Microstory 2253: A Hope and a Dream

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Kelly here. Nick is getting his rest in the hospital. The surgeries went really well, and the buyer is pleased with the results. They’ve transported the specimens to some secret facility, and will be studying them without any input from us. We will never know what becomes of their research, unless someone comes out with a miracle cure in five years that can fix anything. Then we’ll be pretty sure that Nick had something to do with it. He’s on the road to recovery, and will be able to return home shortly. He thought that he may have to stay here for only a couple of days, but we’ll probably keep him for the rest of the week, just so he doesn’t have to deal with the stress of moving around. You’ve all been asking for this, so I suppose I ought to just say it. Nick has authorized me to reveal the amount of money that he received for these surgeries, and after you read it, you won’t question why he went through with it anymore. He’s not greedy, but he thinks that he’ll be able to do a lot of good with it, so he just couldn’t pass on it. We’re still not gonna tell you who we did business with. You may not have heard of him anyway. He’s not one of those uber-wealthy businessmen who dance on stage at their tech bro conferences, and buy newspapers just so they’ll say nice things about them. He’s not a recluse, but he’s discreet, and so are we. But like I said, I’m allowed to tell you how much he paid for Nick’s index and marrow. The final number is 24 million dollars. Yes, 24. Yes, million. It was 24 milly bucks. That’s an insane amount of money, to be paid out in a lump sum by the end of the month. The funny thing about it is that it’s entirely tax free. The buyer knows how to navigate the complexities of tax law, and avoided them by marking it down as an investment in research, pulling it from a particular type of account, and depositing it into another certain type of account that his people helped us set up. I obviously don’t understand it, but I’m sure it will become a matter of public record someday. For now, we have tens of millions of dollars to figure out what to do with. We’ll probably build a few hospitals, and even more free clinics. Might as well help people medically before the research pans out—or more likely—in place of it. He spent his money on a hope and a dream, but we’ll be able to translate that into immediate action. I can’t wait to get started.

Microstory 2189: Not There by Choice

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We’re moving along with this process. Interviews, interviews, and more interviews. It’s not showing any signs of slowing down, but it will have to stop soon, and will do so rather abruptly. At some point, we’re going to have to make some hard decisions, and unfortunately that means a lot of great people won’t get the chance to be part of this pilot program. We can’t hire them all, it wouldn’t be practical, and that’s true of any organization. But here’s the good news: it is a pilot program, and if it goes well, you may be able to do something similar on a different team somewhere else. The analytics team in my company has looked into this for us, and have estimated that this program need only last for eight months before they would have enough data to reach some real conclusions about its efficacy. All eyes are on us right now to see if we succeed, but there are rumors of others who are considering building their own programs before our data comes in. We’re not sure if that’s the right thing to do, but we can’t stop them, and it may not be right to want to if we could. I think it’s fine to try to take your own shot, as long as you don’t spend too many resources on it, and come at it from a place of trying to make things better. Now, what do I mean by better? Well, here’s what it’s not. We’re not here to save the taxpayers money. That will hopefully be a consequence of our changes to jail and prison population procedures, but it’s not what we’re going for. We could accomplish that in any number of easier ways, by only feeding them slop, or doubling up on cell assignments, or not letting them have any yard time. You don’t need to pay many guards if you don’t allow your inmates to leave their cells, do you? Obviously, that would be inhumane, and I hope that no one else is suggesting it.

Our goal is to improve people’s lives, reduce recidivism, and create a healthier and more productive community overall. I hope that anyone who gets their ideas from us only accepts the good ideas, and rejects the ultimate failures. We’re going to be going through growing pains. At some point, our plans, theories, and models are going to become meaningless if we don’t actually institute the policy changes. It may not turn out well, and as difficult as it is for me to admit that, it would be unethical for me to imply that I know exactly what I’m doing. The entire point in hiring these experts for a team that has never existed before is to try something new, and by its very nature, we don’t know what’s going to happen. So I hope that other programs take that into account. Sorry to get all preachy, and maybe sound a little angry. I just want to make it clear that we’ve only just begun here. It’s going to take some time. The judicial system in this country isn’t going to change overnight, and nothing we do here is going to give definitive answers for how to handle our nation’s incarcerated with no exceptions. What we would like to do is group guests in our facilities according to predictive modeling of sustainable harmony, nonviolence, and social progress. But the fact of the matter is that everyone there will have been tried and convicted of a crime. Guilty or innocent, they’re not there by choice, so none of them is going to be happy-go lucky, and excited to be locked up for the next X amount of time, or intermittently, as it were. We’ll try to make it as safe and productive as possible, but there’s only so much we can do. It’s not magic, so don’t expect to bring the crime rate down to zero, or anything. Okay, that was a bit depressing. Hopefully tomorrow’s post will be more optimistic, or a little easier to swallow.

Microstory 2178: Taboo For People to Share

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I’ve been working on the job descriptions for my team today, so we can find the right people to apply for them. Human resources will handle the actual search for me, and once a candidate fits their criteria, they’ll pass them on to my desk so I can see if they fit my criteria. I honestly don’t know how it’s going to go, or how many applications I’ll get. When I’ve applied to jobs, it’s been a really frustrating experience. They make you fill out the same information in multiple places, they ask dumb questions that have nothing to do with the position, and worst of all, they don’t get back to you. I actually spoke with someone in HR, and they assured me that they have an auto-rejection subroutine in their system. Everyone who isn’t going to get the job will receive an automatic reply through email about it. It’s the absolute least you can do, right? It’s so easy. I did get a quick update from my alternate self on the other Earth, and right now, he has a job where he processes hundreds of emails per day. So even if a company receives thousands of applications, it should not be that hard to sort them, and shoot off a quick canned response. That’s assuming you don’t make it easy on yourself by sending a single email per day, and blind carbon copy everyone who needs it. And that’s assuming you don’t use more sophisticated methods, like email client scripts, or in our case, a candidate management system with robust automated features. Again, it’s really not that hard. Sorry, it’s just been really annoying in the past, so now that I’m on this side of it, I want to make sure I don’t treat people the way that I’ve been treated. I’ll promise you this too, if your application goes far enough in the process that I’m seeing it, and I choose to not offer you the job, I will take the time to write up a tailored email to you. It won’t be poetry, but it will be sincere, and most importantly, it will exist!

