Microstory 385: Legacy

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Accomplishment

In the previous installment, I went over accomplishments. These are results that you can see and keep track of while they’re happening, and immediately afterwards. What I tried to explain was that they might be subtle and hard for you to believe in, but they are definitely there. We have all accomplished something. Legacy, on the other hand, is much hard to attain. This has traditionally been used to refer to what people remember of you when you’re gone. I hear a lot of characters in movies tell a depressed person that they matter, and that they’ll live on forever as long as someone remembers them. This is usually followed by a personal claim that the one in question is important to the speaker personally. Writers write these speeches thinking that they’re being clever and original, when in fact, I call it a cliché. It’s not about whether any given individual remembers you, but whether you had an impact on the world. Now of course I’m not just talking about heads of state and popular musicians. Your legacy may be rather small, but the idea is that the choices you made ripple through time beyond any human’s ability to calculate the ramifications. A few family members with a few anecdotes will eventually die off too, and we’ll end up with diminishing returns, rendering the memories themselves meaningless. It’s what you do, and what effect you have on society, that really counts. These impacts can range from saving a culture from genocide to letting a stranger merge into the lane in front of you. With death in the equation, all memories fade away. A few people are lucky enough to have their stories written down, but for the rest of us, our social outreach will be the only thing that keeps us alive. I don’t ever plan on dying, as I’ve said, but the process is the same either way. The easiest way to create a legacy is to take it literally and raise a child of your own, but there are other ways. Being out there and effecting change in your community; letting your voice be heard, especially by the next generation, is going to give you that edge. You don’t matter just by being alive and knowing people. You have to make an effort.

Extravagance

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 383: Self-assurance

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Self-awareness

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

Accomplishment

Microstory 382: Self-awareness

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Commitment

I first became self-aware when I was three years old. I remember playing in the leaves in the front of my home in Springfield, Missouri. I have fragments from before then, namely one of me looking up at my sister and our neighbors in a jungle gym they said I was too young to get up on, but the leaf thing is the first real memory. It’s when I realized that I was this free-thinking individual capable of making complex decisions without the direct influence of others. And yes, even though I couldn’t form those words, that’s exactly what I remember going through at that time. I was having an existential crisis as a toddler, and it is from that moment that I started being able to question everything I encounter. I’ve always known that I was autistic, even before I actually did. I even couldn’t bear to watch the second season or beyond of Parenthood because it just hit too close to home. There’s a young boy character in it who was diagnosed on the spectrum and I identified with his struggles far too deeply. When I was a freshman in high school, our swim team manager gave me her locker combination so that I could retrieve her philosophy textbook when I needed it. I ended up trying to study philosophy in college, realizing rather quickly that it wasn’t for me. What I discovered was that my philosophical nature was about figuring out how to solve problems, and understand things that actually do have an attainable answer. I look at the world through these meta-lenses. I’m constantly thinking about the fact that I’m thinking, and I never accept what I see as just the way it is. Normal people don’t care about such things. It doesn’t bother you that we spend the first quarter of the year preparing taxes when today’s computers are more than capable of tracking our income and expenditure practices as they occur. Here’s why I’m telling you this. I’ve been noticing these things my whole life, but I’m only now gaining control over them. I’m becoming aware of it, and I’m learning how to manipulate my world to accommodate it. I’m becoming more and more self-aware. As the old saying goes, know thyself. Don’t I know it.

