Microstory 2300: Millions of People

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The place was packed. In case you never found out, the event was catered, that was the surprise from the other day. A counter-serve vegetarian restaurant called Honeypea’s Harvest graciously donated tons of food and labor time for what’s certainly the largest reception I’ve ever been to. They actually started out in the Kansas City area, and their first location that wasn’t in the immediate region was Chicago, so they felt a kinship to us. Nick loved going there, I remember that, but I didn’t think to reach out to them. Our publicity firm did, and we’re very grateful for their assistance. We basically took over the entire Humankind Causeway Center, because we had the auditorium on one end, and then the ballroom for the reception on the other. You can see why I couldn’t tell you about it before, right? You say the word free, and people flock to you, whether they know what you’re giving away or not. There was a limited amount of space and food available, so we couldn’t let the whole world know. As for the service itself, it went pretty well. I told you that I was nervous, and having a full auditorium didn’t help with my nerves, but I pretended that they weren’t there, and that I was still practicing in front of the mirror. I got into a rhythm, and made it through to the other end. I want to thank all who attended, and everyone who logged in to watch the stream. Millions. Millions of people watched it live, and millions more have watched the recording since it ended. I can’t believe we ended up here. When I first met Dutch, he was just this cool guy without a care in the world. And when I met Nick, I honestly thought that he was a little nutty. He was shy, but not shy about telling us who he was, and where he came from. I grew to believe him, and it seems that a lot of you have too. I find it hard to imagine that this many people read his blog, especially now that he’s dead, when they just think it’s this dumb little fictional story. Dare I say most of you are believers? It’s crazy how far he’s come. Even though he’s gone, his legacy continues, through all of you, and through me. I’ll keep sending out posts as long as you keep reading them. I think he would appreciate that. In fact, I bet he would literally say, “I appreciate your support.”

Microstory 2245: Complaint to You

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I had lunch with my old friends today. It was my former assistant, who replaced me at the jail, and my former parole officer. At first, I thought that Leonard was being respectful by ordering a vegetarian meal, but as it turns out, I inspired him to become a vegetarian. I’m really happy about that, and I hope the trend continues, if only due to the fear of a prion disease. They ran a full investigation of the restaurant where I allegedly (I legally have to say it like that) ate contaminated meat, and they were unable to find evidence of further contamination. So you should be able to eat there again if you want, in case you were waiting for an answer regarding that problem. I guess I should have said something earlier. Anyway, the meal we had today was great, and I enjoyed the company. It was nice to be out in public again, even though men in suits were standing at the ready. I always wanted to be famous, but important—like a politician would be—is a different concept. Someone like that is a target. I did not want it to be like this. I knew there was a chance that I may end up with a stalker or two, but not that everyone I saw was a potential threat. People were staring, not only because it was me, but because I was clearly under protection. Fortunately, it didn’t get any worse than that. I’m not one to advertise my location, so it didn’t draw a big crowd, or anything, but I fear that this might start happening if the media begins to track my movements. Maybe I should just stay home all the time, and never show my face. That may sound like a complaint to you, but it doesn’t sound like one to me. There are worse ways to live, believe you me. Speaking of which, we still haven’t gotten word on whether my offer on the house has been approved. Even if it is, it will still take some time to complete all the paperwork, and whathaveyou. Until next week, goodbye.