I received some other news today, in the form of my official salary in this new position. My superiors made whispers with the number, but nothing was concrete until now. I know that I’m not supposed to tell you what it is, but truthfully, I think that’s bullshit. That’s not the way it should be done, it’s just the way that it is. No matter what world you’re in, if your society uses a capitalistic system, it’s taboo for people to share their wage information. But that convention is not to protect the people. It’s to protect the corporations. So I’m just gonna come out and say it. I’m now making roughly $108,000 per year. That’s right, I’m at six figures. There’s never been a job quite like this in the country, but they found some close ones. Consultants of this nature usually make just under 100K, but since I’ll be directly responsible for a dozen and a half people, that bumps me up pretty high. I think it’s important for you to know this, because you’re paying for it. My salary comes out of your tax dollars, and I think that it’s only fair that we be transparent about what we’re doing with that money. Don’t worry, I spoke with the legal department to make sure that I’m not violating any sort of non-disclosure agreement. I firmly believe that we need to all be more honest about these things. It empowers workers to advocate for themselves, and to make sure that everyone is earning fair pay for their hard work. Most people aren’t in the industry that I am, but I guess I’m hoping this encourages others to be more open, to help not only themselves, but those who are in less fortunate positions. I hope it doesn’t backfire on me, and just make you angry to see that number, but I don’t think it will. I have faith in you.

Microstory 1548: Wrong-of-Way

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I’m not one for rules. I don’t care if you don’t pay your ________, or shoplift from a major store ________. You shouldn’t be able to hurt ________, but if you get in a fight, and you’re both on ________ footing, then whatever, right? There are certain ________, however, that you can’t ignore. Road rules. Most people seem to understand that traffic ________ are there to ensure everyone’s safety, but what they don’t under____ is that they’re also there to facilitate traffic. When you come to a four-way ________, we’ve decided that it’s first-come first-serve. That’s what makes the most sense, and if you tried to do it in ________, it would be crazy, and I don’t want to live in that ________. When you get there before me, please just go. You don’t even have to wait until I come to a complete ________. As soon as you’ve stopped for a reasonable amount of ________—which is measured in seconds—then just move on. Waving me through before you is ________ polite. It is not a nice ________ to do. It’s irritating, because it’s unexpected, and unconventional. Follow the ________. If you just went when it was your ________, you would be out of my way before I even needed to go anyway, so stop ____ting my time and patting yourself on the back like you’re some ________ of generous street hero. I’m ranting now, but the ________ is that the laws are there to get everyone to their destination as ________ as possible. They’re not pointless, and they are not random. They’re all ________ logical, so they shouldn’t be too hard to ________. This is unlike, say, learning another language, which will be made up of almost ________ arbitrary rules that could go either way. I say all this because I’ve always been a really ________ driver. I’m fast, yes. I speed, yes. But damn am I good, and I’m nothing if not the least intrusive fellow ________ ever. It may seem like I ________ you off, but I’ll go zero to forty-five in two ________ flat, and you won’t, so me being in front of you is no different from your perspective than me just not being there at all. I’ve never been in an ________, and I always stay out of people’s ________. Today is different. Today, I ________ up.

I always take the same route to ________, because it’s familiar, and I know all the tricks. I don’t just mean I know the ____est way there, and where the pot____ are. I also know what the traffic is going to ________. This changes throughout the week, throughout the ________, and throughout the year. I know when school’s on, and when it’s not. I know how ________ the other drivers are going to go, and when they’re going to slow ________. I drive in the ________ lane for most of the highway, but there’s this stretch of it where everyone slows ________, because a chain of cars comes in from the right, and they’re all delusional about how fast they actually are. I have to ________ over to the ________ lane to pass ________. Sometimes I even jog over to the exit lane, and quickly get ________ in, which I’m pretty ________ is illegal, but some ________ are only for ________ who can’t handle it. Anyway, I get off the ________ today, and there’s construction all over ________. I don’t know how all this sprung up overnight, but I think it’s fine, because I’m familiar enough with the ________ to find my way around it, even if it’s not the detour that the signs are claiming is ________. This is where ________ get interesting. I’m going down a ________ I’ve never been on before, and I see orange ________ up ahead, but not roadblocks, so I figure it must be ________. There’s a caravan of others behind me, because I guess they’ve ________ me as their leader. I make the slight ________, and head for the cones, but there’s a problem. I can’t tell which side is open for traffic, and which is for the construction ________. There’s a tiny little baby sign for babies, with an arrow pointing towards the ________, but I don’t see it in time, and end up on the left. No, this isn’t ________. This is the lane for oncoming ________. I thought they were supposed to be on the far side of the ________, but nope, they’re right here. And so am I. So are we. The cones are close together, but I should have just run one ________, because now we’re in between concrete ________, and there’s another caravan coming ________ us. We all stop. We can’t move. And more ________are coming.

Microstory 1543: The Escape

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Since before I can ________, I have been obsessed with being ________, and being capable of ________ autonomy. I watch all the survivalist ________, multiple times each, and I love getting ________ for the apocalypse. Do I think the ________ will actually end? No, probably ________, but there’s a greater than ________ percent chance, so I would rather ________ how to get through it than be sorry. I’ve also considered what I would do to escape a bad ________ on a more personal ________. What if the ________ doesn’t end, but my world does? I have no intention of becoming a ________, but I can conceive of a ________ where I’m wrongfully accused, or I’m in the wrong ________ at the ________ time. I store tons of ________ and other resources in and around my ________, and of course, I have a tricked out bug-out ________, which I can take to an off-the-grid bug-out ________. But I did more than that, because I’m ________ I’ll get caught up in ________, and not have any way out. I built ________ tunnels. One leads from my ________ to the ________ about a ________ away, and the ________ is only half as long, but it goes from my ________, which is already ________ deeply in the ________. I realize that my ________ goal is to disappear, not just sur____. Over time, I decide it doesn’t ________ if I truly need to or not. That’s only the first ________, and I may not even need that one. The real ________ is whether I can become a ghost in a more general ________. I have to wipe ________ from the world, so that no one can track me, or ________ me. I’m obviously going to live in the ________, but not the ones near my places. No, I have to travel far, ________ away, and I have to do it on ________, so that people don’t see me. If even one eye lands on me as I’m making my way towards my new ________ life, it will be a total waste of ________, because that one person can identify me. Even if they don’t see my ________, the authorities will be able to work out that it’s me through deductive ____ning.

