Microstory 2509: Former Girlfriend

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Landis wasn’t always the great and noble guy you’ve heard of. I’m not surprised that he became what he is today, but I do wish that it was happening while we were dating. He wasn’t a bad guy, but he really struggled with motivation. He didn’t want to work very hard at anything. He didn’t want things handed to him, but he didn’t want to have to think too hard either, and figure the solutions out for himself. He wanted to know how to do something, and understand why he should be doing it. He didn’t have a great job, bu he was content with it, because he gave an unremarkable interview, yet they gave it to him. He didn’t care about being promoted, or even making more money. His budget was always based on the bare minimum, and he didn’t care about anything else. He didn’t want to improve, or have a better life. This sounds really selfish of me, but it might have been nice had he treated me to dinner every once in a while. I felt like I was the only one making an effort in the relationship. I had to leave him, because it was so one-sided, and when I finally did, he didn’t seem to care. This goes to show how dispassionate he was. I wanted him to want something, even if it wasn’t me. I couldn’t tell you how he got his powers, because I wasn’t around for that, but I’m happy for him. I am not bitter, and I’ve not tried to get back together. He’s doing his thing, and I’m doing mine. I feel lucky that the path we walked took us to where we are. Even if I were miserable, at least he’s a superhero now, and that’s a beautiful thing. People ask if I regret not sticking by him but if I had, the Foundation might not exist. It’s all so mysterious, so we don’t know how he ended up with the abilities, but he has told us that we received them. He wasn’t born with them, so he would not have randomly developed them in an alternate reality. He was reportedly simply at the right place at the right time. If we had still been living together, he would have been in a completely different place at that particular time. We would have gone on with our lives none the wiser, still not happy, and none of you would be cured. I guess I should say...you’re welcome.

Microstory 2040: Wisconsin

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My fathers’ bad luck continued as they were trying to fly from Alaska to New Jersey. They were supposed to make a stop in Chicago, which is where my papa used to live, but that’s not what happened. On their way on the first plane, another passenger got really drunk, and started misbehaving. He was causing problems for everyone, and being really rude, so the pilot had no choice but to land the plane at a different airport to let him off. They even had to have the police waiting for him there. The closest one was this little airport called Southern Wisconsin Regional Airport. It wasn’t really built for planes like that, so it took them a long time to get through all the stuff with the police, and start trying to fly again. By the time they were ready, they couldn’t leave anyway, because of a snowstorm that had formed over Canada. If that guy had just not gotten drunk, they would have arrived in New Jersey on time. Honestly, it’s kind of scary for me to think about, though. They had to spend one night in Wisconsin until the storm passed, and then they were able to fly again. By the time they made it to New Jersey, though, the child they were going to adopt had already gone to another family. They were too late. They would have to wait a few months longer. They had to wait for me. I, for one, am glad that they did.

Microstory 1861: The Tarmides of Tasmania

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In the late sixteenth century, a certain famous playwright wrote what would become perhaps his most obscure works. He was two years from death, and didn’t even get to see his final piece performed on stage. Once Tarmides of Egypt finally did make it to the theatre, opening night was riddled with such bad luck that it ruined the show’s future indefinitely. The lead forgot many of his lines, his co-star had to give birth halfway through, forcing them to switch to an understudy. The man who played the grandfather died of a heart attack near the end, and another was impaled when the stage collapsed due to all the weight of the people who ran up to tend to the old man. The injury resulted in death a day later. It was for these reasons that all further showings were cancelled. Years later, a different troupe tried to put on another production, but it went badly too. No one else died on the night, but set pieces fell apart, multiple actors flubbed their lines, and historians believe this to be the probable ground zero for what came to be known as the relatively shortlived Lurch Plague. The play was cursed, according to the superstitious majority of the time, and no one else so much as attempted to produce it again for at least a century. Since then, rumors of further unfortunate events have spread about more recent attempts, but most of these claims remain unsubstantiated. The fact of the matter is that the play has almost certainly been produced dozens of times without any issue, but that’s not a very good story, so most students are taught the melodramatically stretched truth that the curse always takes them in the end. The mystique of this whole thing is only fueled by the subject matter of the play itself.

