Microstory 1382: Social Psychology

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Roommate: Oh my Gosh, this is so weird.

Psych Major: It doesn’t have to be weird.

Roommate: So, you want me to make up new problems?

Psych Major: Yes, don’t talk about any real problems. I am not a licensed therapist yet, so it’s not really within my purview to ask you about your real life. I mean it, you’re supposed to come up with something new. It’s okay if you have to take a little time to come up with a good cover story.

Roommate: Okay, just give me a minute.

Psych Major: We can do this later tonight, or even tomorrow, if you would rather. It’s not due until Friday. I do need some time to organize a little presentation.

Roommate: No, I’ve got it. Go ahead.

Psych Major: Okay. So, what brings you in today?

Roommate: I assassinated the king of South Canada, and I’m feeling really depressed about it.

Psych Major: Okay...

Roommate: Ha, I can come up with something more practical.

Psych Major: No, this is good practice. Except for the fact that South Canada doesn’t exist—which is probably for the best, honestly—that’s a technically possible scenario, just maybe not in our universe. So. Tell me. Why did you feel the need to assassinate the king?

Roommate: I asked him for help irrigating my corn, and he refused, so our crops failed, we couldn’t sell enough, and my youngest son died of starvation.

Psych Major: So, are you depressed about having assassinated the king, or are you more depressed about your son?

Roommate: Hm. I guess that’s a good point. I didn’t care for the king, and I’m glad he’s dead. But I loved, and miss, my son.

Psych Major: So, if you could go back in time, you would do it all again, just like that?

Roommate: I would, yeah. I wasn’t caught, of course, so I stand by my actions.

Psych Major: Do you have any other violent thoughts? Are there other people you feel deserve to die?

Roommate: Ah, I’m not falling for that trickery. I know you can’t report me to the police, because the crime has already happened, but you would be free to do so if I admit to the intention to commit some crime later.

Psych Major: That’s not quite how the law works, but I see your point. Still, ignoring what you’ve done in the past, if you really do feel like you need to hurt someone, perhaps we can work on channeling your frustrations, so they come out in more productive ways. Have you tried talking to these people who frustrate you?

Roommate: Not really.

Psych Major: I want you to pretend that Penka Penguin, sitting on that shelf, is your worst enemy. This is a judgment free zone, so tell Penka whatever you want. What would you want to say to her that you wouldn’t be able to without getting in trouble?

Roommate: I would look her in the eye, and tell her how irritating she can be, and how I feel like I can’t be myself around her.

Psych Major: I’m sorry to hear that. What does she do to make you feel this way?

Roommate: Well, she’s always talking about her classes, and how rewarding it is to be learning all these things, and I just feel inadequate because I’m only a business major.

Psych Major: You’re a business major.

Roommate: Yes.

Psych Major: No, I mean you, Roommate, are actually a business major. You’re meant to be making this up.

Roommate: Oh, right. I’m a...art history major.

Psych Major: Roommate, do I make you feel like what you’re studying isn’t good enough?

Roommate: I was just playing a character. I slipped up when I mentioned a fact that’s true about the real me.

Psych Major: I feel like maybe you slipped up when you started talking about how someone you know irritates you because she’s always talking about her classes.

Roommate:  Psych Major, I don’t want to kill you.

Psych Major: I’m glad to hear that, but maybe there’s a little bit of truth to what you said?

Roommate:  ...

Psych Major: We need to have a discussion. I don’t think being a business student makes you inadequate, and if I’ve done anything to make you feel this way, we should talk about it. Not a therapy session, but a real talk between us.

Roommate: It’s not that big a deal, and it’s certainly not worth failing your psychology assignment. 

Psych Major: I won’t fail, I’ll just cut this part out.

Roommate: I really don’t want to kill you.

Psych Major: What you said is what we in the business call parapraxis. It’s when your subconsciousness rises to the surface, and you accidentally vocalize your true feelings, even if doing so could damage your social health. Obviously the assassin bit was just a fabrication, because you having access to a king is an absurd notion. But then when I asked you about other people you’re having trouble with, your gut reaction was to think of the honest answer to the question. Then you said it out loud before you remembered we were pretending.