Self-assurance

Microstory 381: Commitment

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Ambition

I have heard people lament the institution of marriage because they think it goes against biology to stay with one person forever. Uh no, actually, no. That’s not how evolution works, and you should probably zip up your pants and take a seat over here so I can explain to you how to do a science. The whole point of this being human thing is that we are not bound by the same natural laws that govern the behavior of other animals. We get to choose how we live our lives. Some of us live way up high, some by the water; some in wood houses, some in brick houses; some don’t have houses, and some have too much house. We marry who we please based on a literally incalculable number of variables, rather than just if a mate can sing, or has a nice pebble. It’s true that there’s still a lot about us that is animalistic. We won’t be able to transcend that until step 97. But your whole “biology” argument is pure nonsense, and a symptom of your inability to rectify the fact that you’re just not that great of a person. Oh, and it’s a sign of your ignorance. Would you people please allow yourself to be uninformed instead of trying to make claims that are completely baseless? Moving on, commitment is an extremely powerful human trait that no other animal matches. Yes, there are organisms out there who mate for life, but not anywhere close to the same way we do. We hold lavish wedding ceremonies, and go on double dates, and it’s all a lot more complicated than it is for any other species. Committing to one single person is not the only way to live your life, which is actually another trait that no animal shares, as far as I know (I, for one, can admit my ignorance). If you do not want to get married, okay, but don’t piss on my beliefs because you’ve never heard of diversity. I recently attended the long-awaited wedding of two men I’ve known for about a decade and a half. Their commitment is a bond, between them, and to their children. It’s something to strive for; not belittle. I hope for that kind of connection one day.

Self-awareness

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 2, 2087

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In order to make things more difficult, The Cleanser insisted that, from now on, he only watch the movie attached to each tribulation once. In this case, Mateo had already watched 16 Blocks when it first came out, which meant he wasn’t allowed to see it again. Makarion claimed that this actually wasn’t that big of a deal, because the Cleanser also wasn’t interested in simply watching the action play out exactly as it had anyway. In fact, the whole film angle was apparently the original Rogue’s idea. The Cleanser wanted them to be more deadly, which made Mateo shiver. They’re pretty dangerous as is, so what could be worse? Really, what? That’s something he should probably be worried about.

All day, and into the next, Mateo had assumed he would be playing the Bruce Willis character, because that was what made sense, but like the Gladiator II tribulation, the Cleanser was turning it on its head. Makarion had Mateo turn around so he could put him in handcuffs. “Someone is going to be tasked with getting you to to the other side of town while others are tasked with chasing you.”

“Who are these people?”

“Your protector is someone you know, but he doesn’t know you in this reality. Your pursuers are some of the worst criminals throughout time. They’ve been given the opportunity to go free. All they have to do is kill you.”

“Oh, is that all?”

“I know, it’s proven to be impossible so far, but honestly, I like their chances.”

“Why?”

“There’s another component to this game, something that will make things more complicated for you.”

Oh no. “What is it?”

“You two, and your pursuers, will be moving at lightning speed. Everyone else around town will be placed in a temporal bubble.” He looked at his bare wrist. “All in all, the tribulation will probably only last a few minutes.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“The civilians will be protected from your pursuers as long as they stay in their bubble. You can bring anyone out of that bubble, and into your dimension, just by touching them. So you’ll have to be careful.”

“They’re like obstacles.”

“Exactly. Again, this won’t be a recreation of the film. Your goal is literally sixteen blocks away, but how you get there is up to you.”

“Understood.”

“There’s one more hiccup; I mean, besides the identity of your so-called protector.”

“What might that be?”

Makarion took out the same gun Mateo had used to kill Adolf Hitler during his short stint in 1945. Without saying another word, he shot Mateo in the stomach and teleported away.

Mateo fell to the sidewalk. Shocked by the sound of the gunshot, people who happened to be nearby tried to jolt their heads to find out where the danger was. Gradually, time slowed down for them. Half speed, quarter speed, eighth speed, all the way until they were moving at a snail’s pace. Mateo was now completely invisible to them, well...most of them. In the distance, he could see the figure of another human being running towards him. But the blood loss from the gunshot wound was starting to get to him, so his eyes were having trouble holding focus.

The figure ran straight for him and helped him to his feet. “Come on, we have to go. They’re after us.”

“Merger?”

“Nobody calls me that,” Kayetan Glaston said. A few days ago, Kayetan was the only survivor of the original Gladiator II tribulation. As they were waiting for further instructions, Mateo freed him from his temporal restraints. Kayetan then proceeded to betray him by placing him in a hell dimension for thousands of years. But that was another life. Literally.

“You’re supposed to save me.”

“That’s right. I get you to the courthouse and they give me back my powers and let me go.”

“They can strip powers from people?” Mateo started laughing like a drunken idiot as Kayetan was trying to drag him down the street. “What is his nickname, The Stripper? HA!”

“Why are you this bad? You were barely hit.”

Mateo did his best Mos Def impression, “life’s too long?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“It’s from the movie.”