Microstory 2180: Secretary is a Dirty Word

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My neighbor and new assistant has agreed to let me tell you her name, and a little bit about her. I didn’t ask her if I could do this; she volunteered, thinking that it didn’t make much sense for me to keep referring to her by her relationship to me. I try to keep the specifics about other people out of my posts, and not reveal too many details about them, in order to protect their privacy, but I can also see how it may feel impersonal and detached. I hope that no one else is experiencing any such issues. Anyway, Jasmine Soun is 29 years old. She’s from St. Louis, Missouri. After she graduated from St. Louis University, she decided to leave all of her belongings behind, and just start driving. She stayed on the road for four hours, and the only reason she stopped is because she ran out of gas. She had made it to Kansas City by then, but wasn’t too near a gas station. She had to get out, and walk the rest of the way to buy a gas can, and fill it up before making her way back to her car. It was there that she met her future boyfriend when he offered to give her a ride. He also offered her a job at the gas station, and she didn’t have any other prospects, so she accepted it. That’s the kind of person she is, a real go-with-the-flow type. He would later convert her to vegetarianism, which was what made her have to quit her job before too long. She didn’t like selling the types of foods to which she had a moral objection. I can very understand that. Fast-forward about six years, and she’s no longer with that guy, but they keep in touch. She’s had a number of jobs since then, but just before I hired her, she was a secretary for the Vice President of Manufacturing at a computer hardware company that specialized in memory modules, so she has decent experience, which means that it’s not a cronyistic hire. Back in my home universe, secretary is a dirty word, filled with a historical context of misogyny, and an imbalance of power through a gendered dynamic. People in this world apparently never had that problem, so the word doesn’t have the same negative connotations. Sure, it’s not like it’s a coveted position, admired like astronauts, but it’s not shameful either, and it hasn’t been traditionally dominated by women either. No job really has been; I find that interesting. And on that note, we better get back to work. Say goodbye, Jasmine. She says hello.

Microstory 2176: And Young

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The thing about the way that I’ve developed my website is that I can sometimes get trapped in my own format. When I started out, I wanted to do really short stories on weekdays, and my permanent story on one day of the weekend. I didn’t know what I was going to do with the other day of the weekend, and I didn’t know how canonical I was going to get with the whole thing. It’s the numbers that make the decisions for me. The numbers dictate all. Once I started doing continuous microfiction stories, I decided that I liked to block them out in batches of 100, but there are roughly 260 weekdays every year, and I don’t like to cross the December 31 border, so I can’t always do the 100 installment thing. I end up with remainders, and the value of each remainder often determines what that shorter series is all about. The reason I wrote exactly fourteen sonnets in 2022 is because I had a remainder of fifteen, and could use one of them for an intro. If the remainder had instead been, say, nineteen, I doubt I would have ever thought to do them. I actually decided to change everything up this year by shifting to a regular blog format, hoping that I would have an interesting enough life for that to make sense. As 2024 approached, and I realized that it wasn’t the right call, I had to alter the plan into a fake blog format. That’s what we’ve been doing every weekday since January 1. And like all series here, I don’t get much of a chance to do something different when the situation arises. But it does sometimes arise, and I occasionally have to briefly put my ideas on hold in order to detour to something else. Something important.

I was running a series in 2020 set in another universe. Each installment was told from the perspective of a different fictional character. But then my grandfather died in real life, and I wanted to say something about him. I wanted to get real with my site, so I hit pause on Reactions, and shared my true thoughts. I’m spending a lot of time explaining myself, but I think it’s important for you to understand what a big deal it is for me to deviate from the structure that I’ve limited myself to. The last time I did it was when I lost a dear loved one. Yeah, I do it during introductions too, but those are strongly dependent upon the forthcoming series. These are true shifts, and come from the real me, rather than the fictional version of me. Though, it was fitting back then, since Reactions was about death, and fitting now for other reasons. Last month, my alternate self was pressured into eating meat, even though he was a vegetarian. I was the one who gave him that diet in the first place, even though I hadn’t mentioned it before when he was first introduced, and that’s because I had become a vegetarian myself since then. I’ve struggled with the idea of harming the environment, and killing animals since I was a child. I just didn’t think that I could get all of my nutrition if I cut out meat, and as it turned out, I was spot on. I’ve struggled with my health and weight since college. I used to be able to eat whatever I wanted, and still be quite thin, because I was unwittingly super active. And young. As I’ve aged, it’s become harder and harder to match my calorie intake with activity, and if anyone told me that that would happen, I didn’t listen to them. One thing I didn’t think that much about was that most junk food is vegetarian. Sure, I can have an entire pizza, just don’t put pepperoni or sausage on it. Ice cream? Of course! Pastries, chocolate, all the cheese in the world? No problem. Just don’t give me any meat, because animals died to make it, and I don’t like that. In addition to how much you can eat as a vegetarian before you feel full, you have to eat so much to get the comparable protein. So it was really easy to justify the binging regardless of what the food actually was. I have come to the profoundly difficult decision to press pause on my vegetarian diet recently. I’m going to focus on lowering my caloric intake, and erasing my reliance on comfort food that doesn’t do anything for me except make me feel full, and add fat to my belly. It won’t be forever. I just have to get down to my goal, then I know I can start maintaining. I was so close before, I’m certain that I can get there and stay as long as I stop resorting to garbage. Then I’ll go back to where I want to be, for the environment, and for the animals. I just hope this months-long detour doesn’t end up giving me some terminal disease, or something. That would be ironic, wouldn’t it? Oh wait, careful...spoilers. That’s it for me. Nick Fisherman IV will be back tomorrow.

