Microstory 2248: Deliberately

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Hey, everyone, this is Kelly again. Things are not going well. As you may have realized, Nick is not well. We thought that we were totally past this, but we were wrong. He proved that he was once immortal by being cured of the prion disease, and now he’s incidentally proving that he’s no longer immortal by suffering from something else. We didn’t know what we were dealing with at first, but we were very worried for him. He’s been very fatigued and weak lately, which he attributed to a lack of consistent and comfortable sleeping situations. But that just didn’t seem to be enough to explain how dramatically he was declining. And then that last post. It was written so poorly, and wasn’t like him at all. We knew that something else had gone wrong; something specific that could be tested for, and not just remedied homeopathically. Everyone’s first thought was yet another pathogen of some kind, since he seems to have become a magnet for them. I’m sure that a lot of you were all thinking the same thing, as his posts were reminiscent of the kind that he wrote during other infections. That’s not what it is, though, and not because he’s run out of those. Some of you seem to feel like he can’t get another infection, because he’s already had every kind, but that’s not how it works. He’s had every classification. He could get a thousand different ones over the course of the next half century, and he will still not have contracted everything that the world has to offer. And you can become reinfected with the same exact disease anyway; we’ve never cured any of them. But no, that has nothing to do with it anyway. It’s poison. He has been poisoned. The hospital ran a battery of tests, and came to the conclusion that it’s an organophosphate. Don’t ask me to say that out loud. They are commonly found in pesticides, which is why the majority of patients live or work on farms, or in facilities would use these pesticides, or which take part in the manufacturing of them. But those are not the only ways to encounter it. You can eat contaminated food, or even be exposed to it from a chemical explosion. None of these apply to Nick. Well, he’s eaten food, of course, but we’ve all eaten the same things, and have not tested positive for the stuff. The most likely answer is that someone poisoned him deliberately. I don’t know if they were trying to kill him, or only wrongly trying to prove that he’s still immortal, or what, but we will not tolerate that. We’ve spoken with the proper authorities, and a major investigation is underway. Since these chemicals are sometimes used in terroristic plots, the FBI is on the case, not just for Nick, but because such a bad actor places the whole country at risk. So be warned, they’re going to find you, and you will pay. As for Nick himself, he is receiving the treatment that he needs, and the medical professionals expect a full recovery eventually. If you did this to him, you better hope for a positive outcome, or you will be in even bigger trouble than you already are.

Microstory 2120: Expect Me to Be Grateful

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My Rehabilitation Plan ended up being a lot longer than I thought it would be. I just kept thinking of more detail that I wanted to include, and one of my biggest weaknesses when it comes to writing is cutting out what I’ve already written. That’s why these posts are usually so short, if you can believe the irony. If I wrote everything that happened to me in a given day, then it would end up two or three pages long. The only way to produce it with only the relevant information is to make my cuts before I even start writing. I try to think about only what’s important, and ignore all the little things that readers won’t find interesting anyway. I guess I end up going overboard with this, since it’s not that hard to refrain from transcribing the unnecessary thoughts when I focus so much on just the important stuff. But, so you have an idea, my basic plan is to attend weekend jail for about the next five months until I’ve completed my thousand hours. I’m going to focus on finding and keeping a job on the weekdays, which means putting the community service off until I’m finished with jail. That will make the schedule much simpler, and less stressful. Plus, the therapy isn’t something that I can put off, because it’s crucial to my consistent progress, so I’ll be signing up for evening sessions, depending on what my work hours end up being. I don’t think that it will be that difficult to find something this time around. My readership is growing day by day, and people are already contacting me about open positions. Some are from people who are just aware that such jobs exist, but a few are actual employers with the power to fill those positions. It’s weird to see these messages. I’ve never been recruited before. In the past, companies would always expect me to be grateful just that they gave me the time of day. I don’t have time to look through them yet, so the job hunt starts first thing Monday. Until then, I’ll be in jail. In fact, my ride is waiting. See you on the other side.

