Microstory 1338: Social Distance Learning

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Data Gatherer: We tried to ask a bunch of random people on the street whether they were more concerned with the virus, or how the elections were going to be handled this term, and the responses...were hard to find. The few people we found walking the mostly empty streets were wearing masks and/or trying to keep their distances from us, and the few responses we did receive were too depressing for our show. At least, that’s what I believed. I instead decided to go back home and video chat with everyone I knew, to ask them some lighthearted questions about their experiences with social distancing. In particular, I was looking for funny stories. Not everything I heard was as lighthearted as I had hoped. My boss has allowed me to upload this last video, but I have been let go. The first person I called was my college roommate. We’ve not spoken in seven years. I think he forgot who I was.

College Friend: Nah, man. I didn’t forget you. I just wasn’t expecting your call. So yeah, social distancing has been fine. I was kind of built for this. I’m a web developer, so I never saw the point in going into the office anyway. They eventually gave my desk to an intern to use while I wasn’t around, so this was just kind of an obvious next step. I don’t really have any funny stories to tell. I have let myself go, so I look more ape than man, but my life hasn’t changed too terribly much. I don’t have kids, or any other responsibilities.

Ex-Girlfriend: I have a ton of responsibilities. This has turned my life into chaos. I get my hair done on Mondays, my nails done on Tuesdays. Wednesdays are for massages. Thursdays are all about me, staying at home, reflecting, so Thursdays are fine. Fridays, I always used to go out to bars or clubs, but nothing’s open anymore. I don’t really see the point in all of this. I’m young, I’ve never been sick a day in my life. I should be able to go out and have fun.

Former Co-worker: Oh, it’s been a lot of fun. Not only am I stuck at home all day, but so are my kids. My. Six. Kids. Well, two of them are my nieces, because my sister and her wife are both doctors. And one of them is an adult who’s been helping out, but it’s still been really stressful for us. They are a joy, make no mistake, but we’re running out of fresh entertainment. Our youngest wants to watch the same episode of a kid’s show over and over again, so if you’re looking for something funny, that’s your story. It’s not funny haha, though. It’s more funny oh God, get me out of here, I’m going crazy.

Brother: The crazy thing is that I’ve been preparing for this my whole adult life. You all called me insane for hoarding those cans of food, and keeping hand sanitizer with me at all times, but who’s laughing now? Who has all the toilet paper, and masks? Me, I do. Well, I don’t have the masks anymore, because my reusable pack finally arrived, so I was able to donate my disposables to a hospital. Yeah, that’s right; not all preppers are selfish jerks. The shows you watch are all about the ones buying guns and bunkers, but most of us were never excited about the end of the world. We still want to stop it, and I’m doing what I can from my end.

Neighbor: The world is not going to end. Everyone is blowing this whole thing out of proportion. Tens of thousands of people die from the flu each year. Now, I’m not saying that’s a good thing, but it is normal. It’s nature’s way of keeping the population down—I really believe that. Old people are supposed to die. Nobody tried to stop it before, so why are we all freaking out now? As the saying goes, this too shall pass.

Social Media Acquaintance: My father passed from this yesterday. No, it’s okay, I want to say this. He was old, and he was on his way out. I don’t know if what he went through with the virus was better or worse than what he was dealing with before. I don’t know whether he would have preferred to stay alive for longer, or end it faster. He stopped being able to talk, so I’ll never know what he was thinking about in the end. Everyone at the hospital was really great. I felt very comfortable leaving him there, and not being able to see him, because I knew he was getting the best care possible. Things are getting bad, though. They’re starting to make triage decisions. Triage, Data Gatherer. That’s not the kind of thing you normally have to do in a hospital setting. Anyone who doesn’t believe this virus is a big deal should be placed in formal quarantine, and left there, even when this is over, because people like that are a danger to society under all circumstances. Though, I guess my anger at them goes against the spirit of what we’re trying to get back here.

Data Gatherer: These were some of the less dispiriting stories, if you can believe it. People need streamed entertainment right now, so maybe it’s a good thing I’ve lost my job. It will give me time to focus on my personal channel. I don’t have a funny story either. Stay safe; stay inside.

