Microstory 936: Douglas Adams

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My sister gave me the book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy for my eighteenth birthday, just in time to see the film adaptation in theatres before it disappeared. For some strange reason, I liked science, and I liked fiction, but I didn’t seem to seek out a lot of science fiction. At the time, I didn’t watch Star Trek, Stargate, or similar franchises. I had heard of Douglas Adams books, but didn’t think I would enjoy them. They have since become my favorite books. The summer after graduating from high school, I went off to volunteer at a farm in Ceres, California. One of the first questions the fellow volunteer who drove me there from the airport asked me was whether I liked to read. I said that I didn’t, because it was true. But I still had four more Hitchhiker’s books to read, so I wasn’t going to let a little thing like my own personality stop me. We were given a break sometime later, and decided to take a weekend trip to San Francisco, which was where I bought the rest of the series. I was so fascinated by the brilliant writing that I couldn’t put them down but to work, eat, and sleep. I was even that weird guy at the party who went there with a book, which confused everyone who had learned that I was not much of a reader. This was the same party, by the way, that inspired some of the details of the story in my Dreams series called Man Planes, God Laughs. As I’ve worked tirelessly on my craft, and my canon, I’ve drawn inspiration from a number of sources, mostly television, but Douglas Adams books are part of that too. I love his wit, and I try to emulate it whenever I’m writing something humorous, or even just a little lighter. There’s that hypothetical question about which historical figure from all of time you would most like to meet, and Douglas Adams is my answer. Rest in peace, Mr. Adams. You were taken from us too soon.

The Advancement of Leona Matic: September 21, 2198

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In one of the other timelines, a bad Horace Reaver formulated a plan to capture Mateo Matic, whom he considered to be his archrival, once and for all. After years of trying to track his movements, he was finally sure of where Mateo would reappear in the timestream after an interim year, within a couple dozen meters. He was also in the right position to purchase the entire chunk of land, so when Mateo did come back, he would do so right in a trap. While his plan ultimately failed, due to a number of unforeseen traitors, Horace was confident he would be able to employ the same strategy again, but make it work this time. This he explained to Leona Matic, who was meant to be in a relationship with Mateo. But this was a new timeline, and something had happened that had somehow prevented Leona from remembering him. The name sounded familiar, like that of an actor you know you’ve seen in a number of films and series, but cannot identify a single one at the moment. His name elicited a response of love and connection that Leona could not explain. Someone had messed with reality, and her memories of it. Unfortunately, this was not the time to deal with it. Right now, they needed to put Ulinthra and her plans to rest, and Horace’s idea was exactly what she was hoping for. It had even worked.

Horace let Leona sleep after she came back in 2198, because there wasn’t anything they needed from her. Once she was awake, he proudly marched her into the interrogation room he had commissioned two months ago after he and the whole world had finally located Ulinthra’s whereabouts. Ulinthra came back a week before Leona did, showing that the time-skipping pattern was wearing off. “Don’t worry,” Horace said. “This is Round Two of today, and you did not speak with her the first time around. Everything you say to her now will be just as unpredictable for her as any normal human conversation.” He looked towards the glass, and flipped on the lights inside, which illuminated Ulinthra on the other side. She was not only in a different room, but also locked in another confinement chamber, as if Hannibal Lecter. “She has lost all of her leverage.”

“So you didn’t find what I described?” Leona asked him.

“They’re still looking. No one else knows what it can do.” His eyeballs fluttered to Ulinthra, then back to Leona. “Not even her, I presume.”

Leona took a breath. “I never told her. At least I have no memory of telling her.”

Horace nodded in understanding.

“I’m kind of surprised she’s still alive, though. Lots of people have it out for her, not the least of which is you.”

“It wasn’t hard to keep the radicals at bay. Capital punishment was outlawed everywhere decades ago, which surprises me, but it did make it easier to keep Ulinthra safe. I don’t want her dead. She’s the only one of my kind.”

“Yet, you..” Leona trailed off.

