Microstory 915: Indoor Plumbing/Energy Grid

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I think this is something that we can all get behind. It’s pretty easy, living in the developed world, to take for granted the basic utilities to which we have access. As I know you know, there are parts of the world without these things. They walk great distances for clean water, or just water that isn’t so clean. Not everyone has electricity, or heat, or air conditioning. A lot of these people are doing fine, so I don’t want you thinking I’m saying everyone else’s lives are terrible. I remember reading about an uncontacted tribe—I believe somewhere in the Amazon, and they may not be totally uncontacted—that does as little as possible. They wake up late, hang out most of the day, and only do as much work as they need to survive. They don’t have plumbing or energy, and it doesn’t seem to bother them. I’m not here to say that it’s unreasonable to want to return to a time before these things. In the future of my stories, you’ll see a sliding scale of technology in the world. Some will embrace amazing advances, even going so far as to upgrade their bodies to nonorganic substrates. There will be those, however, who would prefer to live without these amenities. There will be people who fall somewhere in between these two extremes. And for the most part, that will be okay. The only time the governing system should step in is if these people begin to needlessly damage the ecosystem with their way of life. We’ll let them live like nomads or pioneers, but we’re not gonna let them tear down forests for farms. And we’ll let nonorganics build superstructures, but they better be taller than they are wide. I’ve recently signed up for a special renewable energy program. Even though renewable energy sources do not exist in my area, I do pay for it. For every bit of energy I use, my bill goes towards offsetting my carbon footprint by providing wind power in regions where the infrastructure has already begun. There are still some major developments we need to make in that infrastructure, and in efficiency, but I wanted to take a moment to appreciate how nice it is to flip the lightswitch on in my home, and be fairly certain that the lights will turn on. Please note that KC Power & Light has, in recent years, been experiencing frustrating power outages. It all comes down to how much the growing population is taxing the system. What we need are microgrids, and personal renewable equipment, but that’s a story for another day.

Microstory 914: My Dogs

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I thought I had told you this story before, but I guess not. A few weeks before my sixteenth birthday, my parents told me that they would need me for a trip over the weekend. My aunt was in the market for a new (old) car, but was in Spain at the time, and unable to look for one herself. She liked a particular kind at the time, and I know next to nothing about cars, so I wasn’t fazed when they claimed the one they found was hundreds of miles away in Minnesota. I remember telling my whole health class about the upcoming road trip, for some reason, as dull as I assumed it would be. We stayed one night in a hotel, and then drove out to the farm in the morning, where the car was supposedly waiting. My dad said he wanted to speak with the seller, so my mom and I waited in the car. A few minutes later, he walked back out of the barn with a man, who was holding a smol puppy in his arms. Once I was out of the car, he offered to let me hold her, which I gladly accepted. Only then did my parents reveal that this was my dog. She was a nine-week-old American Foxhound, and the most beautiful creature I had seen in my life. The whole thing about the car was a total lie; a ruse to get me up there. On the way back home, my dad handed me a list of French names, and suggested I take one from it, since I was studying French at the time. I chose Sophie, because I was also into philosophy back then. I kept that girl for almost ten years before we lost her to the evil of Billy Rubin, and I’ve never forgiven time for taking her away from me. I miss you, Sophie Love Highfill.

Cut to nearly five years later when I’m finally ready for a new dog. I have my own house, with a huge backyard, and a nice deck. While there are fences surrounding most of the property, they’re not the kinds we want, so we decided to contract a new one. It took my family and me months to prepare for the new pup. We had to clean up the yard, hire someone to remove a few trees, and totally rearrange the first floor of my house. I got rid of the giant dining table, and moved my TV into the dining room, because that’s where the door to the deck is. We bought kennels, and a cage, and a doghouse, and food and water bowls, and everything else the dog would need. I also spent a lot of time trying to come up with a good name for her, ultimately settling on Daisy Quake; after a character in one of our favorite television series, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. On the fourth day of July of this year, my dad and I drove to the other side of Missouri to pick up the six-week-old English Coonhound. I chose her because, while her brothers and sisters were clamoring for attention, she was just chilling in their huge doghouse. As it turns out, she was probably just tired at the moment, because she’s an energetic wild one in real life. She jumps, bites, wrestles, and plays tug-o-war. And I love her just as much as I did Sophie. I regret all the time I didn’t take to spend with my first dog, and I’m determined to not make that mistake again. I never did say that these 99 things that I love are in a randomized order. If they weren’t, my dogs and my family would be tied for first place.

