Microstory 2420: Nordome Network

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Unlike most other themed domes, this is actually a series of domes. I believe the creator wanted to truly make it feel large in scope. While the distance between the “continents” isn’t anywhere near as large as they are on Earth, it still takes some time in those antiquated boats to travel between them. I even think you pass by other, unrelated domes on your way, though you would never know it if you stick to the right heading, because the holographic sky is sensational. It just looks like you’re outside. If you get lost, and sail in the wrong direction, you’re gonna hit the sides. They even have a sprinkler system to simulate rain during your journey, and the sea below you is saltwater, so you get that real oceanic experience. This isn’t the only dome network that works like this. It’s just the one that’s set during the Viking Age. You don’t have to be a Viking yourself—you can choose a simpler life, as a farmer, or a merchant—but you’re at risk of being attacked. You have to protect your settlement as they would have during the 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th centuries. If you do choose to go on a journey, you have to build or commission your own ship. They aren’t just provided to you. Keep in mind that this is a lifestyle dome experience. You’re meant to stay here for years, and really live the way that these people historically lived. There are no rules, and no planned activities. There’s no anachronistic technology, and you can’t keep leaving and come back. If you have a serious need, they’ll let you go through an emergency exit, and once the issue is resolved, you can go back. So it’s not like a one and done sort of thing, but it’s also not a free-for-all. You can’t spend your days on the boat, then sleep in a nice comfy bed at night. There are no day trips, and they will enforce these rules. I never saw any sort of argument or disagreement, but they were clear. If you really want to get the full experience, it’s probably gonna take you about thirty years. But, I mean, come on, who doesn’t have that kind of time to spare these days? What are you worried about, that you’re gonna die soon? So take a break and learn something. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, if you haven’t heard.

Microstory 2014: Utah

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Promontory University is a college in Utah that’s near Salt Lake City, to the north. The city is named that because it’s next to the Great Salt Lake, which is a really big body of water that has salt in it, like an ocean. It actually has more salt in it than the oceans. I don’t understand how it works, but Mrs. McKinney told me that she’s going to teach us the water cycle in a couple of months, so we’ll probably all learn more about it. Anyway, after the big trip in Europe, my papa decided to go to Promontory University. My grandma said that it was only about 2 and a half hours away from where they lived. So he was able to be out of the house, and learn how to be an adult, but he could also drive back home, and then back to his dorm in only one day if he really needed to. I don’t think he ever had to do that, though. He loved being at school. It’s where he learned the skills that he used when he got a job. That would not happen for a long time, though. After he graduated, he joined the military, but we’ll talk more about that in a few slides when I talk about Rhode Island. At Promontory University, he studied Architectural Engineering. That’s what people use to draw out buildings before other people build them. But he didn’t do much with buildings. His work had more to do with vehicles. That will come up again later too.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 8, 2398

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Mateo’s phone rings. It’s Moray, which isn’t odd. His brother, Carlin has been calling a lot lately, trying to get him to teleport up to Palmeria. This is probably him, thinking that using a different phone is like a new strategy. “Mr. Matic, are you there?” It actually is Moray, he’s whispering.

“You can just call me Mateo,” he reminds him.

“You need to come right now. I know that we keep saying that, but it really is an emergency.”

“What kind of emergency?” Mateo asks. “Tell me what happened.”

“Heath’s ex-husband is here. He’s really mad. He’s demanding to see him and Marie. He has Carlin and me trapped on the little island. We’ve been helping get the resort ready for the next guest every morning, but the Waltons are still in the main house on the big island. They don’t know anything’s happened yet. What do we do?”

“I’m not sure that I can teleport,” Mateo explains as he’s rushing down the stairs, “but I’m going to do what I can. I’m going to hand Ramses the phone, so you can stay on the line with him.”

“I don’t know how long I can hide in the bathroom,” Moray explains in a lower voice. “He’s going to get suspicious.”

“Don’t make him any angrier,” Mateo tells him. “Hang up if you have to. Someone is coming, I promise.” He’s reached the lab. He covers the mouthpiece with his hand, and relays the info to Ramses. Then he hands over the phone, and teleports away.

