Microstory 779: Duck

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My name is Cora Graves, and I have one question for you. Have you ever wanted to be a duck? It may sound like an absurd question, but it’s a perfect example to illustrate my point. Ducks are magnificent, and versatile creatures. They can fly, they can swim on the surface, or underwater, and they can walk (read: waddle) on land. When making its nest, a mother-to-be duck will pluck out her own feathers, instead of just using material she finds around. Have you ever thought about pulling out your hair and making a crib? Now you’re all wondering, why am I even bringing this up? I want you take a look at this...can we zoom in on my hand? This is my personal assistant, Tilina. Say hello, Tilina. Tilina is presently about six deam tall, but she didn’t start out this way. She was born as an average-sized human, but we transferred her consciousness to this substrate, which we are calling her anchor. I know, she looks a hell of a lot like a fairy, and that’s for good reason. We modeled this product on the fairies, because they had the right idea about shrinking. This is what brings us back down to my question about becoming a duck. With an anchor, you could do exactly that, or you could become anything else you can imagine. As long as we have the necessary parameters, we can build you virtually any new body, and insert you into it via your anchor. No longer will you need these standard human forms. You will be the anchor, and the anchor will let you become anything else. Well...anything larger than the anchor, that is. We could upload your consciousness into a pea-sized object, but then you would have to rely on someone else to place you into any new form. Should something go wrong, forcing you to abandon your current form, you’re gonna want to be able to fly away and find another one, so the fairy form is the best option for an anchor; not too large, not too small, for most forms. Unless you wanna be a bug. I want to make it clear that you would not be driving your form, using your anchor’s motor components. Once the anchor is inserted, your consciousness will be integrated into the neural construct, allowing you to feel yourself as that animal, mythological creature, or hey, maybe even an airplane, if you’d like. Ladies and gentlemen, we were born with limits. We’re too slow, too short, too grounded. I’m here to tell you that those constraints no longer exist. Now you can realize your dreams, and become literally anything you want, be that the mighty coleobeast, or the humble duck.

Microstory 778: Pothook

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There are several moves in boxing, most of which were created during the invention of the sport itself, for they were really just formalizations of moves that already existed for real hand-to-hand combat. Traditionally, boxing has been a male sport, with women generally gravitating towards the various forms of martial arts. One notable boxer was a woman named Siveda Gualerni. She was large and muscular, weighing into bargeweight when she was only nineteen years old. What she lacked in speed, she made up for in power, of course. She was nearly impossible to knock down. One of her most common moves was to just let the other boxer hit her as many times as they could before they were too tired to take much of a beating back. During one match, however, she discovered this tactic would not work. She was up against former military officer, Sergei ‘Deadvelvet’ Fannen, who was known for being able to hit pressure points just so. Since they were participating in a Mystery Showdown, she didn’t know they would be competing against each other until the very last minute, which meant she didn’t have enough time to strategize a plan. She tried to fight like she normally did, but this was proving unwise, so she broke formation, and observed a regular stance. Still, it was only a matter of time before Deadvelvet found the right series of pressure punches, and took her out. In a desperate move, Gualerni tried to send him a left hook, but lost her balance in the middle of it, and her right hand ended up on the other side of his head as her instincts were just trying to keep her upright. The result was a devastating blow to both of Deadvelvet’s temples and ears that had terrible repercussions for his inner ear. For the next several moments, he was unable to maintain his balance, which gave Gualerni the edge she needed to knock him down for the count. The audience and announcers were shocked, not that she had won, but that she had done so in such an unorthodox manner, using a move no one had seen before. Reporters would later refer to this as the pothook, suggestive of her holding pot on the other side of the opponent’s head. The International Boxing Council would come to refer to it as a violation after Deadvelvet was shown to have permanent hearing loss. Ashamed of what she had done, Gualerni quit boxing that week, and started pursuing a career in nursing, but she would always be remembered as the inventor of the pothook; the only move in history to be used once before being deemed foul, except for that time a boxer bit another’s ear off.

Clean Sweep: Dreams (Part I)

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Dreams. What are dreams? Most experts believe that dreams are essentially a side effect of the brain’s attempt to consolidate and organize all of the information that it received during the day before. This is true, to some extent, but it is not the whole story. Time and thought are not as disparate of concepts as we think. They are bound to, and intertwined with, each other. Time is more complex than simply the ever-continuing process of causality. The essence of time moves throughout everything and everyone, leaving an imprint of itself across the dimensions. Why does it do this? Well, because true time is all about perception and perspective. We observe time by what we see and hear, but we understand time because of what it does to us on a quantum level. Time uses us as computational servers, powering reality by utilizing the strength of mind, body, and soul.

