Microstory 2477: Wheeldome

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In case you’re confused, this dome is all about wheels. This includes bicycles, roller blades, skateboards, etc. What it doesn’t include are cars and motorcycles. Basically, if it runs on petrol or electricity, it can’t be here. I guess I shouldn’t say that. They do have some electric bikes, but obviously that’s a whole different animal. There are hundreds of wheel-based leisure areas, as well as long trails that stretch between them. They have all sorts of hills if you wanna go fast, and the best part about it is that you don’t even have to hike all the way back up. They have chairlifts that take you back up. It’s like a ski mountain, but for wheel sports. You couldn’t do that on Earth. They just didn’t want to build the infrastructure, and of course in more recent decades, all those old abandoned roads have been demolished to make way for nature. I didn’t come here because I was a skater. I came because I’m not, and I want to learn. I’ve had plenty of time to practice in virtual simulations but never got around to it, despite how accessible the worlds are. I guess I was waiting for this. Having a whole dome dedicated to what might one day become my passion seemed like the perfect place to get into it. It’s real, ya know? Anyway, I tell you that I’m a beginner so you’re not expecting me to give a detailed review of this place. I don’t know how it stacks up against other skate parks. I just know that when you’re working with 5,410 square kilometers, it’s hard to believe it’s lacking in anything. Unless, again, you’re looking to race cars, or something. Go somewhere else for that. Just because it’s got wheels, doesn’t mean it belongs in Wheeldome. Hang ten, bruh. Gotta go.

Microstory 2469: Gambledome

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Here’s the thing about gambling in a post-scarcity society...it’s not any fun! When money isn’t real, the stakes aren’t real, and there’s nothing interesting about it. The creators of Gambledome have managed to subvert this about as well as possible without completely shifting the paradigm of the economy. In Gambledome, money kind of is real, but only here. You start out with a modest amount of cash to spend on chips, and as you play, you win and lose those chips. If your stack starts piling up, you can cash them out, and spend it on things. You can get yourself a nice, luxurious room to stay in. You can spring for the (faux) lobster at dinner. You can give it away to your friends to make them like you. This is how it worked in other gambling communities on Earth back in the before-fore times, like Las Vegas. Here, it’s a recreation, which may make you think that your life can only get better, but that’s not true. If you run into the negative, you’re in trouble. You can’t leave the dome, and go back to the utopia that vonearthans have created since automation made fiat-based economies obsolete. You have to stick around, and pay off your debts. That’s right, there are real consequences. Some of the humans walking around as staff may be there because that is the experience that they have asked to be assigned while staying in the dome, but some are there because they have to be. Don’t come here if you don’t genuinely want to pretend to be an ancient human, because that’s the thing about gambling. You don’t know if you’re gonna win, and people lose all the time. A note on cheating: while they won’t torture you, it can land you in jail, where you’ll pay off your social debt by being locked up in a cell, unable to leave. We still have jails in the 27th century, of course, but the percentage of incarcerated individuals has never been lower, so this is rare. One woman lost her money on purpose, threw a tantrum, and tried to steal it all back, specifically so they would throw her in a cell, because it just doesn’t happen all that often anymore, and she certainly didn’t want to break any real laws. She didn’t want to go through the real justice system, and go to a real jail, where she might never get out. Overall, this place is a lot of fun, but only temporarily. I wouldn’t want to spend the rest of my life here, and I certainly wouldn’t want to live in a world where people are sincerely desperate enough to gamble because they think they have no other choice. I don’t know if Gambledome is fostering any real addicts, but I sure would be interested to know if it’s happening, and if it is, whether the creators have any plans to do anything about it.

