Microstory 905: Rising Literacy

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I’m not much of a reader, which I recognize you’ll see as either a lie, or just plain bizarre. Despite my many hours of not reading, I obviously can read, and this is a trait that I take for granted. It wasn’t hard for me as a child to make the connection between spoken words, which I already knew, and writing skills. Of course that’s the alphabet, and of course that string of letters ultimately makes that sound, and carries that semantic meaning. Even if it didn’t come so easily for you—perhaps you were more into numbers—I bet you didn’t struggle all that much. People in developing countries are more likely to struggle to learn to read, but it’s nothing compared to the way thing were just centuries ago. Literacy was not all that common. It was reserved for noblemen, and often just men in general. Not only were educational opportunities hard to come by, and society looked down upon certain peoples learning certain skills, but there was also little point. They completed their menial labor, and that was all that was required of them. But people are seeing now the value in being able to read, regardless of one’s station, and that is something to be celebrated. But that’s not to say we have reached some goal. There are still tens of millions of adults, in this country alone, who are considered illiterate. They are easily forgotten, as education tends to focus on children. Please note that simply knowing the alphabet does not mean you count as literate. The threshold is formulated by a group of academics smarter than me that you can research on your own. We still have a long way to go, but I did want to take a minute to show that progress is possible, and is happening.

Microstory 904: Loud Nonvoting Activists

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Months ago, I was enjoying a vacation with my family when news broke of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. I was horrified, of course, but also struck by how well-spoken many of the survivors were about what had happened. This wasn’t the first school shooting, nor was it the last, not even that month. We have been forced to surrender to the fact that school violence is just the way it is, but these students decided that that was not acceptable. I suddenly found myself awe-inspired by a handful of teenagers, many of whom were not yet old enough to vote in this country. We have always enjoyed a healthy dose of nonvoting activists, but these kids were taking it to the extreme, and I’m proud to call them my heroes. Old people have long complained of how annoying “kids these days are” and how they’re so much better. Well here’s a news flash. This planet is in shambles right now. The reason there are so many more disaster movies than there used to be is because we can see ourselves falling to all that. And you know whose fault that is? I’ll give you a hint, it’s not the millennials, who are only now reaching positions of power. You need us, and the generation after us, because we’re the ones who are gonna clean up all this shit you’ve let build up. Several weeks ago, I found myself at a town hall meeting in Kansas City, Kansas, hosted by a couple organizations, one being March for Our Lives. The panel was composed exclusively of high school and college-aged people, and they were more eloquent than anyone in the so-called “GOP” could ever hope to be. They certainly made their point better than I am right now. So if you want to know more about what we need to do to change the world, I recommend you start paying attention to the loud nonvoting, and first-time voting, activists.

Microstory 903: Strategy Challenges

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A few years ago, my family and some family friends participated in one of those escape rooms. It was profoundly frustrating, and I feel like I should have done better, but it was also a lot of fun. If you even so much as met me once, you likely know that I have a strong aversion to recreational drugs, which includes alcohol. Aside from all the medical issues it can cause—and its skill of driving people to manslaughter—my take is that if you can’t have fun without altering your brain chemistry, you may be experiencing some underlying deficiency. These problems should be addressed using what I feel to be healthier solutions, like therapy, self-improvement, ferris wheel rides, or sex. Escape rooms, scavenger hunts, and the like are good wholesome fun, that can, and should, be enjoyed sober. You see, the point of life is to cultivate fond memories. Drugs like alcohol are designed, however, to inhibit neural connections. That’s not just a side effect either; it is the purpose of the exercise. The next time you wake up hungover, and have the instinct to proclaim that you must have had fun last night, the truth is that you didn’t. To paraphrase Manchester Orchestra, there is nothing you have when you die that you keep. I would add, except maybe memories. I see the rise of strategy challenges—exemplified by higher stakes reality competitions, like Survivor and Flipsides—as an unintended argument against recreational drug use. We should do more with that. We should construct escape buildings, which can take days to complete, rather than hours. We should foster a society that values sober recreation over pointless busywork for an arbitrary forty hours a week. Hell, as little interest as I personally have in it, we should make more of those adult summer camps. The real reason—again, as I see it—people do drugs, is because their lives suck. It’s not all their fault. We’re expected to have these jobs, many of which don’t actually contribute positively to the world. We spend so much time trying to make as much money as possible that we don’t have any time to spend it. And even when we do, we’re taught to revere material possessions, rather than experiences. So everybody has all this shit, and nobody’s done much of what they love. As I’ve said before, things like universal basic income, material synthesis, and general automation are all things that can help us realize a world where fun is the name of the game. But we’ll never reach it, even once we’re capable of it, if we keep teaching our kids to not want it, and damning millennials for disregarding work for work’s sake. So keep playing GISH, and keep locking yourselves in rooms, just so you can break out of them. And be sure to check out Flipsides season one, coming summer of 2030.

