Microstory 2426: Waterworld

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There is an ancient movie called Waterworld, and this has absolutely nothing to do with it. The only connection is the abundance of water. I kind of feel like they did that intentionally. It was one of the first domes ever to come into commission, obviously because water is so important. It makes me think that they knew about the movie, and deliberately used it as the name for this place so they wouldn’t have to adopt the franchise for a themed dome. Do you think that’s possible? Maybe I’m just being stupid and paranoid. I didn’t come to this planet specifically for it, but I got excited when I saw the dome on my brochure, and then my heart sank when I quickly learned that it’s only a Utility dome. I guess I really am dumb, because I was in the wrong section of the catalog. All the fun ones are listed completely separately. So. What is this? It’s a water processing plant. Not so exciting now, is it? They send a ship out into the outer solar system, where water can’t exist in liquid form (for the most part). They drag the ice that they harvest from the smaller celestial bodies, and transport it back to us. I went to Waterworld because it was already in my brain, and when I make plans, I tend to stick to them. Then I stayed to learn about it anyway. They don’t just lasso the ice chunks in a net, and pull it along behind them. They encapsulate it in a highly regulated tank, which is only partially insulated. They adjust this insulation and pressure accordingly as they’re on their way back. This allows the ice to melt into a liquid, and drain into a second tank without sublimating into gaseous form, which is what it would typically do in a vacuum. It’s the sun that accomplishes this for them, allowing them to get a little bit of free energy. Obviously, it still takes power, but it sounds like a pretty cool system at any rate. Pun intended. By the time they get back, the ice should theoretically be fully liquified, so they can dump it into Waterworld. The dome itself is basically a giant fish tank...without any fish. I’m oversimplifying it, because that’s what it looks like from the outside, but the truth is that the water is divided into compartments, which protects the system from total and utter cross-contamination. If there’s an issue with one compartment, at least it doesn’t ruin the entire thing. All told, we’re talking a volume of 145 billion megalitres. I mean, just picture that. You can’t, can you? Well, just take the vactrain to Waterworld, and they’ll show you. It’s evidently never filled to the brim, but it still looks interesting. You’re not gonna want to spend a lot of time here. It’s not closed to the public, but they clearly haven’t set it up for visitors. Don’t get me wrong, they’re ready for you, but I don’t think they could handle it if it suddenly became super popular. If you’re only mildly intrigued, I think reading about it on their prospectus is probably good enough, but if you really want to, you can come take a little tour. It won’t take much time out of your stay on Castlebourne, and might be a nice reprieve from the exhilarating activities. I’m still mad about that name, though.

Microstory 2319: Vacuus, September 12, 2178

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Dear Condor,

It’s okay, I don’t mind about the extra message. And yes, I would love to send you photos. I have to limit them, though, and I would ask you to do the same. Excessive data costs money. Each resident is allotted one message per week (to send), which is perfect for the two of us, but only if they’re text only. Again, I don’t want to worry you, I can afford it. Message quotas are transferable, so I can probably snag one from someone else. The other younger people don’t know anyone on Earth, so they don’t use theirs at all, but I don’t want to do that too much. So basically, what I’m saying in the most roundabout way is that I’ll step back, and send you one photo of my quarters. You can send as many as you want. Received messages do have limitations, but it goes by the day, and it only counts if I open it, so I can just wait to view them one at a time. Unless it’s a video. Those are mad expensive, whether they’re opened or not. I’m not even sure we could manage to get a video message through between the two of us. The leaders restrict it pretty heavily. The compression alone takes a ton of energy. We can’t have solar power here, and the fusion reactor is, of course, dedicated primarily to life support and field research. Which reminds me, I never told you what I do for work, or asked you about you. That might sound like a non sequitur, but field researchers are the rock stars of the land. It’s a coveted position, but it’s also the most dangerous. Nearly all deaths are caused by field accidents. It even outweighs death from age-related disease. I never wanted to do anything like that, and not because it’s dangerous, but because of how arrogant and self-absorbed they all are. Gee, I hope no one here reads these messages before they go out. Anyway, I am only a solar flare monitor. You might be asking, “Corinthia, I thought you couldn’t even use solar power all the way out there.” EXACTLY! Sunlight has little effect on us at this distance, but energetic particles still do pose a risk. Even though you’re much closer, Earth is protected by a much stronger magnetosphere. If the sun decides to stretch its legs in our direction, it could have serious consequences for our equipment. Nothing’s ever happened since I’ve had the post, but it’s not an impossibility. The great thing about it is that I just sit here all day, and do whatever I want. The bad thing is that I’m the only one in the position, so I don’t get any time off. When it’s time for bed, I turn up the alert volume so it can wake me up. Again, though, it hasn’t ever happened, so it’s kind of a non-job, really. What about you?

Bored on Vacuus,

Corinthia

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 16, 2398

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Finland. That’s where they want to go. Mateo doesn’t remember a whole lot from school, but he does recall a classmate of his once getting into an argument with their math teacher. The teacher claimed that the shortest distance between two points is a line, and she illustrated this using a geographical map. The student argued that it didn’t matter if the line was the shortest, because it wasn’t the fastest. Going that direction meant trudging through thick brush, and over a lake or two. It meant crossing straight through streets, and climbing over buildings. The fastest route was to get on the freeway, pass the destination just a little until the next exit, and cut through the city. The teacher insisted that this wasn’t what she was trying to teach, and he contended that she should be. Mateo recalls one quote quite clearly when his classmate said, “if what you teach us can’t be applied to the real world, then why are you trying to teach us anything at all?” He failed the assignment, and came this close to flunking out of the class.

To get back home, their shortest route would take them pretty much directly southward until hitting mainland Norway. There they could resupply, repair The Olimpia to its former glory, and contact their friends back in Kansas City with reliable cell service. They can’t do that, though, because in addition to it being the most direct route for them, it simultaneously creates the shortest distance between the island of Svalbard and the United States government, who they know they can’t trust. To protect Amir, and all the locals of Vertegen, they have to take the scenic route. Fortunately, they have a way to create a distraction in the form of Russia.