“...would do anything for you,” Horace completed her sentence for her. “I’m not like this Ace you told me about. “While I’m no longer the antagonist, I’m still a villain. If I weren’t going to die anyway, it would probably be in your best interests to kill me after her.”

“Why would you die at all? We have this figured out. Everything in the other time branch happened just as it did before. The Arborist was wrong; we didn’t create a paradox. You don’t have to go back.”

Horace smiled kindly. “That’s not it.” He was going to continue, but was accidentally interrupted.

“Is anyone going to come talk to me, or what?” Ulinthra asked from her cell. “Let’s get this enhanced interrogation party started!”

Horace scoff-laughed. “It’s nice to be on this side of a prison cube.”

“Yeah,” Leona smiled coyly. “I see you used a similar design. Maybe you need to talk to a professional about your hang-ups.” She gave him a wink.

“I love you,” Leona thought Horace whispered, but she couldn’t be certain. She decided to not embarrass him by pushing the issue. “I mean, I’ll be right here.”

Leona nodded. “Horace, if everything goes according to our absolutely insane plan, I’m going to need you more than ever. I won’t be able to help tomorrow.”

“I won’t let you down,” Horace said to her, wiping a tear from his cheek. “Not this time.”

“Thank you,” Leona said solemnly. Then she opened the door and went into the other room.

“Ah,”  Ulinthra said. “I thought it might be your day, but I lose track of time in here. They’ve got some system going. I know that my days are resetting, just like always, but they make it hard to see it. That’s a form of torture. Guiltless Leona of yesterday would not approve.”

“I wasn’t here yesterday,” Leona said, knowing full well that Ulinthra was using the term in a more general sense.

Ulinthra tried to hide a smile. “Funny. I do want to extend my congratulations. Clever recruiting Horace Reaver. I would have thought of that, but I wouldn’t think you would have thought of it. I’m impressed.”

“I appreciate your support. You know why I’m here?”

“For the first time in my life, I do not,” Ulinthra answered.

“You stole something from me, years ago. I want it back.”

Ulinthra tilted her head to think. “I stole many things. I stole a planet from its peoples. I stole the lives of people you loved. I stole the hearts of my loyalists. But I don’t think I stole anything that I could ever give back.”

“This was literal.”

Ulinthra thought some more. It didn’t seem like a game. She genuinely might not have known what Leona was talking about. “I’m afraid I legit don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“My family heirloom.”

“Oh, that sword thing? The glass sword?”

“It’s a dagger, and it means a great deal to me.”

“Okay...sorry? I don’t know what you want me to say. I tossed it a long time ago, I think in a swamp. I don’t really remember, it meant nothing to me.”

Leona studied Ulinthra’s face for a moment. “Nah, you didn’t throw it out. It intrigued you, and you could tell that it was special.”

“It is—I mean was? What does it do?”

Leona needed a lie that was believably interesting. Ulinthra needed to feel like it allowed her to maintain leverage over Leona, but still consider giving it up for the right price. It was a good thing that Leona and Vitalie had spent last night thinking of a good one. “It removes your time powers...or pattern, depending on what subspecies you are.”

It was working. Ulinthra leaned back to see if she believed it. “A stabby thing that takes away powers?”

“Think of it as...a prototype for The Warrior’s Sword of Assimilation,” Leona explained. “It can’t transfer powers, but it can take take ‘em out.”

“It does look old, like it could have been one of The Weaver’s early inventions.”

Leona nodded slightly, and consistently.

“But no, I’m not buyin’ it.”

Leona closed her eyes in exasperation. “I am tired. You may enjoy rewinding your days, but I can’t do that. I was blessed with suck, and I want it gone.”

“Why didn’t you use it before?” Ulinthra questioned. “It’s unlikely I stole it just after you received it.”

“Actually it wasn’t all that long after, but that wasn’t why I hadn’t tried it yet. First of all, it doesn’t work alone. It’s one of two ingredients,” Leona continued to lie. “The other is easy to come by, but I just hadn’t gotten a chance yet. I have what I need now.”

