Microstory 1830: Extreme to the End

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I am an adventurer. I like going to the most extreme places on Earth, and participating in the most extreme sports. I kayak on rapids, and run marathons, and even learned how to dance fight. That last one wasn’t especially dangerous, but it wasn’t sitting at home on your couch either, let me tell you that. I’ve climbed the highest mountains, and dove the deepest oceans. If I’m not risking my life, I’m not happy. I can’t say how many times I’ve been seconds or centimeters away from death, but I like to tell people that that is my comfort zone. One day, I thought it could eventually get me, but if the story is crazy enough, my legacy will live on without me. Until then, living on the edge makes me feel alive, and I wouldn’t give it up for anything. That’s why I’m so disappointed in myself right now. I did all these things, and expected to die from something amazing, but that’s not what’s happening. It’s so boring, and pathetic, and embarrassing. I would say I’ll never get over it, but that’s an understatement, because this is it. Someone is going to find me like this, and that will be my entire story. They won’t talk about the time I ran with the bulls, or when I swung over the streets like a certain red and blue costumed hero, from one building to another. That one landed me in jail, and it was my proudest moment. My fan base grew, like, a thousand percent that day. I can’t bear to lose them. I know—again—I’ll be dead anyway, but that shouldn’t mean they all start making fun of me. They should continue to watch my stuff, and talk about me. They should flip off their mothers once she closes the door behind her after scolding them for watching those dumb videos. They should aspire to be me no matter what.

I slipped in the shower, how pitiful is that? I was just trying to step out when I lost my balance, and knocked my head against the porcelain. I don’t mind dying, but not like this, dammit! I struggle to grab my phone from the vanity. It falls right into the toilet. I didn’t bother buying something rugged or waterproof, because I’m not about that virtual life. I live in the moment, in the real world. It’s dead, and I don’t have any other way of reaching out for help, which means the end is near, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. But maybe I can make it a little better. Maybe I can die as I lived, like a freakin’ badass that people look up to. I turn the water back on, and shove the blood down the drain, but it just keeps leaking from my head. But it has to stop at some point, right? No one can know that it started here, or the ruse won’t work. It’s still coming? Seriously!? This isn’t fair! I’ll wrap a towel around it to keep it from dripping on the floors. Must. Get. To. The. Window. This is gonna work. It’s a foolproof plan. They’re gonna find me on the pavement, and they won’t know why I did it, but they’ll call me a hero. Because I am a hero. I crawl across the tiles, onto the hardwood floors of the hallway, and then onto the carpet of the guest bedroom. Some blood does drip from the towel, so I wipe it up with my hand, and keep going. Yeah, I’m not leavin’ a trail. This is definitely gonna work. It’s getting harder to move, but it’s not much farther now. Damn, the window is locked, and I’m getting woozy. I don’t think I can figure out how to open the latch in this state. It’s too complicated. Why do they make windows so complicated? That’s all right. Better even. Going through the glass will just make me look awesomer. I get to my feet, and slam my head against it. It cracks, but doesn’t shatter. I strike it again. It breaks, but not all the way. One more time...and I’m free. Oh, wait, no. I live on the first floor.

Microstory 1460: Nothing Civil About It

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People were not happy with Sekundas Drumpf declaring himself the Republic’s dictator. It didn’t make any sense, and it wasn’t right, and it wasn’t fair. The voters distrusted women as much as he did, but that didn’t mean he had the right to pass whatever laws he wanted, or to punish however he saw fit. People were dying, even though capital punishment remained illegal. They had to get him out of office, and that meant sparking a revolution. This rebellion force had absolutely nothing to do with the Thicket. They didn’t feel that women should be equal, but if the city was going to develop any policies regarding what a woman could and couldn’t do, then it would develop them as a collective, not by a single voice. Unfortunately, unseating Drumpf was not destined to be the easiest thing in the world. He was extremely good to the military. He allowed them to use whatever means they deemed necessary in the fight against terrorism, but also made their jobs as easy as they wanted. He didn’t force them to work, but when they did work, he let them do it however they pleased. He had no interest in commanding the troops, but left that responsibility to the Commons. By the way, Common was the Durune analog for a General, due to some English linguistics becoming lost in translation over time. They loved him, and they would do anything for him, and the only way to stop him was if they switched sides, or if dissidents started an internal conflict. For two years, this so-called civil war raged throughout the city. Soldiers on both sides died, as did innocent bystanders.