Microstory 2076: About My Weaknesses

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Obviously, since it’s winter, most of the work we do at the nursery has been in the greenhouses, but that’s not all we can do. Apparently, since there are fewer customers, we’ll be spending a lot of time cleaning, and doing inventory. When I first started, the weather was unseasonably warm, so I was able to get a taste of what it’s like in the spring, but now that the temperature is dropping again, things have started to slow down, at least in terms of customer service. Like I said, there’s plenty to do, but it’s not as stressful, because there’s not as much of a timing issue. Soon enough, our busiest time of year will begin, and I’m getting anxious about it. They do a lot of workshops here, to teach the public about how to care for plants, and which ones to choose for their needs or wants. I can learn all I want about the industry, but I’ll never be good at teaching others about it. I come from a family of teachers, including my paternal grandparents, my aunt, my father, and my sister. I was not born with that gene. I just don’t explain things well, and I have such a shoddy memory that I forget whether I’ve said something already. More often than not, though, that doesn’t result in me repeating myself. I end up skipping crucial information instead because I think I’ve already said it. Then the whole thing just doesn’t make any sense. I was clear with the boss about my weaknesses, though, so I think they’re just going to keep me away from the students. At least I hope that I was clear. Maybe I skipped over crucial information. And anyway, we don’t have to worry about that quite yet. We’re still in the winter slowdown. Peace out!

Starstruck: The Toliman Nulls (Part I)

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When Brooke Prieto, Sharice Prieto, Mirage, and the newest member of their group, Belahkay Teal arrived inside the heliosphere of Alpha Centauri B, they immediately figured out why the vonearthans had chosen not to colonize it. All stars and other celestial bodies are valuable. They contain hydrogen, helium, and other elements, which can be used to produce energy and/or construct useful structures. Lots of science fiction stories only care about worlds that are naturally habitable, but that doesn’t really matter. With sufficiently advanced technology, anything can become habitable, even if that only means breaking it all apart to make enclosed spaceships. Nothing in the universe is completely useless, including Toliman, except that there’s something different about it. There’s something eerie about it. The closer they got to the star, the worse they felt, and there was no escape from this. Mirage was an early general intelligence turned transdimensional observer god turned android. Sharice was an unregulated AI turned android. Brooke was a human turned android. Out of the four of them, only Belahkay was alive with nearly all biological components. They were all capable of manipulating their sensory inputs to varying degrees, but not in this case. The sickness took hold of them all, and made them all feel the same.

According to the exploratory records, a single probe was sent to the star system. This happened at the same time that they were being sent to Proxima Centauri and Rigel Kentaurus. These were the three closest stars to Sol, so it made perfect sense. While the first two received later vessels, as well as passengers, Toliman was abandoned after the first probe. The reason for this was never publicized, but since there were hundreds of billions of other stars in this galaxy alone, no one really bothered to question that decision. Not even Mirage knew the answer, but her educated guess was that a time traveler had something to do with it. Travelers come from all time periods, and while the majority of history can be attributed to normal people making whatever decisions they feel they ought to, a few events were ultimately caused by someone who knew how specific decisions would turn out. Of course time travelers made certain decisions all the time, but in this case, we’re talking about deliberately driving the course of the future with profound and more obvious choices, or with big nudges.

For instance, to travel at something called fractional speeds—which is to say, a significant fraction of light speed—an object in motion must accelerate from a stopped position. This works with anything. A car can’t just suddenly go from zero miles per hour to 60 miles per hour with no intervening speeds in between. Except it can, as long as it can manipulate time and space properly. It was a time traveler, or perhaps a team, who first introduced the humans to this concept, and vonearthans have been taking the feature of interstellar travel for granted ever since. It’s not instant, but it’s impossibly fast. They don’t have to accelerate or decelerate at nearly the same rate as normal physical laws would suggest, which cuts down on travel time. Mirage was sure that Toliman was just like this. She thought a time traveler needed the star system for something, and made sure that no one would come here until they were ready. That might still be the case, but there was more to it. There was something wrong with it. There was something wrong with people when they came here.

