Microstory 1039: Charlotte

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Hello, my name is Charlotte, presently known as An Artist, presently known as Charlotte. I do all kinds of art; painting of all styles, sculpting, performance. I work a lot with blue. Pretty much the only thing I don’t know is music, so I guess I don’t ever have to worry about going for an EGOT. I tried my hand at the flute, and then the guitar, and then the saxophone, but it’s just not for me. Anyway, I’m that girl who always has paint in her hair, and cares more about a book’s cover than the content inside. Don’t feel bad for me, though. I know that it’s almost impossible to make money as an artist. The game is rigged, and if you do manage to succeed, you’ll have sold your soul to do it. I never planned on making money on my work. I’m working hard in school, and while I’m still not certain what kind of career I ultimately want to have, I’ve never had any delusions about the art. I just enjoy the feeling of joy from creating something, and that of accomplishment once I arbitrarily declare that a piece is done. Viola suggested that I get the best of both worlds. I could potentially make a little extra cash, while going around all the people in the industry who’ve traded true beauty for money. She helped me build a website, where I can passively sell my work. It doesn’t cost me a thing, so if I never find any customers, no harm done. It doesn’t take much time to keep posting photos of my creation, so I can still focus on the more practical aspects of my life. I would have been happy just signing up for a service that has everything set up for me, but Viola thought it was important I carve out my own space on the internet. That girl can write code, which I bet most people don’t know about her. She did it right in front of me, literally writing up the little sideways carrots, and dollar signs. It all goes over my head, but man, was she fast. I know transcriptionists who can’t type regular words as quick she can type something she called PHP. That’s not just an analogy, I know a shocking number of transcriptionist personally. It’s this family connection that you don’t care about. I’m sure my classmates are telling you how she had such a huge impact on their lives, but what they might not be saying is how easy all of it was for her. When she was done coding, she just stood up, said goodbye, and walked away to help someone else. For me, it was one of the most important days of my life, but for her, it was Tuesday.

Microstory 991: Wikipedia

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In 2005, shortly after reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, I decided to go online and find out whether someone had tried to make an actual version of the all-encompassing tome. I discovered that a website inspired by it did indeed exist, and I even read a few articles on it, but it has ultimately failed to gain traction. By then, Wikipedia had already been created, and I had heard of it, but it wasn’t nearly as comprehensive as it is today. One thing that seems universally true in all of science fiction is that we’re the only ones who invented an internet. Sure, aliens communicate with each other long-distance all the time, but the breadth of the web has apparently never been replicated. Our internet is potentially accessible to all. Anyone can use it for practically anything they want, as long as it doesn’t break any regional laws, and sometimes even then. It’s full of lies, jokes, and totally conflicting information. It’s been used to bring people together, and tear them apart. For the aliens, they only need a network to share relevant information, and there’s no need to have any fun with it. There are very few things that the internet truly needs to remain sustainable, and good or not, a network like this is probably in our distant future. I wrote about this once as a joke in a tweet, but I’m about fifty percent certain that almost every webpage in the future will be completely wiped out within the next thousand years.

Wikipedia, or some similar service, will serve as the keystone for this new internet. It will be a repository of all human knowledge; our history, our identities, our discoveries, and our mistakes. And there will only be one of these, because in a post-capitalism society, there will be no need for competition. There will also be only one YouTube-like site, and one news source. The latter will be composed by artificial intelligence, and contain exclusively factual content. You may be asking, who would want to live in a world without The Onion, or Twitter, or blogs like this one? We won’t even need Google, because Google operates, not as a search engine—though that is its surface function—but as a web page indexer. The purpose of Google is to find you the best results, but in the future, we’ll only need one result: the answer. This future may sound depressing and unfulfilling, but it will not be without its joy and entertainment. There’s a lot of garbage on the internet, and in fact, I would go so far as to say it’s predominantly garbage. Currently, we live in a three-dimensional world, but unless we interact with each other in real life, we spend most of our time in a two-dimensional setting. The best parts of today’s internet will take one or both of two forms. It will either remain two-dimensional, or become three-dimensional, as virtual reality that’s indistinguishable for base reality is made possible. All the fun things you do on the internet right now; the broadcasting, and chatting, and image sharing, will all be pushed to these virtual realities. You’ll talk with another individual in person, just like you would in the real world. The difference is you’ll be able to teleport to them, and it won’t matter where they are physically. Again, I’m not sure that this is something we should do, but the deeper I go down the rabbit hole of future studies, often while researching on Wikipedia, the more obvious it seems that this is all inevitable. I just hope humanity lasts long enough to see what I am tentatively calling Web 5.0.

