Microstory 357: Freedom from War

Click here for a list of every step.
Latitude for Mistakes

Now we’re getting into some human needs that we don’t actually have. We’re also moving away from individual needs, and discussing primarily the happiness of society, and the world as a whole. It’s very easy to claim that you’re interested in world peace. Beauty pageant contestants do it all the time. Politicians do it to win elections. I’m doing it right now to build my website, hoping to get famous. Uh...I mean, for art. First off, y’all need to stop being so angry all the time; fighting over a bit of sand. Who gives a crap? It’s just land, and if you spent more time building a productive society, and less time throwing rocks, guess what you would have? Money. And money gets you land. I know, it’s easy for me to reduce the problem to its primary components and lay it all out in its most simplistic form, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong. So many people fight for their God, but I refuse to believe in a deity who would want us to be so violent. Make no mistake (even though, if you do, I’ll give you the latitude for it) but humans are not the only ones keeping us in a constant of conflict. Technology has not yet progressed enough to aid our lives enough to protect us from ourselves. In a future with sustainable energy, agricultural cloning, nanofabrication, nanomedicine, telepresence, and instant translation, people will not be in so much need. I believe, with my optimistic heart, that the richest of us will own spaceships, while the poorest will own houses. There will still be an economic divide, but everyone will have what they need to live comfortably. As the workweek shrinks, our psychological and physiological health will increase. As cost of living decreases, free time will become more fulfilling. Eventually, we’ll do away with money altogether. Some will choose to live in virtual worlds. Some will modify our bodies to reach a certain type of immortality. We’ll look back and laugh-cry at all our petty wars. This may sound like sci-fi or fantasy to you. But trust me, the singularity is coming...

Safety from Political Corruption

Microstory 356: Latitude for Mistakes

Click here for a list of every step.
Free Thought

As I brought up in my Overwritten mezzofiction series, my father and I have always had s problem with people who claim to have no ragrets. Assuming you’re not simply lying, if you have never done anything you wish you hadn’t, then you were probably playing it safe. Life isn’t about being safe. It’s not about doing the most dangerous thing that comes to mind, of course, but you also shouldnt be purposefully dull. Awhile back, I was on one of my urban hikes, and came across a small creek with no bridge, because why would there bee? I put my phone in my bag, through it to the other side, then tried to cross by stepping on what looked like a sturdy rock. It wasn’t, and I fell in. I wasn’t mad, tho, because that moment gave me a new experience, and though I didn’t learn anything specifically, it supported my procedural memory. I am now slightly better at crossing creeks then I was before. Should that come up again, I’ll be better equipped. It may even save my life, you never no. Everybody makes mistakes, and so we should. We learn the most important lessons by doing something wrong and having to fix it. I believe most people know this; at least I know that you know, because I just told you, and you should know by now that I know what I’m talking about it, and you know to listen to me, no? What you may not quiet see is how you should handle other peoples mistakes. Be patient with them. Yes, at some points, a person’s stupidity is beyond indulgince. The definition of stupidity is trying the same thing over and over again, and expecting people to let you keep trying. There’s a difference between mistakes and incontinence. My point is to treet others that way you would like to be treeted, unless you like pain. That’s fine for you, but you can’t project that onto others. Just remember that everyone deserves the latitude to make mistakes, not just yo. For instance me, because this story has the wrong number of words, and a lot of mistakes. “Sorry.”

Freedom from War

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 30, 1945

« < » > Table of Contents

There was really no way to describe what Mateo was feeling. He knew that his body hadn’t actually experienced four thousand years in a hell dimension, but he had memory of it. Yet the memories weren’t like regular memories. It was more like a constant state of paralysis. After at most fifteen seconds in the alternate timeline, time would reset itself, which meant that he was only able to hold a fifteen second thought. After each reset, he wouldn’t have to rethink that same thing, but he also couldn’t continue his train of thought.