Stealth, initial resources, and full independence. Wherever I end up, I want to be as far from ________ as possible, and I don’t want to have to go into ________ for supplies. Everything I need should be at my campsite, and that ________ should be nearly impossible to detect, or stumble ________. I’ll live up in a ________ in a ghillie suit if that’s what I have to do. I spend ________ working on my plan, making sure every detail is ________, and there aren’t any ________. I sell all my property by the New ________, and start living minimalistically for the first ________ after that, so no one will be looking for my ________ return come next year. I want to stop being a real ________, and start being on my own, and taxes are the most ________ part of that process, but they are not impossible to avoid. I just can’t take in any income for the start of the ________, I can’t make any ________ but with cash, and I can’t be worrying about utilities, and the like. The day is finally here when it’s time to leave my ________ life behind, and become the new me. I break my outskirt campsite when the night is at its dark____, stuff everything into my ________, and head into the ________. This is amazing already. I keep my eye on the map, and away from roads, and even trails as much as ________. When I do have to walk close to inhabited ________, I do so only at ________, so no one can see me. It takes me six ________ to get all the way up to a random spot in ________, Canada, which is over four thousand ________ away. I have fresh ________, plenty of game, and a tent that’s rated for the coldest of cold. This is all I need, and I’m ________. For the first year, I’m still para____, though, that people have figured out where I ________. I’m still not certain I avoided any tax ________, so it’s pretty stressful throughout the next year too. But then I relax, and realize that nothing’s going to ________ to me. I don’t owe the world anything, and they have ________ about me. Then it hits me. They didn’t have to ________ about me, because before I left, I wasn’t anybody anyway. No one ________, and they don’t care now. I didn’t escape ________. I’m just as alone as I have always been.

Microstory 1534: Found and Lost

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I can never find anything in this ________ house. I swear, I’m not a ________, I just cannot get organized. I can spend ________ on the hunt for one ________ thing, and there have been some things that I still haven’t ________, even after years. I’m not talking about common ________, like my chapstick or wallet. I use those every day, and I always ________ them in the same ________. I’m talking about that little metal key thing you use to access the ________ card or external ________ on your phone. I only need it every two ________, and that’s plenty of time to forget where I placed it. And when I finally do ________ what I’m looking for, I always recall that I put it there for some ________ reason. Yeah, I thought I was pretty clever, ________ all the thumbtacks with the nails. But ________ go out in the garage, and ________ are an indoor ________ . The fact that they’re both ________ isn’t all that relevant. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been through this ________, flipping through my stack of tax forms and middle school report cards, or opening every ________ in my desk twice. You would think I would have the layout memorized by now, but I’m only ever looking for one thing, and even if I saw it the last time, when I was looking for something else, it’s not like I’ll remember. But I should, because I have to do it so ________. And what’s happened today doesn’t make any ________. This is what you might call a junk ________, but it’s actually pretty clean and ________. It’s the most organized area I have. There’s a divider for rubber ________, and one for ________, and another for ________. If I’m ever looking for ________, that’s one of the few things I actually can always find. It’s the first ________ I open when I’m looking for something that’s not normally in it, though.

Today, I can’t remember where I ________ my social security ________. I need it to apply to this airport thing, and apparently memorizing the number itself isn’t ________ enough. Which is dumb. What’s the difference between ________ the number, and showing a piece of ________ with the number on it? That’s all that’s on there. I could probably forge one myself, even though I’m no ________, nor exceptionally good at computers. Anyway, that’s not the point. There’s something in my organized ________ drawer that doesn’t belong. I have never seen it ________. It’s a golden flash drive that claims to have five petabytes stored on it. Like I said, I’m no computer ________, but even I know how insane that is. I look it up online; that’s five thousand times larger than the ____est flash drive the public has access to. Obviously I have to figure out what’s on it. Someone ________ into my house, didn’t take anything I can see, but left something that shouldn’t even ________. I’m not certain it ever could exist, even in the ________, not in something so small. I’m worried it’s a ________ that will destroy the ________, though, so I spend the next ________ looking for my old ________. I mean, this ________ is ancient. It still boots up, but the ________ I’m not using my ________ computer is because I don’t want there to be any ________ of connecting to the ________. This thing was manufactured before wireless ________ was even a thing, I think, probably. I stick the mysterious ________ ________ into the USB ________, and wait for it to ________. It begins to glow, and quickly becomes too hot to touch, so I can’t take it out, and shutting the ________ doesn’t matter, because it’s so old that it can’t detect whether it’s open or ________. The screen will stay on unless you turn it off ________, which isn’t working either. After a ________, I’m getting really worried, but before I can make another ________, two beams of light shoot out of the flash ________, and hit me right in the eyes. Now I’m ________ in a trance, unable to move a muscle. I can feel myself being ________ into the device, little by little. Then the darkness. I don’t know how long it takes me to ________ up again, but it takes me awhile to get my bearings. I realize that I’m in the computer, and I’m able to access everything still ________ on it, like the letter I wrote to the boy I had a crush on in ________ grade that I was always too scared to print off and ________ to him. I can’t actually do anything here, though, because like I said, this ________ is too old. Now I’m regretting it, because if I had an internet connection, I could have at least called for ________.

Microstory 1383: Solitude

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News Reporter: Solitudinarian, thank you so much for meeting with me. It is a great honor.

Solitudinarian: Thank you.

News Reporter: First question, have you found it difficult to reintegrate into society, because of all the technology you’re not familiar with?

Solitudinarian: Because of all the technology with which I’m not familiar.

News Reporter: That’s one thing that’s changed in the forty-two years you were away.

Solitudinarian: Grammar? Grammar doesn’t change.

News Reporter: Okay.

Solitudinarian: It’s been tough, but I’m not sure I would use the term reintegration. I have no interest in remaining in your world, even after all I’ve seen.

News Reporter: But you returned to society because you needed something?

Solitudinarian: Yes, I was dying of an infection. I was feeling desperate, and I came back for help. I had no idea there would be this huge media frenzy about it. I only agreed to this interview, because you work for a station that I recognize. I don’t understand all these padcasts, and computer bogs.

News Reporter: So, you still feel disillusioned with civilization?

Solitudinarian: I can’t really answer that honestly. I mean, I don’t know everything that’s been going on. I still see racism, though. And I see the government is still standing, which I’m opposed to. It may be a better government. It may even be the best possible, but I still do not wish to remain under its rule.

News Reporter: Fair enough. Tell me about how you were living. What did you do day-to-day?