Tarmides was born in Greece, but the narrative is about him immigrating to Egypt to escape his past, only to find himself at the center of one disaster after another. The playwright was probably trying to demonstrate the futility of life, having become more nihilistic in his latter years, but this depressing lesson is lost to the more sensational idea that he was a prophet, who wrote it in order to prompt destruction in the real world. When I was a young man, a tyrant rose to power, and waged a war against the rural parts of my country. Villages were demolished under the weight of his superior technology. I probably wasn’t truly the only survivor, but again, that’s not sensational enough, so the media billed it that way. I became famous, and an international effort formed in order to relocate me to a safer region of the world. Most of the time, developed world nations fight over who has to take in refugees, but in my case, they fought for the honor. Tasmania won, so that’s where I moved. Shortly thereafter, an undersea earthquake in the Southern Ocean sent a tidal wave to the island, killing thousands of people, and destroying a great deal of the infrastructure. Once again, in order to sell papers, journalists began drawing connections between my arrival, and the completely unrelated and unpredictable natural disaster. Like most regular people, I hadn’t even heard of the play myself at the time, but I soon came to be known as The Tarmides of Tasmania. This nickname followed me for the rest of my life. Whenever an item fell off of the shelf at the grocery store, or I was around when it began to rain, I was blamed for it. There was always someone around who enjoyed pointing it out, especially if something even moderately inconvenient happened to someone else. I lived the rest of my life with this mark, and as much as I don’t want to die, I won’t miss it.

Microstory 1424: How to Protect a Town With Pointless Powers

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Some of the source mages wanted the process of gifting people with mage powers to be fair. They wanted to randomize it, so that a selectee could ultimately end up with anything. That seemed fine on paper, but it could cause a lot of problems down the road. No amount of competitive scoring was good enough to measure precisely what an individual would do with their powers once they actually received them. A given person might be incredibly noble and brave with the ability to repulse time monsters, but end up gravely dangerous with the power to manipulate reality itself. Same person, different powers, wildly different outcomes. Still, it would be irresponsible to leave it up to chance. They ought to be trying to tailor powers towards the mage’s innate abilities. There were also countless powers that wouldn’t be very helpful for a mage at all. For instance, it might be cool for someone to have the ability to see what an object will look like in the future, to measure the effects of wear and tear over time, but they wouldn’t be able to fight a monster with that. By the time the first sourcing ceremony began, the source mages had reached a decision, though some were not happy about it. They didn’t feel like they had any choice but to control what power someone received. They would do their best not to play favorites, but making it random was just too risky. It was not, however, so simple. No matter how unbiased they were, or thought they were, people would accuse them of being unfair. They could claim it was random, but some would not believe it, and even if these were only a minority voice, a small group could grow. To protect themselves against this backlash, they decided that someone needed to be sacrificed. His name was Vaion Newport, and he hoped to end up the most powerful town mage of all, but his excellent scores in the Mage Games were exactly what made this impossible.

Source mage Madoc Raptis was tasked with giving Vaion a pointless power. They wanted to show that anyone could end up with any gift, and there was no guarantee they would like it. It was particularly important to use Madoc for this, because he hated the inequity of some of their decisions, and he was considered the lucky one. If even he could source someone a power that wasn’t good for them, then it could happen to anyone, and the source mages must not have been lying when they claimed it was completely out of their control. After being sourced, Vaion learned that he now had the ability to freeze time in place. That kind of thing happened all the time in movies, but in real life, it was practically impossible, and no one had ever heard of it before. If time were to stop completely, then nothing would be moving. Photons couldn’t bounce off of objects, and show an observer what they looked like. Air couldn’t reach people’s lungs. Nothing could move, not even Vaion himself. And of course, that was the whole problem. While technically time wasn’t totally stopped, it was slow enough, and did not really give anyone an advantage, or disadvantage. While this was active, Vaion was able to continue thinking, and even process oxygen in his blood, but once time restarted, everything pretty much just continued as it was, without anyone having detected a change. It was interesting to be able to essentially stop time—and no one in histories enjoyed this same power—but since he also couldn’t move, it was useless in the war against the monsters. If he wanted to help the town, he had to contribute in some other way. Madoc was sick to his stomach that he had to do this to Vaion. None of the winners would have deserved this, but especially not him. Madoc resented his friends for making him do it, and vowed to never do anything like it again. He walked another path, and subverted the Mage Games by sourcing those who did nothing to earn powers at all, every year, and everyone let him do this. Meanwhile, the rest of the source mages continued as they were, and in order to maintain the lie, they always sourced at least one person with a power that was pointless against the monsters.

