Microstory 1653: Flipsides

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Not all of the dichotomies from Flipverse were bad, or hostile, or violent. There was one in particular that was pretty innocuous. It wasn’t without its controversies, but it was created with the best of intentions, and designed just to be fun and entertaining. They called it Flipsides, and it was a reality show that featured a tournament style competition, which pitted two different types of people against each other. Every season was about two somewhat opposing lifestyles, if only superficially. The first, for instance, was city-dwellers against rural-dwellers. The second season was athletes versus scholars. You might imagine the criticism that the producers endured over the years—accusations of playing into stereotypes—but for the most part, it did okay. It lasted for eleven seasons, and mostly only ended because of other social changes that were going on in the world at the time, which made pursuing any entertainment endeavor difficult. The contests were varied. They took place in different locales, all over the world, and no specific contest was ever repeated. Some were in swamps, others in the mountains, and they even went into orbit around the planet. The audience would vote on various things, such as which contestants would compete in which location. Anything could happen, including the rules being changed mid-game, just to make things more interesting, but no one was ever given an unfair advantage, unless they earned it in some other way. Many tuned in, not just for the competition itself, but the drama that surrounded the contestants. How they lived together during the season, even after people were eliminated, was an important aspect of the social experiment; perhaps most important. There were group challenges, and bonus challenges, and these led to secret advantages, or better accommodations, which could result in social complications. People fell in love, and fell out of love, and had fights, and were occasionally kicked off for causing too many problems, or quit. The impact of the show went beyond the broadcast itself. Many contestants were elevated from it, and started getting noticed for the other things they did in their life. The final season spawned a documentary, where some of the most favored contestants were followed around in their daily lives, as they kept in contact with each other. While proper physics of Flipverse always had a little bit of scifi stuff going on with it, it was actually the leads of the docuseries that uncovered until then unknown secrets of the cosmos, and changed the course of history for the entire world.

Microstory 1603: The Dichotomy of it All

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Flipverse seemed like an okay brane in the beginning, especially once people realized that they could commune with their deceased loved ones. There was no inherently nefarious reason that they could do this. The people who set up the system didn’t do so as part of some grand plan to harm humanity, and they weren’t as evil as some others of their kind, but they weren’t particularly fond of humans either. They were Maramon from a universe called Ansutah, and were only in Flipverse when The Crossover suffered a cataclysmic failure. Stranded, they created the afterlife world for reasons I’m not able to detect, but everything bad that happened as a result of it was because of human error, or unforeseen consequences. Things took a turn for the worse near the beginning of the 21st century, when a dark organization rose from the shadows, and decided it was time they took over the United States. Their power was fleeting, but their impact was everlasting, and profound. This was how the universe earned its name. From there on out, those in power found that they could only ever hold onto it for a short period of time, until another appeared to take their place. Each new faction formed in response to the last, and promised that things would be better under their rule, but it was actually just different. A hunger for power and control pervaded everything in this universe, starkly contrasting the period of peace that preceded this age, and making everyone’s lives more complicated by the year. Everything was about some sort of dichotomy, from the living world versus the underworld, to the wealthy versus the wanting. Even the most popular reality show contest was about pitting two groups against each other that were distinct for reasons unrelated to the competition itself. This wasn’t only about two sides literally fighting against each other, but a society that was no longer capable of allowing two opposing forces to co-exist. There had to be conflict, and there weren’t many people left who wanted to see things return to normal, or reach some form of enlightenment. The interesting lesson from this story is not that civilization kept falling, but that it kept getting back up. They kept trying and trying, and even when things grew worse, most people involved only intended to do what they felt was best. It is for this reason that Flipverse ended up becoming a vastly important strategic position in the Darning Wars.