Microstory 2159: Can’t Ever Be Happy

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Yesterday evening, I had my usual meeting with my therapist. We talked about the storm a little, but it was mostly about the volunteer work I’ve been doing. It was no big secret that I got an early jump on my community service due to the traumatizing meat-eating incident the other day. She was able to piece together that I’ve been pretty depressed about it, and I think I knew that; I just didn’t want to think about it. I’ve been filling my days with tons of stuff to do so that my brain doesn’t get a chance to stop and ponder my life choices. It’s been really hard on me. I feel like I’m an addict, and I just had a relapse. It’s super not the same thing as a real addiction, like drugs, or sex, or even food in general. I made a decision to become a vegetarian for several reasons, none of which was that it was harming my life, or causing issues with others. Even so, I made a commitment to stop, and I broke that promise to myself. It can’t be reversed. It will always mark a new beginning, but in a bad way. The streak cannot be repaired, no matter how long I live without ever doing it again. And that sucks. It’s gonna take a lot, and a lot of time, for me to be able to move past it, especially since depression always reinforces itself with dark thoughts on other things. I start to think about every bad thing that has happened to me in my life, and all the mistakes that I’ve made. I dwell on it, and everything negative. My therapist tried to figure out what brings me out of my funks, but I don’t know that anything ever really has. It just kind of stays with me. It subsides after things regress towards the mean, but I can’t ever be happy. Happiness is a concept that I only understand through the lens of relativity. I’ve been happier at times than at other times, but true contentment sounds impossible, and if you tell me that you’ve experienced it, I may not believe it. If you tell me that you’re in the middle of experiencing it, I can’t promise that I won’t punch you in the face, so just don’t give me that BS. Sorry, didn’t mean to become so violent, but it’s impossible to delete my words, so I won’t. I just don’t care for braggers. We get it, you love life, now shut up about it, and leave me to brood in the shadows.

Microstory 2155: Tiny Home Community

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You’ll recall that I was planning to put off my community service hours until I was finished with my jail time. This was the best decision at the time, because it meant that I wasn’t trying to pile everything on all at once. If I had tried to rush through it, I would have gotten burnt out, and probably had a nervous breakdown. Other than that, though, there’s no other reason that I can’t start working through my hours earlier if I want. Before I get into it, I have one last update about that business deal that I’ve been working on. They pulled out of it. Completely. They made it quite clear that there was no legal issue, and that the whole reason they’ve changed their minds is because of my post last night. They asked me to eat steak with them, because that’s traditionally what they do after a handshake. I felt pressured to go along with it, even though I’m vegetarian, but they don’t see it that way. I’m an adult, and I made a decision, and I could have declined. Except I did try to decline, and they kept pushing and pushing. Still, they don’t want to work with me anymore, because I made them look bad. I pointed out that I never mentioned them by name, but they volleyed that I eventually would have, when I started to promote them, and that’s a good point. I must say, I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, it’s probably for the best that we don’t associate with each other, whoever they were—I’ll never tell. On the other hand, I ate meat for no reason now, destroying my five year streak, and making me feel even worse about myself. If I could go back in time, I would have politely rejected their initial proposal, and then just moved on with my life. I’m gaining not only new readers, but also new subscribers. I have a good job in addition to this side hustle. I really don’t think anything else on top of that.