“What movie?”

They heard a very loud banging sort of sound, and something small flew past their heads incredibly quickly. After it did so, it started to slow down, moving at a comparable speed to the people in the temporal bubble. “Oh look, a birdie.”

“We gotta go. Those bullets go fast until they’ve missed their mark.”

“Stop!” Mateo commanded. He dropped down so they could hide in an alley. A few more bullets slowly flew past them.

“No, we have to get to the finish line,” Kayetan insisted.

After maneuvering his restraints back to front, Mateo reached out and tried to grab one of the bullets. It burned his fingers, and forced him to retreat, but it also pulled it back into his time dimension, and fell to the ground. Upon seeing his arms, the attackers started firing again. There was now a whole crowd of bullets slowly moving down the street. “Those bullets are stuck in the time bubble.”

“Yeah, they can’t hurt us now, unless you try to grab one, of course like a dumbass.”

“But they can hurt someone else.”

“What?”

“Well we’re the ones going fast. Everyone else is in real-time. Those bullets aren’t actually moving so slow. We just perceive them that way. Those poor people are stuck with the bullets meant for us.”

“Yeah, I guess. How does this help us get to the courthouse?”

“We can’t just leave them there.”

“They’re not my problem.”

“Oh my God, you’re the same in every timeline.”

“That sounds like it’s supposed to be an insult.”

Taking a chance, Mateo reached out and stole as many bullets from midair as he possibly could. They burned his hand, so he used that to his advantage by lifting his shirt and placing them on his wound.

“Holy shit!” Kayetan exclaimed. “I’ve only ever seen people do that in movies.”

“We are in a movie,” he answered with a melodramatically lower register.

As the heat from the bullets continued to cauterize his wound, Mateo stood up. He kept staring at the small group of shooters as he took more bullets from the air, placing each one on his gut. Yeah, it hurt like hell, but it was medically necessary, and it also made him look like a badass. The attackers didn’t know what to think, but for now, they figured they better stop firing their weapons. Kayetan followed him down the street, but periodically ducked behind things, just in case they started shooting again.

“The man didn’t tell us you had balls,” an apparent leader noted.

“Do you have any clue what’s going on here?” Mateo asked.

“Yeah, they’re jackin’ with time,” the leader said.

“It’s a massive temporal bubble,” one of the others said, trying to help.

“Shut up, Harlan.”

“Don’t shut up, Harlan,” Mateo said. “Always be yourself.”

Harlan cracked a little smile.

“We’re supposed to kill you,” the leader said.

Mateo continued the line of questioning. “Are you time travelers?”

“Well, we’re here, ain’t we? And if we kill you, the guy who sent us here is gonna take us to any year we want and let us live free.”

“But, I mean, the first time you traveled was today. You’ve never done it before.”

The leader was lost. “No, why?”

“That’s means you’re gonna die.”

The leader lunged his gun forward, but wasn’t going to shoot, because he needed answers. “We’re the ones holding guns.”

“No, I’m not going to kill you. Believe you me, I don’t want you dead. Hell, even the guy who brought you here doesn’t want you dead, but he knows you’ll die anyway. It’s just biology. Some people can travel through time, but others can’t.” He gestured towards Kayetan, who was cowering behind a stoop. “He and I are genetically different than you. We can move through time safely as we please, but normal people get sick. Don’t ask me to explain any more than that, because I personally don’t understand it. I’m not a doctor.”

The others were starting to believe him, especially Harlan. The leader still had a decent amount of doubt. “How do we know you’re telling the truth?”

Mateo didn’t actually know whether this was true; it was just something Mr. Halifax claimed. He didn’t even know what symptoms might appear, but he did know some standard time travel symptoms. Daria would get dry mouth, and Mateo would get very tired for a few moments. He saw Gilbert Boyce’s men go through this kind of thing when they were on Easter Island. “Are any of your palms really sweaty, or is your skin really tingly, or maybe it’s really cold?”

That last one made the leader twitch.

“Yeah, that’s it,” Mateo went on. “The cold thing. It’s not cold for us, that only happens to normal people. Those are the early signs of temporal sickness, so you still have time. Just count yourself lucky that your heads don’t hurt.”