“And second of all?” Ulinthra waited.

“Secondly, it’s a dagger. I wasn’t relishing the idea of stabbing myself with it. It requires something bigger than a wee papercut, but not so damaging that I can’t heal. If I just wanted to kill myself to end it all, I would have used any other dagger.”

“I see.” Ulinthra definitely believed the lie now. “What’s the second ingredient; the thing that makes the dagger work?”

“I’m withholding that. You need to tell me where it is.”

“No,” Ulinthra said firmly. “I don’t need my powers gone, I don’t care what happens to yours, and as long as I’m stuck in here, I can’t use it to control my enemies.”

“This feels like a classic impasse,” Leona said. “I can’t let you go until you give me the dagger, and you can’t use the dagger unless I give the other ingredient. The difference between you and me, however, is this barrier between us, and who’s on which side of it. I also have time. You’ll rot in here for years before I get the hankering for Chinese food again. I can wait.”

Ulinthra laughed abruptly, and loudly. “You don’t even know why that’s funny, because you don’t remember—”

“Mateo Matic?” Leona took a guess.

“So you do remember.”

“I remember...” Leona paused for effect, “that I know people with powers. Your problem is that you relied too heavily on yourself. You didn’t make any friends. I don’t have that problem, so when I asked my mind-reader buddy for a favor, he just did it. I don’t even owe him one.” She looked over at the glass, on the other side of which no one was standing, but Horace Reaver. “He’s just standing over there, getting ready to tell me where the dagger is. All I needed was for you to think about it in your brain.” Leona tapped on her own temple, again for effect.

“What? No, you’re lying.”

Leona shrugged. “Maybe I am, but you’ll die in here, never knowing for sure.”

Suddenly, there was gunfire on the other side of the door. Leona jumped out of her chair, and slinked back in fear. Ulinthra was noticeably frightened as well, because she didn’t yet know if this was a good thing or not. The firefight stopped, replaced with a grinding sound as someone was cutting through the wall with a laser. Once they were all the way through, people with guns slipped inside. One of them raised his weapon, and shot Leona right in the stomach.

“Oh my God!” Ulinthra cried as she watched Leona fall to the floor.

Leona had experienced a lot of pain in her life. She had lost everyone she had ever cared about, and despite being a time traveler, she rarely ever saw them again. But this. This was pain unlike any other. She did not expect it to feel like this.

“Is it a trick?” Ulinthra asked. “It’s a trick.”

“Lord Arianrhod,” the man who shot Leona said. “We’ve come for you.”

“You shot her!” Ulinthra shouted at him.

“Ma’am,” he affirmed.

“I wasn’t done with her yet!”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. What can I do?”

“You can shoot yourself in the head.”

Without hesitation, the man lifted his pistol, and did exactly as he was told. His dead body fell right next to Leona’s dying one. Their blood started intermingling as someone managed to unlock the prison cube. The last thing Leona felt before she died was Ulinthra’s warm fingers on her neck, checking for a pulse that would soon be gone.

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Fervor: The Trinity is a Paradox (Part XII)

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A kind woman is helping me up from the hot pavement of a rooftop parking lot. As I’m trying to recover from the lightshow, I see Jesi running down into the garage, still wearing her hazmat suit, and freaking out a couple walking back to their car. “Should I call the police?” the woman asks me.

“They couldn’t do anything,” I say. “She’s too powerful.” I remember what’s just happened, and scramble away from the woman. “Oh no, get away from me, I’m sick!” I look around, as if it would be possible to see the pathogen spreading through the air, or more ridiculously, that if possible, I could do anything about it.

“Hey, it’s okay,” she says to me calmly. “We’ll get to a hospital and figure this out. What exactly is it that you think you have?”

“They called it anthrolysis.”

“They, who?”

I can’t answer that question, because I’m determined to keep time travel a better secret, and she picks up on this.

“Everything is going to be all right. I’m Carol Gelen. What’s your name?”

“Paige. Paige Turner.”

