Microstory 2466: Grand Central Sewage

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According to lore, this was originally called Primary Sewage Treatment Dome. They changed it, because they wanted it to sound a little more fun. Because in reality, it’s not fun at all. It’s the grossest aspect of this planet, in my humble opinion. Let’s start with the water. Every sufficiently completed dome handles its own water treatment for the most part. Using state-of-the-art plants, the sewage is collected, filtered, and recycled as needed. This clean water is then pumped back into their own pipe network, and if there’s any excess, it can be returned to the planet’s water table. There isn’t much of a water table, but it does exist, and it’s growing every day. What’s left over after all of the water has been reclaimed is called sludge, and while it’s absolutely disgusting, it is absolutely not useless. There are all sorts of goodies in your waste. It can be used for biogas, fertilizer, and even feedstock for additive printers. That’s right, the device you’re using to read this review may be made out of poop! It’s a...different circle of life. Certain useful ingredients can also be extracted from the sludge, like phosphorus, nitrogen, and cellulose. These chemicals are all processed here, and redistributed as necessary. But first, it has to get here. As I said, each individual dome reclaims its own recycled water, but since there’s only one Grand Central Sewage, it all has to be pelletized, sealed up, and transported somehow. Enter the vactrain network. That’s right, the same tubes you use to travel from your residential dome to, say, Archidome, are also used to transport waste. Don’t worry, though. They use entirely different trains, and entirely different train stations. It’s probably right under your feet, though. If you were to step through a maintenance door, and walk down the steps, you could end up in a second station where waste is moved into the tubes. Scrap is shipped from here as well. Every time you throw away some packaging, or a part breaks off from some equipment, it goes to one of these hidden stations too, so it can head off to a separate dome, colloquially known as The Scrapyard. I reviewed that dome as well, because I actually like the utility domes. I find the secret, underground means by which we live to be more interesting than what we do on the surface. It’s not pretty, and it’s not glamorous, but it is monumentally important. Yes, it might be a little weird to know that the chair your sitting on could have been in someone’s body at some point, but trust me, this is better. We used to just dump our waste in a hole, and leave it there forever. Talk about disgusting.

Microstory 1628: Scared Substrate

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Like Lochanverse, this next universe was sterilized completely by the Ochivari, in an attempt to prevent them from being able to destroy their world completely. Unfortunately for the Ochivari, their plan failed, because it had a weakness. Organic life isn’t the only thing capable of destroying. The truth is that it doesn’t matter what body you’re in, if you don’t care about the environment, you’re not going to go out of your way to save it. It doesn’t matter as much as people think if you could live long enough to see the consequences of your actions. You’re not going to suddenly start recycling, and turning off your lights, and driving electric cars, and donating money to wildlife preserves. You’re going to keep doing whatever it is that makes you happy in whatever way is the most convenient, whether that means polluting, or wasting resources. This is what happened here. Most of the time, the Ochivari don’t reveal themselves to the populations that they sterilize. They do it quietly, and just let the humans figure out what happened to them on their own. Obviously, they always will realize it, but the hope is that it will be too late by that time. The Ochivari don’t just want to make sure no one stops them, because once they release the virus, that’s pretty much impossible anyway. The sooner the humans figure it out, the longer they have to come up with some solution. Now, most of the time, that’s not relevant. The humans spend all their resources trying to cure the virus that they don’t have the time or resources to try anything else. The discovery that no more children are going to be born leads to mayhem and civil breakdown. The mistake that the Ochivari made in this case was to reveal themselves to their victims, and they did it out of anger.

The one requirement they have when choosing a target is the people have to be doomed to destroy their world unless someone intervenes. Generally, this means that they’re greedy, lazy, or just inept. This world, however, was willfully destructive. They reveled in the damage they were doing to their environment, seeing every bad outcome as proof that they were gods of their own planet, and were entitled to do whatever the hell they wanted with it. They were conquerors, and takers. They didn’t want to save their planet, because they were confident the best of them would one day leave, and maintain their lifestyles elsewhere. They weren’t wrong. The Ochivari made a mistake when they chose to lecture them about why they had to sterilize them. Armed with this knowledge, the humans came up with a workaround. They didn’t even bother to cure the virus. They simply uploaded their consciousnesses to new bodies. They were working on this technology already, so it wasn’t all that hard. The technology was made free—which didn’t sound like something they would do, but presumably, they wanted to rob the aliens of the satisfaction of watching even one organic human die. It was an unexpected response. It showed how flawed the Ochivari's ideals were, even within the parameters of their sick and irrational view of the multiverse. Unfortunately, this development did nothing to dissuade them from their crusade. They just needed to devise contingencies. Organic lifeforms were susceptible to organic viruses, which computers were immune to, but computers have their own viruses to contend with. All the Ochivari had to do was program one of these viruses to be as nasty and all-inclusive as their normal pathogen. The people died out anyway, and nothing got better. It was a lose-lose situation.