Microstory 902: Animals and Wildlife

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The other day, I overheard people on the street talking about the weather, which is something I’ve grown accustomed to neurotypicals doing, like how it no longer freaks you out when your dog licks itself. They expressed denial to climate change, but were in the same breath questioning why the weather is so different now than it once was. I don’t know whether to be outraged by their audacity, or discouraged by their stupidity. It’s like they’re completely blind to reality, it’s baffling. The climate, the weather, the environment; it’s all connected. The real circle of life has more to do with water and air than it does zebras and baby lions. If you’re caught up on my Sunday series, The Advancement of Leona Matic, or even if you’re a year behind, you may have noticed I describe the future of Earth a little differently than other stories set in the future. A lot of science fiction tries to extrapolate population growth, if only abstractly, determining that we will one day live in gargantuan cities, and barely have enough room to sit down. They’re not entirely wrong per se, but they are going the wrong direction. The correct answer is up. Improvements in materials science will allow us to construct extraordinarily tall megastructures. This will allow us to pack millions of people into a tiny sliver of land. We’ll build these all over the world as a way to prevent ourselves from putting all our eggs in one basket, which is the same reason we’ll start living on Luna, Mars, and nearby exoplanets. We won’t be living in megacities, like one might find in a Judge Dredd comic book, because that would be a waste of space. But what does it matter, you ask. If we have the room, why would we not use it? Well, because we don’t have the room. Humans have only been settling for the last few thousand years. Before this, we were nomadic, and before that, we didn’t even exist. Sorry, Christians, the story of Adam and Eve is just a straight up fabrication. What does this all mean? It means that this world belongs to the plants and animals. So in the future, when technology progresses enough, we need to give it back. But don’t wait until the 22nd century; not even if you think you won’t be alive then—which you may be, believe it or not (but we’ll get to that later). Wildlife needs your help now. Recycle, invest in clean energy as possible, and try a more vegetarian diet. I still eat some meat, because I can’t afford alternative sources of protein, but I recently realized just because I’m not a herbivore, doesn’t mean I have to be a carnivore. In a hundred years, when food synthesis has long been possible, people will look back and note how absurd it is that we once killed animals for food. But we’ll get to that later too. Either way, why not start now? Yes, I’m aware of how preachy I’m being, and no, you working towards vegetarianism is not presently as important to me as, say, voting Russia out of this country. I’m just saying that this world doesn’t really belong to us, and it never did.