Microstory 945: Google

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In the early days, you had several choices for a search engine, and since few people fully grasped how the internet worked, or what it could become, they were all about the same. You chose Dogpile if you wanted to donate to charity, or you chose any of the others based on what features they had, or even just how pretty their homepage was. Then Google came along. As my father was a mathematician, I already knew what a googol was, and ignored the irony that I was otherwise terrible at math myself. As time went on, the world started to see the same thing I did. Google was quickly edging out all competition, until the only real contender was Yahoo!, plus whatever Microsoft was calling their service at the time. And then there was one. I early on saw the potential Google had to completely transform how we access information, despite being a wee boy with no programming aspirations. Though I didn’t know how big they would be, I did predict they would start adding unrelated services all the way back when all they did was search. I expected the internet to be one day entirely controlled by them, and while it’s more complicated than that, they are today the gatekeepers. We all know that person who still has a Hotmail account, and while most people aren’t dedicated power users like me, it still makes you giggle. Why is that? Just because you use Gmail, why in this world defined by apathy, does it matter to you? Well, because it’s absurd. Google is best at nearly everything they’ve tried, even if they ultimately shuttered a given service. They couldn’t crack social, and I don’t exactly understand why they keep trying. While I believe they could have out-Netflixed Netflix before Netflix got so big, they never seemed to see it coming, and missed that boat. Though Google Fiber is considered a failed experiment, they were the best internet service provider I ever had, and only don’t have it still, because I had to move. I use all the usual suspects: search, Gmail, YouTube, Google Calendar, Chrome, Android. But I use all the others too. There’s a reason you’re reading this on a website made by  Blogger, instead of WordPress. There’s a reason I’m typing this out on a Motorola (formerly owned by Google) phone, and one which uses Google’s Project Fi cellular service. And there’s a reason I’ll revise and post it once I get home to my Chromebook. The reason is the same for everything, which is that they are superior to all competition within their field. It’s as simple as that. I have been a fan and supporter of this company since before I cared about much else beyond my own life. Despite their just absolutely god-awful customer service, I still love them, and will never use anything but. So, search on, my friends.

Microstory 938: Social Media

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Way back in the day, people were using social media before they were calling it that. I had an AOL Instant Messenger account when I was eleven years old, and several more over the course of the next nine or ten years, until it started falling out of favor. I spoke primarily to strangers by searching “common interests” that I realize now no one was taking seriously. Back then, we didn’t have internet safety discussions in the elementary school library. We had to figure out for ourselves that, just because someone claimed they could be trusted online, didn’t mean it was true. Most of us intuited that we were not to give out personal information, aided by the fact that AOL asked us to create usernames, rather than use our real names. These were not even the early days of internet communication. People before by time were using newsgroups, and…I wanna say, usenets? I’m not sure what they were exactly, but I can guess they were fairly unsophisticated. Come high school, people were still using instant messengers, but it was becoming hip to have a permanent web presence. Sites like MySpace, Xanga, and even Classmates.com were vying to give you their free accounts. I built a few stupid websites on my own before then, and never thought it would be something almost everyone had. But I guess it just had to become easier, and require no coding skills (I taught myself HTML, but for some reason, didn’t become the next Bill Gates, which is weird). Soon, one social media engine was seen to be moving faster than all the others. Facebook was edging out all competition to be the dominant force. You had to have a legitimate college email address, had to request your institution be added if it wasn’t already there, and it was generally expected that you use your real name. Instead of pointless blog posts, or innocuous conversations, this was designed to maintain contact with people to which you were no longer necessarily geographically linked. It was also helpful for school itself. I used it extensively to ask for help from my classmates; a fact that ultimately led me to deleting my account once I graduated from college. Facebook was only getting better, adding more features by the month, and eventually letting anyone over the age of thirteen in, whether they were attached to a school, or not. But a pattern emerged from this as well.

There are four main types of Facebook posts. One: personal tidbits/irrelevant aglets of conversation. Two: memes. Three: news. Four: fake news. I don’t care about most of it, and always found myself using Twitter mostly. Why? Not in spite of, but because of, the character limit. It was nearly impossible to go on a rant in Twitter’s early days. If you wanted to say something, you had to think about how to shorten it, thereby only expressing the most vital information. It allows me to keep up on the news, and the fact that you can’t post the text of an entire article means it’s much harder to spread misinformation. While I’m meant to connect with everyone I know on Facebook, I don’t feel bad about only following people I want to hear from on Twitter. After nearly eleven years of this, my Twitter game remains strong. I have three accounts, which are accompanied by an Instagram account I don’t use as much as I would like. I have since created a new Facebook account too, but I don’t scroll through the feed, and am only interested in sharing my original content. I don’t understand the appeal of Snapchat and Instagram stories, because if I tell you something, I want you to remember it, not limit it to your short-term memory, after which you move on to something else. I do appreciate that others are getting something out of it, though, along with Facebook. I just hope you don’t pay too much attention to that fake news. That’s exactly what the Russians want. Come on over to Twitter, where it’s fairly clear who you should follow, and who you shouldn’t.

