Microstory 2748: One One Cocoa Full Basket

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Elise Perkins has dropped her rapping iron again. All of her tools can float except for that one. It keeps sinking to the bottom of the pool, and every time she dives down to retrieve it, she ends up pushing all of her other tools away, so she has to swim around to get those back too. She has taken so many courses here, but has never found a class called Keeping Track of Your Stuff 101. She did find underwater basket weaving, though. She knows it started as a joke, but she’s having fun with it, despite the drops.

Her basket is fairly complete at this point, so she uses it as a little liferaft for her other tools while she very carefully sinks below the surface herself, and slowly swims down to find the rapping iron. It’s an awkward shape, so it doesn’t always land right below. The chlorine stings her eyes as she’s hunting for it. She could have designed a body for herself that doesn’t feel that kind of inconsequential pain, but she wants to immerse herself in the culture. She wants to feel what her ancestors felt when they were doing these kinds of things. She wants to be authentic.

She spots it. Huh. It’s right next to another one. Wait, no. That one isn’t a rapping iron. What the hell is that thing? No one else is in the pool right now. Did they really drop something earlier, and it was never picked up? It’s not like the droids to make such a mistake. She swims towards it, but before she can catch it, the second metal object latches itself onto her iron and they both begin floating upwards. She keeps grasping at them, but they’re moving too fast. She follows them up to the surface, only noticing then that someone is standing on the pool coping. Are they trying to steal her tool? Who the hell would do that? It’s not worth anything. They can get their own!

Elise makes one final push. She takes hold of her rapping iron, as well as the magnet, and the string it’s attached to. She yanks it away, which causes the figure to totally faceplant into the water. Serves them right. But now there’s a problem. What if this stranger is a serial killer? Now she’s in a very vulnerable position with a person who she has just royally pissed off. She breaks the surface quickly, and swims the rest of the way to the wall so she can pull herself up. She hears a bunch of splashing behind her.

The stranger is flailing about, trying to keep their head above water. They’re panicking, and can clearly not swim. Well, maybe it’s not so clear. They could be faking.

This is ridiculous. Elise is immortal, and there’s security all over the place. She doesn’t have to be afraid. So she jumps back in, thankful that she learned to become a certified lifeguard not two months ago, and rescues the non-swimmer.

The stranger is still panicking as she scrambles out of the water, and lies on her back on the deck to catch her breath.

Elise stands there patiently, wringing water out of her hair, and adjusting her bikini, which magnet girl nearly tore off of her during the struggle.

The woman rolls over to her side, and stands back up. She stares awkwardly at Elise. “This is not how I wanted this to go. How embarrassing that I should not know how to swim. I just...didn’t think you would pull me in.”

“I didn’t think you would try to steal from me,” Elise replies.

“That was only my way of introducing myself. I thought it would be funny.”

“Well, it wasn’t. It was just confusing, and honestly, a little scary for me. I change substrates when I feel like it, but I never let my body die. I have an aversion to pain.”

“I get it,” the woman says. She takes a deep breath, and holds out her hand. “Hi. I’m Ciaragie Benetton, but everyone calls me Rage. Don’t worry, it’s ironic. It might not seem like it, but I’m typically very cool under pressure.”

“My name is not important,” Elise replies. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I would like to get back to my basket.” She starts to scan the surface because now her tools will have scattered all over the place. She sees her basket first. It is completely mangled and broken. She looks back over at Rage. “You ruined it. I’ll have to start over.”

“I’m sorry, Elise. I should have said just hello, like a normal person.”

“How do you know my name?” Elise questions.

“I came here to find you,” Rage explains as she’s stripping naked. “I’m putting together a team to compete under Treasure Hunting Dome. I believe that there is a secret, hidden level to be played. I believe there is a prize which no one has ever heard of, let alone attempted to locate. I’ve been going around, finding the best of the best from people who have experience in other domes. I myself have spent decades in Escape Dome. But I also have a navigator, and adrenaline junkie, even an anthro—”

“I’m sorry, what the heck does this have to do with me?” Elise asks. “I’m not the best of the best at anything. I spend my time learning archaic skills, like underwater basket weaving, and bricklaying. You must have me confused with someone else.”