Every atom in each one of their bodies was telling them to leave. They felt nausea, chills, muscle fatigue, dizziness, and fear. This place was frightening in an indescribable way. If they were on a planet, they would say that there was something in the air, but in this case, maybe it was in the radiation? They couldn’t tell, and they didn’t want to spend too much time trying to figure it out. Unfortunately, fate had other plans for them. They couldn’t leave, because one of the symptoms was a complete loss of motivation. Had Belahkay waited even one more minute, he may not have made it to the stasis pod, which saved his life. Because the other three stopped where they were, and didn’t move for the next five years. In that time, the little jumper ship they took from the planet of Bungula drifted throughout the star system until it finally happened to come close enough to the nanofactory that Mirage sent there years ago. Their real ship dispatched a tugboat to tow them into the hollowed-out asteroid. It wasn’t until the hatch was sealed behind them that they were released from the spell.

Brooke stood up, and emulated a deep breath. “What the hell was that?”

Sharice couldn’t stop shaking her head. “It was bad, it was bad, it was bad, it was bad. We can’t go back out, we can’t go back out, we can’t go back out.”

“We have to,” Mirage reasoned. “We can’t live here forever.” She composed herself, and approached the console to get some answers. “Whatever was doing whatever it was doing to us can’t reach us through the walls of the asteroid, but that might not always be enough. We have to take our new ship, and get the hell out of here.”

“Is the ship even finished?” Brooke questioned.

“Of course it is.” Mirage tapped the button to open the forward shutters. Before them was the interior of the asteroid. A shipyard was built here, and in the center was a beautiful shining vessel. It was small for a transgalactic ship, but it wasn’t possible to look at anything else in the room. The hull was a dark royal purple, with perfect curves, and no sharp edges. “Ladies...say hello to the Iman Vellani.”

“Unique design,” Brooke noticed.

Sharice was admiring the ship as well before looking over her shoulder. “The human. Is he okay?”

The Prietos ran down to the other side of the jumper to the stasis pod. “Vitals are okay,” Brooke said as she was looking through the interface screen. She released the door, and had to catch Belahkey before he fell to the floor.

He took a moment to catch his breath, and shake off the feeling of dread. “At the risk of sounding like a cliché, are we there yet?”

“Yes,” Sharice replied, “and now we’re leaving.”

“Good.” He shivered again. “What the hell is wrong with this star?”

“Mira?” Brooke asked. Belahkay was still having trouble walking, so she was carrying him down towards the control area. “What’s wrong with Toliman?”

“I don’t know, but...it affects everything. The Vellani, it’s...damaged. There are parts of its operational code that I didn’t write.”

“Can you repair it?” Sharice asked her.

Mirage sighed. “Not here. The effects of the...” She didn’t know what to call it.

“The Nulls,” Belahkay suggested. If it affects you as well as me, it’s not a real disease. It’s something new.”

“The Nulls,” Mirage echoed. “The shielding of this asteroid appears to be protecting us from the symptoms, but it’s really just suppressing them. I can already feel myself losing motivation again. We can’t stay here for even a day.”

“But if your ship is broken.”

“It’s not broken, it just needs to be reprogrammed” Mirage contended. “I’ll fly it manually until we can do that. This will work. We’ll just point ourselves away from the star, and go. But just to be safe, Belahkay, you should go back into stasis.”

“No. I’m with you.”

“It’s your choice. I’m not your boss.”

“Aren’t you, though? Sharice asked as Mirage was walking away.

