Microstory 2097: I Even Did Poorly in English

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What have I done with my life? Well, a lot of things. I have a ton of interests, but I’ve never really wanted to be an expert in anything, save for writing. But first, here’s a list of things that I’ve done that I didn’t like, or at least don’t anymore. I was a gymnast from childhood, up until my senior year of high school. I didn’t like to compete, and eventually only kept going because that’s what I was used to doing. I regret not being more self-aware, and realizing how it was a really good excuse to work out. Maybe then I would have continued to do something to keep my fitness up after graduating. I played baseball for a few years too, but I absolutely hate sports, and I quit as soon as my parents let me. I took golf lessons later, and ran a mile outside of a school program. Apparently, my parents were trying to find my skills and passion, and I was not smart enough to tell them that these things weren’t it. I would go on to run a 5K as an adult, but that was to lose weight, and I never wanted to do it again. I was on the dive and swim team all through high school, which my parents considered a natural extension of my experience as a gymnast, but I hated that too. After my first practice, I got in the car, and asked to let me quit right away, because the coach was making all divers swim to fill out the team. By the time my high school career was over, I preferred to swim, but I was literally the only diver on the team by then, and I guess I had to finish what I started anyway. I’m not a musician either. I played the piano for several years, and quit when my teacher died. My excuse at the time was that I didn’t want to think about trying to find a new teacher, but I think I can admit now that I always hated it as much as anything, and I was never good at it. I severely regret the amount of money my parents spent on a piano that’s no longer used, however much that was.

I was terrible in school, and that was annoying, because I wasn’t cool either, so everyone assumed that I was a nerd, but I wasn’t anything. I even did poorly in English, and related subjects. The way I see it, I’m more of a storyteller than a wordsmith. Words are just my medium, because I also have an ugly voice, but I think I would prefer to produce movies on the creative side than literally write the screenplays. After I graduated from college, in pursuit of my writing career, I started to do a lot more research, and branch out into subjects that I never thought I would try. I like architecture. Before I ended up here, I would use software to design spaceships, and other structures, from my stories, even though I never planned to release these illustrations publicly. I found it to be a soothing task, even when it was frustrating. I like to watch educational videos online for futuristic and technological subjects, and also some more grounded topics. Power generation, conversion, and storage; engineering; anatomy, physiology, medicine, psychology, and neurology; especially evolutionary biology; and even economics are some of my other random interests. I’m particularly invested in ethics, because I see bad ethics all the time, and also logic, because neurotypicals are so wrong so much of the time. I like to study these subjects, and pretend that I can retain the information presented to me, but honestly, I don’t remember hardly any of it, so they’re mostly good for killing time. Of course, I’ve done lots of other things, but these are the basics. Join me tomorrow, where I’ll discuss where I’ve lived, and where I’ve been.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 14, 2398

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Marie teleported down later yesterday to take over the brain scan error investigations. She’s going to prep her own small SD6 team. This isn’t a tactical team, like the one Kivi works with. One of them is an operative who specializes in combat and weaponry, yes, but another one is an agent, like Marie, with investigative experience. The third is an officer with diplomatic skills that she uses to turn foreigners and other civilians into government assets. They have all been read into the whole thing about time travel and alternate realities, so they’re ready to go on these missions. Alyssa doesn’t need to be involved in that anymore, and Mateo can’t, because whenever he approaches one of these people, they’re accidentally banished to another universe. While that’s happening, there is something that he always thought they should do, but weren’t able to.

The Olimpia was a submarine, but it had limited depth capabilities. The Bridgette has its own limits, but it can dive far deeper, which they’ll need in order to get to the bottom of Danica Lake. It’s located on the McIver farm outside of Lebanon, Kansas, and the McIver’s still technically own that land, but they still don’t need anyone seeing them go down there. As the saying goes, it’s always darkest before the dawn, and though that’s wholly inaccurate, that’s about when they arrive in the area. That way, they’ll still benefit from some of the daylight filtering through the water. There may be nothing down here, but then again, it may be everything,

This vehicle is far more automated than their last one as it’s equipped with the AI that Ramses rescued from The Constant before it was flooded and destroyed. Mateo is capable of operating it himself without the help of one of the team’s smart people. They dip into the water, and hang out near the surface for a little bit, shining the giant lights on the exterior around in case they see anything interesting right off the bat. They do. There are tons of fish down here. “Were you aware of people stocking this lake with life?” Mateo asks.

Alyssa shakes her head. “If they did, it would have been illegal. Not only would they have needed permission from the owner, which is me, but they would have had to negotiate a lot of bureaucratic red tape. A team of scientists would have needed to come out and test the area for pH, salinity, and other environmental variables. You can’t just randomly introduce a species to an ecosystem. Not enough time has passed for all of that, and we still have friends in the area. I’m sure I would have heard something.”

“Hmm. You seem to know a lot about how it works.”