The Republican Federation of Russia bears an even more tumultuous history here than its counterpart in the main sequence. It has been on the sidelines of nearly every major world war since the first one. Funny enough, it doesn’t seem to experience much direct conflict with other states. It’s just been known to wait until the hostilities between two or more parties begin, and then choose a side. Some xenophobes might chalk this up to them making their choice randomly. A number of political cartoons, comedy sketches, and modern memes feature a blindfolded Russian leader throwing darts towards a map, or some variation therein. The reality is that Russia always chooses to back the belligerents whose victory would spell some kind of success for Russia. Russia chooses Russia is a slogan from a certain social awareness organization that is always trying to help people understand this.

The Russian government holds no convictions, and has no strong feelings about any specific faction. They are probably the least religious nation in the world—or maybe just when accounting for its sheer mass. The presidents have run their nation like a business, accepting benefits to their economy wherever they can find it, be it with a neighbor, a former enemy, or even a terrorist sect. At the moment, the United States is its biggest competitor, because while citizens of the U.S. would deny, deny, deny, their social practices are not without their similarities. They would never work with terrorists, but freedom fighters are just fine, and the difference between the two can often be found only in the nuance of personal perspective. So while Mateo labeled Russia the enemy, they are in fact more like a rival, and the Olimpia’s presence within their territory is no more dangerous than meeting an industry colleague for coffee in the cafeteria on the first floor of their office building.

Still, as stated, this is a distraction. If the team is spotted making their way through the White Sea, this will be all that Senator Honeycutt—and anyone else involved in all this—will focus on. They won’t even consider the possibility that they were once on Svalbard, or make any attempts to retrace their steps at all. It’s been a long journey, but thanks to Mateo’s new knife, not as long as it could have been. They’ve not had to stay on the surface of the water for the whole trip. Short bursts. They can stay in the air for a limited amount of time, which is what has allowed them to cross the distance as fast as they have so far, but they’re running out of power, and they need a new tactic. Leona may have come with the solution. “Well, if you have this thing, why can’t you just replace the solar panels altogether?” Solar power has been providing them enough energy to fly for a little bit, but they use that energy faster than it can come in, which is why they always have to drop back down to the water.

“I don’t know how to work this knife,” Mateo explains. I can’t get it to replace the entire panel. I can either replace part of the framing, or an individual...what did you call them?”

“Tiles,” Ramses helps. “Each time he stabs a panel, it only destroys that specific tile, and spits out a new one. I can’t figure out why efficiency is so low. It could be one or more of the tiles, but which ones?”

Leona takes the knife from Mateo, and examines it. Before anyone can stop her, she downs the rest of her water, sets the cub back on the counter, and tries to stab it. Nothing happens. “What did I do wrong?”

“You accidentally aren’t your husband, Mateo,” Angela says.

“What?”

“Only he can use it. We’ve both tried.”

“Well, I suppose I had to try too, given our connection, and the fact that some of that Existence water is still swimming through my veins.”

“Well, that was my favorite cup,” Angela laments.

“Then you shouldn’t have let me use it.”

Mateo chuckles once. He takes the knife back, and stabs the mangled cup himself, which generates a pristine replacement.

“That doesn’t make any sense!” Leona shouts. “Okay, it makes a new one; it’s quantum duplication, whatever. But why does it make an unbroken one? It goes back in time to before it was damaged? How far back in time? How much damage does it correct? What if there was a dent in it that had been there for twenty years?”

“These are all questions that none of us can answer,” Ramses tells her.

“Did you try asking the Rakripa where they got it, and what they thought of it?”

“Yes,” Angela says, looking suddenly tired. “I asked them a lot of questions. Communication was difficult, and I eventually learned that it wasn’t only because our languages aren’t mutually intelligible. They were cagey. They were nice...but they didn’t want us to stick around. So we didn’t.”

Leona sighs. “Where is that lantern thing you were talking about?”

Ramses goes back down to engineering to retrieve it. “I’ve been all over this thing. I don’t think anything else needs to be replaced. What we need is power.”

“And I’m going to get it for you,” Leona says. She sets the lantern on the counter, and arranges her husband in front of it. She adjusts his arms and hands like a sexy golf instructor, or a pottery ghost. “Okay. Go for it.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 7, 2398

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Mateo is startled awake. He’s nervous at first, because he assumes the person who’s shaking him by the shoulders in the pitch black is a friendly, but he doesn’t know that for sure. “Who is that?” he asks.

“Shh. It’s Heath,” he says in a whisper.

Leona turns over in her sleep.

Mateo drops down into a whisper too. “What is happening?”

“I wanna show you something.”

“Can it wait until morning?”

“It is morning. Come on.” He gets his hands further along Mateo’s shoulder blades, and pulls him out of the bed.

“Can I put on pants first?”

“Probably should.”

Mateo hastily pulls on some clothes, and follows Heath out of the room. He slips his shoes on too, and they leave the condo. They walk down the hallway, down the elevator, and down the hill. He rubs the sand out of his eyes as they continue walking for another couple of kilometers. He complains a little, but feels he needs to respect his host’s decisions, as bizarre as they seem right now. Finally they make it to a parking garage. There’s something different about it, but Mateo can’t place his finger on it, because he’s still so sleepy. As they walk through it, though, he realizes that the ceilings are very high. Some garages can’t even accommodate a heavy duty pickup truck, but this could handle semi-truck trailers. He yawns. “What are we doing here?”

“I got the notification that my present arrived, and just couldn’t wait.”

“Present for me?” Mateo asks.

Heath stops at a...plane? He extends his arms to present it. “Present for us.”

“Is that an airplane?”

“It’s a flying carboat.”

“What?”

Heath runs his hand along the curve of what looks like a turned up wing. “It can float in the sea, drive on the roads, and fly through the sky.”

“What, couldn’t spring for the one that’s also a spaceship?” Mateo jokes.

“No,” he answers genuinely. He continues to admire the vehicle.

“Where are the wings?” Mateo questions.

