Microstory 315: Sleep

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Carbohydrates

I have, in earlier stories, discussed the truth behind sleep. Most recently, I got into it for my microfaction story Carbohydrates. You’ve probably always considered sleep to be a nothing more than deeper form of rest. It’s true that some bodily functions are carried out during sleep that can’t be done throughout the day. When you’re asleep, you’re working less, so breathing slows, blood pumps more steadily, and certain beneficial hormones are released. The primary purpose of sleep, however, is to regulate the brain. If you don’t get enough sleep, you’re not grumpy just because you’re upset about this fact. You’re grumpy because your brain hasn’t been given the opportunity to consolidate memories of the day, and restore the brain to a sort of default setting, purging and renewing chemicals so that you can start back up again tomorrow. Sleep works on shift scheduling, meaning that we don’t just fall asleep then wake up. Sleep is composed of several stages, each designed to help the brain and body with different things, and each one vital to a healthy waking lifestyle. The best time to wake up is after the end of a full cycle. Unfortunately, the world doesn’t operate according to this philosophy. You’re allotted only as much time to sleep as you don’t need to be doing something else. The healthiest way to sleep would be entirely without an alarm. Eventually, your body will adapt and wake up at the best time for your age, right around eight hours average, and never in the middle of a cycle. It’s possible to feel more rested after an hour and a half of sleep than seven hours with an alarm that interrupts your cycle. You will, however, later notice signs sleep deprivation, so I don’t recommend such actions. There are many theories on how to sleep, but only the one I’ve cited is the right one.

Disease Prevention

Microstory 314: Carbohydrates

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Vitamins, Minerals, and Proteins

I hear a lot of people claim that they’re no longer eating carbs. I assume this to be referring to carbohydrates, because giving up carburetors is an entirely different endeavor, and I would applaud them for joining us in the 21st century. The craze to cutting carbs out of one’s diet is not a new thing, but it seems to resurface with new life every few years once the next charlatan comes ‘round with an idea that’s supposed to change the face of nutrition forever. It’s true that carbohydrates do not have the same nutritional value as vitamins, minerals, or proteins. But that doesn’t mean there is no value in them. As with anything, the key is balance and moderation. There are many benefits to carbohydrates, most of which you’ll know just because you have a tum-tum and a tongue-tongue. Studies have shown that eating carbs makes you happy, probably because they taste so good. Joy is the entire point to living. If all we wanted to do was survive, then we wouldn’t have invented music. There are some biological reasons to eat carbs as well, including the very simple fact that fiber is a carbohydrate, which means it can curb your urge to eat sugars, and generally regulate your digestion. Lots of people are under the impression that sleep is all about rest. The truth is that sleep lowers your caloric burn by about 100. That’s negligibly better than just sitting and reading a book. We don’t gain energy from sleeping; we get it from eating. And carbohydrates are incredibly good at giving us just that. Like anything, carbohydrates need to be managed, but removing them entirely will not only do no good, but could harm what benefits sleep gives your brain. Instead of lowering or eliminating carbs, research what foods hold the “good” kind. Here’s a hint, processed foods are generally worse.

Sleep

Microstory 313: Vitamins, Minerals, and Proteins

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Cleanliness

The problem with pretty much any diet fad is that they almost all remove at least one chemical important to healthy living. Humans regularly produce chemicals necessary to life just by breathing, eating, and drinking water. There are certain substances, however, that the body cannot produce on its own, and so they must be ingested directly. Scientists, since 1920, have referred to these as vitamins. Similarly, minerals are elements that must be in an organism’s diet in order to support their continued survival. I’m not going to list them all, but you’ll recognize them. As a few examples, iron is used to transport oxygen through the blood, calcium strengthens bones, and iodine assists with the release of certain bodily hormones. Restrictive dietists often like to claim that humans are not biologically designed to ingest certain foods, particularly meat, and that removing these altogether fortifies the body. I want to make sure you understand that these claims are entirely baseless and sometimes flat-out lies. That’s the best way to describe them. They’re either lying, or they are ignorant on the matter themselves. Every living organism needs protein. Humans have evolved to metabolize proteins by the consumption of other animals. Make all the moral accusations you want, but you leave science and health out of it, because you’re straight up wrong if you think we’re not physiologically meant to eat meat. Vegans and vegetarians can supplement their diet with vitamins and minerals they forfeit because of their exclusions, but this requires commitment, and an enormous amount of work. You can’t just stop eating meat or animal byproducts. You have to be diligent and careful, keeping a record of everything you eat so that you don’t miss anything. And you have to find other ways of maintaining a healthy diet of vitamins and minerals. Research every diet fad you try. Do not just believe the hype.