“We considered doing it,” she explains. “We could have charged people to fish. I decided not to, because all this stuff was going on, and I didn’t want to deal with that red tape. I doubt it would have been worth it, especially since we would have either had to move back, or employ someone to manage the licenses.”

Mateo nods. “So this may be a clue. These fish here came from somewhere. I guess we don’t know where the water itself came from. I saw a movie where an isolated species of carnivorous fish were living in an underground lake until something broke, and they ended up in the regular lake, where they started eating people.”

“Sounds awful.”

“It was.” They continue to dive down as the sun rises. The natural light is never bright enough to do them much good, but it does make it seem less scary, being able to look up and see that they’re not trapped in a watery grave. They continue to see fish, though the population is not as dense down here, which they guess is typical of any body of water. They don’t see any other things, like frogs or octopodes. Mateo had a thought that they might, and that they were about to be transported to somewhere else in the world. These sorts of missions usually end up like that, but it doesn’t happen. No coral, no sharks. It’s looking like someone really did just drive up here with a tank of unauthorized fish, and dump them in here, for whatever reason.

Just as they’re reaching the limits of the sub’s capabilities, they also reach the lakebed. They expected to see the twisted ruins of the Constant, but there’s nothing. It’s just dirt and particulates, and a few adventurous fish. They go back up a little bit, because this water did have to come from somewhere, but they don’t see the pipes. “They must have been designed to disintegrate after use. The Constant must have been designed to do the same.”

“Surely the walls will have gotten wet at some point,” Alyssa reasons.

“Yeah, so water wouldn’t have caused them to fall apart. There must have been something in the water, like a...enzyme, or whatever, I don’t know.”

“Ha, are you just using fancy words you’ve heard before?”

“Pretty much.”

“Let’s call it an enzyme, which destroyed all evidence that there was once an underground complex down here. The question is where was that enzyme stored before it was needed, and why don’t we see evidence of that?”

Mateo sighs. “Neither of us is smart enough to make any real guesses in this matter. This was a nice idea, but we’re not qualified for this work.”

“Yeah.” Alyssa leans forward, and looks up through the viewscreen, where she sees nothing remarkable. “Let’s call it a day.”

“If we surface now, someone may see us.”

“I don’t really care anymore,” Alyssa decides. “This is still my land, I can do whatever I want with it.”

“Fair enough. Hey Constance, please surface.”

“Surfacing,” the computer responds.

They keep looking through the viewscreen as they go higher and higher. It’s going pretty fast, which Mateo would think would be dangerous, but Constance knows best. Something weird happens when they’re almost at the surface. The water becomes clearer, and light comes in through the glass. It almost looks like there’s a wall in front of them. An alarm starts going off outside, but it’s not too loud, and not too obnoxious. “Constance, report!”

“Status normal,” she replies simply. She doesn’t see anything wrong with this. The Bridgette breaks the surface, and starts to just float there. Now they can really see the walls. It looks like they’re in an Olympic-size pool.

“What happened?”

“I’m pretty sure we just went back in time.” Mateo reaches up to the emergency ceiling hatch, and pulls himself through it. He then helps Alyssa up as well.

They stand on the roof, and get a look around. It’s definitely a swimming pool, and it looks familiar. The double doors open, and Mateo’s cousin, Danica power walks in. She looks surprised to see him, but more annoyed than anything. “What the hell are you doing back here?” she questions.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 6, 2398

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Ramses tries to deliver The Bridgette back to the park in New York, but it seems that Winona has managed to lock him out of all systems. That’s impressive. These Third Railers are more resourceful than he thought. He’ll have to remember that moving forward. He doesn’t like being surprised, or the one beholden to someone else. He’s always meant to be in control, and once he clears the override feature that Winona installed on this craft, he’ll get back to that. For now, he has to do what she says. They need their starship back, and this is the way they’re getting it. It’s not the first time their plans didn’t go as planned. They always figure out a workaround to the obstacles.

Winona sets her tablet on the console, and lets it sync with the Bridgette. “Constance, please navigate us to these coordinates in realspace.”

“Prepare for liftoff,” the AI replies.

“I’m sorry I had to do that,” Winona says to Ramses. “I like Leona; I consider her one of my own. But I had to make a call. We will get her up into space, I promise you.”

“You can’t promise that,” Ramses says, “but I can. I can also promise you that getting on my team’s bad side never works out for people. You live in your own little reality, but we always win. You apologized with words, now do it through action.”

Winona nods. The computer beeps. She looks down at the console. “We’re here.” She activates the radio. “Amberjack, this is Pelican. Come in, Amberjack.”

“Amberjack Actual here, go ahead.”

“Permission to land and come aboard. Three visitors total, limited equipment.”

“Permission granted.”

“Constance, please land. Once we’re aboard the Amberjack, dive to a depth of thirty meters, and travel three hundred kilometers to the Northeast, avoiding detection along the way. Once there, resurface, launch, and return to base.”