“It’s a lifting body, it doesn’t need wings.” He points to the vertical wing thing. “Or that’s what those things are. I don’t know. All I know is it works, and it cost me a fortune.”

“Do we need all of this? Could we not just take regular commercial jets where we need to go, and then rent cars?”

“Well, sure, if you wanna be basic.”

“Far be it.”

“Isn’t it beautiful? Come on, let’s check out the inside.”

It has to be really narrow, so it can fit in the standard road lane—and those weird wings do stick out a little—but it’s pretty long, and sufficiently tall. That’s why it needs this high ceiling parking garage, but it should be able to fit under any bridge just fine. The controls are in the cockpit, where you would expect, for a pilot and co-pilot. Behind it are four little cubbies; two on each side, separated by seats. By the door is a little kitchenette, then a lav, a toilet, and steps up to a loft. It feels like too much. It feels like too much. It all feels too extravagant.

“These cubby seats recline into flat beds, while these two are just for sitting .” He pulls down one of the three jumpseats along the wall by the door. “You could technically fit eleven people, though these three of them wouldn’t have anywhere to sleep.” He continues the tour, pointing around as necessary. Cargo is stored behind the shower, to leave space underneath for mechanical. Retractable floats allow water takeoff and landing. Of course, the wheels retract as well. Back there is a powerful boat motor, but you could opt out of that in favor of just using the jet engines. Distributed propulsion, obviously more fuel efficient. Solar panels mostly provide power for internal systems and land travel operation, but they can support flight in a pinch. Well, they can support an emergency landing.”

“This is...” Mateo doesn’t want to repeat himself. Heath knows it’s a lot. He knows what he bought. “When did you have time to buy this? Was it on your wishlist before we got here?”

He laughs, “no. I ordered it as soon as we first started talking about the mission five days ago.”

“Quick delivery time,” Mateo notes.

“Was it?” It must be pretty typical in this reality.

“I really appreciate everything you’ve done, including this, but not excluding everything else. You’ve been a great help to us, and I thank you for helping Marie when she had no one.”

“You speak as if you’re about to leave alone.”

“I know this thing is yours, and I’m not saying you should give it to me—I would find another way—but I assume it runs itself, because no one has mentioned you having a pilot’s license. I’m just reminding you that I’m fine doing this by myself. You don’t have to spend time away from your wife. I know you two are going through something profound.”

“Yeah, we’ve been talking about that,” Heath says, nodding his head. “You need to add another destination to your list, which we’ll be going to first. Marie needs a real abortion.”

“Where is it?”

“Croatia.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 6, 2398

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Marie is sitting with her alternate self at a late lunch, who she should probably think of as her twin sister now, since that’s what everyone beyond the team is meant to assume about them. They’ve been working on their relationship since Angela first appeared in this reality back in early April. It’s still a little weird, knowing that there’s this other person around with identical memories, but it helps now that Marie has four additional years’ worth of experiences. The more they diverge from each other, the less awkward it will become. But they will never lose the benefit they have of also knowing that there’s this other person around who knows how they feel about the world. Their personalities will not ever become unrecognizably different. She takes another bite.

“It’s not working.”

“What’s not working?” Angela asks.

“No bleeding, no cramps, no vomiting. These foods, they’re not working, and I’m getting sick of them.”

“Let me respond to you backwards. Remember what mother always said when we refused to eat our cucumbers.”

“Ugh, I hate cucumbers. And peppers. Now I really am gonna retch.”

“She said to treat them like medicine. You have to eat it, so just do it, and be done with it. Without cucumbers, we might have starved, and neither of us would exist right now.”

“Well, that’s a bit overdramatic, but okay.”

“Secondly, the foods might still be working. You just need more time. It’s barely been a week, and a miscarriage may not present itself for a couple more, which means you need to give it over a month.”

“The longer I wait, the fewer alternatives I have.”

“I understand that,” Angela agrees, “but you need to let this first attempt play out. You can’t keep going to the doctor to find out if it’s working, because then you’ll get in trouble, so all you can do is keep going, and....hope.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Marie accuses.

“You’re right, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

“What’s the next thing you wanted to tell me?”

“The cramps and the vomiting.”

“Yeah, that’s how I would know that I’m having a miscarriage.”

“They’re also symptoms of pregnancy,” Angela points out.

“And they’re sometimes symptoms of regular menstruation, what’s your point?”

“My point is, you’re not experiencing those at all?”

“No.”

“Did you...experience them while you were menstruating?”

“No.”

“Have you...ever been sick...since you came here?”

Marie pulls her head back, and stares into empty space to think on that question for a moment and a half. “No. Never.”

“According to Ramses, something is blocking our powers and patterns, but...our durable new bodies aren’t all just about powers. I don’t remember if he specifically said we could no longer get sick, but it was sort of implied. I mean, if you’re gonna give someone an upgrade, don’t include Huntington’s disease, or cancer. You would take those things out, along with other medical problems like the occasional low blood sugar, seasonal allergies, and stress-related hives.”

“We still can’t get sick,” Marie realizes, “even here. What does that mean?”

Angela shuts her eyes. “The food that you’re eating, which is tailored for you to place the fetus at risk, is dependent upon your reaction to certain chemicals that those foods possess. They throw off hormone imbalance, and they send bad neural signals. If your body was designed to work around that kind of thing—to combat it—then...”

“Then I may be medically incapable of having a miscarriage.”

Ramses sits down before he collapses. “It’s possible. I don’t understand how this reality works. If there is something out there that protects linear time, then our immortality shouldn’t be affected. But we know that it is, because we get tired, and we don’t absorb solar power, and we—” He stops short. Then he stands up, goes over to the kitchen, and takes out a knife. He drags it across his arm, going in far deeper than he needs to in order to illustrate his point.

“Goddamnit, Ramses!” Marie exclaims.

“Yeah, we can still get hurt...a lot easier than we should. But maybe...” He gets lost in his thoughts, and the other two don’t try to force him to continue. He starts rubbing his blood up and down his arm like he has an unhealthy fascination with it. “Maybe...” he repeats.