Microstory 2400: Introduction to Castlebourne Reviews

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I feel like it’s been a long time since I’ve addressed you, my imaginary audience. Sometimes I like to introduce new microfiction series as one of the characters, or the in-universe narrator, or someone else involved in the canon. Sometimes, however, it’s best if I just come at it as myself. In the end, I decided to do it this way, because there’s no good way for a character to prepare their readers for what they’re going to write. These are going to be formatted as customer reviews, and people don’t typically plan such writings. They have the experiences, and write how they feel in that moment. I know that there are going to be 99 of these in total, but the narrating reviewer wouldn’t really know that. In fact, I’m still not sure if the reviews are going to be from the perspective of one person who visited multiple domes, or if each one will be from a different person. I may leave it up in the air, because when it comes to real reviews, most people don’t have reviewers that they follow. I mean, I think it happens, but there’s often that trope with a prolific business reviewer who believes that their thoughts are important to other customers, and the joke is that no one really cares that much about any single review, and they probably don’t pay much attention to a reviewer’s history. Anyway, here’s the story. About 108 light years from Earth, there’s a planet called Castlebourne. It falls into the category of a Charter World. Now, what is that? Well, the closest neighboring star systems to Earth are known as the Core Worlds. We’re a tight-knit group. They were colonized through state-sponsored missions, they belong to a uniform, cohesive government, and they follow all the rules. In return, they get military protection, and resource exchanges without question. Stellar Neighborhood systems also receive military protection and aid, but at a lower priority to the Core. They don’t have to be post-scarcity societies, but their government can’t be oppressive, violent, or unfair. Civilizations in the Charter Cloud are expected to get there on their own, and for the most part, handle their own needs. They can’t take military action against a Core or Neighborhood system, but they’re not entitled to military protection from the Core. They can execute trade negotiations, but nothing is guaranteed. Any colony beyond this range is totally out of the Core’s control, and can do whatever they want, but the downside is they get nothing.

Castlebourne enjoys really strong ties to the Sol System. Despite being as far out into the galaxy as they are, they’ve been granted a number of charters. They’ve been afforded technology, power allotments, and additional ships in order to accomplish their goals. This is because Castlebourne offers a lot to all citizens of the inner colony bands. Almost the entire surface is littered with tens of thousands of geodesic domes. Most of these will be pressurized, and become habitable eventually, but it takes a lot of work, and a ton of resources. That’s why these charters are so important. These domes offer visitors all sorts of entertainment and amusement potential. Some are recreational, some of relaxational, some are for exploration, some are wildlife preserves. Many of them are just for the permanent inhabitants to live, and cultivate their independent society. There are two gargantuan oceans at the poles. This planet boasts having everything you could ever want. You can travel there using a fractional ship, but it’s going to take you over a hundred years to reach it. If you’re lucky, you might be able to get on a ship with a reframe engine, which will take around two months. But most people don’t see any point in this. They instead transfer their consciousnesses across the interstellar void via advanced quantum tunneling, and download into new substrates. It takes about an hour, and that’s it. Not every dome is available. There are just so many of them, and only so many sufficiently original ideas. But believe me, there are plenty of them. There is more than enough to see to occupy your time for decades. It would be pretty tough to get bored on Castlebourne. Like I said, the next 99 stories will be in the form of customer reviews, told from a person (or people) who had some meaningful visit there, and they barely scratch the surface. I could write a fictional review every weekday for the next forty years, and still not even come close to covering them all. Hopefully, these are the most interesting, at least out of the domes that were ready at the purported time of writing according to the set time period around the Grand Opening in the year 2500. Read them all, and decide for yourselves if Castlebourne is a place that you would like to travel to some day.

Microstory 2121: Try to Escape, Blah Blah Blah

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I’ve been calling this weekend jail, but the real and official term is intermittent jail. I don’t know about anywhere else, but the people of this Earth decided that they wanted a lot of their criminals to be able to serve their time while still being able to contribute positively to society. Some prisons offer some sort of work program, but this is difficult to regulate, and studies a long time ago discovered a lot of exploitation, and unfair wage practices. The reason it’s called intermittent is because not everyone can do it on the weekends, because that makes the process too complicated. Everyone who works there would be really busy during these short periods of time, and they don’t want to have to do that. It’s actually harder to get a weekend schedule, because that’s what everyone wants, for obvious reasons. I was able to secure it because of my rising readership count for this website. They argued that my blog was a fixture of public interest that had the potential to paint the court system in a positive light. The system is not known here for its negative press, but good publicity is always welcome, and the judge agreed. So here’s what happened. I checked in at 19:00 exactly on Friday night. First, I should say that there are entire facilities dedicated to intermittent jail time, but some of them cater to mixed populations. You may end up as a cellmate to someone who has to stay there the whole time. In this case, we were all there for the same thing, and I think they’re going to try to keep me with the same cell mate each time, though that might not always work out. I have no feelings on this matter yet, as I have not even had a cellmate, because I was in the intake section.