He doesn’t know where he is, but it’s nowhere near Palmeria. The small border country is on an island in a lake. This is saltwater. And it’s freezing. And he literally doesn’t know which way is up. Let’s see, what did his brother, Darko say about this? That’s right. Blow bubbles, and head in the same direction. He releases what little air he has left, and follows them up. The sun is bearing straight down on him, but it still feels cold enough for him to die of hypothermia. Sometimes, when he’s tried to teleport in recent days, he has arrived late. Often he doesn’t go anywhere at all. He’s occasionally been a little bit off the mark, but unless this is the Great Salt Lake, he’s a thousand miles from his destination. Even if this were the Salt Lake, that would probably be true, though it might not be so cold.

There is no land in sight, though that may have more to do with the waves blocking his view. There’s no way to know, and without even a vague guess as to where he is, he can’t possibly know which direction to try to swim. Well, it could be worse. He could have ended up at the bottom of the ocean, instead of near the surface. Then again, at least that would have been a quick death. Who knows how long he’ll last if he can’t get his powers working again, if only once more? God, that’s such a bad idea. Teleporting is what got him into this mess, it is not going to get him out. Damn, he doesn’t even have his phone! Why didn’t he just ask Moray to hang up and call Ramses? Oh, because it’s only hindsight that is 20/20.

He has to get out of this water, and warm up. His only choice is to pick a direction, and cross his fingers. What he wouldn’t give to be in a lifeboat with a tiger right now, or even just a man with a tiger’s name. This is all wasteful thinking. There is no boat, no living mobile island. There’s just him and the deep blue sea. Whether he makes it to land or not, swimming will get his blood pumping, and keep him warmer for longer. Perhaps Ramses can track all teleportation around the planet. He’ll realize that Mateo never made it to Palmeria, use tech to get there himself to help, and then maybe send someone else on The Olimpia? How long will that take? A matter of hours? Surely he has hours of life left in him. Not necessarily, or rather, not likely.

He takes a deep breath to prepare himself, and then reaches across the water, pulling it towards him. Then he reaches out with his other arm, and does the same thing. He keeps doing that for about three hundred years before he gets tired, and has to take a break. How far did he get? Well, when he first started the sun was over his head, and the water was under his chin, which is still the case, so presumably, he didn’t go anywhere at all. That’s funny, but could also be one hundred percent true. The waves may have even pushed him farther away, which is probably okay, because he doesn’t know where he’s going anyway. Kolby Morse, also known as Guard Number Two, was a lifeguard, and once told Mateo that he knew how to make a lifejacket out of his own pants by tying the legs together, and swinging them over his head to catch and trap air. He didn’t go over the specifics on how to make it work, but this is a better time to try than never.

It takes Mateo several attempts, usually because he’s not happy with how little air he was able to trap, but finally, he has it. Now he can rest. He’s still lost. He’s freezing. But he’s not treading water anymore. For a time, he just stays like that, floating on his back with his eyes closed, and trying to capture as much sunlight as possible. It’s not enough. He has to get as much of his body out of the water as he can. Is that right? That may not be right, because of the wind. Oh my God, how does anyone survive anything! Half of them didn’t. That’s what happens. One person dies trying something, so the next person learns from their mistakes, and does it better. Unfortunately, it’s looking like Mateo is the first one in that allegory. One day, a teleporter with no control over their power is going to be in the same situation, but they’ll do it better, because they’ll hear the tale of this day. They’ll call it...The Downfall of Mateo Matic. Or maybe The Drowning of Mateo Matic. Or, no, how about—what the hell was that?

Is that a breeze underneath him? He swears, it felt like air tickling the shirt under his back. There it is again. He carefully turns his neck, and looks over his pants lifejacket. There’s the water. It’s under him, sure, but he’s in it anymore. He’s hovering over the surface. He’s completely up in the air. He lets go of his pant legs, and looks at his hands. They’re tingling in a way they never have before. Is this...is this true telekinesis? The god who gave him these powers said that they would just allow him to simulate touching things without technically making contact. But whatever magic he used to give him such a limited form of telekinetic powers must also be theoretically capable of real telekinesis. Perhaps that magic is somewhat sentient, and is aware that Mateo is in trouble.