Mirage didn’t answer. While she went off to prepare for things in their shiny new ship, Sharice teleported Belahkay over, and then started to ferry all of their belongings. It thusly fell to Brooke to distribute antimatter bombs in key places in the asteroid. They weren’t really bombs, but antimatter was inherently unstable, so if you wanted to turn some of it into a bomb, all you had to do was find a way to disrupt the magnetic field that was keeping it from touching matter, and preferably do so remotely. They could imagine some intrepid explorers in the future, who couldn’t understand why this star system was off limits, coming here to figure things out. They too would become trapped, but if they were organic, it could result in their deaths. This could still happen, but at least there wouldn’t be anything left around here to make it more interesting and inviting.

Once everything was done, they convened on the Vellani, and prepared to launch. They left the jumper where it was, because it was no longer of any use to them. They had everything they would ever need right here. Mirage commanded the airlock doors to open, and then shot out of there as fast as they could. They immediately started to feel the effects of the nulls again, but now that they knew what they were up against, they were able to fight against it. If they were to stick around much longer, the sickness would probably win again, but they weren’t planning on doing that. Even if they did lose all hope, and become unable to escape, they wouldn’t last much longer. The antimatter containment pods were programmed to fail on a timer, rather than be detonated remotely. It had to be this way, because what if Brooke lost her motivation to trigger the chain reaction while she was out here. And anyway, there should have been enough time to get sufficiently far away. The resulting explosion would be large, but still mostly limited to the scope of the asteroid. The pods they used weren’t full to the brim with antimatter, and it’s not like they needed to destroy the whole solar system. So the question was, why did that happen?

They were more than far enough away from the asteroid when it exploded, but the annihilation didn’t stop there. Bursts of energy started to pop up in all directions, much farther than they should have. It was like there was more antimatter in the area than they expected. But that couldn’t be possible? Antimatter wasn’t just floating around all over space. It was short-lived, because whenever it came into contact with ordinary matter, they would annihilate each other, particle by particle. How was this still going on? How could they stop it?

“We can’t stop it,” Mirage explained to Belahkay, who probably should have been placed back in stasis. “But we can protect ourselves.” She tapped on the controls, and boosted the EM shield. It was a simple enough feature that every starship had. While time travelers had access to things like a teleportation field for dust and micrometeoroids, that wouldn’t help them with things like solar wind and cosmic radiation. Still, the electromagnetic shield wasn’t usually turned up to eleven, because it didn’t need to be. In this case, it did. The Vellani was made out of matter, and if those explosions got any closer, they would all be vaporized instantly. The EM shield held, but it wasn’t enough to protect them from the devastating effects of what they had done. Something started to pull them back towards the host star, and they couldn’t do anything about it.

“Can you boost the propulsion?” Belahkay offered. He was holding onto the center console since artificial gravity had been turned off. The other three could magnetize their feet at will.

“All available power is being diverted to the shield!” Sharice replied. “We would be destroyed if we started using it for anything else.”

“If we fall into that sun,” he reasoned, “we’re gonna be destroyed anyway.”

Mirage was watching the screen as the explosions all began to approach the star. It too was made out of ordinary matter. “There is no reality where we’re not destroyed! Everything living on Bungula is dead too! It’s over! We fucked up!”

The ship continued to fall into the sun at an accelerated rate, and soon, the four of them lost all will to care about it. They just sat there, not worrying about anything, not willing to do anything to fix it, which was okay, because there wasn’t anything to do except accept their fate. In the blink of an eye, Alpha Centauri B was gone, as was the newborn starship Iman Vellani, and its crew.