“Understood,” Constance replies.

She regards Ramses’ expression. “The Bridgette will be fully yours after today.”

“Clearly.”

They land the Bridgette, and board the sub. They’re surprised to see what must be a full crew waiting for them. It’s hard to walk through, there are so many people. They were to understand that there would only be a few left around, while the rest rested and relaxed in Bermuda. Winona and Executor Ongaro go into his office to have a chat about it. When they come out ten minutes later, Winona explains to Ramses and Alyssa that rumor spread about what kind of mission they were going on, and everyone wanted to be a part of it. She questioned why he didn’t just order them to go on shore leave, being the Executor and all. He claimed that his own curiosity made him feel like he couldn’t rob others of the opportunity. Bad leadership, if you ask Ramses, but nothing can be done about it now. They have already begun the dive.

By the time they reach the bottom, Ramses has started to receive a signal from the AOC. So not only is it close, but it’s on and operational. That’s good, it strongly suggests that life support is still active. Even if it’s not, it shouldn’t be too hard to re-engage it. Once they’re close enough, the sub’s lights shine upon the vessel. It’s sitting neatly on the ocean floor, right between two little rocky cliffs. Either it was damn lucky to have fallen right in the perfect spot, or the AI is still on, and navigated it well enough to protect hull integrity.

“Wow. This is yours?” one of the crewmen asks.

“Yes,” Ramses replies, not super happy about having all these eyes on his ship.

“It can fly to the stars?” another asks.

Ramses looks over to Winona. “You have some leaks to plug up.” He’s not referring to the sub, or the ship.

“A lot of people had to be read in for this, Winona defends.

“How do we dock with it?” Executor Ongaro asks them.

“We don’t.” And now for the hard part. There are more people here than Ramses was led to believe. Keeping the secret amongst a smaller group would have been easier, but they probably know enough already anyway. He’s just gonna teleport in, now that he has a target. “You have a torpedo room, right?”

Executor Ongaro laughs. “Yeah, but you’re not going to be able to fire one from there, if that’s what you’re thinking. That’s just where they’re loaded.”

“That’s not what I was thinking. I just need privacy. Can you give me that, or are we gonna have a problem?”

Ongaro sizes him up, but decides to agree. “That will be fine.” He doesn’t think there’s anything he can do in that room that they won’t be able to find out about.

The torpedo room offers them a plausible way off of the sub, and onto the AOC. It’s ridiculously impossible at this depth, but they will probably assume that Ramses used some kind of crazy supersoldier serum that allowed him to traverse the distance safely. What he won’t guess is that he can inject himself with a magical formula that will allow him to teleport over there without getting a single drop of water on him. Ongaro leads him down to the other side of the vessel, and shows him into the room, ordering the crew manning their stations to leave. He makes a mistake, though, when he accidentally looks up to the security camera in the corner. That’s fine, disabling basic surveillance is incredibly easy for Ramses with his trusty mission kit.

Winona closes the door behind them. “They’ll still be watching.”

“They’ll try.” Ramses presses the button on his signal scrambler, and shuts off the cameras and microphones. Then he places a magnetic lock on the door, in case going blind pisses them off enough to try to get back in here.

“You’re not going to try to stop me from coming with you?” Winona asks.

“I can’t leave you here with these warmongers,” Ramses tells her. “I’m mad at you right now, but we’ll get through this. That’s what it means to be on our team. Isn’t that what you want?”

“Yes.”

Ramses injects himself with the Existence Water. “Then hold onto me tightly.”

Both Alyssa and Winona take him in a bear hug, and let him transport them into the AOC. He was right, life support is fine. A cursory glance at the diagnostics screen shows that everything is fine. The hull did suffer a few scrapes on the way down, but it repaired itself without any prompting. Ramses takes out the data drive where he keeps the base code for the AI that he got from The Constant. He plugs it into a dataport, and uploads it as an upgrade. “Constance, can you hear me?”

“Five by five,” Constance replies.

“Run full diagnostics on yourself, please.”

Once the perfect diagnostic finishes, Ramses says, “okay, then. Please teleport to the last New York coordinates where the Bridgette was.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 25, 2398

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It wasn’t easy, getting on a commercial flight to Bermuda at such short notice. It’s a popular destination, so lots of flights go out there, but this is the beginning of vacation season, so most of them were pretty full. Heath and Ramses deplane, and head for the exit. Ramses gets on the phone. “We’re here, where are you?”

“I’m about an hour and forty-five minutes away,” Leona replies.

“What?” Ramses questions. “You were meant to wait for us.”

“I was worried I would lose the signal. I’m still worried. I need to come back and scoop you up, but what if he gets out of range. I already feel our psychic connection wearing off.”

Heath takes the phone. “Leona, have you been going in the same direction the whole time?”