Roommate: That all sounded really smart. You’re kind of proving my point here, but I recognize that you’re not doing it on purpose. So let’s talk.

Microstory 1225: Irving Hummel

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Irving Hummel was a reality corruptor, but not an exceptionally good one. His ability to alter reality was fairly limited, and often only significantly impacted his own life. If he wasn’t careful, any changes he made could quite easily revert, and he might not be strong enough to change them back to the way he wanted. He wasn’t that great of a person in general, and the power he wielded only made him worse. He was by no means evil, but he lacked both drive and skill. Ambition wasn’t a problem, but that and drive are not the same concept. He wanted to do great things, and to be recognized for them, but he didn’t want to put in the effort. And so, thanks to his time power, he forced the world to become what he needed in order to realize his dreams. He barely scraped by at the police academy, but he did make it, and he didn’t do anything bad to get there. Unfortunately, he just couldn’t reach any of his goals beyond that. He was stuck as a regular uniformed officer, and it wasn’t looking like things were going to get better, so he changed them. He arbitrarily turned himself into a Sergeant. It was no Lieutenant, or Captain, but it was kind of the best he could muster. You see, the modifications he could make to reality had to have some kind of plausible basis. He couldn’t just make himself king of the world, because no world would accept him as such. He did have the potential to become a sergeant, if only he worked harder at it, but that would always be the best he could do. The problem—though he wasn’t sure he saw it like this—was that his corruptions also had an effect on his personality. He couldn’t just slip his mind into his new life. He had to become the person he would be if he had done it in a more conventional way, and apparently, the more conventional way led him down a somewhat darker path.

Sergeant Hummel was a lot grumpier and harder to get along with than Officer Hummel. He was snarky, and short with people, and constantly pushed them away. Even though he could still remember his life before the corruption, he couldn’t help but adopt this new behavior, and start treating people poorly. There was only one person he knew who could see through him. A colleague of his evidently had his own temporal power. It was immediately clear to Irving that Detective Bran could see the discrepancies between the two conflicting realities. He didn’t want to let on that he was not only fully aware of the changes as well, but that he was responsible for them. Well, he didn’t think he was responsible for all the changes. Bran was regularly concerned about the town literally shrinking in size with no logical explanation, but Irving had no clue what he was talking about, and couldn’t believe that it had anything to do with him. He just kept doing his thing; transforming himself into what he hoped was a better person, eventually faltering, and going back to the way he was, and then trying again once he was strong enough. In the end, none of his efforts mattered. Irving was in the wrong part of town when the phenomenon Bran kept talking about swallowed it up. Presumably because of his own ability, Irving managed to survive the trip through the portal, and landed on a different planet entirely, as one of very few who weren’t torn apart, and scattered throughout time. Now what was he going to do? There was no reality where this dead world wasn’t a terrible place to live.

Microstory 1151: Uhyiopa

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Many light years from Earth, there is a planet. This planet has slightly lower gravity, and slightly higher tidal forces from an orbiting moon. The planet itself orbits an adolescent main-sequence star, and revolves fast enough to produce a strong magnetosphere, which protects it from solar radiation, and maintains a breathable atmosphere. Though it did not produce evolved life, it is fully capable of supporting it, which is good, because it was chosen as a colony site for, not one, but two separate species. The Orothsew and Gondilak, through some bioengineering, evolved independent of each other on isolated continents. Because of the stronger tides, both species developed quite significantly before they progressed enough in a maritime respect to survive travel across the vast ocean. The Orothsew were more advanced, and quickly overcame the Gondilak, even though the latter were more difficult to kill. But this was carried out by the leadership, and though their laws didn’t allow them to do anything to stop it, the people did not want war. A rebellion formed, composed of both Orothsew and Gondilak, who were seeking a peace. The conquest for land was pointless, as there were plenty of resources to go around, and the differences between their species was irrelevant. One such of these rebels was named Uhyiopa. She did not actively recruit new rebels, but protected battlefield deserters, from both belligerents. These did not fight like most revolutionaries. Their main purpose was to show the world what it would be like if they all lived in harmony. The plan did not work completely, when a tyrant rose up and ended the war simply by declaring himself ruler over both nations. But her efforts, and those of her people, were not wasted. Two humans witnessed her actions, and respected her vision. When they were sent to the deep past to correct the world’s problems before they even began, they used Uhyiopa’s model as a foundation to help build a more productive civilization. She would not be born in this timeline, as much of its history was changed, but her legacy lives on in the billions of people who would come to find peace on Orolak.

