Microstory 2323: Earth, October 25, 2178

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Dear Corinthia,

Yeah, you would think that our dad would have reached out again by now, but he still hasn’t. Not really, anyway. He sent me a text message about having to travel to one of the other domes, but he didn’t say much about it. This sort of thing happens in politics. You’re trying to negotiate with one party, but they won’t give you what you need unless you get them something that you don’t have, so you have to go to someone else. It can start this whole chain of favor after favor after favor. He’s never had to be away for quite this long before, though, so I’m kind of thinking that he’s avoiding our impending conversation. It seems like a lot to go through. I mean, he has to register his itinerary with the travel office, which I have access to. Movement on this planet is heavily regulated except in the poisoned regions themselves, so he is definitely going to the other dome, and they definitely won’t let him in unless he has a good reason, so I guess he’s not lying? I don’t know. I’m trying to get approval to travel myself, so maybe I can confront him earlier than he was planning. I’ll try to let you know if I do secure the approval, but after that, I might have trouble staying in contact with you. I can’t exactly send out a quick message from my personal device to outer space 1200 AU from Earth. I doubt it will happen anyway, though. I don’t have that good of a reason to leave. Anyway, thanks for getting back to me. Sorry about the whole lockdown situation, even though it doesn’t sound like it was as bad for you as it was for some. We have lockdowns all the time, so I kind of know what you went through. Like you, we’re always pretty well-stocked. We don’t have any restrictions on it, but we try to be mindful of what others will need, so we don’t take more than our fair share. That’s not to say that you were taking more than you deserve. You need it because your job demands constant monitoring. We have extra because of my dad’s job, but only insofar as he has special privileges here, not because of any inherent need. That reminds me, should I be calling him my dad or our dad? I think I’ve said it both ways in our previous letters. I’ve not asked him if he wants to speak with you, because I don’t think he deserves to get to know you, but if you want to get to know him, I don’t have a problem with it. I suppose that’s the true issue here, whether you consider him family, or have any interest in becoming that one day, or what. Just let me know what you feel more comfortable with; what to call him, and whether you want to hear from him directly.

Glad you’re back,

Condor

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 28, 2480

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A couple of hours later, Dr. Hammer was finished with her other work for the time being, and was available to speak with the team. She stepped into her own office, and didn’t seem shocked to see them. Siria must have warned her through a text message, or something. She smiled at her assistant, and nodded, but didn’t say anything, yet Siria knew that she could leave, and tend to other things. “Could I see the card?” Dr. Mallory asked once Siria was gone.

Mateo handed it over.

Dr. Hammer inspected it carefully with her eyes, then inserted it back into the reader for more information. “Miss Webb does not have my access code. Neither should you. Please look away.” Her hands hovered over the keyboard, ready to type it in.

“We should leave real quick,” Ramses suggested. “Our brains can process keystrokes, and determine which keys are being pressed, based on the sound each one makes, unique to its position on the board, and its distance from our ears.”

Dr. Hammer narrowed her eyes at him, regarding him with fascination. “I should like to study you.”

“Maybe one day,” Ramses tentatively agreed.

Dr. Hammer typed in her code without worrying too much about it, and read the screen in silence for a moment. “Where did you get this?”

“A friend,” Mateo replied.

“A friend...who?”

“Who...I trust,” Mateo said, still playing it close to the vest.

“Should I trust them?”

“Indeed.”

“Well,” Dr. Hammer began. “When I stick it into that device, and stick you into that machine, I can tether you together, but in order for it to work, it must first be logged into the system. Otherwise, someone could simply steal one from the manufacturing room, and use it without authorization. Whoever gave it to you, that’s what they did. This is stolen property, I didn’t issue it.”

“I’m sorry,” Mateo said sincerely.

“Mister Matic, there is a reason I have not offered you a place at this facility. Well, there are a number of reasons, the main one being your significant connection to the Superintendent. For anyone else, I can prevent him from seeing what’s discussed in these meetings, but you’re more difficult to tease from his prying eyes. I don’t know what to do about that. We can’t let him go spouting off about confidential information. It wouldn’t be fair to the other members. He already knows too much.”

“I understand,” Mateo replied, just as sincerely as before.

I’ll skip the sessions. I’ll just say that he’s gone off to one, but I won’t follow him there. I respect doctor-patient privilege.

“Hold on, I’m getting a message,” Dr. Hammer said as she was clicking the mouse. She read the Superintendent’s claim. “The fact that you’re watching us at this very moment does not instill confidence in me that you would honor the boundaries. Even one peek could have devastating consequences for my patients that I cannot allow.”

The team wasn’t fazed by her apparent conversation with the Superintendent. They sat there patiently and quietly.

“Another one.” She took a second to read it, then paraphrased it for the whole class. “He promises to stay away, and says that there’s plenty of story to be told that has nothing to do with this place.” She sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t even know what to do about this emotional bond. I can find a workaround on the calibration, but you’ll all be able to use it, which is not the purpose of the card.”

“We don’t need the card,” Leona explained. “We go wherever we want, whenever we want. We promise to stay out of it, just as the Superintendent did. Mateo will be the only one to use that card.”

“And if anyone breaks this rule, you may revoke it,” Mateo added.

“We don’t really do that,” Dr. Hammer explained.

Mateo shrugged. “Do it anyway, if it ever comes up.”

Dr. Hammer thought over her options. “Is this the whole team?”

“My sister, Angela’s still on the ship,” Marie said.

“The two of them were once one and the same,” Leona clarified, “in case that matters when calibrating the machine for Mateo, or whatever.”

“It doesn’t. But she does need to be here. You’re like limbs of the same person, so you all need to be a part of it.”