“Maybe what?”

“Maybe it’s external. Maybe it’s literally external. Your body doesn’t get sick, because most illnesses are internal, which might be protected against the...magical...power-dampening whatever?”

“I open my mouth all the time,” Marie counters. “I’ve cut myself before; with the knife you’re holding right now, in fact.”

Ramses shakes his head. “It’s not a constant thing. It’s not an invisible gas in the air. When we jumped from the main sequence to the Third Rail, we passed through something that stripped us of part of who we were. It took away everything special about our skin. It didn’t take away anything inside.”

“Then why can’t we teleport?” Angela questions.

“It’s a separate thing,” Ramses decides. “They’re two different things: the linear time protector, and the skin changer.”

“Why would someone do that?” Angela presses. “It doesn’t make any sense. I mean, it sort of does, but who’s going to all that trouble, and to what end?”

“Maybe it’s not on purpose. Maybe it’s just that whatever barrier is between realities does this to us.”

“It didn’t happen when you went to all those other realities, did it?” Angela asks.

She’s right, it didn’t. Or did it? Mateo and Ramses thought they were converting solar energy in the Parallel, but even though he personally engineered these upgraded bodies, he hasn’t spent much time in his own. Maybe he was mistaken this whole time. “I need to talk to Leona.”

“Wait.” Marie stops him from going down one of his absent-minded genius professor rabbit holes. “What can I do? How do I fix this?”

He shakes his head at her. “I don’t know. Let me think on that too.”

Microstory 1682: Starcatcher

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After the wars began—precipitated by a debate about what to do with the people on this version of Earth who were already infected with the sterility virus—a group of scientists figured that there was no way out of this. Now that the virus existed on their planet, there was probably nothing stopping it from getting out eventually. They could bomb the quarantined nation, and they could send people to bunkers, but their fate would eventually catch up to them. They decided that the only way to save the human race was to take it off world. But they weren’t trying to save themselves. They did not have the resources or technology necessary to send a significant enough population to the stars. They would only be able to send frozen embryos, and one individual young adult in stasis. There was also no guarantee that revival from stasis would work, because even though they had tested the technology in the short-term, they didn’t know if it would be able to last for what was potentially thousands of years. There were no sufficiently habitable planets within a reasonable distance from Earth. Neighboring worlds were always too hot, or too massive, or not massive enough. A human outpost could probably survive on these worlds, but again, this was a long-term project, and the people who would grow up in the colony were not liable to be able to advance fast enough in a harsh environment. Thanks to a boost from the solar sails, the ship was capable of traveling at about ten percent the speed of light. It would slow down over time as it hunted for the right world to settle on. Since they didn’t know exactly where the ship would be going, they called it Starcatcher. It was designed to use solar power to jump from the current star to the next, and just keep doing that until the right orbiting body presented itself.

There was no way to know whether their plan would work, let alone how long it might take. They just had to send off the embryos, and hope that Starcatcher found a new home eventually. As aforementioned, this could take thousands of years. They could program the AI to gather the requisite data for every planet they encountered, synthesize it well, and extrapolate a survivability factor, but so many things could go wrong. Again, the scientists would never know how the mission turned out. Even if Starcatcher did manage to find a world just next door, the trip was still going to take decades, and none of them was young enough to still be around. This was all about faith. They were right to have it. Fifty-six thousand years later, Starcatcher found a decent planet that was about 5500 light years away. It had a nitrogen-rich environment with healthy levels of oxygen, 85% water on the surface, and fairly reliable climate patterns. Things went pretty smoothly, but not perfectly. The Governess, as she was called, woke up from stasis, obviously still alive, but she wasn’t intact. She had trouble remembering who she was, and what she was meant to do. Fortunately, she didn’t try to mess with any of the embryos until her mind was better. It just took some time for her to acclimate to the future, and remember her purpose here. You may be wondering how it’s possible for a single woman to raise the 147 babies needed for the initial population. She didn’t start with that number. Experts had developed a complicated development plan for her, which involved starting out slowly, having the older children help raise the younger ones, and patiently doing this over the course of three decades. Humanity was able to restart here, and they never had to worry about the Ochivari again.

Microstory 1680: Those Who Stayed Awake

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While the majority of the population was uploading themselves into virtual reality constructs—powered by the abundant solar energy on the day side of their tidally-locked planet, and cooled by the night side—a few were choosing to go a different route. They had no problem with transferring their consciousnesses to other substrates, but they didn’t want to live in fantasy worlds where the laws of physics could be manipulated. They wanted to remain in base reality, and enjoy life here. Many moved themselves over to android bodies, while others stayed more or less organic. They built gargantuan cylinder ships, each with its own unique design. These were massive pieces of art that could orbit a celestial body, or propel themselves through interstellar space. The proper physics in this universe did not allow for any form of faster-than-light travel, so the ships traveled at sublight speeds. They went to worlds that their probes indicated were interesting, but since most of them were just as immortal as the brethren they left behind in the virtual constructs, they weren’t in too much of a hurry. This was just how they lived, and they were able to continue on like this for a very long time before changing their minds. Even though they were the people who wanted to explore the universe, they still didn’t feel any desire to consume more than was necessary to live safely and happily. They didn’t settle on any new worlds, because they wouldn’t get anything out of that. They just visited them, and enjoyed them, and lamented that they were apparently the only evolved species for at least the next several million light years. Once they confirmed that they were well and truly alone, they just let the probes continue to support the evidence, and then they followed their ancestors into VR.