“Yes,” she answers.

“Then we have a good idea where they’re headed by now,” Heath reasons. “Come back and get us. “You probably need to refuel anyway. We’ll leave as soon as we can, and get back on the trail.”

“Okay,” Leona concedes. “I’m coming back.”

Mateo is about 600 kilometers from Bermuda right now, traveling on the same bearing since departure. There’s nothing on the map out here, so either the men who took him are trying to get to Cuba, or they’re going to rendezvous with some other ocean vessel. All she knows is that they’re on a boat, and she’s on a plane. She can catch back up to him, even after flying all the way back to the island, but it’s going to break her heart if it turns out she can’t find that trail again.

Heath may be wrong. Mateo’s abductors could turn to a different direction at any moment. One thing that gives her comfort is that her husband feels okay right now. He was not doing well yesterday, but he seems to have recovered. He’s not happy, per se, but he’s not scared or sick anymore, so at least there’s that. Like she was saying, though, they might lose their empathic connection, either by moving too far away from each other, or just because the temporal energy that they’re working off of is used up. One good choice Leona made is to call up some help. She doesn’t know who they’re going to be up against, and she shouldn’t try to fight them on her own. Angela and Marie are still in Kansas City, moving forward with Operation Backup Twin, as one of them decided to start calling it.

As calculated, Leona lands back on the road within two hours. They take a little bit of time to replace the fuel cells, so they can be at optimal operational capacity. Leona never does lose the psychic link, but she can still feel Mateo getting farther away from her until the three rescuers get back in the air. Before they get too close to the enemy, they drop out of the sky, and transform into a boat. This is when they start putting on their tactical gear, and checking their weapons. “So, the reason we stopped flying is to be stealthy, correct?” Heath asks the group.

“Right,” Leona agrees.

“Why don’t we just go sub?”

Leona stops adjusting her thigh holster. “What? This is a sub?”

“Yeah, did I not tell you that?”

“Uhh, no.”

“Oh, yeah. This is a sub.”

“Put us down,” Leona demands.

Heath stops what he was doing, and engages the controls. They dive deeper until The Olimpia is fully submerged. Blast shutters slide down over the windows automatically, but Heath reverses them, under the assumption that they won’t be going very deep.

“No, put them back down,” Leona says. “I wanna kiss the bottom of the ocean. The closer we are, the more difficult it will be for the enemies to detect us, if they’re expecting anyone at all.”

“Very well,” Heath agrees. He does as he’s told, and sinks deeper and deeper and deeper, but then he stops.

“What’s going on?”

“This is as deep as we can go,” he warns. “It can only handle a couple hundred meters. That’s pretty good for a vessel this size in the 24th century.”

Leona sighs heavily. “Fine. Keep going.” She points towards the front. “That way.”

They maintain their pursuit, hoping that the boat doesn’t see them coming. Even if they do, though, what are they going to do about it? They probably don’t have torpedoes, or anything. The element of surprise would be great, but just being able to rise up to the bilge would be helpful on its own, as Ramses suggests. They don’t get that chance, which disappoints him a little.

Mateo gets on the radio, and makes contact. “Olimpia, Olimpia, come in.”

“This is the Olimpia. Go ahead,” Leona prompts.

“I wanna show you somethin’.”

“Okay...”

“I’ll be with you in a second. I just need to get something from my cabin.” A minute later, Mateo teleports himself into the Olimpia. “I don’t have much time. I obviously didn’t tell them what I can do, so they can’t walk in to find me missing. Surface so we can talk in person. And put away those guns. I’ll explain everything.”

Microstory 1767: Piscis Austrinus

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I’ve been an honorary fish for a few months now, and I’ve loved almost all of it. There’s something missing in my life, though. I’m the only one of my kind. The other fish have accepted me into their school, but I’m not truly one of them. I’m a giant, and I still look human. Every other member is paired up. That’s how this species works. It’s hard to communicate with them, but I’ve been able to gather some information, like how their pairings are a defense mechanism. When they swim in their circles, they create a bunch of bubbles, which makes them difficult to pinpoint. It allows each pair to move off from the school, and hunt for food, or maybe find a little alone time. I don’t want to mate with a fish, or anything, but I do feel lonely. Like I said, they’ve accepted me, but that doesn’t mean one of them is going to circle with me. I don’t want that anyway. I want to find another human to transform into a fish. Unfortunately, that’s damn near impossible. The reason I discovered this species is because they live deeper than 600 meters below sea level. I’m the first person in history to scuba dive to that depth, and since I never came back up, I doubt anyone else is going to be trying it anytime soon. They wouldn’t likely survive; I was the best in the world before I became a fish. Submarines have come this far before, but not regularly, because there’s usually no point. The chances of finding a mate are just too low to hold out hope. I’ve tried encouraging the school to swim closer to the surface, but they won’t do it. They’ve never done it before, and it’s not how they evolved. I don’t know why they transformed me into someone who can breathe underwater, but they seem to consider that act their one favor, and they aren’t interested in going for another. I’m free to go up alone, but that won’t matter. I’m not capable of repeating the miracle myself. I need them to do it. There’s no other way.