I still feel pretty crappy about the situation, so I decided I needed to do something about it. A long, long time ago, in a universe far, far away, I used to volunteer all the time. It came so naturally to me that I barely thought about it. That was one good thing about the scouts, because if not for them, or for church, I might not have done any, because, well...I wasn’t thinking about it. I didn’t have to go to the opportunities. They always came to me. Despite the fact that I’m now required by law to participate in community service, it’s not that easy. The court isn’t going to send me a list of places where I can volunteer, and they’re certainly not going to coordinate it for me. I have to reach out to the organizations myself, and have them approved by my parole officer, Leonard. That’s mostly a formality, because the only reason he would reject a particular proposal is if I’m being asked to do dumb, pointless, or unhelpful work. Good, non-scammy organizations who legitimately need help should be fair game. I forgot to say anything to Leonard beforehand, because I wasn’t initially planning on starting my service so soon, but I called him after, and the eight hours I earned will still count just fine. Homes for Humankind is presently building a tiny home community not too far from me on the Missouri side. It’s for people of low or no income, who need a place to live, but don’t need their homes to be lavish and expensive. I spent a half day cutting wood, and drilling screws. Most of the other dozen or so volunteers were highly experienced with this standardized model, so they went fast, and had a shorthand with each other. They were wary of me, but I have my own experience with this sort of thing, so I kept up. We still got the whole unfurnished product done in a day. I’ll help build another next week.

Microstory 2154: It Can’t Be Undone

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I’m not having a good day. The meeting with the people went fine. We struck a deal, and I’ll start to promote their products and services in future installments. These won’t be non sequiturs, though. They’ll provide me with samples, so I can mention them more casually and naturally during my regular updates. You won’t ever hear me just randomly doing ads only for them. I’ll still have normal things to say about how my life is going, but also what I’m using. I’ll also be incorporating their own banner advertising system, as opposed to the one that’s built into the blogging service. Everything still has to go through their legal department, and I’ve been advised to find a lawyer of my own, but once I finish signing the paperwork, we’ll start. It was after the meeting was over that things started to become not so great. As you know, I’m vegetarian, and I’ve been this way for years. It’s something that I wanted to do for a long time before I found the opportunity to make the leap. I never liked the idea of killing to survive, but fresh fruits and vegetables are expensive, and I am not a good cook. Once I started living in Havenverse with Cricket and Claire, though, that all stopped being a problem, so I was able to adopt my desired diet. That all changed this evening. My new business partners wanted to celebrate the deal with a meal, like you do. Unfortunately, they have a more specific idea of what that entails. To avoid being rude, I let them order a steak for me, and I ate it. It was the first meat I had eaten in years, and I did not feel good about it. I’m an all or nothing kind of guy. It can be my worst character flaw, but it has kept me completely away from drugs and alcohol, so I’ve never tried to change. I don’t want to.

I once believed that I wasn’t very susceptible to peer pressure, but now I think that that had more to do with the fact that I didn’t have peers. No one outside of my family ever cared much what I did or didn’t do with my life. So I reluctantly agreed to the steak, and I had to hold back tears as I was chewing. When it was over, and we officially said our goodbyes, I went back to my apartment, and threw up again. A part of it was because it was too much, and a part of it was stress and guilt, but another part of me believed that I could undo it by not letting my body process the meat all the way. Of course, it doesn’t work like that, and anyway, one point is to lower my carbon impact, and the damage has already been done. I’m just going to have to figure out a way through this. I’ve said this before, and it’s always been about my health and weight, but this time, it’s for the animals: my diet starts now. From tomorrow onwards, I will never eat meat again, whether anyone asks me to or not. They’ll have to force me if they want it to happen. I’m just gonna go to bed for now, and try to put it in the past. As I said, it can’t be undone.