Microstory 913: Blood/Organ Donation

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When I was getting my first driver’s license, someone at the DMV was explaining to me what it meant to be an organ donor, and acting as if I had a choice. It was years before I started realizing that there are actually a fair number of people who choose to not be donors, which perplexes me. Why would you not want that? My instinct was that the majority of them are religious, and believe giving away parts of their former bodies is somehow going to hurt their conditions in the magical flying spaghetti monsterland, or wherever it is they think they’re going for chanting nonsense once a week. As it turns out, religion is a common reason people have in favor of becoming donors. So maybe it’s that many are so spiteful and misanthropic that, in one final middle finger to the world, they’re going to make sure their deaths lead to nothing good. Eh, those kinds of people aren’t as plentiful as it might seem. The truth is that there are many other reasons to check the wrong box. People get a lot of their education from glamorized television; this case being medical dramas. The rumor is that a doctor won’t save your life if your organs can be donated. This absurdity relies on the doctor making a choice between yours, and someone else’s life. What do you suppose the criteria are, and what makes you think you wouldn’t win? This is also related to a mistrusts in doctors, and medical science as a whole.  I guess I get that to some extent, because I’ve never met a doctor that I liked. But while there are outliers, every single one of them in the Western world took some modern form of the Hippocratic oath, and that’s not something to be ignored. The fact is that you don’t need your heart and kidneys after death, so there is no legitimate reason to try to literally take them to your grave. I do want to speak on some related issues that need to be addressed. As medical science improves, and life comes with more safety protocols, we face an even greater shortage of viable donors. People are living longer, and more easily surviving physical traumas, which means there are fewer to go around. And while this often means treatment can exclude the necessity of an organ transplant, it doesn’t preclude it entirely. We still need them, and you can help. In the future, we’ll be able to print organs in a medical synthesizer, using cells harvested from the patient themselves, to avoid any compatibility issues. But until then, do one thing for me; check that donation consent box. God forbid you die, but if you ever do, you could save up to eight lives, and improve the lives of a hundred more. And look at it this way, if you end up donating everything possible, you’ll be put to rest seven pounds* lighter than you were when you died.

*The totality of the organs you’re capable of donating upon death actually adds up to less than four pounds, but your scale is broken anyway, right? How do I do a winky face?

Microstory 912: Fandom

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I have mixed feelings about this topic. On the one hand, I love that people love to love things, but I think they can take it a bit too far. Back in the day, men were allowed to like sports, boobs, explosions, and more sports. Women were allowed to like horses, and making sure my dinner was ready by 5:15. These days, it’s cool to like comic books and video games, and it’s not really cool to like those traditional things. I take issue with this too, because while the jocks ruled the school of yesterday, the nerds run the show now. There’s just as much judgment and animosity as there was before, but now with different divisions of people. I admit that this is getting better already, with the mini-generation after millennials basically not caring what anyone does, as long is it doesn’t negatively impact the world. I also think there is quite a bit of materialism going on, even more than there used to be. Man, my goal of being more positive for this series isn’t going all that, is it? I’ll do better next time. For now, I want to talk about all the stuff. Major content creators make more money off of merchandise than they could ever hope to make from the source material. Why is that? Why do full-grown adults find satisfaction from owning an action figure, while doing nothing with it but set it on a shelf. Or they own so much of this crap, they can’t even display it all. Do you not find that absurd? Exactly how many plush porgs do you need? If you’re about to look around the room and count your porgs, don’t bother. The answer is a hard zero. I’m all for expressing your love for whatever, but there’s a way to do it without losing half your income. You need a cup to put your drinks in, so buy a cup with some insider quote from your favorite show, like “I’m the one who knocks” or “time out on this game of thrones; I need to pee!”. You need a bag to carry your essentials, so that one works out as well. But all these little stickers, trinkets, figurines, and costumes you never wear; it’s all just useless junk to which one of two things will happen. Either you’ll die, and burden your family with all that stuff you overestimated how much they would want, or you’ll become immortal, your priorities will shift, and you’ll wish you didn’t have it anymore. And you won’t be able to sell it, because guess what, everyone around you feels the same way. So now the world is down in resources, but up in full-sized pokeballs. Like I said, it’s all about priorities. If you have some disposable income to burn on a real 1940s police box, why not instead give that money to charity? You’re not gonna make me feel bad about trying to make you feel bad for wasting your money on a sonic screwdriver that stopped making noise after a week.

