Microstory 934: 3D Printing

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3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, sounded absurd to me when I first heard whispers of it years ago. Objects are made of so many different kinds of materials, so it seemed impractical to keep each one on hand in raw form at all times. As that one guy in The Graduate says, in one of only two scenes I’ve watched, “plastics.” Plastic is manufactured from a myriad of chemical compounds, and formed in a multitude of ways. It is widely available, cheap to make, and capable of assuming any form. It also lasts for thousands of years, which is why it’s so bad for the environment when wasted. Despite its issues, plastic may be our best hope to combat scarcity and inequality. One day, I believe everyone will own two 3D printers; one for synthesizing food, and another for clothing and household items. Certain places will use other types. Every hospital will be equipped with artificial tissue synthesizers, in order to replace bodily organs. Construction companies will utilize specialized mega-printers to build skyscrapers in a matter of days. The average consumer will never have to leave their housing unit to shop. Goods will be selected online—or rather, the technical specifications for them—and printed in minutes, maybe hours. Entire companies will be shuttered, and replaced by those in the business of processing raw plastic cartridges, and delivering to end users via automated drones. This, combined with other societal advances, such as universal basic income, will render jobs virtually irrelevant and unnecessary. I won’t speak more on that, though, because if you’ve been following, you know how excited I am for this future. As of now, most people have no use for a 3D printer of any kind, but in fewer than thirty years, they will be as ubiquitous as microwave ovens. It may sound crazy now, but in the same span of time, the idea of owning a tiny computer the size of a calculator, with access to the whole world, was the stuff of science fiction.

Flurry: The Jacket (Part XIII)

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“Do we need both jackets?” Serkan asked after catching up to Jupiter. He was used to walking slowly to accommodate normal people, so it was a nice literal change of pace to be around someone just as fast.

“We do. The jackets need time to recharge, which we’ll only be able to do in the real world. They can take no more than two passengers at once, so without the copy, the other two in our group would have to stay behind.”

“The other two? There are three of us.” Ace noted. “Who’s the fourth?”

“I came here to rescue you, yes,” Jupiter began, “but only as a favor. My true mission is to retrieve someone important to me personally. I promised to protect him, always. I can’t break that promise.”

“If he’s here, then he was copied, right?” Serkan asked.

This made Jupiter stopped dead in his tracks. “Does that mean he doesn’t matter; that I shouldn’t save him?”

He misunderstood. “No, I was just wondering about what happens when you take him back. Will he live with his duplicate, start a new life somewhere else, or what?”

Jupiter turned back around and pushed the door to the stairwell, ready to begin the long journey back down. “I’ll raise them both.”

If at all possible, the weather outside was even worse than when they sought shelter in the skyscraper. Serkan and Ace had stolen a few extra layers of clothing that had been left lying around the cafeteria, and still felt like they were about to turn into icicles. Jupiter seemed perfectly fine...warm even. When asked about it, he said, “oh this jacket runs real hot. It’s not really meant to be worn while you’re not using it. The Weaver built it to be stylish, but she never did figure out the overheating problem.”

“Do you know where the copy of it is?” Serkan asked as he was restarting the bus with the Escher Card.

“I know where it should be. Whether it was stolen in the meantime, I couldn’t tell you. I don’t believe my old friends know about it, but I can’t be sure. They’re tricksy hobbitses.”

Serkan handed Jupiter the Escher Card so he could input in the coordinates. “Tell me about this group of friends of yours. Did you have a falling out?”

Jupiter shook his head in disappointment. “Technically yes, technically no. Jupiter Rosa is still very much friends with all them, and works with them happily.”

“I thought you said that you were Jupiter Rosa.”

“That’s the technically part.”

“You’re a copy,” Ace realized.

“I am. The first. Since then, the quote-unquote real one has figured out how to assimilate and destroy his copies as needed, but he could never bring himself to destroy me. That’s our sentimental side, I guess. Still, we avoid each other; stay out of each other’s way. But now he threatens someone I love, and that I cannot abide.”

“Is it your son?” Serkan asked. “You said you would raise them both; him and his copy.”

“He’s not mine, no. But I suppose...he is.”

This reminded both Serkan and Ace of Paige. “We’ll get him back,” Ace said, trying to comfort him. “We can relate to raising someone else’s child.”

“We also have experience with multiple versions of that child,” Serkan added.

Jupiter cracked a smile and nodded. “Oh yeah, that’s right.”

“What happened to the birth parents?”

“The closest the mother could find a decent job was in Ottawa, so she drives down there and back every day. She happened to be there when the metro was duplicated, which means there’s only one of her. She’s presently looking after that reality’s version of her son. Meanwhile, this world’s copy is with daycare.”

“Do you know where he is now, I mean, since the city was evacuated?

“Olathe’s weather is okay right now. They should still be there, waiting for the last of the parents to return. It’s possible that they’ve gone somewhere else, but with no communications, I can’t be certain unless I check there, and the apartment.”