Angela teleported down to the office, which alarmed Dr. Hammer, who believed there to be a barrier around the building that prevented anyone from showing up anywhere besides the vestibule. She wrote a note to herself to reinforce the security system, even though she obviously wasn’t worried about the six of them. She went on with the procedure. Mateo alone lay down in the card tethering machine, but they could all feel the procedure in their minds, and their bodies. A connection was created, between them and the card, and also to the facility. Their bond with each other felt like it was reinforced as well, though that might have been in their imaginations. The whole process only took a couple minutes. Mateo sat up, and left the room to go through orientation with Siria. As the Superintendent, I’m not allowed to divulge what he learned on his tour. I know only that it happened.

Meanwhile, back on the ship, the rest of the team was hanging out in Delegation Hall. Leona was reading a book, the other girls were chatting about nothing, and Ramses was looking through data on his tablet. After doing this for a bit, he looked away with a sort of concentrative frown, and shut his eyes. Finally, he said, “one more jump.”

“What was that?” Leona asked, though she didn’t take her eyes off the page.

“If we make one more uncertain jump, I believe that I will at last have the navigational abilities to find Romana.”

She turned her ereader away, and looked down at the floor between the two of them. “How certain are you of that?” Now she looked him in the eye.

“Fifty-fifty,” he answered.

She nodded, and considered it. “This sounds like one of those situations where we should vote on it.”

“We’ll do it when he gets back,” Olimpia said, referring to Mateo.

“We know how he would vote,” Leona replied. “We may as well do it now. You can call me his proxy, so I get two votes.”

Marie scoffed. “Raise your hand if you don’t think we should go.”

No one raised their hand.

“Motion passes,” Marie decided.

Leona took a breath, and yawned unwillingly. “Ange, run a pre-flight check, just how we taught ya. Rambo, you handle the quintessence drive, of course.”

While they were in the middle of their checks, Mateo returned, and listened to the update. “Wait, is it going to take us to her, or just help us find her eventually?”

“The latter,” Ramses answered.

“If it turns out to be enough,” Leona added.

“Where are we going? Anywhere?”

“A random jump would give us better data than a target one. I think that’s my problem. I think I’m trying to exert too much control, when I should really be letting the slingshot guide my trajectory.”

“That’s not how slingshots work,” Mateo argued.

“We thought you would want this,” Leona told her husband.

“We could end up anywhere,” Mateo went on. “That means inside of a star, or at the beginning of the big bang, or hell, a different universe.”

“I wrote safeguards into the program to prevent us appearing inside of a solid object,” Ramses began to explain. “Or a liquid or plasma, for that matter. Those are basic protocols, even the teleporter has them. The big bang was so dense that it would be tantamount to being in a sun, so the protocols would cover that too. As for another universe, the slingdrive can’t do that. We can pierce the membrane from the outside, but not from inside. We can only slide along it.”

“My position holds,” Mateo stood firm. “It’s too dangerous of a proposition.”

“What did you talk about down there after we left?” Leona asked.

“You know I can’t tell you.”

“Can you tell me if you’re an impostor?”

He waited to respond. “Not applicable.”

“We thought for sure you’d vote to go,” Olimpia said, stepping into the room.

“I would,” Mateo agreed. “I am. It just didn’t sound like any of you discussed the dangers that this poses. You only made it here because I took a fear pill. We don’t have that luxury this time. Wherever we go, it may take us on a wild adventure that lasts for years. As we’ve tethered our personal timelines together, that would mean Romana stays alone until we’re finished fighting Cthulhu, or whatever it ends up being.”

“She’s alone if we do nothing,” Leona reasoned. “We need this data.”

Mateo twirled his rendezvous card between his fingers, just as the other Leona had earlier. He was probably thinking about what he talked about in group at the Center for Temporal Health, but I was not there, so I don’t know anything that anyone said. He chuckled, perhaps getting the feeling that someone was leaning on the fourth wall from the outside. “I should stay. Whatever happens, wherever you end up going, you can always end up back here at least. Let me be your anchor. Something goes wrong, jump right back.”

“Dr. Hammer doesn’t want us doing that sort of thing,” Leona reminded him. “That’s not what this card is for. It’s not what that place is for.”

“I’ve just...we’ve been here before...so many times. We’ve been on a mission, and then we end up on a tangent. We have to break that cycle. We have to stick with something until it’s done. Our team has grown, yet remains incomplete. I’m afraid.”

“Give us the room, please,” Ramses said mysteriously.

Leona and Olimpia were a little surprised, but they left without arguing.

“What is it?” Mateo questioned.

“I analyzed that card,” Ramses said. “I couldn’t get much from it, but I bounced tiny ablation lasers off of the surface, which were absorbed by our sensors. They detected two DNA signatures from the sample. One was yours, and the other was Romana’s. She’s the one who gave it to you.”

Mateo didn’t want to say anything, even though he had obviously been caught. “She was wearing gloves.”

Ramses smiled. “She probably wasn’t wearing them the whole time. Lemme guess, she was from the future?”

“Maybe.”

He smiled wider. “I’ll keep your secret, as long as you vote yes, and come with us. We will find her again, so she can go back to see you in the past, and close her loop. I don’t think you should be this worried. Studying that slingdrive, and improving it, has been my sole focus for days. Please trust me, Mateo. You’ve done it before.”

Mateo sighed. “All right. Fire it up.”

They returned to the group, and confirmed that everyone understood what they were getting themselves into. They may find themselves back on Earth centuries ago, or on the other side of the universe. No result was more likely than another, however, regardless of where they ended up, they should be able to initiate a second jump, and go back to where they belonged. This should give them the data they needed to understand how the drive worked, so that they were not flying blind for that second time.

Ramses stood there like he was waiting for someone else, but he was the only one qualified to operate this thing. Even Leona hadn’t spent much time on it.

“What?” Leona asked.

“Say the thing. Say that word I like.”

“Oh.” She laughed. “Yalla.”

They jumped, and for a moment, they were disoriented, as was the ship, though the computers recalibrated themselves, unlike the first time they tried to use this thing. “I can tell you where we are, but not when,” Ramses announced. “I have enough positional data to know that we’re in the Miridir Galaxy.”