Throughout all of this, it wasn’t like the base reality people had completely broken off from the VR people. They were still a single united civilization. Not only did they stay in contact with each other, but the people on the ships regularly entered the constructs remotely, and interacted with their friends and neighbors. Some even did land on lifeless celestials, and set up their own servers. Thanks to quantum communication, the virtual universe was as connected as the real one. Or rather, more so, because faster-than-light travel was possible within the bounds of the simulations. Over time, more and more people who had either originally chosen to board the exploration ships, or were descended from those, ended up living in the simulation permanently. Tens of millions of years later, they realized that no one was left in the real world anymore, except for the robots they needed to maintain the system’s hardware. They were spread out, but back together. As it turned out, without any alien species to develop diplomatic relations with—or, hell, even not-so-diplomatic relationships—the universe just wasn’t all that fun. They kept the real cosmic structure as the foundation, however. When someone jumped from one world to the next, it would either look exactly as it did for real, or was modified in a semi-realistic way. That is, they didn’t build new planets to their specifications. They found something close to what they were looking for, and altered it in the same way they would if they were still out there. They didn’t have to stick to the limitations of the physical laws completely, but they didn’t go too crazy most of the time. They reserved such things for the primary servers that were still operating on their homeworld. This lasted for trillions upon trillions of years, and then beyond.

Microstory 1630: Virtual Exclusion

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Here is another story about a world that avoided a run-in with the Ochivari and the Darning Wars. It’s also not about a version of Earth. Here, humans evolved on a planet called Olankaran. It was tidally locked with its host star, meaning one side of it was stuck in perpetual brightness, and the other, perpetually nighttime. They could only survive in the terminator zone, which was a thin strip of temperate vegetation that went all around the circumference. Despite this wildly different solar dynamic, they developed about as any other civilization does. They fought with each other, and formed bonds, and progressed science, and were held back by religion. It took them about as long to figure out that some habitable worlds weren’t tidal-locked as it will take a non-tidally-locked planet to hypothesize about them. One thing they had on their side was a deeper appreciation for how precious life was. So much of their planet could not support complex life, so they understood how important it was to protect what little managed to come into existence. They didn’t ever burn fossil fuels, instead moving directly to renewables. It might have taken them longer to start harnessing electricity, but whatever, who cares? Solar was, of course, their number one form of power generation, as there were places where they could install panels that worked throughout the entire day. It was very windy on the nightside, though, so that was useful to them as well. They flourished on this world, and why they were just as curious about outer space as anyone, the majority of them chose to stay right where they were. And that was because they knew, from there, they could go anywhere.

They developed virtually reality constructs, which was a completely normal and natural progression for any civilization. These people took it to an extreme. Once they were ready, just about everyone chose to upload their consciousnesses to the virtual worlds, and live there permanently. To keep them cool, their processors were placed on the far side of the planet, and kept them running using highly advanced solar power on the day side. Robots maintained them from the outside. The temperate zones where their physical bodies once took up excessive space were returned to nature. Within a century, it was nearly impossible to tell that people had ever lived there before. Anyone still using a body was exploring interstellar space. The uploaded people were exploring space too, they just weren’t doing it with their own bodies. They dispatched probes to map the galaxy, and one day reach out to other galaxies. As more data came in from these unmanned exploratory missions, the virtual equivalent world was updated to reflect the new information. They just thought it was a lot safer, because it was impossible to die in the construct unless the servers were damaged, and of course, they came up with safeguards to prevent that from happening. The people here were so good at hiding that the Ochivari weren’t even aware that they existed. When they came to this universe to find out whether any sufficiently evolved life was here in need of being destroyed, they didn’t detect anything, and marked it down as empty. They lived happily ever after. Literally. Because when the universe finally came to a close on its own, they simply transferred all of their servers to a younger one, and just kept going on forever.

Microstory 1623: Death in a Vacuum

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Vacuumverse, as I think I’ll call it, is another really weird one. It started out as a normal version of Earth. History came with hardships, war, death, beauty, advancement; everything you would expect. The world ended rather abruptly, and though humanity lived past the planet’s destruction, it too came to an end. In space, there is no up, or down. Because of gravity, it’s more like in and out. You’re either letting it hold you against the nearest sufficiently massive celestial object, or you’re trying to resist this gravitational pull. Most of the time, this works just fine, and it’s totally predictable. By measuring an object’s mass and density, you can figure out how strong of an attraction it will have on some other object. The math is hard to reach, but easy to fathom. In this case, the sun orbits the center of the galaxy, while all its orbitals revolve around it. Every inhabited universe operates in this way. Some others have alternate fundamental constants, but we’re not worried about this, because they don’t support life very well. Something changed in Vacuumverse. Maybe it was a black hole, maybe it was artificial, I don’t know. But something suddenly altered the orbit of Earth. If you were looking at the solar system from a distance, keeping the orbital plane in a horizontal position, you would see the planet fall down towards an imaginary floor underneath the whole thing. In fact, you would see all of the planets doing that, as if the sun simply stopped having any gravitational impact on its orbitals, and something underneath them took over. It was still there, but nothing was attracted to it anymore. Like I said, it’s weird, because it should be impossible. That’s not really how gravity works, so again, I can’t say what happened. Obviously, since it was no longer being supported by a host star, the Earth started becoming inhospitable. It’s a good thing a few people knew that it was coming, and had a plan. It wasn’t a particularly good plan, and it didn’t quite work out in the long-term, but I suppose it was the best they could do on such short notice. Or maybe they just didn’t try hard enough.

These people couldn’t save everyone, but they did save a few, and the way they chose to save them was just as strange as the cataclysmic event itself. Much like the Bicker Institute in Bickerverse, those in the know sought out people with healthy and compatible genetic codes. They figured that the survivors would need to be able to restart the population at some point, and they wanted to maximize their chances. As we’ll find out, their plans were hopeless. They gathered these lucky survivors a few different ways, usually by sending them subliminal messages, but also sometimes through good old fashioned kidnapping. They protected them through vehicles and aircraft retrofitted to survive the vacuum of space, and be completely self-sufficient, using advanced solar power technologies. Some were even protected in a bubble that surrounded a big parking lot. Don’t ask me to explain that one. What they didn’t do was tell anyone that this was happening. They didn’t even tell their savelings, as they called them. Once it was time to leave, they put everyone they wanted in their special lifeboats, and flew away, leaving Earth to plummet out of orbit. Their plan was...insane, and convoluted, and ridiculous, and honestly, short-sighted. I call it Vacuumverse, because now these people were living in vacuum-sealed tin cans with very minimal propulsion systems. All they could do was stick by the sun, and float around aimlessly. They couldn’t fly off to the next exoplanet over, and they couldn’t mine raw materials to expand their fleet with a growing population. They were just destined to be stuck there, with no hope for survival, not for long, anyway. It didn’t matter that they picked people with the best genes, because there wasn’t enough livable space for them to spread out. So they died shortly after everyone else did, and no one in the rest of the bulkverse even knew enough about them to care.

