Microstory 2504: Regret Seer

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I can see your regrets, and show you your potential. Before Landis Tipton received the gifts of The Ten Vulnerabilities, I was responsible for two of them. There were five of us in total, and we chose to use our abilities very differently. We were nomads, traveling all over the world—mostly the North American continent—helping people one at a time. We searched for those who were at their lowest, who needed the most help. I was on the frontlines of this mission. Regret is one of the strongest emotions that a person can have, and sight is one of the strongest senses. It was easier for me to pick our targets out of a crowd without having to wait for them to do something to draw attention to themselves. I could just see it. Once I found a candidate, the five of us would explore this person’s life further. We could strategize about what we could do to help this person live a better life. The way we saw it, our tasks were helping the whole world exponentially. Everyone we supported would go out, and pay it forward. With a brand new lease on life, they would find it in their hearts to help others in their own ways. Honestly, we didn’t think to focus on only one of the Vulnerabilities, like Landis has. We were drawn to one another, and it felt like we absolutely had to work together in order to fulfill our destinies. Had we only let the Health Smeller do her thing, what work would have been left for the rest of us? We just had a different perspective. And fittingly enough, I regret nothing. And you know that’s true, because if I did, I would be able to tell, and I’m comfortable enough with my own vulnerabilities that I would be honest about it. I can’t bring my own regrets to the surface, but I’m very good at recognizing them. We did our own thing our own way, and I still think we improved the world. We didn’t always hit it out of the park. There is a reason why we don’t have the gifts anymore, and why we had to transfer them to Landis. But I don’t like to talk about it, because that is something that I regret. Maybe I’m not as brave as I believe. I should be able to talk about what happened. Unfortunately, while I helped countless others see their potential, I could never see my own. But again, the gifts belong to Landis now, and while it saddens me a little that my Vulnerability senses aren’t being used, I’m proud of the work that he’s been doing. That’s why I chose him in the first place. I didn’t know exactly what he was going to do, but I knew that he was on his way to reaching greatness.

Microstory 2459: Savanna Land

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Right now, this is one of the least impressive domes on the planet. I guess I can’t say that. It’s not like I’ve seen every single other one. Then again, people have been making these kinds of statements forever, like when a food blog would rate the best restaurants in the country, as if they have any semblance of a comprehensive authority regarding anything close to what they’re claiming. All I mean is that there aren’t any animals here yet. For this one, I don’t think that they want to get by with lifelike robots. I think they want it to be really authentic, and that’s going to take some time. Still, it’s not called Savanna Animal Kingdom. They opened it, because it currently already exemplifies exactly what it says on the tin. There’s a ton of grass, patches of barren dirt, and very few trees. I didn’t see many other people while I was there, and the ones who did show up didn’t stay very long either, because we all saw the same thing. Potential. But not completion. The vehicles are ready, which is an interesting thing, but the real interesting part about that is how big they are. Back on Earth (before we stopped having to drive) roads had to be sort of standardized. It would have been ridiculous if French roads were 10 meters wide and Spanish roads were 50 meters wide. They developed organically, initially based on the size of people, then of horses, then horse-drawn carriages, and so on, and so forth. They got bigger, but you could still still see the natural origins. Even when they broke new ground, like I was saying, the cars were the size they were, and they weren’t going to make special cars for some hip, new region. I’m talking a lot about vehicles, because I can’t talk about the lions or the elephants yet. The point is, we’re starting from scratch here, and not limiting ourselves to tradition. Some of the vehicles are big, with giant observation bubbles which allow for 360 degree viewing all around. Man, it’ll be great in 15 or 20 years when this place is populated, and there are actually some cool things to see, but until then, we can literally only imagine.

Microstory 1225: Irving Hummel

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Irving Hummel was a reality corruptor, but not an exceptionally good one. His ability to alter reality was fairly limited, and often only significantly impacted his own life. If he wasn’t careful, any changes he made could quite easily revert, and he might not be strong enough to change them back to the way he wanted. He wasn’t that great of a person in general, and the power he wielded only made him worse. He was by no means evil, but he lacked both drive and skill. Ambition wasn’t a problem, but that and drive are not the same concept. He wanted to do great things, and to be recognized for them, but he didn’t want to put in the effort. And so, thanks to his time power, he forced the world to become what he needed in order to realize his dreams. He barely scraped by at the police academy, but he did make it, and he didn’t do anything bad to get there. Unfortunately, he just couldn’t reach any of his goals beyond that. He was stuck as a regular uniformed officer, and it wasn’t looking like things were going to get better, so he changed them. He arbitrarily turned himself into a Sergeant. It was no Lieutenant, or Captain, but it was kind of the best he could muster. You see, the modifications he could make to reality had to have some kind of plausible basis. He couldn’t just make himself king of the world, because no world would accept him as such. He did have the potential to become a sergeant, if only he worked harder at it, but that would always be the best he could do. The problem—though he wasn’t sure he saw it like this—was that his corruptions also had an effect on his personality. He couldn’t just slip his mind into his new life. He had to become the person he would be if he had done it in a more conventional way, and apparently, the more conventional way led him down a somewhat darker path.

Sergeant Hummel was a lot grumpier and harder to get along with than Officer Hummel. He was snarky, and short with people, and constantly pushed them away. Even though he could still remember his life before the corruption, he couldn’t help but adopt this new behavior, and start treating people poorly. There was only one person he knew who could see through him. A colleague of his evidently had his own temporal power. It was immediately clear to Irving that Detective Bran could see the discrepancies between the two conflicting realities. He didn’t want to let on that he was not only fully aware of the changes as well, but that he was responsible for them. Well, he didn’t think he was responsible for all the changes. Bran was regularly concerned about the town literally shrinking in size with no logical explanation, but Irving had no clue what he was talking about, and couldn’t believe that it had anything to do with him. He just kept doing his thing; transforming himself into what he hoped was a better person, eventually faltering, and going back to the way he was, and then trying again once he was strong enough. In the end, none of his efforts mattered. Irving was in the wrong part of town when the phenomenon Bran kept talking about swallowed it up. Presumably because of his own ability, Irving managed to survive the trip through the portal, and landed on a different planet entirely, as one of very few who weren’t torn apart, and scattered throughout time. Now what was he going to do? There was no reality where this dead world wasn’t a terrible place to live.