Microstory 933: Recycling

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It would seem difficult to argue against things like renewable resources, and recycling, but people manage to do it. There are some issues with it; I would never claim it to be perfect. Solar panels can make the area hot enough to fry birds, that is, if the wind turbines don’t chop ‘em up first. Recycling facilities also pollute the air, which kind of defeats the purpose of them in the first place. But we should still invest as a society in environmentally-minded projects and technology. Just because something doesn’t work the way we want it to now, doesn’t mean it won’t be better in the future. People seem to think progress is based merely in time; that if you wait long enough, everything will be done. In reality, you have to work for it. We had to want to travel great distances faster in order to invent trains, cars, and planes. If oceans were made of lava, we wouldn’t build ships out of wood. We would instead try to figure out how to mould metal that won’t melt, or just skip right to aircraft. If we all lived on a tiny island, and had everything we needed to live happily, we probably wouldn’t build any transportation technology beyond the humble bicycle. We have to use crappy recycling techniques now so we can learn from our experiences, and one day come up with something better. We are presently a planet of trash. This trash was tossed out not only by our ancestors, but by us. And when I say it was tossed out, remember that there is nowhere safe for it to go. All you can hope to do is make it someone else’s problem, but that is not a very dignified way to live. There are a few people out there who benefit financially by keeping us the way we are, which is living in literal filth. They are generally old, and would sooner see this world die than give up their cash. They use their charm to convince people who are both poor and stupid that their open positions in destroying the environment are the only ones to be had. People like King Dumpster want you to rely on them to live. Because if you figure out that a couple solar panels, and a miniature wind turbine, can get you off the grid, and save you tons of money in the long-term, you might also realize that they do not have your best interests in mind. It’s negligibly harder in most regions—in this country, at least—to sort your refuse into two separate bins; one for waste, and one for recycling. There are many reasons to take that extra step, and so few reasons to not. Your descendants will live better, so that should be enough for you. If not, consider that you might be young enough to live forever, or long enough to personally suffer consequences of environmental disaster. (Side note: while hurricanes themselves are perfectly natural, the frequency, and increased intensity of them in recent years, are being directly caused by global climate change, which is being perpetrated by humans.) If you believe in an afterlife, I guarantee deliberately not recycling is not going to score you any points with whatever Flying Spaghetti Monster you worship. Unless you worship an evil being. Is that it? Are you a devil-worshipper? Those three reasons should encompass the majority of people living in the developed world, so stop listening to garbage people, like Donald Trump, and pick one. Reduce..reuse...recycle.