The intake section is meant only for people who are going in for the first time. Well, it doesn’t have to be their first time full stop. If they’re a repeat offender, they have to go through the initial intake process all over again, so some of the people I saw there might have already known what to do. That’s the point of all this, to familiarize residents with the process before throwing them in with everyone else. So I got there at 19:00, and started filling out forms, and confirming information with the intake officers. After that, I was asked to place all of my belongings in a box after they were logged, and hand it to one of the officers while I went into a privacy room, and removed all of my clothes. It wasn’t that private, though, because we were all in there together, which I didn’t have a problem with; I just tend to notice funny language errors like that. It was just a locker room. So I removed my clothes, and put on an ugly multicolored striped shirt and ugly multicolored striped sweatpants. These did not have any pockets, because there is no reason to carry anything, such as—you know—weapons? Why were these striped and ugly? Well, if anyone breaks out, they want them to be immediately identifiable by their attire. It would be crazy for someone to break out of intermittent jail, since you would only have to wait a day or two, but I suppose there might be extenuating circumstances, like a dying loved one, or some other emergency.

After I got my new clothes on, I tucked my regulars in an aluminum tub, along with my other personal objects. I then put that whole thing in a big locker, the combination to which is known to the officers, and not to me. The normal lockers inside the privacy room serve no purpose from what I can tell. They led me down a hallway where I continued the intake process, which involved another physical exam, as well as a psych evaluation. All of this stuff is mostly for the first time you go there, but they warned me that they will periodically make me go through it all again, so I should never try to rely on a consistent schedule. Once I was cleared for lockup, they gave me a quick tour. The facility is not complicated. The common area is a hexagon in the center, which includes a gym, the cafeteria, chairs, televisions, and a few recreational amenities, like a pool table. That’s where the phones are too. On the first side of the hexagon is the Intake Sector, where the entrance is, as well as all the stuff that I’ve been describing, plus I think some offices on the upper floors. The common area is only a few stories high but the other sectors go up fourteen stories. The actual cells are in the middle levels of that first sector. The other sides of the hexagon are dedicated to all of the other cells, which is where I’ll go at the end of this week.

My first two nights here weren’t too terribly bad, but again, we were all in the same boat. Everyone there was scared, nervous, anxious, or just unfamiliar. Once I get placed in gen pop, I’ll start running into people who know the ropes. There could be drugs in there, or fights; who knows? I can’t give you a full impression since I’ve had such a limited experience so far. They did lay out the rules for me, most of which are obvious, like don’t cause trouble, or try to escape, blah, blah, blah. There are some less obvious ones too, like when mealtimes are, and how often I’m allowed to use the phone. There are times when I have to be in my cell, and even times when I’m not allowed to be in my cell, even if I just want to go in there to be alone or sleep. These vary by the sector, and by my current privilege status, so they’ll inform me of those specifics later. They will continue to update me with my status as my behavior continues to be monitored and appraised. For the time being, it felt more like staying in a hotel in Iowa. As we all know and agree, Iowa sucks, so if you have to be there for whatever reason, there’s no other reason to leave your hotel room. It’s not like there could be something that you would like to see or do, so staying in the room is the only rational way to pass the time anyway. I’m sure that it will start to feel more like a prison the more I’m obligated to go back, so stay tuned for my shifting perspective.

Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida: Beyond (Part V)

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I was named for a play on science words, which if you knew my father, would make perfect sense. I’m not certain what he would have done if the woman he impregnated had any other surname, but I wouldn’t have put it past him to just make one up for me. Abigail Genifer Siskin. Abiogenesis is the process by which nonliving matter evolves into living matter. At some point in Earth’s history, nothing was alive. There were rocks, and gases, and lots of other elements, including carbon, but there were no organisms. Then later on, there was life. How long did that take, how did it happen, and why? These are questions scientists have still not answered, but we’re all pretty confident about the idea of abiogenesis, because any competing theory would be paradoxical. Life had to start somewhere—even if it happened a million light years away, a billion years ago—and my father says I’m the embodiment of that.

I’m nobody, though. I mean, I’m not nobody, but don’t expect some crazy story about how I came into being. Tamerlane Pryce didn’t create me by shooting a bolt of lightning into a stone. He conceived me with my mother the old fashioned way, so him calling me Abiogenesis is really just about his compulsion to make everything about science, whether it’s relevant or not. And again, he didn’t give me her surname to be progressive, hip, or woke. He did it for the nickname, because—and I say this with all the love he deserves—he a basic bitch.