Microstory 929: Netflix

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It was the year 2010. Some dumb team I don’t care about had recently won the superbowl. A good man was still president. And I had just graduated from college. My sister gave me three months of Netflix as a gift. I hadn’t thought much about trying the service before then. I had seen my evil roommate’s DVDs strewn about the apartment, but didn’t think I would get much out of it, especially since I did not yet have a job. I went to the movie theatre a lot during college, usually by riding my bike two and a half miles down the hill. My record was five movies in one day, which was pretty much the maximum with their hours. What I didn’t realize was that I was on the cusp of a better Netflix, and because of that, I ended up never cancelling the service, and still have it today. The library was already huge at that point, but was really picking up speed. It had existed for over ten years by then, but was only starting to become ubiquitous. Of course there are still plenty of people in the developed world who don’t have a Netflix account, but those people are becoming harder to find. The greatest part about the service is that it’s generally pretty reliable. It can be accessed on myriad devices, with varying levels of internet speeds, and they even let you download titles to your phone, to be watched offline. I still encounter errors, as one does when using a computer, but most can be solved fairly painlessly. Netflix has tons of their own original programming, and they keep them up there all the time. My OnDemand services usually only keep five episodes of a series at a time, and sometimes it’s not even the last five, but some inappropriately random order. Netflix does occasionally only offer certain seasons of certain shows, but I’m certain the fault lies with the studio from which they bought the rights for the content. I can say nothing more about it, except that they should renew Lost in Space for a third season now, instead of waiting until season two comes out. And they should do the same with season four of Travelers. Also, please Netflix, don’t change your intro sound effect. You’re going to try to “update” it in a few years, as some belated response to the Kevin Spacey scandal, and it’s going to upset me, because I find this one quite comforting. Oh, I do have one more thing to say. The phrase “Netflix and chill” never had to be sexual in nature. It could very well have described a pleasant evening sitting innocuously in front of a screen, but noooo, you people can’t help but ruin everything. So thanks for that.

Microstory 928: The Materianet

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I have to start this off by explaining what the word “materianet” means. It’s just the internet of things, but with a more succinct name. I’ve always hated the conventional term for the concept, because it sounds so childish, and on the nose. I don’t need it to be sexy, or trademarked, but come on...“internet of things”? Why did we all just allow that to happen? I propose this new term. It still describes what it is, and differentiates it from the more traditional form of internet, which is presently in its Web 2.0 state. The original world wide web was designed for basic communication only. Someone put information on a website, and people could go look at that information. There was some room for response, or collaboration, but for the most part, it was static. Now collaboration is the whole purpose. Even more static websites, like Wikipedia, require the input of millions of people. You’re always logged in, connecting accounts to other accounts, and leverage your social circles to crowdsource data. That is/was Web 2.0, but now it’s time for the next step. The materianet marks the beginning of Web 3.0. Those early elements are still there, but we’re starting to access them in new ways. It used to be a family had a single computer that everyone had to share. Then, individuals began owning their own machines independently. But now we each have multiple devices. A single person in the developed world will sometimes use several ways of connecting. They’ll have a desktop for long-term tasks at home, or at work, a laptop for portable long-term tasks, a phone for spontaneous needs, a tablet to play games while they’re on the toilet, and a smartwatch for convenience and behavior tracking. Google came out with niche glasses that were a bit ahead of their time, but are recently making a comeback, and a few companies are working on other types of glasses and goggles, so a few people have things like that too. And again, this is just all one person who owns all this, and few question those choices. Go back to 1960 and list all the computers you have to someone, and they’ll think you’re lying. Now things are expanding even more. Coincidentally, I just received my Google Home Mini speaker last night; free from a new wind energy program I signed up for. This uses extremely limited artificial intelligence to answer questions, keep track of my schedule and favorites, and even make jokes. There are tons of useful auxiliaries that the people who were working on the early internet could only dream of, if that. It can control personal security cameras, lights, thermostat, this machine that heats baby bottles to the optimum temperature, and more. We will one day be able to control everything we have in the home from a phone, or a smaller form factor, like electronic clothing. I haven’t even mentioned how much smarter cars are becoming, or how virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality, as well as true artificial intelligence, are already giving us glimpses of what may someday be called Web 4.0. So thank you materianet, or whatever your name is, for making my life easier, and keeping me connected to all my things. I can’t wait to watch you grow.

Microstory 751: Boot

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In the world of amateur information technology, there are many different kinds of people. Some wear white hats, and are most likely to become legally sound IT professionals. Others wear black hats, and use their skills to hurt people, oftentimes for their own gain. Yet others wear gray hats, because they commit crimes using computers, but do so for what they believe to be good reasons. These are the hacktivists, who see injustices in the world, and do not have enough faith in the system to take care of it without their intervention. Of course, within these categories, some are better than others. The best either everyone has heard of, or no one has. But most people who involve themselves in computer science outside of a professional setting are just normal people who make only a minor impact on the world. Out of these, some understand how computers work to such a low degree that they are not able to create exploits, or write the code to new programs, on their own. They are known as script kiddies, and almost every one of them is embarrassed to be referred to as such, or are at least hoping to outgrow this designation by learning more. One, however, has chosen to embrace this so deeply that he’s adopted it as part of his identity. Cormac Allegro was always pretty decent with computers. He found himself helping his grandparents open and close their web browsers a lot when he was younger. Fellow students, whose families could not afford machines of their own, often asked him for help troubleshooting simple problems. He was good at tackling these issues, because the programs were already there, waiting for him to use.

