Microstory 810: Driverless

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I woke up in a bed, but it wasn’t my bed. I thought I was in the middle of an earthquake, but when I tried to sit up and take a look, the whole room turned. No, quakes don’t move like that, so something else was going on. I rubbed my eyes and got a better look around. It wasn’t a room at all, but a van, completely hollowed out, and filled to the edges with this van shaped mattress. Despite having no apparent driver, it was rolling down the highway. I looked out the deeply tinted windows, where it was either early morning, or late evening. Other cars were around, but none of them was towing this van, so it was probably being operated remotely. Why anyone would kidnap me would be a hard enough question to resolve, but trying to figure out what their reasoning behind putting me in this thing was beyond unanswerable. Of course, I tried opening the doors, but the handles were removed, and they wouldn’t budge without them. I took off my shirt and used it to protect my fist as I pounded on the glass, but that wasn’t doing any good. I might have tried a shoe, but they had taken those as well. I crawled up to the front to at least see where I was going. As soon as I drew close enough, a blue light lit up the windshield, and a soothing voice alerted me to the fact that autopilot had been disengaged. The van immediately started swerving, so I reflexively willed it to straighten back out, which it eventually did. We were coming up on one of the busiest stretches of the highway, so I wished the van would exit to the side streets, and as if the vehicle could read my mind, it exited. Or maybe that was exactly what it was doing; reading my mind.

I continued to think about where I wanted to go, and the van would comply. When it was necessary to stop for a light, or stop sign, or slow traffic, it didn’t seem to be planning on reacting properly, unless I deliberately thought that it should. Yes, it was quite clear after several tests that the van was responding to my instructions telepathically. The most pressing question now was where was I even going? I realized I could make these minor adjustments to my route, but ultimately, I was heading in one direction. The van was still working somewhat autonomously, and was apparently programmed to take me somewhere specific, whether I wanted it to or not. I kept trying to get it to just take me back home, but nothing was working. After hours of this, I was getting bored, having resigned myself to the fact that I wasn’t really in any control, even though I still had to keep my eyes on the road. Finally, it pulled into an abandoned drive-in movie theatre. There were dozens of other vans already there, and a few more coming in behind me. Once everyone was apparently there, all of our doors opened at the same time, revealing that no one else knew what was going on either. The movie screen turned blue, and radiated different shades as the voice on the speakers spoke. “Welcome to your new home. Everything you need can be found in your gloveboxes. No one may enter your van without your permission. But have no fear, there are no criminals in this new world. The only rule...is that you must remain here forever. To leave means death.” Then everything outside of the parking lot disappeared, as if the world had fallen out of orbit, leaving only us standing.

Microstory 798: Tax Card

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During the 200-year period of chaos, when the galaxy was being claimed by all sorts of people with enough money to reach new planets, tax rates were unpredictable. If you wanted to leave the homeworld, you had to suffer whatever policies the founder of the planet you chose had decided to impose upon you. When the Astral Military Force was established, however, the planets began to conform to certain principles. As time progressed, it became harder and harder to push laws that were significantly different than competitor worlds, because citizens would simply leave for better lives. Across the next few centuries, competition essentially disappeared, with no world having any real advantage over another. Populations leveled off, and planets began to fall into one of a few classes. The sixteen original colonies became hubs for interstellar trade, and bellwethers for best practice, and though there were generally more people on the surface of the primaries at any one time, their respective permanent populations were not much than any other. Reservations were military installments, but all other worlds—secondary, tertiary, quaternary, quinary, and constellation class systems—maintained relatively constant populations, with only slight decreases down the spectrum. Soon after the primary worlds adopted a tax program based on mandatory AMF levies, other worlds followed suit. Whereas most nations on the homeworld long ago used some kind of income-based tax bracketing system, the new worlds utilized a flat tax method. All citizens of the galaxy were required to pay one hundred points to the Astral Military Force, so that the organization could regulate interstellar travel, and protect everyone from war travesties. One hundred additional points were allocated to each planet’s global government, while another third was designated for local governments. While earlier tax plans only required payment from working adults, it was decided that every living citizen was attached to three hundred tax points. Parents usually took responsibility for this burden for their children, though there have been cases of abandonment in order to absolve these parents of the obligation. It is not technically illegal if certain procedures are followed. All in all, it wasn’t the most perfect system conceivable, but it seemed to work for the galaxy...until the galaxy fell, and the remaining leaders turned towards a more every world for itself mentality.

Microstory 628: Scourge of the Carriers

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Over the centuries, and back in the history of the old worlds, science and medicine has progressed greatly. We’ve not cured every disease in the universe, but scientists believe we’ve knocked a significant portion of them out. The problem is that, upon reaching a new planet, there is always a new host of dangers. There’s a certain way to approach a world that has not yet been experienced. Surveys, tests, and experiments are required if anyone plans on staying there for an extended period of time. Each time we come across a new world, we risk unleashing a disease that has never been seen before. This happens all the time, though, and the people who normally settle new worlds have gotten pretty good at handling whatever it throws at them. This is not what happened here. Not long after the replacement for Eido Feivel, Agantai Bauriter left her homeplanet of Haplen, an infestation began spreading across the surface. Some researchers now believe these pesky creatures—which live in their victim’s hair, and overheat their head—to have been surviving in some kind of dormant state deep under the ground. They were supposedly accidentally released into the population, carrying with them all kinds of previously unknown diseases. This is something many never thought would happen on a central world like Haplen. It’s no surprise to those of us who understand, believe in, and trust the taikon, though. The Book of Light predicts an inexplicable scourge of a carrier species that has not existed before. We do not believe they came from the ground, but that nature created them from nothing. It cannot be a coincidence that they surfaced at the perfect time to match with the taikon order, and no one will be able to convince us otherwise. As for the diseases themselves, they were quickly eradicated. Only a few hundred people died first. The scripture does not say what kind of people would be attacked, or whether it would be good or bad, but it turned out to have been rather irrelevant.

Microstory 42: New World

A few months ago, while I was on a road trip, the world ended. I won’t get into specifics about what went wrong, but it happened quickly, and very few of us survived. I’ve encountered a few camps in the area. The majority of them were fine people. Post-apocalyptic films like to show how twisted people will become in dire situations, but most of us are just trying to find our way through this new world. After feeling like I’ve exhausted the resources, I get into the fastest car I can find, and leave. So I’m driving down the highway, going at least 90 miles per hour, when I hear and see flashing lights behind me. Guy doesn’t know who he’s messing with. I speed up and just try to ignore him. He matches my speed and gets on the intercom, instructing me to pull over. I can’t keep this up. I’ll eventually need to get some gas, so I concede to his demands and check my weapons. Then I step out and point my shotgun towards him. He gets out and protects himself with his car door, shouting at me to put down my weapon. I don’t, of course, so he calls back-up. More police cruisers arrive. What a bunch of dishonorable people, pretending to be law enforcement officers in a time like this. Outnumbered, I give in and disarm myself. The first “cop” stuffs me in the back of his car and drives me into the city where I see tons of other cars driving around; far more than there should be, statistically speaking. All I can think is, “dawut?” After much confusion in the interrogation room, I’m finally able to convey to them that it doesn’t matter how fast I was going, because the world’s ended. They look at me like I’m crazy, and end up showing me a park where children are playing without a care in the world.

Another cop finally figures out where the misunderstanding was coming from. “Oh, no,” he says. “The world hasn’t ended. That’s just what Independence, Missouri looks like.”