This somehow seems to catch her off guard. She reaches into her back pocket, and opens a sheet of paper. “I received this in the mail. Not an email, but the old fogey kind. I thought it was strange that a new bookstore would open after nearly all others have closed in recent years. I couldn’t pass up the offer for one free softcover book to the first fifty people who show up to its grand opening, though.” She hands me the flyer. “I figured it was a prank, because I can’t find a store by that name anywhere. I came back up here to leave.”

“KC Page Turner Book Emporium,” I read. “Jesi, you bitch,” I mutter.

“This wasn’t me.” Jesimula Utkin has appeared next to me. She sounds sincere. “I’m Alt!Jesi, from the other reality. I’ve just learned what this is. The Prestons have it out for this woman’s children.”

“I don’t have children,” Carol corrects her. “I only have a daughter.”

“In this timeline, yes.”

The fear in Carol’s eyes. She pulls her phone out of her pocket, and almost drops it, trembling like a newborn fawn. “Hey Thistle, call Leona.”

“No,” I say out loud, absorbing some of Carol’s fear into my own eyes as she’s confirming that her daughter is still alive. “Please tell me that’s a more common name than I knew.”

Jesi frowned at me. “Technically it’s a different Leona than you know. The one at the Ponce is far older.”

“I saw you teleport,” Carol says to Jesi after hanging up. “I thought I was seeing things when Miss Turner here did it, but obviously not. What is going to happen to my little girl?”

“She will be fine,” Jesi assures her. “Well, maybe that’s not the best word to use, but she will survive, and she’ll become a hero. She meets a boyfriend and a girlfriend, and has two wonderful children. You actually met your grandchildren, as did your late husband, you just didn’t know it.” That was shockingly generous of Jesi to say, and it seems to be helping Carol feel better.

“But I’m still going to die?” Carol asks.

“It’s like it’s already happened,” Jesi confirms

“No,” I say. “We can stop this. Send me back.”

Jesi frowns at me again as she’s taking out her phone. “Okay Thistle, call Ophir.” She waits a second. “Fifi. Emergency evac to KU Med in realtime. One patient. The human.”

“She doesn’t need a hospital; she needs a reset,” I argue.

A man appears, picks Carol up like they’re newlyweds, and disappears again.

“Arcadia and Nerakali are not going to let this go. Mrs. Gelen died in the other timeline, and I don’t deign to understand why she has to die in this one, but I do not question them.”

“How is that possible? You don’t back down.”

“From them, I do. Anything more would be suicide. I’m sorry, Paige, but the only thing  we can do for Patient One right now is keep her comfortable until she dies.”

“At least take her to Doctor Hammer,” I suggest. “She might stand a chance at fixing this.”

“That is precisely why I didn’t involve Hammer. I’m trying to tell you, it’s hopeless. Her fate has been decided.”

Now I’m getting angry. “Yeah, decided by you! You can blame others all you want, but this was your doing, and you will have to live with yourself.”

“Not if I erase my own memories. I can do the same for you.”

“No,” I say, seething. “I wanna remember how much I hate you.”

“I think you’ll one day forgive me. Afterall, I’m the reason you just saved the world. Yes, someone died, but omelettes and eggs, right?”

I’m getting angrier. “People! Are not! Omelettes! Carol was a human bei—is. She is a human being!”

“In this analogy, Carol would be the egg, and humanity would be the—”

“Argh!” I scream. I invoke my memories of watching football with my dad. He doesn’t actually like sports all that much, but gambling on games with the power to vaguely recall the future is how he makes his money. I pull my arms in, and lower my head, so I can barrel right into her, like a...uhh...linebacker? Jesi’s nearly over the edge when a pair of hands tugs me at the waist. She’s still about to fall to her death when a second pair of hands saves her just in time. But it’s the same pair, and both belong to me. Two other versions of me just stopped me from making the biggest mistake of my life.

Second!Paige regards Third!Paige with surprise. “In the other timeline,” Third!Paige explains, “you pull First!Paige off of Jesimula, but it’s too late. Jesi ends up tipping over.”

I can’t speak.

