft, and then rolled off onto something soft and cushiony.
“Ouch!” cried a voice. Was that Olimpia?
“Where am I?” Mateo asked in a panic. For a split second he had thought maybe he was in outer space, and in that time, his heart decided to try to burst out of his chest in response. His brain knew he was safe, but his body was still freaking out.
“You are in my grave chamber,” Angela explained. Oh, it was her, not Olimpia. Then she switched on the light. It was both Angela and Olimpia. They were as naked as he was.
“Well,” Mateo said awkwardly. “I guess now we know the teleporter isn’t that precise.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Olimpia replied.
“I’m gonna go,” Mateo declared, sitting up, and fumbling for the hatch.
“Up to you,” Angela said.
They just went right back to what they were doing while he was climbing out of there, desperately trying to hold onto his clothes. Leona was sitting at the table, watching him. “It’s not what it looks like,” Mateo defended. “I mean really, it really isn’t.”
“Why wouldn’t you put on your clothes first, and then test the teleporter?” Leona questioned. Smart as a whip. “And why would you ever test it on a spaceship this small?”
“That’s why you wear the pants in this relationship?” he tried to joke.
“Well...maybe you ought to...try it yourself.”
“Yeah.” He started putting his clothes back on. “Everything okay in engineering?”
“It’s fine,” she answered. “I want us to be geared up by midnight when we arrive near the Nexus planet. We don’t know what we’re walking into, so you should get some sleep now.”
“Okay.”
“In your own grave chamber,” Leona added.
“I know.” He started walking towards it.
“No, not ours...yours.” She gently jerked her head towards the one that Jeremy used to sleep in.
“Leona...”
“We’re fine, I know you weren’t cheating on me, but...I need to be able to sleep here in a minute too, and I know how you get when you’re...because of what you saw.”
That was true, he was in the mood now. “Okay.”

Nobody talked about what happened to them. Ramses could sense some tension, but he ignored it. He was probably still thinking about the last chapter he read in his book. Leona, meanwhile, was making sure that the AOC was programmed correctly. They wanted it to come out of reframe speed about sixty astronomical units from the destination, and find a place to hide on an object out there. The star system may be equipped with defenses capable of detecting it, but this was as far out as they wanted to be. It would take about an hour to complete the journey from there, making maximum range rapid burst jumps, and then pausing to let the vessel cool down and recover. Most of the time, when they tried something like this, they would end up getting caught anyway, but they still had to try every time.
This time, it worked. When they returned to the timestream a year later, they found themselves sitting on a comet in a highly elliptical orbit around a class IV subgiant. No other vessels were around, and no one had fiddled with their ship while they were gone. According to data it collected for them, the single terrestrial planet was orbiting in the habitable zone, and was, in fact, inhabited. The locals were a group of resistance nonfighters. They didn’t want to bring down the system, but they wanted to live outside of it. The Nexus served as a means of ferrying refugees from the Andromeda galaxy, where the war was raging. Out here in the void, it was harder for the Security Watchhouse Detachment to find them. Detachment, Leona noted upon hearing this. If the matrioshka-class SWD was a detachment then they needed to be very afraid of the sheer scale of whatever it was detached from. It could be the largest object ever created across the four known realities. Wanderer was apparently a nickname they used in a pathetic attempt to fool the refugees into believing they weren’t truly the enemy. No one was buying it. The Fifth Division was a ruling force, and not everyone wanted to be ruled by them.
The Investigator was like a police cruiser, scouting around for signs of life. The planet here, Paz was the biggest prize, but they scooped up anyone who rejected the Fifth Division’s sovereignty. The theory now was that the SWD was actually being rather cordial with the team, and that the tactic was meant as a means of learning the whereabouts of this intergalactic star system.
“They’re probably going to be quite concerned about us,” Olimpia figured. “We can’t just teleport to the surface, and expect to be welcomed with open arms. We have to warn them that we’re here, and assure them that we come in peace.”
“Agreed,” Leona said. “Computer, send a message. Tell them exactly where we are, and that we seek sanctuary.”
Acknowledged,” the computer returned.
“Take off the tactical gear,” Leona ordered. “We don’t want to look hostile.”