I hate my father, which is why I locked him in his tank, and I haven’t let him out for months. He’s the stellar neighborhood’s foremost expert in consciousness transference. The good people of Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida asked him to come here so he could use his expertise to build up their recreational ventures. Well, he’s done that, and we don’t need him anymore. People come here to temporarily load their minds into artificial animal bodies, and explore those animals’ natural habitat without interfering with them. They use his technology on Earth now too, which is presently the only planet we know of with such diversity of life. Anyway, this obviously isn’t the only application of it. There are many ways in this day and age to be immortal, but one of the ways he uses to avoid death is to transfer his mind into a backup body whenever anything goes wrong with the one he was in before. What he didn’t consider is the fact that he can’t kill himself and trigger a transfer if he’s unconscious and trapped in a clone tank, waiting for his rebellious daughter to decide to let him out. I won’t do it, though. He’s not a good person, and he’s been around for centuries, and if I killed him, I would be doing the galaxy a huge favor. The only reason I haven’t is because I don’t know how. I don’t know how to prevent him from transfering, or from just having an outdated backup somewhere else. I don’t tell people that, of course. They all think I’m keeping him alive because killing is wrong, or whatever.

I’ve moved on from him, and I’ll only go back to worrying about it once I discover a weakness to mind transference. It’s pretty difficult, because there’s always a chance he’s set aside a contingency I never knew about. If I were him, I would send a darkbursting automated ship to the Andromeda galaxy in case a cataclysmic failure took out all my other clones.

Right now I’m with my new family. Thor Thompson is another immortal human, who Pryce used as his test subject for a new substrate that would have turned my father into even more of a threat. There’s also Trinity Turner, who literally created this world. Nearly everything here was toxic to humans when she set foot on it, so she spent decades altering the native organisms on a molecular level, without changing anything else about them. Good thing she’s from the future, or her dream would have been impossible. Our friend, Ellie Underhill also has a time power; one which Thor and I are presently learning more about. “You’re bringing everyone who has ever lived in the history of Earth, and the stellar neighborhood, back to life?”

“Yeah,” Trinity confirms. “I know, it’s—”

“I don’t think it’s crazy,” I assure her. “I’m just...what are ya gonna do with them?”

Trinity and Ellie give each other a look, which they’ve been doing a lot lately, since they keep a lot of secrets from me. “We’re going to put their consciousnesses in a simulation,” Ellie answers.

“Why?” Thor questions.

“We don’t think they would do well in base reality,” Ellie continues. “I mean, well, some people would. You take anyone from, maybe the 22nd century, and you can get them up to speed. Hell, it might even be okay if we tried to integrate someone who regularly used a personal computer while they were alive, because at least they can fathom the concept. Anyone earlier than that, though, is going to freak out.”

“So, will you convince them they’re in heaven, or are you going to simulate the world they were living in at the time, and make them just think they survived death?” Thor knows what kind of questions to ask.

“A little bit of both,” Trinity says. “They’ll know they died. We’re not going to try to convince them that nothing happened. They’ll eventually wonder why nothing else has killed them, or why other people aren’t getting hurt, and all that. We’re not sure where to go from there, though. Can we tell them this is the afterlife when it’s not true?”

“Well...” I start to say. “It will be true. If this is universal, it’s no less of an afterlife than a so-called real one. Perhaps this is all destined to happen, and every theory about the afterlife is partially true, because you’re building it for them.”

“Hmm.”

At that, we stop talking for a good period of time. We all sit down, and stay in the room together, but we think on the matter in our own heads. I don’t know exactly what they’re thinking about, but I know what I’ve come up with, so I speak first, hoping it’s something reasonable. “When are you planning to start this? Will we bring back our primate ancestors? What is a human?”

“We’ve chosen five thousand years BCE,” Ellie replies.

“That’s as far back as my camera will go,” Trinity adds. She carries a magical camera with her that lets her travel to the past, and even the future. Someone else apparently invented the camera for her, and it automatically took pictures from all throughout history.

“We don’t have enough data from before that. So when we say we’ll bring back everyone, that’s a bit of an exaggeration.”

“Either way,” Thor jumps in, “how are you going to explain that? I don’t know much about the brain, but this neural implant you came up with, you’re going to give it to everyone in the past? Won’t people notice they have one, but their ancestors didn’t?”

“Those are the logistical issues we’re still working on,” Ellie says with a nod. “Neurolemmocytes already exist, but there’s no difference between the ones found in the central nervous system, and the ones in the peripheral system. What we would have to do is replace the ones in the brain with ours.”

“Won’t people eventually figure out there’s something strange about them?” I presume.