Mateo closes his eyes again, and drops his hands to his sides. He calls upon the spirit of Tony Stark with his rocket hand things, and pushes himself farther away from the water. There’s a learning curve to this flying thing, but he doesn’t go too far up, so if he falls, he’ll land safely in the ocean. He just keeps working at it, and while he never flies like superman, he does make it to an inhabited island, where—after climbing over some language barriers—he manages to learn is not too far from Antarctica, which explains why it’s so damn cold here. A look at the map shows that he’s even pretty close to the region where the Nexus is. Now he just needs a radio.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 1, 2398

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Marie continues to watch the water try to escape gravity, but inevitably fall back down. All of the sudden, a hand touches her shoulder, and she breaks out of it to find Kivi next to her. They’re not in the water, though. They’re somewhere else in the middle of the woods. “What happened?”

“You were in there for two minutes. I worked up the nerve to go in after you.”

“Then you dragged me out of the water, through the woods? To what end?”

“I dragged nobody nowhere. You must have teleported us here.”

“I did no such thing!” Marie insists.

“Okay, then the time gods did it. I’m sorry, I don’t know,” she defends.

Marie composes herself. “No, I’m sorry. I think there’s something weird about that water. I was not in there for two minutes. Rather, that’s not what it felt like. And right now I feel agitated, and angry at you for taking me away from it. It’s not fair. I want to go back there. I know that I shouldn’t be so...invested, but there’s something drawing me to it, like an addictive drug.”

“Maybe it’s an actual drug,” Kivi reasons.

“Yeah, and maybe drinking it turns you into an asshole.”

“Are immortals assholes?”

“Ya know, I’m not sure if I’ve ever met anyone who drank all the waters. I know of some people who were, to various degrees, immortal, but for other reasons. Mateo once told me of one guy, though. He was an asshole, but I don’t know if this was why.”

Kivi nods. “We need to figure out where we are.”

“I don’t suppose you brought the tablet with us, or anything from our bag?”

“You got naked, I got naked. I didn’t think anything else should get wet.”

“Take my hand.” Marie tries to jump them back to the spring, and then back to Kansas City. Finally she tries to return to the Springfield airport, where they left the car, but nothing. If she was the one responsible for teleporting them before, she can’t do it again. “Ugh, I wish I had just kept my watch on. That would have been good enough.”

“We have to find help. We can’t just sit here. No one knows where we are.”

“Agreed.”

They get up, and start walking through the trees. They don’t have to go far at all before they see a huge body of water before them. They’re definitely nowhere near the Fountain of Youth anymore. They keep walking, until they get to the beach.

“Do you know where this is?”

Marie squints, and looks around. “It couldn’t be...” She steps into the water, reaches in to get some on her hand, and sticks it in her mouth. She tries to spit it out.

“Ocean water?”

“No. The salinity is much too high for that. It’s the Dead Sea, otherwise known as the source of Energy water.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 24, 2398

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Mateo wakes up woozy, tied up and rocking on the metal floor. It was the heat that woke him, frying him from above, and scorching him from below. It’s probably the hottest part of the day, and he can’t move to find shelter. He immediately finds that he’s tied up, his hands together, and tightly bound to a railing of some kind. A salty breeze slips in between the bars, enough to burn his eyes, but not enough to cool him down. He’s on a boat. He pulls himself into a sitting position, but he can’t hold it for long. Whoever did this didn’t care how hard it would be for him to get comfortable, didn’t realize, or did it on purpose.

Two feet approach him, which are presumably attached to a body, but he can barely see above the ankle. He just can’t turn his head enough to get a good look, and even so, the sun would probably blind him. He hears two claps, and then the feet walk away, only to be replaced with two new feet. A voice he recognizes says, “afternoon, soldier.”

“I’m not a soldier,” Mateo groans back. It’s hard to talk, he’s so thirsty.

“Oh, we know,” Ebraim replies.

“Are you gonna kill me?” Mateo asks him. “It’s okay if you are. It wouldn’t be the first time I died. I always manage to come back, I’m sure I’ll figure it out again.”

Ebraim gets on his hands and knees to cut the zip ties. He clears his throat authoritatively as he’s pulling Mateo up and over into a more tenable sitting position. “The way you say that, you almost sound like one of us.” He nods and breathes loudly through his nose, looking over toward the other side of the boat. “Every man here has died at least once.”

“I’m not a soldier,” Mateo begins, “but I am a fighter.”

He coughs involuntarily. “I believe you. That’s why you’re here.”

Mateo looks around. “It’s why I’m where, and doing what?”