I give up on pleading with them. I don’t think it’s gonna happen, even though the second generation seems to be a little more open-minded. I just surrender to the fact that I’ll live the rest of my life alone. It’s still a blessing to be down here. I’m setting records left and right. As it turns out, 600 meters is a little high for these fish. We spend most of our time at 800, which is a depth I never dreamed of seeing. It’s dark, but my eyes have adjusted accordingly, so it basically looks like tropical snorkeling to me. I don’t even think there’s a regular species with that kind of eyesight. Some have even lost their eyes to evolution, because it’s too dark for them to see. It’s a wonder, all the underground mountains, and other unique terrain. As I’m watching some kind of crustacean crawl around on the floor off the coast of Australia, the school suddenly shoots upwards, faster then they ever have before. I have to work hard to keep up. They gave me the ability to breathe water like air, and to withstand the pressure, but I didn’t grow fins. I’m still using the carbon fiber ones I came down here with. It’s not long before I see what all the fuss is about. It’s another diver. She’s only at 500 meters, but she’s descending quickly. Something is tied to her leg. My God, it’s a cement block. Someone is trying to kill her. I wonder why they left her with her scuba gear. Anyway, her attempted murderer is not going to succeed. The fish do to her what they once did for me. We bite off the rope, and swarm her, using magicks to keep her from dying. I smile, glad to finally have someone that I can relate to again. She does not feel the same way. The first thing she does is swim back up to confront her attacker. I feel compelled to follow. Maybe I can help.

Microstory 1766: Pisces

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I’m the best scuba diver in the world, which is saying a lot, because I was afraid of it when I was a kid, and I come from a family of masters. I’ve since surpassed all others in skills and experience. I can venture to the deepest parts of the ocean that are humanly possible to survive. I can use any kind of tank, and complete any task. Today, I’m about to set the record for the deepest dive ever, and cement myself as one of the absolute best in history. I’ve already passed the last record, but I’m not satisfied with that. I have to get to 600 meters. No one will try that depth after me without a submarine. I check my watch. I had to have it specially made to survive these pressures too, and so far, it’s done me well. I’m at 570 meters, and so pleased with myself. No one has ever seen what I’m seeing right now. Of course, like I said, submarines can descend this far, but they haven’t, not around here. My cousins are going to be so jealous, I can’t wait to run it in their faces. None of them thought that I would make it, and I’ve yet to prove them wrong. It’s not really the deepest dive if I die down here, is it? Maybe they’ll still count it, and sing songs of my brave and tragic end. I keep going: 580, 590, and...600 meters! I reached my goal. If I stay too long, I really will die, though, so I immediately prepare to ascend. Then something catches my eye. It’s a fish. No, it’s two fish. Wow, it’s an entire school. There’s something strange about this species, but I can’t put my finger on it. Oh, yeah, they’re swimming in pairs.

These fish are exhibiting behavior that I’ve never heard of. I’m no ichthyologist, but I know what species live around here, and this ain’t one of them. Every single fish is paired up with another, face to tail. They’re swimming in circles around each other, or more appropriately, around some mutual barycenter between them. Since they’re not going straight, the only reason they go anywhere is because the spin isn’t constant. They nudge themselves in one direction, like propellers. Why the heck are they doing that? Is there some sort of evolutionary advantage to spinning? Perhaps it has more to do with the pairs, and less to do with the way that they swim. I obviously have to take photographs and video of this phenomenon. If I’ve discovered a new species, it will only make me more famous, which is kind of what I’m going for here. I don’t even have to survive. The footage is being automatically beamed back up to the boat. There’s no way for me to communicate with them directly, but I can.imagine my mother urging me to begin the ascension process. It’s going to take an extremely long time, and the extra tanks they left hanging for me at my stop intervals won’t be enough if I don’t maintain my schedule, not to mention the risk of getting bent. I’m about to let it go, and save myself when the fish change behaviors. They stay in their paired circles, but also begin to circle me. They’re aware of me, but probably aren’t sure if I’m a predator. I’m amazed but frightened, but the latter grows faster once they start biting at my equipment. They tear off the straps, and cut the breathing tubes. Welp, I guess I really am gonna die. Except I don’t. I suddenly stop feeling the intense pressure, the freezing cold, and the need to breathe. They’ve somehow transformed me into one of them, and once I realize what an amazing gift this is, I all but forget about my past life as a human, and together...we dive deeper.