Microstory 901: Diversity

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The rainbow flag has been used as a symbol for a lot of different things over the course of centuries. Today, it is most commonly associated with the LGBTQ movement, but I’ve never thought of it like that. Most people believe that there are seven colors in the rainbow, but the truth is that there are literally all of them. We arbitrarily break it down into seven standards, but it could just as easily be eight, or 39. In this way, the color spectrum represents all that a human being is capable of perceiving, which is most of what matters to everyday life. Because of this, I have always seen the rainbow flag as less of a symbol for any one sexuality, or even multiple sexual orientations. I’ve always interpreted it as a symbol for diversity. People who preach peace often do so by pointing out our similarities. We all live on Earth, we all bleed red blood, we all need to eat, etc. But as a futurist, I see this as becoming a problem in the future. We won’t always live exclusively on Earth. If we encounter an alien species, their biology would most likely be different than ours, and they might not possess red blood. And our nonbiological friends, who are energized by other means, will not need to eat. It is a problem for us to emphasize our similarities, because that’s really just another way of valuing homogeneity over variety. You see, we are not beautiful creatures despite our differences, but because of our differences. If we were all the same person, we would not be capable of coming up with new ideas. We would not create stunning art, or discover medical breakthroughs, or come up with technological conveniences. We would just sit here in the boredom of our own predictability. And in but a few generations, we would simply die off, because nobody wants to procreate with themselves. When I walk into a room, I want to see men; women; young people; old people; black people; Asian people; people of all shapes and sizes, from all backgrounds, of all identities; maybe even a few white people. A recent study has suggested that those living in an ethnically diverse neighborhood are more likely to help a stranger in need. Their experiences with people unlike them have given them perspective, and a whole hell of a lot of empathy. Because when I say that we should value diversity, that doesn’t mean I think we should ignore how well we relate to each other. Our ability to put ourselves other people’s shoes will always drive us to good works more than inherent altruism, which is fundamentally difficult to achieve, and far rarer than you probably know. King Dumpster was elected president in my country because he spoke to the hearts of an astonishingly large number of people who prefer mirrors over windows. It is up to the rest of us to prove that we are not all like that. Because we aren’t. We are diverse.

Microstory 900: Providentials (Introduction)

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At some point many moons ago, I was sort of hurting for ideas, so I went back through my old works, trying to figure out whether I could expand on them. I wrote a couple of fables, and figured I could come up with more. I quite enjoyed writing the Perspectives series, so I decided I could revisit that concept from time to time. And I realized that I could reapply my strategy from Bellevue Profiles to a Salmonverse Profiles version, of which two have already been posted. My salmonverse canon has become so much larger than I ever thought it would, and I think the audience might benefit from a source that sums up each character’s backstory. You’ll see these all come to fruition over the next few years. I also figured I could write an expansion of my 99th microstory, 99 Problems. What a great idea, right? I’ve already told you what I hate; now I can tell you why. It just seemed so perfect since I didn’t have anything else for the 900 block. Well, then November 8, 2016 happened. One of the worst people in the history of the world was elected King Dumpster of the Divided States of Russiamerica. I was heartbroken. Not only could this administration negate everything we’ve worked so hard for over the last two billion years, but it was a testament to how many hateful people there were in the country I once thought I loved. It was extremely clear to me from the very beginning that Donald Trump was, and is, a Russian spy (we can argue semantics all you want, but if you don’t think he’s Putin’s intelligence asset, then you are not paying any goddamn attention). It seemed to take a long time for others to realize this very obvious fact, and it’s going to be even longer before all the people who either deny it today, or aren’t bothered by it, simply turn over to the sweet release of biological death. His election, however unjustified and illegal as it was, turned out to be a major wakeup call to me. This is the world we’re living in. Nazis run the U.S., the United Kingdom wants to hide away in a hole, and the future is doomed. But as time wore on with Drumpf’s first year, I started to reject these ideas. Seriously, screw that. Screw him, and screw all the negativity. I’m not going to sit back and let this happen. I’m going to fight for this planet that has been ruined by—sorry to say it—you neurotypicals. You’ve had your chance for the last couple hundred thousand years. Maybe you wanna give someone else a shot? We might surprise you, and I doubt we could do worse than the pile of crap you’ve created. Let’s start with this. I’m cancelling my 99 Problems series, and replacing it with something less negative, because that’s what we need right now. I’m going to show you that there is still good in the world, and that we can get through this. King Dumpster’s people have made one final push against the future, but they will ultimately fail. This is my contribution, as a writer...my personal list of 99 Providentials.