“We’re presently in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle, traveling at eleven knots, bearing Southeast deeper into the middle of nowhere, and you’re with us, because our mission happens to be a six man operation, and until you came along, we only numbered five.”

“But you know that I’m not one of you.” Mateo is still struggling to enunciate.

“We don’t need you to have any experience,” Ebraim explains. “We just need another warm body.”

“You mean you need a human sacrifice,” Mateo guesses.

Ebraim chuckles. “You’re so smart, why are you lying about who you are?”

He adjusts his position a little, and smacks his lips. “Water.”

Ebraim doesn’t break eye contact as he lifts his left hand, and snaps his fingers twice. A man Mateo doesn’t know yet places a bottle in it, which he transfers to Mateo.

“I just needed a new life.” When in doubt, be honest, but maybe not too honest. He does not intend to throw the forger under the bus, or say one word about his own team. It just needs to be believable, and only moderately close to the truth. He also shouldn’t add too many details. “I needed a new identity. The forger asked me if I wanted military credentials. I was in a pretty bad way at the time, and it seemed like an all right idea. I didn’t really think through the consequences. He gave me this little card that said I’m blah, blah, blah. I tucked it away, and didn’t worry about it. I didn’t think it would actually come up, because what I didn’t realize is that he also put my name in the system. It actually looks like I bear rank, and have a record. It’s only recently come back to bite me in the ass, I’m really sorry.”

Ebraim laughs again. “Ah, hell, we don’t give a shit about that. Way I see it, if the military doesn’t kill you, it screws up your life. The only way out is to lie, steal, and cheat. I’d be a hypocrite if I thought only people like me deserved to break the rules. I’m not a good man, but I’m not a hypocrite.”

“This isn’t a sanctioned mission?”

He helps Mateo to his feat, and starts to lead him into the inside part of the boat, whatever it’s called. “It’s sanctioned by the five of us. I suppose that’ll hafta be good enough. You don’t mind, do ya?”

“Why are you talking differently now?”

“My mama’s southern side comes out every now and then,” Ebraim replies. “I don’t work as hard to suppress it among friends.”

Now Mateo laughs. “I reckon we ain’t friends.”

Ebraim smiles. “Well, we’ll see. Let’s start small. Allow me to introduce you to the rest of the team.”

Microstory 1564: Plantworld

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Prompt

Everyone thought that robots or aliens would take over the world, but no one considered the possibility that sentient plants would grow out of control.

Botner

That’s what this bizarre creature from Tokyo seems to be: a strolling rose that puts us to shame with its round-about conversation, longevity, and willingness to prostrate itself before unsuspecting passersby. The rose, a forget-me-not, started out life as a normal plant in the garden of Urayasu City’s Chuo Ward. Initially, it was a member of the quiet ground cover family, but a sudden surge of excitement occurred among the neighborhood’s residents after a rose began growing up and out of its pot. According to the plant’s owner, the guy who brought home the forget-me-not in the first place, the plant’s red flowers, which were not there before, are supposed to signify good luck. At this point, the standard human reaction would be to marvel at the skill of the plant’s operator, who has apparently decided to use its many complicated arms and legs to celebrate Japan’s 125th year of reign in the world’s foremost soccer league. However, the rose is showing some unpredictable behaviors.

Conclusion

It’s not begging to drink human blood, or inject poison into victims. All its doing is multiplying, so rapidly that it can’t be stopped. Scientists tried to find a way to kill it, but before they made any progress, everything changed. The forget-me-not started to impact the plantlife around it, effectively transforming everything else into an invasive species. The spores get on clothes, and fur, and spread around. Not only do new plants grow from this, but also command nearby plants to do the same. In a matter of weeks, the entire island is covered in plants and flowers. They adapt to grow out of the cracks in buildings, and up through the floors. They thrive in the sun, in arid land, and even in saltwater. In months, all of Asia has been overcome, and the rest of the world will surely follow suit. People start to cut back on the brush as much as possible, to carve out some small area of livable land, but it doesn’t last long. It all grows back. People don’t die off as much as other apocalyptic scenarios would predict. There’s plenty of food to eat now, and it’s possible to just live in the wild, using natural shelters, like trees. So it’s only civilization that falls, while the population itself continues. It’s not as interesting anymore, as any plant or vine will destroy any attempt to establish lines of communication, and it’s also lonely, but we continue. We continue in our little isolated pockets like this, and if anyone came up with a solution to the problem, it wouldn’t be a simple thing to get that information to others. My family and I just decide that this is how life on this planet is, and there’s no way of going back to the way it was before. Then everything changes again. I leave camp for my daily walk alone, and come across a plant I see all over the place. But this one is different. It starts to speak to me. It asks me who I am, and what my intentions are. Soon, all the plants around me are speaking. I run back to camp, and tell my family, but they don’t know what I’m talking about. Only I can communicate with them, and now...it’s my duty to do so.