“They’ll probably give them another name, because they will see a distinction,” Ellie explains, “but they will function just as the real ones do. They’ll just also have this mind transferring characteristic they would never think to test for.”

“And do our primate ancestors have them?” I press.

“They do,” Trinity answers. “Evolution invented them a really long time ago. Even invertebrates have them.”

“This sounds incredibly complicated,” I tell them apologetically. “And when I say complicated, I think I mean impossible.”

“That’s why you got me.” Oh no. It’s my father. He’s somehow broken free.

Trinity and Ellie have known him longer than me, so they’re not exactly pleased he’s awake, but they’ve developed coping mechanisms. I’m pissed because my plan didn’t work, and Thor’s the worst off, because he doesn’t fully understand what this guy’s deal is. All he knows is that they’re never gonna be buddies.

“Oh, don’t look so surprised and upset,” he says to me. “I always have another plan, and I don’t blame you for trying to sweep me under the rug.”

“What was your plan? How did you get out?” I ask.

He chuckles. “I obviously can’t trust you with that information. Just know that there’s nothing you could do to get rid of me.” He sizes Thor’s new body up. “I built this new substrate to make myself stronger, but I don’t need it to be a survivor. I accomplished that a long time ago.” He claps his hands together abruptly. “That’s not what we’re talkin’ about, though, are we? You’re trying to save the human past. You’re gonna need me to do this. Trinity’s got the connections, Ellie’s got the power, Abby’s got the ideas, and I got the brains.” He looks back over to Thor. “Oh, and I guess you’re still here too.”

Ellie and Trinity have another one of their infamous psychic conversations. I’m starting to think that’s not just a metaphor about their facial expressions. They may have actually formed some kind of psychic bond that either can or can’t be intercepted.

“Don’t do this,” I say to them, shaking my head.

Trinity sighs. “There’s a reason I brought him to this planet in the first place. To be honest, waking him up was probably inevitable. I don’t like it any more than you do, Abigail.”

“I doubt that,” I contend, standing up defiantly. “He’s my dad, and that can never be undone. You, on the other hand, chose to associate yourself with him, and I won’t be a part of it.”

“Wait,” Thor says calmly. “He was right when he said we need you too. These three are clearly strong and capable individuals, but they don’t have your creativity.”

“We just met,” I argue.

He smiles at me. “I’ve grown pretty good at knowing when I encounter someone who’s the polar opposite of me. Before he interrupted us, you were saying you had an idea. I would like to hear it.”

“His interruption wasn’t a single moment,” I say. “It’s still happening.”

Thor nods understandingly. Then he stands up coolly, and punches my father in the throat so hard, it collapses his windpipe, and kills him pretty much instantly. I think there’s something seriously wrong with me, because I’ve never been more attracted to anyone in my whole life.

Ellie rolls her eyes, and starts swiping on her device. “He was listening to our conversation before he walked into the room. He must have hacked into our security system, and I don’t feel like correcting that right now. So if we want to continue our conversation, Trinity can transport us somewhere he can never go. I honestly don’t know where this photo was taken, but the person who took it claims there’s nowhere safer, and I trust him with my life. He said I would know when I needed it. Maybe this isn’t it, maybe it is.”

Trinity takes a look at the photo. “You say you trust him? This could be anywhere, anywhen. Who are these people?”

“You trust him too,” Ellie says. “I don’t know who the people in the photo are.”

“All right. I could do with a break from this place,” Trinity decides. “I wanna hear your ideas too, Abigail.”

We crowd around Ellie’s device, which is displaying a jungle. My eyes burn, as they do when Trinity is traveling to a different time and place through one of her pictures. In a second, it’s over, and we’re standing in that jungle.

“Whoa,” I hear behind us.

We all turn around to find a small group of people. There’s only one person I recognize, though. I saw a clone of his body in a tank for decades of my life. Mateo Matic.

“Ah,” he says. “This is unexpected. We were told there would not be a transition window today.”

“Where are we?” I ask.

“This...” he begins, building suspense, “is The Parallel.”

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Varkas Reflex: Equilibrium (Part IV)

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The adjudicative system today was a lot different than it was when Hokusai was growing up. Instead of a single jury, deliberations were done with two separate arbitration panels, of five people. On each panel, three were regular people who served as arbiters, while two were educated arbitrators. There was still a judge—though, the position was now called adjudicator, to align with an a-word motif—but it was their responsibility to manage and mediate the court, rather than make summary judgments, punish the half-guilty, be corrupt, and stand above the law. The court system on Varkas Reflex was quite new, and while societies on the other colony planets generally stuck with the systems created on Earth after millennia of development, the Varkans decided to throw most of that out the window. Theirs was not an unfair process, but it wasn’t formal either, and it wasn’t orderly, nor predictable.

