Microstory 2493: Eldome

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They call this a train, but that doesn’t really do it justice. A train involves separate cars linked together, following each other along a track. This, on the other hand, is more like a big-ass disc that spins around. It’s not just like that, that’s exactly how it is. It does have the feel of a train while you’re inside, except the seats can be adjusted so you’re facing any direction. To get the full experience, they expect you to look through the window the whole time. The window is slanted, so you can really get a clear view of everything. It’s about 11 kilometers up in the air, so there is nothing that you can’t see on the surface of the entire dome after the nearly four-hour trip. It moves pretty slow, which some might find boring, so just be aware of that before you sign up. I mean, I don’t think I thought that it was going to be a fast ride, but four hours is a long time to look at some hills and trees. It was lovely, to be sure. I just don’t know if it’s any better than a sim, or a holographic window. I guess I just wasn’t sure if I was meant to feel something. The idea is that you turn your chair so you’re looking through the window at the beautiful landscape below. I just think that it was too high up. Yeah, so I can see the center from here, but so what? It would be better if we were lower, and could see the geography in greater detail. The prospectus doesn’t do a rating system because they, like, did studies long ago, and determined that they were no longer necessary when an AI is just gonna summarize all the reviews for a deeper focus on quality, but if they still allowed them, I would give this place two stars. It wasn’t bad, and I don’t feel like I wasted my time, but as far as leisure domes go, this one is not my favorite.

EDIT: I’m such an idiot. There are multiple discs. Not all of them are that high up, and the lower ones go faster. They’re all still four hours long, which I think was the source of my confusion when I was misinterpreting the description. One of them actually is a train, and it’s situated on the ground, so you can only see what’s right in front of you. I’m gonna try that one next. Glad we got that cleared up. Sorry, ignore me.

Microstory 1331: Charitable Foundation

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Lottery Winner: Thank you for calling in one last time. My friend told me to refer to this a suitability interview, so I don’t look like a jerk for making you interview more than once, but the truth is that I don’t really know what the hell I’m doing, and there were some things I forgot to ask you before.

Assistant Candidate: It’s no problem. I’m happy to answer anything.

Lottery Winner: Okay, great. I’ll make this as quick and painless as possible. After I won the lottery, everyone had a lot of ideas about how I could spend the money. If they weren’t asking for me to just give it to them, they were suggesting I buy a theme park, or a sports team, or a giant mansion. Of course, a lot of people said I ought to just donate it to charity, which is the obvious answer here, and why I placed the job posting. At first, I figured I would need help from an assistant who could field donation requests, and research the most reputable ones. I don’t want to give to a front for a terrorist organization, or to someone who’s embezzling it. The more I’ve thought about this, the more I’ve realized that this won’t be enough. I have eighty-three million dollars right now, and when I run out of that, then it’s gone. Most would say that’s no big deal, but I want to maximize my donations, and the amount of time I can do it. I don’t just want to give the money away. I want to set up a charitable foundation, so it can keep going, even after the initial money is gone; even after I’m gone.

Assistant Candidate: Oh, that’s a nice idea, I like that.

Lottery Winner: I’m glad to hear it, because once I decided to do this, I remembered your name. There were a lot of great candidates for this position, and honestly, I wasn’t too worried about who I chose before. I was mostly concerned with finding someone who wasn’t going to steal from me, or exploit my generosity. But it says here you’ve actually worked for a number of nonprofits.

Assistant Candidate: I have, yes.

Lottery Winner: What did you do for them?

Assistant Candidate: Well, I’ve done a lot of volunteer work here and there. I sorted thrift store donations, helped build houses, and cleaned up parks. I imagine that’s not what you’re asking about, though. You’re wondering about the administrative side, and I do have a little bit of experience with that. I’m an editor by trade, so I worked in two paid positions, editing grant proposals. The key to remember there is that I was an editor; not a writer. A lot of letters came across my desk, but I never had to be the one to write one from scratch, and I haven’t done anything else in administration.

Lottery Winner: I think that would be okay. I’m not looking for the best. I’m looking for someone flexible, who is willing to accept my mistakes, as well as their own, and try to get better.

Assistant Candidate: I can be flexible. I think I would be very happy in a job where I help you figure things out.

Lottery Winner: That would be amazing.

Assistant Candidate: I would have one suggestion, though.

Lottery Winner: You have a charity in mind?

Assistant Candidate: Oh no, nothing like that. If you don’t have any experience, and you’re going to hire me—who also isn’t all that experienced—then you might want to think about hiring some kind of lawyer next. That’s the trickiest thing when it comes to this. You hear a lot about white collar criminals who steal from their unsuspecting clients, but I bet there are some who just didn’t realize they were doing something illegal. Compliance is boring, but it’s important.

Lottery Winner: Yeah, that’s a good point. I could easily fall into that category. Why don’t you come in tomorrow? We’ll discuss how to find a lawyer for such a thing, as well as other things, like your salary.

Assistant Candidate: Cool, thanks.

Lottery Winner: Thank you.

Microstory 1030: Herman

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You can call me H.R. Mann. It’s my pseudonym, but I like when people call me that in real life. I write mostly horror stories, but I’ve been known to dabble in some fantasy, kind of like the reverse of George R.R. Martin. I hate other people reading my stuff. In my eyes, my work is never really done. I wrote an entire book five years ago, but I keep just looking back at it, and changing things. A lot of my stories are connected, so I’m kind of working on them all at the same time, and I worry that if I try to publish something, it will prevent me from making a creative decision that would contradict some irreversible decision. It was Viola who suggested I try to write a standalone novel. It would take place in its own universe, and be completely separate from all my other stories. Then I could try to publish that, and maybe get my name out there. Well, I spent the entirety of our junior year working on it, and gave it to her to look over. I had no expectations of her, but I did expect that she would read it over, and give me a few notes. I didn’t think she would pull out the red pen, and edit the whole thing for me. I don’t mean she just proofread it. She edited for content, suggesting thematic and semantic changes that made the overall book far better. There were some parallels, and narrative symmetries that she saw that I would have never thought of on my own. I implemented nearly all of her suggestions, which helped make me think of a few extra, but I wasn’t able to give her the next draft before she died. Not that it would have been her responsibility to look over it yet again. I’m really just saying this to illustrate how important a person she was to everyone in our class, the school, and the world. She would do just about anything for just about anyone. She was an angel. We’ll miss you, Viola Woods.