Solitudinarian: Well, I stuck near my cabin. It’s by a bountiful stream so I never wanted for food. I learned what plants were edible in my area, and eventually cultivated, so I could grow them in a more controlled environment, and in sufficient quantities.

News Reporter: Did you hunt?

Solitudinarian: ...

News Reporter: I’m sorry, I didn’t know it was a trick question.

Solitudinarian: I’m ashamed to say I did. Very infrequently, though. If I had a bad winter, I might have to catch a rabbit or two. But I still consider myself a pescatarian. I don’t even keep a goat for milk, or anything.

News Reporter: When you started getting sick, had you experienced anything like that before? What were your thoughts?

Solitudinarian: I’ve been sick before, of course, even after I left home. I always got through it, but I do understand that I’m an old man now, and my body doesn’t get over things like it used to. According to doctors, all I needed were antibiotics, and they were pretty convinced I did the right thing by seeking help. It was definitely a last resort, though. I didn’t want to do it.

News Reporter: Well, we’re all glad you survived.

Solitudinarian: For your interview?

News Reporter: Nope. Just because you’re a human being, and we could all do a little bit better at looking out for one another.

Solitudinarian: I see.

News Reporter: Let’s switch gears a little bit. Has anyone tried to teach you how to use a computer, or a phone, or any other tech that wasn’t around before you went into the woods?

Solitudinarian: They’ve taught me some. The social worker the state assigned me gave me something called a flip phone. They tried to give me this crazy device that you’re supposed to use with your fingers. There aren’t any buttons on the thing itself. It all comes up on the screen. Anyway, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about, and I sound like an idiot.

News Reporter: You do not, sir.

Solitudinarian: I couldn’t handle it, so they just gave me a regular one, so they can keep in contact with me. I still have to remember to plug it in every week, which has caused some problems, because in my day, phones just stayed plugged in.

News Reporter: So, they set you up with housing too? You have a room?

Solitudinarian: Yeah, I live in something called a halfway house. It’s for people who just got out of prison. They got ‘em all over, but this particular one is designed for old men like me, so I don’t have any problems with them.

News Reporter: But you’re trying to get back to the woods?

Solitudinarian: The doctors say they want me to stay to run more tests, but I’ve made peace with my condition. If anything like this happens again, I’ll just stay in my cabin, and wait to die. Like I said, I’m old. When I was born, life expectancy was only around seventy, so I would say I did okay. My life’s been pretty great. I don’t pay taxes, or deal with nosy neighbors. I’m ready to go, if it’s my time.

News Reporter: In terms of taxes, how does that work? Are they saying you broke any laws by leaving society?

Solitudinarian: My social worker is helping me with the legal stuff, to make sure I didn’t do anything wrong. I think it’s gonna be fine. He’s confident, even if I do technically owe the government money, they’ll waive it, because I haven’t actually done anything bad. The fact that I was so young when I left, I don’t own any guns, and I’ve never stolen, works in my favor.

News Reporter: That’s interesting. Thanks for speaking to us. I hope you go back to the life you want, but I also want you to be safe and healthy.

Solitudinarian: Thank you very much, madam.

Microstory 1214: Oskari Belker

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Oskari Belker was an old man. He wasn’t always old, but almost always. On the planet of Durus, everyone was aware of time powers. The first of these on their world were the source mages. They were able to bequest abilities to others, which they selected using a series of challenges called the mage games. Those mages who survived the final days of the war with the time monsters were stripped of their powers, but not of their ability to procreate. This was against the law while the Mage Protectorate was standing, but after it fell, the policy was abandoned; or at least it was unenforceable by anyone who still believed in it. Amongst the descendants of mages, a random few of them were born with limited temporal powers, which earned them the name mage remnants. Due to reasons not fully understood—possibly involving environmental factors—some mage remnants weren’t born with time powers, but instead time afflictions. They experienced time beyond the normal linear way, and had no control over this, like salmon. Unlike salmon, however, their patterns weren’t being controlled by an intelligence. Their afflictions caused various problems for their lives, making it difficult for them to live productively, and interact with others. Oskari Belker was one of these people. Everything seemed perfectly fine when he was born, but about a year into his development, he started aging rapidly, and showing no signs of slowing down. Even worse, his family was of a lower class, so it took them weeks for them to find someone who could help stop this horror. The government finally gave them permission to go into what was normally illegal territory, to seek the retroverters. They were a politically neutral type of monster with a long history with the source mages, and the Protectorate. They attempted to reverse Oskari’s aging, but were unable to. The best they could do was halt it in his current condition. Had they tried it a couple weeks ago, he might have become ageless and undying, but perpetually being so close to death made his life unbearable at times. He was constantly fighting off age-related diseases, and was at risk of death with every passing minute. He used to say that he was on borrowed time.

Oskari continued with his life for thirty-years, trying to be as positive as possible, despite his shortcomings. Though he appeared elderly, he first had to develop and mature, just like any child. When it was time, his parents attempted to send him to school, but this proved hard for everyone. The children were not purposely mean. They understood what had happened to him, and accepted him for it. But what they didn’t understand was his perspective. He saw time, life, and the world in a unique way, and they just couldn’t relate to him. They never mocked or deliberately exclude him, but none of them made the level of effort required to be his friend. Many would grow up to regret their failure to try just a little bit harder. Still, Oskari persevered, and made it through. He found companionship with the proverters who once tried to help him, because aging was their specialty, and they knew how to make an effort. He graduated from school, and landed a job at the tax building. It was tedious and boring work, but it allowed him to sit at a desk all day, instead of being out and exerting himself. Like his friends, the retroverters, taxes were neutral, and didn’t require him to judge others, or to be judged. He spent his adult like cross-referencing data, and filling out paperwork, but it could not last forever. Unfortunately, it didn’t even last as long as it should have. Oskari never did find love, because people had trouble getting past how he looked, and he couldn’t be expected to be interested in potential mates who looked more his age. One of his former classmates, however, did contact him about six years before he was meant to die. They started getting to know each other better, and maybe with a little more time, the relationship could have transformed. Tragically, a temporal accident involving a library from another dimension took his life too soon in the middle of a picnic with his friend. A paramount—which was what mages were now called—determined when he would have died had this not occurred. This would have given him more time to live, but also more time to be in pain. His family would note that this might have been the best ending for Oskari Belker. It was quick and painless, and it could have happened to anyone; normal or not. History would remember him fondly, even by people who didn’t know him at all.

