Microstory 2449: Windbourne

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Gemini Pro text-to-video AI software, powered by Veo 3

Holy crap, it’s windy here! It’s almost like that’s the point! I’m yelling, because it’s hard to hear with all this wind! Did I mention that it was very windy? Why did they make a dome that’s just super windy? Well, I don’t know, why the hell not? What would you do instead? I’m asking a lot of questions, and I’m not a prolific reviewer on the network, so no one’s going to answer them. The staff certainly didn’t. It’s windy here, because that’s the way they wanted it, and they were technologically capable of it. Before you read on (if you do manage to find this review) you should know that I’m one of the uneducated. By early 21st century standards, I would have been an average student. By today’s standards, with perfections in educational tools, and individualized lesson planning, I’m well-below average. I did this on purpose. I don’t find value in learning beyond a certain point. I’m happy, and I’m content with who I am. So if you’re looking for a scientifically dense explanation for how the wind generation works here, tap on, buddy...tap on. Windbourne. It’s windy. The topography has been moulded to create the perfect conditions for wind, where they want it, when they want it. Air is heated and cooled in very precise configurations to create the wind patterns as planned. Temperature usually flows spontaneously from hot to cold, I remember that. I’m not sure how they’re heated, but I think the process is solar-powered, perhaps by use of mirrors, rather than just solar panels to convert into electricity. They also use gargantuan fans to control the airflow, but I didn’t see them, so the must have cleverly hidden them behind geographic features, or maybe holographic illusions. Some regions are windier than others, of course, and they tell you where these are. The map color-codes the zones by the speed of the wind, so if you just want a light breeze, you can stay there. If you want near tornado-like conditions, baby, you’re gonna wanna go to Gale City. Winds in this area reach up to 400 kilometers per hour. That sounded like a lot to me, but I didn’t have much of a frame of reference until I tried it myself. What you do is enter a tunnel where you can walk through, or stand on people movers. Once you’re on the other side of the Arnett Mountains, you climb up to these towers. There are robot staff here, so they’ll tell you where to go, and how to get there. You get to your platform, which is fully protected by walls, and situate yourself in the waiting station. You have a few options here. You can strap yourself in, hold onto the straps, hold onto a bar, or freehand it. Once you’re ready, they’ll open the flap behind you. At this point, you can hear the wind roaring at your sides, and above you, but you’re still protected. This only lasts for a few moments before the wall opposite you opens up. The wind rushes in, as I said, at 400 km/h. What happens to you next is entirely dependent upon your choices, both leading up to it, and once you hit the point of no return. Did you grab on to something? Can you keep holding onto it? Are you gonna fly over the edge? If you do, will you activate a parachute, or a wingsuit? If not, will you manage to land in one of the scattered foam pits, or plummet to your death? Please note that, due to the obvious dangers, there are certain criteria that you must meet before they let you go to Gale City, such as, do you have a heart condition, and do you have mind-transference on, or are you a suicidal moron? I’ve already gone on the ride several times, and I’m gonna end this here, so I can go back to see if I can beat my own record for the farthest fall without wings. Wild ride, friends, wild ride. Catch the wind, and fly out of control!

Microstory 968: Evolution

< > Table of Contents

Over the years, I had some teachers that I liked. They were cool, or helpful, or otherwise impactful. True, there was not one that really stands out; that I can point to today and say, “that one. S/he did a lot for me”. But the real problem with education, in this country at least, is that it’s designed to have students regurgitate whatever the policymakers believe they should know, regardless of who they are. Understand this, the problem is not the teachers’ fault. Humanity has been looking at education all wrong for all this time, and it’s gonna take a lot of effort to dismantle those institutional ideals. In the past, education was for the elite. You had to be born at the right station to get it, and you had to be a man. Though this is no longer the case in the western world, it still has an effect on us. I grew up hating school because no one had the time to find out what I liked, or how to relate it to me. I would have loved to have studied a number of topics in school had I known back then I liked them. One of these things is astrophysics, which I’ll discuss later, but another is evolutionary biology. I am positively fascinated by all the different little organisms, and how they’ve mutated to fit their environment. Dragonflies have arms in their mouths to catch prey, and live underwater in nymph form for up to five years, before maturing into adulthood, and living another several months on the wing. Why? Why does it do this? Why does it spend so much time in the water, so little time in the air, and then just die? Why do lobsters never stop growing until they die from exhaustion when it starts taking too much energy to moult? Which came first; the honeybee, or the flower?

