Microstory 1321: Insanity

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Sane Defendant: So, how does this work? Do you expect me to tear off my clothes, and smear feces on the wall, or is it one of those things where you just sign the papers, and move on?

Court Appointed Psychologist: Do you feel compelled to remove your clothing, or smear feces on the wall?

Sane Defendant: Not really.

Psychologist: Then all we need to do is talk.

Sane Defendant: What are the parameters? What are you looking for in my responses?

Psychologist: Determining whether a defendant can reasonably plea insanity is an extremely complex and nuanced process. I wouldn’t be able to explain how it works even if I wanted to. I can’t tell you anything, because then you could simply tell me what you think I expect to hear. It would taint the results, and I’m starting to get the impression that that’s exactly what you’re trying to do.

Sane Defendant: No, that’s not true. I’m crazy; everybody says so.

Psychologist: Everybody, like who?

Sane Defendant: Are you going to run a background check on me; consult with character witnesses, and corroborate my claims?

Psychologist: If we were to do that, what would be the results? Would they verify what you say about yourself?

Sane Defendant: Let’s move on. I suppose it all started with my parents. My uncle used to put out his cigarettes on my arm. That’s when I started developing a fascination with causing other people harm. I pushed down those urges, but I couldn’t contain them anymore, and I just went berserk.

Psychologist: Hmm. I have the crime scene investigation report right here, and it says the crime must have been planned out meticulously. Evidence was difficult to come by. Besides the blood, the scene was immaculate, as if having been scrubbed down after the murder.

Sane Defendant: [...] Well, yes, of course. I mean, that’s the work of the elven fairies.

Psychologist: Elven fairies?

Sane Defendant: Yeah, you haven’t heard of them. They usually live in..filing cabinets, but they’re attracted to murderers. They follow them around until they kill, and then the elven fairies clean up afterwards.

Psychologist: I saw your eyes dart over to my filing cabinet when you said that, and I’m sorry, is your defense that you are experiencing a delusion where mythical creatures help you carry out crimes, or is your defense that you experienced a drop in impulse control, which caused you to murder that couple?

Sane Defendant: Um. Yes. All of those things. I was impulsive, and the fairy elves helped me, because fairy elves are real. I can prove it. They’re sending secret messages through, uh...postal stamps.

Psychologist: All they elven fairies, or fairy elves?

Sane Defendant: See? I can’t even keep it straight, I’m so crazy.

Psychologist: We don’t like to use that term.

Sane Defendant: See, I’m so mentally unstable that I don’t even know not to use the word crazy.

Psychologist: I think we both know that you were in your right mind when you committed the double murder, that you have no delusions about mythological beings, and that you are only here to receive a more lenient sentence.

Sane Defendant: Well, doesn’t that speak to my mental capacity? Would a healthy individual make such an attempt? Doesn’t it mean that there actually truly is indeed something wrong with me? Sounds like a paradox.

Psychologist: Sounds like I have everything I need to complete my evaluation. Guard? You can come back in now!

Sane Defendant: Wait, no. Isn’t murder alone a good enough reason to diagnose someone with a mental illness? Are any murderers not insane? I would argue murderousness should be in the DSM-6.

Psychologist: Goodbye.

Sane Defendant: No, wait. I am crazy. Loco, cholo. Get your hands off me. I didn’t do it! What if I took back my plea. The fairies told me to! You hear me, the fairies...!

Microstory 886: Fish Out of Water

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I’ve always been fascinated with the past. History was, by far, my favorite subject in school, and I never really liked learning about anything else, except in the context of history. I even taught myself Old English, just for the hell of it. I guess someone upstairs was paying attention, because I woke up one morning on the ground, and it was the middle ages. At first, I thought I was the victim of a practical joke. I couldn’t have known right away that I had traveled through time. I thought I was just left in the middle of the woods. Then I thought maybe I was at some weird renaissance faire without the Renaissance. I eventually realized that this had to be the past, because the kind of architectural structures I was seeing just didn’t exist anymore in my time, and to recreate them would have been prohibitively expensive. The more I walked around, the more I could remember about where I was the last time I was in my own time period. I wasn’t asleep at all, but walking back from the store. This left me with a few provisions, including some healthy snacks, and a vitamin-enhanced flavored water that I drink, because I don’t like regular water, and I don’t drink high fructose corn syrup any more. I would have expected people to look at me funny, because of my modern backpack, and strange garb. They didn’t care, though, because their lives were total crap, and they didn’t have the energy to worry about anyone else. They just kept going with their chores as I passed by, looking for shelter. I found an inn that gave me a room for a few nights in exchange for a box of gluten-free cookies.