Microstory 946: Taxes

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I know it’s an extremely unpopular opinion, but I very much love taxes. In 2011, I worked for the IRS for a short stint during tax season. A year later, I worked at H&R Block as an editor in a temporary capacity in the Learning Department for several months. Almost exactly a year after my first day, I was rehired there in a similar position, which only lasted a couple months. I applied for these jobs very much on purpose, and only don’t still do them, because I was just a temp, and they weren’t going anywhere. Now, why would I like taxes? They’re a pain to fill out, and “that’s my hard-earned money”. Well, that’s true. You did earn that money, so the question is now, what are you going to do with it? Are you going to buy more guns? Cigarettes? Tiki torches? Or do you want to spend it on improvements to your community? Libertarians would say, “hell no” to the latter, and “you should be able to, if you want,” to any other option. If you think spending a day or two filling out tax forms each year is a huge hassle, you are in for a real treat, if we ever get rid of them. Let’s go on a hypothetical walk, and take a look around. You’re on a sidewalk, next to a road. Let’s say it’s the evening, which means there are streetlights, lighting your way, along with traffic lights keeping cars from killing you. There’s a county hospital. That’s a public a school. Right across the street from that police station is a fire station. Wave hello to that postal worker, on his way to delivering your paycheck. Oh, now we’re in a not so great neighborhood. These people are struggling to get by, but fortunately, the government helps them out. They provide them with a little bit extra, to make their lives easier, so they have some money left over, which they spend on goods and services, which stimulates the economy. Which helps us all. See that house with a flag in the front, still in “bad” neighborhood? A marine once lived there. Not anymore, though. She was killed in action fighting for your freedom, and is survived by her husband, and two little children. Your taxes paid for her gear, and then it paid for her memorial services. Your taxes paid for that road, sidewalk, and lights. It paid for police protection, fire safety, health care, community education, and mail. It even paid some welfare, and other assistance programs.

Some of things I’ve discussed you like, and some you don’t. Some you use, and some you don’t. But I guarantee you know at least one person who has, at some point, benefited from each of these things. An educated populace is a prosperous one, and I think it would be difficult to argue against the idea of safety and health. You may want these individual services to be paid for by the consumer on an as-needed basis. You may want everything to be privatized, so that companies compete for your business. That’s what capitalism is about, so why wouldn’t we use it for this? Well, because that would be hell. I don’t want to have to pay a toll every time I switch from one street to the next. L.A. traffic would look like racetrack compared to how that would be. Maybe we simplify it, by adding stickers to your car that indicates which streets you’ve paid for, and which you haven’t. Could you imagine the amount of manpower it would take to regulate this, however you set it  up? A labor shortage would put this nation into just as much turmoil as unemployment has in recent history. You may hate taxes, but they are the most efficient means of distributing wealth across the whole country. I’m not saying it’s a perfect system. There are so many ways we can make it better. I don’t understand why I fill out any forms at all. The government should know where I work, how much money I earned, and even what I did with it. Just take what you need, send me a statement, and give me back my Aprils. I also don’t always agree with what they spend my tax dollars on, but the solution to this is not to simply eliminate the concept completely. The solution is to vote for civil servants who I believe will change laws according to what’s best for society. If you agree with this sentiment, then come the next two elections...#votethemout.

Fervor: Five Woman Band (Part II)

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“Who the hell are you people?” I ask of these two women who just appeared in my house, and wrecked the place. I don’t feel bad about, they’re not supposed to be here.

Slipstream easily catches up, and creates a human barrier between me and the strangers.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” One of them holds her hands up defensively. “We’re not here to hurt anyone. We must have missed our mark. We were meant to land somewhere in the middle of Kansas, since Springfield doesn’t exist anymore.”

“What do you mean, it doesn’t exist anymore? My great uncle was born there.”

The strangers give each other a look. “She must be a chooser.”

“I was born in the 1960s,” I explain, because I just don’t give a fuh.

“She must not have been in the timestream when the city started disappearing,” the other postulates.

“Well, I’m glad we ended up here, instead of a house full of humans. That would have been hard to explain.” She presents her hand. “My name is Hogarth Pudeyonavic. This is my partner, Hilde Unger.”

“Paige.” I tilt my head towards my new best friend. “This is Slipstream. What year is it for you?”

“It should be 2025. We were on another planet.”

“Oh.” I’ve never heard of people going to other planets, but nothing surprises me anymore. “Yeah, it’s 2025. “By the way,” I say to Slipstream, “some people have special temporal powers.”

“I gathered,” Slipstream replies. “I’ve seen some things that make a bit more sense now.”

“Well, this isn’t awkward,” Hilde says after a silence.

“Yeah, I guess we should leave,” Hogarth says. “Sorry for invading your...” she trails off as she’s looking around at the mess they made made. It looks like a mad scientist generated a miniature tornado that broke free of its containment field. “We somehow have to fix this, even though I doubt I have any money...since it was all tied to the Springfield Central Bank.”

I shake my head. “We live in Countryside, we’re rich. Don’t worry about it.”

“No, we’ll find a way,” Hogarth insisted. “Come, love. We have to find jobs, and figure out what we’ve missed these last eight years.”

“Universal basic income,” I say before the two travelers could leave the room.

Hogarth stops. “What was that?”

“It’s actually a negative income tax,” Slipstream clarifies. “If you don’t make enough money to live on your own, the government subsidizes your income. If you do, you get nothing, and if you make more than enough, you pay taxes, just like before. President Clinton pushed for total universal basic income, but had to make a compromise with the Republicans. The new system started at the beginning of this tax year. If you don’t have any money, you would qualify, except...”

“Except that we don’t qualify for anything, because we don’t exist. Even if the records rewrite themselves, now that we’re back on Earth, we’ve been missing for the better part of a decade. Neither one of us has an identity.”

“The Forger,” I remember.

“Who?”

“A family friend, Detective Bran was telling me about the guy who gave him a new identity; an actual one, not just fake papers. He can rewrite your whole history. He might even give you money to start off.”

“There’s a guy who does that?” Slipstream asks me.

“There’s someone for everything,” I say, prideful of what I know about the world.

“Did this detective tell you how to find the Forger?”

I frown. “No. But I can ask him. I never went to his place, but he told me he lived at...uh, the Leon?”

“The Ponce de Leon?” Slipstream asks, impressed. “That place is pretty swanky.”

“He’s rich too.”