PS: My Dream series was longer than normal. These will probably be on the shorter side.

Microstory 830: The Hunted and the Elite

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We have learned from the mistakes of our past, but we have not forgotten their value. When we overthrew the king, we knew we would have to come up with something else, and do so rather quickly. Fortunately, we already had everything we needed at our disposal. Over time, people have noticed that objects, and sometimes people, often mysteriously fall into our world, from distant places. We used to believe these events to be random, or at least unpredictable, but a few smart people did the math, and now they can be forecast with extreme precision. This gave our group an advantage over the others, but we did not all keep these treasures for ourselves. We just control them, and we decide who gets what. The treasures are a commodity; a resource. If you know when and where they’re coming, you don’t have to work for anything. We call the people who receive most of these treasures The Elites. All Elites have everything they need, and we protect them from the dangers of the world. But this life comes with a price, in that it’s dull, and uneventful. They don’t have access to some art, like film and theatre. They don’t have interesting jobs, full of stories they can go home and tell their families. Sure, they live in luxury, but when choosing your place, you have to decide whether that’s really worth it. If the answer is no, then you can choose to be The Hunted. Though they do not live in luxury, they too are provided with enough food to survive, at no cost to them. Except they have to find where that food is hidden, and fight to keep it out of other people’s hands. Meanwhile, they are being hunted by our world’s criminals, so they’re also fighting for their survival. It can be a lot of fun, though, if you form the right alliances, and come across the right treasures. We don’t know if this is the best way to maintain a civilization, but it’s the best we have ever had. It perfectly blends elements from our past, and we will not give it up easily.

Microstory 826: Hurt a Fly

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Today is the day. I’m more nervous about this than any other time in my life. I thought I had accepted what was going to happen to me, but as the hour approaches, I start doubting my resolve. Years ago, the King of this country came across a movie scientists eventually realized had come from another universe. We either don’t know how the DVD got here, or they never revealed this to the general public, but it changed our lives forever. In the story, all crime is legal for one night, including murder. This inspired the King to adopt a similar structure. His people made the connection between this movie, and a short story we came across seventy years ago. Though technology hadn’t advanced enough back then to determine the story’s origin, we now believe it too originated from some other universe, because no one by the author’s name ever existed in ours. It was about a small village where one individual is chosen every year to be stoned to death, upon the superstition that there was some correlation between that, and a good harvest. Our King decided to combine these stories into one. He would draw one name in a lottery every year, and make all crimes against the winner legal for one day, so people could purge them from the world. Of course, in a kingdom of millions, the odds of your name being drawn are almost negligible, but someone has to be chosen, and this time, it’s me. But I have a secret that no one else knows.