Carbohydrates

Microstory 312: Cleanliness

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Intuition

Unlike other stories I’ve written for the Stepwisdom series, for this one, I’m going to be a little bit more personal. I have something called Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. This gives me a lot of ticks and unnatural habits, but it also demands I be excessively clean. I’m constantly worried about cross-contamination. I don’t like touching something I deem unclean, and then touching something that is clean, because then I have just polluted it. I remember the day I first learned about hand sanitizer; it was as if God reached down and gave me a little kiss. Unfortunately, this discovery also enhanced my need to be clean, because suddenly, it could be achieved instantly, and at pretty much any time. I keep a small bottle of it attached to my hip, and this tends to freak people out, so I just have to ignore their judgments. I grew up in a clean household, though, so I always understood it. We don’t wear our shoes in the house, and we shower before bed, because if you shower in the mornings, then your whole house is perpetually dirty, and how the hell do you not even realize this? I know I have a condition, but come on, you sleep in dirt? That doesn’t bother you? Cleanliness is an indicator of a developed society, one that not every culture has the luxury of. Uncleanliness leads to poor hygiene, and thus disease, but to a certain degree, it can also lead to immunity. It is said that “you have to eat a peck of dirt before you die”. This is true figuratively, but also literally. I always knew that exposure to dirt was important so that my immune system would know how to fight off disease, so I make a point sullying my hands on certain occasions. Always keep your children clean, but let them get dirty first.

Vitamins, Minerals, and Proteins

Microstory 311: Intuition

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Physical Safety

First of all, it’s important to know that intuition is not the same thing is instinct. Instinct is presented as a reflex to certain stimuli, and not something that can be controlled. It’s based on a species’ biological imperatives, rather than cognitive processing. Intuition refers to the ability for a free-thinking individual (read: human) to make decisions, and come to conclusions, without a clear rational path. That is, being intuitive is knowing the answer to a problem without knowing exactly how it’s known. I have personally defined the word as, “a feeling of knowledge without any apparent episodic memory attached,” and “knowing something without having actually learned and verified it as true.” Episodic memory is the memory of past events, but does not directly include any information learned during those events. For example, you are aware that the Earth revolves around the sun, and this knowledge exists in your brain as semantic memory. Episodic memory would be the day in first grade when your teacher told you this fact, and you wrote it in your notes, and you answered a test question about it later. As I’ve said, intuition is a higher level of problem-solving that takes place independent of this episodic memory. And I don’t mean it happens without particularly recalling the moment you learned the truth in question. That moment of learning simply never happened, but you still somehow understand anyway. Intuition is an incredibly powerful characteristic, and is a vital component of both basic survival, and of complex social interaction. It allows us to read each other’s nonverbal cues, fix unpredictable problems, and learn new skills. Trust your intuition, but do not rely on it exclusively. Without learned information, chemicals in your brain will not be balanced enough to make intuitive determinations. Intuition is the mark of a highly intelligent person, but its limitations must always be respected.

Cleanliness

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 19, 2073

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Mateo and Leona decided to watch Transporter 3 for a third time after the jump. This was after they watched all other films in the Transporter franchise, some that had not been released when Mateo first started jumping through time.

“What scene do you think he’s going to have us recreate?” Leona asked.

“None of them really fits. The tribulations up to this point have been about normal people surviving some sort of traumatic event.”

“Except for The Martian.”

“Yes, but at least you were technically qualified to command a ship, to a degree. And for the most part, all I did was sit there. But this one would require skills we do not possess, unless we play two of the side characters.”

“Yeah,” she paused, “wait, what are you talking about? You’re a driver.”

“I was a driver’s ed instructor.”

“And you have experience driving a taxi, and a bus, and you delivered food on a motorcycle, and you have a commercial driver’s licence, and you were thinking about moving out west to become a stunt driver.”

“I never breathed one word to you about my absolutely inane fantasy of being a Hollywood stunt driver.”

“Your parents and I had time to talk while you were gone for the year.”