Future!Leona took a page out of The Rogue’s book and placed Mateo in a temporal bubble. This allowed him to experience years of time without breaking his pattern. Less than a day passed in the outside world while he lived his life at a rate far faster than ever before. By the time he felt recovered enough to return to the timestream, he was 35 years old. During the first several of his jumps, he was way too old for Leona. She kept aging, though, while he was stuck, until they were finally the same age. Now he was again seven years older than Present!Leona. As if there wasn’t already enough chaos tearing them apart, this was going to make things so much more complicated. Leona would use math to explain it away, claiming that their age difference wasn’t a big deal, but it would always be in the back of his mind.

To make things even weirder, only the one version of Leona was seven years younger, while the other was ten years older. However, it all had to be done. Following the alternate memory implant, there was no way he was going to be able to move on with his pattern in real-time. He could barely eke out a full sentence, let alone complete The Cleanser’s dastardly tribulations. Not long after Future!Leona took down the bubble, Makarion teleported in front of them. He scrutinized her face and worked it out in his head. “You’re not the Leona I last year saw in the—never mind.”

“I’m from an alternate timeline,” she explained once more.

Makarion breathed in deep, but Mateo didn’t see him let it out. “Yes, the Cleanser mentioned that. He also told me that he killed you. Is that a perspective discrepancy?”

“No,” Future!Leona clarified. “It’s happened in all of our pasts. I’m just not as easy to kill as I used to be.”

“Then I suggest you leave so he doesn’t find out.”

“My thoughts exactly.” She lovingly placed her hand under Mateo’s chin.

Over the last five years, he had fallen back in love with her. But she was wise and careful. While in the bubble, she treated him more like his nurse or mother, and not like a lover. She made sure that his feelings for Leona were directed towards Present!Leona instead. She looked exactly like her, so it was hard knowing that this might be the last time he would see his caregiver, but it was the right thing to do. The Cleanser thought that she died quickly in this timeline, and she would need that to maintain advantage over him. She had to go, and Mateo had to refocus efforts towards Present!Leona, and the tribulations. “I understand. You need say nothing.”

“Take care of him...Boyce.” she said, sporting a knowing smile. Blue electricity began to surge all over her body. She feigned surprise about this. “Oh boy.”

“I’m still trusting you,” Mateo said to Makarion after Future!Leona was gone, possibly for good.

“I’ll continue to try to earn it. I promise that I do not want the Cleanser to know that she is still alive.”

“She knew your true identity.”

“The truth always comes out eventually. Even I know that.”

“What happens now?”

“It’s time to continue the Gladiator II tribulation on April 30th, 1945.”

“Doesn’t the Cleanser have to send me back through his loopholes?”

Makarion looked at his watch. “He’ll be throwing us back remotely in half a moment.”

“He’s not coming with us?”

“No, he just likes to watch from afar.”

“Could someone tell him that?”

A transparent bubble formed around both of them. “Oh, not again,” Mateo said.

“Actually,” the Cleanser considers this to be a treat.”

“How so?”

“Just watch.”

The scene began to change, little by little at first, but soon quite rapidly. The grass went from green to brown, and then to white as snow quickly covered it completely. Trees lost and regained their leaves and limbs. The sun shot across the sky from West to East. Clouds tickled the light in between nighttimes. The terrain changed a little. In the distance they could see the skyscrapers of a city grow smaller. Eventually, every single building was gone, or at least the ones large enough to be seen from that vantage point. While they remained in the bubble, the earth below them rolled away from their feet. Again, it started out slowly, but picked up speed the more it moved. Their bubble raced down the countryside, over the ocean, along the highway, and through the streets. They began to slow down enough to make out the faces of people going about their day. They were fortunately completely invisible to the 1945 population.

“This is Germany?”

“It is, yes.”

“Have you ever traveled through time before?”

Makarion laughed. “Of course I have. Far more than you, actually.”

“What exactly will I be doing here?”

“We’re here to see Adolf Hitler at his final moments.”

“Adolf Hitler did not die in 1945.”

“He will now.”