Microstory 901: Diversity

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The rainbow flag has been used as a symbol for a lot of different things over the course of centuries. Today, it is most commonly associated with the LGBTQ movement, but I’ve never thought of it like that. Most people believe that there are seven colors in the rainbow, but the truth is that there are literally all of them. We arbitrarily break it down into seven standards, but it could just as easily be eight, or 39. In this way, the color spectrum represents all that a human being is capable of perceiving, which is most of what matters to everyday life. Because of this, I have always seen the rainbow flag as less of a symbol for any one sexuality, or even multiple sexual orientations. I’ve always interpreted it as a symbol for diversity. People who preach peace often do so by pointing out our similarities. We all live on Earth, we all bleed red blood, we all need to eat, etc. But as a futurist, I see this as becoming a problem in the future. We won’t always live exclusively on Earth. If we encounter an alien species, their biology would most likely be different than ours, and they might not possess red blood. And our nonbiological friends, who are energized by other means, will not need to eat. It is a problem for us to emphasize our similarities, because that’s really just another way of valuing homogeneity over variety. You see, we are not beautiful creatures despite our differences, but because of our differences. If we were all the same person, we would not be capable of coming up with new ideas. We would not create stunning art, or discover medical breakthroughs, or come up with technological conveniences. We would just sit here in the boredom of our own predictability. And in but a few generations, we would simply die off, because nobody wants to procreate with themselves. When I walk into a room, I want to see men; women; young people; old people; black people; Asian people; people of all shapes and sizes, from all backgrounds, of all identities; maybe even a few white people. A recent study has suggested that those living in an ethnically diverse neighborhood are more likely to help a stranger in need. Their experiences with people unlike them have given them perspective, and a whole hell of a lot of empathy. Because when I say that we should value diversity, that doesn’t mean I think we should ignore how well we relate to each other. Our ability to put ourselves other people’s shoes will always drive us to good works more than inherent altruism, which is fundamentally difficult to achieve, and far rarer than you probably know. King Dumpster was elected president in my country because he spoke to the hearts of an astonishingly large number of people who prefer mirrors over windows. It is up to the rest of us to prove that we are not all like that. Because we aren’t. We are diverse.

The Advancement of Leona Matic: September 14, 2191

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           As Leona and her friends were frozen in place, watching the screen that was just playing the disappearance of entire arcology hanging tower, four other people stepped up beside them. It was the Warrior, Nerakali Preston, another man, and another woman.

“This is going to be a lot of work,” said the man.

“Did the entire planet see it?” Nerakali asked.

“We cut the stream before it could reach Mars,” the Warrior replied, “but we think it got as far as Luna.”

“Shit.”

“What’s going on here?” Leona asked them.

“Miss Matic, it’s nice to see you again,” the man said to her. “When I learned a few of our people were so close to the incident, we wanted to drop by first, and make sure you were okay.”

“We’ve not met for me yet.”

“We have,” he said with a smile. “I’m The Repairman. Your memories have been messed with, but it’s already happened for you.”

The other woman presented her hand. “And I’m The Stitcher. He and I do pretty much the same thing. The work just sometimes takes more than one person.”

“This time we need to the whole team.”

“The whole team for what?” Vitalie questioned. “What is it you do?”

“We fix noticed temporal anomalies,” the Repairman began to explain. “When normal humans witness something outside their comprehension of the way the laws of physics should work, we step in and make them forget that it ever happened.”

The Stitcher continued, “historically, it’s been enough for Nerakali to modify people’s memories. With something so pervasive, like this, or the Deathspring, it requires more drastic measures. Which is where we come in.”

“Drastic measures, like...?” Ecrin trailed off cautiously.

“Quantum overlap. We can merge realities. There’s a microreality out there where Ulinthra doesn’t massacre thousands of people, and those people don’t slip into a massive portal. We have to sort of...borrow that chunk of timeline, so people move on without a care. It’s not always pretty, but we try to make it as seamless as possible.”

“And Hogarth?” Brooke asked.

“Hogarth?” the Stitcher repeated?

“One of the Durune precursors,” Nerakali informed her.

“Ah, yes. Was she in the tower?”

“At the very bottom,” Leona said.

“If she wasn’t on one of the top floors, then she would still have been there when the tower fell. The Savior only rescued those who were in danger of people killed by the weapons,” the Warrior explained.

“Well, where did it go?” Ecrin asked.

The four visitors looked to each other. “We don’t actually  know,” the Repairman ended up saying.