“It’s June 28, 2480. Present day, for lack of a better term in our line of business,” Leona elucidated them while consulting her special time watch.

“We’re not in the Beorht system, though,” Ramses continued. “Dardius is about two thousand light years from here, give or take a couple hundred.”

“All I care about is the new navigational data,” Mateo said to him. “Can we pinpoint a destination now?”

“I’ll need time,” Ramses said in an apologetic tone. “I can’t even tell you if the new data looks promising. I’m sorry.”

“Well, if we’re this far from civilization, finding the peace you need to conduct your work shouldn’t be a problem,” Angela figured.

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” Olimpia contended. She was looking through a viewport that wasn’t big enough for them all to see.

Leona threw the image onto the screen. There was another ship out there. Her armband pinged, so she looked at it. “External sensors are detecting a Nexus nearby. It’s probably on the ship.”

“What does that mean?” Marie asked.

“We can’t possibly know yet.” Mateo reached back for his helmet, and put it over his head. “Prepare for another tangent.”

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Microstory 2185: Hierarchy is Required

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To add to what I was saying yesterday, I feel that it is my responsibility to respect people’s time. I wouldn’t want to block out an entire day for a doctor’s appointment, or an interview, because I have no choice but to wait for someone else to manage their own schedule. The Golden Rule tells me that if I wouldn’t want it to happen to me, I shouldn’t do it to someone else. You have that rule here too, which is nice. It’s kind of cheesy, but it works most of the time. There are some general exceptions, like the fact that most people don’t want to be told what to do, but that’s the dynamic of a boss-employee relationship, or a parent-child relationship, or the like. Some hierarchy is required, which is why I can’t be expected to travel to my candidates’ locations, for instance. They all need to come to me, or procure the software that I use for video chat. I’m not saying any of this because I had some problem with any of our candidates; I just want to express it, so you can gauge how I’m trying to do things differently than how I’ve experienced it from the other side. Without sharing any confidential details, the interviews went great today. Everyone was suited enough for the job enough to be hired, so I will have some hard decisions coming up. Some of you seem to be a little confused, because from what you hear, an employer will only interview a few people for a position, and that’s mostly true here, though I am trying to keep my horizons broadened to make sure that I find the absolute best applicant possible. You have to remember that I’m trying to fill thirteen positions for my team. So when I tell you that I interviewed seven people in the office today, they were for all different jobs. It’s going to take us several days just to get through any reasonable number, and only then can I make a decision on which to choose for each one. Okay, I can practically feel the legal department shaking its head at me, so I should stop talking about the process before I say something privileged. As always, no blog post until Monday. Have a great weekend, everybody.

Microstory 2177: Dark About a Lot

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Wow. Just. Wow. These are some nice offices in the jail administrative section. We’re on the top floor of the building, and have a great view of the skyline, as well as some greenery. I prefer the latter, but some prefer the former, so it’s the best of both worlds. They’re giving us an entire conference room, which is big enough to accommodate our eighteen person team. I have my own office that comes right off of that room, and the facilities department has set aside four other workspaces for us. Each subdepartment will be able to separate themselves from the group, and focus on their own stuff. At the moment, the only thing that’s ready is the conference room, since it’s pretty much already configured the right way. It’s lined with bookshelves, so I’m thinking that it used to be a library, which they eventually started using for meetings, but I don’t know what has happened with all that since. It was reportedly pretty dusty in here. I said that I wanted to physically work on a lot of this myself, but I am not bummed out that they did all the cleaning for me. I’m more of a designer and arranger than a cleaner. I have really bad allergies, and I just don’t care for it. I’m weird that way. I’m truly grateful for everything that everyone has done in preparation for this new project, and I’m excited to get started. I spent all day yesterday slowly moving things around in my office, and the other four shared spaces. We need a few things that the jail doesn’t already have on hand for us, like computers, and other various things. I drew up a list so facilities and IT will be working on procuring new equipment and supplies this week. I still had plenty to do on that front today.

Tomorrow, I’m probably going to work exclusively on building out the staff. Back when I was looking for a job—or rather, when employers were looking for me—I was able to tell you about them, to some vague degree. I didn’t think that it was a problem to say this and that about a hypothetical position that I was probably not going to end up taking, as long as I didn’t specify which company was offering. Even if the name of the company ended up being publicized, it probably would have been all right. Now I’m on the other side of that, preparing to interview individual innocent people for my team. So I won’t be telling you anything about the candidates during this process. I won’t even say anything about the ones that I hire, unless they unambiguously tell me it’s okay, and probably not even then. They have a right to their privacy, and they shouldn’t feel uncomfortable applying because something may come out about them. Even if it’s good, it’s not my place to divulge it, whatever it may be. They have the ability to set up their own social media accounts, and build their own websites, should they choose to. Of course, confidentiality being a thing, there’s a lot more about my new job that I won’t be able to say. The jail is now my client, and while they’re fully aware of who I am, and what I do online, they’ve not given me permission to say absolutely anything and everything about what we’re doing here. So be prepared to be left in the dark about a lot. I’ll keep you up to date as much as I can, but my posts could get shorter if everything that I start to deal with is strictly privileged information. They could, therefore, get boring if all I can talk about is my private life. The work I’m getting ready to do here, I believe, is in the interest of the public good, so I’m all right letting my site suffer in service to that. Anyway, I’m tired, so I better grab some dinner, and call it a night.