Microstory 911: Outdoor Activities

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I hate sportsball. I hate football, I hate North American football, I hate baseball, I hate basketball. It would be easier for me to tell you which sports I like than which ones I don’t, because I don’t like any of them, so none. I do not, however, hate outdoor activities. I would certainly never want to watch someone else participate in one, but I enjoy them myself. When I was a boy scout, we would go on a camping trip pretty much every month. During the eight years I was involved, I can probably count on two hands the number of these trips that I missed; perhaps even one hand. Sometimes it was just all about tenting and cobbler, but we also went for specific things. We would always go on a bike ride in the fall. We would go to the slopes for skiing and snowboarding sometime in the deep winter. I didn’t think I would like skiing, since I’m afraid of heights and high speeds, and cold weather, but I got pretty comfortable with it. One time, I spontaneously belted out the Star-Spangled Banner when the other scouts were being particularly rambunctious in the cabins the night before. They must have thought I was meant to do that, because no one made a peep the rest of the night. It probably wouldn’t have been as fun if we had been too tired the next day. I especially enjoyed the canoe trips. I could paddle down a river for an entire day, across multiple days, if given the opportunity. Of course, there were also hiking and backpacking trips. My dad and I went down to backpack in the Arkansas hills with a small group, and one in the mountains of New Mexico that lasted longer than a week, and also involved horseback riding. My favorite trip was Seabase. We spent a week on a tiny Florida Key that was designated just for us. I experienced zero problems the whole time, developed a profound fondness for the mysterious deep, and uncovered inspiration for what I thought for years would be my first novel. I miss most of those things today, and wish there was an adult form of scouting that coordinates similar trips. Maybe there is, and I just haven’t really been looking. I suppose the closest thing to that would be Meet Up, but I feel like I’ve tried that. I guess I can try harder.

The Advancement of Leona Matic: September 16, 2193

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Darrow looked the four of them over, like a man with new money on the hunt for the most stylish motorcycle he can find, with no plans to ever ride the thing. He stopped at Brooke. “Transhuman, but weakened. Your body won’t be able to take much more stress. You will die one day.” He stopped at Vitalie. “A spirit walker, interesting. But you also jump through time.” He looked between her and Leona, and back again, over to Ecrin, and then back at Vitalie. The he stepped away to get a look at all three of them. “In fact, you all possess the same temporal pattern. What’s happened here?”

“Someone transplanted my bone marrow to the other two,” Leona began to explain, “to trap them in my pattern. Brooke can’t experience nonlinear time, so they put her in that pod.”

“Fascinating,” he said in an attempt to mimic Mr. Spock’s voice.

“We need to draw up a contract,” Ecrin said reluctantly.

“Against the person who did this to you, I presume,” Darrow guessed.

“Yes, but not for doing that. She’s a warlord, and a mass murderer.”

“A warlord and a mass murder? I think I’m in love,” he joked.

“Will you do it, or not?” Ecrin was not happy about having to ask him for anything.

“I’ll kill anyone you want, love,” he said. “I would do anything for you; you know that. The question is not whether I’ll take the contract, but if you’re willing to go that far.”

“This won’t be the first time I had to get in bed with the devil,” Ecrin confessed. “Not literally,” she felt the need to add when she saw how the other three looked at her.

“No,” Darrow confirmed. “But we’re a better team than she would care to admit. You see, I’m what some might call an antivillain. I’m more bad than good, but I’m also necessary. This is a perfect example. None of you wants me to kill this person, but you know it has to be done.”

“But you don’t know that,” Leona pointed out. “You took the job without any details.”

“I trust Miss Cardoso’s judgment. If she says kill, I kill.”

“Miss Who?” Leona questioned.

“Uhh...it was an alias,” Ecrin said quickly. “He doesn’t need to know my real name, though.”

Darrow smirked slowly. “I know more about you than you think, Ecrin Leyla Cabral.” He clapped his hands. “Now, you said something about a weird timeline. What’s the deal with that?”