Microstory 1288: The Mule and Its Burden

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A mule was carrying a load of salt for his master, so that the master could sell his product at the market. The trail there was treacherous and long, and there was one particular spot that always gave them trouble. The mule was always able to cross the stream, but it required a lot of patience and care, and there was always a risk that something would go wrong. The master once tried to take them on an alternate route, but the trail was far longer, and was more dangerous overall. Their luck ran out when the mule slipped on a wet rock, and fell to his side. Luckily, he wasn’t hurt, and was able to stand back up. In fact, he felt better than ever, because much of the salt had spilled into the stream, to be lost forever. The master was disappointed, but he knew it was only a matter of time. Hopefully it would never happen again. But the mule had other plans. The next time they took the journey, he had the idea to slip again, and lighten his load a bit. His plan worked perfectly; too good, actually. He lost more of the salt than he had planned on, which made his master become suspicious of him. Still, they kept trying. When it happened a third time, the master knew that something was wrong. He was unable to communicate with his mule, but he realized there was only one solution to the problem. The next time they went out, he loaded his mule up with less salt than normal, and carried the rest of it himself. The mule was grateful, and decided to cross the stream safely once more. All was well.


This story was inspired by, and revised from, an Aesop Fable called The Ass and the Load of Salt.

Microstory 764: Hockey Stick

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Few people could be considered as fierce an athletic competitor as Veraise Akima. Though born in Captain Mason, Usonia, her family decided to take up a nomadic lifestyle, and start moving all over the world. They never spent more than six months in any one place, and often did not even bother renting a permanent house. They wanted to experience everything that the universe had to offer, so trotting the globe was as close as they were going to get. As a result of moving around so much, Akima found herself in a number of completely different environments, but her one constant was hockey. From the street to the field, ice rink to roller rink, and even underwater, Akima did it all. Seeing her love of the sport, her parents moved to a small island in the Japanese archipelago where it was rumored an old woman was experimenting with graphene tools. She agreed to design a custom stick for Veraise that would be the strongest of its kind in the whole world. Once she had it, she never used anything else. No matter which type she was playing, or where she was playing it, she used the same stick, swapping out only the blades, when necessary. Even after growing old enough to move out on her own, Veraise stuck by her family, having long fallen in love with the idea of not being tied down to any one place for too long. In her mid-twenties, they found themselves living in inland Somalia. There they discovered the Great Salt Flats of Somalia, which she eventually decided was her favorite place ever, especially since it gave her an idea that would change the course of history. She founded a new type of hockey, one that could be played on salt flats. But not all salt flats are created equal. Some are completely dry, and playing on those would prove to be but marginally different than playing in a semi-arid desert. No. Though similar flats existed, no flat was quite like the Great Flats of Somalia. It lies just on top of brine water, which seeps to the surface, resulting in a thin layer of water. It is highly reflective, giving distant observers the impression that they are watching someone walk on water. It was on the edge of the flats that Akima tried out her new sport, gathering her neighbors to play with her, and work out some of the nuances. For the most part, it’s played like other versions of hockey, but requires special equipment to allow for speed in the shallow water. From this day on, Veraise Akima never played any other type of hockey, nor any other sport, for that matter, nor did she live anywhere outside of Somalia. She gathered crowds of spectators from all over the world, which snowballed its popularity, and encouraged the creation of a league. She served as its first commissioner, establishing most of the organization’s rules that remain today. She was buried somewhere in secret somewhere under the Somalian flats with her stick, while her various blades can be viewed by the public in the International Salt Hockey Association museum.

