Microstory 939: Fire and Water

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I want to start off by making it clear that I am in no way an arsonist, or obsessed with fire. I don’t even like it more than any other person, but along with water, it’s one of the most profoundly important components of the universe. We need both of these two things to survive, even long before we could manipulate and control the former, or make the latter safe enough to drink. The control of fire is believed to have first been done by the ancestors of man between one and two million years ago. This marked a turning point in our history. It allowed us to keep warm, ward off predators, and cook our food. As I said in my Stepwisdom series, we do not know of a single civilization that did not cook its food. Wow, a lot of these entries are repeats. Does that make me wise? I don’t know, you tell me...but yes. What I said about it there is that the intense heat is primarily good for killing off pathogens, but that’s not all. Despite what you may have been told about the raw food craze, cooked food is not only perfectly acceptable, but healthy. Fad dietitians may claim our species has not had time to adapt to modern foods, and in some cases, this is true, especially when it comes to synthetic ingredients. But you would be surprised how quickly we can change in but a few generations. Our bodies have evolved to digest cooked food, and absorb the majority of its nutrients. Likewise, we’ve evolved out of the ability to live on a lot of raw foods, particularly meats. Meanwhile, our carnivorous animal brethren are completely fine with tearing the flesh off a fresh kill. I won’t say anything further about it, nor will I go over yet again the benefits of drinking water. Both deserved to be on this list, but you don’t need a master’s thesis on them.

Microstory 938: Social Media

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Way back in the day, people were using social media before they were calling it that. I had an AOL Instant Messenger account when I was eleven years old, and several more over the course of the next nine or ten years, until it started falling out of favor. I spoke primarily to strangers by searching “common interests” that I realize now no one was taking seriously. Back then, we didn’t have internet safety discussions in the elementary school library. We had to figure out for ourselves that, just because someone claimed they could be trusted online, didn’t mean it was true. Most of us intuited that we were not to give out personal information, aided by the fact that AOL asked us to create usernames, rather than use our real names. These were not even the early days of internet communication. People before by time were using newsgroups, and…I wanna say, usenets? I’m not sure what they were exactly, but I can guess they were fairly unsophisticated. Come high school, people were still using instant messengers, but it was becoming hip to have a permanent web presence. Sites like MySpace, Xanga, and even Classmates.com were vying to give you their free accounts. I built a few stupid websites on my own before then, and never thought it would be something almost everyone had. But I guess it just had to become easier, and require no coding skills (I taught myself HTML, but for some reason, didn’t become the next Bill Gates, which is weird). Soon, one social media engine was seen to be moving faster than all the others. Facebook was edging out all competition to be the dominant force. You had to have a legitimate college email address, had to request your institution be added if it wasn’t already there, and it was generally expected that you use your real name. Instead of pointless blog posts, or innocuous conversations, this was designed to maintain contact with people to which you were no longer necessarily geographically linked. It was also helpful for school itself. I used it extensively to ask for help from my classmates; a fact that ultimately led me to deleting my account once I graduated from college. Facebook was only getting better, adding more features by the month, and eventually letting anyone over the age of thirteen in, whether they were attached to a school, or not. But a pattern emerged from this as well.

There are four main types of Facebook posts. One: personal tidbits/irrelevant aglets of conversation. Two: memes. Three: news. Four: fake news. I don’t care about most of it, and always found myself using Twitter mostly. Why? Not in spite of, but because of, the character limit. It was nearly impossible to go on a rant in Twitter’s early days. If you wanted to say something, you had to think about how to shorten it, thereby only expressing the most vital information. It allows me to keep up on the news, and the fact that you can’t post the text of an entire article means it’s much harder to spread misinformation. While I’m meant to connect with everyone I know on Facebook, I don’t feel bad about only following people I want to hear from on Twitter. After nearly eleven years of this, my Twitter game remains strong. I have three accounts, which are accompanied by an Instagram account I don’t use as much as I would like. I have since created a new Facebook account too, but I don’t scroll through the feed, and am only interested in sharing my original content. I don’t understand the appeal of Snapchat and Instagram stories, because if I tell you something, I want you to remember it, not limit it to your short-term memory, after which you move on to something else. I do appreciate that others are getting something out of it, though, along with Facebook. I just hope you don’t pay too much attention to that fake news. That’s exactly what the Russians want. Come on over to Twitter, where it’s fairly clear who you should follow, and who you shouldn’t.

Microstory 937: Education

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As you’ve seen from a few other posts, and will continue to see as this series continues, I’m a huge proponent of education. I believe in the availability of knowledge, and the truth that understanding is the true purpose of life. I’ve worked at literally dozens of different companies, and many of these organizations are almost completely meaningless. As depicted in films like Office Space, most of your jobs are complete nonsense. In the beginning of civilization, everything anyone did mattered. There were those who grew corn, because people needed to eat corn to survive. The corn growers traded with the fur traders, because they needed furs to keep them warm, so they could survive in the winter until they could go back to planting corn. And the fur traders needed shelters to live in, so they traded with builders to build the shelters. And thus the fundamental tenets of capitalism were born. Despite what fancy-pants words get thrown around regarding how other nations handle their governmental rule, or lack thereof, we are all capitalists. I perform labor for you, you give me money. I give you money, you give me product or service. Nearly everyone operates on these principles, whether they like it or not. A few smatterings of communes and hermits manage some modicum of independence from this, but not in all ways. They don’t create their own fabric from scratch, nor the saddles on their horses. Capitalism is not the best way to run a planet; it’s just the only one that works for now. But this can change, and it all come down to education and awareness.

The main reason so many teenagers are getting pregnant is because they’re being taught misguided practices, primarily by religious nuts, who more often than not, do not practice what they preach. The reason people all over the world are starving and homeless is because we are indoctrinated from birth to horde our resources. Some altruistic people teach their children that it is noble to give to those in need, when instead, we should all be taught that this is just something that you do. Our whole society is built upon the concept that, if you want to help someone else, you have to lose something of yourself. We are actively discouraged from such behavior, which makes it even harder for the willing to actually do some good. It all comes down to education. The more people who know more, the better we all are. If Teds—Nugents and Cruzes alike—of the world were given a proper education, they might be able to see how their political positions are harming others. Without it, their ignorance is killing people.  We should do away with the unproductive and counterproductive work that some rich people fabricated for the sake of wealth. Sure, it builds employment, but in this day and age, with so much automation, is that really necessary anymore. I’m not saying we should all go back to farming corn (which is a trash crop) and trading furs (which is cruelty at its worst). I’m just saying that we should focus our attention on contributing positively to the betterment of the human race, and the world in general. And that all comes down to education.

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.