When one dreams about something, they are not merely using narratives to render their own memories. They are also experiencing the memories of other people; sometimes at different times, sometimes even on different worlds. This happens because, in order for time to process events, it must utilize the power from any number of people. And it doesn’t do this by reaching out to the nearest people, because that’s a concept that doesn’t really exist in terms of time. Temporal information passes from server to server in a web of interconnectivity rivaling that of the data network we call the internet.

This is all fine on its own, because it doesn’t really have anything to do with how we live our lives. Understanding that we are walking temporal servers isn’t all that useful, because we can’t do anything about. Except that some people can. Most of us, as temporal computers, are only capable of input and processing. We don’t have any actual control over what time does, or how it operates. All we can do is accept reality as we perceive it. There are those, however, who are somehow able to break through these limitations, process time in original ways, and deliver input to the temporal network. We call these people the choosing ones. They have their own limitations, but are still more powerful than the average person.

Some choosers can travel across great distances in the blink of an eye. Others can move backwards or forwards along the timestream. Some are powerful enough to alter reality, while others can merely predict the future to great accuracy. We are not entirely sure what creates a chooser’s personal limitations, or if it’s possible for them to learn new ways of manipulating time, for it has only happened once. Meliora Rutherford Delaney-Reaver was born with no specialty. That is, she does not have any limitations. She can travel through the timestream, merge two points in spacetime together, alter memories, and accomplish just about anything else she wants. Zeferino Preston, however, had limitations at first that he was only later able to transcend.

Zeferino’s original title was The Cleaner, and his original job was to clean up the timeline after alterations made by other choosers. If only one party of choosers were manipulating time, there would be no problem. The timeline would adjust itself to account for any changes they made, and no one outside of the party would have any idea that anything had changed at all. It’s important to remember, however, that we are all temporal servers, working to process reality in tandem. When a choosing one sends out unplanned signals, other servers are capable of receiving it, even though they were not programmed to process it entirely. For example, let’s say that two choosers are unhappy with what United States President A is doing with the country. They each go back in time and select a different president, changing the outcome of the future election. This causes problems, because now there are two different presidents; President B, and President C. This conflict in the timeline creates what we know as a paradox. Unless corrected, it’s possible that the office of the president will erratically shift between B and C, and it is this condition that threatens reality as a whole.

Most people won’t actually be able to see that the Office of the President keeps changing, but they will be able to feel it. As mentioned, the observation of time is not the same thing as the comprehension of it. As The Cleaner, Zeferino was responsible for poring through the timeline from an outsider’s perspective. He would use this power to adjust reality so that inconsistencies like the double president paradox could be erased, like one would restore a painting. This is less of an analogy, and more of a description, for Zeferino Preston once worked in a special place called The Gallery.

“Hey, Zef, how’s it going?” Erlendr asks.

“I’m all right,” Zeferino says. “I’m just not sure if I want this teapot to be black or a sort of red with white and green stripes.”

“What?”

Zeferino sits back in his chair to give Erlendr a better view of the painting. “The teapot.” He waves his hand over the image of the teapot to switch between designs. “I’m also thinking about making it a little taller.”

“What are you talking about? Who the hell tried to change the design of some random teapot?”

“I am, that’s what I’m telling you.”

Erlendr is confused. “You’re making manual changes to the timeline?”

“Yeah, it’s a nice break from the tedium.”

“Zef, you can’t just do that.”

“Why not?”

“You take care of the timeline; protect it from the choosers. You’re not supposed to become one of them.”

“Again. Why not?”

“Because...because that’s not your job.”

“Erlendr, look around. This is The Gallery. We are surrounded by art, so why should I not create some masterpieces of my own.”

Erlendr pulls up a chair and takes a deep breath. “The Gallery is just a metaphor. The Constructor built it for us so that we could make sense of the timestream. You’re not actually painting, Zeferino. You just perceive a painting.” He places his hand on Zeferino’s heart. “Everything you’re doing comes from within.”

Zeferino stands up in defiance. “The Gallery was not built so that we could interpret the world. It appears in the form of a gallery because the world already is art. It already is beautiful.”

Erlendr stands back up as well. “It doesn’t matter. Correct paradoxes. That’s what you do. That’s all you do. Leave the changes up to Arcadia.”

“Arcadia,” Zeferino repeats in disgust. “She doesn’t create art. She doesn’t make changes. She just reverts it back. She wouldn’t know beauty if she looked in a mirror.”

“That may be,” Erlendr began, “but it doesn’t change the fact that you are not allowed to change the color of teapots. We are the keepers of time. It is our duty to manage the choosing ones. That is our only purpose.”

“I do not accept that.”

“You must. Or I will call in Fury, and you will possess no further choice on the matter. You are conscious because of him, but if you do not follow the rules, we will remove your free will.”

Zeferino had his own fury to unleash, but he bit his tongue.

“Good,” Erlendr says, picking up on Zeferino’s body language. He adds, while walking away, “destroy the teapot. They can drink coffee. I believe you have a windmill to restore.”

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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.