“One thing you’ll learn, First,” Third!Paige says to me, “is that sometimes you can change the past, and sometimes you’re just completing a predestined loop.”

I still can’t speak. Part of me is in shock from encountering two other versions of myself, and the rest is still vengeful against Jesimula Utkin.

“The question now,” Second!Paige begins, “is what do we do with the three of us?”

“Easy,” Jesi says. “You have to do a physical blend.”

I finally feel up to joining the bizarre conversation.“What is that?”

“Choosers tend to not like there being alternate versions of themselves running around,” Third!Paige starts, “so they join together, and form a new person.”

“This new person has the combined memories of the originals, which is why I’m not so sure we should do it,” Second!Paige adds. “Both of us remember killing Jesi, and I don’t want you to have to go through that. Besides, blending brains is bad enough, but quantum merging two bodies is said by some to be more painful than childbirth. I’ve never heard of it being done by three people.”

“Irrelevant,” Jesi says. “It’s immoral to remain apart. Jupiter Rosa is the only exception.”

“You’re one to talk,” Second!Paige says to her.

“The other Jesi and I will be quantum merging soon, I promise you that,” Jesi claims.

Third!Paige faced Jesi more straight on. “You should go before a fourth version of us has to come back in time, and save your life again.”

“I have business on the plaza,” Jesi responds, looking at her watch. “Fair warning, I’m only sliding a few minutes into the future. Be here, or be somewhere else.” She forms a temporal bubble, and disappears.

Second!Paige looks at her watch. “We should get going anyway. The rest of the team is going to be worried about her.”

“We can’t show ourselves to them,” Third!Paige reminds her.

“I know,” Second!Paige agrees. “Which means we don’t have long to settle our affairs, and say our goodbyes.”

Both of the other Paiges take sunglasses out of their respective pockets, and place them on their faces, completely in sync, like they practiced it ahead of time. Second!Paige puts on a funny hat. I guess we don’t want to draw attention to ourselves, which three triplets at somewhat different ages would do. We climb the stairs in silence. Once we’re back down on the street, I look back up to the roof, and see Jesimula Utkin creepily staring at us. I watch her for a moment, then turn away, and follow myself down the block. The disguises seem to be working, because nobody gives us a second look as we stroll the plaza.

“Why do we have to say goodbye again?” I ask of them.

“Jesi’s right in that we shouldn’t be seen together,” Third!Paige explains, “or interact with each other in the long run. If we’re each to survive independently, then we should do so, well...independently.”

This was sound logic, and I couldn’t figure out how I felt about. These two are me, and I could learn so much from them. They almost feel like my sisters, and I don’t to part from them. But yes, it would be uncomfortable and confusing for our fathers, and I don’t want them dealing with that. It’s already bad enough that I’m now one of their peers.

Second!Paige sighs deeply. “Our biggest hurdle is which of us gets to go back, and which has to go somewhere else?”

“How would you even get there?” Third!Paige asks her.

“I would...” Second!Paige tries to sound like she knows what she’s talking about, “make contact.”

“With whom?”

“Choosers.”

“You know many choosers?”

“Someone could take me there.”

“Someone, like Ophir Adimari?” Third!Paige questions.

“Yeah, maybe,” Second!Paige argues.

“I have something better,” Third!Paige says. She removes what look like two phones from her back pockets. I assume they’re not really phones, though. “I found Ophir after Jesi died by my hand for the second time, and asked him to take me back there. I had spent years not wanting to try to change history again, thinking it would  only end in disaster, knowing that only Asuk could help me through it. Our fathers were great, but I felt such shame every time I looked at them, I couldn’t bear it. Going back to the future helped immensely, but at a terrible price. Ophir, Jesi, Keanu, and all their friends are horrible people, who don’t do anything for free. Ophir wanted too much from me, so I came back to fix it all, but not before I made these.” She hands one device to Second!Paige, and the other to me.

“What are they?” I ask.