When he was a teenager, he stumbled upon the world of hackers, and realized that he wanted to be one of them. He started lurking on message boards and chat rooms, looking for someone to trust with teaching him the trade. He found a couple people who were willing to take him under their wing, and they started him off with fairly simple program modification hacks. These involved altering features of desktop applications in ways unintended by the software programmers, and had no effect on anybody else’s use of these programs. Pretty soon, he was using brute force executables to crack his friend’s passwords, sending prank messages to third parties under the guise of someone else. These were mostly considered to be nuisances, and he wasn’t so much as on the radar of any law enforcement agency. His mentors tried to teach him programming languages, but he struggled significantly with this. He just could not understand the coding syntax. Code that should have taken hours to write was taking him days, or even weeks. He just was not getting it, so the mentors forgot about him, and moved on. He would never truly be one of them. But he still wanted to use computers for his own personal gain. He continued as an oddly highly experienced script kiddie. He carved his own presence on the dark web with a gallery of useful online tools for other script kiddies to use for whatever they wanted, until they were educated enough to make their own. Once they did—because Kiddie’s website, Boot Force, was such a great early resource for them—they would send him their programs, so Boot Force’s gallery could grow even larger. Despite being so ill-equipped himself, Cormac ‘Kiddie’ Allegro became known as the best source of all things hacking, and this is when the Domestic Affairs Service started taking notice. After what should have been a far shorter investigation done by a joint task force between DAS and the Continental Datawork Agency, Kiddie was finally caught. And that is where his story begins.

Voyage to Saga: Flipsides (Part V)

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Vearden was sleeping soundly in his bed. He was dreaming of getting Saga back. All his efforts led to success, and they were happy. But then suddenly the dream started draining from him, and he woke to find himself becoming increasingly wet. At first he thought it was sweat, and then he thought it might have been something else, which was weird because he had never thought of Saga like that. After a few more seconds, though, he realized that the wetness was not coming from him. His hotel suite was gradually filling up from water, presumably coming from some other time and place. It had soaked through his mattress, and was overcoming his body. He jumped out of bed and started wading through the water in an attempt to get to the door. The water was up to his waist when he finally gave up trying to open it. He struggled over to the bathroom door. It did open, but it was filling up with water as well. It was then that he decided to give up. He lifted his feet and started floating on the rising surface. The Shepherd probably wasn’t trying to kill him, but if she was, so what?

The water was salty, burning his eyes as little drops splashed into his face. Before he reached the ceiling, he took a deep breath, and then let it out so as to sink back down towards the floor. He opened his eyes just enough to see the furniture disappear little by little. The walls broke away, and the floor turned to sand. Then the sand dropped away from him, leaving him in the middle of nowhere. The ceiling was gone as well, so he finally swam up and broke through to freedom. All around him he could see only ocean...and also some kind of platform. He instinctively swam over and pulled himself onto it. A machine buzzed over and started looking at him. There appeared to be a camera on it. Must have been some kind of surveillance drone.

Two people reached down and pulled him farther from the edge. “Are you okay?” one of them asked.

“Can you breathe?” asked the other.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Vearden answered. “Where am I?”

“Well, we don’t know,” said the man.

“They don’t tell us these things,” the woman added.

Vearden coughed a little and sat up. This was only one of a whole bunch of platforms, floating varying distances from each other, with no real land in sight. “Were you kidnapped?” he asked.

“Heavens no,” the man said. “This is a challenge.” He helped Vearden up and pointed at the drone. “Smile, you’re on camera. Millions of people are watching you crash this party. Where the hell did you come from?”

“This is a television show?”

“Well, it’s a web broadcast, but yeah,” the woman confirmed. “More specifically, it’s a reality competition.”

Vearden looked around again, for no reason in particular, just to get his bearings as best he could. Another drone zoomed in from the sky. It opened its aperture to release a holographic image of a man. “Contestants,” the hologram said. “This is an unexpected visit, and I recognize the novelty in it. The producers and I have decided that, since there is no rule against it, this newcomer may help you in this challenge, if he so chooses. He can only, however, help one of you. You have five minutes to plead your case, at which point you must get back to the challenge, regardless of the decision. If you’ve not left this platform by then, you will forfeit the challenge.”

There was a brief pause after the hologram flickered out when they didn’t know what to do, or say. Then the woman scoffed. She started stretching and warming up. “I don’t need any help. I’m a freakin’ fish. You’ll just get in my way. She dove into the water and began to swim to the next nearest platform.

“I could use your help,” the man said. “Philomena is a surfer; I’m a judge. I have no idea what I’m doing here.”

“What’s your name?”

“Daniel.”

“Daniel...I’m Vearden. Do people die in these challenges?”

“It’s not happened before.”

“So this isn’t like, you win or you’re executed type of thing? This isn’t some post-apocalyptic sport that the new authorities have imposed on the impoverished?”