Ace was looking out the window, and up. The weather was less tumultuous the farther from the center they drove, but it still wasn’t great here on the edge of the county. The bus was slowing down. “Why are we stopping here, then?”

“I know this place,” Serkan said. It was the tagger homebase, located at the confluence of the three of the five central metro counties. This was where he sought sanctuary with the taggers, and learned more about Crispin, the rabbit dog. “In the future.”

“The other jacket is here,” Jupiter explained. “This won’t be tagger territory until next year.”

They got out of the car and entered the building. Jupiter led them up the stairs, down the hall, and up to one of the units. When he noticed the door ajar, he reached to his hip...exhaling in frustration upon realizing he didn’t have a gun. It looked like instinct to reach for his sidearm, though, so maybe he had law enforcement experience, or military. Armed or not, he could come in handy whenever they ran into Keanu again. Which was happening right now.

Keanu ‘Ōpūnui was standing on the other side of the foyer, holding a baby with two arms. “Yes, do everyone please come in. But not any further than that. You’ll track slush on the floor.”

Jupiter tried approaching him anyway.

“Uh-uh-uh.”

“You wouldn’t hurt a child,” Jupiter hoped. “An infant.”

Keanu shrugged. “It’s a fake baby. Like the one from that Bradley Cooper movie. See, I could just toss it...” he lifted it up in the air, as if he were about to throw it across the room, but didn’t. The baby started crying.

“Jesus..Christ, man! What the hell happened to you!”

“I had everything,” Keanu began to explain. “Then you people show up and screw me over.”

“Looks like you got your arm back,” Ace pointed out.

Keanu held up what was once a missing arm. “This..is a shitty prosthetic.” It looked just as real as any other.

Jupiter’s anger was rising from his feet to his face. He was breathing heavily, and on the verge of doing something he was going to regret.

“That’s right, Jupi. Let it all out. Come back to us. None of this pansy hippy BS. You are a gunrunner. Act like one!”

The baby cried louder as Jupiter yelled louder. “You wanna see my gunrunning side again! You wanna see my rage!”

“Yes! Yes!”

Jupiter let out a battle cry and punched the wall, which delighted Keanu to no end. This turned out to have been a ruse, though. After he quickly pulled his arm back out from the drywall, they could all see that he was now holding a gun. His rage was completely gone, and was probably never really there in the first place. He calmly said to Keanu, “give Luken to me, and you will be spared.”

“You think you’ve won? You still did what I wanted. You’ll have to go back to your office and reset that sign of yours. How many days has it been since you held a weapon in your hand?” He chucked. “Well...zero, I guess. It feels good, doesn’t it? Like a jolt of electricity to your balls.”

“Have you ever noticed that you never stop talking, but you also never say anything?” Jupiter asserted.

“You can’t shoot me. I’m holding Mendoza’s son. You shoot, I drop him.”

“If I shoot you in the head,” Jupiter replied, “your body will seize up. You’ll fall straight to your back. Luken will go down with you, but your body will break his fall, with your arm cushioning his head and neck.”

“That sounds like it might not work, dude.”

“It’s like you said. He’s just a copy anyway. I can always go back to the one in the other world.”

“That world may be different than you last left it. And you’ll need two jackets, won’t you?” He bared all of his teeth in this creepy clown grin.

“What did you do?”

Still grinning uncomfortably, Keanu lifted his phone. “The wonderful internet of things. Ya know, you can connect anything these days, even if it makes no practical sense.” He pushed a button, set Luken down, and ran through a portal behind him.

The microwave in the kitchen started sparking. “Run!” Jupiter screamed before dashing over to shield the baby.

Serkan tried to protect Ace, but it was too late. The microwave exploded.

Slowly, Serkan started working on opening his eyes. At first, they were sealed shut, but then he got them to flutter. Eventually, with enough practice, he was able to open them all the way, and keep them open. Before him was a wall with tiny little holes in them. No, that wasn’t a wall, but a ceiling. He was on his back. His whole body ached, and he couldn’t move. He struggled to look to his sides, and was able to see just enough to know that he was in a hospital room. A television attached the wall was barely hanging onto its brace. The walls were dirty and oily, and the lights were barely on. So, not a very good hospital.

A silver fox walked into the room wearing scrubs. “Mister Demir, do you know where you are?”

“A hospital, I don’t know which one.”

“You were in an explosion. You’re at the Kansas University Medical Center.”

“How long has it been?”

“Mister Demir, you have to understand that you suffered terrible injuries from the explosion. It caused irreparable damage to your body.”

He stopped the nurse from continuing his speech, “I need to know the time first.”

“It’s been nineteen days.” He looked at his watch. “Almost exactly since they found you. You were placed in a medically induced coma so that your brain could recover, as best as possible.”

“As best as possible,” Serkan repeated. “So not really.”

“The doctors did all they could,” he answered. “But we’re in a new world, and resources are scarce.”

“What’s wrong with me? Be honest. I couldn’t care less about bedside manner. I need to know what I can do next.”

“You were paralyzed from the waist down. You will not likely ever walk again.”