“How could you not know?”

“There are other forces at play,” the Stitcher said.

“If it makes you feel any better,” Nerakali began, “it’s unlikely the people in that tower are dead. Very few choosers would be capable of generating a portal that large. Whoever it was wanted them alive.”

“Yes, but for what?” Leona asked, knowing she would receive no answer.

“We have to go,” the Warrior said definitively. “When you return next year, you four will be the only ones with any memory of this. We’ll even erase Ulinthra’s, so she doesn’t try it again.”

“If she doesn’t remember punishing us, she’ll just punish us some other way,” Leona pointed out. “Actually probably the same way, with some other tower.”

Nerakali shook her head. “She won’t. She’ll think she’s already done something to you, and I promise it won’t be as bad.”

Much to both hers and Nerakali’s surprise, Leona gently took Nerakali by the arm while she was trying to leave. “What do you know?”

Nerakali’s eyes darted towards the Warrior, who would have already killed her in the past of his timeline, or he wouldn’t have had her time power today. He didn’t look sorry about it, and she didn’t seem to have any sore feelings against him either. “Everything. This won’t be the last time you see me, so to stop you from asking me that question yet again, know this one thing.” She paused, struggling with the truth. I used to live in another dimension. The first thing I learned when I fell to your plane of existence...was how I was going to die. I’ve always been at peace with it, and have really just been going through the motions.” She smiled warmly, and tipped an imaginary hat. “I’ll see you on The Warren.”

“Anatol,” the Stitcher said, “please open a portal for us. We’ll start with Kansas City, and work our way through the spiral.”

 The Warrior drew a black hole in the middle of the room, through which the four of them disappeared.

The reality correction team was not lying when they said Leona, Ecrin, Brooke, and Vitalie would be the only ones to remember what happened to the hanging tower come next year. Common knowledge was that a software error caused one of the Panama arcs to be built with one fewer hanging towers than others of the same style. People accepted this completely, and just ignored the asymmetrical blank space on the bottom of the platform where it was meant to be.

Ulinthra seemed to be under the impression that she punished the group for Harrison’s murder by taking away a few of their amenities, like their synthesizers, as well as embedding tracking devices on their hearts. She didn’t explicitly say this, but these devices were almost certainly capable of killing them if they got out of line. Still, the group took a vote, and decided to recommence their plans to work against her by flipping a penny every day. Leona called Ulinthra to confirm what they were allowed to do, and where they were allowed to go, but of course, this was just a way of forcing Schrödinger’s cat to make up its damn mind about whether it was dead or not. When Vitalie flipped the coin, it landed on heads. This left the question of what they were going to actually do. It wasn’t like they had created a list of offensive maneuvers. Their only move was to steal the teleporter gun plans. They did still have those, but since their movements were now being tracked, it would be nearly impossible to access the nearest synthesizing machine, and build another one. Plus, they were now missing their engineering ringer, Hogarth, and Leona didn’t have the time or resources to make a full-functioning gun.

“There’s only one thing we can do from our current position,” Vitalie said.

“And what would that be?” Leona asked, having no clue what she was talking about.

“We have to tell the truth,” Vitalie replied.

“The truth about what?”

“About everything. About us, about her, and what she can do. We have to tell the world what we are. Isn’t that against some time law?” Vitalie asked.

“In a way, it is,” Leona said. “We’ve talked about this. While there is no formal law prohibiting revealing our powers—which is why you’ve always been free to tell your loved ones, if you so wished—if you take it too far, Beaver Havens steps in.”

Vitalie nodded once. “That’s exactly what we need.”

“Brooke had it right before. We would be locked up, instead of Ulinthra, and she would be free to continue.”

“Right now, Earth is not my concern,” Vitalie said. “Right now, we are the ones in the most danger. At the moment, I would rather be in prison than this arc.”