Microstory 2148: Wokest of Folk

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I agreed to have dinner with my neighbor yesterday evening. She framed the invitation as a friendly stranger passing by me in the hallway, but she knew who I was, and has read some of my blog. She’s not a crazy stalker, though, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’ve just been pretty good at marketing my site in the local area. There’s a bulletin board in the lobby of our apartment complex, for instance, where people can post lost animal flyers, or musical instrument lessons. I printed out a slip of paper that just gives my address, and tacked it up there. It doesn’t even say what the site is, so people have to try it to see. There aren’t enough people living here to make much of a dent in my readership—especially not these days—but marketing is all about cost versus return, and it cost me almost nothing. Anyway, the dinner went well, she was very nice, and a really good cook. She’s a vegetarian too, so I didn’t have to worry about making her feel bad about making something special on my account. She prepared us sweet potato and black bean enchiladas with avocado crema. Sweet potatoes are one of those foods that I had to grow to like later in life, and I’m glad I did for this situation. I’m sure you’re all wondering if sparks were flying, but please don’t. Where I’m from, it’s annoyingly taboo for a man and a woman to be friends. Even the wokest of folk think that it doesn’t work, but as an omnisexual, I say, what even is a man, and what is a woman? Your “theory” may stop making sense when you answer that. There’s nothing romantic going on between us, and there wouldn’t be even if I weren’t loyal to Cricket.

Microstory 2081: Half a Surprise

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I didn’t have to go to work today. I worked eleven days straight, so it’s time for a break. I’ve not just been sitting around, though. I got out, and did stuff. First, I walked back to the bike shop, where they let you rent for the day. The first time is free as long as you sign up for their emailing list, and promise to seriously consider buying something at a later date. They have a few used ones, so instead of exploring my options online, I think I’ll just end up choosing one of these. I’ve gotten my first deposit, but I’m not exactly a millionaire yet. I would like to get a couple more before I start making any big purchases. I did spend a little cash on some food. I am not much of a cook, but I can get by if I plan it out, and I’m very careful. My landlord happened to have the day off too, so she planned something with a friend. She’ll be home for dinner, though, so I’m making something for her. I told her that I wanted to pick something up for the two of us to thank her for everything she’s done for me, so shh, it’s still half a surprise. She’s a vegetarian too, which is great. Do you know what the most important part of cooking is...? [...] Give up? It’s eating. Eating, of course; what else would be the point. The second most important thing, however, may be timing, and it’s one of the hardest things to learn. That’s what I’m struggling with now, but I think I’m gonna be okay. Something that really helps is having a bunch of little bowls ready with the individual ingredients. This is how they do it on all the cooking shows. My landlord doesn’t cook much herself, because she’s too busy at the clinic, but she inherited a lot of kitchen stuff from her grandmother, so there’s enough here for me to be ready to go. Wish me luck, I’m making a Mediterranean bowl, which shouldn’t be too terribly hard for an unskilled, perpetual novice like me. I’ll let you know how it goes tomorrow.

Microstory 1724: Columbarium

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I am the only survivor of a crashed scout ship on an alien planet. My communications array was destroyed, not that there would be anyone to reach out to this deep in the black. If Earth doesn’t hear back from us, they will assume the worst, and make no attempt to mount a rescue mission. They cannot waste time looking for me when every ship is needed to search for a new home. Here is where I will live for the rest of my days, which will probably be long. The forward section of the ship is intact. It has good ventilation, solar power, ample medical supplies, and comfortable quarters. I must still go out in search of food, however, as our reserves all burned up. I’ll only last a year on the emergency rations that we had the good sense to store separate from the rest. I leave the protection of the vessel, and venture out into the wild. I won’t have to walk, fortunately, as a single occupancy helicopter did manage to survive the devastation. I’ll be able to hunt for resources from above, and it will go much faster. I immediately find a source of freshwater. It appears to come from a spring, and cuts through an oasis. I’m not sure if any of the plant life is edible yet, so I’m going to have to run some tests. I keep traveling over the lands, and keep finding these isolated oases, but the majority of the planet appears to be rather barren. It will be fine for me, but it would have been a poor choice to migrate our entire population. Life here would have been hard for people, so hopefully they will find something better elsewhere. I don’t see any land-dwelling animal life at all. I see some birds in the distance, but they are quite repelled by me. I don’t think I’ll be able to catch any of them for food. They appear to be too skittish.