Microstory 2056: Good Word For Me

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My mother always told me that the best way to succeed is to know people. I never put much stock into that, because I didn’t want to believe it. I remember watching some movie or TV show a couple of years ago. A guy was trying to get out of a speeding ticket, or something, so he promised the cop to help his son get into college. I think he was lying about knowing the Dean, or whatever. It was a ridiculous scenario. The speeder didn’t know this kid, or whether he belonged at that college, but the cop was willing to overlook that, because he was desperate. I guess he expected the speeder to make a phone call, and just randomly drop the name of an applicant who should go to the top of the pile. I can’t remember how all that turned out, but the fact is that networking is real. Only twice have I applied to a job, secured an interview, and then gotten that job. When I was still a kid, my dad signed me up for my lifeguarding certification. A friend from church owned a maintenance contractor. A friend of a friend knew about a warehouse who was hiring a lot of seasonal employees. That’s mostly how I’ve conducted business, and I find it incredibly annoying. Don’t put out a want ad online for employees if you’re just going to hire your old roommate’s slacker nephew, okay? But despite my “principles” I’ve played along with the game. I’ve taken my opportunities. I jumped at the chance to sleep in this finished attic from the nurse at the free clinic, and when she had a lead on a job, I jumped at that too. I have an interview for an entry-level gardening position tomorrow, but my landlord is pretty confident that I’ll get it, because no one else seems to be applying, and because she put in a good word for me. That’s all it takes sometimes. I don’t like it, but I’ll benefit from it, because if I tried to go through this life without any help, it would turn out to be a rather short one, I’ll tell ya that much. So anyway, wish me luck, and all that. Or don’t, if it goes against your principles.

Microstory 2055: My Real Problem

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Not much to report today. The medicine is working, and I’m feeling better. I’m trying to focus on getting a job, and not worrying too much about my requirements for that. It just has to give me some kind of steady income, and my employer can’t get hung up on my lack of social security number, or whatever other info this country expects out of me. I’ve not found anything yet. Unemployment seems to be rather low here. There are about as many jobs as there are people, and my arrival has thrown off that balance. I don’t know why I said that. I don’t really know how any of this works. I try to spend a little bit of time every day getting an idea of what exactly is different about this world, but there’s no real way for me to understand. My real problem is that I don’t have any résumé to speak of. I mean, I do, but I can’t prove any of it, since I lived in a different universe at the time. Still, I’m putting out feelers, as they say. Nothin’ yet, but I’ll keep looking. It’s only been a few days. I’ve spent months looking for work before, so I’m not going to be discouraged quite yet. Then again, I was living in a lot of privilege before. Now I have nothing to fall back on. I’m alone. That’s not true. I have this great finished attic, and I’m so grateful for it. Still, I don’t want to overstay my welcome. It’s important that I figure out how to take care of myself. I think I’m going to have to start hanging out in the side lot of a home improvement store as a day laborer, if that’s even a thing here.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 5, 2398

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For the last five weeks, Mateo has had a standing appointment at Magnus Sharpe’s office to discuss his psycho-emotional issues in a presumably safe and consequence-free environment. He hasn’t been able to make it to every Friday, but he’s always made it up. Today, he doesn’t feel like going in, but he didn’t come to this decision in time to cancel appropriately, so Ramses has asked to take his place. He could do with some therapy himself after the recent abduction, and Mag. Sharpe has apparently proven herself to be reliable, and to provide a safe space for time travelers, so he figured he would give it a try. It’s an uncomfortable feeling, because he didn’t grow up in a world where this sort of thing was available.

“What do you mean?” Magus Sharpe asks. “Had the science of psychology not yet been developed in your time?”

“Oh no, it definitely had. From my team’s perspective,” Ramses begins, “I’m from the future, not the past. And that’s why this is weird. You see, in my time, and in my culture, trust was a real issue. Artificial intelligence dominated our lives, and it was just about impossible to get away from. It made decisions for us, and gave us everything we needed. If you wanted to avoid it completely, you were shit out of luck. Oops, sorry.”

“It’s quite all right,” Mag. Sharpe promises.

Ramses nods, and pets her dog some more. “My family taught me to be a capitalist...to essentially fetishize a world of haves and have-nots. I’m not sure if that’s an idiom that exists in your world.”

“I can grasp the meaning. Go on.”

“Of course, the capitalist movement was composed of rich and privileged people, because if anyone who believed in it started to lose their status, they would...well, they would jump ship, and go back to normal society. That’s why it didn’t work, but obviously the diehard fans could never accept that. They just kept fighting and fighting for it, and it eventually died out, because capitalism survived for thousands of years on a planet founded upon capitalism. It only lasted because everyone agreed to it. Once the majority of inhabitants agreed to reject it, it became unrealistic and unsustainable. I’m kind of overexplaining things, because the reason I’m telling you all this is because therapy was sort of the one thing that never went back to the capitalistic format. It just didn’t work. Humans stopped studying medicine almost altogether, so if you needed mental health help, you got it from an AI, whether you were normal, or like me and my family. So yes, we had psychological tools, but we did not have human support, so I don’t know how to do this, which is why I’m rambling on about unimportant nonsense.”

“I don’t think it’s unimportant nonsense,” Mag. Sharpe says. “It’s clearly important to you, or you wouldn’t have said anything.”

“Well...”

“You would have just told me you had never tried therapy, and moved on, but you went over the basics of your society, because you want me to understand where it is you come from. It seems as though that’s what you’re struggling with. I’m not supposed to do this, but from what I gather, the way you grew up was wildly different than your friends. Do you have trouble relating to them because of that?”

“I don’t know about that, I love them.”

“Sure you do, and they love you too, but how do you feel about the changes you experienced over time? To them, the future was an idealistic paradise; full of adventure, yes, but noble in its pursuit of equality. You, on the other hand, were born into such a world, but were denied its advantages by a subculture that spurned its teachings, and romanticized an economic format that prized winners over losers.”

“Yeah, well, you seem to get it.”

“I’m just going by what you told me. I can only imagine that your parents taught you that inequality formed the basis of a healthy and competitive world that valued innovation, which they likely believed was impossible to achieve without the possibility of true failure and loss.”

“You act as if you’ve been there before.”

“No, it’s just that the world you describe, I’ve heard of it before.”

“Where, one of the others on my team?”

