Microstory 2135: Maybe it Changed His Life

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I’m feeling better today than I have in a week. I’m still not allowed to go into jail this evening, but I can’t imagine that I won’t be able to get back to our regularly scheduled programming next weekend. I’m still frustrated that I’ll have to extend my sentence because of my medical issues, but this is where procrastination helps. People all my life have told me that I should be more responsible, and to just get things done once I know that they need to be done, rather than sitting around, and putting them off. But that’s not always true, they just might not realize it. One time I had to replace my door in my house, and then I was left with this extra door that I didn’t wanna deal with. I put it by the curb, and waited for someone to pick it up. After a while, my mom started to nag me to bring it into the garage, so we could do something else with it, but The Walking Dead was on, so no. That sounded like a job for Future!Tav. Days later, a guy knocked on my door to ask if he could have the old door. I don’t know how important it was to him. Maybe he just broke it up, and used it for firewood for one day. Or maybe it changed his life forever. I’d like to imagine the latter. There have been other times when procrastinating has helped me, and I’ve felt lucky that I didn’t waste my time. Timing isn’t always about early versus late. It’s a lot more complicated than that, and no human is capable of fathoming the profound complexities of cause and effect. All I’m saying is that maybe it will end up better that I have an extra 64 hours of jail time. I don’t believe that everything happens for a reason, which suggests that there’s some god-like critter that’s moving us around like chess pieces, and trying to attain some goal, but maybe everything will at least end up all right, if only through 20/20 hindsight. While I wait, I’m just gonna keep doin’ my thang. I’ll see ya next week.

Microstory 763: Time Travel

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People often come with me with questions about how time travel works. They watch a movie about it, and are confused on the timeline. Sometimes I can help them, because I’m fairly well-versed in the subject of time travel in fiction, but sometimes it’s done so horribly, or confusingly, that even I can’t follow it. A lot of writers seem to keep making the same mistakes, and I would like to clear some of them up. First, you can’t have an event in one moment of time have some effect on an event in another moment without impacting the time in between. If today you went back to when you were in first grade, and stopped yourself from cheating on a test, you would not suddenly feel the effects of that once you returned to you own time. A whole bunch of other things happened in between. While we’re on this subject, you can’t return to your own time anyway, or rather if you did, you would find yourself in an alternate timeline. You would have to deal with the version of yourself who is living there. A single timeline simply does not explain the point of divergence, for if you succeed in stopping yourself from cheating, Future!You would have no reason to go back and change it, which would leave it unchanged, which would give you a reason to go back and change it, and so on, ad infinitum. Alternate timelines are the only logical consequence of any time traveling event. Writers also try to bring in bogus tropes that make no sense. They have timewaves, which somehow affect the timeline at a different rate than the flow of time itself. This allows people to see the changes that are being made all around them, and maintain their memory of how things were before. But this is impossible. Like I’ve said about the alternate timeline, as soon as you go back to first grade, everything changes, from that moment of egress, onwards. One may be able to jump from one moment in time to another, but that does not stop time from moving forward at a constant. Now, this constant gets a little more complicated when you factor in relativity, but it is still always moving forwards. Time doesn’t change, only an observer’s perspective of it. I could go on about the issues I see, but no one has time for that. There’s a lot we don’t know about how time works, but by as much as I write about it, and the manipulation of it, there is one undeniable truth that must not be ignored. Time travel can happen by one of two ways: it either can not, or should not.

Microstory 490: Crafter

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The Crafter is the resident computer expert. His mind can process massive amounts of data, which are exceedingly difficult for him to forget. Furthermore, he understands the concept of causality so well that it borders on precognition. He is extremely quiet and speaks only when contributing something he feels is important. In fact, he has spent entire strings of days not saying a single thing to anyone else. He often forgets how much smarter he is than others, which frequently leads to a gap in communication. He sometimes has trouble knowing what is important to say, because he assumes others have already came to the same conclusion. He regularly speaks in half-sentences that are either setting up—or finishing—a thought he had in his own mind. Whenever he finds himself in a new group of people, he usually attaches to one particular person. Most of the time, there is at least someone around who can sort of translate his thoughts for the rest. He doesn’t even always have to speak to that person for them to understand what he’s going for. In this latest situation, that person happens to be The Architect, whom he grows closer to than anyone he’s met before, including his family. Though he appreciates efficiency, he is flexible, and willing to accommodate other people’s needs. Rather, even when he has an idea of how to proceed, and can’t fathom doing it any other way, he can at least acknowledge other people’s perspectives. He works incredibly hard to make sure everyone around him is on the same page, even if it doesn’t seem that way to people who don’t “get” him. He has magnus degrees in data management, computational systematics, cognitive science, and linguistics. He has a sub-magnus degree in network security.

Microstory 352: Acceptance

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Tolerance

Congratulations again, you’re one step closer to being a happy person. Here’s your ribbon. You have let go of most of your anger. You’ve stopped fighting the reality of the world. You’ve looked into the future and seen that your obstinance has no place in the world. I wish more people would be like you. Seeing the future isn’t all that difficult. Yes, we do have this thing called free will, and no it wasn’t bestowed upon us by God. If it were, then it isn’t real. Choice, like time, isn’t a conscious planning entity. It is but the natural course of events. So yeah, we are indeed free to make our own choices, but that doesn’t mean absolutely anything can happen, or that there is no such thing as causality. It just means that many things can happen, and these things can be understood. Past experiences never determine the future, but they can do a damn good job at predicting it. Every choice you make is put before you as the result of a series of prior events, some partially instigated by yourself, others by other people, and the rest by natural forces. You might be asking the screen, why is he talking about causality? Well, you see, it all has to do with this need to hold onto tradition. The past is not valuable simply by being in the past; it must be good on its own. I know I’ve used this as an example before, but I’ll say it again. This world has a history of slavery, and it is in fact persisting today, but that doesn’t make it okay. So when people argue against gay rights (read: human rights), building a wall in the year of your Lord 2017, or getting rid of schools, they just sound like idiots. They obviously have an inability to see the future, because things are going to change, and as an optimist, I believe they will change for the better. You have already changed by attaining acceptance, and soon things will get even better for you, and you’ll learn what love is.

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