Microstory 2312: A Great Audience

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Hello, it’s Kelly again. Welcome to the last post ever. I hope that it lives up to your expectations, but there’s only so much I can do. Nick was a very important part of a lot of people’s lives, including my own, but I recognize that others have their own personal experiences. That was kind of the original idea behind the Forum Memorial, but I suppose that the comment section serves that purpose too. Beyond that, I wanted to thank Jasmine for taking the time to express her final thoughts before this site comes to a close. It was really nice to hear from her again, wasn’t it, folks? Moving on, I was planning on just sort of shutting myself away from the world after this, but my friends have suggested that I keep things alive in a new way. People have evidently responded well to my contributions, even before Nick went away forever, so I do want to continue in some capacity, but before I get into that, you should know that this blog is still ending. It was never really mine, and I want my own space on the web. Stay subscribed to Nick’s social media accounts, where I’ll let you know how to keep following along, if you want. I think this is the right way to do it. All of you subscribed to hear from him, or at least about him. It wouldn’t be fair for me to sort of usurp this whole audience for my own gain. I should have to start over, and you can choose to follow me on the other side, or not. I won’t blame you if you don’t. I would rather know that everyone is there because they want to be, not because they forgot to fully unsubscribe from this site. So, there it is. It’s over. As they say, it’s been a hell of a ride, so far, but it’s not truly over. This version of Earth kept spinning after Nick and Dutch died, and will continue doing just that even when every single one of us follows in their footsteps. These words, though...the blog updates, the book, the musical; they could live on forever. Alienoid ultrahumans five billion years from now might be enjoying what we’ve created over the last 365 days. That goes for everyone, with your own accounts, storing your own original thoughts. It’s crazy to think about it this way, but it’s comforting too. You can all live forever if you do something with your lives. It doesn’t have to be huge, or mind-blowing. You don’t even have to become famous. You just have to have something to say, and a means of recording it. Thank you again for being here, and participating in the global discourse. I wouldn’t call us boring at all, and I think Nick would have changed his mind about that by now. Signing off for the last time here. I’ve been Kelly Serna...and you’ve been a great audience.

Microstory 2311: Nice to Be Back

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Hello readers, this is Jasmine again. I asked Nick if I could write another guest post for his blog. This was obviously before he died, and it never ended up happening. I was having tea with Kelly this weekend, though, and mentioned it, so she asked me to finally follow through with it. I was gonna say a whole bunch of stuff back then that’s no longer relevant nor appropriate, but it’s nice to be back here. This website feels like home. When I was his assistant, I helped a lot with managing it, and making it look better than it did before. I rearranged some of the auxiliary elements, and reformatted some old posts. He had to use a number of different word processors over time when his life was all about staying in motion, so things were just a little messy in the beginning, but he had always wanted everything to be more consistent. Anyway, I’m still working at the jail, and things are going very well. He did a great job formulating this team, so if anyone asks whether he made a positive impact on the world, there can be no doubt. I’ve run into a surprising number of people who assumed the whole project fell apart when he was forced to leave, but that’s not how he set it up. Nothing was ever balanced on the shoulders of one person, not even him. We’re still working our butts off. We hope to see real changes in the system by the end of next year. For those of you who watched the memorials, I was present at both. I even spoke at both, so now you know what I look and sound like. It was my honor to relate my experiences with such a great friend. I’ll never forget what it was like to meet him and know him. I appreciate that he’s being kept alive, not only through the work he did, but through this site, and all of his friends, followers, and fans. It’s sad, but it’s sweet too. I’ll miss him, but at least I knew him at all. Thanks.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 292,398 Part 2

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Leona admires the stars for the next few seconds before shaking it off, and getting back to business. They could be in a lot of danger here. The Bridgette was designed to survive the vacuum of space, but that has yet to be properly tested. It was something that Ramses was meaning to do, but it would have required wearing a spacesuit as backup, and it was this whole thing. “Constance, report!”

“All systems nominal,” the AI replies.

“All systems, really?”

Constance takes a moment. “Really.”

“Thank you. Where are we?”

“Unknown. Unable to calculate.”

“I see a planet.” Marie points out the viewport. “It looks nothing like Earth.”