Mateo was embarrassed she knew all this about him, but unmoved. “Well...it’s true that I was a driver, but that doesn’t make me Jason Statham. I’m no better at driving than anyone else with decent experience. I lived with my parents because I didn’t make any money.”

“There’s no shame in that. I think you’re underestimating your talent as a driver. Makarion isn’t going to pick anything we can’t conceivably handle. If we die, then his game is over.”

“Theoretically he has any number of other salmon to go after. In fact, he may be doing that during our yearly interims. I’m not sure we’re as inexpendable as you think.”

“You don’t know that we aren’t.”

“I don’t know why we’re talking about my driving skills. Those movies aren’t just about the driving. There are a lot of scenes of him just fighting. He was a...he was in the army, or something. I don’t remember, I wasn’t paying all that much attention to his backstory. I would have no clue how to handle those encounters.”

“I would,” Darko said from the door. He came into the room with Makarion in tow.

“It’s true,” Makarion concurred. “I’ve seen him in action. He’s some kind of Taylor Lautner beast.”

“Well,” Darko started to explain, “Taylor is known for karate. I did some of that too, but I’m more into taekwondo, kung fu, and Muay Thai. For some reason, it was important for me to gather skills from different countries?”

“Darko, we didn’t know that about you.”

“I always try to keep people guessing,” Darko said.

Makarion clapped his hands together. “Awesome! Darko has agreed to be part of your team so that he can complete the scenes you’re not qualified for.”

“How many scenes are we doing?” Mateo asked.

“All of them.”

“All of them?” Leona was surprised.

“Well, I mean, you’re just going to start with the scene where Frank gets into the car and begins his assignment, and go from there. You don’t have to worry about cutaways to other characters and such.”

“You employed bad guys to chase after us?” Mateo was worried. A not insignificant number of people died in the movie. Getting rid of the original Rogue is one thing, but a fight to the death with multiple assailants was not something he was comfortable with.

“That is none of your concern.”

“It’s mine,” Darko disagreed.

“Very well, it takes some of the fun out of it, but if you must know, they’re just androids. I’m not a monster.”

They weren’t sure this was true.

“Anyone have anything to say about that?”

Nope.

“Good. Now,” Makarion began, “manually driving, and recklessly so, isn’t something that’s really done anymore. If you don’t want the cops coming after you, then you might want to find a way to keep them off your back, because they’re not really in the movie all that much. It’s why I chose the one that takes place primarily in the countryside, rather than the city.”

“Too many variables,” Leona said understandingly.

“Yeah, you’re the smart one, so I’m confident you’ll be able to find a way to stay as true to the action as possible.”

Leona sighed. “I have some ideas.”

“Perfect!” Makarion took three metallic rings out of his bag. “Then I guess the only thing left to discuss is the matter of these death bracelets.”

“We were hoping you would forget those.”

“Nonsense,” Makarion spat. “Authenticity.”

“What are those?” Oh, that’s right, Darko didn’t watch the movies with them.

“You go too far from the car, and you blow-up,” Mateo told him.

“Nothing that messy,” Makarion corrected. “They’ll inject a neurotoxin, that’s all.”

“Oh, is that all?” Leona asked sarcastically.

Makarion apported all three of them to a warehouse where a car was waiting for them, not unlike the one from the film. The built-in GPS directed them to their first pit stop a few hours away. This gave Darko the time to watch the movie in the back of the car on his own. Leona spent that time on her computer, but did not say what she was doing. Mateo learned long ago that if she didn’t explain her actions, it was in their best interests to just let it go. She had some kind of plan. From what they could gather, the source material took place over the course of a couple days. They wouldn’t have that kind of time, and Makarion wasn’t capable of placing them in a time bubble like the first Rogue, so they were on some kind of truncated trip. They did begin, however, in France.

In the movie, Frank and some chick ended up going to the garage of one of his friends, hoping to have their death bracelets deactivated. This was, of course, not in the cards for the three of them, so they just drove into a warehouse to meet up with a gang of robot adversaries. Though this was Darko’s field of expertise, Mateo stayed in the action to help as much as he possibly could. Fortunately, these particular robots were not built like terminators, so they were just as breakable as any human. They didn’t follow the same choreography, but they got the job done, and were free to go on their way. If nothing else, these tribulations were tiring.

