Microstory 2306: Appreciation for Symmetry

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Gemini Advanced text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 3

The end of the year is approaching, and I’m taking stock of my life. All of Nick and Dutch’s final arrangements have been completed. I’ve started the process of getting Nick’s novel published, and beginning to look into who can help me do something with the stage musical. I’m selling the house, and weighing my options when it comes to where I want to live next. I may stay in the Kansas City area, or I may not. One thing I’m still really not sure about is this site. Nick started it at the beginning of the year, and I have only ever taken over when he’s been incapacitated, but should that last forever, now that he can never come back? Do I truly have the right? Would he want me to keep going? He was a man with an appreciation for symmetry. I think ending on December 31 would be poetic in a way that he would like if he were here to do it himself. A lot of people don’t get to live on like this at all. If they die when they’re in the middle of something, it just ends. Well, maybe that’s not entirely true. If you have a job, a coworker probably takes over your accounts, and if you have young children, someone raises them for you...at least that’s the hope, anyway. Still, I think it’s time to start thinking about ending this. His story may not technically be over if his legacy moves on, but it still feels like the right thing to do. You’ll always be able to read and reread all 365 posts that will be up by then, as well as everything he wrote on social media. I’m certainly not going to shut the whole thing down. But it was never really mine. Perhaps I’ll start my own blog after this, which chronicles the things that I do next year, and beyond. Or it will too end in a year. I don’t have to decide anything right now, but the deadline is coming up soon, so let me know what you think.

Microstory 1602: New House

< > Table of Contents

In 1981, after Japan House was finished being built, the Bicker Institute started trying to think of other ways to allow the human race to survive. Eight full bunkers were already up and ready to go, with another House in New Zealand, which was designed to maintain its population mostly above ground. Jumping off of that idea, they decided that keeping people underground wasn’t necessarily the only way to survive the end of the world. In fact, it may not even be the best way. The organization was not founded upon the basis of some specific disaster. If they had those answers, they probably would have channeled all of their efforts into stopping it. They wanted to prepare for anything, and massive global earthquakes, for instance, might just bury all of their bunkers, so they wanted to come up with new strategies. People in the ocean could conceivably survive such a thing. It wasn’t guaranteed, but nothing was, and again, this was all about preparation. They needed a ship. They needed the best ship in the world. And they needed it to potentially endure a tidal wave or tsunami. Their next interim deadline was in seven years, which was important, because the hope was to support a certain percentage of a growing population. The project leads started looking around, hoping to find something that would meet their requirements. It didn’t have to be perfect, they had time to modify it, and bolster its features, but after a few months, things were getting ridiculous. Nothing fit the bill. Nothing was good enough for them. All ships were made to weather storms to some certain degree, but none of them could last through the worst storm in history, should it occur. Before wasting any more time, they decided their only solution was to build their own vessel from scratch, which they did over the course of the next eight years. They went about a year past their deadline, but that was okay, because the actual end of the world wouldn’t start happening until around 2021, and even then, things weren’t bad enough to warrant populating the Houses. This latest project made them better with their time management, and before it was finished, they ended up getting to work on the next plan for survival, which was a submarine. As for the ship, it was a magnificent beauty, far beyond anything else 1989 had to offer, and probably even superior to the ships built in 2021. I won’t tell you whether it, or its Inheritors, survived what came to it.

Microstory 422: Floor 21 (Part 1)

< > Table of Contents

I’ve always been terrible at maths. I came to this country for university with no idea what I wanted to do. I just thought a change of scenery would do me good. In the end, what I discovered was that things here are about the same. Most notably, I’m still bad at maths. I failed algebra twice in the first year at uni, and got a D the third time. I then learned that I still had to get one more credit in mathematics if I wanted to graduate. I ended up taking this random course that taught semi-practical skills. I’m not talking about money-management or basic arithmetic. This was a unique way to look at the world, and not in just numbers. One thing our teacher went over was time management and scheduling. He showed us ways to graph and visualize projects to understand how to divide time, labor, and resources. I became fascinated with this after noticing that I was exceptional at it. This kind of “maths” just made perfect sense to me, and I remember being frustrated that my secondary education teachers never did anything like it with us. It’s so much more valuable than solving for x, or any such nonsense. I’m not just saying that because I happened to make a career out of these skills. My work in project management is a perfect example of the topic, but anyone and everyone could benefit from learning even a little bit of what I do. Actually, I could have used a little help with these latest projects. Making deadlines are always the most difficult part of my job, but for the first time ever, we had to cut corners. Did that have anything to do with our defective products? I can neither confirm nor deny that, but yes. Yes, we definitely did. I’m sorry.