“Are you saying...?” Mateo started to ask, afraid of the answer. It would seem as though the Cleanser had plans to kill Hitler before his time and make a major alteration to the timeline. Salmon, and especially choosers, were evidently always running around, making changes to history. But this was big. No, this was massive. What would this act do to the future? Things would have to play out dramatically differently. It would have an effect on everyone on the planet from now on. What would it do to Mateo’s own personal timeline? Would his mother or father still be alive? Would his birthmother never be chosen as a salmon? Would he? Mateo thought about asking what part he was to play in this, but he was pretty sure he already knew. The Cleanser did say he wanted Mateo to kill at least one person every day. Apparently, Hitler would be that someone today. All right.

“I know that you and the Cleanser are kind of, well...rogue elements, but surely the powers that be will stop you if you go too far out of bounds. This would change everything. Literally. This will stop people from being born. This will introduce people who were never supposed to be born. Can anyone predict the butterfly effect from something like this?”

“Honestly, Mister Matic,” Makarion said ominously, but waited to continue.

They floated down through the ground. A magic glow emanating from the space in the bubble itself protected them from total darkness. Mateo couldn’t help but hold his breath. It must have just been instinct.

Makarion finally finished his thought, “this is a sanctioned mission.”

Mateo didn’t say anything further, because the trouble was about to begin. He did wonder why this was a sanctioned mission and the Cleanser was in control of it. It just seemed like those two conditions would never exist at the same time. Letting him do whatever he wanted was one thing, but teaming up with the Cleanser would make the powers that be about a hundred times more dangerous than they already were. Hopefully this was just a one time thing, because if it was going to become a trend, there would be no hope of stopping any of them.

The bubble passed through a couple more walls and settled in a room where Mateo could clearly see Adolf Hitler and his wife, Eva Braun. They were on the sofa, but were not moving. At first Mateo thought that they were already dead, but then he saw another man in the room. He was old, but looked familiar. He walked over from a corner and carefully placed something in Eva’s mouth. Just as he noticed the other two time travelers, their two different temporal bubbles apparently collided with each other and popped. He couldn’t be sure, but Mateo thought he heard the faint echo of the Cleaner’s laugh.

Shocked by the sudden appearance of three strangers, Eva closed her mouth and back up against the cushion out of fear.

Hitler yelled something in German, but of course Mateo had no idea what. He pulled out a gun which Makarion promptly took from his hand and pointed at the Führer. Hitler looked like he was planning on taking back control, but then Eva started gasping for air and thrashing about. He dove to her and tried to help, but there was nothing he could do. She was dead in seconds. He obviously wanted to cry, but he kept a straight face so that he could bark at them, again in German.

“Who are you people?” the old man asked.

“We’re part of your future. Mum’s the word, Theodore,” Makarion answered rather dismissively, still holding Hitler’s own gun towards his throat. He slightly shook the weapon towards Mateo. “You’re up, sport. Now, I know you have reservations about killing, and I’ll give you a little time, but—”

Mateo took the gun from Makarion’s hand and shot Adolf Hitler in the head.

« < » > Table of Contents

Second Stage of Something Started: 370-239-2005 (Part XII)

« < » > Entire Story

“One thing about time travel is that it’s very easy to encounter someone at one point and have knowledge of their future. Or worse, they could have knowledge of yours. In some cases, both could happen simultaneously. Some salmon operate across a single timeline. The Shapers, for instance, often have an effect on their past selves without realizing it. Whatever happened, happened. Nothing can be changed. No one can be saved. No one can be stopped. If this were the only form of time travel, then things would be fine. Everything would remain as it was. If you tried to go back and stop a car crash, well, you would probably end up being the cause of the crash. To make things even more complicated, however, some salmon—and just about all choosers—are moving across realities. They can go back and make changes to the timeline. In fact, they can potentially make changes to their own timeline. Unlike in Back to the Future, this will not result in the end of the universe. Things might just get—for lack of a better word—fucked up.

“With all these salmon and choosers hopping through and altering timelines, then salmon who can’t do that are in weird positions, aren’t they? From their perspective, nothing about the timeline has changed. If anything does end up getting changed, single-timeline salmon are going to undergo the process of being overwritten. Their memories of the first variation of events will be erased from their minds, as if they had never happened...because they hadn’t. To them, and all the lowly humans, whatever happened, happened. They don’t know that anything changed, so they just move on with their lives, doing the best they can to make the future as good as it gets.