“It’s Ulinthra. Have you ever heard of her?” Vitalie asked.

Darrow had to think about it for a moment. “The Rewinder, yes. She disappeared in 2022.”

“Well, she’s back, and she’s taking over the world,” Vitalie explained.

“Oh, that’s why you want her dead. World domination is sort of my thing, but I can dig it. I imagine you don’t want me doing it just whenever, because she can see the future.”

“We have a system,” Vitalie said proudly. “It involves a penny.”

“We flip it every day that we’re in the timestream,” Brooke continued. “Theoretically, half the time, we’re flipping it differently than we did the first time around. It decides how we proceed. And as you know, we only exist one day out of the year, so you would have to do it one of those days.”

“Fifty percent ain’t great odds,” Darrow noted.

“Can you do better?” Brooke asked him.

“I can’t increase your odds,” Darrow said, “but I can keep you out of it. Protecting my clients from consequences comes with every package. You want to keep her followers from coming after you, you best have me do this while you’re not in the timestream, so your trail goes cold for a whole year.”

“That...” Ecrin trailed off for a moment. “...sounds uncharacteristically nice of you.”

“You may be the immortal one,” Darrow started, “but I’m also immortal, and I’ve changed since we last saw each other. I’m sure you can relate. I’ll take care of your problem, shield you from blowback, and get you back to your lives.”

“What’s the cost?” Leona asked, knowing there would be one, and assuming it would be nothing as pedestrian as money.

“I’ll have to think it over,” Darrow said. “I shall return next year. I like to have multiple meetings about one contract anyway. I would rather you back out before we sign than sign too quickly, and regret it.”

The next year, Leona called Ulinthra to ask for their synthesizers back. She was just doing it to open Schrödinger’s box, but much to her surprise, Ulinthra agreed to it. She did so a little too hurriedly, though, so Leona guessed that she was preoccupied. This made sense considering that her entire point of being was not to make Leona and her friends’ lives hell, but to wage war against the establishment. While she up until that point could set aside one day to devote to them, she must have been too busy today. At first Leona thought that was a good thing, but then started to doubt it.

“Are we ready to flip?” Vitalie asked.

“I’m not so sure you should,” Leona said, still working the problem in her head.

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“It’s hard to explain, but you heard, that conversation was real quick.”

“So?” Vitalie asked. “Quantum mechanics operates at planck time.”

Leona looked at her funny.

“Sometimes I read from your electronic book,” Vitalie said.

“Well, technically a particle needs virtually no time to choose its path, but we’re not dealing with subatomic particles. Our decisions are based on much broader differences that I don’t feel we have. I believe the conversation we’re having right now is fundamentally identical to the one we had in the prior timeline. I don’t feel comfortable testing that, especially not since Darrow is scheduled to fix it for us sometime this year.”

A defiant Vitalie flipped her penny anyway. “Tails. You win.”

Leona cleared her throat, but said nothing else.

“Do we have to do the cloak and dagger thing again?” Brooke asked Ecrin after an awkward silence.

“That was just to contact him. He said he’d be here, so he’ll come on his own. If he doesn’t, it means he’s rejected our proposal, for whatever reason, or he’s dead.”

“Not yet,” Darrow said from a dark corner.

“How long have you been there?” Ecrin demanded to know with a little too much fervor.

“Only long enough to hear half of your last sentence. Calm down.”

“Have you come up with your price?” Leona asked, like an intern preparing to go out and get everyone’s coffee orders.

“I have,” Darrow replied. “I’ve just spent the last seven years thinking it over, and I believe I’m ready to be done.”

“Done with what?”

“Everything,” he said. “Life. I want you to kill me.”

“Well, why wouldn’t you just—” Vitalie began to ask

“Is this one of those things where you’re immortal, except for one weakness, so you need someone’s help with it?” Leona posited.

“Yes,” Ecrin answered for him somberly.

“What’s the weakness?” Brooke asked.

“I need to be, uhh...” he hesitated.

“We’re all adults here,” Brooke said. “Except maybe Vitalie.”

“Hey.”

“I have to be dismembered, and burned separately, with my ashes sent to the four corners of the Earth.”

“Is that it?” Ecrin asked. “We can do that.”

“Ecrin,” Leona gently scolded, but only because she agreed to it too earnestly.