“No.” She stands and steps over to her bookcase to scan the titles until she finds what she’s looking for. “Here.” She hands it to him.

“Capital With a Capital C,” he reads aloud.

“It’s eerily similar to what you describe. You should read it,” she urges.

He speedreads the description on the back, choosing to read one excerpt out loud as well, “...but in this world are multiple subcultures who idealize the inequality of yesteryear. As they attempt to plunge the world into the darkness of the past—some in truly violent ways—another group desperately tries to make that past better than it once was. This is fiction?”

“You tell me?”

Ramses flips the book back over, half-expecting to find the author calling himself The Superintendent, or some self-aggrandizing bullshit like that. It’s not. “Who the hell is Ildemire Lorenz?”

Microstory 1884: Transience

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Transient Retrograde Amnesia is what they call it. I can’t remember how long I’ve had it, or what caused it. And that’s not an amnesia joke. I can’t remember, because I’ve been suffering from it for a long time, and I just happen to not recall that far back in the past. Lots of people have that kind of poor memory without it being a symptom of some larger issue. Most of the time, I’m normal. I know who I am, and what I’ve done. I can form new memories, and I know whether I left the proverbial stove on. Of course, I don’t own a stove, on account of those periods of time when I don’t remember a thing. Sometimes I wake up, and I have no memory at all. It doesn’t always occur when I literally wake up, but that’s what it feels like; like everything that happened to me before was a dream that disappeared from my mind in a flash. I know stuff did indeed happen, but mostly probably because it must have happened, since I know that adults don’t just suddenly come into being. I know this, because my memory condition doesn’t affect semantic memory, which is the kind that tells me what an adult is, and what a baby is, and what words to use to describe them. My problem is all about events, plus the most basic information about myself. I can’t tell you my name, or what kind of upbringing I had, for instance. Even the most recent of things are gone. I don’t know where I am, or how I got there. When the attack is over, it all comes flooding back to me, including the time I spent in that state. So I remember how fearful and anxious I become each time. I’m talking about this like it’s in the present, but I’m happy to say that I’ve not had an attack in over a year, whereas before, it would happen nearly every day.

Like I said, I don’t own a stove. It’s not worth the risk to be out in the world when I could lose it all without warning. Medical professionals of all sorts have tried to figure out what prompts an attack. Is it stress? Fear? Reminder of a past trauma? There seems to be no link between them. There’s no temporal connection either; it happens at all times of the day. As far as anyone has been able to discern after studying me for decades, it’s completely random and unpredictable. So I live in a facility, where others take care of me, even while I don’t need it. That’s the most humiliating part. I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself, but they won’t let me do anything. I can’t blame them. I once had an attack while I was holding a knife. It was quite obvious that I was cutting vegetables with it, but my father was in the room, and I thought he could have been a threat. So over the years, little by little, my privileges have been taken away. It’s for my safety as much as anyone else’s. Again, I’m not going to forget what a knife is, or how it works, or which end is the hazardous one, but I obviously can’t be trusted with it anyway. In a way, I’m relieved that my body has been failing me recently. When you’re bedridden, and it’s difficult to move, people have to wait on you anyway. It feels natural now, expecting the nurse or orderly to come in and feed me, or take my vitals. That’s what they’re supposed to do, and they do it for everyone who lives long enough to die like this. It’s almost over now anyway. My spirit has pulled itself away from my body. I’m hovering over it, looking down at myself like it’s not me anymore, because it’s not. The man left on the bed is looking around, confused and lost. He doesn’t remember a thing. I can’t believe I’m witnessing my last attack as a ghost. I keep watching, knowing the other me can’t hurt himself, and that it won’t be long before he’s dead too.

Microstory 1880: Promovere

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I don’t wanna talk about my work. People are always asking me about it, like isn’t that so sad? I can’t go to a party, or the bar, without having to discuss it. Like, it’s the first thing they ask. I just think that’s so sad. It’s my 25th anniversary there. Same place, different jobs, but it’s just nothing. Really, I’m not going to talk about it. And you know, my boss is such an asshole. He’s always giving me these looks, like, I know what you’re thinking, buddy. He’s one of those guys who thinks the world of himself, and everyone wants to be like him. That smug look on his face when something right happens, and he gets the chance to take credit for it, whether he had anything to do with it, or not. Oh, I just want to rip it off his face. But I’m not going to talk about work. That’s a promise I’m making to myself. My job does not define me. My final thoughts can’t be of the 45 hours a week I spend in hell. Man, 25 years. That’s not how long I was in the workforce, just here, which only makes it all the more depressing. They gave me a certificate, isn’t that nice? My boss handed it to me so delicately, like I was to cherish it. Others proudly pin theirs to their cubicles. They legitimately seem to love what they do. I don’t want to die, but at least I won’t ever have to come back here. No, this isn’t about work. This is about my whole life, and that is only a small part. Is it small, though? I mean, at the bare minimum, it represents a quarter of my time, and that’s not counting all the time I spent stressing about it. I remember the day I was promoted to exempt status. This is it, I thought to myself. I’ve made it. Sure, more promotions would be great, but a salary is a benchmark of success that they can never take away. Nope, stop. Stop that.

Stop talking about your meaningless job. Everything’s meaningless, though. Your life, that was meaningless too, though maybe a little less meaningless, because at least you had the chance to help people. Did you help anyone, though? When you really get down to it, were you a generous and good person, or was that just always something you aspired to be, but you were too busy with your terrible job that you hated? I said, stop talking about your job! Hobbies. Surely you had hobbies. Knitting? Why is knitting the first hobby you think of when you think of hobbies? How is that the default? Because I’m a woman? Because I’m older now? I’m not an old woman. Plenty of younger women like to do arts and crafts, don’t be an ageist. A what? An ageist; you know what that word means, because you’re talking to yourself. I guess that’s true, I guess I just normally hear it in the form of ageism, or maybe age discrimination. Whatever. Yeah, whatever to you too...me. Wow, you really light up a room with your attitude, don’t you? Oh, ha-ha-ha. They say, it’s not the fire that kills you, it’s the smoke, but it’s the pointlessness of it all. I didn’t do anything with my life. I could have taken control, but I just kept tripping down the steps. Most people go up the stairs of life, but I went right down, and not to say I was never privileged. I recognize my privilege, I really just mean it always felt more like falling, because I didn’t control it. That’s what a promotion is, isn’t it? You don’t apply for it, it’s given to you. Sure, you probably did something to earn it, but you couldn’t take it. You can go get a new job, but you can’t be the agent of a promotion, unless you’re promoting someone else. But does that feel any better, giving other people promotions? I think not. And look at you now, you’re stuck in the break room with everybody else, and you’re gonna die with everybody else, except that it’ll happen to you first.