Microstory 1419: Splitsville

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The future source mages were a godsend for the people of Springfield, Kansas after it was sucked into the Deathfall portal, and dropped on Durus. Without these special children, the entire town would have been lost in under a month, with only a few people surviving. It was no surprise, then, that the children were extremely popular amongst the townsfolk. They all disagreed on how to divvy up resources, and what rules to institute, but one thing they could agree on was that the kids were amazing, and ought to be revered. Still, many did not believe the Baby Barrier they used to keep the monsters out was a sustainable solution. While everyone protected the children at all costs, even beyond their respective families, there were still some limitations to their lives. They had to live on the perimeter of the habitable zone, and while travel within and without the zone was possible—and quite necessary when journeying out to gather water—for the most part, they had to stay put. If they were free to roam around wherever they wanted, a monster could slip through, and attack someone before others could get to them to help. No, it was too dangerous to break the front line, even for a few hours. When one needed to leave, the rest always had to pick up the slack, and the coordination alone was taxing for all those assigned to the team. Of course, when they were babies, this was fine. They weren’t going anywhere anyway, and their parents fully understood the danger. As these children grew up, however, they started making their own decisions. And as they grew even older, they started feeling rebellious, as children always do. While still in single digits, the town could keep them in line, but that wouldn’t necessarily be true once they became preteens, and it would only get worse as time went on. Obviously, the best way to avoid the unsavory disciplining they worried would come from this was to make the children no longer necessary. That way, they could live their lives however they wanted, and not concern themselves with protecting the town border, unless they happened to decide to train with the general border security team. Fortunately for them, their best scientist was dedicating all of her time towards making this a reality.

In a couple of years, Hogarth Pudeyonavic was ready to deploy her own border protection solution. They could erect towers around the perimeter, which would mimic the repulsive power that the source mage children somehow exhibited naturally. It was not without its engineering issues, however. Some of the town was powered with geothermal energy when it was on Earth, and while experts were eventually able to recreate this situation on Durus, capacity was limited, so everyone had to conserve. They probably would have been okay using fossil fuels, even though Earth was trying to lose its dependency on such things, but no one knew how to do it, or what kind of geological resources the planet held, so that didn’t really matter. With no sun to power solar cells, their only other option was water power, directly from Watershed, which meant that they would need to build a dam. It didn’t have to be a particularly fancy dam, at least not at first, but it was going to take some effort. They spent years laboring on this, even before Hogarth showed up. The Baby Barrier was later cut in half—which forced the habitable zone to shrink with it—so some of the future source mages could protect the workers at Watershed. People had to be trained to construct all the necessary infrastructure. Luckily, everyone wanted this, so it wasn’t like there was some kind of internal disagreement about the project as a whole. They did disagree, however, with what to do with their newfound source of energy. Some just wanted to use it for the town itself, while others wanted to build Hogarth’s towers. The former was composed predominantly of people who almost worshiped the special children, and saw them as their saviors. The latter camp loved the children as well, but saw the Baby Barrier as more of a burden for them, and less of a boon for Springfield. By 2025 the dam was ready to start generating energy, and they had not come to a consensus. They did come up with a compromise, though. Those who wanted to live inside the Baby Barrier would be able to do so. Those who wanted to live inside the tower perimeter would be able to do that instead. They sliced the town in half, and lived on opposite sides, with a no man’s land in between them. The two towns were separated not only by geography, but also systems of leadership. Springfield formed the basis for a new society, which would ultimately be called the Mage Protectorate. The second town fell under its governance as well, but enjoyed a level of independence seen in most distinct municipalities. They called it Splitsville, at first as a joke, but then it stuck.

Microstory 965: Renewable Energy

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I’ve spoken so much about renewable energy, in this series, and in others, that I’m almost not sure I need to go over it again. It’s frustrating that so many people believe in clean energy, but apparently not the right people. I wasn’t aware until recently that the official political stance on climate change, for democrats and republicans alike, is tha—next question, please. Seriously, if they don’t outright deny climate change, then they still won’t explicitly admit that it’s real, or at least not that humans are the main drivers for it. I remember talking about this years ago with a conservative “friend”. He said that electric vehicles, for instance, require charging from the grid, which are powered by coal, natural gas, and other not-so-renewable sources. His reasoning was that they couldn’t help the environment as long as this true, so we might as well not try, and “hey, look at my gas guzzler, the hubcaps keep spinning!” And he’s not entirely wrong. The energy grid is a terribly inefficient system, and all but the worst way of accomplishing our energy requirements. Instead of building a giant central plant, and piping it all over a massive area, why don’t we build a bunch of tiny ones? In fact, why don’t we just let each household supply its own energy? The libertarians should be jumping all over this one, because instead of relying on the only power option available to me, solar and wind power companies can all vie for my business, no matter where they’re based. If I place solar panels and miniature wind turbines on my roof, and store excess in a wall battery, I can be energy self-sufficient. If I collect and filter my own rainwater, farm my own small garden, and print my own clothes using additive manufacturing, then I don’t need nobody but me. Some would call that a dream. Last year, power went out all over the city. I don’t even know how bad it was, but for some, it lasted for days. My parents and sister had to stay at a hotel one night, and at my place for another. I nearly slept in my downstairs twin bed, of all places. A twin bed! It was horrific. And it only happened because we’re all connected, so one thing goes wrong, and we all get screwed. So let’s fix these problems before they even happen, by investing in microgrids. The more people who start buying renewable solutions, the cheaper it becomes, and the more affordable it will be for people like me. In the end, isn’t that what really matters; what’s best for me?

