Microstory 952: Systems Thinking

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You might be asking Google right now, what is systems thinking? Well, tab back over here, because I’m going to tell you myself. Throughout the history of problem-solving, people have primarily used a process of analysis in order to understand how something works. What you do when you analyze something is break it down into its constituent parts, and try to figure out how those work. You break it down as as much as possible, until breaking them any further would lead to fractions. For instance, let’s say you’re trying to learn about computer hardware. You would open up the casing, and start removing the parts. You have the hard drive, the memory cards, processor, logic board, etc. A hard drive is made up of the platters, circuits, spindle, etc. The processor is made of God knows what, and so on. Once you understand how each part operates independently, you would theoretically know everything you could about the whole computer. But this isn’t true, is it? Because a memory card isn’t useful unless you can process the information. A hard drive might as well have no data unless you can read it. You won’t be able to change anything about the information without input/output devices, and nothing in a computer matters one lick unless you can interface with it using some kind of monitor. The lesson here is that the entire computer, and how all parts work together, is what gives us the best understanding of the topic. One of the most famous explanations for this comes from a leader in the field of systems thinking named Russell Ackoff. He puts forth the hypothetical of trying to build the absolute best automobile in the world by taking the best individual parts from other vehicles. Maybe this one has the best pistons, and this other the best gas tank. The reality is that this is an impossible endeavor, because those parts wouldn’t fit together, because they were designed to fit in different respective cars.

I’m passionate about systems thinking, because of how interconnected all of my stories are. I’m not just telling all these little stories, and claiming that they take place within the same continuity. I have to understand how each one can impact the others, and the greater mythology. If I decide that Jane Doe from Story Y is the mother of John Smith from Story X—which I wrote first—then I have to remember that Jane Doe can’t die in her story, until she’s birthed her son. If in Story Z, I decide I want John Smith to have a younger brother named James, then I won’t be able to do it, unless I decide James was adopted, or John’s half brother. I spent years not releasing a single word from any of my stories so that I could build my world. I know how astral travel works, and where the astral planes come from. I know why the subspecies known as anomalies took longer to evolve than the ambers, and I know how it’s possible for someone to be born as both. I have a list of galaxies, their stars, and the planets revolving around them. I have a timeline that starts at the beginning of time, and ends at the end of it. Whenever I come up with something knew, I have to find a way to fit it into the preexisting mythos, and if that’s not possible, then I have to create a separate universe to allow its existence, or simply scrap the project. There is a place for analysis, but systems thinking is an overall superior technique for learning something. The best leaders have a working comprehension of their whole domain, which is what we need right now. If you want that too, then come these next two elections, #votethemout.

Microstory 591: Visitors Have Yet to Leave Ship

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Hundreds of years ago, our ancestors found a way to travel from their homeworld to this one. They didn’t necessarily have to. Sure, there was some water here, but not as much as there was on the eighth planet in the solar system, Aziïr...or on two of the moons of gas giant, Polavia. At the time, Keres was uninhabitable, but it had a lot of potential, and so they set about a journey to transform themselves into an interplanetary civilization. Over time, they were able to actually become an interstellar culture, but Keresites have generally remained here. The Great Flood brought this planet the greatest exodus humans have ever seen. We’re descended from those refugees. Since then, we have made this world beautiful. Gardens spread all across the surface, with new life being created by the Azi water. This is now our home. No one living today has ever been alive at the same time as anyone who was alive during The Great Exodus. Now there appears to be some kind of new possible exodus that we can’t explain. A massive black ship, large enough to blot out the sun, has arrived in our atmosphere. After coming out of the green simplex dimension, it has done absolutely nothing. We have attempted to communicate with it, and even tried to access the vessel, but have found no success. We don’t know if they are humans from an exoplanet, or aliens from another galaxy, or even our own descendants from the future. The fact is that we know nothing about them, and this has caused a stir amongst our populace. Already the government urges civilians to remain indoors. Every city has deployed an emergency fleet of armored vehicle drivers to deliver rations to every household. Please note that each and every household will be serviced by this network. Do not leave your residence without true necessity. Anyone with educational backgrounds in engineering, electronics, plex mechanics, physics, rocket surgery, anthropology, xenopology, linguistics, or related field is being asked to contact their local representative for the possibility of assisting with our exploration into this development. We still don’t understand what we’re dealing with here, but if Keresites work together, there’s nothing we can’t get through.

Microstory 584: Fairies Leave the Planet

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Around the same time that a group of scientists and SDS detectives were accidentally discovering the inner workings of faster-than-light travel, a transhumanistic woman named Morgan LeFay founded an organization. Archaeologists and evolutionary biologists have long known that the proof of evolution lies in the simple fact that humans are about two feet taller on average than our ancestors two million years ago. There are many advantages to an increase in height. Larger animals can often run faster (to an extent), reach to high-hanging fruit, and combat predators better. They also tend to live longer, while tiny species, like insects, burn bright and die young. Of course, in recent times, our evolution in this manner has had less to do with mutations and survival advantages, and more to do with sexual selection. That is, many humans seem to have decided they prefer taller partners, leaving our shorter brethren single, and unable to pass on their genes. The Fairy Institute, based in Wales, chose to focus their posthuman efforts in a very specific field. They have been looking for ways to make humans extremely tiny; about the size of a standard human’s hand. Why would they do this? Well, as stated above, their efforts began before the discovery of plex dimensional travel, and the fairies were interested in exploring the universe.