Once in town, Darko stepped out of the car so that Mateo could drive off without him. This was the part where the main character is replaced by a second driver, leaving him to be in danger of exploding once the vehicle got too far away from his death bracelet. Mateo started by slowly inching through the market, but then Makarion’s voice came through the speaker system, “your instinct is to let Darko keep up with the car so it doesn’t get away from him. But I have a specific route I want you to take, and as extra incentive for you to actually do this right, I’ve mashed another film franchise into the mission. You have ten seconds to start driving for real. After that, if the car goes under 30 miles per hour, the death bracelet will activate. Only Darko’s, though,” he amended after it wasn’t clear whether Mateo fully understood.

Crap. Mateo looked to his brother who was presently only casually jogging alongside them. “It’s okay,” Darko said through the window. “I can handle it.” The timer on the car’s interface counted down, and Mateo was soon forced to speed off. He weaved and bobbed through the marketplace as Leona rattled her fingers on her computer, hacking into the police system to ensure they would not be disturbed. Like in the movie, Darko would later tell them he did end up stealing a bicycle that was sitting conspicuously in his path as he raced to keep up with the car. Finally, the GPS told them the completely fabricated race was over, and they could stop and let Darko get back in.

Makarion clearly just wanted to see them survive the action scenes, so they didn’t waste time with all the little dumb conversations and distractions. They stopped for food with no complications and then drove off to wait for the only real car chase in the film. Their enemy car showed up before too long and gave Mateo a run for his money. It was true that he didn’t want to admit how good of a driver he was. Despite having a completely clean record, he knew some pretty dangerous vehicular maneuvers. He even managed to get the car to drive up on only two tires in order to fit between parallel semitrucks. Ridiculous. He zoomed down the highway, and turned into the forest roads when the GPS instructed him to. He probably could have excelled as a stunt driver.

Everything was going according to Makarion’s sick plan until something unexpected and unscripted happened. Mateo dodged trees and other obstacles through the woods while the other car continued their pursuit. They even shot guns at them, which must have been real, because it sounded like they were bouncing off the apparent bulletproof glass. Mateo successfully lured the other car into driving in front of them, and—despite his reservations of harming a free-thinking individual, robot or no—managed to force them off the cliff, just like in the movie. Unfortunately, he was not as good of a driver as Leona seemed to think, for he found himself flying off the cliff as well. Welp, they really were gonna die this time. There was no way out of this, unless the car also turned into an airplane. It didn’t. The car continued to fall until crashing into the rocks below, exploding in true action movie fashion

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Second Stage of Something Started: Necessities (Part III)

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Saga and Vearden worked together to drag the set of instructions for the replica of the Colosseum out of the cave, along with the chest itself. There was no apparent time constraint to their mission, so they decided to wait and start work in the morning. They were losing daylight, and needed to build some kind of camp. Saga suggested they just stay in the cave, but it was just too dangerous. Their boss liked movies, and too many movies were about people being trapped underground. Remaining in wide open spaces was their best option. They found a box of other supplies under the ramp to the stargate: a compass, two flashlights, a few tools, four bottles of water, and five towels of varying sizes. On top of everything was a note from Makarion, Don’t forget to bring a towel. What a strange little man.

Vearden was tasked with constructing the shelter while Saga went about getting a fire going. They chose to make it a contest to see who could finish first. Just before she had the fire raging well enough to be left alone, he had placed the final leaf on their new home and was mocking her loss playfully. “What the hell is that?” she asked of him.

“It’s our shelter. They call it a lean-to, I’m sure of it.” A line of sticks were leaning against a tree. Leaves filled in some, but not all, of the gaps between them.

“That’s only big enough for one person!” She chided him, adding, “who doesn’t mind getting rained on.”

“What are talking about? It’s fine,” he disagreed.

“It’s absolute rubbish,” she said in a feigned British accent. “I’ll have to do it again.”

“That’s ridiculous,” he responded with a laugh. “There’s plenty of room. We’ll just have to cuddle. We’ll need body warmth anyway.”

Saga took a deep breath and exhaled melodramatically.

“Oh, I see what’s happened here,” he finally said. “You’re looking at this pile of random sticks and leaves I put up against the tree. That’s not the shelter.”

“What are you goin’ on about?” Her British kick came from having thought about Pirates of the Caribbean. It was this assimilation thing she did when exposed to other cultures.

Vearden took her by the hand and led her down the tree line. Hidden behind some brush and tall trees was a completely finished cottage. He opened the door and waved her inside. She widened her eyes with interest while two beds were gradually growing out of the floor. He smiled and watched as well. “Okay, I guess you won the game since the beds aren’t quite done.”