“Photos. Hundreds of millions of them,” Third!Paige answers. “There’s one photo for very day of eight thousand years, in a couple hundred strategic locations around the world. It can take you all the way to about five-thousand B.C.E.”

I examine the device itself, without even turning it on. “They all fit on this one thing?”

“That baby holds eight petabytes, and I’ve used almost all of it. For reference, a petabyte is a million gigs.”

“How did you find pictures before the camera was invented?” Second!Paige asked.

Third!Paige smirks. “I used a time traveling camera, that someone else invented. It doesn’t matter, the point is that those are yours. First!Paige, you’ll stay here, and continue your life. Jesi isn’t likely to be done with you, and her friends have their own nefarious projects going on. Keep a lookout. Second!Paige, you can be the one to go see Asuk, and his family. As you know, this is a different timeline, so they won’t have any clue who you are.”

“Where will you go?” Second!Paige asks graciously.

Third!Paige’s smirk grows larger. “Hey Glasses, telescope mode.” The lenses of her sunglasses turn a deeper black. She looks up, and looks around at the sky, until she settles on one point. “How about Tau Ceti?” Then she disappears.

“Did she just go to a different planet?” I ask. “How is that possible? She wasn’t looking at a photo.”

Now Second!Paige smirks as she’s flipping through her camera roll. “You don’t need a photo. You just need to see where you’re going.” She disappears too.

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Microstory 935: Parental Leave

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When mother nature is sitting in her office, trying to come up with a new species, she generally has two options to choose from. She can either protect that species by making it immortal, or she can allow each generation to pass on its genes to its offspring. Immortality is so incredibly rare because it’s not often necessary. Most creatures are capable of surviving in their environments by evolving useful traits. The primary biological imperative, therefore, is most often the continuation of the bloodline. Nearly every living thing on this planet is driven by an instinct to propagate their respective species, and besides immortals, like certain jellyfish, humans are the biggest exception. As depicted in the positively brilliant film Idiocracy, humans are capable of ignoring their instincts. We can choose who to mate with, and we don’t always choose wisely. While the term sexual selection may sound like it applies to us more than anyone, it doesn’t. We mate for any number of reasons, with genetic viability being pretty low on the list. We also create accidental pregnancies, which is unheard of in the rest of the animal kingdom. However your family begins, under whatever conditions, you should have the right to nurture your young. Many countries have parental leave policies, which allows new parents to take time off work, while not only maintaining their job security, but getting paid simultaneously. In fact, the majority of nations have some federal law dictating the responsibility a company has to their employees regarding parental leave. The United States does not, which means each company has to come up with their own. Their only incentives to offer a good deal in their benefits package are good publicity, and competition. In my opinion, not even the most accommodating countries provide enough parental leave. In some of my stories—since the first three years of a child’s life are so important—a parent is allowed an entire year of full pay, another year with half-pay, and a third with quarter-pay. This may seem extreme, but they have a wildly different outlook on work. To them, working is something you have to do to have the money you need to do the things you like. They pay more taxes than us, because they see it as an investment in the community, and it’s what pays for things like parental leave, which ultimately benefits everyone. I propose we emulate their plan, and give parents the tools they need to raise their children properly. Everyone complains about how terrible other parents are, and how no one is doing it right. One way to solve that disconnect is to allow them to actually parent, rather than spending half the day at the office.