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Microstory 1406: Triumph of the Triumvirate

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Only weeks after Rothko arrived on Durus, Effigy came back, hoping to use a different tactic to get what she wanted. She had had just about enough of Escher getting in the way of her plans to bring all of her people into this universe, and she thought she finally had an advantage over him. On the outside, Rothko was a really good person. He was compassionate, thoughtful, and ready to help anyone who crossed his path, whether he knew them or not. Yet he carried a darkness inside of him that he was only beginning to discover, and being a master manipulator, Effigy believed she could exploit these two sides of him at the same time. She could turn him over to her side, both by appealing to his instinct to be helpful and understanding, and to his inner demons. She began to communicate with him when he was apart from the other two. She didn’t whisper in his ear, or claim that his friends weren’t good for him. She didn’t even charge him to keep their new relationship a secret. She just became friends with him, and taught him how to use his time powers, and let him decide for himself whether he was going to reveal the truth to the rest of the Triumvirate. Most choosing ones develop an instinct for their abilities. They don’t know exactly how they work, but they know how to use them, just like a baby will learn to walk, pretty much no matter what, even if you try to teach them not to. Rothko, however, was particularly unskilled with his, and he needed Effigy’s help. He was a lot smarter than she gave him credit for, though. He could see what she was trying to do to him, and as long as he stayed grounded, he felt he could overcome any psychological poison she tried to use on him. He let her keep thinking that they were becoming real friends, but it was all just an act, so he could learn from her. He recognized that she was his best hope of figuring out how to use his gifts. He proved his loyalty months later; to himself, to his friends, and to Effigy. One thing he had always wanted to do was restore Escher’s hand. Now, the range of his powers was limited. While it was indeed called reality-warping, it didn’t give him free reign over the whole universe. It was localized. He could only make small changes, and only within the immediate area. He was disrupting physics, but not quite breaking any laws. The energy he used had to come from somewhere, and a lot of his work were more illusions than real alterations. There was a way, however, for him to give Escher his hand back. There was a reality out there where Escher didn’t lose his hand at all. This reality was unstable, and short-lived, but that didn’t matter when it came to  time travel. He could still access that timeline, and take from it what he needed. He stitched events from this microreality into the real one, and returned the hand, as if it had never been removed at all. This was great; the Triumvirate had beaten Effigy yet again, and she was furious, because it meant she hadn’t really found a weakness at all. Sadly, their new, happy, and intact life together was not destined to last forever. In utilizing his powers in this way, Rothko had unwittingly opened the world up to much larger changes in the future, and none of them would prove to be powerful enough to stop what was coming.

Microstory 667: A Weak Man Made Strong

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Vilis Samuels was bullied as a child. He struggled in most of his classes, but had a fascination with history of the old world. He wasn’t the only one. We’re all very sad to say, but over the years, some of us have longed for the days when we were under the rule of the dirty communists. These defectors believe the communists to be all about equality and contentment, when really, they’re all about control. Of course these twisted thoughts would make people like Vilis outsiders wherever they went in the galaxy. Many succumb to their bad thoughts, and end up trying to return from whence we came. Vilis never likely gave up his childhood fantasies, but he did grow up to use his love of Lactea in the best way he could find, which was to help covertly keep track of their movements. What some people may not know is that, in order to maintain our secrecy against the Lacteans, we have to know what they’ve been up to. One of the longest-lasting organizations has been secretly returning to the old world, and reporting back. Vilis does not go on these missions, for it would be too dangerous to let him anywhere near people he may yet admire. It’s his responsibility to handle the reports from the agents in the field, making sure they’re filed correctly, and escalating any issues that may threaten our people. He is really just a clerk, and has never made much of an impression on anyone else. Upon watching the bulletin from the new Warriors of Mercy, however, he suddenly felt a surge of energy. This new power was physical, yes, with his muscles far exceeding the strength he had ever had before, but it was also more. Vilis became confident and self-assured, no longer allowing anyone to talk down to him. He demanded a promotion to field agent, which his superiors were helpless to decline. He’s lost his love of Lactea, and is shaping up to be one of the best intelligence agents the galaxy has ever seen. Only time will tell what comes of Vilis Samuels, but one thing we know from him, is that he never wants to be that same weak man he was before.