“How did you know how to do this? We barely scratched the surface of the instructions.”

“It didn’t take much work on my end. I really just opened the cottage kit at a good location and let it go to work. It’s using the wood from nearby trees. I also found directions to another cache, this one of necessities that apparently can’t be manufactured like sleeping bags and toiletries. It’s evidently buried near a source of fresh water. I didn’t go off looking for it because I didn’t want to be too far from you.”

“And you wanted to spend time making me think that crap out there was our actual shelter.”

“Well yeah, that too.”

“Why did you let me build the fire so far from the cottage?”

“Oo, I didn’t think of that.”

Soon thereafter, they went off amidst the twilight to find what else Makarion had left for them, taking the small shovel and trowel along with them. They found the trunk sticking out of the ground. Either Makarion didn’t have time to bury it all the way, or didn’t think it was necessary. They wrestled it up and broke the lock with a few swift swings of the mini-shovel. Inside were sleeping bags, a water purification system, and several other helpful survival items. But there were two other things in the corner. “What does he want us to do with these?”

“I doubt I could come up with a possibility worse than what he might actually have in store for us,” Vearden replied.

“I’ve never used a gun before, Vearden.”

“Wha—you think I have?”

“I didn’t say that. Maybe they’re just for hunting, or they’re not even real.”

Vearden picked up one of the revolvers. “It’s real.”

“I thought you didn’t have any experience with them.”

“Toy guns aren’t so heavy!” he yelled back defensively. “It’s probably for a future one of his games.”

“Yeah,” she said solemnly. “I imagine a Clint Eastwood movie.”

They stopped, and again spoke at the same time, “Back to the Future Part III”.

“We are time travelers,” Vearden pointed out.

Saga took the gun from Vearden’s hand and put it back in the trunk before removing all other other supplies and cradling them in her shirt. “We don’t open that back up until we have no other choice.”

“Deal.”

They followed the trail back down to the beach, both thinking that the other knew where they were going. It was getting darker by the second, so that was definitely a mistake. They did make it to a beach, though, where they found another collection of items scattered around. It looked like they had been abandoned there for years. “What is all this stuff doing here? It doesn’t look like it’s for us.”

“No, it belongs to someone else, for sure.”

She picked up some packages sticking out of the sand. The food was far past expiration date. “Whoever was here, they didn’t use any of this stuff.”

“Maybe they crashed here but were rescued before too long.” He was examining an inflatable raft, and noticing a hole in it.

“Or maybe they were killed,” she suggested. “Perhaps by Makarion.”

“We can’t think like that.”

He dropped the raft and and took a look at the compass. “We can’t be far from the cottage and the stargate. Grab what you can, leave the food if it’s gone bad. I’m starting to think Makarion owns this island, and is using it for other games, with other people.”

They quickly walked back to camp and stuffed all of their new belongings in the cottage. But they left the trunk of guns under the stargate ramp, safe and as far away from them as possible.

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Microstory 310: Physical Safety

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Instinct

So far, I have been providing you with a list of everything necessary for an organism, particularly a human, to survive. You need air to breath, ground to stand on, water to drink, food to eat, and barriers between you and danger. You also need the supporting factors that make such things possible. This is the last of the survival necessities, and will be followed by a list of things required for what one might call a “full” life. That is, they will venture beyond basic survival, and start delving deeper into what a person needs in order to achieve true happiness. For now, I’m just going to talk about general physical safety. No one wants to live in a world of constant danger. But if you’re honest with yourself, you will realize that’s exactly where you are. You could slip in the shower, get run over by a car on the sidewalk, slip off a cliff, or just have a no-warning brain aneurysm. Danger abounds, as they say. Physical safety does not mean being completely free from anything that could do you harm. A boy in a bubble can still starve to death. The mark of a safe environment is not that there is no danger, but that there are ways of keeping the danger at bay, or of otherwise overcoming it. Airbags do not prevent vehicular collisions, but they make one easier to live through, should it occur. Before you can be a happy person, you need to understand where you’re living, and what precautions you need to take to make your life worthwhile. A lower-class person in a developing nation is not totally barred from happiness. They may just have more work. You can’t go through life worried about being hurt by it. Because even more important than physical safety itself, is knowing its limitations, and yours.

Intuition