“Are we really considering sending ourselves to jail?” Brooke wasn’t convinced. “Even if that’s the safest for us, that doesn’t change the fact that we’ve exposed all choosers and salmon. There’s a reason they would lock us up.”

“We could find a way to threaten exposure. We’ll do just enough to get their attention, but not actually say anything,” Vitalie suggested.

“I don’t see how we could fake it like that, and besides, Brooke can’t go,” Leona reminded them. “Anything we try like that will automatically exclude her.”

“Well, don’t make decisions on my account,” Brooke groaned. She was getting tired of feeling like a burden.

“I’m all out of ideas,” Vitalie said, literally throwing up her arms. “I came up with the penny thing. I guess I didn’t consider what we were meant to actually do on head days. If you’re not willing to go to prison, then I can’t even.”

Leona looked over to Ecrin. “You’ve been quiet. What is your opinion on this whole thing?”

“Do you think the penny thing is just dumb?” Vitalie asked as well.

“No,” Ecrin replied clearly. “We have to be able to take action, and the penny is our best vehicle for that. But Brooke can’t go to prison, and I’m sorry, Brooke, but we are going to take that into account with everything we try. You guys are missing the obvious answer, though.”

Leona tried to think. “What would that be?”

“You keep looking for some time power solution. But look at where we are. No one in Panama wants to be controlled by the Arianation. In fact, most of the Arianation on the whole wants nothing to do with her. It’s just that her followers are too powerful.”

“Okay...”

“We need to connect with the resistance movement. The human resistance movement; the ones who don’t know she has powers, and are trying to get rid of her.”

“Great. Do you know where they are, or who they are? Because I haven’t heard a single mention of such a group.”

“I don’t know anything about them,” Ecrin admitted, “but I know they must exist. They couldn’t not. There must be a way to find them, though. All we need to do is figure out who is hurting the most from her being here.”

“I’m sure they do exist,” Leona agreed. But they would be squashed in a second, because Ulinthra will always see it coming. Always”

“That’s because they don’t have our penny advantage.” She smiled at Vitalie. “We find them, we tell them—and only them—what we know. Beaver Haven won’t care if we just do that. We don’t even have to be there. The humans will do the work for us. In one year’s time, this could be all over.”

“Or it isn’t over,” Brooke argued. “Because even without her power advantage, Ulinthra still has a lot of loyalty. Overthrowing governments is always difficult.”

“I think we should try,” Ecrin said.

“I do too,” Vitalie said, always ready for a fight.

Leona didn’t see how this could make any difference. People had been fighting against her this whole time, and even Ulinthra wasn’t invulnerable. She only ever lived through each day twice, so once she gathered all intelligence on her enemies, everything would be altered as soon as she made a single move. Once she changed the timeline, she would lose that foreknowledge. Yet she was still not only in as much control as she had been, but more. In just the last few years, she was already making moves against the smaller Class D arcstates, like Rwanda, and Ecuador. She was showing no chance of slowing, and her opposition was showing no hope of keeping her at bay. “Brooke, if you agree with me, the penny will need to be the tiebreaker.”

Brooke stared into space for a pretty long time. “No need.” She looked at Leona with a hint of embarrassment. “I think we should go for it.”

“Okay,” Leona said, knowing she had been beat, and deciding not to argue the matter further. “Since they took our synthesizers anyway, we have a great opportunity to do some recon. Let’s go shopping, in pairs. Don’t talk to anyone, don’t ask anyone how they feel about the Arianrhod regime. Just observe. One thing we’ve been missing these several days is social interaction. We need to know better what it’s like to live in one of the arcs when you don’t know the king personally. Look for recurring tattoos, or multiple people wearing the same ribbons on their belt loops. It could be anything; just as long as it’s suspiciously prevalent, but not glaringly conspicuous. Again, do not approach anyone. We’ll report back to each other at the end of the day, and decide what to do about it tomorrow, if anything.”

They went out to look for clues, and returned that night having all noticed the same literal sign; the one for butterfly.