The Thicket rebels didn’t know what to do. They could see some great opportunities to make real changes while Aljabara was distracted and in chaos, but they were afraid of making things worse, or stooping to their level, because that was the kind of thing that their enemies would do in their shoes. In the end, they did nothing. They stayed in hiding, and let the Aljabarans work it out themselves, for if they tried to help the dissidents, they would just be painting a larger target on their own backs. No one really won this conflict. Drumpf ultimately stepped down, deciding that he would rather not be in power than see the city fall, and the women rise from its ashes to take their revenge. Before he left office, however, he made one final speech, where he warned the citizens of the last prediction that his hidden seer made for him. He claimed that a great subversive force was on its way, that this force would destroy everything they had been working towards for the last sixty years, and that they would come crawling back to him in the wake of its destruction. He said that he would gladly return to office when that day came, and would not hold these recent events against them. It was the only thing he ever asserted that ultimately proved to apparently be true. Years later, a woman from Earth showed up, and helped take down the established republic. In response to this, Drumpf was indeed returned to leadership, in an albeit different position, with smaller scope. Until that day came, however, the Republic still needed to continue, and someone had to be in charge around here. The dissidents hadn’t really thought about who would do that, or how they would go about finding this man. They decided they needed an emergency election. That actually went pretty well, and marked a turning point in the planet’s history. The thirteenth top leader of the Aljabaran Republic secretly studied under former President Summerfield, which gave him the insight to learn from his mentor’s mistakes. Before the Republic ended, social justice was already leaning in that direction, thanks to Remanoir Eskandar Aljabari’s initiatives.

Microstory 1459: A Continuation

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Starting in the year 2154, the city of Aljabara was gearing up for another election. They expected to elect Sekundas Drumpf for a third term, but there was no guarantee of that, and there were plenty of hopefuls who sought to unseat him. He had no interest in seeing this happen, so he made an argument for cancelling the election altogether. He was already in charge, and things were going great, so why mess with a good thing? According to reports, the war against the Thicket terrorists couldn’t be going any better. The truth was that he had made little to no progress on this front, but the people didn’t need to know that. He inflated numbers, and reframed narratives, and spun the truth, and also just made up flat-out lies. He made himself look like the best thing that had ever happened to this planet. He made it seem like people barely survived before him, and that they wouldn’t survive the future without him. He claimed to have a mage remnant seer in his pocket, who regularly warned him of oncoming events, and that only he knew what to do to protect his constituents. He swayed a lot of people using these tactics, but he couldn’t convince everyone. That was okay, because he didn’t need everyone. He really only needed the military. He had no legal authority to get rid of the election ballots, but get rid of them he did. He declared himself the autonomous authority over the entire planet, and challenged anyone to disagree with him on this matter. There were a few takers, but they were swiftly removed from their mortal coil, and no one dared push him towards the edge again. It didn’t bother him at all that his actions meant that they were no longer living under a republic, but a dictatorship. He wanted more power, and the only way to get it was to hold onto what he already had. Democracy could go take a hike for all he cared. He insisted they continue to call it The Republic, however, to make him look good, and to make the city look good, in case Earth ever found out about them. The history books didn’t even acknowledge a change in governmental type when looking back at this period of time, for all the official documentation suggested that nothing had been altered. The Durune were now living in a totalitarian state, and it didn’t feel like anything could make it the least bit better.