Microstory 1717: Carina

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Carina Silver awoke face up on a diving board. She had grown so used to sleepwalking that she no longer freaked out about it. Regularly, she returned to the world of the living in awkward, or even dangerous, positions. It was best to remain as still as possible until she could assess the situation. She saw a waterslide in the middle distance, but it was still difficult to tell how far up she was. She had to move to figure that out. She sat up slowly, and braced herself on the edges. Swinging her legs down to straddle the board, she now realized she was on the high dive, and also that the pool was empty. It wasn’t covered, or anything. Judging by the leaves and trash below her, it was abandoned long ago. Falling from this height could be fatal, and even if she survived impact, it could potentially be years before anyone else came round here. The two ladders still remaining appeared to be in bad shape, as was the board. The more she moved, the more she could hear it slide against the bolts that once held onto it tight. It was a wonder she hadn’t fallen to her head while she was still asleep. Obviously the more she approached the steps to safety, the more stable the surface would become, but getting far enough away from the far end was going to be hard. It might be impossible. She made one move towards the steps, and the entire thing came up like a seesaw, tipping her over towards an early death. Carina exhaled as it teetered, hoping the release of air made her light enough to keep from going over. She didn’t know if that had anything to do with it, but the board did end up tottering back, and returning to its rightful place. Moving was not an option. She had to keep it in balance, so if she was ever going to get off this thing, it was going to take a miracle, or maybe just some assistance.

Carina was a quiet person, both literally and socially. She spoke in low volumes, and said unprovocative things. She didn’t like to disturb people, and even now, when calling out for help could save her life, she struggled to speak beyond a whisper. She kept trying to raise her voice, so others would know she was in trouble, but she just couldn’t do it. Part of it was fear that her voice alone could tip her back towards the concrete below, but most of it was because of how unnatural and unfamiliar it felt. Before too long, she gave up, and lay back down on the board to watch the stars. She could not see them well when the tears welled in her eyes, and rolled down her temples. She fell back asleep, knowing that she could end up falling over because of it, but also calculating there to be a remote chance that her sleepwalking self would figure out the problem for her. When she awoke yet again, the stars were gone, and the sun was blinding her eyes. The sound of joyful cries and laughter overwhelmed her ears. A few drops of water made it all the way up to her, and danced upon her shoulders. She sat up and looked around. Yes, she was still above the pool, but it was no longer abandoned. It was full of patrons, mostly children, and also water. They were jumping off the two lower boards, and chasing each other around, and swimming laps in the lanes. Had she traveled through time, or filled the pool with her own tears, or had she simply imagined the state of the place last night, and it was actually all fine all along? They were having all sorts of fun, and appeared to be unperturbed by her presence. A child was standing at the top of the steps, waiting to take his turn on the high dive. Below them, Carina could see a line of others. They weren’t complaining, or yelling at her. They were just waiting patiently, and letting her take all the time she needed. Even so, she didn’t want to keep them waiting, so Carina smiled and waved at everyone. Then she rolled over, and dove into the water.

Microstory 1356: Self-Helper

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Self-Help Superfan: It is such an honor to meet you, sir. I was a huge fan of your first book, and almost scooped the moon when I found out you were soon to release a follow-up.

Self-Helper: Ah, scoop the moon. I like the reference. That was smart, starting out like that. It proves that you actually read my book, and you’re not just BSing me.

Self-Help Superfan: No, sir. I would not have asked for this interview if I hadn’t read it twice all the way through.

Self-Helper: Well, that’s great. I’m glad it’s helping you.

Self-Help Superfan: Oh, it definitely has. I’m already finding so much more success in my career than I ever thought possible, and it’s all thanks to you.

Self-Helper: No, no, no. Don’t say that. The point of my book is to find out what you can do for you. You’re already the pilot. I just cleaned your engines.

Self-Help Superfan: Haha, yes, of course. On that note, why don’t we get right into it? Your first self-help book was entitled The Astronaut in You. This next one is called The Ocean Above You. Did you mean for it to be so poetic? First we go up, then we come back down, and explore the depths?

Self-Helper: Honestly, I didn’t give it that much thought when I started out. I didn’t plan it to be like that. I suppose that goes to show how much profound truth there is to what I say. First you want to get as far from your comfort zone as possible. It’s only then that you can gain perspective, and an appreciation for where you came from. It’s also only after that when you can really get back to your roots, and explore who you are inside.

Self-Help Superfan: Excellent, excellent. So, the first chapter—and I don’t want to give anything away for my listeners—starts out with the Astronaut splashing down into the ocean to begin the second part of their journey. That wasn’t planned from the start?

Self-Helper: No, I wrote the first draft of the whole second book before I realized I could connect it to the astronaut motif in that way. I had to rewrite a lot of the rest to make it make sense, but that’s okay, because I was going to do another draft anyway. It’s important to understand—and don’t think any of my readers don’t—is that the Astronaut and the Diver are just metaphors. I don’t know what other metaphors I could have chosen, but the point is they’re just tools to help you comprehend how you can change your life for the better. That’s not the say I chose them at random. There is a reason for it, and it’s because most people reading these books are neither astronauts, nor deep sea divers. This sort of allows everyone to be on an even playing field. We can all relate to the archetypes in about the same way. Well, not all; chapter four of The Astronaut in You talks about diversity, but you get what I mean.