The good news was that Loa and Pribadium were both deemed innocent for the potential crime of erasing the episodic memories of the dimensional gravity scientists. The bad news was that Hokusai was not. She was sitting in the courtroom now, which was usually used for zero-g darts. One of the eight alleged victims was responsible for coming up with new forms of gravitational recreation, so this was her spot. Of course, she didn’t remember doing any of that, which was why they were all here now.

Gangsta Dazzlemist was playing the part of adjudicator, Katica Petrić was acting as advocate for the defense, and the investigator from before was the adhering attorney. Two people were chosen at random to approximate the role of arbiters. One was a permanent resident, while the other just happened to be in the middle of a decade-long vacation. Neither of them exhibited any signs of caring whether they were there or not. The only truly qualified person here was a bona fide arbitrator from Bungula. He had reportedly moved here to make sure proceedings such as this didn’t end up in kangaroo court. Anywhere else in the stellar neighborhood, most of these would be considered conflicts of interest, or at least inappropriate selections, but people here didn’t see it that way. If they were impacted by whatever had happened, then they were believed to have the right to decide the consequences and conclusion.

A slapdash Gangsta was sucking his teeth repeatedly, out of boredom, as if waiting for someone else to start, except that this was his duty. He apparently knew this, and finally perked up. “All right. Let’s get goin’. Adherent Blower, what’s your accusation?”

“It’s Boehler. Risto Boehler,” the investigator responded.

“Is that your accusation?” Gangsta joked.

“Hokusai Gimura stands accused of maliciously erasing the memories of seven innocent scientists.”

“Okay,” Gangsta said. “Hokusai? Are ya guilty?”

“I am not. I did know it would erase all of their memories, but I was told that it would not hurt, and I did it with no malice.”

“‘Kay, cool. Go ahead and ask your questions, bro.”

“Thank you. Madam Gimura, when did you first arrive on Varkas Reflex?”

“Twenty-two thirty-nine,” she answered.

“So, you were part of the original colony fleet?”

“No,” she said truthfully. “I arrived in my own vessel.”

“This vessel was much smaller than standard technological development in the 2230s would allow, correct?”

“I’m ahead of my time.”

“And how exactly are you ahead of your time? Where were you educated?”

“Earth. I was just born smart.”

“When were you born?”

“June 27, 1985.”

“So that would make you three hundred and two years old. You’re a tricenterian.”

Hokusai bobbed her head side to side. The reality was that she was much younger than that, because of all the time travel she had experienced, but she couldn’t say any of that. Fortunately, perjury didn’t seem to be a thing here, so okay. “Well, it’s more complicated than that, because of relativity.” That wasn’t quite a lie anyway.

“Sure,” Risto began. “I’m just gathering some information. Let’s get to the real questions. You’re the one who invented what scientists refer to as dimensional gravity?”

“Yes.”

“How does it work?”

“You would need at least three postgraduate degrees to have any hope of understanding it.”

“I have equivalent-seven.” He didn’t say this to brag. Equivalent-seven wasn’t even all that much in this day and age. With no need to use one’s education to make money, and literally all the time in the universe, casually gaining profound amounts of knowledge over the course of several decades was commonplace. “But assume I don’t. Explain like I’m five. How does it work, at its most basic level?”

Hokusai squirmed in her seat, and looked to her wife for help, but Loa could only frown at her. “Gravity is a force, enacted upon an object to a certain calculable degree, according to mass, density, and proximity. My technology generates a field of negative mass, extracted from another dimension. It doesn’t lower the gravity under your feet; it’s more like it gets between you and the gravitational object, so that the object can’t pull on you anymore. This energy can be manipulated to adjust your weight.”

“Wow, that’s some smart five-year-old,” Risto remarked.

Hokusai tried to dumb it down further. “Water makes you buoyant, so you can float on it. It doesn’t negate gravity, but it can make you feel weightless, because the water is trying to push you up at the same time. Think of my tech as just a lake of water that isn’t wet, and is made up of particles other than dihydrogen monoxide.”

“What particles is it made of?”

“Are you still five years old in this question?”