Microstory 1458: New War on Terrorism

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Sekundas Drumpf won reëlection for leader of Aljabara, which was the first time that ever happened on Durus since the Republic was founded. People liked change, and he gave it to them, and five years later, there was no reason to believe he wouldn’t keep changing things. He even promised to undo some of the policies he himself came up with in the first place, as if his past self were less of a man than the version of him in the present. People didn’t see this as contradictory or bizarre. The past was always worse, no matter what, even if this was objectively untrue. He had their confidence, and he had their votes. There was some evidence that the ballots had been tampered with by Drumpf’s loyalists, but no proof, and there was definitely nothing connecting him to this alleged crime. He would later get rid of any semblance of democracy altogether, but for now, he had work to do. He wanted to make this the best planet in the galaxy, and in order to do that, he had to take control over the whole planet. The first change he made was to his own administration. They were no longer going to call this the government of Aljabara, but of Durus, so that if they did one day expand beyond this one city, they would have control over everything. It wasn’t just about the future, though. It also made it a lot easier for him to go after what he considered to be man’s greatest enemy. Now that younger generations of girls would be indoctrinated into the belief that they could do nothing on their own, it was time to deal with The Thicket. These women could never change—never be taught. He figured they needed to die, like a household pest. He and his closest allies desperately wanted to go to war, and to leave no prisoners, but it wasn’t going to be easy. Surprisingly few were in favor of violence against women, or anyone. There was only one way to change their minds, and that was to reframe the narrative. The Thicket was already labeled an insurgent organization, but had yet to be fully recognized as a terrorist group. Making this change required diplomatic addendums, but starting there would have been a waste of time. He needed to make sure the public was on his side first, so he just started slipping the word into his speeches, increasing frequency each time, and boosting applause every moment he could. Once the civilians were convinced that the rebels were terrorists, it was easy to get it changed in the official documentation. That in turn made it easier to get the necessary support to start physical attacks. Until then, they had been trying to protect the city’s borders, but had yet to go on the offensive in any significant way. It took Drumpf several months, but he finally got approval. Then it took even longer for his army to find their opponents, who had grown used to hiding deep in the thicket. The War on Terrorism began in 2151, and never really technically ended, even when Hokusai Gimura showed up, and forced huge changes to the government. They never reached a peace treaty, or a ceasefire, or anything. They just kept fighting when they could, and taking strategic breaks when the intelligence dried up. A lot of other things happened in the meantime.

Microstory 1457: Extremist in Command

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Sekundas Poppet Drumpf was, in no uncertain terms, an extremist. A lot of people were happy with their little misogynistic society, because they didn’t know of a better way, but he was into it. He was super into it. He hated women, and thought that they were only good for making babies. There were many tasks that men didn’t want to have to do, like laundry, and keeping the household clean, but Poppet wasn’t like that. Men did everything better, and he was willing to do the dirty work if it meant a woman wasn’t involved. If he had it his way, every woman would be locked in a little room with the bare minimum: a bed, sink, shower, and toilet. They would gestate the babies, birth them, and then go back to their bed to start the whole process over again. There weren’t a whole lot of people on Durus who agreed with him to this degree. Sure, women couldn’t be trusted, but they shouldn’t be locked up, and not because that was inhumane, but because at the very least, they were useful as slaves. Still, he was popular, because just like President Summerfield’s lies, he was loud and unrelenting, and people absolutely loved that in a leader. The only reason Summerfield allowed him to run for the second-in-command position was because the insanity would hopefully distract from Summerfield’s attempts at pushing the world towards progress. When he was removed from office, his whole plan backfired, for once Poppet found himself in the number one spot, there was no stopping him. He decided to not take the position of President. Earth had a lot of presidents, and they also had a lot of women in power. He didn’t want any part of that, so he decided to keep his old title, even though it obviously indicated he was meant to be second, and not first. He then proceeded to win the election four years later, and became the only two-term primary leader the Republic had ever seen. He wouldn’t stop there, but that is a story for another day. Until then, he wanted to make some changes in Aljabara, whether the people wanted him to or not.

The biggest changes he made were to the education system. He decided that women weren’t the issue, but the way they were raised as girls. They weren’t taught to be independent, but they weren’t taught to be submissive either. He deemed this too problematic. He knew no one would go for his crazy locked half-room idea, but education was the easiest avenue towards getting close to his goals. People cared deeply about education, but they also easily conceded to the fact that they didn’t know what the hell to do with it. If someone in power told them schools should be run a certain way, well, then they just sort of trusted that, as long as that person said other things that they liked. So he knew he would be able to get away with preventing girls from being educated the right way. He didn’t stop them from learning at all, but he only let them learn the things he felt weren’t important, or useful. Language was an acceptable subject, because it was irrelevant to their everyday lives. Understanding grammar wasn’t going to help them rise up, and demand equality. Maybe they could conduct impactful speeches, but without any understanding of politics, their words would be empty, and people would recognize that. Likewise, they could make all the art and music they wanted, but it wasn’t going to make them any less inferior to men. Education wasn’t the only thing that Drumpf went after in his first few years, but it was the most significant. He did all these terrible things, and he still got reëlected. He was unstoppable.