Microstory 1800: A Life Well-Earned

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I was born into a very wealthy family, which only got wealthier with each generation. None of us was allowed to rest on our laurels, and relax. We had a system in place. Parents were expected to take care of their children, and give them just about anything they wanted (within reason). Once they turned 18, their college would be paid for, and everything that goes with that, like food and lodging. Any purchases they wanted beyond that had to be approved, and were always contingent upon extremely good grades. No one was expected to join the family business, but they had to do something with their lives. They had to live up to our name, whether that meant doing as they were told by their betters, or striking out on their own. A well-rounded education was vital to this. You were cut off once you turned 26, regardless of how prepared you were. The idea was to give everyone enough time to finish their undergraduate studies, plus their graduate studies—if they so chose to continue their education—and also begin pulling in their own income. There was no trust, there were no allowances. Everybody had to make their own way, at least after spending a quarter of their lives learning how to do that. I know, I know, this all sounds very ridiculous to normal people, but what would you have us do, reject our family money as soon as we could speak? That wouldn’t have done anyone any good, would it? For my part, actually, I didn’t even let my family do this much for me. I let them pay for tuition, books, and other educational expenses, but I paid for food, and my own place to live. I had a job while I was there, which was smarter than my siblings and cousins, because I learned a lot more about the labor force than they did from their ivory towers. I wouldn’t say that I struggled, but I certainly worked harder than the rest of them. I was at least closer to seeing what real life was like for most people.

Rich people have problems too, and I don’t mean to sound like we don’t, but I always tried to be careful with my perspective. The fact is that I had an easy life, and people like me have a responsibility to use our privilege to help others as possible. What better way to support those people than to provide them with jobs? No one wants to be a charity case. They don’t want you to just hand them stuff. They want to feel like they earned it. No, strike that from the record; they want to know that they undeniably earned it. Ya know, receiving free stuff activates the same part of the brain as incurring debt does. I mean...I don’t actually know that for sure, but it sounds right, so it probably is. People hate to feel like what they have isn’t really theirs, and I chose to do my part to alleviate that for them. I paid my employees fair wages, and I treated them fairly. Sure, if you read the statistics, it sounds like workers were generally unhappy in their positions, but that data is always skewed. Only the loudest and angriest of people are going to fill out those surveys. Content people tend to be too happy to bother telling other people about why. And sure, my company technically pays most jobs on the left side of that bell curve, but that doesn’t matter. That isn’t what my organization is about. What I found—and this is another one of those things that my relatives never understood—is that an employee would much rather be validated by their superiors than just be given more money. Money doesn’t make you smile. Money can’t buy you monthly division birthday parties, and great online coupons. Well, I guess it does, but family doesn’t need that from each other. That’s what we are at the company; a family. I couldn’t die prouder.

Microstory 1450: Ladytown

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After the fourth fake election process, people were really starting to wise up that their voices weren’t counting for all that much. Law after law was being passed, limiting women’s rights more and more. Nobody wanted to try for another revolution, but things were definitely not going to get better without one. It seemed that the only option was to secede from the union, and break the algebra apart once more. One might think this movement would be struck down swiftly and definitively, but Republican loyalists still only ever wanted to solve their problems through deception, spin, and other forms of strategery. The day they instigated war was the day they lost the approval of all the civilians who were at least happy that their lives were safe and secure. Many women were starting to get used to the new system, and didn’t complain anymore, because the more they opposed the rules, the worse those rules became, and the harder things got for those who didn’t support them. The female spirit could not be crushed, though, and there were still plenty of people who did not want to live under the man’s thumb. They didn’t want to revolt either; they just wanted to live their lives in peace. Perhaps the only way to do that would be to strike out on their own. They worked slowly, just as the phallocratic movement started way back during the Interstitial Chaos. They quietly built support, and gained momentum. They followed all the rules, and pleaded their cases in the appropriate ways. The only women working towards this goal had support from their husbands, leaving the ones without it with their mouths shut, only able to hope this would somehow also help them. Still, the Republicans made no attempt to shut them all down, because they did not want public opinion to sway out of their favor. In fact, they agreed to the secessionists’ pleas, but of course, they had some conditions. 

The first and most important condition was that the settlers were not to interfere with the affairs of Aljabara, nor make any attempt to war with them, or steal resources. Fine, they didn’t want to have anything to do with the city anymore anyway. Secondly, not only did some men have to agree to go to the settlement with them, but there had to be a certain ratio of interested people, according to gender. Well, that made things a little more difficult, but not impossible. Not every man’s life was super great under this regime, and many of them saw the ratio as beneficial to them. Lots of daughters who did not yet have husbands wanted to go, which sons without wives saw as a numbers advantage. The one condition that made it clear that the administration had less than no respect for women was that the government would be allowed to name this new settlement for them. They decided to call it Ladytown, principally because of how stupid it sounded. That wasn’t their only reason, though. By now, misogyny was ingrained in society as the way things were. All children alive at this point had grown up under these rules, and if they were ever told how civilization once worked, they possessed no context, and couldn’t fathom it. It sucked to be born a girl, and boys were aware of this fact, unlike on Earth, where many guys were oblivious to their own privilege. The government’s requirement that some men sign up to go with, in the government’s eyes, was contradictory to the name. What man would want to live in a place called Ladytown? Well, maybe the older ones would if they had fewer prejudices. They added an age mandate, which required there be a certain number of younger men, in order to combat the idea further, but as explained, this wasn’t too much of a problem either, since these younger men hoped to find wives, and some were secretly okay being with a bunch of independent women, in a settlement called Ladytown, without the comforts and freedoms they could find in Aljabara. In 2117, Ladytown was founded on the other side of Watershed. They complied with all conditions, and didn’t make trouble. They didn’t last forever, though.