Microstory 957: Driverless Vehicles

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Humans suck. We’re terrible at nearly everything we do, and the only reason most people don’t think that’s true is because, historically, we’ve not had a lot of competition. Now a new lifeform is slowly being created. Automated systems are beginning to outperform people in an array of skills. They construct better buildings, they win every game, and they even drive cars. Driverless vehicles have been a staple of speculative fiction for decades. Even before understanding how they could possibly work, my predecessors predicted that they one day would. Most of them got their dates wrong, but that’s true of most fantastical predictions. While these stories have done their part in stimulating our imagination, they’ve usually been more of a footnote than a sign of one of the greatest developments in our history. The driverless car will not just change the way we get to places. They will completely transform how we live. A lot of people have given up their busy lives to travel the country in recreational vehicles, and I genuinely believe a lot more would do the same, if given the opportunity. It takes a lot of privilege to uproot your life like that, but if you were able to take your life with you, that would be a different story. Imagine finding the most perfect location for a new job without worrying about what you’ll be losing from wherever you live now. When your home is mobile, capable of drawing energy from the sun during the day, and the wind while at rest, you no longer have to be tied down. Shorter working hours will allow you time to return to friends and family on a whim, no matter where they live, as long as it’s on the same continent. (We could build a vactrain network to make that even faster, by the way, but that’s a different story.) Hell, you could even work on the go, because you won’t have to worry about keeping your eyes on the road. When you can sleep on the way, you won’t have to maximize your time in bed—like I’m doing right now by rushing this story so I can shut down by 23:15—which means no more erratic drivers who should have left earlier. Experts predict that automated cars will save thousands of lives, and that number will only increase the more people who use them. Even a single one of these on any stretch of road will make a statistically evident impact on road safety. A lot of people are deeply concerned about a robot uprising, and you know what, that doesn’t make them crazy. It’s entirely possible that our version of Hal, Skynet, or whatsherface from I, Robot will decide that humans just have to go. But that’s not inevitable. Think about how many humans there are who hate their parents, or who have become estranged from them, because they no longer feel the need for help. Do those people commit parenticide? Yeah, some of them, but most don’t. People like Elon Musk want to put leashes on artificial intelligence, to keep our inorganic descendants from taking us over, but that can’t possibly end well. It may take decades, or even centuries, but those safeguards will wear down, or become otherwise obsolete. The only hope of protecting our species while dawning a new one lies in raising our digital offspring the same way we do our children now...through love and logic, and by example. No one has ever been killed by someone who truly respected them. Driverless cars are part of something immensely powerful, so sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride.

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 915: Indoor Plumbing/Energy Grid

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I think this is something that we can all get behind. It’s pretty easy, living in the developed world, to take for granted the basic utilities to which we have access. As I know you know, there are parts of the world without these things. They walk great distances for clean water, or just water that isn’t so clean. Not everyone has electricity, or heat, or air conditioning. A lot of these people are doing fine, so I don’t want you thinking I’m saying everyone else’s lives are terrible. I remember reading about an uncontacted tribe—I believe somewhere in the Amazon, and they may not be totally uncontacted—that does as little as possible. They wake up late, hang out most of the day, and only do as much work as they need to survive. They don’t have plumbing or energy, and it doesn’t seem to bother them. I’m not here to say that it’s unreasonable to want to return to a time before these things. In the future of my stories, you’ll see a sliding scale of technology in the world. Some will embrace amazing advances, even going so far as to upgrade their bodies to nonorganic substrates. There will be those, however, who would prefer to live without these amenities. There will be people who fall somewhere in between these two extremes. And for the most part, that will be okay. The only time the governing system should step in is if these people begin to needlessly damage the ecosystem with their way of life. We’ll let them live like nomads or pioneers, but we’re not gonna let them tear down forests for farms. And we’ll let nonorganics build superstructures, but they better be taller than they are wide. I’ve recently signed up for a special renewable energy program. Even though renewable energy sources do not exist in my area, I do pay for it. For every bit of energy I use, my bill goes towards offsetting my carbon footprint by providing wind power in regions where the infrastructure has already begun. There are still some major developments we need to make in that infrastructure, and in efficiency, but I wanted to take a moment to appreciate how nice it is to flip the lightswitch on in my home, and be fairly certain that the lights will turn on. Please note that KC Power & Light has, in recent years, been experiencing frustrating power outages. It all comes down to how much the growing population is taxing the system. What we need are microgrids, and personal renewable equipment, but that’s a story for another day.

Microstory 910: Croissants and Mandarin Oranges

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This is a funny one, because we all have our favorite foods, but we don’t all have the same ones. Up until now, my entries have been conceptually applicable to anyone, or everyone. Even my Stargate story was about how important fiction is to me, and every nonsociopath has something like that. This one is just about my favorite foods, and how my tastes have changed over time. I was eating a croissant sandwich a couple weeks ago when I realized it’s probably my favorite food of all. I like most types of bread, but this one is the best. That same sandwich made me sick yesterday, yet I had one at a different place for lunch not two hours prior to writing this. I also have to consider mandarin oranges as my favorite fruit. It’s less sour than other citrus, and softer, so it’s easier to eat. I guess that’s a big thing for me. I tend to stay away from difficult foods, because no food is good enough to be worth exerting the calories you gain from consuming it. Aside from these two things, I’m also known for being a huge fan of chocolate. I keep a lot of protein bars in my diet, and nearly all of them include some form of chocolate. I’m also a famous chicken-eater, but that won’t always be the case, because I will, at some point in the future, become vegetarian. Further in the future, we’ll synthesize food in 3D printers, and we’ll eat bars packed with every daily nutrient the average human being requires, accompanied by little tabs that you place on your tongue to alter flavor as desired. Further in the future, though, the majority of us will likely be nonorganic; at least I will. We will accumulate energy from our environment, like solar and wind power, and more exotic forms of energy generation and storage, that we can’t even begin to explain nowadays. I look forward to this future, because as much as I love the sensation of eating croissants and mandarin oranges, nothing compares to the satisfaction of being able to subsist without them. Satisfunction; a new word for your personal dictionary. Excuse me while I take a break from writing to put mandarin oranges back on my monthly grocery list.