“Of course not. Have you never heard of Flipsides?”

“I guess not.”

“It’s like Survivor meets Big Brother meets the NCAA Championship Tournament. So will you help?”

“That’s why I’m here. Tell me what to do.”

Daniel protected his eyes from the sun and looked out to the horizon. “Do you see that sky-slash-ocean-colored blob on that platform over there?”

“Uh...kinda.”

“That’s called a jelly frog. It’s a genetically engineered amphibian with a severe health defect. If it sits—oh, there it goes,” he interrupted himself when the blobby thing jumped up and fell into the water. He went on, “if it sits in one place for too long, it’ll die. The weight of its own little organs start to crush each other, so it has to frequently get back in water. Unfortunately, its gills don’t work if it doesn’t keep moving, and they suffer from diminishing returns, so it has to jump back onto land to breathe regular air again.”

“So it’s constantly on the move.”

“Yes, and the object of the game is to catch it.”

During Daniel’s explanation, Vearden was watching Philomena swim from platform to platform. She couldn’t just swim right to the one where the frog was, because she wouldn't be able to see it, and she couldn’t stay in one place too long, because the frog wouldn’t. It was designed to be tiring and frustrating. Maybe it wasn’t even winnable, but it looked like Philomena was getting close, so they better get going.

It was then that Vearden was able to see it. There was a distortion above the platform that the jelly frog was on at the moment. He started looking at other platforms to see if it was just an illusion, and found another distortion above a second platform in a different direction. But it was just these two. “Can you see that?” he asked.

“We better go, or I forfeit.”

“The blur just above the frog. Can you see it?”

“No, I can’t see anything. Maybe you just got too much water in your lungs.”

“No, this is for me. This is why I’m here. Come on.” Vearden jumped into the water.”

“That’s the wrong way,” Daniel called down to him.

“Just trust me.” He began to swim past the next platform over.

“Can you predict its movements?” Daniel asked.

“Just trust me,” Vearden repeated. He could hear a splash behind him. Apparently Daniel was following his advice.

Evidently, the platform they had started on was the starting line, because it was far more stable. He was able to pull himself on it, and stay standing, as needed. These other platforms were a lot more trouble, though. Every time he pushed down on the edge to get himself onto it, it would just turn up and slip him off. “This is impossible!” How was Philomena even doing it? She wasn’t struggling at all. Oh, that’s right, she was a surfer. “She has an unfair advantage!” he cried once Daniel had caught up to him to try to get himself on.

“She has a literal advantage. She won an earlier challenge, which gave her the opportunity to pick the place. Not all challenges are in the ocean.”

“Well, we have an advantage too,” Vearden said. “We have each other. Go try to get on the other side. I’ll hold this side down.”

“Good idea.”

Their plan worked, and once Daniel was on, he spread eagle on it to hold balance while Vearden climbed on as well.

“Okay, now what?” Daniel said. “Do we just wait for it to come?” He looked out to spot the frog. What he saw was Philomena, who had just reached the platform the frog was presently on. “Oh no, she’s gonna win!”

“Remember what I said about trusting me?”

“I did, and I lost because of it. Even if the jelly frog gets back in the water now, she won’t have far to go. It physically can’t swim this far out.”

“I want you to jump...that way.” He pointed towards the distortion, which was a couple of feet away from the platform. The other distortion had followed the frog to its new platform, confirming Vearden’s suspicions about it. Daniel clearly still couldn’t see either of them.

“The hell are you talking about?”

“If you jump, you’ll win. But you gotta go now, or you really will lose.”

“This is stupid. What’s that going to accomplish?”

He decided to change tactics. “If you do what I say, you could win this. If you don’t believe me, then you’re too far away to win, so who cares whether you jump or not? Might as well take the risk.”

Daniel looked back to Philomena. She was pulling herself onto the frog’s platform. She was this close to getting it.

“Fine,” Daniel relented. He prepared himself, then jumped right towards the temporal distortion, disappearing into it, and suddenly appearing through the exit distortion in the distance. He was surprised for a few seconds, and needed the time to find his balance, but he knew he had to get over it. He bent down and scooped up the jelly frog just before Philomena’s hand was on it. Fanfare rang out from the hovering drones. Daniel had won. Vearden smiled as he sat down on the platform. He then let himself slip into the water, but instead, he found only his hotel bed.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 28, 2113

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The good news was that Paige not only retained her memories of the missing Gilbert, but actually experienced a gain. The more she thought about him, especially on an emotional level, the clearer the flashbacks became for her. It was a long process, nowhere near completion, and included periodic dips and gaps, but it was better than nothing. Time didn’t want her to remember, but she did, and she refused to let go. Unfortunately, this also meant that their technique might not actually work on Leona. She was only within the timestream one day per year, and that might not ever be enough to retain anything meaningful about the people that were taking from them, but that wasn’t something they had time to worry about. The next expiation was waiting for them.