Microstory 982: Antiseptic

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Most people think I’m a germophobe, because I carry a bottle of hand sanitizer on my belt loop. I haven’t always been this way. In some ways, I’ve gotten worse, but from my side, I’ve gotten better. I’m a firm believer in letting kids go outside and get dirty, so they can boost their immune system naturally. I watched the first episode of an old scifi series called Earth 2. One of the plot points was that, in the future, children born in pristine environments easily contract diseases because their bodies don’t know how to handle the invaders. Now me, I used to get sick all the time, and I think if a pandemic spread through the world, I have a pretty good chance of being completely immune to it. I was 24 years old before I started carrying hand sanitizer around, and not too terribly much younger when I finally discovered it existed in the first place. The truth is that I’m not actually scared of getting sick. Like I said, it used to happen to me all the time, and I always got through it. I’ve known elderly people who spent all their lives in perfect health. You would think that would be the best way to live, but until such time that we conquer all diseases, no one escapes death. Everyone who doesn’t die from some external trauma, like a vehicular collision, or a bullet, dies from an illness. It’s impossible to die from old age itself; something always comes for you, and if you’ve never experienced anything like it before, it’s probably going to be a lot harder for you to cope. I’m not worried about some deadly pathogen, because I understand what’s happening there. I know how to seek treatment, and I would be able to wrap my head around the concept of hopelessness, if I were to be told that there’s nothing the medical professionals can do. No, I carry hand sanitizer around with me because I have trouble with cross contamination, because when I’m clean, I want to stay that way. And if I go around touching dirty things with my hands, I can’t then go around touching clean things, because then those things are also dirty. This has just reminded me that I’ve already been over this, so I’ll move back to what this entry is really meant to be about. Donnie Darko once pointed out that the greatest invention in history was soap. Antiseptic is still considered one of the most important ways of preventing the spread of disease. As with many rampant pathogens, scientists still can’t be sure exactly how the Spanish Flu began, but we know why it got so bad. I use this as an example, because I’m preparing to explore this time period in a story. One thing we do know about it is that its spread could have been halted with a little more soap. If you’re reading this, you’re probably lucky enough to live in a region with unimpeded access to antiseptic, but not everyone lives like this. So just don’t forget to be grateful for that.

Microstory 921: Hand Sanitizer

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I discussed hand sanitizer in the Stepwisdom entry about Cleanliness in general; wherein I recount my first experience with the stuff as being God-adjacent. For someone like me, cleanliness is extremely important. I’m not a germaphobe, mind you. I get sick all the time, and it has been this way my whole life. I’m not afraid of being infected by something, and I’m about 83% that, if the zombie virus ever plagued this world, I would be immune to it. What I have a problem with is cross-contamination. My OCD is what gives me the need to control the nature of my environment, but it’s my autism that dictates what how that environment should ideally be. There’s this trope you can find on the web called Blessed With Suck. Basically, a character will be burdened with some supernatural ability that is mundane, pointless, or downright inconvenient. There are a lot of superpowers that I occasionally believe myself to possess, like being able to see the future, or sensing other people’s emotions. The one power that I actually do have, all the time, is the ability to feel the ick around me. If you were to clean a table thoroughly, I would be able to touch that table, and tell that it’s happened. No big deal, right? Anyone can intuit the cleanliness of an object. Now imagine you ran your palm along the tabletop. Your hand isn’t particularly dirty; you weren’t picking your nose, or chalking up to climb a mountain. It was just your hand. Well, I can tell that too. I won’t know exactly what happened, but I’ll be able to tell that something contaminated that surface, and it’ll bother me. I once worked with this girl in a room where all the tables were pushed together, and we sat around it. She would put her feet up on her section, and—I dunno, doodle “Mrs. Donald Trump” in a notebook, I guess. When it was lunch time, she would go grab her food, and place her fork on that table...right where her shoes were. Then she would use that fork to pick up food, and put it all in her mouth. She was putting dirt in her mouth, along with animal feces, and God knows what else she’d walked through. Because she was a crazy person. People think I’m weird for walking around with hand sanitizer, but it makes me feel safe, and it makes it a lot more difficult for me to put poop in my mouth. Can you honestly say the same?

Microstory 822: The Room

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I’ve been in this room for years now. At least that’s what I assume. I’ve never seen the sun, so keep tracking of time is pretty difficult. I’m not sure where this light is coming from, but it’s always at the same dimness, so I’ve had to get used to sleeping with it. That wasn’t the hardest part, though, because I don’t have a blanket or pillow either. There’s a hole in the corner that no one told me was a toilet, but I’ve been using it as such for years now, and have experienced no consequences for it. Once a day, when I wake from sleep, there’s a crate of new supplies. Gruel, water, vitamins, my daily allotment of toilet paper, and hand sanitizer, if I’ve run out. At least they don’t want me getting some disease from a lack of hygiene. Still, I wouldn’t say no to a shower, or even a bath. I’ve tried staying awake long enough to see where each new crate comes from, but like children and Santa Claus, if I’m not asleep, I get nothing. There’s also no door, and no seams on the walls to hide one. I think they knocked me out...built it around me. All I do, day in, day out, is eat, make waste, and sleep. I have nothing to watch, nothing to read, nothing to draw with. No playing cards, no pull-up bar, no life. I just here and wait. I don’t know how I got here, but the most important question is why I’m here. I have no real memories of before the room. I know I’ve ridden in cars, trains, and airplanes. I know I’ve had real food, and read books, and met other people like me. I have fragments of these experiences, but couldn’t actually describe them to you. Perhaps it’s all just my semantic memory disguising itself as episodic memory. Then again, the fact that I know what the difference between those kinds of memories is must say something about what kind of life I led before the room.

