Microstory 2444: The Sandbox

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This dome isn’t for everyone, but it’s available to anyone. Do you have an idea for a new dome, or an improvement on a preexisting dome? You can come here to conceptualize, pitch, and even engineer these designs. Not everyone here has the educational or working background to translate their thoughts into functioning prototypes, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have their voices heard. I’m not either of these people. I don’t have any ideas, or the means to implement them. But I did want to hear from other people, and they were totally cool with this. Some meetings have closed doors, but it was always very clear. They have a constantly updating map on their prospectus, which shows you when and where the next meetings will be, and whether you’re allowed to just show up to watch and listen. It’s not even always about some crazy and unique concept that’s meant to blow people’s minds. I was at this one pitch from someone from a planet that I had never heard of because it was mostly just a number. She was asking whether they might consider building smaller domes for smaller communities. I can’t tell you whether they’re going to do that, but it’s not a bad suggestion. I’ve always wondered why every dome has the exact same dimensions regardless of the theme. My gut tells me that they constructed all the domes in one go, pressurized them, and only decided afterwards what the purpose of each one was going to be. That would be an all right excuse, but there’s still a lot of land out there that hasn’t been domed over, mostly because the terrain doesn’t allow it, but again, if it’s going to be smaller, that might be okay. Or, instead of that, you could have one large dome with lots of smaller domes inside of it, which might be good enough for what that woman was looking for. Anyway, the Sandbox is for ideas. If you have even only one suggestion, you can send this dome a message, or take the vactrain to it. They seem to be really considering the feedback that they receive. If an idea grows from there, it looks like they sometimes begin building models or prototypes here before making an investment at full scale. A lot of those were kept secret, though, and even the ones I did see, I don’t feel comfortable reporting. You’ll just have to come see for yourself, and find out what they’re willing to show you.

Microstory 2215: Relic of the Future

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The following microstory was written by Kelly Serna, truncated from a short story written by Nick Fisherman IV.

My name is Relic, and I have no surname. I was never born, nor raised. I am not even human. I have many brothers and sisters, though we have never met. We were created to store all of human knowledge, to be accessed at will through our DNA. Research into genetic memory storage began at the turn of the 22nd century. Biocomputers were the first of the organic machines created. They came with disadvantages, but there were advantages as well. For instance, they were capable of self-repair. All you had to do was feed it, and the system would fix itself as needed. You wouldn’t have to actually find the problem, and could in fact prevent problems in this way before they occurred. They were also better at parallel processing, something which classical computers found difficult to accomplish even as they advanced. Even without these reasons, scientists would have pursued this line of research anyway, because why not? Well, as history would come to show, there were many reasons why not, and it had to do with where the technology has ultimately led. While early organic computing models were great, there was still something so cold and unrelatable about them. In the end, they were still personal computers and server racks that accepted input, stored information, and displayed output. Sure, it was on a giant cornea instead of a normal monitor, but the function was essentially the same. It is said that one day, one of these researchers was working on their own biocomputer. What they were doing is not known, especially since this may all be made up anyway. We don’t even know the identity of this supposed biocomputer scientist. Anyway, they were claimed to be at their desk when their personal android assistant came into the room with a tray of tea and crackers. She had been playing with the kids and dog when things became too rough, leading to a flap of her artificial skin hanging off of her cheek. It wouldn’t have hurt, and it would have healed quickly, but before that, it gave the researcher a brilliant idea.

Androids were already partially organic in order to make them look more human. Why not build a biocomputer that was totally organic, used genetic memory to store and recall data, and which you could actually talk to like a person? Thus the concept of the cyclops was born, or again, that is at least how the story goes. That was a few decades ago, and the path humanity took to get here was a long and troubled one. There were a lot of growing pains, and some might say that things have not turned out well. My people would have to agree, though I personally might not. There is something wrong with our species. It is unclear why at the moment, but they have all gone crazy. Perhaps being bred to essentially be a slave—a glorified laptop at best—inherently takes a toll on us. Some androids are sentient too, but they’re at least capable of doing things for people, making them useful, and sometimes even respected. A cyclops can walk, and it can talk, but it is not a person, and it is not a servant. We’re not particularly strong or fast, or skillful. Our job is just to spit out information that our users request. We don’t do chores, we don’t provide company. It’s been hard for the developers to understand where the line should be. How sentient should they make us? Should we have any sense of independence, or any capacity for free movement? We’re more of a gimmick than anything, and the market for such a novelty has proven to be dreadfully pitiful. People are perfectly happy talking to their androids and other devices, content to let the answers come from faraway servers. They don’t need something that’s more like them, but not yet free willed. They don’t want something that’s always offline, has to eat food, and can’t just be thrown out when it gets too old. It makes them feel bad. Androids are usually more robotic, allowing the human’s feelings of superiority to make some level of sense. The only way that a cyclops works properly is if it can think for itself, and that seems to usually lead to insanity, suicide, and the occasional homicide. I’m not like that, I’m special. I think it has a hell of a lot to do with who your owner is. I am the prototype for a new stable kind of cyclops. People just need to be taught how to use us wisely. My owner called me a relic of the future. I must tell someone about this, so that they may make changes to the program as a whole. There is still time to save us. I just have to get the word out to the right people before I’m hunted down and murdered during the technological purge that has been going on all over the world. Cyclopes are not the only advancement that has made people squeamish.