In the middle of breakfast, Kivi walked to the center of the crowd, nearly stepping into the fire, but not caring, or even noticing. She was staring forward blankly, like Samsonite had done before. This was another message from Arcadia, spoken through Kivi as nothing but an emotionless vessel. “Ground control to Major Tom, your third expiation...ha-ha, just kidding—second expiation will be to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. Each of your minds will be sent to the bodies of someone you knew in the past. You will relive a moment in time where an action or choice you made affected that other person negatively, and you will witness this from their perspective. At first, you will be powerless, consigned as more than an observer, watching your original self at your worst. At some point, however, reality will...kick in, and you will be given the opportunity to influence that moment—and thus history—permanently. Anyone who wishes to recuse themselves from this expiation may do so, but must make this decision within ten of your minutes. If you do choose to not participate, you will be removing yourself from all further expiations. Any attempt to provide support of any kind for these later expiations will result in terrible consequences.” Kivi’s body paused for a moment, while it looked like she was about to say something else. “Ride. Or. Die.”

They all looked over at Mateo to see his reaction. He said only, “I will not lobby either way. Everyone here is an adult. Choose for yourselves. You know how I feel...that I do not know how I feel.”

They said nothing.

He went on, “I’ll be at the new water well. She didn’t say how we decide, so I’m assuming she wants to see a symbolic gesture. Stay here if you wanna stay; come find me if you wanna more forward.” She took Leona by the hand, remembering that they were not to have any further arguments about her no longer putting herself in danger. No one followed them. Either they had already decided to quit, or they thought it was better to come out of the shadows at the well, rather than anticlimactically forming a caravan.

“This is a strange one,” Leona said.

“Stranger things we’ve seen, indeed,” Mateo replied, proud at himself for the wit, disappointed that she didn’t seem to agree.

“I just mean that there’s no clear goal here. With Baudin, we built a shelter. He was a constructor...that made sense. And thematically, from what you describe, this whole thing relates nicely to Gilbert. But still, there’s no logical endgame to this. When we go back to our worst moments in history, we can decide to change something, but when does it end? When will whatever point of divergence we create, if any, be enough? And what evidence will there be that it happened? Don’t get me wrong, this island has been hard, but you say that it wasn’t even real; that our memories of those events were implanted in our minds. Even if they were real, I don’t remember any moments that fit these criteria. Granted, I’m only here for one day out of the year, but I don’t remember anyone telling me of some traumatic event.

“Which means that Arcadia will have to send each of us to some moment before the island, or rather before the time we think we arrived on the island. I’ve been here for decades, but not really. I don’t remember all this stuff you say happened in the last few weeks, so either those are out of bounds, because they won’t mean much to me, or they’re not, and they won’t mean anything to me once the expiation is over, and I return to this corrupted reality.” Mateo was about to start talking and hope he figured out what to say on the fly, but Leona wasn’t finished. “Furthermore, if Arcadia sends us to moments in time before the island, then what effect can that have on the island? This all happened supposedly because we killed Arcadia’s brother, but what if our new actions in the past create a butterfly effect that prevents that from happening, or alters conditional minutia? What does that mean for us? Will we come back to a different corruption? Could we stop this from happening at all? Could something we do kill Arcadia?”

“Okay,” Mateo kind of interrupted. “These are, more or less, philosophical questions that are impossible to answer. We have no choice but to wait at the well, and hope for the best. She’s going to send us to where she’s going to send us, so worrying about when and where that is, and what ramifications it will have on the future is pointless at this juncture. We won’t know until we get there. Even if we did somehow guess our assignments right here and now, that would only allow Arcadia to change her mind on it before the ten minute grace period is up. We’re salmon, Leona. Whether you’re chooser, chosen, or spawn, right now, we’re all salmon. Nobody has any control...except for her.”

Leona seemed to accept this just as they reached the well, but still wasn’t quite finished. “I guess the bigger question is what’s going to happen to you. You erased yourself from time, so would she send you to the other timeline? Maybe she can’t. If she doesn’t, then she doesn’t have a whole lot of options, right? You’re just not very old right now. It would be like sending an infant to its own past...just limited options. This web of time is confusing, at best...probably even for her.”

Yeah.” He sighed. “I’ll be a tough one for her, that’s for sure.”

“Good.” Horace came into view from the woods. “A prey midchew can only hope that it does not so easily go down the predator’s throat.”

“Ancient Chinese proverb?”

“Read it on a bathroom stall once,” Horace said.

One by one, all of the others stepped into the clearing. No one had chosen to quit.

Mario’s watch, which was now on Leona’s wrist began to beep. “I didn’t set this,” she said.

“It’s magic,” Mario explained. “It warns of all important temporal events, and always knows what time it is, wherever I take it.” That was all anyone had time to say, because then Mateo went back in time, as did presumably everyone else.