Microstory 1348: Flush With Cash

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Department Manager: So, how’s the job hunt going?

Trust Fund Kid: It’s absolutely dreadful. No one wants to hire someone with no experience in the workforce. I sometimes tell them why, and that never goes over well.

Department Manager: Oh yeah? None at all? Why’s that? Can I be one of the people you tell?

Trust Fund Kid: I don’t know that I should care anymore. I mean, if no one’s gonna hire me anyway, then I might as well be honest, right? I’m what one might call a trust fund kid. My maternal great grandfather was the real estate king in this area, so we come from old money. My paternal grandfather was a jingle writer, and you know those people can make bank if they book the right gig. Then my biological dad was a professional athlete, got killed in a train derailment, and left me his fortune, I guess to make up for not being in my life much. Well, anyway, my mother never cared if I had a job or not, so I never learned any work ethic. Furthermore, I invested in burcoin early on a lark, and made millions of dollars. Then—get this—I win the lottery. At that point, I’m just like, someone is watching over me from above, and they really shouldn’t be.

Department Manager: Why did you play the lottery?

Trust Fund Kid: Okay, here’s the story. I was nearing a million social media followers when I got this idea to give them each a reward. I bought a lottery ticket for every single one of them, and hired a team of temps to mail them out to my fans tout suite. One of the temps took it upon herself to go the extra mile, and program a special scanning software that would create a database of every ticket, and its numbers. So, if any of my people won, we would know it. Well, about four thousand people never responded, or refused to give me their address—which is understandable—so I still had some of the tickets, and one of them was the lucky winner. I tried to give all the money to those temps, particularly the one who built that scanning software, but now she’s my fiancée, so what’s left is kind of mine again.

Department Manager: You have led a very auspicious life.

Trust Fund Kid: Right? Well, I’m trying to make up for it by getting a job, but no one thinks I deserve it. I can’t really blame them for that, and I realize my situation is not as dire as it is for others.

Department Manager: Why don’t you just give the money to charity? Getting a job is still really only gonna help you.

Trust Fund Kid: Oh, most of the money is gone. I do donate it to various charities, but that’s just money; not my time. I want to give my time now.

Department Manager: Hm.

Trust Fund Kid: So, am I hired?

Department Manager: We haven’t even talked about what the job would entail.

Trust Fund Kid: I don’t have any experience, but I do have a lot of education.

Department Manager: Yes, this résumé is just your entire school history. You have an MBA from Hillside University?

Trust Fund Kid: Yeah, I don’t know why. I don’t run a business.

Department Manager: Maybe you should.

Trust Fund Kid: Maybe I should run a business? Which one?

Department Manager: You could start one.

Trust Fund Kid: What would my hypothetical company do?

Department Manager: Just take a look at this list. It itemizes everything you’ve learned since you graduated from high school. You studied computers a little. You could run a tech firm, and hire a bunch of people who are more knowledgeable than you. You could open a gym, because you took all these sports classes. Again, you don’t have to be the smartest in your industry. You just need to find people who can do it for you. You already have capital, so all you need is people. And those people need a place to work. Talk about winning. When the virus hit, so many employers had to let their employees go, because they didn’t budget in catastrophe. They just gave their executives huge bonuses, and wasted money on things we shouldn’t be using anymore, like paper. You could do better.

Trust Fund Kid: Hm.

Department Manager: Yeah.

Trust Fund Kid: What do you do for this company again?

Department Manager: This is the Washroom Department for the Appliance Division.

Trust Fund Kid: Great, let’s do that. Are you in?

Microstory 1347: Ivy Creep

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Ivy Candidate: Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity, sir. I’m very eager to learn from the absolute best of the best.

Ivy Gatekeeper: Well, that’s nice to hear, but you haven’t gotten in yet. I have been looking over your application, and it’s...

Ivy Candidate: What?

Ivy Gatekeeper: It’s not bad. It’s not particularly interesting. I mean, nothing in your essay really stands out. We get a lot of applicants—more and more each year—and there’s a reason for that. Well, there are many reasons. First, the human population is growing. Second, loans are increasingly easy to obtain, giving many students a false sense of security when it comes to paying for school. Third, people are just smarter. As a species, we’re smarter than we were before, and with the advent of the internet, knowledge is more accessible than ever. Suddenly, you don’t have to be born a genius, or come from the best grade school district. It’s leveled a lot of the playing field. Unfortunately, this means that, if you end up with a four-point-oh GPA, you’re not special anymore. Nonetheless, we have to have standards of some kind. We have to have some way of filtering people out. Otherwise, all we could go on is who happened to click the submit button the fastest.

Ivy Candidate: I understand. Is there anything I can do to stand out, or is my fate inevitable?

Ivy Gatekeeper: [...] There would have to be something you tell me in this interview that you didn’t mention before. You would need to give me some reason to advocate for you. Is there anything about your life that you think makes you unique, even if it’s only unique when coupled with something you’ve already told us?

Ivy Candidate: Hm. I guess not really. I know you want me to fight for this, but I don’t have a sappy story. I wasn’t raised by a single mother with a single leg. I didn’t pull my neighbor out of a burning building. I’ve been privileged, and can’t say I had to overcome adversity. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve worked my ass off. I sacrificed a lot of things so I could study, and participate in extracurriculars, but I see your point that there are plenty of people who have done the same thing.