Though purge day lasts for twelve hours, lottery winners usually die within the first, because there is nowhere to run. But I don’t have to run, because I can fly. I take a deep breath and step up onto the stage. Wearing my ceremonial grey suit, I smile for the cameras, which is something I’m required to do, so people know who they’re trying to kill. There’s been a history of illegal murders on this day, because people pretend to be the lottery winner, just to die famous. I stretch a little and loosen up, do a little dance to make the people laugh, and wait for the bell. As soon as it dings, I launch into the air, surprising the entire world, all at once. I’ve never met any other human who could fly, so it appears to be impossible, and it certainly isn’t easy for me. It’s not like in the movies, where they just have to jump up and go. It takes a lot of work, and a lot of energy, and I’m not entirely confident in my ability to sustain myself for as long as I’ll need to. When I fly, it’s like I’ve turned the wind into a slippery hill. I have to constantly climb up that hill to stay above the surface, and it’s always only a matter of time before I slide back down.

After the crowd gets over their shock from what I’ve done, they start running after me. They can tell that it isn’t easy, so they’re just biding their time until I come back down. I’m just glad that the King decreed that guns were illegal for this event, because of how impersonal, and effortless they are. He wants a show, and it’s supposed to be my job to give it to them, which I believe I’ve delivered, and I think that entitles me to become the first lottery winner to survive. I stay up as best I can, but man am I getting tired. I move like a heart rate monitor. Up, down, up, down, up, down. But I never fall, and I never land. I try to rest on roofs of the castle towers, but people are always waiting for me there. I try to seek refuge in the Keserint Forest, which no past winner has ever lasted long enough to reach, but I find a horde or rebels there who are just as interested in killing me as any law-abiding citizen. After three hours of this, I’m just not physically capable of staying up. I gracelessly drop to a meadow, and try to massage my shoulders, and my pelvic muscles, which support most of my weight when I’m flying. I look into the distance as a band of excited killers come to claim their prize. They’re happy that it’s finally over, but appreciative of how much more thrilling this year has been. Everyone always wants to be the one to make the final blow, but the stakes are even higher for me. They’re but meters away, but I’m even too tired to try to run. I place my arms behind my back, and close my eyes to yield to my fate. Suddenly, I feel arms grip my shoulders, and lift me into the air. I turn my head to find another human who can fly, carrying me away from the crowd. It appears to be far easier for her. She smiles at me. “We’ve been looking for you your whole life. Let’s go back to our universe.”

Microstory 790: Monarch

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There have been many civilizations, on many worlds, in many universes, across all of time and space. Most were created by humans, or some subspecies thereof. Unfortunately, the chances of any one of these surviving for any period of time is nearly negligible. People often wonder why they have not been visited by aliens, and though the truth is that there could be—and indeed are—many reasons, one of them is how difficult it is to reaching civilization milestones. Most fall before they advance enough to venture beyond their own little section of reality, and those that do will find it nearly impossible to meet any other civilization, for life is few and far between. Intelligent life is even rarer. When a major civilization ends—major being the operative word—there is one entity who is always present. A time traveler and immortal, he has adopted it as his responsibility to ease the transitional period when a culture dies, even if no life survives beyond it. When the Simmer Flood overwhelmed the first united shell, he was there. When Babylon was conquered, he was there. And when Adversary, and his demon army spoiled the lands of the living realm, he was there. He’s always there, taking on new forms, as necessary. He goes by many names, his preference being Deliverer. But others will call him First and Last, Beginning and End, and King of Kings. He is no ruler, though, nor does he have any interest in holding power over a peoples. He is there to help, and relies on a series of Bearers to know when and where he should be to be the most useful. For most transitions, he is around as true witness for a brief period of time. He may save as many as he can at the last minute, but he does not stick around for too long, fearing undue influence on the survivors. But there was one world whose fall was taking longer than usual, and required a little more help than others had. Society succumbed to chaos, leaving a great deal of people with far more arduous lives than they deserved. They grew angry, and began executing apocalyptic attacks against each other. But it would not end there. The misfortune just kept coming, in the form of domestic violence, and external threats. And so Deliverer endured through a long extension, acting as hero and friend to every decent individual that he encountered. He found himself liking this life, and it made him start rethinking his approach to his job.