Microstory 2189: Not There by Choice

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We’re moving along with this process. Interviews, interviews, and more interviews. It’s not showing any signs of slowing down, but it will have to stop soon, and will do so rather abruptly. At some point, we’re going to have to make some hard decisions, and unfortunately that means a lot of great people won’t get the chance to be part of this pilot program. We can’t hire them all, it wouldn’t be practical, and that’s true of any organization. But here’s the good news: it is a pilot program, and if it goes well, you may be able to do something similar on a different team somewhere else. The analytics team in my company has looked into this for us, and have estimated that this program need only last for eight months before they would have enough data to reach some real conclusions about its efficacy. All eyes are on us right now to see if we succeed, but there are rumors of others who are considering building their own programs before our data comes in. We’re not sure if that’s the right thing to do, but we can’t stop them, and it may not be right to want to if we could. I think it’s fine to try to take your own shot, as long as you don’t spend too many resources on it, and come at it from a place of trying to make things better. Now, what do I mean by better? Well, here’s what it’s not. We’re not here to save the taxpayers money. That will hopefully be a consequence of our changes to jail and prison population procedures, but it’s not what we’re going for. We could accomplish that in any number of easier ways, by only feeding them slop, or doubling up on cell assignments, or not letting them have any yard time. You don’t need to pay many guards if you don’t allow your inmates to leave their cells, do you? Obviously, that would be inhumane, and I hope that no one else is suggesting it.

Our goal is to improve people’s lives, reduce recidivism, and create a healthier and more productive community overall. I hope that anyone who gets their ideas from us only accepts the good ideas, and rejects the ultimate failures. We’re going to be going through growing pains. At some point, our plans, theories, and models are going to become meaningless if we don’t actually institute the policy changes. It may not turn out well, and as difficult as it is for me to admit that, it would be unethical for me to imply that I know exactly what I’m doing. The entire point in hiring these experts for a team that has never existed before is to try something new, and by its very nature, we don’t know what’s going to happen. So I hope that other programs take that into account. Sorry to get all preachy, and maybe sound a little angry. I just want to make it clear that we’ve only just begun here. It’s going to take some time. The judicial system in this country isn’t going to change overnight, and nothing we do here is going to give definitive answers for how to handle our nation’s incarcerated with no exceptions. What we would like to do is group guests in our facilities according to predictive modeling of sustainable harmony, nonviolence, and social progress. But the fact of the matter is that everyone there will have been tried and convicted of a crime. Guilty or innocent, they’re not there by choice, so none of them is going to be happy-go lucky, and excited to be locked up for the next X amount of time, or intermittently, as it were. We’ll try to make it as safe and productive as possible, but there’s only so much we can do. It’s not magic, so don’t expect to bring the crime rate down to zero, or anything. Okay, that was a bit depressing. Hopefully tomorrow’s post will be more optimistic, or a little easier to swallow.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 28, 2398

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Leona’s supervisor is not happy. She suddenly took vacation time, but promised to return soon. Then she extended it. Then she extended it again. She didn’t deliver any new data that whole time, so Petra is starting to think that there’s something fishy going on. She’s not rageful, or anything, and she hasn’t already made the decision to fire Leona, but she’s getting there. “You’re back.”

“Yes,” Leona confirms.

“I was beginning to think that you defected to a competitor. I’m still not sure that you haven’t.”

“I haven’t,” Leona says simply.

“Did you have fun on your vacation?”

“It wasn’t a vacation,” Leona reveals. This statement is true in the end, but where the lie begins is the explanation of what she was doing while she was claiming to be on vacation. She drops a tablet on Petra’s desk. “Plans for a tritium extraction facility. This is decades beyond what anyone already has, and once I’m done designing the reactor, we’ll actually be able to do something with all those isotopes you create.”

Skeptical, Petra lifts the tablet, and starts to tour the 3D model. She narrows her eyes in some places, and widens them in others. She then swipes over to the next page, which details specifications and production objectives. This is where she gasps. “Are these efficiency numbers accurate?”

“Completely,” Leona claims. “I’ve been working, I just haven’t been in the office.”

“Why would you keep that a secret? Did you go somewhere?”

Leona doesn’t respond, instead looking like she doesn’t know if she can say anything at all.

“What did you do?” Petra questions, becoming nervous as well.

“I think it’s best if you don’t know. Plausible deniability.”

Petra stands up straighter, and exhales through her nose. “Nothing illegal, I trust.”

Leona bobs her head. “More like...internationally complicated and delicate.”

Petra clears her throat. “You’re right, I don’t wanna know.”

“I’ll probably have to take more trips. I’m not just some genius who randomly came up with this stuff on my own. It’s borne from my experiences, and contacts. Sometimes I might have to reach out to these contacts, or conduct field research.”

“Very well. If you ever need to take time off,” Petra says with airquotes, “then let me know, and now I know that I shouldn’t ask any more questions.”