Microstory 1238: Madoc Raptis

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While the tyrant, Smith always recognized the potential in the first newborn children of Durus, no one truly understood their power until they were much older. While in womb, they seemed to possess deflective capabilities when it came to the monsters, but this hardly extended beyond protecting their mothers from attack, and that was presumed to be mostly about protecting themselves. Once they were old enough, the people of what was formerly Springfield, Kansas discovered that the children had the ability to give other people time powers. Later, these gifts would be decided according to a formal competition known as the mage games, but the precursor to this tradition came in the form of smaller challenges, and the occasional personal favor. Shortly after Madoc Raptis first accidentally gave his cousin the ability to distort other people’s perception of the flow of time, the source mages found out that they could give each other powers as well. There was a limit to what powers they could possess, and the more they accumulated, the less effective they were at each one of them, but it still increased their social power in the new world. The source mages could exchange their powers for new ones at will, but they each had to work to see which power, or powers, they were best at using, and concentrate the most energy on nurturing those. None was luckier than Madoc, whose level of skill for any given power seemed almost irrelevant when it came to what he did with them. The kids liked to go against each other, not just to tailor their strengths, but to see who among them was the very best. Madoc won these contests frequently; a little too frequently, actually. It didn’t matter who he was competing against, or what time power they were using, he just kept winning.

His favorite game was called Air Gap; a variation of capture the flag, where there was only one flag in the center of the field. The object was to try to reach the target first, while simultaneously superimposing more and more space between one’s opponent, and the center. It was his favorite, because he never lost even once. Everyone else called it luck. Madoc also called it luck. He recognized that he wasn’t actually better than them, and if they ever wanted to win the war with the time monsters, he wouldn’t be able to do it alone. Mad Dog Raptis is what they called him, though he wasn’t mad, and he didn’t possess any canine qualities. It was really just a play on his name. But he couldn’t care less about his nickname. He just liked to wield his power, and test his limits. He didn’t care for the mage games either, though they were his twin sister, Yeong’s creation. He was pretty vocal with his opposition to the very concept, believing it unfair to require others to prove their worth when the source mages themselves hadn’t done anything to earn them. They were just conceived at the right time, in the right city, and he knew this could have happened to anybody. This argument was the biggest thing he ever lost, and he didn’t quite accept the outcome. Every year, whether the mage games were held or not, Madoc reserved the right to source an individual from anywhere in the world. They didn’t have to fight for the honor, or plead their case. They just had to exist, be of sufficient age, and of course, consent. These special selections sometimes went on to protect their respective towns, but others joined a special army of Madoc’s devising, which served as balance against the source mages’ power. Madoc placed no expectations on his personal selections, and though he ultimately sourced fewer people over the course of the Mage Protectorate than any of his peers, many came to be known as some of the most honorable, respected, contributive, fearless...and lucky mages in history.

Microstory 712: A Jaded Man Made Curious

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The discovery the Book of Anseluka was not the happiest time in our galaxy’s history. We had gathered so many more followers of the Light than we had ever had before, that it was a particularly nasty blow when we learned our faith would have to change. Had the revelation that we would one day have to retire the Book of Light come sooner, it might not have been so bad for our interstellar economy. But with nearly everyone now on board, it was just too much. Fortunately for these people—new followers, and old loyalists, alike—their luck would soon change. A quantum field known as the Force of Hope began affecting everyone, on every planet, nearly simultaneously. We grew more optimistic, possibly even more so than we were before the war against Thuriama started. This caused a reaffirmation of our obligation and dedication to spreading the Light of Truth across the universe. We were more determined to win the Light Wars, and we were more capable of it. There was one, however, who somehow never experienced this reinvigoration. Luvras Seldasic has maintained his faith in the Light throughout his tenure as the Loctener, just as he has his entire life. The Force of Hope, however, never managed to shine the soul within him. His closest officials have described him as numb, or on a sort of automatic pilot mode. He would do as he was asked by the resurrected Sotiren, and he always acted upon the needs of Fosteans and Lightseers, but he had no passion. One might even say that he had become jaded. Luckily for him, this would not last forever. As predicted by Anseluka, the Force of Hope suddenly awakened inside of him, like a light switch being flipped. One moment, he was his usual hardened and immovable self, and then the next, his heart was filled with wonder and curiosity. With no provocation, he started singing in the Great Hall of the Magnus Building on Haplen. He looked at everything around him with renewed interest, as if he hadn’t ever seen an object before. Doctors would call this phenomenon jamais vu, but we know it as something else: the fulfillment of a taikon. Now we have a true Loctener, and nothing will stop us from salvation.