Rage shakes her head. “No, you’re who I’m looking for. I don’t know what you know about Treasure Hunting Dome, but the challenges often involve exactly things like those skills. Some are inherent, like digging through a haystack to find a data-needle which contains your next clue. But for some of them, completing the challenge is just what tells the Exemplar that you deserve the clue, so they hand it to you.”

Elise sighs. “It’s not really my thing. As I was saying, I enjoy the quiet. I don’t wanna go on an adventure. When I’m not here, I’m reading classics in Branch of Babel, or relaxing on a boat in Raindome. I don’t do fun. I don’t do challenges.”

“You don’t wanna do anything with what you’ve learned,” Rage presses. “So you can weave a basket underwater. So what? It’s not like the world needs more baskets. You don’t even need a basket. You could print one in minutes.”

Elise points to the water. “That was supposed to be mine. It was going to be something that I made myself. No, I don’t need a basket, but I want a basket that’s one hundred percent unique. It wasn’t programmed, it wasn’t generated. It would be mine. My house is filled with things that I have created with my own two hands. I made the house itself...on my own...from scratch. That’s what makes me happy. I do it for me, and no one else. I don’t expect someone like you to understand that.”

“I understand,” Rage argues. “Oh, I understand better than you think. The prize for winning an escape room is getting out of the escape room, which you already were before you voluntarily went in. We collect the same things. We collect experiences.” She holds her hand out again, but this time not to shake. “Come with me. Let’s experience something neither of us has before, which I believe no one in the universe has. You might not be able to put a physical object in your home, but you’ll never forget it.”

Elise stares at Rage’s hand with a frown. That’s a pretty convincing argument, she has to admit it, if only to herself. “I’m not promising anything, but I am willing to listen. Tell me more about this Treasure Hunting Dome.” She doesn’t take her hand.

Rage smiles as she drops her arm. “Let’s meet the team first.”

Microstory 2581: Renata Comes Back Out from Behind the Counter After Shutting the Other Gates

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Renata comes back out from behind the counter after shutting the other gates. Her statement stands, that she can’t trust Quidel, but those motorcycles don’t sound good. They’re so loud and obnoxious. This is a remote part of town, but it’s not completely cut-off. People can hear them, and if there’s a shootout, the cops will become involved, whether the alarms are still working or not. All this running through her mind, she’s starting to freak out. She didn’t pass the first test—the first test!—for the NSD. She can’t protect an entire bank from a bunch of shadowy biker spies. She gets on her knees, and checks for Lazar’s pulse. He doesn’t have one. “How will they get in? Blowtorches? Explosives? A truck?”

“They’ll use a key,” Quidel answers calmly.

She’s just staring at Lazar’s bloodied face. “If they have access to this building, why did this guy kill my boss?”

“Because he didn’t have a key. They’re not working together. The location of this bank was leaked, and multiple parties are coming to claim it.”

“Are they here for everything, or for one specific thing?”

“Little bit of both. They all have their priorities, but they’ll take anything they can get their hands on. Grab his gun. Our only hope is to fight back.”

“Are reinforcements coming?” Renata presses.

“Yes, but they’ll be a while. The Kumati will be inside in seconds, as soon as they find which key goes to which gate.” They can hear the warble-whang of the gate as the bad guys begin to try to open it. “Their slight lack of intel is the only thing protecting us right now, and the clock is ticking. Please pick up that gun.”

Renata is still not looking up. “If this bank is so valuable, why doesn’t it have round-the-clock surveillance?”

“Renata! Please!”

“I mean, at least keep a guard here overnight.”