“Sorry, but I’m a centuries old career law enforcement officer. I don’t have the same kind of hangups with killing as you.”

“I know, and I’m inclined to agree to this as well,” Leona said, trying to explain herself, “but maybe we could stand to be a little cautious.”

“I won’t be a part of killing anyone,” Brooke said quietly.

“What?” Vitalie asked.

“I won’t kill anyone, even indirectly.”

“We all agreed to this,” Ecrin pointed out.

“I didn’t agree to shit,” Brooke reminded them. “I was grounded when you met with the resistance group.”

“The who?” Darrow asked.

“This has to happen,” Vitalie argued.

“Does it?” Brooke asked.

“Vitalie, it’s okay that she doesn’t want this.”

“No, it’s not,” Vitalie became more defensive. “Brooke you have it worst of all. We three are on a salmon pattern, but you’re sick. She freaking poisoned you. I can’t believe you’re being like this. You should want her dead more than any of us.”

“What can I say? I’m just not that violent of a person,” Brooke said.

“You used to fly a warship,” Darrow said to her.

“What are you talking about?” Brooke asked him. “No, I didn’t.”

Darrow swallowed. “Oh. What year is it again?”

“Brooke,” Vitalie continued, “you are either wankru, or you are enemy—”

“Enough with the references!” Brooke showed more emotion than she had in a long time, and to a higher degree than Leona had probably ever seen. “I watched that show! That girl went crazy and nearly wiped out the human race! I’m not your enemy, and I am not going to kill anyone. Those are not mutually exclusive.” She stood up, and retrieved the hover sled from its closet.

“What are you doing?” Leona asked her.

“I’m leaving,” Brooke said simply.

“I don’t think Ulinthra would want us to do that,” Ecrin said.

“Well, fortunately you’re about to kill her, so I won’t really have to worry about that much longer, will I?” Brooke pulled the sled over, and tried to pull her stasis pod onto it.

“That’s what this is about, isn’t it?” Vitalie asked.

Brooke continued to struggle with the heavy pod. “What are you trying to say to me?”

“Ulinthra is the only one with the permanent cure to whatever it is she gave you to make you sick. You can’t let her die, or you die,” Vitalie hypothesized.

Brooke stopped trying. “That’s absurd. I would never interfere with our plans to end this for selfish gains. Not once have I indicated that I would do something like that, and we’ve been trying for days.”

“Yes, but always to know avail,” Vitalie said, almost like she was accusing Brooke of something.

Brooke narrowed her eyes and stepped towards Vitalie, who drew back in fear. “Darrow.”

“Yes, Miss Prieto?” Darrow stood up straight, ready to serve.

“Please help me get my pod on the sled and escort me to a vacant unit. I’m not as strong as I once was.”

“Of course, right away.” For a killer, he was rather accommodating and pleasant.

“You can return when we’re finished and iron out the details of your evil master plan.”

“Brooke,” Leona tried to reason, “don’t do this. We have to stick together.”

“Do we?” Brooke asked rhetorically.

Darrow followed Brooke out of the apartment with her pod. He returned a few hours later with news that Ulinthra had learned of the separation, and had no intention of punishing them for it. She also showed no signs of having discovered Darrow to be involved at all, so at least they had their secret weapon. They worked out the details, and settled on a plan for Darrow to fulfill his contract about six weeks from now, to avoid any suspicion about their involvement. When the time skippers jumped back into the timestream in 2194, they learned that Darrow was dead...and Ulinthra was not.

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Fervor: Swingin’ on the Flippity-flop (Part VII)

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I’m about to get myself as far from the temple as I can when I remember that I never did send that time pigeon to my past self. I’m meant to summon one to me using a special phrase, spoken over a podium, and surely this place has one. I sneak in the building, fearful that a mormon is about to catch me. I’m not worried they’ll kick me out for trespassing; I’m worried they’ll try to convert me. I saw the Book of Mormon, I know how this works. I see several people walking the halls as I’m slinking around, and a few of them notice me, but none of them bothers me, which is a great relief. I make my way to the sanctuary, or whatever it is they call their worship space. Thank Lord Xenu no one’s in here, because I’m about to do something strange.