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Fervor: Monkey Boots (Part V)

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Hilde and I turn around when we hear people behind us. A man and woman are standing a few meters from us in the lobby. They’re wearing extremely outdated garb, and looking around. “Hello,” Hilde says, as brave as Slipstream. “This might be a strange question, but what year is this?”

The man looks at his timepiece. “We were to understand it would be 2030.”

“That’s five years in the future,” I point out.

“It would be five hundred and twelve for us.”

“You were trying to go to the future?”

“Well, we weren’t really trying,” the woman answers. “We’re salmon, so it just happens to us. The math checks out. We should have jumped today.”

“Let’s go outside,” Hilde suggests, “before the other people in this building find us.” We step out and see nothing but trees and plants. The air is crisp and fresh, completely free from human pollution. We’re standing next to a wall of lavender. “I don’t think it’s 2030, or 2025. I think you’re still in...uh”

“1518,” the woman says. “By the Julian calendar.”

“That’s exactly what year it is,” another woman says, having walked out from the building. “Who are you people?” It’s a younger version of Jesimula Utkin. Is that good or bad?

“Paige,” I respond, not wanting to antagonize her just yet, or let on that we know something about her personal future.

“Hilde.”

“Laura.”

“Samwise.”

“Samwise?” Jesimula questions? “Like in Lord of the Rings?”

“Uhuh.”

“What year are you all from?”

“2025,” Hilde says. “We hitched a ride in your magical building.

“1994, originally,” Laura answers for the two of them. “I think your building interfered with our latest attempt at a salmon jump.”

“I think your salmon jump interfered with our building,” Jesimula counters. We were trying to get to 1491.”

“I think the powers that be wanted this to happen. That explains the time pigeon we received, telling us to come to these coordinates.”

Jesmula breathes to center herself, then redirects her attention to the two of us. “What were you doing in my building?”

“We were just looking for directions. We have nothing to do with this,” I lie unconvincingly.

“That’s bullshit. If you weren’t time travelers, you would be freaking out right now. Who are you? Are you trying to stop me?”

We don’t say anything.

“Answer me!”

“Yes,” I finally say truthfully. “We’re trying to stop you. We have witnessed the future you look forward to,” I say untruthfully. There’s no reason to bring Future!Jesi into this. “It does not end well. You should return, and cancel all of your plans. Try doing something good for the world.”

“I am doing something good for the world. I have no clue what future you saw, but I assure you that I have nothing but good intentions.” She gestures to her building. “This facility is in a unique position to study diseases and potential cures across all of time and space.”

“Have you never worried about cross-contamination?” Laura asks.

“We do,” Jesi affirms. “Which is why you four being here is such a problem. You’ve breached our safety protocols. Maybe it is you who creates the virus that spreads through the future you claim to have seen.”

“We didn’t say jack about a virus,” Hilde remarks.

“I guessed, based on the purpose of my company.”

“The virus isn’t from the past, it’s from the future. Everybody’s future.”

“Are you sure?” Jesimula asked, suddenly dead serious.

“Yes.”

“Who told you this? How did they know? When in the future did it come from? Be specific.”

“We don’t have specifics,” Hilde says to her. “We can tell you only that we can’t tell you everything, because it violates a rule of time travel.”

Jesimula shakes her head. “That’s not gonna fly. You’re all going to the hock until we get this sorted out.”

“You have your own jail?” I question.

“You don’t?” she asks rhetorically.

We spend a few hours being watched in the J.U. Mithra jail cell in the basement before the ad hoc guard gets tired of it, and leaves. As soon as the door closes behind him, we hear the flapping of wings from the floor, along with bird coos. “They must be studying bird diseases, or something,” I guess.

“I don’t think that’s it,” Samwise says.

I lean forward as the flapping and cooing continue, until a bird suddenly appears from the stones, as if they were nothing more than a hologram. It nearly takes off my face as it flies around, bewildered by the abrupt emergence into close quarters.