“My head hurts,” one of the other shooters said.

“Oh, that’s not good. That’s a later stage. If we don’t get you out of here right now, there is a one hundred percent chance that you die within the next two hours.”

The leader finally dropped his gun, prompting the others to as well. Kayetan ventured from his hiding place an inch or two. “What do we do?” the leader asked. When Mateo started digging through his bag, he raised his gun out of fear.

“I’m just getting some paper.” He carefully and deliberately drew his notepad out.

The leader lowered his gun again and waited impatiently.

Mateo never did see what Mr. Halifax wrote on his sheet of paper, or if the paper itself was special, but he had to have faith once more. He desperately needed this to work, so he chose to believe it would. He wrote out the words Dave, a.k.a. The Chauffeur, I have six passengers here in need of a ride to Sanctuary. PS: Never open the package. He didn’t know why he made a cheeky reference to the rules in the Transporter franchise, but it felt like a good place for it. He held out his hand. “May I...?”

The leader tentatively provided Mateo with his gun. Mateo pointed it towards the ground and fired. The bullet only went a couple feet before starting to move slowly. He placed the corner of the piece of paper on the bullet and let it burn. He then knocked the bullet out of the air, forcing it to drop safely on the ground.

After the paper had completely burned out, Dave appeared, just as he had before in the graveyard. “Okay, that’s not really how it’s done, but I’ll allow it this one time. Next time I see you, remind me to teach you protocol.”

“I would appreciate that.”

“These guys here?” He motioned towards the attackers.

“Yeah, and I would be forever in your debt if you would take him back to jail too.”

“What? No,” Kayetan cried. “Screw you!” He started to run away.

Dave snapped his fingers, remotely banishing Kayetan from this moment in the timestream. “This will still cost you. I don’t work for free, and I don’t mean money.”

“Whatever it is, I’ll pay it. Just save them.”

“Very well.” All seven of them disappeared.

Mateo calmly and slowly made his way to the courthouse, careful to not touch any of the humans.

The Cleanser was waiting for him at the top of the steps. “Color me impressed.”

“Are you gonna disqualify me for that?”

“I would never. I really am impressed, and as a bonus, I’ll even let you celebrate the centennial in realtime.”

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Frenzy: The Night Before (Part IV)

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I immediately regret not taking time to put on my uniform. It’s made of a special material that partially protects from hard falls and crashes, and also beads water. We both reach the balance beam at the same time. Unlike in the Frenzy, you can’t just find the fastest way through the course. When you’re doing the Gauntlet, you have to do everything, and only one person can be on the beam at a time. Theoretically one could get on behind the other, but it bends and wobbles enough with only one person. Braxton shoves his shoulder against mine and lets me fall into the Pit of Lava. No, there isn’t any actual lava, but it is filled with a slimy goop of some kind that’s colored a reddish orange. It’s like a golf course sand trap; extremely difficult to get back out of. It does dissolve quickly in water, and there is a showerhead nearby for this reason. Normally that would be perfectly fine, because it’s near the end of the course, but since we’re going the wrong way, I have no choice but to run the whole thing wet. Have I told you how much I hate water?

I take off my shirt and shoes, because at this point, that’s the only way to continue. I can hear the cheering again, along with several cat calls. Nudity never bothers me, but I try to be careful about making others uncomfortable. I throw my clothes behind me as I’m getting back in the race. Here’s one thing Braxton probably didn’t know. There’s a sweet spot on the beam where, if you hit it just right, it’ll bend just enough so that it can propel you forwards and land you safely on the other side. This works going the right way, and I take a chance that it does backwards, and am rewarded for it. There is an uproar in enthusiasm as I stick the landing and quickly move on.

The next obstacle is a halfpipe with a very specific route between posts. You can run through it incorrectly, but then an alarm is going to ring out nonstop until you go back and correct yourself. Again, apparently everything is fine going backwards. The trick is staying balanced on a curve without holding onto the posts, unless that is, you like being mildly tased. I’ve finally caught up to Braxton after getting through the halfpipe. He’s having trouble getting up to the catwalk. You’re supposed to climb up a rope, and then jump down a series of platforms, finally ending up back at the bottom by dropping into a pit of foam. He’s still trying to figure out how to shimmy up the wall, which is not part of the course. “Betcha wish you weren’t so muscular now, huh?”