Scientists can study the traits of various animals, plants, and other organisms all they want, and they can infer what might have led to any given mutation surviving in a species, but no one really understands what it took to get to this point. There are only a handful of examples of evolution happening right before our eyes. Most of our understanding of it comes from a fairly static perspective of its present state, because we’ve not been observing scientifically for very long. I want so badly to go back in time and watch the Tree of Evolution split, and split, and continue to split over aeons. I want to experience the changes in real time so much that I’ve created characters that are time travelers and immortal, so this is exactly what they’ve chosen to do with their lives. I just haven’t found a good story to introduce them, but they’re coming. Education is a very linear construct. You learn simple stuff when you’re young, and gradually introduce more complex concepts. A few people have a bunch of degrees, but most of them are geniuses, because colleges don’t really expect you to keep coming back. It is simply not a feasible or affordable life plan. Yes, there are other options, like educational online videos, but I still think it would be best if I had an authority who could prepare a structured syllabus for me to follow. No one told me how amazing evolution is, especially not since I grew up in Kansas, where half the people were telling me that God made humans from scratch six thousand years ago. In case evolutionary biology is your thing, and you still haven’t reached a point of no return, then this is your opportunity to change course. Don’t you wanna know why platypodes and echidnas are the only mammals that lay eggs?

Crossed Off: Foreshadowing (Part X)

< > Entire Story

Death. Death reached out to a number of passengers on the plane from Somalia to Seychelles. After having to make a slight adjustment to their flight path due to some weather, alarm bells screamed at them and the fuselage began to tear apart. Starla saw several passengers being pulled into the sky and zipping out of view.  Yenifer was about to lose her grip of the nearby cargo net when Máire grabbed her hand. “I’ll protect you.” A bright orange-yellow light came out of her, overtook Yenifer, and pulled her in. Máire had merged Yenifer’s body with her own. Starla now watched from Máire’s perspective as she struggled throughout the remaining part of the plane, merging those who happened to be strapped into their seats when the crisis struck, and were also lucky enough to be against a wall that had not yet been torn off. Though Máire seemed to feel stronger each time she merged with someone, she eventually started to feel pain once she had saved only a dozen or so others. She had just saved everyone in the fuselage, and was about to head for the cockpit when Starla’s mind was again pulled away, just like it had when she first met Don.

She found herself on the ground, in the body of a stranger. He had his arms raised upwards where the plane was headed right for him, and was expending a great deal of energy in an effort to stop it. His face felt hot and his whole body was shaking. As he concentrated, the plane slowed its descent, but it wasn’t enough. He managed to redirect the plane far enough away to keep himself from being crushed under it, but this only got him so far. It still crashed down with enough power to tremble the ground and knock him to his back. He was not there for very long, for an unseen force lifted him into the air and sent him flying towards the wreckage. He concentrated once more, and was able to slow his movement, but he still collided with a wing and remained stuck there. He was distraught, but also relieved.

Um...what just happened? Starla asked, awkwardly.

“Mon dieu!” The man turned his head as much as he could and called out, “Un survivant! I can’t move to help! Are you okay? Is anyone else in there with you?”

I’m not in the plane, Starla explained. I’m in your head. I can possess you.

He paused for a time. “I do not believe that I am in a position to doubt such a possibilité.”

What happened here?

“This plane was not supposed to be here. I stay far from the flight paths. I’m very careful! Je ne sais pas why it was so close.”

We had to redirect for weather.

“So you were on l’avion?”

No, but my mind was at the time. Did you do this?

“I can’t help it. I can’t stop it. I either attract or repel magnetic objects, but I don’t always get to choose which one, and I never get to choose to not do it at all. Jamais!”

Oh my God. There were more than two dozen people on that plane!

“Désolé, I’m so sorry!” the man cried. “This wasn’t supposed to happen. We’re in the jungle. There is not supposed to be any metal!”

I had friends on that plane! They’re all dead! You killed them!