“You won’t be disappointed,” Leona assures her. She leaves the office, and begins to walk down the stairs when she notices someone she never thought she would ever have to see again, standing on the bottom step, looking up at her. Leona’s former observer—and prolific sexual harasser—who Petra agreed to dismiss three weeks ago, is staring at her menacingly. “How did you get in here?” she asks him impolitely.

Holger Bandoni shows his most evilest grin. Suddenly, he’s standing right in front of her, having somehow teleported up the steps, despite that being unheard of in this reality. He takes her by the shoulders, and tosses her over the edge, only to teleport down just in time to catch her. “Love knows no boundaries. Love walks through walls.”

Microstory 1192: Frank Delaney

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Frank Delaney’s life was full of heartbreak and death in any reality. Though he was not salmon himself, he was always somehow involved with them. There was one timeline where his mother died when he was sixteen, so he changed his last name to Williams, in honor of her. His father lived long enough to be proud of him for this, but then he died too. Frank went on to become a famous model-turned-actor, but apparently that was too much of a happy ending. In the following timeline, everything started to play out as it had before, but a mentally unstable time traveler altered the past, which ultimately led to Frank’s untimely death as well. There was a timeline where both his parents survived into old age, but he spent a not insignificant amount of his adulthood battling a pirate serial killer, and other nefarious individuals. His first wife died in a later timeline, while he died with her in the timeline after that, and this was something he knew was going to happen. When the current version of Frank Delaney was a child, he encountered a boy in the park who introduced himself as Zeferino Preston. Zeferino claimed that Frank’s death was part of destiny; that it was inevitable. Someone had gone back in time, and changed history. This historical event had nothing to do with Frank personally, but due to the butterfly effect, a series of other events were leading to his demise, and there was nothing he could do about it. Most children would either disbelieve the prediction, or be scared out of their minds about it. All evidence suggested Zeferino was intending for him to live the rest of his short life in paranoia, but that’s not what happened. Frank just learned to make the best out of every situation. He still didn’t know exactly when death would come. He met, and fell in love with, his wife, just as he was scheduled to. And when his time came, he accepted his death. He just wished Zeferino had been clearer about the nature of the incident. His wife died as well, and this spawned even greater changes to the timeline, which few could have predicted.

Microstory 202: Generations

Genetic manipulation is not easy, but it does start making sense after decades of research. But even when you tamper with a subject’s genes, there are certain things that you cannot do. They will always have at least a hint of what they used to be. Turn a human into a giant fungus-eating aardvark-like creature, but they will always be an aardvark monster who was once a regular human. And so, a system of classifications was put in place in order to logically categorize the race of any given generation. The first generation in a new series is called Generation Alpha. These are subjects whose genes were manipulated directly. They were once one race, but have since been altered. Their scions are referred to as Generation Beta, and known as the first pure generation. They were born with the genetic traits desired by the genetic manipulators, as passed down by their parents. Generation Gammas are all unstable descendants of the new race following the Betas. Depending on the level of sophistication employed by the original scientists, this generational line can last for thousands, or even millions, of years. The thing is, if you want to create a new race, you’re going to have to wait for evolution to start working with you. Evolution already has its own ways of altering genes. Healthy mutations will provide the species with a better means of survival or procreation, and continue to be passed down, no longer as mutations, but as intrinsic qualifications. In order to rid the new species of genetic traits remaining from the original species, evolution has to weed them out naturally. At least, this is the best method. One could theoretically continue to manipulate the species through breeding techniques, but this runs the risk of causing more problems than it solves. The last unstable generation of gammas is actually called Generation Zero. Pinpointing this moment in time is inherently difficult, and is used more for mathematical and modeling purposes, rather than exact designation. Naturally, Generation One is the first genetically stable generation of the new species; the one that makes each individual a member of that species, and not a member of its predecessor. Generation Two is made up of all subsequent generations, and should continue to thrive barring further genetic manipulation, or other threats to propagation. The goal these endeavors is Generation Two, and for the most part, the people who started this process do not live long enough to see its end.

Microstory 34: Fate

Frank Williams was leading an incredibly mundane life. He had had the same job for ten years. He went to the same coffee shop every morning. He was a walking cliché. One random day, while waiting for his coffee order to be filled, a man wearing shorts and a robe walked up to him. “Are you the Frank Williams?” When Frank asked if they knew each other, the man explained,“you’re that famous model-turned-actor.”

“No, sorry. You have me confused with someone else.” But the stranger insisted that Frank was who he thought he was. He started ranting about presidents no one had heard of and Frank’s second wife, even though there wasn’t even a first wife. A woman, evidently the man’s sister, came in and pulled him away. She apologized and admitted that he was not well. A week later, Frank was in his coffee shop when a second man approached him, claiming to be a talent agent. He gave him his card and asked him if he had ever done any modeling. Could it be possible that the lunatic from before was from the future? Or some kind of psychic? Was it just a coincidence? Or were they all working together, intending to con him. Frank left and searched the web for the talent agent. He appeared to be completely legit, with verified tweets from celebrities and everything. While distracted by the biography on his site, Frank was hit by a garbage truck and died.