Microstory 906: Vertical Farming

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Something that some people may not know is that farming is one of the most destructive forces against nature. It requires a massive amount of land just to feed a few consumers. We tend to think of deforestation being caused by evil corporations forcing their way into rainforests for logging. And to be sure, that’s true, but what many don’t realize is how many trees, and how much wildlife has to be cleared out for agriculture. While it allowed our ancestors to settle down, and start building civilization, agriculture has also destroyed animals’ homes, and harmed the ecosystem, almost irreparably. People love to talk about these new age food ideas. They think organic foods are better, not knowing that there is no legal definition for the word, and anyone can use it as they wish. They promote almond milk over dairy, but almonds require an astonishing amount of water to grow. Don’t believe me? Look it up. A single almonds requires more than four litres. They hate genetically modified organisms, despite the fact that the majority of them don’t actually know what that means. They’ve just been indoctrinated into distrusting anything that goes by an acronym. So what’s the answer to all these problems? GMOs, for one. Done right, GMOs are safer, healthier, and environmentally friendly. Non-nutritious components can be removed, and more nutrients can be added. They can be modified to grow on less water and less sunlight, all the while being more resistant to pests. Doesn’t that sound better? Besides that, though, there’s also always the title of this microstory: vertical farming. A high volume of produce can be cultivated in only a few square meters of land. Hydroponics, aquaponics, aeroponics, and related methods have the potential to feed billions of people. They do so with less water, limited fertilizer, and zero pesticides. Here’s the thing, plants need light to survive, but they don’t much care where that light is coming from. Yes, grow lights require electricity, but that’s just one more reason for us to invest in renewable energy sources. Vertical Farming is capable of literally solving world hunger. Virtually any crop can be grown in any environment, because everything will be done inside. There are some limitations, of course. Rooted vegetables, like carrots and potatoes, don’t grow well using these techniques, because they need to dig deep. But just because we can’t use vertical farming to grow everything, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use it to grow anything. That rewilding I told you we will do in the future is made possible by this, along with clean meat, which I’ll discuss further in a few weeks. That’s reason enough to support the effort. But if nothing else, recognize that vertical farming allows everyone to enjoy fresh locally grown food, regardless of where they live.

Microstory 670: Unpredicted Devastating Solar Flare

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Like so many other things, many of the issues that plagued us in the past are exactly that, in the past. We don’t worry about hurricanes ravaging our homes, or energy crises, or sex robots being hacked to murder their owners. Included in this list are celestial phenomena, notably solar flares. Most people around the universe haven’t dealt much with devastating solar flares. They’ve happened on occasion, and have caused some minor disturbances, like malfunctioning electronics, but they’re not usually all that bad. Even for the ones that do happen, we’ve developed technology to predict them. Every solar orbital, satellite, and space vessel comes equipped with the necessary sensors; even the least advanced ones. We can’t predict them years, or even weeks off, but we can generally see them coming with enough time to engage countermeasures. Something was different in a little remote star system in the Casini cluster. Suddenly, completely without any warning, something known as a superflare erupted from a star called Doppel b. Within minutes, the flare had a disastrous effect on the two habitable planets in the system, Delena and Steroline. This caused the majority of both planets to go completely dark. They had no way of communicating with each other, let alone someone at an interstellar distance. They spent the better part of three days working tirelessly to reconstruct their communication capabilities, only to learn that the superflare was accompanied by a coronal mass ejection, which was in the middle of sending a stream of deadly plasma towards the planets. The inhabitants released multiple E285FF wide-spectrum distress beacons, but they were all too late. A nearby luxury ship arrived just in time to watch Delena and Steroline become consumed by Doppel b’s fire. Everyone died instantly, leading a few believers in the Light to question why the Sacred Savior spoke of the solar flare, when really it was the CME that they should have been worried about.

Microstory 562: First Completely Self-Sufficient Building To Open

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Near the heart of the city lies a cylindrical building that runs twenty-four stories in the air. Visually speaking, it is mostly unremarkable. It ultimately doesn’t look like any other building, nor does it take any interesting artistic liberties. What it does have, however, is the ability to run entirely on its own. The rest of the city—energy grid, water treatment, etc.—could be severely disrupted, and it would remain standing. It is the first completely self-sufficient building in the world. Unlike other, more piecemeal, attempts at developing at autonomous structure, the new UI MicroTower does not at all rely on any outside support. First, it’s built using carbon nanotubes, which would allow it to withstand a tremor at even the highest levels on the Leisoke Magnointensity Array. It’s specially designed with insulation and natural venting, which allows it to be heated and cooled while using the least amount of power possible. What power it does use it generates through solar and wind energy. Also on the roof are a series of rain collectors, which act as the first step to filtering and distributing clean water throughout the building. This water is constantly being analyzed and recycled, so that it can be used more than once. As the water flows through the pipes, it generates minimal amounts of electricity, though every bit can help. Once the water becomes too contaminated for reuse, it is diverted to the irrigation system where it provides hydration to oxygen-producing plants, rather that just being spilled out into a creek and wasted. UI would prefer to keep a number of what it refers to as its revolutionary features a secret until the grand opening next month. The building itself was not built to be used as office space or laboratories. Spokeswoman for the company, Janice Fielder had this to say about its purpose: “We weren’t looking to build our new headquarters. To be sure, twenty-four stories would not be nearly enough for a global multi-billion dollar organization. Nor do we require extra space in this region. No, the building is here for you. It’s so that you can see what can be done; a proof-of-concept, if you will. Though some employees will be stationed here to better simulate the office setting, the majority of the business we do out of here will be public tours. While the tower itself will be the primary draw of the tour, we will also be showcasing some of our other latest advancements.” Tickets for the first two weeks of tours have already been sold out to focus groups, but soon, the UI website will soon open reservations for ongoing passes to the new exhibit.