Ivy Gatekeeper: You’re from Hillside, Kansas, right? I hear HillU is a pretty good school. Did you apply there?

Ivy Candidate: I have a few safety schools, but not Hillside. I want to move away from home, so I’m not tempted to rely on my family. The point of college is to prepare for a self-driven life.

Ivy Gatekeeper: I would agree with that. I actually know someone who used to work at Hillside University. He’s here now; teaches philosophy.

Ivy Candidate: I think I know who you’re talking about. Professor Ivy Creep, right?

Ivy Gatekeeper: Yes, you know him?

Ivy Candidate: He’s my uncle. But, ya know, when I say uncle, I mean...

Ivy Gatekeeper: He’s a family friend, not actually a parent’s sibling.

Ivy Candidate: Exactly. We haven’t spoken in a long time. How is he doing?

Ivy Gatekeeper: Oh, he’s...good, I think. He’s enjoying his new job.

Ivy Candidate: Oh, good. I’m happy for him.

Ivy Gatekeeper: Yeah.

Ivy Candidate: Yeah.

Ivy Gatekeeper: [...]

Ivy Candidate: [...]

Ivy Gatekeeper: So, he’s an asshole, right?

Ivy Candidate: Right!? Oh my God,  I’m glad you said something.

Ivy Gatekeeper: He acts like he runs this place.

Ivy Candidate: He’s always been that way. He talks down to people, and when he’s not the smartest person in the room, he literally ignores the person who is.

Ivy Gatekeeper: Yeah, I’ve noticed that.

Ivy Candidate: Yeah.

Ivy Gatekeeper: So, look. Anyone who has survived Professor Ivy Creep deserves a shot at a real life. If that’s not overcoming adversity, I don’t know what is. I’ll put in a good word for you, okay? I can’t make any guarantees, but I won’t let your application be the only thing that defines your college career.

Ivy Candidate: Oh, wow, thank you. That’s so amazing. You want me to be interesting, I promise to go crazy in college.

Microstory 1085: Buster

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Viola Woods was my girlfriend for a time. Now that we’ve learned so much about what she really was, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. I know she can manipulate time in some way, or perhaps the perception of it, but it still seems like she wasted so much of it on me. I mean, I’m a decent human being, but I’m no prize. My mother says I am, but the truth is that I’m unremarkably average. She couldn’t have been dating me as some kind of project, so she could fix me. She also couldn’t have been dating me so we would be a status couple. I get mostly Bs in school, I’m going to a respectable in-state college, and I know how to catch a ball. You know that, even though you haven’t quite released this interview series, people are already talking about its contents. I’m not so surprised about all the supernatural rumors going around, though I definitely didn’t know about them at the time. I keep racking my brain, trying to come up with some way that she changed my life. I asked her out the first time, and she accepted unenthusiastically. We never did anything, if that’s a question you were dying to ask. She implied that she was asexual, but I don’t actually know if that’s true. We broke up, I think now because she realized she couldn’t be totally honest with me. I was okay; not devastated. It didn’t make me stronger, or give me new perspective. It didn’t inspire me to turn my life around, or find my passion. All in all, I believe she had relatively little impact on me. As egotistical as it sounds, I think I simply didn’t need her help. I suppose it was bound to happen, right? No one can get through life all on their own, but I’m not alone. I have a good support system from my family and friends. I was born into middle class privilege, on the good side of town, but I see what the world is really like outside my bubble. As powerful as she may have been, she wasn’t capable of saving every individual on the planet, so I’m just another one of those people who missed out on her personal attention. I’m nothing special, and I’m totally fine with that. She did a lot of good for a lot of people here, but I guess I’m just the exception to the rule.

Microstory 944: My Family

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I’ve had a lot of struggles in my life, and despite countless opportunities to be better, I’ve wasted nearly all of them. I had some behavioral issues when I was younger, which we now know was partly due to my autism, but that’s not a very good excuse in my case.  I’ve mentioned the classes I’ve failed, but never really gave you any numbers. I still won’t, and I can tell you it’s never been enough to keep me from graduating, but it has cost money. My job search was even worse. I finished college in 2010, but only really found a good fit about a year ago when I found this position I have now. Yet through it all, my family has been there for me. They have repeatedly given me extra chances, funded my doomed endeavors, and received little return on their investment. My father is an economist, and works as a human resources consultant. He’s taught me so much about how business and how the market operates. I’m a pretty simple guy, who sees a lot of excess in the world. Without his lessons, and constant guidance, I would be so confused and lost about all the things most people take for granted, like how insurance works. My mother is a crafty financial advisor with an unmatched capacity for compassion and understanding. I can talk to her about almost anything (and do). She gives the best advice, because she not only gets how the world works in reality, but also how I see it, and how I think it ought to work, which is decidedly different. My sister is my best friend, and like a third parent for me. I needed a lot of help when I was a kid, and still do. She helps me organize my thoughts, and tackle challenges. And she has had to support me financially as well. I have a bit of resentment for shows like The Originals and Supernatural, which teach you that blood relations are everything, because that is not how I was raised. I think ours is the preferable option, since those people are consistently dying, and even killing each other, yet that hasn’t happened to us even once. You absolutely can choose your own family; maybe not as much when you’re too young to fend for yourself, but certainly when you get older. Even though my real family happens to be related to me, it doesn’t necessarily have to be like that. I’m related to a ton of people neither I care about, nor who care about me. I’m sure you’ve heard the idiomatic expression, blood is thicker than water. You’re probably using it wrong, though, because the original phrase referred to blood of the battle versus water of the womb, which makes a level of sense, because what other water might it be talking about? The water of friendship? I wasn’t born with a lot of privilege, but instead acquired it later. My parents didn’t have it easy when I was born, but the three of them worked their butts off, and by extension, I benefit as well. Without them, there is very little chance that I would still be alive today.