The gate opens. A bunch of men file in, and start waving their guns around, as if there were more threats than only two people in the center of the lobby. They’re speaking Kumati, which Renata never learned, but they don’t sound happy.

“If it were me, I would keep a surveillance house nearby, with officers who are always on watch. If not every bank employee knows it’s a front, the panopticons only come in during an emergency.”

“It’s over, Renata.” Quidel drops his gun, holds his hand up to surrender.

“Like this one,” Renata finishes.

More yelling.

“Stand up, Renata,” Quidel urges. “These guys aren’t messing around, and I don’t know what happens to your consciousness when you die!”

Now she looks up. “Huh?”

“You. Are. A. Ro. Bot.”

She winces.

More yelling. This guy’s right up in her face with his shotgun. And he’s about to fire it.

She slaps the muzzle of his gun, so it swings to the side. He instinctively pulls the trigger, shooting a few of his compatriots. She takes the shotgun with both hands, jams the butt into his toe, then shoots him in the chin. No more shells. She finally does pick-up the original motorcyclist’s pistol. She shoots the rest of the attackers in the head, one-by-one, before any of them can fire back even once. No more bullets.

Two more guys rush into the bank. Quidel has since retrieved his own weapon from the floor, which he uses to take out these guys. They can still hear more outside. A lot of people came for the treasure. The two of them swipe their dead enemies’ guns from their hands, and walk out of the bank together. They don’t speak, they don’t coordinate. Renata handles the gunmen who are more on the left side as Quidel takes care of the right. They only fire as many times as necessary to get the job done, and they don’t take a single bullet for themselves.

They stand there for a moment, waiting for anyone to come out from behind a tree, or something. “What did you mean by that?”

“By what?”

“You said I was a robot.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I heard you, plain as day. It...triggered something in me. I felt invigorated. I felt bulletproof.”

“You may be.”

“Because I’m a robot?”

He shakes his head. “That’s not the right word for it. There’s no such thing as an intelligent robot. Android, yes. Superintelligence, absolutely. But robots are just machines with programming. You don’t have programming. Even when you did, it wasn’t a rigid set of instructions, but a deeply engineered personality. You still made your own choices. It’s just that you made the predictable ones, and you didn’t know that they came from implanted memories, rather than lived experiences, and that you were designed by another intelligence.”

“What the hell are you going on about?”

Quidel looks at her with what Renata feels is unwarranted sadness. “You’re not the only one. I just think you were the first. That’s what I’ve been doing here, in your world. The NSD gives me missions, which I take, but I’ve been running my own investigation in parallel. It took me a long time to find you, and I encountered other anomalies along the way.”

“You are not making any sense, as per usual. Maybe the gas that nearly killed us gave you permanent brain damage.”

“It didn’t nearly kill me, Renata. It did kill me.”

“How is that possible?” she questions.

He gestures all around them. “How is this? Did you take marksmanship classes? Did you even learn basic gun safety? This is your handiwork, yet as far as you remember, you’ve never picked up a gun even once. Can you explain that?”

“No. Can you?”

“Yes. But you won’t believe me, and if I do manage to convince you of the truth, it’s gonna ruin your life.”

Renata looks around now. “What else is new?”