I stand at the podium, but take a moment to recall the words that Laura taught me. I take one more look around, before repeating the line, “if he or she does their schoolwork seriously; does well, takes school.” A pigeon appears literally out of nowhere, and waits patiently for me on the podium. I remove the coffee receipt from my pocket, and prepare to write a note to myself. I can’t remember exactly what I read before, but that’s probably for the best. It’ll be more natural if I just write what I feel. Paige, take a photo of the wall outside of the cell. There, that’s both cryptic and clear. I tie the note to the pigeon’s leg, and shove it into the air. It disappears through a portal.

I hear the sound of papers falling to the floor, and look over to see a man wearing a white button-up shirt and black tie, staring at me in awe. He falls to his knees. “It’s a miracle,” he exclaims. “You have returned as proof.”

I walk down the steps, and approach him, and he bows his head. “Stand, my child.”

He stands up, and regards me with reverence and admiration. “Are you a new prophet?”

“Let me see your phone.”

“My phone?”

“Yes, your phone.” I’m using a gliding voice to impersonate this holy creature he believes I am. “Did you take any photographs earlier today?”

“I...I did. You know this.”

Closed time loops are confusing and dangerous things, but if the man says he’s seen me, then I better go prove him right. I have him open his camera roll, and show me the latest one. “Why did you take a picture of a stump?”

“The workers were meant to remove the whole tree,” he answers. “I was planning to send it as proof that they did not complete the job.”

I make my eyes burn, and travel into the photograph, back in time a few hours. I’m standing on the trunk, arms outstretched like a welcoming messiah. The man from the future drops his arms down in shock. “How did you do that?”

“You will drive me downtown,” I order him.

He has so many questions for me, but I just tell him that he will understand everything when he is ready. I make him buy me a burner phone, then take me back to J.U. Mithra Labs, which has not yet slid back to the 15th century. Someone’s left a window on the second floor in full view, and if I were more like this guy, I would pray that no one was in that room. “You’ve been trained how to spread the good word?” I ask him as I take a quick photo of the window.

He stutters a bit. “Uh...yes, I’ve memorized thirty percent—”

“I don’t care about that. Just go in there and try to get whoever you see to accept Jesus Christ into their hearts, or whatever. Be as loud as you can. We want the whole building coming down to hear what you have to say.”

“Yes, prophet, he says. Then he eagerly leaves the car, not even asking what I’m going to do.

I take one last look at the window, only to see myself up there, giving me a salute. “This is going to have to take some getting used to. First order of business once this is all finished is finding a way to store in one place every single photo that has ever been taken, or will be taken, in the history of mankind, so I can go when and wherever I want withing running into myself. Shouldn’t be too hard.

As the mormon—which I think he probably doesn’t want me to call him—is providing a nice distraction, I lean against the wall, and jump through the photo I took moments ago. I then step over to the window, and give Past!Me a salute. Then I hide out there for the rest of day. Just before the building goes back in time, I take one last photo of a strip of shops in the distance.

I’m about to go down and free my friends from the basement hock, but then I remember that this did not happen in the original history. I have to preserve the timeline as much as possible. In fact, I may not be able to change the past at all, no matter what I do. Maybe my life has all been written, and I’m just fulfilling my destiny, with free will being nothing more than an illusion. Armed with these deep existential ponderances, I wait out there for another couple hours, surprised with every passing minute that I go unnoticed. But then someone comes in.

It’s a security guard, but not the same one. He sizes me up real quick, then hands me his electroprojectile gun.

“What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Protect yourself,” he says, as if I should already know.

“Why would you help me?”

He takes a mobile device from his pocket, and shows it to me. “This is live security feed from the basement. There are your friends, and here you are on the outside of the bars. Don’t worry, I’ll erase this, but you might want to get back down and free them soon. I’ll escort you down there.”

“Again, why are you helping me?” I ask him as I’m following.

“I had a partner once; Kolby Morse. He went to work for the good guys, and I chose the bad guys.”

“It sounds like you regret it,” I say once we’ve reached the bottom of the stairs.

He shakes his head, and points to a door on the other side of the hallway. “I don’t at all. I’m deep undercover.”

People keep helping me, as if they have foreknowledge of my future. The mormon, I guess, actually did have such knowledge, but who is this guy? And who was the man who gave me the telescope picture? I don’t have much time to think about it. I hear the first guard shout, “hey!” to a past version of me. As I’m opening the door, I see myself fall drop my phone, and crumple to the floor. Then I pixelate and disappear, on my way back to 1972. The guard is staring at me in shock, so before he has time to figure out what to do, I raise the gun, and shoot him in the chest, to give him a taste of his own medicine. I then notice a tiny little screen on the back of the weapon, and discover that there are two kinds of projectiles. I switch it to the tranquilizer darts, so I can put him down without him causing any more problems for awhile.