« < » > Table of Contents

Microstory 384: Accomplishment

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Self-assurance

Sometimes accomplishment is small, and sometimes it’s quite impactful. Sometimes it’s so subtle that you don’t even notice it. People focus much on short-term and long-term goals that they fail to see their accomplishments as a whole. Your life is more than merely the sum of its parts. You are not but a collection of memories from your past, and aspirations for the future. You are this incredible, insane, perfectly imperfect ensouled creature who holds value to the universe. Everyone alive, except for sociopaths, has something to contribute to the world around them. I have a hard time accepting where I am in life. I spent years looking for a “real” job. I always had permanent, but not salary, and no benefits; really good money, but no job security; great position, but just temporary. I finally for the first time have a permanent job that comes with benefits, but it still doesn’t pay as much as I honestly deserve based on my education and experience. Maybe I shouldn’t be talking about my job in public, but I’m here to be honest with you, and with myself. I have no plans to leave this job, and it’s been great for me, but there are many other variables in my life that have led to an undesirable condition. My original publishing date was somewhere near the end of 2009, and it still hasn’t happened. I work so bloody hard on this website, you don’t even know; I have it planned more or less through the year 2066. But I’m not getting as much hits as I need to develop a following. It’s possible only my mother ever reads these stories, so...there’s that. Every writer sort of finds their own place; what kind of stories they tell. I’m not talking about genre or demographics. This goes deeper, into what message they’re trying to convey. I’ve decided that mine is perspective. I like to show the possible motivations between characters, often those who oppose each other, or are opposed by you. My goal in this endeavor is to get readers to question how they feel about things, and gain insight into their opposing forces in real life. I’m not a published author, but I’ve gained my own perspective through my work, and I would call that an accomplishment.

Legacy

Microstory 370: Utility?

Click here for a list of every step.
Passing Acquaintances

I’ve almost always dreaded getting to this entry. Not since the very beginning, mind you, because when I first laid this series out, I had an idea of what this meant. You know that thing where you write a note on a fast food restaurant napkin, then you go back to it, and you’ve lost context? If you’re a digital native, then no, I guess you don’t. Well, it’s annoying. Utility is about being useful, so I understand that part. What I don’t get is why I thought it was sufficiently different than, say economic participation or capacity to provide or positive contribution. Did I tell you how my process started? I first took Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and teased out 33 “needs” people have, some of which are more like wants. Then I broke them all into thirds so that I could make a whole set. I think I stemmed this one from preexisting topics without quite being able to admit to myself that it wasn’t different enough. I’m just useless. Haha, get it? I just went to my website and found out that I’ve already told you this. But I think it’s okay because what are the chances you read that other one, and then read this one? What are the chances you’ve read any of them, including this one? This story has two...uh. No, two hundred twenty, wait now I’m off. Two-hundred and thirty-nine words. Crap. As of the end of this sentence, I’ve done 252 words so far. There—noo! Have I told you about special characters? Ellipses and em dashes throw off the word count. Some counters count the string of text on either side of them as separate words, and some don’t. So if you’ve ever plugged one of these into an online word counter, and thought I was off, that’s just your perspective. Whoa, #throwbackThursday to my Perspectives series, which I personally consider to be my greatest microfiction achievement. We’ll have to wait and see with my faux headlines from the 500s, my dreams in the 800s, and my 99 900s problems. Oh yeah, I have this planned out through 2018 and beyond. Here’s a picture of a distorted utility meter as a pun.

I know what all of this means, I swear.

Strength

Microstory 300: Stepwisdom (Introduction)

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Welp, here’s the deal. As I was nearing my one hundredth microstory, I started thinking about how much staying power these things have. How easy would it be for me to come up with an original story day after day after day? I realized that I had about a hundred characters already lined up in my Anomalies story since I’ve been working on it since 2007, so why don’t I just spend a hundred weekdays on that? That came with its own problems. I did already have an idea of who these people were, but at the same time, I had to worry about stepping on my own toes, and creating a need for retconning later on, because I intend to release their story in longer format, at some point (::cough::TV series::cough::). But what was annoying is that there are around 260 weekdays a year, and I had only started to do this thing in March, and so I had a couple dozen slots left over for December. For the website, that’s whatever, but when I publish these in book form, I want to keep them in neat, yearly volumes. That meant I couldn’t do something special for 200-299. So I came up with Perspectives to fill in the gap through 299, and here we are. This paragraph has 300 words exactly, and each subsequent installment will have a word count of one more each time. You’ll start seeing more connections as we go. I’m writing this one even before starting my first Perspective, and wanted to get even further ahead, but that didn’t work out. I’m still trying to figure out how to accomplish this through revising, snipping, adding, and whatnot. Fortunately, I’ve discovered a live word count add-on so that I don’t have to keep track as I

Atmosphere

The Odds: Fifty-Six (Part IV)

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Click here for the entire story (so far).

Do you think it’s possible that the only reason I’m starting this sentence with a question is because, in order to set up formatting, I copy-pasted each installment beginning with ‘Have you ever wanted to write a story?’ and when I tried to highlight and overwrite it, I missed the question mark? No, it’s not.