Braxton is strong but heavy, which can be an asset, but something like this requires agility and nimble dance moves. With this I have the advantage. I hop back and forth between two load bearing columns against the wall and make it to the first platform with relative ease. From there I jump to the next platform and pull myself up. The Dark Knight ain’t got nothin’ on me, risen or not. I race down the catwalk and slide down the rope. It burns my hands, but I can’t think about that now. I’ve just realized that I actually have a chance of winning, and I can’t let that go to waste.

Behind me I hear a scream. Braxton finally managed to get up to the first platform, but he’s stuck on the second. He’s just hanging there by his hands, unable to lift his own weight high enough to reach safety. The crowd is shocked but unmoving. The bystander effect is preventing anyone from running out to rescue him. Where are the adults? Each one thinks that someone else will do it. He’s my opponent, which makes him my responsibility. I have to get back over to him, but it would take too long to climb back up to the catwalk, and they built a canyon under it that’s far too wide to jump over. There’s only one way, and it’s insane. This could kill me, seriously. While holding onto the rope, I run in his general direction, but not quite towards him. It’s just long enough to reach the edge of the floor. I start running on the wall itself, following the swing radius of the rope. Is this going to work, or am I going to die? The radius pulls me away from the wall and I have to start hopping across posts, poles, bars, and other obstacles intended for completely different purposes. But I’m able to keep going. There’s always something close enough to hold my growing momentum.

Finally I’ve reached critical mass and have to throw myself forwards through the swing so that it will direct me to the other side of the canyon. My heart races, not only to keep oxygen to my brain, but because remember that part where I could die? The room is completely silent as I continue through my side swing. I don’t make it to the second platform, which was my target. Hell, I would have even taken the lower platform. No, my body smashes into the wall and I fall to the floor. The shock of what I had just done presumably causes Braxton to lose his grip. Now normally he might die from a fall this high, but I’m there to break it for him, and we both somehow survive.

“Are you okay?” he asks as we’re struggling to get to our feet.

“I’m not dead at least,” I answer.

He can’t put any weight on his right leg, and I’m in some pain myself. “Betcha wish I weren’t so muscular now, huh?” He asks rhetorically.

I laugh, but the pain is growing by the moment

Finally the audience runs down to tend to us. Andrews and Rutherford push their way through the horde of racers and take over the situation. “Let’s get them to medical,” Andrews says.

I don’t spend long in the medical bay before my mother comes to pick me up. She spends the whole ride back home scolding me for what I did, saying that Braxton’s problem was the result of his own choices, and that I shouldn’t have risked my life for him. “I mean, you could have run around the canyon to get to him.”

“That would have taken too long. You wouldn’t understand, you haven’t seen the Gauntlet.”

“Oh, I understand. I saw the whole thing on Miss Buchanan’s video feeds.”

“You were watching me?”

“What, you thought your mother wasn’t hip enough to watch that sort of thing? I was one of Agent Nanny Cam’s first subscribers, even before you were a Frenzy runner.”

“I just...I’m sorry, I was just trying to help.”

“I know, and God knows nobody else was doing anything. But you know how much we hate when you leap across buildings. You do it for your city, and we can appreciate that sort of dedication. Running the Gauntlet in reverse came out of nothing but pride, from the both of you.”

“Yes, mother.”

“Okay, well we’ll probably talk more about your behavior next week, but for the rest of the day, you need to study and rest.”

“I still need to do a dry run.”

“The Gauntlet will just have to be your dry run.”

“Mom!” I complain. “That’s not the same thing!”

“You should have thought about that before.”

“You were the who wanted me to register for this race. I wasn’t even gonna do it!”

“Oh, don’t put that on me. I know you better than you know yourself, and you wanted it more than anything. You just needed someone to push you so you didn’t have to take responsibility for your own guilty pleasures.”

“That’s not it at all.” No, that was pretty much spot on.

“I’m not having this conversation.” They were back home. “Go to your room, study the map, and go to sleep.”

“What about dinner?”

“No dinner, I’m starving you.”

I stomp down the hallway.