Self-Help Superfan: Yeah, I totally get it. There aren’t a lot of readers who can relate to the character too terribly much, because if they did, they might lose the message.

Self-Helper: That’s right. It’s about the message, and I don’t just want people reading a good story about themselves. It’s only moderately fictional to keep people interested, and to get them to read it straight through. People often try to pick and choose what parts of a self-help book will help them the quickest, and they ignore a lot of good material because of it. It’s not a piece of fiction, but it’s not an encyclopedia either. You’re meant to go from page one to the conclusion.

Self-Help Superfan: Oh, I know I certainly did. Now, a lot of self-help authors have come up with life-changing advice based on their own past experiences. But you didn’t really talk about your personal life in the first book. The second one seems to suggest writing the first one was actually an exercise in itself. You learned the hidden tricks by trying them out?

Self-Helper: That’s exactly what happened. The first one started out as a series of letters to my therapist. I was so anxious around people back then that I never got out what I really wanted to say during my sessions. She suggested that I write my questions down. She intended to answer them in-person, but we kind of became pen pals. That’s why she enjoys a collaborative credit in the book jacket.

Self-Help Superfan: That’s amazing. I want to know more about her; as much as you’re allowed to say, of course.

Self-Helper: I can say quite a bit. How long you got?

Microstory 871: Pearl of Folly

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A few years back, I visited my sister, who was working as an ELL teacher in Ecuador. While there, she suggested I learn how to scuba dive, which she had gotten into when she first arrived. I did extremely well in the class, easily grasping the mathematical components, and safety concepts, so I was confident in my abilities. What I discovered during the swimming pool portion of the course, however, was that I had some kind of breathing issue. At first, I thought I was panicking, because while my allergies have always made breathing through my nose difficult, scuba diving requires mouth-breathing, so it didn’t make sense. I went back home ashamed, and booked an appointment with the doctor right away, only to learn that I also had asthma. There was medicine I could take, and an inhaler, but the doctor couldn’t promise I would ever be able to dive. I wasn’t satisfied with that answer, so I became determined to figure out how to do it, even if that meant finding some workaround. I bought a snorkel, and started training myself in the pool in my apartment complex. It wasn’t quite the same, but it was unrealistic to buy full equipment if this wasn’t going to work out. Summer was coming to a close, though, so I needed to try my hand at the real thing one more time. I bought the best of the best gear, and drove out to the lake. I obviously shouldn’t have gone out there alone, uncertified, but this was something I felt I needed to do on my own. A few seconds underwater, and I was already having just as much trouble as I had before. This wasn’t working. All that time I spent at the pool—and all the money I spent on the gear—had been a complete waste. No, I thought to myself. This can work, but I have to take the training wheels off, and remove the safety net. I decided to just go for it, and head straight for the bottom.

I am freaking out on the way down, but resolute. When my whole family meets in Costa Rica in a few months, I have to prove that I’ve gotten over my issues. I keep kicking my feet until I can see the floor, along with something shiny peeking out from under a rock. Suddenly my breathing problems go away, and I feel as comfortable as I do on land. I keep going until I reach the treasure. It looks like a pearl, but it’s huge. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard of one being this large, but I’m no expert. I scoop it up to make sure it’s not just a sparkly rock. As soon as my hand touches the stone—or whatever it is that pearls are—I get a vision. I see a meteoroid strike the surface of the Earth, killing all the dinosaurs in the immediate area. Time passes quickly, and I witness a plant grow from the impact site. It spreads its seed far and wide, until it’s rooted all over the globe. The plants can somehow communicate with one another, which allows them to release some kind of toxic gas that kills nearly all life on the planet. It is the most horrifying thing I’ve seen in my life. The vision ends, and the pearl begins to crumble away, like a small piece of soap in the bathwater. Only then do I realize that the water above is rushing towards me, draining impossibly fast down the little hole I created when I removed the pearl. In only a matter of minutes, I’m crouched on a dry lake bed, still breathing through my regulator. Something green appears through the hole, and grows larger. A plant shoots out so quickly that I fall to my back. I scramble to get my mask off, and find that there are already two plants sitting right next to each other. They each release a seed, each one of which lands a few meters away in either direction. Then all the plants do the same thing over again. And again and again and again. I take off my flippers and run towards the car, but I know that it doesn’t matter. This is how the world ends, and I’m the one who causes it.