His brain injuries must have been extensive, because he was having trouble with rational and logical thought. There were pressing questions. “I was with people. My friends. One was a baby.”

“We only found you. I’m sorry. There was no evidence anyone else was in the apartment.”

“Am I still in the other Kansas City?”

“The other Kansas City?” the nurse questioned. “We found out about that while you were asleep. How do you know about it?”

Serkan shifted his body as much as he could to get comfortable, but of course, his legs were stuck. He winced in pain. “I’m friends with a scientist,” he explained, referring to Duke Andrews, sort of. “He figured it out sooner than anyone else.” Obviously telling this guy he was a time traveler could put his life in danger. If people were trying to figure out how to escape this dimension, Serkan could be of use to them.

“Does he know how we can get back to Earth?” See?

“He told me not long before the explosion. I know nothing. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do now.”

“There are a few options. I don’t know if we’ll be able to accomplish them here, though. We’re completely cut off from the world, living in a bottle. There’s only so much we can do to help.”

“I have no money.”

He laughed, but it wasn’t funny-haha, more like funny-oh God. “Your money is literally no good here. There is no use for it. We’re gonna have to figure something else out, but for now, all available resources will be allocated to anyone who needs it. The leaders of this hospital have decided that, and the tracer gang has been called in to provided added security.” He paused to pull up a chair. “We have access to a phenomenal new procedure that could make your legs good as new. You have to know that it does not come without sacrifice, is not—strictly speaking—legal, and is still extremely experimental.”

“What would it entail?”

“Amputating your legs and giving you new ones. We probably wouldn’t even suggest it if we weren’t now in another dimension.”

It had been tough to wake up, and to think clearly, but things were really coming into focus. He was a runner, and needed his legs. They were the most important part of him besides his soul. He had to do everything he could to get better, even if it was dangerous. “Do it.”

They performed the procedure that night, apparently having already been in the process of 3D printing his new legs. A couple days into his second wave of recovery, Ace walked into the room, wearing the special leather jacket. Not bothering to say anything other than “finally,” he scooped Serkan up in his arms, and transported him to a different version of the same room. It was much cleaner and nicer, as if someone had actually had time to maintain it. The sun was shining. It was April of 2025.

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Microstory 192: Paulo Rocha

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An important early member of Bellevue jumped ahead of that infamous short list of anomalies, and discovered Paulo Rocha living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He was born in a small town nearby, but moved to the city to be closer to the targets of his ability. He could sense and manipulate waves on the microwave section of the Electromagnetic spectrum, including ultra-high frequency, super high frequency, and extremely high frequency waves. This allowed him to interface with television broadcasts, walkie-talkies, cell phones, GPS, and later line-of-sight communication such as wireless internet and near field communication. He could push the boundaries and adjust or redirect these signals beyond their normal range. He was always a curious boy, and liked to listen in on private conversations. He never worked in espionage, or sold information to the highest bidder. He just liked to know that he knew things that others wouldn’t want him to know, and would do him harm if they knew that he knew. But this early Bellevue member was desperate. A friend of theirs had unknowingly become father to an extremely powerful Generation Two, and the infant needed to be protected from the world. Much of Brazil was about as remote as one could get in the world, and Paulo was about as random an anomaly as one could find. He agreed to raise the child in secret. He remembered learning of a small tribal village that had experienced minimal outside contact from his life in the small town, and so he took her there. He kept that baby safe, teaching her to control her abilities, and to make her own choices for what she wanted to do with them. Many years later, after hearing of her birth father’s death, this girl took to the skies and became a superhero to honor his legacy. She traveled to Bellevue and secretly absorbed the abilities of all anomalies she could find. She then went around the world, mostly in South America, saving everyone she could, and capturing criminals. Bellevue officially contacted the two of them not long after, and discussed their options. Paulo ended up holding on to his connection with his adopted daughter, and ran communications for operatives in South America, much like Radimir in Europe. His ability was perfect for it.

Microstory 79: Pot

I am a pot. I am part of a set of pots and pans, created in the late 1970s. We were a wedding gift to a couple of crazy kids getting married at 18. We were a staple of their lives for years. We helped cook their children’s favorite meals. We were there when the daughter was learning the art of spaghetti. The son occasionally helped by stirring the stew in one of us. When the daughter was old enough to move out, she took us with her. And we continued to provide food and joy for her and her friends. When she moved out of the country, we were passed to the son who had just found an apartment of his own. And he did not cook. We listened from under the oven that he used as counter space to the breeze released as the freezer opened, and as the buttons on the microwave beeped and booped. We heard the ding of the toaster oven. And we heard the crinkle of fast food sacks. But we were never used. We had lost our purpose. Months later, the son was moving to a new place. He cleared out the entire unit; in the deep closet, under the bathroom sink, and even the storage space in the garage. But he left us there. He had forgotten about us. A cleanup crew came in to prepare the unit for someone else to use. A young worker, just recently married, found us simple pots and pans and took us back home with him. So now we continue our purpose, providing happiness and satisfaction to a new loving and growing family.