Microstory 934: 3D Printing

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3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, sounded absurd to me when I first heard whispers of it years ago. Objects are made of so many different kinds of materials, so it seemed impractical to keep each one on hand in raw form at all times. As that one guy in The Graduate says, in one of only two scenes I’ve watched, “plastics.” Plastic is manufactured from a myriad of chemical compounds, and formed in a multitude of ways. It is widely available, cheap to make, and capable of assuming any form. It also lasts for thousands of years, which is why it’s so bad for the environment when wasted. Despite its issues, plastic may be our best hope to combat scarcity and inequality. One day, I believe everyone will own two 3D printers; one for synthesizing food, and another for clothing and household items. Certain places will use other types. Every hospital will be equipped with artificial tissue synthesizers, in order to replace bodily organs. Construction companies will utilize specialized mega-printers to build skyscrapers in a matter of days. The average consumer will never have to leave their housing unit to shop. Goods will be selected online—or rather, the technical specifications for them—and printed in minutes, maybe hours. Entire companies will be shuttered, and replaced by those in the business of processing raw plastic cartridges, and delivering to end users via automated drones. This, combined with other societal advances, such as universal basic income, will render jobs virtually irrelevant and unnecessary. I won’t speak more on that, though, because if you’ve been following, you know how excited I am for this future. As of now, most people have no use for a 3D printer of any kind, but in fewer than thirty years, they will be as ubiquitous as microwave ovens. It may sound crazy now, but in the same span of time, the idea of owning a tiny computer the size of a calculator, with access to the whole world, was the stuff of science fiction.

Microstory 933: Recycling

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It would seem difficult to argue against things like renewable resources, and recycling, but people manage to do it. There are some issues with it; I would never claim it to be perfect. Solar panels can make the area hot enough to fry birds, that is, if the wind turbines don’t chop ‘em up first. Recycling facilities also pollute the air, which kind of defeats the purpose of them in the first place. But we should still invest as a society in environmentally-minded projects and technology. Just because something doesn’t work the way we want it to now, doesn’t mean it won’t be better in the future. People seem to think progress is based merely in time; that if you wait long enough, everything will be done. In reality, you have to work for it. We had to want to travel great distances faster in order to invent trains, cars, and planes. If oceans were made of lava, we wouldn’t build ships out of wood. We would instead try to figure out how to mould metal that won’t melt, or just skip right to aircraft. If we all lived on a tiny island, and had everything we needed to live happily, we probably wouldn’t build any transportation technology beyond the humble bicycle. We have to use crappy recycling techniques now so we can learn from our experiences, and one day come up with something better. We are presently a planet of trash. This trash was tossed out not only by our ancestors, but by us. And when I say it was tossed out, remember that there is nowhere safe for it to go. All you can hope to do is make it someone else’s problem, but that is not a very dignified way to live. There are a few people out there who benefit financially by keeping us the way we are, which is living in literal filth. They are generally old, and would sooner see this world die than give up their cash. They use their charm to convince people who are both poor and stupid that their open positions in destroying the environment are the only ones to be had. People like King Dumpster want you to rely on them to live. Because if you figure out that a couple solar panels, and a miniature wind turbine, can get you off the grid, and save you tons of money in the long-term, you might also realize that they do not have your best interests in mind. It’s negligibly harder in most regions—in this country, at least—to sort your refuse into two separate bins; one for waste, and one for recycling. There are many reasons to take that extra step, and so few reasons to not. Your descendants will live better, so that should be enough for you. If not, consider that you might be young enough to live forever, or long enough to personally suffer consequences of environmental disaster. (Side note: while hurricanes themselves are perfectly natural, the frequency, and increased intensity of them in recent years, are being directly caused by global climate change, which is being perpetrated by humans.) If you believe in an afterlife, I guarantee deliberately not recycling is not going to score you any points with whatever Flying Spaghetti Monster you worship. Unless you worship an evil being. Is that it? Are you a devil-worshipper? Those three reasons should encompass the majority of people living in the developed world, so stop listening to garbage people, like Donald Trump, and pick one. Reduce..reuse...recycle.