Do I have permission to clarify our power systems?” the computer requested.
“Say nothing about the reframe engine. Tell them we use antimatter for propulsion, fusion for internal systems, and have an AU range teleporter drive, or whatever it is they call it here.”
Understood,” the computer replied. Before too long, it went on, “they’re sending a light year drive to retrieve us.”
“Very well,” Leona said. “How did they sound?”
Human,” the ship answered.
“I mean tone, demeanor, emotional mood.”
The computer waited a moment. “Human.”
“Does it not understand the question?” Angela asked.
“No, it’s just recognizing its own limitations,” Ramses explained. “Humans are emotional, and it’s not. We programmed it without such things to avoid creating another Sasha or Imzadi. It’s just telling us that the person or persons it conversed with are emotional beings, but it can’t tell us which emotions. It just doesn’t know.”
They sat there for a moment, waiting to be picked up. The computer then finally responded to Ramses’ last words, “correct.”
“We can tweak the language cadence later,” Ramses said. “I think it thinks that it was pausing for effect.”
They waited another moment before the computer said one last thing, “correct.”
A ship suddenly appeared above them. “Crew of the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, this is the captain of the Paz Rescue Vessel Ataraxis. We’re here to take you to the inner system. Do we have your consent to transport you to our docking bay?
“This is the captain of the Stateless Private Vessel AOC. We consent.”
They never met anyone on the ship. It was fast enough to jump them into their bay, jump themselves all the way over to the planet, and then drop them off on the surface before they knew it. The team exited the airlock, shocked by the bright light from the sun. How long had it been since they had seen something like this? It was dark and cloudy on Pluoraia, which was the last planet they had been on that was habitable without human intervention. Before that, they spent a little bit of time on 1816 Earth to say goodbye to Jeremy. They just didn’t do much on planets anymore. Perhaps they would wait to make the trip to Andromeda. This looked like a nice enough place. Sure, they were stumbling on the stairs—because they always kept the AOC at slightly lower gravity than Earth, and this world was reportedly slightly higher than Earth gravity—but they would get used to it quickly. This could be their new home. Maybe.
 “Greetings,” said a woman at the bottom of the stairs. “I’m Florida Telano.”
“Florida, like the state?” Olimpia asked.
“I’ve never heard of that,” Florida said.
“The U.S. doesn’t exist here,” Leona whispered.
“Right. My mistake.”
“Where do you come from?” Florida questioned. The name must have been a linguistic coincidence.
“We would rather keep that private,” Leona said. “We still have family there, and we don’t need any targets on their backs.” Really good lie.
“Understood,” Florida said surprisingly. “Let me give you the tour.” She lifted her arms up to project a hologram of the planet between them. “We are primarily a pitstop on a refugee’s way to their new home. The void consists of millions of minor celestial bodies, which we spread out to avoid detection. Every one of them is hydrogen-rich, and powered by at least one fusion reactor, depending on capacity. It’s capable of self-propulsion at subluminal speeds, but not faster-than-light travel. The idea is to radiate the least amount of heat possible in order to remain hidden. In contrast, Paz is orbiting a Stage Nu subgiant rogue star. It’s hard to find out here in the black, but still rather visible. People do live here, but it’s more dangerous. We are always at risk of being discovered. It’s up to you whether you’re willing to take that risk.”
“We were told that we could go to Andromeda,” Leona said. She showed Florida her handheld device. “A friend gave us these coordinates.”
Florida tilted her head, and frowned. “This is the capital of the Andromedan Consortium. It’s the number one opposing force to the Fifth Divisional Denseterium. It’s safe from the latter, but you’re at the mercy of the former. Some say they’re no better.”
Leona frowned back. She looked over to her team. “We’re not much for hiding anyway, are we?”
“No, not really,” Mateo concurred.
“All right,” Leona decided with a nod, “unless there are any objections, I think we’ll just stay here.”
“Great!” Florida exclaimed with sincerity. “We have a number of options for habitation. You’re welcome to stay on your vessel, or we can place you in a home. The price of the latter is some form of contribution, even if you choose privacy mode—which means we never go to you; you come to us—over community engagement mode.”
“Privacy mode,” they all said in unison.
“And we’ll stay on our ship,” Leona added.