After about a day there, I realized that as much as I enjoyed studying the past, I didn’t really like actually being there. Like I said, these people’s lives sucked. Even though they had never heard of video games, or good hygiene, they could recognize that they lacked basic comforts, and of course, this feeling was more acute in me. I went back to the place I woke up, hoping to find a magic coin, or a rift through time and space, or a wizard, but there was nothing. If there was a way back home, I had little hope of finding it. I was thirsty on my way back to the village, so I started drinking the second to last bottle of my flavored water. The first person to really speak to me was a woman who happened to be hunting for truffles. She immediately saw how odd my plastic bottle was, and wanted to know everything about it. I told her that I came from a land of magic and fairies, who had exiled me for being too tall. It was a dumb lie, but people these days are easy to trick. I could be a god in this world, like the wizard of Oz, if I wanted to. Anyway, she asked to have my last bottle, and I gave it to her. It wasn’t like I would be able to go get any more, so I might as well just end it now forever. A couple weeks later, I was completely out of the food I brought back from the future, which meant I could no longer keep my room. I packed up and left to look for work that was reported to be abundant out East. As I was walking back through the woods, the woman I gave my water to walked up to me, like she had been waiting for me to return. She handed me a jug with a wide smile, and asked me to drink. I was surprised to find that it tasted just like my water. She told me she had studied my bottle, and reverse engineered it. She said if I stayed with her, I could have as much as I wanted, whenever I wanted. I asked her how she did that, and how she knew the term reverse engineering. She smiled again. “I’m from the year 1954, and I’ve also been working on a way to get back.”

Microstory 584: Fairies Leave the Planet

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Around the same time that a group of scientists and SDS detectives were accidentally discovering the inner workings of faster-than-light travel, a transhumanistic woman named Morgan LeFay founded an organization. Archaeologists and evolutionary biologists have long known that the proof of evolution lies in the simple fact that humans are about two feet taller on average than our ancestors two million years ago. There are many advantages to an increase in height. Larger animals can often run faster (to an extent), reach to high-hanging fruit, and combat predators better. They also tend to live longer, while tiny species, like insects, burn bright and die young. Of course, in recent times, our evolution in this manner has had less to do with mutations and survival advantages, and more to do with sexual selection. That is, many humans seem to have decided they prefer taller partners, leaving our shorter brethren single, and unable to pass on their genes. The Fairy Institute, based in Wales, chose to focus their posthuman efforts in a very specific field. They have been looking for ways to make humans extremely tiny; about the size of a standard human’s hand. Why would they do this? Well, as stated above, their efforts began before the discovery of plex dimensional travel, and the fairies were interested in exploring the universe.

There are many advantages to a being tiny when attempting to cross the solar barrier, the most important being that a tiny human would take up very little space, and require fewer resources. A larger ship would require more fuel, most of it being allocated to propelling hunks of material, rather than just the passengers that matter. Though plex travel would theoretically render all this discussion meaningless, the Fairy Institute remained steadfast in their belief. In fact, LeFay is quoted as saying, “the need for this technology is more important than it ever has been. We have an opportunity here, and I won’t pass it up. I am not satisfied with just going to the next galaxy over.” The fairies continued their work, perfecting consciousness transference, while designing the perfect new bodies. They did this in secret, revealing only vague and general information to the public. Earlier today, they held a press conference in the countryside to announce their new developments, but Morgan LeFay never came on stage. Nor did anyone else. Journalists sat in their seats, waiting patiently for the conference to begin. Suddenly the curtain fell, as if broken. It revealed a metallic object, about the size of an average land vehicle, not large enough for more than just a handful of people. It was shaped like a kidney bean, and smooth, with no evidence of any seams. It was presumably entered and exited via astral tunneling. After a few more moments of suspension, the beanship disappeared in astral blue. Space agencies around the world would later confirm that it exited the blue dimension halfway between the planet and our moon, then entered the orange plex, never to be seen or heard from again. Meanwhile, journalists remained in their seats, unsure whether anything else was going to happen. A projector rose from the stage and turned itself on. A recording of Morgan LeFay’s final message to humanity began playing:

Children of C, we thank you for your hospitality. You have given us shelter, technology, and inspiration. We will never forget you, but you will never see us again. We believe that we are seeking the answer to the most important question in the universe, which is, what even is the universe? We are ultimately sending our vessel to the highest dimension possible; one that no one in the world has so much as imagined before. This will allow us to travel to the far reaches of the observable universe in a matter of years. However, we are not stopping there. We will keep going, and we will keep going until we’ve reached our final destination. One day, perhaps in thousands of years, we will hopefully land on this rock once more. Like famous explorer Merrianne Derringer, who’s most known for being the first person to circumnavigate the planet, our intention is to circle the cosmos. We are attempting to find out if this universe is flat, or if it is closed. We may never return. We may never find home, nor may we find anything of note out there, but we’re going anyway. Wish us luck. Again, thank you for everything.