“There have been many terrible events in the history of mankind. The holocaust, 9/11, Aurora, and Pulse are but a few of the most recent. Have you guys gotten to Pulse yet? But you’re just a human, so you can see only one timeline. You don’t know all the other terrible things that happened before being retconned by time travelers. That may be a nice thought, but keep in mind that not every time traveler has good intentions, and people with the power to reign these bad eggs in are rarely interested in doing so. This means that many days have gone by without a hitch, but then someone goes back and makes things bad. I’m not going to go over these events with you, because I think you would be offended if I attributed heinous acts carried out by hateful people to magicks. You’ll just have to take my word for it that some of the worst moments in time were put there on purpose, while others were created incidentally from the butterfly effect of some earlier time traveling event.

“I’m telling you this so you’ll understand what I have to do. This may seem like a bad moment. The world will remember this day as the greatest mystery in commercial airliner history. But believe you me...this is the lesser of two evils. I guarantee that, my friend. Two-hundred-and-thirty-nine people are going to have to sacrifice their lives for the greater good. Now before you freak out, you’re not going to die. We’ll put you somewhere safe. I’ve already put in a call to The Chauffeur. But you can’t stay here, because then you really will die. The Triple Triple Seven catastrophe was the deadliest aircraft disaster of all times. I’m here to force us into a timeline where that does not happen. I went over a number of scenarios, and this is our only choice. Trying to divert the planes won’t work. All I can do is take one away.”

“Are you telling me that you’re a terrorist?” the passenger asked.

The stowaway sported a charming smile. “No. I’m an unsung hero.”

The passenger’s husband returned from the lavatory. “Hey, what are you doing in my seat, buddy?”

“The name’s not Buddy, Mister Burrows,” the stowaway said as he stood up and slipped into the aisle. “It’s Prince.” He started walking backwards to the cockpit, and spoke more loudly than decorum dictated, “Prince Darko!”

They were still looking at him with concern as Prince Darko spun around and stole someone’s drink from first class.

“Can I help you sir?” the flight attendant asked, then stopped short. “I don’t recognize you.”

“Oh, I’m not on the list. I’m a walk-in.” He nodded towards the cockpit door. “But it’s okay, I’m with them.”

“The pilots?”

“No.”

Saga and Vearden accidentally opened the cockpit door from the inside.

“Them.”

“Oh my God!” the flight attendant cried, unable to keep his composure.

“Where are we?” Saga asked, surprised to be on a plane, but also not.

Prince Darko took a sip of the drink he had stolen, but then put it down on the counter with disgust. “Exactly where you need to be.”

“What is going on here?” The Pilot in Command had gotten up and assumed authority.

Prince Darko pointed his phone through the doorway like a remote control and tapped something on the screen without looking.

“We have lost ACARS now, sir,” reported the co-pilot.

“Well...” Darko said in an uncertain voice. “Not all of it. We still have to shake a few more hands.”

“Who are you?”

“Why, I am now your commanding officer,” Prince Darko responded as-a-matter-of-factly.

“I don’t know how you people opened the cockpit door, but I will not recognize your authority.” He tried reclosing the door, but failed. Each time he tried to swing it inwards, it would keep going past the brink and open outwards. In was out and out was in. No matter how he moved the door, spacetime would shift around it so that he was always opening it. “What is this? What did you do?”

“I’m afraid I can’t take credit for that. I’m just an object threader.”

Vearden cleared his throat to get Prince Darko’s attention. “You are Mateo’s brother.”

“Indeed.”

“We were told that you were a good person,” Vearden said.

“I met you in my past, do you remember that?” Saga asked, referring to a time when she accompanied Baxter to a house call.

“I do not,” Prince Darko admitted as he continued to work on his phone. “It must take place in my future.” The plane started banking left, not enough to cause fear in the hearts of the passengers, but enough to wake up any sleepers.

The pilots and flight attendant were speechless, as any regular human would be by the turn of events, and the current conversation.

“You have control of the plane?” Saga asked.

“Indeed again,” Prince Darko replied.