Leona sticks her face up against the glass. “That could still be Earth. Billions of years ago, it didn’t have water yet. Constance, please locate any and all satellites orbiting the celestial body along with us.”

“Four objects of significant mass are currently orbiting the planet below,” Constance responds.

“So, definitely not Earth,” Marie assumes.

“Don’t be so hasty,” Leona tells her. “We don’t know what the solar system was like back then. Let’s try this. Constance, how far are we from the host star?”

“We are currently located one hundred and forty-seven million kilometers from the host star.”

“Hmm...can you be more exact?” Leona requests.

“One hundred and forty-seven million, two hundred and sixteen thousand, one hundred and twenty kilometers.”

Leona turns away, and starts talking mainly to herself. “The Earth was never that close. I mean, not once it was formed, and that world down there is fully formed. Wait, what’s the diameter of this planet?”

“Six thousand, one hundred and eight kilometers.”

“Similar to the size of Mars,” Leona notes, still to herself.

“So, it’s Mars,” Marie thinks.

Leona’s eyes widen. “Constance, find the other nearest massive celestial body.”

“Another object is orbiting the host star at about the same distance as us, in the path of our object’s orbit.”

“Holy shit.”

“What is it? Is it Mars? That doesn’t sound like Mars.”

“It’s Theia.”

“Theia Stendhal?”

Leona shakes her head. “That’s Téa. Theia is a planet.”

“I don’t remember learning that in school.”

“It doesn’t exist anymore. I mean...it won’t.” She points at the viewport, which is showing what the solar system looked like 4.5 billion years ago.

“What happens to it?” Marie questions.

Leona looks her straight in the eye. “It crashes into Earth. It’s what forms the moon. The hypothesis was right.”

“Are we gonna die?” Marie asks.

“No, Marie—” Leona stops herself, and sighs. “Maybe. I don’t know exactly when The Constant was built. It seems unlikely that it would have survived the giant impact, which suggests that it was built sometime after that happened, while the Earth was reforming-slash-recovering.”

“When exactly is the impact gonna happen? Can we wait it out?”

Leona can’t help but laugh. “At the earliest, millions of years.”

“So...no,” Marie jokes. “We have a teleporter, though. Isn’t Earth our best hope?”

“Well, let me do the math. The Bridgette has a teleportation range of about 13,000 kilometers per jump. We can make maybe a dozen jumps before we run out of temporal energy...”

“Is that enough?”

Leona is a bit surprised. “Sorry, I thought that math was easier to figure. We’re around 10,000 jumps too short. We should have brought the AOC.”

“Teleporting to destination,” Constance suddenly announces, completely unprompted.

“What, why?”

They jump before Constance can respond, and find themselves floating in the middle of an Olympic-size pool.

“Oh, crap. Go. Teleport, Marie, to the energy generation room. Go, go, go, go, go!”

Marie closes her eyes, but doesn’t go anywhere. “I can’t, I’m stuck.”

“I was afraid of this. This place must be able to control internal movement, as well as external intrusion. I don’t know as much about this place as I would like.”

The doors to the pool open, and a figure comes towards them, which they quickly recognize as none other than Danica Matic. She takes out a megaphone. “Please exit the vehicle with your hands up!”

“Is she serious?” Marie asks.

“She is right now.”

Leona opens the hatch, and waits. “Do you have, like, a raft, or maybe a ladder?”

“You can swim, can’t ya?”

“Goddammit,” Leona mutters. She sighs, and slips into the water. Then she swims over the edge and climbs out as Marie follows closely behind. “It’s so nice to see you!” she tells Danica in an incredibly passive-aggressive high-pitched voice.

“Thanks!” Danica replies, matching her energy. “You just missed him!”

“Missed who?” Now apparently they can’t stop with the voice.

“Your husband, Mateo! He disappeared from a locked room, and funny thing, I don’t remember a thing that happened in there since I  closed the door behind us!”

“Did you check the cameras?”

“Oh, I forgot to do that, because I’m a total idiot!” She takes a beat. “They’ve all been erased!”

“Take me to that room, and I’ll look into it,” Leona offers, in a deeper, more genuine voice.

“No!” Danica has decided not to drop the voice yet. “You’re both going into stasis for a very long time! Congratu-frickin-lations!”