“I can’t believe this!”

“Hello?” the voice of Máire came from below, but they could not lift the man’s head high enough to see.

Starla took control of the man’s body. “Máire? Is that you?”

“Is that, uh...oh, wait. Starla?”

“Yes! How did you survive?”

“When I merge with other people, I become stronger, remember?”

“Yeah, but...I mean...it was a plane crash.”

“Well, I’ve felt better before, but I jumped out before it crashed, and the people I managed to save are all fine. We lost four refugees, two of my men, the pilot, and co-pilot. That is, unless the cockpit survived.” She directed her words elsewhere, “Meriden and Duvall, go check.” She returned to Starla. “What are you...I mean, what is this man doing lying down on the wing?”

“He’s magnetic. He pulled the plane out of the sky.

Pause.

“Máire?”

“Yeah, sorry, just—he did what?”

“Je ne le peux pas contrôler!” the man said for himself.

“Voilà pourquoi vous êtes coincé là.”

“Oui!” Then he switched to Standard C so that others could understand him, “the only time I don’t either attract or repel metal is when I’m asleep.”

Starla felt a sharp but rather mild sting in the man’s leg. “Did you just shoot me?” he asked in a hazy voice.

“Oui,” was the last thing she heard Máire say before losing the psychic connection.

Starla’s mind was sent back to Canada where her body had been sleeping next to Alec. Startled by the ordeal, she jumped out of bed and let out a tight scream.

Alec jumped as well, “what? What is it?” He reached over and turned on the light. “Are you okay?”

She rambled, and it felt like she was screaming, but she was subconsciously trying to remain rather quiet. “There was a plane crash! People died, Alec! And I was in the mind of the killer. Well, he wasn’t really the killer, but he killed people. Accidentally. You see, he can control magnets. Well, he can’t. That’s the problem. Apparently metal just sticks to his body...or it flies away from him. I don’t really understand how it works, but he pulled an entire plane from the sky, and it nearly crashed into him. And people died!”

“Starla.”

“What?” she hissed back at him.

“You’re standing.”

“What are you talking about? Of—” She stopped herself. He was right. She was standing on her own two legs, in her own body. She hadn’t been able to do that for months. “I’m standing. Holy shit!”

He smiled with shock. “You’re standing, Starla.”

She opened her mouth, wanting to cry out and alert the world of the development. She could stand. She could probably walk. She could probably even run! But she couldn’t. That was impossible, to everyone else, at least.

Alec was on the same wavelength. “You’re right. We can’t tell anyone. And we have to get the hell out of here. Now.”

Fortunately, the guest room was on the first floor of the house, and fairly separate from the rest of the bedrooms, otherwise someone would have heard her scream, and maybe even her rant. They quickly grabbed their belongings and haphazardly stuffed them into their bags. She took them out to the car while Alec was stuffing her now former wheelchair in the boot.

“Alec, is this temporary?”

“Starla, you know that I would never lie to you.”

She shook her head, indicating that she had no idea what he meant by that.

“No,” he clarified. “As long as you stay in your own body from here on out.”

“Promise.”

“Bullshit.”

< > Entire Story

Microstory 60: What the Birds Are Saying

Marinko: Hey! Sara!

Sara: Yeah!?

Marinko: Let’s propagate the species!

Sara: Well, let me see your wing!

Marinko: [shows wing]

Sara: Oh, that’s a nice wing!

Samuel: Hey, I also got a wing!

Sara: Let me see your wing!

Samuel: [shows wing]

Sara: Oh, that’s a nice wing too!

Marinko: This is my territory!

Samuel: No, this territory is mine!

Marinko: It’s my territory!

Samuel: That over there is my brother!

Carter: I’m your brother!

Samuel: You’re my brother!

Marinko: Is that a predator?!

Samuel: [...]

Carter: [...]

Marinko: [...]

Samuel: Where did Sara go?

Marinko: She was killed by the predator!

Samuel: There’s her sister!

Carter: I’m your brother

Samuel: I’m your brother!

Marinko: Hey! Laurel!

Laurel: Yeah!?

Marinko: Let’s propagate the species!

Laurel: Show me your wing!

Carter: There’s some food over there!