Microstory 932: Quantum Entanglement

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I wouldn’t claim to understand exactly what quantum entanglement is, how it is a thing that exists, or what we can do with it. I am no quantum physicist, though as you can read in my bio, I did have aspirations to study that in the future when I was younger. I realize now my only reason for this is because my favorite show was once Quantum Leap, but the field requires a level of math that I’m not capable of. Judging from one failing grade, and two D grades, I’m not even capable of college algebra. What I can do, however, is utilize a very basic grasp of the most basic concepts to come up with cool science fiction stories wherein characters exploit physical laws to their own gains. Quantum entanglement is a complex subject that not even those studying it can fully explain, but I’ll give you the gist of it, as I’ve interpreted the sources I’ve used for research. Let’s say you have two particles that are close to each other, and spinning around. They spin because nothing in the universe stands still. Everything is in flux, exchanging energy, and succumbing to the ultimate vastness of entropy. I’m not sure how it happens, but by some manner, these two particles can become linked to one another. You can then move the particles far, far away from each other, but this connection inexplicably remains. If you measure the spin of one, you can know the spin of the other, even faster than it would take for you to learn that using normal spacetime limitations. Einstein referred to this as “spooky action at a distance”. The man was so intelligent, he intuited the concept using mathematical formula before humanity had the technology to even come close to testing his hypothesis. So what does this all mean? Well, in my stories, it’s possible to communicate across the universe by connecting two devices together, and then sending them far apart. The internet says, “not so fast, compadre. That’s not how it works.” Welp, maybe not. It’s true that the two particles lose their connection as soon as you try to manipulate one of them. We call this the Uncertainty Principle, but I won’t get into that. I still believe that there is a loophole to that. I don’t know what it might be, but I also don’t think we’re all stuck here. I believe humans are destined to reach for the stars...literally, and to be able to stay connected to each other. And isn’t that what it’s all about? The real reason I love quantum entanglement so much is because it’s a property of physics that demonstrates the best thing about being alive: interacting with others.

Microstory 931: Gravity

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There are few things in the universe as important as gravity. One of them is spacetime, and the other—if it exists at all—is any underlying component of reality that allows for the creation, and persistence, of life in general. We have only studied organic life on Earth, as well as quasi-living entities we call viruses. There may be other forms of life beyond our single orbital we have yet to encounter, or which we have encountered, but do not recognize. One thing is for sure, however, in whatever form this other life takes, it would not be able to exist without gravity, because nothing can. Gravity is what holds celestial bodies together. People like to say that it “keeps us down to the ground” but that’s not a very reasonable way to put it. There is no up and down in space—and we are in space, just not outer space. So it’s more like gravity pulling us inward, and keeping us from going outward. The distinction matters, because it’s important to understand that a body gravitationally bound to another will always be pulled towards the center of  that more massive object. Why exactly it does this is something we’ve been struggling with for years. Contrary to the tale of the apple that has been misinterpreted into your brains, Isaac Newton did not discover gravity. At no point did someone have to realize that things fall down, or even that they don’t spontaneously float upwards. There are things like wind, lift, and pressure, which allow certain objects to move away from its gravitational pull, but that doesn’t mean gravity isn’t operating upon it. The reason those objects, like birds, are capable of resisting the effects of gravity to some degree is because gravity is a weak force. It’s the weakest force, because it takes a lot more to make it happen than it does to make the other forces happen.

If gravity were stronger, the computer you’re reading this on may be experiencing a gravitational pull towards the center of your body right now. There’s an episode of Family Guy that demonstrates this by having several household objects float around Peter, suggesting that he’s so fat, he’s massive enough to hold his own orbit. And while we know that such a thing is impossible in the real world, and Isaac codified a great deal of the basic properties of gravity, there is still so much more to learn. The scientists who know the most about it still don’t understand what gravity is, how it works, or why it’s so much weaker than the other three (or four) forces. They’ve proposed this particle called the graviton, but there’s no proof it even exists. What we do know is that it’s vital to the universe. I’ve read some sources that say if we didn’t have gravity, everything would just fall apart, but that’s only a helpful image when you’re trying to explain what would happen if gravity suddenly disappeared. The truth is that, without it, nothing meaningful would exist at all. Particles would just be floating around in empty space, never having come together to form something larger in the first place. Gravity has done a lot to work against us. Rocket ships expend the majority of their fuel just getting off the ground, and away from the atmosphere, in the first place. And we don’t even have it that bad. It’s conceivable that a species living on a heavy world would never develop technology capable of reaching space, because it would just not be practical to try. Still, gravity is one of my favorite things, because we will one day conquer it, and once we do that, nothing will be able to stop us from reaching greatness.