“You don’t have to help us,” Hogarth says with a worried look on her face. “We came here by accident, so you have no obligation to us.”

I smile. “If there’s one thing my dads taught me, it’s that a person in a position to help someone else..has a responsibility to do just. Bran protected me when I was in danger of a winter-making maniac, even though he didn’t have to. That’s what being a human is.” I step into the hallway.

“Is this all true?” Mireille asks me.

“Mireille,” I exclaim. “I, uhh...forgot you were here. But I guess there’s no rule that stops me from telling anyone this stuff. Did you hear everything?”

“Pretty much. You’re going to the Ponce?”

“We are.”

“Well, Slippy travels on foot, you can’t drive, and these two don’t have a car.”

“Oh, that’s true.”

“I’m glad I bought that SUV,” Mireille says. “Let’s go,” she offers the whole crowd.

Slipstream balks at the larger-than-necessary vehicle. “It’s not even two miles away,” she half-complains as we’re climbing it. I imagine she never takes motorized transportation, except maybe to get to the airport, or maybe not even then.

Five minutes later, we’re parking next to Mendoza Park, and walking the rest of the way to the condominium. We take the elevator up to what’s probably the most expensive unit in the complex, and knock on the door.

A woman answers, and she looks exhausted. “Yeah? Can I help you?”

“Um, we must have the wrong apartment,” Slipstream apologizes. “We were looking for, what was the name?”

“Kallias Bran,” I reply, upset. “I know he lives here.”

“Paige?” The woman squints her eyes at me. “Holy shit, it’s little Paige.”

A giggling kindergartner runs straight into the woman’s hip. “You’re it!” she cries.

“Brooke, pause on the game. We have company. Please, come in,” she says cordially. “I think you’re in the right place. When they gave this to me, they called it the Bran Safehouse. I didn’t know what that meant.”

“How do you know a fourteen-year-old girl?” Slipstream questions protectively.

“She wasn’t fourteen last time I saw her.”

“She’s a time traveler,” I whisper to Mireille.

The woman offers Slipstream her hand. “I’m Leona Matic, and I am from the future.”

“Told ya,” I say.

“Why are you and your daughter in a safehouse?” Slipstream continues the interrogation.

“She’s not my daughter. I had to take her when her mother...disappeared. I brought her to this time period, and I’ve been waiting for further instructions.”

“Where’s Kal?” I ask her.

“I have no idea,” Leona says seemingly truthfully. “The Repairman just set me up here and told me all he knows is that I’m meant to wait. Maybe I was waiting for you. I don’t suppose any one of you would be related to an Angelita Prieto—oh, you wouldn’t remember her. Goddammit! Or does the corruption have an effect on the past? How does this work?”

“I..don’t know,” Slipstream answers tentatively.

“Prieto was my mother’s maiden name,” Mireille says quietly. “My father’s French, but she’s Spanish.” She looks down at little Brooke, who is cautiously attached to Leona’s waist.

Yet another woman suddenly appears in the middle of the condo. A bubble of warped spacetime that was surrounding her dissipates. “Good, you’re all here. You have no idea what it took to get Mrs. Voss here to be your babysitter.” She gestures towards Mireille. “She can take care of Brooke while the rest of you are working.”

“My last name’s Travert,” Mireille says, confused.

The new woman chortles. “Right. For now...”

“What’s the meaning of this.” Slipstream; ever the leader, and protector. “You act as if you brought us all together.”

“I did,” she says. “I assembled a team of ragtag elites to take me on.”

“Take you on?”

“Well, not me. Past!Me. I like to call her Asshole!Jesi.”

“What are you talking about?” Hogarth asks.

This Jesi person prepares herself for a story. “In the other timeline, I killed a bunch of people with a virus from the future that I did not understand. I was trying to inoculate the human race, so they wouldn’t be affected by it later, when the virus shows up naturally. But it mutated, and got out control. I need you to stop me from making that same mistake again. Bozhena, I convinced Jupiter to have you deliver the transdimensional jacket to Horace, so he could go get Serkan back, and you could meet Paige.”

“The what jacket?”

Jesi continues, “Hogarth, I brought you and your lovely assistant here so you could provide the Book of Hogarth.”

“The what?”

This time, Jesi stopped. “The Book of Hogarth. Your book, that you wrote? It codifies the principles of time and space? Shit, do you not have the book?”

“What book are you talking about? I didn’t write any book.”

Jesi pinches the bridge of her nose. “Jesus Christ. I need to figure something out. You didn’t actually write anything. You...birthed it, for lack of a better term. I thought you’d find it on Durus. Well, you’re just gonna have to find it now. You can do that tomorrow.” She gestures to Leona. “Leona’s gonna need it in the future, so it’s kind of important, okay?” She’s looking pretty frazzled. “Okay, um. Let me rework the timeline to account for that hiccup. I would have contacted you earlier, but you two were still on Durus, and Ace was still here. We don’t need him in our way. Miss Travert, please stay here with Young!Brooke. I’m sending the rest of you someone who can help. She probably won’t be part of the band permanently, but she can lead you to the Book of Hogarth.” She opens a new mostly transparent bubble, and disappears.

“We’re not gonna do what she wants us to do, are we?” Hilde sounds confident.

“Never do anything without having an answer why,” Leona recites, like it’s her credo, or something.

Hogarth is staring at the space that the cryptic woman from the future was once occupying. “When I was about Brooke’s age, I witnessed a group of older children being pursue by a giant monster. It’s what inspired me to build my machine, so I could study the portal they disappeared through.”

“I remember you telling me about that,” Hilde says, taking Hogarth’s hand.

“There were ten children. One of them was named Jesimula Utkin. Everybody called her Jesi.”

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Fervor: April Fools (Part I)

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Nine months ago, my adoptive fathers were in hot pursuit of a madman who was threatening the safety of everyone in the Kansas City Metropolitan area. They actually seemed to think he wasn’t trying to hurt anyone, but was trying to help the world, and didn’t think through the consequences of his actions. He has a special temporal power, as do many other people throughout time and space. He can open microscopic tears in the spacetime continuum, which are mostly only large enough to allow tiny particles, and waves, through. With this, he can alter his environment, by sharing it with some other environment, from some other time. He created a summer snow that the city was not prepared for. As far as I know, no one died from this, and even if they had, their deaths would have been erased from history, but that doesn’t make it any less wrong. My fathers ended his reign of terror in the city, by somehow going back in time and preventing it from ever happening at all. Ace hasn’t given me the details, saying only that I would understand when I was older. I usually hate when adults say this, but the way he says it, it’s not dismissive. I think he literally means only Future!Me will have all the facts.