There are many advantages to a being tiny when attempting to cross the solar barrier, the most important being that a tiny human would take up very little space, and require fewer resources. A larger ship would require more fuel, most of it being allocated to propelling hunks of material, rather than just the passengers that matter. Though plex travel would theoretically render all this discussion meaningless, the Fairy Institute remained steadfast in their belief. In fact, LeFay is quoted as saying, “the need for this technology is more important than it ever has been. We have an opportunity here, and I won’t pass it up. I am not satisfied with just going to the next galaxy over.” The fairies continued their work, perfecting consciousness transference, while designing the perfect new bodies. They did this in secret, revealing only vague and general information to the public. Earlier today, they held a press conference in the countryside to announce their new developments, but Morgan LeFay never came on stage. Nor did anyone else. Journalists sat in their seats, waiting patiently for the conference to begin. Suddenly the curtain fell, as if broken. It revealed a metallic object, about the size of an average land vehicle, not large enough for more than just a handful of people. It was shaped like a kidney bean, and smooth, with no evidence of any seams. It was presumably entered and exited via astral tunneling. After a few more moments of suspension, the beanship disappeared in astral blue. Space agencies around the world would later confirm that it exited the blue dimension halfway between the planet and our moon, then entered the orange plex, never to be seen or heard from again. Meanwhile, journalists remained in their seats, unsure whether anything else was going to happen. A projector rose from the stage and turned itself on. A recording of Morgan LeFay’s final message to humanity began playing:

Children of C, we thank you for your hospitality. You have given us shelter, technology, and inspiration. We will never forget you, but you will never see us again. We believe that we are seeking the answer to the most important question in the universe, which is, what even is the universe? We are ultimately sending our vessel to the highest dimension possible; one that no one in the world has so much as imagined before. This will allow us to travel to the far reaches of the observable universe in a matter of years. However, we are not stopping there. We will keep going, and we will keep going until we’ve reached our final destination. One day, perhaps in thousands of years, we will hopefully land on this rock once more. Like famous explorer Merrianne Derringer, who’s most known for being the first person to circumnavigate the planet, our intention is to circle the cosmos. We are attempting to find out if this universe is flat, or if it is closed. We may never return. We may never find home, nor may we find anything of note out there, but we’re going anyway. Wish us luck. Again, thank you for everything.

Microstory 488: Inventor

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Like I said with the last one, some of these titles will be more literal. The Inventor is one of these. If ever something needs to be repaired, or built on the fly, she is your girl. She seems to know more about what’s going on than she lets on, frequently dropping hints as if under the assumption that people already know what she knows. She needs others to ground her so that she does not abandon a project in excitement for another one. Because of this, her workspace includes a number of half-done inventions that she finally finishes and uses later, but only when and if the need arises. She tends to reject traditionalism, preferring instead to look for new, improved, and especially interesting, ways of getting things done. She has a goal towards universal efficiency. Even if she doesn’t actually operate like this herself—often jumping into new projects without any sort of planning stage—her creations are designed to ultimately increase the end user’s speed and accuracy. Others like her for her ability to both be social while recognizing that not everyone is like her, but also know her to be absent-minded. The longer her friends know her, the more they accept her quirks, and the more they love her for them. She has magnus degrees in astrophysics, quantum dynamics, plex mechanics, radionics, and engineering, as well as a sub-magnus degree in matterology. She has studied a plethora of other subjects on her own time too without ever bothering to earn formal recognition for them.

Microstory 49*: Excerpt from Crusade

“All right, basic plex mechanics; the astral planes are full of matter. They’re full of matter because they exist in compressed space. Now, the lower the dimension, the more compressed it is, which is why traveling across a single planet is exponentially faster than flying between stars. Why is it faster, you ask? Why is more compression better? Well, you see, it all has to do with gravity. Gravity holds us in place. It attaches things together. People to planets, planets to suns, suns together, moving around a galaxy. It’s all about attraction. But thanks to a little human ingenuity, we have ways of subverting that gravity. But we can’t subvert it if it’s not there, or there’s not enough, which is why faster-than-light travel within empty space is all but impossible. These compressed astral planes, however, change all that.

“Once an astral collimator transmits a vessel into a tunnel inside astral space, we use our gravity manipulators to counteract the effects of the gravity from the proverbial astral walls and slide right through. The better we are able to manipulate the gravity, the faster we go. But it’s not instant. It’s never instant. Enter, astral snappers. Though still not instant, they get you about as close as you’re ever gonna get. They form a wedge of astral space, thereby increasing their gravitational pull which we then reverse from one direction and harness from the other to use to our advantage. In other words, the snappers temporarily close the tunnel behind us and in front of us, giving us more to work with. What does this mean, you ask? It means we go faster; much faster. Again, not instant, but pretty damn close. Instead of hours, we could potentially reach another planet in a matter of minutes.

“This, my friends, is what solidifies our status as the most powerful group of people in the galaxy.”