“And no going to the bathroom either!”

I slam the door.

“And stop breathing!”

I forego the studying and go to bed extremely early instead. The only time I’ll be able to get to the city is if I sneak out at night when my family’s asleep. Alim catches me slipping out the back door, but he lets me go because he gets it. I grab my bicycle from the porch because it’s quieter than opening the garage, and I need the warm-up anyway. It’s mighty cold outside, and clouds are once again threatening rain. As late as it is, there’s still a not insignificant amount of traffic. I would normally weave in and out of it as part of practice, but more and more cars are adapting to it in a way that makes things even more dangerous. You can’t teach a driverless car that I know what I’m doing.

I reach downtown and lock my bike up on the corner. I look at it this way, if I had a school test tomorrow, and I hadn’t been studying, then I would need to take some risks in order to compensate. They say that cramming isn’t all that helpful, but when it’s all you have, it’s what you accept. So I take out a special pair of electronic training goggles. One of Andrews’ competitors built the prototypes this year, and wanted the Frenzy kids to test them out, but the council would have none of it. Still, a few of us managed to steal them, so we could try them out.

They were supposed to be for training purposes only, because these kinds of modifications are against the bylaws, but the adults don’t think they should be used at all. The screen is a special kind of augmented reality called controlled reality. Instead of enhancing your vision, it hinders it. This is supposed to teach you to move around the world without seeing where you’re going too well. It’s been programmed to delete potential hazards, replacing them with what the program thinks it looks like behind it. If you don’t use your instincts, and your other senses, you could just run into it. If you think this all sounds dangerous, then you would be entirely correct, and probably now understand why it was banned by the council. There’s bravery, and then there’s stupidity.

In the darkness, it’s even worse. I can make out the outlines of the buildings and other objects around me, but I’m having trouble pinpointing their location. Either it’s designed to flicker like that to keep me guessing, or it just has rendering bugs. I take a deep breath and start my dry run, or rather I start a wet run. As I knew it would, it’s raining. No, it’s pouring, and I just know that this will not end well. I start by springing myself off of a first floor window sill and reaching out for a fire escape ladder. The second to the bottom rung appears to be in my hand, but then the goggles flicker and show me that I’m about a centimeter short. I have to think quickly, so I open my fist again and try to take hold of the bottom rung; also known as my last chance. I make it, barely. But that rain, though. I swing forward once, then backwards, then forwards again. With this, I lose my grip and fall down for the third time today, this time to my back. That’s all I remember.

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Microstory 380: Ambition

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Complexity

Ambition can be a divisive subject for people. The consensus, however, seems to be that it’s a naughty word. You’re allowed to have ambition, or rather you’re allowed to have it to some degree, but you’re certainly not allowed to express those feelings. Often in movies, someone loyal to the villain, or sometimes the villain themselves, will explain that they’re not bad, they’re just ambitious. So many characters are portrayed as evil only by showing them to have an insatiable hunger for more. The ultimate question in this regard is why not? Why shouldn’t they want as much as they can possibly get? This is the world you’ve signed up for. When you signed the social contract, you agreed to a capitalistic society. Due to globalization, not a single nation more advanced than a tribal stage is truly anything other than capitalistic, even if they structure their government as something else. They all need to export their goods, and they certainly need to import them, because nobody has everything. We’ve all chosen this, whether we like it or not, so we can’t really complain when people smart enough to take advantage of the system do just that. Now, I’m the first guy to tell you that Donald Trump is a piece of shit, and I will maintain that position until the day he dies, and beyond (he’s too old to be immortal). But I don’t think anyone can argue against the man being intelligent. He’s built an empire, and he’s used the law to do so. Has he broken the law as well? I’m almost 100% certain that he has, but that’s what’s strange. The law is imperfect, and by its methods of procedure, it allows itself to be broken, making certain types of illegal behavior effectively within the boundaries of law. Whoa, none of this sounds like my usual radically liberal self, does it? Well, I’m also a realist. I recognize that, even though you don’t like how we do things around here, you understand it better than me, and I better play ball. I mean I do have ambitions to change things, which is why I became a writer, but you don’t need to know about my 200-year plan. 200 years!? And you thought Donald Trump was ambitious.

Commitment