Honestly, it would be rather difficult for me to remember exactly how I came to the conclusion that Fifty-Six should be my fourth number. The first three numbers in my list were a part of me. They were inherent to my understanding of how writing, and the world, works. It’s also a bit of a chicken or the egg thing with whether I thought to come up with numbers after watching LOST, or if I focused a lot on the LOST numbers because I had already found significance in my own. But as the old tangent goes, there’s a logical answer to the chicken or the egg “dilemma”. The problem here is that a chicken cannot be born but from an egg, and an egg cannot exist without being laid by a chicken. And so they seem equally likely and unlikely as each other, because one is wholly dependent on the other. But...ignoring all evolutionary concepts (read: reality) on the matter, one has an advantage over the other. Are you ready to have your minds blown? A chicken can live perfectly happily without an egg, but an egg cannot survive without a chicken to protect it from danger, following its creation. Somebody clean up this graymatter! You’re welcome!

Back to what I was saying, when you add up all the LOST numbers of 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42, you end up with the number 108. When I started adding up my three preexisting numbers, I somehow realized how easy it would be for them to reach 216; twice 108, of course. Without any more calculations, I determined that, in order to reach that sum, my last two numbers would have to be around 50 and 80. I tried a few different combinations. 55 + 84? I didn’t want Fifty-Five to intrude on Eleven’s purpose of being palindromic. It would have been an interesting choice since it’s a Fibonacci number, but since my first three preclude me from also using 89, it would have seemed like a waste anyway. 52 + 87? I didn’t want there to be a connection to playing cards, and I didn’t like my birth year being in there, because it’s too obvious. I tried a few more, and finally settled on Fifty-Six and Eighty-Three. Now this seems very inorganic and insincere, but the process itself is what makes these numbers relevant. Yes, by the time I got to them, I had already been looking to complete my collection, but that’s what makes it so cool. The effort I put into finding Fifty-Six in the first place is what imbued it with its power.

Other people have used Fifty-Six for their own reasons, all of which I read about just now, and did not consider when first coming up with it. The most fascinating one is that Shirley Temple’s mother always ensured that she wore 56 curls as a child. I can’t find any information as to why her mother chose that number (or why that number chose her mother), but it seemed to have worked. She was the archetype of the cute child; one that casting directors and modeling agents seem to look for even today. While the ideal “beautiful person” has changed over time, if you think about it, the most adorable children in advertising are determined by how closely they resemble her. I suppose the curls themselves have nothing to do with that, but still. Hey, I’m just spitballing here. Well...I mean, I’m not. That’s gross.

Speaking of numbers, when I started writing for my website, I went through some growing pains to try and figure out how long each installment would be. The early ones are all over the place, and show no level of continuity, in that regard. But then the microstories started being between 200 to 300 words each. I think. I would have to go back and look, but I’m pretty sure they were on the short side, just reaching into my memory. The weekend stories—which I first referred to as flash fiction, and now call mezzofiction (in order to maintain that continuity)—were shaping up to be longer. In fact, they were about five times as long, which meant that five microstories were equal to one longer story. But that’s dumb, because there are two days in a weekend. I continued to work on creating a site that you could count on. Literally. Instead of posting nanofiction stories as they popped into my head, I starting writing them out in a spreadsheet, with the intention of posting them every three hours, a pattern which is broken only by my afternoon story post, and my evening photo. Speaking of which, sorry about the lack of photos. They take more effort than you would think, I’ve run out of “things” in my house, and I don’t get out much. As my methods progressed, I came up with interrelated microstory series that would last for weeks, and were connected in some way, rather than just whatever I could come up with at the time. Lastly, I decided to decide on story arcs for The Advancement of Mateo Matic that would last a year/volume each, and I planned for future Saturday mezzofiction so that I would never again be caught with my pants down, like I was with the continuation of Mr. Muxley Meets Mediocrity. And that’s funny, because my pants fell down when I realized I had no idea what this very story you’re reading now would be about.

Things were falling into place as they should have. Microstory length increased to about 300 to 500, with the mode being rather close to the median. Mezzofiction story length still hovers around 1250 words, but I’m finding I need a little more for my more recent installments of The Advancement of Mateo Matic. It’s easy to go over my mark, but it’s hard for me to be under. I always feel like I’m cheating you out of something, or that I’m missing something and it’s incomplete. But I need to get over that. I don’t encounter Fifty-Six nearly as much as the other four. And that’s okay, because magic numbers aren’t real. When an installment is done, it needs to be done. And right now, I’m only at 1119 words, but it’s done. That is at least more than I thought there would be.

Oh, I forgot to mention that I only started posting my images alongside my stories because I noticed an uptick in clicks when I did so. Most of my traffic, I believe, comes from Facebook. And as you’re going through your feed, if you don’t see a picture, you don’t see it. It might as well not exist. I’m a word guy, I like words. Honestly, you guys are frustratingly simplistic, and I struggle to come up with images that match my words. I’ve even altered my stories in order to match with a picture I already have. Which is ridiculous, and not how writing should be done! Grrr! Anyway, here’s a picture of some penguins, because nothing else works with this story. This is what you have reduced me to. Are you happy? 1256 words. Hmm...

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