Microstory 1009: Ira

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No, Bertha didn’t say that, did she? What a jackass. I’m glad she finally recognizes how terrible she is with people, but she’s living in a nightmare world if she thinks I am too. It’s true, I read and watch a lot of science fiction, but I’m smart enough to know the difference between a character, and a real person. Fiction is a great resource for understanding how other people work. Simply seeing that it’s possible for a separate individual to have a different perspective than one’s own can be enough to fuel your empathy for others. Writers take a lot of liberties when it comes to characterization, but just because the character is made up, doesn’t mean we can learn nothing from their experiences. Each character is created by a writer, and at the very least, that writer is drawing upon their own lives, and those of the people they know. So, let’s just assume every character a given writer comes up with is essentially the same person, because that writer somehow managed to become successful enough to get their work out there without anyone noticing how one-dimensional their stuff was. There are still thousands upon thousands of other characters in the world, created by different writers. Compound that with the fact that most that are created by the same artist are going to have different perspectives. Now compound it with the number of people who contribute to that characterization: writing partners, producers, actors, editors, etc. A lot goes into making a piece of performance art, or a written work. There’s a lot more collaboration for the former, but that doesn’t mean the latter type doesn’t hold its own lessons. Plus, any given story is going to be interpreted differently by each audience member, and now with the internet, it’s not only easy to share these thoughts with others, but helpful. I’m doing just fine in this world. I have lots of friends, and though I probably couldn’t have counted Viola as one of them, I’ve still been impacted by her death. Sometimes I use nomenclature that makes it sounds like I see the people around me as characters, but that’s but an extension of my love for art, and does not reflect an indifference to them. Like I was saying, I didn’t know her well, but I did know a lot about her. Socially, she was a lovely person, who was nice to most people. If she didn’t like you, she surely had good reasons, and that should give others pause when considering their own feelings towards you. She loved people, and always seemed to try to give them the benefit of the doubt. She was a lot like me in that way. I try not to judge people until I know more about them. I’ve known Bertha most of my life, which is why I can tell you with absolute certainty that she has a lot of growing up to do. I know I talked a lot more about myself than Viola, but I hope it helps. I’m looking forward to reading your story.

Microstory 300: Stepwisdom (Introduction)

Click here for a list of every step.

Welp, here’s the deal. As I was nearing my one hundredth microstory, I started thinking about how much staying power these things have. How easy would it be for me to come up with an original story day after day after day? I realized that I had about a hundred characters already lined up in my Anomalies story since I’ve been working on it since 2007, so why don’t I just spend a hundred weekdays on that? That came with its own problems. I did already have an idea of who these people were, but at the same time, I had to worry about stepping on my own toes, and creating a need for retconning later on, because I intend to release their story in longer format, at some point (::cough::TV series::cough::). But what was annoying is that there are around 260 weekdays a year, and I had only started to do this thing in March, and so I had a couple dozen slots left over for December. For the website, that’s whatever, but when I publish these in book form, I want to keep them in neat, yearly volumes. That meant I couldn’t do something special for 200-299. So I came up with Perspectives to fill in the gap through 299, and here we are. This paragraph has 300 words exactly, and each subsequent installment will have a word count of one more each time. You’ll start seeing more connections as we go. I’m writing this one even before starting my first Perspective, and wanted to get even further ahead, but that didn’t work out. I’m still trying to figure out how to accomplish this through revising, snipping, adding, and whatnot. Fortunately, I’ve discovered a live word count add-on so that I don’t have to keep track as I

Atmosphere

Microstory 273: Perspective Forty-Eight

Click here for a list of every perspective.

Perspective Forty-Seven

I’m very suspicious of my brother and this new job that he has. He has been working to be a writer for pretty much his whole life. He doesn’t read as much you think a guy like that would. He claims to gather most of his inspiration from television and movies. I just think he’s lazy. He’s had a number of random jobs here and there throughout the years. My God, one time he was a welder. But he’s always thinking that he’s on his way to publishing the next great American novel. He never gave us any indication that he was interested in a career. Then all of the sudden he’s working for one of the largest technology companies in the world. He says that he’s a literary editor for the material they print and post online, but he talks about it with this weird level of deception. It’s like he’s trying to keep something about his job from us. He does say that the company holds contracts with the defense department, which is true, but I still think he should be able to say something about his work. Maybe this is just me being me. We’ve always had a rivalry between each other; one that I clearly take more seriously than he does. I’m younger than him, but I started writing stories much earlier, and so I kind of felt like he was stealing my thunder. Our parents didn’t give him more attention, of course, but that’s because they don’t really care. It just seemed to me like he only got into it because I was doing it, and because he’s not good at anything else. My fiancée says that I need to focus on myself. I’m the one who actually has stuff published. Sure, they’re self-published, and they’re not exactly selling like hotcakes, but I make enough money to only have to work part time. I’m going to have to start working harder, and taking on more hours, though. We’re trying to have a baby. She’s been supporting our relationship for years now, and it’s time I feel like I’m actually contributing. And it’s also time I stop worrying so much about my brother’s business.

Perspective Forty-Nine