“Fair enough, I’ll move on. Who did you work with to create this technology? Who else was on your team?”

At this, the professional arbitrator, Jericho Hagen shifted in his seat, as if perturbed by the question.

“No one.” Another truth, but it was hard to believe.

“You did all by yourself?”

“Yes.”

“That’s impressive.”

“I had decades upon decades to work on it.” That wasn’t totally true, though. Hokusai had indeed been inventing things since the 20th century, but dimensional gravity was a more recent endeavor.”

“Still,” he went on, “others have had about as much time as you, and they never did it, so you must be something special.”

“I must be,” she said.

“When you came to our planet, you agreed to help us combat the high-gravity problem by letting us use your dimensional gravity technology, yes?”

“I did.”

“Yet you didn’t allow us to reverse-engineer or reproduce it, right? You handled every aspect of early construction, and didn’t let anyone else in?”

“That’s not the whole truth. I trusted my apprentice, Pribadium Delgado with it.”

“Yes,” Risto understood. “You trusted Miss Delgado, up until the point she disappeared. Then you disappeared as well, along with your wife.”

“I didn’t disappear.”

“Oh, no?”

“I always knew where I was.”

“Quite. But we didn’t, and still don’t. Care to share where you were during that time?”

“I don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Care. I don’t care to share. That’s classified.”

“Well, that’s a good segue. Let’s talk about the neural implant chips, and the classified data on them. Did you have anything to do with their creation?”

Jericho shifted in his seat again.

“I didn’t,” she said. “I wasn’t here, and hadn’t heard of them until yesterday.”

“Yet you had control over them.”

“Briefly.”

“Enough time to push a button, and erase everyone’s memories.”

“Enough time for that, indeed.”

“Why did you do it?”

“I was told the button would only purge the data on the chip, not affect the rest of their respective brains.”

“But you knew it was a possibility?”

“Of course it was a possibility. There was a possibility that, when I pressed the button, the whole building transmuted into gold. The chances were absurdly low, but still not zero. Osiris gave it to me, knowing full well I would use it, and probably sooner, rather than later. He knew the risks, and I accepted his consideration without spending time considering these risks myself.”

Jericho could clearly bite his tongue no longer. Arbitrators were not usually meant to speak during the trial. Like the juries of ancient days, they were expected to only listen until deliberations began. He couldn’t suffer the ineptitude anymore, though. “You’re not asking her any real questions!”

“I’m sorry?” Boehler asked.”

Jericho stood up. “This is supposed to be a trial. You’re supposed to find out what she did, why she did it, and whether she’s a danger because of it. The four of us are then supposed to figure out what to do with her. You can’t just keep letting her off the hook. Where did she go after she disappeared? Don’t let her not answer that. How confident was she that the memory-erasing button was safe? Ask that question.  Make her tell you what this other dimension is where we’re getting our gravity. This isn’t the 21st century anymore. There’s no such thing as proprietary privilege. Ask the damn questions!”

Adjudicator Dazzlemist pretended to bang a gavel, and released a sort of barking sound with each one. “Mister Hagen, this is highly irregular!” He said it with about as much seriousness as a clown at a comedy club.

“This is a joke! You don’t want justice for these people’s lives. Do you even know what life is? It’s memory. I’m two hundred and sixteen years old. I spent four of those in stasis on my way to Alpha Centauri, so I’m not really two-sixteen, I’m closer to two-twelve.”

“You chose stasis for a six-year flight?” Gangsta questioned.

“That’s not my point!” Jericho contended. “I didn’t make any memories during the trip. I was essentially dead. Because memories are all we have, the act of erasing someone’s memories is tantamount to murder. So let’s do a real trial, and figure it out.”

Gangsta’s face changed in such a way to make his name sound a bit unrealistic. He finally lived up to his position as a world leader. “This isn’t a real trial. This is more of a mediation. We’re trying to determine, not the truth, but what we should do with that truth. We know that Madam Gimura erased the victim’s memories, and we know she didn’t do it on purpose, because we have testimony from Madam Nielsen, Miss Delgado, and Dr. Petrić. All we need to do now is decide if she’s too dangerous to stay on-world. I understand that you would prefer we make this all very formal and regulated, but your response to the lack of organization was a chaotic outburst of passion. I hope you can appreciate the irony in that.”

Jericho sighed. “I do.”

“Good. I have some questions of my own. “Dr. Petrić, you possess knowledge of dimensional gravity, correct?”

“Indeed.”