I return to the ship knowing that I’ll have to become a vegetarian once the rations are gone, but also relieved that I’m probably going to be okay. I’m a decent engineer, there don’t seem to be any predators, and the weather array suggests a mild climate all year-round. So what am I going to do with all my time? My life is meaningless now, and I was raised in a world where meaninglessness meant uselessness, and uselessness meant a drain on resources which could be going to someone who contributes to the survival of the species. I have to find my new purpose. I first cremate the remains of my crew, and temporarily store them in bags. Bodies take up too much precious land, so we stopped burying our dead decades ago. I find some nice clay just outside the ship, so I use that to fashion a personalized urn for each and every one of my 55 fallen friends. I don’t stop there, though. Once the cremains are in the urns, they need a place to rest, so I begin building an entire structure for them, called a columbarium. It takes me a very long time to set the stones by hand, by myself, with clay and sand as my mortar, but I literally have all the time in the world now. I no longer have to worry about radiation pockets, or smog, or rioting. It’s important that these heroes be honored and respected. They deserve to be on display, not just for future travelers who might happen upon us millennia from now, but for me. It’s twice as big as it needs to be, because they deserve the wide open space too. Once it’s complete, I begin setting the urns in their niches. I stand there and admire my work, proud that I did this for them, and didn’t just focus on my own needs. As I’m making sure all of the urns are faced correctly, one of those white birds flies in, and perches in one of the empty niches. Another follows, and does the same. Then more come in. Perhaps I won’t have to become a vegetarian after all.

Microstory 948: Clean Meat

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I love meat. Meaty, meat, meat. Here it goes down; down into my belly. Mm-mm-mm. I love cow meat, and pig meat, and bird meat, and sea meat. When I was younger, I was willing to eat any kind of animal, as long as it wasn’t lamb or veal. Why those exceptions? Well, they’re babies, and I think eating babies is monstrous. But maybe that’s just me. Other than that, I was up for anything. Cow tongue, escargot, caviar; whatever, I’m a pretty adventurous guy. I never had any interest in becoming a vegetarian, but somehow at the same time, I always wanted to be a vegetarian. I never liked the fact that something had to die so that I could live, but I did it, because I needed the protein. Things are different now, though. I’m educated enough to know that there are vegetarian protein options, I’m living late enough in history for those options to be readily available, and now all I need is the money. I would love to go full vegetarian right now, but I just cannot afford the substitutes I would need to stay healthy. If I had better self-control, and wasn’t a recovering binge eater, I might be able to get away with it. After all, the majority of your diet is meant to be carbohydrates anyway. That doesn’t work, though, when the you can’t get full just from eating fruits and vegetables, and ended up eating thousands of calories a day to compensate.

A few months ago, one of my cousins was being celebrated for having graduated from college. Family from all over came to the area for a lunch, which was being catered by a local fried chicken place. They came in with this huge tin of dark chicken meat, and I wanted to throw up. My favorite food had always been chicken, but that looked so...Usonian (you would call it “American”). It was excessive and wasteful; it kind of opened up my eyes. I decided I wanted to change my lifestyle, but I knew I couldn’t just go cold turkey (pun well intended). Ironically, I’ve actually kept the chicken in my diet, along with other fowl. I also continue to eat seafood, though it’s fairly expensive in landlocked Kansas, so it’s mostly birds. Chicken. It’s mostly chicken. All I did was cut out the mammals, which is perhaps the easiest way to explain it. I’m saving up money so I can by a car, but once I have that, I’ll start saving...so I can adopt an older child. But maybe someday down the line, I’ll be able to afford—and consistently stomach—all those nuts, lentils, tofu, quinoa, and yogurt. Hopefully soon, though, I’ll have an even better option. They call it clean meat. You know me; I’m great at naming things. Seriously, using my linguistics resources to figure out how to name things is a special skill I have that’s surpassed by few others. I’m the one who came up with the term materianet, for anyone reading this in the future when it has finally replaced the ridiculously-sounding “internet of things”. Clean meat is an odd choice of words, and an entirely politco-marketing one. It’s not any cleaner than regular meat, but it is less cruel. What they do is extract a few cells from a living creature, let that creature continue to live, then engineer the sample to grow on its own. It’s a fascinating process that is presently still in its infancy, but it is showing real promise. Imagine the staunchest of carnivores capable of devouring any meat they’d like without having killed a single animal. Despite all those restaurants that make you wear use forks for soup—or whatever other crap they do—this really will revolutionize the food industry, and I’m extremely pleased with the prospect.