Microstory 746: Wild Cards

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I want to take a moment and write whatever pops into my head. You guys are in for a real treat with this next microfiction series. I don’t know what it’s about. What I did is look up nicknames for playing cards, and put them into a table. I chose the ones I liked best, and if there weren’t enough to be choosy, then...well, I wasn’t. I randomized the list, and that’s what you’ll be reading for the next several weeks. Exactly what this series entails, I could not quite tell you. I have the titles, but that’s about as far as it goes. Are they people? Nicknames of people? Is each title merely a jumping off point for me to write completely disparate series? Honestly I don’t know, and that’s why it’s a treat, because you get to watch me slowly spiral into insanity to try and figure it out. Right now I’m listening to Max Richter, trying to calm myself down after an hour of frustration working on my website revamp, which is nowhere near ready to be released. The images won’t resize to where I want them, and twitter has some funky new system that refuses to cooperate. I’m barely halfway done with the new navigation coding, and I’ve not even begun to code the new coloring scheme. This all coming on the heels of a terrible day where nothing went right. It was the last day of one of the worst years. I lost my job...technically I got a new one, but I still don’t run the world, so that’s disappointing.

King Dumpster started his tenure as—I can’t even type it out anymore. It’s just too hard to handle. So how do we think 2018 is gonna go? Is it gonna be better? Well, that evil man is still going to be in office, regardless of how many political pundits predict his downfall. Justice is dead. Literally every man besides me and those in my family is a rapist, or at least a sexual assaultist. Gun sales are doing really well, especially for those terrorists, who desperately need automatic assault rifles to protect the country from those frightening five-year-old children. And we’re still spending buttloads of money protecting pandas, which should—scientifically speaking—just die out already. No, 2018, you’re not lookin’ so great. Because the fact of the matter is that time doesn’t fall into categories that well. Nothing magical happens at the start of a new year that resets how people think, or what they do. The world can get better, and in many ways, this process has already begun. But there is no royal road to our success. So what can we do? Well, all I have is my platform, which is the combined power of my website, and social media accounts. I’m dedicating 2018 to women, and unoriginally referring to it as the #yearofthewoman (#yotwoman). I’ve erased my male lead in my Sunday macrofiction, and replaced him with a female. All main characters in the Saturday mezzofiction are going to be women, with a strong feminist lean. I’m even changing the color scheme on my site to pink and purple, which my mother says might be a little too obvious, but it’s what I can do. It’s all I can do. I can’t tell you what’s going to happen in 2018, in the real world, or even in my stories. What I can tell you is that this is not the end. We’ve only been doing this for a few thousand years, we’re still just babies. At least, we always have been. I think it’s time we start to grow up. Or maybe we wait until next year...because I woke up like this.

Microstory 742: Credos, Convention Thirteen: Compromise, Chapter One

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Many years ago, before anyone in the galaxy was flying to the stars, there was group of kingdoms that held lands not far from each other, and they each had something that the another needed. One had the best soil for farming, but no water to irrigate it. One had access to a great river of freshwater, but no decent way to transport this water anywhere else. One had developed advanced forms of transportation, but did not have enough fuel to power them. One was sitting on top of a grand reservoir of chemicals that could be processed into fuel, but no way to dig into the soil. The last had the tools to access underground resources, but few crops and other food, so the highly trained workers were hungry, and unable to work. From the outside, there may seem to be a perfect solution to all of their problems. Kingdom One can give its crops the the workers of Kingdom Five. Kingdom Five can dig for the chemicals under Kingdom Four’s lands. Kingdom Four can provide fuel for the transportational vehicles of Kingdom Three. Kingdom Three can deploy vehicles to transport Kingdom Two’s water to Kingdom One. This seems easy enough to do, until you place yourself in each Kingdom’s respective perspective. No one is interested in trading with anyone else, for they are too close to the issues to see what the entire system looks like. Why would Kingdom One give any crops to Kingdom Five when they cannot get anything in return? They cannot see the whole cycle, and how it will ultimately come back around to them. Even if they could, who can start the cycle in the first place? The only way for anyone to give what they have is to first get what they need from someone else. Fortunately, there was a workable solution to this, but the whole process depended on everyone working together. Though there was no easy way to transport the water from Kingdom Two to Kingdom One, there were still much harder ways. Everyone in the five kingdoms had to band together, and get that water to the crops. The queen from Kingdom Four understood this, and she organized the labor force into something no one had ever seen before. The first batch of crops was sent to the trained diggers, and the cycle was able to begin. Eventually, this worked so well, that they ended up with a single unifying economy, and the kingdoms merged into a single nation, living in prosperity for decades.