“As do you, Miss Delgado?”

Pribadium didn’t know why she was being addressed, but had to answer, “yes.”

“This place thrives on safety. There aren’t a lot of laws that we care about, but we care about that. I see no reason for you to fill out seven billion forms to request an assignment on a ship collecting hydrogen from this system’s mini-Neptune, Lycos Isledon. You wanna go, just go. The only reason our species used to have closed borders, visas, and passports is because people were greedy and dangerous back then. We got rid of that when we got rid of most of the motives for crime. Still, crime does exist, because people still have complicated motives. It would be equally difficult to categorize Madam Gimura’s actions as harmless as it would be to categorize them as malicious. I can’t have someone on my world who has erased seven people’s memories, and it doesn’t much matter whether she did it on purpose, or not. It throws off the equilibrium, and it has to be stopped before it gets out of control. She can go live somewhere else, which I know she’s capable of doing, because she’s three centuries old, and she’s done it before. My judgment is permanent exile. Thank you. You’re all dismissed.”

Hokusai wanted to be upset, but the reality was that her technology was safe, and there was nothing particularly appealing about this planet, so she didn’t need to stay. He was right, she could live anywhere. So she would go without a fight.

< > Entire Story

Microstory 1386: Marriage Counseling

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Marriage Counselor: Welcome, you both, to marriage counseling. Before we begin, it’s important that you understand that this is a safe space. There will be no judgments here; not from me, and not from either of you. This is not just a guideline, but a rule, and I will be enforcing it strictly.

Husband: I understand, and agree to your terms.

Wife: As do I.

Marriage Counselor: So, what seems to be the problem?

Wife: I cheated on him, and he doesn’t care.

Marriage Counselor: Is that true, Mr. Husband?

Husband: I suppose it is, yes. I would love to say that I simply didn’t react the way she would have wanted, but I see where she’s coming from, and I honestly can’t explain it.

Marriage Counselor: Walk me through it. What happened, and how did Husband react? Mrs. Wife, you go first.

Wife: I’ve been feeling a little neglected, and spending a lot of time on my own. I didn’t go out seeking a second partner, but I often found myself at the rec center, even when I didn’t have a fitness class to get to. I met this woman there who’s kind of going through the same thing with her girlfriend. At first, we were just talking, but then things escalated. It just so happened that Husband walked in on us during the one time it went too far.

Marriage Counselor: Let’s switch perspectives before you proceed. What were you doing that led up to this, Mr. Husband?

Husband: I’ve been pretty busy at work, but that’s not the whole story. I could get it all done on time, but I’ve slowly lost the motivation to do so. The work is overwhelming, and it’s also total nonsense. I used to get really frustrated about it, but now I’m just indifferent. It’s not like the work slows down just because I don’t do it with so much haste, so it builds up even more, and I end up having to stay late just to catch up. One day, I finally just said screw it, and left for home at the time I’m supposed to. Like she said, I walked in on her.

Marriage Counselor: How did you react?

Husband: I barely did at all. My first instinct was that I was pissed; not that I was actually anger, but that I ought to be. As I stood there, looking at them in our marital bed, though, I realized it didn’t bother me. I felt like, if that’s what she wants, she should have it, because I obviously can’t provide for her.

Marriage Counselor: Did it excite you, or just not bother you?

Husband: I felt nothing. I feel nothing. I’m completely numb. I don’t feel joy or jealousy anymore, or anything else, for that matter. I don’t know why, and I don’t want to be like this. I wish I had gotten angry at her, because then we could have worked through it. But she’s just sitting here in this marriage, and neither of us is happy, but she’s the only one who’s trying anymore. I think I might have become a sociopath.

Wife: I don’t think that.

Marriage Counselor: Me neither. You would not have become a sociopath, Mr. Husband. It’s something you’re born with, or possibly develop at a very early age. And even if you hadn’t realized what you were until now, just from my first impression of you, I doubt it would be a good diagnosis. You obviously still care about her, if only in a lesser sense than you used to. Sociopaths aren’t capable of even that. You seem to be having trouble manifesting emotions, but I don’t think they’re not there at all. Are you taking any medication?

Wife: He’s not taking anything.

Marriage Counselor: Well, he’s mimicking some of the symptoms of certain antidepressants, so if it’s not that, then there’s some other imbalance in the brain. Mr. Husband, you mentioned your work. I believe that may be at the heart of what’s causing all this. Let’s dive deeper into that.

Husband: Okay.