Microstory 2556: Web Developer

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I knew what I wanted to do with my life from a pretty young age. I taught myself HTML and CSS when I was in fourth grade, and started three surprisingly successful websites that demonstrated my skills. They were stupid, and thank God, defunct now, but they were my first little babies. I took all the computer classes I could in high school. I had to ask my guidance counselor to waive the language requirement, because I did not have time to learn it. I was learning javascript. That is a language, and these days, some schools which also have a language minimum include it in their lists. I never went to a four-year program, because it would have been a waste of time. I would have gotten a degree in art history, or something, and cost my parents tens of thousands of dollars for nothing. Again, I knew what I wanted to do. I earned an associate’s degree in Web Development and Graphic Design, which was helpful because graphics have never come easy for me. I’m much better with deep coding, and logical operations. After I completed that, I felt ready to really lean into my specialization, and ended up being accepted into a Coding Bootcamp. Unlike other programs, this one lasted for eighteen months. What they do there is teach you how to write code from scratch, and build your own libraries. It’s kind of this open secret that most coders don’t write most of their code. They copy and paste, and there’s nothing wrong with that, except there is, because that’s where the bugs come from. If your phone ever randomly closes an app on you, or two separate programs claim that they’re compatible with each other, but you can’t get them to share data properly, it’s probably because the developer didn’t know how to do a thing they needed to do. To make it work, they found a resource. This other resource gave them something similar to what they needed, and they were smart enough to adapt it for their needs. The problem with this technique is there’s no cohesion in the code. You can tell either that that’s how they did it, or multiple people worked on different sections, and then they had to stitch everything together. Mama don’t play that way.

My code is mine, and it works flawlessly because I wrote it all myself, and I did it using consistent conventions, which promotes flow and compatibility. Now, I’m not saying things don’t go wrong. People are still accessing my site from browsers that I have no control over, and with extensions that interfere with it, but for the most part, it’s a well-oiled machine. I keep a watchful eye over it, and man do I pay attention to those bug reports and complaints. A lot of tech companies don’t do that, because they don’t want to spend the time on it. Fixing bugs doesn’t make them money. Only signing up new users, or generating more traffic, can do that. The application process is complicated. The way you answer one question changes what questions are asked of you afterwards. This is not easy to program, but I can do it, because I worked hard, and I’m passionate about perfection. Candidates do not want to get all the way through the application, only to be kicked out because they missed a question, or because their internet cut out for a millisecond. I prevent those disruptions. I save their work. I don’t make mistakes. Because if I make a mistake, they make a mistake, which gives the evaluators the wrong information, which leads to no healing, which leads to death! I can’t have that on my conscience. I won’t allow it. I live and breathe this code. It’s my one and only baby now, and I won’t let anything bad happen to it. I promise.

Microstory 2538: Personal Chef

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I’ve been cooking my whole life. My grandmother raised me, along with my two siblings. They were older, but they were tasked with other responsibilities to maintain the household. I had a knack for the culinary arts, so that’s what she fostered in me. I cooked all the meals for everyone, and I loved it. My grandmother was very practical, though, so she didn’t let me focus all of my attention on my passion. She made me study all of my subjects in school, and after I graduated, she refused to let me go straight to the culinary institute. She knew that I wouldn’t get much out of a four-year degree, but she didn’t want me to have to rely on only one thing. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe in me, but a cooking school wasn’t going to teach me all of the skills that she thought every adult should have. Spending two years at my community college was a great experience, which I believe turned me into a more well-rounded person. I’m still a chef, and that’s really all I care about, but I also remember reading the books, exploring evolutionary ecology, and learning to speak French. That was a pretty big one. I adore French cuisine, so it made sense to add that to my personal inventory of skills. Once I was done there, I went on to the Antova School for the Culinary Arts, where I graduated at the top of my class. It too was a two-year program, so when I entered the workforce, I wasn’t behind my peers. People often ask if—or even when—I’m going to open my own restaurant, but the truth is that I have no interest in that. There’s too much businessy stuff going on with that. I didn’t study any of that stuff, and I don’t want to return to school to do so. And I don’t wanna do it anyway. It gets in the way of the cooking. Sure, I can slap my name on a building, and call it mine while someone else actually handles the business side of things, but that’s just vanity. I’m perfectly content in the kitchen, working with my hands, and making something that people will enjoy. I never thought I would ever be cooking for a man like Landis Tipton, but who knew such a man would ever exist? It’s not the most exciting role, cooking for only one person who is not a picky eater in the least, but I’m a part of something bigger, and that’s good enough for me. If this job ever ends, I could always start tutoring elementary school students in French.