Microstory 346: Weight Control

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Exercise

As I mentioned before, I’ve developed a binge eating disorder. Weight wasn’t anything I worried about growing up. Other people in my family did, but I was always really skinny. What I was too stupid to understand at the time was that this was because of how active I was. I was working out almost every day. My God, at one point, I was going to gymnastics three times a week. Why was I doing that? I hate competition, so it’s not like I was training for the Olympics. Whatever my reasoning, it all stopped when I went to college. But that alone would have been okay, because I was already starting from a pretty good place. Other things, however, were at play. I’ve always been very money-conscious as well, so when I discovered that the dorm cafeteria was all-you-can-eat, I went overboard. I decided to eat as much as I could each time I swiped my card to get the most out of the money already spent. And this all came out of a lack of education. Your body needs time to digest and process the nutrients and carbohydrates it gets from food. This is why we eat a few meals per day, rather than just gathering all of our calories in the beginning, and saving time. I didn’t know this, so eating two or three burgers at dinner seemed like a perfectly reasonable solution to the fact that I was only allotted so many meals. I’m ashamed to admit that I gained 45 pounds in college. Afterwards, I went through periods of dropping that back down, but I still wasn’t getting much exercise, so it could only take me so far. At this point in my life, I would say that it’s worse than ever. I have a job where I have to keep moving, but that really builds muscle without burning fat. Plus, I’ve recently quit that position anyway. But now that I’ll be making me more money, I need to commit to fixing myself, starting with eating less food at more meals.

Freedom from Persecution

Microstory 345: Exercise

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Career Integrity

Whenever anyone’s ever talked to me about exercise, they always have some idea of the best way to do it. I’ve also read articles about what you’re supposed to do, and what you’re not. The truth is that different kinds are good for different things. Lifting weights isn’t going to get your heart rate up, but swimming isn’t really going to increase muscle mass. It just depends on what you’re trying to get out of the activity. When I was a child, I didn’t seek out exercise, it was just something that happened to me. I played baseball for however many years long (don’t remember). I started gymnastics very early on because I saw someone on television do what I later learned was a roundoff backhandspring backflip. After eleven years of practice, I was finally able to do that myself. Looking back, it should not have taken that long. Anyway, the point is that I wasn’t trying to stay healthy, especially not when my parents made me join the dive team in high school. These were just incidental, and I didn’t realize how much good they were doing for me until I went to college and promptly stopped exercising. I wasn’t doing anything. I walked to class, but sometimes not even that. My dog still lived back home, so I wasn’t going out with her. I was leading a very sedentary life, and developing a binge eating disorder, but I’ll talk more on that later. It was only a couple years ago that I decided to start hiking again, which was something I had done, again incidentally, through the scouting program. That was one of the best choices I made in my life, and I wish I could do it more. I wish I had the money for a treadmill so that I could multitask with it. But I need to get past my roadblocks and understand that there are ways to exercise without paying any money at all. I hope you’re getting some level of exercise, whether it be yoga, dancing, or even running.

Weight Control

Microstory 7: True Story II

When I was very young, no older than five years old, I saw someone on television doing gymnastics. I would later learn that the trick they performed was a round-off back handspring, backflip. I turned to my mother and said, "I want to do that." She said, "okay." Sometime later, I started gymnastics. And I did it for eleven years. I also played baseball for several years. When I entered high school, my parents made me join the dive team. I ended up doing some swimming events as well. But I never liked it. There was too much competition. And I would prefer a world where everyone wins. Plus, I'm afraid of heights! But that's all another story. The point is that I was physically active for my entire life. It was second nature. I didn't realize that it was keeping me healthy. Then I went to college. All of it stopped. I spent so much time in a different city that I didn't even walk my dog very much. The meal plan allowed me to eat as much as I wanted, and only kept track of the number of meals. I was used to eating as much as I wanted and burning it off regularly. But not anymore. I gained a lot of weight. I won't get into specifics. It wasn't entirely noticeable to others if I wore the right clothes. Which meant it wasn't entirely noticeable to me. So, it just kept getting worse. I tried some diets. I tried becoming more active. But I am SOO busy. I spend every second of every day thinking about my stories, even when I'm asleep. Even when I'm doing something else. But I can only multitask so much and working out was, well...too much work.

The other day, I decided that I needed to push myself. I needed to force myself into a workout situation that I couldn't get out of. So, I started walking the 5.8 miles (42 blocks) from my house to my parents' house. At a certain point, there was no turning back. I could have called someone to pick me up. But that would have made me a failure. And, being Japanese, that's not really an option. My fingers swelled up, worsened by the fact that I didn't think to take off my ring. My feet blistered and suffered from poor circulation. But since my fingers were swollen, I couldn't loosen my shoelaces. But I made it. I had enough water. I had some good music. And I even made a few minor breakthroughs in my stories. There is no point, or really even an end, to this story. I'm telling it, though, because it keeps me accountable. And maybe if I know that others know I did this once, it will make it that much harder to excuse myself from doing something like it again. Thank you for your time. Microfiction resumes tomorrow on my official Tavis Highfill Page.