Microstory 902: Animals and Wildlife

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The other day, I overheard people on the street talking about the weather, which is something I’ve grown accustomed to neurotypicals doing, like how it no longer freaks you out when your dog licks itself. They expressed denial to climate change, but were in the same breath questioning why the weather is so different now than it once was. I don’t know whether to be outraged by their audacity, or discouraged by their stupidity. It’s like they’re completely blind to reality, it’s baffling. The climate, the weather, the environment; it’s all connected. The real circle of life has more to do with water and air than it does zebras and baby lions. If you’re caught up on my Sunday series, The Advancement of Leona Matic, or even if you’re a year behind, you may have noticed I describe the future of Earth a little differently than other stories set in the future. A lot of science fiction tries to extrapolate population growth, if only abstractly, determining that we will one day live in gargantuan cities, and barely have enough room to sit down. They’re not entirely wrong per se, but they are going the wrong direction. The correct answer is up. Improvements in materials science will allow us to construct extraordinarily tall megastructures. This will allow us to pack millions of people into a tiny sliver of land. We’ll build these all over the world as a way to prevent ourselves from putting all our eggs in one basket, which is the same reason we’ll start living on Luna, Mars, and nearby exoplanets. We won’t be living in megacities, like one might find in a Judge Dredd comic book, because that would be a waste of space. But what does it matter, you ask. If we have the room, why would we not use it? Well, because we don’t have the room. Humans have only been settling for the last few thousand years. Before this, we were nomadic, and before that, we didn’t even exist. Sorry, Christians, the story of Adam and Eve is just a straight up fabrication. What does this all mean? It means that this world belongs to the plants and animals. So in the future, when technology progresses enough, we need to give it back. But don’t wait until the 22nd century; not even if you think you won’t be alive then—which you may be, believe it or not (but we’ll get to that later). Wildlife needs your help now. Recycle, invest in clean energy as possible, and try a more vegetarian diet. I still eat some meat, because I can’t afford alternative sources of protein, but I recently realized just because I’m not a herbivore, doesn’t mean I have to be a carnivore. In a hundred years, when food synthesis has long been possible, people will look back and note how absurd it is that we once killed animals for food. But we’ll get to that later too. Either way, why not start now? Yes, I’m aware of how preachy I’m being, and no, you working towards vegetarianism is not presently as important to me as, say, voting Russia out of this country. I’m just saying that this world doesn’t really belong to us, and it never did.

Microstory 894: Three Speed, Part 1

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Something about me must have just screamed easy target, because I can’t understand why I would have otherwise been chosen. I keep a pretty low profile, so I couldn’t have any enemies. My first thought is that it’s a case of mistaken identity, but the guy clearly knows exactly who I am, which means it just doesn’t make any sense. I’m not an important person, and I’m not white, so it’s not like the news was gonna cover my story. Sorry, not sorry, I didn’t make the world the way it is. I’m just some random guy who works at the county recycling center. I don’t even own a car, which is why he found me riding my wee little three-speed bike along the old highway. He pulls up next to me in a cargo van, and it looks like he’s alone. He immediately points a gun at my chest, but says he doesn’t want my money when I offer him a tenner. He just orders me to put this weird-looking choker necklace around my neck. It’s not really my style, but I can’t think of much of a reason to not comply. As soon as it’s fully clasped, he relaxes and smiles with relief. After a moment, he catches his breath, and shows me this little remote, saying that it’s a detonator set to trigger the bomb around my neck if I don’t do what he says. Apparently having seen an overrated action film franchise from the 1990s, he says that the bomb will go off if I don’t keep moving, or if I don’t add the name of another one of my friends to his hitlist every two minutes. When I point out how absurd that is; that I couldn’t conceivably keep up with that kind of timeline, he clears his throat and contends that he said hours, not minutes. That’s doable, not because I’m willing to send one of my friends to their death, but because I’m confident I’ll be able to get this thing off before that will matter. He gives me a minute to retie my shoes, and stretch a little, before he activates the timer. He then hands me a PDA where I’m meant to list my doomed friends. I get back on my bike, and turn around to head for the recycling center.

One of my coworkers is a mechanic by trade with an engineer for a mother, so surely she can help. I try to call her on my phone, but I can’t get a signal, even as I’m riding directly underneath what I know for a fact to be a fully operational cell tower. The choker necklace must have its only blocker. Only later do I realize why the guy who’s doing this to me looked so familiar. I met him at a party once. He was my neighbor’s friend, and seemed totally normal. What the hell is going on? I pedal faster as my two hours approaches, but hit a pothole, and bust open both of my tires. There’s no way I’m making it back to work now. I know someone who everyone thinks is my friend, but I secretly hate. If I have to choose anyone to die, and if it means I and everyone else survives, then it might as well be him. It’s a terrible thought, but I would rather it be him than my dentist, or something. I try to jog to get as close to my destination as possible, but it’s pointless. I slow down just enough that I can type out his name without a bunch of spelling mistakes, and beg the flying spaghetti monster for forgiveness. Just when I’m thinking about how I can’t keep this up for much longer, I see the little airstrip I always pass on my way to work. I detour in that direction, and find it surprisingly easy to steal a plane. There is some hope left in the world. I think I can get it to taxi, but takeoff is going to be another issue.

To be continued...