Microstory 551: Defense System Test Reveals Dangerous Flaws

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Before our new solar system that we’ve literally built from scratch can be officially declared completed, we need to put on some of the final touches. Though we’ve created a sort of paradise for ourselves, our leadership recognizes that not everyone in the universe shares our vision. The Exiles have made it clear they want nothing to do with us, though that could change in just a few generations. The Anarcho-capitalists ran off to a new galaxy, we’re still not sure where. We know that scattered sects of Amadesis followers remain alive, but inactive. We have no idea where they’ve gone. And finally, there could be other threats out there of which we are simply not cognizant. As much as we would like to be open and carefree, we must remain cautious and vigilant. We must protect ourselves from all known threats, and all unknown threats too. A special department has been tasked with doing this for us. They’ve come up with hundreds of ideas; some good, others not. They’ve whittled them down to things that we can effectively implement, with the right amount of redundancy, but it is still a work in progress. This much has been brought to light.

The Core Defense Strategy is no perfect system, but engineers, and other professionals, are working hard at shoring up flaws. One such of these flaws presented itself during a test yesterday. A fleet of “enemy” ships were built all the way on Montisaltom, which means the CDS system had never encountered it before, and could not perceive it as non-hostile. One by one, and sometimes in groups, these ships were sent to The Core, and programmed to attempt to break our defenses. Most of them failed, but one managed to get through, and could have caused a heavy amount of destruction had it been a real threat. It would seem that there is a small region that lies just before the decided upon system borders, and interstellar space. If a ship exits a simplex dimension in this perfect zone, but then immediately transports itself deeper inside using one of the lower dimensions, it can bypass all alerts, at least long enough to establish a stranglehold. The blue simplex dimension, for instance, is so slow that only an incredibly patient crew would be willing to take the time to travel here from another star system. It could take years. It is for this reason that lower dimensions have, up to this point, remained unmonitored. Basically, we’ve never been worried about global or interplanetary travel within the system. Rest assured, however, that these flaws are currently being removed through some extra programming. Other weaknesses have recently been found as well. For instance, we’ve decided to eliminate onslaughts coming from all stars in the immediate vicinity that a threat might chose to utilize as staging post. The system leadership would like to remind every citizen of The Core that we’re all in this together. If anyone has any ideas for how to improve our society, or protect us from danger, they are encouraged to voice their concerns.

Microstory 383: Self-assurance

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Self-awareness

I previously discussed this topic to some degree in another step, but that was limited in scope, so I think there’s room for more. I’m just going to expand on what I’ve already said about self-confidence, maybe this time talking about myself a little less. What I never went into before is what happens when self-assurance goes wrong, which would also be continuing the subject of self-awareness. Some people are pretty sure of themselves, and are incapable of recognizing how other people see them. Not every celebrity on the cover of a tabloid is a bad person, but there clearly are those out there who have no real talent. In order to maintain their relevance, they regularly do something ridiculous so people pay attention to them. On the surface, this does sound like a kind of talent, but really, how many of those “celebrities” you think come up with those tricks themselves? Self-assurance too easily leads to self-aggrandizement. If not put in check, someone with too much confidence in themselves can start to lose vital perspective. How many times have you heard someone, celebrity or not, make a stupid remark about the way things are. Donald Trump’s primary voting population is known for having a warped idea of how things work. Libertarians build their whole socio-political belief system upon their own ignorance of how people different than them live and view the world. I’m in this weird spot where I see better ways of doing things, but I also get hopelessly confused by the simple things. This I must work on by nurturing my curiosity, and ignoring my presumptions. Always be able to question if you truly understanding something, or if you’re missing important information. Every problem the world has ever encountered can be traced to either selfishness or a lack of data. Find and commit to something that makes you happy, but also keep yourself challenged. Imagine greatness and be ambitious, but don’t hurt people on your way to success. Recognize and appreciate your faults. They make you who you are, but you don’t have to be defined by them. Train to shed yourself of weaknesses, but never believe them to be gone entirely. Know yourself, trust your past, and keep improving. Rest assured, you can’t lose if you never stop trying.

Accomplishment