“It’s been ages for me,” I say to my friends as I’m removing keys from the guard’s belt. You’ll never guess where I’ve been.”

“Well, we’ve just been here,” Laura says, “swingin’ on the flippity-flop.”

“Doing what on the what?” I ask.

“Never mind.”

I unlock the gate for them after only a few tries. Why are they still using physical keys when everyone has a perfectly good phone? “Come on. I took a picture of the future, so we can all get out of here.” I open the photo of downtown Independence, and hold it up in front of us, like I’m taking a selfie.

“Wait,” Laura stops me. “This might not work for us.”

“Yeah,” Samwise agrees. “The powers that be have a plan, and they may not let us out of our time period, until it’s...time.”

“You have to promise,” Laura says out of concern. “Promise that you won’t come back for us if it doesn’t work. We belong here.”

“It’ll work, so we won’t have to worry about it,” I say dismissively, and raise my arm again.

“Just promise,” Samwise insisted.

“I promise. Now let’s go before they send someone else.”

They were totally right. Despite the fact that Laura and Samwise were between me and Hilde, the latter is the only one who manages to come through with me. I wasn’t even touching her at the time. The evil group of unseen overseers have too much control over time and space. After we take of this Jesimula Utkin problem, I intend to go after them next.

“You’re back,” the mormon boy declares. Goddamn, is this guy in every one of my pictures, or what? “Did I do well?”

“You did it perfectly,” I say in my prophet voice. “Now do one more thing for me.”

“Anything, mistress,” the creeper says.

“Take off that outfit...not literally” I cry as he immediately starts trying to remove his clothes.

“I just mean stop being a mormon, because the religion is total garbage.”

“What should I believe instead?”

“There’s only one real higher power in the whole universe,” I announce, starting to drop my persona.

“And what is that?” he asks.

“Yeah, what is it?” Hilde asks.

I snap a pic of the empty lot in the distance where the laboratory once stood. “Time.” Hilde and I look at the photo, and teleport back to the parking lot, where our friends are standing around. They look lost and confused. “It’s a long story,” I say to them. “But we’re back, and we have some pretty good intel.”

“Story?” Leona asks.

“Intel?” Slipstream asks.

“Who are you people?” Hogarth asks.

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Microstory 910: Croissants and Mandarin Oranges

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This is a funny one, because we all have our favorite foods, but we don’t all have the same ones. Up until now, my entries have been conceptually applicable to anyone, or everyone. Even my Stargate story was about how important fiction is to me, and every nonsociopath has something like that. This one is just about my favorite foods, and how my tastes have changed over time. I was eating a croissant sandwich a couple weeks ago when I realized it’s probably my favorite food of all. I like most types of bread, but this one is the best. That same sandwich made me sick yesterday, yet I had one at a different place for lunch not two hours prior to writing this. I also have to consider mandarin oranges as my favorite fruit. It’s less sour than other citrus, and softer, so it’s easier to eat. I guess that’s a big thing for me. I tend to stay away from difficult foods, because no food is good enough to be worth exerting the calories you gain from consuming it. Aside from these two things, I’m also known for being a huge fan of chocolate. I keep a lot of protein bars in my diet, and nearly all of them include some form of chocolate. I’m also a famous chicken-eater, but that won’t always be the case, because I will, at some point in the future, become vegetarian. Further in the future, we’ll synthesize food in 3D printers, and we’ll eat bars packed with every daily nutrient the average human being requires, accompanied by little tabs that you place on your tongue to alter flavor as desired. Further in the future, though, the majority of us will likely be nonorganic; at least I will. We will accumulate energy from our environment, like solar and wind power, and more exotic forms of energy generation and storage, that we can’t even begin to explain nowadays. I look forward to this future, because as much as I love the sensation of eating croissants and mandarin oranges, nothing compares to the satisfaction of being able to subsist without them. Satisfunction; a new word for your personal dictionary. Excuse me while I take a break from writing to put mandarin oranges back on my monthly grocery list.