Unfortunately, in retaliation for what my dads did to his little global warming experiment, the madman enlisted the help of some friend of his, and created an exact duplicate of the entire metro. There is a second version of nearly everyone within the blast radius, running around some nearly inescapable pocket dimension. Only a few people were spared duplication, but that doesn’t mean they have it easy. My other dad, Serkan remains the one and only, but he is now stuck over on the other side, and I’ve been worried this whole time that we would never get him back. Ace was with him when they finally caught up to their enemy, who in one last desperate attempt to prevent our collective happiness, set off a powerful explosion. There were two magical jackets capable of crossing the dimensional barrier, each of which can only carry two passengers at a time. One of them caused the explosion that sent Ace, a new friend of his, and the friend’s son, I guess, back to our side. The problem is that, not only did Serkan not make it through—and may even be dead—but the other jacket was damaged.

The man with them apparently imbued the jackets with their power, but was not able to fix the surviving one right away. He claims to have been working on the issue since Ace hired him to get Serkan back, but it has been so long, and still nothing. I know I should be patient and compassionate. After all, he’s raising two versions of the same baby, pretty much on his own. Yet I can’t help but think that, with each passing day, week, month, my father gets one step closer to being lost forever. Time is not kind to people in our world. It jerks us around, moving us through the stream in the wrong direction, and forcing us to places we don’t want to be. The longer he stays there, the less time we can spend together, and that’s not fair. I wish I could do something to help, but I’m just a dumb teenage anachronism. I was born in 1959, but Serkan and Ace accidentally brought me with them when they tried to get home a couple of years ago. Like I said, time moves differently for people like us. But my coming here was the best thing that ever happened to me, and I will always be in those men’s debt for taking me out of a horrible life in the 1970s. I have to have both of them. I don’t know what I would do if we never find Serkan. I just don’t know.

Ace is knocking on my door, even though he knows he’s not supposed to. We had to start going to family therapy right away. Here I was in the future, surrounded by technology, cultural norms, and topic references that I didn’t get. The only people who could take care of me were willing to do that, but it was a complex situation. They had only just met each other—as sort of a love at first sight, brought together by time travel, kind of thing—so I was just another complication. Anyway, of course we couldn’t tell the therapist absolutely everything, and I think she picked up on that, but she gave us some good advice. She said that I need to adjust to living in a new country, which was what we claimed had happened. In order to feel comfortable here, I need to be able to spend time alone, and not bombarded by constant attention. Together, we decided on a rule. For one hour after school, I am to remain alone in my room. I’m meant to sit quietly and reflect, or even meditate, but I usually just put on my headphones, and catch up on a half century of movies and television. We’ve come a long way since Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Hawaii Five-O, and Ironside. Now we have Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Hawaii Five-0, and Ironside.

Ace is still knocking. It’s not loud, but it’s persistent, and annoying. It’s his way of being cute. “What!” I finally yell through the door. “This is Paige’s Hour!”

“I have a surprise for you,” he says, fairly quietly.

“Let me guess...you’re gay.”

“Ha-ha. I’m pan, you know that. No, it’s an actual surprise. I think you’ll be happy.”

“I’m never happy.”

“You once were.”

“For, like, a second, when Serkan was here,” I argue.

“That’s the surprise,” he barely says before I’m one more arm day from tearing the door of its hinges.

“Really?” I look over his shoulder. “He’s back?”

“I...guess I should have worded it more carefully. He’s not back, but I am going to get him. The jacket is fixed. Jupiter sent it via courier, and it will be here soon.”

What the hell? “He’s having a one-of-a-kind interdimensional portal opening piece of highly volatile equipment sent via courier?”

“It’s someone from the tracer gang,” Ace says in a reassuring voice. “It’ll get here.”

“If that’s true, then I don’t doubt it, but why isn’t Jupiter going to take the jacket himself? He’s the one who built it. He’s the one who destroyed it, and he’s the one who fixed it. This is his mess. He owes us.”

“He has to stay for his son.”

“You have to stay for your daughter.”

“I promise, I’ll be back. And I will be with Serkan.”

“Why don’t you promise that Jupiter will be back instead?” I suggest. “If you’re that confident.” I think I have him now.

He sighs at my rebellious attitude. “I’m confident in my ability to complete this mission, not his.”

That...is sound logic, and I can’t argue against it. I switch to my mature face. “You get him back. You find him, you come back, and you bring him with you.” He doesn’t say anything as I’m trying to muster my courage. “But if you can’t find him, or if there’s nothing to find, you still better come back.”

The doorbell rings.

“I promise.”

We head down the stairs together, and open the door to find none other than the infamous Slipstream herself. She was not just any member of the tracer gang, but its founder. She was instrumental in the creation of the New Gangs of Kansas City by protecting the original Gunbenders, and starting a movement of anti-gun violence by promoting a form of martial arts that emphasizes the well-being of everyone, including one’s enemies or attackers. She did more for aikido than The Walking Dead ever could have hoped for. She’s pretty much my hero, and she’s standing at my door.

“Hi,” Slipstream says.

Oh my God, she just spoke.

“I’m Bozhena, and I’ve been sent to deliver this.” She hands Ace a package, wrapped in that ol’ timey brown paper, tied up with twine.

“You introduced yourself with your real name?” I ask.

Slipstream smiles. “That ain’t my real name; not anymore. I’m just trying it out. A friend got me wondering whether I should hate it as much as I always have.”

I’m speechless.

“That was what you were looking for, right?” Slipstream-slash-Bozhena asks.

Ace opens it up, and reveals the special jacket. “This is it,” he confirms. “Thank you so much.”

“Do you wanna stay for tea?” I offer as she’s trying to leave. I’m such an idiot. Why would I ask that? Dear God, send me back through that Stonehenge portal. I’ll take my abusive birthparents over this humiliation.

“Uhh...sure,” my idol says. She actually said yes. I wanna go live and announce that she said yes to all my friends online, of which I have none since my birth certificate is fake news, and they don’t allow that sort of thing anymore. “If it’s all right with your dad, that is.”

“Fine with me, I trust you. I do have to go. He starts whispering to Slipstream, but isn’t really trying to keep me from hearing. “You can leave anytime, though. She can spend a little time alone, and the babysitter will be coming soon.”