One day, I wake up and there is not crate of supplies. Oh well, I still have enough hand sanitizer, and I always save a little bit of toilet paper, just in case something like this happens. I’m grateful for my forethought now. I see something weird out of the corner of my eye, but the room has never changed before, so I must be imagining it. I just turn back around and stare at the corner for the next several hours. I fall asleep at some point, and wake up the next day to find myself crateless yet again. That thing is still there, though; that thing I barely recognize, that was never there before, and I guess isn’t an hallucination. I start staring at it and realize I know exactly what it is: a door. Doors are meant to get in and out of places. Like with everything else, I recall having many times opened and closed doors, but I can’t point to a specific instance of it. I crawl over toward the new door, which is my only mode of transportation. Since they give me, maybe 800 calories a day, I can’t exactly sprint over there. I reach for the handle, knowing for sure that it’ll be locked, but before my fingers can touch it, it disappears, and reappears behind me. Maybe I am hallucinating, because I have no vague memories of doors that can move around on their own. I hoof it over to its new location, and try to open it once more, but it moves again. While it’s at its new place, I don’t touch it at all, but inspect it closely. I see nothing between the door itself, and the frame that surrounds it. I think it’s unlocked, but I still need to figure out how to keep it from jumping away from me. This goes on for three days, at which point one glass of water begins appearing every time I wake up for the day. It’s three more weeks before my food also returns, and the door disappears completely. What I imagine is another three years, the cycle starts over. And this pattern continues for decades, until my body can take it no longer, and I’m lying on my back, near death. It is only then that the door finally opens. A man walks in and kneels over me. “Now you know what it feels like,” he says. And then it’s all over.

Microstory 312: Cleanliness

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Intuition

Unlike other stories I’ve written for the Stepwisdom series, for this one, I’m going to be a little bit more personal. I have something called Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. This gives me a lot of ticks and unnatural habits, but it also demands I be excessively clean. I’m constantly worried about cross-contamination. I don’t like touching something I deem unclean, and then touching something that is clean, because then I have just polluted it. I remember the day I first learned about hand sanitizer; it was as if God reached down and gave me a little kiss. Unfortunately, this discovery also enhanced my need to be clean, because suddenly, it could be achieved instantly, and at pretty much any time. I keep a small bottle of it attached to my hip, and this tends to freak people out, so I just have to ignore their judgments. I grew up in a clean household, though, so I always understood it. We don’t wear our shoes in the house, and we shower before bed, because if you shower in the mornings, then your whole house is perpetually dirty, and how the hell do you not even realize this? I know I have a condition, but come on, you sleep in dirt? That doesn’t bother you? Cleanliness is an indicator of a developed society, one that not every culture has the luxury of. Uncleanliness leads to poor hygiene, and thus disease, but to a certain degree, it can also lead to immunity. It is said that “you have to eat a peck of dirt before you die”. This is true figuratively, but also literally. I always knew that exposure to dirt was important so that my immune system would know how to fight off disease, so I make a point sullying my hands on certain occasions. Always keep your children clean, but let them get dirty first.

Vitamins, Minerals, and Proteins

Microstory 62: Kerguelen

The Kerguelen Islands are an island chain located in the southern Indian Ocean. They are considered to be one of the most isolated places in the world. Despite sometimes being referred to as “Desolation Islands” there is no lack of plants and animals. One such of these animals has managed to remain outside of catalogs and most other records. The Great Kerguelen Coleobeast is a majestic creature, twice as massive as an elephant, that resembles an anglerfish that has formed hind legs in the back and these sort of fin things in the front. There is only one Coleobeast in the world. It is functionally immortal, capable of a process called transdifferentiation, much like a certain type of jellyfish. If the Coleobeast feels threatened, or becomes sick, it will revert itself to the pupal stage of development. The most interesting aspect of this animal is its mucus, which contains natural antibacterial properties. The animal was discovered in 1772, but went into hiding shortly thereafter. It wasn’t until the mid-20th century that its mucus was extracted and repurposed as your average, everyday hand sanitizer.