Microstory 525: Savons Are Barely Not Human

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Ever since savons, elves, dwarves, and hiniaur were reintroduced to the world, scientists have been eager to learn more about them. We don’t know exactly where they came from, or how they came to be. All we know is how different they are than us. Elves are generally leaner, taller, and top-heavy when compared to humans. The bones in their upper body are denser than ours, which is why they are unable to swim. They can’t get their heads above water in order to breathe. What they lack in the water, they make up on land. They’re faster, stronger, tougher, and possess a greater amount of endurance. On the superficial side, they also have an almost silvery, powdery, tint of purple eyes and hair. Like elves, dwarves are known for their stamina. They require very little sleep, and are particularly adept at manual labor. They are, however, short and stout, and are technically capable of swimming. They’re nothing when compared to hiniaur, though, which are at their best in the water. Every hiniaur is born with gills, but not always in the same place of the body. They’re capable of walking around on land, but require considerable amounts of salt in order to survive. They will carry little pouches of salt around their necks in case they ever find themselves too far from saltwater. It is often unsettling when first meeting a hiniaur. They grow up normal to an adolescent stage, but then they stop aging. They’ll live nearly another 120 years, but will show no outward signs of it. Biologists believe they were created long ago in an attempt to cure aging; one that failed...but not completely.

Perhaps simultaneously the most interesting, and the least interesting, of the new races are the savons. They are noted for their tendency to speak in riddles and noncontextual metaphors. More research needs to be done, but they claim to have some kind of insight into the future; one that may or may not rival that of prophets. As far as their biology goes, they can possibly be considered the opposite of hiniaur. Their bodies age extremely rapidly for several years, before hitting a plateau, and appearing elderly for the rest of their lives, which will likely be somewhat longer than humans. Despite their advanced age, they are indistinguishable from humans, and some have even been hesitant to believe that they exist. Geneticists have found this to be not too far from the truth. Testing has shown that savon genes so similar to normal humans that results are often negligible. They appear to have such minor differences that it is almost not worth treating them as a separate human subspecies. A full report will be released to the public next month.

Microstory 412: Floor 31 (Part 1)

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Mine is the newest department in the entire company, which is funny, because it’s our job to create even newer departments. Since its inception, Analion has been focused on creating a holistic internal experience. The founders didn’t want to outsource labor, contract consultants, or cooperate with other companies. It wanted to be able to do everything within its purview independently, and that might have worked in the olden times, but this is the 21st century. If you’re not growing, you’re not nothing. The biggest organizations, the ones leading the world markets, are able to do so because of the labor, technology, and patents they acquire through complex negotiations with others. To be honest, and I don’t like to brag, but I’m a beast. I can sell salt to a slug, porn to a monk, veal to a cow, or an abacus now. When we stand up from the table, my side’s gotten everything it wanted, and more, while the other is left feeling good about being screwed over. The company’s problems right now have nothing to do with unsafe products, or a lack of money, or even management. It all comes down to expertise. Quite frankly, Analion just didn’t have the technology to pursue these recent projects. I’m not the least bit surprised that their plans backfired before they knew what hit ‘em. If they had hired me before all this, they wouldn’t have even known there might have been a problem, because I would have shored up our organizational structure. There are a lot of things I could have fixed if I had been around sooner. I guess I’m just going to have to do it now. Its my family’s curse to fix everybody else’s mistakes. Sorry to cut this short, but I better get back to work. Saving the day is a fulltime job.

Microstory 17: Slug

As I let the salt fall, it writhed and curled. Back and forth. Up and down. Sweeping through the granules that landed dry on the deck. In its final moments of torturous pain, it couldn't tell the difference between where there was salt and where there wasn't. It knew only that something was scratching and tearing at its skin. An unstoppable fire sucking the moisture from its body. I felt an unavoidable urge to explain myself. "I'm not a sadist." I stood up straight, looking for any more, camouflaged on top of the brown planks. "I just can't have you near my dog's food." But as I said the words, I wondered, were they true? My dog ambled onto the deck and sniffed at the slugs, placing her nose firmly against their lifeless bodies. She opened her mouth, contemplating whether she wanted to try one for breakfast. She snapped at it a couple times. "No!" I said. She looked up at me as if to say, who do you think you are? Then she snapped at one again. "NO!" I said with more fervor. She looked up again, what is this? I don’t even... "Don’t eat that," I said. "It might have ingested pesticides, or something." If she had shoulders, she would have shrugged them. Whatever. She walked over to the corner of the deck and dramatically plopped down on her side. Wake me up when there’s legal food.