“Then please give control back to the pilots so they can land these passengers safely at their destination,” she requested calmly and politely.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

“Please,” Vearden pleaded, more urgently.

“Look, I appreciate you opening the door for me. I needed line of sight for the program to activate, but now that it has, your services are no longer required. You are now free to move about time and space.” He pointed to the nearest lavatory. “This is just one of many doors. Pick one.”

Kolby, the security guard from the Vietnam camp appeared through the curtain from a cheaper section of the plane. He lifted his apportation gun towards Prince Darko, but did not fire. The passengers who were in the right places to see the gun started screaming and freaking out. He ignored them. “Darko Matic, you are under arrest for colluding with a rogue element, and for reshaping an Essential Temporal Juncture. You are hereby sentenced to an indefinite stint at Beaver Haven Penitentiary. I am prepared to shoot if you do not comply.”

“Are you going to revert the juncture?” Darko asked, with no obvious intentions to run from his fate.

“That is not my department.”

“Very well.” Prince Darko held out his wrists and allowed Kolby to place a special set of handcuffs on him.

Kolby looked over to Saga and Vearden. “Is this before or after Vietnam?”

“After,” Saga confirmed.

“Then I suppose it’s not urgent for us, but I recommend finding a door off this plane. I don’t know what the others are going to do with it.”

“That’s not up to us,” Vearden said with a deep breath.

“No, I suppose it’s not.” Kolby tapped a sequence onto some high-tech bracelet he was wearing while his hand had a firm grip on the bar between Darko’s bound wrists. They both disappeared in a flash.”

Passengers continued to whoop and holler.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!” The Cleanser called out right after teleporting onto the plane. “No need to get upset!” he assured them. “The worst is yet to come, I assure you.”

The crowd grew quiet out of fear for what that meant.

“Now who’s ready to go back in time and crash this plane into The Pentagon?”

« < » > Entire Story

Microstory 355: Free Thought

Click here for a list of every step.
Equality

I didn’t know where I was going for most of the entries in this series. I had the titles down, and felt like they were sufficiently distinct from one another. But as far as the actual content, I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. I actually thought my biggest hurdle would be reaching the exact number of words. With relatively little tweaking, however; a contraction here, a snip there, that’s the easy part. Even though I still struggled with saying what I wanted to say, these last several installments were easy to write. I was actually having more trouble keeping it down to a low enough number. With one of them, I was so engrossed in the writing that I forgot to turn on the word count feature, and ended up with over 500 words with no end in sight. I knew something like that would happen as I was laying this week in the order I wanted. Side note: the truth of order—as in, what reality looks like—is more fluid than the spacetime continuum will allow me to illustrate for you. That is, they’re not actually steps, so this was a dumb series title. Damn you, four dimensions! Anyway, after getting my passion-topics set, I needed a safe space where I could explain myself. Since those are topics of passion for me, and because I’m limited in word count, I needed an entire entry just to say that I’m sorry. I know many of you don’t feel the same way, and I know I sounded harsh. Don’t get me wrong, you’re wrong. If you’re sexist or bigoted, you definitely need to change your outlook, but I also recognize the need for free thought. I’m not here to control you, of course. Though, if we’re being honest, if I had the ability to control you, it’s about 50/50 whether I would exercise that power. Barring superpowers, society does not work if everyone believes the same thing, nor does it work if people are oppressed, and their opinions punished. So go on and keep thinking for yourself. I’ll just be over here...trying to change you.