Microstory 533: Man Claims to Know Where Flipcoats Come From

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Approximately 117 years ago, something extraordinary happened. Now historical figure, Dooney Parks became the first flipper in the galaxy. He had just gotten out of the shower when he felt a searing pain all over his upper body. At first he thought he was having some kind of delusional episode, but then the shock subsided, and he realized that some kind of torture device had been wrapped around his torso, and embedded in his skin. He couldn't remove it, his doctor couldn’t remove it, and scientists could not explain it. By the time the story became interstellar news, a second individual, Mercy Grace Hillsboro found herself experiencing the exact same thing. She too was unclothed at the time. No one knew what to make of these developments, even after more and more people unwillingly became flippers. After a while, however, these flippers began to notice some changes in their lives. One of them happened to be a gunner during a war with a rival nation on her home planet. She discovered that she could not be hurt. No matter what, her fighter jet was never damaged enough to cause a crash, not even following a direct hit by the enemy. Another won the planetary lottery twice in a row, that is, before a law was hastily passed that disqualified all past winners.

Things were just working out for these people, if only despite the constant pain they felt from their flipcoats. Still, scientists were completely baffled as to how these seemingly magical devices worked, where they came from, and why these particular people were chosen. This ignorance has continued up to today, but if we are to believe one man, the wait is partially over. Alberto Kussen is not a formally educated scientist, nor does he have any connection to a flipper, past or present. He has, however, been studying the flipcoat phenomenon for practically his entire life, and has dedicated that life to understanding it on a metaphysical level. He believes that there is some kind of shadow reality that lies just beyond our perception. This reality contains alternate versions of everyone in our reality, and they are all aware of us. Perhaps they are able to perceive events as they occur for us, and maybe even influence them. Kussen thinks that society in the shadow reality has developed some kind of merit-based reward system. Those who prove their worth to the authoritative body are awarded a flipcoat. For whatever reason, though, they are not capable of wearing flipcoats themselves, and so their doppelgänger in our reality is given it instead.

Of course this theory can’t, or has yet to, be proven. And of course, it still doesn’t explain how they operate, and why scientists are prevented even from examining one without suffering fatal consequences. It doesn’t even explain the logical reasoning behind a society that would reward alternate versions of its denizens. All it does is provide one among many possibilities that have appeared over the years. We may never know the truth regarding flipcoats, or what would happen in a galaxy full of flippers. All we know is that they hurt to wear, and it’s hard to live without one.

Microstory 385: Legacy

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Accomplishment

In the previous installment, I went over accomplishments. These are results that you can see and keep track of while they’re happening, and immediately afterwards. What I tried to explain was that they might be subtle and hard for you to believe in, but they are definitely there. We have all accomplished something. Legacy, on the other hand, is much hard to attain. This has traditionally been used to refer to what people remember of you when you’re gone. I hear a lot of characters in movies tell a depressed person that they matter, and that they’ll live on forever as long as someone remembers them. This is usually followed by a personal claim that the one in question is important to the speaker personally. Writers write these speeches thinking that they’re being clever and original, when in fact, I call it a cliché. It’s not about whether any given individual remembers you, but whether you had an impact on the world. Now of course I’m not just talking about heads of state and popular musicians. Your legacy may be rather small, but the idea is that the choices you made ripple through time beyond any human’s ability to calculate the ramifications. A few family members with a few anecdotes will eventually die off too, and we’ll end up with diminishing returns, rendering the memories themselves meaningless. It’s what you do, and what effect you have on society, that really counts. These impacts can range from saving a culture from genocide to letting a stranger merge into the lane in front of you. With death in the equation, all memories fade away. A few people are lucky enough to have their stories written down, but for the rest of us, our social outreach will be the only thing that keeps us alive. I don’t ever plan on dying, as I’ve said, but the process is the same either way. The easiest way to create a legacy is to take it literally and raise a child of your own, but there are other ways. Being out there and effecting change in your community; letting your voice be heard, especially by the next generation, is going to give you that edge. You don’t matter just by being alive and knowing people. You have to make an effort.

Extravagance