“Da-a-ad,” I groan. “I don’t need a babysitter.”

“But you love Mireille.”

I try to play it cool with Slipstream. “She’s not my babysitter, we’re friends. She’s only, like, three years older than me.”

Slipstream doesn’t make me feel like a child. She smiles genuinely. What a cool chick.

“All right, play nice,” Ace says, determined to embarass me. “I’m going to grab a few provisions, then be gone. I’ll be back by end-of-day tomorrow.” He kisses me on the forehead. “I love you.”

“Love you!” I call up to him as he’s walking upstairs. “Leave a note in the usual spot if you get trapped in the past!”

“Will do,” he says. We actually have that. It’s an old tree stump that we check regularly for messages from ourselves, or each other. We’ve not seen any yet, but all three of us know the protocol, and only us three.

I realize that a stranger just heard me casually mention time travel to my father, but instead of covering, I act like it’s totally normal. I don’t mind being a mystery to her.

She stays longer than I ever thought she would, and when Mireille shows up that evening, we decide to throw an old-school slumber party. We watch movies and eat popcorn. That’s really it. We don’t braid each other’s hair, or talk about cute boys, which is good, because I’m not interested in boys. I keep expecting they’ll offer to give me a makeover, but actually make me look ugly, then take pictures and shout, April Fools, but it never happens. We just laugh about how I’ve never seen the Captain Marvel trilogy, then we fall asleep on the couches. We wake up the next morning to an explosion from the other room. Mireille cowers in fear, while Slipstream tries to protect me from whatever that was. But I know it’s my fathers, back from the other dimension. I slip under her arm, and race around the corner, but I don’t see Serkan, or Ace. Instead, it’s two random women. This feels like the beginning of something that’s not perfectly great.

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Microstory 878: Edison Phone

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Most people may not know this, but it’s not, on its own, illegal to fake your own death. Where people who try this go wrong is when they commit some crime that’s more of a side effect. If you really want to disappear from society, you’ll need to make a few arrangements, and even if you succeed in these, you still won’t be able to reinstate yourself with a new identity. Your only option would be to start living off the land. But it can’t be your land, because you have to pay property taxes on that, so someone would have to give you permission to live there, but if they do, they could be party to fraud as well, depending. Before you leave, you can’t have any outstanding warrants, or unpaid debts. You can’t skip out on filing your taxes, so you pretty much won’t be able to do anything from a financial standpoint between the first of the year, and whenever you file for the year before. Lastly, you can’t do this in order to collect a life insurance payout, not even for your loved ones. That’s where I come in. My company will only pay the survivors of a death if that death follows certain legally binding criteria; the primary requirement being that it actually happened. As an investigator, it’s my job to make sure these claims are legitimate ones. You would be surprised how many times I catch someone trying to commit fraud, if only in some minor way. A faked death is pretty rare, especially since, as I’ve mentioned, any number of other agencies and departments are going to be scrutinizing the same case. Otherwise perfectly normal, upstanding citizens can make one mistake when they’re desperate, and as much sympathy as I feel for them, I have to uphold the law.

My current case is an interesting one, because she seems to have followed every piece of advice I would give to someone committing pseudocide, which is the term we use in the industry. The only suspicious thing about it comes from the life insurance policy, which was only flagged because she named her sister beneficiary within too short of a period of time before her supposed death. She technically passed the waiting period that’s designed to prevent this sort of thing, but only by one day. We don’t disclose to our clients that we continue to monitor that for longer. I do my due diligence, and discover that a fairly remote friend of hers just subletted her apartment for a year-long stint in Japan. That would be a perfect place for the alleged fraudster to hide out, because I can find no record of the individual renting the unit out at the moment.  I knock on the door, and hear a voice telling me it’s okay to come in. Sitting at the kitchen table is the now confirmed fraudster, totally alive, and smiling at me, with a phone up to her ear. I try to introduce myself, but she knows exactly who I am. She recites my name, social security number, and a bunch of personal anecdotes, many of which she could not have possibly known. She hands me her phone, which I see now is attached to a machine in the corner that’s about the size of the refrigerator right next to it, which seems to be helping keep it cool. I place the phone to my ear, and listen as my great grandmother scolds me for bothering this poor girl. She demands I leave her to her business, and insists that she is doing good work; that she’s helping people like her find closure. I try to maintain the conversation, but Nanaboo doesn’t want to talk anymore. I hang up the phone, and stare into space for an indeterminate period of time. “That woman has been dead for over twenty years,” I say. “You built a machine that can talk to ghosts?” The young woman smiles wider and nods. “And you help people?” She nods once more, so I think this over for another moment. “Do you need an assistant?”

Microstory 798: Tax Card

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During the 200-year period of chaos, when the galaxy was being claimed by all sorts of people with enough money to reach new planets, tax rates were unpredictable. If you wanted to leave the homeworld, you had to suffer whatever policies the founder of the planet you chose had decided to impose upon you. When the Astral Military Force was established, however, the planets began to conform to certain principles. As time progressed, it became harder and harder to push laws that were significantly different than competitor worlds, because citizens would simply leave for better lives. Across the next few centuries, competition essentially disappeared, with no world having any real advantage over another. Populations leveled off, and planets began to fall into one of a few classes. The sixteen original colonies became hubs for interstellar trade, and bellwethers for best practice, and though there were generally more people on the surface of the primaries at any one time, their respective permanent populations were not much than any other. Reservations were military installments, but all other worlds—secondary, tertiary, quaternary, quinary, and constellation class systems—maintained relatively constant populations, with only slight decreases down the spectrum. Soon after the primary worlds adopted a tax program based on mandatory AMF levies, other worlds followed suit. Whereas most nations on the homeworld long ago used some kind of income-based tax bracketing system, the new worlds utilized a flat tax method. All citizens of the galaxy were required to pay one hundred points to the Astral Military Force, so that the organization could regulate interstellar travel, and protect everyone from war travesties. One hundred additional points were allocated to each planet’s global government, while another third was designated for local governments. While earlier tax plans only required payment from working adults, it was decided that every living citizen was attached to three hundred tax points. Parents usually took responsibility for this burden for their children, though there have been cases of abandonment in order to absolve these parents of the obligation. It is not technically illegal if certain procedures are followed. All in all, it wasn’t the most perfect system conceivable, but it seemed to work for the galaxy...until the galaxy fell, and the remaining leaders turned towards a more every world for itself mentality.