Latitude for Mistakes

Microstory 354: Equality

Click here for a list of every step.
Social Love

Lots of people think that the rainbow flag is a symbol for homosexuality, and it’s actually rather sad that this narrow viewpoint has continued. While it did push the issue to the forefront of people’s minds, which is the purpose of symbols, I believe that it has hurt our cause as well. The original intention of the rainbow was not only to represent a particular group, but all of them. All of us. It is a symbol of diversity. Now that you know this, it kind of makes sense, doesn’t it? Google is currently running a campaign of “be together, not the same”. I find this to be an incredibly powerful and beautiful sentiment. People who argue against bigotry often try to find commonalities between the bigots and the oppressed. And that’s great, at least it certainly has its place, but Google and I are proposing a different approach. The question we’re ultimately asking is “okay, you don’t identify with these people; why is that a problem?” We have all been told that we should be celebrating our differences, but most of us seem to be having trouble acting on this maxim. I’ve discussed the problem of bigotry with people on the right side of history, and for the most part, we all agree that bigotry has remained a constant throughout history. The police didn’t suddenly start beating black people, it’s just that everyone has a camera in their pocket now. That’s the only real difference, as dumb as that sounds. So what is equality? We all know what it literally means, but what does a world like that look like? Truthfully, no one knows. But anyone not voting for Donald Trump knows that it will be better. Yes, I said will, because we’ll get there. Love will indeed win, and there’s nothing Trump can do to stop that. Thousands of years from now, assuming you’re young enough to be immortal, you’ll look back on these days and wonder what people were thinking. This will all look even more ridiculous than it already does. The bigots, on the other hand, will all be dead.

Free Thought

Microstory 353: Social Love

Click here for a list of every step.
Acceptance

Love is when you not only agree that things are a certain way and that this is all right, but also that you’re for it. You’ve determined that what you hated or didn’t understand before is actually a good thing, and that you should be in support of it. My sister and I were raised by love. Earlier generations sound rather progressive to me, but they still held their fair share of ignorance, as was common in those times. Somehow, out of all that came my parents. They taught us to love people of different race, religion, sexuality, etc. It never occurred to me that there was anything wrong with gay people, so when I first encountered someone who thought as much, I was massively confused. I can’t speak for my sister’s perspective, but I can explain my own. Even if I hadn’t been raised by my wonderful parents, I doubt I would have grown up bigoted. This is because I never felt like a normal person. I’m not referring to standard pubescent angst. I’m once more talking about my autism. I’ve always felt like a completely separate species. The way you people do things, it doesn’t make any sense. You are so inefficient, and resistant to progress. It’s actually quite infuriating, being able to see a better way to do things, with no one listening. It’s ironic that I’m one of the quietest people you’ll meet, but I’m the one who wants to talk about fixing the process. All that aside, my autism also causes me to see humans from a sort of outsider’s perspective. That doesn’t mean I don’t care, but it does mean I see no difference between a black father and a single Chinese businessman, or a girl in a wheelchair and a senator. You’re all just people to me. So when I hear about all this friction between two groups of people, it’s not something I can relate to. I just can’t understand it, except on an academic level. I came from a different place, but I too had to learn love, and I’m still working on it.

Equality

Microstory 352: Acceptance

Click here for a list of every step.
Tolerance

Congratulations again, you’re one step closer to being a happy person. Here’s your ribbon. You have let go of most of your anger. You’ve stopped fighting the reality of the world. You’ve looked into the future and seen that your obstinance has no place in the world. I wish more people would be like you. Seeing the future isn’t all that difficult. Yes, we do have this thing called free will, and no it wasn’t bestowed upon us by God. If it were, then it isn’t real. Choice, like time, isn’t a conscious planning entity. It is but the natural course of events. So yeah, we are indeed free to make our own choices, but that doesn’t mean absolutely anything can happen, or that there is no such thing as causality. It just means that many things can happen, and these things can be understood. Past experiences never determine the future, but they can do a damn good job at predicting it. Every choice you make is put before you as the result of a series of prior events, some partially instigated by yourself, others by other people, and the rest by natural forces. You might be asking the screen, why is he talking about causality? Well, you see, it all has to do with this need to hold onto tradition. The past is not valuable simply by being in the past; it must be good on its own. I know I’ve used this as an example before, but I’ll say it again. This world has a history of slavery, and it is in fact persisting today, but that doesn’t make it okay. So when people argue against gay rights (read: human rights), building a wall in the year of your Lord 2017, or getting rid of schools, they just sound like idiots. They obviously have an inability to see the future, because things are going to change, and as an optimist, I believe they will change for the better. You have already changed by attaining acceptance, and soon things will get even better for you, and you’ll learn what love is.

Social Love