Microstory 224: The Adventures of Braeburn and McIntosh

Detectives Braeburn and McIntosh are two of the toughest cops the Empire of Cortland has ever seen. They’ve just been tapped by the federal government for a special task force, codename Winesap. The team is investigating the wrongdoings of an enemy known only as Northern Spy, operating out of a secret lair in Mount Fuji. The two partners have just infiltrated a special gala at Catshead Manor, hoping that Northern Spy makes a cameo. Until then, they decide to just enjoy the jazz, and have a little fun...

Braeburn: SweeTango, McIntosh! Look at that Pink Lady!

McIntosh: She’s bad news, Braeburn.

Braeburn: So, what?

McIntosh: You know what my Granny Smith always says.

Braeburn: That you’re the apple of her pie?

McIntosh: It’s eye, moron. The expression is “apple of your eye”.

Braeburn: What the heck do apples have to do with eyes?

McIntosh: What do they have to do with—! Oh. Hmm. Whatever, anyway. My granny, she always say, “one bad apple spoils the barrel”. And you know she knows what she’s talking about. She was best friends with the famous Ida Red Macoun.

Braeburn: Hey McIntosh, ain’t that your wife, Melrose? The one standing fireside?

McIntosh: Honeycrisp, what are you doing here?

Melrose: I’m undercover, just like you, Merton. I told you not to use pet names in public. And please call me Ambrosia Antonovka. It’s my fake identity. I’ve been getting to know the wealthy Ginger Gold. And I have made a discovery. Her husband, Jonathan is Northern Spy.

Braeburn: Jon A. Gold is Northern Spy!? He must be using his position as the CEO of Elstar Enterprises as a cover.

Melrose: Keep your voice down, Baldwin. Yes, and he’s planning to assassinate Her Excellency, Lady Alice, along with the Duchess of Oldenburg. Apparently, he has King James Grieve in his pocket, and wants him to come to full power.

Braeburn: Sweet Beauty of Bath, we have to stop him! If he succeeds, it will mean the end of liberty!

Melrose: You two go find him. I need to contact my handler, Ben Davis. He can send out the beacon for reinforcements waiting to be deployed on Bardsey Island.

The three of them go off and catch Northern Spy, foiling his plans for world domination. The day is saved once again, thanks to the hard work of Braeburn and McIntosh. And Melrose.

Microstory 18: The Half Wish

A wizard appeared and granted me two and a half wishes. When I asked him what a half wish was, he told me that the wish would come true but only sort of. He evidently had no control over the ramifications of the wishes. He was only a conduit to some other awesome power. That power was the one deciding how to interpret the wishes, and for this reason, half wishes were even more unpredictable than full ones. I first asked for a thousand more wishes, as you do. That was against the rules, so I just completely lost that one. One and a half left. I asked him, very carefully, whether it would be okay if I asked for something in multiple parts. He saw no reason why not. “I wish to be the good and loved king of the entire world. This world will have no war, and no poverty. There will be an endless supply of resources.”

“Is that all?” the wizard asked. It was. He waved his arms and the environment changed. I was on top of a hill. Below me was a forest, a lake, and a river. Beyond that was nothing; a void. There were only a few square kilometers of anything. “Oh,” the wizard said solemnly. “You forgot to ask to be the king of Earth specifically, or that it would at least be a full-sized planet, and have other people.”

I thought about it for a very long time, worried what might happen with my half wish. Maybe I wasn't smart enough to come up with something clever and impeccable. Finally, I decided to ask for the same thing again, but this time be more clear. “I wish to be the good and loved king of the entirety of Earth. Earth will have no war, and no poverty. There will be an endless supply of resources for Earth.” The environment changed once more. I was back on Earth, in the city. I looked up to the night sky where I could see the other half of the Earth, floating in its own orbit.