“Catch it!” Laura whispers loudly.

I try to go for it, but it’s way too fast. Then Hilde stretches her arm out, and the thing just lands right on it, like it’s finally found home.

“Are you a wizard?” I ask her.

“I have some falconry experience, believe it or not,” she answers as she’s unraveling the note attached to the pigeon’s leg. like it’s no big deal. “Birds just know this.” She clears her throat, and reads the note, “Paige, take a picture of the wall outside the cell. What the hell?”

“Should I do it?” I survey the group. They all just shrug, so I take out my phone, and snap a photo of the wall, because it sounds innocuous. Immediately afterwards, another version of me appears in front of the wall, shocked and confused. Shocked as well, I look back down at my phone and tap the little thumbnail to open the photo I just took. I get a strange sort of burning sensation in my eyes, and then I find myself on the other side of the bars, looking at the past version of myself. I then watch as she looks down at her phone, and disappears to close the loop. “What in the world just happened?”

“Have you never done that before?” Laura asks me.

“No.”

“I thought you were a time traveler.”

“I was a stowaway. I’ve never done it myself. I didn’t know I could.”

“Hilde,” Laura says, “show her the note.”

“My God, it’s in my handwriting,” I realize when Hilde hands it to me. I flip it over. “And it’s written on the back of my receipt for coffee this morning.”

“Yikes,” Samwise says, “you just bootstrapped yourself.

“I beg your pardon, I’m fourteen.”

“No, I mean if you don’t write that note, you may inadvertently create a temporal paradox.”

“You mean another paradox,” Hilde reminded him. “The bootstrap itself is already one.”

“What boots are we talking about?” I’m getting a bit angry being left out of this.

“It’s an ontological paradox,” Hilde starts to explain. “If you write that note, then the only reason you wrote it is because you’ve seen the note come to you from the future. But the only reason the note came to you from the future is because you wrote it.”

“So...?” I ask patiently.

“So, who came up with the idea to write the note? You didn’t. You’re only gonna write it because you know you’re supposed to. There’s no actual cause. It just comes out of nowhere.”

“They do that on 12 Monkeys all the time,” I bring up. “They meet someone one day who talks about having seen them years ago, so they go back further, to that moment years ago, and meet them again...for the very first time.”

“Yes, well that works because it’s a piece of fiction,” Hilde says. “This is real life.”

“Is it, though?”

“Just write the note,” Samwise says with his foot down, “and let’s get past this.”

“Well, how do I get that pigeon back here?” I ask as I’m taking the present-day receipt out of my pocket, and starting to write the note.”

Samwise and Laura give each other this look before she starts to answer. “Okay, well, it’s a little weird—and neither of us knows why it works this way—but you have to find a podium, or a podium-like object. Then you have to stand over it, and say, if he or she does their schoolwork seriously; does well, takes school.”

“It’s not even a real sentence, but that’s what you have to say,” Samwise adds.

“It might not be a pigeon,” Laura says. “It could be an owl, or a dove, or even a finch. Any one of them can take your message to wherever and whenever you want them to.”

I look around the room. There is no podium-like thing around, and certainly no podium.

“You might have to go somewhere else,” Hilde suggests.

“No, this is stupid. I can write the note anytime. What I need to do is get you three out of there.” I look around again. “The keys are usually on a hook on the other side of the room, just outside of reach of a rope made out of clothes tied together.” As I’m scanning the walls, we hear movement on the other side of the door.

“The keys aren’t gonna be in here,” Laura warns. “But you need to go. Get yourself out. Use another picture, if you have to.”

“I’m not leaving you,” I argue.

“Paige!” Hilde starts to say, but then the guard comes back in the room. “Run! Now!”

“Hey!” the guard shouts.

I turn to run, but I don’t get far. Something pokes me in the back, and I suddenly can’t move a single muscle. My phone slips out of my hand, and I fall to the floor. All I can see is my Blue Marble homescreen. My eyes start burning again, and before I know it, I’m on the ground, outside again. The pain has subsided, and I’m able to stand back up. I get into a crouch and gather myself before looking around. I see tall buildings, and old cars driving around. The people, their clothes, and everything around me; it all just screams 1970s. At the very least, I can safely say I’m no longer in the early sixteenth century.

A woman kneels down and helps me up. “My God, are you okay?” she asks in what sounds like a British accent.

“I’m fine, I just need to get back,” I tell her as I’m scouring the ground. “My phone. Where’s my phone?”

“Back at your place, I would imagine,” the woman says. “You couldn’t take it with you.” She laughs.

“Oh crap, I wasn’t holding it. I have to be holding it!”

“Okay, it’s okay. Where are your parents? Do you know where you’re staying? I assume you’re not from South Africa?”

“This is South Africa?”

“Quite.”

“What year?”

“Paige?” I hear a sickening voice I am all too familiar with. “Is that you?”

I close my eyes, and slowly turn around, hoping this is all just a nightmare. When I open them, however, I find that it is not. It’s just my nightmare come to life. Standing before me is my awful birthmother. Behind her is my just as bad birthfather.

“It is you,” my mother says in awe. She almost looks like she’s about to break down in tears of joy, but I know her too well. 

“It’s nice to meet you,” the woman who was helping me says with her hand open. “My name is—”

“Paige Turner!” my mother scolds me, ignoring the woman. “It’s been over a year. Where the shit have you been!”

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Microstory 900: Providentials (Introduction)

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At some point many moons ago, I was sort of hurting for ideas, so I went back through my old works, trying to figure out whether I could expand on them. I wrote a couple of fables, and figured I could come up with more. I quite enjoyed writing the Perspectives series, so I decided I could revisit that concept from time to time. And I realized that I could reapply my strategy from Bellevue Profiles to a Salmonverse Profiles version, of which two have already been posted. My salmonverse canon has become so much larger than I ever thought it would, and I think the audience might benefit from a source that sums up each character’s backstory. You’ll see these all come to fruition over the next few years. I also figured I could write an expansion of my 99th microstory, 99 Problems. What a great idea, right? I’ve already told you what I hate; now I can tell you why. It just seemed so perfect since I didn’t have anything else for the 900 block. Well, then November 8, 2016 happened. One of the worst people in the history of the world was elected King Dumpster of the Divided States of Russiamerica. I was heartbroken. Not only could this administration negate everything we’ve worked so hard for over the last two billion years, but it was a testament to how many hateful people there were in the country I once thought I loved. It was extremely clear to me from the very beginning that Donald Trump was, and is, a Russian spy (we can argue semantics all you want, but if you don’t think he’s Putin’s intelligence asset, then you are not paying any goddamn attention). It seemed to take a long time for others to realize this very obvious fact, and it’s going to be even longer before all the people who either deny it today, or aren’t bothered by it, simply turn over to the sweet release of biological death. His election, however unjustified and illegal as it was, turned out to be a major wakeup call to me. This is the world we’re living in. Nazis run the U.S., the United Kingdom wants to hide away in a hole, and the future is doomed. But as time wore on with Drumpf’s first year, I started to reject these ideas. Seriously, screw that. Screw him, and screw all the negativity. I’m not going to sit back and let this happen. I’m going to fight for this planet that has been ruined by—sorry to say it—you neurotypicals. You’ve had your chance for the last couple hundred thousand years. Maybe you wanna give someone else a shot? We might surprise you, and I doubt we could do worse than the pile of crap you’ve created. Let’s start with this. I’m cancelling my 99 Problems series, and replacing it with something less negative, because that’s what we need right now. I’m going to show you that there is still good in the world, and that we can get through this. King Dumpster’s people have made one final push against the future, but they will ultimately fail. This is my contribution, as a writer...my personal list of 99 Providentials.

PS: My Dream series was longer than normal. These will probably be on the shorter side.